Developmentally appropriate criteria for evaluating sexual abuse prevention programs

Many sexual abuse prevention programs originally designed for school children are inappropriately used with preschool children. Programs used with young children need to take into consideration their unique learning abilities. This paper uses a developmentally appropriate practice framework as a guide in helping early childhood professionals evaluate sexual abuse prevention programs.     

Life circumstances and public policies for young children in immigrant families

Young children, birth through eight, are more diverse than other age groups in the United States. They are more likely to be first- or second-generation immigrants and, as a consequence, more likely to belong to racial-ethnic groups originating outside European nations. Many also live with parents whose heritage language is not English. For these reasons, children in immigrant families merit special attention by policy-makers, program administrators, and others who have responsibility for assuring that the young children of today become competent students, workers, citizens, and parents in the years ahead. The development of effective policies and programs for all children and families depends on having information about their life circumstances, including their family composition, education, work, income, and housing, and for immigrants, also their country of origin, citizenship, and language skills. This article presents new results from the U.S. Census Bureau's American Community Survey for 2005, 2006, and 2007, reflecting important life circumstances of young children in immigrant families, compared to those in native-born families. We present new population projections from the U.S. Census Bureau, which highlight the increasingly important role that children of immigrants will play in the economy and civil society during the coming decades. We then discuss implications for the design and implementation of effective policies and programs.     

Altruism, aggression, and social interactions in young children with a manic-depressive parent

This is an exploratory study of the emotional and social functioning of young children with a manic-depressive parent. Seminaturalistic observations and experimental manipulations of the affective environment were used to assess 2-year-old children's regulation of emotion, as well as their aggression, altruism, and affiliative interactions. Children with a bipolar parent sometimes showed heightened distress and preoccupation with the conflicts and suffering of others, especially disturbances in adults. These children had difficulty in maintaining friendly social interactions, in sharing, and in helping their playmates. They also had difficulty modulating hostile impulses; they showed more maladaptive patterns of aggression toward peers and adults. These interpersonal and emotional problems of offspring of manic-depressives were often similar to those problems of manic-depressives that have been implicated in the clinical literature as possibly associated with the transmission of the disorder. This apparent congruence of findings obtained from different disciplines employing very different research strategies and studying people of different ages, attests to the utility of an explicit interdisciplinary approach in the area of developmental psychopathology.     

A comparison between parent identification of young bright children and subsequent testing

Eighty‐four 4‐, 5‐, and 6‐year‐olds in Saturday and summer classes offered at Towson State University for gifted children, ages 4–12, were tested using the Woodcock‐Johnson Psycho‐Educational Battery and Raven's Progressive Matrices, after being accepted only on parent recommendation. Test results confirmed the accuracy of parent recommendation, the high ability and achievement levels of the children, and their variability within achievement. Program adaptations resulting from the testing included more mathematics teaching, more individualized instruction, more parent meetings, and allowance for inadequate handwriting skills and emotional and social variability.     

Schools,families, and the development of young children

From a developmental perspective, hothousing is a matter of concern, for it is based on a conception of the preschool child's future which is too narrow to include the complex creative and social needs these children will face. The idea that children must be prepared for a technologically dominant future may be responsible for a mandate for hothousing. Preschool children need a “Back to Basics” preschool program which focuses on broad psychological goals and a developmental base rather than the limited achievement goals usually associated with such programs. Outside of the school, parents influence the preschool child's attitudes about intellectual growth, individuality and belonging, and coping with change. Parents and schools should provide complementary systems to deal with the challenging developmental needs of preschoolers.     

Developing an equalities literacy for practitioners working with children,young people and families through action research

ABSTRACT

The Marginalisation and Co-created Education (MaCE) project was developed between the University of Southern Norway, VIA University in Denmark and the University of Cumbria in the UK and funded by Erasmus+. The project aims to co-create proposals to achieve an equitable and socially just education system through participative action research with ‘Early School Leavers’. This paper establishes a conceptual framework called ‘Equalities Literacy’ that evolved from the first action research cycle of the project. The framework is informed by the practice experience and theoretical knowledge of the international and interdisciplinary research team. It is applied to one youth narrative in this paper to illustrate its efficacy in revealing socio-cultural in/equalities. The Equalities Literacy framework is proposed to challenge and inform practice and further research. Further, the ‘Indirect Approach’ is introduced and located within action research as a participatory methodology that other researchers may wish to adopt.     

Developmentally appropriate practices and children's perception of self-competence in Head Start classrooms

The present project studied the relationship between the use of developmentally appropriate practices and children's perception of self-competence in Head Start classrooms. Self-competence is defined as children's confidence in succeeding in certain tasks. Developmentally appropriate practices (DAP) as proposed by the National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC) are teaching practices that are age appropriate, individually appropriate and culturally appropriate. Seventy-two children attending six Head Start centres participated in the study. Trained researchers filled out the Rating Scale to assess the use Developmentally Appropriate Practices in Early Childhood Classrooms. The participating children's perceived self-competence was measured using the Pictorial Scale of Perceived Competence and Social Acceptance. Correlational analysis showed that some of the subscales assessing the use of developmentally appropriate practices were correlated with two of the subscales of the children's perception of self-competence. The above results provide some insight into the importance of the use of developmentally appropriate practices and their effects on children.     

The effectiveness of an expanded interrogative training technique for young deaf children

This study investigates the development of language interrogatives in deaf children through a program using expanded question structures. Ten young deaf children, (age range 6 to 8 years) were assigned to matched groups on the basis of chronological age and results of Raven's Progressive Matrices. One group was given six traditional question structures and the other was given six expanded question structures, on each of four consecutive days. On the fifth day, the traditional question structures were asked of all the subjects. The analysis of responses showed that even with a small sample the expanded question structures affected the number of accurate responses for the conceptual type of “wh” questions.     

Vocabulary training for children with dyslexia

A vocabulary training program, using the parents as sole instructors, led to significant and lasting improvements in word knowledge and lexical access speed for 13 adolescents with dyslexia. Furthermore, when the trained words matched the current vocabulary age of the child, the improvement generalized to untrained words.     

An evaluation of key working for families of children and young people with special educational needs and disabilities

Key working is a way of supporting children and young people with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) and their families, and is highly regarded by families and practitioners. However, there is a lack of up‐to‐date research exploring key working in the current context of policy reforms in England. This article reports an evaluation of key working in four sites in England, with a particular focus on the SEND policy reforms. Key working resulted in a number of positive outcomes for children and young people, families and services, including helping services to meet the requirements of the SEND reforms. Challenging aspects included managing transitions and the relationship between key working practitioner and family, but successful strategies were identified. Key working supports the implementation of specific aspects of the English SEND reforms along with more general cultural change in services to align with families' needs and well‐established aspects of good practice.