Linking Mind,Brain, and Education to Clinical Practice: A Proposal for Transdisciplinary Collaboration

It has been suggested that the field of Mind, Brain, and Education (MBE) requires a stable infrastructure for translating research into practice. Hinton and Fischer (2008) point to the academic medical center as a model for similar translational work and suggest a similar approach for linking scientists to research schools. We propose expanding their model to include a formal role for clinicians. Including clinicians who work with children with learning problems brings an important perspective to the translational work. For example, the integration of the concept of “differential diagnosis,” a core precept in clinical medicine, would bring needed diagnostic specificity to the field of MBE. We describe a virtual infrastructure for collaboration, or “collaboratory,” consisting of research scientists, educators, and clinicians, linked to an academic institution. We anticipate that MBE graduates can play a critical role in the collaboratory model. With additional training, they can become “neuroeducators” capable of moving comfortably among the disciplines, building linkages, fostering communication, and facilitating collaboration.     

The Developmental Process of Clinical Supervisors in Training: An Investigation of the Supervisor Complexity Model

The authors investigated C. E. Watkins's (1994) supervisor complexity model (SCM). The Psychotherapy Supervisor Development Scale (PSDS; C. E. Watkins, L. J. Schneider, J. Haynes, & R. Nieberding, 1995) was used to ascertain development over a 15‐week supervision practicum for 12 doctoral students and to compare their development with 7 doctoral students who had not yet begun their practicums. A set of retrospective interview questions produced responses that were used to investigate the viability of the 4 proposed discrete developmental stages in the SCM. The PSDS findings are congruent with theory. The retrospective interview findings, although interesting, are less definitive. Recommendations for research and training are presented.     

Breaking up is hard to do: the resilience of the rock group as an organizational form for creating music

Though there is a long tradition of band members quitting the group or taking a hiatus, the rock group as an organization to produce music continues to be both popular and economically viable. The research question addressed in this paper is whether or not it is a good idea to quit or take a hiatus from the group. We begin with a discussion of the framework for understanding why groups are formed and why they may be difficult to keep together. We then discuss differences between groups in the decade of the 1960s versus today. We argue that there is something unique about the output of the group even with the changes in the structure of contracts, compensation, and consumer focus on the artist that explain the resilience of the rock band as an organizational form within which to create music. We compare the charting success of bands that have members leave the group with the charting success of the members who left the group. We identified the groups in five representative years: 1965, 1975, 1985, 1995, and 2005. We then analyzed the entire Billboard Hot 100 charting careers of those groups and the artists who quit those groups. Our main finding is that when charting success is divided equally among members, going solo pays off—there is a clear economic rationale because solo acts have greater average charting success than the original bands they started in. The other ensuing side projects: duos, collaborations, and other groups are not as lucrative as the original bands. These findings are valid for members of charting groups from each of the 5 years examined. Despite the difficulties in keeping a rock band together, there are fewer band breakups today and remaining with the group generally results in a longer and more productive charting career. Thus, the rock group remains an important organization for producing contemporary music. However, there remains a compelling incentive to go solo. Superstars may benefit from solo projects, but for the average, non-superstar group member, in many circumstances it is better for the band to stay together if the income is divided equally.     

Strategic Capacity and Organisational Capabilities: A Challenge for Universities

Are universities able to operate as strategic actors? An organisational sociology based approach supported by a comparative field research project identifies three types of social, cultural and cognitive processes that play a decisive role in building and implementing local capabilities required to mobilise a strategic capacity. The paper identifies how much these processes are present in the four ideal-types of universities defined by crossing their reputation and their metrics-based performance. Such a meso deterministic perspective suggests that universities may position themselves as proactive actors or principals, and not just as agents of national reforms and political demands. Nevertheless, their ability to do it varies according to their type. The paper also explores the implications of such findings for institutional leadership and steering policymakers.     

Unsustainable Growth,Hyper-Competition,and Worth in Life Science Research: Narrowing Evaluative Repertoires in Doctoral and Postdoctoral Scientists’ Work and Lives

There is a crisis of valuation practices in the current academic life sciences, triggered by unsustainable growth and “hyper-competition.” Quantitative metrics in evaluating researchers are seen as replacing deeper considerations of the quality and novelty of work, as well as substantive care for the societal implications of research. Junior researchers are frequently mentioned as those most strongly affected by these dynamics. However, their own perceptions of these issues are much less frequently considered. This paper aims at contributing to a better understanding of the interplay between how research is valued and how young researchers learn to live, work and produce knowledge within academia. We thus analyze how PhD students and postdocs in the Austrian life sciences ascribe worth to people, objects and practices as they talk about their own present and future lives in research. We draw on literature from the field of valuation studies and its interest in how actors refer to different forms of valuation to account for their actions. We explore how young researchers are socialized into different valuation practices in different stages of their growing into science. Introducing the concept of “regimes of valuation” we show that PhD students relate to a wider evaluative repertoire while postdocs base their decisions on one dominant regime of valuing research. In conclusion, we discuss the implications of these findings for the epistemic and social development of the life sciences, and for other scientific fields.     

A learning-based method to detect and segment text from scene images

This paper proposes a learning-based method for text detection and text segmentation in natural scene images. First, the input image is decomposed into multiple connected-components (CCs) by Niblack clustering algorithm. Then all the CCs including text CCs and non-text CCs are verified on their text features by a 2-stage classification module, where most non-text CCs are discarded by an attentional cascade classifier and remaining CCs are further verified by an SVM. All the accepted CCs are output to result in text only binary image. Experiments with many images in different scenes showed satisfactory performance of our proposed method.     

In pursuit of becoming a senior coach: the learning culture for Australian Football League coaches

Background and Purpose: Given the turbulent and highly contested environment in which professional coaches work, a prime concern to coach developers is how coaches learn their craft. Understanding the learning and development of senior coaches (SCs) and assistant coaches (ACs) in the Australian Football League (AFL – the peak organisation for Australian Rules Football) is important to better develop the next generation of performance coaches. Hence the focus of this research was to examine the learning of SC and AC in the AFL. Fundamental to this research was an understanding that the AFL and each club within the league be regarded as learning organisations and workplaces with their own learning cultures where learning takes place. The purpose of this paper was to examine the learning culture for AFL coaches.

Method: Five SCs, 6 ACs, and 5 administrators (4 of whom were former coaches) at 11 of the 16 AFL clubs were recruited for the research project. First, demographic data were collected for each participant (e.g. age, playing and coaching experience, development and coach development activities). Second, all participants were involved in one semi-structured interview of between 45 and 90 minutes duration. An interpretative (hierarchical content) analysis of the interview data was conducted to identify key emergent themes.

Results: Learning was central to AFL coaches becoming a SC. Nevertheless, coaches reported a sense of isolation and a lack of support in developing their craft within their particular learning culture. These coaches developed a unique dynamic social network (DSN) that involved episodic contact with a number of respected confidantes often from diverse fields (used here in the Bourdieuian sense) in developing their coaching craft. Although there were some opportunities in their workplace, much of their learning was unmediated by others, underscoring the importance of their agentic engagement in limited workplace affordances.

Conclusion: The variety of people accessed for the purposes of learning (often beyond the immediate workplace) and the long time taken to establish networks of supporters meant that a new way of describing the social networks of AFL coaches was needed; DSN. However, despite the acknowledged utility of learning from others, all coaches reported some sense of isolation in their learning. The sense of isolation brought about by professional volatility in high-performance Australian Football offers an alternative view on Hodkinson, Biesta and James' attempt in overcoming dualisms in learning.     

Bedingungen der Bindungswirkung inkrementeller Normen in Fußballvereinen

Sports clubs depend on the pooling of resources by their members. The supportive distribution of the resources within a club is facilitated in particular by the effectiveness of incremental standards. A basic prerequisite for a fair distribution of resources is a minimum of community spirit among the members. Based on a nationwide survey of football clubs and an ordinal logistic regression model, factors were determined that reflect the extent of the community spirit within a club. The opening up of the club by payment to players and perceived problems with acquiring and binding of volunteers are associated with a reduction of community spirit. In contrast, the perception that the club activities can be continued in the long term shows a positive correlation to a highly developed community spirit.