Editorial Policy, Religious Freedom Acts and Denying Access to Same-Sex Marriage

Generations of readers have bought and shared space inside the wedding pages in newspapers, and the introduction of same-sex wedding announcements has not always been granted immediate access. Although polls show same-sex marriage has become more generally accepted by society, the lifestyle and complete inclusion have been perceived as being directly challenged by newspaper policies and legislative efforts to pass religious freedom restoration acts. This paper explores the history of the wedding lifestyles pages, the evolution of media coverage surrounding lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) issues and the recent wave of a religious freedom restoration act in Indiana and the subsequent media coverage that followed

A Name Change May Be a Start, but It Is Not Enough

Since the broadcast killing of George Floyd by four Minneapolis police officers on May 25, all levels of government, and institutions of every kind, have scrambled with breakneck speed to confront their own ties to America’s most deeply entrenched demons: White supremacy and systematic racism. Washington and Lee has certainly not been exempt from this reckoning. A majority of its faculty and student body have already passed resolutions calling for the removal of Robert E. Lee’s name from the university. As a direct descendent of those enslaved by the school, I commend these resolutions; yet, I strongly offer that a name change may be a start, but it is not enough to reconcile the sins of the past

Navigating the Intersections of Migration and Motherhood in Online Communities: Digital Community Mothering and Migrant Maternal Imaginaries

This thesis explores the experiences of contemporary migrant mothers in Australia, through the lens of their online communities. Facebook groups created by and for migrant mothers from particular national, ethnic or linguistic communities have proliferated in the last decade. The analysis of these groups acts as a springboard to investigate how migrant mothers in Australia experience and respond to migration and motherhood, centring on four key areas: community-building and leadership; friendship and sociality; the emotions of motherhood and migration; and migrant mothers’ maternal practices, narratives and imaginaries.Literature and concepts from three distinct fields – motherhood studies, migration research and digital sociology – inform the research. Understandings of migration are extended and troubled by highlighting the importance of maternal social connection, not simply in relation to their partners and children or to the labour market, but also between mothers. The investigation of the role of migrant maternal Facebook groups in the everyday lives of migrant mothers also extends scholarship in digital sociology by bringing feminist, matricentric (A. O'Reilly 2016) and intersectional approaches into conversation with key themes relating to belonging, mobility and connection.The thesis involved a scoping exercise which mapped Australian online migrant mother’s groups, an online survey of women ‘mothering away from home’ , and semi-structured interviews with 41 migrant mothers from ten different countries living in Sydney and Melbourne, who were members of migrant mothers’ online groups. Fifteen of the interviewees held an administrator role in their group, and the digital and emotional labour involved in managing the groups became a central theme. The migrant maternal narratives elicited across the study demonstrate the role of the digital in managing the ruptures and connections of migrant motherhood. Mothers, as both consumers and producers of digital information and community, are shown to be working to effect settlement and create belonging for themselves and others.This thesis works to bring mothers out from the shadows of migration and digital social research. In order to achieve the task of making migrant mothers visible, new concepts have been introduced, such as ‘digital community mothering’, ‘relational settlement’, ‘affective settlement’ and ‘migrant maternal imagined communities’. The groups are representations of their collective maternal imaginary, as well as mechanisms for forging ‘real’ connections

Modeling Flexibility for Middle Level Teacher Candidates during the COVID-19 Pandemic

Faced with school closures in spring of 2020 due to COVID-19, middle level teacher candidates were left with no way to finish their field experience. The challenge continued into the fall with many schools providing only virtual learning and some not allowing visitors on campus. This article describes the steps one university middle level program implemented to create an engaging, meaningful field experience while modeling flexibility for the teacher candidates

Teacher Teams That Work

Teaming in middle schools is considered by many to be a best practice strategy in meeting the unique needs of the adolescent learner. Systems must be in place to support teacher teams as they work towards become a functioning unit. Administrators can assist teacher teams through providing training on the evolutional phases that teams will naturally move through as well as how to negotiate team decision making. This article reviewed the phases that teams experience as they develop and the variety of personalities and roles that team members play in teams. Tips for working towards building successful teams in the middle school are provided

The Impacts of Integrated Teaching in the Elementary Classroom

The world in which our students live, and the one which they will inherit, is integrated and cross-disciplinary. In schools, we break the world down into fragments, but the preference is to consider phenomena coherently-to identify the pattern and structure with context as a clue. (Jones and Thomas, 2006, p. 64). Due to the current trends of standardized testing, non-testable subjects such as art and social studies have taken a backseat in the elementary classroom. The purpose of this research is to attempt to overcome these pressures through the approach of integrated, or multi-subject, teaching. My research was conducted in two separate classrooms, kindergarten and the fourth grade. Through teaching multiple lessons students were exposed to an integrated approach to learning. These lessons centered on pulling elements of core subjects such as math and language arts into lessons focused on non-testable areas like art and social studies. By doing this I hoped to give merit to these subjects while building connections between the different areas of academia as well as the real world

Prospectus, June 18, 2003

https://spark.parkland.edu/prospectus_2003/1015/thumbnail.jp

Criminal trials in black and white: Exploring meaning making about defendants and criminal trials in newspaper court reporting narratives in New South Wales

This study investigates the construction of newspaper court reports as an act of ‘meaning making’. Through a qualitative analysis, it seeks to develop a better understanding of how the criminal trial and defendants are represented and how meanings are embedded and advanced through newspaper court reports. Distinct from the question of what is reported about criminal proceedings, my aim is to generate insights into how the myriad contestations that occur within and surrounding criminal trials are negotiated in the construction of a newspaper court report and to theorise the possible implications of the meanings produced through those processes of construction. I conceptualise newspaper court reports as narratives and use a combination of functionalist narratology and cultural criminology to expose the barely visible and highly sophisticated ways in which narrative techniques respond to the plurality of stories that comprise a criminal trial. Focusing on seven case studies representing the defendants in five criminal trials heard in New South Wales between 1893 and 2016, I demonstrate how narrative techniques perpetuate the use of gendered expectations and idealised identities to amplify the deviance of defendants in increasingly complex ways. My analysis does not seek to draw determinative conclusions about what is communicated through newspaper court reports, but rather to understand how processes of narrative construction and meaning making operate together to create, recreate, strengthen or weaken some meanings and not others. This study makes an original contribution to knowledge that expands upon the existing literature regarding mediated representations of defendants and situates the analysis of their construction against the competing imperatives of fair trial rights and news values. The findings generate insights into the relationship between how newspaper court reporting narratives are constructed, and how meanings about cultural products such as crime and justice are negotiated and reinforced