Distance education for the gifted and talented: An interactive design model

In 1994, the New South Wales Board of Studies, Australia, introduced three high level Distinction Courses for gifted and talented students: comparative literature, cosmology, and philosophy. All are offered by distance education but the cosmology course employs an interactive design model and an extensive communication system that differentiates it from the other two. This article explains the model and the way it is used in practice to organize, sequence and deliver the course. Discussion addresses ways in which the model might be used to design a wider range of courses for gifted and talented students.     

The Principalship in Transition

Many individuals enter administration not fully prepared for their roles. This is because many preparatory programs have persistent weaknesses in the linkage between theory and practice, are irrelevant and grossly inadequate for the current responsibilities of the principalship, and overlook teaching the social realities of administrative roles. Along with aligning administrative programs with standards of effective leadership, the social side of administration must be considered and addressed.     

“Darker than any prison,hotter than any human flame”: Punishment,choice, and culpability in A Clockwork Orange

Contemporary textbooks in criminal justice use A Clockwork Orange to illustrate issues of correctional and sentencing practices. This article challenges criminal justice faculty and students to use the film to explore the political and social realities of punishment, in particular the examination of the moral question of “voluntariness” and the implications for “treatment” as a mechanism of social control. This paper explores the moral questions of state sponsored social control and using the film satire invites the student to examine their beliefs about the political and social realities of punishment and rehabilitation.     

What do freshmen really know about research? Assess before you teach

The paper describes an effort to assess the information literacy skills of first year college students. An instrument was developed and information was gathered on students' experience and comfort in conducting library research as well as their perceived competence with specific information literacy skills. In addition, students completed a skills test to assess specific knowledge and skills relating to information literacy. Entering freshmen generally self-reported their skills to be less than “excellent.” This finding was supported by the results of the skills test. Strengths and weaknesses in information literacy skills are reported as well as implications for librarians who assess and teach these skills to students.     

Understanding others Kellyian theory,methodology and applicationComprendre les autres la théorie de Kelly: methodologie et applicationEntendimiemto de los otros la teoría de Kelly: metodología y applicación

This article discusses Kelly's theory of personal constructs and its Repertory grid technique as means of revealing the nature of cultural differences and similarities. It shows how Kelly's theory relates to cognitive theory, implicit personality theory and subjective culture theory. According to Kelly, people and groups are best understood in terms of the ways they anticipate events. People are all psychologists since they employ constructs. These bases of discrimination are bipolar in nature and open to revision. A group's culture is summarized by its members' shared superordinate constructs. Kelly's Commonality Corollary explains that members of a group are similar because they use the same constructs to order events. Kelly's Sociality Corollary states that, in order to enter into a relationship with others, people need first to subsume the others' personal constructs. His custom-built Repertory grid elicits constructs by having a person decide how in a matrix other people, for example, are similar and different. In the rated grid form, each person or element is rated from most to least on the positive pole of each construct. Either principal components or cluster analysis or multidimensional scaling can reveal the interviewed person's superordinate dimensions of appraisal. As an emic technique, the grid is contrasted with the semantic differential and other fixed-format tests. A review of the personal construct literature shows that many individuals and cultural groups have been explained in their own terms. In this research, difference is construed as interesting and others are understood by construing their construction processes as a first step towards approval.     

Volunteering in libraries,museums and archives

Volunteering is very much in vogue as far as government is concerned; volunteering strengthens society through participation, whilst helping to extend and deliver services and enhance the lives of volunteers in numerous ways. This chapter of Cultural Trends offers an overview of volunteering before looking at the involvement of volunteers in museums, libraries and archives. Many volunteer‐involving organisations are examining carefully the way in which they recruit and support volunteers, as the environment in which volunteers are recruited becomes more competitive. At the same time, organisations can sometimes lose sight of why they involve volunteers.

This chapter reports on a survey of museums and libraries conducted for Resource: the Council for Museums, Archives and Libraries, identifying the added value of involving volunteers and the institutional structures in place to support them. A survey was conducted in which 1,500 questionnaires were sent out ‐ with 500 each going to libraries, museums and archives. It finds that volunteers are a key element in extending the services that museums and libraries can offer. It also finds that practices in involving volunteers vary widely. Volunteers are more likely to be found in libraries than museums or archives and women are more likely to be involved than men. Very few of the organisations returning the questionnaires have somebody whose job is to manage or coordinate volunteers; perhaps unsurprisingly most are to be found in museums. Where organisations do not involve volunteers, issues of time management were most often cited, although a minority argued against involving volunteers per se.

The chapter concludes that although many organisations value highly the involvement of volunteers, there is more that can be done to support volunteering in libraries, museums and archives.