A contribution toward interbehavioral analysis I. Some general concepts

The Psychological Record -     

A Latent Transition Analysis Model for Latent-State-Dependent Nonignorable Missingness

Psychologists often use latent transition analysis (LTA) to investigate state-to-state change in discrete latent constructs involving delinquent or risky behaviors. In this setting, latent-state-dependent nonignorable missingness is a potential concern. For some longitudinal models (e.g., growth models), a large literature has addressed extensions to accommodate nonignorable missingness. In contrast, little research has addressed how to extend the LTA to accommodate nonignorable missingness. Here we present a shared parameter LTA that can reduce bias due to latent-state-dependent nonignorable missingness: a parallel-process missing-not-at-random (MNAR-PP) LTA. The MNAR-PP LTA allows outcome process parameters to be interpreted as in the conventional LTA, which facilitates sensitivity analyses assessing changes in estimates between LTA and MNAR-PP LTA. In a sensitivity analysis for our empirical example, previous and current membership in high-delinquency states predicted adolescents’ membership in missingness states that had high nonresponse probabilities for some or all items. A conventional LTA overestimated the proportion of adolescents ending up in a low-delinquency state, compared to an MNAR-PP LTA.     

The Educational Community as In-tentional Community

This paper reassesses a perennial concern of philosophy of education: the nature of the educational community and the role of the teacher in relation to such a community. As an entry point into this broader question, we turn to Philosophy for children (P4C), which has consistently emphasized the importance of community. Yet, not unlike pragmatist notions of community more broadly, the P4C community has largely focused on the goal-directed, purposive, aspect of the process of inquiry. The purpose of our paper is to move beyond P4C (as it has traditionally been conceived) in order to theorize a non-instrumental, in-tentional, educational community without pre-conceived goals or intentions. Drawing largely from the work of Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben, we describe the P4C-classroom as one that refuses to be operative (moving forward toward reaching common goals) and thus undermines the taken-for-granted logic of means and ends that underlies how educational communities are typically depicted and justified. Again drawing from Agamben, we identify the specific ways in which the experience of love and friendship (both of which are pure means rather than means to an end) constitute the in-tentional community. The silence of the voice of the teacher enables the experience of love and friendship to come about. Being included as an exclusion via his/her silence, the teacher is neither immanent (facilitator of student learning) nor transcendent (outside or beyond learning) but alongside the community as a paradigm of friendship.     

Other People’s Problems: Student Distancing,Epistemic Responsibility,and Injustice

In classes that examine entrenched injustices like sexism or racism, students sometimes use “distancing strategies” to dissociate themselves from the injustice being studied. Education researchers argue that distancing is a mechanism through which students, especially students of apparent privilege, deny their complicity in systemic injustice. While I am sympathetic to this analysis, I argue that there is much at stake in student distancing that the current literature fails to recognize. On my view, distancing perpetuates socially sanctioned forms of ignorance and unknowing, through which students misrecognize not only their complicity in injustice, but also the ways that injustice shapes the world, their lives, and their knowledge. Thus, distancing is pedagogically problematic because it prevents students from understanding important social facts, and because it prevents them from engaging with perspectives, analyses, and testimonies that might beneficially challenge their settled views and epistemic habits. To substantiate this new analysis, I draw on recent work on epistemologies of ignorance, especially José Medina’s account of “active ignorance.” In order to respond to student distancing, I argue, it is not sufficient for teachers to make students aware of injustice, or of their potential complicity in it. Beyond this, teachers should cultivate epistemic virtue in the classroom and encourage students to take responsibility for better ways of knowing. The article ends by outlining several classroom practices for beginning this work.     

Corrupting Conversations with the Marquis de Sade: On Education,Gender, and Sexuality

In this essay, the author joins a conversation started by Martin (Reclaiming the conversation: the ideal of the educated woman. Yale University Press, New Haven, 1985) regarding gender and education seeking to extend the conversation to address sexuality. To do so, the author brings a reading of the Marquis de Sade to challenge the emphasis on reproduction in education as it relates to gendered and sexual norms. The author, following Martin’s approach in Reclaiming the Conversation, reads one particular text of Sade’s—Philosophy in the Bedroom—to argue for queer possibilities that Sade brings to the conversation around gender and sexuality within twenty-first century education. The Marquis de Sade may viscerally seem an inappropriate choice to return to and use to join the conversation, but his novelic imagination incites complications in the conversation. Following in the footsteps of Martin’s re-reading of historic philosophical texts the author offers not only another layer of thinking about “female education,” but also opens up space for engaging gender and sexuality in the history and philosophy of education. As issues around gender and sexed bodies become ever more present and contested in educational discourses, does Sade continue the conversation in ways that corrupt the reproductive aims of education?     

General and Realm-Specific Self-Efficacy: Connections to Life Functioning

This project examined how the synthesis of general and realm specific self-efficacy is related to life functioning. In two studies 760 participants provided information on their levels of general self-efficacy, specific self-efficacy in the realms of positive affect, sleep, exercise and study, and quality of functioning in these realms. Higher general self-efficacy was significantly associated with realm specific self-efficacy across the realms of positive affect, sleep, study, and exercise. Both higher general self-efficacy and higher realm-specific self efficacy were associated with positive affect, quality of sleep and study skills. Realm-specific self-efficacy mediated the relationships between general self-efficacy and functioning in the realms of positive affect, sleep, and study. Structural equation modeling indicated paths from general self-efficacy to latent variables comprised of realm-specific self-efficacy. Different types of realm-specific self-efficacy together contributed to explaining variance in general self-efficacy. The results provide support for a hierarchical model of self-efficacy. The findings provide a platform for future longitudinal research and experimental intervention research examining the causal inter-relationships of general self-efficacy, realm-specific self-efficacy, and functioning.     

Examining the Latent Structure of Posttraumatic Growth Between Male and Female Survivors in the Immediate Aftermath of a Flash Flood Disaster

The study examined and compared the latent structure of posttraumatic growth (PTG) based on three proposed models: 1-factor, 3-factor and 5-factor models in order to (1) find out the factor structure that has the best fit for the Filipino sample; (2) find out the factor structure that best represents PTG in the immediate aftermath of a flash flood disaster; and (3) examine the generalizability of the best-fitted model across gender. A sample of 895 survivor-respondents answered the Posttraumatic Growth Inventory (PTGI) within a month after a deadly flash flood. Based on the best-fitted model, a multi-group comparison between male and female was conducted to determine gender generalizability. Results showed that the 3-factor model comprising of Changes in Self/Positive Life Attitudes, Philosophy of Life, and Relating to Others fitted best in contrast to the other two models. The data also demonstrated the generalizability of the 3-factor model across gender, with invariance in factor loadings, item intercepts, factor variance and covariance, and factor means.     

Adolescents in Residential Treatment: Caregiver and Peer Predictors of Risk Behavior and Academic Performance

The purpose of this research was to better understand the substance use and sexual risk taking behavior among high-risk adolescent populations placed in residential treatment facilities, including those in the foster care and juvenile justice systems. The primary predictors considered in this study included caregiver support, caregiver closeness, other adult support, adolescent self-disclosure/communication with caregiver, caregiver expectations about sexual behavior, and peer influence regards to drugs/alcohol and sexual behavior. Participants included 120 adolescent females in grades 7 to 12 (median grade?=?10; mean age 15.7 years), primarily African American (57.2 %) and White (29 %), in a residential treatment setting in a large urban area in the Midwest. Caregiver support and self-disclosure/communication with caregivers predicted condom use at most recent intercourse, but variables related to substance use were most consistently predictive of sexuality variables including onset and frequency of behavior. None of these support variables significantly predicted onset and frequency of substance use. Caregiver support was the contributing variable in predicting academic achievement.     

“It Is Not Wit,It Is Truth:” Transcending the Narrative Bounds of Professional and Personal Identity in Life and in Art

Taking inspiration from the film Wit (2001), adapted from Margaret Edson’s (1999) Pulitzer Prize-winning play, this article explores the particularities of witnessing a cinematic cancer narrative juxtaposed with the author’s own cancer narrative. The analysis reveals the tenuous line between death and dying, illness and wellness, life and living and the resulting identities shaped in the process of understanding both from a personal and professional lens. By framing these representations of illness experience within the narrative constructions of drama, time, metaphor and morality, the personal stories of intellectual knowledge converging with intimate and embodied knowing are revealed.