Educational and occupational aspirations of rural high school seniors in the private and public schools in northwest Iowa

Research has suggested that rural youth have lower educational and occupational aspirations than their nonrural counterparts, and they may experience barriers to educational and occupational attainment. Discrepancies and barriers that may exist have implications for educational policy and educational planning;Seventeen rural high schools in northwest Iowa were examined; thirteen public and four private schools. Rural high school students were studied to examine their perceptions concerning potential educational and occupational barriers. Student characteristics and qualities were examined based on where the student lived and the type of school they attended. Students who had been involved in the agricultural curricula in the high schools were described. Students in private and public schools were studied to examine differences and how the differences might affect community and agricultural development;Significant student differences were found based on where the student lived in their community, in town (a house or apartment) or in the country on an acreage, small farm, or large farm. The educational aspirations were very high for all of the students, but the level of educational aspirations were higher for students residing in town than the students residing in the country;Significant differences existed between the students who attended private and public schools. More private school students resided on farms, had more positive perceptions of their communities, and expressed greater intentions of wanting to remain in their communities, but they had lower educational aspirations;Students who took agriculture courses or who participated in FFA had lower aspirations in the level of their educational aspirations and in their intentions to continue their education than their peers;The study concluded that school planning should recognize that differences in aspirations and perceptions existed between students based on where they lived, and secondly, the students in private schools should be considered as policy and plans are made for community and rural development

Exploring attitudes towards environmentally displaced people in Australia: an integrated threat theory approach

Anna Bajema investigated an Australian sample's attitudes towards environmentally displaced people, and whether these attitudes can be shifted using perspective taking. She found placing people into the perspective of environmentally displaced people improved attitudes. Her findings can be used to enhance intergroup relations between host countries and environmentally displaced people

Art Across Borders: Japanese Artists in the United States, 1895-1955

From the 1880s to the early 1920s, hundreds of artists left Japan for the United States. The length of their stays varied from several months to several decades. Some had studied art in Tokyo, but others became interested in art after working in California. Some became successful in the American art world, some in the Japanese art world, and some in both. They used oil paints on canvas, sumi ink on silk, and Leica cameras. They created images of Buddhist deities, labor protests, farmers harvesting rice, cabaret dancers, and the K.K.K. They saw themselves and were seen by others as Japanese nationals, but whether what they created should be called Japanese art proved a difficult and personal question, The case of Japanese artists in the United States during the first half of the twentieth century demonstrates that there is a national art - a Japanese art and an American art - but that the category is not fixed. A painting can be classified in the 1910s as Japanese, but the same painting can be included in a show of American art a few decades later. An artist can proclaim himself to be American, but can then be exhibited as a Japanese artist after his death. National constructions of art and artists serve the art market's purpose of selling a work. Categories set along national lines also reinforce the state's projection of a distinct, homogeneous culture to the international community. For non-Western artists, assigning themselves with a national aesthetic allows for easy identification. But for modern Japanese artists like Kuniyoshi Yasuo, Ishigaki Eitarô, and Shimizu Toshi and others, national categories often posed barriers to creativity and to their success in the art world. Shimizu Toshi was awarded for painting a night scene of Yokohama, but his award was rescinded because he was Japanese. Savvy artists like Yoshida Hiroshi and Obata Chiura worked within national aesthetic categories to better market his work. Kuniyoshi Yasuo remained enigmatic, willing to fall into any category that a critic or dealer might determine they should be cast in, while Ishigaki Eitarô associated himself with international leftist politics that precluded notions of Japanese art. Exploring their histories brings several themes to the fore. First, any attempt to use a single, or hyphenated, national category to describe them or their art is problematic and misleading. An artist's "Japaneseness" was not a fixed characteristic: at different points in his career, he might be classified as a Japanese, American, or even a proletarian artist. Artists could sometimes choose to align themselves with one national culture or eschew both, but the denizens of the art world - critics, museum and gallery curators, schools, and other artists - as well as the public nearly always ascribed a national, or at best hybrid, aesthetic character to their work. During the 1910s and 1920s, when Japanese art had fallen out of fashion and modernism was the vanguard, Japanese artists were freer to transcend the preconceptions of what had become by then conventionally defined as a "Japanese aesthetic," which was based in good part on the works of Japanaiserie of earlier years. Artists of many nationalities strove to be "modern" by consciously rejecting "tradition," which for Japanese artists meant the styles and techniques of traditional Japanese painting. Many of the artists from Japan who wanted to make modern art had little practice in traditional art in any case, since they had received their artistic training in the United States. Indeed, it was their American mentors who taught them what Japanese art was supposed to look like. Modern art did not just set itself against the artistic conventions of the past; it also sought to comment on, and intervene in, the rapidly changing ways of modern life. Japanese artists in New York and Los Angeles joined their colleagues in turning to city streets and everyday life for their subjects, rather than reflecting on a safely imagined past. Portraying the streets they walked, in the techniques they learned in American art schools, came more naturally to them than making a woodblock print of a geisha strolling in a Kyoto garden. They used oils to paint flappers they saw on Fourteenth Street, but had no experience with woodblock printing, geisha, or the gardens of Kyoto

Lupus nephritis management guidelines compared

In the past years, many (randomized) trials have been performed comparing the treatment strategies for lupus nephritis. In 2012, these data were incorporated in six different guidelines for treating lupus nephritis. These guidelines are European, American and internationally based, with one separate guideline for children. They offer information on different aspects of the management of lupus nephritis including induction and maintenance treatment of the different histological classes, adjunctive treatment, monitoring of the patient, definitions of response and relapse, indications for (repeat) renal biopsy, and additional challenges such as the presence of vascular complications, the pregnant SLE patient, treatment in children and adolescents and considerations about end-stage renal disease and transplantation. In this review, we summarize the guidelines, determine the common ground between them, highlight the differences and discuss recent literature

Aspirations of Rural Youth

The purpose of this study was to determine the aspirations of rural youth and to identify perceived support for and barriers to achieving their goals. The population included all seniors enrolled in public and private high schools in a five county area of northwest Iowa. The students were asked to indicate their educational and occupational aspirations. Likert-type scales were used to measure perceptions regarding support for and barriers to achieving their goals. Tenets of achievement motivation theory were observed in the rural students. Town and farm students alike had diverse educational and occupational aspirations. A high level of congruence was observed between the students\u27 occupational aspirations and their educational goals, revealing that many students were following career paths. Students perceived that the environment provided by their schools was supportive of their aspirations. Barriers to achieving their goals were perceived as minimal