Symbolism and survival in developing organizations: Regional colleges in Israel [1]

This article draws on the work of John Meyer and others who look at the institutional side of organizations. We analyze the origins and early history of a system of regional colleges in Israel in the context of an emerging postsecondary system. We argue that the terms used to define legitimacy, as well as who defines it, are crucial issues in the institutionalization of educational organizations, especially colleges and universities.     

The Point-Biserial as a Discrimination Index for Distractors in Multiple-Choice Items: Deficiencies in Usage and an Alternative

We show that using the point-biserial as a discrimination index for distractors by differentiating between examinees who chose the distractor and examinees who did not choose the distractor is theoretically wrong and may lead to an incorrect rejection of items. We propose an alternative usage and present empirical evidence for its suitability.     

Teaching effectiveness as measured by student ratings and instructor self-evaluation

The present study is designed to evaluate teaching effectiveness based on effective teacher behaviors. Operationally, it is measured by assessing levels of agreement between perceptions of instructors and students on reported employment rates and rated ability for specific instructional behavior attributes. Individually-based and organizationally-based factors are incorporated in the study for a possible contribution to teaching effectiveness variance. Findings indicate a lack of agreement between perceptions on abstract instructional attributes but that agreement exists for attributes of a concrete nature. Analysis suggests that individually-based and organizationally-based factors do not contribute to agreement variance.     

‘It’s a dark cloud’: experiences of social undermining among people living with HIV in New Mexico

Social undermining as a strong predictor of adverse health outcomes in people living with HIV (PLWH), yet little is known about the experiences that constitute social undermining in this population. We led community-engaged research to identify and understand experiences of social undermining of PLWH in largely rural, minority-majority Southwestern communities. While past research focused on stigma-related experiences, participants in this study also told stories that shared their feelings of being undermined by lack of patient-centered care that they did not attribute to stigma, but to bureaucratic and impersonal service provision that marginalized them. These experiences create stress and serve as barriers for participants’ well-being and care. By bringing to the front experiences and mechanisms of social undermining, these findings advance theory, research, and practice regarding social undermining and living with HIV in diverse communities.     

Self-Control in School-Age Children

Conflicts between immediately rewarding activities and more enduringly valued goals abound in the lives of school-age children. Such conflicts call upon children to exercise self-control, a competence that depends in part on the mastery of metacognitive, prospective strategies. The process model of self-control organizes these strategies into five families corresponding to sequential phases in the process by which undesired and desired impulses lose or gather force over time. Situation selection and situation modification strategies involve choosing or changing physical or social circumstances. Attentional deployment and cognitive change strategies involve altering whether and how objective features of the situation are mentally represented. Finally, response modulation strategies involve the direct suppression or enhancement of impulses. The process model of self-control predicts that strategies deployed earlier in the process of impulse generation and regulation generally will be more effective than those deployed later. Implications of this self-control perspective for school-age children are considered.     

Medicine as a calling among male and female medical students in Israel: Does it make a difference?

This study focused on the perception of medicine as a calling and its associations with medical training satisfaction, career certainty, career satisfaction, career commitment, and well-being among 176 Israeli medical students. Participants replied to an online questionnaire including the Brief Calling Scale (Duffy and Sedlacek in Career Dev Q 59:27–41, 2010) and measures related to medical training, a medical career, and well-being. Calling was positively associated with all outcome measures, and gender moderated these associations, which were stronger for female medical students in comparison with male medical students. The importance of taking these gender differences regarding calling under consideration for career counseling is discussed.     

Civic education and visions of war and peace in the Spanish transition to democracy

Abstract

This article explores visions of war and peace in the education system during the Spanish transition to democracy. During those years, the Spanish state was faced with the challenge of leaving its authoritarian political past behind and forging a democratic civic culture. As the concepts of war and peace are inextricably linked to those of state and citizenship, they are a useful tool with which to examine changes in civic education. A wide variety of educational sources has been explored, with particular attention to the emotional nature of the depiction of both war and peace. This study reveals two opposing styles. The official discourse demonstrated a factual treatment of war and a tendency to concentrate on international bodies and their actions, when it came to fomenting peace. The treatment of peace in the circles of teachers’ local initiatives was different. First, peace was defined not only as the absence of war but also in terms of social equality and solidarity. Second, there was a conscious effort to get the students involved in opposing war, reinforced by emotionally charged messages regarding its horrors.     

Changes in educational beliefs and classroom practices of teachers and students in rich technology-based classrooms[1]

This study was conducted in the framework of a project that sought to change the school learning and teaching environment and adapt it to current reality through the proactive use of technology in the search for knowledge. It is an exploratory, longitudinal, case study of a single school, in one city in central Israel, which examines changes in educational beliefs, classroom practices, and knowledge restructuring processes of six teachers of grades 4-6, who for three years experienced an approach to teaching and learning focusing on information-rich tasks in an information-rich environment. The main findings show different patterns and rates of change in teacher educational beliefs, knowledge restructuring processes and classroom practices. They also demonstrate that students of teachers whose educational beliefs and classroom practices radically changed and which reflected a constructivist approach to learning regarded learning as a process of engaging with complex, context-related tasks requiring multiple viewpoints, whereas students whose teachers had a traditional positivist approach saw technologyassisted learning as learning with technical tools. The study indicates a reciprocal rather than unidirectional relationship between teacher classroom practice and changes in teacher educational beliefs and knowledge restructuring processes.