Why We Watch Them Sing and Dance: The Uses and Gratifications of Talent-Based Reality Television

This study explores how talent-based reality shows with different thematic content influence gratifications obtained (GO) by viewers. Participants completed surveys regarding their reasons for watching reality programs, in general, and their reasons for watching specific talent-based reality shows (American Idol, Dancing With the Stars, and America's Got Talent). Results identified 2 gratifications not previously observed in other gratifications research (TV personalities and schadenfreude), and that correlations exist between the content of talent-based programs and GO.     

Science learning and a Sense of Place in a Urban Middle School

This paper offers an analysis into low-income, urban middle school children's sense of place and what and how their sense of place matters in science learning by focusing on the following questions: In what ways is students' sense of place leveraged in a science classroom? How does the content and context of science class shape how students leverage their sense of place? What learning opportunities emerge when sense of place is leveraged in class? Drawing from an ethnographic investigation into an environmental statistics class in a mid-sized public middle school, we examined sense of place events from their source, process, and outcome perspectives. Our findings are presented from two aspects of sense of place events, (1) characterizing students' sense of place by exploring sources of the sense of place events, and (2) examining processes of how students' sense of place is being leveraged in the episodes. We also examine two kinds of tensions that emerge in the class when sense of place is leveraged by students and acknowledged by the teacher: epistemological tensions (related to what the students are learning) and procedural tensions (related to how they are learning).