Factors Associated with Teenagers’ Willingness to Volunteer with Elderly Persons: Application of the Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB)

The purpose of this study was to investigate the factors associated with teenagers’ willingness to volunteer with elderly persons using an expanded model of the Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB). Participants consisted of 258 ninth-grade students at a large high school in the northern part of Israel. Participants completed a structured questionnaire consisting of 52 items, which examined their attitudes, subjective norms, perceived behavioral control, past behavior, personal identity, and perceived moral obligation. Their willingness to volunteer with elderly persons was assessed using six vignettes, varying in the severity of the elderly person's health and functional conditions described. Additionally, the students’ sociodemographic variables were examined. Overall, students’ willingness to volunteer with elderly persons was low; however, it increased when the elderly person in the vignette was described as relatively healthy. Statistically significant relationships were found between willingness to volunteer and personal identity, as well as between willingness to volunteer and attitudes toward volunteering with elderly persons. A statistically significant but moderate relationship was found between willingness to volunteer and subjective norms. Multiple regression analyses showed that attitudes, subjective norms, and personal identity were the main predictors of willingness to volunteer with elderly persons, explaining 58% of the variance. The expanded model of the Theory of Planned Behavior provided an appropriate framework for understanding the factors associated with teenagers’ willingness to volunteer with elderly persons. Our findings stress the need to develop educational intervention programs regarding gerontologically-related subjects and to disseminate them among the population in general, and among youth in particular.     

Fostering mathematical modelling competency of South African engineering students: which influence does the teaching design have?

Educational Studies in Mathematics - This paper reports on empirical results about the influence of two different teaching designs on the development of tertiary students’ modelling...     

Curriculum Reform and the Legitimation of Educational Objectives: the case of the Federal Republic of Germany

Abstract

Taking the political and scholarly debates about curriculum reform in the Federal Republic of Germany as a case in point, the article develops the notion of ‘compensatory legitimation’ as a theoretical construct for better understanding the political dynamics of making and implementing educational policy under conditions of conflict. Among various strategies of compensatory legitimation, special attention is given to the recourse to legal and constitutional norms, the utilisation of expertise, and the invocation of the discourse of participation.

     

Reducing adolescents' involvement with relational aggression: Evaluating the effectiveness of the Creating A Safe School (CASS) intervention

This study examined the effectiveness of a comprehensive, school‐based intervention program, Creating A Safe School (CASS; The Ophelia Project) designed to reduce relational aggression (RA) and relational victimization (RV). Sixth‐grade students (N = 406) were surveyed before and after the intervention. Program effects were tested using a repeated‐measures design. Results revealed significant reductions in RA and RV among students who reported initially high levels of involvement. Findings also showed that decreasing approval of RA accounted for a significant amount of variance in changes in RA between pre‐ and posttest. These results provide initial evidence of the effectiveness of the CASS intervention model in reducing RA among early adolescents. © 2010 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

Indexing the continuum of verbal texts

Differentiates items on a continuum of verbal texts as: books (single-author, small-team, multiple-author, encyclopedias); periodicals (journals, bulletins, bibliographic volume indexes, cumulations); databases. The requirements of their indexing, with varying problems of policy, language, depth, authors' names, and titles, in both printed and electronic form, are discussed.