Faculty perceptions of job rewards and instructional development activities

The purpose of this study was to explore the perceptions of faculty at a large urban university concerning: (a) personal and college rewards for various areas of job responsibilities, and (b) which programs and incentives to enhance teaching effectiveness would be most attractive to them. Faculty generally reported both teaching and scholarly activity to be personally rewarding, but perceived discrepancies between personal and college rewards for teaching, and between college rewards for teaching and scholarly activity. Although a wide range of instructional development programs and incentives was endorsed, the top rated options referred to institutional recognition of teaching excellence.The authors gratefully acknowledge the assistance of the following persons with this project: Nellie Bess, Gilbert Braun, Donald Brewer, Eileen Duffy-Blair, Gary Duncan, Daniel Funk, James West, Cheryl White.     

Retardation of conditioned excitation following operational inhibitory blocking

Water-deprived adult rats were used in a conditioned-suppression-of-licking procedure to determine the effect of inhibitory training with a novel stimulus trained in simultaneous compound with a previously established conditioned inhibitor. This procedure constitutes an inhibitory analogue to the excitatory blocking procedure in classical conditioning. The conditioned-inhibition training consisted of either explicitly unpaired CS and US presentations or negative contingency training, in which the likelihood of the US was greater in the absence than in the presence of the CS, but the CS and the US were occasionally paired. To assess conditioned inhibition, a retardation test was used, and comparable retardation was obtained for subjects that were administered the blocking treatment and control subjects given similar conditioned-inhibition training with a compound stimulus in which the nontarget element was not previously established as a conditioned inhibitor.     

IMPROVING CLASSROOM ENGAGEMENT AMONG HIGH SCHOOL STUDENTS WITH DISRUPTIVE BEHAVIOR: EVALUATION OF THE CLASS PASS INTERVENTION

Off‐task and disruptive classroom behaviors have a negative impact on the learning environment and present a unique challenge for teachers to address. The aim of this study was to evaluate the Class Pass Intervention (CPI) as a behavior management strategy for secondary students with disruptive classroom behavior. The CPI consists of providing students with passes that they can either (1) use to appropriately request a break to engage in a preferred activity for a preset amount of time or (2) keep and later exchange for a preferred item or activity. Using an ABAB withdrawal design with replication through a concurrent multiple baseline across participants design, the CPI was shown to increase academic engagement, which is incompatible with disruptive behavior, in 4 students who engaged in high levels of disruptive behavior throughout the baseline condition. Results also demonstrated partial support for the durability of intervention effects over time and indicated that both teachers and students perceived the intervention to be socially feasible. Implications of the results and directions for future research are discussed.     

Toward a socio‐psychological definition of transitional persons

In this innovative study, state legislators' dependence on various mass media and interpersonal sources for information about their constituents is examined revealing a relatively stable use of mass communication sources and a somewhat surprising role for radio.     

Go your own way: lifelong learning and reflexive autobiographies in postmodernity

This article provides an autobiographical account of two adult educators engaged in what may be seen as an identity crisis for contemporary adult education. Through our autobiographical analysis, we address the question of what it means to be an adult educator or to practice adult education in circumstances where dedifferentiation has taken hold under the sign of lifelong learning. First, we outline the challenges that are taking place to many of the practices and institutional structures of adult education. At the heart of these, we argue that there is an intensification of reflexivity wherein the identity crisis with which we are working is both a condition for and a response to increasing individualization and reflexivity. Second, we illustrate the link between reflexivity and identity by drawing on our own autobiographies. Here we exemplify the processes we argue to be operating under the sign of lifelong learning through the exploration of our own autobiographical bricolages. Third, we explore the cultural conditions which give rise to the similarities and differences in these bricolages, in particular the rise of the new middle classes, the increased significance of popular culture and the development of postmodern positions.     

SERVICE PROVIDERS’ KNOWLEDGE AND MISCONCEPTIONS ABOUT OLD AGE: COMPARISON OF THREE SERVICE NETWORKS

We report on knowledge about old age among social service providers from three service networks. Data are based on a survey of 245 respondents from Washington State's developmental disabilities, aging, and generic service networks. Palmore's Facts on Aging Quiz (FAQ; 1977, 1988) was used to measure the level of knowledge about old age. Key findings are as follows: (a) Overall, the respondents averaged 64% correct on the FAQ. (b) Developmental disabilities service providers scored lower than either aging service providers or generic service providers. (c) The content areas in which items were most often missed were the psychological aspects aging, the demographic trends of the aging population, and the socioeconomic status of the elderly. Implications of the results for training service providers are discussed.     

Preference for 50% reinforcement over 75% reinforcement by pigeons

When pigeons are given a choice between an initial-link alternative that results in either a terminal-link stimulus correlated with 100% reinforcement or a stimulus correlated with 0% reinforcement (overall 50% reinforcement) and another initial-link alternative that always results in a terminal-link stimulus correlated with 100% reinforcement, some pigeons show a preference for the initial-link alternative correlated with 50% reinforcement. Using this procedure, in Experiment 1, we found a relatively modest preference for 100% over 50% reinforcement. In Experiment 2, we decreased the reinforcement density for the second initial-link alternative to 75% and found a significant preference for the 50% reinforcement initial-link alternative. It may be that this “maladaptive” behavior results from a positive contrast between the expectation of reinforcement correlated with the 50% reinforcement initial-link alternative and the terminal-link stimulus correlated with 100% reinforcement. But apparently, the complementary negative contrast does not develop between the expectation of reinforcement correlated with the 50% reinforcement initial-link alternative and the terminal-link stimulus correlated with 0% reinforcement that often follow. Such paradoxical choice may account for certain human appetitive risk-taking behavior (e.g., gambling) as well.