Early orthographic influences on phonemic awareness tasks: Evidence from a preschool training study

Experienced readers show influences of orthographic knowledge on tasks ostensibly tapping phonemic awareness. Here we draw on data from an experimental training study to demonstrate that even preschoolers show influences of their emerging orthographic abilities in such tasks. A total of 40 children were taught some letter-sound correspondences but not others. A selective effect of this training was found on their phonemic awareness task performance for the trained items. These findings point to the multidetermined nature of performance on tasks normally considered as measuring phonemic awareness and have implications for theories of the role of phonemic awareness in reading acquisition.     

Integrating complementary and alternative therapies into psychological practice: A qualitative analysis

Although complementary and alternative therapies (CATs) are utilised widely for treating psychological disorders, little research has examined psychologists' beliefs about integrating CAT into psychological practice. Six practicing psychologists and six psychology students were interviewed about their CAT integration beliefs, in particular integrating CAT into clinical practice via recommending CATs, offering referrals to CAT practitioners, or undertaking training to utilise CATs within psychological practice. Guided broadly from a theory of planned behaviour perspective, participants raised a number of costs and benefits, discussed referent groups who would influence their decisions, and suggested motivators and barriers for integration. A number of additional themes were raised, including risks, such as the possibility of litigation and the need for clear Society guidelines, as most participants were unclear about what constitutes appropriate practice. Identifying these themes serves as an important initial step to informing discussion and policy for this emerging practice issue within psychology.     

An Examination of the Psychologists' Attitudes Towards Complementary and Alternative Therapies Scale Within a Practitioner Sample

This study assessed the validity of a scale measuring psychologists' attitudes towards complementary and alternative therapies and compared the attitudes of psychologists with a previous sample of psychology students. The scale, derived from existing measures for medical professionals and previously tested on a sample of psychology students, was completed by practising psychologists (N = 122). The data were factor analysed, and three correlated subscales were identified, assessing the perceived importance of knowledge about available therapies, attitudes towards integration with psychological practice, and concerns about associated risks of use. This structure was similar, but not identical, to that found in a previous sample of psychology students; however, psychologists expressed more concern for risks associated with integration and were less likely to hold a positive attitude towards integration. This scale will be useful in gauging changes in psychologists' attitudes towards integrative practice over time.     

Designing Programs with a Purpose: To Promote Civic Engagement for Life

Curricular and co-curricular civic engagement activities and programs are analyzed in terms of their capacity to contribute to a common set of outcomes associated with nurturing civic-minded graduates: academic knowledge, familiarity with volunteering and nonprofit sector, knowledge of social issues, communication skills, diversity skills, self-efficacy, and intentions to be involved in communities. Different programs that promote civic-mindedness, developmental models, and assessment strategies that can contribute to program enhancement are presented.     

Assessing the impact of healthy work organization intervention

This research evaluates a healthy work organization intervention implemented in a retail setting. Using a participatory process, employee teams in 11 intervention stores developed customized plans for improving work organization at their sites. Ten comparable stores served as controls. Employee surveys were administered prior to the intervention and twice again at 12‐month intervals. Business results were compiled monthly for each store. The baseline data were used by the teams to identify needs and establish action priorities for their stores. Most study outcomes declined across time for all stores, due primarily to internal corporate events and a generally adverse economic environment. However, the intervention process appeared to buffer some of these declines; intervention stores fared better in terms of selected aspects of organizational climate and psychological work adjustment. Intervention stores also performed better than controls on general indices of perceived health and safety and two of the four business outcomes: employee turnover and sales per labour hour. These results are discussed in terms of the challenges involved in evaluating organizational‐level interventions in work settings.     

Changing career and changing identity: how do teacher career changers exercise agency in identity construction?

The quest to understand what it means to ‘become’ a teacher and the conditions in which such aspirations can be translated into lived experience, continues to exercise teacher educators and researchers alike. Whilst the literature points towards the importance of developing teacher identity, little attention has been given to understanding the transitional processes of individuals coming into teaching at a later point in their working lives. The research reported here was part of a wider project investigating the experiences of early career science teachers. In this study we follow one mature, highly qualified science graduate as she moved through initial teacher education and beyond into her first teaching post. Drawing on theories of identity and self-verification, the analysis reveals how disparity between strongly-held archetypal teacher images and socially constructed teacher identity played out and led this teacher to step away from her new career. Fostering a strong sense of self-efficacy is suggested as critical in supporting mid-career changers in making durable adjustments to new working roles and contexts of teaching.     

Do workers who experience conflict between the work and family domains hit a “glass ceiling?”: A meta-analytic examination

Based in Conservation of Resources (COR; Hobfoll, 1989) and self-verification (Swann, 1987) theories, we argue that when workers experience conflict between the work and family domains, this should have implications for evaluations of their work performance and ultimately affect more “objective” career outcomes such as salary and hierarchical level attained, as well as the attitudinal outcome of career satisfaction. Our meta-analysis of 96 studies, for a combined sample size of 32,783, found that both work-to-family conflict (WFC) as well as family-to-work conflict (FWC) negatively impacted self-rated as well as manager-rated work performance. And our structural equation model found that WFC and FWC were negatively related to career satisfaction and hierarchical level attained. But while WFC was negatively related to salary, FWC was positively related to salary.     

Contextual influences on acculturation processes: The roles of family,community and society

The paper outlines the major approaches to the psychological study of acculturation, drawing particular attention to the importance of context. Three significant contexts are highlighted: family, ethnic community, and society/nation. New perspectives from our evolving program of acculturation research are introduced to illustrate contextual influences on acculturation, and future directions for empirical work are recommended.     

Negotiating Dominant Masculinity Ideology: Strategies Used by Gay, Bisexual and Questioning Male Adolescents

In the context of a U.S. dominant masculinity ideology, which devalues men who are not heterosexually identified, many gay, bisexual and questioning (GBQ) adolescent males must develop their own affirming and health-promoting sense of masculinity. In order to promote the well-being of GBQ young men, exploration of their reactions and responses to dominant images of masculinity is needed. We qualitatively analyzed interviews with 39 GBQ African American, Latino, and European American male adolescents (15–23 years old). Participants reported a range of responses to traditional masculinity ideologies, most of which centered on balancing presentations of masculine and feminine characteristics. Negotiation strategies served a variety of functions, including avoiding anti-gay violence, living up to expected images of masculinity, and creating unique images of personhood free of gender role expectations. These data suggest a complex picture of GBQ male adolescents’ management of masculinity expectations and serve as a basis for culturally and developmentally specific HIV prevention programs.     

Integrating the most unintuitive empirical observations of 2007 in the domain of personality and social psychology into a unified framework

Two obstacles impede the development of productive theories in personality, social, and organizational psychology. First, the distinct frameworks are seldom integrated; the various theories sometimes yield incompatible implications. Second, because many findings in these fields seem intuitive, these observations do not augment the validity of these theories. To override these issues, this paper integrates the 70 most unintuitive findings of 2007 into a unified framework, derived from personality systems interaction theory. Specifically, 10 participants extracted the most unintuitive observations from 17 scholarly journals. These findings were reconciled within a single framework that generates 41 testable propositions. The framework assumes that an associative self system, underpinned by a vast network of schemas, governs behavior as well as enhances intuition, engagement, creativity, and cooperation. When individuals experience a threat, this system is inhibited, unless the requisite defense mechanisms to accommodate potential hazards have been developed. Furthermore, individuals attempt to distance themselves from unassailable threats, which activate an analytical system that formulates plans that could accommodate future contingencies. These plans are retained in memory or executed if individuals have acquired sufficient confidence.