Code-switching 101: Black women counselor educators’ personal and professional identity development

The perceptions of personal and professional identity development from four Black women counselor educators were examined through a collaborative autoethnography methodology. Themes identified include (a) intentionality of code-switching, (b) inextricable identities, (c) fight for and with authenticity, and (d) mutual development of personal and professional identities.     

In search of systemic innovation for sustainable development: A design praxis emerging from a decade of social learning inquiry

Processes of designing for systemic innovation for sustainable development (SD) through the lens of three long-term case studies are reported. All case studies, which originated from the SLIM (Social Learning for the Integrated Management and Sustainable Use of Water at Catchment Scale) Project, funded within the EU Fifth Framework Program (2001–2004), constitute inquiry pathways that are explored using a critical incident approach. The initial starting conditions for each inquiry pathway are compared; significant pathway dependencies are identified which foster the development of social learning processes locally, but constrain their uptake and embedding across the wider system of interest. In the first case study, in England & Wales, promising developments in the application of social learning approaches to river basin planning over an initial 3-year period were subsequently marginalised, only to resurface towards the end of the 10-year period of study. In the second, South African case study, significant spaces for social learning and innovation in integrated water resources management were opened up over a five year period but closed down again, primarily as the result of lack of policy support by national government. The third, Italian, case study was designed to assess options for adapting to climate change by opening up new learning spaces between researchers, stakeholders and policy makers. A case for investing in local level systemic innovation through social-learning praxis design approaches and in learning processes around well contextualised case-studies is supported. However, concomitant investment by policy makers in social learning as an alternative, but complementary, governance mechanism for systemic innovation for SD is needed.     

When do firms rely on their knowledge spillover recipients for guidance in exploring unfamiliar knowledge?

Knowledge spillover occurs when recipient firms combine the knowledge of an originating firm with other knowledge. When recipient firms combine the originating firm's knowledge with knowledge that is unfamiliar to the originating firm, the recipient firms potentially provide insight to the originating firm on the viability of exploring such knowledge. By mimicking its recipient firms, the originating firm reduces the challenge and uncertainty of exploring unfamiliar knowledge domains. We examine the exploration activities of 87 telecommunications equipment manufacturers over a ten-year time period. We argue that those firms that operate in competitive and dynamic market environments promoting conservative risk-taking behavior will value such uncertainty reduction more highly and thus rely to a greater extent on their recipient firms for guidance on where to explore for new expertise. In contrast, firms in high-growth market environments are more likely to look beyond the activities of recipient firms when exploring new technological domains and rely less on mimicking their recipient firms.     

Tilted post arrays for separating long DNA

Recent simulations by Chen and Dorfman [Electrophoresis 35, 405–411 (2014)] suggested that “tilting” the electric field with respect to the lattice vectors of a hexagonal post array would lead to a substantial improvement in electrophoretic DNA separations therein. We constructed such an array where the electric field is applied at an angle equidistant between the two lattice vectors. This tilted array leads to (i) baseline resolution of 20 kbp DNA and λ DNA (48.5 kbp) in a 4 mm channel and (ii) measurable separation resolutions for electric fields up to 50 V/cm, both of which are improvements over untilted post arrays of the same post density. The predicted time required to reach a resolution of unity is approximately 5 min, independent of electric field. The separations are more reproducible at higher fields.     

‘They think it’s all Dover!’ Popular newspaper narratives and images about the English football team and (re)presentations of national identity during Euro 2012

The 2012 UEFA European Football Championship (‘Euro 2012’) – Europe’s quadrennial football bonanza was held in Poland and the Ukraine between June 8th and July 1st. Occurring between Elizabeth II’s Diamond jubilee and the London 2012 Olympic Games, the eyes of the media were fixated on the pride and joy of English football, its men’s national team. With national consciousness at an all-time high, articles in England’s tabloid, ‘red-top,’ daily national newspapers The Sun and Daily Mirror were tracked for three weeks as they lavished their attentions on the national pastime. Their coverage of the English team reflected a heightened consciousness of English national identity. Drawing on Guibernau’s strategies for creating and uniting citizens around a collective national identity, this study examined how England’s popular media presented and represented England’s national identity to reflect the real and imagined versions of Englishness during this major sporting event.¹1. Montserrat Guibernau, The Identity of Nations (Cambridge: Polity, 2007). By focusing on The Sun and Daily Mirror’s narratives about, and images of, the English team during the Euro 2012 tournament, this paper focuses on how English national identity ebbed and flowed during a time of seismic change within the country. Shaped by an inductive textual analysis, this paper shows how the press fluctuated between optimistic notions of the present and future English national identity and traditional ‘olde England’ in an almost formulaic fashion.     

‘Active Citizens’: the case of school governors

ABSTRACT

This article reviews current and historical debates about active, participant citizens and related conceptions of citizenship. In particular it focusses on the prospects for the participation of citizens in the administration of public bodies. It discusses critically the notion of participative citizenship and active citizenship as articulated by Douglas Hurd (when Home Secretary) and also the version contained in the report of the Speaker's Commission on Citizenship. The article then draws upon research conducted for the Volunteer Centre, by the National Foundation for Educational Research and that by Brehony and Deem which is funded by an Economic and Social Research Council Grant (R000 23 1799), on voluntary activity and school governors, respectively. The applicability of the concept of active citizenship to the oversight of schools by school governing bodies is then considered alongside recent work in the United States. The article then considers the constraints upon active citizenship which prevent many governors from participating as much as the role demands and it ends with a reference to the tension between those who see governing bodies as an arena for democratic accountability and the active participation of citizens and those who view them principally as a means by which the local state is weakened and its functions increasingly transferred to the voluntary sector.     

Teacher Acceptability of Functional Assessment-Derived Treatments

This study examines whether teachers find a treatment clearly linked to a functional assessment more acceptable than treatments based on arbitrarily selected reinforcers. We randomly assigned 111 elementary school teachers to 3 experimental conditions. In all conditions, a problem vignette was read that included the same functional assessment summary but varied according to whether the treatment recommendation was linked to the assessment results. A one-way analysis of variance revealed significantly higher pretreatment acceptability ratings and likelihood of use for the treatment linked to assessment. Implications of these results for school-based consultation are discussed.