LEARNING COMMUNITIES AND COMMUNITY COLLEGES: A CASE STUDY

Learning communities have been present in community college settings for more than a decade. The literature suggests that they are generally effective for both participating students and faculty. As economic development increasingly demands greater technological sophistication, and community colleges are faced with increasing numbers of developmentally challenged students, learning communities may be one means to effectively resolve this paradox. This article is directed to those faculty and staff who may be considering the initiation of a learning community. It provides a review of literature, and presents a set of issues currently being addressed at one small community college in Louisiana where a learning community is in the design stage.     

Gesture as a window on children's beginning understanding of false belief

Given that gestures may provide access to transitions in cognitive development, preschoolers' performance on standard tasks was compared with their performance on a new gesture false belief task. Experiment 1 confirmed that children (N=45, M age=54 months) responded consistently on two gesture tasks and that there is dramatic improvement on both the gesture false belief task and a standard task from ages 3 to 5. In 2 subsequent experiments focusing on children in transition with respect to understanding false beliefs (Ns=34 and 70, M age=48 months), there was a significant advantage of gesture over standard and novel verbal-response tasks. Iconic gesture may facilitate reasoning about opaque mental states in children who are rapidly developing concepts of mind.     

Lacan in Public: Psychoanalysis and the Science of Rhetoric

Discussion: Principles and Types. By A. Graig Baird. New York and London: McGraw‐Hill Book Company. 1943; pp. x + 348. $2.50.

The Anatomy of Drama. By Alan Reynolds Thompson. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1943; pp. xx + 414. $3.00.

Selected Writings and Speeches of Abraham Lincoln. Edited by T. Harry Williams. University Classics. Chicago: Packard and Company, 1943; pp. 269. $.95.

The Latin Key to Better English. By Archibald Hart and F. Arnold Lejeune. New York: E. P. Dutton &; Co., 1942; pp. 226. $2.00.

Speech for the Military. By Cole S. Brem‐beck and Albert A. Rights. Harrisburg, Pa.: Stackpole Sons, 1943; pp. 210. $1.20.

Speech for Military Service. By William Norwood Brigance and Ray Keeslar Immel. New York: F. S. Crofts &; Co., 1943; pp. x + 150. $1.00.

Essentials of Oral Communication. By Donald C. Bryant. St. Louis: John S. Swift Co., 1943; pp. 50. $.50.

Direct Communication. By Robert Gorham Davis, F. G. Fassett, Jr., William C. Greene, Frederick C. Packard, Jr., and Mark Schorer. New York: D. C. Heath, 1943; pp. 247. $1.25.

Speaking and Listening. By Bert Emsley, Frances E. Jones, and William M. Tim‐mons. New York: American Book Company, 1943; pp. v + 138.11.00.

Principles of Speech. Military edition. By Alan H. Monroe. Chicago: Scott, Fores‐man and Company, 1943; pp. v + 182. $1.00.

English, Communication. By Kendall B. Taft, John Francis McDermott, Dana O. Jensen, and W. Hayes Yeager. New York: Farrar and Rinehart, 1943; pp. x + 435. $1,40.

English for the Armed Forces. By A. D. G. Wiles, Arlin M. Cook, and Jack Trevithick. New York: Harper and Brothers, 1943: pp. xii + 262. $1.50.     

New teachers’ identity shifts at the boundary of teacher education and initial practice

As teachers enter the school communities of their initial practice, they experience identity shifts that reflect their learning. Throughout teacher education they have constructed an identity informed by their previous school experiences, the ideas and approaches promoted by their teacher education programs, and an ideal of the teachers they hope to become. The complex set of influences at the boundary between their lives as students and their lives as professionals causes them to confront their identities in new and sometimes disruptive ways (Flores & Day, 2006). New teaching situations introduce them to the thinking of experienced teachers, and to the needs of their first groups of learners, challenging the notions they have so far developed about who they are as teachers (Smagorinsky, Cook, Moore, Jackson, & Fry, 2004). This paper reports on interviews with 35 new teachers as they graduate from teacher education programs and enter the profession, and details their learning about agency and role in community resulting in identity changes within this boundary space.     

A Bioethos for Bodies: Respecting a Priceless Resource

The value that willed body donors provide to medical education is priceless. Their precious gift helps to teach anatomy, spatial relationships between morphological structures, anatomical variation, and professionalism to medical students in a way that plastic models, podcasts, and lectures cannot. They are also an important resource for medical research and a wide variety of postgraduate training opportunities. While many body donation programs throughout the world are nonprofit organizations, there are body donation companies in the United States that sell donors for-profit. These “body brokers” have accumulated large profits from this business. It is incongruous that others would profit from such a priceless, freely donated gift. To prevent this incongruity, it is proposed that the international anatomical community develop a normative culture (a bioethos) for body donation programs. This would involve the conscious and systematic development of ethical principles for the day-to-day policies and practices of institutions that collect and use human bodies. With the development of this bioethos, a cultural shift in how donors are treated would occur and, over time, this would become the normal practice. These principles would become fundamental and foundational for the procurement and use of priceless human tissues.     

A cultural embrace

Conclusion As culture is at the heart of meaning making, it warrants exacting attention in the systemic design process. As Gustafson & Powell (1991) point out, too often models are not tested for validity and reliability. It is for this reason that we emphasize that research must critically evaluate this expanded ADDIE model. As technology enables us to increase our interaction with the peoples of the world, we are enriched by the incessant shifts in our own cultural paradigms. Attention to this cultural dynamism and incessant interplay leads to both improved designs and improved designers. As instructional designers, we must be able to critically analyze our learner’s cultures and allow it to strengthen the instructional design process. In this way we address our ethical commitment to creating culturally sensitive products. His research interests include culture, identity development, and meaning making in technology rich environments. His research interests are in the areas of Educational Gerontology, Instructional Design, and the Digital Divide. His research interests include Systemic Change and the Digital Divide.     

A look at student cheating in college science classes

To gain an appreciation of the collusion rate of college students in science classes, over three hundred undergraduates from western Pennsylvania were sampled for their attitudes toward different forms of cheating. The science students were sampled from several different divisions within the university. The survey used in the study was developed by Baird (1980) and holds a reliability coefficient of 89%. The results of the survey indicate that eighty three percent of the respondents had cheated in science sometime in their lives. The vast majority (86%) of the pupils had shared homework answers with classmates and most (81%) had told little lies to teachers or administrators to avoid getting in trouble. Fewer, but still the majority (75%), of the students admitted to have copied phrases directly out of glossaries, encyclopedias, journals or reference books turning it in as their own work. Most students (80%) had also used crib notes or written science terms on their shoes, wrists or other parts of their body to get by minor quizzes at times in their biology course. Over three quarters of the students admitted to cheating on large exams and major projects. When the results of the study are compared to students surveyed with the same instrument a decade ago, it is revealed that the cheating among students is growing. Alarmingly, when the results of the 1993 study were compared to the one in 1980, it was discovered that student collusion had increased in all of the categories in the questionnaire.