Sustainable lifestyles for all? Disability equality,sustainability and the limitations of current UK policy

In recent years, various environmental threats have been highlighted in relation to disability. Growing knowledge of the effects of climate change and particular impacts on disabled people have been highlighted by a number of authors, including a recent critique of disabled people’s ‘vulnerability’ with respect to environmental hazard. This article focuses on the issue of citizen involvement with climate change mitigation – and more broadly individual and household-level efforts to reduce our impact on the environment. These more mundane aspects of climate change mitigation, for example through transitions to more sustainable lifestyles, also have significant implications for disabled people. The article argues that disability equality is a key component of sustainability. Limitations are demonstrated in policy designed to address these issues using the example of current UK policy, and it is suggested that policy approaches to sustainability should also be a concern of disability studies.     

Review Articles: Introduction

Florian Coulmas (ed.). The Handbook of Sociolinguistics (Blackwell Handbooks in Linguistics, 4). Oxford: Blackwell. 1997. x + 532 pp.Cloth (0–631–19339–1) £#187;70.00.     

Neutrality as a Moral Standpoint, Conceptual Confusion and the Full Inclusion Debate

Opposing perspectives on the full inclusion debate reveal a fundamental disjuncture between underlying conceptual frameworks. Advocates contend that full inclusion is a moral issue that cannot be resolved from a supposedly neutral scientific stance. Defenders of the traditional continuum of placements argue, to the contrary, that scientific research should be the dominant factor in arbitrating between separation and inclusion. In this paper, I examine the concept of scientific neutrality and its lack of tenability as a foundation for sorting out the full inclusion debate. Subsequently, I explore how the assumption of neutrality plays itself out in the context of specific argument against full inclusion and offer some clarification on the moral nature of the debate.     

The quality of mother‐adolescent disclosure: Links with predictors and adolescents’ sociomoral outcomes

Previous work on adolescents’ disclosure has focused on the frequency of disclosure to parents, but not the quality of that disclosure. Therefore, there is a need to examine factors that predict the quality of adolescents’ disclosure, as well as the consequences of the quality for adolescents’ outcomes. In this study, 100 adolescents (M age = 14.27 years; 57 girls; 70.7% White, European American) disclosed to mothers a recent past event in which they felt excluded; the videotaped and transcribed conversations were rated for indices of the quality of disclosure (i.e., the quality of elaboration and emotion discussed). Adolescents completed measures of sociomoral behavior and parental warmth and mothers completed measures of their moral identity, circle of moral regard, and moral socialization. The quality of adolescents’ disclosure was related to adolescents’ sociomoral outcomes (including prosocial behaviors, empathy, and sociability). Adolescents’ disclosure quality was predicted by gender and by aspects of mothers’ moral sophistication. Findings highlight the importance of high‐quality self‐disclosure by adolescents for promoting adolescents’ moral development, potentially because such disclosure gives parents the opportunity to help adolescents cope with challenging peer experiences potentially through emotion coaching and problem‐solving. Moreover, the findings are novel because they highlight how maternal moral processes might promote adolescents’ disclosure.     

Reactive Temperament and Sensitivity to Context in Childcare

Consistent with Biological Sensitivity to Context and Differential Susceptibility hypotheses, this study found that children who, as infants, were more temperamentally reactive were more sensitive to the quality of childcare they experienced as toddlers, but not to the amount of childcare with peers they had experienced since birth. Children with both highly positively and negatively reactive temperaments were more socially integrated when care quality was higher and less integrated when care quality was lower compared with moderately reactive children. Reactive temperament was not found to moderate relations between care quality or care duration and internalizing or externalizing behavior problems. These findings support the need to consider individual differences among children in evaluating the impacts of childcare.     

Prepared for Practice? Graduating Social Work Students' Reflections on Their Education,Competence and Skills

The paper encompasses the views of 13 Swedish graduating social work students on their education, competence, skills and expectations for their future roles as social workers. It presents the findings of the first phase of a longitudinal study where students in Sweden and Australia are followed from university and during the first 18 months in the profession. A qualitative methodology was employed and semi-structured interviews were conducted with the students just prior to graduating. The most salient theme was the strong wish for more time in contact with the field. All of the students would have preferred at least one additional period of field placement. A strong wish for clarity, particularly in relation to understanding what it means to practise social work, emerged. Although most of the graduates talked about their self-development and described themselves as having become more critical and more self-confident, they perceived themselves as more or less unprepared for most social work positions and expected to receive considerable support and guidance in their workplaces. The proportion of theoretical and research courses in comparison to the teaching of practice skills and field placements within Swedish social work education is discussed.