Precursors to probation and parole agent intent to send informational,emotional, and esteem social support messages to female clients

Supervising agents serve as sources of social support for over one million women in the US on probation and parole who strive to avoid recidivism. Little is known about the supportive messages agents intend to provide their female clients or their precursors. The optimal matching model of social support is used in an investigation of the precursors to agents’ intent to send different types of social support messages to the women they supervise. Results indicated that supervising agents intended to provide informational support in the form of suggestions or advice, esteem support in the form of compliments, and emotional support in the form of encouragement to the women. Both agent communication pattern and offender level variables were precursors to the intent to send informational support messages, but only agent communication pattern variables predicted the intent to send emotional support messages.     

Innovation Management and U.S. Weekly Newspaper Web Sites: An Examination of Newspaper Managers and Emerging Technology

Using Everett Rogers's (2003) Rogers, E. M. 2003. Diffusion of innovations, 5th, New York: Free Press.  [Google Scholar] theory of innovation in organizations, this nationwide study examines U.S. weekly newspapers and their adoption and management of innovation—specifically, the online newspaper. From a theoretical standpoint, the creation of the online product was somewhat unsystematic. The data reveal that most weekly newspapers were not following any type of innovation management strategy when developing their online editions. This study echoes the findings of Saksena and Hollifield (2002) Saksena, S. and Hollifield, C. A. 2002. U.S. newspapers and the development of online editions. The International Journal on Media Management, 4: 75–84. [Taylor & Francis Online] , [Google Scholar] in the assessment that newspapers are adopting and managing emerging technology in a “relatively haphazard fashion.” Most newspaper managers report they did not develop a business plan for the new product or set specific, measurable goals to aid in assessing the success of the online newspaper. In addition, almost ¾ of the newspapers did not gather target-market or audience research before launching the online newspaper. The study found that newspaper managers were sensitive to their staffs' questions, needs, and concerns about publishing an online newspaper; and most involved their staffs in the decision-making process. A majority reported that they did not meet any resistance from their staffs about the adoption of new technology to produce the online newspapers.     

The Librarian's Role in Linking Patients to Their Personal Health Data and Contextual Information

The objective of this project was to make an institution's patients aware of a new patient portal with contextual links to MedlinePlus. Through partnerships with information technology personnel and LSU Health Shreveport clinics, the Health Sciences Library created and distributed promotional and educational materials and instructed patients on how to use MyChart and access reliable consumer health information via MedlinePlus Connect. Although most patients were not interested in coming to the library for demonstrations, many of them expressed interest in using MyChart. The contextual information in MedlinePlus Connect worked well for most topics. The institutional team leader for MyChart expressed gratitude for librarian involvement.     

Broadcasters’ attitudes toward public responsibility: An Ohio case study

Certainly one key to a licensee's response to community needs is the perception by top station executives of their station's role in the community. The following article is an adaptation of some research findings of a dissertation conducted under the supervision of Professor Walter B. Emery at Ohio State University in 1971. The author, now an assistant professor in the department of speech and dramatic art at the University of Iowa, received a research grant from the National Association of Broadcasters to help conduct the study.     

Texas Community College Funding: Nonmetropolitan and Metropolitan Ad Valorem Tax Rates and Revenue

This article examines ad valorem tax rates per $100 valuation and the resultant tax revenues per in-district contact hour for Texas nonmetropolitan and metropolitan public community colleges. The results of the analyses indicate no difference in ad valorem tax rates between these institutions but demonstrate differences in the resultant tax revenues. Recommendations for further research are provided.     

Editor's Introduction

I believe teacher educators resist changing teacher education because there's simply a lot of inertia in the field. We do what we do because it is the way we've always done it. If we have always had a program that requires two years of liberal studies, a few foundations courses, a set of methods courses and a field experience, why change it? Why take the time to analyze what's wrong with a system that we don't think is broken? (Ladson-Billings, 2001 Ladson-Billings, G. 2001. Crossing over to Canaan: The journey of new teachers in diverse classrooms., San Francisco: Jossey Bass.  [Google Scholar], p. 7)     

Acts of Irreconcilable Mourning: Post-Holocaust Witness and Testimony

Abstract

This essay revisits the question of post-Shoah responses to cataclysm in light of the now-urgent question of transmission – the shift in mourning and memory between first-generation survivors and later generations. Offering a different but complementary analysis to those in trauma or memory studies, I argue that post-Shoah witness and testimony are acts of ‘irreconcilable mourning’. This sense of mourning departs from post-Freudian approaches that focus on closure. Instead, irreconcilable mourning is a non-totalising approach to loss that resists ‘redemption’ and instead necessitates an ongoing, creative, and critical response to loss. In the course of this argument, I examine first-generation accounts such as Primo Levi's and Elie Wiesel's to highlight the necessity and contingency of transmission by interrogating concepts such as the ‘unsayable’ and the remnant. I then focus on Art Spiegelman's second-generation Maus: A Survivor's Tale, bringing cross-generational questions of witness and testimony as acts of irreconcilable mourning into the fold of Marianne Hirsch's ‘postmemory’ and Edith Wyschogrod's heterological history-telling.     

Parental migration and children’s academic engagement: The case of China

In the context of China’s increasing rural-urban migration, few studies have investigated how parental migration affects children’s experience in school. The high cost of schooling, taken together with the institutional barriers in destination cities, have compelled many rural parents in China to migrate without their children, leaving them in the care of their spouses, grandparents, relatives or other caregivers. Still other parents migrate with their children, many of whom then attend urban migrant schools in their destination city. Understanding the academic engagement of children of migrant workers is particularly salient because the poor qualities of migrant schools, a lack of parental support, and exposure to competing alternatives to schooling may render both migrant children in the cities and left-behind children in the rural villages vulnerable to disengagement, and ultimately school dropout. Using data collected in 2008 in the urban Haidian and Changping districts of Beijing and rural Henan and Shaanxi provinces, the authors of this paper investigate the association between parental migration status and two measures of academic engagement, academic aspirations and the odds of liking school, by comparing migrant children attending migrant schools and left-behind children with their rural counterparts who do not have migrant parents. The authors’ findings show that migrant children attending migrant schools have lower academic engagement compared to rural children of non-migrant parents. The correlation between academic engagement and parental migration status can be accounted for in part by the support children receive from family and teachers. The association between certain measures of family and school support and academic engagement also varies by parental migration status: for example, high teacher turnover rates significantly reduce migrant children’s odds of liking schools, but do not affect children of non-migrant parents.     

A Model for Recruiting and Retaining Teachers in Alaska's Rural K–12 Schools

The Alaska Statewide Mentor Project (ASMP) is a joint effort of the University of Alaska and the Alaska Department of Education & Early Development to address the persistently low teacher retention rates in the state, especially in rural districts that predominantly serve Alaska Native (AN) students. Over six years, teacher retention in rural districts, measured from year to year, has increased from an average of 67% to an average of 77% among new teachers who receive ASMP mentoring (Adams & Jordan, 2012). We conducted a midcareer teacher study to determine whether ASMP also affects long-term retention and, if so, to identify contributing factors. Using an explanatory sequential mixed-methods approach, we first calculated longitudinal retention rates and then interviewed midcareer teachers to identify factors supporting teacher efficacy connected to teacher retention. Interview data were coded using a framework from community psychology that employs a strengths-based perspective grounded, in this case, by the orienting concepts of “stress” and “coping.” The data produced a model of strengths contributing to teacher efficacy related to typical stressors in Alaska's public K–12 schools, a model that includes factors specific to teacher background, professionalism, socializing in the community, and being student-focused. In this paper, we compare and contrast these results to findings by others in northern rural remote areas in order to present practical implications for teacher recruitment, professional development, mentoring and support, and school environment.