Perceptions of Doctoral Graduates on the Usefulness of Written Reflections as an Instructional Strategy

One of the goals of the Ed.D. in Leadership and Professional Practice at Trevecca Nazarene University is for candidates to be reflective practitioners. Since the inception of the program in 1999, written reflections as an instructional strategy has been encouraged by the administration and used by several professors. This focus is supported by the conceptual framework that informs all courses and programs in the School of Education and includes the national standards adopted by INTASC (Interstate New Teacher Assessment and Support Consortium) which calls for teacher education candidates to be reflective practitioners who plan, implement, and evaluate effectively. This standard is applied to all programs, including those at the master’s and doctoral levels. Research by Ballantyne and Packer (1995) in Studies in Continuing Education reported that the analysis of journal entries by 13 students enrolled in education doctoral programs confirmed the usefulness of journals in reflecting on and connecting academic learning and experience

Algebraicity of the Appell-Lauricella and Horn hypergeometric functions

We extend Schwarz' list of irreducible algebraic Gauss functions to the four classes of Appell-Lauricella functions in several variables and the 14 complete Horn functions in two variables. This gives an example of a family of functions such that for any number of variables there are infinitely many algebraic functions, namely the Lauricella $F_C$ functions.Comment: 24 pages, 6 tables, 2 figure

Critical criticism’s critique: 13 theses, or, it is all rubbish

Book synopsis: Well this is it: the end, last gasp, final straw; in short, the concluding dark volume in a series of books some idiot called ‘critical inventions.’ Let us be like wry Oscar Wilde, said the idiot, and dream of the critic as artist, or at least as someone else, as someone other than who we had thought he was, or been taught he was. Let us, continued the idiot, set the critical dogs off the leash and see what they come back with. And here they are: no less than twenty-four press-ganged souls all huddled together for warmth; some are critics, some are poets, and some are critic-poets; among them such as Steven Connor, Jonathan Dollimore, Ewan Fernie, Mark Ford, Kevin Hart, Geoffrey Hartman, Esther Leslie, Willy Maley, and Michael Simmons Roberts. … So, twenty-four voices, twenty-four shots in the dark, or maybe shots at the dark, or possibly the head, or even the foot. But whatever, each is a shot at pushing the battered perambulator of dear old criticism so far and so fast that someone somewhere – whether in anger, derision, or pain – might just cry ‘Crritic!,’ that curse of all curses, the best of all possible anathema. But maybe, just maybe, the exclamation ‘Crritic!’ will here double as a cri de coeur, or howl of self-loathing, or scream of delight, or laugh in the night, or just a smashed-up and beaten old prayer. We shall see

Prediction of academic success of Bouve-Boston School.

Thesis (M.Ed.)--Boston Universit

A classification of the irreducible algebraic A-hypergeometric functions associated to planar point configurations

We consider A-hypergeometric functions associated to normal sets in the plane. We give a classification of all point configurations for which there exists a parameter vector such that the associated hypergeometric function is algebraic. In particular, we show that there are no irreducible algebraic functions if the number of boundary points is sufficiently large and A is not a pyramid.Comment: 24 pages, 8 tables, 13 figure

Young Adult Service in the State, Regional or County System

published or submitted for publicatio

Tempting food words activate eating simulations

This study shows that tempting food words activate simulations of eating the food, including simulations of the taste and texture of the food, simulations of eating situations, and simulations of hedonic enjoyment. In a feature listing task, participants generated features that are typically true of four tempting foods (e.g., chips) and four neutral foods (e.g., rice). The resulting features were coded as features of eating simulations if they referred to the taste, texture, and temperature of the food (e.g., “crunchy”; “sticky”), to situations of eating the food (e.g., “movie”; “good for Wok dishes”), and to the hedonic experience when eating the food (e.g., “tasty”). Based on the grounded cognition perspective, it was predicted that tempting foods are more likely to be represented in terms of actually eating them, so that participants would list more features referring to eating simulations for tempting than for neutral foods. Confirming this hypothesis, results showed that eating simulation features constituted 53% of the features for tempting food, and 26% of the features for neutral food. Visual features, in contrast, were mentioned more often for neutral foods (45%) than for tempting foods (19%). Exploratory analyses revealed that the proportion of eating simulation features for tempting foods was positively correlated with perceived attractiveness of the foods, and negatively with participants’ dieting concerns, suggesting that eating simulations may depend on individuals’ goals with regard to eating. These findings are discussed with regard to their implications for understanding the processes guiding eating behavior, and for interventions designed to reduce the consumption of attractive, unhealthy food