Mystery or Typical Teen? The Social Construction of Academic Engagement and Disability

A qualitative study of academic engagement of five high school students labelled mentally retarded describes strategies of student participation and non-participation, and teacher perceptions. These students were non-verbal or inarticulate, and functioned in an environment of competing formal and informal assessments of their participation and understanding in the academic environment. Teachers' informal assessments of student participation revealed how the students challenged the conventional categories employed by teachers. The examples show the power of educators' perceptions to reveal or obscure student engagement.     

Older family-carers' views on the future accommodation needs of relatives who have an intellectual disability

Over the past 20 years, research across the developed world has identified trends towards ageing of the population with learning/intellectual disability. Alongside is the recognition that family-carers are also ageing. Recently, the UK government has sought to identify the future housing needs of dependents with intellectual disability residing with older carers. Consequentially, a city council commissioned this qualitative study involving 28 older carers. The findings indicate a need for information about housing options, a lack of practical support and feelings of marginalisation. The conclusions suggest key roles for social services in providing proactive support and advice to family-carers, and a greater degree of joint working between social services departments and housing agencies. These resonate with similar international studies and provide the opportunity to focus on the perspectives of family-carers. Their experiences are real, and if welfare professionals are to work with people with intellectual disability and their family-carers, acknowledging their views is essential.     

The Hazards of Predicting Divorce Without Crossvalidation

Divorce prediction studies (e.g., Gottman, Coan, Carrere, & Swanson, 1998) suggest that couples' eventual divorce can be very accurately predicted from a number of different variables. Recent attention to these studies has failed to consider the need to crossvalidate prediction equations and to consider the prevalence of divorce in the population. We analyze archival data to demonstrate that accuracy and predictive value drops precipitously during crossvalidation. We conclude that results of studies without crossvalidation analyses should be interpreted with extreme caution, no matter how impressive the initial results appear to be.     

Mass-market magazine portrayals of working mothers and related issues, 1987 and 1997

In this research project a historian seeks to test whether a dichotomy in the historical analysis of working mothers also exists in recent mass-media portrayals of contemporary wage-earning mothers. The hypothesis is that only white, middle- and upper-class women who work outside the home are considered working mothers, with the emphasis placed on their role as mothers. When poor, minority, working women with children are discussed, they are considered primarily in their capacity as workers. Following from this dichotomy is a split in the assessment of day care for the children of working mothers. For the children of high socioeconomic status women, no day care facility can satisfactorily replace maternal care; for the children of low socioeconomic status women, any type of non-maternal care that enables a mother to keep functioning as a worker is considered superior to maternal care. This study is important because it clarifies some critical scholarly and popular assumptions about the importance of work, the nature of motherhood, and the needs of different classes of children. These assumptions in turn structure scholarly analysis, permeate public discourse, and ultimately shape work and child care policies that profoundly affect all of America's families. This work is intended as a brief analysis that can serve to highlight unconscious attitudes and to suggest how future studies and discussions might be restructured to avoid perpetuating a false separation of different classes of working mothers and their children.     

The Analysis of Crop Variety Evaluation Data in Australia

The major aim of crop variety evaluation is to predict the future performance of varieties. This paper presents the routine statistical analysis of data from late-stage testing of crop varieties in Australia. It uses a two-stage approach for analysis. The data from individual trials from the current year are analysed using spatial techniques. The resultant table of variety-by-trial means is combined with tables from previous years to form the data for an overall mixed model analysis. Weights allow for the data being estimates with varying accuracy. In view of the predictive aim of the analysis, variety effects and interactions are regarded as random effects. Appropriate inferential tools have been developed to assist with interpretation of the results. Analyses must be conducted in a timely manner so that variety predictions can be published and disseminated to growers immediately after harvest each year. Factors which facilitate this include easy access to historic data and the use of specialist mixed model software.     

SOME ASPECTS OF THE DYNAMIC PROPERTIES OF ECONOMETRIC MODELS*

Recent efforts by several authors have resulted in the development of techniques for analytically describing the dynamic properties of linear stochastic difference equation models ¹ 1 For examples of this work see Chow [1]; Chow and Levitan [2] [3]; Howrey [8] [9]; Howrey and Kelejian [10] and Howrey and Klein [11].
. Since these techniques have not been extensively applied to econometric models and consequently are not generally familiar to economic modelers, the purpose of this paper is to summarize the techniques these researchers have developed and to illustrate them using a simple (and admittedly unrealistic) econometric model.     

THE EFFECTS OF INTERDISCIPLINARY EDUCATIONAL FORMATS ON CONCEPT RETENTION AND PROBLEM–SOLVING ABILITY*

The purpose of this study was to examine the effects of different interdisciplinary problem-oriented formats on a student's knowledge of and retention of disciplinary concepts and principles, his application of these concepts and principles to disciplinary problems, and his use of a discipline in his analysis of a complex problem. Performances of students enrolled in the experimental sections were compared to those of students enrolled in standard lecture-discussion sections. Regression analysis was used to analyze students' performance in order to control the effects of differences in student backgrounds. It was found that altering the pedagogical format and reward system within the experimental sections had no significant effect upon student performances in the experimental, problem-oriented program. In general, this study indicates that students taught in the standard lecture-discussion format in which grades are determined by examination over course material retain concepts and principles, apply these concepts and principles to disciplinary problems, and integrate disciplinary concepts into their analysis of complex problems as well as, if not better than, students taught in an interdisciplinary, problem-solving format.