Decisions that involve consideration of inconsistent or contradictory information provide a context for understanding and supporting intellectual development.

Local autonomy is one of the recent trends in reforms of compulsory education. However, several parallel trends such as individual accountability, performance and visibility challenge professional autonomy. The aim of this article is to explore how accountability and transparency reforms affect teacher autonomy in Norway and Sweden. The authors…

This article presents the author's message during a graduation ceremony at the University of Pennsylvania. The author talks about the identity of education and stresses that education not only fosters conversation, but it is itself a form of conversation. The author challenges people to engage in conversation about education from multiple…

Objective: The authors compare and contrast psychiatry residency training in the United States to that in Canada and selected countries in South America, Europe, and Asia. Method: Nine individuals who are intimately familiar with psychiatry residency training in the United States (primarily chairs, training directors, associate training directors,…

Based on the seminal work of Emmy Werner (1990), practitioners have recognized the powerful role protective and risk factors play in the development of children's emotional and behavioral adjustment. Researchers have concluded that differences in children's reactions to difficult events are influenced by the type and level of protective factors in…

This article explores some of the core values which underpin student voice work. We are in the very early stages of trying to understand the values that surround student voice and hope to develop these understandings by drawing on the work of various educational theorists. Throughout the article we examine some of the complexities that arise in…

This article draws on the suggestion that modern technology is "autonomous" in that our social control mechanisms are unable to control technology and instead merely adapt society to integrate new technologies. In this article, I suggest that common law judges tend systematically to support the integration of novel technologies into…

Reproductive rights are essential to a woman's full participation in the workplace. Procreative decisions are private ones, and once the door is open to government restrictions it will be hard to close. Prior to 1850, abortion was legal in most states. Not until the professionalization of the medical field did physicians and others seek to…

This theme issue presents personal perspectives and approaches to self-advocacy from individuals who are deaf-blind. Individual articles are: (1) "Self-Advocacy: Attaining Personal Stature" by Michelle J. Smithdas; (2) "The American Association of the Deaf-Blind: A National Consumer Advocacy Organization" by Jeffrey S. Bohrman;…

A practicum was developed to implement a career awareness program for pregnant and parenting teenagers as a part of a continuum of services provided to adolescents by a nonprofit agency. The overall goals of the program were to help participants become aware of their identity and ambitions, to assist them in setting educational and career goals,…

People in the counseling profession make some profound assumptions about the freedom that all people have (or seem to have). From the moment that each counselor began counselor training, the notion that people are able to generally choose and make decisions for themselves has been associated with the dominant process models of the profession. As a…

The purpose of this study was to clarify and empirically examine the role played by a toddler's self comforting skill in facilitating the separation-individuation process. On the basis of psychoanalytic ideas and empirical findings it was predicted that self comforting would be positively related to both secure attachment and self awareness. It…

Presents review of perspectives from law, medical ethics, and psychosocial research to emphasize importance and multi-disciplinary nature of autonomy issues in long term care and to clarify background of Retirement Research Foundation's Personal Autonomy in Long Term Care Initiative. Introduces supplemental issue of "The Gerontologist"…

A switch-activated microcomputer was used to systematically access the leisure preferences of three severely disabled non-speaking children (ages 10-12). Subjects were provided with a choice between two of five leisure activities (such as listening to music, watching action videos, and feeling vibrations). (Author/DB)

Employing the multidimensional scaling of similarities data, studied person perception in five adult-aged groups of both male and female respondents. Identified three basic attributes: perceived age, perceived gender, and perceived autonomy. Discerned several generalizable trends for the attributes of perceived age and perceived autonomy.…