Predicting multicultural effectiveness of international students: the Multicultural Personality Questionnaire

The present study considered the reliability and validity of the 78-item revised version of the Multicultural Personality Questionnaire, a multidimensional instrument aimed at measuring multicultural effectiveness of expatriate employees and students. The questionnaire includes scales for cultural empathy, open-mindedness, emotional stability, social initiative and flexibility. Participants were native and foreign students of an international business school (N=171) in the Netherlands. The MPQ scales appeared to be more strongly predictive of adjustment of international students as compared to native students. Moreover, the instrument was able to explain variance in students’ adjustment beyond self-efficacy.     

Subtypes, severity, and structural stability of peer victimization: what does latent class analysis say?

This study uses latent class analysis (LCA) to empirically identify victimization groups during middle school. Approximately 2,000 urban, public middle school students (mean age in sixth grade = 11.57) reported on their peer victimization during the Fall and Spring semesters of their sixth, seventh, and eighth grades. Independent LCA analyses at each semester yielded 3 victim classes based on victimization degree rather than type (e.g., physical vs. relational). The most victimized class always represented the smallest proportion of the sample, decreasing from 20% in sixth grade to 6% by the end of eighth grade. This victimized class also always reported feeling less safe at school concurrently and more depressed than others 1 semester later, illustrating the validity of the LCA approach.     

Learning to mark: exemplars,dialogue and participation in assessment communities

The problems of shifting from norm-referenced assessment to criterion-referenced assessment have been identified by several scholars in recent years. These important critiques touch on a number of areas, but neglect a key question about how assessors learn to accomplish what Shay calls a ‘socially situated interpretive act'. Research that does exist tends to focus on salaried, full-time academics. This overlooks the heterogeneity of the academic labour force in higher education and the substantial contribution made by contract (hourly-paid) lecturers, particularly in applied disciplines such as Business and Management. This study explores how nine newcomers to a UK Business School – including salaried and contract staff – attempt to understand local assessment practice. We use a situated learning lens to analyse their diary entries and interviews about their experiences of learning to mark. Drawing on scholars such as Sadler, we examine the suggestion that exemplars are important for newcomers coming to understand local assessment practice. We argue for the fundamental importance of dialogue about exemplars and other aspects of practice, both to develop inter-subject understandings of assessment ‘anchor points' and also to foster among newcomers (and especially contract lecturers) a greater sense of participating in, and being valued by, the local assessment community.     

Best entry points for structured document retrieval—Part II: Types,usage and effectiveness

Structured document retrieval makes use of document components as the basis of the retrieval process, rather than complete documents. The inherent relationships between these components make it vital to support users’ natural browsing behaviour in order to offer effective and efficient access to structured documents. This paper examines the concept of best entry points, which are document components from which the user can browse to obtain optimal access to relevant document components. It investigates at the types of best entry points in structured document retrieval, and their usage and effectiveness in real information search tasks.     

But good strategy instructors are constructivists!

The general nature of constructivist educators' views of teaching are overviewed first, followed by analysis of good strategy instruction in constructivist terms. That good strategy instruction is scaffolded teaching is particularly emphasized. Scaffolded teacher-student interactions necessitate that students experience unique instruction that stimulates a great deal of student construction of to-be-acquired competencies. The only important difference between good strategy teaching and teaching recommended by constructivist educators is in the explicitness of instruction, with relatively greater teacher input about what is to be learned during good strategy instruction.     

How do students define their roles and responsibilities in online learning group projects?

The goal of this study was to explore the processes of group role formation in online class settings. Qualitative analysis was used to code chat logs and discussion threads in six undergraduate Family and Consumer Sciences online courses that required online group projects. Four themes related to the process of group role formation emerged: testing the waters, apologies as being nice, tag – you’re it, and struggling to find one’s role. Students created roles of leader, wannabe, spoiler, agreeable enabler, coat‐tails, and supportive worker as the group process evolved over the course of the semester. Results lend support for a balance between allowing students to create and experience roles on their own and faculty assignment of roles. Questions are raised related to faculty approaches toward directing and scaffolding the group process.     

To Sign or Not to Sign? The Impact of Encouraging Infants to Gesture on Infant Language and Maternal Mind‐Mindedness

Findings are presented from the first randomized control trial of the effects of encouraging symbolic gesture (or “baby sign”) on infant language, following 40 infants from age 8 months to 20 months. Half of the mothers were trained to model a target set of gestures to their infants. Frequent measures were taken of infant language development and dyadic interactions were scrutinized to assess mind‐mindedness. Infants exposed to gesture did not differ from control conditions on language outcomes; thus, no support was found for previous claims that encouraging gesturing with infants accelerates linguistic development. Microgenetic analysis revealed mothers in the gesture training conditions were more responsive to their infants' nonverbal cues and encouraged more independent action by their infant.     

The status of research on women and communication

The purpose of this essay is to survey and summarize the research on women, gender, and sex differences that has been published in speech communication journals. Five categories of research emerged from this survey: historical treatments of women, sex differences, images of women in the media, education and pedagogy, and surveys and integrative works. While future research is needed to fill in the gaps made evident by this survey of literature, perhaps more important is to begin to question and investigate the assumptions underlying current research about women.