Job Demands and Resources Experienced by the Early Childhood Education Workforce Serving High-Need Populations

Early Childhood Education Journal - The early childhood education (ECE) workforce plays a key role in promoting early childhood development by their interactions with young children during...     

The Socialization of Emotion: Learning Emotion Management at the Fire Station

In a variety of fields, particularly human service occupations, the management of emotion is a precondition of employee and client well being. Based on qualitative data from participant observation and interviews, this study examines how firefighters are socialized to manage feelings and emotional displays. It concludes that firefighters recognized a need to manage their own emotions and those of their clients in order to deliver adequate service. Veteran firefighters facilitated the use of emotion labor techniques among newcomers by considering the emotion management knowledge and capabilities of job candidates during employee selection processes, providing habituated emotional events, and reinforcing customer service expectations. Newcomers actively participated in their own socialization to local emotion expectations through observational information seeking, retrospective surveillance, and performance of a normative newcomer role demeanor. The article concludes by offering practical and theoretical implications.     

Lombroso's Legacy: The Miseducation of Criminologists

This study examines the extent to which criminal justice and criminology Ph.D. students are exposed to contemporary biological and genetic findings associated with aggression and violence. Drawing on multiple sources of information, we find little evidence showing that Ph.D. students are exposed to any biological research on crime and offending. We examine the consequences for this “trained incompetence” and offer suggestions for remedying this deficiency.

If all mankind minus one were of one opinion, and only one person were of the contrary opinion, mankind would be no more justified in silencing that one person, than he, if he had the power, would be justified in silencing mankind. (John Stuart Mill)     

Identifying the required knowledge elements for the effective detection,investigation, and prosecution of high technology crime: The perspective of academe

This is a selective bibliography of 89 references on recruitment of minority students and faculty for graduate and professional schools and programs. Education, social sciences, and law literature were scanned for the years 1981 to 1991. Resources on recruitment in graduate and professional education are included, as well as a few relevant references of somewhat broader scope on diversity in higher education. This bibliography is divided into two parts: Part 1 is on student recruitment, Part 2 on faculty recruitment. Each part is subdivided into three sections—general literature, strategies and programs, and literature pertaining to particular fields of study or professions.     

Public Opinion of Genetic and Neuropsychological Contributors to Criminal Involvement

There is a lack of research that has examined public opinion on the importance of biosocial influences for understanding the potential causes of criminal and delinquent involvement. We address this gap in the current study by surveying a nationally representative sample of adults about the importance of biosocial factors for influencing criminal behavior. Results indicate that the public believes the environment matters more than genetic factors for determining whether someone becomes a criminal. However, the data also reveal an overall acceptance of the importance of neuropsychological factors for influencing criminal behavior. An ordered logistic regression analysis was also estimated to examine potential differences in opinion across demographic categories. The results revealed that income, gender, marital status, and employment status are significantly associated with whether a respondent supports the role of biosocial factors in crime causation. Implications of the findings are discussed.     

The evaluation of criminal justice programs: Assessment of evolving standards in context

The quality of criminal justice programs has been evaluated by methods which assume that quality standards are associated primarily with research excellence and are clearly defined. Because these standards are still emerging in our discipline, a more appropriate method of assessment is introduced, which takes into account the evolving standards of quality in criminal justice. With this method, programs can evaluate themselves continuously not only against minimum standards, but also against newly evolving standards as they are introduced. This design will allow criminal justice programs to determine whether their procedures promote the goal of students' learning by analyzing their functions in relation to evolving standards of quality.     

On Fitting a Multivariate Two-Part Latent Growth Model

The purpose of this study was to explore the influence of the number of targets specified on the quality of exploratory factor analysis solutions with a complex underlying structure and incomplete substantive measurement theory. Three Monte Carlo studies were performed based on the ratio of the number of observed variables to the number of underlying factors. Within each study, communality, sample size, and the number of targets were manipulated. Outcomes included a measure of congruence and a measure of variability with regard to the rotated pattern matrix. The magnitude of the main effect for the influence of the number of targets on congruence and variability ranged from moderate to large. The magnitude of the interaction between the number of targets and level of communality ranged from small to moderate with regard to congruence and variability. Consistent with theoretical expectations, the minimum number of targets to specify to be reasonably assured of obtaining an accurate solution varied across study conditions.     

Increasing Access to Higher Education Among Low-Income Students: The Washington State Achievers Program

The purpose of this study was to assess how a comprehensive precollege intervention and developmental program among low-income high school students contributed to college enrollment outcomes measured in 2006. Our focus was on the Fifth Cohort of the Washington State Achievers (WSA) Program, which provides financial, academic, and college preparation support to 500 high school students who come from the lowest 35% of Washington state income levels. One important feature of the WSA Program is that it provided funding for complete high school curriculum reform among 16 Washington high schools that have a high prevalence of low-income students. The data set contained three groups of students from these 16 high schools: Funded Achievers who were part of the WSA Program and received funding for college; Nonfunded Achievers who were part of the WSA Program and but did not receive funding for college; and Nonrecipients who were neither part of the WSA Program nor received funding for college. Results from generalized multinomial logistic models found two trends (a) early and continuous financial support for college along with being active in the WSA Program nearly guarantees enrollment in college and increases enrollment in 4-year and highly selective colleges; and (b) even in the absence of financial support for college there are still quantifiable and positive effects on college-going for just participating in the WSA Program and receiving its abundant nonfinancial resources and support. These results persist even with strong controls for selection, background, academic, financial, aspiration, and school-level variables.     

A Longitudinal Investigation of Siblings’ and Friends’ Features of Connectedness and Interaction Quality During Play

The present study examined features of sibling and friend dyads’ connectedness (e.g., length and emotional tone of connected sequences) and the quality of the dyads’ interactions during play from early to middle childhood. Forty-four families with a 4-year-old focal child were observed at Time 1 (T1) and again at Time 2 (T2) at age 7 in two separate play sessions (i.e., sibling and friend). Play sessions were coded for interaction quality (i.e., conflict, cooperation). Based on previous research, features of the sequences (i.e., emotional tone, length of sequence) were compared across relationship and time. Research Findings: Findings revealed similarities in the dyads’ interaction quality, with both siblings and friends increasing in cooperation over time. Similarly, the emotional tone of siblings’ and friends’ connected sequences was more likely to be positive than negative; however, siblings’ sequences were short rather than long, whereas friends’ sequences were more likely to be long than short. Practice or Policy: These findings provide new insights into children’s connectedness in child-child relationships and changes in connectedness across development from early to middle childhood. The study highlights the importance of observing the dyad when using a relationships theory framework to examine children’s interactions.