Public Pedagogy and Social Justice in Arts Education

In this article we explore examples of public pedagogical actions and interventions, reading them through a social justice education framework lens. In our discussion we start with definitions of social justice, public pedagogy and case study methodologies. Then, we look at a variety of international examples to highlight the pervasiveness of public pedagogical opportunities in visual culture that include a festival, an individual, a citywide symposium, an online community, a cultural group and a museum exhibition. They are divided into three categories based on social justice principles suggested by Ayers et al. and later interpreted by Dewhurst: (1) Public pedagogy and social justice is rooted in people's experiences: Fiesta del Señor de Choquekillka: Ollantaytambo, Peru and Janet Weight Reed – an artist's public pedagogy utilising social media; (2) Public pedagogy and social justice is a process of reflection and action together: Ideas City Festival and the Vlogbrothers; (3) Public pedagogy and social justice seeks to dismantle systems of inequality to create a more humane society: CULTURUNNERS and sh[OUT]: Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender and Intersex art and culture. It is our hope that in looking more closely at these international examples of public pedagogy and social justice education that the power of such alternative sites of learning is apparent and encourages further interventions and investigations in such spaces of inquiry.     

Rethinking the ‘aspirations’ of Chinese girls within and beyond Health and Physical Education and physical activity in Greater Western Sydney

This paper aims to explore young Chinese girls’ aspirations and ideal environments for engagement in Health and Physical Education (HPE) and physical activity (PA) in Greater Western Sydney. Interviews are used to elicit these girls’ perceptions of their future and ideal environments in relation to HPEPA. Their data offer insights into key influences regarding what is thinkable, desirable and achievable in their HPEPA environments. Results showed dimensions of environments, such as social and pedagogical aspects, that are conducive to these girls’ aspirations in HPEPA (e.g. social support from parents, and functional built environment for HPE). This paper aligns with a strengths-based approach to understanding and recognising young Chinese girls’ perceived aspirations within their socio-cultural environment. In doing so, we discuss how feminism and femininity are positioned from a Chinese perspective that may provide alternative views to a post-feminist panorama in promoting advancement of all young girls in HPEPA. Results invite us to take into account some of the girls’ ambivalence towards being an ‘autonomous’ and ‘dependent’ modern Chinese young girl. This paper calls for a rethinking of how aspirations that shape young people’s future in HPEPA in much of the contemporary Western world are conceptualised in academic research.     

Mobile Phones in the Bedroom: Trajectories of Sleep Habits and Subsequent Adolescent Psychosocial Development

Mobile phones are an essential part of an adolescent's life, leading them to text, phone, or message into the night. Longitudinal latent growth models were used to examine relations between changes in adolescent night‐time mobile phone use, changes in sleep behavior, and changes in well‐being (depressed mood, externalizing behavior, self‐esteem, and coping) for 1,101 students (43% male) between 13 and 16 years old. Both night‐time mobile phone use and poor sleep behavior underwent positive linear growth over time. Increased night‐time mobile phone use was directly associated with increased externalizing behavior and decreased self‐esteem and coping. Changes in sleep behavior mediated the relation between early changes in night‐time mobile phone use and later increases in depressed mood and externalizing behavior and later declines in self‐esteem and coping.     

Task-based evaluation of text summarization using Relevance Prediction

This article introduces a new task-based evaluation measure called Relevance Prediction that is a more intuitive measure of an individual’s performance on a real-world task than interannotator agreement. Relevance Prediction parallels what a user does in the real world task of browsing a set of documents using standard search tools, i.e., the user judges relevance based on a short summary and then that same user—not an independent user—decides whether to open (and judge) the corresponding document. This measure is shown to be a more reliable measure of task performance than LDC Agreement, a current gold-standard based measure used in the summarization evaluation community. Our goal is to provide a stable framework within which developers of new automatic measures may make stronger statistical statements about the effectiveness of their measures in predicting summary usefulness. We demonstrate—as a proof-of-concept methodology for automatic metric developers—that a current automatic evaluation measure has a better correlation with Relevance Prediction than with LDC Agreement and that the significance level for detected differences is higher for the former than for the latter.     

Xanthine oxidase as a marker of myocardial infarction

In the present communication, we report remarkably elevated levels of xanthine oxidase activity in the blood of the patients with myocardial infarction when compared to age and sex matched healthy persons. Highly significant increase of malondialdehyde, serving as an index of lipid peroxidation and thus free radical mediated damage, has also been found in the patients. We propose the measurement of the blood levels of xanthine oxidase, a very simple, reliable and less time consuming method as an indicator of myocardial infarction.     

After Six Decades of Systematic Study of Creativity: What Do Teachers Need to Know About What It Is and How It Is Measured?

With creativity now being emphasized in schools, it is important for teachers to understand what it is and how it is measured. This review of the literature is an attempt to make sense of the many definitions and measures of creativity. As a result, this comprehensive review shows that most definitions agree that there are at least two criteria to judge whether a person or a product is creative or not, originality and usefulness. Organized according to Rhodes’s 3 P conceptualization of creativity—person, process, product, and press—more than 40 assessments used in creativity research were reviewed. Familiarity with the definitions, views of, and measurement of creativity can help teachers recognize and foster creativity in their students.     

Family rearing antecedents of pubertal timing

Two general evolutionary hypotheses were tested on 756 White children (397 girls) studied longitudinally: (1) rearing experiences would predict pubertal timing; and (2) children would prove differentially susceptible to rearing. Analysis of pubertal measurements, including some based on repeated physical assessments, showed that mothering and fathering, earlier and later in childhood, predicted pubertal development, but only for girls, with negative parenting appearing most influential; maternal harsh control predicted earlier menarche. Rearing effects varied by infant negative emotionality, proving stronger (and opposite) for girls who in infancy were lower rather than higher in negativity. Maternal menarche, controlled in all analyses, was a stronger predictor than rearing. Findings are discussed in terms of theory development, genetic and nutritional influences, and sample restrictions.     

Boot Camps for Graduate Student Success: A Collaborative Initiative

Although graduate students are interested in learning data, grant, literature research, presentation, scholarly communication, and writing and publishing skills – topics not typically taught within their curriculum – scheduling conflicts during the academic year often prevent them from attending workshops that teach these skills. This article describes a grant-funded initiative where multiple campus units collaborated to provide themed boot camps outside of the fall and spring semesters. It also offers recommendations for adapting such a program at other institutions for lower cost, which administrators and practitioners in higher education, especially in academic libraries, may be particularly interested in.     

Pilot study for the fidelity,acceptability, and effectiveness of a PBIS program plus mental health supports in under‐resourced urban schools

This paper describes implementation (fidelity, perceived acceptability) and tier 1 and Tier 2 outcomes of school‐wide positive behavior interventions and supports approach including mental health supports at Tier 2 in two K‐8 urban schools. Interventions for Tier 2 consisted of three manualized group cognitive behavioral therapy (GCBT) protocols for externalizing behavior problems, depression, and anxiety. Tier 1 and Tier 2 interventions were implemented with fidelity but program feasibility for Tier 2 was in question because school personnel needed a great deal of external support to implement the interventions. Tier 1 interventions were associated with a decrease in office discipline referrals. Students participating in GCBT showed a significant decrease in mental health diagnostic severity at posttreatment. A discussion of perceived and actual implementation barriers and how they were addressed is provided. Implications for practice in low‐income urban schools are discussed.