SCAN: A method of community collaboration

Recent research has highlighted the complexity of the battered child syndrome. Clinical experience suggests that treatment of troubled families is a long-term process, draining financial resources of agencies and emotional resources of professionals. The need to provide support and case consultation to professionals working in the area of child abuse and neglect evolved in the establishment, in 1968, of the Suspected Child Abuse and Neglect (SCAN) Program at Children's Hospital, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. This program provides an effective method of intervention through identification, consultation, referral and follow-up of at-risk families. Weekly meetings offer multi-disciplinary case coordination, treatment recommendations, and a channel of communication for representatives of community agencies. This paper traces the history and present status of the SCAN Program, as well as the role of SCAN as a force for change of community attitudes.     

Theoretical Value Belief, Cognitive Ability, and Personality as Predictors of Student Performance in Object-Oriented Programming Environments

The research described in this article reports the results of a study designed to evaluate the relationship among object‐oriented (OO) computer programming task performance and a student's (1) theoretical value belief, (2) cognitive ability, and (3) personality. The results of this study do not support the assertion that cognitive ability is a main determinant of performance. Rather, the findings suggest that characteristics of an individual nature have more effect on a student's performance. This supports our belief advanced herein that theoretical value belief and personality are significant predictors of computer programming performance in OO environments. From the findings of this study, we assert that academicians who must teach OO computer programming consider these factors when developing course materials or student assistance programs.     

Interactive Multimedia for Engineering Education

Our main educational objective is to support the new, multi-faceted, dynamically changing learning experiences that real life imposes on us and on our students. We have to recognize that traditional, mass produced, highly controlled static and rigid educational methods cannot cope with the increased amount of information, knowledge and inferencing requirements of this rapidly changing world. The life cycle of critical design and manufacturing technologies is contracting. Concepts such as time-to-market, total quality management, local design, global manufacture, concurrent or simultaneous engineering, parallel design and manufacturing, intelligent design and intelligent manufacturing systems are widely accepted. These new technologies require multi-skilled and well-educated engineers and managers as well as flexible and feedback-controlled manufacturing technologies, such as cellular manufacture, computer-integrated manufacturing, concurrent engineering and flexible manufacturing system. It is important to recognize that we are living in an era when the customers, not the designers or salesmen, are the kings. Customers require increasingly better products at a lower cost. In other words, products require continuous improvement and change, therefore flexible design and manufacture and the appropriate level of automation must be provided throughout the life cycle of product development. In the education business the customers are the learners, i.e. students entering access courses, college and university courses, mature students who are prepared to study in the evenings at home, at the university, or in open learning centres. Furthermore, there are a large number of continuing education students and other professionals seeking new focused knowledge in this rapidly changing and extremely competitive world.     

Initial Teacher Education: the pedagogy is the message

This paper addresses the need to increase the coherence between educational theory and pedagogical practices at the level of initial, or preservice, teacher education. It provides a case study of pedagogical practices within the context of a third‐year unit/subject on the psychology of teaching and learning in a four‐year Bachelor‐of‐Education course. These practices were developed and implemented within the framework of a constructivist view of teaching and learning, a framework which was itself a central component of the theory base of the unit. The case study includes student responses to these practices.     

Predicting higher education outcomes and implications for a postsecondary institution ratings system

The accountability of colleges and universities is a high priority for those making policy decisions. The purpose of this study was to determine institutional characteristics predicting retention rates, graduation rates and transfer-out rates using publicly available data from the US Department of Education. Using regression analysis, it was determined there are 14 predictors of the full-time retention rate, 7 predictors of the part-time retention rate, 15 predictors of the graduation rate and 12 predictors of transfer-out rates. Institutions and policymakers could use the results of this analysis to determine the policies that would be beneficial to improving the analysed outcomes. All four analyses indicate good fit with R² ranging from .273 to .828. Some possible policy implications include addressing selectivity if institutions want to improve retention rates and addressing affordability to improve retention and graduation rates.     

Prenatal screening for risk of major parenting problems: further results from the Queen Mary Maternity Hospital Child Care Unit

This research revealed in Stage I the ability to identify during the prenatal period women at risk for possible child abuse and in Stage II an intervention program which when introduced resulted in fewer high-risk mothers relinquishing the care of their infants. The research had two main aims: to use the data from Stages I and II to reassess the criteria for identifying "at risk" mothers, and to develop a brief, easily administered screening questionnaire which could be standardized for widespread prenatal use; and to collect data on a random sample of prenatal patients, to use these data for confirming the validity and stability of the screening procedures, and to estimate the incidence of potentially high-risk mothers in an urban population.     

Special education and the regular education initiative: basic assumptions

The regular education initiative (REI) is a thoughtful response to identified problems in our system for educating low-performing children, but it is a not a detailed blueprint for changing the system. Educators must achieve consensus on what the REI actually proposes. The authors infer from the REI literature five assumptions regarding the roles and responsibilities of elementary regular classroom teachers, concluding that these teachers and specialists form a partnership, but the classroom teachers are ultimately in charge of the instruction of all children in their classrooms, including those who are not succeeding in the mainstream. A discussion of the target population and of several partnership models further delineates REI issues and concerns.     

Effects of problem-based discussion on studying a subsequent text: A randomized trial among first year medical students

The Purpose of this study was to examine effectsof group discussion of a medical problem on the comprehension of a subsequentproblem-relevant text by first year medical students.Forty-eight first-year medical students were randomly assigned toone of two conditions: The experimental group discussed a problem of blood pressureregulation, where the control group discussed a problem of vision. Subsequently, allstudents studied a text on the physiology of blood pressure regulation. Finally, a freerecall test was administered. Numbers of propositions accurately recalled were analyzed usinganalysis of variance (ANOVA). Students who discussed the blood pressure regulationproblem recalled 25% more from the text than those who discussed the control problem.This difference was statistically significant. The present study represented thefirst truly randomized trial in the ecologically valid context of a medical curriculum. Itdemonstrated the positive effects of problem-based tutorial group discussion on thecomprehension of text. It confirmed earlier findings from laboratory studies thatproblem-based learning, in addition to positive emotional and motivational long-term effectswell-documented in the literature, also has positive effects on learning.