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Situational ethics

About: Situational ethics is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 4023 publications have been published within this topic receiving 145379 citations.


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Journal Article
TL;DR: The reliability and validity of the Study Process Questionnaire (SPQ) is investigated for 750 South African undergraduates in this article, where the authors found that the SPQ scales and subscales were found to be adequate internal consistency reliability for research purposes.
Abstract: The reliability and validity of the Study Process Questionnaire is investigated for 750 South African undergraduates. The concepts involved in the SPQ are relevant to the South African students and the SPQ scales and subscales were found to be adequate internal consistency reliability for research purposes. This conclusion was further enhanced by the meaningful factor structure of responses to the SPQ subscales found for the South African sample. However, doubt is cast as to the metric equivalence of SPQ scales across cultures making it difficult to interpret direct cross-cultural comparisons of mean scale scores Keywords: Learning, Culture, Study process, South Africa Introduction Psychological and educational theories of learning have often been criticized as being inadequate to explain level cognitive processes required for academic learning. Research into student learning especially in the developing countries such as South Africa should start with the context in which learning takes place. Educational theorists generally believe that learning is not a unitary process that happens inside an individual, but is a construction that takes place as a result of the individual interacting with a content, which usually contains other individuals. We sometimes assume learning takes place in a vacuum (Akande, 1997a, 1997b; Biggs & Watkins, 1993; Entwistle & Ramsden, 1983; Watkins & Akande, 1994; Wedekind, Lubisi, Harley & Gultig, 1996). For many years, the role of cross-cultural differences has been overlooked in discussions of approaches to learning. Most findings on approaches to learning have been overwhelmingly focused on the teacher's and researcher's point of view. Educational change will not occur until new educational system in postapartheid South Africa can root the analysis and practice of education and care-giving of students in the context of their culture. Other research confirms that there is a need to devise educational strategies that integrate the African culture in all its diversity into a creative interrelated learning environment (see Hale-Benson, 1996). Knowledge of how students go about their learning can be useful information for psychologists, teachers, counselors and researchers. This article investigates aspects of the reliability of one of the most widely used questionnaire in this area, the Study Process Questionnaire (SPQ; Biggs, 1987), for use with urban South African students. Theoretical Model The SPQ has been developed within the framework of a well articulated model of learning: the Presage, Process, Product (3P) model (Biggs, 1985; 1987; 1988; 1989). The 3P Model involves the interrelationships between the personal characteristics of students; the situational constraints in which they find themselves; their approaches to learning; and the outcomes of that learning (see Figure 1). The components of this model tend to be in equilibrium but changes to any component affect the whole system. Thus, change in the teaching context may well result in a change in approach to learning and ultimately to the learning outcome itself. [Figure 1 ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Passage Variables Passage factors involve two categories of variables: those which are characteristics of the individual students and those which are a function of the situation. Amongst the personological variables. Biggs (1987) included both general ability and information processing abilities; personality characteristics; age and previous learning experiences. Biggs further emphasizes those factors which influence meta-cognition, the degree to which students are aware of and can control their own learning processes. Important for this purpose are a relatively high degree of self-confidence and an internal locus of control (McCombs, 1986; Watkins, 1987; Watkins & Akande, 1992). Situational factors include the mode of teaching, the difficulty and nature of the task, the method of assessment, student satisfaction with the learning environment, and the opportunity students are given to learn independently (Biggs, 1987; Hattie & Watkins, 1988). …

26 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: It is found that users are less likely to engage in negative behaviours after negative incidents that take place outdoors or in vehicles than after indoor incidents, and the relationships between specific situational characteristics and different types of user behaviours are uncovered.
Abstract: Users occasionally have critical incidents with information systems IS. A critical IS incident is an IS product or service experience that a user considers to be unusually positive or negative. Critical IS incidents are highly influential in terms of users' overall perceptions and customer relationships; thus, they are crucial for IS product and service providers. Therefore, it is important to study user behaviours after such incidents. Within IS, the relationships between the situational context and user behaviours after critical incidents have not been addressed at all. Prior studies on general mobile use as a related research area have recognized the influence of the situational context, but they have not covered the relationships between specific situational characteristics and different types of user behaviours. To address this gap, we examine 605 critical mobile incidents that were collected from actual mobile application users. Based on our results, we extend current theoretical knowledge by uncovering and explaining the relationships between specific situational characteristics interaction state, place, sociality and application type and user behaviours use continuance, word-of-mouth and complaints. We have found, for example, that users are less likely to engage in negative behaviours after negative incidents that take place outdoors or in vehicles than after indoor incidents. This is because users often consider indoor environments to be familiar and treat them with established expectations and low uncertainty: users are accustomed to the notion that the applications function indoors just like before. Further, we present practical implications for mobile application providers by suggesting to them which positive critical incidents are the most beneficial to promote and which negative critical incidents are the most crucial to avoid.

26 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this article, the authors define a situation as a series of interactions, located in space and time, and perceived by the participants as an event: in this usage "situation" is a delimiting term, cutting out from the flow of experience a particular series of inter-personal actions which are seen by participants as a describable event, separable from preceding and succeeding events, constraining the participants to act in particular ways, and having its own unique consequences.
Abstract: THERE is now abundant research evidence of situational variability in intergroup behavior: an ever-accumulating body of research demonstrates that allegedly prejudiced persons act in a thoroughly egalitarian manner in situations where that is the socially prescribed mode of behavior, and that allegedly unprejudiced persons discriminate in situations where they feel it is socially appropriate to do so.1 It is also well known that patterns of "appropriateness" in intergroup behavior have been changing with increasing tempo in recent years. The unthinkable of a short time ago has in many areas of life become the commonplace of today. For a brief period the transition from unthinkable to commonplace arouses extreme emotional fervor; but as the new definition of the situation becomes the socially prescribed, the fervor soon diminishes. What was for the moment an "unpatterned" situation becomes, in Karl Mannheim's terms, "built into the framework of the society." 2 Unpatterned situations, in which definitions of appropriate conduct are in process of change, occur infrequently, and it is even more infrequent that they occur at the convenience of the research observer. Yet their importance for social change is likely to be great. In the multitude of unambiguous, patterned situations we have the raw material for documenting existing patterns of intergroup behavior. In the relatively rare unpatterned situations, however, we may hope to find important information concerning social change. It appears, for instance, that one of the most basic changes in race relations in the South is the growing uncertainty of all concerned about what is appropriate, "proper" intergroup behavior. This, along with the decreased personal interaction between whites and Negroes (especially middleand upper-class Negroes), is compounded with the relative impersonality of the new urban South, to create an unprecedented situation in which further changes can occur with a rapidity that would have been thought impossible only a few years ago. The social scientist who wishes to study the processes by which unpatterned situations come to be defined by their participants is faced with several major problems, not the least of which is the difficulty of finding situations that can be studied systematically. It is not sufficient to create hypothetical situations and to ask people how they think they would behave in them. People's responses to hypothetical situations are patterned in the same way as ordinary opinionitems-for example, they can be ordered into unidimensional scales. But behavior studied in actual intergroup situations has not proven scalable; such behavior encomi We wish to acknowledge our very considerable debt to our research collaborators, John P. Dean and Robert B. Johnson. John Dean was primarily responsible for inaugurating this research, and both he and Robert Johnson participated actively in the field work. t Melvin Kohn was at Cornell University at the time this research was carried out. His participation in the research was supported by the Social Science Research Council. 1 We shall define a situation as a series of interactions, located in space and time, and perceived by the participants as an event: in this usage "situation" is a delimiting term, cutting out from the flow of experience a particular series of inter-personal actions which are seen by the participants as a describable event, separable from preceding and succeeding events, constraining the participants to act in particular ways, and having its own unique consequences. 2 "Although situations are in their very nature dynamic and unique, as soon as they become socialized-that is to say, built into the framework of society-they tend to become standardized to a certain extent. Thus we must distinguish between what is called patterned and unpatterned situations." [Karl Mannheim, Man and Society in an Age of Reconstruction, (London: Kegan Paul, Trench. Trubner. and Co 1940). n qn, 1

26 citations

Book ChapterDOI
01 Jan 1985
TL;DR: The competent use of language lies in knowing how to use words to get listeners to make the right inferences about what is meant as discussed by the authors. But simply knowing the meanings of individual words, along with the rules for concatenating them into grammatical sentences, is not sufficient to ensure the proper understanding of speakers' messages.
Abstract: The competent use of language lies in knowing how to use words to get listeners to make the right inferences about what is meant. Simply knowing the meanings of individual words, along with the rules for concatenating them into grammatical sentences, is not sufficient to ensure the proper understanding of speakers’ messages. People need to know additional information about the social setting, the particular roles that speakers and hearers play in conversations, the interaction of speakers’ and hearers’ beliefs, and their presuppositions about each other’s plans and goals in different discourse situations. This pragmatic information constitutes the shared or mutual knowledge that allows speakers and hearers to achieve successful communication.

26 citations


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Performance
Metrics
No. of papers in the topic in previous years
YearPapers
20242
20231,132
20222,631
2021154
2020179
2019133