Restructuring a traditional student teacher supervision model: Fostering enhanced professional development and mentoring within a professional development school context

The purpose of this study was to pilot an alternative student teaching supervision model at a college of education in a US context. In the study, the collaborators used multiple paired dyads to supervise student teachers with multiple supports from college faculty. This study examined how teachers and university faculty planned the use of paired dyads and how participants responded to the innovation. The findings suggest teachers and junior faculty can undertake bottom-up reform within larger systemic constraints.     

Concurrent validity of the Universal Nonverbal Intelligence Test and the Leiter International Performance Scale–Revised

One hundred elementary‐ and middle‐school students were administered the Universal Nonverbal Intelligence Test (UNIT; B.A. Bracken & R.S. McCallum, 1998) and the Leiter International Performance Scale‐Revised (Leiter‐R; G.H. Roid & L.J. Miller, 1997). Correlations between UNIT and Leiter‐R scores were statistically significant ( p < .001), ranging from .33 to .74. The UNIT Full Scale score was 5 points higher than the Leiter‐R Full Scale score, t = 4.73, p < .001. © 2006 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Psychol Schs 43: 143–148, 2006.     

The Meaning of Social Inclusion for People with Disabilities in South Korea

This study sets out to examine and understand the meaning of social inclusion for people with disabilities, as constructed by people with disabilities themselves. Focus group interviews with 34 people who have physical impairments, cerebral palsy, or hearing or visual impairments were conducted for the study. Using the data obtained from these interviews, the interviewees’ various definitions and perceptions of social inclusion were analysed and four meaning categories for social inclusion were identified: excluded/segregated, present, participating, and actively participating. The findings of this research can be used as foundational material in the development of disability policies and the improvement of social services to better enable full social participation and social inclusion for people with disabilities.     

Financing training in developing countries: The role of payroll taxes

In most developing countries, the major programs of vocational training and manpower-skill development are financed from general government revenues. Increasingly, however, earmarked payroll taxes are employed to finance training. This paper summarizes international experience with these payroll taxes, drawing the distinction between the more traditional revenue raising schemes on the lines of the Latin American model and the newer levy-grant schemes.Drawing upon experience of payroll taxes in advanced economies it discusses the incidence of these taxes in developing countries and presents an economic rationale for their growing use, as part of a reverse social security scheme. It concludes that the desirability of using payroll taxes to finance training, compared to other alternatives available to developing country governments, is likely to be contingent upon the stage of a country's development.     

Generic Interests and School Subject Choice

While empirical research on school subject preferences and choices has a long history, ‘interest’ has infrequently been invoked as an explanatory construct. Three levels on which interest is conceptualised in educational research are identified. The most general derives from vocational psychology and may be characterised by the themes of Holland’s RIASEC typology. The results of five recent Australian studies in which interests were related to school subject preferences and choices are reviewed, and a series of multi-level models of data from the most recent are presented. The models offer a coherent summary of interest – school subject choice relations and enable accurate estimates to be made of their relative importance across the curriculum fields typically available in the senior secondary years. The consistency in the results of the five studies provides strong support for the hypotheses that school subject preferences and choices are systematically related to interests, and that Holland’s RIASEC themes provide a coherent account of preferences and choices across a broad range of objects, activities and contexts encountered in school and work.     

Music Selection Behaviors in Everyday Listening

Data on everyday music listening obtained via the Experience Sampling Method indicated that selection method was related to liking for and emotional response to the music, attention paid to the music, and perceived consequences of hearing the music. Individual listener's characteristics (e.g., age and level of engagement with music) were associated with selection behaviors. Negative effects resulted when individuals perceived they did not have control over music selection. In contrast, possessing control led to positive consequences such as enjoyment and motivation. These results indicate that control is an important aspect of one's everyday music experiences.     

On Bosworth Field or the Playing Fields of Eton and Rugby? Who Really Invented Modern Football?

In 1867 the Football Association was considering disbanding but was largely dissuaded from doing so by the progress the game was making in Sheffield. The football rules used there seemed much more appealing to teams and spectators alike and the game was beginning to be exploited commercially. This commercialism was resisted though by the local social elite who still had a fierce belief in amateurism and opposed the professionalisation of football. At the same time, in Lancashire, there existed a vigorous sporting culture surrounding pedestrianism, horse racing, boxing and cricket together with a well developed structure of sporting facilities. By the 1870s football, a game that had not previously been exploited commercially in Lancashire, was beginning to become popular and was rapidly professionalised. Nominal record linkage indicates that this development was essentially driven by schoolteachers, clerks, bookkeepers and accountants using their social and cultural capital rather than the transference of public school culture through returning public schoolboys. The formation of modern association football in Lancashire between 1830 and 1885 can then be seen to be effected though linear continuities in local popular culture and the emergence of a lower middle class rather than public school traditions and a civilising process.     

Changing the way people think about health-enhancing physical activity: do mass media campaigns have a role?

Mass media campaigns are conducted to influence community norms around health behaviours, including physical activity. Campaigns can reach large populations at relatively low cost, to influence awareness, knowledge and beliefs through to intention and behaviour change. We reviewed 15 campaigns with an explicit focus on physical activity, and explored impacts upon a range of proximal and distal variables. Campaigns achieved high recall, with a median of 70% of the target group aware of the campaign. Increases in knowledge or attitudes to physical activity were found among half the campaigns that reported this measure. Few campaigns reported other proximal variables, such as saliency, beliefs, self-efficacy or behavioural intention. Increases in physical activity were reported among motivated sub-groups of volunteers, but few campaigns reported population increases in activity. Campaigns increase awareness of the issue of physical activity but may not have a population-level effect on behaviour. Campaigns should focus more on influencing proximal variables, such as social norms, to bring about long-term behaviour change. This should be seen as part of a broader strategy, including policy and environmental change. Evaluation designs that measure the full range of variables are preferred to an over-concentration on behaviour alone.