Teacher communities play a central role in teachers' professional development. This study provides a systematic review of empirical research on teacher communities (TCs). Based upon predefined ...selection criteria, 40 studies were analysed using a narrative method. Three different types of TCs were identified: formal, member-oriented with a pre-set agenda, and formative TCs. Results showed that different stakeholders (governments, school principals, teachers) are involved and their different perspectives and degrees of involvement (distinguishing between TCs realised bottom-up or top-down) impact TCs. Finally, several conditions for success were reported: supportive leadership, group dynamics and composition, and trust and respect.
•Community appears to be a fuzzy concept, in literature and practice.•Three different types of teacher communities (TCs) can be distinguished.•The presence of different stakeholders influences the functioning of TCs.•Conditions for TCs' success include leadership, group dynamics, trust, and respect.
Gay and bisexual men might face unique, status-based competitive pressures given that their social and sexual relationships often occur with other men, who are known to compete for social and sexual ...gain. In a multistage study, we delineated intraminority gay community stress theory-that status-focused elements of the gay community challenge the mental health of gay and bisexual men. We first created a measure of gay community stress with items derived from qualitative interviewing (n = 49); calculated its psychometric properties, including 1-year temporal stability (n = 937); and confirmed its structural stability in distinct samples (n = 96; n = 1,413). Being stressed by perceiving the gay community's focus on sex, focus on status, focus on competition, and exclusion of diversity predicted gay and bisexual men's mental health over-and-above a comprehensive battery of traditional minority stressors (β = .17, p < .01) and mediated the association between one's gay community status and mental health. To examine the impact of individual differences in status concerns (i.e., about masculinity, attractiveness, and wealth) on gay and bisexual men's feelings of within-community exclusion, a series of experiments manipulated (a) the sexual orientation (gay vs. heterosexual) of rejecters (n = 103), (b) the social status of gay rejecters (n = 83), and (c) whether rejection from gay and bisexual rejecters was status-based or nonstatus-based (n = 252). Overall, these experiments provide partial support for the possibility that gay and bisexual men's status concerns underlie their experience of gay community stress. Together, these studies advance psychological and sociological accounts of gay and bisexual men's mental health beyond minority stress theory, with implications for intervention.
This review outlines several key aspects or the new rural-urban interface and the growing interpenetration of American rural and urban life. The historical coincidence ot spatial and social ...boundaries in America is changing rapidly. This review highlights (a) the enormous scale of rural-urban interdependence and boundary crossing, shifting, and blurring—along many dimensions of community life—over the past several decades, and (b) the symmetrical rather than asymmetrical influences between urban and rural areas, i.e., on bidirectional relational aspects of spatial categories. These general points are illustrated by identifying 10 common conceptions of rural America that reflect both its social and economic diversity and its changing spatial and social boundaries. Here we emphasize symbolic and social boundaries—the distinctions between urban and rural communities and people and the processes by which boundaries are engaged. Placing behaviors or organizational forms along a rural-urban continuum (or within a metropolitan hierarchy of places) or drawing sharp rural-urban distinctions seems increasingly obsolete or even problematic. We conclude with a call for new research on rural America and greater conceptual and empirical integration of urban and rural scholarship, which remains disconnected and segregated institutionally.
Microbial communities transform nitrogen (N) compounds, thereby regulating the availability of N in soil. The N cycle is defined by interacting microbial functional groups, as inorganic N‐products ...formed in one process are the substrate in one or several other processes. The nitrification pathway is often a two‐step process in which bacterial or archaeal communities oxidize ammonia to nitrite, and bacterial communities further oxidize nitrite to nitrate. Little is known about the significance of interactions between ammonia‐oxidizing bacteria (AOB) and archaea (AOA) and nitrite‐oxidizing bacterial communities (NOB) in determining the spatial variation of overall nitrifier community structure. We hypothesize that nonrandom associations exist between different AO and NOB lineages that, along with edaphic factors, shape field‐scale spatial patterns of nitrifying communities. To address this, we sequenced and quantified the abundance of AOA, AOB, and Nitrospira and Nitrobacter NOB communities across a 44‐hectare site with agricultural fields. The abundance of Nitrobacter communities was significantly associated only with AOB abundance, while that of Nitrospira was correlated to AOA. Network analysis and geostatistical modelling revealed distinct modules of co‐occurring AO and NOB groups occupying disparate areas, with each module dominated by different lineages and associated with different edaphic factors. Local communities were characterized by a high proportion of module‐connecting versus module‐hub nodes, indicating that nitrifier assemblages in these soils are shaped by fluctuating conditions. Overall, our results demonstrate the utility of network analysis in accounting for potential biotic interactions that define the niche space of nitrifying communities at scales compatible to soil management.
Ecosystem ecology sees living organisms, including people and the elements of their environment, as part of a single integrated system. The comprehensive coverage in this textbook examines the ...central processes at work, including their freshwater components.
Resilience, and specifically the resilience of (rural) communities, is an increasingly-ubiquitous concept, particularly in the contexts of resistance to shocks, climate change, and environmental ...disasters. The dominant discourse concerning (community) resilience centres around bounce-back from external shocks. In this paper, I argue that it is necessary to query this dominant, singular conceptualisation for two main reasons. Firstly, through reviewing the international literature, it is possible to construct a spectrum of (community) resilience research concepts from ‘reactive bounce-back’ through to ‘proactive human agency’, where the latter increasingly questions the reactive stance of much community resilience analysis. Secondly, the new findings I present from 17 community land trusts (CLTs) in Scotland demonstrate processes of proactive change being implemented by communities-of-place, rather than simply as reactions to external shocks or events. Communities' aimed-for outcomes are far wider than shock-absorption, and include deliberately building their skills and capacity-base in a context of constant change, rather than in anticipation of singular events.
As a result of bringing together empirical findings with a wider review of the resilience literature, I conclude that to persist with only the dominant narrative of a reactive, shock-related definition of (community) resilience unnecessarily constrains our analysis, since it bypasses evident proactive processes and wider adaptability outcomes. I further conclude that we need to continue to problematise resilience as a concept, in order to be more accurate with its usage. This is important in itself, and, I argue, a necessary precursor to enhancing dialogue between resilience and other concepts such as social capital.
Online communities (OCs) are a virtual organizational form in which knowledge collaboration can occur in unparalleled scale and scope, in ways not heretofore theorized. For example, collaboration can ...occur among people not known to each other, who share different interests and without dialogue. An exploration of this organizational form can fundamentally change how we theorize about knowledge collaboration among members of organizations. We argue that a fundamental characteristic of OCs that affords collaboration is their fluidity. This fluidity engenders a dynamic flow of resources in and out of the community-resources such as passion, time, identity, social disembodiment of ideas, socially ambiguous identities, and temporary convergence. With each resource comes both a negative and positive consequence, creating a tension that fluctuates with changes in the resource. We argue that the fluctuations in tensions can provide an opportunity for knowledge collaboration when the community responds to these tensions in ways that encourage interactions to be generative rather than constrained. After offering numerous examples of such generative responses, we suggest that this form of theorizing-induced by online communities-has implications for theorizing about the more general case of knowledge collaboration in organizations.
Unconditional cash transfer programs are a form of structural intervention to address poverty, a “fundamental cause” of disease. Such programs increasingly aim to build resilience to sustain improved ...outcomes and provide a solid foundation for longer term transformations. As such, there is a need to understand what resilience means in specific contexts. The goal of this formative study was to explore local experiences of resilience and vulnerability among 11 youth–caregiver dyads (n = 22) who were beneficiaries of the Malawi Social Cash Transfer Program in Balaka district. We used a photo-elicitation approach informed by the participatory, visual methodology photovoice to guide the study and conducted an iterative content analysis using thematic coding of transcripts and photos. Participants took pictures of their daily struggles and shocks and participated in audio-recorded discussions to reflect on the photos using an adapted version of the SHOWeD method. We found that participants characterized resilience as a tireless process of using all available individual, family, and community resources at all times in pursuit of survival and well-being. In the context of daily struggles, resilience was an essential part of survival. Shocks, mostly health-related, were depicted through staged images candidly highlighting individual and environmental vulnerabilities. Community support was an essential component of resilience for both daily struggles and shocks. Using photo-elicitation methods facilitated an intergenerational, community-driven reflection on the meaning of resilience and the multilevel determinants of health in a context of extreme poverty. Findings can inform the design of resilience-focused cash transfer programs to improve health equity.
Aim of the study was to assess the relationship between social participation and Sense of Community in a sample of University students and the impact of such variables on Social well being. A further ...aim was to assess the generality of the relationships between these constructs across different countries, and specifically, the USA, Italy and Iran. The sample includes 200 Italian, 125 American and 214 Iranian University students, male and female. Results show higher levels of social participation, Sense of Community and Social well being among American students. Sense of Community is positively correlated with social participation in all three samples; however, only among Italian students social participation positively predicts Social well being. Implications of results will be discussed.
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