An exploratory study of Special Educational Needs Co‐ordinators' knowledge and experience of working with children who have sustained a brain injury

This research aimed to measure Special Educational Needs Co‐ordinators' knowledge of the educational implications of acquired brain injury in children and young people and whether experience of working with pupils with a brain injury or additional training impacts upon this knowledge. Data was collected within one local authority in England using an online survey. The results indicated that the respondents had high levels of uncertainty regarding the impact of a brain injury although they were more confident in those areas which related most closely to their practice. The responses suggested that experience of working with a pupil with a brain injury promoted greater knowledge than receiving training; the results, however, showed that only a minority of SENCos had received any training and those who had tended to have undertaken this independently. This suggests that there is a need for SENCos to be provided with specialist training in order to increase their understanding of the impact of acquired brain injury in children and young people.     

Memes and symbolic violence: #proudboys and the use of memes for propaganda and the construction of collective identity

ABSTRACT

As a social media platform, Instagram has a strong influence on youth culture, identity, and perceptions of the world, with the application serving not only for youth to follow accounts that are aspirational but also for entertainment and identity building through memes. Meme accounts that are explicitly conservative and that espouse white supremacist, hateful ideology and subsequently, identity, are incredibly prevalent. Media serve as powerful institutions for the socialization of youth, and content on the platform reveals that memes are serving as building blocks of ideological meaning. This study conducted a discourse analysis of the memes and content circulated by the alt-right affiliate movement the ‘Proud Boys,’ which is being sold to young men as a fraternity-like organization to celebrate ‘Western ideals’. Proud Boys operate on an ideology that consists of both symbolic and physical violence, and the popularity of these groups is growing. Using Bourdieu’s work on language as a framework, this article is an exploration to their recruitment and world-building practices on Instagram using memes and will be necessary to understand the movement, and to gain further insight into how memes are being used as propaganda.     

Mapping Access and Opportunity for Students with Disabilities: Urban K–8 Schools as Pockets of Privilege

Abstract

Using a DisCrit intersectional lens and statistical and spatial methods, we trace how the creation of K-8 schools functioned to create pockets of privilege in one urban U.S. school district. K-8 schools were both whiter and wealthier than district averages, serving as “enclave” schools. Although far fewer students with disabilities were served in K-8 schools compared to traditional elementary and middle schools, those attending K-8 schools were more likely to be educated in inclusive settings.     

Family-Peer Connections: The Roles of Emotional Expressiveness within the Family and Children''s Understanding of Emotions

The purpose of this study was to explore patterns of parent and child emotional expressiveness within the family context, to examine links between these patterns and children's peer relations, and to examine whether these links might be mediated by children's understanding of emotions. Subjects were 61 kindergarten and first-grade white, middle-class children and their parents. Parent and child expressiveness were assessed in a laboratory ring-toss game designed to elicit a range of emotional responses. Parent expressiveness in the home was also assessed with Halberstadt's Family Expressiveness Questionnaire. The questionnaire, completed by both mother and father, assesses a range of emotions in a variety of settings typical of many families, and consists of items tapping both positive and negative expressiveness. Children were interviewed about their understanding of emotions across a broad range of areas. Results indicated that maternal expressiveness (home) and paternal expressiveness (home and laboratory) but not children's expressiveness with parents were associated with children's peer relations. Although children's understanding of emotions was generally not associated with family expressiveness, understanding predicted children's peer relations. In addition, children's understanding influenced the links between maternal expressiveness in the home and peer relations and between paternal expressiveness in the laboratory and peer relations. This pattern of results underscores the importance of the emotional climate of the family for the development of children's social relations with peers.     

“The Soldiers Came to the House”: Young Children’s Responses to <Emphasis Type="Italic">The Colour of Home</Emphasis>

This article begins by reflecting on the present refugee crisis and its relevance to children in the UK. It identifies the need for teaching about the refugee experience to young children and argues that literature can provide a conduit for this. Since the millennium there has been a rapid increase in the number of books published for children which take this as their theme, aimed at ever-younger readers. Taking as a case study The Colour of Home by Mary Hoffman, a picturebook commonly used in lower primary classrooms, the article considers how this text promotes understanding and validates the circumstances of refugees. It closely examines the motivations and aims of the writer, how the book was mediated by teachers in the primary classroom, and how refugee and non-refugee children read and responded to it. Findings are presented from an interview with Mary Hoffman herself, juxtaposed with data from three classrooms suggesting that pupils gained valuable insight into a complicated and controversial issue. However the research concludes that viewing children through a refugee/non-refugee binary was reductive in not recognising the multi-layered nuances of meaning which were constructed by young readers who brought to bear a wide variety of individual life and family experiences. Furthermore, teachers in the study played a powerful role in mediating the texts when sharing them in the classroom, and devised a selection of stimulating resources to provoke reader response in terms of empathy, “social action”, and some critical literacy.     

Stimulus modality and short-term memory in rats

Two experimental paradigms are presented aimed at determining the retention of auditory and visual information over brief delay intervals. First, a conditional delayed matching-to-sample procedure was used in which rats were required to symbolically match the modality of the sample stimulus with one of two comparison stimuli. In the second experiment, subjects were trained and tested using a Konorski-type procedure. Despite the conceptual and procedural differences between the two procedures, subjects in both experiments showed steeper forgetting functions for visual events than for auditory events, while performance levels at 0-sec delay intervals were equivalent for both stimuli. These results, when taken together with related research conducted with pigeons, suggest that content of memory may have important influences on the short-term retention abilities of animal subjects.     

Temperament Predicts Processing Speed in Low Socioeconomic Status Rural Preschoolers

Extreme poverty all over the world is concentrated in rural settings. However, studies about cognition in low socioeconomic status (SES) children are for the most part conducted in urban populations. This paper investigates, in a poor rural sample, what are the individual and socioenvironmental variables that make the difference in performance in a processing speed task. Forty four 5‐year‐old children were evaluated with a processing speed task; individual and socioenvironmental information was obtained from parents' interviews. Higher scores in the effortful control dimension of temperament were associated with higher performance in the processing speed task. No other individual or socioenvironmental variable predicted the performance. These results showed that effortful control is important in processing speed and suggest that in low SES rural contexts, low effortful control children would require stronger interventions.     

Design and Evaluation of Digital Learning Material to Support Acquisition of Quantitative Problem-Solving Skills Within Food Chemistry

One of the modules in the course Food Chemistry at Wageningen University (Wageningen, The Netherlands) focuses on quantitative problem-solving skills related to chemical reactions. The intended learning outcomes of this module are firstly, to be able to translate practical food chemistry related problems into mathematical equations and to solve them and secondly, to have a quantitative understanding of chemical reactions in food. Until 3 years ago the learning situation for this module was inefficient for both teachers and students. For this learning situation a staff/student ratio of 1/25 was experienced to be insufficient: the level of student frustration was high and many students could not finish the tasks within the scheduled time. To make this situation more efficient for both students and teachers and to lower the level of frustration, digital learning material was designed. The main characteristic of this learning material is that it provides just-in-time information, such as feedback, hints and links to background information. The material was evaluated in three case studies in a normal educational setting (n = 22, n = 31, n = 33). The results show that now frustration of students is low, the time in classes is efficiently used, and the staff/student ratio of 1/25 is indeed sufficient. A staff student ratio of around 1/40 is now regarded as realistic.     

Negotiating femininities online

Much has been written about the potential for online learning (Fryer, 1997 Fryer R (1997) Learning for the twenty first century (London, DfEE)  [Google Scholar]; www. ngfl.gov.uk/ngfl/index.html www.ngfl.gov.uk/ngfl/index.html  [Google Scholar]). However this literature typically emphasizes not online learning but online education. In this paper I focus on the potential for online learning, specifically learning about issues surrounding femininity in the presence of online peers, originally brought together through the medium of the Mindscape game ‘Babyz’. Members of ‘The Babyz Community’, as participants describe themselves, (www.angelfire.com www.angelfire.com  [Google Scholar]; www.mnBabyz.cjbnet www.mnBabyz.cjbnet  [Google Scholar]; www.Babyzrus.cjb.net www.Babyzrus.cjb.net  [Google Scholar]) gain experience in web site surfing and design, email, as well as opportunities to communicate worldwide. This paper, through an analysis of ‘Babyz’ software, affiliated web sites and forum interactions, provides an account of girls' links with each other and their presentations of multiple identities through the Internet.     

Does Institution Type Predict Students’ Desires to Pursue Law Enforcement Careers?

Diversity in the field of law enforcement remains an issue, despite the popularity of the criminal justice degree. Prior research has typically been limited to surveying students from a single type of institution (historically black college & university, mixed-race institution, or predominately white institution). This is the first time a sample of students has been drawn from three different types of institutions. The current study examined whether institution type, race, gender, major, and perception of fair treatment were adequate predictors of a criminal justice student’s desire to pursue a career in law enforcement. Results revealed a significant interaction between the institution and gender. Academic major and perception of fair treatment produced significant main effects in the model. The theoretical and practical implications associated with these findings are discussed.