Search results

In this chapter, the authors present a conceptual perspective on resilience that is grounded in self-regulation theory, to help address theoretical, empirical, and practical concerns in this domain. Despite the growing popularity of resilience research (see Linnenluecke, 2017), scholars have noted ongoing concerns about conceptual confusion and resulting, paradoxical, stigmatization associated with the label “resilience” (e.g., Adler, 2013; Britt, Shen, Sinclair, Grossman, & Klieger, 2016; Luthar, Cicchetti, & Becker, 2000). The authors seek to advance this domain via presenting a clarified, theoretically grounded conceptualization that can facilitate unified theoretical advancements, aligned operationalization, research model development, and intervention improvements. Resilience is defined here as continued, self-regulated goal striving (e.g., behavioral and/or psychological) despite adversity (i.e., after goal frustration). This self-regulatory conceptualization of resilience offers theoretically based definitions for the necessary conditions (i.e., adversity and overcoming) and outlines specific characteristics (i.e., unit-centered and dynamic) of resilience, distinguishes resilience from other persistence-related concepts (e.g., grit and hardiness), and provides a framework for understanding the connections (and distinctions) between resilience, performance, and well-being. After presenting this self-regulatory resilience perspective, the authors outline additional paths forward for the domain.

We discuss the development of achievement motivation from the perspective of Eccles and colleagues’ expectancy-value theory (EVT), focusing on the importance of children developing positive expectancies for success and valuing of achievement to help them cope with change and uncertainty. Although research has shown that, overall, children’s expectancies and values decline, recent studies show many different trajectories in the overall pattern. Children’s expectancies and values predict their school performance and choices of which activities to pursue in and out of school, with these relations getting stronger as children get older. When children’s expectancies and values stay more positive, they can better cope with change and uncertainty, such as the increasing difficulty of many school subjects, or broader changes such as immigrating to a new country. Parents can buffer children’s experiences of change and uncertainty by encouraging them to engage in different activities and by providing them opportunities to do so. Parents’ positive beliefs about their children’s abilities and discussing with them the importance of school can moderate the observed decline in children’s ability beliefs and values. For immigrant and minority children, parents’ emphasis on the importance of school and encouragement of the development of a positive sense of their racial/ethnic identity are critical buffers. Positive teacher–child relations also are a strong buffer, although research indicates that immigrant and minority children often have less positive relations with their teachers. We close with a discussion on recent EVT-based intervention research that shows how children’s beliefs and values for different school subjects can be fostered.

This research aims to investigate whether and how differences may exist in children’s preferences of package design across cultures, with a focus on three aspects of package design: curvilinearity, figurativeness and complexity.

A large-scale questionnaire survey has been conducted in a face-to-face setting in the USA and China, generating valid responses from 763 American children and 837 Chinese children of age 3-12 years.

Unlike previous findings among adults, children from both cultures were found to unanimously prefer curved package design. Nevertheless, Chinese children showed greater preferences for figurative and complex package design than American children; these tendencies increased with age, suggesting significant age–culture interactions.

The surprising finding of the lack of cultural difference in children’s preferences of curved package design suggests that such cultural preferences established in studies of adults may not emerge through time via cultural/social learning until after age 12. The limited cultures, stimuli and factors included in the study call for replications of the study in more realistic and broader settings.

The findings provide package design guidelines for consumer product marketers and designers/innovators targeting the Chinese and American children’s markets. Curved package designs are preferred by children from both cultures. Nevertheless, marketers should choose figurative and complex package design in accordance with the target children’s age and cultural background.

This study contributes to the limited empirical consumer behavior research on package design, especially that of children’s products. It also extends the literature on cultural psychology, experimental aesthetics and developmental psychology.

The aim of this study is to explore short‐term outcomes of communication aid provision from the perspective of children with complex communication needs.

A total of ten children were interviewed at two time points. The first interviews took place before or within two weeks of the arrival of a new communication aid. A second follow‐up interview was carried out between six and ten weeks later. Initial interviews explored children's views concerning their ability to engage in school activities that they deemed important but difficult to achieve. First interviews also examined children's self‐perceptions related to their self‐efficacy and self‐esteem, and perceptions of others' attitudes towards themselves. Children's views concerning the likely impact of the new communication aid on taking part in activities and their self‐concepts were also explored. The follow‐up interviews asked children to reflect on the short‐term impact of the new communication aid.

Children reported expected and unexpected positive changes at follow‐up. Notably, unanticipated and undesirable changes were also reported.

The paper addresses the critical issue of early outcomes following communication aid provision from the viewpoint of children themselves.

The paper seeks to promote the integration of reflective learning within a broader service learning pedagogy at the undergraduate university level. Furthermore, it aims to illustrate various models for service learning that span multiple academic disciplines.

The paper illustrates three ways in which reflective learning can be used to enhance the learning potential of service learning pedagogy. The subjective experiences inform its own stories that it presents as examples, supported as they are by the findings of prior empirical studies.

The paper believes that multi‐dimensional learning has been achieved in each of the three examples presented. Service learning extends the academic learning of students and allows for personal and societal learning to occur, not simply as a result of having a service experience, but of spending time reflecting on it.

Practical implications are particular to the students themselves, as the service experiences it describes have, in some instances, helped to clarify individual students' values and vocational interests.

Given the range of service learning models contained in these examples, the social implications likewise range, yet share common dimensions of increasing students' social consciousness, appreciation of diversity, and their own capacities to contribute.

The originality of this paper lies in the linking of reflective learning to service learning best practices to highlight the particular role of reflection in the production of multi‐dimensional learning.

Applying sociological and developmental theoretical perspectives to educational policy issues, this study analyzed data from 7,710 children from low-income families in the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study-Kindergarten Cohort. The goal was to examine how much the association between phonics instruction in kindergarten classrooms and children’s reading achievement during the first year of school in the low-income population would depend on whether children had previously attended preschool as well as the socioeconomic composition of their elementary schools. Lagged linear models with a series of sensitivity tests revealed that this association was strongest among children from low-income families who had not attended preschool and then enrolled in socioeconomically disadvantaged elementary schools and among children from low-income families who had attended preschool and then enrolled in socioeconomically advantaged elementary schools. These findings demonstrate how insights into educational inequality can be gained by situating developing children within their proximate ecologies and institutional settings, especially looking to the match between children and their contexts. They are especially relevant to timely policy discussions of early childhood education programs, classroom instructional practices, and school desegregation.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze if the sport trajectory could be an impact factor in leadership development.

A qualitative research method has been adopted by conducting 17 in-depth, semi-structured interviews. The data were analyzed with the program Open Code (4.03).

The findings of this study revealed that the interviewed managers perceived that their sport trajectory has had an important influence in the development of their leadership. This influence is determined by four factors: (1) sport profile, (2) sport referents, (3) competences, values and abilities and (4) experiences from different sport roles played during their lifespan.

The research is based on interviews with a small sample of managers. In order to develop the research further, a more extensive sample is required.

The paper is unique as it examines the impact of the sport trajectory as an impact factor in leadership development.

This paper aims to extend the conceptualization of well-being as a staged social responsibility process by undertaking further conceptual development of these ideas as well as exploratory, small-scale international testing.

The sample comprised 117 leaders from Alaska, India and Norway. Cluster analysis was used to determine systematic differences in the way leaders think about societal well-being (well-being action logics), and regression analysis was used to test positive and significant relationships between well-being action logics and stages of consciousness.

Cluster analysis confirmed the three theoretically derived well-being action logics of top managers: compensatory, integral and hybrid. The authors found preliminary empirical support for a systematic relationship between well-being action logics and stages of consciousness as per constructive-developmental theory.

Better adoption of societal well-being as a normative ethic hinges on building the capacity of top managers to process more complex understandings of the range of components of societal well-being and how these components interact, conflict and synergize.

Being asked to embrace more complex views about societal well-being can be overwhelming, leading top managers to retreat into defensiveness. The result is resistance to change, preferring instead to stay with familiar yet outmoded conceptions. Societal well-being can thus suffer.

This paper opens the black box to find systematic differences in the way managers think about societal well-being. Further, the research has uncovered that these differences follow a staged developmental process of greater complexity.