Confronting Free Market Romanticism: Health Care Reform in the Least Likely Place

Health policy experts long have argued that a combination of budgetary constraints, lack of legislative expertise, and parochial attitudes make it unlikely that the U.S. states will contribute significantly to health care reform. This is particularly true of states like Texas, which ranks last or near-to-last in virtually every measure of public health, and is dominated by conservative politics and libertarian, free market ideology. Yet, in 1997 the Texas legislature enacted the first Patient's Bill of Rights. This article examines the political and rhetorical processes that led to successful reform, and discusses the implications that success in "the least likely place" holds for the making of health care policy.     

Effects of teacher gender and principal gender on ratings of teacher performance

The Ohio State University     

Reconsidering human performance technology

This article discusses three perceived challenges in the field of human performance technology: a missing link from training to performance, limitations in gap analysis and cause analysis, and a lack of attention to business and organization performance. It then provides possible alternatives for each issue, such as instructional system development frameworks for organizational learning, a soft performance technology framework, and a proposed framework for four levels of performance.     

Garage Sales

西方的旧货市场,又称跳蚤市场,在那里一逛二逛,往往就能发现便宜又实用的物件。没准还能找到稀世珍宝呢。一个炎炎的夏日周末,Brad和妻子去旧货市场上逛了一圈,还真买到了个宝贝：一盏新灯具。这灯具买得是物美又价廉。但买回去后却导致了其他几笔不小的支出。这是为何？但听Brad细细道来。     

New Year＇s Traditions

庆贺新年伊始是世界各国各地区的普遍习俗。由于历史、文化、宗教信仰和民族习惯的不同。世界各地庆祝新年的方式各具特色。且看加拿大人如何庆新年。     

Meaningful actions and motivated projects in the transition to adulthood: two case illustrations

A framework for understanding career transitions based on the joint processes and goals of those engaged in the transition and significant others in the person’s social network was used to study the transition to adulthood of youth aged 17–19 years and their families. Twenty parent-youth dyads participated in this study in which a transition project was identified and monitored for 6 months. Two cases are used to illustrate the characteristics of the motivated transition project at the levels of meaning, functional processes, and conscious and unconscious behaviour and structural support and resources.     

Conceptualizing parents' sign language use in bilingual early intervention

This research study investigates how parents and interveners conceptualize parents' early sign language use. Three groups of respondents involved in the same bilingual early intervention program were being interviewed: hearing parents (n = 12), hearing teachers (n = 6), and Deaf consultants (n = 6). The search and retrieve program 'The Ethnograph' was used for data analysis. The results demonstrate that neither a framework of linguistic proficiency nor one of communicative competence captures the complexity of the issues involved for parents and interveners in conceptualizing parents' early sign language use. The interpretative frameworks of each group emphasize different aspects of the task facing parents: balancing the quest for Sign Language proficiency with emotional and practical considerations in the family, acknowledging the overriding importance of communication regardless of what one may label the language used, and confirming the visual quality and child appropriateness of the signing. Results are related to the stocks of knowledge on which respondents draw and the implications for Deaf and hearing interveners assessing parents' progress.