New Concepts for New Dynamics: Generating Theory for the Study of Religious Innovation and Social Change

The Emerging Church movement (ECM) is sociologically interesting—not due to the size of its membership or the centrality of its congregations. Rather, the ECM is significant because it provides an opportunity to generate new concepts for the study religious innovation and social change. Using theoretical language, the ECM consists of institutional entrepreneurs who drive their religiously concerned movement by continually deconstructing and reframing beliefs, practices, and identities from “mainstream” Christianity while at the same time promoting newly formulated and broadly resonant religious imperatives. As Emerging Christians cultivate new or altered religious practices, these must be continually legitimized. Furthermore, their renegotiated beliefs (heterodoxies) require new forms of organization (alternative congregations). Such action is not the work of isolated individuals, nor is it independent of societal conditions. Ultimately, the ECM consists of Emerging Christians who creatively operate through diffuse network structures across wide geographic spaces and among disparate social groups to enact a collective institutional entrepreneurship that seeks to reimagine the assumptions of conventional Christian congregational life.     

Body,culture and cognition: avoiding reductionist temptations / Cuerpo,cultura y cognición: sorteando las tentaciones reduccionistas

The article considers two postulates of Piaget’s epistemology (anti-reductionism and developmental perspective) to analyse three influential perspectives on cognition: nativist, sociocultural and situated cognition. Based on this analysis, we propose two cognitive processes (explicitation and implicitation) that can explain cognitive change from the most elementary and embodied knowledge to more sophisticated and cultural ones. Some empirical examples concerning external representations that support this proposal are discussed.     

Factor structure and internal consistency of the Spanish version of the Parenting Stress Index-Short Form

The aim of this study was to analyze the psychometric properties of the Spanish version of Parenting Stress Index-Short Form. After translating the instrument from English into Spanish using the forward-backward translation method, it was administered to a sample of 129 mothers of children aged between 10 and 39 months olds. The exploratory factor analysis identified two factors: Childrearing Stress and Personal Distress, which accounted for 48.77% of the variance. The internal consistency of these factors was high (Childrearing Stress: .90 and Personal Distress: .87). Implications of these findings and suggestions for future research are discussed.     

Perception of the teaching-learning process and academic achievement in diverse instructional contexts of Higher Education

In Higher Education, performance and Teaching-Learning (T-L) contexts are highly current concerns. Based on the DEDEPRO model, interdependence can be established between instructional contexts and levels of performance as they relate to the T-L process. Partitipants were 2020 pupils from two Spanish universities. Measurements of both variables were used in a quasi-experimental and correlational design. The univariate and causal analyses showed the effect of context on the T-L process and on performance; thus, the interdependent relationships between the latter and perception of the T-L process. Partial interaction effects also appeared, as well as a causal model of academic performance. Results are discussed and implications for the ECTS (European Credit Transfer System) are analyzed.     

The effects of counting blessings on subjective well-being: a gratitude intervention in a Spanish sample

This study examined a gratitude intervention repeating Emmons and McCullough study (2003) in a Spanish sample, Participants were randomly assigned to one of three conditions (gratitude, hassles and any event) and kept daily records during 2 weeks of gratitude, affect, quality of relationships, physical and subjective well-being. We added design features to assess the intervention long-term impact (follow-up measures), and to improve the design control (pre-treatment measures). Following the cited authors' analysis, i.e., comparing groups only in the post-test, we replicated their results, finding differences in positive affect and gratitude between the gratitude condition and the hassles condition. However, when including both the pre and the follow-up measures in the analysis, results were replicated only partially, as the difference in gratitude disappeared. Moreover, the difference in positive affect between groups in the post-test seemed to be influenced mainly by a decrease in positive affect in the hassles group. Post-test differences between groups in positive affect disappeared in the follow-up. Gratitude interventions may have an effect on well-being, but we consider other methods to promote gratitude besides gratitude journals should be tested.     

Humanismo Del Diecisiete En La Postmodernidad Del Veintiuno

It would be possible to be affirmed that the most of the educational goals that modernity assumes, they settled down from the Renaissance. The postmodern age, in its critic to the modern period, demands the recovery of some losses. At the time of fast changes as it happens in the Renaissance, the Humanism originates a fruitful debate. According to the authors protagonists, the controversy became a dialogue plenty of common questions to which we find in the contemporary discussion. The reflection on the thought of one of the most representative and well-known authors, Comenio, it serves to think on the encounter of traditions in Philosophy of Education. He is a thinker who supplies the basis for his educational practice on a Philosophy of education and projects a reform to confront some problems that in the essential are repeated today.      

Subjective Well-Being and Adaptation. The Case of Uruguay

We assess the recent evolution of the quality of life in Uruguay, analysing whether current subjective well-being levels are conditioned by the objective well-being trajectory of each individual. We explore subjective well-being in 3 domains: life, economic situation and housing satisfaction. Although adaptation has been addressed in the empirical literature for developed countries, there is scarce evidence for developing countries due to the lack of suitable panel datasets. In this article, we provide an econometric test of the adaptation hypothesis based on longitudinal data from Uruguay for the years 2004, 2006 and 2011/12 (Estudio Longitudinal de Bienestar en Uruguay). Our main findings show that present levels of life, economic and housing satisfaction are each positively correlated with the corresponding contemporary and lagged objective variable of interest. Thus, we reject the adaptation hypothesis in all the dimensions considered. We also explore the role of social interactions in the 3 subjective well-being dimensions, finding out that average objective well-being of the reference group (either income or crowding) is not associated with individual subjective well-being levels.

     

Mediterranean diet and wellbeing: evidence from a nationwide survey

Objective: Although there is some evidence of the association between specific food groups, such as plant foods, and subjective wellbeing, this is the first study to assess the relationship between adherence to the Mediterranean dietary pattern and subjective wellbeing. Design: Data were collected in 2014–2015, within the Edad con Salud project, a follow-up study of a multistage clustered survey on a representative sample of the population of Spain. The final sample comprised 2397 individuals with ages ranging from 21 to 101 years. Main outcome measures: Experienced wellbeing (positive and negative affect) was measured using the Day Reconstruction Method, and evaluative wellbeing was assessed with the Cantril Self-Anchoring Striving Scale. Results: A higher adherence to the Mediterranean diet showed a small but statistically significant inverse relationship with negative affect (β?=??0.076, p=.001), and direct with evaluative wellbeing (β?=?0.053, p=.015), whereas it was not related to positive affect. Several components of the Mediterranean diet were independently associated with wellbeing. Conclusion: The results suggest that adherence to a dietary pattern such as the Mediterranean diet, and not only the isolated consumption of its components, is associated with a better subjective wellbeing.     

Change of attitudes towards disability in primary school students

In this paper, the development and results of a program are presented, carried out with students in 3rd and 4th grade of primary school, 128 children aged from 8 y 10 years old, 75 assigned to the experimental group and 53 to the control group. In order to assess the changes achieved and whether they were maintained, a pre- and post-treatment Likert-scale of adjectives describing discapacities and a 3-year follow-up measure were applied. As in the previous applications of the program, the results suggest the efficacy of the program, that is, positive changes were achieved in the rating of terms related to disability as well as in the attitudes towards disabled people and these changes were maintained throughout the follow-up. In order to test their influence on attitudes, some variables considered determinants of attitudes toward disability were also contrasted, such as gender, age, acquaintance and experience with the topic of disability, disabled children's integration, and disability type.