A Cross Canada Inventory: Evidence of 21st Century Educational Reform in Canada

This paper reports on an initial website review of Ministries of Education, provincial teacher associations and select school jurisdictions across Canada with respect to their publically available and visible policy commitments to 21st century educational reforms. This review was conducted for the purposes of drawing conclusions about the current state of these reform efforts in Canada and, consequently, to provide implications for the future. Through the implementation of thematic analysis findings revealed that the publically available 21st century reform policy of provincial Ministries of Education tended to be best described by one of three frames: the futurist frame, the political frame and the teacher as change agent frame.     

Motivation for return to study as a predictor of completion of degree amongst female mature students with children

The motivation for return to study, as measured by the Continuing Education Women Questionnaire (modified), of 117 mature age female graduates with children was compared with that of 118 former mature age female students with children who had discontinued a degree program before graduation. Motivation was found to relate to a number of predictors, including previous education, age, marital status, family life cycle stage, satisfaction with previous employment and family support for return to study. Interrupters as a group were found to be similar in motivation to graduates. However, certain subgroups of interrupters scored higher on those aspects of motivation which stressed study as a way to ameliorate or escape from unpleasant or difficult life circumstances. These same difficult circumstances in turn made graduation more unlikely and led to discontinuance. The conclusion is drawn that life circumstances may be a more parsimonious predictor of attrition in this population than motivation.     

Training for Generalization and Maintenance in RtI Implementation: Front‐Loading for Sustainability

Response to Intervention (RtI) is being implemented as a new initiative in PK‐12 schools with increasing frequency. However, the model must be sustained at the school level, which is potentially difficult due to a number of challenges brought about by systems change. This article applied the Stokes and Baer (1977) framework for programming for generalization and maintenance of behavior change to suggest specific activities in which schools could engage to better ensure RtI sustainability. We specifically discussed ways to (1) introduce to natural maintaining contingencies, (2) train with sufficient exemplars, (3) train loosely, (4) program common stimuli, (5) mediate generalization, and (6) train to generalize. Directions for future research are included.     

HOW PASTORS LEARN THE POLITICS OF MINISTRY PRACTICE

Politics are a daily reality in the ministry. In order to identify how pastors develop their political knowledge, eleven pastors were interviewed using a qualitative form of the critical incidents technique.     

Accumulating short bouts of running reduces resting blood pressure in young normotensive/pre-hypertensive men

In this study, we compared the effects of accumulated and continuous running on resting arterial blood pressure. Ten normotensive/pre-hypertensive men, aged 25.0 ± 4.2 years (mean ± s), participated in three 2-day trials at least one week apart in a randomized, repeated-measures design. On Day 1, participants rested (control) or ran at 70% of maximum oxygen uptake in either ten 3-min bouts (30 min rest between bouts) or one continuous 30-min bout. On Day 2, participants rested throughout the day. Blood pressure was measured at hourly intervals throughout Days 1 and 2. Mean resting systolic blood pressure on Day 2 was 6% lower during the accumulated and continuous running trials compared with the control trial (110 ± 6 vs. 110 ± 8 vs. 117 ± 6 mmHg respectively; P < 0.05), but there were no differences in resting diastolic blood pressure among the three trials (70 ± 7 vs. 69 ± 6 vs. 70 ± 5 mmHg respectively). These findings demonstrate that accumulating 30 min of running throughout the day in short bouts is as effective as 30 min of continuous running for reducing resting systolic blood pressure on the next day in young normotensive/pre-hyptertensive men.     

Foreign Media Systems

Patricia Hindley, Gail M. Martin, and Jean McNulty The Tangled Net: Basic Issues in Canadian Communications (Vancouver, British Columbia: J.J. Douglas Ltd., 1977—$12.95)

Tom Burns The BBC: Public Institution and Private World (London: Macmillan [New York: Holmes & Meier Publishers, Inc.], 1977—$19.50)

Alison McLeay The World of the Onedin Line (Newton Abbot, England (North Pomfret, Vt.): David & Charles, 1977—$11.95)     

Assessing jail coverage in introductory criminal justice textbooks

Despite their integral and multi-functional role within the criminal justice system, jails receive limited societal and research attention. The present study assesses the extent to which jail-related information is presented in fourteen leading introductory criminal justice texts. In general, it was found that there are 4.8 pages of prison-related information for every one page of jail coverage, and that roughly 72% of all jail-related information is found within the corrections sections of introductory criminal justice texts. Suggestions regarding future directions for authors of these texts are offered.