Comparison of Native American Navajo Bender-Gestalt performance with Koppitz and SOMPA norms

The authors compare Koppitz error scores of a large group of referred Navajo children with the 1974 Koppitz and SOMPA total sample norms. Results suggest that the 1974 Koppitz and SOMPA white norms may have utility as an aide to psychological assessment of Native American Navajo children. Recommendations are made regarding effective methods of differential diagnosis and for further validation studies to confirm the relevance of Koppitz and SOMPA norms as they are used with Navajo children.     

What Makes a High School a Good High School for Students with Disabilities

This article summarizes the findings and themes from the three high schools we studied. All three schools engaged in five schoolwide strategies for educating students with disabilities. They provided a broad array of academic courses and program options; provided schoolwide support structures that could be combined and customized to the needs and strengths of individual students; worked intentionally to connect students to the school and build their motivation to succeed; created a connected and caring adult community to serve students' academic and social/personal needs; and developed responsive leaders who managed the tensions inherent in the commitment to prepare students with disabilities to be successful in their lives beyond school. The article also reviews the different ways these three school instantiated these strategies. We describe the “theory of action” that integrates the five schoolwide strategies into a synergistic approach in each school and explore implications of the Good High Schools study for practice and for future research.     

Designing Systems for the 90s

For almost 30 years, training designers have tried to develop effective training for automated systems. Even with their best efforts, though, training has been seen as something other than the system itself. Specifically, training has been designed to help minimize the disruption caused by the implementation of the system. In the 1990s, a different effort will be called for. The system itself will have to take on much of the training responsibility—including minimizing disruption. This will require training designers, metamorphosed into full-scale performance technologists, to become part of thesystem design team itself, since their expertise will be crucial to effective system design.     

When a problem is more than a teacher’s question

Not only are the problems teachers pose throughout their teaching of great importance but also the ways in which they use those problems make this a critical component of teaching. A problem-posing episode includes the problem setup, the statement of the problem, and the follow-up questions. Analysis of problem-posing episodes of precalculus instructors suggests that their mindset influences how they pose problems. In this paper, we describe the reflexive relationship between an instructor’s mindset and problem-posing episodes.     

HIV post-exposure prophylaxis in children and adolescents presenting for reported sexual assault

BackgroundThe appropriate use of antiretroviral medications to protect against infection with human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) is unclear in cases of sexual assault of children, for whom the perpetrator's risk of HIV is often unknown, and physical proof of sexual contact is usually absent.ObjectiveIn an effort to clarify prescribing practices for HIV post-exposure prophylaxis (PEP) at our institution, we examined records of all children tested for HIV for prevalence of infection, our experience with prescribing PEP, and follow-up rates.Design/methodsMedical records at a sexual abuse clinic of all children tested for HIV during a 38-month period were reviewed for information concerning risk factors for HIV acquisition, STI test results, and PEP experience. Children were defined as PEP-eligible if they were within 96 hours of assault, and there was a report of sexual contact with the potential to transmit HIV.ResultsOne thousand seven hundred and fifty children were tested for HIV during the study period. Five children had a positive HIV ELISA, but only one child was confirmed HIV-positive. Three hundred and three children were eligible to receive HIV-PEP, but it was only offered to 16 (5.3%), of whom 15 accepted the medications. None of the children prescribed PEP completed follow-up, but 11 children had limited follow-up.ConclusionsOur results indicate that the prevalence of HIV infection among sexually abused children in our population is low, and follow-up rates are poor. Intensive efforts to try to ensure follow-up are warranted whenever PEP is prescribed. Further research may help better define the efficacy of PEP in sexually abused children and adolescents.     

WISC-R verbal and performance abilities of native american students referred for school learning problems

This study was designed to determine if three diagnostic groups of Navajo children differed on intellectual dimensions as measured by the WISC-R. Subjects had been previously diagnosed by state certified professionals and were identified as nonhan dicapped (NH) (N = 113), educationally disadvantaged.(ED) (N = 189), and learning disabled (LD) (N = 150). NH group means on all WISC-R variables were significantly higher than the LD group means. The ED and the LD group means were similar on the verbal measures, but the LD group scores were lower than the ED group scores on performance measures. The NH group demonstrated intellectual abilities and deficits similar to those reported for other primary-grade Navajo children who had not been referred for suspected handicapping conditions.