Improving Direct‐Care Staff Consistency in a Residential Treatment Program through the Use of Self‐Recording and Feedback

A program for increasing staff effectiveness in implementing a group home behaviour management program was evaluated. The program consisted of self‐recording and supervisor feedback. A multiple baseline design was used to evaluate staff consistency in four skill areas; implementing response cost for the occurrence of physical aggression, implementing response cost for the occurrence of verbal aggression, setting guidelines for successful task completion, and providing feedback to residents. Staff increased consistency in all four areas following intervention. A one week follow‐up demonstrated short‐term maintenance of intervention effects. Results are discussed with reference to future training procedures.     

Effects of 6-month soccer and traditional physical activity programmes on body composition,cardiometabolic risk factors,inflammatory, oxidative stress markers and cardiorespiratory fitness in obese boys

Physical activity is important in obesity prevention, but the effectiveness of different physical activity modalities remains to be determined among children. The main purpose of this study was to compare the effects of a 6-month soccer programme and a traditional physical activity programme on changes in body composition, cardiometabolic risk factors, inflammatory and oxidative markers, cardiorespiratory fitness and perceived psychological status in obese boys. Eighty-eight boys (8–12 years; BMI > +2 standard deviations of WHO reference values) participated in one of three groups: soccer, traditional activity and control. Soccer and traditional activity programmes involved 3 sessions per week for 60–90 min at an average intensity of 70–80% of maximal heart rate. Control group participated in activities of normal daily living. All boys participated in school physical education, two sessions per week of 45–90-min. Measurements were taken at baseline and after 6 months, and included body size and composition, cardiometabolic risk factors, inflammatory and oxidative markers, cardiorespiratory fitness and perceived psychological status. Physical activity and dietary intake were assessed before and immediately following the intervention. The three groups had similar characteristics at baseline. After 6 months, both intervention groups had significantly lower relative fatness (% fat), waist circumference and total cholesterol, and higher cardiorespiratory fitness, self-esteem, perceived physical competence and attraction to physical activity compared with control group. In conclusion, physical activity interventions over 6 months positively influenced several indicators of health status among obese boys. The results also suggested that soccer has the potential as an effective tool for the prevention and reduction of childhood obesity and associated consequences.     

Developing a Graduate Level Science Education Course on the Nature of Science

The purpose of this report is to outline our experiences designing and teaching a course on the nature of science to science education graduate students. By addressing questions related to the creation of a new university course, the design of the course syllabus, and the transformation of the syllabus into instruction, we hope to make our craft knowledge more accessible to others who create such courses.     

Sources of inflexibility in 6-year-olds' understanding of emotion in speech

When utterances contain conflicting emotion cues, 6-year-olds judge emotion from content, even when instructed to judge emotion from paralanguage (Morton & Trehub, 2001). Two experiments examined the nature of this bias. In Experiment 1, priming paralanguage reversed 6-year-olds' normal bias to content. In Experiment 2, 6-year-olds were instructed to listen to paralanguage under various conditions. Children were more likely to follow instructions delivered with feedback than instructions delivered alone. Children who described conflicts between content and paralanguage were more likely to follow instructions than children who did not describe these conflicts. Results suggest that 6-year-olds can judge emotion from paralanguage in the presence of competing content but often remain focused on content because of the way they represent the instructions.     

Classroom Animals Provide More Than Just Science Education

Keeping classroom animals is a common practice in many classrooms. Their value for learning is often seen narrowly as the potential to involve children in learning biological science. They also provide opportunities for increased empathy, as well as socio-emotional development. Realization of their potential for enhancing primary children’s learning can be affected by many factors. This paper focuses on teachers’ perceptions of classroom animals, drawing on accounts and reflections provided by 19 participants located in an Australian primary school where each classroom kept an animal. This study aims to progress the conversation about classroom animals, the learning opportunities that they afford, and the issues they present. Phenomenographic analysis of data resulted in five categories of teachers’ perceptions of the affordances and constraints of keeping classroom animals.     

Supplementation of urban home visitation with a series of group meetings for parents and infants: results of a “real-world” randomized, controlled trial

Objective: Home visitation has been shown to be effective in reducing rates of child maltreatment and in enhancing psychosocial outcomes in children and their parents. Even when available, however, it is underutilized by parents in some urban settings. We tested a supplemental 10-session group intervention for its ability to increase active participation in home visitation, enhance the quality of caregiving behavior of parents, and improve social developmental outcome in children.Method: A randomized controlled design was utilized, involving two separate cohorts of parents of 3- to 18-month old infants, totaling 148 parent-child dyads. The intervention focused on practical experience in promoting parent-infant attachment relationships.Results: At 6 months follow-up, there was a substantial increase in the proportion of intervention group parents participating in home visitation, compared to parents in the control group (Fisher’s exact p = .008). Parents in the intervention group exhibited a trend for improvement in their capacity to appropriately interpret infants’ emotional cues (p = .08), independent of the effects of home visitation itself. Attrition in both the treatment and control groups was inversely associated with income and level of education.Conclusions: Group meetings may constitute an effective means of engaging stressed urban families in home visitation.