Effects of school-based interventions on motivation towards physical activity in children and adolescents: A systematic review and meta-analysis

IntroductionAssuming that motivation is the key to initiate and sustain beneficial health behaviors, the aim of this systematic review was to analyze the effects of school-based physical activity interventions on a variety of motivational outcomes towards PA in school-aged children and adolescents.MethodsA comprehensive literature search was carried out in six electronic databases to identify randomized controlled trials and quasi-experimental trials examining the effects of PA interventions implemented during the regular school day, e.g., during physical education lessons or lunch breaks. Primary outcomes of interest were students' motivation, basic psychological needs, goal orientation, enjoyment, and motivational teaching climate in physical education. Meta-analyses were conducted for these outcomes using Comprehensive Meta-analysis software. Secondarily, intervention effects on students' PA behaviors were examined and the findings summarized narratively. Methodological quality of studies was evaluated using the Cochrane Collaboration's tool for assessing risk of bias for randomized trials; certainty of evidence on outcome level was evaluated using the GRADE approach.ResultsIn total, 57 studies carried out between 2001 and 2018 were included in this review. Sixteen individual meta-analyses were performed and revealed significant pooled effects for the outcomes enjoyment (g = 0.310), perceived autonomy (g = 0.152), identified regulation (g = 0.378), intrinsic motivation (g = 0.419), self-determination index (g = 0.672), task/mastery climate (g = 0.254), ego/performance climate (g = −0.438), autonomy supportive climate (g = 0.262), task goal orientation (g = 1.370), ego goal orientation (g = −0.188). The narrative data synthesis indicated an increase in students' PA behavior. The overall risk of bias was high across all studies and certainty of evidence of meta-analyzed outcomes ranged from very low to moderate. Moderate certainty of evidence was found for ego/performance climate and ego goal orientation. Conclusions: Meta-analyses suggest that school-based PA interventions may be effective in increasing a variety of motivational outcomes. However, the certainty of evidence was limited in the majority of outcomes. Further research is needed to identify effective intervention strategies that increase students’ motivation towards PA.     

The Glory of God is a Human Being Fully Alive: Predictors of Positive Versus Negative Mental Health Among Clergy

Clergy fulfill vital societal functions as meaning makers and community builders. Partly because of their important roles, clergy frequently encounter stressful situations. Further, studies suggest that clergy experience high rates of depression. Despite this, few studies have examined protective factors for clergy that may increase their positive mental health. We invited all United Methodist clergy in North Carolina to participate in a survey. Of church‐serving clergy, 85 percent responded (n = 1,476). Hierarchical multiple regression was used to assess the predictors of three positive and four negative mental health outcomes. The three sets of predictors were: demographics, which explained 2–10 percent of the variances; variables typically related to mental health (social support, social isolation, and financial stress), which explained 14–41 percent of the variances; and clergy‐specific variables, which explained 14–20 percent of the variances, indicating the importance of measuring occupation‐specific variables. Some variables (e.g., congregation demands) significantly related to both positive and negative mental health, whereas others (e.g., positive congregations, congregation support) significantly related primarily to positive mental health. In addition to their intervention implications, these findings support separate consideration for negative versus positive mental health.     

A Sense of Powerlessness Fosters System Justification: Implications for the Legitimation of Authority,Hierarchy, and Government

In an attempt to explain the stability of hierarchy, we focus on the perspective of the powerless and how a subjective sense of dependence leads them to imbue the system and its authorities with legitimacy. In Study 1, we found in a nationally representative sample of U.S. employees that financial dependence on one's job was positively associated with the perceived legitimacy of one's supervisor. In Study 2, we observed that a general sense of powerlessness was positively correlated with the perceived legitimacy of the economic system. In Studies 3 and 4, priming experimental participants with feelings of powerlessness increased their justification of the social system, even when they were presented with system‐challenging explanations for race, class, and gender disparities. In Study 5, we demonstrated that the experience of powerlessness increased legitimation of governmental authorities (relative to baseline conditions). The processes we identify are likely to perpetuate inequality insofar as the powerless justify rather than strive to change the hierarchical structures that disadvantage them.     

Attachment to God,adult attachment,and spiritual pathology: mediator and moderator effects

In this exploratory study, we examined moderated mediation models grounded in psychoanalytic and attachment theory regarding the correspondence between adult attachment and Divine–human relating in a sample of graduate students in the USA. Results supported the correspondence hypothesis as positive correlations between adult attachment dimensions and attachment to God dimensions were observed. An interaction effect was observed as spiritual grandiosity moderated the indirect effect between insecure adult attachment and insecure God attachment dimensions through spiritual instability. Results therefore provided support for the theoretical notion that spiritual dysregulation can function as a mechanism of the attachment correspondence that varies as a function of spiritual grandiosity. Findings are discussed in the context of advancing existing theory on implicit models of attachment correspondence and the nature of the association between spiritual insecurity and spiritual grandiosity.     

Metaphor for Teaching: Good Teaching is Like Good Sex

Based on a real teaching experience in the classroom, the author reflects on the dynamics of gender, race/ethnicity, power, and privilege in the context of an undergraduate course in Christian sexual ethics. Through this analysis of pedagogical style and process initiated by a challenging moment at the midpoint of the semester, the author develops ten guiding principles for good teaching, using the metaphor that “good teaching is like good sex,” which emphasize the necessary elements and outcomes of a positive learning environment: intimacy, flexibility, creativity, satisfaction, care and attentiveness, vulnerability, fun and playfulness, reciprocity, full engagement, and risk‐taking. This experience provided the foundation for planning and assessment for the author's courses since.     

Education,queer theology,and spiritual development: disrupting heteronormativity for inclusion in Jewish,Muslim and Christian faith schools

Voices critiquing heteronormativity in faith schools often rely on an understanding of such schools as arbiters for heteronormative religious orthodoxies. Many proponents of Jewish, Muslim and Christian schools offer compelling responses to such claims by providing inclusive perspectives on faith schooling. By applying a queer reading of temporality to a critique of the latter body of work, this paper will argue that these perspectives, despite their commitments to inclusion, have affinities with logics of heteronormativity through their appeal to a language of hospitality that reproduces adherence to heteronormative binaries and identity frames as originary and normative. From here, the paper will suggest that queer theology’s understanding of the transcendent in relation to immanence offers resources for reframing discussions around heteronormativity and faith schools in ways that speak to the inclusive commitments of those critiqued in this paper, while also eschewing reproductive determinism as a basis for understanding spiritual development.     

Layers of engagement: Staff perceptions of spiritual care in residential aged care

ABSTRACT

Addressing the spiritual care needs of residents living in aged-care facilities should be an important dimension of quality care. We conducted semi-structured interviews with residential aged-care staff (including caregivers, nurses, managers, and chaplains) in New Zealand to explore how spiritual care is understood and operationalized. Many participants appeared to equate spiritual care with holistic care that respects the whole person. Participants discussed five types of spiritual care engagement requiring different skills, knowledge, and personal commitment, including information gathering, facilitation, companionship, end-of-life care, and counseling. Our findings suggest that the spiritual care that was offered by our participants, clergy and non-clergy alike, was predominantly informal and unplanned.     

Conceptualising ‘Authority’

Abstract

This paper attempts a conceptualisation of authority intended to be useful across all areas where the concept is relevant. It begins by setting off authority against power, on the one hand, and respect, on the other, and then spells out S₁’s authority as consisting in S₂’s voluntary action performed in the belief that S₁ would approve of it. While this definition should hold for authority generally, a distinction is made between three different kinds of authority according to what grounds them: personal, acquired and bestowed authority. Authority thus defined is then used as an example to argue that there is a kind of property that is response-dependent (R-D), but, consisting in all and only a response, is ontologically different from both secondary qualities and value judgments. While secondary qualities are interactive in that they depend on both the object and the perceiver and on what they are like, genuinely R-D qualities depend ontologically and metaphysically only on the responder. And while value judgments require a concept, R-D qualities require an action as a response. It is hoped that this metaphysical underpinning might be helpful in the discussion of authority in other areas of philosophy and beyond.     

Perceptions of Spirituality and Spiritual Care in Occupational Therapy Practice

Occupational therapists view human occupation as active engagement in that which brings meaning to the life of the patient. Spirituality is understood to be one important construct in the creation of meaning in the lives of human beings. This study examined the attitudes toward the use of spiritual care in occupational therapy. The study sample consisted of 310 occupational therapists. Data were collected through the use of a secure web-based survey tool. Analysis was conducted to determine the significance of relationships between several important constructs (e.g., education, theory base, definition of spirituality) and perceptions regarding the use of spiritual care.