Introduction: Schools have become a primary setting for providing mental health care to youths in the U.S. School-based interventions have proliferated, but their effects on mental health and academic outcomes remain understudied. In this study we will implement and evaluate the effects of a flexible multidiagnostic treatment called Modular Approach to Therapy for Children with Anxiety, Depression, Trauma, or Conduct Problems on students' mental health and academic outcomes.Methods and Analysis: This is an assessor-blind randomized controlled effectiveness trial conducted across five (...) school districts. School clinicians are randomized to either MATCH or usual care treatment conditions. The target sample includes 168 youths referred for mental health services and presenting with elevated symptoms of anxiety, depression, trauma, and/or conduct problems. Clinicians randomly assigned to MATCH or UC treat the youths who are assigned to them through normal school referral procedures. The project will evaluate the effectiveness of MATCH compared to UC on youths' mental health and school related outcomes and assess whether changes in school outcomes are mediated by changes in youth mental health.Ethics and Dissemination: This study was approved by the Harvard University Institutional Review Board. We plan to publish the findings in peer-reviewed journals and present them at academic conferences.Clinical Trial Registration:ClinicalTrials.gov ID: NCT02877875. Registered on August 24, 2016. (shrink)

Many feminist philosophers of education have argued that the teacher's pleasure plays an important role in the classroom. However, accessing such pleasure is often easier said than done. Given our current academic climate, how might teachers develop pedagogical practices that cultivate these delights? This article investigates the (rather surprising) response to this question offered in Augustine's De catechizandis rudibus. Despite his reputation as a pleasure-hater, Augustine spends the majority of his text defending the delights of teaching. In particular, Augustine argues (...) that if teachers wish to find pleasure in teaching, they would do well to study the pleasures of mothers. To this end, I analyse the nature of Augustine's maternal appeal. What insight does Augustine find in the experiences of mothers? In what way does he hope his colleagues will allow these experiences to shape their pedagogies? I conclude by exploring the benefits and the risks of Augustine's claim for those who teach in the contemporary feminist classroom. Augustine's defence of pedagogical pleasure suggests that he shares a common interest with feminist philosophers. But, the social/political limits of his account highlight the value of submitting such pleasures to the terms of feminist critique. (shrink)

What do consumers do with their used clothing, books, and children’s toys? In this research, we introduce metaphoric “fresh start” messaging as an effective tactic to encourage consumers to engage in environmentally sustainable actions of donating used products for remanufacture or reuse. Drawing on conceptual metaphor theory and construal theory, we contrast metaphoric “fresh start” messaging with dominant “reduce waste” and “recycle” non-metaphoric environmental messages. Across six experimental studies, metaphoric “fresh start” messaging is more effective in increasing environmentally sustainable actions, (...) including used product donations and donation intentions. The effectiveness of metaphoric “fresh start” messaging is grounded in its activation of abstract thinking as “rebirth associations,” thoughts around new beginnings, renewal, and new life. We examine the effectiveness of metaphoric “fresh start” (vs. non-metaphoric environmental) messaging with the use of “fresh start” temporal landmarks (New Year’s Day and Earth Day) and find that metaphoric “fresh start” messaging, with or without these temporal landmarks, is more effective in triggering abstract thinking as “rebirth associations.” Our work substantiates the power of metaphoric “fresh start” messaging in encouraging consumers’ environmentally sustainable actions and has significant implications for the use of conceptual metaphors in marketing messages. (shrink)

IntroductionThe National Institute for Health and Care Excellence guidelines acknowledge the importance of the parent–infant relationship for child development but highlight the need for further research to establish reliable tools for assessment, particularly for parents of children under 1 year. This study explores the acceptability and psychometric properties of a co-developed tool, ‘Me and My Baby’.Study designA cross-sectional design was applied. The MaMB was administered universally with mothers during routine 6–8-week Health Visitor contacts. The sample comprised 467 mothers. Dimensionality of (...) instrument responses were evaluated via exploratory and confirmatory ordinal factor analyses. Item response modeling was conducted via a Rasch calibration to evaluate how the tool conformed to principles of ‘fundamental measurement’. Tool acceptability was evaluated via completion rates and comparing ‘completers’ and ‘non-completers’ demographic differences on age, parity, ethnicity, and English as an additional language. Free-text comments were summarized. Data sharing agreements and data management were compliant with the General Data Protection Regulation, and University of York data management policies.ResultsHigh completion rates suggested the MaMB was acceptable. Psychometric analyses showed the response data to be an excellent fit to a unidimensional confirmatory factor analytic model. All items loaded statistically significantly and substantially on a single underlying factor. The item response modeling showed that most MaMB items fitted the Rasch model. item reliability was high yet the test yielded little information on each respondent, as highlighted by the relatively low ‘person separation index’ of 0.1.Conclusion and next stepsMaMB reliably measures a single construct, likely to be infant bonding. However, further validation work is needed, preferably with ‘enriched population samples’ to include higher-need/risk families. The MaMB tool may benefit from reduced response categories and some modest item wording amendments. Following further validation and reliability appraisal the MaMB may ultimately be used with fathers/other primary caregivers and be potentially useful in research, universal health settings as part of a referral pathway, and clinical practice, to identify dyads in need of additional support/interventions. (shrink)

This study examines the outcomes of a four-year faculty learning community (FLC) that aimed to transform departmental ethics curriculum by supporting Earth Sciences faculty members as they ethically inquired into their teaching of ethics and refined existing courses in alignment with an Integrated Community-Engaged Learning and Ethical Reflection (ICELER) framework. We present ethnographic case studies that unpack processes through which three faculty members transformed undergraduate courses. We assembled case studies by triangulating interview data, course artifacts, and faculty reflections. We examine (...) how faculty (1) built awareness around teaching ethics, (2) took responsibility for and made judgments about teaching ethics, (3) experimented by designing and implementing ICELER-inspired courses, and (4) interrogated the outcomes of their ethics teaching, utilizing findings to enhance awareness and revise courses. The paper closes by introducing a model detailing how instructors inquire into ethics teaching and how model components might inspire future educational practice and research. (shrink)

We argue performance in the serial reaction time task is associated with gradations of awareness that provide examples of fringe consciousness [Mangan, B. . Taking phenomenology seriously: the “fringe” and its implications for cognitive research. Consciousness and Cognition, 2, 89–108, Mangan, B. . The conscious “fringe”: Bringing William James up to date. In B. J. Baars, W. P. Banks & J. B. Newman , Essential sources in the scientific study of consciousness . Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.], and address limitations (...) of the traditional SRT procedure, including criticism of exclusion generation tasks. Two experiments are conducted with a modified SRT procedure where irrelevant stimulus attributes obscure the sequence rule. Our modified paradigm, which includes a novel exclusion task, makes it easier to demonstrate a previously controversial influence of response stimulus interval on awareness. It also allows identification of participants showing fringe consciousness rather than explicit sequence knowledge, as reflected by dissociations between different awareness measures. The NEO-PI-R variable Openness to Feelings influenced the diversity of subjective feelings reported during two awareness measures, but not the degree of learning and awareness as previously found with traditional SRT tasks [Norman, E., Price, M. C., & Duff, S. C. . Fringe consciousness in sequence learning: the influence of individual differences. Consciousness and Cognition, 15, 723–760.]. This suggests possible distinctions between two components of fringe consciousness. (shrink)

This book explores for the first time an idea common to both Plato and Aristotle: although people are separate, their lives need not be; one person's life may overflow into another's, so that helping someone else is a way of serving oneself. Price considers how this idea unites the philosophers' treatments of love and friendship (which are otherwise very different), and demonstrates that this view of love and friendship, applied not only to personal relationships, but also to the household (...) and even the city-state, promises to resolve the old dichotomy between egoism and altruism. (shrink)

Different ideals of friendship feed into different ideals of political community. A political liberal can accept that political association should be a form of friendship,so long as his conception of friendship is a liberal one. Plato hopes for maximal mutual identification, with lovers' lives merging, and citizens applying the term 'mine' together.What then leaves it a problem why philosophers should be willing to rule is that they cannot share the most valuable part of their life — doing philosophy — with (...) most of their fellow-citizens. Plato stills intends a degree of political and interpersonal unity that sounds amiable, but invites fascism. Aristotle takes over some of Plato's structure: friends' lives overlap in the activities they share; and all citizens are to belinked within political friendship. This appears to be a dilute form of perfect friendship, retaining goodwill, but replacing intimacy by acquaintance, and rather pursuing than presupposing similarity. To move from that to a liberal conception of friendship andpolitics we need to allow that friends and fellow-citizens may accept one another's choices without fully endorsing them. Personal affection and respect can and should survive a recognition even of fundamental differences — so long as these are compatible with the values of friendship. (shrink)

A. W. Price; VII*—Varieties of Objectivity and Values, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Volume 83, Issue 1, 1 June 1983, Pages 103–120, https://doi.org/.

As earthquakes expose geological faults, so mental conflict reveals tendencies to rupture within the mind. Dissension is rife not only between people but also within them, for each of us is subject to a contrariety of desires, beliefs, motivations, aspirations. What image are we to form of ourselves that might best enable us to accept the reality of discord, or achieve the ideal of harmony? Greek philosophers offer us a variety of pictures and structures intended to capture the actual and (...) the possible either within a reason that fails to be resolute, or within a split soul that houses a play of forces. Reflection upon them alerts us to the elusiveness at once of mental reality, and of the understanding by which we hope to capture and transform it. Studying in turn the treatments of _Mental Conflict_ in Socrates, Plato, Aristotle and the Stoics, A.W. Price demonstrates how the arguments of the Greeks are still relevant to philosophical discussion today. (shrink)

A. W. Price explores the varying ways in which context is relevant to our reasoning about what to do.

John Cottingham identifies “the grand traditional project of synoptic ethics” as an attempt to define the essential features of a good human life within a rational understanding of the world, and of man’s place within it. That the project now seems dated he explains in two ways. First, he notes the recent specialization and professionalization of philosophy, its preference of technical topics to grand questions. Second, he adduces a skepticism that doubts the objectivity, and a liberalism that accepts a plurality, (...) of values. The upshot of both trends is a “committee ethics” that takes on “the task of articulating the structure of an optimal political system in which maximum scope is given for the pursuit of whatever values are in fact chosen by the citizens” —a grandish issue, surely, but neither a personal nor a metaphysical one. Cottingham’s main aim is to cast further doubt on the practicability of the traditional project so long as it is pursued in the traditional “ratiocentric” style. What that is he conveys through discussions of Plato, Aristotle, and Descartes. (shrink)

How, in pursuit of ontological neutrality, should one talk about values? I propose to say: there are values. Those three words do nothing to define within what kind of conception of a world values are at home.1 I take it that the ‘realist’ must have more to say about values and their world. I recognize that an ‘anti-realist’ may prefer to talk of value-terms ; I ask him to wait and see whether taking the linguistic turn is the only way (...) to put values in their place. (shrink)

Volume 23, Issue 2, June 2020, Page 160-166.

A.W. Price explores the views of Plato and Aristotle on how virtue of character and practical reasoning enable agents to achieve eudaimonia--the state of living or acting well. He provides a full philosophical analysis and argues that the perennial question of action within human life is central to the reflections of these ancient philosophers.

_ Practical Shape: A Theory of Practical Reasoning _, by DancyJonathan. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018. Pp. xiii + 185.

Different questions generate different forms of practical reasoning. A contextually unrestricted ‘What shall I do?’ is too open to focus reflection. More determinately, an agent may ask, ‘Shall I do X, or Y?’ To answer that, he may need to weigh things up—as fits the derivation of ‘deliberation’ fromlibra(Latin for ‘scales’). Ubiquitous and indispensable though this is, I mention it only to salute it in passing. Or he may ask how to achieve a proposed end: if his end is to (...) do X, he may ask ‘How shall I do X?’ Or he may ask how to apply a universal rule or particular maxim. Aristotle supplies examples inDe Motu Animalium(7.701a7 ff.), whose wording I freely adapt to my own purposes:A1 reasons to a necessary means to achieving an end:I will make a cloak.To make a cloak I must do A.So, I will do A. (shrink)

There is a current debate about the grammar of intention: do I intend to φ, or that I φ? The equivalent question in Aristotle relates especially to choice. I argue that, in the context of practical reasoning, choice, as also wish, has as its object an act. I then explore the role that this plays within his account of the relation of thought to action. In particular, I discuss the relation of deliberation to the practical syllogism, and the thesis that (...) the conclusion of the second is an action. (shrink)

In her 2015 article, Helena Olofsdotter Stensöta notes that ‘the ethics of care is often used as a lens to dissect the current arrangement of care provision (or rather non-care provision) in polici...