Library as place: results of a delphi study.

OBJECTIVE: An expert consensus on the future of the library as place was developed to assist health sciences librarians in designing new library spaces. METHOD: An expert panel of health sciences librarians, building consultants, architects, and information technologists was asked to reflect on the likelihood, desirability, timing, and impact on building design of more than seventy possible changes in the use of library space. RESULTS: An expert consensus predicted that the roles librarians play and the way libraries are used will substantially change. These changes come in response to changes in technology, scholarly communication, learning environments, and the health care economy. CONCLUSIONS: How health sciences library space is used will be far less consistent by 2015, as space becomes more tailored to institutional needs. However, the manner in which health sciences libraries develop and deliver services and collections will drastically change in the next decade. Libraries will continue to exist and will provide support for knowledge management and clinical trials, provide access to digital materials, and play a host of other roles that will enable libraries to emerge as institutional change agents.     

Sampling Methods and Sample Populations in Quantitative Mass Communication Research Studies: A 15-Year Census of Six Journals

This study evaluated the sampling methods and sample populations used in all U.S.-based survey and experimental mass communication studies published between 2000 and 2014 in six major journals (N = 1,173). Most studies used nonprobability samples, and more than half used student samples. Experiments used more nonprobability and student samples than surveys. Funded studies used more probability and nonstudent samples than nonfunded studies. Implications of results pertaining to population validity and interpretations of findings for mass communication research are discussed.     

Disciplinary containment: whiteness and the academic scarcity narrative

ABSTRACT

Amid rising controversy around the alleged distinctions between merit and excellence lies a familiar refrain, scarcity. The narrative of academic scarcity, proclaiming the insufficient numbers of scholars and academics of color, permeates conversations in higher education. We suggest that the academic scarcity narrative, a remnant of stagnant logics of diversity, circulates as a contemporary mechanism of what we name disciplinary containment. Extending disciplinary conversations around rhetorical containment, we argue that disciplinary containment perpetuates whiteness.     

Technical Skills Required: How Technological Efficacy Influences Online Political Behavior

Rapid advances in technology have provided the potential to connect citizens to their surroundings in unprecedented ways. While many scholars examine different types of efficacy as a predictor of behavior (e.g., internal, external, and political), it is essential to examine how confident citizens feel in their ability to use the technology before understanding how they will use it politically. Research shows that perceived competence increases motivation, which is correlated with behavior. This study examined how traditional measures of efficacy and a new measure affect online political behaviors, concluding that technological efficacy is a reliable construct predicting online news use and expression.     

Childhood Ideology in the United States: A Comparative Cultural View

Childhood ideology functions in each nation as a complex of ideas about what children are like and how best to teach and socialise them. One important domain of childhood ideology concerns ideas and practices related to children's development and behaviour management. Drawing from an analysis of popular childrearing magazines and early childhood education materials in the United States, this cultural study describes contemporary American mainstream beliefs concerning children's early emotional and behavioural development. In particular, the paper explores themes of emotional expression, autonomy, individuality, power, and consumerism. Some comparisons with Japanese views on child development and emotional/behavioural socialisation are also made. The paper suggests that popular ideas and techniques of emotional and behavioural management in the United States in both families and early childcare environments reflect a dominant ideology of children that has potentially negative consequences for children's welfare. Furthermore, childhood ideologies, while retaining culturally specific values and ideas neither remain static nor exist in isolation from one another. The paper questions the global diffusion of a Western-style professionalised discourse of child psychology that may not be applicable to all nations and their children.     

How New Caledonian crows solve novel foraging problems and what it means for cumulative culture

New Caledonian crows make and use tools, and tool types vary over geographic landscapes. Social learning may explain the variation in tool design, but it is unknown to what degree social learning accounts for the maintenance of these designs. Indeed, little is known about the mechanisms these crows use to obtain information from others, despite the question’s importance in understanding whether tool behavior is transmitted via social, genetic, or environmental means. For social transmission to account for tool-type variation, copying must utilize a mechanism that is action specific (e.g., pushing left vs. right) as well as context specific (e.g., pushing a particular object vs. any object). To determine whether crows can copy a demonstrator’s actions as well as the contexts in which they occur, we conducted a diffusion experiment using a novel foraging task. We used a nontool task to eliminate any confounds introduced by individual differences in their prior tool experience. Two groups had demonstrators (trained in isolation on different options of a four-option task, including a two-action option) and one group did not. We found that crows socially learn about context: After observers see a demonstrator interact with the task, they are more likely to interact with the same parts of the task. In contrast, observers did not copy the demonstrator’s specific actions. Our results suggest it is unlikely that observing tool-making behavior transmits tool types. We suggest it is possible that tool types are transmitted when crows copy the physical form of the tools they encounter.     

Fire play: ICCARUS—Intelligent command and control,acquisition and review using simulation*

Is it possible to educate a fire officer to deal intelligently with the command and control of a major fire event he will never have experienced? The authors of this paper believe there is, and present here just one solution to this training challenge. It involves the development of an intelligent simulation based upon computer managed interactive media. The expertise and content underpinning this educational development was provided by the West Midlands Fire Service. Their brief for this training programme was unambiguous and to the point:

• 1 Do not present the trainee with a model answer, because there are no generic fires. Each incident is novel, complex, and often ‘wicked’ in that it changes obstructively as it progresses. Thus firefighting demands that Commanders impose their individual intelligence on each problem to solve it.
• 2 A suitable Educational Simulator should stand alone; operate in real time; emulate as nearly as possible the ‘feel’ of the fireground; present realistic fire progress; incorporate the vast majority of those resources normally present at a real incident; bombard the trainee with information from those sources; provide as few system‐prompts as possible.
• 3 There should also be an interrogable visual debrief which can be used after the exercise to give the trainees a firm understanding of the effects of their actions. This allows them to draw their own conclusions of their command effectiveness. Additionally, such a record of command and control will be an ideal initiator of tutorial discussion.
• 4 The simulation should be realisable on a hardware/software platform of £10 000.
• 5 The overriding importance is that the simulation should ‘emulate as nearly as possible the feelings and stresses of the command role’.

     

Peer-Collaborator Preferences of African American and White Sixth-Graders in Mathematics Classrooms

Abstract

This study focused on academic and social correlates of collaborator preferences of African American and White sixth-graders in mathematics classrooms in fall and spring. Students’ appraisals of emotional risk were examined as a moderator. Nomination procedures identified collaborator preferences, group affiliations, and social centrality; students self-reported engagement and emotional risk; school records provided achievement scores. Results indicated students preferred group affiliates, but not exclusively, as collaborators. Students with greater centrality, achievement, and engagement received more nominations. In the fall, high achievers received more nominations when appraisals of risk were high; whereas, engaged students whose appraisals of risk were low received more nominations. Results are interpreted in relation to coordinating social and academic factors in peer collaboration.     

Concurrent and predictive validity of the LET-II for average children

Memory tests, such as the Learning Efficiency Test-II (LET-II), have frequently been used to describe the memory characteristics of special populations such as persons with learning disabilities, brain damage, or Alzheimer's disease. Yet, few research studies have examined the memory characteristics of normally functioning children and compared these characteristics to their performance on ability tests or real-life achievement criteria. This study investigates the predictive and concurrent validities of the LET-II for performance on the Kuhlmann-Anderson Tests (K-A), class grades, and actual grade level functioning in reading and mathematics for third and fourth grade children of average intelligence. The LET-II memory factor scores correlated significantly with the K-A scores, class grades and actual grade level functioning in reading. The relevance of these findings for norm-referenced psychological tests, and in particular memory tests, in real-life settings is examined. © 1996 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.