Interview: In conversation with Professor Debbie Epstein

This conversation with Professor Emerita Debbie Epstein explores her political activism in South Africa and academic works in the United Kingdom (UK). In particular, the interview focuses on her political involvement against the Apartheid system, which caused her to leave the country six months after starting her undergraduate study at the University of the Witwatersrand. Moreover, the interview discusses Epstein’s transition to the UK and her work on gender and education, elite schools, anti-racist education and Southern theories. This interview contributes to understanding factors that affect access and equity in education

Taking Responsibility: The Multiple and Shifting Positions of Social Justice Educators

In this article, we present a qualitative multi-case study of three beginning elementary teachers working in New York City and describe the distinct ways in which each articulates her responsibility to teach a social justice-oriented education. We employ positioning theory to examine how teachers narrate their relationship to the concept of social justice and how this relates to the ways in which they identify themselves and others as capable and qualified to engage in such work. We find that responsibility to teach for social justice is often delegated based on a perception of experiences with injustice and wonder how this rigid outlook can be made more malleable and inclusive. We draw from the work of Sharon Todd to imagine how individuals, situated within unique and divergent circumstances, can all be framed as integral members in the making of a more just world. This article ends with suggestions for how teachers and teacher educators can infuse such theories into reflective, autoethnographic practices

School violence, school differences and school discourses

This article highlights one strand of a study which investigated the concept of the violenceresilient school. In six inner-city secondary schools, data on violent incidents in school and violent crime in the neighbourhood were gathered, and compared with school practices to minimise violence, accessed through interviews. Some degree of association between the patterns of behaviour and school practices was found: schools with a wider range of wellconnected practices seemed to have less difficult behaviour. Interviews also showed that the different schools had different organisational discourses for construing school violence, its possible causes and the possible solutions. Differences in practices are best understood in connection with differences in these discourses. Some of the features of school discourses are outlined, including their range, their core metaphor and their silences. We suggest that organisational discourse is an important concept in explaining school effects and school differences, and that improvement attempts could have clearer regard to this concept

Inclusive Masculinities in a Working-Class Sixth Form in Northeast England

This research examines the construction of masculinity among a group of working-class boys aged sixteen to nineteen in the northeast of England. Drawing on data collected from a six-week ethnography with boys in a religious (Christian) sixth form college, this study documents how only a small minority of these boys embodied the orthodox archetype of masculinity that has traditionally been associated with working-class youth. Instead, the great majority of participants adopted attitudes and behaviors that can be categorized as a set of inclusive masculinities: They espoused positive attitudes toward homosexuality, engaged in physical tactility and emotional intimacy, and used homosexually themed language without the intent to wound or marginalize other boys. These findings pose a considerable challenge to dominant narratives on working-class masculinities; narratives that must now be reconfigured to account for the proliferation of inclusive masculinities among working-class youth

Clustered Environments and Randomized Genes: A Fundamental Distinction between Conventional and Genetic Epidemiology

In a cross-sectional study Davey Smith and colleagues show why observational studies can produce misleading claims regarding potential causal factors for disease, and illustrate the use of mendelian randomization to study environmentally modifiable risk factors

From Ideal to Practice and Back Again: Beginning Teachers Teaching for Social Justice

The five authors of this article designed a multicase study to follow recent graduates of an elementary preservice teacher education program into their beginning teaching placements and explore the ways in which they enacted social justice curricula. The authors highlight the stories of three beginning teachers, honoring the plurality of their conceptions of social justice teaching and the resiliency they exhibited in translating social justice ideals into viable pedagogy. They also discuss the struggles the teachers faced when enacting social justice curricula and the tenuous connection they perceived between their conceptions and their practices. The authors emphasize that such struggles are inevitable and end the article with recommendations for ways in which teacher educators can prepare beginning teachers for the uncertain journey of teaching for social justice

Effects of antiplatelet therapy on stroke risk by brain imaging features of intracerebral haemorrhage and cerebral small vessel diseases: subgroup analyses of the RESTART randomised, open-label trial

Background Findings from the RESTART trial suggest that starting antiplatelet therapy might reduce the risk of recurrent symptomatic intracerebral haemorrhage compared with avoiding antiplatelet therapy. Brain imaging features of intracerebral haemorrhage and cerebral small vessel diseases (such as cerebral microbleeds) are associated with greater risks of recurrent intracerebral haemorrhage. We did subgroup analyses of the RESTART trial to explore whether these brain imaging features modify the effects of antiplatelet therapy

GM-CSF Increases Mucosal and Systemic Immunogenicity of an H1N1 Influenza DNA Vaccine Administered into the Epidermis of Non-Human Primates

Background: The recent H5N1 avian and H1N1 swine-origin influenza virus outbreaks reaffirm that the threat of a worldwide influenza pandemic is both real and ever-present. Vaccination is still considered the best strategy for protection against influenza virus infection but a significant challenge is to identify new vaccine approaches that offer accelerated production, broader protection against drifted and shifted strains, and the capacity to elicit anti-viral immune responses in the respiratory tract at the site of viral entry. As a safe alternative to live attenuated vaccines, the mucosal and systemic immunogenicity of an H1N1 influenza (A/New Caledonia/20/99) HA DNA vaccine administered by particle-mediated epidermal delivery (PMED or gene gun) was analyzed in rhesus macaques. Methodology/Principal Findings: Macaques were immunized at weeks 0, 8, and 16 using a disposable single-shot particlemediated delivery device designed for clinical use that delivers plasmid DNA directly into cells of the epidermis. Significant levels of hemagglutination inhibiting (HI) antibodies and cytokine-secreting HA-specific T cells were observed in the periphery of macaques following 1-3 doses of the PMED HA DNA vaccine. In addition, HA DNA vaccination induced detectable levels of HA-specific mucosal antibodies and T cells in the lung and gut-associated lymphoid tissues of vaccinated macaques. Importantly, co-delivery of a DNA encoding the rhesus macaque GM-CSF gene was found to significantly enhance both the systemic and mucosal immunogenicity of the HA DNA vaccine. Conclusions/Significance: These results provide strong support for the development of a particle-mediated epidermal DNA vaccine for protection against respiratory pathogens such as influenza and demonstrate, for the first time, the ability of skindelivered GM-CSF to serve as an effective mucosal adjuvant for vaccine induction of immune responses in the gut and respiratory tract. © 2010 Loudon et al