Expressing community through freedom market and visual connections

ABSTRACT

Building on a long-term university/community research partnership, this article examines how different ways of conceptualizing, interpreting, and producing murals impacted how an urban community saw itself. Using a participatory action research design, university researchers worked alongside community researchers to ethnographically document the transformation. Findings indicate that the mural project constructed pathways for building relationships and community in ways that made neighborhood transformation possible. The mural project embodied this transformative goal by providing a space where people gathered with shared attention to talk and to envision how their lives and their community could be different.     

Concerns of First‐Year Teachers in Australian Catholic Schools

Fifty primary and 52 secondary teachers were interviewed about their concerns and fears as first‐year teachers in Catholic schools. Teacher variables of gender and maturity, as well as school variables such as socio‐economic status (SES), non‐English speaking background (NESB), school size and primary/secondary level were examined as sources of difference in expressed concerns and needs. Ranked concerns associated with meeting individual differences were ranked highest followed by ‘Content’, ‘Control’ and ‘Motivation’, ‘Teaching Migrants’, ‘Record Keeping’ and ‘Communication’. Open‐ended responses differed from ranked responses with ‘Efficacy’, ‘Control’ and ‘Content’ the most frequently mentioned fears. In general, no significant differences were found between rankings of concerns for primary/secondary levels or for teacher gender. However SES, NESB and teacher tender were significantly related to concerns for certain subsets of data.     

Rediscovering the ninja turtles' namesakes

We are not ninja turtles! If the dead could talk this would be the cry of the Italian Renaissance Masters—Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, Raphael and Donatello—to young children currently clamoring for a bunch of TV turtle characters who live in a sewer, fight bad guys with swords and order out for pizza.Joyce Mesrobian is an Early Education Consultant and a reviewer of children's books. © Joyce Mesrobian, August 1990.     

Cultural Group,Reading Attainments and Dialect Interference

(NB. In the interests of brevity, the British-born children of parents of West Indian origin are referred to as the WI group and the children of parents of English origin are referred to as the E group.) It has been suggested that, partly because of dialect interferences, WI children experience greater difficulty than E group children in various aspects of reading. The present study compares the attainments of a sample of 20 WI and E boys and girls of equivalent intellectual ability attending a multi-cultural inner-city comprehensive school in a social priority area. Reading accuracy, reading comprehension and listening comprehension attainments of the children were tested by the individual administration of the Neale Analysis of Reading Ability, Forms A, B and C. In terms of both reading accuracy and comprehension, although the group mean scores were all below the norms for their chronological ages, there were no significant mean differences between the WI and E pupils or between boys and girls. Silent reading led to significantly lower scores than did reading aloud.     

Using a computerized concept mapping program to assess preservice teachers' thinking about effective teaching

Concept mapping with Learning Tool, a computerized mapping program, was used to assess changes in the content and organization of 17 preservice teachers' concept maps for the topic of effective teaching. Preservice teachers in their senior year of an early childhood teacher education program constructed and revised concept maps with a partner. They entered reflections on each mapping experience into their reflective journals, developing implications for teaching. Analysis of the concept maps revealed that these students had a primary concern with classroom management throughout the year, linking diverse information to that concept. They evidenced detailed and diverse understandings under the labels of knowledge and organization. Professionalism was a common item, though it was less well developed. Their reflective journals indicated that these students moved from describing emotional reactions to using the computer program as a basis for reflection on the teaching/learning process. This study illustrates how concept mapping can be useful in describing students' evolving constructions of knowledge in a particular subject area, and in promoting reflection.     

Effects of the child–perpetrator relationship on mental health outcomes of child abuse: It's (not) all relative

The present study was conducted to better understand the influence of the child–perpetrator relationship on responses to child sexual and physical trauma for a relatively large, ethnically diverse sample of children and youth presenting for clinical evaluation and treatment at child mental health centers across the United States. This referred sample includes 2,133 youth with sexual or physical trauma as their primary treatment focus. Analyses were conducted to ascertain whether outcomes were dependent on the perpetrator's status as a caregiver vs. non-caregiver. Outcome measures included psychiatric symptom and behavior problem rating scales. For sexual trauma, victimization by a non-caregiver was associated with higher posttraumatic stress, internalizing and externalizing behavior problems, depression, and dissociation compared to youth victimized by a caregiver. For physical trauma, victimization by a non-caregiver was also associated with higher posttraumatic symptoms and internalizing behavior problems. The total number of trauma types experienced and age of physical or sexual trauma onset also predicted several outcomes for both groups, although in disparate ways. These findings are consistent with other recent studies demonstrating that perpetration of abuse by caregivers results in fewer symptoms and problems than abuse perpetrated by a non-caregiving relative. Thus, clinicians should not make a priori assumptions that children and adolescents who are traumatized by a parent/caregiver would have more severe symptoms than youth who are traumatized by a non-caregiver. Further exploration of the role of the perpetrator and other trauma characteristics associated with the perpetrator role is needed to advance our understanding of these findings and their implications for clinical practice.