Off to a Slow Start: Four Profiles of Slow Readers in Second Grade

Assessments of oral reading rate in words correct per minute (WCPM) have proliferated in elementary classrooms. This study explores the similarities and differences among students at the end of second grade who demonstrate low WCPM. Using latent profile analysis, readers with low WCPM compared to peers were identified (n?=?2,191) from a state-wide assessment database and grouped into four statistically significant profiles based on their reading accuracy, rate, prosody, and comprehension scores. Students in Profile 1 demonstrated relatively high skills across the board, compared to the other “slow readers”; students in Profile 2 demonstrated high accuracy paired with low rate; students in Profile 3 demonstrated low accuracy paired with comparatively high rate; and students in Profile 4 demonstrated low scores across the board. The students who struggled with accuracy (Profiles 3 and 4) also demonstrated more difficulty with comprehension, word recognition, and spelling. The students who struggled most with rate (Profiles 2 and 4) demonstrated more difficulty with prosody. Profile membership predicted students’ scores on a state standardized test of reading one year later, at the end of third grade. These findings suggest that low WCPM can indicate a range of underlying skill difficulties, which may require differentiated support and instruction to support long-term reading proficiency.     

Introduction: The Dialogical Self in a Global and Digital Age

In this article, culture and self, like society and identity, are conceived as mutually inclusive. On the basis of this premise, self and identity are discussed in the context of an evolution toward a global and digital society. The core concept is the "dialogical self" that is described as a spatial and temporal process of positioning. Examples of multivoiced and dialogical selves are given in communities and cultures that lack advanced technological means. Apparently, the dialogical self is not an exclusive feature of the present era but a general human condition. Specific to the era is that dialogue is becoming increasingly mediated as a result of technological advances. Closely related to these advances, one can witness an increasing cultural complexity, mobility, and hybridization. It is argued that technological developments and global interconnectedness provide new opportunities for innovation of the self as multivoiced and dialogical. At the same time, such developments evoke counter forces that can close the self off from such opportunities. This article ends with a short introduction to the several contributions in this special issue.     

The Ethical Challenges of the Digital Age

This article examines the ethical challenges of digital transformation in three steps. First, it offers a survey of the various dimensions of digital transformation and the ethical challenges that are associated with them: the exposure of private life through access to data; the change of communication culture through algorithms; the concentration of corporate power; changes in the world of work; the military use of digital technology; and the fusion of the human being and the machine. Second, it reflects upon various fundamental anthropological dimensions of the biblical tradition, which does not define humankind through itself but first and foremost in relation to, and being different from, God. Third, it draws conclusions about how to deal with digital transformation: through rescuing public discourse, making digital transformation socially accountable, and offering a perspective of theological anthropology that takes account of both the vulnerability and the deep freedom of our humanity.     

Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy in the Digital Age: Presidential Address

Our field has come a long way in establishing cognitive-behavioral therapy as the empirically supported treatment of choice for a wide range of mental and behavioral health problems. Nevertheless, most individuals with mental disorders do not receive any care at all, and those who do often have difficulty accessing care that is consistently high in quality. Addressing these issues is complex and costly and thus progress has been slow. We are entering an exciting stage in which emerging technologies might offer novel solutions to the treatment gap. This paper discusses a number of technology-enabled solutions to our field’s challenges, including Internet-based and smartphone-based cognitive-behavioral therapy. Nevertheless, we must remain attentive to potential pitfalls of these emerging technologies. The paper incorporates suggestions for how the field may approach these potential pitfalls and provides a vision for how we might develop powerful, scalable, precisely timed, personalized interventions to enhance global mental health.     

The Pedagogy of the Online Wisdom Community: Forming Church Ministers in a Digital Age

Abstract. While electronic learning is transforming the face of higher education today, some in the theological community question whether it is appropriate for the specific goals of graduate level theological formation for ministry. Drawing on the work of one theological faculty, this article answers yes. The author describes the school's hybrid model of distance education pedagogy. He discusses the underlying teaching and learning principles that guided the faculty in their development of this model, and, in particular, the pedagogical ideal of the learning cohort as a “wisdom community.” Web‐based instruction can be effectively designed to nurture wisdom communities for integrative learning. The author describes the “pedagogy of the online wisdom community” from his experience of Web‐based distance education teaching. The growing demand for ministry formation programs, particularly in mission areas, underlines the urgent need for continued study of the role of technology in theological pedagogy.     

“触电”时代的儿童:触屏媒体与幼儿发展

数字媒体的飞速发展使得越来越多的研究者开始关注触屏媒体对幼儿发展的影响。综述从触屏媒体的特征、触屏学习、幼儿发展、触屏媒体能否作为测量工具及其在家庭和学校中推广使用的有效性方面进行探讨。综述发现：触屏媒体具有交互性、即时反馈性、渐进性和便携性。41项涉及触屏的研究在STEM学习（d_{与基线比较}=1.06,d_{与其它方法比较}=0.30）、词汇学习（d_{与基线比较}=0.51,d_{与其它方法比较}=0.47）和学习迁移（d=0.78）上发现了触屏的促进作用。触屏媒体对幼儿执行功能与亲子关系发展有促进作用,但是对精细运动的影响尚不明确。触屏可以作为测量工具或干预方式用于其它领域,推广使用时存在挑战。未来研究应该继续关注触屏媒体特征对学习效果及不同年龄阶段儿童的影响,探讨真实触屏媒体环境中儿童的学习与发展。     

The Link between Onset Age and Adult Offending: The Role of Developmental Profiles

Studies of the development of anti-social behavior from adolescence through adulthood have suggested that early onset of offending tends to be associated with a lengthier criminal career. Recently, Bacon and colleagues uncovered a somewhat divergent finding in that late onset of delinquency was associated with subsequent offending among members of the 1958 Philadelphia Birth Cohort. This paper furthers this line of research by adopting a different methodological orientation, a finite mixture-modeling framework, to the 1958 Cohort data. Findings suggest that late adolescence onset of delinquency is associated with more offending in adulthood. Direction for future research is discussed.     

公民的两个身体:数字时代的政治现象学

在当下数字时代,传统上以地域、物理现实为基础来对公民身份进行定义的方式,可能会遭遇一系列的挑战。在全球互联网时代,一张把全球联系在一起的信息空间网,促使我们去重新思考我们的公民身份及其相对应的政治行动和存在方式。数字时代对我们日常生活所带来的创新和变革、机遇和挑战,无不吸引我们去对公民身份以及公民的存在方式展开讨论。本文从公民在线下和线上的两副身体出发,来讨论数字时代公民、公民身份和社会行动所具有的内涵。     

Creativity in the Age of Technology: Measuring the Digital Creativity of Millennials

Digital technology and its many uses form an emerging domain of creative expression for adolescents and young adults. To date, measures of self-reported creative behavior cover more traditional forms of creativity, including visual art, music, or writing, but do not include creativity in the digital domain. This article introduces a new measure, the Creative Behavior Questionnaire: Digital (CBQD), which assesses self-reported creative behavior in the digital domain. High school students (N = 230) completed the CBQD, as well as several other measures of creativity and personality. Factor analysis revealed 3 factors: digital creativity achievement, school-based everyday creativity, and self-expressive digital creativity. Factor-based scales showed expected correlations with other creativity measures, as well as Big-Five personality traits and Unconventionality, supporting construct validity. Results indicate that the CBQD can be used as an independent or a supplemental measure of creative behavior.     

Situation-Behavior Profiles as a Locus of Consistency in Personality

Traditional approaches have long considered situations as "noise" or "error" that obscures the consistency of personality and its invariance. Therefore, it has been customary to average the individual's behavior on any given dimension (e.g., conscientiousness) across different situations. Contradicting this assumption and practice, recent studies have demonstrated that by incorporating the situation into the search for consistency, a new locus of stability is found. Namely, people are characterized not only by stable individual differences in their overall levels of behavior, but also by distinctive and stable patterns of situation-behavior relations (e.g., she does X when A but Y when B ). These if . . . then . . . profiles constitute behavioral "signatures" that provide potential windows into the individual's underlying dynamics. Processing models that can account for such signatures provide a new route for studying personality types in terms of their shared dynamics and characteristic defining profiles.     

Solidarity in a Technocratic Age

Do free markets teach us how to construct humane social relations or do they impede us from doing so? We discuss social scientific evidence on the nature of commercialization and its consequences for moral formation. From a virtue ethics perspective, people face a need to learn and practice the good. When interactions transition into the market sphere, we argue commercialization can fundamentally alter the nature of relationships, particularly for those relations formerly based on gift, sacrifice, and obligation. While modern social scientists accurately identify problems resulting from commercialization, we argue for the importance of theological social ethics, which can offer a penetrating analysis of the habits of gift and communal responsibility. Catholic social teaching in particular outlines the set of principles and institutions which foster sacrificial gift‐giving among individuals and organizations within society, providing a bulwark against the threat commercialization poses to many social relations.     

Baptism in a Secular Age

In the Western world, the cultural conditions for interpreting and practicing baptism have changed radically in recent decades. An increasing level of religious plurality is one cultural trend that the theology of baptism must take seriously. One option for responding to this challenge is to interpret baptism as a rite of drastic communal transition whereby one enters into the church and leaves the world—with all its plurality—behind. Another option is to view baptism as a rite that, by bringing us into the church's fellowship with God in Christ, draws us into communion with all living creatures and calls upon us to engage in openness toward others.     

Judging Knowledge in the Digital Age: The Role of External‐Memory Organization

Two studies examined relations between features of external‐memory repositories (personal computers) and confidence in knowing. Participants judged their confidence in knowledge related to their work or studies and then answered questions about the way they store and use information. Participants who maintained more organized repositories were more confident in their knowledge. Furthermore, moderation analyses showed that the participants who navigated through their files by manually clicking through folders to find documents, but not those who use an automated search feature, felt more knowledge confident if they maintained a well‐organized electronic repository. These results provide evidence for relation between assessments of internally ‘stored’ knowledge and the degree of organization of their externally stored ‘knowledge.’ Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The Body and the Sacred in the Digital Age: Thoughts on Posthuman Sexuality

Abstract

Considerable scholarly discussion has been given to the idea that we are moving toward a state of "posthumanism." In this essay, I examine some possible implications of a posthuman existence, specifically as it relates to that most basic of human needs—sexuality. More specifically, I am interested in exploring the spiritual aspects of sexuality to see what is lost and what is gained in technologically mediated forms of sexuality. To that end, I consider the interplay between sexual behaviour and our conceptions of the sacred, how technologies are changing our views of—and realities concerning—our bodies, and the potential for a sacred posthuman sexuality.     

Living in a Digital Culture

Today our lives are filled with technology through which we communicate, work, play, and even engage with for making meaning. This implies the pervasive presence of digital media as an integral part of our everyday life. Although studies on media are mostly done by sociology and communication students, living in a digital age has significant implications for theological reflections. Despite this being the case, there is a gap in terms of a religious response to technology. In response to this, the aim of this article is to stimulate theological reflections with regard to living in a digital culture. This is achieved by raising theological questions in the hope that theology could take a proactive role in these discussions. The implications of living in a digital culture are quite vast; therefore, the focus will be limited to how a community is formed and sustained, and the possible implications for the church as community.