Personality, assessment methods and academic performance

This study examines the relationship between personality and two different academic performance (AP) assessment methods, namely exams and coursework. It aimed to examine whether the relationship between traits and AP was consistent across self-reported versus documented exam results, two different assessment techniques and across different faculties. There were 1,013 (622 female) university students from four British Universities in four faculties namely arts/humanities, social sciences, life/biological sciences and mathematical sciences. Participants completed a brief version of the Big Five inventory and a self-report measure of AP. Conscientiousness and Agreeableness were the strongest personality predictors of AP. Structural equation model showed that sex and personality effects on AP were invariant across different areas of study or degree types (humanities, social sciences, life sciences and hard sciences). Personality variables are stable, robust and predictable correlates and determinants of AP. Conscientiousness, Openness and Agreeableness were positive predictors as measured by good grades whilst Neuroticism and Extraversion were correlates of weaker performance. Implications of these results refer how teachers choose to examine their pupils and to what extent students choose courses because of their known examination procedures.     

The persuasive effect of the AIDS NAMES quilt on behavioral intentions

The present study attempted to test the persuasive impact of the AIDS NAMES Quilt on behavioral intentions. Specifically, the Quilt, and knowing or not knowing a homosexual or Person Living with AIDS (PLWA), was predicted to be influential in determining one's intentions to behave supportively towards PLWA.

Results indicated that far individuals who know a homosexual or PLWA, viewing the quilt had no effect. For individuals who did not know a homosexual or PLWA, the quilt had a significant effect on their behavioral intentions e.g., they were more willing to engage in supportive behaviors. Additionally, females were more willing to engage in supportive behaviors than males. Implications and directions for future research are discussed.     

Strategies for leading academics to rethink humanities and social sciences curricula in the context of discipline standards

The introduction of discipline standards in Australia has required a comprehensive rethinking of humanities and social science curricula from first year through to graduation. This paper proposes a model to facilitate academics’ engagement with discipline standards and their implication for first-year curricula. The model supports discipline-focussed professional development that integrates consideration of discipline threshold learning outcomes, first-year pedagogy principles, and discipline threshold concepts. The model is demonstrated using strategies that were applied, tested, and shown to be effective in workshops across five disciplines in the humanities and social sciences.     

Literacy,schooling and ideology in a multilingual state

In this article I argue that current government policy for teaching literacy in schools in England is part of a broader ideology of homogeneity which is visible in other dominant-culture institutions. Despite the multilingual nature of England and its schools, the dominant discourse is one which values English at the expense of other languages, leading to the ‘misrecognition’ (Bourdieu, 1998b: 131), by majority and minority language speakers alike, of English as the sole language of symbolic capital. While the first part of this article outlines the monolingual ideology of current literacy policy in schools in England, and locates this in the context of a similar ideology evident in discourses beyond education, I also suggest that this process of symbolic domination is not inevitable. Schools need not be sites of social and cultural reproduction. They can challenge existing relations of power in society, and put in place structures and practices which question and even reverse the coercive relations between majority-culture schools and minority-culture communities and their children. I propose some ways forward in the development of structures which can enable schools to become sites of social and cultural transformation, rather than reproduction.     

Innovation studies and sustainability transitions: The allure of the multi-level perspective and its challenges

Sustainable development is prompting a re-assessment of innovation and technological change. This review paper contributes three things towards this re-assessment activity. First, it considers how the history of innovation studies for sustainable development can be explained as a process of linking broader analytical frameworks to successively larger problem framings. Second it introduces an emerging framework whose allure rests in its ability to capture the bigger picture: the multi-level perspective on socio-technical transitions (MLP). Whilst burgeoning researcher networks and literature suggests this policy-relevant theory is attractive, it is not without its challenges. The third purpose of this paper is to elaborate these challenges as areas for further research and development. We do this by drawing upon contributions to this special section and the wider literature.     

Peak Moments in Sport: A Literature Review

Despite being inherently rewarding and a major stimulus for many athletes' continued involvement in sport, there is a dearth of research concerning peak moments in sport. Methodological and definitional problems are abundant, and confusion surrounds the categorization of such instances. This paper examines four models related to peak moments, with particular emphasis placed on the Privette and Bundrick model. Peak experience, peak performance, and flow, which form a central component in this model, are discussed in detail. Similar and distinctive characteristics of peak moments in sport are then discussed. Finally, personal factors influencing the ability to experience peak moments, as well as optimal conditions for facilitating such moments, are reviewed. Particular attention is devoted to how one can minimize interference with these experiences.     

Forty years on

The election of the New Labour Government in 1997 led to the end of a strand of museum policy that had begun with the publication of the Survey of Provincial Museums and Galleries (the Rosse Report) in 1963. Comparison of the substantial data relating to the usage, governance, management and resources of museums in Rosse with the position at the end of the twentieth century shows how the museums landscape has (or has not) changed during the intervening period. Both National and non-National museums have seen their financial resources grow in a way that has outpaced Gross Domestic Product (GDP). This is both a reflection of, and stimulus for, increasing public interest in the heritage. However, the museum sector has not been the stable entity of popular perception, and museums have closed or amalgamated as well as opened and developed new projects. For most of the 40 years government policy for museums has been ad hoc, and it is only since 1997 that museums have been the subject of strategic direction, exemplified for non-National museums by the Renaissance in the Regions initiative. The £147 million to be spent on this scheme by 2007/08 represents an unmatched level of investment. However, it has focused resources on the large regional museums rather than the previous more equal distribution, increasing the risk that the museum sector will atomize rather than continue the process of coming together that had been taking place previously. Rosse's main recommendation, the creation of area museum councils, endured for 40 years. Renaissance's larger budget makes current levels of support vulnerable without some formal (perhaps legislative) framework to anchor it within government. While this approach is increasingly popular in other European nations, it still represents a challenge for cultural policy in the nations of the UK.     

Disruption of splicing-regulatory elements using CRISPR/Cas9 to rescue spinal muscular atrophy in human iPSCs and mice

We here report a genome-editing strategy to correct spinal muscular atrophy (SMA). Rather than directly targeting the pathogenic exonic mutations, our strategy employed Cas9 and guide-sgRNA for the targeted disruption of intronic splicing-regulatory elements. We disrupted intronic splicing silencers (ISSs, including ISS-N1 and ISS + 100) of survival motor neuron (SMN) 2, a key modifier gene of SMA, to enhance exon 7 inclusion and full-length SMN expression in SMA iPSCs. Survival of splicing-corrected iPSC-derived motor neurons was rescued with SMN restoration. Furthermore, co-injection of Cas9 mRNA from Streptococcus pyogenes (SpCas9) or Cas9 from Staphylococcus aureus (SaCas9) alongside their corresponding sgRNAs targeting ISS-N1 into zygotes rescued 56% and 100% of severe SMA transgenic mice (Smn^−/−, SMN2^tg/−). The median survival of the resulting mice was extended to >400 days. Collectively, our study provides proof-of-principle for a new strategy to therapeutically intervene in SMA and other RNA-splicing-related diseases.