An Exploratory Examination and Critique of Academic Law Librarian Blogs: A Look into an Evolving Reference Communication Practice

This study is an exploratory qualitative investigation of academic library blogs with the purpose of examining how the technology of blogging is evolving for reference and research purposes at particular academic law libraries. This study uses anthropological archive research methods to study the blogs’ posts and triangulates the study with librarian blogger interviews. It provides a look into possible future directions for blogging in academic law libraries that may serve as a model for other academic libraries.     

Enabling transformation through critical engagement and reflexivity: a case study of South African academics

ABSTRACT

Scholars writing on agency argue that normally, individuals who experience social structures as comfortable will tend to want to reproduce them while those who experience these structures as oppressive will want to change them. This is a bleak outlook because it suggests that those in positions of power and influence are less likely to seek to overhaul the very system of rewards and punishments that benefits them. However, there are exceptions to this pattern: instances where those who experience the structures as comfortable, nevertheless, work at transforming them. This article introduces an alternative perspective to current transformation discourses by seeking to understand why such exceptions exist. It argues that critical engagement is an important dimension of such transformation, and examines how it interacts with reflexivity to shape individual choices and reformulate interest. Drawing on a hermeneutic phenomenological analysis of in-depth interviews with 10 academics who have been identified as agents of change at one university in South Africa, we reveal how individuals are able to shift their understanding of what is or is not in their interest in a context where raced, gendered and classed interests are deeply embedded in the fabric of the society. In such contexts, reflexivity and critical personal engagement with one’s context can lead to a shift in interest and then consciousness as the individual comes to see and experience things from a different vantage point, opening up the possibility for a changed relationship with the social structure and its constraints and determining influence.     

Adolescent Perceptions of Help-Seeking Resources for Substance Abuse

Adolescent perceptions of help-seeking social resources (e.g., parents, friends, school counselor, clergyman) they would utilize if they were having substance abuse difficulties were investigated for samples of early and middle adolescents. 8 different perceived help-seeking categories were identified, and intergroup comparisons were made with regard to gender and ethnic/racial group and with regard to alcohol consumption, substance-related problems, and school misconduct. 2 perceived help-seeking categories had the highest levels of problem behaviors. The first category consisted of adolescents who identified friends as the only social resource they would utilize if they were having substance abuse problems. The second category, referred to as social isolates, indicated that they would not utilize any social resource if they were having substance abuse problems. There were approximately twice as many male social isolates as female social isolates, and blacks and Hispanics were highly overrepresented in the social isolate category.     

The parental bonding experiences of sex offenders: a comparison between child molesters and rapists

OBJECTIVE: It has often been hypothesized that because of a lack of early satisfactory attachments, sex offenders grow up unable to form relationships with adults, which makes them susceptible to pursue intimacy in maladaptive ways. This research aims to empirically examine the parental bonding patterns for a group of sex offenders, comparing child molesters and rapists. METHOD: Seventy-six men convicted of a sexual offense (57 child molesters and 19 rapists) completed the parental bonding instrument (PBI), and were assessed by means of a semi-structured clinical interview. RESULTS: Affectionless control style of parental bonding was highly prevalent amongst the sex offenders. There was some suggestion that low parental care was associated with childhood abuse and disturbances, particularly for child molesters. High overprotection in mothers was linked with parental separation and sex play with male peers in childhood. CONCLUSIONS: There is a need to replicate the study with non-sexual offenders as a comparison group, and to establish whether the PBI provides a useful adjunct to studies of adult romantic attachment in sex offenders.     

Developing planning indicators for outdoor wind environments of high-rise residential buildings

The construction of a building may change the microclimate in the vicinity, and planning indicators in a master plan may directly affect the outdoor physical environmental quality in residential areas. An inappropriate plan for a site may accelerate wind and intensify vortexes over places on the pedestrian levels, which leads to an adverse outdoor environment. Therefore, the design of a cluster of buildings should not focus only on the buildings but also provide a good outdoor environment around the buildings. To tackle the problem of inadequate wind environment, the relationship between the building’s floor area ratio and height was identified in this study as the main planning indicator to be examined on its effects on the outdoor wind environment. A computational fluid dynamics (CFD) model was hence developed to simulate the wind conditions generated by some typical site layouts with different values for planning indicators under relevant weather conditions, which were typical of those in Hangzhou, China. The simulated wind conditions are assessed using the wind speed ratio over the whole area of the building cluster at the pedestrian level. The effects on the local wind condition due to the varying of the planning indicators are discussed whilst considering the potential construction costs. The indicators resulting in better external conditions are highlighted in the conclusion as the recommendation which could be used as a rule of thumb by architects and planners at the master planning stage. The study disproves the common belief in the practice that a lower floor area ratio means fewer buildings and therefore greater external comfort. In fact, the higher the building, the greater the outdoor comfort wind zone for pedestrians. However, the increment in comfort area is limited to buildings extending from 25 to 30 levels.     

Recruiting and Retaining Asian American and Pacific Islander Teachers

The Urban Review - The lack of Teachers of Color in the United States raises questions about their recruitment and retention and the responsiveness of schools to racial and linguistic diversity....     

Does previewing answer choice options improve performance on reading tests?

Previewing answer-choice options before finishing reading the text is a widely employed test-taking behavior. In the present study we examined whether previewing is related to item response accuracy and response time, using data from Chinese learners of varying English proficiency levels and English native speakers. We examined eye movement patterns of participants who completed online multiple-choice sentence completion tasks, and how previewing was related to reading performance and whether the relation varied as a function of English proficiency level. The results showed that, relative to no previewing, previewing was associated with a significantly lower probability of answering an item correctly but not with significantly longer response time. Importantly, these relations varied across English proficiency levels such that participants with higher proficiency performed better without previewing, but there was no difference for lower-intermediate learners of English. These findings suggest that previewing does not facilitate performance on a sentence comprehension task, but instead interferes with the comprehension process, particularly for individuals with relatively high language proficiency.     

Stories of Success from Eminent Finnish Women: A narrative study

Factors to which women attribute their success were explored in this study using narrative analysis of the life stories of contemporary eminent women living in Finland. The participants were 12 Finnish women who have achieved success and peer recognition in various fields including science, business and finance, politics, and the arts. Four universal themes emerged from an analysis of the interview data. In their stories of achievement, the main factors were their personal self-reliance, the superiority of their work, and their interdependence with others including family members and co-workers. In addition, every woman talked about the egalitarianism that pervades Finnish society and its importance in the home and workplace. The voices of these women confirmed and extended the knowledge base about the course of talent development for females and the meaning of success for eminent women.     

Why the Simple View of Reading Is Not Simplistic: Unpacking Component Skills of Reading Using a Direct and Indirect Effect Model of Reading (DIER)

Pathways of relations of language, cognitive, and literacy skills (i.e., working memory, vocabulary, grammatical knowledge, inference, comprehension monitoring, word reading, and listening comprehension) to reading comprehension were examined by comparing four variations of direct and indirect effects model of reading. Results from 350 English-speaking second graders revealed that language and cognitive component skills had direct and indirect relations to listening comprehension, explaining 86% of variance. Word reading and listening comprehension completely mediated the relations of language and cognitive component skills to reading comprehension and explained virtually all the variance in reading comprehension. Total effects of component skills varied from small to substantial. The findings support the direct and indirect effects model of reading model and indicate that word reading and listening comprehension are upper-level skills that are built on multiple language and cognitive component skills, which have direct and indirect relations among themselves. The results underscore the importance of understanding nature of relations.