Beginning the cycle of equitable teaching: The pivotal role of cooperating teachers

Cooperating teachers are prominent people in influencing the next generation of teachers because they interact daily with student teachers. This paper discusses the impact of gender-sensitive cooperating teachers on student teachers' teaching strategies, questioning patterns and interactions during their teaching practicum. Student teachers working with these gender-sensitive cooperating teachers were more equitable in their questioning patterns and more likely to ask students (of both genders) higher-order questions than their peers. Concord High School Caesar Rodney High School Glasgow High School Middletown High School Hanby Middle School     

Association between early sexual abuse and adult HIV-risky sexual behaviors among community-recruited women.

OBJECTIVE: The first purpose was to determine whether sexual abuse involving penetration that occurred in childhood only, adolescence only, or both childhood and adolescence differently impacted whether community-recruited women had ever traded sex for money or drugs, their number of recent sex partners, and the number of times they had engaged in recent unprotected sex. The second purpose was to assess the mediating effects of adulthood rape, recent drug use, and recent sex with an injection drug user on these three HIV-risky sexual behaviors. METHOD: Women (n = 1,490) recruited from three US sites were questioned about their childhood and/or adolescent sexual abuse histories, adulthood rape experiences, recent drug use, and adult HIV-risky sexual behaviors via structured interviews. RESULTS: One-third of the women reported having experienced sexual abuse involving penetration in childhood and/or adolescence. Overall, regression analyses indicated a significant relationship between early sexual abuse and adult risky behaviors; rape in adulthood mediated this relationship for all three HIV-risky behaviors. Abuse that occurred in childhood only and abuse that occurred in both childhood and adolescence had a stronger impact on later risky behaviors than did abuse that occurred in adolescence only. CONCLUSIONS: Because childhood constitutes a critical period in individuals' sexual, social, and personal development, sexual abuse precipitated during this time may distort women's constructions of sex and sexuality. Women abused in childhood may therefore engage in HIV-risky sexual behaviors to a greater extent than women abused in adolescence as a result of these disruptions to their development. Rape in adulthood appears to intensify the effects of early sexual abuse,     

Children''s Housework and Psychosocial Functioning: The Mediating Effects of Parents'' Sex-Role Behaviors and Attitudes

We examined sex-typed housework of children from dual- and single-earner families and its implications for children's adjustment as a function of congruencies between children's work and parents' sex-role behaviors and attitudes. Participants were 152 firstborn 9-12-year-olds (85 girls, 67 boys) and their parents. All fathers and 50% of mothers were employed. In home interviews parents rated their sex-role attitudes, and children rated their competence, stress, and parent-child relationships. In 7 nightly telephone interviews, children and parents described their household tasks for that day. Analyses revealed sex and earner-status differences in children's and parents' involvement in traditionally feminine and masculine tasks. Correlations between levels of parents' and children's task involvement were significant only in the case of fathers and sons in single-earner families. Regarding the connections between task performance and child adjustment, we found that incongruency between boys' sex-typed tasks and their fathers' sex-role behaviors and attitudes was linked to poorer psychosocial functioning, a pattern that did not hold for girls.     

Memory and Processing Speed in Preterm Children at Eleven Years: A Comparison with Full-Terms

This study examined the effects of prematurity on 11-year-olds' performance on 2 specific aspects of cognition—memory and processing speed, using a new computer-administered battery, the Cognitive Abilities Test (CAT: Detterman). Preterms performed more poorly than their full-term controls on all memory tasks; this relative deficit was associated with the presence and severity of neonatal Respiratory Distress Syndrome (RDS). Preterms were also slower on selected aspects of processing speed but not on motor speed. Memory and processing speed, taken together, accounted for much of the 10-point difference in WISC-R IQ between groups.     

Excellence in doctoral supervision: an examination of authoritative sources across four countries in search of performance higher than competence

Supervision is generally recognised as playing a crucial role in the quality of a research student’s doctoral experience and their academic outcomes and, in common with most areas of higher education, there is an oft-stated desire to pursue excellence in this important area. Excellence in research degree supervision is, however, an elusive concept and on close scrutiny most of the discussions of high-quality supervision, even those that purport to be identifying excellence, refer to competence rather than excellence. This paper examines two potentially national authoritative perspectives from which excellence in research degree supervision might be explicated (codes of practice and learning and teaching awards) from Australia, New Zealand, South Africa and the United Kingdom but concludes that the complex nature of the activity and the complexity of the concept itself mean that rather than identifying excellence in supervision we can only respond to claims for excellence.     

An exploration of participative motivations in a community-based online English extensive reading contest with respect to gender difference

The purpose of this study is to describe an online community-based English extensive reading contest to investigate whether the participants’ intrinsic, extrinsic, and interpersonal motivations and learning results show significant gender differences. A total of 501 valid questionnaires (285 females and 216 males) from Taiwanese high school students and 15 interviewees from the students receiving awards were the subjects in this study. The findings show that females had a stronger participative intrinsic motivation, while males displayed a higher participative interpersonal motivation. Furthermore, female average scores were higher than the male ones on the comprehension tests. Even though the final results of the total scores for females were still higher than those of males, male scores for the interactivity tests were on average higher than those of females. The phenomena and implications behind the participative motivations are specifically discussed and explained.     

School-Based Consultation to Improve Concussion Recognition and Response

Many students who have sustained concussions return to school requiring academic adjustments while their brains heal. However, school personnel often are not trained to accommodate these students. This exploratory project examined the usefulness of school-based training paired with ongoing consultation and continued dissemination of information to improve both concussion recognition and response among school personnel. A case study design was employed in which a school district received training that was followed by ongoing consultation and continued dissemination of concussion resources. This study highlights the importance of involving school psychologists in concussion management programs.     

Assessing the Development of Young Children in Child Care: A Survey of Formal Assessment Practices in One State

With the current emphasis on program accountability and appreciation of the importance of early learning and timely identification of delays, early childhood developmental assessment in child care centers is crucial. In Florida, a state that supports local control of child assessment decisions, counties were surveyed to determine the specific tools and formal assessment procedures for children birth to 5 in subsidized child care. Sixty-one counties responded for a 91% return rate. Survey results were examined according to experts’ recommendations for best practices in child assessment. Most counties used multiple tools to assess multiple domains of child development with age-appropriate instruments. Many did not involve parents in the assessment process or use tools connected to the child care curriculum. The survey results underscore the complexity of implementing assessment systems for young children in child care.