The price of education in a land where illiteracy means death

'Snakes took shelter with men. Snakes did not kill men, men did not kill snakes. It seemed that the end of the world had started.” The words are a rare oral record of the worst environmental disaster in recorded history, which took place in 1970 when a relatively small cyclone combined with a high tide in the bowl-like topography of the Bay of Bengal, and whipped up a huge wall of water which swamped the low lying delta island of Bhola, Bangladesh. As many as half a million were drowned or crushed by the wave. Whe

The three not-so-wise manoeuvres behind willingess-to-pay calculations

Economists seek to value entities that the lay public describe as 'invaluable' or 'priceless' by extrapolating values from responses probing willingness to pay (WTP) and willingness to accept (WTA) from the perspective of psychology, arguing that both techniques depend on the rigour of human cognition, a rigour which is generally and systematically absent in the lay public

Leadership and listening: The transformation of School X

Leadership is a vague concept that engenders a surprisingly precise mental image. When we think ‘leadership’ we think of more or less ideal ‘types’: Martin Luther King, Gandhi, Churchill, Nelson Mandela – individuals with substantial personal charisma. In the leadership literature charisma is closely associated with theories of transformational leadership, but transformation is possible without charisma. As an organisational psychologist I had the privilege of witnessing a dramatic revival of a large urban high school, driven by a man who neither looked nor sounded like Richard Branson. It was a case I conducted along with research assistant Georgina Cohen as part of a study lead by professors Paul Gollan and Adrian Wilkinson, and funded by the Australian Research Council and industry partner Voice Project. This, briefly, is the story of School X, a school where, in the words of one of the principals was characterised by “blue lights and sirens, and [students] getting carted off”. School X hit the national news more than once for all the wrong reasons, but its successful transformation has barely touched the media

The biographizing trend in popular science writing

Biography’s enduring popularity as a non-fiction form appears to have triggered a trend in science writing toward the “biography of the object” rather than the “subject.” The trend gives rise to a number of questions. Are these texts really biographies or simply conventional non-fiction texts that borrow the lustre of the biography “brand,” occasionally co-opting elements of biographical techniques? Does their success correspond to the degree to which they successfully mimic conventional biographies of human subjects? Finally, does the biographizing trend in popular science writing imperil the science? In responding to the research questions, this study examines evidence, both in case study and quantitative form, that biographizing of objects is a new trend and takes a case study approach to two popular examples of the “new” genre

Getting a grip on why incivility happens within the workplace : a commentary essay : Michael Leiter: Analyzing and theorizing the dynamics of the workplace incivility crisis. SprinterBriefs in Psychology, New York, 2013 (88 pp). ISBN 978-94-007-5571-0 (eBook)

To map our commentary essay, we will first start by understanding exactly what ‘incivility’ is and how it differentiates from other constructs, in order for the audience to contextualise Leiter’s (2013_ use of incivility. Next will be our overview and in it our first line of discussion is the understanding the Risk Management Model and how Leiter uses it as a framework (e.g. emotions and their impact as social contagions within a workplace)

Managing (out) corruption in NGOs: A case study from the Bangladesh delta

Corruption is one of the most destructive and pervasive wicked problems, present in commercial enterprises, governmental agencies and Non-Government Organisations (NGOs). The reduction of corruption is prominent amongst the United Nation's Sustainable Development Goals, but research on corruption in the context of NGOs in developing countries is scarce, particularly relating to the identification and management of corruption in this context. This paper adds new insights to this under-researched field by providing a rich description of a single, longitudinal ethnographic case study of one NGO in Bangladesh, which has successfully identified and managed (out) complex, entrenched corruption through a simple sustainable intervention: expanding and improving information channels for stakeholders

Getting a grip on why incivility happens within the workplace : a commentary essay : Michael Leiter: Analyzing and theorizing the dynamics of the workplace incivility crisis. SprinterBriefs in Psychology, New York, 2013 (88 pp). ISBN 978-94-007-5571-0 (eBook)

To map our commentary essay, we will first start by understanding exactly what ‘incivility’ is and how it differentiates from other constructs, in order for the audience to contextualise Leiter’s (2013_ use of incivility. Next will be our overview and in it our first line of discussion is the understanding the Risk Management Model and how Leiter uses it as a framework (e.g. emotions and their impact as social contagions within a workplace)

Research ethics for human research and legal issues

This chapter provides an overview of ethical issues presented to researchers working within a university context, in particular in the field of psychology. It covers ethical issues relating to reasons for conducting research, issues relating to expertise and capacity to properly conduct that research, ethical challenges in handling data, developing research design, recruiting and handling participants, and consent. It also considers issues post-project and post-publication.

Narrative risks in science writing for the lay public

The narrative method of presenting popular science method promises to extend the audience of science, but carries risks related to two broad aspects of story: the power of narrative to impose a compelling and easily interpretable structure on discrete events and the unpredictability and mystique associated with story

The ‘lifecycle’ of human beings: A call to explore vector-borne diseases from an ecosystem perspective

Background: Dengue virus, an Aedes mosquito-borne flavivirus, is associated with close to 400 million reported infections per annum worldwide. Reduction of dengue virus transmission depends entirely on limiting Aedes breeding or preventing adult female contact with humans. Currently, the World Health Organization promotes the strategic approach of integrated vector management in order to optimise resources for mosquito control. Main text: Neglected tropical disease researchers focus on geographical zones where the incidence of clinical cases, and prevalence of vectors, are high. In combatting those infectious diseases such as dengue that affect mainly low-income populations in developing regions, a mosquito-centric approach is frequently adopted. This prioritises environmental factors that facilitate or impede the lifecycle progression of the vector. Climatic variables (such as rainfall and wind speed) that impact the vector’s lifecycle either causally or by happenstance also affect the human host’s ‘lifecycle’, but in very different ways. The socioeconomic impacts of the same variables that influence vector control impact host vulnerability but at different points in the human lifecycle to those of the vector. Here, we argue that the vulnerability of the vector and that of the host interact in complex and unpredictable ways that are characteristic of (complex and intransigent) ‘wicked problems’. Moreover, they are treated by public health programs in ways that may ignore this complexity. This opinion draws on recent evidence showing that the best climate predictors of the scale of dengue outbreaks in Bangladesh cannot be explained through a simple vector-to-host causal model. Conclusions: In mapping causal pathways for vector-borne diseases this article makes a case to elevate the lifecycle of the human host to a level closer in equivalence to that of the vector. Here, we suggest value may be gained from transferring Rittel and Webber’s concept of a wicked (social) problem to dengue, malaria and other mosquito-transmitted public health concerns. This would take a ‘problem definition’ rather than a ‘solution-finding’ approach, particularly when considering problems in which climate impacts simultaneously on human and vector vulnerability