Content analysis

The Fountas and Pinnell Leveled Literacy Intervention System (LLI), first edition, is a textbook series designed for struggling elementary school readers. The materials have become entrenched in the nation’s schools and are currently utilized as an intervention resource in all fifty states and four of the seven largest school districts in Florida. Reading intervention support is a requirement for students in most states, often due to their performance on standardized assessments (Diffey, 2016). Moreover, NAEP data indicates that students of color are overrepresented in reading intervention courses; thus, instructional materials choices made for these courses disproportionally affect this population (The Nation’s Report Card, n.d.). As culturally relevant texts are academically beneficial, it is critical that intervention materials are appropriately representative (Aronson & Laughter, 2016; Au, 2001; Sampson & Garrison-Wade, 2011). The purpose of this qualitative critical content analysis of the 731 books within the LLI system was to examine the cultural, ethnic, and racial representation of people/characters of color within the series.
Major findings revealed that people/characters of color were depicted from a deficit model (Ladson-Billings, 2018). Coded information revealed 41.5% included a negative characterization while 7.6% offered a positive portrayal. Further, the books exploring the experiences and cultures of people/characters of color depicted undesirable conditions 25.7% of the time while presenting favorable information 2.5% of the time. The final finding centers on what is missing from the stories. Other than a select few texts, the LLI books are colorblind, presenting students an inaccurate view of society. Accordingly, counternarratives and stories that center on social justice/equity are notably absent.

American bureaucracies are often assigned inconsistent goals, expectations, roles, and functions (Goodsell, 2004; Lipsky, 2010), exemplified in probation by Klockars’ (1972) classical dilemma of corrections that describes a punitive-rehabilitative dichotomy. A failure to prepare bureaucrats in corrections to address the classical dilemma this results in probation officers (POs) making decisions between and among competing options that consequently generally emphasize only one of the primary goals of probation (Ellsworth, 1990). This dissertation offers insight into and prompts rethinking of how corrections agencies prepare POs to address the classical dilemma.
Few studies focus on how organizations educate POs to address the classical dilemma. This dissertation applies ethnographic content analysis to examine the messages communicated to correctional probation officers in the 95 lessons of the curriculum used by Florida Department of Corrections (FDC) to train new officers. To analyze the data and the meaning conveyed by the FDC I applied Saldana’s (2016) 5Rs framework of rules, routines, roles, rituals, and relationships.

Human trafficking is a heinous human rights violation, impacting as many as 40.3 million people around the globe (Global Slavery Index, 2018). In the United States of America (USA), the Trafficking Victims Protections Act of 2000 (TVPA), and its subsequent reauthorizations, comprise the bulk of the federal response to human trafficking. As a result, federal policies have received a lot of praise and scrutiny in the literature.
However, less is known about statewide legislative efforts to combat human trafficking. To fill this gap, the current study analyzes state human trafficking statutes through content analysis. Overall, state legislation could best be described as a hodge-podge of laws related to three themes: 1) conceptualizing human trafficking, 2) victim centeredness, and 3) perpetrator centeredness. Accordingly, several recommendations are made that would reduce inconsistency and increase implementation of evidence-based policy.