Social Interactions of Retarded Children: Generalization from Mainstream to Special School

Seven IH children attending a special school were integrated into a mainstream school on a part‐time basis over a period of 18 weeks. Effects were evaluated using behavioural measures of activity participation and social interactions during class time and free‐play periods in both the mainstream school and the special school which the children continued to attend. Compared to IH children who remained in the special school, the integrated children showed larger increases in Associative play in the special school free‐play period, but no differential change in classroom behaviour. In the mainstream school, social interactions between IH and non‐handicapped children occurred at high levels in both class and playground periods.     

Visual and auditory priming influences the production of low-frequency spellings

Three experiments investigated whether production of low-frequency spellings could be influenced by other words containing those spellings. Participants saw visually-presented primes (Experiment 1) or heard primes presented auditorily and produced their spelling (Experiments 2 and 3). Primes either shared both orthography and phonology (e.g., chapl ai n) or only orthography (e.g., ord ai n) with the target word (e.g., porcel ai n). Following the primes, participants attempted to produce the correct spellings of auditorily-presented target words containing low-frequency spellings, such as the ai in porcelain. Participants correctly spelled the targets’ low-frequency spelling more often when preceded by either type of prime, relative to unprimed targets. Furthermore, priming only occurred when the prime’s spelling was produced correctly; primes spelled incorrectly reduced the correct production of target spellings. These results suggest that unlike the priming of nonwords, the basis of lexical priming of real words is orthographic, resulting from the priming of specific graphemes that increases the probability of reactivating the same spelling pattern in the target.

Instructions for authors

Instructions for Authors

Instructions for authors     

Business cycles and state governmental finances: Implications for higher education

The national economy has been increasingly subject to macroeconomic fluctuations in the 1970s. This paper demonstrates that these fluctuations have an important impact on state public finance. Tax revenues for these governments are directly related to the aggregate level of economic activity. However, the uncontrollability of such expenditure components as welfare, and the inflationary pressures in all program areas may increase expenditure levels in the face of declining revenue.Since public institutions of higher education rely heavily on financial support from state governments, the cyclical budgetary conditions of these governments have important implications for higher education. Historically, a financial crunch in higher education has resulted in most program areas being restricted to a similar extent, which reflects the fact that administrators have not adjusted expenditure levels to effectively deal with cyclical financial problems. This paper documents the severity of cyclical fluctuations in higher education finance and suggests ways to cope with these problems.     

租房记

五十三年前,本文作者James A.White Sr.是一名美国空军,但作为一名非裔美国人,他几经周折才终于得以在其驻地租下一间房子,他以幽默生动的方式向我们讲述了这段经历,揭露了当时美国严重的种族歧视现象。然而,时至今日,这种歧视依然以一些隐晦的形式存在着……     

Evaluation of a school‐based transition program designed to facilitate school reentry following a mental health crisis or psychiatric hospitalization

In recent decades, increasing attention has been paid to the number of adolescents experiencing extended absences from school due to mental health crises. Upon returning to school, these students often face difficulties in functioning, risk of relapse, and vulnerability to academic failure and social isolation. This paper presents results of a study examining a school‐based support program model designed to provide short‐term academic, social, and emotional support to help students successfully reacclimatize to school after an extended absence. The paper describes demographic, academic, and clinical characteristics of 189 program participants across eight high schools. Improvements were observed in participants’ day‐to‐day functioning based on the results of pre/postassessments completed by program clinicians. Preliminary data showed positive trends in participants’ school attendance and high school graduation rates. Finally, the paper considers implications for school‐based mental health practice and next steps in related research.     

Agency online: trends in a university learning course

This article aims to investigate how university students perform agency in an online course and whether the collaborative nature of the course affects such expression. A total of 11 online web forums involving 18 students (N = 745 posts in total) were qualitatively analysed through the use of a codebook composed of five categories (individual, interpersonal, epistemic, transformative and collective) and several sub-categories purposely developed for the sake of this research. The results show that each category follows a specific path, although two events – the re-mixing of the groups and the assumption of the peer-tutor role – particularly affected the evolution of trends. Although this study needs further development, the authors believe that an in-depth understanding of the nature of agency, including how to analyse it as well as empower it when implementing blended educational activities, engages relevant theoretical and pedagogical issues.     

The broad effectiveness of seventy-four field instances of abstinence-based programming

Evaluations of a large federally funded sexual risk avoidance education (SRAE) efforts in the USA have not been widely reported in the wake of funding cuts. The purpose of this study is to report results from a broad set of programmes to demonstrate the breadth of field effectiveness of these programmes. Twenty-seven separate community-based SRAE programmes were evaluated from 2005 to 2010, comprising 74 separate evaluations and involving over 96,000 young people. Pre- to post-effect sizes on key attitudinal predictors of sexual activity were analysed using meta-analytic techniques, both individually and as an average composite score. The standardised change score effect size on the composite measure were small and statistically significant (d = 0.20, k = 75, p < 0.001), as were effects on individual measures (d = 0.15–0.31). Programmes using a single curriculum showed greater results than those using their own blend of two or more curricula. As a group, this large body of field implementations of SRAE appears to have produced modest but statistically significant effects on key predictors of sexual activity in youth.     

Transformational Leadership: The Nexus Between Faith and Classroom Leadership

Transformational leadership is well documented in organizational and business literature. Classroom and faith-based applications are more recent phenomena. The authors of this mixed-methods study explored professor behaviors and characteristics perceived as transformational in students' faith and focused on transformational leadership in the classroom at a faith-based institution. Thirty-four undergraduate students completed surveys containing open-ended and forced-choice questions; the findings highlighted the importance of compassion, optimism, encouragement, and openness as behaviors that facilitated faith transformation.