Post-16 course choice: A challenge for guidance

Some of the findings of a study of young people who had left post-16 education prematurely or switched courses are discussed. The experiences of those who had switched or dropped out from courses once only are compared with those who changed courses several times. The main influences on the young people's decisions, the extent to which they felt prepared for their transitions, and their views of career education and guidance before the end of year 11 and at their post-16 destination, are examined. The findings provide some support for the beneficial effects of career education, but for many it seemed that career education and guidance had little impact. Parents, teachers, friends and the judgements of the young people themselves appeared to be more influential than guidance practitioners on choice of destination. It is argued that it may be unrealistic to expect guidance alone to fully prepare young people for post-compulsory education, particularly when institutional constraints often require premature closures on choices. Some respondents recognised this, and in some ways their limited expectations of career guidance were realistic. It is also argued that from young people's perspectives, at least, switching courses often has positive benefits.     

Pathophobia,Vices, and Illness

ABSTRACT

I introduce the concept of pathophobia to capture the range of morally objectionable forms of treatment to which somatically ill persons are subjected. After distinguishing this concept from sanism and ableism, I argue that the moral wrongs of pathophobia are best analysed using a framework of vice ethics. To that end I describe five clusters of pathophobic vices and failings, illustrating each with examples from three influential illness narratives.     

Intellectual Humility,Confidence, and Argumentation

In this paper, I explore the relationship of virtue, argumentation, and philosophical conduct by considering the role of the specific virtue of intellectual humility in the practice of philosophical argumentation. I have three aims: first, to sketch an account of this virtue; second, to argue that it can be cultivated by engaging in argumentation with others; and third, to problematize this claim by drawing upon recent data from social psychology. My claim is that philosophical argumentation can be conducive to the cultivation of virtues, including humility, but only if it is conceived and practiced in appropriately ‘edifying’ ways.     

Expanding transformative experience

We develop a broader, more fine‐grained taxonomy of forms of transformative experience, inspired by the work of L. A. Paul. Our vulnerability to such experiences arises, we argue, due to the vulnerability, dependence, and affliction intrinsic to the human condition. We use this trio to distinguish a variety of positively, negatively, and ambivalently valenced forms of epistemically and/or personally transformative experiences. Moreover, we argue that many transformative experiences can arise gradually and cumulatively, unfolding over the course of longer periods of time.     

Young People's Perceptions of their Occupational Decision-Making

In an attempt to discover how young people perceive the processes by which their occupational preferences are formed, semi-structured interviews were carried out with sixteen 15-year-old school-children. Taken together with the results of other work carried out by the author, the results provided some empirical support for the three ways in which Super sees matching of self and occupational concepts as occurring: identification, experience in a role, and awareness of oneself and of occupations. The interviews also revealed the powerful role which the young people perceived significant others as playing in their career development. Six ways in which the influence of significant others was transmitted are identified.     

Attention, rehearsal, and memory for serial order

In three experiments, subjects attended to one of two simultaneous nine-digit sequences, presented binaurally in different voices (one male, one female). Substantial repetition effects (defined as gains in immediate memory performance for previously presented sequences relative to novel ones) were found for two exposure conditions: (a) one that required reproduction of the full sequence on each exposure (Experiment 1), and (b) one that required recall of a different two-digit subsequence on each exposure (Experiment 2). In Experiment 3, the following conditions produced no repetition effects, even though tests had substantial power to detect small effects: 10 consecutive presentations in the unattended voice; 4 prior presentations in a task that required attention to each digit as it was presented (but not to digit order); and 4 prior presentations in a task that required attention to digit order during their presentations. These results, together with those of previous studies, support the conclusion that repetition effects on immediate memory occur only with procedures that encourage covert rehearsal of full-sequence order on each exposure. These findings also limit the generality of others' conclusions that event order is automatically encoded for attended events, and extend previous findings showing unattended exposures to be without effect on recall measures.