The dangers of relentless pursuit: teaching,personal health,and the symbolic/real violence of Teach For America

ABSTRACT

This paper examines the pressures experienced by teachers as they strive to embody the Teach For America (TFA) motif of ‘relentless pursuit’. It draws on interviews conducted with 36 teachers and uses a Bourdieuian analysis to consider the mechanisms of control manifested through socialization and corps member habituation. The findings suggest that corps members experience both symbolic and self-imposed overt violence as they aim to meet the demands of TFA. This has implications for the increasing number of teachers in programs around like TFA as well as the broader discourses of teacher accountability and the teaching profession.     

Stairway to employment? Internships in higher education

This article aims to shed light on the current debate regarding the role of internships in higher education in graduates’ employability. In specific, it analyses empirical data on a large-scale study of Portuguese first-cycle study programmes, in order to explore indicators of the professional value of internships in the employability of higher education graduates. Results demonstrate that study programmes that include internships tend to significantly enhance graduates’ employability, particularly within the universe of polytechnic and public higher education institutions. Besides the instrumental value of internships, the impact of the nature and structure of the internship on the percentage of unemployed graduates are also discussed. Mandatory internships and the inclusion of multiple, shorter internships throughout the degree are negatively associated with unemployment levels. Results indicate work-based learning can be used as a successful strategy to bridge theoretical knowledge and practice and enhance graduate employability. These findings provide important insights for the evaluation and/or the design of internship programmes in higher education.     

The Ocular Communicator: A Device to Enable Persons with Severe Physical Disabilities to Communicate Using Eye Movements

This report describes the Ocular Communicator(OC) and its use with a person who is severely physically disabled. The device is designed for persons who have minimal motor function and employs eye movements for the operation of a printer or computer keyboard.     

Exploring undergraduates' understanding of photosynthesis using diagnostic question clusters

We present a diagnostic question cluster (DQC) that assesses undergraduates' thinking about photosynthesis. This assessment tool is not designed to identify individual misconceptions. Rather, it is focused on students' abilities to apply basic concepts about photosynthesis by reasoning with a coordinated set of practices based on a few scientific principles: conservation of matter, conservation of energy, and the hierarchical nature of biological systems. Data on students' responses to the cluster items and uses of some of the questions in multiple-choice, multiple-true/false, and essay formats are compared. A cross-over study indicates that the multiple-true/false format shows promise as a machine-gradable format that identifies students who have a mixture of accurate and inaccurate ideas. In addition, interviews with students about their choices on three multiple-choice questions reveal the fragility of students' understanding. Collectively, the data show that many undergraduates lack both a basic understanding of the role of photosynthesis in plant metabolism and the ability to reason with scientific principles when learning new content. Implications for instruction are discussed.     

Using Virtual Field Trips to Connect Students with University Scientists: Core Elements and Evaluation of zipTrips?

Physical field trips to scientists?? work places have been shown to enhance student perceptions of science, scientists and science careers. Although virtual field trips (VFTs) have emerged as viable alternatives (or supplements) to traditional physical fieldtrips, little is known about the potential of virtual field trips to provide the same or similar science career exploration advantages as physical field trips. The overarching goal of this paper is to describe a VFT, zipTrips?, designed to provide middle school students, especially those in resource limited rural areas, with access to university scientists. Using zipTrips as a case example, the paper identifies and describes some of the core characteristics and elements of high quality authentic VFTs that foster student-scientist interactions. In addition, the paper uses program evaluation data to examine the impact of zipTrips on student perceptions of scientists.     

Te Wero—the challenge: reimagining universities from an indigenous world view

This paper provides a foundational framework to bring into conversation indigenous world views in reimagining universities. Highlighting a specific indigenous world view, the university is presented as a site for critical conversation and transformative praxis. We discuss the workplace experiences of indigenous staff in a university and infer from these how management practices related to indigenous staff could be enhanced. Building on our study of Māori academic and administrative staff in a New Zealand university, an indigenous typology and a Wero or challenge matrix is offered, which locates different positions and actions that universities adhere to or seek to emulate. The paper argues for universities to reimagine their policies and practices by drawing from the complex richness of indigenous world views.     

Examining the developmental trajectories of adolescent sexual offenders

The aim of the current study was to assess the validity of the sex-plus versus sex-only categorization method for distinguishing between different types of adolescent sex offenders (ASOs; Butler & Seto, 2002). It is hypothesized that this categorization method has utility when attempting to distinguish between generalist and specialist ASOs (Seto & Pullman, 2014). Additionally, further classification of ASOs was attempted using a well known juvenile delinquency classification scheme, early-onset versus late-onset offenders (Moffitt, 1993). The current study was an archival analysis of clinical files from a sample of 158 male ASOs seen for clinical assessment at a Metropolitan Family Court Clinic. Results indicate that sex-plus offenders are more antisocial, exhibit more psychiatric issues, and have greater deficits in general social skills compared to sex-only offenders. Conversely, sex-only offenders were found to have more atypical sexual interests, and were more likely to have greater deficits in romantic relationships compared to sex-plus offenders. Due to a power related limitation, little support was found for the use of the early-onset versus late-onset classification scheme with ASOs. Overall, these results provide further support to the validity of a sex-only versus sex-plus distinction. Given these results mirror those found in the generalist/specialist literature regarding the etiology of ASOs, sex-only and sex-plus offenders may indeed have different etiological pathways: sex-plus offenders are more driven by general antisociality factors, as the generalist perspective suggests, and sex-only offenders are more driven by special factors, as the specialist explanations suggest.     

Reprints of Interest

Parker Tyler, The Hollywood Hallucination (originally published in 1944) and The Magic and Myth of the Movies (originally published in 1947)

Jerome Agel's The Making of Kubrick's 2001 (Signet Books, $1.50)     

Practical Guides

THE ART AND SCIENCE OF RADIO, by Linda Busby and Donald Parker (Boston: Allyn and Bacon, 1984-$20.00).

ELECTRONIC ARTS OF SOUND AND LIGHT, by Ronald Pellegrino (New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold, 1983—$28.50).

TELECONFERENCING HANDBOOK: A GUIDE TO COST-EFFECTIVE COMMUNICATION, by Ellen Lazar et al. (White Plains, New York: Knowledge Industry Publications, 1983—$34.95).

THE CREATIVE CONNECTION: ADVERTISING COPYWRITING AND IDEA VISUALIZATION, by Arthur A. Winters and Shirley F. Milton (New York: Fairchild Publications, 1982—$16.50).

BROADCAST NEWSWRITING AS PROCESS and BROADCAST COPYWRITING AS PROCESS by J. Clark Weaver (New York: Longman, 1984—price not given, paper).

PUBLIC RELATIONS/PUBLICITY: A KEY LINK IN COMMUNICATIONS, by Lois Ehrenkranz and Gilbert Kahn (New York: Fairchild, 1983—$14.50).

EXPERTS IN ACTION: INSIDE PUBLIC RELATIONS, by Bill Cantor (New York: Longman, 1984—$29.95/ 14.95).     

Are first-circulation patterns for monographs in the humanities different from the sciences?

How many monographs acquired in a particular year circulate in that year? What percentage have their first circulation each successive year? Does the pattern differ for different broad subject areas, i.e., humanities, the sciences, and the social sciences? This article tests the assumption that the first-circulation pattern differs by subject. We conclude that the pattern does not differ. The finding is important for decisions about off-site storage, assessing collection development, maintaining departmental libraries, etc. Regardless of subject, if a book has not circulated at least once within a few years after acquisition, it is unlikely to find its reader.