Search

States' annual testing data for spring 2021 showed that unfinished learning in the wake of COVID-19 is most pronounced--and most troubling--in math. In Texas, nearly 40 percent of students failed the state's math exam in 2021. In Indiana, only 37 percent were proficient in math, down from 48 percent in 2019. Many states saw similar results. What makes the results such a cause for alarm is the sequential nature of math learning. Math skills build like a staircase. Should math teachers deliver grade-level content to students, knowing they lack the prerequisite skills and concepts to thrive? Or should she remediate by teaching the entire class fourth-grade material, which potentially robs students of the chance to outperform expectations? These questions plagued educators long before COVID-19. But given what test results say about unfinished learning, particularly in math, the need for answers is even more urgent.

Purpose: Current evidence around the management of osteotomy‐related infection is insufficient to robustly underpin the expert statements formulated by a recent European consensus statement. We present a review of a large case series in a high‐volume osteotomy practice to contribute to the understanding of the incidence, management and outcome of infection in this subspecialty area. Methods: Analyses of two prospectively collected databases for all osteotomy around the knee and infections related to osteotomy were performed, along with a review of hospital readmission data to capture all osteotomy‐related infections. Clinical notes were reviewed to assess patient demographics, incidence of infection, how infection was managed and clinical outcome. Results: In a series of 822 osteotomies in 755 patients, there were 21 (2.8%) cases of suspected infection. Twelve (1.6%) were contemporaneously deemed 'superficial' and nine confirmed 'deep' infections (1.2%). Deep infections were all successfully managed with wound debridement, with or without plate removal, depending on union and time from initial surgery. One of these infections was noted during a revision procedure, but no revision was carried out as a direct result of infection, no external fixation was required and no infected nonunions were experienced. Conclusion: All of the cases in this series were managed successfully with debridement ± removal of the plate, without the need for revision or external fixation. Any potential signs of infection around an osteotomy, especially in the case of medial high tibial osteotomy, should raise awareness for deep infection and the need for further surgery due to the limited overlying soft tissue cover. This evidence supports the recent European Society of Sports Traumatology, Knee Surgery and Arthroscopy algorithm. Level of Evidence: Level IV, case series. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores how the concept of emotional labour has moved from sociological into lay discourse as a case study of the double hermeneutic and concept creep, demonstrating the effect sociological concepts can have on lay actors' understanding of their everyday lives. From an analysis of 41 news and magazine articles about emotional labour, we identify the various meanings the term carries as well as the ideologies and logics that underpin them. The concept has become a tool used to frame discussions around gender inequalities in unpaid work, including housework, emotion work, and providing support. However, the Marxist underpinnings of the original concept have been subverted within a lay discourse that is largely reflective of a liberal feminist and neoliberal ethos. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This short piece considers how participant recruitment can have ethical elements. With reference to a qualitative research project on asexuality we explore the challenges associated with recruiting from an emerging, and politically charged, identity group. In our attempt to broaden the representation of asexual stories we sought to recruit people who may not fully identify with the emerging term 'asexual' as a sexual orientation while also not equating this with a lifestyle choice of abstinence. This was attempted through crafting suitable recruitment materials via the use of the Mass Observation archive and expanded sampling criteria. Our efforts met with mixed success, on which we reflect. We conclude by suggesting how such ethical questions related to recruitment will remain 'gaps' in ethical regulation, calling for a greater reflexive approach from researchers about sampling criteria.

Consequently, Brzezi'nski sees this as a "liminal" stage in Bauman's work, as he moved between differing conceptions of culture. It is also in this period that Brzezi'nski suggests Bauman links his theory of culture to transformation, most notably in his consideration of socialism as an active utopia. By bringing this Polish work into consideration of Bauman's I oeuvre i , Brzezi'nski has provided us with a valuable overview of continuities and changes in Bauman's sociology. [Extracted from the article]

Analytics, the application of advanced statistics to sport, has become increasingly prominent. This paper will focus on their application in basketball. I will argue that the introduction of analytics is an attempt to expand the logic of modernity into sport, an area which, for Elias, its demands had historically been temporarily suspended. Instead we can see some of the key tenets of analytics – which I will explore via reference to The Mid-Range Theory, a recent book promoting their use in basketball – as reproducing the modernist demand for control, order, prediction and efficiency. In turn, I will also explore how the critique of analytics reflects the critique of modernity, most notably in its attempt to disenchant the social world and create a new iron cage of efficiency. Therefore, the case of analytics in basketball shows us that what Wagner called modernity as interpretation still has significant social purchase. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Soil dust aerosols are a key component of the climate system, as they interact with short- and long-wave radiation, alter cloud formation processes, affect atmospheric chemistry and play a role in biogeochemical cycles by providing nutrient inputs such as iron and phosphorus. The influence of dust on these processes depends on its physicochemical properties, which, far from being homogeneous, are shaped by its regionally varying mineral composition. The relative amount of minerals in dust depends on the source region and shows a large geographical variability. However, many state-of-the-art Earth system models (ESMs), upon which climate analyses and projections rely, still consider dust mineralogy to be invariant. The explicit representation of minerals in ESMs is more hindered by our limited knowledge of the global soil composition along with the resulting size-resolved airborne mineralogy than by computational constraints. In this work we introduce an explicit mineralogy representation within the state-of-the-art Multiscale Online Nonhydrostatic AtmospheRe CHemistry (MONARCH) model. We review and compare two existing soil mineralogy datasets, which remain a source of uncertainty for dust mineralogy modeling and provide an evaluation of multiannual simulations against available mineralogy observations. Soil mineralogy datasets are based on measurements performed after wet sieving, which breaks the aggregates found in the parent soil. Our model predicts the emitted particle size distribution (PSD) in terms of its constituent minerals based on brittle fragmentation theory (BFT), which reconstructs the emitted mineral aggregates destroyed by wet sieving. Our simulations broadly reproduce the most abundant mineral fractions independently of the soil composition data used. Feldspars and calcite are highly sensitive to the soil mineralogy map, mainly due to the different assumptions made in each soil dataset to extrapolate a handful of soil measurements to arid and semi-arid regions worldwide. For the least abundant or more difficult-to-determine minerals, such as iron oxides, uncertainties in soil mineralogy yield differences in annual mean aerosol mass fractions of up to ∼ 100 %. Although BFT restores coarse aggregates including phyllosilicates that usually break during soil analysis, we still identify an overestimation of coarse quartz mass fractions (above 2 µm in diameter). In a dedicated experiment, we estimate the fraction of dust with undetermined composition as given by a soil map, which makes up ∼ 10 % of the emitted dust mass at the global scale and can be regionally larger. Changes in the underlying soil mineralogy impact our estimates of climate-relevant variables, particularly affecting the regional variability of the single-scattering albedo at solar wavelengths or the total iron deposited over oceans. All in all, this assessment represents a baseline for future model experiments including new mineralogical maps constrained by high-quality spaceborne hyperspectral measurements, such as those arising from the NASA Earth Surface Mineral Dust Source Investigation (EMIT) mission. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Soil dust aerosols are a key component of the climate system, as they interact with short- and long-wave radiation, alter cloud formation processes, affect atmospheric chemistry and play a role in biogeochemical cycles by providing nutrient inputs such as iron and phosphorus. The influence of dust on these processes depends on its physico-chemical properties, which far from being homogeneous, are shaped by its regionally varying mineral composition. The relative amount of minerals in dust depends on the source region and shows a large geographical variability. However, many state-of-the-art Earth System Models (ESMs), upon which climate analyses and projections rely, still consider dust mineralogy as invariant. The explicit representation of minerals in ESMs is more hindered by our limited knowledge of the global soil composition along with the resulting size-resolved airborne mineralogy than by computational constraints. In this work, we introduce an explicit mineralogy representation within the state-of-the-art atmosphere-chemistry model MONARCH. We review and compare two existing soil mineralogy datasets, which remain a source of uncertainty for dust mineralogy modelling, and provide an evaluation of multi-annual simulations against available mineralogy observations. Soil mineralogy datasets are based on measurements performed after wet sieving, which breaks the aggregates found in the parent soil. Our model predicts the emitted particle size distribution (PSD) in terms of its constituent minerals based on Brittle Fragmentation Theory (BFT), which reconstructs the emitted mineral aggregates destroyed by wet sieving. Our simulations broadly reproduce the most abundant mineral fractions, independently of the soil composition data used. Feldspars and calcite are highly sensitive to the soil mineralogy map, mainly due to the different assumptions made in each soil dataset to extrapolate a handful of soil measurements to arid and semiarid regions worldwide. For the least abundant or more difficult to determine minerals, such as the iron oxides, uncertainties in soil mineralogy yield differences in annual mean aerosol mass fractions of up to ∼100 %. Although BFT restores coarse aggregates including phyllosilicates that usually break during soil analysis, we still identify an overestimation of coarse quartz mass fractions (above 2 µm in diameter). In a dedicated experiment, we estimate the fraction of dust with undetermined composition as given by a soil map, which makes a ∼10 % of the emitted dust mass at the global scale, and can be regionally larger. Changes in the underlying soil mineralogy impact our estimates of climate-relevant variables, particularly affecting the regional variability of the single scattering albedo at solar wavelengths, or the total iron deposited over oceans. All in all, this assessment represents a baseline for future model experiments including new mineralogical maps constrained by high quality spaceborne hyperspectral measurements, such as those arising from the NASA EMIT mission. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Argues for the application of Delphi studies in marriage and family therapy (MFT) research. Describes the methodology of the Delphi and discusses Delphi studies that already exist in the MFT literature. Recommendations for the use of Delphi in the MFT field are highlighted. (MKA)

In this piece I explore how Bhambra and Holmwood's Colonialism and Modern Social Theory implies three different questions that can be asked concerning the connections between colonialism and social theory. With reference to their discussion of Durkheim, I suggest the answers they offer to these possible questions return us to what Kurasawa termed the 'constitutive paradox' of Durkheim's relation to colonialism, namely a mix of political acceptance while also questioning its ideological legitimacy. While exploring Durkheim's comments on colonialism, race, the state and his own Jewishness, I emphasise the need for a careful historical sociology which reckons with the different possible connections between social theory and colonialism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents the discussion on Bauman's maleness and ignorance of gender. Topics include drawing strong connection drawn between socialism and Judaism in Poland; strength of anti-Semitism rests in the ability for seeing one's position of power as a marker of Jewishness; and calling for decolonising sociology and critical theory.

This paper argues against assigning Zygmunt Bauman to the category of a 'white', 'European' theorist and the tendency to speak of an undifferentiated 'Eurocentrism'. To argue this, I return to a set of articles by Bauman which reflected on the history of European Jewry. These encourage us to place Bauman in a historical and social context in which he is best identified as emerging from the racialized and classed politics of East European Jewry. Bauman traces how this group were made the outsiders of the assimilatory project of West European Jewry then, as Jewish socialists, were victims of the political anti-Semitism of communist regimes. Not only does this encourages us to be critical of the claims that he spoke from an elite 'white European' position, it also has further lessons for sociology which, in its own 'war against forgetfulness', has tended to impose simplistic racialized and political categories onto theorists. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Some literature on asexuality has claimed that it is inherently radical and contains the potential for resistance. Unfortunately, this literature has tended to be unempirical, has imagined asexuality as a disembodied entity, and has marginalised the multiple identities held by asexual people. This article, inspired by Plummer’s critical humanist approach, seeks to explore how individuals understand their asexuality to encourage forms of political action in the areas of identity, activism, online spaces, and LGBT politics. What we found was a plurality of experiences and attitudes with most adopting a pragmatic position in response to their social situation which saw large-scale political action as irrelevant. We conclude by reflecting on what these results mean for those who see asexuality as potentially radical. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper seeks to bring the sociologies on morality developed by Zygmunt Bauman and Émile Durkheim into conversation. Rather than adopting an approach which sees their perspectives as opposed, it will be suggested that while there are differences in their broad approaches there is also a hitherto uncommented upon overlap concerning the possibility of moral rebellion. For Bauman, inspired by those who were part of the resistance to the Holocaust, this is seen to reside in the pre-social moral impulse to be for the other while Durkheim links this to the role of education as a form of moral socialization. By exploring these links, we can see that both rely upon a conception of the conscience which, expressing the moral ideal lying behind our morally imperfect world, inspires actors to act morally in immoral times. The paper concludes by suggesting that this argument reflects recent claims concerning the potentially humanist elements of a sociological perspective and long-running debates on the potentially ‘oversocialized’ conception of individuals common to sociology. Therefore, this paper raises wider questions about the notion of the human resting behind sociological ideas. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article evaluates the relative contributions of diaries and interviews in multiple methods qualitative research exploring asexual identities and intimacies. Differentiated by three core differences: reflective time-frame (the day just had/lifetime), context (alone/with researcher) and mode (written/verbal), these methods had the potential to generate a multidimensional view of our topics. Using five cases in which data from both interviews and diaries were collected, this article explores how the intermeshed issues of identity and intimacy were constructed in each method, as well as reflecting on what was gained by their combination. Our analysis leads us to conclude that multiple methods do not always produce a fuller or a more rounded picture of individual participants' lives. Nevertheless, the decision to collect data using different strategies did increase our chances of finding a method that suited individual participants, whether in style or focus. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This short piece considers how participant recruitment can have ethical elements. With reference to a qualitative research project on asexuality we explore the challenges associated with recruiting from an emerging, and politically charged, identity group. In our attempt to broaden the representation of asexual stories we sought to recruit people who may not fully identify with the emerging term ‘asexual’ as a sexual orientation while also not equating this with a lifestyle choice of abstinence. This was attempted through crafting suitable recruitment materials via the use of the Mass Observation archive and expanded sampling criteria. Our efforts met with mixed success, on which we reflect. We conclude by suggesting how such ethical questions related to recruitment will remain ‘gaps’ in ethical regulation, calling for a greater reflexive approach from researchers about sampling criteria. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper uses findings from research diaries to explore the use of practices of intimacy among asexual people. While much of the literature to date has focused on the supposedly transformative and political nature of uniquely asexual practices of intimacy, our findings suggest something different. Rather than seeking to transform the nature of intimate relationships, asexual people make pragmatic adjustments and engage in negotiations to achieve the forms of physical and emotional intimacy they seek. We discuss this in relation to three areas: friendships, sex as a practice of intimacy, and exclusion from intimacy. Our findings suggest the importance of not only considering the social context in which asexual people practise intimacy, but also how the practices in which they engage may be shared with non-asexual people. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article argues for a return to the social thought of the often ignored early 20th-century English thinker GDH Cole. The authors contend that Cole combined a sociological critique of capitalism and liberal democracy with a well-developed alternative in his work on guild socialism bearing particular relevance to advanced capitalist societies. Both of these, with their focus on the limitations on ‘free communal service’ in associations and the inability of capitalism to yield emancipation in either production or consumption, are relevant to social theorists looking to understand, critique and contribute to the subversion of neoliberalism. Therefore, the authors suggest that Cole’s associational sociology, and the invitation it provides to think of formations beyond capitalism and liberal democracy, is a timely and valuable resource which should be returned to. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article is an attempt to contribute a view on the economic crisis from classical sociology, a voice often missing from the sociological response to the crisis. The work of Émile Durkheim provides a unique perspective here centred on morality and inequality produced in a historical context akin to our neoliberal times. It is argued there are four key points to take from Durkheim’s work. First, that the initial credit crunch can be more fully understood with reference to the economic anomie which Durkheim sees as ‘chronic’ in a time of marketisation. Second, that this creates an antagonistic relationship between a supposedly self-dependent rich and lazy poor. Third, this conception of self-dependency and individual initiative makes any attempt to regulate the economy akin to sacrilege. Finally, the state is unwilling to intervene due to the emergence of ‘pseudo-democracies’. Therefore, Durkheim’s theory accounts for the initial crisis, austerity and double-dip recessions in a sociological framework. The article concludes by returning to the centrality of morality to the crisis for Durkheim and highlighting the omission of this in contemporary debates. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]