Parents as cotherapists in think aloud

Results of two case studies in which parents served as cotherapists in a social cognitive problem-solving program are presented. Larry, nine years old, was referred due to distractibility, immaturity, and impulsivity. Robert, eight years old, was referred for aggressive behaviors. Training occurred once a week for 50 minutes for 17 weeks for Larry and for 15 weeks for Robert. Parents were included in training in an effort to promote generalization and transfer of training outcomes. The parents' role included cognitive modeling, reinforcing, providing problem situations from the prior week, and extending training through generalization tasks at home. The following dependent measures were obtained in a pre-post design: Conners Teacher and Parent Rating Scales, Sociometric measures, WISC-R Mazes and Block Design, tests of consequential and means-end thinking, and observations of task-relevant and irrelevant self-verbalizations during Mazes and Block Design: Treatment effects were found for both boys on the parent and teacher versions of the Conners questionnaire. Larry improved in task relevant self-verbalizations, Mazes performance, and consequential and means-end thinking, but he did not improve on the sociometric measures. Robert improved on the sociometric measures, but not on task-relevant self-verbalizations, Mazes, Block Design, or consequential or means-end thinking. While these results are encouraging, limitations of the study limit generalizability of findings. Studies of the long-term benefits of training are needed to determine the cost effectiveness of incorporating parents as cotherapists in social cognitive problem-solving therapy.     

Using Workflow for Projects in Higher Education

The WWW is increasingly used as a medium to support education and training. A course at the University of Twente in which groups of students collaborate in the design and production of multimedia instructional materials has now been supported by a website since 1995. Workflow was integrated with other components in the website to investigate whether workflow can help instructors and students to have a better overview of group progress. Our evaluation shows that the introduction of workflow does provide added value. Another outcome of the experiment is that the transfer of a business application (workflow) into the educational domain has highlighted some differences and similarities between educational and business processes. This article explores some of these issues as highlighted by the application of workflow in education.     

Integrierte Entwicklung von Automotive-Software mit AutoFocus

Zur Beherrschung der komplexen vernetzten und verteilten Funktionen von Automotive-Software ist eine Beschreibung des zu erstellenden Systems auf verschiedenen Abstraktionsebenen und schrittweise überg?nge zwischen diesen Ebenen notwendig. Neben der Definition geeigneter Ebenen werden zur Unterstützung echtzeitkritischer Systemanteile ein einheitliches Berechnungsmodell, ebenenspezifische Beschreibungstechniken, sowie methodische Regeln für diese Abstraktionsebenen eingeführt und in den Werkzeugprototypen AutoFocus integriert.     

The Adoption of the Compact Disk Player: An Event History Analysis for the Netherlands

The compact disk (CD) player was one of the major audio innovations of the 1980s in the Netherlands. For studies of the temporal and social diffusion pattern of the CD player and the compact disks, both cultural and economic theories about innovations and music consumption are available. In this paper, these theories are combined in six working hypotheses concerning earlier adoption. The empirical analysis includes both time-invariant and time-varying variables and consumer characteristics. Event history analysis, the technique used in this article, enables one to incorporate these kinds of variables simultaneously in a dynamic model. Compared with the diffusion models usually employed by means of longitudinal analysis, event history analysis is a significant improvement in studying the development of the CD market in the Netherlands.     

Teacher learning in the context of educational innovation: Learning activities and learning outcomes of experienced teachers

This longitudinal study was aimed at increasing our understanding of how teachers learn. It was conducted within a national innovation programme in secondary education. During one year 94 teachers reported six learning experiences using digital logs. The learning experiences were content-analysed in terms of learning activities and learning outcomes. The former comprised six main categories, namely experimenting, considering own practice, getting ideas from others, experiencing friction, struggling not to revert to old ways, and avoiding learning—the first two categories being reported most frequently. Reported learning outcomes referred to changes in knowledge and beliefs, emotions, practices, and intentions for practice, with changes in knowledge and beliefs being reported most frequently and changes in teaching practices being reported rarely. Learning activities were associated significantly with all measures of learning outcomes. Type of learning environment was significantly associated with learning activities and learning outcomes. Results are discussed with respect to ways of fostering teacher learning.