The Pivotal Role of Adolescent Autonomy in Secondary School Classrooms

Student engagement is an important contributor to school success, yet high school students routinely describe themselves as disengaged. Identifying factors that alter (increase) engagement is a key aspect of improving support for student achievement. This study investigated students’ perceptions of autonomy, teacher connection, and academic competence as predictors of changes in student engagement within the classroom from the start to the end of a course. Participants were 578 (58% female) diverse (67.8% White, 25.2% African American, 5.1% Hispanic, 1.2% Asian American) high school students from 34 classrooms who provided questionnaire data both at the start and the end of a single course. Novel results from a cross-lagged model demonstrated that students who perceived their classrooms as allowing and encouraging their own autonomy in the first few weeks increased their engagement throughout the course, rather than the typical decline in engagement that was demonstrated by students in other classrooms. This finding is unique in that it extended to both students’ perceptions of engagement and observations of student engagement, suggesting a fairly robust pattern. The pertinence of this finding to adolescent developmental needs and its relationship to educational practice is discussed.     

Developmental Associations Between Adolescent Change in Depressive Symptoms and Menstrual-Cycle-Phase-Specific Negative Affect During Early Adulthood

The causal factors associated with increases in depressive symptoms among adolescent girls remain an area of theoretical debate, and the limited research considering a hormonal influence has provided mixed results. The goal of the present study was to test a set of longitudinal associations, that, if found, would provide support for a hormonal contribution to these changes. Specifically, this study tested the hypotheses that changes in depressive symptoms among adolescent girls would be associated with phase-specific symptoms of the menstrual cycle during early adulthood; that these associations would differ across three phases of the menstrual cycle; and that the pattern of associations would differ for changes in depressive symptoms during early- and late-adolescence. The sample consisted of 47 women with longitudinal data from 12 to 21 years old (approximately 91% European Canadian, 4% Middle Eastern Canadian, 2% Haitian Canadian, and 2% Asian Canadian). Consistent with expectations, results showed that early-adolescent increases in depressive symptoms were negatively associated with menstrual-phase negative affect, and positively associated with mid-cycle negative affect, but not associated with premenstrual negative affect; whereas late-adolescent change in depressive symptoms was only associated with depressive symptoms at 20-21 years. Thus, early-adolescent changes in depressive symptoms are longitudinally associated with later mood change across the menstrual cycle, suggesting a common underlying cause, which is hypothesized to be hormonal. Moreover, results suggest that, with respect to variables that are involved in affective development, important differences exist between early- and late-adolescence. The discussion considers menstrual-cycle-related symptoms (e.g., dysmenorrhea) during adolescence, and the need to study their effects on development. It is suggested that focused intervention and prevention efforts may be indicated to interrupt negative developmental outcomes.     

Cognitive Vulnerabilities to Depression for Adolescents in Single-Mother and Two-Parent Families

Although research consistently suggests that adolescents in single-mother families are at increased risk for depression, the mechanisms that explain this relationship are unclear. In a community sample of adolescents (N?=?368; ages 12–16; 50?% female; 50?% White) and their mothers (42?% single), adolescents completed measures of depressive symptoms, rumination, and depressogenic inferential style at baseline and two yearly follow-ups. Mothers reported on stressful events that occurred in the child’s life from birth until baseline. Adolescents raised by single mothers, relative to partnered mothers, experienced more childhood stressors and higher rumination levels at 1-year follow-up. Additionally, higher rumination mediated the relationship between single motherhood and greater youth depressive symptoms at the 2-year follow-up. Clinical implications and developmental considerations are discussed.     

drones,swarms and becoming-insect: feminist utopias and posthuman politics

Insects and ‘the swarm’ as metaphors and objects of research have inspired works in the genres of science fiction and horror; social and political theorists; and the development of war-fighting technologies such as ‘drone swarms’, which function as robot/insect hybrids. Contemporary developments suggest that the future of warfare will not be ‘robots’ as technological, individualised substitutions for idealised (masculine) warfighters, but warfighters understood as swarms: insect metaphors for non-centrally organised problem-solvers that will become technologies of racialisation. As such, contemporary feminist analysis requires an analysis of the politics of life and death in the insect and the swarm, which, following Braidotti (2002), cannot be assumed to be a mere metaphor or representation of political life, but an animating materialist logic. The swarm is not only a metaphor but also a central mode of biopolitical and necropolitical war, with the ‘terrorist’ enemy represented as swarm-like as well. In analysing the relations of assemblage and antagonism in the war ontologies of the drone swarm, I seek inspiration from what Hayles (1999, p. 47) describes as a double vision that ‘looks simultaneously at the power of simulation and at the materialities that produce it’. I discuss various representations and manifestations of swarms and insect life in science/speculative fiction, from various presentations of the ‘Borg’ in Star Trek (1987–1994, 1995–2001, 1996), Alien (1979) and The Fly (1958, 1986) to more positive representations of the ‘becoming-insect’ as possible feminist utopia in Gilman’s Herland (2015 [1915]) and Tiptree’s Houston, Houston, Do You Read? (1989 [1976]). Posthuman warfare also contains the possibilities of both appropriating and rewriting antagonisms of masculine and feminine in the embodiment of the subject of war in the swarm. This piece seeks to analyse new ways of feminist theorising of the relations of power and violence in the embodiment of war as the swarm.