Becoming a Race-Conscious Social Studies Teacher: The Influence of Personal and Professional Experiences

In this interpretive case study the researchers examined the beliefs of 13 self-identifying race-conscious secondary social studies teachers from diverse racial or ethnic, gender, and school-context backgrounds. The researchers found that the teachers' beliefs and views of practice were generally aligned with the main assertions of critical race theory. The teachers described their personal and professional experiences as a major influence on their race-conscious beliefs and views of practice. Moreover, teachers in diverse contexts described having to learn how to navigate the different racial experiences of the students in their classrooms, while teachers in racially segregated contexts (predominately White, Black, or Latino) emphasized the importance of teaching their students about others. Finally, despite the teachers' regular integration of race-related issues into their required and elective courses, they expressed a desire to have more opportunities to teach about race.     

Do ENDAs End Discrimination for Behaviorally Gay Men?

Twenty-two states have implemented state Employment Nondiscrimination Acts (ENDAs) making sexual orientation discrimination illegal, and Congress has repeatedly considered a federal ENDA. However, we know very little about the impact of existing ENDAs and the likely impact of future ENDAs. I describe the implementation of ENDAs and highlight their shortcomings relative to federal employment nondiscrimination law. Despite their shortcomings, I show that state ENDAs decrease wage differentials by roughly 20 % for behaviorally gay men. ENDAs appear to reduce this wage differential by reducing the portion of wage differentials typically associated with discrimination. These results inform a contemporary policy debate over the necessity and impact of expanded protection from discrimination for gay men. (JEL J1, J3, J7)     

Bounding Estimates for Critical Events When Directly Disposing Highly Enriched Spent Nuclear Fuel in Unsaturated Tuff

This paper examines the possibility of criticality in a nuclear waste repository. The estimated probabilities are rough bounds and do not entirely dismiss the possibility of a critical condition; however, they do point to the difficulty of creating conditions under which a critical mass could be assembled (i.e., corrosion of containers, separation of neutron absorbers from the fissile material, and collapse or precipitation of the fissile material). In addition, should a criticality occur in or near a container, the bounding consequence calculations showed that fissions from one critical event are quite small (<˜10²⁰ fissions, if similar to aqueous and metal accidents and experiments). Furthermore, a reasonable upper bound of total critical events of 10²⁸ fissions corresponds to only 0.1% of the number of fissions represented by the spent nuclear fuel inventory in a repository containing 70,000 metric tons of heavy metal (MTHM) (the expected size for the proposed repository at Yucca Mountain, Nevada).     

Adaptive trading rules for commodity futures

This paper extends and refines an adaptive filtering model utilizing entropy-based decision rules. The initial adaptive model chose filter sizes by considering both current profitability and previous forecasting success, where forecasting success is measured by a statistic derived from information theory. Alternative specifications of the historical information vector are employed to examine the sensitivity of various components of the model. Although the original adaptive model was a substantial improvement over existing models, it lacked stability; that is, there was more stability in the underlying information of the process than there was in the net profits produced by the adaptive model. Hence this further study.The information-based adaptive model we developed was run on a large data base composed of 15 years of soybean and wheat data. Our results allow us to reject the Martingale hypothesis of commodity price movement.     

New Labour, Work and the Family

New Labour has put support for the family at the core of its notion of the “strong community”. Across a range of policy areas the Labour government can be seen to be developing a direct and explicit family policy. But what kind of community is the government trying to shape by these policies? On the one hand, Labour appears to support the family as the basis of a more moral, dutiful and cohesive community. On the other hand, the government has given weight to policies that support social inclusion in the community through paid work. This paper examines whether there is a tension in Labour’s social policies between its emphasis on the importance of stable family life and the primacy given to paid work. Are critics like Ruth Levitas right when they argue that the government’s emphasis on paid work devalues, and is unsupportive of, unpaid work, especially caring for children and other family members? Alternatively, can this combination of communitarianisms—community as “stable family” and community as “paid work”—be seen to be marking out some “third way” on the family? We shall show that different aspects of the government’s family policies reflect different perspectives and policy agendas within New Labour and third‐way thinking more broadly. And while recognizing the tensions between work and the family, we shall suggest that they are often overstated and fail to give sufficient weight to the complementary aspects of Labour’s welfare reforms.     

Britain and Globalization

Many perspectives on globalization see it as differentiated in its effects and reception, culturally driven, either pre-modern or postmodern, best captured by globalist or sceptical perspectives, and an equalizing phenomenon. This article discusses the British experience of globalization in the light of such approaches and argues that looking at this case gives an alternative view. Six themes on globalization are explored across four areas of the British experience of globalization. It is argued that in Britain globalization is, in contrast to the approaches outlined above, differentiated but also generalizing, economically driven, modern, best understood with a mix of globalist and sceptical perspectives and structured by power, inequality, and conflict. It is also argued that the British experience of globalization is a specific one and that Britain is a very globalized and globalizing country, economically, culturally, and politically.     

Perceived Levels of Cultural Competence for School Social Workers: A Follow-Up Study

The purpose of this article is to report on findings from a follow-up study that examined the relationship among social work education programs, postgraduate professional development, and school social workers’ perceived levels of cultural competence in practice with urban minority youth. The initial study demonstrated that African Americans perceived a higher level of cultural competence than their Anglo American counterparts did. Findings highlight the need to understand the processes by which practitioners become culturally competent for urban school social work practice. Underscoring the importance of professional development, the authors determined that geographic location of practice may serve as a factor that influences how practitioners anticipate the need for culturally competent practice with diverse populations. Implications for practice and future research are discussed.     

A labor of love: The impact of same-sex marriage on labor supply

Review of Economics of the Household - We study how the average labor supply of gay men and lesbian women responds to the legalization of same-sex marriage in the United States. We exploit...     

A Review of Social Justice and Diversity Content in Diversity Course Syllabi

Given United State's leading position among international social work organizations, it is important that its standards of practice for diversity in social work education are examined. Using a nationwide sample of syllabi (N = 174) in the United States, the purpose of this study is to measure the extent to which various facets of diversity and social justice are incorporated into social work course syllabi. The study further assesses whether social justice content is integrated into diversity courses according to the Council on Social Work Education's 2001 and 2008 Educational Policy and Accreditation Standards (EPAS). The goal is to better understand program adherence to diversity objects designed for social work education curriculum. An examination of course titles, syllabi content, and course objectives revealed a broad array of identified topics; however, terms such as culture/multicultural (79.2%), race (71.7%), diversity (68.2%), ethnicity (63.6%), gender (60.1%), oppression (57.8%), and gay/lesbian (56.1%) were addressed with greater frequency across all syllabi. In an assessment of adherence to 2001 and 2008 EPAS among syllabi, interrater agreement with the use of Kappa revealed modest agreement. Greater transparency in connecting EPAS with diversity course syllabi is an important step in the requirement to improve capability across programs. Implications for future research are discussed.