Dialogic voices in talk about drinking and pregnancy

Alcohol use during pregnancy poses a significant risk of fetal alcohol syndrome. This study presents the interpretive findings of the formative research phase of a funded grant to develop a community‐based public health media campaign on the topic of drinking during pregnancy. In the initial wave of data collection, 50 rural women were recruited from four Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) clinics in southeastern Iowa to participate in semi‐structured interviews. In the second wave, 10 additional WIC clients were interviewed for member‐checking purposes. Findings revealed two competing discourses that organized these women's attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors surrounding drinking and pregnancy: the discourse of individualism and the discourse of responsible motherhood. These two discourses offer opposing normative guidelines for talk among their close female relatives and friends. The implications of these findings for designing a community‐based media campaign are discussed.     

Unlocking the potential of the Internet to improve college choice: a comparative case study of college-access Web tools

Students and parents rely on Web-based tools to navigate the college-choice process, yet little research has been done to understand this environment. While this shift has made the process easier to navigate for some, we contend that the move will grow an already large digital divide in the USA. We use Hossler and Gallagher's college-choice framework to examine the substance and function of three college-access Web portals. Our findings suggest these tools are likely to serve many students well in the process, but may exacerbate the digital divide with consequences for low-income students.     

Recursivity: A Working Paper on Rhetoric and Mnesis

This essay proposes the genealogical study of remembering and forgetting as recursive rhetorical capacities that enable discourse to place itself in an ever-changing present. Mnesis is a meta-concept for the arrangements of remembering and forgetting that enable rhetoric to function. Most of the essay defines the materiality of mnesis, first noting the limitations of studying recursivity within dominant approaches remembering and forgetting in rhetorical studies, then describing mnesis as the performative necessity to fold the past into the present so as to provide “now” with a sense of place. After setting a foundation, the essay closes with a sketch of how to produce a genealogy of recursion.     

In living memory: Abortion as cultural amnesia

This essay argues that abortion is more than the termination of a pregnancy: it is a metaphor for cultural amnesia. Early medical anti‐abortion rhetoric in the United States established women's bodies as rhetorical sites of cultural memory. Physicians formed a system of mnemonics: cultural truth about humanity was located in women's reproductive physiology, protocols for accessing that truth were formed via diagnostic practices, and a network of bodies (discursive and corporeal) was established through which truth could circulate. In the face of increasing numbers of abortions, physicians made the act of listening to the female body a culturally genealogical act.     

“A Capital and Novel Argument”: Charles Darwin's Notebooks and the Productivity of Rhetorical Consciousness

With the rise of poststructuralist critiques of the autonomous subject, attention has shifted from the nature of “intentional persuasion” to the constitutive nature of discourse. Although this turn has led to valuable new insights into the nature of rhetoric, it also threatens to discount one of the most vital contributions of the rhetorical tradition—the nature of rhetorical invention. This essay seeks to recover the notion of invention by drawing from John Dewey's naturalistic interpretation of experience. In Dewey's framework, “consciousness” is neither the private contents of thought nor a point of articulation for social discourse, but a practice of manipulating public meanings as a means of responding to problematic situations. I then use Dewey's notion to advance the concept of a “rhetorical consciousness,” which I define in terms of the sophistical principles of imitatio and dissoi logoi. To demonstrate the pragmatic significance of this concept, I then show, through an analysis of Charles Darwin's notebooks, how Darwin employed his own rhetorical consciousness within his struggle to invent the revolutionary arguments that led up to his publication of On the Origin of Species. My hope is that this naturalistic interpretation of rhetorical invention will contribute to the ongoing project of cultivating a more intelligent, critical, and creative citizenry through the application of classical rhetorical principles to contemporary democratic forms of education in both the arts and sciences.     

Legal Notes When May a College Regulate an Instructor's In-Class Speech? Recent Guidance from the Sixth Circuit

In a recent opinion, the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that a community college instructor has a constitutional right to utilize the words nigger and bitch in the context of a classroom discussion in a course on interpersonal relations. This article discusses this case in the context of other court decisions concerning a college's right to regulate an instructor's classroom speech. Implications for personnel evaluation in the higher education setting are discussed.     

The Comparability of Scores from Different Digital Devices: A Literature Review and Synthesis with Recommendations for Practice

Evidence of comparability is generally needed whenever there are variations in the conditions of an assessment administration, including variations introduced by the administration of an assessment on multiple digital devices (e.g., tablet, laptop, desktop). This article is meant to provide a comprehensive examination of issues relevant to the comparability of scores across devices, and as such provide a starting point in designing and implementing a research agenda to support the comparability of any assessment program. This work starts with a conceptual framework rooted in the idea of a comparability claim—a conceptual statement about how each student is expected to perform on each of the devices in question. Then a review of the available literature is provided, focusing on how aspects of the devices (touch screens, keyboards, screen size, and displayed content) and aspects of the assessments (content area and item type) relate to student performance and preference. Building on this literature, recommendations to minimize threats to comparability are then provided. The article concludes with ways to gather evidence to support claims of comparability.     

Early-grade reading support in rural South Africa: A language-centred technology approach

International Review of Education - This article describes a short-term longitudinal study conducted in low-performing rural primary schools in South Africa. The authors were involved in developing...     

Infant Attachment Security and Early Childhood Behavioral Inhibition Interact to Predict Adolescent Social Anxiety Symptoms

Insecure attachment and behavioral inhibition (BI) increase risk for internalizing problems, but few longitudinal studies have examined their interaction in predicting adolescent anxiety. This study included 165 adolescents (ages 14–17 years) selected based on their reactivity to novelty at 4 months. Infant attachment was assessed with the Strange Situation. Multimethod BI assessments were conducted across childhood. Adolescents and their parents independently reported on anxiety. The interaction of attachment and BI significantly predicted adolescent anxiety symptoms, such that BI and anxiety were only associated among adolescents with histories of insecure attachment. Exploratory analyses revealed that this effect was driven by insecure‐resistant attachment and that the association between BI and social anxiety was significant only for insecure males. Clinical implications are discussed.