What schools are doing around career development: implications for policy and practice

This article describes the role that schools are playing in supporting career development for young people. It examines the history of career-related programming in schools, including school-to-work programs, career and technical education, the college and career readiness movement, and current school reform initiatives. This understanding of schools' history, roles, opportunities, and constraints can help practitioners and policymakers think about how to build a system that supports youth development.     

Fostering Global Citizenship Dispositions: The Long-term Impact of Participating in a High School Global Service Club

To assist teachers in fostering students' global citizenship dispositions through service experiences, this article reports findings from a case study that investigated one high school's global service club and its impact on former club members' global awareness and global citizenship dispositions. Data were collected from Web-based documents and interviews with the faculty advisor and four former members. Data were analyzed by using the constant comparison method to elicit the following findings: (1) fundraising and awareness campaigns, when connected to a larger global service network, can act as viable local actions to combat global poverty; (2) club involvement can produce adults who feel more globally aware, but who do not necessary display critical understandings of global issues; and (3) club involvement can have a positive impact on global citizenship dispositions as participants reported feelings of empowerment and personal/social responsibility, yet no former club members continued participation in global service initiates as adults. Findings suggest the need for structural support when establishing high school global service clubs and, to optimize critical justice aims, local service actions should be tied to a more formal global citizenship curriculum.     

Racialization in a ‘homogenous’ society? The case of Buraku people in Japan

This paper examines the puzzling status of Buraku people in Japan through the methodological prism of historical sociology. I develop a theoretical approach that emphasizes the concept of racialization to illuminate the historical and social construction of Buraku status. I propose this approach as a complementary alternative to prior analytic perspectives. Two major perspectives have dominated research on the status of Buraku people. First, an earlier approach that focused on the legacy of caste discrimination. The second framework focuses on Buraku people as part of the struggle for universal human rights. This article raises three basic, but interrelated questions about the historical development of Buraku status in Japan. Why did the Buraku people become subject to such overt discrimination in local community life, and through government policy? How was the state involved in the social construction of Buraku people? How did the Buraku liberation struggles challenge formalized discrimination?     

A further examination of antecedents of correctional staff life satisfaction

Working in corrections is not only a demanding job, but a socially important one. While a growing number of studies have examined how the work environment impacts the job stress, job satisfaction, and organizational commitment of staff, very few studies have examined how working in corrections impacts the life satisfaction of workers. The current study utilized OLS regression to examine the antecedents of life satisfaction among staff at a Midwestern private prison. Job satisfaction had a positive relationship with life satisfaction, while age, work on family conflict, family on work conflict, and job involvement all had statistically significant negative effects. Finally, perceptions of the level of financial rewards, job stress, organizational commitment, gender, race, educational level, tenure, supervisory status, position, marital status, and having children, all had non-significant associations with overall satisfaction with life.     

Class,race, and the disposal of urban waste: Locations of landfills,incinerators, and sewage treatment plants

This study compared the socioeconomic status, racial composition, and ethnic composition of 49 randomly selected U.S. cities with those of the census tracts containing the solid waste disposal facilities and sewage treatment plants for those cities. Contrary to the environmental racism and classism hypotheses, residents of tracts with landfills or incinerators had higher incomes and were less likely to be minority group members than residents of the cities that generated the refuse—although they did have somewhat lower education levels. There were few differences between the population characteristics of the cities and the census tracts that contained their sewage treatment plants. Possible explanations for these findings are discussed.     

k-POD: A Method for k-Means Clustering of Missing Data

The k-means algorithm is often used in clustering applications but its usage requires a complete data matrix. Missing data, however, are common in many applications. Mainstream approaches to clustering missing data reduce the missing data problem to a complete data formulation through either deletion or imputation but these solutions may incur significant costs. Our k-POD method presents a simple extension of k-means clustering for missing data that works even when the missingness mechanism is unknown, when external information is unavailable, and when there is significant missingness in the data.

[Received November 2014. Revised August 2015.]     

Studying the dependence between ordinal-nominal categorical variables via orthogonal polynomials

In situations where the structure of one of the variables of a contingency table is ordered recent theory involving the augmentation of singular vectors and orthogonal polynomials has shown to be applicable for performing symmetric and non-symmetric correspondence analysis. Such an approach has the advantage of allowing the user to identify the source of variation between the categories in terms of components that reflect linear, quadratic and higher-order trends. The purpose of this paper is to focus on the study of two asymmetrically related variables cross-classified to form a two-way contingency table where only one of the variables has an ordinal structure.