Minority status,sex, and school psychological services

The sex and minority status of 355 students referred for psychological services from a random sample of schools in an urban school system were examined in relation to the frequency of referral, type of problem, and the nature of subsequent psychological services. A significantly higher percentage of both minority students and males were referred for psychological services; males were referred approximately twice as often as females. When referral problems were categorized as either academic or behavior problems, there were no differences between majority and minority students nor between males and females on percentage referred for each type of problem. Parent contacts were made significantly more often for majority students and for females, and recommendations to parents of majority students were more varied than those made to parents of minority students. Special Education resource services were recommended significantly more often for minority students. Possible reasons and implications of these findings are discussed.     

The Construction of Knowledge in Classroom Talk

Social interaction is important for the development of knowledge (M. Chapman, 1991 Chapman, M. 1991. “The epistemic triangle: Operative and communicative components of cognitive competence.”. In Criteria for competence: Controversies in the conceptualization and assessment of children's abilities Edited by: Chandler, M. and Chapman, M. 209–228. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.  [Google Scholar]). Social interaction, however, takes many forms, and J. Piaget (1977/1995) proposed that the construction of knowledge is facilitated in cooperative as opposed to constraining relationships. These views of knowledge development were drawn on in a study of classroom talk in higher education, namely in 2 first- and 2 fourth-year college and university psychology classes. Classroom talk was recorded, transcribed, and analyzed following conversation analytic (H. Sacks, 1992 Sacks, H. 1992. Lectures on conversation Vol. 1–2, Oxford, England: Basil Blackwell.  [Google Scholar]) and social pragmatic (W. Turnbull, 2003 Turnbull, W. 2003. Language in action: Psychological models of conversation. New York, NY: Psychology Press..  [Google Scholar]) approaches. Examination of how cooperation and constraint were constituted in the corpus was based on N. Mercer's (1995, 2000) categorization of different ways of making reasoning manifest, namely exploratory talk, or the joint negotiation of ideas; disputational talk, or the competitive negotiation of knowledge claims; and cumulative talk, or the uncritical addition of knowledge claims. Analysis focused on the sequential structures of classroom talk in and through which reasoning is achieved. Analysis revealed that most fourth-year talk was exploratory, whereas most first-year talk was disputational or cumulative.     

An evaluation of a support group for parents who have a sexually abused child

This study investigates the effectiveness of a parent support group for parents who have a child who has been sexually abused. The parents completed pre- and post-evaluation packages to assess the effectiveness of the group. The Louisville Behavior Checklist, the Parenting Stress Index, and a subjective evaluation using a rating scale and content analysis were used. The results indicated that there were significant decreases in some of the children's dysfunctional behaviors, and the parents found the group helpful and rated it highly stating that they learned coping skills and felt more confident as parents. The parents' stress levels did not change significantly. The implications of the results and suggestions for further research are discussed.     

Foregone earnings of college students in the U.S., 1970 and 1979: a microanalytic approach

Foregone earnings are defined as the difference between a student's potential and actual income. Data from the 1970 wave of the National Longitudinal Survey (NLS) of Youths Labor Market Experience and the 1979 Youths Cohort of the NLS are employed to estimate foregone earnings of male college students. Estimates are provided by full- and parttime enrollments, and by attendance level (lower-division and upper division undergraduates and graduate-professional). The results are compared to estimates provided by other authors.     

The effects of American Sign Language as an assessment accommodation for students who are deaf or hard of hearing

Students who are deaf or hard of hearing (SDHH) often need accommodations to participate in large-scale standardized assessments. One way to bridge the gap between the language of the test (English) and a student's linguistic background (often including American Sign Language [ASL]) is to present test items in ASL. The specific aim of this project was to measure the effects of an ASL accommodation on standardized test scores for SDHH in reading and mathematics. A total of 64 fifth- to eighth-grade (ages 10-15) SDHH from schools for the deaf in the United States participated in this study. There were no overall differences in the mean percent of items students scored correctly in the standard vs. ASL-accommodated conditions for reading or mathematics. We then conducted hierarchical linear regression analyses to analyze whether measures of exposure to ASL (home and classroom) and student proficiency in the subject area predicted student performance in ASL-accommodated assessments. The models explained up to half of the variance in the scores, with subject area proficiency (mathematics or reading) as the strongest predictor. ASL exposure was not significant with the exception of ASL classroom instruction as a predictor of mathematics scores.     

Challenging fundraising,challenging inequity: contextual constraints on advocacy groups’ policy influence

School fundraising is known to reproduce inequities in schools, yet it remains common practice in Ontario, Canada; findings from a critical policy analysis of an advocacy group’s efforts to change fundraising policy help explain why this is the case. Adopting a discursive understanding of policy, the study used rhetorical analysis to identify how the group has engaged in a decades-long struggle over the meaning of fundraising policy. The findings of the rhetorical analysis were examined in light of an historical narrative of Ontario’s social context to understand how the policy’s contexts have constrained the group’s influence. The study’s findings demonstrate that challenging school fundraising by defining the policy as a problem of equity is not strong enough to overcome neoliberalism’s pressure on parents to provide their children with educational advantages, a trend toward privatization in public education, neoconservative interests in reduced government spending, Canadians’ belief in meritocracy, and historical fundraising practices and dominant meanings. Further, the continuance of school fundraising even after Ontario’s government introduced policy that explicitly addressed the group’s concerns about equity and aimed to limit the practice challenges traditional notional of group influence and success in policy processes.     

Missing Voices: African American School Psychologists’ Perspectives on Increasing Professional Diversity

Since the mid 1960s, there has been a noticeable decrease in the percentage of African American educators. Although a sizeable literature is dedicated to understanding how to recruit African American teachers, fewer studies focus on recruiting and retaining African American school psychologists. Therefore, this exploratory qualitative study investigated factors important to African American school psychologists when they were selecting a school psychology graduate program to attend and their perspectives on strategies that might facilitate an increase in their numbers. Four major themes of Location, Raise Awareness, Recruit, and Support emerged. Based on the results, a three-prong approach for recruiting African Americans into school psychology graduate education is presented.     

Constructing bullying in Ontario,Canada: a critical policy analysis

As the prevalence and negative effects of bullying become widely known, people around the world seem desperate to solve the bullying “problem”. A sizeable body of research about many aspects of bullying and a plethora of anti-bullying programmes and policies now exist. This critical policy analysis asks: how does Ontario, Canada’s bullying policy support and/or undermine critical democracy; and how does it reflect, support and further the interests of neoliberalism and/or neoconservatism? Findings indicate that the policy constructs the problem of bullying as a problem of individuals and a “behaviour for learning” problem. The policy also prescribes standardised responses to bullying incidents. We explore ways in which these constructions are undemocratic and unjust. The findings are particularly concerning because bullying policies are often viewed as innocuous by practitioners. This paper offers more than just critique by providing suggestions for how research and policies can become more just and equitable and how bullying policy may be enacted to support critical democracy.