Lombroso's Legacy: The Miseducation of Criminologists

This study examines the extent to which criminal justice and criminology Ph.D. students are exposed to contemporary biological and genetic findings associated with aggression and violence. Drawing on multiple sources of information, we find little evidence showing that Ph.D. students are exposed to any biological research on crime and offending. We examine the consequences for this “trained incompetence” and offer suggestions for remedying this deficiency.

If all mankind minus one were of one opinion, and only one person were of the contrary opinion, mankind would be no more justified in silencing that one person, than he, if he had the power, would be justified in silencing mankind. (John Stuart Mill)     

Teaching Biosocial Criminology I: Understanding Endophenotypes Using Gottfredson and Hirschi’s Self‐Control Construct

Criminology is experiencing a paradigm shift in theory and research that articulates a more interdisciplinary, biosocial mode of inquiry. Unfortunately, however, graduate‐level criminal justice education rarely encompasses biosocial training. The current review is the first in a series of works that seeks to fill this biosocial training void by providing instruction on concepts in the biological sciences and neurosciences that have direct relevance to criminal justice education and criminology. Here we introduce endophenotypes and demonstrate their relevance to the study of crime using the self‐control construct from Gottfredson and Hirschi’s general theory. Because biosocial criminology is in its nascent stage, it is critical that biosocial criminologists provide service and instruction to their social science‐trained colleagues.     

Team teach with a student: A pilot study in criminal justice

In this study, criminal justice classes were team taught by six pairs of one faculty member and one student teacher. The professor-student teaching teams met together before class to plan and after class to problem solve. The student teachers were charged with helping the professors introduce active learning exercises into their classes. This article reports on survey data from these professors, student teachers and the students they taught, including their views on both the benefits and problems. The article shows professors how to team teach with a student and helps professors who want to try the approach to anticipate and minimize the problems while capitalizing on the benefits.     

Integrating Social Media Into the Classroom Curriculum

Interested in incorporating social media into your teaching but wary of the effort it might take? According to the research reviewed by Paige Abe and Nickolas A. Jordan, the challenge may be well worth it in terms of increased student engagement.     

Retell as an Indicator of Reading Comprehension

The purpose of this narrative synthesis is to determine the reliability and validity of retell protocols for assessing reading comprehension of students in grades K–12. Fifty-four studies were systematically coded for data related to the administration protocol, scoring procedures, and technical adequacy of the retell component. Retell was moderately correlated with standardized measures of reading comprehension and, with older students, had a lower correlation with decoding and fluency. Literal information was retold more frequently than inferential, and students with learning disabilities or reading difficulties needed more supports to demonstrate adequate recall. Great variability was shown in the prompting procedures, but scoring methods were more consistent across studies. The influences of genre, background knowledge, and organizational features were often specific to particular content, texts, or students. Overall, retell has not yet demonstrated adequacy as a progress monitoring instrument.     

Center Stage: Performing a Needs Assessment of Campus Research Centers and Institutes

Outreach to research centers and institutes is often overlooked in academic libraries. This article discusses a needs assessment conducted by the Liaison Services Department at the University of Houston Libraries that reviewed library services to centers and institutes at the University of Houston's main campus. The assessment was conducted for two purposes: to build collaborations with centers and to determine how the libraries might create new services and/or market existing services to meet the centers and institutes' growing research needs.     

“Doing What I can,but I got no Magic Wand:” A Snapshot of Early Childhood Educator Experiences and Efforts to Ensure Quality During the COVID-19 Pandemic

Early Childhood Education Journal - The COVID-19 pandemic impacted early childhood programs serving infants, toddlers, and preschoolers in dramatic ways. After temporarily closing, many educators...     

Reading Instruction for English Learners in the Middle Grades: a Meta-Analysis

This meta-analysis synthesizes the last two decades of experimental and quasi-experimental research on reading instruction across academic contexts (e.g., social studies, science, mathematics, English language arts) for English learners (ELs) in grades 4 through 8, to determine (a) the overall effectiveness of reading instruction for upper elementary and middle school students who are ELs and (b) how the magnitude of the effect varies based on student, instructional, and study characteristics. The analysis included a total of 11 studies with 46 individual effect sizes and yielded a mean effect size of g?=?0.35 across all (i.e., standardized and unstandardized) reading measures, g?=?0.01 across standardized reading measures, and g?=?0.43 across unstandardized reading measures. For all reading, unstandardized reading, all vocabulary, and unstandardized vocabulary measures, results suggest that higher quality studies tended to have smaller effects, and these effects were even more evident for unstandardized measures (i.e., one unit increase in study quality was associated with decreased effects: g?=?0.21, g?=?0.30, g?=?0.24, g?=?0.30, respectively). For all comprehension measures, effects were larger for instruction that included both vocabulary and comprehension (g?=?0.39) than for instruction that focused on vocabulary alone (g?=?0.08). Results suggest the benefit of developing and refining high-impact approaches to reading instruction for ELs that can be delivered across content areas and grades.