Was macht den Sport zum Mediensport?

The popularity of sports varies to different extents around the world and leads to the question: what is a media sport? This contribution discusses definitional principles with the goal of using a model to establish the basis of categorization for future empirical analysis of diverse sports types. Media sports are defined as characteristic of movement structures in the culturally differentiated media sports complex. Features of media sports are distinguished according to the dimensions of context, organization, and (interactive) structure. It becomes clear that media sports types are not only characterized by cultural grounding, success, and charismatic stars, but can also exhibit structural distinctions. In conclusion, real, media-driven, and medial media sports are differentiated to demonstrate application of the model.     

Non-Academic Careers for STS Graduate Students: Hopping off the Tenure Track

Science, Technology & Society (STS) graduate programs primarily train graduate students to work in tenure track academic jobs. However, there are not enough tenure track academic jobs to match the supply of STS graduate students, nor does every STS graduate student want to become an academic. As a start to addressing these challenges, we hosted workshops before the 2017 Society for the Annual Meeting of the Society Studies of Science and the 2018 ST Global conference. In those workshops, panelists with PhDs in STS and related fields and working in non-academic faculty careers such as government agencies, non-profit foundations, and industry emphasized that students must showcase how their skills are useful to non-academic organizations. The panelists offered a wealth of stories on how their STS perspective supported their careers, yet most had faced implicit and explicit mentoring from STS faculty that ran counter to their career aspirations. The conversations centered on reframing research and conveying to potential employers how their STS training would support their future careers. A takeaway point that resonated with many participants was the need for STS graduate programs to rethink how they market themselves, recruit students, and critically reflect upon the measures of success. By implicitly steering graduate students solely towards an academic career, STS graduate training will miss an opportunity to make a positive impact on society.     

“Stop sending your kids across our border:” Discursively constructing the unaccompanied youth migrant

The recent migration of 65,000 children across the southwestern border, coupled with allegations of abuse by the U.S. Border Patrol, enables the investigation of an overlooked immigrant category: the unaccompanied youth migrant. Analyzing audience responses to news reports of the abuse, we find that established disparaging immigrant tropes apply, describing the children as an economic burden, disease carriers, and offspring of irresponsible families. We uncover two new themes: Youth migrants are channels whereby criminals may infiltrate the U.S., and manipulate legal authorities to remain in the U.S. Finally, we demonstrate how global compassion is strategically deployed to qualify harsh retaliatory measures.     

Developing Culturally Competent Preservice Teachers

An unfortunate, yet persistent, truth in U.S. public schools is the large achievement gap existing between children from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds and their White, middle-class counterparts. The potential for cultural dissonance between contemporary teachers and their students necessitates that educators must persistently seek culturally responsive practices. Much has been written regarding strategies for culturally responsive pedagogy; therefore, this article moves beyond a review of culturally responsive pedagogy. Rather than providing teacher candidates with more suggestions for culturally responsive teaching activities, the authors provide teacher educators with specific resources for facilitating the development of cultural competence among preservice teachers.     

How does education have an impact on ethnocentrism? A structural equation analysis of cognitive,occupational status and network mechanisms

Previous studies have distinguished cognitive, occupational status and network mechanisms in the relation between education and ethnocentrism. Hypotheses on these mediating mechanisms are derived from socialization theory, realistic group threat and contact theory. In the current study we use structural equation modeling to investigate the explanatory power of these three mechanisms simultaneously. The analysis is based on a representative population survey from the Netherlands (NELLS 2009, n = 1910). The results show that more than half of the initial association between education and ethnocentrism can be attributed to cognitive ability and occupational status mechanisms. The remaining part of the overall association, however, still has to be modeled as a direct relationship between education and ethnocentrism. This direct association can be attributed either to social desirability or to a direct liberalizing effect of education on social and political attitudes. Our analysis tentatively suggests that the rise of average education levels in Western societies might lead to less ethnocentric attitudes via the cognitive sophistication mechanism.