Brotherly Love and the Piper's Pay

There are people who think and people who dream, but there are more people who do neither. The first group, those who think, do not doubt that wars will continue in the future as in the past; the dreamers, their heads swirling in roseate dreams of the universal brotherhood of all mankind, still envision the warless age. Hard headed realists know that civilization of the kind we have always had (when we have had any at all) is more likely to increase than to decrease the number of open seasons for human game. They join with the dreamers in deploring the kind of wars we now fight, but they recognize the inevitability of war and try to take proper measures for selfsurvival. Members of the third group, those who neither think nor dream, vegetate in peace time, reproduce all of the time, and the best of them get killed when war comes. During the periods of armed neutrality, which we call peace, they listen to the plans of the dreamers.     

Science and scientists in Victorian and Edwardian literary novels: insights into the emergence of a new profession

Literary fiction has seldom been seriously considered as a mode of science communication. Here, I review novels from the 19th century canon of English literature in which characters either have, or aspire to have, substantive professional scientific roles to see what insights they provide into the practice of science in the Victorian and Edwardian eras. They reflect the historical transition of science from an intellectual hobby to a paid occupation, but also reveal that while a career in science became possible for a wider range of people, it seldom allowed these new entrants to undertake fundamental scientific research.     

Deconstructing learning in science—Young children's responses to a classroom sequence on evaporation

Five year old children's ideas were tracked by a range of means during and subsequent to a classroom sequence on evaporation. They held a range of conceptions which changed in complex ways across context and time. These could only be made sense of by moving outside traditional conceptual change interpretations to include broader notions of appropriation of language as a cultural tool, of personal and social narrative responses to features of the phenomena and the classroom setting, and the nature of science explanations. The findings are used to explore the relationship between social and individual perspectives on learning, and to question some assumptions underlying conceptual change research.     

Long-term impacts of two secondary school environmental studies programs on environmental behaviour: the shadows of patriarchy and neoliberalism

Abstract

A survey of alumni of two longstanding interdisciplinary secondary school environmental studies programs revealed that the vast majority of alumni reported being engaged in pro-environmental behaviours, which they attributed to participation in the programs five to twenty-three years prior. That finding in itself is worth sharing. Digging deeper, however, revealed that most reported behaviours were in the private rather than public sphere. Women alumni reported engaging in more household and marketplace-oriented behaviours. Further, a small number of men from the rural school expressed hostility towards environmental concerns using aggressively sexist and homophobic discourse. A feminist analysis takes into account structural forces such as patriarchy and neoliberalism to interpret the findings and illuminates gendered dimensions of pro- and anti-environmental behaviours.     

Emotion Regulation Strategies and Parenting Practices among Parents of Children With Clinic-Referred Conduct Problems

Objective. This study examined the cognitive-affective strategies used by parents of young children with conduct problems to regulate emotions. Key questions concerned the extent to which these emotion regulation strategies are associated with positive and negative parenting practices and predict quality of parenting through interplay with parental depression. Design. Participants were families of toddlers (n = 84) referred to a tertiary-level health service for the treatment of disruptive behavior problems. Parenting practices were indexed through observational coding of parent–child interactions and self-report data on multiple dimensions of positive and negative parenting. Parents self-reported their use of cognitive reappraisal and expressive suppression—the two emotion regulation strategies that are most robustly associated with psychosocial functioning in adults. Results. Associations between emotion regulation strategy and quality of parenting were moderated by parental depressive symptom severity, with distinct effects seen for positive and negative parenting practices. In terms of positive parenting, more frequent use of cognitive reappraisal was associated with increased use of labeled praise among parents with lower levels of depressive symptoms, whereas parents who had higher levels of depressive symptoms engaged in less such praise regardless of how frequently they used reappraisal. In terms of negative parenting, frequent use of cognitive reappraisal and expression suppression were associated with reduced levels of negative parenting, but only among parents with high levels of depression. Conclusions. These findings add to growing support for the integration of emotion regulation strategies into family process models of early-onset conduct problems and related clinical interventions.     

Organizational culture and effectiveness in two-year colleges

The central purpose of this study is to determine the extent to which the effectiveness of a nationally representative sample of two-year colleges differs in terms of their dominant type of organizational culture. The findings demonstrate wide differences in the effectiveness of two-year colleges that exhibit the traits of clan, adhocracy, hierarchy, and market cultures, and the differences are consistent with their conceptual rationale. The research, policy, and practical implications of the findings in terms of our efforts to understand and improve the management and institutional performance of two-year colleges are discussed.Presented at the Association for Institutional Research Annual Forum, Atlanta, Georgia, May 10–13, 1992.