The Impact of Modernization on Indian Families: The Counselling Challenge

India has the distinction of evolving one of the longest continuing civilization in the world, which is constantly adapted itself to the changing political and socio-economic contents and specific watershed events in her history. Her family system has proved to be a remarkable stable unit of society which has shown great flexibility and adaptability in the phase of rapid social changes. This paper briefly traces the past taken by India in the modernization process, then analyzes the impact of social change of family structure, functions, roles, relationships and status of its members and its relationship with kinship system. Lastly, it draws implications for counseling interventions based on the changing needs of contemporary Indian Families.     

Introduction to this Special Issue

A one-group quasi-experimental design and survey methodology were used to investigate the effect of virtual laboratory practices on preservice teachers’ (N = 29) graphic comprehension and interpretation skills with different learning approaches. Pretest and posttest data were collected with the Test of Understanding Kinematic Graphs. The Learning Approaches Scale was administered to the preservice science teachers to determine if they used an in-depth, superficial, or strategic approach. These data were analyzed using non-parametric statistics. The effect of virtual laboratory practices on these preservice teachers’ graphic comprehension and interpretation skills was evaluated, and a significant pretest–posttest gain for “Selecting the graphic related to the explanation of movement” was found. Suggestions are made to address the effects of teaching models and technology-integrated learning environments on students’ learning approach in science courses at different levels of education.     

Introduction to the Special Issue

Expository text is often neglected in the elementary school curriculum even though most of the reading that children do in school is of that type. Most of the research that demonstrates the importance of text structure in reading comprehension and the benefits that accrue from instruction in text structure deals with children at or above the 4th grade. This research literature, reviewed briefly, provides the basis for the work that is described in this article, which involves younger children. First, a study is presented that demonstrates that children are sensitive to text structure, and therefore would benefit from instruction, as early as 2nd grade. Second, a new instructional program is described that focuses intensively on one specific expository structure, compare and contrast. Finally, the results of a study that evaluates the effects of the program are described.     

Complex Systems Approaches to Educational Research: Introduction to the Special Issue

Abstract

To explore the movement toward increased complex systems (CS) research in education, this special issue of the Journal of Experimental Education was developed to identify some under-examined places where CS approaches have advanced research. The articles provide empirical examples of research leveraging methods and analyses from complexity science. In this introduction article to the special issue, we discuss the authors’ contributions to defining and explicating concepts and methods that fall under the umbrella of CS perspectives and how these methods were used to investigate complex processes in their topics of study. The articles capture the goal of the special issue to demonstrate how the research questions framed by CS assumptions can change our expectations about the very nature of the processes under study in education. We then take a more global perspective and acknowledge the commonalities amongst the papers, including (a) the reliance on intensive data to answer research questions, and (b) the use of dynamic approaches that yield findings about the stability and change of these systems and phenomena.     

Introduction to the Special International Issue

To understand the role the media play in educational politics, it useful to consider the media's role in a participatory democracy. The concept of the news media as “thin” public sphere serves as a pragmatic theoretical lens through which to examine the possibility that the media might play a critical but limited role in participatory democracy. The focus of this special issue is not to enter the fray in the debate over media bias but instead to draw attention to the important role that the media play in educational politics and to make a case for research that is attentive to the intersection of educational politics and media coverage.