Abusive head trauma in Maine infants: medical,child protective,and law enforcement analysis

OBJECTIVE: To collect and compare the results of medical, child protective, and law enforcement evaluation of a sample of Maine children who were victims of abusive head trauma (AHT) in order to describe the clinical and evaluative characteristics as they relate to victims, families and perpetrators of such trauma and to improve the professional response to AHT in Maine.METHOD: Retrospective chart review of medical, child protective, and law enforcement records of all AHT victims admitted to two tertiary care hospitals in Maine or seen by the state medical examiner from 1991 to 1994.RESULTS: Nineteen children (age range 2 weeks to 17 months) were identified as victims of AHT (out of a total of 94 head trauma admissions) accounting for 20 hospitalizations during the study period. There was a history of prior injury in 30%, history of prior medical evaluations for possibly abuse related problems in 65%, while, on presentation, 75% had evidence or history of prior injury. The hospitals notified child protective services (CPS) in all 20 cases and correctly identified abuse in 18 (90%). Parental risk factors for abuse identified in CPS records included substance abuse (53%), domestic violence (42%), criminal history (32%), unrealistic expectations (42%), and attachment problems (32%). However, risk factors were inadequately assessed in 53% of homes. Law enforcement identified a likely perpetrator in 79% of cases and in the majority the identified suspect was the father. In the 15 cases where a perpetrator was identified by law enforcement, that person was alone with the child at symptom onset in 14 (93%).CONCLUSIONS: The medical response, at least at the inpatient level, was generally well done with regard to suspicion and reporting. Cases are possibly being missed at the outpatient level. Child protective risk assessment was limited overall yet in a third of the homes where AHT occurred, few if any risk factors were present to aid in identification and prevention. Law enforcement results suggest that a primary suspect for AHT is the caretaker alone with the child at the time of symptom onset.     

The role and the training of teacher-counsellors

The example of teachers not seeking counselling was used. Some reasons for this situation were given as well as one possible way to change it by providing early information and training during the students' regular studies. My hope is that if teachers have the necessary information, abilities and positive experiences, when they have problems, it should be easier for them to use counsellors than it is for other today.Teachers were used as an example of how one group could be encounraged to make use of counsellors. However, similar strategies could be used with other groups whose jobs involve high personal stress (for example social workers, medical doctors etc.). The example of teachers was also used to show how change can be introduced within a system. Here it might be useful to develop the ability to work with a counsellor during the regular education, so that it becomes part of their understanding of their professional role.     

Where have they gone? Issues in transition and progression for special school leavers

This paper reports on semi-structured interviews with 76 former special school students now aged between 16 and 25. These young people were 'disadvantaged' rather than 'disabled' and many were experiencing 'fractured' transitions from school. Although they were more positive about their schools than similarly disadvantaged peers who had attended mainstream provision, they nonetheless raised concerns about the quality and usefulness of their experiences. On leaving school they had, in many cases, moved from one unsatisfactory activity to another, without any obvious signs of progression. They displayed a high level of purposefulness but lacked personal and social resources to support their progression within somewhat unsupportive structures. The paper argues that an exclusive focus on transition from school is inadequate and that young people may need support well after this point, possibly from the Connexions service. It also suggests that the notion of 'resilience' may have more to offer than traditional special education discourses.     

Recasts Used with Preschoolers Learning English as their Second Language

This study examined linguistic recasts provided by 16 early childhood educators to preschool children learning English as a second language (EL2). Recasts are semantic and syntactic revisions of children’s utterances. The educator–child interactions were filmed during book reading and play dough activities with small groups of four children, one of whom was EL2. The EL2 children were rated by their educators as having less well-developed expressive language skills than their unilingual peers. However, despite this finding, educators provided similar rates of recasts to both groups of children. Eight EL2 children with the lowest expressive language skills demonstrated fewer uptakes of their educator’s recasts in comparison to EL2 children with higher expressive language skills. The implications of this study include increasing the rate of recasts and reducing their complexity to provide language-learning opportunities for all preschool children, especially for those learning English as a second language.     

Measures of academic motivation: A conceptual review

This review examines the measurement of academic motivation in college students. It distinguishes pencil-and-paper group-administered instruments according to their conceptions of academic motivation: academic motivation taken as a single general motivation, as single specific motivations, or as a complex of motivations. It evaluates these classes of instruments in terms of the interpretability and the utility of the information each type of instrument is likely to provide.     

职业教育教师所受压力及个性化特征

我们每个人都碰到过压力,体验过压力的滋味,感受过压力带来的影响.压力实际上是身体对我们所遇到的紧张性刺激的反应.人们对压力这个话题本身、压力带来的影响以及压力的消减怀着极大的兴趣.心理学、社会学以及医学领域的研究者们对压力已进行过多年的研究.……     

Textbook treatments and students' understanding of acceleration

A single science textbook often provides the syllabus for courses at upper secondary and tertiary levels, and may be used as a principal source of information or explanation. The research reported in this article challenges such practices. The ways in which the concept, acceleration, is treated in physics textbooks is compared with understandings of the concept demonstrated by final-year secondary (Year 12) and first-year university students. Some students' understandings are shown to be incomplete in ways that parallel misleading or inaccurate textbook treatments of the concept. In addition to misleading or inaccurate statements, the limitations of some textbook treatments of acceleration were found to include: lack of attempts to make explicit relationships with other concepts, failure to point out when it is appropriate to use particular definitions or that an alternative definition might be more appropriate in specific situations, inclusion of operational definitions without conceptual explanations, and a focus on quantitative treatments while overlooking the development of qualitative understanding. Two principal aspects that distinguished the ways in which the students understood acceleration were identified: (a) the relation between acceleration and velocity; and (b) the relation between acceleration and force(s). The results of the study have implications for teaching and, in particular, for the use of textbooks in teaching. These implications are discussed in the article.     

Self and peer appraisal in higher education

This paper applies the mathematical technique of Data Envelopment Analysis to the problem of appraisal in Higher Education. The technique can be understood as an idealised self and peer appraisal: evaluating others in the same way that we would optimally evaluate ourselves relative to those others. The technique is applied to examples of student and staff appraisal. Although the main focus of this article is on the technique itself (its rationale, the prerequisites for use, and the insights that it yields), we also discuss the wider implications of having and using such a technique to assist appraisal.