Discipline Commitment Research Articles

Notes on Translation as Research

Structured as a companion piece to Translation as Research: A Manifesto, this essay argues that there are compelling reasons for translation to be one of the ways in which academics, notably in Modern Languages, spend their time. It speculates on the nature of possible misgivings or hesitations on this point; these seem to include the fear that embracing translation may undermine the discipline's commitment to reading in the original, and apprehension at the difficulty of assessing translations as especially where aesthetic criteria are involved. Rather than being drawn into debates over the definition of research, however, the essay argues, we should start by committing to the broad intellectual and cultural value of translations, and recognize that, in the UK context, the REF already provides a framework in which translation can be embraced as a research practice, as a form of scholarship and/or creative writing.

Professional psychology in health care services: A blueprint for education and training.

In 2010, an interorganizational effort among the American Psychological Association, the Council of Graduate Departments of Psychology, and the Council of Chairs of Training Councils, known as the Health Service Psychology Education Collaborative (HSPEC), was initiated to address mounting concerns related to education and training for the professional practice of psychology. Given that professional psychology includes diverse areas of practice and the mounting concerns about psychology's role in a reformed health care system, HSPEC chose to focus on preparation of psychologists for the delivery of health care services and made seven recommendations that constitute the core of a blueprint for the future. These recommendations require significant changes in graduate education-changes critical to the future of psychology as a health profession. As part of its work, HSPEC developed a statement of core competencies for the preparation of health service psychologists, integrating feedback solicited through public comment and review by the psychology community, including education and training councils and APA governance groups. The articulation of these competencies serves to inform not only the preparation of health service psychologists but students, employers, regulators, and policymakers as well. It also reflects the discipline's commitment to quality and accountability in the preparation of its workforce. HSPEC recognizes that its recommendations to strengthen the core preparation and identity of health service psychologists will result in some limitations on degrees of freedom at the program level but believes such limitation to be in the service of coherent and uniform standards for education and training. This blueprint supports the evolution and development of the profession within a scientific context. It supports standards as meaningful, versus minimum, indicators as part of the profession's obligation to the public. The blueprint also calls for the profession to develop a mechanism for systematic monitoring of progress, challenges, and opportunities to ensure that psychology as a health profession meets societal needs.

School Social Work Practice: Future Directions Based on Present Conditions

A few months ago, a policymaker emailed one of us requesting evidence that social work works. The e-mail and thread of communications that followed demonstrated the need for this special issue, highlighting the gap between effectiveness data policymakers need to advocate and the evidence base for social work practice that is actually available The policymaker reported that government officials want evidence that school-based practitioners (that is, social workers, counselors, psychologists, and so forth) influence school success, defined largely around academic achievement and dropout prevention. Leaders in the field of social work research provided a recent resource documenting the positive impact of social work practice on attendance, grades, and emotional and behavioral problems experienced by students (Franklin, Kim, & Tripodi, 2009). Still, the exchange revealed how little we still know empirically about the impact of social work practice in schools in addressing the very issues that most concern leaders. This special issue was inspired by what we see as the persistent disconnect among much of social work practice and our discipline's commitment to an ecological orientation, educational effectiveness research, and trends in education policy and practice. The articles included in this special issue are unified by their attention to these issues, and each is briefly described in this editorial.

Geobiology and paleobiogeography: tracking the coevolution of the Earth and its biota

Paleobiogeographic research is an important area of geobiology that involves the study of the coevolution of the Earth and its biota by considering how tectonic and climatic changes have affected the evolution and distribution of organisms. The intellectual heritage of the discipline stretches back well before Darwin. Phylogenetic approaches to paleobiogeography have played an important part in the expansion of the field, and recent analyses have incorporated Geographic Information Systems (GIS). Each of these approaches, by enhancing the precision of paleobiogeography, helps make the discipline more relevant to geobiology. The interaction occurring between the geological and biological sciences in paleobiogeography is apparent in several areas. First, there is the emergence of new techniques such as the ability to analyze ancient DNA sequences. Also, paleobiogeographers and biogeographers have realized that geo-dispersal, a biogeographic process first identified through studies of the fossil record, can powerfully influence the evolution and distribution of biotas. Finally, biogeographers have recognized that paleontological incompleteness and extinction constrain our ability to reconstruct biogeographic patterns in the fossil record and the extant biota, respectively. Each of these developments suggests that further growth in paleobiogeography will involve important interactions between studies involving the fossil record and the extant biota, and this, along with the discipline's commitment to studying how tectonic and climatic changes have influenced evolution, reaffirms the validity of the synthetic field that is geobiology.

The language of psychology: APA style as epistemology.

The Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association (4th ed., APA, 1994) is a guide for many aspects of professional writing for psychologists. In this article, the authors propose that APA style involves more than a set of explicit guidelines for presenting information; it also incorporates a variety of unarticulated practices that reflect fundamental attitudes and values of psychologists. The authors examine some of the less obvious characteristics of APA style to show how they support the discipline's commitment to the empirical method and the discipline's view of itself as a cumulative, collaborative enterprise. Students who enter the field of psychology acquire psychology's language conventions, and in doing so they also come to implicitly endorse important values of their discipline.

The Planning Profession and Blacks in the United States: A Content Analysis of Academic and Professional Literature

One way to test an academic discipline's commitment to social justice in a multicultural society is to examine its literature's attention to the unique characteris tics and needs of a particular disadvantaged group. This paper examines the planning literature in regard to one disadvantaged group—black Americans. Journal of the American Planning Association, Urban Affairs Quarterly, and Planning are analyzed for five- year periods beginning in 1955 and running through 1989. After a summary of findings, this paper identifies pertinent planning-related issues that are affecting blacks now and will continue to do so into the next century. Measures to enhance the profession's sensitivity to these issues and thereby mitigate negative impacts will also be mentioned.