Narrative Career Counselling for People with Refugee Backgrounds

For people with refugee backgrounds, pursuing a meaningful career in their country of resettlement is important for their successful integration. However, for many, achieving this is a challenging process. Career counsellors may have a role to play in facilitating the transition and integration of people with refugee backgrounds, and narrative career counselling has much to offer. This article discusses the impact of prolonged transition under difficult circumstances on people with refugee backgrounds, and the potential contribution of narrative career counselling in assisting them. In particular, it identifies cultural considerations for narrative career counsellors who work with people with refugee backgrounds.     

Sanitizing the Struggle: Barack Obama,Selma, and Civil Rights Memory

In this article, I examine Barack Obama’s use of collective memory during his 2007 campaign speech in Selma, Alabama. Specifically, I argue that Obama appeals to collective memory to challenge the Black community’s relationship to the past. He reframed the memory of the Civil Rights Movement in a manner favorable to his political aspirations. While this frame was politically expedient, it weakened Black political agency. It robbed the Black community of crucial rhetorical resources used to challenge structural inequalities in society. This article offers insight into the complex relationship between metaphor and collective memory. Specifically, I interrogate the role of metaphor as a crucial site where public memory is formed, disrupted, and rearticulated. Furthermore, I consider the implications of his use of memory for the future of the Black freedom struggle.     

School principals’ views of teacher evaluation policy: lessons learned from two empirical studies

Teacher evaluation accountability policies are emerging worldwide. This study examines principals’ perceptions of teacher evaluation in terms of commonalities and differences arising from two research projects conducted in Portugal and in the US. Perceptions of school principals in regard to a new policy on teacher evaluation as well as its perceived effects at school and conditions for its implementation will be analysed. Findings point to the challenges and successes of coping with mandated accountability measures in two different contexts. Principals balanced perceived conflicting goals, sought maintenance of positive teacher relationships and school culture and managed the tensions of policy implementation and the making sense of its effects at school. Implications of the findings are discussed.     

Learning to play: A review and theoretical investigation of the developmental mechanisms and functions of cetacean play

Play is a behavioral phenomenon most commonly observed in the young of both solitary and social species. Documentation of play in cetaceans varies across species and settings. Cetacean play behavioral repertoires include a broad range of actions, such as the manipulation of diverse objects, blowing bubbles, chasing conspecifics, and swimming in spirals through the water. As is common in research on animal play, cetacean play has been grouped into categories by its form, including locomotor play, object play, and different variations of social play, such as affiliative games, play fighting, and socio-sexual play. Research has primarily focused on recording the topography of cetacean play and the demographics of the individuals engaging in play. However, these classifications are insufficient to address the possible developmental and societal functions of cetacean play behaviors, or the mechanisms with which play behaviors are spread between conspecifics and acquired by young members of cetacean populations. This article applies several developmental and social learning theories in order to organize current knowledge and guide future research.     

Reading to Learn or Learning to Read? Engaging College Students in Course Readings

Despite instructors' belief that class readings are integral to the learning process, only 20–30% of undergraduate students complete required readings. Failure to complete course reading has been associated with declines in exam and research performance. This article first offers a brief review of the literature on why students do not complete course readings: 1) unpreparedness, 2) lack of motivation, 3) time constraints, and 4) an underestimation of reading importance. We then identify approaches that encourage students to read, enjoy reading, and develop metacognitive knowledge, shown to improve learning.     

The Impact of a Professional Development Program on Teachers' Mathematical Knowledge for Teaching,Instruction, and Student Achievement

In this paper, we describe findings from a three-year evaluation of a well-developed mathematics professional development program that is commercially available on a wide scale. The professional development is designed to improve teachers' mathematical knowledge for teaching and to enable them to elicit more student thinking and reasoning during mathematics lessons. Specifically, it focused on helping teachers (a) learn more mathematics, (b) understand how children learn math, (c) use formative assessment to develop insight into what specific students know and do not know, and (d) develop effective classroom instructional strategies that enable student problem solving. Participants included 105 fourth- and fifth-grade teachers teaching in 19 low-income schools within a single district. Teachers were randomly assigned within schools either to a “business as usual” control group or to receive the professional development. The training consisted of a week-long summer institute and four to six in-service days during the school year. The training was run by full-time trained associates. We find some limited evidence of positive impacts on teachers' mathematical knowledge for teaching, but no effects on instructional practice or student outcomes.     

Using the Content of Online Privacy Notices to Inform Public Policy: A Longitudinal Analysis of the 1998-2001 U.S. Web Surveys

In the United States, Congress has had a long-standing interest in consumer privacy and the extent to which company practices are based on fair information practices. Previously, public policy was largely informed by anecdotal evidence about the effectiveness of industry self-regulatory programs. However, the Internet has made it possible to unobtrusively sample web sites and their privacy disclosures in a way that is not feasible in the offline world. Beginning in 1998, the Federal Trade Commission relied upon a series of three surveys of web sites to assess whether organizations post online privacy disclosures and whether these disclosures represent the U.S. definition of fair information practices. While each year's survey has provided an important snapshot of U.S. web-site practices, there has been no longitudinal analysis of the multiyear trends. This study compares a subset of equivalent individual-level web-site data for the 1998, 1999, 2000, and 2001 web surveys. Implications for using this type of research to inform public policy are discussed.     

Advancing Diversity in STEM

Although progress has been made, greater efforts are needed to promote faculty diversity at the college and university levels, especially in STEM fields. Thus, it is important to elucidate best practices both for increasing awareness of diversity issues pertaining to higher education and for implementing change. This article focuses on the outcomes of a diversity workshop for college and university faculty hosted by the West Virginia Higher Education Policy Commission, Division of Science and Research. More specifically, it elucidates how participation in the workshop translated into practice at the faculty participants’ home institutions.     

Gender attitudes in school have changed mainly in peer relational factors over a period of 35 years

The aim of the study is to compare gender patterns of student attitudes toward school, teachers and peers in grade 6 over time. In 1967–68 and in 2003, 1500 pupils responded to the same 40‐item questionnaire. A confirmatory factor analysis was applied. In the gender comparison the within‐class level was used. The more traditional school factors, Interest in School, View of Teacher, and Work Atmosphere, showed no differences between the two time periods. The factor Interest in School showed that girls were more positive than boys. In contrast to this, changes with more positive attitudes had occurred especially in boys’ peer relational factors. In Relations with Classmates and in View of Fuss, the scores were now equal between the two genders, but in View of Peers, and Lack of Anxiety the boys’ attitudinal scores were significantly higher than those of the girls.