Transforming roles to support student development of academic literacies: a reflection on one team’s experience

Social work is a discipline that attracts students from diverse academic backgrounds. Many are first in family to attend university, and come to university through alternative pathways such as vocational education. As a result, there are higher levels of attrition compared to other disciplines, especially in the first year. To address this, and in keeping with a commitment to provide accessible education, one school of social work undertook a project to embed academic literacies into the curriculum. This paper used Gibb’s reflective process to explore how this was experienced by team members. Data were collected via staff focus groups at two different points in time across the project and compared. The reflection unpacked a number of tensions experienced by team members, including concerns about potential loss of resources as a result of academics adopting new roles, and concerns about implementing what was seen as Westernised academic skills which may not fit with students’ ways of thinking and creating knowledge. Overfull curricula and constant change also appeared to be of concern. The reflection highlighted that to achieve effective and sustainable change, action was required at multiple levels.     

Parental Monitoring,Association with Externalized Behavior,and Academic Outcomes in Urban African‐American Youth: A Moderated Mediation Analysis

African‐American adolescents exposed to neighborhood disadvantage are at increased risk for engaging in problem behavior and academic underachievement. It is critical to identify the mechanisms that reduce problem behavior and promote better academic outcomes in this population. Based on social disorganization and socioecological theories, the current prospective study examined pathways from parental monitoring to academic outcomes via externalizing behavior at different levels of neighborhood disadvantage. A moderated mediation model employing maximum likelihood was conducted on 339 African‐American students from 9th to 11th grade (49.3% females) with a mean age of 14.8 years (SD ± 0.35). The results indicated that parental monitoring predicted low externalizing behavior, and low externalizing behavior predicted better academic outcomes after controlling for externalizing behavior in 9th grade, intervention status, and gender. Mediation was supported, as the index of mediation was significant. Conversely, neighborhood disadvantage did not moderate the path from parental monitoring to externalizing behavior. Implications for intervention at both community and individual levels and study limitations are discussed.     

Don’t tell me I’m normal: inpatient psychotherapy of a severely abused patient at the Cassel Hospital

This paper is a case study of a patient with severe personality disorder undergoing treatment at the Cassel Hospital. It looks at a phase of her individual psychoanalytic psychotherapy and how that sits within an institutional model of treatment that can be understood as applied psychoanalysis, in which Tom Main’s concept of a ‘culture of enquiry’ aims to observe and bring together splitting and projective processes operating at all levels of the organisation. The patient, who had been sexually abused and then suffered a prolonged suicidal breakdown, exerted intense pressure on the institution through her experience of herself as both a victim of abuse and a participant in it. A working through is described, in which different parts of the patient that had been projected into different parts of the institution are brought together, and her primitive demand for a two-person world gives way to an acceptance of triangulation. Themes from her individual sessions are enacted in the milieu-based treatment, and conversely struggles in the patient community appear in her sessions. It is from drawing these parts of the patient together as a whole institution that the treatment derives its power and effectiveness.     

Family Resource Allocation after Firstborns Leave Home: Implications for Secondborns' Academic Functioning

This study assessed secondborn adolescents' perceptions of changes in the allocation of family resources following their firstborn siblings' departure from home after high school, and whether perceived changes were related to changes over 1 year in secondborns' academic functioning. Participants were secondborn siblings (mean age = 16.58, SD = 0.91) from 115 families in which the older sibling had left the family home in the previous year. Allocation of resources was measured via coded qualitative interviews. Most (77%) secondborns reported increases in at least one type of family resource (i.e., parental companionship, attention, material goods), and many reported an increase in multiple types of resources in the year following their older sibling's departure. Consistent with resource dilution theory, perceptions of increases in fathers' companionship, fathers' attention, and mothers' companionship were related to improvements over time in secondborns' academic functioning.     

Parental involvement,adolescents' self‐determined learning and academic achievement in Urban China

Self‐determined learning is essential to academic success. The motivational resources development model argues that parents promote academic success in their children indirectly by nurturing self‐determined learner. In this study, applying a structural equation modelling and using data collected from 8th graders in Zhuhai, China (n = 1009) in 2012, we aim to answer 2 research questions: (a) What forms of parental involvement are highly correlated with self‐determined learning and (b) Can self‐determined learning fully mediate the relationship between parental involvement and students' academic performance? We find that parental leisure involvement is positively and significantly associated with the development of self‐determined learning, which in turn is significantly and positively correlated with academic achievement. Parental provision of structure or parental academic assistance is not significantly associated with students' self‐regulation and students' academic achievement.     

Relations of positive and negative expressivity and effortful control to kindergarteners’ student–teacher relationship,academic engagement,and externalizing problems at school

The current study examined the role of naturally-occurring negative and positive emotion expressivity in kindergarten and children’s effortful control (EC) on their relationships with teachers, academic engagement, and problems behaviors in school. Further, the potential moderating role of EC on these important school outcomes was assessed. Emotion and engagement were observed at school. EC was assessed by multiple methods. Teachers reported on their student–teacher relationships and students’ externalizing behaviors. Children’s emotion expressivity and EC were related to engagement and relationships with teachers as well as behavioral problems at school. Children low in EC may be particularly vulnerable to the poor outcomes associated with relatively intense emotion expressivity as they struggle to manage their emotions and behaviors in the classroom.     

Neuropsychological deficits in preschool as predictors of ADHD symptoms and academic achievement in late adolescence

High levels of ADHD symptoms are related to severe negative outcomes, which underscore the importance of identifying early markers of these behavior problems. The main aim of the present study was therefore to investigate whether neuropsychological deficits in preschool are related to later ADHD symptoms and academic achievement, over and above the influence of early ADHD symptom levels. The present study is unique because it includes a broader range of predictors compared to previous studies and the participants are followed over time for as long as 13 years (i.e., ages 5–18 years). Preschool data included measures of executive functioning and reaction time variability as well as emotional reactivity and emotion regulation of both positive and negative emotions. When controlling for early ADHD symptom levels, working memory, reaction time variability, and regulation of happiness/exuberance were significantly related to inattention whereas regulation of happiness/exuberance and anger reactivity were significantly related to hyperactivity/impulsivity. Furthermore, working memory and reaction time variability in preschool were significantly related to academic achievement in late adolescence beyond the influence of early ADHD symptoms. These findings could suggest that it is possible to screen for early neuropsychological deficits and thereby identify children who are at risk of negative outcomes. Furthermore, our results suggest that interventions need to look beyond executive functioning deficits in ADHD and also target the role of emotional functioning and reaction time variability. The importance of including both the positive and negative aspects of emotional functioning and distinguishing between emotion regulation and emotional reactivity was also demonstrated.     

Elementary school students with AD/HD: predictors of academic achievement

Academic underachievement frequently is associated with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (AD/HD); however, the role of variables beyond AD/HD symptoms and cognitive mediators is unknown. Further, whether prediction models vary (a) relative to non-AD/HD students, (b) between math and reading, and (c) based on how achievement is defined has not been examined. Multiple measures (e.g., teacher ratings and behavior observations) were examined as predictors for concurrent achievement outcomes (standardized achievement test scores and report card grades) in math and reading in two samples of 1st through 4th grade children (136 with AD/HD, 53 without AD/HD). Teacher perceptions of academic skills were the strongest predictors of achievement test scores for both groups, while academic skills and enablers accounted for reading report card grades in children with AD/HD but not their normal counterparts. Implications of these findings for school-based assessment and intervention for students with AD/HD are discussed.     

Getting emotional about ‘brain mobility’

Our purpose in this paper is to offer an historical and cultural account of the relationships between globalisation, the nation-state, emotion and the academic mobility policies that are driven by the knowledge economy. In so doing we seek to contribute to the emerging literature on the links between emotion, policy and globalisation. These links are under-researched and under-theorised. Seeking to build on Arjun Appadurai’s work on the global cultural economy, we coin the term ‘emoscapes’. Emoscapes, we argue, involve the movement and mobilisation of emotion on intersecting global, national and personal scales. This concept helps us to illuminate how emotion circulates within global power and knowledge geographies. We discuss global policy atmospherics in terms of the structural power relationship between different nation-states and regions, the feelings such relationships generate on matters of ‘brain mobility’ and the implications for policy. This provides a broad context for our discussion of the nation-state itself where we consider how the nation-state’s position within these global power formations contributes to national feelings. Taking the example of Australia, we look at its emotional archive, the implications for the ways in which Australian policies have territorialised the global ‘brain mobility’ policy discourse and the nation-state policy atmospherics involved. Ultimately we show how emoscapes have entered and influenced policy and how they are part of global and national power and knowledge geographies.     

大学生学习拖延研究综述

学习拖延是指有目的地推迟必须完成的学习任务的行为。学习者的个性特质、角色冲突、自我调节能力不足以及学习任务特征,是导致大学生学习拖延的重要因素。当前对大学生学习拖延的测评主要采用自陈式量表,对学习拖延的干预主要采用认知-行为咨询法。强化实验研究、探讨综合性理论框架是该研究领域的重要发展方向。