Beyond Framing

Visual news media's framing has been well studied; however, production factors and cultural conditions involved in photographer–subject interactions have attracted less scholarly attention although they are no less influential in determining the depiction. Guided by social constructionism theory, in-depth interviews with staff photojournalists at a daily community newspaper in the Midwest and an analysis of their work revealed 22 variables that impact how and why images look the way they do. Photojournalists have complete control of only two of these variables, share partial control of 13, but have no control over the remaining seven. The photographers also shared insights into how to improve their journalism's verisimilitude when dealing with reactive subjects. The results support concepts of social constructionism that the subjects of photographs are most comfortable with photographers who share similar characteristics, but that some characteristics can have greater influence. The results also highlight areas where photographers might focus in pursuit of authenticity in journalistic photographs.     

Broadening Impact for Library Exhibitions and Speakers

Libraries curate exhibitions and host speakers to promote collections and engage communities. Traditional library exhibit spaces present information gaps for visitors. To bridge these gaps, the University of Florida (UF) created and deployed innovative technologies, the Community Engagement Engine (CEE) for iPads (handheld and kiosks). The CEE facilitates visitor's registration as well as questions and comments sent directly to curators with automated email responses with relevant materials. The CEE allows libraries to aggregate visitor information for targeted outreach and assessment. This article discusses the CEE for innovative community engagement, including considerations for other institutions interested in engaged exhibitions programs.     

Is There a Need for Transcendental Arguments in Discourse Ethics?

In this essay, James Scott Johnston examines Jürgen Habermas's transcendental justification of his discourse theory of morality. According to Johnston, the application of Habermas's theory to educational issues often assumes that this justification is a cogent one. However, if the theory is to provide reasoned and appropriate guidance for educators, the justification of discourse ethics requires closer examination. Johnston argues that Habermas's so‐called “weak” transcendental approach is in fact unsustainable because it fails to reconcile two conflicting schools of philosophical thought: Kant's transcendental idealism and George Herbert Mead's social pragmatism. Johnston concludes that a more plausible justification of the discourse ethical project can be achieved by rejecting Habermas's Kantianism and appealing solely to Mead's social pragmatic conception of rationality.     

Brian Griffiths (1927–2008) – his pioneering contributions to mathematics and education

Brian Griffiths (1927–2008) was a British mathematician and educator who served as a member of the founding editorial board of Educational Studies in Mathematics. As a mathematician, Griffiths is remembered through his work on what continue to be known as ‘Griffiths-type’ topological spaces. As a mathematics educator, his most profound contribution was, with Geoffrey Howson, in offering a conceptualisation of the relationship between mathematics, society and curricula.     

Does a Sentiment-Based Ethics of Caring Improve upon a Principles-Based One? The problem of impartial morality

My task in this paper is to demonstrate, contra Nel Noddings, that Kantian ethics does not have an expectation of treating those closest to one the same as one would a stranger. In fact, Kantian ethics has what I would consider a robust statement of how it is that those around us come to figure prominently in the development of one's ethics. To push the point even further, I argue that Kantian ethics has an even stronger claim to treating those closest to oneself as imperative than Noddings and sentiment-based ethical theory in general, proposes.     

Teachers’ perspectives of lower secondary school students in streamed classes – A Western Australian case study

Streaming in secondary schools is not beneficial for improving student outcomes of education with vast amounts of educational research indicating that it does not improve academic results and increases inequity. Yet teachers often prefer working in streamed classes, and research shows that teachers mediate the effects of streaming on students. This study sought to add to the understanding of teachers’ role in student learning by investigating how teachers conceptualise the students in streamed classes. A qualitative case study approach was used, where 18 teachers were interviewed in-depth to create narrative examples, three of which are presented here. These narratives summarise the research findings that teachers saw students in high and low streams as having homogenous characteristics according to five dichotomous categories: approach to learning, attitude to learning, learning style, autonomy and background. Students in mixed-ability classes were viewed along these same continua, but as more heterogeneous groups. Furthermore, these views of students had direct implications for how teachers planned for learning and the expectations that they held of their students. The discussion links streaming research with teacher expectation research, suggesting that teachers of streamed classes in this secondary school hold specific whole-class ideas that affect student learning. The article concludes with recommendations for further inquiry that links these two important fields of educational research.     

Ideas: A system for international data exchange and access for science

An operational prototype inhomogeneous distributed database system has been built to provide homogeneous access for researchers and managers of science policy to data on research projects held in three countries. The architecture is sufficiently general not only to accommodate additional countries and databases on research projects, but also to provide a general framework for other international collaborative projects aimed at the provision of information. The design exhibits an optimal compromise between sufficient data to satisfy a retrieval request and the minimal data for transmission to maintain the database.