Held Beliefs Research Articles

Solidarity’s Abandonment of Worker Councils: Redefining Employee Stakeholder Rights in Post‐socialist Poland

This paper examines the rejection of employee councils by Poland’s trade union Solidarity. In the historical institutional analysis in the first part of this paper, Solidarity’s early commitment to employee councils is traced to the evolution of ideas about economic reform that predominated in the union leadership. The impact of these dominant ideas are examined in the second half of the paper which relates Solidarity’s abandonment of employee councils to broadly held beliefs about the limited rights of employee stakeholders. Together, the qualitative and quantitative analysis demonstrates how trade unions’ strategies and their ideological underpinnings have shaped Poland’s postwar industrial relations institutions.

International report reassesses ways to cut maternal mortality

A study issued recently by the World Health Organisation, the United Nations Population Fund, Unicef (the United Nations Children's Fund), and the World Bank questions a number of long held beliefs about maternal mortality. Assessing 10 years of work in the field, the report ( Reduction of Maternal Mortality ) insists that “vertical, stand-alone” measures cannot alone effectively reduce the near 600 000 annual deaths caused by …

Building Coalitions

1. The context of agriculture in the Midwest, given many smaller, family run operations, presents multiple and complex challenges; occupational health intervention strategies used in other industries are not immediately applicable. 2. Public health nurses in Minnesota's Occupational Health Nurses in Agricultural Communities project (OHNAC) are applying the strategies of community wide health promotion through community organizing for farm health and safety promotion. 3. The theoretical basis for community wide health promotion encompasses theory from several disciplines, and a five stage model for community organization in health promotion has been developed and tested. 4. At the root of tis approach to farm safety is the effort to change long held beliefs and community norms, especially the belief that farm injuries and fatalities are a necessary part of agricultural work.

International Human Rights and Women's Reproductive Health

Neglect of women's reproductive health, perpetuated by law, is part of a larger, systematic discrimination against women. Laws obstruct women's access to reproductive health services. Laws protective of women's reproductive health are rarely or inadequately implemented. Moreover, few laws or policies facilitate women's reproductive health services. Epidemiological evidence and feminist legal methods provide insight into the law's neglect of women's reproductive health and expose long-held beliefs in the law's neutrality that harm women fundamentally. Empirical evidence can be used to evaluate how effectively laws are implemented and whether alternative legal approaches exist that would provide greater protection of individual rights. International human rights treaties, including those discussed in this article, are being applied increasingly to expose how laws that obstruct women's access to reproductive health services violate their basic rights.Broad, systematic discrimination against women exists worldwide, and indifference to women's reproductive health is just part of this larger system. Laws support this neglect. They deny women access to reproductive health services. They use women's reproductive functions to control women. States implement the few laws which do exist that protect women's reproductive health either infrequently or insufficiently. Besides, there are only a few laws or policies which promote women's reproductive health services. An international human rights lawyer uses epidemiological evidence and feminist legal methods to reveal how the law neglects women's reproductive health. She also shows how long held beliefs that the law is gender-neutral actually harm women fundamentally. Lawyers can use empirical data to determine how effectively states implement laws and whether there are alternative legal approaches that would be more effective in protecting individual rights. Human rights lawyers are using various international human rights treaties, e.g., Women's Convention, to reveal how laws that deny women access to reproductive health services violate their basic rights. Women must secure reproductive self-determination to seize independence to choose their path to life's opportunities. To achieve self-determination, however, all forms of discrimination against women need to fall to the wayside. Governments must be held accountable for their acts of discrimination, their failure to eliminate discriminatory laws and practices, and the effects of their conduct on the status of women within their countries. International agencies and nongovernmental organizations can monitor the states actions. The Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women can develop recommendations on standards against which these groups can measure country performance.

MATHEMATICS TEACHER EDUCATION AND QUALITY

ABSTRACT ‘Quality’ in mathematics teaching does not relate solely to pupil achievement, to teaching approaches or to deeply held beliefs about the nature of mathematics and its teaching and learning, but to all of these. A model of a teacher's mathematics‐related belief‐system is presented, and the issue of the contrast between espoused and enacted beliefs is discussed. ‘Quality’ in mathematics teacher education raises all of these issues, as well as the aims, goals and means of the teacher preparation process itself. The paper concludes by arguing against the ‘apprenticeship’ model of mathematics teacher education, for depriving student teachers of theory and of practical research experience. A well known dictum paraphrased states that theory without practice is empty, but that practice without theory is blind. ‘Quality’ in mathematics teaching and teacher education depends on both theory and practice in systematic cooperation.

Mark Tobey’s City Paintings

Mark Tobey’s City Paintings have traditionally been interpreted as joyous evoc­ations of the energy inherent in the modern urban scene. This article looks at the evolutionary character of Tobey’s City Paintings during the decades of the 1930s, ‘40s, and’ 50s, and points out that they may instead be understood as modern reinterpretations of the traditional themes of the Apocalypse, Hell, the Day of Judgment, and the New Jerusalem. This interpretation finds its roots in the study of the relationship of Tobey’s City Paintings to the artist’s long held beliefs in the Bahá’í Faith and to specific Bahá’í teachings concerning the Book of Revelation and the coming of a New Age. The article also looks at the overall influence of the Bahá’í Faith on Tobey’s work and draws parallels between major themes in the City Paintings and important Bahá’í scriptures, including The Seven Valleys. In this connection, Tobey’s City Paintings can be understood as symbolic of the various stages in humanity’s spiritual quest, ending with the theme of the resolution of opposites and a celebration or the essential unity of all creation.

A simplified method for quality control of deglycerolized erythrocytes.

Quality control to detect inadequately deglycerolized red blood cells can be easily and inexpensively accomplished by suspending the deglycerolized cells in either recipient serum or normal saline in the same way in which the routine crossmatch is performed. In vitro hemolysis is readily and consistently apparent when the residual glycerol exceeds either 2.4% (in saline) or 2.5% (in serum). In contrast to generally held beliefs, the in vivo 24-hour survival of red blood cells with a residual glycerol concentration of up to 2.7% was demonstrated to be 76% of greater, a level which is well above what is usually accepted as adequate.

Shattuck lecture--The general medical journal: for readers or repositories?

General medical journals seek newsworthiness but face obstacles because of their usually slow publication schedules and because of contents that readers find either obscure or contradictory to long held beliefs. In addition, since medical news has become "big news," general medical journals find themselves in competition with both the lay press and the medical giveaways. One effect of the escalating public interest in medical news is that general medical journals that are reliable and have maintained their newsworthiness are increasingly cited. These journals thus eventually transmit research findings to the public as well as to the health-care professions. To help prevent exaggeration and misinterpretation by the lay press and by the public, general medical journals must evaluate submissions in a broader than traditional context. Nevertheless, newsworthiness is an appropiate goal for such journals.

Task requirements, belief salience and attitude: Beyond the Hullian model

Results of this study support three conclusions: 1. A task requiring certain conscious cognitive operations can cause subjects to bring to mind prior held beliefs that are not usually salient. 2. Change in belief salience produces temporary attitude shifts. 3. Attitude correlates highly with the proportion of negative associations in the salient array of beliefs. Questions are raised as to the adequacy of Hullian theory to account for the results and the TOTE model is proposed as a method of reconciling human condi‐tionability with higher level cognitive capabilities.

Can Political Factors Account for the Fact that Calvinism Rather than Anabaptism Came to Dominate the Dutch Reformation?

It is not surprising that the sixteenth century Anabaptist movement should gain increasing attention among American church historians. Anyone who becomes even slightly acquainted with that movement cannot help but observe that many of its features, such as its individualism, its rejection of infant baptism, its subjectivism, and its fragmentation into many diverse groups, seem to anticipate the kind of ecclesiastical developments that characterize much of North American church history. The parallel even extends to a number of individual phenomena: Many modern premillennialist movements hold views remarkably like those of Melchior Hoffman. The efforts of Jan de Bakker and Jan Beukelzoon to set up a Kingdom of God at Miinster were very like those of Joseph Smith and Brigham Young, and the Latter Day Saints who followed them, to achieve a similar objective in the United States. In this case the parallel even extends to the polygamy that was introduced in both movements. Among the early Anabaptists Adam Pastor held beliefs which did not differ markedly from the anti-trinitarian doctrines of the present Jehovah's Witnesses. The existence of many such similarities makes the study of early Anabaptism a profitable one to the student of American church history.