Obama's Interfaith Service Challenge: A Call for a New Theology of Service in American Higher Education

Abstract : President Obama's recent Interfaith Service Challenge issued to colleges and universities in the United States encourages schools to commit to year‐long interfaith service projects that engage constituencies across campus, across faith traditions, and across the wider local community. While they were included in pre‐challenge planning, university chaplains and religious life staff were omitted from the list of partners. This omission challenges college chaplains and campus ministers to articulate a theology of interfaith service that represents their enduring priorities to engagement across faith lines and in service to others. For Christians, such a theology could be based on the three key principles of imago dei, theologia crucis, and faith active in love.     

Using teacher greetings to increase speed to task engagement

We used a multiple baseline design across participants to determine if teacher greetings would reduce the latency to task engagement. Three participants were identified by their respective teachers as having difficulty initiating task-appropriate engagement at the beginning of class. Latency was measured from teacher greeting until the participant was actively engaged for 5 consecutive seconds. Results showed that teacher greetings were effective at reducing latency to task engagement for all participants.     

Contextual Influences on Participation in Community Organizing: A Multilevel Longitudinal Study

This article reports results from a study of contextual influences on participation among people involved in congregation-based community organizing. Data are drawn from 11,538 individual participants in 115 congregations taking part in one of five local organizing initiatives in different cities over a five-year period. Analyses used 3-level longitudinal models with binary indicators of participation/non-participation in group meetings each successive year as the criterion. Time-varying predictors at level-1 included prior participation in group meetings as a control, the types of group meetings that participants attended, the number of face-to-face meetings held between each participant and organizing staff of the local organizing initiatives, and a measure of the involvement of participants' affiliation networks. At level-2, demographic information was collected for a subset of participants (N = 461) and was included in a separate model. Neighborhood compositional characteristics were examined at level-3, including median income, economic heterogeneity, and residential stability. Study results found that characteristics of organizational settings (i.e., types of group meetings attended and frequency of face-to-face contact) predicted future participation in group meetings but that individual and neighborhood-level demographic characteristics were generally not predictive of future participation in community organizing activities.     

The Roman Catholic Charismatic Movement and Civic Engagement in Sub‐Saharan Africa

The Catholic Charismatic Renewal (CCR) is a movement within the Roman Catholic Church that has grown dramatically in many parts of the world over the past three decades, including Sub‐Saharan Africa. Since it stresses divine intervention (e.g., miracles and healing), some observers suspect that the CCR deemphasizes the importance of human initiative and depresses civic engagement. In this article, we report the results of an original mass survey and in‐depth interviews conducted in Nigeria and Kenya that suggest that the CCR does not necessarily depress civic engagement and that, depending on the types of individuals involved, the movement may encourage certain types of civic engagement. While we found little evidence that mere membership in the CCR was affecting civic engagement, we did find that the time commitment involved in being an active part of the CCR did negatively affect civic engagement, especially in Kenya. However, we also found evidence that involvement in the CCR was having a positive effect on civic engagement among women in Kenya. The results indicate that the CCR is not a religious movement that is inherently quietist, always and everywhere discouraging participation in public life, and that context matters.     

Schools and the twenty-first century labour market: perspectives on structural change

ABSTRACT

The focus of this article is the youth labour market and how changes within it have (negatively) affected the economic prospects of young Britons. It suggests ways in which schools and colleges can respond to such change in order to optimise the life chances of their students. The paper reviews the perspectives of two important groups of people well-placed to offer informed views to educationalists: policy commentators close to the political and academic debates surrounding youth employment; and, HR professionals with first-hand experience of recruitment. Synthesising perspectives, the paper highlights three key changes demanding attention: the growing complexity of the labour market; increased competition for entry level employment; and, the changing requirements of employers who increasingly seek new employees well placed to be personally effective in applying knowledge and skills in changing situations. The paper concludes by offering a framework for structuring school provision to optimise the school to work transitions of young people.     

流动儿童的未来取向及与学业卷入的关系

采用问卷法,选取755名初中生(其中流动儿童562名)作为被试,对未来取向及其与学业卷入的关系进行考察。结果表明:(1)打工子弟学校流动儿童的未来取向与公立学校流动儿童、城市儿童差异较大,具体表现为,打工子弟学校流动儿童的受教育领域未来目标显著较少,未来职业目标较多;未来计划得分显著较低;未来评价方面,打工子弟学校的流动儿童具有较少的内部归因,乐观性也较弱;(2)打工子弟学校的流动儿童未来取向主要表现出了年级差异,初一年级受教育目标显著高于初二年级,而未来职业内部归因显著低于初二年级;公立学校流动儿童则表现出了性别差异,男生在各领域上的外部归因和乐观性均显著高于女生;(3)教育计划和乐观性对流动儿童的行为卷入得分有显著的正向预测作用,教育的外部归因和未来的职业计划有着显著的负向预测作用;流动儿童的未来受教育计划、教育目标和乐观性以及职业的内部归因对其心理卷入有显著的正向预测作用。     

企业员工工作不安全感的实证分析

该研究采用自编的工作不安全感问卷,通过对武汉、广州、成都、太原等地12家企业的787名员工进行问卷调查,对企业员工工作不安全感的维度进行了探讨。探索性因素分析表明,企业员工的工作不安全感包括工作丧失、工作执行、薪酬晋升、过度竞争和人际关系不安全感等五个维度。五因素模型在验证性因素分析中得到了较好地验证。文章最后对工作不安全感的维度构成以及测量等相关问题进行了讨论。     

The Effects of Identity-Relevance and Task Difficulty on Task Motivation,Stress, and Performance

Tested the hypothesis that the identity-relevance of a performance domain would predict task motivation, stress, and actual performance. Psychology majors and non-majors (N = 94) completed either moderately difficult or very difficulty questions from a standardized verbal aptitude test. Before the test participants were told that performance on the test was either predictive of success as a psychologist (identity-relevant condition) or were given no information on the predictive ability of the test (control condition). Results revealed that only psychology majors evidenced higher motivation and stress in the identity-relevant condition in comparison to the control condition. The results of actual test performance revealed that when identity-relevance was high, psychology majors tended to do better than non-majors on a task of moderate difficulty, but tended to do worse on a task of high difficulty. Implications of the results for identity-relevance as a motivational and emotional lynchpin for performance are discussed. The author would like to thank Cynthia Ellison, Melissa Kinder, and Kelly Riddle for their assistance in data collection. A paper based on the results of the present study was presented at the 2004 meeting of the Southeastern Psychological Association and was the co-recipient of the outstanding professional paper award.     

Measuring cognitive and psychological engagement: Validation of the Student Engagement Instrument

A review of relevant literatures led to the construction of a self-report instrument designed to measure two subtypes of student engagement with school: cognitive and psychological engagement. The psychometric properties of this measure, the Student Engagement Instrument (SEI), were assessed based on responses of an ethnically and economically diverse urban sample of 1931 ninth grade students. Factor structures were obtained using exploratory factor analyses (EFAs) on half of the dataset, with model fit examined using confirmatory factor analyses (CFAs) on the other half of the dataset. The model displaying the best empirical fit consisted of six factors, and these factors correlated with expected educational outcomes. Further research is suggested in the iterative process of developing the SEI, and the implications of these findings are discussed.