Child emotional security and interparental conflict

Guided by the emotional security hypothesis developed by Davies & Cummings (1994), studies were conducted to test a conceptual refinement of children's adjustment to parental conflict in relation to hypotheses of other prominent theories. Study 1 examined whether the pattern of child responses to simulations of adult conflict tactics and topics was consistent with the emotional security hypothesis and social learning theory in a sample of 327 Welsh children. Supporting the emotional security hypothesis, child reports of fear, avoidance, and involvement were especially prominent responses to destructive conflict. Study 2 examined the relative roles of child emotional insecurity and social-cognitive appraisals in accounting for associations between parental conflict and child psychological symptoms in a sample of 285 Welsh children and parents. Findings indicated that child emotional insecurity was a robust intervening process in the prospective links between parental conflict and child maladjustment even when intervening processes proposed in the social-cognitive models were included in the analyses. Studies 3 and 4 explored pathways among parental conflict, child emotional insecurity, and psychological adjustment in the broader family context with a sample of 174 children and mothers. Supporting the emotional security hypothesis, Study 3 findings indicated that child insecurity continued to mediate the link between parental conflict and child maladjustment even after specifying the effects of other parenting processes. Parenting difficulties accompanying interparental conflict were related to child maladjustment through their association with insecure parent-child attachment. In support of the emotional security hypothesis, Study 4 findings indicated that family instability, parenting difficulties, and parent-child attachment insecurity potentiated mediational pathways among parental conflict, child insecurity, and maladjustment. Family cohesiveness, interparental satisfaction, and interparental expressiveness appeared to be protective factors in these mediational paths. No support was found for the social learning theory prediction that parent-child warmth would amplify associations between parental conflict and child disruptive behaviors.     

Matching Educational Television to the Learning Needs of Handicapped Children

This paper discusses the learning needs of handicapped children and how ETV programmes can help to fill these needs. Drawing on research concerning the use of ETV and handicapped children it points out some of the reasons why ETV does not reach its full potential and suggests why these problems keep recurring.     

Resilience in Preschoolers and Toddlers from Low-Income Families

Authoritative parenting has been demonstrated to promote healthy, loving children across home environments of different SES income levels. However, anecdotal evidence shows that some children who encounter nonsupportive parenting and an impoverished environment may develop into remarkably resilient children. Further research is needed in this area of child development.     

Newborn pain cries and vagal tone: parallel changes in response to circumcision

Clinical studies have demonstrated that the cries of chronically stressed, medically compromised infants are characteristically higher and more variable in pitch than those of healthy infants. Other studies have indicated that the vagal tone of chronically stressed infants is significantly reduced in comparison to that of normal infants. A neural model of cry production has been proposed which suggests that decreased vagal tone among infants at risk may, in fact, be related to these increases in cry pitch. Using routine, unanesthetized circumcision as a model of stress, we were able to examine the relation between cry acoustics and vagal tone in normal, healthy newborns undergoing an acutely stressful event. Vocalizations, heart, and respiratory waveforms were continuously recorded from 49 (32 experimental; 17 control) 1-2-day-old, full-term infants during preoperative, surgical, and postoperative periods. Vagal tone, as measured by the amplitude of respiratory sinus arrhythmia extracted from heart period data, was significantly reduced during the severe stress of circumcision, and these reductions were paralleled by significant increases in the pitch of the infants' cries. In addition, individual differences in vagal tone measured prior to circumcision surgery were predictive of physiological and acoustic reactivity to subsequent stress. These results emphasize the potential role of vagal control of the autonomic nervous system during stress.     

Making connections: the logical structuring of hypertext documents

The results from an experiment analysing hypertextual semantic linking is reported. In the study participants are asked to describe logical relationships between related, semi-related and unrelated paragraphs of text. It is concluded that existence and themes of relationships are (as expected) fairly consistently recognised, however, specific relationships do not readily fall into natural predicate like statements. Purely thematic relationships, or a palette of available relationships might be the more practical approach. Further work on dynamic linking in hypertext documents is also reported. Dynamic linking eliminates some of the problems associated with a mismatch between the mental models of authors and readers and allows the readers to construct their own hypertexts from linear documents. This approach offers useful data on logical connectivity in hypertext documents but also represents an alternative to conventional hypertext authoring and reading.     

Mathematical problem posing: Implications for facilitating student inquiry in classrooms

From 1984 through 1988, the authors worked with teachers using an inquiry approach to teach high school geometry courses with the aid of the GEOMETRIC SUPPOSERS. Problems are a critical component of the approach, as they are of any instructional process, because they focus attention and energy and guide students in the application, integration, and extension of knowledge. Inquiry problems differ from traditional, single-answer textbook exercises in that they must leave room for student initiative and creativity. The observations presented in this paper about the delicate balance between specifying too much instruction and too little, which is part of creating and posing inquiry problems, are based on careful examination of students' papers and classroom observations. The paper closes with speculations on whether these observations suggest general lessons for those seeking practical and successful strategies to introduce student inquiry into classrooms, with the hope of stimulating interest in and discussion of such strategies.Preliminary versions of this paper were presented at PME-XI Montreal, 1987, and the 1988 AERA conference in New Orleans.     

Girls in education: citizenship,agency and emotions

Education has been expected to maintain status quo through regulation of citizens, but also to contribute to social change and emancipation. In a collective ethnographic project we have proposed that these contradictions manifest themselves in everyday life at school through tensions between control and agency. Girls encounter practices whereby their use of space is curtailed, their embodiment is controlled and their voice is frequently considered inappropriate. Limitations encountered by girls when striving for independent individuality and citizenship generate a range of emotions. Girls enter educational spaces with the expectation of attaining rational individuality as learners. They often bestow great expectations on schooling and long to attain the position of an abstract independent individual and a citizen capable of exercising agency. In this process they enter a ‘transpositional’ space that frequently reminds them of their gender, as Victoria Foster suggests. The analysis is based on an ethnographic study and subsequent life history interviews on transitions of girls in ethnography.     

A Shoelace Left Untied: Teachers Negotiate Class and Ethnicity in a City of Northern England

Using qualitative research methods supported by demographic data, the role of castelike class patterns in British schooling and the participation of teacher mentalities in maintaining images of working-class students and their families within urban communities were examined. The common American assumption that race is the most salient, if not the sole, designator of resistance to schooling was challenged as teachers and administrators in three urban schools in the north of England presented their experiences and views of working with low-income urban students. In returning as an American researcher to the city of her British family, the author brings a unique cross-cultural lens to the analysis of ethnicity and class.     

The prevalence of a history of child sexual abuse among adults visiting family practitioners in Israel

OBJECTIVE: To determine the prevalence of a history of child sexual abuse (CSA) in a random sample of adult patients presenting for routine health care to family practice clinics in Israel. METHOD: One thousand and five randomly selected patients aged 18 to 55, attending 48 clinics, participated in this questionnaire study. RESULTS: Twenty-five percent indicated that they had been sexually abused as children. More women reported CSA (p < .0001 ) than men, as did women originating from Western countries (p = .02) and those with more than 12 years of education (p = .01). There were no significant associations between CSA and the other socio-demographic variables examined. Fondling was the most common and intercourse the least common activity experienced. Forty-five percent of the perpetrators were previously known. The mean age at which the child sexual abuse began varied between 10 and 14. Only 45% of the subjects had ever told anyone about the experience. CONCLUSIONS: Since no other prevalence study has been reported to date in Israel, these findings suggest that as in other Western countries CSA is a relatively common problem. Family physicians and other health professionals should be aware of this high prevalence and its known potential for initial and long-term deleterious outcomes.