The Scholarship of Teaching in Theology and Religion: A Wabash Center Advisory Committee Conversation

The article is a reflection on what I perceive to be a confusion about the relation between theoretical judgments and judgments of pedagogical efficacy. My interest in the issue originated with my own confusion over persistent student resistance to certain assigned texts that I had initially felt confident would prove valuable in the classroom. The essay unfolds in three segments. In the first, I recount how this concern about the relation between theoretical judgments and judgments of pedagogical efficacy evolved out of my own teaching. I next list three tentative conclusions about the correlation or lack of correlation between theoretical judgments and judgments of pedagogical efficacy. In the concluding segment, I call for concerted resistance to the tendency of pure rationality to colonize the aesthetic and dramatic components of experience so essential to transformative teaching and learning.     

Understanding families as systems

In this article, we discuss recent research that has arisen from theoretical and conceptual models that use a systems metaphor for understanding families. We suggest that research stimulated by such models leads social scientists in new and important directions in understanding the social and emotional development of children in their families. These models view development as resulting from the dynamic transactions across multiple levels of family systems, which regulate a child's behavior. Thus, these models are important in considering multiple influences on development and adaptation.     

Acquisition of matching to sample via mediated transfer

Two severely retarded Down's-syndrome boys learned a matching-to-sample performance through mediated transfer. The transfer paradigm involved three sets of stimuli, one auditory set (A) and two visual sets (B and C). The subjects were taught directly to do B-A and C-B matching, but experienced no direct association between C and A. They acquired the ability to do C-A matching without having been taught that performance directly. They also learned indirectly to name some of the visual stimuli, but naming was apparently not the mediator in the emergent C-A matching. The use of words and letters as stimuli highlighted the possible relevance of mediated associations in the indirect acquisition of elementary reading comprehension and oral reading. The acquisition of matching via mediated transfer also raised some new considerations concerning the role of coding responses in arbitrary matching to sample.     

A Family Affair: Examining the Impact of Parental Infidelity on Children Using a Structural Family Therapy Framework

Infidelity has a permeating impact on social systems, but no system is more impacted by infidelity than the nuclear family. This paper examines the impact of parental infidelity on the family using a structural family therapy (SFT) framework. Conceptualizing and treating infidelity from an SFT approach provides a systemic understanding of how interactions between the parental units about infidelity impact parent–child dynamics. Clinical recommendations are outlined for couple and family therapists to help families find healthy and adaptable ways to create and maintain structures that minimize the harmful impact of infidelity on the family system.     

Disproportionate Representation in Special Education: A Synthesis and Recommendations

Disproportionate representation of minority students in special education remains a very controversial, unresolved issue. This synthesis summarizes historical perspectives and current knowledge about disproportionate representation with respect to: (a) definitions of disproportionate representation and related issues of interpretation; (b) national and state-level estimates of disproportionality for four ethnic groups; (c) legal, policy, research and teacher education responses to disproportionality; and (d) hypothesized causes and predictors of disproportionality. Authors stress the need for: coherent and well-articulated conceptual frameworks, responsible use and representation of data, research dialog that is informed by appreciation of the complex sociopolitical history and current context, and the need for effective advocacy to improve the educational success of minority students.     

Parts and wholes in face recognition

Are faces recognized using more holistic representations than other types of stimuli? Taking holistic representation to mean representation without an internal part structure, we interpret the available evidence on this issue and then design new empirical tests. Based on previous research, we reasoned that if a portion of an object corresponds to an explicitly represented part in a hierarchical visual representation, then when that portion is presented in isolation it will be identified relatively more easily than if it did not have the status of an explicitly represented part. The hypothesis that face recognition is holistic therefore predicts that a part of a face will be disproportionately more easily recognized in the whole face than as an isolated part, relative to recognition of the parts and wholes of other kinds of stimuli. This prediction was borne out in three experiments: subjects were more accurate at identifying the parts of faces, presented in the whole object, than they were at identifying the same part presented in isolation, even though both parts and wholes were tested in a forced-choice format and the whole faces differed only by one part. In contrast, three other types of stimuli--scrambled faces, inverted faces, and houses--did not show this advantage for part identification in whole object recognition.