Giving Birth: “We Just Don’t Talk About It”

In this column, Alyson Grauer, a young woman recently embarking on her postuniversity career, shares her experiences with friends who do not talk about childbirth. She contrasts their fear and their unwillingness to talk and learn about birth with her own experience being the daughter of a Lamaze Certified Childbirth Educator and doula. Grauer’s experiences provide a backdrop for a deeper understanding of young adults’ beliefs about childbirth. Judith Lothian provides insight related to when and why women and men stopped talking about birth and the implications for childbirth education.     

“We Talked About Sex.” “No,We Didn't”: Exploring Adolescent and Parent Agreement About Sexuality Communication

Family communication about sex can protect adolescents from risky behavior, like early sex and sex without protection. However, adolescents and parents often disagree about whether they talked with each other about sexual issues, limiting the protective effects of communication. Few studies explore these disagreements. This study included 27 pairs of early adolescents and parents. Adolescent and parent interviews were coded for agreement in reports of sexuality communication. Adolescents’ interview themes were compared across levels of agreement between adolescent–parent dyads. Adolescents who highly agreed with their parents were more likely than those who did not to describe positive parental approaches to sexuality communication and awareness of parental perspectives, while no group differences were found for responses to parents’ viewpoints. Study findings highlight the importance of sex education programs that support adolescent–parent sexuality communication, particularly for middle school students.     

An Analysis of the Means of Cohesion in “of Studies” by Francis Bacon

This thesis aims to analyze the means of cohesion in"of Studies"by Francis Bacon.According to the systemic-functional linguistics,the paper is intended to explore cohesion means applied in Of Studies by Francis Bacon.It gives an account of the functions in grammatical cohesion in the several fields,they are reference,substitution,ellipsis,and conjunction respectively.Finally,it is expected that these analyses can help readers gain a better and deeper comprehension of the structure and content of the text.     

A Review of: “Engaging Technology in Theological Education: All that We Can't Leave Behind”

Voice is critical to youth; yet discerning and claiming a public religious voice is complicated, especially as youth encounter values that include or exclude them based on personality, ethnicity, religion, gender identification, ability, social class, or sexual orientation. Drawing from interviews, we analyze influences on youth to discover and speak their religious voices in public spaces, and to claim religious motivations for their public personas and actions. The study uncovers complex relationships among young people's religious awareness, social contexts, inner dynamics, and public religious expressions. These relationships suggest directions for religious education in faith communities, schools, and other public spaces.     

An Analysis on The Play of“Truth”by Using Foucault's Theory of Power

In Foucault's view,power is in everywhere,especially in place where meaning is produced.It's the same in advertisement.In this paper,I will try to analyse the production of truth and how the power is used as strategies.     

“We Have a Window Seat”: A Bakhtinian Analysis of International Teachers’ Identity in Nazarbayev Intellectual Schools in Kazakhstan

The article explores the dynamic positionality of international teachers in Nazarbayev Intellectual Schools (NIS) in Kazakhstan. The study draws on in-depth interviews with 11 international teachers from three NIS schools. The findings of the study indicate that, on the one hand, participants share a fascination with the exciting academic environment and, on the other hand, they report a degree of disaffection as a result of multiple constraints, which prevent them from being fully integrated in the life of the schools. The article contributes to the literature on teacher mobility and migration examined from the perspective of Bakhtin’s dialogical approach.     

“Really Just Lip Service”: Talking About Diversity in Suburban Schools

Suburban school districts are in the midst of rapid racial/ethnic and socioeconomic diversification, although the teaching force remains much more homogenous. This article examines how educators in increasingly more diverse suburban schools conceptualize diversity. Qualitative data comes from interviews of 40 teachers, 23 principals and assistant principals, and 16 other school staff in six suburban school districts across the country. Using critical discourse analysis (van Dijk, 1993), I identify three primary discourses: an aspirational commitment to preparing students for a diverse society; color-muteness and insistence on individuality; and a deficit perspective on students from diverse racial/ethnic, linguistic, and socioeconomic backgrounds. In particular, educators perceived cultural deficits in students’ families and communities (Valencia, 2010). Finally, a small number of participants recognized structural forces that impeded the achievement of students of color. The discussion analyzes how such discourses threaten to reproduce educational inequality as suburban districts continue to diversify and concludes with recommendations for districts and schools.     

“We Have to Educate Every Single Student,Not Just the Ones That Look Like Us”: Support Service Providers’ Beliefs About the Root Causes of the School-to-Prison Pipeline for Youth of Color

Abstract

This study adds to the extant research on the school-to-prison pipeline by investigating how school-based service providers and administrators conceptualize the causal mechanisms constraining and enabling the school-to-prison pipeline in a large urban district. Thirty-three schools were selected for the study based on their suspension rates. Support staff and district partners (n?=?36) participated in focus groups guided by semi-structured protocols. Most participants emphasized structural and systemic causes of the school-to-prison pipeline, such as institutional racism and poverty. To minimize the school-to-prison pipeline, participants highlighted the importance of relationship building and non-punitive practices in response to misbehavior, although solutions offered limited evidence of promising interventions. Given strong research indicating that racial disparities cannot be explained by differential behavior, scholarship in this area emphasizes the need to increase school-level practices that promote positive school climate. The persistence of exclusionary and punitive attitudes among a subset of the sample suggests a need for differentiated professional development to address competing frameworks for understanding the root causes of, and solutions to, the school-to-prison pipeline.     

An Analysis of the Dual Tragic Effect of“Macbeth”

Shakespeare’s“Macbeth”has a dual tragic effect. This paper aims to analyze the play part by part to show how Shake?speare gets this special effect through the arrangement of plot and creation of char...     

Conceptions and Beliefs About “Good Teaching”: An integration of contrasting research areas

Previous research on conceptions of teaching comes from three distinct areas. The first is based on interviews with students and staff in higher education, the second involves the investigation of the conceptions and beliefs of schoolteachers, while the third derives from more general consideration of the nature of conceptions themselves. The empirical study reported here drew on these differing research areas to distinguish between beliefs and conceptions about good teaching and to explore their possible origins. The data came from student teachers, but the findings contribute to current thinking about conceptions of teaching in higher education. Bringing the empirical findings together with the three areas of previous research enables a more complete concept map to be drawn to summarise what may underlie the notion of “good teaching”.     

“Love Doesn’t Just Happen…”: Parent-Child Communication About Marriage

This study takes an exploratory, qualitative approach to examine the communication between parents and their children on the topic of marriage. Two research questions guide this study regarding what messages newlyweds recall receiving from their parents about marriage and how accurate the newlyweds perceive these messages to be. An inductive theme analysis revealed several meanings of marriage were transmitted from parent to child: Marriage means a lifelong commitment, marriage means work, and traditional values of marriage. Largely, these meanings of marriage were perceived to be accurate by the newlyweds.     

Does First Sex Really “Just Happen?” A Retrospective Exploratory Study of Sexual Debut Among American Adolescents

First sex marks a significant transition for most adolescents, yet teens often report that it was unplanned. Seventy-four college students participated in exploratory focus groups about their first sex. Although initially asked whether their first sex was spontaneous or planned, many participants revealed evidence of forethought or anticipation, signifying a third option, anticipation. This study suggests that the development and timing of sexual health messages should build on the apparent, albeit often unacknowledged, planning and thought that accompany the transition to first sex. Specifically, during the time immediately preceding first sex, young people might be particularly open to such messages.     

“We’re Here to Learn to Speak French”: An Exploration of World Language Teachers’ Beliefs About Students and Teaching

The purpose of this qualitative study was to explore five world language teachers’ beliefs about their students, their attributions about student enrollment, and their reported teaching practices. Findings represent a continuum of critical practice in that three teachers appeared to espouse deficit thinking and stereotypes about students of color, and color-evasiveness or colorblindness as an approach to teaching. Two teachers appeared to espouse beliefs that may be more representative of inclusive classrooms, and these teachers reported advocacy work for certain student groups and efforts to develop students’ critical consciousness in their classrooms. Findings are contextualized via critical lenses, and implications for language teacher education and policy are discussed.     

“You Have to Know Why”: The Influence of Different Curricula on Nursing Students' Perceptions of Nursing

The need in modern healthcare for professionals who are self‐directed and autonomous has increased in recent decades. Problem‐based learning is spreading in nursing education as one strategy for meeting these demands. This article deals with the relationship between the design and execution of nursing education curricula and students' understanding of nursing. The aim of the study was to examine nursing students' perceptions of nursing, comparing a problem‐based curriculum to a conventional curriculum. Students were asked to write narratives about nursing. Forty‐three narratives were analyzed using the phenomenological hermeneutic method. Differences between the two groups were found in terms of both structure and content. Problem‐based learning students stressed more the theoretical aspects of nursing. The study shows that educational design might be of great importance to how students understand nursing. Extensive research is needed to further explore the findings, especially related to clinical practice following graduation.     

An Analysis of Lexical Cohesion in “How Empathy Unfolds”

This thesis aims to analyze the lexical cohesion in the text "How Empathy Unfolds" in the new standard college English textbook. This paper focuses on four kinds of lexical cohesive devices: repetition, synonymy, hyponymy and collocation. It is expected that these analyses can help readers gain a better and deeper comprehension of the structure and content of the text.     

Song of Herself: An Analysis of Southern Women's Consciousness in“The Jilting of Granny Weatherall”

"The Jilting of Granny Weatherall" is a short story by Katherine Anne Porter representing her views of southern women's self-consciousness in the male-dominated world.On the one hand, Granny Weatherall stands for a typical southern woman who cherishes the conventional values in southern partriarchal society.On the other, the sense of selfhood obtained from suffering many mishaps in her lifetime, in return, however, strengthens the subjective consciousness constructed through the stream-of-consciousness narrative technique, thus drawing an intimate portrait of a strong, independent woman.     

On Death:A Stylistic Analysis of“The Building” by Philip Larkin

Adopting a stylistic approach, this paper tries to figure out the theme of Larkin’s “The building” by means of observing it on three different levels: aural, grammatical, and semantic, offering an example of applying stylistic methods to the study of poetry.