School-community partnership models: implications for leadership

School–community partnerships have shown promise as an educational reform effort. In these partnerships, schools expand their traditional educational mission to include health and social services for children and families and to involve the broader community. Such partnerships have been found to enhance student learning, strengthen schools and support struggling neighbourhoods. Little is known, however, about the implications for school and community leadership in different types of partnerships. A previous review of the literature indicated four basic types of partnership, each with a different scope and purpose and different implications for leadership. Informed by interagency, leadership and social capital theories, this article describes the leadership practices that support each model and the dilemmas these partnership leaders face. The overall goal of the article is to deepen understanding of leadership in these models in order to strengthen the conditions for school–community partnership success.     

Cross-cultural implications of graduate study abroad: The case of Korean academics

The purpose of this study is to explore the perceptions of Korean faculty regarding the cross-cultural implications of their graduate education abroad for their careers in the academy. Personal interviews were conducted with twenty-seven Western-trained faculty members at three private research universities in the Republic of Korea. Individuals were purposively selected to provide representation across disciplinary fields, academic rank and gender. The study focuses on faculty members' 1) experiences as foreign graduate students and their socialization to the professoriate, and 2) perceptions of the impact of their cross-cultural graduate preparation on their academic careers. Analyses of the data with respect to the research questions revealed two themes: 1) the westernized expectations they developed regarding teaching and research, and 2) the emphasis they place on service to their university and nation. The implications of these findings are discussed not only for faculty careers but also for Western graduate education and training.     

Infant Temperament Profiles,Cultural Orientation,and Toddler Behavioral and Physiological Regulation in Mexican-American Families

This study sought to (a) replicate infant temperament profiles from predominantly White samples in a sample of low-income, predominantly first-generation Mexican-American families, (b) investigate associations between infant temperament profiles and toddler behavioral and physiological regulation, and (c) explore whether mothers’ cultural orientation would moderate those associations. Mothers and infants (n = 322; 46% male) were assessed during pregnancy and at infant ages 9, 12, and 24 months. Latent profile analysis yielded three temperament profiles that were consistent with those from extant research. Compared to the high positive affect, well-regulated profile, the negative reactive, low regulated profile was associated with poorer behavioral and parasympathetic (i.e., respiratory sinus arrhythmia) regulation, but associations depended on mothers’ Mexican and Anglo cultural orientation.     

Curriculum reform in post-1990s sub-Saharan Africa

The article uses both primary and secondary sources to examine why learner-centredness, outcomes- and competency-based education and national qualifications frameworks were favourably received at local level in sub-Saharan Africa but have not resulted in widespread change in classroom practice. It argues that they found local favour because they were not entirely new ideas, and were ambiguous enough to be seen as key vehicles for achieving not so much educational, as economic, social and political goals. It suggests that the failure of implementation could lie in expectations that education would lead to transformation without paying necessary attention to implementation and capacity.     

Thinking with Posthuman Perspectives in Self-Study Research

In this study, we set out to explore processes of individual and group becomings of a self-study collective over time and distance, and with/through technology. Born out of a self-study project in one of our early doctoral courses, our self-study community has evolved over several years to one that is hybrid in nature. As we have continued our collaboration through online media, a tension arose at the juncture of our fundamentally relational work together, our need for the physical, embodied aspect of learning and self-study and the hybrid, often disembodied, experience provided by substituting online meetings for those conducted in-person. In this article we explore these tensions through pivotal moments and lines of flight in our self-study work over the past year. To frame these moments, we draw on ideas from posthumanism, which offers ways to conceptualize our collective as a multiplicity, account for the relational and material aspects of our work, address the agency of non-human actors (such as technology) in our collaboration, and consider our self-study practice a dynamic, complex, contextualized, situated phenomenon.     

A Comparative Study of the Effects of Recency of Instruction on the Stability of IRT and Conventional Item Parameter Estimates

A potential concern for individuals interested in using item response theory (IRT) with achievement test data is that such tests have been specifically designed to measure content areas related to course curriculum and students taking the tests at different points in their coursework may not constitute samples from the same population. In this study, data were obtained from three administrations of two forms of a Biology achievement test. Data from the newer of the two forms were collected at a spring administration, made up of high school sophomores just completing the Biology course, and at a fall administration, made up mostly of seniors who completed their instruction in the course from 6–18 months prior to the test administration. Data from the older form, already on scale, were collected at only a fall administration, where the sample was comparable to the newer form fall sample. IRT and conventional item difficulty parameter estimates for the common items across the two forms were compared for each of the two form/sample combinations. In addition, conventional and IRT score equatings were performed between the new and old forms for each o f the form sample combinations. Widely disparate results were obtained between the equatings based on the two form/sample combinations. Conclusions are drawn about the use o f both classical test theory and IRT in situations such as that studied, and implications o f the results for achievement test validity are also discussed     

Visual and olfactory oddity learning in rats: What evidence is necessary to show conceptual behavior?

Experiment 1 involved the use of plastic and wooden objects and trial-unique problems. The rats performed successfully on nonconceptual oddity problems given before and after conceptual training, showing that the testing conditions were suitable, but they showed chance performances on the trial-unique problems. Experiment 2 involved the use of olfactory discriminanda. Five pretraining problems and 300 unique five-trial problems were presented. Two of 3 rats performed better than chance on Trial 2 and on Trials 3–5, but all performed at chance levels on Trial 1 throughout. The data suggest that the rats responded to specific odors on Trials 2–5 following the Trial 1 experience, as opposed to respondingconceptually to the “odd” odor. Had they responded conceptually to odd odors, they should have performed better than chance on Trial 1. These findings and the general logical argument that they support are considered in the context of the numerous inconclusive reports of the use of the oddity concept by nonprimate animals.     

Motivated Attention and Reward in Parenting

Parenting has a significant and lasting impact on child development. From birth, parents must sensitively and appropriately attend to their infant’s emotional expressions and vocalizations. Accumulating evidence indicates that these infant cues of emotion attract more attention than equivalent adult cues in parents as well as non-parents. We review this evidence and suggest that infant cues hold high incentive value and elicit motivated attention (i.e., enhanced processing of motivationally relevant stimuli), which in turn promotes approach motivation and thus caregiving responses. Further, we discuss data suggesting that infant cues are salient for non-parents, with increasing motivated attention to infant cues in the transition to parenthood. This increase may depend on interactions between the dopamine reward system and the neuropeptide oxytocin. Therefore, we also explore the human and non-human data that support this association and consider potential sources of variability in motivated attention in parents.     

Blurring Boundaries between Technical Communication and Engineering: Challenges of a Multidisciplinary, Client-Based Pedagogy

Educational settings tend to provide highly specialized contexts for learning. In contrast, workplaces are increasingly multidisciplinary, presenting challenges often not considered in the technical communication curriculum. Our technical communication program is addressing this issue by building partnerships with programs in mechanical engineering and industrial engineering. In this article, we discuss a study of our initial semester matching technical communication students with teams of engineers in a capstone, client-based design course. We focus on challenges the students faced in the multidisciplinary, client-based experience. Based on our initial results, we suggest that academic and professional settings could do more to address the types of challenges identified. We call for a more inclusive pedagogy, one that expands the boundaries of technical communication and welcomes multidisciplinary experience in shared contexts.