Picking Up the Mantle of “Expert”: Assigned Roles,Assertion of Identity,and Peer Recognition Within a Programming Class

Changing an established role in a classroom is difficult. It involves constructing a new set of relations within a community. In this article we investigate how students with newly developed interest and experience in programming developed outside the classroom pick up and establish their roles as experts in programming within the classroom community. More specifically, we focus on how two 11-year-old software designers shifted their established roles in their classroom to gain status as expert programmers. We use an identity lens to understand how peer expertise was established in the context of a classroom community, adopting a multifaceted perspective of identity by focusing on an individual's narrativization of self, full, or peripheral participation among a group of people, and individuals' social recognition by others. Our findings point to the importance of both positive positioning by authority figures in the classroom and activities and roles that provide opportunities to establish intersubjectivity among peers in facilitating students' identities as experts in the classroom. Students' willingness to take up a new position in the established activity system also played a role. We consider implications of how making roles flexible within classroom stratification may provide opportunities for more students see themselves as experts.     

Use of home and community-based services by elderly black and white females

The study purpose was to determine the impact of demographic, social, environmental, and health indicators on utilization of community-based services among black and white female elders. Existing data from a regional Area Agency on Aging was used and the sample (N = 1816) included low income and rural females. Races differed in use and services most frequently used were case management, outreach, congregate meal, and home delivered meals. Multiple linear and logistic regression indicated that age, payment source, income adequacy, residence, health conditions, sensory impairment, and function were associated with the number and types of services used, but these differed by race. Study findings have implications for health care providers, educators, policy makers, and planners.