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Growing up green? Disrupting neoliberalist and anthropocentric constructions of nature in primary and early educational spaces
No full textThis empirical study responds to evidence that demonstrates the value of engaging children with nature in schools and nurseries, using a mixed-method, multi-sited, multiple perspective approach to explore the everyday experiences of children and adults in the outside spaces of educational and ECEC settings. It seeks to understand how children’s access is mediated and how children and practitioners respond to and value nature in these spaces. 26 children aged 3-6 and 8 adults were recruited from four field sites: a community infant school, an independent pre-preparatory school, a charitable playcentre and a day nursery. Data consisted of 1) photographic depictions of outdoor spaces taken by children and accompanying talk that arose during walks and workshops; 2) semi-structured interviews with practitioners. Children’s talk and practitioners’ interviews were analysed using a Reflexive Thematic Analysis.Findings show that access to outdoor space at school and nursery is mediated and boundaried by practitioners, with physical and imagined geographies shaping children’s nature engagement. However, children’s performative embodied engagements within everyday natural phenomena deemed undesirable by adults, allow them to challenge the boundaries that they constantly have to negotiate. Children enact spontaneous common worlding practices, feeling their world as part of an entangled collection of heterogenous presences and relational active flow, with different possibilities and ways of seeing continuously opening up. Children develop within common worlds that are more-than-human, beyond the fabricated spaces that adults curate for them.Children’s responses to nature are conceptualised as a disruptive force in the face of wider ideological and structural influences that impact adults’ practice. Practitioners are firmly embedded within and occasionally enthusiastic promotors of prevailing policy discourse. A neoliberal homogeneity is tacitly produced and promoted across settings. Nature is converted into an educational commodity, instrumentalised in the name of continual active learning and the acquisition of science-based skills and knowledge. Outdoor areas become material, rationalised spaces controlled by adult intervention and surveillance, with access opportunities individualised, prescriptive usage patterns designated and spatiality shaped according to the potential to develop ideal learners. Paradoxically, nature is also seen as a romantic purification device, with children accessing its essential goodness to enhance their own (temporary) freedom. Institutional narratives, confidence and a resource-rich environment allow the children attending the private school far greater access to nature, while still closely mediated by practitioners. Structural and perceptual factors create both the advantages that the private school children enjoy and the disadvantages that the other children face: thus, to enjoy regular access to diverse nature at school or nursery is not necessarily a right, but a privilege.This research adds a substantial contribution to knowledge, building on existing literature and expanding the field of vision. It broadens the knowledge base beyond an anthropocentric lens which has informed much of the work in this area, being informed by both new materialist and social constructionist approaches. It adds a novel methodological approach, coupling elements of Photovoice with a Reflexive Thematic Analysis and focussing comparatively on cohorts of both children and adults in state, private and charitable contexts. It has generated in-depth, nuanced knowledge with the very young, through attending to their small scale and mundane practices. It contributes to debates around social justice as it highlights the inequalities between private and state settings. It speaks to sustainability concerns, demonstrating how the very young respond to nature and how their access is mediated by adults. It shows that even in the most nature depleted settings, children enact new types of common worlds that are not dualistically good or bad, safe or unsafe, but dynamic and transformative.</p
Identity motives and subjective well-being: disentangling their longitudinal associations
No full textIdentity processes are thought to be guided by motives for belonging, self-esteem, distinctiveness, continuity, efficacy, and meaning. Satisfaction of identity motives is therefore expected to foster higher well-being. Across two studies among adolescents, we examined day-to-day (Study 1: N= 527; Mage = 15.70; seven assessments over one week), and medium-term (Study 2: N=1,395; Mage = 15.72; four waves over one year) associations between identity motives satisfaction and subjective well-being (life satisfaction, positive and negative emotions). We hypothesized that within-person changes in satisfaction of identity motives would be associated with both concurrent and subsequent changes in subjective well-being at both time scales. In Study 1, Random-Intercept Cross-Lagged Panel Models showed that day-to-day changes in identity motives satisfaction were associated with concurrent changes in subjective well-being, but did not predict changes in well-being on the next day. In Study 2, we replicated the concurrent associations between identity motives satisfaction and subjective well-being over a one-year time-span; moreover, fluctuations in satisfaction of three motives (belonging, self-esteem, and continuity) significantly predicted changes in aspects of subjective well-being several months later. Our findings highlight the potential utility of supporting individuals to fulfil their identity motives to foster well-being.</p
Comparing the carbon footprint of fMRI data processing and analysis approaches
No full textWe compared the carbon emissions of preprocessing and statistical analysis of fMRI data in software packages FSL, SPM, and fMRIPrep using an existing open access dataset. Carbon emissions for fMRIPrep were 30x larger than those of FSL, and 23x those of SPM. We also compared the scientific performance of each package, reflected by sensitivity to statistical activation. Overall, fMRIPrep demonstrated slightly superior statistical sensitivity to both FSL and SPM, with FSL also outperforming SPM. However, this pattern varied by brain region. Researchers analysing fMRI data can use these findings to inform their choice of software package, considering the carbon footprint of data processing alongside usability and quality of derived output. Researchers should be conscious of how and when tools that elicit heavy compute are used, minimising energy usage and subsequent file size when possible. Researchers developing and using such tools should consider the extent to which computationally expensive steps are necessary to produce high quality results.</p
Links between child executive function and adjustment: a three-site study
No full textCross-site comparisons indicate that East Asian children typically excel on tests of executive function (EF), but interpreting this contrast is made difficult by both the heavy reliance on testing in school settings and by the scarcity of studies that assess across-site measurement invariance. Addressing these gaps, our study included remote home-based assessments of EF for 1,002 children (Mage = 5.19 years, SD = 0.51; 49% male) from England, Hong Kong, and mainland China, as well as parental ratings of externalizing and internalizing adjustment problems. The models established partial scalar invariance but did not show clear site differences. Supporting the universal importance of EF for behavioral self-regulation, EF task performance and parent-rated externalizing problems showed similar inverse associations across sites.</p
Single enantiomer propeller-shaped polynuclear complexes as catalysts – proof-of-concept for enantioinduction in a Michael addition reaction
No full textWe report a family of propeller-shaped polynuclear metal complexes whose overall chirality is dictated by a single stereogenic centre within their component amino alcohol- ligand. These topologically intriguing complexes are readily prepared in enantiomerically pure form and are shown here to catalyse the conjugate addition of barbituric acids and their derivatives to nitroalkenes, with a catalyst loading of 1 mol%. Although only low levels of enantioinduction are observed, control experiments indicate that the enantioselectivity is dictated by the overall topology of the complex and not governed by binding to the tetrametallic entity, heralding a potentially new mode of catalysis.</p
Towards a transformative pedagogy for the development of academic voice through peer talk
No full textIn this thesis, voice is seen as an embodied quality that can emerge through a process of peer learning in Higher Education contexts; it is explored and analysed through a post-structural lens as emergent, dialogic, intersubjective and situational, impacted by institutional and sociocultural contexts. Voice is defined as the capacity to embody meaning-making with self within a discourse community. The thesis explores whether students can develop spoken academic voice, mediated by a peer in student-student interaction, in tutor-free spaces. This was investigated using interaction analysis of two consecutive dialogues held within EAP seminars and PG writing groups, triangulated with interviews. The majority of the 28 participants were from non-English-speaking backgrounds. The purpose was to discover the direct impact of the dialogic encounters on the students’ academic competence, identity and voice relating to the academic assignments they discussed. The data is categorised within three dimensions of language use: cognitive, sociocultural and pedagogic (Vygotsky, 1986; 2012). The results show that spontaneous talk in a democratic community of practice provides an active time and space for academic identity and voice creation. The findings demonstrate that spoken voice can be mediated by a peer through a process of unprepared interactional exchanges within and across disciplines. Voice is seen to emerge from a transformative pedagogy (Freire, 1970), which enables students to act as agentive participants in academic spaces that are facilitated but not constrained by a tutor. Enabling peer talk is argued to be a powerful element of inclusive practice, which can allow students to overcome a range of transitions and find their voice in learning.</p
Normalizzare l’emergenza: il sovraffollamento carcerario oltre la crisi
No full textPrison overcrowding in Italy is often interpreted as a temporary anomaly, the result of a crisis within the penal system. This article aims to challenge this notion. To this end, it examines the policies adopted since the 1990s, demonstrating how the management of prison congestion has surreptitiously contributed to reinforcing a tightening of penal control. In this context, the discussion explores how overcrowding has taken on a political and symbolic function, legitimizing a securitarian narrative and fostering a punitive shift. In conclusion, it argues that only a structural change, based on decriminalisation and social investment, could break this cycle and realign Italian penal policy with the constitutional principles of justice and equality.</p
Ekphrasis in Italian Culture from 15th-Century Humanism to the Digital Age
No full textComprising the Greek words ek (out) and phrásis (manner of expression), ekphrasis originally meant “telling in full” and was intended as an exercise of rhetorical skills aiming at “a vividly descriptive speech bringing the thing shown powerfully before the eyes”. It then came to signify the literary response to a visual representation, and vice versa, encompassing the most widespread late Greek conception of energeia, that is, “pictorial vividness”. Nowadays, however, the concept of ekphrasis as “the poetic description of a pictorial or sculptural work of art” has received increasing scholarly attention also in other art / media forms, such as cinematography, comics, music, photography, and television. Despite some notable works, little critical attention has been given to the study of socio-cultural ekphrastic discourses in Italian studies in terms of transmedia encounters associated to Latin elegy, gender studies, literary criticism, 20th-century aesthetic experimentations, contemporary Italian novel, post-colonial literature, and digital contexts. This volume addresses such plurality of discourses from 15th-century Humanism to today.</p
Understanding experiences of quality of care in family planning services: moving beyond metrics to meaning-centred approaches
No full textEMBARGOED: expected end date 30.05.2028</p
Standing up to sexism: does challenging sexist comments have transformational benefits in how women value themselves and other women?
No full textResearch suggests that challenging sexist comments may mitigate its negative effects and may even have some positive effects, but the nature of this association is unclear: is it causal or a mere correlational artefact? Across three studies, we examined whether challenging sexist comments relates to how women value themselves and other women. We hypothesised that challenging sexist comments may have a transformative effect, a moderating effect, or no effect, merely reflecting pre-existing beliefs. Studies 1a, 1b, and 2 found that women who challenged sexist comments valued sexual consent more and accepted gender inequality and rape myths less. However, these effects disappeared when accounting for baseline sexism, suggesting that women with less sexist attitudes were more likely to challenge sexist comments – and already hold these values. Study 3 confirmed this, showing that challengers and those who wanted to challenge held similar attitudes, while non-challengers valued themselves and other women less. These findings question the assumption that challenging sexism has immediate transformative benefits – but the possibility remains that repeated acts of challenging would have stronger effects. Instead, our findings suggest that women who confront sexism are likely to have pre-existing egalitarian beliefs. For educators, activists, and policymakers, strategies to reduce sexist attitudes and fostering cultural and psychological change is paramount instead of simply placing the onus on women’s individual acts of resistance.</p