Using technology to engage and educate youth

Given that information age technologies are as natural to the Net generation as breathing, it is time to provide learning experiences that maximize their use in schools. The authors argue that integrating technology into learning is central to creating the meaningful learning opportunities needed to engage and motivate youth today. To achieve this potential, however, technology must support a new paradigm of teaching and learning. This chapter discusses common elements and challenges to implementing pioneering high school reform models that promote one-to-one student-computer ratios, collaborative learning environments, problem- and project-based instruction, and interdisciplinary teaching.     

EFFORTS TO INCORPORATE SOCIAL JUSTICE PERSPECTIVES INTO A FAMILY TRAINING PROGRAM

This paper describes the efforts of the faculty of the Family Institute of New Jersey in recent years to develop a collaborative family training program that takes into account issues of gender, race, culture, class, and sexual orientation. We have come to realize how strongly traditional approaches have been skewed in the direction of the dominant culture--white, male, heterosexist, and prioritizing the needs and experience of the middle and upper classes. We have attempted to modify our teaching, supervision, reading lists, and overall training approach to challenge trainees and ourselves to move toward broader, strength-based, and equity-based multicultural perspectives in our training. We describe our vision, how we incorporate it into our program structure, and a few of our training initiatives.     

Hierarchical space-time modelling of epidemic dynamics: an application to measles outbreaks

How infectious diseases spread in space and time is an important question that has received considerable theoretical attention. There are, however, few empirical studies to support theoretical approaches, because data is scarce. In this paper we propose to model the epidemic spread of measles in the London boroughs between 1960 and 1970 by an extension of the Kriged Kalman filter (Mardia et al. , 1998) to count data. Results show the flexibility of our approach in describing complex spatio-temporal dynamics.     

Children's Reasoning about Lie-telling and Truth-telling in Politeness Contexts

Children's reasoning about lying and truth-telling was examined among participants ages 7–11 (total N  =  181) with reference to conflicts between being honest and protecting the feelings of others. In Study 1, participants showed different patterns of evaluation and motivational inference in politeness contexts vs. transgression contexts: in politeness contexts, they rated lie-telling more favorably and were far more likely to assume that motives were prosocial. In Study 2, participants evaluated lie-telling more positively and truth-telling more negatively in politeness contexts, especially when they focused on the implications of the statements for others instead of whether the statements were true or false.     

On the likelihood of Condorcet's profiles

Consider a group of individuals who have to collectively choose an outcome from a finite set of feasible alternatives. A scoring or positional rule is an aggregation procedure where each voter awards a given number of points, w _j, to the alternative she ranks in j ^th position in her preference ordering; The outcome chosen is then the alternative that receives the highest number of points. A Condorcet or majority winner is a candidate who obtains more votes than her opponents in any pairwise comparison. Condorcet [4] showed that all positional rules fail to satisfy the majority criterion. Furthermore, he supplied a famous example where all the positional rules select simultaneously the same winner while the majority rule picks another one. Let P ^* be the probability of such events in three-candidate elections. We apply the techniques of Merlin et al. [17] to evaluate P ^* for a large population under the Impartial Culture condition. With these assumptions, such a paradox occurs in 1.808% of the cases. Received: 30 April 1999/Accepted: 14 September 2000     

An agent-based approach to modelling virtual enterprises

This paper describes how virtual enterprises (VEs) can be modelled using the AGORA multi-agent architecture, designed for modelling and supporting cooperative work among distributed entities. The model consists of a structure of AGORAs and agents, where AGORAs are facilitators of cooperative work for agents and the agents represent the partners of the VE, the cooperative mechanisms and the service providers. The distributed and goal-oriented nature of the VE provides a strong motivation for the use of agents to model VEs. The main advantages of this approach are that the structure of AGORAs provides a homogeneous modelling environment throughout the life cycle of the VE, traceability of the VE activities and a history of the VE. In addition to these, it is important to point out that, agents being computational entities, the resulting model provides an easy and efficient passage from the model to the computational support that is required by the VE.     

The Rights and Responsibilities of Gay and Lesbian Parents: Legal Developments, Psychological Research, and Policy Implications

With the growing number of same-sex unions, the legal system must determine the rights and responsibilities of gay parents who decide to end a relationship. In 2005, the California Supreme Court found that a child's lesbian caregiver was a legal "parent" despite having no biological or adoptive relationship, while the Massachusetts Supreme Court in 2004 concluded the opposite. Psychologists can inform this debate by presenting research demonstrating that (a) children benefit from contact with two parents, and (b) children's well-being is unaffected by their parents' sexual orientation. Psychologists can further assist the legal system by conducting future research. In order for psychologists to impact laws and policies, legal actors must utilize this expertise .     

Looking After Children: assessing outcomes in child care. The experience of implementation

A Department of Health initiative has supported the implementation of Looking After Children in over 90 per cent of local authorities in England. The process has required major organisational change and new values and attitudes towards children looked after away from home. Difficulties arise where management and monitoring systems are not available to support these wider changes and to assess the quality of practice. Nevertheless clear benefits to using the system can be identified. Pilot projects in Sweden, Canada and Australia provide an opportunity to compare experiences internationally; strong parallels are evident in some of the current issues facing child welfare.     

Resignation or Dismissal?: When a CEO and a President Clash

In the executive director's opinion, Bluehills Family Services' board of directors had serious problems with their organizational governance. These difficulties came to a head in an apparently unresolvable clash between the executive director and the board president. Given the preexisting board and organization perceptions, could an emergency board meeting produce a positive outcome, and would the executive director's participation be counterproductive?