Children's Vocational Development: A Research Rationale

Vocational development research and interventions have focused primarily on adolescents and young adults. The lack of attention to career development antecedents in children has led to a serious neglect of this period of life when the foundation is laid for career choices and outcomes in later life. A harmful by‐product is the frequent preclusion of gender‐atypical occupational pathways by boys and especially by girls. To address this situation, the authors recommend identifying a core set of constructs that describe children's vocational development and developing sound instruments to measure them, leading to a longitudinal study ranging from childhood to early adulthood.     

Community Development, Partnership Governance and Dilemmas of Professionalization: Profiling and Assessing the Case of Ireland

Over the last two decades, Ireland has emerged as a paradigmaticcase of partnership governance. Underpinned by state-facilitatednational agreements that sought to maximize economic and socialdevelopment, ‘partnership’ was also held to includethe development of progressive social policies. The ‘communityand voluntary sector’ has been both the site and purportedvehicle for these progressive policies. In this context, communitydevelopment emerged as a discourse of social action that wasboth popular with what Donnelly-Cox and Jaffro (1999) have inthe Irish context called ‘second generation communitydevelopment’, i.e. the emergence of self-activated localcommunity groups informed by a social justice ethos, and tothe Irish state as a route to social inclusion for an arrayof marginalized social groups. Since the early 1990s, thesegroups have been the recipients of significantly increased statefunding. This resource has had a dramatic effect on the structureand nature of community development. In this paper, we outlineand assess the model of community development that has emergedin Ireland during this period. Based on empirical data arisingfrom a nationwide survey of community workers, we profile theextent of state funding; the consequent employment profile ofcommunity development workers and the impact on volunteerism;and the nature and consequence of community development’semerging relationship with the Irish state.     

Structure, Agency, and Context: The Contributions of Geography to World-Systems Analysis

The interaction of geography and world-systems theory has created two groups of work. The first body of work uses world-systems theory as its theoretical framework with minor levels of critique or change. The second body of work attempts to inform world- systems theory by explicitly including a geographical perspective. Human geographers attracted to world-systems theory provide a perspective that highlights the role of agency in what is widely perceived to be a rigid structuralist approach. Key geographical concepts of region and place are viewed as social constructs created within an overarching context of structural imperatives. By conceptualizing places, states, and the macroregions of core, semiperiphery, and periphery as geographical scales, the role of agency in creating and maintaining the important structures and institutions of the capitalist world-economy, such as hegemony, is illustrated. The geographer's interest in the creation of geographical scales results in analysis of the dynamism of the contemporary world-system.     

Career Adaptability in Childhood

Childhood marks the dawn of vocational development, involving developmental tasks, transitions, and change. Children must acquire the rudiments of career adaptability to envision a future, make educational and vocational decisions, explore self and occupations, and problem solve. The authors situate child vocational development within human life span and life course development paradigms and career development theory. They then consider the theoretical origins of career adaptability and examine it as a critical construct for construing vocational development. Two models derived from career construction theory offer guides for research and counseling practice designed to foster development through work and other social roles.     

Does Australia Have a Filipina Brides Problem?

This paper challenges the assumption that Australian-Filipina marriages are prone to high rates of marital breakdown; and the belief that the incidence of Australian-Filipina marriages is sufficiently large to warrant the introduction of restrictive immigration policies for Filipinas. First we set the problem of Filipina bride migration in perspective by viewing it in the wider context of Australian immigration patterns — something that has been largely neglected in the discussion so far. Then we review the evidence on marital breakdown and show that Filipina-Australian marriages have been more successful than is commonly assumed. Finally, we consider the standard explanation of the breakdown of Filipina-Australian marriages in terms of ‘cultural differences’. Our conclusion is that much of the discussion has been based on implicit racial and sexual prejudices, rather than factual evidence.     

A FAMILY THERAPIST RATING SCALE*

This article reports the development of a scale for evaluating family therapist skills. The scale includes ten items within each of five skill categories. All items were found to discriminate significantly between videotaped segments of effective and ineffective family therapist skills. Also all skill categories discriminated significantly between experienced and inexperienced family therapists. The interrater reliability and internal consistency of the categories were also judged to be acceptable. Suggestions are presented for uses of the scale in therapist training research.