Caring responsibilities, change and transitions in young people's family lives in Zambia

Despite diversity in family dynamics within and between societies, globally, it is adults who are usually relied upon to care for family members who are sick, disabled or have other care needs. Young people in Zambia and other African countries affected by the HIV epidemic are under increasing pressure to obtain a good education and employment to support their families, whilst some also have to cope with the loss of parents and care for relatives with little external support. This article discusses the findings of qualitative research that explored the experiences of young people (aged 14-30) who had significant family caring responsibilities and those without such responsibilities in Zambia. Interviews and life-mapping methods were conducted with a total of 35 young people living in rural and urban areas, 12 parents and relatives and 12 professionals. We analyse young people's experiences and perceptions of socially expected transitions, such as completing education and earning an income to support themselves and their families, in addition to more unpredictable changes in young people's family lives. ‘Critical moments’ (Thomson et al, 2002), such as bereavement and loss of parents and other family members, disinheritance of assets and property grabbing, migration and mobility between different relatives homes, parental divorce and separation, often had significant impacts on young people’s ability to navigate their pathways to adulthood according to wider social norms and expectations. A more relational conceptualisation of youth transitions is needed that takes account of young people's caring responsibilities and changing family dynamics.

Effects of a multi-session Cognitive Bias Modification program on interpretative biases and social anxiety symptoms in a sample of Iranian socially-anxious students

This study examines the effects of a multi-session Cognitive Bias Modification (CBM) program on interpretative biases and social anxiety in an Iranian sample. Thirty-six volunteers with a high score on social anxiety measures were recruited from a student population and randomly allocated into the experimental and control groups. In the experimental group, participants received 4 sessions of positive CBM for interpretative biases (CBM-I) over 2 weeks in the laboratory. Participants in the control condition completed a neutral task matched the active CBM-I intervention in format and duration but did not encourage positive disambiguation of socially ambiguous scenarios. The results indicated that after training the positive CBM-I group exhibited more positive (and less negative) interpretations of ambiguous scenarios and less social anxiety symptoms relative to the control condition at both 1 week post-test and 7 weeks follow-up. It is suggested that clinical trials are required to establish the clinical efficacy of this intervention for social anxiety.

The effects of acute fluoxetine administration on temporal discounting in youth with ADHD

Background Serotonin is under-researched in attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), despite accumulating evidence for its involvement in impulsiveness and the disorder. Serotonin further modulates temporal discounting (TD), which is typically abnormal in ADHD relative to healthy subjects, underpinned by reduced fronto-striato-limbic activation. This study tested whether a single acute dose of the selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SSRI) fluoxetine up-regulates and normalizes reduced fronto-striato-limbic neurofunctional activation in ADHD during TD. Method Twelve boys with ADHD were scanned twice in a placebo-controlled randomized design under either fluoxetine (between 8 and 15 mg, titrated to weight) or placebo while performing an individually adjusted functional magnetic resonance imaging TD task. Twenty healthy controls were scanned once. Brain activation was compared in patients under either drug condition and compared to controls to test for normalization effects. Results Repeated-measures whole-brain analysis in patients revealed significant up-regulation with fluoxetine in a large cluster comprising right inferior frontal cortex, insula, premotor cortex and basal ganglia, which further correlated trend-wise with TD performance, which was impaired relative to controls under placebo, but normalized under fluoxetine. Fluoxetine further down-regulated default mode areas of posterior cingulate and precuneus. Comparisons between controls and patients under either drug condition revealed normalization with fluoxetine in right premotor-insular-parietal activation, which was reduced in patients under placebo. Conclusions The findings show that a serotonin agonist up-regulates activation in typical ADHD dysfunctional areas in right inferior frontal cortex, insula and striatum as well as down-regulating default mode network regions in the context of impulsivity and TD.

White youth: the Far Right, Punk and British youth culture

‘White Youth’ recovers and explains the relationship between far-right organisations and British youth culture in the period between 1977 and 1987. In particular, it concentrates on the cultural spaces opened up by punk and the attempts made by the National Front and British Movement to claim them as conduits for racist and/or ultra-nationalist politics. The article is built on an empirical basis, using archival material and a historical methodology chosen to develop a history ‘from below’ that takes due consideration of the socio-economic and political forces that inform its wider context. Its focus is designed to map shifting cultural and political influences across the far right, assessing the extent to which extremist organisations proved able to adopt or utilise youth cultural practice as a means of recruitment and communication. Today the British far right is in political and organisational disarray. Nonetheless, residues tied to the cultural initiatives devised in the 1970s–80s remain, be they stylistic, nostalgic or points of connection forged to connect a transnational music scene.

Mediated addiction: The drug discourses of Hong Kong youth

This paper examines the ways young people in Hong Kong at different stages of involvement with illegal drugs respond to government produced anti-drug television commercials through a methodology which provided them with the technical skills and equipment to make their own short videos about drugs. An analysis of the videos they produced and their interaction while producing them reveals that participants with different drug-taking experiences have very different and often multiple ways of talking about drugs, and that these different ‘discourses’ and the ways they are deployed in different contexts affect how ‘at-risk’ they are for new or continued drug use and how they respond to anti-drug messages designed to mitigate this risk.

Materialising bodies : there is nothing more material than a socially constructed body.

Over the last one of two decades, researchers within the physical education (PE) and sport pedagogy research frequently use the concept ‘the material body’. An initial purpose of this article is to explore what a concept of a ‘material body’ might mean. What other bodies are there? Who would dispute the materiality of bodies? I suggest that the use of a concept as ‘the material body’ suggests a hesitation before the radicalism of the linguistic turn in the sense that the concept ‘discourse’ does not include a material dimension. In this way ‘the material body’ relates to an interpretation of ‘the socially (or discursively) constructed body’ as void of matter. A further purpose with the article is to re-inscribe matter in the concept of ‘discourse’. This is done by way of discussing what theorists like Michel Foucault and, in particular, Judith Butler, has to say about the materiality of the body. In their writings, discourse should not be limited to spoken and/or written language. Rather, discourse is understood in terms of actions and events that create meanings—that matters. One conclusion of the article is that it is important to problematise the mundane view of discourse as ‘verbal interchange’ because it reinforces the promise of an objective knowledge that will eventually shed light on the ‘real’ body and the mysteries of sexual difference, what its origins are, what causes it. Another conclusion is that the PE and sport pedagogy research should pay less attention to the body as an object (what it ‘is’), and pay more attention to how the body matters, and e.g. how movements make bodies matter.

Decision Support Systems And Promoting Socially Just Environmental Management

The Mauri Model DMF is unique in its approach to the management of water resources as the framework offers a transparent and inclusive approach to considering the environmental, economic, social and cultural aspects of the decisions being contemplated. The Mauri Model DMF is unique because it is capable of including multiple-worldviews and adopts mauri (intrinsic value or well-being) in the place of the more common monetised assessments of pseudo sustainability using Cost Benefit Analysis. The Mauri Model DMF uses a two stage process that first identifies participants’ worldviews and inherent bias regarding water resource management, and then facilitates transparent assessment of selected sustainability performance indicators. The assessment can then be contemplated as the separate environmental, economic, social and cultural dimensions of the decision, and collectively as an overall result; or the priorities associated with different worldviews can be applied to determine the sensitivity of the result to different cultural contexts or worldviews.

The state of the youth: prisons, drugs and car crashes

By virtue of the volume and nature of their attributions, including secondary school as well as problem-areas such as security and traffic, the Brazilian states are the ultimate responsible entities for young people. This study argues in favour of granting greater freedom for the states to define their own public policy parameters to deal with local features and to increase the degree of learning about such actions at the national level. In empirical terms, the study assesses the impacts of new laws, such as the new traffic code (from the joint work with Leandro Kume, EPGE/FGV doctor’s degree student) and traces the statistics for specific questions like drugs, violence and car accidents. The findings show that these questions produce different results for young men and women.The main characters in these dramas are young single males, suggesting the need for more distinguished public policies according not only to age, but also by gender. The study also reveals that the magnitude of these problems changes according to the youth’s social class. Prisons concern poorer men (except for the functional illiterate) while fatal car accidents and the confessed use of drugs concern upper-class boys.

"Não somos diferentes das outras pessoas": a vida cotidiana de mulheres com deficiência mental contada por elas mesmas

O objetivo desta pesquisa foi investigar a vida cotidiana de mulheres rotuladas como deficientes mentais, através de seus relatos biográficos pessoais. As entrevistadas descreveram sua rotina em casa e na instituição, falaram sobre suas famílias, relacionamentos, dificuldades em integração social, e sobre seus problemas físicos e de aprendizagem. Ficou clara no discurso deste grupo a dicotomia entre o mundo “de dentro", compreendendo os espaços protegidos da casa e da instituição, e o mundo ameaçador e violento “de fora", representado pela rua. Seus relacionamentos sociais restringem-se aos personagens do mundo “de dentro": a família, os profissionais, e os colegas da instituição, e muitas entrevistadas disseram se· sentir discriminadas pelas pessoas “de fora". Embora várias mulheres tenham exprimido o desejo de ser independentes (trabalhar fora, sair sozinhas, etc), na prática mantém urna relação de extrema dependência familiar. A pesar de dois terços das entrevistadas terem mais de 20 anos, elas não parecem ter nenhuma perspectiva concreta de morar sozinhas, casar, ou vir a formar sua própria família. Um dos pressupostos deste estudo era de que o estigma da deficiência mental, seria o terna central nas histórias de vida. Entretanto, mais da metade dos sujeitos não abordou esta questão, e muito poucas se autodenominaram deficientes. Foi postulado que os efeitos do estigma talvez sejam minimizados neste grupo devido à superproteção familiar e institucional por um lado, e a evitação do mundo "de fora" (onde esta condição seria denunciada mais abertamente) por outro. Assim sendo, em sua prática diária, a maioria dessas mulheres têm poucas oportunidades de se confrontar com a situação de marginalização. Deficiência mental foi analisada como um fenômeno socialmente construído, e acredita-se que estas pessoas funcionem em um nível mais dependente do que sua condição orgânica exigiria, por terem sido reforçadas por representar o papel social de deficientes. Apesar das características comuns, cada história de vida provou ser original e única, mostrando o erro em se considerar as pessoas portadoras de deficiência mental como um grupo homogêneo e bem definido. Além disso, a não ser pela dependência familiar, falta de participação autônoma e integrada na comunidade, e relacionamento amoroso e sexual restrito, a ideia dessas mulheres não é qualitativamente diferente do resto da população.

Juventude e vulnerabilidade social :no contexto intra-urbano de Natal, RN

The use of the term social vulnerability in the study of the reproduction of the social inequalities in Brazil, still, is recent. The social vulnerability is linked to the indicators of social risk. The work approaches the youth's social vulnerability and your relationship with the education, considering the youth a, among other groups socially excluded, vulnerable, in the Brazilian metropolises. It is guided by the methodological theoretical formulations on this thematic one developed by the Rede Metrópoles in the ambit of the project, " Observatory of the Metropolises: territory, social cohesion and democratic governability ( Project Millennium CNPq) and your unfoldings in the Natal group. Empirically, forehead a methodological proposal - still in construction - and it accomplishes a " pilot " study for the city of Natal with base in the data of the Census of IBGE 2000, that proposes mensurar the importance of the social characteristics of the neighborhood on the considered youths' educational acting those that are in the strip from 15 to 24 years. It considers that the youths' educational " earnings as being influenced not only for the social context of the family, also, for your space location in the city - social context of the neighborhood. With base in the results can verify that the youths of the city of Natal present situations of social vulnerability so much in the ambit of the family as expresses in the social space of the neighborhood. Such vulnerability are verified in the low educational indexes, in the high unemployment rates and in the presented social conditions of the researched areas. The youths, residents of those neighborhoods, they are considered vulnerable socially because original of a precarious source of " assets " and opportunities. There is in Natal a low " structure of assets and opportunities " - accessible to the youth

Análise de necessidades de formação: uma prática reveladora de objetivos da formação docente

In recent years, in Brazil, researches in the area of education have been focused on the study of the necessities of formation, by the practice of necessity analysis, to subside the continued teacher formation programs. This research on the necessity of the formation of literacy teachers in the initial years of primary education originated in our discussions in academia, regarding the issues of retention and evasion related to basic literacy teaching in Brazilian public schools. We defined as a goal: to know the necessities of the formation of literacy teachers from Odila Leite Municipal Elementary School, Natal/RN, which focuses on the literacy teaching on that level of education and in Adult and Youth Education. The object is the necessities in these teachers formation. The thesis is that the literacy teacher reveals/constructs formation necessities when speaking of her practice, when exerting said practice or even when producing teaching materials which subside that practice; in other words, when making the theoretical/practical relation related to literacy teaching. The approach is qualitative, according to which the natural environment is the source for data collection; the focus of interest is the process of knowledge construction, and fundamental importance is given to the meanings constructed by the subjects. We comprehended that necessity is a socially constructed subjective phenomenon, and that necessity analysis allows the revelation of formation objectives. We used the case study as a methodological strategy which permits: studying a well-defined entity, [ ] as well as an academic institution; the global comprehension of the phenomenon of interest; discovering what is most essential and characteristic in the object. We counted with 17 teachers, 3 of which had their teaching practices observed. We observed the school routine, analyzed the main class documents and plans and interviewed the 17 teachers. We triangulated the data obtained by the routine observation, the observation of the three teachers practices and by the document analysis, next, we triangulated this data with the data from the analyzing the interviews with the 17 teachers. Such procedures reveal formation necessities in those teachers , such as: studying child cognitive development; reviewing the concepts of literacy teaching; reviewing fundaments of written language psychogenesis; reflecting on reading practices and literature; reflecting on the practice of daily planning; reflecting on the school s material conditions and the family/school relation. We concluded that researches of this nature contribute to the orientation of teacher formation programs

Trajetória do ifrn em inclusão escolar

Discussions over the topic of inclusion of handicapped people at school are considered recent, but they have become more and more frequent within the national and international scenario. Such discussion has also being inserted in the speeches and actions of the school institution and with the formation of educators. This investigation is made necessary as a way to collect elements to reconsider the actions for the inclusion of the special education need youth. In special the visually handicapped ones, at Instituto Federal de Educação, Ciência e Tecnologia do Rio Grande do Norte (IFRN). The creation of a support unit functions as main vehicle for the actions of the institution. It is intended to know what young people with limitations have to say regarding their experiences as a way to signal paths to be and not to be followed by the support unit. Therefore, the experience which these young boys and girls have is of crucial importance. In order to accomplish the task, it was decided to use methodological elements based upon elements supported by the life reports of two deficient students here called Borges and Stéfano. Their reports are from childhood to their arrival at IFRN. From their reports, categories appeared: childhood and the role of family; school life and, finally, related to the actions of the support unit of IFRN, being divided in inclusive actions and obstacles. The first one takes a second look at the actions of the family within the learning-teaching process of these students. The second category presents the moment in which students started to receive formal education per se. The last category constitutes the cornerstone of the investigation, for it analyses the process of inclusion in the institution, according to the perception of the students with visual limitations. The results signaled the need for shared intervention between students with Special Education Needs and school professionals in the elaboration of the Educational Planning, which guarantees the defense of the rights to an efficient teaching practice and effective in the process of inclusion of these students

Youth and social cohesion in Ibero-America: a model in the making. Summary

Includes bibliography