Addressing social determinants of health: Supporting ex-offenders’ employment through use of the Systems Theory Framework

There remains a need for counselors well-prepared to work with ex-offenders. As counselors aim to meet ethical obligations toward advocacy, they often seek to address social determinants of health (SDOH) challenges. Those working with ex-offenders should be aware of unique employment challenges ex-offenders may face and possess a baseline knowledge of the justice system for pertinent collaboration. This paper provides an explanation of how the Systems Theory Framework may be used to address ex-offenders’ employment-related needs through addressing SDOH challenges and collaborating with the justice system. Implications for employment counselors, counselor educators, and supervisors and steps for future research conclude.     

Interrogating the Learning Sciences as a Design Science: Leveraging Insights from Chinese Philosophy and Chinese Medicine

Design research has been positioned as an important methodological contribution of the learning sciences. Despite the publication of a handbook on the subject, the practice of design research in education remains an eclectic collection of specific approaches implemented by different researchers and research groups. In this paper, I examine the learning sciences as a design science to identify its fundamental goals, methods, affiliations, and assumptions. I argue that inherent tensions arise when attempting to practice design research as an analytic science. Drawing inspiration and insight from Chinese philosophy and the practice of Chinese medicine, I propose that the learning sciences may better attain its claims to science through greater reliance on inductive synthesis rather than linear causal analysis. In so doing, I reposition the endeavor of science making within the metaphysics of process philosophy instead of classical Western philosophy. I suggest that theory building will be strengthened empirically and pragmatically by more careful observation and systematic generalization of the stability patterns of design related phenomena. It also needs to be more situated in its orientation.     

Influences of vowel and tone variation on emergent word knowledge: a cross‐linguistic investigation

To learn words, infants must be sensitive to native phonological contrast. While lexical tone predominates as a source of phonemic contrast in human languages, there has been little investigation of the influences of lexical tone on word learning. The present study investigates infants’ sensitivity to tone mispronunciations in two groups of infants. For one group (Chinese learners), tone is phonemic in their native language, and for the second group (English learners), tone is non‐phonemic and constituted suprasegmental variation. In Experiment 1, English learners were trained on novel word–object pairings and tested on their recognition of correct pronunciations, tone and vowel mispronunciations of these words at 18 and 24 months. In Experiment 2a, bilingual English‐Chinese learners were tested on a similar task translated into Chinese at the same age intervals. Results demonstrate that non‐tonal learners treated tonal and vowel substitutions alike as mispronunciations at 18 months but only treated vowel substitutions as mispronunciations at 24 months. Tonal learners treated both tonal and vowel substitutions as mispronunciations at both ages. In Experiment 2b, bilingual non‐tone language learners were tested on the same set of tasks replicating a similar set of results as monolingual non‐tone language learners (Experiment 1). Findings point to an early predisposition to treat tone as a defining characteristic of words regardless of its lexical relevance at 18 months. Between 18 and 24 months, learners appear to ascribe lexical relevance to tone in a language‐specific manner. The current study identifies the influences of tone variation on memories for newly learned words and the time period during which lexical tone – a highly frequent constituent of human languages – actually becomes lexical for early learners. Findings are contextualized with prevailing models of the developing lexicon.     

Self‐construal and students’ math self‐concept,anxiety and achievement: An examination of achievement goals as mediators

This study examines the role of self‐construal in student learning by testing a mediation model: through math achievement goals, self‐construal predicts math self‐concept and anxiety, which further predict math achievement. A sample of 1196 students from 104 secondary classes in Singapore took a survey and a math achievement test. The results from multi‐group structural equation modelling support measurement invariance and equal path coefficients in the mediation model between boys and girls. Interdependent self‐construal positively predicted mastery approach and avoidance goals, through which interdependent self‐construal had a positive total indirect effect on math anxiety. Independent self‐construal positively predicted mastery approach, performance approach and performance avoidance goals, and through the two approach goals, high independent self‐construal was associated with high math self‐concept. Overall, self‐construal was not associated with math achievement. The findings enhance our understanding of achievement motivation from a sociocultural perspective and help explain East Asian students’ relatively higher anxiety and lower self‐concept in comparison with their Western counterparts as reported in international studies.     

Emigration as Family Strategy in Chinese Context: Emigration from Fuqing,China

This study explores how family characteristics affect the emigration of family members from the city of Fuqing, China, a major migrant-sending area in China. We focus our discussion on three related questions: how family demographic characteristics affect a family’s participation in emigration, the number of family members involved in emigration, and the locational diversification of family members overseas. Our findings show that family income is related to whether the family has any members overseas and their numbers. Second, a larger family is more likely to participate in migration. These findings are consistent with the argument that migration is a joint family decision. Third, effects of demographic characteristics of different generations on emigration indicate again that migration is a family matter. Finally, our Fuqing findings show no clear patterns of family members settling in the same country if more than one member is overseas.     

The Judas Within: A Look at the Sexual Abuse Crisis in the Catholic Church

Drawing from normal accident theory, high reliability theory, and systems theory, we analyze the Charter for the Protection of Children and Young People that is promulgated by the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops in response to the sexual abuses of minors by clergy members. Although the Charter is a step in the right direction, there remain some areas that require immediate attention. In spite of the goodwill processes, the safety of minors must remain the concerted efforts and responsibilities of individuals at all the various levels if the Catholic Church is to prevent further cases of abuse from happening.     

Comparing two career adaptability measures for career construction theory: Relations with boundaryless mindset and protean career attitudes

We examined the constructs underlying the Career Maturity Inventory-Adaptability Form (CMI-C) and the Career Adapt-Abilities Scale (CAAS). Data from 852 university students indicated that the second-order factors for both scales correlate .43, suggesting that they measure different yet related constructs. All three subscales of the CMI-C correlate most with the “concern” subscale of the CAAS rather than with the corresponding subscale. It appears that the CMI-C is a measure of particular career adaptability for choosing a career whereas the CAAS is a global measure of career adaptability for dealing with all of the tasks of vocational development across the life span. Regression analyses show that the CMI-C does not add to the prediction of boundaryless mindset and protean career attitudes over the CAAS. Relationships between the CMI-C and CAAS with entrepreneurial, professional, and leadership career motivation profiles showed that the CAAS is more strongly related to boundaryless mindset and protean career attitudes, while the CMI-C appears to relate to more traditional (professional and leadership) career motivations.