A longitudinal comparative study of the impact of the experience of social work education on interpersonal and critical thinking capabilities

Head (the intellectual/critical thinking) and Heart (the emotional-interpersonal) are long established twin-pillars of social work. Their importance is not just reflected in literature devoted to each but in the professional proficiencies and capabilities expected for practice. While clearly intertwined—both operate together in practice—and central to practice proficiencies/capabilities, implying implicit measurement of standards, there is a curious lack of research focusing on measurement of the two together. This novel study is the first to carry out a longitudinal comparative study examining the extent to which interpersonal and critical thinking capabilities are developed during the lifetime of qualifying social work training as measured through programme performance and development. It focuses on four cohorts (n = 170) at two Universities (Undergraduate and Masters). While findings show the interpersonal significantly underpinned performance and outcome, critical thinking—though embedded in Masters programme performance—was less significant, particularly in the undergraduate programmes. The study concludes that we cannot assume interpersonal and critical thinking capabilities are always incorporated into the learning process and attention should be paid to the overt measurement of interpersonal and critical thinking capabilities together with the processes and mechanisms by which they are focused on in programmes.     

家电下乡政策的消费效应评估——基于全国221个村庄的4年跟踪调查

以全国221个村庄所获得的4年调查数据作为研究基础,对"家电下乡"政策的消费效应予以评估和分析。调查表明,家电下乡政策消费效应的最大特征是农民消费需求的释放,其中包括全国消费总额的上升,户均消费额增幅达到8成,全国各地消费总量和户均消费数量的增加。但家电下乡政策的消费效应在实践中也遇到了持续性疲软的难题,如农民收入的限制作用,农民购买下乡产品比重偏低,政府补贴额和补贴程序不足,政策宣传和解说不到位。为了使家电下乡政策的消费效应持续起效,必须不断完善政策,使家电下乡政策的实惠真正落实到农民身上。     

重庆市农民工市民化的教育培训资源统筹对策

城乡统筹的实质是资源的统筹.在重庆市“千万农民变市民”的社会大试验中,教育与培训将发挥重要作用.目前,重庆市农民工的教育与培训存在较多问题,直接影响了农民工市民化的进程,根源在于资源统筹乏力.应当根据科学发展观的要求,加强重庆市农民工的教育培训资源统筹.文章对重庆市实施制度、机构、经费、师资、信息资源这“五大统筹”和统筹模式变革提出了对策建议.     

Pre‐procreative ages in population stability and cyclicity

Age‐specific models of population renewal (with and without feedback) which imply convergence to a stable state for some levels of fertility or feedback may imply the presence of long‐term cycling around a constant or exponentially changing equilibrium for other levels of fertility or feedback. The switch from one regime to the other is a “bifurcation.”; The conditions for bifurcation involve the roots of an analogue of Lotka's Equation.

Typically bifurcation is induced by raising the strength of feedback or the level of fertility. It has been known since the early 1980s, however, that this is sometimes impossible. It is sometimes impossible even with the linear renewal equation itself and with the most basic of non‐linear models, Lee's cohort feedback model.

Here it is proved that this typical route to bifurcation does not fail for these basic models in the presence of a condition which always holds for realistic applications with higher organisms: the existence of a span of ages before the onset of fertility.

Specifically, a strictly positive lower bound on ages of procreation is proved to be sufficient to guarantee the existence of a rescaling of Lotka's Equation for which the real part of some complex root vanishes. This result holds for absolutely Lebesgue‐integrable (signed) net maternity functions on the positive real line and for absolutely summable (signed) net maternities on the positive integers.

It follows that Coale's rescaling device for the analysis of approach to stability in stable population theory can be implemented for all realistic human net maternity schedules. It also follows that the many special cases of the cohort feedback model throughout population biology will all generate persistent cycling instead of stability if feedback is sufficiently strong.     

From Destruction to Reconciliation

SUMMARY

Daniel Johnson discusses how the application of “restorative justice” in his own life and in the life of the victim of his criminal offense contributed to his personal regeneration and healing for his victim. Mr. Johnson challenges criminal justice policy-makers to create conditions where “restorative justice” can be employed in the broadest sense in order to do what contemporary, punitive, retributive criminal justice systems are largely incapable of doing, that is, facilitate lasting offender rehabilitation and healing for crime victims and communities, and to offer opportunities for victim-offender reconciliations.     

Poverty Research in a Development Policy Context

This article provides an evaluation of the extent to which science is addressing worldwide poverty and hunger. It is based on the literature contained in the Thomson Reuters' Web of Science Citation Index (1980 to 2008) and focuses on the WOTRO Strategy Plan 2007–2010 of the Netherlands Foundation for the Advancement of Tropical Research, although similar policies from other countries might also be assessed. The data show that poverty/hunger research has grown steadily over time in many disciplines, most significantly in Environmental Sciences and Technology. Much of this research is hidden; hence the construction of an internationally recognised open‐access database is recommended so that scientists can easily identify critical gaps related to scientific capacity‐building.     

Power To Our Journeys: Re‐membering Michael

The following personal reflections are in honour of Michael and all that he contributed to our lives. And, we honour Brigitte a key member of the group who died in 2006. Mem, Sue and Veronica, December 2008.     

The numerical evaluation of the distribution function of a bilinear from to a quadratic from with econometric examples

This paper considers a general and computationally convenient method of evaluating the distribution function of statistics that are the ratio of a bilinear form to a quadratic form. Numerous Economemc applications of the method are given.     

引渡背景下的刑事法变革探析

在全球经济一体化步伐加快、各国刑事司法合作日益紧密的当下,如何将逃亡国外的贪官污吏引渡回国、实现正义审判,是一个急迫的现实问题。笔者关注国际法律制度与国内刑法的衔接,以近年引渡实况为背景,从引渡困境切入,探讨国际化背景下的大刑法改革之路,以期通过自身革新实现国际追捕的新跨越。     

大学生数学建模竞赛几个相关问题的研究

数学建模竞赛已成为全球重点综合性大学数学教学工作中的一项“重头戏” ,成为评价大学数学教学水平的一项重要指标。数学建模对培养学生的素质特别是培养大学生创新能力和团队精神有着重大的意义 ;提高大学生数学建模竞赛水平关键在于教学组织工作 ,并要时时跟踪数学建模竞赛的特点和未来的发展走向。