In his article, Brouwers argues that cross-cultural psychologists (CCPs; a term he uses to include cultural psychologists and indigenous psychologists) should be a resource for agencies and organizations that engage in international and developmental aid. His argument is that CCPs can help these agencies and organizations ensure that their interventions become “entrenched”—meaning they become long-lasting aspects of life in the communities receiving the aid. We agree with Brouwers that CCPs can and should be more involved with international aid organizations. However, we argue that CCPs’ primary concern should be ensuring the ethical and cultural appropriateness of the ways in which the aid organizations interact with recipient communities. We believe this can only happen when indigenous psychologists are involved in the intervention in ways that ensure recipient communities are fully engaged with any aid-based intervention. We highlight our argument by utilizing some preliminary analyses from a related project we recently completed in Guatemala.

This study compared volleyball achievement and task-specific self-efficacy for high-, medium-, and low-skilled learners using two teaching styles. Students were pre-, mid-, and posttested on skills and self-efficacy and were ability grouped from skill pretest scores. Learning trials were tallied for 58 students in two university classes, and growth curves for each student were created by plotting the percentages of successful trials against the 19 instructional days. ANOVA, used to determine relationships between the teaching styles and the rate of change in volleyball performance, revealed two significant aptitude treatment interactions (ATIs). For skill practice, low-skilled learners did better with command style on the set, and the practice style was best for low-skilled learners on the spike. Self-efficacy increased for all students, with no significant difference in style.

The purpose of this study was to determine the relationship between learning trials and achievement for four volleyball skills—set, forearm pass, serve, and spike. The subjects studied totaled 58 male and female students in two university beginning-volleyball classes. Twenty-two class periods were videotaped, and the tapes were analyzed to determine all correct and incorrect skill trials made by each student each day for the four skills studied. The data analysis included learning trials, learning curves, and achievement. The most consistent result of the statistical analyses was the importance of the total correct trials in determining achievement. For the forearm pass, the serve, and the spike, outside-of-class participation increased the number of total correct trials. The beginning skill level, represented by the pretest score, also influenced achievement. Average trials per day per student were very low, and low-skilled students did not get as many correct or total trials as high-skilled students. This study supports previous studies that suggest that discrete trials might be a more appropriate measure of student achievement than ALT-PE or time-on-task.

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