Family counseling in the Netherlands for Turkish-origin parents of deaf children with a cochlear implant

Cultural elements such as language, beliefs about health, and family context play important roles in the uptake of rehabilitation and treatment of deafness. Because of cultural issues, minority groups often do not receive optimal care. Focusing on the Netherlands, the researchers explored how the rehabilitation and counseling of deaf children of Turkish-origin parents can be improved. The most important findings were that (a) most parents initially did not believe their child was deaf and regretted later that they did not start hearing rehabilitation earlier; (b) parents had little confidence in the Dutch health care system and sought a second opinion from a medical doctor of their own national origin; (c) parents did not know how to be actively involved in the care of their deaf child. Implications for practice aimed at improving rehabilitation and counseling for these children are described.     

Delivering LIS education into Viet Nam: A narrative of teaching,interpreting, and translating

A team of academics from RMIT School of Business Information Technology were involved in delivering LIS training to staff at Can Tho University in Viet Nam who were to work in a newly developed Learning Resource Centre (LRC). The training materials were written in English and then translated into Vietnamese. RMIT staff then delivered the training face-to-face through interpreters. This paper records a narrative of the interaction between academics, students, translators, and interpreters. This narrative examines development, limitations, and successes of cross-cultural teaching and learning and offers a commentary from the point of view of academic participants in this project, particularly about the developing relationships between academics, translators, and interpreters. Examination of the impact includes some preliminary evaluation of the nature of the teaching experience and the development of culturally inclusive strategies and material.     

Comparison of mail and telephone methods of studying media contactors

Cable regulation should be based on the unique characteristics of cable, the rights of speakers to be as free as possible from government regulation, and a First Amendment theory that recognizes the public's right to a diverse marketplace of ideas. As a consequence, it is recommended that cable be defined as a limited public forum to include both the utility poles/conduits and the attached coaxial cable. This approach suggests that de facto monopoly franchise agreements and franchise fees are unconstitutional, but that limited access channel requirements such as one or two public access channels would be constitutional.     

Sex differences in communication and the construction of HIV/AIDS

This paper reports analyses of sex differences in knowledge, attitudes, and behavior related to HIV/AIDS and communication about HIV I'AIDS in the heterosexual college population. Men and women differed in their assessments of risk to HIV infection for various behaviors; in each case women perceived greater risk. Women were more favorable than men regarding talking about AIDS and attitudes about condom use. Men reported a greater number of sexual partners for the previous five years than did women. Men, more often than women, appear to have changed their behavior in a direction of greater risk. Only two sex differences were found for prevention‐related behaviors. First, men more often reported having purchased a condom. However, no sex differences were found for actual condom use. Second, as reported in previous studies, women were more likely to engage in AIDS‐related talk with a sexual partner. Because of their many differences, men and women need to be targeted as separate audiences for HIV/AIDS prevention. Further, because women have emerged as the most rapidly growing group at risk for HIV infection and because women appear to be more willing than men to implement HIV/AIDS prevention in their relationships, they should be considered a primary audience for HIV/AIDS‐prevention programs designed for influencing the behavior of heterosexual couples.     

Actors: From Audience to Provider

Abstract

This article describes and analyzes actors' experiences of distance learning systems in a wide variety of cultural and organizational contexts. In line with the project of this special series of issues, results of research, much of which is longitudinal, allow us to suggest answers to the following questions: Who are the actors of distance learning? How has their experience of learning systems evolved over the last thirty years? What roles have information and communication technologies (ICTs) played in this evolution? How do actors assess the effects of these learning systems on themselves, on the system itself, or on the organization? What are the future perspectives?     

Factors Affecting Efficiency of Inductive Reasoning

This experiment studied the separate effects on student achievement and time on-task of three components of the team learning technique, Student Teams-Achievement Divisions (STAD): cooperative rewards, group tasks, and a focused schedule of instruction. The subjects were 336 fourth and fifth grade students in 14 classes who studied language mechanics for nine weeks in one of five treatments. The results of a curriculum-specific achievement test and behavioral observation of time on-task indicated significantly greater performance in cooperative than traditional reward structures, but significantly lower performance in group than individual task structures. The focused schedule was found to be an important component of STAD in increasing academic achievement.     

Computer-Assisted Instruction on Study Skills

The study investigated the effectiveness of a computer-assisted instruction (CAI) study skills program on students’ behaviors and attitudes. The subjects were 88 students (experimental group) who completed the CAI program and 67 students (control group) who did not have access to the program. All subjects responded three times during the semester to the Survey of Study Habits and Attitudes inventory. Trend analyses revealed that during the semester the scores for the experimental group increased significantly and the scores for the control group decreased significantly. The findings showed that the CAI program can effectively present the information on effective study skills and how to develop such skills.     

Moving on (part 1): The physics of power and curriculum history

This is the first of two papers that map (dis)continuities in notions of power from Aristotle to Newton to Foucault. They trace the ways in which bio-physical conceptions of power became paraphrased in social science and deployed in educational discourse on the child and curriculum from post-Newtonian times to the present. The analyses suggest that, amid ruptures in the definition, role, location and meaning given 'power' historically in various 'physical' and 'social' cosmologies, the naming of 'power' has been dependent on 'physics', on the theorization of motion across 'Western' sciences. This first paper examines some (dis)continuities in regard to histories of motion and power from Aristotelian 'natural science' to Newtonian mechanics.     

College Chemistry: how a textbook can reveal the values embedded in chemistry

This paper explores the norms, values and ethical attitudes that Linus Pauling wanted to convey to his students in his famous textbook College Chemistry. In this classic textbook, Pauling aimed to introduce beginners into the world of chemistry by presenting chemistry as a systematic science based on a collection of empirical data and a recent theoretical framework. In doing so, he expressed his epistemic and didactic choices clearly. College Chemistry therefore offers an ideal opportunity to examine some of the norms at the core of chemistry's 'moral economy'.