Only connect: Troubling oppositions in gender and mathematics

This paper focuses on the ways in which many researchers working in the area of gender and mathematics make sense of their data. In particular, it is argued that their use of the oppositional framing, separation versus connection (and others, such as cognition versus affect and objective versus subjective), operates to fix difference, and so to fix gender and mathematics within a structure of binary thinking that ultimately serves to re/produce gender inequalities. The aim is to suggest a more productive approach to understanding the continued gendering of participation in mathematics. This approach is based in deconstructing these oppositional patterns. This theoretical approach is illustrated using readings of interviews with two young mathematics students, Analia and Phil, talking about their relationships with the subject. The paper ends by looking at what this unfixing of difference means for mathematics pedagogy.     

Peer choice – does reviewer self‐selection work?

The British Journal of Educational Technology (BJET) uses a novel system for obtaining referees by e‐mailing the abstracts of submissions to a panel of over 250 referees and allowing these individuals to choose which papers they would like to review. An analysis of 13 experienced referees showed that, of 473 reviews assessed, these referees were slightly more lenient than the editor and that electronic records provide useful data that can be mined in interesting ways.     

Small scholar‐led scholarly journals: Can they survive and thrive in an open access future?

This article presents early results of a research project designed to further our understanding of how to ensure that small scholar‐led journals can survive and thrive in a global open access knowledge commons. This phase of the research focuses on generation of ideas through interviews and focus groups with 15 participants involved in producing small scholar‐led journals that either are or would like to become open access. Although a couple of journals reported that they could survive in an open access future based on existing resources, most were concerned about survival and none expressed confidence that they could thrive in an open‐access future. These journals are far more diverse than one might imagine. Comparing the costs of article production from one journal with another might not make sense. A number of avenues for further research are discussed.     

The Combined Effects of Instructor Communicative Behaviors,Instructor Credibility,and Student Personality Traits on Incivility in the College Classroom

This study investigated the combined role of instructor communication variables (nonverbal immediacy and self-disclosure), instructor credibility (competence, caring, and trustworthiness), and student personality traits (extraversion, neuroticism, agreeableness, conscientiousness, and openness) in predicting students’ uncivil behaviors in class. A total of 406 students completed online questionnaires regarding the instructor of the class they attended prior to the one in which the study was administered. Personality and instructor behavior variables contributed approximately equally to explaining variance in student incivility. Students’ conscientiousness and agreeableness had direct negative relationships with incivility, whereas instructors’ amount and negativity of self-disclosure had direct positive relationships with incivility.     

Perceived Message Effectiveness Predicts Information-Seeking Behavior

This study examined whether perceived message effectiveness (PE) predicted information-seeking behavior in the topical domain of colon cancer. Participants (N = 277) viewed one of three video messages (news, testimonial, and animation) that advocated screening for colon cancer. Information-seeking behavior was operationalized as reading time for a subsequent message about colon cancer. The proposed mediation model successfully reproduced the pattern of data, thereby providing evidence that PE predicts behavior via intention.     

High-Quality Metadata and Repository Staffing: Perceptions of United States–Based OpenDOAR Participants

Digital repositories require good metadata, created according to community-based principles that include provisions for interoperability. When metadata is of high quality, digital objects become sharable and metadata can be harvested and reused outside of the local system. A sample of U.S.-based repository administrators from the OpenDOAR initiative were surveyed to understand aspects of the quality and creation of their metadata, and how their metadata could improve. Most respondents (65%) thought their metadata was of average quality; none thought their metadata was high quality or poor quality. The discussion argues that increased strategic staffing will alleviate many perceived issues with metadata quality.