The Tea Party and Social Movements

The recent rise of the Tea Party movement has added a new dimension to our discussion of domestic politics. The main question is: what effect will the Tea Party have on the political landscape? The best way to answer this question is to place the Tea Party in historical and theoretical context, in order to discuss what type of social movement the Tea Party is and what impact it might have. To this end, I will define and discuss the two major literatures in socialmovement theory: Issue Evolution and Political Process theory. This theoretical framework will provide the basis for a more concrete definition of the Tea Party movement itself. I will attemptto define the Tea Party movement based on its demographics, goals and political successes and will discuss it within the context of this theoretical framework. In addition, I will discuss four landmark social movements within our country’s history through the lens of the theoretical framework. I have found that successful movements rely on a combination of internal organizations and networks and external political opportunities to achieve and maintain nationalrelevance. In the end, I will come to the conclusion that the Tea Party will not likely have a major lasting impact on the political arena. It lacks key parts of the internal structure that makes some movements, such as the Civil Rights movement, so influential. But in the short term it will succeed in pushing the Republican Party towards a more fiscally conservative position.

THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN PARENTING STYLES, LEARNING AUTONOMY, AND SCHOLASTIC ACHIEVEMENT IN UNDERGRADUATE COLLEGE STUDENTS

Throughout the years, the role that parents play with regard to a child’s academic achievement has been the source of considerable research. The type of parenting style employed by parents, whether it is authoritarian, authoritative, or permissive, has and continues to be a major theme in these studies. One area of particular interest that has been overlooked in these studies, however, is the influence that parents may have on a student’s learning autonomy. Learning autonomy is the idea that a student has internal motivation to learn or achieve. The purpose of this study was to investigate therelationship among the three styles of parenting, learning autonomy, perceived parental autonomy support, and scholastic achievement in undergraduate college students. Sixty-one participants were recruited at a small liberal arts college in the northeastern United States to complete questionnaires, which measured perceived parental authority of the participants’ parents, perceived parental autonomy support, and students’ own learning autonomy. The participants were also asked to list their grade point average. The results revealed positive and negative correlations between many of the variables in the study;however, simple regression analyses did not yield any statistically significant relationships between parental authority, learning autonomy, perceived autonomy support, and scholastic achievement.

The Politics of Accountability and Teacher Preparation: A Case Study from Pennsylvania

In an effort to understand some of the ways that accountability-based reform efforts have influenced teacher education, this article details the politics of accountability in Pennsylvania that motivated sweeping changes in the policies governing teacher preparation in 2006. This case study provides a poignant example of the kind of complex accountability systems now being constructed across the United States in an effort to change teacher preparation. By analyzing primary documents including the legal statutes governing teacher preparation in Pennsylvania, correspondence from the Pennsylvania Department of Education, related newsletters, memos, reports, transcripts of meetings, and testimony before the Pennsylvania House of Representatives, the complex nature of the conflicts underlying the development and implementation of teacher education reform is brought into focus. The study's findings suggest that a deep and uncritical acceptance of accountability-based teacher education reform on the part of educational policy makers is likely to do more harm than good. The article concludes by outlining a framework for developing more intelligent measures of accountability that might preserve professional autonomy and judgment.

The Politics of Accountability and Teacher Preparation

In an effort to understand some of the ways that accountability-based reform efforts have influenced teacher education, this article details the politics of accountability in Pennsylvania that motivated sweeping changes in the policies governing teacher preparation in 2006. This case study provides a poignant example of the kind of complex accountability systems now being constructed across the United States in an effort to change teacher preparation. By analyzing primary documents including the legal statutes governing teacher preparation in Pennsylvania, correspondence from the Pennsylvania Department of Education, related newsletters, memos, reports, transcripts of meetings, and testimony before the Pennsylvania House of Representatives, the complex nature of the conflicts underlying the development and implementation of teacher education reform is brought into focus. The study's findings suggest that a deep and uncritical acceptance of accountability-based teacher education reform on the part of educational policy makers is likely to do more harm than good. The article concludes by outlining a framework for developing more intelligent measures of accountability that might preserve professional autonomy and judgment.

Processes Regulating the Initiation and Postejaculatory Resumption of Copulatory Behavior in Male Hamsters

Studies using factor analysis have helped describe the organization of copulatory behavior in male rodents. However, the focus of these studies on a few traditional measures may have limited their results. To test this possibility, 74 sexually-experienced male hamsters were observed as they copulated with stimulus females. The measures collected exceeded the conventional ones in number, variety and independence. The factor analysis of these data revealed a structure with seven factors collectively accounting for 80% of the variance. Most resembled the factors in previous reports, reinforcing the contributions that the processes suggested by these factors make to the organization,of male behavior. But several other factors were more novel, possibly reflecting the use of measures that were novel or revised for greater independence. The most interesting of these were two factors focusing on early steps in the progression leading to ejaculation. Importantly, both incorporated measures from each of the three copulatory series that were observed. Past work suggests that independent processes control the times required to initiate copulation and later resume it after an ejaculation. In contrast, these results suggest the existence of two processes, each of which contributes to both the initiation and reinitiation of copulation. (C) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.