In practice: The Carolinian's Creed

While other campuses are instituting speech and conduct codes to address tensions among their students, the University of South Carolina is taking a very different approach. That institution's vice president for student affairs explains what inspired them to create the creed reproduced in this issue and the effect it is having on students and everyone on campus.* Readers who would like additional information about the creed (reprinted here) should contact Jim Doran, director of advancement (jdoran@sc.edu), or Jerry Crotty, associate director for student development (jcrotty@sc.edu), both at the University of South Carolina, Columbia.     

Making sense of iconic symbols: a study of preschool children conducting a refuse-sorting task

This article is part of a larger project focusing upon explanatory illustrations that children encounter in pre- and primary school education. The research questions concerned (a) how preschool children make sense of iconic symbols when placing items of refuse on illustrations of refuse bins in a sorting task and (b) what stumbling blocks they encounter when interpreting these symbols. Video data were collected with 30 children between four and five?years of age. From the children’s verbal and non-verbal interactions, four different categories of sense-making were constructed: by material, by object type, by appearance and by function. Three stumbling blocks were identified. The first had to do with giving the symbols a different logical meaning to the intended one; the second related to what materials the different refuse items were made of; the third was being able to stick to one correct way of interpreting each symbol.     

Academic work on a back-burner: habituating students in the upper-secondary school towards marginality and a life in the precariat

This article takes its point of departure in ethnographic data from what in Sweden is called the Individual Programme (IP). This programme was for upper-secondary school pupils who were not eligible for one of the country's academic or vocational programme. Its main formally expressed goal was to enable students to become eligible for these programmes. Our data show that this aim risks going unfulfilled as attending the kind of programme represented by the IP increases the likelihood of marginalisation and a precarious existence. The policy of freedom of choice was a problem. This policy allowed the students to opt out of academic work and staff to encourage students to opt for easy study options and activities that took them away from academic routes.     

Teachers’ Commitment and psychological well-being: implications of self-beliefs for teaching in Hong Kong

Despite ample research on commitment in industrial settings, there has been no systematic attempt to investigate outcomes associated with teacher commitment. Therefore, the aim of this study was to examine the relationship between teacher commitment and psychological well-being in the work place using questionnaires. Hong Kong teachers (N?=?857) participated. Hierarchical regression analyses were used to investigate how the three aspects of commitment pertaining to the organisation and occupation predicted relevant outcomes. Results showed that affective and normative commitment positively predicted psychological well-being in the work place: interpersonal fit at work, thriving at work, feeling of competency, perceived recognition at work, desire for involvement at work and job satisfaction. Continuance commitment was a negative predictor of some outcomes. Results of the current study provide support to Meyer’s 3?×?2 factor model of commitment. Findings are discussed in relation to the situation of teachers in the Hong Kong context.     

Using Evaluation to Build Organizational Performance and Learning Capability: A Strategy and a Method

More than ever organizations need to achieve the very best training and performance improvement possible. Today's competitive environment requires a workforce that cannot only learn quickly, but that can rapidly and consistently transform new learning into enhanced individual, team, and organizational performance. Thoughtful, efficient, and constructive evaluation is at the heart of continuous improvement and is vital to unlocking the desperately needed potential of learning for performance improvement.