The irony of rigor: ‘no-excuses’ charter schools at the intersections of race and disability

Across the United States, the ‘no-excuses’ charter school movement featuring strict discipline policies and rigorous academic standards has gained popularity among schools serving poor and working-class students of color. In this article, we examine how Black and Latinx parents of students with disabilities¹ negotiated and experienced these charter school practices of rigor, which disciplined, managed, and regulated students’ social differences. Drawing from a yearlong qualitative research study, we examine interviews with Black and Latinx parents who experienced conflict with charter schools and the school lawyers, along with school artifacts we gathered such as parent handbooks and website information. We found parents experienced what we refer to as the ‘irony of rigor:’ the contradictory double-movement through which students of color with disabilities desired inclusion into ‘rigorous’ charter schools which then excluded them using ‘rigor’ as a central feature of student pushout practices. We present the irony of rigor in three interrelated acts: Act I: the lure of rigor (i.e. what drew parents to charter schools); Act II: the body meets rigor (i.e. how schools disciplined and managed student differences); and Act III: the consequences of rigor (i.e., what happened to students and parents while and after experiencing rigorous practices). We contextualize the irony of rigor within the relationship between disability, race, and neoliberalism.     

When everything is under control: Chronicling the affective containment experiences of Filipino elderly in institutionalized settings

Affective Containment has been recognized as a means to manage negative experience by projecting emotions to others. To date, there are no known literatures on the process of affective containment in the elderly context; hence, this grounded theory investigation. This study aims to describe the process by which affective containment is experienced by a select group of institutionalized Filipino elderly. To achieve the overall intent of this study, Strauss and Corbin’s Grounded Theory design was employed. Face-to-face, semi-structured interviews were carried out among 20 institutionalized Filipino elderly. Field texts were subjected to thematic analysis involving open, axial, and selective coding. The overall validity of the findings was ensured through member checking procedure. An interesting set of phases emerged relative to the layer of experience, namely: Holding-up, Gearing-up, and Opening-up; collectively known as the 3-Stage Analogy of Elderly Affective Containment. Said model describes how emotions can be contained to other individuals through interactions inside the institution. The study has eidetically described and examined the process of affective containment among the institutionalized Filipino elderly. Findings of the study invite nurses to put premium to nurse–patient relationship and provide timely interventions with a view to improving emotional health.     

Understanding behavior to understand behavior change: a literature review

One view of environmental education suggests that its goal is to ‘develop a world population that … has the knowledge, skills, attitudes, motivations and commitment to work individually and collectively towards solutions of current problems and the prevention of new ones’ (UNESCO‐UNEP 1976 UNESCO‐UNEP. 1976. The Belgrade charter. Connect: UNESCO‐UNEP Environmental Education Newsletter, 1(1): 1–2.  [Google Scholar]). Embedded within this charge is the teaching of skills and motivations to implement skills, where a skill refers to performance of an act acquired through extended practice and training (Ericsson and Oliver 1995 Ericsson, K.A. and Oliver, W.L. 1995. “Cognitive skills”. In Learning and Skill, Edited by: Mackintosh, N.J. and Colman, A.M. 37–55. London: Longman.  [Google Scholar]). However, it is often difficult to articulate clearly what skills we teach in conservation education and environmental education focusing on behavior change or influence. It can be equally challenging to describe the behaviors we are ultimately seeking, identified in the Tbilisi Declaration as ‘new patterns of behavior’ (UNESCO 1978 UNESCO. 1978. Final report: Intergovernmental conference on environmental education, Paris: UNESCO ED/MD/49. Organized by UNESCO in Cooperation with UNEP, Tbilisi, USSR, 14–26 October, 1977 [Google Scholar]). At a basic level, it is important to explore the grounding for teaching toward behavior – often referred to as behavior change – that supports the work of the field. This literature review attempts to provide a foundation for behavior‐related discussions in environmental and conservation education. A number of the behavior theories, concepts and models discussed in this review have been explored extensively elsewhere; therefore, this review is not exhaustive, but rather is intended to be broadly representative of the literature.     

Group Time Experiences: Belonging,Being and Becoming Through Active Participation Within Early Childhood Communities

The National Quality Standards (NQS) as part of the Australian National Quality Framework were developed in 2011 and included several references to the organisation of small and large groups within early childhood settings (ACECQA 2013). The NQS act in tandem with the Early Years Learning Framework (EYLF) (DEEWR 2009) and are the basis by which early childhood centres are assessed for accreditation in Australia. This paper draws upon current research with early childhood educators as they struggle to understand the new concept of ‘intentional teachers’ within this new regime. There also appears to have been a dramatic shift in the understanding about how large and small groups operate within centres. As the accreditation process unfolds, some early childhood centres have been advised to abandon large or whole group work. At the core of the EYLF are the notions of ‘being, belonging, becoming’, locating young children as part of a community of learners within a democratic society. It therefore appears that tensions and contradictions are emerging between the fundamental principles of the EYLF as they are juxtaposed against the requirement of the NQS. Critical Pedagogy of Place provides a theoretical framework in which to interrogate the ways some early childhood educators interpret intentional teaching both in terms of the organisation of spaces in early childhood centres and the organisation of the children as they inhabit those spaces (Gruenewald 2008). This paper argues that the possible abandonment of large group experiences runs the risk of disconnecting children from their communities and the relationships they form as social participants. Furthermore, it is argued that whole group experiences are crucial elements that facilitate a child’s identity and active citizenry.     

Evolution and adoption of contributor role ontologies and taxonomies

Contributor Role Ontologies and Taxonomies (CROTs) are standard vocabularies to describe individual contributions to a scholarly project or research output. Contributor Roles Taxonomy (CRediT) is one of the most widely used CROTs, and has been adopted by numerous journals to describe author's contributions, and recently formalized as a ANSI/NISO standard. Despite these developments, there is still much work left to be done to improve how CROTs are used across different research domains, research output types, and scholarly workflows. In this paper, we describe how CROTs could be extended to include roles from various disciplines in an ethical and inclusive manner. We explore potential approaches to apply CROTs to diverse research objects and various disciplines; as well as envision their integration into various scholarly workflows, such as promotion and tenure in academic institutions. Lastly, we discuss potential mechanisms for wide adoption and use. While acknowledging that improving current systems of attribution is a slow and iterative process, we believe that engaging the community in the evolution of CROTs will ultimately enhance the ethical attribution of credit and responsibilities in scholarly publications.     

Doctoral Counselor Education Students' Levels of Research Self‐Efficacy,Perceptions of the Research Training Environment,and Interest in Research

Counselor educators are called to be effective researchers; however, limited study has investigated research constructs within counselor educators‐in‐training. This study investigated the levels of research self‐efficacy (Greeley et al., 1989), perceptions of the research training environment (Gelso, Mallinckrodt, & Judge, 1996), and interest in research (Bishop & Bieschke, 1994) within a sample of counselor education doctoral students (N = 89). Doctoral students in their 3rd year of preparation had higher research self‐efficacy scores than did 1st‐ and 2nd‐year students. Additionally, higher research self‐efficacy was associated with higher interest in research and scholarly publication experience. Implications for counselor education are discussed.     

Learning to Match Auditory and Visual Speech Cues: Social Influences on Acquisition of Phonological Categories

Infants' language exposure largely involves face‐to‐face interactions providing acoustic and visual speech cues but also social cues that might foster language learning. Yet, both audiovisual speech information and social information have so far received little attention in research on infants' early language development. Using a preferential looking paradigm, 44 German 6‐month olds' ability to detect mismatches between concurrently presented auditory and visual native vowels was tested. Outcomes were related to mothers' speech style and interactive behavior assessed during free play with their infant, and to infant‐specific factors assessed through a questionnaire. Results show that mothers' and infants' social behavior modulated infants' preference for matching audiovisual speech. Moreover, infants' audiovisual speech perception correlated with later vocabulary size, suggesting a lasting effect on language development.