“Beneath their cheerful bunny faces,his slippers had steel toe caps”: Traction Cities,Postmodernisms, and Coming of Age in Philip Reeve’s <Emphasis Type="Italic">Mortal Engines</Emphasis> and <Emphasis Type="Italic">Predator’s Gold</Emphasis>

This article discusses Philip Reeve's young adult science fiction novels as literary collages. It explores the ways in which the author uses postmodernisms to introduce big ideas and construct a compelling futuristic world that combines fast-paced adventure with the bildungsroman.

Part-time work and advancement: a study of female professional staff in Australian universities

One focus of gender equity policies in universities has been the creation of ‘retention’ part-time work for professional staff, which allows employees to move between full-time and part-time hours at their request. This paper examines whether such ‘good’ part-time jobs can contribute to or at least not impede women’s career advancement. The paper examines the correlation between job classification and part-time work, and whether a period of part-time work acts as a significant ‘brake’ on a woman’s career trajectory. This study uses data from the 2011 Work and Careers in Australian Universities survey. Part-time work is used extensively by lower-classified women, but rarely by those in higher classifications. Part-time work stalls career advancement compared to working full-time, but this brake is reduced if a woman transitions back to full-time work.     

Candidates’ use of informal communication on social media reduces credibility and support: Examining the consequences of expectancy violations

ABSTRACT

This experiment (N= 476) investigates how individuals evaluate political candidates who use informal communication on social media. We use expectancy violations theory (EVT) to predict that informal communication will lead to negative evaluations. Our results suggest that politicians’ use of informal communication on social media leads to expectancy violation, which decreases perceived credibility and lessens intention to support a candidate. This effect was not moderated by sex (male versus female) or age (young versus old) of the candidate, nor of participants being the same sex as the candidate. These findings suggest that political figures should use informal communication on social media with caution.     

Teacher educators' reflections on moments in a secondary teacher education course: thinking forward by challenging our teaching practices

In this paper the authors explore two pedagogical moments that occurred within a diversity‐focused secondary teacher education course, giving specific attention to Genevieve's and Debra's reflections as course instructors. We explore the ways in which instructors find themselves challenged, engaged and provoked to rethink taken for granted ideas and beliefs about their pedagogies as teacher educators. We conclude the paper by ‘thinking forward’: challenging teacher educators to be responsible and to be vulnerable with respect to their own teaching stances and to take the time to critically examine their own lived experiences in order to connect with their students' emergent understandings.     

The Influences on Educational Management Learning

This paper draws on findings from a research study in which educational managers at different career stages were interviewed about their conceptions and experiences of educational‐management learning. The study highlighted the diverse and individual influences on the process of learning to become an educational manager and indicated that teachers acquire managerial expertise by a variety of means. The seven most common opportunities through which educational‐management learning was gained have been identified, and they are analysed from the point of view of the learner in terms of: (i) their relative importance to the learning process, (ii) how (and if) they affect practice or thinking, (iii) when (at what points in the learning curve) they are effective. This study suggested that the value and effectiveness of the different developmental processes may reflect some of the personal characteristics peculiar to the individual educational manager. These significant characteristics are also discussed.     

Understanding the decline in unwanted online sexual solicitations for U.S. youth 2000–2010: Findings from three Youth Internet Safety Surveys

To explore the decline in online sexual solicitations between 2000 and 2010 by examining the characteristics of solicitations to better inform prevention efforts. Data are from the Youth Internet Safety Surveys (YISS); three cross-sectional, nationally representative telephone surveys of 3561 youth Internet users in the United States, ages 10 through 17 (1501 in YISS-1; 1500 in YISS-2; 1560 in YISS-3). Unwanted online sexual solicitation was defined as requests to engage in sexual activities or sexual talk or give personal sexual information that were unwanted or, whether wanted or not, made by an adult. The decline in unwanted sexual solicitations from 19% in 2000 to 13% in 2005 to 9% in 2010 was driven by a reduction in youth who were being asked to talk about sex or for personal sexual information online. Pre-teens (ages 10–12) accounted for the majority of this decline. Multiple solicitations over the course of a year also decreased. More solicitations occurred at the hands of people youth knew in person prior to the incident – mainly friends and acquaintances, and less so at the hands of people youth met online. By 2010 most solicitations were occurring through social networking sites. Victims were disclosing solicitation incidents at greater rates in 2010 – mostly to friends. In spite of continuing anxiety about the impact of the Internet on the safety of youth, encouraging trends suggest experiences, behavior and education are moving in the direction of greater online safety and improved experiences for youth.