Making a Difference in the Lives of Youth: Mapping Success with the “Six Cs”

Many museums offer specialized programs for young people during out‐of‐school time, yet the consequences of such programs are not well documented. This article explores the potential utility of borrowing a conceptual framework from the youth development literature as a tool for assessment. The authors map findings from three studies of museum youth programs onto the youth development framework as an exercise in understanding the extent to which this model may be useful in developing museum youth programs. Results from this preliminary analysis demonstrate that the framework could serve as a viable tool for program design, and could offer a clear, grounded framework with common language for articulating program impacts often known intuitively and/or anecdotally but not formalized.     

From ``Computers in the Classroom' to Mindful Radical Adaptation by Education Systems to the Emerging Cyber Culture

Despite the huge investments in the last two decades in the introduction of ICT to education and the grandiose expectations accompanying them, ICT has not been widely integrated into educational systems throughout the post-industrial world; furthermore, there is no clear evidence that ICT leads to the improvement of students' outcomes, enhances desired modes of learning or teaching of desired social values. Indeed, on the basis of the outcomes realized to date, one could characterize the rapid and costly response of Western educational systems to the ICT revolution as “much ado about nothing”. This paper focuses on the two questions stemming from awareness of this state of affairs: ? Why have so few outcomes resulted from the huge investments in ICT? ? What must happen in order for educational systems to successfully adapt to the ICT revolution? In contrast to some recent writers on this issue who have criticized the rush to computerization of education, this paper argues that educational systems cannot abstain from joining the ICT race. Abstention is not really an option since the ICT revolution is an important aspect of a deeper and broader cultural revolution that is changing Western culture from modern (or, industrial) to postmodern (or post-industrial) and schools, if they want to survive, have no option but to adapt themselves to the era in which they function. However, successful adaptation requires: 1. a radical breaking of the organizational “glass ceiling” (i.e. school's modern organizational structure) now preventing the true adaptation of education to postmodernity, 2. the accompaniment of this radical restructuring by a well-formed strategy based on a clear understanding of the new emerging culture and explicit values and educational aims. The paper argues that currently, computerization processes in post-industrial societies suffer acutely from total ignorance of the need for such radical organizational restructuring and for its accompaniment by a cultural-ideological strategy – hence the explanation to the above “much a do about nothing” phenomenon.     

Publishing a well-established international environmental journal in Chinese

A Chinese-language version of Ambio – A Journal of the Human Environment – published by the Royal Swedish Academy of Science – has been published in China since 1994. We describe the background to the project and the processes and problems involved in its successful development.     

Perceived threat and Israeli Jews’ evaluations of Russian immigrants: the moderating role of Jewish and Israeli identity

The study examined the moderating effect of Israeli and Jewish identity on the relations between perceived relative personal threat as well as perceived group threat and Israeli Jews’ evaluations of Russian immigrants’ attributes. Results revealed that, with regard to perceived relative personal threat, among low Jewish identity and high Israeli identity participants, perceived relative personal threat was negatively related to the evaluations of immigrants. In contrast, among high Jewish and low Israeli identity participants, perceived relative personal threat was associated positively with evaluations of immigrants. Concerning perceived group threat, evaluations of immigrants by participants of low Israeli identity, as compared to high Israeli identity, and high Jewish identity as compared to low Jewish identity, were more positive mainly at lower levels of perceived group threat. Based on the Common Ingroup Identity Model, the results are interpreted by viewing Israeli Jews and immigrants as two subgroups contained in a superordinate group, namely the Jewish people.     

Group status and attitude change in desegregated classrooms

One thousand thirty-three ninth-grade students from Western and Middle-Eastern ethnic background in 30 classrooms responded to a questionnaire assessing ethnic attitudes. The questionnaire was administered at the beginning and again at the end of these students' first year in ethnically desegregated classrooms. No marked changes in ethnic attitudes were noted as a function of the students' individual academic or social status in the classroom, but there were noteworthy changes associated with the relative status in the classroom occupied by the students' ethnic groups. Positive attitude change among Western (majority) students occurred when both ethnic groups in the classroom were of equal status, and when the MiddleEastern (minority) group was of superior academic status to the Western group. Positive change among the Middle-Eastern group occurred when it occupied superior status in the classroom.     

A Critical Look at Ourselves: Do Male and Female Professors Respond the Same to Environment Characteristics?

We examined the relationship between gender and both job satisfaction and research productivity using data from 1,135 psychology faculty working in 229 academic departments. We found that gender differences in job satisfaction and research productivity were related to elements of the department (i.e., teaching orientation and structure). Overall, women reported lower levels of productivity than their male counterparts. Women also reported higher levels of job satisfaction in more teaching-oriented departments whereas men reported higher levels job satisfaction in more research-oriented departments. We suggest that these findings might be the result of gender differences in preferences with women preferring more socially-oriented positions and men prefer more “things/data”-oriented positions.