“I’m not running around with my pants sagging, so how am I not acting like a lady?”: Intersections of Race and Gender in the Experiences of Female Middle School Troublemakers

Careful examination of the discipline gap reveals growing disproportionality in the use of exclusionary discipline measures with female students of color, particularly African American females. Most often, adolescent girls of color are disciplined for subjectively defined behaviors, or behaviors considered inappropriate by educators. This study seeks to understand how seven middle school girls of color explain and justify their compliant and noncompliant behaviors and how their interactions with educators shape their beliefs about such behaviors. Using the theory of intersectionality, we examine how these girls both experience oppression and resist it within various domains of power. Findings show that a hostile school environment characterized by a lack of academic and social support, challenges to justice and fairness, presumptions of guilt, miscommunications and misunderstandings, and peer conflict alienates these young females of color from the learning process. Additionally, findings suggest participants strive to be heard and respected at school, using it as a site of resistance and reflecting their individual empowerment and self-advocacy.     

High School Teachers' Use of Data to Inform Instruction

The expectation that teachers will use student achievement data to improve their instruction is a major feature of national and local reform agendas. The theory of action behind data-driven decision making is a mostly causal model of professional action, whereby teachers diagnose weaknesses and implement solutions. The purpose of this article is to examine how high school teachers, situated within their policy and work contexts, use data to inform instructional decisions. Using a framework that draws upon sense-making and co-construction theories on reform implementation, we analyze qualitative data gathered in 4 urban public high schools in the United States. Findings reveal that the process of data use by teachers is complex, multilayered, and influenced by teacher interpretations and social interactions. Teachers used a variety of forms of data to inform their decision making and struggled to reconcile policies promoting data-driven decision making with local beliefs and practices. Implications for research and policy are discussed.     

What Do Students Gain by Engaging in Socioscientific Inquiry?

The question of what students gain by engaging in socioscientific inquiry is addressed in two ways. First, relevant literature is surveyed to build the case that socioscientific issues (SSI) can serve as useful contexts for teaching and learning science content. Studies are reviewed which document student gains in discipline specific content knowledge as well as understandings of the nature of science. SSI are also positioned as vehicles for addressing citizenship education within science classrooms. Although the promotion of citizenship goals seems widely advocated, the specifics of how this may be accomplished remain underdeveloped. To address this issue, we introduce socioscientific reasoning as a construct which captures a suite of practices fundamental to the negotiation of SSI. In the second phase of the project, interviews with 24 middle school students from classes engaged in socioscientific inquiry serve as the basis for the development of an emergent rubric for socioscientific reasoning. Variation in practices demonstrated by this sample are explored and implications drawn for advancing socioscientific reasoning as an educationally meaningful and assessable construct.     

Records storage in the cloud: are we modelling the cost?

Cloud services are increasingly seen as a flexible strategy for platform, infrastructure and software. Given the cloud’s claimed economic benefits archives and records professionals are now using cloud services for the storage of digital records and data. However, in determining whether or not to use the cloud for records and/or data storage, what models are available to them for estimating the cost and the medium-to-long-term financial implications for their organisations? This article identifies models available for estimating cloud storage costs and presents the results of an international survey into their use in the decision-making process with a series of real use case examples illustrating their value. The study highlights a series of important implications for archivists and records managers. These include the importance and challenges of using the models, their lack of widespread use, their adequacy, and the multiple players who should be involved in their application and development. Archivists and records managers need greater awareness and understanding of the models so they can play a central role in the cloud storage decision-making process and in the development of more effective costing models.     

Digital immigrants fare better than digital natives due to social reliance

Older adult cohorts show greater external locus of control (LOC), a marker of social reliance, compared to younger cohorts. In the present study, American college students from 27 to 61 years of age participated in online courses in a graduate health science programme. Four birth‐year cohorts were included: millennials, born in 1982+; generation X, born 1982–71; younger boomers, 1972–61; and older boomers, 1962–51. Pretest and posttest knowledge, digital nativism, self (internal LOC) versus social (external LOC) reliance and online activity were measured. Self versus social reliance was measured using Duttweiler's Internal Control Index, an adaptation of Rotter's Locus of Control. Millennial students were more likely to be digital natives, showed poorer knowledge application skill and were more self‐reliant than older students. Older boomers represented the most socially‐reliant learners, and were better at knowledge application, that is, answering questions that go ‘beyond the information given’. Older boomers were also more active in the websites associated with the online courses and were more likely to be digital immigrants rather than natives. Active participation, digital non‐native status and social reliance contributed to better knowledge application. Instructors teaching millennial‐age students need to encourage active, meaningful participation in applying knowledge.     

Exploring sport participants’ event and destination choices

ABSTRACT

This study explored the relationship between destination and event elements and an individual’s motivation to travel for sport events. Investigators surveyed participants who were planning to travel or had recently travelled to at least one running, cycling, or triathlon event in the current competitive race season. Data were analysed using exploratory factor analysis, regression, cross-tabulation, and ANOVA. The findings provide empirical evidence that travel behaviours vary by athlete type (runner, triathlete, and cyclist). The results of this study not only add to the push/pull theoretical framework but also provide strong practical implications for both event managers and destination marketers to better package destination attributes and event elements specific to athlete type.     

Using critical policy analysis to examine competing discourses in zero tolerance legislation: do we really want to leave no child behind?

The increasing use of zero tolerance discipline policies in the USA has led to a ‘discipline gap,’ in which minoritized students receive harsher and more frequent suspensions and expulsions than their peers from dominant cultural and socioeconomic backgrounds. Though disciplinary decisions are made by educators at the school level, mandates regarding the disciplinary infractions that must result in exclusionary discipline are made at the federal and state levels. Using a theoretical framework that distinguishes the discourse of safety from the discourse of equity, this critical policy analysis examines how state-level zero tolerance legislation portrays educators, students, and school discipline and reflects neoliberal influence. Findings show that these policies narrowly define schools’ roles as developing academic, but not behavioral, skills. Students are portrayed as rational actors who deserve the punishment meted out by educators when students choose to behave disruptively; and educators have absolute power and their decisions regarding student discipline are reflected as being consistent and objective. Nevertheless, legislation in some states also acknowledges students’ needs for a more holistic approach to their education and mandate continued education and support services to help them after they are removed from school. An example from one California district illustrates findings and demonstrates how both discourses are inadequate in challenging neoracism.