Three pathways to support the professional and career development of casual academics

Almost half of current academic staff will need to be replaced within three years in the Australian academic workforce. Literature suggests that casual academics are a potential solution, yet they are frequently excluded from the career development opportunities that would allow them to fulfil an ongoing academic role. Most academic development programmes designed for and delivered to casual academics are constructed by academic developers with little or no input from casual academics themselves. This paper documents what casual academics determine to be their academic development needs and how they could be addressed using three pathways of professional and career development.     

Visual recognition memory in squirrel monkeys

Squirrel monkeys (Saimiri sciureus) were trained on visual recognition memory tasks in a Wisconsin General Testing Apparatus with a trial-unique procedure that used 250 objects as stimuli. In Experiment 1, acquisition of a trial-unique delayed non-match-to-sample task (DNMS) was compared with acquisition of a trial-unique delayed match-to-sample (DMS) task. The DNMS task was learned in significantly fewer trials and with significantly fewer errors. Two animals in the DNMS group demonstrated highly accurate retention of the DNMS strategy despite an 11-month hiatus in experimental testing. In Experiment 2, the same procedures were used to study the learning of lists of 3, 5, 10, or 20 serially presented items. Although the animals were able to accurately remember lists of up to 20 items, there was no evidence of serial position effects.     

Emotional Determinants of Infant-Mother Attachment

The present study examined the assumption that emotion-related characteristics of mothers and infants contribute to the development of infant-mother attachment in the first year of life. Mothers' emotion and personality characteristics were assessed with expressive-behavior ratings and self-report scales. Infant characteristics were measured by emotion and temperament questionnaires (mother report) and objective coding of facial expressions of emotions. Attachment classifications were determined by means of the Strange Situation procedure, and a continuous-variable index of attachment security was derived by a discriminant function procedure. Mothers' emotion experiences, expressive behaviors, and personality traits were significant predictors of the level of security of the infant-mother attachment. Infants' expressive and temperamental characteristics as rated by their mothers were also significant predictors of attachment security.     

Grandfather - granddaughter incest: A trigenerational view

Grandfather-granddaughter incest accounts for about 10% of all reported cases of intrafamilial childhood sexual abuse. In a sample of 10 such cases, all referrals came from mothers fo the child victims; six of these mothers had themselves been abused in childhood by the perpetrator. For eight of the 10 perpetrators, multiple child sexual victims were identified in a pattern that suggests facultative pedohphilia. Ony two of the 18 grandchildren sexually abused by the 10 grandfathers were asymptomatic at the time of report. Grandchild victims from chaotic families showed educational and behavioral symptoms; those from stable families exhibited fears and phobias. Eight of the 18 grandchildren were victimized by multiple perpetrators. The results cast doubt on the assumption that grandparent incest is a benign form of abuse and indicate that there is some justification for the fears expressed by adult incest victims about visitation between their children and the father-perpetrator.     

An innovative model for collaborative reform in Elementary School Science Teaching

This article received the Innovations in Teaching Science Teachers award at the 1996 meeting of the Association for the Education of Teachers in Science. The award is made possible by Delta Education.This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation (Grant No. TPE-9050015). Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this article are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.     

A Simple and Effective Program to Increase Faculty Knowledge of and Referrals to Counseling Centers

The authors describe a simple, cost‐effective, and empirically supported program to increase faculty referrals of students to counseling centers (CCs). Incoming faculty members at 3 universities received a mailing and personal telephone call from a CC staff member. Faculty assigned to the outreach program had greater knowledge of and rates of referral to CCs than did faculty who received only standard information at faculty orientation. Recommendations for the implementation of this program are discussed.