The Indirect Association Between Television Exposure and Self-Protective Behavior as a Result of Worry About Crime: The Moderating Role of Gender

Persistent fear of crime can have serious consequences for one’s social behavior. Previous research has shown that people who fear crime are more likely to engage in self-protective behavior. Although a substantial amount of research has examined the relationship between television exposure and fear of crime, research on the association between television exposure and self-protective behavior is scarce. Based on cultivation theory and the mediated fear model, the current study aimed to examine whether news and crime drama television viewing are indirectly related to self-protective behavior via fear of crime. Structural equation modeling of data from 392 undergraduate students showed that news viewing and crime drama viewing is indirectly associated with self-protective behavior. The current study provided evidence for the importance of accounting for gender when investigating the complex issue of media effects on fear of crime and self-protective behavior.     

Developing Teaching Best Practice—Pedagogy,Preferences, and Professional Development

This column examines advances in public services internal and external to libraries. The focus is on how public services, such as instruction and education, programming, research consulting, and circulation evolve and impact users. The strength of the column is its broad, international focus and contributors are encouraged to explore issues and recent advances in public services relevant to their geographical region, as well as the larger, global audience. Interested authors are invited to submit proposals and articles to the column editor at andrea.falcone@ucdenver.edu     

The Representation of Altruistic and Egoistic Motivations in Children’s TV Programming

A content analysis of children’s television examined the frequency with which behaviors were (a) driven by altruistic versus egoistic motivations, (b) performed by affable/surly characters, (c) rewarded/punished, and (d) present in content popular among different age groups (2–5, 6–11, and 12–17 years old). We found that portrayal patterns stressed the importance of egoistic motivations (particularly competence, autonomy, and relatedness) for older children. The findings are interpreted in line with logic underlying the model of intuitive morality and exemplars (MIME; Tamborini, 2013), suggesting that media representations can influence the motivations of their viewers.     

The Use of Student Consulting Projects as an Active Learning Pedagogy: A Case Study in a Production/Operations Management Course

Active learning has attracted considerable attention in higher education in response to concerns about how and what students are learning. There are many different forms of active learning, yet most of them are classroom based. We propose an alternative to active learning in the classroom through active learning outside of the classroom in the form of student consulting projects. While the literature on student consulting has largely focused on projects to assist small business owners, this research demonstrates the potential for using student-consulting projects in the Production/Operations Management course. We use a case study to describe the use of a student-consulting project as an alternative to the other types of active learning described in the Operations Management education literature.     

Transitions to becoming a teacher on an initial teacher education and training programme

This article is based on research with a group of one‐year Postgraduate Certificate in Education secondary trainee teachers during their initial teacher education and training in England. It considers tensions between trainees’ prior experiences and conceptions of teaching and their training programme. In doing so, it seeks to examine how a trainee’s dispositions as revealed through practice in various contexts are reflective of Bourdieu’s ‘habitus’. Associated with this, the paper also examines how particular forms of pre‐existing cultural capital and manifestations of biographical identity also pre‐dispose trainees to form affinities and disaffinities within particular fields. Lacanian concepts of the symbolic, imaginary and real are used to help explain how trainee teachers articulate resonance and dissonance during their field experiences, particularly in relation to ontological concerns of securing a professional stable sense of self.     

Reading Instruction for English Learners in the Middle Grades: a Meta-Analysis

This meta-analysis synthesizes the last two decades of experimental and quasi-experimental research on reading instruction across academic contexts (e.g., social studies, science, mathematics, English language arts) for English learners (ELs) in grades 4 through 8, to determine (a) the overall effectiveness of reading instruction for upper elementary and middle school students who are ELs and (b) how the magnitude of the effect varies based on student, instructional, and study characteristics. The analysis included a total of 11 studies with 46 individual effect sizes and yielded a mean effect size of g?=?0.35 across all (i.e., standardized and unstandardized) reading measures, g?=?0.01 across standardized reading measures, and g?=?0.43 across unstandardized reading measures. For all reading, unstandardized reading, all vocabulary, and unstandardized vocabulary measures, results suggest that higher quality studies tended to have smaller effects, and these effects were even more evident for unstandardized measures (i.e., one unit increase in study quality was associated with decreased effects: g?=?0.21, g?=?0.30, g?=?0.24, g?=?0.30, respectively). For all comprehension measures, effects were larger for instruction that included both vocabulary and comprehension (g?=?0.39) than for instruction that focused on vocabulary alone (g?=?0.08). Results suggest the benefit of developing and refining high-impact approaches to reading instruction for ELs that can be delivered across content areas and grades.     

Potentiation of responding on a VR schedule by a stimulus correlated with reinforcement: Effects of diffuse and localized signals

In Experiment 1, rats were trained to leverpress on a variable ratio (VR) 30 schedule with a 500-msec delay between the reinforced response and food delivery. Subjects that experienced a signal during the delay responded faster than did control subjects that received the stimulus un-correlated with reinforcement. Higher response rates were obtained when the stimulus used to signal reinforcement was auditory rather than visual. Experiments 2 and 3 compared the effects of signaling reinforcement with either a localized or a diffuse light on responding maintained by VR schedules of reinforcement. Elevated response rates were observed with the diffuse stimulus, but the localized stimulus failed to produce such potentiation. Experiment 3 also examined the conditioned reinforcing power of localized and diffuse visual stimuli. These results are discussed with reference to (1) theories of selective association and sign tracking and (2) their implications for current theories of signaling reinforcement.     

Individual differences in children's ability to profit from picture adjunct aids

A paired-associate memory task with pictures and words as items was used to categorize fourth graders into four learner types: HH, high picture-high word; HL, high picture-low word; LH, low picture-high word; LL, low picture-low word. Some children in each classification read prose passages with picture adjunct aids; other children read the passages without adjunct aids. Although free recall for the prose passage yielded inconclusive data, a constructed response test for facts in the prose passages revealed significant Aptitude × Treatment interactions, such that poor paired-associate learners (i.e., LLs) profited more than did good paired-associate learners (i.e., HHs) from picture aids on the prose task. The children's standardized reading scores were positively related to memory performance, but good and poor readers did not differ in their ability to profit from picture aids. It was suggested that less-strategic learners, such as those who perform poorly on paired-associate tasks, are more likely to be helped by externally provided mediational aids, while more-strategic learners are more likely to be helped by instructions to generate their own mediational aids.     

Responding to student expectations: a partnership approach to course evaluation

This paper presents a study that used newly developed instruments to investigate student expectations at two points in a semester‐based course. Course convenors were able to make some changes in response to the feedback, explain to students how the feedback had informed the course processes, and work with tutors on delivery enhancements. The administration of these instruments, a partnership approach involving students, tutors and lecturers, contributed to the creation of a responsive teaching and learning environment. In addition to enabling real‐time changes to be made, evaluation of the total teaching and learning experience ensured that improvements were made to subsequent offerings of the same course. Also, insights from one course were evaluated in terms of applicability to other courses offered within the same academic discipline. The study finds that establishing student expectations provides a framework for developing a responsive and iterative approach to achieving excellence in teaching and learning.     

The developmental influence of sex composition in preschool classrooms: Boys fare worse in preschool classrooms with more boys

A multilevel modeling approach was employed to investigate the relation between sex composition and developmental change in 70 urban preschool classrooms. The research represents a unique contribution as (1) few studies have examined the influence of sex composition during the preschool years, (2) it represents the first research to use a continuous (i.e., sex ratio) as opposed to binary (i.e., mixed- versus single-sex) indicator for classroom sex composition, and (3) the sample represents an important and often neglected group (i.e., low-income children from urban schools). A series of HLM models were run, addressing the nested nature of the data (children within classrooms), and relating classroom sex composition to developmental change using the cognitive, motor, and social subscales from the Child Observation Record (COR). Overall, there were no main effects at the classroom-level for sex composition. However, a cross-level interaction indicated that, while girls’ development was not influenced by classroom sex composition, boys in classrooms with proportionally more boys fared significantly worse in terms of development as assessed by combined score on the COR. More specifically, this interaction was significant when predicting the COR cognitive subscale, but nonsignificant when predicting the COR social and motor subscales. This was true when controlling for the number of students at the classroom-level, as well as child's age and baseline ability (i.e., Time 1 COR) at the child-level. Implications for early childhood education policy are discussed.