Philosophy of Education in a Poor Historical Moment: A Personal Account

Under the post-metaphysical sky “old” humanistic-oriented education is possible solely at the cost of its transformation into its negative, into a power that is determined to diminish human potentials for self-exaltation. Nothing less than total metamorphosis is needed to rescue the core of humanistic genesis: the quest for edifying Life and resistance to the call for “home-returning” into the total harmony that is promised to us within nothingness.     

Female Offenders Under Community Supervision: A Phenomenological Analysis

In this phenomenological study, we examined the lived experiences of 10 female offenders under community supervision. Findings include five essential themes. We propose clinical implications and actionable service recommendations for clinical mental health counselors working with this population.     

Defensive reactions of “wild-type” and “Domesticated” wild rats to approach and contact by a threat stimulus

Selective breeding of wild rats over many generations on the basis of low or high defensive threat and attack to human approach and contact has produced highly polarized “domesticated” and “wild-type” animals. Because the selection procedure selectively involves these two defense patterns, and these clearly differ in the two groups, it is of interest to determine if other, nonselected, defensive behaviors to threat stimuli also change. “Domesticated” and “wild-type” rats of the thirty-fifth generation were run in a fear defense test battery (F/DTB) to systematically evaluate defensive behaviors to a variety of present threat stimuli. “Domesticated” rats showed reduced avoidance and slower flight speed to an approaching experimenter, reduced jump/startle response to handelap and dorsal contact, less vocalization and boxing to vibrissae stimulation or to an anesthetized conspecific, and reduced defensiveness to an attempted pickup by the experimenter. These results indicate that selective bi-directional breeding for defensive threat and attack to human approach and contact produces group differences in a variety of defensive behaviors, and in defensiveness to stimuli other than those on which the selection was based. © 1994 Wiley-Liss, Inc.     

The danger of conflating level-specific effects of control variables when primary interest lies in level-2 effects

In the multilevel modelling literature, methodologists widely acknowledge that a level-1 variable can have distinct within-cluster and between-cluster effects, and that failing to disaggregate these can yield a slope estimate that is an uninterpretable, conflated blend of the two. Methodologists have stated, however, that including conflated slopes of level-1 variables in a model is not problematic if substantive interest lies only in effects of level-2 predictors. Researchers commonly follow this advice and use methods that do not disaggregate effects of level-1 control variables (e.g., grand mean centering) when examining effects of level-2 predictors. The primary purpose of this paper is to show that this is a dangerous practice. When level-specific effects of level-1 variables differ, failing to disaggregate them can severely bias estimation of level-2 predictor slopes. We show mathematically why this is the case and highlight factors that can exacerbate such bias. We corroborate these findings with simulations and present an empirical example, showing how such distortions can severely alter substantive conclusions. We ultimately recommend that simply including the cluster mean of the level-1 variable as a control will alleviate the problem.     

Stress and subjective life expectancy: Cross-sectional and longitudinal associations in early adolescence

Using data from a longitudinal study, the present study employed a latent class mover-stayer analytical strategy to examine both the cross-sectional and longitudinal (+33 months) relationship between membership of stress classes, and subjective life expectancy. Participants were from 21 High schools in Scotland and Northern Ireland. Data were collected in the first year of High school (mean age = 12.5 years), and at +33 months (fourth year, or school year 11). Sample 1 consisted of 1171 adolescents (40.82% females, 2.56% unreported) in Northern Ireland. Sample 2 consisted of 1059 adolescents (52.79% females, 1.32% unreported) in Scotland. Adolescents with the lowest levels of stress projected the highest subjective life expectancy scores. Longitudinal analyses were jumbled and not in keeping with cross-sectional results. More research may be needed on the trajectory of subjective life expectancy over time before it can be depended upon as a reliable outcome variable in adolescent development.