A binding tie: Supportive communication of family kinkeepers

Families are an important source of social support and little scholarship exists regarding how family members stay in touch and provide support for one another. Kinkeepers are said to provide support and keep family members informed about one another, yet there has been little research on who family kinkeepers are and how they communicate and enact this role. Two studies were undertaken. The first study used surveys to provide demographic data on kinkeepers and to ascertain information on their activities. The second study used diaries and interviews to document the activities of a set of kinkeepers and to describe outcomes of kinkeeping communication. These studies revealed that kinkeepers are mostly females between the ages of 40–59, who use the telephone and personal visits predominantly. Five outcomes of kinkeeping communication were identified: providing information, facilitating rituals, providing assistance, maintaining family relationships, and continuing a previous kinkeeper's work.     

Social cognition in context: validating a cartoon-based attributional measure for urban girls

Standard approaches to the development of psychological measures emphasize the role of the research team in identifying constructs, generating and retaining items, and establishing psychometric soundness. Although there are a number of strengths associated with these methods, the resulting measures may not be culturally sensitive to minority cultural groups. In order to address this need, the authors partnered with African American inner-city 3rd- and 4th-grade girls (predominantly 9- and 10-year-olds) to design and validate a cartoon-based hostile attributional bias measure that is developmentally and culturally sensitive. This paper illustrates how a partnership-based research model can be used to design measurement tools sensitive to the ways in which developmental processes are influenced by an urban, low-income, ecological context.     

Teacher Perspectives on the Evaluation of Teachers

Views on the evaluation of teachers were investigated in a sample of Barbadian primary and secondary school teachers. Their perceptions of existing evaluation were compared with their stance on literature recommendations for teacher evaluation. Questionnaire responses revealed strong support for teacher evaluation in principle, and for general recommendations in the literature on the conduct of teacher evaluation. However, there was equally strong dissatisfaction with the existing system of teacher evaluation, which was perceived to be aimed primarily at fulfilling administrative requirements, with insufficient emphasis on promoting improved teacher performance. Strategies in use did not appear to be designed to facilitate communication between evaluator and evaluated. There were significant differences between primary and secondary school teachers on most of the issues investigated.     

The successful resolution of armed hostage/barricade events in schools: A qualitative analysis

This article explores the perceptions and reactions of school and law enforcement personnel in the successful resolution of armed hostage and barricade events in schools. A total of 12 individuals from three schools were interviewed to determine (1) their salient roles related to the situations, (2) facilitative systemic conditions, (3) to what they attributed the successful resolution, and (4) their advice to other school professionals. Results suggest that establishment of trusting relationships between school personnel and all students is essential in successfully resolving school hostage and barricade events. In addition, respondents discussed the importance of awareness, training, and communications in resolving such events. Implications for school staff are included, along with limitations and future research directions. © 2007 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

TRAINING THE ADMINISTRATOR∗

Twenty‐two teachers were asked to give their opinion as to the ability being tested by each item in two multiple‐choice examination papers. Agreement appeared to be rather low, particularly from one of the papers, but a rigid statistical analysis was impossible because of the difficulty of deciding upon acceptable criteria. The opinions of the teachers were correlated with the facility values for the items and the coefficients obtained appear to support the Bloom taxonomy.     

Through a glass darkly ‐ curriculum control in New South Wales schools

ABSTRACT

This article examines the issue of moral education and especially the role moral educators should take in schools. It critiques a number of well‐known positions, principally those of absolutism, the specification of content and relativism. The author suggests that, though the debate is an immensely difficult one, it is possible to suggest that what we should in fact be doing is giving children in school those attitudes, dispositions, abilities, concepts, skills and other qualities which constitute a good performer in the area of morality. He concludes by providing a list of demonstrably relevant features of this enterprise.