BackgroundThe aim of this study was to investigate the stress level of university faculty members, the important determinants of faculty members’ stress, and the implications for both faculty members and administrators.Subjects and methodsParticipants were asked to complete a questionnaire consisting of 24 questions. Reponses from 240 participants at a Chinese university were analyzed using SPSS software. The descriptive statistics showed the participants’ statistical characteristics. Cronbach’s a and varimax rotation were used to assess the reliability and validity of the scale. The main statistical methods used were ANOVA and multifactor line regression.ResultsUniversity faculty members’ occupational stress is widespread across occupational hierarchies. University faculty members are faced with different levels of teaching and scientific research and personal development pressures. Professional ranking, age, and length of teaching make a difference in the level of faculty members’ occupational stress. The results can help us confirm that scientific research, professional development, and administrative affairs are significant influencing factors of faculty members’ occupational stress.ConclusionUniversity faculty members’ occupational stress is the outcome of structural constraints of university and personal characteristics. On the one hand, the faculty members should recognize the positive impact of occupational stress while striving to eliminate stressors. On the other hand, this empirical study uncovered that the evaluation mechanism based on quantitative performance indicators has greatly increased the occupational pressure on university faculty members.

BackgroundThe primary aim of this research was to examine the role of psychological empowerment on the work engagement of university faculty members in China and the implications for both faculty members and university administrators. The questions of the study focus on the level of psychological empowerment and work engagement of university faculty members and the correlation between psychological empowerment and work engagement.Materials and methodsData were collected from a sample of 162 faculty members working at a China university. They were asked to complete two self-reported scales with good reliability and validity: the psychological empowerment scale (PES) and the Utrecht work engagement scale (UWES). The responses from the sample were analyzed using SPSS software. The descriptive statistics showed the participants’ statistical characteristics, while independent sample t-tests and one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) revealed group differences among university faculty members. Correlation analysis and multidimensional regression analysis demonstrated how psychological empowerment affected work engagement.ResultsThe total scores for the PES and UWES were both moderately high. Gender, age, degree attained, and professional ranking were associated with differences in levels of psychological empowerment and work engagement. The results confirmed that psychological empowerment was positively correlated with all the dimensions of work engagement. The regression analysis results showed that the positive role of psychological empowerment in work engagement was mainly realized through two dimensions: meaning and competence.ConclusionThe study results revealed significant group differences in the PES and UWES scores among university faculty members. Universities should give more support to younger and junior faculty. There is highly positive correlation between psychological empowerment and work engagement. University should recognize the role of psychological empowerment and create a supportive environment to promote faculty members’ professional development, which, in turn, can increase universities’ productivity.

Following massive socioeconomic reforms over the past three decades, social work in the People’s Republic of China (hereafter China) has developed at an unprecedented pace. To respond to social issues arising from accelerated economic development, the government has launched a large-scale programme to train a professional social work workforce of 1.45 million by 2020. Social work in mainland China has developed, and continues to develop, rapidly in major urban centres, while rural areas remain largely neglected. This article describes developmental issues in rural China and argues that social work requires indigenised knowledge and interventions to address context-specific problems.

Learning from video lectures is becoming a prevalent learning activity in formal and informal settings. However, relatively little research has been carried out on the interactions of learning strategies and social environment in learning from video lectures. The present study addresses this gap by examining whether learner-generated explanations and co-learner presence with or without nonverbal praise independently and interactively affected learning from a self-paced video lecture about infectious diseases. University students were randomized into viewing either the video with instructor-generated explanations or the same video but generating explanations themselves. Outcomes were assessed by the quality of explanations, learning performance, mental effort, attention allocation, and behavioral patterns. Between-group comparisons showed that, in the absence of a peer co-learner, learning performance was similar in both the instructor-generated and learner-generated explanation groups. However, in the presence of a peer, learner-generated explanation facilitated learning performance. Furthermore, learner-generated explanation in the presence of a co-learner also reduced learners’ mental effort and primed more behaviors related to self-regulation and monitoring. The results lead to the following strong recommendation for educational practice when using video lectures: if students learn by generating their own explanations in the presence of a co-learner, they will show better learning performance even though the learning is not necessarily more demanding, and will engage in more behaviors related to explanation adjustment and self-regulation.

This article presents a critical analysis of the challenges global social work standards present for mainland China (hereafter China) with its authoritarian political ideology that is in tension with the profession’s universal values grounded in liberal individualism. China is caught between the Scylla of universal standards and Charybdis of indigenisation seeking to adapt social work to its unique sociocultural contexts. Based on our extensive literature review, we identified four challenges for Chinese social work: (1) balancing personal social services and social development, (2) negotiating global standards and local realities, (3) responding to poverty and other national social development issues and (4) pressures towards indigenisation, while remaining in step with social work’s global standards. China favours the continued adaptation of imported knowledge and practice interventions within local and national sociocultural, economic and political realities. This study also highlights social work in China’s urban bias and limited attention to rural issues, acknowledging this is a concern for social work even in Western contexts.