An experimental comparison of urban children with suburban children on eight tasks of basic skills

About 1500 children from an inner city school district and a suburban school district were asked to perform eight tasks of basic skills. There were differences in the performances of the children. The differences depended upon the socio-economic background of the children. On many of the skills, third grade urban children were similar to first grade suburban children. It is for this reason that the inner city children in this study were considered disadvantaged and a program of skill development has begun. Inner city children must have experiences that will help them acquire the skills that suburban children have acquired before entering school.     

Are “no-drug” cues discriminated during drug-discrimination training?

Rats were trained in a two-lever operant chamber to discriminate the presence versus the absence of a drug. During drug sessions, the training procedure involved reinforcing presses on lever 1 with saccharin-sweetened water but not reinforcing presses on lever 2. During no-drug sessions, only presses on lever 2 were reinforced. After this discrimination was learned, each rat was trained to discriminate presence versus absence of a second drug. All rats learned this second discrimination. Finally, the rats were tested to determine whether they could still discriminate the first drug, as well as other pharmacologically related compounds; most rats could. Training drugs were phenobarbital 30–35, nicotine 0.4, amphetamine 0.4, cyproheptadine 7, phencyclidine 4, cyclazocine 1.5, fentanyl 0.04, and scopolamine 0.2 mg/kg. The results indicate that drug versus no-drug discrimination training does not disrupt discriminative control previously established with a different drug. When considered in combination with the results obtained during substitution tests conducted after drug-versus-no-drug training, the data suggest that, instead of discriminating drug cues versus no-drug cues, rats discriminate presence versus absence of particular drug cues.     

Relative Importance of the Institute of Food Technologists (IFT) Core Competencies—A Case Study Survey

ABSTRACT: Nearly 90% of graduating seniors from the Food Science program at Purdue University gain employment in the food industry. Ensuring the program is meeting employers' needs is one mission of our curriculum committee with input from an Industrial Advisory Board (IAB). In light of the recent outcomes-based assessment requirements outlined by IFT, feedback from our IAB members regarding the relative importance of the core competencies was needed. The objective of this study was to survey the IAB members regarding relative importance of each of the 46 core competencies. Each competency was ranked using a Likert scale from 1 = not important to 5 = very important. Statistical analysis was conducted using the Mann-Whitney nonparametric test. Significant differences (P = 0.05) were found between several of the five content categories with Success Skills scoring highest (4.35 out of 5) on relative importance followed by Applied Food Science Knowledge (4.02 out of 5). Also, significant differences (P = 0.05) were found between competencies within each content category. Overall, the results suggest that the 46 core competencies should not be given the same instructional weight within a curriculum. One option for addressing the variation in importance could be to include some planned redundancy within the curriculum for those core competencies that were ranked the highest. In addition, part of the outcomes-based assessment process should include measures of the level of competency being achieved by graduates. By considering relative importance and competency achieved by graduates, important areas for improvement can be identified.     

International Children's Literature

Discusses the definition and contributions of international children's literature. Presents an overview of the International Board on Books for Young Children (IBBY), the Hans Christian Andersen Award and 2004 nominees, and the International Children's Digital Library (ICDL). Includes recommendations and summaries of 12 books.     

Social contexts of development in natural outdoor environments: children’s motor activities,personal challenges and peer interactions at the river and the creek

This study examined the influence of spending time outdoors on young children’s physical and socioemotional development. We observed preschoolers’ activities in two naturally provisioned outdoor environments over the course of one year. Eleven preschoolers were videotaped continuously for 16 days at a local river and 9 days at a creek adjacent to the school. In addition to the quantitative analyses of children’s behaviors, a case study of three children’s experiences over the course of the year was conducted. Both the river and the creek settings encouraged a multitude of physical and play behaviors with similar types of affordances, including flat surfaces for running, rocks for climbing and jumping off, and water for exploration and play, but the wilder environment (river) afforded more risk and personal challenges. Observations of children’s motor activities, play and responses to challenging environmental features supported the importance of accumulated experience and social context for the development of confidence in the face of risk, individual exploration and positive social support and engagement with peers.     

Do NESB University Students with Poor English Skills Make Rapid Linguistic Gains in Mainstream Studies?

This paper reports the testing and retesting two years later of 147 first‐year medical students for English language proficiency (ELP). A group of 66 with low initial proficiency, all of non‐English‐speaking background (NESB), improved from an average language age of 14.3 years to 15.2 years over the period. A comparison group of 81, randomly drawn from those who were of adequate ELP, 48% of whom were NESB, were close to the test ceiling on both occasions with an age equivalence of 33 years. Generalisation to other courses and samples may be limited but this study did not indicate great linguistic gains associated with mainstream studies for those whose English was poor at the beginning of their course.     

An Empirical Investigation of the Efficacy of Multimedia Instruction in Counseling Skill Development

The purpose of this study was to examine the effects of multimedia instruction on students' counseling skill development. The participants were 73 beginning‐level counselor education students (20 men and 53 women, ages ranging from 24 to 47 years). Ratings of students' pre‐ and posttest video counseling tapes were used to assess the effects of the multimedia approach. The results found that there was no statistically significant difference among the levels of students' counseling skill development across the 3 (high‐tech multimedia, low‐tech multimedia, and traditional instruction) treatment groups.