Sexual reconviction rates in the United Kingdom and actuarial risk estimates

OBJECTIVE: Assessing the risk of further offending behavior by adult sexual perpetrators of children is highly relevant and important to professionals involved in child protection. Recent progress in assessing risk in sexual offenders has established the validity of actuarial measures, although there continues to be some debate about the application of these instruments. This paper summarizes the debate between clinical and actuarial approaches and reviews the "base rate" for United Kingdom sexual offense reconviction. METHOD: A review of the literature revealed 16 UK sexual reconviction studies, 8 using incarcerated samples (N=5,915) and 8 using non-incarcerated samples (N=1,274). UK estimates of sexual reconviction rates are compared with European and North American studies. RESULTS: The mean sexual reconviction rates for the incarcerated sample at 2 years (6.0%), 4 years (7.8%) and 6 years or more (19.5%) were higher than that of the comparative non-incarcerated sample at 2 years (5.7%), up to 4 years (5.9%), and 6 years or more (15.5%). The overall sexual reconviction rate for both samples combined was 5.8% at 2 years, and 17.5% at 6 years or more. CONCLUSIONS: The sexual reconviction rate for incarcerated sexual offenders is higher than that of non-incarcerated sexual offenders. The UK sexual reconviction rates were comparable with European and North American studies.     

Jack in two boxes: A postmodern perspective on the transformation of persons into portraits

The paper explores issues surrounding portrayal in educational research and interrogates the notion of a life as a textual product, via an analysis of two short biographical narratives which happen to portray the same person — a British primary school head teacher nearing the end of his career. The discrepancies between these two texts point to the problematic nature of the relationship between person and portrait, and make visible some of the textual devices that writers/researchers use in order to achieve coherence and authenticity in biographical narratives.     

Power,prestige and pedagogic identity: a tale of two programs recontextualizing teacher standards

Worldwide there has been a range of initiatives in the area of standards for teachers as part of a discourse of professionalism. In Australia there are a plethora of standards: state and territory frameworks, generic and subject‐specific, systemic and cross‐systemic, for pre‐service, beginning and experienced teachers. Little has been written as to how teacher education programs are responding to the standards agenda. This paper positions standards as integral to the recontextualizing field (Bernstein, 2000 Bernstein B 2000 Pedagogy, symbolic control and identity: theory, research, critique (Lanham, Rowman & Littlefield)  [Google Scholar]) for teacher educators and their programs. Using Bernsteinian concepts of fields, identities and framing, we compare the responses of two physical education teacher education programs to their state's standards imperatives. The authors conclude that the academic orientation of the university, together with the framing of the standards, affect the degree of programmatic change it will undertake in response to the changes in teacher certification standards.     

Development and validation of the moral disengagement in sport scale

A sport-specific measure of moral disengagement was developed in 2 studies. In Study 1, a 59-item questionnaire was developed and tested with 308 athletes from 5 team sports. A series of confirmatory factor analyses (CFA) testing different models suggested the model that best fitted the data had 6 first-order factors that could be represented by 1 second-order factor. Study 2 involved 305 athletes from the same 5 sports. CFA confirmed the 6-factor, second-order structure for the final 32-item measure. Results from Study 2 supported the construct validity of the scale, providing evidence for the factorial, concurrent, convergent, and discriminant validity. The Moral Disengagement in Sport Scale (MDSS) is proposed as a valid and reliable measure of moral disengagement for use in the sport context.     

Impact of age on host responses to diet-induced obesity:Development of joint damage and metabolic set points

Background:Osteoarthritis is one of the leading causes of pain and disability worldwide,and a large percentage of patients with osteoarthritis are individuals who are also obese.In recent years,a series of animal models have demonstrated that obesity-inducing diets can result in synovial joint damage(both with and without the superimposition of trauma),which may be related to changes in percentage of body fat and a series of low-level systemic inflammatory mediators.Of note,there is a disparity between whether the dietary challenges commence at weaning,representing a weanling onset,or at skeletal maturity,representing an adult onset of obesity.We wished to evaluate the effect ofthe dietary exposure time and the age at which animals are exposed to a high-fat and high-sucrose(HFS) diet to determine whether these factors may result in disparate outcomes,as there is evidence suggesting that these factors result in differential metabolic disturbances.Based on dietary exposure time,we hypothesized that rats fed an HFS diet for 14 weeks from weaning(HFS Weanling) would demonstrate an increase in knee joint damage scores,whereas rats exposed to the HFS diet for 4 weeks,starting at 12 weeks of age(HFS Adult) and rats exposed to a standard chow diet(Chow)would not display an increase in knee joint damage scores.Methods:Male Sprague-Dawley rats were fed either an HFS diet for 14 weeks from weaning(HFS Weanling) or an HFS diet for 4 weeks,starting at 12 weeks of age(HFS Adult).At sacrifice,joints were scored using the modified Mankin Criteria,and serum was analyzed for a defined subset of inflammatory markers(Interleukin-6,leptin,monocyte chemoattractant protein-1,and tumor necrosis factorα).Results:When the HFS Weanling and HFS Adult groups were compared,both groups had a similar percent of body fat,although the HFS Weanling group had a significantly greater body mass than the HFS Adult group.The HFS Weanling and HFS Adult animals had a significant increase in body mass and percentage of body fat when compared to the Chow group.Although knee joint damage scores were low in all 3 groups,we found,contrary to our hypothesis,that the HFS Adult group had statistically significant greater knee joint damage scores than the Chow and HFS Weanling groups.Furthermore,we observed that the HFS Weanling group did not have significant differences in knee joint damage scores relative to the Chow group.Conclusion:These findings indicate that the HFS Weanling animals were better able to cope with the dietary challenge of an HFS diet than the HFS Adult group.Interestingly,when assessing various serum proinflammatory markers,no significant differences were detected between the HTS Adult and HFS Weanling groups.Although details regarding the mechanisms underlying an increase in knee joint damage scores in the HFS Adult group remain to be elucidated,these findings indicate that dietary exposure time maybe less important than the age at which an HFS diet is introduced.Moreover,increases in serum proinflammatory mediators do not appear to be directly linked to knee joint damage scores in the HFS Weanling group animals but may be partially responsible for the observed knee joint damage in the adults over the very short time of exposure to the HFS diet.     

A “Deleterious” Driver: The “First Teacher” Reform in Sweden

This article investigates the implementation of the “förstelärare” or “First teacher” reform in Sweden. We draw upon the insights of a superintendent, union official, principal, three First teachers, and two of their colleagues in one school, and recent literature on career development reform. We employ Michael Fullan’s overview of the “right” and “wrong” drivers of educational reform to analyse the extent to which the First Teacher initiative cultivated productive “professional capital.” The research reveals: how broader national policy aims were in clear tension with municipal-wide school development, and school-level development efforts; the perverse effects of a strong focus upon salary on professional conduct; and how an emphasis upon teachers’ roles per se undermined the espoused policy focus on enhancing teaching. The research cautions against the problematic effects of the initiative on more profession-oriented prerogatives, and how more external, “deleterious,” drivers of reform militate against more productive professional capital.     

Governing teachers’ work and learning through data: Australian insights

This article reveals the multiple ways in which data are constituted as a vehicle for governing teachers’ work and learning. Drawing on the concept of governance, including in relation to the sociology of numbers, and data from one school in Queensland, Australia, the research reveals how teachers’ work and learning were constituted through practices of: establishing specific ‘targets’, including various ‘audacious goals’ for school and national testing; focusing upon ‘aligning’ all forms of school, regional and national data collected within the school; and participating in various ‘data conversations’ about specific students with senior members of staff. While the research reveals how teachers found such practices beneficial for improving their practice with students, it also shows how this learning was always and everywhere framed within a broader discourse of data, and how this data-centric focus came to constitute what was valued about their work and learning, and that of their students.     

Historicising teachers’ learning: a case study of productive professional practice

This paper reveals the significant historical traces which informed the learning practices of teachers at one particular school site in a rural and regional educational district in Australia. Drawing upon recent theorising into professional practice, the paper argues that teacher learning practices are intrinsically ‘ecologically’ related to teachers’ practices at specific sites. However, extending beyond this theorising, the research also reveals how teacher learning – in the case presented, in relation to classroom dialogue – is also significantly influenced by earlier learning experiences of the teachers involved. In this way, teachers’ practices are revealed as not only influenced by present-day, site-specific, whole-school teacher learning, but also by particular events encountered by teachers at an earlier phase of their careers. The research argues for a conception of teachers’ learning which is not only site-informed and ecologically arranged, but also deeply temporally embedded.