“Why do you make me hate myself?”: Re-teaching Whiteness,abuse, and love in urban teacher education

Teacher educators are constantly trying to improve the field to meet the needs of a growing urban populace. Inclusion of socially just philosophies in the curriculum is indeed essential, yet it can mask the recycling of normalized, oppressive Whiteness. This reflective and theoretical paper employs critical race theory and critical Whiteness studies to deconstruct Whiteness, abuse, and love in teacher education. Using an interdisciplinary and emotion-based approach to understanding Whiteness, this paper examines how denying race during white childhood via a color-blind ideology leaves lasting emotional scars, impressions that perpetuate the institutional silencing of race in teacher education. This “abuse” is projected onto urban students of color and, more broadly, people of color. This paper asserts that until teacher education programs make confronting and exploring Whiteness a priority, they cannot truly love their urban students of color as complete beings and so deny humanity full and just consideration.     

Incidence and impact of sexual abuse in a child outpatient sample: The role of direct inquiry

From the child psychiatry outpatient department of a university medical center, 64 charts were reviewed in two phases: 29 were randomly selected from outpatient files, and 35 were examined after clinicians were asked to directly query sexual abuse. Although the reported sexual abuse rate for randomly selected charts was quite low (6.9%), reference to sexual abuse history in charts of children who were asked about molestation was 4.5 times more frequent (31.4%; 11.5% of all boys, 50% of all girls). Children with an identified sexual abuse history reported more psychological symptoms, had made more suicide attempts in the past, and were more likely than nonabused children to receive a diagnosis of major depression.     

The Children's Television Workshop goes to school

Repackaging existing educational television series to fit the needs of more narrowly defined audiences is a cost-effective way of delivering high-quality educational television into the schools. This article discusses both the technological and program-design barriers to wider use of television in classroom instruction and details the steps that the Children's Television Workshop took to make3-2-1 Contact, its educational television science series, a more effective science teaching tool.     

The nonretention of capable women engineering students

This study investigated aptitude, achievement, and retention patterns among 273 women and 1,953 male students who entered engineering at The University of Texas at Austin as freshmen in the fall semesters of 1974–1977. Academic and attrition records were maintained through the fall of 1978 for the sample. Multiple regression techniques were used to predict both academic achievement and retention on the basis of college entrance scores and high school rank. In addition, first-year grade-point average was included as a predictor of retention. The Mathematics Achievement Test, Level I, emerged as primary predictor of cumulative grade-point average for both men and women, and first year grade-point average the best single predictor of retention for men, but combined with entrance scores for retention prediction among women. Academic performance was more easily predicted for women than men, but retention was more easily predicted for men. Female nonretainees in engineering score higher on all variables than male nonretainees, and female retainees make similar grades to male retainees. More capable women than men are transferring to other majors within the University, especially to the natural sciences. Unlike men, women leaving engineering and the University did not do so for academic failure. This study suggests that a support system developed to counsel women in engineering might contribute positively to their retention.     

Episodic memories and the longitudinal impact of high school physics on female students’ physics identity

Students enter physics classes with negative attitudes towards physics compared to the other sciences. Female students are more likely to opt out of a second higher-level physics course. Thus, the broad goal of this work is to better understand how to have the most lasting positive impact on female students’ attitudes and motivations towards learning physics after a single physics course in high school. Through longitudinal case studies of six female students using the frameworks of episodic memory and physics identity, we explore the most impactful features of students’ high school physics experiences. The data is drawn from three years of student interviews and one initial student survey. Our results indicate that the students could remember in detail and with longevity their experiences with physics causing high arousal and negative initial valence, such as teachers presenting physics knowledge in a counter-intuitive way. The students can remember the context but not the details of their experiences with physics causing low arousal and non-neutral valence, such as their teacher sharing a story about physics. Experiences that were eventually tied to positive valence had positive impacts on female students’ physics identity maintenance, such as problem solving activities where no one was left behind.     

Display Rules for Anger and Aggression in School-Age Children

2 related studies addressed the development of display rules for anger and the relation between use of display rules for anger and aggressiveness as rated by school peers. Third, fifth, and seventh graders (ages 8.4, 10.9, and 12.8, respectively) gave hypothetical responses to videotaped, anger provoking vignettes. Overall, regardless of how display rules were defined, subjects reported display rules more often with teachers than with peers for both facial expressions and actions. Reported masking of facial expressions of anger increased with age, but only with teachers. Girls reported masking of facial expressions of anger more than boys. There was a trend for aggressive subjects to invoke display rules for anger less than nonaggressive subjects. The phenomenon of display rules for anger is complex and dependent on the way display rules are defined and the age and gender of the subjects. Most of all, whether children say they would behave angrily seems to be determined by the social context for revealing angry feelings; children say they would express anger genuinely much more often with peers than with teachers.     

The Southern Manifesto: A Doctrine of Resistance 60 Years Later

ABSTRACT

This article illustrates the historic relationship between the Brown v. Board of Education decision and the school choice movement. It will discuss the immediate push back to Brown particularly from Southern states that were resistant to desegregating public schools; a move that would provide African-American parents with educational choice for their children. Within the United States Congress 101 members, most from formerly Confederate states, drafted what is commonly known as the Southern Manifesto intent on reversing the Court’s decision and urging states to defy the law. Sixty years after the signing of the Southern Manifesto, there is still a coalition pushing for “freedom of choice,” this time with a sincere interest in the well-being of students trapped in the nation's lowest-performing schools and a mandate for equal opportunity, racial, ethnic, and gender equality.     

Predictors of adult quality of life for foster care alumni with physical and/or psychiatric disabilities

INTRODUCTION: This study used quality of life and resilience as theoretical frameworks for evaluating predictors of outcomes for adults who received foster care services alumni of foster care and were diagnosed with a physical or psychiatric disability while in foster care. METHOD: First, outcomes for foster care alumni with and without physical and psychiatric disabilities (N=1,087) were compared according to quality of life variables. Second, using only participants with disabilities (N=578), stepwise regression analyses were performed to determine whether risk and protective factors were associated with specific outcomes. RESULTS: Alumni with disabilities had significantly lower economic (p=.020) and health (p=.001) outcomes; and reported lower educational attainment (p=.002), more difficulty paying monthly bills (p=.026), more psychiatric diagnoses (p=.006), lower self-esteem (p=.013), and worse physical health (p=.001) than those without disabilities. For alumni with disabilities, receiving special education services and experiencing sexual abuse while in foster care were significant risk factors for poor self-esteem; conversely, receiving services and resources that prepared foster care alumni for leaving foster care (e.g., protective factors) predicted better outcomes. CONCLUSIONS: By expanding the quality of life outcomes analyses to investigate the impact of risk and protective factors on outcomes of foster care alumni with disabilities, this study fills a gap in the literature by assessing outcome differences within the foster-care population. The study found protective factors were associated with more educational attainment and higher self-esteem in adulthood. Conversely, those who received special education services and experienced sexual abuse while in foster care may be at the greatest risk of poor self-esteem and therefore, could benefit from services that enhance self-esteem.     

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.     

Longitudinal associations between marital instability and child sleep problems across infancy and toddlerhood in adoptive families

This study examined the longitudinal association between marital instability and child sleep problems at ages 9 and 18 months in 357 families with a genetically unrelated infant adopted at birth. This design eliminates shared genes as an explanation for similarities between parent and child. Structural equation modeling indicated that T1 marital instability predicted T2 child sleep problems, but T1 child sleep problems did not predict T2 marital instability. This result was replicated when models were estimated separately for mothers and fathers. Thus, even after controlling for stability in sleep problems and marital instability and eliminating shared genetic influences on associations using a longitudinal adoption design, marital instability prospectively predicts early childhood sleep patterns.