Curriculum,caring for the Earth,and planetary responsibility

PROSPECTS - This text is a simultaneously personal and political commentary on those who inhabit the border between worlds, such as those now at war in a viral assemblage. Starting from a...     

The dissection room experience: A factor in the choice of organ and whole body donation—A Nigerian survey

The psychosocial impact of human dissection on the lives of medical and health science students has been noted. To assess the impact of the dissection room experience on one's willingness to become a whole body and organ donor, the attitudes of 1,350 students and professionals from the medical, health, and non‐health related disciplines to body and organ donation were studied. The participants were broken into categories according to degree of exposure to human dissection. Participants who were never exposed to the dissection experience showed more willingness to donate their bodies than those who were exposed. With the exception of the physiotherapy department, the students and professionals from the health science departments who were exposed to the dissection room but never engaged in dissection showed the most unwillingness to donate their bodies (P < 0.001). An unwillingness to donate oneself was noted as one of the negative impacts associated with exposure to the dissection room. Willingness to donate an organ correlated positively with the level of exposure to the dissection room (P < 0.001). Most of the reasons for unwillingness were traceable to negative perceptions of the dissection room as a result of poor and disrespectful management of the human cadavers. Anat Sci Educ. 7: 56–63. © 2013 American Association of Anatomists.     

Doing,knowing, caring and feeling: exploring relations between nature-oriented teaching and preschool children's learning

Research has shown that early childhood science education is based on education and care, sometimes stressed as a dichotomy. The purpose of this study is to empirically investigate the relations between teachers' teaching and children's learning in preschool practice, both in terms of educative processes and nature-oriented content. The ambition is also to develop and present an analysis method that facilitates these investigations. Outdoor nature experiences of preschool children (aged one to three) were video-recorded, transcribed and analysed. The methodology is based on John Dewey's pragmatic philosophy. Here, epistemological move analysis (oriented towards teachers' guiding processes as moves) and substantive learning quality analysis (oriented towards multi-dimensional learning qualities) are developed and used as analysis tools. The analyses show that the relations between teaching and learning processes and nature content are intertwined and include education and care. The teachers guide towards aesthetical, moral, cognitive and physical qualities in learning by challenging, admonishing, instructional, confirming, generative, reorienting and reconstructing moves. The results contribute to nature-oriented teaching practice and nature-oriented preschool research when discussing and investigating teaching and learning processes and nature content.     

The global,the local,and the science curriculum: A struggle for balance in Cyprus

In documenting educational reforms in the science curriculum of developing countries, a number of tensions become apparent as a result of struggles to preserve local values while incorporating global trends. This article describes and analyses these tensions and paradoxes, and discusses the intersections of cultural, economic, administrative and educational history of elementary school science curriculum development in Cyprus since its independence from the British in 1960. Using a combination of methodological tools that range from document analysis, historical research and ethnographic methods of collecting data, it is argued that the global and the local can be viewed spatially in terms of linking people, spaces and diverse knowledges. In order to ensure that local values in science curriculum development can be sustained without being absorbed by globalization curriculum developers in developing countries need to create spaces in which the local can be performed together with the global.     

人民币汇率与我国国际收支的相关性分析

汇率波动是否会影响国际收支,从文献资料看,不存在统一的观点。利用2005年汇率改革后的月度数据,运用协整检验和格兰杰检验来考察人民币汇率波动和国际收支的关系,从实证结果看：人民币汇率的变动对净出口、外汇储备的作用并不显著,两者之间不存在短期的均衡关系。但汇率与出口、进口存在单向因果关系。     

Effect of exercise on depressive symptoms and body balance in the elderly

Exercise systematically improves physical and psychological performances on a wide range of measures, but the links between them are rarely examined for the high homogeneous group of institutionalized veterans. This study aims to investigate the exercise intervention effects on both depressive symptoms and body-balance. Samples were divided into experimental-group (N = 11, mean age = 80.67) and the control-group (N = 10, mean-age = 82.54). The experimental-group received 10 sessions of exercise intervention, including aerobic cycling and leg stretching (muscular endurance), while the control-group attended lecture sessions on health education. Depressive symptoms: the findings show the intervention has no significant intragroup effect on either the experimental-group or the control-group; but a high and median effect-size (EF with Cohen’s d) was found for both the experimental and the control group (d = .916 and .504, respectively). The intergroup difference was small (p = .748; d = .136). Balance-ability: the findings show no statistically significant intragroup effect on the 5-stage balance test within the experimental-group, and the EF is low. In the control-group, health education intervention had no improvement on the 5-stage balance test, but there was a moderate decrease in balance Stage-4 (d = ?.626). Additionally, the strong intergroup effect (d = 1.621, p = .003) indicated that the experimental-group is superior to the control-group at Stage-4, and there was a moderate effect at stage-3 and stage-5 (d = .567 and .495, respectively). The current study shows that exercise can help adults older than 80 to ameliorate depressive symptoms and enhance body balance ability, and the findings deserve more attention.     

“Love, love, and more love for children”: exploring preservice teachers’ understandings of caring

The development of an ethic of care is seen as a central concern of teacher education, however little attention has been paid to the preconceived conceptions of caring held by preservice teachers. In this article we share the results of a recent study of a group of preservice elementary teachers in which we examined the understandings of the relationship of caring and teaching brought by these novices to their first field placement experiences. Rather than seeing our students’ partial and limited understandings as problematic, we argue that the student teachers’ preconceptions can be an ideal starting point for productive, educative dialogue about caring and elementary school teaching practice.     

浅谈当代大学生就业所需要的几种能力

在市场经济条件下，大学毕业生就业不仅需要宽博扎实的基础知识，同时还需要具备各种必要的技能。在这里我们结合毕业生就业、从业的实际情况，谈谈当代大学毕业生就业所需要的几种基本能力，以便其在平时的学习中能及时调整自己，充实自己、完善自己。     

Building caring relationships between a teacher and students in a teacher preparation program word-by-word, moment-by-moment

Our purpose was to illustrate the process by which caring relationships between students and their teacher educator developed in the context of preservice reading preparation that made use of online communication as one class activity. Describing the development of caring relationships between three students and their teacher, we showed that caring could not be considered a one-way characteristic of what teachers do and are, but rather that it depended on students’ reciprocal responses. Findings indicated that the trajectories of caring relationships developed differently, each influenced by differences in entering expectations, critical events, and a negotiation of what the relationship meant.     

农村家庭赡养老人的福利分析

家庭对老人的支持包括物质支持、行为支持和情感支持。"支持"的实质是家庭为赡养老人需要投入时间和经济资源。基于福利分析模型,时间—经济投入的多少决定着老年人的福利水平,投入量与家庭的社会经济特征有密切关系。从现实出发,家庭支持是保障和提高农村老人福利的重要途径,同时提高农村老人的福利也需要社会养老保险的支持,二者是一种功能互补的关系。     

Concern for close or distant others: The distinction between moral identity and moral inclusion

Research has analyzed the relationship between moral identity—the extent to which people experience their moral character as being central to their self-conception—and the inclusion of other people within one’s own moral circle. These studies underline that the higher the moral identity, the larger the moral circle. However, recent studies have observed that a person with a high moral identity feels morally obliged towards close people and may be intolerant towards distant groups. The aim of the present research was to deepen the differences between moral identity and moral inclusion considering prejudicial attitudes, ethnocentrism, altruism and values. The results indicated that moral identity alone does not imply a reduction in intolerant attitudes. Instead, when moral inclusion is considered, the results even show a positive effect of moral identity internalization on prejudice and ethnocentrism. Moreover, moral identity internalization has an effect on values of benevolence, security, tradition and conformity. Hence, a strong moral identity does not denote an extension of one’s own moral circle. Instead, this variable is related to intolerance towards those groups considered not to be included in one’s own moral community.