Unemployment and social class stigmas

Western economies have seen a shift away from a model of job security to a model of work precarity. Cycles of unemployment are a defining feature of the new precarious economy. Given these cycles of unemployment, it becomes imperative to explore the barriers to reemployment. The present study uses stigma communication to explore the intersection of two barriers to reemployment: the stigmatization of unemployment and social class position. Analysis of 40 interviews revealed that the meaning of unemployment changed depending on the perceived social class of an unemployed person. Participants described typical unemployed people as pathologically lazy and unmotivated. Upper class unemployed people were stigmatized as a product of privilege. Middle class unemployed people were relatively unstigmatized. The typical unemployed person merged with the typical unemployed lower class person, suggesting that the dominant meaning of unemployment assumes that unemployment is a lower class phenomenon that is preventable if the lower class person would work harder.     

Prepracticum Service‐Learning: Examining the Relationship With Counselor Self‐Efficacy and Anxiety

Prepracticum service‐learning is an integral part of the curriculum for counselor education students at a large southwestern university. Service‐learning is accomplished by placing novice students in school or community agency settings to acquire early, practical, field‐based experience. Activities are more structured and supervised than in an internship or practicum. Analysis indicated that prepracticum service‐learning had a positive significant relationship with counselor self‐efficacy and a significant negative relationship with student anxiety. However, substantial counseling course work and experience with counseling‐related work both had a stronger influence than did prepracticum service‐learning, indicating that the latter is more appropriate for novice students.     

“我不能”的葬礼

常言道:失败乃成功之母。这也是我们在失败时经常用来鼓励自己继续前行的话。如果说这句话略带点阿Q,是精神胜利法的话,那么下面这则小故事则给人置之死地而后生的破釜沉舟的勇气和力量。细细品味吧!     

What makes for effective feedback: staff and student perspectives

Since the early 2010s the literature has shifted to view feedback as a process that students do where they make sense of information about work they have done, and use it to improve the quality of their subsequent work. In this view, effective feedback needs to demonstrate effects. However, it is unclear if educators and students share this understanding of feedback. This paper reports a qualitative investigation of what educators and students think the purpose of feedback is, and what they think makes feedback effective. We administered a survey on feedback that was completed by 406 staff and 4514 students from two Australian universities. Inductive thematic analysis was conducted on data from a sample of 323 staff with assessment responsibilities and 400 students. Staff and students largely thought the purpose of feedback was improvement. With respect to what makes feedback effective, staff mostly discussed feedback design matters like timing, modalities and connected tasks. In contrast, students mostly wrote that high-quality feedback comments make feedback effective – especially comments that are usable, detailed, considerate of affect and personalised to the student’s own work. This study may assist researchers, educators and academic developers in refocusing their efforts in improving feedback.     

A content analysis of research published in the Journal of Research in Science Teaching from 1985 through 1989

To determine if actual practice was consistent with commonly recommended research methods and procedures, this study examined 130 studies reported over a 5-year period in three volumes of the Journal of Research in Science Teaching (JRST). The results were consistent with similar previous analyses (Shaver & Norton, 1980a, 1980b; Wallen & Fraenkel, 1988a) and indicate that appropriate generalizations beyond the confines of the reported studies may be impossible for most (64%) of the JRST studies surveyed. The findings also show that replication studies, which could be employed to offset deficiencies in generalizability, were not commonly encountered (3%) in these 130 reports. In addition, the study results indicate that many researchers (48%) do not properly restrict their conclusions based on the limits imposed by the accessible populations and samples used; nor do they typically provide possible alternative explanations for the outcomes obtained (76%). These findings prompt the following recommendations: 1. A greater awareness and use of replication as a check on generalizability should be encouraged by the science education community. 2. Clearly defined populations (target and accessible) and fully described samples warrant increased attention as report components from authors, reviewers, and editorial board members of JRST. 3. In light of the difficulties inherent in effecting random selection in educational settings, a greater emphasis should be placed on recognizing the limits that the underlying assumptions of inferential statistics place on research conclusions. The results of this study indicate that the methodological quality of published science education research should remain a concern for both practitioners and readers.     

Investigations of Temperament at Three to Seven Years: The Children''s Behavior Questionnaire

This article reviews evidence on the reliability and validity of the Children's Behavior Questionnaire (CBQ), and presents CBQ data on the structure of temperament in childhood. The CBQ is a caregiver report measure designed to provide a detailed assessment of temperament in children 3 to 7 years of age. Individual differences are assessed on 15 primary temperament characteristics: Positive Anticipation, Smiling/Laughter, High Intensity Pleasure, Activity Level, Impulsivity, Shyness, Discomfort, Fear, Anger/Frustration, Sadness, Soothability, Inhibitory Control, Attentional Focusing, Low Intensity Pleasure, and Perceptual Sensitivity. Factor analyses of CBQ scales reliably recover a three-factor solution indicating three broad dimensions of temperament: Extraversion/Surgency, Negative Affectivity, and Effortful Control. This three-factor solution also appears to be reliably recovered in ratings of children in other cultures (e.g., China and Japan). Evidence for convergent validity derives from confirmation of hypothesized relations between temperament and socialization-relevant traits. In addition, parental agreement on CBQ ratings is substantial. The CBQ scales demonstrate adequate internal consistency, and may be used in studies requiring a highly differentiated yet integrated measure of temperament for children in this age range.     

Behavioral momentum in academics: Using embedded high‐p sequences to increase academic productivity

The use of high‐probability (high‐p) request sequences has enjoyed support in the applied behavioral literature as a method to increase compliance. Based on the theory of behavioral momentum, high‐probability sequences increase the rate of responding, and subsequent rate of reinforcement, within a response class. This increase in density of reinforcement results in increased responding for the response class as a whole. Early research in this area had focused mainly on compliance issues for individuals with developmental disabilities. However, more recently the utility of high‐p sequences has been examined within the context of academics. The purpose of these two experiments was to examine the use of high‐p sequences with two academic tasks—letter‐writing and mathematics problem completion. The results of these studies suggest that high‐p sequences can be used to increase academic productivity. Moreover, the addition of experimenter‐delivered reinforcers to existing high‐p sequences enhances overall behavioral persistence. Theoretical and applied implications of persistence and behavioral momentum are discussed. © 2004 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Psychol Schs 41: 789–801, 2004.     

Can training improve marker accuracy at detecting contract cheating? A multi-disciplinary pre-post study

Contract cheating occurs when students outsource assessed work. In this study, we asked experienced markers from four disciplines to detect contract cheating in a set of 20 discipline-specific assignments. We then conducted a training workshop to improve their detection accuracy, and afterwards asked them to detect contract cheating in 20 new assignments. We analysed the data in terms of sensitivity (the rate at which markers spotted contract cheating) and specificity (the rate at which markers spotted real student work). Pre-workshop marker sensitivity was 58% and specificity was 83%. Post-workshop marker sensitivity was 82% and specificity was 87%. The increase in sensitivity was statistically significant, but the increase in specificity was not. These results indicate that markers can often detect contract cheating when asked to do so, and that training may be helpful in improving their accuracy. We suggest that markers’ suspicions may be crucial in addressing contract cheating.     

Postmodern Challenges and Modern Horizons: education ‘for being for the environment‘

This article argues that a ‘humanly‐constructive’ critical theory of environmental education called ‘a critical ecological ontology for educational inquiry’ provides a necessary complement to the ‘socially‐critical’ perspective. This humanly‐constructive curriculum theory focuses on our individual and collective ‘being‐in‐the‐world’. It invites learners, teachers and researchers to study how their ‘lived experience’ of socio‐environmentally problematic circumstances is shaped and stretched globally by various economic and technological imperatives. In so doing, ‘a critical ecological ontology’ highlights the personal politic required for a socio‐ecological praxis. Of particular relevance to the socio‐ecological politic ‘for being’ are interpretations of postmodern agency that emerge from three practical applications of ‘a critical ecological ontology’. This dialogue of theory and practice is necessary in the critical curriculum project of environmental education     

The Role of Study Habits in Foreign Language Courses

The purpose of this study was to determine which study habits distinguish successful from unsuccessful foreign language learners. Participants were 219 college students from a variety of disciplinary backgrounds, enrolled in either Spanish, French, German or Japanese classes. A canonical discriminant analysis (F [6, 117], p < 0.0001; canonical R = 0.92) revealed that, compared to their high-performing counterparts, students with the lowest levels of foreign language performance tended to report that: (a) they frequently include a lot of irrelevant or unimportant information in their notes; (b) when they have difficulty with their assignments, they do not seek help from their instructor; (c) they put their lecture notes away after taking the test and never consult them again; (d) they have to be in the mood before attempting to study; (e) they have a tendency to doodle or to daydream when they are trying to study; and (f) they do not look up in a dictionary the meanings of words that they do not understand. Implications are discussed.