The mass media and young people

The study reported below analyzes differences in mass media attention behavior in Des Moines school children in 1950 and 1958. It is interesting to compare its findings with those of Edwin Parker, starting on page 39 of this issue of the Journal.     

Dialogic voices in talk about drinking and pregnancy

Alcohol use during pregnancy poses a significant risk of fetal alcohol syndrome. This study presents the interpretive findings of the formative research phase of a funded grant to develop a community‐based public health media campaign on the topic of drinking during pregnancy. In the initial wave of data collection, 50 rural women were recruited from four Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) clinics in southeastern Iowa to participate in semi‐structured interviews. In the second wave, 10 additional WIC clients were interviewed for member‐checking purposes. Findings revealed two competing discourses that organized these women's attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors surrounding drinking and pregnancy: the discourse of individualism and the discourse of responsible motherhood. These two discourses offer opposing normative guidelines for talk among their close female relatives and friends. The implications of these findings for designing a community‐based media campaign are discussed.     

Attribution‐based strategies for initiating and terminating friendships

Research in attribution theory has almost exclusively focused on the perception process to the neglect of studying how communicators incorporate attribution‐based information in their message behavior. This study derived a typology of attribution‐based strategies from Kelley's attribution cube and Jones' ingratiation tactics to assess respondent strategies for initiating and for terminating same‐sex friendships. Respondents were 191 persons drawn from fifth grade, high school, college, and post‐college groups. Results of the study included: 1) distinctiveness information was disproportionately employed in the strategy repertoires to the neglect of consistency‐based and consensus‐based information; 2) respondents had greater variety in types of strategies for their initiation repertoires as opposed to their termination repertoires; 3) repertoire variety for both initiation and termination increased from childhood through adolescence.     

Unsettled Relations: Schools,Gay Marriage,and Educating for Sexuality

In this article, Cris Mayo examines the relationship among anti‐LGBTQ policies, gay marriage, and sexuality education. Her concern is that because gay marriage is insufficiently different from heterosexual marriage, adding it as an issue to curriculum or broader culture debate elides rather than addresses sexual difference. In other words, marriage may be an assimilative aspiration that closes down discussions of what sexuality is and can mean, that sidesteps other related social issues such as health care for all, and that reinforces sexuality and gender identity as privatized, not political, concerns. Mayo examines different strands of LGBTQ history that complicate the meanings of sexuality and that critique a variety of antigay or heterosexist policies for their exclusions. She concludes by suggesting that the possibilities of sexuality are not served by advocacy for one gay relationship formation and calling for a sexuality education that is instead directed at sexual diversity.     

Humorous Relations: Attentiveness,pleasure and risk

Abstract

This article focuses on the structures of humor and joke telling that require particular kinds of attentiveness and particular relationships between speaker and audience, or more specifically, between classmates. First, I will analyze the pedagogical and relational preconditions that are necessary for humor to work. If humor is to work well, the person engaging in humor needs to gauge their interlocutors carefully. I discuss, too, the kinds of listening necessary for listening for the joke, including attentiveness to complex possibilities for meaning. This attentiveness to complexity is linked to curiosity and a willingness to be startled, two qualities that are central to the risk and pleasure of learning discussed by Socrates and Maria Lugones. Examining the place of risk in Socrates’ teaching and the place of serious play in Maria Lugones’ discussion of difference, I suggest that humor can help to illuminate complicities and invite more robust interactions with difference, creating pleasurable encounters to work through difficult social divisions.     

Good practices for student learning: Mixed‐method evidence from the Wabash National Study

Kathleen M. Goodman, Marcia Baxter Magolda, Tricia A. Seifert, and Patricia M. King review both quantitative and qualitative data to understand students' college experiences and provide powerful information to guide educators.     

Exploring youth engagement in agricultural development: the case of farmers’ children in the Philippines as rice crop manager infomediaries

Purpose: This paper explores the intersections between community development and youth development in an initiative that mobilized farmers’ children as Rice Crop Manager (RCM) infomediaries (information mediators). RCM is an ICT-enabled nutrient management application.

Design/Methodology/Approach: The study engaged 30 farmers’ children in high school level from the provinces of Pangasinan, Isabela, Camarines Sur, Iloilo, Bukidnon, and Davao del Norte from November 2016 to October 2017. They interacted with the research team (the authors) and the RCM-SMS platform that sends text messages regarding fertilizer recommendations. A staff member from the Agricultural Training Institute (ATI) also called the students for some follow-up questions. The research team conducted three rounds of interviews with the students concerning the messages and calls that they received and what they did with the information.

Findings: This study finds that farmers’ children can perform infomediary roles quite effectively. Academically excellent children and those involved in farm work performed best.

Practical Implications: The study provides guidance on similar initiatives tapping young people in agricultural development.

Theoretical Implications: This paper finds that while Community Youth Development (CYD) Theory provides a powerful lens in understanding community and youth development intersections, some identified outcomes may overlap and may not be very easy to observe. Hence, the identified outcomes may be revisited for clarity and to make them more all-encompassing.

Originality/Value: The paper documents actual parent-child interaction when the latter is mobilized to serve as an infomediary to access nutrient management-related information on rice.     

Auditing the historic environment: Measurements,datasets and English heritage's state of the historic environment report 2002

This chapter sets out the current context for historic environment management, and the associated information requirements to manage organisations successfully within the sector for the benefit of the country's heritage. The initiative undertaken by English Heritage (the English government's conservation advisors) in developing a pilot State of the Historic Environment Report is used as a case study in the collation of management information for advocacy purposes. Political support for such a development is considered, as well as the history of the report's development with its roots outside the heritage sector. The challenges of project management for report delivery are discussed, particularly where information collation and analysis is reliant on third‐party data sources, often created for separate purposes. Tourism data is focused on, showing how results from the former English Tourism Council's annual surveys of visitor attractions were used to inform key messages in the heritage sector. Comments are made on specific types of data used, and a review given of the methodology for collecting dedicated heritage management organisational data.