Audience and image in ciceronian Rome: Creation and constraints of the Vir Bonus personality

Although the study of Roman oratory persistently has occupied the interests of classical rhetoricians, little research has been done to try to understand the speeches as they were actually delivered and the influence which listeners had upon speakers. Focusing on Cicero, this study investigates his views and relationship with listeners who frequently filled the Forum to evaluate rhetorical skills. The results of this research indicate that the audience became such a dominant force that many orators, in an effort to gain recognition, were encouraged to stress histrionics and the appearance of virtue over the realities of a sincere moral commitment to a cause. Consequently, individuals such as Cicero were strongly tempted to concentrate on the appearance of a virtuous public image and not the morality which it implied.     

Using Multiple Data Sources to Develop a Liaison Agenda

Subject librarians at many college and university libraries have a wide variety of job responsibilities. Yet they often lack guidance on goal setting and prioritization. At the University of Nevada, Las Vegas (UNLV) Libraries, the liaison program currently lacks a formal agenda setting process. This study explores using multiple sources of data for liaison goal setting and goal prioritization. Data from the LibQUAL+ survey, faculty surveys and focus groups, and usage statistics were examined for the disciplines of art, architecture, business, and hotel administration, and then applied to the development of liaison agendas. The results show that data can enrich and inform liaison perceptions of the behavior and priorities of their constituents and assist liaisons with establishing annual goals.     

Ten Years of Change: National Library of Medicine TOXMAP Gets a New Look

The United States National Library of Medicine (NLM) TOXNET® databases <http://toxnet.nlm.nih.gov> provide broad coverage of environmental health information covering a wide variety of topics, including access to the U.S. Environment Protection Agency (EPA)'s Toxics Release Inventory (TRI) data. The NLM web-based geographic information system (GIS), TOXMAP® <http://toxmap.nlm.nih.gov/>, provides interactive maps which show where TRI chemicals are released into the environment and links to TOXNET for information about these chemicals. TOXMAP also displays locations of Superfund sites on the EPA National Priority List, as well as information about the chemical contaminants at these sites. This column focuses on a new version of TOXMAP which brings it up to date with current web GIS technologies and user expectations.     

SCCTP Electronic Serials Cataloging Workshop

This preconference was a presentation of the Electronic Serials Cataloging Workshop created by the Serials Cataloging Cooperative Training Program (SCCTP). The workshop assumed a general knowledge of print serials cataloging and focused on issues specific to cataloging electronic serials. Presenter Jeanne Baker followed the course content developed by SCCTP, while highlighting changes introduced by the new CONSER standard record where applicable.     

Does Displaying the Class Results Affect Student Discussion during Peer Instruction?

The use of personal response systems, or clickers, is increasingly common in college classrooms. Although clickers can increase student engagement and discussion, their benefits also can be overstated. A common practice is to ask the class a question, display the responses, allow the students to discuss the question, and then collect the responses a second time. In an introductory biology course, we asked whether showing students the class responses to a question biased their second response. Some sections of the course displayed a bar graph of the student responses and others served as a control group in which discussion occurred without seeing the most common answer chosen by the class. If students saw the bar graph, they were 30% more likely to switch from a less common to the most common response. This trend was more pronounced in true/false questions (38%) than multiple-choice questions (28%). These results suggest that observing the most common response can bias a student''s second vote on a question and may be misinterpreted as an increase in performance due to student discussion alone.     

Strategic pay reform: A student outcomes-based evaluation of Denver's ProComp teacher pay initiative

Denver Public Schools utilizes one of the nation's highest profile alternative teacher compensation systems, and a key element of Denver's Professional Compensation System for Teachers (ProComp) is pay for performance. This study analyzes the student achievement implications of ProComp utilizing matched student- and teacher-level data from 2003 to 2010. We find that student achievement increased during the years ProComp was implemented, but that these gains were observed for students taught by teachers enrolled in ProComp's alternative compensation system as well as non-participating teachers. While the findings are not consistent across grades and subjects, there is some evidence that teachers voluntarily opting into ProComp are more effective than those who do not volunteer. Finally, some ProComp bonuses were well targeted towards value-added measures of teacher effectiveness while others were not.     

How front-end loading contributes to creating and sustaining the theory-practice gap in higher education programs

In this paper, I show how Mead’s theory of emergence can prove explanatory in how the theory-practice gap is co-created and sustained in front-end loading university programs. Taking teacher education as an exemplar, I argue that trainee teachers encounter different and oft-times conflicting environmental, social and cultural conditions in the two ‘fields of interaction’ of their training program, namely, the on-campus pre-service program and the in-school experience. The argument draws on interview and focus group data collected via a study of first-year graduate teachers of an Australian pre-service teacher education program. My conclusions are two-fold. First, I argue that role taking and self-regulated behaviour within the two environmental fields of interaction in front-end loading programs inhibit the trainee professional from exercising the power of agency to implement theory learned at university in practice in the workplace. Second, I conclude that Mead’s theory of emergence proves effective in predicting the obduracy of the gap between theory and practice in front-end programs.     

Head Start and children's nutrition,weight, and health care receipt

Using a sample of low-income children from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study-Birth Cohort (N ≈ 4350) and propensity-score weighted regressions, we analyzed children's nutrition, weight, and health care receipt at kindergarten entry, comparing (1) Head Start participants and all non-participants, and (2) Head Start participants and children in prekindergarten, other center-based care, other non-parental care, or only parental care. Overall, we found that compared to all non-participants, Head Start participants were more likely to receive dental checkups but showed no differences in getting medical checkups; they were also more likely to have healthy eating patterns but showed no differences in Body Mass Index (BMI), overweight, or obesity. However, these results varied depending on the comparison group—Head Start participants showed lower BMI scores and lower probability of overweight compared to those in other non-parental care, and the effects on healthy eating and dental checkups differed by comparison group.