Promises and Challenges of Teaching Statistical Reasoning to Journalism Undergraduates: Twin Surveys of Department Heads, 1997 and 2008

This research is dedicated to the memory of Victor Cohn, former science reporter for the Washington Post and often considered the dean of science writers, who collaborated on the first wave of the survey. The 1997 survey was supported by a grant from the American Statistical Association and the 2008 survey by a grant from the Communication graduate program at Marquette University. Special thanks to research assistants Kathryn Zabriskie and Gongke Li for their valuable help in the survey. The analyses and conclusions are solely those of the authors

Chair Support, Faculty Entrepreneurship, and the Teaching of Statistical Reasoning to Journalism Undergraduates in the United States

Statistical reasoning is not the same as doing calculations. Instead, it involves cognitive skills such as the ability to think critically and systematically with data, skills important for everyday news work and essential for the era of data journalism. Twin surveys of the chairs of undergraduate journalism programs in the United States, conducted 11 years apart, revealed that those who perceived benefits from statistical reasoning instruction were more likely to reward entrepreneurship (faculty attempts to integrate this instruction into their classes), but with slow gains over time in the fairly small number of such faculty. Being consistent with university goals in statistical reasoning instruction appeared to motivate chairs’ reward decisions in both waves. Increasingly, they took into account what they saw as the general value of statistical reasoning for their students and the competitive edge it could give them in the journalism job market. Perceived constraints to teaching this content had no apparent overall impact on reward decisions

Future work selves : how salient hoped-for identities motivate proactive career behaviors

The term future work self refers to an individual's representation of himself or herself in the future that reflects his or her hopes and aspirations in relation to work. The clearer and more accessible this representation, the more salient the future work self. An initial study with 2 samples (N = 397; N = 103) showed that future work self salience was distinct from established career concepts and positively related to individuals' proactive career behavior. A follow-up longitudinal analysis, Study 2 (N = 53), demonstrated that future work self salience had a lagged effect on proactive career behavior. In Study 3 (N = 233), we considered the role of elaboration, a further attribute of a future work self, and showed that elaboration motivated proactive career behavior only when future work self salience was also high. Together the studies suggest the power of future work selves as a motivational resource for proactive career behavior. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved

Introduction: The Challenge of Risk Communication in a Democratic Society

The symposium editors review key issues concerning the relationship between risk communication and public participation

Statistical Reasoning in Journalism Education

Surveys of journalism department heads in 1997 and 2008 showed general support for the need for journalism students to reason with statistical information. Stronger support was associated, in particular, with the perception that this cognitive skill would give students an advantage in the journalism job market. However, many chairs also perceived constraints to learning, such as student inability and/or unwillingness to focus on this material and the difficulty most of their faculty would have teaching it. Some of these concerns may be more perceptual than actual

The Transformation of a Low Performing Middle School Into a High Performing Middle School: An Auotethnography

Federal and state mandates to improve student achievement for all students necessitate change in the way schools operate and are run. The role of the principal has changed and requires different skills to succeed in the 21st century. However, there are few studes that focues on revealing the perspective of a principal who applied a change theory in a school setting and positively transformed a low performing school into a high performing school. The purpose of this qualitative autoethnography was to study a principal\u27s leadership in a middle school culture as the principal attempted to transform the school from 2005-2008.The leadership framework for the study was the Four Dimensions of Principal Leadership (Green, 2010) and the pratices, processes, and procedures embedded within the dimensions used to transform the low performing school into a high performing school. A document/artifact analysis was conducted to reveal leadership practices, processes, and procedures the principal used over time. The results of the document analysis indictaed the principal utilized knowledge of the Four Dimensions of Principal Leadership and identiied nineteen major themes that suround the four dimensions and eight practices that include leadership of the principal, collaboration of the faculty and staff, having high expectations for all students, structuring the school ina nurturing manner, using data to make instructional decisions, aligning the curriculum and using appropriate student interventions, implementing a focused professional development plan for all personnel, and engaging the parent and the community in the teaching and learning process. Analysis of data sources indicated that Red Middle School was transformed because the principal changed waht was taught, how it was taught, and what was expected of students.The culture of the school evolved through a process of implementing the Nurturing Schools Inventory (Green, 2010) which included building relationships with the students, community, staff, and the district. The implications of this study can assist aspiring principals in understanding the complex nature of implementing an effective change model to transform a school in the 21st century