DARING TO GROW OLD: LESSONS IN HEALTHY AGING AND EMPOWERMENT

The capacity to achieve and retain control over one's own life—to make decisions about and exert power over one's situation—is strongly correlated with being healthy. For older persons, there is a real danger that professionals with good intentions will encroach on this control in the name of providing service. We examine the issues of power, control, decision making, and healthy aging from the perspective of educating health care providers. Particular attention is paid to how health care providers see their role in defining older adults as being at risk when they refuse service or take risks that providers define as unacceptable. We raise this issue of appropriate professional control and cite the literature on successful coping to argue for policies and practices that enhance personal autonomy and interdependence as effective vehicles for healthy aging. Lessons from primary health care are applied to healthy aging even in the face of diminished capacities.     

中国老年人心脏形态与功能的多普勒超声心动图研究

本文以多普勒超声心动图对50例健康中国老年人的心脏形态与功能进行了研究,发现主动脉根部增宽、左房增大、右心室增大为心脏老化之形态特征,而静息状态心脏收缩功能在正常范围,但舒张功能却较差(E/A均值0.97).     

ORAL HISTORY AND THE MOTIVATION TO LEARN: AN EXPLORATORY STUDY

Previous research has indicated that (1) older adults are predisposed to reflect on the meaning and integrity of their lives, (2) few legitimate opportunities to reminisce are available to the elderly, and (3) oral history has been used successfully as a teaching method with young students who worked with the elderly. The oral histories of 13 residents of a Veterans Administration Hospital nursing home care unit were collected by 11 members of the staff. The histories were reviewed by teachers and were used to establish the content of two experimental courses that were open only to residents who had been interviewed. At the conclusion of the classes, data were collected from attendance records and from the teachers, members of the staff, and friends and relatives of the residents. The data were used to assess the impact of the project on the residents and on the staff. The implications of the study for teachers and administrators and for educational researchers are discussed.     

PUSHING THE LIMITS OF LIBERALISM: QUEERNESS, CHILDREN, AND THE FUTURE

A bstract .  In this essay, Cris Mayo describes a tension between recognizing gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender (lgbt) people by law and giving (or denying) them certain legal rights on the basis of identity, on the one hand, and enabling queer people, not always fully recognizable as inhabiting particular identity categories, to live their potentials, on the other. Laws and rights regulate particular kinds of people, and while lgbt people have pursued civil rights energetically for the last sixty years or so, their queerness continues to complicate their attempts to gain legitimacy. Beyond civil rights claims, queer liberationist claims push the limits of the understanding of identity, sexual practices, and political life, because they prompt us to consider not just abstract possibilities and freedoms but the freedoms and possibilities of people barely recognizable. Mayo shows how these queer claims are often hard to frame in terms of liberal theory and actual law.     

IDEALS, EDUCATION, AND HAPPY FLOURISHING

A bstract .  In this essay, Doret J. de Ruyter defends the claim that parents as well as professional educators need to impart ideals to children in order to realize their wish that children become happy and flourishing adults. The argument consists of two parts. First, de Ruyter shows how ideals are important to construing the meaning of objective goods. Second, she contends that educating children with ideals is important to motivating them to strive for something higher or better. De Ruyter's analysis rests on two key concepts: "ideals," which refer to things one believes to be superb, excellent, or perfect, but that are as yet unrealized, and "happy flourishing," which describes the fulfillment of objectively identifiable generic goods and the person's satisfactory meaningful interpretation of these goods.     

CONTACT QUALITY AND ATTITUDES TOWARD THE ELDERLY

The contact hypothesis (Allport, 1954) states that cooperative contact with individual members of an out-group can lead to a general more positive attitude toward the out-group as a whole. The research reported in this article investigated the validity of the contact hypothesis within the context of interage interactions. Specifically, the study examined the relationship between young adults' contact with older adults and their attitudes toward the elderly in general. Previous research has emphasized that various factors related to contact quality strongly influence the formation of positive attitudes. In accordance with this assertion, we hypothesized that a single factor, participants' self-reported quality of contact with older individuals, would be related to their attitudes toward the elderly as measured by an implicit attitude scale. Participants' self-reported frequency of contact with older adults was expected to have no effect on their attitudes. College-aged participants were given a single questionnaire that assessed (a) the frequency and quality of their contact with elderly men and women and (b) their implicit attitudes toward the elderly. The results confirmed that self-reported favorable quality, but not frequency, of contact was significantly related to more positive attitudes toward the elderly.     

EDUCATION FOR THE ELDERLY: TRENDS AND PROBLEMS IN THE 1980s

The 1980s will see a trend toward lifelong education and a resulting shift in educational emphasis to educating older people. As part of this trend, more people will reach retirement in good health and with high educational levels. Therefore the elderly will become a more notable group of educational consumers in the decade to come. This paper identifies four groups of elderly educational consumers based on their interests and needs. Each group is delineated, and problems inherent in meeting their needs are discussed.     

CHILDREN'S ATTITUDES TOWARD THE ELDERLY AND AGING

This article describes the attitudes of children aged 3 to 11 toward the elderly and what they think about the aging process. It examines the development of the ability to discriminate aging in people as defined in Piaget's theory. Education must reach children long before 6 years of age if it is to modify their perceptions of older people and to create positive images of aging.     

ON TEACHING ART TO THE ELDERLY: RESEARCH AND PRACTICE

There is a growing need for information on teaching art to the elderly and only a few studies that deal specifically with the topic. This paper discusses findings from studies in the psychology of aging and relates them to similar findings reported in the literature of adult education and art education to generate guidelines for the teaching of art. Suggestions are made for approaching the elderly student as a single type and for accommodating for the wide differences within the group.     

GIFTED AND TALENTED CHILDREN: THE NATURE OF GIFTEDNESS,SCREENING, DEVELOPMENT

The intensive restructuring of Soviet society has led to the decision to establish the National Centre on Creative Giftedness to lead theoretical and applied research on the nature of giftedness both in children and adults. The development of a gifted person is viewed as an ideal model of normal development. The psychology of giftedness includes investigations into the nature of creativity and creative personality growth; the structure and dynamics of general ability and special capacities; the psychophysiology of individual differences; psychogenetic studies. Applied research involves educational practices based on creative problem discovery and problem solving. General giftedness is viewed as primarily expressing itself in problem sensitivity and sensitivity to nonstandard ways of solving them. It also involves a high ability to anticipate and forecast the future. The integral components of giftedness are considered in terms of an evaluation function based on the individual's perspective, intellectual and emotional ‘standards’. Special abilities are viewed as emerging against the framework of general giftedness.     

4岁儿童退缩行为与其7岁时问题行为关系的追踪研究

笔者考察了176名4岁儿童的实验室自由游戏活动,将其中的68名鉴别为行为退缩儿童,并进一步区分为3个亚类型。对7岁儿童通过观察和问卷等方式收集他们的同伴关系、问题行为方面的数据。回归分析结果表明,4岁儿童的退缩行为不能单独预测其7岁时存在的问题行为,在3个退缩行为子变量中,退缩子分数2(单独建构和单独探索)是一个反应儿童退缩行为的敏感变量。     

抓住机遇 深化改革 再现老专业生机——探索我校机械制造专业改革思路

近几年我校机制专业发展一直停滞不前.随着市场机制的成熟,目前机械人才就业出现转机.如何抓住机遇,扭转不利局面,成为亟待解决的问题.本文就机械专业教学改革和专业建设问题进行了探讨,对关心机制专业发展的人们能有所启示和借鉴.     

NASTY,BRUTISH AND LONG: ADVENTURES IN OLD AGE AND THE WORLD OF ELDERCARE By Ira Rosofsky

Nurses play a significant role in geriatric care. However, as the aging population and demand for geriatric nurses increase worldwide, shortages of nurses seem to arise. This creates the need to assess and address the motivation and attitudes of nurses toward geriatric care. The intent of this qualitative study is to surface the essence or the “lebenswelt” that describe the motivation and attitudes of a selected group of Filipino nurses toward geriatric care. A total of six registered nurses who had experienced taking care of elderly patients voluntarily participated as respondents of this study. A two-part instrument developed by the researchers was made to elicit necessary data and information. The first part comprised of the robotfoto intended to establish the baseline characteristics of nurses under study. The second part consisted of a semistructured individual in-depth interview using “aide memoire” to probe into the motivation and attitudes of the nurse respondents. Field texts were phenomenologically reduced via repertory grid. Two distinct and interesting themes, namely Geriatric Service Motivation Typology and the Yin-Yang of Geriatric Attitudes emerged. The first theme includes the Single Loop and Double Loop type of motivation The former involves a transactional and unidirectional process, while the latter constitutes a two-way relational and transformational process. The second theme consists of a harmonious combination of the two sides of the nurses' attitudes toward geriatric care. Through this study, the human side of nursing is seen and captured, thus increasing the awareness and knowledge of nurses, improving provision of optimum geriatric care, and inspiring nurses to pursue geriatric nursing with a yearning to serve the elderly with and from the heart.