1811 research outputs found
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Canterbury Takes the Lead
No full textIn 1874, Pleasant Hill, Kentucky, had 362 members and was the second largest Shaker village. By 1900, however, it numbered only thirty-four and ranked twelfth out of the fourteen surviving societies. Canterbury, by contrast, which had 177 members and ranked sixth in size in 1874, numbered 106 in 1900, making it the second largest Shaker community. This was only ten fewer than Mount Lebanon, which had 421 members in 1874. Between 1874 and 1900, Pleasant Hill had declined by 91 percent, Mount Lebanon by 72 percent, but Canterbury only by 40 percent. In fact, in 1895 this numerical strength was so well known throughout Shakerdom, that Pleasant Hill requested Shakers be sent there from Canterbury.
What had happened at Canterbury that caused that community to supersede all others? The keys to understanding this are realizing the place or niche Canterbury occupied in Shakerdom, the decline of New Lebanon, and familiarity with the long-standing policies at Canterbury that guaranteed its survival
Primary Care Provider Practice Patterns and Perspectives in Health Provider Shortage Areas (HPSA) and non-HPSAs
No full textHealth outcomes in health provider shortage areas (HPSA) are often worse than those in non-health provider shortage areas. To understand this difference, I examine practice patterns amongst primary care providers in an HPSA and a non-HPSA, using Utica and Boston as case studies, respectively. While there has been a wealth of research on the differences between patients in these two designations, the research on providers has largely focused on motivations to work in HPSAs (Ferguson et. al, 2009, Liu, 2007, Schlack et. al, 2022, & Rereddy, Jordan, Moore, 2015). To fill the gap in provider patterns in HPSAs and non-HPSAs, this study explores how these two groups of providers interact with patients, insurance companies, and bureaucracy, as well as their experiences of burnout. Drawing on in-depth interviews (n=14), I find that providers across designations share many of the same issues concerning the healthcare system including fear of medical malpractice attitudes, heightened burnout, diminished career satisfaction, and frustrations with insurance bureaucracy. However, these groups notably differ in three key areas: patient transportation, changes in visit length, and cultural competency training. Additionally, while HPSA providers often alluded to the shortage of specialists, non-HPSA providers spoke to the beginnings of a primary care provider shortage that may not be felt as directly in Utica due to the prevalence of allied healthcare professionals. These findings highlight the need for further research into the reasoning behind the growing PCP shortage in Boston, as well as the need for policy remedies for shared concerns about the increasingly complicated field of primary health care
Contested Classrooms: How Partisan Politics Shape the Discourse on Inclusive Education in Public High Schools
No full textThe central research question guiding this study is: how do partisan progressive and conservative politics influence students’ experiences with inclusive education, particularly concerning education on race and LGBTQ+ topics? My findings reveal that among students from both politically conservative and progressive states, inclusive education was most prevalent and positively received when delivered through non-formal channels. However, disparities emerged between the two groups. Students from politically progressive states were more likely to notice and benefit from informal instruction compared to their counterparts from politically conservative states
Holes in the Fabric of a Shaker Village: Three Lost Buildings of the Harvard Shaker Society
No full textIn the Harvard Shaker village today, there are eleven surviving buildings built by or used by the Shakers, one in the North Family, three in the South Family and seven in the Church Family. Between 1791 and 1918, the Shakers had at least seventy structures. So if eleven still stand, what happened to the other fifty-nine buildings? Three of these buildings are the subject of this article. The three buildings addressed include one of the earliest buildings, the First House, built in 1792, and two of the last buildings built by the Shakers: the South Family’s Brick Shop of 1854 and the North Family’s dwelling, often referred to as the “Rural Home” of 1853. All three of these buildings still stood when the Shakers sold their property in 1918
Emotional Labor in Special Education Teachers
No full textThis study identifies emotional labor demands and coping strategies for special education teachers at two locations of a special education school. Emotional labor requires one to suppress or reduce feelings in order to meet the expectation of their job (Hochschild 2012 [1983]), and is made up of both job-focused and employee-focused emotional labor. Normalization, the institutionalized process of making the ordinary seem ordinary (Ashforth and Kreiner 2002), and routinization, a process by which abnormal procedures are rendered normal or mundane in the workplace (Chambliss 1996) are two major mechanisms for regulating emotional expression in the workplace that are applied in this case. The most significant emotional labor demands required of special education teachers in this research setting are addressing student behaviors and the expectation to remain neutral. Both institutionalized coping strategies and informal coping strategies contribute to teachers’ mechanisms for regulating their emotional expression in the workplace. Institutionalized strategies are taught through the organization’s training process and include “taking a minute” and calling for staff assistance. Informal coping strategies include making light of the situation and venting with other staff members. Both formal and informal strategies fit into aspects of normalization and routinization processes established in previous literature. These findings provide new information about emotional labor in this specific research area, and provide helpful information about challenges that teachers face that may contribute to staffing issues. Staffing shortages and retention are a major challenge facing this, and similar, schools, and this research helps identify areas for organizational growth to combat this issue in a feasible way
Not So Sexy Sex Ed: How Sex Education Impacts Sexual Script Formation
No full textSex education provides critical information that helps young adults form their sexual scripts and the subsequent decision making process regarding their health. However, the stereotypes and stigmas present in the information can negatively impact young adult sexual development and empowerment. Therefore, this study seeks to understand how different types of sex education, both formal, in schools, and informal, from parents, friends, and the media, work together to form young adult knowledge and beliefs about sex and sexuality. The study uses six all women focus group interviews at Alex College to compare and contrast the sexual script development from different educational sources during participants high school years. Analysis of the themes reveals that while school based sex education overall provides the information and beliefs utilized the least by students due to its lack of relevance, all forms of sex education have similar problems leading to a disempowerment of women’s sexual agency. All the sex education sources promote power imbalances based on gender and sexuality along with a narrow, medical perception of sex that does not teach the importance of social and emotional wellbeing in relationships, all of which harm sexual script development. Therefore, this study provides additional evidence supporting sex education reform towards a holistic approach
Front Matter
Full text linkInformation relating to the publisher, publication frequency, editorial staff, purchase options, submission requirements, and contact information for the American Communal Societies Quarterly
Cover
No full textFront cover illustration: Sarita Akin, sister of Madhuri, dancing in meditation. Communal Societies Collection, Hamilton College
Being Italian: The Peculiar Journey of Blackness
No full textGenerations of African and Black Italians are extending the boundaries of what it means to be Italian, in the face of denial, diversion, and an insistence on whiteness as the measure of inclusion, and humanity. Drawing on Allan Pred’s work on racist geographies of the everyday and taken-for-granted in Sweden, I advance the concepts of B/black spaces and relational places to approach to the study of identity, belonging, and place in Black Europe, with a focus on Italy. Black and African Italians from diverse origins and generations are asserting their belonging in Italy. Pred’s work on every day situated practices, power relations, taken-for-granted knowledge, and silences, is useful to contemporary scholarship in Black geographies, antiracist and decolonial scholarship. Pred’s holistic studies of modernity and the impacts of global political and economic transformations in lived experiences demonstrate the centrality of racism to national societies and cultures. His work is valuable to scholars of modern Western colonial systems of knowledge production and power, advancing insights and encouraging new directions based on abundant, ordinary yet silenced everyday realities and experiences. This paper expands on Pred’s work through an analysis of Blackness, place and belonging in Italy, offering an approach to the study of African Diaspora in Europe