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R has always provided an application programming interface (API) for extensions. Based on the C language, it uses a number of macros and other low-level constructs to exchange data structures between the R process and any dynamically-loaded component modules authors added to it. With the introduction of the Rcpp package, and its later refinements, this process has become considerably easier yet also more robust. By now, Rcpp has become the most popular extension mechanism for R. This article introduces Rcpp, and illustrates with several examples how the Rcpp Attributes mechanism in particular eases the transition of objects between R and C++ code.

Currently, most white people seem to think that Trump and his values are some cruel, insane, accidental distortion of US society. In counterpoint to this view, I argue that he is not. Inste...

Educational equity dominates discussions of US schooling. However, what ‘educational equity’ means is much contested in the scholarly literature and in public discourses. We follow the lead of scholars of color who have problematized the definition of educational equity. They have shown that the dominant, taken-for-granted definitions of equity which disguises the accumulation of societal and educational exclusions of and prejudices toward historically marginalized students, their families, and their communities. In response to this critique, we offer a new definitional framework for ‘educational equity’ that is community-based and, in our specific case, urban community-based. And, then, we will apply this new equity framework to three examples or ‘exemplars’ of education reform to explicate how they do and do not illustrate our framework. We will finish with a brief discussion, recommendations for future scholarship, and some concluding remarks.

In this study, I use in-depth interview data with black and white heterosexual men to explore shifts in the role of homophobia in the social construction of heterosexual masculinities. A continuum is introduced to map a range of interactional practices through which these men enact heterosexual masculinities. Heterosexual men who, on one end of the continuum, construct their heterosexual masculinities through homophobic practices establish strong boundaries of social distance from gays. The other end documents heterosexual men's anti-homophobias, moving from men who establish weak boundaries to those who blur them. These heterosexual men's anti-homophobic stances trade on the prestige of being tolerant of gays, with black men's anti-homophobias drawing on their experiences with racism.

We know little about what determines an effective placement experience, yet vocational placements are an integral part of many professional degree programmes. The aim of this research was to examin...

Large, traditional urban high schools are among the most difficult education environments in the United States. These schools, which serve a high percentage of the Black and Latino students in the United States, often have low academic performance, high dropout rates, high teacher and school leader turnover, and inexperienced teachers. They often exist within contexts of high poverty, high family mobility, high unemployment, and low social capital. However, because they serve such a high percentage of students nationally, academic success at these schools is an equity issue with major national economic and social wellbeing implications. As a result, there have been many efforts to reform these urban high schools or whole urban districts. Despite some exceptions, particularly in small schools that serve a small percentage of students, the success of these reforms has been limited. This is the report of a qualitative study of teachers', school leaders', and students' perceptions of three large, traditional ...

Utilizing a qualitative case-study design, this study explored how a mid-sized urban high school professional learning community was used as a reform effort to increase student achievement in mathematics on standards-based assessments. From a year-long interaction with the math professional learning community, which consisted of 3 school leaders and 6 teachers, principal leadership emerged as most significant in the professional learning community process for increasing teacher and student learning. Through detailed observations of professional learning community meetings and teachers' classrooms, this research was able to trace changes in teacher practices that resulted from the professional learning community meetings. Results indicate that school leaders may have to take responsibility for providing instructional processes and practices that are characterized by structure, pressure, and support to ensure that teacher learning and change in teacher practice that leads to improved student learning occur ...

This article reports the findings from a case study of urban school district effectiveness taken from a larger, multistate study. The case study district, Galena Park Independent School District in Galena Park, Texas, was chosen for inclusion in the study based on quantitative analysis of student achievement data in Texas. An education production function model was used to compare how well school districts actually performed to how well the model predicted they would perform given a certain level of resources. Qualitative data were gathered through extensive fieldwork in the school district and were analyzed using codes based on a theoretical framework of district effectiveness developed a priori by the research team. Key findings reveal how the political, administrative, and professional systems in Galena Park were brought into coherent alignment to support district reform efforts. A finding of particular importance was the productive coexistence of both professional and administrative accountability wit...

The mammalian target of rapamycin (mTOR) is centrally involved in growth, survival and metabolism. In cancer, mTOR is frequently hyperactivated and is a clinically validated target for drug development. Until recently, we have relied largely on the use of rapamycin to study mTOR function and its anticancer potential. Recent insights now indicate that rapamycin is a partial inhibitor of mTOR through allosteric inhibition of mTOR complex-1 (mTORC1) but not mTOR complex-2 (mTORC2). Both the mechanism of action and the cellular response to mTORC1 inhibition by rapamycin and related drugs may limit the effectiveness of these compounds as antitumor agents. We and others have recently reported the discovery of second-generation ATP-competitive mTOR kinase inhibitors (TKIs) that bind to the active sites of mTORC1 and mTORC2, thereby targeting mTOR signaling function globally (reviewed in refs. 1-4). The discovery of specific, active-site mTOR inhibitors has opened a new chapter in the 40-plus year old odyssey that began with the discovery of rapamycin from a soil sample collected on Easter Island (see Vézina C, et al. J Antibiot 1975). Here, we discuss recent studies that highlight the emergence of rapamycin-resistant mTOR function in protein synthesis, cell growth, survival and metabolism. It is shown that these rapamycin-resistant mTOR functions are profoundly inhibited by TKIs. A more complete suppression of mTOR global signaling network by the new inhibitors is expected to yield a deeper and broader antitumor response in the clinic.

Two university researchers who have considerable practitioner and research experience in urban schools conducted an interventionist action research project in collaboration with the professional staff of a diverse urban elementary school. The goal was to collaborate with the administration, faculty and staff in an average urban elementary school to improve the academic success of all students and all student groups regardless of the race, ethnicity and family income of the students and their families. While analyses of the school’s state accountability data indicated that there was some improvement in the academic success of the school’s diverse students, particularly among the lowest scoring student group, problems that arose in this process led the researchers to identify four themes of resistance to school change. These were ‘externals are the cause of low achievement and achievement gaps’, ‘accountability systems are destructive to my teaching’, ‘suggesting change is critique’ and ‘we are not leaders’...

This paper advocates working carefully through a tactical, practical engagement with accountability policies for the purpose of increasing educational equity and social justice for children of colour and children from low-income families. It discusses the pervasiveness of systemic racism and its effects in US schools, and explores the complexity surrounding issues of accountability and the possible disruption of this racism. Also described is the possibility of a convergence of interests between supporters of accountability and advocates for social justice. Finally, evidence is presented, from state and school district levels in Texas, that increased educational equity can be leveraged through the careful use of some accountability measures.

Postpositivists, such as Mishler (1990) and Lincoln and Guba (1985), have commonly claimed that there are substantial methodological and epistemological differences between their framework and that of the conventional or positivistic approach. On the face of it, this claim is indisputable. For example, Lincoln and Guba in Naturalistic Inquiry (1985) lay out five key differences in terms of ontology, epistemology, generalizability, causality, and axiology (p. 37). In contrast, it is argued here, as a result of a deconstructive investigation, that the conventional approach and more radical versions of postpositivism are, in a primary way, profoundly and disturbingly similar. This point is pursued by investigating the transgressive practices of validity across both conventional and more radical postpositivist research orientations and ends with new imaginaries of validity that make problematic conventional and postpositivist validity practices and celebrate the play of multiplicity and difference.

Comparison of Sexually Compulsive Physicians and Nonphysicians with Non-Sexually Compulsive Physicians and Nonphysicians Studies of the sexual behavior of physicians have focused primarily on ethical violations. Little information on sexual compulsivity in physicians is available. This study compares the sexual behavior of four groups of chemically dependent subjects: sexually compulsive physicians (SA-MD), non-sexually compulsive physicians (NONSA-MD), non-sexually compulsive nonphysicians (NONSA), and sexually compulsive nonphysicians (SA). These groups were also compared with respondents to a broad-based sexual survey. Findings and conclusions are presented.

Since the emergence of qualitative research in education, research interviewing has been naively accepted as a reasonably straightforward method for gathering information. Even Lincoln and Guba's ground‐breaking postpositivist work, Naturalistic Inquiry (1985), largely treated interviewing in this manner. More recently, other postpositivists, such as Mishler (1986), have criticized the traditional approach to interviewing and suggested new ways to conduct and understand the research interview. But these latter postpositivists still retain thoroughly modernist assumptions that they embed in their reconstructions of research interviewing. This paper presents, in contrast, a postmodernist perspective that critiques both positivist and postpositivist characterizations of interviewing. This paper also shows how one aspect of interviewing – the power relationship between the interviewer and the interviewee — might be reconceptualized within a postmodernist perspective. The paper ends with a call for appreciatio...

Policy archaeology is a radically different approach to policy studies in education, drawn from the post‐structuralist work of Foucault, which completely reconceptualizes policy studies and, thus, significantly expands it as a critical problematic. Rather than beginning after social and education problems have emerged into social visibility, policy archaeology studies the social construction of these problems. Rather than acquiescing to the range of policy solutions debated by policy makers and policy analysts, it interrogates the social construction of that range. Rather than accepting policy studies as a ‘neutral’ social science, it questions the broader social functions of policy studies. And, finally, rather than concluding that social and education problems, policy solutions and policy studies are created by the conscious interplay of the free agents of history, policy archaeology proposes that a grid of social regularities constitutes what is seen as a problem, what is socially legitimized as a poli...

Since 1959 several million dolphins have been killed in the purse‐seine fishery for tunas in the eastern Pacific Ocean. Through combined efforts of the nations whose vessels participate in this fishery, annual dolphin mortality in the fishery was reduced from about 350,000 animals during the 1960s to about 15,000 animals in 1992. In 1993 10 nations implemented an international program to progressively reduce this mortality even further, with a goal of eventually eliminating it. During 1993, the first year of the program, it appears that dolphin mortality will be less than 4000 animals. An alternative program, which would impose a moratorium on fishing for tunas associated with dolphins beginning in 1994, has been proposed. Controversy concerning the practicality and effects of the two programs centers around the morality of fishing for tunas associated with dolphins and the biological, economic, and political impacts of each program.

Kathryn Bell McKenzie will be joining me as the new co-editor of QSE. I am sure she is going to make a great contribution to QSE. First, she has been an associate editor for QSE for several years s...

(2000). Comments from the Editors. International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education: Vol. 13, No. 2, pp. 101-102.

With all of the current upheaval and argument about ‘scientific’ research in the scholarly world of education and with the huge growth of qualitative research since Naturalistic Inquiry by Lincoln ...