A participatory action research approach to developing youth-friendly strategies for the prevention of teenage pregnancy

Teenage pregnancy among school-going youth is a concern worldwide, but in socially–economically challenged environments it is a result of, and contributory factor to, a complex web of social injustice. In South Africa, most of the school-based prevention interventions to date have been adult-designed and imparted, with the voice of the target audience – the youth – being ignored. The purpose of this participatory action research study was to involve school-going youth in the research and development of prevention interventions, tailored to meet their perceived needs. This article focuses on the first cycle where 24 high school participants interrogated their own and their peers’ narratives about teenage pregnancy so as to determine a way forward. Findings indicate that, although the youth perceive parenthood while they are still studying to have a negative impact on their future life goals, the prevention messages mediated by educators and other adults do not take into consideration the needs and lifestyle of teenagers within their specific social context. The implications of the three themes which emerged from the thematic analysis of the interviews, open-ended questionnaires and visual data are discussed to provide guidelines for the design of more youth-friendly prevention education to inform the next cycle of the research. Since teenage pregnancy is a global problem, the findings of this study have international relevance.     

Australian engineering educators’ attitudes towards Aboriginal cultures and perspectives

In Australia, representation of Aboriginal populations within the engineering profession is very low despite participation targets set by Government departments, professional bodies and Universities. Progressing the Aboriginal inclusion agenda within Australian Engineering Education requires a clearer understanding of engineering educators’ preparedness for increased numbers of students from this non-traditional cohort. This research stems from a recently completed project that explored Aboriginal perspectives in engineering education and proposed a model for embedding perspectives in curricula. Nine engineering academics were interviewed to explore attitudes towards Aboriginal perspectives in engineering and the viability of the proposed model. Results of the interviews indicate efforts to embed Aboriginal perspectives are starting from a small base of knowledge and experience. Individuals’ motivations and values indicate that there is significant support for improving this, but that efforts can be hampered by conceptions of Aboriginal perspectives that do not consider how Aboriginal knowledges may change engineering itself.     

State literacies and inequality: Managing Haitian immigrants in the Dominican Republic

For decades, Haitians have immigrated to the Dominican Republic in search of a better life, yet such hopes have been elusive for many. Since the 1980s, in the midst of shifting economic and political conditions, changing interpretations of the Constitution have increasingly denied Dominican citizenship to children born to Haitians in the Dominican Republic. Drawing on qualitative interviews with people of Haitian descent, the article demonstrates how citizenship claims are textually mediated, and it examines how agents of the Dominican state exert authority over Haitian- and Dominican-born people of Haitian descent through literacy events and literacy practices. Specifically, we consider not only how the withholding of documents shaped immigrants’ lives but also how state agents selectively and arbitrarily interpreted documents, such as passports, visas, birth certificates, and national identity cards, based upon various factors, including witnesses to the social interaction, whether bribes were forthcoming, and the state agent's determination of the social and economic value of the document bearer. While dominant development discourses routinely suggest that literacy skills provide a protective factor and potentially redress inequality, we demonstrate that literacy events are yet another social interaction in which authorities with power easily impose their interpretations on vulnerable populations.     

THE ROLE OF LONELINESS IN THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN ANXIETY AND DEPRESSION IN CLINICAL AND SCHOOL‐BASED YOUTH

Identifying mechanisms that explain the relationship between anxiety and depression are needed. The Tripartite Model is one model that has been proposed to help explain the association between these two problems, positing a shared component called negative affect. The objective of the present study was to examine the role of loneliness in relation to anxiety and depression. A total of 10,891 school‐based youth (Grades 2–12) and 254 clinical children and adolescents receiving residential treatment (Grades 2–12) completed measures of loneliness, anxiety, depression, and negative affect. The relationships among loneliness, anxiety, depression, and negative affect were examined, including whether loneliness was a significant intervening variable. Various mediational tests converged showing that loneliness was a significant mediator in the relationship between anxiety and depression. This effect was found across children (Grades 2–6) and adolescent (Grades 7–12) school‐based youth. In the clinical sample, loneliness was found to be a significant mediator between anxiety and depression, even after introducing negative affect based on the Tripartite Model. Results supported loneliness as a significant risk factor in youths' lives that may result from anxiety and place youth at risk for subsequent depression. Implications related to intervention and prevention in school settings are also discussed.     

AD/HD is a bio‐psychosocial condition requiring support from integrated services

This article reports on how integrated services can provide coordinated support for children with AD/HD and their families. The author reports on the effectiveness of a problem‐based approach to interagency working by exploring the use of two models of good practice from education, health and social care to provide a framework for working across disciplines. It identifies how children with AD/HD could usefully inform professionals and parents about their experience of living with the condition and so influence the services they receive. Suggestions are made as to how the framework can be applied in practice with children and how the framework can be used to identify the effectiveness of support which in turn can inform further research and practice.     

Tradition,tension, and transformation: a structuration analysis of a game warden service in transition

Independence and competence define the traditional characteristics of a game warden. External pressure to transform the game warden service into a more culturally and ethnically diverse state law enforcement agency, however, creates tensions surrounding these characteristics in the organization's structurationally defined agency and reflexivity of law enforcement; duality of structure in office memos and citation counts; social integration and institutional reproduction of law enforcement training, use of decoys, and search and seizure procedures; and time-space distanciation of working a 40-hour week or having complete responsibility for a territory. The present study examined how these tensions interact with the traditional assumptions of independence and competence to transform the meaning of these characteristics, and of the game warden service itself.