A relatively northern southern state: civil rights protest in Richmond and Danville, Virginia, 1959-1963

This thesis reveals the historical narrative of the civil rights campaigns in Richmond and Danville, Virginia, from 1959 to 1963, emphasizing how protesters experienced the movement through direct action and examining the way an inherited philosophy and strategy of non-violent protest was employed by demonstrators. Furthermore, it analyzes the role of Virginia as an Upper South state during the movement. The evidence presented verifies a direct correlation between community size, economic foundations, and social outlooks and the community\u27s level of resistance to direct action tactics and youth leadership of the movement. Protests were successful in urban areas such as Richmond because greater economic diversity, demands to integrate because of financial losses during boycotts, and the presence of political moderates warranted the death of Jim Crow. Protesters encountered resistance in tobacco and textile towns like Danville because such communities lacked economic diversity and subscribed to traditional Jim Crow structures of segregation

Understanding the Response to Financial and Non-Financial Incentives in Education: Field Experimental Evidence Using High-Stakes Assessments

We analyze the impact of incentivizing students' effort during the school year on performance on high-stakes assessments in a field experiment with 63 low-income high schools and over 10,000 students. We contribute to the literature on education incentives by incentivising inputs rather than output, by focusing on high stakes outcomes, and by comparing financial and non-financial rewards. We take advantage of our large sample and rich data to explore heterogeneity in the effects of incentives, and identify a "right tail" of underperforming students who experience a significant impact on high stakes assessments. Among students in the upper half of the distribution of incentive effectiveness, exam scores improve by 10% to 20% of a standard deviation, equal to about half the attainment gap between poor and non-poor students

Nursing and euthanasia : a narrative review of the nursing ethics literature

Background: Medical Assistance in Dying, also known as euthanasia or assisted suicide, is expanding internationally. Canada is the first country to permit Nurse Practitioners to provide euthanasia. These developments highlight the need for nurses to reflect upon the moral and ethical issues that euthanasia presents for nursing practice. Purpose: The purpose of this article is to provide a narrative review of the ethical arguments surrounding euthanasia in relationship to nursing practice. Methods: Systematic search and narrative review. Nine electronic databases were searched using vocabulary developed from a stage 1 search of Medline and CINAHL. Articles that analysed a focused ethical question related to euthanasia in the context of nursing practice were included. Articles were synthesized to provide an overview of the literature of nursing ethics and euthanasia. Ethical Considerations: This review was conducted as per established scientific guidelines. We have tried to be fair and respectful to the authors discussed. Findings: Forty-three articles were identified and arranged inductively into four themes: arguments from the nature of nursing; arguments from ethical principles, concepts and theories; arguments for moral consistency; and arguments from the nature of the social good. Key considerations included nursing's moral ontology, the nurse-patient relationship, potential impact on the profession, ethical principles and theories, moral culpability for acts versus omissions, the role of intention and the nature of the society in which euthanasia would be enacted. In many cases, the same assumptions, values, principles and theories were used to argue both for and against euthanasia. Discussion: The review identified a relative paucity of literature in light of the expansion of euthanasia internationally. However, the literature provided a fulsome range of positions for nurses to consider as they reflect on their own participation in euthanasia. Many of the arguments reviewed were not nursing-specific, but rather are relevant across healthcare disciplines. Arguments explicitly grounded within the nature of nursing and nurse-patient relationships warrant further exploration

(Kid) Gloves On or Off? Academic Conflict in Research Articles Across the Disciplines

El estudio interdisciplinar que se presenta en este artículo continúa en la línea de recientes investigaciones del conflicto académico. Examinamos artículos de investigación de seis disciplinas distintas. De los datos obtenidos, desarrollamos una taxonomía de las estrategias retóricas que emplean los autores en estos campos para expresar el conflicto académico, incluyendo el concepto de mediación del “redactor” en la expresión de la crítica. La aplicación de esta taxonomía mostró que disciplinas con contactos fuera de la comunidad académica normalmente evitaban o mitigaban la crítica, pero por otro lado no se pudo establecer ninguna otra correlación. Sugerimos que sucesivas investigaciones deberían aplicar un enfoque más cualitativo y tener más en cuenta la recepción.The interdisciplinary study of academic conflict (AC) presented in this paper expands on a growing body of research. We examined research articles from six distinct disciplines. From the data obtained, we developed a taxonomy of the rhetorical strategies used by the writers in these fields, expanding on earlier work by introducing the concept of writer mediation. The application of this taxonomy to the disciplines showed that those with extra-mural ties were more likely to avoid or mitigate AC, but few other correlations were discernible. It is suggested that future research on AC should take a qualitative approach and that more attention should be paid to reception

The design and implementation of an English for Research Publication Purposes course: A corpus-based genre-analytic pedagogical intervention

The pressure on scholars who use English as an Additional Language (EAL) to publish their research in English-medium journals has recently been extended to those postgraduate students who seek to complete their PhD programmes. However, in higher education institutions worldwide, few training courses on English for Research Publication Purposes (ERPP) are being offered in order to provide students with effective rhetorical strategies which could facilitate the integration in their disciplinary communities. In this paper we report on the design and implementation of an ERPP training course for doctoral students in the fields of Arts and Humanities, which is based on the prior compilation of a corpus of research articles selected by the participants, a genre-analysis of the texts and a critical-pragmatic approach to the teaching of the socio-cultural features that underpin the whole process of publishing one’s research. On the basis of the analysis of the responses to a post-course evaluation questionnaire we also aim to examine the participants’ perceptions of the pedagogical intervention. The results indicate that, through their active participation in the course, the students acknowledge having gained a better understanding of the socio-pragmatic context involved in the publishing process, including awareness of the predominant rhetorical structures of research articles and abstracts, the prevalent academic practices in both national and international settings, and of potential variation in communicative strategies in their specific disciplinary areas.  La presión sobre los académicos que usan el inglés como segunda lengua para que publiquen sus investigaciones en revistas en inglés se ha extendido recientemente a los estudiantes de posgrado inscritos en programas de doctorado. Sin embargo, en las instituciones de educación superior de todo el mundo, se ofrecen pocos cursos de formación en English for Research Publication Purposes (ERPP) con el objetivo de proporcionar a los estudiantes estrategias retóricas efectivas que podrían facilitarles la integración en sus comunidades disciplinarias. En este artículo presentamos el diseño e implementación de un curso de formación en ERPP, dirigido a estudiantes de doctorado en Artes y Humanidades, que se basa en la recopilación previa de un corpus de artículos de investigación seleccionados por los mismos participantes, un análisis de género de los textos y un enfoque crítico-pragmático para la enseñanza de las características socioculturales que sustentan todo el proceso de publicación de la propia investigación. Basándonos en el análisis de las respuestas a un cuestionario de evaluación del curso, también pretendemos indagar en las percepciones de los participantes en relación con la intervención pedagógica. Los resultados indican que, mediante la participación activa en el curso, los estudiantes reconocen haber adquirido una mayor comprensión del contexto socio-pragmático relacionado con el proceso de publicación, incluyendo un mayor entendimiento de las estructuras retóricas predominantes en los artículos de investigación y resúmenes, de las prácticas académicas prevalentes a nivel nacional e internacional, y de la potencial variación de estrategias comunicativas en sus áreas disciplinarias específicas. &nbsp

Spanish researchers’ perceived difficulty writing research articles for English-medium journals: the impact of proficiency in English versus publication experience

Previous quantitative studies suggest that the burden researchers who use English as an additional language perceive when writing research articles (RAs) for publication in English (as L2) is 24% greater than the burden they perceive when they write RAs for publication in their L1. It remains unclear precisely which aspects of research article (RA) writing in English present these writers with the greatest challenge and just why they perceive this increase in difficulty. A structured questionnaire comprising thirty-seven questions about researchers’ publication experiences in scientific journals in English and in Spanish was designed and sent out to all (n = 8,794) Spanish postdoctoral researchers at one research-only institution and four universities in Spain, yielding responses from 1,717 researchers. Our first results show that the discussion is the section that is perceived as more difficult to write for English-medium journals, across the four broad knowledge areas in a way that cannot be fully explained by their lower level of proficiency in English (as L2). This article proposes the rhetorical transfer hypothesis as a possible explanation for their additional difficulty. Our results also reveal that their increased perceived difficulty writing RA discussions in English (as L2) does not decrease noticeably until Spanish researchers report high or very high levels of proficiency in English (as L2) for academic or general purposes or have published on average at least 37 RAs as corresponding author in English-medium journals over the last ten years. Implications for English for Academic Purposes (EAP) research and pedagogy are discussed

Identifying Spanish researchers’ needs for training in English for Research Publication Purposes: Methodological aspects of a large-scale online survey

This paper mainly aims to report on the survey method employed in Phase 1 of the ENEIDA project to fulfil the following aims: a) locating those researchers at the five institutions participating in the project who might be interested in receiving ERPP training and in collaborating in subsequent phases of the project; b) identifying their specific needs vis-à-vis ERPP; and c) providing a context for future studies of Spanish-English intercultural rhetoric for research publication purposes. The paper also offers an overall characterisation of the informants to our survey, discusses some of the results to assess the relevance and viability of further phases of the project, and evaluates the database thus created. 24 researchers were first interviewed in-depth from one research-only institution and two universities. Interview responses were then used to design a structured questionnaire comprising thirty-seven questions related to both English and Spanish for research publication purposes. The questionnaire was piloted with 200 researchers selected from the total population of staff with doctorates (8,794) at the three institutions mentioned above, plus another two universities. The questionnaire was then sent out to the total population, yielding responses from 1717 researchers, which are kept in the ENEIDA Database. The findings suggest high levels of interest in ERPP amongst participants in that not only were 64% of respondents interested in future ERPP training, but also in that 96% of them were willing to receive information about how to participate in subsequent phases of the project. It is hoped that the information contained in the ENEIDA Database will allow us to: a) carry out precise needs analyses of specific groups of informants (e.g. according to specific disciplines); b) carry out in-depth studies of how relevant factors affect writing for research publication purposes of Spanish researchers, and c) design multiple case studies of their difficulties writing for research publication purposes grounded in sound researc

Spanish Researchers Publishing In Scientific Journals: Motivations, Views, Strategies, Experiences and Training Needs

In recent decades, there has been a growing move towards publication in English-medium journals among multilingual researchers and a growing demand for materials (Swales and Feak, 2004) and courses in skills relevant to publishing in English for Research Publication Purposes (ERPP) (Moreno 2011). Research into academic writing has also flourished world-wide (Swales 2004), with crosscultural and intercultural studies of academic discourse across various languages and English being an area of increasing interest (Moreno 2010). Despite this, little is known about the training needs vis-à-vis ERPP of writers for whom English is an Additional Language (EAL) and how teaching resources might best address them (Swales 2002). The present project focusses on a neglected population of EAL writers, Spanish researchers, and advocates for a critical pragmatic approach that addresses access and difference simultaneously. Thus the project highlights the importance of giving priority to those aspects of ERPP writing with which specific groups of Spanish researchers tend to have difficulties when communicating with an international audience (the intercultural perspective). Additionally, based on revealing results from Spanish-English crosscultural studies of academic discourse, the project seeks to explain some of Spanish researchers’ writing problems by virtue of the contrastive rhetoric hypothesis, according to which writers from different cultural and language backgrounds have distinct preferences for articulating messages with share a similar purpose (the crosscultural perspective). It is believed that raising Spanish researchers’ awareness of crosscultural differences in ERPP writing related to audience types (national/local versus international) will help them to produce more successful texts in the eyes of English-medium journal gatekeepers. Convinced that this type of research would benefit from interdisciplinary collaborations, the ENEIDA (Spanish team for Intercultural Studies of Academic Discourse) research group was officially set up in 2010. It consists of researchers with background and expertise in supplementary research fields from one Spanish research-only institution (the CSIC), four Spanish universities (Universidad de León, Universidad de La Laguna, Universitat Jaume I and Universidad de Zaragoza) and three foreign universities (The University of London, The University of Michigan and the Open University). The first phase of the ENEIDA project on “Rhetorical Strategies to Get Published in International Journals from a Spanish-English Intercultural Perspective (I)” (Ref.: FFI2009-08336) sets out to collect relevant data to investigate Spanish researchers’ writing difficulties publishing in English-medium international journals by means of a large-scale confidential online survey. The present panel aims to give account of the methodology used to carry out this survey and to offer first descriptive results on the basis of the responses given by the whole sample of participants