Teaching for Social Justice: Resources,Relationships, and Anti-Racist Practice

Fear and bigotry have spread through schools on the heels of a presidential campaign that promoted divisiveness grounded in racism and discrimination. This article describes the need for and a path toward explicit anti-racist teaching and anti-racist action to counteract this surge of hate speech. In addition, to create a more equitable and just education system and society, the article outlines actions needed to change key aspects of institutionalized racism and intolerance that are embedded in our schools: a) Correcting the unequal resources leading to inequitable opportunities, programs, teacher and leader distribution; b) providing equal opportunity for the kind of deeper learning demanded in the 21st century: A curriculum that supports critical thinking, problem solving, communication, collaboration, and applications of knowledge to real-world problems; c) developing social/emotional as well as academic skills; and d) supporting personalization and relationships so that students feel cared about and cared for and experience culturally responsive, engaging, and empowering learning opportunities in contexts that provide supportive relationships and community.     

Public library use and users: Statistical explorations

Library statistics are often criticised for their traditional format and narrow concentration on finance and resource provision. This chapter of Cultural Trends demonstrates how a new generation of library statistics has moved to assess the impact of services on users as well as features of broader interest. Diversity of offer and take‐up is an important and complicating factor in the public library service. The CIPFA PLUS survey, developed by UK librarians and now standard across the country, is powerful in linking service features to user characteristics. Such library statistics are essential to policy formulation and can be a valuable aid to expanding take‐up: first, in describing services available; second, in assessing market penetration and popularity; and, third, in providing feedback on particular initiatives and policies.

The question arises how far such services are already current in other cultural services. Given Resource's remit to cover the domains of museums and archives as well as libraries, the chapter closes by asking whether recent developments in library statistics might usefully be transferred.     

Religious broadcasting on UK television: Policy,public perception and programmes

This chapter assesses the developments in UK religious broadcasting over the last 20 years in both the BBC and independent television. Debate about the role and purpose of religious broadcasting is nothing new. However, the debate has taken on new significance recently in the light of wider consideration by broadcasting bodies and the government about the meaning and purpose of public service broadcasting in a multi‐channel television environment.

The first part of the chapter maps developments in broadcasting policy, with particular reference to statements issued by the BBC's and Independent Television Commission's advisory body, the Central Religious Advisory Committee. The chapter also highlights the impact of the changing religious make‐up of the UK, and the advent of dedicated religious television channels on the content of religious broadcasting.

The second part looks at the audience. Research findings may initially suggest that religious programmes are seen primarily as being for ‘other people’. However, closer examination of the audience shows that religious programmes are still watched by the majority of the adult population. And although viewers over 55 are well represented in the audience for many programmes, the audience for religious television is in reality more diverse than public and broadcasting industry perceptions would suggest.

Programmes are the focus of the third part of the chapter. While the amount of time devoted to religious programmes on BBC1 and ITV has remained at similar levels, the scheduling of religious programmes has moved away from peak time on both channels, but particularly so on ITV. Both channels have reduced the amount of religious programme time devoted to acts of worship. The official figures for amounts of religious broadcasting do not tell the whole story, however. Discussion continues both about the definition of ‘religious’ programmes and the future of religious broadcasting departments.

The challenge for religious broadcasting is to redefine itself for the digital age, without narrowing its scope.     

Mediated Public Diplomacy and Political Dialectics: 2010 Free Gaza Flotilla

In a networked world, national reputation management is an essential part of mediated public diplomacy and a unique part of intercultural communication. On May 31, 2010, the Free Gaza Flotilla breached the Israeli blockade off the coast of the Gaza strip which resulted in nine casualties. The purpose of this rhetorical analysis is to explore Israel’s attempt to manage its reputation during the incident. A Bakhtinian dialectical analysis was conducted to explore the conceptualization of political dialectics and to enhance the research on political grammars. The findings reveal the failures of public diplomacy when underlying tensions are ignored and when unwilling to negotiate through those tensions.     

Public and Popular: British and Swedish Audience Trends in Factual and Reality Television

The research in this article examines audience responses to a range of factual and reality genres. It takes as a starting point that television audiences do not experience news or documentary or reality TV in isolation but as part of a range of factual and reality programmes. Factual and reality programming includes a broad understanding of non-fictional programming on broadcast television, satellite, cable and digital television. The breakdown of factual and reality programming into specific genres includes news, current affairs, documentary, and reality programmes, with further sub genres applied within each of these categories. This article critically examines genre evaluation. The quantitative research in this article is based on two national representative surveys conducted in Britain and Sweden. In both Britain and Sweden, programme makers have moved towards a reliance on popular factual genres. In Britain this is across all channels, and in Sweden this is mainly concentrated on commercial channels. Whilst there is still a commitment to news, there is an increasing use of hybrid genres in an attempt to popularise factual output. The impact of this changing generic environment on audiences is that in both countries viewers have reacted by drawing a line between traditional and contemporary factual genres. It is precisely because of the redrawing of the factual map that viewers rely on traditional ways of evaluating genres as public and informative, or popular and entertaining. The data provides evidence that contributes to existing debate on television genre, public service broadcasting, and media literacy skills. The central argument in this article is that genre evaluation is connected with wider socio-cultural discourses on public service broadcasting and popular culture, and that these are common social and cultural values that are shared by national audiences in two Northern European countries.     

Education Policy and Family Values: A Critical Analysis of Initiatives From the Right

This article analyzes current education policy initiatives from the political Right in the United States, focusing on initiatives at the federal level (standards and testing), the state level (funding), the local level (alternative certification), and the campus level (censorship). Each initiative has received wide bipartisan and public support, largely due to the ways that they have been framed, particularly around family values. Implications for future research and practice conclude the article.