Using Photovoice to Promote Body Image Resilience in College Women

Photovoice methodology was used to examine and promote body image resilience. Fourteen female college students participated in a 2‐part group series. Photovoice projects and other artifacts were analyzed. Three themes related to body image resilience emerged from the data analysis: connection, social gender norms, and self. This study contributes to the growing body of literature by examining photovoice as a creative approach for critically discussing body image resilience. Implications for college counselors are provided.     

A “muddled arrray of models”: theoretical and organisational perspectives on change and development in higher education

Understanding the change process in higher education requires the development of adequate theory. Theories are characterised by propositions which guide thinking, research and professional action. These propositions are a starting point for research, one goal of which is a contribution to the development and refinement of theory. Theory enables explanation, prediction and well-guided action to take place. An end-point to this is better understanding and influence over the change and development process in higher education. There is no general theory of change in higher education. So, what theories guide our action? This question is explored, together with a consideration of the role of theory in the process of individual and organisational change. The paper comprises two contributions, one by Cannon on theory development, the other by Lonsdale which is a reaction to and extension of Cannon's arguments, especially as they relate to organisational change.     

We can,we know how. But do we want to? Teaching attitudes towards ICT based on the level of technology integration in schools

Teachers’ attitudes towards technology are crucial to foster its use in schools and to improve its educational affordances and this is still a topic for research. This article relates the attitudes school teachers have towards information and communication technologies (ICT) with the different levels of technology integration in schools. A multiple case-study research methodology was applied, and in which the school was the unit of sampling used. Thirty-five schools from eight Spanish regions were selected, and 1222 questionnaires were collected, representing 78.9% of the sample. Three combined variables were utilised to classify schools in four different levels of technology integration. Results suggest level 4 school teachers exhibit better attitudes towards ICT, which results in creating a positive circle which improves the learning process. This becomes relevant for teacher education and professional development, as effective ICT integration in the classroom can perform as a catalyst for educational innovation.     

The generality of within-session patterns of responding: Rate of reinforcement and session length

Rats and pigeons responded for food delivered according to multiple schedules. The session length varied from 10 to 120 min, and the programmed rate of reinforcement varied from 15 to 240 reinforcers per hour. Response rates usually changed systematically within experimental sessions. For both rats and pigeons, responding reached a peak after an approximately constant amount of time since the beginning of the session, regardless of session length. When rats, but not pigeons, served as subjects, the peak rates of responding occurred later in the session and the within-session changes were smaller for lower than for higher rates of reinforcement. The similarities between the results for rats and for pigeons when session length varied suggest that at least one of the factors that produces the within-session changes in responding is shared by the present species, responses, and reinforcers. The differences in results when rate of reinforcement varied are more difficult to interpret.     

Raising Literacy Attainments in the Early Years: the impact of instructional psychology

The National Literacy Strategy (DfEE, 1998) aims to raise literacy standards by 2002. The expectation is that 80% of Year 6 children will achieve Level 4 or above within the National Curriculum. This is seen to represent ‘zero tolerance of failure’. However, another interpretation of ‘zero tolerance of failure’ is that all children, including the 20% who are predicted to experience difficulties, will reach ageand skill‐appropriate targets in reading. This is the goal adopted for the Early Reading Research (ERR) reported in this article.

The aims of the ERR are to investigate: (i) whether overall reading standards can be improved and (ii) the extent to which reading difficulties can be prevented. Despite all the recent research into phonological awareness and its relationship to reading, there has been very little research into how phonological skills are taught within a broader literacy framework to enable children both to increase their attainments and to prevent the occurrence of problems in learning to read. The ERR is a 2‐year study following a sample of 433 children as they progress from reception into Year 1.

This article reviews recent psychological research on teaching reading, discusses the significance of instructional psychology and reports on the first year of the research when children were in six experimental reception classes implementing the ERR reading framework or six comparison schools following their usual approaches for teaching reading. The experimental group made considerably greater gains in reading on all but one of the assessment measures taken and demonstrated that the incidence of reading difficulties can be reduced quite dramatically, while at the same time raising the attainments of higher achieving pupils.     

Evaluation of the teaching guide as an instrument for adaptation to the new European credit system： Case analysis

This paper presents the evaluation of the teaching guide application for the subject of management control in the Business Management and Administration Degree. The evaluation began with the analysis of a questionnaire which aimed to collect the perceptions of learners who have studied this subject in two groups （morning and afternoon） during the first semester of the current academic year. The intention of this analysis was to obtain information that would meet two objectives： to continue upgrading the teaching-learning process and to revise and improve all the components in the teaching guide. There is an analysis of the degree of difficulty involved in the activities proposed and the degree to which specific objectives for different competencies have been attained. Likewise, we have carried out a global assessment of the different methodologies applied in the teaching-learning process, and an assessment of the evaluation system as well as of other aspects that could have hindered reaching the objectives stated in the guide. Furthermore, the relevance of this questionnaire has been vindicated for obtaining the information necessary to adjust the learner＇s workload to the European credit.     

Predicting Language Development in Children At Risk: The Effects of Quality and Frequency of Caregiver Reading

Reading to children has been advocated as a way to enhance language and literacy skills (A. G. Bus, M. H. van IJzendoorn, & A. D. Pellegrini, 1995). However, little is known about reading with children under age 3 (K. L. Fletcher & E. Reese, 2005), particularly in at-risk samples (A. van Kleeck, 2003). In the current study of 87 primary caregivers and their 24-month-old children enrolled in an early intervention program, we tested a theoretical model of the relations among 24-month-old children's language, caregivers' reported frequency of reading with children, and caregivers' reading strategies on children's language and attention using path models. Path models indicated that caregivers' use of expansions and questions with their 24-month-old children during reading was related to children's expressive language at 30 months. Caregivers' use of labeling, expansions, and questions was related to 24-month-old children's attention during reading. Although children's language skills at 24 months were associated with the reported frequency of caregiver reading in the home, only caregivers' use of questions had a relationship with frequency of reading. Reading practices that promote language development and engagement during reading observed in this at- risk sample have implications for reading intervention efforts with young children.     

Orthogonal stimulus variation and attention in dimensional contrast

These experiments examined one way in which the allocation of attentional resources can change performance during a visual discrimination task. Pigeons were trained to discriminate visual forms under conditions that produced dimensional contrast. In three experiments, negative training stimuli differed from positive stimuli either along a primary physical dimension alone or along both a primary dimension and an orthogonal dimension. When a negative stimulus differed from positive stimuli along two dimensions, discrimination of that negative stimulus improved. For one type of visual form, discrimination of the positive stimuli declined with orthogonal variation in a negative stimulus, whereas for other visual forms, there was no decline in performance. These results are consistent with a model of dimensional contrast that suggests that differences in the allocation of attentional resources determine discrimination performance. The results also indicate that the organization of stimulus dimensions plays a crucial role in the allocation of attentional resources in these settings.