Correlates of Selected Test-Wiseness Skills

The study investigated personality and aptitude correlates of selected test-wiseness skills. The subjects in the study were 162 students enrolled in a freshman course in a large public university in the southern United States. Test-wiseness skills were measured using a measure of the individual’s ability to utilize deductive reasoning and item cues to correctly answer items. Personality factors were measured using the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator and aptitude was measured using the American College Test. Statistically significant relationships were found between the predictor variables and test-wiseness scores. Overall, the results suggest that cognitive variables have substantially more power to predict testwiseness scores than do personality variables, and that most of the predictive power of personality variables is also subsumed within the cognitive variables investigated in the study.     

Using a random dependent group contingency to increase on‐task behaviors of high school students with high incidence disabilities

Group contingencies have the advantages of encouraging individual students to collectively feel responsible for appropriate and inappropriate classroom behaviors and have shown effectiveness in improving students' behavior. The purpose of this study was to investigate the effects of a random dependent group contingency on the on‐task behaviors of six high school students with high incidence disabilities in a resource classroom. The study used an ABAB reversal design, and the results of the study indicated that the random dependent group contingency intervention was positively associated with increases in on‐task behaviors for three of the six participants. Limitations and implications are discussed in relation to dependent group contingencies for high school students. © 2009 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

Mentoring College Students: A Critical Review of the Literature Between 1990 and 2007

In response to the mounting national support provided to mentoring programs and initiatives in higher education, the present article updates a review article written by Jacobi (Rev Educ Res 61(4):505–532, 1991). The article revisits the mentoring literature in an attempt to re-frame and update the definition and characteristics of mentoring provided by Jacobi. It also synthesizes and critically analyzes empirical literature specific to mentoring college students published between 1990 and 2007. Finally, the article presents broad theoretical perspectives of mentoring from the business, psychology and education literature in preface to a proposed theoretical framework specific to mentoring college students. The article concludes with specific recommendations to advance the mentoring literature.

Technology and ethical dilemmas in a medical setting: Privacy, professional autonomy, life and death

A growing literature addresses the ethicalimplications of electronic surveillance atwork, frequently assigning ethical priority tovalues such as the right to privacy. Thispaper suggests that, in practice, the issuesare sociologically more complex than someaccounts suggest. This is because manyworkplace electronic technologies not designedor deployed for surveillance purposesnevertheless embody surveillance capacity. Thiscapacity may not be immediately obvious toparticipants or lend itself to simpledeployment. Moreover, because of their primaryfunctions, such systems embody a range of otherfeatures which are potentially beneficial forthose utilising them. As a result, more complexethical dilemmas emerge as different desired goods compete for priority in thedecision-making of individuals and groups. From a sociological point of view this raisesinteresting questions about the way ethicaldilemmas arise in the context of the ongoingsocial relationships of work. The paperexplores these issues using data from a studyof the development and implementation of acomputerised instructional package in amaternity setting. This medical settingillustrates clearly how seeking to assignethical priority to a particular concern, suchas the right to privacy, cannot butoversimplify the real day to day dilemmasencountered by participants. At the same time,the example of the instructional packagedemonstrates that it is difficult to predict inadvance what ethical issues will be raised bytechnologies that almost always turn out tohave a range of capabilities beyond thoseenvisaged in their original designspecification.     

Moving Beyond Colorblindness in Early Childhood Classrooms

Countering the position that colorblindness is desirable for teachers and children, this article encourages early childhood education teachers to engage in conversations about race and racism with young children. We discuss why the early childhood years are important for interrupting racism and make suggestions for helping children develop tools for addressing it. Annotated examples of children’s drawings about racism from a second grade classroom are shared to demonstrate that young children are not colorblind and that they think about and experience racism in their daily lives. We conclude that it is both an educational and ethical necessity to address racism with young children.     

La Cuestión Social como Objeto de Estudio: Concepto y Fundamento

Este artículo intenta clarificar conceptos relacionados con disciplinas que se ocupan de lo social. Exige una ardua labor de reflexión, verificación y contraste de los implicados en el estudio y la práctica para elaborar una terminología común. Construir los fundamentos de una ciencia, y/o disciplina científica –Pedagogía Social, Educación Social y Trabajo Social –no es una tarea fácil. Intentamos aportar las bases epistemológicas en las que se sustentan las disciplinas mencionadas. En general, los agentes de lo social no han adquirido la capacidad de pensamiento riguroso que es esencial para una profesión en vías de maduración.     

Professionals' and Families' Perceptions of Family-Centered Practices in Infant-Toddler Services

The purposes of this study were to determine the extent of family-centered practices, professionals' and families' values about the practices, and the extent to which selected characteristics of participants explained variance in the practices. Professionals (N = 198) and families (N = 118) completed two questionnaires. Professionals tended to report more family-centered typical practice than did families, but ideal practices generally did not vary between groups. Agency type and the Setting x Experience interaction predicted professionals' ideal-practice scores and their self-ratings of the frequency of implementing family-centered practices: Home-based services were most predictive of frequent reports of these practices. The frequency with which families reported receiving these practices was predicted by the amount of time the family had been in early intervention: The longer, the more frequently families experienced the practices.