The Good Working Mother: Managerial Women’s Sensemaking and Feelings About Work–Family Issues

We use a sensemaking lens to explore how women managers experience and articulate work–life concerns upon their return to paid work following maternity leaves. We focus on 11 women who held different types of managerial positions, including vice presidents, circulation managers, and human resources experts. We found that our participants re‐framed the good mother image into a good working mother role that fit their lifestyles and interests. To accomplish this reframing, participants engaged in three thematic processes supportive of the good working mother image: (a) good working mothers arrange quality child care; (b) good working mothers are (un)equal partners; and (c) good working mothers feel pleasure in their working mother role. These themes and image were both ironic and fragile constructions of working motherhood. Because these themes and images enable participants to make sense of and establish the worth of working motherhood to family members, friends, acquaintances, organizational members, and community members, they provide a reason why middle‐ or upper‐class working and stay‐at‐home mothers may be in conflict about work and family choices.     

Book review

Copyright Questions and Answers for Information Professionals: From the Columns of Against the Grain Laura N. Gasaway West Lafayette, Indiana, Purdue University Press, 2013, 284pp. ISBN: 978‐1‐55753‐639‐6, £16.12, pbk     

High school students' use of meiosis when solving genetics problems

Researchers have pointed out the difficulties that high school students have in understanding meiosis and the infrequency with which they acknowledge the conceptual relationships between meiosis and classical genetics, particularly when solving genetics problems. The research described in this article paints a different picture of students' reasoning with meiosis as they solved complex, computergenerated genetics problems, some of which required them to revise their understanding of meiosis in response to anomalous data. Details are presented of the ways students used their knowledge of meiosis to recognize anomalous data, to generate hypotheses as part of the revision of explanatory models, and to assess these hypotheses. The findings from this research, contrary to most reports in the literature, suggest that students are able to develop rich understanding of meiosis and can utilize that knowledge to solve genetics problems.     

From Mario to FIFA: what qualitative case study research suggests about games-based learning in a US classroom

This article explores the impact of using commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) videogames in a high school curriculum when developed through a connected learning frame by examining the influence that COTS videogames have on transforming students’ literacy learning in-school. However, it must be noted that transforming literacy in school is about more than bridging in- and out-of-school literacies; it concerns developing a deeper understanding of the meaning of literacy in today’s multimediated world, and the ways that these experiences are connected not only to media, but to traditional texts, peers, and guiding teachers, so that we can better grasp how to harness new learning styles and new ways of making meaning in contemporary classroom spaces. To understand how to capture in and out-of-school practices, we conducted a qualitative case study of two high school students enrolled in a reading intervention class that incorporated a COTS videogames curriculum. Data were analyzed via a constant comparison analysis. Findings indicated that the games-based curriculum created through a connected learning frame enabled students to engage in a constellation of connections among digital media, traditional texts, peers, and guiding teachers.     

Book reviews

Streznewski, M. K. (1999). Gifted grownups: The mixed blessings of extraordinary potential . New York: John Wiley & Sons (292 pp., $24.95 hb, ISBN‐0–471–29580–9).

Johnson, N.G., Roberts, M.C., & Worell, J., Eds.(1999). Beyond appearance: A new look at adolescent girls . Washington, DC: American Psychological Association (464 pp., ISBN‐1–55798–582–0).

Smutny, J.F. (1998). The young gifted child: Potential and promise, an anthology . Cresskill, NJ: Hampton Press, Inc. (582 pp. $35.00, paperback, ISBN 1–57273–108–7).

Elias, M. J., Zins, J. E., Weissberg, R. P., Frey, K. S., Green‐berg, M. T., Haynes, N. M., Kessler, R., Schwab‐Stone, M. E., & Shriver, T. P. (1997). Promoting social and emotional learning . Alexandria, VA: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development. (164 pp., $22.95 pb, ISBN‐0–87120–288–3).

Friedman, R. C., & Rogers, K. B. (Eds.). (1998). Talent in context: Historical and social perspectives on giftedness . Washington, DC: American Psychological Association (218 pp., $29.95 Hardback, ISBN 1–55798–493).     

Book reviews

Levine, J. (1999). The Enneagram intelligences: Understanding personality for effective teaching and learning. Westport, CT: Bergin & Garvey (320 pp., $24.95, cloth, ISBN‐O‐89789‐ 562–2; $59.95 hardcover, ISBN‐0–89789–561–4).

Jacobsen, M. (1999) Liberating everyday genius: Revolutionary guide for identifying and mastering your exceptional gifts . NY: Ballantine Books. (399 pp., $25.00 hb, ISBN‐0–345–42771–8).

Cline, S., & Schwartz, D. (1999). Diverse populations of gifted children: Meeting their needs in the regular classroom and beyond. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Merrill (207 pp., $ paper, ISBN 0–13–399908–4).

Johnson, N.G., Roberts, M.C., & Worell, J., Eds. (1999). Beyond appearance: A new look at adolescent girls. Washington, DC: American Psychological Association (408 pp., $39.95 hb, ISBN‐1–55798–582–0).     

Removing the Barriers for Students with Disabilities: Accessible Online and Web‐Enhanced Courses

The concern of this article is the difficulties faced by disabled students as technology grows and expands in academia. Although distance learning, web‐based courses, and hybrid courses, among other venues, have improved the chances for many people suffering disabilities for obtaining degrees and thereby increasing their life chances, we have met new challenges as well. This work will consider the growth of these technologies and some of the difficulties they present to particular groups of students. Also, the article will explore methods of overcoming many of these problems. Finally, a general method of working with these students and their special needs is drawn from existing literature.     

The Nature of Laboratory Learning Experiences in Secondary Science Online

Teaching science to secondary students in an online environment is a growing international trend. Despite this trend, reports of empirical studies of this phenomenon are noticeably missing. With a survey concerning the nature of laboratory activities, this study describes the perspective of 35-secondary teachers from 15-different U.S. states who are teaching science online. The type and frequency of reported laboratory activities are consistent with the tradition of face-to-face instruction, using hands-on and simulated experiments. While provided examples were student-centered and required the collection of data, they failed to illustrate key components of the nature of science. The features of student-teacher interactions, student engagement, and nonverbal communications were found to be lacking and likely constitute barriers to the enactment of inquiry. These results serve as a call for research and development focused on using existing communication tools to better align with the activity of science such that the nature of science is more clearly addressed, the work of students becomes more collaborative and authentic, and the formative elements of a scientific inquiry are more accessible to all participants.     

Developing Summarization Skills through the Use of LSA-Based Feedback

This paper describes a series of classroom trials during which we developed Summary Street, an educational software system that uses Latent Semantic Analysis to support writing and revision activities. Summary Street provides various kinds of feedback, primarily about whether a student summary adequately covers important source content and fulfills other requirements, such as length. The feedback allows students to engage in extensive, independent practice in writing and revising without placing excessive demands on teachers for feedback. We first discuss the underlying educational rationale, then present some results of the trials conducted with the system. We describe the collaborative process among researchers and teachers which enabled the development of a viable and supportive educational tool and its integration into classroom instruction.