The Favelas Through the Lenses of Photographers

Photographers from community and mainstream media organisations bring the everyday of favela communities to the attention of Rio de Janeiro's society from different perspectives. While mainstream photojournalists mainly report on favelas from outside to inside, denouncing wrongdoings and human rights abuses, community photographers do it from the opposite direction, from inside to outside, presenting images of the everyday life of favela communities. This paper takes an ethnographic and discursive approach to comparing these two categories of photographers to ask how their different practices can yield benefits for the people living in marginalised communities. Furthermore, by adapting Foucault and Bourdieu's theories, this study examines photographers’ habitus so as to determine how cultural capital and economic capital that they possess shape their subjectivity and, as such, the fields of community and mainstream photojournalism. This study has no intention of creating polarised distinctions between community and mainstream photojournalism. Instead, the research aims, through the investigation of the working practices, identities, and discourses of photographers from community and mainstream media organisations, to identify the activities and limitations of both community and mainstream in order to build an understanding about how the media ecology works best within both.     

Spatial Thinking in Practice: A Snapshot of teacher's Spatial Activity Use in the Early Years' Classroom

Spatial thinking predicts Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics achievement, yet is often absent from educational policy. We provide benchmarks of teachers' usage and perceptions of spatial activities in practice in the reception classroom (first year of primary school). In this questionnaire study of educational professionals working in the reception classroom in England (N = 104), we found that spatial and numeracy activities were perceived as significantly less important, and were reportedly completed significantly less often, than literacy or life skills. Despite the lower perceived importance of spatial skills in curriculum guidance in England, rates of reported spatial activity use were encouragingly high and were broadly comparable to those of numeracy. Teachers had moderate anxiety levels for both spatial and mathematics domains. The findings highlight a need to elevate teachers' understanding of the importance of developing children's early spatial and numeracy skills, which may begin with efforts to reduce spatial and mathematics anxiety.     

Social origins,school type and higher education destinations

To what extent and why do social origins matter for access to higher education, including access to elite universities? What is the role of private and selective schooling? This paper uses the 1970 British Cohort Study (BCS70) to analyse the trajectories of a generation currently in early middle age. We find that the influence of social origins, especially parental education, remains when both a wide range of cognitive measures and school attainment are controlled. Attending a private school is powerfully predictive of gaining a university degree, and especially a degree from an elite institution, while grammar schooling does not appear to confer any advantage.     

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.     

Responding to Poverty and Its Complex Challenges: The Importance of Policy Fluency for Educational Leaders

We present a case example of a school leader whose understanding of both in- and out-of-school policies and issues supported 2 students who experienced severe trauma. We describe some of the principal's key beliefs and practices that led to the development of a justice-oriented school, and then contextualize her work in a “social frontiers” perspective. We conclude by suggesting that, especially in contexts where poverty affects many students, school leaders must go beyond school walls to cultivate appropriately responsive systems of practice that allow all students to thrive.     

The impact of childhood abuse on inpatient substance users: Specific links with risky sex,aggression, and emotion dysregulation

Adults with substance use disorders (SUDs) report a high prevalence of childhood abuse. Research in the general population suggests specific types of abuse lead to particular negative outcomes; it is not known whether this pattern holds for adults with SUDs. We hypothesized that specific types of abuse would be associated with particular behavioral and emotional outcomes among substance users. That is, childhood sexual abuse would be associated with risky sex behaviors, childhood physical abuse with aggression, and childhood emotional abuse with emotion dysregulation. 280 inpatients (M age = 43.3; 69.7% male; 88.4% African American) in substance use treatment completed the Childhood Trauma Questionnaire (CTQ), HIV Risk-Taking Behavior Scale, Addiction Severity Index, Difficulties with Emotion Regulation Scale (DERS), Distress Tolerance Scale (DTS), and Affect Intensity and Dimensions of Affiliation Motivation (AIM). Consistent with our hypotheses, the CTQ sexual abuse subscale uniquely predicted exchanging sex for cocaine and heroin, number of arrests for prostitution, engaging in unprotected sex with a casual partner during the prior year, and experiencing low sexual arousal when sober. The physical abuse subscale uniquely predicted number of arrests for assault and weapons offenses. The emotional abuse subscale uniquely predicted the DERS total score, AIM score, and DTS score. Among substance users, different types of abuse are uniquely associated with specific negative effects. Assessment of specific abuse types among substance users may be informative in treatment planning and relapse prevention.     

The Role of Relational and Instructional Classroom Supports in the Language Development of At-Risk Preschoolers

The present study examined the extent to which preschool classroom supports—relational support (RS) and instructional support (IS)—are associated with children's language development and whether these associations vary as a function of children's language ability. The language skills of 360 children within 95 classrooms were assessed using an expressive narrative task in the fall and spring of the preschool year, teachers rated RS in the fall, and observations of IS were collected across the year. Research Findings: Hierarchical linear models revealed main effects of IS, but not RS, on preschoolers’ development of expressive language skills. In addition, the associations between RS and IS on children's expressive language development were moderated by children's fall language ability. Specifically, the association between IS and language development was stronger for children with stronger expressive language skills, and the association between RS and language development was stronger for children with weaker expressive language skills. Practice or Policy: These findings suggest that professional development for preschool teachers might focus on aligning classroom supports with the needs of children with weaker language skills who are at risk for difficulty acquiring literacy.     

Making the Intentional Decision to Use an Effective Curriculum to Promote Children’s Learning

This study investigated the extent to which early education classrooms across Indiana implemented evidence-based practices and how well the classrooms of different types of early education programs in our state compared with one another. Evidence-based effective curricula increase children’s learning compared to those that are not effective. This article addresses the question: “Are the curricula used by the teachers effective?” The 81 participating classrooms included 28 in licensed child care centers, 27 in Head Start, and 26 in public school prekindergarten. Of the 81 classrooms, 80 teachers responded to the question: “What curriculum or curricula do you use in your classroom?” We used a three-step process to determine whether each response named a curriculum based on the Head Start definition; whether studies of the curriculum met the What Works Clearinghouse (WWC) guidelines for being evidence-based; and if the WWC reviews identified the curriculum as effective in increasing children’s learning. Findings revealed that only 2 of 80 responding teachers used a curriculum determined by WWC to be effective. Other teachers used curricula that did not meet the Head Start definition, used curricula that did not meet the WWC standards for evidence, or used curricula with evidence but that were ineffective. These findings suggest that administrators and teachers should opt for a curriculum determined to be effective and to choose whether the curriculum will be math- or literacy-based since no comprehensive curriculum has been determined to be effective. A challenge for implementation is that the WWC has shown only five curricula to be effective.     

The Foodborne Outbreak Challenge—Using Experiential Learning to Foster Interdisciplinary Training Among Students on Foodborne Disease Outbreak Investigations

The Integrated Food Safety Centers of Excellence aim to develop novel learning methods to educate and train the future public health workforce to investigate foodborne outbreaks. The Foodborne Outbreak Challenge (FOC) was a one‐day event hosted by the Colorado Integrated Food Safety Center of Excellence at the Colorado School of Public Health. The FOC incorporated experiential, problem‐based, and interdisciplinary pedagogies from case studies, simulation exercises, and public health case competitions, to deliver a novel learning experience that met the training needs of a multidisciplinary foodborne outbreak response team with diverse skills sets. The event received positive feedback, and participants demonstrated knowledge gain. Event materials are available for other institutions to use.