Cyprus' Accession to the European Union and Educational Change: a critique

Cyprus will soon become a member of the European Union. The negotiations for its the access have ended and as from next year it will represent one of the countries that will expand the EU. The member countries of the EU have progressed in the field of education, they have high requirements from their schools and offer quality education (although there is no homogeneity amongst their educational systems). Therefore, the future accession of Cyprus to the EU raises many questions regarding the situation of its education system in comparison to the other Members. With a focus on change, this article studies the situation that prevails in Cyprus and examines the different barriers that hamper the development of its educational system. The authors then discuss a number of ways to achieve educational change.     

Becoming a Counselor: A Longitudinal Study of Student Cognitive Development

This study investigated the cognitive development of counseling students during their training program. Results suggest a need to emphasize student cognitive development as strongly as skills development in graduate programs.     

Moral Development and Empathy in Counseling

Of interest to counselor educators are variables associated with helper empathy. The authors investigated the relationship between empathy and moral development. Students enrolled in a facilitative skills development course completed a measure of moral development before making their first counseling audiotape. After approximately 12 weeks of skills training, they were subsequently rated for their demonstration of empathic understanding to client statements on an analog videotape and on a counseling audiotape made for their course evaluation. Empathy ratings of their responses to the analog videotape correlated .61 (p < .001) with moral development scores and .35 (p < .05) with supervisory empathy ratings of their final audiotape and moral development scores. Implications for counselor education are discussed.     

THE DEVELOPMENT AND EVALUATION OF AN OCCUPATIONAL INVENTORY

An occupational inventory was developed by the Pennsylvania Department of Education for consideration as part of the state assessment project. This instrument measures 7tb grade student knowledge of the world of work. The summary phase of field testing involving 255 students revealed a reliability of .828 and a standard error of measurement of 2.60.     

Exercise,plasma catecholamine concentrations and decision-making performance of soccer players on a soccer-specific test

The main aim of this study was to compare the decision-making performance of college soccer players on a soccer-specific, tachistoscopically presented test, at rest and while exercising at their adrenaline threshold and at their maximum power output. These were determined following an incremental test to exhaustion on a cycle ergometer. After the initial maximum power test, participants (n= 9) were allowed 10 habituation trials on the soccer decision-making test. Participants' decision-making performance was tested at rest, while cycling at a power output that had previously been determined to elicit their adrenaline threshold and while cycling at maximum power output. Accuracy and speed of decision were the dependent variables. A one-way repeated measures analysis of variance showed no significant effect of exercise on accuracy, and showed speed of decision to be significantly affected by exercise. Tukey post-hoc tests showed that speed of decision at rest was significantly slower than in the other two conditions, which did not differ significantly from one another. Based on allocatable resources theories of arousal and performance, we conclude that the adrenaline threshold may be indicative of increases in the resources available to the individual. Furthermore, we considered that exercise at maximum power output may only induce a moderate rather than a high level of arousal.     

A Pedagogical Strategy for Gradual Enhancement of Creative Performance of the Students

The objective of this paper is to describe a pedagogical strategy for gradual enhancement of creative performance among students by using interdisciplinary hands-on projects. A study was conducted comparing 66 students' performances on creativity in three classes—Fall 1996, Spring 1997 and Fall 1997—consisting of juniors and seniors at Temple University. All the students were tested on the creative opportunities actually taught by the projects presented to the students, theoretical aspects of creativity on a specially designed test and the learning process. The results of evaluation on the creativity of the models, the theory tests and the learning process indicated that the pedagogical strategy did help in gradually enhancing the creativity performance of the students.     

MacIntyre's Revolutionary Aristotelian Philosophy and his Idea of an Educated Public Revisited

In this article I revisit MacIntyre's lecture on the idea of an educated public. I argue that the full significance of MacIntyre's views on the underlying purposes of universities only become clear when his lecture on the educated public is situated in the context of his wider ‘revolutionary Aristotelian’ philosophical project. I claim that for MacIntyre educational institutions should both support students to learn how to think for themselves and act for the common good. After considering criticisms from Putnam, Wain and Harris I conclude that MacIntyre's later work points towards an idea of educated ‘community’ that is more outward looking and open to difference than his earlier articulated idea of an educated ‘public’.