The Connector Study: A Strategy for Collecting Post-Graduation Data About Low-Income High School Students

Tracking low-income students after high school graduation presents significant problems for data collection. The Connector Study is an attempt to increase and enrich outcomes data in a longitudinal study of low-income graduates of a national network of innovative high schools by gathering alumni updates through telephone interviews with high school staff members who remain in touch with their former students. Approximately 2 years after they worked with groups of students in high school, these individuals were able to provide information about education, job, and personal outcomes for 96% of 563 graduates. The Connector Study strategy offers a feasible method for collecting quantifiable outcome measures for longitudinal studies. This method also provides information about student change and individual circumstances that is difficult to obtain from students themselves, and that goes beyond the basic outcome indicators available through federal and state student tracking systems.     

The Relationship Between Maternal Beliefs and Behavior During Shared Reading

The goal of the present study was to increase understanding of the connection between maternal beliefs and behavior during shared reading and to examine the relation of these maternal beliefs to children's reading engagement. The study included survey and observational data from an ethnically diverse sample of 50 mothers and their 5- to 6-year-old children. As predicted, mothers who believed that shared reading should involve learning showed more learning-focused behaviors. Similarly, the belief that reading should be fun predicted more positive interactions. Some relationships between beliefs and behavior were moderated by gender. For girls, higher maternal expectations for children's future reading grades were associated with better scaffolding, but this pattern was not found for boys. There was a positive relationship between mothers' belief that reading should be fun and their sons' engagement. No gender differences were found in maternal expectations and beliefs or in observed maternal learning-focused behaviors or positive support. However, girls were observed to be significantly more engaged during the reading interaction. These results point to the connections between maternal beliefs and behaviors during shared reading, as well as the need to consider child gender in understanding these connections.     

EMERITUS PROFESSORS: ENGAGEMENT AND INVOLVEMENT

Teachers and practitioners of gerontology in universities and social agencies are overlooking an important resource that resides in the skills, experience, and knowledge of retired professors. Many of them are healthy, financially secure, and willing to volunteer their talents in interdisciplinary and intergenerational projects on the campus and in the community. The author suggests that retired professors, organized in an Emeritus College, officially recognized and modestly funded, would bring a grand‐parental, extended‐family presence to the campus, and provide a partnership with teaching faculty and students involved in gerontological education and practice. Such a college would not displace regular faculty or graduate assistants, but provide supplementary support in organizing and participating in symposia, lectures, research, tutoring, public relations, fund‐raising, and similar activities on the campus and in the community. The two‐year experience at Southern Illinois University in Carbondale is reviewed.     

Kinematic analysis of the double side kick in pointfighting,kickboxing

The double side kick is a frequently used technique in pointfighting on which most offensive kicking techniques are based on. The aim of the study was to identify parameters, e.g., trunk and leg positions, durations and velocities that affect successful technique execution.

44 fighters, male and female, including European and World champions, participated in the research. The participants performed double side kicks to a punching bag with the target at chest level. 10 international experts scored (1–10 points; interrater correlation ICC (3,1): 0.952) videos of the best individual trial for quality of technique execution. Based on the average of the scores participants were categorised into 2 equally sized groups. For kinematic data acquisition, a Vicon 3D-motion capturing system was used. The normalised knee height of the kick leg (KHK), normalised absolute distance to the frontal shoulder (DKS) at the end of both chambering phases, the horizontal velocity during both chambering phases (KEV), the durations of all 6 functional phases and total duration, were analysed.

KHK1, KHK2, DKS1 and DKS2, total duration as well as 4 out of 6 phase durations and KEV1 showed significant differences between groups in two-sided t-test or Mann–Whitney U-test for not normally distributed variables.     

Management education and the challenge of action learning

The phenomenal growth of management education in the last two decades has been accompanied by much controversy. Critics consider that business schools tend to concentrate on theory and on quantitative analysis, while neglecting interpersonal relationships and qualitative thinking. It is often stated that management education should be experience-based, active, problem oriented and modified by feedback. The extent to which Action Learning meets these criteria is discussed in this paper. The difference between Action Learning and other types of management education is stressed.Attention is drawn to Action Learning programmes that have been conducted in Belgium, in the United Kingdom and in Australia.Various difficulties that may be encountered in introducing Action Learning to management schools are described and some strategies for overcoming these difficulties are suggested.The paper mentions problems connected with evaluating Action Learning programmes and suggests that Action Learning may be useful in management education.     

Faculty perceptions of the scholarship and utility of writing college-level textbooks

The literature and most anecdotal evidence suggest that higher education faculty members hold writing college-level textbooks in relatively low esteem as a scholarly activity. A structured inquiry conducted among tenured faculty and department chairs which separated notions of scholarship from expectation of utility disclosed a surprisingly high regard for the scholarship required in writing textbooks. However, the expectation of utility or reward is much lower, suggesting institutional and financial pressures that act as major disincentives to textbook authorship. Both the regard for scholarship and the expectation of reward were also shown to display disciplinary variations. David L. Arnold is a proposal development officer in research administration at the University of Louisville. His research interests include both scholarly publishing and continuing and adult education as a university activity.