Teaching Pilgrims to Walk

The creation and implementation of a Christian theological seminary course, “The Education of Christian Pilgrims,” in which the purpose was to prepare students to teach members of a church to be and become a consciously “pilgrim Church.” This article describes the genesis of the course, creating a syllabus, the actual pilgrimage undertaken by students and professor, and suggested modifications.     

The Experience of Intrusions Scale: a preliminary examination

Intrusive thoughts (i.e., unwelcome, distressing, involuntary thoughts) are prevalent in a variety of clinical conditions and are increasingly a focus of translational research. The goal of this study was to develop and preliminarily examine a brief self-report measure designed to assess clinically relevant aspects of the experience of intrusive thoughts related to a particular target. The Experience of Intrusions Scale (EIS) is a five-item measure that assesses the frequency, unpredictability, and unwantedness of intrusive thoughts, as well as the interference and distress caused by the intrusions, each on a five-point Likert-type scale. Five times over a four-] period, female undergraduates (N=160) completed the EIS in response to intrusive thoughts regarding a film clip depicting a sexual assault. On the first and last days, participants completed the EIS five minutes after watching the clip. In between film clip viewings, participants completed the EIS once per day. The EIS demonstrated good internal consistency, good to excellent test-retest reliability using both immediate post-stimulus and 24-hour time intervals, and convergent validity with two existing measures of intrusive phenomena: the White Bear Suppression Inventory (Wegner & Zanakos, 1994) and the Post-traumatic Stress Disorder Checklist-Civilian Version (Weathers, Litz, Herman, Huska, & Keane, 1993).     

Impact of school sense of community within a faith-based university: administrative and academic staff perceptions on institutional mission and values

Academic staff (n = 305) and administrative staff (n = 595) at a large urban, Catholic, and religious order teaching university completed on-line school sense of community, social desirability, and mission-identity plus mission-driven activity measures. Partial correlates (controlling for social desirability) indicated that for both faculty and staff a sense of community with co-workers and with administrators were significantly related to mission-identity characteristics of the university. Moreover, regression analyses found that for faculty and staff significant predictors of school sense of community variables were perceptions that the university was innovative and inclusive of pragmatic and risk-taking ideas. For staff but not for faculty, a feeling of Catholic pluralism on campus was a significant predictor of a sense of community with co-workers. These outcomes suggest that employees at faith-based universities may strengthen their school sense of community by institutional practices and programs that foster creating a setting for innovative, inclusive, pragmatic, and risk-taking policies, but not necessarily religious practices on campus.     

The social context as a determinant of teacher motivational strategies in physical education

ObjectivesThe purpose of the study was to provide an in-depth analysis of how the Physical Education (PE) teaching context influences teachers' motivational strategies towards students.DesignQualitative semi-structured interviewsMethodsUsing Self-determination theory (Deci, E. L., & Ryan, R. M. (2000). Psychological Enquiry, 11, 227-268) as a guiding framework, semi-structured interviews of 22 PE teachers were examined using categorical content analysis.ResultsThe teachers perceived that an emphasis on student assessment and the time constraints associated with PE lessons often compelled them to use teaching strategies which conflicted with their beliefs about the most appropriate ways to motivate students. The teachers' own performance evaluations and pressure to conform to other teachers' methods also influenced the teachers' motivational strategies, but these influences were often congruent with their teaching beliefs. Additionally, the teachers discussed how perceived cultural norms associated with the teacher-student relationship impacted upon their chosen motivational strategies. These cultural norms were reported by different teachers as either in line, or in conflict with their teaching beliefs. Finally, the influence of the teachers' perceptions of their students helped produce strategies that were congruent with their beliefs, but often different to empirically suggested strategies.ConclusionsIt is important that teacher beliefs are targeted in education programs and that the teaching context aid in facilitating adaptive motivational strategies.     

A theoretical expectancy table calculator

A program for calculating theoretical expectancy tables is described. These tables are useful for communicating the meaning of correlation coefficients, since they display the relationship in a simple way. The program allows users to go beyond empirical expectancy tables, which are routinely calculated, by allowing the table to reflect corrections for effects such as unreliability and restriction of range.     

Mechanism of the human diving response

The diving response in human beings is characterized by breath-holding, slowing of the heart rate (diving bradycardia), reduction of limb blood flow and a gradual rise in the mean arterial blood pressure. The bradycardia results from increased parasympathetic stimulus to the cardiac pacemaker. The reduction in limb blood flow is due to vasoconstriction resulting from increased activity of the sympathetic nerves supplying arteries in the arms and legs. Essentially the response is produced by the combination of water touching the face and either voluntary or involuntary (reflex) arrest of breathing. The nervous inputs and outputs for the response are coordinated in the brain stem by the respiratory, vasomotor and cardioinhibitory “centers.” The diving response in human beings can be modified by many factors but the most important are water temperature, oxygen tension in the arterial blood and emotional factors.     

Depression Mixed with Anxiety,Somatization, and Disordered Eating: Relationship with Gender-Role-Related Limitations Experienced by Females

In several previous studies, females who reported that they felt limited by responses to their gender, or viewed their mothers as having been limited in this way, exhibited higher prevalence compared to other females or to males of depression accompanied by anxiety, somatic symptoms such as headaches, disordered eating, and poor body image/preference for thinness (“anxious somatic depression”), but not higher prevalence of depression unaccompanied by these other symptoms (“pure depression”). In this study of high school students, females whose mothers scored high on a scale measuring their feelings of having been limited by traditional gender roles reported much higher prevalence than other females of anxious somatic depression, but not higher prevalence of pure depression. Mothers' reports of depression were not related to daughters' anxious somatic depression.     

EFFECTS OF CHOOSING ACADEMIC ASSIGNMENTS ON A STUDENT WITH ATTENTION DEFICIT HYPERACTIVITY DISORDER

The effects of choosing academic assignments on the undesirable behaviors manifested by a second-grade student with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder were analyzed. This study extended Dunlap et al.'s (1994) research on choice making as a form of antecedent control. A reversal design showed that undesirable behaviors decreased when the student was given a choice of academic assignments.