Hierarchial relationships among formal cognitive structures and their relationship to principled moral reasoning

Measurements of formal reasoning and principled moral reasoning ability were obtained from a sample of 99 tenth grade students. Specific modes of formal reasoning (proportional reasoning, controlling variables, probabilistic, correlational, and combinatorial reasoning) were first examined. Findings support the notion of hierarchical relationships which exist among those variables. Further results from factor analysis provide evidence that the variables represent specific cognitive structures that are interdependent with each other and precede operations in development. Finally, significant relationships were found to exist between the different modes of formal reasoning and principled moral reasoning. Combinatorial and correlational reasoning were found to significantly account for 22% of the variance in principled moral reasoning. Theoretical and educational implications are discussed.     

School counselor educators: A grounded theory of career interest and satisfaction

Annually, there are school counseling specific counselor educator positions that remain unfilled. There is a need for more counselor educators with school counseling backgrounds. This grounded theory provides a model of the process by which school counselor educators decide to enter academia and what keeps them in their positions, based on focus groups with 32 participants. Results showed the reasons for leaving school counseling, what factors promote entry into school counselor education, and what keeps school counselor educators in that role. Implications for counselor education are provided.     

Exploring the covariates of sport participation for health: an analysis of males and females in England

Increasing sport participation has been identified as a key vehicle for achieving World Health Organisation guidelines for health-enhancing physical activity (HEPA). A policy challenge is to promote this changed behaviour. Making use of the Active People Survey, a zero-inflated ordered probit model is used to identify the covariates of sport participation for males and females with respect to the related decisions to either participate in sport or not, and to participate at either lower or higher than desired intensity. To inform current policy emphases, the Active Places Survey is also used to examine the causal impact of facility provision on these behaviours. Results indicate that females are more likely to adopt less intensive activity even with time available. Families could place most constraints on females, but also reduce the intensity of male participation. Education has a greater association with higher intensity female activity. The largest effects are identified for sport club membership and facility satisfaction. Both of these affect male intensity of activity most. The main policy challenges facing sport in contributing to HEPA are shown to involve retaining male intensity of participation when ageing and encouraging greater female intensity of participation, with more appropriate matching of facilities.     

Global pedigree and national imperative: Hong Kong universities’ response to China’s grand strategies

Higher Education - Literature offers a theoretical framework exemplifying the inherent tensions between “becoming Chinese” and “remaining global” in the evolution of the...     

ADMINISTRATIVE PRESSURE TO PRACTICE UNETHICALLY AND BURNOUT WITHIN THE PROFESSION OF SCHOOL PSYCHOLOGY

This investigation involved the surveying of school psychology practitioners (N = 291) to determine the possible existence of a relationship between administrative pressure to practice unethically and impaired occupational health, as manifested in elevated levels of burnout, job dissatisfaction, and intent to exit the workforce. Almost one‐third of participants claimed to have been pressured to behave unethically, with directives most commonly consisting of instructions to withhold recommendations for support services and to agree with inappropriate special education placement decisions. Practitioners who experienced administrative pressure reported higher levels of burnout, less satisfaction with their current position and the profession, and a greater desire to leave their job and the field of school psychology. The findings are presented within the context of current and projected shortages of practicing school psychologists. Implications for preventing burnout and promoting school psychologists’ occupational well‐being are discussed.     

Combining different evaluation systems on social media for measuring user satisfaction

Web 2.0 allows people to express and share their opinions about products and services they buy/use. These opinions can be expressed in various ways: numbers, texts, emoticons, pictures, videos, audios, and so on. There has been great interest in the strategies for extracting, organising and analysing this kind of information. In a social media mining framework, in particular, the use of textual data has been explored in depth and still represents a challenge. On a rating and review website, user satisfaction can be detected both from a rating scale and from the written text. However, in common practice, there is a lack of algorithms able to combine judgments provided with both comments and scores. In this paper we propose a strategy to jointly measure the user evaluations obtained from the two systems. Text polarity is detected with a sentiment-based approach, and then combined with the associated rating score. The new rating scale has a finer granularity. Moreover, also enables the reviews to be ranked. We show the effectiveness of our proposal by analysing a set of reviews about the Uffizi Gallery in Florence (Italy) published on TripAdvisor.     

The relationship between protective factors and outcomes for children investigated for maltreatment

ObjectivesThis research explores the relationship between hypothesized protective factors and outcomes for children investigated for maltreatment.MethodsUsing data from the National Survey on Child and Adolescent Well-Being (NSCAW), we ran logistic regression models to examine the relationship between hypothesized protective factors (social competence, adaptive functioning skills, and peer relationships) and outcomes (externalizing behavior, internalizing behavior, reading competence).ResultsFor each hypothesized protective factor, we found variation in individual scores and sample mean scores at the lower end of the scales, indicating that these children fare worse than most children. However, many children experienced large changes in their individual scores over time suggesting that children can and do improve on these hypothesized protective factors. In examining the relationship between hypothesized protective factors and outcomes, children with higher levels of social competence were significantly more likely to be in the normal range for both externalizing and internalizing behaviors. Children with higher mean adaptive functioning skills were more likely to be in the normal range for both externalizing behavior and reading competence. The positive nature of the child's peer relationships was also related to externalizing behavior and reading competence.ConclusionsOverall, our analyses support the idea that social competence, adaptive functioning skills, and peer relationships are related to outcomes for children investigated for maltreatment. While further research is needed to establish a causal link, this work identifies three individual-level hypothesized protective factors as potential sources of variation in outcomes.Practice implicationsTo prevent or alleviate the harmful consequences maltreatment, it is necessary to understand factors that help children move beyond poor outcomes. Our analyses suggest that a strong relationship exists between a child's social competence, adaptive functioning skills and positive peer relationships and select outcomes three years after being investigated for maltreatment. With these individual-level protective factors related to more positive outcomes, it suggests that intervening to increase protective factors could improve outcomes for maltreated and at-risk children.     

The Matrix and Critical Theory's Desertion of the Real

This article uses the narratives of the popular films The Matrix, Matrix: Reloaded, and Matrix: Revolutions as a lens through which to discuss the problems of the real and human agency in contemporary critical theory. Alongside a reading of the films’ invocations of social theory, the article describes parallel academic theories whose strongest structuralist and poststructuralist manifestations abandon conceptions of the real and willful human agency. In a field whose pessimistic narrative of Marxism often begins with anti-humanist structuralism, classical Marxist discourse theories offer a viable standpoint-based concept of reality upon which to found solidaristic human action.