The construction of ‘alternative masculinity’ among men in the childcare profession

In Germany about 3%–5% of kindergarten teachers¹1. They are not usually referred to as teachers in Germany because no academic/university education is required of people wanting to work in kindergartens. The German word used to describe caregivers in kindergartens is Erzieher, which could be translated as ‘educator’.View all notes (for children aged 3–6) are men (BMFSFJ 2010). In this qualitative research on men as kindergarten teachers I analyzed how men in this profession construct masculinity while working with children and during interaction with (mostly female) colleagues, parents, and in the interview situation. Therefore, 10 men teachers were observed for one day in their working environment and interviewed in qualitative interviews. One main theoretical implication was the concept of ‘doing gender’ (e.g. West and Zimmerman 1987, Gildemeister 2004), which was adopted to understand the ‘doing masculinity’ of these men. Another theoretical basis is the concept of hegemonic masculinities by Raewyn Connell (1987, 2006), which was used, critically discussed, and as a result re-conceptualized. The discussion of the theoretical implications and the analysis of the empirical material showed that Connell's theory misses a type of masculinity that opposes hegemonic masculinity, just as her type of ‘complicit masculinities’ supports it. From the interviews and observations a type of ‘alternative masculinity’ was developed.     

University Students’ Views on the Utility of Psychiatric Advance Directives

Abstract

Objective: Rates of serious mental illnesses (SMIs) among university students are increasing, and universities are struggling with how to respond to students who show SMI symptoms. Psychiatric advance directives (PADs) allow individuals, when well, to document their wishes for treatment during a psychiatric crisis. This project explored the feasibility of using PADs in university settings by examining students’ views towards PADs. Participants: Forty university students with SMIs were recruited for this study from 1 large university. Methods: A mixed-methods design was used, with both quantitative survey instruments and qualitative interviews with students. Results: Respondents were positive about PAD utility for students. Respondents saw PADs as beneficial because PADs gave students control over their treatment. However, students also considered PADs potentially problematic because PAD use raised a risk of breaching student privacy and stigmatizing students with SMIs. Conclusions: Although a promising intervention for students with SMI, this approach requires further research.     

Work Satisfaction and Intention to Leave Among Direct Care Workers in Community and Residential Aged Care in Australia

Turnover in the Australian aged-care workforce is lower than in the United States but is still of concern. This research examined the effects of worker satisfaction, worker characteristics, work conditions, and workplace environment on intention to leave, using data from a 2007 national census of the aged-care workforce. A probit model was used to estimate the probability of care workers leaving their jobs in the next 12 months. While workers were satisfied, overall, with their work, improving some components of satisfaction and converting casual contracts to permanent work would reduce intention to leave. To these ends, a shift in focus is required away from worker characteristics and the nature of care work to job conditions and organizational matters amenable to management and policy action.     

Challenges,Changes, and Impact of the Council on Social Work Education Women’s Council: An Update

This article highlights the contributions of the Council on the Role and Status of Women in Social Work Education (Women’s Council) as well as the role and status of women in social work education. For this historical analysis update, the authors drew on several primary and secondary data sources. The first major theme was organizational development (e.g., organizational commitment, strategic planning, and sustainability). The second major theme was contributions to social work education (e.g., furthering the knowledge base, influencing accreditation standards, and monitoring equity). These major themes and subthemes remained constant from the previous publication on the history of the WC (Alvarez et al., 2008), underscoring the resilience, commitment and persistence of the WC to keep a sharp focus on infusing feminist perspectives into social work education.     

Happy Doing Good? How Workers' Career Orientations and Job Satisfaction Relate in Grassroots Human Services

ABSTRACT

Job satisfaction has long been a focus of human services managers and researchers. Yet recent trends in what workers want from their jobs and careers may challenge the current understanding of this important phenomenon. There is limited understanding, in particular, of human services workers' potentially diverse orientations toward their work and how those preferences relate to job satisfaction. These factors are considered using unique data from a population of domestic violence agencies. Results show that newer human services employees report valuing opportunities for entrepreneurialism at work more than their veteran coworkers, while senior staff state stronger preferences for jobs that facilitate work-life balance. Across all employees, a preference for work seen as advancing a social cause is positively linked to job satisfaction, while a desire for job autonomy is negatively related to satisfaction. Finally, the work-life balance preferences only of newer staff are positively related to their satisfaction. The article concludes with a discussion of strategies for managing employees' multidimensional preferences for work.     

The concept of yikhes and its transformation during the Soviet period (based on field materials collected in the town of Tulchin,Ukraine)

It is commonly thought that the concept of yikhes (Hebrew, yikhus) refers largely or even solely to the notion of noble descent. As late as 1959, the Standard Jewish Encyclopedia defined yikhes in these terms; and a similar understanding of the term can be found in other leading sources. Using extensive field materials collected under the auspices of the St Petersburg Judaica Centre, this essay demonstrates, however, that yikhes has a wide variety of meanings in the present‐day Jewish community of Tulchin (Ukraine), which is not limited to genealogical implications and may completely ignore them. The range of meanings associated with yikhes includes secular learning, “honorable” (non‐manual) profession, “respect” on the part of other community members, ethical qualities, etc. Due to a partial or complete loss of Yiddish, many residents of the town know the word yikhes solely from expressions such as “yikhes in the bathhouse,” where this word has lost its independent meaning. Through an anthropological analysis of yikhes as a reflection of social ideas and practices within a small and relatively circumscribed society, the paper demonstrates both the breadth of tradition the concept reflects and the limitations of the ways it is generally presented and understood in the literature.     

Passover in the Soviet Union, 1917–41

Marian Fuks, Zygmunt Hoffman, Maurycy Horn, Jerzy Tomaszewski, Zydzi polscy: dzieje i kultura (Polish Jews: History and Culture). Warsaw. Interpress, 1982. 196pp. Illus. Zl. 1,080; and Artur Sandauer, O sytua.cji pisarza pochodzenia zydowskiego w XX wieku (Rzecz, która nie ja powinienem byl napisac (On the Situation of the Polish Writer of Jewish Descent in the Twentieth Century—A Piece Not I Should Have Written). Warsaw: Czytelnik, 1982.97pp.     

An exploration of factors which may influence how teachers perceive participatory action research tools being employed in schools

This article draws on a lead researcher's observations about participatory research collaboration within a qualitative research project involving teachers, pupils and members of the communities surrounding schools. It presents a practical account of research processes aimed at uncovering to how pupils, teachers and community members in economically and socially disadvantaged neighbourhoods perceived their own roles in relation to creative activity with groups of children, who had been identified by their schools as being in need of help to engage in learning. The activities were led by artists who would not normally be involved in schools. Social constructionist frameworks for evaluation are combined with the literature on participatory appraisal, in order to suggest a politically sensitive course of action by which practitioners and peer interviewers could be involved more usefully in the future, through direct collaboration on the planning tasks to reveal rarely articulated pupil attitudes.