Instructing adolescents with learning disabilities: converting a meta-analysis to practice

A previous meta-analysis indicated that eight instructional factors--Questioning, Sequencing and Segmentation, Skill Modeling, Organization and Explicit Practice, Small-Group Setting, Indirect Teacher Activities (e.g., homework), Technology, and Scaffolding-captured the majority of successful intervention programs for adolescents with learning disabilities (LD). Most important was the Organization/Explicit factor, which contributed significant variance (16%) to effect size. This factor included two important instructional components: advance organization and explicit practice. In this article, we convert these findings into practical guidelines to direct instructional practice.     

The expert witness in child abuse and neglect: An interdisciplinary process

The legal system is an important part of a society's response to child abuse and child neglect. Courts need to be guided in their deliberations by experts from many different professions. Consultation and in-court expert testimony is necessary from medicine, psychology, psychiatry, social work and other professions both to prove child abuse and neglect and establish the power of the court to act on behalf of a child but also to guide the court in the intervention strategy most suited to the needs of the child and his family. Non-lawyers often feel uncomfortable in the legal setting. The adversary process is foreign to their training and professional experience. Collaboration with a lawyer greatly improves their effectiveness in court. Lawyers, on the other hand, need to make maximum use of medical and social-psychological experts in the court process in the interests of their clients; but to do so lawyers need a basic understanding of the other professions. With an emphasis on a process of mutual education, the paper presents a framework for collaboration between lawyers and expert witnesses in child abuse and neglect cases. “Expert witness” is defined; informal consultation is encouraged; suggestions for selecting a collaborator are made; initial contracts between lawyer and expert, case conferencing and preparation for trial are discussed; specific advice on direct and cross examination is provided.     

The other half of international teaching assistant training: Classroom communication workshops for international students

ITAs often experience particular difficulty balancing their roles as teachers with their roles as students. Student communication skills training is warranted for ITAs because it may be more motivating than instructional skills training, because it captures an otherwise elusive segment of the clientele, and because learning can transfer to ITAs' own teaching repertoires. Such a program can begin with a focus on naming and social identity. The bulk of the program focuses on communication practices for participative learning such as small group problem solving and whole-group responding. A typical workshop concludes with a forum for student concerns, often focusing upon how to interact with one's academic advisor.He obtained his Ph.D. in 1978 at the University of Minnesota. Among the courses he teaches are offerings in intercultural communication, applied linguistics, and composition research. He has also conducted research pertaining to perceptions of international instructors.     

Physiotherapy Student Clinical Education: the influence of subjective judgements on observational assessment

The process of assessing students on clinical placements has to date been under‐researched. In particular, while the involvement of subjective judgements in assessing students has been discussed in the literature, there has been no attempt to look for systematic evidence. This paper comprises the first attempt to relate judgement theory to the assessment of vocational education. Preliminary results demonstrate that physiotherapy assessors made subjective judgements of their students, that these contributed to the determination of assessment grades, and that in certain cases these judgements were erroneous. The relationship of these subjective judgements to the awarding of grades via a supposedly objective assessment instrument is not yet known. Given the widespread use of such assessment instruments across different professions, the question raised is whether all observational assessment systems suffer from similar problems. If students are being judged on criteria not included on assessment instruments, perhaps the other criteria being used need to be made more explicit.     

Advice to doctoral guidance committees from alumni at two universities

This investigation provided a comparative analysis of results of follow-up studies of graduates of doctoral programs at Ohio State and Michigan State universities. The same questionnaire survey and similar sampling procedures were used in both settings. The survey considered alumni perceptions of guidance committee activities, course work, comprehensive examinations, and dissertations. Most findings were consistent across both institutions (e.g., about one-fifth of the graduates from both universities wish they had taken more course work in research methodology). However, some striking contrasts were also found (e.g., the proportion of graduates who published articles based on their dissertations was 40% at one university and 23% at the other). The report offers recommendations for doctoral guidance committees suggested by the findings.     

Child Development and the Social Demography of Childhood

This article provides background information and a practical guide for including demographic information in developmental research. First, it portrays historic demographic trends reflecting critical ways in which the family and economic environments of children have been, and continue to be, transformed in the United States. Second, it presents current demographic statistics to provide a basis for researchers to compare their special study population to the general population of children and to formulate specific hypotheses about ways in which their result might differ for children in various demographic situations. Third, it offers an Appendix with standardized wording for a minimum set of questions needed to measure the demographic characteristics and environments of children. The Appendix provides researchers the technical capacity to collect such data, so they can develop and test hypotheses about how family and econmic environments shape child development processes and outcomes.     

The effect of network size on intra-network knowledge processes

This paper addresses a neglected topic in the knowledge management literature: how the size of a network of actors affects the nature of intra-network social relations and knowledge processes. It makes a theoretical contribution to developing understanding in this area drawing on a range of literatures including practice-based perspectives on knowledge, the literature on the embeddedness of social relations, and relevant knowledge management literature. The central focus of this paper is on the relationship between network size, network density, and how these variables affect intra-network knowledge processes. It suggests that as network size increases network density is likely to decrease (as it becomes problematic for the actors in such networks to retain strong ties with a significant proportion of the network's members), which it will be suggested has significant ramifications for intra-network knowledge processes. This paper concludes by reflecting on the implications of the ideas developed for network-based forms of organizing, and innovation processes.     

The approximate frequency response of semi-active systems requiring no computer

Semi-active systems are those in which a passive, dissipative element (damper, friction clutch, fluid orifice) is modulated, via low power inputs, to enhance the performance of its associated dynamic system. This type of control is inherently nonlinear, thus forcing the closed-loop response of the total system to be determined numerically using a digital computer. Although, strictly speaking, the frequency response for nonlinear systems does not exist, it is typical to simulate semi-active systems with sinusoidal input and present results as frequency transmissibilities. This paper uses energy dissipation per cycle to determine an approximate frequency response of semi-active systems requiring only a calculator for numerical analysis.