Faculty/Staff Perceptions of a Standards-Based Exit Portfolio System for Graduate Students

New standards for certification were recently developed for speech–language pathology graduate training programs by the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association. The new standards are outcomes-based rather than process-based. Using a collective case study approach, this article highlights the perceptions of faculty and staff regarding use of a standards-based exit portfolio system for students in a Speech–Language Pathology graduate program at a medium-sized, public university after two semesters of use.Tena L. McNamara received a B.S. degree in Speech Pathology and Audiology and an M.S. degree in Audiology from Bradley University, and the Doctor of Audiology Degree from the University of Florida. She is now Assistant Professor at Illinois State University. Special interests include soundfield FM systems utilized in classroom settings, auditory processing disorders, electrophysiology, and phonological awareness. Rita L. Bailey is a speech–language pathologist and holds a B.S. and an M.S. in Speech–Language Pathology and an Ed.D. in Special Education, all from Illinois State University. She is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Speech Pathology and Audiology at Illinois State University. Her primary research interests include pediatric dysphagia, service-learning, alternative-augmentative communication methods, and voice. E-mail: tlmcnam@ilstu.edu.     

Does a Sentiment-Based Ethics of Caring Improve upon a Principles-Based One? The problem of impartial morality

My task in this paper is to demonstrate, contra Nel Noddings, that Kantian ethics does not have an expectation of treating those closest to one the same as one would a stranger. In fact, Kantian ethics has what I would consider a robust statement of how it is that those around us come to figure prominently in the development of one's ethics. To push the point even further, I argue that Kantian ethics has an even stronger claim to treating those closest to oneself as imperative than Noddings and sentiment-based ethical theory in general, proposes.     

Constraints on conceptual development: a case study of the acquisition of folkbiological and folksociological knowledge in Madagascar

How different are the concepts held by children who grow up in a North American middle class neighborhood and by children who grow up in a rural Malagasy fishing village? By probing Malagasy children's and adults' conceptual representations of human and animal kind, biological inheritance, innate potential and family relations, the studies presented in this Monograph address current debates about the acquisition and the nature of concepts in the domains of folkbiology and folksociology. Cross-cultural and developmental studies of this kind bear on the hypothesis that conceptual development in these domains is supported and constrained by innate conceptual content. If so, one would expect cross-cultural universality in the relevant adult concepts and their early emergence in childhood regardless of widely different input conditions. We chose to conduct these studies among the Vezo of Madagascar because the ethnographic literature has attributed to them folkbiological and folksociological theories that are radically different, even in commensurable, with those of North American adults. Vezo therefore provide a challenging test for the innate conceptual constraints hypothesis.Four studies probed aspects of biological and sociological reasoning of Vezo children, adolescents and adults through a number of adoption scenarios. Despite ethnographic reports to the contrary, we found cross-cultural convergence in adult concepts of biological inheritance, but the pattern of development of this concept differed greatly from that seen in North America. Moreover, in agreement with the ethnographic literature, we found that Vezo adults have constructed a distinctive theory of social group identity. However, we found that children's reasoning in this domain is under the influence of endogenous constraints that are overturned in the course of development. Finally, we found cross-cultural convergence in adults' concept of species kind, as well as evidence for the early emergence of this concept. In light of these findings, we discuss the nature of the constraints on children's conceptual representations, the developmental process through which the adults' concepts are constructed, and relations between Vezotheories of folkbiology and folksociology.     

How Integration Matters: An Alternative Vision for Urban Education in an Era of the Market

ABSTRACT

The widespread assumption in the United States today is that traditional urban public schools are failing. Market-based solutions, particularly charter schools, are seen as the way to improve urban education. How then can we understand a large urban district where educational actors have furthered a locally popular alternative vision? This article analyzes the comparison of Indianapolis, IN and Louisville, KY to demonstrate how four-decades-old desegregation orders continue to matter for the perceptions of urban school districts. The analysis shows how actors in Louisville utilized more favorable perceptions to fight for a compelling alternative narrative–integration–and against charter schools.     

A Whole-School Approach to Guidance: A Hong Kong Experience

As in England, approaches to guidance/pastoral care in Hong Kong have in recent years become more proactive and less exclusively reactive. This paper presents an example of this, focusing on a secondary school in Hong Kong which has sought to implement a whole-school approach through developmental guidance programmes. The writers' evaluation of this suggests that the integration of guidance/PSE into the whole-school curriculum was feasible, with a favourable outcome perceived by the school community. The findings also identified a number of important factors which facilitated the implementation and development of the policy.     

Incorporating the Narrative in Career Planning

The article makes a case for the construction of narratives as major focus for career planning. Narratives can be seen as an appropriate compliment to the analysis of objective test data that has dominated our practice in the past. Narrative is described as an approach for career counselors to understand clients' vocational experiences and future plans. Subjective and objective aspects of a career narrative are explored, and emphasis is placed on co-authoring a career story that is subjectively meaningful and objectively sound. The client's subjective understanding of the career story is given importance as being pivotal information that must be considered in career counseling. Five key interventions are described from a narrative perspective.     

Marketing undergraduates' attitudes towards query-based instructional machines as a possible learning medium

Six hundred and seventy-one undergraduates completed a questionnaire concerning their reactions to the idea that parts of their degree programmes might be delivered via Query Based Instructional Machines. The latter are commonplace in museums and other cultural attractions. They are menu-driven and operate on the touch-screen principle, thus allowing the user to browse through whichever aspects of a subject the person finds most interesting. Cognitive, affective and conative responses were measured and related to students' personal characteristics, degree programme, year of study, level of academic attainment, psychological involvement with a course, and innate tendencies vis-à-vis need for cognition, curiosity, and change leadership. The sample comprised students on three categories of degree programme: marketing, computing, or humanities. An analysis of covariance (ANCOVA) was completed using aggregated responses as dependent variables, degree type as the fixed factor (grouping variable), and personal characteristics and inclinations as covariates. There were a number of significant differences between the responses of the marketing students and students in the other groups.     

Social work with service families

Our aim in this paper is twofold. We wish to describe the work done with families referred for various problems, including child abuse, to one Area Social Services Team (Section 2). We then offer (Section 3) some comparisons to indicate the extent of the problem. The second task in subsequent sections is to use data from various sources on child abuse (Section 4), and our own information (Section 5) to suggest that Army life has inherent features exacerbating risk of child abuse. We make various conclusions, and proposals for improvement (Section 6). We draw material from the Army Welfare Inquiry Committee Report, known as the Spencer Report. 1 We would argue that the welfare of Service families requires special concern.