How might teachers enable self-confidence? A review study

In the context of learner-centred learning and curricular reform, self-confidence is invoked as an important construct. However, there is no easily available research-informed guidance on what self-confidence means for the professional teacher. This study uses the analytic technique of Concept Analysis to review psychology and education literatures to provide a 'take-home' message for teachers. The review identifies conceptual artefacts (ideas, theories, concepts which explain, connect, predict or apply knowledge) that the teacher can appropriate in order to enable learner self-confidence. These conceptual artefacts are classified in three groups: characterising self-confidence; self-judgements of confidence; and factors that influence the development of self-confidence. The review finds self-confidence to be a robust and stable psychological construct, best promoted through teachers' attention to learners' development of knowledge and engagement in socially designed learning activities. It further finds that teachers' attention to activities which involve learners' self-regulation are of importance

Accountability as a Debiasing Strategy: Testing the Effect of Racial Diversity in Employment Committees

Congress passed Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 with the primary goal of integrating the workforce and eliminating arbitrary bias against minorities and other groups who had been historically excluded. Yet substantial research reveals that racial bias persists and continues to limit opportunities and outcomes for racial minorities in the workplace. Because these denials of opportunity result from myriad individual hiring and promotion decisions made by vast numbers of managers, finding effective strategies to reduce the impact of bias has proven challenging. Some have proposed that a sense of accountability, or “the implicit or explicit expectation that one may be called on to justify one’s beliefs, feelings, and actions to others,” can decrease bias. This Article examines the conditions under which accountability to a committee of peers reduces racial bias and discrimination. More specifically, this Article provides the first empirical test of whether an employment committee’s racial composition influences the decision-making process. My experimental results reveal that race does in fact matter. Accountability to a racially diverse committee leads to more hiring and promotion of underrepresented minorities than does accountability to a homogeneous committee. Members of diverse committees were more likely to value diversity, acknowledge structural discrimination, and favor inclusive promotion decisions. This suggests that accountability as a debiasing strategy is more nuanced than previously theorized. If simply changing the racial composition of a committee can indeed nudge less discriminatory behavior, we can encourage these changes through voluntary organizational policies like having an NFL “Rooney Rule” for hiring committees. In addition, Title VII can be interpreted to hold employers liable under a negligence theory to encourage the types of changes that yield inclusive hires and promotions

Beyond Personalization: Research Directions in Multistakeholder Recommendation

Recommender systems are personalized information access applications; they are ubiquitous in today's online environment, and effective at finding items that meet user needs and tastes. As the reach of recommender systems has extended, it has become apparent that the single-minded focus on the user common to academic research has obscured other important aspects of recommendation outcomes. Properties such as fairness, balance, profitability, and reciprocity are not captured by typical metrics for recommender system evaluation. The concept of multistakeholder recommendation has emerged as a unifying framework for describing and understanding recommendation settings where the end user is not the sole focus. This article describes the origins of multistakeholder recommendation, and the landscape of system designs. It provides illustrative examples of current research, as well as outlining open questions and research directions for the field.Comment: 64 page

Serious violent offenders : developing a risk assessment framework

In order to establish a complementary language of risk across all agencies, it is recommended that the Scottish Government and the Risk Management Authority actively disseminate MAPPA guidance through the RMA's specialist training programme and through the development of protocols and memoranda of agreement. Prior to a violent offender framework being implemented, an audit of existing numbers, staffing, budgetary and other resources should be undertaken across the Community Justice Authorities to ascertain projected needs

Training Interviewers to Spot ‘Faking’ in Employment Interviews: Can Frame of Reference Training Enhance Cue Detection, Cue Utilisation, and Overall Profile Accuracy for Rating Candidate Deceptive Impression Management?

Deceptive Impression Management (DIM), defined as faking in order to be perceived positively, is frequently used by candidates in employment interviews. DIM is problematic because it is difficult for interviewers to accurately rate, leading to unsound interview evaluations. This invalidates employment interviews because the best candidate is not selected for the job (i.e., deceptive candidates are hired above preferable honest candidates). Deceptive candidates’ good interview performance is negatively related to desired organisational outcomes (i.e., once hired, deceptive candidates are more likely to underperform on the job, as well as engage in undesirable workplace behaviours such as lack of effort and/or theft). Drawing on the Realistic Accuracy Model (RAM), it is argued that interviewers do not detect and/or utilise relevant and available DIM cues because they have not been taught to do so. The present study uses a post-test only true experimental design to determine whether students can be trained to accurately rate targets’ DIM. A Frame of Reference Training (FORT) intervention was developed, implemented, and evaluated. FORT aimed to teach experimental group participants to detect and utilise relevant and available DIM cues and to make accurate overall DIM profile ratings. Results show that FORT had a positive effect on DIM cue detection, but no effect on either DIM cue utilisation accuracy or overall DIM profile rating accuracy. Findings are attributed to the moderators of the ‘good judge’, ‘good information’ as well as the design and implementation of the FORT intervention. Because FORT had a positive effect on DIM cue detection accuracy, it is concluded that raters’ behaviour observation ability can be learned and improved with training. To the knowledge of the researcher and research supervisor, this is the first study to: (1) determine the trainability of DIM using FORT; (2) support and disentangle RAM by measuring the effect of FORT on each stage of RAM independently; (3) indirectly examine new dispositional reasoning schemas pertaining to DIM. Keywords: deceptive impression management (DIM), Frame of Reference training (FOR), Realistic Accuracy Model (RAM), accuracy, employment interviews