Latinx* popular culture imaginaries: examining Puerto Rican children’s social discourses in interpreting telenovelas

Abstract

In this paper, we present a collaboration project within one urban Puerto Rican classroom, focused on constructing a critical literacy inquiry curriculum grounded in the students’ out-of-school literacy practices in their communities, including their experiences with media and popular culture. We focused on a critical literacy and media inquiry unit centered on the students’ self-selected subject of the telenovela. Here, we examine one student’s work to highlight two overarching findings: (1) the visibility of the students’ complex understanding of the media landscapes in telenovelas, particularly the construction of dominant social discourses across telenovela worlds, and (2) the ways that bringing children’s mediatized cultural imaginaries in their creative work supports an approach to literacy in classrooms, where explorations of discourses of power emerge from the students’ knowledge. In order to articulate how children actively examine and construct discourses across multiple social worlds, we examine these findings using the Four Resource Model, and elements of discourse analysis, as theoretical and analytical frameworks, focusing on the construction of identities, worlds and meanings in relation to the social discourses of telenovelas.     

Black women’s bodies,ideology, and the public curriculum of the pro- and anti-choice movements in the US

This paper explores how opposite sides of the abortion debate employ a discourse of endangerment to mobilise political support for their ideologies about black women’s bodies. I examine the role of black women within that rhetorical strategy through various rhetorical artefacts. To analyse these artefacts, I employ the theoretical framework of ideological or ideographic criticism. This framework helps us see how the artefacts used by both pro and anti-choice movements ‘condition’ the audience not merely to adopt a set of ‘beliefs and behavior, but a vocabulary of concepts that function as guides, warrants, reasons, or excuses for behavior and belief’. Though the two sides of the abortion debate differ in their overt political views, they turn out to share an implicit ideology about black women. This ideology prevents the voices of black women from being heard and valued in a debate that is nonetheless focused on black women’s bodies.     

Scale of attitudes of schoolchildren towards immigrant pupils

In the academic year 2004–2005, approximately 400,000 immigrant pupils were enrolled in Spanish schools and six-form colleges. The racial and ethnic diversity that Spanish society and schools present could be a source of new opportunities and social enrichment, for the national as well as the immigrant population. However, this contact between nationals and immigrants is not free of problems. School is one of the areas where attitudes towards different social groups begin to be formed, while at the same time being the main opportunity that our society has to create an environment of coexistence and attitudinal change. The first step to look at such a complex phenomenon in more detail is to have evaluation tools available that allow us to measure it. In this article we present the results referring to psychometric features, and we carry out a differential analysis of the Scale of attitudes of school-children towards immigrant pupils.     

Successful Women Researchers in the Social Sciences: A case study of Catalan public universities

This article examines the factors which contribute to the success of female academics engaging in research in social sciences. The data were obtained through a series of interviews carried out at public universities in Catalonia with women, all of whom were the heads of research groups recognized by the Generalitat de Catalunya (Catalan Government). These results reveal several aspects relevant for women academics, at both the individual and institutional levels, in terms of employment opportunities, management of research programmes, development of teaching strategies and individual time management. This should assist the development of institutional policies and practices within higher education to help women build successful research careers.     

Peer bullying,self-serving cognitive distortions and school moral climate perception in Spanish and Dutch secondary school students / Acoso escolar,distorsiones cognitivas en beneficio propio y percepción del clima moral escolar en estudiantes de secundaria de España y Holanda

Students’ role in traditional bullying and cyberbullying was investigated in relation to self-serving cognitive distortions (SSCD), perception of school moral climate and bullying observation. Participants were secondary school students from Spain (n = 568; 286 girls) and the Netherlands (n = 421; 223 girls). The results demonstrated that in both country samples, bullies and bully-victims had higher levels of SSCD. Both Spanish and Dutch students who were directly involved in traditional bullying situations showed more negative perceptions of the school moral climate. In cyberbullying situations, bystanders scored higher on school moral climate perception than bullies and bully-victims. Furthermore, school moral climate perception was negatively associated with traditional bullying observation in the group of victims, and with cyberbullying observation in the case of victims and bystanders. The present findings suggest that future research should focus on the cause-effect relations of these factors, which could include measuring the effects on bullying prevalence of an intervention aimed at SSCD reduction in bullies and bystanders and the improvement of the school moral climate.     

The Pendulum: From Constrained Fall to the Concept of Potential

Kuhn underlined the relevance of Galileo’s gestalt switch in the interpretation of a swinging body from constrained fall to time metre. But the new interpretation did not eliminate the older one. The constrained fall, both in the motion of pendulums and along inclined planes, led Galileo to the law of free fall. Experimenting with physical pendulums and assuming the impossibility of perpetual motion Huygens obtained a law of conservation of vis viva at specific positions, beautifully commented by Mach. Daniel Bernoulli generalised Huygens results introducing the concept of potential and the related independence of the ‘work’ done from the trajectories (paths) followed: vis viva conservation at specific positions is now linked with the potential. Feynman’s modern way of teaching the subject shows striking similarities with Bernoulli’s approach. A number of animations and simulations can help to visualise and teach some of the pendulum’s interpretations related to what we now see as instances of energy conservation.     

The Distant Other

This study analyses the representation of immigrants in four Spanish national newspapers, El País, El Mundo, La Razón and ABC, between 1 June 2013 and 31 June 2014. Seven days per month were randomly selected, each corresponding to a different day of the week; 91 editions of each paper, 364 in total, were analysed. Of the 289 items relating to immigrants, 179 in which one or more photographs appeared in addition to text were chosen for analysis. Among the main results, two stand out: first, immigrants do not usually have an opportunity to communicate directly with readers and, secondly, the treatment of news items on immigration by the four Spanish newspapers is variable.