Perceptions of women managers and their communicator competencies 1

A stepfamily often faces unique challenges that can influence the strength of its bonds. One way in which stepfamily members adapt to these challenges is through communication. This study investigates adolescents’ and young adults’ use of topic avoidance in stepfamilies and its association with satisfaction and the parenting style of the stepparent. The results revealed that the more satisfied the participants were with their mother, father, stepmother, stepfather, and stepfamily overall, the less avoidance they were likely to employ. The findings also showed that more authoritarian stepparenting tended to increase the amount of avoidance, whereas more permissiveness and authoritativeness decreased it. Authoritativeness and authoritarianism were more strongly associated than permissiveness with participants’ avoidance. Perceptions of authoritarian stepparenting were also negatively associated with participants’ satisfaction with their stepparent. Finally, low or high degrees of persmissiveness were associated with low levels of satisfaction, but moderate degrees of permissive stepparenting were associated with moderate degrees of satisfaction with one's stepfamily.     

影响4～6岁幼儿父母教育观念的因素研究

通过对新疆地区7所幼儿园914名4～6岁幼儿的父母进行教育观念的测查，结果发现：（1）父母教育观念受儿童年龄及父母年龄、性别、收入和学历等因素的影响。（2）随着儿童年龄的增加，父母倾向于赞同对儿童的严厉教育。（3）母亲比父亲更加赞同对儿童的赏识教育。（4）收入低的父母比收入高的父母更赞同对孩子进行严厉教育，（5）学历低的父母比学历高的父母更赞同对孩子的宽松教育；学历高的父母比学历低的父母更赞同孩子主动探索知识。     

Facilitating knowledge construction by customized supportive services

This research is aimed to assist individual learners to construct knowledge in online learning through providing them with customized supportive services. The services go beyond simply presenting course materials, but supply a diverse range of technological facilities, tools and services to assist individual learners to progress in the learning process. In this paper, the theoretical background for facilitating construction of knowledge by individual learners is built at the first, through the review of constructivist theories for learning and the objectivist ones. Then, a general conceptual model to describe any number of practices in learning and teaching online is built. It will be used to customize online learning environments to cater for various different learning demands. The services to support the individual’s knowledge construction are identified based on the relevant theoretical background. After that, software agents are proposed to customize the supportive services for individual learners based on their particular learning characteristics. Next, the implementation of these services is investigated and a system prototype is reported. Finally the preliminary research result and the further work are presented.     

A Review of Parent-Based Barriers to Parent–Adolescent Communication about Sex and Sexuality: Implications for Sex and Family Educators

Although adolescents' sexual health is generally better when parents and adolescents communicate about sex and sexuality, researchers have found parents can be reluctant to engage adolescents in conversations about those topics. To better understand why, we reviewed prior literature and identified four types of parent-based barriers to communication with adolescents about sex: limited sexual health knowledge, believing adolescents are not ready to discuss sex, discomfort discussing sex, and demographic factors. We then used the Theory of Planned Behavior to develop recommendations for how health educators can address these barriers, thereby increasing parent–adolescent sexual health communication.     

Choosing the arts: the moral regulation of parents in the educational marketplace

The neoliberal turn in public education positions the parent as a consumer within an expanding educational marketplace. This shift is premised on the notion that the free market is best suited to promote equity. Critics of this claim highlight how a larger choice arena creates additional opportunities for privileged parents to mobilize their resources to further their child’s advantages. While extremely important, this framework of analysis ignores the role that educational choice plays in producing parent subjectivities. In this article, we explore how parents at one specialized arts high school construct notions of the ‘good/moral’ parent around the decision to ‘choose the arts,’ and how these categories work to reinforce dominant race, class, and gender hierarchies within the school. We hope to illuminate how educational choice is not solely about shaping the material and symbolic conditions of the child; it is about producing parent subjectivities as well.     

School–Family–Community Partnership in Hong Kong – Perspectives and Challenges

This paper reviews the school–family partnership in Hong Kong in the past decade. The typology of Epsteins six types of partnership is adopted as the analytical framework. The results show that there has been an increase in shared experience in school education among various stakeholders. Schools have become more convinced that they have a role to play in various types of partnership. Home–school contacts have become more informal and two-way. Teachers have been changing their views of how capable are parents in supporting the school. However, the increase in communication does not seem to focus on childrens learning. The relationship of the school-sponsoring bodies and the Government was hampered in the exercise of widening the governance structure. Hong Kong parents mainly serve as supporters of their children at home in the past. They have now also become customers, and to some extent learners, volunteers and managers in school education.     

知识视域父母教养方式对“双一流”高校大学生 新冠疫情期间亲社会行为的影响下高校课程思政建设研究

本文基于北京大学教育学院“‘双一流’大学新冠疫情调查”项目组于2020年6月面向全国15所“双一流”高校本科生收集的截面数据，采用结构方程模型发现：疫情期间，被调查学生积极进行着与社会密切相关的抗疫行动，表现出了新一代青年的责任担当；不同家庭社会经济地位的本科生以不同形式参与抗疫活动，呈现出优势阶层“舍财”、弱势阶层“力行”的特征；家庭社会经济地位正在以父母教养方式的中介机制作用于个体发展，情感温暖型的教养方式为对亲社会行为具有较强的促进作用，过度保护对亲社会行为无显著影响。因此，我们要进一步提升对家庭教育的重视程度。一方面，积极倡导父母对子代的温暖与鼓励型养育方式；另一方面，学校教育要消除父母过度保护教养的不利影响。     

Understanding Associations Between Low-Income Mothers' Participation in Education and Parenting

Maternal education is one of the strongest predictors of children's academic outcomes. One possible explanation for this is that more highly educated mothers more frequently engage in parenting practices that may promote children's later cognitive development; however, most of this evidence is correlational. This study uses Head Start Impact Study data (N = 1,953) to explore whether low-income mothers' participation in education affects their parenting practices and beliefs. Principal scores, which predict maternal educational participation based on covariates, were used for analysis. Principal score matching was used to identify mothers who we predicted participated in education because their children were randomly assigned to Head Start. We compared these mothers' outcomes to those of mothers we predicted would have participated in education if they were assigned to Head Start. For these mothers, participation in maternal education was associated with children watching fewer hours of TV, having more types of printed media at home, and more frequent participation in cultural activities, but it was not associated with a host of other parenting outcomes. Changing parenting is one potential pathway by which maternal educational participation may influence children's later academic outcomes.     

Empower Foster Parents Toward Caring Relations with Children

Foster parents face many challenges in caring for children in foster care. Perhaps the major challenge is to achieve a caring environment for children who have experienced trauma and much change. Thus, this article provides ideas and strategies for nurturing foster parents toward a caring relationship with their children.