Our digital children

The power relationship between adults and children in the West is shifting. Factors of age and life experience are becoming counterbalanced by children’s affinity for burgeoning developments in digital technology, where skills developed in online gaming and social media provide a strong foundation for knowledge economy occupations. The implications for parenting, schooling and society are immense. This paper summarises the current debate on issues around children’s use of digital devices and social media. It argues that for many parents a lack of familiarity and understanding creates anxieties and impairs them from helping their children realise the opportunities for social, moral and economic development afforded by the new technologies. Schools have a leading role to play but are hampered by teachers’ technical skills and confidence to innovate. The paper concludes with recommendations for a proactive approach to yield benefits for both children and adults

Our digital children

The power relationship between adults and children in the West is shifting. Factors of age and life experience are becoming counterbalanced by children’s affinity for burgeoning developments in digital technology, where skills developed in online gaming and social media provide a strong foundation for knowledge economy occupations. The implications for parenting, schooling and society are immense. This paper summarises the current debate on issues around children’s use of digital devices and social media. It argues that for many parents a lack of familiarity and understanding creates anxieties and impairs them from helping their children realise the opportunities for social, moral and economic development afforded by the new technologies. Schools have a leading role to play but are hampered by teachers’ technical skills and confidence to innovate. The paper concludes with recommendations for a proactive approach to yield benefits for both children and adults

Teachers’ understandings of lesson study as a professional development tool in a primary multi-grade school

With increasing focus on primary curricular reform in Ireland, growing understanding of the importance of education in the early years has led professional development organisations to consider the effectiveness of STEM (science, technology, engineering and maths) education for young children. This research seeks to explore the potential of lesson study as a vehicle to promote and support collaborative professional development in a rural, multi-grade primary school. Three teachers were introduced to and participated in four cycles of lesson study over the course of one school year. Lesson study was utilised to design and implement integrated STEM lessons in Junior and Senior Infants (ages 4–7 years). Through an action research methodology, qualitative data were generated from interviews, lesson plans, collaborative weekly meetings, observation sheets, and the researcher’s reflective journal and field notes. Analysis suggests that teachers began to develop new pedagogical practices as a result of iterative and collaborative lesson study processes. Findings also reveal insights into the knowledge-related demands of designing and implementing STEM lessons. Successive and collaborative cycles enabled teachers to become more confident in their teaching of STEM education, and they believed they had a greater understanding of the children’s learning. While teachers perceived lesson study to be a beneficial form of professional development, some factors constrained their engagement, including practical, cultural and sustainability challenges. The work concludes by contemplating the place of lesson study and STEM education in the current educational landscape, and makes recommendations to support their implementation nationally.N

Systematic review of interventions for the secondary prevention and treatment of emotional abuse of children by primary carers

Background Emotional abuse (or psychological maltreatment, as it is more commonly called in the US) is an inadequately researched and poorly understood concept, despite increasing awareness about the harm it can cause to children‟s lives. Although it unifies and underpins all types of maltreatment it also occurs alone and when it does, tends to elude detection and intervention. There have to date been no systematic reviews of the literature on the secondary prevention and treatment involving the parents or primary carers of emotionally abused children. Objective The objective of the review was to identify studies that evaluate the effectiveness of interventions in the secondary prevention and treatment of child emotional abuse involving the parents or primary carers of children aged 0 – 19 years. Methods Studies were included if they involved any intervention which was directed at emotionally abusive parenting and that measured change in (i) emotional unavailability (ii) negative attributions (i.e. that involve the parent attributing negative intentions, beliefs or attitudes toward the child); (iii) developmentally inappropriate interactions; (iv) lack of recognition of children‟s boundaries; (v) inconsistency of parenting role; (vi) missocialisation or consistent failure to promote the child‟s social adaptation. The primary outcomes evaluated involved proxy measures of a range of parent, family and child outcomes including parental psychopathology, parenting attitudes and practices, family functioning and/or child behaviour and the child‟s development and adaptation. . A broad search strategy was developed in order to identify as many relevant studies as possible. An electronic search of a wide range of databases was carried about. No study type was excluded. The search was augmented by direct contact with academics and practitioners known in this field. The search included studies written in English, Spanish, French and German. Studies were included if the intervention was described, and the impact on at least one indicator of emotional abuse was assessed. Included studies were critically appraised by two reviewers using standard criteria. Data were extracted using a standard proforma, and a qualitative synthesis of results was carried out. Results The initial search yielded 4248 publications of potential interest. Of these, 175 were obtained for possible inclusion or as background material. A total of 21 studies of 18 interventions, met all the inclusion criteria. A further 43 studies were relevant, but did not meet all of the inclusion criteria. Studies were organised according to the type of emotional abuse targeted: emotionally abusive parenting; parents of infants with faltering growth; missocialisation: parenting interventions with substance-abusing mothers. Twelve included studies had quantitative designs. Of these, 6 comprised randomised controlled trials; 1 comprised a follow-up of a randomised controlled trial; 2 were controlled studies; and 3 had one-group pre- and post-designs. The remaining 9 were case studies. Included studies involved a wide range of interventions. The 8 studies for parents which address emotionally abusive parenting (rejection, misattribution, parent-child role reversal and anger management) involved evaluations of cognitive-behavioural training (CBT), behavioural training and parent-infant psychotherapy. Two further case studies involved cognitive-behavioural training, mentalisation and family-based therapy. The 9 interventions with parents of infants with faltering growth evaluated CBT, behavioural training, parent infant psychotherapy and interaction guidance; lay home visitors, and a range of therapeutic options based on the diagnostic condition of the parents. The 3 studies of interventions for substance abusing mothers evaluated a relational psychotherapy group for mothers, and a residential treatment for substance abuse with a parenting component. The sample sizes for quantitative studies were small and ranged from 17 to 98 participants. Ten interventions involved mothers alone, while a further 11 included fathers, either at the outset or at a later stage, and in 3 cases extended family members. Interventions for emotionally abusing parents The findings from the 8 included studies evaluating CBT, psychotherapy, and behavioural approaches suggest that group-based CBT may be an effective means of intervening with this group of parents, although it cannot currently be recommended with parents experiencing symptoms of severe psychopathology. While one comparative study showed a psychotherapeutic intervention to be more effective than a CBT focused intervention, the outcomes measured in this study (i.e. parent and child representations) favoured the former. Behavioural case work involving the use of problem-solving techniques may also have a role to play with some parents, although further research is still needed. Interventions to enhance parental sensitivity The findings from a systematic review of 81 interventions that aimed at enhancing parental sensitivity and / or infant attachment found strong evidence that short term (less than 16 sessions) interventions, with a behavioural focus and aimed exclusively at enhancing maternal sensitivity were also most effective in enhancing infant attachment security. This supports the notion of a causal role of sensitivity in shaping attachment. Interventions that included fathers as well as mothers showed higher effect sizes but results are tentative since they are based on a small number of small scale trials. Parental behaviours associated with faltering growth Nine studies evaluated a range of interventions with parents of babies with faltering growth including interaction guidance, home visiting; parent-child psychotherapy, behavioural casework and multi-component interventions. The findings show that interaction guidance and parent-infant psychotherapy may be potentially effective means of working with this group of clients along with behavioural casework, but that further research is needed before these can be recommended. Missocialisation: Parenting interventions for substance-abusing parents 5 studies (one of which was a 6-month follow-up) evaluated interventions for substance abusing mothers, including a relational psychotherapy group and a residential treatment for substance abusing adults with a parenting component. The findings show that initial gains made in the former were not sustained at 6-months and few benefits from residential intervention. Conclusions Emotional abuse is a complex issue resulting in part from learned behaviours, psychopathology and/or unmet emotional needs in the parents, and often compounded by factors in the families‟ immediate and wider social environment. As such, a „one-approach-fits-all‟ is unlikely to lead to sustained change. The evidence base is weak, but suggests that some caregivers respond well to cognitive behavioural therapy. However, the characteristics that define these parents are not clear. There is currently no evidence to support the use of this intervention alone in the treatment of severely emotionally abusive parents. Some of the evidence suggests that a certain form of emotional abuse (for example, highly negative parent affect, which may be expressed as frightened and frightening behaviours in the parent) stemming from unresolved trauma and loss, is less amenable to CBT. There is some evidence that interaction guidance and psychotherapeutic approaches can generate change in parents with more severe psychopathology. Further research is urgently needed to evaluate the benefits of both psychotherapeutic and cognitive behavioural interventions, including those which take the form of family therapy, with parents at the more severe end of the spectrum, with fathers, and with older children. There is also a need to gain further understanding about which forms of emotional abuse respond best to different treatments

Experiential Learning and Its Influence on Social Change

This research study is presented as a final project in fulfillment of the capstone requirement to the College of Professional Studies and the graduate school at Marquette University. This research study was presented with Dr. Jay Caulfield at the ISSOTL (International Scholarship of Teaching and Learning) conference, October 22, 2011. The research study included previous and current graduate students enrolled in the Nature of Cities course in the spring of 2008 and the Models of Sustainability course in the spring of 2011 within the public service program at Marquette University. Both of these courses were graduate courses that had substantial experiential learning experiences incorporated into their course design. This research study identified how experiential learning activities may add to a graduate student’s engagement and awareness of social issues. In addition, the research findings within this study are intended to give a general overview of how the participants’ experiential learning experiences have influenced and or changed their behavior. This study is inclusive to an introduction, literature review, overview of participants, methods, findings and discussion, limitations to research, additional research, and conclusion. It is the researcher’s intention to include an additional 10 participants within this study that will comprise of students enrolled in the Models of Sustainability course at Marquette University during the summer of 2010. Upon completion of this research study, it is the researcher’s objective to publish this study as an article within the Journal of the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning

Brains and Education: Towards Neurocognitive Phenomics

Phenomics is concerned with detailed description of all aspects of organisms, from their physical foundations at genetic, molecular and cellular level, to behavioural and psychological traits. Neuropsychiatric phenomics tries to understand mental disease from such broad perspective. It is clear that learning sciences also need similar approach that should integrate efforts to understand cognitive processes from the perspective of the brain development, in temporal, spatial, psychological and social aspects. A new branch of science called neurocognitive phenomics is proposed, treating the brain as a substrate shaped by the genetic, epigenetic, cellular and environmental factors, in which learning processes due to the individual experiences, social contacts, education and culture take place. A brief review of selected aspects, from genes to learning styles, is presented, and a link between central, peripheral and motor processes in the brain linked to learning styles

Developmental Bootstrapping of AIs

Although some current AIs surpass human abilities in closed artificial worlds such as board games, their abilities in the real world are limited. They make strange mistakes and do not notice them. They cannot be instructed easily, fail to use common sense, and lack curiosity. They do not make good collaborators. Mainstream approaches for creating AIs are the traditional manually-constructed symbolic AI approach and generative and deep learning AI approaches including large language models (LLMs). These systems are not well suited for creating robust and trustworthy AIs. Although it is outside of the mainstream, the developmental bootstrapping approach has more potential. In developmental bootstrapping, AIs develop competences like human children do. They start with innate competences. They interact with the environment and learn from their interactions. They incrementally extend their innate competences with self-developed competences. They interact and learn from people and establish perceptual, cognitive, and common grounding. They acquire the competences they need through bootstrapping. However, developmental robotics has not yet produced AIs with robust adult-level competences. Projects have typically stopped at the Toddler Barrier corresponding to human infant development at about two years of age, before their speech is fluent. They also do not bridge the Reading Barrier, to skillfully and skeptically draw on the socially developed information resources that power current LLMs. The next competences in human cognitive development involve intrinsic motivation, imitation learning, imagination, coordination, and communication. This position paper lays out the logic, prospects, gaps, and challenges for extending the practice of developmental bootstrapping to acquire further competences and create robust, resilient, and human-compatible AIs.Comment: 102 pages, 29 figure

Educational Learning Theories: 2nd Edition

This open textbook was the result of a remix of pre-existing open materials collected and reviewed by Molly Zhou and David Brown. Learning theories covered include the theories of Piaget, Bandura, Vygotsky, Kohlberg, Dewey, Bronfenbrenner, Eriksen, Gardner, Bloom, and Maslow. The textbook was revised in 2018 through a Round Ten Revisions and Ancillary Materials Mini-Grant. Topics covered include: Behaviorism Cognitive Development Social Cognitive Theory Experiential Learning Theory Human Motivation Theory Information Processing Theoryhttps://oer.galileo.usg.edu/education-textbooks/1000/thumbnail.jp

Professional pedagogies of parenting that build resilience through partnership with families at-risk: a cultural-historical approach

© 2016 Pedagogy, Culture & Society. The importance of pedagogic practices in addressing major social problems is increasingly acknowledged. This is especially so in areas of work not traditionally understood in pedagogic terms, such as services for vulnerable families with young children. Policy mandates for change in relationships between professionals and clients have challenged conventional notions of professional expertise, intensifying and expanding the pedagogic dimension of such work. This paper examines professional–parent interactions, adopting a cultural-historical approach focused on mediation, everyday and scientific concepts, and the space of reasons. Analysis reveals four distinct activities: locating and orienting change, creating new meaning for change, change through joint live action, and planning for change. Each involves different objects and ways in which professional expertise is brought to bear in pedagogic work. It is argued resilience-building works by helping parents learn to interpret and act in their worlds differently, using cultural tools from professional expertise made available through pedagogic work. The paper provides new insights into the importance of professional expertise in these practices at a time when this is in question