Envisioning a meaningful future and academic engagement: The role of parenting practices and school‐based relationships

In contrast to the focus on short‐term, extrinsic goals in our society (e.g., wealth, prestige), positive youth development scholars have highlighted the need for parents and schools to help youths cultivate and plan for long‐term, intrinsic, and meaningful goals (i.e., envisioning a meaningful future), arguing that envisioning a meaningful future is potentially inspiring and associated with better outcomes for youths. Envisioning a meaningful future includes being future‐oriented and planful and having a sense of purpose, a life focus that provides deep meaning to life and contributes to the good of society. This study used structural equation modeling to examine the direct and indirect effects of parental and school relationships on envisioning a meaningful future and academic engagement in a diverse sample of adolescents (n = 624). Parental and school‐based relationships were positively associated with academic engagement, and this association was partially mediated by envisioning a meaningful future. Analyses revealed the importance of parental and school relationships in engaging youths in developing a vision for a meaningful future toward the goal of academic engagement. Variations between African‐Americans and Whites, and across grade and parental education levels are discussed.     

潜意识,你未知的自己

潜意识,自心理学家西格蒙德·弗洛伊德1在其《精神分析学》(An Outline of Psycho-Analysis)理论中首先提出后,这股潜藏在我们一般意识底下的神秘力量开始得到广泛的关注和探究,如今已成为开发自己能量的一种重要方式.你可曾留意过自己的潜意识?你可知道,你可能会发现一个意想不到的强大的自己?     

Assessing attitude towards religion: the Astley–Francis Scale of Attitude towards Theistic Faith

This study builds on the research tradition modelled by the Francis Scale of Attitude towards Christianity, the Katz–Francis Scale of Attitude towards Judaism, the Sahin–Francis Scale of Attitude towards Islam and the Santosh–Francis Scale of Attitude towards Hinduism to propose a generic instrument concerned with attitudes towards theistic faith. The scale properties of this new instrument, established among a sample of 284 (200 female and 84 male) 16–18-year-old students, commend it for use in future research.     

Early Experiences Matter: A Relationships-Based Curriculum for the Birth-to-Three Age Group

The paper discusses some research findings in Singapore that investigated if a relationships-based curriculum extended the active involvement of the infants, toddlers, and young children (up to the age of three) in their learning. Using a relationships-based curriculum, a study conducted over a year involved the use of a well-tested, traditional before-and-after methodology to find out if any change had occurred in the phenomenon under study between two points in time. A sample of 58 infants, toddlers and young children (up to the age of three) in an experimental cohort and 59 of comparable ages in a control cohort, were measured using the Laevers’ Active Involvement scale before and after a curriculum intervention. The results showed that there was a statistically significant improvement in the active involvement of the children in the experimental cohort as compared to no improvement in the control cohort. It is proposed that the relationships-based approach has the potential to raise the quality of curriculum and could be considered for application in child care centres in other countries.     

How inclusion became exclusion: policy,teachers and inclusive education

ABSTRACT

It is almost two decades since a concept of inclusion as selective segregation was proposed as an alternative to the concept of full inclusion and inclusive education was reconfigured as providing children with varied educational settings in order to meet their needs. A version of this model of inclusive education subsequently gained political traction in England where the issue of segregated or mainstream provision is now constructed as a matter of parental choice and child voice. Meanwhile, the implications of this latest model of inclusive education for teachers and schools in a rapidly changing wider educational landscape have largely been ignored or reduced to a question of training. This paper explores how the inclusive education landscape has changed in England in recent years, charting recent key developments in areas such as policy, statutory guidance and teacher training, with particular reference to teacher workload and the positioning of teachers within political and polemical educational discourse.     

Localising and tailoring research evidence helps public health decision making

Background

Published research evidence is typically not readily applicable to practice but needs to be actively mobilised.

Objectives

This paper explores the mechanisms used by information professionals with a specific knowledge mobilisation role to make evidence useful for local decision making and planning of public health interventions.

Methods

Data are drawn from a NIHR project that studied how, when, where and by whom published research evidence is used in commissioning and planning across two sites (one in England and one in Scotland). Data included 11 in‐depth interviews with information professionals, observations at meetings and documentary analysis.

Results

Published research evidence is made fit for local commissioning and planning purposes by information professionals through two mechanisms. They localise evidence (relate evidence to local context and needs) and tailor it (present actionable messages).

Discussion

Knowledge mobilisation roles of information professionals are not recognised and researched. Information professionals contribute to the ‘inform’ and ‘relational’ functions of knowledge mobilisation; however, they are less involved in improving the institutional environment for sustainable knowledge sharing.

Conclusion

Information professionals are instrumental in shaping what evidence enters local decision making processes. Identifying and supporting knowledge mobilisation roles within health libraries should be the focus of future research and training.

     

Literacies remaking public places: the Umbrella Movement of Hong Kong, 2014

We approach Hong Kong's Umbrella Movement, also known as Occupy Central, encountered in 2 days in November 2014 as an exemplar of literacy as placemaking. As a contemporary city‐based resistance movement, the creation and subsequent resemiotisation of literacy artefacts were an important element of spatialised practice in asserting a new and dynamic sense of citizenship. In their collaborative design, shared commitment to certain values and expressions of political resistance, these occupation sites may be read as an instantiation of Goodsell's concept of public space. The initial research site of engagement gave rise to a dataset of photographs that the authors examined together as discourses in place, informed by cultural knowledge of Hong Kong. Selecting two photographs, we broaden out beyond the linguistic features of texts to consider processes of creative semiotic remediation. We suggest that in such placemaking activities, the Umbrella Movement activists embodied Giroux's concept of literacy as emancipatory practice. Finally, we make suggestions as to how this study might be connected to a critical pedagogy of place.     

Balancing Teacher and Student Roles in Elementary Classrooms: Preservice elementary teachers’ learning about the inquiry continuum

Using the National Research Council's inquiry continuum framework, we use a multiple-case study research design to investigate the teacher- and student-directedness of elementary preservice teachers’ planned and enacted science lessons and their pedagogical reasoning about science instruction during a semester-long science methods course. Our specific research questions were (1) What ideas do elementary preservice teachers bring to a science teaching methods course about the inquiry continuum? and (2) How do their ideas about the inquiry continuum change over the course of the semester through engaging in planning, enactment, and reflection upon science instruction? Participants’ course artifacts (journals, reflective teaching assignments, and lesson plan rationales), interviews, and field observations of their enacted science lessons served as data for this study. Findings show that although the preservice teachers began the semester defining inquiry as highly student-directed, their ideas and definitions broadened over the course of the semester to include and embrace more teacher-directed forms of inquiry. Their early science lessons were more student-directed but, as they encountered challenges engaging in inquiry-based instruction and increasingly emphasized students’ learning needs, they began to plan and enact lessons that were more teacher-directed. Teacher education programs need to explicitly emphasize these variations of inquiry as a core component of supporting preservice teachers’ learning to teach science as inquiry.