Sociology and Music Education: a further response to Swanwick

This paper is a response to Professor Swanwick's further critique of our sociological perspective on music education. We argue that criticisms made in relation to our positions on referenlialism, the ability of people to appreciate music cross‐culturally, and the various analytic categories of Meyer, Chester and Keil are all grounded in a desire to isolate the essence of ‘music’ from social and cultural processes. We further argue that the difficulties perceived with our positions do not follow from a belief in the culture‐specific significance of different musics per se, but rather from overly rigid and sometimes mistaken interpretation of our perspective. Finally, we point to the danger of assuming a cross‐cultural category, ‘music’, when many cultures have no equivalent word and use what we understand as ‘music’ in ways vastly different to ourselves.     

Faculty members’ perceptions of online program community and their efforts to sustain it

This study investigated faculty members’ perceptions of program community and what they do to support it in online graduate programs. Researchers developed and administered an online survey to ascertain perceptions of program community among education and engineering faculty members at United States, land-grant, research-extensive universities. Three hundred forty-four faculty members responded. Most participants thought that fostering community beyond courses was important. Faculty members used a variety of strategies to accomplish this task, including social media, synchronous communication and advising, face-to-face socials and orientations, and cohort models. Yet, many also relied on classroom strategies. Several participants indicated that they and their students lacked the time, resources or interest to pursue program community and that geographical distance and university reward policies complicated its establishment. Differences via discipline, gender and years of online teaching experience were also reported.     

Testing for the Transfer of Tacit Knowledge: Making a Case for Implicit Learning

Companies are beginning to realize that simply storing data in warehouses and databases is not sufficient to ensure the usefulness of that data or information. As information is processed with a purpose ( Ackoff & Emery, 1972 ), it becomes knowledge. Knowledge exists on many planes; one is the tacit‐explicit plane described by Polanyi (1966) . Knowledge‐based applications are becoming a key factor in determining organizational value. For example, Activity‐Based Costing (ABC) and Knowledge Value Added (KVA) are two methodologies that organizations use to measure explicit knowledge. However, this interest in measuring and managing knowledge creates two important questions. First, do companies include tacit knowledge in their measurements of knowledge? Second, can educators demonstrate that they are helping increase tacit knowledge? This paper posits that companies may not be including the full range of knowledge in their endeavor to measure knowledge in their organizations. To help make a case for including tacit knowledge and implicit learning, an active learning exercise is created to demonstrate a method to quantify and test for changes in both types of knowledge. The results show that the activity created observable changes in explicit and tacit knowledge. Future research will need to concentrate further on understanding how the two types of knowledge interact. For now though, these results demonstrate one way to observe the two types of knowledge and more importantly, point out the need for organizations to find ways to value both implicit and explicit knowledge.     

Cable Communications

Cable Television Interconnection (1974, 40 pp., around $4.00, paper)

Educational Uses of Cable Television (1974, 105 pp. price not known, paper)

William G. Shepherd and Thomas G. Gies' Regulation in Further Perspective: The Little Engine that Might (Cambridge, Mass.: Ballinger Publishing Co., 1974—$13.50)

Districting: Report of the Advisory Committee on Cable Communications (Metropolitan Council, 300 Metro Square Bldg., 7th and Robert, St., Paul, Minn. 55101—price not given, paper)     

Shared patron driven acquisition of E-books in the California State University Library Consortium

The California State University (CSU) system has a history of consortial purchasing of electronic resources. Its most recent endeavor is consortial Patron Driven Acquisition (PDA) of e-books. Two PDA e-book pilots, funded by the CSU Chancellor's Office, were conducted in 2011 and 2012. The aim of the pilots was to reduce duplication of e-books on CSU campuses, and determine if consortial PDA is appropriate for the CSU. This article provides an overview of CSU's cooperative collection development efforts, results from both pilots, and addresses how a consortial PDA program affects collection development locally on one CSU campus.     

Theories of communication,human nature,and the world: Associations and implications

Although much scholarly attention has been devoted to conceptualizing communication, few attempts have been made to examine the practical consequences of individuals’ beliefs about communication. This paper reports the results of an initial investigation into the relationships among personal theories of communication (or message design logics), privately held philosophies of human nature, and personal assumptions about the world. Results demonstrated significant differences in participants’ philosophies of human nature and assumptions about the world as a function of message design logic. Implications and directions for future research are addressed.     

Interpersonal construct differentiation,attitudinal confidence,and the attitude‐behavior relationship

Subjects differing in interpersonal construct differentiation completed a measure of religious attitude, a measure of attitudinal confidence, and a 20‐item religious behavior self‐report inventory. High‐confidence subjects exhibited greater attitude‐behavior consistency (r = .69) than did low‐confidence subjects (r = .51). Despite high power (N = 313), high‐ and low‐differentiation subjects did not differ significantly (r = .61 and .66, respectively), indicating that the role of differentiation as a direct mediator of non‐interpersonal attitude‐behavior consistency is a comparatively small one. But the influence of attitudinal confidence on attitude‐behavior consistency was larger for low‐differentiation subjects (r = .75 for high confidence, .51 for low) than for high‐differentiation subjects (r = .68 for high confidence, .50 for low), suggesting that interpersonal construct system development may indirectly influence the relationship of non‐interpersonal attitudes and behaviors.     

The components of the female athlete triad do not identify all physically active females at risk

Abstract

The purpose of the present study was to assess the effectiveness of the triad components (amenorrhoea, disordered eating, and osteoporosis) in identifying physically active women at risk of long-term health problems. Eighty-two females (mean age 31.1 years, s = 6.7; body mass 58.4 kg, s = 6.6; stature 1.65 m, s = 0.06) completed training, menstrual, and dietary questionnaires. Bone mineral density and size-adjusted bone mineral density were assessed at the femoral neck and lumbar spine using dual energy X-ray absorptiometry. Seventy-eight percent of participants were eumenorrhoeic, 20% were oligomenorrhoeic, and 2% were amenorrhoeic. Thirty-six percent and 55% reported disordered eating practices in the present and past respectively. Eighty-one percent, 17%, and 2% were classified as normal, osteopaenic, and osteoporotic at the femoral neck respectively; 92% were normal, 7% osteopaenic, and 1% osteoporotic at the lumbar spine. No significant differences in femoral neck size-adjusted bone mineral density were observed between eumenorrhoeic and oligo/amenorrhoeic participants (F _2,80 = 0.119, P = 0.73); eumenorrhoeic participants had significantly greater lumbar spine size-adjusted bone mineral density (F _2,80 = 9.79, P = 0.003). Disordered eating participants had significantly lower femoral neck size-adjusted bone mineral density than those reporting no disordered eating (F _2,80 = 13.816, P = 0.000). Twenty-two percent of participants fulfilled triad criteria, while 55% were “at risk” of long-term health problems. An accumulation of conditions resulted in lower lumbar spine size-adjusted bone mineral density (F _1,80 = 6.074, P = 0.004). The current triad components do not identify all women “at risk” and more appropriate criteria such as exercise-related menstrual alterations, disordered eating, and osteopaenia are suggested.