Spirituality in Counseling: What Do Counseling Students Think About It?

The author discusses students' reactions to 4 seminars. 1‐hour each, on the topic of spirituality in counseling. Students were enrolled in a master's‐level counseling program, Several issues emerged that have implications for the training of counselors on spiritual issues, including students' level of comfort with discussing spiritual issues, the difficulty of defining spirituality, client and counselor readiness to explore spirituality, and training issues in the area of spirituality.     

Taiwanese College Students’ Perceptions of Plagiarism: Cultural and Educational Considerations

The present study investigates Taiwanese college students’ perceptions of plagiarism. Specifically, this study seeks to explore how perceptive students pursuing higher education in Taiwan are in recognizing plagiaristic writing, in what terms they perceive source use in writing as appropriate and inappropriate, and view why plagiarism occurs. The study included 30 high- and 30 low-achieving students selected out of 396 students in English writing classes at a university in Taiwan. Drawing upon evidence from a writing exercise and individual interviews with these 60 Taiwanese college students, the present study identified a variety of reasons why students may plagiarize. Most of the students participating in the study had some basic understanding of plagiarism. They had some familiarity with the Western notion of plagiarism, but based on the writing exercise, more often than not they were not able to recognize plagiarism when it actually occurred. Students’ understanding was generally, but not entirely, consistent with their source use behavior. More than half of the students considered that plagiarism is a cultural issue. However, there are also other factors that may lead to plagiarism. Finally, recommendations in terms of writing pedagogy are made.     

What Does it Mean to Notice my Students’ Ideas in Science Today?: An Investigation of Elementary Teachers’ Practice of Noticing their Students’ Thinking in Science

Abstract

Efforts toward improving K-12 science education emphasize teachers noticing students’ thinking as they engage in disciplinary practices and reasoning. This noticing requires specialized teacher knowledge and skills as it involves attending to students’ ideas, as well as making sense of and responding to those ideas so that the disciplinary substance in them is recognized, made explicit, and supported. This study investigates three elementary teachers’ in-the-moment noticing of students’ ideas while teaching science and their thinking about what it means to engage in this teaching practice. Results indicate that teachers notice many different kinds of student science ideas, and also that teachers have different ways of thinking about which student ideas are substantive during a science lesson. This research contributes to our theoretical understanding of the nature of teacher noticing in science. Noticing students’ science ideas involves not only the presence of ideas and the ability to notice them, but also a teacher’s understanding of this teaching practice in the moment.     

Alcohol and Sex Offending: What Do Child Sex Offenders Think About Drinking?

The relationship between general and sex-specific alcohol expectancies and drinking before offending was examined in a sample of child sex offenders. Regression analyses revealed that sex-specific expectancies were the single best predictor of the proportion of times the offenders reported drinking before offending, even when the offenders' (preincarceration) customary drinking behaviors were accounted for. These results highlight the importance of assessing expectancies related to particular social domains. Implications for offender treatment and relapse prevention are discussed.     

Students’ achievement motivation in Finnish and Chinese higher education and its relation to perceived teaching-learning environments

This cross-cultural study of Finnish and Chinese students set out to compare the levels of achievement motivation (AM) in order to investigate whether the differences in them might be explained by the different cultural response styles and whether these response styles could be controlled for with a method which includes response style variables as covariates in ANCOVA. This study also scrutinizes relationships between perceived teaching-learning environments (TLE) and AM within each cultural group. The survey sample consisted of 3,035 Finnish and 2,309 mainland Chinese university students. Finnish students were found to rate the level of AM markedly higher than do Chinese students. It was determined that the method applied for response style controlling is not suitable for cross-cultural studies, even though it is recommended for this use. A modification of the method, which is based on robust statistical tools, was found not to change this conclusion, but it can nevertheless be used to obtain useful information about the effects of response style differences. The results also show that similar relationships between AM and TLE could be identified in the data of both groups. However, for the Finnish group AM is related to perceived suitable workload, whereas for the Chinese group it is related to teacher encouragement.     

Medical Students’ Decisions About Authorship in Disputable Situations: Intervention Study

In medicine, professional behavior and ethics are often rule-based. We assessed whether instruction on formal criteria of authorship affected the decision of students about authorship dilemmas and whether they perceive authorship as a conventional or moral concept. A prospective non-randomized intervention study involved 203s year medical students who did (n = 107) or did not (n = 96) received a lecture on International Committee of Medical Journal editors (ICMJE) authorship criteria. Both groups had to read 3 vignettes and answer 4 questions related to the distinction between conventional and moral domains. Written justification of student’ choices whether the authorship in a vignette was right or wrong was rated by 4 independent raters as based on justice or a rule. Formal instruction had no effect on students’ decisions on authorship in the vignettes (44, 34 and 39% ICMJE-consistent answers for 3 vignettes, respectively, by students receiving instruction vs. 38, 42 and 30% for those without instruction; P > 0.161 for all vignettes). For all dilemmas, more students decided contrary to ICMJE criteria and considered their decisions to be a matter of obligation and not a choice and to be general across situations and sciences. They were willing to change their decision if a rule was different only for peer situations but not for mentor–mentee situations. The number of students who used rule-based justification of their ICMJE criteria-consistent decisions was significantly higher in the instructed than in the uninstructed group. Instruction about formal authorship criteria had no effect on student’s decisions about authorship dilemmas and their decisions were related to the moral rather than a conventional domain. Teaching about authorship and other professionalism and integrity issues may benefit from interventions that bring intuitive processes into awareness instead of those fostering rule-based reasoning.     

Academic Guidance in Medical Student Research: How Well Do Supervisors and Students Understand the Ethics of Human Research?

Research is increasingly recognised as a key component of medical curricula, offering a range of benefits including development of skills in evidence-based medicine. The literature indicates that experienced academic supervision or mentoring is important in any research activity and positively influences research output. The aim of this project was to investigate the human research ethics experiences and knowledge of three groups: medical students, and university academic staff and clinicians eligible to supervise medical student research projects; at two Australian universities. Training in research ethics was low amongst academic staff and clinicians eligible to supervise medical student research. Only two-thirds of academic staff (67.9 %) and students (65.7 %) and less than half of clinicians surveyed (47.1 %; p?=?0.014) indicated that specific patient consent was required for a doctor to include patient medical records within a research publication. There was limited awareness of requirements for participant information and consent forms amongst all groups. In the case of clinical trials, fewer clinicians (88.4 %) and students (83.3 %) than academics (100 %) indicated there was a requirement to obtain consent (p?=?0.009). Awareness of the ethics committee focus on respect was low across all groups. This project has identified significant gaps in human research ethics understanding among medical students, and university academic staff and clinicians. The incorporation of research within medical curricula provides the impetus for medical schools and their institutions to ensure that academic staff and clinicians who are eligible and qualified to supervise students’ research projects are appropriately trained in human research ethics.     

Students’ Reasoning About Whether to Report When Others Cheat: Conflict,Confusion, and Consequences

Journal of Academic Ethics - Nearly all students believe academic cheating is wrong, yet few students say they would report witnessed acts of cheating. To explain this apparent tension, the present...     

How to Use Your Mind When You Can’t Think: Reply to Commentaries by Davies and Cooper

There is much area of agreement between the author and the discussants. The author addresses areas of concern and questions raised in the commentaries. These topics include the use of reverie, how I have defined maternal desire, concerns about the avoidance of negative transference, the analyst’s own dissociation, and compassion.     

How Prevalent is Contract Cheating and to What Extent are Students Repeat Offenders?

Contract cheating, or plagiarism via paid ghostwriting, is a significant academic ethical issue, especially as reliable methods for its prevention and detection in students’ assignments remain elusive. Contract cheating in academic assessment has been the subject of much recent debate and concern. Although some scandals have attracted substantial media attention, little is known about the likely prevalence of contract cheating by students for their university assignments. Although rates of contract cheating tend to be low, criminological theories suggest that people who employ ghostwriters for their assignments are likely to re-offend, and little is known about re-offence rates in this form of academic misconduct. We combined previously-collected datasets (N = 1378) and conducted additional, and previously-unreported, analyses on self-report measures of contract cheating prevalence. We found that few students (3.5%), on aggregate, ever engaged in contract cheating but this varied substantially among samples (from 0.3% to 7.9%). Of those who ever engaged in contract cheating, 62.5% did so more than once. The data also suggested that engagement in contract cheating is influenced by opportunity. These figures may help policy makers, and researchers who are creating contract cheating detection methods, to estimate base rates of contract cheating and the likelihood of re-offence.     

Constructing Self-Identity: Minority Students’ Adaptation Trajectories in a Chinese University

Researchers have gone beyond identity status and been putting more and more emphases on the dynamic process of identity development and its contextual embeddedness. Study of individual’s adaptation to the multicultural background is a good point of penetration. Because of the differences in regional conditions and cultural traditions, the minority youths who go to university in the mainstream culture would have special experiences and challenges in the development of their self-identities. Semi-structured interview and narrative were used in this research to discover the characteristics of the self-identity constructing processes of Mongolian undergraduates in a Shanghai university context. Their identity constructing process could be divided into three stages: difference-detecting, self-doubting and self-orienting. The main efforts of identity constructing in each stage could all be described as self-exploring and support-seeking. Special contents of internal explorations and sources of support were distinguished at different stages. As relative results, three main types of self-orientation were revealed: goal-oriented, self-isolated and unreserved assimilated. The characteristics of them are quite similar to those of three identity processing styles proposed by Berzonsky, which indicates there are some common elements lying in all self-development processes of adolescences and young adults. Ethnicity and culture could be background and resource or what Côté called identity capital that impacts the special course of self-identity constructing under similar principles. Different attitudes towards and relationships with their own ethnicity and new surroundings separated the three types of students from each other and interacted with the developmental characteristics and tendencies of their ethnicity identifications and self identities. It was found that minority youths’ self-identity constructing was based on their needs of self-value and interacted with their ecological niche constructing. Take ethnicity attachment and ethnicity responsibility as a typical example: the setting up of bi-direction relationship between individuals and their ethnicity (or other identity-related factors) was very important for minority youths to expand and integrate themselves. We also presented in detail our methodological exploring process so as to illuminate the limitation of traditional methods and the necessity and importance of methodological reform. Methodologically, both emic and etic positions were taken, interview and narrative approaches were adopted and individual angle of analysis was kept in the research. They were all proved to be effective to provide insight into the dynamic process of self identity constructing.     

Students’ Academic Cheating in Chinese Universities: Prevalence, Influencing Factors, and Proposed Action

Quantitative research about academic cheating among Chinese college students is minimal. This paper discusses a large survey conducted in Chinese colleges and universities which examined the prevalence of different kinds of student cheating and explored factors that influence cheating behavior. A structural equation model was used to analyze the data. Results indicate that organizational deterrence and individual performance have a negative impact on cheating while individual perceived pressure, peers’ cheating, and extracurricular activities have a positive impact. Recommendations are proposed to reduce the level of academic cheating in China. Many of these are universal in nature and applicable outside of China as well.     

Are We on the Same Page? College Students’ and Faculty’s Perception of Student Plagiarism in Taiwan

The rapid development of the Internet has granted college students easy access to vast amount of online resources, and to some degree has increased the chances of plagiarism problems. A number of studies have suggested that both faculty’s and students’ perceptions toward plagiarism are found to be influential on students’ plagiarizing behaviors, and limited research has been done to explore the perceptional differences between these two roles. This study aims to respond to the growing educational concerns about plagiarism by comparing the perceptions held by faculty and college students. A total of 229 faculty and 634 college students in Taiwan completed the Perceptions of Student Plagiarism Questionnaire designed for the study. The results reveal that faculty held stricter standards than those of students. Results also indicate various causes of plagiarism, such as no interest in the learning subjects, lack of citation knowledge, or lack of research ability. Furthermore, significant disciplinary differences were shown to contribute to students’ plagiarism perception; the results reveal that most students with an Arts or Communication major held a relatively adverse thinking toward plagiarism. Last, this study provides research-based strategies for school and faculty to reduce the likelihood of plagiarism.     

Barriers to children’s walking to school in Iranian and Chinese samples

Factors that contribute to children’s walking to school have been investigated in previous research, which primarily focussed on socio-economic variables in high income countries. There is a general lack of studies which have examined mode choice differences on school trips in low and middle income countries. Focusing on parental social cognitive variables in addition to household socio-economic characteristics, the present study is among the first to compare barriers to children’s walking in daily commuting to schools across samples from two middle income countries: Iran and China. A self-administered questionnaire was devised and distributed among primary school pupils (7–9 years old) in Mashhad, Iran and Nanjing, China. The children were asked to take the questionnaires to their parents to complete and return the filled forms. A total of 671 (response rate of 90 percent) and 224 (response rate of 82 percent) completely filled questionnaires were returned in Mashhad and Nanjing, respectively. Multivariate analysis of covariance (MANCOVA) showed that parents in Mashhad perceived higher risk and reported more worry of children being involved in road crashes when walking to school. Analyses revealed more safety favourable parental attitudes in the Chinese sample, compared to the Iranian sample. Parental attitudes towards transport safety were safer in the sample from Nanjing as compared to Mashhad. Hierarchical binary logistic regression showed that walking time from home to school and parental worry about road crashes were negatively associated with children’s walking to school in both samples. In the Iranian sample, results suggested that while household car ownership and higher family income were associated with a decreased probability that a child walk to school, the total number of children in the household increased the probability of walking to school.