Training teachers to use verbal immediacy

Previous research clearly demonstrates the positive impacts of using verbal immediacy in the college classroom. This paper explores the issue of training university instructors to increase their verbal immediacy use while teaching. First, a brief literature review recaps recent verbal immediacy studies and the reasons training could be valuable. Next, the training method is outlined and results reveal how university teachers were successfully trained to use significantly more verbal immediacy in their classrooms, compared to a control group of teachers who were not trained. A discussion concludes with the implications for improving college teaching.     

Attempts to televise parliament

Concern in Canada about U.S. cultural and economic “invasions” is not new—and here is some support for the contention that despite Canadian content regulations of recent years a large portion of the Canadian population still sees heavily Americanized TV programming simply because much of that programming comes directly from the U.S.—not via cable or Canadian stations subject to Canadian controls. The authors (a husband‐wife team) work in the Boston area, where Richard Nielson is on the Boston University faculty. Angela Nielson is a freelance writer‐researcher.     

Does teaching students how to explicitly model the causal structure of systems improve their understanding of these systems?

If students really understand the systems they study, they would be able to tell how changes in the system would affect a result. This demands that the students understand the mechanisms that drive its behaviour. The study investigates potential merits of learning how to explicitly model the causal structure of systems. The approach and performance of 15 system dynamics students who are taught to explicitly model the causal structure of the systems they study were compared with the approach and performance of 22 engineering students, who generally did not receive such training. The task was to bring a computer-simulated predator-and-prey ecology to equilibrium. The system dynamics students were significantly more likely than the engineering students to correctly frame the problem. They were not much better at solving the task, however. It seemed that they had only learnt how to make models and not how to use them for reasoning.     

雨水和中水回用对北京供水的潜在贡献(英文)

为寻找新途径以缓解北京市因日趋减少的年降水量和人口快速增长等因素引起的水危机,及地下水位迅速下降的状况,探讨了基于住户的分散式雨水收集和中水回用,作为减少地下水抽取和从其他地区调水的手段.通过案头案例研究,提出了雨水和中水结合式收集再利用的2个理念.基于粗略假设,计算表明采用升级理念可节约生活自来水消费的67.8%,而采用降级理念则节约5.9%.如果2 000万北京市民采用升级理念,将节约相当于0.545×109m3的年供水量.尽管先决条件诸多,如水处理技术、空间需求、能源和成本,以及公众接受能力,主张采用住户雨水收集和中水回用与其他措施相结合,以实现北京可持续的水管理.     

Improving Upon Nature: The Rhetorical Ecology of Chemical Language,Reproductive Endocrinology,and the Medicalization of Infertility

Chemical theories of human fertility and reproduction first became prevalent in both technical and mainstream media outlets beginning in the 1930s and 1940s, and they have remained prevalent to this day. In this essay, I analyze a selection of primary sources from this era that defined human fertility as a chemically induced process, rather than, for instance, a characteristic related to the conservation of nervous energy or to moral physiology. The resulting rhetorical history demonstrates the ways in which this chemical rhetoric was appropriated to re-envision sex, gender, and reproductive health in light of appeals to biochemical variability, artificiality, and technical expertise. Tracing these appeals sheds light on the rhetorical ecology that supported the widespread medicalization of (in)fertility and demonstrates how public vocabularies of science and medicine are constituted as they move across and interact with broader social discourses.     

Balancing Mystery and Identification: Dolores Huerta's Shifting Transcendent Persona

The present analysis explores Dolores Huerta's use of a shifting transcendent persona to balance the sense of mystery surrounding her accomplishments with a performance of normalcy and audience identification. We find, first, that Huerta leveraged her borderland experiences and ideology as rhetorical resources that functioned to facilitate the amalgamation of personae exemplifying her advocacy, and, second, that her shifting transcendent persona's balance of mystery and identification hinged as much upon the manner in which she positioned audience members to perceive themselves as it did upon the manner in which she positioned them to perceive her own exceptional normalcy.     

The meaning of heritability in the behavioral sciences 1

The concept of heritability in quantitative genetics is defined and discussed in terms of its implications for individual and group differences in behavioral traits, with particular reference to studies of the heritability of IQ. Common misconceptions concerning the relevance of heritability analysis for individual scores and the roles of genotype x environment covariance and interaction are clarified. Some of the popular criticisms of heritability analysis as applied to mental ability are shown to be misconceived.     

Social Competence and Oral Language Development for Young Children of Latino Immigrants

Research Findings: In this study we analyze how parent and teacher ratings of young Latino children’s social competencies in rural California are associated with children’s oral language development. We find (a) that there is considerable incongruence between parent and teacher ratings of child social competence, (b) that both parent and teacher ratings account for meaningful variation in children’s oral language development, and (c) that incongruence between parent and teacher ratings is associated with oral language above and beyond the effects of parent and teacher ratings alone. Practice or Policy: Young Latino children’s social competencies contribute to their oral language development. These competencies represent an important, though to date underutilized, asset for building stronger academic/language functioning. Part of the paradoxical development of Latino children (i.e., strong social though weak academic/language competence) could be attributable to cultural differences that underlie teacher and parent perceptions of social competence. Teachers of young Latino children should (a) be aware of the cultural nature of social competence and (b) explore culturally responsive ways of interacting in classrooms to build stronger oral language functioning.     

Ethical implications of assessment: Thoughts on pigs and process in an early childhood course

A graduate student in early childhood education discusses observations of his children during and after Hurricanes Rita and Katrina struck the Gulf Coast. He relates his use of responsive parenting and provides examples of his children's learning and play that emerged after the storms. He reflects upon how aspects of developmentally appropriate practice are applicable to parenting and how teachers may support reciprocal relationships with families.