An Exercise to Introduce Power

In introductory statistics courses, the concept of power is usually presented in the context of testing hypotheses about the population mean. We instead propose an exercise that uses a binomial probability table to introduce the idea of power in the context of testing a population proportion.     

Children leaving foster care: Outcomes of permanency planning

Foster care, created to overcome some of the disadvantages and abuses of institutional care of children, can present its own problems. One problem is overt abuse, but there are other, more subtle, deficiencies and concerns about foster care. In response, the concept of permanency planning has been introduced as a philosophy, a policy, and a technique. It is designed to return every child who enters care to the stability of a family as quickly as possible. This paper presents findings of a longitudinal study of the outcomes of permanency planning. Results show that over half the children returned to their biological parents, that adoptions were more common for Caucasian than black children, that 78% of the children were still in their permanent placements 12-16 months later, that most children were functioning well, and that there was a marked need for services for the families. In addition to the results of the study, the discussion focuses on implications for foster care practice and child welfare policy, including the importance of relatives, the impact of foster care placements, the needs of biological families, and the provision of services and supports for reunified families.     

Steering Dynamics in Complex Education Systems. An Agenda for Empirical Research

Many policy systems and education systems have grown more complex in the last three decades. Power has moved away from central governments in different directions: upwards towards international organisations, sideways towards private institutions and non‐governmental organisations and downwards towards local governments and public enterprises such as schools. Where once we had central government, we now have governance, which can be defined as the processes of establishing priorities, formulating and implementing policies, and being accountable in complex networks with many different actors. Steering in such complex education systems emerges from the activities, tasks and responsibilities of state and non‐state actors, operating at different levels and from different positions and often has un‐deliberate, un‐intentional and un‐foreseen consequences. There are many conceptual models that encapsulate this complexity, but this article suggests that there is a real need for empirical research. Without empirical research it remains unknown whether and how steering in complex networks works out in practice, what are its effects and for whom. Moreover, it is only through empirical research that we can find out whether central government has become less dominant, or rather whether its appearance has changed and it has become less visible, but not necessarily less influential. Foucault's governmentality perspective is a useful notion on which to build such a framework for empirical research which allows for a careful study of the interactions that signify steering. Inspired by Foucault, this article develops a trilogy of assumed conditions for steering to take effect in modern societies. Following this reasoning, ‘something' first needs to be made thinkable, calculable and practicable by different actors for steering to occur. This trilogy is a promising starting point for empirical research into very specific phenomena which can help us to understand how steering in complex education systems works.     

A Guide for Parent Workshops: Parents as Teachers

Conclusion Parents want to help their young-ster learn and grow and, if offered the means to acquire the necessary knowledge and skills, will assume this responsibility. It is hoped that through the suggestions, source lists, and examples provided here, educators will be stimulated to explore the development of parent workshop programs. This article is based on a series of workshops the author designed and initiated for parents at the Whitney Young Jr. Day Care Center on Staten Island, New York, in the spring of 1977. Edith Barnes is Assistant Professor of Behavioral Sciences at the College of Staten Island, City University of New York, 715 Ocean Terrace, Staten Island, New York 10301. She is a member of the New York City Higher Education Task Force for the International Year of the Child and Chairperson of the Staten Island IYC Committee. She is also a member of the HEW Advisory Committee of Staten Island Children's Community Mental Health Center, member of the Center Policy Committee of Staten Island Head Start, and Founder and Past President of the Staten Island Nursery Directors' Organization (SIND).     

Recent experimental strategies for prejudice reduction in American schools and classrooms

Through an analysis of policy documents, archival material, interviews and journal articles, this paper attempts to map those discourses which have become an important part of the meanings and practices that make up the physical education curriculum in New South Wales, Australia, from 1880 to 1980. It uses a feminist perspective to argue that the dominance of a masculine agenda, built around organized sport and the human movement sciences, has marginalized other pedagogies and other forms of physical activity, such as gymnastics and dance, which are more likely to be associated with women. Physical education possesses characteristics which make it a particularly potent site within education for discourses about the body. When organized sports dominate the curriculum, the valuing of individual achievement through aggressive competition, within a context of male dominance, becomes the normative standard. This typically works against women's and girls’ participation in physical education and physical activity; it also contributes to the (re)production of notions of women being ‘weaker’ and ‘lacking’ in relation to male superior strength and skill. There has been a marked and continuing absence of oppositional discourses in Australian physical education to contest the dominance of the masculine tradition. Contestation has been framed primarily within liberal feminist or ‘equal opportunity’ discourses which rarely challenge the dominant forms of physical education. Further analyses using feminist perspectives are required to challenge existing curricula.     

An organizational behavior model of students' evaluation of instruction

The present study develops and tests an organizational behavior model of students' evaluation of instruction outlining the causal relationships among levels of instruction, feedback, goal-setting, student's accomplishment, and student's instructional evaluation.The major findings of this study are: (a) The organizational behavior model is one of the strongest predictors of student's overall instructional evaluation. (b) Student's accomplishment, while controlling for the effects of other independent variables, does not contribute to predicting overall evaluation of instruction. (c) Feedback and goal-setting are the most powerful predictors of overall evaluation of instruction. (d) The means, standard deviations and reliability coefficients of the various variables and the interrelationships among the various variables are similar at two points of time (mid-semester and end-semester). The implications of these findings are discussed and elaborated.     

University and Social Involvement at the Neighborhood Level: Implications for Social Work Education

The article describes and evaluates an innovative experiment in education and training of social workers at an academic learning center, which was established by the Hebrew University's School of Social Work and Social Welfare in a neighborhood of Jerusalem. The project focused on strengthening the link between theory, research, and practice. Participants were exposed to advanced theories and macropractice seminars, and gained practical experience as well as tools and technologies for coping with the social problems faced by Jerusalem neighborhoods. In that process, they became aware of the difficulties involved in initiating programs and in establishing coalitions with neighborhood institutions, residents, and other constituencies. The article deals with the achievements of the learning center, as well as with the difficulties and dilemmas encountered in the effort to sustain collaboration between the university and the community. In addition, issues related to supervision of students specializing in community work and practice, and implications for social work education are presented and discussed.     

Report to the President on the Use of Technology to Strengthen K–12 Education in the United States: Findings Related to Research and Evaluation

The Panel on Educational Technology was organized in April 1995 under the auspices of the President's Committee of Advisers on Science and Technology (PCAST) to provide advice to the President on matters related to the application of information technologies to K–12 education in the United States. Its findings and recommendations were set forth in March 1997 in the Report to the President on the Use of Technology to Strengthen K–12 Education in the United States. This report was based on a review of the research literature and on written submissions and oral briefings from a number of academic and industrial researchers, practicing educators, software developers, governmental agencies, and professional and industry organizations involved in various ways with the application of technology to education. Its most important finding is that a large-scale program of rigorous, systematic research on education in general and educational technology in particular will ultimately prove necessary to ensure both the efficacy and cost-effectiveness of technology use within our nation's K–12 schools. Finding that less than 0.1 percent of our nation's expenditures for elementary and secondary education are currently invested to determine which educational techniques actually work, and to find ways to improve them—an extremely low level relative to comparable ratios within the private sector—the Panel recommended that this figure be increased over a period of several years to at least 0.5 percent, and sustained at that level on an ongoing basis. Further, because no one state, municipality, or private firm could hope to capture more than a small fraction of the benefits associated with a significant advance in our understanding of how best to educate K–12 students, the Panel concluded that such funding will have to be provided largely at the federal level in order to avoid a systematic underinvestment (attributable to a classical form of economic externality) relative to the level that would be optimal for the nation as a whole. This paper originally appeared as Section 8 of the report.