The Greek Publishing Industry and Professional Development

In the Greek publishing industry, tradition and the desire for innovation go hand in hand. The industry is influenced by European developments in publishing and bookselling in terms of book promotion methods, the role of chain bookstores and the impact of information technology. Greece shares the features of other small book markets in Europe, whilst retaining the individuality defined by the Greek language and the country’s cultural and social conditions. This article provides an overview of the publishing industry in Greece through a review of the relevant literature and the available statistics. This work also focuses on the need to develop publishing skills through publishing education and continuous professional development.     

Selection of School Counselor Candidates: Future Directions at Two Universities

A new vision of school counseling asserts that counselors must address all children and must orient counseling services toward the primary mission of schools: to educate young people and to support their healthy development. Two universities that are working to prepare new vision school counselors have changed their recruitment and selection procedures to attract increased numbers of candidates who can be optimally trained to fulfill the requirements of this vision. The authors describe criteria and procedures used to select graduate students who have the greatest promise of becoming leaders, advocates, and change agents in schools to promote student learning and achievement.     

A guide for the perplexed: Scientific educational research, methodolatry, and the gold versus platinum standards

The paper opens by characterizing recent discourse about empirical educational research as the “new Babel”-critics, using different theoretical vocabularies and making different deep assumptions about the nature of social life, are failing to communicate with each other. After locating some of the critical positions on a left-right continuum, the main discussion focusses upon the end of this continuum where there are located the recent attempts to restore rigor to educational research by using the so-called “gold standard” of randomized field trials. It is argued that positions at this end of the continuum misrepresent the nature of science, and some examples are briefly mentioned in order to covey the point that it is fruitful to view scientists as making convincing cases, cases that appeal to a wide variety of evidence. This assessment of scientific cases is called the “platinum standard”.     

Watching TV Series with Horror Content: Audience Attributes,Motivations, Involvement and Enjoyment

This study is the first to explore the motivational, cognitive, affective, and personality factors that influence the enjoyment of and exposure to TV series with horror content. The most-watched TV series identified by 411 study participants were examined in the study. Results indicate that personality traits significantly predict cognitive and affective involvement with these programs and viewing motivations. Viewing motivations significantly influence viewers’ cognitive and affective involvement with these TV series as well as their viewing enjoyment and frequency. While positive affect and negative affect are significant predictors of viewing enjoyment, viewing enjoyment has a positive effect on viewing frequency.     

Hemispheric laterality in music and math

Hemispheric laterality may be a useful concept in teaching, learning, training, and in understanding more about human development. To address this issue, a measure of hemispheric laterality was compared to musical and mathematical ability. The Human Information Processing Survey (HIPS) instrument, designed to measure hemispheric laterality, was administered to 101 participants who were then asked to provide a measure of their conceptual aptitude for mathematics and music. Scores were then compared through canonical correlation to test the hypothesis that perceived mathematical ability may be explained by left-brain hemisphere preference and musical by the right hemisphere. A relatively strong correlation was found between music ability and right-brain hemisphere preference. A relationship between math and left-brain hemisphere preference or integrated brain processing scores was found to be marginal. Ramifications to learning are discussed.     

Young children's understanding of perception, desire, and emotion

Very young children seem to know that people experience several mental states: desires, perceptions, emotions. In three studies, we investigated 2- and young 3-year-olds' judgments and communications about how these states connect together in people's lives and minds. Two experimental studies with 56 participants demonstrated young children's understanding of at least one set of connections: In appropriate circumstances, a person's perception of desirable or undesirable objects leads to related emotional experiences. A complementary investigation of four young children's everyday conversations demonstrated their awareness of and expression of several additional connections between people's desires, perceptions, and emotions.     

What Makes the Foucault Pendulum Move among the Stars?

Foucault’s pendulum exhibition in 1851 occurred in an era now known by development of the theorems of Coriolis and the formulation of dynamical meteorology by Ferrel. Yet today the behavior of the pendulum is often misunderstood. The existence of a horizontal component of Newtonian gravitation is essential for understanding the behavior with respect to the stars. Two simple mechanical principles describe why the path of oscillation is fixed only at the poles; the principle of centripetal acceleration and the principle of conservation of angular momentum. A sky map is used to describe the elegant path among the stars produced by these principles.