Organizing for survival and social change: The case of streetwise

This study explores how members of StreetWise organize for survival and social change. Through the publication of a street journal by the same name, StreetWise provides employment opportunities for men and women without homes. Using feminist principles of organizing as a backdrop, we highlight the discursive moves that (1) reinforce StreetWise's standpoint as counter to the practices and structures of the dominant culture, and (2) provide alternative ways of thinking about issues of poverty and homelessness. We highlight tensions that emerge between the dialectic of survival and social change, and in so doing position StreetWise as an “alternative discourse community” that develops counterdiscourses amidst cultural and material constraints. We work toward locating how members negotiate organizational irrationalities through moral deliberation.     

Popular Illustration

Gerald McConnell and Gene Light's Illustrators 19 (New York: Hastings House, 1978—$26.50)

Evelyn and Leo Farland's Posters by Painters (New York: Abrams, 1978—$8.95, paper)

Robert R. Hartmann's Graphics for Designers (Ames: Iowa State University Press, 1976—price not given, spiral bound)

Peggy and Harold Samuels' The Illustrated Biographical Encyclopedia of Artists of the American West (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1976—$25.00)

The Second Norman Rockwell Poster Book (New York: Watson-Guptill Publications, 19777—$6.95, paper)     

The effects of changes in the order of verbal labels and numerical values on children's scores on attitude and rating scales

Research with adults has shown that variations in verbal labels and numerical scale values on rating scales can affect the responses given. However, few studies have been conducted with children. The study aimed to examine potential differences in children's responses to Likert‐type rating scales according to their anchor points and scale direction and to see whether or not such differences were stable over time. A total of 130 British children, aged 9 to 11 years, completed six sets of Likert‐type rating scales, presented in four different ways varying the position of positive labels and numerical values. The results showed, both initially and 8–12 weeks later, that presenting a positive label or a high score on the left of a scale led to significantly higher mean scores than did the other variations. These findings indicate that different arrangements of rating scales can produce different results, which has clear implications for the administration of scales with children.     

A day in the life of an academic chemist

A typical day for an academic chemist is a whirlwind of activity, where multitasking and effective time management ensure success. One major focus is securing research grants, and much of that process requires keeping up to date with the scientific literature. Many chemists have established mechanisms to identify and store papers relevant to their research program. Now they are turning to new tools to aggregate, personalize, and share their knowledge.     

Community Education and child-care programs

The Community Education Services (CES) division of the Children's Television Workshop (CTW) is CTW's community-outreach arm. This article describes how CES works with parents, children, experts, and local groups to develop special multimedia products, four of which are discussed. Two of the products—a fire-safety kit and a natural-hazards packet—were designed to teach young children how to protect themselves in life-threatening emergencies. Two other products—CES'sSesame Street preschool education materials and its3-2-1 Contact andSquare One TV after-school materials—are attempts by CTW to respond to societal changes that have increasingly shifted the burden of child care onto preschool and after-school programs.     

Dissociation of the blocking of conditioned eyeblink and conditioned fear following a shift in US locus

Two experiments with rabbits investigated the concordance of two measures of conditioning, eyeblink and potentiated startle, during a blocking sequence with paraorbital shock reinforcement. In both, a shift in the locus of shock from one eye to the other between the conditioning of an element and a compound of that element and a new cue had differential effects on the two measures of conditioning to the new cue. When the shock was unchanged, diminished conditioning in relation to controls (i.e., blocking) was observed on both measures. When the shock was changed, little conditioning was observed in startle, but control-equivalent amounts were observed in eyeblink (i.e., blocking occurred on the former but not the latter). The results are interpreted as showing a dissociation of the associative learning involving the emotive features of Pavlovian reinforcers and that involving the remaining sensory-perceptual features, and more compatible with a diminished US-processing, than with a CSprocessing, view of blocking.     

Building an assessment of community-defined social-emotional competencies from the ground up in Tanzania

Two studies were conducted in 2017 to investigate children's competencies seen as important by communities in Mtwara, Tanzania. Qualitative data from 95 parents (34 women) and 27 teachers (11 women) in Study 1 indicated that dimensions of social responsibility, such as obedience, were valued highly. In Study 2, the competencies of 477 children (245 girls), aged 4–13 years, were rated by teachers and parents. Factor analysis found the obedient factor explained the most variance in parent rating. In line with predictions, urban residence, parental socioeconomic status (SES), and parental education were all positively associated with ratings of curiosity, and parental SES was negatively associated with obedience and emotional regulation. Findings illustrate the need for culturally specific frameworks of social-emotional learning.     

Hanging out in The Studio to challenge xenophobia: consolidating identities as community writers

This article examines findings from a Scottish Social Innovation Fund project carried out in an after‐school club known as The Studio. Researchers worked alongside artists to engage young people situated within their communities to challenge xenophobic discourses through the creation of positive narratives developed through story and arts‐based activities. The work used the “deep hang out theory” to generate a complex account of how the participants mediated the cultural tools surrounding them to produce a community text. Through engaging in an arts‐based process, the young writers and illustrators developed a sense of belonging within their communities, taking an active, engaged stance as literacy producers of texts that challenged xenophobic discourses. The lessons learned in this informal space are of relevance across contexts where young people wish to engage in creating positive narratives of community cohesion.     

Mathematical learning difficulties and PASS cognitive processes

This study examined the relationships between mathematical learning difficulties (MLD) and the planning, attention, simultaneous, successive (PASS) theory of cognitive processing. The Cognitive Assessment System (CAS) was used to measure the PASS processes for a group of 267 Dutch students with MLD who attended either general or special education. The results showed that students with MLD performed lower than their peers on all CAS scales and that the MLD group contained many students with cognitive weaknesses in planning or successive processing. Moreover, students who had specific difficulties with the acquisition of basic math facts, the automatization of such facts, or word-problem solving were found to have distinct PASS cognitive profiles. In order to investigate the relationships between cognitive abilities and improvement in the mastery of basic math facts and problem solving, 165 of the students with MLD were given a special multiplication intervention. It appeared that the effectiveness of this particular intervention did not differ across the groups of students with specific cognitive weaknesses.