Jointness, Culture, and Inter-Service Prejudice: Assessing the Impact of Resident, Satellite, and Hybrid Joint Professional Military Education II Course Delivery Methods on Military Officer Attitudes

The efficacy of United States (U.S.) military forces is predicated on a condition of jointness, which enables members of different military services to overcome their cultural and experiential prejudices and operate interdependently. Joint Professional Military Education Phase (JPME) II, offered through the Joint Forces Staff College (JFSC), is the principal mechanism within the Department of Defense to reduce the inter-service prejudices held by military officers and to cultivate the optimal joint perspectives and attitudes associated with jointness. The JFSC employs three different methods for delivering JPME II—Resident, Satellite, and Hybrid—yet it remains unknown whether significant differences exist between them regarding their effectiveness in reducing inter-service prejudice. Accordingly, this study explores the following question: What is the impact on inter-service prejudice by the various JPME II course delivery methods provided by JFSC? To provide an answer, the study first considered the nature of organizational culture, the origin of inter-service prejudice, and how intergroup contact can reduce such prejudice. Second, it considered each JFSC JPME II delivery method in the context of Intergroup Contact Theory to develop related hypotheses, and employed analysis of variance and multiple regression techniques using JFSC archival longitudinal survey data collected from students attending each delivery method. The results of analysis demonstrate that, while each method contributes to the reduction of inter-service prejudice, significant and possibly consequential differences exist between the delivery methods in terms of the levels of cognitive inter-service prejudice both before and after treatment

Multiple religious belonging : Conceptual advance or secularization denial?

Peer reviewedPublisher PD

The Constitutionality of Mandatory Public School Community Service Programs

Constitutional challenges to community service programs may be divided into two generic types--those raised by students or parents who object to the requirement of community service, and those raised by students, parents, organizations, or agencies who object to the selection criteria used to include or exclude organizations or agencies eligible to participate in community service programs

Incorporating Self-Study Methodology into a Hybrid Course Design Experiment

This investigation utilized self-study as an impetus for change in teaching practices for post-tenure faculty. Two instructors collaborated with 33 graduate students enrolled in a teacher research methods course. Across a ten-week term, faculty and students examined both possibilities and challenges created by running parallel class meetings each week (one virtual, one face-to-face).Using social networking tools as well as conventional forms of data gathering, instructors found that, while students appreciated the flexibility that the hybrid design afforded, a majority preferred to attend the face-to-face sessions rather than to take advantage of the online classes. The author discusses possible explanations for attendance patterns and suggests ways that the online option could be enhanced

Teachers as writers: a systematic review

This paper is a critical literature review of empirical work from 1990-2015 on teachers as writers. It interrogates the evidence on teachers’ attitudes to writing, their sense of themselves as writers and the potential impact of teacher writing on pedagogy or student outcomes in writing. The methodology was carried out in four stages. Firstly, educational databases keyword searches located 438 papers. Secondly, initial screening identified 159 for further scrutiny, 43 of which were found to specifically address teachers’ writing identities and practices. Thirdly, these sources were screened further using inclusion/exclusion criteria. Fourthly, the 22 papers judged to satisfy the criteria were subject to in-depth analysis and synthesis. The findings reveal that the evidence base in relation to teachers as writers is not strong, particularly with regard to the impact of teachers’ writing on student outcomes. The review indicates that teachers have narrow conceptions of what counts as writing and being a writer and that multiple tensions exist, relating to low self-confidence, negative writing histories, and the challenge of composing and enacting teacher and writer positions in school. However, initial training and professional development programmes do appear to afford opportunities for reformulation of attitudes and sense of self as writer

Who Owns the Soul of the Child?: An Essay on Religious Parenting Rights and the Enfranchisement of the Child

At common law, and (for most of the nation\u27s history) under state statutory regimes, the authority of the parent to direct the child\u27s upbringing was a matter of duty, not right, and chief among parental obligations was the duty to provide the child with a suitable education. It has long been a legal commonplace that at common law the parent had a sacred right to the custody of his or her child, that the parent\u27s right to control the upbringing of the child was almost absolute. But this reading of the law is sorely anachronistic, less history than advocacy on behalf of parental rights. What is deeply rooted in our nation\u27s history—and the custody case law of the nineteenth century and early twentieth century makes this abundantly clear—is the notion that the state only entrusts the parent with educational custody of the child, and does so only as long as the parent meets his or her duty to serve the best interests of the child. Indeed, it was the child who had an absolute right: the right to proper parental care, including the right to an education that would prepare the child for eventual enfranchisement from what Blackstone called the empire of the father. If by fundamental we designate rights with a deep historical pedigree, the right to parent free of state interference cannot be numbered among them. The Supreme Court\u27s seminal cases establishing a parent\u27s right to educate. Meyer and Pierce have been made to state broad claims about the fundamental nature of parental rights, but, in fact, they stand for a much more modest proposition: that the state does not have exclusive authority over the child\u27s education; and, more particularly, that the state cannot prohibit parents from teaching their children subject matter outside the scope of the state-mandated curriculum. Rhetoric aside, Meyer and Pierce are hardly a charter of fundamental parental rights. But that is what the Supreme Court made of these cases in Wisconsin v. Yoder. The idiosyncratic facts of Yoder encouraged the Supreme Court to abandon well established law governing the right of religious parenting and to formulate a harm standard ill-adapted to the existential intricacies of family disputes. Courts should look with skepticism at any authority that, by restricting the spectrum of available knowledge, fails to prepare the child for obligations beyond those of familial obedience. While a full treatment of these cases lies outside the scope of the article, this part suggests that courts should look with skepticism at any educational program—whether the program is imposed by the parent or by the state—that, by restricting the spectrum of available knowledge, fails to prepare the child for obligations beyond those of familial obedience. If the courts were to apply the principle that children may not be denied exposure to the full measure of intellectual incitement that should be the heart (and soul) of every young person\u27s education, they would more consistently, and correctly, sort out the competing claims of parents and public school officials to make educational choices on behalf of the child. The work of preparing the child to make free and independent choices is entrusted to the parent, and it is a challenging and somber task, for it means allowing children (in fact, it means helping children) to leave their homes and leave behind the ways of their parents. Or, at least, it means giving children the choice to do so. It is little wonder, then, that we would want to transform this sacred trust into a sacred right, a right that effectively allows parents to shield their children from choice and its attendant responsibilities. But the law of parent-child relations protects children from this sort of protection, ensuring that children receive a truly public education. Physically and intellectually transporting the child across the boundaries of home and community, a public education can bring its students a much needed respite from the ideological solipsism of the enclosed family. Of course, public education comes at a cost. It disrupts the intramural transmission of values from parent to child. It threatens to dismantle a familiar world by introducing the child to multiple sources of authority—and to the possibility that a choice must be made among them. Indeed, the open world of the public school should challenge the transmission of any closed set of values. Unless children are to live under a perpetual childhood of prescription, they must be exposed to the dust and heat of the race—intellectually, morally, spiritually. A public education is the engine by which children are exposed to the great sphere that is their world and legacy. It is their means of escape from, or free commitment to, the social group in which they were born. It is their best guarantee of an open future. The Yoder standard fails to protect the child from harms routinely addressed in cases involving only secular matters. Judicial non-intervention amounts to little more than a way of not dealing with such cases—or, at least, of not dealing with such cases until it is too late for the child. To honor its fiduciary obligation to the child, the court must be able to consider any practice that could affect the general welfare of the child and to insist upon an appropriate form of civil discourse when religious views diverge. Where exposure to intolerance is not in the best interests of the child, the welfare of the child requires that those responsible for their upbringing observe, or be made to observe, the boundaries of socially appropriate behavior. The duty to respect those with whom one disagrees is a civic obligation for which parents must prepare their children. It is the necessary concomitant of the parenting right. Religious belief should not absolve parents of this obligation, and disparagement born of religious conviction should not get a constitutional pass from judicial scrutiny

When Insiders Become Outsiders: Parental Objections to Public School Sex Education Programs

This Note argues that parents\u27 fundamental right to direct their children\u27s moral and educational upbringing includes the right to exempt their children from objectionable sex education programs in public schools. Schools usurp parents\u27 fundamental rights when they unilaterally introduce children to topics of human sexuality without parental notice or permission. Alleged violations of these rights merit strict scrutiny review from courts. When parents\u27 objections are confined to discrete, tangible events, parents are constitutionally entitled to exempt their children from objectionable activities. The efficacy of this constitutional relief is more limited, however, when parental objections are pervasive and unassociated with a particular aspect of the school\u27s program or curriculum

The Impact of Public Speaking and Hybrid Introductory Communication Courses on Student Perceptions of Homophily and Classroom Climate

This study examines whether public speaking and hybrid introductory communication courses contribute to whether students feel connected to one another as a result of taking the course. Results indicate that students develop stronger perceptions of homophily and connected classroom climate over time, and this growth is slightly larger in public speaking courses than in hybrid introductory communication courses. Attendance impacted the levels of perceived homophily and connected classroom climate at the end of the course. However, perceived homophily did not predict academic performance in either course, and perceptions of classroom connectedness only predicted the academic performance of students in the hybrid introduction to communication course

Higher Ground: A Hoosier Soldier\u27s Search for Religious Identity in the Korean War

This paper focuses on Private Joe Doe, a Hoosier soldier in the Korean War who struggled with the conflict between conservative Christian beliefs and modernity. The author reviewed 85 letters that Doe sent home to his mother, in addition to Private Doe’s mother’s memoirs and the evangelical literature that Doe encountered in his formative years. Although Doe had been socialized to believe that the church solved the most pressing problems, his experiences also underscored the power of modern science, New Deal programs, public education, and changing roles of women. This is a case study of a young Hoosier soldier’s search for religious identity