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The study aims to identify profiles of trainee teachers in terms of their stress and work experiences and to uncover profile differences in regard to dropout intentions and perceived relationships between trainee teachers and their mentors. Based on data from 1,756 German trainee teachers, three distinct stress and work experience profiles could be identified. Trainee teachers with high levels of stress and negative work experiences exhibit higher dropout intentions and experience their relationship with their mentors as less transparent, fair and trusting, and more ambivalent compared to trainee teachers with low levels of stress and positive work experiences. The results underline the importance of the relationship between mentors and trainee teachers for the professional development of future teachers.

In France, teenage pregnancy has remained a relatively moderate and stable phenomenon for several decades. Public discourse on young people's sexuality and the issue of teenage pregnancies focuses overwhelmingly on two themes: contraception and voluntary termination of pregnancy, leaving in the shadows the reality of the experiences of these young under-age mothers. Thus, one of the major challenges of support in maternity centers is to ensure the coexistence of psychic movements linked to adolescent reorganization and those linked to the birth of motherhood. With this in mind, we have been able to highlight the importance of care structures for these mothers, acting as a substitute family figure for these young people. This support seems to have fostered the creation of more appropriate conditions for the establishment of the first mother-baby bonds in these initially very precarious psychological contexts., (Copyright © 2024 Elsevier Masson SAS. All rights reserved.)

Maternal ambivalence refers to the simultaneous experience of both negative and positive feelings about motherhood and the child. It has been suggested that maternal ambivalence exists on a continuum from manageable (healthy) to unmanageable (problematic) and can have wide-ranging psychological consequences. However, there are currently no empirically validated measures for examining manageable or unmanageable maternal ambivalence. In this article, we outline the development and initial validation of the Maternal Ambivalence Questionnaire (MAQ). An online study was conducted to evaluate the factor structure, construct validity, reliability, and relationships of the MAQ with demographic characteristics. The participants included a community sample of 502 mothers living in the United Kingdom with at least one child aged 0–11 years. Statistical analyses demonstrated a good fit for the 20-item measure and suggested five theoretically consistent factors. These factors are assessment of one's perception of self as a mother, awareness of conflicting feelings about motherhood, suppression of negative feelings about motherhood, internalization of negative feelings about motherhood, and externalization of negative feelings about motherhood. These factors were related in theoretically expected ways to parental reflective functioning capacity, parenting stress and guilt, and symptoms of depression. The study's findings indicate that the MAQ is a robust and reliable measure that contributes to a theoretical understanding and practical assessment of maternal ambivalence, facilitating insight into emotional challenges of motherhood. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present research examined whether consideration of individuals' certainty in their holism can enhance the ability of this individual difference to predict how they respond to contradiction‐relevant outcomes. Across four studies, participants first completed a standardized measure of holistic‐analytic thinking. Then, they rated how certain they were in their responses to the holism scale or were experimentally induced to feel high or low certainty. Next, participants were exposed to dialectical proverbs (Study 1a and 1b), to a counter‐attitudinal change induction (Study 2), or to a paradigm of attitudinal ambivalence (Study 3). Results revealed that participants with higher certainty in their holistic thinking exhibited higher preference for dialectical proverbs (Study 1a and 1b), changed their attitude less following a counter‐attitudinal task (Study 2) and showed weaker correspondence between objective and subjective ambivalence (Study 3). Beyond examining new domains and discovering novel findings, the present work was designed to be the first to show moderation of previously identified effects in the domain of holistic thinking and responses to contradiction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective: Motivational Interviewing (MI) is described as a method for improving clinical outcomes by reducing client ambivalence. If this is true, MI's focus on improving clients' motivational language should be most useful for clients with ambivalence about change and less valuable for those who are ready to implement new behaviors or are opposed to change. To address this hypothesis and potentially add precision to MI delivery in clinical settings, we tested whether the relationship between clients' in-session motivational language and posttreatment alcohol use depended on their baseline motivation to change. Method: Client speech from 149 sessions from Project MATCH were analyzed. A cluster analysis of the percent change talk during the first decile of the session identified three motivational groups: opposed, ambivalent, and ready. The change in percent change talk (C-PCT) across the session was calculated for each group. Zero-inflated negative binomial analysis was used to test whether the effect of C-PCT on end-of-treatment drinking varied between motivational groups. Results: The count part of the model revealed a significant interaction between C-PCT and membership in the ambivalent group (b = −17.710, 95% CI [−25.775, −9.645], p <.001), only for those who received MI. Favorable C-PCT was associated with less drinking (b = −15.735, p =.004). Only baseline drinking was a significant predictor of abstinence at follow-up (b =.032, 95% CI [0.012, 0.051], p =.001). Conclusion: A putative MI mechanism—improved client motivational language—appears most important for clients who express ambivalence in the opening minutes of the session, with minimal value for those who do not. What is the public health significance of this article?: This study suggests that alcohol treatment counselors can improve their use of popular interventions, such as Motivational Interviewing, based on what clients say about their motivation to change their drinking at the start of the session. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores an important aspect of academic precarity: the use of fixed-term contract researchers as factotums within universities. The practice can be defined as the taking-on of tasks that are outside of core research activities, including substantial amounts of time spent teaching, supervising students and preparing research proposals, often at the behest of tenured staff members, reflecting existing power dynamics within the organisation. At a theoretical level, it is argued that this aspect of academic precarity reflects various forms of ambivalence in researchers' lives, creating tensions in addition to expanding their workloads. Using evidence from 54 interviews with researchers of at least five years' experience and based at research units in Portugal, conducted during 2022 and 2023, it is possible to illustrate various aspects of academic precarity and ambivalence, with different responses from researchers including acceptance of and resistance towards the factotum role.

We offer the concept of "proximate ambivalence" to highlight the ambiguity inherent in the social and spatial relations of higher education's digitally-mediated teaching and learning that replaced in-person seminars during the COVID-19 pandemic. By proximate ambivalence, we refer to one's simultaneous proximity and distance in relation to an object, person, or space. We employ affect theories (i.e. "collective bodies" and "affective atmospheres") and affective methodology--grounding our analysis in our lived experiences as illustrative examples--to demonstrate how proximate ambivalence manifests. We first show how proximate ambivalence manifested as digital technologies facilitated and disrupted collective bodies' emergence. Second, we illuminate how proximate ambivalence materialized as affective atmospheres changed while differentiated spaces and the transitions therein faded. We argue that proximate ambivalence helps reveal interconnections between affect, bodies, and space in digitally-mediated teaching and learning.

Of the multiple instances of feminist ambivalence present in Barbie, perhaps the most poignant for cinema studies concerns the affirmation of both descriptive and interpretive practices. Across its narrative and aesthetic features, Barbie develops a logic that equates matriarchal culture with “wonderful” surface (Greta Gerwig 2023), and patriarchal culture with paranoid depth. As for the former, Greta Gerwig (2023) has characterised Barbie Land through reference to the original toy Dreamhouse: as a space of openness, where “nothing is obscured because there’s no depth, there’s no shame, there’s no aging, there’s no pain.” In contrast, the returned gaze of the real-world effects depth in the form of self-awareness; as Stereotypical Barbie remarks upon entry, “I’m conscious but it’s myself that I’m conscious of.” This opposition is redolent of recent critical debates concerning modes of reading that pit feminist and queer oriented approaches foregrounding surface against older, masculine models that assume the latency of meaning. Relative to this tension, it is interesting that Barbie has it both ways: by the film’s ending, its project to restore matriarchy to Barbie Land is realised just as Stereotypical Barbie comes to terms with her desire to join the real-world, to “be part of the people that make meaning.” This essay interrogates the surface/depth binary tendered throughout Barbie, arguing that the film’s value for contemporary feminists, specifically those working in the field of cinema studies, hinges on the unification of these levels. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The psychoanalytic explanation of religious sentiment is genetic, meaning that it probes the psychological processes behind the formation of such sentiment. Freud ascribed the genesis of religious sentiment to human infantile helplessness and ambivalence towards the father. This explanation encounters a dilemma when confronted with the sense of completeness and infinity in religious sentiment and fails to address components related to death, such as the transcendent and surmounting nature of the believer's fear of death. Experience has shown that numerous religious sentiments occur through a process of emotional transformation, from a melancholic state of extreme mental anguish to a state of blissful, complete joy. This process, from a psychogenetic perspective, is essentially a defense of the self-preservation impulse. In this transformation, the ego removes chronic suffering by identifying itself with the superego. Therefore, the ego undergoes a symbolic death, through which it regains the energy of life. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This music score was submitted for Resonate 2024: An Open Access Call for Scores by the UCLA Music Library.

Undergraduate students often view and define terms differently than faculty and scholars. Differences in the operationalization of terms can lead to miscommunication and misunderstanding, especially within university classrooms. The present study used the theoretical framework of sensemaking to understand how undergraduate students perceived and defined inclusion in university classrooms. Through the facilitation of eight focus groups (N = 50), we identified four elements that contribute to inclusion/exclusion: "Respect," "Safety," "Unfettered Expression," and "Context Appropriate." Theoretically, these findings show a lack of concreteness in students' definition of these terms, which can lead to ambiguity and ambivalence when defining the boundaries of inclusive/exclusive spaces. The lack of specificity dilutes the power of these words and phrases, and its ability to meet its intended purpose (e.g., disruption of oppressive systems). Pedagogically, for instructors to become intentional practitioners of inclusion, we argue that instructors must have an operationalized definition of inclusion grounded in social justice frameworks, share this definition and its rationale with students, engage in instructor reflexivity, and develop proactive strategies to combat challenges to inclusion.

Finland has repeatedly been presented as a "success story" of equality and education, promoter of human rights and included equality and human rights as part of national curricula. However, research has shown the slow progress of integrating topics of equality and human rights in teacher education despite hundreds of project-based interventions during the past 50 years. We used historically informed discursive reading drawing from the existent literature, human rights and equality policy documents, and data from student teachers (n = 311) about their perceptions. The theoretical framework in this article is grounded in critical and feminist theories. The aim is to analyse why student teachers still report receiving too little education in human rights and equality despite the improvements in human rights and equality education law and policy. We argue that Finnish teacher education has an ambivalent role of representing itself as "exceptional" while reproducing inequalities. Furthermore, this alleged "exceptionalism" does not enable a focus on equality and human rights policies goals. We constructed a general theoretical frame to re-examine critically the role of ambivalence, ignorance, and "innocence", which reproduce inequalities. Our analysis describes several discursive realities of public narratives and student teachers' experiences concerning equality and human rights education. This article provides a novel interpretation frame for the persisting inequalities in education in a country that profiles itself as a champion of human rights and equality. Based on our results, we suggest critical self-reflection for educational policy to advance continuous measures to affect structural inequalities.

This article examines the concept of maternal ambivalence in the Indian cultural milieu through a critical analysis of Avni Doshi’s Burnt Sugar and Zehra Naqvi’s The Reluctant Mother. These novels illustrate how societal glorification of maternal archetypes imposes significant emotional burdens on mothers who defy established norms, leading to inner conflicts laden with guilt, uncertainty, and the struggle to balance personal aspirations with societal expectations. We demonstrate how the novels subvert the entrenched heteropatriarchal order and advocate for a departure from rigid standards of what Andrea O’Reilly calls ‘patriarchal motherhood’. The article focuses on the mother–child relationship, which is characterised by ‘ambiguous intersubjectivity’ and ethical dilemmas linked to maternal discontent. We argue that a phenomenological exploration of maternal ambivalence, in conjunction with cultural norms, offers valuable insights into the complexities of maternal subjectivity and mirrors the conflicts within the maternal psyche. This approach grounds conceptions of gender and motherhood in lived experiences rather than normative ideals, providing a unique lens to examine social realities beyond individual literary works. We show how maternal ambivalence lies at the heart of the motherhood experience and how these narratives vindicate the individuality and autonomy of mothers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay argues that the concept of ambivalence could be leveraged as a feminist project with specific epistemological value for scholars across the humanities and social sciences. Curating its recent appearance across several areas of study, we suggest the potential of ambivalence as a feminist analytic. We argue that this analytic may help feminist scholars understand the complexity of texts, people, and social circumstances—both past and present—because it offers a conceptual category that holds space for conflicting emotions, contending historical phenomena, and overlapping affective, ethical, and political commitments. We see unique value for feminist scholarship when ambivalence is foregrounded; it asks us to consider important tensions and binaries between subjection and liberation, certainty and uncertainty, and skepticism and conviction. Reconceptualizing ambivalence as a capacity and structural condition (rather than an individual deficiency or failing), we render this concept legible for feminists across various fields and disciplines. We propose three principles that could guide its uptake in scholarship: troubling the subjection/liberation binary, elevating the value of uncertainty, and encouraging constructive ambivalence in the researcher themself. While mindful of the risks and limits of ambivalence, we encourage others to adopt ambivalence as an analytic in their own work, describing the specific gains to be had in affectively and epistemologically sitting with the contradictions and discomforts it reveals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ambivalence describes a conflict between contrasting valences, for example, when an image appears bitter but sweet. Such a potential for revealing ever-new facets of an object or situation might trigger interest that has been related to a combination of perceptual challenge with anticipation of coping or new experience. Interest might be even intensified when we heighten our awareness of the potential multiplicity of interpretations. We present two studies with artistic photographs examining the relationship between ambivalence and interest. The first study utilized explicit evaluations and revealed a positive relationship between estimated ambivalence and interest as well as an increase in interest after exploring positive and negative semantic facets of an image. The second study utilized a forced-choice paradigm that was captured by a high-speed eyetracker. It defined dwell time and choice-ratio as alternative measures of interest. When we asked participants which of two images they wanted to learn more about, they chose ambivalent photos more often and looked slightly longer at them. We discuss these findings and further examine the potential role of artistic context for interest in ambivalence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article reports on the online administration of career construction counselling for a trauma survivor who sought help in resolving her career-choice ambivalence (uncertainty). The participant was purposively selected from a group of people attending a workshop on career construction counselling. An intrinsic, descriptive, exploratory intervention case study based on career construction counselling (involving administering the Career Construction Interview (CCI) to elicit the participant's micro-narratives qualitatively) was used to generate data and adapted thematic data analysis incorporating the analytic style proposed by Savickas was used to analyse the data reflexively. The intervention shed light on the participant's conscious knowledge about herself and on her subconsciously regulated views on her preferred future career choices. The findings confirmed the value of career construction counselling in promoting the participant's psychological self as an autobiographical author especially. They also underlined the importance of timely intervention for trauma survivors in pre-empting the occurrence of unmastered developmental tasks and repetition of trauma. Future research should involve diverse participants in individual as well as group contexts. Equally important is contextualising the intervention discussed here to meet the distinctive diversity needs of participants in individual and group contexts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

I argue that the gender-role incongruity between being a woman and the masculine stereotypes of political leadership roles will lead to more ambivalence about women relative to men and that gendered traits will comprise the content of these ambivalent attitudes. I analyze attitudinal ambivalence toward female candidates using ANES data. The results find that ambivalence is higher among voters who hold cross-pressured identities as strong partisans with sexist beliefs for both Democratic and Republican women. In 2016, individuals held stronger ambivalent attitudes about Hillary Clinton even among strong Democrats but there was very little ambivalence in attitudes about Trump. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study revisits the concept of anxiety and affective dimensions through an analysis of social media related to affordable housing property in Hegang, a small city located in the northeastern part of China. We build on Calum Matheson’s reconceptualization of anxiety as arising from networks of affective investment along with Sara Ahmed’s concept of the sociality of emotions and Lauren Berlant’s notion of cruel optimism. The essay sees rhetorical anxieties as affective vacillations from constant adaptions to an impasse caused by the polarizing effect of a rising neoliberal order, manifested as shifted orientations toward objects of desire and happiness. Constant vacillations may lead to a state of restlessness where anxiety is sedimented to routines and thus recedes to the background, making anxiety ambivalent in shape and unpredictable in trajectory. Viewing rhetorical anxieties as affective vacillations offers insights into their manifestations as anxious encounters and constant affective (re)investments. This reimagination of anxiety has implications on both theoretical inquiries of rhetorical anxieties as affects and practical understandings of the rise of the recent youth counternarratives in China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract Background This study focuses on college students as research subjects, exploring the relationship between fear of evaluation, ambivalence over emotional expression, and self-care, as well as the moderating effect of self-care on the prediction of ambivalence over emotional expression by fear of evaluation. Methods This study selected physical education college students in Sichuan Province as the research participants. Convenience sampling was used to recruit participants through public recruitment information and questionnaire links on online platforms commonly used by college students. The questionnaire was distributed at two different time points to reduce the effect of common method bias. A total of 858 questionnaires were distributed, after excluding duplicate responses, a total of 743 valid questionnaires were obtained. Results The result as following: (1) College students exhibit a moderate to high level of negative fear of evaluation, ambivalence over emotional expression, and self-care, with female students having higher negative fear of evaluation; (2) There are significant correlations between fear of evaluation, ambivalence over emotional expression, and self-care; (3) Fear of evaluation and self-care can predict ambivalence over emotional expression, but self-care does not have a moderating effect on the prediction of ambivalence over emotional expression by fear of evaluation; (4) Self-care and negative self-care both have a moderating effect on the prediction of emotion rumination by positive fear of evaluation. Conclusions In the past, rumination has often been considered a manifestation of excessive rumination and anxiety. However, this study found that self-compassion’s modulation on fear of positive evaluation intensifies its impact on emotional rumination. Research suggests that moderate emotional rumination may not necessarily be a negative outcome and reflects a positive emotional adjustment process to some extent. Therefore, future studies can further explore the growth and decline of internal rumination processes in self-compassion or counseling, and potentially gain a better understanding of key elements of personal growth.