Unpacking the narrative of non-positional leadership in academia: Hero and/or victim?

This article, based on narrative inquiry, explores how academics with/out formal leadership positions experience and understand themselves as leaders in their everyday working contexts. A single case of a fixed-term academic was chosen to illustrate how different analytical lenses – ‘plot analysis’ and ‘discourse analysis’ – can unpack the complexities of experience associated with non-positional leadership, a topic scarcely represented in studies of leadership in higher education. Two interdependent plots – the heroic plot and the victimised plot – were found to recur throughout the participant's narrative. These plots signified the conflictual dynamics and the unique subjectivity in which this person made sense of himself as a leader. The analytical lens was then shifted to pay greater attention to the ways in which broader networks of discourses were at play within this participant's narrative. Using discourse analysis, the discourses of autonomy and masculinity, among others, were present in constituting the unique subject positions the participant took up. The article concludes with a summary of methodological contributions this study offers to the field of leadership in higher education.     

Progressive Presentations of Place-Based Identities in Meg Rosoff’s How I Live Now

This article provides a close reading of Meg Rosoff’s award-winning novel How I Live Now. It argues that an understanding of the text can be extended through an application of ideas found in contemporary spatial discourse concerning place. Reading the novel within this context allows a discussion of ways in which it draws on established traditions within children’s literature, but also of ways in which it challenges a view of place-based identities, and the social relations inherent within those, as being nostalgic and fixed. Whilst not unique in this respect, How I Live Now offers a particularly strong challenge to conceptions of place as being rooted in stability, a challenge which is pertinent to young readers negotiating postmodern contexts, and which offers them an optimistic and progressive consideration of place. The novel draws on some literary traditions which could be viewed as nostalgic—the imagined rural idyll, the country house and garden, the escape from the city—but Rosoff offers a subtle subversion of these traditions through her progressive consideration of place-based identities.     

Outthinking the Media: Lessons from a Tennis Master

This article challenges contemporary religious educators to take notice of some of the competitive aspects of media, not to scapegoat the technological changes of twenty-first-century life, but to address the concerns of a people who feel overwhelmed by media's game plan yet long to work for a more invigorated future of American religious education. Just like winning tennis superstars, religious educators can master the media environment by recognizing, analyzing, and capitalizing on various options of resistance and consent in every media moment.     

Student evaluations of teaching: the impact of faculty procedures on response rates

In the last 10–15 years, many institutions of higher education have switched from paper-and-pencil methods to online methods of administering student evaluations of teaching (SETs). One consequence has been a significant reduction in the response rates to such instruments. The current study was conducted to identify whether offering in-class time to students to complete online SETs would increase response rates. A quasi-experiment (nonequivalent group design) was conducted in which one group of tenured faculty instructed students to bring electronic devices with internet capabilities on a specified day and offered in-class time to students to complete online SETs. A communication protocol for faculty members’ use was developed and implemented. A comparison group of tenured faculty who did not offer in-class time for SET completion was identified and the difference-in-differences method was used to compare the previous year’s response rates for the same instructor teaching the same course across the two groups. Response rates were substantially higher when faculty provided in-class time to students to complete SETs. These results indicate that high response rates can be obtained for online SETs submitted by students in face-to-face classes if faculty communicate the importance of SETs in both their words and actions.     

USING CURRICULUM‐BASED MEASUREMENT TO EXAMINE SUMMER LEARNING LOSS

Summer loss of reading is a potential factor in maintaining, and potentially widening, the achievement gap. This study used curriculum‐based measurement of reading (R‐CBM) to investigate the effect of the summer on reading. For this study, 317 students in Grades 2 to 5 were assessed in the spring and fall using Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Literacy Skills Oral Reading Fluency (ORF) measure. Repeated measures analysis of variance modeled overall change in ORF scores by grade, family income, ethnic minority status, English language learner status, and special education (SPED) status. Students in Grades 2 and 3 evidenced overall summer loss, whereas students in Grades 4 and 5 did not exhibit summer loss. In addition, students in Grade 2 showed differential loss based on family income and SPED status. These results support the broadening application of R‐CBM and add to the summer loss literature. Findings are discussed relative to prevention and intervention.     

Academic optimism of individual teachers: Confirming a new construct

Teacher sense of academic optimism is individual teachers' beliefs that they can teach effectively, their students can learn, and parents will support them so the teacher can press hard for learning. This new construct is grounded in the social cognitive and self-efficacy theories, social capital theory, work on school culture and climate and research on learned optimism. At the school level, collective academic optimism has been related to academic performance (Hoy, Tarter, & Woolfolk Hoy, 2006b). The analyses tested and supported the validity and reliability of the construct at the individual level with elementary school teachers in a confirmatory factor analysis using Structural Equation Modeling (SEM).     

An investigation into electronic‐source plagiarism in a first‐year essay assignment

Since the emergence of the electronic era, plagiarism has become an increasingly prevalent problem at tertiary institutions. This study investigated the role electronic sources of information played in influencing plagiarism in an essay assignment in a first‐year geography module at the University of KwaZulu‐Natal in South Africa. Despite explicit instruction in tutorials on academic writing, referencing and plagiarism, a quarter of students still plagiarised in their essay, with the majority having done so off the Internet. A survey questionnaire and interviews revealed that not only did the school writing experience prepare students poorly for academic writing discourses, but also highlighted that student ignorance with regard to acknowledgement of electronic sources, a pervasive perception of difference between electronic and print sources, as well as the availability of the copy‐and‐paste facility which reinforces the product view of writing, all contributed towards electronic‐source plagiarism. Active instructional engagement with electronic‐source material, and open dialogue on ownership of knowledge as well as on moral and ethical issues with students, are recommended as strategies to overcome such plagiarism.     

Oblique chest views as a routine part of skeletal surveys performed for possible physical abuse--is this practice worthwhile?

OBJECTIVE: To evaluate the utility of oblique chest views in the diagnosis of rib fractures when used as a routine part of the skeletal survey performed for possible physical abuse. METHODS: Oblique chest views have been part of the routine skeletal survey protocol at Primary Children's Medical Center since October 2002. Dictated radiology reports since that time were reviewed, and all cases with rib fractures documented were chosen for study. For each chosen case two pediatric radiologists identified and recorded rib fractures using only the PA and lateral chest radiographs (standard two-view chest series) from the skeletal survey for each case. In a separate session they identified and recorded rib fractures using the PA, lateral, right oblique, and left oblique radiographs (four-view chest series) from the skeletal survey for each case. The results were compared. RESULTS: Twenty-two cases with rib fractures were identified. Interpretation of the four-view chest series was different than interpretation of the two-view chest series in 12 of the 22 cases (54%). Overall, the four-view chest series differed significantly in the number of rib fractures diagnosed compared with the two-view chest series (p=.02, Wilcoxon matched-pairs signed-rank test) adding 19 rib fractures and excluding 6 rib fractures. CONCLUSIONS: The results indicate that use of the four-view chest series adds information to that obtained from the two-view chest series and increases the accuracy of diagnosing rib fractures in cases of possible physical abuse. Addition of oblique chest views to the routine protocol for skeletal surveys performed for possible physical abuse is recommended.