At the receiving end: Are policies and practices working to keep students in high schools?

Exclusion occurs when school systems do not have the answers, or are often unwilling to delve deeply into the primary source of the behaviours in focus. “Exclusion, intolerance, “getting rid of’, ‘not my responsibility’, blame, are all symptoms of projection – projected guilt; guilt over dilemmas we don't know how to solve” – (Parffrey, 1994, p.117). Two decades later these words still ring true in our education system

Part-time work and non-school activities while in high school: Is there a threshold effect on achievement?

Student involvement in extracurricular activities including sport and part-time work is considered to have an influence on achievement, yet there are conflicting views on whether the effect is negative or positive. Data were collected from 2,257 secondary students to investigate the relationship of different participation patterns with grade averages. Results reveal higher grades for students reporting 5-20 hours of total extracurricular activities including part-time work. In contrast, fewer than 5 and more than 20 hours weekly spent in combined extracurricular activities were associated with lowerachievement. Implications for educators and parents are discussed

Motivating the Professoriate: Why Sticks and Carrots are only for Donkeys

Government decreases in funding to universities accompanied by increased accountability measures for both teaching and research have resulted in tertiary management structures consistent with these developments. Universities have historically relied upon the active and collegial participation of their academic staff to achieve the goals and aspirations that have driven the sector for generations. This paper utilises psychological motivation theory and research to examine developments designed by management to promote faculty productivity. We challenge the naive implementation of change strategies that do not appear to be based on theory and/or research. Strategies are proposed for monitoring such changes in policy and practice within well-established social science paradigms to ensure achievement of desired ends rather than undesirable negative effects upon the university’s capacity to fulfil its role in the creation and transmission of new knowledge...

Motiver le corps professoral : Les universitaires n'ont besoin ni de bâtons ni de carottes

Sous l’effet de la diminution des dotations gouvernementales aux universités et de l’augmentation des mesures destinées à favoriser la transparence, tant dans l’enseignement que dans la recherche, les structures de gestion de l’enseignement tertiaire se transforment. Les universités ont de tout temps fait confiance à la participation active et collégiale de leur personnel universitaire pour atteindre les objectifs et donner corps aux attentes qui animent le secteur depuis des générations. Dans cet article, les auteurs ont recours à la théorie psychologique de la motivation et à la recherche correspondante pour examiner les dispositifs conçus par les instances dirigeantes pour promouvoir la productivité du corps professoral. Nous nous élevons contre la mise en œuvre naïve de stratégies du changement qui ne semblent reposer ni sur la théorie ni sur la recherche. Nous proposons des stratégies visant à suivre ces changements de la politique et des pratiques conformément à certains paradigmes bien établis des sciences sociales, afin d’assurer la réalisation des objectifs souhaités sans risquer de provoquer des effets négatifs indésirables qui empêchent l’université d’accomplir sa mission de création et de transmission de savoirs nouveaux...

Participatory Research: New Approaches to the Research to Practice Dilemma

The dissemination of research into practice presents an enduring challenge to the social sciences. Despite intervention research focused on individuals with disabilities and their families that reveals clear pathways to improving practice, researchers and practitioners alike express concern regarding limited and slow implementation of the results of research in typical school and community settings. This article reviews three widely disparate literatures concerned with the gap between research and practice, highlighting suggestions for narrowing the gap through the incorporation of elements of practice into the research process. For each of the steps in our research on the social relationships of children and youth, we present examples of participatory research approaches to decision making designed to increase the relevance and validity of findings for everyday practice. We conclude with criteria that might be applied to the design of effective interventions for research validation to increase the likelihood that the results of intervention research will be adopted by school and community constituencies

Altered Functional Subnetwork During Emotional Face Processing

Importance Although deficits in emotional processing are prominent in schizophrenia, it has been difficult to identify neural mechanisms related to the genetic risk for this highly heritable illness. Prior studies have not found consistent regional activation or connectivity alterations in first-degree relatives compared with healthy controls, suggesting that a more comprehensive search for connectomic biomarkers is warranted.Objectives To identify a potential systems-level intermediate phenotype linked to emotion processing in schizophrenia and to examine the psychological association, task specificity, test-retest reliability, and clinical validity of the identified phenotype.Design, Setting, and Participations The study was performed in university research hospitals from June 1, 2008, through December 31, 2013. We examined 58 unaffected first-degree relatives of patients with schizophrenia and 94 healthy controls with an emotional face-matching functional magnetic resonance imaging paradigm. Test-retest reliability was analyzed with an independent sample of 26 healthy participants. A clinical association study was performed in 31 patients with schizophrenia and 45 healthy controls. Data analysis was performed from January 1 to September 30, 2014.Main Outcomes and Measures Conventional amygdala activity and seeded connectivity measures, graph-based global and local network connectivity measures, Spearman rank correlation, intraclass correlation, and gray matter volumes.Results Among the 152 volunteers included in the relative-control sample, 58 were unaffected first-degree relatives of patients with schizophrenia (mean [SD] age, 33.29 [12.56]; 38 were women), and 94 were healthy controls without a first-degree relative with mental illness (mean [SD] age, 32.69 [10.09] years; 55 were women). A graph-theoretical connectivity approach identified significantly decreased connectivity in a subnetwork that primarily included the limbic cortex, visual cortex, and subcortex during emotional face processing (cluster-level P corrected for familywise error = .006) in relatives compared with controls. The connectivity of the same subnetwork was significantly decreased in patients with schizophrenia (F = 6.29, P = .01). Furthermore, we found that this subnetwork connectivity measure was negatively correlated with trait anxiety scores (P = .04), test-retest reliable (intraclass correlation coefficient = 0.57), specific to emotional face processing (F = 17.97, P < .001), and independent of gray matter volumes of the identified brain areas (F = 1.84, P = .18). Replicating previous results, no significant group differences were found in face-related amygdala activation and amygdala–anterior cingulate cortex connectivity (P corrected for familywise error =.37 and .11, respectively).Conclusions and Relevance Our results indicate that altered connectivity in a visual-limbic subnetwork during emotional face processing may be a functional connectomic intermediate phenotype for schizophrenia. The phenotype is reliable, task specific, related to trait anxiety, and associated with manifest illness. These data encourage the further investigation of this phenotype in clinical and pharmacologic studies