Child and adolescent abuse and subsequent victimization: a prospective study

OBJECTIVE: We investigated the possible reciprocal relationship between victimization experiences and psychological functioning by assessing abuse experiences in childhood, adolescence, and during a 2-month follow-up period. METHOD: At the beginning of the study (Time 1), abuse histories, trauma and depressive symptoms, and interpersonal functioning were assessed in 551 college women. Subsequent victimization experiences and psychological outcomes were assessed at the follow-up (Time 2). RESULTS: Path analyses indicated that verbal abuse by the mother and father were predictive of various psychological outcomes as measured at Time 1 and emerged as the only significant predictors of adolescent dating violence. Adolescent dating violence subsequently predicted the experience of dating violence during the 2-month follow-up period. Paternal physical abuse predicted adolescent sexual victimization which subsequently predicted all symptom measures at Time 1. Conversely, the experience of adolescent physical dating violence was not predictive of any of the symptom measures at Time 1. For those women who experienced dating violence during the follow-up, however, the severity of their abusive experiences was related to both depression and interpersonal problems assessed at Time 2. In comparison, for those women who experienced sexual victimization during the follow-up period, the severity of their abusive experiences was related to trauma symptoms. Interpersonal problems emerged as both an aftereffect of adolescent sexual victimization experience and a predictor of a subsequent sexual victimization experience during the follow-up. CONCLUSIONS: Given that emotional abuse emerged as a predictor of adolescent dating violence and psychological outcomes, researchers and clinicians need to continue to explore this problem. Further, it is important to assess how interpersonal problems contribute to the risk of subsequent sexual victimization and to try to break the cycle between adolescent abuse experiences and subsequent physical and sexual assaults.     

Physics in the primary school: Peer interaction and the understanding of floating and sinking

The paper presents two studies designed to investigate whether, as Piagetian theory would predict, peer interaction can advance the physics understanding of primary school children so long as there is variation in initial viewpoints. The studies were concerned with advancing understanding of floating and sinking, with one focusing on the relevant properties of objects and the other on the relevant properties of fluids. Both studies considered the efficacy of interaction between primary school children whose views varied because they were at different levels of understanding and primary children whose views varied despite being at equivalent levels. In both cases, the children’s pre-to post-test progress was superior to that observed in control children whose interaction had been with peers whose views were similar. However, in contradiction to recent qualifications to Piagetian theory progress from pre- to post-test did not depend on joint advancement within the groups.     

The multimedia case as a tool for professional development: an analysis of online and face-to-face interaction among mathematics pre-service teachers, in-service teachers, mathematicians, and mathematics teacher educators

In this study, we consider the potential of multimedia cases as tools for teacher professional development. Specifically, we examined online and face-to-face discussions that occurred within groups composed of pre-service mathematics teachers, in-service mathematics teachers, mathematicians, and mathematics teacher educators. Discussions within these heterogeneous groups tended to focus on issues of classroom implementation of the tasks shown in the multimedia case. Secondary foci of discussion included task characteristics and appropriateness of tasks for engaging students in thinking about mathematical concepts and processes. Analysis of contributions to discussions across group member type revealed differences that suggest that the variety of backgrounds and experiences of group members can blend in ways that support rich and critical discussions of mathematics, teaching, and learning.     

Classroom Activities and Areas: Regularity of Use and Perceptions of Adaptability by General Early Educators

This report describes a mail survey of general early educators from Head Start, public school pre-kindergarten, public school kindergarten, and community preschool/child care programs. The purposes were to secure information about the availability of classroom activities and areas, and to obtain the respondents' perceptions of the ease with which activities and areas could be adapted to accommodate children with disabilities. Of the 893 mailed questionnaires, 483 (54.1%) were returned and coded. The respondents reportedly used a wide range of classroom activities and areas, and they rated those activities and areas as moderately easy to adapt. Also, respondents from mainstreamed programs used slightly more activities and perceived the activities as easier to adapt than did respondents from non-mainstreamed programs. The findings appear to indicate that placement of children with disabilities in segregated programs cannot be justified on grounds that integration will restrict the range of activities available to typically developing children, or on the grounds that the adaptations are perceived by program staff as too difficult to be accomplished.     

An International Arts-Integration Model

This article highlights distinctive aspects of an international team-teaching program for teaching artists and the pedagogical implications of its structure.     

Body Dissatisfaction in College Women: Identification of Risk and Protective Factors to Guide College Counseling Practices

This study attempted to identify risk factors that are implicated in the body dissatisfaction of college women and the factors that may facilitate effective prevention and treatment efforts. Data collected from 215 female college students indicated that participants with (a) greater physical self‐concept, (b) less drive for thinness, and (c) greater social self‐esteem manifested less body dissatisfaction.     

Understanding how schools fail children

From time immemorial the efforts of educators to produce effective solutions to the problems plaguing instruction have been frustrated. This frustration emanates from the erroneous assumptions supporting their beliefs about schooling, learning and the essence of the questions seeking solutions. Early research efforts only compounded the problem by providing practitioners with the right answers to the wrong questions about effective schooling and learning. Gradually, the past errors of pedagogic empiricism are being corrected. We now realize that most learners, not merely the intellectual elite, can learn when instruction is properly sequenced and paced; that it is more important to examine what teachers do than to look at what they are; that schools have covert as well as overt curricula; and that many institutions besides schools teach important learnings. When scholastic and extra-scholastic instructional goals ar synchronous and harmonious, learning is optimal. When they are not, the resulting dissonance is destructive to the best efforts of schools to teach. The gap between what is known about effective instruction and current educational practices is cavernous. Proposed procedures for transforming theory into practice have largely been ignored. The transformation begins by enticing bright students into teacher preparation programmes which have been revitalized to make emerging knowledge about schooling and learning the focal point of instruction. To complete the instructional improvement cycle, schools must interface learners with carefully monitored delivery systems guaranteed to produce the desired learnings.     

Varied Developmental Trajectories: Lessons for Educators

ABSTRACT— Methodological ingenuity and deep knowledge of expected development are combined by Immordino-Yang to produce an enlightening analysis of 2 hemispherectomized youths. Specific lessons to be drawn from her article include the following: the limitations of anatomy in predicting function; the need for educators to understand fully the multifunctionality, plasticity, and experience-driven development of cortical structures; the importance of a wide-ranging and multilayered approach to assessment when it is being used for diagnostic purposes; and, finally, the difficulty (and importance) of distinguishing task accomplishment from procedures undertaken while performing the task. Carefully documented stories like those told by Immordino-Yang in this important article serve as a salutary reminder to educators that there are multiple pathways to the achievement of many developmental goals and that the educator's role is to support the student's optimal trajectory rather than imposing a normative trajectory.     

Ecological, psychological, and cognitive components of reading difficulties: testing the component model of reading in fourth graders across 38 countries

The authors tested the component model of reading (CMR) among 186,725 fourth grade students from 38 countries (45 regions) on five continents by analyzing the 2006 Progress in International Reading Literacy Study data using measures of ecological (country, family, school, teacher), psychological, and cognitive components. More than 91% of the differences in student difficulty occurred at the country (61%) and classroom (30%) levels (ecological), with less than 9% at the student level (cognitive and psychological). All three components were negatively associated with reading difficulties: cognitive (student's early literacy skills), ecological (family characteristics [socioeconomic status, number of books at home, and attitudes about reading], school characteristics [school climate and resources]), and psychological (students' attitudes about reading, reading self-concept, and being a girl). These results extend the CMR by demonstrating the importance of multiple levels of factors for reading deficits across diverse cultures.