Employability capacities and organisational commitment foci of human resource professionals: An exploratory study

This study explored the relationship between employees’ employability capacities and their organisational commitment foci. A convenience sample of 196 South African human resource professionals participated in the study, consisting of 73% females and 88% black African people, predominantly within their early career stages (aged > 45 years). Data on individuals’ employability capacities and organisational commitment were collected via questionnaires. Canonical correlation analysis (CCA) was performed to assess the association between the variables of employability capacities and organisational commitment foci. Participants’ lifelong learning capacities (goal-directed behaviour and continuous learning orientation) were positively associated with their career commitment. This finding suggests that a strong lifelong orientation is likely to increase involvement in one’s occupation within the organisation, which contributes to organisational commitment. Lifelong learning capacities appear important to human resource professionals’ career development within their employer organisation.     

Reflections on a Community Psychology Setting and the Future of the Field

The 50th anniversary of the Swampscott Conference offers an opportunity to reflect on a community psychology setting, The Consultation Center at Yale, that was formed in response to the 1963 Community Mental Health Act and the 1965 Swampscott Conference. The Center has flourished as a community psychology setting for practice, research, and training for 39 of the 50 years since Swampscott. Its creation and existence over this period offers an opportunity for reflection on the types of settings needed to sustain the field into the future.     

Effects of self-generated versus experimenter-provided cues on the representation of future events

Most experimental studies of prospection focused on episodic forms of future events prompted by means of verbal cues. However, there is evidence suggesting that future events differ considerably according to whether they are produced in response to external, experimenter-provided verbal cues or they are self-generated. In the present study, we compared the quality, the phenomenal characteristics, the temporal distribution, and the content of imagined events prompted by experimenter-provided cues (i.e., cue-words and short verbal sentences) or elicited by means of verbal cues that were self-generated in an autobiographical fluency task. The results showed that future events prompted by means of self-generated cues contained fewer event-specific details than future events prompted by experimenter-provided cues. However, future events elicited by means of self-generated and by experimenter-provided cues did not differ with respect to their phenomenal characteristics. The temporal distribution and the thematic content of future representations were also affected by the type of cue used to elicit prospection. These results offer a holistic view of the properties of future thinking and suggest that the content and the characteristics of envisioned future events may be affected by the method used to elicit prospection.     

Dual Processing of Open- and Closed-Class Words

A series of articles in the past two decades has suggested differential processing of open- and closed-class lexical items by normal adults. Difficulties in replicating a crucial study (Bradley, 1978), however, have weakened the dual route hypothesis. We matched 16 French open-class items to 16 closed-class items for phonological structure, word length, and relative word frequency. Three agrammatic aphasics were asked to read each word in isolation and in a sentence context. Error analysis revealed strikingly more phonological errors on closed-class than open-class items. Dysfluencies were greater on closed-class items and contributed to greater overall reading time for the closed-class words, consistent with a two-route model for the production of closed- and open-class lexical items in Broca's aphasics and, thus, normals.     

Case illustration: Moving along…and,is change gradual or sudden?

A sequence of analytic sessions of a professional woman in her forties is used to illustrate the moving along process. The material shows a gradual change, where the patient's experience of her sense of agency is altered through a particular kind of interactive sequence. The example is intended to make it clear that the group's view of how change occurs is not strictly or primarily in terms of sudden changes, and that the problem of assessing moments of meeting as well as quantitative and qualitative shifts is one with which the group continues to struggle. © 1998 Michigan Association for Infant Mental Health     

Explaining early moral hypocrisy: Numerical cognition promotes equal sharing behavior in preschool‐aged children

Recent work has documented that despite preschool‐aged children's understanding of social norms surrounding sharing, they fail to share their resources equally in many contexts. Here we explored two hypotheses for this failure: an insufficient motivation hypothesis and an insufficient cognitive resources hypothesis. With respect to the latter, we specifically explored whether children's numerical cognition—their understanding of the cardinal principle—might underpin their abilities to share equally. In Experiment 1, preschoolers’ numerical cognition fully mediated age‐related changes in children's fair sharing. We found little support for the insufficient motivation hypothesis—children stated that they had shared fairly, and failures in sharing fairly were a reflection of their number knowledge. Numerical cognition did not relate to children's knowledge of the norms of equality (Experiment 2). Results suggest that the knowledge–behavior gap in fairness may be partly explained by the differences in cognitive skills required for conceptual and behavioral equality.     

Adorno: Cultural Education and Resistance

In recent years, culture has become significantly politicized, or conspicuously de-politicized, in different parts of the UK, making its appearance in education policy of pivotal interest and ripe for critical attention. From the vantage point of Theodor Adorno’s work on the culture industry and his writings on the work of the teacher, I argue that cultural education is a site where something crucial and distinctive takes place. Within the Enlightenment tradition, critical self-reflection and resistance to heteronymous ways of thinking are core aims of education. Adorno’s contribution to an understanding of these aims leads us to consider the importance of ‘live contact with the warmth of things’ as essential to ethical and intellectual life. The kindly tolerance of the pluralist ideal is now being teased and goaded by acts of terror and widespread concern about personal and social security. At such an unstable juncture, an understanding of cultural education as an experience of ‘incorrigible plurality’ enriches and informs the beleaguered ideal of pluralism and points a way forward in troubled times.     

La formation professionnelle en alternance,un lieu de transmission des normes de genre?

This paper develops the issue of gender in the Swiss dual system of vocational education and training (VET). It is based on the results of a study on VET dropouts. The purpose is to consider the VET system as a place of gender construction. First, the paper underlines the learning made by both boys and girls of the gender division of labour. Secondly, the paper focuses on the transmission of gender norms experimented by boys in traditional occupations. Thirdly, this transmission is also analysed in the female experiences not only in traditional occupations, but also in pioneer careers. These analyses give us the opportunity to understand that gender socialization takes place at the same time as professional socialization.