New teachers’ identity shifts at the boundary of teacher education and initial practice

As teachers enter the school communities of their initial practice, they experience identity shifts that reflect their learning. Throughout teacher education they have constructed an identity informed by their previous school experiences, the ideas and approaches promoted by their teacher education programs, and an ideal of the teachers they hope to become. The complex set of influences at the boundary between their lives as students and their lives as professionals causes them to confront their identities in new and sometimes disruptive ways (Flores & Day, 2006). New teaching situations introduce them to the thinking of experienced teachers, and to the needs of their first groups of learners, challenging the notions they have so far developed about who they are as teachers (Smagorinsky, Cook, Moore, Jackson, & Fry, 2004). This paper reports on interviews with 35 new teachers as they graduate from teacher education programs and enter the profession, and details their learning about agency and role in community resulting in identity changes within this boundary space.     

Sundials: Ancestors of our clocks

This article deals with the timekeepers of the past, the sundials. Apart from discussing the structure of a few common sundials, we point out the reasons for the variation between sundial time and the time shown by mechanical timekeepers.     

Intergenerational transmission of adaptive functioning: a test of the interactionist model of SES and human development

The interactionist model (IM) of human development (R. D. Conger & M. B. Donellan, 2007) proposes that the association between socioeconomic status (SES) and human development involves a dynamic interplay that includes both social causation (SES influences human development) and social selection (individual characteristics affect SES). Using a multigenerational data set involving 271 families, the current study finds empirical support for the IM. Adolescent personality characteristics indicative of social competence, goal-setting, hard work, and emotional stability predicted later SES, parenting, and family characteristics that were related to the positive development of a third-generation child. Processes of both social selection and social causation appear to account for the association between SES and dimensions of human development indicative of healthy functioning across multiple generations.     

Hemoglobin, growth, and attention of infants in southern Ethiopia

Male and female infants from rural Ethiopia were tested to investigate relations among hemoglobin (Hb), anthropometry, and attention. A longitudinal design was used to examine differences in attention performance from 6 (M = 24.9 weeks, n = 89) to 9 months of age (M = 40.6 weeks, n = 85), differences hypothesized to be related to changes in iron status and growth delays. Stunting (length‐for‐age z scores < ?2.0) and attention performance, t(30) = ?2.42, p = .022, worsened over time. Growth and Hb predicted attention at 9 months, R² = .15, p < .05, but not at 6. The study contributes to the knowledge base concerning the relations among Hb, early growth, and attention.     

Effect of foster care on young children's language learning

This report examines 174 young children's language outcomes in the Bucharest Early Intervention Project, the first randomized trial of foster placement after institutional care. Age of foster placement was highly correlated with language outcomes. Placement by 15 months led to similar expressive and receptive language test scores as typical age peers at 30 and 42 months. Placement from 15 to 24 months also led to dramatic language improvement. In contrast, children placed after 24 months had the same severe language delays as children in institutional care. Language samples at 42 months confirmed that placement after 24 months led to lower expressive skill.     

Emotion recognition in fathers and mothers at high-risk for child physical abuse

Objective

The present study was designed to determine whether parents at high risk for physical child abuse, in comparison with parents at low risk, show deficits in emotion recognition, as well as to examine the moderator effect of gender and stress on the relationship between risk for physical child abuse and emotion recognition.

Methods

Based on their scores on the Abuse Scale of the CAP Inventory (Milner, 1986), 64 parents at high risk (24 fathers and 40 mothers) and 80 parents at low risk (40 fathers and 40 mothers) for physical child abuse were selected. The Subtle Expression Training Tool/Micro Expression Training Tool ( [Ekman, 2004a] and [Ekman, 2004b]) and the Diagnostic Analysis of Nonverbal Accuracy II (Nowicki & Carton, 1993) were used to assess emotion recognition.

Results

As expected, parents at high risk, in contrast to parents at low risk, showed deficits in emotion recognition. However, differences between high- and low-risk participants were observed only for fathers, but not for mothers. Whereas fathers at high risk for physical child abuse made more errors than mothers at high risk, no differences between mothers at low risk and fathers at low risk were found. No interaction between stress, gender, and risk status was observed for errors in emotion recognition.

Conclusions and practice implications

The present findings, if confirmed with physical abusers, could be helpful to further our understanding of deficits in processing information of physically abusive parents and to develop treatment strategies specifically focused on emotion recognition. Moreover, if gender differences can be confirmed, the findings could be helpful to develop specific treatment programs for abusive fathers.     

Conditional cash penalties in education: Evidence from the Learnfare experiment

Wisconsin's influential Learnfare initiative is a conditional cash penalty program that sanctions a family's welfare grant when covered teens fail to meet school attendance targets. In the presence of reference-dependent preferences, Learnfare provides uniquely powerful financial incentives for student performance. However, a 10-county random-assignment evaluation suggested that Learnfare had no sustained effects on school enrollment and attendance. This study evaluates the data from this randomized field experiment. In Milwaukee County, the Learnfare procedures were poorly implemented and the random-assignment process failed to produce balanced baseline traits. However, in the nine remaining counties, Learnfare increased school enrollment by 3.5 percent (effect size = 0.08) and attendance by 4.5 percent (effect size = 0.10). These results suggest that well-designed financial incentives may be an effective mechanism for improving the school persistence of at-risk students at scale.