Gesture as a window on children's beginning understanding of false belief

Given that gestures may provide access to transitions in cognitive development, preschoolers' performance on standard tasks was compared with their performance on a new gesture false belief task. Experiment 1 confirmed that children (N=45, M age=54 months) responded consistently on two gesture tasks and that there is dramatic improvement on both the gesture false belief task and a standard task from ages 3 to 5. In 2 subsequent experiments focusing on children in transition with respect to understanding false beliefs (Ns=34 and 70, M age=48 months), there was a significant advantage of gesture over standard and novel verbal-response tasks. Iconic gesture may facilitate reasoning about opaque mental states in children who are rapidly developing concepts of mind.     

Culturally Responsive Pedagogy and Online Learning: Implications for the Globalized Community College

Implicit in the open-door mission of the community college is the mandate that every learning experience should offer full equity and inclusion for all learners, including those of diverse cultural backgrounds. This mission is paramount, given the cultural diversity represented among learners served by the globalized community college. This paper presents a cross-section of research, practice, and discourse focused on expanding our knowledge and understanding of the diverse learning needs of community college learners. The relevance of the literature to the planning, design, and implementation of distance-learning is discussed. In the end, the authors offer distance-learning instructional strategies that may accommodate the unique needs of Hispanic/Latino learners. Implications for community college educators are discussed.     

Diversity research literature in school psychology: 1990–1999

This study is an extension of an initial study conducted by Wiese Rogers in 1992 that examined the diversity literature in school psychology journals. The purpose of this study was to review all research published in four major school psychology journals during the decade of the 90s for diversity content to determine if there had been an increase. Results indicated that 10.6% of the articles have diversity as a focus, a slight increase over Wiese Rogers's findings. Assessment continues to be the area that has the greatest number of diversity articles. Six reasons are proposed for the continued gap in the literature base. Implications for the field of school psychology and suggestions for increasing diversity articles are provided. © 2002 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

Coping efficacy and psychological problems of children of divorce

Three models of the relations of coping efficacy, coping, and psychological problems of children of divorce were investigated. A structural equation model using cross-sectional data of 356 nine- to twelve-year-old children of divorce yielded results that supported coping efficacy as a mediator of the relations between both active coping and avoiding coping and psychological problems. In a prospective longitudinal model with a subsample of 162 of these children, support was found for Time 2 coping efficacy as a mediator of the relations between Time 1 active coping and Time 2 internalizing of problems. Individual growth curve models over four waves also found support for coping efficacy as a mediator of the relations between active coping and psychological problems. No support was found for alternative models of coping as a mediator of the relations between efficacy and symptoms or for coping efficacy as a moderator of the relations between coping and symptoms.     

Development of the child care worker job stress inventory

After a series of instrument development studies, a mail survey was conducted with 196 randomly selected family day care providers (FDCPs) and child care center workers (CCCWs) residing in the state of Maryland (response rates were 76.6% and 70.5%, respectively). Embedded in the instrument were three job stress scales, specific to child care workers, measuring job demands, job control, and job resources. Extensive psychometric testing of the three 17-item instruments demonstrated several areas of strength. The job demands scale, because of its breadth of stressors covered, fared slightly worse on indicators of reliability (alpha = 0.77; mean interitem correlation [MIC] = 0.17; item-to-total correlations [ITCs] = 0.14 to 0.49) than did job control (alpha = 0.88; MIC = 0.31; ITCs = 0.26 to 0.69) and job resources (alpha = 0.89; MIC = 0.35; ITCs = 0.32 to 0.70). Known groups validity was demonstrated through a conceptually meaningful pattern of differences between FDCPs and CCCWs. Construct validity for all three scales was demonstrated by a pattern of stronger correlations with conceptually similar versus dissimilar instruments. Average correlations with similar versus dissimilar instruments were: job demands, 0.54 versus 0.24; job control, 0.74 versus 0.30; and job resources, −0.53 versus 0.30. Similar to the reliability analysis, results of factor analysis were stronger for job control and job resources than for job demands.     

A parent-teacher conference: Interpreting Margaret Mahler

Dr. Margaret A. Mahler is a leading child psychiatrist whose theory of the psychologica birth of the human being has been influential for many years. According to Mahler, the physical birth of the infant does not coincide with the psychological birth.William Ayers is the Educational Director of BJ's Kids Day Care Community in New York City.