Crying in the first 12 months of life: A systematic review and meta-analysis of cross-country parent-reported data and modeling of the “cry curve”

Crying is an ubiquitous communicative signal in infancy. This meta-analysis synthesizes data on parent-reported infant cry durations from 17 countries and 57 studies until infant age 12 months (N = 7580, 54% female from k = 44; majority White samples, where reported, k = 18), from studies before the end Sept. 2020. Most studies were conducted in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Canada (k = 32), and at the traditional cry “peak” (age 5–6 weeks), where the pooled estimate for cry and fuss duration was 126 mins (SD = 61), with high heterogeneity. Formal modeling of the meta-analytic data suggests that the duration of crying remains substantial in the first year of life, after an initial decline.     

What Are They Thinking? Dental Assisting Students' Feelings About E-Books

Electronic textbook usage is increasing within higher education while use of traditional textbooks is declining. While some research concerning student preference for textbook type provides insight into student choices, there is a gap in the literature regarding use of electronic textbooks within dental assisting programs. The purpose of this study was to explore dental assisting students’ preferences regarding electronic textbook usage during their professional education. Two questionnaires were administered to a group of dental assisting students to ascertain their preferences. One questionnaire was given during the Dental Assisting Program orientation at the beginning of the academic year. The second questionnaire was administered at the conclusion of a nine-month dental assisting curriculum in which students were required to use electronic textbooks for approximately half of their courses. Results from the questionnaires indicated that while students were open to the idea of electronic textbooks and willing to use them prior to beginning in the Dental Assisting Program, at the conclusion of the Program they overwhelmingly preferred to use traditional print textbooks.     

Social origins,school type and higher education destinations

To what extent and why do social origins matter for access to higher education, including access to elite universities? What is the role of private and selective schooling? This paper uses the 1970 British Cohort Study (BCS70) to analyse the trajectories of a generation currently in early middle age. We find that the influence of social origins, especially parental education, remains when both a wide range of cognitive measures and school attainment are controlled. Attending a private school is powerfully predictive of gaining a university degree, and especially a degree from an elite institution, while grammar schooling does not appear to confer any advantage.     

Resisting the Tick Box: Reflexive Use of Educational Technologies in Developing Student Identities and Challenging Higher Education Constructions of Disability Based on Notions of Conformity and Consistency

For many students, impairments such as chronic fatigue syndrome/myalgic encephalomyelitis, epilepsy, or diabetes have the potential to vary in intensity, and thus impact, on participation in learning activities and on self-perception/identity. This article considers some of the factors that may be of influence on the ways in which students with such fluctuating or recurring impairments enact identity within higher education in the United Kingdom. In particular, the article highlights the potential role of higher education discourses based on notions of consistency and conformity in constructing disablement in finite ways. It also reviews the potential for reflexive use of communication technologies in offering students ways of promoting or masking selected aspects of identity. The article concludes with some insights into possibilities for the use of online communication modes in offering flexibility and autonomy in managing student identity and challenging institutional discourses of disability as fixed or finite.     

The influence of context,timing, and duration of risk experiences for the passage from childhood to midadulthood

This study investigated the long-term effects of social disadvantage on academic achievement and on subsequent attainments in adulthood. The study drew on data collected for over 30,000 individuals born 12 years apart, following their development from birth to adulthood. The pathways that link social disadvantage to individual development across the life course were analyzed in a developmental-contextual systems model. The results showed that the influence of risk factors associated with socioeconomic disadvantage depended on the developmental stage of the individual, the experience of long-term or continuous disadvantage, and the overall sociohistorical context. Early risk had a moderate influence on the formation of individual competences. The greatest risk was associated with persisting and accumulating experiences of socioeconomic disadvantage throughout childhood and adolescence. Material conditions improved for the later-born cohort, yet pervasive social inequalities existed that affected outcomes during childhood and were consequently reflected in adult attainment.     

The impact of society on educational technology

Much has been written about the impact of the new technologies on society by Jacques Ellul, Stafford Beer, and many others. But there has been very littleanalysis of the reverse—the impact of evolving commercial, political, and institutional interests, and their ideologies, on the development of technology. Educational technology in particular has been and is being shaped by these societal forces.
This article presents a theoretical perspective on the interaction and gives several instances of cultural impact on the development of computer/video-mediated educational technology in the US, Japan, and the United Kingdom.
Increased awareness of societal shaping should lead us to new research areas, and ultimately to more democratic, more fruitful, and more viable educational innovations.     

The effect of neighborhood racial composition on black and white attitudes

The impact of the racial composition of neighborhoods, rather than race per se, is examined in this study. The sample includes 1027 families with children attending 5 of the 11 former school districts in New Castle County, Delaware. Questionnaires were sent to these families in the spring of 1978, prior to school desegregation, and again in the spring of 1979, at the end of the first year of desegregation. Scales were developed to measure attitudinal variables for both parents and students. These included racial attitudes, attitudes toward school desegregation, and attitudes about education. Results show that attitudes both before and after desegregation varied according to the neighborhood racial composition. Thus it is important in future studies of racial attitudes to examine neighborhood racial characteristics as well as the race of the individual.This research has been supported by a grant from the Rockefeller Foundation, Division of Social Sciences.     

Study orchestration and learning outcome: evidence of association over time among disadvantaged students

This study explores, for the first time, the study orchestrations of (mostly Black) engineering students who enter an academic support programme in their first year at university at an educational disadvantage by virtue of their exposure to an inferior, racially determined school education.The empirical manifestation, and the stability over time, of their study orchestrations is described, and the association between their study orchestrations and learning outcome is investigated.It is concluded that the manifestation of individual study orchestrations of these particular educationally disadvantaged engineering students, as well as the association between their study orchestrations and their learning outcomes, is essentially similar to that of other students; academic success is associated with theoretically desirable study orchestrations - particularly when these are manifested early on in the programme since they remain essentially stable over time. Where changes do occur over time they are generally of a theoretically desirable nature and, to a lesser extent, where theoretically undesirable changes occur they appear to be associated with a decline in academic achievement.The implications of these conclusions for academic support programmes and for future research are discussed in so far as they impinge on admissions procedures, the identification of potentially at risk students early on in the academic year and explicit provisions of intervention mechanisms to assist such students.     

A childbirth educator speaks out for increased advocacy for normal birth

Upon noting that, over the years, normal birth has become less and less a cultural norm in the United States (where cesarean births now approach 30%), a childbirth educator speaks out to say it is time for normal-birth advocates to organize in order to increase efforts at social marketing of normal birth as a cultural norm.