A multivariate study of the effects of high-risk factors on performance on the Brazelton Neonatal Assessment Scale.

The Brazelton Neonatal Assessment Scale was administered to 52 newborn infants. A factor analysis revealed 2 main factors, 1 along an attention-orientation dimension, the other relating to temperament arousal. A stepwise multiple linear regression analysis showed that the attention-orientation factor was related to birth weight, age of the mother, and sex and race of the baby. The only variable related to the temperament-arousal factor was 5-min Apgar scor. The study, although exploratory, demonstrates the use of multivariate techniques in the assessment of influences on newborn behavior.     

Negative instances and the acquisition of the mathematical concepts of commutativity and associativity

The effects of negative instances in the acquisition of the mathematical concepts of commutativity and associativity were examined. Two treatment levels for commutativity (positive instances or positive and negative instances) and the same treatment levels for associativity were crossed to form a 2×2 factorial design with 21 subjects per cell. Subjects were undergraduate elementary education majors. Criterion variables were number of correct responses, stimulus intervals, and postfeedback intervals. Results supported the contention that negative instances enhance concept acquisition but also appear to require more time during treatments. No evidence for a transfer effect for negative instances from one concept to another was found.Paper presented at the 51st Annual Meeting of the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics, Houston, Texas, April, 1973.     

Impact of the Friendly Schools whole-school intervention on transition to secondary school and adolescent bullying behaviour

Peer bullying increases in times of school transition, influenced by changing peer and friendship groups, new schooling environments and greater stress. Covert forms of bullying, including cyberbullying, become more common in secondary school and cause considerable distress and long-term harm. The period of transition to secondary school is therefore a critical window for intervening to manage and prevent bullying. A three-year cluster randomised control trial was conducted to develop, implement and evaluate the Friendly Schools Project intervention which aimed to reduce bullying and aggression among more than 3,000 students who had recently transitioned to secondary school. Intervention schools were provided with individualised training and resources to support students’ transition and reduce bullying using a multi-level comprehensive intervention addressing classroom curriculum, school policies and procedures, the social and physical environment, pastoral care approaches and school-home-community links. Although the observed effect sizes were small, the intervention had a consistently significant positive effect across a range of outcomes, including bullying perpetration, victimisation, depression, anxiety, stress, feelings of loneliness and perceptions of school safety at the end of the students’ first year in secondary school. However, none of these differences were sustained into the students’ second year of secondary school. These findings demonstrate the immediate value of whole-school interventions to reduce bullying behaviour and associated harms among students who have recently transitioned to secondary school, as well as the need to provide strategies that continue to support students as they progress through school, to sustain these effects.     

Uncomfortable pedagogy: experiential learning as an anthropological encounter in the Asia-Pacific

This paper features a discussion of how educators can channel anthropological practices towards the enhancement of experiential learning (EL) teaching methods, particularly on the topic of religion across the Asia-Pacific. I argue that our capacity to achieve curricular objectives through EL calls for an attentiveness to the affinity between the empirical challenges confronted by ethnographers, who work to create rapport between researcher and subject, and classroom teachers who seek to cultivate a conducive learning environment beyond the classroom walls. I show the pedagogical implications of the ways anthropologists have operationalized their discipline’s “critical turn” by highlighting two experiential domains: (1) through activities of “uncomfortable” stereotype self-inventory and (2) through a dialogic pedagogy that pursues meaningful learning outcomes through the “struggle” to recognize inter-cultural and religious agency among students.     

TESTS IN JEWISH HISTORY

In the years following Manny Gamoran's retirement, we would meet often to talk, not just of our mutual educational concerns, but of theology. This was an old bond between us dating back to my student years in Cincinnati. The substance of these conversations, though they wandered over many an issue, was ultimately the same. Manny could not understand why I found Mordecai Kaplan's view of God intellectually inadequate and pro‐grammatically dangerous, though I agreed with a number of Kaplan's views on the Jewish community and supported a number of his practical proposals. Manny's loyalty to the Power that makes for salvation never faltered. His constancy almost persuaded me where his arguments did not.

Since leaving the Commission on Jewish Education of the Union of American Hebrew Congregations as Manny's successor, I have had the time to re‐read Kaplan's major works. This has enabled me to make my part in that long discussion clearer. I regret most sincerely that Manny is no longer able to meet my arguments with his great patience and undaunted resistance. In his memory then, I should like to analyze one aspect of Kaplan's view of God which has not received appropriate attention.     

Tyrosinase activity in photosensitive individuals inin-vitro study

A reddish glow localized within the iris was observed in the photographs of some individuals in the dark using an electric-arc flash. On repeated exposure and reprints of the same individuals to photography under similar conditions, the red glow persisted. Studies were under taken to analyze thein vitro effect of cupric ions on the activity of serum tyrosinase. A significant increase in the activity of tyrosinase was observed in the affected individuals as compared to the controls when cupric ion was supplementedin vitro. Studies also confirmed the inhibitory effect of benzoic acid on serum tyrosinase activityin vitro. Our preliminary studies have shown a significant decrease (p<0.001) in tyrosinase activity in the serum of the photosensitive individuals compared to controls which is consistent with the observed red glow on the photographic prints and reprints.     

Efficient online index maintenance for contiguous inverted lists

Search engines and other text retrieval systems use high-performance inverted indexes to provide efficient text query evaluation. Algorithms for fast query evaluation and index construction are well-known, but relatively little has been published concerning update. In this paper, we experimentally evaluate the two main alternative strategies for index maintenance in the presence of insertions, with the constraint that inverted lists remain contiguous on disk for fast query evaluation. The in-place and re-merge strategies are benchmarked against the baseline of a complete re-build. Our experiments with large volumes of web data show that re-merge is the fastest approach if large buffers are available, but that even a simple implementation of in-place update is suitable when the rate of insertion is low or memory buffer size is limited. We also show that with careful design of aspects of implementation such as free-space management, in-place update can be improved by around an order of magnitude over a naïve implementation.     

Striving 2.0: Faculty Collaboration and Advocacy as Strategies for Overcoming Post-Striving Organizational Priorities

Innovative Higher Education - A case study at a large, public research university was conducted to understand how post-striving environments, defined by those universities that achieved very high...     

Understanding the Formation, Functions, and Challenges of Grassroots Leadership Teams

This study examined the nature, characteristics, and challenges of grassroots leadership teams and the role of these factors in promoting cognitive complexity in order to provide insight into collective forms of bottom-up change. The study is framed by the literature on leadership teams. Using interviews from a case study conducted at five higher education campuses, we explored two types of leadership teams (sense-making and problem-solving) across different initiatives. The results from this study extend the literature on bottom-up change, leadership, and grassroots teams.