Communicating Prevention: The Effects of the keepin' it REAL Classroom Videotapes and Televised PSAs on Middle-School Students' Substance Use

This study sought to determine if exposure to two communication-oriented activities, videotapes and public service announcements, accounts for changes in substance use among adolescents participating in the Drug Resistance Strategies Project's keepin' it REAL adolescent substance use prevention curriculum. Middle-school students (4,734, 72% Latino) responded to questionnaires related to these analyses. An analysis of covariance (ANCOVA) model was fit separately to six substance use outcomes. The results suggested that intervention students who saw four or five videos engaged in less substance use in the past month than did students who saw fewer videos. Having seen the PSAs one or more times did not predict the reported change in substance use.     

Through the Dąbrowski Lens: A Fresh Examination of the Theory of Positive Disintegration

D?browski’s theory of positive disintegration is an emotion-centered, nonontogenetic, five-level theory of personality development where the experience of all emotions is essential for the process of growth. In this article, we examine the complexities of the three factors of development, which are essential to the notion of development within the theory of positive disintegration. We elaborate on the relationships between these factors, depict the processes and interactions in a new graphical framework, provide associated explanations, and support these by additional references to D?browski’s original writings.     

Los retos de la educación bilingüe en inglés y español en las escuelas públicas de Nueva York: objetivos, modelos y currículos

The challenges of bilingual education in English and Spanish in public schools of New York: Objectives, models and curricula – The first section of this article describes the conceptual differences between educational objectives, educational model (context and structures) and curriculum (units of study or sequential study guides). The second section analyses how these three concepts were put into practice in five bilingual elementary schools serving immigrant students in New York City. The educational objectives reflect the leadership and work expectations which the principal establishes within the school and with the community. The educational model is translated into a clear language allocation policy that is reached by consensus between the principal and the teachers. The curriculum adaptations reflect the context and culture of the students, but without neglecting the educational objectives. The development of academic language (the language based on academic texts) is an element that attracts vast interest in American schools, but is ignored in many bilingual ones. The development of academic language occupies a central role in the curriculum of these five schools. This is, to a great extent, the result of the limited exposure to literacy that many students have had outside of the school environment. The final section of this article describes how these schools disregard the antagonism towards immigrants and bilingual education that is currently characteristic of the United States and focus on the quality of their programmes.     

Measuring the Impact of Professional Accreditation on Student Experiences and Learning Outcomes

This research uses a conceptual model to examine the influence of a change in accreditation standards on a representative national sample of 203 engineering programs at 40 institutions. Based on data collected from more than 140 program chairs, 1,200 faculty, 4,300 graduates of 2004, and 5,400 graduates of 1994, the study investigates the differential impact of the change in accreditation standards on programs reviewed in different years during the period of transition. Despite significant variation across most of the measures and groups in 1994 (before the introduction of the new accreditation criteria), the 2004 evidence demonstrates a surprisingly uniform level of student experiences and outcomes. These findings suggest that engineering accreditation is beginning to accomplish its quality assurance goals. This is a revised version of a research paper presented at the meeting of the Association for Institutional Research, May 17, 2006, Chicago, IL.     

Michael Faraday, media man

Michael Faraday was an enthusiastic portrait collector, and he welcomed the invention of photography not only as a possible means of recording observations accurately, but also as a method for advertising science and its practitioners. This article (which is part of the Science in the Industrial Revolution series) shows that like many eminent scientists, Faraday took advantage of the burgeoning Victorian media industry by posing in various roles.     

Peripheral Narrowing among Experienced and Inexperienced Rifle Shooters under Low- and High-Stress Conditions

Abstract

This study examined Easterbrook's (1959) hypothesis that performance on a primary task would improve or at least be maintained with increased levels of arousal, while performance on a secondary task would decrease. To test this hypothesis, the performance of 20 collegiate rifle shooters (10 experienced, 10 inexperienced) on a primary target shooting task and a secondary auditory task were compared while shooting under low- and high-time stress conditions. Heart rate results, but not a self-report anxiety measure, provided evidence for the effectiveness of the stress manipulation. The results primarily supported Easterbrook's hypothesis. There were no differences in secondary task performance between experienced and inexperienced shooters. However, subjects who first underwent high time stress followed by low (H-L) shot better than those given the reverse order (L-H). These findings are discussed in relation to the attention demands of self-paced sports as well as the transfer effects of stress.     

Teaching and learning across disciplines: student and staff experiences in a newly modularised system

Within modular degrees it is sometimes possible for students to broaden their education by taking modules from outside their main programme of study. This is one significant aspect of modular degrees which has not been studied. In an effort to better understand this issue, the research reported in this paper explored the experiences: (1) of students taking modules from outside their programme of study and; (2) of staff teaching modules with significant numbers of students from other programmes. In total, 820 undergraduate students responded to an on-line survey; 12 academic staff members participated in interviews. The survey focused on students’ reasons for choosing the module, their experiences of assessment and their perceptions of workload. Interviews with academic staff focused on the influence of non-programme students on teaching and assessment practices. The discussion addresses the implications of student choice and classroom diversity for teaching and assessment in modular systems.