Righting the Commons in Red Rock Canyon

In this essay we examine the coil-bound notebooks kept at the summit of Turtlehead Peak in Red Rock Canyon, a recreational hiking trail on the immediate outskirts of Las Vegas. Of the many different sorts of entries, a “nature-culture binary” is the most dominant and unique pattern to be found in the journals. We argue that this nature-culture binary serves as a piece of rhetorical equipment useful for navigating the daunting ecological complexities of everyday life. Invoking culturally familiar tropes of sublimity-and-banality, hikers renew their civic vows by “righting” themselves through the journals. We thus argue that the notebooks ultimately serve as the locus of a “becoming-common” within discourse. At bottom, the nature-culture binary enables hikers to affirm—and in affirming make available, and in making available make possible—the noblest ideals and loftiest hopes of a shared material existence. We conclude by noting a darker implication of this rhetorical performance, namely that the seeds of a more harmonious ecological future are sown alongside a dangerously innocent self-righteousness.     

Emeriti faculty as mentors: the benefits and rewards of mentoring the next generation

ABSTRACT

This holistic single-case study reports on the benefits mentors derived from participating in the Increasing Minority Presence within Academia through Continuous Training (IMPACT) mentoring program. The IMPACT program was sponsored by the National Science Foundation Office for Broadening Participation in Engineering 15–7680 (awards #1542728 and #1542524). In this program, emeriti faculty were matched with underrepresented minority faculty in the engineering professoriate for career-focused mentorship. The conceptual framework of the Benefits of Being a Mentor grounded this study. Findings indicate mentors appreciate the opportunity to give back and remain engaged in the field, to relive past academic career experiences, and to support the next generation of engineering professors while adjusting to retirement. These findings aligned with the conceptual framework on three factors: rewarding experience, improved job performance, and generativity. Implications for administrators and faculty, as well as additional research areas, are discussed.     

Programme evaluation toolbox: effective evaluation principles and considerations in career practice

In our ever-present age of accountability, career development professionals are increasingly called upon to document evidence-based outcomes and other metrics of programme effectiveness. In this article, we will review the key components of effective programme evaluation, including purposes and types of evaluation. Our review will span empirical and practical literature across disciplines and within guidance and counselling, specifically. We will review current evaluation models within an international context but focus predominantly on US based ones, along with articulating their shortfalls. Finally, we will present a potentially transformative advocacy-infused model of programme evaluation.     

Teacher Compensation and Teacher Teaming: Sketching the Terrain

Many recent educational reform and school improvement initiatives have asserted the importance of teachers working in groups. However, it is not clear what organizational redesign has occurred to support a shift to team- or group-based work. This article examines one such organizational shift, changes in teacher compensation, that might accompany organizational redesign arranged to support teacher work groups. The article describes a continuum of possible options for teacher compensation in teacher teaming arrangements. Three interrelated aspects of teaming and compensation are considered: the relationship of teaming to teachers' overall work, the investment a school or a district might make to accomplish the teaming in education, and the degree to which the team aims to increase employee self-management and self-governance (Hackman, 1986). Some implications of these options for personnel evaluation are also discussed.     

Standards-Based Evaluation and Teacher Career Satisfaction: A Structural Equation Modeling Analysis

Structural equation modeling was used to assess the plausibility of a conceptual model specifying hypothesized linkages among perceptions of characteristics of standards-based evaluation, work environment mediators, and career satisfaction and other outcomes. Four comprehensive high schools located in two neighboring counties in southern California provided the data for this study. The schools’ districts had recently developed and implemented evaluation systems based on six California Standards for the Teaching Profession generated in 1997. One hundred and seventy-eight teachers responded to survey questions designed to capture the following constructs: understandable/relevant standards, satisfactory/helpful evaluation, role ambiguity, effort performance-rating linkage, work criteria autonomy, career satisfaction, organizational commitment, and perceptions of the effectiveness of the evaluation system. Confirmatory factor analysis was used to assess whether the items measuring evaluation fit two hypothesized constructs. Structural equation modeling results indicated that there are two mediators in the evaluation-career satisfaction relationship: role ambiguity and work criteria autonomy.

Do Charters Pose a Threat to Private Schools? Evidence from Nationally Representative Surveys of U.S. Parents

Charter schools increasingly challenge both district and private schools for student enrollments in the United States. With more parents able to choose among the sectors, the success of each in attracting students will turn in part on the levels of satisfaction provided to families who enroll. We analyze data from two nationally representative surveys of parental perceptions. Private school parents are the most satisfied with the climate, student behavior, and school-to-parent communications in their child’s school, but the gap between private school parents and charter parents is much less than the one between private school parents and those in district schools. We find little difference across sectors in satisfaction with school infrastructure and in school–parent communications about student behavior. Because charters, like district schools, are free, this narrowing of the satisfaction gap between the tuition-based and free school sectors may erode the size of the private sector.     

Telecommunications

Leland L. Johnson's Expanding the Use of Commercial and Noncommercial Broadcast Programming on Cable Television Systems (Santa Monica, Calif.: Rand Corp publication R-1677-MF, January 1975—$5.00, paper).

Ben Parks' An Introduction to Telemedicine: Interactive Television for Delivery of Health Services (Alternate Media Center, New York University School of the Arts, 144 Bleecker St., New York, N.Y. 10012—free on reouest).

CATV Today A Discussion of Current Issues (School for Summer and Continuing Education, Georgetown University, Washington D.C.—apparently free on request)

Oliver Berliner's Color TV Studio Design and Operation: for CATVL School and Industry (Blue Ridge Summit, Pa.: TAB Books, 1975— $9.95).     

Sitting in Silence: Managing Aural Body Rhetoric in Public Restrooms

Proposing an enhancement to the concepts of verbal and corporeal rhetorics, this article offers the concept of aural body rhetoric, arguing that nonvocal sounds produced by the body can also provide rhetorical messages, create rhetorical challenges and prompt the conscious management of bodily sounds, particularly in panopticonic spaces (panauricons) in which the body is hidden from view. Using the urinary sounds made by transsexual men in public restrooms as an example, this article examines this space as a panauricon that creates a rhetorical challenge for these men and has prompted the dissemination of various rhetorical strategies within the community of transmen in the United States.