Overarching Principles Research Articles

Pupil participation in Scottish schools: How far have we come?

The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UN, 1989), which applies to all children under the age of 18, established the overarching principles guiding pupil participation. In most European states, signatories to the Convention have enacted policies to promote the voice of the child or young person in decisions that affect them. In education systems strategies to enhance pupil participation are an increasing feature of deliberation on education for citizenship, curriculum flexibility, pedagogical approaches and assessment for learning. Despite the positive policy context and professional commitment to principles of inclusion, translating policy intentions so that the spirit of the legislation is played out in the day-to-day experiences of pupils is a constant challenge. This article reports on research that examines how pupil participation is understood and enacted in Scottish schools. It considers how the over-laying of diverse policies presents mixed messages to practitioners.

The Case for Reform of the Undergraduate General Chemistry Curriculum

The Case for Reform of the Undergraduate General Chemistry Curriculum

Financing Vaccination of Children and Adolescents: National Vaccine Advisory Committee Recommendations

Financing Vaccination of Children and Adolescents: National Vaccine Advisory Committee Recommendations

Advanced practice nursing: A principle‐based concept analysis

To analyze and clarify the conceptual basis of advanced practice nursing to determine the state of the knowledge from the perspective of four overarching principles derived from the philosophy of science: epistemological, pragmatic, linguistic, and logical. Written discourse regarding advanced practice nursing from refereed journals published between 2000 and 2007. Conceptualization of a core definition of advanced practice nursing will enhance external legitimacy and recognition; understanding advanced practice nurse (APN) roles, sub-roles, and competencies will enhance internal cohesion. The outcome of this concept analysis is a greater understanding of the conceptual basis of advanced practice nursing and a current best estimate of the probable truth surrounding advanced practice nursing. A greater understanding of the conceptual basis of advanced practice nursing will help to gain clarity, internal cohesion, external legitimacy, and acceptance of APN roles by society and other healthcare professions.

The Use of Metapatterns for Research into Complex Systems of Teaching, Learning, and Schooling— Part II: Applications

In part I of this paper set, Volk and Bloom discuss the reasons why metapatterns are important in biological and cultural contexts. Here, in part II, we show how metapatterns can be applied to an important problem in qualitative educational research: the difficulties in elucidating fundamental patterns of interaction. In meeting this challenge we provide a metapatterns-based framework for analyzing and interpreting qualitative data. We begin by acknowledging the importance of context, the setting within which any system under investigation can be expected to exhibit metapatterns as functional components that are vital for the maintenance of that specific system within a particular context. We follow this discussion by defining three dimensions of our proposed analytical framework. The first dimension, which we call depth, examines the various metapatterns involved in the particular system under investigation. Extent is the second dimension, which involves extending to other contexts the interacting sets of metapatterns found in the investigation of depth. The third component is abstraction, which involves generating overarching principles or models from the analytical results of the first and second dimensions (i.e., depth and extent). We recommend that these three dimensions should be used recursively to meet the challenge named above. We demonstrate the framework through an example of a classroom discussion involving children arguing about the concept of density. We conclude with a discussion of the implications of this analytical framework, along with a list of fundamental principles of this framework and a list of questions that can guide qualitative research.

At the helm of the NIDDK

At the helm of the NIDDK

‘Earth system governance’ as a crosscutting theme of global change research

In 2001, the four global change research programmes ‘urgently’ called for ‘an ethical framework for global stewardship and strategies for Earth System management’. Yet this notion of ‘earth system management’ remains vaguely defined: It is too elusive for natural scientists, and too ambitious or too normative for social scientists. In this article, I develop an alternative concept that is better grounded in social science theory: ‘earth system governance’. I introduce, first, the concept of earth system governance as a new social phenomenon, a political programme and a crosscutting theme of research in the field of global environmental change. I then sketch the five key problem structures that complicate earth system governance, and derive from these four overarching principles for earth system governance as political practice, namely credibility, stability, adaptiveness, and inclusiveness. In the last part of the article, I identify five research and governance challenges that lie at the core of earth system governance as a crosscutting theme in global change research. These are the problems of the overall architecture of earth system governance, of agency beyond the state, of the adaptiveness of governance mechanisms and of their accountability and legitimacy, and of the modes of allocation in earth system governance—in short, the five A's of earth system governance research.

Two Rules of Legality in Criminal Law

Criminal law scholars approach legality in various ways. Some scholars eschew over-arching principles and proceed directly to one or more distinct “rules”: (1) the rule against retroactive criminalization; (2) the rule that criminal statutes be construed narrowly; (3) the rule against the judicial creation of common-law offenses; and (4) the rule that vague criminal statutes are void. Other scholars seek a single principle, i.e., the “principle of legality,” that they claim underlies the four rules. In contrast, I believe that both approaches are misguided. There is no such thing as a single “principle of legality;” yet, the four aforementioned rules are not unrelated to each other. The so-called “principle of legality” consists of two distinct norms that derive, respectively, from two fundamental principles of criminal justice, viz., the principle, “No person shall be punished in the absence of a bad mind,” and the principle that underlies the maxim, “Every person is presumed innocent until proven guilty.” The first norm of legality explains the rules regarding ex post facto legislation, and rules regarding “notice” and “fair warning” of judicial decisions. When a person is punished for violating a rule that was non-existent or unclear at the time he acted, he is punished for conduct that the state now condemns and seeks to prevent by means of penal sanctions. Accordingly, at the time the person is prosecuted, his claim is not that he did not do anything that the state regards as wrong, but, rather, that he neither knew nor should have known that he was doing something that the state would come to regard as wrong. He ought, indeed, to be excused for his mistake, but only because of a principle that is common to excuses generally: “No person ought to be punished in the absence of a guilty mind.” He should be excused because even when a person does something the state condemns and seeks to prevent, he ought not to be blamed for it unless he was motivated in a certain way, namely, by an attitude of disrespect for the legitimate interests of the political community by whose norms he is bound.

Influence of a hybrid Sport Education—Teaching Games for Understanding unit on one teacher and his students

Background: Sport Education (SE) and Teaching Games for Understanding (TGfU) are two curriculum models that were developed to help students participate in fair and equitable ways and challenge their thinking beyond the replication of techniques and skills. Given that the general aim of both models is to employ more democratic pedagogies and provide sporting experiences which really allow students to learn how to play well, and considering both models attempt to realize this goal in slightly different ways and have different foci, it would seem logical that a coalition of the two might lead to some real pedagogical breakthroughs. Purpose: To provide descriptive, detailed information about the researcher's experiences and the students' reactions to a unit designed following the structure of SE (seasons, formal competition and student roles), but with the skills and tactics taught using problem solving and guided discovery approaches rather than a more command style. Participants and setting: 29 sixth-grade students (11 boys and 18 girls) at a middle class primary school in a metropolitan Australian capital meeting daily for 30 minutes over a 5-week period. Intervention: A 22-lesson hybrid season of ‘batting and fielding games’ formed the basic content of instruction. The organizational structure of the unit was pure SE, however the main pedagogical style employed was pure TGfU. Research design: The design followed that of a ‘teaching experiment’ having four foundational goals: (i) to examine teaching, learning and subject matters as part of a complex system, (ii) to describe the learning of subject matter as it occurs in the classroom, (iii) to identify from the teacher's perspective the issues, problems and challenges that arise during teaching, and (iv) to develop, refine or provide illustrations of theory. Data collection: Following each lesson, each student completed a ‘critical incident reflective sheet’. Four ‘tactics quizzes’ were given throughout the season. Each team designed its own batting and fielding game using a ‘game design form’. At the completion of the season, each team participated in a group interview that explored why they chose to incorporate certain rules or equipment into their own games and how they would teach the tactics of their games. Data analysis: Critical incidence data were sorted into thoughts and perceptions, and the frequency of thoughts and perceptions within each category and subcategory were computed. Tactical quizzes were analyzed to determine the number of students who provided an appropriate response to the scenario. Interview text was reduced to a series of thoughts and perceptions, and these were then coded and categorized using the same procedure employed during the analysis of the critical incident data Findings: The students responded well to the myriad of problems they were asked to solve and by the unit's conclusion, were able to understand, appreciate, and execute a number of rudimentary batting, bowling/pitching, and fielding tactics and strategies and some which were fairly sophisticated. They also understood the overarching principles, rules and structures of batting/fielding games, appreciated their importance, and were able to transfer them from one game to another. Particularly impressive in this respect, was their ability to include risk/reward strategies and avoid problematic skills in the games that they invented. Conclusions: It is important to emphasize that combining the two models did not weaken most of the structural advantages research has suggested SE has over more traditional curricula. However, combining SE and TGfU placed more emphasis on the teacher to drive and give momentum to the proceedings and, therefore, teaching was more labour-intensive. In particular, we concluded that to be successful when delivering a hybrid SE-TGfU unit, a teacher would have to possess superior content and pedagogical content knowledge.

Love - rights - solidarity

The aim of this paper is to explore overarching principles that need to be present in each therapeutic encounter, no matter what orientation the therapist has and independent of the status of the client's mental health. Such over-arching principles can be drawn from 'Recognition Theory', a philosophical concept developed by critical social theorists that offers a language that moves away from pathologising and labeling clients as ill or deficient and towards identifying those experiences that are understood as necessary for identity formation and self realization.

Salvage harvesting fire-damaged wet eucalypt forests in south-eastern Australia: some ecological perspectives

Summary Recent wildfires burned large areas of native forest in south-eastern Australia. Salvage harvesting will inevitably occur in some areas of burned forest to recover timber and pulpwood, but serious consideration should be given to the intensity of salvage harvesting. In order to provide for forest biodiversity, salvage logging operations must retain sufficient numbers of biological legacies such as living and dead trees that remain in fire-damaged stands and landscapes. Such retention is a critical part of sound forest stewardship which considers both ecological and economic issues, and is consistent with the overarching (and agreed) principles of Ecologically Sustainable Forest Management (ESFM). Retaining biological legacies like living trees, large dead hollow trees, large fallen logs and islands of unburned vegetation is critical for maintaining key ecological processes and creating suitable future habitat for a range of elements of forest biodiversity as stand recovery takes place. Planning where to salvage log, which and how many biological legacies to retain, and where and how to burn slash after salvage logging, will influence the structure of forests and the fate of many forest species for the next several centuries.

Comparative psychology, a new perspective for the 21st century: Response to criticism

The editor’s choice of Denenberg, Lickliter, and Moore to comment on our article was highly appropriate. All are important contributors to the field of comparative psychology. Lickliter and Moore are not only familiar with the general position we have espoused but they are often linked to it. Denenberg, of course, across a distinguished career has been a major contributor to comparative psychology, most significantly in the area of early experience and development, and development is a key focus of our article. We are appreciative of the nature and tone of these comments, and we take them to be generally supportive of the position we have outlined. We think the commentaries may even serve as supplements to our original article. Our response addresses areas of disagreement and instances in which we have apparently not provided extensive enough discourse to make our points clear. Let us state at the outset that we intended this article to be an introductory statement of the approach to comparative psychology we are offering. There is only so much that can be said in a journal article. We have developed this position more extensively in a recent book, Principles of Comparative Psychology (Greenberg & Haraway, 2002), but that too was intended to be an introduction to what we recognize to be a long-term research and theoretical effort. Dynamic systems theory is still somewhat new in science, and has only recently been embraced by psychology— although certainly not all psychologists see its relevance. The points addressed by the commentators are excellent ones and draw little dissent from our perspective. Indeed, the major emphases in the commentaries are to point to a divergence of emphasis and aim rather than contradiction. Our hope was to introduce a metatheoretical perspective about comparative psychology, which has historical roots in the field and has more recently gained empirical and methodological support. In this introduction, we chose to emphasize two of the more overarching principles of this metatheoretical approach: the levels concept and anagenesis, and their exemplification in the approach/withdrawal concept developed by Schneirla (1959). In addition, we had hoped to provide a brief demonstration of the congruence of the concepts and methods of nonlinear dynamic systems approaches and the developmental systems perspective of comparative psychology. We concur that developmental heterochrony and general behavioral influences on evolutionary change are extremely important concepts in the perspective of comparative psychology that we propose; they are more specific concepts which are tacit in the principles we outlined in our article. The development of neophenotypes (Gottlieb, 1992, 1997; Johnston & Gottlieb, 1990) as a result of extragenetic developmental changes is a primary example of the dynamic interplay of levels of factors across both spatial (i.e., organisms and cells) and temporal (i.e., ontogeny and phylogeny) levels (Li, 2002, 2003). Our decision not to highlight these more specific concepts more directly does not reflect our view of their importance so much as it reflects an editorial decision given the constraints of journal space. We chose to focus on more abstract and encompassing concepts. We discerned at least three themes in the commentaries: (a) We presented a view of comparative psychology that is abiological, (b) we seem to have divorced comparative psychology and behavior from evolutionary thinking, and (c) comparative psychology is not meaningfully identified as general psychology. Our response addresses each of these themes in turn.

The Sources of Ethical Decision Making for Individuals in the Public Sector

What was the value in changing ASPA's Code of Ethics? Until recently, the Code of Ethics of the American Society for Public Administration symbolized the confusion in the field rather than its insights. The fine content of the former code was lost in numerous, unequal categories and discursive language. The new code has five principles or decision-making sources upon which public administrators should draw. This article demonstrates how the five sources are prominently discussed in the literature and arc useful for practitioners. Even more, the new code should provide an authoritative framework for the field. At an elementary level, the code prohibits egregiously unethical behavior. At a more sophisticated level, the code recognizes that the really tough administrative decisions occur when two or more of the legitimate decision-making sources compete. Thus the code is far more than a list of legalistic prohibitions. It is a powerful tool for decision analysis on the one hand and an aspirational call for excellence in the profession on the other. The American Society for Public Administration (ASPA) recently streamlined and substantially revised its Code of Ethics so that it would be more useful for practitioners and better reflect the literature on public sector ethics. The new code collapses 12 categories of unequal importance into 5 overarching principles. In this article I provide the intellectual and scholarly background used in the selection of those five organizing principles. Historical Background of ASPA's Code of Ethics ASPA adopted a loose set of ethical principles in 1981. In 1984, ASPA approved a formal Code of Ethics which was expanded the next year to include implementation guidelines. When published in small type, the Code and Implementation Guidelines were two full pages. In 1993, ASPA's leadership encouraged the Professional Ethics Committee to revise the Code of Ethics. Although no specific charge was given, the following complaints were noted by the committee: 1. The highlighted principles did not distinguish between overarching principles and subordinate concepts and were too numerous to remember easily. 2. Despite good content, the code rambled and had inconsistent styles. 3. Because of the weak organization, it was difficult to find a specific point without reading the document from the beginning. The Professional Ethics Committee drew heavily on the previous 1985 code in its revision but decided to (1) use broader categories that would be recognizable to the scholarly community and memorable for the practitioner community; (2) consolidate the code into a dense, one-page document; and (3) number and display principles and points for ease of use. A subcommittee redrafted the code in the spring of 1994, then the full committee edited it, and a preliminary draft was shared with the National Council. In the fall, a draft was published in PA Times with a request for comments. After revising it based on the comments received, the revised Code of Ethics was unanimously adopted at the 1994 December meeting. Problems in Identifying Sources of Decision Making Which Are the Key Sources or Roles? One of the most commonly agreed-upon notions in the field is that administrators have numerous roles, or value sets, which are sources for the decisions they make. For example, an administrator may concentrate quite appropriately on legal issues at one point, organizational issues at another, and personal interests at still another. Although there is widespread agreement that these roles and their concomitant value sets exist, that agreement quickly dissipates when one tries to identify and name which roles or value sets are crucial for public administrators. Researchers have divided up an administrator's major roles in many ways. Some researchers are famous for specializing in a single area, even though their views are broad, such as Rohr's (1989) concentration on regime values (law and legal tradition) and Frederickson's (1990) attention to social equity (public interest), but many researchers have consciously divided the roles to cover all the major decision-making bases. …

Do We Need Another Advisory Commission on Human Experimentation?

A few months ago Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) published in Federal Register its proposal for establishment of another Bioethics Advisory Commission within Executive Branch ...to consider issues of bioethics arising from research on human biology and behavior, and application of that Central to OSTP's proposal is an inquiry into adequacy of current of rights and welfare of research subjects, [i.e.] informed consent, adequacy and implementation of Federal human subject research guidelines, and concept of 'minimal risk.' We do not need another inquiry, another advisory commission on human experimentation. We need a national commission that has authority, with advice of Congress, to regulate all research involving human subjects. We have had enough advisory bodies: National Commission for Protection of Human Subjects of Biomedical and Behavioral Research (1974-78) and President's Commission for Study of Ethical Problems in Medicine and Biomedical and Behavioral Research (1979-83). Both made remarkable contributions and left us a rich legacy of ethical, legal, and policy analysis as well as recommendations for conduct of research. To be sure, as OSTP noted, members of contemplated commission could expand on their work, but I doubt whether they would shed significant new light on the broad overarching principles to govern ethical conduct of (OSTP assigned two other tasks to advisory commission, but was correctly concerned that one of them was itself so broad in scope that it might limit [the commission's] effectiveness. In what follows, I make no judgment about need for advisory commissions in areas unrelated to human experimentation.) The current impetus for establishing another advisory commission is fueled, as its chief supporter Senator Mark Hatfield suggested in a letter to President Clinton, by disclosures of radiation testing on humans during Cold War [that] have raised profound ethical questions for Federal policy makers. Twenty-two years ago, revelations regarding Tuskegee syphilis study, conducted by Public Health Service physicians from 1932 to 1972, led to a similar call for more stringent oversight of human experimentation process which in 1974 culminated in promulgation of federal regulations for protection of human research subjects. The regulations, while an improvement over what we had before, are inadequate. Indeed, in its final report, Tuskegee Syphilis Study Ad Hoc Advisory Panel of Department of Health, Education and Welfare recommended an entirely different approach to regulation of human experimentation. I chaired subcommittee that addressed this charge. Now twenty years later, our recommendations deserve reconsideration. Before describing them, I want to proffer two observations: (1) The federal regulations, promulgated in 1974 at prodding of Senator Edward Kennedy and others, essentially codified criteria for informed consent in conduct of research and, with limited and vague additional instructions, left it to local institutional review boards (IRBs) to review - approve, require modification in, or disapprove - research proposals submitted by their local institutions. Thus, IRBs are forced to make decisions that are compromised by limited time and resources available to them; by their lack of expertise, which prevents them from considering in any depth complex legal, ethical, and societal problems that human experimentation poses; and by pressures of their institutional colleagues to approve their protocols as quickly and unquestioningly as possible. In short, IRBs are left at sea, given a mandate that they could not responsibly carry out without recourse to an overarching body that would structure and guide their work. (2) Already in 1973, it was clear that more was needed than what federal regulations provided. …

Social Justice and the Problem of Punishment

Until very recently the dominant approach to the theory of punishment has been to discuss it in isolation from any general theory of the just distribution of benefits and burdens in a society. Almost without exception, the debate between the competing theories of punishment has run separately from the theory of distributive justice, as if the words “just” in “just punishment” and “just reward” belonged to two different species of “justice”. Perhaps the most important exception to this rule has been the position of radical utilitarians — i.e., act-utilitarians of J. J. C. Smart's genre, or wealth-maximization theorists of Richard Posner's ilk — who consciously treat the domains of economic distribution and of criminal punishment as two areas of application of one and the same set of over-arching principles. But, since neither for Smart nor for Posner is distributive justice (whether regarding economic goods, or penalties) a morally significant virtue, their theories really do not detract from the general trend that, in the literature on punishment, the conceptions of retributive and distributive justice are largely independent.