Search

Despite an overwhelming scientific consensus, a significant proportion of the American public continues to reject anthropogenic climate change. This disparity is particularly evident among evangelical Christians, for whom theological conservatism, general scientific skepticism, political affiliations, and sociocultural influences may impede their acceptance of human-caused climate change. Climate advocates have attempted to engage the evangelical community through various educational initiatives; lacking empirical measurement, however, it is difficult to draw conclusions regarding the efficacy of such programs. Here, we present the results of a study that addresses this lack by adapting questions from the Six Americas of Global Warming survey to measure the climate change beliefs of undergraduate students at an evangelical Christian college before and after attending a lecture by a Christian climate scientist. The 88 participants who successfully completed a pre- and posttreatment survey were divided into three groups: the first attended a live lecture, the second attended a recorded lecture, and the third attended a similar version of the same recorded lecture in which the presenter removed material addressing common misconceptions about climate change. The results demonstrate a significant increase in the proclimate beliefs for students in all three groups. There was no significant difference between the impacts of the live and recorded lectures or between the recorded lectures with and without misconceptions. These findings affirm the value of climate education among evangelicals; highlight the potential utility of such presentations, both recorded and live; and point to opportunities for research in the area of faith-based climate communication.

Discussion is a crucial component for learning in a college classroom. Increasingly, university and college faculty are using online learning management systems to facilitate and assess course discussions. Given this reality, are there ways to frame prompts to generate normatively better discussions, or discussions where students are better able to meet the course learning outcomes? To answer these questions, we utilize data from Introduction to American Government classes at two institutions with the students of three instructors who participated in online discussion boards on multiple substantive topics; for each topic, students were randomly assigned to one of two experimental conditions. In each, we framed a related prompt in different ways to test how such prompts impact student success as measured by several learning outcomes informed by the American Association of Colleges & Universities (AAC&U). With our unique experimental design and novel data, we are able to test several hypotheses related to student engagement, the content of discussions, as well as the quality of students' work. In the end, our research has important normative implications for pedagogy as well as the cultivation of civility and political engagement inside and outside of the modern classroom environment.

This paper presents the first spatial analysis of racial disparities in the UK welfare sanction regime. As part of their austerity programme, the UK government tightened the conditionality of welfare programmes and intensified the use of financial penalties against welfare claimants who failed to demonstrate compliance with these conditions. Analysing Jobseeker's Allowance (JSA) data from the Department of Work and Pensions (DWP) and the Office for National Statistics between 2012 and 2019 we draw attention to the spatially uneven and highly racialised geography of welfare sanctions in England. Claimants from racially minoritised backgrounds are consistently more likely to be referred for a sanction by Jobcentre caseworkers and receive an adverse decision at the hands of institutional decision‐makers. Within this, however, there are important scalar and spatial differences that warrant critical attention. In rural England, the risk of being sanctioned is substantially higher for all groups, but especially for Mixed heritage and Black/Black British claimants who in some areas are over twice as likely to be sanctioned as their White counterparts. Since ethnicity data have not been published for Universal Credit sanction decisions, the presented evidence offers critical insight into the potential persistence of racial injustice in applying welfare sanctions. We identify ‘hotspots’ of racism in the sanction regime, most of which are in rural areas, before offering three interpretative frameworks through which spatial and racial disparities might be explained. Any suggestion that such disparities simply derive from the behaviour of DWP staff fails to adequately account for deeply entrenched histories of welfare racism, rural racism and the role of welfare sanctioning in dynamics of racial capitalism: that is, disciplining and impoverishing racialised populations in ways that generate conditions for capital accumulation. By contributing new empirical and theoretical insights to the often neglected study of rural austerity and welfare, the paper calls for scholarship to investigate the variegations of welfare, austerity and racial capitalism in diverse rural contexts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

City centres and their retail spaces have faced major challenges in recent years, including the rise of e-commerce and out-of-town retail, the disruption caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, and the current cost-of-living crisis. These challenges, along with other changes to the retail sector, have led to high retail vacancy rates, reduced footfall, and a decline in department stores, particularly in UK city centres that have struggled in recent years to attract sufficient visitors to remain economically viable. Many cities in the UK have prepared strategic plans to respond to the recent challenges of retail spaces of city centres. This paper aims to explore how the UK Core Cities have dealt with these challenges at a strategic level. Through analysing their strategic plans, this paper investigates whether they have acknowledged the major challenges in the retail sector, whilst classifying the strategies that they have adopted to deal with these challenges. The results show that the studied cities have acknowledged the major changes to the retail sector and have adopted various strategies to address retail-related challenges. These strategies can be classified into three categories of temporary interventions, economic and financial interventions, and planning and design interventions. While there are considerable similarities among the adopted strategies, some cities have developed more comprehensive and innovative strategies, particularly in relation to planning and design interventions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]