Trauma-informed interventions for counselling sex trafficking survivors

International Journal for the Advancement of Counselling - Human trafficking represents the fastest growing form of transnational crime and remains the third largest criminal enterprise following...     

Developing a Shared Vision for Change: Moving toward Inclusive Empowerment

Research in Higher Education - Shared vision is an important process for change projects, serving to amplify success, increase participation, and erode the divide between project leaders and...     

Children's distributive justice judgments: aversive racism in Euro-American children?

Euro-American 2nd- and 4th-grade children (Ms=7.67 and 9.82 years) heard stories about Black and White characters who produced artwork yielding a windfall reward. Children allocated rewards to characters, justified their allocations, and judged the fairness of patterns representing different justice principles. Older children allocated more money to Black than White productive characters and to White than Black needy characters, consistent with predictions from aversive racism theory. Rationales most often relied on equality principles; older children gave more equity-based justifications for Black than for White characters. Fairness ratings of patterns representing 4 justice principles revealed effects for age and character race. Implications for understanding the developmental course of moral judgments as they apply to racial differences are discussed.     

Putting the pieces together: endometriosis blogs,cognitive authority,and collaborative information behavior

Objective:

A discourse analysis was conducted of peer-written blogs about the chronic illness endometriosis to understand how bloggers present information sources and make cases for and against the authority of those sources.

Methods:

Eleven blogs that were authored by endometriosis patients and focused exclusively or primarily on the authors'' experiences with endometriosis were selected. After selecting segments in which the bloggers invoked forms of knowledge and sources of evidence, the text was discursively analyzed to reveal how bloggers establish and dispute the authority of the sources they invoke.

Results:

When discussing and refuting authority, the bloggers invoked many sources of evidence, including experiential, peer-provided, biomedical, and intuitive ones. Additionally, they made and disputed claims of cognitive authority via two interpretive repertoires: a concern about the role and interests of the pharmaceutical industry and an understanding of endometriosis as extremely idiosyncratic. Affective authority of information sources was also identified, which presented as social context, situational similarity, or aesthetic or spiritual factors.

Conclusions:

Endometriosis patients may find informational value in blogs, especially for affective support and epistemic experience. Traditional notions of authority might need to be revised for the online environment. Guidelines for evaluating the authority of consumer health information, informed by established readers'' advisory practices, are suggested.

Highlights

• Endometriosis patients who blog about the illness may determine authority of information sources through both cognitive and affective methods.

Implications

• Because patients with chronic illnesses might have different authority criteria than medical librarians do, it could be useful to carefully incorporate electronic patient discussion forums, medical blogs written by laypeople, and other nontraditionally authoritative resources into consumer health information selection policies. Standard biomedical resources are certainly important to recommend to consumers, but they do not convey the complete picture of a chronic illness and its related experience.
• Patients with chronic illnesses and caregivers can benefit from sources such as blogs and online discussion lists that provide social and emotional support as well as accounts of “lived experience.”
• An understanding of the patient''s potential epistemological community can make the librarian''s recommendations more appropriate for the individual user.

     

The Role of Rural Communities in the Postsecondary Preparation of Low-Income Students

In the past decade, rural education has been critiqued for contributing to brain drain and social stratification that saps the human, social, and economic resources of rural communities. This article, based on an investigation of six small rural school districts in the same state, offers an alternative view of the role of community groups and individuals in the academic preparation and postsecondary aspirations of local low-income students. From the accounts of 79 school and community residents, we developed a typology that categorizes local stakeholders by their involvement in three common functions: program support, program directing, and program initiation/administration. These proeducational activities, in combination, support the necessary tasks of qualification, graduation, application, and aspiration. Results not only increase understanding about the ways rural communities support educational preparation, but also clarify the links between particular community behaviors and the completion of essential college-preparation tasks.     

Analyzing the Roles,Activities, and Skills of Learning Technologists: A Case Study From City University London

This article reports on a case study carried out at City University London into the role of learning technologists. The article examines how the role developed by providing points of comparison with a report on the career development of learning technology staff in UK universities in 2001. This case study identified that learning technologists undertook diverse roles and acquired the skills to work in different communities (professional, academic, and research). It also found that although the core role and activities of learning technologists were similar to findings in 2001, the changing context in which they operated added complexity to the role and impacted the skills and experience required.     

UNDERSTANDING TEST‐TYPE ASSIGNMENT: WHY DO SPECIAL EDUCATORS MAKE UNEXPECTED TEST‐TYPE ASSIGNMENTS?

We interviewed special educators (a) whose students with disabilities (SWDs) were proficient on the 2008 general education assessment but were assigned to the 2009 alternate assessment based on modified achievement standards (AA‐MAS), and (b) whose students with mild disabilities took the 2008 alternate assessment based on alternate achievement standards (AA‐AAS) and then the 2009 AA‐MAS. We explored teachers’ rationales for test‐type assignment, student characteristics, and quality of instruction to determine the test‐type decisions’ appropriateness. All teachers based their decisions on combinations of factors in the guidelines plus subjective and noninstructional factors. Findings raised concerns about the subjectivity of the assessment assignment system and the inappropriate grade‐level instruction for SWDs. Future research, implications of these findings, and limitations are discussed.     

Emotional Literacy Support Assistants’ views on supervision provided by educational psychologists: what EPs can learn from group supervision

The Educational Psychology Service in this study has responsibility for providing group supervision to Emotional Literacy Support Assistants (ELSAs) working in schools. To date, little research has examined this type of inter-professional supervision arrangement. The current study used a questionnaire to examine ELSAs’ views on the supervision provided to them. Key areas of interest were the extent to which supervision was perceived to be meeting ELSAs’ needs, their relationship with their supervisor and other group members, the advantages and disadvantages of receiving supervision as a group, and the impact of supervision on practice. Questionnaires were returned by 270 ELSAs. The responses indicated that the majority felt that their supervision needs were being met and that they had a good relationship with their supervisor and other group members. Supervision was generally considered to be a useful mechanism for discussing cases, sharing ideas and problem-solving. Consequently, the majority felt better able to support pupils as a result of this support. The results are discussed in light of the dual role that educational psychologists (EPs) who provide this type of supervision have, and the implications of this for educational psychology practice.