VII. IDEAL COMPONENTS AND CURRENT CHARACTERISTICS OF ALTERNATIVE CARE OPTIONS FOR CHILDREN OUTSIDE OF PARENTAL CARE IN LOW‐RESOURCE COUNTRIES

Utilizing the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child and the Guidelines for the Alternative Care of Children, this paper examines critical components and current characteristics of alternative care for children in low‐resource countries. It begins by exploring the role of values within policy and practice related to child welfare. Then a brief examination comparing alternative care in high‐ versus low‐resource countries is presented. Alternative care includes a continuum approach beginning with family support and reunification, kinship care, foster care, domestic adoption, and ending with intercountry adoption. Specific examples are provided from Eastern Europe, Latin America, and Africa. The paper concludes with the need for more research related to alternative care outcomes that could inform policy and practice.     

Teachers' attitudes towards adolescent sexuality and life skills education in rural South Africa

This study investigated the attitudes of 43 teachers and school administrators towards sex education, young people's sexuality and their communities in 19 secondary schools in rural KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa, and how these attitudes affect school-based HIV prevention and sex education. In interviews, teachers expressed judgemental attitudes towards young people's sexuality and pregnant students, and focused on girls' perceived irresponsible behaviour instead of strategies to minimise HIV risk. Despite general awareness of the HIV epidemic, few teachers perceived it as an immediate threat, and teachers' own HIV risk was infrequently acknowledged. Teachers perceived themselves to have higher personal standards and moral authority than members of the communities and schools they served. Male administrators' authority to determine school policies and teachers' attitudes towards sexuality fundamentally affect the content and delivery of school-based sexuality education and HIV prevention activities. Opportunities to create a supportive educational environment for students and for female teachers are frequently missed. Improving teachers' efficacy to deliver impartial, non-judgemental and accurate information about sex and HIV is essential, as are efforts to acknowledge and address their own HIV risks.     

Collaborative Batch Creation for Open Access E-Books: A Case Study

When the National Academies Press announced that more than 4,000 electronic books would be made freely available for download, many academic libraries expressed interest in obtaining MARC (Machine Readable Cataloging) records for them. Using cataloging e-mail distribution lists, volunteers were recruited for a project to identify and upgrade bibliographic records for aggregation into a batch that could be easily loaded into catalogs. Project organization, documentation, quality control measures, and problems are described, as well as processes for adding new titles. The project's implications for future efforts are assessed, as are the numerous challenges for network-level cataloging.     

Reviewing criminal justice baccalaureate curricula: The importance of student input

While criminal justice undergraduate enrollments continue to burgeon, rarely do criminal justice departments conduct comprehensive surveys of their majors as part of the baccalaureate curriculum review process. This paper describes one such survey completed by 238 criminal justice majors at Wayne State University in Detroit. Major survey findings are presented along with their implications for student and faculty diversity, curriculum design, teaching and grading methods, student advising, and department administration.     

Facing Disaster: A Tale of Two Colleges,One System,and Their Response to Hurricane Katrina

This article presents three situations (a community college, a technical college, and a state system) and describes the responses to substantial hurricane storm damages sustained by the physical infrastructure in each case. A disaster readiness checklist is provided.     

An Examination of Personal/Situational Variables,Stress Appraisal,and Burnout in Collegiate Teacher-Coaches

Abstract

Following Smith's (1986) cognitive-affective model of stress and burnout in athletics, this investigation examined (a) the relationship of personal/situational variables (social support, gender, and years of experience) to stress appraisal and (b) the relationship of stress appraisal (perceived stress, coaching issues, and role conflict) to burnout. Male (n = 99) and female (n = 115) teacher-head basketball coaches from NCAA Division III and NAIA colleges completed established measures of burnout, perceived stress, teacher—coach role conflict, and social support and a measure of coaching issues developed for this study. Multivariate analyses supported the hypothesized relationships. Specifically, greater satisfaction with social support, less experience, and gender (females higher) were related to stress appraisal, and all stress appraisal variables were positively related to burnout. Contrary to previous studies, these teacher—coaches reported moderate to high levels of burnout.