Winter Reference-Land (Blame It on the Lake-Effect)

[This column is a collection of stories of one reference librarian’s dialogues with a host of patrons, which occur over a variety of media, including Web chat, phone, face-to-face, and immersive environments. Some names, places, times, and events have been changed to preserve anonymity.]     

Stanton's “Solitude of Self” as Public Confession

Elizabeth Cady Stanton opened her now famous “Solitude of Self” by asserting her desire to make manifest the “individuality of each human soul.” Using Stanton's attempt to display the human soul as a case study, I consider in this essay the capacities of language to disclose the self. I argue that, for Stanton, self-disclosure is fundamentally performative: The “Solitude of Self” evokes the “inner-being we call ourself” through a reliance on, and a subsequent violation of, a distinctively narrative logic. As this violation takes from the audience the sense of order that the narrative had theretofore provided, it puts the audience in a position where they, now shorn of narrative and the order it provided, can experience firsthand the solitude of self.     

Louis Jouvet's l'ecole des femmes in New York City

This essay examines dramatistic criticism as a dialectical process. It argues that dramatistic symbolic theory establishes three criteria for evaluating critical action and that dramatistic criticism involves three necessary and mutually corrective phases of analysis, only one of which involves pentadic relationships.     

Engaging with commonality and difference: Theoretical tensions in the analysis of working-class women's educational discourses

In this article the authors contribute to ongoing theoretical debates concerning the conceptualisation of multiple social identities and oppressions. The article begins by briefly tracing the path towards current critical/feminist/sociological positions 'between modernism and postmodernism', in which identities ('race', class, gender, etc.) are conceptualised as socially constructed, fluid, shifting and yet grounded in 'real' inequalities and oppressions. The article then builds upon, and contributes to, current theoretical dialogue by highlighting ongoing tensions and unresolved problematics within the theoretical approach, drawing out the particular implications of these for educational research. Issues are discussed with specific reference to recent work by Brah (1999) and illustrations are provided using examples from the authors' research with inner city, working-class women.     

The effect of standardized test information on teachers’ assessment of ability in their classes

Abstract

The responses of three groups of teachers to a rating task in which they were asked to indicate how many of their pupils were “bright”, “above average”, “below average” and “dull” were compared. In two of the groups, teachers had been provided with test information based on performance on nationally standardized ability and attainment tests. In the third group tests had been administered but no results were provided.

No differences between the groups were found in terms of the extent to which teacher ratings of ability levels correspond with mean ability test scores. In addition, teachers, irrespective of the group to which they belonged, were found to display a tendency to place more pupils in the above average categories than the below average categories. Finally, no support was found for an hypothesis which suggested that test information would differentially affect the ratings of teachers of classes with pupils who were typical and untypical with respect to age.

The fact that the correlation between mean ratings and mean test scores were found to be fairly high in all three groups (they ranged from .51 to .60) suggests a reason for the failure of test information to impact on teachers’ judgements. The degree of agreement between teachers and tests that the correlations reveal means that there is less scope for a convergence of ratings on tests to occur than might otherwise be the case.     

Nerdy, Brainy and Normal: Children’s and Parents’ Constructions of Those Who Are Highly Engaged with Science

There is a continuing international concern about a decline in the pursuit of post-compulsory science. One suggested cause concerns the role that young people's narrow perceptions of scientists may play in deterring them from pursuing science qualifications and careers. Research would suggest that the ages of 10–14 appear to be a critical period for the development of such views. This paper looks at the early part of this period, when general liking for science is high, although views on science careers as ‘not for me’ also appear to be forming. Drawing on data collected from interviews conducted with 92 children and 78 parents (in which children described peers who are ‘really into’ science and parents described those who are likely to pursue a career in science), we examine the constructions children and parents have of those who are highly engaged with science. In the interviews, participants evoked a range of constructions, some of which were closely aligned with traditional stereotypical images of science and scientists (e.g. as ‘geeky’) while others moderated and/or challenged those images. Although very few participants held explicitly ‘negative’ representations of science/scientists, our analysis shows how popular constructions of science as ‘specialist’ and ‘clever’ may feed into an understanding of science as different and not for me. It is argued that more work needs to be done to open up science as a field that is accessible ‘for all’ and to increase students' awareness of the breadth of careers in and from science.     

Growth,functional capacities and motivation for achievement and competitiveness in youth basketball: an interdisciplinary approach

The interaction of multiple influences on the path to sport success is not yet fully understood by sport scientists. In this study, we examined variation in body size, functional capacities and motivation for achievement, competitiveness and deliberate practice of youth basketball players associated with differences in biological maturity status, chronological age and years of training experience. Reflecting the importance of interactive effects, we examined the relationships between the psychological variables and functional capacities. Fifty-eight male basketball players aged 9.5 to 15.5 years were considered. Variables included chronological age, estimated age at peak height velocity, stature, body mass and sitting height by anthropometry; the Work and Family Orientation and Deliberate Practice Motivation Questionnaires were also used. Finally, the Line Drill test and Yo-Yo Intermittent Recovery level 1 (Yo-Yo IR1) tests were used as functional capacities indicators for basketball. Variance components models derived from series of multilevel linear regression models revealed a substantial variation by maturity status for body size, functional capacities indicators, mastery and will to excel. The influence of estimated maturity status on mastery and will to excel was independent of age and years of experience. In contrast, no relationships were observed between psychological variables and functional capacities indicators. We conclude that growth-related changes are relevant to understanding players´ motivations for achievement, competitiveness and deliberate practice. This should be of interest to those involved in the selection and development of youth basketball players.     

Students as co-producers in a multidisciplinary software engineering project: addressing cultural distance and cross-cohort handover

This article reports an undergraduate software engineering project in which, over a period of 2 years, four student teams from different cohorts developed a note-taking app for four academic clients at the students’ own university. We investigated how projects involving internal clients can give students the benefits of engaging in real software development while also giving them experience of a student-staff collaboration that has its own benefits for students, academics, and the university more broadly. As the university involved is a Sino-Foreign university located in China, where most students are Chinese and most teaching staff are not, this ‘student as co-producer’ approach interacts with another feature of the project: cultural distance. Based on analysis of notes, reports, interviews, and focus groups, we recommend that students should be provided with communicative strategies for dealing with academics as clients; universities should develop policies on ownership of student-staff collaborations; and projects should include a formalised handover process. This article can serve as guidance for educators considering a ‘students as co-producers’ approach for software development projects.     

Job aids and performance support: Moving from knowledge in the classroom to knowledge everywhere by Allison Rossett,and Lisa Schafer

Allison Rossett, CPT, teaches at San Diego State University and is equally at home in the consulting world, where she has helped a global mix of companies and other organizations. Lisa Schafer is one of the principals in Collet and Schafer, which focuses on performance improvement in Fortune 100 companies. Job Aids and Performance Support: Moving from Knowledge in the Classroom to Knowledge Everywhere (ISBN 978‐0‐7879‐7621‐7) is published by Jossey‐Bass/Pfeiffer. This publisher may be reached at (800) 274‐4434 (phone) or (800) 569‐0443 (fax).