Mandated state-level open government training programs

Although every state in the country has recognized the importance of government transparency by enacting open government provisions, few of those statutes require training programs to encourage records custodians to comply with the law. Ten states mandate training in how to legally respond to public records requests, and some mandates are stronger than others. Using the qualitative research methods of legal statutory analysis, interviews, and content analysis, this paper explores how those states comply with the training mandates. The paper evaluates trainers' pedagogical goals, their opinions of the process, and their perceptions of the people they train. It concludes with suggestions for how states can develop open government training programs.     

Possibilities for MOOCs in Corporate Training and Development

The term MOOC, an acronym for massive open online course, has been nearly ubiquitous in recent discussions about online education and distance learning. Some articles have questioned the MOOC's tentative role as “the future of education,” while others have framed it as a disrupter of traditional higher education. Research in earlier years trended toward the ways in which MOOCs may be changing the landscape of higher education. However, in the past two years, greater consideration has been focused on how MOOCs may play a role in the corporate world. The year 2012 may have been deemed “The Year of the MOOC,” but many saw 2014 as “The Year of the Corporate MOOC.” Despite MOOCs reaching their prominence as disrupters of traditional higher education, MOOC providers are now aggressively pursuing opportunities in the corporate sector. This presents a great opportunity for corporations to drive this relatively new learning platform and to tailor it to meet their organizational needs. The potential uses for MOOCs in the corporate world are vast. MOOCs can expand corporate training options, offer new recruiting techniques, and provide innovative marketing and branding channels. This article identifies the features of MOOCs, briefly reviews the history of the MOOC movement from academic MOOCs to corporate MOOCs, and discusses the possibilities for extending the MOOC format to a corporate training and employee development environment.     

Digital pilgrimage: Exploring Catholic monastic webcasts

This study questions how religious webmasters view the objectives of their webcasting in relation to pilgrimage. Findings uncovered four facets: (1) mediation of the holy sites and experience; (2) bonding between Holy Land communities and global believers; (3) cultivating agents; (4) media experiences as a pilgrimage surrogate. Drawing on Walter Benjamin, the study elucidates how online videos evoke proximity to the sacred, thus connecting holy sites and believers, while affirming webmasters as secondary actors of religious authority.     

Reverse Image Lookup: Assessing Digital Library Users and Reuses

Reverse image lookup technology was used to assess the users and reuses of images from the Library of Congress' Teaching with Primary Resources digital collection. After selecting 44 images for the study, researchers used Google Reverse Image Lookup to generate a dataset of over 1,400 URLs. Drawing upon a coding rubric designed for a previous study on the ultimate uses of digital library materials, researchers coded the data to identify who uses these images and for what purposes. They found that the most popular type of user was “personal,” which aligns with previous work and indicates that a pattern is emerging between ultimate use and the personal user type. Additionally, the study's results indicate that social media and popular culture research outnumbered any other type of reuse. This article introduces reverse image lookup as a viable and approachable tool for digital library assessment, and discusses its implications for assessment and content selection.     

Development of a Metric to Test Group Differences in Ecological Knowledge as One Component of Environmental Literacy

Abstract

Environmental literacy has been defined in numerous ways and attempts have been made to measure how environmentally literate people are. Many attempts to measure literacy have instead measured people's knowledge about pollution and their attitudes toward the environment. According to many environmental education experts, knowledge and attitudes are important components of environmental literacy, especially if the goal of environmental education is to change behavior. However, the experts also indicate that, to change an individual's behavior, knowledge about the environment must be associated with environmental sensitivity, personal beliefs, and decisionmaking and problem-solving skills. The research presented in this article contributes to environmental literacy research by offering a tested, valid survey instrument to measure ecological knowledge—one component of environmental literacy. In this article, we provide an example of how this instrument can be applied by comparing knowledge levels among diverse groups of Ohio citizens.     

Black Families and Schooling in Rural South Carolina: Families' and Educators' Disjunctive Interpretations of Parental Involvement

The positive impact on children's educational trajectories when effective home-school partnerships are established has been extensively documented. This article shares findings from a 13-month research study in a rural, southern community in South Carolina that sought to investigate the nature of the “partnerships” formed between educators and families, while challenging stereotypes and misperceptions that prevent such partnerships from unfolding. In doing so, the researcher makes visible the experiences of Black families, students, and schools in communities rarely studied—poor, rural Black communities in the southern United States. The researcher uses the actual words of the teachers and parents to make visible the disjunctive interpretations about one of the major themes from the study, parental involvement as relationships. Finally, the researcher offers implications for educators and parents as they do the work necessary to form relationships that really benefit students.     

Debating Affirmative Action: Politics,Media, and Equal Opportunity in a “Postracial” America

This article explores how race-conscious education policy is interpreted in the political landscape of a “postracial” America. Based on a qualitative media analysis of the press coverage surrounding Amendment 46, an antiaffirmative action initiative, we examine language, statistics, and messages leveraged by advocates and critics of the ballot measure. We argue that despite using some of the same data sources, terms, and concepts, proponents and opponents of Amendment 46 proposed divergent policies. We analyzed this phenomenon vis-à-vis the framework of conflicting racial projects (Omi &; Winant, 1994 Omi, M. and Winant, H. 1994. Racial formation in the United States: From the 1960s to the 1990s, New York, NY: Routledge.  [Google Scholar]), moral paradigms of race (Loury, 2002 Loury, G. 2002. The anatomy of racial inequality, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.  [Google Scholar]), and interpretations of equality of educational opportunity (Howe, 1997 Howe, K. 1997. Understanding equal educational opportunity: Social justice, democracy and schooling, New York, NY: Teachers College Press.  [Google Scholar]). Arguably, the public's understanding of race-conscious education policies relies in part on opportunities for researchers, journalists, and the public to deliberate about issues related to race. We conclude with some recommendations for fostering more communication and understanding based in deliberative democratic theory (Gutmann &; Thompson, 1996 Gutmann, A. and Thompson, D. 1996. Democracy and disagreement, Cambridge, MA: Belknap.  [Google Scholar], 2004).     

Arthur,James et al ed (2012) Research methods and methodologies in education Sage (London & Thousand Oaks CA) isbn 978‐0‐85702‐039‐0 456 pp £26.99 (paper and e‐versions; boards £75) http://www.sagepub.co.uk/arthur

Aimed at postgraduates within education and educational research methods courses, this book integrates the theoretical and practical aspects of educational research. It journeys through designing, planning and conducting research to analytical techniques, impact and dissemination. Whether you are a new educational researcher or more established, you might find your own copy of this book useful for in‐depth study or for reference: borrow a copy to help you decide. Nancy El‐Farargy     

The Need for Critical Media Literacy In Teacher Education Core Curricula

The "information era" has brought up new literacies, although most of them are still not part of the K–12 curriculum or the teacher education curriculum. One of these new literacies is critical media literacy. The purpose of this article is to document the urgency for including this new literacy in school and teacher education curricula given the crucial role of media as they touch every issue impacting human life in society. Critical media literacy as understood here includes three dimensions: (1) develop a critical understanding of how corporate for-profit media work, driven by their political and economic vested interests; (2) search for and support alternative, nonprofit media; and (3) characterize the role of teachers in helping students and their parents to become media-literate users and supporters of alternative media. Critical media literacy is founded on the legitimate role of media to serve the public's right to be truly informed, and thereby serve democracy. However, currently we are witnessing an unprecedented concentration of for-profit media into conglomerates, in alliance with the government and especially with the federal regulating agency—Federal Communications Commission—and other powerful institutions and corporations. Starting with this big picture, we examine and document specific cases that illustrate how these conglomerates and their allies work to keep and to expand their power, by means of filtering information, manufacturing consent, and controlling what the public watch, listen to, read, think, believe, taste, dress, look like, speak, and how they perceive themselves. The propaganda behind the banning of bilingual education in California is a clear example in the educational arena of the role of media in helping powerful people to manufacture voters' consent through fabricated stories, misleading ballot question, biased polls, etc. The second dimension of critical media literacy refers to the active involvement of every person, including school children, to support and advocate for alternative, nonprofit, public service-driven media. Given the reasons and the evidence presented, the authors consider that there is an urgency for including critical media literacy in the K–12 school curricula, and therefore in the teacher education core curriculum.     

Building Child Friendly Cities in the MENA region

The notion of Child Friendly Cities (CFCs) was first developed during the Second United Nations Conference on Human Settlements (HABITAT II), held in Istanbul in 1996. The concept is based on four general principles of the United Nations Convention on the rights of the child: (1) fair treatment of every child, regardless of ethnicity, gender, religion, socioeconomic background etc.; (2) top priority of the best interests of the child; (3) the child’s right to a better life and development; and (4) respect of children’s views. In a CFC, children are encouraged to take part in the decision making processes that affect their lives. Instead of starting yet another programme for children, the development of a CFC mobilises and connects existing agencies and actors. Giving examples of some cities in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region, this paper demonstrates that building CFCs has induced the development of mechanisms and structures which have enabled cities to address children’s issues in a systematic manner. These mechanisms and structures include: a municipal child-friendly legal framework, local development councils and NGO networks and local municipal development offices. The author argues that in building CFCs, the role of municipal authorities is indispensable in responding to the needs of children and young people within the municipalities’ mandates.