Performance support that adds value to everyday lives

At the beginning came the job aid. Now, we incline toward performance support tools (PSTs), sometimes fondly described as “job aids on steroids.” PSTs that support employee performance have been studied, but scant attention has been paid to the PSTs that add to people's everyday lives beyond work. We studied 30 diverse people, voluntary PST users, to gauge their opinions and attitudes about such widely available PSTs as MapQuest, VideoJug, eHow, WebMD, and Turbo Tax.     

The Limits of Theory in Art Education

The last forty years have seen substantial and dramatic changes in the thinking about education in art. Changes have taken place in art itself and there have been incredible social, political and economic upheavals. All this has led to an enlarged view of art education. It has given rise to the need for greater dialogue and debate. In more recent years, there have been more concentrated and focussed efforts to establish art curricula and standards of accomplishment for art education. In England, there has been the introduction of the National Curriculum and in the USA there has been the development of the National Standards for Arts Education. In both countries there have been numerous efforts at national or state, local and school levels aimed at assessing what students’ `know and are able to do’ in the arts. The role of theory in art education is of some importance. It is through theory that a systematic accounting can be constructed that explains and makes consistent the individual critiques of what is going on in classrooms, schools, committees and the nation-at-large. The paper discusses developments in England and the United States with regard to the theoretical development of curricula and the means for evaluation in art education. It also outlines and discusses the `limits of theory in art education’. It is not opposed to theory; rather it is posited that preoccupations with theory should not over-ride the importance of maintaining a multiplicity of competing (or emerging) meanings. It is argued that theories should inform and illuminate actions rather than place arbitrary limits upon them.     

Life Experiences among Urban Adolescents: Examining the Role of Context

Interest in the influence of context on the psychosocial development of adolescents led to the examination of neighborhood effects on the experience of adolescent life stress. Because of concerns regarding the population and ecological validity of existing measures of adolescent life events, the research group developed a scale for the measurement of life events among urban adolescents based on data from focus group interviews in the community of interest. Investigators utilized three strategies to examine the impact of neighborhood on adolescents' perceptions of life stress in a sample of 114 adolescents (mean age = 15). Results indicated that life stress in the peer domain varied by the adolescent's neighborhood of residence. In addition, family/community stress was linearly related to neighborhood indices of economic resources.     

COGNITIVE COMPONENTS OF DEVELOPMENTAL WRITING SKILL

A significant number of studies have examined the cognitive components of basic academic skills, which has led to major changes in both teaching and early identification assessment practices. However, the majority of previous research has focused solely on reading. This study examines the cognitive components of academic writing skills across early grade levels (1–4) while controlling for basic word identification skills. Results from this study suggest writing skill requires several cognitive skills of differing emphasis depending on the level of writing skill. Perceptual and rapid perceptual processing skills are important during the early acquisition of writing skills followed by a transition to language and language retrieval skills and later still to working memory skills. Applications for education and cognitive assessment are discussed.     

Academic Tenure and Conservative Philosophy*

The purpose of this essay is to investigate the meaning and justifiations of ‘tenure’ for university stanand to relate those justifiations to the mainstream of ideas in political philosophy, with particular emphasis on such ideas as can reasonably be described as ‘conservative’.     

Exploiting Manual Indexing to Improve Collection Selection and Retrieval Effectiveness

Vocabulary incompatibilities arise when the terms used to index a document collection are largely unknown, or at least not well-known to the users who eventually search the collection. No matter how comprehensive or well-structured the indexing vocabulary, it is of little use if it is not used effectively in query formulation. This paper demonstrates that techniques for mapping user queries into the controlled indexing vocabulary have the potential to radically improve document retrieval performance. We also show how the use of controlled indexing vocabulary can be employed to achieve performance gains for collection selection. Finally, we demonstrate the potential benefit of combining these two techniques in an interactive retrieval environment. Given a user query, our evaluation approach simulates the human user's choice of terms for query augmentation given a list of controlled vocabulary terms suggested by a system. This strategy lets us evaluate interactive strategies without the need for human subjects.     

The transition to college: Diverse students,diverse stories

While much is known about the role of student involvement in various dimensions of student change and development, considerably less is known abouthow students become involved as they make the transition from work or high school to college. This paper describes the results of a series of focus-group interviews with 132 diverse, new students entering a community college; a liberal arts college; an urban, commuter, comprehensive university; and a large research university. The study identifies the people, experiences, and themes in the processes through which students become (or fail to become) members of the academic and social communities on their campus. The research reported here was conducted under the auspices of the National Center on Postsecondary Teaching, Learning, and Assessment. NCTLA is funded by the U.S. Department of Education, Office of Educational Research and Improvement (OERI), under Grant No. R117G10037. The opinions herein do not necessarily reflect the position or policies of OERI, and no official endorsement should be inferred. Presented at the 1993 AIR Forum, Chicago, May 1993.     

Maternal Supportive Behavior,Cognitive Talk,and Desire/Emotion Talk at 24 Months: Distinct Factors and Differential Antecedents

Objective. Mental-state talk is an important aspect of parenting, but it is not clear whether this type of talk is structurally distinct from behavioral support or sensitivity. Although assessment of sensitive, supportive behavior captures a mother’s responses to her child’s needs, mental-state talk assesses a mother’s consideration of (and comments on) her child’s inner world. This study examined the structure and antecedents of mental-state talk, behavioral support, and sensitivity. Design. Data from the NICHD Study of Early Child Care and Youth Development were used, and mothering was assessed during a laboratory session when children were 24 months old (N = 1114). Results. Confirmatory factor analyses provided support for the hypothesized three-factor model, in which maternal supportive behavior, cognitive talk, and desire/emotion talk formed distinct factors. Furthermore, maternal depressive symptoms assessed at 1 and 6 months predicted less supportive behavior, whereas traditional parenting beliefs assessed at 1 month predicted lower levels of all three mothering outcomes. Conclusion. Maternal talk about mental states is a unique component of parenting, and cognitive talk is distinct from desire and emotion talk.