Three strikes and you’re out: culture,facilities, and participation among LGBTQ youth in sports

ABSTRACT

School-based sports and physical education play an important role in the development of youth (Jones, Edwards, et al., 2017), but participation in athletics is unequal for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) youth compared to their straight/cisgender peers [Greenspan, S. B., Griffith, C., & Murtagh, E. F. (2017). LGBTQ youths’ school athletic experiences: A 40-year content analysis in nine flagship journals. Journal of LGBT Issues in Counseling, 11(3), 190–200]. Sport cultures, generally, recreate dynamics of exclusion for marginalized youth. However, there are opportunities to transform these spaces into more inclusive and positive environments to support positive growth for all young people [Newman, T., Alvarez, A., & Kim, M. (2017). An experiential approach to sport-based positive youth development. Journal of Experiential Education, 40(3), 308–322]. Our study uses a data set of adolescents, collected as part of a community-based participatory action research project led by high school students in southeast Michigan, USA. Respondents reported their sexual and gender identities, as well as experiences in youth sport, as well as safety using sex-segregated facilities (i.e., bathrooms and locker-rooms). Using mediation models based on linear regression, we found evidence that LGBQ high school students play sports at a significantly lower rate compared to straight students, and among those who play sports, LGBTQ respondents felt significantly less safe compared to straight and cisgender students. Opposite to the LGBQ and trans youth in this study, straight/cisgender youth also reported feeling safer using all facilities. The mediation models suggest that these inequalities help to explain disparities in rates of sports participation and feelings of safety while participating. These findings have important implications for policy, practice, and future research.     

Reducing Heterosexism in African American Christian Students: Effects of Multicultural Education Courses

Sexual-minority college students continue to experience heterosexism in the form of heterosexist and biased language from peers. Religion has been identified as a predictor of sexual prejudice among college students. Yet there is limited research on the intersection of race, religion, and heterosexism, and on interventions designed to address this prejudice. This study examined the effectiveness of multicultural education courses at a large public university on reducing heterosexism in Christian students. Analysis of pre- and post- data using repeated measures ANCOVA indicated African American Christian students had significantly higher heterosexism scores than White Christian students, and African American Christian students had a significant decrease in heterosexism as compared to White Christian students after taking a service learning course. These results have implications for future research and education on prejudice reduction.     

Adolescent Daily and General Maladjustment: Is There Reactivity to Daily Repeated Measures Methodologies?

The present study examined whether repeated exposure to daily surveys about negative social experiences predicts changes in adolescents' daily and general maladjustment, and whether question content moderates these changes. Across a 2-week period, 6th-grade students (N = 215; mode age = 11) completed 5 daily reports tapping experienced or experienced and witnessed negative events, or they completed no daily reports. General maladjustment was measured in 2-week intervals before, at the end of, and 2 weeks after the daily report study. Daily maladjustment either decreased or did not change across the 5 daily report exposures. General maladjustment decreased across the three 2-week intervals. Combined, results indicate that short-term daily report studies do not place youth at risk for increased maladjustment.     

Students' Perceptions and Communicative Management of Instructors' Online Self–Disclosure

Computer-mediated communication has become one of the many teaching strategies used to enhance students' cognitive and affective learning. What happens, however, when instructors use the Internet for personal purposes, such as staying in touch with friends and sharing gossip? This study investigated how college students perceive and communicatively manage their instructors' private information after viewing these profiles. An interpretive analysis of 21 interviews with college students confirmed previous research regarding student perceptions of instructors' self-disclosure, and students reported the information online impacted their communication with the instructor in various ways. Implications and future research suggestions are discussed.     

Teaching engaged research literacy: A description and assessment of the Research Ripped from the Headlines project

Courses: This assignment can be implemented in wide-range of courses that have research-related goals at the undergraduate or master's degree level. Applicable courses include Research Methods, Capstone, Interpersonal Communication, Organizational Communication, Intercultural Communication, Health Communication, Gender, and Family Communication.

Objectives: This assignment serves to increase students’ information literacy related to research gathering, critique, analysis, and implementation. For this assignment, students will: (a) identify and examine a news article that uses research; (b) trace the origins and conduct an analysis of the research study cited in the news article or a related research study; and (c) deliver an informative discussion that explains the news article, selected research study, and connect their analysis to research and research methodology principles. In all, this assignment improves students' media literacy related to social media and technology, and increases student affect for research practices. Finally, this assignment describes one model of using curriculum assessment to generate innovative pedagogical opportunities.     

The Superconducting Super Collider's Frontier Outpost, 1983–1988

In 1993, after an optimistic beginning followed by a half-decadeof conflict, the Superconducting Super Collider (SSC) project wasabandoned. In an era of `Big Science', a major scientificenterprise collapsed. Why? We employ the metaphor of the`frontier outpost' to analyse a critical moment in the history ofthis vastly expensive project, when the physicists who designedthe machine were forced to recognize that traditional post-warscientific values were no longer in harmony with governmentpriorities.     

Microtubules and morphogenesis in plants

Observations made by electron microscopy indicate that part of the machinery used by plants and animals to regulate their growth consists of sub-cellular structures termed microtubules. The system that organises the arrays of microtubules within each cell is therefore a crucial element in the chain of command that determines the pattern of development. Recent progress at this level of analysis is described here, with special reference to plants.     

Humanizing Instructional Videos in Physics: When Less Is More

Many instructors in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics fields are striving to create active learning environments in their classrooms and in doing so are frequently moving the lecture portion of their course into online video format. In this classroom-based study, we used a two group randomized experimental design to examine the efficacy of an instructional video that incorporates a human hand demonstrating and modeling how to solve frictional inclined plane problems compared to an identical video that did not include the human hand. The results show that the learners who viewed the video without the human hand present performed significantly better on a learning test and experienced a significantly better training efficiency than the learners who viewed the video with the human hand present. Meanwhile, those who learned with the human hand present in the instructional video rated the instructor as being more humanlike and engaging. The results have implications for both theory and practice. Implications for those designing instructional videos are discussed, as well as the limitations of the current study.