What price harmony? Teachers' methods of delivering an ethos of tolerance and respect for diversity in an integrated school in Northern Ireland

The aim of the paper is to explore teachers’ methods of delivering an ethos of tolerance, respect
and mutual understanding in one integrated secondary school in Northern Ireland. Drawing on
interviews with teachers in the school, it is argued that most teachers make ‘critical choices’
which both reflect and reinforce a ‘culture of avoidance’, whereby politically or religiously contentious
issues are avoided rather than explored. Although teachers are well-intentioned in making
these choices, it is shown that they have the potential to create the conditions that maintain or even
harden psychological boundaries between Catholics and Protestants rather than dilute them.

The general and specific effects of educational programmes aimed at promoting awareness of and respect for diversity among young children

This article reports the findings of a mixed-method evaluation of a pilot educational programme undertaken with 6-7 year olds in a sample of primary schools in England with the aim of increasing their awareness of and respect for diversity through theatre, workshops and related teacher-led classroom activities. The qualitative feedback from the teachers involved was extremely positive and encouraging and an analysis of the actual impact of the pilot programme on the children’s attitudes and awareness, using an experimental design, demonstrated some positive effects. In particular, the programme was found to increase the children’s general awareness of diversity and their ability to recognise instances of exclusion. While not a planned objective of the pilot programme, the evaluation also examined whether it had any effects on the children’s attitudes to specific differences, in this particular case racial differences. Interestingly, however, no evidence was found of any change in the children’s racial attitudes. With this in mind the article suggests that there is a need to distinguish between the general and specific effects of such educational programmes. The article considers the implications of this for future work in the area and also stresses the need to undertake more thorough and rigorous evaluations of such initiatives.

Museums and youth: between misunderstanding and disappointment. Youth perceptions and arguments about the cultural consumption of museums in Chile

Young people are less explored in museum audience research; this is a paradoxical situation when considering its strategic location in the cultural reproduction and if considering the high performing cultural consumption compared with other sectors. The phenomenon of museums consumption by young Chileans who are self recognized as public and non-public museums is explored from a qualitative approach. It was conducted with focus groups in the three largest cities in Chile (Santiago, Valparaíso and Concepción). They identify the museum as a cultural institution in full force. However, in questioning museums activity youth reveal the specificity of their cultural matrix. This is referred to a social temporality based on the fragment, the discourse of familiarity, proximity and instead of breaking and critical. They claim a museum aesthetic / historical experience based on pleasure and enjoyment. An overview is proposed to further clarify the youth cultural consumption to characterize more precisely the place of the museum in the set, to design more effective policies museums.

The Association of Ownership Type With Job Insecurity and Worry About Job Stability The Moderating Effects of Fair Management, Positive Leadership, and Employment Type

This study examined whether the ownership type is associated with job insecurity and worry about job stability and whether the type of employment contract, positive leadership, and fair management moderated these associations. Survey data from 1249 Finnish female elderly care staff aged 18 to 69 years were used. Job insecurity and worry about job stability were highest in not-for-profit sheltered homes. However, positive leadership and fair management were able to mitigate this insecurity and worry. Job insecurity was highest among fixed-term employees in public sheltered homes or not-for-profit nursing homes. Thus, promoting good leadership and fair management would be of importance.

A graded BDI agent model to represent and reason about preferences

In this research note, we introduce a graded BDI agent development framework, g-BDI for short, that allows to build agents as multi-context systems that reason about three fundamental and graded mental attitudes (i.e. beliefs, desires and intentions). We propose a sound and complete logical framework for them and some logical extensions to accommodate slightly different views on desires. © 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Energy efficiency investments in the home: Swiss homeowners and expectations about future energy prices

Using conjoint choice experiments, we surveyed 473 Swiss homeowners about their preferences for energy efficiency home renovations.We find that homeowners are responsive to the upfront costs of the renovation projects, governmentoffered rebates, savings in energy expenses, time horizon over which such savings would be realized, and thermal comfort improvement. The implicit discount rate is low, ranging from 1.5 to 3%, depending on model specification. This is consistent with Hassett and Metcalf (1993) and Metcalf and Rosenthal (1995), and with the fact that our scenarios contain no uncertainty. Respondents who feel completely uncertain about future energy prices are more likely to select the status quo (no renovations) in any given choice task and weight the costs of the investments more heavily than the financial gains (subsidies and savings on the energy bills). Renovations are more likely when respondents believe that climate change considerations are important determinants of home renovations. Copyright © 2013 by the IAEE. All rights reserved.

Microbiota of De-Novo Pediatric IBD: Increased Faecalibacterium Prausnitzii and Reduced Bacterial Diversity in Crohn's But Not in Ulcerative Colitis

OBJECTIVES: The gastrointestinal microbiota is considered important in inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) pathogenesis. Discoveries from established disease cohorts report reduced bacterial diversity, changes in bacterial composition, and a protective role for Faecalibacterium prausnitzii in Crohn's disease (CD). The majority of studies to date are however potentially confounded by the effect of treatment and a reliance on established rather than de-novo disease.

METHODS: Microbial changes at diagnosis were examined by biopsying the colonic mucosa of 37 children: 25 with newly presenting, untreated IBD with active colitis (13 CD and 12 ulcerative colitis (UC)), and 12 pediatric controls with a macroscopically and microscopically normal colon. We utilized a dual-methodology approach with pyrosequencing (threshold >10,000 reads) and confirmatory real-time PCR (RT-PCR).

RESULTS: Threshold pyrosequencing output was obtained on 34 subjects (11 CD, 11 UC, 12 controls). No significant changes were noted at phylum level among the Bacteroidetes, Firmicutes, or Proteobacteria. A significant reduction in bacterial alpha-diversity was noted in CD vs. controls by three methods (Shannon, Simpson, and phylogenetic diversity) but not in UC vs. controls. An increase in Faecalibacterium was observed in CD compared with controls by pyrosequencing (mean 16.7% vs. 9.1% of reads, P = 0.02) and replicated by specific F. prausnitzii RT-PCR (36.0% vs. 19.0% of total bacteria, P = 0.02). No disease-specific clustering was evident on principal components analysis.

CONCLUSIONS: Our results offer a comprehensive examination of the IBD mucosal microbiota at diagnosis, unaffected by therapeutic confounders or changes over time. Our results challenge the current model of a protective role for F. prausnitzii in CD, suggesting a more dynamic role for this organism than previously described.