Many educators today recognise the importance of online data sources for all sorts of research and writing projects. Some now permit students to include online sources in their work and others actually require their use. There are abundant resources available online, including real-time video; radio stations from around the world; reference tools, such as encyclopaedias, dictionaries, thesauri and collections of quotes; libraries of poetry, short stories, images and music; critical studies and research articles on every conceivable topic; information about authors (...) and historical figures; government and public policy data; current events; interactive software; and much, much more. At the same time, most users quickly see the problems that arise. Issues of privacy, plagiarism, pornography, hate sites, commercialism and simply wasting time arise regardless of the topic. The abundance soon yields thousands of Websites of dubious quality and relevance. (shrink)

Our embodied capacity for action and our dispositions towards goals define our perception of a situation and possible actions. Thus, situations are not constitutive of action, but they demand that we act. For Shane Ralston, the situations that call for action are historical, imagined, or projected debates involving John Dewey. When Dewey is portrayed not just as a presenter of theory, but as an actor in debates grounded in time, place, and daily life consequences, we understand his arguments in new (...) ways. When he is called upon to act by engaging in debates that arose even long after his death, the interaction (or transaction) of philosopher and situation produces new meaning.The non-teleological, creative .. (shrink)

John Dewey's writings make a compelling case for the importance of linking school and society and for conceiving education as the development and articulation of lived experience. In recent years, however, a focus on discrete topical learning, along with narrow definitions of achievement, have left us with few good examples of that conception of education. The best examples often represent one-time experiences, or more limited linking of school and society.This article explores an example of what we call community inquiry1, as (...) it has developed within a school and community life. The community's inquiry builds on student experiences and exemplifies integrated curriculum, community-based learning, projects .. (shrink)

Children are vulnerable to adverse effects of food advertising. Food commercials are known to increase hedonic, taste-oriented, and unhealthy food decisions. The current study examined how promoting resilience to food commercials impacted susceptibility to unhealthy food decision-making in children. To promote resilience to food commercials, we utilized the food advertising literacy intervention intended to enhance cognitive skepticism and critical thinking, and decrease positive attitudes toward commercials. Thirty-six children aged 8–12 years were randomly assigned to the food advertising literacy intervention or (...) the control condition. Eighteen children received four brief intervention sessions via video over 1 week period. In each session, children watched six food commercials with interspersed embedded intervention narratives. While watching food commercials and narratives, children were encouraged to speak their thoughts out loud spontaneously (“think-aloud”), which provided children's attitudes toward commercials. Eighteen children in the control condition had four control sessions over 1 week, and watched the same food commercials without intervention narratives while thinking aloud. The first and last sessions were held in the laboratory, and the second and third sessions were held at the children's homes. Susceptibility to unhealthy food decision-making was indicated by the decision weights of taste attributes, taste perception, food choices,ad libitumsnacking, and cognitive and affective attitudes toward food commercials. As hypothesized, the intervention successfully decreased susceptibility to unhealthy food decision-making evidenced by reduced decision weights of the taste in food decisions, decreased tasty perception of unhealthy foods, and increased cognitive skepticism and critical thinking toward food commercials. In addition, as children's opinions assimilated to intervention narratives, their cognitive skepticism and critical thinking toward commercials increased. The aforementioned results were not shown in the control condition. However, this brief intervention was not enough to change actual food choices or food consumption. Results of this study suggest that promoting resilience to food commercials by enhancing cognitive skepticism and critical thinking effectively reduced children's susceptibility to unhealthy food-decision making. (shrink)

The paper explores certain phenomena which arise in stories, conversations, and human activity in general when the plans of two individuals are formed and carried out in an interactive situation. A notation system for representing interacting plans is introduced and applied in the analysis of a small portion of “Hansel and Gretel.” The analysis illustrates how a single actor plan can be modified by the needs of cooperative interaction with others and how cooperative interactive episodes can be transformed and used (...) deceptively by one party in achieving his or her own covert goals. (shrink)

This paper reports an analysis of the content of the codes of ethics of 15 professional business organizations in the United States, representing the broad range of disciplines found in business. The analysis was conducted to identify common ethical issues faced by business professionals. It was also structured to highlight ethical issues that are either unique to or of particular importance for business professionals. No attempt is made to make value judgments about either the codes of ethics studied or of (...) their content. General ethical values identified include honesty and integrity, general legal compliance, discreditable or harmful acts, and obligations related to social values. More business-specific issues include confidentiality, responsibilities to employers/clients, obligations to the profession, independence and objectivity, and business-specific legal and technical compliance issues. (shrink)

A great deal of interest in codes of ethics exists in both the business community and the academic community. Within the academic community, this interest has given rise to a number of studies of codes of ethics. Many of these studies have focused on the content of various codes.One important way the study of codes of ethics can be advanced is by applying formal tools of analysis to codes of ethics. An understanding of important dimensions that may differ across codes (...) of ethics, a common terminology to describe these dimensions, and a means to measure these dimensions will facilitate applying such tools. They will also facilitate discussion, enable comparisons, and advance our understanding of codes of ethics. The present paper describes a classification scheme to use in studying codes of ethics. This scheme uses six important dimensions to distinguish among codes of ethics: length, focus, level of detail, shape, thematic content, and tone. The paper also introduces metrics that can be used to measure the dimensions. (shrink)

Motor proficiency reflects the ability to perform precise and coordinated movements in different contexts. Previous research suggests that different profiles of motor proficiency may be associated with different cognitive functioning characteristics thus suggesting an interaction between cognitive and motor processes. The current study investigated this interaction in the general population of healthy adults with different profiles of motor proficiency by focusing on error-related cognitive control and behavioral adaptation mechanisms. In addition, the impact of these processes was assessed in terms of (...) trait anxiety and worries. Forty healthy adults were divided into high and low motor proficiency groups based on an assessment of their motor skills. Using electroencephalography during a flanker task, error-related negativity was measured as the neural indicator of cognitive control. Post-error slowing was measured to represent behavioral adaptation. Participants also completed an anxiety assessment questionnaire. Participants in the high motor proficiency group achieved better task accuracy and showed relatively enhanced cognitive control through increased ERN. Contrastingly, individuals in the lower motor proficiency group achieved poorer accuracy whilst showing some evidence of compensation through increased PES. Trait anxiety reflecting general worries was found to be correlated with motor functioning, but the study could not provide evidence that this was related to cognitive or behavioral control mechanisms. The interaction between cognitive and motor processes observed in this study is unique for healthy and sub-clinical populations and provides a baseline for the interpretation of similar investigations in individuals with motor disorders. (shrink)

Negative acknowledgement is an impression management technique that uses the admission of an unfavourable quality to mitigate a negative response. Although the technique has been clearly demonstrated, the underlying process is not well understood. The current research identifies a key mediator and moderator while also demonstrating that the effect extends beyond the specific acknowledged domain to the overall evaluation of a target object. The results of study 1 indicate that negative acknowledgement works through mitigating negatively valenced cognitive responses. People who (...) are presented with a negative acknowledgement are less likely to counterargue when forming an evaluation. The results of study 2 reveal that individual differences in need for structure impact the effectiveness of the technique. People who are high in need for structure are more susceptible to the effect presumably because of their desire for easy-to-use information that aids the formation and maintenance of simple knowledge structures. (shrink)

Medical ethical thought, imbued with the idealism of traditional medicine, has always grappled with the problem of translating abstract principles into actions that do not violate the sensibilities of the patient or the physician. The problem of translation is minimal for the family physician engaged in routine conversations with patients and their family members. This conversation — staying with details, maintaining the union of values and facts, reflecting without detaching or distancing — suggests a model of ethical reasoning and problem-solving (...) that warrants serious attention. (shrink)

We highlight exclusionary practices in management research, and demonstrate through example how a more inclusive management literature can address the unique contexts of persons with disabilities, a group that is disadvantaged in society, globally. Drawing from social psychology, disability, self-employment, entrepreneurship, and vocational rehabilitation literatures, we develop and test a holistic model that demonstrates how persons with disabilities might attain meaningful work and improved self-image via self-employment, thus accessing some of the economic and social-psychological benefits often unavailable to them due (...) to organizational-employment barriers. Our longitudinal study provides evidence of the self-image value of ‘doing’ in self-employment, highlighting the potential to reduce stigma and improve generalized self-efficacy and self-esteem. Implications for self-image theory, entrepreneurship training and development, and public policy related to persons with disabilities are discussed. (shrink)

We identify two aspects of the problem of maintaining perceptual stability despite an observer's eye movements. The first, visual direction constancy, is the (egocentric) stability of apparent positions of objects in the visual world relative to the perceiver. The second, visual position constancy, is the (exocentric) stability of positions of objects relative to each other. We analyze the constancy of visual direction despite saccadic eye movements.Three information sources have been proposed to enable the visual system to achieve stability: the structure (...) of the visual field, proprioceptive inflow, and a copy of neural efference or outflow to the extraocular muscles. None of these sources by itself provides adequate information to achieve visual direction constancy; present evidence indicates that all three are used.Our final question concerns how information processing operations result in a stable world. The three traditionally suggested means have been elimination, translation, or evaluation. All are rejected. From a review of the physiological and psychological evidence we conclude that no subtraction, compensation, or evaluation need take place. The problem for which these solutions were developed turns out to be a false one. We propose a “calibration” solution: correct spatiotopic positions are calculated anew for each fixation. Inflow, outflow, and retinal sources are used in this calculation: saccadic suppression of displacement bridges the errors between these sources and the actual extent of movement. (shrink)

Jacob Klapwijk’s book Purpose in the Living World? (Cambridge 2998) is examined with special attention given to the scholarly background from out of which it emerges as a significant contribution to reformational philosophical reflection. As an initial step to clarify some important issues raised by Klapwijk’s critical comments about Dooyeweerd’s “essentialist” concept of species, the article probes facets of the way Jan Lever incorporated reformational philosophical concepts into his biological theory and considers the 1959 review written by Herman Dooyeweerd of (...) Lever’s Creation and Evolution. The analysis focuses specifically upon the social responsibilities of these two scholars and the confrontation of their respective views. With the work of Lever and Dooyeweerd we sense something of the ambiguities when reformational philosophy confronts an evangelical scholasticism. This confrontation is an important facet of the context in which Klapwijk has set forth his discussion of creation and emergent evolution. Purpose is also the fruit of scholarly collaboration across disciplines, providing a welcome stimulus for a deepened understanding of the corporate character of the student vocation. (shrink)