On love as an (im)properly political concept

Love has been theorized as a way to rebuild fractured communities, and a potential way to overcome differences on the political Left. However, might it be dangerous to invest so much potential in the power of love? In this paper, I reflect upon Michael Hardt’s work on the necessity of love for politics. Hardt emphasizes the radical and transformative potential of love, seeing it as a collective and generative force. Yet, I argue that Hardt’s reading of love, tied to a Spinozist theorization of joy, provides a limited understanding of the affective dimensions of love. Instead, I propose that we need to think about the ambivalence and incoherence of love: how love can be both joyful and painful, enduring and transient, expansive and territorial, revolutionary and conservative. That is, to consider how love, even in its seemingly most benevolent and unconditional form, can still be a source of exclusion, violence, and domination. Ultimately, I seek to challenge this fantasy of coherence and togetherness, asking if there is still space for the aspects of politics that are not joyful, that do not feel like love, that anger us, disappoint us, and that make us desire distance rather than togethernes

More than the power of two: leading school improvement in Indigenous education

Australian schools are now under constant pressure to improve their schools for students to have increased achievement and wellbeing outcomes, particularly for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander learners. This thesis has investigated the professional relationships of Indigenous Education Workers/Community Education Counsellors (IEWs/CECs) and principals and how they can lead together to improve their schools for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students. Until now, their professional relationship has not been well understood or documented. This thesis captures the research that has sought to examine, interpret and transform the ambiguity of the professional relationship between IEW/CEC and principal. On another level, the study has aimed to highlight effective practice, inform future improvements for Indigenous education within the schools studied and for those in the greater region, and finally, provide a call for change of policy and practice within the wider school system of Queensland. Informed by a plurality of paradigms, that of transformation and pragmatism and a tripartite of theory—critical theory, Indigenous standpoint theory and relationship leadership theory—this investigation was conducted across a large state educational region in Queensland. Using a mixed methods approach, quantitative and qualitative data were concurrently and sequentially collected over two phases in a four-year process. Each phase provided a collection of data that contributed to the separate and integrated, consecutive analysis of the core research questions. In Phase 1, 41 principals and 35 IEWs/CECs were surveyed for the broad analysis of the region's schools and contributed answers to the first core research question. In Phase 2, an instrumental case study was then undertaken in four schools with five exemplar IEW/CEC and principal pairs within the same region. The predominant methodological orientation for the case study was participatory and an adaption of critical participatory action research (CPAR) was conducted in three cycles over three years. Case study data were collected from a partnership assessment questionnaire, nine hours of responsive interviews, school documents and descriptive field notes from 13 site visits. This provided data for a holistic and detailed analysis of the IEW/CEC and principal professional relationship to answer all of the core research questions. Overall three rounds of data analysis occurred, multiple logics were employed together, with abduction, deduction and induction of descriptive statistics and thematic analysis of documentation. Results of this study indicate while similar conditions were experienced by most schools across the region, the IEW/CEC and principal relationship was variable and fragmented for many and the role of IEW/CEC was underestimated and underutilised. The case study pairs presented differently and of the six relational dynamics evident between every pair, the most highly enacted was that of trusting interpersonal communication. Their strong relationships were created through certain personal predispositions and deliberate practices, but these occurred more by chance and less by systemic design. Strong relationships between IEW/CEC and principals showed they could mitigate detrimental contextual features like racism, perceived or actual uncertainty of funding and insufficiency of system support, while they ameliorated school members' capacity so leader agency, student success, parent engagement and staff cultural competency growth could occur. This study revealed that the IEW/CEC and principal relationship was not only microcosmic to school-community partnerships, but was also that of the greater project of national reconciliation. This thesis provides implications that call for a change of policy and practice within the wider school system in the state of Queensland. It concludes that if educational outcomes for Indigenous students and engagement their families are to be maximised, professional relationships between IEWs/CECs and their principals need to exist and then expand beyond the pair through deliberate and greater systemic support. The position of IEW/CEC needs to be guaranteed in schools, training for Indigenist perspectives must be promulgated and systemic provision of resources for IEWs/CECs and principals in schools to grow their professional relationship must occur. A strong IEW/CEC and principal relationship can lead to less a transactional and different type of leader collaboration, one that creates a 'vorticity' of influence that enrols others into taking on the responsibility of supporting every Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander student succeed, something that is more than the power of two

Massachusetts Children in Need of Services: Trapped by the Legacy of \u3ci\u3eIsaac\u3c/i\u3e and \u3ci\u3eJeremy\u3c/i\u3e

In 1995, the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts severely limited the power of courts to review Department of Social Services (DSS) decisions regarding children in its care, in companion cases Care and Protection of Isaac and Care and Protection of Jeremy. All Massachusetts children in DSS’ care are affected by these cases. Isaac and Jeremy may conflict with the federal Adoption and Safe Families Act, which mandates regular review of out-of-home placements for children. In addition, these decisions disproportionately affect children of color. To protect the interests of children in DSS care, the negative impact of Isaac and Jeremy must be addressed by judicially or legislatively overruling them. Other states provide useful statutory examples of addressing this problem

The use of a cereal leaf product as human food

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More than the power of two: sharing leadership for social justice in Australian schools with Australian Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students

Australian schools are now under constant pressure to improve student achievement, particularly for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students. Successful school-community interrelationships are considered an important contributing factor to this improvement as is the school's educational leadership. This paper reports on a four year research project that looks into these contributing factors, through the work of Indigenous Education Workers (IEWs)/Community Education Counsellors (CECs) and principals and how they collaborate together. Informed by theoretical underpinnings emanating from a critical theorist framework, a mixed method, participatory action research multi-site case study approach was undertaken in a large educational region in the state of Queensland, Australia. Insights into the significance of the IEW/CEC role and the distinctive educational leadership relationship practice between IEWs/CECs and principals are presented. Finally, the paper explains the scholarly significance of the project and its potential to influence system policy and actions of educational leaders in Australian schools

The neural correlates of regulating another person's emotions: an exploratory fMRI study

Studies investigating the neurophysiological basis of intrapersonal emotion regulation (control of one's own emotional experience) report that the frontal cortex exerts a modulatory effect on limbic structures such as the amygdala and insula. However, no imaging study to date has examined the neurophysiological processes involved in interpersonal emotion regulation, where the goal is explicitly to regulate another person's emotion. Twenty healthy participants (10 males) underwent fMRI while regulating their own or another person's emotions. Intrapersonal and interpersonal emotion regulation tasks recruited an overlapping network of brain regions including bilateral lateral frontal cortex, pre-supplementary motor area, and left temporo-parietal junction. Activations unique to the interpersonal condition suggest that both affective (emotional simulation) and cognitive (mentalizing) aspects of empathy may be involved in the process of interpersonal emotion regulation. These findings provide an initial insight into the neural correlates of regulating another person's emotions and may be relevant to understanding mental health issues that involve problems with social interaction

The neural correlates of emotion regulation by implementation intentions

Several studies have investigated the neural basis of effortful emotion regulation (ER) but the neural basis of automatic ER has been less comprehensively explored. The present study investigated the neural basis of automatic ER supported by ‘implementation intentions’. 40 healthy participants underwent fMRI while viewing emotion-eliciting images and used either a previously-taught effortful ER strategy, in the form of a goal intention (e.g., try to take a detached perspective), or a more automatic ER strategy, in the form of an implementation intention (e.g., “If I see something disgusting, then I will think these are just pixels on the screen!”), to regulate their emotional response. Whereas goal intention ER strategies were associated with activation of brain areas previously reported to be involved in effortful ER (including dorsolateral prefrontal cortex), ER strategies based on an implementation intention strategy were associated with activation of right inferior frontal gyrus and ventro-parietal cortex, which may reflect the attentional control processes automatically captured by the cue for action contained within the implementation intention. Goal intentions were also associated with less effective modulation of left amygdala, supporting the increased efficacy of ER under implementation intention instructions, which showed coupling of orbitofrontal cortex and amygdala. The findings support previous behavioural studies in suggesting that forming an implementation intention enables people to enact goal-directed responses with less effort and more efficiency

The dog as an animal model for bladder and urethral urothelial carcinoma: comparative epidemiology and histology

Despite the recent approval of several novel agents for patients with metastatic urothelial carcinoma (UC), survival in this setting remains poor. As such, continued investigation into novel therapeutic options remains warranted. Pre clinical development of novel treatments requires an animal model that accurately simulates the disease in humans. The aim of the present study was to evaluate the dog as an animal model for human UC. A total of 260 cases of spontaneous, untreated canine primary urethral and urinary bladder UC, were epide¬miologically and histologically assessed and classified based on the current 2016 World Health Organization (WHO) tumor classification system. Canine data was compared with human data available from scientific literature. The mean age of dogs diagnosed with UC was 10.22 years (range, 4 15 years), which is equivalent to 60 70 human years. The results revealed a high association between UC diagnosis with the female sex [odds ratio (OR) 3.51; 95% confidence interval (CI) 2.57 4.79; P<0.001], surgical neutering (OR 4.57; 95% CI 1.87 11.12; P<0.001) and breed (OR 15.11 for Scottish terriers; 95% CI 8.99 25.41; P<0.001). Based on the 2016 WHO tumor (T), node and metastasis staging system, the primary tumors were characterized as T1 (38%), T2a (28%), T2b (13%) and T3 (22%). Non papillary, flat subgross tumor growth was strongly associated with muscle invasion (OR 31.00; P<0.001). Irrespective of subgross growth pattern, all assessable tumors were invading beyond the basement membrane compatible with infiltrating UC. Conventional, not further classifiable infiltrating UC was the most common type of tumor (90%), followed by UC with divergent, squamous and/or glandular differentiation (6%). Seven out of the 260 (2.8%) cases were classified as non urothelial based on their histological morphology. These cases included 5 (2%) squamous cell carci¬nomas, 1 (0.4%) adenocarcinoma and 1 (0.4%) neuroendocrine tumor. The 2 most striking common features of canine and human UC included high sex predilection and histological tumor appearance. The results support the suitability of the dog as an animal model for UC and confirm that dogs also spontaneously develop rare UC subtypes and bladder tumors, including plasmacytoid UC and neuroendocrine tumor, which are herein described for the first time in a non experimental animal species