Education for broadcasting: 1929–1963

As is implicit in its name, the purpose of the Association for Professional Broadcasting Education is to work to continually improve the quality of education available for college students interested in joining the profession of broadcasting. The Journal of Broadcasting, as an agency of the APBE, has published some six dozen articles dealing with this subject in the eight years of its existence. However, the rapid growth of broadcast education, the normal turnover of teaching personnel, and the more‐than‐one‐generation span of this field of study have combined to make it difficult to see where we have been, and doubly hard to see where our present activities (as educators and broadcasters interested in broadcast education) are leading us. The following article attempts a broad survey of the first thirty‐five years of broadcast education. It is published for the benefit of the students in these curricula, the professors that teach them, the broadcasters who are called upon to test the “end product” and those in each category who recognize that one of the most important criteria for judging whether a body of activities is truly a profession is the quality of the education made available to the would‐be practitioner, and the traditions that lay behind it.     

General Media,Minorities, and Research

Ronald G. Hick A Survey of Mass Communication (Gretna, La.: Pelican Publishing Co., 1977—$7.95, paper)

Everette E. Dennis The Media Society: Evidence About Mass Communication in America (Dubuque, Iowa: Wm. C. Brown, 1978—$6.95, paper)

Leslie J. Friedman Sex Role Stereotyping in the Mass Media: An Annotated Bibliography (New York: Garland Publishing, 1977—$25.00)

Maurine Beasley and Sheila Silver Women in Media: A Documentary Source Book (Women's Institute for Freedom of the Press, 3306 Ross Place, N.W., Washington, D.C. 20008—$5.95, paper)

Preben Sepstrup Consumption of Mass Communication: Construction of a Model on Information Consumption Behavior (Handelsvidenskabelig Boghandel, Fuglesangsalle 4, DK-8210 Aarhus V, Denmark—D. kr . 12, paper)

J. Michael Crabtree and Kenneth E. Moyer Bibliography of Aggresive Behavior: A Reader's Guide to the Research Literature (Alan R. Liss, Inc., 150 Fifth Ave., New York, N.Y. 10011—$35.00).

Marcia Guttentag and Shalom Saar, Evaluation Studies Review Annual, Volume 2: 1977 (Beverly Hills, Calif.: Sage Publications, 1977—$29.95)

Paul C. Cozby Methods in Behavioral Research (Palo Alto, Calif.: Mayfield Publishing, 1977—$6.95, paper)     

Yarn Bombing and the Aesthetics of Exceptionalism

This essay analyzes the international discourses and practices of yarn bombing—affixing knitted and crocheted works on public objects. Yarn bombing has recently become a nearly universally celebrated form of street art. The authors argue that acclaim for yarn bombing fashions an aesthetic regime that situates guerrilla needlework as an exceptional contribution to the urban landscape, while simultaneously policing alternate expressions of public art. By examining how yarn bombing's privileged style is related to modalities of gender, race, class, and capital, the authors supplement scholarly understandings of the politics of exceptionalism by highlighting the sovereign work of aesthetics.     

Variation in children's classroom engagement throughout a day in preschool: Relations to classroom and child factors

This study examined sources of variability in preschool children's positive and negative engagement with teachers, peers, and tasks, and how that variability was related to both classroom activity settings (e.g., teacher-structured time, outdoor time, transitions) and child factors (age, gender). Participants were 283 socioeconomically and linguistically diverse children drawn from 84 classrooms, 34–63 months old (M = 50.8, SD = 6.5). Each child's engagement was observed and rated multiple times within a single day. Results suggested that children's engagement varied significantly across the preschool day. Activity settings that provided children with a greater degree of choice (free choice and outdoor time) were associated with more positive engagement with peers and tasks, while teacher-structured activities were associated with more positive engagement with teachers. Transitions emerged as a difficult part of the day, associated with less positive engagement with teachers and tasks. Older children were rated higher on peer and task engagement. These findings, together with previous research, suggest that both characteristics of the classroom setting and child factors are associated with children's classroom engagement throughout a day in preschool.     

Policy change to improve pathology turnaround time and reduce costs – possible to do both?

Background:

Overcrowding and prolonged length of stay in emergency departments (ED) are increasing problems in hospitals. Rapid availability of all laboratory results has an impact on clinical decision-making, admissions or discharge decisions and resource utilisation. Increasing number of our urinary drugs of abuse (DOA) screens had a turnaround time (TAT) of up to 33 days after the discharge of the patient.

Materials and methods:

Following an audit and a consultation period with clinicians using the service, a policy change was implemented to reduce the use of gas chromatography mass spectroscopy (GCMS): all requests would have a standard immunoassay (IA) test panel undertaken unless specifically they requested GCMS (including medico-legal) analysis.

Results:

Almost all of the clinicians interviewed had no understanding of the DOA screening or the difference in the information generated between a confirmatory GCMS urine toxicology screen and IA DOA panel. It appeared none of the patients surveyed in the audit would have had a different clinical decision made if a GCMS had not been undertaken. Post change audit showed only 4.3% of drug requests for IA also received a confirmatory GCMS testing. The estimated saving post change implementation was $127,000 (AU $) in test costs alone over a two year period. The TAT of GCMS results was reduced to 3–4 days.

Conclusion:

A laboratory-led behavioural change in test requesting is possible and sustainable provided the reason is clinically sound and accompanied by consultation and availability of advice by phone when requested on test requesting or interpretation.     

Rob Kling and the Irvine School

Abstract

During the Industrial Revolution, manufacturing and related commercial activities led to the evolution of “dense cores” of heavily populated areas. Fundamental to the operation of these industrial‐commercial cores was the development of service activities—banking, risk‐bearing, legal services—which depended on rapid exchange of information or quick “cycle times of information” for effective decision making and allocation of resources. As these cores radiate resources away from the central body toward less populated areas, the need for short cycle times of information in rural areas has become apparent. For example, modem agriculture is an enterprise that requires short time cycles of information exchange. The technology for building computer‐based information networks to facilitate the desired rapid transfer of information exists. However, the installation of hardware linked by reliable, cost‐effective communications networks is only in the beginning stages. One computer‐based information network that has successfully met the challenges of rapid transfer of agricultural management information to farmers is the University of Nebraska's AGNET system.     

Going Critical: Perspective and Proportion in the Epistemology of Rob Kling 1

One foundational element of Rob Kling's research and writing is his critical perspective on the nature, role, and dynamics of computerization. His main argument was that one should view as dubious any statements that are not grounded in empirical evidence or theoretical analysis. Rob's work was replete with critical refutation, in which he challenged assumptions or statements about computerization and provided alternative interpretations. Much of his work delivered indictments against hyperbolic statements that claimed either utopian or dystopian outcomes from computerization. However, some of his own writings on emerging technologies tended to be dismissive and marginalizing, revealing in his own work some of the weaknesses he pointed out in others' rhetoric and writing. This article identifies intellectual traps inherent in critical perspectives that can catch even the most acute practitioners. The objective is to help elucidate and stabilize the epistemological foundations for Rob's critical perspective on the role of computerization.