Nitpicking: An Exploration of the Marginalization of Gender Equity in Urban School Research and Reform

The Urban Review - Why has gender been marginalized as a consideration in decisions about how conditions in urban schools should be improved? To answer this question I examine research about home...     

The effects of explicit timing on middle‐school students’ writing production across 5‐ and 15‐min sessions

Enhancing rates of accurate, active, academic responding can enhance learning. Both temporal manipulations (i.e., reducing time to work on assignments) and providing multiple distributed temporal cues (MDTC), sometimes referred to as explicit timing, have been shown to enhance rates of accurate mathematics responding. The current study was designed to evaluate the effects of session length (i.e., 5 vs. 15 min to write) and temporal cues (i.e., a single initial temporal cue vs. MDTC) on seventh‐ and eighth‐grade students writing assignment rates and writing accuracy. Results showed that the 5 min writing sessions did result in significantly greater rates of accurate responding than the 15 min sessions; however, explicit timing did not significantly alter writing rates or accuracy. These findings suggest that educators can enhance rates of accurate writing by reducing writing session lengths. Discussion focuses on applied implications of providing briefer writing sessions and future research investigating the interaction between multiple temporal cues and assignments.     

Conditions affecting the usefulness of pre- and post-tests for assessment purposes

Interest in measuring and evaluating student learning in higher education is growing. There are many tools available to assess student learning. However, the use of such tools may be more or less appropriate under various conditions. This study provides some evidence related to the appropriate use of pre/post‐tests. The question of whether graded tests elicit a higher level of performance (better representation of actual learning gains) than ungraded post‐tests is examined. We examine whether the difficulty level of the questions asked (knowledge/comprehension vs. analysis/application) affects this difference. We test whether the student’s level in the degree programme affects this difference. Results indicate that post‐tests may not demonstrate the full level of student mastery of learning objectives and that both the difficulty level of the questions asked and the level of students in their degree programme affect the difference between graded and ungraded assessments. Some of these differences may be due to causes other than grades on the assessments. Students may have benefited from the post‐test, as a review of the material, or from additional studying between the post‐test and the final examination. Results also indicate that pre‐tests can be useful in identifying appropriate changes in course materials over time.     

“工厂的阴影”——兼论质性研究的实践与应用

全球化条件下急剧变化的经济结构给不同的社会群体带来冲击,一项关于一群生活在美国后工业化城镇中的中学生的前后跨度为15年的民族志追踪研究,揭示了如何从日常生活实践的角度理解阶级变迁过程,以及在去工业化时期,失去原有工作的白人工人群体如何在特定的社会结构与历史条件下,将自身重塑为一个独特的阶层。全球化时代的阶级重构过程与性别关系以及族群身份认同等因素之间存在极其错综复杂的关联。只有将社会群体置于具体的历史条件以及相邻群体关系中考察,才能深刻理解这些过程,这就是构图式分析法(compo-sitional study)。这一研究思路应当适用于不同国家与背景下的社会人群研究,而在全球化过程中受益的新兴国家如印度和中国开展类似研究,尤为重要。     

Evolution and Diffusion of the Michigan State University Tradition of Organizational Communication Network Research

This article documents the 30‐year history of communication network research at Michigan State University (M.S.U.), providing a case study of the evolution and diffusion of an academic innovation. Three past and continuing issues for network scholars are identified: a lack of professional reward for developing user‐friendly computer programs, unresolved methodological problems, and a need for better theoretical and conceptual frameworks. The narrative also illustrates the difficulty communication as a discipline has in impacting broader intellectual traditions. The story begins with the first doctoral dissertation (Schwartz, 1968 Richards, W. D. and Barnett, G., eds. 1993. Progress in communication sciences: Advances in communication network analysis, Norwood, NJ: Ablex.  [Google Scholar]) and the first network analysis software program in 1970 (Richards’ Negopy), continuing to the last dissertation (Susskind, 1996 Susskind, A. M. 1996. The impact of an organizational downsizing effort on survivors’ communication network relationships and attitudes, East Lansing: Department of Communication, Michigan State University. Unpublished doctoral dissertation [Google Scholar]), and ending in 1998 when J. David Johnson left the M.S.U. faculty. Other major players in the M.S.U. network tradition included David K. Berlo, Eugene Jacobson, Everett M. Rogers, Vincent Farace, Peter Monge, and Erwin Bettinghaus. Ironically, Schwartz and Susskind met in 1998 while Schwartz was preparing to retire from Cornell University and Susskind was starting as an Assistant Professor in a different department, thus providing closure to the M.S.U. network.