Motivation to “Keep Pushin’”: Insights into Faculty Development Facilitating Inclusive Pedagogy

This study focuses on the lived experiences of nine university faculty who were attempting to implement inclusive teaching practices following university-sponsored faculty development. While the participants were each successful in their respective implementations, they all expressed anxiety at the beginning of the semester as well as at the end when they reflected upon the changes they made. This occurred despite deeply held motivations to change their teaching and make a difference for their students. The participants encountered barriers that centered on feelings related to self-confidence, student perception, and peer approval. Findings include descriptions of these anxieties and the supports that meaningfully helped them push through difficulties and sustain their journeys toward inclusive pedagogy.

Contextualizing Cannabis Implicit Associations: Consideration of Peers and Personality

Objective: Implicit cannabis associations (ICAs) inconsistently predict cannabis use (CU), and little is known about their formation. Personality, behavioral approach and inhibition, were tested as predictors of ICAs, which in turn, was expected to predict CU (mediation). Peer context was tested as a moderator. Method: Data were taken from three annual assessments of a larger longitudinal study. The community sample (314 emerging adults, mean age = 19.13, 54% female, 76% White/non-Hispanic at the first assessment) completed an ICA task and questionnaire assessments of CU, personality, and peer norms. Results: ICAs were positively associated with CU at high but not low levels of perceived peer approval/use. Behavioral inhibition was negatively associated ICAs, which in turn, predicted infrequent CU at high levels of peer approval/use (moderated mediation). Behavioral approach was marginally associated with ICAs. Conclusions: Peer context and personality are important for understanding the formation of ICAs and their association with CU.

Pathways to Deviance: Exploring the Relationship between Peer Affiliation, Gang Membership and Youth Misconduct

Deviant peer affiliation and gang membership often act as a catalyst for maladaptive behaviour, as individuals in the late adolescent phase of lifespan development typically share stronger attachment to their peers than to their caregivers. An interrelationship also exists between delinquency and factors such as peer approval of deviance and peer pressure to transgress. This is particularly prevalent when exposed to challenges in the family or school, which typically perpetuate feelings of rejection, leading to a greater likelihood to seek out peers to gain a sense of belonging, support and camaraderie. Despite the importance of these interactions, exposure to antisocial peers or gangs exponentially increase the propensity to transgress, as maladaptive behaviour would be reinforced, thereby decreasing the efficacy of primary and secondary socialisation agents. Moreover, youths may become desensitised to violence, learn to rationalise unlawful behaviour and gain opportunities for crime. Accordingly, a qualitative study was conducted in South Africa to explore peer affiliation and gang membership as a pathway to deviance, based on the unique experiences of 20 detained male youths. The data were obtained through purposive sampling and analysed by frequency or percentage distributions, and also through narrative accounts from the participants. The findings identified deviant peer affiliation (75%) and gang involvement (65%) as key factors which motivated the participants to transgress. Furthermore, the association between peer affiliation, substance abuse, academic failure and truancy was apparent. It is thus envisaged that these findings will stimulate further research, contribute to the existing literature and aid in the development of strategies to manage deviant peer association and gang membership.

Autobiography

In this email exchange, Jean-Christophe Menu inveighs against the deterioration of comics autobiography into a formulaic ‘genre’. Fabrice Neaud maintains that the autobiographical enterprise is necessarily a dangerous undertaking in which a precarious subject comes into being, unlike the ‘proximate’ autobiography featuring a ready-made persona in search of peer approval. He employs a Darwinist evolutionary metaphor to demonstrate the colonisation of the ecological niche that houses comics autobiography by an ‘autobiography-lite’ better adapted to the market. He details the criticisms that have been made of his work (‘egotistical’, or formally over-conservative) and laments the tendency to equate artless scribbles with ‘sincerity’. Menu regrets that a distanced and selective portrayal of family life can be read as invasive of privacy, with devastating legal consequences.

Autobiography

In this email exchange, Jean-Christophe Menu inveighs against the deterioration of comics autobiography into a formulaic ‘genre’. Fabrice Neaud maintains that the autobiographical enterprise is necessarily a dangerous undertaking in which a precarious subject comes into being, unlike the ‘proximate’ autobiography featuring a ready-made persona in search of peer approval. He employs a Darwinist evolutionary metaphor to demonstrate the colonisation of the ecological niche that houses comics autobiography by an ‘autobiography-lite’ better adapted to the market. He details the criticisms that have been made of his work (‘egotistical’, or formally over-conservative) and laments the tendency to equate artless scribbles with ‘sincerity’. Menu regrets that a distanced and selective portrayal of family life can be read as invasive of privacy, with devastating legal consequences.

Adolescents’ Social Media Experiences and Their Self-Esteem: A Person-Specific Susceptibility Perspective

The aim of this preregistered study was to compare and explain the effects of (a) time spent on social media (SM), and (b) the valence (positivity or negativity) of SM experiences on adolescents’ self-esteem. We conducted a three-week experience sampling study among 300 adolescents (13-16 years; 126 assessments per adolescent; 21,970 assessments in total). Using an N=1 method of analysis (Dynamic Structural Equation Modeling), we found that the within-person effects of time spent with SM on self-esteem ranged from strongly negative ( = –.31) to moderately positive ( = +.27). Across all ESM observations of the valence of adolescents’ SM experiences, 55% of these experiences were positive, 18% negative, and 27% neutral. Finally, 78% of adolescents experienced a positive within-person effect of the valence of SM experiences on self-esteem ( ≥ +.05), 19% no to very small effects (–.05 < < +.05), and 3% a negative effect ( ≤ –.05). These sizeable differences in person-specific effects could be explained by adolescents’ trait self-esteem level, trait self-esteem instability, and their tendency to base their self-esteem on peer approval.

Predictors of Sexual Intimate Partner Violence Perpetration Among Men: A Prospective Analysis

Research demonstrates that both peer socialization and underage drinking play a significant role in teen dating violence. However, less is known about the lasting effects of these risk factors on boys’ ability to form healthy romantic relationships as they get older. The present study examined whether boys who perceived their peers would respect them more for having sex and those who engaged in past year heavy alcohol use would be more likely to perpetrate sexual intimate partner violence (IPV) in young adulthood compared to boys who did not endorse perceived peer approval for sex or report past year heavy drinking. Analyses were conducted using a sample of boys ( n = 1,189) from Waves I and III of the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health (Add Health). A logistic regression was conducted to assess the relationship between perceived peer approval to have sex and heavy alcohol use at Wave I and sexual IPV at Wave III, after adjusting for demographic factors and other correlates of sexual IPV at Wave I, including age, race/ethnicity, sexual initiation in adolescence, parental attachment, annual family income, and neighborhood poverty. Boys who believed they would gain peer respect by having sex and boys who reported getting drunk in the last 12 months, regardless of how often, were significantly more likely to report sexual IPV in young adulthood compared to boys who did not endorse either of these factors. Targeting boys’ perceived peer norms regarding sexual activity and heavy alcohol use may therefore be especially important for preventing sexual IPV later in life.

Science on Demand

Characterizing science as a public good, as Steve Fuller notes, is a part of an ideological construal of science, linked to a particular portrayal of science in the postwar era that was designed to provide a rationale for the funding of pure or basic science. The image of science depended on the idea of scientists as autonomous truth-seekers. But the funding system, and other hierarchies, effectively eliminated this autonomy, and bound scientists tightly to a competitive system in which the opportunity to pursue ideas in science depended on peer approval in advance. Funding agencies then turned to assessments of impact. John Ziman had already recognized the effects of these changes in the nature of science, and characterized it as “reliable knowledge” produced on demand from funders. As the competition for funds increased, there were further changes in the nature of science itself toward “reliable enough” knowledge. This made science into a “good”. but a good in the sense of results produced for funders, a transformation that left the original epistemic aims of science behind.

An exploration of millennial perceptions and value priority of CSR and CnSR

Ethical rhetoric regarding the demographic attributed as Millennials, their characteristics and value priorities, is diverse (i.e. Becker Jr, 2012; Bucic et al., 2012; Cone, 2015; Deloitte, 2017; Greenberg, & Weber, 2008; McGlone et al., 2011; Neilsen, 2015; Paulin et al., 2014; Schweitzer & Lyons, 2010; Weber & Urick, 2017). This research explores their views and attitudes regarding social responsibility and ethical considerations relating to both corporate (CSR) and personal behaviour (CnSR). The aim being to offer beneficial insight, furthering research relating to a better understanding of the demographic that enables more effective, meaningful or relevant corporate CSR strategies and pertinent marketing communications targeted at them. A heterogeneous ideology required an interpretivist approach and interviews were used to gain insights of eighteen Millennials: undergraduate students at a UK university Business School. Transcripts were thematically analysed to disclose their ethical / pro-environmental value priority that produced three themes: convenience & indifference, self-reasoning & justification, and distrust. Value priority for both CSR and CnSR was low and the three themes uncovered findings pertinent to meeting the research aims. The sample indicated that the late-adolescent life stage they were experiencing was indicative of an undefined role in a responsible adult society; as acknowledged by Erikson as early as 1963 with conflict experienced - self-identity and peer approval needs vs those of society. This was reflected in a combination of factors including the influence of significant others (noted by Beckmann, 2007), a deflection of responsibility to act or reluctance to take responsibility for the consequences of the previous generation’s misgivings, and an apathy or indifference to the topic in general. Moreover, their transitioning life-stage including temporary accommodation, friendship groups, identity formation and employment purpose was evident (Batemann & Phippen, 2016) as an antecedent to this and the alternate priorities that emanate from this situation. The findings concluded that empathy was evident, but action was more ‘locally’ focused such as on UK animal welfare rather than international (human) labour or socio-economic conditions. For marketing communications, the data revealed cynicism and scepticism was evident, relating to global brands, but more ominously, all forms of information. A topic that has been raised on occasion by previous authors (notably Quinby, 1999) and in reference to socially responsible behaviour has been acknowledged to negate responsibility to act, or assign blame elsewhere (Detert et al., 2008). The concept of pro-environmental corporate strategy to appeal to the demographic was found to be uncertain. Findings suggested some admiration may arise for a majority but added patronage was uncommitted.