Living with Children with an Intellectual Disability: Parents Construct their Reality

This paper reports a study that adopted an interpretivist paradigm as a basis for parents and researchers to co‐create a discourse that outlines life experiences as they relate to parenting a child with an intellectual disability. Repertory grid methodology was employed to inform the process of discourse development. A model of the five interrelated systems of events or issues that impinge upon the perceptions of parents of children with an intellectual disability is proposed. In addition, details about the group's perceptions of those environmental events or issues that are pertinent to living with and caring for a child with an intellectual disability are reported.     

Family disruption and academic functioning in urban,black youth

The purpose of this study was to examine from an ecological perspective the relationships between multiple levels of family disruption and children's academic functioning in a sample of 390 urban, Black adolescents at age 14. Subjects in this cohort have been followed longitudinally since before their birth. Data from previous assessments at birth and age 7 years allowed for control of important correlates in this analyses. Examination of this unique sample, using multisource data collection procedures, provides important information about the many family disruptions among urban, low‐income families and the effects of these disruptions on academic outcomes. Results revealed several consistent findings, the most notable of which is that, when parents were married, adolescents demonstrated significantly higher grades, mediated through paternal involvement. Of all variables studied, the role of fathers in the lives of these adolescents was the most influential on academic outcomes. In this unique sample, even variables such as involvement with child protective services were not significantly related to outcomes after important control variables were factored into analyses. Results of this study have important implications for future research and for prevention and intervention efforts in urban, at‐risk samples. Emphasis is made for work in the school context, particularly for school psychologists. © 2011 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

BOOK REVIEW

This article summarizes results from a national study of community colleges (stratified by size and region). Included in the findings are data about the curriculum approaches being used, changes in approaches during the last 10 years, curriculum approaches preferred by chief academic officers, and perceived barriers to change in general education offerings.     

Organization,constraints and opportunities: an analysis of adult education in Turkey

This paper discusses the organization of adult education in Turkey. From a historical perspective, it examines the development, organization and problems of post‐school adult education. It shows these to be related to the politics and position of Turkish society in the Middle East and to the high degree of centralization of educational decision making in Turkey. The paper argues a case for the decentralization of adult education services for better training of adult educators and better delivery of adult educational provisions.     

Leadership for School Improvement: The Role of the Head of Department in UK Secondary Schools

The study examines the role of the Head of Department in UK secondary schools in terms of its potential for school improvement. Thirty-two heads of department in secondary schools in Birmingham and Manchester were shadowed and interviewed in order to identify: (1) their leadership and management styles; (2) the sense of empowerment felt by each; (3) initiatives for improving teaching, learning and achievement in their departments; and (4) obstacles to improving teaching, learning and achievement. Four deputy head teachers in the sample schools were also interviewed with the purpose of eliciting their views on the role of the head of department in facilitating school improvement. The findings support the prediction that distributed leadership (or shared power) among senior and middle managers in UK schools still remains rhetoric rather than practice and that there is a growing need for current middle management development and training provision to change radically if middle managers are to be supported as curriculum leaders and managers     

Joseph McCabe: A Forgotten Early Populariser of Science and Defender of Evolution

Joseph McCabe (1867–1955) was one of the most prolific and gifted polymaths of the twentieth century. Long before such a thing was thought respectable, and almost a century before any university established a chair in the public understanding of science, McCabe made a living as a populariser of science and a critic of philosophical and religious obscurantism. Through the first half of the twentieth century he wrote countless cheap and widely distributed books and pamphlets for those whose thirst for knowledge exceeded the money or time they could devote to such pursuits. This article will detail, and give some assessment of, McCabe’s career as a populariser of science and expositor of evolutionary theory and its philosophical, religious and cultural ramifications.