“The mind has to catch up on sex”: sexual norms and sex education in the Hull House

From its beginning in 1885, the Hull House was beacon for social progress and urban reform. Founders Jane Addams and Ellen Gates Starr recruited talented, passionate partners from diverse fields to address issues from street sanitation to education in Chicago’s immigrant communities. Among residents’ many projects, their involvement in the “social hygiene” movement for sex education and contraception is perhaps the least recognised, in part because the Hull House did not save materials directly related to these services. As a result, the professional activities of Hull House residents Drs Rachelle Yarros and Alice Hamilton reveal a productive relationship between the Hull House and the social hygiene movement. Part of their critical work was to dismantle the cultural association of contraceptives and sex education with “fallen women” and reframe these services as necessities for maternal health. The papers of their professional organisations chronicle their delicate efforts to challenge assumptions about reproductive healthcare while preserving Victorian ideals about sex as a private, procreative endeavour strictly between married, monogamous people. Rachelle Yarros was particularly active, producing a dearth of literature on sexual health, teaching classes on the subject, and overseeing the opening of Chicago’s first public birth control clinics. Each of these advancements, including the birth control clinic, was available on Hull House grounds. By capitalising on the financial and medical resources available to them as physicians and reformers, Yarros and Hamilton achieved significant gains in women’s healthcare and initiated a national conversation about sexual health as a human right.     

Beyond ‘dusty archives’: The economic benefits of preserving recorded heritage

Libraries and archives are increasingly under pressure to justify the cost of preserving the recorded heritage. This paper addresses the real need to identify and measure the benefits of preservation of the recorded heritage in the UK.

Stated preference techniques are well established in the field of environmental economics, and they are also appropriate for the valuation of cultural heritage. The authors develop and test a methodology to estimate people's preferences for the preservation of the recorded heritage through two stated preference case (pilot) studies.

All library and archive materials supporting the written and documentary heritage of the chosen case studies have been considered. The benefits of preservation are identified as those associated with the use of the recorded heritage (for example, by schools, commercial organisations, academics and other interested parties), the option of using it in the future, and the value placed on its existence by the general public, even if they have no intention of using it.

The main advantage of estimating the benefits of preservation in monetary terms is that these can be compared with the costs of preservation to determine whether any given project or policy is worthwhile, or indeed to choose among competing projects for the allocation of funds.     

The Mediating Effects of Approaches to Learning on the Academic Success of First-Year College Students

Students’ personal predictors of academic success are particularly relevant for first-year college students, given the specific challenges that these students face when entering higher education (HE). Academic success in HE has been related to multiple factors, including the students’ approaches to learning (SAL), satisfaction (linked to commitment and persistence), study time (effort), and prior academic achievement. This study analyzes the combined effect of these predictors on perceived academic success. Data from 247 students was collected using the Approaches and Study Skills Inventory for Students and other specific measures to assess presage and process variables of academic success. Although academic success is multidimensional and difficult to explain, factors such as prior academic achievement, satisfaction with the course, SAL, and study time contribute to explain perceived academic success in first-year college students.     

e-Authentication for online assessment: A mixed-method study

Authenticating the students’ identity and authenticity of their work is increasingly important to reduce academic malpractices and for quality assurance purposes in Education. There is a growing body of research about technological innovations to combat cheating and plagiarism. However, the literature is very limited on the impact of e-authentication systems across distinctive end-users because it is not a widespread practice at the moment. A considerable gap is to understand whether the use of e-authentication systems would increase trust on e-assessment, and to extend, whether students’ acceptance would vary across gender, age and previous experiences. This study aims to shed light on this area by examining the attitudes and experiences of 328 students who used an authentication system known as adaptive trust-based e-assessment system for learning (TeSLA). Evidence from mixed-method analysis suggests a broadly positive acceptance of these e-authentication technologies by distance education students. However, significant differences in the students’ responses indicated, for instance, that men were less concerned about providing personal data than women; middle-aged participants were more aware of the nuances of cheating and plagiarism; while younger students were more likely to reject e-authentication, considerably due to data privacy and security and students with disabilities due to concerns about their special needs.     

Educational Transfers in Postcolonial Contexts: Preliminary Results From Comparative Research on Workers’ Faculties in Vietnam,Cuba, and Mozambique

Worker’s Faculties, which have been widespread in the Soviet Union up until 1941, combined the two goals of preparing adult workers and peasants for university entrance through the provision of general education, as well as creating a new socialist intelligentsia from among these groups. After World War II, Workers’ Faculties were also established in postcolonial countries. Based on case studies in Vietnam, Cuba, and Mozambique, we argue that corresponding transfer processes were largely driven by local actors in the respective countries and that these institutions were regarded as suitable instruments in solving problems particular to postcolonial contexts.     

Examining the Short-, Medium-, and Long-Term Success of an Embodied Learning Activity in the Study of Hand Anatomy for Clinical Application

A student's own body provides an often disregarded site of knowledge production and corporeal wisdom. Learning via cognitive processes anchored in physical movement and body awareness, known as embodied learning, may aid students to visualize structures and understand their functions and clinical relevance. Working from an embodied learning perspective, the current article evaluates the use of an offline physical learning tool (Anatomical Glove Learning System; AGLS) for teaching hand anatomy for clinical application in medical students. Two student samples (N₁ = 105; N₂ = 94) used the AGLS in two different ways. In the first sample, the AGLS was compared to a traditional approach using hand bones, models and prosected specimens. Secondly, the AGLS and traditional approach were combined. The evaluation consisted of three outcomes: short-term learning (post-test), medium-term applications (mock-objective structured clinical examination, MOSCE), and longer-term assessment (objective structured clinical examination, OSCE). Findings from the first sample indicated no significant differences between the AGLS and traditional laboratory groups on short- (F_(1,78) = 0.036, P = 0.849), medium- (F_(1,50) = 0.743, P = 0.393), or longer-term (F_(1,82) = 0.997, P = 0.321) outcomes. In the second sample using the AGLS in combination with a traditional approach was associated with significantly better short-term post-test scores (F_(2,174) = 5.98, P = 0.003) than using the AGLS alone, but demonstrated no effect for long-term OSCE scores. These results suggest an embodied learning experience alone does not appear to be advantageous to student learning, but when combined with other methods for studying anatomy there are learning gains.     

Human Performance Technology and Knowledge Management: A Case Study

ABSTRACT As organizations respond to competitive environments and strive to enhance performance, knowledge management (KM) has increasingly become a strategic activity. A KM strategy entails consciously helping people share and put knowledge into action. A key challenge is how to develop and implement KM solutions that provide performance support to knowledge workers and seamlessly integrate KM into business processes. We propose that human performance technology (HPT) provides a systematic framework to help guide KM initiatives. Specifically, HPT provides a holistic view of a knowledge worker's performance environment by considering the complex interdependencies between the organizational context, business processes, and individual performers. Via a case study, we describe and illustrate how HPT guided one organization in its journey to identify the content and structure to best support performance and manage knowledge in a core business process. Based on the case study, we offer lessons for other firms on how HPT can be used to guide KM initiatives.     

Patterns of word and nonword processing in skilled and less-skilled readers

Sixty-eight third graders who were less-skilled readers performed more poorly than younger reading-level control children on tests of pseudoword reading and phonological sensitivity. These findings add to the growing consensus that the proximal cause of reading difficulties are spelling-sound coding problems that result from deficient underlying phonological processes and structures. Analyses of their word and pseudoword reading performance provided some suggestive evidence that less-skilled readers are less sensitive than their younger reading-level matched counterparts to all subword-size orthographic units, perhaps especially to grapheme-sized units.