Child–parent interaction in relation to road safety education : Part 2 – main report

• Children and young people are particularly vulnerable road users. • Child pedestrian injury rates are poor compared with the rest of Europe. • The factors that impact on children’s road safety and their capability in traffic are numerous, multi-faceted and complex. • • The systematic review conducted by Cattan et al. (2008) as the initial phase of this study shows that: • parents see themselves as being responsible for developing their children’s road safety awareness and skills; • holding hands is the most common road-crossing interaction between parents and children; • adults rarely make use of road-crossing events to give oral instructions; • few parents and children are consistent in their road-crossing behaviour; • roadside training by volunteer parents for groups of children can lead to significant improvements in children’s road safety behaviour; • belief in fate seems to influence the likelihood of parents using restraints, such as seat belts or car seats, with their children; and • parents’ understanding of the child’s perspective in carrying out road safety tasks and their motivation to actively involve their child in making decisions at the roadside can be improved through training. • Social Cognitive Theory (Bandura, 1986) suggests that the modelling role of parents can make a significant contribution to children’s learning about road use and their development of traffic competence whether or not parents are aware of this. • The main aim of this study was to explore the way parents influence children and young people aged 0–16 years to be safer road users. • This study included children and young people aged 5–16 and parents of children aged 0–16 years old

Child–parent interaction in relation to road safety education : part 1 – A critical literature review

The purpose of this review was: • to identify and provide a critical review of the research and literature concerned with parentchild interaction in relation to road safety education in order to inform the Child–parent interaction in relation to road safety education study completed in 2007; and • to consider the published evidence for the effect of strategies that parents use in training their children to be safer road users and to consider ways of engaging parents in road safety education. The term ‘children’ refers to the age group 0 to 18. The reason for this is that, although most research on childparent interaction tends to focus on the 0 to 14 age group, some studies, mainly those concerned with teen drivers, include young people aged 16 to 18. The term ‘parent’ refers to any adult accompanying the child

How does living in a rural location affect experiences of acquired vision impairment?

This research explores the lived experiences of adults with acquired sight loss who live in rural areas in Southwest England. There is a scarcity of published academic research with this group. Vision impaired people who live in rural locations are therefore unrecognised sources of vision impairment rehabilitation knowledge. The research is conducted in an interpretivist paradigm. The research is guided by phenomenological understanding, rooted in Merleau-Ponty’s concepts of perception, the centrality of tool-use, and human embodiment. Attention is centred on the process of adapting to sight loss in a domestic setting, placing this research in an experiential, community-based educational context. The researcher openly acknowledges her professional migration from urban to rural areas has informed this study. The interview method is an adaptation of the visual imagery-based Z-MET interview technique, re-designed for this group of participants. This study is connected to other multi-sensory research, particularly sensory ethnography. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with eight vision impaired people living in rural Southwest England, generating descriptive data. Interviews were analysed using an Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis framework. The identified themes, Light and Sound; Blindness: a state of difference; Changes in A Working Life; Me, My People and My Animals; My Rural Home; I am what I eat; each express an aspect of participants’ daily lives that is significant. The themes demonstrate how fundamental rurality is for every participant irrespective of whether this was chosen or the outcome of happenstance. This research shows how rural life remains emphatically different from urban living. This research identifies and conveys participants’ living expertise. In conclusion, implications for both vision impairment rehabilitation service policies and professional practice are stated.