Too Much of a Good Thing? How Breadth of Extracurricular Participation Relates to School-Related Affect and Academic Outcomes During Adolescence

Although adolescents often participate in multiple extracurricular activities, little research has examined how the breadth of activities in which an adolescent is involved relates to school-related affect and academic performance. Relying on a large, multi-ethnic sample (N = 864; 55.9% female), the current study investigated linear and non-linear relationships of 11th grade activity participation in four activity domains (academic/leadership groups, arts activities, clubs, and sports) to adolescents’ sense of belonging at school, academic engagement, and grade point average, contemporarily and in 12th grade. Results of multiple regression models revealed curvilinear relationships for sense of belonging at school in 11th and 12th grade, grade point average in 11th grade, and academic engagement in 12th grade. Adolescents who were moderately involved (i.e., in two domains) reported a greater sense of belonging at school in 11th and 12th grade, a higher grade point average in 11th grade, and greater academic engagement in 12th grade, relative to those who were more or less involved. Furthermore, adolescents’ sense of belonging at school in 11th grade mediated the relationship of domain participation in 11th grade to academic engagement in 12th grade. This study suggests that involvement in a moderate number of activity domains promotes positive school-related affect and greater academic performance. School policy implications and recommendations are discussed.     

A Prospective Study of Mexican American Adolescents’ Academic Success: Considering Family and Individual Factors

Mexican American youth are at greater risk of school failure than their peers. To identify factors that may contribute to academic success in this population, this study examined the prospective relationships from 5th grade to 7th grade of family (i.e., human capital [a parent with at least a high school education], residential stability, academically and occupationally positive family role models, and family structure) and individual characteristics (i.e., externalizing symptoms, bilingualism, gender, and immigrant status) to the academic performance of 749 Mexican American early adolescents (average age = 10.4 years and 48.7% were girls in 5th grade) from economically and culturally diverse families as these youth made the transition to junior high school. Results indicated that while controlling for prior academic performance, human capital and positive family role models assessed when adolescents were in 5th grade positively related to academic performance in 7th grade. Further, being a girl also was related to greater 7th grade academic success, whereas externalizing symptoms were negatively related to 7th grade academic performance. No other variables in the model were significantly and prospectively related to 7th grade academic performance. Implications for future research and interventions are discussed.     

收入不平等和经济危机:战略与政策——第四届亚欧劳工国际论坛综述

长期主导全球经济的新自由主义经济模式导致了2008年以来的经济危机,使收入不平等分化更加严重,加剧了社会不同群体之间的对立,影响了国家凝聚力和社会信心,破坏了社会稳定与安宁.解决收入不平等加剧,对策上要制定收入增长战略,改革收入分配,促进经济持续的包容性增长;政策上要改革税收制度、建立社会保障制度、实行最低工资标准、加强劳动力市场监管、减少非正规就业等.各国工会积极采取各种措施应对收入不平等的加剧,切实保护工人权益.     

就业困难大学生群体的特征、成因及对策研究——基于对上海某高校2010-2011届毕业生就业状况的调研

本文以上海某高校2010-2011届毕业生的就业调查数据和历年访谈资料为基础,以就业不困难大学生群体为对照组,以就业困难大学生群体为实验组,从就业目标、就业准备和就业能力等方面分析就业困难大学生群体的特征,从劳动力市场机制、教育体制、家庭教育方式以及学生个体特征等方面分析其成因,进而提出相应的对策建议.     

Interrelations of Behavioral, Emotional, and Cognitive School Engagement in High School Students

School engagement, or the extent to which students are involved in, attached and committed to the academic and social activities in school, plays a prominent role in preventing academic failure, promoting competence, and influencing a wide range of adolescent outcomes. Although the multidimensional nature of school engagement is well-recognized, how the three purported parts of the construct work together is largely unknown. By using data from the longitudinal, 4-H study of Positive Youth Development, involving a sample of 1,029 adolescents (67.7 % female; mean age at Grade 9 = 14.92 years; 74.4 % of participants were European American, 5.2 % were Latino/a, 7.3 % were African American), the current study examined the interrelationships of behavioral, emotional, and cognitive aspects of school engagement over three years in adolescence (Grades 9–11). We used autoregressive lagged effects models to assess the relationships among the three engagement constructs. Results indicated that behavioral and emotional engagement were related bidirectionally (each variable was a basis and an outcome of the other). In addition, behavioral engagement influenced cognitive engagement (but the reverse of this relation was not found). Implications for future research are discussed.     

贯彻党的十八大精神全方位推进厂务公开民主管理

全方位推进厂务公开民主管理工作,要在学习党的十八大精神上抓深度;在宣传《规定》内涵上抓广度;在落实民主管理上抓力度.通过扩面提质、健全制度、创新机制、狠抓落实,进一步推动厂务公开民主管理工作向深层次、宽领域、高质量发展.     

基于心理契约理论构建和谐劳动关系评价指标体系

和谐劳动关系是雇佣双方在劳动关系过程中通过有效的机制实现双方权利、义务的平衡,达到协调和平衡的状态,其特征是规范有序、公平合理、互利共赢,因此评价企业劳动关系的和谐程度需要关注雇佣双方利益满足程度.心理契约作为劳动关系的基础和框架,描述了雇佣双方对彼此应履行责任的主观理解,雇佣双方感知到的心理契约履行程度描述了其利益满足程度.本文尝试从雇佣双方心理契约内容及其感知到的心理契约履行程度的理论视角,运用探索性和验证性因子分析构建包含管理者评价和员工评价的和谐劳动关系评价指标体系,并确定管理者和员工评价得分均为4分以上的企业为劳动关系和谐企业.最后对评价指标体系的实践应用进行探讨.     

Centering labor in the land grab debate

Placing labor at the center of the global ‘land-grab’ debate helps sharpen critical insights at two scales. At the scale of agricultural enterprises, a labor perspective highlights the jobs generated, and the rewards received, by people who work in and around large farms. This approach guides my critical reading of the report prepared by a World Bank team that argues for large-scale land acquisition as a way to reduce poverty. Using data from within the report itself, I show why poverty reduction is a very unlikely result. I develop the argument further by drawing on research in colonial and contemporary Indonesia, where large-scale plantations and associated smallholder contract schemes have a long history. A labor perspective is also relevant at the national and transnational scale, where it highlights the predicament of people whose labor is not needed by the global capitalist system. In much of the global South, the anticipated transition from the farm to factory has not taken place and education offers no solution, as vast numbers of educated people are unemployed. Unless vast numbers of jobs are created, or a global basic income grant is devised to redistribute the wealth generated in highly productive but labor-displacing ventures, any program that robs rural people of their foothold on the land must be firmly rejected.     

forbidden tastes: queering the palate in anglophone Indian fiction

We examine pregnant women’s experiences with routinised obstetric ultrasound as entailed in their antenatal care during planned pregnancies. This paper highlights the ambiguity of ultrasound technology in the constitution of maternal–foetal connections. Our analysis focusses on Australian women’s experiences of the ontological, aesthetic and epistemological ambiguities afforded by ultrasound. We argue that these ambiguities offer possibilities for connecting to the foetus in ways that maintain a kind of unknowability; they afford an openness and ethical responsiveness irrespective of the future of the foetus. This suggests that elucidating women’s experience has implications for theorising ethics across maternal–foetal relations and, more specifically, for the ‘moral pioneering’ (Rapp, 2000) that reproductive technologies can demand of women. Moral pioneering cannot be reduced to moments or processes of decision-making; it must allow for greater recognition of the affective commitments entailed in and incited by ultrasound. Furthermore, focussing on experiences of the ambiguity of ultrasound allows for understanding the ways in which affectivity circulates across domains commonly understood as medical or social, public or private. In doing so, it contributes to undermining a series of tensions that currently shape feminist analysis of obstetric ultrasound, often at the expense of the experience of women.