The First-Person Effect and Its Behavioral Consequences: A New Trend in the Twenty-Five Year History of Third-Person Effect Research

The perceived effect of the media on the self when compared to others has been adequately established over the last 25 five years. Rather than a third-person effect where individuals perceive a greater effect for self than others, first-person effect perceptions, where individuals perceive a greater effect for self than others, have been considered by scholars recently. Findings indicate support for first-person perceptions. However, research is limited and the behavioral consequences of first-person perceptions are almost nonexistent. The current analysis discusses the evolution of the first-person perception and details the findings of each study as well as the psychological mechanisms used to explain first-person perceptions. Methodological considerations for future studies of first-person effect behavioral consequences are also proposed.     

School leadership and intercultural understanding: school foyers as situated spaces for doing diversity

Internationally, Intercultural Understanding (ICU) is increasingly prevalent in the field of education. The recent evidence base includes a growing academic literature and examples of specified education policy and curricula. In regards to leveraging ICU, research suggests a multi-level and longitudinal approach is needed to ensure effective and sustainable school change. Significant gaps exist in the literature about the contextual factors across all school levels that facilitate or impede the development of ICU. These gaps include research and action pertaining to school leadership. This paper draws from interviews and visual data generated in a large Australian study and focuses on the centrality of a single architectural feature of the school, the school foyer, and how principals grapple with the (re)design of these spaces to assert themselves as interculturally capable schools. Discourses of educational leadership have historically relied on well-worn leadership models of operational practices rather than explicitly framing an understanding of diversity to support intercultural capabilities. During a period of mandated Australian curriculum reform and assessment, this paper offers another way of ‘Doing Diversity’ of interest to policy makers and school leadership keen to embed ICU in their schools while highlighting the significant role school leaders have in progressing ICU.     

Making do with media: teachers,technology, and tactics of media use in American classrooms, 1919–1946

In the last century, teachers have come under pressure to incorporate new media technologies into their lessons. Comparing educational research, press coverage, and teachers' firsthand accounts of mediated instruction between 1919 and 1946, this article highlights a historic discrepancy between anticipated and actual uses of media in classrooms. Drawing on de Certeau's theory of “making do,” the author argues that teachers' efforts to balance high technologies with simpler, more do-it-yourself varieties of media in their lessons constituted critical forms of participation in educational media culture and small acts of resistance against industrial, top-down efforts to streamline, modernize, and technologize their work.     

Rebuilding: Organizing and Operating Under New Management

In 2014, the highly experienced Head of Electronic Resources and Serials Services at Auburn University Libraries retired. Parallel changes in workflows, staffing, and organizational structure were also taking place, resulting in an intense period of transition that included merging two units. This presentation describes the transition process from the perspective of the new Head of Technical Services and one paraprofessional staff in the merged units. The presentation focuses on the processes of change, guiding philosophies, and lessons learned.     

The Role of Interpersonal Comfort in Mentoring Relationships

This research examined interpersonal comfort as a potential mediating mechanism in mentoring relationships. Results indicated that interpersonal comfort mediated the relationship between gender similarity and protégé reports of career and psychosocial mentoring. Contrary to prediction, interpersonal comfort did not mediate relationships involving mentorship type (i.e., formal versus informal). However, we did find that informal mentoring and interpersonal comfort were positively associated with career mentoring. The research helps illustrate the important role that interpersonal comfort plays in the mentoring process.     

Petro-pedagogy: fossil fuel interests and the obstruction of climate justice in public education

Abstract

The corporate control of energy production and the reach of fossil capital into civil and political society can be understood as a regime of obstruction that is preventing necessary action on climate change and blocking a just energy transition. In addition to overt forms of economic power and influence, hegemonic power is central to the fossil fuel industry’s regime of obstruction. Based on 29 interviews and an analysis of third-party teaching resources, this article shows how teaching practices and resources work to centre, legitimize, and entrench a set of beliefs relating to climate change, energy, and environmentalism that align with the interests of fossil fuel industry actors in Saskatchewan, Canada. We argue that these pedagogical practices promote student subjectivities consistent with neoliberal environmentalism centred on individual actions designed to insulate fossil fuel industries from criticism and dissuade young people from questioning or understanding the role of corporate power in the climate crisis. Furthermore, this petro-pedagogy intends to restrict the imagination of possible climate solutions to individual acts of conservation that fail to challenge the structural growth of fossil fuel consumption. This paper advances these teaching practices and resources as a ‘pedagogical arm’ of the regime of obstruction.     

Investigating young children’s human figure drawings using Rasch analysis

The Goodenough–Harris Drawing Test (GHDT) is a non-verbal assessment designed to infer young children’s levels of intellectual development and understanding via the collection of three human figure drawings (HFDs) – one each of a man, a woman and a self-portrait. This paper presents findings from a research project that applied the Rasch model for measurement to HFDs collected from 246 children aged between 4 and 10 years to assess the psychometric properties of the GHDT assessment, and young children’s HFDs in general, as the GHDT had not yet been examined from a modern test theory perspective in full. Results indicated that: (1) the GHDT and children’s HFDs were apt for Rasch analysis and deemed to be generally psychometrically sound; and (2) that children performed almost identically (within error) on all three HFDs collected for the assessment, suggesting that the collection of three HFDs – as well as many of the 217 items which comprise the GHDT – was potentially redundant. Consequently, a prototype human figure drawing continuum (HFDC) was constructed from those data and examined. Rasch analysis revealed that the researcher-constructed 45-item HFDC scale – requiring just one self-selected HFD of a man, woman or child – was just as effective as the 217-item GHDT. The HFDC, when normed, should be seen as a parsimonious and child-friendly HDF assessment.