James H McDonald wrote a journal on how people see technology in an institution of learning. In his research, he investigates if the students in each environment would be more susceptible to asking for help in the less technologically driven classes. He then looks at the students well being as a whole during the lack of, or excess off technology. In addition he then compares the parents responses to their students. In the CoSy system he found that there was a major dropout rate of the students, nearly half quit their schoolings. He asked a series of questions, some being “what is computer literacy” (McDonald, 1993). McDonald went through and surveyed students, although I feel as if expert opinions could have also been a great help to him. In my own opinion I feel as if his research is in need of growth and a little more exmapnsion upon. There is great direction but I feel like there could be some possibilities that are missing and some factors that can be updated since 1993.

McDonald, J. H. (1993), The Interpenetration of Technology and Institution: An Assessment of an Educational Computer Conferencing System. NAPA Bulletin, 12: 49–65. doi:10.1525/napa.1993.12.1.49

Looking through the current periodical section in the library, I came across the journal Education vol. 131, no. 4. Within this journal I came across an article titled “Teacher Leaders Impacting School Culture” by Douglas E. Roby and found it relevant to my topic of community and education. The topic of this study focused on teachers implementing culture into classrooms to create a sustainable learning environment. Based off my reading of this study, I believe it asks the question: How can teachers pursuing a teacher leader masters degree assess their work-place culture and begin to affect school culture in a positive manner? In order to answer this question, the types of data used was reports of acts, behaviors, and events, and shallow opinions and attitudes. The author collected this data by administering the School Culture Review to 195 participants. This was a survey of 40 statements that had the participants consider characteristics of cultural norms, points being awarded for the answers (none=0, low=1, average=2, above average=3, high=4). Roby states the analysis used was, “mean scores, ranges, frequencies, and standard deviations” (2011). After separating the teachers into groups by levels of experience in the classroom, Roby compared the group’s mean scores based off the questions in the survey. Robey found the means fell within the 80-119 point range, and means below 80 revealed a “low functioning culture”, and a mean below 41 meant “the school culture is dysfunctional” (2011). Roby concluded the length of teaching experience was not a factor in rating school climate. Roby did, however, find teacher isolation is a major concern. Other concerns included: “opportunities for informal leadership, climate of physical plant [campus], trust, relationships, and support” (2011). Moving forward, it is suggested teachers and administrators create a clear form of communication to get to the root of key issues, build trust, and strengthen relationships in the workplace.

Roby, D.E. (2011). Teacher leaders impacting school culture. Education, 131(4), 782-790.

Waasdorp, Tracy Evian, and Catherine P. Bradshaw. 2011 “Examining Student Responses to Frequent Bullying: A Latent Class Approach” Journal of Educational Psychology 103 (2): 336-352. doi: 10.1037/a0022747.

Research on bullying is necessary to answer questions about how to prevent and deal with this major issue that is happening to our children. Because I did my first journal exercise on this same topic, I was able to find another interesting and relevant article from browsing the table of contents of the same Journal of Education Psychology issue for this exercise. The previous one I talked about deals with how parents respond to their children’s victimization. This one deals with the students’ response instead. This study is from two out three of the authors of the last article. Both of these articles were found in the Armacost Library Bound Periodicals section (LB 1051 .A2 J6).

Here the authors set out to find a pattern in the ways children respond to victimization.This study has three research questions in the form of three hypothesis. The primary one asked whether or not “discrete patterns” of responses would emerge. The patterns they were looking for were seeking of social support, aggressive, and passive response. From the previously published literature on this topic, they expect to see a difference in responses by gender and school level. The second research question inquired if the way children respond are affected by forms or frequency of bullying and if the victims were also bullies. The third question asked if the aggressive or passive was more dangerous.

To collect the reports of acts and behavior, the data gathering method that the author chose was to use an anonymous online survey in a Maryland public school district. Although many students completed the survey, the author wound up with a subsample of 4,312 bullied students after excluding those who were not victimized. The students answered questions about their demographic information, about how they responded to being bullied, about whether they externalized or internalized their problems, how they were bullied and how often they were bullied, and whether they have bullied others. The authors analyzed the data using both descriptive analysis and the Latent Class Approach with the Mplus 5.21 statistical program.

The result of their research found four patterns of responses, as opposed to the hypothesized three. Most students ignore the bully. The smaller group of aggressive responders differed in each gender groups–boys preferred to be more physically aggressive whereas girls were more verbal. The last two types of options were actively problem-solving by telling the bully to stop and support seeking from authority figures or friends; however, there was no pattern of one group that primarily chose this approach. There was another small group, called the undifferentiated/high class that endorsed most or all of the possible responses. This group showed the most internalizing and externalizing symptoms. The author theorized that ignoring/walking away is the more effective strategy for diffusing bullying and lessening social-emotional problems.

However, the limits this study had was that the authors could not confirm the causal relationship between some response strategies and social-emotional problems. They suggest longitudinal data for future research that wants to explore that relationship. Aside from the limit, this research reports clear findings on how different groups of students respond to bullying and how we can help them.

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I did not find an article that matched my topic of sustainable architecture very well. However, I did find an article about architecture in The Art Bulletin.  The article is titled “El Lissitzky’s Other Wollkenbugel: Reconstructing an Abandoned Architectural Project” by Samuel Johnson. The article talks about El Lissitzky’s creation of the horizontal skyscraper. The skyscraper is called “Wolkenbugel”. The Wolkenbugel sparked a lot of debate regarding land use, restoration, integration of transit systems, while contemplating the relative priority of form and utility in architecture. Later on in the article Lissitzky proposes a second “Wolkenbugel” design.  A drawing in the article regarding Lissitzky’s second proposed design, explains the reconstruction and new design of the second “Wolkenbugel”. The drawing also helps to explain the attitudes, Constructivism and working process towards the second “Wolkenbugel”. I think the question in this article would be “How can the second “Wolkenbugel” structure fix the problems of transit, land-use and safety… etc. that the first “Wolkenbugel” brought forth?” For this question you would use expert knowledge (particularly someone good in restoration or an architectural engineer). You would need to gather architectural data from a number of people, regarding how to make the new project better. You would then analyze the data and come up with a plan on how to safely and effectively create the new building. This research of this article brings up interesting points regarding restoration and reconstruction in architecture. I think that my classmates the entire reconstruction process to be interesting, specifically how much thought, time and money goes into recreating and bettering architecture.

Johnson, S. (2017). El Lissitzky’s other wolkenbügel: Reconstructing an abandoned architectural project. Art Bulletin, 99(3), 147-169.

Reed, W. Robert. “The Determinants of U.S. State Economic Growth: A Less Extreme Bounds Analysis.” Economic Inquiry47, no. 4 (October 2009): 685-700.

Since there are not many academic journals in the periodical section of the library that fit my topic about consumption and socioeconomic status,  I chose an article from an economic journal. This article covers U.S. state economic growth from 1970 to 1999. It investigates the robust determinates to figure out what exactly contributed to the economic growth between that time period. The author pulls from other research and also introduces his own new method for addressing “model uncertainty” issues associated with the growth equations that he’s using. Some of the potential explanatory variables include population/labor force characteristics, economic characteristics, public sector variables, etc. The article’s research topic is U.S. economic growth factors, and the research question is “what factors caused U.S. state economic growth during 1970 to 1999?”  The type of data the author needed to collect to answer his questions is economic data. The author utilized public and private records for his data collection, including the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis. The data collected is quantitative, and it is interval/ratio data. The author uses it to compare different factors of economic growth between the set years. In my opinion, I think this research is valid and trustworthy, because the article appears in a peer-reviewed academic journal. The author pulls certain aspects of research from other related projects to help his own research, and also implements new strategies and methods for determining the characteristics of economic growth.

I have been going through my articles and books that I found my initial information to see which information will help in answering my research question. I have found an interesting point of view from the book, Teaching for the Commons: Place, Pride, and the Renewal of Community. As my focus has shifted slightly from studying a teaching style purely created for this research to place-based education, I have been looking more for articles  that describe a more local approach to educating students.

In this book, written by Paul Theobald, I have found information about schools that implement a place-based education in their own classrooms. This is supposed to help the students to revitalize their eagerness to learn, but also to renew the surrounding community as it mentions in the title. Place-based learning is all about involving the whole community, to bring together the different resources that are offered and show students how they can help and apply knowledge that they learn in school to the outside world. This is not incredibly new to me however, so the most interesting aspect for me in utilizing this text is to research and study the way that the surrounding community also benefits from this kind of educational implementation. My research question is solely about the community building and academic success of the students. However, I believe that the information I could learn from this text about how a place-based education not only benefits students and the classroom community, but also the outside community, will give my work more of a persuasive tone. This is to convince schools and communities about the true worth of a place based education so that my work will not just be read, it will be analyzed and accepted, hopefully, into other communities and classrooms.

The next articles I would like to find will be more about statistics and documented information about different factors that researchers have found to help boost the test scores and academic success of elementary school students.

Citation:

Theobald, Paul. Teaching the Commons: Place, Pride, and the Renewal of Westview                       Press, 5500 Central Avenue, Boulder, CO 80301-2877., 1997. Print.

The journal article I found this week that relates to my research topic is titled “Gender and Violence Risk Assessment in Prison” written by Janet Warren, James Wellbeloved-Stone, Park Dietz, and Sara Millspaugh. The study examines “violence perpetuated during incarceration by female and male inmates”. They looked into 3 types of violence: threatened, physical, and sexual. They measured these types of violence in 2 ways: inmate self-report and formal institutional fractions. This study also seeks to assess the risk of prison violence for future references and either prevent it from happening or reduce the occurrence of it. This is especially true in the case of sexual assault in prisons in an effort to prevent, detect, and respond to prison rape. The study design  examines the effect of gender on violence risk assessments. They researched the perpetration of violence by male and female inmates at low-, medium, and high security prisons across 2 states in the United States. The study participants were collected through a random sample of male and female prisoners. The inmates who were interested in participating in the research were provided with an explanation of the study and asked to sign consent forms. After this, the investigators interviewed the selected inmates. These interviews took about 3.5 hours each. The other data that the investigators collected came from either self reported physical fights by the inmates themselves, or through surveys/ questionnaires that asked about sexual violence. They used statistical analysis and input it in a chart to analyze the data. However, race was not taken into account when they collected this data. I think the research was conducted well, however it would have been interesting and possibly more enlightening to intersect race and gender in the study.

Warren, J. I., Wellbeloved-Stone, J. M., Dietz, P. E., & Millspaugh, S. B. (2017, November 27). Gender and Violence Risk Assessment in Prisons. Psychological Services. Advance online publication. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/ser0000217

I was not able to find an article in a printed scholarly journal that directly related to my topic (birthing decisions), but I found an article in The Journal of Educational Psychology that seemed appropriate enough since it is about parenting.  The article is titled “The Differential Impact of Early Father and Mother Involvement on Later Student Achievement”, and it is by Brent A. McBride, W. Justin Dyer, Ying Liu, Geoffrey L. Brown, and Sungjin Hong. The topic of the article is student success. The article explains a study that was conducted in order to determine if there is a relationship between parenting in the early stages of a child’s life and their success in the future, as well as parents involvement in their child’s future schooling. The first part of the study was to understand how involved parents were in their children’s life, and the second part of the study analyzed test scores from the schools. The type of data needed for the first part of this study was reports of acts, behavior, or events, and it was collected through questionnaires. The type of data that was needed for the second part of the study was organizational data, which was collected with private and public records. All of the data was analyzed with a program called Mplus to see if there was a correlation between parental involvement and student success.

In the questionnaires, parents were asked how often they engage with their children and their activities, the limits they set for their children, how affectionate they are with them, as well as how often they participate in school activities (e.g. volunteering, parent-teacher meetings, etc.) on a 0-5 point scale. Data about student success was gathered from the CDS (Child Development Services) standardized test scores. All of the gathered data was compared in tables. The study concluded that parental involvement in early life and school life does effect student success.

I think the study was fascinating, however I wish there was more information from the parents. Instead of having the parents answer the questionnaires on a 0-5 scale, it would have been interesting to have more detailed information. However it would be difficult with the amount of people that were involved in the study.

This article is primary literature.

Citation:

Mcbride, Brent A., W. Justin Dyer, Ying Liu, Geoffrey L. Brown, and Sungjin Hong. 2009. “The Differential Impact of Early Father and Mother Involvement on Later Student Achievement.” Journal of Educational Psychology volume 101(2). 498-508.

Sine I have decided to focus my study on mental illness, I thought it would be interesting to read an article focused on learning disabilities and anxiety. The article I found is titled, “Learning Disabilities and Anxiety: A Meta-Analysis” that came from the journal “Journal of Learning Disabilities” on page 3-7. The contributing authors were Jason M. Nelson and Hannah Harwood.

Nelson, Jason M., and Hannah Harwood. “Learning Disabilities and Anxiety: A Meta-Analysis.” Journal of Learning Disabilities44, no. 1 (2010): 3-17. Doi:10.1177/0022219409359939.

This article is studying kids with learning disabilities compared to those who do not have learning disabilities to see if there is a difference in their anxiety levels. The researched 58 studies out of 533 and their results proved that students who had a learning disability had a higher level of anxiety. The articles research question is “Does having a learning disability effect ones anxiety level?” The type of data needed to conduct this study in order to answer the question is reports of acts, behaviors, and events. The type of data gathering method used by the researches was using private and public records. They researched several different databases throughout libraries from 1977 (because this was the first year learning disabilities became a special education classification) to 2007. The data method analysis used would be categorical data because they are being organized into specific groups.

I think this research was done well because they compared several different reports over a span of 30 years. They were also precisely specific with the forms of data they used. After a series of looking through hundreds of databases and articles they found 58 that met their criteria. For example, if they found a study that had used people from a previous study they would exclude it. Also if they found one that did not use a control group they excluded the study. They wanted to be sure what they were researching from past studies would be able to properly answer their research question. Something I found interesting was that they looked at students with learning disabilities and their anxiety levels to see their informant type. They wanted to know whether it was self-report, teacher, hospital, parent, ect. making the report. I found this interesting because I never thought how the answers could change because each person, including yourself sees you in a different setting. Your teacher does not see you in the same setting as your mom, but a doctor is not going to see you in the same setting as your teacher causing some answers and levels to vary.

Continuing with my topic of the challenges facing today’s American ranchers and farmers, I revisited the journal Rural Sociology and discovered yet another relevant article. In the June 2016, Volume 81, Number 2 print I found an article titled, “Environmental Harm and ‘the Good Farmer’: Conceptualizing Discourses of Environmental Sustainability in the Beef Industry” written by Anna Kessler, John R. Parkins and Emily Huddart Kennedy. In this piece, the authors analyze the struggle of producing beef while being environmentally conscious. Kessler et al. pose three research questions: “(1) What are the discourses that producers draw on to support their self-perceptions as stewards of the land, (2) how are these discourses used by producers to negotiate and reconcile their involvement in a system that contributes to environmental degradation, and (3) what are key elements to interpreting these discourses of sustainability?” (Kessler et al. 2016: 174).

In order to answer these questions, the authors analyze secondary sources while also conducting their own in-depth interviews, utilizing reports of acts, behaviors and events and focused ethnography. The secondary sources come in the form of reports of interviews and focus groups made of farmers (specifically calf and cow producers). When conducting their own personal interviews, Kessler et al. used referral sampling and accumulated a sample of 17 cow and calf producers in Alberta, Canada with whom they conducted semi-structured interviews. They assigned pseudonyms to the participants in order to remain ethical. After collecting their data via personal interviews, Kessler et al. used thematic analysis to look at repeated patters. The interviews were coded then categorized into themes.

This article provided some very interesting insights into the struggles many farmers and ranchers face when it comes to producing beef while also trying to help the environment. Focus is placed on the use of biotechnology and the debate surrounding its positive effects on the environment but negative effects on farming practices and animal welfare. Kessler et al. write on the turmoil facing farmers who want to be seen as the ‘good farmer’ and act in environmentally conscious ways while still having high levels of productivity. Many farmers are trying to find a balance and a way to be both because without a healthy environment, there would be nothing to produce. While this study focused on farmers in Canada, this is a very relevant issue in the United States as well. As people are becoming more environmentally conscious and more aware of where their food is coming from and how it is being raised, farmers and ranchers are needing to keep up with the changing demands of consumers.

Kessler, Anna; Parkins R. John; Kennedy Huddart Emily. 2016. “Environmental Harm and ‘theGood Farmer’: Conceptualizing Discourses of Environmental Sustainability in the Beef Industry.” Rural Sociology81(2):172-193.