Where Do All the STEM Graduates Go? Higher Education,the Labour Market and Career Trajectories in the UK

Journal of Science Education and Technology - Problems with the supply of highly skilled science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) workers have been reported by employers and...     

Raising standards in American schools? Problems with improving teacher quality

The quality of the teacher workforce is a subject of perennial concern in many developed countries. In the United States, through the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act, the federal government has a mandate for reform of teacher education that is unprecedented in its scale. Essentially the Act demands that every teacher of core academic subjects must be deemed to be highly qualified in every subject they teach by the end of the 2005–2006 academic year. This paper considers the impact that NCLB's teacher quality mandate is having in US schools. By drawing upon school-level data for the state of California, we examine the progress that this state is making towards meeting NCLB's mandate and also the role that teacher quality can play as a determinant of school success. The findings suggest that overall California has a well-qualified and highly experienced teacher workforce which is relatively equitably distributed among the states’ institutions. On the other hand, the distribution of California's students appears to be less fair, with students from poorer homes and certain ethnic backgrounds being disproportionately represented in the state's least wealthy and least successful schools. In addition, the finding that it is student background factors rather than teacher quality characteristics that are the key determinants of school success, also brings into question the extent to which requiring teachers to improve their subject content skills will really help close the achievement gaps in California's schools.     

Body pedagogies,P/policy,health and gender

Schools within a ‘knowledge economy’ nurture and endorse particular ‘corporeal orientations’, that is to say, ascribe value, meaning and potential to ‘the body’ (particular bodies) in time, place and space. Such processes reflect wider (national and global) socio‐economic trends. In contemporary culture, these processes increasingly celebrate particular virtues—‘flexible identities’, the manifest aspects of ‘performance’ and ‘corporeal perfection’ (usually defined as ‘the slender ideal’). Calling on the voices of a number of young women (aged 11–18) the article illustrates how these processes can intersect to seriously damage some people's health, perhaps especially those of young women and girls. The analyses suggest that the expectations of a ‘knowledge economy’ relating to the body and health enter the school system through two forms of P/policy: ‘formal’, state‐sanctioned, usually legislated education Policy; and ‘informal’, mainly medical and health institution‐based, state ‘approved’ but non‐legislated, pseudo policy initiatives often merely reflecting expectations and pressures laundered through the popular media. Together, these P/policies define not only formal education but increasingly encode other aspects of school life, in effect, making ‘pedagogy’ everyone's concern, everywhere. The article highlights the relentless and inescapable nature of pedagogical activity in the Totally Pedagogised Micro Societies (TPMS) which schools have become.     

Making Sense of Eating Disorders in Schools

Over the last two decades we have witnessed an emerging set of conditions in schools which render them contexts replete with social messages about the body, health, and self. Research has suggested that both the formal and informal contexts of education are heavily imbued with a “culture of healthism” which places moral obligation and blame on individuals for their health/problem. In this paper we explore the ways in which young women with eating disorders constructed their identities within and against the various “health” discourses now found within schools. Data is presented from life history interviews with young women who have been diagnosed with anorexia and/or bulimia who were resident at a leading centre for the treatment of eating disorders in the UK. The experiences of the young women in the study point towards the ways in which schools, despite their best intentions, are implicated in constructing contexts which are inimical to the well-being of young women who have been diagnosed with anorexia or bulimia and perhaps others who are making sense of their bodies, health, and selves in these cultures.     

The desire to emulate parental emotional strategies and its relation to emotion dysregulation among emerging adults

Emotion regulation (ER) is an integral aspect of emerging adults’ mental health, yet little is known about interpersonal factors that influence ER in during this period. This investigation examines emerging adults’ desire to emulate parental ER skills in the relation between perceived parental ER and emerging adults’ emotion dysregulation.A sample of 79 emerging adults (M_age = 18.55 years, SD = .32; 88.6% female, 69.6% White) completed measures of perceived parental ER (Affective Style Questionnaire [ASQ]Hofmann and Kashdan 2010), emotion dysregulation (Difficulties in Emotion Regulation Scale [DERS]Gratz and Roemer 2004), and desire to emulate parental ER (Perception of Emotion Regulation Scale [PERS]).A desire to emulate parental ER skills moderated the relationship between perceived parental ER and emerging adults’ emotion dysregulation in general (B = -.10, SE = .048, t = ?2.07, p = .043), and low emotional awareness in particular (B = -.04 SE = .02, t = ?2.47, p = .02).Findings suggest that emerging adults with an increased desire to emulate parents with lower ER skills report greater emotion dysregulation. Implications for clinical practice, along with future directions for the field of ER, are discussed.     

Suicidal phenomena and abuse in adolescents: a review of epidemiological studies

OBJECTIVE: To conduct a systematic review of the international literature to determine whether adolescents who had experienced abuse were more likely to also experience suicidal thoughts and behaviors than other adolescents, and to investigate the nature of this association. METHOD: Reports of community- or school-based studies of adolescents on the association between the prevalence of suicidal phenomena and abuse were searched for via electronic databases, reviewing reference lists and contacting experts in the field. RESULTS: Ten relevant studies were identified. Adolescents who had been physically or sexually abused were significantly more likely to experience suicidal thoughts and behaviors than other adolescents. This association appeared to be direct in most studies in which multivariate analyses were conducted. There is evidence that other factors (e.g., low self-esteem) may play a mediating role in the relationship between abuse and suicidal phenomena. CONCLUSIONS: There is a clear link between abuse and suicidal phenomena occurring during childhood and adolescence.