bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
The United Kingdom and the European Union
Authors: Blair Alasdair
Published: August 2020

Since the end of World War II a key question that successive U.K. governments have faced is what position the country should occupy in global affairs. Such a question stemmed from the legacy of Empire, which both offered global connections and at the same time financial demands in terms of the need to maintain a global footing. These issues came to a head when the United Kingdom applied (unsuccessfully) to join the European Community (the forerunner of the European Union (EU)) in the 1960s when the country was reappraising its position in the world. And while the United Kingdom eventually joined the Community in 1973, there remained an underlying skepticism about membership within the public at large as well as within sections of the Conservative and Labour parties. This suspicion gained more traction from the 1990s onward as the then EU appeared to be moving to a deeper level of integration in the wake of the Maastricht Treaty. This spurred on Euroskeptics in the United Kingdom to campaign for independence. To put a lid on this pressure for reform, David Cameron held a referendum on U.K. membership in 2016. His gamble that this would once and for all seal the United Kingdom within the EU by closing down the issue of withdrawal did not actually materialize, as the electorate voted to leave, which in turn set the country on a path to depart the EU in 2020. Yet, despite these developments, just as was the case in 1945, the United Kingdom is in many ways still searching for a role in the world in 2020.
Ambivalent Humanitarian Crises and Complex Emergencies
Authors: Dijkzeul Dennis , Griesinger Diana
Published: August 2020

The term “humanitarian crisis” combines two words of controversial meaning and definitions that are often used in very different situations. For example, there is no official definition of “humanitarian crisis” in international humanitarian law. Although some academic disciplines have developed ways of collecting and analyzing data on (potential) crises, all of them have difficulties understanding, defining, and even identifying humanitarian crises. Following an overview of the use of the compound noun “humanitarian crisis,” three perspectives from respectively the disciplines International Humanitarian Law, Public Health, and Humanitarian Studies are discussed in order to explore their different but partly overlapping approaches to (incompletely) defining, representing, and negotiating humanitarian crises. These disciplinary perspectives often paint an incomplete and technocratic picture of crises that is rarely contextualized and, thus, fails to reflect adequately the political causes of crises and the roles of local actors. They center more on defining humanitarian action than on humanitarian crises. They also show four different types of humanitarian action, namely radical, traditional Dunantist, multimandate, and resilience humanitarianism. These humanitarianisms have different strengths and weaknesses in different types of crisis, but none comprehensively and successfully defines humanitarian crises. Finally, a multiperspective and power-sensitive definition of crises, and a more fine-grained language for comprehending the diversity of crises will do more justice to the complexity and longevity of crises and the persons who are surviving—or attempting to survive—them.
Economic Globalization, Democracy, and Political Behavior
Authors: Vowles Jack
Published: August 2020

The implications of economic globalization for economic policy, social policy, and party government have been well researched. But until recently one important topic has been relatively neglected: the effects of the process on mass political behavior, political parties, and electoral competition. As in the broader literature, two opposed theoretical approaches stand out: one inferring that globalization imposes “constraint” on actors, and the other that it generates incentives for efforts to “compensate” those disadvantaged by the process. Work on economic voting has established that economic globalization reduces the apparent effect of economic performance on vote for or against incumbents, although the explanations and implications remain a matter of debate. Testing expectations that economic globalization produces neoliberal party policy convergence within countries produces mixed results, some confirming and others refuting the claims of constraint theory. While there is an association between high levels of economic globalization and lower electoral turnout, an expected microlevel linkage by way of external efficacy has not been established. While economic globalization produces winners and losers, its effects on social and political cleavages vary between countries, although there is some evidence that economic globalization helps to promote the salience of a universalist/particularist or open/closed cultural cleavage. The ability to generalize from the research so far is somewhat limited by much of the literature’s European focus. Theoretically, there is a need to move beyond the constraint/compensation debate, particularly in the wake of the global financial crisis (GFC), as a result of which globalization stalled and in some respects, began to retreat. The COVID-19 pandemic has thrown even more doubt on the future: the ‘high years’ of globalization may now be behind us, but the research questions thrown up by the process should remain alive and well.
Regionalist Parties and the European Union
Authors: Massetti Emanuele , Schakel Arjan H.
Published: August 2020

Regionalist parties are political actors that emphasize distinct ethno-territorial identities and interests vis-à-vis those of the entire state, advocating some forms of territorially based self-government in a view to protect, give voice to, and enhance those identities and interests. The tense relationships that these political actors often have with the central institutions leads them, in the European Union (EU) context, to identify the EU as a potential ally in their struggle against the state. Indeed, the EU system of multilevel governance, in which regional governments have obtained a considerable role, is also the result of a combined effect of regionalist parties’ pressure on member states from below and the process of European integration creating a favorable political framework from above. This putative alliance was celebrated, during the 1980s and 1990s, with the Maastricht Treaty representing a pivotal moment for the launch of the vision of a “Europe of the Regions.” However, the EU constitutional reforms of the 2000s (from the Treaty of Nice to the Treaty of Lisbon) fell rather short vis-à-vis regionalist claims, revealing the “illusionary character” of the “Europe of the Regions” idea. Since then, attempts to achieve “Independence in Europe” (through “internal enlargement”) have intensified in regions governed by strong and radical regionalist parties, such as in Catalonia and Scotland. These secessionist attempts have added further strain to an already under-stress EU political system. Indeed, far from acting as an ally of regionalist forces, the EU appears to have straddled between the role of a neutral observer and a supporter of member states’ territorial integrity.
Crowds and Collective Behavior
Authors: Drury John , Reicher Stephen
Published: August 2020

The challenge for a psychology of crowds and collective behavior is to explain how large numbers of people are, spontaneously, able to act together in patterned and socially meaningful ways and, at the same time, how crowd events can bring about social and psychological change.

Classical theories, which treat crowd psychology as pathological, deny any meaning to crowd action. More recent normative and rationalist models begin to explain the coherence of crowd action but are unable to explain how that links to broader social systems of meaning. In both cases, the explanatory impasse derives from an individualistic conception of selfhood that denies any social basis to behavioral control. Such a basis is provided by the social identity approach. This proposes that crowd formation is underpinned by the development of shared social identity whereby people see themselves and others in terms of membership of a common category. This leads to three psychological transformations: members perceive the world in terms of collective values and belief systems; they coordinate themselves effectively; and hence they are empowered to realize their collective goals. These transformations explain the social form of crowd action. At the same time, crowd events are intergroup phenomena. It is through the intergroup dynamics between the crowd and an out-group (typically the police)—more specifically the way the social position of crowd members can change through the way police officers understand and respond to their actions—that change can occur. The social identity framework helps make sense of a range of phenomena beyond conflict crowds, including behavior in emergencies and disasters and the psychology of mass gatherings. The practical adequacy of the social identity approach is demonstrated by its use in a number of applied fields, including “public order” policing, crowd and emergency management, mass gatherings, health, and pedestrian modeling.
Studying Development in Mid-20th Century America
Authors: Johnson Ann , Johnston Elizabeth
Published: August 2020

During the mid-20th century, the study of human development in the United States underwent significant expansion as support for scientific approaches solidified and methods and research topics grew. Inside the field, tensions between contrasting theoretical approaches and differing views on what determines growth and change (e.g., the perennial nature vs. nurture debate), fueled a proliferation of studies on physical growth and motor development, IQ, and personality. Lois Barclay Murphy, for example, challenged the emphasis placed on aggression and conflict in personality studies to include evidence of the early appearance of empathy and altruism in the young child, contradicting the outlook popularized by behaviorist John Watson in the 1920s. While hereditarian views of intelligence were dominant in the early part of the century, research by Marie Skodak Crissey and others soon challenged that perspective and pushed the field to develop more interactive models of heredity and environment. Skodak Crissey, for example, documented the powerful impact of adoption versus institutional care on measures of intelligence, demonstrating the mutability of intelligence as a result of environmental changes.

In addition, the field expanded during the mid-century period (which is here defined as approximately 1925 to 1960) from studies of the infant and child to adolescents and development over the lifespan, including longitudinal studies like the Berkeley Growth Study, initiated in 1928 and headed by Nancy Bayley, and Lewis Terman’s long term study of gifted children. While historical accounts emphasize the contributions of a small number of male psychologists (such as Watson, Arnold Gesell, and Terman), women entered the field in large numbers and made landmark contributions during this period, often challenging and undermining orthodoxies and motivating the more complex picture of development dominant today. Among the women making contributions were Marie Skodak Crissey (1910–2000), Nancy Bayley (1899–1994), and Lois Barclay Murphy (1902–2003).
A History of Pavlovian Science
Authors: Ruiz Gabriel , Sánchez Natividad
Published: August 2020

Transnational historiography, which emerged in the 1990s, covers historical phenomena that transcend the boundaries of the nation-state, analyzing the processes of circulation, transformation and hybridization of scientific ideas and practices across national frontiers. When scientific knowledge flows between different countries, the ideas that emerge in one particular national context adapt to the new local contexts of their hosts, with their particular cultural, social, political and scientific traditions. In psychology, the transnational approach provides a productive theoretical framework capable of going beyond the traditional US-centered perspective that has dominated the historiography of psychology since the mid-20th century. This US-based historiography has, for example, interpreted the historical influence of I. P. Pavlov in terms of two main factors: his methodological contribution—the conditioned reflex—and the existence of a behaviorist tradition in the receptor psychology community. However, a more global analysis questions the need for these two elements and, at the same time, offers insights into the conditions that facilitated or hindered the flow of Pavlovian science beyond the United States. Thus, for example, between 1903 and 1970 the dissemination and appropriation of the Pavlovian science of conditioned reflexes took two different routes: in America, scientific aspects and factors dominated; whereas elsewhere, politics prevailed over science. This happened in countries such as China, Cuba, and Spain, with dictatorial regimes at different ends of the political spectrum, where Pavlov’s work arrived under the auspices of government programs to modernize scientific and clinical institutions. Once Pavlov’s ideas had been introduced through reform programs in each country, they were accepted or rejected depending on whether the sign of the regime in question converged with the ideology prevailing in the Soviet Union, which it did in China and Cuba, but not in Spain. In these countries, where psychology did not have strong institutional roots and behaviorism was not a dominant approach, Pavlovian ideas found a receptive audience among health professionals-doctors, psychiatrists, and clinical psychologists - keen to embrace new ideas and treatments for mental disorders. Thus, from a transnational perspective, the global repercussion of Pavlov’s ideas went far beyond the strictly methodological sphere.
Brain Lesions
Authors: Whishaw Ian Q. , Sholomiski Megan
Published: August 2020

A brain lesion is an area of damage, injury, or abnormal change to a part of the brain. Brain lesions may be caused by head injury, disease, surgery, or congenital disorders, and they are classified by the cause, extent, and locus of injury. Lesions cause many behavioral symptoms. Symptom severity generally corresponds to the region and extent of damaged brain. Thus, behavior is often a reliable indicator of the type and extent of a lesion. Observations of patients suffering brain lesions were first recorded in detail in the 18th century, and lesion studies continue to shape modern neuroscience and to give insight into the functions of brain regions. Recovery, defined as any return of lost behavioral or cognitive function, depends on the age, sex, genetics, and lifestyle of patients, and recovery may be predicted by the cause of injury. Most recovery occurs within the first 6 to 9 months after injury and likely involves a combination of compensatory behaviors and physiological changes in the brain. Children often recover some function after brain lesions better than adults, though both children and adults experience residual deficits. Brain lesion survival rates are improved by better diagnostic tools and treatments. Therapeutic interventions and treatments for brain lesions include surgery, pharmaceuticals, transplants, and temperature regulation, each with varying degrees of success. Research in treating brain lesions is progressing, but in principle a cure will only be complete when brain lesions are replaced with healthy tissue.
Frustration and Relative Deprivation
Authors: Rios Kimberly , Mackey Cameron D.
Published: August 2020

With its origin in the writings of Alexis de Tocqueville and Karl Marx, relative deprivation has been investigated by researchers in psychology, sociology, anthropology, criminology, and political science. Relative deprivation is a judgment of oneself or one’s ingroup as being disadvantaged compared to another person or group, which leads to feelings of anger, frustration, resentment, and/or entitlement. Individuals can feel relatively deprived when comparing themselves to other ingroup members or relevant outgroup members, or when comparing their ingroup as a whole to a relevant outgroup. Individuals can also make temporal comparisons—comparing their current status with their own past or future status or comparing their ingroup’s current status with the past or future status of the ingroup. If these comparisons lead to an appraisal of disadvantage and to affective reactions such as angry resentment, a variety of interpersonal or intergroup outcomes can ensue, including individual psychological states (e.g., lower self-esteem), individual behavior (e.g., increased engagement in risky behaviors such as gambling), intergroup attitudes (e.g., more prejudice toward the outgroup), and collective action (e.g., higher likelihood of protesting).

Relative deprivation can be influenced by several factors. People from individualistic cultures have been shown to exhibit more relative deprivation from collectivistic cultures. Temporality also has affected feelings of relative deprivation; these feelings are dependent upon type of temporal comparison (past vs. future) and number of temporal comparisons. Moreover, temporal comparisons have been treated as both an influencer of relative deprivation as well as a source of relative deprivation; future research should address these competing notions. Additional influencing factors include system-justifying beliefs (potentially limiting comparisons and subsequent feelings of relative deprivation) and feelings of empowerment (leading to more deprivation). Future directions pertaining to relative deprivation should focus on comparing feelings of relative deprivation over a period of time (i.e., longitudinally) and experimentally manipulating the construct to flesh out how relative deprivation works. Another recommendation for future research involves creating and validating measures of relative deprivation at both the individual and group level. Finally, a newer line of research examines relative gratification (where cognitive comparisons of being better-off than others leads to prejudice against outgroups). Future research should determine when and how relative gratification occurs and what the differences between the feelings and outcomes of relative gratification and relative deprivation may be.
Group Cohesion
Authors: Rios Kimberly , Mackey Cameron D.
Published: August 2020

The definition of group cohesion has been debated since the formal introduction of the concept in social psychology. Group cohesion has undergone a variety of conceptualizations over the years stemming from several theoretical perspectives. Many models of group cohesion have been introduced; however, research with these models is largely confined to the field (e.g., psychology) or subfield (e.g., sports psychology) in which it originated. Initially, unidimensional models of group cohesion were popular, with proponents of these models arguing that cohesion would have the same consequences regardless of its operationalization. However, later research found that group cohesion may be multidimensional in nature. Several two-dimensional models have been proposed, the most popular of which distinguishes between group members working together to attain common goals (task cohesion) and group members interacting with one another on a more personal level (social cohesion). Another multidimensional model of group cohesion builds on the social-task cohesion distinction but further divides social and task cohesion into Group Integration and Individual Attractiveness to Group sub-components, thus creating a four-factor model.

Group cohesion has been applied to a variety of group contexts, including sports teams, military squads, and work groups. The amount of cohesion in each group is dependent upon the properties of the group being investigated. Groups that have naturally formed (i.e., “real” groups) have higher rates of group cohesion than groups created for the purpose of a study (i.e., “artificial” groups). Other factors that affect group cohesion include type of group (e.g., interdependent vs. co-acting) and level of analysis (i.e., individual or group). Research on group cohesion has focused on the consequences of group cohesion in lieu of what causes group cohesion in the first place. Furthermore, although much research has detailed the relationship between cohesion and performance, many other positive consequences of group cohesion have not been assessed in depth. Finally, group cohesion is also associated with potential negative consequences, such as groupthink.
Bystander Apathy
Authors: Nida Steve A.
Published: August 2020

The brutal 1964 murder of Kitty Genovese sparked widespread public interest, primarily because it was reported to have taken place in view of some 38 witnesses, most of whom had seen the incident through the windows of their apartments in a high-rise building directly across the street. (Investigative work conducted some 50 years later suggests that there were not that many actual witnesses—more likely as few as seven or eight.) The ensuing analyses provided by newspaper columnists and others tended to focus on the callous indifference that had been demonstrated by those who had chosen not to intervene in the emergency, a state of affairs that came to be known, at least for a while, as “bystander apathy.” (It soon became clear, however, that bystanders in such events are rarely apathetic or indifferent.) Intrigued by the internal and interpersonal dynamics that might be involved, two social psychologists, Bibb Latané and John Darley, began a program of research that led to the conclusion that any notion of “safety in numbers” is illusory. In fact, it is the very presence of other people that may discourage helping in such circumstances. More specifically, other unresponsive bystanders may provide cues suggesting that the event is not serious and that inaction is the appropriate response. In addition, knowing that others are available to help allows the individual bystander to shift some of the responsibility for intervening to the others present, a process that Latané and Darley termed “diffusion of responsibility”; that is, the greater the number of others present, the easier it is for any one individual to assume that someone else will help. Subsequent research has demonstrated that this tendency for the individual to be less likely to help when part of a group than when alone—now known as the “bystander effect”—is a remarkably robust phenomenon. Even though social psychology has developed a thorough understanding of the mechanisms that drive this phenomenon, applying this knowledge is difficult, and significant incidents involving the bystander effect continue to occur.
Gordon Allport
Authors: Fancher Raymond E.
Published: August 2020

Gordon W. Allport was a prominent Harvard University psychologist during the mid-20th century, notable both for his early and effective promotion of “personality” as an important psychological subdiscipline, and in his later career as a social psychologist for works on several issues of major social importance. In 1921 he and his older brother Floyd Allport jointly proposed the study and measurement of traits as the foundation of a new subdiscipline of personality psychology, with Gordon’s Harvard doctoral research a pilot study demonstrating the feasibility of the approach. On a subsequent postdoctoral fellowship in Germany Allport became impressed by William Stern’s “personalistic” psychology, which held that a person’s “individuality” could be defined in two ways: relational individuality, comprised of the particular combination of numerous measurable traits manifested by a subject in studies such as Allport’s thesis; and real individuality, a Gestalt-like conception of a personality that is more than just the sum of its parts, and discoverable only through a qualitative analysis of the traits’ role in an overall life history. These ideas inspired in Allport a conception of personality as a broad and independent psychological field that would incorporate both the “nomothetic,” experimental methods of the natural sciences in measuring and studying personality traits, and the non-experimental “idiographic” methods utilized in the historical and humanistic fields for providing conceptions of wholly integrated, unique personalities. Noting that Anglo-American psychology was heavily dominated by the former approach, he became an outspoken advocate of the latter as a necessary complement to it.

Allport taught undergraduate seminars promoting this conception at Harvard and Dartmouth between 1924 and 1930, before returning permanently to Harvard in 1930. There, both independently and in collaborations with others, he conducted and promoted seminal personality research employing both nomothetic and idiographic methods. His comprehensive and authoritative 1937 textbook, Personality: A Psychological Interpretation, was a landmark in establishing personality as a major psychological discipline. With enhanced reputation, Allport became a leading institutional figure in American psychology. For the rest of his career he continued to advocate an inclusive, “eclectic” approach to personality psychology, while also turning attention to important social issues such as wartime morale and propaganda, the influence of radio as a mass medium, the role of religion in personality and society, and with particular impact the nature of prejudice.
William James and the Role of Psychology in Philosophy
Authors: Araujo Saulo de Freitas , Osbeck Lisa M.
Published: August 2020

James’s work is admittedly cross-disciplinary to the extent that it defies traditional scholarly boundaries. One of the best examples is the cross-fertilization between his philosophical and psychological ideas, although the precise relation between them is not easy to frame. Notwithstanding this difficulty, one can say that James’s early psychology, developed between the 1870s and 1880s, illuminates many aspects of his later philosophical positions, including pragmatism, radical empiricism, and pluralism. First, James defends the teleological nature of mind, which is driven by subjective interests and goals that cannot be explained by the immediate interchange with the external environment. They are spontaneous variations that constitute the a priori, properly active nature of the human mind. This idea helps him not only explain important features of scientific and philosophical theories, but also reject certain philosophical doctrines such as materialism, determinism, agnosticism, and so on. It represents, so to speak, the relevance of the subjective method for deciding moral and metaphysical issues. Second, James claims that certain temperaments underlie the choice of philosophical systems. Thus, both pragmatism and pluralism can be seen as philosophical expressions of subjective influences. In the first case, pragmatism expresses a temperament that combines and harmonizes the tender-minded and the tough-minded. In the second, pluralism reflects the sympathetic temperament in contrast with the cynical character drawn to materialism. Finally, James proposes a distinction between the substantive and the transitive parts of consciousness, meaning that consciousness has clearly distinguishable aspects as well as more obscure points, although human beings tend to focus only on the first part, ignoring the other. This idea plays a decisive role in the elaboration of radical empiricism. Such illustrations, far from exhausting the relations between James’s psychology and philosophy, invite new insights and further scholarship.
Phantom Limbs and Brain Plasticity in Amputees
Authors: Makin Tamar , Plasticity Lab London
Published: August 2020

Phantom sensations are experienced by almost every person who has lost their hand in adulthood. This mysterious phenomenon spans the full range of bodily sensations, including the sense of touch, temperature, movement, and even the sense of wetness. For a majority of upper-limb amputees, these sensations will also be at times unpleasant, painful, and for some even excruciating to the point of debilitating, causing a serious clinical problem, termed phantom limb pain (PLP). Considering the sensory organs (the receptors in the skin, muscle or tendon) are physically missing, in order to understand the origins of phantom sensations and pain the potential causes must be studied at the level of the nervous system, and the brain in particular. This raises the question of what happens to a fully developed part of the brain that becomes functionally redundant (e.g. the sensorimotor hand area after arm amputation). Relatedly, what happens to the brain representation of a body part that becomes overused (e.g. the intact hand, on which most amputees heavily rely for completing daily tasks)? Classical studies in animals show that the brain territory in primary somatosensory cortex (S1) that was “freed up” due to input loss (hereafter deprivation) becomes activated by other body part representations, those neighboring the deprived cortex.

If neural resources in the deprived hand area get redistributed to facilitate the representation of other body parts following amputation, how does this process relate to persistent phantom sensation arising from the amputated hand? Subsequent work in humans, mostly with noninvasive neuroimaging and brain stimulation techniques, have expanded on the initial observations of cortical remapping in two important ways. First, research with humans allows us to study the perceptual consequence of remapping, particularly with regards to phantom sensations and pain. Second, by considering the various compensatory strategies amputees adopt in order to account for their disability, including overuse of their intact hand and learning to use an artificial limb, use-dependent plasticity can also be studied in amputees, as well as its relationship to deprivation-triggered plasticity. Both of these topics are of great clinical value, as these could inform clinicians how to treat PLP, and how to facilitate rehabilitation and prosthesis usage in particular. Moreover, research in humans provides new insight into the role of remapping and persistent representation in facilitating (or hindering) the realization of emerging technologies for artificial limb devices, with special emphasis on the role of embodiment. Together, this research affords a more comprehensive outlook at the functional consequences of cortical remapping in amputees’ primary sensorimotor cortex.
Effective Self-Management Strategies
Authors: Rafferty Lisa A. , Asaro-Saddler Kristie
Published: August 2020

There are many benefits to developing self-management skills in children, especially in inclusive classroom environments; individuals with effective self-management skills who work as part of a larger team can improve not only their own overall performance but also that of the group as a whole—inside and outside of the school setting. Teaching students self-management strategies can free teacher time to focus on other essential tasks, which is especially important when working in a classroom environment with children with a variety of learning strengths and needs. Moreover, such strategies can be used to increase students’ opportunities to practice and respond to knowledge and academic skills in the curriculum, as well as support their behavioral needs.

Although there are many benefits to developing self-management skills, students with and at risk of disabilities often need explicit instruction to learn about and implement specific strategies to help develop these skills. Fortunately, teaching just a small set of strategies can have wide-ranging benefits and help students regulate many behaviors; additionally, research results suggest that people with a variety of learning strengths and needs can learn to implement and benefit from being taught self-management strategies. Therefore, it seems worthwhile to focus on such skills.

Despite these encouraging benefits, however, there are still several areas within self-management research that need to be further explored and discussed. For instance, identifying the appropriate level of teacher involvement in teaching these strategies, determining the potential differential effects of various self-management strategies on the behaviors of students embodying different characteristics, and the potential structural variability and the impact on student outcomes all require further investigation. Given these unresolved questions in the field, it is unclear as to how such variables impact students’ mastery and generalization of self-management strategies. This is especially important since it has been argued that self-management is the most significant goal of education; individuals who can effectively self-manage contribute to society in impactful and meaningful ways.
Policies That Foster Education for All: Implications for Economically Wealthy Nations
Authors: Sider Steve
Published: August 2020

Efforts to support education for all students have increasingly become priorities for governments around the world. Key international agreements, including the Sustainable Development Goals and the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, have provided foundational direction to jurisdictions in implementing policies to engage all students including those with special education needs. As initiatives to support equitable and inclusive education for all become more widespread globally, it is important to consider how these efforts affect economically wealthy countries. Using the example of Canada, and specifically the province of Ontario, implications of supporting education for all through the framework of inclusive education are examined. These implications include funding, teaching commitment and training, resources, and privatization. Inclusive education refers to the ability of all students, regardless of gender, socioeconomic background, sexual orientation, or ability, to attend their neighborhood community school and be in classes with similar aged peers. Students with special education needs, whether these be learning disabilities, visual or hearing disorders, or mental health disorders, among many other conditions, are key stakeholders in inclusive education. The conclusion raises important questions for future research to examine inclusive education and the parallel implications not only in economically wealthy countries but for all jurisdictions that are trying to initiate and support educational programs for all students.
Inclusive and Special Education Policies in South America
Authors: Payà Andrés
Published: August 2020

In the last decade, inclusive education policies have been one of the priorities within the pedagogical and social agendas of different South American countries. However, the great complexity and enormous diversity of both concepts (inclusive education and South America) demand a detailed analysis of what it means to strive for educational progress throughout such an extensive territory. On the one hand, inclusive education encompasses both traditional special education as well as other key issues that are closely linked: equity, quality, diversity, universality, access, participation, intersectionality, rights, individualization, and so on. On the other hand, South America is a real, complex, multifaceted territory in which different countries with very different political, economic, and social situations coexist (Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Guyana, Paraguay, Peru, Suriname, Uruguay, and Venezuela).

As such, it is necessary to begin with comparative education and educational policy in order to understand the different educational priorities of each region as well as the organizations and stakeholders that have an impact. The development of inclusive education has not been uniform. Indeed, because there is no consensus regarding what inclusion means and represents, though there have been correlations, its evolution has been unequal throughout different countries. A study of both national and transnational inclusive educational policies will allow us to better understand and approximate this complex reality, as well as to anticipate forthcoming educational challenges.
Critical Thinking
Authors: Allen Derek , Bailin Sharon , Battersby Mark , Freeman James B.
Published: August 2020

There are numerous definitions of critical thinking, but the core concept has been said to be careful, reasoned, goal-directed thinking. There are also many conceptualizations of critical thinking, which are generally more detailed than brief definitions, and there are different views about what the goal(s) of critical thinking instruction should be. Whether critical thinking is a good thing is a matter of debate. Approaches to teaching critical thinking vary, partly according to whether they focus on general principles of critical thinking or on subject-matter content or on a combination of both. A meta-analysis research report published in 2015 concluded that, subject to certain qualifications, a variety of critical thinking skills and dispositions can develop in students through instruction at all educational levels. Critical thinking instruction has been influenced by research in cognitive psychology that has suggested strategies for countering factors (e.g., biases) that the research has found to produce irrational beliefs. Methods of assessing critical thinking ability include teacher-designed tests and standardized tests. A research report published in 2014 on assessing critical thinking in higher education describes challenges involved in designing standardized critical thinking tests and proposes a framework for a “next-generation” assessment. The challenges include achieving a balance between the assessment's real-world relevance and its psychometric quality, and designing an assessment useful for instructional purposes and for comparisons of programs and institutions. The proposed framework is based partly on a review of existing frameworks of critical thinking in higher education. It has two analytical dimensions and two synthetic dimensions, and a dimension on understanding causation and explanation. Surveys show that employers value employees with strong critical thinking ability; this fact has significant implications for students, teachers, and administrators at all levels of education.
High Leverage Practices in Elementary Inclusive Education
Authors: Maheady Lawrence J. , Patti Angela L.
Published: August 2020

Teacher preparation programs are undergoing a shift from knowledge-based to practice-based, meaning the emphasis is on what teacher candidates can do, rather than what they know. In light of this movement, high leverage practices (HLPs)—a set of core practices that educational experts agree all teachers should be able to do upon entering the teaching field—have been developed in several different educational areas (e.g., general education and special education). As experts develop sets of HLPs, they identify practices that (a) are researched based, (b) are often used by teachers during the school day, (c) can be applied across grade levels and subject areas, (d) are fundamental to student learning, and (e) can be taught, practiced, and developed to some degree of fluency by teachers entering the profession. The idea is that these practices can be used as a core curriculum for teacher preparation programs. While initial work with HLPs is promising, additional questions must be answered before moving forward. Institutions of higher education that choose to use HLPs to frame their teacher preparation programs need to determine (a) which HLPs to use, (b) how to integrate HLPs into the program, (c) how to assess teacher candidate fluency with HLPs, and (d) how to evaluate the effects of HLPs on P–12 students. As these questions are answered, further light can be shed on what truly makes a practice worthy of the designation “high leverage.”
Best Practices for Working with Students with Physical Disabilities
Authors: Coughlin April B.
Published: August 2020

The Disability Studies in Education framework offers the best practices for working with, listening to, and addressing the strengths and needs of students with physical disabilities in schools. Areas covered include reducing barriers to physical and social access, utilizing expertise of students with disabilities to inform practice, reducing stigma while creating disability culture in the classroom, and assisting students with physical disabilities in building self-advocacy skills.
Diversity and Inclusion and Special Education
Authors: Forlin Chris , Chambers Dianne
Published: August 2020

Special education has undergone continued transformation since societies began to provide an increasing number of specialized, segregated facilities for children with like needs during the 20th century. Since then, there has been a worldwide movement against a segregated approach and toward greater inclusion of students with disabilities into regular schools. The provision of a dual special education and regular school system, nevertheless, remains in existence, even though there has been a strong emphasis on a more inclusive approach since the latter half of the 20th century. As regular schools become more inclusive and teachers more capable of providing appropriate modifications for most students with learning needs, simultaneously there has been an increase in the number of students whose needs are so severe that schools have not been able to accommodate them. While these children and youth have special needs, they are invariably not related to an identified disability but fall more into a category of diversity. In particular, students who are excluded from schools due to severe infringements, those who are disenfranchised from school and refuse to attend, and those with severe emotional, behavioral, or mental health issues are not being serviced by the existing dual system. For these students neither existing special schools that cater to students with disabilities nor regular inclusive schools provide an appropriate education. The provision of a complementary and alternatively focused education to cater to the specific needs of these marginalized students seems to be developing to ensure sustainability of education and to prepare these new groups of students for inclusion into society upon leaving school. This tripartite approach highlights a new era in the movement toward a sustainable, inclusive education system that caters to the needs of all students and specifically those with the most challenging and diverse requirements.
Preparing Teaching Assistants for Including All Learners
Authors: Webster Rob , Bosanquet Paula , Blatchford Peter
Published: August 2020

The early 21st century has seen a considerable increase in both the number and presence of teaching assistants (TAs) and learning support staff in classrooms. In the United Kingdom and elsewhere, TAs have assumed responsibility for teaching lower-attaining pupils and especially those with special educational needs or disabilities (SEND). This drift has occurred in a largely uncritical way and has attracted little attention because of the attendant benefits additional adult support has for teachers. However, evidence from research in the United Kingdom and the United States have revealed troubling and unintended consequences of this arrangement in terms of impeding pupil progress and increasing the likelihood of pupils’ dependency on adult support. Of particular concern are research findings that show how a high amount of support from TAs for pupils with high-level SEND leads to a qualitatively different experience of schooling compared to pupils without SEND, particularly in terms of having fewer interactions with teachers and peers.

Heavy reliance on the employment and deployment of TAs to facilitate the inclusion of pupils with often complex learning difficulties in mainstream settings can be seen as a proxy for long-standing and unresolved questions about how teachers are prepared and trained to meet the learning needs of those with SEND and the priority school leaders give to SEND. Future efforts to meaningfully educate pupils with SEND in mainstream schools must attend to teachers’ confidence and competence in respect of this aim. In addition, extensive and collaborative work with schools in the United Kingdom is offering a more hopeful model of how TAs can supplement this endeavor. Improving how teachers deploy TAs and how TAs interact with pupils, together with addressing persistent problems relating to the way TAs are trained and prepared for their roles in classrooms, schools can unlock the potential of the TA workforce as part of a wider, more inclusive approach for disadvantaged pupils.
School Choice and Inclusive Education
Authors: Dudley-Marling Curt
Published: August 2020

The reform of public education through the application of principles of free-market capitalism, particularly notions of competition and choice, has long enjoyed bipartisan support in the United States, reflecting trends in other industrialized countries. The basic assumption is that the competitive pressures of the market, instantiated through various forms of school choice and high-stakes accountability, will necessarily lead to more efficient and effective schools while honoring parents’ right to determine what is best for their children. Concurrently, another group of educational reformers, advocating for the rights of students with disabilities, have pushed for the transformation of schools, with the goal of creating spaces congenial to the range of human differences, including disability. The problem is that the basic assumptions that underpin free-market reforms and the principles of inclusion are incompatible. One of the requirements of school choice, for example, is the production and marketing of data based on standardized assessment practices and standardized curricula. This tendency toward standardization in market-oriented schools, saturated with the ideology of normality, is antithetical to the conception of diversity that informs the desire for inclusive schools.
Using Technology to Prepare 21st Century Educators
Authors: Cumming Therese M.
Published: August 2020

The use of real-time technology has caused the world to “shrink,” with society becoming more global and information- and communication-based. The amount of information that people are exposed to continues to increase exponentially, requiring a new definition of literacy that includes digital literacy and other 21st-century skills. However, the implementation of technology in education has not kept up with how it is used in peoples’ lives. The main role of teachers is to prepare students to become literate, globally informed citizens. Generation Z, or the technology generation, are tech savvy and used to instant action and access to information due to their experiences with the Internet. Although students are proficient with and regularly use mobile devices and other information and communication technologies (ICTs), their teachers have difficulty integrating these technologies into their pedagogy beyond basic functional uses. The goals of educational technology are often not readily apparent in classrooms; this is problematic, as technology has the potential to be used for critical thinking, collaboration, and the dissemination of new knowledge.

Therefore, teacher education programs have a responsibility to ensure that teachers of the future are globally aware, proficient with current innovative technology tools and information resources, and have the ability to adapt to tools and educational strategies of the future. Supporting preservice teachers in their acquisition of digital literacy can widen their views of the world and strengthen their skills in locating, assessing, organizing, analyzing, and presenting information. Teaching preservice teachers to use the technological pedagogical content knowledge (TPACK) model and embedding new technologies throughout teacher education programs can support preservice teachers’ global understandings and information literacy, as well as develop their expertise in the use of the technology itself. Instruction in digital literacies can help preservice teachers to hone their teaching skills and minimize the isolation and anxieties that are often experienced during their field experiences.