Powering Up, Philanthropically

Faculty members have an important role to play in helping to fund programs and direct donor dollars at colleges and universities. This paper outlines the ‘golden age of philanthropy’ that the United States has currently entered, explaining the combination of material resources and spiritual inclinations that have led to increased giving. It then outlines several principles that faculty members should keep in mind in approaching prospective donors, including the reasons for giving, donors’ interest in ideas, and the importance of persistence, local focus, and collaboration. Finally it offers several practical steps that faculty members can take to marshal philanthropic support for their visions.

The Strategies Instructional Approach

OVER THE PAST ten years, various efforts to develop and validate instructional programs to train students in strategies and thinking skills have been initiated. These efforts have usually focused on either the benefits of specific strategy training or on the very general parameters of how strategy instruction should be implemented. As a result, the translation from research to practice has often resulted in educational applications that have either been removed from common academic and social tasks required for school success, or the applications have not been sufficiently intensive or specific to have a significant impact on the learning and performance of individuals with handicapping conditions. To be successful, strategies instruction must focus on both the general and specific elements of instruction within the context of a rich strategy environment Well designed strategy environments should promote, model, guide, and prompt efficient and effective learning and performance across settings for all students, not just those with learning disabilities or handicaps. This has been the primary goal of researchers involved in the creation of the Strategies Intervention Model developed at the University of Kansas Institute for Research in Learning Disabilities. The authors of this article describe how they define and view the use of strategies for instruction and explain how the basic concepts of strategies instruction have been operationalized for use in educational settings.     

Taste aversion learning and schedule-induced polydipsia in rats

Experiment 1 sought to determine whether schedule-induced drinking could be abolished by means of a taste aversion. Polydipsic rats were given access to a .4% saccharin solution while they were exposed to an intermittent food schedule. Immediately after the session, they received an intraperitoneal injection of either lithium chloride or sodium chloride. Following a recovery day with water in the experimental chamber, the animals were again exposed to the saccharin solution. The poisoned animals (lithium chloride) drank very little saccharin compared to the control animals (sodium chloride), indicating that they had learned a taste aversion in only one conditioning trial. Experiment 2 established that polydipsic rats can learn a taste aversion despite a long delay between schedule-induced saccharin consumption and poisoning, and that the delay gradient displayed by polydipsic rats is similar to that observed in thirst-motivated rats.     

Disciplinary knowledge of K-3 teachers and their knowledge calibration in the domain of early literacy

Recently, investigators have begun to pay increasing attention to the role of teachers’ domain-specific knowledge in the area of reading, and its implications for both classroom practice and student learning. The aims of the present study were to assess kindergarten to third grade teachers’ actual and perceived reading related subject matter knowledge, and to investigate the extent to which teachers calibrate their reading related subject matter knowledge by examining relationships between actual and perceived knowledge. Results indicated that while teachers demonstrated limited knowledge of children’s literature, phoneme awareness, and phonics, the majority of these same teachers evaluated their knowledge levels quite positively. Teachers demonstrated some ability to calibrate their own knowledge levels in the area of children’s literature, yet they were poorly calibrated in the domains of phoneme awareness and phonics. These findings suggest that teachers tend to overestimate their reading related subject matter knowledge, and are often unaware of what they know and do not know. Implications for the design of teacher education at both the preservice and inservice levels are discussed. Note: This research was funded through the National Science Foundation IERI 00-74 Initiative to Anne E. Cunningham, University of California, Berkeley. acunning@uclink.berkeley.edu     

The politics of developing global human resources in Japan

Japan has made developing global human resources (gurobaru jinzai ikusei) a national priority. The government has invested billions of yen annually to double the number of Japanese students studying overseas, double the number of globally competitive Japanese universities, and improve Japanese students’ English test scores. A broad, conservative ‘globalist coalition’ supported these reforms, including the Liberal Democratic Party, Democratic Party Japan, Ministry of Education, Ministry of Economy Trade and Industry, and big business. Education specialists – government vice ministers and business association committee chairmen – created ‘contrived consensus’ through a series of advisory council deliberations. All globalist coalition members benefitted from reforms to develop global human resources, especially big business. Political progressives, including teachers’ unions and university professors, were not included in the policy-making process and benefitted little from the reforms.     

Mentoring Promotion/Tenure‐Seeking Faculty: Principles of Good Practice Within a Counselor Education Program

Approaches to mentoring junior faculty in counselor education departments have received minimal attention in the counseling literature. In this article, the authors describe a successful program based on the 10 principles for good mentoring recommended by Sorcinelli (2000). Application of the principles within a combined formal and informal mentoring approach is described, as are the experiences of junior faculty whose careers have been shaped within this system.     

Refinements in mathematics undergraduate students’ reasoning on completed infinite iterative processes

This paper reports a teaching experiment in which two students engaged in tasks that challenged them to describe a final state for a variety of infinite iterative processes. The results from the study indicate that the students used multiple reasoning strategies for addressing these tasks. Refinements in the students’ reasoning occurred as students constructed relationships between the problems they were solving and problems they had solved previously, applying some of the reasoning strategies that they used for one problem to make sense of or solve another problem. We discuss how these findings relate to the existing body of research on infinite iterative processes.     

Values and norms of proof for mathematicians and students

In this theoretical paper, we present a framework for conceptualizing proof in terms of mathematical values, as well as the norms that uphold those values. In particular, proofs adhere to the values of establishing a priori truth, employing decontextualized reasoning, increasing mathematical understanding, and maintaining consistent standards for acceptable reasoning across domains. We further argue that students’ acceptance of these values may be integral to their apprenticeship into proving practice; students who do not perceive or accept these values will likely have difficulty adhering to the norms that uphold them and hence will find proof confusing and problematic. We discuss the implications of mathematical values and norms with respect to proof for investigating mathematical practice, conducting research in mathematics education, and teaching proof in mathematics classrooms.     

Sectoral patterns of technical change: Towards a taxonomy and a theory

The purpose of the paper is to describe and explain sectoral patterns of technical change as revealed by data on about 2000 significant innovations in Britain since 1945. Most technological knowledge turns out not to be “information” that is generally applicable and easily reproducible, but specific to firms and applications, cumulative in development and varied amongst sectors in source and direction. Innovating firms principally in electronics and chemicals, are relatively big, and they develop innovations over a wide range of specific product groups within their principal sector, but relatively few outside. Firms principally in mechanical and instrument engineering are relatively small and specialised, and they exist in symbiosis with large firms, in scale intensive sectors like metal manufacture and vehicles, who make a significant contribution to their own process technology. In textile firms, on the other hand. most process innovations come from suppliers.These characteristics and variations can be classified in a three part taxonomy based on firms: (1) supplier dominated; (2) production intensive; (3) science based. They can be explained by sources of technology, requirements of users, and possibilities for appropriation. This explanation has implications for our understanding of the sources and directions of technical change, firms' diversification behaviour, the dynamic relationship between technology and industrial structure, and the formation of technological skills and advantages at the level of the firm. the region and the country.