The effects of maternal postnatal depression and child sex on academic performance at age 16 years: a developmental approach

Background: Postnatal depression (PND) is associated with poor cognitive functioning in infancy and the early school years; long-term effects on academic outcome are not known. Method: Children of postnatally depressed (N = 50) and non-depressed mothers (N = 39), studied from infancy, were followed up at 16 years. We examined the effects on General Certificate of Secondary Education (GCSE) exam performance of maternal depression (postnatal and subsequent) and IQ, child sex and earlier cognitive development, and mother–child interactions, using structural equation modelling (SEM). Results: Boys, but not girls, of PND mothers had poorer GCSE results than control children. This was principally accounted for by effects on early child cognitive functioning, which showed strong continuity from infancy. PND had continuing negative effects on maternal interactions through childhood, and these also contributed to poorer GCSE performance. Neither chronic, nor recent, exposure to maternal depression had significant effects. Conclusions: The adverse effects of PND on male infants’ cognitive functioning may persist through development. Continuing difficulties in mother–child interactions are also important, suggesting that both early intervention and continuing monitoring of mothers with PND may be warranted.

Giving up on modern foreign languages? Students' perceptions of learning French

This article reports on the findings of an investigation into the attitudes of English students aged 16 to 19 years towards French and how they view the reasons behind their level of achievement. Those students who attributed success to effort, high ability, and effective learning strategies had higher levels of achievement, and students intending to continue French after age 16 were more likely than noncontinuers to attribute success to these factors. Low ability and task difficulty were the main reasons cited for lack of achievement in French, whereas the possible role of learning strategies tended to be overlooked by students. It is argued that learners' self-concept and motivation might be enhanced through approaches that encourage learners to explore the causal links between the strategies they employ and their academic performance, thereby changing the attributions they make for success or failure.

Life histories of academics who become heads of department: socialisation, identity and career trajectory

Although the role of the academic head of department (HoD) has always been important to university management and performance, an increasing significance given to bureaucracy, academic performance and productivity, and government accountability has greatly elevated the importance of this position. Previous research and anecdotal evidence suggests that as academics move into HoD roles, usually with little or no training, they experience a problem of struggling to adequately manage key aspects of their role. It is this problem – and its manifestations – that forms the research focus of this study. Based on the research question, “What are the career trajectories of academics who become HoDs in a selected post-1992 university?” the study aimed to achieve greater understanding of why academics become HoDs, what it is like being a HoD, and how the experience influences their future career plans. The study adopts an interpretive approach, in line with social constructivism. Edited topical life history interviews were undertaken with 17 male and female HoDs, from a range of disciplines, in a post-1992 UK university. These data were analysed using coding, categorisation and theme formation techniques and developing profiles of each of the respondents. The findings from this study suggest that academics who become HoDs not only need the capacity to assume a range of personal and professional identities, but need to regularly adopt and switch between them. Whether individuals can successfully balance and manage these multiple identities, or whether they experience major conflicts and difficulties within or between them, greatly affects their experiences of being a HoD and may influence their subsequent career decisions. It is claimed that the focus, approach and analytical framework - based on the interrelationships between the concepts of socialisation, identity and career trajectory - provide a distinct and original contribution to knowledge in this area. Although the results of this study cannot be generalised, the findings may help other individuals and institutions move towards a firmer understanding of the academic who becomes HoD - in relation to theory, practice and future research.

Measuring students' emotions in the early years: the Achievement Emotions Questionnaire-Elementary School (AEQ-ES)

This article reports about the development and validation of a measurement instrument assessing elementary school students' achievement emotions (Achievement Emotions Questionnaire-Elementary School, AEQ-ES). Specifically, the instrument assesses students' enjoyment, anxiety, and boredom pertaining to three types of academic settings (i.e., attending class, doing homework, and taking tests and exams). Scale construction was based on Pekrun's (2006) control-value theory of achievement emotions. The instrument was tested using samples from German and American elementary school classrooms. The results of Study 1 (German sample) corroborate the reliability and structural validity of the new emotion measure. Moreover, they show that students' achievement emotions were linked with their control and value appraisals as well as their academic performance, thus supporting the external validity of the measure as well as propositions of Pekrun's (2006) control-value theory of achievement emotions. Study 2 (American sample) corroborated the cross-cultural equivalence of the measure and the generalizability of findings across the German and American samples. Implications for research on achievement emotions and educational practice are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2013 APA, all rights reserved)(journal abstract)

Methods to assess the effectiveness of naturally ventilated classrooms in Gauteng, South Africa

There is a tendency to reduce ventilation rates and natural or hybrid ventilation systems to ensure the conservation of energy in school buildings. However, high indoor pollutant concentration, due to natural or hybrid ventilation systems may have a significant adverse impact on the health and academic performance of pupils and students. Reviewed evidence shows that this can be detrimental to health and wellbeing in schools because of the learner density within a small area, eventually indicating that CO2 concentrations can rise to very high levels (about 4000 ppm) in classrooms during occupancy periods. In South Africa’s naturally ventilated classrooms, it is not clear whether the environmental conditions are conducive for learning. In addition, natural ventilation will be minimized given the fact that in cold, wet or windy weather, doors and windows will commonly remain closed. Evidence from literature based studies indicates that the significance of ventilation techniques is not understood satisfactorily and additional information concerning naturally ventilated schools has to be provided for better design and policy formulation. To develop a thorough understanding of the environments in classrooms, many other parameters have to be considered as well, such as outdoor air quality, CO2 concentrations, temperature and relative humidity and safety issues that may be important drawbacks for naturally ventilated schools. The aim of this paper is to develop a conceptual understanding of methods that can be implemented to assess the effectiveness of naturally ventilated classrooms in Gauteng, South Africa. A theoretical concept with an embedded practical methodology have been proposed for the research programme to investigate the relationship between ventilation rates and learning in schools in Gauteng , a province in South Africa. It is important that existing and future school buildings must include adequate outdoor ventilation, control of moisture, and avoidance of indoor exposures to microbiologic and chemical substances considered likely to have adverse effects in South Africa. Adequate ventilation in classrooms is necessary to reduce and/or eradicate the transmission of indoor pollutants.

Don’t aim too high for your kids: parental over-aspiration undermines students’ learning in mathematics

Previous research has suggested that parents’ aspirations for their children’s academic attainment can have a positive influence on children’s actual academic performance. Possible negative effects of parental over-aspiration, however, have found little attention in the psychological literature. Employing a dual-change score model with longitudinal data from a representative sample of German schoolchildren and their parents (N = 3,530; grades 5 to 10), we showed that parental aspiration and children’s mathematical achievement were linked by positive reciprocal relations over time. Importantly, we also found that parental aspiration that exceeded their expectation (i.e., over-aspiration) had negative reciprocal relations with children’s mathematical achievement. These results were fairly robust after controlling for a variety of demographic and cognitive variables such as children’s gender, age, intelligence, school type, and family SES. The results were also replicated with an independent sample of US parents and their children. These findings suggest that unrealistically high parental aspiration can be detrimental for children’s achievement.

Analyzing the performance of non-listed real estate funds: an panel data analysis

The rapid growth of non-listed real estate funds over the last several years has contributed towards establishing this sector as a major investment vehicle for gaining exposure to commercial real estate. Academic research has not kept up with this development, however, as there are still only a few published studies on non-listed real estate funds. This paper aims to identify the factors driving the total return over a seven-year period. Influential factors tested in our analysis include the weighted underlying direct property returns in each country and sector as well as fund size, investment style gearing and the distribution yield. Furthermore, we analyze the interaction of non-listed real estate funds with the performance of the overall economy and that of competing asset classes and found that lagged GDP growth and stock market returns as well as contemporaneous government bond rates are significant and positive predictors of annual fund performance.

Performance drivers of UK unlisted property funds

An unlisted property fund is a private investment vehicle which aims to provide direct property total returns and may also employ financial leverage which will accentuate performance. They have become a far more prevalent institutional property investment conduit since the early 2000’s. Investors have been primarily attracted to them due to the ease of executing a property exposure, both domestically and internationally, and for their diversification benefits given the capital intensive nature of constructing a well diversified commercial property investment portfolio. However, despite their greater prominence there has been little academic research conducted on the performance and risks of unlisted property fund investments. This can be attributed to a paucity of available data and limited time series where it exists. In this study we have made use of a unique dataset of institutional UK unlisted non-listed property funds over the period 2003Q4 to 2011Q4, using a panel modelling framework in order to determine the key factors which impact on fund performance. The sample provided a rich set of unlisted property fund factors including market exposures, direct property characteristics and the level of financial leverage employed. The findings from the panel regression analysis show that a small number of variables are able to account for the performance of unlisted property funds. These variables should be considered by investors when assessing the risk and return of these vehicles. The impact of financial leverage upon the performance of these vehicles through the recent global financial crisis and subsequent UK commercial property market downturn was also studied. The findings indicate a significant asymmetric effect of employing debt finance within unlisted property funds.

The design of a semantics-oriented organisational performance measurement system

Current methods and techniques used in designing organisational performance measurement systems do not consider the multiple aspects of business processes or the semantics of data generated during the lifecycle of a product. In this paper, we propose an organisational performance measurement systems design model that is based on the semantics of an organisation, business process and products lifecycle. Organisational performance measurement is examined from academic and practice disciplines. The multi-discipline approach is used as a research tool to explore the weaknesses of current models that are used to design organisational performance measurement systems. This helped in identifying the gaps in research and practice concerning the issues and challenges in designing information systems for measuring the performance of an organisation. The knowledge sources investigated include on-going and completed research project reports; scientific and management literature; and practitioners’ magazines.

Are informed citizens more trusting? Transparency of performance data and trust towards a British police force

In Britain, substantial cuts in police budgets alongside controversial handling of incidents such as politically sensitive enquiries, public disorder and relations with the media have recently triggered much debate about public knowledge and trust in the police. To date, however, little academic research has investigated how knowledge of police performance impacts citizens’ trust. We address this long-standing lacuna by exploring citizens’ trust before and after exposure to real performance data in the context of a British police force. The results reveal that being informed of performance data affects citizens’ trust significantly. Furthermore, direction and degree of change in trust are related to variations across the different elements of the reported performance criteria. Interestingly, the volatility of citizens’ trust is related to initial performance perceptions (such that citizens with low initial perceptions of police performance react more significantly to evidence of both good and bad performance than citizens with high initial perceptions), and citizens’ intentions to support the police do not always correlate with their cognitive and affective trust towards the police. In discussing our findings, we explore the implications of how being transparent with performance data can both hinder and be helpful in developing citizens’ trust towards a public organisation such as the police. From our study, we pose a number of ethical challenges that practitioners face when deciding what data to highlight, to whom, and for what purpose.

The development of a data-driven application benchmarking approach to performance modelling

Performance modelling is a useful tool in the lifeycle of high performance scientific software, such as weather and climate models, especially as a means of ensuring efficient use of available computing resources. In particular, sufficiently accurate performance prediction could reduce the effort and experimental computer time required when porting and optimising a climate model to a new machine. In this paper, traditional techniques are used to predict the computation time of a simple shallow water model which is illustrative of the computation (and communication) involved in climate models. These models are compared with real execution data gathered on AMD Opteron-based systems, including several phases of the U.K. academic community HPC resource, HECToR. Some success is had in relating source code to achieved performance for the K10 series of Opterons, but the method is found to be inadequate for the next-generation Interlagos processor. The experience leads to the investigation of a data-driven application benchmarking approach to performance modelling. Results for an early version of the approach are presented using the shallow model as an example.

Rethinking the literature on the performance of Chinese multinational enterprises

We synthesize the literature on Chinese multinational enterprises (MNEs) and find that much of the prior research is based on as few as a dozen case studies of Chinese firms. They are so case-specific that it has led to a misplaced call for new theories to explain Chinese firms’ internationalization. In an attempt to better relate theory with empirical evidence, we examine the largest 500 Chinese manufacturing firms. We aim to find out the number of Chinese manufacturing firms to be true MNEs by definition, and to examine their financial performance relative to global peers using the financial benchmarking method. We develop our theoretical perspectives from new internalization theory. We find that there are only 49 Chinese manufacturing firms to be true MNEs, whereas the rest is purely domestic firms. Their performance is poor relative to global peers. Chinese MNEs have home country bound firm-specific advantages (FSAs), which are built upon home country-specific advantages (home CSAs). They have not yet developed advanced management capabilities through recombination with host CSAs. Essentially, they acquire foreign firms to increase their sales in domestic market, but they fail to be competitive internationally and to achieve superior performance in overseas operations. Our findings have important strategic implications for managers, public policy makers, and academic research.

Cool Roofs for improving thermal performance of EU office buildings: an investigation for different climates and building layouts

Cool materials are characterized by having a high solar reflectance r – which is able to reduce heat gains during daytime - and a high thermal emissivity ε that enables them to dissipate the heat absorbed throughout the day during night. Despite the concept of cool roofs - i.e. the application of cool materials to roof surfaces - is well known in US since 1990s, many studies focused on their performance in both residential and commercial sectors under various climatic conditions for US countries, while only a few case studies are analyzed in EU countries. The present work aims at analyzing the thermal benefits due to their application to existing office buildings located in EU countries. Indeed, due to their weight in the existing buildings stock, as well as the very low rate of new buildings construction, the retrofit of office buildings is a topic of great concern worldwide. After an in-depth characterization of the existing buildings stock in the EU, the book gives an insight into roof energy balance due to different technological solutions, showing in which cases and to what extent cool roofs are preferable. A detailed description of the physical properties of cool materials and their availability on the market provides a solid background for the parametric analysis carried out by means of detailed numerical models that aims at evaluating cool roofs performance for various climates and office buildings configurations. With the help of dynamic simulations, the thermal behavior of representative office buildings of the existing EU buildings stock is assessed in terms of thermal comfort and energy needs for air conditioning. The results, which consider several variations of building features that may affect the resulting energy balance, show how cool roofs are an effective strategy for reducing overheating occurrences and thus improving thermal comfort in any climate. On the other hand, potential heating penalties due to a reduction in the incoming heat fluxes through the roof are taken into account, as well as the aging process of cool materials. Finally, an economic analysis of the best performing models shows the boundaries for their economic convenience.