‘Leav[ing] the white[s] … far behind them’: The girls from fort shaw (Montana) Indian School,basketball champions of the 1904 world's fair

In spring 1903, barely a dozen years after the invention of ‘basket ball’, a girls' team from an Indian boarding school in Montana overcame racial and gender barriers to win that state's first basketball championship. Subsequently, these ten young women spent the summer of 1904 attending the government's Model Indian School at the St Louis World's Fair, where their twice-weekly intra-squad exhibition games provided fairgoers with their only glimpse of women's team sports. Having also taken on – and defeated – all challengers, they returned to Montana with a gleaming silver trophy declaring them ‘Basket Ball Champions’ of the 1904 World's Fair.     

Testing moral foundation theory: Are specific moral emotions elicited by specific moral transgressions?

Moral foundation theory posits that specific moral transgressions elicit specific moral emotions. To test this claim, participants (N = 195) were asked to rate their emotions in response to moral violation vignettes. We found that compassion and disgust were associated with care and purity respectively as predicted by moral foundation theory. However, anger, rage, contempt, resentment and fear were not associated to any single moral transgression. Thus, even though the type of moral violation matters for the type of emotion that is elicited, the link between moral foundations and moral emotions seems more complex than moral foundation theory suggests. Rather, the findings suggest that there are both emotion-specific foundations (i.e. care and purity) and emotion-unspecific foundations (i.e. fairness, authority and loyalty).     

“Martin Luther King Fixed It”: Children Making Sense of Racial Identity in a Colorblind Society

Children in the United States grow up in a context wherein colorblindness and racism coexist. This article examined how colorblindness functions as a societal “master narrative” that shapes how children construct their own racial identities. Data were collected via semi-structured interviews with 217 Black, White, and Multiracial children (M_age = 9.92) in public schools in the Pacific Northwest during 2013–2014 academic year. Our analysis identified four race narratives, which varied systematically by child age and race. Associations were also found between narrative types and children’s ratings of racial identity importance. Although colorblindness infuses many of the racial narratives, there was evidence that children also question and disrupt this master narrative with stories of resistance that counter colorblind norms.     

Does Religious Education as an examination subject work to promote community cohesion? An empirical enquiry among 14- to 15-year-old adolescents in England and Wales

This study begins by examining the way in which, in both England and Wales, Religious Education has become implicated in political discussion regarding the role of education in promoting community cohesion. The relationship between taking Religious Education as an examination subject and attitude towards religious diversity (as an affective indicator of community cohesion) is then explored among 3052 14- to 15-year-old students. After controlling for contextual factors (school type and geographical location), personal factors (sex and age), psychological factors (psychoticism, neuroticism and extraversion) and religious factors (Christian affiliation, worship attendance, personal prayer and belief in God), a small but significant positive association was found between taking Religious Education as an examination subject and attitude towards religious diversity. This finding may be interpreted as supporting the view that Religious Education works to promote community cohesion, although the wider debate that the community cohesion agenda has generated among religious educators needs further exploration.