NEW THOUGHTS ON EDUCATION
Year:2010 | Volume:5 | Issue:4|Papers Count:10

Emotional impairment refers to difficulties in emotional self regulation or inability in cognitive processing of emotional data necessary for regulating emotions. This construct is also defined as a way of coping with affective helplessness related to special stressful situations. The relationship between such impairments and the coping styles, based on data collected from a sample of Tehran University students (156 males and 190 females), is examined here. The instruments used were Toronto Emotional Impairement Scale and Tehran Coping Styles Scale. Results show a significant relationship between the extent of emotional impairment and the coping style. It seems that the coping style used depends on the individual's ability/inability in processing emotional data, regulating and managing emotions, and regulating levels of emotional tranquility or distress.

To explore the relationship between personality characteristics and learning motivation, a sample of 158 high school students in Sheeraaz was selected and two measures of personality and motivation were administered. Results show that inner-based motivation is positively correlated with personality characteristics such as dutifulness, openness to new experience, and agreeability. The outer-based motivation was found to be negatively correlated to psychosis while two of its components showed the same type of relationship with dutifulness and openness to new experiences. The latter were found to be significant predictors for inner-based motivation while psychosis meaningfully predicted outer-based motivation.

To determine the role of human-ware in the efficiency of the work force through a survey of administrators and staff at the Alzahra University, a set of two questionnaires was administered to 39 administrators and 73 staff members. One questionnaire measured the extent of the human-ware while the other assessed the efficiency of the work force from the perspective of the respondents. Findings show that the administrators do not believe that enough attention is paid to human-ware while the staff vacillated on different components of the measure. There was no difference between different colleges and divisions in terms of efficiency.

Whether the quality of contents offered to gifted university students is appropriate was explored in this study and is reported herein. A sample of 140 gifted and regular students at Esfahan University was randomly selected while a sample of experts was chosen purposefully. Data on students' difficulties with the contents offered were collected using a questionnaire, while the data from the experts was gathered through semi-structured interviews. Results show that both regular and gifted students are dissatisfied with the contents offered at the university. The experts stressed that in order to make the contents appropriate for the gifted, professors have to avoid repetitive contents, be more practical in their teaching, enrich their offerings, and be more flexible.

Gardner's theory of multiple intelligence, because of its comprehensive perspective on human cognitive abilities and its rejection of the linear and single dimensional approach to intelligence, has many applications and implications for curriculum design and administration. The curriculum designers can fit in many choices of activities and learning experiences that correspond to the variety of intelligences that can be expected among the student population. The application of the M.I. theory to the process of curriculum design can lead to the flourishing of different intelligences among the learners.

Student population, especially the adolescent subgroup, constitutes a major portion of the population and their religious values are indicative of the society's values in the future. As suc, h having a scale to measure this characteristic of the student population is a must. To this end, two forms of a religiosity measure were constructed and tested on a sample of 944 high school and prep school students in Tehran. The internal consistency of both forms was measured to be high (0.97 & 0.96) and the validity of the measure was determined to be adequate.

To compare the social roles played by men and women in the story books written for children, a sample of 180 such books written for four age groups during the period of 1360 to 1384 was content analyzed. The social roles found could be categorized into five categories of family, house work, schooling, occupations, and sociopolitical activities. Of these, women figured promptly in family and house work categories while men were more noticeable in family and occupation categories. Men enjoy more variations in their social roles than women while there seemed not to be any parallels between the social roles depicted in the books and the social reality.