A JEWISH SCHOOL MODEL FOR MORAL EDUCATION

Since Gaonic times a great deal of Jewish history had been made, and vast areas of Jewish living had been vitally affected by an intellectual device known as “Shaalot Utshuvot” (“Responsa”), an exchange of correspondence between two leaders of Jewish thought and learning. Something in the nature of such a responsum took place between our colleagues Drs. Judah Pilch and David Kuselewitz, on the occasion of the former's publishing an experimental edition of a proposed High School curriculum, in his former capacity as director of the Curriculum Research Institute.

We publish herewith David Kusele‐witz's reply to Judah Pilch's request for his evaluation of the curriculum proposal. Written in 1965, it is still very relevant to our troubles and our challenges, and offers much food for bold and innovative thought on several vital Jewish educational issues.     

Conceptualizing Justice: Revising the Introductory Criminal Justice Course*

Criminal justice is often criticized for lacking theoretical grounding. This article argues that the introductory criminal justice course should be reconceptualized in such a way that permits a critical assessment of theoretical bases underlying crime, law and justice. Doing so would better prepare students to understand key questions in the study of criminal justice and would also help give criminal justice greater credibility as a stand‐alone academic discipline. In addition to presenting the benefits of a theory‐driven introductory course, possible content and pedagogy are described.     

Using Web-Based Key Character and Classification Instruction for Teaching Undergraduate Students Insect Identification

The purpose of the study was to determine whether undergraduate students receiving web-based instruction based on traditional, key character, or classification instruction differed in their performance of insect identification tasks. All groups showed a significant improvement in insect identifications on pre- and post-two-dimensional picture specimen quizzes. The study also determined student performance on insect identification tasks was not as good as for family-level identification as compared to broader insect orders and arthropod classification identification tasks. Finally, students erred significantly more by misidentification than misspelling specimen names on prepared specimen quizzes. Results of this study support that short web-based insect identification exercises can improve insect identification performance. Also included is a discussion of how these results can be used in teaching and future research on biological identification.     

Creating a Schoolwide Vocabulary Initiative in an Urban High School

In an effort to improve student achievement at an urban high school, teachers and administrators developed a 5-part, schoolwide vocabulary plan. Over 4 years, teachers provided students with increased opportunities to read, read to their students, developed content-specific vocabulary instruction, taught students academic words, and focused on 5 words each week with a common prefix, suffix, or root. Over the 4 years, student achievement in vocabulary and reading comprehension improved in significant ways, both on reading assessments and state achievement tests.     

Sociodemographic Inequality in Early Literacy Development: The Role of Teacher Perceptual Accuracy

Previous research has established that student learning is influenced by how accurately teachers perceive student academic ability. But studies rarely investigate the degree to which inaccuracies in teacher perceptions exacerbate demographic inequality in academic ability. Using a sample of almost 14,000 children from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study, Kindergarten Cohort, we found that children whose literacy skills are overestimated by their teachers typically gain more literacy skills during kindergarten. Conversely, children whose skills are underestimated learn less. It is important to note that the skills of socioeconomically disadvantaged children are on average underestimated. As a result, inequalities in kindergarten literacy development stem in part from the links between teacher misperceptions and student background. We also explored the extent to which these relationships operate through practices associated with ability grouping. We found instructional grouping to be a weak facilitator of the link between teacher perceptions and student learning, suggesting the need for further research that identifies the social and structural classroom characteristics that link teacher perceptual accuracy to student learning.     

The noise of thoughts: The turbulent (sound‐)worlds of Jean‐Luc Godard

This article examines the role of noise in various aspects of Jean‐Luc Godard's filmmaking practice. Beginning with an analysis of 2 ou 3 choses que je sais d'elle (1966), it suggests that the loud noise on the soundtrack functions to disrupt the search for meaning in this film that is precisely about knowledge and cognition, providing an image of thought as an unpredictable and uncontrollable process. The influence of 1970s theoretical biology and information theory is analysed in Sauve qui peut (la vie) (1979) which applies Henri Atlan's ‘order from noise’ principle to the composition of shots, the construction of scenes and the development of narrative. Finally Godard's presentation of a complex, deterritorialised capitalist economy is considered in Nouvelle Vague (1990), and it is suggested that Godard's creation of aesthetic events – both through editing and through sound design – implies a different conception of temporality to the sequential logic of financial speculation and risk management.     

感召力膜拜和世界一流大学

让我们从目前全世界所关注的话题,也就是所谓的世界一流大学谈起。它被人们如此频繁的提及,已成了陈词滥调。我要谈的是人们究竟期望这些学校取得什么样的成绩,但在此之前,我们需要先搞清楚为什么当今人们的期望会如此高。高度期望答案非常简单:在人类有历史以来,没有什么比教育更重要的了。每一个人都认同这一点,即良好的教育对学生个人的成功是非常重要的。同时良好的教育对一个国家的富强也是非常重要的。虽然这个观点存在很大的争议,但它仍被人们广泛接受。对于个人来说,学校教育是非常重要的。因为生活中机会的多少直接取决于个人的知…     

Resistance to interference in complex negative patterning

Resistance to interference was examined in rats that received a complex negative patterning discrimination in which XA and XB were followed by food reinforcement and XAB was not. Retention of the discrimination was evident after separate reinforcement of both A and B (Experiment 3), but not after reinforcement of either AB (Experiments 1 and 3) or XAB (Experiments 2 and 3). These data suggest that complex negative patterning discriminations are acquired configurally and that the relative similarity of the original discrimination and subsequent interference trials dictates the final degree of retention observed.