Suchergebnisse

Journal writing is pedagogically appropriate for increasing reflexivity and conscious awareness of one's environment. The journal assignment discussed in this article promotes recognition of the impact of race, gender, and social class on students' everyday lives. In pre- and posttest surveys of students engaged in this assignment, students report statistically significant increases in awareness after journaling. These increases in awareness are found for students enrolled in introductory courses at two very different universities (one a private Catholic midsized university in the Midwest and the other a large state university in the Southeast). Students' qualitative responses further substantiate the effectiveness of this assignment in meeting course objectives. To facilitate use of this assignment by others, we identify a set of best practices to help ensure high-quality journals and discuss challenges and benefits of this assignment, including getting to know one's students.

AbstractAnalyzing a unique module of the General Social Survey, we test hypotheses that three religion dimensions — affiliation with specific religious traditions (belonging), service attendance (behaving), and religious orthodoxy (believing) are associated with compassionate feelings, and that these feelings carry over into support for government efforts to help the poor, blacks, and the sick. The religiously orthodox report more compassionate feelings toward others than do modernists and, partly because of this, are more supportive of government intervention to help the poor. Yet attending religious services frequently does not increase compassionate feelings and makes people less supportive of government efforts to help the poor. There are no differences among religious traditions in compassionate feelings, and the only difference on economic policy preferences is for Black Protestants to support government assistance to blacks. Compassionate feelings have comparable effects to political ideology and party identification on support for government assistance to the disadvantaged and misfortunate. We conclude that people of faith, variously defined, do not constitute a monolithic "Religious Right" and are potentially open to policy appeals from both political parties.

The Inside-Out Prison Exchange Program (Inside-Out) is a program that offers college courses taught in a blended classroom within correctional settings, resulting in multiple challenges for instructors. This article focuses on three major challenges that should be considered by Inside-Out instructors: addressing legal challenges for the instructor, students, university, and prison site; creating and sustaining diversity in a blended classroom; and, balancing the rules of the Inside-Out program and the institution. Utilizing a post hoc observation-as-participant framework, we present our experiences of teaching Inside-Out courses to demonstrate these distinct challenges and provide recommendations for current and future Inside-Out faculty, as well as the National program.

Although using personal electronic devices to record police–public encounters has surfaced as an important social phenomenon that could potentially shape public perceptions of the police and police–community relations, very little research has investigated factors affecting people's willingness to record the police. Using survey data collected from two universities, this study assessed whether race/ethnicity and social and legal consciousness influence college students' inclination to record public interactions with the police. Results indicated that minority students and those who believed that recording served social justice, had a deterrent effect on the police, and was legally justified were more likely to engage in such behavior. Past recording experience and negative encounters with the police also led to higher levels of willingness to record police activity. Implications for policy and future research are discussed.

Since 1992 there has been a federal mandate to reduce "disproportionate minority contact" (DMC), that is, juvenile and criminal justice system contact of non-White youth at rates exceeding their representation in the population. There is little research on how juvenile court authorities interpret this problem and their responsibility to address it, yet existing studies suggest that racial attitudes of court workers, and the lack of diversity among these officials, may contribute to DMC. Using a survey of juvenile court workers, the authors consider how court authorities view the importance of addressing disproportionate minority confinement and the individual-level and contextual predictors of these orientations. The authors find significant variation in the extent to which local court workers view DMC as a problem and that racial politics condition these orientations. Their findings support prior work suggesting that courtroom workgroups be seen as collectives that filter and interpret external rules and regulations, such as the DMC Mandate and indicate the significance of race to the focal concerns of court workers. Within limitations of the study, findings suggest racial politics of probation officers and court contexts may impede or promote local responses to the DMC Mandate and that minority representation within the courtroom workforce is an important source of DMC Mandate support.

AbstractThis participatory action research project worked with four street‐life‐oriented black men to document how a community sample of street‐life‐oriented black adolescents between the ages of sixteen and nineteen frame street life as a site of resiliency inside schools based on 156 surveys, 10 individual interviews, and 1 group interview. Data collection took place primarily in Paterson, New Jersey, and Harlem, New York City. Findings reveal that the adolescents overall hold negative attitudes about their educational experiences within two dominant themes: student‐teacher interactions and preparation for economic and educational opportunities. Results can be used to understand how the adolescents' street identities are adaptive inside schools.