Exploring the future of lifelong learning: advocacy, research and footprinting

This reflective think-tank contribution begins by comparing advocacy and research as distinct modalities of professional and social action. In practice they frequently elide and merge into one another. While alliance and complementarity between the two modalities is constructive for shaping policy and practice, it poses risks when governments and state apparatus play their own advocates, co-opting research into the endeavour. Established classification and distribution policy logics are ill-attuned to transversal and holistic agendas such as lifelong learning; this leads to competition between interest groups defined by educational sector and level, and it occludes life-course perspectives on learning that have the capacity to resituate understandings of shared interests. Transversal and holistic agendas demand forms and styles of evidence that can encompass these qualities; indicators and benchmarks as currently employed in educational policymaking are under-developed with respect to lifelong learning. The successful example of eco-footprinting could suggest a way forward that is not only evidentially more appropriate, but could also achieve greater impact for the development of lifelong learning policy and practice.     

Enigma Variations: Parsing the Riddle of Main Entry and the “Rule of Three” from AACR2 to RDA

ABSTRACT

In the ten years since the International Conference on the Principles and Future Development of AACR, long-standing debates have continued as to whether or not to have a “main entry,” and whether or not to exercise the rule of three to limit the number of headings or access points in certain cases. Recent proposals from the Joint Steering Committee for Development of RDA have recommended a change in “main entry” terminology to “primary access point,” and the elimination of the rule of three. This article explores how and why these shifts have occurred.     

Mountains to Molehills: The Past,Present, and Future of Cataloging Backlogs

While backlogs have existed in libraries and the literature that describes them, the decline in the acquisition of physical collections relative to digital resources, as well as the availability of cataloging copy has called into question the continued viability and relevance of arrearages. Yet, at a time of economic restraint, a rethinking of library operations is timely, if not urgent. What does nearly sixty years of research tell us about materials that are removed from cataloging workflow pending availability of a bibliographic record? This article analyzes the characteristics of, and reasons for, arrearages, and assesses approaches to reducing or eliminating backlogs.     

Journal reviewers acknowledged

Mediated Political Realities, Dan Nimmo and James E. Combs (New York: Longman, 1983), 240 pp., $10.95.

The Political Uses of Symbols, Charles D. Elder and Roger W. Cobb (New York: Longman, 1983), 173 pp., $22.50/$9.95.

Keeping a Finger on the Public Pulse: Private Polling in Presidential Elections, Bruce E. Altschuler (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1982), 197 pp., $25.00.

"For Immediate Release”;: Candidate Press Releases in American Political Campaigns, Jan Pons Vermeer (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1982), 189 pp., $27.50.

Introduction to Mass Communications, 7th ed., Warren K. Agee, Philip H. Ault and Edwin Emery (New York: Harper and Row, 1982), 498 pp., $16.50.

Discovering Mass Communication, Samuel L. Becker (Glenview, IL: Scott, Foresman and Company, 1983), 492 pp., $15.95.

Mass Communication an Introduction, 3d ed., John R. Bittner (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice‐Hall, 1983), 508 pp., $17.95.

The Dynamics of Mass Communication, Joseph R. Dominick (Reading, MA: Addison‐Wesley, 1983), 552 pp., $16.95.

Broadcasting in the Arab World, Douglas A. Boyd (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1982), 306 pp., $29.50.

The Age of Television, Martin Esslin (San Francisco: Freeman, 1982), 138 pp., $7.95.

The Early Window: Effects of Television on Children and Youth, 2d ed., Robert M. Liebert, Joyce N. Sprafkin and Emily S. Davidson (New York: Pergamon, 1982), 255 pp., $25.00/$9.95.

The Interplay of Influence: Mass Media &; Their Publics in News, Advertising, Politics, Kathleen Hall Jamieson and Karlyn Kohrs Campbell (Belmont, CA: Wadsworth, 1983), 287 pp., $11.95.

Television and Radio Announcing, 4th ed., Stuart W. Hyde (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1983), 522 pp., $22.50.

Humanistic Radio Production, Harold L. Drake (Washington, DC: University Press of America, 1982), 116 pp., $19.50/$8.25.     

Not just ‘sunny days’: Aboriginal students connect out‐of‐school literacy resources with school literacy practices

In this paper, I report on a school‐university collaborative research project that investigated which practices and knowledges of Canadian Aboriginal students not acknowledged in school may provide these students with access to school literacy practices. The study, which took place in a small city in Western Canada, examined ways to merge the out‐of‐school literacy resources with school literacy practices for minority language learners who struggle with academic literacies. Drawing on the third space theory, in conjunction with the concept of “funds of knowledge,” I explain how students' linguistic and cultural resources from home and community networks were utilised to reshape school literacy practices through their involvement in the Heritage Fair programme. I analyse a representative case study of Darius, a 10‐year‐old boy who explored his familial hunting practices for his Heritage Fair project. This illustrative exemplar, “Not just sunny days,” highlights the ways in which children's out‐of‐school lives can be used as a scaffold for literacy learning. In conclusion, I discuss implications for educators and researchers working to improve literacy learning for minority students by connecting school learning to children's out‐of‐school learning.     

An in-depth appraisal of career termination experiences in professional cricket

This qualitative study explored the career termination experiences of 9 male, retired professional cricketers between the ages of 28 and 40 (mean value 34, s = 4.65 m). The participants took part in retrospective, semi-structured interviews. Data from the interviews were inductively content analysed within three transition phases of the retirement process: reasons for retirement, factors affecting adaptation and reactions to retirement. The reasons for retirement were multicausal with the majority of the participants highlighting contractual pressures and a lack of communication as important precursors to retirement. Three main themes accounted for the factors affecting adaptation: a limited pursuit of other interests, developmental experiences and coping strategies. In terms of reactions to retirement, all of the participants reflected negatively on the termination of their career, with a sense of loss and resentment characterising the post-retirement period. The findings illustrated the sport-specific nature of career termination in professional cricket and added further support to the emerging consensus that the distinction between voluntary and involuntary retirement is, at best, unclear.     

To Every Artifact Its Voice: Creating Surrogates for Hand-Crafted Indigenous Objects

This article reports on findings from qualitative research undertaken with a group of Aboriginal seniors in Toronto, Canada, to assess how a community-based collection of handcrafted objects could be used to evoke memories of maker culture (craft), as well as to foster meaning-making—all in the course of gathering elements requisite to representing each item in a documented surrogate. The article will discuss how the need to give voice to this unique collection both challenges and enriches traditional approaches to representing and organizing artifacts. A rethinking of surrogate records that center the Indigenous experience in the cataloging process is proposed.     

Computer conferencing for guidance and support in the OU

This article describes the UK Open University's FirstClass™ Computer conferencing system and its role in student support taking as an example the particular the way it is used for course choice. It suggests that whilst there are students who use it freely and apparently derive benefit from it, there are also substantial issues to be addressed about its relative unpopularity with students as a support medium. Institutions using computer conferencing may need to address issues about student antipathy towards it