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Background: The background of this paper is an empirical research on social rehabilitation of psychiatric patients in a large urban city in China during the post-Mao period, the Beijing Psychiatric Rehabilitation Research. Another aspect of this background is an exchange with Chen Sheying, a colleague interested in social services for the elderly in China. The underlying assumption of this paper is the multiple similarities between those two areas. Objectives: The first objective of this paper is to present a contextual analysis of the development of psychiatric rehabilitation in urban China and a second objective is to stress the similarities between psychiatric rehabilitation and social services to the elderly. Material: The material presented, while referring mainly to the general context of psychiatry and rehabilitation around that period, includes some data from the Beijing research. There are five analytical dimensions: (1) epistemological choices and research paradigms; (2) rehabilitation as an idea; (3) rehabilitation as a social, political and cultural matter; (4) factors of change in the recent history of China; and, finally, (5) mental illness as a personal experience. Discussion: This presentation leads to a discussion about the multiple similarities between the social welfare of two vulnerable categories of people (i.e. psychiatric patients and the elderly). It also offers, in the specific field of mental illness, a general interpretation of the rapid social changes in urban China. Conclusion: The conclusion is that psychiatric and ageing services are both a product of interaction among various cultural and social-political-economic factors. Any social welfare intervention or policy should be based on a thorough understanding of the five dimensions referred to earlier, including the traditional Chinese familism and structural dimensions of the post-Mao 'economic state' orientation.

Prologue: The Good-Luck River -- River notes: Buenaventura, 1804 -- A river's heartbeat -- The river I drink -- River notes: Buenaventura, 1825 -- The company we keep -- The thirsty tree -- River notes: Buenaventura, 1826 -- Fossil creek -- Shallow roots -- River notes: Buenaventura, 1841 -- Who owns the clouds? -- The water nobody wanted -- River notes: Buenaventura, 1843-44 -- The ghost dam -- An accidental beauty -- River notes: Buenaventura, 1845 -- The rights of rivers -- Epilogue: Split Mountain Canyon

Many teachers enter classrooms with limited cross-cultural awareness and low levels of confidence to accommodate cultural diversity. Therefore, teaching a heterogeneous body of students requires teachers to have culturally responsive teaching self-efficacy (CRTSE). The investigation of factors impacting teachers' self-efficacy in teaching diverse students has produced mixed results. The purpose of the current study was to explore the determinants of CRTSE in a sample of Canadian preservice teachers. One hundred and ten preservice teachers from a medium-sized public Canadian University completed measures of political orientation, CRTSE, cross-cultural experiences, and teacher burnout. Higher levels of preservice teachers' CRTSE were predicted by lower levels of Emotional Exhaustion (i.e., a key aspect of burnout syndrome) and more frequent cross-cultural experiences in their childhood and adolescence. Implications for training preservice teachers are discussed.

Drug courts have been widely praised as an important tool for reducing prison and jail populations by diverting drug-involved offenders into treatment rather than incarceration. Yet only a small share of offenders presenting with drug abuse or dependence are processed in drug courts. This study uses inmate self-report surveys from 2002 and 2004 to examine characteristics of the prison and jail populations in the United States and assess why so many drug-involved offenders are incarcerated. Our analysis shows that four factors have prevented drug courts from substantially lowering the flow into prisons and jails. In descending order of importance, these are: drug courts' tight eligibility requirements, specific sentencing requirements, legal consequences of program noncompliance, and constraints in drug court capacity and funding. Drug courts will only be able to help lower prison and jail populations if substantial changes are made in eligibility and sentencing rules.

Awareness of and sensitivity toward handicaps on the part of nonhandicapped faculty and staff in educational environments is vital for both students and faculty. Awareness and sensitivity can be gained in a variety of ways; however, coordinated efforts are usually more comprehensive and enhancing. At the Rochester Institute of Technology in the College of the National Technical Institute for the Deaf, a college for deaf students in Rochester, New York, the faculty development staff carried out a deafness simulation project for hearing faculty and staff. Rationale, a description of the project, and effective approaches for implementing and coordinating deafness simulation projects are presented below.

This study expands arguments calling for a more rigorous approach to high-frequency vocabulary list-based learning in EFL learning environments. Test and flashcard item designs were validated through quantitative (midterm and final test) and qualitative (survey) results to explore the impact of digital flashcards designed to build recall-level comprehension on both timed gap-fill and traditional multiple-choice posttests. Quizlet was chosen as the platform due to the affordance it provides teachers to create flashcard content and monitor practice. The results showed that multiple-choice, recognition-level test items result in a 20% overestimation of knowledge relative to gap-fill posttests. Additionally, a post-semester survey of 138 Japanese, pre-intermediate students of English showed a highly positive response to the recall-focused practice and testing system. The results demonstrate that for high-frequency L2 vocabulary, a paradigm shift from form-meaning recognition to form-meaning recall is an important direction for high-frequency vocabulary instruction and testing.