Crossing under the highway: youth-centered research as resistance to structural inequality

This article tells the story of two exploratory youth-centered participatory action research (PAR) projects to consider how youth-centered research can resist inequality. In this paper, I focus on the findings and process of two PAR projects that took place within one geographically isolated neighborhood in Brooklyn, New York. The studies focused on neighborhood experiences of educational inequality and everyday experiences of crossing the street in and out of the neighborhood. The process and findings of the research identified tensions and connections around the lived experiences of inequality. Ultimately we found the process of conducting research collaboratively and across generation was itself a form of resistance.     

Does Audience Participation on Facebook Influence the News Agenda? A Case Study of The Rachel Maddow Show

Social media have been theorized as being able to break the press' monopoly on agenda-setting, giving the public greater influence over which stories are covered in the news. This study uses a cross-lagged panel analysis to determine to what extent audience conversations on The Rachel Maddow Show's Facebook Page may have influenced the selection of issues covered in the TV broadcast. Results show a positive correlation between stories discussed on Facebook and the subsequent airing of similar stories on TV. The evidence also suggests that social media may enable many factors that influence both the media and the public agendas.     

Teacher education and elementary school science—1980

A challenging projection of science education replete with heuristic content. Dare one be imaginative?     

Developing secondary students’ epistemic agency in a knowledge-building community

A key educational objective for the twenty-first century is developing students’ epistemic agency. Epistemic agency is the active process of choosing when, what, where one learns and how one knows, as well as the capacity to create knowledge in a community. The knowledge-building communities model developed by Scardamalia and Bereiter was used in a New Zealand Year 13 distance art history class to support the development of students’ epistemic agency in 2013. In this study, students were given more control in the learning process, and were able to exercise epistemic agency through identifying their knowledge gaps, sharing information and ideas, developing ideas and creating communal knowledge. A number of factors that increased students’ development of epistemic agency are also discussed in this article.     

Group tagging: Using video tagging to facilitate reflection on small group activities

Collaborative learning in class-based teaching presents a challenge for a tutor to ensure every group and individual student has the best learning experience. We present Group Tagging, a web application that supports reflection on collaborative, group-based classroom activities. Group Tagging provides students with an opportunity to record important moments within the class-based group work and enables reflection on and promotion of professional skills such as communication, collaboration and critical thinking. After class, students use the tagged clips to create short videos showcasing their group work activities, which can later be reviewed by the teacher. We report on a deployment of Group Tagging in an undergraduate Computing Science class with 48 students over a semester. Through our analysis of interviews and log data, we show that Group Tagging helped the students remain attentive and on-task during group work, and encouraged them to participate more during group activities.     

Prenatal Alcohol Exposure and Infant Information Processing Ability

403 black, inner-city infants born to women recruited prenatally on the basis of their alcohol consumption during pregnancy were assessed on a battery focusing on information processing and complexity of play. Prenatal alcohol exposure was not related to visual recognition memory or cross-modal transfer of information but was associated with longer fixation duration, a measure indicative of slower, less efficient information processing; lower scores on elicited play; and longer periods of toy exploration, possibly also due to slower cognitive processing. The effects on processing speed and elicited play were dose-dependent and not attributable to maternal depression, parental intellectual stimulation, other prenatal drug exposure, or postpartum maternal drinking. The processing speed deficit is consistent with deficits in older children prenatally exposed to alcohol; the present study is the first to identify slower cognitive processing in infancy and in tasks not dependent on motoric proficiency.     

Adult Education and the Health Literacy of Hispanic Immigrants in the United States

Discussion on the advantages of integrating health literacy into adult education has primarily been theoretical and conceptual. There is a need for studies that assess the impact of adult education on health literacy. This study implemented a quasi-experimental design to explore whether basic adult instruction may constitute a venue for improving health literacy among Spanish-speaking immigrants. Participants included adults in a High School Equivalency program in a US-Mexico border community who received either a standard GED curriculum or a GED curriculum enhanced with health literacy content. The Short Spanish TOFHLA was used to measure health literacy. While S-TOFHLA scores and health literacy levels improved in all participants, no statistically significant differences were observed across groups. Results are consistent with recommendations supporting adult education as a strategy for improving health literacy.