How Flat World Knowledge is Transforming College Textbook Publishing

An inside look at the disruptive business model and online publishing platform of Flat World Knowledge, a fast-growing publisher of college textbooks that are openly-licensed and available free online and in affordable print and digital formats.     

Emerging: the impact of the Artist Teacher Scheme MA on students’ pedagogical and artistic practices

The United Kingdom Artist Teacher Scheme (ATS) commissioned a study of the artistic and pedagogical practices of students on a recently established Artist Teacher Scheme MA (ATS MA). The aims of this study were to: investigate the motives and objectives teachers/educators have for undertaking this ATS MA programme, the impact the programme had on their artistic and pedagogical practices and their pupils’ learning; and make recommendations for future development of ATS MA programmes. Through the analysis of questionnaires it was found that the ATS MA’s strength lies in the development of communities of practice and peer support, artist teachers’ renewed confidence in their extended artistic and pedagogical practices, the professional development of artist teachers, and significant development of the art and design curriculum.     

The Talent Development Model of Schooling: Placing Students at Promise for Academic Success

The work at the Center for Research on the Education of Students Placed At Risk (CRESPAR) has been guided by the Talent Development model, a comprehensive paradigm for school reform. The Talent Development model asserts that all students can learn in demanding, high-expectation academic settings. This goal is reachable if schools are committed to implementing multiple, evidence-based activities to "overdetermine success," and if all relevant stakeholders are genuinely involved, supportive, and held accountable. First, however, the traditional function of schooling must be redirected from that of classifying, sorting, and weeding out students to maximizing every child's potential for academic development. The model is itself a work in progress. Research done at CRESPAR is presented to demonstrate how we are building and evaluating it, with the ultimate aim to contribute to preparing our nation's children for productive participation in their communities and society at large.     

Technology,Learning Communities and Young People: The Future Something Project

The Future Something Project (FSP), a two‐year action research project, was devised to nurture the creative and technological talent of small groups of young people at risk by creating a structured network, mentored and driven by creative professionals exploring innovative ways for the two distinct target groups to work together. The project practice is located within the new field of interaction design and takes a social and critical approach to art and design pedagogy. The external research team found that one valuable way of looking at the FSP enterprise was through the social theory of communities of practice (CoPs) developed in the 1990s by Lave and Wenger. The creation of a learning community as a pedagogical strategy is central to the conception and practice of this project. This article, therefore, sets out to apply an existing theory to a new art and design context together with more general thoughts on learning communities. It explores the potential of new technologies and different settings to effect learning within structured networks and local and virtual communities of practice.     

Leveraging Technology and Staffing in Developing a New Liaison Program

With nearly all library resources and services delivered digitally, librarians working for the New York University Health Sciences Library struggled with maintaining awareness of changing user needs, understanding barriers faced in using library resources and services, and determining knowledge management challenges across the organization. A liaison program was created to provide opportunities for librarians to meaningfully engage with users. The program was directed toward a subset of high-priority user groups to provide focused engagement with these users. Responsibility for providing routine reference service was reduced for liaison librarians to provide maximum time to engage with their assigned user communities.     

Intrafamily secrets in various family configurations: A communication boundary management perspective

Although extant literature suggests that blended, single‐parent, and biological/adoptive (i.e., nuclear) families differ in terms of the boundaries that separate family members, little systematic research has compared such boundaries. The current investigation examined this issue by focusing on communication boundaries as indexed by intrafamily secrets. As expected, college students in blended families reported that their original parents and siblings were more likely than their stepparents or stepsiblings to know the family secret that they reported in this study. This suggests the presence of a relatively rigid communication boundary between original family members and stepfamily members. Interestingly, participants in blended families, single‐parent families, and nuclear families were quite similar in terms of: (a) the number of intrafamily secrets they perceived in their family, (b) the topics of the secrets they reported, and (c) the functions they reported being served by the secrets. Also, regardless of family form, there was an inverse association between participants’ family satisfaction and their perceptions of how many intrafamily secrets their family held. Overall, in contrast to the literature that often portrays blended families and single‐parent families as particularly problematic, these results suggest remarkable similarities across family configurations in terms of communication boundaries.