Snack time in kindergarten as a cultural practice—Implications for processes of subjectivation

This article explores subjectivation processes in eating situations in Swiss kindergartens. On the basis of a long-term ethnographic study and against the backdrop of the public discourse on healthy food in schools it investigates how norms and rules are being translated, shaped and performed in daily practices of un/doing difference. This ethnomethodological approach is combined with Judith Butlers deconstructionist perspective of analysing local and institutional norms of recognisability. The findings show that eating situations are highly relevant for processes of subjectivation and also bear a high potential for conflicts regarding differing cultural norms around eating.     

A semi-Markov multistate model for estimation of the mean quality-adjusted survival for non-progressive processes

We discuss the estimation of the expected value of the quality-adjusted survival, based on multistate models. We generalize an earlier work, considering the sojourn times in health states are not identically distributed, for a given vector of covariates. Approaches based on semiparametric and parametric (exponential and Weibull distributions) methodologies are considered. A simulation study is conducted to evaluate the performance of the proposed estimator and the jackknife resampling method is used to estimate the variance of such estimator. An application to a real data set is also included.     

“Unless You Were Native American…Everybody Came From Another Country:” Language and Content Learning in a Grade 4 Diverse Classroom

Set amidst an increasingly tense discourse about immigration and substantial pressures on educators, this study examines a three-week fourth-grade social studies unit as taught to a class with a large number of English learners located in a low-income school in the Pacific Northwest. Using ethnographic and sociolinguistic perspectives, we provide evidence of how the teacher leverages a wide array of instructional strategies and scaffolds to build language skills and content knowledge within a fast-paced unit on 19th-century Westward Migration. Embedded within such instruction is the construction of narratives that highlight regional examples of a linguistic and ethnically diverse community and that connect immigration trends on a global scale to local history. These strategies and narratives are then used in a summative lesson about immigration that affirms students’ family stories as part of the U.S. history still being written.     

A non-parametric maximum test for the Behrens–Fisher problem

Non-normality and heteroscedasticity are common in applications. For the comparison of two samples in the non-parametric Behrens–Fisher problem, different tests have been proposed, but no single test can be recommended for all situations. Here, we propose combining two tests, the Welch t test based on ranks and the Brunner–Munzel test, within a maximum test. Simulation studies indicate that this maximum test, performed as a permutation test, controls the type I error rate and stabilizes the power. That is, it has good power characteristics for a variety of distributions, and also for unbalanced sample sizes. Compared to the single tests, the maximum test shows acceptable type I error control.     

Diversity in sociology and social policy analysis: Education reform and the immigration act of 1990

Against the criticism of extreme specialization in sociology, it is argued that such specialization can prove insightful to the implications that social policy in one area may have for social policy in other areas. Such insight derives from sociologists straddling two or more areas of specialization. The example of the implications that the Immigration Act of 1990 has for education policy, in relation to social class and race, is used to illustrate the argument. Earlier versions of parts of this paper were presented at the Association For Humanist Sociology 16th Annual Meeting, October 26, 1991, Ottawa, Ontario; and at the Eastern Sociological Society 62nd Annual Meeting, April 4, 1992, Washington.     

Bastler — Sammler — Spurensucher. Zum Verhältnis von Geschichte und Systematik der soziologischen Theorie nach Robert K. Merton

For the history of sociology not to lose its relevance to the discipline, it should not be understood as a biographically oriented parade of recognized and forgotten classics, but rather complement sociological theory. Writing upon these premises, the historian of sociology would cease to act as the discipline's identity engineer who, considering the competitive field of theories and subjects, conservatively serves sociology to find and stabilize its historical identity. Furthermore, s/he would no longer operate as collector of ideas in search in the history of sociology for concepts of sociological analysis that were abandoned at some point, and in doing so, would cease to pursue the objective of critically undermining the dominating paradigms in contemporary sociology. On the contrary, since the ‘historic turn’ in the philosophy of science, the historian of sociology has to take up a trace-tracking role. In contrast to Robert K. Merton's stance, the theory and history of sociology should not be understood as two separate ventures. Rather, the genealogical exploration will lead to a historical epistemology of disciplinary paradigms that emphasizes that theoretical paradigms must be analyzed within the social context of their genesis. Such an approach would enable us to systematically identify the prerequisites and range of contemporary theoretical paradigms. Beyond Merton's former analysis, theory construction in sociology requires that systematic and historical reconstructions go hand-in-hand.     

Soziales Lernen – Angewandte Sozialpsychologie für Lernende und Lehrende in Schule und Universität

In this paper, two interdigitated current training projects will be presented. The presentation is to show that social psychological theories can be applied profitably for school development. The content is about social learning in school. Social learning is aimed at the acquisition of social and emotional skills. These skills are positively correlated with the cognitive development of students. Social skills need to be explicitly taught and practiced, especially if they were developed insufficiently in childhood. In the project Social Learning we examine what contents may include social learning. In the project Classroom Management we explore how these contents are best taught and this teaching can be taught. Insights of Social Psychology are introduced for each resulting different extracts of reality and their uses are discussed.     

Statistical tests for the comparison of two samples: The general alternative

It is common to test the null hypothesis that two samples were drawn from identical distributions; and the Smirnov (sometimes called Kolmogorov–Smirnov) test is conventionally applied. We present simulation results to compare the performance of this test with three recently introduced alternatives. We consider both continuous and discrete data. We show that the alternative methods preserve type I error at the nominal level as well as the Smirnov test but offer superior power. We argue for the routine replacement of the Smirnov test with the modified Baumgartner test according to Murakami (2006) Murakami, H. (2006). A k-sample rank test based on a modified Baumgartner statistic and its power comparison. Journal of the Japanese Society of Computational Statistics 19:1–13.[Crossref] , [Google Scholar], or with the test proposed by Zhang (2006) Zhang, J. (2006). Powerful two-sample tests based on the likelihood ratio. Technometrics 48:95–103.[Taylor &; Francis Online], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar].