Mothers’ Implicit and Explicit Attitudes and Attributions in Relation to Self-Reported Parenting Behavior

Objective. Parenting behavior is presumed to be related to the thoughts about child behavior that parents report in a controlled and explicit manner and to more implicit parent cognitions that occur outside of conscious awareness and are less accessible to verbal report. Design. We examined mothers’ attitudes toward their children as correlates of self-reported parenting behavior. We used a combination of a self-report questionnaire and a reaction-time method (the Implicit Association Test) to assess explicit and implicit attitudes, respectively. We also assessed mothers’ implicit and explicit attributions for child misbehavior in relation to parenting, using a questionnaire measure of attributions completed under high-cognitive load (implicit attributions) or under low-cognitive load (explicit attributions). Mothers of 124, 6- to 10-year-olds (52% male) participated. Results. Attitudes assessed by self-report questionnaire and the Implicit Association Test were uniquely associated with negative parenting. The cognitive load manipulation moderated associations between attributions and parenting, such that child-blaming attributions were inversely associated with positive parenting only under conditions of high-cognitive load. Conclusions. Compared to traditional self-report questionnaires, methods such as the Implicit Association Test or cognitive load manipulations may more effectively assess implicit parent cognitions.     

Value Profiles During Middle Childhood: Developmental Processes and Social Behavior

Little is known about how children's value priorities develop over time. This study identifies children's value priority profiles and follows their development during middle childhood. Australian children (N = 609; ages 5–12 at Time 1) reported their values over 2 years. Latent Transition Analysis indicated four profiles: Social-Focus, Self-Focus, Growth-Focus and Undifferentiated. Within person development was characterized by profile stability or transfer to the Social-Focus profile. Younger children were more likely to have an Undifferentiated profile (or Self-Focus among boys) than older ones. Girls were more likely to have a Social-Focus profile or transfer to it, and less likely to have a Self- or Growth-Focus profile than boys. Social-Focus profile membership over time predicted more prosocial and less aggressive behavior.     

Medical students' attitudes toward the anatomy dissection room in relation to personality

Assessment of the personalities of medical students could enable medical educators to formulate strategies for the best development of academic and clinical competencies. In this article, we focus on the experience of students in the anatomy dissecting room. While there have been many attempts to evaluate the emotional responses of medical students to human cadaveric dissection, there has been no investigation into how different personality traits affect the responses. The main hypothesis tested was that there is a relationship between personality traits and attitudes toward the dissection room. For the present study, a group of French medical students (n = 403; mean age 21.3 ± 1.6; 65.3% female) completed a "Big Five" personality inventory and a questionnaire to assess their attitudes in regard to human dissection. The findings are consistent with our hypothesis, in that we found a relationship between reporting anxiety and four of the "Big Five" dimensions (all except openness). The rated level of anxiety was positively correlated with negative affectivity, more strongly at the beginning than at the end of the course. There were significant gender differences in attitudes toward dissection. The findings are discussed in relation to the possibility of preparing students for the dissecting room experience and also in relation to the students' understanding of mortality issues.     

Ethnic and regional influences on teachers' evaluations of oral answers

Tape recordings were made of six white and six black ninth-grade northern boys speaking identically worded answers to typical school questions. Black students were given significantly higher grades than white students by 56 white and 50 black southern teachers. Black teachers gave significantly higher grades than white teachers, but no significant interaction was found between students' and teachers' ethnic group. The study is a partial replication of a previous study in which it was found that black students were given significantly lower grades than white students by northern white teachers.     

Educators’ perceptions of bringing students to environmental consciousness through engaging outdoor experiences

This paper explores the premise that environmental education involves raising environmental consciousness rather than simply knowing about the environment in a technical-rational manner and acting for it in mechanistic prescribed ways. The paper draws on educational theory and data from a phenomenological case study of educators working together at an outdoor education centre in urban Canada, whose practice of environmental education we believe can best be described as environmental consciousness raising. Based on our study’s findings, we suggest that raising environmental consciousness involves connecting people to their environment, fostering care for the environment, and building agency for the environment. Educating for environmental consciousness also requires providing people with deeply engaging experiences that afford authenticity, multidimensionality and serendipity. Our study shows how these features can work to raise environmental consciousness, by creating epiphanies or moments when sudden expansions of the self, realization and empowerment become possible.     

The Impact of APA and AERA Guidelines on Effect Size Reporting

Given the long history of effect size (ES) indices (Olejnik and Algina Contemporary Educational Psychology, 25, 241–286 2000) and various attempts by APA and AERA to encourage the reporting and interpretation of ES to supplement findings from inferential statistical analyses, it is essential to document the impact of APA and AERA standards on ES reporting practices. In this paper, we investigated the impact by examining findings from 31 published reviews and our own review of 451 articles published in 2009 and 2010. The 32 reviews were divided into two periods: before and after 1999. A total of 116 journals were reviewed. Findings from these 32 reviews revealed that since 1999, the ES reporting has improved in terms of its rate, variety, interpretation, confidence intervals, and fullness. Yet several inadequate practices still persisted: (1) the dominance of Cohen’s d, and the unadjusted R ²/η², (2) the mere labeling of ES, (3) the under-reporting of confidence intervals, and (4) a lack of integration between ES and statistical tests. The paper concludes with resources on Internet and recommendations for improving ES reporting practices.     

The impact of coworker support and stigma on breastfeeding after returning to work

This study assessed the impact of coworker support on lactating mothers’ breastfeeding self-efficacy after maternity leave. A cross-sectional survey of 1000 working adults assessed effects of perception of fairness, coworkers’ support for breastfeeding colleagues, and ick response on willingness to help mothers needing breaks to pump breastmilk at work. The study also examined how coworker support affected mothers’ self-efficacy to continue breastfeeding. One out of four coworkers showed moderate to strong stigma, saw breaks to pump breastmilk as unfair, and showed less intention to help new mothers. These results suggest that while the majority of coworkers are generally supportive, lactating women are likely to encounter disapproving coworkers who may discourage them from continuing to breastfeed. The data showed that the majority of organizations included in this study have only passively fostered mother-friendly workplaces and could do more to encourage employees to be supportive of lactating colleagues.     

Girls’ active identities: navigating othering discourses of femininity,bodies and physical education

Within physical education and sport, girls must navigate discourses of valued athletic and gendered bodies that marginalise or ‘other’ non-normative performances through systems of surveillance and punishment. The purpose of this paper is to share girls’ perspectives on how these discourses affected their gender performances and activity engagement. Students aged 13–14 in one ethnically diverse UK secondary school were invited to create a photo diary of the physical activities they engaged in. Photo-elicitation interviews in small groups followed. The girls positioned themselves as physically active but had to carefully manage their activity choices and gender performances in a single-sex physical education environment that regulated deviation from the fit, slender, girly-girl. Although the girls demonstrate the difficulty of resisting, they indicate moments of positioning themselves against norms that suggest the possibilities of shifting gendering processes. The paper points out the importance of listening to ‘other’ girls’ narratives in building positive physical education engagements.