Distinct Factors Associated With Head Start Mothers’ Self-Report of Perceived Low Positive and High Negative Maternal Expressiveness

Research Findings: There is growing acknowledgment of the need for parenting interventions to address early-onset behavior and emotional concerns. Favorable child outcomes have been linked to parents’ responsiveness and positive expressiveness. Given the theoretical and empirical link between perceptions and actual behavior, Head Start mothers (n = 114) participated in an investigation to examine factors that may be associated with level of self-reported maternal expressiveness. Participants completed the Self-Expressiveness in the Family Questionnaire (Halberstadt, Cassidy, Stifter, Parke, & Fox, 1995). Analysis suggested that self-reported high negative expressiveness was linked with raising a preschooler with perceived internalizing and externalizing behaviors, high parenting stress, and obtaining a post–high school degree. A perceived view of being low in positive expressiveness, in contrast, correlated with different variables, including raising a preschooler with a diagnosed delay, not having any child receive specialized services, raising only 1 child, dropping out of high school, and not receiving behavior advice from Head Start staff. Practice or Policy: Implications for examining self-reported low positive and high negative expressiveness as separate constructs with possibly different intervention pathways are discussed.     

Grading as a Reform Effort: Do Standards‐Based Grades Converge With Test Scores?

Standards‐based progress reports (SBPRs) require teachers to grade students using the performance levels reported by state tests and are an increasingly popular report card format. They may help to increase teacher familiarity with state standards, encourage teachers to exclude nonacademic factors from grades, and/or improve communication with parents. The current study examines the SBPR grade–state test score correspondence observed across 2 years in 125 third and fifth grade classrooms located in one school district to examine the degree of consistency between grades and state test results. It also examines the grading practices of a subset of 37 teachers to determine whether there is an association between teacher appraisal style and convergence rates. A moderate degree of grade–test score convergence was observed using three agreement estimates (coefficient kappa, tau‐b correlations, and classroom‐level mean differences between grades and test scores). In addition, only small amounts of grade–test score convergence were observed between teachers; a much greater proportion of variance lay within classrooms and subjects. Appraisal style correlated weakly with convergence rates, but was most strongly related to assigning students to the same performance level as the test. Therefore using recommended grading practices may improve the quality of SBPR grades to some extent.     

V. THE NEUROBIOLOGICAL TOLL OF EARLY HUMAN DEPRIVATION

Children raised in institutions frequently suffer from a variety of behavioral, emotional, and neuropsychological sequelae, including deficits in attention, executive functions, disorders of attachment, and in some cases a syndrome that mimics autism. The extent and severity of these disorders appear to be mediated, in part, by the age at which the child entered and, in some cases, left the institution. Here we review the neurobiological literature on early institutionalization that may account for the psychological and neurological sequelae discussed in other chapters in this volume.