Preserving respectability or blatant disrespect? A critical discourse analysis of the Morehouse Appropriate Attire Policy and implications for intersectional approaches to examining campus policies

In this paper, I conduct a critical discourse analysis of the Morehouse College Appropriate Attire Policy and discuss how issues of race, gender, and sexuality converge to reveal both overt and hidden meanings embedded in the policy. I also consider how power is used towards “other” black college men who neither fit neatly into prescribed gender norms, nor foster representations of “good” black men. I situate this critical policy analysis in the context of two ideas: bipolar masculinity and the politics of respectability, and offer implications for the use of intersectional frames in scholarship and research on men and institutional policies.     

Longitudinal correlates of reading comprehension difficulties in Chinese children

The present study explored the early predictors of reading comprehension difficulties in Chinese children. We originally recruited 290 Beijing and 154 Hong Kong children and further selected from each sample those (30 from Beijing and 22 from Hong Kong sample) in the lowest 25 % on reading comprehension tests across the last two consecutive testing years (Beijing: ages 9 and 10; Hong Kong: ages 8 and 9) as poor comprehenders. These groups were matched to a group of children from the same sample whose reading comprehension was above 30 % across the two final years and matched on mothers’ education levels, age, nonverbal reasoning at age 4, and Chinese word reading across the same final two consecutive years. We then examined early linguistic/cognitive skills at ages 5–9 that could distinguish the poor and typically developing groups in each city separately. Compared to the control group, poor comprehenders from both samples performed significantly and consistently worse on word reading at early ages, and generally worse on morphological compounding awareness, phonological awareness, and vocabulary knowledge from ages 6 and onwards. In addition, lexical tone sensitivity across ages and grammatical sensitivity (administered at age 5 only) failed to distinguish the two groups for the Beijing sample but did for Hong Kong children.     

It's All About the Relationships—In Serials,in FRBR,in Life: An Interview with Olivia M. A. Madison

Olivia M. A. Madison talks about her roles in the library profession and how her career developed along with them, most importantly the unanticipated relationships connecting the elements of her career. She discusses the influence of serials work on her career, her cataloging experiences, the early days of OCLC, her work in CC:DA, her adventures at IFLA, the development of FRBR, the future of bibliographic control, and her development as a librarian at Iowa State University.     

Letter from the Editor

Getting help in understanding how to use and interpret a new information system is a crucial organizational and individual resource. Indeed, both informal and formal sources of information technology help are expensive and necessary, but largely unidentified, unmanaged, and underresearched. This study proposes that two types of factors influence the formation of information technology helping relationships: individual and structural. Based on a survey of employees in an organization implementing a new workstation‐based customer database system, the study compares influences on being sought as an informal source of IT help, and on types of help (individual or positional) that one seeks. One individual factor (some forms of computer expertise) and most structural factors (especially measures of employees’ perceived socialization, task interdependence, and communication networks) exerted weak but significant influences on employees’ IT helping relationships.     

INVESTIGATING IDEOLOGICAL CLARITY IN TEACHER EDUCATION

Set in a graduate-level multicultural literacy course, this qualitative study draws on Bakhtin's theories of ideological becoming and a hybrid of critical discourse analysis (CDA) methods (Gee, 1996 Gee, J. P. 1996. Social linguistics and literacies. Ideology in discourses, , 2nd ed. London: Falmer..  [Google Scholar]; Fairclough, 1995 Fairclough, N. 1995. Critical discourse analysis: The critical study of language. London: Longman..  [Google Scholar]; 2003 Fairclough, N. 2003. Analyzing discourse: Textual analysis for social research. London: Routledge. [Crossref] , [Google Scholar]) to explore the complexities of learning to teach culturally and linguistically diverse students. We investigated how eight beginning teachers' ideologies were constructed and reconstructed by closely examining the struggles and tensions teachers expressed in one multicultural literacy course. This research adds to the literature about how beginning teachers might better address cultural and linguistic diversity in literacy instruction. The study also describes the types of activities that can facilitate the development of teachers who are interested and committed to working with culturally and linguistically diverse students.     

From the Horse's Mouth: Why scientists’ views are crucial to nature of science understanding

Written in response to criticism of our work by Fouad Abd-El-Khalick, this position paper reaffirms and reinforces our position about the need to broaden and enrich the scope of nature of science (NOS) oriented curricula by exposing students to the voices of practising scientists. While Abd-El-Khalick's motivation for promoting the so-called consensus view of NOS is rooted in issues of assessment (or ‘benchmarking', as he calls it), we argue that the major reason for teaching about NOS is its contribution to what Shen calls civic and cultural scientific literacy. We are critical of the consensus view for its philosophical naivety, failure to reflect contemporary scientific practice and potential for confusing students, and we re-state our view that it is important to expose students to a diversity of practice among the sub-disciplines of science. We argue that richer NOS understanding and a more authentic view of scientific practice can be achieved through direct and indirect contact with scientists at the cutting edge of research and development, which we characterise as learning about scientists, learning from scientists and learning with scientists.     

Turning Crisis into Opportunity: Enhancing student‐teachers’ understanding of nature of science and scientific inquiry through a case study of the scientific research in severe acute respiratory syndrome

Interviews with key scientists involved in research on severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS), together with analysis of media reports and documentaries produced during and after the SARS epidemic, revealed many interesting aspects of nature of science (NOS) and authentic scientific inquiry. This novel insight into practice in the rapidly growing field of molecular biology was used in the development of instructional materials for use in the pre‐service and in‐service teacher education programme at The University of Hong Kong. The elements of NOS and scientific inquiry identified in the scientific research on SARS were explicitly emphasized in our instructional materials. The contemporary real‐life context of SARS was found to be effective in promoting student‐teachers’ understanding of NOS and scientific inquiry, particularly in terms of: the realization of inseparable links between science and the social, cultural, and political environment; deeper understanding of how science and technology impact on each other; and a richer appreciation of the processes of authentic scientific inquiry and the humanistic character of scientists. The effectiveness is attributed to immediacy, relevance, and familiarity, making the abstract tangible, personal experience of science history, and the powerful affective impact of the interviews with scientists.     

Crossing the binary line: the founding of the polytechnic in Colonial Hong Kong

Using the case of the Hong Kong Polytechnic (HKP), this paper examines academic drift in colonial settings. The HKP, like polytechnics in the UK, was supposedly a service sector institution. Under the binary system in the UK, schools in the service division were governed by the state educational bureaucracy, while the universities – the autonomous sector – were under the University Grants Committee (UGC). When the HKP was being founded, however, it became an institution under the UGC of Hong Kong. This article argues that the HKP could cross the binary line because a polytechnic unsubordinated to the local colonial state would be more serviceable to external agents’ interests. This finding suggests that researchers of academic drift – who have hitherto studied exclusively sovereign nations and the impacts of internal factors – should also examine the cases in dependent territories as well as the effects of external influences on such shifts.