Examining Familial-Based Academic Success Factors in Urban High School Students: The Case of Puerto Rican Female High Achievers

ABSTRACT

This article works to dispel the myth that Puerto Rican female urban high school students living in poverty are not capable of performing at high academic levels. This article attempts to counteract these beliefs by describing the four success factors that seven Puerto Rican female high school students attribute to their high academic achievement. These success factors are: (1) religiosity and extracurricular activities as sources of social capital, (2) affirming and maintaining a Puerto Rican identity, (3) maternal influences on students' academic achievement and, (4) the potential for caring teachers and other school staff to influence high academic achievement. Finally, our findings suggest that opportunities for Latinas and other youth of color are still inequitably structured in large, comprehensive high schools. Hence, we argue that schools must continue to bridge the large gap between themselves and the families/communities they serve and utilize the funds of knowledge and social capital that their students already bring to school.     

The Influence of Gender Role Attitudes on Perceptions of Women's Work Performance and the Importance of Fair Pay

Gender role attitudes and their influence on perceptions of male and female work performance are important aspects understanding workplace gender inequality. Reskin (2000 Reskin , B. 2000 . “Proximate Causes of Employment Discrimination.” Contemporary Sociology 29 ( 2 ): 319 – 328 .[Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]) suggests researchers must look to non-conscious causes in order to understand and alleviate gender inequality in the workplace. Also critical to understanding workplace gender inequality is the differential importance placed on being paid fairly. Using a survey sample of 525 traditional undergraduate students from a public university in the middle south of the United States consisting of approximately one-third African Americans and two-thirds whites, race and sex differences are examined. The more liberal the respondent in terms of gender roles, the less they perceived performance inferiority of females. Excluding white males, those more liberal on gender roles perceived fair pay as more important. Gender differences are stronger among whites. Implications for the gender inequities at work are discussed.     

Indigenous Australian population projections: problems and prospects

According to estimates from the 2006 Census, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander (Indigenous) Australians made up 2.5 % of the total Australian population. However, the focus of research and policy debate on Indigenous Australians far exceeds their population size for reasons of history, socio-economics, geography and demography. This has led to a need for accurate population projections of the population. In this paper, we outline a number of issues related to Indigenous population projections. These include the nature of self-identification; the impact of particular policy changes; significant differences in demographic parameters; and high rates of exogamy, especially in urban areas. We also document the relative accuracy of past and current population projections. In the final section of the paper we outline a research agenda that has the potential to lead to new and better Indigenous population projections.     

Conversational evidence in therapeutic dialogue

Family therapists' participation in therapeutic dialogue with clients is typically informed by evidence of how such dialogue is developing. In this article, we propose that conversational evidence, the kind that can be empirically analyzed using discourse analyses, be considered a contribution to widening psychotherapy's evidence base. After some preliminaries about what we mean by conversational evidence, we provide a genealogy of evaluative practice in psychotherapy, and examine qualitative evaluation methods for their theoretical compatibilities with social constructionist approaches to family therapy. We then move on to examine the notion of accomplishment in therapeutic dialogue given how such accomplishments can be evaluated using conversation analysis. We conclude by considering a number of research and pedagogical implications we associate with conversational evidence.     

An Introduction to ‘Benefit of the Doubt’ Composite Indicators

Despite their increasing use, composite indicators remain controversial. The undesirable dependence of countries’ rankings on the preliminary normalization stage, and the disagreement among experts/stakeholders on the specific weighting scheme used to aggregate sub-indicators, are often invoked to undermine the credibility of composite indicators. Data envelopment analysis may be instrumental in overcoming these limitations. One part of its appeal in the composite indicator context stems from its invariance to measurement units, which entails that a normalization stage can be skipped. Secondly, it fills the informational gap in the ‘right’ set of weights by generating flexible ‘benefit of the doubt’-weights for each evaluated country. The ease of interpretation is a third advantage of the specific model that is the main focus of this paper. In sum, the method may help to neutralize some recurring sources of criticism on composite indicators, allowing one to shift the focus to other, and perhaps more essential stages of their construction. An abridged version of this paper was presented at the Workshop on European Indicators and Scoreboards, organised by DG Education and the Joint Research Centre within the auspices of CRELL, in Brussels, October 24–25, 2005.     

The forecast accuracy of Australian Bureau of Statistics national population projections

This paper examines the forecast accuracy of Australian Bureau of Statistics national population projections produced from the 1960s to the early 2000s. As well as total populations, the accuracy of the following is assessed: age-sex-specific populations, the Total Fertility Rate, life expectancy at birth and net international migration. It is shown that forecasts of the 1960s and 70s were the most inaccurate; forecasts of the 1980s and later proved to be much more reliable. The paper goes on to take an alternative perspective on population forecast error through the use of an adapted percentage error measure which accounts for offsetting errors in births, deaths, net migration and the jump-off population. This measure also permits an assessment of the relative contributions of the components of demographic change to overall inaccuracy. It is shown that errors in forecasting net international migration have generally contributed most to inaccuracy followed by births and then deaths and jump-off error. ABS projections of total population are also compared to those produced using a simple naïve model. The paper concludes by arguing that the new error measure could prove valuable in other studies of population forecast accuracy.     

创新与语法

一门语法,是对语言这个意义潜势系统进行多层次、多功能的描摹,为讨论人类在语言方面的无尽创造力提供了一个有效而实用的框架。语言的创新性源于生成意义的资源,该资源在各个语言层面运作。无论是语言艺术、语言游戏抑或修辞手段,语法都不可能对语言的创造性进行全面预测。正如对诗人Edwin Thumboo的《一个诗人在朗诵》一诗作出的语言学解读所示,一首诗歌的意义,是由它所有可能的解读来界定,这种解读可以来自作诗的诗人,也可以来自读者。《一个诗人在朗诵》既展示了语言的创造性,也喻示了我们将经验转换为意义的无限创造力的神圣①。