Celebrating 100 Years of Criminal Justice Education, 1916–2016

Berkeley Police Chief August Vollmer, in coordination with the University of California, created a baccalaureate degree granting program for his police officers in the summer of 1916. The program was titled Criminology and consisted of courses on police practices, criminal law, and many of the natural science classes including biology, chemistry, and toxicology. This program continued through the summer of 1932, when a university-wide program was developed and overseen by then Professor August Vollmer. The summer program, begun in 1916, developed into both the modern criminology and criminal justice programs of today. The purpose of this paper is to recognize the development of criminal justice education which marks its 100th anniversary in the summer of 2016.     

Book of the Month: Television

Bruce M. Owen, Jack H. Beebe, and Willard G. Manning, Jr., Television Economics (Lexington, Mass.: Lexington Books (D.C. Heath) 1974—$15.00)     

Developing Best Practices for Technical Services Cross-Institutional Collaboration

The OhioLINK CollaboraTeS Project was initiated to support cross-institutional collaborations by building a skills inventory and by defining collaborative best practices. This article discusses what was learned and defines best practices for collaboration. The authors recommend the creation of regional technical services skills inventories, and the application of management and financial best practices to collaborations. Librarians should be confident they possess these skills because many of them have been learned in other environments. Collaboration represents a bright future for libraries struggling to meet tight budgets. Providing the tools and best practices for collaboration makes it easier for libraries to participate.     

Students’ and Teachers’ Perceptions of Using Video Games to Enhance Science Instruction

Science education video game research points toward promising, but inconclusive results in both student learning outcomes and attitudes. However, student-level variables other than gender have been largely absent from this research. This study examined how students’ reading ability level and disability status are related to their video game-playing behaviors outside of school and their perceptions about the use of science video games during school. Thirty-four teachers and 876 sixth- through ninth-grade students from 14 states participated in the study. All student groups reported that they would prefer to learn science from a video game rather than from traditional text, laboratory-based, or Internet environments. Chi-square analyses indicated a significant association between reading ability level, disability status, and key areas of interest including students’ use of video games outside of school, their perceptions of their scientific abilities, and whether they would pursue a career in the sciences. Implications of these findings and areas for future research are identified.     

The teachers college faces the future in the selection of teachers

This article examines the educational conditions and resources, institutional characteristics, and political factors that contribute to shaping states' educational accountability policies. The policies addressed are identification of underperforming schools, state takeover or reconstitution of failing schools, and state power to replace principals and teachers in underperforming schools. The article addresses accountability for schools and educators, rather than high-stakes tests for students, because of the emphases of the federal No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB). Based on correlations and cross-sectional, logistic regression, the most important predictors of states' accountability policies appear to be National Assessment of Educational Progress NAEP performance, state education agency staff resources, and Democratic party identification. However, the impact of Democratic party identification is reduced when the southern states are excluded. The article concludes with a discussion of directions for further quantitative and qualitative research, as well as predictions of how NCLB is likely to affect states' accountability policies.