Learning communities : schools, parents and challenges for wider community involvement in schools

This presentation will focus, for the most part, on a project of parental involvement in a state primary school located in a predominantly working-class area in a Mediterranean country. It will draw briefly on qualitative empirical work carried out with a colleague (Carmel Borg). The presentation gives an account of the socio-economic context of the school, and foregrounds, through empirical data culled from transcribed semi-structured interviews, the voices of parents, administrators, school-council members and teachers. It will be argued that, if this project is to develop into a genuine exercise in democratic participation, parents must begin to be conceived of not as “adjuncts”, but “subjects”. The parents interviewed in this empirical work see themselves as such, and derive confidence from the fact that, at the time of the interview, their claims and recommendations were translating into concrete developments. The second part of the presentation will discuss the issue of parental involvement in schools within the context of a wider discussion on ‘changing the face of the school’ by helping it develop into a community learning centre. Insights from the work of Paulo Freire and his Education Secretariat, when he served as Education Secretary in the Municipal Government of São Paulo, Brazil, and from SMED in Porto Alegre, Brazil, will be drawn upon.peer-reviewe

The Last Acolhua: Alva Ixtlilxochitl and Elite Native Historiography in Early New Spain

The present article offers a thematic analysis of the lords’ discourse as a means of contextualizing and historicizing the works of don Fernando de Alva Ixtlilxochitl.4 Students of the famous chronicler of Tetzcoco will recognize the parallels between his historical vision and how the natural lords of an earlier era explained and represented themselves to Spanish authorities. Like don Hernando Pimentel and his peers, Alva Ixtlilxochitl portrayed his mother's ancestors—descendants of the original Acolhua-Chichimeca settlers and rulers of Tetzcoco and its provinces—as aristocrats of illustrious pedigree who became indispensable Christian vassals of the Spanish king. In his telling, among the Acolhuaque the Spaniards encountered natural allies, as the heirs to a prestigious native tradition embraced and aided them in their subjugation of Mexico, their partnership consummated in a triumphant dénouement of baptismal water

Isthmus

The purpose of this thesis paper is to describe the sculptural series Isthmus. This project was a direct result of my endeavor with social encounter through the exploration of factors such as place, material and process. The physical landscape between my studio and home was utilized as "place" designated for the purpose of collecting material while connecting with people and nature

“Pure and Noble Indians, Untainted by Inferior Idolatrous Races”: Native Elites and the Discourse of Blood Purity in Late Colonial Mexico

As sixteenth-century Spaniards constructed their global empire, they carried with them the racial-religious concept of “limpieza de sangre,” or blood purity, which restricted marginalized communities from exercising prestige and authority. However, the complex demographic arena of early modern America, so different from the late medieval Iberia that gave rise to the discourse, necessarily destabilized and complicated limpieza's meanings and modes of expression. This article explores a variety of ways by which indigenous elites in late colonial Mexico sought to take advantage of these ambiguities and describe themselves as “pure-blooded,” thereby reframing their local authority in terms recognized and respected by Spanish authorities. Specifically, savvy native lords naturalized the concept by portraying their own ancestors as the originators of “pure” bloodlines in America. In doing so, they reoriented the imagined metrics of purity so as to distinguish themselves from native commoners, mestizos, and the descendants of Africans. However, applying limpieza in native communities could backfire: after two centuries of extensive race mixing, many native lords found themselves vulnerable to accusations of uncleanliness and ancestral shame. Yet successful or not, indigenous participation in the discourse of limpieza helped influence what it meant in New Spain to be “honorable” and “pure,” and therefore eligible for social mobility

Encoding strategy changes and spacing effects in the free recall of unmixed lists

Memory for repeated items often improves when repetitions are separated by other items—a phenomenon called the spacing effect. In two experiments, we explored the complex interaction between study strategies, serial position, and spacing effects. When people studied several unmixed lists, they initially used mainly rote rehearsal, but some people eventually adopted relational encoding strategies like creating a story from the items (Experiment 1). We observed overall spacing effects when participants used the story mnemonic, but not when they employed rote rehearsal strategies (Experiments 1 and 2). This occurred in part because the story mnemonic reduced or eliminated the usual recall advantage of immediately repeated items at the beginning of lists (Experiment 2)

The wind, the calm

I have too many questions myself about the nature of poetry to say much by way of an introduction to this collection. Somehow in the last couple of years these poems came into being, though the experiences from which they were born have passed and the poems too are perishable. My own faith in poetry and my own doubts about the ultimate value of words are bound up in the transiency of all human experience. Perhaps these poems suffice best as brief illuminations, lightning flares on the rim of night by which we may glimpse, or at least think we glimpse, the substance surrounding us. For me, the prospect of the darkness which intercedes grows increasingly awesome, beautiful, and complex. May the reader make of that ground what he can by the flicker of these poems

Person-centered approaches to examining links between self-regulation and conduct problems, attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, and callous-unemotional behaviors in childhood

Over the past two decades, the study of self-regulation and its associations with emerging psychopathology has become a major pursuit in developmental science. Early-childhood emotion regulation (ER) and executive function (EF), in particular, are interrelated aspects of self-regulation that have garnered extensive research and are theorized to promote social competence school readiness and achievement, and adjustment. However, the development of self-regulation is a complex process that occurs through coaction at multiple levels of analysis. Three studies were conducted to examine biobehavioral emotion responding in infancy, early childhood EF, and their prospective influences on trajectories of conduct problems (CPs), attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), and callous-unemotional (CU) behaviors using multiple person-centered approaches. Study 1 used latent profile analysis (LPA) to prospectively examine the synchrony and asynchrony of infant behavioral reactivity, cortisol reactivity, and ER behaviors at 6, 15, and 24 months of age to determine whether groups of infants evidenced different patterns of arousal and regulation; and whether such patterns were bidirectionally related to parenting behavior over the same span of time. Study 2 used longitudinal latent class analysis (LLCA) to examine joint trajectories of CPs, ADHD symptoms, and CU behaviors from 3 years old to 5th grade in order to assess examine heterogeneity in CPs based on the presence of ADHD and CU behaviors. Study 3 built upon the prior two studies by in by investigating associations of infants’ emotional arousal and regulation with their later CP/ADUD/CU trajectories, as well as the role of early childhood EF in mediating these prospective associations. Results from Study 1 indicated that there is observable variation in infants’ patterns of behavioral reactivity, cortisol reactivity, and ER behaviors across infancy, and that infant emotion responding and parent sensitivity and harsh-intrusion were bidirectionally predictive of one another. Results from Study 2 showed that children did follow differing trajectories of CPs, but that these varied based on who reported their behavior (parents, teachers, or both), rather than on trajectories of ADHD symptoms and CU behaviors. In addition, these joint trajectories differentiated children’s likelihood of meeting diagnostic criteria for oppositional defiant disorder, conduct disorder, and ADHD, as well as clinically significant levels of CU behaviors, during preadolescence. Finally, results from Study 3 indicated that infants’ patterns of emotion responding were not prospectively related to their CP/ADHD/CU trajectories or their early childhood EF. However, better EF did significantly predict a decreased likelihood of following trajectories characterized by high problem behavior as rated by both parents and teachers, parents only, and teachers only. The implications for understanding the early development of self-regulation, CPs, ADHD, and CU behaviors are discussed, as is the utility of innovative person-centered approaches for understanding these phenomena

Organizing rhetoric: situation, ethos, identification, and the institution of social form

This project theorizes the relationship between ethos, situation, and identification at the site of organizations. Specifically, it focuses on the rhetoric's constitutive role in organizations. The study of rhetoric in organizations is longstanding, but little if any attention has been paid to the social consequences of this specific rhetorical relationship. The project's theoretical base employs frameworks from the fields of rhetoric, sociology, communication, and management science. Rhetorical theory, in particular the Aristotelian view of ethos and Burke's concept of identification, as well as structuration theory, dialogic theory, sensemaking theory, and actor-network theory, all contribute to the project's conceptual structure and approach. The project uses a rhetorical analysis of public texts--documents, artifacts, public displays--to demonstrate how organizational rhetoric promotes direction, alignment, and commitment among organizational members and affiliates. This project finds evidence that motive in organizational rhetoric defines situations and thereby influences ethos, and that identification is a strategy of sustainability. The project also finds theoretical support for the claim that social forms, such as organizations, are instituted discursively. The project's theory promotes ethos as social recognition, which is extended, through a process of identification, to encourage the association of diverse interests and contribute to organizational durability

The effect of multiple interventions on freshman college student engagement and retention

College student retention has been widely studied in the past twenty five years, and institutions have developed numerous interventions aimed at improving student retention and persistence-to-degree. A number of theories have been promulgated to explain student departure. While none has proven absolutely conclusive, the concept that student engagement influences the decision to stay enrolled or depart the institution has achieved an almost universal acceptance. Most institutional programs aimed at improving retention seek to engage students on academic and social levels, following the theory that the more a student is connected to the institution, the more likely the student is to stay, and hence, graduate. Much research has been completed attesting to the efficacy of a variety of single interventions. This study determined if participating in more than one intervention significantly improves engagement and retention. Results indicated that participating in more than one intervention significantly improves retention, and that participation in an extended orientation when combined with a learning community with an embedded first- year seminar was the most effective combination. Analysis also demonstrated a relationship between engagement, expressed as the quality of interactions a student has with the institution, and retention

The effects of three behavioral treatments on sleep difficulties of college students

Sixty college students who had sleep difficulties in the form of taking approximately 30 minutes or longer to get to sleep at night were treated in groups by either (1) Relaxation Training (RT), (2) Slef-Regulation of Thoughts (ST), a technique similar to "Thought Stopping,” where the individual learns how to stop and start his thoughts, (3) Combined Treatment (CT), a combination of RT and ST treatments, (4) Group Discussion (GD), a placebo control group in which no direct therapeutic techniques were employed, or (5) No-Treatment Control (NC), which received CT treatment subsequent to follow-up. There was a significant reduction from baseline to follow-up across all treatment groups for the following three dependent measures: latency to sleep onset, difficulty getting to sleep, and number of times awakened. There also was a significant increase in the degree of restedness from baseline to follow-up across all treatment groups. The subjects in the RT group reported significantly less difficulty getting to sleep than the NC subjects across all phases of the study. Furthermore the subjects in RT, GT, and ST conditions also reported significantly greater degrees of restedness upon awakening than subjects in NC group across all phases of the study