Insights into the strategic ways in which two bilingual children in the early years seek to negotiate the competing demands on their identity in their home and school worlds

This paper reports on the results of a small‐scale study into the ways in which two bilingual boys attempt to manage the discontinuities between their identities at home and as members of an early years class at a mainly white primary school in the UK. To do this, a number of semi‐structured interviews were undertaken with the boys and their parents. The results reveal that while the children generally attempt to assume the pupil identity options afforded them at school, the differences between these and those they take up in their home environment generally lead them to seek to keep the world of the home and of the school separate in ways that disrupt the school’s attempts to develop home/school partnership initiatives. We argue that a focus on identity management issues for children in the early years allows new and more critical understandings to emerge that can usefully inform the practices that educators can develop to enhance their learning experiences.     

Undergraduate Laboratory Exercises Specific to Food Spoilage Microbiology

Food spoilage has an enormous economic impact, and microbial food spoilage plays a significant role in food waste and loss; subsequently, an equally significant portion of undergraduate food microbiology instruction should be dedicated to spoilage microbiology. Here, we describe a set of undergraduate microbiology laboratory exercises that focus specifically on food spoilage which were taught in 2 lab periods as part of the undergraduate food microbiology lab curriculum at Cornell University. The lab was broken down into 3 exercises. Two exercises lead students to determine the likely source of contamination in a canned salsa through (exercise 1a) plating and observation of colony morphology and (exercise 1b) determination of the thermal resistance for those isolates. The final exercise (2) involved detection of the spoilage bacterium Alicyclobacillus in apple juice. Spoiled juice demonstrations were also prepared in this exercise for students to observe sensorial changes resulting from spoilage, emphasizing that spoilage is not always visually detectable. Students were able to successfully determine the source of contamination based on the results of their laboratory findings, which they used to make recommendations for production to reduce microbial food spoilage in the canned salsa product. Based on student answers to discussion questions provided following lab exercises, participants were able to (a) identify the significance of microbial spoilage and how spoilage is principally different from food safety, (b) describe varying sensorial changes associated with microbial spoilage, and (c) employ methods and analysis to evaluate sources and type of contamination. Downloadable handouts and stepwise instructions are available as supporting information.     

Making Sense of Eating Disorders in Schools

Over the last two decades we have witnessed an emerging set of conditions in schools which render them contexts replete with social messages about the body, health, and self. Research has suggested that both the formal and informal contexts of education are heavily imbued with a “culture of healthism” which places moral obligation and blame on individuals for their health/problem. In this paper we explore the ways in which young women with eating disorders constructed their identities within and against the various “health” discourses now found within schools. Data is presented from life history interviews with young women who have been diagnosed with anorexia and/or bulimia who were resident at a leading centre for the treatment of eating disorders in the UK. The experiences of the young women in the study point towards the ways in which schools, despite their best intentions, are implicated in constructing contexts which are inimical to the well-being of young women who have been diagnosed with anorexia or bulimia and perhaps others who are making sense of their bodies, health, and selves in these cultures.     

B(l)acklash: Tamera,Tia, and the “white man’s whore”

Tamera Mowry-Housely and Tia Mowery-Hardrict first gained popularity with their 1990s sitcom Sister Sister and re-entered the limelight in 2011 with the Tia &; Tamera reality show. During the opening scene of season one, Tamera disclosed that she was referred to as a “white man’s whore” on social media. By using critical discourse analysis, we examine how producers on Tia and Tamera and Oprah: Where Are They Now? employ this trope to construct Tamera in a particular way and reinforce postracial storylines.     

Faculty attitudes toward student evaluation of teaching

This study dealt with university faculty attitudes toward the validity of and varying uses for student evaluations of teaching. It was hypothesized that faculty attitudes toward the potential uses of student evaluations would be systematically related to a professor's a priori frame of reference regarding the validity of these instruments. On the basis of responses to selected questionnaire items, faculty were divided into those whose frame of reference (1) opposed the idea that student evaluations could be made valid, (2) supported the idea that existing evaluation forms were valid, and (3) were uncommitted regarding this validity question. A fourth group, administrators at the university, were also surveyed. Large and consistent differences among these groups were found on policy matters such as the use of student evaluations in tenure and promotion decisions, in providing information to students to help them choose courses, and on a variety of other issues. In each case the results supported the hypothesis.Authors' names are ordered randomly.