Understanding the investigation-stage overrepresentation of First Nations children in the child welfare system: An analysis of the First Nations component of the Canadian Incidence Study of Reported Child Abuse and Neglect 2008

Objectives

The overrepresentation of Aboriginal children in child welfare systems in the U.S., Canada, and Australia is well documented, but limited attention has been paid to investigation-stage disproportionality. This paper examines the overrepresentation of First Nations (the largest of three federally recognized Aboriginal groups in Canada) children, focusing on three questions: (1) What is the level/nature of First Nations overrepresentation at the investigation stage? (2) What is known about the source of referrals in child welfare investigations involving First Nations children? (3) What risk factors and child functioning concerns are identified for investigated First Nations children and families?

Methods

The First Nations Component of the Canadian Incidence Study of Reported Child Abuse and Neglect (FNCIS-2008) was designed to address limitations in existing Aboriginal child welfare data: it sampled one quarter of the Aboriginally governed child welfare agencies that conduct investigations in Canada, gathered data on over 3,000 investigations involving First Nations children, and incorporated weights designed for analysis of First Nations data. Bivariate analyses are used to compare investigations involving First Nations and non-Aboriginal children.

Results

The rate of investigations for First Nations children living in the areas served by sampled agencies was 4.2 times that for non-Aboriginal children; investigation-stage overrepresentation was compounded by each short term case disposition examined. A higher proportion of First Nations than non-Aboriginal investigations involved non-professional referrals, a pattern consistent with disparities in access to alternative services. Workers expressed concerns about multiple caregiver risk factor concerns for more than ½ of investigated First Nations families and, with the exception of “health issues”, identified every caregiver/household risk factor examined in a greater percentage of First Nations than non-Aboriginal households.

Conclusions

It would be extremely difficult to reduce First Nations overrepresentation at later decision points without addressing overrepresentation at the investigation-stage. Despite the serious needs of investigated First Nations families, alternatives to traditional child protection responses may be appropriate in many cases. If First Nations overrepresentation is to be reduced, child welfare agencies must be equipped to provide supports needed to help families address factors such as poverty, substance abuse, domestic violence, and lack of social supports.     

Critically re-conceptualising early career teacher resilience

In this paper, we describe how and why we adopted a socially critical orientation to early career teacher resilience. In re-conceptualising early career teacher resilience, we expose the normative components of resilience by revealing the implicit values, beliefs and assumptions that underpin most traditional conceptions of resilience. We argue against the hyper-individualisation of the concept because it leads to a diminution of the influence of situational and structural forces on early career teachers’ experiences, and shifts primary responsibility for early career teacher well-being onto the individual. We lay the groundwork for a critical perspective on teacher resilience capable of illuminating the ‘problems’ of early career teachers within a broader social, cultural and political context. Our analysis is designed to promote further debate about new ways of seeing early career teacher resilience with the aim of creating and sustaining a spirit of optimism and human agency, as well as a sense of health and well-being among early career teachers.     

Higher Educational Cost-Sharing,Dual-Track Tuition Fees,and Higher Educational Access: The East African Experience

Three universal demands characterize higher education globally: the demand for higher quality, for increased access, and for greater equity. In East Africa, where resources are highly constrained, no nation has been able to meet these demands on the basis of public expenditures alone. Instead countries have had to increase resources from nonpublic sources, including tuition fees. In countries with strong resistance to tuition fees and where the difficulty of taxation is combined with a daunting queue of competing public sector needs, a dual-track tuition policy is especially popular whereby the most capable applicants are financed from public resources and other qualified students are allowed admission on a fee-paying basis. This article studies dual-track policies in Tanzania, Kenya, and Uganda. We find that although rewarding ability, the dual-track policies did little to offer opportunities for the poor.     

Building With Benchmarks: The Role of the District in Philadelphia's Benchmark Assessment System

In recent years, interim assessments have become an increasingly popular tool in districts seeking to improve student learning and achievement. Philadelphia has been at the forefront of this change, implementing a set of Benchmark assessments aligned with its Core Curriculum district-wide in 2004. In this article, we examine the overall context for Benchmarks in Philadelphia, the expectations district leaders had for the use of those Benchmarks, the supports put in place to assist those in schools in meeting those expectations, and the challenges encountered in that implementation.     

Learning to Learn From Data: Benchmarks and Instructional Communities

This article examines the use of interim assessments in elementary schools in the School District of Philadelphia. The article reports on the qualitative component of a multimethod study about the use of interim assessments in Philadelphia. The study used an organizational learning framework to explore how schools can best develop the capacity to utilize the potential benefits of interim assessments. The qualitative analysis draws on data from intensive fieldwork in 10 elementary schools and interviews with district staff and others who worked with the schools, as well as further in-depth case study analysis of 5 schools. This article examines how school leaders and grade groups made sense of data provided through interim assessments and how they were able to use these data to rethink instructional practice. We found substantial evidence that interim assessments have the potential to contribute to instructional coherence and instructional improvement if they are embedded in a robust feedback system. Such feedback systems were not the norm in the schools in our study, and their development requires skill, knowledge, and concerted attention on the part of school leaders.     

Building Teacher‐Researcher Collaboration: dilemmas and strategies

School‐based and university‐based research collaborations are becoming more common because they provide rich sources of data. Classrooms are complex systems and having the multiple perspectives of researchers from different contexts provides a broader and more dynamic view. However, collaborative research also brings with it some ethical issues researchers who have worked alone may not have experienced before. This paper examines problems of collaborative research and conditions for successful research that arose from discussions among university‐based researchers. The problem areas that emerged ranged across a variety of epistemological and institutional Issues. These fell within seven large categories: (a) definitions of collaborative research, (b) roles of teachers and researchers, (c) time constraints, (d) expectations of employers, (e) whose voice gets heard, (f) openness and trust, and (g) political and institutional constraints. As with any dilemma, there are no clear solutions to the problems listed above. Explicitly considering the following conditions in response to the problems has, however, led to more satisfying and productive collaborative research relationships and products: (a) recognising that relationships take time, (b) recognising the role of disagreement, (c) discussing all aspects of the research project from the beginning, (d) acknowledging the organic nature of research projects, (e) striving to achieve parity in research relationships, and (f) reaching agreements about reporting the research.     

Enhancing the undergraduate student experience via fund-raising partnerships: an action research project

This project was developed from practitioner action research and considers the impact of integrating fund-raising activities into the formal curriculum with a target group of undergraduate students. The main aim of this project was to evaluate the impact of developing fund-raising activities as an integral aspect at both module and programme levels, grounded within practitioner action research. A core component of this aim was to develop value-added structures into established modules to support the student experience and student identity. Furthermore, the project sought to broaden, develop and strengthen links with the local wider community, recognising the value such interactions can bring. Finally, the project set out to develop integration opportunities between the students and organisations in order to develop the students’ awareness of workforce options as future professionals. This study is based within one post-1992 higher education institution and consisted of three inter-related but distinct phases. The project involved 60 students during Phase 1, building to some 200 students by Phase 3. The findings suggest that fund-raising activities built into the formal curriculum can be a useful medium for promoting student identity whilst providing a ‘value-added’ component to existing programmes of study.     

Examining what we mean by collaboration in collaborative action research: a cross-case analysis

The purpose of this paper is to report on the nature of collaboration in a multi-year, large-scale collaborative action research project in which a teachers’ federation (in Ontario, Canada), university researchers and teachers partnered to investigate teacher-selected topics for inquiry. Over two years, 14 case studies were generated involving six university researchers and 61 teacher researchers. As teacher researchers collected their topic-specific data, university researchers worked in parallel on case studies at the 14 sites in an attempt to gain insights into the types and value of collaboration in collaborative action research. University researchers gathered 20–30 points of data for each case-study site (including teacher researcher final reports as well as journal entries, focus group interviews, field notes, video footage and questionnaires). Through comprehensive cross-case analysis, researchers were able to examine common traits as well as relationships between the nature of the teams, the nature of the projects and their relative success, to highlight conditions that led to robust collaborations. Through pattern matching, hypothesised events were compared with observations to test the claim that a triad of relationships between the team, the team lead and the researchers functioned as a positive collaborative force that propelled teacher team success in a generative ethos, even when faced with substantial challenges.