DESANTISLAND

Court strikes down Florida's 'end run around the Endangered Species act'
Julia Conley, Common Dreams
February 17, 2024 

A Florida panther is seen in Sunshine Acres, Florida on May 3, 2021. 

(Photo: James H./Flickr/cc)

A federal court ruling will restore "essential guardrails provided by the Endangered Species Act," said one wildlife advocacy group on Thursday, as the court found that under former Republican President Donald Trump, federal agencies broke the law when they allowed Florida's right-wing government to take over wetlands permitting.

The U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia found that the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) "made an end run around the Endangered Species Act," said the Center for Biological Diversity (CBD) when they greenlighted Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis' proposal to allow the state to fast-track construction permits for projects on wetlands.

Under Section 404 of the Clean Water Act, states can take over wetlands permitting if they can prove that they will not violate wildlife protections.

Shortly after the EPA transferred the authority to Florida in 2020, CBD was joined by groups including Defenders of Wildlife, the Sierra Club, and Miami Waterkeeper in suing the agency.

This past December, environmental legal group Earthjustice requested a preliminary injunction on behalf of CBD and the Sierra Club to stop Florida from issuing state permits for development projects near the Florida Panther National Wildlife Refuge, where an estimated 120-230 endangered panthers "remain in their last territory on Earth," according to CBD.

The FWS found that the projects were likely to kill between seven and 26 panthers each year as they were pushed out of their habitat and became vulnerable to car collisions on nearby roads, while another three panthers would be otherwise harmed by the habitat loss each year.

“We're talking about the destruction of some of the last remaining habitat for one of the most endangered animals in the world," said Earthjustice attorney Bonnie Malloy on Thursday. "Restoring the Endangered Species Act protections will ensure that these projects get the analysis and review Congress intended to protect threatened and endangered species."

The court ruled on the groups' underlying claim that the EPA's transfer of the authority would violate federal endangered species protections, rather than just issuing a preliminary injunction.

Elise Bennett, Florida and Caribbean director at CBD, called the ruling "a reprieve for critically endangered species like the Florida panther," but warned that "we'll never prevent the extinction of our most vulnerable wildlife unless we stop bulldozing the wild places where they live."

"The Endangered Species Act can save these magnificent creatures, but only if our agencies follow the law. We'll continue to fight sprawling developments that rip apart the precious wetlands and interconnected natural spaces that Florida's most imperiled wildlife need to survive," said Bennett.

Florida Phoenix columnist Craig Pittman called the ruling "huge news for Florida's wetlands, because DeSantis' [Department of Environmental Protection] never said no to a developer."

Elizabeth Fleming, senior Florida representative at Defenders of Wildlife, said that "wetlands are the lifeblood of Florida, providing essential habitat to the world's only population of the critically endangered Florida panther and many other rare and endemic species, all found within one of the most biologically diverse states in the country."

"Requiring agencies to follow the law is a win for wildlife," she said, "protecting habitat and the public alike, as protecting our wetlands also protects drinking water and ecosystems across the state."

 

Increased access to opioids, shrinking economic safety net boost U.S. suicide rates

Suicide rates are on the rise. A new study helps explain why

Peer-Reviewed Publication

UNIVERSITY OF COLORADO AT BOULDER

After a long, steady decline in national suicide rates, those numbers began steadily ticking up in the late 1990s and have generally risen ever since, with nearly 50,000 people in the U.S. taking their own lives in 2022, up 3% from the previous year.

Scholars seeking explanations for this troubling trend have pointed to everything from generally declining mental health to increased social media exposure and heightened access to firearms.

A new University of Colorado Boulder study points to two other surprising drivers:

Increased access to potentially lethal prescription opioids has made it easier for women, specifically, to end their own lives; and a shrinking federal safety net has contributed to rising suicide rates among all adults during tough economic times, the study suggests.

“We contend that the U.S. federal government’s weak regulatory oversight of the pharmaceutical industry and tattered social safety nets have significantly shaped U.S. suicide risk,” said first author Daniel Simon, a PhD candidate in the Department of Sociology and research affiliate with the Institute of Behavioral Science.

A sweeping analysis

For the study, published in the Journal of Health and Social Behavior, Simon and Associate Sociology Professor Ryan Masters analyzed records of more than 16 million deaths among U.S. adults between 1990 and 2017.

When separating the nearly 600,000 suicide deaths by intentional poisoning vs. non-poisoning (all other methods of self-harm), two notable spikes in the data emerged: in 1997 and 2007.

In 1997 — one year after the long-acting opioid OxyContin hit the market and kicked off the nation’s opioid crisis — women’s suicide rates by poisoning (the preferred method among females) began ticking up by about 2% per year through 2017 after declining by about 3% annually over the previous decade.

Women aged 40 to 55 were hit hardest.

“In the late 1990s, the method women often consider using to attempt to end their life suddenly became much more potent and much more available, with devastating consequences,” said Simon.

Notably, states without prescription drug monitoring programs experienced larger increases in women’s suicide rates from poisonings.

After controlling for other factors, the authors conclude that increased availability of opioids and other prescription drugs like benzodiazepines was solely responsible for driving women’s self-poisoning suicides rates up from 1997 to 2006.

“Our study showed that the approval, easy access and over-prescription of opioid-based pain relievers had deleterious consequences for U.S. suicide rates for women, a reality that has been overlooked in discussions of the opioid epidemic,” said Simon.

A tattered safety net

Among all men and women, non-poisoning suicide rates remained relatively stable across the 1990s and 2000s.

But in 2007, at the onset of the Great Recession, these rates spiked and continued to climb, ticking up anywhere from 2% annually among Black men and 2.5% annually among white men to 9% annually among American Indian/Alaska Native women. These trends continued long after the recession subsided.

When looking at state-level financial indicators, the authors found that suicide rates strongly paralleled changes in states’ economic conditions, such as stagnating wages, higher unemployment and increased poverty.

Economic downturns are not always associated with increases in suicides. In Sweden during a massive economic crash from 1990 to 1994, suicide deaths did not increase in part because the government invested in social safety net programs to minimize the health effects of financial strain, Simon said.

While rates spiked at the onset of the Great Depression, they plummeted after the passage of the New Deal in 1933 which put Americans back to work via publicly funded projects.

In contrast, U.S. policymakers during the Great Recession prioritized market stabilization, investing $2 trillion in the banking sector while cutting funding for federal Housing and Urban Development programs by $3.8 billion, the authors note.

“Oftentimes, the health consequences of an economic downturn can be mitigated by aggressive moves to alleviate the financial burden of individuals,” said Masters. “Unfortunately, that did not happen during the Great Recession or during the slow and unequal recovery since. This has left individuals more vulnerable to economic stressors and that likely has spilled over into the elevation of suicide rates.”

The authors stress that a host of psychiatric and social factors can push individual suicide risk up. They hope their work can demonstrate that there are also broader “structural determinants” of suicide risk.

“Suicide hotline crisis numbers and efforts to help people at the individual level are all amazing and necessary, but our work shows that higher-level, institutional interventions are also critical in addressing this crisis,” said Simon. “Giving a person a job or proper health care can also be a suicide-prevention tool.”

 

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JOURNAL

Journal of Health and Social Behavior

DOI

10.1177/00221465231223723 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Data/statistical analysis

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

People

ARTICLE TITLE

Institutional Failures as Structural Determinants of Suicide: The Opioid Epidemic and the Great Recession in the United States

 

Asexual propagation of crop plants gets closer

Peer-Reviewed Publication

UNIVERSITY OF ZURICH

 

IMAGE: 

SEED STRUCTURE WITH A LARGE CENTRAL CELL IN THE CENTER (CELL NUCLEUS IN YELLOW) SURROUNDED BY THE TISSUE OF THE MOTHER PLANT (PURPLE). THE MATURE CENTRAL CELL (LEFT) IS IN A QUIESCENT STATE UNTIL FERTILIZATION REACTIVATES THE CELL CYCLE AND THE CELL NUCLEUS DIVIDES (RIGHT) TO FORM THE NUTRITIVE TISSUE.

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CREDIT: SARA SIMONINI, UNIVERSITY OF ZURICH

Seeds are the end product of plant reproduction. Whether directly as food, or indirectly as animal feed, they provide around 80 percent of human calorie consumption. In the millennia since humans first settled, we have bred countless plant varieties with advantageous characteristics, such as increased yields, improved quality, resistance to pests or hardiness. Where possible, farmers use hybrid varieties, which are created by crossing two inbred lines and are more resistant and higher-yielding than normal varieties. The problem is that these desired properties are lost during propagation and, therefore, hybrid seeds have to be recreated every year.

Sperm-derived signal activates cell division of the female gamete

If we could find a way to propagate crop plants by asexual reproduction through seeds – known as apomixis – it would revolutionize agriculture. If it were possible to bypass the reductional division and fertilization of female gametes, the seeds produced would be genetically identical to the mother plant. Plant varieties with desired characteristics could thus be propagated much more easily – as seed clones. Now, Ueli Grossniklaus and his team at the Department of Plant and Microbial Biology at the University of Zurich (UZH) have come a step closer to achieving this goal. “In the model plant thale cress, we have discovered the signal that activates the female gamete to form a new seed,” says Grossniklaus.

The fertilization process in plants consists of two events. Two sperm cells merge with one female gamete each – one sperm cell fertilizes the egg, from which the embryo and ultimately the next generation is formed, while the other one fuses with the central cell, which develops into a placenta-like tissue that supplies the embryo with nutrients. Together, they develop into mature seeds. For fertilization to be successful, sperm cells and female gametes must be in the same phase of the cell cycle – in other words, they need to be “in sync” with each other.

Synchronization precedes gamete division

Scientists already knew that the sperm cells in thale cress (Arabidopsis thaliana) are in the preparatory phase for cell division. Grossniklaus’ team has now shown that the quiescent egg cell is also in this phase. The central cell, on the other hand, remains stuck in the middle of the preceding phase, in which the genetic material gets duplicated. While sperm and egg cells are in the same cell cycle phase, the central cell must first complete DNA synthesis after fertilization before the first division can begin.

This interruption in the cell cycle is caused by a protein in the central cell that is not completely degraded and is thus still present. When the sperm fertilizes this gamete, it introduces the protein cyclin, which then activates the decomposition of the inhibitory protein. Only then can the central cell complete DNA synthesis and move into the next phase of the cell cycle. “For the first time, we have managed to figure out the molecular mechanism of how the signal is delivered from the sperm to the female gamete in order to shift it out of its quiescent state. It signals to the central cell that fertilization was successful and that cell division can now take place,” says first author Sara Simonini.

Asexual reproduction for crops

If thale cress were to be genetically modified such that the central cells produced the protein cyclin themselves, they would begin to divide even without fertilization. “We can now deliberately trigger this activation in the absence of fertilization. This opens up opportunities to introduce apomixis in crop plants, in particular in hybrid varieties that are more resilient and produce higher yields than normal varieties,” says Grossniklaus. If apoximis could be harnessed in crop plants, millions of small-scale farmers in the Global South would for the first time be able to grow hybrid varieties whose seeds could be saved for the next sowing.

"The targeted activation of cell division without fertilization opens up new possibilities for introducing apomixis into crop plants, especially in the more resilient and higher-yielding hybrid varieties", says Ueli Grossniklaus, Director of the Department of Plant and Microbial Biology at University of Zurich.

CREDIT

Arturo Bolaños, University of Zurich

JOURNAL

Science

DOI

10.1126/science.adj4996 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Experimental study

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

Not applicable

ARTICLE TITLE

A paternal signal induces endosperm proliferation upon fertilization in Arabidopsis

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

15-Feb-2024

 

Rapid detection of antibiotic-resistant bacteria

Peer-Reviewed Publication

INDIAN INSTITUTE OF SCIENCE (IISC)

 

IMAGE: 

PORTABLE FLUORESCENCE READER DEVICE

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CREDIT: ARNAB DUTTA

A paper-based platform developed by researchers at the Indian Institute of Science (IISc) and Jawaharlal Nehru Centre for Advanced Scientific Research (JNCASR) could help quickly detect the presence of antibiotic-resistant, disease-causing bacteria.

One of mankind's greatest challenges has been the rise of disease-causing bacteria that are resistant to antibiotics. Their emergence has been fuelled by the misuse and overuse of antibiotics.

A handful of such bacteria – including E. coli and Staphylococcus aureus – have caused over a million deaths, and these numbers are projected to rise in the coming years, according to the World Health Organisation. Timely diagnosis can improve the efficiency of treatment.

“Generally, the doctor diagnoses the patient and gives them medicines. The patient then takes it for 2-3 days before realising that the medicine is not working and goes back to the doctor. Even diagnosing that the bacteria is antibiotic-resistant from blood or urine tests takes time. We wanted to reduce that time-to-diagnosis,” says Uday Maitra, Professor at the Department of Organic Chemistry, IISc.

In a paper published in ACS Sensors, Maitra’s lab and collaborators have addressed this challenge. They have developed a rapid diagnosis protocol that uses a luminescent paper-based platform to detect the presence of antibiotic-resistant bacteria.

There are different ways by which a bacterium becomes resistant to antibiotics. In one, the bacterium evolves, and can recognise and eject the medicine out of its cell. In another, the bacterium produces an enzyme called β-lactamase, which hydrolyses the β-lactam ring – a key structural component of common antibiotics like penicillin and carbapenem – rendering the medication ineffective.

The approach developed by the IISc and JNCASR team involves incorporating biphenyl-4-carboxylic acid (BCA) within a supramolecular hydrogel matrix containing terbium cholate (TbCh). This hydrogel normally emits green fluorescence when UV light is shined on it.

"In the lab, we synthesised an enzyme-substrate by tethering BCA to the cyclic [β-lactam] ring that is a part of the antibiotic. When you mix this with TbCh hydrogel, there is no green emission as the sensitiser is ‘masked,’” explains Arnab Dutta, PhD student in the Department of Organic Chemistry, IISc, and lead author of the paper. “In the presence of β-lactamase enzyme, the gel will produce green emission. β-lactamase enzyme in the bacteria is the one that cuts open the drug, destroys, and unmasks the sensitiser BCA. So, the presence of β-lactamase is signalled by green emission.” The luminescence signals the presence of antibiotic-resistant bacteria, and the intensity of the luminescence indicates the bacterial load. For non-resistant bacteria, the green intensity was found to be extremely low, making it easier to distinguish them from resistant bacteria.

The next step was to find a way to make the technology inexpensive. Currently used diagnostics instruments are costly, which drives up the price for testing.

The team collaborated with a Tamil Nadu-based company called Adiuvo Diagnostics to design a customised, portable and miniature imaging device, named Illuminate Fluorescence Reader. Infusing the hydrogel in a sheet of paper as the medium reduced the cost significantly. The instrument is fitted with different LEDs that shine UV radiation as required. Green fluorescence from the enzyme is captured by a built-in camera, and a dedicated software app measures the intensity, which can help quantify the bacterial load.

The team from IISc tied up with Jayanta Haldar’s research group from JNCASR to check their approach on urine samples. “We used samples from healthy volunteers and added pathogenic bacteria to mimic Urinary Tract Infections. It successfully produced the outcome within two hours,” explains Maitra.

As the next step, the researchers plan to tie up with hospitals to test this technology with samples from patients.

Schematic depicting the detection/differentiation of antibiotic-resistance bacteria

CREDIT

Arnab Dutta

JOURNAL

ACS Sensors

DOI

10.1021/acssensors.3c02065 

ARTICLE TITLE

Augmenting Antimicrobial Resistance Surveillance: Rapid Detection of β-Lactamase-Expressing Drug-Resistant Bacteria through Sensitized Luminescence on a Paper-Supported Hydrogel Arnab Dutta, Sudip Mukherjee, Jayanta Haldar, and Uday Maitra*

Superbug killer: New synthetic molecule highly effective against drug-resistant bacteria

Peer-Reviewed Publication

HARVARD UNIVERSITY

 

IMAGE: 

OVERVIEW AND CLOSE-UP OF CRESOMYCIN BOUND TO THE BACTERIAL RIBOSOME OF THERMUS THERMOPHILUS.

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CREDIT: YURY POLIKANOV/UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS CHICAGO

A new antibiotic created by Harvard researchers overcomes antimicrobial resistance mechanisms that have rendered many modern drugs ineffective and are driving a global public health crisis.

A team led by Andrew Myers, Amory Houghton Professor of Chemistry and Chemical Biology, reports in Science that their synthetic compound, cresomycin, kills many strains of drug-resistant bacteria, including Staphylococcus aureus and Pseudomonas aeruginosa.

“While we don’t yet know whether cresomycin and drugs like it are safe and effective in humans, our results show significantly improved inhibitory activity against a long list of pathogenic bacterial strains that kill more than a million people every year, compared with clinically approved antibiotics,” Myers said.

The new molecule demonstrates an improved ability to bind to bacterial ribosomes, which are biomolecular machines that control protein synthesis. Disrupting ribosomal function is a hallmark of many existing antibiotics, but some bacteria have evolved shielding mechanisms that prevent legacy drugs from working.

Cresomycin is one of several promising compounds that Myers’ team has developed, with the goal of helping win the war against superbugs. They’ll continue advancing these compounds through preclinical profiling studies, supported by a $1.2 million grant from Combating Antibiotic-Resistant Bacteria Biopharmaceutical Accelerator (CARB-X). A Boston University-based global nonprofit partnership, CARB-X is dedicated to supporting early-stage antibacterial research and development.

The Harvard team’s new molecule draws inspiration from the chemical structures of lincosamides, a class of antibiotics that includes the commonly prescribed clindamycin. Like many antibiotics, clindamycin is made via semisynthesis, in which complex products isolated from nature are modified directly for drug applications. The new Harvard compound, however, is fully synthetic and features chemical modifications that cannot be accessed through existing means.   

“The bacterial ribosome is nature’s preferred target for antibacterial agents, and these agents are the source of inspiration for our program,” said co-author Ben Tresco, a Kenneth C. Griffin Graduate School of Arts and Sciences student. “By leveraging the power of organic synthesis, we are limited almost only by our imagination when designing new antibiotics.”

Bacteria can develop resistance to ribosome-targeting antibiotic drugs by expressing genes that produce enzymes called ribosomal RNA methyltransferases. These enzymes box out the drug components that are designed to latch onto and disrupt the ribosome, ultimately blocking the drug’s activity.

To get around this problem, Myers and team engineered their compound into a rigidified shape that closely resembles its binding target, giving it a stronger grip on the ribosome. The researchers call their drug “pre-organized” for ribosomal binding because it doesn’t need to expend as much energy conforming to its target as existing drugs must do.

The researchers arrived at cresomycin using what they call component-based synthesis, a method pioneered by the Myers lab that involves building large molecular components of equal complexity and bringing them together at late stages – like pre-building sections of a complicated LEGO set before assembling them. This modular, completely synthetic system allows them to make and test not just one, but hundreds of target molecules, greatly speeding up the drug discovery process.

The stakes are clear. “Antibiotics form the foundation on which modern medicine is built,” said co-author and graduate student Kelvin Wu. “Without antibiotics, many cutting-edge medical procedures like surgeries, cancer treatments, and organ transplants, cannot be done.”

Myers’ component-based synthesis research received early support from Harvard’s Blavatnik Biomedical Accelerator, part of the Office of Technology Development, which awarded funding to Myers’ lab in 2013 to enable testing of drug compounds. The Office of Technology Development protected the Myers Research Group’s innovations and, along with the Blavatnik Biomedical Accelerator, will support the research team for the duration of the CARB-X agreement. The newly awarded CARB-X funding allows the researchers to continue profiling and optimizing drug leads.

“Funding and other support from groups like the Blavatnik Biomedical Accelerator and CARB-X are essential for the discovery and development of new antibiotics,” said Curtis Keith, the Harvard accelerator’s chief scientific officer. “These innovations from the Myers Research Group have the potential to yield new drugs that will one day meet a global health need.”

The published work was supported by the National Institutes of Health and the National Science Foundation.

 

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JOURNAL

Science

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Experimental study

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

Cells

ARTICLE TITLE

An antibiotic preorganized for ribosomal binding overcomes antimicrobial resistance

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

16-Feb-2024

 

Games in the classroom and the boardroom: How ‘serious games’ are helping us learn

A team of researchers are encouraging us to swap textbooks for games, as they drive the application of games in learning, engagement and research

Reports and Proceedings

UNIVERSITY OF WARWICK

A team of researchers are encouraging us to swap textbooks for games, as they drive the application of games in learning, engagement and research.

 

Known as ‘serious games’, these games are designed for more than just entertainment. Ranging from digital applications to physical board games, they are developed for learning, problem solving, raising awareness, research, and stakeholder engagement – with potential in both schools and workplaces. A key application will be for educating people on sustainable development and climate change.

 

Experts leading in the field at the Universities of Warwick, Cardiff, York, and Sussex, have teamed up for this project, known as GamEngage, to help implement gaming across many sectors. They are bringing together serious game researchers, developers, and practitioners to explore new opportunities in using serious games.

 

The academics have put together a ‘Serious Games Cookbook’, which aims to support beginners in using and designing serious games by presenting a resource full of detailed guidance. The cookbook will support beginners who are new to the idea of serious games, especially those with specialist knowledge, who want to explore how to apply that knowledge within games. The Cookbook addresses key considerations in using serious games, including establishing play goals, selecting the most suitable game for these goals, and facilitating gameplay within a session. It also discusses crucial aspects of serious game design, covering content and themes, mechanics, player engagement, and strategies for influencing attitudes.

 

Associate Professor of Global Sustainable Development, Dr Feng Mao, University of Warwick, said: “The cookbook offers a practical guide to help beginners designing serious games, as an emerging and promising tool for learning, engagement, and research, especially in the context of sustainable development and climate change – though we hope it will also be applied more broadly too. We hope to inspire and empower the Cookbook’s readers to meaningfully engage with serious games.”

 

Dr Katarzyna Stawarz, co-author of the Serious Games Cookbook and Senior Lecturer in Human-Computer Interaction at Cardiff University, added: “The Cookbook and its parts can also be used as a research tool, for example as part of co-design workshops as it would help to engage general public with serious topics through the medium of game design: rather than playing games designed by others, they could explore topics important to them that could be introduced in future games or even inform other types of projects.  We are hoping to encourage and help readers to explore the different ways in which games and game design could be used.”

 

A link to the Cookbook is available here: https://publishing.warwick.ac.uk/index.php/uwp/catalog/book/31

 

Read more about Professor Mao’s research here: https://warwick.ac.uk/fac/arts/schoolforcross-facultystudies/igsd/about/people/fengmao/

 

Media contact 

University of Warwick press office contact: 

Annie Slinn 07876876934 

Communications Officer | Press & Media Relations | University of Warwick Email: annie.slinn@warwick.ac.uk

 

 

Introducing competition between schools involves a lot of work and major costs

Peer-Reviewed Publication

UPPSALA UNIVERSITY

 

IMAGE: 

STEFAN ARORA-JONSSON, PROFESSOR OF BUSINESS STUDIES, DEPARTMENT OF BUSINESS STUDIES, UPPSALA UNIVERSITY, SWEDEN

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CREDIT: DAVID NAYLOR/UPPSALA UNIVERSITY

After the introduction of the freedom to choose between upper secondary schools in 1992, it took nearly ten years for upper secondary school heads in a municipality to start seeing themselves as competitors for school students. Any analysis of change from a later perspective needs to bear in mind that a transition of this kind takes a good deal of organising, costs a lot of money and takes many years to become established. This is shown by a new study of the introduction of competition between upper secondary schools, published in the journal Socio-Economic Review.

“It was surprising that it took such a long time for a reform to promote competition to take effect. In the municipality we studied it took roughly ten years. We had expected it would be a matter of a couple of years at the most,” says Stefan Arora-Jonsson, Professor of Business Studies at Uppsala University, one of the authors behind the study.

One of the ideas behind the 1992 school choice reform in Sweden, when free school choice was introduced, allowing upper secondary students to choose which school to attend, was that upper secondary schools would begin to compete for students. In a new research study, researchers in business studies have examined how the process went. Unlike previous studies of introducing competition, where the assumption has been that competition arises as soon as there are several schools to choose between, this study set out from interviews with school heads and managers in the municipal education system, along with analysis of archive materials to determine how the introduction of competition had played out. In their research, the authors interviewed 24 current and former school heads and employees in the education system in a medium-sized municipality. One question for future research is the extent to which the findings can be generalised to apply to other municipalities, particularly in the metropolitan regions.

The study shows that nearly ten years passed before the school heads felt they were in competition with one another. The new competitive approach required many years of far-reaching reorganisation of the municipal school system, training for teachers and school heads, and a change in the admission rules for students. When the school heads did see one another as competitors, further reorganisation was needed to enable them to compete while still cooperating in certain areas.

One of the conclusions is that the introduction of competition can entail significant costs, require radical organisational changes, take several years to work out and lead to further reorganisations. These costs should be viewed in the light of numerous international and Swedish studies that show that introducing competition between schools leads to marginal changes in students’ learning opportunities.

“Our research shows that introducing competition involves a far greater disruption of ongoing activities than was previously thought. People usually think about the changes that occur once competition has been established, but we show that major changes are needed for competition even to become established. When the effects of introducing competition are evaluated, the costs of these changes also need to be included in the analysis,” says Arora-Jonsson.

Article: Stefan Arora-Jonsson, Peter Edlund, Teaching schools to compete: the case of Swedish upper secondary education, Socio-Economic Review, 2024; mwad074, https://doi.org/10.1093/ser/mwad074

For further information:
Stefan Arora-Jonsson, Professor of Business Studies, Department of Business Studies, Uppsala University, email: stefan.jonsson@fek.uu.se, phone: 018-471 3959

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JOURNAL

Socio-Economic Review

DOI

10.1093/ser/mwad074 

ARTICLE TITLE

Teaching schools to compete: the case of Swedish upper secondary education

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

7-Feb-2024

New book helps school leaders focus on what they can do without getting weighed down

'Focused' gives strategies, examples of how leaders can do what only they can do

Book Announcement

UNIVERSITY OF KANSAS

LAWRENCE — No one can do everything. Yet that is exactly what many school leaders feel like they must do. A new book from a pair of school leaders and scholars aims to help those who often feel overwhelmed focus on what they can and should do and how to help teachers and students lead schools to reaching their full potential.

“Focused: Understanding, Negotiating, and Maximizing Your Influence as a School Leader,” by Jim Watterston and Yong Zhao, aims to help educational administrators guide schools to success without getting weighed down by things they can’t control. The book shares stories of leaders from around the world.

“The basic idea we wanted to give school leaders is that there are many things you can do, but you have to focus on the things that only you can do,” said Zhao, Foundation Distinguished Professor of Education at the University of Kansas. “You can’t do everything, and you need to empower others to do the things that they can do. We look at the issue of, ‘How do you carve out a space for yourself?’” 

Watterston, dean of the faculty at the University of Melbourne, and Zhao have starkly different backgrounds in education. The former started as a classroom teacher in a rural Indigenous school in Western Australia and rose to lead several schools before taking his current post. 

Zhao has spent a career in higher education researching and writing about schools around the world and improving the educational experience. 

In working together previously, they realized their unique experiences with education suited them to a collaboration. 

“I said, ‘You’ve got to write that book. Because I want to know what you did in going from a small, rural school to probably the best university in Australia,’” Zhao said of his co-author. “That was fascinating to me, his journey.” 

Zhao’s respective journey took him from his native China to study how schools operate there to the United States, putting him in contact with thousands of teachers and school leaders. 

Both have seen many school leaders who felt like they had to be in charge of everything in a school, including curriculum, teachers, students, extracurricular activities, budgets, community relations and more, the authors said. In “Focused,” they aim to help school leaders excel in their roles while empowering others. 

The book is presented in three stages:

• How to build a leadership paradigm for outstanding schools.
• What are the most influential elements for collective success?
• How to avoid the pitfalls that prevent success.

The book’s opening chapters provide guidance on how principals can focus on what they can do to be the most effective principal possible without trying to also be the best teacher or best person in any other role. Stage I shares chapters on how leaders can use a system the authors call “the inverted triangle of influence” and creating game plans for success and leading a renewed purpose of education.

Stage II focuses on how leaders can achieve collective success by leading students, teachers and other players in the school environment. The authors point out that students can be given a larger role as school leaders than that with which they are usually entrusted.

“Students are not only learners, they are also leaders of learning for others,” Zhao said. “Schools rarely treat them as leaders of their own learning. We have organized schools so students are only considered learners, but they are and can be change-makers.”

Teachers are also learners, and the book’s second stage contains vignettes and examples of leaders who have successfully engaged teachers as self-determined individuals who can help shape the vision for a school. 

Stage III shares strategies to avoid pitfalls that can prevent success, including leading through formative accountability and sustainability. Action steps are included to help leaders embrace hope instead of fear or risk aversion and how to innovate without simply making changes for the sake of change.

“As a principal, do you want to focus on the past, present or future?” Zhong asked. “We propose school leaders invest in a new future. But you can’t wait for the system. Systems don’t innovate; they follow and respond. People and leaders innovate.”

Watterston and Zhao wrote that if leaders trust and empower all the players within their institution, they can guide the kinds of change and improvements that enable all students to succeed.

“You are the bus driver, but you’re not the bus, as Jim often says,” Zhao said. “The idea with this book is to use examples to inspire people. The stories all come from people we’ve met and the successes we’ve seen them have.”