The flexible university: higher education and the global production of migrant labor

This article demonstrates how neoliberal higher education has come to play a distinct role in the global market for migrant labor, where a growing number of developing nations educate its citizens for overseas work in order to maximize future monetary remittances. Located in the Philippines, this study shows how local colleges and universities attempt to impose an ideal notion of flexibility, quickly shifting academic manpower and resources to programs that would produce the ‘right’ types of workers to address foreign labor demands. Based on qualitative interviews with Filipino college educators and students, the article then discusses how such ‘flexible’ strategies undermine the job security of college faculty and lead to the constant restructuring of physical space within university campuses. Such changes negatively affect both students and teachers.     

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 effect of being a victim or witness of family violence on the retrieval of autobiographical memories.

OBJECTIVE: This study was designed to determine whether greater reliance on general memory retrieval in children was related to depression, and whether family violence affected the specificity of children's memory retrieval. METHOD: We compared children who had experienced some form of family violence with children who had never experienced any form of family violence, based on their responses to questions concerning child-parent and interparental disagreements. RESULTS: As expected, there was a positive correlation between the extent of "generic-categoric" memory retrieval and depression level. There was no evidence, however, that autobiographical memory was affected by family violence. CONCLUSIONS: This study is the first to report significant associations between depression and autobiographical memory style in children. The results suggest that the effect of family violence on children's memory retrieval may be mediated by depression.     

裕固族伦理思想综述

裕固族是一个富有道德情感和道德传统的民族。裕固族伦理思想是指裕固族历史止各种伦理思想和道德观念的总称，是中国伦理思想的重要组成部分。裕固族伦理思想在裕固族的民间文学、婚姻家庭、社交礼仪、宗教活动等诸多方面均有广泛的反映，千百年来在裕固族人们的思想观念和行为操作中起着规范与准则的作用。在全面建设和谐社会，实现各民族共同团结奋斗、共同繁荣发展，开创中国特色社会主义事业新局面的今天，认真发掘、整理、继承和弘扬裕固族伦理道德思想及其文化，无疑是一项意义深远的工作。     

Flexural fatigue strength of steel fibrous concrete containing mixed steel fibres

INTRODUCTION A number of experimental fatigue studies were conducted on plain concrete as well as on steel fibre reinforced concrete (SFRC) beams of different sizes under different loading conditions. Murdock and Kesler (1958) investigated the effect of stress ratio on the fatigue strength of plain concrete. Batson et al.(1972) reported fatigue strength of 74% and 83% of the first crack static flexural strength at 2 million cycles of complete reversed and not-reversed loads respectively…     

The Homogeneity and Heterogeneity of Moral Functioning in Preschool

The current study examined relations between distinct aspects of moral functioning, and their cognitive and emotional correlates, in preschool age children. Participants were 171 typically developing 3- to 6-year-olds. Each child completed several tasks, including (a) moral tasks assessing both performance of various moral actions and evaluations of moral scenarios presented both verbally and nonverbally; and (b) non-moral tasks assessing general cognitive skill, executive functioning, theory-of-mind, and emotion recognition. Shyness and empathic concern were assessed from video acquired during participation. Results demonstrated positive associations among distinct moral actions, as well as among distinct moral evaluation tasks, but few associations between tasks assessing moral actions and moral evaluation. Empathic concern and inhibitory control each emerged as important predictors of preschoolers’ moral functioning.     

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.     

Help-Seeking Stigma in Asian American College Women: the Role of Disordered Eating Cognitions and Psychological Inflexibility

Help-seeking stigma is considered a major obstacle to seeking professional psychological services in Asian American college women. Informed in part by objectification theory and the psychological flexibility model of behavior change, the present cross-sectional study examines the role of disordered eating cognition and psychological inflexibility in help-seeking stigma among a sample of Asian American college women (N = 257). More specifically, this study examined whether disordered eating cognitions and psychological inflexibility would mediate the association between psychological distress and stigma tolerance for seeking psychological services in this group. Results revealed that both greater disordered eating cognition and greater psychological inflexibility were associated with lower stigma tolerance, and each of them uniquely mediated the association between greater psychological distress and lower stigma tolerance. These findings suggest that disordered eating cognitions and avoidance-based coping and beliefs may contribute to help-seeking stigma and its association with psychological distress. Limitations of the study and the directions of future research are discussed.     

Adoptive Parenting Cognitions: Acknowledgement of Differences as a Predictor of Adolescents’ Attachment to Parents

SYNOPSIS

Objective. Adoptive parents’ acknowledgment of differences is defined as the propensity to think that adoptive and nonadoptive families are different in important ways. Few studies have examined the implications of such cognitions for the parent–child bond. Design. Structural equation modeling was utilized to examine the relation between adoptive parents’ acknowledgment of differences and adolescents’ later attachment to their parents in a sample of within-race domestic infant adoptions. Data from 189 adoptive families were drawn from two waves (middle childhood, adolescence) of the Minnesota/Texas Adoption Research Project, a longitudinal study of openness in adoption. Results. Levels of acknowledgment of differences displayed by the adoptive mother and adoptive father during middle childhood positively predicted adopted adolescents’ feelings of attachment toward the respective parent 8 years later. This relation depended on adopted adolescents’ attitude toward adoption-related communication during middle childhood as well as the adoptive family’s level of openness during middle childhood. Conclusions. Acknowledgment of differences in adoptive families has positive implications for the parent–child bond.     

Education Reform in Hong Kong: The “Through-Road” Model and its Societal Consequences

Although Hong Kong’s education system has long been criticized as lacking in creativity and over-emphasising rote learning, on the whole it has served Hong Kong well in the past years, breeding outstanding business, academic and political leaders who continue to maintain Hong Kong’s competitive edge. The traditional elite schools have played a crucial role in the process. The education reform, which is still on-going, aims to overhaul the entire system by introducing the “through-road” model. To accomplish this, some mechanisms need to be changed. J.P. Farrell’s concepts of equality and equity, C.W. Mills’ concept of elitism, and P. Bourdieu and J. Coleman’s concepts of cultural and social capital will be applied to analyse the consequences of the reform. The paper argues that the education reform may be well-intentioned in eliminating some elements of inequality and inequity in education, but that this comes at the expense of Hong Kong’s cultural and social capital and leads to the development of new forms of inequality.