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This research advances communities of practice (CoPs) theory by documenting a role distinct to CoPs within student newsrooms. Using a survey (N = 127) of college student media advisers, the data support a liminal role in which advisers are simultaneously inside and outside the CoP. This study also develops and verifies scales for each of the four pillars of a CoP in student newsrooms, that is, practice, community, identity, and meaning. Furthermore, these findings explore the impact of newsroom structure on the formation of CoPs and the differences among advisers regarding time spent in mentorship and assessment.

Student engagement is a complex phenomenon, with diverse interpretations, even within further and higher education. This article presents three potential, interconnected, novel models which provide a measure of unification of the range of interpretations and hence may improve understanding of the broad phenomenon. The models emerged from a study of computing students but should be relevant across a wide range of disciplines. They are presented as being provisional but they should be useful in providing modifiable frameworks for the investigation of engagement issues and in student support activity. The first model is in the form of a force-field diagram, identifying forces which drive for, and those which drive against, student engagement. The second identifies four possible levels of student engagement created by an individual's responses to those forces. The final model represents an individual student's engagement as comprising four dimensions, encompassing forms of motivation and connectedness. In addition to these models, this article suggests that some students who may appear to be disengaged should more accurately be considered to be 'differently engaged'.

In a mixed methods survey (N = 323), college journalists shared their experiences of working in remote student newsrooms during the COVID-19 campus disruptions. Through the theoretical lens of Communities of Practice, findings revealed students experienced robust, but different learning in disrupted newsrooms. While students reported that their ability to cultivate and learn with a community suffered, they still reported the formation of their identities as journalists and the development of meaning. Analysis demonstrated that the survey items created statistically reliable scales for each of the four pillars and overall CoP scale. This advances the Communities of Practice theoretical framework to help describe the nature of student newsroom learning in a disrupted environment. Consistent with existing literature, this work points toward the special nature of student-run newsrooms as high-impact learning environments, however, the isolation that came as a natural outgrowth of the lack of community contributed to students’ struggles with mental health. These findings also underscore additional practical implications of young journalists learning and refining their craft in isolated spaces. Reporting remotely required heightened self-sufficiency and resiliency, but also amplified feelings of burnout, low morale, and mental exhaustion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since ratification of the Convention on the Rights of the Child in 1991, the UK Government has submitted three reports to the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child. This article explains the reporting process and provides an overview of the most recent recommendations from the Committee.

Despite structural changes made to central government and the development of the Every Child Matters programme in England, compartmentalised child policy proposals are often created for service settings and in response to a specific political imperative. This article provides a rationale for child impact assessment--a systematic process in which proposals for policy and legislation are reviewed and assessed for their potential impact on children and young people--and reviews project work in England involving the National Children's Bureau and the Children's Legal Centre.

Despite evidence that chronic care management improves outcomes, a framework designed for low income, uninsured populations is still needed to improve health disparities and guide further replication. We describe the Innovative Care for Chronic Conditions framework implemented by a coalition of clinics and agencies to address chronic care management for Mexican Americans with Type 2 diabetes mellitus who have low income and primarily uninsured. The core elements of the framework are described by clinic, home and community settings with community health workers playing an essential role in the delivery of community-based services that address the social determinants of health. Promising results are described. This framework expands the understanding of chronic care management approaches and contributes to further replication of the framework in diverse settings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This research advances communities of practice (CoPs) theory by documenting a role distinct to CoPs within student newsrooms. Using a survey (N = 127) of college student media advisers, the data support a liminal role in which advisers are simultaneously inside and outside the CoP. This study also develops and verifies scales for each of the four pillars of a CoP in student newsrooms, that is, practice, community, identity, and meaning. Furthermore, these findings explore the impact of newsroom structure on the formation of CoPs and the differences among advisers regarding time spent in mentorship and assessment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Volunteering has been found to improve life satisfaction and participation in the general population, but its impact has not been thoroughly studied among those with traumatic brain injury (TBI). It is important to investigate whether volunteering is helpful in addressing participation and life satisfaction to inform future treatment. Objective: To characterize those who volunteer after moderate-severe TBI and to investigate the association of volunteering with participation and life satisfaction after TBI. Methods: Using data from a single site contributing to the TBI Model Systems National Database, a retrospective analysis of 725 individuals with TBI was conducted. General Linear Models were used to compare outcomes of those who volunteer and those who do not after controlling for important covariates. Results: Volunteers were more likely to be employed/students, have better current functioning, be further post-injury, non-Hispanic white, and have more education. Significant relationships, after controlling for covariates, were found between volunteering and higher life satisfaction, more frequent community engagement, and greater social relations. No significant relationship between volunteering and productivity emerged. Conclusions: Given the positive relationship between volunteer status with life satisfaction and aspects of participation, future research should investigate the barriers/facilitators of volunteering to improve well-being and participation after TBI. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Student engagement is a complex phenomenon, with diverse interpretations, even within further and higher education. This article presents three potential, interconnected, novel models which provide a measure of unification of the range of interpretations and hence may improve understanding of the broad phenomenon. The models emerged from a study of computing students but should be relevant across a wide range of disciplines. They are presented as being provisional but they should be useful in providing modifiable frameworks for the investigation of engagement issues and in student support activity. The first model is in the form of a force-field diagram, identifying forces which drive for, and those which drive against, student engagement. The second identifies four possible levels of student engagement created by an individual's responses to those forces. The final model represents an individual student's engagement as comprising four dimensions, encompassing forms of motivation and connectedness. In addition to these models, this article suggests that some students who may appear to be disengaged should more accurately be considered to be 'differently engaged'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Auditory selective attention makes it possible to pick out one speech stream that is embedded in a multispeaker environment. We adapted a cued dichotic listening task to examine suppression of a speech stream lateralized to the nonattended ear, and to evaluate the effects of attention on the right ear's well-known advantage in the perception of linguistic stimuli. After being cued to attend to input from either their left or right ear, participants heard two different four-word streams presented simultaneously to the separate ears. Following each dichotic presentation, participants judged whether a spoken probe word had been in the attended ear's stream. We used EEG signals to track participants' spatial lateralization of auditory attention, which is marked by interhemispheric differences in EEG alpha (8-14 Hz) power. A right-ear advantage (REA) was evident in faster response times and greater sensitivity in distinguishing attended from unattended words. Consistent with the REA, we found strongest parietal and right frontotemporal alpha modulation during the attend-right condition. These findings provide evidence for a link between selective attention and the REA during directed dichotic listening. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents a novel diagramming approach which employs aspects of Actor-Network Theory (ANT) in the creation of ANT Analysis Diagrams (AADs). ANT is a socio-material approach which allows for the consideration of both human and inanimate entities in a social context. AADs provide a novel method for the analytical investigation of social situations, thereby both operationalizing elements of ANT and generating a visualization of a domain. It is the process of creating an AAD which is crucial, focusing attention on the characteristics of the entities involved and the nature of the relationships between them, thereby supporting the analysis of qualitative social data. As this article illustrates, AADs can be usefully applied to a wide range of social contexts and across scales, from the individual person, to groups through to broad social concepts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]