Effectiveness of the International Child Development Programme: Results from a randomized controlled trial

This study aimed to evaluate the effectiveness of the International Child Development Programme (ICDP), a group-based parenting programme used internationally and implemented nationally in Norway. We used a cluster randomized controlled trial in which 81 groups were randomly assigned to either the intervention or waitlist control condition after the baseline data collection. A total of 590 parents completed at least one of three questionnaires (administrated before and after ICDP and 4 months after completing the intervention). Primary outcomes included parental self-efficacy, parental emotion sensitivity and positive involvement with their child. Secondary outcomes included parents' perceptions of their relationship with the child, child-rearing conflicts and the child's psychosocial health. We found significant effects favouring the intervention arm following the intervention and at follow-up on two primary outcomes (parental self-efficacy and emotion sensitivity). For the secondary outcomes, we found a significant reduction in child-rearing conflict at the 4-month follow-up, increased closeness to the child, reduced child internalizing difficulties and increased prosocial behaviour immediately following the intervention. However, ICDP seems to have limited effects on parent-reported changes in children. We conclude that ICDP as a universal preventive programme offered to parents in groups can be effective in strengthening parental self-efficacy and improving parental emotion sensitivity.     

Skewed Sex Ratios at Birth in Italian Migrant Populations: Evidence from a Longitudinal Register 1999–2017

European Journal of Population - Many studies in different settings have suggested that migrants from countries with skewed sex ratios at birth tend to adjust the sex of their offspring to ensure...     

Palestinians and the Arab Uprisings: political activism and narratives of home,homeland, and home-camp

This article examines the ways in which Palestinians have been affected by the Arab Uprisings and their aftermath, especially in light of their statelessness and protracted refugeedom. It does so by analysing the narratives of 49 Palestinians who were based in France, Sweden, and the UK at the time of interview between 2012 and 2014. We show that the forms of mobilisation and/or identifications that Palestinians in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) and beyond engaged in with regard to the Arab Uprisings, transcended the link between the host state and the homeland. They extended to a plurality of in-between spaces such as Palestinian refugee camps, Arab host states, and Arab countries experiencing the uprisings. We argue that these in-between spaces became salient to broader conceptions of Palestinian identity and activism because Palestinian-ness is shaped not only through attachment to place, but also through particular experiences that are associated with Palestinian identity.     

The challenges of mathematics education for Indigenous teacher training

In this article, I outline research carried out on in an Ethnomathematics course designed to train Indigenous teachers in Costa Rica, in which the following ethnic groups participated: Ngabes, Bribris, and Cabecares. The challenge is to develop a mathematical education that provides equitable conditions for the different groups within innovative curricular proposals. This research is based on the construct of ‘Cultural Mathematical Knowledge' which serves to describe intrinsic characteristics of socially differentiated groups and thus propose a model for teacher education. The design of the course incorporates an empirical base, a theoretical base, and a methodological base. It is a multicultural and multidisciplinary proposal based on Indigenous mathematics and on the ideas of mathematical enculturation, to be developed through curricular microprojects in Indigenous schools. The course promotes preparing the teacher as a researcher to shape him or herself mathematically, as someone who carries out appropriate educational actions in an academic environment in accordance with an ethnolinguistic reality, a cultural worldview, and awareness of the potential of the students of Indigenous schools.     

Kitwood's thought and relational social work

Tom Kitwood is a key figure in the development of thought about dementia, but generally no references are made to his work outside of elderly care. This article argues that Kitwood's thought has much to offer to all the professional caregivers, regardless of the users’ category they are caring for, and to the broader field of professional social work. Some key themes from the writings of Kitwood are examined, namely the critique of the ‘standard paradigm’; the conception of malignant social psychology; the respect for otherness in the positive person work; the person with dementia as a resource for reciprocity processes; the new culture of dementia. For each of these issues similarities between Kitwood's approach and relational social work are identified. Relational social work considers the helping process and the well-being development as co-constructions, in which the contributions not only by the helper (or the caregiver, or the social worker), but also by the helpee (or by the care recipient, or by the user) are essential: both at the same time are helped and helpers, and both are empowered by this. This idea—of great value to all social work fields—is remarkably close to the Kitwood's thought about the dementia care.     

Young people’s leisure patterns: testing social age,social gender,and linguistic capital hypotheses

We analysed young people’s leisure activities in order to identify their leisure habitus, discover how they combined activities into leisure patterns, and examine how leisure patterns were socially structured. We argue that the effects of age, gender, and language on how young people’s leisure patterns are structured are mediated by social class. We found that leisure practices could be classified in terms of three habitus: the frequent leisure habitus, the cultural activity habitus, and the social vs. entertainment habitus. The different combinations of these three leisure habitus by young people resulted in four patterns which we refer to as social, omnivorous, entertainment, and religious leisure patterns. The association of leisure patterns with indicators of social position suggests that, as predicted by our theoretical framework, age, gender, and language effects are diminished once we take into account the mediating role of social class. Young people’s leisure practices are therefore socially differentiated, with young immigrants forming a vulnerable group that should be the particular focus of youth leisure policies.     

The language ideologies of multilingual nannies in London

In the globalized economy, multilingualism is increasingly perceived as a way of maximizing competitiveness, even in the family home. In the United Kingdom, multilingualism has become an asset for nannies, granting privileged access to a niche job market. Adopting the theoretical lens of language ideology, we identify sites and forms of language evaluation within the nannies’ discursive construction of their language work. Using thematic analysis of interview and focus group data with nannies, we examine how nannies represent their English and L1 language practices, verbalizations, and embodiments. Findings suggest that, rather than language practices, it is the verbalization of the symbolic value of multilingualism (normally through the medium of English) that grants nannies an advantageous position in the market. This market is made possible by upper-middle-class families, whose privileging of specific languages and speakers perpetuates eliteness, gendered language work, and problematic approaches to second language learning.     

The love bug and the melancholic drag queen or a reflection on the cultural/political “grounds” of subjects as sexual

The notion of the subject and its formation has long been at the centre of discussion in critical theory. Identity discourse constructed a passive subject made up of qualities such us gender, sexuality, race, ethnicity and age. Poststructuralist thought on the other hand invested its critical mind in producing a mobile subject, one that is both the product and the producer of practices, power and processes. While identity discourse put qualities such as “sex” at the centre of its analysis of subject formation and produced a sexual subject, poststructuralist thought emphasised “bodies and pleasure” and produced the subject as sexual. This article addresses the formation of the subject as sexual through an everyday practice that forms a dominant part of our contemporary computerised era, namely that of the opening of an e‐mail. It reads the effects of the “Love Bug”, the e‐mail that infected millions of computer systems on the 4th of May 2000, so as to assess the extent it produces a different subject sexual than the one already promoted in poststructuralist thought. Butler’s notion of “gender performativity” (a dominant concept in relation to the subject as sexual) and her allegory of the melancholic drag queen are evaluated through ?i?ek’s critique and the example of the “Love Bug” e‐mail. This produces a different reading of the subject as sexual: one that understands sexual pleasure as being at the foundations of subject formation.