Synopsis of Wrenn and Kotler's Exchange Model for Marketing Parochial Schooling

In the Spring 1993 edition of the JRCE, Bruce Wrenn and Philip Kotler (pp. 119–134) drew from social exchange theory to explain why people choose parochial education. Wrenn and Kotler argue that marketing theory can both inform and improve marketing practice in such non-profit organizations as parochial schools.     

The Value of Marketing Theory for Parochial Schools: Some Parting Thoughts

In this response to Thogmartin's Spring 1994 JRCE article on “The Prevalence of Phonics Instruction in Fundamentalist Christian Schools,” the author offers his suggestions about why fundamentalist Christians are so enamored with intensive phonics reading pedagogy. In the first part of his response, he argues that the rationale for intensive phonics teaching lies in a radical behaviorist anthropology and epistemology of which Christian educators ought to be extremely wary. In the second section, the author provides a review of some empirical evidence for the limited utility of phonics in the teaching of reading and suggests, finally, that Christian teachers should show as much concern about what and why Christian children and adolescents should read as about how to teach them to do so.     

Process Tracing as an Effective Epistemic Complement

In the last decades philosophers of science and social scientists promoted the view that knowledge of mechanisms might help causal inference considerably in the social sciences. Mechanisms, however, can only assist causal inference effectively if scientists have a means to identify them correctly. Some scholars suggested that process-tracing might be a helpful strategy in this respect. Shared criteria to assess its performance, however, are not available yet; furthermore, the criteria proposed so far tie the validity of process-tracing findings to the specific kind of evidence it uses. In this paper I shall propose a criterion to assess process-tracing performance in cases in which favorable epistemic circumstances do not occur and the existing criteria thus fail to apply. The criterion I propose does not double as a condition for validity. Rather, it aims to assess whether the mechanism process-tracing outlines constitutes admissible evidence for the hypothesis at hand. It will be argued that only if this requirement is fulfilled process-tracing can be used as an effective complement for causal inference.     

Figuration of the Real as an Intersubjective Process

In this paper, I make use of the term figuration, which relates to the process of giving shape to unconscious contents in the form of meaningful presentations. My interest is in how traumatic experience succeeds or fails to become psychically figured and thereby susceptible to elaboration and absorption through intersubjective process. I argue that the process of figuration always occurs in an actual or implied intersubjective context and involves, thereby, a central feature of an exchange between subject and Other. These concepts are discussed and applied to a case report of an analytic psychotherapy involving a traumatic dream and its sequellae.     

The Mind as a Process

Essentially all behavior is regulated by the brain in response to information received from within the body or from the environment. The tangible structures of the brain serve as devices for processing thoughts and emotions as well as information. Stored among the interacting neural structures are memories of past experiences and responses to them. These intangibles participate in determining the decisions made and the actions performed by the brain's structures. There are valuable studies of the clinical and neurological effects of environmental stimuli, but we need to learn more about the processes that lead to these effects. More definitive correlations could be made between environmental stimuli and the neurological pathways they create by studying individual's real life experiences rather than laboratory simulations alone.     

The Challenge of Christian Schooling in a Secular Society

This article evaluates the position of Christian schooling within a liberal democracy and the rights of Christians within a secular state. I challenge the fundamental liberal tenet of individual autonomy as the supreme goal of education and put the case that Christian schools are a vital part of a diverse, tolerant and inclusive society. Although intended as a theoretical resource, current developments in faith-based education in the United Kingdom are used to exemplify important political and philosophical arguments that will be of value to Christian educators in the United States and elsewhere.     

The Challenges of the Schooling from Cultural Psychology of Education

Education is in the core of societal change in all its different forms—from kindergartens to vocational schools and lifelong learning. Education—understood as goal-oriented personal movement—re-structures personal lives both inside school and outside the school. This special issue stems from the Cultural Psychology of Education (Marsico Culture & Psychology, 21(4), 445–454, 2015a, b, Journal for the Study of Education and Development, 40(4), 754–781, 2017)—a new approach to the field of education that examines how educational experience is culturally organized. This special issue is focused on the work of schooling as a crucial scientific arena to investigate. It is the follow up of an international workshop host by the Centre for Cultural Psychology (at Aalborg University, Demark) that was very thought provoking and from where several outcomes came out. Some of them are the papers here presented that tried to illuminate the different dimensions of the educational context in the East and West society with specific attention to the Chinese and Scandinavian educational practices. The dialogue between Chinese, European and North American scholars offered a complex view of the current educational challenges in the age of globalization. In this paper I try to focus on some of the most debated and challenging aspects in educational psychology worldwide: diversity, values and practical usability of psychology at school. I re-read these “hot topics” with the help of the themes developed by the authors of this special issue and in light of Cultural Psychology of Education. Then, I conclude by proposing a new agenda for the education of the future.     

Toward an Anthropology of Exchange in Tamil Nadu

This article is an attempt to present the cultural conceptions of exchange that appear in studies of medieval South Indian redistributive processes and the anthropology of Tamil caste, kinship, and marital transactions. As such it does not engage theological understandings of gifts to and from South Indian deities. The approach is sociological, and the argument is that whether the mode is redistributive or donative, Tamil exchanges create social relationships that are embedded in meanings of distinction and precedence. What is handed out is a position in a social order that is first and foremost hierarchical, a rank in a social sequence, so that not merely things and services but social distinctions move through the social landscape.     

Counseling as an Interpersonal Influence Process: A Perspective for Counseling Practice

J. D. Corrigan, D. M. Dell, K. N. Lewis, & L. D. Schmidt. Counseling as a social influence process: A review. Journal of Counseling Psychology, 1980, 27, 395–441 (Monograph).     

The Work Process as Spatial Situation: A Sketch

Interacting with the work of art entails a spatial situation, which is double. On a mental plane it is encapsulated reverie, on a physical plane it is production and consumption. These two are woven together as an orthogonal text or texture. The space of the work of art thus contains both the process of its making and its viewing. Seen as a dimensional space it is non linear. It is characterized by oscillations, discepancies, misalignements, multiplicity and recurrence. There is a correspondance between the studio and the exhibition area, as well as a dialogue between privileged and unprivileged spaces. The situation has something in common with oneiric space, where weightlessness and gravity oscillate.     

The Cyborg as an Interpretation of Culture-Nature

The idea of "nature" performs an important cultural work. The cyborg-nature is an attempt to free ourselves from the features of the culturally authorized concepts of nature. The cyborg offers new metaphors to both academic and popular theorizing for comprehending the different ways that sciences and technologies affect our lives, subjectivities, and concepts. The cyborg is a lived reality and a metaphor. Paul Tillich deemed it necessary to have a mythos of technology to explain our technologies and ourselves. He offered "The Technical City" as a symbol for his age. Donna Haraway's cy-borg-figure could function as a symbol to interpret our time and technologies and ourselves.     

The Constitution as an Axiomatic System

The Constitution is considered as an informal axiomatic system. The strategy proposed by the authors rests on the following propositions: (1) axioms are considered as contextual definitions of those concepts by means of which they are formulated; and (2) the main requirement for this type of system is internal consistency. The first proposition is necessary for considering the Constitution as an informal axiomatic system, while the second is sufficient, because the approach proposed, apart from consistency, must certainly consider the requirements for formal axiomatic systems, such as independence and completeness. The authors argue that the Constitution can be compared to axiomatic constructions in modern science in the sense that is given in the research on the logic and methodology of deductive sciences. This analogy is appropriate to the extent to which constitutional provisions are interpreted as the basic elements of the legal system, just as in the formal sciences axioms are regarded as basic principles that define the main features of the formal system. This means that the Constitution itself is seen as coherent, consistent discourse that contextually defines the meaning of the basic terms of the legal system.     

Phonological Awareness Development as a Discrete Process: Evidence for an Integrative Model

The theoretical and practical implications of examining young children's acquisitions of phonological awareness skills with specific and differentiated processing tasks are explored in this study. The study presents data from 269 kindergarten children completing a phonological awareness protocol that provided information on 14 discrete phonological awareness skills. The data supported the assertion that phonological awareness develops in a gradual and continuous fashion and illustrated the importance of measuring phonological awareness while controlling for the effects of task difficulty, linguistic complexity, and phoneme position within syllables. In addition, three general patterns of literacy development were confirmed in these analyses that frame the integrated model of phonological awareness development.     

The Theory of Emotions in Marketing

To determine whether a theory of emotions in marketing is needed, this article assesses the current theoretical status of emotions in marketing. The theoretical propositions and the characteristics of four major theories of emotions borrowed from psychology, as well as five marketing accounts for emotions are reviewed. The characteristics of emotions in marketing are specified and compared with the characteristics of emotions as seen by psychology. The article ends with four theoretical proposals on directions for future development of a theory of emotions in marketing.     

Organizational Conflict Management as Disputing Process The Problem of Social Escalation

In this article, organizational conflict management is conceived as a “disputing process” involving the social escalation from grievance stage to conflict and dispute stages. The Disputing Process Instrument (DPI) was designed as a way to study these phenomena quantitatively. Seven behaviors are represented in the instrument: conciliatory negotiation, third-party mobilization, overt retaliation, covert retaliation, toleration, avoidance, and discipline. The DPI demonstrated high reliability, content, discriminant, and construct validity relative to earlier conflict instruments. An empirical study of social escalation was conducted among peers with different strengths of informal relations in an electronics firm. The study results revealed that interpersonal problems among weakly tied peers are likely to be contained at the grievance stage using covert behaviors or to be socially escalated to disputes involving third parties. More strongly tied peers are likely to escalate their problems from grievances to dyadic confrontations only. These results have implications for understanding disparate results from earlier studies of peer conflict in organizations and for arguments regarding the introduction of external third-party conflict consulting in organizations.     

The Building of Models as Pathway to Understand the Therapeutic Process

The present work highlights the necessity to re-think the paradigmatic, methodological and theoretical assumptions which for a long time have regulated the practices of research in the field of the study of therapeutic processes. Following this suggestion, and commenting on Ribeiro and Gonçalves (2011), and Faccio, Centomo and Mininni (2011), I highlight the need to reframe the therapeutic change research in terms of a modelling approach. According to such perspective models arise through focusing on the general rule of the functioning of a change process within the local domain of a particular therapeutic encounter, making it possible both to manage it in line with the specific local aims, and to promote the deepening and the develop of scientific knowledge. This is a step towards a new research perspective able to promote the integration of empirical research and clinical practice.