Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Change As A Scholarly Act: Higher Education Research Transfer To Practice, Judith Ramaley

Higher Education

Achieving transformational change is a scholarly challenge best dealt with by practicing public scholarship, which is modeled by the leader and encouraged in other members of the campus community. Like all good scholarly work, good decision making by campus leadership begins with a base of scholarly knowledge generated and validated by higher education researchers.

The University Of Nebraska At Omaha Center For Space Data Use In Teaching And Learning, Neal Grandgenett, Uno Aviation Institute

Faculty Books and Monographs

UNOAI Report 2000-4

Within the context of innovative coursework and other educational activities, we are proposing the establishment of a University of Nebraska at Omaha Center for the Use of Space Data in Teaching and Learning. This Center will provide an exciting and motivating process for educators at all levels to become involved in professional development and training which engages real life applications of mathematics, science, and technology. The Center will facilitate innovative courses (including online and distance education formats), systematic degree programs, classroom research initiatives, new instructional methods and tools, engaging curriculum materials, and various symposiums. It will involve …

Correlational Study Of Attachment And Self-Reported Levels Of Urges To Self-Harm And Frequency Of Self-Harming Behaviors In Dialectical Behavioral Therapy Clients, Nealy Anne Vicker

Student Work

This research examined the relationships between attachment style and frequency o f suicidal ideation, urges to self-harm, and action to self-harm in Dialectical Behavioral Therapy patients. The Attachment Style Questionnaire served as the attachment measure. The Diary Cards, used in Dialectical Behavioral Therapy, served as the measure for suicide ideation, urges to self-harm and action to self-harm averages. Twenty women from the Omaha YWCA and Therapy Resource Associates participated in the study. Results o f the study suggest that there was no relationship between a high score on Avoidant and Anxious/Ambivalent attachment styles and frequency of suicide ideation, urges to …

Making An Impact On Out-Of-School Time: A Guide For Corporation For National Service Programs Engaged In After School, Summer, And Weekend Activities For Young People, National Institute On Out-Of-School Time

Guides

This resource contains: Exploring the Facts about Children’s Out-of-School Time; Understanding Basic Standards for a Quality Out-of-School Time Program; Training Members and Volunteers to Work in Out-of-School Time Programs; Understanding Service-Learning; Tip Sheets: Simple Ideas to Address Important Out-of-School Topics; Training Materials on Important Out-of-School Time Issues; Program Profiles; and Connecting to Additional Out-of-School Time and School-Age Child Care Resources.

Stone Soup Community Development: Sustainability And Americorp*Vista Projects, Amy Bonn

Curriculum

The Stone Soup Sustainability research project is an evaluation of how AmeriCorps*VISTA (VISTA) projects address continuity and viability. The research examines what elements are important to a project's sustainability and what resources are needed to improve efforts for stakeholders (Corporation for National Service staff, VISTA supervisors, VISTA Leaders and members). Using Participatory Action Research (PAR) methodology, stakeholders were interviewed and asked how they defined a successful project, what strategies they used to develop such a project and what tools would be useful to them. From these findings, the Stone Soup Sustainability series was developed. The series includes a supervisor's guide …

The Impact Of Individual, Organizational, And Environmental Attributes On Voluntary Turnover Among Juvenile Correctional Staff Members, Ojmarrh Mitchell, Doris Layton Mackenzie, Gaylene Armstrong, Angela Gover

Criminology and Criminal Justice Faculty Publications

In this study we assessed the impact of individual employee characteristics, organizational attributes, and quality of the correctional environment on the turnover intentions of juvenile correctional staff members. Both individual characteristics and organizational attributes were significant predictors of turnover intentions. The individual characteristics were age, race, and education; the organizational variables were job satisfaction, stress, and staff support and communication. In general, the organizational attributes were stronger predictors of turnover. Only one variable pertaining to the quality of correctional environment, facility's amount of care toward juveniles, was significantly related to turnover. In contrast to findings of previous research, dangerousness, gender, …

A Comparative Investigation Of Service-Learning Models In Maryland: Student Outcomes In Relationship To Employability Skills, Ruth Brodsky

Thesis, Dissertations, Student Creative Activity, and Scholarship

The purpose of this descriptive study was to describe the relationship between structured service-learning outcomes, through Maryland's replication models, and the attainment of employability skills for adolescents. Participants included fifty-five out of ninety-two service-learning coordinators and a panel of experts comprised of five key informants. The site of the study was the state of Maryland, which is divided into twenty-three counties and Baltimore City. Three data gathering procedures were utilized: content analysis of the four most frequently used replication models, a key informant rubric, and a survey of nineteen counties in the state.

A criterion sample of four models was …

Research On K-12 School-Based Service-Learning: The Evidence Builds, Shelley Billig

School K-12

Practitioners and policy makers are curious about service-learning and its effects. Ms. Billig details for Kappan readers what research tells us about service-learning today and suggests the kinds of questions that still need to be answered.

Service-Learning: An Administrator's Tool For Improving Schools And Connecting With The Community, Sheldon Berman, Sheila Bailey, Randall Collins, Dale Kinsley, Elizabeth Holman

School K-12

What should students know and be able to do by the time they graduate high school? This basic question is at the heart of most education reforms in recent years. Increasingly, the answer lies not just in strong academic skills but also in a sense of self and the individual’s role in supporting and building a vibrant community.

Service-Learning Leadership Development For Youths, Joy Des Marais, Farid Farzanehkia

Special Topics, General

Service-learning without intentional leadership development is trivial and shallow, these youthful authors point out. And such leadership development requires adults and young people to work collaboratively in the design of service-learning. When that happens, the outcome will be both profound learning and successful projects.

Learning In Deed: Service-Learning And Preservice Teacher Education, Jeffrey B. Anderson

Service Learning, General

Progressive teacher education programs face a pair of daunting yet crucial tasks. New teachers must be prepared to function effectively in schools as they exist today. They also must be educated to take a leadership role in the improvement and restructuring of P-12 education to meet students’ and society’s needs more fully. Service-learning appears to have considerable potential as a method to achieve both these goals.

The W.K. Kellogg Foundation believes that meaningful service to the community, combined with curriculum-based learning, builds stronger academic skills, encourages lifelong civic commitment, and improves workplace and personal development skills among youth. Educators lead …

Free To Choose Service Learning, Michael P. Garber, Justin A. Heet

Service Learning, General

Only disciples of Ayn Rand could oppose the idea of service-learning. In the best situations, when service is part of a school's program. students are challenged to define themselves through a larger sense of their community and of their responsibility to it. They have the opportunity to apply their skills to problems that require judgment and leadership. Service-learning, if properly understood, can help re-create the functional communities that renowned University of Chicago sociologist James Coleman wrote about as being vital to increasing the amount of "social capital" generated by schools.

Service-Learning And Multicultural/Multiethnic Perspectives: From Diversity To Equity, Wokie Weah, Verna Cornelia Simmons, Mcclellan Hall

Diversity

The "missionary ideology" that currently underlies much of the service-learning movement is mostly the result of a series of decisions intended to "do good things" for others, and so the movement does not directly acknowledge what those others, particularly communities of color, might hove to offer, the authors say. It's time to change that.

The Service Sojourn: Conceptualizing The College Student Volunteer Experience, Brian C. Schmidt

Thesis, Dissertations, Student Creative Activity, and Scholarship

Despite the increasing popularity of volunteerism in student activities and service-learning courses on college campuses, little is known about the experience of volunteers. This study examines the experience of 16 students from the University of Utah who t participated in community service. The qualitative investigation is based on 54 interviews regarding student descriptions of their experience. What common events occurred? How did they make sense of their experience? What, really, did they learn? Ethnographic interviews and a "naturalistic" approach were used to identify patterns and analyze the data. Grounded in reoccurring themes such as leaving familiar surroundings. the shock of …

Associations Of Civic Attitudes In Service Learning, Christina M. Roemer

Thesis, Dissertations, Student Creative Activity, and Scholarship

Civic responsibility is comprised of actions and attitudes associated with democratic governance and social participation. Students enrolled at institutions of higher education have the opportunity to transform their social interests into advocacy through personal connections with the community. Service learning is an effective method of increasing citizenship participation and civic responsibility by incorporating community service activities with academic coursework.

This study used survey research to examine the civic attitude scores of service learning students at a large, public, mid-Atlantic state university. The research questions attained information on the associations among students who perform written and discussion reflection activities (outside of …

Viewing The Parent As A Person: An Individuation-Related Phenomenon, Brian Andersen

Student Work

When do adolescents start viewing the parent as a person, and what influence this process were the developmental research questions examined in this study. The participants were high school and college students, ranging in ages from 14 to 27 years, who completed three different scales: the Family Relationships Measure, the Psychological Separation Inventory, and the Emotional Autonomy Scale. Age differences were found for the Family Relationships Measure as well as the Psychological Separation Inventory. Individuation and viewing the parents as people were not related, but both measures appeared to tap separate processes that occur at similar times in development during …

Development And Construct Validity Of Scores On The Community Service Attitudes Scale, Ann Harris Shiarella, Anne M. Mccarthy, Mary L. Tucker

Evaluation/Reflection

This study reports the multistage development of the Community Service Attitudes Scale (CSAS), an instrument for measuring college students' attitudes about community service. The CSAS was developed based on Schwartz's helping behavior model. Scores on the scales of the CSAS yielded strong reliability evidence (coefficient alphas ranging from .72 to .93). Principal components analysis yielded results consistent with the Schwartz model. In addition, the CSAS scale scores were positively correlated with gender, college major, community service experience, and intentions to engage in community service. The CSAS will be useful to researchers for conducting further research on the effects of service …

Learning Our Freedom, Ingrid Flory, Debra Henzey

School K-12

Over the past three years, several events have drawn attention to the startling stare of civic education in North Carolina.

Engaging Students In Community Issues, Kara A. Mccraw, Susan S. Taylor

School K-12

How can you integrate community resources in the classroom in an exciting and dynamic way? We set out to answer this question in the summer of 1999 when we attended a conference sponsored by the North Carolina Institute of Government. Our immediate goal was to help the freshmen students we teach in a course called ELPSA (Economic, Legal and Political Systems in Action) understand the importance of active citizenship and prudent fiscal decision making. What better way to teach this than through real life examples? After our conference and the introduction to a number of valuable resources and contact points …

What Kind Of Citizen? The Politics Of Assessing Democratic Values, Joel Westheimer, Joesph Kahne, Bethany Rogers

Civic Engagement

I was visiting a middle school the other day and saw a sign on a teacher's classroom wall that said "Assessment is your friend." It had a picture of a cuddly looking puppy on it. There was no explanation for the puppy, so I'm not sure why it was there. But it was cute and the message seemed to be saying that "assessment" if perhaps not man or woman's best friend, is, at the very least, something you need not fear. Now we are living in an era of high stakes testing and standards, so many would believe that there …

The Airline Quality Rating 2000, Brent D. Bowen, Dean Headley, Uno Aviation Institute

Faculty Books and Monographs

UNOAI Report 2000-2

The Airline Quality Rating (AQR) was developed and first announced in early 1991 as an objective method of comparing airline performance on combined multiple criteria. This current report, Airline Quality Rating 2000, reflects monthly Airline Quality Rating scores for 1999. AQR scores for the calendar year 1999 are based on 14 elements that focus on airline performance areas important to air travel consumers.

The Airline Quality Rating 2000 is a summary of month-by-month quality ratings for the ten major domestic U.S. airlines operating during 1998. Using the Airline Quality Rating system of weighted averages and monthly performance …

Nebraska Home Rule Project: Nebraska Municipal Survey, Robert F. Blair, Dale Krane

Publications

The purpose of the survey was to collect information from Nebraska municipal officials on how state government affects their operations and to identify potential areas for improvement.

Development Of Leadership Skills: Experience And Timing, Michael D. Mumford, Michelle A. Marks, American Institutes For Research, Stephen J. Zaccaro, Roni Reiter-Palmon

Psychology Faculty Publications

To develop organizational leaders we need to understand how requisite skills are acquired over the course of people's careers. In this article, a cross-sectional design was used to assess differences in leadership skills across six grade levels of officers in the U.S. Army. Increased levels of knowledge, problem-solving skills, systems skills, and social skills were found at higher grade levels. Certain skills and experiences, however, were found to be particularly important at certain phases of leaders' careers. These findings are used to propose an organization-based model of skill development. Implications of this model for leader development programs are discussed.

Education For Democratic Citizenship, Rosemary C. Salamone

Civic Engagement

Over the past decade, pollsters and pundits have raised warning flags of moral decay and declining political understanding and commitment among Americans. Scandals from Washington to Wall Street, voter apathy and cynicism, and the regeneration of the "me generation" in a climate of unprecedented prosperity have raised increasing concerns in the media over the moral state of the country. The most alarming evidence has emerged from education, validating and documenting the anxieties that Americans share over the failure of schools to create citizens of character. By the mid-1990s, half of the nation's high school students reported that drugs and violence …

Service-Learning: Comparison Of Hospitality Programs In Two- And Four-Year Institutions, Verna M. Ward

Thesis, Dissertations, Student Creative Activity, and Scholarship

Partnerships between community and academic institutions are the cornerstones of academic service-learning. While the term "academic service-learning" emerged in the 90's, civic or citizenship education has been part of academic curriculums for centuries. Hospitality management programs at two-(n=63) and four-year (n=79) institutions were surveyed for this study using a 21 question faxed survey and two-year (52%) and four-year (48%) institutions responded. Results indicated that academic service-learning was not as prevalent in hospitality management programs of four-year institutions as anticipated, while two-year (67%) institutions had higher participation.

Overall results showed that hospitality program directors did not identify what influences inclusion/exclusion. The …

Doing Good While Doing Well: Service Learning Internships, Louise Rehling

Higher Education

Internships for students in business and professional communication have rightly been seen as a transitional form of coursework: a guided move away from academia and into the workplace. The assumption accompanying this vision has been that, since most business and professional communication students will graduate to work in industry, the best placements for them are, therefore, necessarily in industry as well. Certainly industry-sponsored internships are valuable as career preparation.

Embracing Civic Responsibility, Judith Ramaley

Higher Education

In the past year, there have been several calls for colleges and universities to take up their responsibilities as members of society in order to model the civic virtues and to become instruments of a working democracy. It is becoming clear that a genuine democracy is also a learning society and that good citizenship requires the capacity to form a learning community with others.

Descriptive Analysis Of News Magazines’ Coverage Of John Glenn’S Return To Space, Michael L. Hilt

Communication Faculty Publications

This study examined issues of Time, Newsweek, and U.S. News & World Report for articles concerning John Glenn’s return to space and described their content. A review of pertinent literature found that little attention has been paid to how older adults are portrayed in magazine articles. Although comments were made concerning Glenn’s age and his role as a rookie payload specialist on the space shuttle Discovery, there were few comments considered ageist or demeaning to older adults.

Involving English Language Learners In Community-Connected Learning, Lili Allen

Diversity

This brief provides policymakers and state and district-level staff with an overview of how to involve English language learners in community-connected learning programs. It lists effective strategies for involving English language learners in internships and project-based learning programs, gives guidelines for community supervisors, and points out how school structures can support these students' involvement. The brief was produced by JFF in collaboration with the Education Alliance/Northeast and Islands Regional Educational Laboratory at Brown University.

Highlights From Service-Learning In California's Teacher Education Programs: A White Paper, Andrew Furco, Mary Sue Ammon

Service Learning, General

The purpose of this white paper is to provide a set of recommendations for advancing service-learning in California's Teacher Education programs. The recommendations are based on the findings from a three-year study conducted by UC Berkeley's Service-Learning Research & Development Center (SLRDC). This paper reports on the viability of various approaches for advancing K-12 service-learning in teacher education, identifies institutional barriers that hinder the advancement of service-learning in teacher education, and describes successful approaches that institutions have used to advance service-learning in teacher education. The recommendations provided in this paper are intended to inform the California Department of Education and …