Organizing the ‘productive transformation of knowledge’: linking university and industry in traditional manufacturing areas

The article aims at underlining the role played by extra-academic and autonomous organizations strongly connected with university institutions and researchers in producing, acquiring, transferring and transforming knowledge. The study examines a particular Italian case, the Politecnico Calzaturiero, a private institution providing technical training and research services operating in North-eastern Italy. The analysis of this experience suggests that, in traditional manufacturing areas, organizations playing a key role in managing the ‘productive transformation of knowledge’ may be neither universities nor firms. ‘Special organizations’, like the one discussed in this article, are deeply embedded in their economic and institutional environment, are closely interconnected within a dense and extended network of various actors, engage in complex and time-consuming processes, and can be understood as organizational relé, that is entities which are able to connect structures that are usually not connected. For these reasons, they represent an underestimated resource for universities’ third mission and its management.     

Addressing Sexual Assault on College Campuses: Guidelines for a Prevention/Awareness Week

The authors discuss concepts that are related to providing education and training regarding sexual assault, as outlined by the Crime Awareness and Campus Security Act of 1990, as amended in 1992. Because college counseling center staff members often initiate and plan campus outreach prevention programs, an outline is provided of a prevention/awareness week intervention that is designed to address sexual assault on university and college campuses.     

Reasoning in Young Children: Fantasy and Information Retrieval

The present article examines 2 predictions concerning conditional reasoning in children derived from Markovits's model of conditional reasoning. The first claims that children under 12 years of age should be able to respond correctly to uncertain logical forms if the premises and context enable them to access pertinent counterexamples from memory. The second concerns the effect of reasoning in a fantasy context. Previous studies have established that young children can correctly respond to certain reasoning problems with empirically false premises when these are presented in a fantasy context. However, this model of reasoning predicts that presenting empirically true premises in a fantasy context should decrease performance on the 2 uncertain logical forms. In Study 1, a total of 48 8-year-olds, 78 10-year-olds, and 74 12-year-olds were given 4 reasoning problems involving familiar premises. These problems were embedded in either a fantasy or a realistic context and presented via video tape. Results were consistent with the predictions made. Study 2 attempted to determine whether these results could be due to context or problem formulation. A total of 40 7-year-olds and 46 8-year-olds were given reasoning problems with either no context or with a visual image preceding the problems. Results showed that children did equally well in these conditions, and that providing an image did not improve performance.     

Faculty reflect on course planning

Faculty members' beliefs about educational purpose and the nature of their academic fields strongly influence how they plan introductory courses. Interviews with 89 faculty members teaching in diverse colleges and representing eight fields also identified faculty attention to student preparation, available textbooks, and locally important factors, but little attention to alternative instructional strategies during course planning. Based on the findings, the authors have developed a tentative general model of course design and related questions to guide future study.     

Reading ability and short-term memory: The role of phonological processing

The aim of the current study was to further explore the connection between verbal short-term recall and phonological processing for two purposes: (a) To investigate the basis of short-term memory deficits for children with reading disability, and (b) To further explore the origin of developmental verbal memory span increases.Using a variety of memory and phonological tasks, reading group comparisons were conducted testing third-grade good readers and poor readers, and developmental changes were studied with pre-kindergarten, first-grade and third-grade children. The main finding was that a strong relationship was observed between efficiency of phonological processes and capacity of verbal memory supporting the hypothesis that reducing phonological processing requirements in verbal short-term memory increases available resources for storage. No such relationship was found between phonological processing and nonverbal memory. This conclusion was supported by two findings: (a) The verbal short-term memory deficits in poor readers significantly correspond with less accurate phonological processing, and (b) Developmental increases in verbal STM are accompanied by more accurate and rapid execution of phonological tasks.     

Call for papers

This study was designed to reveal the knowledge and skill sets that practicing day treatment and residential treatment EBD teachers view as important, and/or lacking, in novice EBD teachers, and to situate those findings within the larger contexts of teacher attrition and teacher preparation in special education. Primary results suggest that EBD teachers in day treatment and residential treatment centres believe knowledge of and implementation of best practices to be one of the most important prerequisites for effective practice in the EBD classroom, and one of the prerequisites most lacking by novice teachers. EBD teachers also indicated that knowledge of and appropriate use of behaviour management techniques was essential for effective practice, and also was reported to be lacking in novice teachers. In addition, EBD teachers reported a number of areas in which their teacher preparation programmes were perceived as lacking depth. Finally, certain personality attributes were identified as essential prerequisites for effective practice in the EBD classroom. Results are useful for teacher educators, teacher coaches, and school administrators.     

Benefits Visitors Derive from Sustained Engagement with a Single Museum

Abstract Museums are currently faced with new challenges and issues of sustainability. Consequently, they are under increasing pressure to provide funding bodies with evidence of their value and worth. This paper reports findings from a narrative study that explored the nature of returning visitors’ engagement with a single museum over time. The study’s findings document a broad range of benefits visitors derive from a sustained relationship with a museum and reveal the significant contributions that sustained engagement with a museum make towards enriching visitors’ lives.     

Development of a Metric to Test Group Differences in Ecological Knowledge as One Component of Environmental Literacy

Abstract

Environmental literacy has been defined in numerous ways and attempts have been made to measure how environmentally literate people are. Many attempts to measure literacy have instead measured people's knowledge about pollution and their attitudes toward the environment. According to many environmental education experts, knowledge and attitudes are important components of environmental literacy, especially if the goal of environmental education is to change behavior. However, the experts also indicate that, to change an individual's behavior, knowledge about the environment must be associated with environmental sensitivity, personal beliefs, and decisionmaking and problem-solving skills. The research presented in this article contributes to environmental literacy research by offering a tested, valid survey instrument to measure ecological knowledge—one component of environmental literacy. In this article, we provide an example of how this instrument can be applied by comparing knowledge levels among diverse groups of Ohio citizens.     

Black Families and Schooling in Rural South Carolina: Families' and Educators' Disjunctive Interpretations of Parental Involvement

The positive impact on children's educational trajectories when effective home-school partnerships are established has been extensively documented. This article shares findings from a 13-month research study in a rural, southern community in South Carolina that sought to investigate the nature of the “partnerships” formed between educators and families, while challenging stereotypes and misperceptions that prevent such partnerships from unfolding. In doing so, the researcher makes visible the experiences of Black families, students, and schools in communities rarely studied—poor, rural Black communities in the southern United States. The researcher uses the actual words of the teachers and parents to make visible the disjunctive interpretations about one of the major themes from the study, parental involvement as relationships. Finally, the researcher offers implications for educators and parents as they do the work necessary to form relationships that really benefit students.