Achievement or Arrest? The Influence of the Collegiate Religious and Spiritual Climate on Students’ Worldview Commitment

The purpose of this study was to elucidate the relationship between the collegiate religious, spiritual, and ideological climate and worldview commitment. As part of this process, 1,071 students responded to the Collegiate Religious and Spiritual Climate Survey, an empirically validated and reliable measure designed to assess dimensions of a campus’ religious, spiritual, and ideological climate. Results indicated that aspects of the psychological and behavioral climate were related to worldview commitment and these relationships were often conditioned upon students’ self-identified religious worldview. Implications for scholars and practitioners are discussed.     

Training Alone Is Not Enough

Improving healthcare services in the developing world remains a major goal for many organizations and despite enormous training and program investments from international organizations, service improvements have been modest. This study looks at how to improve results by examining the relationship between the conditions in a healthcare providers' work environment and his or her performance. Drawing upon a human performance model that assumes that performance expectations, timely feedback, adequate environment, incentives, and skills and knowledge are required for a worker to perform well, this study explores how these conditions might affect healthcare provider performance in four countries. The study successfully shows that although multiple conditions were deficient or missing in every country, significant association is found between the performance of workers and conditions in the workers environment. Further, when viewed across all countries, non‐monetary incentives is the most powerful “predictor‘ of performance when compared with other factors. Of particular interest to Performance Improvement practitioners, knowledge and skills surfaced as important in only three of eight possible cases (with multiple cases in each country)—the least influential factor overall.     

Promoting multicultural understanding and positive self-concept through a distance learning community: Cultural connections

We explored the effectiveness of distance learning and multimedia technologies in facilitating an expanded learning community among two teachers and their students in geographically separated schools. The teachers collaboratively developed curricular activities and identity-forming multicultural activities for their K-12 students to conduct over the distance. Predominantly Hispanic students in a school on the Texas border with Mexico communicated regularly over a school year with diverse students in a partner school hundreds of miles to the north. They participated in collaborative activities and shared multimedia files via interactive videoconference. Using qualitative research methods, we discovered that the participating teachers developed empowering multicultural relationships while their students developed multicultural understanding and positive self-concept. Examples of empowerment and positive self-concept included raised levels of academic aspirations and heightened poise during public speaking. Thanks to Lucy Cifuentes, Sharon Clark, Trina Davis, and Teri Metcalf for their contributions of raw data and earlier versions of writings about Cultural Connections. Also, thanks to Ester Gonzales and Trina Davis for permitting us to use their names in this paper.     

Phonological skills and comprehension failure: A test of the phonological processing deficit hypothesis

Shankweiler and colleagues argue that text comprehensionproblems in young children arise from phonological processingdifficulties. Their work has focused on children with poor wordreading ability. We investigated this hypothesis for children whoexperience comprehension difficulties in the presence of age-appropriate word reading skills. We found that good and poorcomprehenders performed comparably on various measures ofphonological processing and differed on a task that made greaterdemands on working memory, Bradley and Bryant's odd-word-outtask. In a final study, hierarchical regression analyses supportedthis distinction: the odd-word-out task was a strong predictor ofreading comprehension performance even after IQ, vocabulary and single word reading had been controlled for, but a lessmemory-dependent phonological task was not. These studiessupport previous work which indicates that poor comprehenders'problems arise from higher-level processing difficulties.     

Education,Welfare Reform and Psychological Well-Being: A Critical Psychology Perspective

There are established links between education and well-being, and between poverty and education. This article draws on interviews with parents of school-aged children impacted by a policy in the UK commonly referred to as the ‘bedroom tax’. A critical psychology perspective to education is put forward, acknowledging the complex interrelationships between psychological well-being, sociopolitical factors and education.     

Comparing motor development of deaf children of deaf parents and deaf children of hearing parents

Deaf children of Deaf parents perform better academically (Ritter-Brinton & Stewart, 1992), linguistically (Courtin, 2000; M. Harris, 2001; Vaccari & Marschark, 1997), and socially (Hadadian & Rose, 1991; M. Harris, 2001) than Deaf children of hearing parents. Twenty-nine Deaf children in residential schools were assessed to determine if a significant difference also exists in motor development between Deaf children with Deaf parents and Deaf children with hearing parents. In the locomotor area, 78.6% of Deaf children of Deaf parents and 73.3% of Deaf children of hearing parents reached or surpassed average performance levels. In regard to object control, 92.9% of Deaf children of Deaf parents and 93.3% of Deaf children of hearing parents reached or surpassed average performance levels. The study results show no significant difference between the motor development of Deaf children of Deaf parents and Deaf children of hearing parents.     

Cross‐Curricular Gallery Learning: A Phenomenological Case Study

This article examines the strategies that can be used to enhance students' understanding of how subjects link together and whether cross‐curricular approaches, through a gallery project, have any real impact on students' understanding of the links between subjects. A substantial part of this article, however, describes the methodological aspect of the project. A phenomenological case study approach was used in order to engage fully with individual students' learning experiences. It was found that the students who were involved directly with the study felt that the links between subjects had more relevance to their learning when the teacher made such links explicit. They were unaware of the relevance of many cross‐curricular links made in lessons, but the study indicated that cross‐curricular learning can enable students to transfer skills and knowledge in order to understand concepts more fully.     

Teacher engagement in core components of an effective,early childhood professional development course: Links to changes in teacher–child interactions

This study built on prior research regarding the effectiveness of the National Center for Research in Early Childhood Education (NCRECE) course by exploring the individual course components. Core aspects of course engagement and performance were described and examined in relation to improvements in the observed quality of teacher–child interactions. Teacher characteristics were also examined as predictors of course engagement and performance. A sample of 150 preschool teachers participated in a semester-long, credit-bearing, college course designed to improve the quality of their emotional, organizational, and instructional interactions with children. Teachers’ participation and performance in the course were high on average. Teachers’ skill level in accurately and specifically explaining other teachers’ instances of effective teacher–child interactions was related to improvements in their own observed teacher–child interactions. Finally, teachers with an early childhood major and those endorsing child-centered beliefs displayed better skills in detecting other teachers’ high-quality interactions with children. Results are discussed in relation to designing more effective early childhood professional development programs.