Policies Essential to Improved Effectiveness in Employment Counseling

The number of college graduates is expected to glut the job market during the next several years. The causes of this surplus are both internal and external to educational systems. Secondary schools, colleges, and universities are uncertain about their goals and objectives, particularly in relation to effective investment in human resources to improve productivity as contrasted with a preoccupation with immediate consumer satisfaction. The externals—occupational data and forecasting—are unreliable for several reasons. Counselors should seek educational system reform while increasing their efforts to attain more effective methods and tools for career counseling and job placement. Apathy in the face of growing budgetary constraints will encourage adverse reaction toward counseling activities.     

Constructing Maternal Thinking

Sara Ruddick's Maternal Thinking represents a great contribution to moral philosophy—in particular, by bringing women's “private” virtues into the public sphere. However, there remain problems in the analysis which need to be addressed: How can one possibly generalize about the practice of mothering from one, necessarily limited, perspective, given the facts of cultural diversity? Is Ruddick's normative account of mothering congruent with the reflective judgments of others? Is her account of the transformation of parochial mothering into feminist peace work viable? After exploring these three questions, this reviewer calk, with Ruddkk, for the telling of more maternal stories, from different cultural, racial and economic perspectives.     

The elementary school: training ground for sex role stereotypes

“Sexism starts with kindergarten activities in which little girls are directed fo the housekeeping corner, while boys are steered toward blocks and trucks.”     

Do Threatening Messages Change Intentions to Give Up Tobacco Smoking? The Role of Argument Framing and Pictures of a Healthy Mouth Versus an Unhealthy Mouth1

Do preventive‐behavior framing and outcomes of action framing moderate behavioral intention to stop smoking when health messages are illustrated by pictures? We manipulated arguments about preventive action (presence or absence), as well as arguments about the outcome of action (gain or loss), and the pictures that illustrated outcome action (healthy or unhealthy mouths). Behavioral intention was higher when pictures of unhealthy mouths were presented, regardless of framing, and when pictures of healthy mouths illustrated the presence of preventive action. Applications of this study on tobacco risk health campaigns based on text and pictures are discussed.     

Low Subjective Social Status Promotes Ruminative Coping1

Correlational research has shown that lower social standing is associated with poorer health, but it is unknown if this association is causal. Two experiments tested whether randomly assigned low subjective social status would promote ruminative coping, a mechanism leading to the development of poor health outcomes. Participants were college females, split about evenly between Blacks and Whites. Experiment 1 (N = 39) found those imagining themselves at the bottom (vs. top) of a social ladder showed more ruminative coping using rater‐assessed responses. Experiment 2 (N = 42) replicated these results, extended them with a self‐report outcome measure, and demonstrated that negative affect did not mediate between subjective social status and ruminative coping. Across both experiments, race/ethnicity had no effect.     

The Application of Chaos Theory to the Career‐Plateaued Worker

This article uses chaos theory as a way to conceptualize the career‐plateaued worker. After discussing the literature regarding both chaos theory and career plateau, it applies some of the principles of chaos theory to career‐plateaued workers on the basis of a case study. The article concludes that chaos theory provides career practitioners a useful application for working with this type of client.