What are the characteristics of “good” apps for young children? Perceptions of industry stakeholders

Young children have become keen users of mobile digital devices. The “hAPPy kids” project mapped the views of different stakeholders - parents, children and industry - on the characteristics of “good” apps - that is, safe and beneficial for the development of children - and on the criteria for selecting and developing them. This article presents the perceptions of industry stakeholders such as digital content developers and broadcasters, policy-makers, and experts from the fields of Education and Psychology, gathered from 17 interviews with a purposive sample. They are aware of the demands of parents - learning and safety - and of children - fun and entertainment. They try to address both, and also value technical aspects of user experience.As crianças pequenas tornaram-se utilizadores hábeis dos dispositivos digitais. O projeto “hAPPy kids” mapeia as visões de diferentes stakeholders - pais, crianças e indústria - sobre as características de “boas” apps - ou seja, seguras e benéficas para o desenvolvimento das crianças - e sobre os critérios que usam para as selecionar e desenvolver. Este artigo apresenta as percepções dos stakeholders da indústria tais como criadores e difusores de conteúdos digitais, reguladores, e peritos nas áreas da Educação e da Psicologia, recolhidas através de 17 entrevistas a uma amostra intencional. Eles estão conscientes das exigências dos pais - aprendizagem e segurança - mas também das preferências das crianças - diversão e entretenimento. Tentam conciliar ambas, preocupando-se também com os aspetos técnicos da user experience.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

A Workplace Study of Four Southern-Ontario Children’s Aid Societies (FULL REPORT)

Rationale Children’s Aid Societies have experienced extensive change since the implementation of recent child welfare reforms in Ontario. Agencies are facing a number of challenges including recruiting and retaining staff, high workloads, extensive requirements for documentation and administration, and less time to serve families and children. The purpose of this study was to understand employee experiences as workers in child welfare. Research Design A survey was distributed to employees of four children’s aid societies. Completion of the survey was voluntary and all individual responses were kept confidential. Completed surveys were returned directly to researchers. Six to eight months after the distribution of the survey, employees voluntarily participated in a series of targeted focus groups. Focus groups were used to facilitate the interpretation of survey results. Survey Results Four hundred and three surveys were completed (for a return rate of 49.3%). Forty-nine percent of employees reported low levels of intention to leave, and 12% reported strong intention to leave their organization. However, intention to leave among direct service workers was higher at 15%. Forty-six percent of all employees who responded to the survey indicated high levels of overall job satisfaction, and even among direct service workers, 42% reported high levels of overall job satisfaction. However, 43.5% of direct service workers also reported being highly emotionally exhausted. Thirty-nine percent of all employees responding to the survey reported high levels of emotional exhaustion, suggesting that high levels of stress are affecting a significant proportion of individuals working in child welfare organizations. Twenty-nine percent of all respondents scored in the high range on a scale measuring an unfeeling or impersonal response to clients; among direct service workers, 39% were high on this scale, and among direct service workers in Intake departments, 49% reported high scores in terms of an impersonal and unfeeling response to service recipients. Focus Group & Survey Comment Results The experience of child welfare work itself was mixed. Feelings of gratification were associated with believing one’s work is important and meaningful, and dissatisfaction was linked to increased documentation and less time for client contact. Employees emphasized the importance of a solid team, collegial support, and supervisory support in counterbalancing dissatisfaction with the work itself. A perception of inadequate support from the organization and a lack of resources (both within the organization and in the broader community) were identified as problems. Employees reported needing more equitable distribution of caseloads, improved communication between departments and from management, and the establishment of an agency culture that cares for the well being of all employees. Discussion & Implications Despite experiencing high levels of emotional exhaustion, almost half of all survey respondents reported being highly satisfied 4 with their jobs. This is an interesting paradox that warrants further study. We suspect that the paradox is related to the female dominated workforce in child welfare agencies, and the tendency of women to sacrifice their own needs for those they see as requiring care. We argue that current levels of emotional exhaustion among employees in child welfare are unacceptable. Emotional exhaustion is clearly a significant contributor to employee turnover. Policies and practices that promote a more balanced approach to the work, as well as fostering cultures that are both caring and committed to service excellence are needed. The relatively high rates of depersonalization especially among DSWs raises concerns about the attitudes of some workers towards the families receiving child welfare services; do unfeeling and impersonal responses contribute to resistance and a lack of cooperation from some families? Employees are very satisfied with the intellectual challenge of the work. Job satisfaction could be increased by maintaining the intellectual challenge and, at the same time, improving the “doability” of the job. Employee turnover will improve as ways are found to decrease emotional exhaustion, improve workers’ perceptions of being treated fairly, and improve job satisfaction

Foreign-language immerision as preferred bilingual/biliterate program model for elementary English education in Taiwan

The primary goal of this project is to clarify the contexts of English as Foreign-language instructional program in Taiwan. Bilteracy is the acquistion and learning of the decoding and encoding of print, using two linguistic and cultural sytems in order to convey mesages in a variety of contexts. Through learning biliteracy, second-language learners gain benefits in cognitive and cultural development

Measuring certain cognitive traits in depressed mothers and their children: A controlled study

This study used self-report measures of self-esteem, locus of control, and anxiety to contrast the thinking styles of depressed mothers and their children. The resulting profiles were then compared with those of a control group of non-depressed mothers and children in an effort to document differences on the dependent variable measures.;Mothers were admitted to the depressed group if they were currently in treatment for either major depression or dysthymia. Significant depressive symptoms also had to be documented in a self-report depression inventory. Mothers for the control group could have no history of depression or other significant psychiatric disorder.;Children in each group were admitted if they fell within the designated age range of 7-9 years. Exceptional children were excluded (i.e., children with documented mental retardation, learning disabilities, or serious emotional disturbance).;The final control group contained 30 mothers and children. The final case group contained 26 mothers and children. All adult participants completed the State-Trait Anxiety Inventory, the Self-Esteem Inventory, and the Nowicki-Strickland Internal-External Scale. The children in both groups completed the child versions of these same instruments.;The data analysis supported a number of the research hypotheses. Depressed mothers were significantly different from control mothers on all dependent variable measures. Control and case children differed significantly on self-esteem, but not on measures of locus of control or trait-anxiety. The self-esteem and trait-anxiety scores of control mothers and children were significantly correlated. There was a significant correlational relationship only on the self-esteem measure when depressed mother and child scores were compared.;It was concluded that self-esteem appeared to be the most significant dependent variable in discriminating between groups. The locus of control measure appeared to have the least statistical significance when within or between group comparisons were made.;Several possible reasons for group differences were discussed. It was concluded that the self-report method was a legitimate technique for measuring certain cognitive traits in young children

The effectiveness of group training based on procedure marital infidelity phenomenology on infidelity tendency and intimacy of married traitor women

Introduction: The purpose of this study was to design and evaluate the effectiveness of an intervention package on the attitude toward infidelity and marital intimacy among the infidel women. Materials and Methods: The present research uses the pseudo experimental pretest-posttest-follow up methodology with a control group to investigate the effectiveness of the formulated intervention package. Population of the research includes all married infidel women who had referred to Entekhab No Psychology Clinic during 2019, with the statistical sample being made up of 30 married infidel women who had referred to Entekhab No Psychology Clinic. Following the introduction of the research objectives to obtain an informed consent from the participants, they were organized into experimental and control groups by observing the inclusion criteria. The standardized questionnaire on marital infidelity and the marital intimacy questionnaire presented by Vandon-Brouck and Bertommen (1995) were used in the pretest, posttest, and follow up stages. Mixed analysis of variance with repeated measures in SPSS v.24 was adopted to investigate the effectiveness of the formulated intervention package. Results: The results implied that provision of training courses based on phenomenological description of the marital infidelity provides the infidel women with sustainably increased average levels of the sexual intimacy, negative attitude toward infidelity, religious encountering, problem-solving skill, and infidelity avoidance. The findings further indicated that such training material might lead to stably enhanced levels of intimacy, affection/amour, agreement and adherence to marital intimacy commitments among the infidel women. Discussion: Based on the findings of this study, it can be argued that designing an intervention package based on the ecological status of the community under study can effectively improve the components of marital commitment and thus if used by therapists. It can be extremely helpful in preventing marital breakdowns in society.   &nbsp

The young school-age assessment of attachment (YSAA): Development and preliminary validation

This manuscript describes the development and preliminary validation of a new assessment procedure called the Young School-age Assessment of Attachment (YSAA). The tool has clinical as well as research relevance in that it identifies the attachment strategies of children aged 5-7 years as well as recognising attachment related problems for this age group. The YSAA is a representational procedure that uses line drawings of a child teddy in attachment-related situations. The stimulus cards, probes, and administration procedures were piloted and refined in the initial stages of this study. The children\u27s narratives that were generated from this procedure were examined for discourse markers derived from the Dynamic Maturational model of analysing the Adult Attachment Interview (Crittenden, 1999-2004). Enough markers in five memory systems were generated for reliable classifications to be made. A preliminary validation study of the YSAA in a normal population was conducted with 158 children over two years with two data gathering points. Classifications of the YSAA transcripts generated by the children at age 6 years demonstrated strong concordance with classifications made on the Preschool Assessment of Attachment (PAA) (Crittenden, 1995) classifications at age 5 years. There was significant agreement between the YSAA classifications and the sensitive attonement of mother-child dyads on a task that involves the co-construction of episodes as measured by the Autobiographical Emotional Events Dialogue (AEED) (Koren-Karie, Oppenheim, Haimovich, & Etzion-Carasso, 2003). The potential clinical relevance of the YSAA was encouraging as classifications on the YSAA matched parental identification of major problems. They did not, however, predict children\u27s relationships with their teachers (Pianta, 1991) or child behaviour problems as identified by Achenback CBCL (Acenbach, 1991). The results are discussed in the light of current issues raised in the research literature with regard to the use of representational measures with young school-age children. The limitations of this study are highlighted and discussed, conclusions drawn, and suggestions made for future research directions

Thoughts Of Moral Education Studi The Comparison of Thoughts Between Ibn Qayim al-Jauziyah and Imam al-Ghazali

The purpose of this research is  to  describe,knowing  the comparison of the concepts of moral  education and knowing the actualization of the moral educational thinking of Imam al-Ghazali and Ibn Qayim al-Jauziyah when applied in the practice of education.. Penelitian is library research. Using  two types  of  data sources,  namely; Primary, and  Secondary Sources,  In data collection select and classify existing data based on association with research objects. Furthermore, data processing is done by descriptive analysis, then done analysis and interpretation of existing data. Comparative analysis will also be used in this study. This analysis is used to compromise the opinions of the two figures, so that with this comparison is made a generalization of applied theories. Untuk achieve the goal of research, a philosophical analysis of the thinking of a person in a certain time inthe past, methodologically, this research will use a historical approach. Thislanguage concluded  first      imam al-Ghazali and Ibn Qayim al-Jauziyah both set out their thoughts in criticizing the deviant and harmful filusuf thinking of the people. So they are both in formulating their thoughts together asyou  cling to islamic values. Both  Imam al-Ghazali and Ibn Qayim al-Jauziyah both used the talak measure of the Qur'an and al-Hadith..  The  third in educating imam al-Ghazali's morality is more focused on the individual himself, which is through the way of mujahadah, while Ibn Qayim argues that the role of teachers can help in educating morals. The  Four Directions and the orientation of education between Imam al-Ghazali and Ibn Qayim both aim to print the perfect human being (human kamil) in order to achieve real happiness so as to be able to live happily in this world and the hereafter. The  five Pemikiran moral educationIbn Qayim and Imam al-Ghazali both emphasized on the education of children, the sixth Blend of moral education Imam al-Ghazali and Ibn Qayim al-Juziyah is expected to be able to print human beings who are sincere karimah so as to face the challenges of the times

Attitudes of girls and boys towards compulsory physical education in a selected government secondary school

This study investigated the attitudes of 175 lower secondary school students towards compulsory physical education and how these attitudes differed by year level and sex. The students were selected from a metropolitan government secondary school. A modified version of the Wear Attitude Inventory was used as the research instrument. A two-way ANOVA was applied to analyse the data for the following sub-groups: Year 8 females, Year 8 males, Year 9 females, Year 9 males, Year 10 females, and Year 10 males. The ANOVA compared the mean scores on the Wear Attitude Inventory for each sub-group. The results indicated that although both girls and boys held positive attitudes towards compulsory physical education, boys\u27 attitudes were more positive than girls. Also, as the year level increased, attitudes towards compulsory physical education were less positive for both boys and girls collectively. However, the data revealed that girls\u27 attitudes towards compulsory physical education tended to become less positive as the year level increased with the reverse being true for boys. That is, boys\u27 attitudes towards physical education tended to become more positive as the year level increased, but girls attitudes did not