Engaging Student Resistance to Feminism: 'How is this stuff going to make us better teachers?'

This article examines the written language of student resistance to feminism in teacher education. Inductive textual analysis of data in the form of standardized student narrative evaluations of teaching and course content uncovers students' situated conceptions of women's subordination, ranging from complete denial of its existence to confused despair over an absence of definitive solutions. Implications for pedagogy of these student postures are discussed, and strategies are offered for engaging students in assessing the coherence of their own positions.     

Influence of schizotypy on responding and contingency awareness on free-operant schedules of reinforcement

Schedules of reinforcement typically produce reliable patterns of behaviour, and one factor that can cause deviations from these normally reliable patterns is schizotypy. Low scorers on the unusual experiences subscale of the Oxford-Liverpool Inventory of Feelings and Experiences performed as expected on a yoked random-ratio (RR), random-interval (RI) schedule of reinforcement, with significantly higher rates of responding on the RR schedule than in the RI schedule. However, high scorers in UE showed no such differences between response rates between the RR and RI schedules. In addition, contingency awareness scores were high, and did not differ in low UE scorers for both types of schedule, whilst awareness scores differed significantly between the schedules in high UE scorers, with more awareness of the RR schedule than the RI one. These results suggest that, as well as being unable to differentiate between the RR and RI schedules in terms of response rates, high UE scorers are also unable to verbally describe the RI schedule parameters.     

Improving Quality and Efficiency of Postpartum Hospital Education

The purpose of this study was to investigate the implementation of an evidence-based, streamlined, education process (comprehensive education booklet, individualized education plan, and integration of education into the clinical pathway) and nurse education to improve the quality and efficiency of postpartum education during hospitalization. A one-group pretest–posttest design was used to measure the quality of discharge teaching for new mothers and efficiency of the education process for registered nurses before and after implementation of an intervention. Results indicated that a comprehensive educational booklet and enhanced documentation can improve efficiency in the patient education process for nurses.     

Investigating the effectiveness of computer simulations for chemistry learning

Are well‐designed computer simulations an effective tool to support student understanding of complex concepts in chemistry when integrated into high school science classrooms? We investigated scaling up the use of a sequence of simulations of kinetic molecular theory and associated topics of diffusion, gas laws, and phase change, which we designed and experimentally tested. In the two effectiveness studies reported, one in a rural and the other in an urban context, chemistry teachers implemented two alternate versions of a curricular unit—an experimental version, incorporating simulations, and a control version, using text‐based materials covering the same content. Participants were 718 high school students (357 rural and 361 urban), in a total of 25 classrooms. The implementation of the simulations was explored using criteria associated with fidelity of implementation (FOI). Each context provided insights into the role of FOI in affecting the effectiveness of the interventions when working with groups of teachers. Results supported the effectiveness of this sequence of simulations as a teaching tool in a classroom context, and confirmed the importance of FOI factors such as adherence and exposure in determining the specific environments in which these materials were most effective. © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Res Sci Teach 49: 394–419, 2012     

Resilience and well-being among children of migrant parents in South-East Asia

There has been little systematic empirical research on the well‐being of children in transnational households in South‐East Asia—a major sending region for contract migrants. This study uses survey data collected in 2008 from children aged 9, 10, and 11 and their caregivers in Indonesia, the Philippines, and Vietnam (N = 1,498). Results indicate that while children of migrant parents, especially migrant mothers, are less likely to be happy compared to children in nonmigrant households, greater resilience in child well‐being is associated to longer durations of maternal absence. There is no evidence for a direct parental migration effect on school enjoyment and performance. The analyses highlight the sensitivity of results to the dimension of child well‐being measured and who makes the assessment.     

RLG and OCLC: Combined for the Future

On July 1, 2006, The Research Libraries Group, Inc. (RLG) and the Online Computer Library System (OCLC) combined their organizations and resources. RLG's products and services were integrated with OCLC's, and RLG's program initiatives went forward within an expanded OCLC Research division. This was a historic moment for libraries and research institutions consonant with the incredible changes in the information environment that had been underway during the previous decade. The expansion of WorldCat that resulted and the renewed attention given to research libraries by OCLC in the merger has positively impacted libraries around the globe.     

Everyday Expertise,Autism, and “Good” Mothering in the Media Discourse of Jenny McCarthy

We examine Jenny McCarthy's mediated crusade to cure and prevent autism to better understand contemporary discourses about mothering, expertise, and gender. McCarthy distrusts traditional scientific and medical expertise and exalts what have long been seen as feminine modes of knowing such as instinct and experience. Her claims dismiss the medical community as wholly corrupt while reifying women's stereotypical identity as mothers. Furthermore, her campaign demonstrates the ways in which our current ethopolitical culture – which values multiple streams of knowledge and democratizes expertise – intersects with a postfeminist culture to limit women's power and create a culture of anxiety around motherhood.     

(Ad)Dressing the Body in Online Shopping Sites

The rapid and tumultuous growth of e-commerce has impacted nearly every aspect of the internet, including the construction, representation, and performance of online identity. Such developments invite us to rethink some of our key assumptions about this technological medium in light of contextual influences. Toward this end, this essay offers a critical analysis of virtual body models available in online shopping contexts. I critique the way in which virtual body models are used to address the online shopper and their body image, how web stores promote identification between the shopper and their virtual model, and the implications of virtual modeling technology for how bodies and identity are brought together in e-commerce situations. I argue that web stores articulate rhetorics of computational precision and user interactivity to declare a null margin between shopper and virtual model while simultaneously manufacturing and exploiting such a margin for their own commercial gain. The result is that even though online shoppers are instructed to create models that will precisely reflect their offline bodies, web stores' commercial motives effectively guarantee that the resulting model will be a misleading, but more commercially viable, image of the shopper's body. I conclude by discussing some of the implications of this strategically manufactured distortion with respect to user participation in e-commerce activities.