Practical Guides

THE DESIGN OF ADVERTISING by Roy Paul Nelson (Dubuque, IA: Wm C. Brown, 1989—price not given, ISBN 0-697-04374-6)

EXPLORING COLOR PHOTOGRAPHY by Robert Hirsch (Dubuque, IA: Wm. C. Brown, 1989—$30.00, paper, ISBN 0-697-06132-9)

VIDEO HELD PRODUCTION by Ron Whittaker (Mayfield Publishing Co., 1240 Villa St., Mountain View, CA 94041—$34.95, ISBN 0-87484-836- 9)     

The relationship of supportive communication to sex discussion in the home

Supportive communication was examined as a component of mothers’ sex discussion with children. Results demonstrated that mothers who communicated supportively were more open and disclosing when discussing sex and were more likely to provide sons with birth control information and instruction than mothers who communicated nonsupportively. The study concludes by raising several issues for future research and sex education pro‐ams for parents.     

Foreign and domestic news content of Chinese television

A sample from 10 weeks of the major Chinese national television news program was content analyzed; 559 news stories were coded according to duration, topic category, position in the newscast, and geographic origin. The 189 international stories clustered at the end of the broadcast and were significantly shorter than domestic stories. A plurality of domestic stories was from the capital, Beijing, and covered different topics than those that originated outside of China. Foreign and domestic stories were brief and provided little interpretation or background.     

Repeated Exposure to Daytime Soap Opera and Shifts in Moral Judgment Toward Social Convention

This study examined the influence of prolonged exposure to soap opera on character dispositions and real-world moral judgments. Eight groups viewed from 0–7 weeks of soap opera prior to a final week after which participants completed measures of disposition towards show characters as well as perceptions of morality in real-world situations. Results demonstrated the effect of prolonged exposure on both the polarization of dispositions toward characters and a trend in moral judgments toward social convention. These findings highlight the role of disposition within social cognitive theory, and the importance of dispositional considerations in understanding learned morality.     

The Spiral of Violence: Equity of Violent Reprisal in Professional Wrestling and its Dispositional and Motivational Features

Though lacking empirical evidence, professional wrestling has been criticized for portraying excessive violence in harmful contexts. This study focused on the equity of violent reprisal perpetrated by liked versus disliked protagonists with socially sanctioned or unsanctioned motives. Results of a quantitative content analysis show that most violent interaction sequences were over-retributive. Violence that was not part of match competition was routinely initiated for normatively unsanctioned motives and showed predominant patterns of escalating violent retribution. These patterns held across perpetrator disposition. Thus, liked characters regularly aggressed for normatively unacceptable reasons. The consequences of these portrayals are discussed.     

Family sex communication orientation

The United States leads all industrialized countries in unintended teenage pregnancies, teenage births, teenage abortions. Despite the seriousness of this problem, family communication researchers so far, for all practical purposes, have excluded it from the discipline's research agenda. Our study was designed to consolidate and examine a measure of children's attitudes toward family sex communication on the dimensions of comfort, information, and value — the Family Sex Communication Quotient scale (FSCQ) — and to test this orientation against other potential mediators of sex discussion in the family. Our tentative findings suggest: (1) family sex communication in general is infrequent and ineffective, (2) frequent and effective family sex communication may serve as a contextual model for children's communication patterns, (3) a strong family sex communication orientation, particularly as measured by the FSCQ which tested out to be a reliable measure and a significant and consistent mediator, seems to facilitate children's open discussion with dating partners and with parents and to develop responsible pre‐parenting attitudes, (4) discussing sex in the family does not promote an attitude of sexual license.     

Online Versus in the Classroom: Student Success in a Hands-On Lab Class

Abstract

This study compares learning success of online and on-campus students in a general education soil science course with lab and field components. Two terms of students completed standardized pre- and postassessments designed to test knowledge and skills from the lecture and lab content of the course. There was no difference in overall grade or lab assignment grades between course formats. Online students outperformed on-campus students on the preassessment in the first term and on the post-assessment in the second term; the two populations scored the similarly for the other assessments. Online students showed a 42% grade improvement from pre- to post-assessment; on-campus students had a 21% improvement. Online students also showed better learning success in lab-related knowledge and skills based on individual assessment questions. The students in both populations successfully met the learning objectives for this lab- and field-based science course.     

The disposition toward critical thinking of high school and university science students: an interintra Israeli-Italian Study

The California Critical Thinking Disposition Inventory (CCTDI) was used to assess the disposition of Israeli and Italian high school and university science students toward critical thinking. The study sought to establish base-lines for these groups as well as quantifying the differences between two national populations. Significant differences between the Israeli and Italian high school science students in the total score and those of five subscales of the CCTDI have been found, the largest on the OpenMindedness and Self-Confidence subscales. The overall scores of high school and university science students on the CCTDI in both countries were essentially the same, with quite a similar pattern in the corresponding disposition profiles. Although the CCTDI can be reliably used for establishing base-line differences between science student populations, the effect of a specific approach to teaching (e.g. HOCS-orientation vs traditional) on the stability or change of this aspect of critical thinking remains an open question.     

Student teaching: perceived confidence at attaining teaching competencies during preservice courses

Summaries

English

Many trainee teachers have learned through bitter experience those teaching competencies experienced teachers hold most important. This paper describes the confidence at which fifty‐five science method students would approach sixty developmental tasks at strategic points during the preservice course of teacher education. The end‐of‐course outcomes are compared with the views of heads of school science department on the importance of these competencies for beginning science teachers.