Privileged Mexican migrants in Europe: Distinctions and cosmopolitanism on social networking sites

This article examines the ways in which classed distinctions are related to the construction of increasingly cosmopolitan identities on Social Networking Sites (SNSs) amongst Mexican migrants from relatively privileged backgrounds living in Europe. It centres on how user demographics shape many of the concerns and outcomes pertaining to the use of SNSs. It considers the implications of the fact that SNSs are predominantly used by a demographic considered as non-marginalized, mobile and as possessing relatively privileged economic, cultural and social backgrounds. It analyses the ways in which online identities are constructed on SNS profiles using multimedia content to represent specific lifestyles and cultural practices that are used to make distinctions amongst participants, and are related to social, cultural and economic capital. A critical analysis is presented as to how users represent cosmopolitan identities online through the display of tastes and lifestyles in SNS content and into how these representations relate to users’ privileged positions in Mexican society. Bourdieu’s concept of distinction is used to emphasize the utility of considering different forms of capital in analysing the use of SNSs and profile content generated by a specific demographic. This article demonstrates how the analysis of SNS use may contribute towards an understanding of how classed distinctions are made based on this use and of how users negotiate the posting of profile content according to these distinctions and manage (select, edit and share) their representations

Collaborative pedagogy and digital scholarship: a case study of 'Media Culture 2020'

This paper presents an educational case study of ‘Media Culture 2020’, an EU Erasmus Intensive Programme that utilised a range social media platforms and computer software to create open, virtual spaces where students from different countries and fields could explore and learn together. The multi-disciplinary project featured five universities from across Europe and was designed to develop new pedagogical frameworks to encourage collaborative approaches to teaching and learning in the arts. The main objective of the project was to break down classroom and campus walls by creating digital learning environments that facilitated new forms of production, transmission and representation of knowledge. Media Culture 2020 was designed to pilot a novel mode of ‘blended learning’, demonstrating a number of ways in which ‘Web 2.0’ networked technologies might be adopted by academics to encourage open and collaborative modes of practice. The project utilised a number of social media platforms (including Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Google Hangout, Google Docs and Blogger) to enhance the learning experiences of a diverse set of students from different cultural and international contexts. In doing so, Media Culture 2020 enabled participants with a diverse range skills and cultural experiences to develop new working practices that respond to the convergence of digital media and art, as well as the internationalisation of media production and business, through the use of open, interactive software

Reaching out to culturally and linguistically diverse families: strategies and challenges reported by parent training and information center staff

Within special education policy and practice, parents are expected to advocate for their children to receive appropriate special education and related services. However, the majority of parents report feeling disempowered to advocate; families from culturally and linguistically diverse (CLD) backgrounds may feel especially disempowered. Federally funded Parent Training and Information Centers (PTIs) exist in each state to empower historically underserved (including CLD) parents of children with disabilities. In this study, we examined how PTIs educate and empower CLD families through semi-structured interviews with 13 PTI staff members who work with CLD families across five states. The participants emphasized the importance of strategies such as conducting outreach in local communities and developing parent leaders among the CLD families they support. The findings also indicated that PTIs struggle with addressing external, systemic barriers which influence CLD families. Implications for research, policy, and practice are discussed.Accepted manuscrip

Gap Analysis Report

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Strength in diversity: enhancing learning in vocationally-orientated, master's level courses

Postgraduate education in geography, especially at the Master’s level, is undergoing significant changes in the developed world. There is an expansion of vocationally-oriented degree programmes, increasing recruitment of international students, integration of work place skills, and the engagement of non-traditional postgraduate students as departments respond to policies for a more ‘inclusive’ higher education. This paper sets the context by outlining some programmatic changes in selected countries (Australia, the UK, and the USA). We briefly reflect on how postgraduate ‘bars’ or ‘levels’ are defined and explore in detail what ‘diversity’ or ‘heterogeneity’ means in these new postgraduate settings. The paper then explores some examples of practice drawn from our own experiences, whilst recognising that relevance will vary in other contexts. Finally we consider how diversity can be harnessed as a strength that has potential to enhance taught elements of contemporary postgraduate education in and beyond the discipline

Big Data Techniques to Improve Learning Access and Citizen Engagement for Adults in Urban Environments

This presentation explores the emerging concept of ‘Big Data in Education’ and introduces novel technologies and approaches for addressing inequalities in access to participation and success in lifelong learning, to produce better life outcomes for urban citizens. It introduces the work of the new Urban Big Data Centre (UBDC) at the University of Glasgow, presenting a case study of its first data product – the integrated Multimedia City Data (iMCD) project. Educational engagement and predictive factors are presented for adult learners, and older adult learners, in a representative survey of 1500 households. This was followed up with mobility tracking data using GPS data and wearable camera images, as well as one year’s worth of contextual data from over one hundred web sources (social media, news, weather). The chapter introduces the complex dataset that can help stakeholders, academics, citizens and other external users examine active aging and citizen learning engagement in the modern urban city, and thus support the development of the learning city. It concludes with a call for a more three-dimensional view of citizen-learners’ daily activity and mobility, such as satellite, mobile phone and active travel application data, alongside administrative data linkage to further explore lifelong learning participation and success. Policy implications are provided for addressing inequalities, and interventions proposed for how cities might promote equal and inclusive adult learning engagement in the face of continued austerity cuts and falling adult learner numbers

The language of friendship and identity : children's communication choices in an interfaith exchange

The development of partnerships between schools and school children of different religious and cultural backgrounds is currently being promoted at national level in an attempt to encourage social cohesion in ethnically and religiously diverse societies. This article reports on one such partnership, a programme of email communication between children from primary schools in Leicester and East Sussex. It uses concepts of presence and space to analyse the different linguistic and paralinguistic devices children employ to construct their identities as friends and as representatives of their communities, and to project these identities across a cultural divide. Evaluation of the children's language choices identifies tensions and limitations as well as possibilities. The article makes use of Derrida's deconstruction of hospitality as it questions a too ready adoption of the discourse of friendship for children's intercultural encounter, and suggests that the development of a more sophisticated language of interest, politeness and respect provides them with a firmer foundation for positive and productive dialogue with religious difference

Unusual conversations: A reflection on the mechanics of internationally engaged public scholarship

This article analyses the civic engagement pathways of researchers from the Asia-Pacific and the United States in an effort to see how the principles of what American  scholars consider publicly engaged research and creative practice are being enacted in research sites across the globe. The purpose of this ongoing project is to focus on finding ways of connecting American scholars with a network of higher education and research institutions that hold a commitment and passion for social responsibility and civic engagement as it impacts education, research and service for community development overseas. The narrative includes the voices and perspectives of colleagues dedicated to engaged scholarship from across the new region in which I work (the Asia-Pacific), alongside the voices of some of Imagining America’s (IA) 2014 National Conference participants. These conversations serve as a critical reflection on the mechanics of doing public scholarship overseas and frame a new model of internationally engaged scholarship.Keywords: Internationally engaged public scholarship, unusual conversation

The Extraction of Community Structures from Publication Networks to Support Ethnographic Observations of Field Differences in Scientific Communication

The scientific community of researchers in a research specialty is an important unit of analysis for understanding the field specific shaping of scientific communication practices. These scientific communities are, however, a challenging unit of analysis to capture and compare because they overlap, have fuzzy boundaries, and evolve over time. We describe a network analytic approach that reveals the complexities of these communities through examination of their publication networks in combination with insights from ethnographic field studies. We suggest that the structures revealed indicate overlapping sub- communities within a research specialty and we provide evidence that they differ in disciplinary orientation and research practices. By mapping the community structures of scientific fields we aim to increase confidence about the domain of validity of ethnographic observations as well as of collaborative patterns extracted from publication networks thereby enabling the systematic study of field differences. The network analytic methods presented include methods to optimize the delineation of a bibliographic data set in order to adequately represent a research specialty, and methods to extract community structures from this data. We demonstrate the application of these methods in a case study of two research specialties in the physical and chemical sciences.Comment: Accepted for publication in JASIS

Mapping Cultural Participation in Chicago

Charts the household income, educational level, race, and ethnicity of all neighborhoods in Chicago's metropolitan area and explores whether smaller, ethnic, and diverse organizations reach a different audience than the larger institutions