Urban White Working-Class Males and the Possibilities of Collective Anger: Patrolling Riley Road

The study, which was conducted in white working-class bars, investigates how a group of white working-class mates aged 25–30 struggle to construct a sense of masculine identity in the context of a postindustrial economy. Previously, Willis (1977) argued that secondary-school lads, in part, shaped their masculine identity around the male Saber jobs they hoped to hold in the future. In a deindustrialized economy, Weis (1990) found that white working-class high school boys retained a sense of masculinity by envisioning a future male-dominant domestic framework. This research investigates how a group of white working-class men turn to their community for a sense of identity, and how these men channel their anger at their devalued economic status into policing their neighborhood from an African American male presence. It will be argued that possibly through policing, or forcibly defining the borders of their community, these men are trying to act out versions of their embattled masculinity.     

Inside the College Writing Gap: Exploring the Mixed Messages of Remediation Support

This case study offers a qualitative perspective on a relationship between institutional structures and student outcomes. The data describe the conditions in 10 English remediation classrooms at one urban community college district. The study uses new literacies as a theoretical framework with which to understand how these conditions supported classroom-level teaching and learning. Findings suggest that classroom conditions undermined new literacies’ assumptions that college writing is a social practice. The authors discuss the implications of these findings for research to improve writing remediation policies.     

Lessons from the Legacy of Canada-China University Linkages

This article looks at a series of university linkages between Canadian and Chinese universities that were supported by the Canadian International Development Agency as a result of a development agreement signed in 1983 between the two governments. It first reviews relevant theoretical literature on higher education in a global context, and discusses the methodology adopted for the study. Then it provides an overview of a major program of collaboration in management education between 1983 and 1996, presenting views of leaders and participants on both sides. The next section overviews parallel linkages in the areas of education, engineering, agriculture, and medicine over the period from 1988 to 2001, and draws on the literature around university partnerships to identify factors that led, in some cases, to long-term sustainable relationships, but not in all. The final section of the paper reviews two major culminating linkages in environment and law, and suggests that these may have significant lessons for current and future cooperation between Chinese and Canadian universities in a new era of global geo-politics.     

Adventures in Implementing a Testing Program

What are the ways in which a testing program can run aground? What are some suggestions for avoiding these problems?     

A subtraction experiment with six and seven year old children

This paper gives an account of an experiment involving 176 children of 6 and 7 years and their difficulties with subtraction problems. By using two screening questions, four levels of attainment were established and two teaching programmes were then devised to help the children forward to their next level. The results show that it is possible to assess a level of understanding in subtraction quickly and accurately and that, through the teaching programmes, pre-requisite skills needed to establish a sound foundation for subtraction can be taught. The experiment indicates, however, that an attempt to symbolise too soon is a danger to be avoided.     

The effect of socioeconomic background on earnings: a comparison by race

Consistent with previous studies, we find that family background variables exert significant indirect effects on earnings of both white and black males. In the case of blacks, parental income in particular exerts a significant direct effect on earnings. Education is found to be a much more important determinant of black earnings than white earnings, while job tenure has the reverse relationship. After adjustments, parental income and level of education exert the strongest effects on reducing the black-white earnings differential.     

The keyword effect: A conceptual replication,effects on bias,and an optimization

Metacognition and Learning - Prompting learners to generate keywords after a delay is a promising means to enhance relative judgment accuracy in learning from texts. However, to date, conceptual...