The identity of educated women in India: confluence or divergence?

Under the combined effects of commercialisation, urbanisation, migration and employment, significant changes are taking place in India’s process of modernisation. One change is the emergence of a population of women with degrees in higher education. These degrees, and the individuals’ desire to pursue professional positions that relate to their education, may influence the ways in which women perceive their identity. This study explores the situations and circumstances of college‐educated Indian females’ identity and illuminates the complexities and consequences of the university‐educated Indian woman’s life. Twenty‐five women from different parts of India were interviewed. The findings, which emerged by marital status, showed identities of single women appeared to be influenced by their interest to maintain a positive attitude about life, develop cognitive intelligence that relates to an interest, and explore the meanings of and learn independence. The identity of married, divorced and widowed women appeared to be affected by their goal to pursue an interest; need to balance personal interests and family responsibilities; and obligation to live in an extended family. The results are discussed in the context of shifting roles of women and the adoption of multifaceted identities.     

Behaviors of youth involved in the child welfare system

OBJECTIVE: Using data from a nationally representative panel study, the National Survey of Child and Adolescent Well-Being (NSCAW), we address the following questions: (a) What are the youth, family, community, and child welfare system risk factors that place youth (ages 11-14 years) living at home, who are referred for maltreatment, at increased risk of delinquent behaviors over time? and (b) What promotive factors at the youth, family, community, and child welfare system levels appear to minimize the risk of delinquent behaviors for these youth over time? METHODS: The study uses the NSCAW data collected at baseline (Wave 1) and 18 months later (Wave 3). The multivariate analyses were conducted using a tobit model adjusted for longitudinal data and a complex survey sample. RESULTS: Several significant risk and promotive factors were found to influence the risk of delinquent behaviors over time. Older youth were more likely to engage in delinquent behaviors than younger youth. Girls were less likely to engage in delinquent behaviors than boys. Race or ethnicity did not have a statistically significant relationship with engaging in delinquent behaviors. Compared with neglected youth, youth who were physically abused were more likely to engage in delinquent behaviors. Increases in caregiver monitoring and in the quality of relationship with caregivers were associated with decreases in delinquent behaviors. Youth at greatest risk and those who engaged in more delinquent behaviors received more child welfare services then youth who did not engage in delinquent behaviors. CONCLUSIONS: The current child welfare delivery system emphasizes provision of services to youth experiencing the more serious problems and less on preventive services. The study findings suggest that preventive services when youth first enter the child welfare system that focus on enhancing caregiver skills in building positive relationships with their youth and increased monitoring of the youth's activity may alter the pathway to delinquent behaviors for these youth.     

Eye movements in shared book reading with children from kindergarten to Grade 4

Previous studies have revealed that preschool-age children who are not yet readers pay little attention to written text in a shared book reading situation (see Evans & Saint-Aubin, 2005). The current study was aimed at investigating the constancy of these results across reading development, by monitoring eye movements in shared book reading, for children from kindergarten to Grade 4. Children were read books of three difficulty levels. The results revealed a higher proportion of time, a higher proportion of landing positions, and a higher proportion of reading-like saccades on the text as grade level increased and as reading skills improved. More precisely, there was a link between the difficulty of the material and attention to text. Children spent more time on a text that was within their reading abilities than when the book difficulty exceeded their reading skills. This research was supported by grants from the Canadian Language and Literacy Research Network (CLLRNet) to Jean Saint-Aubin and to Mary Ann Evans. This article was part of Annie Roy-Charland doctoral exam.     

Identifying Best Practice Principles in Working with the Inupiat Eskimo: Building Trust and Beyond

The authors present an examination of established models on trust building issues in multicultural counseling and apply them with the Inupiat Eskimo population. Drawing on the cultural strengths of the Inupiat communities, counselors traverse challenging cultural barriers and develop positive working relationships with families and individual clients within the communities of Alaska. Cultural competence is discussed and guidelines for multicultural counseling are provided. The principles outlined in this paper, whilst developed in this instance in a particular location and cultural context, have relevance for other situations where counseling involving a minority is concerned. The overriding element is working at and maintaining trust, with this being the essential foundation upon which other counseling strategies are implemented.     

Latent inhibition of the conditioning context: Further evidence of contextual potentiation of retrieval in the absence of appreciable context-US associations

Previous research in our laboratory has found superior performance when classically conditioned responses are observed in the training context as opposed to outside it, even when direct context-US associations have been minimized by either the choice of conditioning parameters or extinction to the context. The present experiment used latent inhibition of the conditioning context as an alternative method of examining contextual cue effects in the absence of appreciable direct context-US associations. Water-deprived rats received tone-footshock pairings in one of two distinctly different apparatuses, but all were tested in a common apparatus. Animals conditioned in the test enclosure displayed more lick suppression than those conditioned outside the test enclosure. Other animals tested without the tone present also exhibited more suppression if conditioning had occurred in the test context rather than outside it, indicating that direct associations between the conditioning context and shock had been formed. However, when formation of direct associations to the conditioning context was attenuated in additional animals through extensive preexposure to the context prior to conditioning, more suppression to the tone was still seen when conditioning had occurred in the test context rather than outside it. These results add support to the position that the training context augments recall even when direct associations between the context and the US are attenuated. The phenomenon is discussed in terms of facilitated retrieval of nominal CS-US associations, configural retrieval cues, and conditional discriminations.     

Pedagogical Reasoning: Issues and Solutions for the Teaching and Learning of ICT in Secondary Schools

Confusion has developed over the role of ICT in schools as a result of conflicting messages from government-led initiatives and changes in the technology. Amidst the ongoing debate about the purpose and rational for ICT in schools a subject has evolved called ICT (Information and Communications Technology), IT or Informatics. Whilst the nature and content of the subject has been fairly clearly defined with significant agreement between specifications from a range of countries, the pedagogy is still unclear. The analysis that I present here of the pedagogical reasoning process as it applies to ICT teachers who are implementing the ICT curriculum in England reveals the basis of the difficulties in teaching ICT and leads to the identification of issues for the development and integration of theories and practices for learning and teaching ICT. These issues are discussed in relation to developments in pedagogy in other curriculum areas, notably science, and an agenda for developing a pedagogy for ICT is proposed.     

The Relation of Preschool Child-Care Quality to Children''s Cognitive and Social Developmental Trajectories through Second Grade

The cognitive and socioemotional development of 733 children was examined longitudinally from ages 4 to 8 years as a function of the quality of their preschool experiences in community child-care centers, after adjusting for family selection factors related to child-care quality and development. These results provide evidence that child-care quality has a modest long-term effect on children's patterns of cognitive and socioemotional development at least through kindergarten, and in some cases, through second grade. Differential effects on children's development were found for two aspects of child-care quality. Observed classroom practices were related to children's language and academic skills, whereas the closeness of the teacher-child relationship was related to both cognitive and social skills, with the strongest effects for the latter. Moderating influences of family characteristics were observed for some outcomes, indicating stronger positive effects of child-care quality for children from more at-risk backgrounds. These findings contribute further evidence of the long-term influences of the quality of child-care environments on children's cognitive and social skills through the elementary school years and are consistent with a bioecological model of development that considers the multiple environmental contexts that the child experiences.     

Evaluation of a rime-based reading program with Shuswap and Heiltsuk First Nations prereaders

The utility of teaching reading using rime-based readingstrategies with prereaders was examined. Two experiments are presentedthat studied the effects of a rime-based reading program with FirstNations prereaders; one experiment with Shuswap kindergartners andthe other with Heiltsuk Grade 1 children. Rhyming, phoneme identity,letter-sound knowledge, phonological working memory, First Nationslanguage speaking ability, and reading were measured. In the Shuswapgroup, the reading program increased the abilities that werespecifically taught, rhyming, initial phoneme identity, letter-sounds,and word reading by rime-analogy, compared to the control group.Children also developed abilities that were not specifically taught,final phoneme identity and reading by letter recoding, and could use therime-analogy strategy to read words with unfamiliar rime endings.Phonological working memory remained unchanged. The Heiltsuk childrengained in reading compared to a Grade 1 comparison group. Pretestletter-sound knowledge and rhyming were related to later reading butphoneme identity and First Nations language ability were not. Progressin phonological awareness and word reading can be enhanced in prereadersby adding experience with rime-based strategies to the readingprogram.