The Teacher Belief Q-Sort: A measure of teachers' priorities in relation to disciplinary practices, teaching practices, and beliefs about children

The present study advances a new method for assessing teacher beliefs and priorities. This paper describes the development and psychometric properties of the Teacher Belief Q-Sort (TBQ), an assessment technique that examines teachers' priorities and beliefs about discipline practices, classroom practices, and beliefs about children (see www.socialdevelopmentlab.org. Further, this paper describes the usefulness of this tool by examining differences in beliefs and priorities among four groups of teachers (experienced teachers trained in the Responsive Classroom (RC) Approach, experienced teachers with no such training, pre-service teachers planning on teaching elementary school, and pre-service teachers planning on teaching middle/high school) with the goal of demonstrating the way priorities are sensitive to specialized training and teaching experience. The study establishes the TBQ as a reliable, valid, and useful method. Findings showed that RC teachers hold discipline and teaching practice priorities consistent with training in the RC Approach and that pre-service teachers placed greater priority on spontaneity and collaboration and held more negative views about children's likeability and motivation than in-service teachers. Findings are discussed in terms of the ways in which teacher priorities are sensitive to specialized training and teaching experience and offer an early indicator of integrity of implementation.     

Responses to the Michelangelo Computer Virus Threat: The Role of Information Sources and Risk Homeostasis Theory1

Computer users were surveyed before and after the Michelangelo trigger date (March 6, 1992) to examine risk perceptions and performance of risky and protective behaviors. Consistent with Risk Homeostasis theory, population risk perceptions changed over the course of the risk period, while personal risk perceptions remained unchanged. Protective behaviors also changed over the virus threat period and were dependent on the passage of the virus trigger date, prior virus experience, and experience during the period of the risk event. This study: (a) provides a scaling of risky and protective behaviors that others may use in future research, (b) suggests a more vivid picture of risk related behavior can be obtained by evaluating personal versus population risk perceptions and risky versus protective behaviors separately, and (c) suggests that training to reduce risks will be most effective if focused on behaviors that are least central to work activities.     

Francis Cecil Sumner: his views and influence on African American higher education

During the mid-1920s, Francis Cecil Sumner, the first African American to earn a PhD in psychology, published 2 articles concerning strategies for the higher education of African American youths. These articles called for a system of segregated education emphasizing an "industrial" style advocated by Booker T. Washington, as well as suggesting a measure of character development. The justification cited by Sumner for such unequal education for African Americans was the cultural inferiority of that population. The present article argues that Sumner's views were couched in terms that fit the prevailing paradigm of the White establishment, with the purpose of generating political and economic support for any type of higher education for African Americans. Evidence drawn from Sumner's early education and his graduate school days at Clark University, as well as testimonials from colleagues and students, are provided in support of this hypothesis.     

Value Perceptions of Integrative Health Care: A Study of Primary Care Physicians and Professional Clinical Counselors

A study was conducted to identify value perceptions of primary care physicians and Professional Clinical Counselors on integrative health care. Surveys were collected from 54 primary care physicians and 33 Professional Clinical Counselors in Central Ohio. Quantitative and qualitative results indicate favorable perceptions and opportunities for professional collaboration.     

Lying about facial recognition: an fMRI study

Novel deception detection techniques have been in creation for centuries. Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) is a neuroscience technology that non-invasively measures brain activity associated with behavior and cognition. A number of investigators have explored the utilization and efficiency of fMRI in deception detection. In this study, 18 subjects were instructed during an fMRI "line-up" task to either conceal (lie) or reveal (truth) the identities of individuals seen in study sets in order to determine the neural correlates of intentionally misidentifying previously known faces (lying about recognition). A repeated measures ANOVA (lie vs. truth and familiar vs. unfamiliar) and two paired t-tests (familiar vs. unfamiliar and familiar lie vs. familiar truth) revealed areas of activation associated with deception in the right MGF, red nucleus, IFG, SMG, SFG (with ACC), DLPFC, and bilateral precuneus. The areas activated in the present study may be involved in the suppression of truth, working and visuospatial memories, and imagery when providing misleading (deceptive) responses to facial identification prompts in the form of a "line-up".     

Conceptual Errors and Social Externalism

Åsa Maria Wikforss has proposed a response to Burge's thought experiments in favour of social externalism, one which allows the individualist to maintain that narrow content is truth–conditional without being idiosyncratic. The narrow aim of this paper is to show that Wikforss' argument against social externalism fails, and hence that the individualist position she endorses is inadequate. The more general aim is to attain clarity on the social externalist thesis. Social externalism need not rest, as is typically thought, on the possibility of incomplete linguistic understanding or conceptual error. I identify the unifying principle that underlies the various externalist thought–experiments.