Stress in Families of Young Children with Down Syndrome, Williams Syndrome, and Smith-Magenis Syndrome

This study examined whether stress levels differ in families of young children with three different genetic etiologies of mental retardation, and whether child characteristics associated with those genetic etiologies may help explain these differences. Participants were sixty families of young children with Down syndrome, Williams syndrome, and Smith-Magenis syndrome. All children were between the ages of 3 and 10 years. Parents completed Achenbach's Child Behavior Checklist, the Questionnaire on Resources and Stress-Friedrich edition, and a demographic questionnaire. Families of children with Down syndrome experienced significantly less Pessimism than the other two etiology groups and significantly less Parent and Family Problems than families of children with Smith-Magenis syndrome. The strongest predictor of Parent and Family Problems was maladaptive behavior in Smith-Magenis syndrome, younger age in Down syndrome, and both maladaptive behavior and younger age in Williams syndrome. Maladaptive behavior predicted Pessimism in families of children with Smith-Magenis syndrome, but none of the variables examined significantly predicted Pessimism in the other two syndromes. The importance of behavioral phenotype research is discussed for practitioners working with young children with mental retardation and their families.     

Double jeopardy: poorer social-emotional outcomes for children in the NICHD SECCYD experiencing home and child-care environments that confer risk

Using data from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development Early Child Care Research Network (NICHD SECCYD), the authors examined whether interactions between home and child-care quality affect children's social-emotional adjustment at 24, 36, and 54 months (N = 771). Triadic splits on quality of home and child care were used to examine children in specific ecological niches, with a focus on those who experience the double jeopardy of poor quality home and child-care environments. Children in this niche exhibited the highest levels of mother-reported problem behavior and the lowest levels of prosocial behavior. However, there was evidence that children from lower quality home environments were able to benefit from the compensatory influence of high-quality child care. These results suggest policies aimed at the cross-context influences of protective and risky settings.     

Learning Visualization Strategies: A qualitative investigation

The following study investigates the range of strategies individuals develop to infer and interpret cross-sections of three-dimensional objects. We focus on the identification of mental representations and problem-solving processes made by 11 individuals with the goal of building training applications that integrate the strategies developed by the participants in our study. Our results suggest that although spatial transformation and perspective-taking techniques are useful for visualizing cross-section problems, these visual processes are augmented by analytical thinking. Further, our study shows that participants employ general analytic strategies for extended periods which evolve through practice into a set of progressively more expert strategies. Theoretical implications are discussed and five main findings are recommended for integration into the design of education software that facilitates visual learning and comprehension.     

Instructional Leadership in Practice: What Does It Look Like,and What Influence Does It Have?

Literature on school reform has emphasized the need for principals to expand beyond their traditionally administrative role and become instructional leaders. This article examines the relationship between the practice of site-based instructional leadership and the professional development that teachers received in the context of a district-wide reform effort in San Diego City Schools. Using data from teacher surveys and school-based interviews, we find a connection between aspects of principal instructional leadership (coherent school-wide vision and leaders' engagement in instructional improvement) and selected research-based characteristics of effective teacher professional development (coherence and focus on content and curriculum). We conclude by addressing some of the tensions and limitations associated with a particular vision for site-based instructional leadership.     

The role of learned resourcefulness in helping female undergraduates deal with unwanted sexual activity

We examined the relationship between learned resourcefulness skills and the manner in which undergraduate heterosexual women handle unwanted sexual advances/activity. Participants consisted of 150 females completing a set of questionnaires assessing general learned resourcefulness, sexual giving-in experience, sexual resourcefulness, sexual self-efficacy and reasons for consent. The hypothesis that possessing a higher general repertoire of learned resourcefulness skills would uniquely predict greater sexual self-control with unwanted sexual advances was supported. Physical contact with men, greater sexual victimization, more reasons for consenting, and less use of sexual resourcefulness skills all directly contributed to voluntarily giving-in behavior. Implications for sexuality education and counseling are discussed.     

Exhibiting Lives

This paper examines some of the dilemmas that accompany the emergence of the personal voice in scholarly work, by taking a close, grounded look at the way in which these unfolded in a specific academic course. As part of the course, entitled “A cultural approach to the life cycle”, students were asked to participate in a group exhibition in which they were to display their life stories using a variety of texts, objects and photographs. The paper reflects upon a number of questions evoked by the exhibition: What made this event so powerful, moving and pleasurable for those involved? How, if at all, did the women choose to engage in dialogue with broader social, cultural and political contexts in the display of their life stories? What common identities, if any, emerged in the group exhibition and, in this process, what particular identities were put aside? What was made possible by the use of a wide variety of media in the presentation of life stories? Finally, what were some of the broader pedagogical implications that emerge out of this experiment in teaching?     

Computer systems: Moral entities but not moral agents

After discussing the distinction between artifacts and natural entities, and the distinction between artifacts and technology, the conditions of the traditional account of moral agency are identified. While computer system behavior meets four of the five conditions, it does not and cannot meet a key condition. Computer systems do not have mental states, and even if they could be construed as having mental states, they do not have intendings to act, which arise from an agent’s freedom. On the other hand, computer systems have intentionality, and because of this, they should not be dismissed from the realm of morality in the same way that natural objects are dismissed. Natural objects behave from necessity; computer systems and other artifacts behave from necessity after they are created and deployed, but, unlike natural objects, they are intentionally created and deployed. Failure to recognize the intentionality of computer systems and their connection to human intentionality and action hides the moral character of computer systems. Computer systems are components in human moral action. When humans act with artifacts, their actions are constituted by the intentionality and efficacy of the artifact which, in turn, has been constituted by the intentionality and efficacy of the artifact designer. All three components – artifact designer, artifact, and artifact user – are at work when there is an action and all three should be the focus of moral evaluation.     

On‐screen print: the role of captions as a supplemental literacy tool

Children living in poverty are 1.3 times as likely as non‐poor children to experience reading difficulties and lack key oral experiences that contribute to early literacy development. The purpose of this research was to study the effects of viewing commercially available educational television with closed captions. Seventy second‐ and third‐grade economically disadvantaged children living in urban locations participated in this experimental research design. Children were randomly assigned to view videos with or without closed captions. Captions helped children recognise and read more words, identify the meaning of those words, generate inferences regarding programme content and transfer these skills to a normative code‐related skill task. Risk status moderated word recognition performance: those at risk benefited from captions while those who were not at risk recognised more words when captions were absent.