This paper provides a starting point for psychological research on the sense of commitment within the context of joint action. We begin by formulating three desiderata: to illuminate the motivational factors that lead agents to feel and act committed, to pick out the cognitive processes and situational factors that lead agents to sense that implicit commitments are in place, and to illuminate t...

Two brief intervention studies tested whether teaching students to mentally contrast a desired future with its present reality resulted in better academic performance than teaching students to only think about the desired future. German elementary school children (N = 49; Study 1) and US middle school children (N = 63; Study 2) from low-income neighborhoods who were taught mental contrasting ac...

BACKGROUND The demanding nature of nursing work environments signals longstanding and growing concerns about nurses' health and job satisfaction and the provision of quality care. Specifically in health care settings, nurse leaders play an essential role in creating supportive work environments to avert these negative trends and increase nurse job satisfaction. OBJECTIVE The purpose of this s...

This paper uses aspects of Jurgen Habermas’s critical theory of societal development as the evaluative stance for the introduction, application and implications of evaluation of teaching quality in universities. It argues that the practice of student evaluation of teaching or Student Ratings of Teaching (SRT) is clearly designed to position students as consumers in their educational experience....

OBJECTIVES To assess any recent change in the commitment to occupational medicine teaching in UK undergraduate medical curricula. DESIGN A questionnaire survey of the teaching of occupational medicine to undergraduates in all medical schools listed in the UK Universities and Colleges Admissions Service prospectus for 1999-2000 (n = 24). RESULTS Nineteen UK schools medical schools returned a...

Workplace stress and its impact upon retention levels are becoming an increasing concern within the teaching profession (Brown, Davis, & Johnson, 2002; Jarvis, 2002). Research has largely focused upon the effects of environmental factors, whilst noting that it is the interplay between the individual and the environment which may hold the key to understanding this problem (Cox, 1978; Parkes, 199...

The interrelatedness of nurses' career commitment and job performance is debated. In nursing, few studies have focused on the relationship between the two concepts. A convenience sample of 640 registered nurses (RNs) from 24 hospitals was recruited. A comparative design was used to assess differences among governmental, teaching and private hospitals in regard to the concepts measured. In gener...