Narrative Career Counselling for People with Refugee Backgrounds

For people with refugee backgrounds, pursuing a meaningful career in their country of resettlement is important for their successful integration. However, for many, achieving this is a challenging process. Career counsellors may have a role to play in facilitating the transition and integration of people with refugee backgrounds, and narrative career counselling has much to offer. This article discusses the impact of prolonged transition under difficult circumstances on people with refugee backgrounds, and the potential contribution of narrative career counselling in assisting them. In particular, it identifies cultural considerations for narrative career counsellors who work with people with refugee backgrounds.     

Bond graphs for thermal energy transport and entropy flow

The transport of thermal energy in thermodynamics is described as the product of entropy flow and of the absolute temperature, in analogy to the volume flow and pressure in oil hydraulics and to electric charge flow (= current) and voltage in electronics. Bond graphs are shown to be especially suitable to describe the splitting of applied thermal energy into internal energy and external mechanical work. Transformers and the 0- and 1-junctions of Paynter can illustrate various entropy flow processes, including Carnot engines and heat exchangers. Entropy flow in heat conduction is distinguished from entropy convection, or transport by moving mass, where the entropy/temperature characteristic or equation of state is important. Irreversibilities are represented by impedance transformers reducing temperature and increasing entropy flow but conserving power.     

Using the Content of Online Privacy Notices to Inform Public Policy: A Longitudinal Analysis of the 1998-2001 U.S. Web Surveys

In the United States, Congress has had a long-standing interest in consumer privacy and the extent to which company practices are based on fair information practices. Previously, public policy was largely informed by anecdotal evidence about the effectiveness of industry self-regulatory programs. However, the Internet has made it possible to unobtrusively sample web sites and their privacy disclosures in a way that is not feasible in the offline world. Beginning in 1998, the Federal Trade Commission relied upon a series of three surveys of web sites to assess whether organizations post online privacy disclosures and whether these disclosures represent the U.S. definition of fair information practices. While each year's survey has provided an important snapshot of U.S. web-site practices, there has been no longitudinal analysis of the multiyear trends. This study compares a subset of equivalent individual-level web-site data for the 1998, 1999, 2000, and 2001 web surveys. Implications for using this type of research to inform public policy are discussed.     

Infant-toddler teachers can successfully employ authentic assessment: The Learning Through Relating system

This study documents the reliability and validity of a new infant-toddler authentic assessment, the Learning Through Relating Child Assets Record (LTR-CAR), and its feasibility of use by infant-toddler caregivers in an Early Head Start program. In a sample of 136 children, results indicated a strong internal structure of the LTR-CAR as evidenced by high internal consistency within age bands, expected performance in terms of the order of difficulty of items, and expected performance relative to the chronological ages of children. Moreover, the LTR-CAR accounted for a statistically significant amount of unique variance (between 6 and 26%), over and above age and gender, in six out of eight regressions predicting criterion measures. Given the increasing numbers of infants and toddlers in non-parental care, the need for authentic assessment as a tool to plan meaningful learning opportunities, as well as the lack of evidence-based authentic assessment options at the infant-toddler level, the LTR-CAR may provide a viable option for the field.     

The reading rate and comprehension of adults with impaired reading skills or visual discomfort

The purpose of this study was to investigate the effect of impaired reading skills and visual discomfort on the reading rate and comprehension of university students when reading texts presented at a high school (Grade 9) or university (Grade 12) level of difficulty. Groups included impaired readers (n=18) and normal readers with (n=13) or without visual discomfort (n=19). Regardless of text difficulty the impaired reader group had a significantly slower reading rate and poorer comprehension than the normal reader control group. However, when reading rate and comprehension were compared at the assessed reading level of each group, no group differences were found. The normal reading visual discomfort group had poorer reading comprehension than other normal readers with presentation of university‐level text only. It was concluded that poor word decoding skills may exacerbate comprehension difficulties in impaired readers. In contrast, the comprehension difficulties found for normal readers with visual discomfort occurred because of the somatic and perceptual difficulties induced with exposure to the repetitive striped patterns found on text pages. The types of strategy needed to increase the reading efficiency and produce greater academic success in university students with impaired reader skills or visual discomfort are discussed.     

The Magical Number 7

This article describes an interactive activity that involves students participating in a memory recall test. Data collected from the activity may be used to illustrate the one‐sample t test or one‐sample sign test.     

Face-to-face versus computer-mediated discussion of teaching cases: Impacts on preservice teachers’ engagement, critical analyses, and self-efficacy

Two frequently-used discussion protocols were investigated as part of a program to implement teaching cases in undergraduate educational psychology classes designed for preservice teachers. One protocol involved synchronous face-to-face (FTF) discussion of teaching cases, which occurred in class after students had individually completed written case analyses as homework outside of class. The other was asynchronous computer-mediated (CM) discussion taking place outside of class, simultaneous to students’ completion of their written case analyses. Six class offerings of an undergraduate child development course taught by two instructors (three classes by each instructor) were randomly assigned within instructor in a quasi-experimental design to one of the three discussion conditions: FTF, CM, or no discussion of the cases across the semester. Findings indicated that both CM and FTF discussion conditions were associated with positive outcomes relative to the control condition. Both CM and FTF discussion related to higher cognitive–affective engagement with the cases than the control condition; and the CM discussion condition was associated with higher cognitive–affective engagement than FTF discussion. In contrast, FTF discussion, but not CM discussion, was associated with higher-than-control-condition case analysis ability at the end of the semester. Potential explanations for these findings and directions for future research are discussed.     

Do increased resources increase educational attainment during a period of rising expenditure? Evidence from English secondary schools using a dynamic panel analysis

This article estimates the effects of school expenditure on school performance at Key Stage 4 in England, over the period 2003–07 during which real per pupil expenditure increased rapidly. It adds to previous investigations by using dynamic panel analysis to: exploit time series data on individual schools that only recently has become available; adjust for the potential endogeneity not only of expenditure but also of other determinants of performance; and differentiate the short‐run and the (higher) long‐run attainment effects of spending changes. Consistent with other recent work, the article reports a generally significant but small effect of expenditure on school performance, but it also finds that the effect varies between specialist and non‐specialist schools, with the effect on the latter being larger. Further, the article identifies significant dynamics in the school improvement process, quantifies the long‐run effect of expenditure changes, suggests that spending effects increase with socio‐economic disadvantage, and quantifies absence effects.