Perpetuating Privilege: Students’ Perspectives on the Culture of a High-Performing and High-Pressure High School

The present study used focus group data to explore students’ perceptions of the culture of their upper-middle-class high school. Although students described a high-pressure school with negative physical and psychological consequences, they valued the social and educational advantages this context conferred. They also simultaneously faulted and appreciated parents’ efforts to maintain the school's competitive climate and status. The discussion addresses how stakeholders work to sustain a culture of privilege, despite costs entailed.     

Beyond the Brink: Beachy Head as a Climbing Landscape

This article closely interrogates the cultural meanings and embodied history of climbing Beachy Head on the south coast of England. The history is traced through the escapades and accounts of leading protagonists, such as Edward Whymper and the famed occultist and mystic Aleister Crowley. The article contends that Beachy Head offers an enduring topography of mortal terror which can be seen through Romantic depictions of the cliffs in art and literature in the early nineteenth century and in the semiotic meanings attributed to the Head by climbers as they negotiate the steep and crumbling face. The article argues that an enduring ‘chronotopic’ relationship between climber and surface, geography and memory, persists on the Head; its dark reputation as a famed suicide spot is reaffirmed in the embodied agency of adventure climbers as they activate topological memories of British Alpinism at the site and so continue to mark it as a perilous space defined by risk and victimhood in ways that limit its wider sporting appropriation.     

Contemporary perspectives on the Australian doctorate: framing insights to guide development

ABSTRACT

The growth of the doctorate in recent decades has spawned concerns about programme quality and external relevance. This article reports findings from research conducted in Australia that was shaped by the view that the doctorate remains in need of educational clarification and design. The research generated insights that can be used to modernise and realign the doctorate. First, this article discusses the development of a doctoral education framework. Next, it presents results from a questionnaire developed using the framework and administered in a national survey to both five-year-out doctoral graduates and to doctoral experts. This identifies the need to design programmes that better orient and align research training with students’ professional aspirations, incorporate more real-world forms of learning, enhance traditional aspects of research training and provide structured reports of doctoral outcomes, experiences and preparations. The results underpin the need for more specific analyses of outcomes and assessment, the nature and distribution of doctoral experiences and the design and management of the resources that go into doctoral education.     

Tactile training facilitates infants' ability to reach to targets on the body

This longitudinal study investigated the effect of experience with tactile stimulation on infants' ability to reach to targets on the body, an important adaptive skill. Infants were provided weekly tactile stimulation on eight body locations from 4 to 8 months of age (N = 11), comparing their ability to reach to the body to infants in a control group who did not receive stimulation (N = 10). Infants who received stimulation were more likely to successfully reach targets on the body than controls by 7 months of age. These findings indicate that tactile stimulation facilitates the development of reaching to the body by allowing infants to explore the sensorimotor correlations emerging from the stimulation.     

Computer-based instruction for improving student nurses’ general numeracy: is it effective? Two randomised trials

In response to concern over the numeracy skills deficit displayed by student nurses, an online computer programme, “Authentic World®”, which aims to simulate a real-life clinical environment and improve the medication dosage calculation skills of users, was developed (Founded in 2004 Authentic World Ltd is a spin out company of Glarmorgan and Cardiff Universities, Cardiff, Wales UK.). Two randomised controlled trials were conducted, each at a UK University, in order to investigate the impact of Authentic World® on student nurses’ general numeracy abilities. All first year nursing students who gave consent were randomised equally into an intervention or control group. The intervention group were given access to Authentic World®. The primary outcome measure was the students’ scores on a general numeracy test. The Intention to Treat (ITT) analysis in both trials revealed a small negative effect of Authentic World® on general numeracy, which was statistically significant in one trial. However, compliance with the intervention was very low in both trials, with only 24 and 12% of students allocated to the intervention groups spending more than 15 minutes using the programme. Providing nursing students with access to Authentic World® is not an effective use of resources since use of the programme appears to be very low.     

Changes in Friendship Commitment: Comparing Geographically Close and Long-Distance Young-Adult Friendships

The existence of long-distance (LD) friendships throws into question assumptions that scholars of interpersonal communication often make about commitment to relationships, the development of relationships, and friendships. An analysis of turning points comparing commitment changes in young-adult geographically close and LD same-sex friendships revealed high and fluctuating levels of commitment over the history of the friendships for both types. Over 80% of those having LD friends reported their levels of commitment were currently increasing, rather than decreasing. Women were more likely than men to report nonlinear trajectories for their friendships, more downturns in commitment to their friendships, and more turning points related to changes in commitment to their friendships.