Teaching Family Matters

Teaching family matters is a matter of some political controversy. The New Right—both government and ‘pro‐family’ political pressure groups—seeks to reinforce and revive the traditional nuclear family through education, especially for family life. This is a response to what is perceived as the ‘problem of the family‘—the increase in ‘working mothers’ in lone or two‐parent families, and lone‐parent families as a result of divorce, separation, teenage or underage sex. These changes in the family have indeed occurred. The New Right blames previous administrations, in the liberal/social‐democratic consensual mode, for their creation. But no postwar government was committed to transforming the privacy of the family but to equality of educational opportunity between the sexes as a means of improving job opportunities. Such measures left the family untouched. If the ‘problem of the family’ is to be solved, more attention, from educators amongst others, must be given to the ways in which women as parents are denied equal work opportunities because of the need to bring up the children in the privacy of the family, supporting the work of schools. Family life or moral education should aim to leach about equality of adult responsibility for both work and family.     

What predicts injury from physical punishment? A test of the typologies of violence hypothesis

OBJECTIVE: This study examined the power of child, perpetrator, and socio-economic characteristics to predict injury in cases of reported child physical abuse. The study was designed to assess the validity of the assumption that physically injurious incidents of child physical abuse are qualitatively different from those that do not result in injury, that their generative factors are distinctive, and that the quality of caregiving in these two types of incidents is different. METHOD: A weighted, nationally representative sample of 8,164 substantiated punishment abuse cases in Canada was used. Various models were constructed and evaluated through logistic regression. RESULTS: Of six potential predictors - child age, perpetrator sex, child functioning, parent functioning, economic stress, and social stress - none predicted injury to the child. CONCLUSIONS: The findings suggest that injurious and non-injurious physical abuse cannot be distinguished on the basis of the personal characteristics or circumstances of the child or perpetrator. PRACTICE IMPLICATIONS: A common criterion for child welfare intervention into cases of suspected physical abuse is injury or risk of injury. This criterion assumes that injurious and non-injurious assaults are qualitatively different phenomena, predicted by different risk factors. In the present study an attempt was made to differentiate between injurious and non-injurious cases of punitive physical abuse on the basis of characteristics of the child, perpetrator, family, and social context. None of these factors explained the likelihood of injury, suggesting that the prediction of injury as an intervention criterion may be questionable.     

Authority and Authority Relations in Mathematics Education: A View from an 8th Grade Classroom

Compared to studies in general education, authority has received little attention in mathematics education, despite an increasing interest in sociological perspectives in mathematics classroom research. The subject of authority is particularly important in mathematics education, on the one hand, because of the immense authority mathematics itself seems to possess and pass on to its practitioners, but also, on the other hand, because of the anti-authoritarianism present, to some degree, in many trends in mathematics education such as cooperative learning approaches and constructivist pedagogies. Such an anti-authoritarian stance appears justified by data from an 8th grade mathematics classroom (supplemented with data from a second 8th grade classroom) which suggest that teachers possess immense authority in the eyes of the students and that this and other authority relations are strongly evident in the students non-reflective ways of interacting not only with their teachers but also among themselves. However, theoretical considerations on authority show that the problem may not be authority per se but the way one conceives the notion of authority, that there exist kinds of authority, such as Bennes anthropogogical authority, which can encourage reflective and also fruitful collaborative work.     

Child Care for Children in Poverty: Opportunity or Inequity?

Data from a nationally representative survey of child care centers and a 5-site, observational study of centers were used to examine the quality of care provided to children from low-income families. Comparisons were made to a national sample of centers; among Head Start, public school-sponsored, and other community-based subsidized centers; and among centers that served families from differing socioeconomic groups. The quality of care in centers that served predominantly low-income children was adequate, but highly variable, with structural indices exhibiting higher quality than observations of global quality and of staff-child interactions. When compared to Head Start and public school-sponsored centers, the community-based centers had smaller groups and fewer children per teacher for preschoolers, but also had less well educated and compensated staff. Centers that predominantly served children from upper-income families provided the highest quality of care across multiple indices, and those that predominantly served children from middle-income families almost uniformly provided the poorest quality of care. The centers that served children from low-income families did not differ significantly in quality from the upper-income centers on most indices. However, the teachers in these programs were observed to be less sensitive and more harsh than teachers in the centers that served more advantaged families. The implications of the findings for research and policy are discussed.     

Maps & GIS Data Libraries in the Era of Big Data and Cloud Computing

In upcoming years, two major changes in the computing landscape will reshape how map and GIS data libraries (MGDLs) will be required to perform their core functions in the future. These advancements—cloud computing and the “Big Data era”—offer opportunities and challenges for libraries, but most dramatically changes. Commercial cloud computing solutions are available as on-demand service; low-cost, internal private clouds are now a financial possibility. Simultaneously, Geographic Information Science (GISci) data and services have advanced at an ever-increasing pace into the “Big Data,” swelling the types and amounts of GIS data and services available. These two shifts have and will impact the entire GIS world and MGDLs, in response, and will now be required to collect, curate, and make available more data and services than ever. The MGDL community must be prepared to respond and react in order to remain effective. This article explores the evolving landscapes within which MGDLs must operate and examines how their roles and operational organization will be impacted. The hope of the authors is that such analyses will spark community-driven discussion to motivate the next major phase of research and implementation in the world of MGDLs.     

An exploration of female offenders’ memorable messages from probation and parole officers on the self-assessment of behavior from a control theory perspective

Guided by control theory, this study examines memorable messages that women on probation and parole receive from their probation and parole agents. Women interviewed for the study were asked to report a memorable message they received from an agent, and to describe situations if/when the message came to mind in three contexts likely to emerge from a control theory perspective: when they did something of which they were proud, when they stopped themselves from doing something they would later regret, and when they did something of which they were not proud. The types of memorable messages and the reactions to these messages within the three contexts were coded, and differences between women on probation versus parole were examined. Overall, a greater proportion of women on parole recalled memorable messages, and the most frequently reported type of memorable message was behavioral advice. Women reported that the message helped them do things of which they were proud, such as engaging in routine activities and fulfilling goals; helped them to not give into urges that could lead to further negative sanctions or feelings of regret; and came to mind when they relapsed. Practical implications of the findings for training are presented.     

'Classification' and 'Judgement': Social class and the 'cognitive structures' of choice of Higher Education

The issue of social-class-related patterns of access to Higher Education (HE) has become a matter of public debate in the UK recently, but is on the whole portrayed one-sidedly in terms of issues of selection (elitism), and the social dimensions of choice are neglected. Here, drawing on an Economic and Social Research Council research study, choice of HE is examined using Bourdieu's concepts of 'classification' and 'judgement'. HE is viewed in terms of its internal status differentiations. Students' positive and negative choices are addressed using qualitative and quantitative data, and the 'accuracy' of status perceptions are also tested. It is argued that choices are infused with class and ethnic meanings and that choice-making plays a crucial role in the reproduction of divisions and hierarchies in HE, but also that the very idea of choice assumes a kind of formal equality that obscures 'the effects of real inequality'. HE choices are embedded in different kinds of biographies and institutional habituses, and different 'opportunity structures'.     

An Empirical Investigation of Impact Moderation in Test Construction

This investigation constructed four different kinds of test sections using three methods of test assembly that incorporate the goals of simultaneous moderation of three kinds of impact-gender impact, African-American impact, and Hispanic- American impact. The test sections were administered undetectably to random samples from the appropriate population. The results were evaluated by comparison of the characteristics of moderated sections with those of parallel operational sections. Almost all methods of test assembly produced either moderation of impact in the appropriate direction or no change in impact. Taking impact into account in test assembly tended to lower reliability slightly, raise concurrent validity slightly, and maintain the construct measured by the parallel operational section. It also reduced the relative efficiency for test takers in the middle score range while increasing efficiency for those with more extreme scores.