Issues and Strategies for Studying Latino Student Dropout at the Local Level

Latino student dropout is a national concern that must also be addressed strategically in local communities. Although national studies are important for pointing out areas of concern, local studies can provide more specific information for local policy development and implementation. This paper presents an example of local community-initiated needs assessment that addresses issues of Latino access to education. Focus groups and interviews were held with Latino students, parents, and community leaders as well as teachers and administrators. Issues and strategies of the needs assessment process are presented, which include involving key stakeholders, engaging community members as research partners, and engaging school personnel. General findings are presented and linked to accomplishments of the needs assessment process, such as increasing community awareness of issues and building commitment to implement strategies identified to reduce Latino student dropout.     

Tragic Recognition: Revisiting Hegel’s Conception of Ethical Life

This paper interprets Hegel’s engagement with tragedy and especially tragic action as an interpretive model for understanding ethical life in complex societies in which independent value spheres collide. Tragic recognition, in contrast to the kind of recognition introduced in the master and slave dialectic, is not based on desire, but arises from the suffering deriving from clashing value spheres. As a coming to terms with one’s finitude, tragic recognition presents an important corrective to the account of mutual recognition that has been the reference point of contemporary interpretations of Hegel’s social and political philosophy. The paper concludes by pointing to some of the limits of tragedy as a universal interpretive framework for modern societies.     

Autopoietic theory,enactivism, and their incommensurable marks of the cognitive

This paper examines a fundamental philosophical difference between two radical postcognitivist theories that are usually assumed to offer (more or less) the same view of cognition; namely the autopoietic theory (AT) and the enactive approach. The ways these two theories understand cognition, it is argued, are not compatible nor incompatible but rather incommensurable. The reason, so it is argued, is that while enactivism, following the traditional stance held by most of the cognitive theories, understands cognitive systems as constituting a (sort of) natural kind, the autopoietic theory understands them as constituting only a conventional kind. Additionally, the paper shows that AT’s conventionalist stance about cognition, far from being an undesirable or useless position, offers some methodological virtues that might be timely and welcome in the agitated and revolutionary climate of current cognitive science.

     

Social recognition memory requires two stages of protein synthesis in mice

Olfactory recognition memory was tested in adult male mice using a social discrimination task. The testing was conducted to begin to characterize the role of protein synthesis and the specific brain regions associated with activity in this task. Long-term olfactory recognition memory was blocked when the protein synthesis inhibitor anisomycin was injected 20 min before, immediately after, or 6 h after sampling. No effect was observed when anisomycin was administered 3 h or 18 h after sampling. Immunohistochemical analysis of Fos expression revealed that sampling-like exposure to a juvenile increased the activity of a subset of cells in the accessory olfactory bulb and the brain areas that are associated with it. Additionally, increased Fos expression was measured in the main olfactory bulb and the piriform cortex, whereas no signs of activation were seen in the cortical nucleus of the amygdala, all components of the main olfactory system. No increases in Fos immunoreactivity were observed after 4 h. Our data suggest that long-lasting olfactory recognition memory requires two stages of protein synthesis. The first stage takes place within 1-2 h and the second stage between 6-7 h after sampling. The first but not the second stage is paralleled by an increase in the number of Fos-immunoreactive cells in brain areas associated with both the main and accessory olfactory systems. It therefore appears that the role of the second stage of protein synthesis in recognition memory depends on the integrity of the first stage of protein synthesis.     

The impact of need for closure on conservative beliefs and racism: differential mediation by authoritarian submission and authoritarian dominance

The present study explores the influence of need for closure as well as authoritarian submission (Right-Wing Authoritarianism [RWA]) and authoritarian dominance (Social Dominance Orientation [SDO]) on the genesis of conservative beliefs and racism. For this purpose, two structural equation models were compared. In Model 1, RWA and SDO were entered as independent variables and the need for closure facets Decisiveness and Need for Simple Structure acted as mediator variables. In Model 2, the need for closure facets served as independent variables and RWA and SDO acted as mediators. In two student samples (Sample 1, N = 399, Sample 2, N = 330) and one adult sample (Sample 3, N = 379), Model 2 showed superior fit to the data. These results corroborate the hypothesis that authoritarianism should be interpreted in terms of generalized beliefs rather than in terms of personality characteristics. In addition, analyses show that the effects of Need for Simple Structure on conservative beliefs and racism are fully mediated by RWA but only partly by SDO. These results suggest a differential genesis of RWA and SDO.     

Compactification Of L(Q)

In this paper we extend the usual notion of model (asa structure) to the more general notion of CauchySequence of Structures in a similar way as rationalsare extending to real numbers by means of Cauchysequences of rationals. We show that the structurespace St is dense in thecomplete space CSt of Cauchysequences of structures and that CSt is compact in the (topo)logicalsense.     

Sequences of staff-child interactions on a psychiatric inpatient unit

Six psychiatry inpatients were observed during mealtimes to determine and evaluate staff intervention techniques. To extend and further elaborate the findings of a previous work (Pines, Kupst, Natta, & Schulman, 1985), staff behaviors (positive, punitive, isolating, and neutral) were investigated for their potential relationship to subsequent child behaviors (positive, negative, and inactive) via a lag sequential analytic approach. Staff punitive and isolating behaviors tended to be associated with significant increases in the likelihood of subsequent child negative behaviors and with significant decreases in child positive behaviors. Staff positive behaviors tended not to be related to a subsequent increase or decrease in any of the coded child behaviors. Findings demonstrate the utility of assessing conditional probabilities of sequences of staff-child behaviors in psychiatric inpatients.     

The group as a self-active system: Outline of a theory of group action

Human social systems, and groups in partlcular, are conceived as units which, as a whole, actively strive towards the achievement of external and internal goals. This ‘group action’ consists of simultaneous integrated processes on various individual and social levels. Our theory comprises four groups of constructs, which refer to task structure, group structure, information processing and execution. In an ongoing group action, the task structure is projected on the group structure; according to the resulting pattern, the group processes its action related information and executes the act. The latter two processes proceed on two levels, on an individual and on a group level. There are cognition, emotion and volition on the individual, and communication on the group level of information processing; execution proceeds in individual action and in cooperation. A specific part of the theory concerns analogies between individual cognition and intragroup communication.