The nature of institutional heteronormativity in primary schools and practice-based responses

Concern for school-based homophobia is increasing, yet there is a tendency to focus on individual incidents of homophobic bullying rather than the cultural and institutional factors supporting them. We analyse ways in which institutional heteronormativity operates in primary schools and report results from our research in UK schools that culminated in a Participatory Action Research project in which practicing teachers explored possibilities for disrupting dominant discourses of sexuality and gender expression. We argue that policy and practice need to be reconceptualised to recognise institutional heteronormativity and to interrogate the discourses underpinning systematic forms of oppression.     

Rethinking Reflection: Teachers' Critiques

This article presents findings from a study conducted with a teacher focus group asked to read and discuss their responses to selected published teacher narratives of reflective practice. The teachers challenged features of practitioner reflection presented in several of the reading selections as not representative of how they experienced reflection in practice. In this study, the teachers' critiques were not viewed as anti-intellectual, lazy, or provincial. Rather, the researcher used reader response theory to frame the teachers' critiques as informed feedback that needs the inquiry and input of teacher educators. The findings invite consideration of the unintended consequences of these representations for practitioners and scholars, especially in an age of emphasis on standards and accountability.     

Environmental conditions for the safeguarding of collections: A background to the current debate on the control of relative humidity and temperature

Conditions of relative humidity (RH) and temperature within museums and buildings holding collections of cultural heritage objects are often maintained around a strictly controlled set point of about 50 ± 5% RH and 20 or 21 ± 2°C to provide safe, stable conditions for hygroscopic artifacts. It has recently been proposed that these ranges should be relaxed to values that are less energy-intensive to maintain while still being safe for the objects in the collection, with the aim of reducing both carbon footprint and energy use. It is also suggested that conditions should be determined by the needs of individual objects and by the local climate of the region, rather than applying overall values across the museum as a whole. This proposal has led to much discussion within the conservation community. The suggested values, a stable humidity within the range 40–60% RH and a stable temperature within the range 16–25°C for most objects, apart from the most vulnerable, are derived from the results of experimental research on the responses of individual materials to particular conditions of RH and temperature, as well as observations of the behaviour of cultural heritage objects in their own environments and on loan. This paper describes briefly the historical and scientific background to the present discussion.     

Relations Among Chronic Peer Group Rejection,Maladaptive Behavioral Dispositions,and Early Adolescents' Peer Perceptions

Adolescents' perceptions of peers' relational characteristics (e.g., support, trustworthiness) were examined for subtypes of youth who evidenced chronic maladaptive behavior, chronic peer group rejection, or combinations of these risk factors. Growth mixture modeling was used to identify subgroups of participants within a normative sample of youth (N = 477; 50% female) for whom data had been gathered from fifth grade (M_age = 10.61) through eighth grade (M_age = 13.93). Results revealed that both enduring individual vulnerability (i.e., chronic withdrawn or chronic aggressive behavioral dispositions) and interpersonal adversity (i.e., chronic peer group rejection) were linked with either differences or changes in adolescents' perceptions of their peers' supportiveness and trustworthiness across the early adolescent age period.     

Robert W. McChesney. The Problem of the Media: U.S. Communication Politics in the 21st Century. New York: Monthly Review Press, 2004, 367 pp., ISBN 1583671056 (paperback)

This study investigates the relationship between adolescents' exposure to news, fictional police/crime shows, and reality police shows and their perceptions of the performance, distributive fairness, and procedural fairness of the police and the link with their overall attitude toward the police. Based on the literature, a hypothetical model of media influence is proposed and tested empirically in a cross-sectional survey of 356 Flemish adolescents. Watching reality shows was negatively related to adolescents' perceptions of how fairly the police exercise their authority. Exposure to the news negatively predicted respondents' perceptions of the distributive fairness of the police. Adolescents' beliefs about police performance were not related to media exposure. Exposure to fictional police shows did not significantly predict police perceptions. The results suggest that news and reality police shows play a small but significant role in adolescents' fairness perceptions of the police.