ELEMENTARY TEACHERS' BELIEFS ABOUT READING AND KNOWLEDGE OF READING CONTENT: RELATIONSHIPS TO DECISION ABOUT READING OUTCOMES

Relationships between elementary teachers' beliefs about reading, knowledge of basic reading content, and decisions about the importance of students' reading behavior in relation to grade level were examined. Significant correlation coefficients were found for (1) knowledge of reading and reading behavior outcomes focusing on discrimination of sounds represented by consonants and consonant clusters and (2) student‐centered reading beliefs and reading behavior outcomes associated with making conclusions and drawing inferences about stories read. Significant negative correlations were noted for (1) knowledge of reading and outcomes dealing with comprehension of explicitly stated meaning and details in reading passages and (2) student‐centered reading beliefs and all reading outcomes focusing on basic decoding skills and literal comprehension of story information. The best predictor of teachers' identification of important reading behavior outcomes was knowledge of reading content. Reading behavior outcomes differed significantly between primary and intermediate level teachers for recognition of sounds represented by vowels; intermediate teachers gave these higher rankings than did primary teachers. The results indicate that beliefs about reading influence elementary teachers' decisions about the importance of reading outcomes typically taught in the elementary grades. Teachers who hold student‐centered reading beliefs are not likely to value instruction that focuses on decoding.     

USING MINIAUTOBIOGRAPHICAL NARRATION IN APPLIED PSYCHOLOGY TO PERSONALIZE COURSE CONTENT AND IMPROVE CONCEPTUAL APPLICATION

­In the present investigation, I implemented a series of brief, written, autobiographical assignments, each associated with material from one of 12 different chapters covered throughout an introductory course in applied psychology. In completing each assignment, students described and applied psychological principles to their past and present life experiences. Students completing the autobiographical writing assignments demonstrated greater comprehension and application of course concepts than students exposed to traditional didactics alone. Students' anecdotal comments combined with narrative excerpts from selected assignments in offering additional evidence of the effectiveness of miniautobiographical narration as a constructivist pedagogical tool.     

PROCESS ECOLOGY: STEPPING STONES TO BIOSEMIOSIS

Many in science are disposed not to take biosemiotics seriously, dismissing it as too anthropomorphic. Furthermore, biosemiotic apologetics are cast in top‐down fashion, thereby adding to widespread skepticism. An effective response might be to approach biosemiotics from the bottom up, but the foundational assumptions that support Enlightenment science make that avenue impossible. Considerations from ecosystem studies reveal, however, that those conventional assumptions, although once possessing great utilitarian value, have come to impede deeper understanding of living systems because they implicitly depict the evolution of the universe backward. Ecological dynamics suggests instead a smaller set of countervailing postulates that allows evolution to play forward and sets the stage for tripartite causalities, signs, and interpreters—the key elements of biosemiosis—to emerge naturally out of the interaction of chance with configurations of autocatalytic processes. Biosemiosis thereby appears as a fully legitimate outgrowth of the new metaphysic and shows promise for becoming the supervenient focus of a deeper perspective on the phenomenon of life.     

WOMEN GOING BACK TO WORK: PRELIMINARY PROBLEMS1

Analysis of 422 applications submitted to an employment agency by married women suggests that some professional women who seek to reenter the labor force lack confidence, skill in presenting their credentials, and enough self-assurance to present themselves in their own names. In this sample of women, the individual whose self-image as an independent professional allowed her to defy Emily Post was more likely to get a job than was the individual who used her husband's name.     

EVOLVING APPROACHES TO CONSERVATION: INTEGRAL ECOLOGY AND CANADA'S GREAT BEAR RAINFOREST

This case study applies Integral Ecology to analyze the broad range of strategies environmentalists have undertaken to create protected areas and change forest practices in the Great Bear Rainforest, British Columbia, Canada. Rainforest conservation efforts in the region promoted holistic, trans-disciplinary solutions and fostered agreement among diverse stakeholders, modeling an Integral Ecology approach. Environmentalists worked locally and globally, engaging with economic, cultural, political, and scientific systems to create change. The campaign involved transformations at personal and cultural levels that have enabled negotiated solutions involving over twenty million acres of rainforest on British Columbia's coast.     

PREDICTING TEST PERFORMANCE: A CONTENT VALID APPROACH TO SCREENING APPLICANTS

This study examined the validity of a rationally developed biographical questionnaire for predicting content valid test performance for electrician applicants ( N = 221). Job analysis task statements were utilized as biographical items, and applicants were required to rate their previous work experience regarding each task. The utility of the questionnaire in screening applicant populations was shown to be both statistically and practically significant. EEOC implications are discussed.     

INTEGRAL ECOLOGY: A PERSPECTIVAL,DEVELOPMENTAL, AND COORDINATING APPROACH TO ENVIRONMENTAL PROBLEMS

Integral Ecology uses multiple perspectives to analyze environmental problems. Four of Integral Ecology's major analytical perspectives (known as the quadrants) correspond to the four divisions of the liberal arts and sciences: fine arts, natural science, social science, and humanities. Integral Ecology also utilizes the analytical perspective provided by the idea of cultural moral development. This perspective helps to reveal how stakeholders at different developmental stages disclose a phenomenon, in this case, a tropical forest that loggers propose to clear-cut. Integral Ecology takes into account all pertinent perspectives, in order to arrive at the best possible solution to environmental problems and conflicts.     

TEACHING MENSTRUAL CARE TO MENTALLY RETARDED WOMEN: ACQUISITION,GENERALIZATION, AND MAINTENANCE

We evaluated a training package designed to teach menstrual care skills to five mild to severely mentally retarded women. Three specific skill areas (changing stained underwear; sanitary napkin; and both stained underwear and sanitary napkin) were task analyzed and taught in a sequential manner. Results of a multiple-baseline design across women indicated that the training package was successful in teaching these skills; the women continued to perform the skills during naturally occurring menses up to 5 months following termination of the study.     

GALILEO STILL GOES TO JAIL: CONFLICT MODEL PERSISTENCE WITHIN INTRODUCTORY ANTHROPOLOGY MATERIALS

Historians have long since rejected the dubious assertions of the conflict model, with its narratives of perennial religion versus science combat. Nonetheless, this theory persists in various academic disciplines, and it is still presented to university students as the authoritative historical account of religion–science interactions. Cases of this can be identified within modern anthropology textbooks and reference materials, which often recapitulate claims once made by John W. Draper and Andrew D. White. This article examines 21st‐century introductory anthropology publications, demonstrating how such works perpetuate religion–science myths and the notion that history has been replete with inevitable religion versus science warfare. In particular, this study reveals how such introductory materials propagate discord narratives associated with the Scientific Revolution and the Enlightenment. Affiliated with these anecdotes are oversimplified accounts of religious responses to heliocentrism and evolutionary theory, as well as claims that science has invariably led to the usurpation of religious belief and secularization from Galileo onwards.     

"I DON'T KNOW WHO TO BLAME": HIV-POSITIVE SOUTH AFRICAN WOMEN NAVIGATING HETEROSEXUAL INFECTION

Women who become HIV infected through heterosexual transmission are faced with the task of making sense of how they became infected. This paper presents a qualitative analysis based on interviews with 35 HIV-positive South African Black women. A specific theme, that blame of a male partner was avoided or disavowed in interviews, is explored in relation to broader contexts concerning gender and HIV. It is suggested that the repeated phrase "I don't know who to blame" expresses gender-differentiated speaking rights. It also protects women from voicing their own anger, guilt and internalization of badness as a result of an HIV-positive diagnosis. Further, it protects women from exposure to male destructiveness and from confronting the possibility that they themselves are implicated in the infection of others. Analysis offers opportunities for exploring how women both resist and repeat dominant discourses and dominant fears related to HIV-infected womanhood.     

POLITICS AND THE GLASS CLIFF: EVIDENCE THAT WOMEN ARE PREFERENTIALLY SELECTED TO CONTEST HARD-TO-WIN SEATS

Recent archival and experimental research has revealed that women are more likely than men to be appointed to leadership positions when an organization is in crisis. As a result, women often confront a "glass cliff" in which their position as leader is precarious. Our first archival study examined the 2005 UK general election and found that, in the Conservative party, women contested harder to win seats than did men. Our second study experimentally investigated the selection of a candidate by 80 undergraduates in a British political science class to contest a by-election in a seat that was either safe (held by own party with a large margin) or risky (held by an opposition party with a large margin). Results indicated that a male candidate was more likely than a woman to be selected to contest a safe seat, but there was a strong preference for a female rather than a male appointment when the seat was described as hard to win. Implications for women's participation in politics are discussed.     

HOW WE HAVE BEEN LEARNING TO TALK ABOUT AUTISM: A ROLE FOR STORIES

Abstract: Autism fiction has become a genre of novel-writing in its own right. Many examples are given in the essay. What does this activity do for us? There used to be no language in which autistic experience could be described. One characteristic difficulty for autistic people is understanding what other people are doing. So absence of a discourse of autistic experience is to be expected. Analyses advanced by Wolfgang Köhler and Lev Vygotsky already made plain long ago that social interaction is a precondition for a language of the inner life. One role for the wave of autism stories now being published, is to create such a language of autism. This in turn affects how autistic people think of themselves. It certainly affects how nonautistic, "neurotypical," individuals think about autism. Not all of this is a good thing, for all too many stories foster images of "the" autistic person as having special gifts that ordinary people lack.     

WHY I HAVE NO PLANS TO RETIRE: IN DEFENCE OF MODERATE PROFESSIONAL COMPLACENCY

Smilansky argues that realistic assumptions justify the conclusion that far more members of a given service profession than we might previously have supposed would best serve that profession by leaving it. I argue that on more realistic assumptions no such conclusion is forthcoming.     

渐减提示法呈现样例对学习迁移的作用

本研究探讨了从样例学习到问题解决过渡的样例设计方式。实验结果表明：渐减提示法是动态的联结样例和问题解决的有效形式,符合认知技能获得的四阶段模型和建构主义学习观的基本要求;渐减提示法可以促进学习者对样例问题进行高质量的自我解释和产生心理预期,是实现从样例学习到问题解决过渡的有效方法。