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This chapter documents an exchange between Leonard Savage, founder of the subjective probability approach to decision-making, and Karl Popper, advocate of the so-called propensity approach to probability, of which there is no knowledge in the literature on probability theory. Early in 1958, just after being informally tested by Daniel Ellsberg with a test of consistency in decision-making processes that originated the so-called Ellsberg Paradox, Savage was made aware that a similar argument had been put forward by Popper. Popper found it paradoxical that two apparently similar events should be attributed the same subjective probability even though evidence supporting judgment in one case was different than in the other case. On this ground, Popper rejected the subjective probability approach. Inspection of the Savage Papers archived at Yale University Library makes it possible to document Savage’s reaction to Popper, of which there is no evidence in his published writings. Savage wrote to Popper denying that his criticism had paradoxical content and a brief exchange followed. The chapter shows that while Savage was unconvinced by Popper’s argument he was not hostile to an axiomatically founded generalization of his theory.

This chapter is an exercise in speaking, letting individuals speak for themselves insofar as possible. As Marx famously put it, “they cannot represent themselves, they must be represented.” The “they” were peasants, potato farmers in 1840s France, and by extension peasants, workers, and other lower class groups, not to mention women and minorities who rarely made it into the historical record, and even more rarely in their own words. To give “voice to the voiceless,” as the now old new social historians of the 1960s and 1970s put it, I consciously include here numerous speakers, arranged in two sets of different voices: quotes in the text and endnotes to further document and amplify points. With this plethora of voices, the aim is not to complicate but to speak clearly, listen carefully, and engage respectfully. To multiply the speakers speaking is the single best way to make two primary points concerning what is most important about the Chief Illiniwek mascot controversy: that the sheer number of individuals speaking out is in itself significant, and that this community colloquy all comes down to identity – who we are, individual identity, communal identity.

This study examines how the distribution of opinions and social status combine in a collectively oriented task group to affect perceptions about the correctness of a final decision.

We relied on data from a controlled laboratory experiment to test a series of theoretically derived hypotheses.

The study shows that both the distribution of opinions and status affect perceptions of correctness. It also establishes that the effects of status on uncertainty are strongest when the group is initially evenly split about the correctness of an opinion, and that like the distribution of opinions, the effects of status on uncertainty are curvilinear.

Previous research shows that by integrating research on faction sizes with status characteristics theory (SCT), more accurate predictions of social influence are possible. Assumed therein is that people use information about the distribution of opinions and status to reduce uncertainty about correctness of a choice. The current study establishes this point empirically by examining the effects of the distribution of opinions and status in a four-person, collectively oriented task group. Future research should consider groups of different sizes and other moderating factors.

This study advances and elaborates upon previous research on social influence that integrates research on faction sizes with SCT.

During early childhood, Indians and non-Indians learn a definition of “Indianness” (Merskin, 1998, p. 159). Around 18 months of age, human beings begin to recognize themselves as distinct and separate from their mothers and others (Lacan, 1977). By age 6, most attributes of personality formation are already established (Biber, 1984). The content of the information that consciously and unconsciously reaches children is critical for the formation of a healthy, grounded sense of self and respect for others. Today, in the absence of personal interaction with an indigenous person, non-Indian perceptions inevitably come from other sources. These mental images, the “pictures in our heads” as Lippmann (1922/1961, p. 33) calls them, come from parents, teachers, textbooks, movies, television programs, cartoons, songs, commercials, art, and product logos. American Indian images, music, and names have, since the beginning of the 20th century, been incorporated into many American advertising campaigns and marketing efforts, demarcating and consuming Indian as exotic “Other” in the popular imagination (Merskin, 1998). Whereas a century ago sheet music covers and patent medicine bottles featured “coppery, feather-topped visage of the Indian” (Larson, 1937, p. 338), today's Land O’ Lake's butter boxes display a doe-eyed, buckskin-clad Indian “princess.” The fact that there never were Indian “princesses” (a European concept), and most Indians do not have the kind of European features and social “availability” that trade characters do, goes largely unquestioned. These stereotypes are pervasive, but not necessarily consistent, varying over time and place from the “artificially idealistic” (noble savage) to images of “mystical environmentalists or uneducated, alcoholic bingo-players confined to reservations” (Mihesuah, 1996, p. 9). Today, a trip down the grocery store aisle still reveals ice cream bars, beef jerky, corn meal, baking powder, malt liquor, butter, honey, sugar, sour cream, chewing tobacco packages, and a plethora of other products emblazoned with images of American Indians. To discern how labels on products and brand names reinforce long-held stereotypical beliefs, we must consider embedded ideological beliefs that perpetuate and reinforce this process.

This chapter discusses the development of evidence-informed practice in Australian education. It highlights growing system-wide aspirations and support for Australian teachers, school leaders, and jurisdictions to be engaging productively with research and evidence. Our aim here is to step back from these developments and consider them in the context of: (1) the nature and distinctive characteristics of the Australian school system; (2) what is known (and not known) about Australian educators' use of research and evidence; and (3) recent insights into enablers and barriers to research use in Australian schools. We argue that the development of evidence-informed practice in Australia needs to take careful account of the complex history and fatalist nature of the wider school system. This will make it possible to identify and work with the productive places that exist within a system of this kind. It is also important to recognize that research use in schools is a topic that has been investigated surprisingly little in Australia relative to other countries internationally. Current policy aspirations around evidence-informed approaches therefore need to be matched by greater efforts to understand the dynamics of research engagement in Australian schools and school systems.

In this chapter, we report findings from a three-year, survey- and interview-based study involving 538 families bringing up children with disabilities in Alberta, Canada. The focus of the study was on the everyday challenge and accomplishment of sustaining a routine of daily life. The families who participated in this study were diverse, yet they struggled with many of the same questions and challenges. Four over-arching and inter-related challenges emerged from our analysis of the interview data. These are difficulty balancing the competing needs and wants of their children; tension between wanting to protect and wanting to integrate their child and family into the community; conflict between earning and care giving activities; and, trouble accessing and navigating supports and services. This chapter includes a small sample of illustrative family stories. The study findings suggest that parents are striving but struggle to meet normative expectations, that is, to simultaneously do all they can to help their disabled child and create a routine that balances the needs and interests of all their children. One conclusion is that service systems and professionals can help and or hinder families as they strive to create and maintain a daily routine that is fitted to the local ecology and family resource-base, and congruent with their values and goals, and with the needs, interests, and competencies of family members.

While traumatic brain injury (TBI) became a special education category within the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) in 1990, societies have dealt with TBI far back in history. According to Granacher (2007), there have been writings about the examination of skulls from battlefields in which a hole was drilled into the skull using a trepanning tool apparently to provide some physical relief for the injured soldier. Interestingly, Levin, Benton, and Grossman (1982) stated that this tool continued to be part of Medieval and Renaissance surgeons' practice. At that time, the surgeons believed that trepanation was a vital procedure to improve the brain pulsations and hence the overall well-being of the person with a TBI; however, the medical effectiveness of this procedure did not materialize and it was replaced by brain surgery in the 20th century (Levin et al., 1982).

In 2001, the rape of “baby Tshepang” triggered a media frenzy in the small community of Louisvale, located in the Northern Cape of South Africa. The purpose of this chapter is to explore how gender discrimination and colonial discourse framed the way the rape of Tshepang was reported in print media.

From the newspaper archives of the Cape Town National Library, the University of Cape Town Library as well as newspaper articles found online, this chapter offers a reading of articles printed between 2001 and 2004. Patterns of troping were identified from the articles examined, and a number of themes were selected to be further examined using a gender perspective. Work already done by African feminist scholars on the grammar of rape was applied to deconstruct the ways in which the media presented this specific case. This chapter works with Sara Ahmed’s (2004) thoughts on shame, Linda Alcoff’s (1991) writing on Othering, Helen Moffett (2003a, 2003b, 2003c, 2006) and Jane Bennett’s (1997) work on gender and rape, as well as Achille Mbembe’s (2001) notion of facticity within colonial discourse.

This chapter argues that the ways in which the media understood this event were through well-worn stereotypes of Africa and women. An overarching theme of shame dominated how journalists represented the event. The label “A Town of Shame” stuck onto Louisvale through the mobilization of colonial and gender discourse. Quickly the town was known for its “barbaric” and “savage” existence; a town with no future and a disgrace to the country. Essentialist thinking about women was used to condemn and blame the mother of Tshepang, concretizing the myth that rape is always the fault of women.

Through relying on palatable stereotypes that create a self and Other, we move further away from engaging in the difficult questions of understanding rape. When rape becomes a spectacle, detached from the greater global socioeconomic realities, we deny our responsibilities of difficult and multilayered engagement.

In the present paper we explore the long-term influence of childhood neglect on violent behavior in the transition to adulthood. In particular, we test whether neglect is spuriously related to violence due to their common association with academic achievement, physical abuse, and general offending. We then ask whether neglect has an indirect effect on violence through its impact on parental attachment, alcohol use, emotional negativity, academic achievement, or staying in school.

We use two waves of data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Adolescent Health (Add Health) and employ both regression models and INDIRECT, a syntax file that allows for the testing of indirect effects using SPSS (Preacher & Hayes, 2008).

We find that the long-term association between childhood neglect and violence in the transition to adulthood is robust in models controlling for GPA, physical abuse, and other forms of offending. Neglect did not have an indirect effect on violence through attachment, negative emotionality, or academic achievement but did have indirect effects on violence through its association with staying in school and with alcohol use.

This set of analyses was exploratory in nature. Further research on neglect should be undertaken, using finely tuned measures and research questions. In addition, our findings imply that the association between neglect and later violent behavior may be intertwined with certain dynamics of physical abuse and alcohol use, which should be further studied.