Gender roles and the American academe: a case study of graduate student mothers

Studies have found that motherhood is significantly associated with attrition for female graduate students in the United States. Few, however, have examined this phenomenon from the point of view of current students. Utilizing data from 30 in‐depth interviews with student mothers from a number of academic fields, this study details both the structural environments and the socio‐cultural constructs that affect the women’s daily experiences. The data highlight the fact that the symbolic nature of both roles – mother and student – is often in conflict with the structural elements around which each role is performed. Student mothers confront this dilemma through a number of strategic practices including ‘maternal invisibility’, ‘academic invisibility’, luck, and reliance on the more traditional means of economic and emotional support that come from spouses and parents. In detailing these practices, the study offers both important clues about the factors that may contribute to attrition for graduate student mothers as well as suggestions for institutional improvement.     

Child abuse before Kempe: an historical literature review

This literature review traces the recognition of child abuse and ends where many texts begin with the publication of Henry Kempe's paper in 1962, where the term, "battered child syndrome," was used for the first time. Starting with the first known treatise in pediatrics, the review examines evidence produced throughout the centuries on the recognition of physical child abuse. Many of the references are medical and show how while the early physicians found it easy to accept that those caring for children might injure them, by the end of the 19th century, more obscure diagnoses were being sought to explain the lesions. However, even during the time some physicians were pursuing "scientific" etiologies, there are publications that demonstrate a continuing acknowledgment of the problem of child abuse. No review of this type can claim to be complete, and the author hopes others will be sufficiently interested to seek out further historical references.     

Prenatal cocaine exposure: a comparison of 2-year-old children in parental and nonparental care

Effects of prenatal cocaine exposure and parental versus nonparental care on outcome at 2 years of age were examined. The sample included 83 cocaine-exposed and 63 nonexposed children and their caregivers; 49 and 34 of the cocaine-exposed children experienced parental and nonparental care, respectively. Prenatal drug exposure was not related directly to children's outcome at 2 years of age. However, compared with cocaine-exposed children in parental care, those in nonparental care experienced a more optimal environment and performed better in several developmental domains at 2 years of age in spite of being at greater neonatal risk. Further analyses suggested that this protective effect of nonparental care was in part due to nonkin rather than kin care.     

Reproduction: the role of cultural factors and educational mediators

To understand the processes of reproduction in education one must not only take account of the resistances of subordinated groups, but also of the counter‐resistance which develops in response to these. Proponents of resistance theory have tended to ignore the responses of powerful groups to emerging resistances. Two major reasons are suggested for this, one being the failure of reproduction theorists to take cognisance of unique cultural and political contexts within which reproduction takes place, and the other being the lack of attention given to educational mediators. Taking the case of Irish second‐level education, it is shown how unique cultural, historical and political forces contribute to the development of counter‐resistance. In particular, it is suggested that the post‐colonial status of the country is central to understanding the reproduction processes within it. The paper also highlights the inadequacy of defining the parameters of the reproduction debate in terms of an interplay of interests between social classes and the State alone. While the State and social classes are key actors in the educational site, so are educational mediators, viz. those who manage and administer educational services on a day‐to‐day basis. It is proposed that educational mediators (whose character varies from one society to another) are often powerful agents of counter‐resistance.     

Accounting for the Relationship Between Initial Status and Growth in Regression Models

Educational analysts studying achievement and other educational outcomes frequently encounter an association between initial status and growth, which has important implications for the analysis of covariate effects, including group differences in growth. As explicated by Allison (1990 Allison, P. D. (1990). Change scores as dependent variables in regression analyses. Sociological Methodology, 20, 93–114.[Crossref] , [Google Scholar]), where only two time points of data are available, identifying a preferred model can be difficult or impossible. In this paper we extend Allison's inquiry by considering multiple sources of the association between initial status and growth simultaneously, including measurement error but also intrinsic associations between initial status and growth. We illustrate the potential trade-offs between the change-score model specifications (models without a control for initial status) and regressor-variable specifications (with a control for initial status) using simulated data.     

Retrieval Practice Benefits Deductive Inference

Retrieval practice has been shown to benefit learning. However, the benefit has sometimes been attenuated with more complex materials that require integrating multiple units of information. Critically, Tran et al. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 22, 135–140 (2015) found that retrieval practice improves sentence memory but not the drawing of inferences from the same sentences. In three experiments, we investigated whether this lack of benefit of retrieval practice for inferential ability was due to the presentation format of the material. Participants studied four sets of seven to nine related sentences by practicing retrieval for two sets and rereading the other two sets. A final test was given 2 days later. When sentences were presented one at a time during study/practice as in Tran et al., we found no effect of retrieval practice on a test requiring inferential reasoning. When sentences in a set were presented simultaneously during study/practice, retrieval practice in the form of fill-in-the-blank testing (experiments 1 and 2) and free recall (experiment 3) aided later deductive inference more than rereading. Our findings suggest that retrieval practice can improve deductive inference, but in order to optimize its utility, the format in which the material is presented during practice must not hinder relational processing of the individual sentences.