Media use is a pervasive aspect of children’s home experiences but is often not considered in studies of the home learning environment. Media use could be detrimental to children’s language and literacy skills because it may displace other literacy-enhancing activities like shared reading and decrease the quantity and quality of caregiver-child interaction. Thus, the current study asked whether media use is associated with gains in children’s language and literacy skills both at a single time point and across a school year (...) and whether age moderates any association. Children (N = 1583) were from preschool through third grade classrooms and language and literacy skills were measured in the fall and spring of the school year. Parents reported how much time their child spends using media on a typical school day. Regression analyses showed that using 4 hours or more of media was related to lower literacy gains, but not to language gains. Multilevel models conducted as a robustness check showed that this effect did not hold when accounting for classroom. In neither set of models was there an interaction between age and media use. Single-time-point models did show some associations that did not manifest in more stringent models, highlighting the limitations of correlational designs that do not have measures of children’s skills over time. Given the concern and popular press coverage around children’s media use, it is important to acknowledge nonsignificant effects in this domain. These nonsignificant associations suggest that societal fears around children’s media use may be exaggerated. Notably, however, characteristics of children’s media use, like educational content or adult co-use, may moderate any effects. The relation between media use and language and literacy growth did not differ across the age range investigated suggesting that, within this range, younger children are not more vulnerable to detrimental effects. (shrink)

Most children experience some form of grouping in the classroom every day. Understanding how teachers make grouping decisions and their impacts on children’s social development can shed light on effective teacher practices for promoting positive social dynamics in the classroom. This study examined the influence of teachers’ grouping strategies on changes in young children’s social experiences with peers across an academic year. A total of 1,463 children and 79 teachers from kindergarten to third-grade classrooms participated in this study. Teachers rated (...) children’s behavioral problems as the most important consideration when creating seating charts or assigning children to small groups. Promoting existing or new friendships was rated as the least important consideration. Heterogeneous ability grouping, rated as somewhat important by the teachers, was associated with a decrease in children’s friendships and yet also a decrease in girls’ experience with peer conflicts. Our findings begin to fill in the gaps in the literature on the social impacts of ability grouping for young children. (shrink)

The aim of this discussion is twofold.* First, I shall scrutinize certain prevailing rationales for enlisting for military service and show that these justifications are inadequate to meet the military’s recruiting needs. Larger numbers of enlistees who are fully equipped, both in technical skills and morale, for combat readiness are in great demand, but the arguments used to recruit potential enlistees are self-defeating. I shall show how and why they attract volunteers who are rendered singularly unfit to meet these demands (...) by those very arguments themselves. (shrink)

Children and individuals with developmental disabilities compared to typical participants are disadvantaged not only by virtue of being vulnerable to risks inherent in research participation but also by the higher likelihood of exclusion from research altogether. Current regulatory and ethical guidelines although necessary for their protection do not sufficiently ensure fair distributive justice. Yet, in view of disproportionately higher burdens of co-occurring physical and mental disorders in individuals with DD, they are better positioned to benefit from research by equitable (...) participation. Greater elucidation of this ethical dilemma is called for by researchers, institutional review boards, and funding agencies to urgently redress the imbalance. This article discusses many of the regulatory principles to ensure better research participation of children and individuals with DD: human rights, validity, distributive justice, beneficence/nonmaleficence, and autonomy. (shrink)

This article explores Fanon's thought on dance, beginning with his explicit treatment of it in Black Skin, White Masks and The Wretched of the Earth. It then broadens to consider his theorization of Black embodiment in racist and colonized societies, considering how these analyses can be reformulated as a phenomenology of dance. This will suggest possibilities for fruitful encounters between the two domains in which (a) dance can be valorized while (b) opening up sites of resignification and resistance for Black (...) persons and communities-including a revalorization of Black embodiment as a kind of empowering danced experience. (shrink)

Interactions with teachers and peers are critical for children’s social, behavioral, and academic development in the classroom context. However, these two types of interpersonal interactions in the classroom are usually pursued via separate lines of inquiries. The current study bridges these two areas of research to examine the way in which teachers influence child-perceived peer social support and peer victimization for 2,678 children within 183 classrooms in preschool through grade three. Two levels of teacher influence are considered, namely teacher-child closeness (...) and conflict relationships at the child-level, and teacher management of interpersonal interactions at the classroom-level. Results of multilevel regression models showed that teacher-child closeness was associated with the growth of child-perceived peer social support from fall to spring, whereas teacher-child conflict and teachers’ behavior management practices were associated with the change in child-perceived peer victimization across the academic year. These associations were unique and above and beyond the influence of children’s actual peer social interactions, including reciprocal friendships and the collective classroom reputation of peer victimization. Collectively, findings highlight the multi-faceted teacher roles in shaping children’s perceptions of their peer social experiences during the earliest years of schooling. (shrink)

After a transgression has occurred within an organization, a primary concern is the reintegration of the affected parties back into the organizational community. However, beyond offenders and victims, reintegration depends on the views of organizational peers and their desire to interact with these parties. In two studies, we demonstrated that offender amends and victim forgiveness interact to predict peer reintegrative outcomes. We found evidence of backlash against unforgiving victims: Peers wanted to work the least with victims who rejected appropriate amends, (...) thus penalizing them for their failure to contribute to the restoration process. This backlash effect was due to decreased liking of the victim and the perceived failure to repair the offender-victim relationship. These findings demonstrate that peers expect both offenders and victims to do their part to achieve reconciliation following transgression, and both may suffer the consequences of failing to meet peer expectations. Implications for reintegration within organizations are discussed. (shrink)

There is an awakening of interest in links between geography and moral philosophy, or ethics. This paper reviews a range of issues where common ground might be found on this new disciplinary interface. These issues include the historical geography of moralities, the notion of moral geographies, inclusion and exclusion in the context of the bounding of spaces, and the moral significance of distance and proximity, as well as the more familiar concern with social justice. Environmental ethics provides a link (...) with the physical side of the subject. Some suggestions are made as to the possible contribution of geography to the understanding of moral issues. (shrink)

In 2001, 178 of the world's nations reached agreement on a treaty to combat global climate change brought on by anthropogenic emissions of greenhouse gases. Despite the notable omission of the United States, representatives of the participants, and many newspapers around the world, expressed elation. Margot Wallström, the environment commissioner of the European Union, went so far as to declare, “Now we can go home and look our children in the eye and be proud of what we have done.”In this (...) article, I argue for two theses. First, the rhetoric and euphoria surrounding the 2001 deal is misplaced. This is not, as is often said, because the Kyoto agreement is too demanding but rather because it is much too weak. In particular, the Kyoto agreement does little to protect future generations. On the contrary, (at best) it seems to be a prudent wait-and-see policy for the present generation, narrowly defined. Hence, even those countries who have endorsed the Kyoto agreement should be wary of looking their children in the eye, and none should relish facing their children's children.Second, the failure of the Kyoto agreement can be explained in terms of the underlying structure of the problem. Climate change involves the intersection of a complex set of intergenerational and intragenerational collective action problems. This structure, and in particular its intergenerational aspect, has not been adequately appreciated. Yet until it is, we are doomed to an ineffectual environmental policy. (shrink)

This latest volume of BACAP Proceedings contains some innovative research by international scholars on Plato and Aristotle. It covers such themes as Plato on recollection and on justice, along with Aristotle on Nous and on law._ This publication has also been published in paperback, please click here_ for details.

This paper evaluates the content of the syllabi of postgraduate courses on public health ethics within accredited schools and programs of public health in the United States in order to gain an awareness of the topics addressed within these courses. Methods: Data was gathered via the analysis of syllabi of courses on PHE. In 2012, information was requested by e-mail from the 48 schools and 86 PH programs accredited by the U.S. Council on Education for Public Health for 2012. The (...) “Epidemiology and PHE Syllabi” project of the University of Miami also was consulted. A table of topics was drawn up in order to carry out content analysis of the documents. Results: Data was obtained from 25 schools and 36 accredited programs ; 36 syllabi were gathered and 75 different topics were found. Of these, 38 topics were addressed in six or more syllabi and can be grouped as follows: foundations of PHE; autonomy and its limits; infectious disease control; justice; research ethics; health education and promotion; environmental and occupational health; screening; genetics; privacy and confidentiality; and community-based practice and vulnerable populations. Conclusions: The analyzed syllabi show high variability in curricular content. The debate with regard to whether a core curriculum on PHE should be established is ongoing. The results of this work might be of interest for schools and programs of PH in other countries or regions of the world in order to develop or ameliorate their own PHE syllabi. (shrink)

This book taps the best American thinkers to answer the essential American question: How do we sustain our experiment in government of, by, and for the people? Authored by an extraordinary and politically diverse roster of public officials, scholars, and educators, these chapters describe our nation's civic education problem, assess its causes, offer an agenda for reform, and explain the high stakes at risk if we fail.

Intellectually stimulating articles, which grapple with the tough issues involving morality, justice, and the law. This balanced anthology will be of interest to philosophers, legal scholars, and anyone concerned about the relation of law to morality.

The precautionary principle (PP) aims to anticipate and minimize potentially serious or irreversible risks under conditions of scientific uncertainty. Thus it preserves the potential for future developments. It has been incorporated into many international treaties and pieces of national legislation for environmental protection and sustainable development. In this article, we outline an interpretation of the PP as a framework of orientation for a sustainable information society. Since the risks induced by future information and communication technologies (ICT) are social risks for (...) the most part, we propose to extend the PP from mainly environmental to social subjects of protection. From an ethical point of view, the PP and sustainability share the principle of intergenerational justice, which can be used as an argument to preserve free space for the decisions of future generations. Applied to technical innovation and to ICT issues in particular, the extended PP can serve as a framework of orientation to avoid socio-economically irreversible developments. We conclude that the PP is a useful approach for: (i) policy makers to reconcile information society and sustainability policies and (ii) ICT companies to formulate sustainability strategies. (shrink)

The Commission on the Accreditation of Law Enforcement employs rigorous evaluation techniques. Objective accreditation, such as made possible by CALEA, is important from the public’s perspective and in the national community of law enforcement.To counteract a general distrust of law enforcement agencies, the Law Enforcement Assistance Administration developed a grant to develop standards by which the quality and performance of law enforcement could be measured. LEAA developed 107 standards and, though well received by the law enforcement community, no single group (...) or agency took the initiative to begin a program to evaluate and implement the standards. In 1979, the Department of Justice established an additional grant that effectively organized the four major law enforcement groups: the International Association of Chiefs of Police, the National Sheriff’s Association, the National Organization of Black Law Enforcement Executives, and the Police Executive Research Forum. (shrink)

The ideal model of a just society defended by John Rawls entails the existence of certain institutions—those that form the basic structure of society—that guarantee citizens' basic rights and liberties, equality of opportunity, and access to material resources. Such a model also presupposes a certain account of reasonable citizenship. In particular, reasonable citizens will have a set of moral capacities and dispositions and will voluntarily support just institutions. According to Rawls, the need for such citizens is related to the following (...) important consideration in favor of a normative theory of justice: that it be stable. That is, such a theory must be capable of generating its own support over time. This means that it has to be possible for citizens to come to endorse the theory's principles of justice, integrating them into their personal conceptions of the good life. Rawls explicitly draws attention to the stability requirement on ideal theories of justice. Somewhat surprisingly, when Rawls explains how a widespread and deep moral consensus on the principles of justice might be generated in actual societies—a problem that is closely related to the issue of how such consensus could be maintained over time—he pays very little attention to the potential contribution of schools to the production of reasonable citizens. This neglect can be explained, in part, by his confidence that the functioning of just institutions will spontaneously generate, in citizens who live under them, the necessary support for principles of justice and will encourage the development and exercise of the virtues characteristic of reasonable citizens. But this confidence seems misplaced. (shrink)

Contemporary philosopher Jacques Rancière has been criticized for a conception of “politics” that is insensitive to the diminished agency of the corporeally oppressed. In a recent article, Dana Mills locates a solution to this alleged problem in Rancière most recent book translated into English, Aisthesis, in its chapter on Mallarmé’s writings on modern dancer Loïe Fuller. My first section argues that Mills’ reading exacerbates an “homonymy” (Rancière’s term) in Rancière’s use of the word “inscription,” which means for him either a (...) vicious literal carving on living bodies, or else a virtuous figurative carving on nonliving bodies. The former, I call “bodily carving,” while the latter is the “corporeal writing” that I take Mallarmé to affirm in Fuller. My second section observes that Rancière himself misses a homonymy in Mallarmé on Fuller, namely “dance,” meaning either “ballet” or dance in general (including Fuller’s). My third section concludes that Rancière’s chapter on Fuller includes another “dance” homonymy, meaning either “concert dance” or what I term a new “art of meta-movement” in Fuller. The latter art, I conclude, is equivalent to Mallarmé’s “corporeal writing,” and can be understood as a new form of dance education, in pursuit of a new utopia of worker-dancers. (shrink)

This chapter starts from the claim that the state is plagued with problems of political short-termism: excessive priority given to near-term benefits at the expense of benefits further in thefuture. One possible mechanism to reduce short-termism involves apportioning greater relative political influence to the young, since younger citizens generally have greater additional life expectancy than older citizens and thus it looks reasonable to expect that they have preferences that are extended further into the future. But the chapter shows that this (...) is unlikely to make states significantly less short-termist: no empirical relationship has been found between age and willingness to support long-termist policies. Instead, the chapter proposes a more promising age-based mechanism. States should develop youth citizens’ assemblies that ensure accountability to future generations through a scheme of retrospective accountability. (shrink)

From accessible and affordable health care to old or new reproductive technologies, human or animal research, and beyond, the justice and well‐being of our society depends on the ability of key groups—such as scientists and health care providers—along with members of the public to identify the key issues, articulate their values and concerns, deliberate openly and respectfully, and together find the most defensible ways forward.The Presidential Commission for the Study of Bioethical Issues and The Hastings Center are committed to (...) improving the ethical literacy of the American public in the domain of bioethics. But what are the best educational practices to spur and support these sorts of societal conversations? And where are the greatest gaps in our collective knowledge of how best to inspire and increase moral understanding, analytical thinking in the moral domain, and professional integrity? (shrink)

MORALITY, JUSTICE AND THE LAW is a co-edited volume pulling together selections on theories of the moral underpinnings of law, morality and lawyering (including the religious lawyering movement), civil disobedience, capital punishment and immigration. The book was published by Prometheus Books in 2007.

Climate change is a turning point in human history, necessitating human–ecological transformation on an individual, local, and global scale. Metropolitan regions offer an opportunity for collective action that can transform individuals and communities by expanding and re-integrating our localities, while making a significant impact on global climate change. The Breakthrough Compass is a conceptual tool for navigating the transition from fragmented self toward wholeness and connection to place, while transforming our world. This article offers stories and case studies illustrating how (...) metropolitan regional climate justice coalitions can galvanize this local and global transformation. (shrink)

Ethical decision-making in public health rarely involves simply avoiding a bad choice in favor of a good choice. Instead, it requires policymakers to strike a balance among conflicting goals that are all good—goals such as the health of populations and individuals, knowledge gained through scientific research, autonomy, social justice, and the efficient use of limited resources. This balance can be elusive, and perfect examples are the legal instruments governing dual-use research, a term describing scientific endeavors meant to produce beneficial (...) knowledge or technology, but that could also be misapplied. Dual-use research of concern policies were implemented... (shrink)

The authors use social science methodology to determine whether a doctrinal shift—from an objectivist view of criminality in the common law to a subjectivist view in modem criminal codes—is consistent with lay intuitions of the principles of justice. Commentators have suggested that lay perceptions of criminality have shifted in a way reflected in the doctrinal change, but the study results suggest a more nuanced conclusion: that the modern lay view agrees with the subjectivist view of modern codes in defining (...) the minimum requirements of criminality, but prefers the common law's objectivist view of grading the punishment deserved. The authors argue that there is practical value in having criminal law track shared community intuitions of the proper rules for assigning liability and punishment. For that reason, the study results support the often criticized subjectivist view of modern codes in setting the minimum requirements of liability, but disapprove of the modern codes' shift away from the common law's objectivist view of grading. (shrink)

Understanding the relationship between obesity and fast food consumption encompasses a broad range of individual level and environmental factors. One theoretical approach, the health capability framework, focuses on the complex set of conditions allowing individuals to be healthy. This qualitative study aimed to identify factors that influence individual level health agency with respect to healthy eating choices in uniformly constrained environments. We used an inductive qualitative research design to develop an interview guide, conduct open-ended interviews with a purposive sample of (...) 14 student fast food workers, and analyze the data. Data analysis was conducted iteratively during the study with multiple coders to identify themes. Emergent themes included environmental influences on eating behaviors and internal psychological factors. A localized, embedded approach to analyzing the factors driving the obesity epidemic is needed. Addressing contextual interactions between internal psychological and external environmental factors responds to social justice and public health concerns, and may yield more relevant and effective interventions for vulnerable communities. (shrink)

Does economic globalization create a “race to the bottom” or a “race to the top” in labor rights practices? Despite significant research on the possible impact of economic globalization on labor conditions, little consensus exists as to whether and what forms of economic openness might help or undermine labor rights. In this study, we illustrate the significance of considering the two distinct processes of de facto and de jure globalization. We argue that whereas de facto globalization in the form of (...) trade and financial transactions is likely to result in worse labor rights practices, de jure globalization that entails regulations to facilitate these transactions is likely to have a positive effect on labor conditions. Combining time-series, cross-national data on labor rights with data on economic globalization, we find significant evidence of the divergent effects of de facto and de jure globalization on labor rights practices. Results also indicate that the labor rights effects of de facto and de jure globalization are stronger for trade than financial globalization. We further show that the effects of economic globalization apply to both collective and substantive labor rights practices. (shrink)

Aus dem Inhalt: Views from the North: Hans Petter Graver: Law, Justice and the State: Nordic Perspectives u Jacob Dahl Rendtorff: The Danish Welfare State: Philosophical Ideals and Systemic Reality u Sigri!Dur *orgeirsdottir: Feminist Ethics and Feminist Politics u Kuellike Lengi: The Situation of Human Rights in Estonia u Einar Palsson: Pythagoras and Early Icelandic Law u Law, Discourse and Rationality: Mats Flodin: Internal and External Rationality of Legal Systems u Logi Gunnarsson: A Discourse About Discourse u Hjordi!s Hakonardottir: (...) Legal Language: A Tool of Justice u Ghita Holmstrom-Hintikka: On the Use of Expert Witness in Legal Reasoning and Inquiry u Law, State and Nation: Agust H. Ing*orsson: Democracy, Bureaucracy and Marginalization of the State u Aleksander Peczenik: Law-State, Legal Certainty and Legitimacy of Law u Ove K. Pedersen/Sverre Raffnsoe: Reorganizing Society u Juha Raikka: Mill on National Sentiment u Pall Skulason: Concepts of the State and Classes of Value u Problems of Law and Rights: Britt-Mari Blegvad: How to Cope With Uncertainty: Trust and Law u Jon Wetlesen: Animal Rights or Human Duties?. (shrink)