Bodily excellence and education: ambiguities of performance

The notion of excellence contains an ambivalence: to aim at the "good" and/or to aim at the "best". This ambivalence exists particularly in the physical effort and in the history of bodily practices, shared between gymnastics, physical education and sports. In the second part of the XXth century, the notion of performance became "worship of performance", "infinite perfectibility". In this context, high level sports became the human improvement laboratory, thanks to the sophistication of its technical means and the its practices intensity. However this "high" questions: about physical and psychological consequences of intensive practices ; about doping and its medical and ethical perspectives; about the increasing precociousness and the potential exploitation of the baby champions. It questions about the nature of familial, social, economical norms transmitted by education: about articulation between constraint and self-government. This is the question about the "price" of excellence. In this sense it appears that the excellence of champion spreads out the margins of an ethics which would be meant to be regulating and universal, indeed this excellence is perhaps, in the same capacity as genius is and in spite of the attachment of sports to a "ethics of the rule", un-ethical.     

Personal-social education: Beyond the national curriculum

The impact of the first ten years of the National Curriculum in England and Wales upon personal-social education (PSE) is analysed. It is proposed that many indirect processes have led to PSE having a lesser place in schools. The analysis offers some broad pointers for improvement. A conception of improved PSE for 21st-century schools is identified.     

Challenges to professional psychology education in the 21st century: response to Peterson

Professional psychology education faces many critical challenges brought about by the major changes occurring in the health care arena. This article shows that professional schools and programs have a good record of responding to these challenges and of taking proactive steps sponding to prepare their graduates for new health care roles and delivery systems. Data on admissions to psychology doctoral training programs demonstrate little support for the toral concerns raised by Donald R. Peterson (2003, this issue) about the preparation of students for graduate training in professional programs. Although quality concerns are important to investigate, such examination best resides with portant the American Psychological Association's Committee on Accreditation, which has the promotion of quality and excellence in professional psychology education and training as its major goal and responsibility.     

Male and female psychoneuroendocrine response to examination stress: A case report

Urinary catecholamine levels were investigated in one female and one male Ph.D. candidate during public defense of their Ph.D. theses as well as during 2 weeks preceding and 1 week following these examinations. Although females, in comparison to males, usually tend to show a weak adrenaline response to mental stress, a threefold increase was observed in both subjects. The results support the assumption that sex differences in adrenal-medullary responsiveness to stress is not determined by sex-specific biological factors alone and that a “male” responsiveness may be observed in achievement-oriented females exposed to a challenging real-life situation. Effects on urinary measures of cortisol obtained from the male subject resembled effects on adrenaline, showing that this kind of real-life stressor affects the sympathetic-adrenal medullary and the pituitary-adrenocortical systems similarly.     

儒学传播与古代日本的国家教育

整体回顾儒学在古代日本的传播情况可知,儒学在日本的早期传播史可分为初传期、拓展期与转型期三个历史时段.以儒学在古代日本的国家和地方教育体系中的传播情况为主要考察对象,亦可发现中国儒学在日本最初的国家教育体系创立、发展过程中发挥的重要作用.在此基础上,即可从政治性、文化性、宗教性三个角度剖析中国儒学在古代日本传播的典型性...     

A randomized‐response investigation of the education effect in attitudes towards foreigners

While negative correlations have often been found between a respondent's education and his attitudes towards foreigners, the reasons for this education effect are still under debate. We examined the hypothesis that the highly educated may not be genuinely less xenophobic, but simply more prone to give socially desirable, xenophile answers in attitude questionnaires. We therefore compared the attitudes of respondents who were either questioned directly or using a cheating detection extension of the randomized‐response technique (RRT). The latter is supposed to yield more honest answers to sensitive questions by experimentally offering the interviewee a higher degree of confidentiality. Under direct questioning conditions, we replicated the education effect; 75% of the highly educated expressed xenophile attitudes, as opposed to only 55% of the less educated. Under randomized‐response conditions, we obtained significantly reduced estimates of 53% for the proportion of xenophiles among the highly educated, and 24% among the less educated, indicating a strong distortion of self‐reported attitudes towards foreigners in both groups. However, a significant proportion of participants disobeyed the RRT instructions regardless of education. Because the education effect was found even after controlling for social desirability, it seems to be a genuine effect, rather than an artefact of a differential response bias. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

An alternative justification for careers education: A radical response to roberts and daws

K. Roberts and Daws have given what are apparently two divergent views of the place and nature of careers education and guidance. This paper seeks to show that while both provide useful comments on a problem area, both seek to discuss this problem from within a normative view of the world. In the case of Roberts this leads to a deterministic acceptance of the status quo, while Daws' view of careers education as a 'catalyst' seems doomed to remain at the level of hope. It is suggested that a more appropriate conceptual framework can be formulated, based on the idea of career choice as the creation of 'nomos', and on a different view of the relationship between individual, society and reality. This finally leads to a discussion of the place of careers education and guidance, and its further development, as an important contribution to radical education and social change.     

Sex differences in jealousy in response to infidelity: Evaluation of demographic moderators in a national random sample

Studies examining sex differences in jealousy have often relied on student samples and were restricted to the evaluation of a selected few moderators. In this study, a nationally representative survey of American households was presented with either an actual or a hypothetical infidelity scenario (which appeared as either a forced choice or as continuous measures). Significant sex differences only emerged for forced choice measures and not for continuous measures. Importantly, this effect appeared most strongly in participants reporting reactions to an actual infidelity. We also explored a number of potential moderators of this effect. These moderators were more influential for the hypothetical than for the actual infidelity scenario. Exploratory analysis of additional demographic variables was conducted.