Envisioning a Common,Capable Public

Abstract To bring great art to the people, art that would transform their lives, used to be the aim of museums. But in the twenty‐first century, contemporary trends in cultural policy reflect a diminished idea of the public and human subjectivity, and a diminished concept of culture. The outcome of this defensive turn is a retreat from difficult exhibitions and a replacement of them with celebration of the ordinary and the banal: the obviously popular topics which challenge no one. As a consequence of the collapse of culture with a capital “C” and the crisis of human subjectivity, cultural policy demands less of the public and delivers less.     

If you build it will they come?; Exploring the student perspective of weekly student evaluations of teaching

This exploratory study investigated the students’ use of formative, weekly, online evaluations of teaching through a virtual learning environment. Results were based on in‐depth interviews of seven students at a rural university college in the UK. Students from different genders, education levels and backgrounds volunteered for the study. The students thought it was a good tool and useful for providing anonymous feedback. However, their motivation to fill in the evaluations every week varied throughout the period of study, and the weekly feedback soon became routine and too onerous a task, and thus had a tendency towards being superficially conducted. Students were more inclined to comment on negative issues, rather than critically analyse positive ones. They also tended to be more positive towards conducting the evaluation if the lecturer discussed them and/or made changes to their future lectures.     

Saving rhetorical children: sexuality education discourses from conservative to post-modern

Sexuality policy is currently changing at global, national and local levels. This move is affecting the sexuality education discourses in education policies around the world. However, the changes are not always translating into a direct re-thinking of approaches, and in some cases result in a push for more conservative policy. This paper provides a discourse exemplar for understanding the broad range of sexuality education discourses currently at work in education policies and policy movements internationally. It is intended for use in sexuality education policy research, conception and practice. The different constructions of ‘the child’ at the core of the various discourses are examined, including the ways in which the different discourses attempt to ‘save’ these children from perceived sexuality problems through education. The article posits that such rhetorical children should not ‘stand in’ for the needs of actual children in sexuality policy, without being explicitly acknowledged as constructs.     

Enhancing Library Instruction to Undergraduates: Incorporating Online Tutorials into the Curriculum

ABSTRACT

Librarians can replace or supplement traditional in-class instruction with course-specific online tutorials. The literature demonstrates how tutorials customized for specific courses are more beneficial than tutorials on basic research skills. Many authors discuss creating online tutorials but do not design one devoted to a specific course. With increasing demand for instruction services, online tutorials can ease staffing concerns prevalent at many libraries and otherwise enhance the quality of instruction and its application to varied learning styles. Using the Blackboard course management system, the authors created an online tutorial tailored to the required World Civilizations course at the University at Buffalo. The tutorial incorporated elements of successful online tutorials described in the literature: clear terminology, a quiz for self-assessment, opportunities for active learning, and individual e-mail feedback between students and librarians, and applied them to a specific course. The authors discuss student and librarian reaction to the tutorial and make recommendations for how the tutorial can be improved and implemented in everyday instruction services.     

Television network news reporting by female correspondents: An update

Although a content analysis of 1247 network news reports indicates that significant differences still exist in male and female‐reported story topics, the scope and importance of women's reporting assignments appear to be improving.     

It's Not Effect Sizes So Much as Comments About Their Magnitude That Mislead Readers

The authors investigated the influence of effect size and comment inclusion on readers' perceptions of research results. In three experiments, undergraduates, graduates, and faculty read a journal article that either included or did not include an effect size and commentary about the effect size. Contrary to a previous study by Robinson, Fouladi, Williams, and Bera (2002), which concluded that including effect sizes causes readers to overestimate result importance, the authors found that including a comment about the magnitude of the effect size was more important than simply including the effect size in influencing undergraduates' perceptions of research results' importance. Graduate students and faculty members were less influenced by inclusion of either effect sizes or comments. Recommendations concerning effect size and comment inclusion polices are discussed.     

Public Versus Private Colleges: Political Participation of College Graduates

Using data from the Baccalaureate and Beyond Longitudinal Study (B&B:93/03) of College Graduates, we use structural equation modeling to model the relationships between college major, values held in college, collegiate community service participation, and the post-college political participation of college graduates by public versus private institutions. We use Holland’s Theory of person-environment fit as lens to understand differences in political participation across majors and institutional contexts. Over a 10-year period immediately after receiving the baccalaureate, we find that choice of major and individual values are differentially associated with post-college political participation for private institution graduates when compared to the counterparts at public institutions. We relate our findings to extant literature that highlights the differences in institutional characteristics between public and private colleges and socialization patterns of undergraduates that may inform differences in post-college political participation. Implications for future research are also offered.