Learning by Doing: Teaching Decision Making through Building a Code of Ethics

Applying abstract ethical principles to the practical business of building a code of applied ethics for a technical communication department teaches students that they share certain unarticulated or even unconscious values that they can translate into ethical principles. Combining abstract theory with practical policy writing can teach technical communication students to become increasingly aware of ethical actions without restricting ethics solely to abstractions or rules.     

Possible role of confounded taste stimuli in conditioned taste aversions

In many publications, Sjödén, Archer, and their colleagues have studied conditioned taste aversions and found that in addition to taste, the bottle and/or spout containing a solution exerts strong control over the expression of an aversion. For example, Sjödén and Archer claim that this bottle stimulus will support a bottle-illness association even with long delays between the bottle and illness and after only a single conditioning trial. They have interpreted their results as indicating that contextual effects are important in taste-aversion learning. However, a confound in their procedure, stemming from the bottles they used, could explain their results in a simple way. Sjödén and Archer have emphasized that the bottle stimuli they used to distinguish between contexts consisted of one of two different sizes of drinking spouts, the larger of which made a clicking noise when licked. However, the larger spouts were always attached to plastic bottles and the smaller spouts were always attached to glass bottles. If discriminable tastes from the plastic bottles existed, then taste may have been inadvertently manipulated. Support for the likelihood of a plastic taste includes the seminal work on taste-aversion learning that stemmed from the serendipitous use of plastic bottles in the cage that rats were irradiated in and glass bottles in the home cages (see Garcia, McGowan, & Green, 1972). In these early demonstrations, rats learned to avoid the taste of water in the plastic bottles but not the taste of water in the glass bottles.     

The effects of combining simulations and laboratory experiments on Zimbabwean students’ conceptual understanding of electric circuits

ABSTRACT

Background

Information Communication Technologies are increasingly present in the African educational system at all educational levels. However, their integration into pedagogical practices to improve the quality of teaching and learning across disciplines remains the exception.     

Congruence,locus of control,and readings of English college students — An application of John Holland's theory of vocational choice

One hundred and five English undergraduate college students at two colleges in the United Kingdom completed the Holland VPI, the Barron Ego Strength Scale, the Adult Nowicki-Strickland Internal Control Scale, and the Occupational Values Q Sort. Congruent students were identified by matching their reading (major) with their scores on the six Holland type indicators. A Multi-variate Analysis of Variance (MANOVA) revealed that congruent subjects exhibited a higher level of internality, greater ego strength, and less affiliation than incongruent subjects. Results are discussed with respect to Holland's theory. The practicability of applying American measurement techniques to an undergraduate English college population is also explored.     

Field research methodology for the study of Latin American ministries of education

In Third World countries a key to the course of nation-building is the modernization of the organizational and administrative infrastructures which drive the development process. Increasing the operational capabilities, effectiveness, and efficiency of the ministry of education, and hence the quality and quantity of school outcomes, is typically a high priority item in the development plans of a nation. In order to promote the modernization of management activities in ministries, however, it is first essential to understand their existing patterns of operation. Toward this objective, the paper presents a methodological framework for a field study approach to the examination of the working of a ministry of education in Latin America. Several issues are introduced which influence the process of inquiry, such as: (1) examining the impact of historical traditions on contemporary management procedures; (2) exploring concerns for ethics and academic colonialism; (3) distinguishing between anthropological and sociological participant-observation field methods; (4) gathering and analyzing data on complex ministries; and (5) exploring the task of Third World theory building.

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Zusammenfassung Einen Schlüssel zum Verlauf des nationalen Aufbaus in der dritten Welt liefert die Modernisierung der organisatorischen und administrativen Infrastrukturen, die den Entwicklungsprozess vorantreiben. Im allgemeinen wird der Verbesserung der Handels-Fähigkeiten, der Wirksamkeit und Effizienz des Bildungsministeriums eine hohe Priorität in den Entwicklungsplänen eines Landes beigemessen. Um jedoch die Modernisierung der Führungsarbeit von Ministerien beschleunigen zu können, müssen zunächst ihre jetzigen Operationsweisen untersucht werden. Zu diesem Zweck wird in diesem Artikel ein methodologischer Rahmen für einen Feldstudienansatz zur Prüfung der Arbeit eines Bildungsministeriums in einem lateinamerikanischen Staat vorgelegt. Verschiedene Fragen, die den Untersuchungsprozeß beeinflussen, werden erörtert, zum Beispiel; (1) die Auswirkung historischer Traditionen auf derzeitige Leitungsverfahren; (2) Grad der Beachtung von Ethik und akademischem Kolonialismus; (3) Unterschied zwischen anthropologischen und soziologischen Methoden zur Beobachtung von Beteiligten in der Praxis; (4) Sammlung und Analyse von Daten über komplexe Ministerien; und (5) die Aufgabe, in der dritten Welt eine Theorie aufzubauen.

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Résumé L'un des éléments essentiels de la course à l'intégration nationale, dans les pays du Tiers Monde, est la modernisation des infrastructures administratives et organiques qui guident le processus du développement. L'une des premières priorités à respecter est typiquement le développement des moyens d'action, de la compétence et de l'efficacité du ministère de l'éducation, et par voie de conséquence, la qualité et l'importance des résultats scolaires. Toutefois, afin de moderniser judicieusement les activités du management dans les ministères de l'éducation, il est primordial de comprendre leur mode actuel de travail. Ayant cet objectif en vue, l'auteur de cet article propose un cadre méthodologique permettant d'aborder sur le terrain l'examen du fonctionnement d'un ministère de l'éducation en Amérique Latine. Il expose plusieurs démarches qui influent sur le processus de l'enquête: (1) examiner l'impact des traditions historiques sur les procédés contemporains du management; (2) déterminer les préoccupations relatives à l'éthique et au colonialisme académique; (3) faire la distinction entre les méthodes anthropologiques et sociologiques de l'observation participante sur le terrain; (4) rassembler et analyser les données concernant les ministères complexes; et (5) explorer la tâche de l'élaboration de théories relatives au Tiers Monde.

     

PEER AND TEACHER PREFERENCE,STUDENT–TEACHER RELATIONSHIPS,STUDENT ETHNICITY,AND PEER VICTIMIZATION IN ELEMENTARY SCHOOL

This research was supported, in part, by a grant from the National Institute for Mental Health (5R44MH07071‐03) awarded to Dr. Melissa E. DeRosier. Additional support comes from an Institute of Education Sciences post‐doctoral fellowship training award to the University of Florida (R324B1200002). The research was conducted at 3‐C Institute. The authors thank the staff and students of the Wake County Public School System in North Carolina for their cooperation and support in the implementation of this research project. In addition, the authors thank Drs. Janey McMillen, Natalie O'Brian, and Melanie Wilson for their invaluable efforts as project coordinators, as well as the many interns of the 3‐C Institute for their assistance in successfully completing this research project.     

Sexual reconviction rates in the United Kingdom and actuarial risk estimates

OBJECTIVE: Assessing the risk of further offending behavior by adult sexual perpetrators of children is highly relevant and important to professionals involved in child protection. Recent progress in assessing risk in sexual offenders has established the validity of actuarial measures, although there continues to be some debate about the application of these instruments. This paper summarizes the debate between clinical and actuarial approaches and reviews the "base rate" for United Kingdom sexual offense reconviction. METHOD: A review of the literature revealed 16 UK sexual reconviction studies, 8 using incarcerated samples (N=5,915) and 8 using non-incarcerated samples (N=1,274). UK estimates of sexual reconviction rates are compared with European and North American studies. RESULTS: The mean sexual reconviction rates for the incarcerated sample at 2 years (6.0%), 4 years (7.8%) and 6 years or more (19.5%) were higher than that of the comparative non-incarcerated sample at 2 years (5.7%), up to 4 years (5.9%), and 6 years or more (15.5%). The overall sexual reconviction rate for both samples combined was 5.8% at 2 years, and 17.5% at 6 years or more. CONCLUSIONS: The sexual reconviction rate for incarcerated sexual offenders is higher than that of non-incarcerated sexual offenders. The UK sexual reconviction rates were comparable with European and North American studies.     

The craftivists: Pushing for affective,materially informed pedagogy

The idea of making as a form of activism or, as we refer to it in this paper, craftivism, underpins our ambition to transform pedagogical environments into spaces of possibility through sensory and affective making practices. A craftivist agenda pushes for open teaching and learning with materials so that students can inhabit a what if space which ruptures institutional time and space. Beginning with a theorization of disruptive making and dissensus and then moving on to foreground a materialist stance on making, the paper illustrates how students experience materialities across two very different classroom environments and how these experiences led to greater presence, voice and agency for students. There is an underlying focus in the paper on embodied responses and affective flows. After theorizing craftivism, there are three sections that explore making, teaching and feeling through craftivist, postdigital methods.