Providing High-Quality Support Services to Home-Based Child Care: A Conceptual Model and Literature Review

ABSTRACT

Research Findings: Home-based child care accounts for a significant proportion of nonparental child care arrangements for young children in the United States. Yet the early care and education field lacks clear models or pathways for how to improve quality in these settings. The conceptual model presented here articulates the components of high-quality support to child care providers; related factors; and hypothesized provider, family, and child outcomes. The model is based on a literature review of research on home-based child care, home visiting, early childhood mental health consultation, coaching, and family services. We hypothesize that high-quality support to home-based child care that offers relationship-based services focused on quality caregiving (individual home visiting and group supports such as training and networking) and sustainability (materials, equipment, referrals) is most likely to positively impact quality caregiving for children and families. Practice or Policy: Current federal efforts and policy initiatives to increase the supply and quality of infant–toddler child care focus on the development of systems that support home-based providers. The conceptual model of high-quality support described here will inform future program development and research on how to improve quality in home-based child care for the millions of low-income children in these settings.     

The Distance Education journal at 40: crossroads and horizons

ABSTRACT

The development of distance education (DE) over the last 40 years is compared with the evolving content of the Distance Education journal during the same period. DE in general has been described as encountering a series of crossroad decision points, and as identifying numerous optimistic horizons beyond them. The decisions made and horizons sought have not always been prudent, however, and the journal’s critical approach and logical sequence of priorities have encouraged DE to avoid ill-considered options. Currently, the journal is challenged with helping the field to overcome mainstream educators’ lack of awareness of the traditional DE literature, media, and methods, and negative reactions to the effects of the massive open online course (MOOC). The approach taken by the journal during its first 40 years will help to overcome such problems and to keep the field on track.     

Effects of stress controllability,immunization, and therapy on the subsequent defeat of colony intruders

Three experiments investigated the influence that various stress-controllability manipulations had on the defensive behaviors of rats when they were subsequently tested as intruders in previously established, aggressive colonies of conspecifics. In Experiment 1, naive subjects that had received a session of 80 shocks in a tube showed an enhanced series of defensive responses and received more bites than did a group of restrained nonshocked rats as colony intruders 24 h later. These two measures were also found to be positively correlated within each group. In Experiment 2, a group that was given 80 yoked inescapable shocks, in contrast to a group that had wheel-turn escape training and a restrained nonshocked control group, displayed more defeat and was bitten more frequently when tested as intruders on the following day. In Experiment 3, 60 trials of wheel-turn escape training were given 4 h prior to (i.e., immunization) or after (i.e., therapy) a session of 60 inescapable tube shocks. During resident-intruder testing 24 h later, both of these groups showed less defeat and received fewer bites than did an inescapably preshocked group but did not differ from a restrained nonshocked control group. These findings clearly indicate that stress controllability alters species-typical defensive responses, and their implications concerning other learned helplessness effects and interpretations are discussed.     

The fog of online learning

The authors recognized a close similarity between practices used in online genealogy research and those common in online education. Uses of a popular online database service were examined within a peer instruction community dedicated to researching a family history topic. Three community subgroups were divided into leaders, who base their work on external sources, and followers who copy the leaders’ conclusions. The accuracy and error levels of the 21 family trees produced by these researchers were calculated in relation to data obtained from offline archives. The trees created in the online process all contained flawed details and invalid conclusions due to practices similar to those of massive open online courses. The inconsistent reliability of the online approaches is discussed in terms of the ‘fog’ that descends upon knowledge when facts are distorted by academic jargon, disciplinary trends, and institutional priorities, and which increases with its transmission to others by non-experts.     

The Choice Architecture of School Choice Websites

Abstract

We conducted a randomized factorial experiment to determine how displaying school information to parents in different ways affects what schools they choose for their children in a hypothetical school district. In a sample of 3,500 low-income parents of school-aged children, a small design manipulation, such as changing the default order in which schools were presented, induced meaningful changes in the types of schools selected. Other design choices such as using icons to represent data, instead of graphs or just numbers, or presenting concise summaries instead of detailed displays, also led parents to choose schools with higher academic performance. We also examined effects on parents’ understanding of the information and their self-reported satisfaction and ease of use. In some cases, there were trade-offs. For example, representing data using only numbers maximized understanding, but adding graphs maximized satisfaction at the expense of understanding.     

From PSAs to reel communities: exploring the sounds and silences of urban youth mobilizing digital media production

ABSTRACT

Amplified by a global political climate of fear, oppression, and increased nationalism, this article examines how U.S. secondary students in a digital media elective course used multimodal composition, and video production in particular, as a nexus of ‘participatory politics.’ By partnering theories of multiliterate expression with youth civic engagement, it offers new understandings into how urban youth use digital media production to leverage school-based social action. Refracted through a mediated discourse analysis lens, and with a particular focus on sound as a modal resource for design, findings suggest that youth used media production and semiotic sense-making to simultaneously enliven community action as well as shield students from personal histories of trauma. By engaging in the process of digital media production, as this article suggests, students cultivated new core practices of civic interaction and local engagement by amplifying injustice.     

Enhancing the contribution of visual methods to inclusive education

This paper examines the use of visual methods in studies of inclusive education. Visual methods have been applied to/with pupils with special educational needs (SEN) in the past but the application has tended to be outside rather than inside schools. We argue that understanding contextual reflexivity is important if visual methods are to be successfully adapted to meet the needs of inclusive research. A case study is used to provide an insight into the strengths, weaknesses and difficulties of mixed method visual research. The final section of the paper explores potential applications, strategies and techniques for including visual methods in inclusivity research.     

Developing and Validating a Novel Anonymous Method for Matching Longitudinal School-Based Data

Prospective longitudinal data collection is an important way for researchers and evaluators to assess change. In school-based settings, for low-risk and/or likely-beneficial interventions or surveys, data quality and ethical standards are both arguably stronger when using a waiver of parental consent—but doing so often requires the use of anonymous data collection methods. The standard solution to this problem has been the use of a self-generated identification code. However, such codes often incorporate personalized elements (e.g., birth month, middle initial) that, even when meeting the technical standard for anonymity, may raise concerns among both youth participants and their parents, potentially altering willingness to participate, response quality, or generating outrage. There may be value, therefore, in developing a self-generated identification code and matching approach that not only is technically anonymous but also appears anonymous to a research-naive individual. This article provides a proof of concept for a novel matching approach for school-based longitudinal data collection that potentially accomplishes this goal.     

Body Donation after Medically Assisted Death: An Emerging Consideration for Donor Programs

Around the world, the recent introduction of assisted death laws has meant that undertaking medical assistance in dying (MAID) is now an option for some persons wishing to end their life. Some of these people donate their bodies to medical science, and by doing so have created a new route from which donor programs can now receive bodies. Such donations have also illuminated a myriad of novel ethical questions. This article considers the emotive and controversial topic of MAID in relation to body donation, describing the experiences of McMaster University, Canada, where several MAID body donors have been received by the anatomical donor program. It provides background on the development and implementation of MAID in Canada, and describes the experience of staff and students at McMaster to MAID donations. It also explores the relevance of MAID to body donation programs, and discusses several of the ethical challenges facing body donation programs who may encounter MAID body donors. These include the appropriateness of accepting MAID donors, issues with informed consent, the effect of personal engagement with MAID donors, information sharing around MAID donations, governance issues, and negative historical parallels between MAID and euthanasia. Suggestions on how to manage MAID body donation focus on how issues affecting institutions, faculty, and students may be approached utilizing appropriate transparency and communication, some of which may facilitate student professional development around the topic of MAID. It is also suggested that the development of ethically appropriate guidelines on MAID body donations may positively guide the anatomical community.     

The Cognitive Predictors of Computational Skill with Whole versus Rational Numbers: An Exploratory Study

The purpose of the present study was to explore the 3rd-grade cognitive predictors of 5th-grade computational skill with rational numbers and how those are similar to and different from the cognitive predictors of whole-number computational skill. Students (n = 688) were assessed on incoming whole-number calculation skill, language, nonverbal reasoning, concept formation, processing speed, and working memory in the fall of 3rd grade. Students were followed longitudinally and assessed on calculation skill with whole numbers and with rational numbers in the spring of 5th grade. The unique predictors of skill with whole-number computation were incoming whole-number calculation skill, nonverbal reasoning, concept formation, and working memory (numerical executive control). In addition to these cognitive abilities, language emerged as a unique predictor of rational-number computational skill.