Reconsidering Happiness in the Context of Social Justice Education

That happiness leads to lack of harm and suffering, representing both a good and a means to good, is promoted, for example, by educational philosophers such as Nel Noddings. But happiness should not be seen as an unproblematic goal, for education or otherwise. In this article, we critically investigate the importance of happiness in the educational context. More specifically, we emphasize the necessity of problematizing happiness as an emotional practice in social justice education. In order to contextualize our analysis, we enumerate two theoretical perspectives that endorse happiness in education. These are the educational philosophy of Noddings and the paradigm of positive psychology. After exploring how happiness is promoted theoretically and practically, we elaborate a critical perspective on happiness in relation to education. We use the work of Sara Ahmed, among others, to illustrate some ways in which happiness can function to serve unjust relations in education. We thus explore happiness as an intersubjective affect, as opposed to considering it as an intrasubjective feeling. We argue that educators who want to foster social justice in education need to consider the positive and the negative consequences of encouraging happiness in education. Fostering happiness can be progressive and empowering, but it can also be regressive and unjust.     

A Dangerous Benefit: Dialogue, Discourse, and Michel Foucault's Critique of Representation

Dialogue has been analyzed by educational theorists mainly from a perspective of representation. However, social theory on language has long questioned whether representation is the primary function of language. Thus, educational debates over the uses and abuses of dialogue entail a blind spot. What if dialogue works in ways that are not representational? What if dialogue is, rather, to be understood as both representation and discourse? In this article, the author argues that dialogue must be understood in both ways. As such, dialogue may be a representational benefit, but it is also a discursive danger.     

A conceptual framework for job change

Change related to the job is identified as an exigent issue in the field of career development. This paper presents an effort to conceptualize a job change framework. The intent is increase awareness, generate discussion, and stimulate empirical research in this area.The conceptual framework for job change has been predicated on client concerns. The framework involves the unique relationship of several life factors which influence individual job change, and provides a means for systematic personal decision-making. A schematic diagram is also included as a tool that can be used for counseling and research applications.     

Small fingers,big data: Preschoolers’ subitizing speed and accuracy during interactions with multitouch technology

This study focused on 18 students 4–5?years old in an urban full-day preschool program in the Mid-Atlantic region of the United States. Over the course of a month, students used a touchscreen tablet to interact with Fingu, an app designed to develop students’ early number sense. Using backend data generated by the app, 8,153 individual task attempts were recorded. Multilevel growth modeling, with task attempts nested within students, was used to examine the extent to which students’ speed of response and response accuracy changed over the course of the study, as well as whether any individual characteristics were associated with either speed or accuracy. Results indicate that, on average, students become both faster and more accurate. Girls were also found to be more accurate than boys, and older students were found to be both slightly slower to respond and less accurate.     

Socialization and Social Judgments among Inner-City African-American Kindergartners

This study explores the relations between certain socialization experiences and social judgments among poor, inner-city African-American kindergartners. 54 mothers and their children took part in this investigation. Consistent with the domain distinction literature, children made judgments about the seriousness, rule contingency, context contingency, and punishment deserved for familiar moral and social-conventional transgressions. Mothers were queried regarding their child-rearing values and discipline practices and described their children's peer network and social experiences. Results indicated that children distinguished between moral and social-conventional issues when explaining why they were wrong and in terms of rule and home context contingency criteria, but not the other judgment criteria. Mothers placed high value on conformity and most often ignored or talked to children about their misbehavior. More frequent use of talking, less ignoring, and less denial of privileges by mothers predicted children's making the domain distinction. Discussion focuses on methodological limitations and directions for future research.     

A Variety of Media Offers Inspirational Resources for Childbirth Educators and Parents

In this column, reviewers offer perspectives and comments on Journey into Motherhood: Inspirational Stories of Natural Birth, a book by Sheri L. Menelli; Modern Mothering, a book by Tian Dayton; Breastfeeding in all the Right Spaces, a DVD by Marilyn Nolt; Postpartum: From Pregnant to Parent, a DVD production from Injoy Videos; MyMoonCards: Understanding My Body and Monthly Cycle, an instructional set of cards developed by Marina Alzugaray; Blessingways—A Guide to Mother-Centered Baby Showers, a book by Shari Maser; and A Meditation on the Sacred Journey of Birth, a book by Marie Beauchemin.