Social and educational modernisation in Spain: the work of Segell Pro Infància in Catalonia (1933–1938)

During the Second Republic of Spain (1931–1939) and within the framework of ambitious social reform, the government of the Generalitat of Catalonia launched a social and educational assistance system. This new system would be independent, modern, and capable of surpassing the traditional welfare system based on religious charity that was predominant in Spain at the time. One of the initiatives performed to obtain funding consisted of the sale of Christmas seals, whose earnings would be allocated to the fight against childhood tuberculosis. The Segell Pro Infància organisation was created for this purpose. This article analyses the origins of this institution within the socio-political context of Catalonia during the Second Republic and the Spanish Civil War, in addition to its work and activities during its brief existence. The series of actions financed by Segell were primarily directed at improving institutions that provided a social welfare system, such as crèches and nursery schools. In this analysis, the commitment of early twentieth-century Catalan nationalism to social and educational modernisation, in addition to its development of social justice policies, is revealed. This reform fits into the framework of a broader pro-sovereignty project in which Catalonia would build state structures independent of Spain.     

Being our best: Understanding the relationship between empowerment and employee engagement among midlevel student affairs professionals

Over the last few decades, there has been a significant increase in the number of student service personnel, yet demand has outstripped this growth leading to turnover and low employee satisfaction. Scholars and practitioners alike have called for increased levels of empowerment of these workers, but the outcomes of this approach need further analysis. We utilize data from a survey of international centre directors in the United States and employ a partial least squares-based structural equation modelling to investigate the relationship between empowerment and employ perceptions including work satisfaction, organizational commitment, perspective of leadership and personal engagement. Specifically, trust meaning and personal consequence are strong components of empowerment in this sample. Our results indicate a positive relationship between empowerment and job satisfaction, organizational commitment and perspectives on leadership. In addition, we find that organizational commitment mediates the relationship between empowerment and personal engagement.     

An exploration of the feature-positive effect in adult humans

Experiment 1 compared the acquisition of a feature-positive and a feature-negative discrimination in humans. In the former, an outcome was signaled by two stimuli together, but not by one of these stimuli alone. In the latter, the outcome was signaled by one stimulus alone, but not by two stimuli together. Using a within-group design, the experiment revealed that the feature-positive discrimination was acquired more readily than the feature-negative discrimination. Experiment 2 tested an explanation for these results, based on the Rescorla-Wagner theory, by examining how novel discriminations, based on a combination of a feature-positive and a feature-negative discrimination, were solved. The results did not accord with predictions from the theory. Alternative explanations for the results are considered.