Analysis and treatment of child abuse: A set of behavioral propositions

Five propositions are presented to suggest the potential of a behavioral approach to the understanding and treatment of child abuse. Each proposition deals with an important source of child abuse: (a) ineffective child management techniques; (b) deliberately punitive child rearing practices; (c) impulsive acts by the parent triggered by the child; (d) high levels of stress; and (e) negative attitude toward the child. For each proposition we discuss supportive findings from both child abuse and general psychological research as well as the additional information that would be needed in order to obtain a better functional analysis of clinical cases. Based on this discussion, behavioral therapy strategies are proposed with special attention being given to the various measures needed to evaluate the effectiveness of treatment programs.     

Psychology's Contribution to Understanding and Managing Bullying within Schools

This paper investigates the extent to which psychological theory and research has contributed to how bullying is managed within schools. Teachers' awareness of the behaviours that constitute bullying, gender differences leading to identification difficulties, and low levels of reporting are discussed as plausible reasons for teachers' low intervention rates. Pupils' attitudes towards and responses to bullying are examined within the contexts of self‐efficacy, self‐acceptance and level of problem‐solving skill. Subsequent anti‐bullying interventions focusing on these aspects are explored and the importance of a whole‐school approach emphasised.     

Reflections on citizenship education in Australia,Canada and England

In this article we describe the background to the recent development of citizenship education in Australia, Canada and England and then, following an account of our methods, discuss issues arising from an analysis of a sample of textbooks from these countries. We suggest that the current policies to introduce versions of citizenship education have emerged in these countries in the context of diverse challenges to the legitimacy of the nation state. We argue, generally, that all three countries tend, in the textbooks we have examined, to emphasize forms of citizenship education that may submerge citizen empowerment under essentially orthodox agendas. We see differences in textbooks between and within the three countries but argue that, despite many exceptions, we are able to characterize textbooks in Ontario, Canada as education in civics (provision of information about formal public institutions), those in England as education for citizenship (a broad‐based promotion of socially useful qualities) and those in Australia as social studies (societal understanding that emerges from the development of critical thinking skills related to existing academic subjects such as history and English).     

Exploring Designerly Thinking of Students as Novice Designers

Few studies have attempted a detailed analysis of designerly thinking and actions of students as they solve design technology problems. This paper reports on a study that describes in detail, the design processes used by small groups of preservice teacher education students engaged in ill-defined, open-ended, self-selected design technology projects. A notation of symbols and connectors was devised and used to map the decisions, and the material and embodied actions of two groups of students throughout the course of their projects. The detail provided by the maps gives insights into these adult novice designers' design processes and provides information to assist teacher educators in planning courses to support future teachers of design and technology.     

How the University of Minnesota was subverted by litigation

This essay was originally presented as part of the panel, “The University of Minnesota: Issues and Prospects,” at “On the State of Academic Discourse,” the third national conference of the National Association of Scholars, held in Minneapolis, October 18 to 20, 1991.     

Format-free databases and the construction of knowledge in primary school science projects

Most current science education reform documents are placing much emphasis on having students become competent in identifying, accessing and operating upon relevant information sources and in using the information to construct new knowledge. One of the means they suggest for achieving these aims is science project work. However, a review of the research literature indicates that little knowledge construction occurs during science projects. This article reports on a study in which a teacher used the collaborative development of a format-free computer database to facilitate the construction of knowledge by a group of three Year 6 students during a science project.     

Are children in need of liberation?

Conclusion In spite of my reservations on the key points of Professor McMurtry's article, I think that he has written the most interesting and sustained case for the liberation of children which I have seen. If he is wrong that children are not identical in status to slaves, he is surely right that some children are treated as badly as slaves were often treated and that our laws at the present time make it very difficult to intervene. If he is wrong in his presupposition that children are persons by the very fact of their being human beings, then he is erring on the side of angels. Because if we thought them so, then we would be much less likely to abuse them. And if our laws treated them so, we would have grounds for preventing the treatment of children as less than human by parents or other adults.     

Framing the benefits of higher education participation from the perspective of non-completers

ABSTRACT

Ensuring that students of all backgrounds are smoothly transitioned through the stages of access, participation and completion in higher education has been the focus of much public policy and research in recent decades. Subsequently, public policy discourse treats those who do not complete their higher education degrees as unsuccessful, despite a lack of research considering the beneficial outcomes of non-completing students. Evidence of beneficial outcomes of higher education participation without completion has potential to challenge the deficit-centric discourse of completion dependent on a binary view of success and failure. This article details a critical discourse analysis of responses to a 2017 survey of university non-completers asked ‘were there any benefits from the time you spent doing an [sic] incomplete degree?’. This study finds that non-completers experience a wide range of benefits from incomplete studies despite the dominant discourse discounting their experiences as unsuccessful. Additionally, this study presents a critique of framing surveys of non-completing students within the normative bounds of success as completion in higher education, and instead calls for a more nuanced construction of success in higher education.