Potential mechanisms by which cash transfer programmes could improve the mental health and life chances of young people: A conceptual framework and lines of enquiry for research and policy

Mental health is inextricably linked to both poverty and future life chances such as education, skills, labour market attachment and social function. Poverty can lead to poorer mental health, which reduces opportunities and increases the risk of lifetime poverty. Cash transfer programmes are one of the most common strategies to reduce poverty and now reach substantial proportions of populations living in low- and middle-income countries. Because of their rapid expansion in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, they have recently gained even more importance. Recently, there have been suggestions that these cash transfers might improve youth mental health, disrupting the cycle of disadvantage at a critical period of life. Here, we present a conceptual framework describing potential mechanisms by which cash transfer programmes could improve the mental health and life chances of young people. Furthermore, we explore how theories from behavioural economics and cognitive psychology could be used to more specifically target these mechanisms and optimise the impact of cash transfers on youth mental health and life chances. Based on this, we identify several lines of enquiry and action for future research and policy.Copyright © The Author(s), 2023. Published by Cambridge University Press.

Workers' individual and dyadic coping with the COVID-19 health emergency: A cross cultural study

The aim of this study was to examine workers' psychological distress during the COVID-19 pandemic as a function of their individual coping, dyadic coping, and work-family conflict. We also tested the moderating role of gender and culture in these associations. To achieve this aim, we run HLM analyses on data from 1521 workers cohabiting with a partner, coming from six countries (Italy, Spain, Malta, Cyprus, Greece, and Russia) characterized by various degrees of country-level individualism/collectivism. Across all six countries, findings highlighted that work-family conflict as well as the individual coping strategy social support seeking were associated with higher psychological distress for workers, while the individual coping strategy positive attitude and common dyadic coping were found to be protective against workers' psychological distress. This latter association, moreover, was stronger in more individualistic countries.

Studies on Education, Science, and Technology 2021

Education, science, and technology disciplines at all levels have never been more important, more exciting, or more crucial for its broader impacts on human society. The need for advanced technical skills is increasingly pressing to address climate change, combat COVID and other diseases, enhance the infrastructural built environment, grow food sources to feed an expanding planetary population, make new scientific discoveries, and interface synergistically with the arts, humanities, and social sciences. Teachers/instructors/mentors/professors need to be proficient in the best ways to convey knowledge and motivate the next generations of productive and engaged citizens of an increasingly diverse planet on which its human inhabitants must learn to confront and surmount increasingly difficult challenges to survival and prosperity. Students need to be focused on honing their learning skills and adapting to an ever-evolving global economy demanding always higher levels of technical proficiency. Students also need to be free to pursue any and all areas of interest without interference from cultural, political, ideological, or faith-imposed limitations. Policymakers need to provide the financial and human resources to fuel the engine of education, and they must create the maximum possible latitude for both those who teach and those who learn to pursue science, technology, engineering, and mathematics to their limits. This book contributes to addressing these needs and to suggesting potential solutions from multiple global perspectives. Adaptability of instructional methods, relevance of instructional content to students' lived experiences, and sensitivity to the mental and physical demands imposed on students must be hallmarks of education. The book is divided into three sections related to studies on education, science, and technology. Each section includes three chapters. The chapter's contributors are from the following countries: the United States, Germany, Greece, Indonesia, the United Kingdom, Russia, and Malaysia. This diversity brings an international perspective to the book.

Pandemic Resurrection: Making Gendered Citizenship Visible in a "Postfeminist" Era

The pandemic resurrected gender as a central categorization of citizenship. COVID-19 reminds us that gender oppression continues in its traditional, materialist formulations to structure our economic, civic, and political lives. Postfeminism has diversified feminist discourses, and at times been used as a temporal claim -- the "post" signifying the diminishing need for feminist theory or activism in light of advancements in gender equality. We use postfeminism in a genealogical and critical sense which encompasses the changes in feminisms and enunciates various contradictions that apply to generations of people. The conditions of COVID-19 prompt us to analyze what Stéphanie Genz aptly names boom and bust postfeminism. This analysis generates two implications for philosophers of education working in areas of gender and political identity.

A Corpus-Based Comparison of Inclusiveness in L2 Reading Materials for Refugee Children

Despite increased emphasis on the role of inclusive practices and materials in post-COVID-19 classrooms and warnings about implicit biases against disadvantaged groups, the textbook problem has rarely been approached with equity measures in mind. This multimethod study aimed to investigate to what extent L2 reading materials, locally produced and used for refugee education in Turkey and New Zealand, include all children with different proficiency levels, gender identities and cultural backgrounds using corpus-driven methods. All verbal and nonverbal texts from ten thematically similar third-grade storybooks were subjected to qualitative and quantitative analysis. Comparisons against measures of grammatical and lexical complexity, and of gender and cultural equity revealed that despite both being far from achieving the ideal composition for creating inclusive learning-friendly environments, TSL materials were lagging further behind ESL counterparts. They depended on almost uniform sets of easy-to-read narratives embodying simpler grammatical features and high-frequency words, and thus needed extension with relatively elaborate ones to accommodate mixed-abilities. Gender disparities were institutionalised through male overrepresentation in hero-making, negative stereotyping, familial and occupational identification, and engagement in monetary and mobility activities, but occasionally ameliorated, in the ESL case, by reversing conventionally-gendered domestic, technical and intellectual skills in texts and illustrations. The widest gap was observed in cultural representations because TSL materials, written from a tourist's perspective, focused on imposing superficial knowledge of target-culture elements, and ESL materials on ensuring relevance through greater use of elements from diverse cultures. Therefore, egalitarian representations in gendered and cultural contents are required for their rehabilitation.

The Impact of COVID-19 Pandemic on MotherScholars: A Comparative Case Study of United States and Australian Higher Education Women Faculty Role Strain

This study examines the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the experiences of women faculty with children in the United States and Australia as they contend with the blended roles and responsibilities of being a mother and an academic (i.e., MotherScholars). Using interpretive comparative case study design, the researchers interviewed MotherScholars to identify common themes based on roles and responsibilities that emerged as a result of the pandemic-caused shift to remote academic demands. Three primary themes emerged: (a) accumulative burdens, (b) rationalization, and (c) gendered expectations. These themes were explored through the lens of Goode's (1960) role strain theory to examine the experiences of both groups of MotherScholars. For these MotherScholars the circumstances of the pandemic rendered obsolete many coping mechanisms previously utilized to manage role strain, which contributed to increased role strain from the conflict between the role systems for mother and scholar. While the pandemic affected everyone, this research adds insight into how cultural contexts and norms can mitigate or exacerbate challenging circumstances.