RESOLVING STRUGGLING READERS' HOMEWORK DIFFICULTIES: A SOCIAL COGNITIVE PERSPECTIVE

Struggling readers often fail to complete homework or complete it in a slipshod, haphazard fashion. Often, this adversely affects grades, erodes motivation for academics, and causes conflict between readers, parents, and school personnel. To help teachers and educational consultants (e.g., reading specialists, school psychologists) help struggling readers improve their homework submission rates and improve the quality of their homework, this article discusses reasons for homework problems and suggests how teachers and educational consultants can apply social cognitive theory to resolve homework problems.     

STRUGGLING LITERACY LEARNERS BENEFIT FROM LIFETIME LITERACY EFFORTS

Becoming a lifetime reader is predicated on developing a love of reading. Children with special needs and their less challenged peers both deserve equity and equality of educational opportunities that promote the lifetime reading habit. To support this direction, a strong commitment is needed from teachers and administrators, whose collective energy is aimed at determining children's attitude toward reading, immersing learners in different texts, engaging students in choosing resources and in reading them during school time, and helping children use skills and strategies in meaningful contexts. Although this perspective is beneficial for all learners, those who experience difficulty with reading profit from scaffolds that support the same instructional direction intended for learners who do not.     

FACTORS THAT AFFECT NONTRADITIONAL VOCATIONAL ENROLLMENT AMONG WOMEN

This study identified the internal (personality) and external (social support) factors that differentiate women who enter male-dominated (Nontraditional) vocational training programs from those who only consider entering such programs (Considereds) and from those who enter female-dominated (Traditional) programs. Four hundred seventy women who were enrolled in California vocational training programs and were stratified on both social class and type of vocational training site completed a self-administered questionnaire covering (1) demographic/family background, (2) social support/encouragement from others, (3) peer experience with nontraditional programs, and (4) personality and sex-role orientation results revealed that the student subgroups differed most significantly in the amount of support, encouragement, and discouragement they received from the important others in their lives. Nontraditional students differed from Traditional students primarily in the support of female friends and family members, and from Considereds in encouragement from school personnel Recommendations are made for steps that can be taken to foster equality of educational opportunity.     

REDISCOVERING THE PAST:

The origins of experimental psychology are found in the theory of discrimination created by Gustav Fechner The theory advanced by Fechner was the first theory of mental judgment that applied the ideas of Gaussian error to human discrimination Despite Its powerful theoretical and empirical results, the theory vanished Later embellishments, such as the addition of response bias found in signal detection theory, gave such theories new life, but Fechner never received the credit due to the founder of psychological detection theory     

ON THE ROAD WITH RELIGION‐AND‐SCIENCE AND THE ROMANCE OF THE PAST

This essay responds to the question “Where Are We Going?Zygon and the Future of Religion‐and‐Science” and was first presented on 9 May 2009 at a symposium honoring Philip Hefner's editorship of Zygon. It offers four suggestions for the future of religion‐and‐science: Ask big questions; encourage cultural literacy in the public sphere; bring a critical voice to other academic disciplines; and include the history of philosophy.     

TELEOLOGY PAST AND PRESENT

Abstract. Current teleology in Western biology, philosophy, and theology draws on resources from four main Western philosophers. (1) Plato's Timaeus shows how to interpret the universe as the handiwork of a purposive Creator who subordinates secondary, necessary, causes to primary, intelligent, causes. (2) Aristotle's Physics sets forth purpose as implicit in the nature of things. Purposes of different sorts inhere in different types of being, and everything has a natural function. Living things grow to actualize the potentials of the goal whose principle they bear within themselves. (3) Kant's Critique of Judgment denies that purpose is anything that human beings can know, strictly speaking. Nevertheless, purpose is a concept we must use to make sense of biological systems. (4) Hegel's Philosophy of Nature articulates organic systems as dialectically including and transcending mechanical and chemical systems. Teleological themes persist, in different ways, in contemporary discussions; I consider two lines of criticism of traditional teleology—by Richard Dawkins and Stephen Jay Gould—and one line that continues traditional teleology in an updated way—by Holmes Rolston, III.     

CYPRUS TURKISH FAIRY TALES: GLIMPSE OF A HARMONIOUS PAST

On the island of Cyprus, believed to be the birthplace of Aphrodite, the Muslim minority (settled there following the Ottoman conquest of the island in 1571) and Orthodox Christians (the native majority) lived together in peace for hundreds of years. However, as a result of ethnic conflict in the late 1950s, the Muslim Cypriot Turks established their own political state in the north of the island in 1974, and Cyprus was divided into northern Turkish and southern Greek sections. This paper attempts to examine historical, religious, cultural and psychological aspects of the relationship between these two large groups, prior to recent conflicts, by studying fairy tales told by Turkish Cypriots about a hundred years ago. It is hoped that this paper will encourage similar studies of other communities where different large-group identities live side by side, and that such studies may support their peaceful co-existence.     

INTELLIGENCE: PAST AND FUTURE

In this paper it is argued that enquiry concerning intelligence in the 20th century has been dominated by a particular theory which we call the ‘strength’ model of intelligence. After briefly considering the history of the strength model we argue that this dominance has severely distorted the logic of research programmes in the area of intelligence, resulting in the crisis of professional uncertainty and public confidence which we currently find ourselves in. Various illustrations of this distortion of logic are considered in three areas of research, (i) the construction of intelligence tests; (ii) enquiry into the ‘structure’ of intelligence; (iii) nature-nurture research. We go on to examine alternatives to the strength model, and then make a plea for a wider and deeper consideration of concept formation, and concept usage, as the basis of a ‘polyphenic’ cognitive system. Some of the implications of this consideration for the nature of future research programmes are also discussed.     

CARRYING THE BURDEN OF PAST VIOLENCES

Through a comparative study of two Palestinian transnational youth movements, this article seeks to understand how the transnational sphere traverses not just space but also time. I analyze how the Palestinian Youth Movement and the Gaza Youth Breaks Out movement understand themselves as carrying the burden of past violences in their promise to continue the Palestinian struggle and lead it toward a just and peaceful solution. Particularly, I am interested in how these movements interpret and conceive of the violences of 1948 and their continuation in present violences from different temporal, and not just spatial, standpoints. I examine the temporalities from which and to which transnational Palestinian movements speak, as well as how they orient themselves, through backward and forward movements, toward past–present–future. The article highlights how temporal differences form tensions that are often overlooked by transnational scholars and activists.     

THE FUTURE OF THE BUDDHIST PAST: A RESPONSE TO THE READERS

I respond to comments offered by Peter Harrison and Thupten Jinpa on my book Buddhism and Science: A Guide for the Perplexed (2008). I report briefly on the reception of the book thus far and provide a summary of its contents before responding individually to the essays of Harrison and Jinpa.     

REVISING PSYCHOANALYTIC INTERPRETATIONS OF THE PAST

The author reviews a contemporary cognitive psychology perspective on memory that views memory as being composed of multiple separate systems. Most researchers draw a fundamental distinction between declarative/explicit and non-declarative/implicit forms of memory. Declarative memory is responsible for the conscious recollection of facts and events - what is typically meant by the everyday and the common psychoanalytic use of the word 'memory'. Non-declarative forms of memory, in contrast, are specialised processes that influence experience and behaviour without representing the past in terms of any consciously accessible content. They operate outside of an individual's awareness, but are not repressed or otherwise dynamically unconscious. Using this theoretical framework, the question of how childhood relationship experiences are carried forward from the past to influence the present is examined. It is argued that incorporating a conceptualisation of non-declarative memory processing into psychoanalytic theory is essential. Non-declarative memory processes are capable of forming complex and sophisticated representations of the interpersonal world. These non-declarative memory processes exert a major impact on interpersonal experience and behaviour that needs to be analysed on its own terms and not mistakenly viewed as a form of resistance.     

PAST: Viewing the programming process

A software package called PAST (Programmer Assessment Software Tools) is described. PAST was designed as a research and diagnostic tool to analyze how programmers develop and test program code. PAST uses line changes between successive compiles to estimate a programmer’s cognitive processing. Line changes are highlighted and graphically presented between any two versions or compiles. Summary graphs and statistics across all versions also are provided. Applications of PAST for expanding our understanding of programming and applying it to research, teaching, and learning are discussed.     

THE RELATION OF SELFEFFICACY AND ASSERTIVENESS TO WILLINGNESS TO ENGAGE IN TRADITIONAL/NONTRADITIONAL CAREER ACTIVITIES

The relation of self-efficacy and assertiveness to the willingness of women to engage in traditional or nontraditional career activities was studied. One hundred and twenty-two undergraduate females took the Career Decision-Making Self-Efficacy Scale (Taylor & Betz, 1983) and the Assertive Behavior Assessment for Women (Osborn & Harris, 1975) and were asked to rate their willingness to engage in the career-related activities of ten traditional and ten nontraditional occupations for women. Strong self-efficacy expectations and assertiveness were related to the willingness to engage in the career-related activities of nontraditional occupations, but not traditional ones. However, regardless of level of self-efficacy or of assertiveness, women were more willing to engage in the career-related activities of traditional occupations. Implications of the results for career counseling are discussed.