Engendering habits of mind and heart through integrative learning

Students are often exposed to an almost breathtaking array of curricular and cocurricular learning experiences, but how do we help them make meaning of their diverse learning? Simone Himbeault Taylor suggests pedagogical processes that promote reflection across learning experiences in a student‐centered approach to integrate learning.     

Students’ perceptions of classroom instructional environments in the context of ‘Universal Design for Learning’

Using a sample of 867 students in Grades 5–12, the present study investigated whether students’ perceptions toward the instructional environment in classrooms that employed Universal Design for Learning differed by school grade level and teacher gender. High-school students in the study showed higher perception scores than upper-elementary or middle-school students in the personalisation and participation aspect of the classroom environment. The results for teacher gender indicated that students in the study perceived a more personalised classroom environment with female teachers than with male teachers. Policy implications and methodological considerations are provided for future study.     

A Dual Identity Approach for Conceptualizing and Measuring Children's Gender Identity

The goal was to test a new dual identity perspective on gender identity by asking children (n = 467) in three grades (M_age = 5.7, 7.6, 9.5) to consider the relation of the self to both boys and girls. This change shifted the conceptualization of gender identity from one to two dimensions, provided insights into the meaning and measurement of gender identity, and allowed for revisiting ideas about the roles of gender identity in adjustment. Using a graphical measure to allow assessment of identity in young children and cluster analyses to determine types of identity, it was found that individual and developmental differences in how similar children feel to both genders, and these variations matter for many important personal and social outcomes.     

Classroom behavior of children and adolescents with learning disabilities: a meta-analysis

Meta-analysis was used to review the results of 25 studies that compared the classroom behavior of children and adolescents with learning disabilities (LD) to children without learning disabilities. The data were analyzed from several different methodological perspectives. Results showed that both methodologically strong and weak studies demonstrated significant behavioral deficits of children with learning disabilities compared to their nondisabled peers in each of five overall areas: on-task behavior, off-task behavior, conduct disorders, distractibility, and shy/withdrawn behavior. Both observational and teacher rating data demonstrated these differences. Effect sizes for both groups of studies seemed to cluster around 1 standard deviation, suggesting noticeable and educationally significant impairment in the behavior of children with disabilities. Analysis of grade-level effect sizes suggests some explanation for the large number of referrals often witnessed during the elementary school years. Educational implications of these behavioral differences in terms of implications for mainstreaming are discussed.     

The expert witness in child abuse and neglect: An interdisciplinary process

The legal system is an important part of a society's response to child abuse and child neglect. Courts need to be guided in their deliberations by experts from many different professions. Consultation and in-court expert testimony is necessary from medicine, psychology, psychiatry, social work and other professions both to prove child abuse and neglect and establish the power of the court to act on behalf of a child but also to guide the court in the intervention strategy most suited to the needs of the child and his family. Non-lawyers often feel uncomfortable in the legal setting. The adversary process is foreign to their training and professional experience. Collaboration with a lawyer greatly improves their effectiveness in court. Lawyers, on the other hand, need to make maximum use of medical and social-psychological experts in the court process in the interests of their clients; but to do so lawyers need a basic understanding of the other professions. With an emphasis on a process of mutual education, the paper presents a framework for collaboration between lawyers and expert witnesses in child abuse and neglect cases. “Expert witness” is defined; informal consultation is encouraged; suggestions for selecting a collaborator are made; initial contracts between lawyer and expert, case conferencing and preparation for trial are discussed; specific advice on direct and cross examination is provided.     

Unfolding Case‐Based Practicum Curriculum Infusing Crisis,Trauma, and Disaster Preparation

The authors evaluated an unfolding case‐based approach to a practicum in counseling course infusing crisis, trauma, and disaster preparation for changes in students’ crisis self‐efficacy across a semester. The course, informed by constructivist‐developmental pedagogy and centered on the unfolding case, resulted in significant increases in students’ crisis self‐efficacy.     

Preschoolers perceptions of the unfairness of maternal disciplinary practices

OBJECTIVE: The aim of this study was to examine preschoolers' perceptions of maternal discipline's unfairness. The participants' gender, age, SES, family intactness and sibship size were examined for their possible relevance to such perceptions. METHOD: Five vignettes, describing forms of discipline the literature suggests constitute psychological maltreatment, were presented to 57 preschoolers (27 boys and 30 girls). They included excessive withdrawal of privileges, withdrawal of entertainment, differential treatment of siblings, threatening power assertion, and public humiliation. The children had to decide on the fairness or unfairness of each vignette in which a child was disciplined in each of these ways by his/her mother. They were then asked to offer an explanation for each of their choices. RESULTS: Of the five forms of discipline employed in the vignettes, children judged differential treatment of siblings as more unfair than either power assertion (threatening spanking), or public humiliation. No differences were found for withdrawal of privileges or entertainment. Of the various predictor variables employed, preschoolers from smaller families were more likely to judge threatening to spank as unfair. As well, compared to boys, girls and children from larger families were more likely to judge differential treatment as unfair. Age, SES, and family intactness had no effect on discipline judgements likely because of their limited range. CONCLUSIONS: The findings suggest that preschoolers can offer views on the fairness or unfairness of parental disciplinary practices, and can differentiate among them. Further, not all forms of parental discipline were viewed by preschoolers as unfair. Yet it has to be appreciated that the vignettes employed here were adapted for younger children, hence they may not have appeared as negative as in studies involving older children and adults.     

How infants use vision for grasping objects

The role of vision was examined as infants prepared to grasp horizontally and vertically oriented rods. Hand orientation was measured prior to contact to determine if infants differentially oriented their hands relative to the object's orientation. Infants reached for rods under different lighting conditions. Three experiments are reported in which (1) sight of the hand was removed (N = 12), (2) sight of the object was removed near the end of the reach (N = 40, including 10 adults), and (3) sight of the object was removed prior to reach onset (N = 9). Infants differentially oriented their hand to a similar extent regardless of lighting condition and similar to control conditions in which they could see the rod and hand throughout the reach. In preparation for reaching, infants may use the current sight of the object's orientation, or the memory of it, to orient the hand for grasping; sight of the hand had no effect on hand orientation.