Sibling comparison of differential parental treatment in adolescence: gender, self-esteem, and emotionality as mediators of the parenting-adjustment association

This study employs findings from social comparison research to investigate adolescents' comparisons with siblings with regard to parental treatment. The sibling comparison hypothesis was tested on a sample of 516 two-child families by examining whether gender, self-esteem, and emotionality-which have been found in previous research to moderate social comparison-also moderate sibling comparison as reflected by siblings' own evaluations of differential parental treatment. Results supported a moderating effect for self-esteem and emotionality but not gender. The sibling comparison process was further examined by using a structural equation model in which parenting toward each child was associated with the adjustment of that child and of the child's sibling. Evidence of the "sibling barricade" effect-that is, parenting toward one child being linked with opposite results on the child's sibling as on the target child-was found in a limited number of cases and interpreted as reflecting a sibling comparison process. For older siblings, emotionality and self-esteem moderated the sibling barricade effect but in the opposite direction as predicted. Results are discussed in terms of older siblings' increased sensitivity to parenting as well as the report of differential parenting reflecting the child's level of comfort and benign understanding of differential parenting, which buffers the child against environmental vicissitudes evoking sibling comparison processes.     

Self‐Socialization of Gender in African American,Dominican Immigrant,and Mexican Immigrant Toddlers

This article advances a self‐socialization perspective demonstrating that children's understanding of both gender categories represents an intergroup cognition that is foundational to the development of gender‐stereotyped play. Children's (N = 212) gender category knowledge was assessed at 24 months and play was observed at 24 and 36 months. Higher levels of gender category knowledge and, more specifically, passing multiple measures of knowledge of both gender categories at 24 months was related to increases in play over time with gender‐stereotyped toys (doll, truck), but not gender‐stereotyped forms of play (nurturing, motion). In contrast to the long‐standing focus on self‐labeling, findings indicate the importance of intergroup cognitions in self‐socialization processes and demonstrate the generalizability of these processes to a diverse sample.     

From the frozen wilderness to the moody sea: rural space,girlhood and popular pedagogy

This paper turns to debates in post-critical public pedagogy to focus on how a small body of films might potentially work as vehicles for teaching and learning about youth, gender and space. It is argued that representations of the rural shape what is possible for girlhood, being both enabling and constraining for the subject. Framed by discourses around the politics of representing the rural, a range of popular Australian films will be analysed to think about how popular film might use representations of the rural to educate spectators about girls as ‘successful’, ‘in crisis’ and/or as girls asserting ‘girlpower’. The films include four key Australian ‘coming of age’ films about girls growing up in rural/rural coastal locales: Peaches set in a sleepy town on the banks of the Murray River, Somersault set in the frozen wilderness of Jindabyne in the Snowy Mountains, Caterpillar Wish set in the coastal town full of secrets and lies, and in Indigenous film maker Ivan Sen's Beneath Clouds, showing the Country passed through during a rural New South Wales road trip.     

The Transformation of Singapore's Public Libraries: A Case Study

This article is an overview of the vast changes that were made in Singapore's public libraries, focusing especially on how leadership made the reforms both relevant and healthy for the future of the system.     

Life skills for ‘real life’: How critical thinking is contextualised across vocational programmes

Background: This article presents an analysis of how critical thinking is contextualised in everyday teaching in three vocational education and training (VET) programmes: Vehicle and transport, Restaurant and management, and Health and social care.

Purpose: The main question addressed is: What knowledge discourses permeate different VET-contexts, and hence what kinds of opportunities for critical thinking do they offer students?

Method: The qualitative analysis draws on data from a four-year ethnographic project exploring learning processes that can be characterised as civic education in Swedish vocational education. The analysis presented here used data collected during 85 days of observations of teaching in six VET classes, interviews with 81 students and 10 teachers, and collected teaching material. To explore why some contextualisations provided more opportunities and encouragement for critical thinking than others, we applied Bernsteinian concepts of ‘horizontal and vertical knowledge discourses’ and ‘discursive gaps’.

Findings and conclusions: Overall, teaching that was observed focused primarily on ‘doing’. However, in all three programmes, the analysis identified that there were also situations that touched upon critical thinking. Three major themes were identified: critical thinking related to ‘Personal experiences’, ‘The other(s)’ and ‘Wider perspectives’. It appeared that the frequency and nature of such situations varied with the knowledge discourses permeating the programme. Furthermore, we discuss the manifestations of critical thinking in relation to the wider context of what Bernstein refers to as pedagogic rights; individual enhancement, social inclusion and development of the competence and confidence to participate in political processes.     

Individual and community practices for constructing communicative resilience: exploring the communicative processes of coping with parental alienation

ABSTRACT

Parental alienation occurs after parents divorce and intentionally or even unintentionally persuade their children to distance themselves from or reject the other parent. Framed by the communication theory of resilience, this study explores the communicative practices that enable and constrain the targeted alienated parents’ ability to create normalcy at the individual and online community levels. We also examine the relationships between individual-level and online community-level resilience. Findings from 40 narrative interviews reveal communicative practices/processes that enable and constrain alienated parents at both the individual and online support group levels. Findings also suggest that there is a robust relationship between resilience practices at the individual and community levels. Theoretical implications and practical applications are discussed.     

Gender Encoding in Gender Diverse and Gender Conforming Children

Previous research suggests that people encode gender starting in childhood. The present research asked whether gender diverse children (i.e., children whose gender identity or expression differs from that expected based on assigned sex) encode gender. Results showed that 3- to 5-year-old gender diverse participants (N = 71), siblings of gender diverse children (N = 52), and gender conforming controls (N = 69) did not significantly differ in degree of gender encoding. These results converge with prior research to suggest that gender diverse children process gender in ways that do not differ from gender conforming children, and provide further evidence that gender encoding may be a common aspect of person perception in societies that support a binary view of gender.