Metastasis and retroactive causality in incentive rhetoric

Our contemporary moment is characterized by the pervasiveness of economics in social life, and the extension of “incentives” into new areas represents this movement’s keystone. Originally a fairly narrow term from neoclassical economic theory, politicians, journalists, and cultural ?gures deploy “incentives” to explain all manner of activity: judicial rulings, gendered wage gaps, and even whether soccer players score penalty kicks. To address this, I elucidate the trope of metastasis – the rhetorical mechanism by which social life is “economized.” Metastasis entails a ?gurative displacement, wherein cause shifts from one place to another. More than simply a spread of narrow economic ideas into culture, incentive rhetoric metastasizes. It displaces alternative explanations onto neoclassical market axioms. Since its proponents insist that incentives are causal mechanisms, I introduce Jacques Lacan’s interpretation of Aristotle’s discourse on causality. Lacan rereads Aristotle’s “?nal cause” from a rhetorical perspective, and forwards the retroactive causality of the symbolic order. Incentive rhetoric exempli?es this concept, in which all outcomes are explained as having been caused by a prior, unseen market force. Incentive rhetorics promise a universal code that unlocks the mysteries of human behavior that reduces all context to discrete individual choices, thereby providing a discursive alibi for economic inequality.     

Recognizing the Outliers: Behaviors and Tendencies of the Profoundly Gifted Learner in Mixed-Ability Classrooms

This article focuses on (a) distinctions between the profoundly gifted individual and others, and (b) a chart describing tendencies and/or behaviors associated with the profoundly gifted student in common, mixed-ability educational settings. The intent is to provide educators, parents, and policymakers with preliminary awareness about the unique behaviors and tendencies of the profoundly gifted learner in heterogeneous educational settings. Learners with measured IQ scores greater than 3 SD units above the mean are a statistical rarity—outliers—in most educational settings. The current inability of most educators to identify and even minimally address needs leaves these students anxious, frustrated, and otherwise unable to reach their intellectual capacity in the majority of school settings across the country. Focused research and careful attention to the nature and needs of these individuals throughout their lives can contribute substantially to our developing understanding.     

The role of consequences of moral action in maximizing moral elevation

Moral elevation is described as a state of positive emotion that includes uplifting feelings, positive views of humanity and a desire to be a better person. Numerous empirical studies have demonstrated that elevation has powerful effects on people’s moral intention and behavior. The next step is to investigate how to maximize the emotion of elevation. According to the evolution of moral elevation research and the theory of moral disgust, we hypothesized that the consequences of moral action would influence moral elevation. The results of two studies in the present research (Study 1: N = 122, average age = 36.96 years; Study 2: N = 232, average age = 23.93 years) demonstrated that moral acts with good consequences were more effective in inducing moral elevation than moral acts with bad consequences. The implications for research and practice are discussed.     

Gratitude for teachers as a psychological resource for early adolescents: A mixed-methods study

In this mixed-methods study, we examine students’ gratitude for their teachers and the implications of that gratitude for their psychological adaptation. We report findings that gratitude for teachers (GT) is, in fact, a resource for students facing difficult circumstances outside school. More specifically, our hierarchical multiple regression models demonstrate that this form of gratitude decreases the negative association between adverse life events and students’ life satisfaction. GT also decreases the positive association between negative life events and students’ perceived stress. Then, we use coded material from student interviews to illustrate how they understand the ways that their GT helps them manage challenges in their personal lives. We conclude that students’ GT buffers the negative impact of adverse life events, because it helps students attend to the positive interactions and mentorship they have with their teachers and maintain focus on their future-oriented goals.     

Contribution of uncertainty in estimation of active drag using assisted towing method in front crawl swimming

Active drag force in swimming can be calculated from a function of five different variables: swim velocity, tow velocity, belt force, power output and exponent of velocity. The accuracy of the drag force value is dependent on the accuracy of each variable, and on the contribution of each variable to drag estimation. To calculate uncertainty in drag value, first the derivatives of the active drag equation with respect to each variable were obtained. Second, these were multiplied by the uncertainty of that variable. Twelve national age and open level swimmers were recruited to complete four free swimming and five active drag trials. The uncertainties for the free and the tow swim velocities, and for the belt force, contributed approximately 5–6% and 2–3% error, respectively, in calculation of drag. The result of the uncertainty of the velocity exponent (1.8–2.6) indicated a contribution of about 6% error in active drag. The contribution of unequal power output showed that if a power changed 7.5% between conditions, it would lead to about 30% error in calculated drag. Consequently, if a swimmer did not maintain constant power output between conditions, there would be substantial errors in the calculation of active drag.     

Food intake and appetite following school-based high-intensity interval training in 9–11-year-old children

Using a randomised cross-over design, free-living lunch intake and subjective appetite were examined in 10 children (9.8 ± 0.6 years) following high-intensity interval training (HIIT) versus a control sedentary (SED) period, within a school setting. The 22-min HIIT took place during a regular PE lesson and consisted of two rounds of 4 × 30 s sprints. Foods were offered at a regular school lunch immediately following HIIT and SED and were matched between conditions. All food was covertly weighed before and after the meal. Hunger, fullness and prospective consumption were reported immediately before and after HIIT/SED, using visual analogue scales. Heart rate was higher during HIIT than SED (159.3 ± 23.1 vs. 76.9 ± 2.2 bpm, P < 0.05). Lunch energy intake was not different (P = 0.52) following HIIT, compared to SED (2.06 ± 0.35 vs. 2.09 ± 0.29 MJ, respectively). There were no significant differences in macronutrient intake or subjective appetite (P > 0.05). Results suggest that HIIT can be implemented in a PE lesson immediately before lunch, without causing a compensatory increase in food consumption.     

Teaching Creativity and Inventive Problem Solving in Science

Engaging learners in the excitement of science, helping them discover the value of evidence-based reasoning and higher-order cognitive skills, and teaching them to become creative problem solvers have long been goals of science education reformers. But the means to achieve these goals, especially methods to promote creative thinking in scientific problem solving, have not become widely known or used. In this essay, I review the evidence that creativity is not a single hard-to-measure property. The creative process can be explained by reference to increasingly well-understood cognitive skills such as cognitive flexibility and inhibitory control that are widely distributed in the population. I explore the relationship between creativity and the higher-order cognitive skills, review assessment methods, and describe several instructional strategies for enhancing creative problem solving in the college classroom. Evidence suggests that instruction to support the development of creativity requires inquiry-based teaching that includes explicit strategies to promote cognitive flexibility. Students need to be repeatedly reminded and shown how to be creative, to integrate material across subject areas, to question their own assumptions, and to imagine other viewpoints and possibilities. Further research is required to determine whether college students'' learning will be enhanced by these measures.     

In Praise of Harmony: The Kantian Imperative and Hegelian Sittlichkeit As the Principle and Substance of Moral Conduct in Sport

My argument will proceed as follows. I will first sketch out the broad internalist case for pitching its normative account of sport in the abstract manner that following Dworkin’s lead in the philosophy of law its adherents insist upon. I will next show that the normative deficiencies in social conventions broad internalists uncover are indeed telling but misplaced since they hold only for what David Lewis famously called ‘coordinating’ conventions. I will then distinguish coordinating conventions from deep ones and make my case not only for the normative salience of deep conventions but for their normative superiority over the abstract normative principles broad internalists champion.