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The Periodical Press in Nineteenth-Century Ireland, by Elizabeth Tilley; pp. ix + 299. Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan, 2020, $79.99, 59.99 [pounds sterling]. By any measure, twentieth-century periodicals in Ireland have [...]

Objectives: We tested whether generalized beliefs that the world is safe, abundant, pleasurable, and progressing (termed "primal world beliefs") are associated with several objective measures of privilege. Methods: Three studies (N = 16,547) tested multiple relationships between indicators of privilege—including socioeconomic status, health, sex, and neighborhood safety—and relevant world beliefs, as well as researchers and laypeople's expectations of these relationships. Samples were mostly from the USA and included general population samples (Study 2) as well as focused samples of academic researchers (Study 1) and people who had experienced serious illness or trauma (Study 3). Results: Studies 1–2 found mostly negligible relationships between world beliefs and indicators of privilege, which were invariably lower than researcher predictions (e.g., instead of the expected r = 0.33, neighborhood affluence correlated with Abundant world belief at r = 0.01). Study 3 found that people who had experienced serious illness (cancer, cystic fibrosis) only showed modest differences in beliefs from controls. Conclusions: While results do not preclude that some individuals' beliefs were meaningfully affected by life events, they imply that such changes are smaller or less uniform than widely believed and that knowing a person's demographic background may tell us relatively little about their beliefs (and vice versa). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Current forms of marketisation in university systems create pressures towards purely ends-focused expectations among students and have implications for learning and assessment processes. The potential harm that these trends have on "learning" should be resisted by educators and students alike. Critical Pedagogy approaches offer one way of conceptualising and implementing such resistance in the interests of "authenticity" in learning. However, the issue becomes sharpest at the point of assessment. Here, the ideals of Critical Pedagogy can collide with student expectations of final degree success. By addressing the question of "authenticity" for assessment in relation to Critical Pedagogy, this article explores the challenges posed by this conundrum and draws upon interviews conducted with module leaders who apply recognisably (although not explicitly) Critical Pedagogy principles in their teaching and in the types of assessment they use. The themes that emerged present a picture of the kinds of potential that Critical Pedagogy influenced forms of assessment have for supporting authenticity in learning, as well as the difficulties involved in its application. It also helps to trace out the possible boundaries for further inquiry.