Reflections of a Racial Queer

In this article, I reflect on my personal experiences of racial queerness. In an effort to speak my secrets, I explore my identity production as a Multiracial person by critically examining my positionality throughout various key stages in my life. I present Multiracial microaggressions –those accumulated moments that underscore my racial queerness and argue that these phenomena, while taxing, also confer agency. I propose a conceptual framework that incorporates both queer theory and borderlands theory as a potential framework from which to study how Multiracial individuals are positioned as racial queers. I argue that queerness, for the Multiracial individual, may denote both deviance (from the monoracial norm) and a unique individuality (stemming from one’s Multiracial background). By offering my testimonial as a racial queer and introducing the racial queer conceptual framework, I come a bit closer to naming my experience as a Multiracial individual and providing a space from which others can do the same.     

Human capital, R&D, trade, and long-run productivity. Testing the technological absorption hypothesis for the Portuguese economy, 1960-2001

An important characteristic of the role of foreign trade in the technological catch-up of countries is the complementary nature with technological change, human capital development and local R&D efforts. Using cointegration techniques, evidence based on Portuguese long-run growth suggests that by investing in certain capacity-building activities, namely human capital and local R&D efforts, countries can improve their ability to identify, value, assimilate, and apply (or exploit) knowledge that is developed in other (more developed) countries. Although human capital has a stronger direct impact on total factor productivity than internal R&D efforts, the latter's indirect impact, by means of machinery and equipment imports, is tremendous. Trade also emerges as a powerful direct contributor to long-term total factor productivity, especially in its embodied form, through the acquisition of advanced machinery and equipment from more developed countries. The (smaller) productivity enhancing effect of licenses and FDI seems to be strongly dependent on institutional circumstances, namely those related to human capital investments and incentives.     

Designing and Developing Assessments of Complex Thinking in Mathematics for the Middle Grades

Designing an assessment system for complex thinking in mathematics involves decisions at every stage, from how to represent the target competencies to how to interpret evidence from student performances. Beyond learning to solve particular problems in a particular area, learning mathematics with understanding involves comprehending connections among mathematical ideas and applying them in ways that may not have been taught directly. A challenge in characterizing mathematical competency is to capture not only the variety of skills and concepts, but also their connections. Designing assessments based on learning progressions may be one way to respond to this challenge. We discuss our experience developing a learning progression and an associated task model for mathetical functions.     

Resisting the Orthodox Smart Label: High School Latinas and the Redefinition of Smartness on the Western Frontier

Drawing from Chicana feminist epistemology and counter-storytelling, this article argues that Latina high school students’ refusal to attach the culturally constructed and hegemonically imposed label of smartness to themselves, while easily identifying that label within others, stems from a resistance to associate themselves with traditional notions of smartness, a label they often frame as exclusive, inappropriate, and/or incongruous within their experiential contexts. This article suggests that the participants in this study agentically embrace their own constructions of smartness to include alternative funds of knowledge and, in this way, coopt smartness in a culturally relevant and specific way.     

Teacher Educator Identity in a Culture of Iterative Teacher Education Program Design: A Collaborative Self-Study

Faculty in the School of Education have collaborated to re-envision teacher education at our university. A complex, dynamic, time-consuming and sometimes painstaking process, redesigning a teacher education program from a traditional approach (i.e. where courses focus primarily on theoretical principles of practice through textbooks and university-based classroom discussions) to a model of teacher education that embraces teaching, learning and leading with schools and in communities is challenging, yet exciting work. Little is known about teacher educators’ experiences as they either design or deliver collaborative field-based models of teacher education. In this article, we examine our experiences in the second implementation year of our redesigned teacher education program, Teaching, Learning, and Leading with Schools and Communities (TLLSC) and how these unique experiences inform our teacher educator identities. Through a collaborative self-study, we sought to make meaning of our transformation from a faculty delivering a traditional model to educators collectively implementing a field-based model, by analyzing the diverse perspectives of faculty at different entry points in the TLLSC development and implementation process. We found that our participation in an intensive field-based teacher preparation model challenged our notions of teacher educator identity. In a culture of iterative program design, this study documents the personal and professional shifts in identity required to accomplish this collaborative and dynamic change in approach to teacher education.     

Grounded theory for generating theory in the study of behavior

The use of grounded theory procedures for the study of information behavior has contributed to generating theory in this field. Thirty-one works were analyzed with regard to a) their relationship to the context in which the research was carried out, b) the aspect of information behavior researched, c) the use of grounded theory procedures, and d) the generation of theory. Most of the studies were carried out in the context of health information, and grounded theory procedures were for the most part only partially applied. The theoretical propositions produced depended on the subject being studied. Although this methodology is suitable for the study of an individual's interaction with information from that individual's own point of view, documentation of the procedures involved is often deficient.     

Cognitive Diversity in Middle-Aged and Elderly Adults: The Role of Education

This study examines cognitive diversity through performance of four attentional tasks and a vocabulary measure in relation to age and level of education. Tasks were performed by 168 participants (aged between 45 and 91 years) who were grouped according to age and level of education. Multivariate analyses of variance were applied to Z scores calculated from intersubject coefficients of variation. When the variance associated with education was discounted prior to analysis, a disproportionate increase in cognitive diversity was observed in participants over 75 years of age. When cognitive diversity was analyzed in relation to age and education in the three youngest age groups, participants with a low level of education displayed higher diversity in most attentional tasks from 66 years of age. In participants with a high level of education, diversity was lower for all attentional tasks considered from 56 years of age. Vocabulary knowledge was the most sensitive to education-related cognitive diversity. The diversifying effect of the relationship between education and diversity on fluid cognitive performance appeared to reverse and become a homogenizing effect with increasing age.