Research paper

In this age of technological change and innovation which has had a major impact upon schools, together with the continuing demands of an assessment driven curriculum, are schools providing opportunities which will develop and enhance children's creative, aesthetic and spiritual experiences? It is the contention of this paper that learning through the medium of creative dance can provide an opportunity which can deepen children's spiritual awareness and provide a context for the development of a kinaesthetic intelligence which enables children to embody, and give expression to, abstract ideas and concepts. In the discussion of the initial findings from a small scale research project carried out with Y3 children, we shall see that although the children's developing spirituality is very much interconnected with their everyday lives and preoccupations, the dance work enabled them to connect with an abstract theme in a concrete way, and inspired them to create a symbolic interpretation of the Creation story.     

Hedonomics: Bridging Decision Research With Happiness Research

ABSTRACT— One way to increase happiness is to increase the objective levels of external outcomes; another is to improve the presentation and choices among external outcomes without increasing their objective levels. Economists focus on the first method. We advocate the second, which we call hedonomics . Hedonomics studies (a) relationships between presentations (how a given set of outcomes are arranged among themselves or relative to other outcomes) and happiness and (b) relationships between choice (which option among alternative options one chooses) and happiness.     

Empirical Research on Ethical Issues in Pediatric Research

Although there is usually agreement about the ethical principles that should govern research on children, there may be little agreement on how those principles should be interpreted into research procedures in some instances. Empirical research on ethical issues that arise in research on children can often elucidate ways to improve on existing research practices and ways to resolve debates about best practices. Following in the success of evidence-based medicine, evidence-based ethical problem solving in human research can enable investigators to avoid such poor alternatives as doing nothing, endlessly debating, or acting on the basis of hunch or time-honored but dubious research practices. A variety of approaches to evidence-based ethical problem solving are illustrated in this article.     

Naturalistic Research

Naturalistic research is offered as an alternative to the more familiar hypothesis-testing methods of research. Naturalistic research is disciplined inquiry conducted through personal, long-term contact between the researcher and the object of research. Rather than arbitrarily operationalizing the variables and specifying the hypotheses in advance of contact with the case, the meanings held by persons involved with the case and the effects of the context on the case are allowed to emerge from the data and thus become the objects of study. In this article the assumptions of the methodology of naturalistic inquiry are contrasted with those underlying traditional hypothesis-testing methods.