Diversity between and within: approaches to teaching about distant place in the secondary school curriculum

This study outlines some challenges of teaching about distant place and demonstrates how different strategies can influence school students’ framings of diversity. The analysis is based on an interpretive case study of 13–14?year-old students learning about Japan in a UK school. Their changing representations of Japan were tracked in detail over a 10?week period of study. The findings show that students’ representations of Japan were multi-stranded, demonstrating different levels of sophistication depending on the aspect of the country under consideration. Learning activities that enabled contact with the lives of young people from the distant place or that involved multiple images were shown to challenge stereotypes and to encourage more nuanced understandings of diversity between and within.     

Conceptualizing Stress and Coping Strategies of Korean Social Work Students in the United States: A Concept Mapping Application

The number of Asian international students pursuing graduate degrees in social work in the U.S. has increased dramatically in recent years, especially among Koreans. Despite the growth and the need for culturally competent practices in higher education, no research has been devoted to the adjustment problems of this population. This study is the first of its kind in exploring stress and coping strategies of Korean international students in graduate social work education. Concept mapping revealed five major clusters of stressors: academic problems, financial difficulties, cultural barriers, psychological problems, and family concerns. Five major coping strategies emerged as well: psychological coping, physical coping, problem solving, social support, and entertainment. Social work schools and departments should demonstrate cultural competence with this population by providing support services to help these students cope successfully with their new environment.     

Individual attitudes and social influences on college students’ intent to participate in study abroad programs

Participation in study abroad programs (SAPs) is widely viewed as offering important professional and personal benefits for college students. This study applies the Theory of Reasoned Action [Ajzen, I., & Fishbein, M. (1980). Understanding attitudes and predicting social behavior. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.] as a theoretical framework to better understand how undergraduate students’ individual attitudes and subjective norms from three social groups (family, friends and professors) impact their intent to participate in SAPs. Surveys were conducted at three public and private universities in the USA and Taiwan. The results suggest that both individual attitudes and subjective norms are influential factors for college students, and the effects are dependent on the type of SAPs. The current research offers several additions to the SAPs literature. Also, the results offer new insights for higher education and other institutional managers for increasing student participation in SAPs.     

The dearth of managerialism in implementation of national examinations policy

Introducing new national examinations is a complex, multi‐agency policy implementation. However, there have been some high‐profile problems in examination systems in recent years. This research investigated what 10 UK managers involved in the process thought were the main problems. Time pressures were recognised as a serious problem by the managers, as well as the politically driven nature of the reform. It is argued that network management explains the lack of high‐profile individual leaders, the delegation issues, the apparent lack of traditional management skills, the low level of planning and monitoring, the absence of scoping, a professionalist approach, the lack of separation between policy and implementation and the fact that managers could not specify from the outset what needed to be done for a new round of examination developments. Inter‐agency power relationships accounted for lack of negotiation of timescales. Recommendations are made for construction of a qualification development blueprint, scoping of resources, appraisal of the human resources shortage in the UK assessment sector and better stakeholder management of the qualification development policy community by government.     

Empowering or disabling? Emotional reactions to assessment amongst part-time adult students

This article focuses on emotional reactions to learning and assessment. It draws on a qualitative research project involving first-generation adult students on a foundation degree programme. Endorsing the notion of emotional reactions as situated in participants' lived power relations, we map out emotional patterns to Semester 1 and then explore in more detail, participants' particular emotional reactions to assessment. We found three key themes: higher education assessment as an unknown risk; assessment success ‘out of the blue’ and assessment as trauma and euphoria. A major aspect of the project was to offer socially constructed pedagogic developments in response to these themes and nurture emotion as positive energy for transformation.     

‘Go somewhere,do something’. How students responded to the opportunity to complete an unstructured,five-day,wilderness solo in the Cantabrian Mountains,Northern Spain

This study explored the response of 28, second year undergraduate students to an innovative approach to a five-day solo. Periods of solitude are more likely to lead to positive outcomes when they are freely chosen than when they are programmed as part of a course. The extent to which a programmed solo can be ‘freely chosen’ by the individual is traditionally perceived as being constrained by logistic, safety and group needs. This study describes a solo, delivered as a required part of a core academic module, in which these perceived limitations were challenged. It describes an attempt to empower students to make their own choices about the nature of their solo experience and risk management. The study evaluates the extent to which individual students felt that they had freedom of choice; the choices they made and the outcomes of their solos. An intrinsic case study approach was used to explore the choices made by all students before, during and immediately after their solo as well as the more considered responses of 14 students eight months later. The data suggest that the pre-solo mindset was the most important factor in determining positive outcomes for participants and that offering students the opportunity to take responsibility for the structure of their own solo increased the likelihood that this would be achieved.     

Maize seed coatings and seedling sprayings with chitosan and hydrogen peroxide: their influence on some phenological and biochemical behaviors

Objective:To evaluate the effect of chitosan(CH) and hydrogen peroxide(H2O2) seed coatings and seedling sprinklings on two different maize varieties by measuring their phenology,the H2O2 presence,the catalase(CAT) activity,and the protein quantity.Methods:Seven groups of ten seeds for each maize variety were treated with CH(2%(20 g/L) and 0.2%(2 g/L)) or H2O2(8 mmol/L) by coating,sprinkling,or both.Germination and seedling growth were measured.One month after germination,the presence of H2O2 in seedlings in the coated seed treatments was evaluated.Protein content and CAT activity were determined under all treatments.Results:H2O2 seed coating enhanced the germination rate and increased seedling and stem length in the quality protein maize(QPM) variety.Seedlings had a higher emergence velocity under this treatment in both varieties.CH and H2O2 sprinklings did not have an effect on seedling phenology.Exogenous application of H2O2 promoted an increase of endogenous H2O2.CH and H2O2 seedling sprinkling increased the protein content in both maize varieties,while there was no significant effect on the CAT activity of treated seeds and seedlings.Conclusions:CH and H2O2 enhance some phenological and biochemical features of maize depending on their method of application.     

“Go,little book ...”: Getting a book to readers

An author, editor, agent, marketing director, and bookseller describe in turn how one book—Facing the Music: Short Stories by Larry Brown—made the journey from a writer's brain to readers' brains. Larry Brown is the author of two novels,Dirty Work andJoe, and two short-story collections,Facing the Music andBig Bad Love. His next book,On Fire, is a nonfiction account of his experiences in the Oxford, Mississippi, Fire Department. Liz Darhansoff is a literary agent with Darhansoff and Verrill Literary Agency, New York. Richard Howorth is an Oxford bookseller who serves on theParis Review's Booksellers' Advisory Board, the Board of Directors of the Mississippi Institute of Arts and Letters, and the Board of Directors of the American Booksellers Association. He chairs the ABA's Publisher Relations Committee and in 1986 was awarded the Charles S. Haslam Award for excellence in bookselling. Shannon Ravenel is editorial director of Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill and the editor of its annualNew Stories from, the South. From 1977 to 1990 she was series editor forBest American Short Stories, and she editedThe Best American Short Stories of the Eighties. Ina Stern is marketing director of Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill.