Intercultural Model of Ethical Decision Making: Addressing Worldview Dilemmas in School Counseling

The role of school counselors has expanded and deepened over the past few decades, just as the K–12 student population has become more diversified. Professional school counselors regularly encounter ethical dilemmas related to the intersection of their transformed role and students' needs. School counselors, therefore, need assistance and support to develop the skills and problem‐solving strategies to effectively, ethically, and respectfully negotiate these dilemmas. The authors propose the Intercultural Model of Ethical Decision Making as a practical, user‐friendly tool to help school counselors meet these complex challenges.     

Strain,Emotion, and Suicide Among American Indian Youth

In this article, we test the utility of Agnew's general strain theory to explain suicidal behaviors among American Indian youth. Data from 721 American Indian adolescents from the Midwest and Canada were collected in partnership with participating reservations/reserves and a research team. We investigate the effects of strains/stressors on suicide, including tests of mediating effects of negative emotions on relationships between stressors and suicidality. We found that several strains/stressors were related to suicidality, including coercive parenting, caretaker rejection, negative school attitudes, and perceived discrimination. We also found that depressive symptoms and anger mediated the effects of several key predictors of suicidality. We discuss the theoretical and policy implications of our work for the general strain theory and for American Indian suicide in general.     

Self-Control,Opportunity, and Substance Use

We examine the effect of self-control and opportunity on adolescent substance use. When theorizing about the role of opportunity, we believe the “sanction potential” of a given situation should be considered. Our results suggest the effect of self-control on substance use does not depend on the availability of substances in the home (high sanction potential), but friends’ substance use (low sanction potential) conditions the effect of self-control on adolescents’ smoking, drinking, and marijuana use. Therefore, adolescents with low self-control are more likely to use substances only when they are presented with attractive opportunities that are unlikely to lead to sanctions.     

Rule-Making and Rule-Breaking: Strip Club Social Control Regarding Alcohol and Other Drugs

Through fieldwork and interviews, this research addresses internal and external social control of drug and alcohol use in “Mell's Belles,” a strip club in a working-class northeastern city. I describe a variety of internal social control techniques used to regulate alcohol and illicit drugs, and then note the impact of external social control on the strip club, including police raids and general surveillance. Strip clubs have an unpredictable, laissez faire approach to rule enforcement, enforcing rules only when necessary. External social control uses legal power to infiltrate Mell's Belles over petty ordinance breaches, and ultimately, drugs. As an underclass population engaged in deviant work, strippers and patrons are unequipped to contend with surveillance regimes.     

County-level IQ and fertility rates: A partial test of Differential-K theory

Human intelligence (IQ) correlates with a number of important life outcomes ranging from mortality and morbidity to social rank and status. Noticeably absent from the literature, however, has been a unifying framework from which to examine why IQ should correspond to so many seemingly disparate outcomes. Rushton’s Differential-K theory represents a theoretical perspective capable of accounting for the role of IQ in understanding human flourishing. We tested predictions suggested by Differential-K theory by examining the association between IQ at the aggregate level and two life-history variables: parental investment and fertility rates. Our results provide tentative support for some of the predictions of Differential-K theory.     

Jury Panel Member Perceptions of Interpersonal‐Affective Traits of Psychopathy Predict Support for Execution in a Capital Murder Trial Simulation

Recent research with college undergraduate mock jurors suggests that how psychopathic they perceive a criminal defendant to be is a powerful predictor of whether they will support a death verdict in simulated capital murder trials. Perceived affective and interpersonal traits of psychopathy are especially predictive of support for capital punishment, with perceived remorselessness explaining a disproportionate amount of variance in these attitudes. The present study attempted to extend these findings with a more representative sample of community members called for jury duty (N = 304). Jurors reviewed a case vignette based on an actual capital murder trial, provided sentencing verdicts, and rated the defendant on several characteristics historically associated with the construct of psychopathy. Consistent with prior findings, remorselessness predicted death verdicts, as did the affective and interpersonal features of psychopathy – though the latter effect was more pronounced among jurors who were Caucasian and/or who described their political beliefs as moderate rather than conservative or liberal. Results are discussed in terms of the potentially stigmatizing effects of psychopathy evidence in capital cases. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

How Novice Science Teachers Appropriate Epistemic Discourses Around Model-Based Inquiry for Use in Classrooms

To test whether epistemically unproblematic ways of thinking and talking about science could be transformed during preservice teacher training, we designed a system of learning activities based on a set of heuristics for progressive disciplinary discourse (HPDD). The HPDD outline six design principles of learning environments where the aim is to foster learners' participation in material and discursive activities that characterize the work of scientists. After tracking participants through university coursework where the HPDD was employed and into their teaching practicums, we found that most came to reconceptualize the interrelated roles of models, theory, evidence, and argument. These ideas ultimately supported a shift in their goals for scientific investigation—from “proving” a hypothesis, to testing and revising explanatory models. Preliminary findings from teaching episodes with their own secondary students indicated that some participants took up “epistemically ambitious” classroom practices, pressing learners to develop testable models of natural phenomena and gather evidence to link observations with underlying explanatory processes.     

What Does it Mean to Notice my Students’ Ideas in Science Today?: An Investigation of Elementary Teachers’ Practice of Noticing their Students’ Thinking in Science

Abstract

Efforts toward improving K-12 science education emphasize teachers noticing students’ thinking as they engage in disciplinary practices and reasoning. This noticing requires specialized teacher knowledge and skills as it involves attending to students’ ideas, as well as making sense of and responding to those ideas so that the disciplinary substance in them is recognized, made explicit, and supported. This study investigates three elementary teachers’ in-the-moment noticing of students’ ideas while teaching science and their thinking about what it means to engage in this teaching practice. Results indicate that teachers notice many different kinds of student science ideas, and also that teachers have different ways of thinking about which student ideas are substantive during a science lesson. This research contributes to our theoretical understanding of the nature of teacher noticing in science. Noticing students’ science ideas involves not only the presence of ideas and the ability to notice them, but also a teacher’s understanding of this teaching practice in the moment.     

Development of mental rotation in 3- to 5-year-old children

We assessed 3- to 5-year-olds’ mental rotation abilities using a new puzzle paradigm. It allows for assessment of mental rotation abilities in children younger than 5 years, using a task comparable to ones used with older children and adults. Children saw pairs of asymmetrical ghost figures, either as three-dimensional cut-outs or two-dimensional paper versions, in seven orientations. One of the ghosts fit into a hole if rotated right-side up – the other ghost was its mirror image and would not fit. Children were asked to turn the ghosts in their heads and choose the one that would fit into the hole. The number of children who chose the correct ghost above chance in the three-dimensional version of the task increased dramatically from 10% of 3-year-olds to 95% of 5-year-olds; average accuracy also increased significantly, from 54% to 83%. The two-dimensional paper version yielded similar results. These results indicate considerable development in mental rotation between 3 and 5 years.