The relation of attachment security to adolescents' paternal and peer relationships, depression, and externalizing behavior

The relation of attachment security to multiple domains of psychosocial functioning was examined in a community sample of 167 early adolescents. Security of attachment organization, assessed using the Adult Attachment Interview, was linked to success in establishing autonomy while maintaining a sense of relatedness both with fathers and with peers, even after accounting for predictions from qualities of the mother-teen relationship. Growth curve analyses revealed links of insecurity to increasing patterns of externalizing behavior and higher and stable patterns of depressive symptoms across adolescence. Implications for a developing theory of the connections of the attachment system to multiple domains of functioning in adolescence are discussed.     

Diversifying Academic and Professional Identities in Higher Education: Some management challenges

This paper draws on an international study of the management challenges arising from diversifying academic and professional identities in higher education. These challenges include, for instance, the introduction of practice-based disciplines with different traditions such as health and social care, the changing aspirations and expectations of younger generations of staff, a diffusion of management responsibilities and structures, and imperatives for a more holistic approach to the “employment package”, including new forms of recognition and reward. It is suggested that while academic and professional identities have become increasingly dynamic and multi-faceted, change is occurring at different rates in different contexts. A model is offered, therefore, that relates approaches to “people management” to different organisational environments, against the general background of increasing resource constraint arising from the global economic downturn.

     

National Security Directive declassification

The secret character of National Security Directives (NSDs) impairs Congress's ability to pursue its constitutionally mandated policy making and oversight roles when the president employs these directives to unilaterally make national security policy. In addition, their typically classified status presents numerous problems for scholars who can monitor the president's unilateral actions when he employs executive orders, proclamations, or executive agreements, but cannot do so in the case of policy created by security classified NSDs. Many of these directives remain classified for significant periods, as the results presented in this article will show. Furthermore, classification and declassification policy is unilaterally set by the president and, therefore, may be arbitrarily altered to lengthen the time it takes for NSDs to become available for congressional and public scrutiny. The article concludes that a statutory basis could provide more government openness and enhance Congress's ability to provide effective oversight of national security policy made through NSDs.     

Standards for Specialists? A Review of the Proposals for Teacher Training for SEN Specialists

Carol Miller and Jill Porter, of the School of Education, The University of Birmingham, provide a penetrating critical response to the Teacher Training Agency's two consultation documents on SEN specialist teachers, which it is hoped will stimulate a wide-ranging debate.