作为社会和文化情境的同伴圈子对儿童社会能力发展的影响

基于同伴圈子的相似性假设探讨同伴圈子的形成、圈子社会情境对儿童社会能力发展的促进作用, 以及圈子文化背景对圈子社会化过程的调节作用。选取某城乡结合部一小学3至5年级898名儿童作为被试进行一年的跟踪调查, 其中在第一年当地城市儿童占36.5%, 当地农村儿童占48.8%, 流动儿童占10.4%。学生在第一和第二年都完成《班级戏剧》和《社会认知地图》问卷。研究结果表明：(1)在个体层面上, 圈子成员的社交性、亲社会性、自主性以及同伴接纳显著高于孤立者。城市儿童的自主性显著高于农村和流动儿童, 后两者之间则无显著差异。亲社会性在性别和文化背景方面存在显著的交互作用。(2)儿童会依据社会能力的相似性来组成同伴圈子, 且不同圈子之间存在显著差异。儿童也愿意与不同文化背景的同伴交往, 形成不同类型社会文化背景的同伴圈子。(3)儿童的社交性和自主性随着同伴圈子相应能力的提高而呈正向发展趋势。(4)同伴圈子对个体社交性和自主性发展的影响因圈子所注重的社会文化准则的差异而有所不同。农村－城市圈子比农村－流动圈子对儿童社交性发展的影响明显更大些; 农村圈子的儿童自主性水平更趋于随圈子自主性的提高而正向发展。     

A longitudinal study of work-based, adult-youth mentoring

Using a longitudinal design, this study explored the relation of urban high school student attitudes toward school, work, and self-esteem beliefs to work-based mentoring, mentor satisfaction, and employment status. Participants included high school students taking part in a formal work-based mentoring program, students who established informal mentoring relationships at work, students who worked without a mentor, and students who were not employed during the academic year. While there were no significant group differences in the measures at the start of the year, results at the end of the year showed that students in the formal mentoring program believed more strongly that school was relevant to work than those who worked without a mentor. Students with mentors had higher levels of self-esteem than those who did not work. Students who were highly satisfied with their mentors had higher levels of self-esteem and believed more strongly that school was relevant to the workplace than students who did not work. The implications of these results are discussed and future research areas are identified.     

Organizing Components into Combinations: How Stage Transition Works

This paper investigates the nature of transition between stages. The Model of Hierarchical Complexity of tasks leads to a quantal notion of stage, and therefore delineates the nature of stage transition. Piaget's dialectical model of stage change was extended and precisely specified. Transition behavior was shown to consist of alternations in previous-stage behavior. As transition proceeded, the alternations increased in rate until the previous stage behaviors were “smashed” together. Once the smashed-together pieces became coordinated, new-stage behavior could be said to have formed. Because stage transition is quantal, individuals can only change performance by whole stage. We reviewed theories of the specific means by which new-stage behavior may be acquired and the emotions and personalities associated with steps in transition. Contemporary challenges in the society increasingly call for transition to postformal and postconventional responses on the part of both individuals and institutions as the examples illustrate.     

Conceptualizing Transition: The Role of Metaphor in Describing the Experience of Change at Midlife

Five new or returning midlife university students were asked to provide metaphors describing their experience of midlife change, change indicated by their attending university at this point in their lives. Five resulting portraits (S. Lawrence-Lightfoot & J. H. Davis, 1997) were created, based on participant-invoked metaphors: personal rebellion against colonization, stage productions, collection and accumulation, journey home, and alchemy and metamorphosis. The portraits indicate that even from within widely divergent metaphoric conceptualizations, the respondents all find midlife to be an active, positive, and hopeful period of life. For them midlife is decidedly neither crisis nor dull plateau. Further, given the richness of the metaphor use, the study demonstrates the desirability of listening carefully to and moreover expressly soliciting metaphoric usage, in order to more fully understand people's inner realities. Finally, the portraits reveal that the participants' metaphoric conceptions are deeply imbedded in their lives, past and current, and as such identify life themes.     

Social Exclusion and the Transition from School to Work: The Case of Young People Not in Education, Employment, or Training (NEET)

In the modern labor market what Côté (1996) describes as “identity capital”—comprising educational, social, and psychological resources—is at a premium in entering and maintaining employment. One consequence is the extension of education and training while young people acquire the qualifications and skills that will enhance their employability. In accordance with the perspective of life span developmental psychology, this places particular pressure on those young people growing up in disadvantaged circumstances and lacking support, especially when attempting to negotiate the transition from school to work. A particular policy concern in Britain has been directed at those young people who leave full-time education at the minimum age of 16 and then spend a substantial period not in education, employment, or training (NEET). This article reports the result of analyzing longitudinal data, collected for a subsample of the 1970 British Birth Cohort Study surveyed at age 21, to model the relationship of NEET status to earlier educational achievement and circumstances and to assess the added difficulties NEET poses in relation to the building of adult identity capital. It is concluded that although poor educational achievement is the major factor in entering NEET, inner city living for boys and lack of parental interest in their education for girls are also important. For young men the consequences of NEET lie mainly in subsequent poor labor market experience. For young women, the majority of whom are teenage mothers, the damaging effects of NEET extend to the psychological domain as well. It is concluded that effective counseling targeted at high risk groups, along the lines of the new UK “ConneXions” service, are needed to help young people avoid the damaging effects of NEET and make a successful transition to adult life.     

ABUNDANT NATURE'S LONG-TERM OPENNESS TO HUMANE BIOCULTURAL DESIGNS

Not by Genes Alone excellently explains Peter J. Richerson and Robert Boyd's important ideas about human gene‐culture co‐evolution to a broader audience but remains short of a larger vision of civilization. Several decades ago Ralph Burhoe had seen that fertile possibility in Richerson and Boyd's work. I suggest getting past present reductionistic customs to a scientific perspective having an integral place for virtue. Subsystem agency is part of this view, as is the driving role of abundance, whose ultimate origins are in the mysterious, quintessentially energetic Big Bang. The free‐rider problem may not impede higher social organization as inexorably as Richerson and Boyd believe; “the tragedy” of enervating leakage from “the commons” may often be less influential than an invigorating flow of externalities to the commons. Eukaryotic origins mark the origin of inevitable wider sharing as higher living systems evolve. I use a metaphor of flesh and spirit in drawing a parallel between that turning point and the wide sharing that occurs in civilization. This helps solve the enigma of the demographic transition. Why do so many productive participants in first‐world societies severely restrict their selfish‐gene reproduction to below replacement birth rate? It is not because culture is maladaptive but because civilization's brain and womb have become partially differentiated in distinct populations. Considerations of social boundaries, myths of sacrifice, and human creativity help in understanding how human social evolution taps potentials present in reality. Human beings' diverse vigorous activities—the organized ones and the inadvertent ones, the wise and the foolish, the good and the bad, the carefully thoughtful and the merely playful—provide the ground of being, or primordial soup, for cultural entities that transcend our intentions. If we have it right for the most part and are fortunate, we will continue to emerge at higher levels.     

Longitudinal associations between relational and sexual well-being in couples transitioning to parenthood

There is limited understanding of the dynamic between relational and sexual well-being as couples adjust to new parenthood, despite this being a vulnerable period for couples' relationships. This study was aimed at examining the bidirectional links between relationship quality and sexual well-being (i.e., sexual satisfaction, sexual distress) across the transition to parenthood. We assessed new parent couples (N = 257) across four time points (two prenatal) from mid-pregnancy through 6 months postpartum. Parallel dyadic latent growth curve modeling was employed to examine the associations between trajectories of perceived relationship quality, sexual satisfaction, and sexual distress. New parents' declines in relationship quality were associated with declines in own and partners' sexual satisfaction and with increases in own sexual distress. Mothers' prenatal relationship quality and sexual distress predicted subsequent changes in own sexual distress and fathers' relationship quality, respectively. Results indicate that changes to new parents' relational and sexual well-being mutually influence each other over time. Current results indicate that the impact of the transition on couples' relationships is partly determined by own and partners' prenatal factors, to which clinicians and researchers can attend to early on. Cross-domain links between relational and sexual well-being should be considered in research and clinical practice.     

A Grand Theory and a Small Social Scientific Community: Niklas luhmann in Slovenia

We analyse the reception of Niklas Luhmanns social metatheory in Slovenian social. The first part outlines the intellectual climate that prevailed in the decade before the post-socialist transition. The decline of the previously dominant Marxist ideology created space for other social theories. Luhmanns ideas were the most prominent among social macro theories in the initial phase. The second part describes variations in the reception of his ideas. The initial affirmative approach was upgraded by a number of more selective and critical approaches. The third part shows that, although his ideas are no longer quite so prominent, his work is both well recognized and firmly embedded in Slovenian social thought.