Broadened previous findings about conceptions of personal prerogative at home and school with regard to socioeconomic and ethnic status, focusing on working-class African American children. Found a flattening out of opportunity at school combined with some presence of punishment reasoning, suggesting interesting differences in approach between…

Sixty-four Japanese mothers of 3- to 6-year-olds were interviewed concerning their conceptions of children's areas of personal control. Mothers granted children choices regarding recreational activities, clothes, and friends to foster autonomy and competence, but they set limits around daily routines, recreational activities, and interpersonal…

In this study, the author examines the patterns of leaving home in a sample of 93 participants and their parents. The quality of parent-child relationships, psychological symptomatology in adolescence and young adulthood, and attachment representation were assessed longitudinally from mid-adolescence to young adulthood. Attachment representation,…

This article reports on findings from a research project that investigated the experiences and perceptions of final-year social science undergraduates enrolled on a dissertation module in a post-1992 UK university. The dissertation was designed to provide students with the opportunity to function autonomously and determine the content and focus of…

Dominant academic narratives about "the body" occur within two major camps. The first is derived from "classical social theory", and takes a macroscopic focus. The contrasting perspective is what Sharp ("Extended forms of the social", "Arena Journal", 1, pp. 221-237, 1993) refers to as "post-classical…

With the growing application of modern genetic technology to everyday healthcare provision, concern over its moral defence is increasing. This paper discusses pre-natal genetic testing, currently the healthcare situation in which the technology is most frequently applied. In doing this it addresses the justification for the resulting marked…

This study looked at the influence of a Sport Education intervention program on students' motivational responses in a high school physical education setting. Two intact groups were assigned curricular interventions: the Sport Education group (n = 25), which received eight 60-min lessons, and the comparison group (n = 26), which received a…

Career indecision can be divided into two categories: developmental and chronic indecision. The former is generally viewed as a developmentally normal problem resulting from a lack of information on the self and on the world of work, whereas the latter is defined as a pervasive inability to make a decision about one's career. The goals of the…

A population of 12-19 year-old adolescents (n = 994) was selected from a pool of 7264 students in order to study adolescent's perception of autonomy. Eleven behavioural autonomy items were elected by the adolescents and used to evaluate the frequency of desire, achievement and disobeying parents in early (12-13 year-old) and late (18-19 year-old)…

The adjustment to college represents a potentially invigorating and unsettling time for students. As students are socialized into college experiences, they must simultaneously navigate issues of identity, uncertainty, and change--all of which take place in a dynamic, ever-changing communication environment. The purpose of this study was to explore…

The right of parents to home educate is sometimes described as a "human right." Underlying this "rights claim" is the perception that attempts to restrict home education are both unnecessary and dangerous. "Unnecessary," because home education does not harm children or deprive them of the right to education and…

A study is reported of the use of a personal journal as a tool for transferring learning from the training room to the workplace. The targeted learning event was an English for Communication training programme. This programme was an intensive four-day course that grouped together participants from the non-UK sites of the aircraft manufacturer…

Amartya Sen's writings have articulated the importance of human agency, and identified the need for information on agency freedom to inform our evaluation of social arrangements. Many approaches to poverty reduction stress the need for empowerment. This paper reviews "subjective quantitative measures of human agency at the individual level." It…

One goal of most courses is to prepare students with basic knowledge and skills associated with the course content. Mastery learning can be a rewarding way to encourage greater student achievement by allowing students multiple attempts to demonstrate an understanding of course concepts. This may involve repeated submissions of individual…

Predictors of persistence previously found useful in distinguishing successful from unsuccessful distance learners were assembled in a 60-item survey. The survey was completed by 259 learners enrolled in associate's, bachelor's, or master's level distance learning courses in accounting, business administration, information services, criminal…