Thornton wilder: Guest star

The purpose of the study was to investigate the dimensions of profane language use in a college student sample. Two hundred and eighty‐three responses to a questionnaire on personal use of “sexual vernacular” were submitted to factor analysis. Results of the factor analysis yielded five dimensions of profane language based upon predispositions to use such words.     

Telecommunications

SILICON VALLEY FEVER: GROWTH OF HIGH-TECHNOLOGY CULTURE by Everett M. Rogers and Judith K. Larsen (New York: Basic Books, 1984---$19.95)

TECHNOSTRESS: THE HUMAN COST OF THE COMPUTER REVOLUTION by Craig Brod (Reading, Mass.: Addison-Wesley, 1984---$16.95)

THE NAKED COMPUTER: A LAYPERSON'S ALMANAC OF COMPUTER LORE, WIZARDRY, PERSONALITIES, MEMORABILIA, WORLD RECORDS, MIND BLOWERS AND TOMFOOLERY by Jack Rochester and John Gantz (New York: William Morrow, l983---$15.95)

TELEMATICS AND INFORMATICS edited by Indu B. Singh and Jay Liebowitz (Pergamon Press, Fairview Park, Elmsford, NY 10523----$95.00 institutions/$45.00 to individuals, quarterly)

MICROCOMPUTER COMMUNICATIONS: A WINDOW ON THE WORLD by Barbara E. McMullen and John F. McMullen (New York: John Wiley, 1983---$14.95, paper)     

Learning to rank query suggestions for adhoc and diversity search

Query suggestions have become pervasive in modern web search, as a mechanism to guide users towards a better representation of their information need. In this article, we propose a ranking approach for producing effective query suggestions. In particular, we devise a structured representation of candidate suggestions mined from a query log that leverages evidence from other queries with a common session or a common click. This enriched representation not only helps overcome data sparsity for long-tail queries, but also leads to multiple ranking criteria, which we integrate as features for learning to rank query suggestions. To validate our approach, we build upon existing efforts for web search evaluation and propose a novel framework for the quantitative assessment of query suggestion effectiveness. Thorough experiments using publicly available data from the TREC Web track show that our approach provides effective suggestions for adhoc and diversity search.     

Attributional support: Targeting attributions underlying recipient emotions

The attribution theory of emotion (Weiner, 1986) is presented as a common example of a naïve theory finding that people expect attributions of personal control and other control to underlie feelings of guilt and anger respectively. The study predicts that supporters use this implicit knowledge to focus their supportive messages on the attributions corresponding to their recipients’ reported emotions. It is also possible that supporters are influenced by their own attributions about support recipients’ problems. The data from 84 college students indicate that the supporters’ intended and actual messages tended to follow their own attributions about their recipients’ situation rather than the attributions implied by the emotions reported by their recipients. It is suggested that some supporters fail to be comforting to their recipients because they do not perceive the situation in the same way as their recipients, and may therefore try to change their recipients ‘ perceptions of their problems.     

From stories of staying to stories of leaving: a US beginning teacher’s experience

This narrative inquiry traces a beginning teacher’s unfolding career over a six-year period in a diverse middle school in the fourth largest city in the USA. The work revolves around two conceptualizations: ‘stories to live by’ and ‘stories to leave by.’ How these identity-related phenomena surface and play out in an entry-level teacher’s experiences become revealed. The stories of experience lived and told, and relived and retold, illuminate the influence of context on beginning teachers’ knowing. The interwoven nature of educators’ lives also forms a major theme. In the final analysis, the beginning teacher’s ‘stories to live by’ are no longer able to sustain her in her urban teaching milieu. Shifting occurs and ‘stories to leave by’ prevail.     

A narrative inquiry into schooling in China: three images of the principalship

This narrative inquiry exploring contemporary Chinese schooling involved three researchers who worked collaboratively as a team. Each researcher resonated with a different image of the principalship embedded in the storied account proffered by Xu Xiaozhang 校长, leader of Hexie Elementary School in Tianjin, China. (1) Principal as the lead teacher; (2) principal as an agent of a harmonious learning community; and (3) principal as a teacher-maker were the images Principal Xu held and expressed. In the interpretive analysis, Xu Xiaozhang’s images of principal were nested one within the other in ways that brought Deweyan pragmatism and Confucian thought fruitfully together. The subtle nuances of the images provide an upclose view of schooling on one elementary campus in China that is of international interest and value.     

From Wimsey to The Wire: Distracting Discourse and Attentional Practice

This essay explores the intervolvement of attentional practice and discursive action. Drawing on Michael Polanyi's phenomenology, I examine occasions when discourse does not sound like deliberate utterance and when attention does not look rationally focused—but when both are rhetorically inventive. Taking a cue from the growing (though conceptually and historically thin) self-help literature on attention and mindfulness, I examine the sometimes distracting speech of that paragon of attentiveness, the fictional detective. Dorothy Sayers’ witty sleuth, Wimsey, and The Wire's profane investigators, Bunk and McNulty, practice transgressive speech that seems nonsensical, but which animates and extends indirect attention for the sake of solving problems in bewildering conditions. These case studies in crime fiction strengthen rhetorical scholarship on embodiment, affect, and verbal inadvertency by locating deliberative dimensions in apparently indeliberate discourses. This essay concludes by conceptualizing the communicative practice that modulates indirect attention, referring to its transgressive nonsensicality as a rhetoric of idiocy.     

Promoting assessment efficacy through an integrated system for online clinical assessment of practical skills

This paper presents evaluation outcomes from an externally funded research project involving the online clinical assessment of practical skills (eCAPS) using web-based video technologies within a university medical programme. eCAPS was implemented to trial this web-based approach for promoting the efficacy of practical skills assessment in knee joint examinations for a pre-clinical cohort of second year medical students. eCAPS involves a progressive organisation of online video experiences and task expectations for formative and summative assessments of selected competencies. Data are presented from semi-structured interviews with the medical students (N?=?40). eCAPS successfully supported students’ skill development in knee joint examinations on fellow students and allowed remote assessment of candidates’ performances by clinicians experienced in musculoskeletal examinations. An ‘indicative standard’ paradigm, involving formative assessment of one randomly selected performance from the submission of all students’ responses within a small group, offered an efficient and efficacious avenue for providing consolidated feedback to students and promoted desirable learning behaviours. Overall, there was evidence of reciprocal learning benefits to the ‘blending’ of an online learning and assessment approach with an existing face-to-face environment. The medical students were able to successfully engage online with high quality and consistent practical skill-based materials in a flexible, independent and individual manner.