Review of Cultural Capital: the Promises and Pitfalls in Educational Research. ASHE Higher Education Report, Vol.36 (1)

Rachelle Winkle-Wagner\u27s monograph is published as part of the ASHE Higher Education Report Series, which is designed to help busy individuals keep up to date with higher education research literature (135). As its title indicates, Winkle-Wagner\u27s publication critically examines cultural capital, an often misunderstood (xi) theoretical construct formulated by the French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu frequently used to explain inequities in access to and success in U.S. higher education (xi). The author, an assistant professor of Higher Education at the University of Nebraska, is well placed to produce a study of this kind. The structure of the book, in consisting of an executive summary and four densely argued chapters, follows the prescribed ASHE Higher Education Report format

Using a research-informed interprofessional curriculum framework to guide reflection and future planning of Interprofessional Education in a Multi-site Context

Abstract Background: Over the past two years health educators in Australia have benefited from funding made available from national organizations such as the Office of Learning and Teaching (OLT) and Health Workforce Australia (HWA). Funded research has been conducted into educational activities across the country that aim to promote integrated and sustainable interprofessional learning. Methods and Findings: A collaboration between multiple stakeholders led to the establishment of a consortium of nine universities and interprofessional organizations. This collaboration resulted in a series of research studies and the development of a conceptual framework to guide the planning and review of interprofessional health curricula. A case study of the development of a suite of health education programs at a regional university in Australia is used to demonstrate how the framework can be used to guide curricular reflection and to plan for the future. Shedding a light on interprofessional health education activities across multiple sites provides a rich picture of current practices and future trends. Commonalities, gaps, and challenges become much more obvious and allow for the development of shared opportunities and solutions. Conclusions: The production of a shared conceptual framework to facilitate interprofessional curriculum development provides valuable strategies for curricular reflection, review, and forward planning.The authors acknowledge the contribution of the Interprofessional Curriculum Renewal Consortium, Australia (2014)

Needling doubts: A sociological examination of parental resistance to childhood immunizations

Within recent years, a group of parents who question or oppose vaccination has emerged in the United States. While recently receiving attention within medicine and public health, parental questioning of and resistance to childhood immunization is a trend that has yet to be examined within sociology. This dissertation explores the role of parental characteristics, beliefs, and attitudes on resistance to pediatric immunization. Thirty-five in-depth interviews with parents who postponed or refused vaccinations for their children were conducted. Qualitative data were used to develop a survey instrument including a series of scales measuring parental beliefs and attitudes about pediatric vaccination. The survey was administered via telephone to a random sample of 310 parents with children aged thirteen or under. Data describing the prevalence of vaccine questioning in the United States and the relationships between race/ethnicity, socioeconomic status, and mistrust and risk beliefs on parental questioning and refusal of vaccination are presented. In addition, I provide an explanatory framework for vaccine questioning within the theoretical orientation of risk theories of modernity. I develop and test a conceptual model that examines the effects of risk assessment and engagement, mistrust or skepticism of expert systems of knowledge, alternative medical orientation, social support, social status variables, and vaccine questioning and concern on parental vaccine practices. The dependent variable is a four category variable that incorporates both vaccine behaviors and perception of pressure to vaccinate. Multinomial logistic regression results indicate that parental risk awareness, risk mastery, mistrust of science and medicine, and vaccine concerns are each significantly related to vaccine uptake behaviors. Results also show a conditional association between education and vaccine concerns. The positive effect of vaccine concerns on the odds of pressured vaccine acceptance and pressured vaccine postponement/refusal was significantly greater among respondents with higher education. There is similar evidence of a conditional association between minority status and vaccine concerns. Vaccine concerns increase the odds of pressured postponement-refusal and pressured acceptance more so among white respondents than among minority respondents. Public health and sociological implications of these findings are discussed

Quantifying the Functional Consequences of Spanish [s] Lenition: Plural Marking and Derived Homophony in Western Andalusian and Castilian

In this thesis, a new methodology is proposed for investigating Spanish [s] lenition (sound weakening or loss) via morphological analysis instead of phonetics. Word-final [s] is a morphological plural marker in Castilian Spanish, but is rarely produced in Western Andalusian Spanish (WAS). It is often asserted in the literature that the loss of [s] in WAS requires plurality to be expressed via alternative means. The results of this study rule out lexical and morpho-syntactic compensation for [s] lenition in WAS in several previously untested domains, and imply that there is no functional motivation in Modern Spanish driving a need for compensation for word-final [s] lenition on nouns or determiners. This investigation is built on a predictable calculation of the environments in which the loss of [s] may result in derived singular/plural homophony in WAS nouns. This is used to quantify potential semantic ambiguity. A frequency comparison of 27,366 WAS and Castilian nouns, across 60 specific Determiner + Noun phrase environments, finds no significant differences between the dialects in the type or token frequencies of numerically ambiguous nouns, nor in 98.7% of the tested phrase environments. When taken in context with studies excluding phonetic compensation in WAS, the current results suggest that the low semantic relevance of word-final [s] in Modern Spanish is a potentially far-reaching explanation for the variable manifestations of [s] lenition experienced in Spanish dialects across the world

Seed dispersing birds respond to local rainforest cover: consequences for seed fate

Most Australian rainforest plants are dispersed by fruit-eating birds. In partly deforested landscapes, seed dispersal within and between forest patches is influenced by these birds' use of forest fragments, and by their patterns of fruit consumption. If the dispersers of a plant species decline or disappear, this will set an ultimate limit to the fate of its seeds – reduced dispersal. Therefore an important question for the conservation of rainforest plant communities is how to sustain or recover seed disperser abundances in fragmented forests. We assessed the effects of fragment size and surrounding forest cover on communities of seed disperser birds in an extensively-cleared Australian rainforest landscape, where different bird species vary in both their sensitivities to fragmentation and their roles as seed dispersers. In surveys of single one-hectare plots within 25 rainforest fragments, we recorded 20 seed disperser species. We used regression modelling to test how well particular seed disperser variables (species abundances, richness and abundance of functional groups) could be predicted by fragment size and six measures of surrounding forest cover (within 200m, 1000m and 5000m radii, for cover of rainforest and of all forest types). Model comparisons showed that the amount of rainforest cover within 200m was the best predictor of the abundances of fragmentation-sensitive disperser species, and of birds which disperse most plant species (including plants which have few dispersers). We conclude that a high proportion of local rainforest cover will help maintain seed disperser assemblages and seed dispersal in forest fragments and during forest restoration

Introduction

[Extract] Stream 2 of the Commonwealth Government's Regional NRM Planning for Climate Change Fund supports the project "Knowledge to manage land and sea: A framework for the future" run by a consortium of scientists from James Cook University (JCU) and CSIRO. This report is the second major product of the consortium project, building on the first report: Climate Change Issues and Impacts in the Wet Tropics NRM Cluster Region (Hilbert et al. 2014). This second report provides syntheses of current knowledge about potential adaptation pathways and opportunities in response to climate change in the Wet Tropics Cluster (WTC) region (see below) across all relevant NRM sectors. The report is framed by the specific topics and issues defined by the NRM groups in the Wet Tropics Cluster (WTC) region (Appendix A), reflecting the planning processes and priorities of these groups as well as the characteristics of their regional communities. This report has two major aims: 1. To provide a review of potential adaptation pathways and opportunities across all NRM sectors in the WTC region, including a review of potential options for adaptation of species to climate change 2. To provide preliminary information about particular directions for adaptation in the Wet Tropics Cluster, based on collaboration with the four NRM bodies via the Brokering Hub