Searching for Expertise in Counseling, Psychotherapy, and Professional Psychology

The expertise literature within cognitive science has provided a rich series of ideas which can be used to improve applied practice. The authors of the articles in this special issue have taken many of these ideas and made useful elaborations and extensions. In reaction to the articles, we suggest five blocks to a full utilization of the expertise literature and other constructs in practitioner development. These blocks are: (a) the need to go beyond the cognitive realm to the working alliance for the fundamental construct in the domain; (b) the need to realize that the novice-to-expert path takes a long time—perhaps 15 years—to travel; (c) the inappropriate use of a short experience differential in comparative studies of novices and experts; (d) the importance of reflection for development; and (e) the need for professors, in order to be experts, to also be practitioners in the domain.     

Functional literacy of Young Guyanese Adults

Functional literacy is interpreted as the ability of the individual to apply skills in reading, writing, calculation and basic problem-solving in those activities in which literacy is required for effective functioning in his/her own group and community. The paper describes the rationale, development and administration of the test used for measuring levels (high, moderate, low) of achievement in functional literacy in three domains (document, prose and quantitative). An assumption of the study was that a high level of functional literacy was required for the individual to function effectively in his/her own group and community. The context of the study is Guyana the most underdeveloped and impoverished country in the English-speaking Caribbean. The subjects are out of school youth in Guyana aged 14–25.Amongst the main findings are: only approximately 11% of the young people show a high level of functional literacy; females tend to have a higher level of functional literacy than males: and most of those at the low level never went beyond primary and low status secondary schools and usually end up unemployed or in semi- or unskilled jobs.     

Content Analysis of the Portrayal of White Characters in Black Films Across Two Decades

Race and media research in the United States emphasizes the representations of ethnic minorities in mainstream media. These sometimes-poor representations of minority groups have implications for social attitudes. However, social groups are defined in relation to one another, and race specifically is a hierarchical category with Whites positioned above. Some scholars suggest that whiteness has meaningful implications for Whites’ racial identity formation. Yet little empirical attention has been given to the portrayals of Whites in racially targeted or ethnic-oriented media, where whiteness is most conspicuous. This study uses social identity theory and critical race theories to examine the portrayals of Whites in Black films. We conduct a content analysis of 32 Black-oriented films spanning two decades. We argue that such investigations (a) position race-oriented films as necessary sites for understanding racial discourse and (b) shed insight into how ethnic media creators may use film as a platform to accept or resist dominant ideologies.     

Assistance that fades in improves learning better than assistance that fades out

Instructional Science - When students are solving problems they often turn to examples when they need assistance. Examples are helpful because they illustrate how a problem can be solved. However,...     

The Role of Civility and Metacommunication in Facebook Discussions

Social media’s potential for political and social discussion provides great promise since deliberation is key for democracy. Unfortunately, there is a problematic presence of incivility in conversations on digital platforms. We conducted an experiment to examine the effects of this phenomenon, driven by the elaboration likelihood model. Each of our four conditions showed a media outlet’s Facebook post with a story about genetically modified organisms and a comment section beneath with one of the following: a civil discussion, an uncivil discussion, an uncivil conversation with metacommunication encouraging civility, and a control group. Results revealed a mediated relationship of exposure to civil and metacommunicative comments on willingness to engage in a discussion through mental elaboration. We also found evidence of modeling behavior for civility and metacommunication.     

Social Histories of Educational Change

This article sets out new directions for thinking about educational change theory. In particular, a number of different segments in educational change processes are examined – the internal, the external and the personal.In analyzing the importance of these different segments of educational change, a socio-historical approach is adopted. It is noted that in the expansionist period of the 1960s and 1970s internal change agentry was dominant and, as a result, modernist change theory located in that period stressed the importance of the internal processes which had become central in orchestrating the change process. In the 1980s and 1990s external change mandates have become dominant, with a number of downsides related to internal and personal missions.In the new millennium it is argued that, as well as internal and external segments, increasing attention will need to be paid to the personal missions and purposes which underpin commitment to change processes. Without a fully conceptualized notion of how the internal, external and personal will interlink, existing change theory remains underdeveloped and of progressively less use.In the final sections, a tentative model of change processes is defined. In this model, the internal, external and personal are integrated in ways that seek to provide new momentum for change processes and their study.     

Examining the Role of Gender in the Prevalence of Campus Victimization,Perceptions of Fear and Risk of Crime,and the Use of Constrained Behaviors among College Students Attending a Large Urban University

The incidence and the impact of crime on college campuses are important issues for students and administrators alike. This study examines experiences with victimization and perceptions of crime on campus with a convenience sample of 997 students attending an urban university in Colorado. Approximately 8% of the student respondents indicated they had been victimized by at least one type of crime since first enrolling at the university. Respondents indicated low‐to‐moderate levels of fear and perceived risk of victimization on campus and viewed the campus as being moderately safe. Male and female respondents did not significantly differ in victimization rates, although gender differences were found in levels of fear, perceived risk of victimization, constrained behavior, and perceptions of overall safety on campus. The results from this study are compared to findings from the work of Jennings, Gover, and Pudrzynska in 2007, which examined campus crime among students at a traditional university, published in the Journal of Criminal Justice Education.