The lived experiences of Qatari adolescents attending international secondary school

Many Qatari families are opting to have their children educated at international schools with curricula based upon western thought and educational standards. Exploring the perceptions of Qatari adolescents as they are engaged in this experience provided an opportunity to uncover the phenomenon of Qatari ways of being as related to Western educational thought. A hermeneutic phenomenological approach was used to investigate the lived experience of Qatari adolescents attending gender integrated, international, secondary schools in Qatar. Nineteen participants took part in five gender segregated focus groups. Qatari Culture and Islamic faith were the primary themes that emerged and these interconnected with the sub-themes of family, identity, and respect. The participants shared common traits with Third Culture Kids. At times, school expectations, norms and values conflicted with traditional family values, practices and culture, but participants saw the cross-cultural value in attending international schools.     

Gender Differences in Narcissism and Courtship Violence in Dating Couples

The current study explored the relationship between courtship violence and the exploitativeness/entitlement factor of overt narcissism, covert narcissism, and sexual narcissism. Data were analyzed from 63 currently dating couples on their own and partner’s aggression using the CTS2. All were white, heterosexual students from a small US college in Central Pennsylvania. An interdependence analysis showed that correlations were entirely explained at the individual-level, thus demonstrating that gender is a key element in understanding narcissism and courtship violence. For women, exploitativeness/ entitlement was significantly correlated with sexual coercion in both dating partners. For men, covert narcissism was correlated with physical assault and sexual narcissism was correlated with their partner’s sexual coercion. Narcissism also influenced some discrepancies in self- and partner-rated aggression.     

Dupré's Anti–Essentialist Objection to Reductionism

In his 'The Disorder of Things' John Dupré presents an objection to reductionism which I call the 'anti–essentialist objection': it is that reductionism requires essentialism, and essentialism is false. I unpack the objection and assess its cogency. Once the objection is clearly in view, it is likely to appeal to those who think conceptual analysis a bankrupt project. I offer on behalf of the reductionist two strategies for responding, one which seeks to rehabilitate conceptual analysis and one (more concessive) which avoids commitment to any such analysis.     

An in-home investigation of maternal teaching strategies during Sesame Street and a popular situation comedy

A naturalistic in-home investigation of maternal teaching strategies while viewing an educational program (Sesame-Street) and an entertainment program (a situation comedy) was conducted. Fourteen mothers and their pre-school children tape-recorded their coversations while jointly viewing the two television programs. Mothers tooks the role of teacher during both types of programs, but they talked more and asked proportionally more questions about the content of Sesame Street than they did about the content of the situation comedy. Likewise, during Sesame Street, mothers talked more about educationally relevant concepts such as size, color, and number. Children, while watching Sesame Street, engaged in ore labeling of educationally relevant concepts than they did while viewing the situation comedy. During the situation comedy, mothers explained why television characters performed particular behaviors and assigned traits and emotions to characters more frequently than they did during Sesame Street. The findings suggest that the parent may play an important role in helping children maximally utilize television as a teacher.     

The effect of punishment on a factor I stuttering behavior

On each of five days the subject of this experiment read aloud different material during an 18-min A₁ (base rate), B (experimental), and A₂ (extinction) period. No stimulation was delivered during the first three days. On the fourth day, the nonsense word “norg” was presented noncontingently during the experimental period. There was no statistically significant difference between the A₁ and B periods on any of these four days. On day five, “wrong” was made contingent on Factor I prolongations during the experimental period. As a result, there was a statistically significant increase in their frequency. When the response consequence was removed in the A₂ priod, there was a reliable reduction in prolongations and the frequency closely approximated that found in the A₁ period. These data suggest that response-contingent negative stimulation is contraindicated as a clinical tactic for use with Factor I prolongations. It not only failed to suppress them, it increased their frequency.