Training program in child abuse for community health workers

A wide range of health workers in the community provide care for families that abuse or have a potential for abusing their children. Frequently these workers are unable to work effectively because of difficulty dealing with feelings aroused by contact with such families.An experimental child abuse training program for community health workers was designed by a pediatrician, a social worker, a public health nurse and two child psychiatrists. This program included a six-month study group which met weekly to focus on feelings and conflcts aroused during the course of work with abusing or potentially abusing families.Through analysis of the group experience, the leaders identified eleven sets of feelings or conflicts which seemed to interfere consistently with effective delivery of care: 1)anxieties about a) being physically harmed by angry parents and b) about the effects of a decision; 2) denial and inhibition of anger; 3) need for emotional gratification from clients; 4) lack of professional support; 5) feelings of incompetence; 6) denial and projection of responsbility; 7) feeling total responsibility for assigned families; 8) difficulty separating personal from professional responsibility; 9) feelings of being a victim; 10) ambivalent feelings a) toward clients and b) about one's professional role; 11) need to be in control.This type of group experience seems to be an effective method for exploration and resolution of feelings and conflicts.     

Effects of Mother-Infant Social Interactions on Infants'' Subsequent Contingency Task Performance

20 3-month-old infants participated in a nonsocial contingency task immediately following a social interaction with their mothers. A measure of the time the dyads spent in a state of vocal turn-taking predicted individual differences in the infants' subsequent performance on the contingency task. These results parallel the social transfer effects we reported earlier in which the turn-taking dimension of social structure was experimentally manipulated to assess its effect on a subsequent nonsocial contingency task.     

Journal Editorial Policies Regarding Statistical Significance Tests: Heat Is to Fire as p Is to Importance

The present paper responds to defenses of statistical significance testing offered by Levin and Robinson. First, some inaccurate perceptions of contemporary criticisms of statistical tests are noted. Second, areas of disagreement are explored. For example, it is noted that all nine empirical studies of reporting practices since 1994 show that encouraging (per the 1994 APA style manual) authors to report effect sizes has not worked; two reasons for this failure are explored. Finally, two important areas of agreement regarding needed improvements in contemporary practices are noted.     

Traditional versus open university teaching methods: A cost comparison

The paper attempts to throw light on the direct (instructional) cost of OU teaching methods as against conventional “live” instruction. The variable cost per student-course is with one exception lower in the OU than elsewhere. This constitutes a strong case for the use of existing OU packages in campus universities, especially as campus universities might feel able to dispense with the costs of the summer schools. It also constitutes a case for expansion of existing courses at the OU. As regards the development of new OU packages, the paper shows the Foundation courses to be much cheaper than equivalent provision de novo at the same scale in campus universities. Measured by the breakeven number of students, second-level courses in a given faculty are cheaper than foundation level courses. But they also have fewer students and some are operating at levels which, if there were no interdependence between courses, might be considered expensive. If however they were used by more students either at the OU or at campus universities they could be economic, even when taken on their own. The paper does not cost student time but, if this is cheaper when OU teaching methods are used, this is a further argument in their favour.

     

The Australian national exceptional teaching for disadvantaged schools programme: a reflection on its first 8 years

ABSTRACT

This paper describes the aims, origins and principles of the Australian National Exceptional Teaching for Disadvantaged Schools programme and reflects on findings from its first eight years. As a well-established, mainstream university-based initial teacher-education programme designed to prepare social justice teachers for low socio-economic or high-poverty schools, NETDS has had significant impact on recruiting and retaining high-performing teachers in the schools that need them most. In this paper we discuss how it works, but also outline some of the complexities that arose in trying to design a teacher-education programme with equity at the centre and some of the changes we made along the way.     

Thinking outside the box: imagination and empathy beyond story writing

It is sometimes assumed that the strongest opportunities for developing imagination and empathy through children's writing lie in narrative starting points, whereas other less obviously literary writing forms are more readily associated with functional literacy. Consequently, writing regarded as non‐literary is rarely analysed with these qualities in mind. This paper presents an exploratory, textual analysis of children's letter‐writing texts, which aims to identify and describe the uses of imagination and empathy. It is suggested that imaginative strategies were integral to this textual construction and that the significance of imagination and empathy in writing development is worthy of further exploration.     

Characteristics of male and female science teachers

The characteristics of 273 male science teachers were compared with 72 female science teachers randomly selected from a fourteen-state region in the USA. A multivariate analysis of variance found differences between the two groups significant at the p ? 0.0005 level. Female teachers were higher on measures of interest in science and receptivity to change. Males scored higher on science knowledge indicators and on their perceptions of the teaching support they received. No differences were noted on measures of professional development or their perceptions of teaching effectiveness, curriculum, workload, or facilities. The implications of the findings are discussed in terms of science career selection by women.     

Herrnstein’s equation for the rates of responding during concurrent schedules

A modification of the nonlinear curve-fitting procedure proposed by Wetherington and Lucas (1980) was used to assess how well Herrnstein’s (1970) equation for the rates of responding during concurrent schedules described performance. The equation fitted some results very well, accounting for 80% or more of the variance in the data in studies that used moderate-duration changeover delays and provided the same positive reinforcers, operanda, and simple schedules in the two components. The equation fitted the data poorly in other studies. The k parameter changed with several variables; it was not as constant as Herrnstein (1974) suggested. R₀ did not fit Herrnstein’s interpretation as reinforcement from unprogrammed sources. Forty percent of all values of R₀ were negative, and another 23% were unreasonably large (greater than 50 reinforcers/h). The data suggest that Herrnstein’s equation is not a general theory of concurrent-schedule responding, and that Herrnstein’s interpretation of k and R₀ should be modified.