Researching young people's sexuality and learning about sex: experience, need, and sex and relationship education

This paper describes findings from an in-depth case study of young people's sexuality and learning about sex. Focus groups and unstructured interviews were conducted with young women and young men aged 15-16 years in a school in the north of England. Analysis focused on disjunctions between reported sexual behaviour in a park and in a bedsitting room, and the content of school sex and relationship education. Tensions between the accounts are considered for their impact on learning about sex, sexual negotiation, subjectivity and inter-generational understanding. Despite some negative experiences in sex education, the young people interviewed desired the affirmation and support of adults, and recommend sex and relationship education as the most appropriate vehicle for providing this. The value added outcomes of participation in the study, including consciousness and awareness raising, and the opportunity for reflection and debate and selves as 'experts', enhanced young people's view that non-judgemental and meaningful advice and guidance are possible in formal learning contexts. Implications for future forms of sex and relationship education are discussed.</p

Company investment announcements and the market value of the firm

This paper examines the stock market reaction to 402 company investment announcements made by UK companies during the 1991-1996 period. The market-adjusted abnormal returns are generally positive but small. Investment announcements are classified according to functional categories, and we find the level of abnormal returns to vary according to the type of capital investment being announced. In particular, we find the market to react more favourably to investments that 'create' future investment opportunities, than to investments which can be categorized as 'exercising' investment opportunities. The market reaction also varies with firm size, with large companies tending to experience smaller responses to announcements than do smaller firms. Chung et al. (1998) reported that the quality of a company's investment opportunities is the primary determinant of market reactions to capital expenditure decisions. The findings presented here lend some support to a role for investment opportunities in market valuations. Project size is also found to have a significant positive impact on the level of abnormal returns

Developing sexual competence? Exploring strategies for the provision of effective sexualities and relationships education

School-based sexualities and relationships education (SRE) offers one of the most promising means of improving young people's sexual health through developing 'sexual competence'. In the absence of evidence on whether the term holds the same meanings for young people and adults (e.g. teachers, researchers, policy-makers), the paper explores 'adult' notions of sexual competence as construed in research data and alluded to in UK Government guidance on SRE, then draws on empirical research with young people on factors that affect the contexts, motivations and outcomes of sexual encounters, and therefore have implications for sexual competence. These data from young people also challenge more traditional approaches to sexualities education in highlighting disjunctions between the content of school-based input and their reported sexual experience. The paper concludes by considering the implications of these insights for developing a shared notion of what SRE is trying to achieve and suggestions for recognition in the content and approaches to SRE.</p

Towards a Biopsychosocial Pedagogy for ESD

There is an evident “theory-practice gap” between uncritical assumptions that business schools can provide “business solutions to sustainability challenges” (AACSB, 2013) and critical theorists’ views that any such ‘solutions’ are likely to be symptomatic at best and a ‘smokescreen’ at worst. While proponents of ESD seek to position it as radical paradigm-breaking project, its co-option by vested interests renders it “virtually useless” (Fleming & Jones, 2013). This paper examines relevant literature and secondary sources (UNPRME progress reports) to verify this claim. It also theorises this problem in terms of an opposition between values & cognitions, which thwart the transformational learning necessary for transition to a sustainability paradigm. Finally, it recommends pedagogical approaches that can endow ESD with a new sense of purpose by changing the way learners’ think through developing “goods internal to practices” (MacIntyre, 2007) and responding to the challenges posed by McGilchrist’s (2009) divided brain theory