Cultural and Gender Biases in Definitions of Mental and Emotional Health and Illness

This article discusses how cultural and gender bias in definitions of mental and emotional health and illness create critical issues for counseling research.     

Gypsy Masculinities and the School–Home Interface: exploring contradictions and tensions

Drawing on data generated by a 3-year study, informed by ethnographic principles, of the interface between Gypsy culture and the educational system in the South West of England, this article focuses specifically on the experiences of young Gypsy males [1]. The manner in which they perform specific forms of masculine identity though business skills and dealing, fighting, and sex talk are considered. Tensions are highlighted regarding the ways in which these performances are valued in different communities of practice, and how this operates to maintain an atmosphere of suspicion regarding the educational system.     

THE EFFECTS OF THE DELETION OF MISFITTING PERSONS ON VERTICAL EQUATING VIA THE RASCH MODEL

The purpose of the study was to compare Rasch model equatings of multilevel achievement test data before and after the deletion of misfitting persons. The Rasch equatings were also compared with an equating obtained using the equipercentile method. No basis could be found in the results for choosing between the two Rasch equatings. The deletion of misfitting persons produced minor improvements in Rasch model fit to the data. Both Rasch equatings produced results that differed from the results of the equipercentile equating. The Rasch data also indicated that the misfitting persons deleted in the second Rasch equating tended to be from the lower portion of the achievement distribution, suggesting that they may have been guessing.     

Living Systems and Counseling: Concepts,Goals, Strategies

This article explores the relationship between a general theory of living systems and the conceptualization and practice of counseling. Emphasis is placed on applicability to the individual, because previous systems writing in the counseling field has emphasized families and other multiple-person levels. After providing a rationale for adopting a systems perspective, specific system dimensions are discussed. The relationship of these dimensions to current counseling theories is developed, with an emphasis on the utility of concepts and techniques from a wide array of theories as understood within the context of living system theory.     

Helping Students Apply the Scientist-Practitioner Model: A Teaching Approach

The scientist-practitioner model was taught to counseling students by giving them an opportunity to integrate theory, research, and practice via a process research case study.     

Application of CAE in Teaching Vibration Engineering

CAE has enabled vibrational problems, which were regarded as intractable 20 years ago, to be solvable by students using computational support. The paper describes a problem set to final year undergraduates which concerns the torsional vibrational response of a three degrees of freedom system which is subjected simultaneously to three different arbitrarily varying torques. The solution involves the use of standard library routines for matrix multiplication and eigensolutions, a Runge-Kutta routine to solve a second order differential equation and general competence in writing software.     

Exploring the Politics of Blame: School inspection and its contestation in New Zealand and England

This article examines how New Zealand's Education Review Office (ERO) and England's Office for Standards in Education (OFSTED) attempt to construct school failure as the clear responsibility of schools in order to gain ideological power as agents of accountability. These 'politics of blame' are contested in both settings by an alternative 'contextual' claim which seeks to take account of broader social and political constraints on schools. It is argued that whereas New Zealand academics have been distrustful of the ERO's agenda, English school effectiveness and school improvement researchers have often provided support for OFSTED's politics of blame. However this relationship represents a double-edged sword for OFSTED because some school effectiveness/school improvement researchers also partly support the contextual claim. The article concludes that the politics of blame and their contestation will continue to be important in these settings and elsewhere.     

Clones identification of Sequoia sempervirens (D.Don) Endl.in Chile by using PCR-RAPDs technique

A protocol of polymerase chain reaction-random amplified polymorphic DNAs (PCR-RAPDs) was established to analyse the gene diversity and genotype identification for clones of Sequoia sempervirens (D.Don) Endl.in Chile.Ten (out of 34) clones from introduction trial located in Voipir-Viilarrica,Chile,were studied.The PCR-RAPDs technique and a modified hexadecyltrimethylammonium bromide (CTAB) protocol were used for genomic DNA extraction.The PCR tests were carried out employing 10-mer random primers.The amplification products were detected by electrophoresis in agarose gels.Forty nine polymorphic bands were obtained with the selected primers (BG04,BF07,BF 12,BF13,and BF 14) and were ordered according to their molecular size.The genetic similarity between samples was calculated by the Jaccard index and a dendrogram was constructed using a cluster analysis of unweighted pair group method using arithmetic averages (UPGMA).Of the primers tested,5 (out of 60) RAPD primers were selected for their reproducibility and high polymorphism.A total of 49 polymorphic RAPD bands were detected out of 252 bands.The genetic similarity analysis demonstrates an extensive genetic variability between the tested clones and the dendrogram depicts the genetic relationships among the clones,suggesting a geographic relationship.The results indicate that the RAPD markers permitted the identification of the assayed clones,although they are derived from the same geographic origin.