Academic Mainstream Research Articles

Gender and Computing: Not the same old problem

ABSTRACT The decline in numbers of women on computing courses in higher education has been the subject of much comment. However, the debate has moved from a ‘women and computing’ approach to a more sophisticated theorisation of gender. We suggest that computing also requires better theorisation. Computing is most usefully characterised as a concrete not abstract science. Women's contribution to the field is often ignored because they are seen as end‐users, not part of the academic mainstream. We report a case study of men and women on applied information technology courses. Using data from in‐depth interviews, we found that both men and women were aware of gender in computing practice. However, both men and women expressed intrinsic as well as instrumental reasons for studying and the women were confident in their own abilities. Women brought with them valuable administrative experience of using computer systems. One of the challenges is to conceptualise women's computer skills as real computing and to ask what is wrong with computing rather than what is wrong with women.

In the ghetto: Legal studies in criminal justice programs*

Academic disciplines are artificial constructions, but also rational methods of organizing curriculum. A relatively new discipline such as criminal justice borrows its substance from established disciplines and wages a constant battle to be scholarly rather than merely vocational. JDs who teach in criminal justice programs find themselves tarred with the vocational brush; the resulting ghettoized status is reflected in salaries, hiring practices and lack of collaboration in teaching and research. JDs have no less commitment to teaching than do PhDs; their education is neither better nor worse, but different. Students will be better served if JDs are drawn into the academic mainstream as equal partners.

Changing Status of Academic Emergency Medicine (1991–1996)

An SAEM national task force previously concluded that academic departments and residencies in emergency medicine (EM) had preferentially developed outside of the academic mainstream. This study was designed to determine whether EM has made significant inroads into academic medical centers over the past 5 years. The baseline data set (7/1/91) contained all 126 Liaison Committee on Medical Education (LCME)-accredited schools, and all 87 Residency Review Committee (RRC)-accredited EM residencies. The comparison data set (7/1/96) contained all 124 LCME-accredited schools, and all 114 RRC-accredited EM residencies. The 1991-96 increments in academic departments and university-hospital residencies was examined in the aggregate, then stratified by medical schools grouped into quartiles and contiguous quartiles, according to academic ranking. A-priori and post-hoc comparisons were expressed with 95% and 99% confidence intervals (CIs), respectively. Over the past 5 years, the proportion of academic departments of EM increased by 23%, from 18% to 41% of all LCME-accredited schools (95% CI 12% to 34%). The largest increase (58%; 99% CI 40% to 77%) occurred among those schools academically ranked above the median. The proportion of EM residencies at university hospitals increased by 17%, from 40% to 57% (95% CI 5% to 30%). Again, the largest increase (25%; 99% CI 3% to 47%) occurred at university hospitals affiliated with schools academically ranked above the median. EM has made substantial inroads into academic medical centers over the past 5 years. This is reflected in quantitatively and statistically significant increases in academic departments and university-hospital residency programs, both occurring largely within institutions whose academic rankings place them among the upper half of all LCME-accredited medical schools.

The impact of content-based instructional programs on the academic progress of ESL students

Research has shown that content-based ESL instruction results in improved proficiency in English language skills and appears to ease students' transition into the academic mainstream. Although this research indicates that content-based instruction enhances performance in individual ESL and some related content courses, to date there has been no quantitative evidence that a content-based instructional program has any further impact on ESL students' academic progress. The study reported here provides evidence that content-based instruction at the intermediate level of English language proficiency not only enhances performance at that level, but may also help to facilitate students' subsequent performance in the college academic mainstream and increase their likelihood of earning a college degree.

Academics and The Nursing Home

Several characteristics of the nursing home justify its new found status as an academic site, including a heterogenous patient population, a rich and varied milieu for teaching, opportunities for faculty development, and more importantly, the nursing home's new found position in the health care continuum. Mandates from a number of professional and accrediting bodies pertaining to primary care training experiences further highlight the nursing home's role in medical education. In addition to education, research in the nursing home has become increasingly recognized and valued. The incorporation of nursing facilities into the academic mainstream will impact positively not only in patient care and age-related clinical investigation but also on the breadth and quality of training for the primary care physician of the future.

Discourse, artifacts, and the ozarks: Understanding academic literacy

As we teachers of ESL reading and writing continue our discussions about preparing second language (L2) students for the academic mainstream, we find ourselves on a theoretical and pedagogical frontier that is largely uncharted. In essence, we seem to be moving rapidly toward a broader social view of language with hardly a border check as we cross from one paradigm to another. In order to understand where we are headed and why we should venture there, it seems important to survey the landscape and consider the potential ahead. My survey proceeds as follows: (1) I wrestle with the notion of academic discourse community, for without it we cannot understand or even posit a concept of academic literacy; (2) in light of the socially constructed nature of an academic literacy, I argue for a different way of framing the questions we need to answer as we compose our ESL classes; (3) I discuss the role of personal experience in learning, language acquisition, and academic writing and reading, a role that I claim is essential; and (4) I end with an assessment of the implications for the ESL classroom.

Equality, Curriculum, and the Decline of the Academic Ideal: Detroit, 1930-68

The question of whether high school students should follow a uniform academic program or choose from options in a differentiated curriculum has reemerged in the 1980s as one of the most crucial issues facing American public education. In its latest incarnation, brought to life by the publication of A Nation at Risk and subsequent proposals and manifestos, the debate has been framed as one between educational excellence, on the one hand, and equality of educational opportunity, on the other. In response to increasing demands for excellence throughout the 1980s, many states and local districts adopted minimum academic competency exams for high school graduation or for passing from the eighth grade into high school, and set or raised the minimum level of academic performance required for participating in extracurricular activities.' Yet many of these efforts were met with a chorus of criticism from educators, liberal politicians, and minority leaders who argued that such changes would have a disproportionate effect on black and Hispanic youths, blocking their participation in athletics and other activities, raising their already high dropout rates, and in countless other ways stunting their aspirations for entry into the academic mainstream. These criticisms echoed a very old idea in American education, a definition of equal educational opportunity, which we believe has done immeasurable damage over the years to the educational experience of American youth in general, and African American youth in particular. This idea holds that the high school must do everything it can to keep everyone in school until graduation-even if this means keeping graduation requirements low and in reach of all; developing courses that

Academic grades of ninth‐grade urban learning‐disabled students and low‐achieving peers

Abstract The first purpose of this study was to describe and analyze the academic performance of secondary learning‐disabled students in regular education classes. We accomplished this by collecting the grades these students earned in three academic mainstream classes. The grades of low‐achieving students were also collected to provide a basis for comparison. The results indicated that there were significant differences in the distribution of grades earned by the two groups in social studies and health, but no significant differences between the grades earned in science. The second purpose of this study was to determine if selected variables (intelligence quotients, reading level, and absence rates) differentiated learning‐disabled students who passed ninth grade from those who did not. Of these variables, only absence rate discriminated between passers and failers.

Mainstreaming in an urban middle school: Effects of school organization and climate

Mainstreaming in an urban middle school was examined for three years by a participant observer. It was hypothesized that the school's organization and culture would affect mainstreaming. Findings confirmed this hypothesis. Homogeneity of academic classes and the requirement that students fit into academic groups limited access for special education students to classes where they could function academically as the students did in general education. Criteria for selecting students were not delineated; special and general education teachers communicated informally and irregularly about their students' functioning in mainstream classes; and students received little help with their academic mainstream responsibilities. Students from special education were added to regular classes that were already very large and teacher permission was necessary to include a mainstream student in a general education class. Some school factors facilitated mainstreaming. The principal advocated it and supported its implementation. Special education teachers initiated mainstreaming through their social networks in the school. Heterogeneous groups in minor subjects offered classes with a wider range of ability within which special education students could function, and low track homogeneous classes provided environments that were more like special education classes.

Apologizing for Capitalism

Like most graduate programs that train economists for the academic mainstream, the one at the University of Michigan has a very rigid and abstract curriculum in the first year or two. Although students understand that they need to learn mathematics, statistics, and conventional economic theory to enter the profession, they cannot seem to see why their courses have no apparent bearing on the social problems that led many of them to study economics in the first place. Instead of changing the curriculum in response to student complaints, the facuity decided to set up a seminar on "the usefulness of economic theory" to teach their students how good their foul-tasting medicine really is.This article can also be found at the Monthly Review website, where most recent articles are published in full.Click here to purchase a PDF version of this article at the Monthly Review website.

Towards a Policy for Mainstream Physics

Britain has produced many physicists of great distinction: Newton, Faraday, Maxwell, Dirac, Mott, Josephson ... However, in recent years the academic mainstream physics community, which is at the core of all our physics, has not received the support necessary to carry out its responsibilities properly (Vinen Report, SERC 1982). This is a particularly serious development in a science in which, with very few exceptions, the only fundamental or long-term research is carried out in universities or SERC facilities.

Book authorship and the physics professoriate

This paper documents the book-writing and research activities of the Pennsylvania physics/astronomy professoriate and, by extrapolation, examines whether college physics textbooks are representative of the academic mainstream in the discipline.

Integration of non-traditional programs into the mainstream of academic institutions

Higher education's efforts to respond to the growing demand for non-traditional programs and services have resulted in the proliferation of external degree programs. The present inquiry examines the status of these programs in traditional institutions. Basing evaluation on the guidelines set forth by the Carnegie Commission for Non-Traditional Study (1973), the author suggests that external programs have not achieved the desired degrees of integration into the academic mainstream. Diverse management and planning approaches that might facilitate institutional adaptation and enhance program strength and viability are explored.

Ritual Process and the Family in the Chicano Novel

In an autobiographical article entitled Going Home Again: The American Scholarship Boy, Richard Rodriguez made a provocative observation about novel. He speculated that the novel ... is not a form capable . . . of being true to basic sense of communal life that typifies culture. Rodriguez argues that novel is best capable of depicting a solitary existence against a large social background. Thus, he argues, Chicano novelists nearly always fail to capture breathtakingly rich family life of most Chicanos and instead often describe only individual in transit between Mexican and American cultures.' This speculative opinion would probably be negligible were it not for fact that it appeared in The American Scholar and an anthology of rhetoric.2 Thus, like his recent media-acclaimed autobiography, it is more accessible to American literary and academic mainstream than more informed opinions, which often appear in less widely circulated publications. While this opinion, first published in 1974, may be accurate in describing some novels, most notably Jose Antonio Villareal's Pocho, it seems to have been written with no acknowledgement of fact that Tomas Rivera's Y no se lo trago la tierra and Rudolfo Anaya's Bless Me, Ultima had been in circulation since 1971. Both of these novels show

Reentry programs

AbstractHow continuing education centers and specially designed counseling programs can ease the reentry of mature women into the academic mainstream.

Making Computer-Aided Instruction make a difference in college teaching

This presentation attempts to discuss some of the factors that enable a computer-based instructional system to function as part of a practical and effective learning system, operating within the academic mainstream of a university environment. It is the author's view that all too many university Computer-Aided Instruction (CAD installations are so far removed from this context that CAI as an instructional tool is already in some danger of following the “programmed instruction” of an earlier era to well-deserved oblivion. A brief summary of CAI activities at Simon Fraser University will be given, with particular mention of the organization of CAI services, the use of our course-ware by other institutions, and our attempts to interface audio-visual devices such as slides, audiotapes, and the Philips PIP unit, to a conventional CAI terminal system. Finally, we will comment on our experience with the Coursewriter III system, and on the steps that must be taken if this system is to become a versatile and adequate instructional tool.

The Strange Career of "Latin-American Studies"

Whatever the recent progress of Latin-American studies in the United States, it is less evident to outsiders than to specialists in the field. Defects of our Latin-American pro grams are most noticeable at the liberal-arts core of humanities and the social sciences. Anthropology, in its present state, offers the best point of departure for examining Latin-American culture; literary and historical studies are especially weak. A drawback to Latin America as a field of study, in contrast to Asia or Africa, is that its culture is deceptively recognizable to Americans. Moreover, our inherited suspicion of the Catho lic world discourages study of its intellectual origins, and pre vents us from identifying its sociological and psychological foundations. Today the wholesale subsidizing of Latin-Ameri can studies threatens to cut them off further from our academic mainstream and to encourage mediocrity. The various causes for the poverty of our Latin-American programs may possibly relate to our submerged doubts about the wisdom of the original Protestant secession.