International trends in health science libraria‐ nship: Part 7 Taking stock

This article reviews the six papers published so far in this series on global trends in health science librarianship. Starting with a retrospective review of trends in the twentieth‐century, the series has covered 6 different regions, with contributions from 21 countries. As this is the half‐way point in the survey, it seems a useful point at which to reflect on what has emerged so far. The method of content analysis is used to identify key trends. The top five trends are explored. JM     

‘He’s a battler. He’s not a quitter:’ the narrative framing of Jerry Kill’s health-related organizational exit

The abrupt retirement of Jerry Kill, the University of Minnesota’s head football coach, for health reasons during the 2015 season ignited intensely emotional reactions from diverse organizational stakeholders. Our essay analyzes the public discourses surrounding Kill’s organizational exit. Specifically, we explore how audiences co-constructed multiple and conflicting narratives about his departure, concurrently praising and blaming Kill for his body management. We highlight how these discourses construct complex subjectivities for working individuals who experience chronic illness. We conclude by discussing how the narrative frames implicate broader discursive struggles between the cultural values of health and work.     

Faculty and Librarian Perceptions of a New Faculty Purchase Program

This study explores new faculty members' and librarians' perceptions of a program that provides each new faculty member with funds to purchase materials supporting their teaching and scholarship. The article describes the results of a survey of perceptions of the faculty and librarians who have participated in the program at Illinois State University. The findings suggest that the program has not been successful as a recruitment tool but has been very valuable for establishing early and strong subject liaison relationships with new faculty members.     

Creating Provider-Neutral Records for E-Books

After boxes of uncataloged microforms were discovered at my library, we learned that many of the titles were available as free electronic books, so I added bibliographic records to the local catalog for the e-versions. Some bibliographic records existed in OCLC WorldCat for the electronic versions, but they were not always provider-neutral. I learned how to create the new provider-neutral record and want to share my experience. Other librarians may want to replicate my project at their institutions, weeding their microforms and supplanting those records with e-book bibliographic records, thereby providing instant online access to these resources for their patrons.     

The flight attendant dilemma: an analysis of communication and sensemaking during in-flight emergencies

Building on past research, this article argues that organizational life can be usefully construed as a series of communicative performances that are embedded and enacted in everyday discursive practices. Specifically, this research explores the sensemaking process individuals undertake when faced with the dilemma of knowing when to invent appropriate ways to respond rather than being automatically constrained by past routines. The research presents case study evidence drawn from participant observation and interviews with flight attendants from a major U.S. airline. Shown to be high in emotional and impression management, flight attendants perform a feminized role that privileges accommodation over authority and reassurance over safety that may influence their performances in emergency situations. The work ends with an evaluation of the dominant air travel performance in relation to safety and offers recommendations for facilitating communication and coordination among flight attendants and pilots.     

Personalizing twitter communication: an evaluation of ‘rotation-curation’ for enhancing social media engagement within higher education

Social media content generated by learning communities within universities is serving both pedagogical and marketing purposes. There is currently a dearth of literature related to social media use at the departmental level within Higher Education Institutions (HEIs). This study explores the multi-voiced interactions of a UK Psychology department’s ‘rotation curation’ approach to using Twitter. An in-depth analysis of a corpus of 4342 tweets by 58 curators (14 staff, 41 students, and 3 guest curators) was carried out using a combination of computer-assisted and manual techniques to generate a quantitative content analysis. The interactions received (e.g. retweets and favorites) and type of content posted (e.g. original tweets, retweets and replies) varied by curator type. Student curators were more likely to gain interactions from other students in comparison to staff. This paper discusses the benefits and potential limitations of a multi-voiced ‘rotation curation’ approach to social media management.     

The Changing Role of the Superintendency in Restructuring Districts in Kentucky 1

Since the mid‐1980s, major efforts to reform education throughout the world have been unfolding under the banner of school restructuring. Central to this agenda for reform are alterations in the roles of all educational stakeholders. While a good deal of conceptual work, and some empirical analyses, have been devoted to the topic of role changes for teachers, administrators, parents, community members, and students at the school level, considerably less is known about the effects of restructuring on the role of central office administrators.

By analyzing the perceptions of 74 chief executive officers about how restructuring is shaping the superintendency in Kentucky, the study reported herein helps address this gap in the knowledge base. Three themes emerge from the analysis: (1) an enhanced role for superintendents in developing community; (2) a redefinition of the type of leadership needed to administer empowered schools; and (3) a mighty struggle to help individual schools deal with the process of systemic change.

     

Restructuring Schooling: The Equity Infrastructure 1

The major thesis of this article is that the current effort at school reform unfolding throughout much of the industrialized world ‐‐ the so‐called school restructuring movement ‐‐ offers considerable promise of enhancing educational equity for students. After describing the evolution in our understanding of equity, three powerful ethics undergirding current attempts to highlight equity values in education are described. The bulk of the article then unpacks the dual strategy for enhancing equity that is embedded in the restructuring movement: (1) the rejection of the central pillars of schooling, such as behaviorally‐grounded models of learning and teaching, that have had deleterious effects on at‐risk students; and (2) the provision of an alternative infrastructure for schooling that expands educational opportunities for historically disenfranchised youth.

     

Three-Level Models for Indirect Effects in School- and Class-Randomized Experiments in Education

Due to the clustered nature of field data, multi-level modeling has become commonly used to analyze data arising from educational field experiments. While recent methodological literature has focused on multi-level mediation analysis, relatively little attention has been devoted to mediation analysis when three levels (e.g., student, class, school) are present in a study setting. This article presents analysis models that can be used to test indirect effects in experimental designs having three levels where random assignment is at the third (school) or second (class) level and where the indirect effect may be random. In the presentation, simulated datasets are used to illustrate model specification and results interpretation for hypothetical three-level educational experiments involving mediation and moderation of treatment effects.