From clouds of chemical warfare to blue skies of peace: the Tehran Peace Museum,Iran

Despite the limited number of peace museums around the world, there exists an essential role for existing peace museums to promote a culture of peace and peace education. The purpose of this article was to introduce the origins, rationale, scope and work of the Tehran Peace Museum in Iran. The concept of the museum is to facilitate peace education and develop peaceful environments drawn from the personal experiences of war survivors. The museum encompasses exhibitions about the horrors of chemical and nuclear warfare and is balanced with awareness programmes, bridge-building dialogues, connections with other peace museums and a comprehensive peace education programme catering for younger and older members of society. It offers the space and opportunity for a community of learning within the museum and welcomes fresh ideas and initiatives from visitors and volunteers. The Tehran Peace Museum is unique in its body of volunteers, men and women who have been directly affected by chemical weapons. They are involved in the Veterans Voices of Peace Oral History Project and actively voice the need for creating peaceful societies in today’s world.     

Bidirectional Influences Between Dimensions of Coparenting and Adolescent Adjustment

Research on coparenting documents that mothers’ and fathers’ coordination and mutual support in their parenting roles is linked to their offspring’s adjustment in childhood, but we know much less about the coparenting of adolescents. Taking a family systems perspective, this study assessed two dimensions of coparenting, parents’ shared decision-making and joint involvement in activities with their adolescents, and examined bidirectional associations between these coparenting dimensions and boys’ and girls’ risky behaviors and depressive symptoms across four time points (6 years) in adolescence. Participants were 201 mothers, fathers, and adolescents (M = 11.83, SD = .55 years of age at Time 1; 51 % female). Parents of sons shared more decisions, on average, than parents of daughters. On average, shared decision-making followed an inverted U shaped pattern of change, and parents’ joint involvement in their adolescents’ activities declined. Cross-lagged findings revealed that risky behavior predicted less shared decision-making, and shared decision-making protected against increased risky behavior for boys. For girls and boys, parents’ joint involvement predicted fewer risky behaviors, and lower levels of risky behavior predicted higher levels of joint involvement. In contrast, boys’ and girls’ depressive symptoms predicted less joint involvement. The discussion centers on the nature and correlates of coparenting during adolescence, including the role of child effects, and directions for future research on coparenting during this developmental period.     

Does Mother Know Best? Adolescent and Mother Reports of Impulsivity and Subsequent Delinquency

Although impulsivity is one of the strongest psychological predictors of crime, it is unclear how well impulsivity, measured at a specific moment in adolescence, predicts criminal behavior months or years into the future. The present study investigated how far into the future self-reports and parents’ reports of a youth’s impulsivity predicted whether he engaged in illegal behavior, whether one reporter’s assessment was more predictive than the other’s, and whether there is value in obtaining multiple reports. Data were obtained from a 6-year longitudinal study of adjudicated juvenile offenders (n = 701 mother-son dyads). Youth (m = 15.93 years old; sd = 1.14) and their mothers independently reported on adolescents’ impulsivity at the initial assessment. We examined the prospective correlation of these measures with illegal behavior, assessed by official records of arrests and youths’ self-reports of offending across the 72-month study period. Youths’ and mothers’ reports of the adolescents’ impulsivity were weakly, but significantly, correlated with one another. Furthermore, mothers’ ratings of their sons’ impulsivity predicted arrest up to 6 years into the future, whereas youths’ reports did not significantly predict arrest beyond 30 months. With respect to youths’ self-reports of offending, mothers’ ratings of impulsivity again predicted farther into the future (as late as 6 years later) than did youths’ self-reports of impulsivity, which were not predictive beyond 4 years. However, across the first 4 years, youths’ self-reports of impulsivity explained more variance in self-reported offending than did mothers’ ratings. The results underscore the endurance of the predictive utility of an assessment of impulsivity and the importance (and accuracy) of parents’ reports of developmental constructs, even when their children are adolescents.     

MI Implementation in Juvenile Justice: A Case Report

Motivational interviewing (MI) is a communication style focused on enhancing clients’ own motivation towards change. In the justice system MI has evidence to support that it enhances communication and change behaviors in youth. As most MI training is designed for healthcare settings training and implementation of MI must be adapted to fit the juvenile justice model. This includes both rehabilitation and restorative justice. Here we describe the details that allowed one county small county in Pennsylvania to roll out MI training and initial skills review in less than 6 months. The case reviews the details of planning, trainings, and timing of activities. We then discuss what elements of those details fit into a greater implementation plan that may be applied elsewhere. Four key elements were instrumental to implementation: 1) appreciation of JPO time constraints, 2) cost containment 3) using blending to enhance JPO flexibility with MI use, and 4) policies that normalize use of MI. This outline may assist other courts in their own implementation efforts.     

Holding on tight – NPM and the New Zealand performance improvement framework

The New Zealand Government's Performance Improvement Framework (PIF) is aimed at public sector organisational improvement. The PIF exemplifies how the characteristics of new public management (NPM) challenge the evolution of performance systems attempting to go beyond performance management. The paper provides an empirical example of the operation of the PIF, using a theoretical frame derived from the literature. The analysis suggests that the PIF design does not yet mitigate the effects of gaming, synecdoche, and reputation-protecting behaviour. The common graded ratings continue to hold the attention of those to whom the PIF is important, acting as a proxy for the whole performance of the organisation. This is a case study of how, despite promising adaptations, performance improvement efforts remain hampered by NPM limitations.     

Helping to Break the Glass Ceiling? Fathers,First Daughters,and Presidential Vote Choice in 2016

Political Behavior - Throughout her 2016 U.S. presidential campaign, Democratic Party nominee Hillary Clinton crafted messages intended to appeal to fathers of daughters and to highlight the...