An exploration of female offenders’ memorable messages from probation and parole officers on the self-assessment of behavior from a control theory perspective

Guided by control theory, this study examines memorable messages that women on probation and parole receive from their probation and parole agents. Women interviewed for the study were asked to report a memorable message they received from an agent, and to describe situations if/when the message came to mind in three contexts likely to emerge from a control theory perspective: when they did something of which they were proud, when they stopped themselves from doing something they would later regret, and when they did something of which they were not proud. The types of memorable messages and the reactions to these messages within the three contexts were coded, and differences between women on probation versus parole were examined. Overall, a greater proportion of women on parole recalled memorable messages, and the most frequently reported type of memorable message was behavioral advice. Women reported that the message helped them do things of which they were proud, such as engaging in routine activities and fulfilling goals; helped them to not give into urges that could lead to further negative sanctions or feelings of regret; and came to mind when they relapsed. Practical implications of the findings for training are presented.     

'Classification' and 'Judgement': Social class and the 'cognitive structures' of choice of Higher Education

The issue of social-class-related patterns of access to Higher Education (HE) has become a matter of public debate in the UK recently, but is on the whole portrayed one-sidedly in terms of issues of selection (elitism), and the social dimensions of choice are neglected. Here, drawing on an Economic and Social Research Council research study, choice of HE is examined using Bourdieu's concepts of 'classification' and 'judgement'. HE is viewed in terms of its internal status differentiations. Students' positive and negative choices are addressed using qualitative and quantitative data, and the 'accuracy' of status perceptions are also tested. It is argued that choices are infused with class and ethnic meanings and that choice-making plays a crucial role in the reproduction of divisions and hierarchies in HE, but also that the very idea of choice assumes a kind of formal equality that obscures 'the effects of real inequality'. HE choices are embedded in different kinds of biographies and institutional habituses, and different 'opportunity structures'.     

Reconsidering Schools and the American Welfare State

Recalling her experience as an exchange teacher in Birmingham, England, in 1938–39, in the midst of the Great Depression, Oregon teacher Mary Kelly, wrote: When I witnessed the first‘leaving’day … in one of the Birmingham schools and learned that as soon as the majority of the English children were fourteen they were through with regular schooling forever, I almost shed tears. “Do you mean that those girls will never go to high school?” I asked. “Yes it is true.” ”Will they have jobs or will they be idle?” “The Education Department will place most of them in positions in homes, shops or factories ….” There were no graduation exercises, no lovely new dresses, no parents or relatives invited. I thought of my high‐school graduation, which possibly would never have been if education was not free, because the means were limited. Still another graduation after going through college on nothing a year permitted me to take up teaching ….To me, at that moment, there was nothing more precious than democracy and I mean the American way.¹     

An Empirical Investigation of Impact Moderation in Test Construction

This investigation constructed four different kinds of test sections using three methods of test assembly that incorporate the goals of simultaneous moderation of three kinds of impact-gender impact, African-American impact, and Hispanic- American impact. The test sections were administered undetectably to random samples from the appropriate population. The results were evaluated by comparison of the characteristics of moderated sections with those of parallel operational sections. Almost all methods of test assembly produced either moderation of impact in the appropriate direction or no change in impact. Taking impact into account in test assembly tended to lower reliability slightly, raise concurrent validity slightly, and maintain the construct measured by the parallel operational section. It also reduced the relative efficiency for test takers in the middle score range while increasing efficiency for those with more extreme scores.     

The Rise and Fall of a Promotions Committee: some reflections on the interrelationship between micro and macro machinations of power

This paper is concerned with a case study regarding the ‘rise and fall’ of a promotions committee within an Australian College of Advanced Education. The paper considers the internal organisational factors involved with the abolition of promotion by merit as part of increasingly dominant managerialist practices. The paper attempts to contextualise these institutional developments in terms of the restructuring of the Australian economy and concomitant pressures upon state expenditure and consequent increasing pressures on tertiary education institutions to ‘pay their own way’. The study fits within the ‘imperialist strategy’ within organisational analyses where the study of organisations is “merged within a wider analytical framework geared to the examination of historical transformations in institutional structures and the principles which underlie these long‐term historical movements”. In the concluding section, some critical remarks are proffered regarding the way senior administrators within tertiary education institutions have responded to these privatisation pressures upon them.

     

Alternative Conceptions: Turning Adversity into Advantage

Research in Science Education - While a vast body of research has identified difficulties in students’ understanding about forces and acceleration and their related alternative conceptions,...     

(<Emphasis Type="Italic">CF</Emphasis>)<Superscript>2</Superscript> architecture: contextual collaborative filtering

Recommender systems have dramatically changed the way we consume content. Internet applications rely on these systems to help users navigate among the ever-increasing number of choices available. However, most current systems ignore the fact that user preferences can change according to context, resulting in recommendations that do not fit user interests. This research addresses these issues by proposing the \(({ CF})^2\) architecture, which uses local learning techniques to embed contextual awareness into collaborative filtering models. The proposed architecture is demonstrated on two large-scale case studies involving over 130 million and over 7 million unique samples, respectively. Results show that contextual models trained with a small fraction of the data provided similar accuracy to collaborative filtering models trained with the complete dataset. Moreover, the impact of taking into account context in real-world datasets has been demonstrated by higher accuracy of context-based models in comparison to random selection models.     

Short Danish Version of the Tools for Early Assessment in Math (TEAM) for 3–6-Year-Olds

Sound assessment tools are needed to evaluate effects of mathematics interventions that familiarize children with early mathematics concepts before they enter the formal school system. We developed a short version of an existing early mathematics tool based on analyses of data collected in a nationally representative Danish sample. Research findings: The Danish adaptation and development process of the Tools for Early Assessment in Math (TEAM) for children aged 3?6 years was carried out in four steps: (a) choosing and translating relevant items, (b) conducting a pilot study, (c) testing items in a representative sample of Danish children aged 3?6 years (n = 5,621), and (d) analyses based on Rasch models. The process resulted in a final 19-item version—the DK-TEAM (final)—that has no differential item functioning relative to age and gender and is sensitive to the full range of abilities. The great majority of the children viewed the test as enjoyable. Practice or Policy: The DK-TEAM (final) appears to be broadly applicable for young Danish children, though the modest reliability at 3 years (which may be remediable by adding easy items) should be kept in mind.     

A Spiral Task as a Model for In-service Teacher Education

The spiral approach has long been used by curriculum designers to deepen students’ knowledge of scientific and mathematical concepts and to bring students to higher levels of abstraction. The benefits of a spiral approach, however, can also be extended to teacher education. This paper describes a spiral activity employed by the Kidumatica program not only to raise the level of teachers’ content knowledge, but also to promote discussion and collaboration among teachers teaching at different grade levels. The activity was designed to take a single problem situation and develop it in ways appropriate to the different grade levels. At each stage, the teachers are encouraged to discuss teaching approaches required by the students at each grade level and the relationships between the different stages of the development.