The influence of self-concept, parenting style and individualism–collectivism on career maturity in Australia and Thailand

Relationships between career maturity and self-concept, parenting style and individualism–collectivism across Australian and Thai cultural contexts were investigated. Berry’s (1969) etic-emic model for adapting instruments for cross-cultural research was applied. Derived etic status was achieved for the career planning scale, five self-concept sub-scales and the Parental Bonding Instrument. Mean score comparisons revealed few significant differences between Australia and Thailand. None of the independent variables were associated with Thai career planning. Academic and social self-concept scales and father care were related to career planning in Australia. Implications are discussed.     

Transferable skills representations in a Portuguese college sample: gender, age, adaptability and vocational development

The departing point of this study is the theoretical framework of “Making the Match project” (Evers and Rush in Management Learning 27:275–299, 1996) about how to develop a common language among stakeholders regarding transferable skills. Thus, the paper examines the impact of demographic variables (age and gender) and developmental dimensions (Career adaptability and Vocational development) in the representations of transferable skills construction within a Portuguese sample of first-year college students (Vocational developmental variables are part of career construction theory; Savickas 2001, 2002, 2005, Journal of Vocational Behavior 75:239–250, 2009), a theoretical framework that significantly supports the notion that the acquisition of transferable skills is one of the consequences of vocational tasks’ resolution. Results suggested that career adaptability seems to be the most robust predictor for the transferable skills’ groups advanced by Evers and colleagues, followed by career development, and, finally, age and gender as a block. Results are discussed in the light of the two aforementioned main frameworks.     

Tracing the Transition from Study to a Contemporary Creative Working Life: The Trajectories of Professional Musicians

The classical music academy is a site dominated by traditional meanings of creative practice and an image of the professional creative career as solo performer that is fully available to only a very few students after graduating. The purpose of the study reported in this paper is to explore career-young professional pianists’ talk about the transition from study within a music academy to working life. The focus is on the ways in which they characterize the nature and significance of this transition from very traditional practice and study, and how they (re)negotiate their identities as professional musicians and pianists in contemporary working life. Four classical pianists were interviewed in-depth about their musicianship, including their transition from study to working life. The qualitative analyses presented here suggest that, as they talked about their transitions and developing musicianship, the speakers constructed, re-constructed and oriented to notions of professional trajectories. Such trajectories are emergent, relational and contextually constituted (Sawyer 2003; MacDonald and Miell 2002; Moran and John-Steiner 2004). Rather than being fixed or dependent on communal expectations, they reflect creative freedom and independence, encompassing multiple influences. Crucially, the transition from study to working life is implicated in the process of assuming agency in respect of one’s own musicianship and career—a process that involves identity work, the (re)negotiation of pathways, narrations and trajectories.     

Does Self-image Matter? Client’s Self-image, Behaviour and Evaluation of a Career Counselling Session: An Exploratory Study

This exploratory study addresses differences in self-image as a client characteristic in career counselling by using the Structural Analysis of Social Behaviour (Benjamin, L., Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 64(6), 1203–1212, 1996; Benjamin, L., Journal of Personality Assessment, 66(2), 248–266, 1996) and an adaptation (Andersson, W.P, and Niles, S.P., The Career Development Quarterly, 48(3), 251–263, 2000) of the Therapist Intention List (Hill C. E and O’Grady K. E., Journal of Counseling Psychology, 32(1), 3–22, 1985; Hill et al., Journal of Counseling Psychology, 35(3), 222–233, 1988). Expected and experienced behaviour of self and other, recalled helpful and non-helpful events during sessions, and evaluation of sessions were compared between two clients with identified positive self-image and two clients with identified negative self-image. The results indicated that the clients with a positive self-image compared to clients with a negative self-image expected more positive behaviours and experienced more positive in-session behaviours from both themselves and from the counsellor; they recalled more positive and fewer negative events in-session and they evaluated their session more positively. Implications for career counselling are discussed.     

Transition-from-early-to-sophisticated-literacy (TESL) as a factor in cross-national achievement differences

The PISA studies of reading achievement of 15 year old students in OECD and partner nations show Anglophone nations to have continuing high proportions of weak readers (≤Level 2), with no improvement in this area from 2000 to 2006 (OECD, Science competencies for tomorrow’s world: Executive summary, 2007). The nations which have decreased their proportions of low achievers all use highly regular (transparent) orthographies, which expedite the development of efficient reading and writing skills (Galletly and Knight, Aust J Learn Disabil 9(4):4–11, 2004). While international scrutiny is being focussed on socio-cultural differences in education as a basis of nations’ achievement differences, little consideration is currently being applied to the speed of reading accuracy and spelling development. This is surprising, given the volume of research showing that orthographic regularity significantly expedites development of reading—accuracy and spelling—with very low rates of reading difficulties in nations with highly regular orthographies (Seymour et al., Br J Psychol 94:143–174, 2003, p. 174; Share, Psychol Bull 134(4):584–615, 2008, p. 615). This paper proposes Transition-from-early-to-sophisticated-literacy (TESL) as a variable for use when considering cross-national achievement differences. It is proposed that Complex TESL nations (including Anglophone nations) will need paradigmatically different mechanisms to those used by Resolved and Facilitated TESL nations, for improved literacy and academic outcomes by lower achievers.     

Family systems as predictors of career attitude maturity for Korean high school students

This study examined the relationships between family systems and high school students’ career development. Family adaptability and family cohesion were considered as indicators of family function, and career attitude maturity was conceptualized as a representative factor explaining adolescents’ career development. A total of 634 high school students participated in this study. Overall, the results showed that family adaptability and family cohesion were both significant predictors of tenth graders’ career attitude maturity. The effects of parents’ educational backgrounds on career attitude maturity were negligible. However, the relationships were inconsistent across gender. For female students, family cohesion was a more influential predictor of career attitude maturity than family adaptability, while the opposite pattern was observed for the male students.     

Developing a ‘leading identity’: the relationship between students’ mathematical identities and their career and higher education aspirations

The construct of identity has been used widely in mathematics education in order to understand how students (and teachers) relate to and engage with the subject (Kaasila, 2007; Sfard & Prusak, 2005; Boaler, 2002). Drawing on cultural historical activity theory (CHAT), this paper adopts Leont’ev’s notion of leading activity in order to explore the key ‘significant’ activities that are implicated in the development of students’ reflexive understanding of self and how this may offer differing relations with mathematics. According to Leont’ev (1981), leading activities are those which are significant to the development of the individual’s psyche through the emergence of new motives for engagement. We suggest that alongside new motives for engagement comes a new understanding of self—a leading identity—which reflects a hierarchy of our motives. Narrative analysis of interviews with two students (aged 16–17 years old) in post-compulsory education, Mary and Lee, are presented. Mary holds a stable ‘vocational’ leading identity throughout her narrative and, thus, her motive for studying mathematics is defined by its ‘use value’ in terms of pursuing this vocation. In contrast, Lee develops a leading identity which is focused on the activity of studying and becoming a university student. As such, his motive for study is framed in terms of the exchange value of the qualifications he hopes to obtain. We argue that this empirical grounding of leading activity and leading identity offers new insights into students’ identity development.     

Linking Life and Literature in Early Childhood Settings

Using an example of a toddler’s developing understanding of an apple, this article illustrates how children integrate all elements in their interpersonal and built environments to support their emerging literacy skills. Otto (2007) and others provide evidence from emergent literacy research that documents observations and exploration by infants, toddlers, and young children and suggest that the ways in which children participate in early literature-related activities influence the knowledge they construct. Twenty-two children’s books—including five for apple discoverers—are recommended and reviewed.     

Trends in Female Authorships, Editorial Board Memberships, and Editorships in Educational Psychology Journals from 2003 to 2008

Robinson, McKay, Katayama, and Fan (Contemporary Educational Psychology, 23, 331–343, 1998) reported that women were underrepresented in terms of authorships, editorial board memberships, and editorships in the field of educational psychology based on membership trends. More recently, Evans, Hsieh, and Robinson (Educational Psychology Review, 17, 263–271, 2005) reported that women had made gains as editors but had not kept pace with organizational membership in terms of authorships and editorial board memberships. Our goal in this paper was to further examine women’s participation in educational psychology journals by extending the datasets of Robinson et al. and Evans et al. The number of female authors per article, particularly those from non-US institutions, has continued to increase. However, consistent with Evans et al., although females are continuing to make numerical gains in both authorships—both primary and secondary—and editorial board memberships, their involvement has not kept pace in relation to membership trends.     

Psychological knowledge for teaching critical thinking: the agency of epistemic activity,metacognitive regulative behaviour and (student-centred) learning

This study considers the case of a tutor whose students repeatedly evidenced significantly superior critical thinking in summative assessment. For the purpose of surfacing appropriate pedagogical action to promote critical thinking (Bassey, Case Study Research in Educational Settings, 1999), the singularity of one tutor’s reported pedagogical practice was explored through focus-group discussion. Qualitative analysis of the data, theoretically informed by phenomenography, suggested that the tutor’s reported practice, when compared with that of two peers, revealed clear pedagogical intentions to be necessary for teaching critical thinking; and that these intentions can be explained through the literatures on epistemic activity, metacognitive regulative behaviour and student-centred learning. It is argued that a synthesised understanding of the literature that explores the nature and purpose of critical thinking —as outlined in the first part of this paper—is a prerequisite for constructing domain-specific pedagogical intentions for developing learners’ critical thinking, and that it is this extensive psychologically informed knowledge base which attenuates the risk of educationally important aspects of learning being overlooked. (De Corte, Learning and Instruction 10:249–266, 2000).     

Interprofessional Activity in the ��Space of Reasons��: Thinking, Communicating and Acting

The paper analyses a form of interprofessional working and learning (IPWL)—the fleeting spatial and temporal constitution of project teams with little prior history of working together—that is an increasing feature of work in the global economy. The paper argues firstly: (i) this form of working and learning is relatively under-researched in professional, vocational and workplace learning (PVWL); and, (ii) the research traditions—Cultural-Historical Activity Theory (CHAT) and Cultural Anthropology/Symbolic Interactionist (CA/SI)—that some researchers in PVWL have drawn on to investigate IPWL do not allow them to capture the cognitive and symbolic complexity of this activity. Secondly, it is possible to reveal the nature of this complexity when the concepts and methods associated with CHAT and CA-SI-based approaches are supplemented with the concepts of ‘inference’, ‘space of reasons’, ‘restructuring and ‘recontextualisation’ (Guile, 2010). The paper demonstrates this claim by reinterpreting a classic study of the aforementioned form of working and learning undertaken by Hall, Stevens and Torolba that drew on concepts and methods from CA and SI (2002).     

大学生时间管理倾向与职业成熟度的关系研究

采用青少年时间管理倾向量表和大学生职业成熟度量表对347名大学本科生进行调查,以探究其时间管理倾向与职业成熟度的关系。结果表明:不同性别的大学生在职业成熟度的总得分以及职业目标、职业价值维度上得分差异显著,男生高于女生;文理科学生在职业自信维度上得分差异显著,文科生高于理科生;不同年级大学生在职业价值维度上存在显著差异;大学生时间管理倾向与职业成熟度总得分存在显著相关。回归分析表明,时间价值感和时间监控观可较好地解释职业成熟度。大学生时间管理倾向与职业成熟度关系密切,且时间管理倾向是职业成熟度的有效预测因素。建议大学生应对时间进行合理规划和管理,以提升自身的职业心理发展水平。     

The Shaman and the ISness of TO BE

Russell Hoban has compared himself as a writer to a shaman—willing to admit the unseen and making himself a medium for the quality of the unseen in his novels. This article explores Hoban’s highly-regarded The Mouse and His Child (1967) with this comparison in mind. The writer interweaves Mircea Eliade’s study of shamanism with an examination of the experiences of the protagonists of the novel—The Mouse and His Child. In so doing, she reveals many elements of shamanism in the text which, it is argued, reaches a conclusion which is consistent with the central tenets of the Indian philosophical system of Advaita. Sharada Bhanu is a lecturer in the English Department of Stella Maris College, Chennai. Her research interests include establishing connections between Advaita and fantasy fiction for children and the devotional poetry of many cultures     

Talkin’ bout my generation: Boomers, Xers, and educational change

From 1998 to 2003, Andy Hargreaves and Ivor Goodson, along with colleagues Shawn Moore, Sonia James-Wilson, Dean Fink, and Corrie Giles, undertook a large-scale study of eight secondary schools in Ontario, Canada, and New York in the United States to investigate teachers’ perceptions and experiences of educational change over 30 years spanning from the 1970s through the 1990s (Hargreaves and Goodson in Edu Admn Quart 42(1):3–41, 2006). The Change Over Time? study not only provided a unique glimpse into how schools and teachers experience educational change but also demonstrated that most of what educators and scholars previously considered when looking at educational change neglected its political, historical, and longitudinal aspects. Hargreaves and Goodson highlighted five change forces that shape educational change: waves of reform, changing student demographics, teacher generations, leadership succession, and school interrelations. This article, based on work conducted in Massachusetts from 2007 to 2009 (Stone-Johnson in Enduring reform: The impact of mandated change on middle career teachers. Boston College, Chestnut Hill, 2009; Teachers’ career trajectories and work lives. Springer, Dordrecht, 2009), elaborates upon two of these aspects, waves of reform and teacher generations, highlighting the response of the current generation of teachers in mid-career to the most recent wave of reform.     

Modeling Environmental Literacy of University Students

The present study proposed an Environmental Literacy Components Model to explain how environmental attitudes, environmental responsibility, environmental concern, and environmental knowledge as well as outdoor activities related to each other. A total of 1,345 university students responded to an environmental literacy survey (Kaplowitz and Levine in Environ Educ Res 11:143–160, 2005). The structural equation model revealed that high levels of environmental knowledge stimulate a university student’s concern, attitudes, and personal responsibility toward environmental protection. More specifically, environmental knowledge was reported to be a significant predictor of environmental concern, attitudes, and responsibility. Environmental knowledge had significant indirect relationships with environmental attitudes and responsibility. Moreover, while attitudes toward the environment were found to be a significant determinant of environmental responsibility, environmental concern held significant association with attitudes toward the environment and outdoor activities. Findings promise to give clues for finding an answer to the question “how education for sustainability can be improved in higher education curricula?”     

From Peasant to Princess: A Standards Conversion Story with a Twist

The first author, a student in a graduate children’s literature class, designed a project to locate “good” mathematics-based children’s literature selections. However, the reference tools usually consulted (e.g., Books in Print) to locate books by topic were of little help, and those she located under individual mathematics topics were mostly traditional mathematics books rather than good read-aloud selections. Consequently, she perused the university library’s sizeable juvenile collection to find books that would meet her selection criteria. This article describes the influence of two landmark documents for mathematics teaching and learning—Curriculum and Evaluation Standards for School Mathematics (National Council of Teachers of Mathematics [NCTM], 1989) and Principles and Standards for School Mathematics (NCTM, 2000)—as she engaged in the process.

Reevaluating canine perspective-taking behavior

Udell, Dorey, and Wynne (2011) demonstrated that both domesticated and nondomesticated canids—specifically, gray wolves—have the capacity to succeed on perspective-taking tasks, suggesting that dogs’ ability to respond to the human attentional state is not a by-product of domestication alone. Furthermore, not all dogs were successful on the task. Instead, the occluder type used was a strong predictor of performance, indicating the important role of environment and experience for tasks of this type. Here, we address several commentaries reflecting on the methods and design of that study, as well as the interpretation of the results. We also discuss the positive shift toward more interactive approaches in the field of canine behavior and cognition. Finally, we question the functionality of describing canine social behavior in terms of theory of mind.     

Measuring adult literacy students’ reading skills using the Gray Oral Reading Test

There are not enough reading tests standardized on adults who have very low literacy skills, and therefore tests standardized on children are frequently administered. This study addressed the complexities and problems of using a test normed on children to measure the reading comprehension skills of 193 adults who read at approximately third through fifth grade reading grade equivalency levels. Findings are reported from an analysis of the administration of Form A of the Gray Oral Reading Tests—Fourth Edition (Wiederholt & Bryant, 2001a, b). Results indicated that educators and researchers should be very cautious when interpreting test results of adults who have difficulty reading when children’s norm-referenced tests are administered.