Writing to Learn in a Mutt Course: How Writing Functions in a Social Justice Living Learning Program Seminar

Learning communities, first-year seminars/experiences, writing intensive courses, and diversity/global learning programs are among the high-impact practices (HIP) shown to influence college student learning, retention, and overall experience (Kuh, 2008). Colleges and universities are creating programs and courses that incorporate these and other HIPs. Some of these courses do not fit neatly into particular disciplinary or interdisciplinary categories. The current research refers to such contexts as “mutt courses.”Writing is often used to facilitate learning in mutt courses, yet virtually everything that is known about how writing promotes learning comes from research on writing in traditional disciplinary settings (e.g. history, engineering, psychology, etc.). The current research sought to understand if writing in a mutt course facilitated learning in similar ways as writing in other disciplinary courses.The context was a credit bearing seminar part of a first-year residential living learning community focused on privilege and oppression. This seminar was not housed in any of the academic colleges at the university at which the research took place, but students received academic credit for the course, and it satisfied the university’s core curriculum diversity requirement. The seminar was taught by instructors in student affairs and non-teaching academic divisions of the university. Students engaged in great deal of writing in this seminar (12 weekly response papers, an identity reflection, and an analysis paper). Through an ethnographic study writing in this context, the current research sought to understand how writing facilitated achievement of course goals. Activity Theory (Engeström, 2015) and the revised Bloom’s Taxonomy (Anderson & Krathwohl, 2001) were used as theoretical frameworks to understand what learning occurred and how.The research found three functions of writing similar to those in traditional disciplinary settings (a demonstrative, learning, and discursive function). The discursive function was nuanced in that students conceptualized writing as a sort of conversation with peers. Additionally, instructors used writing to inform their practice. Furthermore, writing was found to influence students’ desire to work toward inclusion. Implications for using writing in similar contexts is discussed as well as implications for theory and future research

Predictors of perceived work-family balance: Gender difference or gender similarity?

This article uses the 1996 General Social Survey (GSS) and the 1992 National Study of the Changing Workforce (NSCW) to examine two issues: the relationship of work characteristics, family characteristics, and work-family spillover to perceptions of work-family balance; and models of “gender difference” versus “gender similarity.” The GSS analysis supports the gender similarity model. It demonstrates that work demands such as the number of hours worked per week and work spillover into family life are the most salient predictors of feelings of imbalance for both women and men. The NSCW includes subtler measures of family spillover into work as well as measures of specific job characteristics and child care. The NSCW results support a gender difference model. They indicate that when family demands reduce work quality, there is a decreased likelihood of perceived balance. However, men and women experience balance in gendered ways. Women report more balance when they give priority to family; men report less balance when they have no personal time for themselves due to work and more balance when they make scheduling changes due to family

Aging Trends and Challenges in Nevada

Societal aging is one of the most important social trends of the 21 st century. It affects our political, social, and economic institutions and also the nature of our interpersonal and family relationships (Quadagno 2005). In the coming decades, both as individuals and as a society, we will have to make important decisions regarding the consequences of our aging population. Policy makers, families, businesses, local, state, and federal governments, health care providers will all be faced with the challenges of meeting the needs of the growing older population in the U.S. and in Nevada