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Prejudices? Quite normal!

Girls are not as good at playing football as boys, and they do not have a clue about cars. Instead they know better how to dance and do not get into mischief as often as boys. Prejudices like these are cultivated from early childhood onwards by everyone. “Approximately at the age of three to four years children start to prefer children of the same sex, and later the same ethnic group or nationality,” Prof. Dr. Andreas Beelmann of the Friedrich Schiller University Jena (Germany) states. This is part of an entirely normal personality development, the director of the Institute for Psychology explains. “It only gets problematic when the more positive evaluation of the own social group, which is adopted automatically in the course of identity formation, at some point reverts into bias and discrimination against others,” Beelmann continues.

To prevent this, the Jena psychologist and his team have been working on a prevention programme for children. It is designed to reduce prejudice and to encourage tolerance for others. But when is the right time to start? Jena psychologists Dr. Tobias Raabe and Prof. Dr. Andreas Beelmann systematically summarise scientific studies on that topic and published the results of their research in the science journal Child Development (DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-8624.2011.01668.x.).

According to this, the development of prejudice increases steadily at pre-school age and reaches its highest level between five and seven years of age. With increasing age this development is reversed and the prejudices decline. “This reflects normal cognitive development of children,” Prof. Beelmann explains. “At first they adopt the social categories from their social environment, mainly the parents. Then they start to build up their own social identity according to social groups, before they finally learn to differentiate and individual evaluations of others will prevail over stereotypes.” Therefore the psychologists reckon this age is the ideal time to start well-designed prevention programmes against prejudice. “Prevention starting at that age supports the normal course of development,” Beelmann says. As the new study and the experience of the Jena psychologists with their prevention programme so far show, the prejudices are strongly diminished at primary school age, when children get in touch with members of so-called social out groups like, for instance children of a different nationality or skin colour. “This also works when they don’t even get in touch with real people but learn it instead via books or told stories.”

But at the same time the primary school age is a critical time for prejudices to consolidate. “If there is no or only a few contact to members of social out groups, there is no personal experience to be made and generalising negative evaluations stick longer.” In this, scientists see an explanation for the particularly strong xenophobia in regions with a very low percentage of foreigners or migrants.

Moreover the Jena psychologists noticed that social ideas and prejudices are formed differently in children of social minorities. They do not have a negative attitude towards the majority to start with, more often it is even a positive one. The reason is the higher social status of the majority, which is being regarded as a role model. Only later, after having experienced discrimination, they develop prejudices, that then sticks with them much more persistently than with other children. “In this case prevention has to start earlier so it doesn’t even get that far,” Beelmann is convinced.

Generally, the psychologist of the Jena University stresses, the results of the new study don’t imply that the children’s and youths attitudes towards different social groups can’t be changed at a later age. But this would then less depend on the individual development and very much more on the social environment like for instance changing social norms in our society. Tolerance on the other hand could be encouraged at any age. The psychologists’ “prescription”: As many diverse contacts to individuals belonging to different social groups as possible. “People who can identify with many groups will be less inclined to make sweeping generalisations in the evaluation of individuals belonging to different social groups or even to discriminate against them,” Prof. Beelmann says.

Original Publication: Raabe T, Beelmann A.: Development of ethnic, racial, and national prejudice in childhood and adolescence: A multinational meta-analysis of age differences. Child Development. 2011; 82(6):1715-37. doi: 10.1111/j.1467-8624.2011.01668.x.

Contact:
Prof. Dr. Andreas Beelmann
Institute for Psychology
Friedrich Schiller University Jena
Humboldtstraße 26, D-07743 Jena
Germany
Phone: ++49 3641 / 945901
Email: Andreas.Beelmann@uni-jena.de

Are religious people better adjusted psychologically?

Psychological research has found that religious people feel great about themselves, with a tendency toward higher social self-esteem and better psychological adjustment than non-believers. But a new study published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, finds that this is only true in countries that put a high value on religion.

The researchers got their data from eDarling, a European dating site that is affiliated with eHarmony. Like eHarmony, eDarling uses a long questionnaire to match clients with potential dates. It includes a question about how important your personal religious beliefs are and questions that get at social self-esteem and how psychologically well-adjusted people are. Jochen Gebauer of the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Constantine Sedikides of the University of Southampton, and Wiebke Neberich of Affinitas GmbH in Berlin, the company behind eDarling, used 187,957 people’s answers to do their analyses.

As in other studies, the researchers found that more religious people had higher social self-esteem and where psychologically better adjusted. But they suspected that the reason for this was that religious people are better in living up to their societal values in religious societies, which in turn should lead to higher social self-esteem and better psychological adjustment. The people in the study lived in 11 different European countries, ranging from Sweden, the least religious country on the planet, to devoutly Catholic Poland. They used people’s answers to figure out how religious the different countries were and then compared the countries.

On average, believers only got the psychological benefits of being religious if they lived in a country that values religiosity. In countries where most people aren’t religious, religious people didn’t have higher self-esteem. “We think you only pat yourself on the back for being religious if you live in a social system that values religiosity,” Gebauer says. So a very religious person might have high social self esteem in religious Poland, but not in non-religious Sweden.

In this study, the researchers made comparisons between different countries, but another study found a similar effect within one country, between students at religious and non-religious universities. “The same might be true when you compare different states in the U.S. or different cities,” Gebauer says. “Probably you could mimic the same result in Germany, if you compare Bavaria where many people are religious and Berlin where very few people are religious.”

For more information about this study, please contact: Jochen E. Gebauer at mail@JochenGebauer.info.

The APS journal Psychological Science is the highest ranked empirical journal in psychology. For a copy of the article “Religiosity, Social Self-Esteem, and Psychological Adjustment: On the Cross- Cultural Specificity of the Psychological Benefits of Religiosity” and access to other Psychological Science research findings, please contact Divya Menon at 202-293-9300 or dmenon@psychologicalscience.org.

Contact: Divya Menon
dmenon@psychologicalscience.org
202-293-9300

Emotional news framing affects public response to crises

When organizational crises occur, such as plane crashes or automobile recalls, public relations practitioners develop strategies for substantive action and effective communication. Now, University of Missouri researchers have found that the way in which news coverage of a crisis is framed affects the public’s emotional response toward the company involved.

Glen Cameron, the Maxine Wilson Gregory Chair in Journalism Research and professor of strategic communication at the University of Missouri School of Journalism, along with Hyo Kim of Nanyang Technological University in Singapore, studied the reactions of news readers when exposed to a story about a crisis. One group read an “anger-frame” story that blamed the organization for the crisis. Another group read a “sadness-frame” story that focused on the victims and how they were hurt by the crisis. Cameron and Kim found that those who read the “anger-frame” story read the news less closely and had more negative attitudes toward the company than those exposed to the “sadness-frame” story.

“The distinct emotions induced by different news frames influenced individuals’ information processing and how they evaluated the corporation,” Cameron said.

Cameron and Kim also found that a corporate response to a crisis that focuses on the relief and wellbeing of the victims tends to improve the public’s perceptions of the corporation as compared to the message focusing on the law, justice, and punishment. This was the case regardless of how the initial news was framed (i.e., anger vs. sadness). Cameron says these findings illustrate the importance of controlling the message during a crisis.

“It is important for corporations to put on a human face during crises,” Cameron said. “If a corporation can focus on the well-being of the victims and how the corporation will improve following the crisis, they have a better chance of influencing “sadness-frame” news coverage as opposed to “anger-frame” coverage. If the news coverage remains “sadness-framed,” public perception will stay more positive.”

Cameron says this research is important, not to help corporations shirk responsibility, but rather to handle crisis situations in the best way possible.

“Crises are going to happen,” Cameron said. “Unfortunately, planes will crash and there will be oil spills. This study helps to show how the public will react to different types of news coverage of crises, and subsequently, what the best ways are for corporations to handle any crises they may encounter.

This study was published in Communications Research.

Contact: Nathan Hurst
hurstn@missouri.edu
573-882-6217
University of Missouri-Columbia

The biology of politics: Liberals roll with the good, conservatives confront the bad

From cable TV news pundits to red-meat speeches in Iowa and New Hampshire, our nation’s deep political stereotypes are on full display: Conservatives paint self-indulgent liberals as insufferably absent on urgent national issues, while liberals say fear-mongering conservatives are fixated on exaggerated dangers to the country.

A new study from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln suggests there are biological truths to such broad brushstrokes.

In a series of experiments, researchers closely monitored physiological reactions and eye movements of study participants when shown combinations of both pleasant and unpleasant images. Conservatives reacted more strongly to, fixated more quickly on, and looked longer at the unpleasant images; liberals had stronger reactions to and looked longer at the pleasant images compared with conservatives.

“It’s been said that conservatives and liberals don’t see things in the same way,” said Mike Dodd, UNL assistant professor of psychology and the study’s lead author. “These findings make that clear – quite literally.”

To gauge participants’ physiological responses, they were shown a series of images on a screen. Electrodes measured subtle skin conductance changes, which indicated an emotional response. The cognitive data, meanwhile, was gathered by outfitting participants with eyetracking equipment that captured even the most subtle of eye movements while combinations of unpleasant and pleasant photos appeared on the screen.

While liberals’ gazes tended to fall upon the pleasant images, such as a beach ball or a bunny rabbit, conservatives clearly focused on the negative images – of an open wound, a crashed car or a dirty toilet, for example.

Consistent with the idea that conservatives seem to respond more to negative stimuli while liberals respond more to positive stimuli, conservatives also exhibited a stronger physiological response to images of Democratic politicians – presumed to be a negative to them – than they did on pictures of well-known Republicans. Liberals, on the other hand, had a stronger physiological response to the Democrats – presumed to be a positive stimulus to them – than they did to images of the Republicans.

By studying both physiological and cognitive aspects, the researchers established unique new insights into the growing notion that political leanings are at least partial products of our biology, UNL political scientist and study co-author Kevin Smith said.

Recent research on the subject has focused mostly on physiological reactions to negative stimuli. The new study’s use of cognitive data regarding both positive and negative imagery adds to the understanding of how liberals and conservatives see and experience the world, Smith said.

UNL political scientist and co-author John Hibbing said the results might mean that those on the right are more attuned and attentive to aversive elements in life and are more naturally inclined to confront them. From an evolutionary standpoint, that makes sense, he said.

The results also are consistent with conservatives’ support of policies to protect society from perceived external threats (support for increased defense spending or opposition to immigration) and internal ones as well (support for traditional values and being tough on crime), Hibbing said.

The researchers were careful to not make a value judgment on either political orientation. But they did note that their discovery provided an opportunity to recognize the relevance of deeper biological variables in politics and turn down political polarization.

Rather than believing those with opposite political views are uninformed or willfully obtuse, the authors said, political tolerance could be enhanced if it was widely understood that political differences are based in part on our physiological and cognitive differences.

“When conservatives say that liberals are out of it and just don’t get it, from this standpoint, that’s true,” Hibbing said. “And when liberals say ‘What are (conservatives) so frightened of? Is the world really that dangerous?’ Given what each side sees, what they pay attention to, what they physiologically experience – the answer is both sides are right.”

The study, funded in part by the National Science Foundation, is in a forthcoming edition of the journal Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B and was authored by Dodd, Hibbing and Smith, as well as UNL’s Amanda Balzer, Carly Jacobs and Michael Gruszczynski.

Contact: Mike Dodd, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
mdodd2@unl.edu
402-472-0547
University of Nebraska-Lincoln

New racism in ‘reasonable accommodation’

It seems history has once again repeated itself. The recent introduction of a ‘statement of values’ by one of Quebec’s biggest cities, Gatineau, harkens back to the 2007 outbreak of race anxiety when the village of Hérouxville drafted its own code of conduct for newcomers.

The intolerance and racism unleashed by the Hérouxville charter and its subsequent reasonable accommodation controversies, which coloured the 2007 provincial election, saw ethnic minorities painted as a threat to Québécois society.

Yet research from Concordia University, published in the Canadian edition of the Global Media Journal, says those flames have been smoldering since the Quiet Revolution. The hostilities were merely stoked by politicians and media eager to trumpet new instances of ethnic hostility to “reasonable Québécois” norm.

According to Alan Wong, a doctoral candidate in Concordia’s Special Individualized Programs, the Quiet Revolution solidified an idea that Quebec was a society bound by democratic values, language and culture. “The ‘reasonable accommodation’ debates, as they happened in the province, maintain this façade of a unified collective Québécois identity. Those identities presumed not to correlate with that value system are therefore different, ‘other,’ and not of Quebec,” says Wong.

There were a number of events in 2006-07 that led to ‘reasonable accommodation’ dominating the public discourse. A young Sikh was permitted to wear a ceremonial dagger to his classes. The École de technologie supérieure (ÉTS) was ordered by the Quebec Human Rights Commission to provide prayer space for Muslim students. Some female members of a Montreal YMCA objected to the decision to install frosted windows out of consideration for the members of the Orthodox Jewish community from a nearby synagogue.

At some point, politicians took notice. Mario Dumont, former leader of the provincial Action démocratique du Québec party, adopted the slogan of “Nos valeurs communes,” which he pledged to defend. Liberal leader and Quebec Premier Jean Charest, as well as then Parti Québécois leader André Boisclair, made similar statements. All three agreed that, in Charest’s words, “recognizing the other doesn’t mean effacing oneself before the other.”

Wong says media were happy to push the narrative of “unreasonable” immigrants insisting on special privileges to the detriment of Québécois values – a practice that has been dubbed “The New Racism.” Coverage from newspapers such as the Montreal Gazette and Le Devoir reinforced the idea of majority culture values as being “reasonable” and immigrants, particularly non-white immigrants, as being “unreasonable”. Special accommodations requested by non-majority yet white groups went unreported by media.

“The press privileged white voices and their perspectives on ‘others’, and favoured their absence when it suited the overall narrative,” says Wong.

Although Wong sees some signs of improvement since 2007 – the Bouchard-Taylor Commission on reasonable accommodation being a positive development – he says much of the assumptions of the discourse of that year have become normal. In addition to alienating already marginalized immigrant and minority groups, this represents a lost opportunity.

“This debate diverted attention away from more significant issues, such as poverty, homelessness and unemployment – issues that affect the everyday lives of the disenfranchised in Quebec,” Wong says. “Immigrants have been harmed in multiple ways by this debate – directly, through the new racism, and indirectly through neglect of life-and-death issues.”

Related links:

Cited study: http://www.gmj.uottawa.ca/1101/v4i1_wong.pdf

Concordia’s Special Individualized Programs: http://graduatestudies.concordia.ca/SIP

Media contact:

Fiona Downey
Media Relations Advisor
Concordia University
Phone: 514-848-2424, ext. 2518
Cell.: 514-518-3336
Twitter: http://twitter.com/concordia
Concordia news: http://www.concordia.ca/now

Why do people defend unjust, inept, and corrupt systems?

Why do we stick up for a system or institution we live in – a government, company, or marriage – even when anyone else can see it is failing miserably? Why do we resist change even when the system is corrupt or unjust? A new article in Current Directions in Psychological Science, a journal published by the Association for Psychological Science, illuminates the conditions under which we’re motivated to defend the status quo – a process called “system justification.”

System justification isn’t the same as acquiescence, explains Aaron C. Kay, a psychologist at Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business and the Department of Psychology & Neuroscience, who co-authored the paper with University of Waterloo graduate student Justin Friesen. “It’s pro-active. When someone comes to justify the status quo, they also come to see it as what should be.”

Reviewing laboratory and cross-national studies, the paper illuminates four situations that foster system justification: system threat, system dependence, system inescapability, and low personal control.

When we’re threatened we defend ourselves – and our systems. Before 9/11, for instance, President George W. Bush was sinking in the polls. But as soon as the planes hit the World Trade Center, the president’s approval ratings soared. So did support for Congress and the police. During Hurricane Katrina, America witnessed FEMA’s spectacular failure to rescue the hurricane’s victims. Yet many people blamed those victims for their fate rather than admitting the agency flunked and supporting ideas for fixing it. In times of crisis, say the authors, we want to believe the system works.

We also defend systems we rely on. In one experiment, students made to feel dependent on their university defended a school funding policy – but disapproved of the same policy if it came from the government, which they didn’t perceive as affecting them closely. However, if they felt dependent on the government, they liked the policy originating from it, but not from the school.

When we feel we can’t escape a system, we adapt. That includes feeling okay about things we might otherwise consider undesirable. The authors note one study in which participants were told that men’s salaries in their country are 20% higher than women’s. Rather than implicate an unfair system, those who felt they couldn’t emigrate chalked up the wage gap to innate differences between the sexes. “You’d think that when people are stuck with a system, they’d want to change it more,” says Kay. But in fact, the more stuck they are, the more likely are they to explain away its shortcomings. Finally, a related phenomenon: The less control people feel over their own lives, the more they endorse systems and leaders that offer a sense of order.

The research on system justification can enlighten those who are frustrated when people don’t rise up in what would seem their own best interests. Says Kay: “If you want to understand how to get social change to happen, you need to understand the conditions that make people resist change and what makes them open to acknowledging that change might be a necessity.”

For more information about this study, please contact: Aaron C. Kay at aaron.kay@duke.edu.

Current Directions in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, publishes concise reviews on the latest advances in theory and research spanning all of scientific psychology and its applications. For a copy of “On Social Stability and Social Change: Understanding When System Justification Does and Does Not Occur” and access to other Current Directions in Psychological Science research findings, please contact Divya Menon at 202-293-9300 or dmenon@psychologicalscience.org.

Contact: Divya Menon
dmenon@psychologicalscience.org
202-293-9300
Association for Psychological Science

Policy reforms ‘demoralizing’ teaching profession, scholar argues

A provocative new article in the American Journal of Education argues that many teachers in the age of rigid curricula, high-stakes testing, and reduced classroom autonomy are finding it difficult to access the “moral rewards” of their profession. This demoralization of teaching threatens to drive away even the most passionate and dedicated of teachers.

“The moral rewards of teaching are activated when educators feel that they are doing what is right in terms of one’s students, the teaching profession, and themselves,” writes Doris Santoro, a professor of education at Bowdoin College. But, she argues, current policy reforms often take away a teacher’s ability to be responsive to students’ needs, and blunt the sense that a teacher is doing what is right for students. This in turn leads to feelings of frustration and hopelessness that are too often misdiagnosed as “teacher burnout.”

“However, the burnout explanation fails to account for situations where the conditions of teaching change so dramatically that moral rewards, previously available in ever-challenging work, are now inaccessible,” Santoro writes. “In this instance, the phenomenon is better termed demoralization.”

To illustrate her point, Santoro describes the experience of Stephanie, a teacher Santoro interviewed in 2008 for a project on why once-passionate teachers decide to leave the profession.

Stephanie taught at a diverse elementary school in Virginia she felt was “a collaborative, respectful environment that enjoyed a cooperative relationship with parents and the community,” Santoro writes. “Stephanie felt as though she was able to exercise her professional judgment and engage in good teaching … and students, while underprepared, were eager to learn.”

Stephanie drew moral rewards from her freedom to respond to her students’ needs. For example, she told Santoro how she relished finding innovative ways to help her students understand scientific and mathematical terminology in her Spanish-language immersion classes. But Stephanie’s sense of having the authority to do good work for her students was ultimately undermined by a new set of statewide curriculum standards adopted in Virginia. The reforms prioritized testing over “real teaching,” Stephanie lamented. She came to see herself as not a teacher but as a dictator of facts.

“What had been hallmarks of good teaching for Stephanie – connecting student learning with their experiences, helping them learn to think in ways that will transfer to success in higher-order analysis and their everyday needs, and maintaining creativity in her work and her students’ problem-solving – was being jettisoned by the exigencies of passing the test” and satisfying state standards, Santoro writes. “The moral rewards that she enjoyed previously by learning about her students’ needs, finding new ways to reach them, and connecting learning to concerns beyond the school became stunted by mandated curriculum and scripted lessons.”

Stephanie ultimately decided that, “This is not what I signed up for,” and left the profession.

What happened to Stephanie is not burnout, Santoro argues. Burnout indicates a personal failing on the part of a teacher – an inability to cope with the stresses inherent in the work, or an exhaustion of the personal resources needed to do the job. Stephanie’s case was not one of personal failing. Rather it was a case in which the profession itself changed in a way that nullified the moral rewards of doing good work.

“Policy makers, educational leaders, and teachers need to find ways to promote, protect, and assess quality teaching that takes into account good teaching and successful (or effective) teaching,” she writes. “Attracting practitioners with the moral significance of the work, while at the same time eliminating the moral dimension of the practice in assessing teacher quality, is a recipe for demoralization.”

Doris A. Santoro, “Good Teaching in Difficult Times: Demoralization in the Pursuit of Good Work.” American Journal of Education 118:1 (November 2011)

Founded as School Review in 1893, the American Journal of Education acquired its present name in November 1979. The journal seeks to bridge and integrate the intellectual, methodological, and substantive diversity of educational scholarship, and to encourage a vigorous dialogue between educational scholars and practitioners. To achieve that goal, papers are published that present research, theoretical statements, philosophical arguments, critical syntheses of a field of educational inquiry, and integrations of educational scholarship, policy, and practice.

Contact: Kevin Stacey
kstacey@press.uchicago.edu
401-284-3878
University of Chicago Press Journals

Creating markets to pay for public good offer promise, peril

Over the past 50 years, 60 percent of all ecosystem services have declined as a direct result of the conversion of land to the production of foods, fuels and fibers.

“This should come as no surprise,” say seven of the world’s leading environmental scientists, who met to collectively to study the pitfalls of utilizing markets to induce people to take account of the environmental costs of their behavior and solutions. “We are getting what we pay for.”

Their report, “Paying for Ecosystems Service: Promise and Peril,” was published in the Nov. 4 issue of the journal Science.

Society pays for the products of agriculture, aquaculture and forestry, and has developed well-functioning markets for these products, these experts say. However, markets for important ecosystem services such as watershed protection, habitat provision, pest and disease regulation, climate regulation and storm buffering are nearly nonexistent.

“The problem is that many ecosystem services are public goods,” says Ann Kinzig, lead author, professor in Arizona State University’s School of Life Sciences and chief research strategist with ASU’s Global Institute of Sustainability. “Some lie outside the control of any one government, and the science for others is still only poorly understood. There is no one-size payment mechanism that fits all cases.”

However, bad payments mechanisms can be worse than no payment mechanisms at all, the study’s authors warn, pointing to the lessons learned from four decades of agricultural subsidies. Subsidies encouraged the overuse of fertilizers and pesticides, two of the main reasons for the growing number of dead zones in the world’s oceans.

A similar lesson can be found in the first generation of cap-and-trade systems, they say. The first U.S. markets for sulfur dioxide emission rights collapsed because of faulty design: They failed to take into account the interactions between multiple pollutants across state boundaries.

The scientists’ report is timely given the growing enthusiasm for the use of Payments for Ecosystem Services (PES) schemes that allow governments and non-governmental organizations to pay for environmental public goods. For example, carbon sequestration is being paid for through the United Nations’ Collaborative Programme on Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation in Developing Countries or REDD scheme. The scheme pays countries to not cut down their forests, which in turn puts the breaks on loss of biodiversity, in addition to curbing carbon emissions.

Many existing schemes fall short, the scientists find.

• Some schemes ignore uncertainties in the science.
• Some generate markets that are too “thin” (involve too few trades) for prices to track environmental conditions.
• Some focus on one service only, creating perverse incentives for other services.
• Many channel income support to particular groups of landholders, rather than signaling the scarcity of ecosystem services.

The authors note too that while ecosystem services that are produced on private lands can benefit from carefully designed payment schemes, many ecosystem services are produced on public lands or seas, or on land and sea areas beyond national jurisdiction.

For such services, different measures of the importance of ecosystem services are needed, they say. The scientists assert that governments need to generate measures that have the same form and status as the measures used to reckon such things as the Gross National Product (GNP). These measures should track changes in the value of publicly owned environmental assets in the same way that society currently tracks changes in the value of buildings, financial stocks or infrastructure.

“Paying for what we need demands that we understand what we collectively lose when we allow the world’s ecosystems to degrade,” say the authors. “To pay for the services we want, we need to know how much they are worth, how they are produced and by whom. Then we need to design payment mechanisms that will work. Our study indicates how.” The study’s authors include Kinzig, Charles Perrings, Terry Chapin III, Steve Polasky, Dave Tilman, V. Kerry Smith and B.L. Turner II, experts in economics, business, urban planning and ecology at Arizona State University, University of Alaska and University of Minnesota. The study was supported by the Global Land Project of the International Geosphere Biosphere Programme and the International Human Dimensions of Global Environmental Change Programme, both part of the International Council of Science.

Contact: Margaret Coulombe
margaret.coulombe@asu.edu
480-727-8934
Arizona State University

Experts challenge government on special needs reforms

Academics, activists, young people, parents and carers will debate government plans to involve parents in the assessment process and introduce a legal right to give them control over funding for their child’s support. The proposals, which are laid out in a Green Paper published in March 2011, claim to give parents a greater choice of schools, along with the power to set up special free schools in their communities.

The proposed changes would fulfil a promise by the coalition government to ‘prevent the unnecessary closure of special schools, and remove the bias towards inclusion’. But event organiser Professor Dan Goodley, at Manchester Metropolitan University, argues that such measures would lead to the greater isolation of disabled children.

“There never has been a bias towards inclusion,” he said. “Disabled children are already more likely to face isolation and unfair treatment, and we know that disabled children are currently more likely than their non-disabled peers to be excluded from mainstream school, and to be set apart in their communities.”

“Our big fear is that more and more disabled kids will be taken out of mainstream schools and put into special schools,” he added. “We could end up with disabled kids being pushed even further away from their communities than they are now.”

Professor Goodley and colleague Dr Katherine Runswick-Cole are drawing on previous research funded by the ESRC called ‘Does every child matter, post Blair?’ The project’s findings show that disabled children and their families continue to suffer exclusions in their day-to-day lives in schools, hospitals, social care and in their leisure activities.

The research also found that narrowing definitions of what represents a ‘normal’ childhood are helping to create increased discrimination and belittlement for disabled children. Expectations for disabled children are low and, despite recent changes in policy and practice, many children are still being denied the opportunity to fulfil their potential.

The debate comes as the government embarks on a period of testing its proposals in local areas from September 2011. The Department for Education plans to set out detailed plans to implement the reforms by the end of the year.

“There are no easy answers, but time is right to debate inclusion,” said Professor Goodley.

For further information contact
Professor Dan Godley
Email: d.goodley@mmu.ac.uk
Telephone: 0161 247 2526

ESRC Press Office:

Danielle Moore
Email: danielle.moore@esrc.ac.uk
Telephone 01793 413122
Jeanine Woolley
Email: jeanine.woolley@esrc.ac.uk
Telephone 01793 413119

Notes for editors:

1. Time to end the bias towards inclusive education?
Organiser: Professor Dan Goodley, Manchester Metropolitan University
Date: 5 November 2011 14.00-16.00
Venue: Museum of Science and Industry, Liverpool Road, Manchester
Audience: Suitable for parents/carers, practitioners, academics and representatives from charities and disabled people’s organisations
For more information: Time to end the bias towards inclusive education?

2. This release refers to the findings from from ‘Does every child matter, post Blair? The interconnections of disabled childhoods’ funded by the Economic and Social Research Council and carried out by Professor of Psychology and Disability Studies at Manchester Metropolitan University. The research examined the effects of the Every Child Matters agenda on disabled children aged 4 to 16 and their families. For more details please visit the project website: post-blair.posterous.com

3. The project involved interviews with disabled children and parents and professionals, along with eighteen months’ observation of families and practitioners as users of health, education and leisure services.

4. The Festival of Social Science is run by the Economic and Social Research Council which runs from 29 October to 5 November 2011. With events from some of the country’s leading social scientists, the Festival celebrates the very best of British social science research and how it influences our social, economic and political lives – both now and in the future. This year’s Festival of Social Science has over 130 creative and exciting events aimed at encouraging businesses, charities, government agencies; and schools or college students to discuss, discover and debate topical social science issues. Press releases detailing some of the varied events are available at the Festival website. You can now follow updates from the Festival on twitter using #esrcfestival

5. The Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) is the UK’s largest organisation for funding research on economic and social issues. It supports independent, high quality research which has an impact on business, the public sector and the third sector. The ESRC’s total budget for 2011/12 is £203 million. At any one time the ESRC supports over 4,000 researchers and postgraduate students in academic institutions and independent research institutes. More at www.esrc.ac.uk

Contact: Press Office
Pressoffice@esrc.ac.uk
Economic & Social Research Council

Hiring foreign talent has a positive impact on the national workforce

Researchers at Universidad Carlos III de Madrid are participating in a study that has determined that when high quality players from foreign countries are drafted to play on sports teams within a determined country, there is an improvement in the performance of that country’s national team.

This research attempts to analyze the impact caused by the liberalization of the labor market in the world of sports brought about by the Bosman Rule. Specifically, the scientists have evaluated the repercussions that the large influx of foreign players caused on national competitions and on the performance of national teams. “This liberalization process has stimulated domestic competition and improved the performance of the national teams that play in national leagues more open to the entrance of foreigners”, declares one of the researchers, Juan de Dios Tena, of the UC3M Statistics Department.

This conclusion contradicts the popular cliché that claims that a huge influx of foreign players to a football league is harmful to the national team. “It’s funny that we (Spain) won the World Cup precisely when the number of foreign football players in the Spanish league increased so dramatically, because up until now, nobody had mentioned the fact that the foreign players could have a positive impact on the national players’ training”, comments Professor Tena. “Science – he adds – offers analytic explanations for facts that doesn’t always support popular beliefs”.

This work, recently published in the journal Labour Economics, was carried out by the Sports Economics research group, whose members are Professor David Forrest, of Salford University (England), Ismael Sanz, of Universidad Rey Juan Carlos (King Juan Carlos University), and Jaime Álvarez, of the Universidad Complutense of Madrid. The general objective of this group, which also includes Ramón Flores, of UC3M’s Statistics Department, is to use sports economics as an experimental field in which to study questions of interest to society, such as the impact of globalization on industry competitiveness. “The great advantage of sports economics is that, unlike other areas of economics, the impact of policy actions can be clearly observed in the results of competitions”, the researchers explain.

Important in creative industries

The results of the study can be extrapolated to other industries in which creativity is important, according to the researchers. That is, local workers can benefit, in terms of skills and ability, from contact with new techniques and practices that foreign “drafts” use. “We have shown – Professor Tena concludes – that the liberalization of the labor market in creative industries improves and stimulates internal competition and industry performance at the national level”.

In carrying out the study, the scientists used statistical analysis and econometric tools to compare the competitive sports balance before and after the enactment of the Bosman Rule. In addition, they examined the results of nearly fifty national basketball teams over a period of more than twenty years, taking into account the number of foreign players in their domestic matches and controlling the impact of other factors, such as the power of the clubs, countries, etc. In this way, they have managed to demonstrate, as the study shows, that an increase in the number of foreigners in a national league tends to generate a subsequent improvement in the national team’s performance, although that team is made up of only domestic players.

Contact: Ana Herrera
oic@uc3m.es
Carlos III University of Madrid
This release is available in Spanish.

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