Tales from the chalkface: using narratives to explore agency, resilience and identity of gay teachers

Existing literature is dominated by accounts which position gay teachers as victims. We were concerned that this only presented a partial insight into the experiences of gay teachers. This study researched the personal and professional experiences of four gay teachers in England. It builds on existing research by presenting positive narratives rather than positioning gay teachers as victims. We use the term “chalkface” to illustrate that all were practicing teachers. The purpose of the study was to explore their experiences as gay teachers throughout their careers. The study used the life history method to create narratives of each participant. Semi-structured interviews were used. The study found that the repeal of Section 28 in England in 2003 did not have an immediate effect on the identities, resilience, and agency of the participants. The 2010 Equality Act in England and changes to the school inspection framework had a greater influence in supporting their agency, resilience, and willingness to merge personal and professional identities. All but one participant managed to use their identities as gay teachers to advance inclusion and social justice through the curriculum. Although the narratives that we have presented do illuminate some negative experiences, the accounts are largely positive, in contrast with existing literature which positions gay teachers as victims

Self-productivity and complementarities in human development : evidence from MARS

This paper investigates the role of self-productivity and home resources in capability formation from infancy to adolescence. In addition, we study the complementarities between basic cognitive, motor and noncognitive abilities and social as well as academic achievement. Our data are taken from the Mannheim Study of Children at Risk (MARS), an epidemiological cohort study following the long-term outcome of early risk factors. Results indicate that initial risk conditions cumulate and that differences in basic abilities increase during development. Self-productivity rises in the developmental process and complementarities are evident. Noncognitive abilities promote cognitive abilities and social achievement. There is remarkable stability in the distribution of the economic and socio-emotional home resources during the early life cycle. This is presumably a major reason for the evolution of inequality in human development

The theory of the firm and its critics: a stocktaking and assessment

Includes bibliographical references."Prepared for Jean-Michel Glachant and Eric Brousseau, eds. New Institutional Economics: A Textbook, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press.""This version: August 22, 2005."Since its emergence in the 1970s the modern economic or Coasian theory of the firm has been discussed and challenged by sociologists, heterodox economists, management scholars, and other critics. This chapter reviews and assesses these critiques, focusing on behavioral issues (bounded rationality and motivation), process (including path dependence and the selection argument), entrepreneurship, and the challenge from knowledge-based theories of the firm

Textual reproduction: Collaboration, gender, and authorship in Renaissance drama

This dissertation emerges from a pair of related perceptions about the English Renaissance that criticism has largely ignored. First, collaboration was the dominant mode of textual production in the Renaissance theatre, before copyright, authorial ownership, and an idealized conception of individuated style. Second, textual production--the writing, performing, collecting, and publishing of plays--occurred within the context of conflicting sex/gender systems; moreover, the printed forms of play-texts participated in the construction of those systems. This dissertation proposes an historically rigorous reconsideration of both textual and sexual reproduction at the points of their intersection. Chapter One, Seeing Double, revises our conception of collaboration in light of recent historicist and post-structuralist treatments of authorship. Arguing that criticism has traditionally framed readings of the drama with an anachronistic notion of the author, the chapter offers an interpretation of The Knight of the Burning Pestle based in the collaborative practice of Renaissance theatrical and textual production. Chapter Two, Between Gentlemen, traces the relation of male friendship, homoeroticism, class, and collaboration in period conduct books, essays, The Two Noble Kinsmen and The Two Gentlemen of Verona. Chapter Three, Representing Author/ity, analyzes an emerging author-function and patriarchalism in plays like Pericles that place authorial figures on stage, and relates these representations to contemporaneous folio volumes that reconceptualized the collection of texts around a single authorial figure. Chapter Four, Reproducing Works, begins by tracing the transition of play-texts from theatrical performance to printed quartos; focusing on title pages, it argues that quartos advertised themselves as ephemeral and collaborative re-presentations of theatrical events. Returning to the dramatic folios and their patriarchal pedigree, the chapter concentrates upon the 1647 Beaumont and Fletcher folio. Got by Two Fathers, the textual offspring of two Masculines espous\u27d (in the words of one of its commendatory poems), this volume illuminates both absolutist/patriarchal and homoerotic textual reproduction, and inscribes the competition of authorship and collaboration at a decisive moment in English history. The dissertation concludes with a consideration of the folio collections of Margaret Cavendish\u27s plays, volumes that register the difficulties of a woman attempting to insert herself into a genre and textual economy normatively transacted by men

Development of the Default Mode and Central Executive Networks across early adolescence: A longitudinal study

The mature brain is organized into distinct neural networks defined by regions demonstrating correlated activity during task performance as well as rest. While research has begun to examine differences in these networks between children and adults, little is known about developmental changes during early adolescence. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), we examined the Default Mode Network (DMN) and the Central Executive Network (CEN) at ages 10 and 13 in a longitudinal sample of 45 participants. In the DMN, participants showed increasing integration (i.e., stronger within-network correlations) between the posterior cingulate cortex (PCC) and the medial prefrontal cortex. During this time frame participants also showed increased segregation (i.e., weaker between-network correlations) between the PCC and the CEN. Similarly, from age 10 to 13, participants showed increased connectivity between the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex and other CEN nodes, as well as increasing DMN segregation. IQ was significantly positively related to CEN integration at age 10, and between-network segregation at both ages. These findings highlight early adolescence as a period of significant maturation for the brain's functional architecture and demonstrate the utility of longitudinal designs to investigate neural network development