A Culturally Responsive Intervention for Addressing Problematic Behaviors in Counseling Students

Counseling faculty serve as gatekeepers to protect the public from trainees who demonstrate significant deficiencies in professional functioning. Two issues that have not been thoroughly examined are how different cultural values may intersect with the assessment of appropriate professional competencies and whether the multicultural environment of programs is considered when assessing potentially problematic students. The authors suggest a group systems intervention and provide implications and recommendations for counselor educators.     

Visual literacy: A failed metaphor?

Has the visual literacy construct led to useful research and defensible practice? The authors draw on psycholinguistics, pathology, and developmental, cognitive, and cross-cultural social psychology to argue that it has not. A reconceptualization of the inherent assumptions and implications is proposed.     

Diversity among Spanish-speaking English language learners: profiles of early literacy skills in kindergarten

This study explored heterogeneity in literacy development among 2,300 Hispanic children receiving English as a Second Language (ESL) services at the start of kindergarten. Two research questions guided this work: (1) Do Spanish-speaking English language learners receiving ESL services in the fall of kindergarten demonstrate homogeneous early literacy skills, or are there distinct patterns of achievement across measures of phonological awareness, alphabet knowledge, and orthography? and (2) if there are distinct profiles, to what extent do they predict literacy achievement at the end of kindergarten and the beginning of first grade? Using cluster analysis, the authors identified four distinct literacy profiles derived from fall kindergarten measures of phonological awareness, alphabet knowledge, and phonetic spelling. These profiles were found to be associated with literacy outcomes in spring of kindergarten and fall of first grade. The two profiles that were associated with greater success on later measures of concept of word in text, letter sound knowledge, word reading, and spelling were the two that included stronger performance on orthographic skills (i.e., alphabet knowledge and phonetic spelling). These findings demonstrated that there is heterogeneity among Hispanic ESL students at kindergarten entry and suggested that literacy instruction must be differentiated from the very beginning in order to meet students’ individual needs. The findings also suggested that orthographic skills should be assessed and taught early on. While phonological awareness may be a necessary precursor to reading, phonological awareness in the absence of orthographic skills may not be sufficient.     

Socialization of graduate teaching assistants: a case study in an American university

Although graduate teaching assistants [GTAS] play an important role on most American university campuses, and despite the fact that the GTA experience is often the only formal professional training that faculty receive, little is known about how GTAS are prepared for their role. One of the most enigmatic processes related to GTA role development is that of socialization. This paper reports the results of a study examining the types of messages that new GTAS receive about their role and the manner in which particular types of communication strategies are used to cope with inconsistencies and conflicts among those messages. It was found that GTAS are exposed to thematic messages about what it means to be a GTA, that they experienced difficulties when attempting to use those messages to guide behavior and decision‐making, and that information‐seeking strategies were used in response to the specific types of problems that were experienced.     

NATIONAL STUDY OF EFFECTIVE COMMUNITY COLLEGE TEACHERS

Three major urban community college districts replicated a study of very effective teachers originally conducted at the City Colleges of Chicago. Researchers at the cooperating institutions identified teachers who had outstanding reputations and whose students achieved'at very high levels. Intensive interviews revealed four common attributes of the ninety teachers involved in the original and replication studies. The teachers plan and organize goals, they show respect and interest in their students, they encourage student participation, and they monitor student progress and respond accordingly. The excellent teachers in this study are exceptionally dedicated and hard working. Many of the techniques that they use can be successfully used by other teachers who would like to improve their own teaching.     

Fellows' Perceptions of a Mandatory Reflective Electronic Portfolio in a Geriatric Medicine Fellowship Program

Electronic portfolios (ePortfolios) can be useful for evaluating and documenting mastery of competencies. We investigated geriatric medicine fellows' perceptions of an ePortfolio. We conducted surveys and focus groups followed by quantitative and qualitative data analysis. Our study revealed that fellows considered the ePortfolio acceptable and accessible. Fellows reflected on aspects relevant to postgraduate training and future practice and documented adherence to competencies. However, fellows expressed resentment about the self-reflection component, which interfered with the overall acceptance of the ePortfolio. Although ePortfolios can be powerful and reflective tools for competency assessment, care must be taken in their implementation.     

Inspecting Spiritual,Moral, Social and Cultural Development

The concept of citizenship is open to a wide range of interpretations and, although it has a long history at the margins of education in the UK, it has never had an established tradition. Arguably, citizenship should occupy a central position in the curriculum since a broad interpretation of it underpins many of the skills, values and attitudes which we would want to promote. As part of Oxfam’s promotion of global citizenship, a pack of teaching materials was commissioned and developed by teachers, with the aim of promoting basic rights from local, national and global perspectives. This paper describes this pack and the rationale for it.     

Safe-circumnavigation of one single agent around a group of targets with only bearing information

This paper investigates the safe-circumnavigation problem of a single agent along a group of static targets. We assume in this paper that the distance information cannot be measured directly and only bearing measurements are available. In order to localize the targets, we design the positional estimator where the bearing measurements of the targets are used to construct the system matrix of the state equation of the estimator. To guarantee that the bearing angles are meaningful and with enough precision, we build the condition keeping safe distance between the agent and the targets. Furthermore, a gradual relaxed method is provided to reduce the limitations brought by the mutual restraint between the accuracy of the initial estimation and the desired encircling radius, so as to make the proposed method easy to apply. The performance of the proposed algorithms is verified through an experiment based on a wheeled robot platform.