Meaningful patterns of activity amongst the long‐term inner city unemployed: a qualitative study

A number of studies have sought to establish the social psychological factors involved in the maintenance of active lifestyles during long‐term unemployment. The aim of this study was to describe and account for the development and maintenance of different patterns of activity, with reference to their perceived meaningfulness. This was undertaken with a sample of Birmingham's inner city, long‐term unemployed population recruited from three inner city Jobcentres, including men and women, and White, Asian and African Caribbean participants (N = 24). Interviews were conducted using a semi‐structured interview guide. Using the qualitative software program, NUD.IST, the data were analysed according to the principles of the grounded theory approach. Activities were characterized as: domestic; educational; work‐like; socializing; and none. A model of meaningful activity in the context of formal unemployment was developed. The main components of the model were: features of formal employment that inhibited participants' engagement in it; the requirements for personal meaningful activity (challenging activity, effort and commitment, and being valued by others); the consequences of meaningful activity (opportunities for self‐determination and self‐development, and achievement, competence, and confidence) and consolidating factors (social comparison, self‐appraisal, religious and political beliefs, and social support). Theories of unemployment of Jahoda, Warr, and Fryer are considered in the light of the present findings. Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Treatment, Age, and Time-Related Predictors of Behavioral Outcome in Pediatric Brain Tumor Survivors

The research has shown that children surviving cancer are at risk for long-term emotional and behavioral problems secondary to the cumulative effects of cranial irradiation and chemotherapy. The purpose of this study was to investigate the emotional and behavioral outcome of children diagnosed with brain tumor and treated with cranial irradiation and chemotherapy by looking at the association between treatment, time, age, and cognitive-related variables on externalizing and internalizing behaviors at 3 years posttreatment. Fifty-four brain tumor survivors were administered a neuropsychological test battery, whereas the parents filled out the CBCL and Conners' Parent Rating Scale. The results indicate that chemotherapy treatment with vincristine, cytoxan, cisplantinum, and/or VP16 was related to poorer internalizing and externalizing behavioral outcome, especially attention, social withdrawal, and anxious–depressive symptomatology. Age at time of diagnosis or treatment, time since discontinuation of treatment, type and/or total dose of radiation therapy was not significantly correlated with any of the behavioral outcome scales. Verbal memory and learning deficits accounted for a significant portion of the variance in social withdrawal, whereas lower scores in overall intellectual functioning and verbal fluency was related to disturbances in attention, inhibition, and social functioning. The findings suggest that children treated with 1 or a combination of any of the aforementioned chemotherapy agents who exhibit declines in intellectual functioning and memory are at increased risk for long-term behavioral problems 3 years after treatment cessation. These findings support the importance for early psychotherapeutic and supportive intervention services immediately after treatment cessation, with the goal of circumventing these potentially debilitating emotional problems.     

Poem as Proposition in the Analects: A Whiteheadian reading of a Confucian sensibility[1]

I suggest that ubiquitous references made by Confucius to poetic songs in the Analects reveal an important aspect of his philosophy. This aspect involves the assumption that things in the world “resonate” with one another. Using elements of Alfred North Whitehead's thought, as well as metaphysical insights from the Han Dynasty text, Huainanzi, I first present an aesthetic theory along with a supporting cosmological vision that enhances our appreciation of this trait in the Confucian world. With these preliminaries in mind, I approach the Analects itself. I will isolate the term xing, or “stimulation “, and demonstrate how this term allows us to understand the function of poetry for the early Confucians. I conclude that poetry was thought to behave much like what Whitehead called “propositions”, and that this function assumes a world with certain basic tendencies normally associated with Daoist cosmology.     

Counterintuitive Religious Ideas and Metaphoric Thinking: An Event‐Related Brain Potential Study

It has been shown that counterintuitive ideas from mythological and religious texts are more acceptable than other (non‐religious) world knowledge violations. In the present experiment we explored whether this relates to the way they are interpreted (literal vs. metaphorical). Participants were presented with verification questions that referred to either the literal or a metaphorical meaning of the sentence previously read (counterintuitive religious, counterintuitive non‐religious and intuitive), in a block‐wise design. Both behavioral and electrophysiological results converged. At variance to the literal interpretation of the sentences, the induced metaphorical interpretation specifically facilitated the integration (N400 amplitude decrease) of religious counterintuitions, whereas the semantic processing of non‐religious counterintuitions was not affected by the interpretation mode. We suggest that religious ideas tend to operate like other instances of figurative language, such as metaphors, facilitating their acceptability despite their counterintuitive nature.     

The Behavioral Dyscontrol Scale and Functional Status Among Elderly Medical and Surgical Rehabilitation Patients

This research was conducted in a sample of 150 older adults (mean age = 78.0) who were inpatients receiving rehabilitation services for a variety of medical and postsurgical conditions. The purpose of the study was to test the hypothesis that the Behavioral Dyscontrol Scale (BDS), a measure of the ability to use intentions to guide purposeful activity, would be strongly associated with concurrent functional status after controlling for age, sex, education, severity of pain, medical comorbidity, depression (Geriatric Depression Scale), and general mental status (Mini Mental State Exam [MMSE]). Functional status was assessed by rehabilitaion nurses' ratings of patients on 11 individual Activities of Daily Living (ADL) items and the Barthel Index. The hypothesis, tested by means of multiple regression analysis, was supported by the results. The BDS was the independent variable most strongly associated with all 11 ADL items and the Barthel Index. The MMSE contributed significantly to none of the models. Other covariates made minimal contributions to the variance shared with functional ability. Consistent with prior results in other samples, the ability to use intentions to guide purposeful behavior appears to be an important contributor to everyday functioning among older adults.     

Designing Translingual Pedagogies: Exploring Pedagogical Translation through a Classroom Teaching Experiment

This study examined how middle-grades language arts teachers learned to integrate a small-group collaborative translation activity into their teaching practice. We discuss what we call pedagogical translation as an emergent social practice, in which translation routines that are familiar to multilingual students may be leveraged toward instructional goals in a mainstream language arts class. The data were drawn from a classroom teaching experiment iteration of a larger design-based research study, whose goal is to create a fully developed instructional protocol useful to all teachers in linguistically diverse language arts classrooms, but especially teachers with limited or emerging proficiencies in languages other than English. We position pedagogical translation as a paradigm case of translingual pedagogy—instructional approaches designed to leverage the full range of emerging bilinguals’ linguistic resources—and we focus our analysis on the agentive participation of teachers as they integrate new translingual routines into their instructional practice. Using a conjecture mapping procedure, we describe the evolution of an instructional theory for how pedagogical translation can be leveraged toward literacy learning objectives. We present qualitative narratives describing how participating teachers made locally situated design choices that meshed new routines with existing instructional practice, documenting trajectories of teacher participation as agentive designers of translingual pedagogy.