Horsing around: Using equine facilitated learning to support the development of social-emotional competence of students at risk of school failure

The social-emotional issues some students experience can place them at risk of school failure. Traditional methods of support can be ineffective or not sustainable and new alternative approaches need to be attempted to support social-emotional competency, school engagement, and success for students at risk. This article discusses preliminary outcomes of an equine facilitated learning (EFL) program specifically designed to focus on using horses to improve the resilience and social-emotional competency in students perceived as “at risk” of school failure. This qualitative exploratory study used interviews and observations over a six month period to listen to the voices of the students themselves about their experiences of EFL. Initial findings from the pilot study suggest that EFL programs can be a novel and motivating way to promote resilience training and social-emotional development of students at risk of failure and, in turn, improve their level of engagement and connection with school environments.     

Human Factors Effecting Forensic Decision Making: Workplace Stress and Well‐being

Over the past decade, there has been a growing openness about the importance of human factors in forensic work. However, most of it focused on cognitive bias, and neglected issues of workplace wellness and stress. Forensic scientists work in a dynamic environment that includes common workplace pressures such as workload volume, tight deadlines, lack of advancement, number of working hours, low salary, technology distractions, and fluctuating priorities. However, in addition, forensic scientists also encounter a number of industry‐specific pressures, such as technique criticism, repeated exposure to crime scenes or horrific case details, access to funding, working in an adversarial legal system, and zero tolerance for “errors”. Thus, stress is an important human factor to mitigate for overall error management, productivity and decision quality (not to mention the well‐being of the examiners themselves). Techniques such as mindfulness can become powerful tools to enhance work and decision quality.     

A Resilience Approach to Transitional Justice?

ABSTRACT

Transitional justice, which is typically part of a liberal peacebuilding strategy, often seems distant, ineffective or even counter-productive. The concept of resilience, to which transitional justice discourses and scholarship have remained relatively indifferent, appears useful to explore justice initiatives in conflict or post-conflict situations. This article argues that much can be gained from better understanding the relevance of – and significant risks associated with – resilience thinking in this context. Through a critical approach to resilience, and embedded within a legal-pluralist framework, it examines some of the ways of dealing with political violence, with a particular focus on the Central African Republic.     

汶川地震应对经验与应急管理中国模式的建构路径——基于强政府与强社会的互动视角

巨灾的频发使得风险治理的公共政策系统受到巨大挑战。由于特定的危机形势和政策制定系统的局限性,造成了各种各样的政策困境,尤其是汶川地震促使我们重新审视国家力量在巨灾应对中与社会力量之间的互动关系。基于以上背景,本文试图通过研究团队三年多来针对汶川地震应对的全景式实证性研究,并结合中国应急管理系统建设发展的历史性回顾揭示出相应的挑战和机遇,探索一个基于强政府与强社会互动的分析视角和发展路径。     

Governance and Tools for the Post-Industrial Re-Conversion of the North-West European Mining Area： From a Contemporary Vulnerability to a Territorial Resilience

Many European countries （including Germany, Belgium, France, and England） were faced with industrial decline, creating a new issue in the territories： Brownfields sites inside or on the periphery of industrial cities. The post-industrial contemporary vulnerability involves prospective and strategic planning choices in terms of rehabilitation, requalification, or in terms of destruction of the existing heritage. The research targets North-West European mining area brownfields requalification via the paradigm of territorial resilience with a view to a socio-economic revitalisation. What can be the vectors of a sustainable territorial recovery and what are the resilience indicators of those traditional industrial regions of Europe？ By such research, the imperative commitment of political players and citizens to carry out a long-term proactive resilience of a space system to a major industrial heritage is demonstrated. Even if governance is not the only factor of territorial resilience, it remains a major sign in its vulnerable territories.     

APPLYING CASE STUDY METHODOLOGY TO CHILD CUSTODY EVALUATIONS

The child custody evaluation (CCE) can play a critical role in the resolution of custody disputes in the Family Court. There have been a number of significant methodological advances made in this field by various researchers over the past 20 years. It is timely that a scientifically‐based, integrative, methodological framework be developed within which existing methods might be situated. In this paper, case study methodology is proposed as an appropriate methodological framework for CCEs. The application of this methodology to CCEs is explicated with particular attention being paid to the methodological tasks of data collection and data interpretation. An orienting model is proposed to guide the collection of data, and strategies are described for applying population level research findings to individual cases in the form of risk and resilience models. Finally, coherence, analogy, and making methodology explicit are proposed as evaluation criteria for the CCE process and reports, and suggestions are made about outcome research.     

Adaptive Governance Policy for Societal Resilience and Community Empowerment

This paper reviews current thinking on flexible policy-making and participatory methods to empower communities to handle the challenges of climate change and other global shocks. Adaptive Governance for Resilience--designed to effectively increase societal resilience to external shocks while facilitating wellbeing and reducing both poverty and environmental degradation--is an innovative approach which teams cutting-edge policy-making with community empowerment. Using a 9-step methodology of the Adaptive Governance Cycle, resilience in communities can be strengthened as the communities are themselves empowered to increase wellbeing, address poverty alleviation, and strengthen environment protection. The approach facilitates governments to partner with local communities to calibrate the coordinated mix of flexible, adaptive policies to facilitate community resilience through participatory action. The author sees expanded use of Adaptive Governance as an approach for maintaining good governance and building social capital in the face of external and internal pressures and uncertainties which may become more widespread in the future.     

Correlates of Reduced Misconduct Among Adolescents Facing Adversity

This study examines the association between engagement in daily challenges and school misconduct in a sample of adolescents. Engagement is assessed by the amount of time spent in challenging activities and in terms of subjective ratings of success in daily challenges. Analyses employ data from a study in which adolescents provided self-reports of their immediate experience over the course of 1 week in response to signals generated at random times by alarm wristwatches. Analyses also test whether the number of opportunities for engagement in school activities is associated with misconduct. Because adolescents who face substantial adversity at home or at school are at particular risk for increased misconduct, associations are tested separately for high- and low-adversity adolescents. Results indicate that both time in daily challenge and perceived success in daily challenge are independently associated with reduced misconduct, and that these associations are slightly more pronounced for high (as compared to low) adversity adolescents. Extracurricular opportunities were shown to be associated with reductions in misconduct for high- but not low-adversity adolescents. Among high adversity adolescents, opportunity for engagement and perceived success in daily challenge were not only associated with reduced misconduct in cross-sectional analyses but also were predictive of reductions in misconduct over time.     

Authoritarian resilience and regime cohesion in Morocco after the Arab Spring

Abstract

This article argues that Morocco's competitive authoritarian regime is more resilient today in certain key respects than it was when the Arab Spring began. Drawing on Levitsky and Way's dimension of organisational power, the article contends the regime was sufficiently unnerved by the unrest to resort to the use of high intensity coercion as part of its response to the 20 February Movement. The article maintains that, in employing this force successfully, the regime has turned the protests into an important source of non-material cohesion for its security apparatus and thereby enhanced its ability to defend itself from similar challenges in the future.     

心理韧性提升的具身认知途径:西方经验与本土反思

具身认知心理学主张身心一体性和情绪具身性,其相关实证研究可为思考从身体途径提升心理韧性提供理论基础。西方的身体疗法和中国本土的身心修炼方式已有较为丰富的身心干预实践,西式疗法具有操作性强、治疗目的明确、理论模型精确的特征,而传统身心修炼方式则以身心合一的基本哲学理念为前提,提倡防重于治的日常化和长期化干预模式。总结这些疗法的特征并分析其特异性,可为探索本土化的心理韧性培养技术提供有益借鉴。