Copyright (c) 2009 University of Nebraska - Lincoln All rights reserved. http://digitalcommons.unl.edu/edpsychpapers Recent documents in Educational Psychology Papers and Publications en-us Fri, 31 Jul 2009 12:08:41 PDT 3600 http://digitalcommons.unl.edu/edpsychpapers/88 http://digitalcommons.unl.edu/edpsychpapers/88 Wed, 29 Jul 2009 12:11:19 PDT Elbers* does an excellent job of integrating, analyzing, and extending recent theoretical and empirical work concerning the relation of learning and development. The purpose of this commentary is to challenge Elbers to address the difficult question of universal sequences in human development. In order to focus the issue, a specific sequence in the development of logical reasoning is proposed. David Moshman http://digitalcommons.unl.edu/edpsychpapers/87 http://digitalcommons.unl.edu/edpsychpapers/87 Wed, 29 Jul 2009 12:11:18 PDT Genocide is commonly deemed to be either inexplicable or the result of special hatreds. I argue instead that genocide is an extreme result of normal identity processes. Four overlapping phases are proposed. (1) Dichotomization elevates one dimension of identity over others and, within that dimension, sharply distinguishes two categories: us and them. This may lead to (2) dehumanization, in which "they" come to be seen not just as different from "us" but as outside the human universe of moral obligation. (3) Destruction may result, accompanied and followed by processes of (4) denial that enable the perpetrators to maintain their moral self-conceptions. These phases are illustrated with examples from the Holocaust, the 1994 genocide in Rwanda, the Latin American dirty wars of the 1970s and 1980s, and the European conquest of the Americas. David Moshman http://digitalcommons.unl.edu/edpsychpapers/86 http://digitalcommons.unl.edu/edpsychpapers/86 Wed, 29 Jul 2009 12:11:17 PDT Intellectual development, the development of the intellect, is the emergence of increasingly sophisticated forms or levels of cognition, the progress of understanding, reasoning, and rationality. We can describe the outcomes of intellectual development by specifying steps, stages, or levels of development for cognition as a whole and/or for various cognitive domains. Fundamentally, however, intellectual development is an ongoing process of reflection, coordination, and social interaction that begins in early childhood and continues, at least in some cases, long into adulthood. Liberal education, however defined, includes the promotion of intellectual development as a primary goal. There may be specific facts, skills, and values we want students to learn in specific courses and contexts, but above all we want to foster intellectual progress. To encourage intellectual progress, we must promote reflection, coordination, and social interaction, the basic processes of development. There are many ways to do this, but the fundamental context for all of them, I argue, is one that encourages students to consider, propose, and discuss a variety of ideas-that is, an environment of intellectual freedom. I conclude with a set of principles of academic freedom that, I suggest, are foundational to the promotion of intellectual development. David Moshman http://digitalcommons.unl.edu/edpsychpapers/85 http://digitalcommons.unl.edu/edpsychpapers/85 Mon, 22 Jun 2009 12:25:05 PDT Tobacco use is the leading cause of preventable death in the United States, causing over 400,000 deaths annually. In Nebraska each year, 2,400 adults die prematurely because of cigarette smoking. It is estimated that 45,000 Nebraskans now under the age of 18 will eventually die prematurely from cigarette smoking. Cigarette smoking is responsible for $419 million of Nebraska's annual health care costs (representing approximately 7 percent of the state's annual health care costs, including 12 percent of Nebraska's annual Medicaid expenditures), and smoking-related mortality results in over $400 million in forgone future earnings in the state per year. In 2000, the Nebraska State Legislature took an important step towards addressing the state's most significant public health problem by enacting Legislative Bill 1436, which appropriated $21 million from the Tobacco Settlement Trust Fund to support statewide tobacco prevention and cessation efforts. This additional funding enabled the Nebraska Health and Human Services System's (NHHSS) existing tobacco program, Tobacco Free Nebraska (TFN), to greatly expand its efforts by establishing a comprehensive statewide tobacco program. The funding marked a turning point for TFN, resulting in the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention citing the program as one of the model tobacco prevention and cessation programs in the nation. In 2002, the State Legislature took another important step towards eliminating tobacco use in Nebraska by passing a 30-cent increase in the state's cigarette tax. TFN's achievements as a model program have been previously documented in the 2001 and 2002 State Snapshots and through a variety of other reports developed by an independent evaluation team. These reports, including this State Snapshot, provide information on statewide progress in tobacco control efforts to NHHSS, national, state, and local policymakers, and other interested parties. The year 2003 marked another turning point for TFN. In June, the Nebraska State Legislature made an appropriation of $405,000 annually to TFN through Legislative Bill 285A rather than renewing the program's funding at its previous level of $7 million. The new appropriation represents a 94 percent cut in the annual program funding originally provided by LB 1436. Because of this recent budget cut, many components of Nebraska's comprehensive tobacco prevention and cessation program have been scaled down or will soon be eliminated (see below). This places the future of TFN's strong community-based foundation in jeopardy since the program's level of support is well below the annual $13.3 million in funding recommended by the CDC to implement statewide best practices in tobacco control. Jeff Willett http://digitalcommons.unl.edu/edpsychpapers/84 http://digitalcommons.unl.edu/edpsychpapers/84 Mon, 22 Jun 2009 12:25:04 PDT The article describes the history of the school psychology program at the University of Utah from 1978, and discusses responsibilities of a school psychologist: utilizing and disseminating the knowledge base of psychology in educational problem solving; operating from a scientist-practitioner model, wherein practices prescribed are based on research-validated procedures and a sound theoretical framework. School psychologists are generalists and specialists and function as researchers, diagnosticians, interventionists, assessors, consultants, and advocates for children. Professionally, school psychologists are identified with the overarching goals of enhancing the academic, social, and emotional well-being of students. William R. Jenson http://digitalcommons.unl.edu/edpsychpapers/83 http://digitalcommons.unl.edu/edpsychpapers/83 Mon, 22 Jun 2009 12:25:03 PDT The purpose of this exploratory study was to investigate the extent to which a partnership orientation in conjoint behavioral consultation (CBC) may predict case outcomes and determine the relationship between a partnership orientation and implementation integrity of CBC. CBC is a problem-solving process by which families and teachers work collaboratively with a consultant to address students' academic, behavioral, and social needs. Twenty children, their parents and teachers, and consultants were involved in CBC services. Outcomes included parent and teacher ratings of acceptability, satisfaction, perceptions of effectiveness, and child performance across home and school settings. Partnership orientation scores and process integrity data were collected across interviews for each case. Results suggest that both parents and teachers consistently find CBC to be an acceptable, effective, and satisfactory form of service delivery. Findings reveal that consultants can conduct CBC interview objectives effectively within a partnership orientation. A partnership orientation in CBC was significant in predicting teachers' acceptability and satisfaction with the process; however, parents' acceptability and satisfaction with the CBC process was not predicted by a partnership orientation. S. Andrew Garbacz http://digitalcommons.unl.edu/edpsychpapers/82 http://digitalcommons.unl.edu/edpsychpapers/82 Wed, 27 May 2009 12:14:48 PDT Review of 1) Robert Epstein, The case against adolescence: Rediscovering the adult in every teen (Quill Driver Books, 2007), and 2) Roger J. R. Levesque, Adolescents, media, and the law: What developmental science reveals and free speech requires (Oxford University Press, 2007). Robert Epstein believes American teens are in chaos. They drink alcohol, smoke cigarettes, abuse a variety of other drugs, have eating disorders, contract sexual diseases, and get pregnant. They carry weapons, join gangs, and commit all manner of crimes. They partake of a mindless peer culture. They are angry, violent, depressed, and suicidal. Not all of them, of course. But disproportionately, Epstein argues, compared to other age groups, other societies, and previous periods of history, American adolescents are in turmoil and out of control. We'd all be better off, he maintains, in a world without adolescents. This part of the argument might lead one to picture Epstein as a grumpy old guy who hates adolescents, but in fact Epstein believes that teens themselves would be better off if we didn't classify them as adolescents. What Epstein decries is not adolescents but adolescence, the cultural construction that produces people like those described above. Epstein lauds the competence and defends the rights of teenagers--that is, people who are numerically in their teen years (13-19). The problem with adolescents, he insists, is that they are capable people who are treated as if they were children. The cultural construct of adolescence, Epstein argues, must be dismantled in its entirety. If his mission succeeds, there will be a world without adolescence, and thus without adolescents, because those we now classify as adolescent will simply be young adults. Throughout his work, Levesque provides far more detail and nuance than Epstein, as would be expected by his academic audience, but the conclusions he reaches, if somewhat less radical, are much the same (see also Hine, 1999). In Adolescents, media, and the law, in particular, he provides detailed reviews of media effects in relation to adolescent aggression, body image, smoking, and sexuality. His conclusion is that media influence everything but determine nothing. Adolescent behavior and development are deeply and thoroughly influenced by the media within which they are immersed but particular experiences do not cause particular results. Adolescents, Levesque concludes, are active agents working their way through a maze of media. We can best help them not by picking out what shouldn't be allowed to impinge on their allegedly innocent young minds but rather by promoting their ability to engage with media productively. Levesque's massive reviews remind us that adolescents are active agents navigating complex informational and social environments, not passive recipients of bad ideas. We should assist them by supporting and promoting their dynamic self-determination; we undermine this goal when we restrict them on the basis of their alleged immaturity. This cautious, research-based conclusion falls not far short of Epstein's more radical call to save adolescents from adolescence by (re)creating a world in which teenagers are simply young adults. David Moshman http://digitalcommons.unl.edu/edpsychpapers/81 http://digitalcommons.unl.edu/edpsychpapers/81 Fri, 01 May 2009 10:10:53 PDT The complex phenomena of interest to family scientists require the use of quantitative and qualitative approaches. Researchers across the social sciences are now turning to mixed methods designs that combine these two approaches. Mixed methods research has great promise for addressing family science topics, but only if researchers under¬stand the design options and procedures that accompany this methodological choice. Discussions of mixed methods in the family science literature are difficult to locate, and little has been written about how family scientists apply this approach in practice. This article presents an overview of mixed methods research, including its definition, terminology, and design types, and examines how it is being successfully used and re¬ported in family research journals. The authors review the application of mixed meth¬ods designs in 19 studies and discuss design features and issues that arose during im¬plementation. They conclude with recommendations for family scientists considering using this approach. Vicki Plano-Clark http://digitalcommons.unl.edu/edpsychpapers/80 http://digitalcommons.unl.edu/edpsychpapers/80 Thu, 19 Feb 2009 10:46:36 PST It was postulated that formal operational hypothesis-testing ability includes at least three cognitive capacities: (a) implication comprehension, the ability to understand conditional relationships; (b) falsification strategy, the realization that to test a hypothesis, one must seek information that would falsify it; and(c) nonverification insight, the realization that hypotheses are not conclusively verified by supporting data. A total of 24 males in each of Grades 7, 10, and college evaluated data descriptions with respect to each of four hypothesized implication relationships and chose an experiment to test each hypothesis. Results suggested three sequences of qualitative change in hypothesis-testing ability: (a) from no systematic interpretation of conditionals to an implication interpretation, (b) from content-based information seeking to a falsification strategy, and (c) from a symmetrical conception of truth and falsity to a non-verification insight. However, formal operational performance was far from universal, even in college students. David Moshman http://digitalcommons.unl.edu/edpsychpapers/79 http://digitalcommons.unl.edu/edpsychpapers/79 Thu, 19 Feb 2009 10:45:11 PST Froman and Hubert (1980) have attempted to show how recently developed prediction analysis techniques may be applied to issues of developmental priority, that is, to clarifying the interrelationship between two developing concepts. Although this work is in some respects an important advance over earlier statistical techniques, it seems to raise new problems: (a) It goes too far in identifying issues of developmental priority (sequence vs. synchrony) with issues of statistical relationship (dependence vs. independence) and thus (b) unjustifiably fails to consider certain information inherent in the data which, although irrelevant to issues of statistical relationship, is highly relevant to issues of developmental priority. The present application of prediction analysis techniques to questions of developmental priority thus raises new difficulties at least as serious as those it resolves. David Moshman