Multiple victimization experiences of urban elementary school students: associations with psychosocial functioning and academic performance

OBJECTIVE: This study explored the victimization experiences of urban elementary school students to determine whether subsets of youth emerged with similar victimization profiles (e.g., no victimization, multiple types of victimization). It also evaluated whether multiple victimization was associated with greater psychological distress and lower academic performance. METHODS: Participants were 689 fifth grade students from an urban, ethnically diverse school district in the Northeast. Youth completed self-report measures in school about bullying victimization, victimization in the home and community, and psychosocial functioning. RESULTS: Cluster analysis suggested the existence of three distinct youth profiles: those with minimal victimization, those victimized primarily by their peers, and those with multiple types of victimizations. As hypothesized, youth with multiple victimizations experienced more psychological distress and earned lower grades than their peers. CONCLUSIONS: Findings highlight the heterogeneity of youth victimization experiences and their relations to functioning, and have implications for treatment planning among practitioners working with youth.     

Mendeley: Creating Communities of Scholarly Inquiry Through Research Collaboration

Mendeley is a free, web-based tool for organizing research citations and annotating their accompanying PDF articles. Adapting Web 2.0 principles for academic scholarship, Mendeley integrates the management of the research articles with features for collaborating with researchers locally and worldwide. In this article the features of Mendeley are discussed and critiqued in comparison to other, similar tools. These features include citation management, online synchronization and collaboration, PDF management and annotation, and integration with word processing software. The article concludes with a discussion of how a social networking tool such as Mendeley might impact the academic scholarship process.     

Levels of social complexity and dimensions of peer experiences in youth sport

We assessed young adolescent female soccer players' perceptions of their peer group experiences. Data were collected via interviews with 34 girls from two youth soccer teams (M age = 13.0 years). Following inductive discovery analysis, data were subjected to an interpretive theoretical analysis guided by a model of peer experiences (Rubin, Bukowski, & Parker, 2006). Five categories of peer experiences were identified across three levels of social complexity. At the interaction level players integrated new members into the team and learned to interact with different types of people. At the relationship level players learned about managing peer conflict. At the group level a structure of leadership emerged and players learned to work together. Findings demonstrated interfaces between peer interactions, relationships, and group processes while also simplifying some apparently complex systems that characterized peer experiences on the teams studied.     

Determinants of Prices for Contemporary Art in Dutch Galleries, 1992–1998

We analyse determinants of prices for contemporary art with the help of quantitative data. The focus is on gallery rather than auction prices in the Netherlands. We model the determinants of prices on three different levels: the work of art (size, material), the artist (age, sex, place of residence, institutional recognition), and the gallery (location, institutional affiliation, age). Our main findings are that the size and material of works of art, and the age and place of residence of the artist are strong predictors of price; that differences in size and materials partly ``mask' price differences between artists; and that the variance in prices across galleries is largely explained by characteristics of the artists they represent.     

Teachers’ use of their mathematical knowledge for teaching in learning a mathematics learning trajectory

In the past decade, research on learning trajectories has progressed from an agenda for research on student learning to include an agenda for research on teaching. In this paper, we use a design experiment to examine a professional development program created to support teacher learning of one learning trajectory. Using a re-interpretation of Ball and colleagues’ mathematics knowledge for teaching framework, we conducted a retrospective analysis to examine how a purposefully selected sample of three teachers used their knowledge to participate in discussions of the professional learning tasks designed to support teacher learning of the trajectory. Findings indicate that professional learning tasks focusing on pedagogical content knowledge present in learning trajectories also allow for teacher learning of subject matter knowledge; this learning is mediated by teachers’ prior mathematics knowledge for teaching. We conclude with considerations for researchers and professional developers seeking to support teachers in learning about learning trajectories.