Professional standards,teacher identities and an ethics of singularity

This paper offers a critical analysis of the education policy move towards teacher professional standards. Drawing on Lacan’s three registers of the psyche (real, imaginary and symbolic), the paper argues that moves towards codification (and domestication) of teachers’ work and identities in standardized (and sanitized) forms, such as the Australian Institute for Teaching and School Leadership professional standards recently adopted in Australia, can be read as a colonization of the Real and the imaginary by (a rather static, mortified form of) the symbolic. The paper argues that in response to such normalizing moves, we need to consider how we might conceptualize the reanimation of what it means to teach and be a teacher, something we attempt in terms of enabling each of the psyche’s registers to inter-animate each other, as a means of engendering teacher identities characterized by criticality, creativity and passion – that is, by an ethics of singularity rather than by standardization.     

PUSH(ing) Limits: Using Fiction in the Classroom for Human Behavior and the Social Environment

The use of fiction and autobiography in social science course work has been shown to enhance students' learning experience. Using the novel PUSH, by Sapphire, we designed a curriculum supplement for the social work course, human behavior and the social environment (HBSE) that encourages students to integrate course content in an innovative way and enables them to apply the material to life-like situations. The HBSE supplement allows students to explore poignant and problematic issues that push them past intrapersonal and interpersonal limits. Classes are infused with energy and the critical consciousness of the students. Final projects are a systematic case study of a chosen character (or characters) in the book and are a testament to student critical thinking and creativity. Methods, assignments, and student experiences in an introductory BSW course are described.     

Mothers' Physiological and Affective Responding to Infant Distress: Unique Antecedents of Avoidant and Resistant Attachments

In a sample of 127 mother–infant dyads, this study examined the predictive significance of mothers' physiological and observed emotional responding within distressing and nondistressing caregiving contexts at 6 months for infant attachment assessed with Fraley and Spieker's (2003) dimensional approach and the categorical approach at 12 months. Findings revealed that a lesser degree of maternal respiratory sinus arrhythmia withdrawal and higher levels of maternal neutral (vs. positive) affect within distressing (vs. nondistressing) caregiving contexts were distinctive antecedents of avoidance versus resistance assessed dimensionally (but not categorically), independent of maternal sensitivity. Discussion focuses on the usefulness of examining mothers' physiological and affective responding, considering the caregiving context, and employing the dimensional approach to attachment in identifying unique antecedents of patterns of attachment insecurity.     

Comparison of individual and group-based load-velocity profiling as a means to dictate training load over a 6-week strength and power intervention

ABSTRACT

This study compared the effects of dictating load using individual (ILVP) or group (GLVP) load-velocity profiles on lower-body strength and power. Nineteen trained males (23.6 ± 3.7 years) completed a back squat one-repetition maximum (1-RM), load-velocity profiling (LVP), and countermovement (CMJ), static-squat (SSJ) and standing-broad (SBJ) jump tests before and after 6 weeks of resistance training. Participants were randomly assigned to an ILVP, or GLVP intervention with intra-session load dictated through real-time velocity monitoring and prediction of current relative performance using either the participant’s LVP (ILVP) or a LVP based on all participant data (GLVP). Training resulted in significant increases in back squat 1-RM for the ILVP and GLVP group (p < 0.01; 9.7% and 7.2%, respectively), with no group-by-time interaction identified between training groups (p = 0.06). All jump performance significantly increased for the ILVP group (p < 0.01; CMJ: 6.6%; SSJ: 4.6%; SBJ: 6.7%), with only CMJ and SSJ improving for the GLVP group (p < 0.05; 4.3%). Despite no significant group-by-time interaction across all variables, the ILVP intervention induced a greater magnitude of adaptation when compared to a GLVP approach. Additionally, an individualised approach may lead to greater positive transfer to power-based movements, specifically vertical and horizontal jumps.