Revisiting print exposure: exploring differential links to vocabulary,comprehension and reading rate

Undergraduates (N=171) completed a revised version of the Author Recognition Test ( Stanovich & West, 1989 ). The resulting print exposure scores were divided into two dimensions: personal reading experience (primary print knowledge – PPK) and secondary print knowledge (SPK). Both PPK and SPK were correlated with print exposure, but not with each other. PPK correlated more strongly with reading‐related variables (vocabulary, comprehension and reading rate) than did SPK. Of particular importance, PPK accounted for variance in all three criterion variables after the effects of SPK had been factored out. Thus, these data support the notion that it is the act of reading over and above memory for reading‐related information that furthers the development of linguistic skill.     

Counselling expectations of international students

International students not only face the normal adjustment problems of young adulthood but also the adjustment to a different culture. A random sample of 100 colleges and universities was contacted. International students enrolled at the institutions completed a questionnaire designed to assess the counselling preferences of international students. Results are discussed in terms of desirable counsellor characteristics and implications for counsellor training. Suggestions are made for facilitating counselling with international students.     

Exploring the dimensions of place: a confirmatory factor analysis of data from three ecoregional sites

Themes of place, situatedness, and locale are increasingly prominent in environmental education literature and practice. Sense-of-place research, which considers how people connect with places and the influence of those connections on engagement with the environment, may have important implications for environmental education. Prior place studies have proposed that people’s place connections have various dimensions. This paper explores four place dimensions, analyzing data from a survey (n?=?712) conducted in three ecoregional sites in which we investigated residents’ sense of place. We examine how our data fit a proposed typology of place dimensions – a four-dimension (biophysical, psychological, sociocultural, and political-economic) categorization based on previous conceptions of the dimensions of place. We use structural equation modeling to question whether a 4-factor conceptualization of the dimensions of sense of place is superior to plausible alternatives. In comparing the four-dimension model with alternative models, we find that the four-dimension model is the best fit for these data. Our findings suggest that environmental and place-based education may benefit from an understanding and consideration of this four-dimension conceptualization of place in program design, implementation, and evaluation.     

Consider the lawyers: Law school's lessons for criminal justice education

For two disciplines interested in similar issues, law schools and criminal justice programs may as well be on different sides of the moon when it comes to pedagogy. Undoubtedly, criminal justice has lessons to share with law, but legal instruction also offers innovations for justice education. The following essay presents my experience from both law school and criminal justice programs, offering recommendations to improve criminal justice teaching. I offer the suggestions not under any brazen notion that I have discovered the secrets to ideal pedagogy, but rather to suggest that many of law's methods would benefit criminal justice as well.     

Foreign Communications

Masami Ito, et al. Broadcasting in Japan (London and Boston: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1978—E4.95/$9.50, paper)

Ibrahim Elsheikh Mass Media and Ideological Change in Egypt (1950-1973) (Amsterdam: University of Amsterdam, 1977—about $40.00, paper)

Mass Media and Cultural Relationships by Anthony Piepe, Sunny Crouch and Miles Emerson (1978, 169 pp.—price not given)

Trade Unionism in Television by Peter Seglow (1978, 287 pp.—price not given)

Cuadernos de Comunicaci(5n (Communication Notes) (Comunicolgia Aplicada de Mexico, S.A. Comunal No. 7, Mexico 20, D.F.—about $55 per year/12 issues).

Godwin C. Chu, Syed A. Rahim, and D. Lawrence Kincaid Institutional Exploration in Communication Technology (Honolulu: East West Communication Institute, East-West Center, 1978 —$3.00, paper)

P. Gould and J. Johnson, An Experiment in the Classification of Television Programs, October 1978, $3.00, paper), and the paper written for laymen, #5 (P. Gould, How Should We Classify Television Programs? October 1978, $2.50, paper)

Journalism Training: An Interim Report by Robert Amerson and John Herbst (30 pp. $1.75)

An Analysis of Ten International Radio News Broadcasts in English to Africa by Douglas A. Boyd and Donald R. MacKay (16 pp., $1.25)

A Look at the World's Radio News by Bert Cowlan and Lee M. Love (39 pp., $2.25)

Education for Communication Development: The Global View by Robert Lindsay (27 pp., $1.75)

A Brief Study on News Patterns in 16 Third World Countries by Edward T. Pinch (15 pp., $1.25)

International Telecommunications and the Requirements of News Services by Ithiel de Sole Pool and Stephen Dizard (19 pp., $1.25)

Foreign News in Nine Arab Countries by Gehan Rachty (21 pp., $1.25)

International News Wires and Third World News in Asia by Wilbur Schramm, et al. (79 pp., $4.00)

The Multinational News Pool by Roger Tatarian (19 pp., $1.25)

International Conferences: Process and Effects by Rosemarie Rogers, et al. (March 1978, 53 pp., $3.00)

Hemisphere Communications in Historical Perspective by James Nelson Goodsell (September 1978, 18 pp., $1.25)

Kaarle Nordenstreng and Herbert I. Schiller, eds. National Sovereignty and International Communication (Norwood, N.J.: Ablex Publishing Corp., 1979—$21.50)

Rosemary Righter's Whose News? Politics, the Press and the Third World (London: Andre Deutsch/New York: Times Books, 1978—$12.50)

Frank Barton The Press of Africa: Persecution & Perseverance (New York: Holmes & Meier/Africana Publishing Co, 1979—$29.50)

Godwin C. Chu, ed. Popular Media in China: Shaping New Cultural Patterns (Honolulu: University Press of Hawaii, 1978—$12.00)     

Book review

Douglas, S. J. (1994). Where the girls are: Growing up female with the mass mediay. New York: Times Books. 340 pages.

Lang, A. (Ed.). (1994). Measuring psychological responses to media messages. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. 244 pages.

Cosby, C. O. (1994). Television's imageable influences: The self‐perceptions of young African Americans. Lanham, MD: University Press of America. 172 pages.

Kern‐Foxworth, M. (1994). Aunt Jemima, Uncle Ben, and Rastus: Blacks in advertising, yesterday, today, and tomorrow. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press. 205 pages.

Fiske, J. (1994). Media matters: Everyday culture and political change. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press. 253 pages.

Johnson, L. L. (1994). Toward competition in cable television. Cambridge, MA & Washington, DC: MIT Press & AEI Press. 214 pages.

Krattenmaker, T. G., & Powe, L. A., Jr. (1994). Regulating broadcast programming. Cambridge, MA & Washington, DC: MIT Press & AEI Press. 369 pages.

Moores, S. (1993). Interpreting audiences: The ethnography of media consumption. London: Sage. 140 pages.     

The Future of Peer Review: Four Possible Options to Nothingness

Peer review faces its biggest challenge over the next few years. This is saying a lot for an activity that has been excoriated as sexist, racist, biased, incompetent, and an accomplice before the fact in theft and skullduggery. We are at a crossroads. We must act, and act now. All that stands in our way to step forward and make the change necessary to save some form of the academic in academic works is our willingness to face the issue with resolve and the rectitude to create a new, better model. We have made all the arguments against change, and, protected in the past by economic barriers that no longer exist, we were certain that even if the arguments failed, the excessive cost to publish and distribute would prevent ??less than acceptable?? research from reaching the masses. Lacking the cost to publish that existed 20?years ago and facing zero-cost global distribution systems, we must now either create a responsible, guided path for academic publishing, or we will see the landscape change without us. We must act now.     

Mentoring and Argumentation in a Game-Infused Science Curriculum

Engaging in argumentation from evidence is challenging for most middle school students. We report the design of a media-based mentoring system to support middle school students in engaging in argumentation in the context of a game-infused science curriculum. Our design emphasizes learners apprenticing with college student mentors around the socio-scientific inquiry of a designed video game. We report the results of a mixed-methods study examining the use of this media-based mentoring system with students ages 11 through 14. We observed that the discourse of groups of students that engaged with the game-infused science curriculum while interacting with college student mentors via a social media platform demonstrated statistically significant higher ratings of cognitive, epistemic, and social aspects of argumentation than groups of students that engaged with the social media platform and game-infused science curriculum without mentors. We further explored the differences between the Discourses of the mentored and non-mentored groups. This analysis showed that students in the mentored groups were invited, guided, and socialized into roles of greater agency than students in the non-mentored groups. This increased agency might explain why mentored groups demonstrated higher levels of scientific argumentation than non-mentored groups. Based on our analyses, we argue that media-based mentoring may be designed around a video game to support middle school students in engaging in argumentation from evidence.     

Testing the usability of a portable DVD player and tailored photo instructions with older adult veterans

DVD-delivered behavioral skills training may help disseminate efficacious treatments to older adults independent of internet access. The present study examined the usability of a portable DVD player alongside iterative revisions of accompanying instructions to be used by older adults in a DVD-delivered behavioral skills treatment study. The sample comprised 20 older adults with a mean age of 69.5 years (SD = 7.3). Behavior observations revealed that three of five steps to play the DVD were completed by more than 90% of participants. Quantitative ratings revealed that 75% could play the DVD easily. Qualitative content analysis further elucidated the usability of the player and the clarity of the instructions. Findings suggest user-centered design of instructional support in DVD-delivered treatments for older adults may be critical to minimizing user error and frustration and increase user experience.