Relational Framing Theory: Utterance Form and Relational Context as Antecedents of Frame Salience

Using relational framing theory, this article examines the influence of utterance type and relational context on the salience of relational frames. The authors report the results of two studies that used scenarios to manipulate utterance form and information about the relationship between interactants. Participants rated the relevance of dominance-submissiveness and affiliation-disaffiliation frames to interpreting the hypothetical interactions. Results showed that judgments of dominance-submissiveness frame salience were sensitive to variations in utterance type and relational context, but the results were mixed for the affiliation-disaffiliation frame. The authors discuss the implications for relational framing theory and the possibility of an affiliation bias.     

Lemons to Lemonade: How Five Challenges in Teaching Macro Practice Helped to Strengthen Our Course

Teaching macro practice can be challenging. While students have some concepts of what macro practice entails, their knowledge may be limited and sometimes inaccurate. Moreover, students may be reluctant to engage in macro change efforts. Given the scarcity of literature regarding teaching macro practice and the growing importance of it in social work, this article addresses major issues that we encountered in teaching macro practice at a large Midwestern school of social work. In our institution only 6% of students are enrolled in macro concentrations and we wish to encourage students to expand their interests in macro practice even if they do not wish to pursue a macro concentration. We describe a macro practice course we designed to meet the challenges of teaching community, organization, and policy practice skills to master's level and advanced undergraduate students. Our goal is to expand the macro practice pedagogy literature and encourage social work faculty to consider both established and innovative ways of introducing the planned change process in community, organization, and policy practice to their students.     

A study of race and gender bias in the punishment of handicapped school children

There is scant research concerned about punishment of handicapped, minority students in public schools. The purpose of this study was to investigate race and gender, types of rules violations, types of punishments, referral rates, referral frequencies, and follow-up activities to determine differences in treatment by race, sex, and handicapping condition. The sample consisted of 4,391 discipline files representing records from 9 schools in a district (K-12). All data were analyzed using the Chi Square statistic. It was demonstrated that racial bias existed in the administration of punishment, and that Black, male handicapped students were punished more severely than others for commission of the same offenses.     

The Influence of Teacher Expectations about Twice-Exceptional Students on the Use of High Quality Gifted Curriculum: A Case Study Approach

Twice-exceptional students show evidence of high academic performance or potential and also have a disability that impedes their ability to learn. Twice-exceptional students remain under-represented in gifted programs, and some researchers attribute such under-representation to the negative beliefs and low expectations about twice-exceptional students held by teachers. While researchers have begun to investigate the curricular models and instructional strategies that are effective for twice-exceptional students, little research addresses how teacher beliefs and expectations about student ability are reflected in the ways teachers implement such models and strategies for twice-exceptional students in gifted classrooms. Even less research addresses gifted students with emotional and behavioral disabilities. We used a case study of a third-grade teacher using a structured, model-based language arts curriculum to better understand how her expectations about a gifted student with an emotional disability influenced her instructional choices. Using observational and interview data, the case study approach allowed the researchers to personalize the experiences of this teacher and provided a context in which to examine the subtleties of teacher expectations when teaching a gifted student with an emotional disability. Implications for educational practice, particularly the need for comprehensive school-based support systems for students with emotional disabilities, are discussed.     

The Effect of Two-dimensional and Stereoscopic Presentation on Middle School Students’ Performance of Spatial Cognition Tasks

We investigated whether and how student performance on three types of spatial cognition tasks differs when worked with two-dimensional or stereoscopic representations. We recruited nineteen middle school students visiting a planetarium in a large Midwestern American city and analyzed their performance on a series of spatial cognition tasks in terms of response accuracy and task completion time. Results show that response accuracy did not differ between the two types of representations while task completion time was significantly greater with the stereoscopic representations. The completion time increased as the number of mental manipulations of 3D objects increased in the tasks. Post-interviews provide evidence that some students continued to think of stereoscopic representations as two-dimensional. Based on cognitive load and cue theories, we interpret that, in the absence of pictorial depth cues, students may need more time to be familiar with stereoscopic representations for optimal performance. In light of these results, we discuss potential uses of stereoscopic representations for science learning.