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The purpose of this paper is to explore teacher candidates’ response to young adult literature (prose and comics) featuring fat identified protagonists. The paper considers the textual and embodied resources readers use and reject when imagining and interpreting a character’s body. This paper explores how readers’ meaning making was influenced when reading prose versus comics. This paper adds to a corpus of scholarship about the relationships between young adult literature, comics, bodies and reader response theory.

At the time of the study, participants were enrolled in a teacher education program at a Midwestern University, meeting monthly for a voluntary book club dedicated to reading and discussing young adult literature. To examine readers’ responses to comics and prose featuring fat-identified protagonists, the author used descriptive qualitative methodologies to conduct a thematic analysis of meeting transcripts, written participant reflections and researcher memos. Analysis was grounded in theories of reader response, critical fat studies and multimodality.

Analyses indicated many readers reject textual clues indicating a character’s body size and weight were different from their own. Readers read their bodies into the stories, regarding them as self-help narratives instead of radical counternarratives. Some readers were not able to read against their assumptions of thinness (and whiteness) until prompted by the researcher and other participants.

Although many reader response scholars have demonstrated readers’ tendencies toward personal identification in the face of racial and class differences, there is less research regarding classroom practices around the entanglement of physical bodies, body image and texts. Analyzing reader’s responses to the constructions of fat bodies in prose versus comics may help English Language Arts (ELA) educators and students identify and deconstruct ideologies of thin-thinking and fatphobia. This study, which demonstrates thin readers’ tendencies to overidentify with protagonists, suggests ELA classrooms might encourage readers to engage in critical literacies that support them in reading both with and against their identities.

In 2022, the Baltimore professional development school (PDS) partner schools, John Ruhruh Elementary/Middle School (JREMS) and Notre Dame of Maryland University (NDMU) received funds through a Maryland Educational Emergency Revitalization (MEER) grant to determine (a) to what extent additional resources and professional development would increase JREMS teachers’ efficacy in technology integration and (b) to what extent NDMU professional development in the form of workshops and self-paced computer science modules would result in greater use of technology in the JREMS K-8 classrooms. Results indicated a statistically significant improvement in both teacher comfort with technology and integrated use of technology in instruction.

Survey data were collected on teacher-stated comfort with technology before and after grant implementation. Teachers’ use of technology was also measured by unannounced classroom visits by administration before and after the grant implementation and through artifacts teachers submitted during NDMU professional development modules.

Results showing significant increases in self-efficacy with technology along with teacher integration of technology exemplify the benefits of a PDS partnership.

This initiative was original in its approach to teacher development by replacing required teacher professional development with an invitation to participate and an incentive for participation (a personal MacBook) that met the stated needs of teachers. Teacher motivation was strong because teammates in a strong PDS partnership provided the necessary supports to induce changes in teacher self-efficacy.

Conventional wisdom tells us that mediation without ripeness is a fool’s errand (Zartman and Touval, 1985). What, then, is Türkiye’s motivation for mediating the war in Ukraine in lieu of ripeness – and what can its behavior as a mediator tell us about that motivation? In pursuit of this question, this paper inductively analyzes Turkish mediation in the Ukraine war to unpack the relationship between a contextual (ripeness) and actor-level (motivation) variable. Of particular interest is the decision-making and behavior of third parties (like Türkiye in Ukraine) who elect to mediate highly complex conflicts in which ripeness is indiscernible. The purpose of this research is not to propose or test a causal relationship between obscured ripeness and mediation, but rather to examine mediation behavior in situations where ripeness is obscured.

The impact of weaponized information on ripeness and third-party mediation is evaluated through an original, systematic and inductive case study analysis of Turkish mediation in the Russia–Ukraine war. As an intense theater of operations for information warfare for well over a decade, the war in Ukraine serves as an especially apt choice for an analysis of “obscured ripeness.” Likewise, Türkiye’s anomalous position as the only substantive source of mediation in the conflict lends significance to an empirical examination of its motivation and behavior as a mediator.

This research reveals that the pervasive use of weaponized information in the Russia–Ukraine war has distorted and disordered the information environment, thereby obscuring the ability of third parties to determine if the conflict is or could be ripe for mediation. However, the condition of obscured ripeness that prevails in the conflict has not proven a deterrent for mediation by Türkiye, which, as the only mediator in the conflict, has used a transactional approach to mediation motivated by self-regarding interests and animated by a manipulative mediation strategy. In sum, this inductive analysis of Turkish mediation in Ukraine reveals that the use of weaponized information in a conflict indirectly selects on transactional mediation (and mediators). The significance of this finding is magnified by the widespread use of weaponized information in contemporary conflicts as well as the declining frequency of third-party mediation.

There have been few, if any, systematic assessments in Turkish mediation of the Russia–Ukraine war, and none specifically concerned with the effects of weaponized information. Additionally, the paper proposes a typology of mediator motivation that is used to structure that assessment, while also introducing a new concept (“obscured ripeness”) and linking that concept both to the existing literature on ripeness and to the use of weaponized information in contemporary armed conflicts. As such, this manuscript represents an important contribution both to the empirical and theoretical landscape with respect to the study of mediation and international conflict management.

The purpose of this study is to investigate (1) how managers respond to stock price crashes, (2) why they respond and (3) how their responses affect shareholders.

This study employs a panel regression with various firm-level controls and firm- and year-fixed effects. The sample is comprised of 101,532 firm-year observations with 11,727 unique firms from 1950 to 2019. Using mutual fund flow redemption pressure as an exogenous variable to stock price crashes, the paper provides further evidence of the causality of documented findings.

Management becomes more focused on improving transparency, raising investment efficiency, reducing agency conflicts and regaining the trust of shareholders by investing in social capital and employee welfare. These actions increase firm value. This study also suggests that management undertakes these actions out of concern for their tenure of employment.

The catalysts of stock price crashes are well documented, but much less is known about what happens following stock price crashes. This study provides more insights into the understanding of corporate crisis management practices following adverse events.