Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: Analytic confidence in intelligence analysis is a topic on which very little specific research has been done, yet has an incredible impact on the United State Intelligence Community’s ability to accurately inform policymakers. This study examines what little literature exists on analytic confidence in intelligence forecasting, in addition to discussing relevant studies from the social sciences, and those factors found to have an impact on confidence in decision-making. After examining each of these factors, an experiment was conducted to test the hypothesis that these factors are appropriate factors upon which to rate analytic confidence in intelligence analysis. The findings of the experiment suggest that those factors are indeed valid ones to consider when assessing analytic confidence, though more research is recommended to make the experiment’s results more robust. This thesis concludes with recommendations for future research, and this author’s assertion of his own method to assess analytic confidence as discussed in the work.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: a) Objectives:

In a study of preservice teachers at a University in Ontario, those teacher candidates who were preparing to teach Grades K-6 were not confident in their abilities to teach mathematics. This study attempted to identify what was most challenging for these preservice teachers and what factors hindered or enhanced their confidence as mathematics teachers.

b) Research Perspectives:

If we want teachers to provide powerful mathematics learning opportunities for students, we must provide teachers with these same opportunities (Feiman-Nemser, 2001). Mathematics education has been an area of concern across North America for two decades since the critical American publication of A Nation at Risk (National Commission on Excellence in Education, 1983). Professional development and reform in the area of mathematics teaching has been well represented in the literature (Simon Tzur, Heinz, Kinzel, 2000; Ross, 1999; Spugun, 1996; NCTM Yearbook 1994; Borko, Davinroy, Bliem and Cumbo, 2000). The related topic of preservice teacher confidence in mathematics teaching is building its own small body of recent literature that focuses on the mathematics methods courses associated with preservice programs. (Fieman-Nemser, 2001; Freeman & Smith D.L., 1997; Spungin, 1996).

How do preservice teachers build the confidence to teach using a standards-based mathematics approach? Specifically, what do preservice teachers think contributes to or hinders their professional confidence?

c) Methods of Inquiry & d) Data Sources

The site for the study was a newly established Canadian school of professional learning with a commitment to social constructivist interpretations of teaching and learning. Students (N=50) engaged in a mathematics methods course participated in (N=18) focus groups about their experiences in learning to teach mathematics

Open ended survey (n=50)
Participants completed a survey with eight questions. They responded in writing at the beginning of the methods course. Data was collated and summarized to assist with selection of focus group participants.

Focus group interviews (18 study participants in 3 groups of 6)
Each member of the focus group was asked to draw an image with key words that represented how they saw themselves as math teachers. The images encouraged interaction amongst group members that was experience based. Focus group interview transcripts were analysed for reoccurring themes and consistent patterns using a grounded theory approach (Creswell, 1998; Strauss and Corbin, 1990).
Participant Observer
A participant observer was included during the focus group interviews to provide an additional perspective beyond those of participants and the instructor of the mathematics methods course.

Data analysis of focus group interviews:
The researcher and participant observer analysed the transcripts independently to ensure consideration of all possible categories and themes as well as to look for consistent interpretation of the transcripts. Themes repeatedly identified by both analysts in independent open coding (Strauss & Corbin, 1990) were deemed of greater reliability. Processes of axial and selective coding were then applied to determine commonalities, contradictions and groupings of themes.

e) Results

Four overlapping themes emerged from the data.

1. Preservice Teachers’ Inner Tensions

What do preservice teachers think challenges their professional confidence?

1a. Healing old wounds:
In knowing that they would be taking a mathematics course, the preservice teachers indicated that they revisited their prior experiences as students learning mathematics. The stories they told in the focus group illustrated a series of predominantly negative experiences. These memories, although recalled from the distant past, were vivid for the participants. They left lasting impressions that affected preservice teacher abilities to enter the course with confidence.

1b. Transmission style learning as prior experience:
The use of manipulatives, math discourse and meaning making as central to the methods course attempted to model approaches that would be most effective for student learning. Throughout the focus group interviews, preservice teachers emphasized the value of making meaning for themselves as mathematicians so that they could facilitate student construction of meaning in their own classrooms. The methods course allowed these preservice candidates to build some beginning confidence as effective mathematics teachers.

1c. Tension of high stakes, layered learning:
As the preservice teachers were learning to teach math, they were developing new conceptual understandings of math for themselves. Sandy said “It has to make sense to me first. I have to get over myself.” The sense of fragility and redefining of self through powerful mathematical understandings were deep and affected the preservice teachers’ sense of self as people and as teachers.

2. The Importance of Building a Math Community

What do preservice teachers think enables their professional confidence?

2a. The importance of a positive and safe learning environment:
Preservice teachers voiced their beliefs that they would only take risks in math learning within a safe, positive environment. Danny described the environment as “something organic and something that evolves and it starts with trust and respect and openness.” The preservice program offered a safe learning environment through explicit development of a community of learners that encouraged risk taking, asking questions and investigating theories.

2b. Components of a math community:
The group discussed their understanding of the notion of ‘mathematics community’ throughout the interviews. The preservice teachers saw a need to build math community in their own classrooms as we were attempting to build community in our methods course. The key elements were math discourse, multiple solutions and math terminology, and the use of manipulatives in small groups

3. Understanding the Meaning of ‘Engagement’ with Mathematics

What other elements of the methods course enabled preservice teachers to build their professional confidence?

3a. Fun versus engagement:
Particular focus group discussions highlighted how the preservice teachers had arrived at a point where they recognized that struggling with mathematical problems could be challenging and engaging. This was significantly different from their earlier impressions that mathematics was not ‘fun’ or engaging.

3b. Use of manipulatives for meaning making:
The use of manipulatives throughout the mathematics methods course served as a key vehicle to allow for exploration of mathematical ideas. It is important here to distinguish between the use of manipulatives that merely represent existing concepts (such as plastic coins to represent money) and the use of manipulatives to explore concepts in mathematics (such as the use of objects and blocks to create pattern or the use of a circle of string and grid paper to explore fixed perimeter and changing area). For those preservice teachers who struggled with nebulous mathematical ideas (such as infinity, zero, and, capacity) the manipulatives became an anchor for meaning-making.

3c. Real life applications of math:
Two preservice teachers independently drew images of spider webs during the focus group interviews. For Sandy and Andi, making real world connections was a critical feature of building their confidence in understanding and teaching mathematics and their webs were symbols of that real world connection.

4. Developing Personal Professional Identity:

How did growing confidence affect preservice teachers’ sense of self?

4a. Learning by teaching:
Opportunities to teach mathematics while on placement proved to be an enormous confidence builder for preservice teachers. Although some were originally reluctant to try, they did, and were rewarded with new learning and increased confidence in their abilities to teach mathematics. This enhanced the preservice teachers’ sense of identity as capable mathematics teachers.

4b. Changing view of self:
The theme of teacher candidates redefining themselves as people, and as teachers of mathematics was an intriguing issue that was difficult to for individuals to describe. Although this state of ‘reconstructing’ identity challenged preservice teacher confidence, it paradoxically, also led to new found confidence as mathematicians.

Conclusion

Primary junior preservice teachers struggled with a host of experiences that challenged their confidence teaching mathematics. Earlier experiences as students of mathematics seemed to have significant impact on levels of confidence of teacher candidates. This is in agreement with previous research in the area of learning mathematics in preservice constructivist classrooms (Anderson & Piazza, 1996; Ross, McDougall, & Hogaboam-Grey, 2002). As preservice teachers were exposed to constructivist teaching methods, they entered a layered learning process which involved participants in ‘doing and learning’ mathematics by making meaning while learning how to ‘teach’ mathematics. Issues of teaching in ways they had not experienced surfaced as challenges to confidence. This was further complicated by their desire to effectively use tools such as manipulatives, computers and calculators to facilitate student understanding. Simultaneously, in experiencing a safe, active, community based mathematics classroom, confidence of preservice teachers increased. This combination of challenges coupled with an enabling environment made for a charged learning environment that questioned self, other, methodology, and mathematics as preservice teachers gained confidence in their mathematics teaching.


References

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Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: Consumer confidence is a closely watched and hotly debated economic indicator. Some analysts regard it as an exceptionally meaningful barometer and forecasting tool, and many cite it as a strong factor in stock market swings. Yet others question its fundamental validity.

Can we trust gauges of consumer confidence? Just what do they measure? How do these measurements interact with economic conditions? Do movements in confidence correlate with other indicators, including personal spending? Is confidence a leading, lagging or coincident indicator of economic recession and recovery?

This paper examines the three most prominent, ongoing surveys of consumer confidence, conducted by the University of Michigan, the Conference Board and ABC News/Money magazine. We review their methodologies, their track records over time and their correlations with other key economic measures.

Our analysis is based on monthly results of these three surveys from December 1985 though the present along with economic measures that should be related to confidence (retail sales, unemployment rate, personal expenditures, income, GDP and others).

These three surveys differ methodologically in important ways, including sampling and question wording. Still, they closely track each other over the 17-year time period reviewed, with correlations of .89 ( p < .01) between ABC and Michigan, .92 ( p < .01) between ABC and Conference Board, and .90 ( p < .01) between Michigan and Conference Board. The analysis also finds that all three indices correlate strongly with key economic gauges, providing compelling evidence of the validity of these measures.

Although the indices are very highly correlated with each other, we also find that they can diverge in the short term, telling different stories about how confidence is trending. The sources of this divergence are discussed, as is the interaction of consumer confidence, political sentiment and war.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: This paper fits with this year's AAPOR conference theme of trust by examining the impact of mass media coverage on trust in the military, the Executive Branch of the U.S. government, and major companies. Trust in these institutions has recently undergone dramatic changes as seen in a set of long standing General Social Survey (GSS) confidence questions asked by a variety of polling organizations. Key reasons for the changes include press coverage of the toppling of the Taliban government in Afghanistan for the military, the handling of the war-on-terror and Saddam Hussein of Iraq for the Executive Branch, and
the collapse of Enron, their accountants, and other high-flying companies for major corporations.
The impact of coverage of these and other crucial events is assessed by predicting time trends of survey questions on the three types of confidence. The predictions will be made from 1977 to shortly before the AAPOR conference using relevant coverage in the Associated Press and the Washington Post. This quarter-century time period is chosen because both survey results and news coverage are available from the Nexis electronic database for the entire time period.
The study builds on Fan, Wyatt, and Keltner (2001, The Suicidal Messenger: How Press Reporting Affects Public Confidence in the Press, the Military, and Organized Religion, Communication Research, 26:826-852), which succeeded in predicting the same confidence questions asked of the press, the military, and organized religion for a shorter time period. For both the present study and earlier one, the press is analyzed by computer using the InfoTrend method, and the modeling is performed using the ideodynamic computation which overcomes important problems inherent to autoregressive models.

Publication Type: Abstract
Abstract: Objectives
The primary objective was to identify the knowledge acquisition strengths and sources used by professional pharmacy students in a self learning environment.

Methods
This preliminary study was conducted to gather baseline data regarding how 2nd year professional students rate themselves as self learners. 123 students enrolled in a Therapeutics course, spring 2005, received a self learning survey to identify variables that affect learning style, confidence regarding learning material on their own, and the extent to which they valued feedback. Students had two self learning practice opportunities. Prior to the first practice opportunity, students ranked themselves with regard to self learning ability.

Results
Students who ranked themselves as very confident (40%) or somewhat confident (50%) self learners were more likely to rely on self-learning strategies, whereas less confident students relied upon input from classmates. Very confident self learners were more likely to research material beyond course requirements (p< 0.05) and, when faced with material not understood, pursued further. Others relied on their peers. (p< 0.05). Few in either group sought feedback from instructors.

Implications
Proficiency as a pharmacist requires the intellectual curiosity, the motivation, and the skill set to be life-long self learner. These results suggest that pharmacy students differ in self-learning confidence, and that this is associated with important differences in information-acquisition strategies. Thus, it may be necessary to implement interventions that enhance self-learning confidence and that teach more productive self-learning strategies to assure professional competence.