Facilitating College Students' Recovery Through the Use of Collegiate Recovery Programs

This article describes an untapped resource that counselors can use to help serve the multiple needs of college students recovering from addiction: collegiate recovery programs. The authors provide detailed information about the collegiate recovery population and give examples of successful programs. Implications for future research are discussed, and suggestions are provided for facilitating student recovery and advocating for collegiate recovery programs.     

Longitudinal analysis of the environmental attitudes of university students

This article addresses the important questions that higher education institutions ask concerning their impact on their students’ sustainability-related attributes ‘How do our students’ worldviews change as they experience higher education with us?’ The process of monitoring such a dynamic entity is fraught with statistical complexity but may not be impossible for an institution willing to ask whether or not its educational efforts in ‘education for sustainability’, ‘education for sustainable development’ or ‘environmental education’, and campus sustainability developments, are paralleled by changes in the attitudes of its students. We describe here a longitudinal survey process based on the revised New Ecological Paradigm scale, with two cohorts of students, in three programmes of study, operating over four years, with multiple survey inputs by each student. We implemented the longitudinal analysis using a linear mixed-effects model and describe here the development and testing of this model. We conclude that higher education institutions can benchmark the sustainability attributes of their students and monitor changes, if they are minded to. We invite higher education practitioners worldwide to join us in further developing suitable research instruments, processes and statistical models, and in further analysing the assumptions that link higher education to sustainability and to global citizenship.     

Action learning,the tool for problem-solving in universities; Uganda Martyrs Nkozi,Makerere and Nkumba universities

The article presents an account of how action learning principles were implemented to alleviate complex problems in universities. It focuses on the registrars and administrators under the academic Registrar's department. The Marquardt model of action learning was used in combination with the constructivist theories of learning, namely community of practice, experiential learning, discovery learning, problem-based learning and situated learning. The importance of culture and knowledge sharing is also highlighted. The results indicate that action learning contributes to problem-solving. The community of practice creates a conducive environment for successful implementation of action learning, and different organizational cultures impact on the implementation of action learning.     

The Challenge of Evaluating Action Learning

The paper examines the benefits claimed for action learning at individual, organisational and inter-organisational levels. It goes on to identify both generic difficulties in evaluating development programmes and action learning specifically. The distinction between formative and summative evaluation is considered and a summative evaluation framework is outlined, based on recent reviews of evaluations of development programmes, while recognising that establishing clear causal links remains problematic.     

A defensive mindset: A pattern of social information processing that develops early and predicts life course outcomes

The hypothesis was tested that some children develop a defensive mindset that subsumes individual social information processing (SIP) steps, grows from early experiences, and guides long-term outcomes. In Study 1 (Fast Track [FT]), 463 age-5 children (45% girls; 43% Black) were first assessed in 1991 and followed through age 32 (83% retention). In Study 2 (Child Development Project [CDP]), 585 age-5 children (48% girls, 17% Black) were first assessed in 1987 and followed through age 34 (78% retention). In both studies, measures were collected of early adverse experiences, defensive mindset and SIP, and adult outcomes. Across both studies, a robust latent construct of school-age defensive mindset was validated empirically (comparative fit index = .99 in each study) and found to mediate the impact of early child abuse (38% in FT and 29% in CDP of total effect) and peer social rejection (14% in FT and 7% in CDP of total effect) on adult incarceration.     

Infant vocalizing and phenotypic outcomes in autism: Evidence from the first 2 years

Infant vocalizations are early-emerging communicative markers shown to be atypical in autism spectrum disorder (ASD), but few longitudinal, prospective studies exist. In this study, 23,850 infant vocalizations from infants at low (LR)- and high (HR)-risk for ASD (HR-ASD = 23, female = 3; HR-Neg = 35, female = 13; LR = 32, female = 10; 80% White; collected from 2007 to 2017 near Philadelphia) were analyzed at 6, 12, and 24 months. At 12 months, HR-ASD infants produced fewer vocalizations than HR-Neg infants. From 6 to 24 months, HR-Neg infants demonstrated steeper vocalization growth compared to HR-ASD and LR infants. Finally, among HR infants, vocalizing at 12 months was associated with language, social phenotype, and diagnosis at age 2. Infant vocalizing is an objective behavioral marker that could facilitate earlier detection of ASD.     

Reconceptualizing student ratings of teaching to support quality discourse on student learning: a systems perspective

Higher Education - This paper summarizes the discourse on student ratings of teaching in higher education. It reconceptualizes student ratings within a larger process of promoting quality in...