What a Scientist Looks Like: How Community Colleges Can Utilize and Enhance Science Identity Development as a Means to Improve Success for Women of Color

ABSTRACT

This article explores the application of science identity development theory for women of color interested in the science disciplines; and it advocates for taking an intersectional approach to understanding how women of color form science identities. The article also challenges community college administrators and scholars to focus on redefining science identity development theory within the community college setting as a means to enhance success for women of color pursuing academic work in scientific disciplines.     

Understanding collaborative learning processes in new learning environments

Trying to understand the complexity of computer-mediated problem-based learning environments is not easy. Sociocultural theory provides a theoretical framework for understanding such environments because it emphasizes the socially situated nature of learning and the critical role of tools in mediating learning. To examine how different aspects of discourse relate to each other, as well as to the tools being used in the collaborative learning process, it is important to understand how collaborative knowledge building unfolds and how these processes are mediated. This requires going beyond coding individual speech acts. The use of Chronologically-Ordered Representations of Discourse and Tool-Related Activity (CORDTRA) diagrams is one way of achieving this understanding. We use this to study contrasting cases of more and less successful groups using the STELLAR learning environment. STELLAR is an integrated online PBL environment for preservice teachers, containing a learning sciences hypermedia, a library of videocases, and online personal and collaborative spaces. Our analyses suggest that an important locus of differences is how students use resources and engage in different kinds of metacognitive talk and knowledge transforming activities, sometimes to the group’s detriment. Frequency analyses provided an easily interpreted snapshot of each group’s activity. The CORDTRA analyses provide a more dynamic view that helps researchers and teachers better understand how collaborative learning unfolds. Such analyses have implications for understanding new learning environments as well as helping identify where interventions might be needed.     

Internalizing and Externalizing Behaviors of Children with Writing Disabilities

Students with specific learning disabilities (SLDs) are more likely to exhibit internalizing and externalizing behaviors than typically developing peers. Virtually none of the literature, however, reports on the behaviors of students at-risk for writing disabilities (AR-WD). We compared the behaviors of writers who are AR-WD and typically developing writers (TDW) from first through fourth grade (N = 138). We found that students who are AR-WD were only significantly different from TDW on Externalizing and Total Behaviors at Grade 2. These findings illustrate the benefits of studying behavior across different forms of SLD, as it appears that students ARWD do not consistently manifest significant behaviors, although interventions that simultaneously target writing and behavior may be warranted and mutually beneficial.     

Affordances,Technical Agency,and the Politics of Technologies of Cultural Production

Culture Digitally is a collective of scholars, gathered by Tarleton Gillespie (Cornell University) and Hector Postigo (Temple University). With the generous funding of the National Science Foundation, the group supports scholarly inquiry into new media and cultural production through numerous projects, collaborations, a scholarly blog, and annual workshops. For more information on projects and researchers affiliated with Culture Digitally, visit culturedigitally.org or follow @CultureDig).     

Reference Desks in Public Libraries: What Happens and What To Know

With staffing and funding shortages and rapidly changing expectations from patrons, what is actually happening at the reference desk in today’s libraries? Understanding the needs today’s reference librarians face can be useful in developing ways to support those needs. Asking them to make some predictions on the future of public library reference work gives Library and Information Science (LIS) students, and libraries preparing for the future, a valuable look at the expertise provided by experience. This understanding will help make some realistic decisions about reference staffing and service needs and provide some guidance for those aspiring to careers in public library reference.     

Student-Athletes’ Perceptions of Mental Illness and Attitudes Toward Help-Seeking

Given that there is evidence that college student-athletes may be at risk for psychological disturbances (Pinkerton, Hintz, & Barrow, 1989), and possibly underutilizing college mental health services (Watson & Kissinger, 2007), the purpose of this study was to examine attitudes toward mental illness and help seeking among college student-athletes compared to college student nonathletes. The roles that athletic identity and gender play in treatment-seeking comfort were examined. Contrary to what was hypothesized, the results showed that student-athletes and nonathletes did not significantly differ in willingness to seek mental health treatment. Student-athletes perceived significantly less discrimination toward individuals based on mental illness status.