Social Cognitive Factors,Support, and Engagement: Early Adolescents’ Math Interests as Precursors to Choice of Career

The authors examined the central hypothesis that students’ early perceptions of support and sense of engagement in math classes and math activities strongly influence the broadening or narrowing of their math interest. The focus was on the first wave of qualitative data collected from 5th‐, 7th‐, and 9th‐grade students during the 2007–2008 academic year as part of a longitudinal study. Findings indicate the importance of using group work and extrinsic motivation in middle school math classes to broaden interest; peer classroom behavior was often a detractor of math interest.     

关于就业创业课程开发及学习资源库建设的几点体会

总结了关于创业教育课程开发和就业创业学习资源库项目建设的意义、目标和主要任务、实施过程、取得的主要成果、重要贡献及项目进一步建设和推广的几点建议。     

Turning Doctoral Students into Faculty in Gerontological Social Work: The AGESW Experience

ABSTRACT

Developing faculty interested in aging may help social work meet the needs of our growing aging population. However, doctoral students need a variety of supports to complete PhDs and become gerontological social work faculty. This study explored one program’s role in supporting the development of social work doctoral students to faculty in gerontology. An e-mail invitation was sent to all former participants (2010–2016 cohorts) of the Association for Gerontology Education in Social Work (AGESW) Pre-Dissertation Fellows Program (PDFP). The 38-question online survey consisted of Likert-type scales, multiple answers, and one open-ended question per section about the program’s impacts on their academic career development in teaching, research, mentoring, and support. Forty-five respondents, representing all six cohorts, completed the survey. More than half reported that the PDFP contributed to their ability to publish their research (64.4%, n = 29), grow their professional network (86.7%, n = 39, and teach (55.5%, n = 25). Doctoral programs provided different experiences than the PDFP, including mentoring, methodological training, professional development, networking, and peer support. Results suggest the PDFP provides content recipients value that supplements instruction received in their institutions. The program’s ability to connect students to each other and to national leaders enhances their career development and socialization into academic roles.     

It's written all over their faces: Preschoolers' emotion understanding

Emotion understanding is a multifaceted construct made up of several components. To identify how several common components of emotion understanding relate to one another, five emotion understanding tasks were compared within the same group of children. Fifty‐four preschool children (M = 3.81 years, SD = 0.40) were asked to display the typical facial expression of six emotions after hearing their corresponding emotion label. They were then read six vignettes and asked to: “use your face to show how [the protagonist] would feel,” provide an emotion label for the main character, and “choose a picture of a face that would look like [the main character].” Finally, they were asked to provide a label for emotions presented to them in photographs. For all tasks, six emotions were examined: happiness, sadness, anger, fear, surprise, and disgust. With the exception of the two modeling tasks, results show correlations among the emotion understanding tasks. There was a significant interaction between task and emotion category for emotion understanding accuracy. However, there was some consistency in the pattern of discrete emotion categorization emergence across the tasks. Additionally, accuracy scores (representing emotion understanding) across tasks were not equivalent. Findings are discussed in the broader context of emotion understanding.     

Using a “child's‐eye view” of social success to understand the importance of school readiness at the transition to formal schooling

Recent research into school readiness has highlighted the importance of not only children's cognitive and socio‐emotional skills, but also the degree to which they have family support in the home. The current study examines the association between social success upon school entry and teacher‐ratings of school readiness as assessed by the Brief Early Skills and Support Index (BESSI), controlling for language ability. Importantly, social success was assessed using a “child's‐eye view” with peer‐reported assessments of both social preference and reciprocated friendships. A total of 244 children (131 boys, M_age = 61 months, SD = 4.78 months) in their first year of formal schooling participated. Child school readiness was found to be important for social preference, with the association being more marked for boys versus girls. Family support was the only independent predictor of children's reciprocated friendships. The use of the BESSI, with its broad scope compared to other measures of school readiness, highlights the importance of focusing both on a child's cognitive and socio‐emotional skills at school entry and their family support when exploring the association of school readiness to children's social success at the transition to formal schooling.     

Social development quartet: When is parental supportiveness a good thing? The dynamic value of parents' supportive emotion socialization across childhood

This introduction to the Social Development Quartet summarizes four articles that examine age‐related and contextual shifts in the utility of parents' emotion socialization responses for children's social‐emotional development. The first two articles present evidence for age‐related changes in the benefits of parents' supportive responses and consequences of parents' nonsupportive responses to children's negative emotions between early and middle childhood. The next two articles consider contextual variations in this developmental shift by examining teacher reports of children's competence and family patterns of response among mothers and fathers. Together, these studies question the unilateral assumption that parental support of children's negative emotions is always a good thing, and provide a more nuanced understanding of when and in what contexts parents' responses are adaptive for children.     

德国项目教学法在高职教学中的实践与创新

项目教学法是德国＂双元制＂职业院校中盛行的教学模式,但多用于工科专业。自引入我国以来,对于工科类高职院校来说,效果非常明显,但对于财经类专业应用效果不尽人意。本文选取财经类专业岗位财务管理岗位实际工作情境之一——筹资,以项目教学法为基础,构建了包括教学情境的设计、学生学习步骤一览表的制定、学生学习步骤计划书的设计、学生自我测试及测试题库的设计、工作任务的设计、参考信息的提供、学习方法和策略的指导、项目成果的展示要求、教学评价方法的制定共9个部分组成的课堂教学体系。     

模糊理论对英语专业学生翻译能力培养的启示

模糊理论使人们认识到语言模糊性的客观存在。模糊性是语言的自然属性。在翻译中，对于语言模糊性的认识，是正确理解原文并用译文准确表达的基础。在翻译教学中，教师应该指引学生识别和运用模糊语言，从而有效地从整体上提升学生的翻译能力。     

A good fit: the contribution of action learning to supervision practice

This paper discusses the value of action learning for social work supervisors. Recent years have seen renewed focus on supervision as a reflective space and some indications that the tide may be turning in regard to the dominance of managerial priorities within the supervision of direct practice. It is less evident that a similar shift is taking place for supervisors themselves and, anecdotally, many describe their own supervision as having a business focus with limited scope for reflective dialogue. While the traditional functions of supervision need to adapt to fit the responsibilities of those in management positions, it remains true that these staff provide a vital containing role within the organisational hierarchy. For that to be sustained, it is important that supervisors have space and structure within which to process the emotional, intellectual and practical challenges of their work. The integration of action learning sets within post-qualifying courses for supervisors has demonstrated a useful dual function. Firstly, they provide an effective model for group supervision, facilitating in-depth reflection on complex practice issues. Secondly, they offer managers a peer supervision forum; a safe place to explore dilemmas and share the vulnerabilities which belong to management roles as well as practice.     

Effects of critical incident tasks on the intercultural competence of English non-majors

ABSTRACT

In this internationalised world, graduate employability in terms of intercultural communication skills needs to be taken into account in higher education. The present study aims to explore the effects of critical incident task instruction on English non-majored undergraduates’ intercultural competence. One group of students received ten weeks of instruction with one critical incident task per week and another group received standard English classes. Data were collected from the students’ pre- and post-test. The results showed a significant and strong effect of the intervention with critical incident tasks. Implications for educational practice are presented for further teaching with critical incident tasks.