The Propensity of Character Education to Promote and Predict Moral Development as Measured in Middle School Students

With an interest in whether character education programs promoted moral development, a study was conducted on a group of middle school students. The question driving this quantitative research asked whether four components of character education—namely self-management, self-efficacy, social awareness, and growth mindset—might predict moral reasoning in adolescents. Data from a multiple and simple regression provided an answer to this study’s question. Surveys completed by 126 students (grades six through eight) provided data for the initial multiple regression. Upon conducting the multiple regression, growth mindset emerged as the only component with a statistically significant (p \u3c .001) relationship with moral reasoning. After the non-relational variables were removed, and a simple regression was conducted, the analysis indicated growth mindset accounted for 11% of a student’s moral reasoning and yielded a small effect size of .11. Along with identifying a significant relationship between growth mindset and moral reasoning, the study further identified an underlying relationship between context, growth mindset, and moral development. In light of Christian educators’ “Scriptural advantage”, Christian schools hold a “contextual advantage” when it comes to establishing cognitive, instructional, and societal contexts

Assessing the Emotional Pull of Advertising

The consideration of different running shoe advertisements provoking different emotions in sport consumers was examined in this research. The concept of different emotions leading to different buying behavior of consumers was also looked to be studied. Through snowball sampling, a survey was sent out to participants and results were examined. General demographic questions were asked along with questions about what different feelings participants experienced from looking at three different advertisements. They were also asked how these feelings would change their buying behavior. Responses were categorized into positive, negative, and neutral feelings and intent to purchase was also compared. Participants included adults, male and female and were from the online social media network, Facebook. Basic findings were expected to produce positive emotions resulting in an increased purchase intention and negative feelings resulting in decreased purchase intention. This study will be beneficial to the sport marketing community in further identifying the role emotions play in sport consumer’s behavior

Crafting a Legacy - The Late Widowhood of Lady Elizabeth Cooke Hoby Russell, 1590-1609

Lady Elizabeth Cooke Hoby Russell is known as one of the remarkably educated Cooke sisters of the Elizabethan period. She married first Thomas Hoby and then John Russell and had seven children. After being widowed twice, Elizabeth became known as a powerful courtier. She was a devout Protestant and became famous for barring Shakespeare from building the Globe Theatre in her neighborhood. Although many scholars have addressed the period of early widowhood in Elizabeth\u27s life, few have directly investigated how her life may have changed in its last decade. This paper will explore how Lady Russell crafted her own legacy using print publication and funeral monument design. Elizabeth and her sisters were recognized by their contemporaries as capable scholars, but Elizabeth published her first full-length translation of a work in 1605, only four years before her death. The finished publication reveals important messages which Elizabeth wanted the reader to understand about her family, her social status, and her religious beliefs. Also invaluable to this study are the funeral monuments commissioned by Elizabeth, including her own. Using strong visual imagery and well-crafted epitaph writing, Elizabeth intentionally preserved the memories of herself and her family. The aims of this paper are to illustrate the importance of historical self-expression to modern understanding and the value of the study of women in late adulthood

Colonial girls\u27 literature and the politics of archives in the digital age

In this paper we examine the politics of print and digital archives and their implications for research in the field of historical children\u27s literature. We use the specific example of our comparative, collaborative project \u27From Colonial to Modern: Transnational Girlhood in Australian, New Zealand and Canadian Print Cultures, 1840-1940\u27 to contrast the strengths and limitations of print and digital archives of young people\u27s texts from these three nations. In particular, we consider how the failure of some print archives to collect ephemeral or non-canonical colonial texts may be reproduced in current digitising projects. Similarly, we examine how gaps in the newly forged digital "canon" are especially large for colonial children\u27s texts because of the commercial imperatives of many large-scale digitisation projects. While we acknowledge the revolutionary applications of digital repositories for research on historical children\u27s literature, we also argue that these projects may unintentionally marginalise or erase certain kinds of children\u27s texts from scholarly view in the future

Colonial Girls’ Literature and the Politics of Archives in the Digital Age

The history of colonial children’s literature is intriguingly complex. Most of the books and magazines that colonial children read, by both British and colonial authors, were produced in London and then shipped to the colonies. Yet alongside these texts are others that were written and published in the colonies themselves, only occasionally making their way back to the metropole. Some colonial novels for young people remain well known, like Mary Grant Bruce’s Billabong series or L.M. Montgomery’s Anne of Green Gables. But what of the many other texts, the ones that were published in Canada, in Australia, in New Zealand, and seem to have disappeared from the history of children’s literature? Attempts to recover this history are complicated by the canonisation of particular children’s texts, a process that narrows the definition of the field to texts popularised by the academy through teaching and research. Moreover, historical children’s literature can be difficult to make accessible to scholars and students because many of the texts are out of print, which may have contributed to the under-representation of certain texts in undergraduate and postgraduate courses. Critical editions of historical children's literature tend to concentrate on frequently taught texts, which reinforces those texts as the most interesting and important in the field

2D Bayesian automated tilted-ring fitting of disk galaxies in large HI galaxy surveys: 2DBAT

We present a novel algorithm based on a Bayesian method for 2D tilted-ring analysis of disk galaxy velocity fields. Compared to the conventional algorithms based on a chi-squared minimisation procedure, this new Bayesian-based algorithm suffers less from local minima of the model parameters even with highly multi-modal posterior distributions. Moreover, the Bayesian analysis, implemented via Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) sampling, only requires broad ranges of posterior distributions of the parameters, which makes the fitting procedure fully automated. This feature will be essential when performing kinematic analysis on the large number of resolved galaxies expected to be detected in neutral hydrogen (HI) surveys with the Square Kilometre Array (SKA) and its pathfinders. The so-called '2D Bayesian Automated Tilted-ring fitter' (2DBAT) implements Bayesian fits of 2D tilted-ring models in order to derive rotation curves of galaxies. We explore 2DBAT performance on (a) artificial HI data cubes built based on representative rotation curves of intermediate-mass and massive spiral galaxies, and (b) Australia Telescope Compact Array (ATCA) HI data from the Local Volume HI Survey (LVHIS). We find that 2DBAT works best for well-resolved galaxies with intermediate inclinations (20 deg < i < 70 deg), complementing three-dimensional techniques better suited to modelling inclined galaxies.Comment: Accepted for publication in MNRAS; 46 pages, 33 figure

Towards an Intracultural Actor Training: Utilising the Cultural Context of the Performer

This thesis offers an evolved methodology of practice that acknowledges and utilises difference in performance, and offers a potential way forward for theatre practice. This methodology is addressed primarily to directors and teachers in both training and professional theatre environments, and therefore offers specific guidance on rehearsal room practice. In 2016, state funded theatres in the United Kingdom and Australia (the territories in which I locate this thesis) are still largely monocultural, both in terms of the people on stage and the people watching the work created. While there are theatres that serve varied communities and engage with international and intracultural arts, there is still an imbalance whereby cultural representations reflecting society’s diversity are not seen on a consistent basis. The pace of change remains slow. Why is it that theatre has not yet moved beyond a homogenous world view to presenting a world that more accurately reflects society’s heterogeneity? I have developed a methodology for directors, teachers and actors that seeks to speak back to these discriminatory practices by opposing the idea of ‘neutral’; in which actors’ differences are stripped away and “the assumption of a shared universality” (Bharucha, 2000: 35) is favoured. After all, the category of ‘neutral’ more often than not overlaps with the identity of the cultural authority, and so is not in fact politically neutral. The methodology described in this thesis offers a pathway to step beyond notions of identity as “fixed” and instead engage with identity as something that is fluid and ever changing. For individuality to flourish, teachers and directors need to develop an understanding of how to embrace and play with difference on the rehearsal room floor and move their focus away from a “one approach fits all” mentality. The methodology outlined in this thesis offers teachers and directors the skills and freedom to work courageously with multifarious personalities and diverse historical narratives as a rich resource in the realisation of work for performance

A question of origin: Where and how to collect seed for ecological restoration

Native plant species are routinely planted or sown in ecological restoration projects, but successful establishment and survival depend on where and how seeds are collected. Research suggests that it is important to use locally adapted seeds. Local populations often show a home-site advantage and non-local genotypes may be maladapted to local environmental conditions. Furthermore, intraspecific hybridisation of local and non-local genotypes may have a negative impact on the genetic structure of local populations via mechanisms such as outbreeding depression. Many species show a strong small-scale genetic differentiation between different habitats so that matching habitats of the restoration and donor site can be more important than minimizing geographical separation. It is a challenge to identify appropriate seed sources because strong small-scale population differentiation makes it difficult to delineate geographically defined seed zones to which seed exchange should be limited. Moreover, it is important to consider the genetic diversity of introduced material because it may be crucial to avoid genetic bottlenecks, inbreeding depression and poor establishment of plant populations. Repeated propagation in stock, which is often required to obtain a sufficient amount of seeds, can further reduce genetic diversity and may select for particular genotypes. Negative impacts of improper seed choice for nursery planting stock may become detectable only after many years, especially in long-lived and slow growing plants. Although scientific information on many species remains limited, the increasing demand for translocation of seed means that mandatory regulations are necessary. Guidelines should prescribe a specification of seed provenance, a record of genetic diversity of wild collections and rules for subsequent processing such as direct transfer and propagation of stock or seed orchards. We use a literature review to evaluate current legislation and to develop recommendations for herbaceous and woody species