Music Education for Pupils with Severe or Profound and Multiple Difficulties — Current Provision and Future Need

There is a general agreement about the important role that music can play in the education and daily lives of children with severe or profound and multiple learning difficulties. But what are the distinctions and relationships between music education, music therapy and music as a vehicle for other forms of learning, occupation, development or engagement? To what extent are professionals in schools aware of these issues and prepared to explore them from an informed perspective? In this article, Dr Adam Ockelford, Deputy Director of Education and Employment for the Royal National Institute of the Blind (RNIB), Sally Zimmermann, Music Education and Employment Advisor (RNIB); and Professor Graham Welch, Chair of Music Education and Head of the School of Arts and Humanities, Institute of Education, University of London, present and expand on the key findings from their recent research project, 'PROMISE', which examined the Provision of Music in Special Education and specifically in schools for pupils with severe or profound and multiple difficulties. The authors conclude their paper with an acknowledgement that a great deal of significant work takes place in these contexts at present but that further research, leading to the provision of new resources for curriculum and staff development, is crucial to the realisation of music's full potential in the lives of pupils with severe and profound and multiple learning difficulties.     

Communicating Library Impact on Retention: A Framework for Developing Reciprocal Value Propositions

This article explores the trends identified in a survey of library directors on efforts to document and communicate library contributions to student retention. Library deans/directors have little in the way of communication methods for sharing library impact on retention. Methods that are used tend to be unidirectional in nature. Based on these results, this article also presents a framework of stakeholder markets and examples of reciprocal value propositions library leaders could develop around library contributions to retention efforts. This in turn can assist with advocacy and the communication of academic library value to university leaders and other higher education stakeholders.     

Apprehension or motivation to defend attitudes? Exploring the underlying threat mechanism in inoculation-induced resistance to persuasion

This study questions the traditional conceptualization of the threat component of inoculation and compares it to an alternative operationalization that was hypothesized to better capture the psychological function of threat according to inoculation theory, focusing less on an apprehensive response in favor of how inoculation treatments cognitively function to motivate resistance. Two measures of threat were contrasted by examining resistance to 9/11 Truth conspiracy propaganda. The results revealed motivational threat was conceptually distinct from the traditional threat measure, better predicted by inoculation treatments, less related to fear, more predictive of resistance to attitude change, and more supportive of inoculation theory when mediating the relationship between inoculation and resistance.     

A context-based integrative framework for e-government initiatives

The recent advances in the Internet technology have propelled the development of related applications in electronic communications and transactions, including electronic commerce and electronic government (e-government). There has been a proliferation of e-government initiatives worldwide undertaken under different forms of government, socioeconomic settings, and technological conditions. Nonetheless, the relationship between an e-government initiative and its context has not received adequate attention in the e-government literature. This paper provides an organizing framework that maps the core values (goals) of e-government to two fundamental factors; namely, the degree of e-government readiness and the level of democratization. The framework addresses the importance of the relationship between the context within which e-government initiatives are undertaken and the goals of those initiatives. From a conceptual perspective, this framework underscores the pivotal importance of the context of an e-government initiative in influencing the goals of this initiative. From a practical viewpoint, the framework provides a roadmap for policy makers to formulate policy goals of e-government initiatives commensurate with their respective environments.     

Examining Twitter Content of State Emergency Management During Hurricane Joaquin

Those tasked with disseminating life-protecting messages during crises have many factors to consider. Social media sites have become an information source for individuals during these times, and more research is needed examining the use of specific message strategies by emergency management agencies that may elicit attention and retransmission. This study examines Twitter content concerning Hurricane Joaquin. Content analysis of tweets from state emergency management accounts was performed to provide an overview of the content and stylistic elements used in tweets associated with the event. The findings are discussed in the context of both past research on the matter and implications for emergency management agencies responding to high-consequence events.     

A level playing ‘field’? A Bourdieusian analysis of the career aspirations of further education students on sports courses

There is currently a distinct dearth of research into how sports students' career aspirations are formed during their post-compulsory education. This article, based on an ethnographic study of sport students in tertiary education, draws on data collected from two first-year cohorts (n = 34) on two different courses at a further education college in England. The study draws on ethnographic observations, and semi-structured group interviews, to examine in-depth the contrasting occupational perspectives emergent within these two groups of mainly working-class students, and how specific cultural practices affect students' career aspirations. Utilising a Bourdieusian framework, the paper analyses the internalised, often latent cultural practices that impact upon these students' diverse career aspirations. The hitherto under-researched dimension of inter-habitus interaction and also the application of doxa are outlined. The article reveals how the two student cohorts are situated within a complex field of relations, where struggles for legitimisation, academic accomplishment and numerous forms of lucrative capital become habituated. The study offers salient Bourdieusian-inspired insights into the career aspirations of these predominantly working-class students and the ways in which certain educational practices contribute to the production and reproduction of class inequalities.     

Project-based learning groups of friends and acquaintances: The role of efficacy beliefs

Abstract

This school-based study explored the role of collective and proxy efficacy beliefs in the performances of project-based learning teams comprising friends and acquaintances. Participants were 162 male students in Grade 8 who attended a Catholic high school, located in Sydney, Australia. Students were organized into 20 acquaintance groups and 21 friendship groups. Each group comprised 4 students who were completing project-based learning assignments in Geography, Religious Studies, and English. Data were self-reports and teacher-assessed group performance scores. Data collection occurred three times over a five-week period. Multilevel modeling was used to examine relationships between variables in the study. Statistically significant interactions involving group type, collective efficacy, and proxy efficacy were identified in Geography and Religious Studies. Implications are that it may be advantageous for teachers to assign students to friendship groups, provided they nurture collective efficacy, and that proxy efficacy may negatively affect group performance, depending on the context.     

Learning through personal connections: cogenerative dialogues in synchronous virtual spaces

This study describes the role of cogenerative dialogues in a synchronous virtual classroom. Cogenerative dialogues are a way for students and instructors to reflect upon in-class events and work collaboratively during the course to optimize teaching and learning. In the present study, cogen has been found to be a tool for enhancing connections among graduate students in the class leading to a reported increase of motivation and engagement. Cogenerative dialogues were essential in shifting responsibilities so that students took a more active role in their own learning while supporting each other.     

Self-Efficacy Beliefs,Classroom Management,and the Cradle-to-Prison Pipeline

In this article, we focus on connections between and among teachers’ self-efficacy beliefs, classroom management practices, and the cradle to prison pipeline. Drawing from Bandura’s (1986) theorization of self-efficacy, we discuss how teachers’ beliefs shape their classroom management practices and how these beliefs and practices can be essential sites to understanding and decreasing disparate outcomes in disciplinary referral patterns among practicing teachers. We emphasize the importance of building teachers’ self-efficacy beliefs and sense of efficacy to inform their classroom management practices/decisions. In particular, we focus on three sites of learning that, we argue, are essential to building teachers’ sense of efficacy in the classroom: learning about and building powerful and sustainable relationships with students; learning about and developing an understanding of outside of school contexts that students experience; and recognizing and appropriately responding to traumatic experiences of students.