SHORT‐TERM PROGRAMS ON DEATH AND DYING AND AGING: A REVIEW OF SELECTED LITERATURE

Agencies and institutions dealing with the elderly have only limited time, money, and personnel with which to plan and implement educational programs. Yet a basic knowledge of aging and death and dying seems to be essential for those working with older adults. The purpose of this paper is to review the literature on short‐term educational programs on death and dying and aging in order to offer practitioners some guidance for efficiently structuring programs to bring about desired changes in these areas. From 15 selected studies, 3 aspects of such programs are reviewed and analyzed: the length of the intervention, the type of treatment, and the nature of the target group involved.     

Playing Neoliberal Politics: Post-Racial and Post-Racist Strategies in “Same Love”

This essay argues that marriage equality discourses have successfully been used not only to advance GLBTQ rights but as a vehicle for re-securing neoliberalism after the 2008 Great Recession. Specifically, this essay analyzes how Macklemore and Ryan Lewis's “Same Love” (featuring Mary Lambert) supports neoliberalism by forwarding antiblackness and circumscribed political subjectivities while urging support for marriage equality. Through appeals to minimization, multiracialism, and inverting oppression, “Same Love” demonstrates how avowedly progressive texts can simultaneously impede the freer and fairer world the text supposedly promotes.     

Elite footballers as role models: promoting young women’s football participation

Sportspeople are constantly urged to maintain the highest levels of conduct because of their position as ‘role models’ to children. This article reports from a study in progress which explores the experiences of elite female athletes in Britain, and focuses on qualitative interview responses of elite female footballers, all of whom were currently playing at top-flight domestic and international levels and took part in the 2012 Olympics. It explores what they perceive the position as ‘role model’ to mean, how it impinges on their sport performance, and how they work with gifted young footballers to promote sporting excellence as well as community cohesion through grass-roots outreach work. It discusses their thoughts on how role models are currently and can best be used to encourage young women’s football participation from elite down to grass-roots levels, and highlights the amount of responsibility they feel to do this.     

FOCUS ON PRACTICE: Difficulties in initiating and sustaining peer friendships: perspectives on students diagnosed with AD/HD

In this article, Myra Taylor, research fellow, and Professor Stephen Houghton of the Centre for Child and Adolescent Related Disorders at the University of Western Australia, report theory generated from interviews with teachers, students and mothers residing in Perth, Western Australia, on how children with attention‐deficit/hyperactivity disorder (AD/HD) initiate and sustain peer relationships. An initial review of the three sample groups’ respective perspectives reveals that children with AD/HD exhibit three distinct socialisation patterns: a socially integrated pattern (that is, having three or more ongoing friendship pairings with peers); a marginal integrated pattern (that is, having two or less ongoing friendship pairings with peers); and a socially isolated pattern (that is, having no, or infrequent, friendship pairings with peers). Both teacher and maternal perspectives are similar in so far as both perceive children with attention deficit disorders to have marginal to non‐existent friendships. Students with AD/HD perceive themselves, however, as having strongly to marginally formed friendships with their peers. Myra Taylor and Stephen Houghton explore suggestions that differences between adult and child perspectives relate to diagnostic status, age and developmental maturity. They identify opportunities for further research arising out of their work and indicate that a wider evidence base will be needed before robust recommendations for practice can be made.     

Daddy’s Hands

I remember daddy’s hands folded silently in prayer And reaching out to hold me, when I had a nightmare