Technical boys and creative girls: the career aspirations of digitally skilled youths

Digital technology is increasingly central to our lives, particularly among young people. However, there remains a concern from government and businesses of a digital skills gap because many youths, especially girls, tend to be consumers rather than creators of technology. Drawing on 32 semi-structured interviews with digitally skilled teenagers (aged 13–19), this article investigates their digital career aspirations and examines how identities and discourses of gender can interact with the type of digital careers that are of interest to these youths. While it was found that digitally skilled young people still articulate traditional gendered discourses of digital competence, especially around technical abilities, the growing importance of creativity as a career pathway into digital technology is highlighted. Implications of the findings are discussed in relation to the new computing curriculum in England, which prioritises technical computing skills, and the discontinuation of Information and Communications Technology (ICT), which facilitates a broader usage of software and digital productivity.     

Measuring the severity of child maltreatment

OBJECTIVE: The purpose was to identify different operational definitions of maltreatment severity, and then to examine their predictive validity. METHOD: Children and their primary caregivers participating in a consortium of ongoing longitudinal studies were interviewed when they were approximately 4 and 8 years of age to assess behavior problems, and developmental and psychological functioning. Four different severity definitions were identified and applied to 519 children who were reported for alleged maltreatment between Birth and the Age 8 interview. A taxonomy for defining maltreatment characteristics (Barnett, Manly, & Cicchetti, 1993) was applied to Child Protective Service records to define severity as (a) Maximum Severity within each of five maltreatment types, (b) Overall Maximum Severity across the five types, (c) Total Severity or the sum of the maximum severity for each of five types, and (d) Mean Severity or the average severity for those types of maltreatment alleged, during each of two time periods-Birth to Age 4, and Age 4 to Age 8. RESULTS: Regression analyses that controlled for socio-demographic factors, early maltreatment (Birth to Age 4), prior functioning (Age 4), and site revealed that (a) all four severity definitions for maltreatment reports between Age 4 and Age 8 predicted Age 8 behavior problems, (b) Maximum Severity by Type and Mean Severity predicted adaptive functioning at Age 8, and (c) only Maximum Severity by Type was related to anger, at Age 8. Follow-up regression analyses indicated that only Maximum Severity by Type, specifically physical abuse, accounted for outcomes, beyond maltreatment occurrence versus non-occurrence. CONCLUSION: The results suggest that maltreatment severity definitions that preserve ratings within types of maltreatment may be the optimal approach to measure the severity of children's experiences.     

The incidence of severe physical child abuse in Wales

OBJECTIVES: The purposes of this study were: (1) to ascertain the incidence and nature of severe physical child abuse in Wales; (2) to ascertain the incidence of all physical abuse in babies under 1 year of age; and (3) to determine whether child protection registers (CPR) accurately reflect the numbers of children who are physically abused. METHODS: This is a population-based incidence study based in Wales, UK, for 2 years from April 1996 through March 1998. Children studied were under the age of 14 with severe physical abuse consistent with the criminal law level of Grievous Bodily Harm. This included seven categories of injury (death; head injury including subdural hemorrhage; internal abdominal injury; physical injury in Munchausen Syndrome by Proxy including suffocation; fracture; burn or scald; adult bite). Cases were ascertained by a pediatrician surveillance reporting system (WPSU). A criterion for inclusion was multidisciplinary agreement that physical abuse had occurred (at case conference, strategy meeting, or Part 8 Review). The incidence of all babies under 1 year of age with physical abuse was also studied. Ascertainment of babies under the age of 1 year was undertaken from CPR as well as the WPSU. RESULTS: Severe abuse is six times more common in babies [54/100,000/year (95% CI +/- 17.2)] than in children from 1 year to 4 years of age [9.2/100,000 (95% CI +/- 3.6)]. It is 120 times more common than in 5- to 13-year-olds [0.47/100,000 (95% CI +/- 0.47)]. This is mainly because two types of serious abuse (brain injury including subdural hemorrhage and fractures) are more common in babies under the age of 1 year than older children. Using data from two sources (the WPSU and CPRs), the incidence of physical abuse in babies is 114/100,000 (CI 114 +/- 11.8) per year. This equates to 1 baby in 880 being abused in the first year of life. The largely rural Health Authority area in Wales had incidence figures for abuse in babies that were 50% of the three other predominantly urban Health Authority areas. Boys throughout the series were more at risk of being severely abused than girls (p < .025). Only 29% of the babies under 1 year of age on the CPR had actually been injured. Thirty percent of abused babies under the age of 1 year and 73% of severely abused children over the age of 1 year had caused previous concern to health professionals regarding abuse or neglect. Conclusions: Physical abuse is a significant problem in babies under the age of 1 year. Very young babies (under 6 months old) have the highest risk of suffering damage or death as a result of physical abuse. Severe abuse, in particular subdural hematoma and fracture, is much more common in babies than in older children. There is evidence of failure of secondary prevention of child abuse by health professionals, with a greater need to act on concerns regarding abuse and neglect. Interagency child protection work in partnership with parents should focus more on protecting babies under age 1 year from further abuse than on maintenance of the infant within an abusive home. The CPR is not intended as an accurate measure of children suffering abuse. It is a record of children requiring a child protection plan and must not be used as a measure of numbers of abused children.     

Learning by Creating: Letting the Student Do the Work

There is evidence to suggest that mature students, perhaps studying at home where human tutors are not readily available, learn particularly effectively in a problem-solving environment. Also, they appear to be especially responsive to analogies and metaphors. We seek to exploit these effects by requiring students to transform problems into alternative forms before solving them. Three examples are given of domains where the student has to convert the formulation into an equivalent diagram. Arguably, the process of performing this transformation increases their understanding of the subject area.     

Kemp-Vincent Rally Test of Tennis Skill

Abstract

The Kemp-Vincent Rally Test of tennis skill was constructed to overcome the criticisms of available tennis skills tests. The major criticisms have been that current tests do not measure skills under game conditions, require the use of special equipment or line markings, and the time involved in their administration is prohibitive. In the Kemp-Vincent Rally Test the students rally as in a game situation, a relatively short time period is involved, and no special equipment or court markings are needed. The validity of the Kemp-Vincent Rally Test was found to be .84 for beginners and .93 for intermediate players when correlated with round robin tournament rankings. When validated against the Iowa revision of the Dyer test, the validity coefficient was .80. Test-retest reliability coefficients were .86 for beginners and .90 for intermediate players.     

The effect of activity type on the engagement and interaction of young children with disabilities in inclusive childcare settings

The engagement and adult and peer interaction of 37 young children with a range of disabilities was measured in free play, group, and meal-routine activities in inclusive childcare settings. A significant effect for activity type was found for total engagement, active engagement, and passive engagement, with the children being more engaged in free-play and meal-routine activities than group activities. Free-play and meal-routine activities provided better opportunities for active engagement than did group activities, but children were more actively engaged during meal-routine activities than during free play. Passive engagement was more commonly observed during group activities. Children interacted more with their peers during free play. When children with a diagnosis of autism spectrum disorder were compared with children with other disabilities, they were found to be significantly less engaged during free play and interacted less with their peers. The implications of these findings for inclusive practice in childcare settings are discussed.     

The Korean government's electronic record management reform: The promise and perils of digital democratization

Recently, the Korean government instituted a reform in its archives with the goal of increasing transparency in government and meeting the challenges of the new digital environment in records management. President Roh's administration focused on a “process and system” reform through a shift from paper-based records management to electronic records management. The E-jiwon task management system of the Office of the President, invented by President Roh himself, served as the archetype for the reform. This study explores and critiques the administration's choice of a “process and system” reform over institutional reform, examines the legal framework used to enact the reform and its shortcomings, and analyzes the benefits and deficiencies of the E-jiwon as a tool for democracy in the archives. It concludes that while the new digital environment can assist in promoting government transparency, technological change by itself is inadequate; ultimately, institutional change is necessary for true reform.     

Noun or verb? Adult readers’ sensitivity to spelling cues to grammatical category in word endings

The spelling of many disyllabic English word endings holds cues to their grammatical category, beyond obvious inflectional endings such as -ing for verbs. For example, some letter sequences are clearly associated with nouns (e.g., -oon) and others with verbs (e.g., -erge). This study extended recent research by Arciuli and Cupples (2006), and confirmed that skilled adult readers are sensitive to these orthographic cues. It was found that adults were more likely to treat pseudowords as nouns when they had noun-like endings than verb-like or control endings, and more likely to treat pseudowords as verbs when they had verb-like than noun-like endings. This sensitivity held across three tasks (sentence construction, sentence judgement, and pseudoword judgement), which required increasingly explicit awareness of the way that cues could allow grammatical categorisation. In some tasks sensitivity to verb-like endings was related to reading ability, although not to spelling ability or grammatical awareness. Implications for our understanding of language processing are discussed.