Lombroso's Legacy: The Miseducation of Criminologists

This study examines the extent to which criminal justice and criminology Ph.D. students are exposed to contemporary biological and genetic findings associated with aggression and violence. Drawing on multiple sources of information, we find little evidence showing that Ph.D. students are exposed to any biological research on crime and offending. We examine the consequences for this “trained incompetence” and offer suggestions for remedying this deficiency.

If all mankind minus one were of one opinion, and only one person were of the contrary opinion, mankind would be no more justified in silencing that one person, than he, if he had the power, would be justified in silencing mankind. (John Stuart Mill)     

Teaching Biosocial Criminology I: Understanding Endophenotypes Using Gottfredson and Hirschi’s Self‐Control Construct

Criminology is experiencing a paradigm shift in theory and research that articulates a more interdisciplinary, biosocial mode of inquiry. Unfortunately, however, graduate‐level criminal justice education rarely encompasses biosocial training. The current review is the first in a series of works that seeks to fill this biosocial training void by providing instruction on concepts in the biological sciences and neurosciences that have direct relevance to criminal justice education and criminology. Here we introduce endophenotypes and demonstrate their relevance to the study of crime using the self‐control construct from Gottfredson and Hirschi’s general theory. Because biosocial criminology is in its nascent stage, it is critical that biosocial criminologists provide service and instruction to their social science‐trained colleagues.     

“Ain't no faggot gonna rob me!”: Anti‐gay attitudes of criminal justice undergraduate majors

This study examines the attitudes of undergraduate criminal justice majors towards gays and lesbians. A sample of 1055 undergraduate students including both criminal justice majors and non‐majors were surveyed at four universities. The analysis indicates that criminal justice undergraduate students are unique in the degree to which they hold negative attitudes towards gays and lesbians     

Promoting Completion Through Organizational Development and Process Improvement

In 2007, Tulsa Community College (TCC) joined the national Achieving the Dream (ATD) network, which is dedicated to developing data-informed interventions to increase persistence and completion among community college students. TCC’s participation in the national initiative set it down a path for positive institutional change, but it was the College’s restructuring of their internal work teams and their process improvements since 2011–2012 that have resulted in a sustainable system that will help retain knowledge and ensure successful leadership transitions. In 2013, TCC rebranded its modified ATD system as Completing the Dream, combining the goals of Complete College America with the action research principles of Achieving the Dream. Because of these efforts, the College is in a stronger position today than it has ever been to serve our students using evidence-based strategies, ultimately resulting in more college-educated citizens in the Tulsa area.     

Residual Structures in Latent Growth Curve Modeling

This article presents relevant research on Bayesian methods and their major applications to modeling in an effort to lay out differences between the frequentist and Bayesian paradigms and to look at the practical implications of these differences. Before research is reviewed, basic tenets and methods of the Bayesian approach to modeling are presented and contrasted with basic estimation results from a frequentist perspective. It is argued that Bayesian methods have become a viable alternative to traditional maximum likelihood-based estimation techniques and may be the only solution for more complex psychometric data structures. Hence, neither the applied nor the theoretical measurement community can afford to neglect the exciting new possibilities that have opened up on the psychometric horizon.     

SERVING AND LEARNING ATA UNIVERSITY LABORATORY SCHOOL: STUDENTS FROM BIRTH THOUGH ADULTHOOD BENEFIT WHEN SERVICE LEARNING IS INTEGRATED INTO THE PRESERVICE CURRICULUM

Service‐Learning (S‐L) pedagogy is attracting increased attention in teacher education. This article describes the implementation of S‐L in the preservice early childhood curriculum, which placed students in a birth‐5 years setting. It identifies a continuum of learning to care, which begins in infancy, as caring capacities emerge, through to adulthood, when preservice teachers learn from experienced mentors how caring characterizes their interactions with learners of all ages. Students’ journals indicate they believe S‐L experiences contribute to their personal, academic and professional development. Carefully implemented S‐L experiences validate students’ caring interactions, give them first‐hand experiences with young children during which they can apply theoretical constructs, provide experiences which help them clarify their own career goals, and make them feel better prepared to manage instructional and classroom management dimensions of working with young children.     

Conceptual Foundations and Components of a Contextual Intervention to Promote Student Engagement During Early Adolescence: The Supporting Early Adolescent Learning and Social Success (SEALS) Model

Decades of research indicate that many early adolescents are at risk for developing significant school adjustment problems in the academic, behavioral, and social domains during the transition to middle school. The Supporting Early Adolescent Learning and Social Success (SEALS) model has been developed as a professional development and consultation program to train teachers in universal (Tier 1) instructional and classroom management strategies to address the correlated risks experienced by students during this time. This article reviews the conceptual foundations of the SEALS model, provides an overview of SEALS intervention components, describes the SEALS professional development training and consultation framework, reviews preliminary findings of the impact of SEALS in rural school settings in the United States, and discusses research needs and future directions regarding the use of the SEALS model.