Critiquing the school community: a qualitative study of children's conceptualizations of their school 1

Schools are traditionally seen as responsible for the educational outcomes of our children. However, schools also play an important role in the development of aspects such as self‐efficacy, participation, competence and self‐determination. As schools are often run as societies rather than communities, they offer little opportunity for these attributes (self‐efficacy, participation, competence and self‐determination) to develop. Forty‐six children aged from nine to 12 years were interviewed to ascertain their conceptualizations of the school community. The children define their school in terms of people, places for activities and interaction, a place for safety, cooperation, influence and functionality. The responses closely align to the adult conceptualizations of sense of community as purported by McMillan and Chavis (1986 McMillan, D.W. and Chavis, D.M. 1986. Sense of community: a definition and theory. Journal of Community Psychology, 14: 6–23. [Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]). Implications of this research suggest that children can and should have an integral role in designing a curriculum and systems relevant to the school context if we are at all concerned with their psychological wellness.     

Environmental‐Scale Map Use in Middle Childhood: Links to Spatial Skills,Strategies, and Gender

Researchers have shown that young children solve mapping tasks in small spaces, but have rarely tested children's performance in large, unfamiliar environments. In the current research, children (9–10 years; N = 40) explored an unfamiliar campus and marked flags' locations on a map. As hypothesized, better performance was predicted by higher spatial‐test scores, greater spontaneous use of map–space coordinating strategies, and participant sex (favoring boys). Data supported some but not all hypotheses about the roles of specific spatial skills for mapping performance. Data patterns were similar on a computer mapping task that displayed environmental‐scale videos of walks through a park. Patterns of children's mapping errors suggested both idiosyncratic and common mapping strategies that should be addressed in future research and educational interventions.     

‘You're not able to breathe’: conceptualizing the intersectionality of early career,gender and crisis

Drawing on data from nine focus groups in four countries, I argue for the need to develop a research agenda around the intersectionality of early career, gender and crisis. I first give a brief explanation of the background, methodology and limitations of the study. Second, I lay out some key conceptualizations and their own limitations and then trace some important theoretical intersections that will frame the discussion. Third, to bring this intersectionality to life, I employ participant examples from the focus groups. In the first section of the analysis of the participant responses, I examine how crisis affects the identities of early-career academics. In the second section of the analysis, I connect these questions of identities with early-career academics' relationship with higher education (HE) pedagogies, most likely well known by the reader as a marginalized aspect of academics' work in HE institutions. Finally, I conclude with some responses to these dilemmas.     

Depression,Control, and Climate: An Examination of Factors Impacting Teaching Quality in Preschool Classrooms

Research Findings: This study investigated the relationship of preschool teachers’ self-reported depressive symptomatology, perception of classroom control, and perception of school climate to classroom quality as measured by the Classroom Assessment Scoring System Pre-K. The sample consisted of 59 urban preschool classrooms serving low-income and linguistically diverse students in the northeastern and southeastern United States. Results of hierarchical linear modeling revealed that teachers’ individual reports of depressive symptomatology were significantly and negatively predictive of the observed quality of their instructional support and classroom organization. Practice or Policy: The findings of this study have implications for increasing access to mental health supports for teachers in an effort to minimize depressive symptoms and potentially improve classroom quality.     

Implementing Quality Service-Learning Programs in Community Colleges

This cross-case comparative study at Western Community College and the University of the Coast explored through a constructive lens the characteristics that lead to sustainable, high quality service-learning programs and how they are implemented at institutions of higher education. The researchers determined that both Western Community College and the University of the Coast (a) have diverse collaborative partnerships that promote excellent communication between all of the entities, (b) offer a wide variety of service-learning courses to connect curricular and cocurricular experiences, (c) have a stable funding base, (d) provide the necessary resources, (e) have continuity in staffing, and (f) incorporate feedback and assessment into their respective service-learning programs. The findings from this study, based on one-on-one interviews, focus groups, observations, and document analysis, serve as a model on how to create quality and sustainable service-learning programs that combine academic scholarship, off-campus learning discoveries, reflection, civic engagement, and meaningful community service. The research may be applicable for educators at community colleges at various stages in developing service-learning programs, or who are transforming faltering programs, trying to make them sustainable.     

Learning about Politics From The Daily Show: The Role of Viewer Orientation and Processing Motivations

Although late-night comedy and satirical news programs like The Daily Show have been recognized as important sources of political information, prior research suggests that viewers gain only a limited amount of political knowledge from watching these programs. Drawing from uses and gratification theory and extant research on political information processing, this study examines whether learning from The Daily Show depends on whether viewers orient to the message as news or as entertainment. Results from an online experiment suggest that viewers who orient to a segment from The Daily Show as news or as a mix of news and entertainment invest more mental effort and subsequently learn more than viewers who have a purely entertainment orientation. Further, among viewers with a purely entertainment orientation, providing them with an explicit informational-processing goal increases the amount of mental effort and learning relative to viewers who are given no explicit viewing objective.     

Building a Virtual Reference Shelf

While many libraries have access to an extensive amount of quality virtual reference titles through platforms such as Gale Virtual Reference, individual titles are often invisible to users. At the University of Montevallo, building a Virtual Reference Shelf (VRS) allowed us to make e-reference titles more accessible for patrons. We constructed our VRS using LibGuides and our existing collections of virtual reference books. This article will discuss various aspects of creating and using the VRS, including designing, marketing, information literacy instruction, assessment, and future directions. The information is based on a presentation at the Mississippi State University eResources & Emerging Technologies Summit on August 2, 2013.     

The Library: Big Data’s Boomtown

Since 2012, nearly every sector has developed a fascination with the seemingly new discovery of Big Data and its unprecedented capabilities to fuel analytic breakthroughs. It is clear that the use of Big Data as an information resource will continue to become more prevalent as it is employed in academic research and data-driven decision making, and even emerges as a vehicle for government transparency. This article reviews the emergence and potentials of Big Data, describes the policies fueling the current data surge, and discusses the impact on libraries. As libraries evolve to provide more data services, there is an opportunity for librarians to become experts and authorities in the data age.     

A systematic review and meta-analysis of implicit theory research in sport,physical activity,and physical education

The purpose of this systematic review and meta-analysis was to gather, catalogue, assess, and evaluate the available evidence examining implicit beliefs about ability in the sport, physical activity, and physical education contexts. A total of 43 studies were found, of which 39 were subjected to meta analyses. With only 7 experimental studies, the strength of evidence is moderate, and the field would benefit from greater experimental work. Overall, incremental beliefs were moderately associated with a small group of theoretically derived correlates, while entity beliefs were only weakly associated. The field would benefit from expanding these outcomes to include a wider range of pertinent outcomes. Researchers should focus their efforts on systematically exploring the most powerful ways of inducing adaptive implicit beliefs with the aim of providing solutions to significant problems such as preventing dropout from organised sports, improving academic grades in and beyond physical education, and increasing levels of physical activity.