Reflecting on Functioning in Trigger Happy America

Trigger warnings are posing serious threats to the ways that English educators can teach at the university level. If Aristotle – and Hillis-Miller years later – argue that literature must arouse and bring about catharsis, then proponents of trigger warnings are anaesthetising the power of words and watering down their ability to incite emotional responses and promote healing. By examining the relationship between proponents of the trigger warning and reflective functioning – a psychoanalytic concept that emerged out of the British psychoanalytic school – this article argues that English students and English educators who support the use of trigger warnings may suffer from poor reflective functioning. Individuals with poor reflective functioning have difficulty coping with their emotions as well as practising mentalisation during times of acute stress, which can be triggered in response to arousing interactions with texts. Finally, the article offers some suggestions for how English educators might use empathy, intentional self-disclosure and vulnerability as a means for enhancing reflective functioning in students and encouraging them to journey more freely and courageously into controversial, charged, and dramatic literary moments.     

Measuring Pharmacy Student Attitudes Toward Prayer: The Student Prayer Attitude Scale (SPAS)

The objective of this study was to develop and validate an instrument to assess the attitude of student pharmacists toward prayer in general and in particular as it relates to their academic performance. To fulfill the study objective, faculty from seven colleges of pharmacy located at Christian universities collaboratively developed the Student Prayer Attitude Scale (SPAS). The items were used to assess the attitudes of student pharmacists toward prayer as well as the effects of prayer on personal lives and academic performance. Faculty investigators asked 1,563 students to complete the survey and received 677 valid responses. A principal components analysis with promax rotation was conducted and revealed a two-factor structure: (a) general attitude toward prayer and (b) specific attitude regarding the impact of prayer on academic performance. Analysis of variance was used to compare student responses by religious identity. Students identifying as atheist or agnostic were significantly different in their responses than students from theistic religions; however, the responses of students from various theistic religions were not significantly different from one another. Faculty concluded that SPAS is a reliable tool for measuring student attitudes toward prayer. The use of such a tool could help faculty tailor educational opportunities to allow pharmacy students to explore prayer more fully and be aware of its impact on the patients they serve.     

Privacy,speech, and values: what we have no business knowing

In the United States the ascendancy of speech protection is due to an expansive and unjustified view of the value or primacy of free expression and access to information. This is perhaps understandable, given that privacy has been understood as a mere interest, whereas speech rights have been seen as more fundamental. I have argued elsewhere that the “mere interest” view of privacy is false. Privacy, properly defined, is a necessary condition for human well-being or flourishing. The opening section of this article will provide an overview of this theory. Next, after a few remarks on speech absolutism, privacy absolutism, and balancing theories, I will sketch several of the dominant argument strands that have been offered in support of presumptively weighty speech rights. While these arguments, taken together, establish that free speech is important, they do not support the view that speech should nearly always trump privacy. In final section I will present and defend a way to balance free speech and privacy claims.     

Can districts keep good teachers in the schools that need them most?

This study investigates how school demographics and their interactions with policies affect the mobility behaviors of public school teachers with various human capital characteristics. Using data from North Carolina from 1995 to 2006, it finds that teachers’ career stage and human capital investments dominate their decisions to leave public school teaching and school demographic characteristics play a dominant role in intra-system sorting. Schools serving at-risk children struggle to attract and retain teachers with desirable observable characteristics. We find evidence to suggest that across-the-board school-based pay-for-performance policies have small but significant associations with mobility decisions and appear to exacerbate inequities in the distribution of teacher qualifications.     

Identification and evaluation of technology trends in K-12 education from 2011 to 2021

Education and Information Technologies - Educational technologies have captured the attention of researchers, policy makers, and parents. Each year, considerable effort and money are invested into...     

Professional community and the problem of high school reform

A two-year qualitative study of mathematics and English teachers in two urban comprehensive high schools investigated how teacher community serves as resource for teacher development and school reform. A school engaged in whole-school reform sustained high teacher commitment and school-level community by constituting professional community strongly at the school level, but its departments displayed varying capacity and disposition to examine problems of teaching and learning at the classroom level. In the second school, innovative teacher communities were constituted strongly at the department level in English and mathematics, but suffered problems of stress and turnover due to weak organizational supports for teacher development and school reform. Findings point both to the potential contribution of professional communities situated in subject departments and the challenge of capitalizing on such communities to advance whole-school reform. The study suggests complex relationships among organizational context, teacher community, teacher development, and institutional reform.