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In this chapter, I focus on two methodological issues involved with conducting ethnographies of very young children; establishing a researcher role in preschool classrooms while simultaneously gaining access into children’s culture and the trust of adult gatekeepers involved (i.e., teachers). Drawing on my participant observation experiences in 10 preschool classrooms (over 470 hours and 19 months of observations), I challenge the use of the friend role (Fine & Sandstrom, 1988) and least-adult role (Mandell, 1988) in research with young children. I examine how teachers mediate the researcher’s role in participant observation of children in preschool classrooms demonstrating the importance of establishing a middle manager role between teachers and children when conducting participant observations. I also discuss strategies used to overcome adult’s mediation of the researcher’s role, and strategies for simultaneously gaining teachers and children’s rapport in participant observation research in ways that formulate positive relationships with adults and children. I demonstrate the importance of researcher reflexivity of children’s and adults’ assessments of researchers’ roles in the field, highlighting how researchers’ impacts on children are not dependent on the times they are present in the field. Instead, I show that children continue to critically assess researchers’ positionality and roles in the field, often times seeking the help of adults (i.e., parents and teachers), further stressing the need for researchers to negotiate an understanding of their roles with both adults and children prior to and while in the field.

Purpose – This narrative inquiry explores one teacher educator's curriculum making process (Connelly & Clandinin, 1992) to elicit teacher candidates' emotional and analytic engagement with multicultural education.

Approach – Three semesters of fieldnotes, from one teacher educator's planning and execution of a blended learning format multicultural teacher education course, with face-to-face classes and asynchronous instruction through technology, document her struggles to create a blended learning curriculum model that explicitly addresses ways to impact teacher candidates' dispositions toward multicultural issues.

Findings – The inquiry raises hopeful questions about the possibilities of using stories and technology in a multicultural teacher education blended learning delivery setting. Additionally, the inquiry highlights fruitful tensions involved in making space for the stories of teacher candidates from both nondominant and dominant culture to become part of the curriculum of the class.

Research implications – Narrative inquiry's application as an empirical research method in the field of multicultural education is demonstrated. Highlighted particularly is the capacity in narrative inquiry methods to document places of tension and inclusion in multicultural teacher education.

Value – Awareness of the potential of storied ways of approaching diversity and the benefits of negotiating the tensions involved are of value to teacher educators exploring curriculum making in a blended learning format. Blended learning is reconceptualized beyond the blending of face-to-face and technologically mediated class sessions to include a notion of blending planned and lived curriculum and public and private learning opportunities.

Purpose: This report analyzes relationships between chronic inflammation and quality of life (QoL). It assesses the potential role of intimate relationships in associations between inflammation, medical sequelae such as pain and disability, and QoL.

Design/Methodology/Approach: Limited longitudinal data from the National Social Life, Health, and Aging Project (NSHAP) were analyzed. Inflammation was assessed via the biomarker C-reactive protein (CRP). The authors examined pathwise associations between CRP levels and general happiness. The authors used ordinal logistic regression with companion OLS models, and conducted a variety of sensitivity analyses.

Findings: Intimate partnerships – especially marriage – appear to impact associations between inflammation and QoL. When QoL is measured using general happiness, intimate relationships appear to shape directional associations between inflammation and QoL along with medical consequences of inflammation.

Research Limitations/Implications: Inflammation and its clinical consequences may substantially alter intimate relationship involvement and quality that in turn impact QoL. These relationships should not be viewed as unilateral explanations of the tremendous variability observed in QoL among people with inflammatory conditions, but rather as possible elements of complex causal frameworks. Further investigation using advanced methods for longitudinal modeling from limited waves of data can help to shed additional light on the nuances of happiness and QoL among people living with chronic inflammation.

Originality/Value: This chapter provides an overview of possible causal relationships between chronic inflammation, associated clinical and social experiences, and QoL. Researchers interested in advanced causal modeling of relationships between chronic inflammation and QoL can build on this work using novel methods and data sources.

This chapter addresses the nature of reflective classroom practice in a Hong Kong setting where action research has been undertaken by both the student teachers and the teaching practice supervisor. It is based on a cross-case study of the processes through which student teachers learn to teach. Specifically, the analysis focuses on how student teachers reflect on their experiences in learning to teach. The data are based on student teachers’ reported thoughts about their learning over a period of 1 year. The results contribute to the understanding of reflective classroom practice by highlighting first, student teachers’ perceptions about learning to teach and second, their reviews on classroom practice. The discussion also adds to the literature on teacher development taken from the novice-expert research tradition. Accordingly, implications for curriculum development in teacher education are drawn.

It is not surprising that the dominant cognitive frame through which most audiences view climate change is that of an environmental problem. However, this messaging strategy has proven susceptible to counter-attacks, defensing processing, and other cognitive biases. As such, many environmental advocates are switching gears. From Barack Obama to Pope Francis, the environment-as-public-health-concern narrative is increasingly found in climate change messages. This strategy involves making the abstract issue of climate change more concrete by tying it to negative health impacts, like asthma, heat-related illness, and the spread of disease. Understanding why and for whom this strategy is persuasive, particularly in a social media context where users often encounter persuasive climate change messages, can help advance theory and practice.

The purpose of this chapter is two-fold: 1.) Test the effects of climate message frame (damage to nature or damage to public health), message source (liberal or conservative organization), and the use of visual human exemplars (present or absent) in social media messages; and, 2.) Assess the predictive utility of different conceptual frameworks (personification, construal level theory, and moral foundations theory) as explanatory mechanisms for persuasive social media climate message effects. The results of a nation-wide experiment reveal that the use of visual exemplars matters when climate change is framed as an environmental problem, but otherwise message frame, source, and visual exemplar use have little impact on policy attitudes. Further analyses demonstrated that multiple conceptual mechanisms related to the aforementioned theories help explain social media effects on climate change attitudes.

Although special education was built upon the foundation of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the discrimination that many racialized students receiving special education services experience cannot be denied. Many culturally, ethnically, and linguistically diverse students receiving special education services encounter labels that perpetuate racism and ableism and lead to inequitable access to services and resources necessary for more positive postsecondary outcomes. By honoring intersectionality and dismantling the singular identity, educators can become change agents and shift the historic oppressive narrative to create a system of empowerment as these individuals transition from transitional kindergarten to age 21 special education programs (TK-21) schools into adulthood.

This chapter brings the educational needs of students with disability from the margins to the mainstream by arguing that teacher education programs have a role to play in dismantling rigid and often unquestioned practices that segregate learners with disabilities from mainstream learning environments. This position is predicated upon a case study analysis of co-teaching strategies that emerged within the context of developing and teaching two new courses in an integrated dual credential program (general and special education) in our department. Construction and analysis of these cases reveal eight cross-cutting principles that serve as a framework for a praxis of desegregation in teacher education programs and K-12 settings and as a set of constructs for evaluating teacher training impact.

In this chapter, we present critical race theory (CRT) with a focus on Latino critical theory (LatCrit) and its impact on Latinx educators, Latinx youth, and Latinx communities. We focus on identity inclusion and Latinidad as a way to increase critical consciousness of educators and Latinx youth, language rights, and feminist pedagogies of resistance. LatCrit frameworks are used as transformational resistance and afford a productive platform for developing critical understandings of the educational experiences of Latinx youth. We discuss relationships and community through the alignment of LatCrit and critical pedagogy and the application of critical theory and community-responsive pedagogy in increasing equitable outcomes in educational settings that support Latinx youth and families. We provide recommendations to address the challenges Latinx youth face and how Latinx educators can continue to support youth through a LatCrit framework, and a summary of possible solutions to consider. We close with some reflection and dialogue questions.

Understanding of the factors that contribute to policies diverging from neoliberal norms and accounting for situations when social movement activists prevail over the interests of more powerful opponents requires an analytical framework specifying the dimensions of interest. The case of Brazil’s pharmaceutical policies, especially those dealing with HIV/AIDS, is considered.

To understand the space and limits for progressive agency amidst contemporary globalization, previous articulations of dependent development and global capitalism require conceptual space with insights from social movement theory and normative framing.

Control over technology, political alliances, and normative appeals have changed since the concept of dependent development to today’s contemporary neoliberal globalization for understanding cases of progressive agency. Technology is based more on intangible knowledge, activism across the state-society boundary is more likely, and human rights has become the dominant idiom for naming and shaming more powerful opponents.

The analytic framework developed informs our understanding of pharmaceutical autonomy – the ability of a country to provide for the prescription drug needs of its population – in the case of Brazil. Further research of other situations requires the application of the framework to determine its merits.

A focus on technology, alliances, and norms provides a useful starting point for exploring situations of development autonomy that prevails over the interests of corporate power.