While LGBTQ people may no longer need be considered the "invisible minority," LGBTQ books are often taken to be positive or affirmative based on their mere inclusion of gay people as characters. The authors believe the catalog of LGBTQ texts must continue to increase in both quantity and quality and that teachers must explicitly engage students in…

Reviews the historical context of core journal lists, current uses in collection assessment, and existing methodologies for creating lists. Outlines two next generation core list projects developing new methodologies and integrating novel information/data sources to improve precision: a national-level core psychology list and the other a local…

In the context of increased expectations for accountability and growing controversy surrounding sabbatical leave programs, it is important to address seemingly simple questions of who is or should be awarded a sabbatical and what the rationale is for the award. The study attempted to offer some insight on these issues by examining the factors that…

The study of institutional myths has been central to organizational sociology, cultural sociology, and the sociology of education for 30 years. This article examines how the myth concept has been used and develops neglected possibilities by asking: What happens when myths become incarnate, and how does this occur? In other words, what happens when…

The purpose of this article is to assert that there are classic African American children's books and to identify a sampling of them. The author presents multiple definitions of the term classic based on the responses of children's literature experts and relevant scholarship. Next, the manner in which data were collected and analyzed in regard to…

Elite public schools must use some method of selecting their students. Given the desirability of this scarce resource, these methods are closely scrutinized. Demographic and other changes in the school districts may make unstable procedures that were deemed successful at one point. This "recurring problem" is the subject of this article,…

The present article focuses on the choices teachers make when teaching Islamic religious education (IRE) in the town of Kisumu, Kenya. The data were collected through interviews with IRE teachers and participant observations in schools that offered IRE during several fieldwork sessions in the period 2003-2006. The fieldwork revealed that the…

After 100 years of discussion, response bias remains a controversial topic in psychological measurement. The use of bias indicators in applied assessment is predicated on the assumptions that (a) response bias suppresses or moderates the criterion-related validity of substantive psychological indicators and (b) bias indicators are capable of…

Teacher quality is the most crucial component in promoting student learning. For all the controversy about No Child Left Behind, one underlying emphasis of the federal law that is irrefutable is the importance placed on teacher quality. Therefore, a school organization committed to excellence must recruit and select outstanding teachers. The Obama…

In "Performance Incentives in Texas: Why Schools Chose Not to Participate"--a paper presented at the National Center on Performance Incentives research to policy conference in February--Jessica Lewis and Matthew Springer of Vanderbilt University examine why some Texas public schools declined to participate in the Texas Educator…

Psychologists have long been intrigued with the rationales that underlie our decisions. Similarly, the concept of conditioned reinforcement has a venerable history, particularly in accounting for behavior not obviously maintained by primary reinforcers. The studies of choice and of conditioned reinforcement have often developed in lockstep. Many…

In this article, the author presents a list of science books that will foster students' interest in science. Some books were suggested by scientists, science educators, and former students. Some came from an analogous list for science journalists compiled by Boyce Rensberger, director of the Knight Science Journalism Fellowship at MIT. Some are…

This article presents an excerpt of Library Journal's (LJ's) Movers & Shakers ideas on how to ensure a vital library for the future. Several identify a disconnect between what librarians and libraries do and what users think they do. Mending this gap, they say, would transform library recruitment and library support. While specific insights on…

Previous research with the radial maze has found evidence that rats can remember both places that they have already been (retrospective coding) and places they have yet to visit (prospective coding; Cook, R. G., Brown, M. F., & Riley, D. A. (1985). Flexible memory processing by rats: Use of prospective and retrospective information in the radial…

Universities and other institutions of higher education in Nigeria see themselves as liberal and open-minded. They support social movements that encourage principles of democracy and social justice, yet their mode of governance is male dominated and patriarchal. This study, therefore, identified the causes of gender inequality in academia and the…