Collective Success: A Phenomenological Case Study of Ohio Public Libraries

This study examines the collective success and Best in the Nation status of Ohio public libraries as indicated by the Hennen American Public Library ratings (HAPLR), the “Star” libraries statistical rankings, and expert suppositions in the trade literature. This study is a phenomenological case study design that utilizes in-depth, semistructured interviews with a purposeful sample of former and current Ohio public librarians. The analysis indicates that equitable state-based funding and organized library autonomy are the overarching drivers in setting the Best in the Nation phenomenon for Ohio public libraries. This phenomenon is abetted by supportive public and professional communities within a hospitable geographic region. Altogether these qualities are the basis of a dynamic ecosystem of success for Ohio public libraries. The sharp funding reduction of 2009, however, has called the sustainability of the Best in the Nation library ecosystem into question. Additionally, the research revealed the specific nature of the phenomenon, which was not initially perceptible.     

A comparative analysis of service learning in social work and criminal justice education

The current study sought input from a national sample of social work (SW) and criminal justice (CJ) educators (N = 276) to explore characteristics of those who use service learning in the two disciplines, differences in the conceptions of and beliefs about service learning, and distinctions in how it is used and implemented. This study offers the first explicitly cross-disciplinary comparison of service learning within two related, but distinct disciplines. The results indicated that SW educators, compared to their CJ peers, used service learning more frequently and perceived fewer barriers to using it. Additionally, a higher percentage of SW faculty members reported using service learning at both the undergraduate and graduate levels, suggesting that SW educators may be more likely to see the value of service learning across education levels. Among those who reported that they have used service learning, few differences were found between the two disciplines.     

Libraries and reference

AMERICAN FILM INSTITUTE [website] (http://www.afionline.org), reviewed 9 June 1999.

GOING DIGITAL: STRATEGIES FOR ACCESS, PRESERVATION, AND CONVERSION OF COLLECTIONS TO A DIGITAL FORMAT edited by Donald L. DeWitt (New York: Haworth Press, 1998—$45.00, ISBN 0–7890–0521–2, 232 pp., index)

ELECTRONIC FRONTIER FOUNDATION [website] (http://www.eff.org), reviewed 17 April 1999. Founded in 1990 by John Perry Barlow and Mitch Kapor (of Lotus 1–2‐3 fame)

FACT: FIRST AMENDMENT CYBER‐TRIBUNE [website] (http://w3.trib.com/FACT), reviewed 17 April 1999. FACT is hosted by Wyoming's Casper Star‐Tribune and edited by Charles Levendosky (a columnist and editor for that newspaper)

THE HISTORY CHANNEL [website] (http://www.historychannel.com), reviewed 11 June 1999.

THE NATURE OF THE BOOK: PRINT AND KNOWLEDGE IN THE MAKING by Adrian Johns (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998—$40.00/no paper price, ISBM 0–226–40121–9 hard, 0–226–40122–7 paper, 753 pp., bibliography, index)

K.I.S.S. OF THE PANOPTICON [website] (http://carmen.artsci.washington.edu /panop/home.htm), reviewed 12 May 1999.

THE MEDIA AND COMMUNICATION STUDIES SITE (MCS): CONSTRUCTIVISM AT WORK [website] (http://www.aber.ac.uk/‐dgc/media.html), reviewed 23 April 1999.

MEDIA AWARENESS NETWORK [webstite] (http://www.media‐awareness.ca/), reviewed 11 March 1999.

CIVIC SPACE/CYBERSPACE: THE AMERICAN PUBLIC LIBRARY IN THE INFORMATION AGE by Redmond Kathleen Molz and Phyllis Dain (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1999—$30.00, ISBN 0–262–13346–6, 259 pp., appendix, notes, bibliographical references, index)

RADIO VATICAN CITY [website] (http://www.wrn.org/vatican‐radio/), reviewed 12 May 1999.

SARAH ZUPKO'S CULTURAL STUDIES CENTER [website] (http://www.popcultures.com/), reviewed 12 May 1999.     

Extending Learning Communities: New Technologies,Multiple Literacies,and Culture Blind Pedagogies

Technologies such as videoconferencing used for distance education are creating ways for high schools to extend their learning communities to connect youth with professional communities of practice in ways that approximate the face-to-face interactions in traditional classrooms. These technologies are often touted as a way to augment course offerings and curricula, particularly those needed for college-going. The use of videoconferencing technologies alone, however, does not ensure that the desired forms of interaction will occur particularly given their reliance on traditional banking-model pedagogies and literacies. In this article, we focus on college bound Black and Latino/a youth from under resourced urban communities and their negotiations of new technologies, multiple literacies, and traditional pedagogies within a music education learning community extended through videoconferencing technologies. Employing a multicultural feminist critical theoretical framework, we unearth the ways Black and Latino/a youths identities as active learners and college-bound musicians shape, and are shaped, in the interplay of new technologies, multiple literacies, and traditional pedagogies within a music education classroom.     

一生一世的朋友

You cry I cry You laugh I laugh You die I'll die These things make us friends Friends for life, till the end Friends until we're high school Playing jokes on April fools Friends until we're in college     

Strategies for Assessing Classroom Teaching: Examining Administrator Thinking as Validity Evidence

All 50 states use observations to evaluate practicing teachers, but we know little about how administrators actually reason when they use those observation protocols. Drawing on think-aloud and stimulated recall data, this study describes the types of strategies and warrants practicing administrators used when rating with their district’s observation protocol. Administrators in a large urban district used an observation protocol aligned to Danielson’s Framework for Teaching to rate a brief lesson clip. Administrators’ thinking was recorded, clarified, and inductively coded. Findings suggest administrator thinking and justification is complex even for short lengths of instruction. Administrators used a range of reasoning strategies, many of which were not sanctioned by their training. Exploratory analyses suggest strategy use was not related to the accuracy of ratings. Implications for the validity of teacher observation scores in high-stakes settings are considered.     

Prior knowledge and its activation in elementary classroom discourse

The purpose of the current study was to: (a) examine the frequency of prior knowledge (PK) activation in elementary classrooms while students were engaged with text, (b) investigate the relevance of students’ responses to teacher prompts, (c) explore the nature of teachers’ and students’ prior knowledge activation utterances, and (d) investigate whether there were discernible routines in the interactions between teachers and students when activating PK. Participants were 6 teachers and 99 students from a private elementary school in the mid-Atlantic. An analysis of classroom discourse suggested that teachers infrequently prompted students to activate their prior knowledge during reading. Yet, when teachers did prompt PK, they asked about a prior lesson most often, or about a specific text, students’ world knowledge, or their personal experiences. Students then responded to their teachers according to the prompted referential frame. Additionally, four routines of classroom discourse were identified in the data including nonresponsive, question–answer, simple feedback, and interaction routines, with less elaborate routines being most common and primarily occurring at the beginning of lessons.

     

Space and Place: Urban Parents’ Geographical Preferences for Schools

Prior research documents the almost universal preference for schools that are “convenient”. Drawing on longitudinal interview data gathered from 36 urban parents, I argue parents’ preference for “convenient” schools is more complex than previously understood. Conceptions of geography used by policy makers do not adequately capture the ways in which parents think about geography. Instead of thinking about school as solely a location one must travel to, parents’ preferences for schools are informed by space and place-based notions of geography. Parents’ geographic preferences connect to larger, more deeply held ideas about parenting, family life, identity, child development, and one’s place in the larger stratified society. Further, these preferences do not exist in a vacuum. Parents’ geographic preferences have implications for the resources parents’ must activate in order to make certain schools possible. Geographic preferences also compete with other school preferences. This paper shows how notions of space and place shape the schools parents choose as well as the schools they are willing to consider. The study describes a fuller, more accurate portrayal of parents’ thinking. It also draws attention to the ways in which existing historical and social contexts influence parents’ understandings of choice policy.