The aim of this paper is to demonstrate how poststructuralism and social constructionism can contribute to the empirical research on groups in problem-based learning (PBL). The paper outlines the analytical complexity and shows, through empirical examples, the potentials and limitations of this perspective as an alternative to traditional group…

Changes in higher education institutions characteristic of a knowledge society are strongly affecting academic life, scientists' working conditions and the social dynamics of scientific groups. In such situations, it is important to understand the different ways in which these groups are tackling the structural dilemmas posed by the changes…

Purpose: Changing research design and methodologies regarding how researchers articulate with end-users of technology is an important consideration in developing sustainable agricultural practices. This paper analyzes a joint experiment as a multi-stakeholder process and contributes to understand how the way of organizing social learning affects…

This article is about the lived experiences and friendships of a small group of people with a learning disability who live without support in one of the most deprived areas in the UK. The findings are from an inclusive research project, that was named "Money, Friends and Making Ends Meet" and the participants who researched their own…

The dual nature of the self has been a core concern of social psychology since its inception. We contribute to this longstanding tradition of inquiry by focusing on two lines of research within the expectation states theoretical research program: (1) the study of second-order expectations and (2) research on the durability of expectations. We…

This article describes an action research project conducted by the first author that examined the influence of class meetings on student-to-student as well as student-to-teacher relationships. Her action research project addressed the following overarching question: What influence do class meetings have on relationships in a first-grade classroom?…

Writing groups for doctoral students are generally agreed to provide valuable learning spaces for Ph.D. candidates. Here an academic developer and the eight members of a writing group formed in a Discipline of Public Health provide an account of their experiences of collaborating in a multicultural, multidisciplinary thesis writing group. We…

This paper discusses the significance of conducting respectful research within urban schools, using the example of one large-scale university-school board partnership in northwestern Toronto. The authors, three research assistants on the project, use their experiences within three of the participating schools to interrogate the research approach…

Investigates several sets of personality and attitudinal variables to assess their relationship to one clear-cut example of sex-role behavior, namely, labor-force participation on the part of married women, and corrects some methodological limitations of earlier studies. (Author)

Hirschi and Hindelang's (1977) causal model in which IQ is linked to delinquency by a set of school-related variables is examined, using Costner's multiple indicator procedure. (Author)

Subjects rated a counselor's performance on two videotapes which were identical except for the level of professional jargon employed by the counselor. Subjects were more likely to rate the counselor high if they were given the high-prestige introduction than if they received the low-prestige introduction. (Author)

This paper proposes and tests a theory of catharsis of repressed emotion. The key concept in this theory is the balance of attention, a concept that is shown to be equivalent to aesthetic distance. Laughter and other emotional releases occur when one's attention is equally divided between a distressful past event and the safe present. In the…

To explore the underlying dimensionality of beliefs about aging, two sets of opinion statements were factor analyzed for two age groups: persons under 60 (N=290) and persons 60 and older (N=181). The belief structure of the older group was more complex and variegated than the younger group. (Author)

Examines the effects of contemporaneous circumstances on the death attitudes of older adults. Findings suggest that the present social and psychological environment of the aged plays a less significant role in their attitudes toward death than is presently reflected in social gerontology. (Author)

Mail, telephone, and in-group methods of surveying youth are analyzed and an example of the use of the latter method during the early phase of Project 4-Health (4-H) in California is provided. Issues in data collection are associated with cost, time, survey item comprehension, and participation rates. Project 4-Health is a 5-year tobacco…