Review and criticism

The network tone of voice

Mass Communication in China, John Howkins (New York: Longman, 1982).

Television and Radio in the United Kingdom, Burton Paulu (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1981).

Mass Media and Social Change, ed. Elihu Katz and Tamas Szecsko (Beverly Hills, CA: Sage Publications Inc., 1981).

Electronic Colonialism: The Future of International Broadcasting and Communication, Thomas L. McPhail (Beverly Hills, CA.: Sage, 1981).

The First Amendment Under Seige: The Politics of Broadcast Regulation, Richard E. Labunski (Westport, Conn: Greenwood Press, 1981).     

BUILDING THE INFRASTRUCTURE FOR EDUCATIONAL CHANGE

Strengthening educational programs requires a coordinated set of supporting activities. This article describes the infrastructure of the Educational Centre for Aging and Health of McMaster University (ECAH). This center seeks through professional education to enhance the quality of life and self‐determination of older persons, by increasing the number of skilled health professionals to care for aging individuals and by developing educational models concerning aging and health. We describe the clinical settings, technical and developmental support, and a system of data collection that provides feedback about health needs and the establishment of educational priorities. This center is attempting to meet the challenge of changing community needs for education for aging and health. Because of ECAH, aging and health has become more salient within this university. This article illustrates an infrastructure that other institutions can adapt to their own purposes in order to enhance gerontology and health education.     

Dyslexia and sequential order errors in reading

This paper reports a study of the antecedent-consequent model of reading dysfunction and possible relationships between verbal spatial order memory and sequence errors in word reading. It provides data on the nature and frequency of such errors. Performance by normal and dyslexic readers on a number of tasks was compared. The study supports the hypothesis that sequence errors of dyslexic readers are related to a developmental lag. This research was carried out in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Ed.D. at the University of Rochester. The author would like to express appreciation to Drs. Keith Rayner, Harry Reis, Ellsworth Woestehoff, Frank Greene and Achilles de Berardinis for their advice and assistance in the study.     

The two-tier instrument on photosynthesis: What does it diagnose?

The goal of this study was to understand how six college biology students complete the tasks of a traditional paper and pencil instrument designed to detect alternative conceptions about photosynthesis. Participants responded to relevant items in a two-tier diagnostic instrument in a think-aloud task. Responses to the traditional content question (first tier) were correct more often than reasons (second tier). However the participants' verbal data indicated that they relied upon test-taking strategies, not retrieval from memory, to choose their reasons. Some distractors caused participants to accept incorrect propositions being considered for the first time (rather than eliciting a misconception from extant knowledge). They also considered relevant exceptions and subtle language cues that justified their choices of incorrect reasons. Participants voiced concerns about the conscientiousness with which students complete such instruments. These findings raise concerns about the validity of using such instruments for diagnosing alternative conceptions.