The effects of loneliness on relational maintenance behaviors: An attributional perspective

This study links the experience of loneliness to the use of relational maintenance behaviors. More precisely, an attributional perspective on loneliness is adopted, wherein chronic loneliness leads to attributions for the cause of loneliness to stable, internal, and uncontrollable factors; situational loneliness is more likely to be attributed to unstable, external, and controllable factors. Over 400 participants completed measures of chronic and situational loneliness, and relational maintenance strategies. Residts indicated that both forms of loneliness are negatively associated with maintenance strategies. As anticipated, chronically lonely people reported the least use of relational maintenance behaviors across relationship types.     

Poison or panacea?: Sarah Moore Grimké's use of the public letter

Rhetors have long used the letter form to overcome difficult situations. This essay considers the difficulties inherent in the form when used by a female rhetor. During her career as an abolitionist, Sarah Grimke attempted to use the apostolic letter to appeal to divergent audiences yet discovered, that the form and its attendant persona limited her audience appeal. In her work as a woman's rights activist, she reformulated the private letter and developed a persona that allowed her to empower herself as well as her audience.     

A Review of “Nations of the World: A Political,Economic, and Business Handbook”

This case study presents the revision of an upper-division one-shot instruction session to include an online tutorial that introduces students to business information sources prior to the library session. In order to complete the assignment and prepare for the library session, students are prompted to find specific information using the given resource, and then consider questions regarding the information retrieved. Students in a 3000-level business writing class responded positively to the activity while providing a good amount of material to inform further iterations of the assignment.     

Student Ethos in the Online Technical Communication Classroom: Diverse Voices

“The study of activity ceases to be the psychology of an individual, but instead focuses on the interaction between an individual, systems of artifacts, and other individuals in historically developing institutional settings” (Miettinen, 1997).

As teaching technical writing online becomes more widespread, teachers and scholars are identifying ways to increase teaching/learning efficacy. One way of accomplishing this goal is by continually reflecting on different types of student ethos being constructed in an online course. The changes that occur in the ethos development process can be contextualized through activity theory, which emphasizes the dynamic, evolving nature of social environments. Activity theory's focus on cultural history and tools makes it ideal for exploring active communication among multiple participants in an online technical communication environment. The triangle of human activity adapted and developed by Engeström (1987) Engeström, Y. 1987. Learning by expanding: An activity theoretical approach to developmental research., Helsinki, Finland: Orienta-Konsultit Oy.  [Google Scholar] provides a framework for exploring ethos as an object within an online course's activity system.     

Looking on the bright side: children's knowledge about the benefits of positive versus negative thinking

Five- to 10-year-olds (N = 90) listened to 6 illustrated scenarios featuring 2 characters that jointly experience the same positive event (and feel good), negative event (and feel bad), or ambiguous event (and feel okay). Afterward, one character thinks a positive thought and the other thinks a negative thought. Children predicted and explained each character's emotions. Results showed significant development between 5 and 10 years in children's understanding that thinking positively improves emotions and thinking negatively makes one feel worse, with earliest knowledge demonstrated when reasoning about ambiguous and positive events. Individual differences in child and parental optimism and hope predicted children's knowledge about thought-emotion connections on some measures, including their beliefs about the emotional benefits of thinking positively in negative situations.     

Initial Results of a New Clinical Practice Model: Impact on Learners at Risk

The last several years have seen a dramatic increase in interest surrounding the role of clinical experiences in enhancing the learning of teacher candidates. Further, pressure has intensified to demonstrate the impact of teacher candidates on P–12 learners. With these goals in mind, a model alternative school/university partnership was created, based on Korthagen's “Realistic Teacher Education” framework. This article is an evaluation of the impact of this intervention on student outcomes from the program's first three years. A convergence of evidence reveals significant improvements in grade point average and credits earned; furthermore, significant improvements in total disciplinary incidents emerged in some of the analyses. These results suggest that this teacher education intervention has promise for documenting impact on P–12 learners. This outcome is significant for accreditation purposes, for bolstering the image of teacher education programs within the broader community, and for establishing a common research agenda.     

Identifying Best Practice in a Shifting Landscape: Making Sense of RTI in the Context of SLD Identification

The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (2004) Individuals with Disabilities Education Act. 1997, 1999, 2004. 20 U. S. C. 1400 et. Seq. (Statute). 34 C.F.R. 300 (Regulations) [Google Scholar] has had substantial influence on special education in general and the field of learning disabilities in particular. Since its reauthorization in 2004, ongoing regulatory efforts have been underway to determine its operationalization and implementation. Of particular concern to those involved in the educational process (i.e., special educators, school psychologists, families, advocates) are the guidelines for identifying children with specific learning disabilities (SLD), including the use of Response to Intervention (RTI). In this article, some of the most relevant and controversial issues associated with the use of RTI for the identification of SLD are detailed. We discuss how SLD is conceptualized in terms of identification approaches and classification criteria and present position statements of special education professional associations on the changes to the federal SLD definition and identification criteria. Finally, we summarize proposed resolutions to the seemingly irreconcilable differences identified throughout the article.     

Accreditation and Power: A Discourse Analysis of a New Regime of Governance in Higher Education

This article studies discourses within the accreditation of Norwegian higher education conducted by the Norwegian Agency for Quality Assurance in Education (NOKUT), using one concrete case (the accreditation of bachelor programs in nursing). Analysis of policy documents and accreditation reports are influenced by two of Foucault's concepts of power; governmentality and panopticon. The analysis provides insights into firstly, how the two forms of power are woven into the schemes used for quality control by redefining quality to be a quantifiable concept; secondly, how the supervision of quality gives privilege to specific types of knowledge; thirdly, how supervisory power is reformulated to require self-control mechanisms within higher education in terms of constant quality development and realization of unexploited potentials; and fourthly, how this power legitimates itself by making all parties guardians of quality control, deconstructing the difference between evaluator and evaluated.