The Women Take Over: Oral argument,rhetorical skepticism,and the performance of feminist jurisprudence in Whole Women’s Health v. Hellerstedt

Whole Women’s Health v. Hellerstedt was the most important abortion case to come before the United States Supreme Court in 25 years. It was also the first time that three women were seated on the high court to hear a case that challenged the fundamental right to choose abortion. I investigate the questioning by Justices Ginsburg, Sotomayor, and Kagan at oral argument for Whole Women’s Health as a rhetorical enactment of feminist judging and argue that the rhetorical skepticism of the SCOTUS women—their persistent questioning, defiant expressions of doubt, and incredulous style—challenged the discursive boundaries of abortion jurisprudence and advanced a feminist demand that regulations to abortion rights receive heightened scrutiny from the courts. Importantly, Whole Women’s Health demonstrates how rhetorical skepticism may operate as a powerful mode of feminist legal invention—to disrupt the norms of legal reasoning and draw the traditions of legal discourse into doubt in order to authorize a discursive space for feminist legal judgment.     

A survey of augmentative and alternative communication used in an inner city special school

This study surveyed staff use of augmentative and alternative communication (AAC) within a large inner city special school for children with complex needs and learning disabilities. A questionnaire asked 72 staff members about the range of AAC strategies they typically used during the working day and how often they used it; training they had received about AAC; and which AAC approaches they found easy to use and those they found difficult. A range of AAC approaches were identified by staff. Participant confidence and understanding of the reasons for using identified AAC strategies was reported to be one of the key barriers to implementing AAC effectively. The implications in relation to how children with complex needs receive support for their receptive and expressive communication within an education environment are discussed.     

Educational equity,academic standards,and countercontrol: Preventing academic deficits with supplemental interdependent rewards

School psychologists have been involved with developing and installing individual contingencies designed to remedy individual students' academic deficits. Group-oriented contingencies can be applied to broader efforts designed to prevent learning problems class-wide. Independent group-oriented rewards are frequently used in school settings to enhance learning by rewarding strong academic performance (e.g., reward for each student who maintains a 90% average). Research suggests overreliance on these contingencies may not be educationally equitable because they may be less effective or ineffective in influencing the behavior and learning of students with weaker academic skills. Theoretical and applied research is analyzed which suggests that maintaining ubiquitous independent rewards and providing supplemental interdependent group-oriented bonus rewards may allow educators to a) maintain their academic standards, b) enhance educational equity by improving learning in students who may not respond to typical independent group-oriented rewards, and c) enhance classroom climates. Also, recommendations are provided that may allow educators to mitigate concerns over perceived unfairness associated with interdependent group-oriented rewards.     

Measurement Invariance of the Passion Scale Across Three Samples: An ESEM Approach

Sport and exercise psychology researchers rely on the Passion Scale to assess levels of harmonious and obsessive passion for many different types of activities (Vallerand, 2010). However, this practice assumes that items from the Passion Scale are interpreted with the same meaning across all activity types. Using exploratory structural equation modeling (ESEM), we tested this assumption by examining the invariance of scores from the Passion Scale across groups of recreational athletes/exercisers (N = 562), competitive athletes (N = 438), and sports fans (N = 256). We found that the ESEM analysis fit the data better than the more common independent clusters confirmatory factor analysis (ICM-CFA) approach and yielded lower correlations between harmonious and obsessive passion factors. Using ESEM, we found evidence of configural, weak, and partial strong invariance across the three groups. Evidence of partial strong invariance provides tentative support for comparing levels of harmonious and obsessive passion across activities.     

Making Meaning on the Mall: The Smithsonian Folklife Festival as a Constructivist Museum

George Hein, museum education theorist, asserts that there are five qualities a “constructivist exhibition” must have (1998, 35). The authors, assembling observations of visitor engagement and qualitative data from the 2013 Smithsonian Folklife Festival, compare the event to Hein's constructivist exhibition criteria, to assess whether the Festival allowed visitors to “make meaning,” and to see whether visitor meaning‐making meshed with the goals of the curators. The answers have the potential to help improve visitor experiences and learning outcomes at museums and other curated cultural events.     

Designing a connected learning toolkit for public library staff serving youth through the design-based implementation research method

Design-based Implementation Research (DBIR) is an iterative approach to developing practical theory and tools to solve problems of practice and to support innovation in improving teaching and learning, which is rarely used in informal settings such as libraries. This study presents findings from a multi-year researcher-practitioner collaboration in which the authors employed DBIR to iteratively design and implement a professional development resource, the ConnectedLib Toolkit, for use in public libraries across the United States (U.S.). In this study, the authors explain what established DBIR challenges and benefits in K-12 formal educational contexts manifest in the development and implementation of a professional development resource for youth-serving library staff working in diverse public libraries across the U.S. This study also disentangles how these challenges and benefits manifest in this setting. These insights will be useful to researchers and library practitioners who are considering partnerships to address problems of practice in library systems.     

The creation of learner identities as part of social inclusion: gender,ethnicity and social space

This paper reports on a project designed to increase parents' and carers' involvement in learning in a multiply deprived inner city community. The project was part of a broader evaluation of a social inclusion partnership funded under the Single Regeneration Budget. The analysis shows how learner identities are created and cannot just be assumed. Drawing on a community development model, a community worker was able to engage with women through routine encounters in their own social space. The project involved a partnership with schools. Other research has suggested that many school/parent partnerships are based on models of resourceful middle-class femininity. This study found that community education worked through engagement with the social realities of women's lives to foster learning identities. Participants were encouraged to gain accreditation based on developing their own knowledge and skills, and to develop learner identities, which allowed them to access other learning. The paper concludes with the importance of working within the ‘habitus’, and that the association of cultural and social capital with education, which policy makers assume, is not universal.