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This paper focuses on the authors' experiences teaching on Ohio University's Learning Network (OULN), which uses interactive television and real-time face-to-face interaction as a distance-education (DE) delivery tool. One of the authors is a sociology professor, and the other is her former student and an experienced OULN system operator. The transition to DE from a traditional, less technological approach presents numerous challenges as well as opportunities. This paper compares the semester-long progress of two different sociology courses that used the OULN. It presents an analysis of each class's strengths and weaknesses, along with qualitative data based on interviews with each class's students, as recorded in a diary that the authors kept throughout the semester on the progress of each class. One class experienced more success than the other, which presented numerous teaching challenges. The paper concludes by offering guidance for integrating traditional teaching methods, including group work, into DE environments.

This study concerns how intra-organizational networks affect the implementation of policies and practices in organizations. In particular, we attend to the role of the informal subgroup or clique in cultivating and distributing locally adapted and integrated knowledge, or know-how. We develop two hypotheses based on the importance of intra-organizational coordination for an organization's capacity for change. The first emphasizes the importance of distributing know-how evenly to potential recipient subgroups. The second emphasizes the importance of restricting know-how to flow from high know-how subgroups. We test our hypotheses with longitudinal network data in 21 schools, finding stronger support for the second hypothesis than the first. Our findings can help managers cultivate know-how flows to contribute to organizational change. The following are appended: (1) Technical Appendix; and (2) Multilevel Estimation of Main Models.

This working paper is one in a series of projects initiated by the Administration for Children and Families (ACF) to improve knowledge for child care researchers and policy makers about parental child care decision making. In this paper, the authors identify three distinct conceptual frameworks for understanding child care decisions--a rational consumer choice framework, a heuristics and biases framework, and a social network framework--and review the major assumptions, contributions, and possible limitations of each of these frameworks. They then discuss an integrated conceptual model, the accommodation model that draws from each of these frameworks. The first three frameworks come primarily from the fields of economics, psychology, and sociology, respectively. It is the authors' sense that most research about child care decision making has been informed by the theories, assumptions, and empirical methods of one or more of these frameworks, either explicitly or implicitly, and they provide some examples and elaborate the basic tenets of each framework. The integrative accommodation model was first presented by Marcia Meyers and Lucy Jordan (2006). They develop and elaborate this model more fully here with explicit attention to its relation to the rational consumer choice framework, the heuristics and biases framework, and the social network frameworks. These frameworks are presented as complementary, rather than mutually exclusive. For a process as complex as parental child care decisions, each can provide a different and useful lens through which to understand unique aspects of the factors, processes and outcomes of parental child care decisions. When considered together, they believe they may inform one another and the development of more integrative models, such as the accommodation model presented here. It is the authors' hope that researchers working primarily within one of the conceptual frameworks discussed here will benefit from learning about other frameworks. In some cases, this may simply suggest additional or new variables to consider when specifying a particular model, while still working from the same conceptual framework. In other cases, it may result in integrative approaches that address multiple dimensions of the decision making process--dimensions that may not be as obvious when working within a single framework. In the concluding section the authors discuss some of the issues and the implications for future research. A goal of this paper is to advance knowledge that can inform public policy efforts. Given that the Child Care Development Fund (CCDF) has an explicit goal of supporting parental choice for child care, it is critical that they expand and deepen everyone's knowledge about the processes through which parents make decisions and the consequences for the choices they make (Zaslow, Halle, Guzman, Lavelle, Keith, Berry, & Dent, 2006). The different perspectives offered by each of the three frameworks and the integrative accommodation model may help policy makers identify the policy and program levers that can prove important at different stages of the decision making process. (Contains 7 footnotes.)

Proceedings from the first three History and Philosophy of Science and Science Teaching Conferences are examined to identify the profile of papers in science content areas. Those papers with a chemistry education emphasis are investigated more closely. Results indicate that papers with physics content dominate. Chemistry and biology content were addressed at about the same frequency. The chemistry topics covered in the papers include air pressure, equilibrium, atomic theory, and periodicity. Student cognition and language in science are the least studied areas among those covered while sociology of chemistry and teacher cognition are examples of domains that have not been addressed. (DDR)

This paper offers a conceptual "map" of issues and approaches in immigration research and illustrates features of the map with the significant contributions of Latino Studies to immigration research. One axis of the map concerns the time line of various waves of immigration. Although research on immigrants and immigration processes was a foundation of American sociology, Latino immigrants were largely ignored until the 1960s. In 1964, two Mexican social scientists published their research on illegal Mexican immigrants and on the "bracero" (migrant worker) program. Since then, Latino scholarship has contributed to the history of Spanish-speaking groups in the United States; the history of regions heavily impacted by Latino immigration; and the development of two major conceptual models of ethnic relations in America--acculturation and internal colonialism. The other axis of the map concerns levels of analysis: micro-level factors that drive individual behavior versus structural perspectives that emphasize major economic or political forces driving migration. The map's "Blue Highways" consist of research themes in Latino scholarship such as the heterogeneity of Latino immigrants, immigrants' involvement in small businesses, impact of migration on sending communities in the underdeveloped world, female labor migrants, and poverty among U.S. Latino immigrants. "Unpaved roads" or research needs are also suggested such as links between micro and macro levels of analysis, the "brain drain" from Third World to First World countries, and the distinctive issues of refugees and exiles. (Contains 69 references.) (SV)

This report discusses evaluation and measurement of the quality of school teachers, emphasizing the problem of assessing competence, performance, and effectiveness through large-scale national sample surveys. Part 1 outlines types of issues and questions surrounding teacher quality that must be addressed, highlighting conventional and new approaches to teacher assessment. Part 2 provides an interpretive and critical review of the predominant approaches to assessing competence, performance, and effectiveness of teachers. Part 3 offers an alternative, sociological approach to assessment. This view presents employee and organizational assessment as social phenomena, suggesting that all evaluation is shaped by social context, is value-laden and purposeful, and is based on particular norms of appropriate behavior. In this view, the role of research should be to uncover viewpoints, interests, criteria, and values underlying and shaping any particular theory and assessment method in order to illuminate its strengths and limits. The goal of research should be to help develop a range of complementary methods representing a range of viewpoints. Part 4 draws out implications of these approaches for large-scale national survey assessments of teacher quality. Part 5 lists sources and examples of existing survey measures of teacher quality (self-assessment, and administrator and peer assessment). (Contains 58 references.) (SM)

This study investigated how academic norms, expectations and rules affect the experiences of graduate students, particularly in regards to reported academic misconduct at disciplinary and departmental levels. The study used a hierarchical linear analysis with data from a nationwide survey of 2,000 graduate students in chemistry, civil engineering, microbiology, and sociology. The survey asked participants about their doctoral programs, academic and social experiences in their departments, their mentors, and experiences with ethical issues and research misconduct. The analysis suggests that the most localized contexts in which graduate students live, the discipline and department, have a great impact on their exposure to misconduct, which appears to be a profound socialization experience. Rates of observed misconduct appear to be department and discipline specific, and alterable characteristics of departmental environments condition the exposure of graduate students to a wide array of different forms of behavior that conflict with the image of "the good scientist." Two appendixes present additional technical information about the survey. (Contains 36 references.) (JB)

The interrelatedness of the fields of nursing and sociology is discussed in this paper in an effort to encourage a sympathetic symbiosis between these two fields and between technical and general education. First, an overview is provided of recent trends in sociology, citing the influences of anthropologists and cultural historians on current views of U.S. society. Next, changes in the delivery of health services are examined, with focus on the implications of these changes for health services education. The need for health services personnel to understand and get along with people is underscored, and several key factors in this understanding are explored, including the importance of a patient's motivation, background, behavior, and involvement in the effective delivery of health services; organizational characteristics of hospitals, such as limited resources, a racial and cultural caste system, work pressures, and management policies; and interpersonal relationships with colleagues, patients, and patients' families. The paper then suggests that learning experiences on such sociological topics be developed and integrated into existing technical courses. After suggesting steps for the development of such modules, a series of concepts are discussed around which learning experiences could be developed. These include power and authority, values and the process of socialization, ethnicity, religion, the aged, language, and wellness. Eight learning activities related to these topics are appended. (AYC)

This paper addresses the problem of faculty members being confronted, in or out of the classroom, with students' personal reactions to some of the subject matter, especially sex and gender material, found in today's college sociology courses. The paper suggests some ways in which sociologists view student sharing of personal reactions and discusses how faculty can respond. Also discussed are the sociological courses and topics that are especially likely to spark student reactions and sharing behavior; some faculty reactions when such occurrences have taken place; ideas for coping with this behavior in the classroom; and observations from faculty on handling students' personal problems that come to them out of the classroom setting. It is suggested that faculty should think about the content of the materials that they will be presenting, the structural and organizational approaches they should use, and the goals of the course prior to content presentation in order to anticipate students' reactions and better meet their academic and personal needs. Contains 11 references. (GLR)

Literary sociology is a multifaceted process of analyzing texts. It moves beyond traditional literary criticism to incorporate such varied approaches as: appreciating literary schemata; textual analysis; seeking form, sound, and content regularities; examining the lasting values of the work; and contemplating the reader's own authentic life-world and experience. This paper seeks to provide a literary sociology about growing up Turkish in light of the contents of five works of recent fiction. The titles of the books (with English translation) are: "Korku'nun Bedeli" (The Price of Fear), Ibrahim Ulvi Yavuz, 1983; "Aile Savaslari" (Family Struggles), Bekir Yildiz, 1984; "Yalcin Nereye Kosuyor?..." (Where's Yalcin Running?), Emin Colasan, 1985; "Koca Ren" (Great Rhine), Fakir Baykurt, 1986; and "Geriye Donenler" (Those Who Go Back), Gulten Dayioglu, 1986. A central theme running throughout these works is the cultural conflicts of growing up Turkish. These conflicts take on three dimensions: a fundamental clash between adhering to traditional Islam or adopting modern Turkish behavior; the tension in the socio-political arena between ideologies of the right and left; and the struggle of Turkish guest workers in West Germany and other European countries between the rural Anatolian root values of the older generation and the European values of their children. According to the five books, the 1980s were turbulent times for Turkish youth. Economic fluctuations at home and abroad as well as changing dynamics in the relationships between today's Turkish parents and their children were among the sources of upheaval. Two charts and two figures supplement the text and an 11-item bibliography is included. (DB)