Growing Awareness of Cultural Aspects of Psychology as a Resource for Managing Progressive Social Change

I suggest that CCP’s early preoccupation with direct comparison between culturally-contrastive groups has been overtaken in importance by a number of trends in developmental and applied psychology. Some Western theorists now acknowledge reflexively that their interpretation of psychological variables is itself informed by a particular cultural system of meanings. A growing number of non-Western theorists have proposed alternative cultural psychologies. Mainstream developmental psychology has incorporated culture as an essential dimension of the field, leading to increasingly systemic theories. Cultural sensitivity is widely perceived as essential for the design and interpretation of psychological assessment. The IACCP has contributed to these trends by fostering inter-cultural communication among psychologists working in many different cultural contexts around the world. Collectively, they are in a position to impress on the next generation of planners and policy-makers the importance of culture in the formulation of strategies for managing progressive social change

Ecological role of an offshore industry artificial structure

Decommissioning of oil and gas infrastructure globally has focused attention on its importance as hard substratum on continental shelf and slope habitats. Observational studies are needed to improve understanding of faunal assemblages supported by offshore infrastructure and better predict the effect of removal. Here, we present results from visual inspection and physical sampling of a small oil and gas industry structure decommissioned from an oil field in the North East Atlantic. This is supported by observations of similar structures nearby and by photographs of the surrounding seabed from environmental baseline surveys. The structure supported a reasonably high biomass and diversity of invertebrates (>10 kg and >39 macrofaunal and 17 megafaunal species) and fishes (>20 kg biomass and >4 species). The invertebrate megafaunal species present on the structure were a sub-set of the hard substratum fauna observed on surrounding seabed. Porifera were absent from the structure. Biological succession in the first 2 years occurred as follows. Sparse colonies of the hydroid Obelia sp. stet were early colonisers then subsequent development of thick hydroid turf (Obelia sp. stet. and Halecium sp. stet.) supported an invertebrate assemblage (2654 individuals kg wet mass–1) dominated by saddle oysters [Pododesmus squama (Gmelin, 1791) and Heteranomia sp. stet.)] and scale worms (Harmothoe spp.). Percentage cover of hydroid turf varied significantly over the structure, with most growth on sections exposed to strongest currents. Commercially important fish species present around the structure included Gadus morhua (Atlantic cod), Pollachius virens (saithe) and Lophius piscatorius (monkfish). Studies of artificial structures such as this provide much needed data to understand their role in the ecology of seafloor habitats and inform environmental decision making on all stages of industry from exploration to decommissioning. We show that the ecological role of the decommissioned three-dimensional structures was to enhance the biomass of a sub-set of epifaunal invertebrates found in the area. This supported diverse associated macrofaunal organisms, providing a food source for motile invertebrates and fishes in an area where background hard substratum can be lost through the impacts of drilling

Relationships between changes in pain severity and other patient-reported outcomes: an analysis in patients with posttraumatic peripheral neuropathic pain

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>The objective of this study is to use the pain numeric rating scale (NRS) to evaluate associations between change in pain severity and changes in sleep, function, and mood assessed via patient-reported outcomes (PROs) in patients with posttraumatic pain.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>This is a secondary analysis of a clinical trial evaluating pregabalin in patients with posttraumatic peripheral neuropathic pain (N = 254). Regression models were used to determine associations between changes in pain (0-10 NRS) as the predictor and scores on the following PRO measures as the outcome: Pain Interference Index; Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale anxiety and depression subscales; Medical Outcomes Study-Sleep Scale 9-item Sleep Problems Index and Sleep Disturbance subscale; and Daily Sleep Interference Scale (0-10 NRS).</p> <p>Results</p> <p>Change in pain severity showed clear, direct relationships with changes in function, anxiety, depression, and sleep PROs, all of which were statistically significant (<it>P </it><.001). Results from subgroup analyses (≥30% or ≥50% pain responders, pregabalin or placebo treatment, age ≤ 51 years or > 51 years) tended to be consistent with results from the overall sample.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>Overall, a direct relationship exists between pain and various aspects of patient's well-being and functioning, which can provide a quantitative assessment of how improvements in pain may be expected to relate to other patient outcomes. (<url>http://ClinicalTrials.gov</url> Identifier number NCT00292188; EudraCT #2005-003048-78).</p

GraphoGame - a catalyst for multi-level promotion of literacy in diverse contexts

GraphoGame (GG) is originally a technology-based intervention method for supporting children with reading difficulties. It is now known that children who face problems in reading acquisition have difficulties in learning to differentiate and manipulate speech sounds and consequently, in connecting these sounds to corresponding letters. GG was developed to provide intensive training in matching speech sounds and larger units of speech to their written counterparts. GG has been shown to benefit children with reading difficulties and the game is now available for all Finnish school children for literacy support. Presently millions of children in Africa fail to learn to read despite years of primary school education. As many African languages have transparent writing systems similar in structure to Finnish, it was hypothesized that GG-based training of letter-sound correspondences could also be effective in supporting children's learning in African countries. In this article we will describe how GG has been developed from a Finnish dyslexia prevention game to an intervention method that can be used not only to improve children's reading performance but also to raise teachers' and parents' awareness of the development of reading skill and effective reading instruction methods. We will also provide an overview of the GG activities in Zambia, Kenya, Tanzania, and Namibia, and the potential to promote education for all with a combination of scientific research and mobile learning.Peer reviewe

A highly successful model? The rail franchising business in Britain

A crucial feature of rail privatisation in Britain was franchising. Passenger services were franchised in competitive bidding processes to train operators which were meant to function with declining subsidy. The paper adopts the framework of social cost-benefit analysis to examine rail privatisation's impact on three key groups; consumers, producers and the government. It establishes that privatisation did not achieve all the supposed benefits. Further, franchising only appears to be profitable through the use of calculative accounting practices, where by franchised train operators are portrayed as discrete business entities, whereas they are supported by very substantial, ongoing direct and indirect government subsidies

A highly successful model? The rail franchising business in Britain

A crucial feature of rail privatisation in Britain was franchising. Passenger services were franchised in competitive bidding processes to train operators which were meant to function with declining subsidy. The paper adopts the framework of social cost-benefit analysis to examine rail privatisation's impact on three key groups; consumers, producers and the government. It establishes that privatisation did not achieve all the supposed benefits. Further, franchising only appears to be profitable through the use of calculative accounting practices, where by franchised train operators are portrayed as discrete business entities, whereas they are supported by very substantial, ongoing direct and indirect government subsidies

Embedded schooling ` Third world education The Progressivist Agenda of Universalizing Enrolment in Basic Schooling

Can humanity make the world a better place? Is social progress possible? The twentieth century saw the formulation of several international conventions on human rights, building on the abolition of slavery, calling for the elimination of racial discrimination, oppression of women, and exploitation of children. Within this broad, progressivist program, one of the most practical proposals has been to increase the level of enrolment of girls and boys in school by taking affirmative action on behalf of those against whom there exist identifiable social barriers. A crucial premise of this agenda is that the experience of schooling reliably affords students beneficial developmental opportunities, like the growth of intellectual competencies, orientation towards society’s expectations, and preparation to focus their energies in ways that will be beneficial to the whole society. How can psychological research help to guide the design of formal education so as to optimize its achievement of those developmental consequences? Michael Cole has been a leading exponent over the past 40 years of how to situate the Western science of developmental psychology in its cultural and historical context [Cole, 1996]. As he observes in this paper, despite the methodological sophistication of the extensive, cross-cultural research of the 1960s and 1970s, which consistently showed superior performance on cognitive tasks by schooled over unschooled children, ‘there are serious reasons to doubt that differences obtained with standard psychological testing methods provide any logical evidence at all for generalized changes in classical categories of cognitive functioning.

Promotion of Literacy in Sub-Saharan Africa: Goals and Prospects of CAPOLSA at the University of Zambia

The convergence of two complementary agendas motivated collaboration between two universities (in Zambia and Finland) to establish the Centre for the Promotion of Literacy in Sub-Saharan Africa (CAPOLSA), focused on initial literacy learning in indigenous languages. The project’s mandate and activities are closely related to Zambia’s national context of literacy and educational provision, emerging trends in information and communication technology, and the University of Zambia’s institutional context of research and development on literacy, child development, and education. CAPOLSA has afforded opportunities for enhancing the working relations between the national university and government and for contributing to the development of institutional linkages and consultative forums. Collaboration between various disciplines, institutions, and economic sectors characterizes CAPOLSA’s activities. Important areas of progress envisaged include institutional development, growth of a sustainable community of researchers whose collective efforts will increase the scale of Africa’s contribution to international knowledge, and evidence-based planning at the interface between humans and technology.peerReviewe