Breaking Down Barriers for Student Parents and Caregivers with Family-Friendly Library Spaces

Abstract

In 2016, J. Murrey Atkins Library at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte opened a reservable study room where student parents and caregivers can study with their children on campus. In 2018, the library opened a second family-friendly study room to meet the needs of our growing campus community. To inform the room design, the library conducted a mixed methods research study that included a user survey, an examination of room reservation and usage data, and one-on-one user interviews. This paper focuses on the user-centered design process used to inform the development of the second, family-friendly, library study room.     

Early Childhood Parenting Predicts Late Childhood Brain Functional Connectivity During Emotion Perception and Reward Processing

Seventy-nine 3-year olds and their mothers participated in a laboratory-based task to assess maternal hostility. Mothers also reported their behavioral regulation of their child. Seven years later, functional magnetic resonance imaging data were acquired while viewing emotional faces and completing a reward processing task. Maternal hostility predicted more negative amygdala connectivity during exposure to sad relative to neutral faces with frontal and parietal regions as well as more negative left ventral striatal connectivity during monetary gain relative to loss feedback with the right posterior orbital frontal cortex and right inferior frontal gyrus. In contrast, maternal regulation predicted enhanced cingulo-frontal connectivity during monetary gain relative to loss feedback. Results suggest parenting is associated with alterations in emotion and reward processing circuitry 7–8 years later.     

The Development of Measures of Individual Differences in Self-Regulatory Control and Their Relationship to Academic Performance

Two studies are reported describing the development and validation of the Strategic Flexibility Questionnaire (SFQ): a self-report instrument aimed at eliciting students’ beliefs about the need for, and conditional nature of, self-regulatory control over learning. In Study 1, 281 first-year university education students completed a 40-item pilot questionnaire. Factor analysis of responses revealed a 21-item instrument indicating three types of control beliefs: adaptive executive control, inflexible executive control, and irresolute executive control. In Study 2, the predictive validity of these conceptions was tested against the academic performance of 105 third-year university education students. Results indicated that students reporting adaptive executive control beliefs were more successful academically, while those students reporting inflexible or irresolute control beliefs were significantly less successful academically.     

Research,Teaching and Scholarship in an Expanding Higher Education System 1

It is argued that, basically, academics engage in three activities: teaching, research and scholarship, and that the activity of scholarship must be recognised and separately funded. The concept of scholarship is derived from its historical roots, according to which it supports both teaching and research, but is extended to support all activities in which academics engage. This makes it possible to develop an expanding system of higher education in which all academic activities are appropriately recognised and rewarded and which can operate with significantly lower unit costs than has been the case in the past. However, the need to provide funding for scholarship puts a lower bound to acceptable unit costs.     

Basic skill requirements for selected Army occupational training courses

This study investigated the basic cognitive skills soldiers must possess before entering the Army, skills that are needed for successful completion of entry-level training. Judgments of 126 instructors from 25 military occupational specialties were obtained on 129 candidate skills, which resulted in the identification of 55 basic skills. Factor analysis of these 55 skill items resulted in 11 interpretable factors. Mean scores on the factors were compared across factors and across Army training schools. The results of the study suggest that, for all occupational specialties studied, skills related to the learning process are as crucial as traditional academic skills for successful training course completion. These results have important implications for training for the Army as well as for industry.     

Summary of an Extended Comparative Analysis on European Private Higher Education1

In November 2005, UNESCO‐CEPES organized a conference on Private Higher Education in Europe and Quality Assurance and Accreditation from the Perspective of the Bologna Process Objectives. Thirteen country reports and a comparative analysis study were commissioned for this specific initiative. The countries included in the project were: Albania, Austria, Bulgaria, Estonia, Germany, Italy, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Russia, Spain, Turkey and the Ukraine. This article provides a brief summary of several main points of the comparative analysis study. The data referred to in this summary is taken solely from the sources cited in the full text study.     

Welding brass tits on the armor: An examination of the quest metaphor in Robin McKinley'sThe Hero and the Crown

Anna E. Altmann teaches children's literature in the School of Library and Information Studies at the University of Alberta.     

Public library trends

Public libraries tend to be taken for granted. They can be found in nearly every community and are used by a substantial proportion of the population, particularly the young and the old. Yet the public library service, as it is today, is a relatively recent phenomenon. Despite their origins in the mid-19th century, the widespread network of public libraries is largely the product of the post-war welfare state. The demand for the service grew rapidly during the war and in the immediate post-war period. Provision to meet the demand was constrained initially by the competing demands for reconstruction, but by 1960 the service was ready to expand. The growth was consolidated by the 1964 Public Libraries and Museums Act and was given further emphasis by the 1962 Bourdillon standards (Ministry of Education, 1962). The Act and the standards provided the impetus for what might be described as the golden age of public libraries. This brief period was brought to an abrupt end by the economic crises of the mid-1970s and the subsequent downward pressure on public expenditure. The service managed to hold its own during the late 1970s and early 1980s but since then it has been in decline, with the rate of decline accelerating during the 1990s as new requirements and increasing costs stretched diminishing resources even further, to the point where the overall level of provision now falls well short of the basic standards that were considered to be essential in the early 1960s.