The multiple sources of workplace stress among land-grant university faculty

Workplace stress has received a fair amount of treatment in the research literature over the past decade. What has not been examined, at least not systematically, is this same phenomena inacademe. Our study looked at stress among university faculty at a land-grant university located in the western region of the U. S. Analyses from the self-assessment mail survey (N = 786) reveals that faculty in the Hard Pure Nonlife (e. g., Astronomy, Math, Physics), Hard Applied Nonlife (e. g., Civil Engineering, Nuclear Engineering, Computer Science) and Soft Applied Life (e. g., Education Administration, Special Education) experience more stress than faculty in disciplines such as Hard Pure Life (e. g., Botany, Zoology) and Soft Pure Nonlife (e. g., English, Philosophy, Communications). Careful attention was paid to the different levels of stress reported by male and female faculty, with women professors reporting a higher level of stress than their male counterparts. We provide an assessment and explanation for this finding. Research ends with several proposals for individual faculty, department chairs and academic administrators for addressing the problem of workplace pressure and work overload.     

The future direction of schooling

This chapter provides a cross-societal discussion of the findings of the Schooling for the future study, the case studies. It examines why senior educators and policy leaders in each of the six case study societies believe that bureaucratic school systems are the most likely scenario for future even though these are not the most desired. It examines some of the key factors that account for senior educators and policy leaders’ views, and the changes they argue are needed to achieve the desired scenario for the future. The chapter concludes with a discussion of the contribution and the implications of the study for the usefulness of the OECD scenarios as policy tools.     

The Raven Progressive Matrices: A Review of National Norming Studies and Ethnic and Socioeconomic Variation Within the United States

In this paper, some recent results relating to the stability o f scores on the Raven Progressive Matrices Test for different subgroups within and between the United Kingdom, the United States, and other Western societies are summarised. Subsequent sections deal with variation over time. A possible explanation for the variation in norms over time and between ethnic groups within the United States is offered.