Augustana College (Illinois)

About: Augustana College (Illinois) is a education organization based out in Rock Island, Illinois, United States. It is known for research contribution in the topics: Higher education & Population. The organization has 491 authors who have published 763 publications receiving 14274 citations. The organization is also known as: Augustana College and Theological Seminary.

The Struggle to Be Seen: Social Movements and the Public Sphere in Brazil

Abstract: This paper analyzes how community movement activity in three popular neighborhoods in Belem, Brazil, shaped the dynamics of contention in the public sphere. Popular social forces, elite actors, and the state mutually influence each other across three moments of public interaction: it clarifying popular discourse, it the struggle to be seen, and routine politics. The article reverses the usual picture in movement research, which emphasizes movements as organizational outcomes to be explained, and instead builds on a body of research that explores how movements can contribute to broader processes of political change.

The Selection and Preparation of Cooperating Teachers in Music Education

Abstract: The purpose of this study is to describe the current process of selecting cooperating teachers and their preparation for this role in music teacher education throughout the state of Illinois to improve future practices and policies. Coordinators of student teaching and music education professors (N = 19) were surveyed regarding their school's selection and preparation practices. Findings include a reliance on the personal and professional relationships between K–12 and collegiate music educators when selecting music cooperating teachers rather than on the recommendation of school principals (p = .003) as reported throughout the general education literature. Preparation activities are limited to the use of handbooks of student teaching, one-on-one conferences between cooperating teachers and college or university supervisors, and an occasional class or workshop. Finally, current selection practices based on previous knowledge of cooperating teacher candidates may in fact decrease the need for preparation.

Intra-Party Political Debates and Issue Learning.

Abstract: This study examined issue learning outcomes in three intra‐party political debates during the 1984 campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination. The results indicated that intra‐party political debates produce significant viewer learning (1) about the issue positions of each participating candidate, (2) about most issues, and (3) among all categories of viewers. In addition, the study found that intra‐party political debates produce distinct outcomes, including: variation in learning between debates about candidate positions on particular issues; significant increases in learning about the positions of the Democratic candidates on the part of Democratic, Republican, and nonaffiliated viewers; and a negative effect on viewer knowledge about nonparticipating incumbent Ronald Reagan's positions on the issues.

Thick Aesthetic Concepts

Abstract: The term 'thick concept' was introduced into philosophical discourse by Bernard Williams in Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy, in the context of a discussion of the fact-value distinction.1 He was interested in the extent to which this distinction is found in the linguistic data that drive a certain kind of moral theorist, rather than simply being imposed upon the data by his interpretation. What Williams had in mind were such concepts as courage, brutality, and gratitude, which "seem to express a union of fact and value. The way these notions are applied is determined by what the world is like (for instance, by how someone has behaved), and yet, at the same time, their application usually involves a certain valuation of the situation, of persons or actions."2 To call a woman brave or courageous is to characterize herher character, actions, dispositions, or demeanorin a certain way and to regard her as admirable or praiseworthy on that basis. To say that she is kind is also to hold her up as worthy of praise or admiration, but for quite different reasons, while calling her foolhardy may be disparaging her behavior on grounds not wholly dissimilar to those that would excite admiration as bravery. The terms that express these concepts, according to Williams, "certainly do not lay bare the fact-value distinction. Rather, the theorist who wants to defend the distinction has to interpret the workings of these terms, and he does so by treating them as a conjunction of a factual and an evaluative element, which can in principle be separated from one another."3 Williams refers in a general way to the work of R. M. Hare as paradigmatic of this kind of treatment. However, in his earlier writings (before Moral Thinking of 1981) Hare was chiefly concerned, not with uses of thick ethical terms (which he called "secondarily evaluative terms"),4 but wi h uses of more general, or thin, ethical terms like 'good,' 'right,' 'wrong,' and 'ought.' It was in connection with these that he first argued that heir use in a given context has both a descriptive an an evaluative meaning, which nevertheless can in principle always be distinguished. In an essay on "Descriptivism" he considers the use of the erm 'good' in the locution 'good wine.' Somee who says that Colombey-les-deux-eglises vintag 1972 is a good wine is doing so because it has a certain taste, bouquet, body, and so forth. However, the fact that there is not a name for the precise complex of descriptive qualities that makes it a good wine is no reason to suppose that the descriptive meaning of the term 'good wine' cannot be isolated. We can invent a word and teach anybody to recognize the taste denoted by the word. Hare believes that we could do this "whether or not he was himself disposed to think that these liquid tasted good, or that, if they were wines, they were good wines. He could, that is to say, learn the meaning of [the invented name] quite independently of his own estimation of the merit of wines having that taste."5 This strategy, Hare claims, works also "when, as in most moral and aesthetic cases, there is no one word which has just the descriptive meaning that we want, but a multitud of possible ways of describing, in greater r lesser detail, the sort of thing we have in mind." "It is," he continues, "very hard to say what it is about a particular picture which makes us call it a good one; but nevertheless what makes us call it a good one is a series of describable characteristics combined in just this way."6 In later writings, Hare explicitly considers the s rategy in relation to the more specific, substantive, or thick ethical concepts like cruel and rude.

How Does It Feel to Be Outperformed by a “Good Winner”? Prize Sharing and Self-Deprecating as Appeasement Strategies

Abstract: Outperformers sometimes attempt to appease those whom they have outperformed, motivated by concerns about outperformed persons' negative reactions. In this article, two experiments examined the effects of two different appeasement strategies—offering to share the winning prize or self-deprecating—upon outperformed participants. In both studies, participants competed against a confederate on a verbal competition that was rigged so that the confederate always won. After winning, the confederate either (a) offered to share the winning prize, (b) made a self-deprecating comment, (c) said and did nothing (Study 1 control), or (d) made an innocuous comment (Study 2 control). The prize-sharing strategy led participants to report liking the winner more and viewing the winner more positively. However, prize sharing also caused participants to feel less pleased with their own performances. The self-deprecation strategy failed to increase liking, and it caused participants to attribute the winner's performance less ...