Three Naive Questions: Addressed to the Modern Educational Optimism

This paper aims to question anew the popular and supposedly self-evident affirmation of education, in its modern incarnation as in its historical notion. The “naive” questions suggest that we have recently taken for granted that education ought to be for the masses, that it ought to be upbringing, and that it is better than ignorance. Drawing on the tradition that calls such an understanding of education into question, the author shows that the hidden costs of disregarding such reflection end up, camouflaged and smuggled, taxing the current debates regarding generally accepted education strategies. The characteristic feeling of the currently accepted model of education being in chronic crisis is less a testament to an absence of alternative approaches than to a lack of thorough self-reflection.     

Social-Psychological Interventions for Intergroup Reconciliation: An Emotion Regulation Perspective

Intergroup reconciliation is a requirement for lasting peace in the context of intergroup conflicts. In this article, we offer an emotion regulation perspective on social-psychological interventions aimed at facilitating intergroup reconciliation. In the first section of the article, we conceptualize intergroup reconciliation as an emotion-regulation process involving positive affective change and offer a framework that integrates the emotion regulation and intergroup reconciliation literatures. In the sections that follow, we review social-psychological interventions that involve changes in beliefs and identity and assess their effects on specific intergroup emotions pertinent for intergroup reconciliation. More specifically, we focus our discussion on specific reconciliation-oriented intervention strategies and their relation to emotions pertinent for facilitating reconciliation, including intergroup hatred, anger, guilt, hope, and empathy. In the final section, we consider key implications and growth points for the field of intergroup reconciliation.     

Institutional Origins of Subjective Well-Being: Estimating the Effects of Economic Freedom on National Happiness

We exploit the cross-country differences in economic freedom to examine the link between the quality of institutions and subjective well-being. Using Veenhoven’s happiness dataset, the evidence suggests countries with better economic institutions and higher level of economic freedom, captured by the security of property rights, open markets and more limited government, are significantly more likely to experience greater subjective well-being after controlling for structural confounders of national subjective well-being such as income, unemployment, inequality, social capital and life satisfaction. The effect of institutions on cross-national happiness is both significant and robust to different model specifications, estimation techniques and possible sources of endogeneity. Furthermore, our panel data analysis reveals that over time higher levels of economic freedom are associated with decreasing subjective well-being after controlling for state dependence and income.     

The Structure of Adolescent Affective Well-Being: The Case of the PANAS Among Serbian Adolescents

The structure of affective well-being and the relationship between positive affect (PA) and negative affect (NA) have rarely been examined among adolescents. The aim of the present research was to investigate the question of bipolarity versus independence of PA and NA as measured by the PANAS across three studies in adolescent samples. The results of Study 1 (N = 1038) showed that a two-factor structure of the PANAS, with correlated PA and NA and allowed correlated errors between similarly worded items provided the best fit to data. Study 2 included three independent samples (total N = 1071), and showed that PA and NA differed in terms of their relationship to various well-being indicators. Study 3 (N = 482) tested the predictive validity of PA and NA in a 5 month follow-up design, and showed that both PA and NA had independent predictive benefits for depression, risky behaviors and life satisfaction, and that PA had no unique role in the prediction of stress and anxiety, while NA had no unique role in the prediction of academic achievement. The results of the present research provided strong support for the relative independence of PA and NA as measured by the PANAS among adolescents.     

Autobiographical reflections on what it means to experience disruption

Accepting disruption as an inevitable occurrence in life, five nurse-teacher-researchers explore their experience with being disruptive/being disrupted. Reflection on the all-encompassing embodied experience of disruption takes us through a process of exploration and meaning-making. We pause to show what it is like to be in-between the known and unknown in creating a life in academia through stories. Plotlines such as being in-between family and work; transplanted outsider seeking a sense of belonging; going into the chaos while feeling invisible; and self-induced disruption in response to loss illuminate our reflection. The metaphor of the breathturn allows us to reconstruct our experience and to discern possibilities beyond the usual negative connotations.     

The structure of coping styles: a comparative study of croatian sample

The primary aim of this study was to develop a Croatian inventory for assessing coping strategies that people use when under stress. As a basis for this inventory, a translation of the multidimensional coping inventory (COPE) by Carver, Scheier and Weintraub (1989) was used. The second purpose was to compare the results of the original version of the COPE with the translated Croatian version. Three additional scales (Humour, Turning to Religion, and Drug and Alcohol Use) were also analysed. The results were obtained using a sample consisting of undergraduate students (N=403) from the University of Rijeka, Croatia. When comparing the original version of the COPE inventory with the Croatian version, a similar factor structure emerged. The differences obtained are interpreted by taking into account different sociocultural and economic conditions in Croatia and the USA. Copyright © 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Safe Danger – On the Experience of Challenge,Adventure and Risk in Education

This article reconsiders the presence and value of danger in outdoor and adventurous activities and sports in safety-conscious societies, especially in relation to the education of children and youth. Based on an original analysis of the relation between the concepts of ‘risk’ and ‘danger’, we offer an account of the relation between challenge, adventure, risk and danger, and emphasise the importance of teaching risk recognition, risk assessment, risk management and risk avoidance to children and youth, without the necessity of exposing them to jeopardy in dangerous situations. Our conclusion is that ‘Safe Danger’ describes what educators should seek, namely: the educational benefits of the challenges set by risk-taking and the demands of risk-facing, including those in adventurous situations, which are obtainable in the absence of significant danger, and which contribute to risk education. The educational value of adventurous and outdoor pursuits lies elsewhere than in the opportunities that they present for danger-facing, for example in their promotion of self-reliance, confidence, ability to team-work, and especially in their promotion of risk education, as an integral aspect of everyday life planning, as preparation for the day’s adventurous challenges, and as an instrument of task completion.     

How do affected interests support global democracy?

In this paper, I critique one way of arguing for global democracy on grounds of affected interests and defend another. A famous argument for global democracy, which I call the Demos-Based Argument, attempts to justify global democracy based on the claim that affected interests vindicate individual claims to democratic participation or representation. I analyze and evaluate the Demos-Based Argument and consider different ways of interpreting and justifying its crucial premise: the Principle of Affected Interests. The result is that the argument fails. One lesson of the discussion of the Demos-Based Argument is that the most promising, though eventually unsuccessful, justification of the Principle of Affected Interests is utilitarian. Given the failure of the Demos-Based Argument, the question suggests itself if there is another way to argue for global democracy on utilitarian grounds. I will outline a promising alternative argument for global democracy, which I call the Direct Argument. Like the Demos-Based Argument, the Direct Argument is based on affected interests and ultimately on utilitarianism, but unlike the former, the Direct Argument avoids the detour over stating a criterion for individual claims to democratic participation and representation.     

One test,five scoring procedures: different ways of approaching the cognitive reflection test

Although the cognitive reflection test (CRT) represents a frequently used instrument within the field of judgement and decision-making, its scope and detailed characteristics are still not well understood. Therefore, the present article discusses 5 different ways of scoring the CRT that include the regular CRT scoring procedure (CRT-Regular), adding up the intuitive answers (CRT-Intuitive), calculating the proportion of intuitive in total incorrect answers (CRT-Proportion Intuitive), scoring only non-intuitive answers irrespective of their correctness (CRT-Reflection) and calculating the proportion of correct in total non-intuitive answers (CRT-Calculation). We conducted 2 studies aimed at investigating the associations among these scoring techniques and their relationships with thinking dispositions, specifically the need for cognition, faith in intuition, superstitious thinking, maximising and post-choice regret. The results indicate that thinking dispositions play a modest role in explaining the performance on the CRT. The specific associations among the investigated dispositions and different CRT scoring techniques are discussed.