Transition from school for youths with a disability: issues and challenges

Australian research has demonstrated that students with a disability are more likely to remain out of the full‐time workforce. These research findings have been the catalyst for a call for a comprehensive career development and transition planning approach for all students with disabilities in schools as well as for employers to rethink the role of people with disabilities in the workforce. In the Australian context the transition from school for individuals with a disability is complicated by a disparate and fragmented group of service agencies providing a range of services, including employment, supported accommodation, recreation and leisure pursuits, as well as training and placement, along with, at times, a deep‐seated prejudice towards people with disabilities in the market place. This paper reviews a number of issues and challenges confronting individuals with a disability making the transition from school to the post‐school environment.     

Seducing Leadership: Stories of Leadership Development

This article argues that leadership development is a process of seduction. Drawing on some stories of leadership development from my experience as participant, observer and teacher I show the ways in which certain sorts of highly valued leadership teaching contain seductive elements, including sweeping audiences off their feet and, in some contexts, forestalling critique about the content that is offered. The article also considers the extent to which seduction is a gendered performance. I conclude that, while gender and power are defining elements and constraints in how seductive pedagogical relations are constructed, there are opportunities for experimentation and display that potentially subvert gendered stereotypes. Seeing the seduction in leadership can help us understand leadership and leadership teaching better, and can open the way to doing it differently — to experimentation and innovation.     

Demographic Influences on Risk Perceptions

Over the past 15 years, psychologists have empirically investigated how people perceive technological, consumer, and natural hazards. The psychometric-attitudes to risk being summarized by three factors: "dread," whether the risk is known, and personal exposure to the risk. The results have been used to suggest that certain types of hazards are viewed very differently from other hazards. The purpose of this paper is somewhat different, in that it investigates whether individual demographic characteristics influence psychometric perceptions of risk. This paper makes use of a large, professionally conducted, survey of a wide cross-section of the residents of metropolitan Chicago. One thousand adults were interviewed in a random-digit dial telephone survey, producing a useable dataset of about 800. Data on the three risk factors mentioned above were obtained on 7-point scales for four common hazards: aviation accidents, fires in the home, automobile accidents, and stomach cancer. The survey also collected demographic data on respondents'age, schooling, income, sex, and race. Regressions were then conducted to relate the demographic characteristics to risk perceptions. Some strong general conclusions can be drawn. The results suggest that women, people with lower levels of schooling and income, younger people, and blacks have more dread of hazards. The exception being age-related illnesses which, not unnaturally, are feared by older people. Unlike previous literature, we cannot substantiate the argument that these groups of people are less informed about hazards and thus less accepting of them. The most likely leading explanation of the relationship between demographic factors and dread of a hazard is the perceived personal exposure to the hazard. People with greater perceived exposure to a hazard are more fearful.     

Formalizing the Unformalized: Practitioners' Communication of Knowledge in Practice

Correspondence to Dr Jennifer Osmond, School of Human Services, Logan Campus, Griffith University, University Drive, Meadowbrook, Queensland 4131, Australia. E-mail: j.osmond{at}griffith.edu.au Summary Despite considerable debate in the literature, social work continuesto invest considerable analytical and empirical energy on understanding,recognizing and critiquing the nature and form of its knowledgebase. Although such contributions have advanced the discussion,what is largely absent but essential to this debate is an understandingof how practitioners actually express what they know. This paperfocuses specifically on this issue and in so doing, advancesone template for working with practice language. From a qualitative,multi-method research methodology, it was found that participants'communication of their knowledge was not always formal and labelled.Knowing could be expressed via examples, stories, metaphor,as well as understandings that resembled existing theoreticalknowledge or that which had been reformulated and synthesizedin practice. The paper emphasizes the necessity to recognizethis diversity in knowledge communication, so as to accuratelyand responsibly map actual practice knowledge, but in doingso, also raises the issue of addressing limitations that suchrecognition brings. The issue of competent and clear practicearticulation is a topic to which the profession should giveserious attention. The inability of practitioners to explicitlyarticulate the basis of practice behaviour places them at aconsiderable disadvantage in a competitive labour market.     

Stability of retrospective reports in depression: traumatic events,past depressive episodes,and parental psychopathology

Research findings based on the retrospective reports of depressed individuals have long been held suspect because of possible negative reporting biases associated with depression. In the present study we assess the stability of retrospective reports of past traumatic events, past depressive episodes, parental depression, and parental substance abuse in a sample of 234 adults whose depression status changed over two assessments conducted one year apart. Depression status was found to affect reporting of number of past depressive episodes and past traumatic events, but not reporting of parental psychopathology. Implications of these findings are discussed for research that relies on the retrospective self-reports of depressed participants.