Parents’ Use of the V-Chip and Perceptions of Television Ratings: The Role of Family Characteristics and the Home Media Environment

Nearly 20 years after the Telecommunications Act of 1996, it is unclear how its mandates influence current parents’ mediation behavior. Parents of 2- to 17-year-old children (N = 1,431) were surveyed about their awareness and perceptions of the TV ratings system and use of the V-chip. Most (81%) parents knew about the ratings system and found it to be only “somewhat useful.” Only 16% of those parents had ever used the V-chip. Ratings awareness and perceptions and V-chip use varied with family characteristics. Policymakers should revisit how to provide better tools for mediating children’s viewing in this new information age.     

USING SELF‐MANAGEMENT INTERVENTIONS TO ADDRESS GENERAL EDUCATION BEHAVIORAL NEEDS: ASSESSMENT OF EFFECTIVENESS AND FEASIBILITY

A comprehensive self‐management intervention was utilized to increase the on‐task behavior of three African American students within an urban middle‐school setting. The intervention was designed to necessitate minimal management on the part of the general education classroom teacher by utilizing an electronic prompting device, as well as a centralized intervention coordinator for the management of training, implementation, and progress monitoring. Results suggested that implementation of the intervention resulted in improvement in on‐task behavior across all three students; however, problems with inconsistent implementation necessitated that modifications be made to the intervention procedures. Implications for the design and implementation of self‐management interventions within general education secondary‐level settings are discussed.     

Fatal child maltreatment: Characteristics of deaths from physical abuse versus neglect

This study examined victim, family, and alleged perpetrator characteristics associated with fatal child maltreatment (FCM) in 685 cases identified by child welfare services in the state of Oklahoma over a 21-year period. Analyses also examined differences in child, family, and alleged perpetrator characteristics of deaths from abuse versus neglect. Case information was drawn from child welfare investigation records for all FCM cases identified by the state Department of Human Services. Fatal neglect accounted for the majority (51%) of deaths. Children were primarily younger than age 5, and parents were most frequently the alleged perpetrators. Moreover, most victims had not been the subject of a child welfare report prior to their death. A greater number of children in the home and previous family involvement with child welfare increased children's likelihood of dying from neglect, rather than physical abuse. In addition, alleged perpetrators of neglect were more likely to be female and biologically related to the victim. These results indicate that there are unique family risk factors for death from neglect (versus physical abuse) that may be important to consider when selecting or developing prevention efforts.     

Relational Turbulence in College Dating Relationships: Measurement,Construct Validity,and Comparison to Marriage

This study seeks to examine a relationship ignored by most communication researchers: the long‐distance friendship. In this study, geographically close friends reported more maintenance behaviors than long‐distance friends. However, no significant differences were found concerning how satisfied or close they perceive their friendship to be or whether they expected their friendship to continue. Differences in the maintenance behaviors reported for each type of friend suggest that some maintenance behaviors may be more important than others for maintaining a close, satisfactory friendship. Implications for current conceptualizations of relational maintenance are discussed.     

Estimating Linear Size and Scale: Body rulers

The National Science Education Standards emphasise the use of concepts and skills that cut across the science domains. One of these cross‐cutting areas is measurement. Students should know measurement systems, units of measurement, tools and error in measurement as well as the importance of measurement to scientific endeavours. Even though measurement is an essential skill, little is known about how students estimate and use measurement in different contexts. This study examines the impact of teaching students to use their bodies as rough measurement tools (body rulers) on their ability to estimate linear measurements. Nineteen middle school students participated in metric intervention tasks and completed a pre‐instruction and a post‐instruction Linear Measurement Assessment. Results showed that teaching students to use rough body measures as tools (a body ruler) for estimation had a significant influence on their estimation accuracy. After instruction, students were better able to estimate the sizes of objects, use their body in making estimations of size, and estimate while touching an object or pacing a distance. Furthermore, proportional reasoning was significantly correlated with students’ post‐instruction scores on the Linear Measurement Assessment.     

The process of relationship development and deterioration: Turning points in friendships that have terminated

This study examines friendships that have ended. Five recalled trajectories for dissolved friendships were found. Certain turning points were generally associated with increases in friendship closeness, while others were associated with decreases in closeness. In addition, gender differences were found for several of the turning points reported. Implications are discussed for interpersonal communication research based on a traditional linear conceptualization of relational development and deterioration.     

Changes in Friendship Commitment: Comparing Geographically Close and Long-Distance Young-Adult Friendships

The existence of long-distance (LD) friendships throws into question assumptions that scholars of interpersonal communication often make about commitment to relationships, the development of relationships, and friendships. An analysis of turning points comparing commitment changes in young-adult geographically close and LD same-sex friendships revealed high and fluctuating levels of commitment over the history of the friendships for both types. Over 80% of those having LD friends reported their levels of commitment were currently increasing, rather than decreasing. Women were more likely than men to report nonlinear trajectories for their friendships, more downturns in commitment to their friendships, and more turning points related to changes in commitment to their friendships.     

The Need for Critical Media Literacy In Teacher Education Core Curricula

The "information era" has brought up new literacies, although most of them are still not part of the K–12 curriculum or the teacher education curriculum. One of these new literacies is critical media literacy. The purpose of this article is to document the urgency for including this new literacy in school and teacher education curricula given the crucial role of media as they touch every issue impacting human life in society. Critical media literacy as understood here includes three dimensions: (1) develop a critical understanding of how corporate for-profit media work, driven by their political and economic vested interests; (2) search for and support alternative, nonprofit media; and (3) characterize the role of teachers in helping students and their parents to become media-literate users and supporters of alternative media. Critical media literacy is founded on the legitimate role of media to serve the public's right to be truly informed, and thereby serve democracy. However, currently we are witnessing an unprecedented concentration of for-profit media into conglomerates, in alliance with the government and especially with the federal regulating agency—Federal Communications Commission—and other powerful institutions and corporations. Starting with this big picture, we examine and document specific cases that illustrate how these conglomerates and their allies work to keep and to expand their power, by means of filtering information, manufacturing consent, and controlling what the public watch, listen to, read, think, believe, taste, dress, look like, speak, and how they perceive themselves. The propaganda behind the banning of bilingual education in California is a clear example in the educational arena of the role of media in helping powerful people to manufacture voters' consent through fabricated stories, misleading ballot question, biased polls, etc. The second dimension of critical media literacy refers to the active involvement of every person, including school children, to support and advocate for alternative, nonprofit, public service-driven media. Given the reasons and the evidence presented, the authors consider that there is an urgency for including critical media literacy in the K–12 school curricula, and therefore in the teacher education core curriculum.     

A Matter of Friendship: Educational Interventions into Culture and Poverty

Contemporary educational reformers have claimed that research on social class differences in child raising justifies programs that aim to lift children out of poverty by means of cultural interventions. Focusing on the Knowledge Is Power Program (KIPP), Ruby Payne's “aha! Process,” and the Harlem Children's Zone as examples, Amy Shuffelton argues that such programs, besides overstepping the social science research, are ethically illegitimate insofar as they undermine the equitable development of civic agency. Shuffelton invokes Aristotelian civic friendship, particularly as interpreted by Danielle Allen and Sibyl Schwarzenbach, as key to a politics that avoids relations of domination and subordination. She concludes that social justice requires that educators involved with culturally interventionist programs recognize the workings of power within schooling and society, that they accept the limits of their own perspectives, and that they remain open to what is of value in child‐raising practices other than those associated with the contemporary middle class.