What do we know about out‐of‐school youths? How participatory action research can work for young refugees in camps

This paper reports on an initiative that took the strategy of youth consultation in programme planning one step further by putting a research project's design, data collection, analysis and presentation of findings in the hands of young women and men who have experienced education and discontinuity of education in a long‐term refugee camp. The participatory action research (PAR) process is described and assessed with attention to how PAR may serve as a practical, credible and ethical methodology for research with refugee youths about refugee youths. This case study reflects that PAR can yield new insights for developing youth‐focused initiatives and positive personal experiences for youth participants, including limited forms of empowerment. Ultimately, however, the structural inequalities imposed by refugee status require redress if the goal is the long‐term empowerment of youths in camps.     

Examining Latina/o Students’ Experiences of Injustice: LatCrit Insights from a Texas High School

We used Latina/Latino Critical Race Theory (LatCrit) to re-analyze survey and interview data from earlier research in which we found that Latina/o students reported less positive experiences than other students in this high school. We found racial injustice in class enrollments, in students’ experiences with stereotypes and prejudice, in student-teacher relationships, and in school policies and norms. LatCrit principles illustrate interconnections among racism, interest convergence, and colorblindness that create racial injustice for Latinas/os. We argue that counterstorytelling could emerge to resist that injustice and that educators must understand how racism functions in their schools and interrogate relevant policies and norms.     

What’s so funny? Audiences of women’s stand-up comedy and layered referential viewing: Exploring identity and power

In this paper, I discuss audience reactions to stand-up clips by Amy Schumer, Wanda Sykes, and Margaret Cho. Women’s comedy is arguably at the height of its popularity, but there is a seeming lack of research on audience interpretations of humor produced by women. This research builds on and extends current notions of “referential viewing” in audience research. Utilizing focus group analysis, I elaborate audience decoding practices and the role of identity in layers of referential viewing. Audiences in this research centered their discussions on identification of the comedians, identification of the targets of jokes, and identification of whom they perceive to be the intended audience. Discussed are implications for how audiences understand various power dynamics through humor and distinctions created between comedy that “laughs with” or that “laughs at.”     

Reimagining student employability: a case study of policy and practice transformation

ABSTRACT

Within Australian higher education, there has been an evolving of employability policy, realised in curriculum, at an intersection of the constructs of employment, work-readiness, life-long learning, and career development. The enactment of employability policy has driven an evolution in the practices of higher education in both curriculum and student support. This paper presents a case study of an Australian university which has reimagined the delivery of career and student support services through a framework that envisions preparing students for future worlds of work. The emergent policy framework has transformed organisational structures, human resources, and connections between student support practices and curriculum design. This transformation has generated new intersections of practice and is challenging institutional constructs of expertise. This case study provides transferrable learnings for broader considerations of higher education policy and practice as employability becomes the core driver of student success, and explores layered discourses of policymaking across an institution.     

The paradoxical role 0f unexamined documents in the evaluation of retrieval effectiveness2

Traditional measures of retrieval effectiveness, of which the recall ratio is an outstanding example, are strongly influenced by the relevance properties of unexamined documents—documents with which the system user has no direct contact. Such an influence is awkward to explain in traditional terms, but is readily justified within the broader framework of a utility-theoretic approach. The utility-theoretic analysis shows that unexamined documents can be important in theory, but usually are not when it is the statistics of large samples that are of interest. It is concluded that the traditional concern with the relevance or nonrelevance of unexamined documents is misplaced, and that traditional measures of effectiveness should be replaced by estimates of the direct utility of the examined documents.     

The paradoxical role 0f unexamined documents in the evaluation of retrieval effectiveness†

Traditional measures of retrieval effectiveness, of which the recall ratio is an outstanding example, are strongly influenced by the relevance properties of unexamined documents—documents with which the system user has no direct contact. Such an influence is awkward to explain in traditional terms, but is readily justified within the broader framework of a utility-theoretic approach. The utility-theoretic analysis shows that unexamined documents can be important in theory, but usually are not when it is the statistics of large samples that are of interest. It is concluded that the traditional concern with the relevance or nonrelevance of unexamined documents is misplaced, and that traditional measures of effectiveness should be replaced by estimates of the direct utility of the examined documents.     

Exploring the potential for and promise of incorporating distributive and procedural justices into post-secondary assessment of student learning

This paper explores the potential of incorporating constructs of distributive justice and procedural justice into summative assessment of student learning in higher education. I systematically compare the process used by managers to evaluate employee performance in organizations – performance appraisal (PA) – with processes used by professors to assess student learning in academe. These procedures are remarkably similar in terms of objectives to facilitate and measure performance/learning, criteria for defining desired performance/learning, the procedures used by raters to evaluate performance/learning, and the procedure used by employees and students to assess fairness of their PA/grades. I then summarize empirical research regarding distributive justice (DJ) and procedural justice (PJ) in organizations. Finally, I posit how positive attitudes and behaviors associated with DJ and PJ in organizations might transfer to benefit students, professors, administrators, and universities in academe.     

On negotiating White science: a call for cultural relevance and critical reflexivity

This article is a response to Randy Yerrick and Joseph Johnson’s article “Negotiating White Science in Rural Black America: A Case for Navigating the Landscape of Teacher Knowledge Domains”. They write about research conducted by Yerrick in which videos of his teaching practice as a White educator in a predominately Black rural classroom were examined. Their analysis is framed through Shulman’s (1986) work on “domains of teacher knowledge” and Ladson-Billings’ (1999) critical race theory (CRT). Although we appreciate a framework that attends to issues of power, such as CRT, we see a heavier emphasis on Shulman’s work in their analysis. We argue that a culturally relevant pedagogy (CRP) framework has the potential to provide a more nuanced analysis of what occurred in Yerrick’s classroom from a critical lens. Thus we examine Yerrick and Johnson’s work through the five main CRP components (as defined by Brown-Jeffy and Cooper 2011) and ultimately argue that science educators who want to promote equity in their classrooms should engage in continuous critical reflexivity, aid students in claiming voice, and encourage students to become not only producers of scientific knowledge but also users and critics of such knowledge.     

The use of branding by trade publishers: An investigation into marketing the book as a brand name product

Publishing has traditionally been an introspective industry, and while this is gradually changing, there is a need for publishers to adopt a more market-led approach. This requires the development of branding strategies to increase levels of recognition and consumer loyalty among the book buying public. The nature of the book as a product presents difficulties in applying branding theory to the industry and this study provides an insight into the issues involved in branding the imprint and the author and examines how some trade publishers are addressing these issues. The study also examines the public perception of brands within the trade sector and examines how much impact publishers’ brands have made with the consumer.