When Herbert met Ken: understanding the 100 languages of creativity

The paper proposes a thought experiment written in the spirit of Tom Stoppard's Travesties in which some major contemporary thinkers on and actors of creativity and culture are brought together in the same imagined space through the conceit of a (faulty) memory play. ‘Actors’ are drawn from the National Advisory Committee on Creative and Cultural Education (NACCCE, 19991, the Gulbenkian Committee (1981) and the Joint Council for Education through Art (1957). The paper suggests a series of hypothetical conversations between educationalists from the 1950s to the 2000s who have been engaged with developing arts and cultural education and creativity in our schools. It aims to establish what we have learnt about the discourses of creativity ‐ and what impact this may have had in our classrooms. It concludes with a speculative trial between a Professor Ken Robinson of 1999, adjudged by a Sir Herbert Read of 1957. Nick Owen is a Liverpool‐based film maker and researcher who has recently completed a PhD scholarship at the University of Hull. The scholarship, funded by Creative Partnerships, focused on developing pedagogies for creativity in contexts in which artists and educators work together.     

Responding to racism at school: Ethnic-racial socialization and the academic engagement of Black and Latinx youth

Guided by the Theory of Racial Socialization in Action (TRSA; Smith-Bynum in press), this study examined observed caregiver-provided ethnic-racial socialization in response to a school-based discriminatory dilemma. Forty-five Black and 36 Latinx caregivers (88% mothers) with low-income and their children (M_age = 11.09, SD = 0.29; 46.3% female) participated in Dallas, Texas from 2018 to 2019. Dyads responded to a hypothetical scenario in which a school counselor makes a discriminatory comment to the child. Results of a factor mixture analysis suggested that caregivers engaged in the dialogue using one of four approaches: Low-engaged, Legacy, Racial Literacy, or High-engaged. Profiles were found to differ significantly by the race/ethnicity and language of caregivers and were associated with youth’s concurrent behavioral engagement (R² = .04).     

Subject-specific computer simulation model for determining elbow loading in one-handed tennis backhand groundstrokes

A subject-specific angle-driven computer model of a tennis player, combined with a forward dynamics, equipment-specific computer model of tennis ball-racket impacts, was developed to determine the effect of ball-racket impacts on loading at the elbow for one-handed backhand groundstrokes. Matching subject-specific computer simulations of a typical topspin/slice one-handed backhand groundstroke performed by an elite tennis player were done with root mean square differences between performance and matching simulations of < 0.5 degrees over a 50 ms period starting from ball impact. Simulation results suggest that for similar ball-racket impact conditions, the difference in elbow loading for a topspin and slice one-handed backhand groundstroke is relatively small. In this study, the relatively small differences in elbow loading may be due to comparable angle-time histories at the wrist and elbow joints with the major kinematic differences occurring at the shoulder. Using a subject-specific angle-driven computer model combined with a forward dynamics, equipment-specific computer model of tennis ball-racket impacts allows peak internal loading, net impulse, and shock due to ball-racket impact to be calculated which would not otherwise be possible without impractical invasive techniques. This study provides a basis for further investigation of the factors that may increase elbow loading during tennis strokes.     

Using interactive management to facilitate a student-centred conceptualisation of critical thinking: a case study

Critical thinking (CT) is a metacognitive process, consisting of a number of sub-skills and dispositions, that, when used appropriately, increases the chances of producing a logical solution to a problem or a valid conclusion to an argument. CT has been identified as a fundamental learning objective of third-level education; however, students often report not being given the opportunity to adequately understand and cultivate CT skills. Though most CT interventions are designed based on academic or expert definitions of CT skills, students are rarely, if ever, asked to guide their instruction by describing their perspectives on what constitutes CT. The current case study investigated students’ conceptualisations of what constitutes good CT using a collective intelligence methodology, interactive management. Interactive management (IM) is a computer-assisted process that allows a group to build a structural model describing relations between elements in a system. Though decades of research on group decision-making in educational and social psychology highlight the many limitations associated with group problem solving (e.g. as a result of an over-reliance on heuristics, cognitive biases and ‘groupthink’), a fundamental skill for making decisions and solving problems is the ability to collectively visualise the structure of a shared problem, and use this knowledge to design solutions and strategies for collective action. Results of IM group work from the current case study revealed five core CT skills (clarity of expression, conversational skill, inference, evaluation, and explanation), five CT dispositions (detachment, listening, systematicity, recognising uncertainty, and self-questioning) and fourteen structural relationships among them. The ability to detach, listen and engage in conversation with others, were seen as fundamental drivers of all other competencies in the system. Results are discussed in light of research and theory on CT and best practice for CT instruction.     

Assessing Outcomes: Practical Methods and Evidence

University counseling center clients’ (N = 52) perceptions of precounseling functioning were highly correlated with their actual well‐being scores at intake. The magnitude of change based on perceptions of precounseling functioning to current well‐being was approximately double of what is found from the difference of actual precounseling well‐being to current well‐being scores. Retrospective methods for assessing precounseling functioning are best suited for comparison among clients or counseling processes.     

Psychometric reevaluation of the scientific attitude inventory‐revised (SAI‐II)

The central purposes of this study were to review the development and evolution of the Scientific Attitude Inventory (SAI) and then reevaluate the psychometric properties of the revised form of the SAI, the Scientific Attitude Inventory II (SAI‐II). The SAI‐II was administered to a convenience sample of 543 middle and high school students from five teachers in four schools in four school districts in San Antonio, Texas, at the beginning of the 2004–2005 school year. Confirmatory factor analysis on the full data set failed to support the existence of a 12‐factor structure (as proposed by the scale developers) or a one‐factor structure. The data were then randomly divided into exploratory [exploratory factor analysis (EFA)] validation and confirmatory [confirmatory factor analysis (CFA)] cross‐validation sets. Exploratory and confirmatory models yielded a three‐factor solution that did not fit the data well [χ² (321) = 646, p < .001; RMSEA = .061 (.90 CI = .054–.068); and CFI = .81]. The three factors were labeled “Science is About Understanding and Explaining” (13 items), “Science is Rigid” (6 items), and “I Want to Be a Scientist” (8 items). The α‐coefficients for these three factors ranged from 0.59 to 0.85. Whether these identified subscales are valid will require independent investigation. In this sample, and consistent with prior publications, the SAI‐II in its current form did not have satisfactory psychometric properties and cannot be recommended for further use. © 2008 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Res Sci Teach 45: 600–616, 2008     

Documenting the world’s sociological literature:Sociological abstracts

Since its founding in 1953,Sociological Abstracts has abstracted and indexed the worldwide literature of sociology and the related social sciences. Growth and specialization within the field are reflected in the number of publications screened, the addition of new document types, the range of languages covered, and the increased specificity of indexing and classication.