By 18 months children demonstrate a range of social-cognitive skills that reflect their emerging capacity to understand and engage in intentional relations with others. Intention understanding is a critical component of children’s social cognition at this age. Although individual differences in social cognition have been linked to neurocognitive maturation, socio-cultural models of development suggest that environmental influences operate in the development of intention understanding, with distal factors operating through proximal processes. In the current study of 501 children and their mothers, we tested and found support for a model in which an accumulation of distal environmental risks was associated with lower maternal responsivity, which was in turn associated with lower social-cognitive competency at 18 months. In addition, part of this effect operated through children’s concurrent language ability. Findings are discussed with respect to the Vygotskian themes of internalization and semiotic mediation.

This thesis examines the contribution of ‘ethnic’ background to the school experiences of educationally and socially disadvantaged students in the senior years of high school (n=927). To investigate the role both of ethnic identification and its interplay with institutional factors, a comparative analysis of secondary student experiences in two national settings was undertaken. The case of Turkish-background students in Australia and France suggests that the influences of ethnic identity are thoroughly transformed from one setting to the other by distinctive pedagogical structures. Streaming and severe academic judgement in France lower academic self-esteem, while creating resentment and social distance between students and teachers. By contrast, the deferral of selection and judgement in Australia allows, temporarily, for a more convivial classroom atmosphere, but fails just as surely to successfully navigate students through the curriculum and achieve academic success. The accommodations of both systems to students in ‘peripheral’ locations constitute logics of marginal integration which enable and legitimise ‘exclusion from within’. Student efforts to make meaning of school life through peer cultures which share many similarities across institutional and national boundaries emerge as what I have called strategies of marginal integration. Ethnic-minority students appear to be particularly susceptible to those logics and strategies, which reinforce their position within the system as marginal. This study therefore identifies the difficulties facing both systems as emerging from common overarching structural qualities. / (French version) Cette thèse examine, au niveau lycée, la contribution de l’origine ethnique aux expériences scolaires d’élèves désavantagés (N=927). Elle a pour objectif d’étudier les rapports entre inégalité sociale, expérience scolaire, et structure institutionnelle. Afin d’enquêter sur le rôle de l’identification ethnique et sa relation aux facteurs institutionnels, une analyse comparative a été menée dans deux pays. L’étude du cas des élèves d’origine turque en France et en Australie indique que les influences de l’ethnicité sont transformées d’un contexte à l’autre par des structures pédagogiques distinctives. En France, les filières et les jugements académiques sévères en réduisent l’estime de soi, en créant de l’aliénation et de la distance sociale entre élève et professeur. En Australie, au contraire, le différemment de la sélection et du jugement permet, de façon temporaire, une atmosphère plus conviviale en cours, mais ne réussit pas à assurer le succès académique des élèves. Les efforts des deux systèmes dans les sites périphériques constituent des logiques d’intégration marginales qui permettent l’exclusion de l’intérieure. Les efforts des élèves pour donner un sens à la vie scolaire à travers des cultures de pairs qui se ressemblent dans les deux contextes font partie des stratégies d’intégration marginale. Les élèves d’origine immigrée semblent particulièrement concernés par ces logiques et stratégies, qui renforcent leur position subordonnée dans le système. L’étude identifie alors les difficultés auxquelles sont confrontés les deux systèmes comme résultant de caractéristiques structurelles.

abstract: Prior sentencing research, especially research on cumulative disadvantage, has mainly focused on the treatment of male defendants, and little attention has been paid to female defendants, especially minority female defendants. Drawing on the intersectional vulnerability and focal concerns perspectives, the current study emphasizes the need to examine disparity in sentencing through an intersectional lens and across multiple decision-making points. Using the State Court Processing Statistics dataset (SCPS) from 1990-2009, this paper investigates the impact that race/ethnicity has for female defendants across individual and successive stages in the sentencing process. The results suggest that race operates through direct and indirect pathways to cause lengthier sentences for Black female defendants compared to White female defendants, thus providing evidence of cumulative disadvantage against Black female defendants. Theoretical, research, and policy implications will be discussed. / Dissertation/Thesis / Masters Thesis Criminology and Criminal Justice 2018

The migration has increased substantially during the last years and most countries struggle to integrate immigrants into the labour market. Since we also know from previous research that women are discriminated against due to their gender we want to investigate if immigrant women are facing an additional earnings differential because of their ethnicity. We study women with similar human capital and occupation in order to see if the initial earnings differential can be explained by these variables. Results indicate that there is no earnings differential remaining after controlling for human capital and occupation. However, there are differences in the results from the different fields of education and occupations. In some fields part of the earnings gap remain even after controlling for the explanatory variables.

Attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is commonly reported to be more prevalent in children from socioeconomically disadvantaged backgrounds. In this thesis I will explore in more detail the association between socioeconomic disadvantage and ADHD. This thesis comprises six studies, starting with a systematic review in order to evaluate existing published evidence, which is followed by a qualitative study that explores educational practitioners’ conceptualisation of the causes of ADHD. A series of three analyses utilising existing data from the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children (ALSPAC) then explore which measures of socioeconomic status (SES) are associated with a research diagnosis of ADHD and potential mediators of this association, and whether timing, duration or changes in exposure to financial difficulty impact on the SES-ADHD association. In the final study in this thesis, I explore whether SES-health associations in general are likely to be due to epigenetic differences in children exposed to low SES. Existing literature provides evidence that an association between SES and ADHD is commonly detected. The facet of SES most predictive of ADHD was mother-reported experience of difficulty affording basic necessities (financial difficulty), associated with an increased risk of a research diagnosis of ADHD of 2.23 (95%CI 1.57, 3.16). Exposure to financial difficulty between birth and age seven was associated with higher levels of ADHD symptoms across childhood of 0.78 points on the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire Hyperactivity subscale (95% CI 0.54, 1.00, p < 0.001), whereas later exposure to financial difficulty was not associated with ADHD symptoms. In addition, I found tentative evidence that different patterns of SES exposure are associated with different levels of ADHD symptoms, with those consistently low SES having symptom scores 0.41 points higher than those in difficulty (95% CI 3.46, 3.57, p<0.001). I did not find strong evidence that low SES impacts on epigenetic profiles across childhood. These findings add to emerging evidence of an association between SES and ADHD that has implications for theory and policy.

Magister Artium (Psychology) - MA(Psych) / Academe is no longer a low stress profession caused by the changing nature of academic work. Academics in health professions perceived a considerable degree of pressure related to the many roles they need to assume such as, teaching, administration, research, and community service. In addition, they are expected to continue practicing in their profession. Research has identified the key stressors experienced by academics, have recorded the debilitating effects of occupational stress and have emphasised that stress left unmanaged can result in burnout. However, such studies on academic well-being and occupational stress are lacking within the South African context. Similarly, studies into the coping strategies used by academic staff and the impact of emotional intelligence on stress and coping remain a focus for further research. Therefore, the overall aim of this study was to determine the relationship between occupational stress, coping and emotional intelligence among academic staff in health professions at a historically disadvantaged university. The study used an online survey design and the sampling frame comprised of all academic staff in a Faculty of Community and Health Sciences at a historically disadvantaged university. Descriptive statistics, correlation matrices and multiple regressions were used to analyse the data. Ethics clearance was obtained from the relevant university committee, and consent to conduct the study at the identified institution was given by the Registrar. As evidenced by the results, significant associations emerged between occupational stress, coping and emotional intelligence. Emotional intelligence was identified as an essential factor that can predict the subjective well-being among academics.

This dissertation examines racial inequality and affirmative action in Malaysia and South Africa, two countries with a politically dominant but economically disadvantaged majority group - the Bumiputera in Malaysia, and blacks in post-Apartheid South Africa. We aim to contribute comparative perspectives and current empirical research on affirmative action regimes and dimensions of inequality directly pertinent to affirmative action, chiefly, racial representation and earnings inequality among tertiary educated workers and in upper-level occupations. We discuss theoretical approaches to inequality and affirmative action, with attention to particular circumstances of majority-favoring regimes, then survey, compare and contrast affirmative action programs and their political economic context in Malaysia and South Africa. In the empirical portions, we outline patterns and evaluate determinants of racial inequality, focusing on the mid-1990s to the mid-2000s. On Malaysia, we find that Bumiputera access to tertiary education has rapidly increased, but also observe disproportionate difficulties among Bumiputera degree-holders in participating in labor markets and in attaining upper-level occupations. Bumiputera representation at managerial and professional levels has remained static and dependent on the public sector. Econometric results indicate that quality of tertiary education impacts on the prospect of attaining upper-level jobs, and that Bumiputera are more adversely affected. Lack of data restricts our assessment of racial earnings inequality to a deduction that Bumiputera young graduates have experienced relatively greater decline in their earnings capacity. On South Africa, we find that blacks have steadily increased access to tertiary education, although disparities in quality of institutions and in student performance persist, which disproportionately and negatively affect black graduates. We observe that black representation has increased in upper-level, especially professional, occupations, largely in the public sector. We find that white-black earnings disparity declined substantially among degree-qualified workers, while not diminishing or not showing clear patterns among other educational and occupational groups. We conclude by considering, within the constraints of each country's political economic context, implications that arise from our findings. Most saliently, while affirmative action raises quantitative attainment of tertiary education and representation in upper-level occupations for the beneficiary group, inadequate attention to qualitative development of institutions and progressive distribution of benefits may attenuate progress toward the ultimate objective of cultivating broad-based, self-reliant professionals and managers.

No description available.

No / Within nursing, career breaks have an impact on women's career outcomes. However, the causal mechanisms that explain the transfer of women's relative reduced career outcomes remain unclear. This article examines the relationships between career breaks, part-time working, and access to training/updating skills in determining nurses' career outcomes. We consider this to be a mechanism of transferring disadvantage both within and between genders within nursing. This qualitative research involved in-depth interviews with 32 registered female nurses with and without children. They were employed in “acute” nursing and worked as registered Band 4 to “senior nurse managers” and were between 25 and 60 years old. They worked or had worked under a variety of employment conditions. Some, but not all, had taken career breaks or requested or attained postregistration training. We found that restricted access to training for part-time nurses and limited opportunity to update their skills following a return from a career break are determining factors affecting the career outcomes of nurses. The findings suggest that it is related to rationing of training for those returning from career breaks, based on the availability of a supply of newly qualified nurses meeting the numerical demand, financial constraints, operational imperatives, and organizational values.

Aims: The aims of this thesis were to investigate the risk of severe maternal morbidity amongst women from different socioeconomic groups in the UK, explore why these differences exist and compare these findings to the setting in Australia. Methods: Three separate analyses were conducted. The first used UK Obstetric Surveillance System (UKOSS) data to assess the incidence and independent odds of severe maternal morbidity by socioeconomic group in the UK. The second analysis used quantitative and qualitative data from the 2010 UK National Maternity Survey (NMS) to explore the possible reasons for the difference in odds of morbidity between socioeconomic groups in the UK. The third analysis used data from the Victorian Perinatal Data Collection (VPDC) unit in Austra lia to assess the incidence and odds of severe maternal morbidity by socioeconomic group in Victoria. Results: The UKOSS analysis showed that compared with women from the highest socioeconomic group, women in the lowest 'unemployed' group had 1.22 (95%CI: 0.92 - 1.61) times greater odds associated with severe maternal morbidity. The NMS analysis demonstrated that independent of ethnicity, age and parity, women from the lowest socioeconomic quintiJe were 60% less likely to have had any antenatal care (aOR 0.40; 95%CI 0.18 - 0.87), 40% less likely to have been seen by a health professional prior to 12 weeks gestation (aOR 0.62; 95%CI 0.45 - 0.85) and 45% less likely to have had a postnatal check with their doctor (aOR 0.55; 95%CI 0.42 - 0.70) compared to women from the highest quintile. The Victorian analysis showed that women from the lowest socioeconomic group were 21% (aOR 1.21 ; 95% CI 1.00 - 1.47) more likely and that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women were twice (aOR 2.02; 95%CI 1.32 - 3.09) as likely to experience severe morbidity. Discussion: The resu lts suggest that women from the lowest socioeconomic group in the UK and in Victoria have increased odds of severe maternal morbidity. Further research is needed into why these differences exist and efforts must be made to ensure that these women are appropriately prioritised in the future planning of maternity services provisio n in the UK and Australia.