Is Mojo (En)De-Skilling?

Drawing on Bourdieu’s field theory, this paper examines how the Hindustan Times, one of the leading English dailies in India, integrates mojo (contraction of mobile journalism) into its journalistic practices. Further, this paper explores how journalists respond to the concomitant changes brought about by the adoption of technologised practices in the newsroom. The analysis of qualitative data obtained from participant-observation and in-depth interview reveals that the practice of mojo, which is about learning new apps and tools, producing short videos by and for mobile devices, and disseminating news to digital readers through multiple platforms, emerges as a new rule in the field of journalism. Instead of depending solely on a team of mobile journalists, the newspaper aims to develop capabilities and impart training to journalists across the board in the newsroom. This study also reveals that journalists at the Hindustan Times experienced the practice of mojo as both en-skilling and de-skilling.     

Near Field Communication: Introduction and Implications

Near field communication is an emerging technology that allows objects, such as mobile phones, computers, tags, or posters, to exchange information wirelessly across a small distance. Though primarily associated with mobile payment, near field communication has many different potential commercial applications, ranging from marketing to nutrition, transportation, gaming, and health care. In libraries, near field communication could enhance outreach and existing services such as self-checkout. More importantly, near field communication also serves as a new way to link physical materials with digital information, potentially transforming the way users interact with the information environment. This introduction to near field communication will address its background and functionality, its current and anticipated commercial applications, and its potential effect on libraries, librarians, and library patrons. The authors of the article will also discuss the time frame for mainstream adoption, and the privacy and security concerns of this new technology.     

组合压气机中尾迹与势流同频/异频干涉的叠加特性

为揭示多级压气机中上下游叶轮对中间叶片叠加气动影响特性,阐述不同叠加干涉情况下下游叶轮进气角度变化,采用数值方法模拟了一级轴流和一级离心组成的组合压气机非定常流场。详细讨论了上游动叶尾迹和下游动叶势流对中间导流叶栅段气流非定常流动的异频和同频叠加干涉特性,依据计算结果,直观地展示了静叶通道中两种干涉间相互激励和抑制作用的位置和时间,与数学公式的推导结果相互印证。研究结果表明:当上下游动叶对中间静叶段异频干涉时,干涉的激励、抑制区域的轴向位置随时间发生变化;当上下游动叶对中间静叶干涉频率相同时,干涉的相互激励、抑制区域的轴向位置不随时间发生变化,但干涉的激励、抑制区域的轴向位置受时序位置影响。另外,上游动叶尾迹与下游离心叶轮势流的不同叠加情况,决定着下游离心叶轮进口相对气流角的大小及波动幅值。      

Researching and conceptualising the field

This concluding paper examines the contributions in this Guest Issue by locating them within the ongoing debates about the role and contribution of social science research, particularly through the production of journals. Set in the context of on-going attacks on the relevance of social science research and the failure to respond to major crises that affect us all, I argue that the field of educational leadership is an important site for showing the dangers of becoming relevant and accepting that a constructed crisis is a crisis. I argue for intellectual work within the field of educational leadership, and use the critical and socially critical traditions to illuminate this. The papers in this Guest Issue are located in these traditions, and so I examine the contribution made through problematising educational leadership, examining the realities of working lives in schools and conceptualising alternative ways of thinking about professional practice.     

Towards a theory of school leadership practice: a Bourdieusian perspective

Despite the ‘practice’ turn in the broader management literature, very little work in educational administration has engaged in a theoretical discussion about what constitutes leadership practice. Theoretically informed by the French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu, this paper contributes to the long-established critical tradition in the educational administration literature, to argue that: (i) ‘leadership’ is a label of the managerialist project of the state; (ii) leadership should be thought of as a disruptive practice; and (iii) Bourdieusian theory can enable this thinking, but not as it is frequently mobilised in the educational administration literature. The alternative put forth in this paper is not merely replacing one external narrative (managerialism) with another (Bourdieusian), but rather advancing a theoretical position on what is leadership that paves a way forward for a research programme.     

Conservation Comes of Age

Abstract

This study investigated the effects of instruction in environmental education on the attitudes of elementary school children toward the environment. One class of third graders was provided with two hours of environmental education instruction. A comparable class of third graders served as a control group. Both classes were pre- and posttested using an author-designed environmental attitude questionnaire. Analyses of these data showed that 1) the experimental group had significantly improved attitudes on a pre-post basis and 2) this same group had significantly more positive attitudes toward the environment when compared with the control group. When tested again as fifth graders, the experimental group remained significantly more positive toward the environment than the fifth grade control group.     

Putting working-class mothers in their place: social stratification,the field of education,and Pierre Bourdieu's theory of practice

This article explores how a small sample of working-class mothers encounters the field of education. In the management of family and their children's schooling, mothers bring to bear and replicate ways of knowing that are embodied, are historical and that offer many-sided insights into profoundly stratified societies. Here I draw on Bourdieu's theory of practice as a heuristic device and focus only on the field while leaving in suspension his other conceptual arsenal. Bourdieu argued that understanding the social space in which interactions occur is pivotal, characterised as it is by ‘permanent relationships of inequality'. This study shows that mothers bring to the field their embodied history, their habituated practice, and their access to capitals. The women I interviewed know the precariousness of how they occupy the field of schooling, negotiated through a matrix of intersected positionings and classifications that are embodied.     

Practising leadership in newly multi-ethnic schools: tensions in the field?

This paper explores the leadership practices of three principals following a period of intensive immigration in Ireland. Drawing on the work of Bourdieu, it conceptualises schools as structured social spaces and of their leadership work as a form of practising. This practising is an outcome of the intersection between deeply embedded subjectivities operating in diverse fields of action that shape, constrain and transform each principal’s practices. Presenting an analytical model that highlights the circular and capillary-like dimension to such practising, the paper explores how principals’ recognition of immigrant children (their recognitive practices) as well as investment in supporting their learning (distributive practices) are shaped by the logics of practice across different fields, as well as by their own evolving habitus and struggle to be authentic in a period of rapid social change. Practising effective leadership in newly multi-ethnic schools must be conceived as layered and multiple but must be underpinned by an ethic of justice, if the minoritised status of ‘ethnic’ others is to be challenged and overcome.     

The sociology of Pierre Bourdieu and researching education policy

Bourdieu did not write anything explicitly about education policy. Despite this neglect, we agree with van Zanten that his theoretical concepts and methodological approaches can contribute to researching and understanding education policy in the context of globalisation and the economising of it. In applying Bourdieu’s theory and methodology to research in education policy, we focus on developing his work to understand what we call ‘cross‐field effects’ and for exploring the emergence of a ‘global education policy field’. These concepts are derived from some of our recent research concerning globalisation and mediatisation of education policy. The paper considers three separate issues. The first deals with Bourdieu’s primary ‘thinking tools’, namely practice, habitus, capitals and fields and their application to policy studies. The second and third sections consider two additions to Bourdieu’s thinking tools, as a way to reconceptualise the functioning of policy if considered as a social field. More specifically, the second section develops an argument around cross‐field effects, as a way to group together, research and describe policy effects. The third section develops an argument about an emergent global education policy field, and considers ways that such a field affects national education policy fields.     

Cognitive style of gifted and average readers

Thirty gifted and 30 average readers were selected from a population of 300 eighth, tenth, and twelfth grade students in small towns or rural areas in Kansas. Students were classified as field independent or field dependent. It was found that gifted and average readers used the same reading strategies but there were significant differences in how frequently some strategies were used. There were also significant differences in how frequently some strategies were used by field independent and field dependent readers. Gifted readers scored significantly higher than average readers on the Hidden Figures Test. No significant differences in the frequency of reading strategy use were found between field independent gifted readers and field dependent gifted readers or between field independent and field dependent average readers.