From voting to engaging: promoting democratic values across an international school network

Using a mixed methods design, the researchers investigated understandings and practices of democracy across Round Square, a worldwide network of 180 schools committed to shared values. An extensive questionnaire received 4020 student and 863 teacher returns; additionally, leaders, students, and parents from five case study schools on different continents were interviewed. All stakeholder groups were found to value democracy highly, but saw its implementation in their schools as challenging and limited. While staff and parents espoused more holistic understandings of democratic practices and cultures, students focused primarily on systems of election and representation. A philosophically informed framework for developing ‘responsible leadership’, and a values-led approach to school improvement, are offered to deepen students’ democratic agency through informed, active, and reflective engagement with people, situations, and curricula.     

Human genetic variation: new challenges and opportunities for doping control

Sport celebrates differences in competitors that lead to the often razor-thin margins between victory and defeat. The source of this variation is the interaction between the environment in which the athletes develop and compete and their genetic make-up. However, a darker side of sports may also be genetically influenced: some anti-doping tests are affected by the athlete's genotype. Genetic variation is an issue that anti-doping authorities must address as more is learned about the interaction between genotype and the responses to prohibited practices. To differentiate between naturally occurring deviations in indirect blood and urine markers from those potentially caused by doping, the "biological-passport" program uses intra-individual variability rather than population values to establish an athlete's expected physiological range. The next step in "personalized" doping control may be the inclusion of genetic data, both for the purposes of documenting an athlete's responses to doping agents and doping-control assays as well facilitating athlete and sample identification. Such applications could benefit "clean" athletes but will come at the expense of risks to privacy. This article reviews the instances where genetics has intersected with doping control, and briefly discusses the potential role, and ethical implications, of genotyping in the struggle to eliminate illicit ergogenic practices.     

Budgetary devolution as an aid to university efficiency

This paper describes a method of allocating resources within a university which provides departments with a built-in incentive to the efficient use of those resources. Present allocation systems based on norms such as the staff: student ratio, incorporate no such incentive. The method we propose involves firstly the creation of a budget for each recognizable academic unit, the size of the budget being related to the unit's student load by a published formula; and secondly, the devolution to academic units of much greater responsibility in the spending of their budgets on different items, thereby giving them a direct interest in the economical use of costly resources. We argue that initially such a system should be introduced on a pilot basis in selected subjects in a few universities and that the budgets should be designed to cover all recurrent items of expenditure. We finally consider the implications of budgetary devolution on the planning process within universities and on the methods by which funds are provided by the government to the universities.A full report appears in Incentives to the Efficient Use of Resources in Universities (June 1975), a report by J. E. Dunworth and W. R. Cook to the Social Science Research Council, who financed this research at the University of Bradford.

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A comparison of genetic variants between proficient low- and high-risk sport participants

Athletes participating in high-risk sports consistently report higher scores on sensation-seeking measures than do low-risk athletes or non-athletic controls. To determine whether genetic variants commonly associated with sensation seeking were over-represented in such athletes, proficient practitioners of high-risk (n = 141) and low-risk sports (n = 132) were compared for scores on sensation seeking and then genotyped at 33 polymorphic loci in 14 candidate genes. As expected, athletes participating in high-risk sports score higher on sensation seeking than did low-risk sport athletes (P < .01). Genotypes were associated with high-risk sport participation for two genes (stathmin, (P = .004) and brain-derived neurotrophic factor (P = .03)) as well as when demographically matched subsets of the sport cohorts were compared (P < .05); however, in all cases, associations did not survive correction for multiple testing.     

Talking and thinking together at Key Stage 1

In this paper, we describe an innovative approach to promoting effective classroom‐based groupwork and the development of children's speaking and listening at Key Stage 1. This approach, known as Thinking Together, was initially developed for use with Key Stage 2 children. The work reported here explains how this approach has now been applied to the teaching of speaking and listening at Key Stage 1. The approach is founded on contemporary sociocultural theory and research. At the heart of the Thinking Together approach is a concern to help children build and develop their knowledge and understanding together, through enabling them to practise and develop ways of reasoning with language.     

Secondary Education Reform and Educational Research in the Asia-Pacific Region

The strengthening and upgrading of secondary education is of great world-wide concern, since in an increasing number of countries secondary education has become the weakest link in the education chain. This article commences by examining the importance of secondary education, and then provides an overview of programme activities concerning secondary education being undertaken in countries throughout the world. The article then reports on a regional study on secondary education in the Asia-Pacific Region, commissioned by the Asian Development Bank, which examined strategic issues and policy analysis. The article concludes that there are firm foundations to secondary education in the Asia-Pacific region and that much has been accomplished in the last few decades. But, as the article shows, there is still a great deal to be done to put into place the vibrant, rich, diverse, relevant, high quality and innovative secondary education desired by countries in the region. The challenges are great, and numerous, but the future for secondary education in the Asia-Pacific region appears bright and full of promise. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Trapping single human osteoblast-like cells from a heterogeneous population using a dielectrophoretic microfluidic device

We describe a system for the isolation, concentration, separation, and recovery of human osteoblast-like cells from a heterogeneous population using dielectrophoretic ring traps. Cells flowing in a microfluidic channel are immobilized inside an electric field cage using negative dielectrophoresis. A planar ring electrode creates a closed trap while repelling surrounding cells. Target cells are identified by fluorescent labeling, and are trapped as they pass across a ring electrode by an automated system. We demonstrate recovery of small populations of human osteoblast-like cells with a purity of 100%, which in turn demonstrates the potential of such a device for cell selection from a heterogeneous population.