Promoting effective parenting practices and preventing child behavior problems in school among ethnically diverse families from underserved, urban communities

This study examines the efficacy of ParentCorps among 4-year-old children (N = 171) enrolled in prekindergarten in schools in a large urban school district. ParentCorps includes a series of 13 group sessions for parents and children held at the school during early evening hours and facilitated by teachers and mental health professionals. ParentCorps resulted in significant benefits on effective parenting practices and teacher ratings of child behavior problems in school. Intervention effects were of similar magnitude for families at different levels of risk and for Black and Latino families. The number of sessions attended was related to improvements in parenting. Study findings support investment in and further study of school-based family interventions for children from underserved, urban communities.     

To what extent does transnational communication drive cross-national policy convergence? The impact of the bologna-process on domestic higher education policies

This study investigates if transnational communication in the context of the Bologna Process (BP) has led to the convergence of higher education (HE) policies. The country sample includes both Bologna participants and non-participants, for which systematic knowledge about the implications of the BP is absent so far. We investigate study structures and quality assurance measures, which differ in their suitability for transnational benchmarking activities and are explicitly addressed by the BP. Our results show that convergent effects differ across policy dimensions and according to the subsamples. We generally find that convergence is greater for the participant countries than for the control group. However, convergence towards the HE policies of Bologna participants is detectable in the control group, albeit to a lesser degree. Thus, some HE policies have diffused beyond the members of the BP. This lends evidence that transnational communication can induce policy change even for countries not participating in the respective harmonization process.     

Scaling Up,Scaling Down: Seven Years of Performance Assessment Development in the Nation's Second Largest School District

To provide an accurate reading of students' and schools' rates of progress, and to provide cues for instruction, assessment at every level should be connected to explicit learning goals and standards. To show how this requirement can be fulfilled, and how research-based assessment can effectively support learning and instruction, this article summarizes a 7-year performance assessment collaboration between assessment researchers and the nation's second largest school district. The project's success in scaling up empirically tested assessment design models and scoring procedures to a district assessment involving more than 300,000 students per year raises the possibility that high-quality learning-centered assessment may again be a practical option for large-scale assessment and accountability.     

Building Family Partnerships: The Journey From Preservice Preparation to Classroom Practice

This study reports the relationship of an undergraduate course in family and community relations to the teaching practices of 1st-, 2nd-, and 3rd-year elementary and early childhood education graduates of a mid-sized Midwestern university. Sixty students were surveyed using the Peabody Family Involvement Survey (Katz & Bauch, 1999 Katz, L. and Bauch, J. P. 1999. The Peabody Family Involvement Initiative: Preparing preservice teachers for family / school collaboration. School Community Journal, 9: 49–69.  [Google Scholar]), with a treatment group (n = 21) having taken the course, and a control group (n = 39) who did not, in order to both quantify and qualify a difference in practices based on preservice preparation. Quantitative measures indicated minimal differences between groups. Qualitatively, however, treatment group members reported engaging families in creative, less standardized levels of involvement than members of the control group. Treatment group members articulated a theoretical and practical understanding of the benefits of family involvement. They emphasized importance of collaboration between home and school, while control group members expressed frequent antagonism and ambivalence toward families.     

The Use of Sublexical Clusters in Normal and Dyslexic Readers

The current study examined the use of sublexical clusters in normal and dyslexic readers. We focused primarily on onset consonantal clusters, but the use of rimes and digraphs was also considered. A segmentation paradigm, the separation of two adjacent letters in a word by a nonletter symbol, was used. We hypothesized that the effect of this distortion on reading would be larger if two adjacent letters functioned as a cluster. In the first study, naming and lexical decision tasks were administered to 24 normal reading and 24 dyslexic fourth-grade children. In a second study, the same tasks were administered to 24 skilled adult readers. The results did not support the use of consonantal onsets and rimes during reading. However, we did find that digraphs were used, because their distortion had a relatively large effect on reading speed. This effect was similar in normal and dyslexic readers.     

Induction and Mentoring of Beginning Researchers at Academic Colleges of Education in Israel

This study focuses on similarities and differences in expectations of cooperating teachers and student teachers in the initial stage of the mentor relationship in the context of an Israeli practicum program for pre‐service student teachers. These expectations, particularly when they conflict, can serve as major obstacles to the formation of contexts for learning. A focus group technique was used to bring the expectations of the participants concerning the role of the cooperating teacher to awareness and articulation. The theoretical framework of Calderhead and Shorrock (1987) was used to analyze the participants’ expectations into categories of educational orientations. Expectations of a practical and technical nature were found to be prevalent among members of both groups, whereas the student teacher group held more expectations for a personal relationship than the cooperating teacher group. Suggestions are given for bridging the gap in expectations between cooperating teachers and student teachers in the initial stage of the practicum program.     

The condom works in all situations? Paradoxical messages in mainstream sex education in Sweden

The condom plays a vital part in safe sex, the ideal outcome of mainstream Swedish sex education. As researchers have pointed out, however, the condom is not a neutral object; rather, it plays a part in shaping, in different ways, both sexual practices and the idea of what sex is. This paper focuses on sex education television programmes produced in Sweden from 1998 to 2011, and particularly on the condom's role in maintaining a hierarchy of sexuality that favours heterosexuality and vaginal intercourse. The analysis shows that the condom is presented as self-evident, as always available, and as unique in the protection it provides against sexually transmitted infections (STIs). Through over-simplified messages, such as ‘the condom is appropriate on all occasions’, the coital imperative is sustained and practices that do not include a penis are excluded from concepts of ‘sex’. From a safer sex perspective, this approach leaves unanswered questions about protection during other sexual practices, in particular from STIs such as herpes, for which no prevention strategies are presented. From a wider perspective, the sole focus on condoms, with its specific emphasis on the penis and penetration, runs contrary to the inclusive agenda of contemporary Swedish sex education.     

The Perception of Error in Production Plants of a Chemical Organisation

There is considerable current interest in error-friendly corporate culture, one particular research question being how and under what conditions errors are learnt from in the workplace. This paper starts from the assumption that errors are inevitable and considers key factors which affect learning from errors in high responsibility organisations, focusing specifically on production plants in a chemical company. An attempt is made to conceptualize potential links between individual, collective and organisational levels of analysis on the one hand, and factors relevant to an error management culture on the other hand. This is followed by an empirical validation of the factors proposed by means of interviews with ten safety representatives and executives from production plants in a chemical company. A problem-centred interview technique was chosen focussing questions on a realistic near-miss event. The content analysis identified two relevant factors for constructive error handling in chemical production plants: a) the perception of an error as a learning opportunity, and b) psychological safety within work groups. On the basis of these findings, strategies are discussed for fostering an error management culture which allows learning from errors and provides suggestions for the handling of errors.     

Tutoring the end-of-studies dissertation: helping psychology students find their academic voice when revising academic texts

This intervention study aimed at helping undergraduate students of psychology learn to use the discursive resources useful to make academic voice visible in their texts and to improve their writing practices. The intervention involved tutorial meetings and collaborative revisions in two different learning environments, on-line and face-to face. The final text quality, the students’ knowledge and the amount and the quality of revisions were assessed in both conditions. Results show that the quality of the texts improved for both intervention groups in contrast with for control group, and better texts were related with higher rates of revision and more students’ satisfaction with the intervention.