Global Social Responsibility: Developing a Scale for Senior High School Students in Japan

This research was conducted with the aim of clarifying a concept of “global social responsibility.” A total sample of 395 senior high school students in Japan responded to a pool of items mostly adapted from a scale developed by Starrett (1996) and provided additional data concerning their social experiences. The data were used in the development of a Japanese version of the Global Social Responsibility (GSR) scale. It was found that “global altruism,” “active involvement with society,” and “understanding of interdependence” constituted a construct of global social responsibility. It was also found that females, those who discussed social problems with their family, those who revealed a high awareness of responsibility and those who had multiple experiences of volunteer activities for community service showed high GSR scores. The scale provides both an awareness of the concept and a measure for determining levels of global social responsibility. Counseling professionals are encouraged to consider their roles from a global and social perspective, with the notion of responsibility being seen as central to the concepts of freedom and personal development.     

Exploring the Effects of Financial Aid on the Gap in Student Dropout Risks by Income Level

Using national survey data and discrete-time logit modeling, this research seeks to understand whether student aid mediates the relationship between parental income and student dropout behavior. Our analysis confirms that there is a gap in dropout rates for low-income students compared with their upper income peers, and suggests that some types of aid are associated with lower risks of dropout. Thus, we examine the interaction between financial aid type and parental income to explore whether, and if so how, different types of aid may reduce the dropout gap by income level group. We find that the receipt of a Pell grant is related to narrowing the dropout gap between students from low- and middle-income groups, although overall the interaction between Pell grant and income is not significant. Loans and work-study aid both have similar effects on student dropout across all income groups. Methodologically, our results demonstrate the need to model dropout behavior temporally and to avoid main-effect bias by incorporating interaction effects.

How New Caledonian crows solve novel foraging problems and what it means for cumulative culture

New Caledonian crows make and use tools, and tool types vary over geographic landscapes. Social learning may explain the variation in tool design, but it is unknown to what degree social learning accounts for the maintenance of these designs. Indeed, little is known about the mechanisms these crows use to obtain information from others, despite the question’s importance in understanding whether tool behavior is transmitted via social, genetic, or environmental means. For social transmission to account for tool-type variation, copying must utilize a mechanism that is action specific (e.g., pushing left vs. right) as well as context specific (e.g., pushing a particular object vs. any object). To determine whether crows can copy a demonstrator’s actions as well as the contexts in which they occur, we conducted a diffusion experiment using a novel foraging task. We used a nontool task to eliminate any confounds introduced by individual differences in their prior tool experience. Two groups had demonstrators (trained in isolation on different options of a four-option task, including a two-action option) and one group did not. We found that crows socially learn about context: After observers see a demonstrator interact with the task, they are more likely to interact with the same parts of the task. In contrast, observers did not copy the demonstrator’s specific actions. Our results suggest it is unlikely that observing tool-making behavior transmits tool types. We suggest it is possible that tool types are transmitted when crows copy the physical form of the tools they encounter.     

The Nature of Scientific Practice and Science Education

There is, broadly speaking, an agreement within the international science education community that comprehension of the nature of science (NOS) should be a key element in the scientific literacy of citizens. During the last few decades, several didactic approaches have emerged concerning what and how to teach NOS. Also, one of the basic objectives of science education is for students to become familiar with the skills typical of scientific practice; however, there is little reference to their need to also acquire meta-knowledge about scientific practice (i.e., an understanding of the nature of scientific practice). Among other reasons, this may be due to NOS being essentially identified in most of the predominant proposals with the nature of scientific knowledge. But why not plan the teaching of science to be in tune with real scientific practice for students to learn about the nature of scientific practice at the same time as they are learning science? The answer to this question has given rise to a proposal grounded in ten essential pedagogical principles for the teaching and learning of science in secondary school. These are the principle of formulating questions, the principle of creativity and imagination, the principle of experimentation, the principle of procedural diversity, the principle of errors as opportunity, the principle of modeling, the principle of cooperation and teamwork, the principle of argumentation and discussion, the principle of communication, and the principle of evaluation. The purpose of this article is to present the justification and fundaments of these principles.     

Improving quality of the child care environment through a consultancy programme for centre directors

This study examined the effects of a newly developed on-site consultancy programme to improve global quality of the child care environment in non-parental child care centres for 0- to 4-year-old children as measured with the ITERS-R/ECERS-R. Using a randomised controlled trial with a pretest, posttest, and follow-up test, we compared 35 experimental group with 33 control group. The consultancy programme comprised three consultations in total. Analysis on the items that were specifically targeted during the consultancy showed a significant improvement on these targeted items between pretest and posttest and between posttest and follow-up. The effect of the consultancy programme on the total scores (including the non-targeted items) was not significant.     

Gender Differences,Family and Psychological Factors Affecting School Performance in Greek Secondary School Students

High rates of school failure have been reported for secondary school students, with boys presenting more schooling difficulties. The aim of this study was to investigate the association between school performance and family and psychological factors. A sample of 1315 male and female secondary school students was recruited from 54 classes randomly selected out of a total of 534 classes in the Greek region of East Macedonia and Thrace. School performance was measured dichotomously according to the final school results (pass or fail). Family and sociodemographic data were collected and psychological problems were measured using the Youth Self Report (YSR). Male gender, low socioeconomic status, low parental education and parental separation were all positively associated with school failure. Those who failed scored higher on the YSR problem scales than those who passed, and boys were more affected by adverse circumstances than girls. The results indicate that students, especially boys, with psychological problems and those coming from families of low socioeconomic and educational status are at high risk of school failure.     

Employment and Achievement in a Problem‐Based Curriculum

The purpose of this study is twofold: first, to examine to what extent the time students work on paid jobs is related to study‐time (class attendance and time devoted to self‐study) and second, to what extent the time students work on paid jobs is related to achievement. A number of 120 students from the problem‐based Faculty of Health Sciences in the Netherlands kept a time‐diary. Academic achievement was measured by using scores on the block‐test. The results showed that working about four to eight hours per week on paid jobs (as opposed to working less than four hours per week or to working intensively, more than 8 hours per week) actually is positively related to study‐time. Test‐scores are not significantly different among students who are not working on jobs, work some hours, or work a lot.