Children and stress: Sources,reactions, and interventions

Stress in childhood is universal, an inevitable part of life. No child reaches adolescence without having to cope with the normal developmental and environmental stresses of weaning, toilet training, entry into school, and the inevitable increasing demands for self-control and responsibility.Diane Shrier is clinical associate professor and director of child and adolescent psychiatry at the New Jersey Medical School in Newark.     

Leading them to books—For life

Promoting lifelong reading, learning, and library use is a goal of most youth-serving librarians. The Young Adult Services Department of the Mesa, Arizona, Public Library is finding that more teens are entering adulthood each year as library users and supporters, and they are bringing their children to the library, too. This article shares a YA librarian's perspectives on how to provide successful reader advisory for teens and how to get young adults to read on their own, building the foundation of a lifelong interest in reading, an interest passed from generation to generation. Building this foundation depends on dedicated, well-trained specialists in YA library service, the publication of well-written and attractive books for teens, school and public library administrative support. Diane P. Tuccillo has been head of the Young Adults Services Adult Services Department at the Mesa (Arizona) Public Library since 1980. She has had articles published in a variety of professional journals includingEmergency Librarian, Voice of Young Advocates (VOYA), andThe ALAN Review, and is a regular book reviewer forVOYA, Kliatt Young Adult Paperback Book Guide, andSchool Library Journal.     

GENDER BIAS: ANALYSIS OF FACTORS CAUSING MALE UNDERREPRESENTATION IN SURVEYS

Using data from a 1987 telephone survey of over 1,000 Illinoisadult residents, this research looked into factors causing maleunder-representation in surveys using the last-birthday methodof respondent selection. Differences by sex in rates of refusaland non-contact (after respondent selection) were evaluatedfor relative contribution to gender bias. Accuracy of informant'sresponse to the birthday question was gauged by checking againstbirth dates of adults rostered during the interview. Other factors,such as the proportion of informants who do not know the lastbirthday, or who misreport from a desire to be the one interviewed(or not interviewed), were evaluated for relative effect onsample representation of males and females.     

DEVELOPMENTALLY APPROPRIATE PRACTICES IN TEACHER EDUCATION: LESSONS FROM ONE SEMESTER

Abstract

A major challenge for teacher preparation programs and future teachers is learning to work skillfully with the diversity of children in American classrooms. This paper describes a tool developed to address this challenge: the Learning and Teaching Assessment System (LTAS). The LTAS is a performance‐based, curriculum‐embedded assessment tool designed to uncover young children's strengths in different curricular areas as well as their approaches to learning. Developed for use with children 3–8 years of age, the LTAS helps teachers understand what children know in relation to key concepts in the different disciplines as well as how they learn in order to further their learning in subsequent days and weeks of teaching. The development of the LTAS is based primarily on two theoretical frameworks: Leont'ev's activity theory and Gardner's theory of multiple intelligences. To examine the efficacy of the LTAS in its proposed objectives, a pilot study was conducted; results point to the potential of the LTAS for helping student teachers uncover new information about children to guide future instruction.