Home  About us  Contact
 

Common Focus (common + focus)

Distribution by Scientific Domains
Psychology40%
Humanities and Social Sciences40%

Selected Abstracts

An Essay on the Role of Language in Collegiate Foreign Language Programmatic Reform,

DIE UNTERRICHTSPRAXIS/TEACHING GERMAN, Issue 2 2009
Hiram Maxim
This position paper argues that collegiate foreign language (FL) education has lost sight of the central role that language plays in the profession. Regardless of one's sub-field within foreign language education (i.e., linguistic, literary, or cultural studies), the profession shares the common focus of exploring how to make and interpret meaning in and through language. The paper therefore recommends that an acknowledgement of and re-commitment to this foundational principle provides common ground to effect the types of change within departments that have long been called: the integration of upper- and lower-level instruction; the reform of graduate student teacher education to foster curricular thinking; the explicit and systematic attention to the development of advanced language abilities; and the establishment of a collaborative departmental culture centered around publicly shared beliefs and concerns. [source]

The theory of human development: A cross-cultural analysis

EUROPEAN JOURNAL OF POLITICAL RESEARCH, Issue 3 2003
CHRISTIAN WELZEL
This article demonstrates that socioeconomic development, emancipative cultural change and democratization constitute a coherent syndrome of social progress , a syndrome whose common focus has not been properly specified by classical modernization theory. We specify this syndrome as ,human development', arguing that its three components have a common focus on broadening human choice. Socioeconomic development gives people the objective means of choice by increasing individual resources; rising emancipative values strengthen people's subjective orientation towards choice; and democratization provides legal guarantees of choice by institutionalizing freedom rights. Analysis of data from the World Values Surveys demonstrates that the linkage between individual resources, emancipative values and freedom rights is universal in its presence across nations, regions and cultural zones; that this human development syndrome is shaped by a causal effect of individual resources and emancipative values on freedom rights; and that this effect operates through its impact on elite integrity, as the factor which makes freedom rights effective. [source]

Hierarchy of interactive functions in father-mother-baby three-way games

INFANT AND CHILD DEVELOPMENT, Issue 4 2004
France Frascarolo
Abstract In developmental research, the family has mainly been studied through dyadic interaction. Three-way interactions have received less attention, partly because of their complexity. This difficulty may be overcome by distinguishing between four hierarchically embedded functions in three-way interactions: (1) participation (inclusion of all participants), (2) organization (partners keeping to their roles), (3) focalization (sharing a common focus) and (4) affective contact (being in tune). We document this hierarchical model on a sample of 80 families observed in the Lausanne Trilogue Play situation across four different sites. Hierarchy between functions was demonstrated by means of Guttman scalability coefficient. Given the importance of the child's development in a threesome, the pertinence of this model for family assessment is discussed. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source]

Occupational therapists' perception of their practice: A phenomenological study

AUSTRALIAN OCCUPATIONAL THERAPY JOURNAL, Issue 2 2009
Liv Grethe Kinn
Background:,International literature seems consistent in reporting that occupational therapists value their methods. However, little empirical evidence has been generated supporting the basic system of belief for occupational therapy. Few studies have explored the nature of the occupational therapists' experiences and thoughts about their use of occupation as means and ends, and which strategies they use to implement their tools in their current practice. Accordingly, the aim of this study was to explore how occupational therapists understood and presented their practice and interventions. Methods:,A sample of six occupational therapists graduated in different decades, from diverse client populations and health-care settings was selected to participate in a semistructured interview. Results:,Three main themes were developed: ,To make the client's potentials visible', ,reaching a position one values' and ,looking with other eyes'. Whatever their specialities, the participants were unanimous in the way they described their role. Their common focus was ,activities of daily living'. However, they had problems describing their therapeutic tools, and were not able to clearly articulate the ,common sense aspects' of their own methods. The participants were engaged in constructing their professional identities, and stressed the need to construct professional boundaries relevant to their particular work. Conclusion:,The occupational therapists perceived their practice and interventions as distinctly different from other team members, thus, they provided a ,counterpoint'. The participants used various ways of marketing their perspectives. While the novices tended to go along with the team, the experienced therapists tended to assert their own special contribution. [source]

Aggression and Moral Development: Integrating Social Information Processing and Moral Domain Models

CHILD DEVELOPMENT, Issue 4 2004
William F. Arsenio
Social information processing and moral domain theories have developed in relative isolation from each other despite their common focus on intentional harm and victimization, and mutual emphasis on social cognitive processes in explaining aggressive, morally relevant behaviors. This article presents a selective summary of these literatures with the goal of showing how they can be integrated into a single, coherent model. An essential aspect of this integration is Crick and Dodge's (1994) distinction between latent mental structures and online processing. It is argued that moral domain theory is relevant for describing underlying mental structures regarding the nature and boundaries of what is moral, whereas the social information processing model describes the online information processing that affects application of moral structures during peer interactions. [source]