FROM NEAR‐RUBBLE TO REBIRTH: A FORMER CHURCH BUILDING AS A CENTERPIECE OF COLLABORATION FOR CHILDREN

This article describes the collaborative efforts of multiple organizations and individuals in transforming a doomed church in a large urban community into an exemplary public Pre‐k through Grade 2 laboratory school. Central to this emerging facility was the commitment of all cooperating parties to focus upon meeting the educational, health, and social needs of each child through school, home and community involvement. Unique to this collaboration has been the continual involvement of higher education institutions in Western New York in the planning, organization and implementation of this project. Further, infusion of the latest in computer and video technology with distance learning capability supported cross‐fertilization and friendships among higher education professionals and their students from a variety of related disciplines.     

Children,Television and Learning in Nursery and Infants’ Schools

Whether young children learn from television is a contentious issue. Some people believe that learning takes place through the very fact of watching a television picture while others feel that young children view passively. The child as an individual, the purposes for using television and the facilities at a teacher's disposal are rarely taken into account within the considerations. This paper argues that attention needs to be given to levels on mental development, interpretation of curriculum and resources available when children, television and learning in nursery and primary schools are examined.     

Practices concerning high school play contests

Scientific analysis of any phenomenon is likely to suffer when the assumptions of methodology too rigidily restrict theory testing. This problem has arisen in the sequential analysis of social interaction. The assumptions explored center on three aspects of process—coding schemes, the nature of time, and the quality of explanations engendered by sequential analysis methodologies.     

I. WHAT THE MINISTERS SAY

The purpose of this column is to keep religious educators abreast of relevant significant research in the general field of psychology. Its implications for methods and material in religious education are clear. Religious educators may well take advantage of every new finding in scientific research.

Each abstract or group is preceded by an evaluation and interpretive comment, which aims to guide the reader in understanding the research reported.

All of these abstracts are from PSYCHOLOGICAL ABSTRACTS, and used by permission of that periodical. The abstract numbers are from Volume 25, 1951.     

Book reviews

Bloomfield, Leonard, and Barnhart, Clarence L., Let's Read: A Linguistic Approach. Wayne State University Press, Detroit 2. l961, $7.50.

Gunderson, Robert Gray, Old Gentlemen's Convention: The Washington Peace Conference of 1861. The University of Wisconsin Press, Madison. 1961, $5.

Corrigan, Robert W., Chandler Editions in Drama. Chandler Publishing Company, 604 Madison Street, San Francisco 4. $.75, paper.

Plummer, Gail, The Business of Show Business. Harper and Brothers, 49 East 33 Street, New York 16. 1961, $5.25.

Babcock, Weston, Hamlet, a Tragedy of Errors. Purdue University Studies, Humanities Series. Purdue University, Lafayette, Indiana. 1961, paper, $1.75.     

The Technology Policy Unit of the University of Aston in Birmingham

The purpose of this research project was to study how students in the first years of elementary school (children from 7 to 10 years of age) are initiated into the construction of explanations of physical phenomena in the teaching of science. With this purpose in mind, we organized classes based on the proposition of investigative problems, where children, working in groups, could solve problems by raising and testing their own hypotheses. They would then attempt, by means of general discussion organized by the teacher, to discuss how each problem was solved and why it worked. We videotaped a series of classes in which the students solved 15 different investigative problems. We also analysed the teacher/student interactions that took place (in this paper, we present data on two of these classes). Based on our data we found that students construct their own causal explanations by following a sequence of stages that includes the appearance of novelties. We also discuss how our data relate to the teacher's role in the classroom and to the organization of science teaching at this level.     

An empirical approach to certain concepts of logical proof

To develop a consistent approach to the basic concepts of logical proof in a theory of rhetoric requires a philosophical base of analysis. An empirical approach makes possible a consistent and precise explanation of the hey concepts of logical proof in a manner closely approximating what we vaguely have in mind when we use terms like “fact”; and “proof in common sense ways.     

Perceived confidence as a function of self‐image

The hypothesis that a speaker's perceived confidence is a function of his self‐image was studied in this investigation. Seventeen matched pairs of subjects were picked on the basis of a pretest of the Personal Report of Confidence as a Speaker index. The experimental subjects were given indirect suggestion that their audiences viewed them as confident speakers. Posttest differences between treatments was significant at the 5% level of confidence.     

Women's Liberation—A New Challenge to Counselors

Abstract

Findings from longitudinal research conducted at a private junior college for women document the claim that the benefits of the women's liberation movement extend beyond those of equalization of employment opportunities. Notably perceptible changes have occurred in the contemporary female, especially the married woman, along a number of key personality traits over the past six years. She is more achievement and politically oriented; her aspiration level today is much higher than a decade ago. She seeks change, is less deterred by failures, and is significantly more self-assertive.

Implications of these changes for a school's counseling and guidance staff are also discussed.