From Source to Evidence? Teachers' Use of Historical Sources in Their Classrooms

To explore questions in history and to construct historical narratives, historians work with evidence from the past. This approach to teaching history (inquiry involving the use of evidence) is an accepted part of the research on history teaching and is promoted widely in standards frameworks and practitioner publications as “good history instruction.” What happens in a standards-based setting where teachers are covering large bodies of content? Do teachers use sources as part of their daily instruction? If so, how? We were afforded the unique opportunity to spend time observing what 35 teachers do by analyzing 352 videos submitted over a 4-year time span. We observed a spectrum of source use within and across teacher practice. In this article we share what we noticed.     

Challenges Experienced at Age 100: Findings From the Fordham Centenarian Study

ABSTRACT

This article examines the challenges experienced by very old individuals and their consequences for well-being and mental health. In order to capture unique issues experienced in very old age, 75 participants of the population-based Fordham Centenarian Study answered open-ended questions on everyday challenges. Theme-based coding was then used to categorize and quantify responses. The challenges mentioned most often were challenges faced in the functional (e.g., physical health/activities of daily living restrictions, mobility, sensory impairment), psychological (e.g., loss of well-liked activity, dependency, negative emotions, death), and social (e.g., family loss) life domains. Functional challenges were negatively associated with aging satisfaction and positively associated with loneliness. Psychological challenges were positively linked to aging satisfaction. Social challenges were marginally related to loneliness. Notably, challenges were not related to depression. In conclusion, the challenges experienced in very old age are multidimensional and multifaceted, unique in nature, and have differential relations to mental health. Functional, psychological, and social challenges affect very old individuals’ lives and therefore need to be better understood and addressed. Given their consequences, it is imperative for policy makers to develop an awareness for the different types of challenges faced by centenarians, as there may be unique policy implications related to each.     

Time and exclusion

Drawing on interviews with parents of children with complex disabilities in several school systems in a US state, this paper examines how temporal units such as the school day and school year and practices organized around artifacts like clocks and calendars work as ‘devices of temporal distanciation’ to separate children with disabilities from other children and exclude their families from critical relations with schools. The paper focuses on two kinds of effects: the ways differentiated timetables separate children and the ways constructing school time in bounded, discrete units limits the ability of parents and children to make key elements of their lives visible to the school.     

Role Fusion: The Occupational Socialization of Prison Chaplains

The conclusion that prisons, as total institutions, are “forcing houses” for the changing of persons can be extended beyond inmates to the prison staff. In this article I focus on one subset of prison staff that has received only scant examination: prison chaplains. Using qualitative interview data, I analyze the occupational socialization of state‐employed prison chaplains. I begin by discussing the initial expectations chaplains held about their work and what they hoped to accomplish. I describe the challenges of working in the correctional environment and note the occupational adjustments chaplains made in reaction to these challenges. I conclude with a theoretical examination of the role and identity processes that framed the occupational socialization of prison chaplains.     

Understanding information systems infrastructure in engineering SMEs: A case study

The benefits of integrated enterprise-wide information systems (IS), such as Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems, are widely accepted. The implementation of such systems in large organisations is established with many in their second or third generation. However, in small to medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) the maturity and extent of their IS infrastructure is less clear. In engineering SMEs, this infrastructure needs to support not only business processes but also the activities of design and manufacture.In this case study, our goal is to provide a better understanding of current IS infrastructure, the functional elements of IS infrastructure, integration and expenditures are explored in ten engineering SMEs. A model of IS functionality is developed and used to identify and classify functional elements within the firms and to compare and contrast the IS infrastructures. The findings are contrasted with the SME literature and conclusions and implications developed.     

Book Review: Living Democracy or Anti-Progress?

Public Organization Review -