Ghassib's (2010) paper is an interesting historical and philosophical discussion on the topic of knowledge production and a productivist industrial model in science. As I see it from the point of view of education, a weakness of the paper relates to the lack of discussion of the notion of creativity in science. The title includes the word…

This decade's literature on families with children and adolescents can be broadly organized around the implications for youth of family statuses (e.g., family structure) and family processes (e.g., parenting). These overlapping bodies of research built on past work by emphasizing the dynamic nature of family life and the intersection of families…

This paper presents the author's critique on Xiaoming Xi's article, "How do we go about investigating test fairness?," which lays out a broad framework for studying fairness as comparable validity across groups within the population of interest. Xi proposes to develop a fairness argument that would identify and evaluate potential fairness-based…

Johanne Paradis' Keynote Article can be read as a concise critical review of the research that focuses on the sometimes strained relationship between bilingualism and specific language impairment (SLI). In my comments I will add some thoughts based on our own research on the learning of Dutch as a second language (L2) by children with SLI.

Humphry (this issue) deserves credit for drawing attention to the long-neglected fact that differences in item discrimination parameters are often due to empirical factors and not the product of random error components. In doing so, Humphry offers a psychometrically elegant, coherent, and practically important new model that is more flexible while…

This article presents the author's response to Sam McKegney's "Strategies for Ethical Engagement: An Open Letter Concerning Non-Native Scholars of Native Literatures." In his response to Sam's diagnosis of the malaise currently afflicting non-Aboriginal critics of this literature, the author attempts to consider the "cure" Sam offers (albeit…

Advocates of narrative research often contend that it is superior to nonnarrative research, both qualitative and quantitative, because they believe it is better able to represent multiple perspectives and foster multiple interpretations. The author of this comment article on Coulter and Smith (2009) draws on literary theory and an analysis of the…

In this essay, Hamilton responds to criticisms of his book "The Art of Theater" (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2007). Acknowledging that he expected that the central proposals in "The Art of Theater" would seem a little strange to philosophers, he reiterates his belief that the three general facts of any theatrical performance are its presentation, its…

As the authors stated early in their article (Machalek and Martin 2010), evolutionary ideas have been gaining traction in the work of a growing number of sociologists in recent years. Much of their thinking derives from work inspired by sociobiology. However, many sociologists are critical of and unreceptive to incorporating evolutionary biology…

In a recent paper, Anthony Bruton argued that correction receives too much attention and that the debate over it (which he calls "the Truscott debate") is "a rather tedious sterile academic debate" that has harmed the field. He dismissed the case against correction, based on arguments that uncorrected students do not improve, some general…

In the last decade, educational researchers and scholars have turned new attention to the theory and practice of community organizing as a method for addressing education injustices. While there are diverse traditions of community organizing work, by far the most influential model in US contexts is that of Saul Alinsky, whose "Rules for Radicals"…

In his commentary, Foster (2010) made arguments at 2 levels, offering a broad critique of statistical or methodological approaches in developmental psychology in general together with critical comments that applied only to our recent article (Dogan, Stockdale, Widaman, & Conger, 2010). Certain criticisms by Foster aimed at the field as a whole…

In recent years, communication education has been used as a means of improving the clinician-patient relationship and promoting health. The focus of these interventions has primarily centered on clinician training. An area that has received less focus, although equally important, is training patients to be good communicators. The purpose of the…

Behavioral scientists have struggled with units of measurement for as long as they have struggled with measurement itself. Psychology's sole attempt at an explicit unit of measurement--the Lexile Framework for Reading (Stenner, Burdick, Sanford, & Burdick, 2006)--has been and continues to be ignored by the psychometric "cognoscenti."…

This article presents Stephen Humphry's response to the commentaries for his article "The Role of the Unit in Physics and Psychometrics." The commentaries covered a range of important considerations and implications. Given that the author fully agrees with the majority of the content, attention will be confined mainly to points that call…