Assessing Anonymous Communication on the Internet: Policy Deliberations

Anonymous communication on the Internet offers new opportunities but has ill-understood risks. This article helps to ground the policy debates by examining some fundamental aspects of anonymous social behavior and current controversies over anonymous communications. It is a companion to the article in this issue, "Anonymous Communication Policies for the Internet: Results and Recommendations of the AAAS Conference." It examines the social character of anonymous communication and the ways that anonymous communication has played important roles for professionals such as journalists and the police. It also explains some of the new technological supports for anonymous communication on the Internet. The openness, decentralization, and transnational character of the Internet challenge the efficacy of traditional control mechanisms and have raised issues related to accountability, law enforcement, security and privacy, governmental empowerment, and e-commerce. Yet, to ban or restrict all anonymous communication online because of the harms it could bring would deny its benefits to those people who may legitimately gain from it. This article helps to understand how to balance these positions.     

What can Interpersonal Process Recall (IPR) offer academic development?

Abstract

Academic development is often seen as a compliance activity, divorced from the teaching context and what teachers are trying to achieve in their classroom. In this case study, we researched Interpersonal Process Recall (IPR) as a reflective, non-judgmental approach to help tutors identify coherence between their teaching intentions and practice. Our results provided evidence that IPR helped tutors reflect on ways to improve their teaching. It also led to unexpected ‘discoveries’ not typically afforded by conventional academic development. We conclude that IPR offers a formative, teacher-focussed and contextual approach that has not been clearly defined in the literature. We offer the IPR model followed in this study for academic developers and researchers alike.     

Outlier Detection in High-Stakes Certification Testing

Recent developrnents of person-Jit analysis in computerized adaptive testing (CAT) are discussed. Methods from stutistical process control are presented that have been proposed to classify an item score pattern as fitting or misjitting the underlying item response theory model in CAT. Most person-fit research in CAT is restricted to simulated data. In this study, empirical data from a certification test were used, Alternatives are discussed to generate norms so that bounds can be determined to classify an item score pattern as fitting or misfitting. Using bounds determined from a sample of a high-stakes certification test, the empirical analysis showed that dizerent types of misfit can be distinguished. Further applications using statistical process control methods to detect misfitting item score patterns are discussed.     

Book reviews

DIGITAL SENSATIONS: SPACE, IDENTITY, AND EMBODIMENT IN VIRTUAL REALITY. By Ken Hillis. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1999; pp. xi + 271. $47.95 cloth; $18.95 paper.

THOMAS KUHN: A PHILOSOPHICAL HISTORY FOR OUR TIMES. By Steve Fuller. Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 2000; pp. xvii + 472.

PROMETHEUS WIRED: THE HOPE FOR DEMOCRACY IN THE AGE OF NETWORK TECHNOLOGY. By Darin Barney. Chicago: Chicago University Press, 2000; pp. 340. $29.00.

DEWEY ON DEMOCRACY. By William R. Caspary. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2000; pp. 256. $39.95.

THE ORGANIZING PROPERTY OF COMMUNICATION. By François Cooren. Philadelphia and Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 2000; pp. 272. $50.00.

CRAFTING SOCIETY: ETHNICITY, CLASS, AND COMMUNICATION THEORY. By Donald G. Ellis. Mahwah: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Publishers, 1999; pp. xvi + 229. $49.95.

PROGAY/ANTIGAY: THE RHETORICAL WAR OVER SEXUALITY. Ralph R. Smith and Russel R. Windes. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, Inc., 2000; pp. xxiv + 240.

THEORIES OF CULTURE IN POSTMODERN TIMES. By Marvin Harris. Walnut Creek, CA: AltaMira Press, 1999; pp. 224. Cloth $62.00; Paper $22.95.

PRESIDENTIAL CRISIS RHETORIC AND THE PRESS IN THE POST‐COLD WAR WORLD. By Jim A. Kuypers. Westport, CT: Praeger, 1997; pp. xi + 242.     

Using visual support in preschool phonemic segmentation training

In an earlier training study we found that the use of visual support in phonemic segmentation training provided no additional value for poor readers and spellers from schools for children with learning disabilities, having problems segmenting speech (Kerstholt, van Bon & Schreuder 1994). Previous research (e.g., Hohn & Ehri 1983) suggests, however, that visual support – such as alphabet letters – does facilitate the segmentation teaching of preschoolers. Hence, it was expected that visual support would be beneficial in phonemic segmentation training only prior to formal reading and spelling instruction. The purpose of the present study was to test this expectation. One group of preschoolers was trained in phonemic segmentation with diagrams and alphabet letters as visual support, another group was trained without visual help. Results show the preschoolers to improve their phonemic segmentation, reading and spelling skill significantly. It made no difference, however, whether the children were trained in phonemic segmentation with or without the help of visual support. The findings of the present study and those of our earlier study indicate visual support to be useful in phonemic segmentation training only under certain conditions. It is suggested that differences in orthographic properties of the languages involved may explain the difference between the Anglo-Saxon studies that did show an additional effect of letters and a number of Dutch studies that did not.     

Narrative Pedagogies in Science, Mathematics and Technology

Despite years of research, there remains serious concern regarding the engagement of students in science, mathematics and technology education. In this paper, the authors explore how narrative pedagogies are used in science, mathematics and technology in order to make the subjects meaningful. The paper focuses specifically on the role and aesthetic nature of narrative as a pedagogical approach in these school subjects and between school sectors. Case study methodology was used to compare the findings of two independent studies investigating the role of narrative-based pedagogies in mathematics and science (first author) and technology (second author). Based on this comparison, this paper proposes two perspectives on narrative-based pedagogies that deal with the connection of students with the subject: inward-looking that situated the learner within the story generated around artefact creation, and outward-looking that situated the stories of the content into students’ lifeworlds. The use of this comparative lens enabled a higher level of analysis that could not have been achieved by each research programme, generating a broader narrative that provided deeper insight into the teaching and learning experience.     

Partnership as cultural practice in the face of neoliberal reform

This article examines the nature of an on-going educational partnership between a Higher Education institution and a number of Further Education (FE) colleges in the West Midlands region of England, forged against the backdrop of sectoral marketisation and neoliberal reform. The partnership originates in the organisation and administration of Initial Teacher Education (ITE) courses for FE student-teachers across a range of sites. These collaborative ITE programmes prepare students to teach in FE settings and conceptualise the FE teacher as a critically informed practitioner, equipped to engage with research and knowledge production practices in the sector. The permeable grouping of teacher educators that has emerged identifies itself as a ‘community of practice’ and uses this concept in the development of a pattern of cultural interaction that scaffolds the continuing professional development of practitioners across the region. This article outlines the underpinning values of the Higher Education (HE)/FE partnership and explores how the partnership has responded to the neoliberal policyscape. Through a number of examples, the authors illustrate how this community seeks to translate shared beliefs into everyday practice, not least through a critical and participatory approach to practitioner research activities which challenges the performative practices that have come to dominate FE in England.     

Classroom studies into cognitive style in mathematics for pupils with dyslexia in special education in the Netherlands, Ireland and the UK

The project reported here was designed to explore the cognitive style used by pupils with dyslexia when answering a range of mathematical questions. The research involved 132 pupils aged between 9 and 13 years, including 66 pupils in mainstream and 66 pupils in specialist schools, in three countries in Europe.
Detailed studies of the methods used by pupils attempting the given questions on a test of cognitive style suggested that they fell into two main categories. These pupils were observed when completing the test and their responses were categorised accordingly. The resulting numerical data were then analysed for differences between pupils within each country and between their non-dyslexic counterparts.
The results showed significant differences in the balance of cognitive styles employed by pupils with dyslexia as opposed to their non-dyslexic counterparts. Also there were interesting differences occurring between the pupils with dyslexia within the three countries on initial testing. Further differences were established after a six-month intervention period, suggesting that the characteristics of different curriculum models do have an impact upon pupils' flexibility as learners.     

Towards a better grasp of what matters in view of ‘the posts’

This response to McKenzie suggests that the issues of representivity, legitimacy and politics, inscribed within an institutional continuism characteristic of modernity within the McKenzie discourse, could well be recast within a reflexive view informed by insights derived with developing social theory. It briefly overviews the struggle for human agency that played out within the deconstructive engagements of the posts and probes how perspectives in social theory are opening the way for a break with features of environmental education as an institutional field. The review points to a reconstituting of the idea of environmental education research from scholastic field of/for environmental awareness and sustainable development, to a reflexive engagement within processes of social reproduction and reorientation in a changing world. A shift such as this would constitute a subtle change in a developing field of research, to situated design decisions of reflexive engagement (research) in social fields constituted within developing cultural contexts of risk.