Project start: An evaluation of a community‐wide school‐based intervention to reduce truancy

The study evaluated the effectiveness of a community‐based court intervention aimed at reducing truancy in a large urban school district. A quasi‐experimental design was used to assess attendance outcomes for 567 truants matched on demographics and drawn from three categories of intervention (no court referral, traditional court referral, and court referral with community‐based services). A court group by time ANOVA was conducted. Truancy levels remained high and unchanged for nonreferred truants throughout the study. Both court groups showed a significant drop in absences 30 days post court. During the subsequent 30‐day period, the community‐based court maintained the reduced rates, while the traditional court group showed higher truancy levels than the community‐based court group. No significant interaction effects were found between court groups and sex, age group, or ethnic categories. At one year follow‐up, the community‐based court group continued to show significantly lower levels of unexcused absences compared to the other two experimental groups. © 2005 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Psychol Schs 42: 657–667, 2005.     

Online Versus Face-to-Face Training of Critical Time Intervention: A Matching Cluster Randomized Trial

This study examined the effectiveness of online education to providers who serve people experiencing homelessness, comparing online and face-to-face training of Critical Time Intervention (CTI), an evidence-based case management model. The authors recruited 184 staff from nineteen homeless service agencies to participate in one of two training conditions: (a) Online Training + Community of Practice or (b) Face-to-Face Training + Telephone Consultation. Each group received twenty-four hours of instruction and support. Through baseline, follow-up, and nine-month posttraining surveys, the authors examined satisfaction, knowledge gains, knowledge retention, and readiness to implement CTI. Although satisfaction rates were higher among participants in the face-to-face group, the two training conditions produced comparable pre/postknowledge gains. Furthermore, both groups showed increased knowledge retention scores at nine-month follow-up, with the online group scoring higher than the face-to-face group.     

Preferences and aversions for stimuli paired with ethanol in hungry rats

Two experiments explored the reinforcing effect of ethanol on conditioned location and flavor preferences in hungry rats. In Experiment 1, rats were administered ethanol (.5, 1.0, or 2.0 g/kg, ig) prior to confinement in one side of a shuttlebox with access to a flavored solution. On control trials, H₂O was administered prior to confinement to the opposite side with a different flavored solution. Location choice tests revealed an overall aversion for the ethanol-associated side that was largest at the 2.0-g/kg dose. Flavor choice tests revealed an aversion for the ethanol-associated flavor at the 2.0-g/kg dose, no reliable difference at the 1.0-g/kg dose, and, of particular interest, a preference at the .5-g/kg dose. The results of Experiment 2 suggest that caloric restoration served as the reinforcing mechanism for the conditioned flavor preference. An isocaloric glucose solution conditioned a flavor preference of the same magnitude as that obtained with ethanol. Moreover, when ethanol provided no caloric advantage, the associated flavor was less preferred than a flavor associated with an isocaloric glucose solution.     

Inquiry in Higher Education: Reflections and Directions on Course Design and Teaching Methods

Our 5-year experiment with teaching and evaluating an inquiry course has led us to conclude that inquiry is a potent pedagogical tool in higher education, encouraging students to become self-directed and engaged learners. This article offers key ingredients and procedures for designing an inquiry-based course. It provides a pragmatic model of inquiry that describes the structure and function of such a course and the goals and learning objectives for students. This model of inquiry is widely applicable and will help faculty members from a variety of disciplines develop an innovative way of engaging and teaching students. Christopher Justice, Ph.D., is an anthropologist and health social scientist, and is an associate of the Centre for Leadership in Learning.e-mail: justice@mcmaster.ca James Rice, Ph.D., is Professor Emeritus in the School of Social Work.e-mail: ricejame@mcmaster.ca Wayne Warry, Ph.D., is Associate Professor, Department of Anthropology. His interests include aboriginal issues, aboriginal health and health systems evaluation, and educational research.e-mail: warrywa@mcmaster.ca Sue Inglis, Ph.D., is Professor in the Department of Kinesiology. Her interests include organizational behaviour and student inquiry.e-mail: ingliss@mcmaster.ca Stefania Miller, Ph.D., is Associate Professor, Department of Political Science. Her interests include international human rights and democratization in post-communist systems.e-mail: millers@mcmaster.ca Sheila Sammon, M.A., is Associate Professor, School of Social Work. Her interests include social work education and the integration of theory and practice.e-mail: sammon@mcmaster.ca     

Interest: A unique motivational variable

In the first part of this article, I discuss motivational variables in general, and interest in specific and propose that because of its biological roots, interest is a unique motivational variable. Furthermore, it is suggested that to demonstrate the uniqueness of interest, neuroscientific findings need to be considered. In the second section of the paper, I argue that the impact of the neuroscientific literature in the areas of social, educational and cognitive psychology has not been appropriately recognized. To support this claim, links between selected neuroscientific findings and motivational variables in general and interest in specific are discussed. Finally, some of the educationally relevant implications of interest research supported by neuroscientific findings are considered.     

Deep Valley revisited: The Betsy-Tacy stories of Maud Hart Lovelace

Suzanne Rahn is an associate professor of English at Pacific Lutheran University, specializing in children's literature. She is the author ofChildren's Literature: An Annotated Bibliography of the History and Criticism (Garland) and is currently at work on a book of Rediscoveries in Children's Literature.     

Continuity,stability, and change in daily emotional experience across adolescence

This longitudinal study examined change in adolescents' daily range of emotional states between early and late adolescence. A sample of 220 youth provided reports on their daily emotions at random times during two 1-week periods. At Time 1 they were in the fifth through eighth grades; 4 years later, at Time 2, they were in the ninth through twelfth grades. Results showed that average emotional states became less positive across early adolescence, but that this downward change in average emotions ceased in grade 10. The results also showed greatest relative instability between youth in the early adolescent years--correlations over time were lower--with stability increasing in late adolescence. Lastly, the study found that adolescents' average emotions had relatively stable relations to life stress and psychological adjustment between early and late adolescence. As a whole, the findings suggest that late adolescence is associated with a slowing of the emotional changes of early adolescence.     

Interactions in the development of spelling,reading and phonological skills

Early interactive processes of development in reading, spelling and implicit and explicit phonological awareness were assessed in a group of children at four time-points as they progressed through their first three years in school. Exploratory causal path analyses were used to investigate the contribution of each ability to the subsequent growth of skill in reading, spelling and phonological awareness. The resultant structural models demonstrate a role of spelling in the early stages of reading acquisition, as well as differential contributions of implicit and explicit phonological awareness to both reading and spelling. They also suggest a developmental cascade from implicit to explicit phonemic awareness in the normal acquisition of phonological knowledge and associated skills. In the early formulative stages of reading implicit phonemic awareness and reading act reciprocally to build skill in each other. But, as ability in word recognition improves, implicit phonemic awareness plays a diminished role in reading. This pattern of initial reciprocal influence and later dissociation is repeated in the relationship between implicit phoneme awareness and spelling. Explicit phonemic awareness is an important factor in the first stages of spelling development but only emerges later as a significant contributor to reading. The early influence of explicit phoneme awareness on spelling, in conjunction with the major contribution of spelling to beginning reading, indicates that experience in spelling promotes the use of a phonological strategy in reading. Within a developmental context, explicit phoneme awareness initially appears to grow out of an implicit appreciation of the overall sound properties of words. Thereafter, ability to identify and segment phonemes develops independently of implicit phonemic awareness and plays an increasingly important role in the further growth of reading and spelling.