Supplementation of urban home visitation with a series of group meetings for parents and infants: results of a “real-world” randomized, controlled trial

Objective: Home visitation has been shown to be effective in reducing rates of child maltreatment and in enhancing psychosocial outcomes in children and their parents. Even when available, however, it is underutilized by parents in some urban settings. We tested a supplemental 10-session group intervention for its ability to increase active participation in home visitation, enhance the quality of caregiving behavior of parents, and improve social developmental outcome in children.Method: A randomized controlled design was utilized, involving two separate cohorts of parents of 3- to 18-month old infants, totaling 148 parent-child dyads. The intervention focused on practical experience in promoting parent-infant attachment relationships.Results: At 6 months follow-up, there was a substantial increase in the proportion of intervention group parents participating in home visitation, compared to parents in the control group (Fisher’s exact p = .008). Parents in the intervention group exhibited a trend for improvement in their capacity to appropriately interpret infants’ emotional cues (p = .08), independent of the effects of home visitation itself. Attrition in both the treatment and control groups was inversely associated with income and level of education.Conclusions: Group meetings may constitute an effective means of engaging stressed urban families in home visitation.     

The problematic place of a woman physical education instructor: an historical case study

In this article the author's problematize the position of women in state school physical education, focusing in particular on the ‘instructors’ who were appointed to work with women teachers and senior girls, and prepare trainees at the Teachers College in South Australia. In exploring this little researched area, the article explores shifting representations of the woman ‘instructor’ from the 1920s to the late 1940s, highlighting the interplay of key discourses associated with age, gender, marital status, character, disciplinarity and physical activity. In addition, the authors explicate ways in which these discourses were interwoven in the career of May Cleggett, who for most of the period was the only woman physical education instructor in South Australian state schools.     

When Reforms Travel: The Sequel

In a previous paper, we described the process in which a reform, grown in the soil of one school district (Community District #2 in New York City) was transplanted to new soil, a new context (the San Diego City Schools). In this paper we examine the condition of the reform 6 years later, at the time Anthony Alvarado, the architect of the reform in New York City and its transplant to San Diego, left the San Diego City Schools, and a new phase of reform was underway. From 1998 through 2002, the San Diego City Schools engaged in a dramatic, daring, and possibly unprecedented reform. Their overarching goal was expressed consistently in terms of student learning. To achieve that commendable goal, the District instituted a content-driven, centralized, comprehensive, and fast-paced reform in 1998. We discuss the tensions that were produced when the ambitiousness of a reform outpaced the capacity of educators to carry it out; when the values, norms, and beliefs of teachers and principals col These developments have consequences for our assessment of how reforms travel from one district to another. Reforms that were developed for and proved their effectiveness in elementary settings appear to have limited transferability to middle and high school settings because elementary students’ learning trajectories are different from adolescents and the organizations of high schools are very different from elementary schools. And reforms that privilege the technical dimension of school reform must always be sensitive to the way that interacts with the political and cultural dimensions.     

Chinese Students’ Attitudes Toward Seeking Professional Psychological Help

In this study 1,453 Chinese high school and college students’ attitudes toward seeking professional psychological help and factors contributing to attitude differences were examined. Results revealed that Chinese students possessed generally positive attitudes and their attitudes were significantly associated with gender, prior counseling contact and prior knowledge about counseling and psychology. Previous help-seeking behavior for a major problem was predictive of respondent attitudes. Students with a broad range of help-seeking preferences had more positive attitudes than students with a narrower range. Students who sought help from parents or teachers perceived counseling more positively than students not seeking such help; this result was more significant for high school students. College students’ attitudes differed more in the area of whether or not to seek help. In addition, family structure was related to two dimensions of attitudes toward help seeking—interpersonal openness and stigma tolerance, but not to attitudes toward seeking psychological help.     

Responsiveness and Affective Processes in the Interactive Construction of Understanding in Mathematics

This paper reports on important learning processes emerging during adult mathematics classes that used a teaching approach compatible with a social constructivist theory of knowing. A cyclical teaching model encouraged much discussion about the mathematical problems presented to paired groups. Whole-class student-led sharing sessions allowed students to continue their interactive constitution of meaning and solutions.Comparisons of pre- and post-course scores on attitude and belief questionnaires indicated significant increases in positive attitudes and beliefs about mathematics and about themselves doing mathematics.The overall positive changes in scores on questionnaires are explained in terms of recurrent patterns in thinking inferred from data obtained by observation, interview, and reflective comments. Changes are explained in terms of the interactive effects of affective and heuristic processing during problem solving. Affective processes precipitated students' responsiveness, modifying the immediate learning context which, in turn, influenced the students' thinking, creating a snowballing effect on learning and affect. Changes were clearly facilitated by the interaction between students and by their shared understandings.     

The Research Training Experiences of Doctoral Students Linked to Australian Cooperative Research Centres

This paper reports on the research trainingexperiences of Australian doctoral studentsworking in or funded by Cooperative ResearchCentres (CRCs), notes how their levels ofsatisfaction compare with those of theircounterparts in regular university science andtechnology disciplines and assesses to whatextent the CRC program is achieving its hopeswith respect to PhD training. Findings arebased on data from a survey of all enrolled PhDstudents in two research-intensive universitiesin Australia, together with supplementary datafrom student and supervisor interviews. Findings indicate that in the main, CRC-relatedPhD students fare well compared with theircounterparts in regular university departmentsand that on a number of indicators CRC-relatedstudents recorded higher levels of satisfactionwith their course experience. This situationsuggests that CRCs are playing a significantand worthwhile role in research training inAustralia.