This study examined the impact of a specific form of intervention on the school performance and behavior of students to determine if such intervention can influence achievement. Students perceived as needing help were referred to a support group in their school led by a psychologist and a teacher, assisted by a team of school staff volunteers. The intervention consisted of giving three sets of sixth to twelfth grade students a support group to deal with the children's everyday issues and problems using a combination of human relations and group therapy techniques. The groups met weekly for ten weeks. Activities were designed to focus on self-esteem and problems affecting school behavior. The sample was composed of 100 high school and middle school students. Participants represented a cross-section of the population, both ethnically and socioeconomically. A control group of similar students also met weekly, using an open discussion format and worksheet projects. For evaluation purposes, the Metropolitan Achievement Test, the Student Rating Scale, attendance records and records of staff observation were used. Significant changes were observed, suggesting that this type of intervention made a major difference in the way these adolescents perceived school and themselves. Even students who had not been expected to benefit from the intervention responded and, further, showed improvement in several areas in a short time period. The comparison for pre- and post-measures of school behavior showed that the procedure had influenced students' school performance. Of the factors measured, attendance was most positively affected by intervention, although reading scores also rose. Gains in reading achievement as well as attendance were made in 10 weeks by Black males who had previously failed to respond to more traditional approaches to student improvement. The experimental students' attendance improved, while the control group attendance did not. The study results indicate that intervention has an impact on attendance and influences achievement to some degree. Intervention is therefore suggested as a useful alternative to traditional methods of dropout prevention and performance improvement.

In the last decade there has been a surge of interest in preservice teachers' thinking. By and large, research studies have focused on the final student teaching period of preservice teacher education. However, little is known about future teachers' perspectives on teaching and the self prior to student teaching. This study--based on social constructivism and dialectical approach to teacher socialization--examined the biographies, notions of identity, epistemological perspectives, and current views about teaching of 15 entering preservice teachers at a large state university, using qualitative analysis of in-depth interviews. Interview questions focused on participants' interpretation of their educational experiences, their perspectives of themselves as learners, and their ideas about teaching. The results are presented in relation to the three themes: images of the self, images of teachers and teaching, and towards the image of self as a teacher. Participants' perspectives of themselves as knowers as well as their social group memberships significantly affected their notions of themselves as teachers, their perceptions of their future students, and their priorities in teaching. The results indicate the importance of opportunities to experience mastery in the domains preservice teachers would teach like math, science, or writing, and the need for inquiry into metaphors describing teachers and images of teaching during teacher education. The case is made for including epistemology in the content of teacher education curricula.

The current set of studies attempted to examine how particular interpersonal goals affected the displays of nonverbal behaviors during job interviews for men and women particularly high and low in self-monitoring needs, and how these nonverbal behaviors affected subsequent applicant ratings and hiring decisions. In Study 1, participants were assigned the role of interviewee for a mock job interview and interviewed for a position which emphasized either competence, ingratiation, or an unspecified self-presentational goal. Participants' interviews were coded for the performance of a number of nonverbal behaviors. While we predicted main effects of self-presentational goal on interviewees' nonverbal behaviors and levels of emotion, as well as interactions between self-presentational goal and gender and between self-presentational goal and self-monitoring, the majority of the effects found related to the interviewees' level of self monitoring; high self-monitors were perceived by judges as less anxious, by interviewers as more competent and hirable, and by both judges and interviewers as happier than low self-monitors. Based on the results of Study 1, prototypes of nonverbal behaviors were constructed. Male and female confederates were trained to produce the levels and combinations of nonverbal behaviors exhibited by those individuals rated the most and least likable in Study 1 while giving a scripted interview. These interviews were videotaped and shown to male and female participants who rated the interviews on a number of measures. Participants' ratings of interview performance, happiness, and anxiety were all significantly affected by nonverbal prototype, and ratings of likability were marginally affected by prototype. Interviewee gender significantly influenced ratings of competence and likability, and had a marginal effect on ratings of interview performance. Finally, nonverbal prototype and interviewee gender interacted to produce significant effects for interview performance, likability, competence, happiness, and anxiety. This interaction suggests that performance of the same sets of nonverbal behaviors by male and female interviewees are received and evaluated quite differently.

Children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) present with varying degrees of deficit in the broader areas of social communication and stereotyped behaviors, but emerging research proposes delayed motor skill and atypical sensory processing as additional factors worth closer examination. In the current study, I sought to investigate the impacts of visual motor skills and sensory differences on language ability in young children with autism. I hypothesized that young children with autism, atypical sensory processing (Short Sensory Profile, 2nd Edition), and impaired visual motor integration (Beery VMI, 6th Edition) would have the most impacted language ability scores (Differential Ability Scales, 2nd Edition). A total of 22 children, eight with autism (25% female; M age = 66 months or 5.5 years) and 14 with typical development (50% female; M age = 73 months or 6 years) between the ages of 3:0 and 9:6 and their parents completed measures for this study. Findings were significant for the relations of status (i.e., TD vs. ASD) on language ability [t(20) = 2.66, p = .015], status on visual motor integration [t(20) = 2.27, p = .035], and for status on sensory processing [t(20) = −5.35, p < .001]. Results of the three-way interaction indicated that 72% of the variance in language ability was accounted for by the key variables in this model, but this hypothesis was not supported: p = .09, B = .15, CI95 = −.031 to .33. Related hypotheses of visual motor integration on status and language, sensory processing on status and language, and between visual motor integration and sensory were also not supported. Ancillary analyses of individual moderation indicated significant status group (TD vs. ASD) differences for children with visual motor integration full form standard scores of 119 and below (p < .05) and for children with total sensory scores of 25 to 36 (p < .05). These post hoc findings are consistent with previous literature and demonstrate promise for replication in future research with a larger and more heterogeneous sample. Further research on these constructs is encouraged as it could inform meaningful pathways for early intervention.

The purpose of this research was to commence the development of a Chinese Vocational Interests Inventory (CVII) which will assist Chinese secondary school students in the identification of their vocational interests. The inventory contains 323 items which include a variety of occupational activities and titles. The occupational titles were selected from Chinese Dictionary of Occupational Titles based on the popularity of occupations in PRC and categorized into 11 subgroups which represented a majority of occupational groups. The occupational activities which related to each occupational title were generated and refined from a description of the nature and work activities of selected occupations defined by occupational specialists in Occupational Outlook Handbook published by the U.S. Labor Department (1991). Further design of the study included establishing preliminary reliability and validity of the CVII, and confirmatory factor analysis to identify occupational interests areas. The CVII was administrated to 454 Chinese secondary school students who voluntarily participated in the project. The results of this preliminary study suggested the CVII have reliability (r =.98), concurrent validity (r =.65) between expressed occupation interests and inventoried interests, and internal validity (r =.81, occupational title versus occupational activities). Principal-component analysis extracted nine factors from 11 proposed subscales of the CVII. They are labelled as Artistic, Science & Technology, Business, Artistic creativity, Scholastic, Legal, Medical, and Service. The combination of some factors is compatible with John Holland's 6 occupational categories, indicating to a certain extent universal value of career interests. Gender difference was found in both factors clusters and occupation preference in which female students favored Liberal Art, Performing Art, and other language expressing related occupations, whereas male students were strongly interested in Science, Engineering, and Mechanical type of occupations. The homogeneous scales for female students and the combined-gender students were established throughout the factor analyses. More research will be needed to develop homogeneous scales for the male students, and to collect test-retest reliability and predictive validity by using criterion groups in order to develop a menu for the CVII.

The present exploratory study attempted to investigate the frequency of codeswitching, preferred learning/cognitive style for decision-making processes and the relationship to the development of bicognitive skills among three categories of successful Puerto Ricans. Three categories of Puerto Ricans were identified as: Puerto Ricans who came from Puerto Rico to pursue a master of doctorate degree (Group I); Puerto Ricans who came to the United States during their teenage years and finished their education in the States (up to master's and/or doctorate degree--Group II); and second generation Puerto Ricans (born, raised and educated--master or doctorate degree--in the United States--Group III). A total of fifteen (15) subjects participated in the study: nine (9) in Group I, three (3) in Groups II and III. The criteria aforementioned was used for participants screening selection and specific answers to six research questions were sought. Data for the study were collected through audiotaped ethnographic interviews, Cultural Life Style Inventory (Mendoza, 1986), and transcript records. The results of the analysis of the frequency of codeswitching among all participants suggested the existence of codeswitching as a sociolinguistic phenomenon; topics, the content of the questions and whether the questions were asked in Spanish or English played an important role in generating switches to either English or Spanish. Codeswitching varied in frequency according to the questions asked to participants. The predominant topics that triggered the occurrence of codeswitching were philosophy of life, experiences in the United States, food, influences of three cultures on the development of bicognitive skills and language competency. Participants exposed to both (field independence/sensitive) learning styles are able to respond appropriately no matter what the situation; whether it is taking a standardized test, working by him or herself or working in groups. The results of the analysis of participants' responses of how codeswitching and bicognitivism relate to each other suggest that the exposure to two (2) cultures (Puerto Rican and American) positively influenced their ability to develop bicognitive skills. There seem to be more similarities between Group I and II and between either of them and Group III with regards to the frequency of switching from English to Spanish and vice versa when answering the interview questions. The preferred language to answer questions for Group I and II was Spanish. For Group III it was English. The overwhelming majority of the participants expressed that it was fine to codeswitch. The results were interpreted as indicating that the degree of bilingualism, degree of biculturalism, and learning/cognitive style contribute to the development and enhancement of bicognitive skills.

<p>Mentorship in the workplace is a critical component of leader development that benefits both the individual and organization. While the United States Army&rsquo;s mentorship program takes an informal approach to initiating mentoring connections, active mentorship is an expectation of all leaders. Women in the army remain underrepresented in the senior ranks, creating a situation that may lead to more limited opportunities for the female-to-female interactions that would result in a diverse mentoring experience. This qualitative case study explored the mentoring experiences of a purposive sample of interviews with 10 women officers assigned to Brigade Combat Teams while stationed at Fort Hood, Texas. Results were analyzed using two cycles of inductive coding and pattern-matching techniques. The six themes that emerged provide insight into the conditions and mechanisms that may create more effective professional mentoring relationships for military leaders. </p><p> <i>Key Words</i>: female mentoring, women&rsquo;s mentorship, United States Army officers, U.S. Army officers, leader development, qualitative </p>

<p> This study employed a quantitative correlational research design to determine the extent of the relationship between professionals' spirituality, stress, and different dimensions of burnout in the workplace. Instruments included the Daily Spiritual Experience Scale (DSES), the Perceived Stress Scale (PSS), and the Maslach Burnout Inventory &ndash; General Survey (MBI-GS) Burnout Inventory. The study was conducted among male and female full-time employees working in an office setting located in the United States of America (<i> N</i> = 92) using an internet-based questionnaire service. Results indicate that spirituality was positively correlated with the Exhaustion and Cynicism burnout dimensions, and negatively correlated with the professional efficacy burnout dimension. The findings suggest that spirituality is a crucial predictor of occupational stress and burnout in the workplace and could be used as a coping strategy.</p><p>

<p> The topic of the study was burnout amongst volunteer emergency service personnel in a Northeastern state. An understanding of the role burnout plays in emergency service professionals exists in the literature; however, the current research expanded the understanding by focusing on volunteers. Years of experience and resilience were studied to determine if a relationship exists with burnout. Data analysis consisted of multiple regression analyses conducted for each subscale of the Maslach Burnout Inventory &ndash; Human Services Survey (emotional exhaustion, depersonalization, and personal achievement) (Maslach, Jackson &amp; Leiter, 1996). Results concluded that resilience, as measured by the Resilience Scale (Wagnild &amp; Young, 1993), was found to be statistically significant in its ability to predict emotional exhaustion and personal achievement, at the p &lt; .05 significance level. Resilience significantly predicted emotional exhaustion subscale scores of the Maslach Burnout Inventory &ndash; Human Services Survey, &beta;= -.25, <i>t</i>(82) = -4.36, <i>p</i> &lt; .001. Resilience and length of service when considered together also explained a significant proportion of variance in emotional exhaustion scores <i>R</i>² = .92, <i> F</i>(2,82) = 9.65, <i>p</i> &lt; .001. Resilience significantly predicted the personal accomplishment subscale, &beta; = .21, <i>t</i>(82) = 5.19 <i>p</i> &lt; .001. Resilience and length of service when considered together also explained a significant portion of the variance in personal exhaustion scores, <i>R</i>² = .25, <i> F</i>(2,82) = 13.91, <i>p</i> &lt; .001. Results concluded that resilience was not a statistically significant predictor of the depersonalization subscale; &beta; = - .07, <i>t</i>(82) = -1.72, <i>p</i> = .090. Length of service was not considered to be a statistically significant predictor for the subscales (emotional exhaustion, depersonalization, and personal achievement) at the .05 alpha level. Resilience and length of service when considered together did not explain a significant portion of the variance in depersonalization scores; <i>R</i>² = .04, <i> F</i>(2, 82) =1.90, <i>p</i>=.157. The regression analysis demonstrated that there was a low correlation between predictor variables of resilience, as measured by The Resilience Scale and length of service, <i> r</i> = .123. A stepwise regression analysis was also conducted and confirmed that the predictor variable of resilience held a greater control over the outcome variables in each regression analysis with a significant outcome. Study implications centered around a recognition that volunteer emergency service personnel can be affected by the work they perform in many similar ways as their paid counterparts. Further research is recommended to increase understanding of the relationship that other demographics and factors may play in the depletion of resilience and development of burnout in related professionals.</p><p>

<p> This quantitative study examined self-compassion as a buffer in burnout of teaching assistants working with students on the autism spectrum. An on-line survey was developed using the Self-Compassion Scale (SCS) and the Copenhagen Burnout Inventory (CBI) to investigate self-compassion, burnout, and a number of demographic variables. The survey was shared with teaching assistants who work with students on the autism spectrum in nine New York Counties. One hundred forty-five (<i>N</i> = 145) teaching assistants participated in the study. The self-kindness factor score, the mindfulness factor score, and the overall self-compassion composite score of teaching assistants working with students on the autism spectrum demonstrated statistically significant negative relationships with all areas of burnout: personal, work-related, and student-related. This indicates that as the teaching assistants' scores for self-kindness, mindfulness, and self-compassion increase their scores for all areas of burnout decrease. Overall, the findings indicate that there may be buffers that prevent against burnout in teaching assistants who work with students on the autism spectrum.</p><p>