From present to future : beyond becoming a nation of readers

Includes bibliographical references (p. 13-19)The work upon which this publication was based was supported in part by the Office of Educational Research and Improvement under Cooperative Agreement No. OEG 0087-C100

Evaluating Lifeworld as an emancipatory methodology

Disability research is conducted within a highly politicised ‘hotbed’ of competing paradigms and principles. New researchers, who want to work within the social model, are soon faced with complex and challenging methodological and philosophical dilemmas. The social model advocates research agendas that are focused on the emancipation and empowerment of disabled people but, in reality, these are rarely achieved. To be successful researchers need to engage with innovative and creative methodologies and to share their experiences of these within environments that welcome challenge and debate. This paper focuses on Lifeworld and assesses its value as a tool for emancipatory research. Using examples from a study with parents, whose children were in the process of being labelled as having autism, the paper illustrates how the principles that ‘underpin’ the methodology offered a supportive framework for a novice researcher

Oral Narrative Skills of Late Talkers at Ages 8 and 9

This study compared the oral narrative skills of 31 school-aged children diagnosed at 24 to 31 months with expressive language delay (late talkers) with those of 23 typically developing peers. Based upon an extensively studied picture-book task, Frog, Where are You?, narratives were elicited from all participants both at age 8 and age 9. At age 9, children were asked to tell the story again and to increase their references to evaluative information (characters\u27 emotions, character speech, and causal explanations of events supported telling condition). Groups were compared on Syntax, Story Grammar, Cohesion, and Evaluative Information factor scores derived from the narrative measures. Children with histories of early language delay obtained lower Syntax, Story Grammar. and Evaluative Information factor scores than typically developing peers for each of their three narrative productions. The late talkers scored in the average range at age 8 on the Clinical Evaluation of Language Fundamentals-Revised (CELF-R), but their scores were significantly lower than those of the comparison peers. When the group differences on the Story Grammar factor were reanalyzed with the CELF-R score as a covariate, the late talkers demonstrated weaknesses in story grammar skills independent of the variance accounted for by their weaker general language skills. This suggests that the use of narrative structure may be a specific area of underachievement for late talkers, in addition to their continuing weakness in syntactic and lexical abilities, relative to typically developing peers from the same SES background

Oral Narrative Skills of Late Talkers at Ages 8 and 9

This study compared the oral narrative skills of 31 school-aged children diagnosed at 24 to 31 months with expressive language delay (late talkers) with those of 23 typically developing peers. Based upon an extensively studied picture-book task, Frog, Where are You?, narratives were elicited from all participants both at age 8 and age 9. At age 9, children were asked to tell the story again and to increase their references to evaluative information (characters\u27 emotions, character speech, and causal explanations of events supported telling condition). Groups were compared on Syntax, Story Grammar, Cohesion, and Evaluative Information factor scores derived from the narrative measures. Children with histories of early language delay obtained lower Syntax, Story Grammar. and Evaluative Information factor scores than typically developing peers for each of their three narrative productions. The late talkers scored in the average range at age 8 on the Clinical Evaluation of Language Fundamentals-Revised (CELF-R), but their scores were significantly lower than those of the comparison peers. When the group differences on the Story Grammar factor were reanalyzed with the CELF-R score as a covariate, the late talkers demonstrated weaknesses in story grammar skills independent of the variance accounted for by their weaker general language skills. This suggests that the use of narrative structure may be a specific area of underachievement for late talkers, in addition to their continuing weakness in syntactic and lexical abilities, relative to typically developing peers from the same SES background

Challenging homophobic bullying in schools: the politics of progress

In recent years homophobic bullying has received increased attention from NGOs, academics and government sources and concern about the issue crosses traditional moral and political divisions. This article examines this ‘progressive’ development and identifies the ‘conditions of possibility’ that have enabled the issue to become a harm that can be spoken of. In doing so it questions whether the readiness to speak about the issue represents the opposite to prohibitions on speech (such as the notorious Section 28) or whether it is based on more subtle forms of governance. It argues that homophobic bullying is heard through three key discourses (‘child abuse’, ‘the child victim’ and ‘the tragic gay’) and that, while enabling an acknowledgement of certain harms, they simultaneously silence other needs and experiences. It then moves to explore the aspirational and ‘liberatory’ political investments that underlie these seemingly ‘common-sense’ descriptive discourses and concludes with a critique of the quasi-criminal responses that the dominant political agenda of homophobic bullying gives rise to. The article draws on, and endeavours to develop a conversation between, critical engagements with the contemporary politics of both childhood and sexuality

National Institute of Mental Health Roundtable Discussion: Promissory Notes and Prevailing Norms in Social and Behavioral Sciences Research

Most workshops convened by the National Institute's of Health are devoted to the puzzle-solving activities of normal science, where the puzzles themselves and the strategies available for solving them are determined largely in advance by the shared paradigmatic assumptions, frameworks, and priorities of the scientific community's research paradigm. They are designed to facilitate what Thomas Kuhn referred to as elucidating topological detail within a map whose main outlines are available in advance. And apparently for good reason. Historical studies by Kuhn and others reveal that science moves fastest and penetrates most deeply when its practitioners work within well-defined and deeply ingrained traditions and employ the concepts, theories, methods, and tools of a shared paradigm. No paradigm is perfect and none is capable of identifying, let alone solving, all of the problems relevant to a given domain of inquiry. Thus, the essential day-to-day business of normal science is not to question the limits or adequacy of a given paradigm, but rather to exploit the presumed virtues for which it was adopted. As Kuhn cautioned in his discussion of paradigms, re-tooling, in science as in manufacture, as an extravagance to be reserved for the occasion that demands it. Well, as the marketing people say --- this is not your father's Oldsmobile. We are breaking with tradition today by stepping outside the map to initiate and pursue a long-overdue dialogue about paradigm reform and scientific retooling. Our warrant for prosecuting this agenda is a Kuhnian occasion that demands it--- is a protracted paradigm crisis, the neglect of which has hurt us terribly and the resolution of which will determine the viability and fate of the social and behavioral sciences in the 21st century. Since the details of the crisis are well know within and outside our ranks, a brief sketch of its main outlines will suffice as a framework for our dialogue today. They include, (a) widespread dissatisfaction with the meager theoretical progress and practical yield of more than a century of social and behavioral sciences research in many substantive domains, (b) long-neglected yet widely recognized deficiencies in the epistemological assumptions, discovery practices and justification standards of the dominant paradigm on which the social and behavioral sciences have relied --- and rely--- to conceptualize, interpret, and guide their empirical research, (c) a broadly based consensus among leading scholars and scientists about the need for fundamental paradigm reforms, and (d) institutional incentive structures that not only encourage and reinforce the status quo but discourage constructive reform efforts. Our objective for the next eight hours is to formulate strategies and recommendations for leveraging the resources and influence of the National Institute of Mental Health to foster a climate of constructive reforms where they are needed by freeing investigators in from the oppressive constraints of existing paradigms and facilitating, encouraging, and funding their retooling their effort

Stories Told and Untold: Confidentiality Laws and the Master Narrative of Child Welfare

In most states, child welfare hearings and records are sealed or confidential. This means that by law, court hearings and records may not be observed. The same laws and court rules also preclude those who are authorized to enter and watch from discussing anything learned or observed in a closed courtroom or from a sealed court record with anyone not involved in the case. It is the restriction on speech—on telling stories about child welfare—with which this Article is concerned. The master narrative of child welfare depicts foster care as a haven for child-victims savagely brutalized by “deviant,” “monstrous” parents. Notwithstanding this shared public understanding, however, most children in foster care have experienced, or are alleged to have experienced, neglect—deprivation of food, clothing, shelter, education, or another necessity of life—not physical abuse. There is also a growing understanding that some children in foster care ought not to be there at all. In addition, research and experience indicate that many maltreated children would be better off if simply left at home—with those responsible for the maltreatment—rather than placed in foster care. This Article argues that confidentiality laws perpetuate the inaccurate master narrative, and preclude other stories from informing or influencing that narrative. Stated simply, laws prohibiting the discussion of child welfare cases silence a vast number of stories. By their terms, these laws define the stories that may not be told, and the putative storytellers who may not speak, while designating as acceptable other stories and other voices. The unchallenged dominance of the inaccurate, law-sanctioned narrative affects even those involved in child welfare as a profession, and by affecting their worldview, diminishes the quality of care provided to children. The laws that require silence outside the courtroom permit the acceptance of pervasive dysfunction in child welfare, and affect the administration of justice inside the courtroom

Leo Kanner and the Psychobiology of Autism

abstract: Leo Kanner first described autism in his 1943 article in Nervous Child titled "Autistic Disturbances of Affective Contact". Throughout, he describes the eleven children with autism in exacting detail. In the closing paragraphs, the parents of autistic children are described as emotionally cold. Yet, he concludes that the condition as he described it was innate. Since its publication, his observations about parents have been a source of controversy surrounding the original definition of autism. Thus far, histories about autism have pointed to descriptions of parents of autistic children with the claim that Kanner abstained from assigning them causal significance. Understanding the theoretical context in which Kanner's practice was embedded is essential to sorting out how he could have held such seemingly contrary views simultaneously. This thesis illustrates that Kanner held an explicitly descriptive frame of reference toward his eleven child patients, their parents, and autism. Adolf Meyer, his mentor at Johns Hopkins, trained him to make detailed life-charts under a clinical framework called psychobiology. By understanding that Kanner was a psychobiologist by training, I revisit the original definition of autism as a category of mental disorder and restate its terms. This history illuminates the theoretical context of autism's discovery and has important implications for the first definition of autism amidst shifting theories of childhood mental disorders and the place of the natural sciences in defining them.Dissertation/ThesisMasters Thesis Biology 201

Reference and Response

A standard view of reference holds that a speaker's use of a name refers to a certain thing in virtue of the speaker's associating a condition with that use that singles the referent out. This view has been criticized by Saul Kripke as empirically inadequate. Recently, however, it has been argued that a version of the standard view, a /response-based theory of reference/, survives the charge of empirical inadequacy by allowing that associated conditions may be largely or even entirely implicit. This paper argues that response-based theories of reference are prey to a variant of the empirical inadequacy objection, because they are ill-suited to accommodate the successful use of proper names by pre-school children. Further, I argue that there is reason to believe that normal adults are, by and large, no different from children with respect to how the referents of their names are determined. I conclude that speakers typically refer /positionally/: the referent of a use of a proper name is typically determined by aspects of the speaker's position, rather than by associated conditions present, however implicitly, in her psychology