The relation between abuse and violent delinquency: the conversion of shame to blame in juvenile offenders

Objective

While the relationship between abusive parenting and violent delinquency has been well established, the cognitive and emotional processes by which this occurs remain relatively unidentified. The objective of this work is to apply a conceptual model linking abusive parenting to the conversion of shame into blaming others and therefore to violent delinquency.

Methods

A retrospective study of 112 adolescents (90 male; 22 female; ages 12-19 years; M = 15.6; SD = 1.4) who were incarcerated in a juvenile detention facility pending criminal charges, completed measures of exposure to abusive and nonabusive discipline, expressed and converted shame, and violent delinquency.

Results

Findings tend to confirm the conceptual model. Subjects who converted shame (i.e., low expressed shame, high blaming others) tended to have more exposure to abusive parenting and showed more violent delinquent behavior than their peers who showed expressed shame. Subjects who showed expressed shame (i.e., high expressed shame, low blaming others) showed less violent delinquency than those who showed converted shame.

Conclusions

Abusive parenting impacts delinquency directly and indirectly through the effects of shame that is converted. Abusive parenting leads to the conversion of shame to blaming others, which in turn leads to violent delinquent behavior.

Practice implications

For juvenile offenders, the conversion of shame into blaming others appears to contribute to pathological outcomes in relation to trauma. Translation of this work into clinical practice is recommended.     

Pathways to Parental Engagement: Contributions of Parents,Teachers, and Schools in Cultural Context

Research Findings: This study examined correlates of parents’ reported school engagement in an ethnically diverse, rural sample (N = 346) of parents and teachers in kindergarten through Grade 2. Of particular interest were role expectations and family–school relationships in American Indian families, who historically have been marginalized by schools. In terms of role expectations, parents and teachers agreed that they should support each other’s roles, parents should have more responsibility than schools for teaching social skills, and families and schools should have shared responsibility for children’s academic success. Teachers had higher expectations than parents for parent engagement, which in turn was greater when parent–teacher communication was more frequent and the school climate was more welcoming. American Indian parents more strongly endorsed a separation of family and school roles and felt less welcomed at school; ethnicity moderated correlates of reported parent engagement. Practice or Policy: These findings have practical promise given that parent–teacher communication, school climate, and role expectations are more easily altered than are structural barriers that also may hinder parents’ involvement in supporting their children’s early education.     

Significance of context in university students' (meta)cognitions related to group work: A multi-layered,multi-dimensional and cultural approach

This article examines the significance of context in university students' development of (meta)cognitions related to a specific group assignment. For this purpose context was conceptualised at two levels: class (Business, Science) and small groups within class (culturally diverse, non-diverse). Diverging trends in (meta)cognitions emerged at class and small group levels, which reflected affordances and constraints of the learning contexts. The value of incorporating a cultural angle in research on group work was confirmed. Overall, the findings highlight the usefulness of a multi-layered learning contexts design for enhancing our understanding of the developing nature of students' multi-dimensional experiences of group work.     

African American Othermothering in the Urban Elementary School

Othermothering and community othermothering can be defined as African American women's maternal assistance offered to the children of blood mothers within the African American community. Originally traced to slavery, othermothering was a survival mechanism that served as a vehicle for educational and cultural transmission. Currently, an othermothering tradition exists within the urban elementary-school context, and African American female educators play an integral role in fulfilling the pyschoeducational needs of the urban child. By employing a qualitative methodology, this article presents two biographical portraits that examine othermothering by a young elementary-school principal and community othermothering by a fifth-grade elementary-school teacher with 25 years of experience in the urban classroom.     

What supports 11- to 13-year-old Pasifika students in mathematics learning in New Zealand classrooms?

The steepest decline in achievement in New Zealand primary schools occurs in Years 7 and 8, with the greatest decline in the subject area of mathematics. The cohort that achieves at the lowest level in New Zealand schools is Pasifika. This study considers the views of those stakeholders involved in the teaching of these children. It seeks to uncover the positive steps being taken to advantage this group and the difficulties principals, teachers and parents face to improve achievement. One-to-one interviews were used to elicit advice and information to provide evidence of best teaching practices for Pasifika students     

A collaborative autoethnography study to inform the teaching of reflective practice in STEM

The paper explores a collaborative self-study, autoethnography research project, which aided in informing practice for the teaching of reflective practice in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) at an Australian university. Self-report methods were used, because it enabled the collection of a variety of self-awareness data generated processes to help produce insights and understandings. This was achieved by undertaking a systematic approach to the exploration of a critical friendship between two academic support staff members alongside reflections from a recorded, focus group interview with nine STEM teachers. Four self-awareness data generated processes were used: (1) self-reflections; (2) collaborative reflections; (3) reflections on pertinent literature findings and (4) reflections from nine STEM teachers. A thematic analysis of the data was undertaken, which resulted in the discovery of three turning points such as moments of understandings that challenge assumptions and/or lead to new insights. The findings indicated that a STEM-centric, scaffolded approach that utilised the scientific method for reflective practice enabled the development of a shared understanding around teaching and assessing reflective practice for STEM teachers. First, because it boosted self-confidence and second, because it reduced scepticism around reflective practice as a non-scientific form of learning.     

Framing of transitional pedagogic practices in the sciences: enabling access

Educational literature shows that students from working-class backgrounds are significantly less likely to persist to completion in higher education than middle-class students. This paper draws theoretically and analytically on Bernstein’s ([1990. Class, Codes and Control, Volume IV: The Structuring of Pedagogic Discourse. London: Routledge; 2000. Pedagogy, Symbolic Control, and Identity: Theory, Research, Critique. Lanham: Rowman and Littlefield]) thesis that, through differential framing of pedagogic practices, the curriculum has capacity to accommodate all groups of students. Pedagogic practices in both a science foundation course and four first-year mainstream science courses in a higher education institution in the South African context are examined. Whilst the foundation course exhibits modalities that generally favour access, the mainstream courses have some modalities that appear to be constraining. It is argued from a social justice perspective that holistic curriculum transformations that better enable epistemic transitions are an urgent imperative, and that consideration of differential framing of pedagogic modalities offer a close-up empirical means of conceptualising such reforms.