CAMPUS EARLY CHILDHOOD LABORATORY SCHOOLS: PARTNERS IN TEACHER EDUCATION PROGRAMS

Abstract

Making Theory and Development of Early Childhood Education come alive for elementary master's degree students in two learning sites offers opportunities and challenges. In constructing the class, a primary goal was to expose the students to the context under which early childhood educators developed programs and theories. Also, students were challenged to uncover the relationship that the education of young children had with social change and emerging human rights. Utilizing distance learning, contemporary books such as Who Moved My Cheese (Johnson, 1998) and a field trip to the National Civil Rights Museum and the Rock'n Soul Museum, students developed a sense of the place early childhood education had and continues to have in social change and the advancement of civil rights in this country.     

All caught up in the kayfabe: understanding and appreciating pro-wrestling

ABSTRACT

Professional wrestling is a popular, global, performance phenomenon that is in many respects sport-like, but tends to be shunned by serious sports fans for its alleged ‘fakeness’. Yet its own fans often behave exactly like regular sports fans: getting caught up in the action, responding emotionally to the performances, and engaging in critical analysis of the competitive strategies and the turns of events. How does this alleged ‘fake sport’ engender such complex and deeply emotional appreciation? Here I provide an analysis of pro-wrestling that explains and emphasises its narrative, dramatic and fictional aspects, showing it to be a complex representational work that can be appreciated aesthetically and emotionally on a number of levels.     

Diverging discourses: Examining how college students majoring in communication define diversity

Colleges and universities in the United States often promote diversity through a neoliberal lens by framing diversity as a celebration of individual differences or a commodity that students can gain by attending their institution. In communication courses, diversity has been conceptualized through both neoliberal and critical lenses, but limited research has investigated how communication students define and explain diversity. The focus of this study was to understand how communication students define diversity. We performed thematic analyses on open-ended survey responses to investigate how communication students define diversity. Four themes emerged from our analyses: (a) diversity is a mechanism for unifying communities, (b) diversity is an affirmation of individual differences, (c) diversity is a harbinger of acceptance and equality, and (d) diversity is a disruptive force that re-centers the voices of traditionally marginalized people. Our findings indicate most communication students define diversity through a neoliberal lens. However, 3% of our participants conceptualized diversity through a critical lens by explaining that diversity should create space for those who are marginalized to have their voices heard. We conclude by providing recommendations for communication instructors to incorporate more critical conversations about diversity into their classrooms and foster diverging discourses about diversity across communication curricula.     

Television Spoilers Recast as Narrative Teasers

This article analyzes online qualitative survey responses from 43 television time shifters who knew narrative content (spoilers) about a particular show before they decided to watch. Twenty of the study participants cited narrative content and/or their spoiler sources as the reason they chose to watch. We ultimately argue that television spoilers can function as teasers, leading would-be viewers to enjoyable shows. In doing so, we expand the definition of spoiler, offering insight into how spoilers can create rather than ruin opportunities for narrative pleasure.     

Center Stage: Performing a Needs Assessment of Campus Research Centers and Institutes

Outreach to research centers and institutes is often overlooked in academic libraries. This article discusses a needs assessment conducted by the Liaison Services Department at the University of Houston Libraries that reviewed library services to centers and institutes at the University of Houston's main campus. The assessment was conducted for two purposes: to build collaborations with centers and to determine how the libraries might create new services and/or market existing services to meet the centers and institutes' growing research needs.     

Reading Instruction for English Learners in the Middle Grades: a Meta-Analysis

This meta-analysis synthesizes the last two decades of experimental and quasi-experimental research on reading instruction across academic contexts (e.g., social studies, science, mathematics, English language arts) for English learners (ELs) in grades 4 through 8, to determine (a) the overall effectiveness of reading instruction for upper elementary and middle school students who are ELs and (b) how the magnitude of the effect varies based on student, instructional, and study characteristics. The analysis included a total of 11 studies with 46 individual effect sizes and yielded a mean effect size of g?=?0.35 across all (i.e., standardized and unstandardized) reading measures, g?=?0.01 across standardized reading measures, and g?=?0.43 across unstandardized reading measures. For all reading, unstandardized reading, all vocabulary, and unstandardized vocabulary measures, results suggest that higher quality studies tended to have smaller effects, and these effects were even more evident for unstandardized measures (i.e., one unit increase in study quality was associated with decreased effects: g?=?0.21, g?=?0.30, g?=?0.24, g?=?0.30, respectively). For all comprehension measures, effects were larger for instruction that included both vocabulary and comprehension (g?=?0.39) than for instruction that focused on vocabulary alone (g?=?0.08). Results suggest the benefit of developing and refining high-impact approaches to reading instruction for ELs that can be delivered across content areas and grades.     

Creating Connections: Using a Narrative Approach in Career Group Counseling With College Students From Diverse Cultural Backgrounds

Changes in the world of work as well as demographic shifts toward a more diverse college population and workforce require changes in the way career counseling is provided on college campuses. The authors propose using a narrative group counseling approach to serve college and university students from various cultural backgrounds. Through this approach, students develop their own career/life stories, incorporating their cultural values, family and community considerations, and life roles.