Changes in the Most-Cited Scholars and Works Over 25 Years: The Evolution of the Field of Criminology and Criminal Justice

Cohn and Farrington’s work in citation analysis has examined scholarly influence within criminological research for over 25 years. The current analysis tracks the ten most-cited scholars and each scholar’s most-cited works in four international criminology journals and six American criminology and criminal justice journals over twenty-five years and five time periods—1986–1990, 1991–1995, 1996–2000, 2001–2005, and 2006–2010. This approach extends the traditional approach to citation analysis by documenting increases and decreases in individual citation careers as well as in the most-cited scholarly contributions of the most-cited scholars during a period of significant growth in criminology. The most-cited works mostly fall within the areas of developmental and life-course criminology and criminal careers, reflecting the importance of these topics in criminology.     

Self Reflections of Undergraduate Students on Using Web-Supported Counterintuitive Science Demonstrations

Analysis of self-reflections of undergraduate education students in a project involving web-supported counterintuitive science demonstrations is reported in this paper. Participating students (N?=?19) taught science with counterintuitive demonstrations in local elementary school classrooms and used web-based resources accessed via wireless USB adapters. Student reflections to seven questions were analyzed qualitatively using four components of reflection (meeting objectives/perception of learning, dynamics of pedagogy, special needs accommodations, improving teaching) deriving 27 initial data categories and 12 emergent themes. Overall the undergraduates reported meeting objectives, engaging students in pedagogically relevant learning tasks including, providing accommodations to students with special needs, and gaining practice and insight to improve their own teaching. Additional research is needed to arrive at generalizable findings concerning teaching with web-supported counterintuitive science demonstrations in elementary classrooms.     

Exploratory Behavior, Task Persistence, and Problem-Solving Ability Across the Second Year of Life

The present study focuses on individual differences in specific qualitative aspects of infants' exploratory behavior, task persistence, and problem-solving ability. Longitudinal questions concern the stability of these behaviors across the second year of life and the relationship between early exploration and task persistence and later problem- solving ability. Twenty-nine infants were observed at 12 months and again at 26 to 28 months of age. Behavior was observed on two exploratory and two problem-solving tasks, and a wide range of individual differences was found. The longitudinal results suggest stability between one and two years of age in terms of the cognitive sophistication of behavior rather than in correlations between identical index behaviors. Longitudinal stability was not found for task persistence. Also, infants who used more different schemes to explore at one year were found to be more successful and sophisticated in problem solving at age two. It is concluded that the quality and range of behaviors used during exploration have important developmental significance, rather than the use of any specific behavior, or persistent behavior, regardless of the degree of sophistication.     

Does Student Language Ability Affect the Assessment of Teacher Language Ability?

This article arises from an investigation into the classroom language assessment (CLA) component of the Hong Kong English language benchmark test for lower secondary (Grades 7–9) teachers of English as a second language (ESL). After some background to the benchmarking initiative in Hong Kong and to the CLA test, the article describes a small-scale study into the effect of student levels of ability on grades awarded to teachers working in schools with differing ability intakes. In the study, a group of ESL teachers were videotaped teaching ESL classes at two different student ability levels, with the two sets of videos assessed by trained CLA assessors. Results indicate that, although there is some variety in the grade awarded to the two different classes taught, variation in grades may well be attributable to individual teacher performance rather than to external factors such as the ability levels of the students being taught. The grades awarded were generally consistent, irrespective of whether classes of high-ability students or low-ability students were being taught.     

Parent-daughter transmission of the androgen receptor gene as an explanation of the effect of father absence on age of menarche

Based on an evolutionary theory of socialization, Belsky and colleagues proposed that girls exposed to a stressful environment, especially when due to father absence in the first 7 years of life, showed an early onset of puberty, precocious sexuality, and unstable relationships as adults. The authors of this article examined an alternative explanation that a variant X-linked androgen receptor (AR) gene, predisposing the father to behaviors that include family abandonment, may be passed to their daughters causing early puberty, precocious sexuality, and behavior problems. The results of a study of 121 White males and 164 White females showed a significant association of the short alleles of the GGC repeat polymorphism of the AR gene with a range of measures of aggression and impulsivity, increased number of sexual partners, sexual compulsivity, and lifetime number of sex partners in males; and paternal divorce, father absence, and early age of menarche in females. These findings support a genetic explanation of the Belsky psychosocial evolutionary hypothesis regarding the association of fathers' absence and parental stress with early age of onset of menarche and early sexual activity in their daughters. A genetic explanation of the father absence effect is proposed in which fathers carrying the AR alleles are more likely to abandon a marriage (father absence) and pass those alleles to their daughters in whom they produce an earlier age of menarche and behavioral problems.     

Reviews

Sam Pickering teaches English at the University of Connecticut     

Universities,public policy and economic development in Latin America: the cases of Mexico and Venezuela

Since the establishment of national university systems in Mexico and Venezuela, three principal demands have dominated the formulation of university policy: the ideological demand imposed by government rhetoric and national aspirations (a demand reflected in federal expenditure), the demand of the national economy for different areas and levels of professional expertise, and the broad-based political and social demand for upward mobility by way of university education. Tensions between these three demands in both Mexico and Venezuela have stemmed from the historically decreasing ability of Latin American economies to produce significant long-term social mobility into the middle classes. Although in the 1940s and 1950s the university systems played important roles in promoting social mobility, by the 1960s the number of professional jobs was much smaller than the number of university graduates. By the 1980s, the social role of the universities was severely limited by economic crisis brought on by a combination of dropping oil prices, debt, and government deficits. The major challenge currently facing Mexico and Venezuela in higher education policy is to restart economic growth to provide jobs for university graduates.