Transition to School: Developmental Trajectories and School Experiences

Because of the premium now placed on a formal education as well as the changing demographics of American society, school failure is now more costly than ever. Given that academic difficulties experienced by children are traceable to problems in underachievement that begin during the first years of early schooling, a thorough understanding of the transition-to-school process is needed. We suggest two principal assumptions in examining this transition-to-kindergarten period. First, multiple risk factors associated with certain child, family, and child care characteristics are expected to predict early school experience, both in and out of the classroom, and, thereby, social and academic success and failure in the early school years. Secondly, it is expected that day-to-day experiences in the classroom and on the playground will exacerbate or mitigate risk, resulting in some children performing better than would otherwise be expected and others functioning worse than anticipated. Thus, a critically important problem involves the identification of child, family, child care, and schooling factors and processes which account for risk being realized or not realized with regard to subsequent academic and school performance.     

Disseminating the right information to the right audience: cultural determinants in the use (and misuse) of rankings

Rankings and league tables, or Report Cards (RCs), of Higher Education Institutions have become a global phenomenon. Their purpose, it is claimed, is to help “student-consumers” make informed decisions. Yet the degree to which RCs succeed in helping students in their college choice is disputed. Even though RCs are intended for all, which information is sought and how it is used may differ between potential students hailing from different social, economic and cultural backgrounds. In particular, RCs may neglect certain cultural determinants that influence students’ college choice behaviour. The article reviews the literature on the cultural determinants of college choice and especially the use of RCs in the ambit of cultural determinants. In the United States, possibly because of evident educational gaps between ethnic groups in society, the issue of cultural perceptions in college choice has been addressed, albeit scantly. In Europe, this field of study is virtually non-existent, despite increasing indications that second and third generation immigrants still lag behind in terms of higher education participation and graduation rates.

Call for papers

Call for papersSecond international symposium on the role of the universities in developing areas     

Changeover contingencies and choice on concurrent schedules

Pigeons were trained on a multiple concurrent schedule with two components per session. In one component, changing schedules required the completion of a small fixed ratio on the switching key (a fixed-ratio changeover, or FRCO), and in the other component, changing schedules required only one switching response but engaged a changeover delay (COD) during which keypecks were not reinforced. Response ratios overmatched reinforcer ratios under the FRCO but undermatched under the COD. There was no difference in time allocation. In addition to these molar regularities in behavior, there were characteristic differences in performance at the molecular level. These local patterns of behavior, which can be explained within the context of contingencies created by the different changeover requirements, appear to underlie differences in performance at the molar level. Obtained molar differences in performance are not compatible with the assumption that there is a “general outcome” on concurrent schedules; and explaining these molar differences in performance in terms of the local contingencies of reinforcement is contrary to the assumption that behavior is allocated as a function of molar distributions of reinforcers.     

Developing medical students as teachers: An anatomy‐based student‐as‐teacher program with emphasis on core teaching competencies

Teaching is an increasingly recognized responsibility of the resident physician. Residents, however, often assume teaching responsibilities without adequate preparation. Consequently, many medical schools have implemented student‐as‐teacher (SAT) programs that provide near‐peer teaching opportunities to senior medical students. Near‐peer teaching is widely regarded as an effective teaching modality; however, whether near‐peer teaching experiences in medical school prepare students for the teaching demands of residency is less understood. We explored whether the anatomy‐based SAT program through the Human Structure didactic block at Mayo Medical School addressed the core teaching competencies of a medical educator and prepared its participants for further teaching roles in their medical careers. A web‐based survey was sent to all teaching assistants in the anatomy‐based SAT program over the past five years (2007–2011). Survey questions were constructed based on previously published competencies in seven teaching domains – course development, course organization, teaching execution, student coaching, student assessment, teacher evaluation, and scholarship. Results of the survey indicate that participants in the anatomy‐based SAT program achieved core competencies of a medical educator and felt prepared for the teaching demands of residency. Anat Sci Educ 6: 385–392. © 2013 American Association of Anatomists.     

Narrowmobilization and Tea Party Activism: A Study of Right-Leaning Alternative Media

Past research concerning the theoretical framework of Resistance Performance (RP) has been based on observations of liberal organizations and activists. In the following essay, we engage in a qualitative content analysis of alternative media utilized by conservative “Tea Party” activists to build on the concept of RP. Overall, we discovered that the dominant theme found in much of the content focuses on “purity,” which is considerably different from past RP research that found broad themes of “human rights,” “democracy,” “be the media,” and “principles of unity” embedded within liberal alternative media content. We conclude that the theme of “purity” gives rise to narrowmobilization, which constructs very focused protest communities within right-leaning politics.     

General Media and Media-Related

William L. Rivers, Theodore Peterson and Jay W. Jensen's The Mass Media and Modern Society (Rinehart Press, $8.95)

Ronald T. Farrar and John D. Stevens' (eds.) Mass Media and the National Experience (Harper & Row, price not known (paper back))

Bernard Rosenberg and David Manning White's Mass Culture Revisited (Van Nostrand, both hardback and paperback at same time–price not yet known)

Wilbur Schramm (ed.) Process and Effects of Mass Communications (University of Illinois Press, details unknown)

The Steranko History of Comics (Supergraphics Publications, 501 Spruce St., Reading, Pa. 19602, $3.00 paperback)     

The Media,the Medium,and Malaise: Assessing the Effects of Campaign Media Exposure with Panel Data

In this article we extend recent work on exposure to campaign advertisements, comparing the effects of television ads, radio ads, and campaign-related e-mails using an unusual panel data set that provides information on multiple media sources. Our findings, which control for the endogeneity problem that has plagued much work in political communications, confirm that media exposure does affect citizen attitudes. We also find additional evidence that the medium matters, with exposure to television ads tending to undermine system-supporting attitudes, whereas exposure to radio ads has an overall positive effect; contrary to expectations, the “new medium” of campaign e-mails had no discernible effect.     

Intramedia Moderation,Electoral Ambivalence,and Electoral Decision Making

The majority of political communication research either studies a single media outlet in isolation of other outlets or focuses on the competing effects of multiple outlets. This study uses 2004 National Annenberg Election Survey data to go beyond these typical approaches to show the moderation-based complementary effects of two-sided messages (e.g., network TV news) relative to one-sided oriented outlets (e.g., FOX News) on attitudinal ambivalence. In addition, this study places ambivalence within a larger communicative process and shows that ambivalence mediates the relationship between consumption of political media and when citizens decide who to support during elections.     

Challenges and Opportunities Associated With Social Network Research: An Examination of Emergent Methodological Issues

Those who study social networks encounter an all-too-often conundrum in academia: the richness of data sets coupled with methodological complications. This article highlights three of the most salient issues facing social network scholars and potential ways of overcoming them. By discussing the quantitative measurement of the network in question, the specific variables under examination, and the overall goal(s) of the research project, readers will understand both the costs and rewards associated with an area of communication, psychology, and sociology scholarship that has existed and thrived for more than a half century.