Improving the compositions of students with learning disabilities using a strategy involving product and process goal setting.

This study was conducted to determine if a planning and writing strategy would improve the essay writing of students with learning disabilities. Four participants were taught a strategy designed to facilitate the setting of product and process goals, generation and organization of notes, continued planning during writing, and evaluation of goal attainment. Training effects were investigated using a multiple probe design across subjects. Strategy instruction had a positive effect on students' essay writing performance and knowledge of the writing process, and effects were maintained over time.     

A Comparative Sociology of School Knowledge

Despite a recently renewed theoretical interest in both North America and in Britain in the sociology of school knowledge, we still have little, if any, comparative empirical material from these two continents. This paper reports the findings of a sociological study, designed to replicate the previous English empirical work by Vulliamy, into music teaching in Ontario high schools. Unlike in England, no overt culture clash was found in Ontario schools between ‘school’ music and ‘students’ ‘ music, both because of the wider scope of ‘what counts as school music’ in Canada and because music is not a compulsory school subject there. However, by focusing upon the deep structure of the pedagogical process, as opposed to surface features of classroom interaction, it is argued that particular ideologies of the dominant musical culture are transmitted in very similar ways in both contexts. What is shared is a conception of music as equatable with musical notation. The ideological significance of this is pinpointed in an analysis of the structurally homological relationship between different musical languages and the social/‐cultural contexts of their creation. The processes of school music teaching not only contribute to the legitimation of a dominant musical ideology, but also to much more pervasive ideological assumptions underpinning capitalist societies.     

A Deluge of Directives: conflict between collegiality and managerialism in the post-ERA primary school

The paper examines the impact of the plethora of innovations associated with the 1988 Education Reform Act (ERA) on the management of whole-school change in the primary school. Based upon qualitative data from a national sample of 50 schools in England and Wales, it documents the growing tensions between collegial and top-down managerial approaches. These are evidenced in the changing nature of working collaboratively in primary schools, in the creation of new management structures, in the me of school development plans and in the growth of quality assurance mechanisms, particularly in relation to preparation for Office for Standards in Education (OFSTED) inspections. There are conflicting interpretations of terms such as ‘collegiality’, ‘collaboration’, ‘teamwork’ and ‘whole-school approaches’ and there have been subtle shifts in their meaning and in their realisation in practice in the pre-and post-ERA context.     

A Methylome‐Wide Association Study of Trajectories of Oppositional Defiant Behaviors and Biological Overlap With Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder

In 671 mother–child (49% male) pairs from an epidemiological birth cohort, we investigated (a) prospective associations between DNA methylation (at birth) and trajectories (ages 7–13) of oppositional defiant disorder (ODD), and the ODD subdimensions of irritable and headstrong; (b) common biological pathways, indexed by DNA methylation, between ODD trajectories and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD); (c) genetic influence on DNA methylation; and (d) prenatal risk exposure associations. Methylome‐wide significant associations were identified for the ODD and headstrong, but not for irritable. Overlap analysis indicated biological correlates between ODD, headstrong, and ADHD. DNA methylation in ODD and headstrong was (to a degree) genetically influenced. DNA methylation associated with prenatal risk exposures of maternal anxiety (headstrong) and cigarette smoking (ODD and headstrong).     

Subtypes, severity, and structural stability of peer victimization: what does latent class analysis say?

This study uses latent class analysis (LCA) to empirically identify victimization groups during middle school. Approximately 2,000 urban, public middle school students (mean age in sixth grade = 11.57) reported on their peer victimization during the Fall and Spring semesters of their sixth, seventh, and eighth grades. Independent LCA analyses at each semester yielded 3 victim classes based on victimization degree rather than type (e.g., physical vs. relational). The most victimized class always represented the smallest proportion of the sample, decreasing from 20% in sixth grade to 6% by the end of eighth grade. This victimized class also always reported feeling less safe at school concurrently and more depressed than others 1 semester later, illustrating the validity of the LCA approach.