Crime,History, and Hollywood: Learning Criminal Justice History through Major Motion Pictures

In this article, the author discusses the pedagogical value of teaching a criminal justice history course through the use of major motion pictures. He examines the past use of film in academia, specifically the criminal justice academy, and highlights the gap in the literature associating historical films with criminal justice history. The article then proceeds to discuss the manner in which Hollywood often portrays history and include criminal justice history, and presents an example through the Steven Spielberg movie Amistad. The article also describes the author’s experience in creating and teaching a criminal justice history films course.     

Investigation of the Development of Pre-Academic Skills for Preschoolers in Head Start

Abstract

This study modeled the time-dependent nature of pre-academic skills development for a multi-lingual sample of 382 preschoolers attending Head Start. A two-slope latent variable model accurately described the trajectories, which included five assessment points obtained throughout the school year for both pre-literacy and pre-numeracy variables. Classroom quality and child demographic variables including age, gender, native language (Spanish or English), and disability status served as predictors of growth. Results revealed a reversal effect such that steeper growth from October to March was offset, although not completely, by less growth from March to May. Similar interaction effects were observed for predictor variables and their interaction terms across the two slopes. IEP status predicted less growth, while Spanish-language status predicted increased growth, despite the fact that both were associated with low initial achievement. The complexity of the relationship between classroom quality, native language, disability status, and pre-academic growth is discussed.     

Introductory Cultural Anthropology: A Multimedia Presentation

Abstract

The study investigated the interactive effects of professors' instruction strategies and students' conceptual levels on the motivation to learn of 83 postsecondary students randomly assigned to either direct or nondirect instruction groups. Statistically significant interactions revealed that highly structured teaching methods maximized the motivation of students with low conceptual levels, whereas teaching methods that were low in structure enhanced the motivation of high-conceptual-level students. The findings expand previous research and offer insights into how professors can influence students' motivation to learn academic course content.     

Practical Guidelines for Counseling Students With Disabilities

Counselors and advisers at the postsecondary level frequently work with students with disabilities, yet most have had very little training in this area. The authors discuss general interaction guidelines for working with people with disabilities. They also examine 7 themes that frequently arise when counseling or advising students with disabilities and provide suggestions for addressing the issues associated with these themes.     

Mutual antipathies and their significance in middle childhood and adolescence

Mutual antipathies (when two children or adolescents dislike one another) were studied among 2,348 school-age children and 2,768 adolescents to determine incidence, gender and age differences, and implications for social adjustment. The children were more frequently involved than were the adolescents in same-sex antipathies but not mixed-sex ones. Boys were involved more frequently than were girls in same-sex antipathies, but involvement in mixed-sex antipathies was comparable for the two genders. With peer rejection scores used as a covariate, same-sex antipathies were associated with antisocial behavior and social withdrawal among children and adolescents of both genders and, in addition, to emotionality and lack of friendship support among adolescents. Mixed-sex antipathies were related to social adjustment depending on gender: these antipathies were related to antisocial and bullying behavior in boys but not girls; and to nonaggressiveness, victimization, lesser cooperation, shyness, and depression in girls but not boys. Mutual antipathies thus appear to be concomitants of adaptational risk in both childhood and adolescence.     

Disciplinary Differences: LCSH and Keyword Assignment for ETDs from Different Disciplines

This research concerns the frequency of the assignment of author-supplied keyword strings and cataloger supplied subject heading strings within a library catalog. The results reveal that, on average, more author-assigned keywords and more cataloger-assigned Library of Congress Subject Headings were assigned to works emerging from the arts & humanities than to works emerging from the social sciences and science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) disciplines. STEM disciplines in particular received a lower amount of topical metadata, in part because of the under-assignment of name/title, geographical, and corporate subject headings. These findings reveal how librarians could increase their understanding of how topical access is functioning within academic disciplines.     

Developmental Universals in Childhood Socialization

This paper examines the nature of social and cognitive development and argues that while cognitive processes are clearly implicated in social development there is also evidence that social relationships affect problem-solving and “intelligent behaviour”. It is further argued that 4 foci: social responsiveness, social-relationships, social reasoning and social regulation — considered as development universals ought to be the focus of research. These “four R's” will need to be researched in different cultures. It is likely that while there may some universality, for instance in the age at which responsiveness and interaction with other children change, societies may nevertheless differ in what are thought to be desirable directions in the development of social responsiveness.