Disrupting an imposed racial identity or performing the model minority? The pursuit of postsecondary education by young African immigrant men in Southern Ontario,Canada

ABSTRACT

This article examines how young African immigrant men in Southern Ontario cope with the dominant racial identity at school in an effort to improve their academic performance and access postsecondary education (PSE). Critical race theory in education is employed to explain how the young men distance themselves from stereotypes about Black masculinity by regulating their own behaviour and differentiating themselves from their Caribbean immigrant peers. Sixty-seven young men who had immigrated to Southern Ontario from several African countries over the last 10 years were interviewed individually and in focus groups for the study. The findings suggest that the research participants adopted a model minority status within an educational system that clearly embodies racist and systemically oppressive frameworks.     

Women are key players in the economies of East and Southeast Asia

In 1996, the East-West Center's Program on Population investigated the links between population change and economic growth in Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Singapore, Thailand, and Indonesia. This document discusses the findings pertaining to women's changing marriage and childbearing patterns, education attainment, and labor force participation as well as changes in family life. In eastern and southeastern Asia, women are delaying marriage and having fewer children as a result of their overwhelming acceptance of modern contraception. Concurrently, women's secondary school enrollment has increased dramatically since 1960, and women have accounted for steadily increasing proportions of total labor force growth. Economic development has led to fewer women employed in agriculture and more in clerical positions. Women continue to be marginalized in low-paying manufacturing jobs and to lose these jobs more frequently than do men. Women's labor force participation continues to be dependent upon their child care responsibilities, but women are beginning to combine both activities with the help of live-in grandparents. Women have made an important contribution to economic growth in Asia. Policies should address job discrimination against married women, wage discrimination, the problems faced by young women who leave home for employment in the manufacturing and service sectors, and the lack of child care facilities.     

Lead and Lag Times of Countries in a Gentler World

Are we moving towards a gentler world, and if so, how fast are we moving? Using data for 25 countries from 1991 to 2012, a positive trend is observed in four indicators—Welzel’s Emancipative Values Index and Gender Equality sub-index, Locus of Control and Nahkur’s Societal Index of Interpersonal Destructiveness (SIID). Applying the simple logistic growth pattern over time, from a floor of 0 to a ceiling of 1, it is apparent that gender equality scores and locus of control are past their fastest growth phase (middle part of the stretched-out S-curve). Emancipative Values Index is in its fastest growth phase, but as its S curve is much more stretched out, so its increase is slow. Normalized SIID is already in its late growth phase, close to the ceiling at 1; thus its further increase is bound to be quite slow. We also looked at the lead and lag times of individual countries compared to world average. This is more informative than saying “Country A is below the world average by x units”. The average lag time was by far the largest for Russia, Ukraine and Moldova (56–42 years). The average lead time was by far the largest for Sweden and Norway (116 and 42 years). Central East Europe was the only region where index values rose rather steadily. Post-2012 increase rate is bound to be slower, feeding frustration.

     

The Role of Government in Macro-Level Quality Development: A Case Study of South Korea

Public Organization Review - This study investigates the South Korean government’s effort to promote macro-level quality development. Using the single case study method, the authors examined...     

Imagining is Not Observing: The Role of Simulation Processes Within the Mimicry-Liking Expressway

Journal of Nonverbal Behavior - Individuals automatically mimic a wide range of different behaviors, and such mimicking behavior has several social benefits. One of the landmark findings in the...     

Business Angel Investment as an Informal Learning Process: Does Experience Matter?

This paper addresses the question of how the informal learning processes of angel investors shape the way in which they assess new investment opportunities. Previous research has suggested that angels learn from their previous investment activity. However, the measurement of investment experience as a function of years of investing and number of investments made does not take into account how, and to what extent, learning occurs and how it impacts investors’ decision-making. To address this deficiency, we suggest a dynamic model of informal learning which incorporates the informal learning typology developed by Schugurensky and extended by Bennett, as a conceptual framework to understand how learning experiences impact angel investment decisions. Based on interviews and verbal protocol analysis with 30 investors, we demonstrate how learning impacts learning processes and outcomes as angels assess an investment opportunity. The findings highlight the importance of supporting angel learning with support for angel groups and angel training programmes.     

Natural cubic splines for the analysis of Alzheimer's clinical trials

Mixed model repeated measures (MMRM) is the most common analysis approach used in clinical trials for Alzheimer's disease and other progressive diseases measured with continuous outcomes over time. The model treats time as a categorical variable, which allows an unconstrained estimate of the mean for each study visit in each randomized group. Categorizing time in this way can be problematic when assessments occur off-schedule, as including off-schedule visits can induce bias, and excluding them ignores valuable information and violates the intention to treat principle. This problem has been exacerbated by clinical trial visits which have been delayed due to the COVID19 pandemic. As an alternative to MMRM, we propose a constrained longitudinal data analysis with natural cubic splines that treats time as continuous and uses test version effects to model the mean over time. Compared to categorical-time models like MMRM and models that assume a proportional treatment effect, the spline model is shown to be more parsimonious and precise in real clinical trial datasets, and has better power and Type I error in a variety of simulation scenarios.     

Estimation of Semiparametric Models when the Criterion Function Is Not Smooth

We provide easy to verify sufficient conditions for the consistency and asymptotic normality of a class of semiparametric optimization estimators where the criterion function does not obey standard smoothness conditions and simultaneously depends on some nonparametric estimators that can themselves depend on the parameters to be estimated. Our results extend existing theories such as those of Pakes and Pollard (1989), Andrews (1994a), and Newey (1994). We also show that bootstrap provides asymptotically correct confidence regions for the finite dimensional parameters. We apply our results to two examples: a ‘hit rate’ and a partially linear median regression with some endogenous regressors.