Helping the One You Hurt: Toddlers’ Rudimentary Guilt,Shame, and Prosocial Behavior After Harming Another

This study explored the role of guilt and shame in early prosocial behavior by extending previous findings that guilt‐ and shame‐like responses can be distinguished in toddlers and, for the first time, examining their associations with helping. Toddlers (n = 32; M_age = 28.9 months) were led to believe they broke an adult's toy, after which they exhibited either a guilt‐like response that included frequently confessing their behavior and trying to repair the toy; or a shame‐like response that included frequently avoiding the adult and seldom confessing or attempting to repair the toy. In subsequent prosocial tasks, children showing a guilt‐like response helped an adult in emotional distress significantly faster and more frequently than did children showing a shame‐like response.     

Dynamics of undergraduate student generic problem-solving skills captured by a campus-wide study

The ability to effectively problem solve is a highly valued competency expected of university graduates, independent of their area of study. Evaluation of problem-solving skill (PSS) development is hindered by a shortage of available tools for monitoring student progress and by lack of defined instructional strategies for development of these skills. Our research is aimed at addressing these problems. We have developed an evaluation tool, which we applied to study the dynamics of undergraduate student PSS. We tested first- and upper-year students from 26 different courses (total enrollment of 2229 students). Overall improvement of PSS was detected for the first-year students over their first term of study. There were no significant differences between the PSS of first- and upper-year students, and no improvement was detected over a single term by measuring PSS in upper-year students. Only three courses were effective at facilitating PSS. Our data indicate that most of the standard lecture approaches do not develop undergraduate student PSS and that universities and individual instructors must take active steps to advance this critical skill set in university students.     

Government research evaluations and academic freedom: a UK and Australian comparison

Performance management systems have been an inevitable consequence of the development of government research evaluations (GREs) of university research, and have also inevitably affected the working life of academics. The aim of this paper is to track the development of GREs over the past 25 years, by critically evaluating their adoption in the UK and Australian higher education sector and their contribution to the commodification of academic labour, and to highlight the resultant tensions between GREs and academic freedom. The paper employs a literature-based analysis, relying on publicly available policy documents and academic studies over the period 1985–2010. GREs are a global phenomenon emanating from new public management reforms and while assessments of university research have been welcomed, they have attracted critique based on their design, the manner in which they have been applied, and the unintended consequences of their implementation on academic freedom in particular. Consistent with international research on the impact of GREs, Australian research assessments appear to be undoing the academic freedom that is central to successful research. Further empirical research on the impact of GREs on academics is urgently needed.