bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
A Model for Teaching Environmental Justice in a Planning Curriculum
Authors: Washington R. O. , Strong Denise
Published: March 2007

This article describes a course, Environmental Justice Movement, initiated at the College of Urban and Public Affairs at the University of New Orleans in the spring of 1995. A companion to a course in environmental planning, the course was designed to prepare planning students to engage in the environmental policy debate by exposing them to its historical, moral, and technical dimensions. By examining strategies and tactics of planning practice, they learn to apply their analytic and research skills to appropriate advocacy, mediation, and community planning roles. The course seeks to connect the environmental justice movement with social movement theory, concepts of procedural justice, and advocacy and equity planning. It integrates propositions and concepts about the politics of planning, land use policies, and practices with political philosophy, populist beliefs and what Perry (1994) calls "the street-level Rawlsian approach."
The Threshold Hypothesis, Semilingualism, and Other Contributions to a Deficit View of Linguistic Minorities
Authors: Macswan Jeff
Published: March 2007

Although some educational researchers have appealed to “semilingualism” or “limited bilingualism” to explain differences in student achievement among language minority students, in this article the author argues that the construct contributes much more to the malady than the remedy in the education of linguistic minorities. The author reviews four kinds of reputed evidence for semilingualism (from studies of language variation, linguistic structure, school performances, and language loss) and concludes that all of it is either spurious or irrelevant. The author argues that semilingualism is essentially indistinguishable from classical prescriptivism and that Cummins’s Threshold Hypothesis, which incorporates the semilingualism thesis, should be abandoned on empirical, theoretical, and moral grounds. An alternative account of the descriptive facts Cummins sought to explain is presented, and implications for education are discussed.
Curanderos and Mental Health Professionals: A Comparative Study on. Perceptions of Psychopathology
Authors: Arenas Silverio , Cross Herbert , Willard William
Published: March 2007

Curanderos and mental health care professionals differ in the way they perceive psychopathology, as demonstrated in the way they responded to a set of hypothetical case histories. These vignettes depicted people suffering from a variety of psychiatric and folk-medical disorders. Compared with professionals, cur anderos were found to be reluctant to label the disorders as "mental illness." They also perceived the people portrayed in the vignettes as less seriously "ill" and less dangerous to them selves or to others. The curanderos were found to classify the disorders presented in a unique and culturally specific way. Their classification system was seen to be consistent with cul turally relevant ideas and beliefs about etiological processes. A variety of treatments based on those etiological processes were also recommended by the curanderos.
Quality of Life and Psychological Well-Being in a Bicultural Latino Community
Authors: Lang John G. , Munoz Ricardo F. , Bernal Guillermo , Sorensen James L.
Published: March 2007

A telephone survey was made of 270 randomly selected adults of Hispanic origin to determine the characteristics of welladjusted "Latinos" residing within San Francisco's Mission District, a bicultural/bilingual urban milieu. Five areas were investigated: (a) sample demographics, (b) acculturation, (c) quality of life components, (d) psychological well-being, and (e) depression levels. Latinos of 18 national origins were represented. The best-adjusted Latinos (satisfied with their lives and subjectively happy) were bicultural, although oriented more toward the Latino culture than the Anglo culture. The sample quality of life depended upon determiners similar to that of the United States mainstream culture: family, work, having children, physical health, education, spouse relationship, and religion. However, the determiners of their satisfaction were discrepant from those of a national sample. Levels of overall psychological well-being were not significantly different for the Latinos when compared to national samples. However, depression levels and negative affect were higher than those reported for non-Latino samples. Utilizing input from the Latino community itself in order to construct a definition of psychological adjustment facilitated the development of a culturally sensitive scale of psychological adjustment. The well-adjusted Latinos when compared to the least well-adjusted Latinos had (a) better paying jobs, (b) a better education, (c) more years lived in the United States, and (d) higher levels of acculturation.
Language Development in Normal and Language Handicapped Spanish-Speaking Children
Authors: Merino Barbara J.
Published: March 2007

The objective of this study was to compare and contrast language development in normal and language handicapped school-aged children who speak Spanish as a first language and who have been classified as being of limited English speaking ability The focus of this report will be on the differences and similarities found in the children's first language, Spanish. This investigation was conducted in three phases. First a battery of instruments, including measures of syntax and articulation, was administered to a group of 50 monolingual Spanish speakers aged 3 to 8 in Oaxaca, Mexico, to establish base-line data for the handicapped study In the second phase, a group of 22 language-delayed Spanish speakers was identified in the United States and administered the same instruments and procedures. In the third phase, comparisons were made to a control group of normal children in the United States, comparable in terms of age, sex, ethnicity, socioeconomic status, exposure to English, and language history All instruments in the second and third phases were also administered in English. Handicapped children performed significantly worse than comparable controls in the production of syntactic features though not in comprehension. Handicapped children also exhibited a significantly higher number of articulation errors.
Hispanic Women: Schooling for Conformity in Public Education
Authors: Moore Helen A.
Published: March 2007

The educational and occupational attainments of Hispanic women are tied to the norms of an Anglocentric and andro-centric school system. In the past, research has indicated that young female students gain an advantage in the early years of school because of their conformity to certain behaviors including passivity, docility and neatness. Teacher norms for students are specified on three dimensions-behavioral, social and academic-and teacher expectations for their st-udents' success are analyzed. The analysis is based on a sample of 1,000 male and female Hispanic and Anglo students and their classroom teachers. Teachers do rate Hispanic females as more conforming to the behavioral norms of the school. Correlational and regression analysis was performed and findings indicate that higher teacher ratings are assigned to Hispanic females who combine high academic scores with low scores on the behavioral conformity norms. These findings indicate that teachers reward assertiveness, leadership and action when considering success in educational and economic institutions. The dilemma of conflicting norms for Hispanic females is discussed.
Meta-Comments: A Discussion of Critiques of L. M. Dunn's Monograph Bilingual Hispanic Children on the U.S. Mainland
Authors: Berliner David C.
Published: March 2007

The misinterpretation of within and between group differences in intelligence is addressed first, followed by evidence for the malleability of IQ. An argument for both high heritability and high modifiability of intelligence is then presented. The reciprocal relationship between achievement and intelligence is discussed and evidence for the cultural influence on tests of achievement and intelligence is presented. It is argued that cultural differences (including linguistic differences) are the major determinant of between group differences in measures of academic IQ. Evidence of the negative effects of schooling for some caste-like minorities is presented, as is evidence for superior cognitive skills among balanced bilingual students. The implications of these refutations of Dunn's thesis for teacher education are discussed.
Acculturation and Adjustment: A Meta-Analytic Study
Authors: Moyerman David R. , Forman Bruce D.
Published: March 2007

Studies of the relationship between acculturation and various forms of adjustment yield divergent findings. Meta-analytic techniques were used to synthesize relevant studies. Samples from the 49 reports were used in more than one class; providing 111 samples for computation. Separate meta-analyses were computed for 11 acculturation and adjustment classes: extroversion (n = 5), self-esteem (n = 6), locus of control (n = 8), career (n = 8), addiction (n = 8), affective disorders (n = 9), field independence (n = 10), family conflict (n = 12), arniety/stress (n = 14), intelligence (n = 14), and psychosociallhealth (n = 17). Because the classes were heterogeneous, clustered homogeneous subgroupings were computed. The more substantial effects were indicated for the subgroupings within intelligence (z+ = .16, p < .01, n = 10), field independence (z+ = .54, p < .01, n = 7), and anxiety/stress (z+ = -.27, p < .01, n = 5) classes. Higher socioeconomic status samples evidence the greatest increases in adjustment with acculturation. The situation specific associations defined among acculturation, sample characteristics, and indices of adjustment were interpreted by integrating coping theory, a social inequality perspective, and acculturative stress models.
Bilingual Receptive Vocabulary in Hispanic Preschool Children
Authors: Fernandez Maria C. , Pearson Barbara Z. , Umbel Vivian M. , Oiler D. K. , Molinet-Molina Margie
Published: March 2007

Hispanic preschoolers in Miami, who are economically and culturally similar to the generalpopulation, were tested on receptive vocabulary in English and Spanish. English scores, even for children from homes where some English is spoken, were more than one and a haif standard deviations below the mean. The Spanish mean, by contrast was 95, a small, though significant difference from the Spanish norm. Factors other than vocabulary knowledge that might account for the lower scores are exploredL These include a different order of item difficulty, the potentially inappropriate norming sample, and the underestimation of bilingual knowledge inherent in single-language measures.
Chicano English and the Nature of the Chicano Language Setting
Authors: A. Otto Santa Ana
Published: March 2007

Little consensus exists about the status of language varieties heard in the speech of Chicanos, and in particular, the linguistic status of Chicano English. This criticism can be extended to many ethnic sociolinguistic settings. Critical commentary on certain controversies about the dialects of Chicanos is presented in this article. A model of the languagesldialects setting used by Chicanos that goes beyond recent typologies is proposed, made on the basis of explicit assumptions about the nature of the speech setting of Chicanos. On the basis of these assumptions, Chicano English is characterized as the autonomous vernacular dialect of native-English-speaking Chicanos. Four examples of this Chicano language setting model are presented, using recent national and three statewide demographic figures.
The Relationship of Maternal Behavior and Acculturation to the Quality of Attachment in Hispanic Infants Living in New York City
Authors: Fracasso Maria P. , Busch-Rossnagel Nancy A. , Fisher Celia B.
Published: March 2007

The present exploratory study examined maternal parenting behavior and patterns of attachment using the Ainsworth Strange Situation with a Hispanic sample. Twenty-four Puerto Rican and 26 Dominican mother-infant dyads were videotaped in the strange situation and observed in their homes. As in other cross-cultural and subcultural studies, the pattern of attachment classifications differed from that reported for middle-class Euro-American populations: Overall there was an equal number of secure and insecure infants. Additionally, there were sex differences in the distributions of attachment patterns: Although two thirds of the boys were securely attached, two thirds of the girls were insecurely attached. The maternal behaviors that distinguished mothers of securely from insecurely attached infants in this study were also disparate from those found in previous studies using non-Hispanic samples. These findings provide a descriptive basis forfuture research with Hispanics and are importantfor their implications regarding the development of inner-city Hispanic children.
Predicting Adherence to Medications by Hispanics with Schizophrenia
Authors: Hosch Harmon M. , Barrientos Guido A. , Fierro Claudia , Ramirez Jorge I. , Pelaez Martha P. , Cedillos Alicia Moreno , Meyer Lawrence D. , Perez Ydalith
Published: March 2007

Casefile data of 100 male and 93female Hispanics with schizophrenia were analyzed to evaluate the impact on the patient's adherence to medication regimen of biodemographic, social support, and treatment variables, and whether the patient's therapist was also Hispanic and spoke Spanish. Results revealed that older and more motivated patients were more likely to adhere to theirmedication. As predicted, those who had greaterfamily support and who were of higher socioeconomic level were also more likely to adhere. Those whose first therapist was of the same ethnicity as the patient (ie., also Hispanic) were more likely to adhere. No relationship was obtained between adherence and patient's level of acculturation, or the extensiveness of treatment: Adherence was less likely whether the therapist spoke Spanish. Implications of these resultsfor mental health practitioners are discussed
Assessment of Acculturation in Hispanic Populations
Authors: Dana Richard H.
Published: March 2007

Professional psychologists who serve Hispanic populations do not routinely use acculturation instruments. Recommendations for use of five adequately conceptualized and validated acculturation measures are presented. Cultural identity information facilitates selection of standard psychological tests or culture-specific instruments. Such information also informs clinical diagnosis, personality description, therapeutic assessment, and psychotherapy. Some issues germane to underutilization of acculturation measures in assessment practice and ethical considerations are discussed.
Predicting the Academic Success of Mexican American and White College Students
Authors: Rodriguez Norma
Published: March 2007

This study examined whether the addition of college variables to a model consisting only ofprecollege variables would improve the prediction of the academic success of Mexican American and White college students. Participants were 225 Mexican American and 83 White first-year college students. A multiple regression analysis, which controlled for differences in high school academic background, indicated that three college variables (academic self-concept, education major, and social science major) were significantly related to grade point average for Mexican Americans. A logistic regression analysis, which also controlled for high school academic record, indicated that three majors (education, social sciences, and natural sciences) were significantly related to academic progressfor Mexican Americans. Overall, the collegefactors significantly enhanced the prediction of academic success for Mexican Americans but not for Whites. Results are discussed in terms of providing appropriate academic programs and support services for Mexican American students.
Idle Mexican American Youth and the Proportionate Size of the Mexican American Population
Authors: Terling Toni
Published: March 2007

Prior research suggests that as the size of a minority grows, disadvantages accrue for its members. This research explores this issuefocusing specifically on Mexican American teenagers. The relationship between the educational and employment status of Mexican American youths and the proportionate size of the Mexican American population in the metropolitan statistical areas (MSAs) in which they reside is examined using 1990 census data. Findings indicate that a large percentage of Mexican American teens can be identified as idle youths (19%), dropping out of school with limited or no employment. Findings also show-after controlling for intervening variables such as household socioeconomic status, acculturation, and central city residence-that proportionately large Mexican American populations are associated with a reduced risk of idle status. Additional research is calledfor to explore the mechanisms by which these teens benefit.
Skin Color, Acculturation, and Community Interest among Mexican American Students: A Research Note
Authors: Vazquez Luis A. , Garcia-Vazquez Enedina , Bauman Sheri A. , Sierra Arturo S.
Published: March 2007

Previous research has demonstrated that skin color affects the economic and social status of African Americans. More recent studies have shown that this relationship extends to Hispanic Americans as well. This study investigated the effects of skin color on acculturation levels and of both skin color and acculturation on Mexican American students' interest in the Mexican American community. A one-way ANOVA demonstrated that students with the darkest skin had significantly lower levels of acculturation than those with lighter skin. A two-way ANOVA was conducted with two between-group factors-skin color and acculturation-with the dependent variable consisting of interest in the Latino community. An interaction was detected, which indicates that skin color does not impact interest in community in the same way across all levels of acculturation.
Drug Use among Puerto Ricans: Ethnic Identity as a Protective Factor
Authors: Brook Judith S. , Whiteman Martin , Balka Elinor B. , Win Pe Thet , Gursen Michal D.
Published: March 2007

This study assesses the relationship of multiple drug risks, Puerto Rican identity, and drug use. In addition, the risk/protective and protective/protective paradigms for examining interactive effects of ethnic identity and drug risks on drug use were assessed. Structured interviews were conducted with 555 Puerto Rican males andfemales whose mean age was 19. Each risk and two ethnic variables were related to drug use. Regressions showed that cultural knowledge, being culturally active, group attachment, and identification with Puerto Ricans offset the impact of risks on drug use. Ethnic variables also enhanced the protective effect of other protective factors. These results substantiate expanding risk-buffering models to include ethnic identity and the protective role of ethnic identity for Puerto Rican youth.
The Personality Inventory for Youth (PIY)-Spanish Version: Reliability and Equivalence to the English Version
Authors: Negy Charles , Lachar David , Gruber Christian P.
Published: March 2007

The present study, using bilingual (English-Spanish) college freshmen as participants, evaluated the psychometric characteristics of the Personality Inventoryfor Youth (PIY) that was translated into Spanish. The scales and subscales of the PIY-Spanish Version demonstrated internal consistency and temporal stability estimates comparable to their English counterparts established in both the present sample of college freshmen and in the PIY normative sample of students attending regular education classes ranging from 9 to 18 years of age. Multivariate analysis did not identify a language effect within the four study samples (English-English, Spanish-Spanish, English-Spanish, Spanish-English) for either profile scales or subscales, and the substantial correlations between English and Spanish versions obtainedfrom the same bilingual students approached and occasionally exceeded the limits established for temporal reliability in both English and Spanish translations.
The Ucla Multidimensional Condom Attitudes Scale: Validity in a Sample of Low-Acculturated Hispanic Women
Authors: Unger Jennifer B. , Molina Gregory B.
Published: March 2007

Condom use can prevent unintended pregnancy, HIV infection, and other sexually transmitted diseases. Unfortunately, scales assessing attitudes toward condom use have not been validated in Hispanic samples. Low-acculturated Hispanic women (N = 291) completed the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) Multidimensional Condom Attitudes Scale (MCAS). The MCAS contains five subscales: Reliability and Effectiveness, Pleasure, Identity Stigma, Embarrassment About Negotiation and Use, and Embarrassment About Purchase. Confirmatory factor analysis was used to evaluate the factor loadings of the questionnaire items on the five factors. The model fit and factor structure were similar to results originally obtained with a college student sample. Higher education was associated with higher scores on Pleasure and lower scores on Identity Stigma, whereas financial strain was associated with higher scores on Embarrassment About Negotiation and Use and Embarrassment About Purchase. Results suggest that the MCAS can be used to assess condom attitudes among low-acculturated Hispanic women.
Error Analysis, Theories of Language, and the Teaching of Writing
Authors: NEY JAMES W.
Published: March 2007

Teachers of writing have currently been showing an interest in error analysis, a device that has been used informally for some time but has received serious attention from linguists and language teaching methodologists only recently. This interest in error analysis seems strange because this type of analysis possesses many of the characteristics of structuralism and few (if any) of the characteristics of tranformationalism. As a result, the objections to error analysis are partly theoretical in nature. Because the number of sentences in a language is infinite, the number of different kinds of errors that students can make is infinite or, at least, indefinitely large. Because of this, the chance of a student producing a particular sentence exhibiting a particular error is very small. This is the principal reason behind the creation of vague, general, and subsequently rather meaningless categories in the taxonomies that are used in error analysis. For this reason, it would seem to be appropriate for teachers to abandon error analysis and lead students through the use of creative language exercises into the writing of creative sentences.
The Communicative and Cognitive Functions of Written Language
Authors: FELDBUSCH ELISABETH
Published: March 2007

That written language is not an image of oral language can be deduced from functions; it has an independent role in linguistic communication. As an independent system of signs, written language mediates between its producers, recipients, and reality. The fact that various written languages in their development have made use of essential principles of oral language can be attributed to methodological economy. In this respect the stages of “phonetization” are no doubt remarkable events in the history of written and oral language. They are of fundamental importance for the further development of both. Nevertheless phonetization in no way inherently defines written language. The effects of written language and its motivation are investigated. Taking historical determination as a basis, both of them lead from the contemporary, manifold interrelations between oral and written language to the search for the original causes and conditions for the emergence of written language. The emergence of written language results from social needs and the individual needs these include, which are in turn conditioned by concrete historical circumstances.
Accommodating Science
Authors: FAHNESTOCK JEANNE
Published: March 2007

This article studies the fate of scientific observations as they pass from original research reports intended for scientific peers into popular accounts aimed at a general audience. Pairing articles from two AAAS (American Association for the Advancement of Science) publications reveals the changes that inevitably occur in “information” as it passes from one rhetorical situation to another. Scientific reports belong to the genre of forensic arguments, affirming the validity of past facts, the experimental data. But a change of audience brings a change of genre; science accommodations are primarily epideictic, celebrations of science, and shifts in wording between comparable statements in matched articles reveal changes made to conform to the two appeals of popularized science, the wonder and the application topoi. Science accommodations emphasize the uniqueness, rarity, originality of observations, removing hedges and qualifications and thus conferring greater certainty on the reported facts. Such changes could be formalized by adopting the scale developed by sociologists Bruno Latour and Steven Woolgar for categorizing the status of claims. The alteration of information is traced not only in articles on bees and bears, and so on, but also on a subject where distortions in reporting research can have serious consequences—the reputed mathematical inferiority of girls to boys. The changes in genre and the status of information that occur between scientific articles and their popularizations can also be explained by classical stasis theory. Anything addressed to readers as members of the general public will inevitably move through the four stasis questions from fact and cause to value and action.
Simultaneous and Successive Cognitive Processing and Writing Skills
Authors: HARRIS MURIEL , WACHS MARY
Published: March 2007

This pilot study investigated relationships between individual differences in levels of writing skills and proficiencies at simultaneous and successive cognitive processing. Data from a group of 46 subjects indicate that scores on successive processing tasks were able to predict final grades in an introductory English composition course (p<.01). This suggested both the possibility and importance of investigating further how simultaneous and (especially) successive processing relate to writing skills. With three subjects used for pilot data, low scores in successive processing showed relationships with sentence-level errors and with the ability to develop sequences of ideas in writing. Low scores in simultaneous processing correlated with an inability to indicate clear relationships between sentences and paragraphs. Planning, a third cognitive factor, was found to be a powerful influence in organizing content. In the interaction of planning and simultaneous processing, lack of planning ability may interfere with the writer's ability to survey and thus organize his or her material.
Coherence in Children's Written Narratives
Authors: GOLDEN JOANNE M. , VUKELICH CAROL
Published: March 2007

This study uses de Beaugrande's (1980) concept analysis system to analyze a group of children's written narratives. In addition to ascertaining the potential of this system as a means of assessing coherence, the purpose of this study was to describe how 20 third graders employed narrative concepts at the local and global levels. An analysis of a maximum of nine writing samples from each child produced in response to a weekly request to write a story revealed that (1) most children were able to establish coherence consistently at a local level, (2) children varied in their establishment of coherence across samples, (3) writing reflected degrees of coherence on a continuum from less to more coherent samples, and (4) a minority of children wrote narratives that were consistently coherent at the global level. The study also supported the value of the concept analysis system as one means of assessing coherence in written narratives.
Rethinking Remediation
Authors: HULL GLYNDA , ROSE MIKE
Published: March 2007

Each year a large number of students enter American higher education unprepared for the reading and writing tasks they encounter. Labeled “remedial,”“nontraditional,”“developmental,”“underprepared,”“nonmainstream,” these students take special courses and participate in special programs designed to qualify them to do academic work. Yet, we do not know very much about what it is that cognitively and socially defines such students as remedial. This article describes a research project on remediation at the community college, state college, and university levels designed to provide such information. We focus on a piece of writing produced by a student in an urban community college, examining it in the context of the student's past experiences with schooling, her ideas about reading and writing, the literacy instruction she was receiving, and her plans and goals for the future. Our analyses suggest that the student's writing, though flawed according to many standards, demonstrates a fundamental social and psychological reality about discourse—how human beings continually appropriate each other's language to establish group membership, to grow, and to define themselves in new ways.
Collaboration in a Traditional Classroom Environment
Authors: JANDA MARY ANN
Published: March 2007

Researchers and teachers are joining in a movement to introduce more collaborative work in language arts classrooms. While collaborative learning and writing are valuable activities in any classroom, not enough is understood about what happens when collaborative activities are introduced into a traditional classroom discourse structure. This study analyzes a collaborative activity, both as a traditional classroom event and as a collaborative event. The results of the analysis suggest that, even when the activity is explicitly collaborative and students are experienced collaborators, patterns of traditional classroom discourse dominate their communicative choices.
Computer Talk
Authors: WILKINS HARRIET
Published: March 2007

In the light of previous studies of features of spoken and written language, this study examined the opening months of an informal computer conversation among novice computer users who had not previously known each other. To establish the sequence of conversational utterances in the absence of physical and temporal proximity, participants used personal names and lexical referents. Linguistic features often found in oral conversation—indicators of personal involvement, disfluencies, and representations of paralinguistic elements—occurred frequently in this corpus. The graphic representation of normally oral language features may account in part for the participants' sense of intimacy and community with one another.
Interpreting an English Competency Examination
Authors: JOHNS ANN M.
Published: March 2007

In this article, interviews with a Vietnamese-speaking science student who has repeatedly failed a required English competency examination are presented. Topics relating to this examination include prompt type, essay content, rhetorical organization, student preparation for writing, and audience. Questions are raised regarding the purposes, development, and evaluation of writing competency tests.
Planning Text Together
Authors: HIGGINS LORRAINE , FLOWER LINDA , PETRAGLIA JOSEPH
Published: March 2007

Writing instructors often assign collaborative writing activities as a way to foster reflective thinking; many assume that the very act of explaining and defending ideas in the presence of a responsive audience actually forces writers to take critical positions on their own ideas. This article questions this assumption by examining the role of critical reflection in one particular writing context—that of collaborative planning. The authors' observations address three questions: (a) When students collaborate on plans for a paper do they necessarily reflect critically on their own ideas and processes, as many advocates of collaboration might expect? (b) If and when students engage in reflection, does it make a qualitative difference in their writing plans? And finally, (c) how do student writers engage in and use reflection as they develop plans? Twenty-two college freshmen audio-taped themselves as they planned course papers with a peer. Transcripts were coded for reflective comments and were holistically rated for quality. The analysis revealed a significant correlation between amount of reflective conversation and the quality of students' plans. Students used reflection to identify problems, to search for and evaluate alternative plans, and to elaborate ideas through the process of justification. This problem solving was most effective when reflection was sustained over many conversational turns. Collaboration did not guarantee reflection, however. Some sessions contained no reflective comments and some students used collaboration in a way that undermined reflective thinking. This study suggests that how students represented collaboration and the writing assignment itself determined whether and how they reflected on their own ideas.
A Method for Analyzing Sentence-Level Differences in Disciplinary Knowledge Making
Authors: MacDONALD SUSAN PECK
Published: March 2007

This article proposes a method for examining how disciplinary differences in knowledge making are created or reflected at the sentence level. The method focuses on the grammatical subjects of sentences as key indicators of disciplinary knowledge making. Grammatical subjects of all sentences in sample academic journal articles were classified by a system identifying (a) the kind of abstraction or particularism involved and (b) the ways in which the researcher may or may not have foregrounded research methods and warrants. Findings from the sample articles in subfields of psychology, history, and literature indicated that psychology articles were more likely to foreground research methods and warrants and least likely to be particularistic. History articles tended to be intermediate. Literature articles were most likely to be particularistic and least likely to focus on research methods and warrants.
Rethinking Genre from a Sociocognitive Perspective
Authors: BERKENKOTTER CAROL , HUCKIN THOMAS N.
Published: March 2007

This article argues for an activity-based theory of genre knowledge. Drawing on empirical findings from case study research emphasizing “insider knowledge” and on structuration theory, activity theory, and rhetorical studies, the authors propose five general principles for genre theory: (a) Genres are dynamic forms that mediate between the unique features of individual contexts and the features that recur across contexts; (b) genre knowledge is embedded in communicative activities of daily and professional life and is thus a form of “situated cognition”; (c) genre knowledge embraces both form and content, including a sense of rhetorical appropriateness; (d) the use of genres simultaneously constitutes and reproduces social structures; and (e) genre conventions signal a discourse community's norms, epistemology, ideology, and social ontology.
“I'm Just No Good at Writing”
Authors: CHARNEY DAVIDA , NEWMAN JOHN H. , PALMQUIST MIKE
Published: March 2007

The authors assessed writing attitudes and epistemologies of 117 first-year and 329 upper-level undergraduates. Attitude scales assessed enjoyment of writing, self-ratings of writing ability, and belief in writing as learnable. Epistemological scales measured absolutism (belief in knowledge as determinably true or false), relativism (belief in the indeterminacy of all claims), and evaluativism (belief that truth can be approximated). Absolutism correlated negatively with writing grades and verbal aptitude, whereas evaluativism exhibited a weak positive correlation with both. Students with higher evaluativism tended to enjoy writing more and to assess themselves as good writers. Upper-level students were less absolutist and marginally more evaluativist than first-year students. Differences in attitudes and epistemologies emerged between men and women and among upper-level students in four disciplinary groups. The authors sketch some implications for writing pedagogy.
Attitude Changes Among Literacy Teachers Coincident With Training and Experience
Authors: Johnson Raymond L. , Cortright Richard W. , Cooper Jessie V.
Published: March 2007

The effects of a short-term training course in changing the attitudes of teachers toward illiterate adults was evaluated by administering an attitude survey at three different times. The magnitude of at titude change was then compared. It was found that the greater shift in attitude coincided with the period of actual teaching rather than the training course. These results indicated that a short-term course is not effective in inducing long-term changes in teacher attitudes. This conclusion is a qualified one, however, because: (1) the course may have had a selective "sleeper effect" on some attitudes wherein the occurrence of observable change was delayed, and (2) it may be feasible to moderate negative or unfavorable attitudes toward illiterate adults during the time available in a short-term course.
Status and Conforming Judgment
Authors: Long Huey B.
Published: March 2007

Thirty-four employees of the Florida Forest Service served as subjects in this study that was designed to determine if conform ing judgment tendencies of an employee were related to the em ployment status of the Ss. The design provided Ss who were tested with people who were of higher status as well as Ss who were tested for conformity with Ss who were of lower employee status than the S. Asch's vertical line test was utilized to measure conformity. An analysis of variance technique was utilized to determine the significance of the difference between the con forming behavior of the Ss. The results of the study suggested that conformity may be related to status. Ss tested with confed erates who were of lower employee rank conformed at a sig nificantly lower rate than did the Ss who were tested with con federates who were of higher rank (thus higher status). Corol lary findings revealed no significant relationships between con formity and age and between conformity and years of service in the FFS.
Educational Variables and Participation in Adult Education: an Exploratory Study
Authors: Dickinson Gary
Published: March 2007

The conceptual framework for analyzing continuous learning through the educative community developed by Essert and Spence was used in this study to examine six representative educational variables in relation to participation to determine whether or not the use of additional educational variables would increase the power of education to predict participation compared to consider ing only the years of school completed by the participant as is normally done. Data were obtained from interviews with 510 married male household heads resident in the rural portions of the Lower Fraser Valley in British Columbia. In bivariate analysis, each predictor variable was associated with total participation and with participation in vocational courses whereas participation in non-vocational courses was not related to educational variables. Partial correlation coefficients indicated that only the years of school completed by the wife and respondent remained as influ ences on total and vocational course participation when the effects of the six predictors were controlled simultaneously. Previous research has suggested that the educational level of the respondent is the most important single factor influencing participation, but the findings of the present study suggest that the years of school completed by the wife may also be an important factor.
Adult Education and the Rational-Irrational Dimension of Prejudice
Authors: Rhyne Dwight C.
Published: March 2007

Using teachers and counselors attending an eight week insti tute on problems of school desegregation as subjects, this study sought to estimate the degree of change in ethnic attitudes on the rational-irrational and anti-pro minority dimensions of prejudice as related to participation in an intensive adult education experience. Systematic procedures were employed to relate degree of change on these dimensions of prejudice to group learning method, social attitude set, and characteristics of race, age, and sex. Findings supported a fundamental postulate of the study that attitude change is related to participation in intensive educational experi ences. The degree of change varied on the anti-minority dimension of prejudice as related to social attitude set and to age. The degree of change on the rational (cognitive) pro-minority dimension was greater among older subjects than among younger subjects. There was little evidence to support hypotheses on the relation of attitude change to group learning methods.
Developing a Strategy for Adult Education Via Mass Media
Authors: McElreath Mark P.
Published: March 2007

Most research on the effectiveness of instructional television is generalizable to school children and other "captive" audiences. Empirical support is presented here for the proposition that the typical, non-captive adult audience will attend to and appreciate exposure to instructional television. Formative and summative evaluations of two developmental stages of a television-based, multi-media system are reviewed, indicating a strategy for adult education via mass media should include nationally known per sonalities and extensive advertising; and that, while personal con tacts in the form of home visitors is not necessary, a feedback mechanism encouraging audience participation does seem to im prove effectiveness. The need for formative research in instruc tional television is discussed.
Sources of Educational Funds as Motivators for Participating in Adult Secondary Education
Authors: Londoner Carroll A.
Published: March 2007

The purposes of this study were two-fold. First, to determine which, if any, attribute variables differentiated significantly be tween adult students who paid their own educational expenses and students whose expenses were paid by a public agency. Sec ond, to determine which educational goals, when controlled by significant test variables, differentiated between the two groups of adult students as motivational reasons for participating in adult secondary education.

Employing the tabular multivariate analysis procedure it was found that agency-paid adult students were more likely to rate the educational goals higher in importance than self-paid students. This finding is contradictory to the popularly held belief of adult secondary school staff that agency-paid students do not hold these educational goals high in importance.

It was concluded that the Needs-Social System-Satisfaction model of adult participation may be inappropriate for explaining the high rating responses of agency-paid students on the educa tional goals when compared to the expressed belief of public school administrators that these students are unmotivated to study and learn.
Harper's Disappointment: University Extension
Authors: Dunkel Harold B. , Fay Maureen A.
Published: March 2007

Early efforts in American adult education were an expression of the need to equalize educational opportunities for all citizens. American educators attemp ted to address these needs with mixed results. William Rainey Harper—first president of the University of Chicago - was convinced that universities had a special role to play in adult education; consequently, when Chicago opened in 1892, it included, for the first time, a Division of Extension as an integral part of its academic structure. Harper's inclusion of the extension function as a major unit of the new University was striking on several counts, but the most startling feature was the general institutional context in which he embedded the Division of Extension. The consequent friction between University Extension and the University Proper was a prominent feature in the history of extension at Chicago. The present account attempts to interpret the philosophical, institutional, finan cial and personal reasons why University Extension did not realize Harper's original vision.
The Power-Load-Margin Formula of Howard Y. McClusky as the Basis for a Model of Teaching
Authors: Main Keith
Published: March 2007

This paper examines relevant writings of Howard McClusky and his power-load-margin (PLM) formula as the nucleus for a teaching-learning model. A teaching model is defined as a pattern or plan which can be used to shape a curriculum or course, to select instructional materials, and to guide a teacher's action. The seven concepts utilized by Joyce and Weil in Models of Teaching serve as the framework for the PLM model.

The PLM teaching model fosters mutual respect, shared responsibility, and a spirit of mutual inquiry in small groups or individualized learning experiences. Four phases form the syntax of the PLM model: exploration of the PLM formula, clarification of value set, determination of a sense of direction, and implementation of the educational objectives. Instructional values claimed as direct outcomes of the PLM model include: introduction to the PLM formula, content areas as defined by the learner, and self-enhancement and goal achievement. Nurturant values claimed as indirect outcomes from "living" in the PLM learning environment include: ability to cope with change, respect for the dignity of the person, and interpersonal warmth and affiliation.
The Role an Evaluator's Values Should Play in Program Evaluation
Authors: Fathy Shadia H.
Published: March 2007

This article analyzes the role one's values play in program evaluation and the pertinent com petencies needed by the evaluator. The analysis considers three main questions: (1) what are values, (2) how can values help the individual relate intelligently to his world, (3) what is evalua tion and how does it relate to values? The implications of the analysis suggest that, for an evaluator's values to play a constructive role in program evaluation, the evaluator should draw upon both a logical conceptual framework and empirical measurements. Such requirements sug gest certain competencies related to developing sound values, syllogistic reasoning and logical deduction, and communicating effectively.
Organizational Dynamics in University Continuing Professional Education
Authors: Knox Alan B.
Published: March 2007

A recent national study analyzed university based continuing professional education efforts in five fields — medicine, pharmacy, social work, education, and law. Persons who coordinate such efforts were interviewed. The sample of institutions was a small but somewhat representative selection of major universities that contain most or all of the five professional schools, at least one of which was perceived as having an outstanding con tinuing professional education effort. Case descriptions for each effort were analyzed within and across fields. The efforts varied greatly in their vitality, as reflected in program expansion and innovativeness. Three major characteristics associated with vitality were educational leadership, obtaining support, and involvement of practitioners.
How Do Child Welfare Caseworkers Learn?
Authors: Gleeson James P.
Published: March 2007

A 1988 survey of 115 child welfare workers suggests that life experience, supervision on the job, self-directed learning projects, agency-sponsored inservice training, formal degree education, and professional continuing education all contribute to acquisition of essential practitioner knowledge and skills. Findings of this study are consistent with findings of research on adult learning and continuing education in the professions and suggest a multi-faceted approach to developing caseworkers for child welfare practice.
Are Psychological Models of Adult Development Still Important for the Practice of Adult Education?
Authors: Courtenay Bradley C.
Published: March 2007

This article examines the longstanding assertion that psychological models of adult development are useful for practitioners of adult education. Earlier andmore recent psychological models of adult development are described. A critique of these models provides evidence to seriously question their importance in adult education. Concerns over the practical implementation of the models, such as helping practitioners to better understand how adults change, are raised in order to stimulate debate on the subject.