An Examination of Coursera as an Information Environment: Does Coursera Fulfill its Mission to Provide Open Education to All?

In terms of international education, the concept of online education seems to be a growing trend. Edxonline.org, Minervaproject.com, and Udacity.com are all new massive online open courses (MOOCs)—education websites similar to Coursera offering students the ability to receive the best education from elite universities entirely online. The most tantalizing promise of a company like Coursera is the role it might play in improving education for the world's have-nots: high school dropouts, the global poor, and those less able to self-teach.     

Sex differences in communication and the construction of HIV/AIDS

This paper reports analyses of sex differences in knowledge, attitudes, and behavior related to HIV/AIDS and communication about HIV I'AIDS in the heterosexual college population. Men and women differed in their assessments of risk to HIV infection for various behaviors; in each case women perceived greater risk. Women were more favorable than men regarding talking about AIDS and attitudes about condom use. Men reported a greater number of sexual partners for the previous five years than did women. Men, more often than women, appear to have changed their behavior in a direction of greater risk. Only two sex differences were found for prevention‐related behaviors. First, men more often reported having purchased a condom. However, no sex differences were found for actual condom use. Second, as reported in previous studies, women were more likely to engage in AIDS‐related talk with a sexual partner. Because of their many differences, men and women need to be targeted as separate audiences for HIV/AIDS prevention. Further, because women have emerged as the most rapidly growing group at risk for HIV infection and because women appear to be more willing than men to implement HIV/AIDS prevention in their relationships, they should be considered a primary audience for HIV/AIDS‐prevention programs designed for influencing the behavior of heterosexual couples.     

Teacher Dispositions for Effective Education in the Borderlands

Teacher dispositions, attitudes, and motivation play important roles in educating students so that they are highly successful in school. This is particularly true for students in borderland areas who frequently need to negotiate two cultures, two languages, and two worlds. Using grounded theory with extant data from Tijuana and San Diego-area teachers who participated in a border pedagogy training institute, characteristics that are critical to teacher dispositions—which can make significant differences in effectiveness with students in the borderlands—have been identified.     

Problem solving in mathematics: the significance of visualisation and related working memory

The importance of educational psychologists’ (EPs’) skills to the formulation of evidence-based educational strategies, as well as in response to learning difficulties, is demonstrated here in relation to mathematical problem solving. Initiatives to improve the link between mathematical skills from school to everyday life have drawn significantly on problem solving tasks. Through critical evaluation of research, the relevance of visualisation methods and working memory to problem solving is considered within this article. Studies suggest that differences exist in the effectiveness of particular visualisation methods, but that training can improve their utility and thereby problem solving performance. Additionally, differences between individuals and contexts can influence visualisation use, and some pupils experience specific difficulties in this area. Recommendations are made to enhance the teaching of visualisation as a strategy for problem solving, and to support those pupils with specific difficulties.     

Evidence of alphabetic knowledge in writing: connections to letter and word identification skills in preschool and kindergarten

The writing skills of 286 children (157 female and 129 male) were studied by comparing name writing and letter writing scores from preschool to kindergarten with letter and word reading scores over the same time period. Two rubrics for scoring writing were compared to determine if scores based on multiple components (i.e., letter formation, orientation on the vertical axis, left–right orientation, and correct letter sequencing) would better reflect differences in children’s writing knowledge in preschool and kindergarten than rubrics composed of one component (i.e., letter formation only). While developmental changes in writing scores were found, little additional information was provided by multiple component scoring rubrics compared to the single component rubric. Letter writing scores were more strongly related to letter and word reading scores than name writing scores but neither writing score was predictive of growth. Implications of the findings for intentional/systematic writing instruction in preschool curricula are discussed.     

Teacher training in K–12 student mental health: A systematic review

Teachers are in a unique position to identify and support students who experience mental health concerns. The purpose of this systematic review was to (a) identify current available evidence-based teacher training programs related to students' mental health, (b) review the content and delivery methods of the training, and (c) evaluate the quality of the research designs and evaluation methods of the training. Most training programs are delivered face-to-face and include interactive discussion and content knowledge. Content varied among the training programs. Most studies found improved knowledge among teachers; however, no studies found improvement in effective communication.     

“Is This a Boy or a Girl?”: Rethinking Sex-Role Representation in Caldecott Medal-Winning Picturebooks, 1938–2011

A number of previous studies have addressed gender role-stereotyping in Caldecott Award-winning picturebooks. Building upon the extensive scholarship examining representations of females in Caldecott books, this current study offers a critical investigation of how gender is represented in Caldecott Medal-winning literature from 1938 to 2011 by exploring the ways in which “femininity” and “masculinity,” biological sex, and gender are constructed in these texts. The investigators briefly address author and illustrator gender and the representations of males and females as characters or images in pictures and text before departing from previous scholarship to offer a rereading of books that feature “ungendered” leading characters, those that are not identified in the text as being either “male” or “female” and are therefore open to the interpretation of individual readers. By resisting cultural cues and normative constructions of gender and biological sex, these ungendered depictions extend the range of possible ways in which readers may see themselves or those in their lives represented in Caldecott Medal-winning picturebooks.     

Including students with disabilities in Education for All: lessons from Ethiopia

This article addresses the inclusion of students with disabilities into the Education for All and Sustainable Development Goals agenda through a case study of Ethiopia, a country aiming to promote inclusive education amidst rapidly rising school enrolments. The article begins with a review of debates concerning inclusive education in the Global South and the strategy taken by Ethiopia. It then examines how inclusive education is currently being implemented drawing on recent fieldwork at rural and urban schools in Tigray province. Through interviews, participant observation, and focus groups, we found that teachers and school administrators are generally in favour of mainstreaming children with disabilities into ‘normal’ schools. However, insufficient training of teachers and itinerant teachers along with shortages of teaching materials and resources present major challenges to addressing special education needs.     

Physical Disability,Stigma, and Physical Activity in Children

Using the stereotype content model as a guiding framework, this study explored whether the stigma that able‐bodied adults have towards children with a physical disability is reduced when the child is portrayed as being active. In a 2 (physical activity status) x 2 (ability status) study design, 178 university students rated a child described in one of four vignettes on 12 dimensions of perceived warmth and competence. Results revealed a main effect of ability status on warmth (p < 0.001) such that children with a physical disability were rated significantly higher in perceived warmth than able‐bodied children, regardless of activity status (d = 0.86). Also, there was a significant interaction (p = 0.02) of ability and activity status on perceived competence, indicating that ratings of perceived competence were significantly higher for active children with a physical disability than for all other children (d = 0.54–0.64). Results suggest that physical activity should be explored as a way to mitigate the stigmatisation of children with a physical disability.     

Tensions in Community Health Improvement Initiatives: Communication and Collaboration in a Managed Care Environment

Between the years 1993 and 2000, the W. K. Kellogg Foundation sponsored the Comprehensive Community Health Models (CCHMs) Initiative in three Michigan counties. CCHMs was comprised of three closely related community initiatives carried out in the midst of a failed national health care reform effort and the continued penetration of managed care arrangements into many health care systems. This experimental initiative set out to test the hypothesis that traditional healthcare system animosities and exclusionary practices could be overcome by stakeholder participation in an ongoing, structured, collaborative dialogue about improving access to health services. In the process of collecting data through surveys, interviews, content analysis, and observation, we were struck by the occurrence of several overarching tensions that we perceive to exist in our data. The present article elucidates five such tensions and suggests how third parties such as communication researchers, evaluators, and practitioners can facilitate community health improvement initiatives and better their own data interpretation by acknowledging and understanding these tensions.