Contextual career education for urban youth: A new look at experience based career education

This article describes a model career education program for urban youth. The program exemplified promising practices in career education by providing all career education experiences in the context of real life experiences. Work site supervisors' ratings of youths' initiative and responsibility significantly increased over the course of the seven week program.     

Weighing opposing positions: Examining the effects of intratextual persuasive messages on students’ knowledge and beliefs

The proliferation of new forms of media has given way to a multitude of new text structures, particularly texts designed to alter the receiver’s perspectives. Yet, little is known about the ways in which these novel text structures alter the characteristics of the receiver including one’s knowledge and beliefs. As such, the purpose of this multi-phase investigation was to explore the persuasion process when students read a persuasive message with an intratextual structure. Intratextual persuasion refers to a text structure in which two one-sided texts are presented together as a single message. As a result of reading an intratextual persuasive message, students’ perceived knowledge increased, and their topic beliefs strengthened differentially based upon students’ position on the controversial issue. Moreover, participants judged the characteristics of the overall commentary similarly, but they rated the characteristics of the two opposing texts differentially based on their position. Implications for research and instruction pertaining to persuasive texts with complex argument structure are forwarded.     

Capacities and Behaviour of Quality Classroom Teachers

This study focussed on the capacities and behaviours of quality teachers. Four key capacities were identified as being characteristic amongst the five quality teachers who were observed in action which were then related to their behaviour. Prominent amongst the findings was the conclusion that these teachers had high cognitive ability which allowed them to develop critical powers of observation, reflection and analysis; they had strong philosophies of education; they had developed a bicultural approach, and possessed a strong sense of humour and a well developed social conscience. Above all else they cared about the learning outcomes of their children. Their approach was child‐centred and they encouraged students to set goals, to review progress, to challenge, and to solve problems. The article concludes with a discussion of its relationship to, and differences with, the parent CERI/OECD study of which it was part.     

Blogging pragmatics and pedagogy: An adventure in faculty development

As university faculty are increasingly called upon to ‘do more with less,’ particularly to teach more students with fewer resources, technology can provide viable solutions to pedagogical dilemmas. Faculty developers are frequently tasked with introducing faculty to or coaching them in the use of technological solutions. With respect to blogs, the typical show-and-tell approach to technology awareness that our faculty development center uses seemed inadequate, given the complexity of blog design, implementation, and maintenance. Instead, we found the best way to instruct university faculty in the use of blogs is to give them an opportunity to participate in a blogging community as part of a Course in College Teaching (CCT). We experimented with two different approaches in two different sections of our CCT. This paper reports on the current blogging culture in higher education, describes our specific context for utilizing blogs, shares implementation decisions and learning affordances, and forwards a set of ‘lessons learned.’     

Relationship Between Adjustment and Support Types: Young and Mature-aged Local and International First Year University Students

First year university is an important transition context for students. The present study examined the relationship between adjustment and support types, sources and levels of support, and satisfaction with levels of support, for first year students in an Australian university. Comparisons were made between young (17–21 year olds) and mature-aged students and local and international students. Findings indicate that well-adjusted students reported higher levels of social companionship support than the less adjusted group. Many students would have liked more support overall. In comparison to the local group, international students would have liked to receive more emotional, practical and informational support. The implications for service provision and university strategies are discussed.     

Differences between Japanese Infants and Caucasian American Infants in Behavioral and Cortisol Response to Inoculation

The behavioral and cortisol responses of Japanese infants and Caucasian American infants, 4 months of age, were observed during and following routine inoculation. The Caucasian American group showed a more intense initial affective response and a longer latency to quiet than the Japanese group; the Japanese group showed a greater cortisol response. A 4-group taxonomy was created based on high or low behavioral and cortisol response: high behavior–high cortisol, low behavior–low cortisol, high behavior–low cortisol, and low behavior–high cortisol. There were significant differences between the 2 groups of infants using this taxonomy: Infants in the Caucasian American group were more likely to fall in the high behavior–low cortisol group, while infants in the Japanese group were more likely to fall in the low behavior–high cortisol group.     

Little United and the Big Society: negotiating the gaps between football,community and the politics of inclusion

The UK government’s Big Society vision is a source of fierce debate and controversy, particularly when set alongside severe austerity measures. This has revealed a glaring disconnect between rhetoric of empowered, inclusive communities and the burgeoning reality of cuts to publicly funded community provision. This puts pressure on organizations that rely on or promote volunteering as a means of participatory community inclusion, not just financially through loss of funding, but also potentially on ideological grounds. To explore this, research was conducted within the community projects of FC United of Manchester, a not-for-profit, cooperative, fan-owned, non-league English football club. Findings reveal extremely positive perceptions of its community and inclusivity work, with volunteering and the club’s ownership structure being seen as major factors in that success. Despite clear opposition to the coalition government’s policies, from a community inclusion perspective and on wider ideological grounds, the club aims to increase its capacity as a community provider, acknowledging the potential contradictions and conflicts this may bring.     

Infant emotional and cortisol responses to goal blockage

This study examined the relation of infant emotional responses of anger and sadness to cortisol response in 2 goal blockage situations. One goal blockage with 4-month-old infants (N = 56) involved a contingency learning procedure where infants' learned response was no longer effective in reinstating an event. The other goal blockage with 6-month-old infants (N = 84) involved the still face procedure where infants' reactions to their mothers' lack of responsivity were not effective in reestablishing interaction. For both blockages, sadness was related to cortisol response, though anger was not--the greater the sadness, the higher the cortisol response. This differential relation is consistent with other evidence indicating the more positive role of anger as opposed to sadness in overcoming an obstacle.     

Reactivity and regulation in cortisol and behavioral responses to stress

This study examined relations between reactivity (i.e., peak response) and regulation (i.e., response dampening) in 6-month-old infants' cortisol and behavioral responses to inoculation (N = 62). Data showed that reactivity and regulation were unrelated for both cortisol and behavior. The independence of reactivity and regulation suggests that measures of both are needed to characterize infant cortisol or behavioral response to stress more completely. For both reactivity and regulation, cortisol and behavior were unrelated, suggesting that measures of both are needed to assess infant stress more adequately. There was considerable variation in the timing of the peak cortisol response, suggesting that obtaining only a single poststressor cortisol sample does not provide a sensitive measure of cortisol reactivity.