Building Research Collaboratives Among Schools and Universities: Lessons From the Field

ABSTRACT— In a previous issue of Mind, Brain, and Education , Hinton and Fischer (2008) argue that educational research needs to be grounded in the lived realities of school life. They advocate for research schools as a venue for accomplishing this. The Center for the Study of Boys' and Girls' Lives represents an alternative model—a research collaborative among independent schools and university-based scholars. This article describes the Center's experience with democratic, participatory action research. It discusses major roadblocks encountered doing such work, including difficulties selecting research topics collaboratively, epistemological differences in methods and design, the scarcity of time, and resistance to results when they challenge gender stereotypes or the status quo or involve student researchers. The article concludes with strategies for overcoming these roadblocks, including clearer, upfront negotiations with schools and a compact that specifies roles and responsibilities for both school and Center personnel.     

Professional Issues: Alcohol Abuse and College Counseling: An Overview of Research and Practice

Recent research suggests that alcohol abuse is widespread among college students, with approximately 20% of all students qualifying as heavy drinkers and over 40% of students reporting at least 1 binge-drinking episode in a given 2-week period. This drinking is associated with a number of adverse consequences, including sexual misconduct, damage to property, academic difficulty, drunk driving, unsafe sex, and suicidality. This article identifies tools that have demonstrated value in detecting and assessing alcohol problems and summarizes those counseling approaches that have been found to be successful and unsuccessful in reducing alcohol consumption. A major conclusion is that the structure and content of most campus counseling services are poorly suited to deliver high quality interventions for students with alcohol problems. Five steps are identified far improving the level of programming for at-risk college and university students.     

Development and validation of two scales to measure elaboration and behaviors associated with stewardship in children

This investigation examines the development of two scales that measure elaboration and behaviors associated with stewardship in children. The scales were developed using confirmatory factor analysis to investigate their construct validity, reliability, and psychometric properties. Results suggest that a second-order factor model structure provides the best fit. This model produced: (1) a stewardship elaboration scale measuring interest and cognitive engagement in stewardship issues, and (2) a stewardship behavior scale measuring in-park, community, and home behaviors. These scales will be useful for evaluating environmental educational programs focused on environmental and park stewardship. The scales may also help researchers assess whether environmental education results in participants elaborating on persuasive messaging, thereby increasing the likelihood that behavioral intentions leading to behavior change will occur.     

Category-use effects in children

Three experiments examined the changes in category representation that take place when children use exemplars for tasks other than classification. In Experiments 1 and 2, 6- and 10-year-old children learned to classify exemplars of a novel category and then used the same exemplars in an inferential prediction task. In a subsequent classification task, features that were predictive for both classification and inference were classified more accurately than features that were predictive only of category membership. Experiment 3 showed that features with multiple uses were also more likely to be retrieved in feature listing. The findings show that children's category representations are affected by the way exemplars are used after they have been categorized.     

Preparing Community Supervision Officers through Undergraduate Education: A Study of Academic and Practitioner Expectations

Although community corrections courses have existed in universities for decades, studies have yet to explore whether the depth and breadth of academic preparation is meeting practitioner needs. In many jurisdictions across the country, community supervision officers receive little pre-service training, making classroom learning a very important component for job preparation. Using survey data collected from members of the American Society of Criminology, Academy of Criminal Justice Sciences, and American Probation and Parole Association, this study examines university faculty and community corrections practitioner expectations regarding topical coverage in undergraduate coursework relevant to the community corrections field. Results indicate that both groups, especially practitioners, gave the strongest preference to coverage of universally applicable job skills such as critical thinking, written and oral communication, and organizational and listening skills. Practitioners generally expected classroom learning to be more in depth and applied than faculty members. Some of the most substantial gaps in expectations were found for daily routine items such as interview skills with offenders, on-the-job decision-making, providing courtroom testimony, and stress coping.     

The home instruction program for preschool youngsters: An alternative for early intervention

The Home Instruction Program for Preschool Youngsters (HIPPY) is a home-based program in which paraprofessionals from the community teach parents how to use structured educational materials to enrich the education of their four- and five-year-old children. HIPPY was developed in 1969 by Dr. Avima Lombard of the National Council of Jewish Women Research Institute at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. It has since become a national program in Israel for disadvantaged families and their preschool children.Arlene Brett is Associate Professor in the School of Education, University of Miami, Coral Gables, FL     

Conflict Resolution Among Preschool Children: The Appeal of Negotiation in Hypothetical Disputes

Young children's preferences for conflict management strategies were assessed with hypothetical puppet interviews. A total of 48 children enrolled in a university nursery school were each presented 12 vignettes depicting common peer conflicts. Vignettes varied as a function of conflict issue (roles and possessions) and peer friendship status (friends and nonfriends). Three conflict resolution strategies were contrasted: negotiation, power assertion, and disengagement. The results indicated an overwhelming preference for negotiation. In contrast, power assertion was the least desirable means of resolving disputes. No differences emerged as a function of conflict issue or friendship status. Neither were there differences according to the age or sex of the subject. The findings indicate that young children evince a similar preference for resolving conflicts through negotiation and cooperation as has been reported in studies of older children and adolescents.     

Don’t Love No Fight: Healing and Identity Among Urban Youth

A neighborhood in Philadelphia, PA, hard hit by violence, approached the local chapter of Physicians for Social Responsibility on behalf of its youth. The chapter responded by developing a psychosocial after-school intervention for early adolescent males, which participants named Peaceful Posse. Youth showed up consistently for the groups, after school and on their own, sometimes for years. Yet the program recognized that there was a great deal not fully understood about the lives of its participants. The present study used a careful analysis of individual interviews conducted with a sample of boys to extend the program’s understanding. Including the perspectives of these participants offered a deeper appreciation of the challenges youth face when exposed to chronic violence and of their resourcefulness at finding relationships to help themselves through these challenges. Their perspectives helped the program to broaden its understanding of healing. The key role of identity as an embodiment of the hopes of the young men helped the program to better appreciate this particularly important locus of healing for urban youth exposed to violence.Michael C. Reichert is the Executive Director of the Center for the Study of Boys’ Lives, Haverford, USA. Brett Stoudt is a Senior Research Associate in Center for the Study of Boys’ Lives, Haverford, USA. Peter Kuriloff is a Professor in Graduate School of Education, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, USA.     

A Historical Examination of Self-Regulation: Helping Children Now and in the Future

Using content and archival analysis as a mixed method research design, this study addresses the broad issue of self-regulation since this subject area first appeared in the developmental psychology journals, addressing the question of whether each historical period had its own particular perspective on self-regulation, or was there, in fact, a progressive development? This research also explored the historical basis of current perspectives in order to provide background and continuity for present theories and the discussion of implications for families, professionals, and communities in supporting the development of self-regulation in infants and children.