The video below explains the use of window functions in SQL. These functions allow you to calculate various values based on the criteria in that specific row. This can lead to some interesting insights depending on the situation.
The purpose of a cost-effectiveness analysis is to determine the relationship between the benefits and expenses of a program. Naturally, there are many different ways to do this but there are some common steps for approaching this as shown below
Define the Program and Outcome Indicators
Defining the programs means to know all the components and features of the program. For example, a reading lab program might have the following components.
The example above is highly simplified but serves our purpose. Once the program is defined it is necessary to determine the outcome indicators. Outcomes are measurable changes in behavior. For our reading lab example below is the the outcome we want to measure.
With the information above we can move to step 2.
Developing Questions
Once you know what the program is about and the outcome you want to measure it is now time to shape questions for the study. This might seem like a wasted step because obviously we want to gather data about the outcome indicator. However, there might be more than one thing we want to know about the outcome. For example, we might want to know if there are differences by gender, race, or socioeconomic factors. Since we can nuance and complicate the study it is important to state explicitly what we want to know. Below are the questions for our reading lab example.
The next step is to determine the cost of the program
Determine Cost
It is now time to find out how much money was spent. This is a straightforward process that includes calculating the expenses for personnel, facilities, equipment, and other expenses. For our reading lab example, the costs are simple to compute and our shown below.
For our example, only $30,000 is used for this program.
Determine Scope of Data Collection
The amount of data to collect depends on the questions to answer and the maturity of the program. If the program has been around for several years you have to decide if you want to collect data from all years or a subset. In our example, this is a new program so we will take all data from the the fifth graders who participated in the reading lab program.
Compute Outcome
Once the program has run its course it is time to determine outcomes. For our example, after the reading lab program was completed, each student took a reading comprehension test to assess what grade level they were at. For our purposes, students at or above grade level are considered successful. Below are the results
| Success | Unsuccess |
| 20 | 10 |
The information in the table above has already answered our first two questions for this study. We can now use this information to determine the cost-effectiveness ratio to answer the last question.
Cost-Effectiveness Ratio
The cost-effectiveness ratio can be calculated by dividing the cost of the program by the outcome. For our example, this would mean dividing $30,000 by 20 (number of success). In the table below we have several important calculations
| Reading Lab Program | |
| Program cost | $30,000 |
| Success rate | 20 / 30 * 100 = 66% |
| Number of students at grade level | 20 |
| Cost per successful student | $30,000 / 20 = $1,500 |
The table above provides all the information we need to assess this program within the scope that we defined. Right now it is hard to tell if this program is good or not because there is no standard or another program to compare it to. However, having external standards or another program for comparison is often expected with real examples.
Sometimes an additional step that is taken is a sensitivity analysis. A sensitivity analysis is especially important when there are a lot of estimations in the model. When it is necessary to estimate it is important to adjust these values high and low to see how they affect outcomes. For our example, this is not applicable.
Conclusion
Cost-effectiveness analysis is an important tool in determining the value of a program. The goals of a program are normally to help people while keeping in mind cost and effectiveness. The analysis presented here allows an evaluation to assess programs so that services can be rendered efficiently.
SQL window functions are calculation functions based on individual rows that create a new column that contains the new calculation. They are similar to aggregate functions but are different in that normal aggregate functions like “group by,” will provide a single number as the output. As mentioned earlier, with a window function, the results are placed in a new column for each row.
Window functions allow users to perform many analytical tasks, from ranking and partitioning data to calculating moving averages, cumulative sums, and differences between consecutive rows. Again, what is important here is that widow functions can be used to calculate values between rows.
Basic Example
In this first example, we will figure out how many customers we have from Texas and California and put this in a new column. Below is the code followed by the output.
SELECT first_name, last_name,state ,
COUNT(*) OVER () as total_customers
FROM customers
WHERE state in ('CA','TX')
ORDER BY customer_id;
In the select statement, we pull first_name, last_name, and state, and we then have our window function. In this window function, we are counting the number of customers in the customer table who are from CA and TX. The OVER() function is used to define the window. Since it is blank it is telling SQL that the entire table is the window. This will not make sense right now but is critical information for future examples. Lastly, we are ordering the data by customer_id.
The output indicates that 9,903 customers are from CA or TX. We can confirm this by running a separate line of code.
SELECT COUNT(*)
FROM customers
where state in('CA','TX')
The output from the window function is repeated in every row called total_customers. Repeating this information doesn’t make sense but it shows us what the window function does. For example, in row 1, the function sees that this person is from TX and then outputs that the total number of customers is 9,903 for somebody from TX or CA. This is a basic example of what window functions can do. Of course, there are things much more insightful than this that can be calculated.
Intermediate Example
We are now going to run mostly the same code with one slight difference. We want to know not just how many total customers there are but how many are from TX and how many are from CA. To do this we will have to use PARTITION BY which is the group by clause for window functions.
SELECT customer_id, first_name, last_name, state,
COUNT(*) OVER (PARTITION BY state) as total_customers
FROM customers
where state in ('CA','TX')
ORDER BY customer_id;
In the output, we have all of the same rows from the previous SELECT clause and the total_customers columns are different. When a person is from TX this column shows how many people are from TX but when a person is from CA it shows how many people are from CA. If you add up the number of people from TX and CA you get the following
4,865 + 5,038 = 9,903
This is the same amount as the total number of customers in our previous example. The PARTITION BY clause breaks the number of customers into two groups, those from TX and those from CA, and assigns the appropriate value based on where the customer in that row is from.
Advanced Examples
The next example will involve using the SUM aggregation function. We are going to add customer_id in a new column. This will be a running total. In other words, SQL will keep adding the customer_id until they get through all of the data. Below is the code followed by the output and explanation.
SELECT customer_id, title, first_name, last_name, state,
Sum(customer_id) OVER (ORDER BY customer_id) as total_customers
FROM customers
where state in('CA','TX')
ORDER BY customer_id;
Here is what is happening. In the total_customer column, a running total of customer_id is being created. For example, row 1 has the value 10 because that is the first customer id of someone from TX. Row 2 has a customer ID of 13. When you add 10 + 13 = 23 which is the value in row 2 of total_customers. This continues for the rest of the table.
Here is another example this time with the RANK() function. The RANK() function allows you to create a new column that ranks the data based on a criteria. For our example, we will rank the data based on their customer_id with the lower the id number the higher the ranking. To make this even more interesting, we will partition the data by state so that the lowest value customer_id will be number 1 for TX and the lowest ranking customer_id will be number 1 for CA. Below is the code
SELECT customer_id, title, first_name, last_name, state,
rank () OVER (PARTITION BY state ORDER BY customer_id) as total_customers
FROM customers
where state in ('CA','TX')
ORDER BY customer_id;
Row number 1 is rank 1 because it is the lowest value customer_id of all TX. Row 2 is also ranked 1 because it is the lowest value customer_id of all CA.
Conclusion
The possibilities are almost endless with window functions. These tools allow you to get into the data and find insightful answers to complex questions. The examples here are only scratching the surface of what can be achieved.
UNION and INTERSECT are two useful statements used in SQL for specific purposes. In this post, we will define, provide examples of each statement, and compare and contrast UNION, INTERSECT, with the JOIN command.
UNION
The UNION statement is used to append rows together from different select statements. Below is the code followed by the output and explanation.
(
SELECT street_address, city, state, postal_code
FROM customers
WHERE street_address IS NOT null
)
union
(
SELECT street_address, city, state, postal_code
FROM dealerships
WHERE street_address IS NOT null
)
Notice how the select statements are both in their own set of parentheses with the union statement between them. In addition, you can see that both select statements used the same columns. Remember we are trying to combine data from different places that have the same columns. You can ignore this but the output will be hard to comprehend. For example, if you have different columns in each select statement you will get an output but it will be hard to interpret.
Essentially, in the example above, we took the same columns from two different tables and created one table. UNION removes duplicates. If you want duplicates you must use UNION ALL
In contrast, joins are used to append columns together based on criteria. If we were to join two or more tables the joined table would increase in its number of columns and possibly its rows. A UNION will have a specified number of columns while growing in terms of the number of rows that are present in the output.
INTERSECT
INTERSECT finds common rows between select statements. It is highly similar to JOIN with the main difference being INTERSECT removes duplicates while JOIN will not. Below is an example.
SELECT state,postal_code FROM customers
INTERSECT
SELECT state,postal_code FROM dealerships;
The code is simple. You make your select statements and place INTERSECT in between them. The results above show us what data these two select statements share. When state and postal_code are the criteria for these two tables only these three rows are in common. If we did a JOIN we would get every instance of these three state and postal codes rather than just the unique ones.
Conclusion
UNION and INTERSECT have their place in the data analyst toolbelt. UNION is for appending rows together. INTERSECT is for finding commonalities between different select statements. Both UNION and INTERESECT remove duplicates which is not done when using a JOIN.
Subqueries allow you to use the tables produced by SELECT queries. One advantage of this is instead of referencing an existing table in your database you can pull from the table you are making when making your SQL query. This is best explained with an example.
WHERE Clause
I have two tables I want to pull data from called salespeople and dealerships. The titles of these two tables explain what they contain. One column these two tables have in common is dealership_id which identifies the dealership in the dealership table and where the salesperson works at in the salespeople table.
Now the question we want to know is “Which of my salespeople work in Texas.” This can only be determined by using my two tables together the salespeople table does not have the state the person is in while the dealerships table has the state but does not have the salesperson’s information.
This problem can be solved with a subquery. Below is the code followed by the output and an explanation.
SELECT *
FROM salespeople
WHERE dealership_id IN (
SELECT dealership_id FROM dealerships
WHERE dealerships.state = 'TX'
)
The first two lines are standard SQL coding. In line three, we have our subquery in the WHERE clause. What is happening is that we are filtering the data to include only dealership_id that matches the state of Texas inside the parentheses. This leads to a note that subqueries are always inside parentheses.
SELECT Clause
Using subqueries in the WHERE clause is most common but we can also do them in the SELECT clause as well. In our first example we learned where the employees work but let’s say we want to know the city and not just the state. Below is a way to pull the city data for one dealership with the salespeople data.
SELECT *,
(SELECT city
FROM dealerships d
WHERE d.dealership_id = 19) as City
FROM salespeople
WHERE salespeople.dealership_id =19;
In this example, we pull all data from salespeople while pulling only data related to the city from the dealership while also filtering for only dealership_id 19.
FROM Clause
We can also place subqueries in a FROM clause. In the example below, I want the first and last name of the salesperson followed by the city and state they work in. The name info is on the salespeople table and the city and state are on the dealership table. Below is the code and results.
SELECT *
FROM
(SELECT s.first_name, s.last_name,d.city,d.state
FROM salespeople s , dealerships d
WHERE s.dealership_id= d.dealership_id);
The code should be self-explanatory. Inside the parentheses, we are creating a table we want to pull data from. The subquery is essentially a join of the two tables based on the criteria. This brings up an important point. Subqueries and joins (inner joins in particular) serve the same purpose. Joins are better for large amounts of data while suqueries are better for smaller amounts of data.
Conclusion
Subqueries are another tool that can be used to deal with data questions. They can be used in the WHERE, SELECT, or FROM clauses. When to use them is a matter of preference and efficiency.
Definition
Single system research design is a term that is associated with program evaluation. This form of research design is highly similar to the experimental designs that are taught in a typical research methods book. There are several differences between single-system research design and experimental design.
The first is the context. Single system research design is associated with program evaluation while experimental design is related to hard and social science research. Another difference is how rigorous each research method is. Generally, single system research design is not as rigorous as experimental design.
Among the reasons for this lack of rigor is sampling. Single system research design is intended to assess how well a program is doing. Therefore, the sample size is limited to the number of people participating in the program. Often there is no sample and all participants are also in the study. The sample size is usually larger for experimental design, but again this depends on the context.
Another difference is random assignment. With single system research design random assignment is not possible which means that there is a lack of independence. Sometimes this lack of independence can also be a problem in experimental design as well but not always.
Since the sampling and the lack of independence are problems this leads to problems with external and internal validity as well for single system research design. It is often not possible to generalize due to sample size or to assess cause and effect due to the limitations of single-system research designs.
Finally, because of these issues, it is often unnecessary to use inferential statistics. If no sampling is done there are no inferences to make about the population. However, for single system research design the purpose is to determine the health and state of the program and not to draw strong conclusions. The goal is intervention rather than the development of theory.
To put it simply, single-system research design is not concerned with being strongly scientific in the traditional sense like experimental design. The goal of this approach is to assess programs and not necessarily to publish data that would withstand the scrutiny of the peer review process
Common Steps
There are several steps involved with single system research design. First, an outcome measure or variable needs to be selected and measured several times. Whatever outcome measure is selected it must be reliably measured and must vary with time.
The results of this measurement must then be graphed to see if the program has had any potential influence on the outcome i.e. a before and after effect. However this depends, there are times when an outcome measure is measured to determine if there is a problem first. For example, looking at reading rates and seeing if they ever fall below a certain threshold to justify the implementation of a program.
Whatever the case, the graphed data is used to make decisions. Again the focus is on that specific outcome measure and not generalizing or making strong cause and effect claims.
Measuring Over Time
The actual design of a single system research design is the same as in experimental design and includes some of the following and more…
These design formats are explained in most research design textbooks. The “A” represents the state of the program without an intervention. The “B” represents measurement during the intervention. The goal is to see a difference in the graphs when the intervention is present to provide evidence that the program is working
How Single System Research Design is Used
To consolidate this information into one place. Single system research design is used for the following.
Conclusion
Single system research design is for program evaluators and not really researchers. The difference is what is focused upon. Since it has limited scope, single system research design normally does not meet the standards of science. Despite, this, it is still a tool for assessing the strength and quality of a program.
Process evaluation is focused on the implementation of a program. There are three main components to a process evaluation and they are…
We will now look at each of these individually.
Program Description
Program description is about documentation for replication. In other words, a program description is used to determine the operational steps of a program if someone else wants to implement the same program. The main challenge of program description is determining what data to find and use. Data can come from clients, staff, program activities, meetings, etc. All of this data has to be organized to explain what the program does and how it does it.
There are some generally recommended steps for this as outlined below.
The steps above will allow you to determine what to collect and how to collect it to describe a program.
Program Monitoring
Program monitoring is used to determine what happens within a program and who it happens to. The focus on what happened and to who is to make sure that a program stays focused on its mission and does not wander away from it. Over time, there are changes to a program in terms of the staff, and resources are often reshuffled as other problems arise. This leads to a program losing focus and not staying committed to its original mission.
To prevent a loss of focus program monitoring involves determining what events and activities within a program should be counted. Below are some examples of events and activities that could be counted in many programs.
As these metrics are gathered it can be determined if the program is staying focused. If these numbers begin to change it will be possible to question and explain why this is happening. For example, the number of clients served may drop due to people moving out of the area. This may lead to the program being shut down or to a change in the demographic of those who are being supported by the program.
Determining what to count can often be decided by looking at the mission, goals, and objectives of a program. The mission is the overarching purpose of a program. The goals are unmeasurable ideas of what the program wants to achieve. The objectives are measurable actions the program takes to achieve its goals.
Quality Assurance
Program monitoring is great for figuring out what is happening but it does not explain how well things are happening. For this reason, we need quality assurance. Quality assurance compares the metrics of the program to an external standard. By doing this, it is possible to determine how well the program is doing.
An example would be for a program that supports juvenile offenders the standard may be to make sure that repeat offenders of crime do not exceed 10% of the participants in the program. The 10% value is the standard. If the program stays below this value it would be considered a good program. However, if the program exceeds 10% of repeat offenders then it would be necessary to determine what types of support and adjustments are needed for the program to meet this standard.
These standards are often set by outside authorities such as accreditation agencies and or the government. Sometimes even the funders of the program will have standards. This is often the case when working with government funding.
Conclusion
Process evaluation is a key component of program evaluation. It allows a team to see the immediate actions of a program in terms of measurable metrics. This analysis can help to document a program, determine if it is on the right path, and assess the quality of the program.
In 1920, Lenin gave a speech to the Communist Youth League of Russia. In this speech, Lenin lays out some of his theories on education, describes how communists seize power, and explains the ethics of communism.
What makes this speech so fascinating is how it has inspired directly or indirectly many arguments made today to attack the establishment. There are ideas in this speech that seem to come directly from Friere, as well as proponents of the various forms of critical studies found today. In this post, we will look at Lenin’s definition of communism as well as his views on education, power, and ethics.
Definitions
Lenin defines communism as a society in which all things are owned in common and the people work in common. This definition is much broader than the definition that is commonly shared today. Many people define communism or socialism as common ownership of the means of production. Generally, the means of production are controlled by capitalists and many today want to strip the capitalists of the means of production while allowing for individual ownership of consumer items such as cars, houses, clothes, etc.
In other words, consuming is permissible among socialist today but production must be controlled by the people. Lenin’s definition makes it clear that the people, which is really just government bureaucrats, want to control everything under the guise of common ownership.
Educational Views
While speaking to the youth, Lenin made it clear that it is the youth who will be the face of communist society. Realizing their responsibility the young people need to learn. Lenin explains that learning and teaching must be redesigned. Rote learning is not true learning as it lacks practical application. Students should not cram knowledge into their minds. Education must be practical and not theoretical with a need for participation.
Lenin’s critique of rote learning or memorization is similar to Friere’s criticism of banking education in which the the teacher deposits knowledge into the students’ heads with any form of critical thought. This style of teaching is oppressive as the student is only going to reproduce the existing society rather than transform it. It would be difficult to prove that Friere was inspired by this particular speech of Lenin but the similarities are interesting.
Friere also talks about Praxis, which is essentially a form of practical political protesting or pushback against the norms of the existing society. Once students have a critical consciousness (awakened to the oppression of the world) they need to mobilize and find ways to resist those who are oppressing them. In other words, just as Lenin stated the need for practical learning, Friere emphasized this in the political education of students.
Lenin also states that books plus struggle is what learning truly is. The choice of the word “struggle” in the English translation is another interesting choice of words. Stalin and Mao later developed criticism and self-criticism in which people would criticized themselves and other people who were not living up to the expectations of the Communist revolution. People were expected to publically confess their “sins” and call out the “sins” of others. If your confession wasn’t good enough it could lead to additional consequences. In China, this was called struggle sessions and has been accused of being a form of brainwashing.
The Plan
Lenin provides an example of how criticism was used to gain power. He states that the Communists must criticize the Bouregise to arouse hatred of them. Once the Bouregise is hated the communists can unite the people (proletariat) to take power. This is what happened in Russia. The Czar and capitalists were criticized, people began to hate them, and the working class seized power under the leadership of the communists.
In the various “studies” of today the same strategy is used. Critical race theory criticizes one racial group to stir up hatred in other groups to unite them and take power. Feminism criticizes men in order to develop hatred among women towards men in order to unite them and take power. Queer studies criticize normalcy to stir up hatred against “normal” people so that the queer will unite and take power. The whole goal is to divide the people so that a revolution takes place between those who are “woke” and those who are not. To see how this strategy was laid out over 100 years ago and is still successful is shocking.
Ethics
Lenin also explains the ethical position of communism. He states clearly that there is no belief in God in the communist worldview. Since there is no God, God is not a source of right or wrong. There is no morality outside of the morality defined by society. In other words, men will decide for themselves what is right or wrong.
Communists have a moral duty to share all resources. Nothing can belong to a person as all resources must be shared. To have private property is to encourage selfishness and is bourgeois. For society to flourish the old ways must be destroyed.
Communists have tried to impose this ethical worldview. However, it never works because people aren’t motivated unless there is something in it for them. Despite this, even to this day, people criticize the capitalist system because it inspires people to work hard for the benefit of themselves and others.
Conclusion
The foundational ideas that Lenin explains here have echoed down over the decades to have powerful effects. Lenin’s views influenced Friere, Lenin’s views influenced criticism of Stalin and Mao, and Lenin’s views have also influenced the various “studies” that have impacted society today.
In this post, we will look at how you can make joins between datasets using a fuzzy criteria in which the matches between the datasets are not 100% the same. In order to do this, we will use the following packages in R.
library(stringdist)
library(stringr)
library(fuzzyjoin)The “stringdist” package will be used to measure the differences between various strings that we will use. The “stringr” package will be used to manipulate some text. Lastly, the “fuzzyjoin” package will be used to join datasets.
String Distance
The stringdist() function is used to measure the differences between strings. This is measured in many different ways. For our purposes, the distance is measured by the number of changes the function has to make so that the second string is the same as the original string of comparison. Below is code that uses three different methods each to compare the strings in the function.
> stringdist("darrin", "darren", method = "lv")
[1] 1
> stringdist("darrin", "darren", method = "dl")
[1] 1
> stringdist("darrin", "darren", method = "osa")
[1] 1
This code is simple. First, we call the function. Inside the function, the first string is the ground truth string which is the string everything else is compared to. The second string is the other string that is compared to the first one. The method is how the difference is measured. For each example, we picked a different method. “lv” stands for Levenshtein distance, “dl” stands for full Damerau-Levenshtein distance, and “osa” stands for Optimal String Alignment distance. The details of each of these methods can be found by looking at the documentation for the “stringdist” package. Also, note that there are other methods beyond this that are available as well.
The value for these methods is 1, which means that only one change is needed to convert “darren” to “darrin”. Most of the time the methods are highly similar in their results but just to demonstrate, below is an example where the methods disagree.
> stringdist("darrin", "dorirn", method = "lv")
[1] 3
> stringdist("darrin", "dorirn", method = "dl")
[1] 2
> stringdist("darrin", "dorirn", method = "osa")
[1] 2Now, the values are different. The reason behind these differences is explained in the documentation.
amatch()
The amatch() function allows you to compare multiple strings to the ground truth and indicate which one is closest to the original ground truth string. Below is the code and output from this function.
amatch(
x = "Darrin",
table = c("Darren", "Daren", "Darien"),
maxDist = 1,
method = "lv"
)
[1] 1Here is what we did.
Fuzzy Join
The fuzzy join is used to join tables that have columns that are similar but not the same. Normally, joins work on exact matches but the fuzzy join does not require this. Before we use this function we have to prepare some data. We will modify the “Titanic” dataset to run this example. The “Titanic” dataset is a part of R by default and there is no need for any packages. Below is the code for the data preparation.
Titanic_1<-as.data.frame(Titanic)
Titanic_2<-as.data.frame(Titanic)
Titanic_1$Sex<-str_to_lower(Titanic_1$Sex)
Titanic_1$Age<-str_to_lower(Titanic_1$Age)Here is what we did.
We will now use the fuzzy join function. Below is the code followed by the output.
stringdist_join(
Titanic_1,
Titanic_2,
by = c("Age" = "Age","Sex"="Sex"),
method = "lv",
max_dist = 1,
distance_col = "distance"
)
The stringdist_join() function is used to perform the fuzzy join. “Titanic_1” is the x dataset and “Titanic_2” is the y dataset. The “by” argument tells the function which columns are being used in the join. The “method” argument indicates how the distance is calculated between the rows in each dataset. The “max_dist” argument is the criteria by which a join is made. In other words, if the distance is greater than one no join will take place. Lastly, the “distance_col” argument creates new columns that show the distance between the compared columns.
The output was a full join. All columns from both datasets are present. The columns with “.x” are from the “Titanic_1” while the columns with “.y” are from “Titanic_2”. The “.distance” column tells us the difference when that row of data was compared from each dataset. For example, in row 1 the “Age.distance” is 1. This means that the difference in “Age.x” and “Age.y” is 1. The only difference is that “Age.x” is lowercase while “Age.y” is capitalized.
Conclusion
The tools mentioned here allow you to match data that is different with a clear metric of the difference. This can be powerful when you have to join data that does not have a matching column in both datasets. Therefore, there is a place for the tools in the life of any data analyst who deals with fuzzy data like this.
This video will provide examples of how to use the glue_collapse() function from the glue package in R. This function is often used for dealing with strings and we will see a few other tricks as well with this function
The glue_collapse() function is another powerful tool from the glue package. In this post, we will look at practical ways to use this function.
Collapsing Text
As you can probably tell from the name, the glue_collapse() function is useful for collapsing a string. In the code below, we will create an object containing several names and use glue_collapse to collapse the values into one string.
> library(glue)
> many_people<-c("Mike","Bob","James","Sam")
> glue_collapse(many_people)
MikeBobJamesSamIn the code above we called the glue package. Next, we created an object called “many_people” which contains several names separated by commas. Lastly, we called the glue_collapse() function which removes the quotes and commas from the string.
Separate & Last
Another great tool of the glue_collapse() function is the ability to separate strings and have a specific last argument. This technique helps to make the output highly readable. Below is the code
> glue_collapse(many_people,sep = ", ", last = ", and ")
Mike, Bob, James, and SamIn the code above we separate each string with a comma followed by a space in the “sep” argument. The “last” argument tells R what to do before the last word in the string. In this example, we have a comma followed by a space and the word and.
Collapse a Dataframe
The glue_collapse() function can also be used with data frames. In the example, below we will take a column from a dataframe and collapse it.
> head(iris$Species)
[1] setosa setosa setosa setosa setosa setosa
Levels: setosa versicolor virginica
> glue_collapse(iris$Species)
setosasetosasetosasetosasetosasetosaseto.....In the code above, we first take a look at the “Species” column from the “iris” dataset using the head() function. Next, we use the glue_collapse() function in the “Species” column. YOu can see how the rows are all collapsed into one long string in this example.
glue and glue_collapse working together
You can also use the glue() and glue_collapse function together as a team.
> glue(
+ "Hi {more_people}.",
+ more_people = glue_collapse(
+ many_people,sep = ", ",last = ", and "
+ )
+ )
Hi Mike, Bob, James, and Sam.This code is a little bit more complicated but here is what happened.
As you can see, the use of the glue_collapse() and glue() functions can be endless.
Conclusion
The glue_collapse() function is another useful tool that can be used with text data. Knowing what options are available for data analysis makes the process much easier.
The glue package provides a lot of great tools for working with strings in R. In this video, we will focus on one particular function within this package that is highly useful for various purposes.
The glue package in R provides a lot of great tools for using regular expressions and manipulating data. In this post, we will look at examples of using just the glue() function from this package.
Paste vs Glue
The paste() function is an older way of achieving the same things that we can achieve with the glue() function. paste() allows you to combine strings. Below we will load our packages and execute a command with the paste() function.
> library(glue)
> library(dplyr)
> people<-"Dan"
> paste("Hello",people)
[1] "Hello Dan"In the code above, we load the glue and the dplyr package (we will need dplyr later). We then create an object called “people” that contains the string “Dan”. We then used the past function to combine the “people” vector with the string “Hello”. The output is at the bottom of the code.
Below is an example of the same output but using the glue() function
> glue("Hello {people}")
Hello DanInside the glue() function everything is inside parentheses. However, the object “people” is inside curly braces and this indicates to the glue() function to look for what “people” represents. The printout is the same but without parentheses.
Multiple Strings
Below is an example of including multiple strings in the same glue() function
> people<-"Dan"
> people_2<-"Darrell"
> glue("Hello {people} and {people_2}")
Hello Dan and DarrellIn the first two lines above we make our objects. In line 3 we used the glue() function again and inside we included both objects in curly braces.
In another example using multiple strings we will replace text if it meets a certain criteria.
> people<-"Dan"
> people_2<-NA
> glue("Hi {people} and {people_2}",.na="What")
Hi Dan and WhatIn the code above we start by creating two objects. The second object (people_2) has stored NA. The code in the third line is the same with the exception of the “.na” argument. The “.na” argument is set to the string “What” which tells R to replace any NA values with the string “What”. The output is in the final line.
Temporary Variables
It is also possible to make variables that are temporary. The temporary variable can be named or unnamed. Below is an example with a named variable.
> glue("Dan is {height} cm tall.",height=175)
Dan is 175 cm tall.The temporary variable “height” is inside the curly braces. The value for “height” is set inside the function to 175.
It is also possible to have unnamed variables inside the function. Below we will use a function inside the curly braces.
> glue("The average number is {mean(c(2,3,4,5))}")
The average number is 3.5The example is self-explanatory. We used the mean() function inside the curly braces to get a calculated value. As you can see, the potential is endless.
Using Dataframes
In our last example, we will see how you can create a data frame and using input from one column to create a new column.
> df<-data.frame(column_1="Dan")
> df
column_1
1 Dan
> df %>% mutate(new_column = glue("Hi {column_1}"))
column_1 new_column
1 Dan Hi DanHere is what we did.
Conclusion
The glue package provides many powerful tools for manipulating data. The examples provided here only focus on one function. As such, this package is sure to provide useful ways in which data analyst can modify their data.
Communicating with children is always difficult. However, sometimes it is the adult’s fault that children do not understand. The video below provides examples of terms adults love to use that can be hard for children to understand.
Regular expressions are used for a variety of reasons. One of the main reasons is for finding data in your dataset that meets specific criteria. In this post, we will use regular expressions for several different purposes.
Initial Setup
The only package we need is the stringr package. We will also create a vector of names that will serve as our data for the first few examples. Below is the code.
library(stringr)
people<-c("Bob","Brad","Dan","Jason","Tony","Tom")Commonly Used Symbols
We are going to use the people vector for our data. The first function we will use is the str_detect() function. This function detects strings within your data that meet your criteria. The str_detect() function takes the data as the first argument and then a pattern for the second argument.
What we are going to do is subset the people vector using str_detect(). We want to find all words that start with the letter B. To tell R to look for words that start with by we must use the caret (^) symbol in front of the letter B in the pattern argument. Below is the code and the output.
> people[str_detect(people,pattern = "^B")]
[1] "Bob" "Brad"The code starts with the vector people. Next, we place all of the code for searching inside brackets. The brackets are used in this example for subsetting the data or for finding data that meets our criteria. Inside the brackets, we are using the str_detect() function. Inside the function is the data we are subsetting followed by the pattern argument. Inside the quotes, we have the caret symbol which means “at the beginning” followed by the letter B. Our output shows the two words that meet this criteria.
The caret symbol is used to indicate finding letters at the beginning. However, the dollar sign “$” is used to find letters at the end of a string. Below is the code and output for this symbol.
> people[str_detect(people,pattern = "n$")]
[1] "Dan" "Jason"The code is mostly the same as in the previous example. The only difference is the pattern which shows we want words that end with the letter “n”. The output shows two words that meet this criteria.
The next symbol we will learn is the period “.”. This is used when you want to find strings that have a particular word character anywhere inside the string. Below is the code and output.
> people[str_detect(people,pattern = "a.")]
[1] "Brad" "Dan" "Jason"Again, the only difference is the pattern. We told R we want to find any words that have the letter “a” inside. By using the period we found three words that match this criteria.
Multiple Criteria
All of the previous examples were limited to looking for one character. However, there are several different shortcuts that allow you to look for multiple criteria when using regular expressions. For the next examples, we need to make a different vector of data and we will now be using the str_match_all() function which will find all strings that meet are criteria.
In the code below, we create a new vector that has words and numbers as data. Next, we will use the str_match_all() function to find all strings that contain numbers. To find numbers we will use the “\\d” expression.
> people_and_numbers<-c("Bob","Brad","Dan",1,2,3)
> str_match_all(people_and_numbers,"\\d")
[[1]]
[,1]
[[2]]
[,1]
[[3]]
[,1]
[[4]]
[,1]
[1,] "1"
[[5]]
[,1]
[1,] "2"
[[6]]
[,1]
[1,] "3"
The output is a little strange. The actual output is a list. Since there are six strings in our original vector there are six items in our list. The first three items in the list contain nothing because the first three entries in our vector do not contain any numbers. The last three items in the list each contain a number because these are the numbers contained in the original vector.
The next expression we will learn is for finding word characters, which is the “\\w” expression. This expression will find any word character or number. Below is an example.
> str_match_all(people_and_numbers,"\\w")
[[1]]
[,1]
[1,] "B"
[2,] "o"
[3,] "b"
[[2]]
[,1]
[1,] "B"
[2,] "r"
[3,] "a"
[4,] "d"
[[3]]
[,1]
[1,] "D"
[2,] "a"
[3,] "n"
[[4]]
[,1]
[1,] "1"
[[5]]
[,1]
[1,] "2"
[[6]]
[,1]
[1,] "3"Notice how the output splits apart of the characters in each word. Besides this, the output is to be expected.
We can also indicate that we want only letters. This is done by using brackets and dashes. below is the code and output.
> str_match_all(people_and_numbers,"[A-Za-z]")
[[1]]
[,1]
[1,] "B"
[2,] "o"
[3,] "b"
[[2]]
[,1]
[1,] "B"
[2,] "r"
[3,] "a"
[4,] "d"
[[3]]
[,1]
[1,] "D"
[2,] "a"
[3,] "n"
[[4]]
[,1]
[[5]]
[,1]
[[6]]
[,1]The output is mostly the same. The first three words are split apart. However, the last three items are empty because the numbers do not contain letters.
You can put almost anything inside the brackets. In the example below, we are only looking for vowels.
> str_match_all(people_and_numbers,"[aeiou]")
[[1]]
[,1]
[1,] "o"
[[2]]
[,1]
[1,] "a"
[[3]]
[,1]
[1,] "a"
[[4]]
[,1]
[[5]]
[,1]
[[6]]
[,1]Now only the items that contain vowels are included in the list.
Conclusion
These are just some of the amazing things that regular expression can allow you to do. Whenever you need to wrestle with text it is important to remember how regular expressions can help you.
The video below will provide examples of using regular expressions with R. Regular expressions are a great tool for finding various information within strings.
Programs play a critical role in providing services for individuals in need. In this post, we will look at what a program is and the traits that are often associated with a good program.
Definition
A program is an organized assortment of activities that are designed to achieve specific objectives. For example, a school might put together a math tutoring program. Within this program, there may be activities such as one-on-one tutoring, group tutoring, and peer support. All of these activities are being used to improve participants’ math ability to grade level.
A key point about programs is that the activities are not random but intentional. In other words, the program developers have the end in mind when they select the activities that they will use.
Good Program
There are several characteristics of a good program as well. Good programs will usually have individual(s) who are directly responsible for the success of the program. These people are usually local staff who are dedicated to the implementation of the activities associated with the program. For our math tutoring program, it would be necessary to place someone in charge and to find tutors as needed to support the students
Not only do good programs have committed staff good programs also have dedicated financial support in the form of a budget. Money must be set aside to implement the program. This can include paying staff, purchasing equipment/software, and other necessary items. For math tutoring, money may be needed for finding a location, advertising the program, paying tutors, purchasing supplies, etc.
Successful programs also have an identity. A program’s identity is the level of visibility it has with the public. Some programs have a national or international identity such as the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP). The level of identity depends on the purpose of the program. Many programs need a level of identity that reaches a neighborhood or city.
Associated with the program identity is the service philosophy. The service philosophy is the program’s beliefs of who should be served from the target population. Some programs believe they should not turn anybody away while others do not. As an example, our math program might only service students who are one grade below grade level and no more than two grades below as a maximum. A service philosophy can help a program to focus on who it is they are trying to serve.
Conclusion
The first step in developing a program is to have a clear idea of what a program is and what makes a program good or bad. This post provides a definition of a program as well as what are the characteristics of a good program. With this foundational knowledge, you can take the first step in developing a program that can help people in need.
Parents are viewed as gatekeepers for their children. For teachers, who have certain ideas and values they want to share, the gatekeepers can help or hinder this process. If the parents provide resistance, some teachers may see them as supporters of the status quo rather than as defenders of the underrepresented and marginalized. In such situations, it leads to a question of who should prevail.
The difference in values between parents and teachers can lead to this struggle over whose values should be shared or taught in the classroom. The metric for determining what is right or wrong is often measured through a critical lens for teachers, which means looking for who has and does not have power and or who is representing the powerless and the powerful. If a teacher is convinced that they stand with the oppressor and the parents do not, a teacher may believe that their values and beliefs are of a higher moral character than the parents (by being more inclusive/respectful). When this happens, the teacher may be convenience that subverting parental values may be necessary by any reasonable means.
Goals of Queer Teachers
The goal of many teachers is to directly disrupt social norms. Often these teachers are inspired by Queer theory or any other critical-inspired belief system, which essentially states that societal norms exclude people who do not conform to existing norms from full participation in society. Therefore, the liberation of these oppressed individuals can only happen when norms are destroyed. Of course, there is no safe space for people who disagree with the idea of a world without norms. People who cannot function in a world without norms would now be just as oppressed as the current people who cannot conform to the existing norms of society. Funnier still, having no norms is a social norm in itself which means there is no such thing as a normless society.
Queer-inspired teachers challenge almost everything. They are against the idea that heterosexual relations are normal (heternormativity). They are even against the idea that homosexual relations are normal (homonormativity). The reason for this is that the war of the queer is against whatever is normal.
Queer-inspired teachers are also against the idea of childhood innocence concerning sexuality. Inspired by Alfred Kinsey’s research, proponents of this believe that children are sexual beings from birth and should be treated as such. This is one reason for the increased introduction of sexual topics to children at younger and younger ages in schools because this is intended to be liberating.
Many teachers are also focused on investigating multiple viewpoints (as there is no objective truth). The focus is also on political problems to stir angst about injustice through the abusive norms that marginalized individuals and groups. From all of this, the goal is to encourage social action against the current structure and function of society.
How to Address Parental Challenges
To raise normless revolutionaries, teachers have had to find ways to bring their values into the classroom without raising the concerns of gatekeeping parents. One approach that has proven to be successful is inserting controversial ideas into a broader, vague curriculum.
For example, a curriculum may be focused on problem-solving, which is a vague topic to address. During such a curriculum, topics on sexuality, racism, and or classism are covered from a perspective of problem-solving. If parents object the teacher can point to the problem-solving emphasis of the curriculum while sharing norm-busting values with the students.
Another way this tactic is used is through inserting side topics from a main curricular topic such as speaking on sexual relationships during a history lesson. Another strategy is using project-based learning which can incorporate almost anything.
The focus is to make sure the controversial material is not taught in isolation but in connection with something that is considered acceptable. This is similar to the wolf in sheep’s clothing analogy. Bad ideas mixed with good do more damage than bad ideas in isolation. Whenever a teacher is attacked about controversial stuff (ie sexuality) they can retreat to the main “theme” of the curriculum such as problem solving.
Accommodation is another strategy. In this situation, when the parents complain the teacher acknowledges their concern and states that their child does not have to participate. When controversial information is being taught the child is removed from the classroom. This is essentially an isolation technique that may frustrate the child. When isolated, the child may believe they are missing out and that the main problem is their parents which can drive a wedge between them. The weakness of this approach is that too many kids may need accommodation. This can shut down the teacher’s plans as too many kids cannot be accommodated.
Dialog is the final strategy here. With this approach, the teacher hears the concerns of the parent but doesn’t change anything. The teacher explains things to the parents, stands by their subject matter expertise, and explains how teaching this material prevents the horrors that happen to marginalized people.
Conclusion
The end game is the same. Find a way to win over the parents or to work around them. Parents who resist these values are the ones who need to change in the eyes of these teachers. Even though they believe in freedom it is only a place in which their values are accepted rather than any other.
In program evaluation, goals, objectives, and the evaluation process work together to provide a team with insights into the success of a program. In this post, we will look at the synergy between these concepts and how they help evaluators of programs.
Goals & Objectives
Goals are long-term ideas that provide a general sense of direction for a program. Usually, goals are not measurable or achievable but rather serve an inspirational purpose in shaping the direction of a program. An example of a goal for a project might be
Increase the degree of reading comprehension among young children in north Texas
The goal above is a goal because it lacks the details of knowing when this goal is achieved. What does “degree” mean or how much “increase” is necessary? How are “young children” defined? How much time does the program have to achieve any of this? All of these questions and more are addressed when developing objectives.
Objectives are short-term, measurable, achievable, and set guidelines for the type of intervention that a program will provide. Objectives provide the details that are missing from goals. There are different acronyms for developing objectives such as SMART (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-Bound). Another format for objectives that is used in curriculum development is action, condition, and proficiency. Below is an example of an objective that is derived from the example goal mentioned earlier.
By the end of the semester, minority students in the 5th grade class will improve their reading comprehension one grade level through using the reading lab software.
The objective above specifies a clear context (End of semester, 5th-grade minority students). The objective also provides the action or what the students will be doing (using reading software). Lastly, there is a clear sense of knowing when success takes place (one grade-level improvement in reading comprehension). It is also important to show that this objective is linked to the original goal of increasing reading comprehension.
Types of Objectives
Within program evaluation, three types of objectives can be developed. These are process, outcome, and impact objectives.
Process objectives define which activities will be carried out during a program. Process objectives provide evidence that the program did what it planned to do. An example is below.
Enroll all minority students into the reading lab be the end of the first month of school.
It may seem silly to make such an objective but doing so helps to keep the program on track and to make interventions if the objectives are not achieved in the timeline that was set.
Outcome objectives measure the results of an intervention and answer the question “How well did we do?” Below is an example
By the end of the semester, 90% of the minority students in the 5th grade class will improve their reading comprehension one grade level through using the reading lab software.
The objective above is similar to others but now it has a clear metric for success stipulating the 90% threshold. This objective value helps to determine how well the program did in helping the students.
The last type of objective used in program evaluation is the impact objective. This objective measures the collective results of an intervention and answers the question “So what?” Below is an example.
At the end of the semester, the students will share what they think of the reading program
The objective above is one way in which the overall impact of the program can be assessed by determining what the target population thinks of the intervention.
Evaluation plan
The evaluation plan is linked with the objectives. The evaluation plan assesses the achievement of the program through the use of the results of the objectives. Just as there are three types of objectives there are also three types of data that are collected for an evaluation and these are process, outcome, and impact data.
Process data is documentation of the implementation of the strategies of the program and assesses what happened. Examples of process data can include a spreadsheet showing the number of kids who were enrolled in the reading lab. Such documentation shows that the process of enrolling the kids was completed.
Outcome data is a measure of the success or failure of a program. An example of outcome data would be a spreadsheet showing how many kids were able to improve one grade level in their reading comprehension from the use of the reading lab.
Lastly, impact data is data for the impact objective. An example would be the results of the survey that measures students’ opinions of the reading lab.
Conclusion
What was learned here was the cooperation that needs to take place between goals, objectives, and the evaluation process. When these concepts are working together it can benefit all stakeholders of a particular program.
This post will summarize Gloria Ladson-Billings’ critical “Just What is Critical Race Theory and What’s it Doing in a Nice Field like Education?” written in 1998 for the journal “Qualitative Studies in Education.”
Definition
Critical race theory grew out of critical legal studies. Critical legal studies attempted to move the focus of legal scholarship away from doctrinal and policy analysis to a focus on groups in cultural and social contexts. What critical race theory did that was unique was to focus primarily on race instead of other groups such as gender, class, etc. A criticism of critical race theory was its obsession only with race rather than looking at injustice in broader ways.
When dealing with ideas such as critical race theory it is impossible to find consensus on what it is about. However, according to Ladson-Billoings critical race theory has some of the following tenants.
Race is the main idea discussed within critical race theory. However, race is not just one’s appearance or genetic phenotype. Ladson-Billings states this because who is considered white has changed throughout US history. For example, Mexicans at one time were considered white. Therefore, there is more to race than biology as race is also a social construct. Essentially, one goal of critical race theory is to break the subordination of blacks to whites by changing the dynamics of law and power even though what is defined as white has been fluid throughout history.
For critical race theory scholars, a major problem with America is that “Whiteness” is positioned as normative and everyone is categorized or ranked according to how well they align with the norms of this culture and people group. For example, a black man who goes to college, speaks American English, and dresses in a suit and tie is more aligned with being “being” than a black man who dropped out of high school, uses slang, and wears baggy clothes. However, even the black man who conforms to “whiteness” is a second-class citizen to a person who has the appearance of being white while having the behavior of the unsuccessful black man.
The goal of critical race theory is to deconstruct, reconstruct, and construct equitable power by exposing the injustice of “whiteness” as normative. All of the critical theories do this with the difference being from what angle. Critical race theory attacks race, queer studies attack everything that is normative, fat studies attack norms around weight, etc.
Traditional means of reforming the system are moving too slowly for critical race theorists. Therefore, they want rapid and radical reform. This is a polite way of saying revolution which is also at the heart of all Marxist’s derived philosophies. By stirring up racial frustration it is possible to radicalize people so that they push or cause rapid changes in the system.
Ladson-Billings also discusses the use of storytelling within critical race theory. Storytelling allows the speaker to name their reality and connect emotionally with the listener. Notice how there is no mention of reasoning or thinking as these are Western forms of communication. Sharing emotional stories of how individuals have suffered under racism helps to shame oppressors and elicit anger from people who are not considered “white.” It is difficult to refute the lived experience of someone who has experienced racism without sounding harsh and callous. It is also difficult to dispute the claims of individuals since one cannot fact-check them.
Examples of Race Relations
Ladson-Billings also shares that white people were the main beneficiaries of the Civil Rights movement. She supports this claim with the example of how anti-discrimination laws benefit white women first before people of color. Allowing white women to get jobs first helped their families which were probably also white.
Another example is Brown V Board of Education. Ladson-Billings states that this court ruling benefits whites by stopping the spread of communism in the USA mong frustrated blacks, it also reassured black WW II veterans of their place in society. To be fair the Soviet Union used to point out the racism in the US during the Cold War.
CRT and Citizenship
The latter half of the article focuses on “whiteness” as property. This argument is not unique to this article. Ladson-Billings’ point is that the US is built on property rights and not individual rights. A person was free because of property ownership and not because of self-worth. This is a problem because blacks did not have property but were rather considered property. Therefore, over time, “whiteness” becomes a form of property that provides privileges that others do not have.
Ladson-Billings then provides examples of how non-whites are pushed to the sides. Within the curriculum, black stories have traditionally been missing in place of the status quo. Another focus has been on supporting a colorblind perspective which may be something no critical race scholar would agree with. Lastly, there is an emphasis on critical thinking, reasoning, and logic in Western schools that discounts other ways of knowing.
When it comes to learning in the classroom black students are often seen as deficient. However, Ladson-Billings argues that this is due to poor curriculum and teaching. Another major problem has been school funding. Schools receive money from local property taxes. Therefore, schools in nicer neighborhoods have more tax dollars available. For Ladson-billings, this is unfair and a form of oppression.
Ladson-Billings ends the article with some warnings. First, she warns against letting critical race theory become watered down like cooperative learning and multicultural education. Cooperative learning was originally about helping students of color perform better but it was eventually reduced to workshops and lesson plans without regard to race. Multicultural education was originally about reconstructing society and examining the contradictions within it. This too was reduced by singing ethnic songs and eating foreign foods.
A much more interesting warning Ladson-Billings made was to protect critical race theory from becoming a tool of the radical left. This warning was not heeded and the political left has used critical race theory to stir up their base and to galvanize society in ways that seem prophetic after examining Ladson-Billings’ warning from the late 1990’s.
Conclusion
Ladson-Billings article provides a great overview of critical race theory and some main tenets and beliefs. The merit of this belief system is left to the individual to judge.
The abstract of a grant proposal plays a critical role in summarizing what the project is about for the potential funders of the project. Below are the necessary components of a grant proposal abstract:
A brief explanation of each of these important components along with insights into how academic journal abstracts are different from grant proposal abstracts is provided below.
Component of a Grant Proposal Abstract
Most of the items above are self-explanatory but we will go through them anyway. The name of the agency is to identify who is applying for money. Type of organization provides the readers of the abstract with an idea of what your organization is about. An organization can be non-profit, focused on a particular target population such as battered women, and or focused on a particular discipline such as education.
Items 3 and 4 which are the purpose and objectives of the project provide an overview of what the project wants to do. The purpose is a direct response to the needs that have been identified and the objectives systematically spell out how the needs will be addressed.
Item 5 addresses the intervention of the project. The intervention is a specific explanation of how the project will help the target population. An example would be to specifically explain how a reading lab would be implemented to support minorities who are struggling with reading comprehension. In this example, there are three components.
There may be more than one intervention. As such, the formatting for this particular part of an abstract can vary.
The location is an explanation of the setting in which the project will take place. Explaining location does not require a great deal of depth. Finally, the last item of the abstract addressed here is relevancy for the funding agency. Every abstract must briefly summarize how the project relates to the mission of the funding agency. Funding agencies want to support projects that align with their goals. therefore, every project that is requesting funding must show how their project supports the mission of the funding organization.
The order in which these items have been presented here is not prescriptive. In other words, it doesn’t matter what order these items are presented in as long as all of these components are there. Each writer and funding agency is going to have their preference about the order but few would argue with whether the listed component should be present or not.
When to write the abstract will depend on the writer. Some prefer to write the abstract at the end of the writing process after the heart of the proposal is completed. Others prefer to write the abstract in the beginning and let it shape the rest of the writing project. It doesn’t matter when the abstract is written as long as it is clear and aligns with the rest of the proposal.
Grant Proposal Abstract vs Journal Abstract
In general, a grant proposal abstract will be much longer than an abstract for a journal article. Grant proposal abstracts are often similar to the length of abstracts for a thesis or dissertation which can run several paragraphs or a few pages. Academic journal abstracts often have a strict word limit and are rarely more than a paragraph or two in most situations.
There are also differences in terms of what is included. The name and type of organization will probably not be included in an academic journal abstract. In addition, the relevancy will be focused on a broader audience beyond just a funding agency in many situations as well.
Conclusion
The abstract of a grant proposal is often the first thing a funding agency looks at when it evaluates a proposal. Therefore, this particular part of the proposal must be well thought out and provide critical information about the project. Neglecting this could lead to the rejection of a project before the content of the proposal is seriously considered for reading.
In 1932, Mussolini tried to articulate his definition of fascism in an article he wrote entitled “The Doctrine of Fascism” with his coauthor Giovanni Gentile. The article is guilty of rambling. However, Mussolini primarily defines fascism by contrasting it with several other concepts of his era. These other schools of thought were communism and materialism. In other words, Mussolini defines fascism by pointing out how it is different from communism and liberalism.
Given the meandering nature of the article, it will be difficult to summarize it here but we will attempt to go through this article here as found below.
Individualism
According to Mussolini, fascism is an organized, centralized, and authoritarian democracy. There is a heavy emphasis on the state over the individual. The state should be strong and popular with the people. The desires of the individual are only okay when they align with the goals of the state. The role of the state is to multiply the energies of the individuals by providing an overarching purpose.
Mussolini’s view of the individual contrasts with communism as communism has little room for the individual. Communism is a collectivist doctrine in which the individual is submerged within the group. Mussolini’s fascism submerges the individual not within the group but within the state with the caveat that individual freedoms are okay when they are not a threat to the state’s interests.
Liberalism in Mussolini’s time was obsessed with the individual and their freedoms. Mussolini disagreed with this and considered it a form of chaos. People are expected to sacrifice individual freedom to maintain the strength of the state.
While Mussolini allows for some individualism as long as it does not threaten the state, he does not believe in supporting anything beyond the state. In other words, Mussolini’s fascism does not believe in international organizations such as the UN. The state is the highest level and ultimate authority, not the world. Therefore, while individual rights may be suppressed a state’s rights are never to be curtailed by an international body.
Mussolini views the state as absolute while individuals and groups have relative rights. This is an indirect jab at the absolute monarchies of the past in which the king was an absolute leader and also the state.
Class Struggle & Democracy
A major theme in communism is class struggle or conflict theory. Marx divided the world into the bourgeoisie and the proletariat or the oppressors and the oppressed. All of human history is seen through the lens of a struggle for material resources.
Mussolini’s view was different as he saw the struggle as being not between classes but rather a focus on the nation and country. The world is not only about materials or resources. The goal of economic felicity and world peace was nonsense to him. Building the state is the way to face the eternal struggle that is expected with living life here. The struggle faced by people here was permanent in his mind.
While communism was determined to end the struggle in this world and bring about peace, fascism is focused on embracing the struggle and having a strong state that can endure it.
Fascism does not support majority rule democracy. Mussolini sees this as a form of mob rule. The state needs to be popular but not necessarily accountable to the people through the ballot box. Communism is totalitarian but so is fascism in that fascism touches all aspects of the government and management of the state.
Culture & Religion
Mussolini stated that fascism is a supporter of culture and tradition. The state’s job is to hand down to future generations the memory of those who came before. He claims that the state needs to “transmit” this information to future generations.
Facism’s support for culture and the past is in stark contrast to communism which preaches a perpetual revolution in which constant change is supposed to bring about the desired utopia. While fascism wants to transmit information communism wants to transform the world through overthrowing the status quo. The words transmit and transform are frequently debated and criticized in Marxist views of education, particularly in the works of Paolo Friere. In short, transmitting information is a form of oppression that continues the status quo while transforming information is a way to bring about an awakened worldview to the injustice that is perpetuated in society.
Fascism is also a proponent of religion and has respect for it. The respect that fascism has for religion is in opposition to communism’s hatred of it. Communism is atheist in nature as communists want people to only obey them and to have no legitimate loyalty to anything else.
Conclusion
The main points to take away from Mussolini’s view of fascism are that the state is supreme, individuals exist to support the state with some personal freedom, the class struggle is nonsense, and culture & religion should be respected. Furthermore, fascism can be seen as a bridge between liberalism and communism in that fascism supports some personal freedom but also wants to have an overarching author.
Transformative Social-Emotional Learning (TSEL) is a highly influential view of teaching today. TSEL is focused on the social transformation of the world through reaching the youth of today. The main focus of this teaching approach is on the student’s emotions and their interaction with others.
TSEL has a long history and is influenced heavily by critical race theory and Marxism in general. This post will define and point out some of the philosophical assumptions of TSEL.
Define
TSEL consists of a range of strategies that are used to manage emotions, achieve goals, show empathy for others, make decisions, and maintain relationships. The key components developed to develop these character traits include self-awareness, self-management, social awareness, relationship skills, and responsible decision-making.
TSEL is highly influenced by critical race theory and deals with issues of power, privilege, discrimination, and social justice as it develops the skills mentioned above. There is an emphasis on the collective rather than the individual as well. In addition, racism and oppression of marginal groups are foundational problematic aspects of the West. These beliefs are held even though oppression has happened all over the world in all inhabited continents by various people groups.
Examples of injustice not limited to Western cultures can include policies enacted by the Ottoman Empire that led to the death of countless people. Other examples include persecution of Chinese in Southeast Asia, discrimination in India and Sri Lanka, and untold injustice in places such as Rwanda and Uganda in Africa. In other words, oppression is not unique to any particular culture.
Citizenship is critical in TSEL. The importance of citizenship may be related to the political nature of TSEL. Citizenship is intended to be transformative and change society. Individuals need to be a part of the decision-making of their community and stand as a voice of the oppressed in the electoral process. However, this assumes that everyone agrees as there is no overt explanation of what to do when there is dissension from the social justice perspective.
Problems with west
Consistent with other avenues of Marxist thought, TSEL has a foundational view that Western society encourages greed and the pursuit of money. Other general economic complaints include the concentration of wealth and general unethical behavior. No mention is made of Marxist countries with the same problems.
TSEL is also attempting to fight the dehumanization of students. dehumanization in this context means people who are not politically conscious and aware of the oppression that is happening around them. The school’s job is to break this cycle and to discontinue the reproduction of the existing system through education. Essentially, students should rebel against the current system even though it’s not clear what the new system will look like or how it will work.
Schools need to develop change agents who will resist and tear down the status quo. Students need to be transformed for optimal human development even though it is not clear what this is. Education needs to be culturally relevant which brings things into the classroom that come from the student’s background. An example could be using math to teach English.
Conclusion
TSEL is another attempt within education to help students to make the world a better place. This is not inherently a problem. The challenge is in the attempt to make these beliefs ubiquitous. No single philosophy or belief system will work in every context. For this reason, true freedom involves letting the local school and parents decide if these beliefs are consistent with what is best for their children.
Decolonization is a popular term. In this post, we provide a simple definition of colonization to understand what decolonization is. From there, we will look at different approaches to decolonization within the context of education.
The ideas here are drawn heavily from the work of Hanson and Jaffe.
Definitions
There are several definitions for colonization. Colonization is viewed by some as outsiders who exploit political and economic systems to have power and authority over other people and or the resources of these people. Colonization can be so powerful that the colonized people may begin to believe that they are inferior to their oppressors in terms of knowledge and spirituality. This sense of inferiority is also known as a culture bomb which is the destruction of the people’s belief in their own culture.
As a result of this mental, physical, and psychological pressure many people in colonized countries develop a double consciousness. A double consciousness is the internalizing of the two cultures in which the colonized person finds themselves. Often there is an antagonistic relationship between these two world views.
Decolonization is the process of removing the influence of non-native worldview(s) within the context of a formerly colonized country and or people. Through this process, the people achieve self-determination and autonomy. Within education, decolonization is the determination of who is speaking for whom within the context of learning and confronting the positionality of ideas discussed in class. Decolonization in education supports epistemic pluralism, which is the belief in having multiple viewpoints within a discussion.
Approaches
Several different approaches are used to decolonize education. The liberal approach views colonization as a process of exclusion and misrepresentation. The answer to colonization for the liberal approach is to increase diversity, equity, and inclusion. By bringing a diverse group of people into the context of education multiple perspectives are ensured and the dominance of the colonizer’s perspective should be weakened.
The emancipatory approach focuses on the dynamics of domination and subordination as the main problem. The solution to this problem is the transformation of the political and socioeconomic structures. In other words, a strong overthrow of the existing standards and norms that may have been brought in by the oppressors. An example would be training women to assume non-traditional gender roles outside the home with the hope of destabilizing male dominance. Emancipatory approaches are supported by many social justice warriors of the current era.
The sentimental approach has a sense of nostalgia. This approach encourages returning to the way things were before the country or people were colonized. This look to the past encourages the use of museums and other judges of history to support this support for the past.
Emerging approaches are ever-changing and not stabilized. What is unique about this approach is that the ideas originate from people from oppressed groups rather than from outside this experience. Since these ideas are emerging there is no single definition in terms of what this group stands for.
Conclusion
Decolonization is a natural reaction to injustice. A desire to remove the influence of people who oppressed someone is a normal response. The goal here was only to show how this reaction may manifest itself within education.
One of the first steps in program development is assessing needs. When the team is aware of the needs of a target population they can develop programs that meet those needs. In this post, we will look at the different types of needs that are found and also look at the types of needs assessments that can be performed.
Types of Needs
Normative needs are needs that exist because the conditions people are experiencing are below what is considered acceptable. An example of this would be how in most parts of the US living without a car is considered unacceptable. The reason behind not having a car is a normative need is because owning a car is almost a given and an expectation.
Felt needs are needs that are based not on societal norms like normative needs but rather on personal needs. If owning a car is a normative need in the US a felt need would be a large family needing a large car rather than a small one. If the family received a small car it would help but it might not be possible for everyone to ride in the car at the same time. The normative need is met but the felt need of a larger car is unmet.
Expressed needs are the ways and methods people use to fulfill their needs. For example, if a family needs a car they might save some money and apply for a car loan when trying to purchase a car. Such an effort as this will help to address the need for a car.
Comparative needs are needs in which a person’s situation is worse than other people on average. People who live in poverty are more likely to not have access to a car which indicates a comparative need for transportation compared to middle and upper-class individuals.
Needs Assessment Types
In addition to types of needs, there are also different types of needs assessments. Sometimes needs are assessed through talking to key informants. These are individuals with unique knowledge of the context in which the program is going to be placed.
The social indicators approach uses statistical data to develop insights into the target population. Often the data is demographic and involves a large amount of descriptive statistics.
The community forum assessment uses a town hall approach to collecting information about needs in the local community. People come to the town hall and provide the program leaders with needed data for the development of the program.
The community survey approach involves quantitative and qualitative data collection from the target population for developing contextual knowledge. How this is different from other approaches is that the grant team collects primary data scientifically rather than looking at secondary data or informal non-scientific data collection that is used in other approaches.
A Focus group is a group of people who get together with a researcher to share information about a topic. The dynamics of a small group can often elicit responses that may not happen in other settings.
The rates-under-treatment approach is used to predict service needs in the future. This often involves looking at the documentation to assess the current use of resources and identifying trends.
Conclusion
Any combination of needs and needs assessments can be experienced or felt. People might have several types of needs and a team can use several combinations of needs assessments. The point here is to be familiar with the available tools
The implied main idea is an idea that the author does not provide directly to the reader. This means that it is the reader’s job to determine what the main idea is. The video below provides tips for how to develop an implied main idea.
There are several standard approaches for organizing one’s thoughts in writing. For readers, it is critical to know these standard forms as it helps with reading comprehension. The video below provides examples of various writing patterns.
Program planning is a a crucial step in the grant proposal process. In the book “Practical Grant Writing and Program Evaluation” by Yuen and Terao, they have this interesting equation for developing program as shown below.
P2 = w5 x h2 x E
The different variables are defined below
P2 = program planning
w5 = why x who x when x where x what
h2 = how x how much
E = evaluation
Below is a break down of each.
P2 is shorthand for program planning. There is not much more to this variable than this. The purpose of this model is to plan a program. What is important is what is to the left of this variable in the model.
w5 stands for the 5 w’s that are commonly used in journalism. “Why” explains the reasons and goals of a program. Another way to think of this is that the “why” is articulating the needs and the problems that the program will address. For example, if kids are struggling with math this could be a problem that a program may address. Program planners must know exactly what they are trying to address or the program may not address what the planners have in mind.
“Who” represents the target population. The target population is the individuals who will receive services from the program. Something that goes along with the target population is who will be serving them. Identifying who will serve the target population can include job titles, qualifications needed, etc. Who will be served and who is serving them is captured by this “w.”
The logistics of a program are captured by the last three “w’s” (when, where, and what). “When” deals with the timing a duration of the program which is context-dependent. “Where” is focused on the location. “What” addresses the resources that a program needs to have success.
These 3 w’s must be addressed with the target population in mind. For example, the “where” or location must be accessible to the target population or the “who.” You can’t have a great location with all the needed tools that are too far away for the people you are trying to help. “When” also is affected by being aware of the availability of the target population. If the target is school kids the program might have to be after school when the kids are available or late in the evening after parents get off work.
h2 represents “how” and “how much.” “How” are the activities that the program will conduct to help the target population. For example, for a math program, the activity might be tutoring or the use of online resources that support the development of math skills. “How much” is the budget of a program which must keep in mind the amount that is reasonable to request from a funder.
The last letter in this equation is “E” which stands for evaluation. The purpose of the evaluation is to determine how well the program was able to achieve its goals and objectives. How an evaluation can be conducted is beyond the scope of this post but this is a critical step in determining what to do next.
Conclusion
This equation is a great way to simplify and explain what needs to happen to develop a grant-funded program. Naturally, there is always more than one way to approach a problem but this is just one of many tools that are available for people who are trying to articulate this complex process.
Decolonization is the removal of colonial influences (ie Western or European) from a society. Often decolonization is a focus of education and involves the removal of Western influences from schools and curriculum. In this post, we will look at several different strategies used to decolonize the curriculum and they include:
The inspiration for this post is taken from two articles. “Pedagogical Talking Circles: Decolonizing Education through Relational Indigenous Frameworks” by Patricia Barkaskas and Derek Gladwin. The second article is “Emphasizing Multicultural and Anti-Racist Pedagogies as One Aspect of Decolonizing Education” by Rawia Azzahrawi.
Talking Circles
Talking circles are a tool used to get people to hear one another and provide an opportunity to share feelings about various topics. One of the goals of talking circles is to destabilize the European dominant narrative of schools. As with other aspects of critical theory, the goal is always to destabilize whatever is considered the norm.
Talking circles are also employed to shift biases about power, knowledge, and sociocultural beliefs. For example, talking circles may be used to discuss alternative views on family and sexuality. Alternative views on such topics are discussed in opposition to traditional views on these matters with an emphasis on showing how traditional norms oppress people who do not conform to these norms.
Several key components need to be a part of talking circles and they include situated relatedness, respectful listening, and reflected witnessing. Situated relatedness involves getting participants to place themselves within the context of others. In other words, stepping out of their worldview and seeing the world from the perspective of the person talking.
Respectful listening involves listening without judging and focusing on the other person’s lived experience. In other words, questioning or opposing the other person’s ideas and views is not acceptable when employing talking circles. Talking circles are a place for mutual consideration of people’s views.
Reflective witnessing encourages the listener to allow other perspectives while considering the feelings and thoughts they may generate. Awareness of others is a key component of talking circles and is a major focus of this approach in decolonizing.
Curriculum Focused
There are several curriculum-focused approaches to decolonization. By curriculum, it is meant the body of information that is taught within a classroom. The approaches are
The contribution approach involves focusing on heroes, events, and holidays from other cultures. An example would be Black History Month in the US. During this month, there is an emphasis on the contribution to the US of African Americans, and major events in US history involving African Americans. Teachers can include contributions of African Americans into their curriculum, which serves as a way of reducing the European focus of the curriculum.
The contribution approach has been criticized for being a form of tokenism as it is an add-on rather than a major change in the curriculum. For many, it is not enough to include the contribution of minorities. Rather, the entire curriculum should be developed from an alternative perspective to that of the West.
The transformation approach encourages changes to the curriculum so that it is more inclusive and balanced. In other words, Black history should not only be covered in February but throughout the year with contributions of African Americans shared in most if not all subjects.
Transforming the curriculum involves a great deal of work. In addition, every teacher may not have the expertise or resources to include the contributions of minorities. Another question to consider is when is the transformation sufficient. One can always find another group of oppressed people who should be included. The danger with this is that representation becomes more important than learning pertinent skills to survive. If children lose basic skills to become inclusive they will not have a skill set to compete upon graduation.
The social action approach addresses inequality through encouraging collaboration among various groups. Often there are antagonistic views between races. The social action approach encourages people to set aside differences for the greater good. An example of this would be environmentalism or even feminism. Remember that this is being done to destabilize the oppressive way things are done now.
Criticism of social action is that it ignores social structures and power distribution. Those in power often do not collaborate with those without power unless there is a benefit. Furthermore, the focus on collaboration often leads to people thinking that working together can solve all problems
Conclusion
The examples shared here are just some of the ways that decolonization is taking place in schools. Whether this is good or bad is a personal decision. However, it is important to be able to identify this when it is happening so that there is an awareness of the tools used in this belief system.
The video below provides several different examples and ways that data can be imported into Python.
Soft skills are non-technical skills. Generally, soft skills involve working with and dealing with people. It is safe to assume that everybody needs soft skills to a certain degree. Teachers in particular need soft skills as they are constantly interacting with people. In this post, we will look at the following softy skills that teachers need to develop to support their students
Communication
Communication is focused on saying what you mean and saying it clearly. How to do this is tricky. When communicating it is important to keep in mind your audience. The way a teacher talks to kindergartners is different from high school students. It is also important to have students repeat what you said back to them. Doing so will allow you to hear what they have learned or not learned. This information sets you up for success.
It takes time to learn how to communicate with students and with people in general. However, given the need to constantly spend time with kids as a teacher, it should not take long for communication skills to improve.
Leadership
Leadership is the ability to influence others. Often, this is associated with achieving a goal. As a teacher, it is critical to have a goal and a way to help a student to achieve excellence and this involves leadership.
Decisiveness and charisma are critical components of leadership. A teacher must know what they want and how they will get there. Often teachers have one or the other. What this means is that a teacher may know what they want but cannot inspire students or they don’t know what they want but are highly motivating. Falling into either extreme is disruptive for the classroom.
Collaboration
Collaboration is the ability to work with others. Teachers are often viewed as people who work alone. There is the common stereotype of the teacher being the only adult in a classroom and also spending time alone grading assignments and preparing lesson plans.
However, teaching involves a great deal of collaboration. Even in the classroom teachers have to work together with students. Children are people too and nobody wants to work with or be under a person who is difficult to get along with. Therefore, even though a teacher may have authority over students it is still easier for all parties involved if the teacher has some basic ability in working with others.
Self-Awareness
Self-awareness is the ability to be aware of one’s internal thoughts and external actions. People frequently make mistakes when interacting with others and are surprised that their actions had a negative influence on them. In addition, it is also common for people to experience angst when their thoughts and actions are not in agreement. One example would be the ting of guilt many experience when they lie or act hypocritically.
Teachers, as individuals who interact with people, need to have self-awareness. It is tempting to blame the students every time there is a problem in the classroom. However, self-aware teachers will always look at themselves first to see if that is where the problem is.
Empathy
Empathy is the ability to see and understand something from another person’s perspective. Being able to understand another person’s perspective, especially when it disagrees with yours, is a rare skill to find today. Often today, people like to gather with people who think the same way they do.
Teachers have to learn to be empathetic because they will be frequently challenged by students who do not agree about having to work and study in class. When disruptive behavior takes place it can make it even harder for the teacher to try and understand the perspective of the student.
Emotional Intelligence
Emotional intelligence is the skill of controlling one’s own emotions and being aware of the emotions of others. It’s difficult for most people to control their emotions. If someone can stay in control of themselves they could be accused of being heartless and cruel.
Teachers need to have a high degree of emotional intelligence. Students are frequently looking for an emotional response from a teacher when they are being disruptive. If a teacher can maintain control of themselves it sends a strong message about who is in charge in a classroom. However, teachers must also be aware of the emotions of their students so that again they can understand them when trying to support them.
Conclusion
A careful reading of this post will show that these skills are overlapping in nature. For example, self-awareness is needed to be empathetic and both of the skills need emotional intelligence. Therefore, soft skills often cannot be broken down into isolated skills but are rather a set of inter-related skills that work together to help students
This post will look at the article “The Politics of Liberation and Love in Privileged Classrooms” by Susannah Livingston. In short, this article addresses bringing critical pedagogy into classrooms of children from privileged homes enrolled in elite private schools. The author’s primary thesis is that critical pedagogy must be brought into every educational space including the space of the rich and well-to-do.
The thesis makes a strong assumption in that it is implied here that there can be no dissent from critical pedagogy since the author claims that every classroom must have critical pedagogy. This makes one wonder what will happen if people disagree.
After making such a sweeping statement of the use and value of critical pedagogy. The author provides two main questions that they want to address in this paper.
It might be difficult to understand question 2 at this moment. Essentially, the author is wondering if rich kids will use their privilege to help the oppressed.
Freeing the Bourgeoisie
According to the author, critical pedagogy for privileged kids is about connecting them with the unfortunate and downtrodden. Friere expresses the idea that to be truly human is to be politically conscious, which is to say that a person is fully human when they are aware of the injustice and oppression in the world. Therefore, for the paper’s author, who is also a teacher in an elite private school, awakening privileged kids and making them aware of the social injustice of the world is critical in making these kids fully human.
The point made above helps one to understand why proponents of critical pedagogy are so adamant about what they are doing. They are truly convinced that they are enlightening the world with their crusade of fighting for the oppressed and downtrodden while also opening the eyes of students in particular to the injustice of the world. Doing this is not only doing a good deed but supposedly making people fully human again as if this was lost at one time. According to the author, if critical pedagogy is not in the classroom then the children are alienated from who they are which is a person who needs to be politically conscious.
The author also speaks on the important role of praxis. Praxis is the implementation of critical pedagogy, which means helping the downtrodden not only by providing support but also by organizing and awakening them as well. Praxis is critical in the author’s eyes because stopping the cycle of reproducing dehumanized students (not politically conscious) is necessary. The author believes that there is a strong need to de-normalize private education. Norms or the status quo is always a target of any critical study as it is the norms that guide and reproduce the current society. Queer studies in particular is a direct assault on any form of norms at all and this is not limited to sexuality.
The article goes on to share the struggle between fascist governments and critical pedagogy. Fascist governments are always looking to limit critical pedagogy. This implies that anything or anybody who disagrees with critical pedagogy is fascist and totalitarian. Of course, this also implies that letting critical pedagogy do whatever it wants is not totalitarian to people who disagree. In short, freedom is defined exclusively within a framework of critical pedagogy, which sounds totalitarian when freedom can only be defined a certain way.
Within this worldview, teachers are undercover agents who are looking to free students from the dehumanizing unjust system that they are subject to. Again, this is surprising that teachers, who mostly are government employees, are actively supposed to be trying to bring revolution to the government they are employed for. Even if parents and the local community may be at odds with this subversive motivation of educators.
The author goes on to share that repression must be resisted by teachers who must have and use tools to fight the status quo or what is considered normal. The idea of repression comes from Marcuse in which he states that the left should be tolerated while the right should be repressed. In other words, there are no right-winged leanings among teachers that are tolerable as all teachers should be fighting for revolution.
The implementation of Friere’s ideas is supposed to lead to a non-stratified society. A society that has no stratification implies there is no social mobility. If such a society is possible, it would be a society in which there are almost no differences and nothing to essentially strive for long-term. How people, especially highly motivated ambitious people, could be satisfied in such a system, is not explained. As people have varying degrees of talent and ability it seems unlikely that equality is possible since the driven and talented rise to the top in many instances.
Another premise that the author makes is about the focus on the group over the individual. The author is convinced that the individual should be below or submissive to the group. The problem with this is whether it applies in all situations at all times. There are examples of the group oppressing the individual. In addition, generally, it is easier for a group of people to take away the rights of others over a small handful taking away the rights of the majority. Even in places where a small cadre of people control the country they rely on a network of others who cooperate with them to maintain the status quo as seen in North Korea and China, two countries that support many of the ideas of the author at one time or another in their past. Supposedly, critical pedagogy is about connections between people within the framework of power and place, however, this seems to apply only when people agree with the proponents of critical pedagogy.
Student Reactions
Livingston also explains the reaction of privileged students to exposure to social justice matters through critical pedagogy. Some of the students would attempt to frame the injustice as abstract or they showed a lack of awareness in the manner. This reaction is an example of epistemic pushback in which a person tries to disarm an argument by feigning ignorance to avoid engaging in an uncomfortable discussion.
Other ways in which students react include showing guilt and anger when they hear about the suffering of the marginalized. Whether this is genuine or not is not shared. The last way students deal with the learning of injustice is to develop a savior complex in which they want to rescue the downtrodden. Such an approach is not unique to children and has been demonstrated by others as well.
Despite these reactions that the author documents in her paper. The author goes on to claim that bringing critical pedagogy into the classroom is relieving for many students. This may be true, however, the author never gives numbers on how many students were upset or relieved from this experience so there is no way to determine the success or failure of incorporating this approach into the classroom.
Curricular Views
The author clearly explains that the curriculum needs to be modified to incorporate social justice into it. However, there is no discussion on what to remove to achieve this. Should students have less PE? Perhaps science should be removed? In practice, critical pedagogy is more of a worldview than a new academic subject. In other words, the existing curriculum should be taught from a perspective of the power dynamics of the privileged and the oppressed, which are concepts of major concern within critical pedagogy.
Another tool of education that needs to be addressed is reasoning. The author states that reasoning is a form of oppression as it is focused on competition and deemphasizes collectivism. She states this even though she used reasoning to attack reasoning. The main concern with this comment is that there is no evidence presented of the dangers of reasoning nor are there any discussions of the potential consequences of removing reasoning from the learning experiences of students. One can imagine a world of functioning adults who think that reasoning is bad and oppressive and have decided to make decisions using other techniques. Perhaps it is reasonable to have a segment of the population who do not reason as it would be rather easy to control and manipulate them. However, to have the majority of students undergo such an educational experience that denigrates reasoning might be destabilizing at a minimum to society and leave a population of people who cannot think for themselves at all and rely on impulsive decision-making.
Conclusion
Critical pedagogy is another approach to providing education to students whether rich or poor. The main concern with the author’s perspective is the demand for this approach to be in every school as if it would work everywhere. People are all different and no single approach will work in every context. Another concern could be with the idea that people who are not awakened through critical pedagogy are not fully human. This could lead to an elitist perspective of those who have embraced critical pedagogy and its calls for social justice versus those who question the merit of this perspective.
The nominal group technique is used to conduct group interviews for qualitative projects/research. This is a tried and true technique and is commonly used in various disciplines. For our purposes, we will look at the criteria for conducting this data collection format along with the actual steps when the nominal group technique is employed.
Criteria
The nominal group technique usually consists of 5-9 people with a sweet spot of 7 individuals. All of these individuals are seated at a table. Another important person in this group interview is the leader. Naturally, the leader should know this process and be able to guide the group members through it.
The entire session should take anywhere from 60 to 90 minutes. The flavor of this approach is a focus on brainstorming ideas in response to some prompt or setting. The beauty of this technique is that it allows everyone to participate. Participation in group interviews can often be dominated by several vocal members with less vocal individuals being left out. With the nominal group technique, everyone can participate.
Steps
There are five steps to the nominal group technique and they are listed below.
Silent Generation
The technique begins with the leader sharing the prompt, issue, or question. For example, the leader may ask a group of students at a university about how to improve the quality of the teaching. The leader will provide a worksheet for the students to write down five ideas. While writing, the students are not allowed to talk.
Round-Robin
The round-robin stage involves everyone sharing the ideas that they wrote down. Again, there is still no discussion. The round-robin step forces everyone to share whether they are vocal or shy. There is no judgment of quality, rather, there is a focus on everyone having a voice.
Serial Discussion
Serial discussion is when the speaking begins. Ideas are discussed to provide clarity to what is being said. If people have questions about each other’s ideas this is the opportunity to explain what was meant.
Preliminary Vote
Once there is clarification regarding what people meant behind their ideas it is now time to vote. The voting is done secretly. This is probably to protect people’s feelings if their ideas are rejected. The votes are cast and the ideas are ranked.
Discussion of Vote
After the initial vote, there is a discussion of the results. This discussion is done to understand and clarify the voting pattern of the group. After this first vote takes place the process is repeated until the leader has the desired number of ideas they want.
Conclusion
The nominal group technique is a great way to encourage discussion and ideas from all members of a group. Allowing full participation can potentially provide richer data and or ideas than when vocal members dominate the discussion. Therefore, when conducting group interviews this technique can be valuable in specific situations.
This post will provide a summary of the article “Queer Futurity and Childhood Innocence: Beyond the Injury of Development” by Hannah Dyer. The article addresses what the author believes are several erroneous assumptions that professionals have about child development and sexuality. By disrupting these misunderstandings the author claims that it will help children.
The author begins the paper by stating that there is a mistake in assuming that children are a-sexual and will soon be heterosexual as they mature. From there, the author builds this argument and concludes the paper with a critique of a video that makes the argument that being homosexual becomes easier once leaving school.
Introduction
It is important to explain several terms before exploring the paper in detail. The word “queer” usually means strange, however, in the context of queer theory “queer” means to challenge whatever is considered “normal.” Queer wants to unsettle all established norms even norms regarding homosexuality. For proponents of queer theory, anything normal can be considered problematic. Queer means deviance from anything normative whether gay or straight. In other words, there can be no identities as everything is always in a state of unsettled flux.
A word that appears in the title of the paper is “futurity.” Futurity in the context of queer theory is a criticism of current problems faced by queer people using ideas from several places such as historicism, utopianism, as well as death drive (negative views of non-traditional sex acts).
The author states that queer theory sees childhood as a place of heteronormative intervention. In other words, childhood is an assault on assuming that children will pursue traditional sexuality. The author provides a quote that it “is open season on gay kids” without providing any statistics to support this. For the author, there appears to be little support for raising children who are homosexual. However, this assumes that children are sexual which is an assumption that the author makes and is counter to the traditional assumption that children are not sexual.
Dyer continues by stating that early childhood theories avoid topics on sexuality because there is an assumption of innocence. The author disagrees with this and uses the term “figure of the Child” which is another way of stating this assumption of innocence. The phrase “figure of Child” is a term borrowed from queer theory. The word “Child” is deliberately capitalized.
For the author, one step in the reform of early childhood theories on development is to get rid of this assumption of innocence. This is because current theories supposedly reduce children to figures without complexity (things are always too simple for critical theorists). The current theories could harm children as they exclude the possibility of the child possessing a queer nature. However, no statistical support is given for this statement.
Another critique the author provides is her concern with childhood education wanting to stabilize and define queerness as an identity. As mentioned earlier, for Dyer, queerness is contingent and cannot be permanently defined. This is because the definition will change as what is normal changes. Since queer theory is always against normativity, its definition will change with whatever is considered normal. Right now, heterosexuality is considered normal so queer theory is in opposition to this. If heterosexuality were no longer considered normal queer theory would move on and attack whatever else is now “normal.” There will never be any fixed definitions for supporters of this theory for almost anything. For example, gender is now considered fluid.
Dyer states that queer theory provides advances in the care of children through methodology, pedagogy, and epistemology. For methodology in particular, queer theory can disrupt the assumption of sequential steps towards normalcy, which may not apply to every child. Queer theory can also help analyze how normativity is reproduced. Reproduction is a frequent complaint of Marxists with the complaint that the existing society wants to reproduce itself and one vehicle for this reproduction is education. Lastly, Dyer speaks of the need to loosen parameters around normative development as queerness destroys identity and does not support the development of identities.
Making Childhood Education “Get Better”
The final section of the paper is a critique of “It Gets Better” a video created to support youth with alternative sexual preferences. Essentially, the video states that having an alternative sexual preference will be easier as an adult. However, the author critiques this argument as untrue. In addition, Dyer criticizes this video for not taking race and class into account. As such, this video falls short of supporting kids who it claims to help.
Conclusion
This article provides an insight into what queer theory is and what it is trying to do. However, one article cannot speak for an entire field. The ideas presented here of overturning anything normal are shocking but may not be something that everybody in this domain agrees with.
Evaluation plays a critical role in assessing the value that a program/project has delivered. Here we will look at the various evaluations that are a part of a project evaluation.
Context
A context evaluation allows the evaluators to assess the needs and resources of the local community to determine a plan for effective action. Generally, this type of evaluation happens before the program is running. In addition, this type of evaluation also allows for the evaluation team to get a sense of the local political situation and support for the program. All of this knowledge helps the team to determine the strengths and weaknesses of the local context.
The tools involved in this assessment can include a full-on development of a needs assessment. This can include identifying local leaders in the community, gaps in service, and opportunities to support the community. Context assessments can also be used to look at the team running the program.
The primary goal of a context evaluation is to develop an understanding of the target population and the community within which the target population is found. You want to get into the community found who are the influencers and see how you project can fit into that situation positively.
Implementation
Implementation evaluation happens while a project is going. Among the many goals of this is to see if he goals of the program match with the needs of the target population. Sometimes the best intentions do not benefit the people we are trying to help. Another goal is to identify and minimize barriers to implementation.
Other goals of this evaluation include monitoring the experiences of stakeholders with a project. In other words, determines what the local community thinks of the program after it is implemented. Lastly, implementation evaluation looks at evidence for systemic change or the impact the program is having on the community as a whole.
Outcome
Outcome evaluation is used to determine the type of outcomes you want from a program. By outcomes, it means the influence your program has on the target population or the people who are actually in the program. How this is measured will depend on the project.
There are two types of outcomes and these are individual outcomes and program outcomes. Individual outcomes look at the influence a program has on an individual person. For example, this could include changes in a person’s quality of life, status, or situation. Program outcomes look at the impact of the general services of a program such as improving access, expanding services, etc. How this is measured varies but the focus is always either on the individual or the program. The results of an outcome evaluation help to determine if a program should continue and what is currently working or not working.
There are several questions to consider when attempting an outcome evaluation. Below is a list
Most of the bullets above are standard to research and will not be discussed here. What may be new is the term performance target. A performance target are benchmark set that helps to establish the standard for what is considered good or bad performance. For example, a reading comprehension program might set a benchmark of 75% of the students reading at grade level by the end of the program. This sets a standard by which to assess the quality of the program.
Conclusion
Program evaluation is a critical component of the grant process. Once money has been spent, the evaluation helps to determine if the money was spent wisely helping people based on whatever the goals of the grant were.
Speaking in is a critical component of develop language skills. The video below provides different techniques for ESL students.
The video below shows how to conduct a t-test and an ANOVA analysis using the pingouin library from Python.
Cells can adjust and change their DNA in marvelous ways. We will look at five ways the cells adjust on a genetic level to survive. These five ways are
Transposition
Transposition is the process of cells rearranging their DNA. This process was first discovered by Barbara McClintock. In her experiments, McClintock deliberately damaged corn DNA to inhibit reproduction. The corn would pull genetic code from other places in the chromosome to maintain the ability to reproduce. In other words, the cells would take DNA from one place and insert it into another place to maintain stability and full functioning.
How fast transposition can take place varies. For the corn experiments of McClintock, it could happen within one generation, which was the generation with the damaged DNA. In other situations, transposition could happen within a few hours, which was found among some forms of protozoan.
The implications for this include that cells know when DNA is damaged and they know how to fix this problem using other pieces of their DNA. This requires a level of mysterious intelligence that few are willing to admit that cells have.
Horizontal gene transfer
Horizontal gene transfer is the exchange of DNA between organisms. Not only do cells have internal mechanisms to fix DNA, but they can also exchange DNA with other cells. An example of this is bacteria that are resistant to antibiotics. What sometimes happens is one bacterium figures out how to resist the drugs and share this DNA with other bacteria through horizontal gene transfer.
What this means is not only do cells manipulate their DNA but when they have success they can share this with other cells. The other cells are then able to incorporate this “foreign” code into their system and have similar results.
Epigenetics
Epigenetics is the process of turning genes on and off. This is where nature vs nurture can play a critical role in development. In one experiment with rat pups, pups licked and nurtured by the mother were better able to deal with stress. This implies that the nurturing of the mother activates genes that allow for better processing of stress.
A relatable example would be weight training. Under the stress of weights, the body is transformed. Muscles get bigger, cardio improves, etc. The changes last as long as the person continues to work out. However, even if somebody stops the “memory” of these changes remains and the person can regain a great deal of the muscle just by returning to weight training.
Therefore, not only can cells manipulate their DNA and share DNA with others, but the environment itself can cause genes to shut on and off.
Symbiogenesis
Symbiogenesis is the merging of cells to cooperate. Lichen is an example of fungus and algae working together to live. Another example is chloroplast, chloroplast is an algae embedded inside plant cells.
Living cells can essentially become “one” in an attempt to have the best success at survival. This makes light of the survival of the fittest in which nature is seen as a battlefield of competition. In reality, alliances are formed for the sake of survival.
Hybridization
Hybridization is two species mating to produce a new species. Examples include tigers and lions coming together to make a liger. Or more commonly a donkey and horse making a mule.
Hybridization is genetic change at light speed. New creatures can be developed overnight with this process. However, as mentioned previously, there is a high risk of creating a genetic dead end that cannot reproduce.
Conclusion
All of the examples here indicate that changes within organisms can happen much faster than the idea of millions of years. Gene modification happens in a self-aware way that seems to defy logic and sense.
Repressive Tolerance is a famous essay by Herbert Marcuse in the 1960’s. Marcuse was a famous philosopher who heavily influenced the thought of the political left. We will look at the ideas presented in Marcuse’s essay Repressive Tolerance. However, it is important to mention that Marcuse’s writing style is highly dense and convoluted. Therefore, it would not be practical to call this a summary as his ideas are so difficult to explain.
The central thesis of Repressive Tolerance can be found in the direct quote from the essay shown below.
Liberating tolerance then would mean intolerance against movements from the right and toleration of movements from the left
Herbert Marcuse “Repressive Tolerance”
The quote above, which appears towards the end of the essay, summarizes what Marcuse is trying to explain. The left should be tolerated while the right should be repressed. The rest of the essay shares examples of this critical point in a highly difficult way to understand and appreciate.
It is also important to consider the context of this essay. It was written in the 1960s during political upheaval in the United States. Minorities were pushing for equal rights while at the same time, there was a controversial war happening. In addition, Marcuse was already an older man at this point in his life so he had seen the horrors of World War II and the right-wing fascist government of Hitler. In other words, this background played a major role in shaping his views on tolerance.
Tolerance Gone Wrong
One example that Marcuse uses to illustrate the danger of tolerating the right is Adolf Hitler. Through tolerance from other countries and even within Germany, Hitler was able to rise to power and cause untold chaos. However, Marcuse conveniently forgot to mention the untold terror of left dictators such as Stalin, Lenin, and Mao. Therefore, it seems that the problem isn’t so much the left or right of the political debate but rather the problem is people who use either the left or the right to rise to power. The danger isn’t the political position but the character of the person(s) who is in charge
Marcuse’s ultimate goal is to develop a world without fear and misery. In other words, he is seeking a utopia, a common left-wing dream. This can potentially be achieved through careful use of tolerance in which everything is not tolerated. Failure to do this could allow for tyranny to arise as the tyrants will use tolerance to take power.
Types of Tolerance and Political Violence
Marcuse also mentions two types of tolerance: active and passive. Active tolerance is tolerance that is granted to the left and the right. Passive tolerance is acceptance of traditional attitudes and behaviors. From these two definitions, it appears that Marcuse is criticizing both of them. Active tolerance is bad because it tolerates the right while passive tolerance is also bad because it supports only traditional values, which are often associated with the right as well.
Another general point of Marcuse is that tolerance cannot be indiscriminate otherwise it will be abuse. Wisdom is needed in determining what is tolerated and it appears that the left should be tolerated because they are pushing for change while the right should be repressed because they support the status quo.
Who Should be Tolerated
Marcuse also provides examples of when tolerance has been limited depending on the context. For example, he provides an example from John Stuart Mills who stated that tolerance for the selection of leadership should be limited to those with “maturity of faculties.” Another example is from Plato who suggested an educational dictatorship or a tolerance of leaders who have achieved a certain minimum level of education. In both these examples tolerance is dependent on social standing. In other words, the educated should be tolerated in positions of power while the uneducated should not.
Marcuse also provides examples of intolerance as well. He pulls several examples of heretics during the days when the Catholic Church had a major influence over Europe. Marcuse then goes on the mention the need people have for access to authentic information so that they can make properly informed decisions. In other words, it is not social standing that matters but rather the quality of information that is available to the people that matters even more. Therefore, those with quality information should be tolerated to make decisions while those without quality information should not be tolerated to make decisions. Unfortunately, determining what is quality information is another dilemma that can never be solved.
The Sharing of Information
Toward the end of the essay, Marcuse shares examples of how the way information is shared can influence tolerance. Examples included sharing positive and negative articles about the government in the same newspaper. This would send a potentially balanced message about the government. Another example was of a newscaster sharing a tragedy without emotion. Again, the way the message is shared can play a part in the tolerance that is perceived.
For Marcuse, truth is mediated by the environment or context in which it is shared. This implies that it is difficult if not impossible to be partial and unbiased. Marcuse does not say this directly but it appears he is alluding to it.
Conclusion
Marcuse is a tough read. He addresses several ideas at once and spirals back to them throughout the piece. This post was not a summary of his essay but essentially was just an attempt to try and organize the thoughts that Marcuse shared. The primary point of the article is that toleration belongs to the left while the right should be repressed or perhaps not tolerated.
This post will take a look at an article by Alison Bailey called “Tracking Privilege-Preserving Epistemic Pushback in Feminist and Critical Race Philosophy Class.” The authors’ main point was to identify epistemic pushback, provide examples of the tools of epistemic pushback, and share some of the associated problems. The context for the author’s views are taken from experiences she had as a teacher.
According to the author, the academic classroom is a place where there are unlevel fields of knowledge in which ignorance is produced. This position assumes that students are creators of knowledge rather than consumers of it. This ignorance that the author is writing about can take place when a student pushes back or disagrees with the opinion of another student. The pushback or disagreement can manifest in many different ways. One way in which it shows itself is when the concerns of a marginalized student relating to injustice are viewed as complaints. Pushing back in this way is dismissing the lived pain of another student. Within the scope of this paper, this type of pushback only seems to happen concerning social justice issues.
The pushback that was described in the previous paragraph has a technical name which is privilege-preserving epistemic pushback. Epistemic pushback is the willful use of ignorance by a dominant group to see the social injustices observed by marginalized groups. The author then provides technical examples of epistemic pushback including the use of critical thinking and shadow texts.
Tools of Pusback
Critical thinking is focused on the truthfulness or epistemic adequacy of an argument. In other words, it assesses the strength of an argument through the relevancy of the support and the development of an argument. The author considers the use of critical thinking as harmful to marginalized groups. The reason for this is that when epistemic pushback claims to use critical thinking it validates the pushback and has an unfair influence.
The author also compares and contrasts critical thinking with critical pedagogy. Critical pedagogy is focused on power dynamics and groups of people to seek justice and emancipation of those who are not in a position of power. Critical thinking in contrast is focused on the soundness of an argument. The author makes this point by stating that critical thinking cannot be used to dismantle a system that employs critical thinking with the analogy that you cannot use the tools of oppression to defeat oppression. Other ways have to be employed in order to challenge the views and opinions of others.
Shadow text is an attempt to share an idea or topic similar to the topic of the debate with the intention to change the course of the debate. The goal with shadow text is to move a person from their epistemic terrain (the topic they are debating and or where they are comfortable) to a weaker position. People struggle to see points of view that are different from theirs such as how men and women struggle to understand each other and people of various races struggle to understand each other. Moving someone from their epistemic terrain can bring a sense of discomfort for people. For example, white fragility is believed to take place when people who are white are faced with a position that challenges their worldview. However, anybody who has their own worldview challenged could potentially face a similar experience of discomfort as it is similar to cognitive dissonance.
Another concern the author has with shadow text is that it can block paths of knowledge. This can happen when people want to be convinced rather than accept the claims of people from marginalized groups as true. When people have to waste time developing arguments it distracts them from hearing the voices of the powerless
Problems with Epistemic Pushback
The author also mentions several additional drawbacks to epistemic pushback. Pushback is considered a type of manipulation called microinvalidation which are words and or actions that deny a person’s thoughts or feelings about their personal experience. Again asking for aspects related to critical thinking may be one form of microvalidation.
Epistemic violence is another problem with epistemic pushback. There are two types of epistemic violence in the paper and these are testimonial quieting and testimonial smoothing. Testimonial quieting is denying the credibility of a knower because they belong to a marginalized group which essentially silences them. For example, silencing the voice of a woman among a group of men because the person is a woman
Testimonial smoothing involves a speaker restricting their word choice out of fear that the audience may not accept or understand what they are trying to say. This self-censorship naturally weakens the individual’s ability to communicate. However, this form of self-censorship is common among the majority and marginalized.
Conclusion
Epistemic pushback is an important term to be aware of because it makes the case that tools commonly used in debating ideas are not acceptable within the context of social justice. Whether this is true or not is a matter for future debate. However, declaring time-honored tools such as critical thinking as being out of bounds within the debate of social justice is a brilliant move to protect the epistemic terrain of those who support progressive ideas within the context of social justice
