Ole-Johan Eikeland

Factors predicting staff's intentions to leave the university

This article investigates factors related to the intention to leave the university job among Norwegian university staff. Its main conclusions are: among staff intending to leave their institution, colleagial relations (i.e. relations between colleagues) constituted the clearest reason to leave. General job satisfaction did also rather strongly predict intention to leave. The study showed that staff who found their work less intrinsically satisfying than others more often intended to leave their institution. The salary or the economical resource situation did not influence intention to leave or stay.

Education of Prison Inmates: Course Experience, Motivation, and Learning Strategies as Indicators of Evaluation.

Course experience, motivational beliefs, and self-regulated learning strategies may be considered to be important indicators of education quality. Inmates taking education in prison may also experience particular problems related to the learning environment and to their own learning difficulties. The present study investigated the level of these variables and the relationship between them among 534 inmates under education in Norwegian prisons. The results showed that the prison inmates are generally quite satisfied with the education quality, that they are highly motivated, and use appropriate learning strategies. However, many of them experience that problems such as lack of access to computer equipment and the security routines in prison interfere with their education. A structural equation modelling (SEM) analysis showed that motivational beliefs were mediators between course experience and self-regulated learning strategies. These findings were discussed with respect to improvement of the education quality in prisons and to theoretical issues with relevance beyond the prison context.

Can solving of wordchains be explained by phonological skills alone

The present study focussed on the determinants for effective solving of the Wordchains Test (WCT) in a normative sample of Norwegian junior high-school students. Forty voluntary participants from a rural school district in Western Norway completed the WCT along with tests of general intellectual capacity, single word and non-word reading, auditory working memory, and visual scanning. All measures correlated significantly with each other except for general non-verbal abilities were not correlated with visual scanning. A stepwise multiple regression analysis, using the WCT as the dependent variable, yielded a model that included single word reading, letter recognition, and working memory as independent variables. This model accounted for 75% of the variance in WCT performance. This finding suggests that phonological skills only have an indirect influence on WCT performance. Thus, the core deficit in dyslexia, i.e. impaired phonological skills, may be related to the development of word recognition skills, but have no direct effect on the WCT performance in a normative sample.

Self-esteem and interpersonal functioning in psychiatric outpatients

This study explored associations between self-esteem and interpersonal functioning in a one-year clinic cohort of psychiatric outpatients (n= 338). At intake, patients completed questionnaires measuring self-esteem, interpersonal problems, interpersonal style, and general symptomatic distress. They were also diagnosed according to the ICD-10. Interpersonal behaviour was measured along the agency and communion dimensions of the Inventory of Interpersonal Problems-Circumplex [IIP-C]. The results show that lower self-esteem was associated with higher levels of interpersonal problems in general. Further, lower self-esteem was first and foremost linked to frustrated agentic motives, as measured by the IIP-C. Hence, the study concludes that fostering patient agency should be considered as an important goal in psychotherapy. Furthermore, the analyses revealed an interaction effect of agency and communion on self-esteem, indicating a need for balancing the two motive dimensions. Finally, some questions are raised concerning the interpretation of the IIP-C subscales in general.

Effects of Training on Pupils' Social Skills

O the last twenty years there has been an expansion of intervention programmes aimed to increase pupils’ social skills or social competence. Much of the expansion has come in the United States and Canada, but also schools in Great Britain, Australia, New Zealand, the Scandinavian countries, and several other European countries have introduced the programmes (e.g. Beelmann et al., 1994; Schneider, 1992). Social skills or social competence training programmes in schools have, however, an uneven record of success. Several studies show that assessments of competence fail to reveal any significant improvement in performance (e.g. Dawson and Spitzberg, 19871; Thompson et al., 1996) and that there are major fluctuations across various intervention techniques and client groups (e.g. Schneider, 1992). In their meta-analysis Beelmann et al. (1994) found that there were few effects on broader constructs (e.g. social adjustment), but significant effect sizes were found when direct goal criteria (e.g. social-cognitive skills) were evaluated. Their data show that the effects of social competence training vary across type of programme, age groups and pupil characteristics. Programmes with a high degree of complexity (multimodal programmes) are particularly favourable for twelveto fifteen-yearolds, while less complex programmes (monomodal programmes) have a strong impact on pre-school-age children, for whom multimodal programmes are less effective. The purpose of the present study was to evaluate the effects of a multimodal school-based social-cognitive training programme on fourteenand fifteen-year-olds’ social skills, as assessed by self-ratings (pupils) and teacher ratings. Recognition of the importance of assessing social skills has given rise to a number of rating scales with the aim of rating children’s and adolescents’ social skills or social competence. In their comparative evaluation of six published rating scales Demaray et al. (1995) concluded that the most comprehensive instrument is the Social Skills Rating System (Gresham and Elliott, 1990) because of its multi-source approach, intervention linkage and overall strong reliability and validity. In the present study the dimensions which are Effects of training on pupils’ social skills

Gender Differences in Mathematical Sub-Skills

Gender differences in mathematical sub-skills Significant gender differences favouring boys were found among Norwegian sixth-grade students in total mathematical test score and in the sub-scores of numeracy, measurement, fractions, geometry and word problems. No significant differences were found in addition and subtraction or in multiplication and division. Items requiring an understanding of decimal numbers discriminated in favour of the boys. The study revealed the dominance of boys in the upper ranges of ability in mathematics, showing that small average gender differences can hide large differences in a highly able group of students.

Innsatte i nordiske fengsler : Utdanning, utdanningsønske og -motivasjon

I denne rapporten presenteres resultatene fra den forste felles nordiske kartleggingen av utdanningsniva, deltakelse i utdanning og motivasjon for utdanning hos innsatte i nordiske fengsl ...