Leisure—A function of museums? The Taiwan perspective

The main factor preventing non-visitors from visiting museums is ‘lack of interest’. But the causes of this ‘lack of interest’ are different in Taiwan than in western countries. Taiwanese non-visitors on low incomes are deterred by the strong association of museums with education. They want an experience that will be relaxing, enjoyable and pleasurable, and one which will not require any effort. They do not perceive museums as providing this. Non-visitors want museums to function more obviously as leisure venues that the whole family can actively enjoy. They say museums need to promote themselves as places for exploration and entertainment, as well as for education and learning. If museums wish to attract low-income non-visitors, they must consider how the needs of the non-visiting public can be met.     

Social capital,human capital and parent–child relation quality: interacting for children’s educational achievement?

We analyse the utility of social capital for children’s achievement, and if this utility interacts with family human capital and the quality of the parent-child relationship. Our focus is on parental activities directly related to children’s school work. Our data stem from a Swedish cohort born in 1953 and consist of both survey and register data. We find that parents with more human capital tended to offer their children more social capital. OLS regressions showed that, when present, social capital was directly related to children’s grades and its utility for achievement did not depend on parents’ human capital. The utility of social capital was enhanced when combined with a very good parent-child relation.     

Information literacy instruction in four Vietnamese university libraries

This case study explored the perceptions of academic stakeholders about the development and delivery of information literacy (IL) programs in four universities, and identified elements necessary to establishing IL credit courses in Vietnamese higher education. The following research questions framed this study: 1) How do library administrators, instruction librarians, and faculty perceive the current implementation of information literacy instruction (ILI) programs for undergraduates studies in universities libraries in Vietnam? 2) What are the challenges to including IL as a credit course in the curriculum as perceived by library administrators, instruction librarians, and faculty? Respondents were purposefully recruited from four universities, including library administrators, instruction librarians, and faculty. Three online surveys were distributed to 537 individuals through Survey Monkey with 149 replies and a final receipt of 133 completed surveys. Interview and focus group data collection included 23 face-to-face interviews and nine focus groups. Findings showed IL is considered the domain of librarians and has not influenced Vietnamese campus culture. IL activities at four university libraries take the form of lectures, workshops, and basic IL skills modules. Few ILI activities are subject discipline-related. Respondents reported challenges to an ILI credit course revolve around the lasting impact of teacher-centered instruction and rote learning, misperceptions about the effect of IL on student learning outcomes, degree of support of IL by academic stakeholders, degree of faculty–librarian collaboration, and scarcity of resources. Recommendations are given for academic librarians in Vietnam implementing ILI programs and considering developing IL credit courses.     

Empirical research in progressive education

While the development of empirical psychology was helpful for research in several fields of schooling, progressive education gained much from the diverse branches of child studies in the late 19th and early 20th Centuries. There are several outstanding examples like G. Stanley Hall, Jean Piaget and the Geneva Institute, and the German movement of “experimental pedagogy.” Progressive education was not constituted out of empirical research, but was in need of empirical research to secure and stabilize public interest in “new education”. Research activities were launched to secure older theories of child orientation, most of them referring to Rousseau and the “naturalistic approach” to education. Without this tradition progressive education could not have been developed.     

The Application of Moral Judgments to Other Cultures: Relativism and Universality

This study examined how moral judgments are applied to events in other cultures. It was hypothesized that subjects make both universal and relativistic judgments, contingent on the types of beliefs held in the culture to which the moral judgments were applied. It was furthermore expected that subjects would be both relativists and universalists at all ages. 72 subjects (aged 11–9, 15–10, and 21–3 years) were asked to apply moral judgments which they had made about a familiar context to 2 types of cultures, 1 where different informational beliefs were held and 1 where different moral beliefs were held. The results confirmed the hypotheses. Most subjects, at all ages, contextualized their moral judgments when they applied them to cultures with different informational beliefs but made nonrelativistic judgments with respect to cultures with opposing moral beliefs. Furthermore, subjects justified their relativistic judgments on informational grounds and their nonrelativistic judgments on moral grounds. These findings demonstrated that nonrelativistic and relativistic thinking coexist throughout a wide age range and underscored the need to distinguish between moral and nonmoral relativism when studying developmental patterns in the moral domain.     

Father Absence in Pregnancy or During Childhood and Pubertal Development in Girls and Boys: A Population-Based Cohort Study

This cohort study, including 15,810 children born 2000–2003 in Denmark, aimed to investigate the association between father absence in pregnancy or during childhood and pubertal development in girls and boys. The children were followed from 11 years of age and throughout pubertal development. Mean age differences according to exposure groups were estimated for each pubertal marker separately and for a combined pubertal marker. The results suggested that father absence in pregnancy and during childhood was associated with earlier pubertal development in girls, and father absence from late childhood was associated with earlier pubertal development in boys. The paternal investment theory, the psychosocial acceleration theory and the energetics theory were explored, and did not seem to explain the observed associations.