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This chapter discusses an innovative teaching method using an avatar to engage young learners in United States geographic studies. While this technique does not call for a teacher to perform in character, it is directly related to storytelling. The educator successfully personifies an inanimate object for engagement and education, linking it to learning objectives. In the author's case, “Moffat the Traveling Rabbit” accompanies first-grade Colorado students in their study of all 50 states. By endowing such an object with human qualities, the teacher draws students in to standards-based instruction presented in a new way. The use of an icon or figure is familiar to video gamers in representing themselves and other players. In education, presenting nonvisual concepts in character form is a familiar strategy and has multiple benefits for young students. As chapter examples demonstrate, teaching history, geography, and writing skills through an avatar encourages creativity and a sense of accessibility to those subjects for the young child. As the author also points out, students who experience discomfort in some situations may feel supported by a nonthreatening “companion” accepted within the class, enabling them to participate. By teaching with an avatar, students are drawn into experiential learning while practicing grade-level skills across multiple curricula. Such experiential learning promotes meaningful curiosity and creates a foundational base from which to make further connections. The author outlines how she has used a stuffed rabbit in her classroom to make these connections, inspiring her students to write their own geography- and history-based stories.

This chapter focuses on one particular practice that came to the forefront in over a dozen teacher education sessions with government schoolteachers in southern India- the reflective practice “Dialogic Modeling.” This chapter delves into two primary facets of dialogic modeling: how it operates and how it fosters opportunities to study the practices being modeled. To help supporters’ and critics’ reading, this chapter examines the form of several episodes of dialogic modeling. By form, the author refers to terms such as logic, structure, and conditions. This form and function analytic is critical to recognizing the mechanics of the practice, and provides an understanding of how a reflective dialogic practice can operate. The chapter also takes up why this form matters for how teachers learn to do their work, and how doing the work of teaching can be bolstered through reflective practice. By doing so, the chapter aims to provide additional warrants for the claims that teacher education can, and likely should, involve teacher-learners in the deliberate study of principled practices. Moreover, the author argues that modeling as it is commonly done leaves much to chance and squanders the opportunity to learn and build teachers’ capacities.

This chapter documents the steps taken in one teacher preparation program to foster culturally sustaining practices (Paris, 2012) in pre-service Alaska Native teachers, as well as in their non-Native peers. For pre-service teachers to develop the skills, understanding, and dispositions necessary to respectfully gather, honor, and use local knowledge in their future classrooms they must first recognize the value and significance of locally relevant curriculum; second, understand how to respectfully gather and document current “living” local knowledge; and third, become empowered with the skills and knowledge to purposefully integrate local knowledge into the curriculum. This chapter uses one semester-long assignment, and data gathered from work samples from that assignment, as the foundation of an exploration into how these three steps can be enacted in the teacher preparation process. The accompanying data show that living Indigenous knowledge exists in abundance in young Alaska Native pre-service teachers, and when appropriately supported, pre-service teachers can develop powerful curriculum that is rooted in local knowledge and also aligned with the academic goals of the curriculum.

This exposition explains how Elementary Theory works and how it has been developed over the last two-and-a-half decades. Both increased scope and heightened precision are covered.

Theoretic methodology is explained. Using that method formal models are constructed analogous to empirical events. Those models predict events, design experiments, and guide applications in the field.

There is a widely held belief in sociology that theory becomes more vague and imprecise as its scope broadens. Whereas broader generalizations are more vague than narrower ones, this exposition shows that abstract theory becomes more precise as its scope broadens.

Here implications and limitations are closely connected. Regarding implications, this exposition shows that scientific explanations and predictions are viable today in sociology but only when exact theory is employed. Regarding limitations, the theory and research included in this exposition make clear why the empiricist search for regularities that dominates sociological research is so very limited in its results.

This exposition demonstrates that theory is the method of all the sciences and in particular the science of sociology.

Loretta Bass, Assistant Professor of Sociology at the University of Oklahoma, earned her Ph.D. in Sociology from the University of Connecticut in 1998. Dr. Bass focuses her research on children and stratification issues in West Africa and the U.S. For her dissertation, Working for Peanuts: Children’s Work in Open-Air Markets in Senegal, she collected and examined both qualitative and quantitative data of child workers and their families. Dr. Bass lived in Senegal from 1994 to 1996, and completed follow-up research in Senegal during the summer of 2000. Her chapter in this collection draws on this research. Her research has appeared in the Population Research and Policy Review, Political Behavior, Anthropology of Work Review, and the International Journal of Sociology and Social Policy.Marilou C. Legazpi Blair is the Assistant Director of Institutional Research at Erie Community College. She received her Ph.D. from Penn State, and has performed a substantial amount of research on issues of child development. Aside from her interests in adolescent status attainment, she has also studied the impact of immigration on both adults and children in the United States. She is currently involved in an examination of adults who return to school for the continuation of uncompleted degree work.Sampson Lee Blair is an Associate Professor at The State University of New York at Buffalo. As a family sociologist, most of his research to date has focused on family relationships, and particularly those between parents and children. More recently, he has been involved in studies of justice issues within the familial context. He recently completed his term as editor of Sociological Inquiry, and is scheduled to be a co-editor of Social Justice Research next year.Sally Bould is Professor of Sociology at the University of Delaware with a joint appointment in the department of Individual and Family Studies. She has published numerous articles in the area of the family, family policy and poverty policy. Another article on this research concerning families and neighborhoods will appear in the 2003 Journal of Family Issues. She is the author of the book, Eighty-five Plus, which examines issues of state and family responsibilities for the oldest old and several articles on the oldest old population in the United States, including disability, caregiving and living arrangements. Currently she is a member of the board of The Carework Network.Tiffani Chin recently finished her Ph.D. in Sociology at UCLA. Her dissertation examined how children’s peer cultures intersect with the schools’ social, academic, and evaluative objectives to influence children’s educational experiences. She is currently a Post-Doctoral Scholar with the Middle School Transition Study, studying oppositional culture and students’ transition from elementary school to middle school. Chin is the author of “‘Sixth Grade Madness’: Parental emotion work in the private high school application process” (Journal of Contemporary Ethnography, April 2000) and a co-author of Tutoring Matters: Everything you ever wanted to know about how to tutor (Temple 1999).Amitai Etzioni is the first University Professor of The George Washington University. He served as president of the American Sociological Association from 1994 to 1995, was Senior Advisor to the White House from 1979 to 1980, and was guest scholar at the Brookings Institution in 1978–1979. From 1958 to 1978, he served as Professor of Sociology at Columbia University. He is the editor of The Responsive Community: Rights and Responsibilities, a Communitarian quarterly. He is the author of twenty-one books, including The Monochrome Society (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001), Next: The Road to the Good Society (New York: Basic Books, 2001), The Limits of Privacy (New York: Basic Books, 1999), and The New Golden Rule: Community and Morality in a Democratic Society (New York: Basic Books, 1996), which received the Simon Wiesenthal Center’s 1997 Tolerance Book Award.David A. Kinney received his Ph.D. in Sociology from Indiana University-Bloomington and did post-doctoral work at the University of Chicago. He is currently Associate Professor of Sociology at Central Michigan University and a faculty affiliate at the Center for the Ethnography of Everyday Life at the University of Michigan. His publications have appeared in Sociology of Education, Youth and Society, Personal Relationships During Adolescence (Sage), and New Directions for Child and Adolescent Development (Jossey-Bass). He is currently conducting ethnographic research with children and their parents in a study of how families manage work, home life, and children’s activity involvement in a fast-paced society.Jennie Jacobs Kronenfeld is a Professor in the Department of Sociology, Arizona State University. She holds a doctorate (1976) and a master’s (1973) in sociology from Brown University and a B.A. (1971) in sociology and history from the University of North Carolina. She has published over ninety articles and book chapters in medical sociology, public health, medicine, and health services research. She has authored or co-authored fifteen books, on topics such as the social and economic impact of coronary artery bypass surgery, the federal role in health policy, public versus private models of service delivery in several different human services areas, controversial issues in health care policy and schools and child health services. Her current research interests include health policy issues, especially access to health care and child health care issues, and research on preventive aspects of health care.Yun-Suk Lee is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Sociology at the University of Chicago. He is completing his doctoral dissertation on the role of familial relationship in the effect of performance of household tasks on subjective outcomes for children and married people. His research includes comparing several measures of time spent on housework, and studying about changes in working time. In the fall of 2002, he became a Postdoctoral Research Associate with the Cornell Employment and Family Careers Institute.Anna B. V. Madamba is a Research Associate at TIAA-CREF in New York City. With a doctorate in demography, most of her research interests are in the field of educational attainment and performance. Her current research involves the examination of the academic performance of children of single mothers.Kimberly A. Mahaffy is Assistant Professor of Sociology. Her research interests are gender, transitions to adulthood, and adolescent sexual risk taking. She recently edited a special issue for the Journal of Mundane Behavior entitled Mundane Sex. She teaches statistics, research methods, social psychology, social problems, and a senior seminar in gender and adolescence at Millersville University of Pennsylvania.Sarah H. Matthews is Professor of Sociology at Cleveland State University. Her current research focuses on the everyday lives of children whose mothers are in a drug treatment program. Her earlier research in the sociology of aging has appeared in gerontology and family journals. Her research on relationships among members of older families is reported in a forthcoming book, Sisters and Brothers/Daughters and Sons: Meeting the Needs of Old Parents.Kathleen M. Mathieson is currently a doctoral student in the Department of Sociology, Arizona State University. She holds a master’s degree in Sociology from ASU. Her research interests focus on medical sociology, including concerns of aging, child health and mental health as impacted by work and family conflicts. She has published on the maintenance of functional independence for the elderly, and has presented papers on this topic as well as on child health and child health policy issues.Meredith Phillips is Assistant Professor of Policy Studies and Sociology at UCLA. Phillips’s research focuses on the relationship between social inequality and academic success. Her current projects include a mixed-method study of the academic achievement of college students at a highly-selective university, an ethnographic study of the development of oppositional culture during students’ transition from elementary to middle school, and a statistical study of the distribution of school quality nationally. Phillips is the co-editor of The Black-White Test Score Gap (Brookings, 1998).Katherine Brown Rosier is currently Assistant Professor of Sociology at Central Michigan University. Her recent book, Mothering Inner-city Children. The Early School Years, was published in 2000 by Rutgers University Press. Other publications have appeared in The Journal of Contemporary Ethnography, Human Development, The Journal of Comparative Family Studies, and several other journals and edited volumes. While continuing to write on experiences of low-income African American children and families, she is also conducting research and writing a book with colleague Scott L. Feld on Louisiana’s Covenant Marriage.Barbara Schneider is Professor of Sociology at the University of Chicago and the Co-Director of the Alfred P. Sloan Center on Parents, Children, and Work. Author of several books, articles and monographs, Dr. Schneider is concerned with encouraging the cognitive and social development of America’s children by reshaping the responsibilities of families, schools, and society. Most recently Dr. Schneider has completed two books, The Ambitious Generation: America’s Teenagers, Motivated but Directionless, and Becoming Adult: How Teenagers Prepare for the World of Work. In both works she discusses how adolescents develop attitudes, skills and expectations about their adult careers.Kimberly A. Scott, Ed.D. is Assistant Professor in Hofstra University’s Foundations, Leadership, and Policy Studies department. She specializes in sociology of education, sociology of childhood, and qualitative research methods. Her research interests include examinations of race, class, and gender influences on the social and academic self-development of elementary school students. She has publications in Equity and Excellence, Journal of Negro Education, and Childhood: A Global Journal of Childhood Research. Currently, she is co-authoring a Rowmann and Littlefield book with Sarane Book entitled, Sociology of Children and Childhood.Linda J. Waite, Ph.D. is the Lucy Flower Professor of Sociology and Co-Director of the Alfred P. Sloan Center on Parents, Children and Work at the University of Chicago, where she also directs the Center on Aging. She is past Chair of the Family Section of the American Sociological Association and Past President of the Population Association of America. Her current research interests include the working family, especially dual-career couples with children and the impact of job characteristics on parenting. She is also interested in the role of the family at older ages in functioning of individuals, intergenerational transfers and exchanges, and employment. She has published widely on the family, including an award-winning book with Frances Goldscheider, New Families, No Families: The Transformation of the American Home. Her most recent book, The Case for Marriage: Why Married People are Happier, Healthier, and Better Off Financially, with Maggie Gallagher, won the 2000 book award from the Coalition for Marriage, Family, and Couples Education.

Robert Franklin Hoxie was of the first generation of University of Chicago economists, a figure of significance in his own time. He is often heralded as the first of the Institutional economists and the impetus behind the field of labor economics. Yet today, his contributions appear as mere footnotes in the history of economic thought, when mentioned at all, despite the fact that in his professional and popular writings he tackled some of the most pressing problems of the day. The topics upon which he focused included bimetallism, price theory, methodology, the economics profession, socialism, syndicalism, scientific management, and trade unionism, the last being the field with which he is most closely associated. His work attracted the notice of some of the most famous economists of his time, including Frank Fetter, J. Laurence Laughlin, Thorstein Veblen, and John R. Commons. For all the promise, his suicide at the age of 48 ended what could have been a storied career. This paper is an attempt to resurrect Hoxie through a review of his life and work, placing him within the social and intellectual milieux of his time.

Purpose – This narrative inquiry chronicles our experiences in a social studies methods course and the understandings we gained as we engaged alongside our teacher candidates in democratic practices.

Approach – Our narrative inquiry began as we wondered whether modeling democratic practices and establishing democratic classrooms in our social studies methods courses would enable future teachers to construct democratic classrooms. Through analysis of our field notes from several semesters, we captured and examined our process of curriculum making with our teacher candidates.

Findings – Through recounting and unpacking four stories of our curriculum making, we demonstrate that to prepare future teachers to prepare their students as citizens, teacher educators must do more than merely model democratic practices. While modeling, they must explicitly teach the concepts behind the practices and attend to nondemocratic and missed opportunities for engaging in democratic practices. They must create opportunities for teacher candidates to plan, practice, observe, and critique democratic practices.

Value – To many, social studies is limited to the study and memorization of facts about history and geography. However, the primary purpose of the K-12 social studies is citizenship education (NCSS, 1994). Social studies teacher educators are responsible to prepare future teachers to meet this purpose through social studies methods courses where democratic practices are modeled and explicitly taught, and where teacher candidates are given opportunities to engage in democratic classrooms.

Consider now the set of all possible events that can occur in a given context. There is a distinction between an elementary event and a compound event. The set of elementary events is exhaustive, exclusive and elementary: the elementary events cover all the possible events; no two of them can occur at the same time; and all other events are constituted by compounds of these. Denoting the set of all elementary events by E, the set of all (possibly compound) events is the power set of E, S ^E. The set of events, S ^E, consists of pairs of events: for each event e there is its complementary event not-e; and for the event not-e there is its complementary event not-(not-e)=e. In any given world only one event of any complementary pair can occur.