Teaching effectiveness of sound with pictures that do not embody the material being taught

Conclusions The data show that instruction through sound linked to images by association only is followed by a significant increase in factual learning over the next most effective method, sound alone. The results suggest further that the projection of abstract forms on the screen distracts attention more than it improves concentration, and that the distraction is worsened by the increased detail, or the incongruity, of an irrelevant picture. These facts indicate promising possibilities for increased use of audiovisual aids in fields where they have been little tried because the subject-matter was not suitable for concrete visualization. Any topic which can be linked associatively with a person, object, or scene would seem to lend itself to presentation by this method. However, more tests appear to be called for to determine whether or not the gain reported in this study can be maintained with difficult material, and at a level which would justify the expense of producing films or photographs. It would be interesting to know, also, how many statements can be attached to a single image or related images before the teaching effect of the image wears out. Finally, further investigation might shed light on the nature of the learning described here, of which it was the purpose of this study to assess only the final result. Does the visual image, as May and Lumsdaine suggest (2), reinforce the sound or mediate the response when recalled? Does it provide a sense of actuality which serves as a stimulus; or does it imply a question which the sound-track answers? Experiments along these lines might furnish evidence which can contribute to more extensive theory of learning from films and similar aids.     

Emergent Agents: The Forgotten Publics in Crisis Communication and Issues Management Research

Crisis communication research rarely highlights the voices of marginalized publics or their advocates whose interests are affected by crisis situations. We take a different approach by using a response to a natural disaster to expand our theorizing about crisis situations beyond those that hurt the bottom line. Using official statements from Senators Landrieu and Obama about events surrounding Hurricane Katrina as texts for analysis, we demonstrate how they used transcendence, rhetorically, and appropriated the Bush administration's key term—security—to garner more support for their positions, Katrina sufferers, and relief efforts. Implications of this strategy serve to broaden crisis communication theorizing, and to provide insights into ways to strengthen the quality of crisis emergency response planning and response protocols.     

Risks, rules, and roles

Summary Based on ten years of fieldwork with a focus on macro-micro linkages from organizational ethos and structure to language behavior and roleplaying, this report centers on institutional changes that affect cognitive, social, and linguistic development of youth. Argued here is the resilience of those young people who find their way to youth-based (as distinct from youth-serving) organizations during their out-of-school lives. These organizations provide an institutional force to fill the voids left by intergenerational communication and nurturance breakdowns and an absence of meaningful work for youth in community and family life. Part 1 gives an overview of areas of interaction, work, and support that institutions fail to give in post-industrial societies and sets up the framework to view the fact that some youth create an institutional force through youth-based organizations that take over key socialization roles. Here crossage peers become their own agents to create an ecology of learning significantly different from customary agents of transmissive socialization. Part 2 answers the questions of what happens in this ecology of learning, and how learning works in youth-based organizations that place high emphasis on the real work of production and performance. Within these organizations that offer a type of liminal zone between childhood and full entry into adult life, youth take risks, play roles, and set their own rules in order to achieve a group goal of excellence in performance. Part 3 looks at language use within these organizations and addresses the means by which youth-based organizations remain dynamic and responsive to the rapidly changing dimensions of youth needs. Part 4 sets out certain changes necessary in the thinking of adults about models of socialization and their role in helping to make possible learning ecologies young people will see as effective. Part 5 pulls together the macro and micro dimensions of the findings to highlight the importance of research on the ways that rules, roles, and risks play within the work of learning.

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Zusammenfassung Risiken, Regeln und Rollen. Jugendperspektiven zur Lernarbeit in der Gemeindeentwicklung Basierend auf zehn Jahren Feldforslchung mit dem Fokus auf den Makro-Mikro-Zusammenh?ngen zwischen organisationaler Struktur und dazugeh?rigem Ethos einerseits und Sprachverhalten und Rollenspiel andererseits konzentriert sich dieser Beitrag auf den institutionellen Wandel, der sich auf die kognitive, soziale und sprachliche Entwicklung der Jugend auswirkt. Auff?llig ist die Selbstbehauptungskraft derjenigen Jugendlichen, die in ihrer au?erschulischen Freizeit den Weg zu jugendzentrierten Einrichtungen finden. Diese Organisationen vermitteln eine institutionelle Macht, die die Leere der intergenerationellen Kommunikation, der Bildungsabbrüche und der fehlenden Aufgaben für Jugendliche im Familien- und Gemeindeleben füllt. Abschnitt 1 gibt zum einen einen überblick über Interaktionsbereiche, die Arbeit und Unterstützung, die Institutionen der postindustriellen Gesellschaft nicht geben, und zeigt dann auf, welche institutionelle Kraft manche Jugendliche durch Engagement in jugendzentrierten Initiativen entwickeln, denen Schlüsselfunktionen in ihrer Sozialisation zukommen. Hier werden altersgemischte Peergruppen ihre eigenen Interessenvertreter, um eigene Lernumgebungen zu schaffen, die sich signifikant von den herk?mmlichen, auf Stoffvermittlung bestehenden Ans?tzen unterscheiden. Teil 2 beantwortet die Fragen, was in diesen Lernumwelten geschieht und welch wichtigen Platz Lernen in diesen jugendzentrierten Einrichtungen mit ihrer deutlichen Betonung von ernsthafter produktorientierter Arbeit und Darstellung einnehmen. In diesen Projekten mit ihrem Angebot für den Zeitraum zwischen Kindheit und vollst?ndigem Eintritt in das Erwachsenenleben akzeptieren Jugendliche Risiken, spielen Rollen und setzen sich Regeln, um hervorragende Gruppenergebnisse, z. B. bei einer Theateraufführung, zu erreichen. Abschnitt 3 betrachtet die Sprache, die in diesen Organisationen benutzt wird, und benennt die Mittel, mit deren Hilfe jugendzentrierte Einrichtungen dynamisch bleiben und auf die raschen Wechsel der jugendlichen Bedürfnisse antworten. Teil 4 beschreibt einige notwendige ?nderungen im Denken der Erwachsenen hinsichtlich der Sozialisationsmodelle und beschreibt ihre Rolle für die effektive Gestaltung von Lernumgebungen für junge Menschen. Im fünften Abschnitt werden Forschungsergebnisse der Makro- und Mikroebene zusammengefasst, um die Wichtigkeit der Forschung zu unterstreichen, die darüber aufkl?rt, welche Rolle Regeln, Rollen und Risiken in der Lernarbeit spielen.

     

A Quantitative Analysis of PhD Students' Views of Supervision

Data on supervision were obtained from questionnaires completed by 355 PhD candidates when they submitted their theses at The University of Queensland. The aim was to provide data that could be used in efforts to enhance the quality of postgraduate supervision. The median age of these candidates was 33, and the 58% who had been full-time throughout took a median of 3.2 years. One third had a single supervisor and the rest one or more associate supervisors. Almost all (85%) expressed satisfaction with the expertise of their supervisor(s). For those who did express dissatisfaction it was not possible to determine the extent to which this reflected problems with the candidate or the supervisor; and if the supervisor, the extent to which it was related to the level of commitment, or to excess workload, or to other factors. Formal meetings were held at least fortnightly with 67% in the early stages, but the frequency decreased in mid-candidature, and increased again towards the end. The frequency also depended on an interaction between gender, discipline area, whether full time or part time candidates, and whether from Australia or overseas. Where meetings were held at least fortnightly, 70-85% expressed satisfaction with a range of aspects of supervision. Supervisors began to require written work from 86% during the first year, and by the time they submitted their thesis, 83% had one or more publications. Most (89%) attended one or more conferences, mainly at national or international level, and had presented one or more papers at conferences. Candidates in the sciences met more frequently with their supervisors, published more papers, and included their supervisor as co-author more often, and also gave more seminars than did those in the humanities and social sciences.