Our Experience with User Experience: Exploring Staffing Configurations to Conduct UX in an Academic Library

ABSTRACT

A research project was undertaken by a university library system to develop a sustainable user experience strategy. A task force was convened to conduct a pilot project with members from both libraries in the system to assess staffing responsibilities, guidelines, processes, and data-gathering procedures. The team tested an electronic resources list common to both libraries. In describing the methods employed by the task force in their research, this article outlines the benefits and drawbacks of staffing configurations to initiate user experience practices in an academic library setting.     

Gaining a future through self‐understanding

Mertens states that teachers should be trained in enrichment education not gifted education, and that the traditional school curriculum could be stretched to serve the needs of the gifted with acceleration and fast‐paced tracks.     

The Intersection of Race and Gender Among Black American Adolescents

This study employed an exploratory sequential mixed-methods design to examine the intersection of race and gender among Black American adolescents, aged 11–19. The quantitative component (n = 344) used survey data to examine gender differences in peer-perpetrated and adult-perpetrated racial discrimination experiences, and no gender differences were evident. Qualitative data (n = 42) probed how males and females interpret discrimination experiences given the intersection of race and gender. Although the majority of participants believed that Black males and females have similar experiences, some believed that Black males face more racial discrimination. However, analyses revealed social disadvantages for Black females given that they report inappropriate comments and unwelcome hair touching and limited opportunities for interracial dating compared with Black males.     

Toward an understanding of higher-order thinking among minority students

Recent investigations have established the importance of higher-order thinking in the acquisition and application of learning skills in diverse domains of inquiry. Such findings have implications for enhancing the quality of thinking of all children but have particular significance for those minority students who historically have not performed as well as their more economically advantaged peers. Although much has been written about the construct, research is still needed to identify the specific processes underlying higher-order thinking and to examine its use among minority populations. A principal-factors extraction with varimax rotation analysis was used in the present study to clarify the nature and function of higher-order thinking among minority students from economically disadvantaged backgrounds. The results allowed for a specification of the mental processes associated with the construct and the extent to which students reported an awareness and use of these processes in academic problem-solving situations.     

Caste and UK education: a historical overview

ABSTRACT

Caste, and awareness of it, have been a persistent, though changing, feature of South Asian communities’ experience in the UK. In twenty-first century Britain the issue of caste has come to the fore and has been hotly contested, in relation to equality legislation. In this wider context, the present article maps some of caste’s historical intersections with education in the UK. The focus is, variously, on: caste as it has intersected with post-18 education; caste as a factor in families’ attitudes to education; school children’s awareness of caste as an aspect of their own identity and as a way of differentiating their peers; the incidence of caste-based bullying in schools; and the inclusion of caste as a topic in religious education and a matter for ongoing consideration by religious educationists.