Expressing community through freedom market and visual connections

ABSTRACT

Building on a long-term university/community research partnership, this article examines how different ways of conceptualizing, interpreting, and producing murals impacted how an urban community saw itself. Using a participatory action research design, university researchers worked alongside community researchers to ethnographically document the transformation. Findings indicate that the mural project constructed pathways for building relationships and community in ways that made neighborhood transformation possible. The mural project embodied this transformative goal by providing a space where people gathered with shared attention to talk and to envision how their lives and their community could be different.     

Revealing and Telling: the socialisation of attention in learning to read and write

Becoming literate involves the socialisation of attention. ‘Revealing’ and ‘telling’ are two modes of assistance to such socialisation. Revealing, as exemplified in one programme, Reading Recovery, can be especially helpful for young learners. But for older students, conflicts between primary and secondary socialisation can be addressed better by more explicit telling. For that purpose, questions about the most useful metalanguage become important.     

Factors affecting treatment acceptability for psychostimulant medication versus psychoeducational intervention

Future teachers' judgments of acceptability for two common treatments for children with the Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) label were examined. One hundred forty‐four pre‐service teachers were grouped according to their high school location at graduation (urban vs. rural) and were randomly assigned to read one of four vignettes. The content of the vignettes was held constant but label (ADHD vs no label) and treatments (special education placement vs. Ritalin) were varied. Results indicated a significant main effect on treatment acceptability for High School Location, a Label × Treatment interaction on the attention problems variable, a main effect for Label on the social problems variable, and a High School Location × Treatment interaction on the social problems variable. A number of implications can be made. Observer characteristics such as urban or rural high school experiences may influence judgments about a labeled child more than the characteristics of the child being observed. In this study, the ADHD label evoked greater expectations of attentional difficulties even when the pattern of functioning was similar to nonlabeled children. On the other hand, children with the ADHD label were judged as having better social functioning, which suggests that the ADHD label allows observers to attribute behavioral difficulties or the social problems displayed by these children to some factor that is outside the control of the child, or for which the child does not have personal responsibility. © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.     

How teachers' perceptions of the parent–teacher relationship affect children's risk for early childhood expulsion

Rates of expulsion from early care and education settings (e.g., childcare and preschool programs) exceed those in K‐12, and relatively little is known of how to prevent such disciplinary decisions. In addition, expulsion disproportionately affects children of color, especially boys. The present study explores a potential protective strategy existent in all early care and education settings, the parent–teacher relationship. Surveys with early childhood teachers (N = 295) outline the association between teachers' perceptions of the parent–teacher relationship and a child's risk for expulsion. Findings indicate that teachers' perceptions of high‐quality parent–teacher relationships are related to a lower risk for expulsion for children who have not been expelled, with the strongest association found for Black children. In contrast, for children identified as previously expelled, we found no association between teachers' perceptions of the parent–teacher relationship and future expulsion risk. Each finding will be described in detail with an eye towards implications and intervention.     

The Politics of Terror: Rereading Harry Potter

This article claims that J. K. Rowling's Harry Potter series, with its use of magic, frightening storylines, and character ambiguity is beneficial to children who are dealing with issues related to terror and terrorism. The author explains that the scenarios presented in Rowling's series teach children strategies for coping with both physical and psychological victimization, and argues that the series explores morality issues, allowing child readers to analyze terror-related questions such as why some people are considered evil, why difference is often believed to be bad, and why good people do bad things. It is acknowledged that many critics believe that the same elements claimed as beneficial in the essay are actually immoral and dangerous to child readers. These critics' evaluations are countered in two ways: first, the author uses expert evidence to demonstrate that children are capable of distinguishing between fantasy and reality by the age of 5, making fantasy the most viable means for children to cope with terror; and second, the author examines and interprets specific passages within the series to demonstrate how various scenes lead children to explore important, yet frightening issues while remaining in an emotionally safe state. The author concludes that the series has proven to be more beneficial than harmful by presenting evidence gathered from actual child readers who state that the Harry Potter series has allowed them to confront and cope with terror and terrorism in their own lives.     

Developing grass roots writing resources: a novel approach to writing within the social work discipline

In this case study, we report on the development of a writing-specialist position, the ‘Writing Resource Coordinator (WRC)’, in a school of social work at a large state university in the southern USA. Such programs are facing increasing budgetary pressures at the same time as their growing enrollments strain available resources. Students who arrive under-prepared or un-acculturated to the discipline often suffer high writing-related anxiety, putting them at risk for low performance, or dropping out altogether. The WRC provides discipline-specific ‘grass roots’ writing assistance to the most at-risk students through a program aimed at both students and faculty, providing a two-pronged service strategy including: (a) individual consultations and (b) group-oriented seminars and workshops. We describe the implementation of this resource and offer recommendations for improving upon and adopting this approach in social science programs at comparable institutions.     

Coming Out as Homophobic: Isaiah Washington and the Grey's Anatomy Scandal

In late 2006 and early 2007, a high-profile celebrity scandal developed around Isaiah Washington's use of an anti-gay slur to describe his co-star T. R. Knight. The mainstream media coverage of this scandal positioned homophobia primarily in therapeutic and confessional terms, echoing the typical treatment of a celebrity's coming out. As the “angry black man,” Washington failed to satisfy the criteria for neoliberal citizenship and seemed to confirm white culture's fears about black masculinity. Knight, in contrast, emerged as a successful neoliberal citizen whose “difference” was safely contained. The debate thus shifted from the morality of homophobia to the morality and psychological health of the individual, determined through Washington's failed performance of honesty and Knight's successful one. As a result, heteronormativity and white privilege remained largely unnoticed within mainstream coverage of the scandal.     

Text Messaging in Tok Pisin: Etymologies and Orthographies in Cosmopolitan Papua New Guinea

This essay examines an aspect of the historical trajectory of Papua New Guinea's creole language Tok Pisin. A medium key to colonisation, pacification, and nationalisation, Tok Pisin's fortunes as a ‘real’ language in popular perception can be tracked through the orthographic choices that have clarified or obscured the etymological connections to the colonial, English-language past. Scholarly approaches to Tok Pisin and other creole languages have concentrated on the orthographic reflection of the regularities of structure that index ‘full’ languaged-ness and modern national autonomy. In contrast to this project of linguistic nationalisation, contemporary Tok Pisin speakers are developing repertoires of speaking/writing that invoke Tok Pisin's connections to Australian English even as they do not conform to it, an enregisterment of forms obscuring the boundaries between Standard English and Tok Pisin. As a convention used by youth in SMS and similar contexts, this practice subverts a prior generation's language ideology by pairing the lateral connections of new media with a repudiation of creole orderedness.