Education and Muslim Identity: The case of France

The French republican principles upon which public education is based include strict separation of religion from schooling. At the same time, public funds subsidise a large number of private schools, over 90% Catholic. Virtually no recognition or public support is provided for Muslim or Jewish schools, nor is there any public or group demand that it do so. This article examines the complex and changing context in which Muslim identity has evolved in France for and by second and third generation immigrants of Muslim origin from the Maghreb (Algeria, Morocco, Tunisia) or to a lesser degree from ex-Yugoslavia, Turkey or sub Saharan Africa. The latest phase is the most confrontational as the Muslim origin population, regardless of its actual heterogeneity or length of stay in France, is affected by the waves of terrorism and fundamentalism flowing from the Algerian civil war. Ill-informed French public opinion frequently amalgamates all Maghreb or Machrek individuals and communities when faced with the threat of violence. This article situates the official discourse which proclaims that the state and its schools promote a secular and equal opportunity for all and at the same time makes no allowance for cultural, linguistic, religious or socio-economic diversity. It examines more recent attempts by French governments to address the longer term needs and aspirations (especially religious) of immigrant populations of Muslim origin as it becomes clear that these populations are massively becoming French citizens and have no further plans to return to countries of origin. The article concludes with reflections on the specificity of the French approach to religious and cultural diversity. Above all, it emphasises a certain unity of view across political parties and communities that this specificity, although in crisis, does not require major change of the traditional republican approach.     

Charles D. Brockett (2005). Political Movements and Violence in Central America

This important book is a study of popular protest and governmentrepression in Guatemala and El Salvador. It draws on an eventsdatabase comparing popular protest with levels of governmentalrepression over time. The book should be helpful to scholarsof social movements, contentious politics, and democratization.It ties in with similar work by Sidney Tarrow and Charles Tillyon other regions of the world and should be useful to scholarsinterested in contention beyond Central America. Brockett's database allows him to trace strikes and protestson the one hand, and government response or repression on theother hand. In Guatemala his data extend from 1955 through 1984while his Salvadorean data reach from 1976 through 1991. Thestudy focuses on two cases that have received relatively littleattention from political science, particularly with respectto Guatemala.     

Rates of return as informer of public policy

Policy makers often employ rate of return (RoR) information in formulating public resource allocation decisions. A noteworthy present example is the World Bank, which uses RoR to advise Third World countries (TWCs) as they set student subsidy levels, tuition levels, and allocations by level of education (i.e., elementary, secondary, higher). This paper demonstrates that in the main RoR may be inappropriate policy devices for such aims because (1) major validity problems surround RoR formulations, (2) emphasis upon average RoR may misinform policy, and (3) RoR calculations are more sensitive to cost than benefits variations. It is concluded that true RoR to education are higher than conventionally estimated and in most cases support increased public resource allocations to various levels of education. Further, RoR evidence does not support reallocations from higher to lower educational levels, and World Bank advice to TWCs, most notably sub-Saharan Africa, may be in error.     

Cognitive play and mathematical learning in computer microworlds

Based on the constructivist principle of active learning, we focus on children's transformation of their cognitive play activity into what we regard as independent mathematical activity. We analyze how, in the process of this transformation, children modify their cognitive play activities. For such a modification to occur, we argue that the cognitive play activity has to involve operations of intelligence which yield situations of mathematical schemes.We present two distinctly different cases. If the first case, the medium of the cognitive play activity was a discrete computer microworld. we illustrate how two children transformed the playful activity of making pluralities into situations of their counting schemes. In the second case, the medium was a continuous microworld. We illustrate two children's transformation of the playful activity of making line segments (sticks) into situations of their counting schemes. We explain one child's transformation as a generalizing assimilation because it was immediate and powerful. The transformation made by the other child was more protracted, and social interaction played a prominent role. We specify several types of accommodations induced by this social interaction, accommodations we see as critical for understanding active mathematics learning. Finally, we illustrate how a playful orientation of independent mathematical activity can be inherited from cognitive play.     

Sex in College Relationships: The Role Television Plays in Emerging Adults’ Sexual Expectations in Relationships

The purpose of this study was to determine whether emerging adults use relationship television to form their expectations for sexual interaction in romantic relationships. Considering emerging adulthood is a unique period of development providing opportunities to experiment with adult identities, and relationship television contains multiple consistent messages about gender roles in sexual relationships, we questioned whether emerging adults’ relationship television viewing may be related to their sexual expectations in relationships. Our findings indicated women's relationship television viewing was associated with expecting more sexual interaction in their relationship. Men's sexual expectations were moderated by perceived realism. Men who watched more relationship television, and perceived that television to be less realistic, reported expecting less frequent sexual interaction.     

Control of pigeons’ keypecking by the left-right arrangement of stimuli

Control of pigeons’ keypecking by conditionalities in the spatial arrangement of two element stimuli (designated A and B) was investigated. In Experiment 1, reinforcement for keypecking was made conditional upon the left-right location of A and B: Reinforcement was available when A was on the left and B was on the right (AB), but not on BA, AA, or BB trials. The pigeons successfully discriminated the rewarded AB configuration, but only after a stage in which a particular element in a particular location (e.g., A on left) primarily controlled pecking. Experiments 2 and 3 systematically replicated these findings and included controls to discount discrimination of the AB compound on the basis of the temporal order (e.g., A followed by B) rather than the spatial configuration of the elements. During a generalization test in Experiment 4, the elements were presented singly either in the left (AX, BX) or right (XA, XB) positions. As would be expected had the animals learned “A on the left, B on the right is rewarded,” responding on AX trials exceeded that on XA trials, and responding on XB trials exceeded that on BX trials.     

Designing an Interactive Web-based Tutorial for Health Sciences Students: A Collaborative Library Project

This column describes the creation of an online interactive tutorial for health sciences students in a general library at a large, urban university. The project was a collaborative effort among the health sciences subject librarian, the library’s web programmer, an assessment and user services librarian, and an instructional support specialist. The column details the initial exploration, design, web programming, student usability study, and subsequent upgrades to the tutorial. Implementation of the tutorial is discussed as well as sampled student input. The effort resulted in the design of improved and more versatile open access coding available for any library to use.