Student-Teacher Relationships and Early School Adaptation of Children with ASD: A Conceptual Framework

In this conceptual article, we integrate existing literature on early school transitions, ecological systems theory, and student-teacher relationships to propose a framework for investigating the transition to school for children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD). A review of the literature suggests that the quality of early student-teacher relationships may play an important role in this process for young children with ASD. Factors important in predicting student-teacher relationship quality, and ultimately, early school outcomes, are derived from the existing literature, which is heavily focused on the experiences of typically developing children. Hypothesized direct effects of child characteristics, teacher factors, classroom/school characteristics, and parent-school connectedness on student-teacher relationship quality are set forth. Potential moderators of the relation between student-teacher relationship quality and child outcomes are proposed, including child cognitive functioning, child relationships with other school staff, classroom placement, and parent involvement. Continued research on these factors will help identify malleable targets for school-based intervention with teachers and children with ASD to enhance student-teacher relationship quality and, in turn, school adjustment for this student population.     

The Objective Value of Subjective Value: A Multi‐Round Negotiation Study

A 2‐round negotiation study provided evidence that positive feelings resulting from one negotiation can be economically rewarding in a second negotiation. Negotiators experiencing greater subjective value (SV)—that is, social, perceptual, and emotional outcomes from a negotiation—in Round 1 achieved greater individual and joint objective negotiation performance in Round 2, even with Round 1 economic outcomes controlled. Moreover, Round 1 SV predicted the desire to negotiate again with the same counterpart, whereas objective negotiation performance had no such association. Taken together, the results suggest that positive feelings, not just positive outcomes, can evoke future economic success.     

Expanding the study of U.S. religion: Reflections on the state of a subfield

The study of U.S. religion, which dates from the 19th century, expanded its sources, methods, and scope during the last quarter of the 20th century, as specialists offered more inclusive historical narratives. That methodological expansion never went far enough, however, and the impulse toward narrative inclusiveness has been restrained in recent years. The subfield, I argue, now faces a number of challenges that also confront other specializations in the study of religion—contraction, overspecialization, fragmentation, and parochialism. After a focused overview of the subfield’s history, I discuss those challenges. Proposing a tentative response, I suggest that specialists celebrate methodological diversity and theoretical sophistication, encourage comparative and translocative studies, and increase collaboration across disciplinary boundaries and national borders. Finally, I suggest that we expand the subfield’s temporal span and geographical scope and reframe the study of U.S. religion in terms of the Atlantic World, the Pacific World, and the Western Hemisphere.     

Towards the concerned study of religion: Exploring the double power–play disparity

Increasing numbers of students of religion, from various disciplines, address issues of public interest, going beyond documentation and analysis, taking the quality of human life in religion and society as a criterion for their recommendations. Accordingly, systematic reflection on the concerned study of religion is gaining relevance. The approach chosen in this article is to focus on one particular aspect, in this case the double – cognitive and moral – disparity in religious contexts between forms of power and play.Power is viewed as the human capacity to influence other people’s behaviour, even against their will. Play is defined here as the human capacity to deal simultaneously with different realities. Power and play represent two human capacities that in themselves are neutral but in combination may change from means, a situation of parity, into goal, a situation of disparity. A first type of disparity is cognitive in nature. It stems from the reduction of the potential open dynamic meaning-making that the power–play constellation could stimulate as well. A second disparity is of a moral nature. It stems from the fact that the power–play set may come to interfere with the quality of human life. As a set, power and play thus move between the roles of being either subservient means or self-fulfilling goal, between a soft and a hard version.Religion is one field in which the gift for play is applied, resulting in the relationship with a sacred or divine reality. Whereas religions cannot survive without some form of power, the form given to the power–play set marks out a religion’s identity. Within our time the critical study of the double disparity of hard power and play has gained urgency. Global society faces severe problems of poverty, violence, pollution and miscommunication. Religions may act as a cause, but also as problem solver.Students of religion are invited to form multidisciplinary teams to study the double disparity in its actual form, while simultaneously exploring prospects for the promotion of both open meaning-making and the quality of human life, with power and play in a relationship of parity. This turn would necessitate a reappraisal of the research agenda for Religious/World-view Studies. It demands an identity change for this study field, both in the selection of themes for research and funding, and in the explicitly applied nature of scholarly work.     

Searching for salvation: An analysis of US religious searching on the World Wide Web

The goals of this research were to answer three questions. How predominant is religious searching online? How do people interact with Web search engines when searching for religious information? How effective are these interactions in locating relevant information? Specifically, referring to a US demographic, we analyzed five data sets from Web search engine, collected between 1997 and 2005, of over a million queries each in order to investigate religious searching on the Web. Results point to four key findings. First, there is no evidence of a decrease in religious Web-searching behaviors. Religious interest is a persistent topic of Web searching. Second, those seeking religious information on the Web are becoming slightly more interactive in their searching. Third, there is no evidence for a move away from mainstream religions toward non-mainstream religions since the majority of the search terms are associated with established religions. Fourth, our work does not support the hypothesis that traditional religious affiliation is associated with lower adoption of or sophistication with technology. These factors point to the Web as a potentially usefully communication medium for a variety of religious organizations.     

Religion is natural, atheism is not: On why everybody is both right and wrong

After discussing evidence of irreligion and the rise of the so called “New Atheism”, the authors refute the claim that this poses a problem for the cognitive science of religion and its hypothesis that religion is natural. The “naturalness hypothesis” is not deterministic but probabilistic and thus leaves room for atheism. This, the authors maintain, is true of both the by-product and adaptationist stances within the cognitive science of religion. In this context the authors also discuss the memetic or “unnaturalness” hypothesis, i.e. that religion is a “virus of the mind”. The authors criticize accounts of atheism offered by cognitive scientists of religion as being based on unfounded assumptions about the psychology of atheists, and object to the notion that the natural aspects of religion by corollary make atheism unnatural. By considering human cognition in a semiotic framework and emphasizing its natural ability to take part in semiotic systems of signs, atheism emerges as a natural, cognitive strategy. The authors argue that to reach a fuller account of religion, the cognitive (naturalness) and memetic (unnaturalness) hypotheses of religion must be merged. Finally, a preliminary analysis of the “New Atheism” is offered in terms of semiotic and cognitive dynamics.     

Constructing the boundaries of Anglican orthodoxy: An analysis of the Global Anglican Future Conference (GAFCON)

This article examines the evolution of the transnational orthodox Anglican movement through the lens of the Global Anglican Future Conference (GAFCON)—the movement’s most significant public expression to date. GAFCON represented the first large-scale event at which a sizable number of Anglicans (ordained and lay) from both the global North and global South gathered to galvanise an ‘orthodox’ response to the current ‘crisis’ in the Anglican Communion (a crisis precipitated by debates over the status of homosexuality). The analysis is based upon fieldwork conducted at GAFCON, a review of a range of documentary sources, and retrospective interviews with several attendees. The article argues that GAFCON constituted a key moment for the attempted framing of movement objectives for participants, other Anglicans, and outside observers, fixing a standard of orthodoxy in the final Jerusalem Declaration. While attempting to project an image of orthodox unity to outsiders, GAFCON leaders also made the negotiation of certain aspects of cultural difference central to the event’s purpose. Detailed examinations are provided of two topics (homosexuality and female ordination) that exemplify the ongoing negotiation of the boundaries of orthodoxy within the movement. The article concludes with reflections on the significance and further development of the movement.     

Locke's theory of classification

In §155 of his New Theory of Vision Berkeley explains that a hypothetical ‘unbodied spirit’ ‘cannot comprehend the manner wherein geometers describe a right line or circle’.1 ¹All references to Berkeley are from, A. A. Luce and T. E. Jessop (eds.), The Works of George Berkeley, Bishop of Cloyne (London: Thomas Nelson and Sons, Ltd., 1948) The following abbreviations are used: An Essay Towards A New Theory of Vision, section x = New Theory x; Philosophical Commentaries, entry x = Commentaries x; Part I of A Treatise concerning the Principles of Knowledge, section x = Principles x. All other references to Berkeley's works are of the form The Works of George Berkeley, Bishop of Cloyne, volume x, page y = Works, x, y. The reason for this, Berkeley continues, is that ‘the rule and compass with their use being things of which it is impossible he should have any notion.’ This reference to geometrical tools has led virtually all commentators to conclude that at least one reason why the unbodied spirit cannot have knowledge of plane geometry is because it cannot manipulate a ruler or a compass. In this article I will show that such an interpretation is flawed. I will instead argue that Berkeley's understanding of Euclidian geometry was based on Isaac Barrow's account of the foundations of geometry. On this view geometrical objects are conceived in terms of the idealized motion that generates the objects of geometry. Consequently, that what the unbodied spirit cannot do in this context is to form an idea of motion rather than being unable to handle geometrical tools.