Feeling Bad About Feel-Good Ads: The Emotional and Body-Image Ramifications of Body-Positive Media

In recent years beauty companies have produced advertising campaigns purporting to make women feel better about their bodies and reverse the damage of thin-ideal media (e.g., The Dove Campaign for Real Beauty). Despite being celebrated in the popular press for the effort, little is known about how effective these advertisements are at healing issues of poor body image. In addition, little work has been done to explore the relationship between discrete emotions and body image. The present study was an experiment aimed at capturing the different discrete emotions experienced in a body-positive advertisement compared to traditional beauty ad. Findings assert that participants reported experiencing positive (e.g., elevation and hope) and negative (e.g., guilt and pride) discrete emotions significantly more than their counterparts in the traditional beauty ad condition. Results also show no significant difference in postexposure thin-ideal internalization between the two conditions.     

Expanding the Understanding of the Categories of Dysconscious Racism

Dysconscious racism is generally defined as the unquestioned acceptance of culturally dominant norms and privileges, with three categories used to describe college students’ reasoning for enduring racial inequity. These range from the historical determinism of slavery to racially exploitive standards inherent in American society. However, few studies have fully utilized these categories. This article has sought to encourage a renewed interest into the student categories by considering them as more of a progressive, developmental continuum.     

Translocal assemblage and the practice of alternative media toward racial justice: a pedagogical perspective

There is a growing cultural and social movement among youth who draw on spoken word poetry and documentary style videos to participate in the new media landscape. Many multimedia poems have appeared on social media sites such as YouTube and Vimeo as a form of participatory politics. In this article, the author takes up a discussion of translocal practices and ‘translocal assemblage’ wherein individuals and groups engage in the exchange of ideas across space and time. One example is a multimedia poem about the underrepresentation and invisibility of racialized minority students at a major American university. This viral multimedia poem remixed elsewhere based on students’ experiences at another university demonstrates not only the potential of translocal assemblage in participatory politics but also the practice of alternative media in the movement toward racial justice. That is, young people are finding civic resources and building on each other’s work to challenge the social order. Pedagogically, the author built on the theoretical underpinning of translocal assemblage to shape work with students in the college classroom who, in turn, produced other genres of alternative media. The resultant video documentaries about locally unjust social arrangements make evident the subtle nature of cultural flows that have direct consequences for critical studies in education.     

Reading comprehension,working memory and higher-level language skills in children with SLI and/or dyslexia

This study examined (1) whether working memory and higher-level languages skills—inferencing and comprehension monitoring—accounted for individual differences among Chinese children in Chinese reading comprehension, after controlling for age, Chinese word reading and oral language skills, and (2) whether children with specific language impairment (SLI) or dyslexia showed deficits in these skills. Eighty-two Cantonese Chinese-speaking children between the age of 7; 8–9; 5 were assessed. Regression analyses on the full sample offered support for the first question. The children were also classified into four groups: Typically-developing (TD; N = 34), specific language impairment-only (SLI-only; N = 18), SLI-dyslexia comorbid (SLI-D; N = 22) and dyslexia-only (D-only; N = 8). Pair-wise comparisons focusing on the second question revealed that both the SLI-only and the D-only group performed worse than the TD group in reading comprehension after controlling for age and nonverbal intelligence. The SLI-only and the D-only group showed a different profile of deficits: only the SLI-only group performed worse than the TD group in working memory, comprehension monitoring, and inferencing. The SLI-D comorbid group did worse than the SLI-only, but not the D-only group, in reading comprehension. The SLI-D comorbid group did not do worse than either single diagnosis group in the higher-level language skills associated with reading comprehension. These findings suggested adopting different intervention approaches for reading comprehension difficulties in children with SLI versus children with dyslexia.     

Character Motivations in the Representation of Mental Health Professionals in Popular Film

A narrative approach to studying media that focuses on character motivations represented in film is presented. A content analysis identified the motivations of 58 mental health professional characters represented in popular films (1990–1999). These characters were most commonly motivated by money, power, or a concern for others. Characters motivated by love/lust or self-healing were less common. Young female characters were more strongly motivated by love than other characters. Those characters motivated by a concern for others also tended to be motivated by a need for self-healing but not by a need for power. The distortions and insights of cinematic depictions of mental health professionals' motivations are considered. The implications of a narrative approach for future audience response media research are also discussed.     

Wellness at Universities: A Group Art Therapy Approach

Art therapy process groups can be used at university counseling centers (UCCs) to treat the mental health needs of higher education students. The authors, art therapists employed at a UCC, developed an art therapy group to engage undergraduate students in creative self‐expression to increase social connection and learn healthy skills to improve insight and emotional well‐being. Such groups offer unique benefits to participants and would be a valuable addition to current UCC services.     

Understanding the use of Educational Technology Among Faculty, Staff, and Students at a Medical University

A college of health professions at a medical university located in the southeastern United States is striving to increase the use of educational technology among faculty, staff, and students. A strategic planning group was formed and charged with enhancing the use of educational technology within the college. In order to understand the current state of technology use, perceptions of technology, and training needs, surveys and focus groups were conducted. Based on the qualitative and quantitative data obtained, a conceptual model illustrating levels of technology use and factors that influence use was developed.     

Science as experience,exploration, and experiments: elementary teachers’ notions of ‘doing science’

ABSTRACT

Much of the literature on science teaching suggests that elementary teachers lack relevant prior experiences with science. This study begins to reframe the deficit approach to research in science teaching by privileging the experiences elementary teachers have had with science – both in and out of schools – throughout their lives. Our work uses identity as a lens to examine the complexities of elementary teachers’ narrative accounts of their experiences with science over the course of their lives. Our findings identify components of teachers’ science-related experiences in order to lay the groundwork for making connections between teachers’ personal experiences and professional practice. This work demonstrates that teachers’ storied lives are important for educational researchers and teacher educators, as they reveal elements of teaching knowledge that may be productive and resourceful for refining teachers’ science practice.     

Constructivism and technology use: findings from the IMPACTing Leadership project

This study used two surveys, the Activities of Instruction 2.0 (AOI 2.0) and the School Technology Needs Assessment (STNA) to assess the relationship between teachers’ level of constructivism and their level of technology use. Results indicate that constructivist practices and beliefs were significant predictors of technology use, after accounting for the contribution of other individual level demographic variables, and school‐level environmental factors. Teachers with more constructivist instructional practices were more likely to report using technology; similarly, teachers who believed more strongly that IT was a useful tool for student‐centered/constructivist teaching were more likely to use technology.

Konstruktivismus und Gebrauch von Technologie: ergebnisse des IMPACTing Leadership Projekts

Dieser Beitrag verwendete zwei Studien: Activities of Instruction 2.0 (AOI 2.0) und das School Technology Needs Assessment (STNA), um das Verhältnis zwischen dem Kenntnisstand der Lehrer bzgl. Konstruktivismus und ihrem Stand im Technologiegebrauch abschätzen zu können. Die Ergebnisse belegen, dass die konstruktivistischen Praxen und Annahmen signifikante Vorhersagen über den Technologiegebrauch unter Berücksichtigung anderer individueller demographischer Werte und schulspezifischer Faktoren ermöglichen. Lehrer mit größerer konstruktivistischer Unterrichtspraxis haben eher die Nutzung von Technologie angegeben. Ähnlich haben Lehrer, die stärker davon überzeugt waren, dass IT ein nützliches Werkzeug für schülerzentrierten konstruktivistischen Unterricht sind, auch den Gebrauch von Technologie bevorzugt.

Constructivisme et usage de la technologie: les résultats du projet IMPACT sur le Leadership

Dans cette étude on a utilisé deux enquêtes, les Activités d’Enseignement 2.0 (AOI 2.0) et l’Evaluation des besoins en technologie (STNA) pour mesurer la relation entre le niveau de constructivisme des professeurs et leur niveau d’usage des technologies. Les résultats obtenus indiquent que les pratiques et les croyances constructivistes étaient des indicateurs significatifs de l’usage des technologies, une fois pris en compte l’impact d’autres variables démographiques au niveau individuel ainsi que les facteurs environnementaux au niveau des écoles. Il y avait plus de chances que les enseignants ayant des pratiques éducatives plus constructivistes signalent qu’ils utilisaient la technologie; de la même façon, les enseignants qui croyaient le plus fermement que les TICE représentaient un outil utile pour un enseignement constructiviste centré sur l’étudiant étaient le plus susceptibles d’utiliser la technologie.

El constructivismo y el uso de la tecnología: el impacto del proyecto IMPACT sobre el liderazgo

La presente investigación está basada en dos encuestas, una Las Actividades de Enseñanza 2.0 (AOI 2.0) y la otra La Evaluación de las Necesidades en tecnología (STNA) para evaluar la relación entre el nivel de de constructivismo de los profesores y su nivel de uso de la tecnología. Los resultados indican que las prácticas y creencias constructivistas eran indicadores significativos de predicción del uso de las tecnologías una vez tomada en cuenta la contribucción de otras variables demográficas a nível individual y de los factores ambientales al nivel de la escuela. La probabilidad es que los profesores con prácticas instructivas más constructivistas eran los que señalaban un uso más frecuente de la tecnología; de la misma manera la probabilidad es que los profesores que pensaban con más fuerza que las TICs eran herramientas útiles para la enseñanza constructivista centrada en el alumno serían los mayores usuarios de la tecnología.