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It is suggested that mentor teachers engage in reflective conversations with preservice teachers to develop formative assessment as a teaching skill. However, there is minimal evidence documenting this process. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the process and impact of reflective conversation on preservice teachers’ learning about implementing formative assessment in the classroom.

This study draws on two dyads of mentor and preservice teachers to examine the role of conversation in helping preservice teachers learn to use formative assessment in elementary classrooms in the USA. A comparative case study method is used to analyze and synthesize the similarities, differences and patterns across both cases.

Qualitative data indicate that reflective conversations enable preservice teachers to reflect on their teaching practices and learn how to conduct formative assessment. However, a lack of critical reflection in the conversations results in generic solutions that do not focus on specific aspects of student learning.

This study suggests that mentor teachers using reflective conversation to guide preservice teacher’s critical analysis of their prior assumptions and teaching practices while referencing actual student learning is an essential element in learning to use formative assessment in the classroom.

This study contributes to the line of research that explores conversation between mentor and preservice teachers and provides an empirical analysis of conversations focused on learning to use formative assessment in elementary classrooms.

How do people with few material resources manage their consumption lives? We address this question by investigating the consumption practices and processes of 27 subsistence consumers in South Africa. These individuals are economically active, underserved consumers who either had in the past or have today few resources in terms of income, employment, and education; most of these consumer–informants grew up in and/or live in urban townships populated by poor black South Africans. Our interpretation is based on family systems theory and centers on analyses showing that subsistence consumers enact strategies to cope with the chronic stress of resource allocation needs for the family that outpace resource generation. The repertoire of strategies includes: (1) adhering to resource generation opportunities, (2) accessing new resources, (3) talking to family members, (4) trying and striving, (5) sacrificing, and (6) risking. These strategies are discussed in light of family systems theory, consumer behavior research, and marketing to subsistence consumers.

When Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans on August 29, 2005, the category 3 storm’s surge caused nearly every municipal levee to break leaving 80% of the city flooded. In the aftermath of the storm, television images of stranded residents, drowned hospital patients, looted stores, and chaos in designated shelters ignited an ethical debate over the role of race and class in modern America. As debates raged over how, or whether, to rebuild New Orleans, the idea of cultural sustainability underlies these discussions.

Drawing on the largest diaspora since the American Dust Bowl of the 1930s, I begin by examining the concept of a civil society through Habermas’ (1994) utopian model of an ideal speech community. I extend Habermas’ idea to the environmental justice movement with an emphasis on the utilitarian approach. This includes my discussion of Hinman’s (1998) pluralistic view of moral ethics within a multicultural society coupled with Bullard’s (1993, 1994, 2008) applied environmental social justice in low-income racial minority neighborhoods disproportionately impacted by hazardous waste sites. Then, I expand this argument into the concept of cultural sustainability in which the concept of a free speech community and environmental justice are embedded.

Drawing on a case study of New Orleans, I examine how the city’s divided racial and class cultures provide major challenges to applying cultural sustainability practices in the post-Katrina rebuilding process.

This chapter uses a case study to explore the application of cultural sustainability practices highlighting the concepts implicit roots in Habermas’ utopian free speech community and underlying ties to the environmental justice movement.

The purpose of this paper is to describe leadership, decision making and other community characteristics that support community resiliency following disasters.

Literature review and case study based on participant observation in nine years post-Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans.

Effective leaders promote community resiliency using democratic, diffused decision making, stressing intra-dependence and promoting individual agency and locally-informed decisions. They build upon local networks and cultural bonds – not waiting for disaster but continuously, with flexible readiness framework infused in all efforts.

The paper uses New Orleans’ experiences following Hurricane Katrina to explore how leadership, decision making and other community characteristics can promote resiliency post-disaster – case study extrapolating from one disaster and relevant literature to understand role of leaders in community recovery/re-design.

Changes in global economic and environmental conditions, population growth and urban migration challenge capacity of communities to thrive. Leadership and decision making are hub of wheel in crises, so understanding how leaders promote community resiliency is essential.

Disasters create breakdowns as functioning of all systems that maintain community are overwhelmed and increased demands exceed wounded capacity. Eventually, immediate struggle to limit impact gives way to longer process of re-designing key systems for improved functionality. What contributes to differing abilities of communities to reboot? How can we use understanding of what contributes to that differential ability to prepare and respond more effectively to disasters?

Hurricane Katrina was a uniquely devastating urban event – causing re-design and re-building of every major system. Almost ten years post-hurricane, rebuilding process has provided key lessons about effective leadership and community resiliency post-disaster.

The purpose of this paper is to seek to understand the differences in image repair strategies adopted by two governments that operate in the Western and Asian societies when faced with similar crises.

Textual analyses are presented of communication of Hurricane Katrina and Typhoon Morakot by the Taiwanese and US governments, respectively.

Faced with similar accusations of slow response, the Asian culture, represented by the Taiwanese Government, used predominantly mortification and corrective action strategies. The Western culture, represented by the US Government, used predominantly bolstering and defeasibility and a mixed bag of other strategies such as shifting the blame and attack the accuser.

A limitation of the study is that it depends on news reports, instead of news releases and speeches, for analysis. However, given the rapidity and volatility in the unfolding drama of each of the two crises, many of the comments made were to the media and not in prepared speeches. It is a limitation the authors accept.

Strategies reflected Hofstede's uncertainty avoidance and power distance dimensions. These dimensions should be considered when designing communication strategies in different cultures so as to be culturally sensitive and relevant.

Few, if any, studies on image repair theory have addressed the role of culture in strategies used. This study fills the gap by integrating Hofstede's cultural dimensions theory.

The purpose of this paper is to recover the narratives constructed by the disaster management policy network in Washington, DC, about the management of Hurricanes Katrina and Sandy. Recovering and analysing these narratives provides an opportunity to understand the stories constructed about these events and consider the implications of this framing for post-event learning and adaptation of government policy.

This research was conducted through an extended ethnographic study in Washington, DC, that incorporated field observation, qualitative interviews and desktop research.

The meta-narratives recovered through this research point to a collective tendency to fit the experiences of Hurricane Katrina and Sandy into a neatly constructed redemption arc. This narrative framing poses significant risk to policy learning and highlights the importance of exploring counter-narratives as part of the policy analysis process.

The narratives in this paper reflect the stories and beliefs of the participants interviewed. As such, it is inherently subjective and should not be generalised. Nonetheless, it is illustrative of how narrative framing can obscure important learnings from disasters.

The paper represents a valuable addition to the field of disaster management policy analysis. It extends the tools of narrative analysis and administrative ethnography into the disaster management policy domain and demonstrates how these techniques can be used to analyse complex historical events.

The purpose of this research is to examine why communities facing the same disaster recover differentially and determine pathways to successful disaster recovery in the research setting of New Orleans neighborhoods affected by Hurricane Katrina. While previous studies suggest that there are a variety of pathways to recovery, a broader cross-case comparison is necessary to generalize these pathways into a recovery framework. Specifically, this study seeks to determine what pre-disaster and post-disaster causal factors, alone or in combination, were important to recovery following Hurricane Katrina.

This paper presents a cross-case comparative study of neighborhood-level recovery. Based on prior work, which used the Delphi method to determine hypothesized causal factors and indicators of recovery, data was collected through publically available sources, including the US Census, the Greater New Orleans Community Data Center and previously completed studies for 18 damaged neighborhoods. Fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis was used due to its ability to analyze both quantitative and qualitative data for smaller case studies.

The results show that there are multiple pathways combining pre-disaster community factors and post-disaster actions that led to recovery, as measured by population return. For example, economic capacity is nearly sufficient for recovery, but a combination of low social vulnerability, post-disaster community participation, a high proportion of pre-World War II housing stock and high amounts of post-disaster funds also led to recovery.

This research uses a novel method to link pre-disaster measures of resilience and vulnerability to recovery outcomes and, through cross-case comparison, generates results that will enable researchers to develop a theory of sustainable community recovery.

For more than a decade, there has been an increased focus on the need for accountability and transparency about the value that United States and international higher education institutions add to students' knowledge and skills to help increase their economic productivity and career opportunities. This focus on accountability and transparency within the U.S. dates to 2005 when former US Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings established a Commission on the Future of Higher Education to develop a national strategy for higher education reform. This led to an increased focus on measuring value added within higher education institutions and using value-added scores to make institutional comparisons. This chapter presents a brief history of value added within the United States and presents high-level summaries of initiatives, assessments used to measure value added, and a review of how value added is measured. We also present challenges around methodology and interpretation of results. Lastly, we discuss some of the future directions in evaluating value added in higher education and areas for future research.

This chapter provides the foundation for the book. The objective of this chapter is to outline the theme of the book and to provide the context for the chapters that follow. Disaster recovery is a challenge for governments and for affected communities, families, and individuals. It is a challenge, because recovery from catastrophic disasters can be much more complicated and elusive than what can be addressed by national and international aid organizations given the time and other resources. The short literature review provides the research context, and the overview of the book describes each of the chapters briefly.

Purpose – This chapter explores the nature of dualism as it operates in post-Katrina New Orleans. In particular, the chapter suggests that the combination of the push toward a tourism and services dependent economy and the failure to regulate labor markets has created an especially detrimental situation for both workers and the long-term development of the city.

Design/methodology – To explore dualism in sectors and employment, this chapter applies survey methods to three areas of the New Orleans economy: food service, construction, and manufacturing. Survey methods vary slightly across sectors, due to the ease or difficulty of applying random sampling methods in each context. The surveys were applied anonymously by trained interviewers, and additional information from qualitative interviews and focus groups was also included.

Findings – Without regulation of labor markets and efforts to sustain and expand sectors characterized by decent livelihoods, New Orleans working conditions and development will continue to decline.

Originality/value – This chapter offers an original application of theories of dualism in development and labor markets. In development, dualism refers to sectoral division between high-value, cosmopolitan activities and low-productivity sectors, with few prospects for growth or employment. In labor markets, dualism characterizes the distinction between well-remunerated jobs with opportunities for decent livelihoods and other jobs that are precarious and vulnerable. The chapter also provides results from original surveys, interviews, and focus groups.