The Impact of Neighborhood,Family, and Individual Risk Factors on Toddlers’ Disruptive Behavior

Disadvantaged neighborhoods confer risk for behavior problems in school‐aged children but their impact in toddlerhood is unknown. Relations between toddlers’ disruptive behavior and neighborhood disadvantage, family disadvantage, violence or conflict exposure, parent depressive symptoms, and parenting behavior were examined using multilevel, multigroup (girl–boy) models. Participants were 1,204 families (mean child age = 24.7 months). Unique associations between disruptive behavior and all risk factors were observed, but the effect of neighborhood disadvantage was negligible when all of the more proximal factors were accounted for. The results suggest both that children in disadvantaged neighborhoods are at greater risk of behavior problems than children in nondisadvantaged neighborhoods and that optimal prevention/intervention work with these children will attend to proximal risk factors.     

Improving Schools Through School‐Based Management: An Examination of the Process of Change∗

Data from twenty‐two case studies of schools in four North American school districts are examined to assess the process and outcomes of reform through school‐based management (SBM). The analysis is guided by a theoretical model that describes the process through which SBM can lead to school improvement. This model suggests that the formal change in governance reflected in a shift to SBM must first generate improvements in the decision making processes utilized at the school. Better decision making will enable schools to implement needed strategic and operational changes, and these together will help build an effective school culture. An improved culture, along with the strategic and operational reforms implemented at the school, will lead to changes in the behavior of staff members, which is necessary for there to be improvement in various outcomes that serve as indicators of school quality. The analysis of the case studies indicates that schools in our sample most frequently exhibited positive changes in two areas, namely, decision making processes and school culture. Strategic and operational changes were less likely to undergo positive change, as were individual behavior and school quality. However, the overall pattern of findings provides reasonable support for the general validity of the model. Furthermore, the data from this sample of schools suggest that SBM has considerable potential to elicit positive changes in schools. To help insure that such potential is realized, the findings indicate that school leaders must insure that all constituents have an opportunity to participate in school level decisions, that a vision regarding desired outcomes should be utilized to guide the implementation of strategic and operational changes, and that the process of change should be monitored in order to better identify problem areas and allow corrective action to be taken.

     

Learning and Teaching Climate Science: The Perils of Consensus Knowledge Using Agnotology

Agnotology has been defined in a variety of ways including “the study of ignorance and its cultural production” and “the study of how and why ignorance or misunderstanding exists.” More recently, however, it has been posited that agnotology should be used in the teaching of climate change science. But rather than use agnotology to enhance an understanding of the complicated nature of the complex Earth’s climate, the particular aim is to dispel alternative viewpoints to the so-called consensus science. One-sided presentations of controversial topics have little place in the classroom as they serve only to stifle debate and do not further knowledge and enhance critical thinking. Students must understand not just what is known and why it is known to be true but also what remains unknown and where the limitations on scientific understanding lie. Fact recitation coupled with demonizing any position or person who disagrees with a singularly-derived conclusion has no place in education. Instead, all sides must be covered in highly debatable and important topics such as climate change, because authoritarian science never will have all the answers to such complex problems.     

Martha Wright Griffiths: Champion of women's rights legislation

This study attempts to explain the strategies employed by Congresswoman Martha Wright Griffiths in her efforts to obtain women's rights legislation; it relies on a four‐fold typology for analyzing the use of motives developed by Walter R. Fisher. The conclusions assert that Griffiths’ rhetorical efforts evidence predominant motives of affirmation and subversion.