The social construction of identity in nineteenth century geography schoolbooks

This study analyzes the social construction of identity in geography schoolbooks published in the United States between 1802 and 1897. A growing literature on recognizing differences among varying and shifting identities informs this dissertation. During the nineteenth century, the United States was in the process of constructing a self-image or national identity, and the social, cultural, political, and economic interests of this time shaped the character of this national identity. The public education system was one site where this image construction took place. Through its construction and maintenance in schools, particularly in textbooks, a national identity was passed on to succeeding generations. Geography schoolbooks emphasized people and places, delineating identities by establishing a Eurocentric, middle-class, masculinist, Protestant norm, and then specifying variance and deficiencies from and to that norm. After examining over three-hundred geography schoolbooks, I chose nineteen textbooks that I decided reflect the overall character of nineteenth century geography schoolbooks published in the United States for common schools. Geared towards younger learners, these books contained representations of the world for the student. Content analysis of visual and written representations allows us to see how the variables of class, religion, gender, and race intersected and influenced each other as they were used to construct an ideal national identity for the United States. Visual imagery often regarded as decorative enhancement for the written text receives much attention in this study because visuals convey immediate information. Graphic images in these schoolbooks sometimes enhanced written text, but quite often they stood alone as the single source of information, thus they deserve critical analysis. vu Representations both visual and written, were used to construct a national identity that encouraged the nation\u27s youth to see explicitly what they were and what they were not. Through the images depicted of the United States and the world beyond, geography schoolbooks molded Americans\u27 views of themselves by describing and defining the United States as well as by highlighting supposed differences between their country and other parts of the world

Becoming Women Engineers: Dismantled Notions and Distorted Perspectives

In an investigation of (non-international) undergraduate students’ experiences with their engineering major, we interviewed 10 young women asking questions about their interactions with instructors, academic successes/struggles, and any challenges they felt they had faced as women/girls in engineering. Initial findings echoed those in previous research serving to affirm held notions of interventions that would improve women/girls’ experiences in engineering. In reflecting on the research methods and troubling its design, we realized that we had approached the data with limited perspectives. A new approach to analysis opened up concepts and yielded findings that offer a different course of action for abating the STEM crisis. Identity/being and becoming for our participants were framed in reference to different entities and were intermingled with themes of prestige, proof of self, and womaness. Our study invites us to look for solutions to recruitment/retention problems in creative ways. More camps, role models, or extracurricular involvement do not meet the supports these women/girls need. Instead of striving for proportionality, perhaps we should shift the conversation to address the multidimensional ways of being constituted and reconstituted by discursive practices that are always already generating gendered positionings. Let’s equip our students and colleagues with ways of recognizing and questioning these entanglements, not in order to solve a problem, but rather to work through a problem and think more about the processes of being and becoming

A Multivariate Approach to a Meta-Analytic Review of the Effectiveness of the D.A.R.E. Program

The Drug Abuse Resistance Education (D.A.R.E.) program is a widespread but controversial school-based drug prevention program in the United States as well as in many other countries. The present multivariate meta-analysis reviewed 20 studies that assessed the effectiveness of the D.A.R.E. program in the United States. The results showed that the effects of the D.A.R.E. program on drug use did not vary across the studies with a less than small overall effect while the effects on psychosocial behavior varied with still a less than small overall effect. In addition, the characteristics of the studies significantly explained the variation of the heterogeneous effects on psychosocial behavior, which provides empirical evidence for improving the school-based drug prevention program

Orientalism(s), World Geography Textbooks, and Temporal Paradox: Questioning Representations of Southwest Asia and North Africa

In this critical discourse analysis of six high-school world geography textbooks, we explore how constructions and representations of North Africa and Southwest Asia have served to reinforce Orientalist discourse in formal curriculum. Visual and written representations in these textbooks were overwhelmingly confounded by a traditional/modern dichotomy that constructed a paradoxical “Muslim world.” Gender and religion coding perpetuated the temporal paradox with women and Islam used as symbols of the traditional in need of western modernization. This paper begins with a contextualization of the study of textbooks and addresses investigations of media portrayals of Muslims, Arabs, and Islam. We then describe our theoretical grounding in criticalist perspectives and detail methods of analysis. Lastly, we present the three themes revealed through analysis and conclude with recommendations for enhancing geographic literacy in schools

Students’ perceived benefits of chess: Differences across age and gender

The purpose of this study was to determine differences in students’ perceived benefits of chess by gender and age after being exposed to chess during instruction for an entire academic year as part of a Chess in Schools initiative in a southeastern state of the United States. Data were collected during the 2017–201 8 academic year. The sample consisted of 1,286 students across elementary, middle, and high school levels. Data were collected using a retrospective pretest survey. Seven constructs of the students’ perceptions were generated (increased enjoyment of mathematics, improvement in academic self-efficacy, improvement in collaborative skills, improvement in organizational skills, enjoyment of chess, confidence in chess playing ability, and increased engagement in learning), and all had high reliability coefficients. Data were analyzed using a two-way multivariate analysis of variance. The results showed that elementary students consistently tended to have higher ratings of perceived benefits than middle and high school students across all constructs. The differences between middle and high school students were low and not statistically significant

Students’ perceived benefits of chess: Differences across age and gender

The purpose of this study was to determine differences in students’ perceived benefits of chess by gender and age after being exposed to chess during instruction for an entire academic year as part of a Chess in Schools initiative in a southeastern state of the United States. Data were collected during the 2017–201 8 academic year. The sample consisted of 1,286 students across elementary, middle, and high school levels. Data were collected using a retrospective pretest survey. Seven constructs of the students’ perceptions were generated (increased enjoyment of mathematics, improvement in academic self-efficacy, improvement in collaborative skills, improvement in organizational skills, enjoyment of chess, confidence in chess playing ability, and increased engagement in learning), and all had high reliability coefficients. Data were analyzed using a two-way multivariate analysis of variance. The results showed that elementary students consistently tended to have higher ratings of perceived benefits than middle and high school students across all constructs. The differences between middle and high school students were low and not statistically significant