Opening the Classroom Door - A Survey of Middle Grades Teachers Who Mentor Preservice Teachers— Lessons from Clinical Partnerships and Implications for Practice

Mentor teachers that participate in school-university clinical experiences have a unique opportunity to support preservice middle grades teachers’ development and improve the schooling of young adolescents. This article investigates an early clinical experience and presents data from a survey of 38 middle school teachers who served as mentor teachers. Findings address how middle grades teachers view their role as mentors, their perceptions of the clinical experience as a collaborative learning partnership, and concludes with suggestions to improve clinical experiences for preservice middle grades teacher candidates

Adapt and Serve the Community!: Voices of Families of Youth of Color in Predominantly White, Rural Communities

Currently, there is limited research that centers the voices of youth of Color and their families living and attending school in rural communities in the United States. This lack of representation is even more prominent among rural youth who identify in culturally, racially, and linguistically diverse ways and who reside and attend schools in predominantly white contexts. This qualitative case study sought to explore the experiences of parents of children who identify as youth of Color and who reside or attend school in predominantly white, rural settings. Drawing from in-depth interviews with five parents from four families, findings reveal that same-race biological parents and transracial adoptive (TRA) parents enact multiple forms of cultural capital as they navigate their communities and their children’s schooling experiences within a broader culture and climate of onlyness. Additional findings indicate the critical need for culturally competent and sustaining practices in predominantly white, rural school

From Zen to C-Level

From the non-stop pull of smart phones to overcommitted working parents, the average American worker is constantly plugged in and on the go. Such a cognitive overload can have dire consequences. These consequences include: memory and concentration problems; hostility and aggression; anxiety; and poor judgment (Smith, 2014). These effects of overload most certainly decrease the effectiveness of work productivity. To get the best out of their employees, restoring their wellbeing and re-engaging them at work should be of value to organizations across the country. Being mindful can increase wellbeing and engagement in activities along with improving concentration. Mindfulness also decreases stress and the likelihood of depression. One of the ways to increase mindfulness is through the practice of meditation (Benefits of Mindfulness, 2013). To use mindfulness and mediation in the corporate world, it can be administered through coaching. As organizational coaches work with employees, they can teach mindfulness meditation along with the use of wellbeing and positive assessments to create more engaged, focused employees and to help aid in leadership development. Assessments can be administered pre- and post- coaching experience to gauge effectiveness. The research for this project was the result of my studies in the Business Psychology graduate program at Franklin University and was used as my mastery project.https://fuse.franklin.edu/ss2014/1070/thumbnail.jp

Evaluation of the treatment utility of the analog functional analysis and the structured descriptive assessment

The analog functional analysis exerts a great deal of control over environmental variables due to the systematic manipulation of specific antecedent and consequent events. Previous research suggests that the treatment utility of the analog might be enhanced by including environmental variables specific to the participant (e.g., caregivers). An alternative to this is to conduct the functional assessment in the natural environment. The structured descriptive assessment (SDA) involves systematic manipulation of antecedent events but is conducted by caregivers in individuals\u27 natural environment. The purpose of this study was to examine the treatment utility of the analog functional analysis and the SDA by comparing results of the analog functional analysis when conducted by experimenters versus caregivers to results obtained from the SDA. Additionally, consequence-based interventions based on the results of each assessment were evaluated. Four participants with developmental disabilities and their caregivers participated. For all four participants, different patterns of responding were observed across all three assessments. For all participants, the interventions based on the results of the SDA were more effective than interventions based on the analog functional analysis

Predicting and understanding sexual and nonsexual adolescent peer victimization in schools: A mixed methods approach

There are several developmental tasks encountered during adolescence that may influence how sexual peer victimization is used and experienced by adolescents in the context of interacting with their peers. The characterization of high-status gender role conforming perpetrators and low-status gender role nonconforming victims in popular media suggests that gender role development and peer social status are important elements involved in how adolescents use and experience sexual peer victimization. In the present research the concept of gender policing (i.e., the use of social power to control and reinforce gender norms) was examined to help describe sexual peer victimization within the peer group context during adolescence. Three studies were conducted to explore (a) the prevalence of sexual and nonsexual forms of peer victimization (i.e., physical, verbal, social, and cyber) in a large sample of high schools students (N = 42, 818; Study 1), (b) social status and gender role conformity in relation to retrospective accounts of sexual and nonsexual forms of peer victimization in high school as reported by emerging adults in a university setting (N = 247; Study 2) who also reported on their current psychological functioning, and (c) in-depth accounts of peer victimization during adolescence obtained through interviews with a small group of adolescents (N = 14; Study 3). The findings reported in this program of research clearly document the presence of both sexual and nonsexual forms of peer victimization in high schools and also suggest that experiencing peer victimization (in general rather than specific forms) may have an impact on later psychosocial functioning. Although there was minimal support for the hypothesized relationships between social status, gender conformity, and experiencing and perpetrating sexual peer victimization, the findings reported in this program of research suggest that there is a level of complexity to sexual peer victimization that requires more refined examination of gender role conformity and social hierarchy alongside the identification of additional mechanisms. Implications and limitations of each study are considered

A Comparison Study of Children\u27s Cognitive Understanding of Conception and Birth: England, Sweden and the United States

This study explores the extent to which early childhood understanding of conception and birth is increased by early sexuality education. The present study compares conception and birth understanding of primary-aged children in America with children in other countries. Specifically, this study compared prompted drawings done by 6 year-old children from England, Sweden, The Netherlands, and the United States. Prompts used to elicit these drawing were: Where do babies come from? and How are babies made? Controlled comparison data of the children\u27s knowledge of conception and birth, were obtained through the application of the Children\u27s Sexuality Awareness Scale (Koch 1974) and the Origin of Babies Scale (Goldman and Goldman (1982). The results of this study provide new information about how children think and process information about conception and birth. Findings support the importance of parents and educators providing children with comprehensive, age appropriate information about conception and birth. Implications for future research are discussed