Volunteer motivation,social problem solving,self-efficacy,and mental health: a structural equation model approach

The study aimed to investigate the direct effect of volunteer motivation on social problem-solving ability, self-efficacy, and mental health and examine the mediating effects on volunteer motivation and mental health by testing social problem-solving ability and self-efficacy. We examined a hypothetical model that integrates the concepts of Self-Determination Theory, the Social Problem Solving Model, and the Self-Efficacy Belief Model. Results demonstrated that volunteer motivation was significantly associated with social problem-solving ability and self-efficacy amongst 1530 undergraduate students. Three subscales of social problem-solving ability (positive problem orientation, negative problem orientation, and avoidance style) and self-efficacy served are significant mediators. Model statistics for SEM demonstrated an adequate fit with the data. Volunteer motivation provides a way to enhance social problem-solving ability and self-efficacy. It also leads to better mental health by enhancing positive problem orientation and self-efficacy and by reducing negative problem orientation and avoidance style.     

Faculty-student engagement in teaching observation and assessment: a Hong Kong initiative

There is now a worldwide focus on the quality of university teaching and yet there is general dissatisfaction in universities with the student evaluation of teaching system. Peer observation of teaching seems to hold much promise in the assessment of teaching quality, but such observation pays little attention to the quality of teaching as perceived by students. One approach to overcome this deficiency is for faculty and students to also partner in the assessment of a faculty member’s teaching, with a student trained in observation and feedback techniques acting as a peer in the observation process. This paper describes and evaluates an ongoing student consultant initiative at Lingnan University in Hong Kong. It presents faculty and student observations in terms of the benefits to faculty regarding potential enhancement of university teaching, and the benefits to students especially in terms of close collaboration with faculty and training in consultation techniques. The paper notes that the student consultant initiative has been more popular with students than faculty, and recommends further investigation of the potential of such programmes in Hong Kong higher education.     

Readability of Informed Consent Documents at University Counseling Centers

The extent to which clients understand the nature and anticipated course of therapy is referred to as informed consent. Counseling psychologists often provide informed consent documents to enhance the education of services and for liability purposes. Professionals in numerous health care settings have evaluated the readability of their informed consent documents, but no such peer-reviewed research exists for university counseling centers. This study evaluated the informed consent documents for psychotherapy from university counseling centers using three readability formulas (Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level, Flesch Reading Ease Score, and Simple Measure of Gobbledygook [SMOG] Grading). The findings support the authors’ exploratory hypotheses that informed consent documents in university counseling centers are rated as challenging to read for college students. Recommendations and implications for practice are discussed.     

The Reported Effects of a Systematic Professional Learning Program on the Knowledge,Skills, and Concerns of Australian Early Childhood Educators who Support Young Children Displaying or at Risk of Challenging Behaviours

High-quality early childhood education is a vital experience for young children with and without disabilities. Social and communication experiences in the context of play represent a core curriculum that sets a foundation for later learning and participation. Using a new self-report instrument, this article describes data collected in a large-scale professional learning project in NSW, Australia, that aimed to support early childhood teachers, paraprofessionals and other personnel who directly work with young children, including individuals who present or are at risk of challenging behaviours. Using a case application model of remote and direct coaching support and intervention centred on the input of expert practitioners, the reports of participants were collected before and after a series of three sequential workshops with embedded action research processes for participants. The program was designed to increase social and communicative exchanges and reduce the likelihood of challenging behaviours, by providing a systematic and practical framework for the introduction of functional behavioural assessment and positive support planning. Respondents indicated significant improvements in knowledge and skills after the program, along with decreased concerns in some areas. The paper concludes by discussing potential areas for an expanded research agenda into the professional learning needs of personnel in this field and more broadly within early childhood support systems and services.     

Politics,Culture, and School Curriculum: The struggles in Hong Kong

The purpose of this paper is to describe the Hong Kong (HK) school curriculum, especially the general curriculum for civic education and other social subjects, in relation to the political events of the 1984 Sino-British Joint Declaration, the 1989 Tiananmen Square Incident, and the return of HK's sovereignty from the United Kingdom (UK) to the People's Republic of China (PRC) in 1997. This paper will argue that since 1984, the school curriculum of HK has been marked by tensions brought about by political cultures shaped by the UK and the PRC, the bureaucratic mechanisms of which are used to make sure that those curriculum contents that are judged to be politically correct are taught in school. Over the last two decades the school curriculum has been depicted as being shaped by the emergence of the nation-state and the transfer of sovereignty. Granted that political and national education forms part of the school culture, the question of how to shape students to be patriotic through the curriculum will continue to be contentious.     

The evolution of a hybrid classroom: Introducing online learning to educators in American samoa

Conclusion This case study suggests that the process of designing and facilitating hybrid courses in the island community of American Samoa required continuous negotiation with respect to the pace of instruction and the acculturation to online learning. The need for gentle transitions, such as constructing the face-to-face community before rushing into the online community, was apparent for instructors and students. Without honoring the local community, and making time for its renewal on a regular basis, the online community would be difficult, if not impossible, to sustain. The feeling of isolation that characterizes many online experiences is often compounded when one is geographically isolated on an island. It was obvious that the presence of a local teaching assistant was essential in bridging the physical and psychological gap between students and online instructor. Before and after each online activity it was important to take time to discuss in face-to-face sessions the questions and concerns that had arisen while engaged in online activities. These sessions, facilitated by a local instructor, reinforced the sense of community that is so important in this island culture and helped students overcome the challenges inherent in online learning. The importance of honoring the traditions of an oral culture, particularly in an island community, underscores the need to purposefully employ information and communication technologies in a hybrid course. Asynchronous communication such as email and discussion forums allows the widest participation because of low bandwidth internet requirements. However, synchronous modes of communication seem to provide the most natural transition from the oral to digital cultures. Chat sessions and videoconferencing offer students with access to broad bandwidth connections the opportunity to interact directly. Videoconferencing seemed the most successful technology for accommodating American Samoan students’ need for oral expression and visual connections with their distant instructor. Ultimately, instructors must strive for a delicate balance while constructing a hybrid classroom that introduces online learning activities to relative novices. To achieve a healthy equilibrium, instructors must pay heed to the cultural context, social needs and technical constraints of their learning community, fostering a learning environment that simultaneously honors oral traditions and textual innovations, enables synchronous and asynchronous communication and accommodates low bandwidth access while experimenting with broadband technologies.     

Reliability and validity of the Learning Styles Questionnaire

The reliability and predictive validity of a short form of Honey and Mumford's Learning Styles Questionnaire were examined. Students' learning preferences were measured by self-report ratings on their degree of likings for 19 teaching and learning activities commonly used in higher and professional education. Subjects were 381 second-year undergraduates enrolled in accountancy, engineering and communication programmes at the Hong Kong Polytechnic. The alpha coefficients for the four learning styles scales were quite low, ranging from 0.311 for the Pragmatist scale to 0.421 for the Reflector scale. Factor analysis of the items did not reveal any coherent factor structure congruent with the underlying constructs. However, significant though weak correlations were found between the learning styles scores and the learning preferences of the students as hypothesised.     

Employability and mobility in the valorisation of higher education qualifications: the experiences and reflections of Chinese students and graduates

ABSTRACT

In the last two decades, we have witnessed a rapid expansion of higher education in Mainland China and Taiwan, recording a significant increase in higher education enrolments in these two Chinese societies. The massification of higher education in China and Taiwan has inevitably resulted in an oversupply of university graduates, with growing social concerns for skills mismatches being found in the labour market, stagnant graduate employment and social mobility. This article critically examines how university students and graduates in these two Chinese societies reflect upon their employment experiences. Human capital theory predicts that other things being equal, raising participation in higher education will initially increase inequality as rates of return rise, and then it will reduce inequality as expansion reaches mass levels and rates of return decline. If the output of graduates outpaces the demand for their skills, which appears to be the current case in many countries, then supply and demand pressures reduce the pay premium for degrees and lower income inequalities. However, this study clearly demonstrates that the massification and the universalisation of higher education in Mainland China and Taiwan, respectively, have actually intensified inequality.     

Validation of senge ’s learning organization model with teachers of vocational high schools at the Seoul Megalopolis

This study measured and applied Senge ’s (1990) fifth discipline model of learning organizations in a culturally distinct population, namely teachers in 17 vocational high schools located in the Seoul megalopolis. The participants were 976 full-time vocational and academic teachers in public trade/industry-technical and business high schools in the Seoul megalopolis. Exploratory factor analysis was used to examine responses from Korean vocational high school teachers to questionnaire items designed to test the theoretical constructs and indices of Senge ’s learning organization model to establish a measurement model. The hypothesized model was tested using confirmatory factor analysis. Strong evidence was provided for the construct validity of the measurement model (i.e., instrument) to measure the learning organization concept in school contexts. The results also support the notion that the theory of learning organization and related concepts, initially developed against the background of Western culture, can apply to a South Korean school context, reflecting Asian culture.     

The geometrical location of information centers

The use of geometrical factors to locate information centers for a spatially distributed user population will be shown. The total amount of information for the community of users is considered to be predetermined. A proportion of that information is to be allocated to each information center created. An optimal user versus distance and contents of the center compromise will be obtained using standard mathematical programming techniques. An interesting theoretical situation results for those cases where the “satisfaction benefit” due to quantity of information increases more slowly than the quantity of information. For such cases, the optimal decentralization (or pluralization) is no decentralization at all—a single location results. A case study locating the Mathematics information of a University concludes the work.