The Design and Evaluation of a Hope Enhancement Programme for Adults

The study evaluated the effectiveness of a hope enhancement programme for a group of adults and its impact on general psychological well-being. The intervention programme focused on participants' abilities to set feasible goals, planning ways to reach those goals (pathways) and increase determination and motivation (agency) to reach these goals. The workshop-format programme, consisted of six two-hour sessions conducted over five days. A pre and post-test design included an experimental group (n = 8), control group (n = 8) and ‘chat group’ (n = 8). Findings indicated that the programme increased hope levels of the experimental group as indicated by the Hope Scale and the Hopefulness Subscale of the Hunter Opinions and Personal Expectations Scale. Well-being also improved as indicated by a significant increase in sense of coherence along with a positive change in satisfaction with life. Recommendations for future research were made.     

The Need for and Possibility of a Christian Forgiveness Education in Schools

Individuals and communities occasionally need asking and giving forgiveness. Because the process of forgiving is not always well understood, it has become necessary to consider including forgiveness education in school pedagogy and in formal school programs such as Citizenship Education. This possibility is illustrated with examples from South Africa and The Netherlands. To date, forgiveness education has mostly taken the form of brief research interventions. It is recommended that forgiveness education, also from a Christian viewpoint, be given a more prominent place in school curriculums as well as in teacher education programs.     

The divine dreams of a sample of South African children: the gateway to their spirituality

As part of a research project on religion, spirituality and education, the authors attended to the role that children's divine dreams could play in religious education (RE). They contend that such dreams can indeed be used by RE teachers as the gateway to understanding the spirituality of their learners. They defend their claim by firstly developing a conceptual‐theoretical framework with respect to religion, spirituality and children's divine dreams, and then presenting the results of an explorative quantitative‐qualitative investigation in three schools. They find their claim to have been vindicated, and suggest that although RE teachers should not necessarily teach divine dreams per se, they should, nevertheless, explore the possibility that (at least some of) the contents of children's divine dreams may be useful for the purpose of teaching them RE from religion itself, rather than teaching them only about religion.     

The Road to Religious Tolerance in Education in South Africa (and Elsewhere): a Possible ‘Martian Perspective’

Abstract

Combining Dennett's notion of detached curiosity with Alexander's notion of transcendental pragmatism, we propose in this paper, from a ‘Martian perspective’, that religious understanding and tolerance in education may be pursued from at least two different angles: (a) via the spiritual substrata of religions or via confessional pluralism or (b) via a combination of both. On the basis of a hermeneutic reconstructive interpretation of (a), we subsequently argue that current South African policy on education and religion has effectively placed a ban on confessional pluralism by relegating religious education to parental homes and religious institutions such as churches, temples and mosques. We conclude that it provides no opportunities for helping learners to understand the religious differences that they will have to engage with in future as adults. We suggest that it effectively engineers a pedagogy of religious essentialism and the subsequent reemergence (of an almost Bourdieuian model) of cultural and spiritual intolerance.     

Dysfunctional Beliefs and Marital Conflict in Distressed and Non-Distressed Married Individuals

To test the hypothesis that the irrational evaluative beliefs, postulated by Rational-emotive behavior therapy, are related to marital conflict, 17 individuals from distressed marriages and 20 from non-distressed marriages participated in the Articulated Thoughts during Simulated Situations procedure. Four scenes, representing different dimensions of marital conflict (power/control, boundaries, expressive investment and instrumental investment), were used. On all the scenes, the distressed group showed significantly more irrational cognitions than the non-distressed group, while the scenes elicited significantly more positive thoughts with the non-distressed individuals compared to the distressed group. The results also showed that the non-distressed group displayed significantly more positive than negative thoughts for all the conflict scenes combined. However, no significant difference between positive and negative thoughts was found for the distressed group.     

Irrational Cognitions and the Fear of Flying

In order to test the hypothesis that the fear of flying is associated with irrational evaluative beliefs, as postulated by Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy for anxiety disorders, 15 fearful flyers and 7 non-fearful flyers participated in the Articulated Thoughts during Simulated Situations procedure. Six experimental scenes depicting some basic fears associated with the fear of flying and six supposedly non-anxiety provoking flight-related control scenes were used. The fear of flying group displayed significantly more irrational thoughts and significantly higher subjective ratings of anxiety on all experimental and five control scenes compared to the non-fearful flyers. Their negative cognitions were predominantly characterized by awfulizing and low frustration tolerance. The results are interpreted as offering support for the cognitive view that anxiety, and the fear of flying, are associated with negative cognitions characterized by a preoccupation with danger and with an overestimation of the seriousness of the perceived threat (awfulizing) and an underestimation of coping abilities (low frustration tolerance).     

Nestling barn owls assess short-term variation in the amount of vocally competing siblings

Assessing the amount of rivals is crucial to optimally adjust investment into a contest. If laboratory animals show numerical abilities, little is known about the ecological implications particularly in young animals. The two to nine barn owl (Tyto alba) siblings vocally compete for priority of access to food resources before parents actually deliver them. In dyads, the individual that vocalizes at the highest rate in the absence of parents deters its siblings from competing for next delivered prey. We tested the novel hypothesis that to optimally adjust vocal investment, barn owl nestlings assess how many of their siblings are currently competing. To singleton owlets, we broadcasted a fixed global number of calls emitted by one, two or four pre-recorded unfamiliar nestlings. We could thus distinguish the independent effect on singletons’ vocal behavior of the global number of calls produced by a brood from the number of competitors that produced these calls. Overall, nestlings retreated more from vocal contest when facing more competitors. However, in front of one highly motivated competitor, nestlings refrained from vocalizing to a larger extent than when competing against more but less motivated individuals. Therefore, young animals assess variation in the number of currently competing siblings based on individual-specific vocal cues.     

Scaling Up Family Therapy in Fragile,Conflict‐Affected States

This article discusses the design and delivery of two international family therapy‐focused mental health and psychosocial support training projects, one in a fragile state and one in a post‐conflict state. The training projects took place in Southeast Asia and the Middle East/North Africa. Each was funded, supported, and implemented by local, regional, and international stakeholders, and delivered as part of a broader humanitarian agenda to develop human resource capacity to work with families affected by atrocities. The two examples illustrate how task‐shifting/task‐sharing and transitional justice approaches were used to inform the scaling‐up of professionals involved in each project. They also exemplify how state‐citizen phenomena in each location affected the project design and delivery.