Henry Barnard—Educator of Teachers

Palestinian youth face developmental, cultural, and political barriers that impede them from fully engaging in civic life. Non-traditional, youth-centered pedagogies of engagement, like community-based service-learning (CBSL), have shown promise to motivate marginalized populations and provide space and roles for them to form individual identities while developing civic skills. Using data collected through focus group interviews, this paper reports how West Bank youth who participated in a non-governmental organization's CBSL leadership program were impacted.     

STUDENTS' ATTITUDES TOWARD THE ELDERLY IN THE PEOPLE'S REPUBLIC OF CHINA

A Chinese translation of a standardized instrument was used to investigate the attitudes of 199 Mainland Chinese university students concerning the elderly. The findings revealed that students' attitudes were in the positive and neutral ranges and that elderly males were perceived more favorably than elderly females. The findings also revealed that the majority of students had considered working with the elderly. Those who reported to have been closer to an elderly person held more positive attitudes. The findings of this study are compared to similar studies done in other countries and discussed within the context of Chinese culture and society.     

PUSH(ing) Limits: Using Fiction in the Classroom for Human Behavior and the Social Environment

The use of fiction and autobiography in social science course work has been shown to enhance students' learning experience. Using the novel PUSH, by Sapphire, we designed a curriculum supplement for the social work course, human behavior and the social environment (HBSE) that encourages students to integrate course content in an innovative way and enables them to apply the material to life-like situations. The HBSE supplement allows students to explore poignant and problematic issues that push them past intrapersonal and interpersonal limits. Classes are infused with energy and the critical consciousness of the students. Final projects are a systematic case study of a chosen character (or characters) in the book and are a testament to student critical thinking and creativity. Methods, assignments, and student experiences in an introductory BSW course are described.     

Anthrax in transit; practical experience and intellectual exchange

Focusing on three Anglo-American outbreaks of industrial anthrax, this essay engages the question of how local circumstances influenced the transmission of scientific knowledge in the late nineteenth century. Walpole (Massachusetts), Glasgow, and Bradford (Yorkshire) served as important nodes of transnational investigation into anthrax. Knowledge about the morphology and behavior of Bacillus anthracis changed little while in transit between these nodes, even during complex debates about the nature of bacterial morphology, disease causation, and spontaneous generation. Working independently of their more famous counterparts (Robert Koch and Louis Pasteur), Anglo-American anthrax investigators used visual representations of anthrax bacilli to persuade their peers that a specific, identifiable cause produced all forms of anthrax-malignant pustule (cutaneous anthrax), intestinal anthrax, and woolsorter's disease (pneumonic anthrax). By the late 1870s, this point of view also supported what we would today call an ecological notion of the disease's origins in the interactions of people, animals, and microorganisms in the context of global commerce.     

Building an innovation hub: A case study of the transformation of university roles in regional technological and economic development

Universities have assumed an expanded role in science and technology-based economic development that has become of interest to catch-up regions as well as to leading innovation locales. This paper examines how the role of the university has evolved from performing conventional research and education functions to serving as an innovation-promoting knowledge hub though the case of Georgia Institute of Technology (Georgia Tech). This case is discussed in the context of state efforts to shift the region from an agricultural to an industrial to an innovation-driven economy. Central to the transformation of Georgia Tech as a knowledge hub is the emergence of new institutional leadership, programs, organizational forms and boundary-spanning roles that meditate among academic, educational, entrepreneurial, venture capital, industrial, and public spheres. Comparisons between Georgia Tech's experiences and those of university roles in selected other catch-up regions in the southern United States highlight the importance to the case of networked approaches, capacity building, technology-based entrepreneurial development, and local innovation system leadership. Insights on the transformation of universities and the challenges of fostering a similar transformation in regional economies are offered.     

Rediscovering the Impact of Marketisation: Dimensions of social segregation in England's secondary schools, 1994-99

Gorard and Fitz have used an index to examine the segregation of pupils eligible for free school meals in Wales and England. They suggest that secondary schools have become less segregated since the quasi-market reforms. This paper describes two segregation indices, the index used by Gorard and Fitz and a version of the index of isolation, suggesting that the latter is a more appropriate measure of segregation. Data are then presented relating to English secondary schools from 1994 to 1999. The analysis shows a significant increase in segregation during that period using either measure of segregation. While it is possible that this increase is from a lower baseline than the level of segregation prior to the reforms, the findings suggest that in the late 1990s there has been a consistent rise in the average level of segregation in English local education authorities.     

Student Motivation to Learn via Computer Conferencing

This study investigates why some university students appear motivated to learn via computer conferencing (CC) whereas others do not, exploring the correlations of three key aspects of student motivation—reasons for engaging in academic learning (goal orientation), beliefs that they can acquire the ability to use CC (self-efficacy), and beliefs that learning to use CC will help them learn the course material (outcome expectations)—with satisfaction and with the frequency of CC contributions. Participants (n = 79) came from 4 graduate-level face-to-face courses and 1 undergraduate DE course. The results suggest that students who believe that CC will help them learn the course material are more likely to express satisfaction and to be active online, that students who believe that they are capable of learning how to use CC are more likely to be active online, and that students who are concerned about their relative performance compared to others tend to send fewer messages to conferences where online activity is not graded. Practical implications for instructors and suggestions for future research are described.