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This study examined the learning of teacher candidates taking a language arts course in a special-educator preparation program and that of the second graders they tutored in a supervised field component of the course. Teacher candidates' knowledge of literacy instruction was assessed using five knowledge tasks; children were assessed on several measures of basic reading and spelling skills as well as on their knowledge of phonics concepts such as syllable types. Teacher candidates generally had inaccurate perceptions of their knowledge at pretest, but their knowledge improved significantly on all tasks after course instruction. Tutored children improved significantly from pre- to posttest on all assessments. The study suggests that carefully designed literacy coursework with field experiences can benefit both prospective special educators and struggling readers.

Foundation social work practice education is critical to the preparation of BSW practitioners for professional practice and the establishment of a theoretical and skill base upon which graduate students may build competencies in the advanced curriculum. Issues in the foundation practice curriculum may hinder this development. The common factors model holds promise as an organizing framework for foundation social work practice education. This model may help to resolve some key issues in social work and social work education, and may provide a useful, coherent, and empirical base for the foundation practice curriculum. © Taylor & Francis Group, LLC.

The organization is often the overlooked level in social work's ecological perspective. However, organizational realities exert a profound influence on human development and well-being as well as the nature and quality of social work practice. This article describes a model of teaching organization theory and practice which requires master's social work students to assess their school of social work as well as their field placement agencies. Teaching organization theory and practice experientially may help students understand how organizations influence practice and empower them to see organization practice as a legitimate and important aspect of their work.

Residents (N = 32) of 3 skilled nursing homes participated in a study designed to document the nature of the stressors they experienced and the coping mechanisms they used. Medical issues were the most common stressors. The most common coping responses were prayer, reading, watching television, listening to music, and talking to friends and family. © 2009 by the American Counseling Association. All rights reserved.

Objective: To examine whether an educational intervention that focused on physician communication training influenced physician ernpathic expression during patient interactions. Methods: This study used a quantitative research method to investigate the influence of communication training on physician-expressed empathy using two measures (global and hierarchical) of physician empathic behavior. Results: The differences in global empathy scores in the physician training group from baseline to follow-up improved by 37%, and hierarchical scores of physician empathic expression improved by up to 51% from baseline scores for the same group. Conclusions: The results strongly supported the hypotheses that training made a significant difference in physician empathic expression during patient interactions demonstrated by both outside observer measures of global ratings and hierarchical ratings of physician empathic behavior. Practice implications: These findings have significant implications for program design and development in medical education and professional training with the potential to improve patient outcomes. (C) 2008 Elsevier Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved.

This study applied word count strategies developed by expressive writing researchers to examine whether the words students use to describe and reflect on their field practicum experiences would predict practicum supervisors' ratings of their performance. The weekly journals of 66 students who completed a practicum at a mental health or school setting were analyzed using a computerized text-analysis program. As expected, positive emotion words and "insight" words were positively correlated with almost all dimensions of evaluation, with the exception of organizational ability, and "we" words were associated with dimensions that focused on interpersonal relations. These findings further support the view that positive emotion words and "insight" words are powerful markers of cognitive broadening and behavioral flexibility and that "we" words index feelings of affiliation and belonging. As one might expect, there was an increase in "we" words and a decrease in "anxiety" words over the course of the internship. © 2009 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

An adjusting-delay procedure was used to study the choices of pigeons and rats when both delay and amount of reinforcement were varied. In different conditions, the choice alternatives included one versus two reinforcers, one versus three reinforcers, and three versus two reinforcers. The delay to one alternative (the standard alternative) was kept constant in a condition, and the delay to the other (the adjusting alternative) was increased or decreased many times a session so as to estimate an indifference point--a delay at which the two alternatives were chosen about equally often. Indifference functions were constructed by plotting the adjusting delay as a function of the standard delay for each pair of reinforcer amounts. The experiments were designed to test the prediction of a hyperbolic decay equation that the slopes of the indifference functions should increase as the ratio of the two reinforcer amounts increased. Consistent with the hyperbolic equation, the slopes of the indifference functions depended on the ratios of the two reinforcer amounts for both pigeons and rats. These results were not compatible with an exponential decay equation, which predicts slopes of 1 regardless of the reinforcer amounts. Combined with other data, these findings provide further evidence that delay discounting is well described by a hyperbolic equation for both species, but not by an exponential equation. Quantitative differences in the y-intercepts of the indifference functions from the two species suggested that the rate at which reinforcer strength decreases with increasing delay may be four or five times slower for rats than for pigeons.

This study examined whether the experience of the death of a parent in childhood increases risk for adult psychopathology. Participants consisted of 3481 men and women gathered through the Baltimore Epidemiologic Catchment Area study in 1981 and followed through 1994-1995. The Diagnostic Interview Survey was administered by trained interviewers and was used to assess DSM-III disorders including major depression, panic, and anxiety disorders. Maternal death was not a predictor of adult psychopathology. The death of the father during childhood more than doubled the risk for major depressive disorder in adulthood. This study did not find any significant interactions between gender of the deceased parent and gender of the participant nor did the current age of the participant or their age at the time of the death of a parent affect risk for adult psychopathology. The long-term effect on adult depression of the experience of the death of the father in childhood is attributed to likely financial stresses, which may have continued for years and possibly into early adulthood, complicating the family's adaptation to the initial loss.

The recent attention given to false confessions and convictions underscores the need for a valid and applicable system of credibility assessment. The current study demonstrates the effectiveness of assessment criteria indicative of deception (ACID) training in increasing rater's ability to discriminate between honest and deceptive transcripts. ACID generates credibility assessment through analysis of behaviors related to memory and impression-management as they occur during the course of an investigative interview. Raters were taught that honest responses are longer, more vivid, and more spontaneous than deceptive responses. Conversely, deceptive responses are shorter, less vivid, more rigid, more carefully phrased, and less likely to change during the course of an investigative interview. Trained raters were able to correctly identify 77% of transcripts as honest or deceptive, whereas untrained raters correctly identified 57%. Future research should focus on using the ACID technique in more realistic situations and should involve training of professional investigators.

Presidential nominations in recent years have been settled with increasing speed, most of the time in the early stages of the primaries and caucuses, and certainly before the national convention, which has become more of a rally. Even when the battle for the Democratic Presidential nomination continued to the end of the primary season in 2008, it was settled before the convention. Analysts have emphasized the importance of the “invisible primary” and the front-loaded delegate selection schedule in explaining the early resolution of Presidential nomination contests. However, not enough attention has been paid to a much more fundamental change in our political parties and party system: The old umbrella parties have been replaced by ideological polarization between the parties and ideological homogenization within the parties. Our new party system dates back about forty years, and features increased ideological unity and decreased factionalism, making it easier to settle nominations. Even today's front-loaded nominating calendar would not have prevented some of the hotly contested conventions of the old umbrella parties. Polity (2009) 41, 312-330. doi:10.1057/pol.2009.4; published online 11 May 2009

In this article, the intellectual thought of a group of key late 19th century national administrative reformers is isolated and analyzed. These reformers were interested in reforming the civil, military and business administrative functions of the executive branch to provide for greater elite administrative supervision over and intervention in the national society and economy. The reformers often articulated their reform purposes, motives and goals in the Hamiltonian language of administrative authority and popular deference to executive administrative counsels. An important key to understanding this article is recognizing that while environmental social and economic conditions had changed significantly for the Gilded Age reformers since the American constitutional founding, many elements of the Hamiltonian tradition still resonated with the reformers a full century later. In this way, the historically transmitted ideology and rhetoric of Hamiltonian thought can be seen as having an independent, causative impact on the administrative reformers' purposes, motives and goals related to executive administrative reform.

This paper explores the Post Cold War origins of the organized criminal violence that once gripped Colombia and now grips Mexico and particularly the highly controversial counterinsurgency strategy used in Colombia that forms the basis for the current strategy in Mexico. It argues that ideology is a reason why the military aspect of these problems was neglected for so long and the reason its detractors see it as a strategy that reduces national sovereignty and endangers democracy when statistics on control of territory, reduction of violence and democratic progress demonstrate the opposite to be true. The paper uses the term “colombianization” to emphasize Colombia’s dramatic shift from almost ungovernable to one of the most stable countries in the region. Colombianization is defined not as a counterdrug strategy as are both the Colombian and Mexican U.S. assistance strategies but as an integrated, law-based, counterinsurgency strategy implemented from the bottom up that facilitates the establishment of elite consensus and puts the country on a path toward rule of law. Ironically, it was democratic and free market reforms that strengthened the forces of instability in both Colombia and Mexico and the militarization of security that appears to facilitate democratic stability. This study uses local level assessments of Plan Colombia and local interviews conducted in Chihuahua and Michoacán to evaluate the prospects of colombianization in urban and rural Mexico. Colombia's experience suggests that colombianization can stabilize the country and help reactivate the economy but democratic progress is painfully slow and the strategy has little impact on the drug industry and the corruption associated with it.