Exploring Views about LARCs Among Parenting Rural Latinx Teenagers,Their Mothers,and Providers: Implications for Sexuality Education and Care

While long-acting reversible contraception (LARC) reduces risk of repeat-births, use remains low among rural Latinx adolescent mothers. This qualitative study identified perspectives about factors that influence LARC use among this population. Participants were dyads of parenting Latinx adolescent daughters and their mothers (n?=?9 dyads) and nurses (n?=?17). Findings revealed themes specific to this vulnerable population including (a) distinct ways LARC characteristics fit into parenting teenagers’ lives, (b) supportive health care climate toward LARCs, and (c) factors that inhibit LARC uptake. The study has implications for sexuality education that seeks to reduce repeat-births among this population.     

Being a protégé: an autoethnographic view of three teacher education doctoral programs

Those in professional and academic fields generally perceive mentoring as a positive relationship that enhances the lives of protégés. Kram (1985 Kram, K.E. 1985. Mentoring at work: Developmental relationships in organizational life, Lanham, MD: University Press of America.  [Google Scholar]) posits that such relationships between dyads in organisational life are an evolutionary, developmental process. The purpose of this article is to explore protégés’ perspectives on their mentoring relationships within doctoral programs. In order to lessen the insurmountable distance between writers and readers that is often associated with a traditional research study, we employ an autoethnographic approach to research writing. We share our journey after having studied the mentoring relationships within our own doctoral programs. Qualitative data collected over a two‐year period consist of journal entries, email correspondence, and phone conversations. This research offers insight into the mentor–protégé relationship and processes, and it provides implications for practice for protégés and mentors, as well as future research directions.     

Influence of improved teaching practices on student satisfaction ratings for two undergraduate units at an Australian university

To track the quality of instruction delivered at the University of Western Australia, the university surveys all units using its Students’ Unit Reflective Feedback (SURF) metrics, and faculties use these metrics to benchmark student satisfaction. Consequently, teaching staff are actively encouraged to adopt teaching practices that will increase the average levels of these metrics. Using a ‘before-after’ approach, we compared these metrics before and after the implementation of improved teaching practices that addressed specific weaknesses identified through student responses for two undergraduate units. Despite the implementation of improved teaching practices, SURF scores did not increase significantly for the two units assessed, due possibly to the components of the academic programme covered by the SURF questions, the field-based nature of the units, and the difficulty in measuring an increase in the SURF scores of units which already score highly. This poor sensitivity of the SURF metrics to the implementation of improved teaching practices could have implications for their use for performance assessment by the university.     

Missing the Mark: The Neglect of Stalking and Cyberstalking in Introductory Criminology Textbooks

Textbooks are an essential component of student education, often forming the basis for all information presented in a given class. Introductory texts cannot possibly cover all relevant material, but what is included speaks volumes. Given the prevalence of stalking and cyberstalking in society, this is an important issue for inclusion in introductory criminology and criminal justice classes. An analysis of 20 criminology and 12 criminal justice textbooks is done to determine what students are learning about this prevalent social problem. Specifically, we aim to evaluate whether stalking and cyberstalking are covered, determine the theories associated with the issues, and assess the textbook location in which the issue is covered. Results indicate slight coverage of stalking and cyberstalking in introductory texts.     

Commentary: the coalition for improving maternity services:

A consumer advocate, two childbirth educators, and a certified nurse-midwife each provide commentary on the effectiveness of and potential uses for the Evidence Basis for the Ten Steps of Mother-Friendly Care.     

Crowdsourcing interactions: using crowdsourcing for evaluating interactive information retrieval systems

In the field of information retrieval (IR), researchers and practitioners are often faced with a demand for valid approaches to evaluate the performance of retrieval systems. The Cranfield experiment paradigm has been dominant for the in-vitro evaluation of IR systems. Alternative to this paradigm, laboratory-based user studies have been widely used to evaluate interactive information retrieval (IIR) systems, and at the same time investigate users’ information searching behaviours. Major drawbacks of laboratory-based user studies for evaluating IIR systems include the high monetary and temporal costs involved in setting up and running those experiments, the lack of heterogeneity amongst the user population and the limited scale of the experiments, which usually involve a relatively restricted set of users. In this paper, we propose an alternative experimental methodology to laboratory-based user studies. Our novel experimental methodology uses a crowdsourcing platform as a means of engaging study participants. Through crowdsourcing, our experimental methodology can capture user interactions and searching behaviours at a lower cost, with more data, and within a shorter period than traditional laboratory-based user studies, and therefore can be used to assess the performances of IIR systems. In this article, we show the characteristic differences of our approach with respect to traditional IIR experimental and evaluation procedures. We also perform a use case study comparing crowdsourcing-based evaluation with laboratory-based evaluation of IIR systems, which can serve as a tutorial for setting up crowdsourcing-based IIR evaluations.     

Part I: Toward a System of Educational Engineering for Traditional Class Elements: A Case Study in an Introductory Physics Course

In this paper, we present a system for formally characterizing elements of an introductory science class, measuring the performance of a class based on this characterization, and modeling the value of the class based on the measurements. This system allows the iterative improvement of any educational presentation through a model, test, iterate cycle. We propose formal practices involved in iteratively improving an educational experience be called educational engineering.     

Inclusive education and best practice for children with autism spectrum disorder: an integrated approach

Many parents of children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) have reported general discontent with the services offered by the education system and have advocated for increased ASD‐specific services to better meet their children’s educational needs. The elements of best practice offer an ideal model for educational support. There are, however, limitations to advocating ASD‐specific services. This paper describes how best practice for ASD as an educational model fits within what is described as authentic inclusion. Further, it is suggested that the ASD community align with the greater inclusive education reform movement. With the use of this unified model of education, all children will receive the educational support they require.     

University Educator Mindsets: How Might Adult Constructive‐Developmental Theory Support Design of Adaptive Learning?

This article explores Robert Kegan's adult constructive‐developmental (ACD) theory. We compare these ideas to the way educators at each of Kegan's meaning‐making levels might plan, implement, and assess digitally enhanced teaching activities. Using Drago‐Severson's interpretation of Kegan's concepts, the authors propose that behaviors of university teaching practitioners indicate mindsets evident at four ACD levels—instrumental, socialized, self‐authoring, and self‐transforming. Higher education professional development literature has identified a significant gap in practitioner implementation of interactive strategies using digital tools. If university practitioners increase their mental complexity they may become more adaptive in the application of interactive pedagogies and digital technologies. Adaptive approaches might cultivate new pedagogies supporting and challenging students toward more complex and flexible qualities of mind.