Prisoners’ Families’ Research: Developments, Debates and Directions

After many years of relative obscurity, research on prisoners’ families has gained significant momentum. It has expanded from case-oriented descriptive analyses of family experiences to longitudinal studies of child and family development and even macro analyses of the effects on communities in societies of mass incarceration. Now the field engages multi-disciplinary and international interest although it arguably still remains on the periphery of mainstream criminological, psychological and sociological research agendas. This chapter discusses developments in prisoners’ families’ research and its positioning in academia and practice. It does not aim to provide an all-encompassing review of the literature rather it will offer some reflections on how and why the field has developed as it has and on its future directions. The chapter is divided into three parts. The first discusses reasons for the historically small body of research on prisoners’ families and for the growth in research interest over the past two decades. The second analyses patterns and shifts in the focus of research studies and considers how the field has been shaped by intersecting disciplinary interests of psychology, sociology, criminology and socio-legal studies. The final part reflects on substantive and ethical issues that are likely to shape the direction of prisoners’ families’ research in the future

Detailed Analysis of a Contiguous 22-Mb Region of the Maize Genome

Most of our understanding of plant genome structure and evolution has come from the careful annotation of small (e.g., 100 kb) sequenced genomic regions or from automated annotation of complete genome sequences. Here, we sequenced and carefully annotated a contiguous 22 Mb region of maize chromosome 4 using an improved pseudomolecule for annotation. The sequence segment was comprehensively ordered, oriented, and confirmed using the maize optical map. Nearly 84% of the sequence is composed of transposable elements (TEs) that are mostly nested within each other, of which most families are low-copy. We identified 544 gene models using multiple levels of evidence, as well as five miRNA genes. Gene fragments, many captured by TEs, are prevalent within this region. Elimination of gene redundancy from a tetraploid maize ancestor that originated a few million years ago is responsible in this region for most disruptions of synteny with sorghum and rice. Consistent with other sub-genomic analyses in maize, small RNA mapping showed that many small RNAs match TEs and that most TEs match small RNAs. These results, performed on ∼1% of the maize genome, demonstrate the feasibility of refining the B73 RefGen_v1 genome assembly by incorporating optical map, high-resolution genetic map, and comparative genomic data sets. Such improvements, along with those of gene and repeat annotation, will serve to promote future functional genomic and phylogenomic research in maize and other grasses

Effects of parental incarceration on children: Lessons from international research

In recent years, the increasing availability of longitudinal datasets has made it possible to investigate the consequences of parental imprisonment for children living in different countries. In this chapter, we compare international findings on three child outcomes hypothesized to be affected by parental imprisonment: offending, substance use, and mental illness. By comparing results across countries, we consider which effects of parental imprisonment on children are internationally generalizable. We find that with the current evidence available, it is difficult to disentangle cross-national differences in the effects of parental imprisonment on children from differences in sample selection, time of data collection, and other differences in research design. However, the increasing diversity and richness of international data sources nevertheless widen the focus of research on parental imprisonment in new ways. We make suggestions for research directions that will extend knowledge about the specific circumstances and mechanisms that determine whether and how imprisonment affects close family members of prisoners

The Creativity Dimension of Instructional Materials Designed by Prospective Teachers: The Comparison across Domains

This study aims at revealing the creativity dimension of the materials designed and developed by the second year students studying at the department of Computer Education and Instructional Technology. A part of the participants has completed the process by designing materials in their own field, information technologies; while some of them have done so by designing materials in the field of mathematics. The data have been retrieved from an experimental study of 13 weeks. “Teaching Material Creativity Rubric” developed by the researchers, has been used as the data collection tool. The rubric has been developed in order to evaluate the creativity dimensions of products. While developing the rubric, the creative product evaluation dimensions of [14] have been a source of inspiration. The products developed by the students have been evaluated through the retrieved data, in terms of their creativity. The rubric developed includes Originality, Practicality & Sensibility, Productivity & Flexibility, Feasibility, Inclusiveness, and Insightfulness dimensions. In this research, the data of the aforementioned dimensions and sub-dimensions have been evaluated. The results present that the creativity level of the products on teaching information technologies, which have been developed by Computer Education and Instructional Technology (CEIT) students, is high. It has been argued that the creativity of domain-specifically developed materials is higher, through literature. Keywords: Material Design in Computers, Mathematics Teaching, Originality, Applicability, Creativity, Creativity and Domainswords