“Engaging Diversity: Sex Education for All in California” an article included in the book The Sex Education Debates begins by discussing the sex education provided at Jefferson High a school located in California before the California Healthy Youth Act was passed; when the decision to provide comprehensive sex education was up to the district and was not mandated. Jefferson High is located in a racially, economically, ethnically, and liberally inclined district. This school was chosen to be studied as it aligned ideologically at the community, district, and state levels.

Sex education at Jefferson was provided during science by a non-profit, private sex education program. This school is similar to the two schools I am studying, the main difference being that the schools I am observing at are required now by the CHYA to provide medically accurate, comprehensive sex education and are not aligned at all levels. Using a private sex education program allowed the educator to increase the presence of discussion and debate in the classroom, as they were less constrained by social expectation than a teacher would be teaching sex ed curriculum. The program taught in both English and Spanish, which is not an option given to the schools I am observing at, although the program educators were not all fully fluent in Spanish and often struggled to provide bilingual curriculum. For students who did not speak English or Spanish, did not often participate in class. The teachers, ill prepared to instruct sex ed curriculum, did not participate in class room sessions.

“The instructors made use of a variety of pedagogical ap-proaches in the classrooms I observed: mini-lectures, small and large group discussions, and individual work; an anonymous question box; distribution of information pamphlets; and quizzes on local reproductive-health and human-sexuality resources. Many of these pedagogical tools were standard-ized across the classes and designed to provide students with opportunities to ask questions, talk with each other, and participate in student-led classroom activities. All four classes jointly attended a teen-mothers’ panel”

The curriculum is accurate and science based and meant to empower the students to seek out additional resources by providing them with options to research. The students are presented with unbiased and factual information, although sex positivity is not presented. Teen sex is viewed not as a bad thing, but as something that has bad outcomes. Students are pushed to accept this belief.  Students were instructed about, “decision making in relationships; the effects of pregnancy on future plans; the “plain facts” about STIs; basic knowledge about a range of contraceptive devices and their ef-fectiveness in preventing pregnancy and /or STIs; information about post-pregnancy options (keeping the baby, adoption, abortion); and general in-formation about sexual identity.Come On In! and Emily made assumptions about what constituted these issues, their importance in teens’ lives, and teens’ common misconceptions about them. The assumptions were shaped by mainstream scientifi c stud-ies and their conceptualizations of the problems and solutions these studies identified.”

There  were marked differences in the educators approach and the lessons taught in the higher education track classes and the lower education tracks which often included English Language Learners.

Kendall, Nancy. The Sex Education Debates. University of Chicago Press, 2012. EBSCOhost.

In the 2013 article, “The Integrative Role of Sport in Multicultural Societies”, the authors examine the role sport plays in bringing people together from different cultural backgrounds and the bonds of friendship that are created. Sports are more than just about winning and losing. Winning is always nice, it does feel good to see hard work payed off with a victory. However, when we step back and look at it from the outside sport is the vehicle that brings people together. In some cases, it can be catalyst for conversation that sparks progressive change.  They create a community of people from different upbringings and “help protect against social exclusion and facilitating inclusion” (192) and in my opinion is the purpose of them. They help give “individuals a sense of belonging” (192) and allows people to feel a part of community that normally wouldn’t have a group of people around them that supports them. Teams in some cases can become one’s family and their teammates become their brothers and sisters. And those who do participate on a team sport “experience greater interaction and may develop socially adaptive attitudes” (197) and become more open minded of other cultural backgrounds. It’s also important to note that one most important studies the authors looked at was looking at whether or not international students at US colleges, participating in sports “was used as a vehicle for adapting to a multicultural environment” (195). And it was found that “sport participation was more important for adapting to a multicultural environment rather than retaining cultural identity” (195) which tells me sports can be a vehicle that allows people to 1) have a better understanding of what’s around them and 2) can help breaks down stereotypes of people from different backgrounds.

Hatzigeorgidis, Antonis; Morela, Eleftheria Morela; Elbe, Anne-Marie; Kouli, Olga; Sanchez, Xavier. October 9, 2013. “The Integrative Role of Sport in Multicultural Societies”. Hogrefe Publishing (Germany). 18(3): 191-202. Accessed March 26, 2017. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1027/1016-9040/a000155

Gender differences in environmental behaviors in China
Authors: Chenyang Xiao and Dayong Hong
Source: Population and Environment, Vol. 32, No. 1 (September 2010), pp. 88-104 Published by: Springer

Xiao, C., & Hong, D. (2010). Gender differences in environmental behaviors in China. Population and Environment, 32(1), 88-104.

This research example was conducted by Xiao and Hong in 2010, and delves into the topic of gender differences in environmental behaviors in China. The research question they proposed asked what the gender differences were in environmental behaviors in public and private settings in China. There were multiple types of data types needed to answer the proposed research question. The data consisted of reports of acts behavior and events to test environmentally conscious behaviors in and out of household, demographic data such as employment, age, gender, income, presence of kids in a family, residence and education level, and finally deeply held opinions and attitudes to test general environmental attitudes and beliefs in the New Environmental Paradigm scale. The methods used to gather data in this experiment were surveys and questionnaires, followed by in-depth interviews. Xiao and Hong used data from the 2003 Chinese General Social Survey, and then used a topic environmental module of their own to test environmental measures with more specificity. The data was analyzed by path analyses and eventually regression analyses to determine correlations between variables of environmental consciousness. Conclusions from this test revealed that Chinese women exhibit higher participation in environmentally oriented behaviors inside the home, consistent with studies in other settings. Yet, such a gender gap in environmental behaviors is not resultant of gendered difference in environmental concern, since women express lower levels of concern when compared to Chinese men.

I think this study was well done all together, however the only issue I have with the results section is that the sample taken for the survey population only represents half of the total Chinese population. One thing I found quite interesting is the finding that higher levels of knowledge regarding environmental issues did, indeed, translate into pro-environmental behaviors.

This research focuses on the relationship between biomass smoke, coal smoke, and health in China. The purpose of this research is based on several key factors. First, unlike many other countries, there has not been any substantial research in China linking indoor pollution and its threats to health. Secondly, much of China’s rural population is still relying on biomass/coal as the primary method of heating. Thus this research has the well being of China’s non-urban population in mind. Thirdly, with China having some of the most polluted urban areas in the world, this research highlights the overlooked and underestimated health effects from indoor-pollution. Products of incomplete combustion (or PICs) are the chief culprits exacerbating domestic health issues. Specifically they are the extremely small but dangerous particulates that are not destroyed in a fireplace. They are mixed and come in many forms, such as CO2, NO2, and other carcinogenic materials. These are often products of biomass; however, coals have completely different yet equally toxic PICs such as mercury, lead, and arsenic. The article claims to find strong evidence linking these PICs to unhealthy domestic conditions. To collect this data, the research pulled from a World Bank study that analyzed poor regions in China that relied on biomass/coal to heat homes. They collected the data from actual households over a 457-day period. This research was clear with what questions it intended to answer, why this information is important, and how it was collected.

Zhang, Junfeng, and Kirk R. Smith. “Household Air Pollution from Coal and Biomass Fuels in China: Measurements, Health Impacts, and Interventions.” Environmental Health Perspectives 115, no. 6 (2007): 848-55. Accessed March 26, 2017. doi:10.1289/ehp.9479.

Author: Edward Orozco Flores and Pierrette Hondagneu-Sotelo

Title: Chicano Gang Members in Recovery: The Public Talk of Negotiating Chicano

MasculinitiesThis article is about former gang members. In this journal, there are two recovery programs that gang members could join, Homeboy Industries and Victory Outreach. The authors were looking at these two programs and how they engage Chicano gang masculinity. A lot of the time when these gang members leave the gang live they feel like they’re not masculine. These programs help them realize what it means to be a man. Things like getting a job and providing for ones on family. The research question for this study is “How do ex-gang members deal with the idea of masculinity after they leave the gang?”. The type of data needed for this study was acts, behaviors, or events. This is the type of data we need because this type of data will tell us what these ex-gang members were doing at these programs. The data gathering method that was used was an Ethnography. One of the authors Edward Orozco spent 18 months 245 hours spent on Homeboy Industries and 195 hours in Victory Outreach. He observed the men’s interactions in these spaces. When the author was doing this some of the themes he found were addiction and recovery. He coded for hegemonic masculine constructions. At Victory Outreach, he heard a lot of them say “man of god” and for Homeboy Industries it was “family man. The type of data analysis used for this study is qualitative data. There was a lot of speech in the ethnography. This research was great the authors did a great job of explaining what their goal was and they executed it properly as well.  

The article Emotional Learning Selectively and Retroactively Strengthens Memories for Related Events written by J. E. Dunsmoor, V. P. Murty, L. Davachi, and E. A. Phelps is about research on long-term memory and the way humans are able to connect irrelevant details from the past, to significant moments in the future. Their goal was to provide evidence of a generalized retroactive memory enhancement in humans that is selective to information conceptually related to a future emotional event. To do this, researchers conducted experiments in three different phases. Phase 1 subjects had to classify 60 basic-level animals and tools. In Phase 2, electric shock electrodes were attached with 30 images from one category with another 30 from an unpaired category. In the final phase, the subjects had to classify another 30 images without the electric shock electrodes. Data was gathered right after the experiment, 6 hours after, and 24 hours after. ANOVA’s and t-tests were used to find any correlations. Results showed that weak memories from the pre-conditioning session were strengthened when related information acquired emotional relevance. It was also shown that fear-conditioning memory enhancement emerged by hour 6, therefore concluding that it was not dependent on sleep consolidation. Lastly, results showed that data that was gathered later (hours 6 and24) had significantly greater memory for conditioned stimulus during pre-conditioning compared to that of data gathered immediately after.

For this research, the topic was long-term memory with emotional attachments and the research question was to ask if emotional learning selectively and retroactively strengthened memories for related events. To answer this question, the researchers needed acts, behaviors, and events to determine whether or not the different stages had any effect on their ability to recall certain things from their memory. To gather this data, researchers used detached observation, and to analyze it, the conducted ANOVA’s and t-tests to find any significance between emotional related events and weak/strong memories.

Overall, I thought this research was well carried out and interesting to read about. For further research, I think it would be intriguing to see if different types of emotions, such as negative or positive ones, could recall different types of weak memories from the past.

Dunsmoor, Joseph E., Vishnu P. Murty, Lila Davachi, and Elizabeth A. Phelps. “Emotional learning selectively and retroactively strengthens memories for related events.” Nature 520.7547 (2015): 345-48. Web. 26 Mar. 2017.

The author of this article, Alan S. Waterman, from Trenton State College, goes over people’s development of their identities and how and why they may try and change it over the course of their journey into adulthood. The foundation of the theory he is looking at is E.H. Erikson’s and then using a number of other research projects done to build off of Erikson’s findings. The author discusses the ideas and findings of when one’s identity will begin to change and the hypothesis that over time people’s progressive shifts as they get older will bring them to start thinking of what beliefs, social status, etc., that they want to commit themselves to. The piece focuses on the direction, timing of identity development, sex differences, and the identification of antecedent conditions that may have influenced the developmental pathways.

The overall topic of the article is the developmental process of one’s identity as they reach adulthood, but the question posed in it is whether or not the transition into adulthood involves a progressive strengthening in the sense of identity. Waterman is looking at whether or not direction, timing, sex, and antecedent conditions that perhaps have a hand in effecting the progression of one’s identity as they come into adulthood; to do this he gathered several studies together and in the way of meta-analysis he looked at shallow opinions & attitudes as well as deeply held opinions & attitudes (survey’s and in-depth interviews). This data was of previously done research so the author would have gotten this information from public records, then to analyze this data he would have used thematic analysis which allows him to find any themes raised in the set of texts, interview transcripts, etc.

The research was at times a bit hard to follow because of the intricate wording of the author but the overall points that he was making in each section came through and was very insightful. Something that I found quite interesting was when Waterman went over the idea that if one is given a greater range of identity alternatives in their childhood the more likely that person will undergo an identity crisis which before I may have thought the opposite.

https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Alan_Waterman2/publication/232489351_Identity_development_from_adolescence_to_adulthood_An_extension_of_theory_and_a_review_of_research/links/0fcfd50c25968422e2000000/Identity-development-from-adolescence-to-adulthood-An-extension-of-theory-and-a-review-of-research.pdf

Low-Income Immigrant Pupils Learning Vocabulary Through Digital Picture Storybooks by Marian Verhallen and Adriana Bus from Leiden University examined whether digital picture storybooks could help low-income children learn the proper amount of vocabulary prior to beginning school, lessening the chances of them developing reading difficulties. Since that often happens to children who start school with a much lower vocabulary than their classmates. In this study, the researchers examined the effects of the video storybooks on 92 five year old children, whom they repeatedly exposed to the digital storybook. After the study, it was found that the storybooks were helpful in teaching children vocabulary words, helping lessen their chances of developing reading difficulties. The type of data needed for such a research question would be acts, behavior or events since the children’s reading abilities were directly observed by the researchers. Therefore, the data-gathering method for such data would be detached observation. While the method of data analysis would be ordinal since the children’s vocabularies were ranked after the research concluded. I found this to be a very interesting research question, I never thought digital picture storybooks could help to improve children’s vocabulary so much, but it is a very innovative and easy way to expand children’s vocabulary at a young age, which I believe my classmates would find interesting as well.

Verhallen, Marian and Bus, Adriana. (2010). Low-Income Immigrant Pupils Learning Vocabulary Through Digital Picture Storybooks. Journal of Educational Psychology, Vol. 102. No. 1, pp. 54-61.

In this study a group of researchers were trying to find a mechanism or cause behind the effects of increased nitrogen disposition on fauna diversity. The researchers specified that  there had been plenty of studies done on correlational relationships between the N deposition and soil acidification and the growth of plants like algae, but there wasn’t very much on the mechanisms causing the changes in those ecosystems in any part of ecosystem ecology. But, even with their own evidence gathered from various effected an less effected areas of increased nitrogen, there was still not enough to come to a conclusion, so more studies will need to be conducted. Though they did find six mainly indirect bottlenecks that my be behind some of the mechanism behind the changes in the ecosystems due to increased nitrogen deposition.

The six bottlenecks discussed and investigated in the study were: chemical stress, a leveled and humid microclimate, decrease in reproductive habitat, changes in food plant quantity, changes in nutritional quality of food plants and changes in availability of prey or host species due to effects in the food web. The researchers found that depending on species and habitat type, different pathways play a dominant role and interference between different pathways can strengthen or weaken the net effect of Nitrogen deposition.

The research problem discussed in this piece of research was why the fauna were reacting to changes in Nitrogen deposition differently and what the driving force was. And which of the possible bottlenecks was the most prominent. The data type was most likely detached observation reports of past research on related or similar topics  Though this study did not include vary many tables or numbers for their paper, which could mean that the study was not as thorough as it could have been, but the researchers did say that  all bottlenecks were supported by peer reviewed literature, scientific evidence on the causal relationship between increased N deposition and effects on fauna in the complete causal chain was insufficient and that further research was needed. The biggest gap in knowledge  were about subtle changes in plant chemistry and changes in availability of prey and host species to higher trophic levels.

Nijssen, M. E., M. F. WallisDeVries, and H. Siepel. “Pathways for the effects of increased nitrogen deposition on fauna.” Biological Conservation(2017).

In order to figure out a new trend you have to look at the other ways trends about your topic have been analyzed. Since my research question has to do with donations looking at articles that focus on what factors may determine what effects peoples willingness to donate. In the journal “The Canadian Journal of Economics” there is an article titled  “Economic determinants of individual charitable donations in Canada” written by  R. D. Hood, S. A. Martin and L. S. Osberg.  As the title of the article mentions the topic of this research is an in-depth study of the variables that effect individual charitable donations. Mainly the economic variables because one of the major more common ideologies about donating is that what constitutes as a “good” donation is seemingly a percentage of your total income. Which brings up many questions about the psychological, social, or economics aspects of donating,  but the question this research study decided to handle is “how would tax reforms effect charitable donations in Canada”. To answer this question the researchers gathered people’s opinions about donations and how tax reforms may or may not encourage more individual charitable donations. To define the general theories behind donating. And empirical data to make note on trends using qualitative analysis because in the end goal is to make predictions about how tax reforms will alter individual donations. Overall I think this a well done research study though it tackles something a little more abstract than the previous ones I’ve looked at. What I think others will find interesting about the this article is how in Canada taxes can play a big role in someones decision to make a donation whereas in the United States it’s most likely very different.

http://0-www.jstor.org.books.redlands.edu/stable/134296