Four Anxieties and a Reassurance: Hare and McLaughlin on being open-minded

In suppport of the idea that education should encourage open-mindedness, Hare and McLaughlin have argued that being open-minded about an issue, in a philosophically well-supported sense of 'open-mindedness', need not prevent one from holding a firm belief on that issue. In this paper I examine the lack of cohesion in this sense of 'open-mindedness', explain why I continue to be anxious about the tensions between open-mindedness and holding firm beliefs and present three further reasons for having reservations about Hare and McLaughlin's proposals.     

Cooperation in European Construction Education: The Development of the Master's Degree Course in European Construction Engineering

The Master's degree course in European Construction Engineering has many unique features. Its students come from several different European countries, each student studies in at least three different European locations, and the teaching staff are drawn from seven different European universities. The course is therefore genuinely multinational and European. The development and delivery of the course over the past 6 years has revealed fundamental differences in European education practices which have provided a learning experience for both students and staff. This paper describes the course development and discusses some of the issues that have arisen during the development process, many of which are yet to be finally resolved.     

Increasing Verbal Empathy as a Function of Feedback and Instruction

Counselor-trainee response uncertainty and delayed supervisor feedback are two apparent difficulties when looking at the normal practicum procedures from a learning theory frame of reference. Twenty-four counselor trainees were randomly assigned to three experimental groups and one control group, i.e., immediate feedback, feedback and instructions, equipment present, and control. Audio tapes pre- and post-were selected and rated on empathy. An analysis of variance on the pre- and post-differences in ratings was computed resulting in a significant F-ratio (p < .05). Subsequent multiple comparisons showed all experimental groups significant when compared to the control group (p < .01) The results showed that all experimental conditions increased counselor trainees' empathic responses significantly.     

Counselor Preferences of Senior High School Students

This study is concerned with the extent to which senior high school students employ the constructs of race, subculture, and sex in establishing counselor preferences. The data suggests that these variables are of far more importance to black students than they are to northern white or to Appalachian white students. The data also supports the findings reported earlier by Stranges and Riccio.     

Making journals accessible to the visually impaired: the future is near

The American Physical Society (APS) has been a leader in using markup languages for publishing. ViewPlus has led development of innovative technologies for graphical information accessibility by people with print disabilities. APS, ViewPlus, and other collaborators in the Enhanced Reading Project are working together to develop the necessary technology and infrastructure for APS to publish its journals in the DAISY (Digital Accessible Information SYstem) eXtended Markup Language (XML) format, in which all text, math, and figures would be accessible to people who are blind or have other print disabilities. The first APS DAISY XML publications are targeted for late 2010.