Developing a standardized comprehensive health survey for use with deaf adults

THERE IS LIMITED INFORMATION on how communication barriers impact on the health of deaf individuals. The present article describes the development of a standardized interview tool to collect health-related information from deaf adults via face-to-face interviews in American Sign Language (ASL). Questions were selected largely from existing standardized questionnaires. Key steps in standardizing the instrument included the creation of an ASL gloss version of the survey and extensive interviewer training. The instrument was pilot-tested and revised prior to implementation. There were 139 questions on the final instrument. A total of 203 interviews were conducted between November 2002 and March 2003. A standardized interview survey administered in ASL proved an effective and well-accepted means of collecting health-related information from a diverse sample of deaf individuals. Several challenges were encountered throughout the process, and the resulting lessons will be useful to future research efforts.     

Teaching Future Teachers: A Model Workshop for Doctoral Education

Doctoral student training has become focused in recent years on acquiring subject-area knowledge and research skills, rather than on teaching. This shift often leaves aspiring junior faculty feeling unprepared to address the demanding pedagogical requirements of the professoriate. In the area of social work, few programs contain a structured, required program of study that addresses issues unique to teaching in a school of social work. This article outlines a doctoral teaching workshop as a model framework for social work doctoral programs. Suggestions are provided for ways to incorporate such an effort into current social work doctoral education.     

Socialization and Social Judgments among Inner-City African-American Kindergartners

This study explores the relations between certain socialization experiences and social judgments among poor, inner-city African-American kindergartners. 54 mothers and their children took part in this investigation. Consistent with the domain distinction literature, children made judgments about the seriousness, rule contingency, context contingency, and punishment deserved for familiar moral and social-conventional transgressions. Mothers were queried regarding their child-rearing values and discipline practices and described their children's peer network and social experiences. Results indicated that children distinguished between moral and social-conventional issues when explaining why they were wrong and in terms of rule and home context contingency criteria, but not the other judgment criteria. Mothers placed high value on conformity and most often ignored or talked to children about their misbehavior. More frequent use of talking, less ignoring, and less denial of privileges by mothers predicted children's making the domain distinction. Discussion focuses on methodological limitations and directions for future research.     

Reconsidering Happiness in the Context of Social Justice Education

That happiness leads to lack of harm and suffering, representing both a good and a means to good, is promoted, for example, by educational philosophers such as Nel Noddings. But happiness should not be seen as an unproblematic goal, for education or otherwise. In this article, we critically investigate the importance of happiness in the educational context. More specifically, we emphasize the necessity of problematizing happiness as an emotional practice in social justice education. In order to contextualize our analysis, we enumerate two theoretical perspectives that endorse happiness in education. These are the educational philosophy of Noddings and the paradigm of positive psychology. After exploring how happiness is promoted theoretically and practically, we elaborate a critical perspective on happiness in relation to education. We use the work of Sara Ahmed, among others, to illustrate some ways in which happiness can function to serve unjust relations in education. We thus explore happiness as an intersubjective affect, as opposed to considering it as an intrasubjective feeling. We argue that educators who want to foster social justice in education need to consider the positive and the negative consequences of encouraging happiness in education. Fostering happiness can be progressive and empowering, but it can also be regressive and unjust.     

Untangling Chinese preschoolers’ early writing development: associations among early reading,executive functioning,and early writing skills

Reading and Writing - Despite a growing body of literature in English-speaking contexts documenting associations among children’s early reading, executive function (EF), and early writing...     

Profiles of Parenting for Low-Income Families and Links to Children’s Preschool Outcomes

Parenting is a multidimensional construct that includes practices, attitudes, and emotional capacity. The aims of the study were to examine variation within parenting through a person-centered approach and the extent to which child and family characteristics were associated with profiles of parenting as well as the link between parenting profiles and children’s preacademic skills, language, and behavior outcomes in preschool. This study used data from low-income, ethnically diverse, preschool-aged children (n = 740) and their parents (n = 713) who were participants in a network of high-quality early care and education programs across the United States. Latent profile analyses uncovered four parenting profiles: (1) low enrichment, conflict-oriented, and distressed parent; (2) average enrichment, conflict-oriented, and distressed parent; (3) low to average enrichment, emotionally close, and low distressed parent; and (4) high enrichment, emotionally close, and low distressed parent. Child (age, minority status) and parent (family structure, home language, maternal age, level of education, school/training status, and depressive symptomatology) characteristics were predictive of being in a particular parenting group. Further, parenting profiles were predictive of children’s preschool outcomes. Implications for intervention and programming are discussed.     

CD‐ROM Technology for Education and Support of Site Supervisors

The authors discuss the creation and evaluation of a CD‐ROM to train and support prepracticum, practicum, and internship site supervisors in a master's‐level counselor education program. The authors, from a small, rural, southwestern college, created and distributed a CD‐ROM containing video and document resources for this purpose. Small focus groups were then conducted to gather data to measure the CD‐ROM's effectiveness. Data showed strong support for the use of CD‐ROM technology in providing training of site supervisors. Recommendations are offered to improve future versions of the CD‐ROM.