How Custom Agents Really Detect Lies

Research has found discrepancies among folk beliefs about lie detection, deception cue utility, and retrospective accounts of detected lies. Elite customs agents (N = 37) were surveyed regarding their overall beliefs about how to detect lies (general strategy), their opinions about best practices (best strategy), and about a successfully detected lie (actual strategy). Responses were coded in three nonexclusive broad categories: (a) behavioral cues, (b) communication content and evidence, and (c) interactive-questioning approaches. Behavioral cues, especially nonverbal cues, were listed most frequently as general beliefs. Opinions about the best approach were evenly split across the three categories. Communication content and evidence was the most frequently reported actual detection method and was mentioned in 97% of the responses. The results are discussed in relation to Truth-Default Theory and their implications for lie detection practice.     

Between education and psychology: school staff perspectives

When discussing contributions from psychology in/to educational practices like school-based mental health promotion, it is peculiar that psychologists (of an educational or clinical kind) or education-oriented sociologists, both not often based in schools or classrooms, dominate the topic. It has been acknowledged that school staff have been over looked and underutilised in contributing to the discussion, particularly as this pertains to sharing perspectives on how they experience their role in relationship to education policy and practice. The study presented here looked to address this situation by seeking the perspectives of school staff on a range of concerns situated at the nexus between education and psychology. Contrary to the type of displaced assessment intimated above, this group of school staff generally accepts they perform a crucial task in supporting students, their main concern being to incisively question how they might negotiate existing role-related pressures to better current school-based practice.     

Longitudinal analysis of the environmental attitudes of university students

This article addresses the important questions that higher education institutions ask concerning their impact on their students’ sustainability-related attributes ‘How do our students’ worldviews change as they experience higher education with us?’ The process of monitoring such a dynamic entity is fraught with statistical complexity but may not be impossible for an institution willing to ask whether or not its educational efforts in ‘education for sustainability’, ‘education for sustainable development’ or ‘environmental education’, and campus sustainability developments, are paralleled by changes in the attitudes of its students. We describe here a longitudinal survey process based on the revised New Ecological Paradigm scale, with two cohorts of students, in three programmes of study, operating over four years, with multiple survey inputs by each student. We implemented the longitudinal analysis using a linear mixed-effects model and describe here the development and testing of this model. We conclude that higher education institutions can benchmark the sustainability attributes of their students and monitor changes, if they are minded to. We invite higher education practitioners worldwide to join us in further developing suitable research instruments, processes and statistical models, and in further analysing the assumptions that link higher education to sustainability and to global citizenship.     

Excluding Primary School Children – The Outcomes Six Years On

This article reports and discusses a study which followed up, through case records, 726 children excluded permanently, indefinitely or for fixed–term periods in 1993/4 in 10 LEAs. The outcomes at secondary level in 1998/9 were found to be moderately poor with the problems intensifying for half the sample. Forty six per cent had further primary school exclusions and 36 per cent received exclusions in their secondary education. Looked–after children and those with special educational needs fared worse and achieved less. Case studies showed the kinds of commitment and support that can work even with very difficult cases.     

Building bridges rather than walls: research into an experiential model of interfaith education in secondary schools

This paper examines research findings from an experiential model of interfaith education called the Building Bridges through Interfaith Dialogue in Schools Programme (BBP). The BBP has been operating continuously in Melbourne, Australia since 2004. In the research, participating students were interviewed and surveyed to assess the effect of this experiential interfaith education programme on their knowledge, attitudes, perspectives and behaviour toward those from different religious and cultural backgrounds to them. Some of the data from those interviews are included in this article. The findings identify that the programme promoted religious literacy, (including improved knowledge, understanding and appreciation for different religious and cultural traditions and their practices), dismantled prejudice from ignorance and overly generalised stereotypes of others, and promoted social inclusion and cohesion.     

The invisible impact of educational research

Although there are policy calls for educational research to discover ‘what works’ and thereby inform decision making directly, the research literature argues instead for research to have a ‘conceptual’ impact on practice. Empirical studies also suggest that, when teachers use research, their use is conceptual; research influences the content and the process of their thinking, changing attitudes and perceptions and making educational decision making more intelligent. This study investigates the ways in which educational research has achieved impact on practice from the perspective of the researchers. A sample of highly-rated impact case studies in the UK’s research assessment exercise (REF2014) were subject to content analysis, using qualitative coding techniques. Analysis shows that most research is ‘invisible’ to education practitioners because it is embedded in educational policies, technologies, and services. This ‘invisible use’ is unlikely to realise the conceptual benefits claimed for research utilisation. If educational research is to make educational decision making more intelligent at its point of use, it will be necessary to re-think current notions of quality in research impact.