Coming Attractions and Reprints

John Dunn's The Studio (Bantam, 95¢)

Bob Thomas' Thalberg: Life and Legend (Bantam, $1.25)

Mrs. D.W. Griffith's When the Movies were Young (Dover, $2.50)     

The Interface of Opinion,Understanding and Evaluation While Learning About a Socioscientific Issue

Scientific literacy is an important goal for science education, especially within controversial socioscientific issues. In this study, we analysed 143 students' research reports about stem cell research (SCR) for how they addressed specific source evaluation criteria provided within the assignment. We investigated students' opinions about SCR, how they used the evaluation criteria to evaluate online sources and whether the evaluation criteria and/or the specific sources influenced their opinion and/or understanding of SCR. We found that most of the students supported some form of SCR and reported that their sources were credible and contained more factual information than opinions. Students critiqued the language of the authors, as well as status in their respective fields, along with the content within each source. Additionally, students reported that their sources influenced their content knowledge, but had little influence regarding their SCR opinions. Through this work, we present a new working model and suggest the need for additional research about the understudied interface of opinion, understanding and evaluation within the context of important socioscientific issues. Students' opinions and content knowledge, located at the model's centre, influence and are influenced by the research topic, the sources used, the evaluation criteria and the evaluation of the sources that students use to provide evidence for claims.     

Communicating With School Boards: Position,Power, and Perseverance

The theme of this years Academy meeting, “Telling Our Story,” raises important questions about how best to hone our message to diverse audiences in order to achieve desired outcomes. This paper addresses strategies and techniques that can be employed with local school boards. The school board is recognized as one of the most influential organizations for developing and shaping policy at the local level. Without the support and advocacy of the local board, efforts to promote physical education and healthful activity for children will not be achieved. The paper also suggests that many advocacy approaches can be generalized lo other groups and settings. including state legislative bodies and other statewide commissions that address issues related to the education of children and youth. Finally, the author acknowledges that despite the best efforts to tell our story, intervening variables beyond the storyteller's control (e.g., happenstance. chance, and fate) may influence the message.     

No Light at the End of Tunnel Vision: Steps for Improving Lesson Plans

The authors of this article believe that the current structure of lesson plans impede differentiation, individualization, and innovation and offer little in assessing the quality of teaching and learning. Concrete steps will be offered for planning to better respond to student diversity in meeting lesson objectives.     

SHORT‐TERM PROGRAMS ON DEATH AND DYING AND AGING: A REVIEW OF SELECTED LITERATURE

Agencies and institutions dealing with the elderly have only limited time, money, and personnel with which to plan and implement educational programs. Yet a basic knowledge of aging and death and dying seems to be essential for those working with older adults. The purpose of this paper is to review the literature on short‐term educational programs on death and dying and aging in order to offer practitioners some guidance for efficiently structuring programs to bring about desired changes in these areas. From 15 selected studies, 3 aspects of such programs are reviewed and analyzed: the length of the intervention, the type of treatment, and the nature of the target group involved.     

Playing Neoliberal Politics: Post-Racial and Post-Racist Strategies in “Same Love”

This essay argues that marriage equality discourses have successfully been used not only to advance GLBTQ rights but as a vehicle for re-securing neoliberalism after the 2008 Great Recession. Specifically, this essay analyzes how Macklemore and Ryan Lewis's “Same Love” (featuring Mary Lambert) supports neoliberalism by forwarding antiblackness and circumscribed political subjectivities while urging support for marriage equality. Through appeals to minimization, multiracialism, and inverting oppression, “Same Love” demonstrates how avowedly progressive texts can simultaneously impede the freer and fairer world the text supposedly promotes.