Fostering student engagement through a real-world, collaborative project across disciplines and institutions

Ample research has identified several features of a learning experience likely to enhance student learning, including collaboration, open-ended exploration, and problem-based learning in real-life scenarios. Missing is a model of how instructors might combine these elements into a single project that works flexibly across disciplines and institutions. This article fills this gap by offering such a model and reporting on its effectiveness in fostering student engagement. It describes a project that instructors at four colleges and universities in Flint, Michigan (USA) piloted during the height of the Flint water crisis. The project asked students to apply class content to the real-world problem unfolding around them, and offered students an opportunity to collaborate with peers. We collected qualitative and quantitative data on students’ reactions to the project, and found that the project succeeded in engaging students. We offer recommendations for how instructors can create similar projects in their own classrooms

Fat Talk in College Women: A Response Styles Perspective

This study placed the phenomenon of college women’s fat talk within response styles theory. We predicted that with increasing trait body dissatisfaction there would be an increase in rumination leading to a greater frequency of fat talk. We also predicted that neuroticism would moderate this mediation pathway, and that these effects would occur over and above body size. A survey was conducted on a convenience sample of 212 college women with a mean age of 22.04 years (SDage = 2.61). A bootstrap analysis utilizing PROCESS software supported the predicted moderated-mediation model. Thus, those college women higher in both trait body dissatisfaction and neuroticism would experience greater rumination and engage more frequently in fat talk. Implications of applying a response styles perspective for future research and fat talk interventions are discussed

Engaging moral agency for human rights: Outlooks from the Global South

A sample of 1,043 participants from 3 regions in the Global South (South and Southeast Asia, Africa, and Latin America) responded to the Personal and Institutional Rights to Aggression and Peace Survey (PAIRTAPS). Participants’ descriptions of what they would want to do if directly exposed to 3 specific human rights violations (torturing a prisoner, bombing civilians, and beating antiwar protestors) were coded for personal agency (prosocial or nonprosocial). In addition, their arguments concerning whether countries have a right to invade other countries and torture suspects, and whether civilians have a right to protest, were coded for moral disengagement and engagement. As predicted, moral engagement was positively correlated with prosocial agency and with belief in a right to protest, and negatively correlated with nonprosocial agency and with beliefs in the acceptability of state-perpetrated invasion and torture. When scores for activists versus nonactivists were compared, activists showed more prosocial agency on behalf of human rights, lower nonprosocial agency on behalf of those rights, and more moral engagement regarding the right to protest than nonactivists

Body appreciation around the world: Measurement invariance of the Body Appreciation Scale-2 (BAS-2) across 65 nations, 40 languages, gender identities, and age

The Body Appreciation Scale-2 (BAS-2) is a widely used measure of a core facet of the positive body image construct. However, extant research concerning measurement invariance of the BAS-2 across a large number of nations remains limited. Here, we utilised the Body Image in Nature (BINS) dataset - with data collected between 2020 and 2022 - to assess measurement invariance of the BAS-2 across 65 nations, 40 languages, gender identities, and age groups. Multi-group confirmatory factor analysis indicated that full scalar invariance was upheld across all nations, languages, gender identities, and age groups, suggesting that the unidimensional BAS-2 model has widespread applicability. There were large differences across nations and languages in latent body appreciation, while differences across gender identities and age groups were negligible-to-small. Additionally, greater body appreciation was significantly associated with higher life satisfaction, being single (versus being married or in a committed relationship), and greater rurality (versus urbanicity). Across a subset of nations where nation-level data were available, greater body appreciation was also significantly associated with greater cultural distance from the United States and greater relative income inequality. These findings suggest that the BAS-2 likely captures a near-universal conceptualisation of the body appreciation construct, which should facilitate further cross-cultural research

Exposure and Connectedness to Natural Environments: An Examination of the Measurement Invariance of the Nature Exposure Scale (NES) and Connectedness to Nature Scale (CNS) Across 65 Nations, 40 Languages, Gender Identities, and Age Groups

International audienceDetachment from nature is contributing to the environmental crisis and reversing this trend requires detailed monitoring and targeted interventions to reconnect people to nature. Most tools measuring nature exposure and attachment were developed in high-income countries and little is known about their robustness across national and linguistic groups. Therefore, we used data from the Body Image in Nature Survey to assess measurement invariance of the Nature Exposure Scale (NES) and the Connectedness to Nature Scale (CNS) across 65 nations, 40 languages, gender identities, and age groups (N = 56,968). While multi-group confirmatory factor analysis (MG-CFA) of the NES supported full scalar invariance across gender identities and age groups, only partial scalar invariance was supported across national and linguistic groups. MG-CFA of the CNS also supported full scalar invariance across gender identities and age groups, but only partial scalar invariance of a 7-item version of the CNS across national and linguistic groups. Nation-level associations between NES and CNS scores were negligible, likely reflecting a lack of conceptual clarity over what the NES is measuring. Individual-level associations between both measures and sociodemographic variables were weak. Findings suggest that the CNS-7 may be a useful tool to measure nature connectedness globally, but measures other than the NES may be needed to capture nature exposure cross-culturally