[Review of] Sidner J. Larson. Catch Colt. American Indian Lives

Catch Colt describes Gros Ventre writer Sidner J. Larson\u27s experience as a mixed-blood Native American looking for his heritage, identity, and personal direction. Although minority fiction writers (such as Rudolfo A. Anaya and Leslie Marmon Silko) have addressed this theme, non-fiction discussions of mixed-blood Native American lives are lacking. Larson\u27s autobiography, however, is only moderately successful because he fails to make readers identify with his struggle as a member of “two different worlds at the same time...with a degree of non-acceptance by both

Creativity to the Core: How the KY Core Academic Standards can Enhance Creativity--RESEARCH

The Common Core State Standards (CCSS) were developed by the Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO) and the National Governor’s Association in response to concerns about the poor performance of US students in comparison to students in other industrialized nations. A lack of understanding of the standards has led some to assume that any standards-based curriculum is going to focus on lower-level thinking skills and therefore impede critical and creative thinking. While Kentucky’s English language arts and mathematics standards are derived from the CCSS, Kentucky’s learning targets and standards are not limited to the CCSS standards. That is, there are additional Kentucky learning targets and standards that are not in the CCSS, from first grade reading to Arts and Humanities. Kentucky’s curriculum meets all of the requirements of the 2009 Senate Bill 1, including Practical Living and Vocational Studies, World Languages, and Arts and Humanities. This paper describes the creative process as requiring a deep foundational knowledge, extensive practice, and a strong work ethic. The s kills and habits of mind that are required for creativity can be aligned with the Common Core Standards (and the KY Core Academic Standards in particular) and explicitly taught at all grade levels. Teachers and instructional leaders must utilize their own creative thinking skills to redesign curriculum and schools to meet the demands of these more rigorous standards

Conducting a Shared Mental Model of Student Evaluation: Implications for Nurse Educators

Subjective evaluation of student performance, by its definition, is open to bias, the possibility of being inequitable, and of being unfair. One faculty member may consider a student performance passing, while the next faculty member may not. Grading criteria may not have the same meaning to all evaluators, which compounds the issue. In search of narrowing the variables, faculty may develop a shared mental model, where faculty reach agreement on the terms and criteria used for subjective evaluation. The use of a shared mental model should decrease subjectivity, and result in student evaluations that are more fair and equitable. This is based on faculty use of more specific, objective criteria for subjective evaluations. The benefits to faculty are that a shared mental model of conducting evaluations promotes best practices in evaluation, and may provide defensible evaluations in high-stakes situations if students grieve the evaluation or decide to pursue legal action

A video is worth a thousand words: Scale development for consumer-to-consumer social interaction

Consumers increasingly share information about products, services, and brands with other consumers via online and offline channels. They chat about purchases with friends, post pictures of new products on Instagram, write restaurant reviews on Yelp, and tweet about brands. Researchers have shown that these types of active consumer social interactions (ACSI) lead to increased sales, purchase intentions, product judgments, and product diffusion. However, despite the influential nature of ACSI, few researchers have created validated scales to measure a person\u27s intention to engage in ACSI (ACSII) that encompass the wide range of communication activities that comprise the construct. Therefore, to address this gap, the current research developed a reliable, validated scale measuring six distinct ACSII activities: word-of-mouth, video sharing, texting, emailing, online reviewing, and blogging, that were shown to be generalizable across positive and negative product and service scenarios. The method involved eleven steps and three rounds of data collection to ensure a reliable and valid scale. First, a comprehensive literature review was conducted to define the construct of ACSII, investigate related variables, and place the ACSII construct in a theoretical framework. Then, a pilot study with 912 students and staff of a large midwestern university was conducted to gather qualitative data from participants about experiences with ACSI in order to confirm and adjust the conceptualization of the ACSI construct outlined in the literature review. The data from the pilot survey were analyzed, and 97 initial items to measure ASCII were developed from the analysis. The content validity of the items was assured through the comprehensive literature review, pilot data analysis, expert reviews, and pretests with graduate students. The items were then assessed for reliability and construct (including convergent, discriminant, and nomological validity) and criterion validity and refined with two samples and five consumer scenarios. The factor structure of the ACSII scale was uncovered and the number of scale items was refined using exploratory factor analyses. These analyses resulted in a 30-item scale measuring six distinct, correlated, ACSII factors: video sharing, WOM, emailing, texting, online reviewing, and blogging. The construct and criterion validity of the scale were assessed with confirmatory factor analyses (CFAs) and structural equation modeling (SEM). The reliability of the ACSII factors was excellent and the CFAs and SEMs established the convergent and discriminant validity of the scale, partially established nomological validity, and confirmed the criterion validity of the scale. These analyses culminated in a reliable and valid ACSII scale that was shown to be generalizable across positive and negative product and service experiences in the apparel, electronics, and food services industries

Safdie

The safdie jacket and dress were inspired by Canadian architect Moshe Safdie’s Habitat 67. Habitat 67 is an experimental housing complex that Safdie designed for the 1967 World Exhibition in Montreal (Baker, 1997). The building features interlocking housing units and clear covered pathways and was envisioned with the themes of progress and technology that were central to the exhibition (Corbeil, 1985)

Vietnamese Beauty: Exploring the Definition of Female Beauty in Present Day, Urban Vietnam as Seen Through the Desire for White Skin

Upon my arrival in Vietnam, I was exposed to Vietnamese women’s desire for white skin. The beauty industry in Vietnam is heavily represented in everyday life through the women who do not go into the sunlight unless they are completely covered from head to toe and by the numerous skin care stores and advertisements on every block. I started my research on the skin whitening community in Vietnam with hopes of gaining an understanding of the motivations behind why Vietnamese women are willing to put so much effort into obtaining white skin and quickly realized that the development of the beauty industry in Vietnam is a representation of the progress that the country has made over the past two decades. Like every other aspect of Vietnamese society, the beauty industry is thriving, proving to be a testament to Vietnam’s development, both as a society and as a people