The role of law in protecting the child: A critique of the English system

We have undertaken a critical appraisal of the current English system of law regulating: (1) Provision of services designed to prevent children coming into care of local authorities, which are the authorised agencies for dealing with children who are abused or neglected. (2) Ways of receiving children into care and also ways of terminating care orders. We question whether, and under what circumstances, care orders are really necessary. (3) Periodic reviews of children in care. We are critical of the English system and look to models in the USA as guides towards the possible reform of English law. We take the same perspective when considering termination of parental rights. In our opinion good laws do not of themselves provide the care and love which a child requires, but they make the caring possible by loved and loving adults. We argue that the law must provide the best possible framework to allow adequate caring by members of the non-legal professions, such as social workers and foster parents. At the same time the law must ensure that the rights of parents and children are protected.     

A validational study of the structured interview of symptoms associated with sexual abuse (SASA) using three samples of sexually abused, allegedly abused, and nonabused boys

Objective: With the rapid rise of sexual abuse allegations, there is a growing need to develop instruments to help clinicians determine the likelihood that sexual abuse has occurred.Method: This study evaluated the discriminant validity of a structured parent interview regarding emotional, behavioral, and physical symptoms by comparing results among three subsamples of age matched boys: 22 sexually abused boys whose perpetrator confessed, 47 boys evaluated in a sexual abuse clinic but without a history of perpetrator confession and 52 nonabused boys selected after rigorous screening.Results: In comparison with the nonabused (NA) boys, the sexually abused boys were significantly more likely to demonstrate sudden emotional and behavioral changes, frequent stomachaches, more knowledge about sex and sexual activities than expected for age, unusual agressiveness toward playmate or toy's private parts, crying easily, difficulty getting to sleep, and a change to poor school performance. The internal reliability of the SASA was determined to be .83 and scoring of an abbreviated 12-item scale demonstrated a sensitivity of 90.9% and a specificity of 88.5%.Conclusions: The findings suggest that Structured Interview of Symptoms Associated with Sexual Abuse (SASA) is an effective tool which may help in the comprehensive assessment of boys who may have been sexually abused.     

Styles of parenting among parents of young gifted children

Elementary students in programs for gifted and highly gifted students were tested using the Stanford‐Binet Intelligence Scales, Fifth Edition (SB5). Students’ scores on the SB5 were significantly lower than their scores on the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children— Third Edition (WISC‐III). In addition, rank order was not well preserved between the SB5, WISC‐III scores, and determination of giftedness. While the cause of these findings is unclear, caution should be used when utilizing the SB5 for determinations of gifted status.     

Action research: A situated perspective

Rigoberta Menchú has become an icon for the struggles of oppressed peoples for justice and self-determination. For many academics and activists around the world, the accusations of lying made against Ms. Menchú by David Stoll brought into sharp focus the politics of "truthmaking" and the absolutist categories of fact and fiction. In this attempt to discredit Ms. Menchú, and through her, the Mayan experience of genocide by the Guatemalan military and its U.S. sponsors, important questions have been raised about how and when Third World women can speak, the conditions under which they will be heard, and the strategies used to silence them. In this paper, the author draws upon some of the lessons of the Rigoberta Menchú case to examine the politics of truth making in Canada in a recent controversy regarding a speech she made criticizing American foreign policy and urging the women's movement to mobilize against America's War on Terrorism. The highly personalized nature of the attacks on the author by political and media elites sought to accomplish a closing down of public space for informed debate about the realities of U.S. foreign policy and to silence dissent. Repeatedly emphasizing her status as an immigrant outsider, this controversy also contributed to the (ongoing) racialization of people of color as a treacherous "enemy" within the nation's geographical borders, against whom "Canadians" had to be mobilized.     

Facilitating early career leadership through pre‐service training

Current research indicates that new teachers want to be involved in school‐level decision‐making. Upon entering the profession, many novice teachers are surprised and disillusioned to find they have considerably less involvement and influence than expected. Based on strategies that have been developed, revised, and refined over a number of years in two teacher preparation programs in the eastern US, the current discussion proposes that teacher preparation programs incorporate training in school‐based management as a means to better prepare new teachers for the political realities of the profession. Intended for teacher educators, this paper describes how the research component common to most teacher education programs can be used as a venue to train teacher candidates in school‐based management.     

Positive emotions: passionate scholarship and student transformation

This paper challenges the practical and conceptual understanding of the role of emotions in higher education from the twin perspectives of transition and transformation. Focusing on the neglected area of positive emotions, exploratory data reveal a rich, low-level milieu of undergraduate emotional awareness in students chiefly attributed to pedagogic actions, primarily extrinsically orientated, and pervasive throughout the learning experience. The data conceive positive affect as oppositional, principally ephemeral and linked to performative pedagogic endeavours of getting, knowing and doing. A cyclical social dynamic of reciprocity, generating positive feedback loops, is highlighted. Finally we inductively construct a tentative ‘emotion-transition framework’ to assist our understanding of positive emotion as a force for transformational change; our contention is that higher education might proactively craft pedagogic spaces so as to unite the feeling discourse, the thinking discourse (epistemological self) and the wider life-self (ontological) discourse.     

Social and cognitive effects of professional communication on software usability

We designed and piloted a technical communication course for software engineering majors to take concurrently with their capstone project course in software design. In the pilot, one third of the capstone design course students jointly enrolled in the writing class. One goal of the collaborative courses was to use writing to improve the usability of students’ software. We studied the effects of writing on students’ user‐centered beliefs and design practices and on the usability of their product, using surveys, document analyses, expert reviews, and user test results. When possible, we compared the usability processes and products of teams who did and did not take the writing class. Our findings suggest that the synergy of this interdisciplinary approach effectively sensitized students to user‐centered design, instilled in them a commitment to it, and helped them develop usable products.     

Prolog programming techniques

In this paper we introduce the concept of a Prolog programming technique. This concept is then distinguished both from that of an algorithm and that of a programming cliché. We give examples and show how a knowledge of them can be useful in both programming environments and in teaching programming skills. The extraction of the various techniques is outlined. Finally, we discuss the problem of representing techniques where we conclude that the most promising approach is the development of a suitable meta-language.     

Developmental Achievements of 7‐year‐old Children in Poland in the Light of International Tests and the Requirements of the Polish Language School Program

The language competence and reading comprehension of 406 7‐year‐old children are examined in the research discussed in this article. The children were tested using comparative tests as part of an international project conducted in 14 countries and sponsored by the IEA and the High Scope Research Foundation in Ypsilanti, USA. The discussion here relates only to a part of this wider research and focuses upon the aims and contents of Polish language teaching in grades I—III of the Polish primary school.