A Moment of Letting Go: Iris Murdoch and the Morally Transformative Process of Unselfing

Higher education as a personal, intellectual and moral cultivation is a longstanding ideal that is constantly challenged by the view that education is merely the development of specific skills for vocational and personal success. Much research argues that the latter understanding makes education a technical affair that creates an egocentric emphasis on the individual students’ ambitions and desires. This article joins in the defence of the former ideal by enquiring into the moral dimensions of education. This is done by turning to Iris Murdoch's idea of moral transformation, with a specific focus on the idea of unselfing. The main argument is that unselfing is a transformative process characterised by a growing attunement to the surrounding world, and the interconnectedness of goal and process is emphasised. Also, to gain a deeper understanding of what unselfing entails I turn to the idea of attention. It is understood as having a specific direction, outward from the egocentric, and as enabling unselfing. The article concludes by suggesting that unselfing can offer a challenge to (higher) education as it entails a moment of letting go of plans and narratives, and of surrendering to the influence of an existence that exceeds the individual. This moment is of relevance to education as it is crucial to the possibility of growing as a moral being as it cultivates a moral manner of relating to others.     

Content Analysis of Google Alerts for Cultural Heritage Institutions

This article outlines evidence-based methods for cultural heritage institutions to look for news and mentions about their collections and services online. Google Alerts were created for repository names, websites, and finding aid websites for 66 institutions randomly selected from the Archive Grid database. Results were analyzed to determine Google Alerts' accuracy, what types of institutions would benefit most from using Google Alerts, what the content of the sources found by the alerts was, what types of publications returned the most results, and if Google Alerts could also identify image reuse. While Google Alerts' accuracy for returning usable results for analysis was not very high, the structure of alert e-mails makes discarding irrelevant results simple and quick. Mid- to large-sized museums and institutions staging frequent exhibits and events, as well as those with active collections, return the largest number of alerts. News publications and social media publish the most content related to cultural heritage institutions. Though the sample set was small, Google Alerts also was able to identify image reuse.     

Healing after traumatic events: Aligning interventions with cultural background and religious and spiritual beliefs

Historically, disaster response efforts have focused primarily on basic physical survival and safety—addressing medical emergencies and ensuring adequate shelter and supplies of food and water. However, in addition to physical survival, relief efforts must also consider strategies to promote emotional healing and psychological well-being. In particular, those who intervene must consider the acceptability of intervention strategies, taking into account survivors' cultural background, religious customs, and spiritual beliefs. This article offers recommendations to better align school-based therapeutic interventions with children's religious and spiritual beliefs.     

Optimized versus corrected peak power during friction-braked cycle ergometry in males and females

The aim of this study was to compare optimization and correction procedures for the determination of peak power output during friction-loaded cycle ergometry. Ten male and 10 female sports students each performed five 10-s sprints from a stationary start on a Monark 864 basket-loaded ergometer. Resistive loads of 5.0, 6.5, 8.0, 9.5, and 11.0% body weight were administered in a counterbalanced order, with a recovery period of 10 min between sprints. Peak power was greater and occurred earlier, with less work having been done before the attainment of peak power, when the data were corrected to account for the inertial and frictional characteristics of the ergometer. Corrected peak power was independent of resistive load (P > 0.05), whereas uncorrected peak power varied as a quadratic function of load (P < 0.001). For males and females, optimized peak power (971 +/- 122 and 668 +/- 37 W) was lower (P < 0.01) than either the highest (1074 +/- 111 and 754 +/- 56 W respectively) or the mean (1007 +/- 125 and 701 +/- 45 W respectively) of the five values for corrected peak power. Optimized and mean corrected peak power were highly correlated both in males (r = 0.97, P < 0.001) and females (r = 0.96, P < 0.001). The difference between optimized and mean corrected peak power was 37 +/- 30 W in males and 33 +/- 14 W in females, of which approximately 15 W was due to the correction for frictional losses. We conclude that corrected peak power is independent of resistive load in males and females.     

Decreasing the proportion of self-control trials during the acquisition period does not compromise the learning advantages in a self-controlled context

The present experiment examined the learning effects of participants self-controlling their receipt of knowledge of results (KR) on all or half of their acquisition trials (50%). For participants who were provided 50% self-control, the first half of their acquisition period consisted of receiving KR on all trials, or according to a faded-KR schedule. Participants practiced a sequential timing task. The results showed that independent of practice condition, participants who self-controlled their KR during the acquisition period demonstrated superior performance compared to the respective yoked conditions in the retention and transfer portion of the experiment. These results extend previous research by suggesting that decreasing the proportion of self-control trials does not compromise learning in a self-controlled context.     

Cognitive behavioural strategies and anxiety in elite orienteers

The primary purpose of this exploratory field study was to examine the use of cognitive behavioural strategies by highly skilled orienteers prior to and during competition. A secondary purpose of the study was to investigate whether differences in the level of qualification in orienteering is related to state anxiety. The subjects were divided into three classes with respect to their international and national records. The first two classes (A and B) were composed of international and national level athletes. The third class (C) included orienteers with unknown international records. Examination of the use of behavioural cognitive strategies during competition indicated that all orienteers reported a moderate use of mental imagery, above moderate use of inner talk and a focus of attention on present action rather than past or future. The other major findings were that prior to competition, superior orienteers reported use of higher self‐efficacy, more positive outcome expectations and more task demand orientation than their less successful counterparts. Top orienteers coped more successfully with pre‐competition anxiety by lowering their anxiety to a more moderate level prior to the actual performance.