Search results

We are in the midst of a refugee crisis, and the ways in which we approach the issue of unprecedented numbers of people crossing borders will shape our world for generations to come. In this chapter, we problematize immunology, capitalism and other lenses through which we construct, label and categorize others and how such constructions and categorizations manifest in educational spheres for migrants, immigrants, refugees and host country nationals. As with access to education, the resources one has also determine one’s ability to migrate and the conditions of one’s resettlement. Therefore, we discuss the ways in which globalization provides greater mobility for those with substantial wealth and how conditions with/in post-modernism serve to create borders between people, their wealth and the social contexts in which they and their wealth reside. We create boxes as labels into which we slot people all too easily. While we critique the discourses and systems that create the socio-political milieu of education for immigrants, migrants and refugees in the US, we also highlight issues abroad, including how language is weaponized in the framing of immigration and those who emigrate.

In September 2009, a special committee of the Israeli Institute of School Leadership has published its final report in which new perspectives, contents, and teaching strategies are suggested to replace old, traditional forms of principal preparation programs in this country. The purpose of this chapter is to describe, first, the new construction of leadership development programs in Israel and its underlying principles and historical background, and, second, to raise some ponderings into its applicability and its quality in terms of practical suggestions and expected teaching strategies. The chapter includes the following elements: a brief introduction of the current principal preparation programs in Israel (briefly), the special committee, the aims of this chapter, importance, and organization of the chapter; the theoretical background based on the research on principal preparation programs worldwide, its shortcomings, and impediments; a historical debate of principal training in Israel – the current state, American influences, weaknesses, rational, basic principles, the new model, purpose, contents, and instructional methods; and critical and future considerations including the weaknesses of the new model, the “chances” to apply this report into the Israeli (or any) educational system, and the potential facilitating versus impeding factors.

Nonstandard work schedules are increasingly common in today’s economy, and work during these nonstandard hours has a negative impact on health. Scholars investigating work schedules have yet to explore how marital status, which is linked with better health, may protect the health of US workers with nonstandard schedules. This study uses binomial logistic regression models to analyze pooled data from the National Study of the Changing Workforce (N = 6,376). Interaction terms are utilized to test if marital status variations occur in the relationship between work schedule and health for men and women.

The results demonstrate that while working a nonstandard schedule puts men and women at a lower odds of reporting good health compared to those who work a standard schedule, there is no difference in this relationship across marital status for men. However, nonstandard schedules are worse for the health of cohabiting and divorced, separated, or widowed women than for married women. The results indicate a significant interaction between work schedule and marital status exists for female workers and should be considered when examining the health of the population with nonstandard work schedules.

Over the last several decades, as women have increasingly entered the labor force, they are spending less time at home (Bianchi, 1995; Hayghe, 1997). Having a more constrained schedule has resulted in married women and single mothers substantially decreasing the amount of time that they spend on household labor (Bianchi et al., 2000; Robinson & Godbey, 1997). Traditionally, in two-parent households, husbands rarely participated in household tasks. Now that more married women with children are employed outside the home, one might assume that they would turn to their husbands to help them manage their households. However, current research shows that fathers are making only a slightly greater contribution to housework than they did in the past (Gershuny & Robinson, 1988; Robinson & Godbey, 1997). If mothers are now spending fewer hours on housework, and fathers are only contributing slightly more, then there remains a significant proportion of household chores that either must be done by others or must remain undone. Research suggests that children in particular may find themselves responsible for an increasing proportion of household tasks. For example, the more hours mothers work outside the home, the more hours children spend on family work (Benin & Edwards, 1990; Blair, 1992b; Elder & Conger, 2000; Shelton, 1992).

Bruner (1985) once challenged learning theorists to define their model of the learner rather than design curriculum and instruction materials directed at a vague, and perhaps nonexistent, target. We suggest that motivation theorists do the same. The model of co-regulated learning that we describe (McCaslin, 2009) first posits learners who: (1) are social by nature (biological adaptations) and by nurture (socialization) (Baumeister & Leary, 1995; Geary, 2002; Olson & McCaslin, 2008); (2) have basic needs for participation and validation that can inform student dispositions toward school (McCaslin & Burross, 2008); and (3) differ in how and in what they participate – their adaptation (McCaslin & Burross, in press, p. xx). Second, the co-regulation model of the learner asserts that motivation and identity are mutually informative; what I am and am not willing to do inform who I am and the person I might become. Both motivation and identity are based on opportunities denied, taken, or missed and on the interpersonal relationships that do or do not support and validate them. Opportunities and relationships are based, in part, on cultural norms and challenges that delineate individuals historically and presently in time and place (see McCaslin, 2009 for full explication of these and related constructs). Motivation is at the core of identity. Thus, motivations of today's learners inform not only their school achievements, but also the adults they may become. If motivation is the core of emergent identity now and in the future, what then is at the core of motivation?