Book review

Douglas, S. J. (1994). Where the girls are: Growing up female with the mass mediay. New York: Times Books. 340 pages.

Lang, A. (Ed.). (1994). Measuring psychological responses to media messages. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. 244 pages.

Cosby, C. O. (1994). Television's imageable influences: The self‐perceptions of young African Americans. Lanham, MD: University Press of America. 172 pages.

Kern‐Foxworth, M. (1994). Aunt Jemima, Uncle Ben, and Rastus: Blacks in advertising, yesterday, today, and tomorrow. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press. 205 pages.

Fiske, J. (1994). Media matters: Everyday culture and political change. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press. 253 pages.

Johnson, L. L. (1994). Toward competition in cable television. Cambridge, MA & Washington, DC: MIT Press & AEI Press. 214 pages.

Krattenmaker, T. G., & Powe, L. A., Jr. (1994). Regulating broadcast programming. Cambridge, MA & Washington, DC: MIT Press & AEI Press. 369 pages.

Moores, S. (1993). Interpreting audiences: The ethnography of media consumption. London: Sage. 140 pages.     

Chameleon effects in homework research: The homework–achievement association depends on the measures used and the level of analysis chosen

Using a data set specifically tailored to homework research, with a sample of 1275 students from 70 classes in Switzerland, the association between homework and achievement in French as a second language was tested at three levels (class level, between-student level, and within-student level). The strength and direction of the homework–achievement association depended on the homework indicator chosen and differed to some degree across analytical levels. At the class level, achievement was higher in classes set frequent homework assignments and in classes where students reported low overall levels of negative emotions when doing homework. At the between-student level, high individual homework effort and low levels of negative homework emotions predicted favorable developments in French achievement, whereas high homework time predicted lower achievement. At the intraindividual level, high homework effort, high homework time, and low levels of negative homework emotions were statistically significantly associated with positive student evaluations of the learning gains from the specific assignment.     

Shared misunderstandings? Competing and conflicting meaning structures in quality assurance

This article shows how the professional discourse on quality assurance in higher education is building on latent meaning structures that can be competing with each other and even subvert the messages on the manifest level. Taking the case of the Austrian higher education system as an example and employing a reconstructive-interpretative approach rooted in social science hermeneutics, five different meaning patterns are presented: a consumer protection pattern, an educative pattern, an entrepreneurial pattern, a managerial pattern and a quality engineering pattern. By analysing and comparing these patterns, the study argues for paying more attention to latencies and implicit meanings that might be overlooked by focusing on the manifest level of the discourse, in order to not lose track of important contradictions and sources of potential conflict.     

The Role of Public Libraries in Self-Publishing: Investigating Author and Librarian Perspectives

Little is known about self-publishing authors and about the concerns of public librarians regarding how best to support library self-publishing initiatives. This article presents and analyzes a survey of authors participating in programming at the Woodneath Library Center/Woodneath Press. It also presents and analyzes the results of a survey of public librarians. Findings suggest that self-publishing authors in this case study would benefit from author services support, and that librarians require targeted training to provide such support. As libraries explore this potential new role, more needs to be done to support author services in public libraries appropriately.     

‘Where do I go from here?’: learning to become activist teachers through a community of practice

Background: Student-Centered Inquiry as Curriculum (SCIC) is an activist approach [Oliver, K. L., and H. A. Oesterreich. 2013. Student-Centered Inquiry as Curriculum as a Model for Field-Based Teacher Education. Journal of Curriculum Studies 45 (3): 394–417. doi:10.1080/00220272.2012.719550] inspired by years of research with youth. It was designed as a means of listening and responding to youth in order to better facilitate students’ interest, motivation, and learning in physical education settings. While we have a strong and growing body of activist research with youth in physical education, SCIC as a specific approach to working with youth is in its infancy; thus, there is a need to further explore the challenges teachers/researchers face learning to use this approach to teaching.

Purpose: This study explores how educators, in different contexts, learn to use an activist approach called SCIC, in order to better facilitate students’ interest, motivation, and learning in physical education and physical activity settings.

Research setting and participants: Participants included a university professor, a college instructor, a postdoctoral student, a doctoral student, and a pre-service teacher. Data were collected between January and May 2016.

Data collection and analysis: Data collection included weekly field notes and debriefings following observations, teacher artifacts, weekly collaborative group meetings, and two individual interviews per teaching participant.

Discussion and conclusions: The main challenge that emerged was learning how to move from a theoretical understanding of student-centered pedagogy to the practice of student-centered pedagogy. Specifically, the amount of time that was necessary to build a foundation that allowed for student and teacher understanding, respect, and comfort, negotiating teacher and student assumptions that were embedded in the status quo of physical education (PE), and the struggle to gather and use meaningful data to guide pedagogical decisions. We negotiated these challenges through our professional learning community whereby we worked to all be able to see and name what was happening in our individual classes and collectively planned what was needed to move forward through these challenges.     

Patterns and costs of printed and online journal usage

This study in an academic medical sciences library setting examines the correlation of usage of a matched set of print and online titles, the validity of e-journals usage statistics and the impact of online journals on print journal usage. The print and online usage was determined for 270 journals, both versions of which were available. Print usage was determined annually since 1997 using the reshelving and the error-copies method. Online usage statistics were delivered by five publishers and corrected for redundant multiple accesses. Print journal usage decreased by 22.3 and 30.2% respectively over each of 2 years after the introduction of online journals. Journals published both in print and online lost 30.4% of their print usage within 2 years. The total loss of usage of print-only titles in the same period was somewhat higher, at 45.8%. The average correlation between online and print usage is 0.60 and 0.67 respectively. For the examined titles, users accessed the online versions ten times as often as the print version. Two clearly distinguishable groupings emerged: while with Academic Press and Elsevier, e-journal usage exceeded print usage by a factor of 3 or 4, the e-journals of Blackwell, HighWire and Springer were used on average 14.6 times as frequently as the corresponding print journals. Each usage of a print article cost 2.79-50.82 Euro, each usage of an online article 0.31-15.10 Euro, depending on the publisher. On average, the usage of an online article was 5.4 times cheaper. Within 2-3 years the usage of online journals has outstripped that of print titles by a factor of ten, but the specific spectrum of usage remains much the same as when only print journals alone existed. Print titles not available online suffer a greater decline in usage compared with print/online journals. This confirms that what is read or purchased is determined primarily by ease of access and that there is a steady tendency to reduce the multiplicity of access modes to a manageable few. The availability of journals online seems to have created a new clientele, at least in the case of the German-language Springer journals. The connection between supplier and supply is much less clear with e-journals than it is with print titles. Therefore it is very important to stress and encourage the role of the library as the supplier of this sort of information in the university environment. Collection building issues are discussed in the light of the results.     

Subtest scatter and Kaufman regroupings on the WISC-R in non-learning-disabled and learning-disabled children

The present study was undertaken to examine scatter analysis and Kaufman regroupings of WISC-R scores. Thirty-one non-learning-disabled children (NLD) and 29 learning-disabled children (LD) determined by individual IQ and achievement scores served as subjects. Scatter indices were computed within the Verbal and Performance subtests as well as between the Verbal and Performance IQ scales. Also, the regrouping categories proposed by Kaufman (1979) were examined. A significant difference in Verbal and Performance IQs was found between the LD and NLD group. Significantly more students in the LD group exhibited the Kaufman regrouping pattern than in the NLD group (p < .01). These results suggest that Kaufman regroupings and Verbal-Performance scatter analysis may be used to assist in diagnosing LD children.