Progress report on the development of child abuse prevention, identification, and treatment systems in Eastern Europe

PROBLEM: After the Soviet Union dissolved in 1989, it became apparent that there was little recognition of the problems of child abuse and neglect, professionally, legally, or societally. There were no effective systems or laws in place to deal with these problems. METHOD: Beginning in 1995 the Children's Mental Health Alliance, in conjunction with the Open Society Institute began conducting trainings in Eastern Europe [Journal of the American Academy of Child Adolescent Psychiatry 39 (2000) 660]. Originally 18 countries from the Baltics to the Balkans participated. A program was elaborated which would proceed in several stages: (1) training mental health professionals to deal with child abuse and neglect (CAN); (2) teaching multidisciplinary team work and fostering the development of multidisciplinary NGOs focused on CAN; (3) promoting the self-sufficiency of these NGO's which would then facilitate social and legal reform and increase public awareness of the problem. Specific methods included multi-national trainings, assignment of mentors to the developing teams who maintained weekly contact with the teams and made yearly site visits to their countries, and overseeing project grants from OSI. RESULTS: NGO's had been established and registered in 11 countries, many establishing a network of programs within their countries. By 2000, over 3800 mental health professional had been trained, either directly by the program or by the trainees of the program. By the end of 2000, over 17,000 other professionals (lawyers, police, judges, educators, other physicians, etc.) had been trained by the network. CONCLUSION: While more work needs to be in this region, the teams in 11 countries have made solid starts.     

Poverty Experiences of Young Children and the Quality of Their Home Environments

This paper assesses the relative contribution of maternal, household, child, and poverty characteristics to the quality of the home environment. The sample consists of 1,887 children birth to 4 years old from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY). Ordinary least-squares regression is used to explore conceptually distinct aspects of children's poverty experiences. Poverty variables are found to have a statistically significant effect on the quality of the home environment, after controlling for the effects of other variables in the models. Statistically significant interactions among poverty variables are identified. A major finding is that improvements in family income have the strongest effects on the quality of the home environment for children who were born poor or lived much of their lives in poverty. The conclusion emphasizes implications for future research.     

Girls and Science: Does a core curriculum in primary school give cause for optimism?

The low numbers of students, particularly girls, pursuing science after the age of 16 continues to give cause for concern, despite the inclusion of science as a core subject in the curriculum of primary schools in England and Wales. This article explores the perceptions of primary pupils with regard to science since its introduction as a compulsory component of the curriculum. The findings tend to replicate those of earlier studies, indicating that primary pupils, both girls and boys, view science positively while at primary school and look forward to science at secondary school. However, results show that, within science, girls' and boys' preferences are different. Girls have greater preference for biological topics while boys demonstrate a wider range of interests. Furthermore, the introduction of the National Curriculum appears to have had negligible effect in broadening the interests of girls. It is argued that intervention strategies are needed in order to make all fields of science attractive to girls and that this should begin in the primary phase of education.     

Finding a Socratic Method for Information Literacy Instruction

ABSTRACT

Librarians can find techniques for improving information literacy in Plato's Socratic dialogs. The Socratic Method is an effective tool that can help engage students in critical thinking about their research, guide students to reveal flaws in their reasoning, and prepare them to learn new research skills. Examples of information literacy instruction drawn from Socratic dialogs are given in this article along with tips for avoiding pitfalls associated with the Socratic Method.     

Books and Publishing

Donald R. McCoy The National Archives: America's Ministry of Documents, 1934-1968 (Chapel Hill, Yniversity of North Carolina Press, 1978—$19.00)

Madeleine B. Stern Books and Book People in 19th Century America (New York: R.R. Bowker, 1978—$25.00)

Susan Otis Thompson American Book Design and William Morris (New York: Bowker, 1977—$29.95)     

Early career researchers: Scholarly behaviour and the prospect of change

Early career researchers (ECRs) are of great interest because they are the new (and biggest) wave of researchers. They merit long and detailed investigation, and towards this end, this overarching paper provides a summary of the first‐year findings of a 3‐year, longitudinal study of 116 science and social science ECRs who have published nearly 1,200 papers and come from 7 countries and 81 universities. ECRs were interviewed in their own languages face‐to‐face, by Skype, or telephone. The study focused on the attitudes and behaviours of ECRs with respect to scholarly communications and the extent to which they are adopting new and disruptive technologies, such as social media, online communities, and Open Science. The main findings include: publishing in high‐impact factor journals is the only reputational game in town; online scholarly communities, and ResearchGate in particular, are gaining ground; social media are beginning to have an impact, especially in the dissemination arena; outreach activities have become more important; libraries are becoming increasingly invisible to ECRs; Open Science is not gaining traction; and more transformational ideas are being expressed, especially in the US and UK.