Promoting prime‐time programs in megasporting events

Analysis of 677 promos for prime‐time series carried within 1993 and 1994 sporting events on the major broadcast networks showed that most on‐air promotion had a modest impact on program shares and ratings: about one‐third of shares went up, over one‐half stayed flat, and less than 10% went down. A six‐part model incorporating lead‐in shares/rating, three structural factors, and two presentational factors collectively accounted for about one‐third of the variance in promoted prime‐time series’ shares and ratings.     

E-Mail as Spectroscopy: Automated Discovery of Community Structure within Organizations

We describe a method for the automatic identification of communities of practice from e-mail logs within an organization. We use a betweenness centrality algorithm that can rapidly find communities within a graph representing information flows. We apply this algorithm to an initial e-mail corpus of nearly 1 million messages collected over a 2-month span, and show that the method is effective at identifying true communities, both formal and informal, within these scale-free graphs. This approach also enables the identification of leadership roles within the communities. These studies are complemented by a qualitative evaluation of the results in the field.     

Does MSP Participation Increase the Supply of Math Teachers? Developing and Testing an Analytic Model

An important feature of the Math and Science Partnership (MSP) Program of the National Science Foundation is to increase K-12 student achievement in math and science by increasing the quality, quantity, and diversity of the nation's K-12 math and science teachers. Because the underlying supply of math and science teachers is never directly observed, the central premise of this article is that an examination of the extent to which the MSP Program might impact the quantity and quality of math and science teachers requires careful thought and modeling.

With that starting point, this study first develops a model that supports a premise that shifts in underlying supply can be inferred from shifts in the percentage of certified math teachers employed when (a) salaries are constrained to be below market clearing salaries and (b) uncertified or “out-of-field” certified teachers can compete as substitutes for certified math teachers. The study then tests the plausibility of the model using data from Texas and in so doing provides preliminary estimates of the extent to which a school or school district's MSP participation affected the supply of certified math teaches available to that school or district. The results, although inconclusive on the question of the labor supply effects of MSP participation by a school or school district, do suggest the reasonableness of the model for future work when more appropriate data will be available.     

Development of Phonological Constancy: 19‐Month‐Olds,but Not 15‐Month‐Olds,Identify Words in a Non‐Native Regional Accent

By 12 months, children grasp that a phonetic change to a word can change its identity (phonological distinctiveness). However, they must also grasp that some phonetic changes do not (phonological constancy). To test development of phonological constancy, sixteen 15‐month‐olds and sixteen 19‐month‐olds completed an eye‐tracking task that tracked their gaze to named versus unnamed images for familiar words spoken in their native (Australian) and an unfamiliar non‐native (Jamaican) regional accent of English. Both groups looked longer at named than unnamed images for Australian pronunciations, but only 19‐month‐olds did so for Jamaican pronunciations, indicating that phonological constancy emerges by 19 months. Vocabulary size predicted 15‐month‐olds' identifications for the Jamaican pronunciations, suggesting vocabulary growth is a viable predictor for phonological constancy development.     

When Hurt Continues: Taking Conflict Personally Leads to Rumination,Residual Hurt and Negative Motivations Toward Someone Who Hurt Us

Individuals sometimes are hurt by the comments of others, and residual feelings of hurt are experienced after the episode. Because of individuals’ tendency to ruminate, we argue that residual hurt and its consequences may be especially common among individuals who tend to take conflict personally (TCP). We hypothesized that TCP would be positively related to motivations to avoid and to seek revenge against offenders, and these relationships will be mediated by the link between rumination and residual hurt. To test our hypotheses, we conducted a survey among undergraduates about how they reacted to a hurtful message. We confirmed our hypotheses.     

Towards a more systematic approach to continuing professional development in vocational education and training

Vocational education and training (VET) teachers and trainers have a key role in ensuring that workers in business and industry are upskilled and up-to-date in a rapidly changing industrial, economic and technological environment. It follows that the VET practitioners should themselves keep up to date, not only with industry developments but also with the pedagogical skills needed to embrace technology and adapt to new sites for learning. However, in Australia and other Western nations, continuing professional development for VET practitioners has been spasmodic and not always well supported, in contrast to the ways it has been established and accepted in other professions. This paper examines the professional development approaches of some of those other professions and identifies the key features that might be adopted in any genuine attempt to develop a more purposeful and systematic provision of ongoing learning for teachers and trainers in VET. The paper concludes with a number of recommendations aimed at Australian VET practitioners in particular, but which might be applicable to VET in any developed country.     

Why everything has changed: the recent revolution in cultural economics

The internet, the iPod, the cell phone, Kindle, blogs, computer games, and virtual realities mean that cultural economics has changed an enormous amount in just the last five years. I explain and analyze some of the implications of these changes. Plenary address at the 2008 ACEI meetings, Boston, Massachusetts. I wish to thank meeting participants for useful comments and questions and thank Jennifer Rogers for her help in transcribing the talk.