Technology Usage Among Community College Faculty

Community colleges are increasing their use of part-time faculty who are taking a leading role in utilizing technology for instructional purposes. Part-time faculty are less likely than their full-time counterparts to use technology for instructional purposes and are less likely to teach non-face-to-face classes. For community colleges to be successful in expanding technology-based education, they must promote technology use by all faculty. This quantitative, national study reports factors found to predict faculty use of technology for instructional purposes.     

Working Memory, Motivation, and Teacher-Initiated Learning

Working memory is where we “think” as we learn. A notion that emerges as a synthesis from several threads in the research literatures of cognition, motivation, and connectionism is that motivation in learning is the process whereby working memory resource allocation is instigated and sustained. This paper reviews much literature on motivation and working memory, and concludes that the apparent novelty of the proposal offered to describe motivation in terms of working memory results from the apparent lack of cross-channel exchange among these research traditions. The relation between working memory and motivation is explored in the context of the interactive compensatory model of learning (ICML) in which learning is considered to result from the interaction of ability, motivation, and prior learning. The ICML is recast in light of the revised definition of motivation offered here. This paper goes on to suggest ways in which a range of teaching and learning issues and activities may be reconceptualized in the context of a model emphasizing a learner's working memory that makes use of chunks of previously acquired knowledge.     

Abuse and deprivation in failing adoptions

Twelve children seen in psychiatric consultation by the authors over a 3-year period were failing in their adoptive placements. All twelve had been adopted as older children (average age at adoption 5 . Ten out of the12 were males. A retrospective case review demonstrated that all the children shared several common characteristics: (1)a history of both neglect and abusive treatment during at least the first two years of life, (2) a behavioral pattern that wasintermittently provocative and punishment seeking, and (3) an ability to elicit a sense of bewilderment and betrayal in theadoptive parents. Twenty-one months was the average duration of the adoption before the families sought the consultation. These adoptive families were all considered competent by the agencies involved. All had raised other natural and adoptive children successfully. Treatment offered by the authors seemed to be helpful in salvaging 4 of the 12 adoptive placements. The authors present these cases as a way of drawing attention to much needed research, both in better understanding the early attachment process in “older child” adoptions, and in better understanding the relative impact of abuse in influencing the child's subsequent attachment capacities.     

One size still does not fit all in specific learning disability assessment across ethnic groups

The use of IQ scores and discrepancy formulas for identifying specific learning disabilities (SLD) has been widely discredited by prominent researchers for more than a decade. Nevertheless, the overwhelming majority of state policies still specify the use of discrepancy formulas, including the simple difference method, which is psychometrically inferior to regression-based methods. This study compares the use of a minimum IQ cutoff score and a simple difference method versus a regression-based method for identifying SLD in a sample of African American and European American full-time college students (N = 117). Replicating the findings from previous studies using typically achieving children, typically achieving adults, and school-age children with SLD, this study adds to the chorus of voices criticizing the use of outdated assessment practices that can have deleterious effects for individuals with SLD. The implications for legislative policy are discussed in the context of the historical overrepresentation of African Americans in all special education categories except SLD and the increased access to higher education that students with SLD have gained during the past decade.     

Ratings by Counselors Without Teaching Experience And Their Principals Regarding Performance of Guidance Functions

This study compared principal and self ratings of performance of guidance functions for practicing counselors who did not have teaching experience. The sample consisted of 43 counselors and their principals from throughout the United States. The ratings indicate better-than-average initial counselor acceptance by administrators, teachers, students, and parents with the degree of acceptance being greater after they had counseled for a while. Principal and self ratings differed significantly on initial acceptance by students and present acceptance by other counselors. Ratings of acceptance by both school psychologists and social workers were below average. There was no significant difference in counselor and principal ratings of counselor understanding of various school procedures and policies or of their ability to perform basic guidance activities. A majority of the principals who had worked with the counselors with non-teaching backgrounds indicated they would recommend the hiring of such a person to their school board.     

Effect of endpoint conditions on position and velocity near impact in tennis

Smoothing to obtain accurate position and velocity data near impacts in sport biomechanics studies is complicated by the accelerations of impact, endpoint effects and the smoothing technique used. Wrist goniometric data with two levels of random noise added were used to examine three endpoint modelling conditions for obtaining accurate position and velocity data at impact in the tennis forehand. The common approach of smoothing through impact created distortions of the position signal up to 100 ms before impact and resulted in consistent underestimations (-3.2%) of wrist angle and angular velocity (-67.9%) at impact. New linear and polynomial extrapolation conditions smoothed with all techniques provided lower root mean squared errors than the smoothing-through-impact condition, with discrete wrist positions at impact within 1.1% of the criterion data. Both the new linear and polynomial conditions can be used to make more accurate angular position and velocity estimates for tennis impacts, whereas the smoothing-through-impact condition creates spurious decreases in speed before impact that in the past have been assumed to be aspects of skilful movement.