A Study of the Perceptions and Worldviews of Mature Age Pre-Service Teachers Aged Between 31 and 53

This study presents the perceptions and worldviews of 17 mature age second-career pre-service teachers in career transition. The aim was to explore the experience of becoming a primary school teacher after a first career. The second-career pre-service teachers were enrolled on a full-time basis at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE/UT). The primary data were collected from 17 separate interviews of approximately 1 h; over two separate calendar years, which totalled a five-month interviewing period. The interviewees volunteered to be part of the study and were aged between 31 and 53 and enrolled in two high academic entry-level accelerated programmes for graduates. The interviewees had previous undergraduate degrees and numerous years?? experience working in a variety of other careers. The overall findings are that individuals who have been involved in well-established careers, present distinct perceptions of teaching, that are not only separate from traditional younger pre-service teachers, but remain as significant factors throughout their teaching programmes. It is argued that perceptions could in turn shape their pedagogy in ways that are either profitable or problematic to primary teaching.     

Faith, Reason, and Worldviews

This critical review of Responses to the Enlightenment focuses on the relationship between faith and reason as advanced by Hendrick Hart and William Sweet, respectively. It does so in the context of Enlightenment critique of faith, from which both Hart and Sweet seek to salvage religious faith. While faith as trust is admitted to be performative (Hart), faith is also belief with cognitive content (Sweet). However, faith and reason, as I contend, stand in a dialectical relationship between the need for commitment and understanding at the root of religious as well as secular traditions or worldviews.     

Ernest Becker and the Psychology of Worldviews

Sheldon Solomon, Jeff Greenberg, and Tom Pyszczynski offer experimental confirmation for Ernest Becker's claim that the fear of death is a powerful unconscious motive producing polarized worldviews and scapegoating. Their suggestion that their findings also prove Sigmund Freud's theory of repression, with worldviews as its irrational products, is questionable, although Becker's own statements about worldviews as "illusions" seem to invite such interpretation. Their basic theory does not depend on this, however, and abandoning it would enable them to take better advantage of their finding that worldviews incorporating the values of rationality and tolerance tend to counteract polarization effects.     

Approaching Environmental Sustainability: Perceptions of Self-Efficacy and Changeability

This paper describes a model focused on the role of self-efficacy and belief in changeability of behavior in motivating environmentally sustainable behavior. The model was tested in two studies. The first study found that participants who had greater self-efficacy for sustainability behavior and a greater belief in their changeability of sustainability behavior had a higher level of approach motivation toward sustainability behavior and reported more such actual behavior. The second study investigated the effect of brief interventions intended to increase perception of self-efficacy for sustainability-related purchasing and changeability of sustainability-related purchasing. The intervention that focused on enhancing self-efficacy for making sustainability-related purchases had the strongest impact on intention to purchase. These findings have implications for interventions intended to change behavior related to environmental sustainability.     

A Typology of LDS Sociopolitical Worldviews

Members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (Mormons, Latter-Day Saints, or LDS) are sometimes thought of as a monolithic block of economic and social conservatives. This article addresses whether this is caused by strong religious effects, or whether it is an artifact of unrepresentative sampling. Q methodology is used to identify six "types" of political worldviews among a multinational and multiracial sample of active Latter-Day Saints. The six types reveal some interesting ideological variations among Mormons, particularly on economic issues, and even some unique LDS issues. A second-order factor analysis indicates a high level of commonality across types on social issues, but important differences on orientation toward government. I conclude that the failure to include racial and cultural variation in Mormon samples has led us to overestimate the otherwise significant influence of LDS doctrine on members' political views.     

Contemporary Worldviews: Personal and Policy Implications12

In the past several decades, changes in industrial societies have presented a host of issues, worldwide in scope, around which individual attitudes may form: technological growth, population expansion, environmental quality, global resources, differing societal goals, etc. This study (N= 325) was conducted to identify and assess the major attitude/belief constellations surrounding these issues and to examine their psychological basis and implications for risk perception and societal decision-making procedures. Results supported the hypotheses that assessed contemporary worldviews are related in predictable ways to (a) the pexceived risk associated with selected technologies, (b) preferences for the manner in which societal decisions should be made, and (c) a coherent set of psychological variables. Discussion focuses on policy implications of differing contemporary worldviews and on future directions and applications of this line of research.     

Counselor Roles According to Two Counseling Worldviews

This article defines the traditional psychological worldview and the emergent systemic worldview in counseling theory. The two counseling worldviews are described as presenting distinct roles for professional counselors with respect to assessment, remediation, and case management.     

Religious Experience,Religious Worldviews,and Near-Death Studies

The tense relation prevailing between representatives of conservative religion and other near-death researchers may be illumined by a look at the different functions religion has fulfilled in the past. Religion may be seen as centering on the meaningfulness of the world, on spiritual experience, or on salvation. In this essay, I sketch the place of these themes in the Great Religions. These themes have inherent mutual tensions that in the case of Christianity cannot necessarily be settled by appeal to the Bible, because different Christian groups have somewhat differing views of the source of authority. Furthermore, the Bible's authority is challenged by the results of modern scholarship. In light of these reflections, I see Michael Sabom's Light & Death (1998) as showing valuable data and insights but failing to respond to significant challenges.     

Worldviews education: cosmopolitan peacebuilding and preventing violent extremism

ABSTRACT

Since the mid-2000s soft power approaches to counter and prevent violent extremism (C/PVE) have increasingly been implemented by civil society, state actors and UN agencies internationally. Education is a critical and previously undervalued component in PVE, as it has only recently begun to attract significant scholarly and policy attention. This article briefly reviews the emerging field of education and PVE, and argues that it could benefit from drawing on insights from research on education about diverse religious and non-religious worldviews and PVE in Australia. Our research indicates that these types of educational initiatives can assist with addressing religious vilification, discrimination and interreligious tensions, and also with building religious literacy and social inclusion of young people, thereby minimising risks of alienation and vulnerability to extremism. We also argue that a critical approach to education about religions can assist young people to identify religions’ ambivalent role in contributing to both cultures of violence – direct and structural – and cultures of peace. We present a case study on learning about diverse worldviews in Victoria, Australia in this article to illustrate our arguments and finally make a series of recommendations regarding religion, education and PVE, and cosmopolitan peacebuilding strategies more broadly.     

Changing Worldviews: Responding to Betty Birner and Robert Masson

Worldviews are changed by higher viewpoints that can develop by metaphoric process, the equating of two formerly disparate known concepts. The equating results in a distortion—a tectonic reformation—of the associated fields of meanings that effects a rearrangement of associated concepts leading to new cognitive relations. We comment on reviews of our books Metaphoric Process (1984) and New Maps for Old (2001) by Robert Masson and Betty Birner. Metaphoric process may further understanding of the formation of diverse worldviews and their reconciliation.     

A Cross-Cultural Comparison of Worldviews: American and Fijian Counseling Students

The Scale to Assess World Views was administered to 104 Fijians and to 109 Americans who were all enrolled in counseling programs in their respective countries. Fijians and Americans were compared in order to determine whether the worldviews of counseling students in these two countries were different. Differences were found between the Fijian and American counseling students on the Human Relationships category and the Time Orientation Category. The Fijian Counseling students scored higher than the Americans on the Lineal-Hierarchical and Collateral-Mutual subscales of the Human Relationships Category and higher than the Americans on the Past and Future subscales of the Time Orientation Category.     

当代政治哲学：“通情达理方面”对“真实方面”，世界观的道德或者

J．罗尔斯主张,他关于“公正即公平”的观念是一种“特立独行的”观念：它被假定为一种“完全在政治领域内部运动”、“使哲学维持现状”的观念：这种回避策略所具有的目标和可行性,取决于我们如何理解“政治的”这个术语。罗尔斯首先用它来具体说明研究一个(现代)社会的制度性框架和基本结构的政治理论所具有的对象领域。存在于人们对基本概念的选择之中的惯例性成份,向来是人们争论的焦点之一;但是,一旦一种理论具体证明了它自己所具有的实用性。     

"通情达理方面"对"真实方面",或者世界观的道德

Ｊ 罗尔斯主张 ,他关于“公正即公平”的观念是一种“特立独行的”观念 :它被假定为一种“完全在政治领域内部运动”、“使哲学维持现状”的观念。这种回避策略所具有的目标和可行性 ,取决于我们如何理解“政治的”这个术语。罗尔斯首先用它来具体说明研究一个 (现代 )社会的制