Evaluation of Equality Policies for the Status of Women in Canada

The aim of this paper is to review and evaluate policies designed to creategender equality in Canada over roughly the past 30 years with a view todetermining what impact, if any, they have had on the status of women.After considering 29 indicators, and noting some of their advantages anddisadvantages, it is concluded that all things considered, there is moreevidence of improvement than of deterioration in the status of women,including more evidence of progress toward gender equality, since the 1970Report of the Royal Commission on the Status of Women in Canada.     

Telegraphic Personalized Instructional Packages for Students

This paper draws together four different teaching-learning constructs into a unified package making use of the instructional module as a vehicle for assisting students to rapidly acquire a knowledge, value, and skill base in social work. This model identifies a process in which telegraphic prose is utilized to convey content in an abbreviated form for the purpose of speeding up the learning process. The content is imbedded in instructional modules to identify the competency to be acquired. Humanizing the instructional process is attained by four positive concepts of learning.     

Antisocial Propensity,Adolescent School Outcomes,and the Risk of Criminal Conviction

Data from the 1986 Northern Finland Birth Cohort Study (n = 4,645) were used to examine the influence of mid‐adolescent (age 15) school outcomes on late‐adolescent (ages 17–19) risk of criminal conviction. Consistent with social‐developmental theories of offending, we found that poor academic performance and reduced school attachment increase the risk of criminal conviction independently of pre‐existing differences in antisocial propensity and other confounding factors identified in prior research. Moreover, in support of an integrated model, our research suggests that academic performance and school attachment mediate the effects of childhood antisociality and learning difficulties on late‐adolescent risk of criminal conviction. The implications of findings for policy and future research are discussed.     

Establishing Mobility Measures to Assess the Effectiveness of Night Vision Devices: Results of a Pilot Study

In preparation for an evaluation of night vision devices, an exploratory study was conducted to gain initial experience with the sensitivity of chosen mobility measures under night conditions. The measures included cane contacts and object recognition distances. Results provide preliminary evidence that these two measures may be sensitive to the effects of a night vision device.     

Making autism through Ocean Heaven (海洋天堂, Haiyang tiantang) and the possibilities of realizing disability differently

This article focuses on a filmic portrayal of issues relating to autism in a Chinese context, using this as a prism through which to consider how meanings associated with disability in general, and the autistic spectrum in particular, are produced. Instead of perpetuating a reductive positive/negative approach to representation, the article focuses on the fluid and dynamic ways in which author and audience co-produce texts relating to disability in ways which are invariably influenced by, and reproducing of, specific socio-cultural and discursive circumstances. Meaning-making in relation to disability is, however, ongoing and there is potential to realize disability differently.     

Politics and Growth

Theories of growth have made progress in understanding the mechanisms of growth in economic terms. However, there is less understanding of the political processes that enable or obstruct these mechanisms. This article provides a four‐stage framework to clarify and analyse the connections between politics and growth: (i) discussing the basic conditions essential for growth; (ii) suggesting that whether or not these conditions emerge depends on specific forms of public‐private interaction; (iii) linking these relationships to the incentives facing those in political power and investors; and (iv) considering the factors at country level that may help to push incentives in a pro‐growth direction.