Mental Health and Quality Education

Although in terms of their meaning and extended connotations there are distinctions between the two concepts of mental (or psychological) quality (xinli suzhi) and mental health (xinli jiankang), the connection between the two is obvious. Specifically we can say that the two are connected in a cause-and-effect relationship. In other words, a sound mental quality is an important foundation for maintaining a healthy state of mind, or a state of mental health. Conversely, a healthy state of mind is also a basic condition for nurturing sound mental qualities. Normally there are the following basic criteria and standards for determining whether a person is mentally healthy. First, the person should possess the normal capacity for cognition, be capable of reflecting on external matters objectively, and make correct judgments and reason deductively. Second, the person must have a stable and generally optimistic mood and outlook, and healthy and positive sentiments or feelings. Third, the person must have normal behavioral reflexes and a strength of will and determination, as well as a relatively strong ability to withstand and endure setbacks. Fourth, the person must have normal capacity for interacting with and relating to other people; he or she must be able to get along with the people around him congenially and maintain good interpersonal relationships. Fifth, the person must have a correct sense of himself and be realistically and honestly self-critical while maintaining an appropriate measure of self-respect and confidence in himself. The realization of these criteria depends on the cultivation of a variety of mental and psychological qualities in a person. For example, the formation of a correct sense of self is an important sign of mental health; at the same time the formation of such a correct sense of self has to be based on one's ability to evaluate and even criticize oneself objectively. A person's ability to evaluate him- or herself and to be self-critical is a funda-mental mental quality. It is only when a person can make an honest and realistic self-assessment that he can form a correct sense of him- or herself and thus have self-respect, self-love, confidence, and learn to strengthen and improve oneself, and, furthermore, maintain a healthy state of mind characterized by an optimistic outlook, a sense of drive for progress, enthusiasm and willingness to move forward. Conversely, if a person is unable to assess and evaluate him- or herself objectively, then, whether his self-assessment is too high or too low, it will lead to a deviation from the norm in his self-concept. If one has, for example, an excessively high estimation of oneself, it could produce unhealthy personality traits such as arrogance and self-importance, looking down on everybody and everything. On the other hand, underestimations could lead to other types of unhealthy characteristics such as excessive self-deprecation, timidity, and withdrawal. All these could hinder the development of a person's potential and latent abilities, as well as lower his or her adaptability to the environment.     

Self-evaluation and school adaptation in adolescence

The transition between Junior High School and High School (respectively “collège” and “lycée” in the French system) results in new academic demands to which the pupil tries to respond by mobilising new adaptive resources. This study deals with one of these resources — self-esteem — which, as a result of a qualitative change in the young person’s evaluation of him/herself, takes on its full meaning during adolescence. At the end of Junior High School, 208 good pupils (126 girls and 82 boys) were asked to fill in questionnaires about global self-esteem and self-evaluation in domains related to school (“with peers”; “in the school work”; “in the family”). Using two different techniques (questionnaires and interviews), their coping modalities (emotions, mental strategies and active strategies) were recorded when they found themselves facing a “first academic difficulty” at school. The difficulty took the form of a sudden, noticeable drop in performance in a subject in which the pupil had previously been successful. A multiple regression analysis revealed the low predictive power of contextual self-evaluation (including self-evaluation related to school) on functional and dysfunctional factors. On the other hand, global self-esteem contributed significantly to the prediction of these factors and to the sequential ordering of coping modalities in time.     

Self-concept and self-esteem reexamined

Three “self” constructs are differentiated: the “self,” that is, the “real” self; the “self-concept,” which is the information or cognitions an individual has about his “self;” and “self-esteem,” which is the judgment and feelings about the “self.” An individual's self-concept can be characterized by its realism or unrealism, its completeness or incompleteness, or by the complexity of the concepts used to describe the self. Self-esteem, but not self-concept, can be described as being positive or negative. Developmental considerations and implications are discussed.     

Home Away from Home: Acclimatization of Filipino Elderly from being Home to a Sense of being “At Home” in an Elderly Institution

This grounded study examined the process of acclimatization or the process of changing perspectives of a person so as to get used to or feel “at home” among a select group of Filipino elderly in a nursing care facility. As institutionalization of the elderly is not typical in the Philippine context, varied responses were analyzed to understand the factors and the course that an elderly person undergoes over a set period of time to achieve acclimatization. Twenty elderly (n = 20) residents were purposively recruited and subjected to an in-depth interview that chronicled their experiences on their previous and present lives and on the process by which they were able to adjust to a relatively new setting. Preliminarily, a robotfoto was devised to obtain demographic data including visitation frequencies and familial relationships, and this was followed by an in-depth interview. Through the constant comparison method, an interesting model called the Hourglass of Acclimatization emerged. This model yielded two distinct phases contributing to successful acclimatization. One is the Conversion phase, or imbibing the main notion of transforming one's perspectives of him or herself and his or her environment; there is also the Immersion phase, which describes how an elderly involves him or herself completely into the life he or she is supposed to live. This emerged model can contribute to the development of nursing interventions focusing on elderly experiences in the entire course of relocation to a new environment other than what they call “home.”     

“Areas of Instruction”—A Tool for Assessing the Quality of Instructional Situations

A model for analysing the nature of the dyadic teacher–student interplay in instructional situations including one teacher and one student is described. The “teacher” may be a regular teacher, a parent, or any other person who is in the position of teacher. The “student” may be a student of any age. The model may discern (a) if the teacher merely asks for information preknown to the teacher and the teacher evaluates the student's answer according to the teacher's preknowledge, (b) if the teacher asks for information preknown to the teacher, the teacher then scaffolds the student's learning by giving clues to the correct answer and then evaluates the answer according to the teacher's preknowledge, or (c) the teacher asks for information not preknown to her/him and the teacher is genuinely interested in the student's answer. This last scenario (c) is thought to give optimal conditions for cognitive development for the student.     

Students' choices in Portuguese higher education: influences and motivations

Students face significant pressures in their decision about their career plan. These pressures are simultaneously internal and external, personal and social, individual and from the reference group. The present paper aims at understanding the reasons driving students' choices, perceived needs, and aspirations. Moreover, it discusses the major influences/pressures of the student's choice and tries to understand how choice is affected by the students' socioeconomic and cultural background and other factors such as institutional reputation or “professional heritage.” The construction of the career plan is analyzed by applying a qualitative analysis methodology through content analysis of the freshmen discourses. The results point out the relevance of social status, intelligence, gender, competences, values, and interests of each person for the construction of his/her career plan. All these levels are highly influenced by self-esteem, which is closely related to the social value of career options and paths. The more central the variable self-esteem is, the less susceptible it will become to change other variables such as educational level, profession accessibility, or gender adequacy.     

Four women's stories of “failure” as beginning teachers

This study focused on the “failure” experienced by four novice teachers. While only one actually “failed” student teaching, each perceived herself as a “failure” in the classroom, and all four chose alternate careers upon completion of the assignment. Drawing on literature identifying patterns in women's thinking and modes of learning, we examined the difficulties these women encountered, focusing on their own perceptions of those problems. We identify alternative patterns of supervision which might have allowed these capable women to do more than “survive” their initial teaching experiences, and we argue for more gender-balanced conceptions of teachers' growth and development.     

A professor realizes the potential poison of Ivy

This clinical treatise discusses this author's concept of “professorial melancholia,” a progressive emotional process characterized by the negating of a university professor's professional motivation, positive attitudinal focus, and adequate personal self-esteem.     

A Review of: “Forgiveness,Reconciliation, and Moral Courage: Motives and Designs for Ministry in a Troubled World”

Traise Yamamoto, a professor of English and a scholar of biographical studies, made the following remark in her book Masking Selves, Making Subjects (1999). She wrote, “Nisei (second-generation Japanese American) women's autobiographies are frustratingly un-autobiographical” (103). Yamamoto, who is a Japanese-American woman herself, saw the lack of personal disclosures and intimate self-reflections in many such works. This grounded-theory research on a group of elderly Nisei Christian women uncovered five oppressive influences from their life journeys, which may have discouraged the Nisei women from expressing and addressing human being's most basic concerns such as one's self worth and one's central philosophy of life.     

Social purposes in search of higher education,or higher education in search of social purposes?

The paper begins by discussing the difficulties of formulating coherent social purposes, with particular attention to the relationship between social purposes and the “inner citadel” of higher education's intrinsic values. A detailed examination is then made of social purposes which have come to the fore in the transition from elite to mass higher education: equality and expansion, in which the importance of higher education as a political phenomenon is emphasised; “hard” vocationalism, the matching of educational content to the skills needed for effective job performance; continuing education (an issue linked to these two social purposes); “soft” vocationalism, which is concerned with abilities highly valued in job performance which are also highly valued in the well-educated person; moral development; and “higher education as society's powerhouse”. The paper concludes by suggesting that however much higher education is implicated in society, it may have to continue to exist in active tension with society if academic ideals are to be self-perpetuating.     

The Development of a New Measure of Pupils' Self-Esteem in Singapore Secondary Schools

This article is a brief account of the development of a new measure of pupils' self-esteem for use in Singapore's secondary schools. The new measure named “Self-Esteem Checklist” (SEC), is a self-reporting instrument comprising 25 items grouped under 4 subscales. It has been pilot tested twice (in September 1986 and March 1987), before the main study was conducted in May, 1987. The findings of the second pilot study and main study yield support to the validity and reliability of the SEC, and its correlation with pupils' academic achievement. This instrument, when used with proper guidance, may facilitate teacher-counsellors' understanding of pupils' self-esteem, and help pupils know more about themselves, in the pastoral care as well as career guidance programmes.     

Empowerment: In Search of a Viable Paradigm

The word “empowerment” is associated with several different and fundamentally inadequate paradigms. This paper presents an alternative, empowering view of empowerment. The essence of empowerment is increasing the behavior potential of persons, individually and in groups and organizations. Behavior potential is not some abstract concept of “what a person might do if” Instead, it is the totality of behaviors that are actually available to a given person in a given environment. These behaviors do not occur in a vacuum; behavior potential is the intersection of the person's behavioral productions with the organization's expectations and permissions. An individual is empowered to the extent that he or she possesses a rich repertoire of behaviors and is expected and permitted to make full use of this repertoire by the organization.     

Does it matter how Molly does it? Person-presentation of strategies and transfer in mathematics

Educational materials often present general concepts or strategies via specific people. Although this practice may enhance interest, it may also have costs for learning and transfer. Linking a strategy to a person (e.g., “Molly’s strategy”) could result in narrower transfer because students infer that the strategy is specific to the person, rather than a general strategy they should adopt. The present study tested this hypothesis among middle school students (N = 191) who learned a novel strategy for solving a mathematics story problem. For some students, the strategy example was presented via a specific person, and for others it was not. Students then solved posttest problems and rated the generality of the strategy. Students who saw the example without the person were more likely to transfer the strategy to new problems, and this effect was mediated by students’ perceptions of the strategy’s generality. Thus, associating information with a person substantially limits the extent to which students transfer their knowledge.     

On the Ethics of Open‐Mindedness in the Age of Trump

Is it always ethical to ask a person to be “open‐minded” in volatile political contexts? What might open‐mindedness entail and when might such an expectation be harmful? Drawing on observations and interviews related to a controversial dialogue that occurred in Charlottesville, Virginia, following the violent Unite the Right rally of August 2017, Rachel Wahl argues, first, that whether we might consider someone “open‐minded” has little to do with their participation in processes that formally affirm and even genuinely aim for this virtue. Second, the division between people who view civil dialogue as the key to social progress and people who aver that direct resistance is what is called for is rooted in deeply different conceptions of the social world and what ails the nation. This divide is at once a response to the political moment and to the human condition, as it is a manifestation of an enduring tension between openness and commitment. Third, the disposition to be what one might call “open‐minded” about this division is premised on how one understands one's self and life. While popular and philosophical conceptions of this division tend to valorize either openness or commitment, Wahl draws on René Arcilla's conception of a life of education in order to articulate how these might be integrated. The possibility of understanding one's life as an education illustrates what may have made it possible for one exemplary participant in the Charlottesville dialogue to be open‐minded even about the value of some expressions of open‐mindedness while maintaining his principled commitments.     

论日本保育思想的形成、发展及其现状

近代以来,日本的保育事业逐步发展,保育思想也不断发展。今天其《幼儿园教育要领》和《保育所保育指针》的基本思想,就是重视孩子自身的各种感受,重视孩子的嬉戏和生活体验。从"健康"、"人际关系"、"环境"、"语言"和"表现"五个领域规定了比较具体的目标和内容,以确保孩子在各个方面都能够"体验"、"感受"和"享受"各种各样的事情。嬉戏作为孩子的自发的活动,是培养其身心协调发展的基础的重要的学习。日本学前教育机构的工作就是从五个领域指导孩子通过嬉戏和生活体验逐步形成生存的基础,逐步为生存能力的形成奠定基础。     

“ Suggestive Books”: the Role of the Writings of Mary Somerville in Science and Gender History

In 1874 the eminent Scottish scientist, James Clerk Maxwell, said of Mary Somerville's On the Connexion of the Physical Sciences that it was one of those “suggestive books” which communicate intelligibly the “guiding ideas” already in the minds of “men of science” and so lead the latter to further discoveries. ^{1 1} Elizabeth Patterson, “ Mary Somerville”, British Journal for the History of Science, IV (1968/1969), p. 322. Mary Somerville's three main publications, all of them updated and reedited a number of times, had a significant impact upon the scientific world of Britain in the nineteenth century. She was seen and, indeed, saw herself, as an expert expositor of science rather than a scientist in her own right. Unusually for a woman, however, she wrote for adults ‐ students and practitioners of science ‐ not children. This paper will explore how influential her scientific writings were in the nineteenth‐century, how and why they came to be written,for whom they were intended and what were the reactions to their publication. This case study will be used as an exemplar of how far, as authors of influential books, women could find a niche in science education or the academic world, or even within the changing cultural construct of “science” itself.

     

Rejoinder to Aaron Cooley's Review of Teaching Against Global Capitalism and the New Imperialism: A Critical Pedagogy

Because of Professor Cooley's prosecutorial review, I want to make clear at the outset that my rejoinder is not a codefendant's answer to a plaintiff's replication. Instead, I first attempt to provide an “immanent” analysis of Cooley's indictment, in the sense of dealing with what dwells within his reasoning. A specific philosophical definition of “immanent” reads: taking place within the mind of the subject, but having no effect outside (this does not apply to me as an outsider). I intend to battle with Cooley up close—no “dancing”—my defense against his offense. In the second part, the focus will be on what I think is missing from Cooley's attempt to discredit McLaren and Farahmandpur's book. His decision or failure to deal with what Marx and the most effective Marxists have written, and how some of this provided analyses that could be and/or was acted upon, may be more serious than his beating up on the book's authors.     

PAINTING WITH IMPASTO: METAPHORS,MIRRORS, AND REFLECTIVE REGRESSION IN MONTAIGNE'S “OF THE EDUCATION OF CHILDREN”

Analyzing Montaigne's triptych painting, “Of the Education of Children,” reveals a series of ever‐morphing, Dorian Gray–like canvases that depict metaphor mutations through which Montaigne defined education by distinguishing between schooling a child into a learned man and educating him into an able, active, and gentle person. Montaigne used metaphor and metaphor clusters to image key points in his educational philosophy, advanced his argument by intertwining, transmuting, and inverting metaphors, and thereby drew and vividly painted his philosophy of how to educate a person from cradle to coffin. Because the etymology and pronunciation of “essay” (from the French essai) support Montaigne's imaging and exploiting of this genre's creative potential, Virginia Worley begins by considering the term's etymology before positioning her analysis of Montaigne's work within metaphor research. She then examines the metaphors Montaigne used to paint the triptych word painting that embodies his philosophy of education: the meaning and value of educating in and for the art of living well.     

How Do You Know You're Old? Gender Differences in Cues Triggering the Experience of Personal Aging

In order to evaluate the gender differences on the experience of aging, 142 individuals 50 years of age and older completed an interview regarding experiences with another individual conveying the message that they were “old.” Interviewees were asked about the type of situation, the age and gender of the response person, and the perceived intent and feelings associated with the experience. Results showed that 72.3% of the experiences could be classified into one of three categories: discount/benefit, physical features/appearance, and performance. While no gender differences were found in the location/setting of the incident, the response person, or the age of the response person, findings indicated that for men, the incident was classified as a “benefit/discount,” while for women it was classified as “physical features/appearance.” In addition, the presumed intent of the situation was viewed as negative and hurtful by women, and both genders reported that the incident made them feel self-conscious and/or elicited a negative self-assessment. These results illustrate that the self-reported experiences that make one feel old and potentially change an individual's identity are important to understand in the context of growing older as a gendered experience.