Does maternal employment influence poor children’s social development?

Various initiatives over the past 40 years have aimed to strengthen children’s early learning and social development. One policy theory—manifest in recent welfare reforms—postulates that requiring single mothers to work more outside the home will advance children’s well-being. We first examine whether young children’s social development is related to maternal employment among 405 women who entered welfare-to-work programs in 1998. For girls, age 24–42 months, we found that their mother’s recent employment duration was significantly associated with a lower incidence of aggressive behavior and inattentiveness, measured by two scales from the Child Behavior Checklist (CBCL 2/3). Yet these relationships with employment were weaker than more robust associations observed for proximal child-rearing practices, including the frequency of reading with the child, enforcing a regular bedtime, the propensity to spank the child, as well as levels of maternal depression. We then assess whether broader measures of the mother’s economic security help to predict these proximal determinants of development. We observed that food security and indicators of job quality consistently predicted the proximal factors. Structural equation models (SEM) provided additional evidence that these broader indicators of economic security, but not recent employment per se, operated through parenting practices and maternal depression to influence girls’ and boys’ social development. These results are consistent with recent findings from random-assignment experiments, showing that employment gains rarely affect child outcomes unless mothers’ income and broader economic security also improve.     

How to encourage a lifelong learner? The complex relation between learning strategies and assessment in a medical curriculum

Abstract

To foster lifelong learning skills, we need new didactic approaches with aligned assessment methods. Therefore, we investigated whether the outcomes of a project assignment show a different relation to learning strategies than a longitudinal knowledge-based assessment. We studied learning strategies of first year students of medicine and biomedical sciences (n?=?248) and performed hierarchical regression analyses for the learning strategies and grades of the longitudinal knowledge-based test and project assignment. Scores of students, measured with the Motivated Strategies for Learning Questionnaire (Likert scale 1–7), were relatively low for critical thinking (3.53), compared to rehearsal (4.40), elaboration (4.82), organisation (4.69) and metacognitive self-regulation (4.33). Knowledge based tests showed a significant relation to elaboration (p?<?0.01). For the project-based assessment, we did not find a significant relation to any learning strategy (p?=?0.074). Explained variance of the grades was low for all learning strategies (R² < 0.043). Different types of assessment did not discriminate between students with high or low scores on learning strategies associated with lifelong learning. An explanation is that the curriculum is not aligned with assessment, or students do not benefit in terms of grades. We conclude that, if assessment is to drive lifelong learning skills, this is not self-evident.     

Intellectual Disability and Developmental Risk: Promoting Intervention to Improve Child and Family Well‐Being

Initial intervention processes for children with intellectual disabilities (IDs) largely focused on direct efforts to impact core cognitive and academic deficits associated with the diagnosis. Recent research on risk processes in families of children with ID, however, has influenced new developmental system approaches to early intervention. Recent risk and resilience processes are reviewed that connect stress, family process, and the high rates of behavioral problems in children with ID that have substantial influence on child and family outcomes. These models are linked to emerging evidence‐based intervention processes that focus on strategic parent skill training and mindfulness interventions that reduce parental stress and create indirect benefits for children's behavioral competencies. A family‐focused developmental systems approach (M. J. Guralnick, 2011) is emphasized.     

V型知识地图在企业知识管理中的应用研究

基于目前知识地图在企业知识管理应用中普遍存在的一些问题,提出了V型知识地图的设计方法、应用模型和技术架构,试图通过V型知识地图开放式的框架体系,启发式的知识构建,促进组织中知识的应用与创新,为企业知识管理提供新的解决之道。     

Biotechnology in the Netherlands: controversy or consensus?

This paper addresses the issue of public perception of modern biotechnology in the Netherlands. Contrary to expectations, data from the 1999 Eurobarometer on biotechnology indicate that the position of the Dutch public in general is rather ambiguous, which is in contrast to many of its neighboring countries. The issue is described in terms of differences between the Netherlands and other European countries on political-economic, social-cultural, or media coverage indicators. On many indicators, the Dutch population differs from that of other European countries, and the Dutch opinion-leading media present a rather balanced perspective on modern biotechnology.     

Cognitive brain potentials in kindergarten children with subtyped risks of reading retardation

Cognition-related brain responses to meaningful and meaningless figures were registered in 5-year-old kindergarten children who either had been subtyped as being at-risk of developing an L- or P-type dyslexia (LAL versus LAP) or who were not at-risk. While identifying, naming, or categorizing pictures, event-related potentials (ERP) were registered. Three cognition-related components were found: the N460, the P780, and the Slow Wave (SW). LAP-children produced weak N460 activity across tasks, whereas LAL children, and to a lesser degree, non-risk children produced robust task-dependent activity. This finding may indicate that LAP-children lack semantic input while processing the figures. P780 latencies to frequently occurring figures were found hemisphere-dependent: LAP-children showed longer latencies in the right than in the left hemisphere, whereas the distribution was reversed in the LAL and non-risk children. It was also found that the right hemisphere is generally responsible for a lion's share of the processing of figures and therefore it seems that the right hemisphere of LAP-children invests ample time in doing so. Whereas LAP-children showed largest SW amplitude differences between frequent and infrequent stimuli at posterior locations, LAL children did so at frontal locations. Assuming that the SW represents working-memory processes, it may be that working-memory in LAP-children deals with figure-relevant visual-spatial information and with figure-derived concepts in LAL children. Overall, the findings suggest that LAL and LAP represent two different groups of kindergartners at risk of dyslexia and that these differences, to some degree, fit with the presumed etiology of L- and P-type dyslexia.     

Editorial H-score as a metric of inner authenticity for national scientific journals—Pilot study for the field of pedagogy

There is evidence that national scientific journals are important for local communities despite their limited audience due to national languages and topics, like in pedagogy. However, it is not easy to assess the level of scientific rigour of local journals, as most do not have available scientometric data and are often published in minority languages. We hypothesize that a possible manifestation of a latent trait of inner authenticity of the scientific journal (meaning the journal is accepted by a community interested in developing the field which conducts internationally accepted research) could be H-index of the editorial board members. To test this approach, we evaluated H-index and gender of editorial board members (n = 490) from 17 Czech and Slovak national science-oriented scientific pedagogical journals which were not indexed or indexed in Erih+ or Scopus, and compared this with the five lowest-rated journals from the same field indexed in the Web of Science (WoS) database. The H-index of editorial board members was somewhat higher in indexed journals with those from WoS showing higher scores, and the number of board members with no discernable H-index was far greater in non-indexed journals. Editorial boards of journals indexed in WoS were mostly male, compared to a dominance of women on boards of non-indexed journals. Acknowledging the limited sample, it appears that the H-index of editorial board members may be a way to value national scientific journals.     

服务科研创新的高校大型仪器条件平台建设

对高校大型仪器条件平台建设的基础、意义、思路和重点进行了分析和探讨,从整体规划布局、规范管理、开放共享、完善制度、创新发展等方面总结了平台建设的成功经验,以更好地推进仪器条件平台建设,服务科研创新。     

寓于语境的听力教学

语言的理解与语境是密不可分的。在英语教学中,听力理解作为一项输入性技能,它是实现用英语进行交际的基础,听力水平也成了衡量外语学习者总体语言能力的一个重要因素。然而在实际的课堂教学中,许多老师会发现尽管听力材料简单,语法、单词都没有障碍,但是学生却只能获得一些零散的信息,无法利用这些零散的语素组合出完整的意义。由于不知如何解读组合所得的信息,而常常使学生听力结束后陷入一种＂混沌＂的状态。为了解决这一问题,在研究听力教学及语境理论的基础上,教学者应结合自身教学经验,将听力教学巧妙地寓于语境之中。     

浅谈开放实验室对物流工程专业研究型人才培养

开放实验室是培养学生创新能力和综合素质的重要基地之一,实验室开放训练是物流工程专业研究型人才培养能力获取的重要环节。物流工程专业学生通过在开放实验室进行专业基础技能、专业综合设计、自选课题型综合训练及科研创新型实验等不同程度的实验,可获得关于物流工程专业的基础理论、知识和技能,以及综合设计能力、前瞻能力和具有独立获取知识、提出问题、分析问题和解决问题的基本科研能力。