Didactic Discussion Research Articles

Asymptomatic Independence and Separability in Convariance Structure Models: Implications for Specification Error, Power, and Model Modification.

This article presents a didactic discussion on the role of asymptotically independent test statistics and separable hypotheses as they pertain to issues of specification error, power, and model modification in the covariance structure modeling framework. Specifically, it is shown that when restricting two parameter estimates on the basis of the multivariate Wald test, the condition of asymptotic independence is necessary but not sufficient for the univariate Wald test statistics to sum to the multivariate Wald test. Instead, what is required is mutual asymptotic independence (MAI) among the univariate tests. This result generalizes to sets of multivariate tests as well. When MA1 is lacking, hypotheses can exhibit transitive relationships. It is also shown that the pattern of zero and non-zero elements of the covariance matrix of the estimates are indicative of mutually asymptotically independent test statistics, separable and transitive hypotheses. The concepts of MAI, separability, and transitivity serve as an explanatory framework for how specification errors are propagated through systems of equations and how power analyses are differentially affected by specification errors of the same magnitude. A small population study supports the major findings of this article. The question of univariate versus multivariate sequential model modification is also addressed. We argue that multivariate sequential model modification strategies do not take into account the typical lack of MA1 thus inadvertently misleading substantive investigators. Instead, a prudent approach favors univariate sequential model modification.

Dialectical tensions of speaking and silence

This essay is both conventional and non‐conventional. The function of silence in communication has been addressed in academic journals, so the topic is conventional. This essay makes no attempt to incorporate or extend those articles, with one exception. Such silence is not conventional for essays in academic journals. The deeper attempt to be non‐conventional, however, stems from placing in dialogue form a discussion of the functions of silence with what purports to be an Eastern attitude, specifically that derived from several Chinese texts. Posed in contrast to the Eastern portion, with an “apology” marking a transition, is a purportedly Western, didactic discussion. The intention is both to let the mingling of voices enrich the concept of silence and to test further possibilities for extending the understanding of communication by seeking westward in the East. In doing so, the ancient question of the relation of rhetoric and dialectic recurs.

From Sea Charts to Satellite Images: Interpreting North American History through Maps

The authors write authoritatively and crisply . . . . How to use maps in teaching is spelled out carefully, but the authors also manage to sketch in the background of American mapping so the book is both a manual and a history. Commentaries are sprinkled with stimulating new ideas, for instance on how to use bird's-eye views and country atlases in the classroom, and there are didactic discussions on maps showing the walking city and the impact of the street car.An extraordinarily wide range of maps is depicted, which makes for good browsing, pondering and close study. . . . This is a very good, highly attractive, and worthwhile book; it will have great impact on the use of old (and new!) maps in teaching. As well, this is a tantalizing survey of mapping the United States and will whet the appetites of students and encourage them to learn more about maps and their origins.--John Warketin, Cartographica

Moo, Toronto, Mississippi and Jewel

In Moo, Sally Clark assembles a series of short narrative scenes which move forward from a startling and emblematic prologue in which the female protagonist is shot by a man who later marries her, through the events of her life to a closing scene in which she is shot by him again. At the same time, monologues, which appear out of time - but actually fit in the linear biography - comment upon the history and upon the self-perceptions of the characters. In the published text, this episodic structure is not satisfying: individual scenes appear undeveloped, and, while minor characters are succinctly drawn, the deterioration of the central character, Moo, seems forced. Attempting to sketch her protagonist’s entire life from 1919 to after 1960, Clark presents Moo at sixty and, one scene later, at sixty-five; she introduces Moo’s son as a child and, in the next scene, as a sixteen-year-old; she moves location from Seattle to Vancouver to Montserrat to “Banyu Wangi” in instant shifts. In production, however, this structure adds a rhythm to the play, balancing the often hectic comic action with introspective asides, creating a pastiche in which the rather didactic discussion of obsessive behaviour is both discussed and acted out. Unity of a disturbing kind is provided by the recurrent images of asylums and nursing homes in which Moo repeatedly finds herself confined - even strapped into a straitjacket - by the physical and mental crippling inflicted by the man Harry whom she “loves to hate,” and without whom she is unable to find a locus. Extending this image of women bound by men, by “the cads, rotters and bounders” to whom the play is dedicated, Clark shows three generations of women who, while observing Moo’s compulsive searching for Harry and the self-destruction it brings, themselves fall into similar emotional traps. Moo’s grand-niece, Susan, discloses her own involvement with a married man who “doesn’t love his wife,” although he hasn’t “exactly told [Susan] that.” She is confident that it is “only a matter of time before he leaves [the wife],” but the history of Moo and Harry suggests that whether he does or not, he will have destroyed the wife’s life and will destroy Susan’s.

The integration of an educational program into a treatment facility.

This paper reviews the integration of an active teaching program into a busy treatment facility. All first and second year medical students at the University of California, San Diego take part in a series of didactic lectures and small group discussions, while third and fourth year students have the opportunity of joining a treatment team for 4 to 6 weeks. All psychiatric residents spend a minimum of 8 weeks working on the unit, and one fourth year resident is chosen to work with the staff for a year. The interactions between treatment teams and students in various stages of development help maximize enthusiasm and the commitment to the best patient care possible.

Färgblivandets under och det stora Duet

The purpose of this article is to map the so-called predialogical level of Martin Buber’s thinking. In Daniel (1913) Buber appears as a romantic culture critic. What is discussed in the book about realization is not dialogues in Buber’s style – rather in the style of Plato, but they are not didactic discussions – they are filled with feeling and spirit and a cosmic home-sickness. The conversations take place in a romantic landscape, a dream-like meadow when twilight sets in. Realization and meaning (Sinn) are topics in Daniel that come back in later writings. In his “Geleitwort” (1906) to the collection Die Gesellschaft Buber defines sociology as “the science of the inter-human forms”. These forms are later built into overall cosmic connections.

Writing War Poetry like a Woman

Like military itself, traditionally most overtly male of preserves, canon of poetry of presented in recent bibliographies or anthologies is especially and intensely androcentric. modern poem as it is usually defined, experience of masculine soldier and voice of masculine author predominate. A reader of didactic discussions of poetry written during Second World War might therefore be surprised at frequency with which American literary critics held up a text written by a woman as single, paradigmatic, exemplary poem: Marianne Moore's In of Merits. W. H. Auden, for instance, called In Distrust the best of... all poems of World War II.1 Moore was so lionized on American home front, her poem so praised, that RandallJarrell began his famous critical answer to In Distrust with a mock-apologetic Miss Moore is reviewed not as a but as an going on to cite, acerbically, a reviewer who had called Moore the greatest living poet and then demanded that she be placed in Fort Knox for duration.2 The uses of Moore as institution, for duration, deserve closer study than Jarrell's ironies might suggest; they shed light on assumptions prevalent in both 1940s and 1980s about what war means, what

Training Educational Administrators in Organizational Behavior Management

A program for training educational administrators in organizational behavior management (OBM) is described and program evaluation results are reported. The program involves participants, with a trainer, in didactic presentations and discussion activities, simulation and role playing exercises, and receipt of performance feedback and reinforcement. Participants are instructed in pinpointing and recording organizational behavior and performance problems, designing and implementing organizational intervention programs, consequating desired behavior, evaluating intervention effectiveness, and involving staff in the change process. Following training, participants receive monthly assistance from the trainer in carrying out an OBM project in their work settings. Evaluation results are reported from an application of the training program with 7 upper-level administrators from urban public school districts. Results suggest that participants were able to apply OBM techniques to facilitate improved organizational b...

Sounding board Peer review in graduate education.

Although few topics in medicine today share the interest generated by peer review, the impression is that programs to assure quality of health care have been received within the medical profession less than enthusiastically. Perhaps, if we look at the education of physicians-in-training, we can gain some insights. It seems incongruous that members of house staffs are given the responsibility for decision making in dealing with people whose body parts are malfunctioning, but at the same time are given no responsibility for the malfunctioning of themselves or their peers. Just as didactic presentation or philosophical discussions are not accepted as . . .

On understanding spin-flip synchrotron radiation and the transverse polarization of electrons in storage rings

A mainly didactic discussion is given of the mechanism for the gradual build up of transverse polarization of electrons and positrons in storage rings. The history and basic results are reviewed briefly. Then an intuitive explanation of the polarization in terms of spontaneous emission via a nonrelativistic magnetic dipole transition in a moving inertial frame is presented and criticized. This simple treatment contains a large part of the essential physics, but not all. It is surprisingly successful for electrons and positrons ($g=2$), becomes exact for large $g$ factors of either sign, but fails badly for particles with $g$ factors of the range $0\ensuremath{\lesssim}g\ensuremath{\lesssim}1.5$. The failure occurs because here the spin-magnetic-moment system cannot be treated even approximately in isolation from the orbital motion. A correct semiclassical description of radiation by a spin system is then given, in direct analogy with semiclassical radiation theory for charged particles ignoring spin. The classical equation of motion for a spin in relativistic motion, derived originally by Thomas, is used to obtain an effective Hamiltonian of interaction of a spin with electromagnetic fields. Emission and absorption of radiation is then described by replacing the classical electromagnetic fields with the appropriately normalized photon fields. The resulting formulas are applicable to charged particles of arbitrary $g$ factor. Expressions are given for the differential spectra in angle and in frequency for numbers of photons and for radiated power, as well as the previously known results for the total transition rates. These results seem of physical interest only for $g=2$ but serve useful pedagogic purposes, refuting some of the expectations of the naive explanation. The various differential spectra are treated in detail for $g=2$ and compared with the corresponding spectra for ordinary synchrotron radiation.

Teaching behavioral principles to dental students: a pilot course

In an effort to amalgamate the study of behavior into the dental curriculum at West Virginia University, four primary objectives were set forth by the authors 1) creating a positive learning experience, 2) providing general information concerning behavior as it relates to dentistry, 3) dealing with special problems related to the human developmental continuum, and 4) increasing the students perception of himself and his patients. These objectives were accomplished through a variety of teaching techniques including formal didactic lectures, open and informal discussions, and videotape exercises involving mock clinical situations. There was no formal grading, although the students were requested to evaluate the course. Generally the students were enthusiastic in their regard for the class, emphasizing their feelings that follow-up courses should be offered.

Helping Teachers Improve Classroom Group Processes

The studies reported here assumed that informal classroom group processes affect students' attitudes as well as their academic performances and that teachers can modify these group processes constructively. Three action research interventions are described in this paper which, in various degrees and in different ways, helped teachers improve the informal group processes in their classrooms. The major intervention of Project z was a teacher development laboratory with seven core training activities: (i) sensitivity training and related human relations experiences, (2) didactic discussions on basic research about classroom group processes, (3) problem-solving techniques for improving group processes, (4) analyses of diagnostic data from the teachers' own classrooms, (5) discussions about useful classroom practices developed by other teachers, (6) role-play tryouts of new classroom practices, and (7) follow-up discussions during the school year. This laboratory was compared with a seminar in which the participants experienced all phases of the laboratory except for sensitivity training, related human relations experiences, and roleplay tryouts of new classroom practices. Both the laboratory and seminar were compared with a control group in which no interventions were attempted. An overview of the results indicated that the laboratory teachers and students made more positive changes in their group processes than those in the seminar group; both of these groups were more improved at the end of the school year than the control group. In Project 2, psychological consultants attempted to enhance teachers' capabilities for coping with group processes in the classroom. The consultants spent four hours each week for 15 weeks in small-group discussions, classroom visitations, and individual conferences. The contacts between consultants and teachers were problem-oriented, centering on the teachers' reactions to classroom processes and how the teachers might try to improve group interaction in their classrooms. The consultants attempted to explore how teachers might relate to students with interpersonal problems, low self-esteem, and disinterest in learning. Results indicated that cognitive and attitudinal changes did occur in the teachers, but that these were not also accompanied by behavioral changes that made a difference in their classroom groups. Constructive changes in classroom group processes and students' attitudes did not occur as a result of the consultations. Project 3 involved an organizational development laboratory for a school faculty which was aimed at improving such organizational processes as interpersonal relations and feelings, communication patterns, and group norms of the staff. The laboratory included structured group exercises, small-group discussions relating the exercises to school processes, total staff discussions on their own group processes, and problem-solving techniques applied to total staff problems. A majority of the teachers, quite unexpectedly, tried new group procedures in their classrooms patterned after their laboratory experiences, even though classroom applications were never formally mentioned during the laboratory. It was concluded that an organizational development laboratory encourages a faculty to try out new group processes in the school organization or in the classroom. Problem-oriented and self-reflective discussions with consultants help teachers perceive that they can improve classroom group processes by modifying their own behaviors. But the regular presence of a psychological consultant does not appear, by itself, to change teachers' actual behaviors in the classroom. A teacher development laboratory which includes problem-solving techniques, sensitivity training, and role-play tryouts increases the likelihood that changes in teachers' cognitions and attitudes will be accompanied by behavioral changes in the classroom. These three interventions can fit well into integrated action programs that might be used by school systems for improving classroom group processes.

NEWS AND ANNOUNCEMENTS

Postgraduate Course in Pediatrics, Harvard Medical School, May 16-20, 1966. This course presents a survey of advances in preventive, diagnostic, and therapeutic pediatrics. The program includes didactic lectures, case presentations, panel discussions, and clinical seminars. Participants may also choose subjects of special interest to explore with an instructor. The course includes evaluation of psychological intellectual and physical development, and prevention and treatment of abnormalities. Medical and surgical specialists from the Harvard Medical School and the Massachusetts General Hospital will participate.

Tuberculosis and Other Problems of Pediatrics

This is the Tenth Series of the Abraham Flexner Lectures given before the School of Medicine of Vanderbilt University. There are 5 lectures. 1."General Trends in Combating Tuberculosis in Childhood"—This is a brief and didactic discussion of what can be done with a planned program of prophylaxis. This program is changing the picture of tuberculosis, especially postponing the primary lesion from childhood to young adult life. The primary infections should be watched closely, especially after a serious upper respiratory infection, influenza, rubeola and pertussis.