From Clinic to Community: The Evolution of a Group for Women with Postpartum Mental Illness

Since 1980, national and international research knowledge on carers and care-giving has been accumulating. However, the theoretical bases of this research are usually unstated and implicit. Theory is vital in shaping social work research programs and types of social work intervention. This paper examines and critiques the social work theories influencing published social work research on care-giving. A search of key social work journals from 1980 to 2001 identified a total of 102 research articles about care-giving. The perspectives informing these articles fall into four groupings: positivist; interpretivist; systems; and feminist/radical. Building on the model developed by Howe (1987), which differentiates theories of radical change from those concerned with social regulation, each perspective is critically analysed for its underlying assumptions, level of analysis, research methodology and implications for policy and practice. Our review indicated that research on care-giving is dominated by a positivist approach that focuses on stress-coping and social support theories. These approaches are essentially individualistic, focus on the burden of care and prescribe interventions that assist carers to adjust to or cope with the care-giving role. Future social work research on care-giving should be informed by critical social work theories offering deeper structural analysis. This would be more consistent with our discipline's concern for social change and social justice.     

全球化背景下云南多样性民族文化的碰撞与发展

文化多样性对人类来讲就像生物多样性对维持生物平衡那样必不可少,它是人类持续和谐发展的根本保证.云南是一个多民族的边疆省份,民族的多样性决定了其文化的多样性.经济全球化的发展为云南各民族不同文化之间的交流和交融提供了新的历史机遇,同时也加剧了各民族文化之间的碰撞.在此背景下,我们必须努力做到"文化自觉",尊重文化个性,加强文化的调适,推进文化整合,这样才能实现保护、传承和发展云南民族文化多样性的目标.     

Grassroots Networks: A Model for Promoting the Influence of Service Users and Carers in Social Work Education

We examine a process for involving service users and carers in a social work programme in Scotland and include the perspective of a service user involved in the development. We note the extent of service user and carer involvement within Scottish social work education. The Dundee system involves a regulated process of academics liaising with service user and carer groups in the locality, so that the expertise of service users and carers informs and influences social work qualifying training. The model is built on current ideas surrounding communication networks that work in non‐hierarchical ways. The paper emphasises the importance of basing a system on shared values and overcoming tokenistic approaches to involvement.     

Education Gains Attributable to Fertility Decline: Patterns by Gender,Period, and Country in Latin America and Asia

We investigate the heterogeneity across countries and time in the relationship between mother’s fertility and children’s educational attainment—the quantity-quality (Q-Q) trade-off—by using census data from 17 countries in Asia and Latin America, with data from each country spanning multiple census years. For each country-year, we estimate micro-level instrumental variables models predicting secondary school attainment using number of siblings of the child, instrumented by the sex composition of the first two births in the family. We then analyze correlates of Q-Q trade-off patterns across countries. On average, one additional sibling in the family reduces the probability of secondary education by 6 percentage points for girls and 4 percentage points for boys. This Q-Q trade-off is significantly associated with the level of son preference, slightly decreasing over time and with fertility, but it does not significantly differ by educational level of the country.     

Social dimensions of gradients in urban ecosystems

Urban ecosystems are complex mosaics in which the biophysical characteristics are transformed over time by a concentrated, diverse set of human activities. Understanding their complexity requires the continuing development of interdisciplinary approaches. The use of gradient approaches has pointed towards the need to examine in greater detail the roles of human influences. In this paper, I propose the addition of three social dimensions to characteristics defining urban gradients: landuse, land management effort, and historical context. These dimensions correspond with major types of social activities that modify the physical environment. They are intended to augment research by explicitly elaborating on the social factors contributing to the variation along the complex, indirect gradients that typify urban areas.The diversity of urban landuses has numerous influences, obvious and subtle, on the complex urban land gradients. Incorporating new information on historical and spatial characteristics of management practices supports more direct fine-scale analyses of the impact of human activities on the environment. This path of inquiry also requires engaging in more detailed research on historical dimensions of urban development in conjunction with biophysical analyses. Examples from Columbia, South Carolina, illustrate the ways that social and historical processes contribute to urban ecology.     

Outcomes focused user involvement in social work education: applying knowledge to practice

Abstract

This paper discusses an innovative approach connecting service user and carer involvement (SUCI) in social work education to social work practice. The research team, comprised service users, carers, social work students and module leader, worked collaboratively democratising the research process. At the University of Dundee, a core social work module facilitates students to spend 15 h with a service user and/or carer (host) gaining a unique insight into their everyday lives. During this time, hosts and students discuss two policy practice questions, responses to these questions are generating annual qualitative data, with study findings being disseminated at local and national level. The experiential learning students acquire from spending time with their host becomes the site of knowledge creation through involvement that is applied to practice. This paper reports on the narratives emerging from the longitudinal data (2012–2015, n = 90) on the changing landscape of social care in Scotland and the dissemination of project findings. We explore the intersection where the voices of service users and carers, student learning and social work practice coalesce. A model of outcomes focused SUCI is introduced as a template for meaningful, sustainable and outcomes-focused SUCI in social work education.     

Integrated Motherhood: Beyond Hegemonic Ideologies of Motherhood

Existing research assumes that hegemonic mothering ideologies influence U.S. mothers' work and family decisions. These ideologies assume that childrearing is a mother's duty, that mothering occurs within a self‐sufficient nuclear family, and that paid employment conflicts with motherhood. Even when mothers do not conform to these ideologies, scholars find that they continue to influence mothers, as exhibited by mothers' efforts to reframe, redefine, or actively reject the ideal. This study expands on research that challenges the dominant influence of these ideologies on all mothers. Through analyzing the accounts of 24 middle‐ and upper‐middle‐class African American mothers employed in professional careers, three different cultural expectations about motherhood emerged. Participants assumed that they should work outside of the home, be financially self‐reliant, and use kin and community members as child caregivers. Together, these cultural expectations form the basis of an alternative ideology of mothering that the author terms integrated mothering.     

A MACROECONOMIC MODEL ON THE QUALITY OF GOVERNMENT AND ECONOMIC PERFORMANCE

We determine the relative rewards to producers, private rent‐seekers, and bureaucrats and allocation of talent between them in a general equilibrium model. Unproductive activity creates a negative externality on the relative rewards to producers. If the size of bureaucracy is exogenously given, among the multiple equilibria, the one with fewer private rent‐seekers yields higher welfare. By choosing a small size of bureaucracy, the government can establish the superior equilibrium as the unique outcome, which also achieves the constrained optimum. If the population of bureaucrats is endogenously determined, however, a larger bureaucracy enhances production and welfare. The size of government and economic performance are jointly determined, and their relationship depends on the quality of government. Our result supports the view that the size of government may not matter much; what is important is the quality of government. (JEL E60, E61, H00)     

课程文化的内涵分析

课程文化的实质,是课程文化最根本、最深层、最终极的规定性.以往的研究侧重从课程的角度或文化的角度来理解课程文化的内涵,应该说这是理解课程文化内涵的一种视角.本文从课程与文化两个概念的共同属性来把握课程文化的内涵.它是主体发展的文化资源.     

Attitudes toward family size and family planning in nairobi

In Nairobi, 352 married African adults, 152 men and 200 women, were interviewed on their attitudes toward family size and family planning. The respondents had, on the average, slightly less than three children at the time of interview and hoped to add slightly more than three children to this total. There was little difference in desired family size by sex.About one-half of both men and women had some knowledge of family planning methods, and there was a general interest (75 percent of the men and 90 percent of the women) in learning more. In addition, two out of every three men, and nine out of every ten women, approved of family planning, and even greater majorities of both sexes were willing to have the government of Kenya provide such services.In spite of their approval, however, only 13 percent of the men, and 2 percent of the women, had ever practiced family planning. These findings are broadly comparable to those found in other emerging nations and suggest that knowledge, interest, and approval generally precede use.