In this article, Ellen Scully-Russ responds to St. Clair's analysis (EJ1072357) of the recent policy report from the Office of Career, Technical and Adult Education, "Making Skills Everyone's Business: A Call to Transform Adult Learning in the United States" (MSEB) (United States Department of Education [USDoE], 2015). While Scully-Russ…

Jill Chouinard, in her article "The Case for Participatory Evaluation in an Era of Accountability" (this issue, p. 237), may be re-iterating what has often been claimed and arguably is infused already in much of our theory and practice: the value of participatory approaches in some, perhaps many situations. She summarizes these claims eloquently…

Lindquist, Siegel, Quigley, and Barrett (2013) critiqued our recent meta-analysis that reported the effects of discrete emotions on outcomes, including cognition, judgment, physiology, behavior, and experience (Lench, Flores, & Bench, 2011). Lindquist et al. offered 2 major criticisms--we address both and consider the nature of emotion and…

Responds to the comments made by Newman et al., Tryon, and Teo on the current author's original article. In the original article on public skepticism toward psychology, the author delineated eight reasons why many laypersons are dubious of our field's scientific status. The author argued that although some of these sources (e.g., hindsight bias,…

In "The Case for Participatory Evaluation in an Era of Accountability" (this issue), Jill Chouinard highlights seven tensions between the participatory and technocratic approaches to evaluation. She suggests that there is a need to create opportunities for more participatory approaches to evaluation. In this essay, I suggest that the era of…

According to the philosophers of science Hempel and Oppenheim (1948), who were cited appropriately by Lilienfeld (see record 2011-12007-001) in his article, scientific explanations serve to answer "why" questions. Clarifying the logic of explanations in the sciences, they developed famously the notion that phenomena can be explained (using…

Not being taken seriously can be an occupational hazard for psychologists, but Lilienfeld's (February-March 2012) thought-provoking article (see record 2011-12007-001) provides a useful framework for thinking about (a) the forms that skepticism about psychological science can take, (b) the roots of such skepticism, and (c) how one might address or…

In this commentary, the authors contend that Persson's (2012a) paper, Cultural Variation and Dominance in a Globalised Knowledge-Economy: Towards a Culture-Sensitive Research Paradigm in the Science of Giftedness, lacks conciseness in defining the connections between the significance of cultural dominance and the definition of giftedness. However,…

In this article, the author will focus on Seymour's article titled, "And What is the Public Interest?" (Sarason, 1986). To the author, the core of the article is as follows: "And what is the public interest? At its phenomenological root it is a picture of a triad: the individual, the society, and the bases on which they give meaning to each other.…

This article presents the author's response to the reviews of his book, "The Good Life of Teaching: An Ethics of Professional Practice." He begins by highlighting some of the main concerns of his book. He then offers a brief response, doing his best to address the main criticisms of his argument and noting where the four reviewers (Charlene…

Persson (2012a) correctly raises the question of how cultural biases may impact giftedness research. He alludes to East-West differences in perceptions of creativity and ways that the collectivist-individualistic approaches may lead to differences in creativity perception. In this commentary, the authors discuss different approaches, and attempt…

In the original paper, it was argued that while there is an array of methods and methodologies available, their use is delimited by the culture of accountability that prevails in public sector institutions, a fact that is particularly problematic given the complexity and diversity of evaluation contexts today. This short rejoinder, to responses…

This commentary is part of an ongoing dialogue that began in the October 2011 special issue of "Performance Improvement"--Exploring a Universal Performance Model for HPT: Notes From the Field. The performance improvement/HPT (human performance technology) model represents a unifying process that helps accomplish successful change, create…

To view giftedness research in a global context is an important and desirable attempt. Roland S. Persson (2012a), in the target article entitled Cultural Variation and Dominance in a Globalised Knowledge-Economy: Towards a Cultural-Sensitive Research Paradigm in the Science of Giftedness, delivers thought-provoking views in the cultural influences…

In this commentary, the author finds that the target article, "Cultural Variation and Dominance in a Globalised Knowledge-Economy: Towards a Culture-Sensitive Research Paradigm in the Science of Giftedness", has three substantial failures: (1) an unproven, even incorrect assumption about the existence of bias in the "science of giftedness" due to…