Students in Australian Catholic and Independent Schools Have More Positive Learning Environments: Evidence From the 2012 PISA Study

Critics of Catholic and independent (nongovernment) schools in Australia contend that the higher levels of performance of students in nongovernment schools can be dismissed as simply a function of student- and especially school-level socioeconomic status (school-SES). A recent article extends this critique to school-sector differences in students’ evaluations of their teachers and schools, arguing that the observable school-sector differences are because of differences in school-SES, not because of school-sector differences in their teachers and schools. In response, this article reviews these arguments and focuses on school-sector differences in students’ evaluations of their teachers and schools using the Organization for Economic Development and Cooperation’s (OECD) measures in the PISA 2009 study. On eight of the 10 attitudinal measures, students attending Catholic and independent schools have more positive evaluations and these school-sector differences survive controls for students’ SES, their overall level of achievement and school-SES, which has no substantive influence. Although the effect sizes are generally small (0.06–0.26) their combined influence means that nongovernment school students enjoy superior learning environments which is likely to contribute to their generally higher levels of academic performance in senior secondary school.     

Associations Between First‐Time Expectant Women's Representations of Attachment and Their Physiological Reactivity to Infant Cry

Associations among 53 primiparous women's Adult Attachment Interview classifications (secure–autonomous vs. insecure–dismissing) and physiological and self‐reported responses to infant crying were explored. Heart rate, skin conductance levels, and respiratory sinus arrhythmia (RSA) were recorded continuously. In response to the cry, secure–autonomous women demonstrated RSA declines, consistent with approach‐oriented responses. Insecure–dismissing women displayed RSA and electrodermal increases, consistent with behavioral inhibition. Furthermore, insecure–dismissing women rated the cries as more aversive than secure–autonomous women. Nine months postpartum, secure–autonomous women, who prenatally manifested an approach‐oriented response to the unfamiliar cry stimulus, were observed as more sensitive when responding to their own distressed infant, whereas women classified prenatally as insecure–dismissing were observed as less sensitive with their own infants.     

Nonverbatim captioning in Dutch television programs: a text linguistic approach

In the Netherlands, as in most other European countries, closed captions for the deaf summarize texts rather than render them verbatim. Caption editors argue that in this way television viewers have enough time to both read the text and watch the program. They also claim that the meaning of the original message is properly conveyed. However, many deaf people demand verbatim subtitles so that they have full access to all original information. They claim that vital information is withheld from them as a result of the summarizing process. Linguistic research was conducted in order (a) to identify the type of information that is left out of captioned texts and (b) to determine the effects of nonverbatim captioning on the meaning of the text. The differences between spoken and captioned texts were analyzed on the basis of on a model of coherence relations in discourse. One prominent finding is that summarizing affects coherence relations, making them less explicit and altering the implied meaning.     

University of Cincinnati Medical Center: integrating information

The University of Cincinnati Medical Center has combined five existing units into a new organization responsible for initiating an Integrated Academic Information Management System (IAIMS). This new organization, Medical Center Information and Communications, was reorganized into nine departments, which now provide a variety of information services. Ultimate goals for IAIMS include a patient-centered database, a decision-support system, and a knowledge network. The IAIMS prototype, currently under development for the University of Cincinnati Hospital's Internal Medicine Service, consists of components representative of the IAIMS model's ultimate goals. A major premise of this IAIMS effort is that it is patient-centered.