Living and learning in a hectic world: Students' perceptions of stress

Conclusion Two of the primary aims of education about stress are to help studentslearn about stress, as well as helping them tocope with stress in their lives. The majority of students in this study saw stress as a demanding environmental condition (i.e. a stressor), less frequently as the individual's reaction to it, and even less frequently as a complex and on-going process of interaction between the individual and his or her environment. Thus the individual and the interactionist aspects of stress need to be address and both aspects of stress, positive and negative should be included. This study highlights not only the areas in which students' understanding of stress can be broadened, but also it provides a rich source of students' experimental knowledge on which new learning can be based. Stress management resources such as self-help literature, television programs, and community-based courses have been available to the adult population for several years. More recently stress management courses are being offered to college students in the USA (Allen, 1981). Researchers in the USA are now beginning to look at stress management units in high school health education programs (Richardson et al, 1983), but such courses are largely absent from Australian schools. Given that stress is an inescapable part of modern life with considerable implications for individual and social health and well-being, knowledge about stress-its causes, effects, and means of management-should be available to all people.     

Resilience in child maltreatment victims: a conceptual exploration

While many child maltreatment victims suffer serious negative emotional sequelae, others do surprisingly well. Resilience in children is a relative concept which can change over time and is affected by environment and genetics. Resilience is fostered by protective factors which ameliorate or alter a child's response to the hazards of maltreatment that usually predispose to maladaptive outcome. Personal characteristics or skills that may foster resilience include (1) rapid responsivity to danger; (2) precocious maturity; (3) dissociation of affect; (4) information seeking; (5) formation and utilization of relationships for survival; (6) positive projective anticipation; (7) decisive risk taking; (8) the conviction of being loved; (9) idealization of an aggressor's competence; (10) cognitive restructuring of painful experiences; (11) altruism; and (12) optimism and hope. There are also generic life circumstances, such as having access to good health, educational, and social welfare services, that foster resilience in children regardless of the specific nature of the stressor. Additionally, there may be abuse-specific protective factors in the environment. Examples might include the quick and full acknowledgment of an offender regarding abuse, or timeliness and permanence of legal actions affecting a child's custody. The life stories of three well-known survivors of various forms of child maltreatment illustrate how protective factors contribute to resilience. A caution is noted regarding how personal characteristics developed for survival may become maladaptive if overused and/or not given up when the stressor no longer exists. Characterological problems are most likely to develop when a child's life circumstances fail to change and the environment never becomes secure.     

高校教师工作压力现状调查及其管理对策——基于河北省高校教师样本的研究

在不同层次高等院校和教师中,运用32个测量项目对工作压力源和压力反应进行的问卷调查显示,5个工作压力源维度和3个压力反应维度以72．32个测量项目的高校教师工作压力问卷通过实证检验,具有较高的信度与效度,为大学教师工作压力现状的研究提供了有效的测量工具。比较不同人口统计学变量教师的工作压力感与压力反应程度,发现在压力源与压力反应全部或部分维度上具有显著差异,这对高校教师差别化压力管理以及教师关注自身的身心健康都具有借鉴意义。     

心理压力的涵义与特性

心理压力是个体在生活实践中，对压力事件反映时所形成的一种持续紧张的综合性心理状态。心理压力是现实生活中客观存在的心理现象，与压力事件密切联系。心理压力作为个体的一种综合性心理状态，表现为认知、情绪、行为三种基本心理成分的有机结合。心理压力具有情绪性和动力性等基本特性。     

大学教职员工的工作压力研究

大学教职员工的压力源和工作压力反应两方面的指标,可以反映出高校教师和行政人员之间工作压力的差异。教职员工的主要压力源在于其工作的自主性不足,他们没有足够的工作自由度和独立性。这方面的限制不仅来源于其工作环境和体制,而且还来自于身边人员的压力。在压力源上,教师所感受到的工作局限性要比行政人员少一些,这可能与二者工作性质的不同有关。从工作压力反应方面来看,教职员工的总体工作稳定性还是比较高的,这也许与他们稳定的收入和良好的福利有关。但是高校教师的辞职意向还是要高于行政人员,这可能是因为学历的提升开阔了眼界,站在更高的层次上就会产生更多的欲求。     

Childhood emotional invalidation and adult psychological distress: the mediating role of emotional inhibition

OBJECTIVE: To evaluate a model in which chronic emotional inhibition mediates the relationship between a history of childhood emotional invalidation or abuse and adult psychological distress. METHOD: One hundred and twenty-seven participants completed a series of self-report questionnaires, and a subset of this group (n=88) completed an additional measure of current avoidant coping in response to a laboratory stressor. Structural equation modeling was used to evaluate and compare a full and partial mediational model. RESULTS: Findings strongly supported a model in which a history of childhood emotional invalidation (i.e., psychological abuse and parental punishment, minimization, and distress in response to negative emotion) was associated with chronic emotional inhibition in adulthood (i.e., ambivalence over emotional expression, thought suppression, and avoidant stress responses). In turn, emotional inhibition significantly predicted psychological distress, including depression and anxiety symptoms. CONCLUSION: This study found support for a model in which the relation between recollected negative emotion socialization in childhood and adult psychological distress was fully mediated by a style of inhibiting emotional experience and expression. Although it is likely that childhood emotional inhibition is functional (e.g., reduces parental distress and rejection), results suggest that chronic emotional inhibition may have long-term negative consequences for the inhibitor.     

COGNITIVE STRUCTURES OF CREATIVITY: IMPLICATIONS FOR INSTRUCTIONAL DESIGN

While creativity of the order which produces paradigm shifts in a knowledge domain is usually the result of the efforts of creative experts, any novel outcome of the work of a problem solver can be referred to as “creative”, be it process or product Any individual, regardless of level of expertise, is capable of creativity if he or she employs the entire cognitive system differentially and synergistically. Consequently, the aim of instruction aimed at enhancing creativity should be to provide opportunities for learners to use all three knowledge orders for creative problem solving. The paper provides various ways in which this may be done.     

大学毕业班学生就业压力路径分析

随机抽取了800名大学生,运用因素分析探讨了就业压力源,采用相关分析、线性结构方程模型（LISREL）探索了就业压力过程的路径。结果表明：（1）就业压力源与焦虑呈显著正相关;就业压力源与消极应付呈显著正相关,与积极应付呈显著负相关;积极应付与焦虑呈显著负相关,消极应付与焦虑呈显著正相关。（2）就业压力源是引起焦虑的直接主要路径,应付方式在就业压力源与焦虑之间起重要的中介作用,是间接的路径。     

The Riddle of Sustainable Development and the Role of Environmental Education

This paper is largely concerned with exploring the meaning of sustainable development from two perspectives, the economic and the ethical. The economic perspective raises questions such as: what kind of development is to be sustained? Is it economic growth? Quality of life? Ecosystem integrity? The ethical perspective considers questions such as: what should be the criteria for ‘progress'? What is our moral obligation to future generations? The paper argues that education for sustainability programmes ought to acknowledge and address these questions. If they do not, then, given the complexity and volatility of late 20th century global society, the current stress on education playing a major role in achieving sustainability (IUCN, UNEP & WWF, 1991) may be unduly naïve and under‐theorised. Finally, I contend that the goals of environmental education need to be reconceptualised, continually and reflexively, in response to the globalisation of industrial risks.     

Education and climate change – some systemic connections

Unlike most papers on education and ecology, this one is not concerned with the content of education but its organisation as a system and hence its purpose or finality. The central contention of the paper, which takes English education and training (or ‘learning’) as a case in point, is that in a new market‐state formation the pursuit of short‐term goals is tied to the global free‐market economy over which any attempt at democratic control has been relinquished. At a time when humanity worldwide faces increasing change in the ecology that sustains it, this is considered to be ‘ecocidally insane’ and the opposite of any sort of learning from experience to alter behaviour in the future. The re‐regulated new global market is seen in conclusion as a crisis response to the end of the previous Keynesian welfare nation‐state formation. As such, it is argued to be unsustainable in any sense.     

An Exploratory Study of Stress in a British University

This paper reports an exploratory study of stress and psychological well-being in British University staff. Unlike previous studies of stress in University staff, this study examines stress not only in relation to lecturing staff, but also research and support staff. Principal components analysis of a fifteen item stressor scale revealed two orthogonal dimensions, relating to quantitative overload stressors and role stressors respectively. Both were found to be related to a measure of psychological well-being. Differences in these stressor factors were found between the various types of university employee; academic staff were found to report more work load and managerial stressors, but reported fewer role stressors.     

The psychophysics of pictorial perception

Summary Pictorial communication of shape and form is not simply a learned visual language. Whatever processes of learning, if any, underly our ability to perceive represented surfaces’ edges-without which the communication of shape is impossible-in response to outline drawings, probably occurs very early in life in consequence of our normal commerce with spatial objects. Although this probability makes the problems of“learning to see pictures”relatively inaccessible, it simplifies the study of the rules which govern edge- and surface-perception in pictures. The applicability of such rules depends, eventually, on knowing This paper is part of an investigation of pictorial psychophysics supported by the National Science Foundation, NSF-G9601.     

Philosophy of Science and Education

This is a vast and vague topic. In order to do justice to it one has to write a book or maybe more than one. For it can be understood in quite different ways and on different levels For example you may think mainly of the historical aspect, that is how philosophy of science developed in the last hundred or so years and how its influence on education changed; you may think of quite different schools of philosophy, from Marxist or positivist to such exotic but at some places influential philosophic positions like that of Rudolph Steiner; of course, you may limit the subject to special fields like epistemology, theory of scientific methodology, or, what has become fashionable recently, sociology of knowledge which may have a considerable bearing on physics teaching (Collins and Shapin 1983; Jung 1985). Again we may think of the topic treated by a philosopher, a scientist, an educationalist, a teacher, which would mean quite a difference. I am trying here to speak as an educationalist, with the physics teacher in mind: this is my vocational perspective as someone who educates physics teachers. Of course, our main concern is the contribution of science, especially physics, to general education, which integrates many of the special topics mentioned. Philosophy of science comes in because it is not at all clear what science and physics is, and what of it should be taught, and how such chosen parts should be taught. I also take this opportunity to give an idea of the longstanding tradition of this discussion in Germany, connected with names like Wagenshein, Litt, Heisenberg and many others.     

Examining the Exam: A Critical Look at The California Critical Thinking Skills Test

This paper examines the content of The California Critical Thinking Skills Test (1990). This report is not a statistical review. Instead it brings under scrutiny the content of the exam. This content will be of interest to the general reader, because the issues range from logic to ethics to pedagogy, and to questions of evidential and epistemological support. Anyone interested in clear thought and expression will find these issues of significance. Although the exam has a number of strengths and has the clearest instructions of all the presently available Critical Thinking exams, the content of 9 of the exams 34 questions is defective, namely the content of questions 6, 7, 8, 19, 21, 23, 24, 29, and 33. These questions make errors in critical thinking. Hence, no statistical results pertaining to the administration of these questions to students can be acceptable. The remaining questions are acceptable as to content. But until the problems are corrected, those who may use the exam should remove the defective questions from test administration or from data collection and reporting.The scope of the exam also is quite limited, but this may be unavoidable for any instrument designed to be completed in about an hour. Further, the scores resulting from any such testing can be understood only as a measure of minimal competency (below which remediation likely is needed) for the skills tested, but not as an adequate measure of critical thinking.Disclosure: Three of the authors are engaged in producing and marketing a critical thinking test. Though this paper was written before any of us considered developing such a test, the reader should be informed. Each of the writers has exercised considerable care to avoid any bias, and we thank our independent reviewers for helping us in this regard as well.     

Beyond the Bounds of Thought: Speculative Philosophy and the Last Proposition of the Tractatus

Wittgenstein's Tractatus attempts to characterize, via an account of the meaning and truth of propositional expressions, the limits to human thought. It turns out that not only, according to him, are the limits to human thought something which lie outside the capacity for humans to express, but such a notion is strictly speaking without sense. He concludes the book with the sentence "What we cannot speak about we must pass over in silence." Whitehead, on the contrary, is concerned to suggest that human sentential expressions are always inadequate to the thoughts which we wish to express. Nonetheless he suggests that a happy speculation a la Plato might just be right, even though we may never know that it is. This paper argues that there are no convincing arguments that either Wittgenstein or Whitehead is right here. So it is best that we maintain an agnostic position with respect to the view that human thought is strictly limited or that no adequate expressions of our thoughts can be found. Both educationally and practically, failing of any convincing arguments to the contrary, it is better that we presuppose, along with the mediaeval Christian thinkers, that our reason and insight are sufficient to the task of ultimately penetrating into the mysteries of the world, however difficult that task might be. Thus a happy speculation with no grounding is a perfectly good thing to engage in. It just might be true.     

Searching for Dumbledore: A reflection upon the outcomes of a tailored emotional literacy programme on three key stage 2 children

Some children may only be able to express feelings of anxiety, frustration, stress or sadness through angry behaviours, which may prove challenging for schools (Barnes et al., 2016; Shechtman and Tutian, 2016). This is problematic when considered in relation to research evidence highlighting the negative impact such behaviours may have upon social relationships and academic outcomes (Sloan et al., 2017). The aims of this study were to explore whether a tailored emotional literacy programme can be used effectively to extend children's emotional lexicon and strategies for the self‐management of behaviours. Three children with social‐emotional difficulties were taught in twelve weekly sessions. The findings from this study suggests the positive benefits of using a programme tailored to meet a child's specific needs (rather than a programme without any adaptations), which may be an effectual tool in supporting children to change established patterns of negative behaviours.     

Adolescents' Increasing Stress Response to Social Evaluation: Pubertal Effects on Cortisol and Alpha‐Amylase During Public Speaking

Stress responses to social evaluation are thought to increase during adolescence, which may be due to pubertal maturation. However, empirical evidence is scarce. This study is the first to investigate the relation between pubertal development and biological responses to a social‐evaluative stressor longitudinally. Participants performed the Leiden Public Speaking Task twice, with a 2‐year interval (N = 217; age at Time 1: 8–17 years). The results support an increase in sensitivity to social evaluation during adolescence. The overall cortisol and alpha‐amylase responses increased—both between and within participants—and were more strongly related to self‐reported pubertal development than to age. The cortisol response shifted from speech delivery toward anticipation. The alpha‐amylase response increased in both phases.     

Quantifying Stress in Children

Today there is a greater awareness than hitherto of the existence and effects of pupil stress. There is also the recognition that the causes of pupil stress may be increasing in number and seriousness. However, recognition of this situation does not necessarily increase our understanding of it. In this paper, Ewen Rennie provides an example of the ways in which greater understanding might be achieved. A group of teachers were asked to rate the degree of stress engendered by a number of events. Though the results revealed significant differences from those of similar work undertaken in the past, their real value would be as a basis for comparison with the perceptions of parents and pupils.     

Action learning: nothing so practical as a good theory

Kurt Lewin's epigrammatic paradox is particularly true for action learning. Marquardt and Waddill (2004), and previously Yorks O'Neil and Marsick (1999) have approached the issue of the relationship between theory and action learning by looking at a variety of theories which they have placed in ‘schools’. This provides an interesting analysis, but may be less well fitted to demonstrate the ‘practical’ element in Lewin's statement. While it is interesting for many of us to know that our ideas or our actions can be interpreted and, even better understood, in relation to a school, it is my experience that for many people action is more related to the ideas of a particular individual rather than to a diffuse categorisation such as a school. From this perspective, it is even more bizarre than it first seemed that Reg Revans, otherwise acknowledged by Marquardt and Waddill as their main source about action learning, does not appear in any of the five schools they have created. Moreover, the twenty six names they include in their schools embrace a number of theorists who are really peripheral in terms of the specifics of action learning, whatever their merits as general theorists about learning in total. In this article I look at the potential for understanding about, and implementation of, action learning through the work of the five theorists who I believe to be most significant. Significant because of the content of their theories, and because they are theorists most likely to be known to, and at least partially understood, by facilitators of action learning.     

Stress‐Induced Elevation of Oxytocin in Maltreated Children: Evolution,Neurodevelopment, and Social Behavior

Child maltreatment often has a negative impact on the development of social behavior and health. The biobehavioral mechanisms through which these adverse outcomes emerge, however, are not clear. To better understand the ways in which early life adversity affects subsequent social behavior, changes in the neuropeptide oxytocin (OT) in children (n = 73) aged 8.1–11.5 years following a laboratory stressor were examined. Girls with histories of physical abuse have higher levels of urinary OT and lower levels of salivary cortisol following the stressor when compared to controls. Abused and control boys, however, do not differ in their hormonal responses. These data suggest that early adversity may disrupt the development of the stress regulation system in girls by middle childhood.