A systems analysis of the behaviors of schooling

Summary and conclusions Thus, the existing nonsystematic system, and the various vested interests associated with it, targets groups of students rather than individuals. Prior to the advent of a science of schooling, the tutorial approach associated with the privileged or ruling classes did not seem feasible for educating the masses, simply because there was no adequate science of behavior for the individual. Even after that science showed promise for pedagogy, there was still no systems-wide science for applying what was known to groups and organizations in which the individual was pivotal. In order to determine whether behavioral conceptions of schooling work on a larger scale, we must experimentally test whether or not thoroughgoing applications are feasible to educate the masses individually. Findings from 8this research can be used to design and modify systems of schooling that are measurably effective, workable year in and year out, automatically self-correcting, and beneficial to all of the parties involved. CABAS has demonstrated how such a system can work on a small scale; other attempts may show us how to make a large scale system work. We have not yet seen what man can make of man (Skinner, 1971, p. 215).     

How parents view professional behaviors: A cross-professional analysis

This study examined the responses of more than 900 parents of children with serious emotional disorders to survey questions about the importance and frequency of professional behaviors and compared these responses across professions. The findings indicated that parents with lower income and less education tended to work more with social workers, counselors, and teachers, less with psychologists and psychiatrists. Professional behaviors concerned with the parent-professional relationship, honesty, non-blaming attitude, supportiveness, and inclusion in decision-making were considered important by most parents regardless of the professional with whom they worked. Parents rated professions differently on the importance of evaluation, home visits, and providing child-raising information, probably reflecting expectations that parents have about the roles and training of professionals. The behaviors that parents considered important also tended to occur frequently. Significant differences across professions were found with respect to the frequency of providing information on child rearing, advocacy, home visits, providing information on resources, and help with coping, although these behaviors were considered relatively less important by parents. An examination of discrepancies between what parents considered important and what they experienced suggested that parents' expectations were only partially met. Implications for practice, professional education, and research are discussed.Editor's Note: We acknowledge the sampling issue raised by the low survey return rate in this study and the resulting threat to generalizability of findings. Nevertheless, the study is judged to merit publication as one of the first efforts to examine empirically parents' views of their relationships with mental health professionals. Our hope is that this report will serve to stimulate further scientific investigation on the topic—Donald Oswald (AE).     

The limits of love: Predicting immediate versus sustained caring behaviors in close relationships

Do the same kinds of processes predict spontaneous acts of kindness and long-term caring behavior in relationships? Three studies examined predictors of immediate behaviors versus delayed, sustained behaviors. Positive feelings toward the relationship partner predicted pro-relational behaviors when the behaviors could be completed in an immediate and fairly short timespan, but not when the behaviors required performance after several days delay (Study 1) or when the behavior required continued self-regulation over a period of a week (Studies 2 and 3). Sustained behavior regulation was better predicted by factors related to self-regulation strength, such as trait conscientiousness, than it was by positive relationship feelings. However, when feelings were primed daily, the feelings-behavior link remained strong for sustained behaviors (Study 3). Together, these studies suggest that immediate pro-relational behaviors are more likely to be acts of the heart, whereas delayed, sustained pro-relational behaviors are more likely to be acts of will.     

Dynamic programming for the analysis of serial behaviors

Studies of breakdowns in music performance can provide rich information about the planning activities required for music performance, as well as offer significant advantages over studies of skilled performance in other domains (Palmer & van de Sande, 1993). Yet despite the potential benefits, documented evidence of errors in music performance is scarce, primarily because of methodological limitations. One important practical problem that arises is how to find a correspondence between the actual performance and the score, or intended performance. When performances are long and complex, with potentially many errors, matching a performance to a musical score becomes a nontrivial task. This paper describes an algorithm for this task, developed in the context of a study of music production errors. The solution to the problem utilizes dynamic programming techniques and runs in polynomial time.     

The future of schooling

Distinction is drawn between research on learning processes among children in schools and the impact of schooling on students' academic and socioemotional development. Schooling and the learning environment are considered within an ecological/transactional framework. The research on school effectiveness and teacher effects is summarized. Interventions directed at the social regularities of the schooling environment are proposed as strategies to improve the learning environment of the school and optimize student outcomes.     

着装行为的动机目标研究

本研究采用主因素分析法探讨动机系统中着装目标的结构 ,同时提出了测量着装动机目标的初步量表———着装目标重要性量表。研究采用动机诱导、服装作品分析与文献分析等方法收集、确认着装动机目标共 90项 ,并在此基础上进行主因素分析。结果表明着装行为的动机目标由 1 2个主要因素构成 :①寻求表现能力地位的外观 ;②寻求表达礼仪的外观 ;③追求表现美的外观 ;④寻求身心舒适的外观 ;⑤追求理想的自我形象 ;⑥寻求新奇气派的外观 ;⑦寻求团体认同的外观 ;⑧寻求便利的外观 ;⑨寻求年轻的外观 ;　l媢斞扒笳胧视玫耐夤?;　l媣曆扒蠓舷八椎耐夤?;　l媤栄扒笳娼巧耐夤邸     

Religious behaviors as strategies for organizing groups of people: A social contingency analysis

A social contingency analysis of religion is presented, arguing that individual religious behaviors are principally maintained by the many powerful benefits of participating in social groups rather than by any immediate or obvious consequences of the religious behaviors. Six common strategies are outlined that can shape the behaviors of large groups of people. More specifically, religious behavior is shaped and maintained by making already-existing contingencies contingent upon low-probability, but socially beneficial, group behaviors. Many specific examples of religious themes are then analyzed in terms of these common strategies for social shaping, including taboos, rituals, totems, personal religious crises, and symbolic expression. For example, a common view is that people are anxious about life, death, and the unknown, and that the direct function of religious behaviors is to provide escape from such anxiety. Such an explanation is instead reversed-that any such anxiety is utilized or created by groups through having escape contingent upon members performing less probable behaviors that nonetheless provide important benefits to most individual group members. These generalized beneficial outcomes, rather than escape from anxiety, maintain the religious behaviors and this fits with observations that religions typically act to increase anxiety rather than to reduce it. An implication of this theory is that there is no difference in principle between religious and nonreligious social control, and it is demonstrated that the same social strategies are utilized in both contexts, although religion has been the more historically important form of social control.     

The effect of schooling on the development of fluid and cristallized intelligence: A quasi-experimental study

The question, whether schooling exerts a substantial influence on the development of intelligence is an issue of ongoing discussion. In our study we (a) present a quasi-experimental design to separate schooling effects from effects of chronological age and (b) apply it to intelligence test data of (n = 578) 10-year-old children. The results show that there are considerable schooling effects on all tests, including the tests of fluid intelligence, and that schooling effects explain most all of the intellectual progress made during 1 year of life at that age, measured by the increase in the mean scores of the tests.     

A continuum of adaptive creative behaviors

Abstract:

The most common definitions of creativity—the production of something new or rare or that of divergent thinking—do not bridge the gap between childhood and adulthood. A developmental continuum is proposed to span the creativity of childhood to the creativity found in adults. The range of adaptive behaviors along this continuum are related by the common element of discontinuity, but differ in adaptation, purpose, novelty, value, speed, and structure. Seven levels are proposed: Learning something new; universal novelty; making connections that are rare compared to peers; developing talents; developing heuristics; producing information; creating by extending a field; and creating by revolutionizing a field. The last two levels are characteristic of mature creators. How educators currently deal with creativity, different developmental trajectories that relate to child‐rearing and schooling practices, a call for supporting creativity as a goal for education, and a brief discussion of the issues of linearity, order, and creativity in females related to the continuum conclude the paper.     

A variable influencing the performance of generalized imitative behaviors

This research attempted to demonstrate some of the conditions that would influence the performance of generalized imitative behaviors in young children. Two experiments were conducted. The results of Exp. I indicated that generalized imitative behaviors can be very durable; only one of three subjects was influenced by a variety of reinforcement-like procedures. Control over the behavior of all three subjects was obtained when a setting event involving the presence or absence of the experimenter was systematically varied. A second test of this variable was carried out in Exp. II. Results showed moderate to strong control over non-reinforced imitations in four preschool children.     

The desire to be remembered: A review and analysis of legacy motivations and behaviors

The psychological motivations and mechanisms underlying a desire to be remembered after death is an understudied area in the social sciences. While previous research has indirectly investigated the pursuit of legacy as a means of coping with death anxiety, little attention has been paid to other potential factors involved in the appeal of leaving an individualistic (usually positive) mark in society that will outlive the self. In the present paper, we broaden the theoretical examination of the human drive for legacy, considering proximate motivations (e.g., alleviating death anxiety, concluding one's “life story” well, etc.) and ultimate causes (i.e., the direct or indirect reproductive effects that post-mortem reputations confer to surviving relatives). Additionally, we consider cognitive factors related to afterlife beliefs and perceptions of post-mortem consciousness, and their potential role in legacy-related desires. We conclude by discussing areas for further empirical investigations of the legacy drive.     

A politics beyond subjects: The affective choreographies and smooth spaces of schooling

In this paper we explore the significance and workings of space, subjectivity and affectivity in everyday life in schools. We bring together conceptual tools from Foucault, Butler and Deleuze and Guattari to make sense of the ways that school spaces and subjects are constituted; to consider the significance of affectivities in everyday school life; and to show how these unsettle the subjects and spaces of the education assemblage. We draw on the notion of affective choreographies to move from a focus on the individual subject and body to a concern with bodies as amalgam and an analysis that foregrounds collectivities and the event and so is anti-subjectivation. Engaging with two detailed accounts of everyday school life through affective choreographies we demonstrate the tacit collectivity of the event; the demarcation of what bodies can and cannot do; and the way that affective intensities exceed these demarcations. This approach, we suggest, enables us to interrogate the constraints of discourse and subjectivation at the same time as we think beyond the subjectivated subject and the striations of the assemblage, thereby opening up new possibilities for a politics of becoming.     

Cluster analysis of depressed college students' social behaviors.

Measures of interpersonal behaviors exhibited by depressed college students toward their dormitory roommates were cluster analyzed, and this procedure produced 2 relatively distinct subgroups: a dependent, friendly, overgenerous type and an autocratic, competitive, aggressive, mistrustful type. These 2 groups were studied over a 9-month period; findings revealed that behaviors associated with each cluster were relatively stable and unrelated to gender or initial symptom severity. In longitudinal analyses, depressives in one group showed symptom abatement across time, whereas symptoms of the other group remained elevated. The roommates of depressives exhibited relatively high levels of hostility and a progressive decline in social contact and satisfaction with their depressed cohabitant. The results are discussed in relation to other typological approaches to unipolar depression.     

Territories of schooling and schooling territories in contexts of extreme urban poverty in Argentina: Between management and abjection

We are living in a time when large masses of workers have become large masses of the unemployed and, to borrow Butler’s term, their bodies constitute an army of bodies that don’t matter. This is probably one of the greatest dilemmas in our society, in the globalized world and in regions like Latin America in particular. In the framework of governmentality studies, this paper presents advances in research geared towards characterizing schooling practices in contexts of extreme urban poverty, specifically in an area on the outskirts of Buenos Aires (Argentina) with one of the highest concentrations of shantytowns. Starting in the late 1960s with the crisis in Fordism and the closing of factories, a dense population has come to inhabit these urban spaces in the midst of a process of extreme decay. I will focus, in this work, on the characteristics that I understand to distinguish the pedagogical devices and processes of subjectivation bound to the configuration of these abject territories.