Who Am I Online? Examining Voluntary Use as Symbolic-Collective Action

This article reports on a test of an integrated voluntary information technology use model that draws on social identity theory to extend the functional utility model of the user. User feedback on a health care insurance firm's electronic service in South Africa was analyzed qualitatively using pattern matching to test the model's propositions. While functional utility was found to be a significant determinant of voluntary information technology use, both functional utility and symbolic needs were significant for some user segments. Information technology research can benefit from further cross-fertilization with social identity theory to explain use patterns in different voluntary contexts. Providers seeking to move beyond functional utility should consider the symbolic needs of strategically important user segments to strengthen long-term relationships.     

Globalisation and citizenship education: diversity in South Korean civics textbooks

This study examines how textbooks in the Republic of Korea incorporate liberal, Western notions of diversity and multiculturalism. Through a systematic analysis of 60 civics textbooks over time, this study shows that ideas of multiculturalism and diversity have dramatically increased in the South Korean intended curriculum. While in the past, textbooks depicted South Korean society as racially and ethnically homogenous with little or no mention of disadvantaged groups or ethnic minorities, starting in the 1990s, textbooks increasingly discuss the rights of diverse groups and the need to empower these groups to address problems of social inequality. Yet, traditional citizenship narratives of national homogeneity still remain, especially in textbooks that discuss prospects for the reunification of the Korean peninsula.     

Identity in science learning: exploring the attention given to agency and structure in studies of identity

This paper explores the ways in which the concept of identity has been conceptualised and studied within science education. The Personality and Social Structure Perspective is used to examine the attention paid by researchers to three levels of identity analysis: personality, interaction and social structure. Tracing the development of science identity studies and the resulting body of literature reveals that most authors have focused their attention on aspects of identity related to individual agency to the exclusion of issues of social structure. This paper argues that this attention is related to the position of communities of practice as the dominant theoretical framework for identity studies and argues that researchers need to consider broader frameworks that encourage the integration of ideas at all three levels of analysis. Broadened methodological approaches, including mixed methods, are also advocated as a way to increase consideration of the level of social structure.     

Robust hope,democracy and early childhood education

This paper discusses a recent Australian study of boys' education using case studies to determine successful practices. It focuses on an early childhood site where access to ‘discourses of power’ for students and parents and a valuing of students' ‘action knowledge’ created a particular democratic culture achieving improved outcomes for boys. The data are drawn from focus groups with families, interviews with educators, conversations with children and on‐site observations over two days. The findings are discussed in terms of those factors deriving from Henry Giroux's work on democracy and hope. In addition, we build on the work of Giroux by discussing the site as an exemplar of what we have come to call ‘robust hope’.     

Do we need to move from communication technology to user community? A new economic model of the journal as a club

Much of the argument around reforming, remaking, or preserving the traditions of scholarly publishing is built on economic principles, explicit or implicit. Can we afford open access (OA)? How do we pay for high‐quality services? Why does it cost so much? In this article, we argue that the sterility of much of this debate is a result of failure to tackle the question of what a journal is in economic terms. We offer a way through by demonstrating that a journal is a club and discuss the implications for the scholarly publishing industry. We use examples, ranging from OA to prestige journals, to explain why congestion is a problem for club‐based publications, and to discuss the importance of creative destruction for the maintenance of knowledge‐generating communities in publishing.