SPECIAL ISSUE COMMENTARY: Cross-Disciplinary Perspectives on Consultation in Gifted Education: Focusing on Practice Issues

This article provides a response from the perspectives of a teacher of the gifted and a trainer of teachers of the gifted. Following a brief summary of the authors' collective experience, the article highlights major issues represented by the four articles and identifies common themes across the various disciplines with respect to consultation and gifted education. A call for needed research and more collaborative work among gifted educators and school support personnel is made.     

Explaining Hong Kong Students’ International Achievement in Civic Learning

This study identifies predictors of Hong Kong students’ civic learning. It has adopted a cross-sectional quantitative design using secondary data from the 2009 International Civics and Citizenship Education Study (ICCS 2009; Schulz et al., 2010). Multi-level analysis reveals that most of the variance in student achievement can be accounted for by school level rather than individual level factors. Student background variables are largely insignificant suggesting the resilience of many Hong Kong students. Regarding Hong Kong students’ achievements in civic learning, a possible explanation is made and implications are developed for both theory and practice.     

‘What about the community impact?’: The Corpus Christi ‘hook’

This case study draws on theory in the following areas (1) public financing of sport facilities and in particular, the method of bonds and the impact on and involvement of local taxpayers, (2) community impact of minor league sport teams, and (3) leveraging of sport teams and facilities. This case is centered on Justin Drew, the president of the Corpus Christi Hooks, who must work with city officials to ensure that his minor league baseball team does not lose local support. The city of Corpus Christi helped finance the Hooks’ stadium a few years prior, and now with new members on City Council, tough economic times, and a history of folded professional sports teams in the city, Drew must be proactive in seeing that the Hooks do not meet a similar fate.The case presents a common challenge confronted by communities that host professional sport teams. In many cases, cities must provide some level of public financing for sport facilities in order to attract or retain a team. To gain public support, various promises are made about the potential for the team to transform the community. However, once public funding is secured and a team and facility is in place, it is unclear who has the responsibility for delivering on these promises. The situation presented in this case is not unique. In fact, similar claims are made about the impact of a sports team, regardless of the size of the host community or the type of team. This case gives students the opportunity to measure impact and also think critically about how to leverage a sports team to create value for the community. Although the characters in the case are fictitious the case draws upon actual facts and data from public records regarding Corpus Christi and their minor league baseball team, the Hooks; thus, providing students with a realistic dilemma to consider. The case is intended for use in Sport Finance/Economics and Sport Policy courses, but could also be adapted for other courses such as Sport Marketing, Sport Communication, Facilities and Event Management or even Research Methods.     

“You Can’t Bring Your Cat to Work”: Challenges Mothers Face Combining Breastfeeding and Working

Despite increasing emphasis in recent years on the importance of breastfeeding for public health, rates in the United States still fall short of goals set by health organizations. In particular, breastfeeding rates for working mothers are lower than for stay at home mothers, despite policy changes to facilitate breastfeeding and working. Based on interviews with 23 mothers who were participants in breastfeeding support groups, this study explores some of the factors contributing to women’s difficulty combining breastfeeding and working. Findings indicate that some women do not return to work because they believe working and breastfeeding are not compatible, while those who do work and breastfeed often lack support from coworkers and managers. In order to improve breastfeeding rates for working mothers, organizations should make their support for breastfeeding mothers explicit beyond formal policies such as lactation rooms.     

Analyzing Challenges to Library Materials: An Incomplete Picture

This research project used Freedom of Information requests to obtain public records from Alabama institutions about challenges to materials in public schools and public libraries. Challenges occur when a patron objects to certain content. In this analysis, we examine the records of challenges. The research questions were as follows: How many challenges occur in public schools and libraries? What is the nature of these challenges? Are there institutional or demographic factors that are correlated to the occurrence of challenges? In this exploratory study, the number of reported challenges was surprisingly low. We investigated whether reported challenges were related to certain institutional or demographic factors, but did not find any discernible relationships. The data suggest that most challenged material is retained, but that librarians may be self-censoring to reduce controversy in their collections.     

The Heroes and the Helpless: Conflicting Media Images of Refugees From Burma

After a protest against Burma's military government exploded into bloody violence on August 8, 1988, some political dissidents applied for refugee status through the United Nations. Since 1990, nearly 6,000 members of Myanmar's ethnic groups settled in Fort Wayne, Indiana. The project's overarching question asks: How have photojournalists covered the lives of the Burmese? An archive of photographs published from 1992 through 2012 by Fort Wayne's The Journal Gazette was used for this qualitative analysis. Three major themes emerged: refugees as “freedom fighters,” Aung San Suu Kyi as “superhero,” and Burmese as helpless victims lacking agency. With mounting tensions concerning refugees arriving into Europe, this examination is important because media images may play a role in welcoming and integrating refugees into new communities.     

Curation,conservation, and the artist in Silent Explosion: Ivor Davies and Destruction in Art

This paper examines the preservation and curatorial approaches explored for the exhibition Silent Explosion: Ivor Davies and Destruction in Art at Amgueddfa Cymru – National Museum Wales (November 2015–March 2016). The collaboration between the artist, curator/researcher, and conservators is considered and the evolving and flexible way in which transient pieces were presented/re-presented is described. The paper offers a case study in the context of this exhibition and argues that regardless of whether it is in traditional media (such as painting) or as time-based media (unstable and open to interpretation), Davies' work challenges a perception of artworks as finished, single-authored objects.     

Scaling and Sustaining an Intervention: The Case of Reading Recovery

ABSTRACT

In every school district across the country, every year, initiatives are adopted with the goal of improving the literacy performance of young students, and, just as frequently, these initiatives fail or quickly become passing fads. In this article, Rodgers reviews literature related to scaling educational innovations and describes challenges and barriers to implementing and maintaining evidence-based reform. Using Reading Recovery as a case example, she describes features of the intervention that are thought to be linked to its longevity in terms of scalability and sustainability. She also shares lessons learned from the most recent period of its expansion with the 5-year grant to scale up Reading Recovery across the county. Implications from this article include the importance of adopting an initiative that has a well-articulated design, collecting data on the progress of the students served, and having a person in the district who acts as a redirecting agent, maintaining the design of the initiative and guarding it against tendencies to pare down the design.