Search results

Preservice English teachers are expected to use literary theories and criticism to read and respond to literary texts. Over the past century, two of the most common approaches to literary encounters in secondary schools have been New Criticism – particularly the practice of close reading – and Rosenblatt's transactional theory, both of which have been expanded through critical theorizing along the way. Elucidated by data produced in iterative experiments with Frost's “The Road Not Taken,” the authors reconceptualize the reader, the text, and close reading through the critical posthuman theory of reading with love as a generative way of thinking outside of the habitual practices of European humanisms.

In “thinking with” (Jackson and Mazzei, 2023) desiring-machines, affect, Man and critical posthuman theory, this post qualitative inquiry maps how the “The Road Not Taken” worked when students plugged into it iteratively in processes of reading with love, an affirmative and creative series of experiments with literature.

This study mapped how respect for authority, the battle of good v evil, individualism and meritocracy operated as desiring-machines that channeled most participants’ initial readings of “The Road Not Taken.” In subsequent experiments with the poem, the authors demonstrate that reading with love as a critical posthuman process of reading invites participants to exceed the logics of recognition and representation, add or invent additional ways of being and relating to the world and thereby produce the possibility to transform a world toward greater inclusivity and equity.

The authors reconceptualize the categories of “the reader” and “the text” from Rosenblatt’s transactional theory within practices of reading with love, which they situate within a critical posthuman theory. They eschew separating efferent and aesthetic reading stances while also recuperating practices of “close reading,” historically associated with the New Critics, by demonstrating the generativity of critically valenced “close reading” within a Deleuzian process of reading with love.

Community health clinics serving the poor and underserved are geographically expanding due to changes in U.S. health care policy. This paper describes the experience of a collaborative alliance of health care providers in a large metropolitan area who develop a conceptual and mathematical decision model to guide decisions on expanding its network of community health clinics.

Community stakeholders participated in a collaborative process that defined constructs they deemed important in guiding decisions on the location of community health clinics. This collaboration also defined key variables within each construct. Scores for variables within each construct were then totaled and weighted into a community-specific optimal space planning equation. This analysis relied entirely on secondary data available from published sources.

The model built from this collaboration revolved around the constructs of demand, sustainability, and competition. It used publicly available data defining variables within each construct to arrive at an optimal location that maximized demand and sustainability and minimized competition.

This is a model that safety net clinic planners and community stakeholders can use to analyze demographic and utilization data to optimize capacity expansion to serve uninsured and Medicaid populations.

Communities can use this innovative model to develop a locally relevant clinic location-planning framework.

THE Library Association Record will, no doubt, produce the appropriate account of the initiation of Mr. Charles Nowell, at Manchester, as President of the Library Association. Only a few words are necessary here to assure the new president of our satisfaftion with the recipient of our highest honour and our assurance of our loyalty. He has had the full apprenticeship from his youth up in the ways of public librarianship and the great work he has done since he has been Chief Librarian of Manchester has had the approval both of the citizens there and, we venture to assert, of the nation. It was specially appropriate that the ceremony, as was the case with Mr. Cashmore at Birmingham, should take place in his own city where the citizens, his Lord Mayor—who entertained the guests splendidly—his Committee and fellow City Officers could share in our tribute. It was even more fitting that that city should be the cradle of librarianship, having our pioneer of pioneers, Edward Edwards, as its first Librarian, and having also had a succession of fine library committees served by a series of quite eminent librarians. One word more; the speeches were worthy of the occasion and Mr. Gordon transferred his own powers to Mr. Nowell with the grace and eloquence he has shown consistently. Our readers will have seen the capital portrait—a speaking likeness—of Mr. Nowell in the January Record.

The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate how teachers can use their Sgaw Karen students’ names as a means to gaining awareness of their students’ home culture, language and personal stories.

This case study uses interviews with four Karen families to explore the meanings behind the names and nicknames given to Karen individuals.

The findings of this study reveal that Karen names can provide teachers important insights into Karen culture, history and language. Moreover, Karen names can also provide important biographical information about the student.

This study only focuses on Sgaw Karen names and does not include other Karen subgroups like the Pwo Karen, who are also resettling in the USA. This study does not include all Sgaw Karen names, but the authors have made efforts to include Karen names from various regions of Burma and of different religious backgrounds.

Teachers and others working with culturally and linguistically diverse students like the Karen will gain a better understanding of the various ways that names are given across cultures. While this paper focuses on one particular ethnic group, it is believed that teachers need to expand their notions about how other non-European groups name their children and how these names may reveal something about the student’s heritage culture, history, language and the unique lived experiences of their students.

Too often teachers and others working cross-culturally do not realize that other cultures follow different naming practices than those used in the USA. Teachers often mispronounce or misunderstand students’ names when the student comes from a cultural group unfamiliar to them. This paper helps a general audience better realize the unique approach Karen culture takes to naming children and how these names are often transformed to fit American naming conventions. As the title suggests, Karen students often feel embarrassed and take on a negative opinion of their given name as a result of a lack of awareness by teachers and others.

This paper provides a unique perspective in the literature on the ways cultural naming conventions can serve teachers aspiring to incorporate biography-driven instruction into their classroom practices.

Purpose – In this chapter we consider how two apparently disconnected practices – one very human (loving relationships), another the apparently alienating outcome of consumer technology (videogame play) – may turn out to be linked in very intimate and perhaps surprising ways. In making this connection we hope to comment on how consumer practices may be understood in the context of dynamic human relationships and cultural ideals.

Methodology – We conducted 36 phenomenological interviews with adult videogame players in order to elicit everyday experiences of videogame play in the context of the individual's lifeworld. This chapter deals with aspects of data that explore relationships with partners and children.

Findings – We illustrate that consumer practices, ideals, and even couples are not stable things, but are subject to routine reconfiguration throughout life. We suggest the possibility of a triadic theory of human relationships that consists of the people themselves, their consumer practices, and ideas about what love means.

Originality/value of paper – Previous questions about the value of videogame consumption have tended to ask about violence or the normalcy of how we might spend our time. In this chapter we have attempted to shift the focus to questions about human relationships and how they might be enacted with consumer technologies. By understanding the interactions between human actors, their consumer practices and their ideals we are able to comment on existing critiques and celebrations of the impact of consumer culture on human relationships.

This paper aims to engage nine women English teachers in exploring their personal memories centered around the perception of their raced, classed and gendered teacher bodies, and led them to conceptualize teaching as invasion.

The process of collective memory work (CMW), a qualitative feminist research method, was used to structure collaborative sessions for the nine women English teachers. In these sessions, the group took up the CMW process as the memories were written, read, analyzed and theorized together.

The analyses of two memories from our group's work builds understanding of how the use of new materialism and a conceptualization of emotions as social, collective and agentic, can expand the understanding of the teacher bodies and disrupt normalizing narratives of teaching and learning. The post-humanist concept of intra-action leads one to better understand the boundaries in the teacher – student relationships that is built/invaded, and to see the ways materials, humans, emotions and discourses are entangled in the teaching encounters.

This study demonstrates how sustained and collective research methodologies like CMW can open space for teachers to more fully explore their identities, encounters and relationships. Further, unpacking everyday classroom moments (through the framework of literacy-as-event) can yield deep and critical understanding of how bodies, emotions and non-human objects all become entangled when teaching becomes an act of invasion.

This paper aims to provide an overview of the development of learning organization concepts from the perspectives of Dr Victoria Marsick and Dr Karen Watkins and presents an interesting evolution of their work together spanning over three decades.

Through a conversation with thought-leading scholars Dr Victoria Marsick and Dr Karen Watkins, this paper discussed serval topics pertaining to the evolution of the learning organization debate and provides their unique perspective on the development of their theories.

The learning organization debate has many foundations that today have led to differing perspectives, which Dr Marsick and Dr Watkins advocate. They developed their learning organization concepts from their particular background, which varies from others. To these thought leaders, cultural aspects are the critical focus of the learning organization.

The discussion with Victoria Marsick and Karen Watkins reveals their understanding of the evolution of the contested discussion around learning organization definition and implications. The understanding of this evolution, in their words, provides context for researchers and practitioners.

Karen is a performance management consultant, trainer, facilitator and coach. Karen has worked in a variety of training, development and leadership roles for over twenty years; including eight years as managing director of PeopleSolve Ltd and 12 years as training, development and culture change manager with the Centrica group. Karen is Chairman of the British Institute for Learning and Development, a non‐executive director of the University of Chichester, and a director of Creative Leaders.

This briefing is prepared by an independent interviewer.

In this interview, Karen Velasco talks about her professional background before being appointed Chairman of the British Institute for Learning and Development (BILD), highlights the vision of the BILD, and gives her thoughts on the new developments occurring within the field of learning and development.

Provides strategic insights and practical thinking that have influenced some of the world's leading organizations.

Learning and development departments constantly have to change their priorities to fit with the changing economic climate. Drawing on her professional experience, Karen Velasco offers advice and guidance to L&D professionals on how to remain competitive in new markets, whilst still addressing the needs of their employees.