Teaching handwriting skills to children with intellectual disabilities using an adapted handwriting programme

Children with intellectual disabilities often struggle with handwriting, but there is very little research to inform intervention approaches. In this study, we developed a teaching manual based on Handwriting Without Tears®, a comprehensive handwriting programme designed for typically developing children. Three children with intellectual disabilities participated in the study and received handwriting instruction based on the manual three times a week over a 32‐week period. Our aims were to explore whether Handwriting Without Tears® can be used as a comprehensive handwriting curriculum for children with intellectual disabilities and to evaluate improvement in handwriting skills. We found that the intervention was successfully incorporated into small group teaching sessions within the child's regular classroom, and that all three children made improvements. Our data show promising results and support the need for larger evaluation studies.     

Age Differences in Online Social Networking: Extending Socioemotional Selectivity Theory to Social Network Sites

This article extends socioemotional selectivity theory to online social networking by examining age differences in the size and composition of Facebook networks across a wide age range of Facebook users (18 to 93 years old) in a nationally representative sample. Findings suggest increasing selectivity of Facebook social partners with age. Compared to younger adults, friend networks of older adults are smaller but contain a greater proportion of individuals who are considered to be actual friends. Moreover, a higher proportion of actual to total Facebook friends is associated with lower levels of social isolation and loneliness across the life span.     

A resourcification manifesto: Understanding the social process of resources becoming resources

In times of major global interconnectedness and environmental change, the pressure to identify, create, and exploit new resources is certain to intensify. Given that there are unavoidable trade-offs, conflicts, and arenas for violence involved when increasingly more material and immaterial things are turned into resources, we call for explicit research on the very process – a process that we label resourcification. The concept of resourcification shifts attention from essentialist queries about the nature of resources to a focus on the social processes through which things are turned into resources. In search of a better understanding of resources in the Anthropocene and, in particular, an understanding about the way resources emerge and are used, resourcification offers a new conceptual framework that allows for a systematic search for knowledge about the diversity of contexts, conditions, modes, and temporalities of resourcification. This Resourcification Manifesto offers a theoretical and empirical framework for a radical and disruptive approach to innovation, sustainability, and management studies and policies.     

Persistence to graduate education

This paper examines the process by which students arrive in graduate school by estimating a causal model incorporating measures of socioeconomic background and undergraduate institutional characteristics and experiences. The student's background was found to influence strongly the initial choice of undergraduate institution, but the direct impact of background became nonsignificant as the student progressed through the educational process. However, background variables do affect decisions to enroll in graduate school, although indirectly, through intervening variables. Primary direct influences on graduate school attendance were found from variables associated with the undergraduate experience. Although both academic and social integration are significant for men and women, academic integration has greater influence for men, whereas for women, social integration has a slightly larger effect.An earlier version of this paper was presented at the annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association, Chicago, April, 1985.     

Brain Processes in Mothers and Nulliparous Women in Response to Cry in Different Situational Contexts: A Default Mode Network Study

SYNOPSIS

Objective: In everyday life, parents must respond to and interact with children while in different situational contexts. How situational contexts influence parents’ responses has not been systematically studied. Here we investigated mothers’ versus nonmothers’ neural responses to infant vocalizations in different situations with different task demands. Design: Using fMRI in 21 women (10 mothers), we explored the effects of being distracted by self-oriented (self-referential decisions about personality adjectives) versus goal-oriented (syllabic counting of personality adjectives) tasks while listening to infant cry in comparison with other emotional sounds (infant laughing, adult crying) on the activity of two medial nodes of the Default Mode Network (DMN): the medial prefrontal cortex (MPFC) and posterior cingulate cortex (PCC). Results: In the self-oriented task while listening to infant cry, both mothers and nulliparas showed (weak) activation of the DMN; this response likely reflects a shift of attention from the task to the cry. In the goal-oriented task, mothers, not nulliparas, showed (weak) activation of the DMN; this result is compatible with interference of emotional sounds while attending to a goal-oriented task, an activity that deactivates the DMN. Conclusions: Mothers are prone to process infant cry and emotional sounds and are less distracted from doing so by situational contexts, demonstrating their greater sensitivity to emotional sounds such as cry. By contrast, situational context influenced brain responses to infant sounds in nulliparas.     

Pedagogical renewal: Improving the quality of classroom interaction in Nigerian primary schools

This study reports on an investigation of classroom interaction and discourse practices in Nigerian primary schools. Its purpose was to identify key issues affecting patterns of teacher–pupil interaction and discourse as research suggests managing the quality of classroom interaction will play a central role in improving the quality of teaching and learning, particularly in contexts where learning resources and teacher training are limited. The study was based on the interaction and discourse analysis of video recordings of 42 lessons and 59 teacher questionnaires from 10 States, drawn mainly from the north of Nigeria. The findings revealed the prevalence of teacher explanation, recitation and rote in the classroom discourse with little attention being paid to securing pupil understanding. The wider implications of the findings for improving the quality of classroom interaction in Nigerian primary schools through more effective school-based training are considered.     

Long-term persistence of two-year college students

This paper employs a theoretical model to explain the long-term persistence of students who began their postsecondary education in two-year institutions. The model was estimated on a national sample of 825 students who initially enrolled in 85 two-year institutions in the fall of 1971, and who were followed over a nine-year period. Although there were differences in the factors associated with persistence for men and women, the results tend to confirm the importance of person-environment fit as a salient influence on degree persistence and completion in postsecondary education. Measures of academic and social integration had the most consistent pattern of positive direct effects, and much of the influence of student precollege traits was indirect.     

Job satisfaction of Jamaican elementary school teachers

This study investigated correlates of job satisfaction among public (N=190) and private (N=100) Jamaican elementary school teachers. Emphasis was on the identification of factors that could be affected through administrative intervention. Results indicated that the quality of school working conditions and respondents' relationships with other teachers were significantly related to satisfaction for both public and private school teachers. School prestige and parental encouragement were also significant predictors for public school teachers; leadership style, organizational structure, and teacher-parent relationships predicted job satisfaction for private school teachers. Implications of these findings for Jamaican education are discussed.

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Zusammenfassung Diese Studie untersuchte Gründe für Zufriedenheit im Beruf unter Lehrern an öffentlichen (N=190) und privaten (N=100) Schulen in Jamaica. Besonderer Wert wurde auf die Herausarbeitung von Faktoren gelegt, die durch das Einwirken des Verwaltungsapparates beeinflußt werden könnten. Die Ergebnisse wiesen darauf hin, daß die Qualität der Arbeitsbedingungen in der Schule und die Beziehungen zu anderen Lehrern sowohl bei den Lehrern an öffentlichen als auch bei den Lehrkräften an privaten Schulen in besonderem Maße auf die Zufriedenheit im Beruf einwirkten. Für Lehrer im öffentlichen Bereich waren zudem Prestige der Schule und elterliche Anerkennung von großer Wichtigkeit; bei Lehrern im Privatschulbereich lassen Führungsstil, organisatorische Struktur und Lehrer-Eltern Beziehung Zufriedenheit im Beruf erwarten. Die Auswirkungen dieser Ergebnisse auf das Erziehungswesen in Jamaika werden betrachtet.

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Résumé Cette étude présente une comparaison de la satisfaction professionnelle des enseignants des écoles élémentaires publiques (N=190) et privées (N=100) à la Jamaque. L'accent a été mis sur la détermination des facteurs qui peuvent être touchés par une intervention administrative. Les résultats obtenus ont indiqué que la qualité des conditions de travail à l'école et les rapports des personnes interrogées avec les autres enseignants dépendaient en grande partie de la satisfaction des enseignants des écoles publiques et privées. Le prestige de l'école et le soutien des parents étaient également jugés comme des indices importants pour les enseignants des écoles publiques; le mode de direction, la structure organisationnelle, les relations entre enseignants et parents accusaient la satisfaction professionnelle des enseignants du privé. On examine ensuite les implications de ces résultats pour l'enseignement jamaïcain.

     

Influences on women's entry into male-dominated occupations

This article focuses on women's entry into male-dominated occupations in the United States. It looks at the impact of Title IX and related legislation which opened access to colleges and universities to women and examines the effects of initial or pre-enrollment student characteristics, organizational attributes of the college of university, student performance and experiences in higher education and the attributes of employing organizations on women's entry into male-dominated occupations. The article concludes with a model for measuring the relative influence of each.