Non-finite loss and challenges to communication between parents and professionals

Elizabeth Bruce PhD, a psychologist in private practice, and Cynthia Schultz PhD, honorary associate at LaTrobe University, both live and work in Australia. Their work on supporting parents who have children with special needs, however, has been published around the world. In this article Bruce and Schultz explore the notion of 'non-finite loss', defined as the ongoing sense of grief experienced by parents caring for children with severe disabilities. The authors discuss the issues that professionals need to consider when working with parents in these circumstances. The article closes with a set of recommendations for promoting more effective partnerships between parents and professionals.     

Analysis of Statistical Question Classification for Fact-Based Questions

Question classification systems play an important role in question answering systems and can be used in a wide range of other domains. The goal of question classification is to accurately assign labels to questions based on expected answer type. Most approaches in the past have relied on matching questions against hand-crafted rules. However, rules require laborious effort to create and often suffer from being too specific. Statistical question classification methods overcome these issues by employing machine learning techniques. We empirically show that a statistical approach is robust and achieves good performance on three diverse data sets with little or no hand tuning. Furthermore, we examine the role different syntactic and semantic features have on performance. We find that semantic features tend to increase performance more than purely syntactic features. Finally, we analyze common causes of misclassification error and provide insight into ways they may be overcome.     

Untangling the effects of shared book reading: Multiple factors and their associations with preschool literacy outcomes

Evidence strongly suggests that shared book reading at home and in preschool is important for young children's development of the foundational skills required for the eventual mastery of decoding and comprehension. Yet the nuances of how learning from book reading might vary across these contexts and with children's skills are not well understood. One hundred and thirty children participating in a longitudinal investigation of literacy development were videotaped reading a storybook with a parent. Children were also videotaped in their 33 preschool classrooms during the instructional book-reading portion of the day. Readings were coded for adult and child contextualized and decontextualized language relating to both decoding and meaning-making skills, and relations between this talk and emergent literacy outcomes were analyzed. Results demonstrate that parents and teachers overwhelmingly focus their book-related talk on meaning-related rather than code-related information, and that the relations between outcomes and talk depend in part on children's initial levels of vocabulary skills. Implications for practice and research are discussed.     

The community college and the disadvantaged

The objective of this study is to empirically explore the extent to which public two-year colleges in this country are characterized by open admissions policies and by comprehensive curricula, as well as the extent and nature of programs for the disadvantaged within these institutions. Utilizing a stratified sampling design developed by the research staff of the American Council on Education, a precoded original questionnaire was mailed in the spring of 1971 to the chief administrative officer for each institution in the sample. It was found that only a little over half of the colleges have the curricula offerings and admissions policies of exemplary community colleges, but that all reported special courses, programs, or services for the academically disadvantaged minority group. However, only 40% of our sample indicated that they have developed special programs (as opposed to courses or services). Too, community colleges with programs require (1) more resources in preparing faculty for dealing effectively with the disadvantaged, (2) additional emphasis on recruitment of the disadvantaged, and (3) more attention to developing courses in ethnic studies.An earlier version of this paper was presented at the annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association, New Orleans, February 1973. Partial support for the project from which this paper was developed was provided by the U.S. Office of Education (Contract #OEC-0-70-4283 (399) to the Pennsylvania State Department of Education). The author also wishes to acknowledge the contribution of Reynolds Ferrante, graduate student, Pennsylvania State University, who assisted in the literature review and questionnaire development of the project.     

Personality structure,instructional outcomes,and instructional preferences

Four instructional treatments differing in structure and student responsibility were used with 60 abstractthinking and 60 concrete-thinking students. As predicted, abstract students preferred those treatments with less structure and more responsibility; however, abstract and concrete students showed similar achievement levels as a result, of each treatment. The differentiated outcomes hypothesis is offered to account for the findings.

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Résumé Quatre méthodes de traitement pédagogique de structure et de responsabilité des étudiants ont été employées avec 60 étudiants pensant abstraitement et 60 étudiants pensant de manière concrète. Ainsi que prévu, les étudiants pensant abstraitement préféraient les méthodes ayant moins de structure et plus de responsabilité. Les deux catégories d'étudiants ont toutefois obtenu des niveaux d'accomplissement pareils avec chaque méthode de traitement. L'hypothèse des aboutissements différenciés est offerte comme explication des conclusions.

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This study was based in part on the doctoral dissertation of the junior author. The authors would like to thank the students and staff of the County College of Morris, Morristown, N.J., for their cooperation.     

The role and the training of teacher-counsellors

The example of teachers not seeking counselling was used. Some reasons for this situation were given as well as one possible way to change it by providing early information and training during the students' regular studies. My hope is that if teachers have the necessary information, abilities and positive experiences, when they have problems, it should be easier for them to use counsellors than it is for other today.Teachers were used as an example of how one group could be encounraged to make use of counsellors. However, similar strategies could be used with other groups whose jobs involve high personal stress (for example social workers, medical doctors etc.). The example of teachers was also used to show how change can be introduced within a system. Here it might be useful to develop the ability to work with a counsellor during the regular education, so that it becomes part of their understanding of their professional role.     

Factors contributing to preservice teachers' management of children's problem behaviors

The purpose of this study was to assess factors that contribute to preservice teachers' choice of a helping or a restrictive strategy to manage social immaturity and social defiance behaviors among children. Levels of tolerance, opinions as to the causes of behavior, perceptions of adverse effects or costs of problem behaviors, and choice of strategy were measured in response to hypothetical samples of problem behavior. Regression analyses indicated that the costs of problem behavior significantly predicted the type of strategy that would be chosen. Training preservice teachers to manage these costs was the main implication for teacher training programs.     

Mentors’ contributions to gifted adolescents’ affective,social, and vocational development

Research on mentorships for gifted adolescents primarily has focused on the role mentors play in students’ academic success. Mentors’ contribution to gifted adolescents’ affective, social, and vocational development rarely has been addressed. This article identifies special needs and characteristics of gifted adolescents in these latter areas, and suggests how mentors can play a significant role in each, including the particular value of mentoring relationships for gifted adolescent females. Finally, educational implications are explored, as well as the need for empirical studies which examine the benefits derived by gifted and nongifted mentees from mentoring relationships.