Assessing Student Progress in Field Practica

This research note presents an assessment tool that students in field practica and their field instructors can use to evaluate student progress over a semester, a process that benefits both groups. The development and sustained use of this system is discussed, as well as its strengths and weaknesses.     

Evaluating Distance Learning in Social Work Education

Fifty-seven MSW students enrolled in two different practice courses were exposed to approximately equal amounts (five 4-hour sessions) of live, in-class instruction and two-way interactive televised instruction. Separate post-course evaluations of both teaching methods, using a previously published measure of instructional quality, significantly favored live instruction over televised distance learning. More empirical research demonstrating the potential benefits of distance learning technology is urgently needed prior to the widespread adoption of these methods.     

NIU Listening Exam: Assessing College Level Listening Skills

The NIU (Northern Illinois University) Listening Exam is a 45-item videotaped exam that assesses eight college level listening skills. This essay describes the criteria that the exam was designed to meet, the procedures used for designing and developing the exam, and the results of its pilot use.     

Stories and the Rhetoric of Contrariety: Subtexts of Organizing (Change)

Stories are an important part of organizational life that scholars have studied from many different perspectives. In this paper, we contribute a new way of exploring the meaning of stories. We use a concept from classical rhetoric, the enthymeme, to help reveal the particular underlying "logic" contained in the story form, and we show that the construction of this logic accounts, in part, for the engaging nature of the stories. We show that storytellers use enthymemes in the construction of their stories and also that scholars can use enthymemes to analyze stories. Understanding the enthymeme and its use in the story form enables interpreters to disentangle the argument often embedded in a story and to surface meanings that are implicit and powerful. In this paper, we focus attention on and examine such implicit meanings in four organizational stories of change in two city administrations, in order to illustrate the role of enthymeme in organizational rhetoric.     

Relational,Indirect, Adaptive,or Just Mean: Recent Studies on Aggression in Adolescent Girls—Part II

Recent research on gender differences in aggressive behaviors is reviewed in this second of a two-part article on the aggression of girls. The objective here is to use findings from studies done by social scientists to confirm and extend vivid reports in recent popular texts (Hadley, 2003). Findings are first summarized and then detailed with methodological issues and some theoretical implications discussed by way of conclusion. This recent research supports observations of differences in the aggression of boys and of girls. It points to the need for further research and discussion on the topic of gender and aggression.     

FROM FOSTER CARE TO FOSTERING CARE: The Need for Community

Using an interpretive ethnographic framework, we investigate how being in a caring community benefits foster children and their families during a time of crisis. Through (re)telling the stories of the untimely death of Carl Connor, a parent of four foster children, we examine the community of Hope Meadows as the site where the activities of caring occurred. Care as a set of relational and moral practices is presented, and we describe how care is facilitated by the purpose as well as the physical and social dimensions of Hope Meadows. The stories of Carl Connor's death provide a foundation for a gendered theory of moral community.     

Rurality,Institutional Disadvantage,and Achievement/Attainment*

Abstract Students living in rural areas of the United States exhibit lower levels of educational achievement and a higher likelihood of dropping out of high school than do their nonrural counterparts. In this paper we extend the literature by offering a framework in which resources influencing achievement/attainment are viewed as embedded in, and varying across, rural and nonrural places because of differences in structures of local opportunity. We draw from the National Educational Longitudinal Survey and the Common Core of Data, and employ hierarchical linear and hierarchical logistic modeling techniques to test our ideas. Rural adolescents are disadvantaged in regard to those family and school resources which are conducive to educational success. These resources translate into important educational investments at both family and school levels, and explain rural deficits in both attainment and standardized achievement. We discuss the implications of our findings for analyses of rural deprivation and inequality specifically, and for educational processes and the spatial patterning of stratification in general.