“They don’t know what it’s like in here”: Incarcerated individuals’ communication with family members

The incarcerated population is large and growing. Maintaining family connections during confinement is linked to positive outcomes, yet the family communication of incarcerated individuals is understudied. We examine the family communication of individuals incarcerated in an urban county jail for women. Four family communication themes were identified: 1) communication access and understanding, 2) family support, 3) parenting challenges, and 4) family conflict. The findings inform both theoretical and practical implications.     

The brain and the US education system: Perpetuation of neuromyths

ABSTRACT

Misconceptions about the brain and its relation to education are widespread. This can lead to the implementation of ineffective methods and the waste of precious resources. To examine the extent of belief in neuromyths, a survey about the brain in education was conducted. Respondents (n = 169) came from special education (n = 83) and general education (n = 78), and included preservice teachers (n = 34), in-service teachers (n = 63), higher education faculty (n = 39), and educational leaders (n = 33). The survey contained 15 Myths and 18 Facts, and overall, participants were able to correctly identify approximately 66% of all the Facts. On the other hand, on average, respondents responded correctly for only one third of the Myths. The most commonly misidentified Myths were related to motor coordination exercises to improve literacy skills, the right brain-left brain myth, and learning styles. Higher education faculty were able to identify more Myths than any other group. Implications for teacher preparation and ongoing professional learning for teachers and educational leaders are discussed.     

Daddy’s Hands

I remember daddy’s hands folded silently in prayer And reaching out to hold me, when I had a nightmare     

Pedagogy,empowerment and discipline: comparative perspectives of novice teachers in England and Turkey reflecting on ‘the other’

This article discusses the views of Turkish and British novice teachers on pedagogy and pedagogical relationships with school students when confronted with the pedagogical practices of the ‘Other’ in particular policy contexts. Experiences of those practices were gained by novice teachers during an exchange visit for British and Turkish university students in the period 2008–2009. Data was collected through questionnaires and focus group interviews. Findings suggest that Turkish and British novice teachers initially constructed the ‘Other’ as very different from themselves. The views of members of both groups were heavily influenced by the cultural contexts in which they trained and worked. British novice teachers tended to take as axiomatic constructivist and inclusive approaches to pedagogy and the relevance to successful pedagogy of listening to students’ voices. Turkish novice teachers questioned both, many seeing control and dissemination of knowledge as central to pedagogy and student teacher relationships.     

“counting” by pigeons: Discrimination of the number of biologically relevant sequential events

Numerical competence has been studied in animals under a variety of conditions, but only a few experiments have reported animals’ ability to detect absolute number. Capaldi and Miller (1988) tested rats’ ability to detect absolute number by using biologically important events—the number of reinforced runs followed by a nonreinforced run—and found that the rats ran significantly slower on the nonreinforced run. In the present experiments, we used a similar procedure. Pigeons were given a sequence of trials in which responding on the first three trials ended in reinforcement but responding on the fourth trial did not (RRRN). When the response requirement on each trial was a single peck (Experiment 1), we found no significant increase in latency to peck on the fourth trial. When the response requirement was increased to 10 pecks (Experiment 2), however, the time to complete the peck requirement was significantly longer on the nonreinforced trial than on the reinforced trials. Tests for control by time, number of responses, and amount of food consumed indicated that the pigeons were using primarily the number of reinforcements obtained in each sequence as a cue for nonreinforcement. This procedure represents a sensitive and efficient method for studying numerical competence in animals.