Piloting Consumer Health Information Services in Collaboration with a Community Research Engagement Program

At an academic health science center, librarians partnered with a community research engagement program to offer a suite of consumer health information services. The services included training staff in the use of online consumer health resources, purchasing a print collection of monographs, and creating a guide to both the online and print resources for staff use. Focus groups were conducted to assess information needs, and the workshop attendees’ online health information competency was assessed presession and postsession. This article details planning and intervention efforts, and proposes future activities to meet the information needs of HealthStreet and its clients.     

Brief Therapy at a University Counseling Center: Working Alliance,Readiness to Change,and Symptom Severity

The authors investigated whether students receiving short–term individual counseling at a university counseling center showed progress as evidenced by perceived client and counselor outcomes and the roles that client readiness to change and working alliance played in this setting. The results indicated that the counselor reports, not the client reports, reflected statistically significant change in client symptoms. Changes in symptom severity were not associated with working alliance and readiness to change.     

Negotiating Competing Goals in the Development of an Urban Ecology Practitioner Inquiry Community

Teacher learning communities are hailed by many as vehicles for reforming and elevating the professional status of teaching. While much research explores teacher community as a venue for measurable gains, our research examines the orientation of practitioner inquiry toward critical debate about effective instruction. Specifically, our study focuses on a group of middle and high school teachers who worked with a nonprofit organization to engage students in urban environmental field investigations. Teachers met regularly as a community with the common goal of teaching urban ecology in an outdoor setting. We collected interview data from members of the teacher community, and we observed teacher interaction during a meeting of the practitioner inquiry group. Interview results indicated that while the nonprofit aimed to support collaborative dialogue and self-critique, participants saw the community mainly as a venue for pursuing short-term goals, such as receiving new resources or socializing with colleagues. Observation data, however, suggested that the community was taking early steps toward building an environment oriented toward critical discussion. Juxtaposing results from our interviews and observations, we discuss the challenges communities face when they seek to develop shared beliefs and deal openly with conflict. Ultimately, we suggest that organizers of collaborative learning environments should work to actively develop structures for building the organizational trust necessary to support civil critique.     

College Students' Experiences of Childhood Developmental Traumatic Stress: Resilience,First‐Year Academic Performance,and Substance Use

Developmental trauma—distressing childhood experiences that include mistreatment, interpersonal violence, abuse, assault, and neglect—is associated with substance use and poor academic performance. The authors investigated the links between developmental trauma, grade point average, substance use, and resilience among first‐year college students (N = 169). The results indicate there is a significant relationship between cumulative trauma and self‐reported substance use.     

Predictors of numeracy performance in national testing programs: insights from the longitudinal study of Australian children

This article is based on an exploratory study that examines factors which predict children's performance on the numeracy component of the Australian National Assessment Program—Literacy and Numeracy (NAPLAN). Utilizing an ecological theoretical model, this study examines child, home and school variables which may enable or constrain NAPLAN numeracy performance. Data are presented from a nationally‐representative sample of 2450 children participating in the Longitudinal Study of Australian Children (LSAC). Twenty‐four children, home and school variables are tested as predictors of performance on the Year 3 NAPLAN numeracy assessment. The analysis includes an investigation of bivariate relationships between the outcome variable and each of the predictor variables. Following this a series of linear regression models are used to analyse the relation between child, home and school‐related variables and NAPLAN numeracy performance. The results support the ecological model and point to the importance of a supportive home–school relationship on children's numeracy performance.     

Antidote or antagonist? The role of Education Reform Advocacy Organizations in educational policymaking

In recent years, a new breed of political organizations has had remarkable influence in American educational policymaking. Proponents of neoliberal reform, these groups have been labeled as Education Reform Advocacy Organizations, or ERAOs. I situate these organizations within the larger network of Intermediary Organizations (IOs). To understand the ways that ERAOs influence the policymaking process, I explore the role of Stand for Children, a national ERAO, in helping to pass neoliberal reform of teacher job security in Massachusetts. Using the Advocacy Coalition Framework (ACF), I explore common frames evident in debate about the organization’s role in the state, and I rely on data from key stakeholder interviews, observations and policy artifacts to characterize competing arguments about the organization’s political motives. I pay particularly close attention to how the organization’s political identity shaped, and was shaped by, its attempts to build an advocacy coalition in the state. Throughout the case, I investigate how competing identities bumped up against each other in ways that would have a major impact on the policymaking process, and I use my analysis to generate questions about what it means for ERAOs to sustain their success over time.     

Neo-democracy in educational policy-making: a critical case study of neoliberal reform in Massachusetts

This paper explores changes to the educational policy-making arena through case study analysis of a Massachusetts law passed in 2012 that limits seniority-based job protections for public K-12 teachers. I use data from interviews with policy stakeholders, observations of public meetings, and policy artifacts to explore struggles over democratic engagement in what unfolded as a highly undemocratic policy development process. Using the policy cycle framework, I explore the ways that political pressure and political discourses shaped the policy development process through various contexts of political struggle. Ultimately, I argue that the case is indicative of what I am calling ‘neo-democratic’ decision-making, in which high-level interest group conflict leads to narrow forms of democratic engagement.