A Mixed-Methods Longitudinal Investigation of Mothers’ Disclosure of HIV to Their Children

Mothers living with HIV (MLH) must navigate disclosing their serostatus to their children, but the longitudinal impact on families remains unknown. This study examined HIV disclosure, parenting, parenting stress, and child adjustment among 174 MLH-child dyads (aged 6–14; 35% Latinx; 57% Black/African American). Quantitative data were collected over four waves spanning 15 months. Qualitative data were collected with 14 families in which disclosure had occurred. Latent change score modeling revealed that disclosure led to improvements in parenting stress, communication, and relationship quality. Disclosure did not predict child adjustment. Qualitative themes contextualized these findings, revealing stability and improvements in family functioning. MLH should be supported in disclosing their serostatus to their children to minimize parenting stress and bolster parenting skills.     

Interlibrary Loan Assessment: Assessing Services in a Small Private College Library's Interlibrary Loan Department

Assessment is a required component of strategic planning and decision making in any library. Interlibrary loan surveys can provide data regarding user satisfaction levels for accuracy, thoroughness, convenience, and turnaround time. As interlibrary loan librarians at D'Youville College, we believed that our patrons were satisfied and impressed with the library's recent service improvement initiatives. However, we did not have any concrete data that would help drive future strategic decisions. We were short on staff time and resources and wondered how a small library staff could create an assessment tool and then analyze the results.     

A Note on Financial Risk, Return and Asset Pricing in Australian Modern and Contemporary Art

In this note, 30,227 paintings by fifty well-known modern and contemporary Australian artists sold at auction over the period 1973–2003 are used to construct a hedonic price index. The attributes included in the hedonic regression model include the name, age and living status of the artist, the number of works sold, the size and medium of the painting, and the auction house, month and year in which the painting was sold. The results indicate that returns on Australian modern and contemporary art averaged nearly five percent over the period with a standard deviation of sixteen percent. The results also show that a ten percent increase in the Australian stock market is associated with a 3.4 percent increase in the art market. Generally, artworks by artists deceased at the time of auction, larger works, works executed in oils, and those auctioned by Sotheby's or Christies in July or August are associated with higher prices.     

Who succeeds? II. Perceptions of graduates and inactive students of a nontraditional bachelor of arts degree program

A questionnaire was returned by 241 (79%) graduates and 75 (31%) of the inactive students of a nontraditional BA degree program. A profile of each type of adult learner was presented and differences between the profiles in age and ethnic affiliation are discussed. The two groups did not differ in primary reason for seeking a degree or a nontraditional program, but graduates gave more reasons in each case. Graduates were more likely to perceive dispositional, communication, and program variables as assets. Inactive students were more likely to perceive time to study and cost of courses as problems. Results are compared to the concept of educational barriers.Dr. Losty is Associate Dean of the Faculty at Stephens College, Columbia, Missouri. She has served as Associate Director and Director of Stephens College Without Walls. Ms. Kreilick is a graduate of Stephens College.     

Analysis of the K‐12 component of the Central Arizona–Phoenix Long‐Term Ecological Research (CAP LTER) project 1998 to 2002

The Central Arizona–Phoenix Long‐Term Ecological Research (CAP LTER) project includes training elementary and secondary teachers. This training component, Ecology Explorers (EE), prepares teachers in grades 4 through 12 to teach about ecological principles and processes. The EE pedagogy employs scientific inquiry and data collection protocols. This study attempted to capture the impact of the EE training on how teachers were integrating their training knowledge and what support systems influenced the pedagogy. The research‐evaluation design used cohort panels to address questions regarding immediate and long‐term impacts. Inquiry methods were based on survey questionnaires with ordinal and reflective questions. Some of the key findings were: (1) it takes less than a year to integrate the use of scientific protocols into teaching practices, (2) current scientific methodologies appear to support student use of the Internet for research purposes, and (3) both internal and external school support are necessary to ensure protocol integration and Internet use.     

Interanimation: repositioning possibilities in educational contexts

Changing discursive practices is necessary for educational social justice and is made possible through the interanimation of diverse ways of knowing that create dynamic tensions and challenge reliance on narrow views of what counts as legitimate knowledge. In this article, we accept the challenge that Reid and Valle put forth in creating new discourses of possibility through the animation of sociocultural and critical theory as they might apply to the interrogation of two aspects of the meaning-making process: (a) the interanimation of voices across systems as a condition of reculturing institutions and communities of practice, and (b) instructional activity settings in educational contexts (e.g., disciplinary apprenticeships). We conclude this article by examining possibilities for collaborative research activity.     

Best practices for preschool programs: an update on inclusive settings

The trend in the curriculum design of programs for young children with developmental disabilities has been toward an approach which emphasizes everyday skills taught in regular routine activities. With the enactment of Public Law 99-457, the Individuals with Disabilities Act (IDEA), states were mandated to provide services for three-to five-year-old preschoolers with developmental disabilities.     

Making all the flashy stuff work: the role of the principal in ICT integration

The pervasiveness of new technologies and their rapid spread around the globe belie the fact that educational leaders still struggle with how to integrate information and communication technologies (ICT) in schools. This article describes the form of these struggles for a small group of Australian principals. Their stories emerged from a set of five longitudinal case studies of ICT integration in a range of Government schools in the state of New South Wales. During the three years over which the study was conducted, the difficulties associated with leading the integration of educational technologies in schools were common and recurring themes that emerged in interviews with principals. These cases reveal the local variations and specificities of ICT integration through a range of issues including infrastructure development, human resource development, curriculum design, pedagogical practices and futures oriented planning. In describing these issues, many of the effects of ICT integration in schools are discussed. One such effect is the requirement for principals to develop the skills of new knowledge workers, in particular they require access to knowledge and support that is sufficiently flexible to deal with immediate and practical problems.     

Excluded from school: getting a second chance at a ‘meaningful’ education

In this paper, we draw upon the experiences of a group of young people who have been excluded from mainstream schools in two Australian states to provide an account of the ways in which they have found their way to education in educational sites that are variously referred to as ‘flexible learning centres', ‘second chance schools' and ‘alternative schools'. Whilst often clashing with school authorities in their original schools, these young people described how, when given the opportunity, they were able to engage in more meaningful learning in environments that recognised and accommodated their personal circumstances, and avoided authoritarian rule. A question we address is: What kinds of educational experiences facilitate ‘meaningful learning’ for these students?