Making the Journey Personal: A Self-Study of the Intersections of Curriculum, Practice, and Identity

The Obama\u27s unveiled their official portraits for the National Portrait Gallery in 2018, forever changing the presidential tone by being the first portraits of Black Americans in these roles but also because they selected two Black artists to depict them, Kehinde Wiley and Amy Sherald. As a White woman, secondary school art educator of diverse students, I witnessed this event as a significant moment in time. Discussing what was immediately visible: portraiture, compositional formats, and use of pattern, but I was unsure how to connect the layered meanings of each portrait. As a veteran teacher, I had implemented different curricula yet had questioned what and how I taught influenced by my White identity. Ongoing growth needed to continue around social justice work and inequities by examining how identity intertwined with curriculum and pedagogy. This led to a qualitative inquiry of my curriculum choices and pedagogical practices to (a) document curriculum choices and pedagogical practices, and (b) analyze this data to identify affordances, limitations, and tensions. The study pulled from postmodernism augmented by critical art pedagogy, critical social justice, and critical whiteness. The self-study, in combination with an arts-based methodology, focused on Titus Kaphar, a contemporary artist who addressed racial inequities in their art. Interweaving self-study reflections with collages facilitated unpacking layers of my identity through vulnerability and listening to what was spoken as much as to what was unsaid. Across multiple rounds of coding, three intersections emerged in response to the research questions: identity/curriculum, identity/practice, and identity/artmaking. Learning how my White identity informed each intersection proffered a lens on biases and colorblindness. This study served to remind me that as I continue to challenge the presence of my Whiteness, my biases, and my colorblindness with critical humility –– it is a journey, not a destination

Pennsylvania Folklife Vol. 34, No. 4

• Coverlets • Sign Painting • Reverse Painting on Glass • Kites • Snake Lore • Horncraft • Weathervanes and Country Signs • Festival Focus • Sheep Shearing & Natural Knits • Bread Baking Among the Pennsylvania Dutch • The Craft of Rushing • Toy Soldier Casting • Pennsylvania Dutch Humor • Fireside Brooms and Whirligigs • Springerlehttps://digitalcommons.ursinus.edu/pafolklifemag/1108/thumbnail.jp

Averting Lemur Extinctions amid Madagascar\u27s Political Crisis

The most threatened mammal group on Earth, Madagascar’s five endemic lemur families (lemurs are found nowhere else), represent more than 20% of the world’s primate species and 30% of family-level diversity. This combination of diversity and uniqueness is unmatched by any other country—remarkable considering that Madagascar is only 1.3 to 2.9% the size of the Neotropics, Africa, or Asia, the other three landmasses where nonhuman primates occur. But lemurs face extinction risks driven by human disturbance of forest habitats. We discuss these challenges and reasons for hope in light of site-specific, local actions proposed in an emergency conservation action plan

Competition and Combative Advertising: An Historical Analysis

Fred K. Beard (PhD, University of Oklahoma) is a professor of advertising in the Gaylord College of Journalism and Mass Communication, University of Oklahoma. His research interests include comparative advertising, advertising humor, and advertising history. His work has appeared in the Journal of Advertising, the Journal of Advertising Research, the Journal of Business Ethics, the Journal of Business Research, Journalism History, the Journal of Historical Research in Marketing, the Journal of Macromarketing, and the Journal of Marketing Communications, among others.Yeshttps://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/manuscript-submission-guideline

Making the Journey Personal: A Self-Study of the Intersections of Curriculum, Practice, and Identity

The Obama\u27s unveiled their official portraits for the National Portrait Gallery in 2018, forever changing the presidential tone by being the first portraits of Black Americans in these roles but also because they selected two Black artists to depict them, Kehinde Wiley and Amy Sherald. As a White woman, secondary school art educator of diverse students, I witnessed this event as a significant moment in time. Discussing what was immediately visible: portraiture, compositional formats, and use of pattern, but I was unsure how to connect the layered meanings of each portrait. As a veteran teacher, I had implemented different curricula yet had questioned what and how I taught influenced by my White identity. Ongoing growth needed to continue around social justice work and inequities by examining how identity intertwined with curriculum and pedagogy. This led to a qualitative inquiry of my curriculum choices and pedagogical practices to (a) document curriculum choices and pedagogical practices, and (b) analyze this data to identify affordances, limitations, and tensions. The study pulled from postmodernism augmented by critical art pedagogy, critical social justice, and critical whiteness. The self-study, in combination with an arts-based methodology, focused on Titus Kaphar, a contemporary artist who addressed racial inequities in their art. Interweaving self-study reflections with collages facilitated unpacking layers of my identity through vulnerability and listening to what was spoken as much as to what was unsaid. Across multiple rounds of coding, three intersections emerged in response to the research questions: identity/curriculum, identity/practice, and identity/artmaking. Learning how my White identity informed each intersection proffered a lens on biases and colorblindness. This study served to remind me that as I continue to challenge the presence of my Whiteness, my biases, and my colorblindness with critical humility –– it is a journey, not a destination

Tropical field stations yield high conservation return on investment

Conservation funding is currently limited; cost-effective conservation solutions are essential. We suggest that the thousands of field stations worldwide can play key roles at the frontline of biodiversity conservation and have high intrinsic value. We assessed field stations’ conservation return on investment and explored the impact of COVID-19. We surveyed leaders of field stations across tropical regions that host primate research; 157 field stations in 56 countries responded. Respondents reported improved habitat quality and reduced hunting rates at over 80% of field stations and lower operational costs per km2 than protected areas, yet half of those surveyed have less funding now than in 2019. Spatial analyses support field station presence as reducing deforestation. These ‘earth observatories’ provide a high return on investment; we advocate for increased support of field station programs and for governments to support their vital conservation efforts by investing accordingly

Open data from the first and second observing runs of Advanced LIGO and Advanced Virgo

Advanced LIGO and Advanced Virgo are monitoring the sky and collecting gravitational-wave strain data with sufficient sensitivity to detect signals routinely. In this paper we describe the data recorded by these instruments during their first and second observing runs. The main data products are gravitational-wave strain time series sampled at 16384 Hz. The datasets that include this strain measurement can be freely accessed through the Gravitational Wave Open Science Center at http://gw-openscience.org, together with data-quality information essential for the analysis of LIGO and Virgo data, documentation, tutorials, and supporting software