Committing Curricular Time to Science Literacy: The Benefits from Science-based Media Resources

Science reported in the media is an authentic source material to explore science research and innovation, to learn how science works and to consolidate science literacy skills.

Media reports intended to communicate science research and innovation provide opportunities for teachers to develop among their pupils the critical reading skills that are essential for promoting literacy in science.

This study focuses on a curricular intervention with upper primary pupils (age 11 years) and uses science reported in the media to facilitate science directed learning in the primary curriculum.

The study suggests that the use of science based media reports can be a positive learning experience for pupils. Strategies and teaching approaches can be used to boost pupils’ confidence and competence to adopt critical reading strategies when they encounter science-based media.

Critical reading and reasoning strategies vary in their degree of difficulty. This study would suggest that, when using media-based resources, teachers need approaches that systematically address the different levels of cognative challenge presented by media resources and create opportunities within the curriculum to revisit, consolidate and develop pupils’ critical reasoning skills.

One thing leads to another: science in the news as a basis for curriculum and professional development

Science based news is widely reported in the media. The ability to interact critically with such news reports is increasingly seen as a legitimate part of the science education agenda. This paper reports the findings of two studies looking at the early response and subsequent usage of a resource promoting the integration of science-based news in secondary science curriculum in Northern Ireland. This paper charts the introduction of the resource into schools. The subsequent impact on the science curriculum and the implications for teacher professional development are considered. Many science teachers demonstrate willingness and aptitude to use primary media sources within their teaching. Some who adopted the resource demonstrate the capacity to sustain the development using the resource as a catalyst in ongoing curricular change. Insights gained in this study are relevant to policy makers and curriculum developers as well as teachers seeking to promote this aspect of science education

A Longitudinal and Contextual Analysis of Media Representation of Business Ethics

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to present an analysis of media representation of business ethics within 62 international newspapers to explore the longitudinal and contextual evolution of business ethics and associated terminology. Levels of coverage and contextual analysis of the content of the articles are used as surrogate measures of the penetration of business ethics concepts into society. Design/methodology/approach – This paper uses a text mining application based on two samples of data: analysis of 62 national newspapers in 21 countries from 1990 to 2008; analysis of the content of two samples of articles containing the term business ethics (comprised of 100 newspaper articles spread over an 18-year period from a sample of US and UK newspapers). Findings – The paper demonstrates increased coverage of sustainability topics within the media over the last 18 years associated with events such as the Rio Summit. Whilst some peaks are associated with business ethics scandals, the overall coverage remains steady. There is little apparent use in the media of concepts such as corporate citizenship. The academic community and company ethical codes appear to adopt a wider definition of business ethics more akin to that associated with sustainability, in comparison with the focus taken by the media, especially in the USA. Coverage demonstrates clear regional bias and contextual analysis of the articles in the UK and USA also shows interesting parallels and divergences in the media representation of business ethics. Originality/value – A promising avenue to explore how the evolution of sustainability issues including business ethics can be tracked within a societal context.

Restorative Justice as a Response to Sexual Offending – Addressing the Failings of Current Punitive Approaches

This article explores the use of restorative justice as a response to sexual crime. The management of high risk sex offenders, particularly in the community post-release, has been a key focus of contemporary popular and political debates on sexual offending. Many offenders fail to come to the attention of the criminal justice system. For those that do, there is the almost blanket application of recent control in the community measures such as sex offender registries and community notification which have failed to prevent reoffending. The response by the media and the public to the presence of sex offenders in the community may also impede offender rehabilitation. The use of punishment alone via formal criminal justice is, therefore, an inadequate deterrent for sexual crimes. Although controversial, this article advocates the use of restorative practices with sexual crime as a proactive, holistic response to the problem and ultimately as a more effective means of reducing the incidence of sexual offences and sex offender recidivism.

The construction of images of people and place: Labelling Liverpool and stereotyping Scousers.

On 28th August 1207, King John created the Borough of Liverpool by granting its first charter. During the ensuing 800 years Liverpool has experienced a complex and changing social, economic and political history resulting in powerful images of the city and its people. This paper examines the labelling of Liverpool and stereotypes of Scousers. It explains how historical and contemporary events, and their coverage in various arms of the media, construct social and spatial imaginations of the city. This involves a more systematic contribution to the how and why dimensions of negative place imagery and social stereotypes, and enhances our understanding of the processes and issues affecting our interpretations of people and place. The analysis is both historical and contemporaneous in teasing out how previous and current events shape the perceptions of insiders and outsiders. This paper reveals that despite concerted efforts to re-brand Liverpool the city continues to face difficult challenges with ongoing bad publicity and negative place imagery.

The Challenges of Universalising Religions: the Kabbalah Centre in France and Britain.

The Kabbalah Centre is an offshoot of Judaism which since the 1990s has spread kabbalistic teaching in several countries to a religiously diverse audience. This article compares two European branches of the Kabbalah Centre: the flourishing London Centre, and the Parisian Centre that declined in the late 1990s before closing its doors in 2005. It emphasizes in particular the responses they stirred from the media, anticult movements, Orthodox Judaism and the Jewish population. Ultimately, this case study allows us to observe, in situ, the trajectory of a global religion, torn between its Jewish roots and universalistic ambitions. It emphasizes the importance, in this process, of the relationship it maintains, willingly or not, with its original religious frame. Consequently, the importance of local contexts is raised, illustrating the impact and combination of diverse factors. In addition to public and official responses to religious diversity, religious movements are affected by the religious landscape and the structures and authorities of religious organizations, as well as the religious and cultural characteristics of the population. Ultimately, this article underscores the complexity of the globalization of religion, which embraces a wide range of complex, sometimes ambiguous, situations lying between strong particularistic identity-claims and cosmopolitan, universalistic ambitions.

From stress to distress: Conceptualizing the British family farming patriarchal way of life

‘Rural stress’ and ‘farming stress’ are terms that have become commonly appropriated by British health-based academic disciplines, the medical profession and social support networks, especially since the agricultural ‘crises’ of B.S.E. and Foot and Mouth Disease. Looking beyond the media headlines, it is apparent that the terms in fact are colloquial catch-alls for visible psychological and physiological outcomes shown by individuals. Seldom have the underlying causes and origins of presentable medical outcomes been probed, particularly within the context of the patriarchal and traditionally patrilineal way of life which family forms of farming business activity in Britain encapsulate. Thus, this paper argues that insufficient attention has been paid to the conceptualization of the terms. They have become both over-used and ill-defined in their application to British family farm individuals and their life situations. A conceptual framework is outlined that attempts to shift the stress research agenda into the unilluminated spaces of the family farming ‘way of life’ and focus instead on ‘distress’. Drawing upon theorization from agricultural and feminist geography together with cultural approaches from rural geography, four distinct clusters of distress originate from the thoughts of individuals and the social practices now required to enact patriarchal family farming gender identities. These are explored using case study evidence from ethnographic repeated life history interviews with members of seven farming families in Powys, Mid Wales, an area dominated by family forms of farming business. Future research agendas need to be based firmly on the distressing reality of patriarchal family farming and also be inclusive of those who, having rejected the associated way of life, now lie beyond the farm gate.

Media coverage of sustainable development issues – attention cycles or punctuated equilibrium?

Over the last two decades there has been a marked change in the way that the public perceives environmental issues and the concepts associated with sustainable development. Few would argue that this has moved into the mainstream of public consciousness. Coverage of sustainability related concepts within the media, as illustrated by a sample of 112 worldwide newspapers, shows a clear upward trajectory. Taking the example of climate change and sustainable development this paper explores this increasing coverage, and arguably awareness of, sustainability concepts and considers parallels with the concepts of punctuated equilibrium and issue-attention cycles.

Discourses of Corporate crime as natural disaster: the case of the Paddington Rail Crash

Drawing on the literature in criminology and media studies on the nature of social understandings of corporate crime and its representation in the media, this paper takes one small but important step in this direction by carrying out a linguistic case study on the news coverage of one sequence of events which resulted from corporate negligence – the Paddington rail crash, a sequence of news events that were important as they led to legal change as regards corporate responsibility in Britain. The paper concludes by showing that while the news coverage played an important part in leading to a change in the law regarding corporate responsibility, although this received little coverage in the press.

The effect of priming on perceptions of dog breed traits

This study examined whether priming cues embedded in mediastyle presentations shaped people's perceptions of specific dog breeds, and in particular, the German shepherd dog (GSD). Two hundred and four adult females were exposed to one of two types of media-style presentation (stories or pictures). Half of the participants in each condition were exposed to versions designed to portray the GSD in a positive light; the remainder to stimuli developed to present the same breed in a negative light. Participants subsequently rated six individual breeds of dog, including the target breed, on a number of traits (e.g., “friendliness,“ “aggression“). Analysis revealed a significant effect of priming on people's perceptions of the GSD. Participants exposed to the negative stimuli perceived this breed as significantly less approachable, and more dangerous and aggressive, than those exposed to the positive stimuli. Priming did not influence the participants' perceptions of other breeds, even those often regarded in a negative light, although there was some evidence of breed-related category-based stereotyping. Overall, results suggest that people's perceptions of dog breeds can be influenced by verbal and visual representations. The results have implications for how dogs are portrayed in the media and other publically available sources of information.

Science Literacy and media Literacy: a missing link?

The study of science in the media is increasingly highlighted within science programmes and represents an authentic context for interdisciplinary collaboration. Yet the literature on ‘media across the curriculum’ makes surprisingly little mention of links to science and cross-curricular approaches to teaching about and with science-based media resources is an area that is under-explored. This research study focuses on science in the news. The project involved 28 teachers from seven schools and brought together science and English teachers to explore collaborative working with the aim of promoting critical engagement with media reports with a science component. Teachers planned, developed and implemented a school-based activity with an emphasis on ‘connected learning’ rather than the compartmentalised learning that tends to accompany the discrete treatment of science matters in science class and media matters in English class. Not only did the project raise teachers’ awareness of science in the media as a potential, purposeful and profitable area for collaborative working, but it demonstrated how the synergy of the different experiences and expertise of science and English teachers produced very varied approaches to a programme of activities with an enhanced capacity to promote criticality in relation to science literacy and media literacy.

The Critical Reading of the Images Associated with Science-Related News Reports: Establishing a knowledge, skills, and attitudes framework

For the majority of adults, the media constitute their main source of information about science and science-related matters impacting on society. To help prepare young people to engage with science in the media, teachers are being exhorted to equip their students with the knowledge, skills, and attitudes to respond critically to science-related news reports. Typically, such reports comprise not only text, but also visual elements. These images are not simply adjuncts to the written word; they are integral to meaning-making. Though science teachers make considerable use of newspaper images, they tend to view these representations unproblematically, underestimating their potential ambiguity, complexity, and role in framing media messages. They rarely aim to develop students’ ability to ‘read’, critically, such graphics. Moreover, research into how this might be achieved is limited and, consequently, research-informed guidance which could support this instruction is lacking. This paper describes a study designed to formulate a framework for such teaching. Science communication scholars, science journalists and media educators with acknowledged relevant expertise were surveyed to ascertain what knowledge, skills, and attitudes they deemed useful to engagement with science related news images. Their proposals were recast as learning intentions (instructional objectives), and science and English teachers collaborated to suggest which could be addressed with secondary school students and the age group best suited to their introduction. The outcome is an inventory of learning intentions on which teachers could draw to support their planning of instructional sequences aimed at developing students’ criticality in respect of the totality of science news reports.

Instituting order: the limitations of Nasser’s post-colonial planning visions for Cairo in the case of the indigenous quarter of Bulaq (1952–1970)

This paper investigates the limitations of postcolonial planning practices that aimed to modernise Cairo’s urban spaces during Gamal Abdel Nasser rule (1952–70). Following the Free Officers revolution of 1952, ambition to display urban order through forceful change in the city’s built environment was in action. Nasser’s visions of modernity were explicit in a series of attempts to reshape several prime locations in central Cairo, which included the old traditional waterfront quarter, in Bulaq Abul Ela. An analysis of the Bulaq planning scheme drafted in 1966 reveals insights into how notions of order were spatialised to integrate with Cairo’s complex urban fabric. The official plans to regularise Bulaq also strongly demonstrates how this was a top-down, centralised process in terms of governance, with full utilisation of state resources, namely the military and the media. From a wider perspective, planning practices under Nasser demonstrated an evident break with the past to eliminate memories of colonisation and disorder. Drawing on original resources, archival material, meeting minutes and maps of this historical but dilapidated quarter of Cairo, this paper gives an insight into how Nasser’s government attempted to convey a sense of order in a revolutionary country without, however, having an understanding of order as a coherent, multilayered and sequential process of change.

Censoring the 1970s: The BBFC and the Decade that Taste Forgot

This book is a study of the British Board of Film Censors in the 1970s. In permitting and refusing specific material to be shown on cinema screens the BBFC were dictating patterns of taste and helping shape and determine notions of acceptability. Contentious and controversial texts like A Clockwork Orange (1971), Straw Dogs (1971) The Devils (1971) and Life of Brian (1979) have been used to draw attention to the way in which the BBFC operated in the 1970s. While it is true to say that these films encountered major censorship problems, what of the hundreds of other films which were being classified at the same time? Did all films struggle with the British censors in this period, and can these famous examples be fitted into broader patterns of censorship policy and practice?

In studying over 250 film files from the BBFC archive, this work reveals how 1970s films such as Vampire Circus (1971), Confessions of a Window Cleaner (1974) and Carry on Emmannuelle (1978) also ran in to trouble with the film censor. This work explores the complex process of negotiation and compromise which affected all film submissions in the 1970s and the way in which the BBFC actively, and often sympathetically, negotiated with film directors, producers and distributors to assign the correct category to each film. The lack of any defined formal censorship policy in this period allowed the BBFC to work alongside the film industry and push cultural, social and artistic boundaries; however it also left the Board open to accusations of favouritism, subjectivity and personal bias.

This work is not simply a study of controversial films and contentious issues, but rather engages with wider issues of changing permission, legal struggles, the influence of the media and the legislative and governmental controls which both helped and hindered the BBFC in this important post-war decade. The approach used within this work focuses on historical and archival research, making it importantly inter-textual and offering a great deal to scholars from a number of associated disciplines, including history, social policy, media and communications and politics.

How Do We Find Out What's Going On in the World?

This textbook chapter critically examines the role of the media in International Relations, and introduces students to the main debates over how the media represents global affairs