Ethnic Identity Development and Acculturation Preferences Among Minority and Majority Youth: Norms and Contact

This article tests a longitudinal model of the antecedents and consequences of changes in identification with indigenous (Mapuche) among indigenous and nonindigenous youth in Chilean school contexts over a 6‐month period (633 nonindigenous and 270 Mapuche students, M_ages = 12.47 and 12.80 years, respectively). Results revealed that in‐group norms supporting contact and quality of intergroup contact at Time 1 predicted student's changes in Mapuche identification at Time 2, which in turn predicted changes in support for adoption of Chilean culture and maintenance of Mapuche culture at Time 2; some of the relationships between these variables were found to be moderated by age and ethnicity. Conceptual and policy implications are addressed in the Discussion .     

Transition planning and writing instruction: the effects of a brief intervention

This study used a multiple probe design across behaviours to determine if four high school students with learning disabilities could plan post‐school transition goals using a modified GO 4 IT … NOW! intervention while learning essential paragraph and essay writing skills. The results of this study indicate a functional relationship between the intervention and increased writing skills needed for high‐stakes testing and increases in students' knowledge of transition planning. During baseline, students produced extremely short essays and did not include essential paragraph elements. After instruction, students wrote longer compositions and included more details, and paragraphs contained more paragraph elements. All participants increased essay quality during the intervention as measured by the rubric used to evaluate end‐of‐instruction writing prompts.     

Potential school violence: Relationship between teacher anxiety and warning‐sign identification

This study examined the relationship between teacher anxiety and their identification of warning signs of student violence. Fifty‐six public school teachers, 22 male and 34 female, between the ages of 23 and 60 participated. Participants identified warning signs in five fictional student case files created for this study and completed the State‐Trait Anxiety Inventory and a demographic survey. The case files included positive and negative information, and high‐ and low‐severity warning signs. Neither state (r = .02) nor trait (r = .04) anxiety was significantly correlated with high‐severity warning‐signs identification. Low‐severity warning‐signs identification was positively correlated with state anxiety (r = .28, p < .05) but not trait anxiety (r = .18, p > .05). False positive identification was not significantly related to state anxiety (r = .07) or trait anxiety (r = .06). The findings indicate that teachers who experience higher levels of state anxiety when confronted with warning signs of potential violence are better able to identify low‐severity warning signs than do their less anxious counterparts, without over‐identifying nonthreatening information as potential warning signs. © 2005 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Psychol Schs 42: 623–635, 2005.     

ENVISION: the effectiveness of a dual‐level professional development model for changing teacher practice

The ENVISION professional development model uses active teacher involvement in inquiry and inquiry‐based teaching to enhance teachers' understandings about inquiry‐based study of local environmental problems and teaching science using inquiry. Teachers also design and implement professional development for their school‐based colleagues about teaching environmental science through inquiry. Therefore, professional development is conducted at two levels. ENVISION staff train teachers directly (called Level I participants) and these Level I participants in turn train their school colleagues (called Level II participants). The study reported here was designed to evaluate the effectiveness of this dual‐level professional development strategy. Results based on the first two years of the program revealed that: Level I participants enhanced their understanding of inquiry and inquiry teaching, with 25 out 30 (83%) changing their classroom practice; and that 21 out of 31 (68%) of Level II participants changed their classroom practice as a result of participating in Level I peer training. Peer training that involved modeling and practicing techniques and activities was particularly effective in producing change in practice for Level II teachers.     

Introduction to the Hebrew Edition of Visions of Jewish Education—Medabrim Chazon (Talking Vision) 1

The following is a translation of the introduction to Medabrim Chazon (Jerusalem: Keter, 2006), the Hebrew translation of Visions of Jewish Education, edited by Seymour Fox, Israel Scheffler, and Daniel Marom (Cambridge, 2003).(See the Journal, volume 71, number 1, Levisohn and responses in volume 71, number 2.) Visions of Jewish Education is an effort by leading scholars to improve the quality of Jewish education through attention to its purposes and aims. We, the editors of Medabrim Chazon wrote this introduction for Israeli readers, who encounter in Medabrim Chazon not just a translation of Visions of Jewish Education, but the world of North American Jewish education. While Visions of Jewish Education assumes familiarity with this framework, it is likely to be foreign to the Israeli audience. Indeed, in order to convey some of the problems in translating Visions of Jewish Education for Israeli readers, we have decided to present a literal rendering of the introduction here. North American readers may be surprised to notice, for example, the need to explain the role of synagogues in Jewish education.

This special introduction to the Hebrew translation may also be valuable for North American readers of Visions of Jewish Education. First, it may be illuminating to see how issues of Jewish educational vision unfold in Israel; the introduction brings to light questions of language, identity, and institutional structure that are unique to Jewish education in Israel. At the same time, while Jewish education plays itself out differently in various parts of the Jewish world, the issue of vision is fundamental in each context, and we hope to identify some shared concerns across Jewish communities. Having identified these concerns, we hope it will be possible for the book's audiences from around the world to engage in a conversation. Finally, we believe that we can benefit from looking at our own communities from the vantage point of how we are perceived by different communities within the Jewish world. This can not only enhance the awareness of our very diverse Jewish world but also foster exchange within it.     

Definition and model of life skills transfer

For a sport skill to be considered a life skill, it must be successfully transferred and applied beyond sport. Life skills transfer is an essential process, but it has yet to be fully delineated within the sport psychology literature. The purpose of the current paper is to present a definition and model of life skills transfer and outline future research needs. A critical review of the literature within sport psychology and other learning-based disciplines is offered to assess our current understanding of learning transfer. A definition and model of transfer are then presented, focusing on the athlete learner’s experience of life skills transfer. Within the model, we first examine how athletes bring personal assets and autobiographical experiences to sport. Second, we explore how sport is a learning environment with distinctive demands, programme designs, and coach characteristics and strategies. Third, we explain how transfer contexts provide environmental conditions, which, depending on how they are interpreted or experienced, can help or hinder the transfer of life skills. Ultimately, we postulate that an individual experiences life skills transfer as an ongoing process whereby he/she continually interacts and interprets his/her environments to produce positive or negative life skills transfer outcomes.