Allison Mattheis

Queer in STEM: Workplace Experiences Reported in a National Survey of LGBTQA Individuals in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics Careers.

ABSTRACT A survey of individuals working in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) fields who identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans*, queer, or asexual (LGTBQA) was administered online in 2013. Participants completed a 58-item questionnaire to report their professional areas of expertise, levels of education, geographic location, and gender and sexual identities and rated their work and social communities as welcoming or hostile to queer identities. An analysis of 1,427 responses to this survey provided the first broad portrait of this population, and it revealed trends related to workplace practices that can inform efforts to improve queer inclusivity in STEM workplaces.

Using Student Learning and Development Outcomes to Evaluate a First-Year Undergraduate Group Video Project

Students in an interdisciplinary undergraduate introductory course were required to complete a group video project focused on nutrition and healthy eating. A mixed-methods approach to data collection involved observing and rating video footage of group work sessions and individual and focus group interviews. These data were analyzed and used to evaluate the effectiveness of the assignment in light of two student learning outcomes and two student development outcomes at the University of Minnesota. Positive results support the continued inclusion of the project within the course, and recommend the assignment to other programs as a viable means of promoting both content learning and affective behavioral objectives.

Regional Educational Policy Analysis: Rochester, Omaha, and Minneapolis' Inter- District Arrangements

Although regional equity scholars have demonstrated how cross-jurisdictional collaboration on transportation, housing, and employment can promote opportunity for low-income families, few have paid serious attention to the potential of regional educational policy to improve opportunity for children. This study seeks to address this gap by examining inter-district “collaboratives” or cooperative agreements between school districts within a metropolitan area. These collaborative arrangements address two inter-related demographic shifts: the rising level of segregation in public schools and the shift from within district segregation to between-district segregation. This article examines three regional collaboratives (Rochester, NY, Omaha, NE, and Minneapolis, MN) that involve varying degrees of cooperation, funding, and legal force. Drawing on 60 in-depth interviews across the three sites, this analysis considers how each program’s design features interact with local political dynamics to shape the degree to which these collaboratives are able to achieve policy goals.

A mashup of policy tools and CDA as a framework for educational policy inquiry

ABSTRACT This article uses an analytic approach that combines a classic educational policy framework with critical discourse analysis (CDA) to problematize power and meaning as expressed through educational legislation in the United States. This examination shows how state-level school desegregation policy documents construct particular understandings of how school districts should rectify contemporary problems of racial and ethnic inequalities that are rooted in historical discriminatory practices. Using an analytic perspective based on policy tools, and a conceptualization of CDA as an element of sociocultural research, I examine statutes designed to address school segregation and promote racial and ethnic integration in the state of Minnesota. In order for policies that shape social equity to succeed, they must address the social contexts in which inequalities have been constructed. Combining CDA approaches with traditional policy analysis frameworks offers one way to make the workings of political ideology visible in educational policy.

The Use of Feedback Mechanisms in Interpreting the Robustness of a Neoliberal Educational Assemblage.

This article demonstrates how using feedback mechanisms or ‘loops’ as heuristic devices can help ethnographers explain the interior logic, robustness and contradictions within complex educational assemblages. After reviewing the use of feedback mechanisms in the natural and social sciences, particularly practice theory, the article presents two feedback loops drawn from the first authors four-year ethnographic study of class culture and neoliberal schooling in suburban Ohio, USA. The first identifies ‘hypercredentialing’ as the key process underlying the production of the performative worth of achievement-oriented students; the second identifies ‘reflexive awareness’ as a key process underlying the insufficient performativity of under- and lower-achieving students. The article uncovers hidden dynamics regarding neoliberal governmentality and performativity within a particular educational context and, more broadly, shows how using feedback mechanisms enables ethnographers to make cultural processes, as well as their interpretations of them, more transparent.