“A Question Everybody Danced Around”: Gay Men Making Sense of Their Identities in Christian Colleges

Despite broader social changes in attitudes and policies regarding lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) people, the space available for gay students to develop and express their identities in Christian colleges provides only limited and fleeting relief because of the culture of heteronormativity central to their history and identity. Yet, in an era of enrollment competition in higher education, Christian colleges must navigate their traditional mission to preserve and advance the faith, changing cultural attitudes regarding LBGTQ people, and the financial realities facing contemporary institutions. This article draws from interviews with men who attended Christian colleges. First, we present their narratives to render the presence of LGBTQ people visible in these sites. Second, we seek to understand how these men made sense of their sexualities within educational cultures saturated with retention imperatives, institutional surveillance, and denominational ambivalence or hostility about LGBTQ persons. The men's narratives highlight the challenges they faced as “unfit subjects” (Pillow, 2004 Pillow, W. (2004). Unfit subjects: Educational policy and the teen mother. New York, NY: Routledge.[Crossref] , [Google Scholar]), their absorption of normative constructions of gender and sexuality governing their educational context, and the need for Christian colleges to better serve their gay students of faith.     

The Use of Lego Technologies in Elementary Teacher Preparation

The need to reform science teacher preparation programs has been pointed out in research (Bryan and Abell in J Res Sci Teach 36:121–140, 1999; Bryan and Atwater in Sci Educ 8(6):821–839, 2002; Harrington and Hathaway in J Teach Educ 46(4):275–284, 1995). Science teachers are charged with the responsibility of incorporating both cognitive and non-cognitive parameters in their everyday teaching practices. This often results in their reluctance to teach science because they often lack disciplinary and/or pedagogical expertise required to promote science learning. The purpose of this study is to propose an alternative instructional approach in which Lego vehicles were used as a tool to promote pre-service elementary teachers’ development and to examine whether there are non-cognitive parameters that promote or obstruct them from using Lego Technologies as a teaching tool. The context of the study was defined by a teacher preparation program of a private university in a small Mediterranean country. A sample of 28 pre-service elementary teachers, working in five 5–6-member groups were involved in scientific inquiries, during which they had to use vehicles in order to solve scientific problems related to concepts such as gear functioning, force, and motion. The nature of their cognitive engagement in the scientific inquiry process, non-cognitive parameters contributing to their cognitive engagement, and the impact of their involvement in the process on their development were examined through qualitative analysis of pre- and post-inquiry interviews, presentations of their solutions to the scientific problems and of their personal reflective journals.     

Do chronic conditions increase young children's risk of being maltreated?

OBJECTIVE: To examine whether and to what extent specific chronic health conditions place young children at risk of maltreatment. METHODS: The study used a sample of Illinois children (born between January 1990 and March 1996) who were through age 3 continuously enrolled in Medicaid, a public health insurance program for low-income families. The study used "paid claims" data and ICD-9-CM health codes to identify children with one or more of three chronic conditions: chronic physical illness, developmental delay/mental retardation (dd/mr), and behavior/mental health conditions (b/mh). The analysis used Cox proportional hazard models to estimate the risk of substantiated child maltreatment that each of these health conditions confer on children under age 6. RESULTS: Among children under age 6, 24.1% had chronic physical health conditions, 6.1% had b/mh conditions, and 4.2% had dd/mr. Among the children, 11.7% were maltreated (abused or neglected). Children with b/mh conditions were 1.95 times more likely than children without such conditions to be victims of child abuse or neglect. Children with chronic physical health conditions were 1.1 time more likely to be maltreated (p相似文献