Comprehensive sexuality education,culture and gender: the effect of the cultural setting on a sexuality education programme in Ethiopia

Comprehensive sexuality education (CSE) is recognised as an effective method of sexual health education, with the school identified as a fitting site of implementation. Its holistic and participatory nature endeavours to develop the knowledge, attitudes and life-skills of students to help them secure their sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR). This qualitative study aimed to better understand aspects of CSE implementation in one context. Specifically, it focuses on the effects of the cultural setting, considering how gender and sexuality norms influence teacher and student implementation strategies. The research was carried out in one secondary school in Ethiopia, which delivered a Dutch-developed programme throughout 2013. Over 50 in-depth interviews were conducted with teachers and students, influential community members and experts in SRHR. Data were also gathered through focus group discussions and classroom observations. Results show that CSE teachers and students, both male and female, were able to discuss issues of sexuality. However, the cultural context was seen to affect interpretation of programme information, influencing the nature of this discussion. For an impactful implementation, it is recommended that sexuality education aims to engage with and involve the wider community, to reduce contradictory messages and increase programme support. Furthermore, teachers should undergo extensive and comprehensive pre-programme training that addresses their attitudes and values, not just their knowledge.     

Information-Seeking Outcomes of Representational,Structural, and Political Intersectionality Among Health Media Consumers

Although the segmentation of publics is a standard practice in public relations programming, practitioners face challenges in using traditional approaches to identify and engage vastly different publics. Responding to the need for new approaches that consider global, cultural, and technological trends in consumer publics, this study provides evidence to a proposed intersectional approach to the segmentation of publics. Thirty-one women of different racial, socioeconomic, age, and relationship backgrounds were interviewed to explore how they perceived their multiple, overlapping identities influence their health decision making. Findings suggest that publics experience co-occurring oppression and privilege in varying contexts: in representations of them, in policies that affect them, and in structures that enable or hinder their ability to improve their health. The findings suggest that intersecting social structures shape disparate health public relations, intersecting policies widen the policymaker–public gap, and intersecting representations reflect a paradox of segmentation.     

Executive function skills of 6–8 year olds: Brain and behavioral evidence and implications for school achievement

Academic and social success in school has been linked to children’s self-regulation. This study investigated the assessment of the executive function (EF) component of self-regulation using a low-cost, easily administered measure to determine whether scores obtained from the behavioral task would agree with those obtained using a laboratory-based neuropsychological measure of EF skills. The sample included 74 children (37 females; M = 86.2 months) who participated in two assessments of working memory and inhibitory control: Knock–Tap (NEPSY: Korkman, Kirk, & Kemp, 1998), and participated in event-related potential (ERP) testing that included the directional stroop test ( DST, Davidson, Cruess, Diamond, O’Craven, and Savoy (1999)). Three main findings emerged. First, children grouped as high vs. low performing on the NEPSY Knock–Tap Task were found to perform differently on the more difficult conditions of the DST (the Incongruent and Mixed Conditions), suggesting that the Knock–Tap Task as a low-cost and easy to administer assessment of EF skills may be one way for teachers to identify students with poor inhibitory control skills. Second, children’s performance on the DST was strongly related to their ERP responses, adding to evidence that differences in behavioral performance on the DST as a measure of EF skills reflect corresponding differences in brain processing. Finally, differences in brain processing on the DST task also were found when the children were grouped based on Knock–Tap performance. Simple screening procedures can enable teachers to identify children whose distractibility, inattentiveness, or poor attention spans may interfere with classroom learning.     

Veiled and overt school choice: A consideration of the ways in which different forms of school choice affect student experiences

Parental choice of secondary schools is central to the Labour Government's education agenda. This article draws on work from an Economic and Social Research Council funded study considering teachers' and students' perspectives and experiences of choice in two locales. Two distinct ways in which choice operates are identified: overt choice, which is parental choice as Labour's education policy envisages it, and veiled choice, which refers to the previous more clandestine operation of parental choice. The article qualitatively explores students' experiences of choice in East Town with active parental choice, and in North Town where there is a strong tradition of attending the local school. For some students who do not get into their chosen school, choice appears to be having negative effects on their experiences of school, whilst choice has positive effects when students attend a school they actively chose and one which is viewed positively by the community.     

Book Review

The following book is reviewed.     

Predictors of Spelling Ability in Children With Down Syndrome

This study examined whether there are processing differences between children with Down syndrome (DS; n = 22; 7 years 8 months to 13 years 10 months) and typically developing children (TD; n = 22; 6 years 6 months to 10 years 10 months), matched for receptive vocabulary. The TD children performed better on tests of nonverbal intelligence (matrices), phonological awareness (sound deletion), and phonological short-term memory (digit span), as well as spelling accuracy (30 single words). Separate regression analyses revealed that nonverbal intelligence and phonological awareness were the best predictors of spelling accuracy for TD children, whereas receptive vocabulary and phonological short-term memory were the best predictors for children with DS. An examination of spelling errors suggested that although children with DS do use some phonological awareness during spelling, deficits in short-term memory appear to limit success. The implications of these results for intervention studies are briefly discussed.     

Kompensatorische Wirkungen von Ganztagsschulen – Ist die Ganztagsschule ein Instrument zur Entkopplung des Zusammenhangs von sozialer Herkunft und Bildungserfolg?

The introduction of “all-day schools” (i.e. schools that provide extended education times and extracurricular activities) has been a major topic in educational debates in Germany in the last decade. One of the main goals for expanding the provision of all-day schooling in Germany was to support the development of academic skills and abilities of all students independent of their socio-economic-background. Based on empirical results of current studies and the data of the “study of the development of all day schools” educational effects of extracurricular activities are analyzed. Typically studies show that extracurricular participation supports social learning rather than academic achievement. Nonetheless, data provide first hints of compensatory effects. Thus all-day schools can weaken the link between socio-economic background and academic achievement.     

The Development of Children's Prelife Reasoning: Evidence From Two Cultures

Two studies investigated children's reasoning about their mental and bodily states during the time prior to biological conception—“prelife.” By exploring prelife beliefs in 5‐ to 12‐year‐olds (N = 283) from two distinct cultures (urban Ecuadorians, rural indigenous Shuar), the studies aimed to uncover children's untutored intuitions about the essential features of persons. Results showed that with age, children judged fewer mental and bodily states to be functional during prelife. However, children from both cultures continued to privilege the functionality of certain mental states (i.e., emotions, desires) relative to bodily states (i.e., biological, psychobiological, perceptual states). Results converge with afterlife research and suggest that there is an unlearned cognitive tendency to view emotions and desires as the eternal core of personhood.     

Child maltreatment and marijuana problems in young adults: Examining the role of motives and emotion dysregulation

It is well established that childhood maltreatment is an important predictor of marijuana use, but few studies have examined the mechanisms underlying this relationship. The current study examines marijuana motives as mediators of the relationship between childhood maltreatment and marijuana use in a sample of young adults. In addition, pathways from childhood maltreatment to emotion dysregulation, coping motives, and marijuana use were explored. Participants were 125 young adults (ages 19–25, 66.9% female) recruited through online community advertising. All participants completed questionnaires assessing childhood maltreatment, emotion dysregulation, marijuana motives, past year and past three-month marijuana use, and marijuana problems. Correlational analyses revealed bivariate relationships between childhood maltreatment, emotion dysregulation, marijuana motives and marijuana problems (rs = .24–.50). Mediation analyses revealed that coping motives mediated the relationship between childhood maltreatment and marijuana problems, and emotion dysregulation was associated with marijuana problems both directly and indirectly via coping motives. The present findings highlight emotion dysregulation and coping motives as important underlying mechanisms in the relationship between childhood maltreatment and marijuana problems.     

Children's shyness,popularity, school liking,cooperative participation,and internalizing problems in the early school years

Aims of the present study included understanding the manner in which shyness during the first year of formal schooling predicts early popularity in the peer group, as well as the manner in which children's shyness and popularity uniquely contribute to later school liking, cooperative participation, and internalizing problems. Structural equation modeling using parents’, teachers’, and children's reports suggested that children's (N = 291; 46% girls) kindergarten shyness predicted lower school liking and lower cooperative participation during second grade through its negative association with first grade popularity. Shyness during the first year of formal schooling may relate to difficulties in the classroom during later years due to problematic peer relations. The indirect relation of kindergarten shyness to second-grade internalizing problems through first-grade popularity was not statistically significant. Kindergarten shyness was also directly related to higher cooperative participation, which suggests that relations between early shyness and classroom engagement may be more complex than previously assumed.