Making universities work for local communities: a community psychology project extending knowledge boundaries beyond the campus

The authors report on a study which explored ways in which teaching, learning and the curriculum could be made more relevant to the communities in which they were situated. Manchester Metropolitan University is a good example of the paradox of modern Universities. It employs an explicit Widening participation agenda, mindful of the low uptake of Higher education in the region (less than 1 in 5 young people take up University places). It wants to extend the ‘campus’ out to communities which it serves. Indeed, Manchester as a large Northern city has many wards with high deprivation indices, high unemployment and poor health outcomes. The University ‘corridor’, comprising Manchester Metropolitan University and University of Manchester is a high income generating area in Manchester. However, half a mile either side of this University corridor lies areas of high deprivation, for example, two areas in Manchester register in the top ten deprivation areas. There is much urban regeneration and Manchester is called a ‘Knowledge capital’. How can we make the ‘academy’ both more accessible and more relevant to its geographical constituency and members?Peer Reviewe

Social media platforms as complex and contradictory spaces for feminisms: Visibility, opportunity, power, resistance and activism

YesThis special issue on feminisms and social media is published at a unique point in time, namely when social media platforms are routinely utilised for communication from the mundane to the extraordinary, to offer support and solidarity, and to blame and victimise. Collectively, social media are online technologies that provide the ability for community building and interaction (Boyd & Ellison, 2007), allowing people to interact, share, create and consume online content (Lyons, McCreanor, Goodwin, & Moewaka Barnes, 2017). They include such platforms as Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Tinder, and Snapchat among others

Revolting talks of migrant workers and community organisers - a UK community psychology perspective

The United Kingdom’s neoliberal agenda has been theorised and commented on widely, notably around the austerity measures, worklessness and the Big Society. We respond to the call of the special issue, in centralising the importance of work for community engagement and individual identities. To explicate this we draw upon two areas of externally funded research undertaken with migrant workers and trainee community organisers to explore how individuals within these communities can be positioned as abject citizens. We engage with Imogen Tyler’s (2013) notion of revolting subjects to conceptualise the ways in which the particular positionings of subjects as revolting occurs within an English context. The paper engages explicitly with a critical community psychology stance to reflect on the consequences of the neoliberal agenda on paid and unpaid work within communities. We add to the call for community psychologists to explore, critique and challenge the current neoliberal codes that positions migrant workers and deprived communities as “revolting subjects”

Exploring the context of strengths – a new approach to strength-based assessment

Since the 1990s many strength-based assessments (for example, inventories, checklists, interview schedules) have been developed for use with children and young people, but these have offered a limited appraisal of the contexts in which strengths are present. In this study a new form of contextualised strength-based assessment was used within the routine practice of an educational psychologist. A multiple case study explored how this approach worked with eight children and young people referred to a local authority educational psychology team, ranging in age from 6.9 to 19.2 years. Qualitative data were analysed holistically using a story-board method. In all cases, participants identified situations or contexts which they associated with the presence of specific strengths. In some cases they highlighted aspects of a situation which might be hypothesised to have pedagogical value. There is discussion of the tensions that can arise in using this approach in schools when a more negative view of a pupil has already emerged. Nevertheless, the introduction of fresh information, about the type of contexts which suited specific children and young people, was helpful in providing ideas and recommendations which may have otherwise been missed

Dis/ability and austerity: beyond work and slow death

The forthcoming book Dis/ability Studies: Theorising Disablism and Ableism argues that we are living in an historical epoch which might be described as neoliberal-ableism, in which we are all subjected to slow death, increased precarity and growing debility. In this paper we apply this analysis to a consideration of austerity with further reference to disability studies and politics

Factorial validity and measurement invariance of the uncertainty response scale

Abstract This study presents the adaptation of the Uncertainty Response Scale (Greco & Roger, Pers. Individ. Differ, 31:519-534, 2001) to Portuguese. This instrument was administered to a non-clinical community sample composed of 1596 students and professionals, allowing a thorough validity and invariance analysis by randomly dividing participants into three subsamples to perform: an exploratory factor analysis (sample one: N = 512); a preliminary confirmatory factor analysis to identify the final solution for the scale (sample two: N = 543); and the confirmatory factor analysis (sample three: N = 541). Samples two and three were also used for multi-group analysis to assess measurement invariance, invariance across gender, sociocultural levels, and students versus active professionals. Results showed the scale reflects the original factorial structure, as well as good internal consistency and overall good psychometric qualities. Invariance results across groups reached structural invariance which provides a confident invariance measurement for this scale, while invariance across gender and sociocultural levels reached metric invariance. Accordingly, differences between these groups were explored, by comparing means with multi-group analysis to establish the scale's sensitivity toward social vulnerability, by demonstrating the existence of statistically significant differences regarding gender and sociocultural levels on how individuals cope with uncertainty, specifically in terms of emotional strategies, as a self-defeating strategy. Thus, females scored higher on emotional uncertainty, as well as low sociocultural levels, compared with higher ones. Therefore, it is proposed that this scale could be a sound alternative to explore strategies for coping with uncertainty, when considering social, economic, or other environmental circumstances that may affect them

Using a situative perspective to gain a deeper understanding of how children’s strengths are related to social context

Over the last twenty-five years, there has been an increase in the availability of published checklists and schedules which allow practitioners to identify the strengths of children and young people, including those with special educational needs. While helpful, these assessments are unable to tell us about the nature of contextual factors which support the expression of particular strengths. In this study, we took a situative perspective to explore how specific classroom practices facilitated strengths. A multiple case study design was used to analyse practices nominated by three children/young people with special educational needs. Qualitative analysis revealed how aspects of practice afforded the opportunity for each child to participate in ways which they equated with their strengths. This style of strength-based assessment led to a more sustained examination of supportive practice features than would have been achieved through interview alone