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MENTAL HEALTH Materials provided here are neither intended nor suitable for individuals needing practical assistance with specific mental health problems of their own or of friends/family/colleagues. For such situations, people should contact local mental health agencies, doctors, or other health care professionals. Some access points are provided here.

Center for Science in Society

Among the arenas in which mental health issues play out most significantly is in schools and classrooms. Issues of student behavior, of assessment, of counseling are all matters of both practical and theoretical significance. Beyond these, education itself can be thought of as the art, skill, and science of altering behavior and the brain. Resources provided here are intended both to highlight matters of mental health as they bear on education and ways in which education can help to better understand and improve mental health.

• Usefulness of SAT Test Is Debated in California, November 17, 2001
  The president of the University of California is continuing his crusade against the use of SAT scores in college admissions in his university system.

• Middle School Assessment Model
  To address all of the science curriculum, as well as the individual needs of each student, this assessment model was developed that allows students to take responsibility for their learning in a teacher-supported context.

• Engines for Educators
  An on-line book by Roger Shank for those who are interested in how people learn and what that says about how we should educate them.

• National Center for Research on Evaluation, Standards, and Student Testing
  Funded by the U.S. Department of Education and the Office of Educational Research and Improvement, CRESST conducts research on important topics related to K-12 educational testing.

• The Maryland State High School Assessment Initiative
  The tests involved in this high school assessment initiative gauge both school performance and individual student performance, providing information to students, parents, and school improvement teams.

• Critical Issues in Assessment
  Assessment issues include ensuring equity in alternative assessments, the role of assessments in supporting educational reform, integrating assessment and instruction and reporting results.

• Clearinghouse for Assessment, Evaluation and Research Information
  Provides balanced information concerning educational assessment, evaluation and research methodology, as well as resources to encourage the responsible use of educational data.

• The School Psychologist's Role in School Assessment
  Article presenting the changing role of the school psychologist from one of assessment professional to interventional and program evaluation specialist.

• School Assessment: Does it Pass the Test?
  Presents the debate over the fairness and efficacyof school assessment techniques.

• Improving America's Schools: A Newsletter on Issues in School Reform
  The U.S. Department of Education has funded and distirbuted a series of newsletters intended to help school, district, and state leaders explore key topics in educational reform.

• Newfoundland and Labrador Department of Education School Assessment Project
  Summary of school assessment processes utilized to maintain quality control in the public school system.

• School Profiles
  Part of the Pennsylvania System of School Assessment (PSSA). The information is provided to assist public school personnel and citizens in evaluationg a public school's qulaities. Useful to policy development.

• New Research Center to Help Refine State's School Assessment Programs
  A new research center at the College of Education, the Maryland Assessment Research Center for Education Success (MARCES), is helping to ensure the long-term viability of state-wide testing programs.

• Motivation in the Classroom
  Making school material meaningful for students in an attempt to motivate them to learn.

• Classroom Motivation and Learning
  Motivation leads to learning but in order to understand what motivates a student, a teacher must also understand what it is that will create that interest for each individual child.

• Classroom Motivation
  A page linking to papers on general principle of motivation and how to motivate the unmotivated student.

• Classroom Motivation and Management Skills
  Suggestions for teachers to use an understanding of individual and group motivation and behavior to create a learning environment that encourages positive social interaction, active engagement in learning, and self-motivation.

• Classroom Motivation
  An extensive page detailing various aspects of motivation including theoretical foundations of motivation for learning, motivational influences, principles of motivation, and strategies to enhance motivation.

• Personality and Differential Motivation in the Classroom
  A study that hypothesized that students will be motivated to learn in a classroom structure depending on the personality traits they bring into the classroom, specifically extroverts versus introverts.

• Student Motivation To Learn
  Article discusses student motivation, factors that influence the development of student motivation, intrinsic motivation, and how to foster motivation in unmotivated students.

• Hard Work and High Expectations: Motivating Students to Learn
  Office of Educational Research and Improvement held a national conference that revealed that motivating students is essential to realize the benefits to achievement that the new reforms aim to make possible.

• When Students Do Not Feel Motivated for Literacy Learning: How a Responsive Classroom Culture Helps
  The study offers clues about the affective and cognitive processes that enable some students to become engaged in literacy activities and prevent others from beginning them.

• Capturing Children's Natural Intrinsic Motivation in the Classroom
  This web site links to topis of intrinsic and extrinsic motivation, factors that encourage intrinsic motivation, classroom management methods and resources.

• Motivation Within a Classroom of Deaf Students
  Key motivational factors with deaf students include praise, awareness of student's history, set realistic goals and treat all students equally.

• A Diary Study of Students' Classroom Learning And Motivation
  This study maintains that students' motivation and learning are situated. The paper reports a study that utilises a diary as a research tool to assess students' learning and motivation in context.

• What Is the Collaborative Classroom?
  Discusses the many facets of a collaborative classroom including characteristics, students' roles, interactions, challenges, research base for collaborative learning.

• Schools Are Now Marketers Where Choice Is Taking Hold, April 2001
  An increasing number of school districts around the country are allowing parents to choose their children's school, resulting in schools marketing to the public.

• The Challenges of Parent Involvement Research
  Although methodlogical limitations of reserach studies prevent the revelation of definitive results, early studies suggesting the importance of parent involvement in their child's education.

• Parents and Schools
  Parent involvement is critical in facilitating children's development and achievement and in preventing and remedying educational and developmental problems.

• Parent Engagement as a School Reform Strategy
  Common characteristics of projects that aim to transform failing schools by engaging significant numbers of parents.

• Father Involvement in Schools
  Assesses the extent to which fathers are involved in their children's schools and the link between fathers' involvement and kindergartners' through 12th-graders' school performance.

• Education and Parental Involvement in Secondary Schools: Problems, Solutions, and Effects
  Methods to improve parental involvement in their child's schooling, beginning with the support of the principal.

• Cognitive Flexibility, Constructivism, and Hypertext: Random Access Instruction for Advanced Knowledge Acquisition in Ill-Structured Domains
  The failure of many instructional systems is influenced by underlying biases and assumptions in the design of instruction.

Back to Mental Health Project.

These resource lists are being maintained by Debbie Plotnick, working with Paul Grobstein, Department of Biology, and James Martin, School of Social Work and Social Research, at Bryn Mawr College. Suggestions for additions to the list are welcome, as are more general thoughts about how to most effectively make available information, and promote conversation, about issues of mental health. Contact dplotnic@brynmawr.edu - pgrobste@brynmawr.edu - jmartin@brynmawr.edu.


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