Physicians' initial forensic impressions of hypothetical cases of pediatric traumatic brain injury

OBJECTIVE: To describe physicians' initial forensic impressions of hypothetical cases of pediatric traumatic brain injury (TBI) and to compare the responses of pathologists and pediatricians. METHOD: A survey was administered to physicians who attended workshops on pediatric TBI; were members of two national internet list serves; and were members of the Section on Child Abuse and Neglect of the American Academy of Pediatrics (N=522) and the National Association of Medical Examiners (N=815). The survey included 16 hypothetical case scenarios depicting a pediatric TBI. Participants were asked to categorize their initial forensic impressions of each scenario on a seven-point scale from definitive unintentional to definitive inflicted injury. RESULTS: A total of 570 surveys were completed, including 465 of 1337 surveys (35%) distributed through the regular mail. In 8 of 16 hypothetical cases, a majority of respondents (range, 60-98%) and a majority of the more experienced respondents (range, 59-97%) categorized the hypothetical TBI as either unintentional or inflicted. Pathologists were less likely than the pediatric participants to view these scenarios as inflicted TBI. CONCLUSION: Certain features of TBI cases result in a majority of clinicians categorizing them as inflicted or intentional. In the absence of a confession of inflicted injury, witnessed or verifiable events, severe injuries without explanation or injuries that can be linked clearly to a perinatal period, clinicians were unable to agree on the etiology of the injury. Our results will be helpful to other researchers so that consistent, validated research definitions are used to classify pediatric TBI for research purposes.     

Participation Structure Impacts on Parent Engagement in Family Literacy Programs

Intervention programs to improve the educational outcomes of young children have become increasingly popular. Studies suggest that family literacy programs involving parents can result in positive effects on children’s language and literacy development. Issues continue to arise, however, regarding the recruitment and retention of families. One component of program design—participation structure—focuses on who is intended to be the direct or indirect recipient of programming. The relationships between participation structure and the recruitment/retention of families, however, has not been well understood. In this study, parents participated in one of two family literacy program models with varying participation structures—one in which parents attended with their children, the other in which parents attended alone. The purpose of this study was to identify parents’ motivations for participating the program, their expectations of what the program would entail, and their reasons for remaining in the program. Focus groups and written questionnaires were used to gather the data. The findings of the study and implications for practice are discussed.     

Gender discrimination and education in West Africa: strategies for maintaining girls in school

Girls’ enrolment in primary schools has achieved significant increase and parity with male enrolment in many countries in Africa since the 1960s. Some of these countries include Botswana, Namibia and Tanzania. However, in most Sub‐Saharan African countries, female enrolment still lags behind male enrolment. This paper examines some of the reasons for the persistent gender gap between females and males in the three African countries of Ghana, Nigeria and Togo within the West Africa sub‐region. It discusses gender relations, cultural practices such as early marriage, child slavery, and child fostering/trafficking, poverty and multiple household duties for girls as some of the contributing factors. It is argued that unless these cultural beliefs and attitudes are changed and mandatory measures such as holding parents accountable and responsible are put in place, gender parity and quality education for all, especially for females, will not be achieved in Africa. A number of additional strategies for improvement in school attendance and retention for females are also discussed.     

Counselor Predicate Usage and Communication Proficiency on Ratings of Counselor Empathic Understanding

This study investigated the effect of predicate usage, facilitative skill level, and participant sex on the participants' ratings of empathic understanding.     

Cross-modality transfer effects in conditioning-enhanced neophobia in chicks (Gallus domesticus): Evidence for the separability of novelty from specific stimulus characteristics

In this study, we investigated the separability of novelty from specific stimulus characteristics (e.g., color or taste quality) in the transfer of aversion effects. Ninety-six chicks (Gallus domesticus) received a novel visual (red water) or taste (3.0% vinegar) CS paired with an injection of lithium chloride or saline. The chicks were then tested for aversion to the CS or for conditioning-enhanced neophobia in response to a different novel visual cue (green water) or taste cue (1.0% saline). Aversions to the CSs were reliable and similar to each other. Reliable evidence of conditioning-enhanced neophobia occurred with respect to each test stimulus, irrespective of the type of CS, but conditioning with the vinegar CS produced reliably greater enhancement of neophobia than did conditioning with red water. For each CS, postconditioning neophobia was more persistent in testing with saline than with green water. The results for postconditioning neophobia suggested that novelty is a general stimulus property that is separable from specific stimulus characteristics.     

Applying Performance Measures and Process Improvements in the Classroom: The Loch Dots Company Simulation

The article describes a multi‐phase, in‐class simulation that employs problem‐based learning to teach operations and process‐improvement concepts as part of an undergraduate or graduate business course. The simulation is derived from a corporate Lean Six Sigma training activity and has been modified to introduce, demonstrate, and apply a wide range of business concepts relevant to operations and supply chain management, including the use of operational and financial performance measures in decision making. The activity is scalable for small‐ to medium‐size classes with multiple student groups and may be deployed as a stand‐alone, in‐class exercise spread over several class meetings or incorporated into a larger, semester‐long process‐improvement project for multiple student groups. The simulation emphasizes problem‐solving, teamwork, and intra‐firm cooperation in addition to 20–30 other business concepts, tools, and measures that may be incorporated.     

The Role of Universities in the ‘Cultural Health’ of their Regions: universities' and regions' understandings of cultural engagement

As Arbo and Benneworth (2007) have alerted us, higher education institutions are now expected not only to conduct education and research, but also to play an active role in the development of their economic, social and cultural surroundings. They call this the ‘regional mission’ of HEIs. This paper is concerned with cultural engagement. Research on universities’ cultural engagement in their regions and the impact of that engagement is still in its infancy, partly because there are different understandings of ‘culture’ and of what ‘engagement’ entails. In this paper, qualitative data from the reports of mixed teams of academics and regional administrators involved in a large international project designed to improve universities’ regional engagement are analysed and discussed. The on-going study — PASCAL Universities' Regional Engagement (PURE) — investigates the role of HEIs in their regions across in a variety of fields such as the economy, community development, the environment and others. This article analyses the data from the study to identify the different perspectives universities and regions have of cultural engagement. The aim here is to demonstrate the value of PURE in facilitating the development of mutual understanding both between universities through a common language and between universities and their regions in respect of mutual expectations. For example, particularly difficult to de-construct is universities’ engagement with disadvantaged communities (Doyle, 2007) but Powell's (2009) work suggests that universities might engage more broadly and effectively ‘through better knowledge sharing and co-creation with business and community partners’ to become ‘real drivers of creative change in developing socially inclusive projects’. Others have written about the educational role of universities in developing a ‘lifelong learning culture’ in their region (European Universities’ Charter on Lifelong Learning, 2008).     

Promising effects of an intervention: Young children’s literacy gains and changes in their home literacy activities from a bilingual family literacy program in Canada

The goal of this paper was to examine promising effects of a bilingual family literacy program: to track the changes of families’ literacy activities through a bilingual family literacy intervention, and to examine the children literacy gains in both Chinese and English across socioeconomic sub-groups. The intervention was an eight-week, two hours per week, literacy program in three Chinese communities in Toronto. Parents, with their children, participated in the program. The extremely high attendance rate provided evidence that families enjoyed the family literacy intervention and felt that the sessions were worthwhile. For their families’ literacy activities, the three sites followed the same trend: reaching the peak of activity at week four, slightly dropping down at weeks five and six, and then increasing to a second peak at week seven or week eight. Results also showed that across the three groups, children of mothers with lower education levels made fewer gains in their English expressive vocabularies and their Chinese expressive vocabularies, than children whose mothers had a higher level of education.