Toward a Theory of Liking

In the current essay, Kevin Burke and Adam Greteman challenge this thing called love by looking at how we might instead “like” in education. Within education, multiculturalism can be viewed as a way of loving, or learning to love, diversity and, as such, learning to love the self; this tendency is notably apparent in the recent rise of concern expressed about student self‐esteem. According to the authors, however, critical research on multiculturalism demonstrates how, in loving diversity, multicultural discourses limn the possibilities for subjects to come into being and be liked for their differences. Drawing on James Alison's On Being Liked, Burke and Greteman reframe the problem of relating in education instead through the language of liking. How does the shift from loving to liking — either our students, our teachers, or ourselves — create different social dynamics and ethical paradigms? In engaging this question, Burke and Greteman offer an alternative model of liking that is based on the practice of cruising.     

Environmental‐Scale Map Use in Middle Childhood: Links to Spatial Skills,Strategies, and Gender

Researchers have shown that young children solve mapping tasks in small spaces, but have rarely tested children's performance in large, unfamiliar environments. In the current research, children (9–10 years; N = 40) explored an unfamiliar campus and marked flags' locations on a map. As hypothesized, better performance was predicted by higher spatial‐test scores, greater spontaneous use of map–space coordinating strategies, and participant sex (favoring boys). Data supported some but not all hypotheses about the roles of specific spatial skills for mapping performance. Data patterns were similar on a computer mapping task that displayed environmental‐scale videos of walks through a park. Patterns of children's mapping errors suggested both idiosyncratic and common mapping strategies that should be addressed in future research and educational interventions.     

Selling ‘impact’: peer reviewer projections of what is needed and what counts in REF impact case studies. A retrospective analysis

Abstract

The intensification of an audit culture in higher education is made no more apparent than with the growing prevalence of performance-based research funding systems like the UK’s Research Excellence Framework (REF) and the introduction of new measures of assessment like ‘impact’ or more specifically, the economic and societal impacts of research. Detractors of this regulatory intervention, however, question the legitimacy and credibility of such a system for, and focus within, the evaluation of research performance. Within this study, we specifically sought to understand the process of evaluating the impact of research by gaining unique access as observers of a simulated impact evaluation exercise populated by aproximately n = 90 senior academic peer reviewers and user assessors, undertaken within one UK research-intensive university prior to and in preparation of its submission to REF2014. Over an intensive two-day period, we observed how peer reviewers and user assessors grouped into four overarching disciplinary panels went about deliberating and scoring impact, presented in the form of narrative-based case studies. Among other findings, our observations revealed that in their efforts to evaluate impact, peer reviewers were indirectly promoting a kind of impact mercantilism, where case studies that best sold impact were those rewarded with the highest evaluative scores.     

Scottish higher education, 1987–2001: expansion through diversion

A pressing question about the expansion of higher education is whether it tends to be inclusive, in the sense of bringing in larger proportions of persons from disadvantaged backgrounds, or diversifying, in that higher education tends to differentiate as it expands, or both, by bringing more persons into an increasingly stratified system of higher education. This paper addresses the question with evidence on higher education expansion in Scotland. Data are drawn from six waves of the Scottish School Leavers Survey from the late 1980s to the start of the new millennium. Binary and multinomial logit models are estimated to examine changes in inequality during this period, which was characterised by substantial expansion in both secondary qualifications and postsecondary enrolment. The results show that, in contrast to the general pattern of stable inequality observed in most nations, overall social inequalities in Scottish higher education enrolment declined over time. However, this decline did not occur in all sectors but was limited to the lowest-status institutions. These findings illustrate how expansion can serve both inclusive and diversifying ends.     

Singing One's Way to Self-Regulation: The Role of Early Music and Movement Curricula and Private Speech

Research Findings: Although the role of language and private speech in the development of behavioral self-regulation has been studied, relations between behavioral self-regulation and children's experiences with other symbolic systems, such as music, have not yet been explored. Eighty-nine 3- and 4-year-old children (42 of whom had been enrolled in Kindermusik music and movement classes, and 47 demographically similar children who had not experienced structured early childhood music classes) completed a battery of laboratory self-regulation tasks and a selective attention task during which their private speech was reliably transcribed and categorized. Children currently enrolled in Kindermusik classes showed better self-regulation than those who were not currently enrolled (d = .41), and they also used more relevant private speech during the selective attention task (d = .57), a verbal strategy that was positively related to performance. Children exposed to the music program were also more likely to engage in the facilitative strategy of singing/humming to themselves during a waiting period in which they had to inhibit their desire to examine a gift, and they were less likely to call out socially to the experimenter, a strategy negatively associated with performance and self-regulation. Practice or Policy: Implications for early childhood education are discussed.     

Development of a Student Self-Reported Instrument to Assess Course Reform

This study examines the development and implementation of a survey-based instrument assessing the effectiveness of a course redesign initiative focused on student centeredness at a large midwestern university in the United States. Given the scope of the reform initiative under investigation in this study, researchers developed an instrument called the Classroom Experience Questionnaire (CEQ), which was administered to students enrolled in redesigned courses. Early findings demonstrate strong construct validity and internal reliability of the CEQ instrument as well as concurrent validity between the CEQ and observation data gathered in concert with self-report data. The authors conclude that in the absence of trained classroom observers, the developed student self-report protocol can serve as a useful tool for measuring the constructivist orientation of pedagogy and student-centered nature of the learning environment in a higher education setting.     

The impact of alternative approaches to comforting,closeness of relationship,and gender on multiple measures of effectiveness

The impact of 6 approaches to comforting (suggesting a diversion, expressing optimism, providing an external account, offering assistance, explaining the perspective of the offender, and a combination of the first 5), attributed to either a good friend or a casual acquaintance, was assessed for 2 situations by 394 students. Distressed individuals responded to comforting messages along two dimension: feeling less upset and feeling demeaned, with some indications that yet a third dimension (appreciating the concern of the comforter) may exist. The message that combined elements from the other 5 approaches yielded generally the most positive responses, but responses to specific message approaches varied with situation and dimension of response. Messages from good friends were more successful than those from casual acquaintances in helping the distressed individual to feel less upset.     

Foreign and International Media

G. Stuart Adam's Journalism, Communication and the Law (Scarborough, Ontario: Prentice-Hall of Canada Ltd., 1976---price not given, paper)

T.J. Allard's The C.A.B. Story: 1926- 1976, Private Broadcasting in Canada (Ottawa: Canadian Association of Broadcasters, 1976---apparently free on request, paper)

Comptroller General of the United States, Suggestions to Improve Management of Radio Free Europe' Radio Liberty (Washington: General Accounting Office, 1976---either free or $1.00 depending on your classification (see 7:150), paper)

Television and the February 1974 General Election by Trevor Pateman (1974, 78 pp., $2.60)

Television News by Richard Collins (1976, 56 pp., $2.60)

Benno Signitzer's Regulation of Direct Broadcasting from Satellites (New York: Praeger Special Studies, 1976---$12.50)

Robert F. Amove (ed.) Educational Television: A Policy Critique and Guide for Developing Countries (New York: Praeger Special Studies, 1976---$15.00)

B.D. Dhawan's Economics of Television in India (New Delhi: S. Cahnd & Co. Ltd., 1974--Rs 35, current conversion to dollars not known but about $7.00)

Broadcasting in Asia and the Pacific (Philadelphia: Temple University Press/Heinemann Educational Books, 1977--$25.00/and a yet to be announced lower paperback price)

Guided Press in Southeast Asia: National Development vs. Freedom of Expression (Buffalo: SUNY at Buffalo Council on International Studies, Special Studies Series, 1976---price not yet announced)

Cultural Pluralism in Malaysia (Dekalb, III.: Northern Illinois University Center for Southeast Asian Studies, Special Report No. 14, 1976--price not yet announced)     

Film Bibliography and Documentary

George Rehrauer's Cinema Booklist (Metuchen, N.J.: Scarecrow Press, 1972---$10.00)

Film Index (1941, Arno Press reissued it in 1966 at $22.50)

Adam Reilly's Current Film Periodicals in English (New York: Educational Film Library Association, 17 West 60th St., 1972---$2.00, paper)

Lewis Jacobs (ed.) The Documentary Tradition From Nanook to Woodstock (New York: Hopkinson & Blake, 1971--$10.00/5.50)     

Health answer quality evaluation by librarians,nurses, and users in social Q&A

Health information consumers and patients increasingly take an active role in seeking health information online and in sharing their health problems and concerns in online support groups and social media venues. However, they may risk being influenced by unreliable and misleading information in such environments, as no intermediaries monitor the quality of this information. This study focuses on evaluating the quality of health information exchanged in one of the social media venues, by investigating how librarians, nurses, and users assessed the quality of health answers in Yahoo! Answers, a social question-and-answering (Q&A) service. Through statistical analysis differences among the three participant groups, how the background characteristics influenced their assessments, and the relationships between characteristics of the content of answers and quality evaluation criteria were each considered in detail. Librarians and nurses shared similar ratings of answer quality, but had differences in their level of medical knowledge and the types of services they offer, resulting in minor differences across criteria. Users perceived the quality of health answers in social Q&A to be higher than librarians and nurses for almost all criteria. Depending on the sources of information presented in health answers, librarians, nurses, and users gave different quality assessments. Implications exist for research into and practice of evaluating the quality of health information, which need to address both search and domain expertise along with the sharing of socioemotional values preferred by users.