Reforming Professional Training and Protecting Vulnerable Adults from Abuse: A Thematic Analysis of the New Social Work Degree's Prescribed Curriculum

Correspondence to Phil Slater, School of Health and Social Sciences, Middlesex University, Queensway, Enfield EN3 4SF, UK. E-mail: p.slater{at}mdx.ac.uk Summary This paper analyses the Prescribed Curriculum of the new Degreein Social Work in relation to the Department of Health themeof ‘protecting vulnerable adults from abuse’. Areview of post-war social policy first establishes the significanceof these terms, both individually and in varying combinations.Subsequently, the phrase as a whole provides the focus for acontent analysis of the three constituents of the PrescribedCurriculum, namely, the Secretary of State’s Requirementsfor Social Work Training, the employment-focussed National OccupationalStandards for Social Work, and the academically oriented BenchmarkStatement for Social Work. With the exception of ‘abuse’,the key terms are all registered, albeit unevenly. This presenceis subsequently enhanced via strategic considerations of ‘logicalimportance’ and ‘organising rubrics’. Finally,terminological variants of ‘abuse’ are traced, withparticular regard to the emerging language of ‘rights’.     

(T)races of terrorism beyond ports of entry: a retrospective assessment of the limits of profiling in the regulation of airport passenger traffic during the 2010 FIFA World Cup

A critical function of post‐9/11 surveillance worldwide was to manage the ‘terrorist’ spectacle in public spaces such as airports and stadia. With the prospect of the 2010 World Cup looming large, aviation security in South Africa had accordingly gained significance in proportion to the expansion of airports and construction of stadium infrastructure countrywide. Private sector and government intentions to defend and consolidate the developmental spinoffs of expansion and infrastructure construction were expected and, with this, real and perceived threats from both ‘terrorists’ and banned football hooligans from Europe seem to demand surveillance based on racial profiling. The resultant profile picture of surveillance, this paper argues, is in monochrome: black terrorists and white yobs. Mobilising Deleuze and Guattari's theoretical work on deterritorialisation – based on the destabilisation of traditional concepts of territory – aviation ports of entry are seen to transmogrify into points of entry into the public discourse of the Arabic‐African militant, on the one hand, and the English‐European yob menace, on the other. In the final analysis, surveillance discourse moves beyond the confines of the airport and enters the public domain as it conflates the political (militant) and the social (menace) in a single, profiled, ossified narrative of ‘race’.     

Irrational thinking among slot machine players

According to the cognitive perspective on gambling, regular gamblers persist in trying to win money at gambling because they hold a set of false beliefs about the nature of gambling, the likelihood of winning, and their own expertise. In order to investigate this claim, twenty seven university students were recruited who played one of three types of games at least twice a week: slot machines, video draw poker, and video amusement games. Subjects played their preferred machines on site (clubs, hotels and amusement arcades) first for at least thirty minutes and then the other two games for a minimum of twenty minutes each. During play, each subject spoke aloud into a microphone describing what he or she was doing or thinking about in the game. It was hypothesised that slot machine players would verbalise more irrational thinking than video poker or video amusement players and that slot machines would elicit more irrational thinking than video poker or video amusement machines. Most importantly, it was hypothesised that slot machine players would exhibit relatively greater amounts of irrational thinking when playing their preferred game. The data supported all three hypotheses. Out of all of the statements made by slot machine players when playing slot machines, 38% were categorised irrational. Furthermore, 80% of the strategic statements made by slot machine players while playing slot machines were categorised as irrational. These results are consistent with earlier work which showed high levels of irrational thinking in artificial gambling games. Together, the results provide support for a cognitive view of the origins of gambling problems.     

光环效应

几乎所有的执行官都会考虑一个问题：如何带领自己的企业取得出色的业绩？在过去十年中，一批又一批的商业管理畅销书全都宣称自己找到了有效的秘诀，可以让你的公司“基业长青”，“从优秀到卓越”，甚至远远凌驾于竞争对手之上。     

The Personal Is Scientific,the Scientific Is Political: The Public Paradigm of the Environmental Breast Cancer Movement

This paper introduces the concept of boundary movements to characterize the distinctive growth and strategies of movements involving citizen/science alliances to contend with environmentally related illnesses. This concept is applied to a case study of the environmental breast cancer movement, which has induced changes in treatment options and public perception of breast cancer. Since the early 1990s, a segment of this movement has consistently criticized the traditional paradigms governing research, the epistemology of breast cancer, and popular understandings. Against the traditional focus on genetics, lifestyles, and personal responsibility, this segment's broader messages stress environmental causation and women's participation in science and politics.     

Technological change,technostress, and industrial humanism

The need for more humanistic imperatives in the management of technological change must be our mandate for corporate and human excellence. Industrial Humanism is our new management creed. The imperatives of humanism such as identity, integrity, self-actualization, individuality, potentiality, responsibility, autonomy, caring, trust, meaning, self-esteem, and character growth must be enriched as the corporation moves to adopt new technologies. The imperatives of technology based on technical rationality, means-ends chain, and industrial engineering methods for programming the workflow for efficiency contain the potential for job alienation, boredom, and technostress. A new psychological contract that integrates both technical and humanistic imperatives is the challenge for the information society. This is an ethical imperative for managing technological change.     

Understanding physical activity behavior in African American and Caucasian college students: an application of the theory of planned behavior

Only 30% of college students meet the recommended amount of physical activity (PA) for health benefits, and this number is lower for African American students. Moreover, the correlates of PA may vary by ethnicity. OBJECTIVE: In the present study, the authors tested the utility of the theory of planned behavior for explaining PA intentions and behavior in Caucasian and African American students. PARTICIPANTS AND METHODS: Participants were 238 African American (M age = 20.05 years, SD = 2.28) and 197 Caucasian (M age = 19.50 years, SD = 2.28) students who completed a baseline theory of planned behavior questionnaire and a follow-up PA measure 1 week later. RESULTS: Hierarchical regression analyses showed that affective (beta = .23) and instrumental (beta = .28) attitudes and perceived behavioral control (beta = .59) were significantly predictive of intention for the Caucasian students, whereas affective attitude (beta = .18) and perceived behavioral control (beta = .56) were significant for African American students. Furthermore, intention (beta = .33) was the lone significant predictor of PA for Caucasian students, whereas perceived behavioral control (beta = .23) was the significant predictor of PA for African American students. CONCLUSIONS: These data suggest that practitioners may need to consider ethnicity when developing PA interventions for college students based on the theory of planned behavior.