Compelling evidence: an influence on middle school students’ accounts that may impact decision-making about socioscientific issues

This study investigates how middle school students make hypothetical purchasing, consuming, and voting decisions about environmental and science-related issues – a key component of environmental literacy. Fifty-three female students were given a packet containing multiple excerpts of information from conflicting positions from stakeholders and interviewed about how they would make decisions about environmental and science-related issues. We first investigated whether and how information presented as evidence influenced students’ accounts that may impact their decision-making (i.e. to make or change decisions). We then investigated how evidence type affected students’ decision-making. Findings indicated that most students did not change their stance after reading additional contrasting information presented as evidence. Implications for science teaching and learning are discussed.     

Censorship in Contemporary Art Education

This study draws upon interviews with fifteen secondary art teachers in Australia and England and focuses on the selection and censorship of artists and art works for student study. Given that cutting edge art must shock if it is to change artistic sensibility it would seem that the study of contemporary art must present students and teachers with many ethical dilemmas. The violent, sexually explicit, disgusting and psychologically disturbing, nature of many contemporary arts works make them potentially offensive, disturbing, provocative and confusing to young impressionable minds. While wishing to be open‐minded and to teach inclusive curricula, art teachers are also aware of their accountability in the community and their responsibility for the well being of their students. The study examines ways in which art teachers achieve postmodernist plurality in their programs yet also respectfully stay within the parameters of modernist school charters which define curriculum limits.     

Methodological issues in child sexual abuse research

The amount of research concerning the prevalence and consequences of child sexual abuse has increased dramatically during the past decade. Too little attention has been paid to possible methodological influences on this research. This investigation reports on the influences of response rate, ordering of questions, and definition of child sexual abuse on the results of a survey of college students' childhood and adolescent sexual experiences. Response rates affected prevalence rate estimates, and the use of varying definitions of child sexual abuse affected estimates of both prevalence and consequences. The importance of the awareness of these methodological issue in future research efforts is discussed.     

Child abuse and cot deaths

A search was made of the Child Protection Register for children with siblings who died of SIDS. The Child Health Department in Southern Derbyshire Health Authority (population 522,000; 7,100 births per year) undertakes confidential inquiries into all child deaths and registered SIDS deaths are noted. This study looked at all children born between January 1, 1984 and June 30, 1988 whose names appeared on the Child Protection Register as victims of abuse or who were considered to be at risk for abuse. From a cohort of 288 children on the Child Protection Register, one in 30 of the children on the Register had a sibling whose death was registered as caused by SIDS. In Southern Derbyshire there is an association between child abuse and about 10% of deaths of children diagnosed as SIDS.     

Coping with the crickets: a fusion autoethnography of silence,schooling, and the continuum of biracial identity formation

This study explores biracial identity development in the adolescent years through fusion autoethnography. Using an ecological model of biracial identity development, this study illustrates how family, peers, and school curricula validate and reject racial self-presentations. We pay specific attention to the different forms of silence (i.e. “crickets”) that teachers and peers deploy as tactics of rejection and how racially coded artifacts such as hip-hop culture and Black Liberation texts function as validations of racial self-presentations. Overall, this study helps researchers and practitioners to understand the fluidity of biracial and multiracial identity development as it relates to everyday school spaces and processes.     

Working with Haitian Canadian families

Given the continued increase of Haitian families being referred for mental health services, a treatment model on how to intervene therapeutically would prove beneficial for both therapists and Haitian families alike. This article discusses cultural factors (family, education, language, religion, and the racial demographics of the Haitian people) that impact upon the treatment of Haitian families. A model for intervening therapeutically with Haitian families is proposed.     

The Religious Rhetoric of George Whitefield and the Founding of a New Nation

Two variables influenced the rhetorical choices of Progressive leaders in their fight against harsh working conditions of children: the ability of auditors to affect the aggrieved conditions (efficacy); and the valuation associated with the object of protest (utility). Success in achieving the movement's goal depended upon the adaptation of desirable objectives to groups that possessed the necessary power to induce change.