The program "Take Action" was used to teach six adolescents with mild to moderate mental retardation the skills they needed to attain their daily Individualized Education Program goals. Results indicate all students learned to attain their own daily goals and maintained these skills following withdrawal of teacher instruction. (Contains…

Addresses the importance of adults negotiating the intergenerational family stage of personal authority in the family system. Presents a treatment approach that integrates intergenerational family therapy with cognitive therapy. Discusses the intergenerational transmission of problem patterns, the assessment process, specific counseling…

Reports on a training package that taught four consumers with physical, learning, or psychiatric disabilities how to write advocacy letters. The research design included baseline and training, and posttraining conditions. Results suggest that an action letter training program may enhance advocacy letter writing skills to address specific problems.…

This article questions the notion of passion in gifted education and discusses how the romanticized interpretation of passion has so diluted the concept that it has been rendered meaningless. Different aspects of passion are explored, different ways people communicate their passions are described, and strategies for fostering passion are provided.…

Reflects on a meditation that is used with women's groups. Describes its purpose as helping women access their inner source of wisdom and knowledge about their bodies and their lives. The meditation is aimed at ridding women of the question, "What's wrong with me?" Describes participants' comments about their reactions and the benefits…

Interviews with 40 young adults participating in Britain's New Deal for Young People showed that the program helped some, did not help some, and was inappropriate for others. The New Deal appears to individualize employment, neglecting structural factors causing job displacement, against which individual agency may be ineffective. (Contains 33…

We adapt resource theory to compare involvement in family decisions by older women and men in the more patriarchal setting of Egypt and the more egalitarian setting of Tunisia. Data from the World Health Organization Collaborative Study on Social and Health Aspects of Aging are analyzed. In Egypt, women participate less often than men in most…

Students' engagement and persistence on academic learning tasks often require their use of volitional strategies to protect against distractions and facilitate task completion. In this article we discusses factors that both positively and negatively influence students' ability to regulate their learning activities and the supporting role that…

This research investigates competing arguments about the relationship between power and perception in social networks. One line of research predicts that occupants of structurally advantaged positions have more accurate perceptions of ties in their networks (i.e., who is tied to whom); another line asserts that lower-power actors have more…

Making choices is an essential part of functioning independently as an adult in society. Activities specifically directed toward helping students learn to make choices, however, are typically neglected in educational programs for students with severe disabilities. This paper presents a rational for the inclusion of choice-making as an important…

Educating older adults (in the so-called third age) is becoming an increasingly important activity for the elderly, above all because it empowers them, while at the same time reducing their social exclusion. The aim of this paper is to closely examine the actual state of affairs and the education possibilities for older adults in Slovenia. The…

In U.S. society dominance appears extremely desirable. The purpose of this study was an attempt to measure the relationship between dominance, self-esteem, and life satisfaction. Research questions were: "Do the people who score high on the Dominance scale of the California Psychological Inventory have higher self-esteem scores as measured by…

This book examines sources of disempowerment in classrooms and schools and suggests ways to deal with them. This book shows how to build children's feelings of competence, control and influence by understanding and increasing their self-esteem. Chapter 1 looks at the barriers to overcome in empowering children. It examines how numerous forces at…

Provides explanations for how rioting, generally interpreted as an attempt to control one's reinforcements, comes to be manifested by external blacks. It is suggested that rioting or violent protest, though traditionally thought of as expressive behavior, comes to be seen as instrumental because it works. (Author/AM)

Presents data from the administration of questionnaires containing civil liberties and personality measures in two different years to adults in the metropolitan New York City area, finding that attitudes towards civil liberties issues correlated with flexibility, self-reliance, independence, anomie, and fate control measures. Anxiety scores did…