Antenatal prediction of mother-infant difficulties

A prospective study of 143 "low risk" pregnant women expecting their first baby was conducted in Newcastle, Australia. The study was designed to examine the contribution of a woman's perception of her own childhood experiences, her trait anxiety level, socioeconomic status, and social support network to difficulties in her relationship with her baby during the baby's first year. The women were initially interviewed during pregnancy and followed up 3 and 12 months postpartum. Follow-up measures included the Dimensions of Perinatal Adjustment, the Neonatal Perception Inventory, the Ainsworth Strange Situation, and information from hospital records, family doctors, and baby health centre sisters. Women who perceived their social network as less supportive during pregnancy were likely to see their one-year-old babies (p less than .05) as more difficult. The other antenatal measures were not significantly predictive of outcome.     

‘Othering’ the archive—from exile to inclusion and heritage dignity: the case of Palestinian archival memory

This paper seeks to address, from the critical perspectives of cultural heritage discourse, the issues at stake in critically apprehending the archive as both a technology of disinheritance and one of potential inclusion and re-inheritance. The first section draws on the work of Jacques Derrida, Edward Said and other critics whose work has sought to address the marginalizing capacity of dominant European/North American archival and cultural–museological institutions. The remainder of the paper grounds these conceptual–ethical issues in the context of Palestinian cultural politics and memory-work. This critical framework is used not only to draw out the absences and silences in archives and cultural institutions, and the epistemological and ‘real’ violences at play in what Derrida characterises as ‘archive trauma’, but responds to Said’s call to ‘re-read’ the colonial archive ‘contrapuntally’ in order to create an ‘othering’ of dominant archival discourse. What is needed to provoke such an ‘othering’ is a commitment to rethink the archive in terms of alternative understandings of ‘hospitality’, ‘memory-work’ and what Derrida has referred to as ‘heritage dignity’. This strategy is capable of apprehending in greater depth the moral-ethical ‘debts’ and ‘duties’ and the operational ‘responses’ and ‘responsibilities’ towards ‘inclusion’ and towards full recognition of those constituencies which have been disenfranchised or exiled outside the realms of dominant cultural–institutional discourse.     

Organizational and institutional influences on creativity in scientific research

This paper explores institutional and organizational influences on creativity in scientific research. Using a method for identifying creative scientific research accomplishments in two fields of science (nanotechnology and human genetics) in Europe and the US, the paper summarizes results derived from twenty case studies of highly creative research accomplishments, focusing on contextual patterns at the group, organizational, and institutional levels. We find that creative accomplishments are associated with small group size, organizational contexts with sufficient access to a complementary variety of technical skills, stable research sponsorship, timely access to extramural skills and resources, and facilitating leadership. A potential institutional threat to creative science is the increase in competitive research council funding at the expense of flexible institutional sponsorship. Implications for research management and research policy are considered.     

School board decision-making and the elimination of sport participation fees

Public schools in the US are increasingly charging ‘pay-to-play’ fees for participating in sports. Although these fees can cause reductions in participation, particularly for children from lower-income families, pay-to-play has become a legitimate practice within the field of public education. This study examines what leads some school districts to abandon sport participation fees, despite the trend in adoption. In particular, using a qualitative, case study approach, we investigate why and how school districts eliminate pay-to-play. We found that the decision to terminate pay-to-play in the ‘Ellis’ district was shaped by the community culture and district leadership. Our findings are supported by data on surrounding school districts. This study contributes to the literatures on institutional change; privatization of health, sport and physical education; and school board decision-making. The findings also shed light on the local context of pay-to-play—a policy that has implications for social equity and youth health and wellness.