Testing the Engagement Theory of Program Quality in CACREP‐Accredited Counselor Education Programs

This study examined the engagement theory of program quality ( Haworth & Conrad, 1997 ), which highlights positive student learning outcomes that result from stakeholder involvement in program evaluation within master's‐level graduate programs. A total of 481 master's‐level counseling students and 63 faculty members, representing 68 Council for Accreditation of Counseling and Related Educational Programs (CACREP)–accredited counselor education programs, participated in the study. Findings reveal that engagement theory is a potentially useful quality assessment resource for CACREP‐accredited programs in their efforts at enhancing and sustaining program quality.     

Training Level, Acculturation, Role Ambiguity, and Multicultural Discussions in Training and Supervising International Counseling Students in the United States

This research partially replicated Nilsson and Anderson’s Professional Psychology: Research and Practice (2004) study on training and supervising international students. It investigated the relationships among international counseling students’ training level, acculturation, supervisory working alliance (SWA), counseling self-efficacy (COSE), role ambiguity (RA) and multicultural discussion (MD) in supervision. In the present study (N = 71), two acculturation variables and RA predicted SWA. SWA and MD did not predict COSE, while language use in acculturation did. Training level differences were only associated with COSE. Findings indicate that supervisors should attend to role ambiguity and multicultural issues when supervising international students, including acculturation issues and their impact on students’ performance. Results are discussed against Nilsson and Anderson’s original study and the implications for supervision of international counseling students.     

‘A lot more to learn than where babies come from’: controversy,language and agenda setting in the framing of school-based sexuality education curricula in Australia

Sexuality education in Australian schools continues to struggle in its ability and willingness to address many of the broader social issues associated with sexuality, such as the needs of gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgendered, intersex and queer (GLBTIQ) students. Studies involving teachers have demonstrated that a reticence on their part to teach GLBTIQ-inclusive sexuality education is driven by a lack of training in handling ‘sensitive’ issues, a fear of backlash and confusion over their obligations under relevant departmental policies. This reticence may, in part at least, stem from a commonly held inference that the inclusion of queer sexualities is inherently ‘controversial’. There appears to be a tendency for curricula and government directives to ‘juggle’ principles of social justice for marginalised sexualities with ‘risk management’ policies, which seek to screen course content for potential ‘controversy’. Much of this controversy has its roots in the language and rhetoric used to describe and discuss issues dealt with in sexuality education curricula. The paper demonstrates, through the process of ‘languaging’, how the language and rhetoric of controversy and sexuality can be exposed so that they may be better addressed through policy and government directives.     

First Date Sexual Expectations: The Effects of Who Asked,Who Paid,Date Location,and Gender

This investigation examined the effects of who asked, who paid, date location, and gender on first date sexual expectations and related attitudes. Participants from a large southwestern university in the United States reported that men hold higher first date sexual expectations than women, particularly when men asked and paid for the date and the date occurred at an apartment versus the movies or restaurant. When women asked and paid for the date and the date occurred at her apartment, men hold higher rape myth acceptance beliefs than when the man asked and paid for the date or when either sex asked for the date and the partners “went dutch” on expenses. Additional sexual- and gender-related findings, discussion, and implications follow.     

Designing Interdisciplinary Assessments in Sciences for College Students: An example on osmosis

College science education needs to foster students' habit of mind beyond disciplinary constraints. However, little research has been devoted to assessing students' interdisciplinary understanding. To address this problem, we formed a team of experts from different disciplines to develop interdisciplinary assessments that target introductory college-level science. We started our project by focusing on osmosis, a topic that involves knowledge from multiple science disciplines. We developed an instrument focusing on this topic and administered it to 3 classes of college students. A Rasch partial credit analysis showed that the items demonstrated satisfactory psychometric properties. The findings also revealed the differences between student's disciplinary and interdisciplinary understanding. The educational implications of the study were discussed.     

Toward an Analytic Framework of Interdisciplinary Reasoning and Communication (IRC) Processes in Science

Students need to think and work across disciplinary boundaries in the twenty-first century. However, it is unclear what interdisciplinary thinking means and how to analyze interdisciplinary interactions in teamwork. In this paper, drawing on multiple theoretical perspectives and empirical analysis of discourse contents, we formulate a theoretical framework that helps analyze interdisciplinary reasoning and communication (IRC) processes in interdisciplinary collaboration. Specifically, we propose four interrelated IRC processes—integration, translation, transfer, and transformation, and develop a corresponding analytic framework. We apply the framework to analyze two meetings of a project that aims to develop interdisciplinary science assessment items. The results illustrate that the framework can help interpret the interdisciplinary meeting dynamics and patterns. Our coding process and results also suggest that these IRC processes can be further examined in terms of interconnected sub-processes. We also discuss the implications of using the framework in conceptualizing, practicing, and researching interdisciplinary learning and teaching in science education.