Publication Type: Informal Discussion Roundtable
Abstract: Municipal underbounding and redistribution of minority populations in the United States is a growing problem that continues to be avoided, therefore increasing the growth of the underclass. In North Carolina, Mississippi and several southern states African Americans and members of the lower and underclass are being excluded from public services by neighboring municipalities. The fringe populations which are located outside of the municipalities have limited or no public services. The areas with access to water, and garbage collection are paying higher fees than the residents who live within the municipalities. Although the residents of the fringe populations are contributing to the neighboring cities their basic needs are not being met because of political exclusion. If the fringe populations were approved for annexation African Americans would comprise more than fifty percent of the votes in many areas. Through redistribution of the African American populations, the underclass is growing in large numbers within the cities and rural areas. Through the use of underbounding, redistribution of African Americans, redlining, and white-flight those in power have found a way to legitimize without repercussions. African Americans are continuing to be subjected to racial discrimination by lending companies, real estate agents and local officials. Laws were put into place in the 60’s and 70’s to provide equal access for all people and today we are still seeing the use of racial discrimination in America at the hands of those in power.

Publication Type: Individual Poster
Abstract: Background and Aims: The effects of early sibling-sibling interactions on social and cognitive development among twins are poorly understood. In comparison to singletons who spend much of their social activity in scaffolded caregiver-child interaction, multiples spend most of their waking hours in the presence of and engaged in negotiated activities with their siblings. We propose that these patterns of negotiation promote a significantly earlier coordination of imitative, joint, and reciprocal activity between twins than in singletons. The intensity of this involvement with a same-age sibling may explain a great deal about the extraordinary empathy and perhaps even the similarities observed in their social and cognitive performances.

Methods: We studied the development of social interaction between twins and the effect of a same-age sibling on the timing and ordering of play behavior. Ten pairs of twins were videotaped for 10 min at 7, 10, and 13 months (adjusted for prematurity) in an open-field room that contained four age-appropriate toys. The interactions between the twins and their caregiver were coded in real time using Tracker II, video-coding software developed by us for this purpose. While tracking the duration of the interactions between participants, we recorded repeated and rhythmic actions, imitation, joint activity, joint focus, joint attention, mutual gazing, and unreciprocated glances at others. We also recorded the presence of reciprocal, complementary or contrasting roles taken by siblings during joint activities

Results: Our observations showed frequent visual monitoring among the seven-month-old twins with few glances toward the caregiver. They imitated rhythmic body movements and activity with toys, and showed a small but significant amount of joint focus depending on their mobility. At ten months, visual monitoring remained frequent and imitation, joint focus and joint activity increased while, at 13 months, there was reduced visual monitoring, taking turns with toys, and joint activity.


Conclusions: Our initial observations indicate that social coordination, such as imitation, repetition, and turn taking occurs early among twins. This early, intense, social interaction may be fundamental to the development of a shared social world. Twin-twin empathy appears to be a more intense development of the shared understanding that ultimately expresses itself as knowledge of the intentions of others.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: This case study analyzes the implementation and negotiation micropractices of a specific program of enterprise discourse, Stephen R. Covey’s The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. Through the lens of discursively influenced identity, we focus on the intersection of discourse and organizational practice to explore what characteristics of the enterprise discourse make it so effective at shaping the identities of organization members. We illuminate key characteristics of the discourse of enterprise for identity shaping and organizational control by examining micropractices at SkyWatch, a high-tech, defense-oriented government facility in the western United States. SkyWatch members, in response to Congressional budget cuts, reorganized themselves into a more competitive, market-oriented organization. During this period of change, facility leaders turned to Covey’s 7 Habits as a way of teaching “trust” and “character” to the members of the SkyWatch workforce. This case thus provides an excellent opportunity to assess the implementation of a specific program of the enterprise discourse and to see what makes this particular discourse successful at shaping organizational identities. Specifically, our findings indicate that Covey’s change program shows the simultaneously general and specific nature of value-based identity discourses, blurs the boundaries between the internal and external organization, functions in multiple contexts, and takes on the character of a mandate.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: Understanding Division by Fractions:
An exploratory study of 7 mathematics education graduate students

This (paper only) poster explores mathematics education graduate students’ understanding of division by fractions. It has been shown in prior research that pre-service teachers exhibit serious shortcomings in their understanding of division by fractions as a model of situations. However, existing research has not examined this issue among populations of graduate students in mathematics education. Looking at such a population is an important issue: Graduate students are often the ones who teach prospective math teachers, so attempts to change pre-service teachers’ views on division by fractions can be informed by learning more about how mathematics education graduate students think about this topic area. A brief synopsis of the current literature findings regarding prospective teachers’ understanding of division by fractions will be provided. Participants in the present study were seven mathematics education graduate students at a large Midwestern university. To assess participants’ understanding of division by fractions, each of the participants was asked to imagine that he/she had to respond to a sixth grader stating the following: “I know that when I’m supposed to divide two fractions, I have to turn one of the numbers upside down and multiply, but I don’t know why all of a sudden it gets changed to multiplication, so I forget which one to turn upside down and I get a bunch of the problems wrong (Borko et al., 1992, p.202). Could you help me?”. Participants’ responses were first transcribed, coded and, then, interpreted in the context of existing research. My analysis indicates that despite the participants’ strong background in mathematics, only one of them exhibited conceptual understanding of the rationale underlying the “invert and multiply” rule; the conceptually oriented student flexibly manipulated an area model and then used inductive reasoning to illustrate the validity of her argument. Among the remaining six graduate students, five of them preferred to focus only on the formula and the rote application of the procedural steps. It is interesting to note that two of these five procedurally oriented students chose to propose an alternative formula as a means to demonstrate their own understanding; one went so far as to say that “to remember the algorithm is more helpful than to understand it”. In addition to the five procedurally and the one conceptually oriented students, there was one graduate student who had both a lack of conceptual understanding and also the serious misconception that multiplication makes bigger and division makes smaller. Without underestimating the difficulty of the topic of division of fractions, the analysis of the present study’s data has serious implications for graduate mathematics education programs, particularly in terms of addressing deficits in graduate students’ subject matter knowledge for teaching.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: Many political observers view get-out-the-vote (GOTV) mobilization drives as a way to increase turnout among chronic non-voters. However, such a strategy assumes that GOTV efforts are effective at increasing turnout in this population. The extant research offers contradictory evidence regarding the empirical validity of this assumption. We propose a model where only those citizens whose propensity to vote is near the indifference threshold are mobilized to vote and the threshold changes based upon the general interest in the election. This three-parameter model reconciles prior inconsistent empirical results and argues that low-propensity voters can be effectively mobilized only in high turnout elections. The model is tested against seven randomized face-to-face voter mobilization field experiments in which we specifically analyze whether subjects’ baseline propensity to vote conditions the effectiveness of door-to-door GOTV canvassing. The evidence is consistent with the model.