Conceptualizing student wellbeing in secondary education:a qualitative systematic literature review

A growing body of academic literature recognizes the importance of supporting students’ wellbeing in school settings. Approaches to supporting students’ wellbeing tend to focus on students’ subjective wellbeing, largely focusing on individuals’ mental health and advocating positive psychology. However, some studies have shown that socio-cultural factors, such as social equity, stigmas, and cultural norms also significantly impact students’ wellbeing. To build a holistic understanding of student wellbeing, this research constructs a comprehensive conceptual framework by systematically reviewing existing literature on students’ wellbeing within secondary education. It identifies factors such as health, autonomy, learning engagement, values, equity, and school culture as important attributes to students’ wellbeing. This review advocates for further research to explore the interaction among these factors, examining how educational pedagogies and practices can effectively nurture those factors without constraints.</p

Positive affect is indirectly related to symptoms of anxiety in tertiary education students via coping resources

Objective: Mental illnesses disproportionately affect young people, and tertiary education students experience higher levels of mental illness compared to other young people. Preventive strategies would be useful for improving tertiary students’ mental health. Method: The current study utilises structural equation modelling in order to measure the indirect relationship between positive affect and life engagement, mindful attention, symptoms of depression and anxiety, and resilience in 1,027 Australian tertiary students. Results: Positive affect had both direct and indirect relationships with resilience and symptoms of depression, and an indirect relationship with symptoms of anxiety. The indirect relationships between positive affect and depression and resilience partially depended on mindfulness and purpose in life. Additionally, the pathway from positive affect to symptoms of anxiety completely depended on the relationship between positive affect and mindfulness and purpose in life. Conclusions: The results indicate that positive affect may be useful for improving resilience and reducing symptoms of depression in tertiary students but may only alleviate symptoms of anxiety through its relationship with coping resources.</p

Bootstrapping non-stationary and irregular time series using singular spectral analysis

This article investigates the consequences of using Singular Spectral Analysis (SSA) to construct a time series bootstrap. The bootstrap replications are obtained via a SSA decomposition obtained using rescaled trajectories (RT-SSA), a procedure that is particularly useful in the analysis of time series that exhibit nonlinear, non-stationary and intermittent or transient behaviour. The theoretical validity of the RT-SSA bootstrap when used to approximate the sampling properties of a general class of statistics is established under regularity conditions that encompass a very broad range of data generating processes. A smeared and a boosted version of the RT-SSA bootstrap are also presented. Practical implementation of the bootstrap is considered and the results are illustrated using stationary, non-stationary and irregular time series examples.</p

A content and quality evaluation of mobile classroom behavior management applications

This study evaluated the quality and behavior change techniques (BCTs) included in 11 freely available mobile classroom behavior management applications (mCBM apps). We found that mCBM apps included a limited number of BCTs, with an average of 9 of 21 possible BCTs. Consequence-based BCTs like rewards and feedback were common, while antecedent-based strategies like prompts and reminders were less prevalent. Some mCBM apps also included BCTs related to sharing and exporting data. There was no significant correlation between the number of BCTs and the apps’ overall quality ratings based on the user version of the Mobile App Rating Scale. However, there was a positive correlation between the number of BCTs and the Engagement and Information subdomains of this scale. The findings contribute to understanding mCBM apps design and functionality, providing insights for future development and evaluation. However, concerns were raised about some features of mCBM apps and the degree to which apps ensured data privacy and security. Further research is needed to assess the quality and benefits of mCBM apps for students and teachers.</p

The connection between sleep problems and emotional and behavioural difficulties in autistic children:a network analysis

The interactions between sleep problems, autism symptoms and emotional and behavioural difficulties were explored using network analysis in 240 autistic children (mean age: 8.8 years, range 5–13 years) with moderate to severe sleep problems. Findings revealed a highly connected and interpretable network, with three separate clusters identified of the modelled variables. Depression, anxiety and behavioural difficulties were the most central variables of the network. Depression, anxiety and restricted repetitive and stereotyped patterns behaviours (RRBs) were the strongest bridging variables in the network model, transmitting activation both within and between other symptom clusters. The results highlight that depression and anxiety were highly connected symptoms within the network, suggesting support in these areas could be helpful, as well as future research.</p

Posted in Error:Did the CDC’s Retraction of Aerosol Guidance Undercut Its Public Reputation?

While there is ample research on the influence of retracted scientific publications on author reputation, less is known about how a health organization’s retraction of scientific guidance can impact public perceptions of the organization. This study centers on the aerosol guidance retraction of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in 2020. X/Twitter social media data were collected via ForSight from September 15 to October 8, 2020, with a machine learning algorithm specifically developed and used to detect sentiment toward the CDC. Regression analyses of the non-bot sample (N = 265,326) tested for differences in CDC sentiment across four stages: 1) baseline; 2) CDC guidance change; 3) CDC retraction of the prior guidance change; and 4) CDC reversion to a tempered form of the initial guidance change. The results show that sentiment toward the CDC increased from Time 1 to Time 2, then decreased for Time 3 with the “posted in error” retraction, but then increased for Time 4 back to a level similar to Time 2. That public perceptions of the CDC could improve after these changes in scientific guidance may be attributed to its self-report of the retraction and reporting that the retraction was a result of unintentional error. This study connects theories of reputation management and trust repair with the growing empirical research on retractions of published scientific research to provide a theoretical explanation for how a major public health organization can mitigate damage to its reputation in the short term.</p

Creating equity for ethnically, linguistically, and religiously diverse students in school settings in the Myanmar public schools

In Myanmar, large diverse indigenous ethnicities exist, and, as a result, public schools consist of a multicultural and multilingual student population. Despite this, the education system proffers and embeds Myanmar’s dominant ideologies relating to culture, language and religion within all aspects of schooling. Students from minority backgrounds often struggle to gain legitimacy and build capital in a system that does not acknowledge diversity. Drawing upon Bourdieu’s concepts of social reproduction, field and capital, this study examines how multiculturalism and multilingualism are positioned within Myanmar’s education policies and how Myanmar’s school leaders and teachers reflect and respond to the needs of students from minority backgrounds within the complex political and educational setting. This qualitative case study captured the perspectives of five participants: two school leaders and three teachers. The findings reveal that students from minority backgrounds experience religious-based inequalities, cultural exclusion, and indifference towards their language backgrounds in public school settings

Business-to-Investor Marketing:The Interplay of Costly and Costless Signals

Marketing to investors—especially when seeking funding for startups—is unique, with investors facing extreme uncertainty. This study uses foundational work in marketing, economics, management, finance, and psychology, as well as theories-in-use development with angel and venture capital investors, to build a business-to-investor marketing theory. The theory proposes that investors rely on marketing signals from startups, whether they are costly (financial, social, human, and intellectual resource endowments) or costless (verbal passion and concreteness). Results of a large quantitative field study of 5,334 written proposals from startups show that costly and costless signals have interactive effects on investor acceptance. The natural entrepreneurial tendency to compensate for a lack of costly signals with the use of passionate language backfires, reducing investor acceptance. Only when costly signals are communicated does a greater use of passion increase investor acceptance. Further, written proposals should be moderately concrete when they lack costly signals and should be formulated abstractly when plenty of costly signals can be offered. These contingencies provide insights into costly–costless signal interdependence in business-to-investor marketing and suggest how startups can optimize their written proposals for investor acceptance.</p

Intersectionality in policy:feminist breakthrough?

The language of intersectionality has been increasingly adopted in Australia by leading gender-equality and gender-focused organisations, as well as policy makers, advocates and other stakeholders. In this article we seek to interrogate the application and operationalisation of intersectionality in policy. We examine the way the use of this terminology at times reflects the co-option of an approach that originally sought to capture the complex realities of power differentials. To do this, we explore three Australian examples and use these to interrogate how intersectionality has been operationalised with respect to migrant and refugee women and consider some of the implications this may have for policy and practice in the areas of gender equality and violence. Our key concern is that in specific contexts, including the policy sphere, the language of intersectionality has moved beyond the origins of a conceptual framework, analytical or methodological approach to speak to complex power relations and has instead become a ‘catch all’ term used to denote diversity and/or difference.</p

The gendered politics of the ‘local turn’ in peacebuilding:Acholi traditional justice and gender in post-conflict Uganda

Typically, advancing localised approaches to peacebuilding has evaded critical reflection on the power dynamics and harms that can arise. This paper considers the gender dynamics and gendered harms that can manifest themselves when adopting an uncritical approach to localisation in peacebuilding. To do so, it examines the use of mato oput (drinking the bitter root) in post-conflict northern Uganda, as an example of a localised approach to post-conflict transitional justice, to investigate these dynamics and harms. It draws from interviews and focus-group discussions that were conducted in northern Uganda between 2020 and 2022 and engages with critical international relations scholarship on the ‘local turn’ in peacebuilding and the gendered nature of conflict and peace. The paper argues that in patriarchal societies, advancing localisation may entail a return to the traditional or customary order that reaffirms and reifies oppressive gender power relations and helps to consolidate gender inequalities, including unequal access to both security and justice.</p