When all you have is a hammer ...: RCTs and hegemony in science

People diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) deserve the same respect as any other person and should be free to benefit from scientific research that can help them achieve skills which enable them to reach their full potential. Over the past 40 years Applied Behaviour Analysis (ABA) has utilised inductive, natural science methods to investigate techniques for the analysis and augmentation of socially significant behaviours. Unfortunately, many individuals with ASD in the UK cannot avail of these techniques because of an obdurate reliance on randomised controlled trials (RCTs) as the single most respectable measure of effectiveness of interventions. In this paper we focus on how the debate about RCTs is played out in the ‘autism wars’.

Evocative Listening : Mediated Practices in Everyday Life

The history of sonic arts is charged with transgressive practices that seek to expose the social, aural and cultural thresholds across various listening experiences, posing new questions in terms of the dialogue between listener and place. Recent work in sonic art exposes the need for an experiential understanding of listening that foregrounds the use of new personal technologies, environmental philosophy and the subject–object relationship. This paper aims to create a vocabulary that better contextualises recent installations and performances produced within the context of everyday life, by researchers and artists at the Sonic Arts Research Centre at Queen's University Belfast.

Effects of continuing professional development on group work practices in Scottish primary schools

The present study investigated the effects of a continuing professional development (CPD) initiative that provided collaborative group work skills training for primary school teachers. The study collected data from 24 primary school classrooms in different schools in a variety of urban and rural settings. The sample was composed of 332 pupils, aged 9-12 years old, and 24 primary school teachers. Results indicated that the CPD initiative had a significant impact on the attainment of pupils in science. In addition, data indicated that the CPD promoted effective discourse and pupil dialogue during science lessons. Pre-test and post-test observation scores were significantly different in terms of children giving of suggestions or courses of actions, offering of explanations, and telling someone to say something or carry out an action. Increases in effective dialogue were significantly correlated to increased science attainment, and teacher evaluations of the impact of the CPD were positive. Significant correlations were found between teacher evaluation of impact upon pupil learning and increased attainment in science. The design and structure of CPD initiatives and the implications for practice, policy and future research are explored.

Mining Money: the generative capacities of scientific and legal knowledge practices in the making of resource economies

In 1997 a scandal associated with Bre-X, a junior mining firm, and its prospecting activities in Indonesia, exposed to public scrutiny the ways in which mineral exploration firms acquire, assess and report on scientific claims about the natural environment. At stake here was not just how investors understood the provisional nature of scientific knowledge, but also evidence of fraud. Contemporaneous mining scandals not only included the salting of cores, but also unreliable proprietary sample preparation and assay methods, mis-representations of visual field estimates as drilling results and ‘overly optimistic’ geological reports. This paper reports on initiatives taken in the wake of these scandals and prompted by the Mining Standards Task Force (TSE/OSC 1999). For regulators, mandated to increase investor confidence in Canada’s leading role within the global mining industry, efforts focused first and foremost upon identifying and removing sources of error and wilfulness within the production and circulation of scientific knowledge claims. A common goal cross-cutting these initiatives was ‘a faithful representation of nature’ (Daston and Galison 2010), however, as the paper argues, this was manifest in an assemblage of practices governed by distinct and rival regulative visions of science and the making of markets in claims about ‘nature’. These ‘practices of fidelity’, it is argued, can be consequential in shaping the spatial and temporal dynamics of the marketization of nature.

Parenting practices in Northern Ireland: evidence from the Northern Ireland Household Panel Survey

The impact of parental child-rearing practices on child outcomes has been the subject of much research and debate for many years. Studies carried out within a variety of disciplines and across a number of different countries in the world have indicated that parents tend to use a different pattern of rearing their sons than their daughters, and that child-rearing practices are related to the gender of the parent, as well as to the age and developmental stage of the child. However, there has been little research in Northern Ireland on child-rearing behaviours. In order to address this shortfall, this paper presents an analysis of parents’ perceptions of their interactions with their children. Data from Wave 3 of the Northern Ireland Household Panel Survey were analysed to explore aspects of ‘‘negative’’ parenting practices (arguing, yelling and use of physical punishment) as well as ‘‘positive’’ parenting practices (talking, praising and hugging). The participants were all parents (aged 16 years and over) with children under the age of 16 years living in the same household. Each parent reported his/her interaction with each child (up to a maximum of six children), and in total 1,629 responses were recorded. The results of the research supported previous findings from the United Kingdom and elsewhere, and indicated that the parenting styles of respondents in Northern Ireland were indeed related to the gender and age of the children and to the gender of the parents. The survey found that parents in Northern Ireland tend to have a harsher, more negative style of parenting boys than girls and that children in their teenage years have fewer positive interactions with their parents than younger children. The same parents and children will be followed up in 2007 in order to provide a longitudinal analysis of parent/child relationships in Northern Ireland.