On Scholars and Pragmatists and Fitting It All In

The author looks back on his career as an academic in Australia, tracing both his own and higher education's descent into pragmatism. In particular, he re‐examines 25 years later the AVCC working party report on Teaching Methods in Australian Universities of which he was a co‐author.     

Friendship Behaviors During Early Childhood and Beyond

This project examines friendship development by identifying behaviors that young children associate with friendship and comparing whether those behaviors match what adults in an enduring friendship recall about the beginnings of their friendships. To examine these questions, young children at a child care facility were interviewed about friendship and 95 adults in enduring friendships identified critical incidents from the beginnings of their friendships. The results not only support past research about what friends mean to young children; but also identifies the ability children have to make distinctions among the many individuals who play with them to be able to label a special person as a best friend. The project proposes that whether childhood friendships become enduring friendships is based on the opportunities the children have to remain friends. It is suggested the opportunity to remain friends is one that can be enhanced by parents and early childhood programs.     

Selective habituation of defensive behavior: Evidence for predator-prey synchrony

The selective nocturnal persistence of death feigning, an antipredator behavior, was assessed in four studies involving single daily trials. In Experiments 1 and 2, White Leghorn chicks exhibited a progressive decline in death feigning durations in both the light and the dark phases of their photoperiods over 8 days, but resistance to habituation was greater at night. When nocturnal death feigning was induced to a habituation criterion (Experiment 3), it was extremely persistent and was not completely abolished in some chicks, even after 25 consecutive test days. Because nocturnal response durations of chicks tested cross-sectionally increased over the same developmental period (Experiment 4), a shifting developmental baseline was excluded as the basis for the declining response durations observed in the first three studies. The differential plasticity of death feigning at two times of day is consistent with the argument that predatorprey synchrony confers a selective advantage, and suggests an additional biological constraint on learning.     

Using a Think-Aloud with Diverse Students: Three Primary Grade Students Experience Chrysanthemum

Many struggling readers, students with English as a second language, and children with disabilities do not engage in the strategies that good readers use when reading for understanding. Reading comprehension depends upon the students’ ability to successfully use strategies to monitor and control their own comprehension. Teachers need to help students develop skills that will aid in reading comprehension. The think-aloud is one strategy that can help struggling readers improve fluency and comprehension. One of the most important components to determine the success of the think-aloud is the teacher’s ability to model and facilitate the think-aloud procedure. The teacher needs to have a basic understanding of what is meant to be accomplished using this method. This article profiles how three teachers model and facilitate a think-aloud with three struggling readers.     

Reflections of an Evaluator

Using as a case study a major project he directed which evaluated student services in Australian higher education, the author discusses the approach and the methodology adopted. Some difficulties and inadequacies are identified and explained, and the criticisms made by some Victims' of the evaluation are presented. Finally, the paper discusses some issues emerging from the experience of this project in such areas as the politics and climate of evaluation, consultation with and education of the evaluated, the credibility of evaluators, self‐evaluation and the use of external evaluators; and points to some lessons which might be learned.     

Online Media and Political Participation: The Case of Malaysia

This study is based on a survey of 526 adult Malaysians who were interviewed shortly before the 2008 national election about online media use, levels of political participation, and voting intentions. The goal was to document the role of online media in a society that controls political information in traditional media and, in turn, compels citizens to seek alternative news sources online. As predicted, the findings indicated that online media use was positively associated with higher levels of political participation among Malaysian voters. The use of and exposure to social networking sites, political blogs, political online videos, party websites, and political ads on cell phones showed strong associations with political activism. However, the use of political online media did not predict voters’ likelihood of voting.     

Unionization and Perceived Control Among Community College Faculty

The research reported in this paper examined what role working in a union or nonunion college has in influencing faculty perceptions of control over their work. Using data from the 1993, 1999, and 2004 National Study of Postsecondary Faculty, this study explored the relative importance of variables in influencing perceived control among full-time teaching faculty in unionized and nonunionized community colleges. Union status was not found to be predictive of perceived control.