This article introduces Q methodology, an idea-sorting activity that can help Extension improve outreach and education on new and contentious issues. Q methodology is a helpful tool when Extension professionals are confronted with controversial or complex resource management challenges. Through the analysis of a simple card-sorting exercise,…

Although many researchers have discussed the historical relationship between the Grounded Theory methodology and Symbolic Interactionism, they have not clearly articulated the congruency of their salient concepts and assumptions. The purpose of this paper is to provide a thorough discussion of this congruency. A hypothetical example about smoking…

The metaphor of "monoculture on the intellectual landscape" is used to analyse the effects of large-scale research management regimes. The metaphor of "monoculture on the intellectual landscape", derived from Shiva's "monocultures of the mind", is developed and illustrated with respect to gender and ethnicity. The…

We investigated curricular conditions and educational practices that influenced the development of life-long learning orientations among 405 undergraduate students. Results suggest that growth in life-long learning orientations was facilitated by instruction that included opportunities for reflection, active learning, and perspective-taking and…

Engaged scholarship represents one way for making our research relevant to organizational practitioners by bridging the gap between theory and practice. Engaged scholarship is viewed as a form of collaborative inquiry between academics and practitioners that leverages their different perspectives to generate useful organizational knowledge. We…

In this article, we report a research project on web-based case instruction that was developed and implemented to allow prospective early childhood teachers to be exposed to various dilemmas faced by practicing teachers. The goal of this project was to design an instructional tool and method that could help prospective teachers expand their notion…

Theorists and researchers have developed abstract divisions in the life span to mark significant stages. To explore the conceptual labels individuals use to make divisions in their life spans, 92 adults, aged 20 to 55 years, marked significant milestones on a lifeline. Participants also completed a demographic questionnaire. Data on the labels…

Four experiments studied 4- to 6-year-old children's understanding of inferential reasoning as a source of knowledge. To assess understanding that knowledge of relevant premises leads to knowledge of the conclusion, children had to judge the knowledge of another person, who was presented to the child as being aware of two premises. (Author/BN)

Studies investigated the development of children's ability to differentiate what they see from what they know in the context of conceptual perspective taking. Two developmental levels accounted for children's performance when they were asked about a naive observer's knowledge of the identity of objects. Perspective awareness training improved…

Children, ages three, five, and seven, were asked to evaluate a series of children's drawings for their own likes and dislikes and for the likes and dislikes they imagined for individuals older and younger than themselves. Results suggest that children as young as three can judge drawings for others differently from the way they judge them for…

Outlines how levels of the interpretation of reality and categories of a naive theory of action that constitute these levels are differentiated and coordinated in a specific developmental sequence. Subsumed within this theoretical framework are the distinction between action on physical objects and social interaction and the distinction between…

Comparison of the performance of 25 subjects with autism and 25 nonautistic subjects with mental retardation found all subjects able to comprehend the personal pronouns "I,""you," and "me." However, autistic subjects were less likely to employ the pronoun "me" in a visual perspective-taking task and to say "you" to refer to the experimenter.…

Study separated two components of drawing: perspective taking and graphic skill. Results suggest that failures of young children to draw occlusion have less to do with graphic skill than was previously thought. Results further suggest that young children have a more general difficulty selecting one perspective and maintaining it over time.…

Examines the issue of developmental consistencies between and within levels of moral reasoning, altruism, and perspective coordination. The relative contributions of perspective coordination and moral reasoning to altruistic behavior were examined in fifth grade. (Author/RH)

This study compared children (n=68) with either autism or general delay on false belief tasks and tasks to test for an understanding of interpretive diversity. Findings partially support the view that tasks of understanding interpretive diversity are more difficult than false belief tasks. Between-group differences in the consistency and quality…