Hearing children’s voices? Including children’s perspectives on their experiences of domestic violence in welfare reports prepared for the English courts in private family law proceedings

This research examined Children and Family Court Advisory and Support Service (Cafcass) reports prepared for private family court proceedings in domestic violence cases in England. The research found that in cases where children’s accounts identified them as victims of violence, these disclosures regularly disappeared from report recommendations. Particular discourses regarding ‘child welfare’ and ‘contact’ were identified, which routinely impacted on the ways in which children’s voices were taken into account. Whilst culturally there has undoubtedly been an influential move towards including children’s perspectives in decision-making that affects them, how these views are interpreted and represented is subject to adult ‘gate-keeping’ and powerful cultural and professional ideologies regarding ‘child welfare’ and ‘post-separation family relationships’. This research found that the unrelenting influence of deeply embedded beliefs regarding the preservation or promotion of relationships with fathers continues to have the effect of marginalising issues of safeguarding, including children’s voiced experiences of violence, in all but the most exceptional of cases. Rather, safeguarding concerns in respect of domestic violence and child abuse were persistently overshadowed by a dominant presumption of the overall benefits of contact with fathers.     

Do regulable features of child-care homes affect children’s development?

Data from the NICHD Study of Early Child Care were used to assess whether regulable features of child-care homes affect children’s development. Child-care homes selected were those in which there were at least two children and the care provider received payment for child care (ns=164 when the study children were 15 months old, 172 at 24 months, and 146 at 36 months). Caregivers who were better educated and had received more recent and higher levels of training provided richer learning environments and warmer and more sensitive caregiving. Caregivers who had more child-centered beliefs about how to handle children also provided higher quality caregiving and more stimulating homes. In addition, when settings were in compliance with recommended age-weighted group size cut-offs, caregivers provided more positive caregiving. Quality of care was not related to caregivers’ age, experience, professionalism, or mental health, or to the number of children enrolled in the child-care home or whether the caregivers’ children were present. Children with more educated and trained caregivers performed better on tests of cognitive and language development. Children who received higher quality care, in homes that were more stimulating, with caregivers who were more attentive, responsive, and emotionally supportive, did better on tests of language and cognitive development and also were rated as being more cooperative. These findings make a case for regulating caregivers’ education and training and for requiring that child-care homes not exceed the recommended age-weighted group size.     

Politics in Language:on George Orwell’s View of Language in Nineteen Eighty-Four

Language stood in the foreground of George Orwell’s social and political thinking. Language is not only a vehicle for transmitting ideas, but also a product originating from social and political intera...     

Politics in Language: on George Orwell’s View of Language in Nineteen Eighty-Four

Language stood in the foreground of George Orwell’s social and political thinking. Language is not only a vehicle for transmitting ideas, but also a product originating from social and political interactions. This paper examines the language, particularly the abuse of language, in the context of politics presented in Nineteen Eighty-Four, so as to find out George Orwell’s view of language: language as a manipulated tool to control people’s minds.     

Weaknesses of Chomsky’s Theory of Language

As seemingly persuasive as Chomsky’s theory is, it is significantly flawed in four aspects: 1. ignoring a much fundamental creative force in early infancy; 2. equation of first-language learning with second-language learning; 3. methodology; 4. employment of terms.     

Weaknesses of Chomsky’s Theory of Language

As seemingly persuasive as Chomsky’s theory is, it is significantly flawed in four aspects:1. ignoring a much fundamen?tal creative force in early infancy; 2. equation of first-language learning with...     

Young children’s photographs of measurement in the home

This article explores the use of children’s photography as a method for conducting mathematics education research with young children. Collected as part of a study focusing on the experiences with measurement children have at the start of schooling, the photographs presented here were taken by children aged five and six years, from two Australian primary schools. The children took a digital camera home and were asked to photograph things that they considered to be related to measurement. While the intended use of the photographs was to provide insight into the types of experiences children have with measurement in the home context, an additional outcome to emerge from the research was a deeper understanding relating to the strengths and weaknesses of using children’s photography and photo elicitation as a research method with young children. This article presents some of the insights gleaned from this mathematics education research, and examines the use of children’s photography and photo elicitation as a research strategy for working in early years research contexts.     

Does domestic violence jeopardize the learning environment of peers within the school? Peer effects of exposure to domestic violence in urban Peru

This study examines the peer effects of domestic violence within school classrooms. Thus, it builds on the findings of Carrell and Hoekstra (2010) and Carrell et al. (2018) and expands them in two aspects. First, we focus our attention in less extreme cases of domestic violence than those that get reported to public institutions. Second, we also study the peer effects of domestic violence over a novel set of outcomes: internalizing behaviors and forms of violence at school. We show that being in a classroom with peers exposed to domestic violence leads to increased dropout rates; increased levels of depression, victimization from bullying and attitudes towards violence at school; and lower verbal and math test scores. Our findings are mainly driven by the extensive margin of exposure to physical violence (i.e. additional students affected by average violence within the classroom).     

Philosophical Ideas in Saussure’s Theory of Language and Halliday’ s Systemic Functional Grammar

How Halliday’s systemic functional grammar was affected by Saussure’s theory of language and what the great significance of their philosophical ideas is.The paper explains those two problems from the clue of the philosophical ideas of language.     

The Teacher’s Language in English Classroom

English teaching is a process of language activity in which languageis the main teaching aid used by the teacher in the classroom.Languageof the teacher may facilitate or interfere with the teaching effects.This is a problem that shnould be taken into consideration.As we know,an English teacher is the unique English speaker whom the studets can imitale,the builder of the communicative environment in which the studente     

Women’s Language or Powerless Language:A Study of Couples’ Talk

The purpose of this essay is to study whether the linguistic behaviour of adult women using hedging and tags as indicative of an intrinsically tentative gender identity or of the effects of male dominant position through analyzing daily conversations of the heterosexual couples.The small scale study employs the methodology,namely,recording spontaneous and natural spoken conversation from authentic interaction with the permission of the ten male-female couples.Digital record pen with an omnidirectional microphone are placed in the central living area of each couple’s home.Then discourse analysis provides data making it possible to support Fishman’s claim that women use tag questions and ’you know’ not because women are not being really sure of themselves,or are looking to the addressee for confirmation,but because men in a dominant position often refuse to take responsibility for the smooth conduct of interpersonal relations,women use tag questions and ’you know’ to elicit and maintain conversations.     

The institutional shaping of children’s educational experiences in secure custody: A case study of a secure children’s home in England

Secure Children’s Homes accommodate some of the most vulnerable children in society and yet they have evaded sustained academic attention. Consequently, little is known about children’s education in this type of setting. Through the lens of institutional ethnography, this paper explores how experiences of education inside one Secure Children’s Home in England are shaped by the institution. This approach makes visible that while the small-scale of the setting is of value, the mix of children accommodated for qualitatively different reasons is problematic for both the delivery of education and the children’s engagement in learning.     

Parental expectations of children’s higher education participation in Australia

The role of parental expectations in determining children's higher education participation is important in understanding both participation and potential policy responses. Using a nationally representative longitudinal survey of Australian households, providing repeat observations on expectations for individual children, this study extends the literature in several respects. First, it examines the adaptation of parental expectations over a 4-year time frame. Second, it looks at how parental expectations for school children are associated with actual higher education outcomes in the future. Third, the longitudinal aspect of the dataset permits more robust analyses of factors that shape parental expectations. The findings indicate that parental expectations of their children's attendance at university are generally stable across time. Perceptions of children's academic achievement at school are shown to be the key influence in shaping parents' expectations, and behavioural issues at school adversely affect expectations. Australian parents from non-English-speaking backgrounds were more likely to form positive expectations of university participation by their children, consistent with studies from other countries. A more nuanced picture of the formation of expectations for sole-parent mothers is also presented. Positive effects of parental education and children's enrolment in a private school on parents' expectations, over and above any effect on school achievement, highlight these socioeconomic factors as potential causal channels for the intergenerational transmission of socioeconomic outcomes.     

Parents’ assessments of their children’s abilities

Conducted in the framework of the theory of social representations, the study was designed to examine the dimensions in terms of which parents assess their children’s abilities, the ways in which social positions — here, the parents’ education and gender and the child’s gender — organize these assessments, and the ways in which the assessments relate to the estimated school success of the child. The subjects were a nationwide sample of parents (N=938), who were asked to estimate their children’s school success and to assess these children’s abilities. A factor analysis showed the ability assessments to be multidimensional. The parents assessed girls’ cognitive and social abilities to be better than boys’. Academically educated parents drew a more categorical distinction than other parents between cognitive and other abilities, which suggests that they endorse a differential conception of intelligence. A clear congruity of content was observed between the estimations of school success and the assessments of abilities, indicating that different school subjects are associated with different abilities.     

The role of inhibitory functioning in children’s reading skills

Executive functions, including inhibition, have been implicated in children’s reading ability. This study investigates whether children’s performance on an inhibition task is more indicative of reading ability than a measure of another executive function, that is, planning. Fifty‐three male participants were administered a reading test and tests of inhibition and planning not requiring a verbal response. Regression analyses revealed that only inhibition significantly predicted reading. Previous inconsistencies may reflect the modality of the tasks used to measure inhibition. Therefore non‐verbal measures may have highest utility for educational psychologists.     

Getting parents involved in children’s play: Qatari parents’ perceptions of and engagement with their children’s play

The study investigates parents’ perceptions of and engagement with their children's play in the context of Qatar. Quantitative data were collected using a questionnaire that was administered to parents of children aged 4–7 years old in Doha. A total sample of 240 parents responded to the questionnaire. Findings indicated that Qatari parents valued the importance of play to their children’s development and learning. In addition, parents showed a moderate level of engagement with their children’s play. The findings also indicated that physical play was the most common type of play in which parents are engaged with their children, followed by discovery play. Moreover, significant correlations were found between parents’ perceptions of children’s play and their engagement with all play types. In addition, significant differences were observed in parents’ perceptions of and engagement with children’s play based on parents' socio-demographic variables. These findings highlight the importance of extending children’s play in all children’s educational levels, and getting parents involved in children’s play activities.     

Inclusion of children with special educational needs in mainstream schools in Ghana: influence of teachers’ and children’s characteristics

The issue of where to teach children with special educational needs (SEN) and disabilities has been a great concern as countries respond to the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) Salamanca Statement on inclusion of 1994. In this study, the responses of 500 trained and untrained mainstream primary school teachers selected from three of the ten regions of Ghana were analysed to investigate their attitudes to including children with SEN and disabilities in mainstream schools in Ghana. These attitudes were examined alongside teachers’ characteristics such as gender, age, length and level of teaching experience, and knowledge of SEN, and also the type, nature and degree of children’s SEN. The results showed that teachers in Ghana were positive towards the inclusion of children with SEN and disabilities with a few reservations which are elaborated. On the basis of the findings, conclusions were drawn that the inclusion agenda should be subject to national and local interpretation, aimed at ensuring that policies and regulations on SEN are fashioned to meet local situations and standards.