Early Identification and Intervention: Head Start's Response to Mental Health Challenges

Serving low-income children from birth to age five and their families, Head Start is a primary venue for identification and intervention in the area of child mental health. However, recent research has demonstrated that the knowledge base regarding prevalence, developmental course, and predictive power of child mental health problems is lacking for young children in general and low-income, diverse populations in particular. Head Start's agency-level data is often discrepant from both national estimates and small, intensive studies of similar populations, perhaps for reasons related to availability of community services and professional staff, as well as concerns about stigmatization. Following on recent expert recommendations, new collaborative Federal initiatives are underway to increase our understanding of the types, trajectories, and treatments of mental health problems affecting the vulnerable children served by Head Start. The paper concludes with a call to action for the field in the area of young children's mental health.     

Crossing cultures: Analysing the experiences of NZ returnees from the EU (UK vs. non-UK)

While there is growing scholarly interest in returned and cyclical migration, and on young adult cultural or adventure seeking migration, there is still a lack of systematic empirical insights into how the experiences of being abroad, and after return, are mediated by exposure to different cultural environments. Addressing this conceptual and empirical gap, the paper analyses the experiences of New Zealand return migrants, or sojourners, who lived and worked in European countries (other than the UK) for more than one year and compares them with the experiences of NZ returnees from the UK. Drawing on 20 ‘non-UK’ and 22 ‘UK’ in-depth interviews, the paper revisits [Rhinesmith, 1975] and [Rhinesmith, 1986] typology of cross-cultural, or intercultural, adjustment (largely ignored in studies of return migration) to assess sojourners’ experiences throughout the migration cycle and serve as a useful tool for identifying and reporting psychological and socio-cultural elements in the returnees stories. The findings of sojourners’ possible identity shifts during intercultural transition are discussed with reference to the four-member paradigm of Cultural Identity Model (CIM) (Sussman, 2010) while addressing Sussman's (2002) argument that overseas adaptation and repatriation experiences are not directly associated. This paper demonstrates the need to understand first that the costs and benefits of circular migration or sojourning are country-specific, and that they do not ‘just happen’ at a particular moment or in one phase but are forged through a veritable rollercoaster of experiences of intercultural adjustment.     

Beyond topicality: A two stage view of relevance and the retrieval process

Topicality is an operationally necessary but insufficient condition for requestor judged relevance. Documents are independent of one another as to any judgement of their topicality but not independent as to any judgement of their relevance which is a function of their informativeness to a requestor. Recall depends solely upon topicality but precision depends upon informativeness as well.A retrieval system which aspires to the retrieval of relevant documents should have a second stage which will order the topical set in a manner so as to provide maximum informativeness to the requestor. Should a system be concerned only with topicality then a two stage system which generates a high recall set and discards imprecise documents by measuring their distance from a seed document can be iterated to provide topicality feedback without user input.     

“Beyond Bali”: a transformative education approach for developing community resilience to violent extremism

The Bali bombings of 2002 and 2005 confronted Australia and its neighbours directly for the first time with the dangers of violent extremism. Since then, the Bali Peace Park Association (BPPA), consisting of former victims, their families and other interested parties, has been lobbying for the creation of the “Bali Peace Park” to be built on one of the bombing sites. Peace parks have been conceived as community-driven projects against violent extremism, and the planned Bali Peace Park embodies this principle. In 2012, the BPPA initiated “Beyond Bali”, an ambitious and highly relevant curriculum development project, and secured funding from the Australian Attorney General’s Department. Drawing on the expertise of a counter-terrorism expert, two university education experts and the first-hand experiences of victims and their families, the Beyond Bali curriculum package was created. Beyond Bali covers a range of topics and activities, including social science studies and ethical dilemma learning, is suitable for Years 8 and 9 students studying the Australian Curriculum, and is available for free from the BPPA: http://www.balipeacepark.com.au/beyond-bali-education-package.html. In this paper we position Beyond Bali as a transformative education resource within the fields of peace and global education and argue that it embodies UNESCO’s “learning to be” principle.     

So You Want to Be a Mentor? An Analysis of Mentor Competencies

As the need for mentors continues to expand in order to meet organizational and programmatic needs, so does the need for quality mentoring. Although sometimes an immediate need for quantity may foreshadow quality, this should not be the case when utilizing mentoring to achieve goals. Faculty mentor competencies are analyzed to demonstrate the importance and need for competent mentors in formal mentoring programs, specifically those in higher education. Correlation analysis is used to assess the relationship between research-based mentor competencies and Ronald E. McNair Program goals. Findings support the need for mentor competency assessment, usage of competent mentors, additional development of mentor competency models, and further study.     

Maternal intrusiveness, maternal warmth, and mother-toddler relationship outcomes: variations across low-income ethnic and acculturation groups

The present study investigated the extent to which maternal intrusiveness and warmth during play, observed in 579 European American, 412 African American, and 110 more and 131 less acculturated Mexican American low-income families when children were approximately 15 months old, predicted 3 dimensions of the mother-toddler relationship 10 months later. Intrusiveness predicted increases in later child negativity in all 4 groups. Among African Americans only, this association was moderated by maternal warmth. Intrusiveness predicted negative change in child engagement with mothers only in European American families. Finally, near-significant trends suggested that intrusiveness predicted later decreased dyadic mutuality in European American and more acculturated Mexican American families, but not in African American or less acculturated Mexican American families.