Unemployment: A Moral Issue

If any man would know the very cause

Which makes me to forget my speech in rhyme,

All the sweet songs I sang in other time,— I'll tell it in a sonnet's simple clause.

I hourly have beheld how good withdraws

To nothing, and how evil mounts the while; Until my heart is gnawed as with a file,

Nor ought of this world's worth is what it was.

GVERZO DI M0NTECANTI—13th Cent. Translation by D. G. ROSSETTI

     

Text and Context: the Passion of the Christ and Other Jesus Films

Looking back on his vocational journey, the author explores three “conversations” among academic and local church religious educators originating in teaching practice that culminate in a discussion of religious education as a field of study. These conversations focus attention on teaching in the transformation of persons and communities, on community as context and agency of teaching, and on public life as the setting for teaching to live responsibly into the providential intent of God. From this perspective religious education is described as an inherently theological practice emerging from the engagement of teachers and students in faith communities at the edges of our collective ignorance of the “intent of God” and at the intersection of our various religious traditions.     

Knowing Your Limitations

This article reflects on whether probability statements can usefully be made about one‐off exceptional events.     

A Framework for Creating a Climate of Transparency for Professional Performance Assessment: Fostering Student Investment in Gatekeeping

Students unfamiliar with their counseling program's professional performance assessment policies may consider such policies pejorative. Moreover, student beliefs about the primacy of ethical service to clients may be confounded when faculty members are reluctant or fail to formally address concerns about deficient professional performance of students. The authors propose a framework intended to promote openness and transparency in professional performance assessment and believe this framework is critical to students' accurate perceptions of the assessment process, their trust in faculty members, and their future investment in safeguarding public welfare and the ethical integrity of the counseling profession through gatekeeping.     

Individual differences in learning entrepreneurship and their implications for web-based instruction in e-business and e-commerce

This paper reports on outcomes from a White Rose Centre for Enterprise funded project Managing Innovation in the Digital Economy. This project aims to incorporate learning for enterprise into undergraduate and postgraduate curricula in information management and information systems. The paper presents results from a survey distributed to postgraduate information management and information systems students following completion of a module in E‐Business and E‐Commerce delivered by the Department of Information Studies at the University of Sheffield. The findings suggest that differences in levels of prior knowledge of business studies and in cultural background can impact on students’ acquisition of domain knowledge and intellectual and information research skills during collaborative development of a business plan. Implications of the results for web‐based instruction are addressed, by identifying teaching and learning strategies that support differential treatment of learners in terms of content and process. It is concluded that empirical investigation of individual differences within a student body can inform more effective methods for information systems and information management graduates to learn about and for entrepreneurship.     

Resisting reductionism in mathematics pedagogy

Although breaking down a mathematical problem into smaller parts can often be an effective solution strategy, when the same reductionist approach is applied to mathematics pedagogy the effects are far from beneficial for students. Mathematics pedagogy in UK schools is gaining an increasingly reductionist flavour, as seen in an excessive focus on bite-sized learning objectives and a tendency for mathematics teachers to path-smooth their students’ learning. I argue that a reductionist mathematics pedagogy severely restricts students’ opportunities to engage in authentic mathematical thinking and deprives them of the enjoyment of solving richer, more worthwhile problems, which would forge connections across diverse areas of the subject. I attribute the rise of a reductionist mathematics pedagogy partly to an assessment-dominated curriculum and partly to a systemic de-professionalisation of teachers through a performative accountability culture in which they are constantly required to prove to non-specialist managers that they are effective. I argue that pedagogical reductionism in mathematics must be resisted in favour of a more holistic approach, in which students are able to bring a variety of mathematical knowledge and skills to bear on rich, challenging and non-routine mathematical tasks. Some principles for achieving this are outlined and some examples are given.     

Ethnic Heterogeneity,Group Affinity,and State Higher Education Spending

A rich interdisciplinary literature exists exploring the determinants of state higher education funding policies. However, that work has collectively ignored an important finding from political economy literature: namely, that citizens’ preferences regarding public spending are strongly influenced by the state’s ethnic and racial context. Drawing on a unique panel of state-level data covering the years 1982–2009, we find that states demarcated by increased racial and ethnic diversity and eroding white majorities do tend to spend less on subsidies to public higher education, resulting in decreased state appropriations as well as more tepid support for financial aid programs. Critically, however, we find that the negative effects of increased ethnic and racial fractionalization can be mitigated—and in some circumstances, fully offset—by a high degree of positive social interaction between ethnic and racial groups. These results are discussed within the pragmatic context of continued state emphasis on degree attainment as a mechanism to foster economic growth as well as broader considerations about equality and social justice.     

Implementing Confidence Assessment in Low-Stakes,Formative Mathematics Assessments

Confidence assessment (CA) involves students stating alongside each of their answers a confidence rating (e.g. 0 low to 10 high) to express how certain they are that their answer is correct. Each student’s score is calculated as the sum of the confidence ratings on the items that they answered correctly, minus the sum of the confidence ratings on the items that they answered incorrectly; this scoring system is designed to incentivize students to give truthful confidence ratings. Previous research found that secondary-school mathematics students readily understood the negative-marking feature of a CA instrument used during one lesson, and that they were generally positive about the CA approach. This paper reports on a quasi-experimental trial of CA in four secondary-school mathematics lessons (N = 475 students) across time periods ranging from 3 weeks up to one academic year, compared to business-as-usual controls. A meta-analysis of the effect sizes across the four schools gave an aggregated Cohen’s d of –0.02 [95% CI –0.22, 0.19] and an overall Bayes Factor B₀₁ of 8.48. This indicated substantial evidence for the null hypothesis that there was no difference between the attainment gains of the intervention group and the control group, relative to the alternative hypothesis that the gains were different. I conclude that incorporating confidence assessment into low-stakes classroom mathematics formative assessments does not appear to be detrimental to students’ attainment, and I suggest reasons why a clear positive outcome was not obtained.

     

Influence of aerobic versus anaerobic exercise on the relationship between reproductive hormones in men

This study examined the effects of equal anaerobic and aerobic total work outputs on the relationship between reproductive hormones in men. Nine subjects performed three randomized trials on separate days: (1) 1 h period of rest (control), (2) 1 h continuous aerobic exercise (65% VO₂ max), and (3) 1 h intermittent anaerobic exercise (which included 2 min exercise periods at 110% FO₂ max). The total work output of the aerobic and anaerobic trials were equated. For the 8 h after each experimental trial, blood samples were collected hourly and analysed for testosterone, luteinizing hormone (LH), follicle‐stimulating hormone (FSH), prolactin and cortisol. Diet, physical activity and circadian influences were all controlled. Compared with the control, the aerobic and anaerobic trials significantly (P < 0.05) elevated testosterone, prolactin and cortisol; however, these changes were transient and returned to control levels within 1–2 h of recovery. Neither exercise produced significant (P > 0.05) changes from control for LH and FSH. The area under the hormonal response curves (AUC) was calculated for the 8‐h recovery period. The testosterone and LH AUC results did not differ (P > 0.05) among the trials (the FSH AUC was not calculated). The prolactin AUC for the aerobic and anaerobic trials were greater (P < 0.01) than the control trial. The cortisol AUC for the anaerobic trial was greater than both the control and aerobic trials (P < 0.05), but the aerobic and control trials did not differ from one another. Correlation analysis among the AUC results within each trial showed testosterone and LH to be significantly related during the control (r = 0.723, P < 0.05) and aerobic (r = 0.801, P < 0.01) trials, but not so during the anaerobic trial (r = 0.430, P > 0.05). No other significant correlations were found. The present findings suggest the relationship between testosterone and LH is affected by anaerobic exercise but not aerobic exercise. However, the effect of anaerobic exercise upon the testosterone‐LH relationship did not seem related to the concurrently induced prolactin or cortisol changes. Anaerobic exercise may produce some degree of temporary alteration within the testosterone‐LH component of the hypothalamic‐pituitary‐gonadal axis; however, the mechanism for this phenomenon remains unclear.