Incidence of violence in Turkish schools: A review

The present article deals with the incidence of violence cases inTurkish schools. A review of research based on published research reports andunpublished M.Sc. and Ph.D. dissertations is presented and basic lines of researchare discussed. Special emphasis was placed upon culturally specific issues,besides the culturally determined attitudes of parents and teachers. The need for anationwide system for the prevention of violence and corporal punishment wasemphasized.     

Predictors of parents' physical disciplinary practices.

OBJECTIVE: This study examined how childhood history of discipline (1) related to ratings of how severe and typical punishments were; and (2) predicted parents' use of discipline techniques. The influence of child culpability on these ratings was also investigated. METHOD: Ninety-nine New Zealand parents rated 12 physical discipline scenarios varying in discipline severity and perceived child culpability. Parents judged how severe and typical they considered the disciplines depicted in the scenarios and reported on how often they had experienced such discipline as children and how often they had used them with their own children. RESULTS: When the child was perceived to be at fault, parents rated the discipline depicted as less severe, considered the technique more typical, reported they had been similarly disciplined more frequently, and applied such discipline to their child more frequently. Childhood history of a discipline was related to the parent's use of that method, and the parents judged techniques they used with their own children as less severe and more typical of methods of discipline. History of discipline and severity judgments were the best predictors of parents' disciplinary practices. CONCLUSIONS: Although the findings support the cycle of violence theory, more complex potential pathways to abusive parenting, including the variables in this study, are proposed.     

The Validity of Comparative Educational Studies

What are the conditions that will allow for appropriate comparisons among groups" Should the concept of comparative validity be added to the lexicon of the psychometrician"     

Physiological effects of infant exposure to environmental tobacco smoke: a passive observation study

This study explored infant physiologic responses of exposure to environmental tobacco smoke (ETS) using a longitudinal passive observation study with a control group. Fifteen smoking and 15 non-smoking mothers were initially contacted in hospital maternity units, with home visits made when their infants were 2, 4, and 6 weeks old. Exposure to ETS was measured using infant urinary nicotine and cotinine levels. The physiologic effects of infant ETS exposure were measured by rectal temperature, pulse rate, respiratory rate, blood pressure, and oxygen saturation. The smoking mothers in this sample were poorer, had less education, and were less likely to be married than the mothers who did not smoke. At birth, the infants of smoking mothers had higher diastolic blood pressure than infants of non-smoking mothers (p < .008). Mothers who smoke cigarettes should be educated that maternal smoking behavior can affect an infant's cardiovascular function. Parents should also be counseled about the risks of smoking in close proximity and/or in an enclosed space with an infant, especially in a motor vehicle.     

The dolphin’s grammatical competency: Comments on Kako (1999)

Kako (1999) reviews the evidence for syntactic competencies in several animal species exposed to artificial language systems, emphasizing the importance of core syntactic properties such as argument structure and closed-class items. We present evidence from our dolphin studies for the acquisition of the closed-class functionality of demonstratives, prepositions, conjunctions, and locatives. Sensitivity to argument structure is also evidenced by wholly untrained and consistent interpretations of the dolphin to probes of anomalous syntactic structures. These results are generated within our comprehension-based paradigm, which enables us to provide convincing objective evidence for the development and generalization of concepts by the dolphin subject. Demonstrations of animal language competencies may illuminate certain aspects of human linguistic competence by suggesting that the particular modeled subsets can derive from general cognitive mechanisms, rather than language-specific ones.     

Being highly internationalised strengthens your reputation: an empirical investigation of top higher education institutions

In an educational context characterised by globalisation, reputation constitutes a crucial issue for today’s higher education institutions. Internationalisation of higher education is often seen as a potential response to globalisation and, consequently, higher education has become increasingly internationalised during the past decade. In this paper, we investigate the relationship between internationalisation and reputation in top higher education institutions. Results reveal that internationalisation positively influences a university’s reputation but also moderates the relationship between the institution’s reputation and its institutional performance with regard to research quality, teaching quality and graduate employability.     

A prospective,randomized crossover study comparing direct inspection by light microscopy versus projected images for teaching of hematopathology to medical students

Instruction in hematopathology at Mayo Medical School has evolved from instructor‐guided direct inspection under the light microscope (laboratory method), to photomicrographs of glass slides with classroom projection (projection method). These methods have not been compared directly to date. Forty‐one second‐year medical students participated in this pilot study, a prospective, randomized, crossover study measuring educational performance during a hematology pathophysiology course. The students were randomized to one of two groups. All students received the same didactic lectures in the classroom and subsequent case‐based review of peripheral blood smears using either laboratory or projection methods, on day one with a crossover to the other method on day two. Pre‐ and post‐test examinations centered on morphology recognition measured educational performance on each day, followed by a questionnaire identifying the student's favored method. There was no significant difference in the pre‐test and post‐test scores between the two teaching methods (rank‐sum P = 0.43). Students overwhelmingly preferred the projection method and perceived it as superior (76%), although post‐test scores were not significantly different. Student's recommended method was split with 50% favoring the projection method, 43% favoring a combined approach, and 23% noting logistical challenges to the laboratory. In this study, the laboratory and projection method were equivalent in terms of educational performance for hematopathology among medicals students. A classroom‐based approach such as the projection method is favored, given the large class sizes in undergraduate medical education, as well as the ergonomic challenges and additional resources required for large group instruction in a laboratory setting. Anat Sci Educ 7: 130–134. © 2013 American Association of Anatomists.     

A retrospective look at replacing face‐to‐face embryology instruction with online lectures in a human anatomy course

Embryology is integrated into the Clinically Oriented Anatomy course at the Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center School of Medicine. Before 2008, the same instructor presented embryology in 13 face‐to‐face lectures distributed by organ systems throughout the course. For the 2008 and 2009 offerings of the course, a hybrid embryology instruction model with four face‐to‐face classes that supplemented online recorded lectures was used. One instructor delivered the lectures face‐to‐face in 2007 and by online videos in 2008–2009, while a second instructor provided the supplemental face‐to‐face classes in 2008–2009. The same embryology learning objectives and selected examination questions were used for each of the three years. This allowed direct comparison of learning outcomes, as measured by examination performance, for students receiving only face‐to‐face embryology instruction versus the hybrid approach. Comparison of the face‐to‐face lectures to the hybrid approach showed no difference in overall class performance on embryology questions that were used all three years. Moreover, there was no differential effect of the delivery method on the examination scores for bottom quartile students. Students completed an end‐of‐course survey to assess their opinions. They rated the two forms of delivery similarly on a six‐point Likert scale and reported that face‐to‐face lectures have the advantage of allowing them to interact with the instructor, whereas online lectures could be paused, replayed, and viewed at any time. These experiences suggest the need for well‐designed prospective studies to determine whether online lectures can be used to enhance the efficacy of embryology instruction. Anat Sci Educ 7: 234–241. © 2013 American Association of Anatomists.