Western European Art Foundations and Publishing

Western European art foundations create invaluable opportunities for research and exhibition by artists, curators, and scholars. These activities are often documented and disseminated via high-quality publications. This article highlights an important but under-recognized collecting resource for academic and museum libraries by profiling several major foundations and recommending selected titles.     

An Examination of How a Teacher's Use of Digital Tools Empowers and Constrains Language Arts Instruction

The Common Core State Standards produce a need to understand how digital tools can support literacy instruction. The purpose of this case study was to explore how a language arts teacher's integration of computers and iPads empowered and constrained her and the resulting classroom instruction. Constraining factors included (a) inadequate technological knowledge, (b) expectations of students’ comfort with technology, (c) inappropriate expectations for assignments, and (d) limited conceptions of the purposes of technology. Subthemes related to enhancement included: enhancement of classroom environment, simplicity and sophistication equal innovation and empowerment, combining tools, and digital tools support multimodal communication.     

A pilot study of a family focused,psychosocial intervention with war-exposed youth at risk of attack and abduction in north-eastern Democratic Republic of Congo

Rural communities in the Haut-Uele Province of northern Democratic Republic of Congo live in constant danger of attack and/or abduction by units of the Lord's Resistance Army operating in the region. This pilot study sought to develop and evaluate a community-participative psychosocial intervention involving life skills and relaxation training and Mobile Cinema screenings with this war-affected population living under current threat. 159 war-affected children and young people (aged 7–18) from the villages of Kiliwa and Li-May in north-eastern DR Congo took part in this study. In total, 22% of participants had been abduction previously while 73% had a family member abducted. Symptoms of post-traumatic stress reactions, internalising problems, conduct problems and pro-social behaviour were assessed by blinded interviewers at pre- and post-intervention and at 3-month follow-up. Participants were randomised (with an accompanying caregiver) to 8 sessions of a group-based, community-participative, psychosocial intervention (n = 79) carried out by supervised local, lay facilitators or a wait-list control group (n = 80). Average seminar attendance rates were high: 88% for participants and 84% for caregivers. Drop-out was low: 97% of participants were assessed at post-intervention and 88% at 3 month follow-up. At post-test, participants reported significantly fewer symptoms of post-traumatic stress reactions compared to controls (Cohen's d = 0.40). At 3 month follow up, large improvements in internalising symptoms and moderate improvements in pro-social scores were reported, with caregivers noting a moderate to large decline in conduct problems among the young people.     

Social class,gender and secondary education in Scotland in the 1950s

Newly accessible data from the Scottish Mental Survey 1947 are used to investigate the legacy in the 1950s of reforms to Scottish secondary schooling in the first four decades of the 20th century. These reforms had sought to extend opportunity for post‐primary education beyond the children of the professional middle class who had formed the largest part of the clientele of older secondary schools. The reforms also provided unprecedented opportunities to girls. The findings of the analysis are that the widening of opportunity was maintained in the stable, selective system of the 1950s. A broadly homogeneous system of academic secondary education had been created for about 45% of the age group, by means of selection at age 12. Social class continued to influence pupils’ progress in this secondary sector, but not to any different extent in the older or the newer schools. Progress in secondary school was not related to gender except in science.     

Learning More About How They Think: Information Literacy Instruction in a Campus-Wide Critical Thinking Project

ABSTRACT

Critical thinking and information literacy are strongly connected. At Washington State University, librarians have been involved with first-year experience programs and with a grant-funded critical thinking project that enhanced the library instruction and outreach efforts and has led to increased involvement with new initiatives on campus.     

Assessing Causality in the Relationship Between Community Attachment and Local News Media Use

Numerous studies have demonstrated a relationship between community attachment and local news media use. Despite calls for panel studies to determine the direction of causality in this relationship, there is little evidence beyond cross-sectional surveys, which are often further limited to single communities. In order to contribute to the debate about causal direction, we conducted a four-wave national panel study with repeated measurement of community attachment and local news media use. Cross-sectional analyses confirmed the expected relationship between news use and community attachment. However, more conservative panel analyses controlling for a lagged measure of the dependent variable failed to produce evidence of causal relationships. The hypothesized role of population density and ethnic diversity as cross-level moderators of this relationship was examined using multilevel modeling. Methodological and theoretical reasons for the results are discussed and suggestions for alternative study designs are proposed.     

A Review of: “David H. Weaver,Randal A. Beam,Bonnie J. Brownlee,Paul S. Voakes,and G. Cleveland Wilhoit. The American Journalist in the 21st Century: U.S. News People at the Dawn of a New Millennium.”

Amy Reynolds and Brooke Barnett (Eds). Communication and Law: Multidisciplinary Approaches to Research. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc., 2006 394 pp., ISBN 0805849424 (hardcover).     

Parental Depression,Overreactive Parenting,and Early Childhood Externalizing Problems: Moderation by Social Support

This study used a large (N = 519), longitudinal sample of adoptive families to test overreactive parenting as a mediator of associations between parental depressive symptoms and early childhood externalizing, and parents’ social support satisfaction as a moderator. Maternal parenting (18 months) mediated the association between maternal depressive symptoms (9 months) and child externalizing problems (27 months). Paternal parenting was not a significant mediator. Unexpectedly, we found a cross-over effect for the moderating role of social support satisfaction, such that partners’ social support satisfaction reduced the strength of the association between each parent's own depressive symptoms and overreactive parenting. Results point to the importance of accounting for broader family context in predicting early childhood parenting and child outcomes.