Factors Influencing Innovative Behaviour of Teachers in Secondary Schools in the North East of Nigeria

Innovative behaviour (IB) refers to the process of developing, generating, applying or promoting new ideas by employees to increase job performance. Today, the rapid social and technological changes in our environment highlight the significance of IB of employees and especially for teachers. Thus, this paper aimed to develop a conceptual framework of factors influencing innovative behaviour of teachers in secondary schools. The research was explored through critical related literature analysis. Findings were presented in form of descriptive analysis, which shows that workplace happiness (WP), organisational climate (OC), affective commitment (AF) and transformational leadership (TFL) play a direct role in affecting innovative behaviour. The paper concludes that WP, OC, AF and TL have a positive impact in creating the essential conditions to encourage teachers to show IB in schools

Australian tropes of nature: representation and appropriation in EFL teaching

Postcolonial criticism has repeatedly expressed scepticism concerning the possibility of appropriate representation of cultures and identities. This seems even more problematic when assessing cultural production in the context of school education – a system which claims authority of representation because it requires comprehensibility and testability of the teaching contents and objectives. Influenced by critical theory’s attempts at mapping cultural representation in its complexity, several didactic models have been put forward in order to provide a conceptual basis for a holistic assessment of culture and intercultural competence in an educational context. Among the most prominent ones is Michael Byram’s model (1997), which promotes the ideal of “Intercultural Communicative Competence” by assessing the level of intercultural (communicative) competence along the lines of the categories “knowledge, skills, and attitudes”. Against the critical backdrop of the conflicting priorities and paradigms established above, this paper will investigate to what extent the representation of Australian nature in ELT materials captures intercultural competence in its cognitive, pragmatic and affective complexity – despite the above mentioned structural impediments inherent in the (German) school system. By taking a closer look at the presentation of Australian tropes of nature, it will scrutinize whether nature serves as a trope in which complex negotiations of cultural identities can play themselves out - and if so, along which didactic lines

Making sense of emotions and affective investments in war: RT and the Syrian conflict on YouTube

Within the context of an ‘affective turn’ in media studies and the social sciences, this article explores the methodological challenges of researching emotions when studying online videos of conflict. Our study focuses on videos of the Syrian conflict shared on YouTube by the Russian state funded international broadcaster, RT. We propose that the concept of affective investment is a useful pivot between online videos of conflict and audience responses to them. Our study interrogates the role that affective investments play in 1) RT’s YouTube representations of the Syrian conflict, and 2) audience comments on these videos. We draw attention to the important intersections of RT’s representations of the conflict and audiences’ affective investments in those representations, and draw attention to the methodological issues raised. Our empirical focus is two critical junctures in the Syrian conflict: the commencement of Russia’s military intervention; and following the announcement of plans to withdraw Russian troops. We conclude by discussing the utility of affective investments in war when assessing online coverage of conflict, and suggesting avenues for further development

Affective Systems Induce Formal Thought Disorder in Early-Stage Psychosis

Although formal thought disorder (FTD) has been described since early conceptualizations of psychosis, its underlying mechanisms are unclear. Evidence suggests FTD may be influenced by affective and cognitive systems; however, few have examined these relationships—with none focusing on early-stage psychosis (EP). In this study, positive FTD and speech production were measured in sex- and race-matched EP (n = 19) and healthy control (n = 19) groups by assessing “reactivity”—a change in experimental compared with baseline conditions—across baseline, affective, and cognitive conditions. Relationships with functioning were also examined within each group. Three key findings emerged: (a) the EP group displayed large differences in positive FTD and speech production, (b) those with EP exhibited affective reactivity for positive FTD, and (c) positive FTD and affective reactivity were linked with poor real-world functioning in EP and these relationships did not considerably change when controlling for positive symptom (e.g., delusions, hallucinations) severity. Our findings provide preliminary evidence that affective, but not cognitive, systems play a critical role in positive FTD. Affective reactivity, in particular, may aid in predicting those with EP who go on to develop serious social impairments. Future work should focus on whether affective systems differentially influence those at separate points on the psychosis-spectrum in an effort to establish evidence-based treatments for FTD

How Unplanned Events Can Sharpen the Critical Focus in Information Literacy Instruction

Critical pedagogy prompts teachers to make connections with students on an affective level in order to achieve the larger goal of liberation and the radical transformation of society. This chapter demonstrates how unexpected moments of surprise or shock in the classroom can play a special pedagogical role, especially for a critical pedagogy that is responsive to students’ realities, and that places students’ knowledge of and perspectives on their information worlds at the center of learning. It uses examples taken from the author's experience teaching information literacy in both one-shot and credit-bearing information literacy classes at a large public urban college

Theories of Emotion: Integrating philosophy and the social sciences

The study of emotion is being taken on by many different fields of research. In particular, the social sciences are providing many new areas of development within the field. Philosophy is specially equipped to add to the research on human affective experience by synthesizing the many different fields' work on emotion and providing a critical assessment of the current research. Two primary approaches to understanding emotion are (1) viewing emotion as a product of evolution and (2) viewing emotion as a product of social and cultural interaction. I argue, however, that while each of these approaches accurately explains a particular aspect of affective experience, they should work towards a more compatibilistic theory of emotion which views affective experience as a system that includes both evolutionary and socio-cultural influences. The concept of a looping effect is particularly helpful in illustrating the systemic nature of emotion, and I put forward the concept of a looping effect as a way to assess a theory's ability to incorporate the two distinct aspects of affective experience (i.e., evolutionary psychology and social constructionism and their debate over the role cognitive and non-cognitive processes play in affective experience) which traditionally have been opposed to each other in the effort to present a clear theory of emotion

An analysis of persistent non-player characters in the first-person gaming genre 1998-2007: a case for the fusion of mechanics and diegetics

This paper describes the results of an analysis of persistent non-player characters (PNPCs) in the first-person gaming genre 1998-2007. Assessing the role, function, gameplay significance and representational characteristics of these critical important gameplay objects from over 34 major releases provides an important set of baseline data within which to situate further research. This kind of extensive, genre-wide analysis is under-represented in game studies, yet it represents a hugely important process in forming clear and robust illustrations of the medium to support understanding. Thus, I offer a fragment of this illustration, demonstrating that many of the cultural and diegetic qualities of PNPCs are a product of a self-assembling set of archetypes formed from gameplay requirements

Social re-orientation and brain development: An expanded and updated view.

Social development has been the focus of a great deal of neuroscience based research over the past decade. In this review, we focus on providing a framework for understanding how changes in facets of social development may correspond with changes in brain function. We argue that (1) distinct phases of social behavior emerge based on whether the organizing social force is the mother, peer play, peer integration, or romantic intimacy; (2) each phase is marked by a high degree of affect-driven motivation that elicits a distinct response in subcortical structures; (3) activity generated by these structures interacts with circuits in prefrontal cortex that guide executive functions, and occipital and temporal lobe circuits, which generate specific sensory and perceptual social representations. We propose that the direction, magnitude and duration of interaction among these affective, executive, and perceptual systems may relate to distinct sensitive periods across development that contribute to establishing long-term patterns of brain function and behavior

Dissociable Recruitment of Rostral Anterior Cingulate and Inferior Frontal Cortex in Emotional Response Inhibition

The integrity of decision-making under emotionally evocative circumstances is critical to navigating complex environments, and dysfunctions in these processes may play an important role in the emergence and maintenance of various psychopathologies. The goal of the present study was to examine the spatial and temporal dynamics of neural responses to emotional stimuli and emotion-modulated response inhibition. High-density event-related brain potentials (ERPs) were measured as participants (N=25) performed an emotional Go/NoGo task that required button presses to words of a "target" emotional valence (i.e., positive, negative, neutral) and response inhibition to words of a different "distractor" valence. Using scalp ERP analyses in conjunction with source-localization techniques, we identified distinct neural responses associated with affective salience and affect- modulated response inhibition, respectively. Both earlier (similar to 300 ms) and later (similar to 700 ms) ERP components were enhanced with successful response inhibition to emotional distractors. Only ERPs to target stimuli differentiated affective from neutral cues. Moreover, Source localization analyses revealed right ventral lateral prefrontal cortex (VLPFC) activation in affective response inhibition regardless of emotional valence, whereas rostral anterior cingulate activation (rACC) was potentiated by emotional valence but was not modulated by response inhibition. This dissociation was supported by a significant Region x Trial Type x Emotion interaction, confirming that distinct regional dynamics characterize neural responses to affective valence and affective response-inhibition. The results are discussed in the context of an emerging affective neuroscience literature and implications for understanding psychiatric pathologies characterized by a detrimental susceptibility to emotional cues, with an emphasis on major depressive disorder.Psycholog

Taking great pains: critical theory, affective pedagogies and radical democracy

The consolidation of neoliberal capitalism over the past decade has been intense, as has the articulation of critical and creative responses to it. One of the most remarkable is the turn towards forms of political resistance that seek liberation from the logics of state and capital while – or through – simultaneously creating alternative, radically democratic modes of existence. Many of these draw on anarchistic and autonomist traditions of critical theory which assert the possibility of prefiguring alternative political projects as well as critiquing existing ones, thus appearing to transcend what Herbert Marcuse described as a ‘vicious circle’ of liberation (1964, 1967). We have thus seen a proliferation of work on problems of prefigurative politics, autonomy, co-operation and self-valorisation; significantly, there is renewed attention to pedagogy in critical theory and as a political practice. However, there is still little attention to the affective and social labour that this type of prefigurative theory and practice requires, or to the systemic critique of the conditions of possibility for it to constitute a challenge to neoliberalism. My concern is that these lacunae can lead to misinterpretations of the meaning of radical democracy and of its possibilities and limitations as a challenge to the logics of neoliberal capitalism and other forms of dehumanising power. In this paper, I draw on work with British-based cultural workers who are active in radical-democratic projects to illustrate how bringing practical work into conversation with critical theories of political subjectivity, on the one hand, and theories of affective pedagogy and politics, on the other, can contribute to strengthening both theories and practices of radical democracy