Trends in spending on training: An analysis of the 1982 through 2008 Training Annual Industry Reports

This article explores long‐term trends in spending using data compiled from the Training magazine Annual Industry Survey from 1982 through 2008. It builds on literature that proposes spending on training is an investment that yields benefits—and that offers methods for demonstrating it. After adjusting for inflation, aggregate spending on training rose 1.5% between 1986 and 2008. Inflation‐adjusted spending on training staff fell 14%, although inflation‐adjusted spending on outside products and services increased 237%. Spending on training fell in all but two job categories. Findings support the belief that spending on training is falling but suggest that this is a sustained and systemic drop rather than a temporary response to an economic crisis. Also, expenditures on internal training resources have fallen, while spending on external resources has risen. A key limitation of this study is that it relies solely on data from the Training Annual Industry Survey.     

Nietzsche,Tragedy, and Liberal Moral Psychology

Abstract

This essay discusses Nietzsche's tragic moral psychology and its significance for liberal political philosophy. In the essay, I sketch out what I view to be the basic features of Nietzsche's tragic psychology, which is strongly opposed to the Socratic and Stoic traditions, and I show how this perspective can be distinguished from the moral psychology that informs liberalism's position on issues such as personhood and political history. I conclude with a few suggestions for viewing Nietzsche's thought as a necessary corrective to a certain dogmatism that still inhabits liberal theory, in this way enabling liberal thought to conceptualise human nature and the human good in more creative and complex ways.     

Learning by doing? Prospective elementary teachers' developing understandings of scientific inquiry and science teaching and learning

This study examined prospective elementary teachers' learning about scientific inquiry in the context of an innovative life science course. Research questions included: (1) What do prospective elementary teachers learn about scientific inquiry within the context of the course? and (2) In what ways do their experiences engaging in science investigations and teaching inquiry‐oriented science influence prospective elementary teachers' understanding of science and science learning and teaching? Eleven prospective elementary teachers participated in this qualitative, multi‐participant case study. Constant comparative analysis strategies attempted to build abstractions and explanations across participants around the constructs of the study. Findings suggest that engaging in scientific inquiry supported the development more appropriate understandings of science and scientific inquiry, and that prospective teachers became more accepting of approaches to teaching science that encourage children's questions about science phenomena. Implications include careful consideration of learning experiences crafted for prospective elementary teachers to support the development of robust subject matter knowledge.     

Rebuilding New Orleans: A Community Field Learning Experience

This article examines how to set up educational seminars for social work students that expose students, first-hand, to a natural or man-made disaster's physical and human impact on a community. These short, intensive experiential seminars help students appreciate the social work role in addressing extreme cases of trauma and loss that have immediate application to their professional work and studies at home. The study also presents evidence via personal reflections of students and faculty about the value-added benefits of the seminar learning experience in terms of the students' integration of course material, readings, and field placement experiences, and their personal and professional growth and maturation as beginning social workers.     

The effects of learning partners and retests on pretest-posttest scores,final course grades,and student attitudes

The present study investigated the effect of three peer monitoring and retest conditions on student quiz scores, attitudes, study time, final course grades, and independent pretest-posttest scores. Three introductory special education classes were randomly assigned to treatments. Students in Group One used a learning partner system similar to one used in a study reported earlier by Fraser, Beaman, and Kelem (1972). Group Two used a system which permitted an unlimited number of retests. The students in Group Three were assigned a combined learning-partner-retest system. All three treatments resulted in significant posttest gains. However, there were highly significant differences in the distribution of course grades. Based on this data it is possible that some behavioral techniques serve more to inflate grades than actually increase overall mastery. Results are discussed in terms of the effectiveness of the learning partners procedure and the implications of this study on the choice of dependent variables for future studies comparing innovative instructional procedures. Several aspects of the data such as study time and student attitudes which tend to contradict results reported earlier by Fraser, Beaman, and Kelem (1972) are documented and discussed.