Standardized tests are a component of the teacher certification process in many states and may also be used by colleges and universities to evaluate readiness for a teacher education program. While ...some agencies have developed examinations for single-state use, institutions of higher learning and licensing bodies in forty-three states, the District of Columbia, and three US territories have adopted the Praxis Series® examinations for these purposes. The Praxis Series, developed by Educational Testing Service, includes the Praxis Core Academic Skills for Educators, often referred to simply as Praxis Core, and the Praxis Subject Assessments, formerly known as Praxis II exams. Here, Hoffman details the structure of Praxis Series.
To determine the effects of phenobarbital and repeated antenatal steroid use on the primary outcome (intelligence and achievement) and secondary outcomes (behavior and head circumference) at age 7 ...years.
This study was a secondary analysis of a double-blind clinical trial (phenobarbital-vitamin K versus placebo). Intelligence (Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children, third edition), achievement (Wide Range Achievement Test, third edition), and behavioral (Achenbach Teacher's Report Form and the Child Behavioral Check List) testing and head circumference measurement were performed on 7-year-old children whose mothers participated in a trial to determine if antenatal phenobarbital and vitamin K prevented severe intracranial hemorrhage. Antenatal steroid therapy in these women was repeated weekly.
Two hundred ninety-nine of 372 newborns (80%) whose mothers participated in the trial were followed up at age 7 years. Comparing mean (+/- standard deviation SD) Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children scores in the placebo versus treatment groups, there were no differences (P >.4) in Full Scale IQ (100.3 +/- 14.2 versus 100.6 +/- 14.2), Performance IQ (100.3 +/- 14.6 versus 101.5 +/- 15.6), and Verbal IQ (100.2 +/- 14.9 versus 99.6 +/- 13.7). Comparing mean (+/- SD) Wide Range Achievement Test standardized scores in the placebo versus treatment groups, there were no differences (P >.4) in Reading (97.3 +/- 13.9 versus 98.0 +/- 14.9), Spelling (95.8 +/- 12.7 versus 95.3 +/- 13.3), Mathematics (95.9 +/- 13.8 versus 94.5 +/- 14.5), or head circumference measurements (20.3 +/- 0.6 cm versus 20.4 +/- 0.6, P >.2). Similarly, there were no differences in the mean Achenbach Teacher's Report Form and Child Behavioral Check List scores between the placebo and treatment groups.
Antenatal phenobarbital and repetitive antenatal corticosteroid therapy was not associated with adverse effects on intelligence, achievement, behavior, or head circumference at age 7 years.
Hoffman talks about the important contributions of William James, American philosopher and founder of its psychology field. Virtually every standard history of science emphasizes James's key role in ...establishing psychology as a logical and empirical discipline, worthy to take its place as a legitimate arena of human study. From their first appearance, James's popular writings on philosophy have been praised for their beauty and clarity of expression. Indeed, some of his best passages on the life of the mind glow with a poetic intensity. In this centennial year of James's death in 1910, it is important for contemporary humanistic psychology to revisit his work, for he was a vital figure in the development of the field.
Rollo May on Maslow and Rogers Hoffman, Edward
The Journal of humanistic psychology,
10/2009, Letnik:
49, Številka:
4
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Hoffman talks about his conversation with Rollo May. Hoffman was interviewing Rollo at length for his major biography of Abraham Maslow. After some small talk, Rollo confided that he had regarded Abe ...Maslow as one of his dearest friends, not so much as a confidant or buddy, for they lived on opposite coasts but rather as an intellectual "comrade-in-arms." He remarked that they both had been mentored by Alfred Adler in the 1930s, a formative experience that had undoubtedly shaped and unified them in profound ways. Moreover, in essence, Rollo contended that he, Rogers, and Maslow were all partially to blame for failing to incorporate evil into humanistic psychology.
Image quality in PET is typically assessed using measures such as contrast recovery, noise variation, and signal-to-noise ratio (SNR). However, these criteria do not directly reflect performance in ...the clinical use of the images. Lesion detection is a critical task in the clinical interpretation of many PET studies. A receiver operating characteristic (ROC) study is an accepted method for quantitatively evaluating detection performance with respect to factors that influence image quality. ROC and localization ROC (LROC) analyses were conducted to investigate the effects of lesion contrast, SNR, and size on detectability of hot lesions in PET images.
A thorax phantom was imaged with spheres of 3 sizes simulating lesions (0.45, 1.0, and 1.9 mL). The relative activity in the lesions and the total number of counts acquired were each varied by factors of 2 to ascertain the effects of contrast and SNR, respectively. Measured attenuation correction and a standard reconstruction protocol were used. Three nuclear medicine physicians and 6 medical physicists participated as readers, rating each image and indicating the suspected lesion location. The area under the calculated ROC and LROC curves (Az and Az,LROC) were used as measures of detection performance.
Detection performance was shown to increase from virtually random (Az approximately 0.5, Az,LROC approximately 0.2) to superior (Az > 0.9, Az,LROC > 0.9) as lesion contrast was increased by 50% and as lesion SNR was doubled. Detection performance was not seen to vary when comparison was made using image-based measures alone.
This study quantitatively shows that moderate increases in the image-based measures of lesion contrast and SNR give a relatively large increase in the task-based measure of lesion detection as measured by ROC and LROC analyses. Thus, techniques that give modest increases in lesion contrast or SNR are expected to improve detection. Results will be useful in evaluating improvement in detection for various reconstruction, acquisition, and data analysis methods that enhance contrast or noise performance.
Receiver operating characteristic (ROC) and localization ROC (LROC) studies were performed to compare lesion detection at the borderline of detectability on images reconstructed with two-dimensional ...filtered backprojection (FBP) without attenuation correction (a common clinical protocol), three-dimensional FBP without attenuation correction, two-dimensional FBP with segmented attenuation correction and a two-dimensional iterative maximum a posteriori (MAP) algorithm using attenuation correction. Lung cancer was the model for the study because of the prominent role of 18F-fluorodeoxyglucose PET in the staging of lung cancer and the importance of lesion detection for staging.
Simulated lung cancer lesions were added to two-dimensional and three-dimensional PET data from healthy volunteers. Data were reconstructed using the four methods. Four nuclear medicine physicians evaluated the images. Detection performance with each method was compared using ROC and LROC analysis. Jackknife analysis provided estimates of statistical significance for differences across all readers for the ROC results.
ROC and LROC results indicated statistically significant degradation in detection performance with three-dimensional acquisition (average area under ROC curves Az 0.51; average area under LROC curves A(z,LROC) 0.13) and segmented attenuation correction (average Az 0.59; average Az,LROC 0.29) compared with two-dimensional FBP without attenuation correction (average Az 0.79; average A(z,LROC) 0.54). ROC and LROC results indicated an improvement in detection performance with iterative MAP reconstruction (average Az 0.83; average A(z,LROC) 0.64) compared with two-dimensional FBP reconstruction; this improvement was not statistically significant.
Use of segmented attenuation correction or three-dimensional acquisition with FBP reconstruction is not expected to improve detection of lung lesions on whole-body PET images compared with images with two-dimensional FBP without attenuation correction. The potential improvement in detection obtained with an iterative MAP reconstruction method is small compared with that obtained with two-dimensional FBP without attenuation correction.
The purpose of this literature review was to gather and examine current research related to the recruitment of precollegiate students into traditional music teacher education programs in the United ...States. Research has shown that precollegiate students who pursue music education as a career are influenced by their secondary ensemble directors. Further analysis also indicated that there is a limited body of research on recruiting as it pertains to marginalized populations, especially on students of color, indicating a need for a more sustained effort to mitigate such barriers. Additionally, university-affiliated outreach programs have shown great promise in music teacher recruitment and should be replicated and expanded wherever possible. Implications for practice and for further research are provided.
This study was conducted to follow up an earlier investigation which examined tears of joy (TOJ) among Japanese undergraduates. In the present investigation, 193 Japanese adults (age range = 31 to ...above 81; 46.7% were older than age 60) responded to a survey inquiring if they had ever experienced TOJ. If they answered affirmatively, they were asked their frequency of TOJ, when was their most recent TOJ episode, and to what extent it relieved their stress and improved their physical well-being immediately afterwards. The vast majority (83.4%) had experienced TOJ in their life. However, TOJ frequency was sharply divergent: although 38% reported TOJ in the past month, 26.1% had not experienced TOJ in over 12 months. Consistent with previous studies, TOJ frequency was significantly associated with high self-reported emotionality compared to peers. For men, TOJ frequency was associated with self-reported effectiveness in coping with stress. Among participants in middle adulthood (age = 41 to 60) but not later adulthood (age 61 and older), TOJ frequency was associated with both stress relief and enhanced physical well-being after a TOJ episode. The implications for strengthening resilience among post-college-age Japanese are discussed and avenues for further research are highlighted.
Humanistic Psychology in Japan Muramoto, Shoji; Hoffman, Edward
The Journal of humanistic psychology,
10/2005, Letnik:
45, Številka:
4
Journal Article
Recenzirano
This article provides an overview of humanistic psychology in Japan. Its growth is traced from its prehistory up through the establishment of its own organization in 1982. Recent developments and ...current challenges are also highlighted. A dominant concern for Japanese humanistic psychologists has been to synthesize traditional Eastern spiritualities and modern Western rationalism.
Metaphor analysis has been used to uncover the specific values of preservice and established teachers concerning the roles of pupil, educator, and the educational process. However, it has never been ...utilized in assessing the broader values and flourishing of experienced teachers. Because positive psychology has found these factors to significantly impact teacher effectiveness, we conducted this study focusing on the life-metaphors of experienced teachers in Costa Rica, an under-represented research population. Sixty teachers (mean teaching experienced 1.2 years) responded to a structured questionnaire. It elicited their preferred life-metaphor, whether they had always espoused it since youth, and if not, what had caused it to change; and how it guides their actions. Teachers were also asked to indicate which of 17 life-metaphors they most and least preferred, and to rate their happiness and life meaning from teaching. Teachers' expressed life-metaphors were predominantly active, affectively positive, and individualistic. They most preferred the metaphor that "life is a gift" and reported that their own life metaphor significantly impacted their decision-making. Consistent with the metaphoric data, they reported high levels of happiness and life meaning from teaching. The usefulness of metaphor analysis in aiding teacher development is discussed, and future avenues of research are highlighted.
