Cross-cultural differences in attitudes towards disabled persons: A study of Jewish and Arab youth in Israel

Cultural values may be seen as the primary determinants of altitudes towards deviant or exceptional persons. The present study deals with the attitudes of Jewish and Arab youth in Israel towards the disabled as a function of cultural identity, existence of contact with a disabled person, and type of disability (blindness, amputation, facial disfigurement, or confinement to a wheelchair).A sample of 510 Jews and 655 Arabs filled out the Yuker Altitudes Towards Disabled Persons Scale (ATDP). The results indicated that overall, Jews were more positive towards the disabled than Arabs. Furthermore, the existence of previous contact with a disabled person was a positive factor in the formation of the Jews' attitudes, and a negative factor for the Arabs. In their ranking of different types of disability, Jews and Arabs differed significantly.The results are interpreted in the context of modern versus traditional cultures, whereby the Jewish youths' more tolerant Western approach seems to engender a more positive attitude than the Arab youths' conservative values.     

Orthography and the development of metalinguistic reflection in Portuguese primary school pupils / Ortografía y desarrollo de la reflexión metalingüística en alumnos portugueses en primaria

Abstract

Linguistic awareness is crucial in learning literacy. This project has a two-fold aim: to develop the students’ ability to think about language in order to write with accuracy and to lead teachers to promote students’ discussions about their writing difficulties. The study is part of a two-year action-research project developed in primary schools from the Lisbon area, with experimental and control groups. The starting point of the project was the analysis of the problems students of third and fourth grades showed in their writing. The scope of the project includes dictation tasks within an interactionist approach, favouring grammatical discussions leading to the observation and manipulation of linguistic data.     

Testing Measurement Invariance Across Groups in Longitudinal Data: Multigroup Second-Order Latent Growth Model

In latent growth modeling, measurement invariance across groups has received little attention. Considering that a group difference is commonly of interest in social science, a Monte Carlo study explored the performance of multigroup second-order latent growth modeling (MSLGM) in testing measurement invariance. True positive and false positive rates in detecting noninvariance across groups in addition to bias estimates of major MSLGM parameters were investigated. Simulation results support the suitability of MSLGM for measurement invariance testing when either forward or iterative likelihood ratio procedure is applied.     

RECONSTRUCTING CHILDREN'S EXPERIENCE WHEN TEACHING AND ASSESSING THEM: LESSONS FROM DEWEY

This paper describes an online early childhood assessment course that was developed through a multi-university collaboration with support from a state improvement grant. Collaborators from three universities developed the course to address a new early childhood unified license (birth to age 8, regular and special education) in the state of Kansas. After reviewing the new state content standards, we identified targeted understandings, performance assessments, and online activities for 15 modules using a backward design process. Emphasis was placed on active learning through synchronous and asynchronous interactions facilitated by the use of a course management system. Positive evidence of learning was indicated by anonymous student feedback, pretest/posttest gain scores, and performance assessments evaluated with rubrics. We viewed the implementation of the course as a success and anticipate that it may lead to more sharing of online coursework in Kansas teacher education programs in the future.     

Exploration versus exploitation in technology firms: The role of compensation structure for R&D workforce

We investigate the relationship between a firm’s compensation structure and the extent to which its innovation is more exploration versus exploitation oriented. Specifically, we assess two aspects of a firm’s compensation design—horizontal dispersion within job levels and vertical tournament incentives between job levels. A six-year panel of compensation records of 671,028 employees working at 81 U.S.-based high technology firms between 1997 and 2002 are used to construct measures that characterize a firm's pay structure, which are linked to these firms’ patents filed in the U.S. We find that firms with higher-powered tournament incentives in vertical compensation structure report higher fraction of innovation directed towards exploration. Horizontal pay dispersion, on the other hand, shows a negative relationship with the exploration in firms where R&D employees’ age variance is low. In firms where R&D employees’ age variance is high, the negative relationship between horizontal pay dispersion and exploration is muted.     

From shanzhai chic to Gangnam style: seven practices of cultural-economic mediation in China and Korea

ABSTRACT

This paper examines the social construction of ‘fashionability’ – namely, what is ‘desirable’ and ‘fashionable’ – with reference to the concept ‘cultural mediators’ that foregrounds agency, negotiation and the contested practices of market actors in cultural production. It zeroes in on the cultural mediators’ attitudes and positions in the two markets by drawing on 25 in-depth interviews with industry veterans. It shows that the mediators in South Korea and China increasingly occupy hybrid occupational roles and social positions across industries and sectors yet achieve limited success in countering the status quo of Western fashion through mediation. The analysis contributes to the literature with a categorisation of seven mediation practices that shape the valuation of fashion products (i.e. ‘fashionability’) in two ways. Empirically, this categorisation illuminates how cultural mediators make reference habitually to the broader social and cultural contexts to co-construct cultural-aesthetic objects. Theoretically, it advances a cultural-economic approach to the understanding of cultural mediation and challenges the reductionist viewpoint of actor–network theory through the notion of a matrix of cultural-economic agency.     

A Social Democratic Vision of Media: Toward a Radical Pre-History of Public Broadcasting

The Public Broadcasting Act’s 50th anniversary provides an opportune moment to reassess justifications for creating a noncommercial media system. This commemorative occasion coincides with a particularly precarious moment for public radio and television’s future, adding some urgency to revisiting and reasserting its normative foundations. With this in mind, it is instructive to look back at public broadcasting’s long history to recover some of the original arguments for establishing an alternative to commercial news media. These earlier visions suggest a social democratic ideal for broadcast media, one clearly recognizing that a market-driven system cannot provide for all of democratic society’s communication needs.