Spirituality, Economics, and Education A Dialogic Critique of Spiritual Capital

This paper consists of a conversation between a philosopher specialising in ethics and religion and an educational researcher with an interest in cultural studies and contemporary social theory. Dialogic in form, this paper employs an interdisciplinary response to an interdisciplinary project and offers the following components: a dialogic theorizing of the implications for education of a research project on spiritual capital; a continuation of the project of analyzing moral thinking in various cultural and societal settings; a continuation of the project of analyzing political rhetoric (towards an understanding of the polemics of political rhetoric); a reaffirmation of the value of recognizing difference and ambiguity in the global moment

Advocating the Well-Being of Children and Families Through a Culturally Responsive Community-University Partnership

poster abstractThis poster presents a mixed-methods research study that focuses on school- community collaborative organizations in the promotion of child-rights and well-being of students, and utilizes an asset-based holistic approach to child development in education. The Westfield community-university partnership aims to properly identify needs and assets of the children in order to explore ways to empower children to excel in life after school, as well as provide an evaluation tool to support community partners to more effectively communicate across programs and schools. In order for schools to develop their programs in response to the needs of the children and those that work with them, the voice of children becomes a necessary component of this partnership. Few programs or evaluation tools foster the involvement of young people in the early stages of mental health, even though children have the capability of expressing distinct views and personal barriers to well-being. This projects uses a case study design as this inquiry concentrates on a contemporary phenomenon within a real-world context. Case study methodology also incorporates many variables of interest, as opposed to specified data points, and relies on the application and combination of multiple sources of evidence to reinforce the study’s findings (Yin, 2008). Qualitative data sources include school staff, students, parents, and community members involved in the Westfield Youth Initiative. Methods of data collection include interviews, focus groups, and school climate surveys, which will be coded and themed, reinforced through team member consensus, and entered into Nvivo © transcript analysis. Quantitative data analysis includes descriptive statistics on demographic variables and a comparison of results from school achievement data. We expect our research to indicate that children who experience a greater sense of well-being assimilate information in more effective ways, engage in healthy and fulfilling social behaviors, and invest in others’ well-being as they advance into adulthood. Thus, the anticipated final results will include a culturally responsive evaluation tool that illustrates the methods in which we incorporate the shared life experience and understanding of children and the community out of respect to the cultural context in which they live. This partnership strives to recognize and appreciate differences between gender, race, language, and class, while maintaining a firm commitment to the well-being of each and every student. Finally, we point to challenges of cross-cultural work, barriers to implementation, and lessons learned unique to this research study

“Failure Looks Like this Child is Still in Limbo”: Foster Parent Experiences of Failed Pre-adoptive Placements

poster abstractPre-adoptive or “waiting” children are those who have a case plan of adoption and/or whose parental rights have been terminated. There are currently over 107,000 pre-adoptive children in the United States, and on average, they have been living in foster care for over three years. A lack of permanency is associated with a milieu of negative consequences while achieving permanent, stable relationships is significant in developing a sense of self and overall, long-term well-being. Failed pre-adoptive placements represent a significant barrier to achieving permanency; however, the phenomenon of failed pre-adoptive placements has been underexplored. This study uses phenomenology, a philosophical method and study of experience, to explore how pre-adoptive foster parents make meaning of their experiences of failed pre-adoptive placements. Participants fostered at least one pre-adoptive child with the intent, willingness, and/or openness to adopt the child, but the placement did not result in an adoption and the child moved to an alternative placement. The primary research question for this study is “What is the experience of a foster parent who has had a failed pre-adoptive placement?” Findings from in-depth interviews reveal that pre-adoptive foster parents enter into pre-adoptive placements with multiple motivations and personal expectations. Experiences which do not confirm these expectations often contribute to decisions to end a pre-adoptive placement. Participants are at times motivated by fear and feel compelled to make decisions to end placements on behalf of alternative roles (i.e. biological mother, spouse, neighbor, etc.). Pre-adoptive parents appear to have a future orientation that serves as a guiding force in decisions to continue or end a pre-adoptive placement. Participants describe feelings of grief, loss, and inadequacy. Findings contribute to the body of knowledge and have implications for foster and pre-adoptive training and support and encourage greater understandings within child welfare for improved permanency planning and practice

Project Lead the Way: Analysis of Statewide Student Outcomes

poster abstractProject Lead the Way (PLTW) is a STEM education programming provider implementing hands-on, project-based engineering or biomedical science curricula in U.S. secondary schools. The goal of PLTW is to increase student interest and knowledge in these and other STEM majors/careers. A large, longitudinal dataset of students who graduated from an Indiana high school in 2010 was created. Preliminary analysis of the dataset found that students who took PLTW engineering courses were significantly more likely to select a STEM major, select an engineering major in college, and persist from the first to the second year of college. Additionally, taking three or more PLTW classes increased the likelihood of selecting a STEM major, selecting an engineering major in college, and persisting from the first to the second year of college. We also examined factors of PLTW students that made them more likely to major in a STEM field, enroll in a 4-year institution, and persist from their first to their second year of college. We found that being male, having a higher math ISTEP+ score, and receiving an honors diploma increased a PLTW students’ likelihood of majoring in STEM. PLTW students who were not eligible for free and reduced lunch, who were part of an underrepresented minority, who received an honors diploma, and who had higher ELA ISTEP+ scores were more likely to attend a 4-year institution. PLTW students who received an honors diploma and were not eligible for free and reduced lunch are more likely to persist from freshman to sophomore year. These findings elucidate interesting and important patterns in the data, highlighting a need for “scale-up research” to further determine the potential factors influencing student access and success. As such, the broad objective of our future research is to produce a multi-scalar representation of PLTW outcomes in Indiana, which can then be used as a modality for understanding the outcomes, impacts, and factors influencing PLTW success nationwide. More specifically, the project will identify PLTW outcomes in rural, suburban, and urban schools and their effects on the everyday experience of students in STEM programs at IUPUI. This multi-scalar approach will explore the broader sociocultural configuration of Indiana high schools, the extent to which those schools evidence PLTW implementation fidelity, and the longitudinal impact of PLTW curriculum on current STEM majors at IUPUI

Finishing the euchromatic sequence of the human genome

The sequence of the human genome encodes the genetic instructions for human physiology, as well as rich information about human evolution. In 2001, the International Human Genome Sequencing Consortium reported a draft sequence of the euchromatic portion of the human genome. Since then, the international collaboration has worked to convert this draft into a genome sequence with high accuracy and nearly complete coverage. Here, we report the result of this finishing process. The current genome sequence (Build 35) contains 2.85 billion nucleotides interrupted by only 341 gaps. It covers ∼99% of the euchromatic genome and is accurate to an error rate of ∼1 event per 100,000 bases. Many of the remaining euchromatic gaps are associated with segmental duplications and will require focused work with new methods. The near-complete sequence, the first for a vertebrate, greatly improves the precision of biological analyses of the human genome including studies of gene number, birth and death. Notably, the human enome seems to encode only 20,000-25,000 protein-coding genes. The genome sequence reported here should serve as a firm foundation for biomedical research in the decades ahead

The other bad men at the door: Ontological spaces and the monstrous

The project here lies in putting two texts—The Walking Dead (TWD) and True Detective (Season 1)—to work in the effort of pedagogy, looking at the text as curriculum and as a way to teach curriculum theorizing through the use of popular culture.  Using a cultural studies framework, this paper suggests that contemporary popular culture provides fertile ground for new understandings of the ways in which the socio-cultural context and its relation to contemporary issues in curriculum theory are entangled in the ethical and the ontological.  In particular, representations of the spatial in the show/s provide an entrée into thinking about the ways in which space is increasingly politicized within contemporary conditions. I argue that these two shows are primarily about ontology—what it means to be, or perhaps in the “posts,” what might it mean to become.   For a zombie show like TWD, this may seem obvious as we witness the transformation of the dead to the undead, but as has been offered all over the internet, the show is really about the human (or post-human?) characters. True Detective, at least at first glance, a more traditional, film noir, Southern gothic crime drama, buries these questions a little deeper and requires one to think through the dialogue and overall structure to push the ontological.  Both shows involve the monstrous, however (spoiler alert), at the end of the day…the monstrous is us

Waiting for Superman: A cultural studies analysis in the nightmare of the present

Abstract While the history of cultural studies cites origins in adult education and contemporary scholars continue to note the need for cultural studies work in schools the connections between cultural studies and educational theorizing seem strained. This paper suggests the recent film Waiting for Superman offers an opportunity for a cultural studies analysis with clear import on education and curriculum theorizing. In specific, this paper notes the important conjuncture of forces at work in the public discourse of so-called education reform in the contemporary US context and suggests that cultural studies analysis may be needed now more than ever. This offering provides linkages between the discursive construction of educative reform efforts, the material lived experiences of those who spend time in educative contexts, and the concomitant ethics that such constructions require. As free-market fundamentalism, neoconservative ideological formations, and representations of school and schooling are all in play, this perspective—both in the material and academic sense—intends to help reinvigorate the conversation between cultural studies and curriculum theorizing and provides new understandings of this “nightmare of the present”