Stress in youth sport: A developmental investigation of tennis parents

ObjectiveThis study investigated the stage-specific stressors experienced by British tennis parents whose children were situated either in the sampling, specializing or investment stages of participation in the sport [Côtè, J. (1999). The influence of the family in the development of talent in sport. The Sport Psychologist, 13, 395–417].Design and methodA qualitative design was employed with semi-structured interviews conducted with twenty two British tennis parents; six parents representing each of the first two stages of sports participation and ten representing the investment stage. Data was analyzed through a process of inductive content analysis following the method proposed by Miles and Huberman [Miles, M. B., & Huberman, A. M. (1994). Qualitative data analysis. London: Sage]. Data matrices were developed for each category of parent to allow for the comparison of the data between themes.Results and conclusionThree general dimensions of parental stressor emerged: Organizational, Competitive and Developmental. Organizational stressors included demands related to finance, time, training and coaching, and governing body systems; competitive stressors related to behavior, performance and morality-related issues associated with their child's matches; and developmental stressors centered on educational issues, uncertainty of tennis transitions, and future decision making. While sampling stage parents encountered few developmental stressors compared to later stage parents, a range of competitive stressors were highly prominent. Organizational stressors were particularly foremost for specializing and investment stage parents. Implications are discussed with reference to further research into the parental stress process and to the importance of stage-specific parent education initiatives.     

The Sheffield Stress on Women Demonstration Project: Summary and Reflections on Evaluation

The Sheffield Stress on Women Project (1992–1995) involved over 30 women's groups. Nearly 500 women took part in the groups, many of whom came with other local women to the Open Day Celebration which concluded the Project. Though the Project was successful within its own frame of reference, it has continued to be difficult to persuade local purchasers to fund these types of interventions for women. Against this background, conflicts and issues relating to the evaluation of the Project are discussed.     

Identifying “types” of ideologies and intergroup biases: Advancing a person-centred approach to social psychology

Whether it be those who are “high” on right-wing authoritarianism (RWA) and social dominance orientation (SDO), or a mixture of “low” on explicit, but “high” on implicit, bias, many social psychological theories predict the existence of distinct “types” of people. These assumptions are, however, untestable using variable-centred analyses. Accordingly, we argue that the time has come to utilise person-centred analyses that enable us to test these key assumptions. We open by demonstrating how to implement – and interpret – latent profile analysis (a type of person-centred analysis), using RWA and SDO as an example. We then discuss the debate over the dimensionality of political ideology to highlight the need for person-centred analyses. Next, we review person-centred approaches to political ideology and highlight recent work using person-centred analyses to assess key assumptions of ambivalent sexism and relative deprivation. We conclude by discussing limitations to person-centred approaches and by providing suggestions for future research.     

Good education,the good teacher,and a practical art of living a good life: a Catholic perspective

What is good education? We value education for reasons connected to the good provided by education in society. This good is connected to be the pedagogical aim of education. This article distinguishes five criteria for good education based on the concept of ‘Bildung’.

Next, these five criteria are used to develop the idea of the good teacher. The rationale behind the analysis is that the good teacher should be able to realise what we consider to be good education. There are different traditions of religiously affiliated schools in the world. This article gives insight into the idea of the good teacher in two documents of the Catholic Congregation of Education on the lay teacher. Finally, the article focuses on the formation of a practical art of living a good life. Again, the five characteristics of good education structure the analysis of this type of educational formation.     

Principals’ experiences of being disempowered by union members

This study explored school principals’ experience of managing unionised schools in South Africa. Qualitative in-depth phenomenological interviews were conducted with a purposeful selected sample of 13 school principals of unionised schools (age range 36-60 years). The school principals responded to open-ended interviews on their managing of school business with staff labour union activity. Thematic coding was utilised to analyse the collected data. Findings indicate the school principals to experience managerial paralysis from adversarial and confrontational engagement by union leaders and members towards them. They reported union activity a significant task diversion through mob-mentality co-option of the membership preventing rational discourse and compromising work health and safety of all school community members. Avenues need to be explored for school staff unionisation to be a resource for the core business of child education.     

Janus‐faced nature of colorblindness: Social dominance orientation moderates the relationship between colorblindness and outgroup attitudes

Colorblindness is a popular diversity ideology promoted as a means to intergroup harmony in ethnically diverse nations. While some research suggests that colorblindness reduces intergroup bias, other work suggests that colorblindness may increase it. The present research utilizes a national sample of European New Zealanders to examine whether the relationship between colorblind endorsement and outgroup attitudes is moderated by perceivers' individual differences in social dominance orientation (SDO). Data revealed that for participants low in SDO, colorblind beliefs predicted more negative attitudes toward ethnic minorities. However, for those high in SDO, colorblind beliefs predicted more positive attitudes toward ethnic minorities. Taken together, these findings suggest that colorblindness is not all good or bad for intergroup relations—instead, its effects may depend on perceivers' own egalitarian sentiments.     

Generalized and specific components of prejudice: The decomposition of intergroup context effects

Although different types of prejudice tend to be highly correlated, target‐specific and more generalized components can nevertheless be distinguished. Here, we analyze whether indicators of the intergroup context—threat, contact, and neighborhood composition—predict the target‐specific and/or generalized components of prejudice. Using data from the New Zealand Attitudes and Values Study (N = 4629), we build a multilevel model that captures the relationship between social dominance orientation, general levels of neighborhood heterogeneity, symbolic and realistic threat and cross‐group friendship (averaged across target groups), and generalized prejudice. Our model simultaneously estimates the relationship between target‐specific levels of these intergroup context indicators and target‐specific prejudice. Results indicated that social dominance orientation remained the strongest predictor of generalized prejudice when adjusting for other variables and that indicators of the intergroup context primarily explain differences between target group ratings. Aggregate levels of cross‐group friendship also had a small effect on generalized prejudice.