Engineering design processes in seventh-grade classrooms: bridging the engineering education gap

This paper reports on some findings from the first year of a three-year longitudinal study, in which seventh- to ninth-graders were introduced to engineering education. Specifically, the paper addresses students’ responses to an initial design activity involving bridge construction, which was implemented at the end of seventh grade. This paper also addresses how students created their bridge designs and applied these in their bridge constructions; their reflections on their designs; their reflections on why the bridge failed to support increased weights during the testing process; and their suggestions on ways in which they would improve their bridge designs. The present findings include identification of six, increasingly sophisticated levels of illustrated bridge designs, with designs improving between the classroom and homework activities of two focus groups of students. Students’ responses to the classroom activity revealed a number of iterative design processes, where the problem goals, including constraints, served as monitoring factors for students’ generation of ideas, design thinking and construction of an effective bridge.     

Transnational public sector knowledge networks: Knowledge and information sharing in a multi-dimensional context

Sharing of knowledge, information, and practices across cultural and national boundaries has become a means to address critical global problems. As government agencies increasingly collaborate with international counterparts on these issues, transnational knowledge and information sharing networks grow in importance as mechanisms for collaboration. This paper explores the nature of transnational public sector knowledge networks (TPSKNs) and identifies critical contextual factors that shape their performance. In these networks, each participating organization operates within complex national, organizational, and information contexts. The contextual differences between participants produce distances in culture, politics, intentions, organizational factors, relationships, knowledge, resources, geography, and technology. These distances influence their ability to engage in the processes and interactions that are essential to network performance. The paper concludes with a conceptual dynamic model that accounts for the relationships among these factors that can guide further research in understanding knowledge and information sharing across national and cultural boundaries.     

Film Genre Studies

Les Adams and Buck Rainey's Shoot-em-Ups: The Complete Reference Guide to Westerns of the Sound Era (New Rochelle, N.Y.: Arlington House, 1978---$30.00)

David Rothel's The Singing Cowboys (Cranbury, N.J.: A.S. Barnes, 1978---$19.95)

Lawrence H. Suid's Guts & Glory: Great American War Movies (Reading, Mass.: Addison-Wesley, 1978---$12.95/6.95)

Jack G. Shaheen, ed. Nuclear War Films (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1978---$10.00/4.95)

Thomas Cripps' Black Film as Genre (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1978---$10.00)

Neil P. Hurley's The Reel Revolution: A Film Primer on Liberation (Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis Books, 1978---$7.95, paper)

Anita Loos' San Francisco, A Screenplay (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1979---$10.00/4.95)

Eugene Rosow's Born to Lose: The Gangster Film in America (New York: Oxford University Press, 1978---$19.95)     

Enhancing Reflection with Audiovisual Playback and Trained Inquirer

Much of the literature on reflection treats the role of memory as unproblematic, overlooking the potential for forgetting and memory distortion to interfere with learning and personal development. This paper discusses the reliability of human memory under conditions that often apply when people are encouraged to learn by reflecting on experience, then describes a process which uses audiovisual playback and a trained inquirer to help reduce memory distortion. Applications of the process to some often‐cited models of reflection are discussed along with some practical implementation issues. It is argued that the process increases the reliability of memory and allows a fullness of time to explore events and their effects in depth and detail. It appears particularly suited to exploring ambiguous interpersonal interactions and to the development of intrapersonal insight.     

How autonomy support and ethical value alignment influences attitudes towards diversity in English police

ABSTRACT

Antagonism towards diversity, an attitude reflecting low egalitarian ethical values, has been a topic within policing that has received increasing attention in the last decade. Using two-wave data and applying self-determination theory, we investigated how autonomy support versus autonomy frustration, ways of being motivated either through encouraging one’s sense of volition, or otherwise, coercing and imposing pressures, can improve diversity attitudes through its relation with ethical values. Study 1 (n= 398 police officers and staff) found that autonomy-supportive communications fostered ethical values, and hence was negatively related to diversity antagonism. Study 2 (n= 859 police officers and staff) indicated that motivation to overcome prejudice mediates the relationship between ethical values and diversity antagonism. Perceptions of workplace culture as lacking in autonomy support acted as a boundary condition for the ethical values and diversity antagonism relationship; no relationship was present when autonomy support was low.     

Family risk factors and prevalence of dissociative symptoms among homeless and runaway youth

OBJECTIVE: To examine family risk factors associated with dissociative symptoms among homeless and runaway youth. METHOD: Three hundred and twenty-eight homeless and runaway youth were interviewed using a systematic sampling strategy in metropolitan Seattle. Homeless young people were interviewed on the streets and in shelters by outreach workers in youth service agencies. RESULTS: The current study revealed widespread prevalence of dissociative symptoms among these young people. Multivariate analyses revealed that sexual abuse, physical abuse, and family mental health problems were all positively associated with dissociative symptoms. No gender differences were found for any of the models. CONCLUSIONS: Dissociative behavior is widespread among these youth and may pose a serious mental health concern. Some young people experience numerous stressors, and with few resources and little support available, many may invoke maladaptive strategies such as dissociative behavior to handle such situations, which may in turn be detrimental to their mental health. Unless youth are provided with programs and intervention, the cycle of abuse that they have experienced at home is likely to continue on the street.     

Book reviews

Myocybernetic control models of skeletal muscle: characteristics and applications, H. Hatze, University of South Africa Press, Pretoria, 1981. xi+221 pp, ISBN 0 86981 216 5

Psychology of motor learning, (2nd edition) J.B. Oxendine, Prentice‐Hall, Inc., New Jersey, 1984. 403 pp, £26.75 (hb), ISBN 0 13 736603 5

Exercise, health and medicine, Symposium Procedings, Sports Council, London, 1984. 66 pp, £4.00 (pb), ISBN 0 906577 42 X

Human motor actions: Bernstein reassessed, H.T.A. Whiting (ed.), North Holland, Amsterdam, 1984. xxxv+559 pp, £40.00 (hb), ISBN 0 4444 868135

Sporting body sporting mind, John Syer and Christopher Connolly, Cambridge University Press, 1984. 160 pp, £3.95 (pb), ISBN 0 521 26935 0

Exercise physiology: human bioenergetics and its applications, George A. Brooks and Thomas D. Fahey, John Wiley & Sons, UK, 1984. xxiv + 810 pp, £30 (hb) ISBN 0 471 88827 3     

Retrieval,visualization, and mining of large radiation dosage data

Radiation dose monitoring has become an essential service that hospitals must perform. Depending on the system in place, this can result in the collection of large quantities of data, ripe for analysis. These data should include a wide variety of variables for each study because assessment of the propriety of the patient’s dose is dependent on many factors, including patient age and size, as well as the body section that is being scanned. Moreover, the scanners themselves have many properties that affect patient dose, such as model, pitch and kVp. In this paper, we propose an engine that seamlessly integrated with a clinical PACS to retrieve radiation dosage data. We devised several schemes to analyze these data through visualization and mining techniques that examine it at different scopes. We demonstrate the utility of such visual methods at examining large, noisy, and multi-dimensional data, which is embodied in the collected radiation data.