The effects of counsellor gender and problem type on help-seeking attitudes among Turkish high school students

The present study explores gender differences in help-seeking attitudes and the effects of counsellor gender and problem type on those attitudes among Turkish high school students. The Attitudes towards Seeking Help Scale and a survey instrument concerning related factors were administered to 342 adolescents. ANOVAs show that male and female students displayed different help-seeking attitudes. Females held much more positive help-seeking attitudes than did males. For females, neither counsellor gender, problem type nor their interaction affected help-seeking attitudes. By contrast, among males, the interaction of counsellor gender and problem type influenced total help-seeking attitudes as well as two of the subscales – psychological distress and confidence in mental health professionals. Limitations, suggestions for further research and implications are discussed.     

Reducing demand for ineffective health remedies: overcoming the illusion of causality

Abstract

Objective: We tested a novel intervention for reducing demand for ineffective health remedies. The intervention aimed to empower participants to overcome the illusion of causality, which otherwise drives erroneous perceptions regarding remedy efficacy.

Design: A laboratory experiment adopted a between-participants design with six conditions that varied the amount of information available to participants (N?=?245). The control condition received a basic refutation of multivitamin efficacy, whereas the principal intervention condition received a full contingency table specifying the number of people reporting a benefit vs. no benefit from both the product and placebo, plus an alternate causal explanation for inefficacy over placebo.

Main outcome measures: We measured participants’ willingness to pay (WTP) for multivitamin products using two incentivized experimental auctions. General attitudes towards health supplements were assessed as a moderator of WTP. We tested generalisation using ratings of the importance of clinical-trial results for making future health purchases.

Results: Our principal intervention significantly reduced participants’ WTP for multivitamins (by 23%) and increased their recognition of the importance of clinical-trial results.

Conclusion: We found evidence that communicating a simplified full-contingency table and an alternate causal explanation may help reduce demand for ineffective health remedies by countering the illusion of causality.     

South African Educators' Voice on the Potential Role of Traditional Healers (THs) in Education Support Services

The aim of this qualitative research was to explore and describe perceptions of the potential role of traditional healers in education support services. Participants were 42 teachers (males = 13, females = 29) from a school district in the Eastern Cape province of South Africa. Interview and questionnaire data were collected and analysed, using a phenomenological method. Two main themes emerged from the analysis for the role of THs as education support providers: as 1) representatives of African culture and 2) contributors towards harmonising diversity in schools. The recommendations made were in line with the findings.     

Sex and the Right to HIV/AIDS Education in Early Childhood

This study explored how early childhood teachers (n=5) and young children (n=174) (age range 7 to 8 years; males = 81; females = 93) in two primary schools constructed and interpreted the right to HIV/AIDS education. Data were captured using individual interviews with teachers and group interviews with young children. Analysis of the data showed that teachers viewed young children's right to health information positively but did not consider the right to sexual information. Teachers operated within discourses which upheld the image of the child as innocent requiring protection from sexual knowledge. Children's perceptions of their rights to knowledge of sex in HIV/AIDS education showed ambiguity. Some accepted the right to know whilst others felt that knowledge about HIV/AIDS was inconsistent with childhood innocence.     

Change in physical self-perceptions across the transition to secondary school: Relationships with perceived teacher-emphasised achievement goals in physical education

ObjectivesThis study aimed to examine the effects of change in perceived teacher achievement goal emphasis in physical education (PE) on physical self-perceptions and self-esteem across the transition to secondary school.Design & methodsA longitudinal design was adopted with three time points, one at the end of primary school and two during the first year of secondary school. Participants (N = 491) were cross-classified by primary (N = 42) and secondary (N = 46) PE class in order to examine the association between perceived class-level teacher-emphasised goals and within-class student goals with self-beliefs.ResultsPersonal approach goals and class perceptions of teacher mastery approach goal promotion were all positively associated with ratings of co-ordination, sport competence, flexibility, and endurance in primary school. More favourable perceptions of coordination, sport competence, strength, flexibility, and endurance during the first year of secondary school were predicted by an increase in performance approach goal emphasis, whereas ratings of sport competence and flexibility were negatively associated with an increase in mastery approach goal emphasis.ConclusionsAlthough not entirely consonant with theoretical predictions, current findings suggest that teacher-emphasised performance approach goals in PE can promote development of several physical self-perceptions in the initial year of secondary school.     

Institutional creativity and pathologies of potential space: The modern university

Abstract

This paper proposes the applicability of object relations psychoanalytic conceptions of dialogue (Ogden, 1986 Ogden, T. 1986. The matrix of the mind, London: Karnac.  [Google Scholar], 1993 Ogden, T. 1993. “On potential space”. In In one's bones: The clinical genius of Winnicot, Edited by: Goldman, D. Northvale, NJ: Jason Aaronson.  [Google Scholar]) to thinking about relationships and relational structures and their governance in universities. It proposes that:

• the qualities of dialogic relations in creative institutions are the proper index of creative productivity; that is of, as examples, ‘thinking’ (Evans, 2004 Evans, M. 2004. Killing thinking: The death of the universities, London: Continuum.  [Google Scholar]), ‘emotional learning’ (Salzberger-Wittenburg et al., 1983 Salzberger-Wittenburg, I., Henry, G. and Osborne, E. 1983. The emotional experience of learning and teaching, London: Routledge.  [Google Scholar]) or ‘criticality’ (Barnett, 1997 Barnett, R. 1997. Higher education: A critical business, Buckingham: Open University Press.  [Google Scholar]);

• contemporary institutions' explicit preoccupation in assuring, monitoring and managing creative ‘dialogue’ can, in practice, pervert creative processes and thoughtful symbolic productivity, thus inhibiting students' development and the quality of ‘thinking space’ for teaching and research.

In this context the paper examines uncanny and perverse connections between Paulo Freire's (1972 Freire, P. 1972. Pedagogy of the oppressed, London: Penguin.  [Google Scholar]) account of educational empowerment and dialogics (from his Pedagogy of the oppressed) to the consumerist (see, for example, Clarke & Vidler, 2005 Clarke, J. and Vidler, E. 2005. Creating citizen-consumers: New labour and the remaking of public services. Public Policy and Administration, 20: 19–37.  [Google Scholar]) rhetoric of student empowerment, as mediated by some strands of managerialism in contemporary higher education. The paper grounds its critique of current models of dialogue, feedback loops, audit and other mechanisms of accountability (Power, 1997 Power, M. 1997. The Audit Society: Ritual's of verification, Oxford: Oxford University Press.  [Google Scholar]; Strathern, 2000 Strathern M. Audit cultures: Anthropological studies in accountability, ethics and the academy London Routledge 2000 [Crossref] , [Google Scholar]), in a close analysis of how creative thinking emerges.

The paper discusses the failure to maintain a dialogic space in humanities and social science areas in particular, exploring psychoanalytic conceptions from Donald Winnicott (1971 Winnicott, D. W. 1971. Playing and Reality, London: Routledge.  [Google Scholar]), Milner (1979 Milner, M. 1979. On not being able to paint, New York: International Universities Press.  [Google Scholar]), Thomas Ogden (1986 Ogden, T. 1986. The matrix of the mind, London: Karnac.  [Google Scholar]) and Csikszentmihalyi (1997 Csikszentmihalyi, M. 1997. Creativity, New York: Harper Perennial.  [Google Scholar]). Coleridge's ideas about imagination as the movement of thought between subjective and objective modes are discussed in terms of both intra- and inter-subjective relational modes of ‘dialogue’, which are seen as subject to pathology in the pathologically structured psychosocial environment. Current patterns of institutional governance, by micromanaging dialogic spaces, curtail the ‘natural’ rhythms and temporalities of imagination by giving an over-emphasis to the moment of outcome, at the expense of holding the necessary vagaries of process in the institutional ‘mind’. On the contrary, as this paper argues, creative thinking lies in sporadic emergences at the conjunction of object/(ive) outcome and through (thought) processes.     

Loss of feeling in the university counsellor: Some clinical illustrations of personal illness in a university context

Abstract

This paper is concerned with anaesthesia, loss of feeling or state of lifelessness, including numbness, helplessness and paralysis in the university counsellor, and explores briefly contributions to such states in a university counsellor.     

Learning and teaching (briefly)

This paper was given as the Annual Ellen Noonan Counselling Lecture on July 2012 and retains some of the spoken style of the lecture. It uses examples of Ellen Noonan’s work to examine aspects of the process of teaching and learning psychodynamic practice. The difficulties of how to embed theoretical knowledge with its clinical application are discussed and the question of what are the key skills of the self-reflective practitioner is raised with reference to whether, and how, they can be taught or learnt. It is suggested that part of this process consists in helping students, and their teachers, to be more comfortable with not knowing, a concept that is both counter intuitive and counter cultural. From this aspects of contemporary therapeutic practice, with specific reference to psychodynamic short-term therapy, are addressed. The paper looks at the ambivalence felt by many psychodynamic clinicians towards working within a short-term paradigm in current workplace settings and how this might be addressed. The paper discusses the intrinsic qualities of a psychodynamic short-term approach and its relation to contemporary therapeutic modalities. It is suggested that the increasing managerial culture, leading to the ascendance of protocol driven, manualised and structured therapies, represents an attack on the relational and must be challenged.     

Gunther von Hagens' BODY WORLDS: Selling Beautiful Education

In the BODY WORLDS exhibitions currently touring the United States, Gunther von Hagens displays human cadavers preserved through plastination. Whole bodies are playfully posed and exposed to educate the public. However, the educational aims are ambiguous, and some aspects of the exhibit violate human dignity. In particular, the signature cards attached to the whole-body plastinates that bear the title, the signature of Gunther von Hagens, and the date of creation mark the plastinates as artwork and von Hagens as the artist in a gesture that strips the personal dignity from the donors. I conclude that the educational use of cadavers is compatible with respect for dignity if: 1) the utility of such use is great enough; 2) there are no other ways of achieving these ends; and 3) every effort is made to honor the dignity of the donors.