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This study tested a causal model of academic self-efficacy in faculty at a large New England research university, focusing specifically on gender as one of 12 antecedent variables. Academic self-efficacy was defined as an estimate of confidence in one's ability to perform various tasks classified as research, service, and teaching in a university setting. The variables were drawn from Bandura's theory of self-efficacy and from characteristics of the university work setting. Data was obtained by mail response to a researcher-designed instrument: the Measure of Self-Efficacy in Academic Tasks (MSEAT). The findings show that being female contributed to feeling less efficacious about research tasks indirectly through the mediating influence of intervening variables. Feeling nourished and rewarded by a department and being male contributed to service self-efficacy. Teaching self-efficacy was not explained by the causal model. The implications of these findings are discussed in terms of campus socializing interventions, departmental research climate, and university incentives for female faculty. © 1988.

This investigation examined the prevalence and nature of grief in response to patient suffering, loss, or death among healthcare workers employed at a general hospital and a skilled nursing facility. A questionnaire was constructed for this purpose. Approximately two-thirds of the skilled nursing facility personnel remembered experiencing bereavement as a reaction to the crises of their geriatric patients. Mourning occurred among virtually all of the general hospital personnel who usually serve younger patients. Healthcare personnel mourned most often for those persons who suffered or died of cancer. A selected sample of respondents recalled that psychological symptoms of grief were more evident than physical. Both symptom types often persisted for more than 1 month. Since grief is common among nurses and aides employed at the two medical settings, bereavement counseling is suggested for those healthcare personnel who require this service.

Special education in the United States services a diverse population, including those students whose academic performance falls at the ends of the normal distribution. This article challenges the assumption that a continuum of learning opportunities appropriate for exceptional persons is possible when the concept of the normal distribution is used. An alternate model, a bull's-eye, is suggested to accommodate the openended potential for the gifted population. © 1990 A B Academic Publishers Printed in Great Britain.

English and Spanish clearly differ in their encoding of motion events, but what is the exact nature of this difference? How does it influence language use? These questions were investigated in two studies of adult English and Spanish speakers' descriptions of static (Study 1) and dynamic (Study 2) motion events. English speakers overwhelmingly used manner-of-motion verbs (e.g. run). Spanish speakers used more path-of-motion verbs (e.g. salir/exit); however, with some motion events they strongly preferred to use manner verbs as well. The two language groups also differed in the degree to which they mentioned the manner of motion at all, and in the types of sentence frames they preferred, but not in the sheer number of verb types produced. The results am discussed with respect to the varying contexts of language use, refinements to typological differences between English and Spanish, and implications for children's acquisition of motion verbs.

Despite reports that substance abuse among young Americans is on the decline, the problem among young male African Americans continues to be of major concern. School-based prevention strategies offer promising alternatives for reducing the risk factors for substance abuse among this group. The most successful of these programs appear to be those that include the entire school ecology as part of the prevention strategy and focus on the unique psychosocial development needs of these youth. in this article we discuss the prevalence of substance abuse among male African American youth, examine school correlates and risk factors, and review school-based prevention strategies that have shown varying degrees of effectiveness in addressing the substance abuse problems, directly through changing values, attitudes, and behaviors, and indirectly by reducing risk factors and strengthening protective mechanisms.

Traditional attentional assessment paradigms have often failed to separate factors relevant to components of attention from factors related to other cognitive-related processes or task-specific variance. This study attempted to evaluate various multidimensional assessment models of children's attentional functioning using a neuropsychological framework addressing multiple components of attention. A series of increasingly complex measurement models were proposed to explain 2nd graders' (n = 107) patterns of performance across multiple measures of hemispheric activation, verbal and nonverbal selective and sustained attention, and general ability. Evaluation of the latent structure produced by these measurement models using confirmatory factor analysis suggested that a multidimensional factor structure that incorporated components of attention involving levels of processing provided a better resolution of the latent structure of the data than those based on lateralized processes or a unidimensional attentional model.

The first author directed a group-therapy program of 20 sessions for clients without speech, diagnosed with autism who communicate using facilitated communication. An average of five clients and their facilitators, the leader, and an assistant leader comprised the group. The themes that emerged and the group-development process observed paralleled regular verbal groups in many respects. The success of the project challenges accepted views of persons labeled autistic as intractably and inevitably isolated and unreachable.

Children in today's society face many stresses from a variety of sources that have a major impact on thier psychosocial adjustment and academic performance in school. These stressful events and thier consequences on the quality of life and academic success are particularly significant among low-income and ethnic minority students in American society. Many schools have adopted strategies to help students who are impacted by stressful life events to deal affectively with their problems in an attempt to reduce school failure and school dropout rates among these students. Most notable among these strategies are school-based mental health programs including the establishment of school-based mental health teams which seek to proactively address individual student concerns while improving the general climate of schools. The evidence seems to support the claim that these school-based services have a positive impact on students' social and emotional well-being as well as on their academic achievements. However, with more careful monitoring and much more consistent support from administrators and policy makers, these school-based approaches can more fully realize their potential to enhance the quality of life and to positively impact the future of many poor and ethnic minority students.

The purpose of the present study was to explore the themes that counselor education doctoral students perceive as influencing their experience. The results of an exploratory qualitative study in which counselor education doctoral students provided their perceptions of what helped or hindered their progress are presented. Themes identified as both positively and negatively influencing their experiences were departmental culture, mentoring, academics, support systems, and personal issues. Recommendations are provided for counselor educators to consider in their work with doctoral students. © 2009 by the American Counseling Association. All rights reserved.

Despite living in disadvantaged urban communities experiencing social and economic hardships, many children emerge with positive outcomes. Social-emotional competence and social support were hypothesized to have strong influences on academic trajectories during the critical period of academic skill acquisition. Participants were 282 third-grade students from six elementary schools in a Northwestern urban community. Beyond the importance of prior levels of academic competence, considerable variance in end-of-year academic outcomes was predicted by initial levels of academic social-emotional competence and improvements in social-emotional competence and perceived teacher support over the course of the year. Noteworthy is that findings were strongest for African-American students, but methodological caveats regarding research with underachieving minority youth were discussed. The findings suggest that school psychologists and others designing interventions to improve achievement of disadvantaged students should address social-emotional competencies and classroom climate, especially teacher support of students.

Although setting up a safe school is an important task for a school counselor, his or her efforts may be resisted when attempting to develop a safe school initiative in a religious community; for example, one conservative-based website gives parents explicit instructions on how to fight a school's safe schools initiatives. This article provides a review of the issues involved and a specific framework for school counselors who wish to set up a Safe Schools Initiative in the context of a resistant atmosphere, using a social justice framework. © 2016 Taylor & Francis Group, LLC.