Deaf clients' perceptions of counseling expertise as a function of counselors' signing skill, gender, and therapy type

The study examined deaf clients' perceptions of counseling expertise as a function of several counseling variables: counselor's signing skill, gender, and therapy type. Twenty undergraduate students at a special college for the deaf who were enrolled in either counseling courses or psychology courses viewed 4 video clips reflecting a mock counseling session. After viewing the clips, the participants were asked to complete the Counselor Rating Form--Short Form (Corrigan & Schmidt, 1983). There was no statistically significant main effect for the sex of the counselor, the match between the counselor's gender and the client's gender, or the mode of communication. While the study demonstrates the utility of the method for future research with deaf clients, further modifications of the method are necessary.     

Forming Identities in College: A Sociological Approach

Using data from 82 in-depth interviews with a randomly selected sample of college students, we explore how these students are forming felt identities in the following domains: intelligence and knowledgeability, occupation, and cosmopolitanism. We study the formation of students' identities by considering college an arena of social interaction in which the individual comes in contact with a multitude of actors in various settings, emphasizing that through these social interactions the identities of individuals are, in part, constituted. In using a symbolic interactionist approach in our research in conjunction with consideration of the social structural location of colleges in the wider society, we demonstrate the sorts of information and insights that can be gained from a nondevelopmental approach to the study of college student change.     

Interrogating ourselves to promote the democratic production,distribution, and use of knowledge through action research

ABSTRACT

This article is a report of a critical co-autoethnography action research (AR) study of Allan Feldman’s life in AR relative to the development of knowledge democracy (KD). For nearly 30 years he has been doing, studying, and writing about AR, first as a doctoral student and then as a professor. Prior to this he engaged in reflective practice as a secondary science teacher. In this study we ask how his life in AR has contributed to KD, and what actions he and others can take to increase the contribution of AR to KD. The meaning-making processes used throughout relied heavily on collaborative conversations with a critical friend (Frederick Bradley), self-reflective writing, and interrogation of the literature and Feldman’s previous writings. The findings suggest that while his work has been situated in democratic and critical aspects of AR, little of it fits in with current conceptions of KD. They also indicate that a reconfiguration of how we think about, practice, facilitate, and study AR might be necessary if we are to fall more in line with the ideals of KD. We contend the methods and results of our study can be used by others in the field, who seek to interrogate their participation in this way, and help them promote the democratic production, distribution, and use of knowledge.     

Factors that Affect Science and Mathematics Teachers’ Initial Implementation of Technology-Enhanced Formative Assessment Using a Classroom Response System

The purpose of this study is to uncover and understand the factors that affect secondary science and mathematics teachers?? initial implementation of Technology-Enhanced Formative Assessment (TEFA), a pedagogy developed for teaching with classroom response system (CRS) technology. We sought to identify the most common and strongest factors, and to understand the general process of how teachers adopt TEFA. We identified ten main hindering factors reported by teachers, and found that time limitations and question development difficulties are reported as the most problematic. In this paper we provide five vignettes of teachers?? initial implementation experiences, illustrating different courses that TEFA adoption can follow. We classify our ten factors into four groups: contextual factors that directly hinder teachers?? attempts to implement TEFA (extrinsic type I); circumstances that affect teachers?? teaching in general (extrinsic type 0); gaps that teachers have in the knowledge and skills they need to adopt TEFA (intrinsic type I); and ways of being a teacher that describe teachers?? deeper perspectives and beliefs, which may be consonant or dissonant with TEFA (intrinsic type II). Finally, we identify four general categories that describe the teachers?? initial TEFA implementation.     

Children's Activity Levels and Lesson Context during Third-Grade Physical Education

Abstract

Little is known about children's activity levels during physical education classes and how they relate to the national health objectives for the year 2000 (U.S. Public Health Service, 1991). We systematically observed students' physical activity and associated variables in 293 third-grade physical education lessons in 95 schools in 4 Child and Adolescent Trial for Cardio-vascular Health (CATCH) centers in California, Louisiana, Minnesota, and Texas. The influence of independent variables was assessed simultaneously by analysis of variance. Significant differences among study centers were evidenced for both physical activity and lesson context variables. Additionally, there were differences among variables for lesson location and teacher specialty, but not for teacher gender. Boys were more active than girls, but only during free play opportunities. The findings have widespread implications for educators responsible for developing and implementing health-related physical education programs, as well as for designing and conducting staff development.     

Existential approaches to action research

The existential approach to action research is derived from research that suggests that teachers' actions, intentions, and beliefs are manifestations of their ways of being teachers. A teacher's ‘way of being’ in an educational situation is defined and informed by what was and is for the teacher, and his or her intentions for what could be. It is essentially the way that that person is a teacher – where ‘teacher’ is one of the many ways that that person is and can be. The existential approach to action research extends the way of being perspective by examining three aspects of personhood – situation, existence precedes essence and freedom – and combines them with critical reflection and action. The result is that existential action research happens when people work together to research their own ways of being a teacher to increase their capacity to choose freely, and to act responsibly for themselves and those they care for     

Care taker blogs in caregiver fabricated illness in a child: A window on the caretaker's thinking?

Three recently diagnosed cases of caregiver-fabricated illness in a child at Seattle Children's Hospital shed light on a new manifestation of their caretakers’ attention seeking. The patients’ mothers were actively blogging about their children's reputed illnesses. Although it is not uncommon for parents of chronically ill children to blog about their child's medical course, specific themes in these blogs of parents suspected of medically abusing their children were noted. In particular, gross distortions of the information parents had received from medical providers were presented online, describing an escalation of the severity of their children's illnesses. The mothers reported contacting palliative care teams and Wish organizations, independently from their medical providers’ recommendations. They sought on-line donations for their children's health needs. We believe these blogs provide additional direct evidence of the suspected caregivers’ fabrications. Although we have not performed formal content analysis, blogs might also provide insight into the caretakers’ motivations. Protective Services and/or police investigators could consider querying the internet for blogs related to children at risk for caregiver-fabricated illness in a child. These blogs, if viewed in parallel with the children's medical records, could assist medical diagnosis and legal documentation of medical fabrication and assist in protective planning for the affected children.     

Foreign and International Media

Allan M. Winkler's The Politics of Propaganda: The Office of War Information, 1942-1945 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1978—$11.95)

46. Mass News Media and the Third World Challenge by Leonard R. Sussman (80 pp.)

49. International News and the American Media by Barry Rubin (71 pp.)

Kees Van Der Haak and Joanna Spicer's Broadcasting in the Netherlands (London and Boston: Routledge &; Kegan Paul, 1977—$7.95, paper)

Tomo Martelanc, et al. External Radio Broadcasting and International Understanding: Broadcasting to Yugoslavia (Paris: Unesco/ New York: Unipub, 1977—$2.75, paper)

John A. Lent's Asian Mass Communications: A Comprehensive Bibliography-1977 Supplement (School of Communications, Temple University, Philadelphia, Pa. 19122—$25.00 1 paper)     

Interpersonal deception: VI. Effects of preinteractional and interactional factors on deceiver and observer perceptions of deception success

Past research on deception success has focused on receiver judgments, ignoring deceiver perceptions, which may influence the ways deceivers choose to behave in interpersonal interactions. The present study investigated how several preinteractional and interactional factors affect both deceiver and observer perceptions of deception success. Preinteractional factors included three that have been found relevant to deceptive communication: social skill, self‐monitoring, and motivation. Interactional factors included receiver suspicion, plus four proposed by the four‐factor theory of deception (anxiety, affect, task difficulty, and behavioral control). Results indicated that deceivers’ perceptions of success were more affected by interactional factors (especially anxiety, interaction difficulty, and conversational normality). Conversely, observers were more affected by preinteractional factors such as deceiver social skill. However, motivation, self‐monitoring, and conversational normality affected both deceivers’ and observers’ assessments: greater motivation and self‐monitoring, coupled with more natural, expected communication, yielded greater believability in deceivers’ own eyes and the eyes of observers.