Engagement,passivity and detachment: 16‐year‐old students’ conceptions of politics and the relationship between people and politics

While there is a wealth of literature on young people and politics, most studies have examined their interest, trust and participation in politics as well as their attitudes toward and knowledge about formal politics. Little is known, however, about young people and the concept of politics. This article investigates 16‐year‐old students’ perceptions of the concept of politics and their conceptions of the relationship between people and politics. This knowledge is valuable for citizenship and social studies education, as an increasingly polarised political climate poses challenges to democratic politics and, consequently, to young people's political engagement and participation. In this study, semi‐structured interviews were conducted with nine students at five Norwegian upper secondary schools. The students varied in their interest and involvement in politics. A main finding is that the students perceived politics as processes related to shaping society, as decisions and activities related to ruling a country, and as the activities of discussion and debate. Three conceptions of the relationship between people and politics are presented: engagement, passivity, and detachment. In addition, while the 16‐year‐olds participated in political discussions privately and at school, they stated that they did not participate in political discussions in social media. Implications for citizenship and social studies education include the need to strengthen the bottom‐up perspective on politics and focus on in‐depth understanding of political processes and tools and methods of social‐scientific enquiry, as well as providing students with opportunities for and practice with handling opposition in political discussions online.     

Considering the ethical implications of social media in social work education

The ethical implications of the explosion of social media outlets for social work education are explored in this paper. Given that social work education has a dual focus, both of educating students and of socializing practitioners into the profession, the issue of the blurring between what is social and what is professional gains particular salience for both educators and students. Recommendations for educators to ethically address the need to maintain a consistent professional presence online and to avoid potentially harmful dual relationships with students are presented. These recommendations include: abstain from using social media or use only a static professional profile; use only university protected sites to promote collaboration with students in the classroom including all students to avoid any appearance of impropriety; use social media with the utmost discretion mindful of all the risks by creating a very select circle of friends, separating one’s personal site from one’s professional site; develop policies which include not friending any individual student or any current student and inform students about the policies.     

Child Readers and the Worlds of the Picture Book

Children as readers of picture books and the ways they respond to, and make meaning from, such texts are the focus of this article, which reports on a small-scale study undertaken in Norway and Wales, UK. The theoretical framing of the research draws on concepts of the multimodal ensemble in picture books and of the reading event as part of a social practice. The research design was developed from the team’s analysis of two texts, Pappa by Svein Nyhus (1998) and What does Daddy Do? by Rachel Bright (2009). Twenty-four children, who were 7 and 8 years old, took part in the study. This was built around two reading events for each book, staged as an immediate response and as a guided response. The data subsequently collected were analysed according to three overarching organisational principles, as book world, real world and play world. For both Daddy and Pappa, the first reading event showed the children’s responses were mainly directed towards exploring the book world. On the second reading event, references to the real world predominated for Daddy, while for Pappa the book world was again dominant. Across both reading events and for both books, the playworld revealed those occasions when the children expanded the meaning of the story, demonstrating an inventive ability to play with the text. Overall, the children’s responses moved fluidly across the three worlds, showing them to be energetically making connections between the reading, their experience of books and their own lives.     

Conditions affecting the usefulness of pre- and post-tests for assessment purposes

Interest in measuring and evaluating student learning in higher education is growing. There are many tools available to assess student learning. However, the use of such tools may be more or less appropriate under various conditions. This study provides some evidence related to the appropriate use of pre/post‐tests. The question of whether graded tests elicit a higher level of performance (better representation of actual learning gains) than ungraded post‐tests is examined. We examine whether the difficulty level of the questions asked (knowledge/comprehension vs. analysis/application) affects this difference. We test whether the student’s level in the degree programme affects this difference. Results indicate that post‐tests may not demonstrate the full level of student mastery of learning objectives and that both the difficulty level of the questions asked and the level of students in their degree programme affect the difference between graded and ungraded assessments. Some of these differences may be due to causes other than grades on the assessments. Students may have benefited from the post‐test, as a review of the material, or from additional studying between the post‐test and the final examination. Results also indicate that pre‐tests can be useful in identifying appropriate changes in course materials over time.     

Prominent Messages in Television Drama Switched at Birth Promote Attitude Change Toward Deafness

The study at hand employed a pre- versus posttest experimental design to test the effects of television drama Switched at Birth on viewers’ attitudes toward deafness. This program tells the story of two teenage girls (one of whom is deaf) and their struggles to relate to their peers and families after discovering they were switched as newborns. Two hundred eleven female adults completed pre- and postexposure measures utilizing Cooper, Rose, and Mason's (2004 Cooper , A. , Rose , J. , &; Mason , O. ( 2004 ). Measuring the attitudes of human service professionals toward deafness . American Annals of the Deaf , 148 , 385 – 389 .[Crossref], [PubMed], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]) Attitudes to Deafness measure, the items of which were categorized according to thematic dimensions. After exposure to one of three episodes, viewers’ attitudes toward deafness significantly improved overall, although significant differences in attitude changes varied by episodes and dimensions. The three thematic dimensions that were most strongly represented in the program (social interaction, deafness as a handicap, and language issues) appeared to show the strongest attitude change. Positive attitude changes were observed on social interaction and deafness as handicap dimensions, which was consistent with program content depicting positive deaf-hearing friendships and capable deaf characters. However, attitudes on the language issues dimension showed a negative shift, possibly due to the way that deaf characters communicated with hearing characters onscreen.     

Social Media,Subjectivity, and Surveillance: Moving on From Occupy,the Rise of Live Streaming Video

This article seeks to critically examine the practical application of live streaming video at use in contemporary resistance movements, particularly the work of CUTV during the Quebec Student Strike of 2012. With a brief comparison to the use of social media—and even live streaming—in the Occupy movement, this article demonstrates the differences, and sophistication, of live streaming video in the Quebec Spring. Specifically, this article seeks to understand the ways in which political actors and digital technologies form unique assemblages (in the Deleuzian sense), which can both operate as mechanisms of power as surveillance technologies for police forces or, if used carefully and critically, can open up nodes of counter-power, disrupting state surveillance, surveilling the police themselves, and providing the space for the construction of subjectivity on the part of political actors in the streets.     

Developing Critical Thinking Skills For Information Seeking Success

Critical thinking skills are required to successfully navigate the overwhelming amount of information sources available today. To address the challenge of developing critical thinking skills, this empirical study examines the effectiveness of exercises in developing thinking skills in college freshmen students. The workbook exercises were designed to develop specific skills related to academics and critical thinking. Two groups of college freshmen participated in the study: one group was given the workbook, the other group was not. At the end of the semester, both groups completed a critical thinking assessment test. A comparison of the test scores confirms the effectiveness of these exercises on improving the critical thinking skills of college freshmen.     

Examining the validity of office discipline referrals as an indicator of student behavior problems

Office discipline referral (ODR) data are increasingly used to monitor student behavior problems and the impact of interventions, but there has been limited research examining their validity. The current study examined the concordance of ODRs with teacher ratings of student behavior using data on 8,645 children in 335 classrooms at 21 elementary schools. The results of a variety of analyses (e.g., correlations, multivariate analysis of variance, receiver operating characteristics) suggested that ODRs are moderately valid and reliable. Multilevel analyses revealed that teacher ratings of disruptive behaviors were significantly associated with ODRs, even after controlling for other student‐, classroom‐, and school‐level factors. These findings suggest that ODRs are moderately valid indicators of student behavior problems and may be an efficient source of information for use in school‐based research and data‐based decision‐making. © 2011 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

A rapid evidence‐based service by librarians provided information to answer primary care clinical questions

Background: A librarian consultation service was offered to 88 primary care clinicians during office hours. This included a streamlined evidence‐based process to answer questions in fewer than 20 min. This included a contact centre accessed through a Web‐based platform and using hand‐held devices and computers with Web access. Librarians were given technical training in evidence‐based medicine, including how to summarise evidence. Objectives: To describe the process and lessons learned from developing and operating a rapid response librarian consultation service for primary care clinicians. Methods: Evaluation included librarian interviews and a clinician exit satisfaction survey. Results: Clinicians were positive about its impact on their clinical practice and decision making. The project revealed some important ‘lessons learned’ in the clinical use of hand‐held devices, knowledge translation and training for clinicians and librarians. Conclusions: The Just‐in‐Time Librarian Consultation Service showed that it was possible to provide evidence‐based answers to clinical questions in 15 min or less. The project overcame a number of barriers using innovative solutions. There are many opportunities to build on this experience for future joint projects of librarians and healthcare providers.