Textbook Affordability in the Time of COVID-19

Abstract

This article provides a background of the textbook affordability problem affecting students attending United States higher education institutions, both prior to and during the 2019 novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic, as well as potential solutions to the problem. Solutions discussed include the availability of open materials in online repositories, publisher responses like inclusive access, institutional incentive programs, and initiatives by library consortia or other statewide programs. The responses of various stakeholders to make textbooks accessible to students during the pandemic are also covered.     

The household inventory as urban ‘theatre’ in late medieval Burgundy

In 1413 at the death of his wife Guillemot, Jean Aubert, a group of witnesses and a clerk of the local mayoralty met to value the possessions of their residence, resulting in an inventory full of notes and values on rooms and their objects. Within the existing historiography of the Burgundian Netherlands and its northern European neighbours, inventories and their objects tend to be analysed from two perspectives: the Burgundian court and the ‘consumer revolution’. Applying insights from Erving Goffman and Bruno Latour, this article suggests a third perspective should have priority: the urban ‘theatre’ within which objects were documented and placed. Therefore it sets up an alternate methodology which begins with the inventory to build a picture of the theatre (the urban context and residence), the actors (the Aubert family) and the audience (the witnesses of the inventory) to establish new insights into the operation of Burgundian power and the dynamics of the ‘consumer revolution’.     

The (non) gradual association of popularity with peer‐nominated and observed behavior in a cooperative and competitive context

Popularity among peers might be related to behavior in gradual or non‐gradual ways. In this research, a popularity subgroups approach was used to examine whether some behaviors were associated with only specific levels of popularity. Moreover, observational data in popularity research is valuable yet scarce. This research, therefore, also examined the association between popularity and observed behavior in a cooperative and competitive setting. In total, 182 early adolescents (58.2% girls, M_age = 10.7 years) completed peer nominations and were observed during a cooperative and a competitive task in groups of four. Results show that affective ties increased gradually with increasing popularity, but that relational aggression, bullying and attention‐attracting qualities distinguished popular adolescents from other early adolescents, and victimization distinguished unpopular adolescents from the other early adolescents. Observations showed that high popularity was defined by high levels of negative behavior, prosocial resource control, skillful leadership, and influence, with the effect of popularity on influence being stronger in the cooperative than the competitive setting. Using multiple methods, and taking context into account, a more complete behavioral profile of different levels of popularity is provided.     

Infant Preferences for Structural and Prosodic Properties of Infant‐Directed Speech in the Second Year of Life

While a large literature discusses young infants' preference for an infant‐directed speaking style, few studies have explored preferences after the first year. The present work compares infants' preference for two different properties of IDS speech: prosodic changes (primarily pitch and pitch variability) and structural properties (utterance length; lexical repetition). We found that both 12‐ and 16‐month‐old infants continued to prefer listening to speech with the prosodic properties of IDS, but neither age showed any preference for speech with the lexical repetition and short utterances typical of IDS.     

Real Jobs: the perspectives of workers with learning difficulties

In a central New Zealand region, 14 people with learning difficulties who were identified by disability agencies as successfully employed were interviewed. Semistructured interviews with the paid workers covered topics such as getting and learning their work, pay, choices about social opportunities and career paths. Interviews were transcribed and constant discussion, and challenging of qualitative data identified the following themes: the effect of paid work on lifestyles, how other people were important for support and workers' aspirations for the future. The effect of paid work has meant major changes for a few people by becoming independent of the benefit system and buying their own home. For other workers, it meant having to learn to use the public transport system and choosing their own social activities. Workers' perspectives were used to provide better understanding of the supports needed by adults with learning difficulties to enhance their employment rates and careers in the paid workforce.     

Of Journal Editors and Editorial Boards: Who Are the Trailblazers in Increasing Editorial Board Gender Equality?

Female academics continue to be under‐represented on the editorial boards of many, but not all, management journals. This variability is intriguing, because it is reasonable to assume that the size of the pool of female faculty available and willing to serve on editorial boards is similar for all management journals. This paper therefore focuses on the characteristics of the journal editors to explain this variability; journal editors or editors‐in‐chief are the most influential people in the selection of editorial board members. The authors draw on social identity and homosocial reproduction theories, and on the gender and careers literature to examine the relationship between an editor's academic performance, professional age and gender, and editorial board gender equality. Longitudinal data are collected at five points in time, using five‐year intervals, from 52 management journals. To account for the nested structure of the data, a three‐level multilevel model was estimated. Overall, it is found that the prospects of board membership improve for women when editors are high‐performing, professionally young or female. The authors discuss these findings and their implications for management journals with low, stagnant or declining representation of women in their boards.     

Parenthood and Well-Being: The Moderating Role of Leisure and Paid Work

This study contributes to our knowledge on the association between parenthood and psychological well-being by examining whether pre-parenthood lifestyles (leisure and paid work) moderate the transition to parenthood. We expected that people with less active lifestyles would find it easier to adapt to the demands of parenthood. Using eleven waves of the Swiss Household Panel (N = 1332 men and 1272 women; 1999–2008, 2010), fixed effects models are estimated for men and women separately. Results show that—on average—parenthood was not associated with well-being for men, whereas it increased well-being for women. As expected, the well-being premium/cost to parenthood was contingent upon individuals’ lifestyle before the transition to parenthood. For men, parenthood reduced well-being, but only if they frequently participated in leisure before the birth of the child. For women, motherhood had a beneficial effect on well-being but this effect was weaker for women who combined leisure with working long hours before motherhood.