Mothers with mental retardation who do or do not abuse or neglect their children

Mothers with mental retardation with or without a history of child abuse and/or neglect were compared on a number of demographic variables. The reasons why children were or were not removed also were examined. The demographic comparisons showed that while those mothers with such a history generally had higher IQs, they were similar to the mothers without such a history. Twice as many of those with a history of abuse and/or neglect were married, lived independently, and had at least two children, one of which often had problems, in comparison to those without such a history. Examination of the reasons for child removal showed that removal occurred if the mother had a problem in addition to her retardation or if she was unwilling to attend and actively participate in a training program and/or did not have someone who could provide support. If a mother was willing and did attend training and had support, children were either not removed initially or were returned upon evidence that the mother was actively participating. In comparison to those mothers with a history of abuse and/or neglect, those without such a history functioned at a lower intellectual and functional level and were living with a relative who shared child-care responsibilities.     

保障见义勇为行为的另一种思路--在法律与道德之间寻求和谐

本文从中国首例见义勇为赔偿案作为切入口，提出了见义勇为的概念，分析了见义勇为行为的性质，并提出见义勇为行为存在着复杂的法律关系，远非一种法律关系所能概括，见义勇为行为的立法保障应定位于社会保障法范畴，由国家对见义勇为行为人负补偿责任，然后由国家向有关行为人追偿。     

心理学与非心理学专业大学生职业伦理意识比较

为了研究我国当前心理学与非心理学专业大学生的心理咨询职业伦理意识现状,研究采用钱铭怡等人根据美国咨询协会ACA伦理规范自编的职业伦理意识和态度问卷对新疆师范大学、石河子大学共639名心理学与非心理学专业大学生进行调查。结果发现:(1)心理学与非心理学专业大学生在22个条目评判上有显著差异,其中涉及咨询关系原则3条,保密性原则4条,职业责任原则7条,评估、测量和解释原则5条,督导、培训和教学原则1条,另外两条为询问被调查者是否认为有必要在中国制定此领域的职业伦理以及目前是否适宜在中国制定此领域的职业伦理;(2)不同性别的心理学与非心理学专业大学生在部分条目上存在显著差异。     

Adults who do not want to participate in learning: a cross-national European analysis of their perceived barriers

This article explores cross-national differences in the intensity of perceived barriers to adult learning in Europe focusing on the barriers recognised by those not participating and having no intention to do so. This relatively large subgroup has received scant scholarly attention, yet exploring their participation barriers is critical for policies aimed at encouraging learning activity. The authors propose a country typology of adult learning based on earlier typologies of welfare state regimes, varieties of capitalism and models of lifelong learning. Multilevel analysis of 19 European countries reveals individual and contextual effects on barriers to adult learning. The results indicate substantial country differences in all types of barriers perceived. In general, in the Nordic countries adults not participating and not intending to participate in learning are the least impeded. For this group of adults, institutional barriers are perceived most often in the Baltic countries, situational barriers occur most frequently in liberal and continental countries, whereas dispositional barriers are most frequent in all post-socialist countries as well as in Southern Europe. This confirms the significance of including structural and institutional factors in addition to individual characteristics in explaining barriers to adult learning.     

Dynamics of forensic interviews with suspected abuse victims who do not disclose abuse

OBJECTIVES: The present study was designed to explore structural differences between forensic interviews in which children made allegations and those in which children did not make allegations. METHODOLOGY: Fifty forensic interviews of 4- to 13-year-old suspected victims of abuse who did not disclose abuse during the interview were compared with the same number of forensic interviews of alleged victims who made allegations of sexual or physical abuse. Only cases in which there was substantial reason to believe that abuse had taken place were included in the study. Audiotapes of the interviews were examined with a focus on interviewer utterances and children's responses during the pre-substantive rapport-building, episodic memory training, and 'getting the allegation' phases of the interviews, which all employed the NICHD Investigative Interview Guide. FINDINGS: Forensic interviews which yielded allegations of child abuse were characterized by quite different dynamics than interviews with children who did not make allegations. When interviewing non-disclosers, interviewers made less frequent use of free recall prompts and offered fewer supportive comments than when interviewing children who made allegations of abuse. Children who did not disclose abuse were somewhat uncooperative, offered fewer details, and gave more uninformative responses, even at the very beginning of the interview, before the interviewers focused on substantive issues and before the interviewers themselves began to behave differently. CONCLUSIONS: A premature focus on substantive issues may prevent children who are not responsive in the episodic memory training phase from disclosing abuse. Identifying reluctant disclosers and making more extensive efforts to build rapport before substantive issues are broached, or interviewing such children in more than one session, may help suspected victims disclose their experiences.     

Relative success in college chemistry for students who experienced a high-school course in chemistry and those who had not

A total of 53 high-ability students who had completed the eleventh year in high school enrolled in a standard college chemistry course at the University of Iowa. Half of them had completed a high-school course in chemistry and half had not. After 2 months of instruction during a summer session, there was no difference between groups as to attitude toward chemistry, performance on the ACS-NSTA Chemistry Achievement Examination, final examination for the course, and course grade. There was a great difference in the amount of time required of tutors; the students who had not completed high-school chemistry spent more time in studying and with tutors.     

高职院校退役复学学生适应性问题调研

问卷调查法和访谈法相结合,对高职院校退役复学学生的适应性问题进行调研,发现他们在学习、生活、人际交往及自我发展层面都存在一定问题。主要原因在于学习内容、学习环境以及训练方式方法上的变化。建议进一步强化政策引领,建立具体的管理档案,进行精准帮扶,具体分析学生个性特征并因材施教,着力发挥其特长,引导他们顺利完成学业。     

Working with artefacts: gestures, drawings and speech in the construction of the mathematical meaning of the visual pyramid

This paper reports a part of a study on the construction of mathematical meanings in terms of development of semiotic systems (gestures, speech in oral and written form, drawings) in a Vygotskian framework, where artefacts are used as tools of semiotic mediation. It describes a teaching experiment on perspective drawing at primary school (fourth to fifth grade classes), starting from a concrete experience with a Dürer’s glass to the interpretation of a new artefact. We analyse the long term process of appropriation of the mathematical model of perspective drawing (visual pyramid) through the development of gestures, speech and drawings under the teacher’s guidance.

East-Asian teaching practices through the eyes of Western learners

Many East-Asian countries are actively positioning themselves as receiving countries of international students. Consequently, the number of international students in these countries is steadily growing. Given the differences between Eastern and Western conceptions of teaching and learning, it could be expected that Western learners studying in the region may encounter educational practices that are foreign to them. This study sought to understand contemporary East-Asian teaching practices as experienced by Western students. Specifically, it explored Anglo and Hispanic students' perceptions of the pedagogic approaches they encountered at a Taiwanese university. In-depth interviews were conducted with 22 degree-seeking students in different fields of study. The findings indicate that despite the government's continuous initiatives to foster less traditional pedagogic approaches, a transmission model of instruction still looms large in Taiwan's higher education context. It was also found that the students in this study were ill-adapted to this form of teaching practice.     

To see or not to see: analyzing difficulties in geometry from the perspective of visual perception

In this paper, we consider theories about processes of visual perception and perception-based knowledge representation (VPR) in order to explain difficulties encountered in figural processing in junior high school geometry tasks. In order to analyze such difficulties, we take advantage of the following perspectives of VPR: (1) Perceptual organization: Gestalt principles, (2) recognition: bottom-up and top-down processing; and (3) representation of perception-based knowledge: verbal vs. pictorial representation, mental images and hierarchical structure of images. Examples given in the paper were mostly taken from Gal's study (2005) which aimed at identifying and analyzing Problematic Learning Situations (after Gal & Linchevski, 2000) in junior high school geometry classes. Gal's study (2005) suggests that while this theoretical perspective became part of teachers' pedagogic content knowledge, the teachers were aware of their students' thinking processes and their ability to analyze and cope with their students’ difficulties in geometry was improved.     

Measuring those who have their minds set: An item-level meta-analysis of the implicit theories of intelligence scale in education

Fixed and growth mindsets represent implicit theories about the nature of one's abilities or traits. The existing body of research on academic achievement and the effectiveness of mindset interventions for student learning largely relies on the premise that fixed and growth mindsets are mutually exclusive. This premise has led to the common practice in which measures of one mindset are reversed and then assumed to represent the other mindset. Focusing on K-12 and university students (N = 27328), we tested the validity of this practice via a comprehensive item-level meta-analysis of the Implicit Theories of Intelligence Scale (ITIS). By means of meta-analytic structural equation modeling and network analysis, we examined (a) the ITIS item-item correlations and their heterogeneity across 32 primary studies; (b) the factor structure of the ITIS, including the distinction between fixed and growth mindset; and (c) moderator effects of sample, study, and measurement characteristics. We found positive item-item correlations within the sets of fixed and growth mindset items, with substantial between-study heterogeneity. The ITIS factor structure comprised two moderately correlated mindset factors ($\rho$ = 0.63–0.65), even after reversing one mindset scale. This structure was moderated by the educational level and origin of the student sample, the assessment mode, and scale modifications. Overall, we argue that fixed and growth mindsets are not mutually exclusive but correlated constructs. We discuss the implications for the assessment of implicit theories of intelligence in education.     

The community of those who have nothing in common: Education and the language of responsibility

In this paper I explore different ways to understand the idea of community. Using the work of Alphonso Lingis, I make a distinction between the rational community and the community of those who have nothing in common. The latter community is the community in which we are all strangers for each other. I argue that the language of the latter community is the language of responsibility. It is this language that enables us to speak with our own, unique and individual voice. I argue that education and educators should be concerned with the latter form of speaking. Therefore, the community without community, which exists as the interruption of the rational community, is the most important, and ultimately the only relevant educational community.     

The role of teacher instructional practices in student collaboration

Prior research on collaborative learning identifies student behaviors that significantly predict student achievement, such as giving explanations of one’s thinking. Less often studied is the role of teachers’ instructional practices in collaboration among students. This article investigates the extent to which teachers engage in practices that support students’ explanations of their thinking, and how these teacher practices might be related to the nature of explanations that students give when asked by the teacher to collaborate with each other. The teachers observed here, all of whom received specific instruction in eliciting the details of student thinking, varied significantly in the extent to which they asked students to elaborate on their suggestions. This variation corresponded to variation across classrooms in the nature and extent of student explanations during collaborative conversations and to differences in student achievement.     

The role of rational number density knowledge in mathematical development

Many students still have not developed a robust understanding of rational number concepts at the end of primary school, despite several years of instruction on the topic. The present study aims to examine the patterns, predictors, and outcomes of the development of rational number knowledge in lower secondary school. Latent transition analysis revealed that rational number development from primary to lower secondary school (N = 362) appears to follow similar patterns as in younger students. In particular, a majority of students had poor knowledge of the density of the rational number set. Whole number magnitude knowledge appeared to be an important predictor of the development of rational number size knowledge, but not density knowledge. Finally, fraction density knowledge appeared to be related to concurrent algebra knowledge. Together these results point to an important role for density knowledge in mathematical development.     

Mothers' parenting practices and adolescents' learning from their mistakes in class: The mediating role of adolescent's self-disclosure

This study examined 126 students' (14–16 years of age; 66 females) perceptions of self-disclosure to their mothers with respect to their mistakes in class activities. Specifically, we hypothesized that self-disclosure would predict adolescents' ability to learn from mistakes they made in classroom tasks. In addition, we hypothesized that perceived mothers' love withdrawal would correlate negatively with adolescents' self-disclosure, whereas perceived autonomy support would correlate positively with self-disclosure. Further, we hypothesized that the effect of mothers' parenting practices on adolescents' ability to learn from their mistakes would be mediated by adolescents' self-disclosure of their school experiences. Results, using SEM analyses, showed the importance of mothers' autonomy support for adolescents' self-disclosure and learning from their mistakes in classroom tasks.