Critical Consciousness and the Christian Conscience: Making the Necessary Connections Between Faith-Based Learning and Critical Pedagogy

Critical pedagogy is a by product of postmodernism, which argues that reality is always subjective, and truth is identified through each person's experiences and environment. Can critical pedagogy be applied to faith-based education? The authors claim that it can. First, the theories and practices of critical pedagogy have strengthened faith-based education by emphasizing self-directed students, the teacher as facilitator, and well-organized learning experiences. In fact, Jesus knew that learning required an active knowledge-creating process through one's full participation in the class. He always encouraged his disciples to transcend superficial understanding. Jesus knew that learning was not simply memorizing facts or reciting the Law of Moses. His beliefs challenged the passive learning paradigm of memorizing content established by the Jewish leaders. This article concludes that both critical pedagogists and Christian teachers would endorse problem-posing methods to encourage full engagement and effective teachers' dispositions in the classroom.     

THE INFLUENCE OF TRAINEE ATTITUDES ON TRAINING EFFECTIVENESS: TEST OF A MODEL

Studies of the influence of trainee characteristics on training effectiveness have focused on the ability level necessary to learn program content. Motivational and environmental influences on training effectiveness have received little attention. The purpose of this study was to test an exploratory model describing the influence on trainee career and job attitudes on training outcomes (learning, behavior change, performance improvement). Results of the study suggest that job involvement and career planning are antecedents of learning and behavior change. Future research directions and practical implications of the results are discussed.     

Response

This essay is a response to the comments and critique, included in this issue, of Claudia Card and Marilyn Friedman to my book, A Passion for Friends. In this response, I emphasize the crucial distinction between female separation and dissociation from the world, so as to register the difference between the positive and negative separations in which women are engaged. I also expand the discussion of individuality and individualism. The latter has arisen within the context of a feminist liberal campaign for sexual liberation which defends, among other things, sadomasochism, prostitution, pornography, and surrogacy.     

A Developmental Model for Family Systems

This paper reviews the historical context of concepts of development and some of the problems of applying them to family systems. A model of family systems development is presented that emphasizes changes in family shape through the individual life cycle. Some clinical uses of the model are described.     

Attachment styles and close relationships: A four-year prospective study

A longitudinal study of 177 adults examined the stability of adult attachment styles and of romantic relationships over a 4-year period. Findings included the following: (a) attachment styles were highly stable over time; (b) Time 1 attachment style was a significant predictor of Time 2 relationship status, but (c) this effect was mediated by concurrent attachment style at Time 2; (d) secure respondents were less likely than insecure respondents to report one or more breakups during the 4-year interval, but (e) paradoxically, ambivalent respondents were just as likely as secure respondents to be in a relationship with the same partner they had identified 4 years earlier; and (f) attachment stability was moderated to some extent by the experience of breakup or initiation of new relationships during the interim. Respondents' ability to recall their previous attachment style was also examined. Methodological and theoretical implications are discussed, particularly with respect to the conceptualization of attachment styles as traits versus reflections of current relationship status.     

Jealousy and the nature of beliefs about infidelity: Tests of competing hypotheses about sex differences in the United States,Korea, and Japan

The different adaptive problems faced by men and women over evolutionary history led evolutionary psychologists to hypothesize and discover sex differences in jealousy as a function of infidelity type. An alternative hypothesis proposes that beliefs about the conditional probabilities of sexual and emotional infidelity account for these sex differences. Four studies tested these hypotheses. Study 1 tested the hypotheses in an American sample (N = 1,122) by rendering the types of infidelity mutually exclusive. Study 2 tested the hypotheses in an American sample (N = 234) by asking participants to identify which aspect of infidelity was more upsetting when both forms occurred, and by using regression to identify the unique contributions of sex and beliefs. Study 3 replicated Study 2 in a Korean sample (N = 190). Study 4 replicated Study 2 in a Japanese sample (N = 316). Across the studies, the evolutionary hypothesis, but not the belief hypothesis, accounted for sex differences in jealousy when the types of infidelity are rendered mutually exclusive; sex differences in which aspect of infidelity is more upsetting when both occur; significant variance attributable to sex, after controlling for beliefs; sex-differentiated patterns of beliefs; and the cross-cultural prevalence of all these sex differences.     

When the Going Gets Tough, Do the Tough Ask for Help? Help Seeking and Power Motivation in Organizations

Individuals do not seek help, even when help is needed and available, because help seeking implies incompetence and dependence, and therefore is related to powerlessness. It was hypothesized that gender, status, and organizational norms affect the importance of maintaining and accruing power, which in turn affect help seeking behaviors. A laboratory and a field study showed that there was more help seeking between equal-status than unequal-status individuals. Further, both studies revealed that males sought more help in collective than individualistic organizational norms, though the trend was not apparent for females. These results shed light on the psychological mechanisms underlying help seeking behaviors and have practical implications for developing steps to foster help seeking in organizations.     

ORGANIZATIONAL RECRUITING AS MARKETING MANAGEMENT: AN INTERDISCIPLINARY STUDY OF ENGINEERING GRADUATES

With the intent of encouraging interdisciplinary research, this study applies principles, theories, and practices of marketing management to examine engineering recruitment as a process of "job marketing." Six hypotheses concerning campus recruiters and strategic recruiting issues were proposed and investigated through a national survey of 242 graduating engineers representing five engineering fields. Survey responses revealed that both overall satisfaction with recruiting processes and likelihood of job acceptance were significantly related to recruiter interpersonal skills and interview information provided about compensation/benefits, job/career, and security/success issues. Further, student satisfaction with recruiting processes was significantly related to recruiter/job applicant similarity in gender and educational characteristics. Contrary to conventional inferences of recruiting research, students did not respond more favorably to line management or engineering recruiters than to personnel representatives. Implications of these findings are identified and discussed in terms of both the marketing and management literatures.     

A COMPARISON OF TECHNIQUES WHICH TEST FOR JOB DIFFERENCES

There has been a recent trend in research seeking the most appropriate statistical technique for determining job similarities/differences. Monte Carlo methods were used to analyze more closely the repeated measures analysis of variance and the multivariate analysis of variance in order to add further insight into the viability of these techniques for this purpose. The conventional univariate analysis of variance, the ε-adjusted univariate F test, and the ε-adjusted univariate F test were compared to three multivariate tests (Roy's largest-root criterion, Wilk's likelihood ratio, and the Pillai-Barlett trace) in terms of power and control for Type I error when (1) circularity and homogeneity were met, (2) homogeneity was met but circularity was violated, (3) homogeneity was violated but circularity was met, and (4) both homogeneity and circularity were violated. The efficacy of the techniques was shown to be contingent upon whether the assumptions were met or not. The univariate test proved to be the better technique when circularity was met. The multivariate technique proved to be the better test when homogeneity was met while circularity was violated. The results were mixed when both circularity and homogeneity were violated. Guidelines for selecting a statistical technique which tests for job differences are offered.