Increasing the Involvement of People with an Intellectual Disability in Choice Making Situations: A Practical Approach

This paper describes a participant observation approach to exploring choice making by people with an intellectual disability in three different home settings‐‐a private family home, a community group home and an independent living situation. It identifies some of the factors which affect choice making, including experience at making choices, routines, the role of support people, and communication. The paper illustrates these factors with examples from the different settings. Finally, it provides practical suggestions for service providers to increase the involvement of people with an intellectual disability in choice making situations.     

Literature,Community and Cooperation: The Big Read at Regent University

This article recounts the experience of the Regent University Library in planning and implementing a festival of Tolstoy and Russian culture as part of the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) Big Read initiative. The NEA launched the Big Read in 2006 to counter the alarming decline of literary reading documented in its 2002 report Reading at Risk. Program and event planning are important competencies of librarianship. The authors hope that the lessons learned in planning a large event with many partners will be useful to others undertaking similar projects for the first time.     

Responses to changes in relational uncertainty within dating relationships: Emotions and communication strategies

Guided by the appraisal theory of emotion, this paper examines how various emotions shape communication strategies within romantic relationships. Events that changed people's relational uncertainty levels provide the context for the investigation. Participants in dating relationships (N = 141) described their experience of relational certainty and uncertainty increasing events. Relational certainty increases coincided with relatively high levels of happiness, and relational uncertainty increases corresponded with heightened degrees of anger and sadness. Integrative behaviors were a frequently reported response to both kinds of events. Consistent with appraisal theory, specific emotions were associated with particular strategies; however, some effects were moderated by the type of event. The discussion highlights the utility of appraisal theory for understanding how romantic partners manage fluctuations in relational uncertainty.     

Instructional Settings in Science for Students with Disabilities: Implications for Teacher Education

Finding appropriate instructional settings in science for students with disabilities is challenging, and the range of services or placements used is currently unknown. This study identifies administrative structures, instructional settings, and special/general education teacher roles in teaching science to students with disabilities. A phone survey was conducted with special education coordinators of fifth graders in 137 districts in Texas. Survey data indicated that while nearly all districts reported special education settings for the instruction of science for students with disabilities, some districts provided only general education settings. Theoretical and practical implications for teacher preparation are discussed.     

‘It's like being in a zoo.’ Researching with people with intellectual disability

This paper introduces key debates in the contemporary practice of disability research and examines how these apply to conceptualising, designing and conducting research with people with intellectual disability. Specifically, it describes a collaborative action‐oriented reflexive approach to researching the lived experience of people with intellectual disability in self‐advocacy, offering a ‘reflective reprocessing’ of the methodological traditions, decisions, complexities and inadequacies of approaches to researching with such people. Emphasis on mutuality and the co‐construction of research agendas, interpretative frames and meanings is a method that has rarely been seen in research practice in intellectual disability. The approach described enables a merging of the skills of the ‘researcher’ and the ‘researched’ to create a process of integrated inquiry and reflection. It promises the possibility of new forms of co‐produced social knowledge about intellectual disability and self‐advocacy, with explicitly emancipatory values and assumptions.     

Foregrounding Women in the Doctoral Classroom: Mainstreaming and Single-Sex Approaches to Graduate Education

An increasing number of published studies have drawn attention to gender disparities in various dimensions of Christian higher education. Although the majority of students on the campuses of member institutions of the Council for Christian Colleges & Universities (CCCU) are women, and the percentage of women holding faculty and administrative roles has increased, the male-normed environment of the academy continues to be evident in various ways, particularly in these Christian institutions. At the same time, higher education—and doctoral education in particular—is an important pathway to prepare future leaders and professors for Christian organizations. One potential way to begin to shift toward a more welcoming climate that benefits both men and women on CCCU campuses is to “foreground,” or make central, women's issues and concerns as part of regular classroom teaching. Such foregrounding can help counter the historic tendency to treat men's experience and concerns as normative for the human race. In the discipline of missiology, women make up the bulk of the practitioners yet are underrepresented as scholars, making it a pertinent field to challenge the neglect of women's voices and concerns in the academy. This article describes how a missiology classroom has been used to create a climate where women have opportunities to be central and where women's perspectives are treated as equally important as men's perspectives. To do this, I used three key practices: intentionally addressing gendered topics in mixed classes, offering selected single-sex education opportunities for women, and focusing on gender-related topics for research and publication. Using the discipline of missiology as a case study in relation to the importance of giving women's contributions to the field both recognition and voice may also offer transferable insights for doctoral faculty in other disciplines.     

Integration models for indigenous public health curricula

All graduates of Master of Public Health (MPH) programmes in Australia are expected to achieve a core set of Indigenous public health competencies designed to train ‘judgement safe practitioners’. A curriculum framework document was developed alongside the competencies to assist programme providers to integrate appropriate Indigenous content, but it does not describe the intended integration model. A review of MPH programmes was undertaken to determine the extent of integration, identify examples of best practice and explore how integration can be improved. Data from the consolidated review findings were analysed using a staged approach. Several models of curricula integration were identified, building on known models, and definitions developed that differentiate features according to the extent of integration achieved. The model recommended in the literature as best practice, known to promote deep learning, was found in only one of the reviewed programmes. This combination model supports development of reflexive practitioners who can operate across different disciplines and ways of knowing. Enablers and barriers were explored to explain why some integration models were more commonly found. Implications for curriculum reform are outlined with strategies to assist implementation of a combined integration model, a necessary learning approach to enhance student cultural competence.     

Looking for leadership: the potential of dialogic reflexivity with rural early-career teachers

Many early-career teachers (ECTs) begin their teaching careers in rural and remote schools in Australia, and do not stay long, with consequences for their own lives, and for their students, schools and communities. By understanding how first-year ECTs navigate personal (subjective) and contextual (objective) conditions, opportunities to disrupt patterns of ECT attrition may be found. This paper explores the online longitudinal reflections from two rural ECTs. Margaret Archer’s three dimensions of reflexivity were used to analyse what personal, structural and cultural resources were activated by ECTs as they discerned and deliberated the costs of being a rural ECT. The potential for school leaders and mentors to support rural ECTs through dialogic reflexivity, that is the opportunity to discern and deliberate priorities with others, is identified as a role that is significant for ECT support but not straightforward. Prompts for dialogic reflexivity are proposed.     

Sexting and institutional discourses of child protection: The views of young people and providers of relationship and sex education

This article focuses on discourses of child safety and protection of stakeholder organisations (SOs) and school pastoral care co-ordinators (PCCs) on educating young people about sexting. Individual semi-structured interviews were conducted with the representatives of four organisations who assist schools in the delivery of Relationships and Sexuality Education (RSE); and with three PCCs in three different types of secondary schools in Northern Ireland to ascertain how their school educates and responds to sexting. Focus groups were also conducted with 17 (10 girls and 7 boys) 16–17-year-olds to explore their views on sexting. The results of this study reveal that the predominant discourse in RSE is child safety and protection, and abstention from sexting. The three main groups (young people, SOs and PCCs) vary, however, in how they view sexting behaviour: the stakeholders are largely cautious and counsel against sending sexual pictures, while the young people regard it as normal behaviour. RSE provided by the schools is inadequate and unrealistic, and does not represent what actually goes on in young people’s sexual lives. Young people want to be consulted on the content of RSE lessons and resources; and RSE content should desist from telling them not to sext and enable them to explore appropriate relationship behaviours, including sexting. Teachers should feel confident in teaching such material and should have access to appropriate training.