SYMPOSIUM: THE SUPREME COURT''S MICHIGAN DECISIONS

On 23 June 2003, the Supreme Court of the United States issued two rulings on the constitutionality of race preferences in university admissions. The cases in question both involved the University of Michigan and were designated Gratz v. Bollinger and Grutter v. Bollinger. Academic Questions' editors subsequently invited five scholars to address the meaning and significance of those decisions.     

Early Islam in British Higher Education

Abstract

In an educational environment where interest in Arabic and Islam is growing, I ask the place of revisionist/critical approaches to early Islam in Higher Education. This paper uses 15 semi-structured interviews with Lecturers in early Islam to investigate how they treat controversial subject matter in the classroom. The paper examines how the different approaches taken by lecturers are linked to different kinds of academic training, and asks what kinds of approach are suited to different student demographics. It concludes by suggesting how critical ways of teaching this subject are linked to new approaches in interfaith engagement, which acknowledge the political context for the development of Scriptures.     

Writing flexibility in argumentative essays: a multidimensional analysis

Reading and Writing - The assessment of argumentative writing generally includes analyses of the specific linguistic and rhetorical features contained in the individual essays produced by students....     

Academic progress of children who attended a preschool for abused children: a follow-up of the keepsafe project

OBJECTIVE: This study was undertaken to assess academic progress of children 1 to 5 years after graduating from the C. Henry Kempe Center's Therapeutic Preschool Day Treatment Program. METHOD: Information was gathered through chart review; telephone surveys of care providers, relatives, and social service workers; as well questionnaires on all children who attended the therapeutic preschool day treatment program between 1984 and 1989, including the 24 children reported on by Oates, Gray, Schweitzer, Kempe, and Harmon, 1995. RESULTS: Classroom placement was determined for 27 of the 44 graduates (61.4%), 14 of whom (51.9%) were in a regular classroom, 10 (37.0%) in special education, two (7.4%) in residential treatment, and one (3.7%) was receiving home schooling. Twenty-two of the 27 children (81.5%) improved or remained in the same grade and type of classroom as they had been staffed into at the time of their graduation from the preschool day treatment program. Factors thought to affect stability of classroom placement were studied, of which frequency of family moves was the only significant variable. Its significance was in the direction opposite to that expected. The most effective method of locating families was to contact the Department of Social Services who provided information used to find 60% of them. CONCLUSIONS: Intervention in a therapeutic preschool day treatment program was found to be beneficial, as it enabled most of the children to progress appropriately in public school.     

A reading level match study of nonword reading skills in poor readers with varying IQ.

This study evaluated the hypothesis that poor readers are characterized by poor nonword reading skills, but that a specific deficit, as opposed to a developmental lag, in nonword reading will be found only in subjects whose reading is discrepant from intellectual ability. To test this hypothesis, we measured nonword reading skills in 93 (64 male, 29 female) third-grade poor readers and 54 (37 male, 17 female) fifth-grade poor readers (with and without reading/IQ discrepancies) who were matched to 147 (81 male, 66 female) nondisabled first graders on word identification skills. Results showed third- and fifth-grade poor readers to be significantly more impaired than word-identification level match first graders on all measures on nonword reading. These findings were not related to the verbal IQ level within the poor reader groups and, thus, provide strong evidence for a deficit in nonword reading skills that is not explained by verbal intelligence.     

Overshadowing of explicitly unpaired conditioned inhibition is disrupted by preexposure to the overshadowed inhibitor

In two conditioned lick-suppression experiments with rats, the interaction of preexposure to a target stimulus and subsequent overshadowing of conditioned inhibition treatment was examined. Blaisdell, Bristol, Gunther, and Miller (1998) have demonstrated that stimulus preexposure and overshadowing counteract each other in their effects on Pavlovian excitation, producing strong excitatory responding to the target stimulus. In the present experiments, a conditioned inhibition analogue of this effect was examined. Overshadowing of conditioned inhibition (i.e., attenuation of inhibitory control of behavior by the target stimulus) was demonstrated when a more salient stimulus was compounded with the target inhibitor during conditioned inhibition training. However, the overshadowing deficit was attenuated by preexposing the target stimulus prior to overshadowing treatment. To account for this phenomenon, we contrast the comparator hypothesis (Miller & Matzel, 1988) with contemporary models that focus on associative acquisition.     

Longitudinal course of rapid naming in disabled and nondisabled readers

The Rapid Automatized Naming Test (Denckla and Rudel 1974) was studied cross-sectionally in an sample of kindergartners (n=342) at-risk for reading disability (Study 1), and longitudinally in an n=160 epidemiological normal sample of children tested in first, third, fifth, and eighth grades (Study 2). Study 1 showed faster absolute naming speeds for those with near perfect untimed alphabet recitation, but the stronger and more orderly relation (at r=.31, p<.0001) was between three levels of alphabet recitation accuracy and the relative number/letter naming speed advantage (ratio of mean number/letter naming speed minus mean color/object naming speed over mean color/object naming speed). In Study 2, the number/letter advantage was already strongly present by first grade, and did not increase significantly thereafter, but absolute naming times improved steadily across grades in an exponential decay function. In this sample, the relative number/letter advantage was not related to reading level. However, the absolute color/object naming speed was strongly related to reading level and vocabulary across grades. Norms for the Rapid Automatized Naming Test based on the epidemiological normal sample tested in Grades 1, 3, 5, and 8 are presented in the appendix.