Sociolinguistics: The implications of a sociological approach in examining the counseling relationshipSociolinguistique: Les insinuation d'une approche sociologique en examinant le rapport de conseil

This article discusses basic concepts of sociolinguistics and considers their relationship to the counseling process. Essentially, it suggests that interviewing be examined in the light of (1) language as a cultural phenomenon and (2) the interactions between individuals and society. When reconceptualized in this way, counseling can benefit from the systematic knowledge of a related field and counselors will be helped to communicate more competently.     

Efficacy of the Nemours BrightStart! Early Literacy Program: Treatment Outcomes From a Randomized Trial With At-Risk Prekindergartners

Research Findings: This study reports outcomes from a randomized, controlled trial of an emergent literacy intervention for prekindergarten children at-risk for reading failure. Children (N = 2219) in 114 preschools and childcare centers were screened for eligibility in fall. Children who scored at-risk (n = 476) were randomized to fall or spring treatment and received nine weeks of explicit, multisensory, emergent literacy instruction in small groups provided by early literacy interventionists. Trained observers noted high implementation fidelity. Pre-reading skills were assessed before and after intervention for both treatment groups. The spring intervention group served as at-risk controls for children who completed fall intervention. Three-level, linear growth models (time-student-school) were used to estimate treatment effects, found for print awareness, elision, rhyming, and the screener (print and letter knowledge, phonological awareness), replicating previous findings for the screener, rhyming, and print knowledge, and extending them to elision. Significantly accelerated growth in print knowledge, elision, rhyming, and the screener was observed during intervention. Practice or Policy: Results demonstrate benefits of high-quality emergent literacy instruction for children at risk. Growth in skills for both fall and spring treatment groups following this 18-lesson program supports some implementation flexibility among interventionists with delivery constraints during the year.     

High-touch,low-tech: Investigating the value of an in-person library orientation game

Since 2011, the Kraemer Family Library at the University of Colorado Colorado Springs (UCCS) has offered Scrabble Scramble, an in-person, student-centered library orientation game, to incoming first-year students. This article describes our journey of developing, assessing, and refining Scrabble Scramble, which focuses on introducing first-year students to the basic services and resources of an academic library. Through analysis of student and library staff feedback survey results, this article reflects on the value of offering a student-centered, impactful, and personal orientation in an environment of rising student enrollment, steady staff numbers, and a trend to move orientation activities online.     

Asking more of Siri and Alexa: feminine persona in service of surveillance capitalism

This paper illuminates how gendered stereotypes can be leveraged to assuage anxieties surrounding artificially intelligent virtual assistants (AI VA). In particular, the analysis shows that these AI objects routinely traffic in normative gender roles of the feminine as caretaker, mother, and wife in order to obfuscate modes of surveillance, and mediate the relationship users and potential users have with late-capitalist market logics in the platform economy. Mobilizing essentialist feminine personas characterized in this paper as “digital domesticity,” artificially intelligent objects orient users to engage productively with surveillance capitalism as natural. To illustrate this relationship between femininity and surveillance, this paper focuses on two case studies of AI VA. The essay turns to Apple’s Siri and Amazon’s Alexa as emblematic of AI VA that perform a stereotypically feminine persona that invites users to participate in increasingly intimate forms of data exchange that in turn contribute to surveillance capitalism. The study of AI VA, like Siri and Alexa, demonstrates the significant rhetorical capacities of the feminine persona as they are applied to objects with weak (that is, limited) artificial intelligence.