Attitudes

Tarkastelemme kirjoituksessamme suomalaisten nuorten suhdetta yhteiskuntaan ja demokraattiseen toimintaan. Olemme rajanneet tarkastelun ulkopuolelle tiedollista tasoa koskevat kysymykset. Jaamme kirjoituksessamme suomalaisten nuorten suhtautumista demokratiaan kahteen osaan. Tarkastelemme aluksi luottamusta yhteiskuntaan ja erityisesti edustukselliseen demokratiaan. Sitten käsittelemme yhteiskunnallista osallistumista, motivaatiota osallistumiseen, vaikuttamisen muotoja ja näkemyksiä vaikuttamisen hyödyllisyydestä. Lopuksi tarkastelemme, millaiselta nuorten kansalaispätevyys näyttää.

"Intertextuality in its broadest sense—the relationship between two texts—is a pervasive feature of academic writing, as manifested by features such as citations to earlier texts and the sets of features such as structure and organisation which are shared by texts in a given genre and/or academic discipline.

Many of the intertextual features of academic writing, such as the choice of reporting verb and verb form, have been thoroughly researched and described (e.g., Charles, 2006; Shaw, 1992). Much is also know about a specific, highly problematic form of intertextuality: plagiarism (e.g., Pecorari & Shaw, 2012). However, less attention has been given to the ways in which novice academic writers become aware of conventional intertextual practices, and less still to the transferability of this feature to writing in the workplace.

This paper will present the results of a corpus-based investigation of intertextuality in two domains: the leisure-time reading which lower-division undergraduates do, and a common workplace genre.  By triangulating the results from these two corpora with existing findings about the intertextual features of academic texts it will be possible to describe the extent to which these features overlap with, or diverge from, each other.  This will thus provide an indication of the features which can reasonably be expected to transfer from one domain to another, and which cannot, and should therefore be the subject of explicit instruction in the English for Specific Academic Purposes classroom.

References
Charles, M. (2006). The Construction of Stance in Reporting Clauses: A Cross-disciplinary Study of Theses. Applied Linguistics, 27, 492–518.
Pecorari, D. & Shaw, P. (2012). Types of student intertextuality and faculty attitudes. Journal of Second Language Writing, 21, 149–164.
Shaw, P. (1992). Reasons for the correlation of voice, tense and sentence function in reporting verbs. Applied Linguistics, 13, 302–319.
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This paper reports on a study of SymbalooEDU which was used as a PLE platform to support learners of English for Academic Purposes at CELC NUS. To begin with, the primary pedagogical ideas behind PLEs are reviewed. These ideas are then considered when interpreting data from two student surveys. The first is an analysis of a survey of CELC students E-Learning preferences. The second is a feedback survey about student perceptions and experiences of using SymbalooEDU to support their learning.

The main aim of the present study was to investigate why some students do not continue in science-oriented studies in higher education despite that their previous career in secondary education proved that they were interested and suitably qualified to do so. We introduced a new approach to deal with these students’ attitudes towards science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) studies. That is, the study was based on the multi-attribute utility theory, using an approach related to the theory of reasoned action. The study included 477 Dutch students that pursued a study in higher education (mostly second- and third-year students). All students had taken advanced mathematics, chemistry and physics courses in secondary education, but did not choose a STEM study in higher education. In 2008, a questionnaire was sent to them to measure their attitudes. The attitudes of these students towards STEM studies were compared with their attitudes towards their current (non-STEM) study, while also taking the influence of significant others (e.g. parents, teachers and peers) on these students’ study choice into account. As expected, most non-STEM students had chosen the best ‘suitable’ option as regards their attitudes. Nevertheless, 1 out of 10 non-STEM students had a more favourable attitude towards STEM studies than towards their current non-STEM study. However, the hypothesis that these students had left the STEM pipeline because of the advice of significant others was not confirmed.

This study investigated 202 elementary school children’s judgements and reasoning about transgressions when school rules regulating these transgressions have been removed in hypothetical school situations. As expected, moral transgressions were judged as more wrong and less accepted than structuring, protecting and etiquette transgressions. In turn, etiquette transgressions were judged as less wrong and more accepted than moral, structuring and protecting transgressions. Structuring transgressions were judged beyond expectations as more wrong and less accepted than protecting transgressions. Judgements and justifications made by the children showed that they discriminated between transgressions as a function of school‐rule category (relational/moral rules, structuring rules, protecting rules and etiquette rules). The findings confirm as well as extend previous social‐cognitive domain theory research on children’s socio‐moral reasoning.

""This study examined various factors affecting attitude towards seeking professional psychological help (ATSPPH) in Arabs living in the UK: causal beliefs, shame-focused attitudes, confidentiality concerns, ethnic identity and demographic variables. Participants completed an online questionnaire and results indicated that Arabs showed significantly less positive ATSPPH and had stronger causal beliefs in supernatural and non-Western physiology than British Caucasians. Confidentiality concerns, but not shame-focused attitudes were significant predictors of ATSPPH; confidentiality concerns were more significant for Arabs than for British Caucasians. Implications are drawn from the results.
Keywords: professional help seeking; mental illness; Arabs; UK""

This study sets out to establish which Buddhist values contrasted with or were shared by adolescents from a non-Buddhist population. A survey of attitude toward a variety of Buddhist values was fielded in a sample of 352 non-Buddhist schoolchildren aged between 13 and 15 in London. Buddhist values where attitudes were least positive concerned the worth of being a monk/nun or meditating, offering candles & incense on the Buddhist shrine, friendship on Sangha Day, avoiding drinking alcohol, seeing the world as empty or impermanent and Nirvana as the ultimate peace. Buddhist values most closely shared by non-Buddhists concerned the Law of Karma, calming the mind, respecting those deserving of respect, subjectivity of happiness, welfare work, looking after parents in old age and compassion to cuddly animals. Further significant differences of attitude toward Buddhism were found in partial correlations with the independent variables of sex, age and religious affiliation. Correlation patterns paralleled those previously described in theistic religions. Findings are applied to spiritual, moral, social and cultural development and for the teaching of religious to pupils of no faith adherence. The study recommends that quantitative psychometrics employed to conceptualize Buddhist values by discriminant validity in this study could be extended usefully to other aspects of the study of Buddhism, particularly in quest of validity in the conceptualization of Buddhist identity within specifically Buddhist populations.

The aim of this study is to investigate whether the cross-cultural value paradigm ‘individualism-collectivism’ is a useful explanatory model for mental illness stigma on a cultural level. Using snowball sampling, a quantitative questionnaire survey of 305 individuals from four UK-based cultural groups (white-English, American, Greek/Greek Cypriot, and Chinese) was carried out. The questionnaire included the ‘Community Attitudes to Mental Illness scale’ and the ‘vertical-horizontal individualism-collectivism scale’. The results revealed that the more stigmatizing a culture’s mental illness attitudes are, the more likely collectivism effectively explains these attitudes. In contrast, the more positive a culture’s mental illness attitudes, the more likely individualism effectively explains attitudes. We conclude that a consideration of the individualism-collectivism paradigm should be included in any future research aiming to provide a holistic understanding of the causes of mental illness stigma, particularly when the cultures stigmatization levels are particularly high or low.

The aim of this postal survey was to assess the utilization, knowledge and attitude concerning sealants among Malaysian dentists. A pretested questionnaire was sent to all dentists (1217) who were on the Dentist Register of Malaysia of 1987. A response rate of 61.1% was obtained. The results indicate that 52.6% of the respondents have used sealants, but of these only 13.6% have used them frequently. The two "knowledge" related questions receiving the most support concerned the suitability of the first permanent molars for sealants and the loss of sealants attributable to problems at the time of application. The two "attitudinal" questions receiving the most support concerned the value of sealants in preventing dental caries and the need for the profession to expand more efforts toward increasing public demand for sealants. Only about 50% of the respondents believed that sealants are cost-effective.

"Hunting is a serious threat to wildlife worldwide.
The rainforest-rich Arunachal Pradesh state of India, a biodiversity hotspot, is an area severely affected by indigenous
hunting. The state has several indigenous tribes who hunt
for food, trade, culture and leisure. Using semi-structured
interviews and questionnaires we surveyed 184 individuals
in 51 villages across four tribes for information on species
hunted and hunting practices. A total of 33 mammalian
species are reportedly hunted, of which only 11 were
reported by hunters during formal interviews. The other
22 species were observed during casual visits, festivals and
informal discussions. Of the species hunted 20 are Endangered,
Vulnerable or Near Threatened on the IUCN Red List. Villagers now travel longer distances to hunt than they did a decade ago, suggesting a decline in wildlife populations around villages. The extent of offtake of mammals was related to the altitude of the village and the use of guns. Villagers living at higher altitudes and with guns appeared to hunt more. We also documented the importance of ritualistic hunting by some tribes. Additional research is required to estimate offtake and consumption rates of wild meat. Increasing conservation awareness and community based conservation projects may assist in controlling the
severity and extent of this hunting problem."

"Complexity, expansion and demand for quality in education have increased pressure on administrators and teachers. With the result that teaching is now regarded by teachers as highly stressful (Borg, 1990) it can cause burnout among teachers. However, can personal variables and principal evaluation predict burnout? Specifically, data were collected from a sample of Omani teachers in the pilot phase of a large research project about their self-efficacy, attitudes toward teaching and principals’ rating of teachers as well as teaching burnout. Regression analysis was used for self-efficacy, attitudes and principals’ ratings to predict burnout among Omani teachers. A sample of 135 teachers (100 females and 35 males) was selected from neighboring schools. The reliability coefficients of the measures were high and significant (Burnout, a = .87; attitudes, a = .79, efficacy, a = .93; principals’ ratings, a = .89). Regression analysis revealed that attitudes toward teaching was the best predictor of burnout (b = -.34, p < .01; r = -.51) followed by self-efficacy (b = -.32, p < .01; r = - .50) and then principals’ ratings (b = -.26, p < .01; r = -.42).  The three variables explained 26%, 13%, and 6%, respectively, of the variance in burnout. These  results indicate that teachers who had positive attitudes toward their profession were less keen to be burned out. Also, teachers who felt self-efficacious were less subject to burnout. Similarly, teachers who were rated positively by their principals were less burned out. The implications of these results are that if teachers have positive attitudes and are self-efficacious, they may be able to repress the feelings of burnout, including the feeling of emotional exhaustion and depersonalization. Being highly and positively evaluated by the principals in conjunction with more positive attitudes and self-efficacy may help teachers evade burnout.

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