Housing Policy and the Underclass debate: Policy Choices and Implications (1900-1970)

Abstract unavailabl

The Opportunity Gap: Rural Gifted Students Left Behind

This study looks at the opportunity gap in identification, opportunities, financial resources, and learning outcomes due to the contexts of urban versus rural districts. Results revealed significant differences in the percent of students identified, opportunities available in the district, financial resources, and learning outcomes for gifted students among urban and rural school districts. Urban school districts have distinct advantages with more students identified compared to their ADM, more opportunities and financial resources for gifted students, and more students in the AIG subgroup scoring level 5’s on the North Carolina EOG and EOC tests than rural districts. The study found significant correlations between opportunities and learning outcomes; financial resources and percent of students identified; financial resources and opportunities; and financial resources and learning outcomes. The higher percentage of opportunities available or the greater the financial resources the more level 5’s scored by the AIG subgroup. The more financial resources the more opportunities and percent of students identified. There are implications of inequities in identification and opportunities. The use of local norms or elimination of test-based identification and a move to MTSS for identification is proposed. To equalize opportunities without more funding, authentic differentiation, acceleration, and individualized learning through MTSS is suggested

Wilderness Imagery in the Bonny Method of Guided Imagery and Music (GIM): A Phenomenological Perspective

The author employed phenomenological methodology to examine clients’ experiences of wilderness imagery in music psychotherapy sessions utilizing the Bonny Method of Guided Imagery and Music (GIM). GIM is a music-centered approach to psychotherapy in which the client engages with spontaneously generated imagery while listening to specially selected programs of music from the Western classical canon. The resultant imagery provides the basis for therapeutic experiences. Client experiences at times include imagery of wilderness. Due to the conflicting and at times contradictory ways of defining wilderness, the author utilized a broad definition: that which is primarily nonhuman. Three individuals with whom the researcher had conducted at least four GIM sessions prior to the study participated. Each participant engaged in a semi-structured interview focused on their experiences of wilderness imagery in one session of their choosing. Twelve themes emerged from these interviews: The experiences involved extraordinary interactions with wilderness images, and events felt both unexpected and predetermined. The degree of agency felt in choice-events was important to their experiences. Wilderness imagery provided both support and challenges for the participants. There was a sense of openness and expansiveness, as well as continuity of affect, associations, feelings, or images through shifting settings or images. Each participant became wilderness images, yet there was a sense of separateness. Wilderness was accompanied by energy sensations, and wilderness contained that which they needed. Wilderness images were experienced as analogs to waking life. Finally, the full meaning of these experiences continued to emerge over time. These themes illustrated complementarity in the participants’ experiences of wilderness imagery. This way of understanding incongruent or opposing qualities, experiences, or beliefs provides a more integrative alternative to the idea of paradox in therapy. Additionally, their experiences pointed to an alternative organizational system in wilderness that tended to be nonlinear and unpredictable

Individual Learning In Team Training: Self-Regulation And Team Context Effects

Although many analysts recognize that team-level learning is reliant on the acquisition of learning content by individuals, very little research has examined individual-level learning during team training. In a sample of 70 teams (N = 380) that participated in a simulation-based team training setting designed to teach strategic decision-making, we examined how self-regulation during team training influenced the extent to which team members subsequently demonstrated individual mastery of the team training content. We also investigated the extent to which team characteristics moderated the relationships between self-regulation and learning outcomes. Multilevel mediation results indicated that self-efficacy fully mediated the effects of metacognition, or self-monitoring of learning, on individual declarative and procedural knowledge of team training content. The results also revealed that these individual-level relationships were moderated by the team context. In particular, a team’s overall performance and quality of cooperation amplified the positive effects of individual self-regulation. Implications for team training research and practice are discussed

When Sex Doesn't Sell - Political Scandals, Culture, and Media Coverage in the States

The determinants of media coverage of political scandals are examined through a content analysis of AP Wire stories in ten states from 1998 to 2005. Tests of the conventional explanations of the amount of media coverage demonstrate that political culture, institutional factors, and the prominence of the officials involved matter, but find only mixed evidence that scandal severity is an important factor. Contrary to assumptions, sexual scandals do not generate more media coverage than other types of exposés

Collective Action and the Mobilization of Institutions

Bias in the composition of interest communities is often explained by reference to variations in the collective action constraint facing voluntary and nonvoluntary organizations. But with the exception of literature on PAC formation, studies of direct institutional mobilization are rare. More often than not, their mobilization advantages vis-à-vis problems of collective action are simply assumed. This paper fills this gap by testing the collective action hypothesis on direct institutional mobilization. We argue that the PAC studies are flawed as tests of this hypothesis; they study the wrong mode of political activity and use selective samples and limited research designs. We develop a new test using state data on seven types of institutions to solve these problems. We also compare the collective action problem facing institutions to the related problems facing voluntary organizations. We find strong evidence of collective action problems in institutional mobilization, problems that make interest populations of nonvoluntary and voluntary organizations appear far more similar than commonly thought

Cool-Water Carbonate Production from Epizoic Bryozoans on Ephemeral Substrates

Bryozoan skeletons are a dominant constituent of cool-water carbonate sediments in the Cenozoic of southern Australia. The primary substrate on much of the modern continental shelf is loose sediment that is reworked intermittently to 200+ m water depth by storm waves. Availability of stable substrate is a limiting factor in the modern distribution of bryozoans in this setting. As a result, a significant proportion of the sedimentologically important modern bryozoans (30–250 m water depth) live attached to sessile, benthic invertebrate hosts that possess organic or spicular skeletons. Hosts such as hydroids, ascidian tunicates, sponges, soft worm tubes, octocorals, and other lightly-calcified and articulated bryozoans provide ephemeral substrates; after death, host skeletons disarticulate and decay, leaving little or no body fossil record. The calcareous sediments produced by these epizoic bryozoans from ephemeral substrates result in loose particles that rarely preserve substratal relationships, but potentially retain diagnostic basal attachment morphologies. Although the best known examples of epizoic carbonate production on ephemeral substrates are from the southern Australian margin, this may be an important phenomenon both globally and in the fossil record. Bryozoan sediment production from epizoans on ephemeral substrates would seem, however, to have a scant record prior to the Cretaceous

Collective Action and the Mobilization of Institutions

Bias in the composition of interest communities is often explained by reference to variations in the collective action constraint facing voluntary and nonvoluntary organizations. But with the exception of literature on PAC formation, studies of direct institutional mobilization are rare. More often than not, their mobilization advantages vis-à-vis problems of collective action are simply assumed. This paper fills this gap by testing the collective action hypothesis on direct institutional mobilization. We argue that the PAC studies are flawed as tests of this hypothesis; they study the wrong mode of political activity and use selective samples and limited research designs. We develop a new test using state data on seven types of institutions to solve these problems. We also compare the collective action problem facing institutions to the related problems facing voluntary organizations. We find strong evidence of collective action problems in institutional mobilization, problems that make interest populations of nonvoluntary and voluntary organizations appear far more similar than commonly thought

Pretend Play And Children With Autism Spectrum Disorder: Deficits And Interventions

Pretend play is a critical social and linguistic interaction for children and a milestone in child development. A review of 34 peer-reviewed articles and books confirms a distinct deficit in the pretend play of children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Pretend acts by children with ASD are simpler, more restricted, and occur less often than children without ASD. Pretend play can be taught to children with ASD or facilitated with shown benefits in the frequency and quality of pretend play, social skills, and language development. Positive impacts of pretend play facilitation and social behavior include improved appropriateness, increased peer interactions, and more novel play. Language benefits of pretend play facilitation are increased speech, more appropriate speech, a rich context for language acquisition, and expressive and receptive language improvements. The facilitation of pretend play through peer modeling, adult modeling, video modeling, least-to-most prompting, and pivotal response training is effective and should focus on generalization and maintenance of acquired skills. Future research should examine solitary pretend play and the creation of a universal scale for pretend play behaviors

The Strange Disappearance of Investment in Human and Physical Capital in the United States

Many scholars have argued that there are strong incentives for states to spend less money on redistributive or consumption programs, such as welfare, and more on developmental or investment programs, such as highways. Yet, over the last few decades, the proportion of state budgets allocated to expenditures intended to develop human and physical capital, specifically education and highways, has declined. In real terms, spending on virtually every government program has increased but expenditure increases to redistributive programs have been much greater than those to investment programs. Why this shift has happened despite theory predicting the contrary has not been adequately examined in a way that considers multiple developmental programs and multiple ways of conceptualizing spending over a substantial time period. We undertake this task in the following article using a large, cross-sectional time series data set of state budgeting toward K-12 education, higher education, and highways from 1965 to 2004. We test competing theories of the determinants of state spending using these data and then discuss the factors that we believe have led to the relative de-emphasis on developmental programs. We find that the most consistent predictors of state developmental spending patterns are federal grants, the state of the economy, and interstate and intrastate competition