Those Who Left,Those Who Stayed: Exploring the Educational Opportunities of High-Achieving Black and Latina/o Students at Magnet and Nonmagnet Los Angeles High Schools (2001–2002)

Being that educational disparities, manifested through socioeconomic instability, were a major contributing factor to the Los Angeles riots, it is important to examine how public high schools are now shaping the postsecondary opportunities of underrepresented students. Using opportunity-to-learn (OTL) and bounded rationality as frames, this article examines the college preparatory experiences of Black and Latina/o students at a magnet and standard urban high school, specifically focusing on the experiences of high achievers. Findings indicate that students at the two schools had equally high college aspirations, but experienced very different college preparatory environments. Magnet students had access to more college-going resources and greater opportunities to learn, manifested directly from opportunities offered at their school and indirectly from the collective college-going culture shaped by the school, peers, and parents. Bounded rationality allowed students at the underresourced urban school to perceive their school's resources positively and stay motivated, but limited their efforts to pursue additional resources to enhance their opportunity-to-learn.     

ACT UP as a Structure of Feeling

In April of 2009, near the end of National Football League (NFL) quarterback Michael Vick's prison term for dog fighting, NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell proposed Vick might resume his career if he could demonstrate “genuine remorse” for his actions. At the same time, Vick was mapping out a plan, with the help of public relations professionals, for how he would perform in interviews and public appearances. The result was an orchestrated campaign whereby Vick was both imposed upon by and performed through a surveillance-based program of social testing designed to prove that he was forgivable on the grounds of genuine remorse. I maintain that the Vick case represents the power of popular institutions like sports leagues to shape and test conditional standards for forgiving through frameworks of surveillance, therapy, and confession that affirm racialized ideals about social order and authentic interior reform. Through an analysis of the NFL's monitoring and surveillance program, as well as a series of highly publicized interviews, I demonstrate the importance of distancing forgiveness from politics, and examine potential alternatives to conditional forgiveness from within rhetorical studies.     

Rural Math Talent,Now and Then

This article interprets inequality evident at the intersection of three realms: (a) mathematical talent (as a cultural phenomenon); (b) rural place and rural life; and (c) future economic, political, and ecological developments. The discussion explains this outlook on inequality, contextualizes interest in rural mathematics education, presents the conventional view of rural mathematics achievement as deficient, and then elaborates an alternative perspective. Illustrating the alternative, the essay embeds an analysis of a national data set to derive comparisons of the equality of math talent across locales (rural, suburban, and urban), demonstrating the greater equality of math talent in rural places. The essay concludes with principles for (a) making mathematics instruction more responsive to rural context, and (b) reorienting the instruction of gifted teachers in rural schools to an educational purpose that exerts better stewardship over local mathematical talent.     

Alzheimer's Disease and Other Dementias: An Organizational Approach to Identifying and Addressing Practices and Learning Needs of Family Physicians

ABSTRACT

Caring for patients with dementia is complex and demanding. Since family physicians (FPs) provide much of this care, we examined their practices, learning needs, and barriers to care concerning Alzheimer's disease and other dementias. We surveyed 392 (approximately 50%) Nova Scotia FPs and conducted focus groups and interviews with: FPs; staff of long-term care facilities; health professionals in home care; patients and their caregivers; FPs with advanced geriatric training; geriatricians; and psychiatrists. Results suggest that many FPs do not perform assessment and management practices as frequently as they ideally should. However, systemic factors, not only inadequate knowledge, affect care.     

The Power Of Beliefs

The overrepresentation of African Americans in particular sport activities has been the focus of numerous theories and research studies. Researchers have provided anthropometric, physiological, psychological, and sociological explanations for the observed disparity. In this paper, theoretical and empirical contributions to racial differences in sport performance are examined, and a framework for viewing race as a movement self-schema is described. The influence of racial self-schemata on movement self-schemata and how this influence may account for much of the variability in sport performance and activity choices between African Americans and Euro-Americans is examined. The roles of television, modeling, expectation theory, and sociological influences are discussed as possible activators of racial movement self-schemata.     

Universities in Europe: North American Perspectives on European Historiography

This 2005 conference dialogue does not attempt to review the formidable A History of the University in Europe, 1800–1945 edited by Walter Rüegg. But it does use this magnificent piece of scholarship to open a discussion of the scholarship on the university, worldwide. The precipitating event was a book session at the Social Science History Convention in Portland, Oregon (2005). The participants are scholars of the higher education discourse and sought to reflect upon the conceptual patterns that have produced our higher education canon. They have found both foundational bedrock and time‐bound, limited assumptions about the ‘university’ in this volume’s 16 major essays. The central issue of this critique addresses the methodological problem of how another discourse, say, American higher education, might conceive a different version of the history of the university. In the course of the discussion the participants try to lay out the conceptual guidelines for a new history of higher education.     

Environmental Pollution: An Ecological Perspective

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to evaluate the effect of participation in a 3-day outdoor environmental education program on preservice teachers' attitudes toward self-efficacy—which is a teacher's belief that he or she can teach environmental education (EE) effectively—and on outcome expectancy—which is a teacher's estimation of his or her influence on student learning. Participants were a convenience sample of 72 preservice elementary teachers taking a science methodology course at a state university. Participants were divided into 2 groups for this modified pretest/2-posttest/control group study. The instrument for all 3 tests was Sia's (1992) Environmental Education Efficacy Belief Instrument. The authors used parametric t tests to compare group means. The results suggested that the preservice teachers' self-efficacy was high before the program and remained unchanged by their teaching experiences but dropped significantly approximately 7 weeks after teaching. The lack of change in self-efficacy from the teaching experience was attributed to the structured nature and success of the teaching experience, but the negative effect of time on self-efficacy was believed to have resulted from the preservice teachers reevaluation of their ability to teach as they learned more about teaching methodologies. In addition, there was no significant change in outcome expectancy as a result of participation in the program or over time (7 weeks).     

Personalised learning: lessons to be learnt

Personalised learning is now broadly endorsed as a key strategy to improve student curricular engagement and academic attainment, but there is also strong critique of this construct. We review claims made for this approach, as well as concerns about its conceptual coherence and effects on different learner cohorts. Drawing on literature around differentiation of the curriculum, self‐regulated learning, and ‘relational agency’ we propose a framework for conceptualising and enacting this construct. We then report on an attempt to introduce personalised learning as one strategy, among several, to improve student academic performance and wellbeing in four low SES regional secondary schools in Australia. We report on a survey of 2407 students’ perceptions of the extent to which their school provided a personalised learning environment, and a case study of a programme within one school that aimed to apply a personalised approach to the mathematics curriculum. We found that while there were ongoing challenges in this approach, there was also evidence of success in the mathematics case.