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Encyclopedia of Cross-Cultural School Psychology
Caroline S. Clauss-Ehlers (Ed.) Caroline S. Clauss-Ehlers, Ph.D. Associate Professor of Counseling Psychology Depa
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Encyclopedia of Cross-Cultural School Psychology
Caroline S. Clauss-Ehlers (Ed.)
Encyclopedia of Cross-Cultural School Psychology
Caroline S. Clauss-Ehlers, Ph.D. Associate Professor of Counseling Psychology Department of Educational Psychology Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey U.S.A.
ISBN-13: 978-0-387-71798-2 This publication is available also as: Electronic publication under 978-0-387-71799-9 and Print and electronic bundle under ISBN 978-0-387-71800-2 Library of Congress Control Number: 2008925838 All rights are reserved. This work may not be translated or copied in whole or in part without the written permission of the publisher (Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, 233 Spring Street, New York, NY 10013, USA), except for brief excerpts in connection with reviews or scholarly analysis. Use in connection with any form of information storage and retrieval, electronic adaption, computer software, or similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed is forbidden. The use in this publication of trade names, trademarks, service marks, and similar terms, even if they are not identified as such, is not to be taken as an expression of opinion as to whether or not they are subject to proprietary rights. Springer is part of Springer Science+Business Media springer.com # Springer Science+Business Media LLC 2010 Product liability: The publishers cannot guarantee the accuracy of any information about the application of operative techniques and medications contained in this book. In every individual case the user must check such information by consulting the relevant literature. springer.com Printed on acid-free paper
SPIN: 11347354 2109 – 5 4 3 2 1
To Julian, Isabel, and Sabrina—whose love and support throughout this work speaks volumes!
Preface It is with great anticipation that I hope you, the reader, will learn from the pages that follow. The field of school psychology is becoming increasingly prominent. School-based mental health centers provide counseling and services to youth in one of their primary natural environments—the school. They give children and families access to counseling, assessment, intervention, resources, and referrals, among a host of other services. Access is enhanced when interventions are delivered where children live their lives and experience their world. This is unlike going to an outside environment for support such as a private practice setting. This in-life intervention is further enhanced when it is provided in a way that reflects the youth’s experience. The Encyclopedia of CrossCultural School Psychology puts the practice of school psychology in a cross-cultural context. It explores how school psychology is culturally and linguistically relevant for students who represent various dimensions of diversity. When selecting topics to write, contributors were instructed to consider how each subject area played out in a cross-cultural context. Hence, the concept of academic achievement considers the experiences of diverse racial/ethnic groups of youth. The term ‘cultural resilience’ explores the cultural implications of overcoming adversity. The Encyclopedia of Cross-Cultural School Psychology has several goals. First, it seeks to respond to the increasingly diverse nature of schools—this considers what is happening nationally as well as implications for global outreach. Second, the volume organizes a community of science that provides current information about a far-reaching range of topics that are inextricably related. Individual entries are broadly categorized as follows: administrative issues; children at different stages of development; alternative school considerations; assessment within a cross-cultural context; community partnerships; counseling concepts; cultural competence; curriculum issues; ethnic identity; gender identity; health insurance and healthcare access; home–school connections; initiatives and innovations in the discipline; language and communication; religious schools; public policy; professional and community organizations; school climate; cross-cultural issues in special education; and a host of additional critical issues such as terrorism, teacher burnout, and culturally competent teaching strategies. The third goal is to offer an easily accessible major reference work. School personnel are busy. Countless challenges arise on a daily basis. Consider the incident where a child makes a racist comment to his classmate. In the moment, the teacher may be understandably nervous—she wonders how to respond and what action to take. This volume is geared to give teachers in this situation an avenue where they can quickly access topics like racism and bullying so as to respond from a base of new knowledge. The Encyclopedia of Cross-Cultural School Psychology is formatted and organized in a purposeful way. Five foundational topics provide an overall grounding for the more than 400 entries that follow. The content of these five chapters includes an overview of the history of cross-cultural school psychology in the United States, a review of cross-cultural competencies, discussion about disparities in school services, consideration of multicultural assessment tools, and future directions in the field of school psychology. These foundational areas are followed by an A to Z listing of the topics themselves. Formatting within each topic is designed to maximize access to information. Entries range in length from small (approximately 600 words), to medium (1,500 words), and large (4,500 words). Subheadings highlight specific areas of interest associated with each topic. (Of course, for smaller entries, there may not be any subheadings.) Cross-references are provided at the end of each entry. These help the reader to seek out additional topics that relate to the major reference heading. For many topics, additional sections present suggested reading and suggested resources like websites. A text such as this is not without limitations. Because of the growth and increasing development of crosscultural school psychology, certain limitations are bound to develop. The changing nature of information is a case in point. Even within the course of this project, for instance, new scientifically based evidence and treatments emerged. The fact that this is an issue is exciting—it means that sufficient work is being done that warrants consideration about new developments and innovations in the field. This is good news. A second limitation is more concrete and concerns the topics themselves. It was easy to identify contributors for topics with substantial research and applied knowledge to back them up. This was not necessarily the case for some of the more esoteric,
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less researched topics. Indeed, some of these topics were ultimately not included because potential contributors could not be identified. It is hoped that as the field progresses, scholarship will occur not only for those more recent innovations, but also across an even greater range of content than that presented here. For topics that are not included, I invite readers to consider how research can move such areas forward for future publication. I am open to this conversation. Readers, for instance, are welcome to send me emails or letters sharing their recommendations about additional topics to be included in possible future editions of this volume. I would like to take a moment to acknowledge the many individuals who contributed to this work. An overall acknowledgement goes out to the authors. It has been a great pleasure to work with them and learn from their many perspectives. I am also quite proud of the fact that, just as this encyclopedia focuses on diversity, so too are the contributors whose words fill the pages that follow. Contributor diversity includes demographic variables, country of origin, area of study, and even professional position. With regard to the latter, for instance, it was wonderful that some of the contributors actually developed the measures they wrote about, whereas others were undergraduate and graduate students organizing their first publication. Just as the diversity of topics makes this work interesting, so too does the variety of authors who present their work from their particular worldviews. Finally, there are specific entities and individuals who deserve mention. I give a heartfelt thanks to a wonderful Advisory Board. The Board provided timely feedback and access to their expertise throughout the process of compiling this project. Many thanks also goes to Dr. Thomas H. Bornemann, Director of the Mental Health Program at The Carter Center, author of the foreword for this text, who shares great knowledge and compassion about this area. The collaboration at Springer has been truly gratifying. Judy Jones, the Senior Editor who first approached me about this project, has always been supportive and helpful. Sharon Panulla, Executive Editor, has been an ongoing source of steadfastness throughout project development. Editorial Assistants Heike Richini and Ulrike Eggert-Neben have amazed me with their accuracy and precision where the written word is concerned. Susanne Friedrichsen has been a thoughtful Reference Development Editor and Chris Purdon has shared his talent for detail and meticulousness as Freelance Copy-Editor. Antonia Hernandez, my former student and now a professional in her own right, has been a loyal colleague and contributor. Kristina Metz never ceased to amaze with her clarity, and Matthew J. Mayer provided timely feedback and insight. Of course, no acknowledgment is complete without the mention of those who make a family. My husband Julian has been a consistent support with his encouraging, gentle way that says anything is possible. Isabel, my oldest daughter, was present during initial discussions about this project at the American Psychological Association conference in Honolulu, Hawaii. She has thrived throughout, even pulling the occasional chair into my home office to sit down and do her research. And Sabrina, who actually came into existence during the middle part of this work, is now four and proudly says the word ‘‘research.’’ All three have provided great joy during this writing. To think about children in general, and then to think about my children, my nieces, nephews, and my friends’ children, is to be inspired. It is a call to action. A call to consider seriously how what we know as a ‘‘school’’ can be a place of egalitarianism, social justice, a love of learning, ongoing curiosity, and overall joy for children and those charged with helping them learn. What a world this would be. Caroline S. Clauss-Ehlers
Foreword As the U.S. population increases each year, it continues to diversify. In the past 35 years, the percentage of foreignborn people living in the U.S.—both those who are naturalized and those who are not citizens—has increased from nearly 5% in 1970 to over 19% in 2005.1 This racial, ethnic, and cultural movement is reflected in many aspects of society, including the educational system, and is bringing with it cultural, attitudinal, and linguistic variance. To best address the depth of this diversity, school systems need to change the ways that students of various racial, ethnic, and cultural groups are engaged in the classrooms, and to better recognize and serve the needs of these students and families. It is imperative that educators receive training around the cultural and ethnic diversity in mental health services, and the necessity of making those services linguistically and culturally appropriate. School psychologists, guidance counselors, teachers, and administrators will counsel, teach, and serve children more effectively if they acknowledge the variety of ways in which students display mental health problems and the reasons why they may not receive necessary services outside the school system. As the Encyclopedia of Cross-Cultural School Psychology indicates, the development and implementation of cross-cultural school psychology is essential in illuminating the significant challenges posed by increasing population diversity. Furthermore, cross-cultural school psychology facilitates the adaptation of instructional environments, the availability of critical resources, and the extent to which teachers and parents remain informed about their children. In assessing potential barriers to mental health services, it is important to acknowledge that language is directly and intimately linked with an individual’s sense of identity, social confidence, and feelings of security.2 Although services may be available, insensitivity to linguistic differences may preclude access to mental health services and lead to erroneous evaluations of a student’s academic capability. For instance, English-as-a-SecondLanguage (ESL) students are sometimes classified as learning disabled after taking standardized tests in English, rather than in their native languages.3 Students in U.S. schools today speak more than 400 different languages. Most standardized tests are given only in English, and as a result, evaluation of individual knowledge and competence may inaccurately reflect cultural and ethnic differences. Unreliable assessments of strengths and weaknesses can unnecessarily leave students behind. Aside from possible language barriers to services, recognition of culturally variant attitudes about mental health and the seeking of services is essential. The National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) has indicated that prevalence rates of mental disorders are higher among U.S.-born children of immigrants than among their parents.4 One possibility for this trend may underscore cross-cultural attitudinal differences in the acceptance and expression of mental illnesses. There are similarities in mental health problems across cultures, with substantial differences in the cultural context of these problems.5 In my 35-year career in public health, my work developing, planning, and implementing mental health programs for refugees and other populations has shown most clearly these cultural commonalities and differences in the acceptance of mental health problems and programs for treatment and recovery. Individuals and organizations committed to working with schoolchildren of different cultures and ethnicities should be educated on the contextual issues of mental health and the potential for language barriers. To be most effective in their jobs, school psychologists, counselors, teachers, and administrators should then transfer this knowledge into the formation of appropriate acculturation policies and services for addressing these differences. With estimates for the year 2040 suggesting that no one ethnic or racial group will compose a majority of the U.S. 1 U.S. Census Bureau http://factfinder.census.gov/servlet/ACSSAFFFacts?_event¼&geo_i; Historical Statistics of the United States Millennial Edition Online. 2 Holtzman, W. H., & Bornemann, T. H. (Eds.). (1990). Mental health of immigrants and refugees. Austin: Hogg Foundation for Mental Health. 3 Rogers, M. R., & Lopez, E. C. (2002). Identifying critical cross-cultural school psychology competencies. Journal of School Psychology, 40(2), 115–141. http://www.nasponline.org/resources/culturalcompetence/cultcompmhservices.pdf 4 http://www.nimh.nih.gov/press/immigrant_mentalhealth.cfm 5 The World Health Report, 2001.
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school-age population,6 adapting to the increasingly heterogeneous population is no longer an option; it is a necessity. The focus of the Encyclopedia of Cross-Cultural School Psychology is to demonstrate how concepts in school psychology have a cross-cultural application. It is particularly relevant to school psychologists, clinical child psychologists, developmental psychologists, guidance counselors, social workers, administrators, teachers, and other allied professionals. The content is divided into two principal sections: ‘‘Foundation Topics in CrossCultural School Psychology’’ and ‘‘Topics in Cross-Cultural School Psychology.’’ The former is further divided into five subsections, and it provides a valuable historical context from which to understand the ‘‘Topics in CrossCultural Psychology.’’ Each entry includes cross-references and suggested reading and online resources where appropriate. The content is designed to provide readers with the necessary demographic and statistical background from which to gauge the need for cross-cultural psychology in U.S. schools. Additionally, several entries focus on specific areas of cultural and ethnic variance, giving in-depth and substantive information on diverse groups in the U.S. population, information that readers should keep in mind in their daily interactions with and treatment of culturally diverse students. For example, because language barriers may present problems in assessing students’ capabilities, there is a section devoted solely to language and communication. It includes content to address the language needs in multicultural classrooms, the intricacies of ESL instruction, culturally competent assessments of English language learners, transitional versus maintenance approaches to language, context communication, and other topics. These data are complemented by information on the assessment of culturally diverse groups, multicultural assessment instruments, community partnerships and organizations for diverse youth, the specifics of counseling children with mental and behavioral health problems, and initiatives to incorporate cross-cultural awareness. The Encyclopedia of Cross-Cultural School Psychology is an excellent and essential resource with which to guide educators, counselors, and others. It is the first comprehensive guide to cross-cultural efforts in schools, and one that identifies the formation of cross-cultural school psychology as essential in elucidating the significant challenges posed by increasing population diversity. Furthermore, it highlights issues applicable to children in pre-kindergarten through grade 12, providing a lifespan approach that addresses cultural variance. With noted increases in population diversity, the need for culturally relevant materials on mental health services in schools will only continue to increase in the coming years. The introduction of this encyclopedia is therefore very timely, and should prove indispensable in ushering U.S. schools into a new era of cross-cultural competency. With this in mind, allow it to remain on your desk with its pages open, for only those who engage in the knowledge that it so adeptly compiles and accessibly organizes will use it to its fullest potential. Thomas H. Bornemann, Ed.D. MSW Assistant Surgeon General (retired) Director, The Carter Center Mental Health Program Atlanta, GA U.S.A.
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National Association of School Boards of Education, 2002, as cited in Williams, B. B. (2006). Culturally competent mental health services in the schools: Tips for teachers. National Association of School Psychologists. http://www.nasponline.org/resources/culturalcompetence/ cultcompmhservices.pdf
Table of Contents Part I Foundation Issues in Cross-Cultural School Psychology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 The History of Cross-Cultural School Psychology in the United States . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 Wilda Laija-Rodriguez . Alberto Restori
Cross-Cultural School Psychology: An Overview and Examples of Multicultural Treatment and Assessment Modalities . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21 Giuseppe Costantino . Carmen Inoa Vazquez . Melanie Perez
Enhancing Cultural Competence in Schools and School Mental Health Programs . . . . . . . . . . . . 39 Caroline S Clauss-Ehlers . Mark D Weist . W Henry Gregory . Robert Hull
Racial Disparities in School Services . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45 Charles R Ridley . M Karega Rausch . Russell J Skiba
Looking into the Future: New Directions in Cross-Cultural School Psychology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55 Beth Kleinman-Fleischer
Part II Topics in Cross-Cultural School Psychology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63 Administrative Issues Accountability Accreditation Attendance Block Scheduling Book Banning Center for School Mental Health (CSMH) Center for School-Based Mental Health Programs (CSBMHP) Center for the Advancement of Mental Health Practices in Schools Class Size Community Schools Data, Using (Accountability) Demographics Early Intervention Education Education Funding Grade Configurations Grading Outcomes-Based Education Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports (PBIS) Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports (PBIS): Process Considerations Principals Reform Retention
Rural Schools School Buses School Roles in Mental Health School Standards School, Size Of School-Based Prevention Student Dropout Student Mobility Suburban Schools Truancy Uniforms Urban Schools Age Groups Adolescence Adolescent Parents Childhood Daycare Diversity in Higher Education Early Childhood Education Head Start High Schools Kindergarten Middle School Preschool Preschool Mental Health Toddler Center Young Adulthood
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Alternative Schools Charter Schools Early Head Start Magnet Schools Montessori Parochial Schools Private Schools Reggio Emilia Religious/Ethnic Schools Single-Sex Education Vocational Schools Vouchers Waldorf Schools Assessment Achievement Tests Assessment of Culturally Diverse Children Authentic Assessment Bilingual Verbal Ability Tests (BVAT) Black Intelligence Test of Cultural Homogeneity (B.I.T.C.H.) Children’s Personal Meaning Profile (PMP-C) College Board Computer Based Testing Cultural Measurement Equivalence Gf-Gc Model of Intelligence Global Assessment of Functioning (GAF) High Stakes Testing Intelligence/Intelligence Quotient (IQ) Kaufman Assessment Battery for Children-Second Edition (KABC-II) Language Deficits Multigroup Ethnic Identity Measure (MEIM) Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI), Multicultural Applications National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) Neuropsychological Assessment Nondiscriminatory Testing Nonverbal Assessment Norm-Referenced Test (NRT) Personality Tests: Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI) and Millon Clinical Multiaxial Inventory (MCMI) Portfolios Preschool Language Assessment Instrument (PLAI) vs. A Thematic Version (PLAI-T) and Preschool Language Assessment Instrument- Second Version (PLAI–2) Projective Tests Racial/Ethnic Group Differences
Raven’s Progressive Matrices SAT Screening and Early Warning Signs Stanford-Binet Intelligence Scale System of Multicultural Pluralistic Assessment (SOMPA) TEMAS (Tell-Me-A-Story) Multicultural Thematic Apperception Test Testing and Measurement Universal Nonverbal Intelligence Test (UNIT) Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children-IV (WISC-IV) Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children-IV (WISC-IV) Spanish Woodcock-Johnson Community Partnerships Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning (CASEL) Community Approaches to Improving Child Success Community Interventions with Diverse Youth Community Psychology Community Violence Educational Partnership School-Community Mental Health Centers Counseling (Guidance/School) Aggressiveness Anxiety Childhood Depression Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) Conduct Disorder Counseling Crime in Schools Crisis Intervention Cross-Cultural Competence in School Psychologists’ Services Cross-Cultural Psychology Cross-Cultural School Psychology Cuento Therapy Delusion Desensitization Disasters and Disaster Prevention Eating Disorders Family Fragmentation Grief Counseling Hypochondriasis Impulsive Behavior Mania/Hypomania
Table of contents
Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD) Panic Disorder/Attacks Personality Disorders Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) Psychosis Referral Schizophrenia School Counselor School Psychologist Self-Esteem Smoking Social Work Somatization Disorder Stigma Substance Abuse Suicide Cultural Competence Acculturation Adolescent Ethnic Identity Biracial/Multiracial Identity Development Black Racial Identity Development Cross-Cultural Consultation Cross-Cultural Dissonance Cultural Competency Self Assessment Checklist Cultural Diversity Cultural Enmeshment Cultural Issues in Education Cultural Perspectives on Trauma Cultural Resilience Culturally Competent Crisis Response Culturally Competent Practice Culture Defense/Coping Mechanism Discrimination Ecology Ego Identity Statuses Ethnic Identity Development Ethnic Minority Youth Ethnicity Generational Differences Melting Pot Mentoring Diverse Youth Minority Identity Development Model Multicultural Education People of Color Prejudice Psychotropics Race Racism: Individual, Institutional, and Cultural
Roles and Responsibilities of Multiculturally Competent School Counselors Self-Assessment Checklist for Personnel Providing Services and Supports to Children and Their Families Stereotyping Tolerance Under-Representation White Racial Identity Development Worldview Curriculum Academic Achievement in Minority Children Advanced Placement Career Education Character Education Citizenship Collaborative and Cooperative Learning Creativity Critical Thinking Cross-Cultural Learning Styles Cultural Psychiatry Cultural Studies in Schools Death Education Democracy, Teaching About Distance Learning Drama, Teaching Drug Education Health Education Holocaust Education Immigration Immigration Literature Language Arts, Teaching of Literacy Mathematics Teaching Approaches Mathematics, Teaching of Media Literacy Moral Education Physical Education, Teaching Poetry, Teaching Pregnancy, Teaching About Prevention Reading, Teaching Religion, Teaching About School-to-Work Science, Teaching Service Learning Sex Education Social Sciences, Teaching Stress/Stressors
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Study Skills Summer Learning Loss Technology Time Management Tracking Gender Identity/Sexual Orientation Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender (GLBT) Gender Bias Homophobia Safe Sex Same Sex Marriage Debate Sexual Development Sexual Orientation Health/Insurance Access and Utilization of Health Care Health Insurance HIV/AIDS Medicaid Social Implications of Medications/Illness Home-School Connection Consultation Cross-Cultural Families Divorce Domestic Violence Extended Family Families and Advocates Partnership for Education (FAPE) Families and Schools Together Program Family Therapy Father Involvement in Early Childhood Education Home, Family, School Liaison Home-School Partnerships Homeschooling Parent Advocacy Coalition for Educational Rights (PACER Center) Parent Attachment Parent Centers Parental Involvement in Education Parenting Adolescents Parent-Teacher Association (PTA) Parent-Teacher Conference Initiatives/Innovations After-School Programs Drug-Free School Zones Extracurricular Activities Gun-Free School Zones
Human Rights KIPP (Knowledge is Power Program) Schools Resilience Building Prevention Programs Language/Communication Bilingual Education Programs: Maintenance, Transitional, and Dual Language Bilingual School Psychologists Bilingualism Children’s Literature Code Switching Comics/Jokes/Humor Context Communication Culturally Competent Assessment of English Language Learners Ebonics English as a Second Language Instruction (ESL) English Language Learners Interpreters Language and Educational Assessment Language Needs in the Multicultural Classroom Language Proficiency Limited English Proficiency Nonverbal Communication Teaching of English as a Second Language (TOESL) Total Immersion Organizations American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry (AACAP) American Psychiatric Association (APA) American Psychological Association (APA) American Psychological Association (APA) Minority Fellowship Program (MFP) American Psychological Association (APA): Office of Ethnic Minority Affairs (OEMA) and Committee on Ethnic Minority Affairs (CEMA) American School Health Association (ASHA) Association of Black Psychologists (ABPsi) Centre for Immigration and Multicultural Studies Council for Indian Education Mental Health-Education Integration Consortium (MHEDIC) National Association for Multicultural Education (NAME) National Association for the Education of African American Children with Learning Disabilities (NAEAACLD) National Association of School Psychologists (NASP) National Education Association (NEA)
Table of contents
National Information Center for Children and Youth with Disabilities (NICHCY) UCLA School Mental Health Project, Center for Mental Health in Schools World Health Organization (WHO) Public Policy Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka Desegregation Education for All Handicapped Children Act of 1975 Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) New Freedom Commission on Mental Health No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Plessy v. Ferguson Section 504 Racial/Ethnic Groups African American Youth Arab American Children Asian/Asian American Youth Bicultural Efficacy Biculturalism Biracial Chinese Youth Hispanic Americans Jewish American Children Korean American Youth Latin Americans Latino/Latina American Youth Mexican American Youth Middle Eastern Youth Muslim American Youth Native American Schools Native American Youth Pacific Islander Youth Puerto Rican Youth Southeast Asian American Youth Sudanese Youth Vietnamese American Youth West Indians White American Youth Religion/Spirituality Confucianism Curanderism Religious Holidays School Climate Bullying Conflict Resolution
Emotional Intelligence Gangs School Violence Social Skills Special Education Asperger’s Syndrome, PDD Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) Child Traumatic Brain Injury Depression Disproportionality in Special Education Dyslexia Gifted Education Inclusion Individualized Education Plan (IEP) Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) Labeling Learning Disabilities Mental Retardation Minimal Brain Dysfunction Multicultural Issues in Special Education Remedial Education Special Education Transitions Special Issues Adoption/Adopted Children Child Abuse Corporal Punishment Educational Resilience Emic-Etic Distinction Foster Care Life Cycle Mandated Reporters Poverty Refugee Youth Resilience School Response to Terrorism Sexual Harassment Sociocultural Factors Socioeconomic Status Torture Transracial Adoption Teacher/Classroom Issues Certification, Alternate Routes to Classroom Management Debates in the Classroom Discipline
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First-Year Teachers Homework Learning Styles Mentoring Teachers Multicultural Teacher Training Multiple Intelligences Paraprofessionals Pre-Service Teacher Education: Multicultural Education Reading Aloud to Students Reinforcement
Rewards Sheltered Instruction Student Motivation Student-Led Conferences Students with Disabilities Substitute Teachers Teacher Burnout Teacher Efficacy Teachers, Assessment of Teaching Strategies
Editor-in-Chief Caroline S. Clauss-Ehlers, Ph.D. Associate Professor of Counseling Psychology Department of Educational Psychology Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey U.S.A.
Dr. Caroline S. Clauss-Ehlers (aka CC) is a bilingual psychologist who focuses on work with children and families within a multicultural context. She is Associate Professor of Counseling Psychology at the Graduate School of Education, Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey. She is Program/Clinical Coordinator for the Programs in School Counseling and Counseling Psychology. Her research and writing focus on resilience and positive youth development within a cultural context. Dr. Clauss-Ehlers is co-editor of the book Community Planning to Foster Resilience in Children (Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2004) and author of Diversity Training for Classroom Teaching: A Manual for Students and Educators (Springer, 2006). She is a 2004–2005 Rosalynn Carter Fellow for Mental Health Journalism, a contributor to the international publication Ser Padres, the Spanish-language version of Parents magazine, and a guest commentator on Univision. She has appeared on media outlets such as Channel 13, ABC’s Eyewitness News, and the CBS Early Show, where she has discussed parenting and child development. Dr. Clauss-Ehlers received her bachelor’s degree from Oberlin College and her Ph.D. in counseling psychology from Teachers College, Columbia University. She completed her predoctoral internship at the New York University/Bellevue Hospital Center. She lives in New York City with her husband and two daughters, ages 4 and 6.
Editorial Board Renato D. Alarco´n, M.D. MPH Professor of Psychiatry Medical Director, Mood Disorders Unit, Mayo Psychiatry and Psychology Treatment Center Mayo Clinic College of Medicine Rochester, Minnesota U.S.A James Garbarino, Ph.D. Maude C. Clarke Chair in Humanistic Psychology Director, Center for the Human Rights of Children at Loyola University Chicago Chicago, Illinois U.S.A. Rafael Art. Javier, Ph.D., A.B.P.P. Professor of Psychology Director Postgraduate Professional Development Programs & Inter-agencies Training and Research Initiatives St. John’s University Queens, New York U.S.A. Larke Huang, Ph.D. Senior Advisor on Children, Office of the Administrator, Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) US Department of Health and Human Services Former Member, President’s New Freedom Commission on Mental Health U.S.A. Dorothy S. Strickland, Ph.D. Samuel DeWitt Proctor Professor of Education, Emerita Distinguished Research Fellow National Institute for Early Education Research (NIERR) Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey New Brunswick, New Jersey U.S.A. Lisa A. Suzuki, Ph.D. Associate Professor of Applied Psychology Department of Applied Psychology
Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development New York University New York, New York U.S.A. Saundra M. Tomlinson-Clarke, Ph.D. Associate Professor of Counseling Psychology Graduate School of Education Department of Educational Psychology Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey New Brunswick, New Jersey U.S.A. Kirkland C. Vaughans, Ph.D. Psychoanalyst in Private Practice; Clinical Professor Gordon F. Derner Institute of Advanced Psychological Studies, Adelphi University U.S.A. Susan M. Swearer, Ph.D. Associate Professor of School Psychology Department of Educational Psychology University of Nebraska, Lincoln Lincoln, Nebraska U.S.A. Ya-Ting Tina Yang, Ed.M. Department of Psychology and Research in Education University of Kansas Lawrence, Kansas U.S.A. George Coolidge Nitzburg, M.A. Department of Counseling and Clinical Psychology Teachers College, Columbia University New York, New York U.S.A. Mark Kiang, Ed.M. Counseling Psychology Program Department of Educational Psychology Graduate School of Education Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey New Brunswick, New Jersey U.S.A.
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Editorial Assistant Antonia Hernandez, Ed.M. Department of Educational Psychology Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey New Brunswick, New Jersey U.S.A.
List of Contributors Susan Adler, Ph.D. Division of Curriculum and Instructional Leadership University of Missouri-Kansas City Kansas City, Missouri U.S.A.
Ryan Androsiglio, B.A. Graduate School of Education Division of Psychological and Educational Services Fordham University New York, New York U.S.A.
Adeyinka M. Akinsulure-Smith, Ph.D. Department of Psychology The City College of New York City Univerisity of New York New York, New York U.S.A.
Andrea E. Antonson, Ed.M. Graduate School of Education Department of Educational Psychology Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey New Brunswick, New Jersey U.S.A.
Renato D. Alarco´n, M.D., MPH Department of Psychiatry and Psychology Mayo Psychiatry and Psychology Treatment Center and Mood Disorders Unit Mayo Clinic College of Medicine Rochester, Minnesota U.S.A.
Donna J. Alberici, M.S., N.C.C, A.C.S., L.P.C. Department of Graduate Psychology Immaculata University Immaculata, Pennsylvania U.S.A.
Vincent C. Alfonso, Ph.D. Graduate School of Education Division of Psychological and Educational Services Fordham University New York, New York U.S.A.
Odah Al-Rowaie, Ph.D. College of Education Department of Psychology Kuwait University Keyfan Kuwait
Mary Elizabeth Asbell, B.A. Metropolitan Nashville Public Schools Nashville, Tennessee U.S.A. Patricia Ashton, Ph.D. College of Education Department of Educational Psychology University of Florida Gainesville, Florida U.S.A. Jennifer Axelrod, Ph.D. Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning University of Illinois Chicago, Illinois U.S.A. Amanda L. Baden, Ph.D. College of Education and Human Services Department of Counseling, Human Development and Educational Leadership Montclair State University Montclair, New Jersey U.S.A. Megan Bang, Ph.D. Technical Education Research Centers Cambridge, Massachusetts U.S.A.
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List of contributors
Carl L. Bankston III, Ph.D. Department of Sociology Tulane University New Orleans, Louisiana U.S.A. Sara Barnett, Ed.M. Teachers College, Columbia University Department of Counseling and Clinical Psychology New York, New York U.S.A. William M. Bart, Ph.D. College of Education and Human Development Department of Educational Psychology University of Minnesota Minneapolis, Minnesota U.S.A. Lisa Baumwell, Ph.D. Department of Applied Psychology New York University New York, New York U.S.A. Nancy Bearss, PA-C, MPH College of Health Professionals Towson University Baltimore, Maryland U.S.A. Lisa M. Beck, M.S. Department of Curriculum and Teaching Teachers College, Columbia University New York, New York U.S.A. Lisa M. Bedore, Ph.D. Department of Communication Sciences & Disorders The University of Texas at Austin Austin, Texas U.S.A. Linda S. Behar-Horenstein, Ph.D. College of Education Department of Educational Administration and Policy College of Dentistry Department of Operative Dentistry University of Florida Gainesville, Florida U.S.A.
Heidi Allison Bender, Ph.D. Graduate Center City University of New York New York, New York U.S.A. Amy Berg, M.A., M.S. Institute for Educational Leadership Coalition for Community Schools Washington, D.C. U.S.A. Julie M. Bertel, M.Ed. College of Education Center for the Advancement of Mental Health Practices in Schools Department of Educational, School and Counseling Psychology University of Missouri Columbia, Missouri U.S.A. Nida Bikmen, Ph.D. Department of Psychology Denison University Granville, Ohio U.S.A. Christina H. Boice, M.A. College of Education and Human Development Department of Educational Psychology Center for Reading Research University of Minnesota Minneapolis, Minnesota U.S.A. Sara Bolt, Ph.D., NCSP College of Education Michigan State University East Lansing, Michigan U.S.A. James A. Bovaird, Ph.D. Department of Educational Psychology University of Nebraska-Lincoln Lincoln, Nebraska U.S.A.
List of contributors
Cheryl A. Boyce, Ph.D. U.S. Department of Health and Human Services National Institute of Mental Health National Institutes of Health Rockville, Maryland U.S.A.
Rodrigo Campos, M.A. Department of Applied Psychology Steinhardt School of Education New York University New York, New York U.S.A.
Catherine P. Bradshaw, Ph.D. Center for the Prevention of Youth Violence Bloomberg School of Public Health Johns Hopkins University Baltimore, Maryland U.S.A.
Christina M. Capodilupo, Ed.M. Department of Counseling and Clinical Psychology Teachers College, Columbia University New York, New York U.S.A.
Melanie L. Bromley, M.A. Learning Research Institute California State University San Bernardino, California U.S.A.
John S. Carlson, Ph.D., NCSP Department of Counseling, Educational Psychology, and Special Education Michigan State University East Lansing, Michigan U.S.A.
John Broughton, Ph.D. Teachers College, Columbia University Department of Arts and Humanities New York, New York U.S.A. Robert W. Burke, Ph.D. Department of Teacher Education Miami University Oxford, Ohio U.S.A. Matthew K. Burns, Ph.D. Educational Psychology Department University of Minnesota Minneapolis, Minnesota U.S.A. Sarah Butler, MLA Department of Psychiatry University of Illinois Chicago, Illinois U.S.A. Margaret L. Byram, M.S., M.Ed., P.A.-C, A.T.C., P.A.S.I.I. Towson University Towson, Maryland U.S.A.
Hui Soo Chae, M.A.T. Gottesman Libraries Teachers College, Columbia University New York, New York U.S.A.
Elaine Chan, Ph.D. College of Education and Human Sciences Department of Teaching, Learning, and Teacher Education University of Nebraska-Lincoln Lincoln, Nebraska U.S.A.
Shih-Yi Chan, Ph.D. Department of Special Education National University of Tainan Taiwan
Minoa Chang, M.D., Ph.D. Bethel Seminary San Diego Bethel University San Diego, California Private Practice San Diego, California U.S.A.
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Wan-Chun Jenny Chen, Ed.M., M.H.R.M. Graduate School of Education Department of Educational Psychology School of Management and Labor Relations Department of Human Resource Management Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey New Brunswick, New Jersey U.S.A. Eric C. Chen, Ph.D. Graduate School of Education Division of Psychological and Educational Services Fordham University New York, New York U.S.A. Katherine Cheung, M.A., Ph.D.-Candidate Department of Applied Psychology New York University New York, New York U.S.A.
Teresa P. Clark, M.A. Department of Counseling, Educational Psychology, and Special Education Michigan State University East Lansing, Michigan U.S.A.
Caroline S. Clauss-Ehlers, Ph.D. Graduate School of Education Department of Educational Psychology Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey New Brunswick, New Jersey U.S.A.
Amanda Smith Collins, Ed.S. College of Education Department of Counseling and Psychological Services Georgia State University Atlanta, Georgia U.S.A.
Clark Chinn, Ph.D. Graduate School of Education Department of Educational Psychology Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey New Brunswick, New Jersey U.S.A.
Kathryn A. Conaway, M.A. Psychology Department Miami University Oxford, Ohio U.S.A.
Jennifer Christ, M.Ed. Science Department Shakopee School District Shakopee, Minnesota U.S.A.
Karen Cone-Uemura, M.A. Graduate School of Education Department of Educational Psychology University of Utah U.S.A.
Theodore J. Christ, Ph.D. College of Education and Human Development Department of Educational Psychology Center for Reading Research University of Minnesota Minneapolis, Minnesota U.S.A.
Jacqueline A. Conley, Ph.D. School of Arts and Sciences Department of Psychology Chicago State University Chicago, Illinois U.S.A.
Mary Cipriani-Price, M.S., LMFT Department of Marital and Family Therapy Bethel University San Diego, California U.S.A.
Ramesh Bakhtiari Conley, Ph.D. Elwyn Services Nonpublic School Program Philadelphia, Pennsylvania U.S.A.
List of contributors
Judith A. Cook, Ph.D. National Research and Training Center on Psychiatric Disability Department of Psychiatry University of Illinois at Chicago Chicago, Illinois U.S.A. Melissa Coolong-Chaffin, Ed.S. Educational Psychology Department University of Minnesota Minneapolis, Minnesota U.S.A. Giuseppe Costantino, Ph.D. Lutheran Medical Center-Lutheran Family Health Centers Brooklyn, New York Touro College, New York, New York U.S.A. Tonia N. Cristofaro, Ph.D. Department of Applied Psychology New York University New York, New York U.S.A. Alicia L. Crowl, M.A. Department of Counseling, Educational Psychology, and Special Education Michigan State University East Lansing, Michigan U.S.A. Janis H. Crowther, Ph.D. Department of Psychology Kent State University Kent, Ohio U.S.A. Raven E. Cuellar, B.S. Center for School-Based Mental Health Programs Department of Psychology Miami University Oxford, Ohio U.S.A.
Jack A. Cummings, Ph.D. Department of Counseling and Educational Psychology Indiana University Bloomington, Indiana U.S.A.
Anne E. Cunningham, Ph.D. Graduate School of Education University of California Berkeley, California U.S.A.
Dana Cunningham, Ph.D. University of Maryland Center for School Mental Health Department of Psychiatry School of Medicine Baltimore, Maryland U.S.A.
Cheryl Danzy, M.A. Prince George’s County Public Schools Prince George’s County, Maryland U.S.A.
Jennifer Davie, B.S. University of Minnesota College of Education and Human Development School Psychology Program Department of Educational Psychology Minneapolis U.S.A.
Ellie Davis, L.C.S.W.-C. University of Maryland School of Medicine Center for School Mental Health Department of Psychiatry Baltimore, Maryland U.S.A.
Kathryn De Bruin, M.A. Reinicke Counseling Associates San Diego, California U.S.A.
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Dawn Decker, Ph.D. Central Michigan University Department of Counseling and Special Education Mount Pleasant, Michigan U.S.A.
Leslie Ditta, Ed.M. Graduate School of Education Department of Educational Psychology Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey New Brunswick, New Jersey U.S.A.
Alice Dix, M.A. College of Education Department of Educational Administration and Policy University of Florida U.S.A.
Minjung Helen Doh, M.Sc. Department of Counselor Education, Counseling Psychology, and Rehabilitation Services The Pennsylvania State University University Park, Pennsylvania U.S.A.
Chandra M. Donnell, Ph.D. College of Education Department of Counseling, Educational Psychology and Special Education Michigan State University East Lansing, Michigan U.S.A.
Monika Echavarria-Son, Ms.Ed. The Graduate Center City University of New York New York, New York U.S.A.
Jana Echevarria, Ph.D. College of Education California State University Long Beach, California U.S.A.
Salman Elbedour, Ph.D. School of Education Department of Human Development and Psychoeducational Studies Howard University Washington, D.C. U.S.A. Jennifer L. Elfstrom, M.A. Center for School-Based Mental Health Programs Clinical Psychology Program Department of Psychology Miami University Oxford, Ohio U.S.A. Petra Engelbrecht, Ph.D. Faculty of Education Sciences North-West University South Africa Sumru Erkut, Ph.D. Wellesley Centers for Women Wellesley College Wellesley, Massachusetts U.S.A. Kathy Escamilla, Ph.D. School of Education University of Colorado Boulder, Colorado U.S.A. Lanaya L. Ethington, Ph.D. School of Education, Counseling and Educational Psychology Indiana University Bloomington, Indiana U.S.A. Michelle L. Evans Learning Research Institute California State University San Bernardino, California U.S.A. Ted Feinberg, Ph.D., Ed.D., NCSP National Association of School Psychologists Bethesda, Maryland U.S.A.
List of contributors
H. Rachel Fender Department of Counseling and Educational Psychology Indiana University Bloomington, Indiana U.S.A. Courtney B. Ferrell, Ph.D. U.S. Department of Health and Human Services National Institute of Mental Health National Institutes of Health Rockville, Maryland U.S.A. Irina Feygina, B.A. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Department of Psychology New York University New York, New York U.S.A.
Yvette Frumkin Feis, Ph.D. Private Practice Melville, New York U.S.A.
Adolfo Martı´n Garcı´a Universidad CAECE Mar del Plata Argentina
Warlene Gary, M.Ed. Parent Teacher Association Chicago, Illinois U.S.A.
Marybeth Gasman, Ph.D. Higher Education University of Pennsylvania Philadelphia, Pennsylvania U.S.A.
Rona Fields, Ph.D. School of Engineering and Applied Sciences Cognitive Sciences Program at the Center for Advanced Defense Studies George Washington University Washington, D.C. U.S.A.
Francisco X. Gaytan, MSW, Ed.M., Ph.D.-Candidate Steinhardt School of Education New York University New York, New York U.S.A.
Melinda Finkel-Konigsberg, Psy.D. Private Practice New York, New York U.S.A.
Jami Givens, M.A. Department of Educational Psychology University of Nebraska-Lincoln Lincoln, Nebraska U.S.A.
Lois T. Flaherty, M.D. School of Medicine Center for School Mental Health Department of Psychiatry University of Maryland Baltimore, Maryland U.S.A.
Raymond Goldfield, B.A. Graduate School of Education Department of Educational Psychology Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey New Brunswick, New Jersey U.S.A.
Samantha Francois, M.S. Department of Psychology Tulane University New Orleans, Louisiana U.S.A.
Julie Goldstein Grumet, Ph.D. D.C. Department of Mental Health Office of Program and Policy Washington, D.C. U.S.A.
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Sycarah Grant, M.A. Department of Counseling, Educational Psychology, and Special Education Michigan State University East Lansing, Michigan U.S.A.
Linda Serra Hagedorn, Ph.D. Research Institute for Studies in Education Iowa State University Ames, Iowa U.S.A.
Misha Graves, Ph.D.-Candidate Department of Counseling and Educational Psychology Indiana University Bloomington, Indiana U.S.A.
J. Mark Halstead, Ph.D. Department of Community and International Education University of Huddersfield Huddersfield United Kingdom
Linnie Green, M.A., Ph.D.-Candidate Department of Applied Psychology New York University New York, New York U.S.A.
Ronald K. Hambleton, Ph.D. Research and Evaluation Methods Program Center for Educational Assessment University of Massachusetts Amherst, Massachusetts U.S.A.
W. Henry Gregory, Ph.D. Progressive Life Center Washington, D.C. U.S.A. Christian Griffin, M.S.W. Department of Applied Psychology Loyola University Chicago Chicago, Illinois U.S.A. Karen L. Haboush, Psy.D. Graduate School of Applied and Professional Psychology Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey Piscataway, New Jersey U.S.A.
Anna L. Harms, M.A. Michigan’s Integrated Behavior and Learning Support Initiative Ottawa Area Intermediate School District Holland, Michigan U.S.A.
Erin A. Harper, Ed.S. College of Education Department of Counseling and Psychological Services Georgia State University Atlanta, Georgia U.S.A.
Donald G. Hackmann, Ed.D. Department of Educational Organization and Leadership University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Champaign, Illinois U.S.A.
Bryn Harris, Ph.D. School of Education and Human Development University of Colorado Denver, Colorado U.S.A.
Sally M. Hage, Ph.D. Department of Counseling and Clinical Psychology Teachers College, Columbia University New York, New York U.S.A.
Thomas Hatch, Ed.D. Department of Curriculum and Teaching Teachers College, Columbia University New York, New York U.S.A.
List of contributors
Michael L. Hecht, Ph.D. Communication Arts and Science The Pennsylvania State University University Park, Pennsylvania U.S.A.
Antonia Hernandez, Ed.M. Graduate School of Education Department of Educational Psychology Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey New Brunswick, New Jersey U.S.A.
Susan W. Herrera, M.Ed. College of Education Department of Educational Administration and Policy University of Florida Gainesville, Florida U.S.A.
Robyn Hess, Ph.D. College of Education and Behavioral Sciences School of Applied Psychology and Counselor Education University of Northern Colorado Greeley, Colorado U.S.A.
Danielle A. Hidalgo, M.A. Department of Sociology Tulane University New Orleans, Louisiana U.S.A.
Caroline L. Hilk, Ph.D. Department of Educational Psychology University of Minnesota Minneapolis, Minnesota U.S.A.
Thomas J. Huberty, Ph.D., A.B.P.P. Counseling and Educational Psychology Indiana University Bloomington, Indiana U.S.A.
Robert Hull, M.Ed., Ed.S., M.H.S. Maryland State Department of Education Baltimore, Maryland U.S.A. Ana Christina Dasilva Iddings, Ph.D. Department of Educational Psychology University of Arizona Tucson, Arizona U.S.A. Colette L. Ingraham, Ph.D., NCSP., NCC. College of Education Department of Counseling and School Psychology San Diego State University San Diego, California U.S.A. Jason G. Irizarry, Ed.D. Dept of Curriculum and Instruction Neag School of Education University of Connecticut U.S.A. Khym Isaac De Barros, Ph.D. W W Wright School of Education Department of Counseling and Educational Psychology Indiana University Bloomington, Indiana U.S.A. Jennifer L. Ivie, M.A. Department of Psychology The University of Kansas Lawrence, Kansas U.S.A. Lourdes India Ivory, Ph.D. Syracuse Community Health Center Syracuse, New York U.S.A. Derek Iwamoto, Ph.D. NIDA-Fellow Yale University School of Medicine New Haven, Connecticut U.S.A.
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Yo Jackson, Ph.D. Department of Psychology Department of Applied Behavioral Science The University of Kansas Lawrence, Kansas U.S.A.
Mitchelle Johnson, Ph.D.-Candidate Department of Educational Psychology Graduate Center City University of New York New York, New York U.S.A.
Karen Jaffe, M.A. Department of Sociology Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey Piscataway, New Jersey U.S.A.
Lakeisha Jourdan, M.Ed. School of Education Human Development and Psychoeducational Studies Howard University Washington, D.C. U.S.A.
Maia Jamadi, M.A. Department of Psychology Long Island University Brooklyn, New York U.S.A.
Rafael A. Javier, Ph.D., A.B.P.P. Postgraduate Professional Development Program and Inter-Agencies Clinical and Research Initiative Saint John’s University Queens, New York U.S.A.
James Jupp, Ph.D. Centre for Immigration and Multicultural Studies Research School of Social Sciences The Australian National University Australia Angela E. Kang, B.A. Graduate School of Education Division of Psychological and Educational Services Fordham University New York, New York U.S.A.
Jeffrey Jay, Ph.D. School of Education Department of Elementary and Secondary Education Northern State University Aberdeen, South Dakota U.S.A.
Scott Barry Kaufman, Ph.D. Department of Psychology Yale University New Haven, Connecticut U.S.A.
Jennifer Jay, Ph.D. College of Education, Curriculum and Instruction St Cloud State University St Cloud, Minnesota U.S.A.
James C. Kaufman, Ph.D. Learning Research Institute Department of Psychology California State University San Bernardino, California U.S.A.
Tyondra Jefferson, Ed.M. Graduate School of Education Department of Educational Psychology Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey New Brunswick, New Jersey U.S.A.
Alan S. Kaufman, Ph.D. School of Medicine Yale Child Study Center Yale University New Haven, Connecticut U.S.A.
List of contributors
Michael Kelly, Ph.D., L.C.S.W. School of Social Work Loyola University Chicago, Illinois U.S.A. Mark Kiang, Ed.M. Graduate School of Education Department of Educational Psychology Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey New Brunswick, New Jersey U.S.A. Youb Kim, Ph.D. Peabody College of Education Department of Teaching and Learning Vanderbilt University Nashville, Tennessee U.S.A. Constance G. Kim-Gervey, M.Ed., M.A., Ph.D.-Candidate Department of Applied Psychology New York University New York, New York U.S.A. Beth Kleinman-Fleischer, M.A., Ed.M. Graduate School of Education Department of Educational Psychology Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey New Brunswick, New Jersey U.S.A. Naoko Kodama, B.A. College of Education and Behavioral Sciences School of Applied Psychology and Counselor Education University of Northern Colorado Greeley, Colorado U.S.A. James R. Koller, Ph.D. College of Education Center for the Advancement of Mental Health Practices in Schools Department of Educational, School and Counseling Psychology University of Missouri Columbia, Missouri U.S.A.
Donna D. Kreskey, Ed.S. College of Education Department of Counseling and Psychological Services Georgia State University Atlanta, Georgia U.S.A.
John Kugler, Ph.D. Bay Ridge Preparatory School Brooklyn, New York U.S.A.
Kevin A. Kupzyk, M.A. The University of Kansas Department of Psychology Lawrence, Kansas U.S.A.
Kyung-Hyun Kwon, M.A. Steinhardt School of Education Department of Applied Psychology New York University New York, New York U.S.A.
Seunghee Kwon, M.A. Department of Counseling and Educational Psychology Indiana University Bloomington, Indiana U.S.A.
Brian Lack, M.Ed. College of Education, Early Childhood Education Georgia State University Atlanta, Georgia U.S.A.
Marcella Lafever, Ph.D. Department of Communication Studies California State University, Stanislaus Turlock, California U.S.A.
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Teresa Lafromboise, Ph.D. School of Education Department of Psychology in Education Stanford University Stanford, California U.S.A. Wilda Laija-Rodriguez, Ph.D. Educational Psychology and Counseling California State University, Northridge Northridge, California U.S.A. Dorothy J. Landon M.S.W., L.C.S.W. Center for the Advancement of Mental Health Practices in Schools Graduate School of Education Department of Education, School, and Counseling Psychology University of Missouri-Columbia U.S.A.
Tricia M. Leahey, M.A. Weight Control and Diabetes Research Center Brown Medical School/The Miriam Hospital Providence, Rhode Island U.S.A. Deann Lechtenberger, Ph.D. College of Education Department of Educational Psychology and Leadership Texas Tech University Lubbock, Texas U.S.A. Angela Ledgerwood, M.A. Center for School-Based Mental Health Programs Clinical Psychology Program Department of Psychology Miami University Oxford, Ohio U.S.A.
Velma Lapoint, Ph.D. School of Education Department of Human Development and Psychoeducational Studies Howard University Washington, D.C. U.S.A.
Patricia M. Lenahan, L.C.S.W., L.M.F.T. School of Medicine Department of Family Medicine University of California, Irvine Irvine, California U.S.A.
Jessica L. Larsen, Ed.M. Gevirtz Graduate School of Education Department of Counseling, Clinical, and School Psychology University of California, Santa Barbara Santa Barbara, California U.S.A.
Nancy Lever, Ph.D. School of Medicine Center for School Mental Health Department of Psychiatry University of Maryland Baltimore, Maryland U.S.A.
Matthew Lau, Ph.D. College of Education and Human Development Department for Educational Psychology University of Minnesota-Twin Cities Minneapolis, Minnesota U.S.A.
Liliana Lo´pez Levi, Ph.D. Department of Politics and Culture Universidad Auto´noma Metropolitana Xochimilco Mexico
Joseph B. Layde, M.D., J.D. Medical College of Wisconsin Milwaukee, Wisconsin U.S.A.
Elizabeth O. Lichtenberger, Ph.D. Alliant International University San Diego, California U.S.A.
List of contributors
Jody Lieske, M.A. Department of Educational Psychology University of Nebraska-Lincoln Lincoln, Nebraska U.S.A. Ben K. Lim, Ph.D. Department of Marital & Family Therapy Bethel University San Diego, California U.S.A. Soh Leong Lim, Ph.D. Department of Counseling and School Psychology San Diego State University San Diego, California U.S.A. Kaikok Lim, M.S. School of Education Department of Psychology & Research in Education The University of Kansas Lawrence, Kansas U.S.A. Annie I. Lin, M.A. Department of Counseling and Clinical Psychology Teachers College, Columbia University New York, New York U.S.A. Michael A. Lindsey, Ph.D., M.S.W., MPH. School of Social Work School of Medicine Department of Psychiatry, Center for School Mental Health University of Maryland, Baltimore Baltimore, Maryland U.S.A. Darla Linville, Ph.D. Young Adult Services New York Public Library New York, New York U.S.A.
Rebecca Littman, Ed.M. Department of Educational Psychology Graduate School of Education Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey New Brunswick, New Jersey U.S.A.
Emilia C. Lopez, Ph.D. Division of Education Queens College City University of New York Flushing, New York U.S.A.
David Lounsbury, Ph.D. Epidemiology and Population Health Division of Community Collaboration and Implementation Science Albert Einstein College of Medicine of Yeshiva University Bronx, New York U.S.A.
Kelly Brey Love, M.A. Department of Educational Psychology University of Nebraska-Lincoln Lincoln, Nebraska U.S.A.
Ruth Mckoy Lowery, Ph.D. College of Education School of Teaching and Learning University of Florida Gainesville, Florida U.S.A.
Luka Lucic, M.A. The Graduate Center City University of New York New York, New York U.S.A.
Bridget Luebbering, B.A., Ed.S. North Kansas City School District Kansas City, Missouri U.S.A.
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Tabethah Mack, M.A. Department of Educational Psychology University of Nebraksa-Lincoln Lincoln, Nebraska U.S.A.
Ane Marinez-Lora, Ph.D. Institute for Juvenile Research University of Illinois at Chicago Chicago, Illinois U.S.A.
Elizabeth Mackenzie, Ph.D. West Seattle Psychological Services Seattle, Washington U.S.A.
Rebecca S. Martı´nez, Ph.D. School of Education Department of Counseling and Educational Psychology Indiana University Bloomington, Indiana U.S.A.
Susan Maclaury, L.S.W., Ph.D. Health Education Kean University Union, New Jersey U.S.A. Megan Maguire, Ed.M. Graduate School of Education Department of Educational Psychology Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey New Brunswick, New Jersey U.S.A. Erin K. Maguire, Ed.M. Graduate School of Education Department of Educational Psychology Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey New Brunswick, New Jersey U.S.A. Lindsay Mahony, Ed.M. Graduate School of Education Department of Educational Psychology Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey New Brunswick, New Jersey U.S.A. Robert Malgady, Ph.D. Program in Quantitative Studies New York University New York, New York U.S.A. Jo-Anne Manswell Butty, Ph.D. Center for Urban Progress Howard University Washington, D.C. U.S.A.
Tara Mathews, B.S. Department of Psychology Tulane University New Orleans, Louisiana U.S.A. Chris Mattise, M.Ed. Department of Counselor Education, Counseling Psychology, and Rehabilitation Services The Pennsylvania State University University Park, Pennsylvania U.S.A. Jennifer Matvya, M.A. School of Medicine Center for School Mental Health Department of Psychiatry University of Maryland Baltimore, Maryland U.S.A. Nate Mccaughtry, Ph.D. Department of Kinesiology Wayne State University Detroit, Michigan U.S.A. Shannon Mckay-Cook, M.A. Steinhardt School of Education Department of Applied Psychology New York University New York, New York U.S.A.
List of contributors
Meredith Mclellan, M.A. East Lansing Public Schools East Lansing, Michigan U.S.A. Christine Mcwayne, Ph.D. Steinhardt School of Education Department of Applied Psychology New York University New York, New York U.S.A. Douglas Medin, Ph.D. Department of Psychology Northwestern University Evanston, Illinois U.S.A. Lisa Medoff, Ph.D. School of Education Stanford University Stanford, California U.S.A. Gigliana Melzi, Ph.D. Department of Applied Psychology New York University New York, New York U.S.A. Michael C. Mensink, M.A. Department of Educational Psychology University of Minnesota Minneapolis, Minnesota U.S.A. Jose Mercado, Ed.M. Graduate School of Education Department of Educational Psychology Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey New Brunswick, New Jersey U.S.A. Jennifer E. Mettrick, M.H.S. School of Medicine Center for School Mental Health Department of Psychiatry University of Maryland Baltimore, Maryland U.S.A.
Kristina Metz, B.S., Ph.D.-Candidate Department of Education University of Texas Austin, Texas U.S.A. Jesse A. Metzger, M.S., M.Phil. Department of Counseling and Clinical Psychology Teachers College, Columbia University New York, New York U.S.A. Elizabeth Midlarsky, Ph.D. Departmnet of Counseling and Clinical Psychology Teachers College, Columbia University New York, New York U.S.A. James J. Mikusi, JR, A.S. Web-Kong LLC Jersey City, NJ U.S.A. M. David Miller, Ph.D. College of Education Department of Educational Psychology University of Florida Gainesville, Florida U.S.A. Madeeha Mir, B.A. Department of Psychology University of West Florida Pensacola, Florida U.S.A. Shannon Gwin Mitchell, Ph.D. Friends Research Institute Social Research Center Baltimore, Maryland U.S.A. Felicia Mohsen, M.A. Department of Educational Psychology University of Nebraska - Lincoln Lincoln, Nebraska U.S.A.
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Debra Mollen, Ph.D. Department of Psychology and Philosophy Texas Woman’s University Denton, Texas U.S.A. Mercy R. Montsi, Ph.D. University of Botswana Botswana Caren R. Moore, B.A. University of Missouri-Columbia Center for the Advancement of Mental Health Practices in Schools College of Education School Psychology Program Department of Educational, School, and Counseling Psychology Columbia, Missouri U.S.A. Alejandro Morales, M.A. Department of Educational Psychology University of Nebraska - Lincoln Lincoln, Nebraska U.S.A. Larissa Morlock, M.A. Department of Counseling, Educational Psychology, and Special Education Michigan State University East Lansing, Michigan U.S.A. Ernest Morrell, Ph.D. Graduate School of Education and Information Studies Urban Schooling Division University of California Los Angeles, California U.S.A. Jacqueline Mosselson, Ph.D. Center for International Education University of Massachusetts Amherst, Massachusetts U.S.A.
Elias Mpofu, Ph.D. Faculty of Health Sciences Department of Rehabilitation Counseling University of Sydney Lidcombe, NSW Australia J. A. Muchado University of Botswana Botswana Elizabeth Mullett-Hume, Ph.D. School-Based Intervention Program Child Study Center New York University School of Medicine New York, New York U.S.A. John Mustol, M.D., M.Div. St Luke’s Refugee Network San Diego, California U.S.A. Magen M. Mutepfa, M.Ed. Schools Psychological Services and Special Education Department Zimbabwe Open University Zimbabwe Kevin Nadal, M.A. Department of Counseling and Clinical Psychology Teachers College, Columbia University New York, New York U.S.A. Michael J. Nakkula, Ed.D. Harvard Graduate School of Education Harvard University Cambridge, Massachusetts U.S.A. Gary Natriello, Ph.D. Department of Human Development Teachers College, Columbia University New York, New York U.S.A.
List of contributors
Nazeh Natur, M.A. School of Education Department of Human Development and Psychoeducational Studies Howard University Washington, D.C. U.S.A.
Von Nebbitt, Ph.D., M.S.W. School of Social Work Howard University Washington, D.C. U.S.A.
Chihiro A. Negron, Ed.M. Graduate School of Education Department of Educational Psychology Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey New Brunswick, New Jersey U.S.A.
Vicky Ng, Ed.S. Graduate School of Education Division of Psychological and Educational Services Fordham University New York, New York U.S.A.
Lan Ngo, M.A. The Storm King School Cornwall-on-Hudson, NY U.S.A.
Jennifer Nyeste, Ed.M. Graduate School of Education Department of Educational Psychology Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey New Brunswick, New Jersey U.S.A.
Kristin Orlovsky, B.A. Graduate School of Education Division of Psychological and Educational Services Fordham University New York, New York U.S.A.
Nancy Otskey, R.N., M.A., N.C.S.N. Montclair Public Schools Montclair, New Jersey U.S.A.
Stacy Overstreet, Ph.D. Department of Psychology Tulane University New Orleans, Louisiana U.S.A.
Celeste Owens, Ph.D. School of Medicine Center for School Mental Health Department of Psychiatry University of Maryland Baltimore, Maryland U.S.A.
George Coolidge Nitzburg, M.A. Department of Counseling and Clinical Psychology Teachers College, Columbia University New York, New York U.S.A.
Amy Padovano, Ed.M. Graduate School of Education Department of Educational Psychology Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey New Brunswick, New Jersey U.S.A.
Erika Niwa, B.A., Ph.D.-Candidate Steinhardt School of Education Department of Applied Psychology New York University U.S.A.
Elizabeth D. Palacios, Ph.D., L.S.S.P., L.P.C. Department of Educational Psychology Baylor University Waco, Texas U.S.A.
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Rolland S. Parker, Ph.D. School of Medicine American Board of Professional Psychology (Clinical Neuropsychology; Clinical Psychology) Department of Neurology New York University New York, New York U.S.A. Jason R. Parkin, B.A. College of Education Center for the Advancement of Mental Health Practices in Schools Department of Educational, School and Counseling Psychology University of Missouri-Columbia Columbia, Missouri U.S.A. Christina M. Pate, M.Ed. College of Education University of Missouri Columbia, Missouri U.S.A. Carl E. Paternite, Ph.D. College of Arts and Sciences Department of Psychology Miami University Oxford, Ohio U.S.A. Constance Kindrick Patterson, Ph.D. Health Sciences Center Louisiana State University Baton Rouge, Louisiana U.S.A. Melissa Pearrow, Ph.D. Graduate College of Education Department of Counseling and School Psychology University of Massachusetts Boston, Massachusetts U.S.A. Elizabeth D. Pen˜A, Ph.D. Department of Communication Sciences & Disorders The University of Texas at Austin Austin, Texas U.S.A.
Anna M. Pen˜a, M.S., NCSP Department of Counseling and Personnel Services University of Maryland College Park, Maryland U.S.A. Becky Pe´rez, M.S. School of Education Department of Counseling and Educational Psychology Indiana University-Bloomington Bloomington, Indiana U.S.A. Melanie Perez, Ph.D. Lutheran Family Health Center Network Brooklyn, New York U.S.A. Jack Petrash, Ed.M. Nova Institute Kensington, Maryland U.S.A. Nareadi Phasha, Ph.D. Department of Educational Psychology University of Johannesburg Johannesburg South Africa Jean S. Phinney, Ph.D. Department of Psychology California State University Los Angeles, California U.S.A. Claudia Pineda, Ed.D. Department of Education University of California, Irvine Irvine, California U.S.A. Jennifer Pitchford, M.S., L.G.P.C., L.C.P.C. School of Medicine Center for School Mental Health Department of Psychiatry University of Maryland Baltimore, Maryland U.S.A.
List of contributors
Bradley S. Portin, Ph.D. College of Education, Educational Leadership and Policy Studies University of Washington Seattle, Washington U.S.A.
Anthony Ralston, Ph.D. Department of Computer Science and Mathematics University at Buffalo The State University of New York Buffalo, New York U.S.A.
Kathryn Powell, Ed.S. College of Education Department of Counseling and Psychological Services Georgia State University Atlanta, Georgia U.S.A.
Erica Ramos, B.S. Graduate School of Education Division of Psychological and Educational Services Fordham University New York, New York U.S.A.
Leshawndra N. Price, Ph.D. U.S. Department of Health and Human Services National Institute of Mental Health National Institutes of Health Bethesda, Maryland U.S.A. Sherrie Lynn Proctor, Ed.S. College of Education Department of Counseling and Psychological Services Georgia State University Atlanta, Georgia U.S.A. Stephen M. Quintana, Ph.D. Department of Counseling Psychology University of Wisconsin-Madison Madison, Wisconsin U.S.A. Saira I. Qureshi, M.A. Department of Psychology City University of New York Hunter College New York, New York U.S.A. Veronica Raggi, M.A. School of Medicine Center for School Mental Health Department of Psychiatry University of Maryland Baltimore, Maryland U.S.A.
Patricia M. Raskin, Ph.D. Department of Organization and Leadership Teachers College, Columbia University New York, New York U.S.A. M. Karega Rausch, Ph.D. Indiana University Bloomington, Indiana U.S.A. Greogory K. Reed, Ph.D. Howard University School of Education Urban School Psychology Program Washington, D.C. U.S.A. Stephanie M. Reich, Ph.D. Department of Education University of California Irvine, California U.S.A. Emily A. Rentz, B.S. Graduate School of Education Division of Psychological and Educational Services Fordham University New York, New York U.S.A. Alberto Restori, Ph.D. Educational Psychology and Counseling California State University, Northridge Northridge, California U.S.A.
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List of contributors
Shamagne N. Richardson, Ed.M. Graduate School of Education Department of Educational Psychology Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey New Brunswick, New Jersey U.S.A. Charles R. Ridley, Ph.D. Department of Counseling and Educational Psychology Indiana University Bloomington, Indiana U.S.A. Lourdes M. Rivera, Ph.D. Department of Educational and Community Programs Division of Education City University of New York Queens College Flushing, New York U.S.A. Daniel H. Robinson, Ph.D. Department of Educational Psychology The University of Texas at Austin Austin, Texas U.S.A. Eileen T. Rodriguez, Ph.D. Department of Applied Psychology New York University New York, New York U.S.A. Anja Ro¨mhild, M.A. Department of Educational Psychology University of Nebraska-Lincoln Lincoln, Nebraska U.S.A. Dinelia Rosa, Ph.D. Dean Hope Center for Educational and Psychological Services Teachers College, Columbia University New York, New York U.S.A.
Marcia Rubin, Ph.D., MPH., FASHA American School Health Association Kent, Ohio U.S.A. Nancy Ruhode, M.Sc. Department of Psychology, Counseling and Special Education Zimbabwe Open University Zimbabwe Patricia Ruiz-Navarro, M.A., Ph.D.-Candidate The Graduate Center City University of New York New York, New York U.S.A. Frank R. Rusch, Ph.D. Department of Counselor Education, Counseling Psychology, and Rehabilitation Services The Pennsylvania State University University Park, Pennsylvania U.S.A. Troy D. Sadler, Ph.D. University of Florida Gainesville, Florida U.S.A. Jonathan Sandoval, Ph.D., A.B.P.P. School of Education University of California Davis, California U.S.A. Dylan Schenk, B.A. National Association of School Psychologists Bethesda, Maryland U.S.A. Adina Schick, M.A. Department of Applied Psychology New York University New York, New York U.S.A. Megan B. Schneider, B.A. Kean University Union, New Jersey U.S.A.
List of contributors
Natasha K. Segool, M.A. Department of Counseling, Educational Psychology, and Special Education Michigan State University East Lansing, Michigan U.S.A.
Zewelanji N. Serpell, Ph.D. Department of Psychology Virginia State University Petersburg, Virginia U.S.A.
Elaine R. Silliman, Ph.D. Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders University of South Florida Tampa, Florida U.S.A. Arlene Silva, M.A., Ph.D., NCSP University of Maryland National Association of School Psychologists Bethesda, Maryland U.S.A.
Karen Lee Seymour, M.Sc. Department of Education and Training Western Australia Australia
Kiran Mala Singh, Ed.M. Graduate School of Education Department of Educational Psychology Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey New Brunswick, New Jersey U.S.A.
Julia Shaftel, Ph.D., NCSP Center for Educational Testing and Evaluation The University of Kansas Lawrence, Kansas U.S.A.
Holli E. Sink, M.A. Center for School-Based Mental Health Programs Department of Psychology Miami University Oxford, Ohio U.S.A.
Jennifer Shannon, B.A. College of Education Center for the Advancement of Mental Health Practices in Schools Department of Educational, School, and Counseling Psychology University of Missouri-Columbia U.S.A.
Almon Shumba, Ph.D. School of Education University of Fort Hare Alice, Eastern Cape South Africa
Amanda B. Siebecker, M.A. Department of Educational Psychology University of Nebraska-Lincoln Lincoln, Nebraska U.S.A.
Selcuk R. Sirin, Ph.D. Department of Applied Psychology New York University New York, New York U.S.A. Russell J. Skiba, Ph.D. Center for Evaluation and Education Policy Indiana University Bloomington, Indiana U.S.A. Charlynn Small, Ph.D. Counseling and Psychological Services University of Richmond Richmond, Virginia U.S.A. Sara Smigell, M.A.T. Department of Kinesiology Wayne State University Detroit, Michigan U.S.A.
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List of contributors
Sharon Smith-Kemper, M.S.W., L.C.S.W. University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey Newark, New Jersey U.S.A. Guillermo Solano-Flores, Ph.D. School of Education Educational Equity and Cultural Diversity Program University of Colorado Boulder, Colorado U.S.A. Sharon H. Stephan, Ph.D. University of Maryland School of Medicine Division of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry U.S.A. Robbie J. Steward, Ph.D. College of Education Department of Counseling, Educational Psychology and Special Education Michigan State University East Lansing, Michigan U.S.A. Latoya S. Stewart, B.A. Department of Counseling, Educational Psychology, and Special Education Michigan State University East Lansing, Michigan U.S.A. Dorothy S. Strickland, Ph.D. Samuel DeWitt Proctor Professor of Education, Emerita Distinguished Research Fellow National Institute for Early Education Research (NIEER) Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey New Brunswick, New Jersey U.S.A. Derald Wing Sue, Ph.D. Department of Counseling and Clinical Psychology Teachers College, Columbia University New York, New York U.S.A.
Lisa A. Suzuki, Ph.D. Steinhardt School of Education Department of Applied Psychology New York University New York, New York U.S.A. Susan M. Swearer, Ph.D. Department of Educational Psychology University of Nebraska- Lincoln Lincoln, Nebraska U.S.A. Yoko Takebayashi, Ph.D. Furman Counseling Center Barnard College New York, New York U.S.A. Catherine S. Tamis-Lemonda, Ph.D. Department of Applied Psychology New York University New York, New York U.S.A. Louisa Banks Tarullo, Ed.D. Mathematica Policy Research, Inc Washington, D.C. U.S.A. Meghan Nichols Taylor, B.A. Douglass College Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey New Brunswick, New Jersey U.S.A. Erika L. Taylor, B.A. College of Education and Human Development Department for Educational Psychology University of Minnesota in the Twin Cities U.S.A. Sarah W. Thompson, M.A. Department of Educational Psychology University of Nebraska-Lincoln Lincoln, Nebraska U.S.A.
List of contributors
Nancy R. Tidwell National Association for the Education of African American Children with Learning Disabilities Columbus, Ohio U.S.A. Saundra M. Tomlinson-Clarke, Ph.D. Graduate School of Education Department of Educational Psychology Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey New Brunswick, New Jersey U.S.A. Gina C. Torino, Ed.M. Department of Counseling and Clinical Psychology Teachers College, Columbia University New York, New York U.S.A. Joseph E. Trimble, Ph.D. Center for Cross-Cultural Research Department of Psychology Western Washington University Bellingham, Washington U.S.A. Stephen D. Truscott, Psy.D. College of Education Department of Counseling and Psychological Services Georgia State University Atlanta, Georgia U.S.A. Rhonda Turner, M.A. Graduate School of the College of Education and Human Services Department of Educational Psychology University of Nebraska-Lincoln Lincoln, Nebraska U.S.A. Sara Unsworth, Ph.D. Department of Psychology Northwestern University Evanston, Illinois U.S.A.
Fons J. R. Van De Vijver, Ph.D. Department of Psychology Tilburg University Tilburg, The Netherlands
Mieke Van Houtte, Ph.D. Department of Sociology Ghent University Gent, Belgium
Mark J. Van Ryzin, M.A. Department of Educational Psychology University of Minnesota-Twin Cities Minneapolis, Minnesota U.S.A.
Karin L. Vanderzee, M.A. Department of Psychology Miami University Oxford, Ohio U.S.A.
Carmen Inoa Vazquez, Ph.D., A.B.P.P. New York University School of Medicine Private Practice New York, New York U.S.A.
Justin M. Walker, B.A. School of Applied Psychology and Counselor Education University of Northern Colorado Greeley, Colorado U.S.A.
Joshua D. Walker, B.A. The University of Texas at Austin Austin, Texas U.S.A.
Tavis Walker, B.A. Department of Marital and Family Therapy Bethel University San Diego, California U.S.A.
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Doris Walker-Dalhouse, Ph.D. Department of Educational Policy and Leadership Marquette University Milwaukee, Wisconsin U.S.A. Joseph Watras, Ph.D. Department of Teacher Education University of Dayton Dayton, Ohio U.S.A. Catharine L. A. Weiss, Ph.D. University of Maryland School of Medicine Center for School Mental Health Department of Psychiatry Baltimore, Maryland U.S.A. Elizabeth Weiss-Deboer, M.A. Department of Counseling, Educational Psychology, and Special Education Michigan State University East Lansing, Michigan U.S.A. Mark D. Weist, Ph.D. University of Maryland School of Medicine Center for School Mental Health Department of Psychiatry Baltimore, Maryland U.S.A. Jennifer M. West, Ph.D. School of Education Bowie State University Bowie, Maryland U.S.A. Karen J. Weston, Ph.D. Center for the Advancement of Mental Health Practices in Schools College of Education Department of Educational, School and Counseling Psychology University of Missouri Columbia, Missouri U.S.A.
Amy Wickstrom, M.F.T. Department of Marital and Family Therapy Loma Linda University Loma Linda, California U.S.A.
Louise C. Wilkinson, Ph.D. Department of Reading and Language Arts Syracuse University Syracuse, New York U.S.A.
Jocelyn Williams, M.Ed. Department of Counselor Education, Counseling Psychology, and Rehabilitation Services The Pennsylvania State University University Park, Pennsylvania U.S.A.
Grace Wong, Ph.D. Steinhardt School of Education Department of Applied Psychology New York University New York, New York South Beach Psychiatric Center Staten Island, New York U.S.A.
Philip S. Wong, Ph.D. Department of Psychology Long Island University Brooklyn, New York U.S.A.
Susan F. Wooley, Ph.D., C.H.E.S. American School Health Association Kent, Ohio U.S.A.
Zalika S. Wright, M.Ed. Urban School Psychology Program School of Education Howard University Washington, D.C. U.S.A.
List of contributors
Oksana Yakushko, Ph.D. Department of Educational Psychology University of Nebraska-Lincoln Lincoln, Nebraska U.S.A.
Georgia Yu, M.A. Psy.D.-Candidate Graduate School of Education and Psychology Pepperdine University Malibu, California U.S.A.
Ya-Ting Tina Yang, Ed.M. Department of Psychology & Research in Education The University of Kansas Lawrence, Kansas U.S.A.
Mayida Zaal, M.S.Ed. Graduate Center Department of Urban Education City University on New York New York, New York U.S.A.
Yvonne Yeh, Ed.M. Graduate School of Education Department of Educational Psychology Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey New Brunswick, New Jersey U.S.A.
Elizabeth Zachry, Ed.D. Graduate School of Education Harvard University Cambridge, Massachusetts U.S.A.
Julia H. Yoo, Doctoral-Candidate Graduate School of Education Learning, Cognition & Instruction Program Department of Educational Psychology The University of Texas at Austin Austin, Texas U.S.A.
Donna Zanjanian, MPH. Steinhardt School of Education Department of Applied Psychology New York University New York, New York U.S.A.
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Part I Part I Foundation Issues in Cross-Cultural School Foundation Psychology Issues in
The History of Cross-Cultural School Psychology in the United States Wilda Laija-Rodriguez . Alberto Restori
Multiculturalism has been an integral part of United States (U.S.) history since the pilgrims arrived. The early American settlers came from many different European nations, seeking religious freedom and relief from oppressive governments. Although most early settlers were White, they each had their own language, culture, values, and beliefs. It is fair to say that, from the very beginning, America and subsequently, the U.S., was settled and built by a multicultural group of people. Colonial America has been described as having an acceptance of cultural and linguistic differences among early settlers and establishing various schools to teach the various languages of the time (e.g., French, German, and English) (Gonzalez, Brusca-Vega, & Yawkey, 1997). However, in the late 1800s, as English began to be the dominant language and as many immigrants entered the U.S., attitudes toward bilingualism and diversity changed (Gonzalez et al., 1997; Ochoa, 2005). After the initial settlers arrived in America from Europe, immigration from various parts of the world to America followed. The largest immigration of Europeans to the U.S. occurred during the early 1900s and continued until the outbreak of World War I (Holliday & Holmes, 2003). Around the same time, the Southwest’s Mexican American population radically increased by more than one million persons as a result of displacement from the Mexican Revolution and the massive recruitment of Mexicans for agricultural, mining, railroad, and industrial labor (Holliday & Holmes, 2003). In addition, immigration of Japanese and various ethnic and cultural groups continued to increase during the remainder of the twentieth century. However, American society in the mid-1800s and 1900s was focused on the White population; it excluded Native American slaves, and did not address the needs of minority students (Gonzalez et al., 1997; Merrell, Ervin, & Gimpel, 2006). Immigration has been a part of America’s history and continues to be prevalent in today’s society. In 2001, the U.S. Census Bureau described the primary
ethnic minority groups to be Latinos, African Americans, Asian Americans, American Indians, natives of Alaska, and Pacific Islanders. These various ethnic groups composed nearly 50% of the population in the U.S., of which approximately 57% was 18 years old or younger (U.S. Bureau of the Census, 2001). It is estimated that by 2010 Latinos will be the largest ethnic group, followed by African Americans (Bernal, Trimble, Burlew, & Leong, 2003). One out of every five school-aged children in the U.S. speaks a language other than English (Gonzalez et al., 1997; Kindler, 2002). In addition, there are more than 400 languages represented within the student population with limited English proficiency (LEP), with Spanish (77%) and Vietnamese (2.3%) being the most common (Kindler, 2002). Issues about diversity have been prevalent in American society and have therefore influenced psychology and education in the U.S. Moreover, various historical events, such as segregation, racism, discrimination, and prejudice, affected institutions and organizations and impeded the integration of multicultural factors into professional practice (Jackson, 1995). The history of diversity (Gonzalez et al., 1997) and the increased number of minority populations in the U.S. within the past century (Ochoa, 2005) have resulted in various social reforms. Several reform movements were related to the emergence of psychology and school psychology (Fagan & Wise, 2000). Although psychology and school psychology have spent a large portion of this century establishing themselves and thus have been preoccupied with structural professional issues, diversity has not been an issue that the profession has addressed effectively (Fagan, 2004; Fagan & Wise, 2000). However, given the changing demographics of the U.S., there is a question of the effectiveness of a psychology that historically has not been inclusive of ethnic and racial groups (Bernal et al., 2003). With the increasing number of minority populations in the U.S., psychology and school psychology will need to include different racial and ethnic groups into all aspects of research and practice if they are to be representative of U.S. demographics (Bernal et al., 2003).
History of Cross-Cultural Psychology Psychology has developed based on the contributions of many European and White American psychologists. It is sometimes criticized as addressing the dominant
C. S. Clauss-Ehlers (Ed.), Encyclopedia of Cross-Cultural School Psychology, DOI 10.1007/978-0-387-71799-9, # Springer Science+Business Media LLC 2010
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The history of cross-cultural school psychology in the United States
culture, but failing to account for minority cultures in its theory, practice, and development (Bernal et al., 2003). As a result, the field of cross-cultural psychology emerged in an attempt to: (1) transport present hypotheses and findings to other cultural settings to test their validity and applicability in other groups of humans; (2) explore other cultures to discover cultural and psychological variations that are not present in our own limited cultural experience; and (3) attempt to assemble and integrate, into a broadly based psychology, the results obtained when pursuing the first two goals, and to generate a more universal psychology that will be valid for a broader range of cultures (Berry, Poortinga, Segall, & Dasen, 2002). Cross-cultural psychology has ‘‘a long past, but only a short history,’’ as psychologists have been interested in the impact of culture on individuals for a very long time, but a more consistent study of culture on individuals has only occurred recently (Ho & Wu, 2001). The literature on cross-cultural psychology points out that one of its main challenges in incorporating multicultural and cross-cultural factors into the field of psychology begins with the definition. Firstly, the concept ‘‘culture’’ in cross-cultural psychology remains largely unexamined theoretically. As a result, the theoretical and research usefulness of this construct is questioned (Rohner, 1984). Despite this issue, ‘‘multicultural’’ has been defined as ‘‘a confluence of three or more coexisting and unintegrated cultures (e.g., those that differ by age, gender, race, ethnicity, social class, or sexual orientation), each of which displays patterns of human behavior that include thought, language, action, and artifacts that may be somewhat unique to it and are sustained by members’ capacity for and interest in learning and transmitting knowledge to succeeding generations’’ (Oakland, 2005, p. 6). Berry et al. (2002) define cross-cultural psychology as: ‘‘the study of similarities and differences in individual psychological functioning in various cultural and ethnocultural groups; of the relationships between psychological variables and socio-cultural, ecological and biological variables; and of ongoing changes in these variables’’ (p. 3). Sociology, anthropology, and social psychology were the first disciplines to consider cultural factors (Segall, Dasen, Berry, & Poortinga, 1990). German psychologists J. F. Herbart and Lightner Witmer, who is also the ‘‘father of school psychology’’ (Fagan & Wise, 2000), began to consider how culture affects human behavior (Hogan & Sussner, 2001). However,
the exploration of cultural determinants in social psychology textbooks was rare during the first half of the twentieth century (Segall, 1979). What continued to be prevalent during the late 1800s and early to mid-1900s was what Holliday and Holmes call ‘‘scientific racism.’’ Holliday and Holmes (2003) suggest that the field of psychology contributed to the practice of scientific racism during the second half of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. They illustrate this point by citing the work of Sir Francis Galton, who indicated that African Americans were on average two grades below the Anglo Saxons, and Stanley Hall, who argued that other ‘‘lower’’ races were at a more ‘‘adolescent stage’’ of their life cycle than Whites. This issue has continued in psychology. In the early 1920s, Spearman observed that tests with a higher g loading, purer measures of intellectual capacity, revealed larger performance differences between groups (Berry et al., 2002). Later, in 1985, Jensen formulated Spearman’s hypothesis, which predicted larger performance differences between ‘‘racial groups’’ in the U.S. when using intelligence tests (Berry et al., 2002). Jensen interpreted his results as evidence for differences in intellectual capacity between African Americans and White Americans. There has been much controversy over Jensen’s results. Berry et al. (2002) concluded that there is a relationship between test performance and schooling and that ‘‘the relationship between cognitive test performance and schooling may have two bases: (1) performance may actually be enhanced by educational experience, and (2) the relationship may be an artifact of the test content being similar to school materials’’ (p. 119). The issue of differences in intellectual capacity among diverse groups continued to be present in psychology. During the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, minority populations were primarily discussed in psychology and education research to make comparisons based on racial differences (Holliday & Holmes, 2003). Moreover, psychology’s psychometric and experimental procedures were used to investigate problems of ‘‘national concern’’ about ethnic minorities. Statistical analyses compared the performance of White, African American, and Latino students on intelligence tests (Herrnstein & Murray, 1994). Researchers then used the results of their analyses to make comparisons between different groups and Whites, as well as assertions about the innate abilities of different groups and their ability to learn. Since the early part of the twentieth
The history of cross-cultural school psychology in the United States
century, there have been many studies on psychological characteristics (e.g., intelligence and personality) of ethnic minorities. Stated implications of these studies often focused on issues related to the management, socialization, and education of the nation’s minority people, and were used to justify racially differential treatment (Holliday & Holmes, 2003). Richards (1997) characterized these studies as ‘‘race psychology,’’ which sought to refine, document, and validate assumptions of scientific racism. In addition, these types of study were used to justify segregation and differential treatment of culturally and linguistically diverse students. During the Great Depression, attempts to include the field of psychology in social issues were best represented by the formation of the Psychologists League in 1934. This was an activist organization committed to ideological critique of issues pertinent to psychological theory, direct political action, and reform of related issues. It was also supportive of the Society for the Psychological Study of Social Issues, which was primarily concerned with the application of psychological theory and methods to the scholarly study of such social issues as war, industrial conflict, and racial prejudice, as well as the testing of hypotheses about social change (Holliday & Holmes, 2003). In the early 1900s, several individuals from different ethnic minorities became scholars of psychology and began to study the major tenets of scientific racism and to highlight the potential effects of environmental variables on human behavior and racial differences (Holliday & Holmes, 2003). Unfortunately, much of the work of these scholars went relatively unnoticed and ignored in psychology and education. Moreover, differentiation and bias toward culturally and linguistically diverse persons continued to influence social, political, and economic agendas in the U.S. Interestingly, in the 1920s, many psychologists believed that, for the most part, all humans were alike and that there was no need to identify and study cultural correlates (Bernal et al., 2003). Some psychologists continue to argue that the study of culture should be conducted within the field of anthropology. Many more psychologists currently feel that psychology has ignored the robustness and salience of culture and ethnicity for many years (Bernal et al., 2003). After World War II, cross-cultural psychology grew in spurts. By the 1970s it came ‘‘of age,’’ having 1,125 cross-cultural psychologists registered in the Directory of cross-cultural research and researchers, professional
organizations, and journals specific to issues in it (Bernal et al., 2003; Ho & Wu, 2001; Segall, 1979). In addition, in 1970, the Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology was launched at Western Washington University (Bernal et al., 2003). Other disciplines, such as anthropology and branches of psychology, also began to address cultural factors in their publications. The first textbook in social psychology, Social psychology by Otto Klinberg in 1940, highlighted the diversity of human behavior, questioned the claim about the universality of psychological concepts, and criticized the concept of biological determinism that had been used to support the belief in the inferiority of ‘‘non-Western’’ peoples (Hogan & Sussner, 2001; Segall et al., 1990). A brief introduction to cross-cultural psychology was written by Serpell in 1976, and an edited volume dealing with research issues in cross-cultural psychology was written by Warren in 1977 (Segall, 1979). In addition, international conferences began to take place during the 1970s, in Ontario, the Netherlands, and Germany (Segall, 1972). In 1972, a group of psychologists from different countries convened in Hong Kong to examine and discuss culture’s influence on the human experience. This led to the founding of the International Association for Cross-Cultural Psychology (IACCP) (Bernal et al., 2003). In addition, the first Handbook of cross-cultural psychology, a series of six volumes, was edited by Triandis et al. (1980). Another important book in the subject was The handbook of cross-cultural human development by Munroe, Munroe, and Whiting in 1981. This book provides impressive evidence that there are scientific laws governing human development (Segall et al., 1990). Given these important contributions, cross-cultural psychology is now an established field, but cultural diversity is yet to be incorporated systematically in other areas of psychology (Segall et al., 1990; Sue, Arrendondo, & McDavis, 1992). Considerations of ethnic, cultural, and linguistic factors in psychology have not been well represented in traditional publications (Bernal et al., 2003). Publishing manuscripts on ethnic minority issues in mainstream periodicals has been a problem. For this reason, culture-specific associations and publications were established in the 1970s. Various of these are listed in > Table 1. Information obtained from Bernal et al. (2003) and Berry et al. (2002).
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The history of cross-cultural school psychology in the United States
. Table 1 Culture-specific associations and publications Title Association of Black Psychologists Network of Indian Psychologists Asian American Psychological Association Journal of Black Psychology White Cloud Journal of American Indian/ Alaska Native Mental Health Renamed American Indian and Alaska Native Mental Health Research Hispanic Journal of Behavioral Sciences Journal of the Asian American Psychological Association National Hispanic Psychological Association Handbook of Cross-Cultural Psychology Society for the Psychological Study of Ethnic Minority Issues (Division 45) Society for the Clinical Psychology of Ethnic Minorities (Section VI of Division 12) Culture and Psychology Asian Journal of Social Psychology Cultural Diversity and Ethnic Minority Psychology
Year Early 1970s Early 1970s Early 1970s 1974 1978 1987 1979 1979 1980 1980 1986 1986 1995 1998 1999
History of School Psychology School psychology diverted from psychology and clinical psychology in the early 1900s (Fagan & Wise, 2000). The field of education began to develop at the same time. The combination of (1) compulsory education in the U.S., (2) the social conditions after immigration and industrialization, and (3) the emergence of new educational tools and scientific technologies, such as intelligence quotient (IQ) and other mental tests, contributed to the inception of school psychology as a field (Fagan & Wise, 2000; Merrell et al., 2006). Therefore, school psychology has had a foundation in psychology and education. The development of the IQ, mental ability testing movement, racial segregation, and inequality in schools, which occurred in the first quarter of the twentieth century, had significant implications for the development and definition of school psychology (Merrell et al., 2006). Compulsory attendance laws between 1852 and 1918, the child labor laws, and waves of immigration dramatically changed education and led to the inclusion in schools of increased
numbers of children from diverse backgrounds (Fagan & Wise, 2000). As education struggled to meet the needs of such large numbers of children, psychologists were sought for the schools to assist educators in determining which resources students should receive; ultimately, these early psychologists assisted in segregating students into different programs (Fagan, 1990; Fagan & Wise, 2000). Fagan (1990, p. 917) points out that ‘‘the early years of the testing movement demonstrated the advantage of ability and achievement tests in segregating individuals for specialized treatments.’’ This led the way for the beginnings of special education and psychological services in schools. By 1910 special education services to address ‘‘mental, physical, and moral’’ issues with students were available in many urban and some rural school systems (Fagan & Wise, 2000). School psychological services existed to a small degree, but it has been stated that the employability of school psychologists in the school system was to reliably sort children into segregated settings (Fagan & Wise, 2000). These initial school psychologists were seen as ‘‘gatekeepers’’ because of their role in identifying students not geared to benefit from regular education. As a result, intelligence testing has been described as a means of promoting, tracking, segregating, and routing students into vocational training to reduce focus on other variables (e.g., curriculum, teacher influence) and assisting in the exclusion of students from obtaining certain types of education (Merrell et al., 2006). Fagan and Wise (2000) state that school psychology went through a formative state between 1890 and 1920 because it lacked the characteristics of a profession. This formative state involved: practitioner autonomy, professional regulation of training, credentialing, and practice. ‘‘Although clinical, counseling, and school psychology were establishing separate identities, there were no criteria for official recognition of psychology specialties’’ (Fagan, 2005, p. 226). During the 1950s and 1960s, school psychology was preoccupied with establishing itself as a professional organization and with professional issues, such as training and credentialing (Merrell et al., 2006). In 1945 the American Psychological Association (APA) gave school psychologists their first national organizational identity in the form of the Division of School Psychology (Division 16). This gave school psychologists an organizational identity, established a loose network of communication among school psychologists, and drafted guidelines for training and credentialing (Fagan & Wise, 2000).
The history of cross-cultural school psychology in the United States
The National Association of School Psychologists was later established in 1969. School psychology focused on becoming a profession in the early nineteenth century. Perhaps because of this focus and its role of ‘‘gatekeeper,’’ it did not pay attention to issues of multiculturalism or crossculturalism to the degree that was needed. In 1954, Brown v. Board of Education addressed the many years of inequality in schools. It resulted in the decision that school segregation by race denied the right of equal protection to African American students, and that schools should provide African American students equal access to the same resources as White students (Fagan & Warden, 1996; Gonzalez et al., 1997; Merrell et al., 2006; Reynolds, Elliott, Gutkin, & Witt, 1984). School psychology, however, with other areas in psychology, described minority students as culturally deprived, culturally different, distinct, or culturally neutral (Jackson, 2005). In the 1960s and 1970s, the school-aged population increased once again, thus increasing the special needs population and therefore the need for school psychologists to assist in the placement of children in special classes. Although the field of school psychology has been characterized by intelligence testing and the need to address diversity in schools, multicultural and crosscultural issues have been largely ignored. The field of school psychology continued to use systematic practices, such as IQ testing, as sole criteria for placement in special education programs that did not necessarily address multicultural or cross-cultural issues (Gonzalez et al., 1997). It appears that responsiveness to multicultural issues did not occur until the field was forced. Various court cases and legislation began to surface to force education and school psychology to address issues about the education, assessment, and equal opportunities for minority students. Some of these cases include Hobson v. Hansen (1967, 1969), Larry P. v. Riles (1972), Diana v. California State Board of Education (1970), Guadalupe v. Tempe Elementary District (1972), Public Law 94-142, and the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) (1990). These and other court decisions brought into focus the need for more sensitive multicultural assessment, improved technical adequacy of tests, broader conceptualization of assessment (Fagan, 1990), and issues about equal educational opportunities. Yet despite the various laws addressing issues of equal educational opportunity, segregation, bias, and tracking, legislation is not systematically enforced (Gonzalez et al., 1997).
Cross-Cultural School Psychology Although Tarver-Behring and Ingraham (1998) and Ingraham (2000) have defined multicultural and cross-cultural consultation, there is no current definition for cross-cultural school psychology in the literature. Ingraham’s (2000) definition of cross-cultural consultation and Pederson’s (2003) definition of cross-cultural counseling will be used to define crosscultural school psychology. It will be defined as the consideration of differing cultural beliefs and values involving ethnicity, language, socioeconomic status, age, gender, educational attainment, sexual orientation, spirituality, professional role, and level of acculturation from one individual, group, community, institution, or profession to another when assessing, conceptualizing, and implementing and evaluating treatments and interventions in a client’s cultural context where those behaviors were learned and displayed. Although this is a long definition, it attempts to capture the complexity of cross-cultural considerations in school psychology. It also attempts to emphasize the need to consider various factors when one is working with an individual who differs in cultural background. School psychologists have worked and continue to work disproportionately with children from low-income, minority families, and cross-culturally diverse backgrounds (Fagan & Wise, 2000; Oakland, 2005). Historically, most of the literature in school psychology dealing with cross-cultural issues and diversity has focused on assessment and its bias (Reynolds, Lowe, & Saenz, 1999). Owing to the many controversies surrounding intelligence testing with minorities, psychology and school psychology have been forced to consider cross-cultural factors when studying bias in mental testing with minority students. Unfortunately, this is not the case in other areas of school psychology. > Table 2 shows some of the events, legislation, and major publications that have led the way to considering a multicultural and cross-cultural focus in school psychology. One can see from the list that the development of a multicultural and cross-cultural perspective in school psychology has been recent. Although legislation requiring school psychology to address multicultural and cross-cultural issues goes back as early as 1954, school psychology only began to address issues of diversity more comprehensively in the past decade. This is consistent with Frisby’s (2005) report that the word ‘‘multiculturalism’’ began to be largely used in the 1990s.
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. Table 2 Developmental milestones in cross-cultural school psychology Event
Year
Compulsory education
Between 1852 and 1918 Stanford Binet Scales 1905 Brown v. Board of Education 1954 Hobson v. Hansen 1967, 1969 Diana v. State Board of Education 1970 Guadalupe Organization, Inc. v. Tempe Elementary School District 1972 Public Law 94-142 1975 P.A.S.E. v. Hannon 1980 Larry P. v. Riles 1984 National Association of School Psychologists (NASP) Position Statement on Advocacy for Appropriate 1985, 2002 Educational Services for All Children Children at Risk: Poverty, Minority Status, and Other Issues in Educational Equity (NASP) 1990 Ethical standards for the deliverance of services for ethnically diverse population resulted 1993 Individuals Disability Education Act (IDEA) 1997 NASP task force on cross-cultural school psychology competence ‘‘providing psychological services to 1998 racially, ethnically, culturally, linguistically diverse populations in the schools: recommendations for practice’’ Standards for educational and psychological testing 1999 Cross-cultural consultation volume in the School Psychology Review (volume 29, issue 3) 2000 Paper ‘‘Identifying critical cross-cultural school psychology competencies’’ by Rogers and Lopez 2002 Comprehensive handbook of multicultural school psychology (Frisby & Reynolds) 2005 Handbook of multicultural school psychology: An interdisciplinary perspective 2006
We reviewed the four major school psychology journals (Psychology in the Schools, Journal of School Psychology, School Psychology Quarterly, and School Psychology Review) to understand to what degree the literature in school psychology has reflected multicultural, cross-cultural, or diversity issues in the past 10 years (1986–2006). Databases searched were PsycINFO, Educational Resources Information Center (ERIC), Academic Search Elite, Psychology in the Schools online (full text available from Wiley Interscience Journals), Journal of School Psychology online (full text available from ScienceDirect Journals), School Psychology Quarterly online (full text available from EBSCOhost EJS), and School Psychology Review online (full text available from Wilson OmniFile) in October 2006. We searched for articles using the following words: ‘‘cross- cultural’’ þ ‘‘school psychology’’ þ ‘‘counseling,’’ ‘‘cross-cultural’’ þ ‘‘school psychology’’ þ ‘‘intervention,’’ and ‘‘cross-cultural’’ þ ‘‘school psychology’’ þ ‘‘consultation.’’ A total of 41 articles were found, of which 19 were directly related to school psychological services. We found a significant difference in
the number of articles that reflected multicultural issues published by each journal. > Table 3 reflects the number of times the words ‘‘multicultural,’’ ‘‘diversity,’’ ‘‘cross-cultural,’’ ‘‘African American,’’ and ‘‘Hispanics’’ where cited in the title of each article in each journal in the past 10 years. > Table 4 shows the proportions of articles from 1996 to 2006 in each journal addressing multicultural, cross-cultural, diversity, African American, and Hispanic issues. By far, School Psychology Quarterly proved to be the journal with the most articles (0.79), whereas Journal of School Psychology (0.06) and School Psychology Review (0.03) had the fewest articles, reflecting multicultural and cross-cultural issues in the past 10 years. The two leading group of books in school psychology have been the Best practices I–IV (Thomas & Grimes, 1988, 1990, 1995, 2002) and The handbook of school psychology (Gutkin & Reynolds, 1990; Reynolds & Gutkin, 1999). We reviewed these two sets of books (with the exception of the Handbook of school psychology (1st ed.), which was not accessible) to see
The history of cross-cultural school psychology in the United States
. Table 3 Titles addressing multicultural and cross-cultural issues in four school psychology journals, 1996–2006 Words used in title
Psychology in the schools
Journal of school psychology
School psychology quarterly
School psychology review
29 71 11 29 10 150
5 1 3 7 3 19
16 54 58 78 22 228
5 5 3 4 2 19
Multicultural Diversity Cross-cultural African American Hispanics Total
. Table 4 Proportions of articles addressing multicultural and cross-cultural issues in four school psychology journals Number of articles/total number Multicultural Diversity Cross-cultural African American Hispanics Total (All articles/total number of articles)
Psychology in the schools
Journal of school psychology
29/538 = 0.05 71/538 = 0.13 11/538 = 0.02 29/538 = 0.05 10/538 = 0.01 150/538 = 0.27
5/288 = 0.01 1/288 = 0 3/288 = 0.01 7/288 = 0.02 3/288 = 0.01 19/288 = 0.06
how many chapters were focused on multicultural or cross-cultural issues. We found that the Best practices I had 1 out of 39 chapters focused on bilingual assessment with LEP and bilingual children; Best practices II had 2 out of 62 chapters that were on bilingual assessment and another on considering cultural factors; Best practices III had 3 out of 96 chapters that focused on cultural differences in families, the role of culture, and working with bilingual children; and Best practices IV had 5 out of 101 chapters that focused on working with culturally and linguistically diverse children and families, using school interpreters, bilingual assessment, non-biased assessment, and increasing crosscultural competence. The handbook of school psychology (2nd ed.), focused one of its chapters on multicultural or cross-cultural issues. And The handbook of school psychology (3rd ed.) focused one of its chapters on cultural diversity and interventions. This is consistent with what Frisby and Reynolds (2005) found. According to them, ‘‘only one of the 43 chapters in the Handbook of school psychology (Reynolds & Gutkin, 1999), 5 of the 101 chapters in Best practices in school psychology
School psychology School quarterly psychology review 16/286 = 0.05 54/286 = 0.18 58/286 = 0.2 78/286 = 0.27 22/286 = 0.07 228/286 = 0.79
5/543 = 0.01 5/543 = 0.01 3/543 = 0.005 4/543 = 0.005 2/543 = 0.003 19/543 = 0.03
IV (Thomas & Grimes, 2002); and 4 of the 85 chapters in Children’s needs II (Bear, Minke, & Thomas, 1997) were devoted to multicultural issues’’ (p. xix). Henning-Stout and Brown-Cheatham (1999) have also noted that diversity issues in school psychology have focused on the difficulties in practice, and to a much lesser degree on training and research. They also indicate that scholars of school psychology began to give the issue of diversity more attention in the early 1990s, with regard to bilingual assessment, bilingual education, training diverse school psychologists, experiences of people of color and women. Yet, research in school psychology has largely ignored issues of diversity. This is perhaps because of the possibility that school psychology might have to change or adapt to a new way of proceeding with culturally and linguistically diverse (CLD) populations (Henning-Stout & Brown-Cheatham, 1999), given possible differences in assessment, counseling, consultation, and intervention procedures. The literature in school psychology consultation has already begun to lead the way in including theoretical and research considerations of
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diversity in school psychology and how this would modify current consultation (Tarver-Behring, Cabello, Kushida, & Murgia, 2000). Given that ‘‘cross-cultural school psychology’’ is a new term and a fairly recent perspective, school psychology has much to learn from cross-cultural psychology. It is important to use the knowledge derived by many psychologists who have richly contributed to the field of cross-cultural psychology to develop the field of cross-cultural school psychology. Among the information that school psychologists need to understand are the cross-cultural perspectives in child and adolescent development, cultural identity, acculturation, cognition across cultures, culture and emotion, culture and moral development, gender and culture, abnormal psychology and culture, clinical psychology and culture, social psychology across cultures, culture and social cognition, and social justice from a cultural perspective. The reader is referred to Harry Gardiner’s (2001) chapter on Child and adolescent development: Cross-cultural perspectives and Yrizarry, Matsumoto, Imai, Kooken, and Takuchi’s (2001) Culture and emotion chapter in Adler and Gielen’s (2001) book, as well as Gardiner, Mutter, and Kosmitzki’s (1998) book Lives across cultures: Cross-cultural human development. We refer the reader to Segall et al.’s (1990) book Human behavior in a global perspective: An introduction to cross-cultural psychology, and specifically to the Developmental niche, theories of human development, and Cognitive processes chapters to understand human behavior in different cultural contexts. We also refer the reader to David Matsumoto’s (2001) The Handbook of culture and psychology and Berry et al.’s (2002) Cross-cultural psychology (2nd ed.) for further information on major concepts in cross-cultural psychology. In addition, it is important to note that two multicultural handbooks in school psychology, Comprehensive handbook of multicultural school psychology (Frisby & Reynolds, 2005) and Handbook of multicultural school psychology (Esquivel, Lopez, & Nahari, 2007), have recently been published. This not only increases the literature on cross-cultural school psychology, but also the focus on multicultural and cross-cultural issues in school psychology. Although school psychology has not always addressed issues of diversity, it is important to note the strides in which school psychology has moved towards a cross-cultural framework. Given that the school psychologist’s role primarily involves assessment,
consultation, counseling, and interventions, a brief view of the historical events that have contributed to the development of ‘‘cross-cultural school psychology’’ in each area will be discussed. The main area that has historically been targeted as needing to address cultural and linguistic diversity issues is psychoeducational assessment. Unfortunately, this has often been due to issues of malpractice, bias, or discrimination. As a result, there is much history in this area that has contributed to cross-cultural school psychology. The other area that has paved the way for cross-cultural school psychology is consultation. Lopez, Rogers, Ingraham, and Tarver-Behring brought issues of diversity into the forefront in the late 1990s, which served to develop school psychology as it relates to cross-cultural and multicultural issues. In addition, Rogers and Lopez (2002) have begun research on the consensus about what cross-cultural skills are necessary to provide best practices in school psychology. They have also provided a list of important crosscultural competencies in school psychology. School psychology has focused less on counseling and interventions for diverse students. It will have to borrow from research in cross-cultural and counseling psychology to expand its knowledge in how to provide best practices in counseling and intervention with culturally and linguistically diverse students.
Cross-Cultural Assessment in School Psychology Because intelligence testing has defined school psychology since its inception, it is no surprise that there is much history in this area. Binet and Simon introduced intelligence testing in 1905 in France, whereas Lewis Terman and his associates published the Stanford-Binet Test, a revision of the Binet-Simon Test, in the U.S. in 1916 (Holliday & Holmes, 2003). This major event led the way for school psychologists to use the Stanford-Binet Test for students in schools by the early 1900s. By 1910 there were various psychology professionals, usually at the non-doctorate level, working in schools. Their main role was to assist in the placement of students in special programs, which was sometimes seen as segregating students. Jacob and Hartshorne (2003) support this fact by indicating that intelligence testing and other mental ability tests have been used to track and segregate ethnic, racial, and linguistic minority students in inferior, dead-end
The history of cross-cultural school psychology in the United States
classes, which denied them access to the college preparatory curriculum. In addition, ethnic, racial, and linguistic minority students have been misclassified as retarded to justify their placement in poorly equipped special education classes, often taught by inadequately trained teachers (Jacob & Hartshorne, 2003). By the mid-1900s, school psychologists were testing CLD students and placing them in special education classes based on their IQs obtained by intelligence testing. As mentioned earlier, school psychology was forced to consider cross-cultural factors in testing based on lawsuits. One of the first lawsuits filed against school districts because of misclassification of minority students into special education was Diana v. California State Board of Education in 1970. Diana was a class action suit on behalf of nine Spanish-speaking Mexican American children placed in classes for the educable mentally retarded on the basis of IQ assessed by tests, such as the Stanford-Binet or Wechsler Intelligence Scale, given in English. After being retested by a bilingual school psychologist, the Diana students not only scored much higher, but they no longer qualified for special education services. As a result, the consent decree in Diana required children to be assessed in their primary language or with sections of tests that did not depend on knowledge of English (Jacob & Hartshorne, 2003). Guadalupe v. Tempe Elementary District (1972) was also a class action suit on behalf of Yaqui Indian and Mexican American children. The consent decree from this case went further than Diana. It required that if the student’s language was not English, intelligence should be assessed by using performance or nonverbal measures and that assessment of adaptive behavior should be done with an interview with the parents (Fagan & Warden, 1996). The history of testing African American students has been their disproportionate assignation to lower educational tracks, thus raising the debate over the bias of intelligence testing. Hobson v. Hansen (1967, 1969) was the first class-action lawsuit representing African American students in an attempt to stop their disproportionally being assigned to lower tracks based on group-administered aptitude tests (Jacob & Hartshorne, 2003). The judge ruled that this practice segregated African American students into tracks that were educationally inferior based on the equal protection clause and ordered this practice to end. In addition, he added that the group-administered aptitude tests produced misleading results because they
were standardized on White middle-class children. Larry P. v. Riles was another class action suit representing African American students. This was a special education class-action suit in California filed on behalf of African American students who had been placed in classes for the educable mentally retarded (EMR) in the San Francisco public school system. According to Fagan and Warden (1996), the central issues in this case were: (1) that standardized individually administered intelligence tests were culturally biased and at fault for the over-representation of African American students in EMR classes; and (2) that these EMR classes were not necessarily beneficial for these students. Judge Peckham found the intelligence tests (Stanford-Binet and Wechsler Intelligence Scales) to be racially and culturally biased, to have discriminatory impact against African American students, and not to be validated for placing African American children in EMR classes (Jacob & Hartshorne, 2003). Moreover, he found no particular benefit of EMR classes for African American children. The P.A.S.E. v. Hannon (1980) case was similar to the Larry P. case. However, the judge ruled that IQ tests, in conjunction with other assessment procedures, would not result in racial or cultural discrimination (Jacob & Hartshorne, 2003). Although issues of difference in testing among ethnic groups and bias in testing have been present in psychology for a long time, school psychology has been forced to address these issues to some degree based on litigation. Diana and Guadalupe have forced school psychologists to administer intelligence tests to non-English-speaking students in their native language, and to use nonverbal intelligence tests when appropriate. Litigation has also forced school psychology not to use intelligence tests to assess African American students. These court cases have also influenced federal legislature in considering multicultural factors in the assessment and provision of services for CLD students. One federal legislation delineating multicultural factors in the assessment and provision of services for CLD students was the passage of Public Law 94-192: Education for All Handicapped Children Act (1975). This provided a more specific delineation to the field of school psychology for special education services. It served to give school psychology more status and increased the demand for school psychological services. Public Law 94-142 mandated services for children aged 3–21 who had been identified with a
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qualifying disability (i.e., mental retardation, hearing impairment (including deafness), speech and language impairment, visual impairment (including blindness), serious emotional disturbance, other health impairment, specific learning disability, or being multihandicapped based on an assessment conducted by multi-disciplinary team members, such as the school psychologist) (Fagan & Warden, 1996). In addition, public law 94-142 also required child-find activities, service determination by a multidisciplinary team, education in the least restrictive environment, when possible with non-handicapped peers, development of an individualized education plan, and procedural safeguards including due process. This federal law used outcomes of previous case laws, such as Diana v. Board of Education and Larry P. v. Riles, to include its provisions. Public Law 94-142 served to require school psychologists nationally to focus on multicultural issues in assessment by mandating nondiscriminatory testing and evaluation procedures. It was later renamed the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) with Public Law 101-476 in 1990 (Fagan & Warden, 1996). IDEA mandates services for children aged 6–21 who are categorized as disabled. It continues to delineate previous mandates listed under Public law 94-142, including nondiscriminatory assessment and evaluation procedures. Jacob and Hartshorne (2003) indicate that IDEA-Part B lists the following provisions for the assessment of culturally and linguistically diverse students: (1) tests and other evaluative components be provided and administered in the child’s native language or other mode of communication, unless it is clearly not feasible to do so; (2) materials and procedures used to assess a child with limited English proficiency are selected and administered to ensure that they measure the extent to which the child has a disability and needs special education, rather than measuring the child’s English language skills; and (3) ‘‘native language’’ is defined as the language normally used by the child in the home or learning environment (p. 90). In addition, IDEA 1990 requires for assessment personnel to: (1) use a variety of assessment tools and strategies; (2) use various tests and procedures to determine whether child has a disability; (3) use technically sound instruments; and (4) determine qualification and placement for special education services by a team. Professional codes of ethics and standards in school psychology also mandate non-biased assessment of
children from culturally and linguistically diverse populations. IDEA 2004 continues to mandate the same as the previous two IDEA legislations, with the modification that a child with LEP should be assessed in the language they are most proficient in, rather than in the native language, as these two may not be the same. The history of the misuse of IQ and other mental testing has provoked various professional organizations to establish safeguards using professional and ethical standards. According to Merrell et al. (2006), the Standards for Educational and Psychological Testing were jointly published by the American Educational Research Association, the APA, and the National Council on Measurement in Education in 1999. Ethical guidelines have also been used to delineate appropriate professional behavior and service delivery to culturally and linguistically diverse students. Ethical guidelines were also established by the APA in 1953 and revised in 1992. The National Association of School Psychologists (NASP) first adopted a professional code of ethics in 1974 that was revised in 1990 (Fagan & Warden, 1996; Fagan & Wise, 2000). A professional code of ethics delineates procedures on how psychologists and school psychologists should provide services to CLD children, youth, families, and professional and community members. Despite the long history of problems with the assessment of CLD students, there have been few books on the assessment of CLD students. Most of this literature is in individual journal articles. In 2005, Rhodes, Ochoa, and Ortiz wrote a book called Assessing culturally and linguistically diverse students: A practical guide, which provides a good foundation of the assessment practice for CLD students within school psychology. Although the way in which school psychologists use tests and interpret the information derived has improved, there is increasing information from the cross-cultural literature indicating differences in cognitive processing among culturally and linguistically diverse students. For example, cross-cultural research has found differences in groups in information processing and reaction times that may be affected by differences in stimulus familiarity (Berry et al., 2002). Other research into memory has found that although there do not appear to be cultural differences in recall, there are differences in recall ability based on schooling and urbanization (Berry et al., 2002). Crosscultural research has also shown that ecological and cultural factors do not influence the sequence of
The history of cross-cultural school psychology in the United States
developmental stages, but that they do influence the rate at which they are attained. In addition, there has been work exploring different cognitive styles, such as field-dependent or field-independent cognitive styles found among different groups, which can help understand qualitative aspects of processing information (Berry et al., 2002). These cultural factors in cognitive processing have not yet been incorporated in how school psychologists interpret information derived by standardized tests, which are largely based on monolingual populations. There is still much that the field of cross-cultural psychology does not know about cognitive processing and culturally and linguistically diverse students. However, what little there is about the similarities and differences between groups should be incorporated in interpreting standardized test results with CLD populations.
Counseling in Cross-Cultural School Psychology In addition to assessment, school psychologists have conducted counseling in schools since the beginning of the profession when early practitioners, who were mostly clinical psychologists, worked in the schools (Fagan & Wise, 2000). Fagan and Wise (2000) indicate that school psychologists have varying degrees of training in individual and group counseling. For those school psychologists, examples of counseling involve working with children of divorce, children having difficulties with anger management, and children dealing with grief (Fagan & Wise, 2000). School psychologists have also led the way in providing crisis counseling in schools beginning in the latter half of the twentieth century (Fagan & Wise, 2000). Since 1990, IDEA has mandated that students receive counseling services in schools to help them adjust to the school setting (Jacob & Hartshorne, 2003). School psychologists are one of the professionals involved in providing counseling as a related service to students. Although some provide this service, most report that assessment takes the majority of their time (Fagan & Wise, 2000). Not surprisingly, studies involving role perceptions of school psychologists have shown that teachers and administrators have either not considered counseling as a function of a school psychologist’s role (Reschly, 1998; as cited in Fagan, 2000) or have wanted school psychologists to be more involved with counseling students
(Hughes, 1979; Roberts, 1970). In all three studies, however, school psychologists did not particularly favor counseling students and tended to favor consultation, involvement in curriculum-based measurement, or organizational development. Much of the information on counseling culturally diverse students in school settings comes from the field of school counseling. Although counseling psychology has provided definitions in cross-cultural counseling competence, the focus is largely on adults (Rogers & Lopez, 2002). In school psychology there is limited literature on counseling, as much of it focuses on assessment, consultation, or interventions. Moreover, literature about particular CLD groups in school psychology often focuses on assessment and general diversity issues working with children and families. Counseling competencies in school psychology were first addressed by Rogers and Ponterotto (1997). These authors developed the Multicultural School Psychology Counseling Competency Scale to measure the multicultural counseling competencies of school psychologists, based on multicultural and cross-cultural competencies identified by Sue et al. (1982). This work influenced the investigation of Rogers and Lopez (2002) regarding relevant cross-cultural competencies in school psychology. In their investigation, cross-cultural counseling competencies rated important in school psychology included: issues in counseling, culture, working with parents, working with interpreters, theoretical paradigms, professional characteristics, and language (Lopez & Rogers, 2001; Rogers & Lopez, 2002). It is hoped that the delineation of these cross-cultural counseling competencies in school psychology will be followed by more literature and improved practice in the field. For more information on the competencies, please refer to the chapter on cross-cultural school psychology competencies in this volume.
Cross-Cultural Consultation in School Psychology Issues in cross-cultural and multicultural consultation in school psychology appear to have surfaced in the mid-1980s, with Gibbs (1980) questioning the effectiveness of consultation with African American clients without considering cross-cultural factors. According to Tarver-Behring and Ingraham (1998), the field of consultation has not consistently acknowledged the
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importance of culture. Further, the literature does not yet provide adequate conceptual or applied models for guiding research and practice in school-based consultation with CLD populations (Ingraham & Meyers, 2000). Other well-established models of consultation, such as the behavioral consultation model, do not have empirical support that they are effective with diverse students (Sheridan, 2000). As a result, cross-cultural and multicultural consultation in school psychology are relatively new terms and approaches. Ingraham and Meyers edited the first mini-series on multicultural and cross-cultural consultation in schools in 2000 through the School Psychology Review. Tarver-Behring and Ingraham (1998) define ‘‘multicultural consultation’’ as a culturally sensitive indirect approach in which the consultant adjusts the consultation services to address the needs and cultural values of the consultees and/or clients from various cultural groups. The specific aspect of differences in cultural background among the consultation participants is referred to as ‘‘cross-cultural consultation’’ (TarverBehring & Ingraham, 1998). Ingraham (2000) lists various researchers who have brought up multicultural or cross-cultural issues in school psychology consultation. The work of these researchers, with the exception of Gibbs (1980), took place in the 1990s. Some of these researchers have studied preferences for race of consultants, ratings of consultants’ effectiveness as a function of consultant race and style, the impact of race on ratings of consultants’ competence, multicultural sensitivity, and/or intervention acceptability, and content of the consultation session for racial issues (Ingraham, 2000). Other research, such as TarverBehring et al. (2000), explored cultural modifications to current school-based consultation approaches with CLD students and consultants. It found that certain modifications to consultation were needed for it to be culturally sensitive to CLD students and parents. Although there are mixed findings about how race has an impact on ratings of consultant competence, multicultural sensitivity, and intervention acceptability, it has been found that consultants’ attention and inclusion of race-sensitive content was rated as positive both by African American and White raters. With research emerging in the field of crosscultural and multicultural consultation, it is not known whether current theories and practices on consultation are equally effective with culturally different groups (Jackson & Hayes, 1993). Ingraham (2000) presented a comprehensive framework in
multicultural and cross-cultural consultation in schools. However, this model has yet to be adopted systematically and needs to be researched. The reader is referred to intervention and prevention efforts in cross-cultural school psychology to learn more about multicultural and cross-cultural consultation practice.
Interventions in Cross-Cultural School Psychology Henning-Stout and Brown-Cheatham (1999) indicate that school psychology does not yet have the expertise in diversity, especially as this pertains to learning environments and learning success. This is because educational institutions are organized to be consistent with values and goals of the dominant culture, which has been primarily European American. Educational systems, as described earlier in this chapter, have led to segregation, institutionalized discrimination, and bias against CLD students (Gonzalez et al., 1997). Institutionalized discrimination has been described and documented by various authors (e.g., HenningStout & Brown-Cheatham, 1999; Meier & Stewart, 1991) as significantly and negatively affecting CLD students’ academic and social development. The primary issue of institutionalized discrimination is that of educational equity and access to curriculum. For CLD students the biggest obstacles to an equal educational experience have been the political aspects surrounding bilingual education, segregation, and their overrepresentation in special education programs. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 addressed some of these obstacles by prohibiting discrimination based on race, color, sex, and national origin by any program receiving federal funding (Gonzalez et al., 1997). School psychologists are often not aware of legislation concerning educational access for CLD students. Important legislation is the Bilingual Education Act (Title VII), which was passed in 1968 and permitted students with LEP to receive instructional services in their native language (Ochoa, 2005). It is also important to know that the U.S. Department of Health, Education, and Welfare expanded its guidelines in 1970 through the May 25 Memorandum by requiring districts to: (1) rectify the language deficiencies of students from minority groups; (2) refrain from assigning pupils to special education based on criteria that reflect English skills; (3) ensure that ability grouping based on language skills does not result in
The history of cross-cultural school psychology in the United States
permanent tracking; and (4) notify parents of school activities in a language that they understand (Gonzalez et al., 1997, p. 35). Another law that school psychologists need to be aware of is Lau v. Nichols (1974). This addressed the specific responsibilities of school districts in the education of students with LEP, and ordered the San Francisco school district to provide a meaningful education to students with LEP in a language they could understand (Gonzalez et al., 1997; Ochoa, 2005). Unfortunately, Lau v. Nichols did not legislate what type of service, program, or language instruction should be provided. Other case law has indicated that school districts should implement a language proficiency testing program (Aspira of New York v. Board of Education of the City of New York, 1975) and should provide CLD students with programs that are (1) based on sound educational theory, (2) implemented in an effective manner that includes adequate training and funding, and (3) produce positive results over a reasonable time (Castaneda v. Pickard, 1981; No Child Left Behind, 2001). Despite legislature addressing equal educational opportunities for CLD students, including students with LEP, there is little follow through in enforcing these laws (Gonzalez et al., 1997). As a result, many school districts have not actively or efficiently supported the learning of CLD students or those with LEP. Moreover, because of political climates characterized by English-only and anti-bilingual education movements, bilingual education programs have been restricted in at least three states (California, Arizona, and Massachusetts) (Ochoa, 2005). For bilingual children, access to bilingual programs or adequate instructional services is paramount to early literacy development and academic achievement (Thomas & Collier, 2002; Willson & Hughes, 2005). For African American youth, institutionalized or racial discrimination may affect academic engagement, academic motivation, and achievement (Eccles, Wong, & Peck, 2006). Unfortunately, school psychologists have become part of an educational system that often does not have programs that lead to positive outcomes for CLD students. Three main examples are the issues of bilingual education, desegregation, and the over-representation of CLD students in special education. The lack of bilingual education services for students with LEP, despite the continued documentation of success of particular bilingual education programs (i.e., late exit transitional bilingual education and dual immersion bilingual
programs) with these students (see Collier, 1992; Gonzalez et al., 1997; Ochoa, 2005), is one of the major impediments in the delivery of best practices in school psychology with this population. Moreover, the absence of an equal educational opportunity based on scientifically based programs for students with LEP has led the fields of education and school psychology to a precarious position in their roles servicing this population. The lack of appropriate programs has led to inappropriate referrals and placements in special education of students with LEP (Figueroa & Artiles, 1999). It has been reported that many urban schools, which are often composed of poor students and those with LEP, currently reflect the highest levels of segregation since the Brown v. Topeka Board of Education Supreme Court decision in 1954 (Truscott & Truscott, 2005). Segregation of CLD students continues to be a major problem. It is a major obstacle for CLD students to graduate from high school, attend higher education, achieve good employment, and achieve success at higher levels in their professional career (Truscott & Truscott, 2005). Lee’s (2001) study indicated that the academic achievement gaps in high school graduation, college graduation, and poverty between White Americans and African Americans decreased between 1970 and 1990, but began to increase again by the mid1980s. The academic achievement gap between White Americans and Hispanics remained stable. The overrepresentation of CLD students, including secondlanguage learners and African American students, in special education programs, either because of the lack of services in the regular program or an intolerance in cultural differences (Figueroa & Artiles, 1999; Henning-Stout & Brown-Cheatham, 1999), poses significant challenges to school psychologists, who have ethical and legal responsibilities in their practice with CLD students. Along with specification of providing meaningful educational experiences to CLD students and those with LEP in regular education, there have also been court cases supporting the specialized instruction of disabled students with LEP in schools in particular states, such as New York, Pennsylvania, and Illinois (Gonzalez et al., 1997). Although IDEA has provided a delineation for the assessment of students with LEP, it has not provided guidelines for the education of disabled students with LEP. As a result, school districts were not held responsible for the education of disabled students with LEP until the Illinois Public Act
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87-0995 of 1992, which delineates issues related to ‘‘bilingual special education,’’ and the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001, which requires school districts to be accountable for the progress of students with LEP (Gonzalez et al., 1997; Jacob & Hartshorne, 2003). Although the Illinois Public Act is a state law, the No Child Left Behind of 2001 is legislature and affects all states. Still, there is no indication about how students with LEP should be educated (Gonzalez et al., 1997), most likely because of the controversies surrounding bilingual education and thus the possible political repercussion resulting in delineating educational programs for students with LEP. As a result, school psychologists are often part of a system that is unprepared to provide services or programs that are meaningful to CLD students and those with LEP and that result in positive outcomes. Although there is a growing body of literature establishing the relationship between cross-cultural competence and intervention outcomes (Rogers & Lopez, 2002), very little research in the school psychology literature has explored specific educational interventions with LEP students or those with LEP. Although various researchers began to provide theoretical frameworks in conceptual and linguistic development from the 1970s to the 1990s (e.g., Jim Cummings, Virginia Gonzalez, and Steven Krashen), very few professionals outside bilingual education even know who these researchers are or what they recommend when intervening with students with CLD and LEP. Some literature (e.g., Carnine, 1994) addresses the different learning styles of CLD students and how this may affect their ability to gain from a curriculum designed for primarily White American students. Yet, other research documents that there are many more similarities in learning styles across cultural groups (Kane & Boan, 2005). Much more research is needed in this and other areas exploring learning strengths and requirements among CLD students for school psychologists to better understand how to incorporate such information into their practice. For academic interventions, the field of school psychology has largely focused on curriculum-based assessment in the past decade and how this can be applied to better outcomes for students. Yet, school psychology has paid little attention to students with CLD and LEP, how curriculum-based assessment, more specifically curriculum-based measurement, can be applied to them (Henning-Stout & Brown-Cheatham, 1999). School psychology as a field is more keenly aware
than ever of reading development and its impact on students’ reading proficiency. Yet, despite the significant problems with reading proficiency among CLD students, there is limited knowledge and research on curriculum-based measurement of students with LEP (Laija-Rodriguez, Ochoa, & Parker, 2006).
Multicultural and Cross-Cultural Training in School Psychology Although the Thayer Conference in 1954 focused on the structural issues pertaining to the specialization of school psychology and its training, it did not address social or cultural issues (Fagan, 2005). Fagan (2005) mentions that the famous Brown v. Board of Education case was neither mentioned at the Thayer Conference nor addressed by APA at that time. The 2002 Multisite Conference was more ‘‘socially and culturally ‘in touch’ especially with regard to developing services for an increasingly diverse student population, and the need for greater minority participation in school psychology’’ (Fagan, 2005, p. 244). According to Cummings (2005), three of the five priority outcomes of the 2002 Multisite Conference were to: (1) improve academic competence and school success for all children; (2) provide more effective education and instruction for all learners; and (3) enhance family–school partnerships and parental involvement in schools. However, ethnic and cultural factors are not noted in the comments of Cummings (2005) or D’Amato, Sheridan, Phelps, and Lopez’ (2004) about the 2002 Multisite Conference. In 1999, according to Fagan and Wise (2000), 92% of school psychologists were White American, 2.14% were African American, 4.01 were Hispanic (1.46% Other Hispanic, 0.91% were Mexican American, 0.76% Puerto Rican), 0.93 were Asian American/Pacific Islander, and 0.40 were American Indian/Alaskan Native. A shortage of school psychologists from minority groups has been a consistent theme throughout the history of school psychology (Fagan, 2004). Not only is school psychology dominated by White Americans, but the recruitment of minority students into school psychology programs has been a challenge (Benson, 1990). The Multisite Conference in 2002 also emphasized the need to train more school psychologists of diverse ethnic and cultural backgrounds. In 1986, Zins and Halsell reported that only 11.5% of the enrolled students in school psychology training programs were students of color, most
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of them coming from 15 programs, and 22% of the programs surveyed having no students of color enrolled. Although the trend of recruiting and retaining minority school psychology students has improved, there is no doubt that there continues to be large need for school psychologists of color in the field (Fagan, 2004). The recruitment of minority individuals to become school psychologists alone will not solve the problem of addressing the needs of CLD students and their families. The APA and NASP professional code of ethics, and legal mandates such as IDEA, Diana v. Board of Education, and Larry P. v. Riles, delineate practice to some degree in working with CLD children, families, and school personnel. Moreover, NASP has delineated specific standards for training school psychologists to work with CLD populations. Research in how training programs address multicultural issues appears to have begun in the late twentieth century. Rogers, Conoley, Ponterroto, and Wiese (1992) surveyed multicultural training in school psychology. They revealed that only 6% of the programs required that students take a foreign language, and that all of these programs granted the doctoral degree (Ed.D., Psy.D., Ph.D.); 60% of the programs offered at least one course specifically devoted to multicultural issues, and 63% of the programs offered two to five courses; in most cases (76%), the multicultural course (titled: Multicultural Studies in Education, Multicultural Counseling, Cultural Diversity, and Bilingual and Multicultural Education) was located inside the program’s department and was a required course (Rogers et al., 1992). In addition, most program directors (69%) estimated that student exposure to minority clients during practicum and internship experiences occurred less than one-quarter of the time, which suggests that a subgroup of school psychology students have either limited or no direct exposure to culturally diverse clients during field training (Rogers et al., 1992). Ochoa, Rivera, and Ford’s (1997) survey on bilingual assessment revealed that 80% of school psychologists reported not having been trained to perform bilingual psychoeducational assessments and 97% indicated that no coursework was available in bilingual assessment in their training program. Even when programs claim to provide multicultural training, there are inconsistencies in the follow through in meeting multicultural guidelines as provided by the APA (Kearns, Ford, & Brown, 2002). The more recent (2002) research of Kearns and colleagues on
multicultural training shows that there is still no systematic manner by which multicultural school psychology programs (even the best) provide multicultural or cross-cultural training.
Implications Cross-cultural issues have been present in the field of school psychology probably since its inception. However, cross-cultural school psychology has a short history. Although multicultural and cross-cultural issues have focused on bias and discrimination in psychoeducational assessment and have been prevalent in school psychology since very early on, multicultural and cross-cultural issues affecting other areas of practice, such as counseling, consultation, and intervention in school psychology, have been evolving slowly. The more recent overwhelming growth of CLD populations in the U.S., however, makes it imperative for the school psychology field to address cross-cultural issues throughout its practice. Although the 2002 Multisite Conference began a national discussion to address the needs of CLD students in the field of school psychology, more remains to be done regarding how this will occur. It is our belief that school psychology will need to use research from cross-cultural psychology for cross-cultural school psychology to truly evolve. It will not do so until school psychology trainers and mainstream school psychologists address cultural and linguistic factors in work with students, families, school personnel, and other professionals. Unfortunately, school psychologists work in educational systems that have often been part of institutionalized discrimination in various respects (Meier & Stewart, 1991), thus reducing options for CLD students. In addition, there has not been enough emphasis on training school psychologists to effectively work with students with CLD and LEP (Ingraham & Meyers, 2000; Truscott & Truscott, 2005). This places the average school psychologist at a disadvantage in furthering the field of cross-cultural school psychology and providing cross-cultural psychological services to CLD students. As a field, school psychology will need to embrace multiculturalism and cross-culturalism to provide the best practices delineated by law as well as professional and ethical codes. Although it will be challenging, given that school psychologists often practice within a system and in settings characterized by
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institutionalized discrimination, school psychologists will need to be trained to understand systems dynamics and system-level changes. School psychology can learn from the school counseling field about taking a more active social advocacy role. There has been much focus on psychoeducational assessment of CLD students within school psychology, mostly because of malpractice, bias, and discrimination. Cross-cultural school psychology can use this information and further the field by incorporating research from cross-cultural psychology, focusing on similarities and differences in cognitive, social, and emotional development and learning among various CLD groups. In addition, school psychologists can interpret assessment information and delineate interventions based on research in cross-cultural psychology. School psychologists will also need to be reminded that their role is not just in assessment, but also in providing counseling, consultation, and interventions to CLD students. This is more relevant given the recent mandates of IDEA (2004) and No Child Left Behind (NCLB, 2002), that require interventions based on scientifically based research. Moreover, IDEA and NCLB focus on data and outcomes, thus making school psychologists accountable for their work with CLD students, families, schools, and community members. School psychology researchers will have to ‘‘step up to the plate’’ and study best-practice approaches in providing counseling, consultation, and interventions for CLD students in schools. This leads to training. School psychology training programs have the added responsibility of addressing mandates delineated by law and by professional and ethics codes in the provision of services to CLD students in schools. School psychology training programs need to go a step further. That is, training programs have the responsibility of not only providing knowledge in the provision of best practices to CLD students in assessment, counseling, consultation, and intervention, but also of developing competence in these areas, as expected by NASP standards. This is a monumental task, given that few school psychology programs address multicultural or cross-cultural issues in a systematic and comprehensive manner. Training in school psychology will have to change to reflect cross-cultural school psychology competencies, as described by Rogers and Lopez (2002) and Gonzalez et al. (1997), and focus on best practices for CLD populations.
Acknowledgment We thank Lilea Magdaleno for her positive attitude in searching journals for articles reflecting multicultural and crosscultural issues in school psychology.
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Jackson, D. N., & Haes, D. H. (1993). Multicultural issues in consultation. Journal of Counseling and Development, 72, 144–147. Jackson, J. H. (2005). Commentary #2: What is multicultural school psychology? In C. L. Frisby & C. R. Reynolds (Eds.). Comprehensive handbook of multicultural school psychology (pp. 14–29). Hoboken, NJ: Wiley. Jackson, M. L. (1995). Multicultural counseling: Historical perspective. In J. G. Ponterotto, M. J. Casas, L. A. Suzuki, & C. M. Alexander (Eds.), Handbook of multicultural counseling (pp. 3–16). Beverly Hills, CA: Sage. Jacob, S., & Hartshorne, T. S. (2003). Ethics and law for school psychologists (4th ed.). Hoboken, NJ: Wiley. Kane, H., & Boan, C. H. (2005). A review and critique of multicultural learning styles. In C. L. Frisby & C. R. Reynolds (Eds.). Comprehensive handbook of multicultural school psychology (pp. 425–482). Hoboken, NJ: Wiley. Kearns, T., Ford, L., & Brown, K. (2002). Multicultural training in doctoral school psychology programs: In search of a model program. ERIC 465 930. Kindler, A. L. (2002). Survey of the states’ limited English proficient students and available educational programs and services 1990– 2000 summary report. Washington, D.C.: National Clearinghouse for English Acquisition and language Instruction Educational Programs. Laija-Rodriguez, W., Ochoa, S. H., & Parker, R. (2006). The crosslinguistic role of cognitive academic language proficiency on reading growth in Spanish and English. Bilingual Research Journal, 30(1), 87–106. Lee, J. (2001). Interstate variations in rural student achievement and schooling conditions. Charleston, WV: ERIC Clearinghouse on Rural Education and Small Schools. (ERIC Document Reproduction Service No. ED99-CO-0027). Retrieved October 10, 2006 from http://www.ael.org/page.htm?&pv = x&pd = &id = ss9 Lopez, E. C., & Rogers, M. R. (2001). Conceptualizing cross-cultural school psychology competence. School Psychology Quarterly, 16(3), 270–302. Matsumoto, D. (Ed.). (2001). The handbook of culture and psychology. New York: Oxford University Press. Meier, K. J., & Stewart, J. (1991). The politics of Hispanic education: Un paso pa’lante y dos pa’tras. New York: State University of New York Press. Merrell, K. W., Ervin, R. A., & Gimpel, G. A. (2006). School psychology for the 21st century: Foundations and practices. New York: The Guilford Press. Oakland, T. (2005). Commentary #1: What is multicultural school psychology? In C. L. Frisby & C. R. Reynolds (Eds.). Comprehensive handbook of multicultural school psychology (pp. 3–13). Hoboken, NJ: Wiley. Ochoa, S. H. (2005). The effectiveness of bilingual education programs? In C. L. Frisby & C. R. Reynolds (Eds.). Comprehensive handbook of multicultural school psychology (pp. 329–356). Hoboken, NJ: Wiley. Ochoa, S. H., Rivera, B., & Ford, L. (1997). An investigation of school psychology training pertaining to bilingual psycho-educational assessment of primarily Hispanic students: Twenty-five years after Diana v. California. Journal of School Psychology, 35, 329–349. Pederson, P. B. (2003). Cross-cultural counseling: developing culture-centered interactions. In G. Bernal, J. Trimble,
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Sue, D. W., Bernier, J. E., Duran, A., Feinberg, L., Pedersen, P., Smith, E. J., et al. (1982). Position paper: Cross-cultural counseling competencies. The Counseling Psychologist, 10, 45–52. Tarver-Behring, S., Cabello, B., Kushida, D., & Murguia, A. (2000). Cultural modifications to current school-based consultation approaches reported by culturally diverse beginning consultants. School Psychology Review, 29(3), 354–368. Tarver-Behring, S., & Ingraham, C. L. (1998). Culture as a central component of consultation: A call to the field. Journal of Educational and Psychological Consultation, 9(1), 57–72. Thomas, W. P., & Collier, V. P. (2002). A national study of school effectiveness for language minority students’ long-term academic achievement. George Mason University: Center for Research on Education, Diversity and Excellence. Available at http://www. crede.org/research/llaa/1.1_fianl.html Thomas, A., & Grimes, J. (1988). Best practices in school psychology I. Bethesda, MD: National Association of School Psychologists. Thomas, A., & Grimes, J. (1990). Best practices in school psychology II. Bethesda, MD: National Association of School Psychologists. Thomas, A., & Grimes, J. (1995). Best practices in school psychology III. Bethesda, MD: National Association of School Psychologists. Thomas, A., & Grimes, J. (2002). Best practices in school psychology IV. Bethesda, MD: National Association of School Psychologists. Triandis, H. C., Lambert, W. W., Berry, J. W. Lonner, W. J., Brislin, R., Heron, A., et al. (Eds.). (1980). Handbook of cross-cultural psychology. Boston: Allyn & Bacon. Truscott, S. D., & Truscott, D. M. (2005). Challenges in urban and rural education. In C. L. Frisby & C. R. Reynolds (Eds.), Comprehensive handbook of multicultural school psychology (pp. 3–13). Hoboken, NJ: Wiley. U.S. Bureau of the Census. (2001). Resident population estimates of the United States by sex, race, and Hispanic origin: April 1, 1990 to November 1, 1999, with short-term projection to November 1, 2000. Retrieved October 1, 2006 from www.census.gov/population/estimates/nation/intfile3-1.txt Willson, V. L., & Hughes, J. N. (2005). Retention of Hispanic/Latino students in first grade: Child, parent, teacher, school, and peer predictors. Journal of School Psychology, 44(1), 31–49. Yrizarry, N., Matsumoto, D., Imai, C., Kooken, K., & Takeuchi, S. (2001). Culture and emotion. In L. Adler, & U. Gielen (Eds.), Cross-cultural topics in psychology (2nd ed., pp. 131–148). Westport, CT: Praeger. Zins, J. E., & Halsell, A. (1986). Status of ethnic minority group members in school psychology training programs. School Psychology Review, 15, 76–83.
Cross-Cultural School Psychology: An Overview and Examples of Multicultural Treatment and Assessment Modalities Giuseppe Costantino . Carmen Inoa Vazquez . Melanie Perez
Background Psychology as a discipline emerged to address questions that provided an understanding of the differences in personalities and the workings of the human mind (Allport, 1973; Robinson, 1976). Theoreticians such as Sigmund Freud, Carl Rogers, Raymond Cattell, and Gordon Allport were the pioneers of various personality theories being applied in psychology today (Mayer, 2005). Although some of these theories have been modified and expanded to include broader theoretical frames, they are primarily based on the European and European American formulation of personality. Hence they lack the specific understanding that cross-cultural psychology recommends should be followed by school psychologists in the United States (U.S.) (Dana, 1993).
Cross-Cultural Psychology Currently, cross-cultural psychology recognizes that those theories, which have trained the profession to view people universally, must consider the role of culture when assessing, treating, teaching, and training people from diverse national backgrounds. Universality of behavior may be only partly true. One of the aims of cross-cultural psychology is either to refute or confirm this view and be able to determine scientifically the relevance of cultural factors in the understanding of all human beings (Berry, Portinga, Segall, & Dasen, 1992). A definition of cross-cultural psychology posed by Segal, Dasen, Berry, and Portinga (1990) indicates that it is ‘‘the scientific study of human behavior and its transmission, taking into account the ways in which behaviors are shaped and influenced by social and cultural forces’’ (p. 1). This definition takes into
consideration two important aspects: (1) acknowledgment of the diversity of human behavior and its uniformity; and (2) the relationship between human behavior and culture. Before we fully understand cross-cultural school psychology, we must look at a broad definition of school psychology. School psychology is the science and practice of psychology in the school system that promotes the protection and the educational and personal development of school-age children. School psychologists facilitate the interaction of youngsters through learning and developmental tasks encountered in U.S. school systems. The practice of school psychology includes psychological and psychoeducational evaluations, individual/group/family therapy with students and parents, consultation with guidance counselors, teachers and principals, screening for physical/ sexual abuse, program development and evaluation, teachers’ training, and research (Costantino & Flanagan, 2004). The settings in which school psychologists may be employed and their job functions reflect their education and training. The acknowledgment of the diversity of human behavior and its uniformity has been one of the challenges faced within the subspecialty of cross-cultural school psychology. This challenge must address the connection between human behavior and culture within the areas of research, training, teaching, assessment, and treatment in mental health. In this regard, the development of the discipline of psychology recognizes that school mental-health professionals are now working with a diverse society, which requires the integration of racial, ethnic, and sexual identity, as well as disabilities, into psychological theory and research. This recognition has been followed by the development of specific guidelines for clinicians, researchers, and teachers in the application of their services. The guidelines train psychologists to gain a better understanding of the differences and similarities of the culturally diverse groups they come in contact with that require services in assessment, treatment, teaching, and research (American Psychological Association, 2003; Atkinson, Morten, & Sue, 1998; Frisby & Reynolds, 2005; Sue, 2001). Although this integration by definition includes school psychology in the provision of mental health services to children from different cultures and their families, it is faced with limitations. The limitations are based on the dearth of specific literature on competency that applies to services in schools (Lopez & Rogers, 2001).
C. S. Clauss-Ehlers (Ed.), Encyclopedia of Cross-Cultural School Psychology, DOI 10.1007/978-0-387-71799-9, # Springer Science+Business Media LLC 2010
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The culturally diverse populations that seek services from psychologists and other mental health professionals in the U.S. pose a challenge to our politics, schools, and agencies and to the profession of psychology in general (Tharp, 1991). Cross-cultural school psychology is faced with the challenge of providing services in a culturally competent manner to a population that is composed not only of persons from different racial and ethnic backgrounds, but of individuals with diverse physical challenges, sexual orientations, economic status, religious backgrounds, and gender. Psychologists who provide services to a diverse population in schools and wish to be culturally competent often fear that they cannot be knowledgeable about all the various racial/ethnic groups that include individuals from African American, Caribbean Black, Asian American, Hispanic/Latino, Native American and Pacific Islander backgrounds.
Cultural Competence Cross-cultural school psychology requires that services be provided to all children and their parents in a manner that recognizes the different values they hold that stem from their cultural beliefs. The number of people from other cultures living in the U.S. is increasing significantly. For example, a Pew Hispanic Center report (2005) indicated that more than half of Hispanic/Latino children (56%) attend schools with the largest enrollments compared with 32% of Blacks and 26% of Whites. In this report Richard Fry indicated that ‘‘Hispanic teens are more likely than any other racial or ethnic group to attend public schools that have dual characteristics of extreme size and poverty’’ (Fry, 2005a, p. 7). According to the Pew Hispanic Center, other significant findings of the three reports refer to the higher dropout rate of foreign-born students. Twenty-five percent of teenage dropouts from school are foreign born (Fry, 2005b). Another alarming finding is that, regardless of the country of origin, adolescents who interrupted their school careers before they immigrated to the U.S. tend to stay out of schools after immigration (Fry, 2005b). The immigration experience tends to create a great deal of stress for children and their families (Dana, 2000; Rogler, 2002; Vazquez, 2004a, 2005). This requires psychologists providing services in schools in the U.S. to gain specific sensitivity and competency skills that will help them
understand differences based on cultural customs, beliefs, attitudes, and behaviors. To understand the relevance of these differences, the providers of services in mental health need to be culturally competent (American Psychological Association, 2003). Before proceeding further, it is necessary to define and understand what is meant by ‘‘cultural competence.’’ The definitions in general refer to a fundamental need to value and respect differences and to gain awareness that cultural competence is an ongoing process, more an ideal than a firmly attained goal (Dana, 1998a; Sue, 2003; Sue & Sue, 2003; Sue, Arredondo, & McDavis, 1992; Vazquez, 2005). Dana (1998a, p. 73) sees cultural competence as a prerequisite for a healthy society: ‘‘It should embrace an ethnorelativistic citizenry who acknowledge, accept, honor and understand differences.’’ A crucial component of cultural competence for the mental health professional is to acknowledge the differences and similarities among the diverse clients, and to acknowledge the limitations in providing competent services. Mental health professionals are not to be considered culturally competent by merely being a member of a particular ethnic or racial group. Nor do they develop competence by belonging to a specific group without receiving the appropriate training to acquire both competence skills and sensitivity. It therefore follows that the need to receive training in cultural competence applies to all mental health clinicians. It is only through awareness, experience, and self-knowledge that practitioners can then reduce biases and look at others’ belief systems and behaviors without labeling them necessarily pathological. Montaigne, the French philosopher, first recognized the universality and individuality of human beings when he stated that all human beings must be alike because no human being is ever mistaken for an animal; but they must be different because no human being is ever mistaken for another human being. When applied to individuals from different cultural groups, this statement embodies both emic and etic perspectives. ‘‘An emic perspective can provide an approach to more veridical and enriched assessment conceptualization of other persons by an emphasis on understanding individuals in their cultural contexts’’ (Dana, 1993, p. 142). Conversely, an etic perspective emphasizes the universal condition of the human personality. Consequently, culturally diverse individuals living in the U.S. tend to exhibit a continuous acculturation process in both their culturally specific personality functions
Cross-cultural school psychology: an overview and examples of multicultural treatment and assessment modalities
and their general personality functions specific to the Anglo European American culture. Traditionally, psychological tests, both intelligence and personality instruments, have been developed in a biased manner because they have been constructed and normed based on the Anglo European American majority group and then applied to culturally diverse minority groups, such as Latinos, African Americans, and Caribbean Blacks. An emic-sensitive instrument takes into consideration those elements that are indigenous to a given cultural group for personality characteristics, and thus reduces test bias. More specifically, the Montaigne axiom rightly assumes that there are certain given universals within human beings, whether they are called drives, emotions, motivations, or behaviors; however their experience or manifestations may be completely different in various cultures. Not to recognize and acknowledge these differences could render the assessment and treatment provided to most culturally diverse clients as biased, if not harmful. If this line of thought is followed, having cultural/linguistic guidelines in the profession of psychology should be seen as the recognition of a consensual message on how to operate competently within the profession of psychology, when clinicians are treating clients from another culture. Guidelines should be understood as a clinical requirement and not a political position. Accordingly, the American Psychological Association (APA) has developed clear multicultural guidelines for psychologists (American Psychological Association, 2003). The concern with cultural competence has been around for more than three decades, dating back to 1973 when the Vail Colorado Conference supported a resolution that recognized multicultural competence as an essential therapeutic expertise, and initiated an examination of ethical issues. For years thereafter, however, and despite the best of intentions, there was no uniform effort to understand culture-specific values and their manifestations in the populations treated by psychologists (Dana, 1998b). The first set of guidelines for multicultural counseling was submitted in 1982. The second set of guidelines (endorsed in 1999), focused on the importance, maintenance, and application of cultural competence as it applies to counseling members of specific racial/ethnic groups. However, the most comprehensive multicultural guidelines for psychologists in the areas of assessment, treatment, research, and teaching were issued only in 2003 (American Psychological Association, 2003). The application of cultural sensitivity and competence was
started at the Hispanic Research Center (HRC), Fordham University, in the early 1980s with a systemic program of assessment and treatment research, which developed culturally competent assessment techniques such as the Tell Me A Story (TEMAS) Multicultural Test (e.g., Costantino, 1978, 1987; Costantino, Colon-Malgady, Malgady, & Baley, 1992; Costantino, Colon-Malgady, Malgady, & Perez, 1991; Costantino & Malgady, 1983; Costantino, Malgady, & Rogler, 1988a; Costantino, Malgady, Rogler, & Tsui, 1988; Costantino, Malgady, & Vazquez, 1981), and cuento therapy, the use of folktales as therapy modalities for Latino children and their parents (e.g., Costantino, 1982; Costantino, Malgady, & Rogler, 1984, 1985, 1986, 1988, 1988b, 1994; Malgady, Rogler, & Costantino, 1990a, b). These programs, and subsequent ones as will be expanded later, were developed for school children in public school settings. At HRC, issues of cultural bias were also addressed (Malgady, Costantino, & Rogler, 1987) and a culturally competent treatment framework for Latinos was developed (Rogler, Malgady, Costantino, & Blumenthal, 1987). The concept of cultural competence extends to teaching, research, and practice. Although it is not possible to list the entire guidelines here, the list of resources at the end of this chapter details where to download the guidelines. In general the guidelines define that what is understood by cultural diversity should include ethnic, cultural, linguistic, and socioeconomically based differences, physical differences in sexual orientation, and any subgroup of characteristics of people about which valid generalizations can be made. Licensed mental health professionals should be specifically educated and trained to recognize and incorporate the influence of diversity on human behavior. There are specific directions that refer to the requirements of psychological practice, which must include an understanding of how cultural differences affect attitudes, values, and behavior. This knowledge should be gained during the psychologist’s formal educational preparation and should be ongoing. To be considered culturally competent in the provision of mental health services within a school setting, specific guidelines must be included for training professionals providing services in schools. These guidelines will insure the adherence and acquisition of cross-cultural competencies. Cross-cultural school psychology not only offers guidelines indicating that all assessments and interventions be completed within the relevant cultural context of the child, including the dominant language of the students, but it also refers
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to the importance of the values of the family and schools, and the relevance of both as socializing institutions. This socialization process from schools and families requires sensitivity in understanding differences among the various groups. When these differences are primarily due to divergent cultural values that promote different behaviors and expectations either from the families or the schools, children, families, and school personnel can be faced with significant conflicts. Sensitivity to the different values and beliefs is important, but it alone does not ensure competence, which is an essential component of cross-cultural school psychology.
Training and Education of School Psychologists The education and training of school psychologists requires advanced master’s or doctoral degrees. The National Association of School Psychologists requires an advanced master’s diploma with a minimum of 60 credits beyond the baccalaureate degree. The APA requires a doctoral degree. However, many school psychologists have not had the opportunity to obtain their master’s or doctoral degrees in cross-cultural psychology from an accredited university. In 2001, Walter J. Lonner, of the Center for Cross-cultural Research at Western Washington University, indicated that no U.S., Canadian, or foreign universities awarded a Ph.D. in cross-cultural psychology (Lonner, 2001). Hence, most school psychologists must learn to become culturally sensitive and competent by attending seminars, workshops, and internship training such as the APA-recognized and accredited programs at Bellevue Medical Center in New York City (Vazquez, 1991) and the Sunset Park Mental Health Center in Brooklyn, New York (Costantino, Rivera, Bracero, & Rand, 2005).
School-Based Mental Health Programs Since the late 1970s, city boards of education, city departments of mental health, and community-based mental health centers in a tripartite partnership have developed school-based mental health programs. These programs seek to bridge the gap for psychological services by providing psychoeducational and mental health assessment and treatment of school-age
children. According to a 1998–1999 survey conducted by the National Assembly on School-Based Health Care (NASBHC), there were 1,135 school-based health centers in the nation, an increase from only 200 in 1990 (NASBHC, 2000). This dramatic growth parallels the strong need for mental health services in schools as an increasing number of students struggle with language, acculturation, family violence, substance abuse, and parental abuse and neglect (Murry, 1997; Paternite, 2005). However, a more recent survey has revealed that more schools are providing school-based mental health centers, which offer a one-stop source of primary and preventive health and mental care. However, the dramatic increase of the late 1990s has leveled off. In the nation’s approximately 114,000 public schools, the number of school-based health centers has increased from 1,137 programs in 1999 to 1,708 in 2005, as shown by National Assembly on School-Based Health Care, 2004–2005 Census. Students in these school-based centers are from predominantly racial/ethnic minority groups that have experienced health care disparities. Approximately 50% of these students are eligible for free and reduced lunch provided by the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s National School Lunch Program to poor students. Of these 1,708 school-based health centers (SBHCs), 39% were housed in high schools, 23% in elementary schools, 18% in middle schools, 9% in elementarymiddle schools, 7% in middle-high schools, and 4% in kindergarten through grade 12 schools. Sixty-two percent of SBHCs were in urban settings, 25% in rural settings, and 10% in suburban districts. Students in these schools with SBHCs are students of color largely from low socioeconomic populations who experience disparities in access to health care: 33% are African American, 32% are White 32%, 29% are Hispanic/ Latino, 4% are Asian/Asian American, 1% are Native American, and 1% are other categorizations. Four in ten SBHCs report that 50% or more of SBHC users had no other source of health and mental health care; in other words, 40% of SBHCs report that 50% or more of their users have no other source of health care. The majority of SBHCs provide basic preventive primary care services, such as health assessment, Body Mass Index (BMI), vision and hearing screenings, immunizations, treatment of minor injuries, and to a lesser extent dental services. Furthermore, SBHCs in middle and high schools tend to offer abstinence counseling (76%), treatment of sexually transmitted diseases (62%), HIV/AIDS and substance abuse counseling (64%), and provide pregnancy testing (78%). The majority of these
Cross-cultural school psychology: an overview and examples of multicultural treatment and assessment modalities
centers are prohibited from dispensing contraceptives. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National Assembly on School-Based Health Care). The first school-based mental health program in New York City operated by a community mental health center was established by the Sunset Park Mental Health Center of the Lutheran Medical Center in 1978 (Costantino, Bailey, & Jusino, 1999). Today, this Center has seven culturally competent school psychologists serving 10 public schools in Brooklyn and approximately 14,000 culturally and linguistic diverse children. The Center’s school psychologists, who are employed by the Lutheran Medical Center and paid by New York City, New York state, and federal grants, provide psychological services in the schools and have been working closely with a school-based support team. The support team comprises a guidance counselor, a social worker, and a part-time psychologist, who are employed by the New York City Board of Education (Costantino, Bailey, & Jusino, 1999). The Lutheran Family Health Centers Network school-based mental health program is fully integrated within the Network’s School-Based Health Centers, that provide basic primary care and preventive mental health services in 14 elementary, middle, and high schools. The Lutheran Family Health Centers Network School-Based Health Centers are one of the largest school-based services in the nation.
Existing School-Based Services The Sunset Park Mental Health Center school health program serves the southwest Brooklyn communities of Red Hook, Sunset Park, and southern Park Slope, which have a population of 150,000 people. The 15 schools in the network comprise six middle schools and eight elementary schools in two school districts (nine in District 15 and two in District 20), and one high school. Services provided on site in the SBHC include: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7.
Intake evaluation. Outreach for Child Health Plus and Medicaid. Mental health services (either on site or by referral). Alcohol/substance abuse (prevention and referral). Primary care and preventive health services. Management of chronic conditions such as asthma. Coordination of care with Sunset Park Network’s Pediatric Department. 8. Follow up and referral. 9. 24 hour/7 day access to care.
The school-based mental health program, which is part of the Lutheran Family Health Centers School Health Program, operates under Article 31 and is licensed by the New York State Office of Mental Health. The program is housed in Brooklyn, New York and provides mental health services to nine elementary schools, five middle schools, and a high school that includes two middle schools in the complex. Services include: 1. Psychosocial assessment on all children enrolled in the SBHC program and psychiatric evaluation as needed. 2. Referral to clinician on site (e.g., school psychologists, social workers). 3. Referral to Sunset Park Mental Health Center or other mental health providers as dictated by the child’s insurance coverage (e.g., primarily managed care contracts). 4. Mental health services such as assessment and treatment plans for individual, group, and family therapy, consultation, and crisis intervention. In addition to its size, what distinguishes the Lutheran Family Health Centers program is that all assessment and treatment are delivered by culturally and linguistically competent psychologists and psychologists-intraining using multicultural competent modalities such as cuento therapy (Costantino, Malgady, & Rogler, 1986), the TEMAS narrative therapy (Costantino, Malgady, & Cardalda, 2005), and the TEMAS Multicultural Test (Costantino, 1987; Costantino, Malgady, & Rogler, 1988a; Costantino, Dana, & Malgady, 2007).
Historical Context The different groups that currently compose American society have been arriving in the U.S. for nearly two centuries. This flow of culturally diverse immigrants, which started around 1820, has created the ‘‘American Mosaic’’ (Johnson-Powell, 1997b) that includes persons from all over the world. Each immigrant group which has arrived to America shares an experience unique to themselves. These experiences may include seeking freedom and safety, avoiding persecutions due to differences in political or religious beliefs, economic changes resulting from wars, physical disasters, and unemployment. Not all members of an immigrant family choose to leave their country: in many instances they are forced to accompany their relatives, as in the case of children or the elderly. People throughout the world leave their homes and try to survive in a
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different sociocultural environment, which for many requires significant adjustments that negatively affect their mental health.
Mental Health Disorders Among Culturally Diverse School Children Recent statistics indicate that there are approximately 75 million school-age children under the age of 18 in the U.S. (the New York City public school system alone has more than one million pupils). According to a recent study (Substance Abuse and Mental Health Servies Administration, 2004), school-age children throughout the nation present severe mental health problems. More specifically, the study showed that: 80% of girls and 73% of boys present social, interpersonal, and family problems; 63% of boys and 27% of girls show aggression, disruptive behavior and bullying; 42% of boys and 20% of girls exhibit behavior problems related to neurological disorders; 24% of the boys and 36% of the girls present adjustment disorders; 18% of the boys and 41% of the girls show anxiety, stress, and school phobia; and 13% of boys and 29% of girls exhibit depression disorders. In addition, the World Health Organization Global Burden of Disease Study (2001) indicates that by 2020, children’s mental health disorders will increase by more than 50%, thus becoming one of the five most common causes of disability and mortality among children. The U.S. Surgeon General (2001) emphasized that a large percentage of children with mental illnesses do not receive any services. The situation is even worse for African American, Latino, and other youngsters from ethnically and culturally diverse communities. Tragically, these children often bear the burden of unmet mental health needs (U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, 2001). These significant percentages of mental health problems indicate that schools play a critical role in mental health interventions; hence school-based mental health programs become the necessary agent to provide treatment on-site to the high numbers of affected pupils in the nation. In 2003, there were 73 million children ages 0–17 in the U.S., 25% of the population, down from a peak of 36% at the end of the baby boom. Children
are projected to compose 24% of the total population in 2020. The racial and ethnic diversity of America’s children continues to increase. In 2003, 60% of U.S. children were White non-Hispanic, 19% were Latino, 16% were Black, and 4% were Asian. The proportion of Hispanic/Latino children has increased faster than that of any other racial and ethnic group, growing from 9% of the child population in 1980 to 19% in 2003 (America’s Children, 2005). In 2004, more than one-quarter of the population three years and older (74.9 million people) were enrolled in schools in the U.S.; 33 million in elementary school, 17 million in high school, and 17 million in college (U.S. Census Press Releases, 2005). For geographical distribution, school-age children in large cities throughout the country are: 1. In Los Angeles, California, the total school-age enrollment according the Board of Education in California is 1.7 million: 7.7% Asian; 61.7% Hispanic/Latino; 10.4% African American; 0.3% American Indian or Alaska Native; 16.5% White (not Hispanic); 0.9% multiracial or no response. (California Department of Education, Educational Demographics Unit, 2006.) 2. In Chicago, Illinois, according to the Illinois Board of Education (http://www.cps.k12.il.us/At A Glance.html), there are 426,812 enrollees. Their racial distribution is: 49.8% African American; 38.0% Latino 8.8%; White 3.2%; Asian/Pacific Islander; and 0.2% Native American. 3. In Miami, Florida, there are a total of 371,773 students enrolled: 37,844 White non-Hispanic students; 106,609 Black students; 218,923 Hispanic/Latino students; 4,239 Asian/Pacific Islander students; 346 American Indian students; 3,812 multiracial students. 4. In New York, New York, the New York City Department of Education indicates a total of 1,055,986 students: 4,906 American Indian; 139,695 Asian/ Asian American; 411,767 Hispanic/Latino; 346,655 Black; and 152,963 White. 5. In Atlanta, Georgia, there are 50,770 students: 0.03% American Indian; 0.6% Asian/Asian American; 86% Black; 4% Hispanic/Latino; 1% multiracial; 8% White. 6. In Boston, Massachusetts, according to the Massachusetts Board of Education, a total of 57,742 students are enrolled: 231 Native American;
Cross-cultural school psychology: an overview and examples of multicultural treatment and assessment modalities
5129 Asian; 26,277 African American; 8,070 White; and 18,035 Hispanic/Latino. 7. In Newark, New Jersey, according to the Newark Public Schools 2004–2005 Annual Report, there was a total student enrollment of 41,899 students: 24,887 Black; 13,354 Hispanic/Latino; 3,295 White; 318 Asian/Asian American and 45 Native American. 8. In Washington, D.C., for the 2003 school year according to the District of Columbia public school system, there were a total of 65,009 enrollees, with 12% of the student population identified as students of color: 75.9% African American; 9.4% Hispanic/Latino; 4.6% White; 9.6% Asian/Asian American; and 0.5% classified as others.
Cultural Context The Immigration Experience The immigration experience should be taken into consideration when working with culturally diverse children within the school system. It is often associated with low socioeconomic status, health and mental health barriers and thus high health disparities, and a stressful period of adjustment for the children and their families. This acculturation process often brings families into conflict with each other and with the school system. The implications that are referred to in the literature point to specific diagnostic categories that include depression and anxiety, conditions such as over involvement and/or enmeshment within the families, and cognitive functions such as language learning processes, which are often misdiagnosed as learning disabilities.
Acculturation Acculturation refers to changes individuals face while adapting to the host society. People are members of the culture where they are born and where they are acculturated. Enculturation is the process where they learn the values of their culture (Berry et al., 1992). Establishing and adapting to a different sociocultural environment is a stressful process for most individuals. Stress due to acculturation can be experienced differently by members of a family. It depends on attitudes
held about cultural values, level of receptivity by the host culture, and similarities and differences of worldviews and of perceptions of the environment. The adherence to cultural traditions and the perception of non-belonging have been recognized as stressors that can drive individuals to resist, reject, or criticize the host culture, leading to mistrust and rendering the process of acculturation very difficult (Berry, Kim, Minde, & Mok, 1987; Berry, Kim, Power, Young, & Bujaki, 1989; Kealey, 1989; Seal, 1979; Vazquez, 2004b; Williams & Berry, 1991). When individuals are in jeopardy or feel threatened by the dominant culture, several of them may tend to minimize the stress experienced and cope in a dysfunctional manner that makes them more resistant to a healthy adaptation. However, many individuals may experience physical and emotional distress as a result. Conversely, those who show resilience to stressful acculturation will have learned to reduce their perceived stress in culturally consonant ways (Berry, 1997; Martin, 2005). The clinician treating families from diverse cultural backgrounds must understand the specific coping mechanisms that are acceptable to the family. Understanding the immigration experience is essential to developing a therapeutic relationship with families from diverse cultural backgrounds. It is also important to help immigrant individuals understand their experiences and their impact on fears and defense strategies. The effectiveness of interventions relies in part on the positive or hostile attitudes of the dominant society towards members of the acculturating groups (Berry, 1997). Children undergoing acculturation are usually confronted by two sets of values: the world of school and the world of family. Thus they live between two worlds/cultures, the old and the new. These worlds show language differences and different attitudes and behaviors that the child must reconcile to function adaptively in both. The function of the cross-cultural clinician within the school setting is to help the child come to terms with the two different worlds, which at times may appear contradictory, and to integrate the best components of each. If this integration does not occur, culturally diverse school children may develop negative self-esteem, cognitive dysfunctions, and emotional disorders such as anxiety, depression, attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), conduct disorder, and other problems that need to be addressed fully.
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Early and Recent Culturally Competent Mental Health School-Based Interventions Cognizant of the need for culturally competent mental health assessment and treatment programs in public schools, the first author and his colleagues developed the following culturally competent, evidence-based mental health modalities. A decade before Vargas and Wiltis (1994) lamented the paucity of research driven by culturally sensitive treatment for Latino groups, the program of culturally competent assessment and treatment modalities had already begun in response to the growing mental health needs of Latino populations and their barriers to access services. Rogler et al. (1983) emphasized that Latinos seeking mental health services encountered several barriers at three different levels: access barriers because of geographic distance and inability to pay; assessment barriers in the form of biased assessment, because of language and culturally inappropriate instruments (Malgady et al., 1987); and treatment barriers in the form of cultural and language distance between the Latino client and the non-minority clinician and lack of culturally sensitive treatment modalities. The culturally competent program of mental health research undertaken at the Hispanic Research Center, Fordham University, has created valid assessment and treatment techniques that have been instrumental in addressing the mental health need of Latinos, especially children and adolescents, and thus reducing the health disparities for the diverse Latino groups (e.g., Costantino, 1982; Costantino, Malgady, & Rogler, 1986, 1988b, 1994; Malgady & Costantino, 1998; Malgady, Costantino, & Rogler, 1990a, b).
Cuento Therapy and TEMAS Narrative Therapy In the ensuing decades, only moderate progress has been made in the development of culturally competent assessment and treatment techniques. The Surgeon General’s publication entitled: Culture, race and ethnicity. A supplement to mental health: A report of the Surgeon General (U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, 2001) reported the existence of several valid and effective treatment modalities for a variety of mental health disorders. However, it emphasized that clients
of color are not represented in those outcomes studies. There are serious questions about the effectiveness of these evidence-based treatments for minority populations (Bernal and Scharro´n del-Rı´o, 2003; Miranda, Bernal, Lau, Kohn, Hwang, & LaFromboise, 2005). The research program at the Hispanic Research Center and Sunset Park Mental Health Center developed culturally competent, evidence-based interventions for Latino children, adolescents, and their parents. Cuento therapy (Costantino, Malgady, & Rogler, 1988b) for children and hero/heroine modeling therapy for adolescents (Malgady, Rogler, & Costantino, 1990a, b) were used. In our initial study of bicultural intervention with young children, we (Costantino, 1982; Costantino, Malgady, & Rogler, 1986) developed a storytelling modality using Puerto Rican cuentos of folktales as a cognitive/behavior modeling intervention. This modality was named cuento therapy. In this approach, the characters in folktales were posed as therapeutic peer models conveying the theme or moral of the stories. The content of such stories motivated children’s attention to the models, which is critical to the first stage of the modeling process. Second, the models were adapted to present attitudes, values, and behaviors that reflect adaptive responses to the designated targets of therapeutic intervention, such as acting out, anxiety symptoms, and negative self-concept. The folktales were adapted to bridge both Puerto Rican and European American cultural values and settings. Reinforcement of children’s imitation of the models through active therapeutic role playing facilitated social learning of adaptive responses, which were targeted in the stories’ themes. In this manner, the modality was rooted in the children’s own cultural heritage, presented in a format with which they could readily identify and imitate, and therapeutically aimed to have an impact on adjustment to mainstream cultural demands. The intervention was conducted with the children in dyad with their mothers in small group sessions led by bilingual Hispanic therapists. This was implemented as a preventive intervention because the children were presenting emotional and behavior problems in school and at home, but they did not satisfy diagnostic criteria for disorders classified by the third and revised edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM III-R; American Psychiatric Association, 1987). In addition, their uniformly low socioeconomic status and high rate of single-parent
Cross-cultural school psychology: an overview and examples of multicultural treatment and assessment modalities
household composition also characterized these children as representing a high-risk population. The effectiveness of the bicultural folktale modality was determined by comparing treatment outcomes with a second folktale condition in which the same stories were not adapted to bridge cultural conflict, and a mainstream (art/play) intervention. The evaluation of treatment outcomes indicated that the bicultural folktale intervention led to the greatest improvement in social judgment and reduction in anxiety symptomatology, which persisted at a one-year follow-up. A second, related cognitive/behavioral modeling intervention appropriate for adolescents was based on ‘‘heroic’’ adult role models (Costantino and Malgady, 1996; Costantino, Malgady, & Rogler, 1988a; Malgady, Rogler, & Costantino, 1990b). It was named hero/heroine modeling psychotherapy. A major consideration in developing this modality was the frequency of young, single-parent households, indicating that Puerto Rican adolescents often lacked appropriate adult role models with whom they could identify, and therefore adaptive values and behaviors to imitate during the critical adolescent years. National figures indicate that 41% of Hispanic households are headed by females (U.S. Bureau of the Census, 1991); estimates specific to Puerto Ricans in New York City are somewhat higher, about 44%; and our own samples drawn from New York City public schools in Hispanic communities had rates of female-headed households exceeding 60% (Costantino & Malgady, 1996). Consequently, Puerto Rican adolescents appeared to be suitable candidates for a modeling therapy that fulfilled their need for adaptive role models in a culturally sensitive way. We developed and evaluated a cuento/ narrative therapy using biographical stories of heroic Puerto Ricans in an effort to bridge the bicultural, intergenerational, and identity conflicts faced by Puerto Rican adolescents. This modality sought to enhance the relevance of therapy for adolescents by exposing them to successful male and female adult models in their own culture, fostering ethnic pride and identity as Puerto Ricans, and by modeling achievement–oriented behavior and adaptive coping with stress common to life in the urban Hispanic community. The content of the biographies embodied themes of cultural conflict and adaptive coping with stress. This intervention was also considered preventive because, although the adolescents were screened for behavior problems in school, they did not meet diagnostic criteria of the DSM III-R. Treatment
outcomes were assessed relative to an attention-control group participating in a school-based dropout prevention program. Evaluation of treatment effectiveness revealed that the culturally sensitive modeling intervention generally decreased anxiety symptomatology and increased ethnic identity. However, treatment interacted with household composition and participants’ gender. Consistent with the intention of the intervention, the role models promoted greater cultural identity in the absence of a male adult in the adolescents’ households, but only among male adolescents. Female adolescents had stronger Puerto Rican identities than males regardless of treatment, possibly because of stable maternal identification. Similarly, the role models promoted greater selfesteem among male and female adolescents from female-headed households; however, although females from intact families felt ‘‘more Puerto Rican,’’ their selfimage diminished in the process. Thus, the role models presented in treatment may have been perceived as idealized and aroused conflict concerning their real parents, so that parental identification led to lower self-esteem. This process may have operated only among females because the female role models presented often represented untraditional female sex roles. The interactions affecting treatment outcomes highlight the importance of adolescents’ social context in considering the mental health value of culturally sensitive behavioral interventions. This implicates the need to investigate both the integrity and quality of interfamilial relations as potential mediators or moderators of treatment outcomes. The introduction of cultural sensitivity into the treatment process is a promising approach to respond to the special mental health needs of Hispanic adolescents. However, further research is warranted that asks how culturally sensitive services can be implemented more effectively given that dynamic processes may intervene to enhance or impugn their effectiveness. One objective of this research program will be to investigate the dynamic interplay between a culturally sensitive narrative intervention and the familial context of male and female Hispanic adolescents, to make gender- and family-specific refinements in treatment protocols.
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy The effectiveness of cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) in reducing anxiety in minority youngsters has also
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been shown when delivered in a group format (Rossello & Bernal, 1999; Silverman, Kurtines, Ginsburg, Weems, Rabian, & Serafini, 1999; Shortt, Barrett, & Fox, 2001; Miranda, Bernal, Lau et al, 2005). In addition, recent research at the San Juan campus of Carlos Albizu University has shown that CBT was effective. Cabiya, Orobitg, Sayers, Bayo´n, & De La Torre (2001) evaluated the effectiveness of a cognitive behavioral intervention that integrated the social cognitive model with youngsters who presented with ADHD, oppositional defiant disorder (ODD), and aggressive symptoms. One hundred and twenty-eight children (93 boys and 35 girls), ages 9–19 (mean 10.83, standard deviation 1.6) participated in the study. Forty-one youths (35 boys, 6 girls) were diagnosed with ADHD, 61 (43 boys, 18 girls) with ODD, and 65 (46 boys, 19 girls) with no diagnoses. Repeated measures analyses of variance were performed with each measure with diagnostic groups as the between-participants variable and pre- and post-treatment as the within-participant variable. The results showed significant differences within participants between the pre-and post-treatment in the scales of somatic complaints, anxiety, depression, social problems, attention problems, and aggressive conduct. Significant differences were found between the two diagnostic groups and the normal group, but there was no significant interaction effect between the diagnostic group and time of evaluation.
TEMAS Narrative Therapy The third study pursued several new directions in this program of research into culturally sensitive treatment outcomes. First, whereas in previous studies inclusion criteria were based on teacher ratings of school behavior, in the third study research participants were screened for symptomatology from the third and revised edition of the DSM III-R (American Psychiatric Association, 1987) using a standardized, structured, clinical interview. Second, the study included older children and young adolescents 9–13 years old, an age range not addressed in previous studies. Previous studies had also presented written and verbal modeling stimuli, whereas this study presented pictures, which were thought to be more effective in communicating with a more psychologically disturbed and educationally disadvantaged group. Fourth, this
study included diverse Hispanic groups, whereas previous studies focused exclusively on Puerto Ricans. The rationale for changing therapy format from verbal (Cuentos) to visual (TEMAS) stimuli was because the second modality was readily adaptable to culturally diverse groups, thus affording the clinician a culturally sensitive modality that could be administered to multicultural youths.
Child/Adolescent Trauma Treatment and Services (CATS) Study Background This fourth study is a continuation of the culturally competent treatment outcome research originally started at HRC and continued at the Sunset Park Family Health Center Network. This study is part of the Child and Adolescent Trauma Treatments and Services Consortium (CATS), the largest youth trauma research related to the September 11 World Trade Center disaster. Natural and/or terrorist-made disasters negatively affect children’s emotional and behavioral functioning. Long-lasting impairments such as post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), anxiety, depression, and disruptive disorder are most likely to occur unless treatment is offered (Chemtob, Nakashima, & Hamada, 2002; Galea, Ahern, Resnick, Kilpatrick, et al., 2002). The New York City Board of Education study (Hoven, Duarte, & Mandell, 2003) of the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center showed that as many as 75,000 children in New York City public schools had symptoms of PTSD after the event. Furthermore, a large percentage of children exhibited anxiety, depression, agoraphobia, separation anxiety, and conduct disorder. The fourth study, entitled Evidence-based Treatments for Postdisaster Trauma Symptoms in Latino Children, used the TEMAS narrative treatment that was first validated with Latino youngsters (Costantino, Malgady, & Rogler, 1994) relative to CBT (Cohen & Mannarino, 1998) in treating children affected by the September 11 terrorist attacks. This study is based on preliminary data collected at the Lutheran Medical Center Sunset Park Family Health Center as part of the CATS Consortium. The CATS multisided study was funded by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) and administered
Cross-cultural school psychology: an overview and examples of multicultural treatment and assessment modalities
by the New York State Office of Mental Health. The CATS Consortium, which comprises six study sites in New York City, was coordinated by the New York State Psychiatric Institute at Columbia University (Costantino, Guajardo, Perez, et al., 2004; Costantino, Kaloghiros, Perez et al., 2007; Costantino, Primavera, & Malgady, 2008).
Method The Sunset Park study compared the validity of the TEMAS narrative therapy with a cognitive behavioral approach, for traumatized schoolchildren. Seven hundred and forty-six fourth- and fifth-graders were screened with a brief screening instrument made of 18 items taken from the University of California, Los Angeles PTSD Reaction Index, the Manifest Anxiety Scale for Children, the Child Depression Inventory, and the World Trade Center Exposure questionnaire at two participating public schools in Brooklyn. Of those screened, 358 (48%) were negative and 388 (52%) were positive, who thus became eligible for baseline assessment. Of those positive screens, 34 (9%) refused assessment, whereas 354 (91%) underwent baseline assessment. Of these, 125 (35%) assessed negative, whereas 229 (65%) assessed positive. Of the 229 students who were positive for the targeted condition of PTSD, anxiety, depression, and conduct disorder, 210 were randomly assigned, 100 were assigned to CBT, and 110 to TEMAS. Each group underwent 18 treatment sessions.
Results Analyses focused on the main effects of gender and their potential interaction with treatment, CBT, and TEMAS as indicators of treatment processes and outcomes. The design for this study was a two-factor mixed design. The between factor was treatment group, which had two levels: the CBT group and the TEMAS group. The within factor was the assessment period, which had three levels: baseline, three months, and six months. Participants were measured on several outcome variables, three of which were targeted for analysis, total severity of PTSD, Child Depression Inventory total score, and Manifest Anxiety Scale for Children total score. The results of the fixed effects for the PTSD outcome measure revealed that the
level 2 intercept was significant (t(129) = 29.94, p < 0.001), indicating that the overall mean of PTSD (33.74) was significantly different from zero. The effect of the treatment group was not significant (t(129) = 0.48, p = 0.632), indicating that the CBT and TEMAS groups did not differ on their average PTSD baseline scores, and that both treatment modalities significantly contributed to the reduction of PTSD symptoms. In addition, the results for the level 1 slopes of the Child Depression Inventory indicated that the average slope ( 2.301) was significantly different from zero (t(129) = 3.432, p = 0.001). The effect of the treatment group was significant (t(129) = 3.641, p = 0.001), indicating the two groups did differ in their average slopes. The difference in slopes was 4.0123, indicating that the TEMAS group dropped significantly more in depression (8 points) than the CBT group over the three assessment periods. The results for the level 1 slopes of the Manifest Anxiety Scale for Children indicated that the average slope ( 3.720) was significantly different from zero (t(129) = 4.1983, p = 0.001). The effect of the treatment group was significant (t(129) = 2.561, p = 0.012), indicating that the two groups did differ in their average slopes. The difference in slopes was 3.736, indicating that the TEMAS group dropped significantly more in anxiety (7.47 points) than the CBT group over the three assessment periods.
Discussion These results indicated that both TEMAS and CBT were effective in reducing symptoms of PTSD among participating students, most of whom were Latino youth. However, only TEMAS showed a significant reduction in depressive and anxiety symptoms as measured by the Child Depression Inventory and Manifest Anxiety Scale for Children. This highlights that TEMAS may be the treatment of choice with Latino children and confirms it as a culturally competent and evidence-based modality (Bernal & Scharro´n del-Rı´o, 2001; Miranda et al., 2005). In addition, these findings show that TEMAS, which is delivered in a group format, may be more cost effective than CBT, which is delivered in an individual format. In addition to developing culturally competent, evidence-based treatment for Hispanic/Latino youngsters and their families, Costantino and his team
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also developed a culturally competent, evidence-based assessment technique for both minority and nonminority children, named the TEMAS Multicultural Test. A description of this test is given below, which is considered the first multicultural test in the U.S. and a valid projective-narrative test for both minority and non-minority school-age children (Costantino, Dana, & Malgady, 2007; Dana, 1993, 2000; Flanagan & DiGiuseppe, 1999; Ritzler, 1993).
Cross-Cultural Validity of the TEMAS Multicultural Test Background The propriety of administering psychological tests standardized on non-minority, middle class, and English-speaking populations to examinees who are linguistically, culturally, and/or ethnically diverse has been a controversial issue for over five decades (Costantino & Malgady, 1996; Dana, 1993; Malgady, 1996; Olmedo, 1981; Padilla, 1979; Padilla & Medina, 1996). This controversy originally focused on intelligence testing of African Americans; however, similar allegations of bias toward Latinos have been made for personality testing and diagnostic evaluation. In the absence of empirical evidence to the contrary, the prevailing view is that standard psychological assessment procedures are considered unbiased (e.g., Lopez, 1988). Conversely, others have argued that clients’ variations in English language proficiency, cultural background, or ethnic profile pose potential sources of bias for standard assessment and diagnostic practices (e.g., Dana, 1993; Malgady, 1996; Malgady, Rogler, & Costantino, 1987). Moreover, Dana (1993, 1997) emphasizes that most personality tests are assumed to be genuine etic, or culture general and universal in their assessment. Consequently, the use of an etic orientation with multicultural groups has erroneously minimized cultural differences and hence generated inappropriate inferences using AngloEuropean personality constructs; this creates unfavorable psychological test results and unfair clinical dispositions (Costantino, 1992; Dana, 1993; Malgady, 1996). Dana (1993) further emphasizes that a correct etic orientation needs to be used to demonstrate the validity of multicultural constructs. Traditionally, projective stimuli have been ambiguous to bypass the ego defenses and allow more latent conflicts to be freely
expressed. However, TEMAS was developed according to more recent literature indicating that diminished ambiguity and increased structure facilitates greater verbal fluency and enables a more reliable and valid interpretation of the narrative, and thus a more valid understanding of the examinee’s personality functioning (Costantino, Flanagan, & Malgady, 2002; Epstein, 1966; Sobel, 1981). Several studies have documented that chromatic thematic apperception test stimuli enhanced verbal fluency and expression of different emotions, whereas achromatic stimuli reinforce sadness as an affective response (Murstein, 1963); in addition, chromatic stimuli appear to maintain children’s attention (Costantino, 1978). Consequently, TEMAS stimuli were developed in color.
Description of the TEMAS Multicultural Test Based on these considerations, the TEMAS test (which in English is an acronym for Tell-Me-a-Story, and in Spanish means ‘‘themes’’) was developed with culturally relevant stimuli for Puerto Rican, other Hispanic, Black, and White children and adolescents. There are parallel minority (African American and Hispanic) and non-minority (White) versions of stimuli (Costantino, 1987; Costantino, Dana, & Malgady, 2007; Costantino, Malgady, & Rogler, 1988a). An Asian American version is in the process of being validated (Yang, Costantino, & Kuo 2003). The TEMAS pictures embody the following features: structured stimuli and diminished ambiguity to pull for specific cognitive, affective, and personality functions; chromatically attractive, ethnically/racially relevant, and contemporary stimuli to elicit diagnostically meaningful stories; representation of both negative and positive intra- and interpersonal functions in the form of conflicts that require problem-solving; and an objective scoring system of both thematic structure and content (Costantino, Dana, & Malgady, 2007; Flanagan, Costantino, Cardalda, & Costantino, 2007). The presentation of culturally relevant and familiar projective test stimuli was first explored in Thompson’s (1949) Black Thematic Apperception Test, based on the assumption that similarity between stimulus and examinee facilitates identification with the characters in the pictures and therefore promotes greater verbal fluency and ability to reveal underlying feelings (Costantino & Malgady, 1981, 1983.)
Cross-cultural school psychology: an overview and examples of multicultural treatment and assessment modalities
Problem Solving: Cognitive, Affective and Personality Functions The presentation of problem solving in TEMAS pictures was based on the methodology of Sobel (1981) who proposed to assess interpersonal conflicts through problem solving and loosely on the methodology of moral dilemma stories (Kohlberg, 1976). Similarly, the TEMAS stimuli depict a split scene showing psychological conflicts in a problem-solving situation; the examinee must resolve the antithetical situations of the conflict (i.e., resolve the problem); and the examiner evaluates the adaptiveness to the solution of the problem. The conflicts depicted in TEMAS pictures were designed to provoke disclosure of specific personality functions that are prominent in personality theory and that are important diagnostic indicators of psychopathology. The nine personality functions are: Interpersonal Relations, Control of Aggression, Control of Anxiety/Depression, Achievement Motivation, Delay Gratification, Self-Concept of Competence, Self-Sexual Identity, Moral Judgment, and Reality Testing. Additionally, the test measures 18 cognitive functions, such as Reaction Time, Total Time, Verbal Fluency, Imagination, Recognition of Conflict, Omissions, and Transformations (the last two referring to selective inattention and distortions); and nine affective functions, such as, Happy, Sad, Angry, and Fearful.
‘‘1’’for most maladaptive resolution of the conflict/ problem, ‘‘2’’ for moderately maladaptive, ‘‘3’’ for moderately adaptive, and ‘‘4’’ for most adaptive; with ‘‘N’’ scoring if the designed personality function is not pulled.
Standardization TEMAS was standardized on a sample of 642 children (281 males and 361 females) from public schools in the New York City area. These children ranged in age from 5 to 13 years (mean 8.9 years, SD = 1.9). The total sample represented four racial/ethnic groups: Whites, Blacks, Puerto Ricans, and other Hispanics. Data on the socioeconomic status of the standardization sample indicated that these participants were from predominantly lower- and middle-income families (Costantino, Malgady, & Rogler, 1988). The test appeared free of biases because none of the variables correlated high with age, gender, or socioeconomic status. However, several modest correlations with age dictated the formation of three age groups: 5–7 years old (n = 166); 8–10 years old (n = 324); and 11–13 years old (n = 152). Separate norms and T-scores were associated with each age group. Several studies have shown the multicultural and cross-cultural validity of the test with school-age children (Costantino, Dana, & Malgady, 2007; Costantino & Malgady 1996b, 2000).
Scoring Cognitive functions are scored as they occur in the storytelling and story. For example, reaction time is scored in time elapsed between the handing of the card and the telling of the story, and total time is scored as the time lapsed after the reaction time and the completion of the story, which includes answers to the structured inquiries. Fluency is scored as the total number of words in the story. Affective functions, such as Happy, Sad, Angry, and Fearful, are scored as ‘‘1’’ when expressed in the story. Other cognitive functions such as Conflict or Sequencing are scored ‘‘blank’’ if they are recognized and resolved (Conflict) or verbalized as recognition of present, past, and future events (Sequencing); they are scored ‘‘1’’ if conflict is not recognized nor resolved, or ‘‘(l)’’ if conflict is recognized but not resolved. Sequencing is scored ‘‘1’’ if past and/or future events are not narrated. Personality functions are scored on a Likert scale of
Validity Early and subsequent studies showed that Hispanic and Black children are more fluent on TEMAS than on the Thematic Apperception Test (Costantino & Malgady, 1983; Costantino, Flanagan, & Malgady, 2002; Costantino, Malgady, & Vazquez, 1981). Other studies have shown that the test can be appropriately used with Black, Hispanic/Latino, and White children for clinical and school status (Costantino, Malgady, Colon-Malgady, & Bailey, 1992; Costantino, Malgady, Rogler, & Tsui, 1988) and that children with attentiondeficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) show significantly more omissions on TEMAS than non-clinical children (Costantino, Colon-Malgady, Malgady, & Perez, 1991). In addition, TEMAS has been shown to predict achievement motivation among Hispanic/ Latino youngsters (Cardalda, 1995).
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Reliability
Anxiety, depression, adjustment disorders, conduct disorders, and ADHD, exhibited by culturally diverse school-age children while struggling to negotiate between the demands of two worlds, are working diagnoses attributed by school mental-health professionals. The old world is represented by the family, with its own cultural heritage; and the new world is represented by the school, which has its rules and regulations. It is common that these two worlds conflict with one another. School mental-health professionals are faced with giving appropriate diagnoses to culturally diverse children. Hence, it is very important that school clinicians be trained in culturally competent assessment and treatment. There is a long history of assessment and treatment biases, which has labeled minority children as more psychopathological than their non-minority counterparts (e.g., Costantino, 1992; Costantino, Malgady, & Vazquez, 1981; Costantino, Rogler, & Costantino, 1987; Malgady & Costantino, 1998). To remove this bias, it is necessary to use culturally competent instruments and treatment that recognizes cultural differences.
psychosocial and family problems, 41% of girls and 18% of boys exhibit anxiety and school phobia, and 29% of girls and 13% of boys experience depression. School-based mental health programs seek to reduce barriers to the diagnosis and treatment of mental health disorders in children and adolescents. As schools are becoming predominantly culturally and linguistically diverse in their students, especially public schools in national metropolitan areas, it becomes necessary to deliver mental health services in a culturally competent manner. However, effective delivery of health services is confronted by racial and ethnic disparities in health care. The 2003 Institute of Medicine report (Smedley, Adrienne, & Alan, 2003) on unequal treatment emphasized that training health professionals in cultural competence may improve the quality of care and reduce health disparities between racial and ethnic minorities and Whites. In school settings, the answer to providing appropriate mental health services to culturally diverse students rests in part on more systematic training of school mental-health professionals in cross-cultural psychology. However, the effectiveness of cross-cultural school psychology, in turn, rests on further research to uncover cultural similarities and differences in psychological traits and behaviors among culturally diverse school-age children, and on continuing to develop and apply evidence-based culturally competent assessment and treatment modalities such as the TEMAS Multicultural Test (Costantino, Dana, & Malgady 2007), cuento therapy, and TEMAS narrative therapy (Bernal & Scharro´n del-Rı´o, 2001; Costantino, Malgady, & Rogler, 1985; Costantino, Primavera, Meucci, & Costantino, 2008; Miranda et al., 2005) as presented in this chapter. These culturally competent treatment and assessment modalities embody original cultural values and adaptive themes from the American culture. In this manner, based on the principles of narrative psychology, they promote a new synthesis of bicultural symbols and meanings and thus foster adaptive personality development in youths who are in conflict between two cultures, the old and new world.
Conclusion
Acknowledgments
Mental health professionals are becoming increasingly aware of the needs of mental health services of school children. The 2004 SAMHSA study indicates that approximately 76% of school girls and boys have
We thank: the Hispanic Research Center team, especially our colleagues Robert G. Malgady Ph.D. and Lloyd Rogler Ph.D.; Elsa Cardalda Ph.D., former Clinical Director, Ph.D. Program, Carlos Albizu University, Puerto Rico; our administrative and clinical staff who have greatly contributed
The reliability of TEMAS was originally presented in terms of internal consistency, test–retest reliability, and interrater agreement. Original studies showed a moderate internal consistency, with coefficient alphas ranging from 0.45 to 0.72. test–retest reliability was low to moderate in the original studies, where only 8 of the 34 scoring categories showed significant correlations over an 18-week period; this may be have been due to significant changes in the children’s behavior over time (Costantino, Malgady, & Rogler, 1988a). However, recent studies have shown an interrater agreement ranging from 0.78 to 0.95 (Costantino, Dana, & Malgady, 2007).
Between Two Worlds/Cultures: Family- and School-related Problems
Cross-cultural school psychology: an overview and examples of multicultural treatment and assessment modalities
to the research reported in this chapter; and Erminia Costantino, American Multicultural Institute, for her technical assistance.
Suggested Reading Allport, G. W. (1973). Personality: A psychological interpretation. New York: Holt. America’s Children: Key National Indicators of Well-Being. (2005). Retrieved February 8, 2006, from http://www.childstats.gov/ americaschildren/index.asp American Psychiatric Association. (1987). Diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders. Washington, D.C.: American Psychiatric Association. American Psychological Association. (2003). Guidelines on multicultural education, training, research, practice, and organizational change for psychologists. American Psychologist, 58, 377–402. American Psychological Association. (n.d.) Definition of psychologists. Retrieved February 8, 2006, from http://www.apa.org/ about/ Atkinson, D. R., Morten G., & Sue, D. (1998). Counseling American minorities (5th ed.). Boston: McGraw-Hill. Bernal, G., & Scharro´n del-Rı´o, M. R. (2001). Are empirically supported treatments valid for ethnic minorities? Toward an alternative approach for treatment research. Cultural Diversity & Ethnic Minority Psychology, 7(4), 328–342. Berry, J. W. (1997). Immigration, acculturation, and adaptation. Applied Psychology: An International Review, 46(1), 5–34. Berry, J. W., Kim, U., Minde, T., & Mok, D. (1987). Comparative studies of acculturative stress. International Migration Review, 21, 491–511. Berry, J. W., Kim. U., Power, S., Young M., & Bujaki, M. (1989). Acculturation attitudes in plural societies. Applied Psychology, 38, 185–206. Berry, J. W., Poortinga. Y. H., Segall, M. H., & Dasen, P. R. (1992). Cross-cultural psychology research and applications (pp. 1–14). New York: Cambridge University Press. Cabiya, J., Orobitg, D., Sayers, S., Bayo´n, N., & De La Torre, M. (2001). Cognitive and behavioral profile of Puerto Rican aggressive and impulsive children. Revista Ciencias de la Conducta, 16, 49–62. California Department of Education, Educational Demographics Unit: California Public Schools – County Report County Level Enrollment Reports. Created on March 31, 2006. Cardalda, E. (1995). Socio-cognitive correlates to school achievement using the TEMAS culturally sensitive test with sixth, seventh, and eighth grades at risk Puerto Rican students. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, New York for Social Research University, New York. Chemtob, C. M., Nakashima, J. P., & Hamada, R. S. (2002). Psychosocial intervention for postdisaster trauma symptoms in elementary school children: A controlled community field study. Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine, 156, 211–216. Chicago Illinois Board of Education. Retrieved February 8, 2006, from Stats and Facts. http://www.cps.k12.il.us/At A Glance.html
Cohen, J. A., & Mannarino, A. P. (1998). Interventions for sexually abused children: Initial treatment outcome findings. Child Maltreatment, 3, 17–26. Costantino, G. (1978). TEMAS, a new thematic apperception test to measure ego functions and development in urban Black and Hispanic Children. Paper presented at the second annual Conference in Fantasy and the Imaging Process, Chicago, IL. Costantino, G. (1982). Cuentos folkloricos: A new therapy modality with Puerto Rican children. Research Bulletin, Hispanic Research Center, Fordham University, 5, 7–10. Costantino, G. (1987). TEMAS (tell-me-a-story) pictures. Los Angeles, CA: Western Psychological Services. Costantino, G. (1992). Overcoming bias in educational assessment of Hispanic students. In K. F. Geisinger (Ed.), Psychological testing of Hispanics (pp. 89–98). Washington, D.C.: American Psychological Association. Costantino, G, Bailey, J., & Jusino, S. (1999, July). School-based mental health programs in the US. Paper presented at 8th European Congress of Psychology, Rome, Italy. Costantino, G., Colon-Malgady G., Malgady, R., & Perez, A. (1991). Assessment of attention-deficit disorder using a thematic apperception technique. Journal of Personality Assessment, 57, 87–96. Costantino, G., Dana, R.H., & Malgady, R. (2007). TEMAS (Tell-me-astory) assessment in multicultural societies. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Costantino, G., & Flanagan, R. (2004). The role and functions of school psychologists in the US public schools. LINK Rivista Scientifica di Psicologia, 3, 44–62. Costantino, G., Flanagan, R. M., & Malgady, R. G. (2002). Narrative assessment: TAT, CAT and TEMAS. In L. A. Suzuki, J. G. Ponterotto, & P. J. Meller (Eds.), Handbook of multicultural assessment (pp. 217–236). San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. Costantino, G., Guajardo, J., Perez, M., Borges, M., & Costantino, E. (2004, August). CBT versus TEMAS narrative for children affected by 9/11 events. Presented at the 112th American Psychological Association Convention, Honolulu, Hawaii. Costantino, G., Kaloghiros, I., Perez, M., Primavera, L., Malgady, R., & Borges, M., et al. (2007, July). Evidence based treatments for post disaster symptoms in Latino children. Paper presented at the 2007 American Psychological Association, San Francsico, CA. Costantino, G., & Malgady, R. (1983). Verbal fluency of Hispanic, Black, and White children on the TAT and TEMAS. Hispanic Journal of Behavioral Sciences, 5, 199–206. Costantino, G., & Malgady, R. G. (1996a). Culturally sensitive treatment: Cuento and Hero/Heroine Modeling Therapies for Hispanic children and adolescents. In P. Jensen & E. Hibbs (Eds.), Psychosocial treatment research of child and adolescent disorders. Empirically based strategies for clinical practice (pp. 639–697). Washington, D.C.: American Psychological Association. Costantino, G., & Malgady, R. G. (1996b). Development of TEMAS, a Multicultural Thematic Apperception Test: Psychometric properties and clinical utility. In G. R. Sodowsky & J. Impara (Eds.), Multicultural assessment in counseling and clinical psychology (pp. 85–136). University of Nebraska-Lincoln, NE: Buros Institute of Mental Measurements. Costantino, G., & Malgady, R. G. (2000). Multicultural and crosscultural utility of the TEMAS (Tell-Me-A-Story). In R. H. Dana
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Cross-cultural school psychology: an overview and examples of multicultural treatment and assessment modalities (Ed.), Handbook of cross-cultural/multicultural personality assessment (pp. 481–514). New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Costantino, G., Malgady, R. G., & Cardalda, E. (2005). TEMAS narrative assessment: A multicultural therapy modality. In P. Jensen & E. Hibbs (Eds.), Psychological treatment research of child and adolescent disorders. Part II. Empirically based statistics for clinical practice (pp. 717–742). Washington, D.C.: American Psychological Association. Costantino, G., Malgady, R., Colon-Malgady, G., & Bailey, J. (1992). Clinical utility of TEMAS with nonminority children. Journal of Personality Assessment, 59, 433– 438. Costantino, G., Malgady, R. G., & Rogler, L. H. (1984). Cuentos folkloricos as a therapeutic modality with Puerto Rican children. Hispanic Journal of Behavioral Sciences, 6, 159–178. Costantino, G., Malgady, R. G., & Rogler, L. H. (1985). Cuento therapy: Folktales as a culturally sensitive psychotherapy for Puerto Rican children. Maplewood, NJ: Waterfront Press. Costantino, G., Malgady, R. G., & Rogler, L. H. (1986). Folktales as culturally sensitive psychotherapy for Hispanic children. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 54, 639–645. Costantino, G., Malgady, R., & Rogler, L. (1988a). TEMAS (tell-me-astory) manual. Los Angeles, CA: Western Psychological Services. Costantino, G., Malgady, R. G., & Rogler, L. H. (1988b). Folk hero modeling therapy for Puerto Rican adolescents. Journal of Adolescence, 11, 155–165. Costantino, G., Malgady, R. G., & Rogler, L. H. (1994). Storytelling through pictures: Culturally sensitive psychotherapy for Hispanic children and adolescents. Journal of Clinical Child Psychology, 23, 13–20. Costantino, G., Malgady, R. G., Rogler, L. H., & Tsui, E. (1988). Discriminant analysis of clinical outpatients and public school children by TEMAS: A thematic apperception test for Hispanics and Blacks. Journal of Personality Assessment, 52, 670–678. Costantino, G., Malgady, R. G., & Vazquez, C. (1981). A comparison of the Murray-TAT and a new thematic apperception test for Hispanic children. Hispanic Journal of Behavioral Sciences, 3, 291–300. Costantino, G., Primavera, L., Malgady, R., Meucci, C, & Costantino, E. (2008, July). Evidence based treatments for post disaster symptoms in Latino children. Paper presented at the 2008 International Congress of Psychology, Berlin, Germany, July 20–25. Costantino, G., Rivera, C., Bracero, W., & Rand, M. (2005). A culturally competent APA approved psychology internship program. Brooklyn, NY: Lutheran Medical Center, Sunset Park Mental Health Center. Lutheran Family Health Centers Network. Dana, R. H. (1993). Multicultural assessment perspectives for professional psychology. Thousand Oaks, CA: Allyn & Bacon. Dana, R. H. (1997). Multicultural assessment and cultural identity: An assessment-intervention model. World Psychology, 3(1–2), 121–141. Dana, R. H. (1998a). Cultural competence in three human service agencies. Psychological Reports, 83, 107–112. Dana, R. H. (1998b). Cultural identity assessment of culturally diverse groups: 1997. Journal of Personality Assessment, 70, 1–16. Dana, R. H. (Ed.) (2000). Handbook of cross-cultural and multicultural personality assessment. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
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Handbook of multicultural assessment: Clinical psychological and educational applications (pp. 3–28). San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. Paternite, C. E. (2005). School-based mental health programs and services: Overview and introduction to the special issue. Journal of Abnormal Child Psychology, 33, 657–663. Pew Hispanic Center. (2005, November). Chronicling Latinos’ diverse experiences in a changing America. A Pew Research Center Project. Washington, D.C. Ritzler, B. (1993). Review of TEMAS (Tell-me-a-story). Journal of Psycheducational Assessment, 11, 381–389. Robinson, D. N. (1976). An intellectual history of psychology. New York: Macmillan. Rogler, L. H. (2002). Ethnicities: Children of immigrants in America. In R. G. Rumbaut, & A. Portes (Eds.), Immigrant America: A portrait (pp. 157–186). Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Rogler, L. H., Cooney, R. S., Costantino, G., Earley, B. F., Grossman, B., & Malgady, R. (1983). A conceptual framework for mental health research on Hispanic populations, monograph No. 10. Bronx, NY: Hispanic Research Center. Rogler, L. H., Malgady, R. G., Costantino, G., & Blumenthal, R. (1987). What does cultural sensitivity mean? The case of Hispanics. American Psychologist, 42, 565–560. Rossello, J., & Bernal, G. (1999). The efficacy of cognitive-behavioral and interpersonal treatments for depression in Puerto Rican adolescents. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 67(5), 734–745. School and district profiles. Massachusetts Department of Education. Retrieved February 8, 2006 from http://profiles.doe.mass. edu/state.asp School Based Health Centers; National Census School year 2001– 2002. http://www.nasbhc.org/EQ/2001census/characteristics. pdf Seal, M. (1979). Cross-cultural psychology. Human behavior in global perspective. Monterey, CA: Brooks/Cole. Segall, M. H., Dasen, P. R., Berry, J. W., & Portinga, Y. H. (1990). Human behavior in global perspective: An introduction to crosscultural psychology. New York: Pergamon. Shortt, A. L., Barrett, P. M., & Fox, T. (2001). Evaluating the FRIENDS program: A cognitive behavioral group treatment for anxious children and their parents. Journal Clinical Child Psychology, 30, 525–535. Silverman, W. K., Kurtines, W. M., Ginsburg, G. S., Weems, C. F., Rabian, B., & Serafini, L. T. (1999). Contingency management, self-control, and education support in the treatment of childhood phobic disorders: A randomized clinical trial. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 67, 675–687. Smedley, B. D., Adrienne Y. S., & Alan R. N. (2003). Unequal treatment: Confronting racial and ethnic disparities in health care. Committee on Understanding and Eliminating Racial and Ethnic Disparities in Health Care, Institute of Medicine. Washington, D.C.: National Academy Press. Retrieved February 8, 2006 from http://www.iom.edu/CMS/3740/4475.aspx Sobel, J. H. (1981). Projective methods of cognitive analysis. In T. Merluzzi, G. Glass, & M. Genest (Eds.), Cognitive assessment (pp. 127–148). New York, NY: Garfield Press. Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) (2004). School mental health services in the United States, 2002–2003 http://www.mentalhealth.samhsa. gov/publications/allpubs/sma05-4068/
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Cross-cultural school psychology: an overview and examples of multicultural treatment and assessment modalities Sue D., & Sue D. W. (2003). Counseling the culturally diverse: Theory and practice (4th ed.). New York: Wiley-Interscience. Sue, D. W. (2001). Multidimensional facets of cultural competence. Counseling Psychologist, 29, 790–821. Sue, D. W. (2003). Overcoming our racism: The journey to liberation. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass. Sue, D. W., Arredondo, P., & McDavis, R. J. (1992). Multicultural counseling competencies and standards: A call to the profession. Journal of Counseling and Development, 70(4), 477–486. Tharp, R. G. (1991). Cultural diversity and treatment of children. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 59(6), 799–812. Thompson, C. E. (1949). The Thompson modification of the Thematic Apperception Test. Journal of Projective Techniques, 17, 469–478. U.S. Census Press Releases. (2005). US Census Bureau News, U.S. Department of Commerce. Facts for features back to school. Released June 1, 2005 at http://www.census.gov/Press-Release/ www/releases/archives/education/005157.html U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (2001). Culture, race, and ethnicity. A supplement to mental health: A report of the Surgeon General. Rockville, MD: US Department of Health and Human Services. Vargas, L. A., & Wiltis, D. J. (1994). Introduction of the new section: New directions in the treatment and assessment of ethnic minority children and adolescents. Journal of Clinical Child Psychology, 23(1), 2–4. Vazquez, C. I. (1991). A training program for Hispanic psychologists at New York University/Bellevue Hospital Center. In H. F. Myers, P. Wohlford, L. P. Guzman, & R. J. Echemendia (Eds.), Ethnic minority perspectives on clinical training and services in psychology (section III, chapter 20). Washington, D.C.: American Psychological Association. Vazquez, C. I. (2004a). Dominican families. In M. McGoldrick, N. G. Preto, J. K. Pearce, & J. Giordano (Eds.) (3rd ed.). Ethnicity and family therapy (pp. 216–328). New York, NY: The Guilford Press. Vazquez, C. I. (2004b). Parenting with pride Latino style: How to help your child cherish your cultural values and succeed in today’s world. New York: Rayo, Harper Collins. Vazquez, C. I. (2005). Criando a su nin˜o con orgullo Latino: Como ayudar a su Nin˜o a triunfar en el mundo de hoy. New York: Rayo, Harper Collins. Washington District of Columbia public schools, just the facts. School year 2003. http://www.k12.dc.us/DCPS/offices/ facts1.html Williams, C. L., & Berry, J. W. (1991). Primary prevention of acculturative stress among refugees: The application of psychological theory and practice. American Psychologist, 46, 632–641. World Health Organization global burden of disease study. http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/organizations/bdu/GBDseries_files/ gbdsum6.pdf Yang, C., Costantino, G., & Kuo, L. (2003, July). Validity of Asian TEMAS in Taiwanese children. Paper presented at the 8th European Congress of Psychology, Vienna, Austria.
Suggested Resources Mental Health, Self Help & Psychology Information and Resources—www.mental-health-matters.com: Mental health
matters, information, and resources about mental health issues for consumers, professionals, students, and supporters. American Family Physician Cultural Competence—http://www. aafp.org/fpm/20001000/58cult.html: Understanding patients’ diverse cultures – their values, traditions, history, and institutions – is integral to eliminating health care disparities and providing high-quality patient care. Journal of Counseling and Development Multicultural Competence and Counselor Training A National Survey—http://www.counsel ing.org/publications/jcd/jcd_summer99.pdf. This article reports the results of a survey on practicing professional counselors’ perceptions of their multicultural competence. American Psychological Association APA—http://www.apa.org/ pi/oema/guide.html: Guidelines for providers of psychological services to ethnic, linguistic, and culturally diverse populations. Psychological service providers need a sociocultural framework to consider diversity of values, interactional styles, and cultural expectations in a systematic fashion. American Medical News Cultural Competency Critical in Elder Care— http://www.ama-assn.org/amednews/2001/08/06/hll20806.htm: The need to address disparities in treatment and diagnosis of Alzheimer’s and other age-related diseases increases as the percentage of minorities in the elderly population increases. National Academy Press Psychological Well-Being and Educational Achievement among Immigrant Youth—http://books.nap.edu/ books/0309065453/html/410.html: This chapter explores the social-psychological costs to those who migrate to other cultures. The Center for Health and Health Care in Schools Welcome to The Center for Health and Health Care in Schools—http://www. healthinschools.org/home.asp 2002 State Survey of SchoolBased Health Center Initiatives—http://www.healthinschools. org/sbhcs/survey02.htm Children Mental Health Needs and Schools Based Services—http://www.healthinschools.org/cfk/ mentfact.asp The National Assembly on School Based Health Care NASBHC RESOURCES QUICK FIND—http://www.nasbhc.org/nasbhc_ resources.htm: Advocacy http://www.nasbhc.org/quick_find_ resources.htm#BASICS Publications from The National Assembly. Changes in Health Care Financing and Organization—http://www. hcfo.net/links_npo.htm: Related Links: Other Robert Wood Johnson Foundation national program offices. School Psychology Resources Online—http://www.schoolpsychology.net/p_04.html: School Psychology Resources for Psychologists, Parents, and Educators. The University of Wisconsin Medical School Center for The Study of Cultural Diversity in Health Care—http://dev.med.wisc.edu/ cdh/plan.asp: CDH Mission and Strategic Plan. The University of Missouri – Columbia Center Descriptions— http://cmrtc.coe.missouri.edu/Description.htm: Center for Multicultural Research, Training, & Consultation. National Association of School Psychologists—http://www. nasponline.org/culturealcompetence/refrences.pdf: 4340 East West Highway, Suite 402, Bethesda, MD 20814 Telephone: (301) 657-0270; toll free: (866) 331-NASP. Suggested References on Cross-Cultural Competence in Education. Harvard Children’s Initiative—http://www.provost.harvard.edu/ childreninitiative/beyond/ann_bib/school/mental.htm: Beyond Harvard, related links, annotated bibliographies, school health.
Enhancing Cultural Competence in Schools and School Mental Health Programs Caroline S Clauss-Ehlers . Mark D Weist . W Henry Gregory . Robert Hull
In January, 2003, the Center for School Mental Health Assistance (CSMHA) sponsored a critical issues meeting focused on cultural competence in schools and school-based mental health (SBMH) programs. The CSMHA, at the University of Maryland, is one of two national centers providing leadership, training, technical assistance, and resources to advance mental health in schools in the United States (U.S.). The other center is at the University of California, Los Angeles. Both centers are funded by the Health Resources and Services Administration, with co-funding provided by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration. Educators, policy makers, psychologists, medical personnel, family members, administrators and youth advocates attended the meeting and worked together to define cultural competence, consider its application to school mental health, and identify both barriers and solutions for culturally competent services. In the following, we review key themes and recommendations developed from the meeting. Couched in current literature on cultural competence, these thoughts highlight the imperative for cultural responsiveness in our schools and in the provision of school mental health (SMH) services (Clauss-Ehlers & Weist, 2004). The increasing diversity of the U.S. supports the need for a significant agenda to enhance cultural competence of staff and programs in public schools. According to U.S. Census data, people of color now constitute 25% of the total population. In fact, this percentage is expected to continue to increase as Census figures show the non-White population grew at a rate eleven times greater than that of the White population between 1980 and 2000 (Hobbs & Stoops, 2002). In some states such as California, New Mexico, and Hawaii, as well as the District of Columbia, people of color now comprise more than 50% of the total population.
Cultural Competence in Mental Health Within the area of mental health service provision, there has been a focus on cultural competence since the early 1970s, when the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) established the Minority Mental Health Research Center. Through that initiative, four separate research centers were funded to address four major racial/ethnic groups: African Americans, Asian Americans, Hispanic Americans, and Native Americans. In 1988, the NIMH Child and Adolescent Service System Program helped to further advance research in this area through the establishment of the Minority Initiative Resource Committee. The Initiative resulted in the publication of Towards a culturally competent system of care (Cross, Bazron, Dennis, & Isaacs, 1989), one of the first publications to define cultural competence. Concerns about the ability of practitioners to incorporate culturally competent practice also prompted the American Psychological Association (APA) to develop guidelines about the provision of services to racial/ ethnic groups (American Psychological Association, 1993). These guidelines were revisited and updated to reflect current trends in the landmark APA publication entitled Guidelines on multicultural education, training, research, practice, and organizational change for psychologists (American Psychological Association, 2003). In 1999, the Office of the Surgeon General produced the first ever report on mental health services in the U.S., Mental health: A report of the Surgeon General. In a telling comment made by the Surgeon General in the preface, he stated: ‘‘Even more than other areas of health and medicine, the mental health field is plagued by disparities in the availability of and access to its services. These disparities are viewed readily through the lenses of racial and cultural diversity, age, and gender’’ (Department of Health and Human Services, 1999). The disparities were so great, in fact, that a supplemental report, Mental health: Culture, race, and ethnicity: A supplement to mental health: A report of the Surgeon General, detailing the nature and extent of these disparities was issued in 2001. The report provided information on the need to reach underserved populations and new directions for research (U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, 2001) as well as federal support including the National Center for Cultural Competence to
C. S. Clauss-Ehlers (Ed.), Encyclopedia of Cross-Cultural School Psychology, DOI 10.1007/978-0-387-71799-9, # Springer Science+Business Media LLC 2010
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(> http://www.georgetown.edu/research/gucdc/nccc/) and the Office for Minority Health (> http://www. omhrc.gov) help guide practitioners in their efforts to provide more effective services for culturally diverse populations.
Cultural Competence in Education Immigration has strongly shaped the development of public schools in the U.S. Early on, the nation’s public schools were seen as a place where ‘‘Americanization’’ of immigrant children could take place. Immigrants had to learn English and to think of themselves as Americans rather than as members of distinct racial/ ethnic groups (Olneck, 1989). School districts across the country began to see efforts to ‘‘Americanize’’ in a different light as a result of the Great Depression and World War II. In fact, many school districts nationwide implemented programs in ‘‘intercultural education’’ by the early 1940s. The primary purpose of these programs was to foster acknowledgement of the contributions of diverse groups to U.S. life and history. The 1954 Supreme Court ruling in Brown v. Board of Education furthered intercultural education when the Supreme Court opposed the ‘‘separate but equal’’ doctrine. This was followed ten years later by the Civil Rights Act of 1964 that further protected individual and group rights (American Psychological Association, 2003). These historical events set the context for cultural competence in schools. Recently, the emphasis on cultural diversity in education has shifted to the importance of culturally competent practice. The Office of Special Education Programs (OSEP) of the U.S. Department of Education, which provides leadership and financial assistance to state and local special education programs, has been a leader in recognizing the importance of cultural competence in education. In 1994, OSEP developed a National Agenda that included seven target areas including one designed to value and address diversity. In an effort to implement more culturally competent education services for children with special education needs, some OSEP-funded projects organized activities to promote cultural understanding between families and teachers. Technical assistance and research centers such as the Center for Effective Collaboration and Practice (> http://cecp.air.org) and several federally-funded regional lab schools (> http://www.nwrel.org/national/
) provide resources and perform research on culturally competent practice both in special education and in general education classroom settings. Pat Guerra, program associate for the Southwest Educational Development Laboratory (SEDL; one of the regional lab schools), speaks to the need for cultural competence in education, stating: ‘‘The low academic achievement and high dropout rate of cultural and linguistic minorities in public schools in the U.S. are well documented. While the cause of these challenges for minority populations remains the source of much debate, a significant body of research points to the need for the inclusion of students’ culture in the instructional settings for these populations to succeed’’ (SEDLetter, 2000).
Defining Cultural Competence Given this history, it is important to define what is meant by cultural competence, which is viewed as an elusive term for many. In his writing, for instance, Sue (1998) talks about the ‘‘search for cultural competence.’’ Sue’s phrase certainly fits the myriad of attempts by scholars, educators, researchers, and practitioners to specify those characteristics that make up cultural competence. In this writing Sue’s (1998) definition of cultural competence is used which is defined as ‘‘the belief that people should not only appreciate and recognize other cultural groups but also be able to effectively work with them’’ (p. 440). This definition acknowledges that cultural competence refers not only to knowledge and awareness, but also to skill and application. Each individual is uniquely multicultural. Each individual has membership in many cultural groups that influence worldview and the process of interacting with others. Cultural group influences include race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, education, vocation, family structure (e.g., two parent, single-parent, blended), faith and religion, other institutional affiliations (e.g., social, political), class, leisure activities (e.g., sports, arts, music), and traumatic experiences (e.g., abuse, injury, illness, addictions and combat), among others. These group memberships combine in unique ways to create the individual’s cultural personality. In turn, each membership comes with a set of values and experiences that shape the individual’s worldview and thought processes. Each membership is also grounded in a set of assumptions about the
Enhancing cultural competence in schools and school mental health programs
nature of existence, humanity, and the change process. These assumptions consciously and unconsciously, overtly and covertly, influence the individual’s interactions with others including students and families. When the individual owns his or her ‘‘cultural personality’’ he or she becomes more self-aware and more capable of discerning which part of the crosscultural interaction dynamic reflects the self and which belongs to the client. Kagawa-Singer and Chung (1994) state that culturally competent care is achieved when the ‘‘therapist can effectively use the knowledge of his or her own culture and the client’s to negotiate mutually acceptable goals of therapy with the client/family’’ (p. 200). They further state that culturally based competent care involves working ‘‘in a manner which is culturally comprehensible and acceptable to the individuals and their families’’ (Kagawa-Singer & Chung, 1994). To pinpoint exact aspects of culturally competent care, meeting participants constructed a list of important characteristics and components of cultural competence. Characteristics fell under three general competency areas: knowledge (knowing about the community and family being served, recognizing the sociopolitical context of the client being served); awareness (of one’s own cultural values and biases, of the client’s worldview, and of nonverbal cues); and skill (ability to effectively engage in individual and cultural assessment, balance between clinical and cultural skill, ability to partner with client system, and ability to deliver services in the appropriate language). These three components fit with Sue and Sue’s (1990) view of a culturally skilled counselor as someone who is ‘‘aware of his/her own assumptions about human behavior. . .attempts to understand the worldview of his/her culturally different client [and is]. . .in the process of actively developing and practicing appropriate. . .skills’’ (p. 166). These same characteristics, developed for mental health practitioners, are relevant for educators.
Why Enhance the Focus on Cultural Competence in Schools? Three major reasons are presented to address the question of why schools should enhance their focus on cultural competence. First, the changing demographic profile of African Americans, Latino Americans, Asian and Pacific Islanders, and Native American youth require school-wide programs, sensitivity to diverse learning
styles, and linguistically relevant instruction for such groups of students in a culturally relevant educational environment. Second, mental health efforts within schools are growing progressively and have received significant federal support through the New Freedom initiative, that contains an explicit recommendation to ‘‘expand and improve school mental health programs’’ (see > www.mentalhealthcommission.gov). These school mental health programs assist in responding to the diverse needs of students of various racial/cultural backgrounds, many of whom experience elevated mental health concerns (e.g., for immigrant students, related to traumatic experiences in their country of origin or during the immigration process). Further, there is evidence that enhancing the cultural competence of mental health efforts increases their effectiveness (U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, 1999). Third, focusing on cultural competence will enhance the potential of schools and school mental health programs to increase resources. The resultant enhanced potential for additional resources relates to a number of factors, including: a) better understanding of students and families served by the school, enabling the tailoring of educational and mental health programs, b) increased involvement and support from school and community stakeholders, resulting in broadened networks to connect to individuals and agencies that may have resources to offer, c) an enhanced connection to federal regulations such as those in the No Child Left Behind Act (described in more detail later), and d) enhanced face validity of grant applications as clear attention to the cultural background of students and families served is documented.
Barriers and Strategies to Address Cultural Competence in School Mental Health Given these potential benefits to enhance the cultural competence agenda for schools and school mental health programs, the question becomes, ‘‘Why is this agenda not developing?’’ Participants in the aforementioned critical issues meeting suggested a number of reasons that can roughly be grouped into categories focused on individual and school/program levels. These barriers and strategies to overcome them are presented below.
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Individual Barriers At the level of the individual, a number of factors commonly impede cultural competence. These include poor understanding of the concept, limited self-awareness of one’s own cultural background and the cultural background of others, absent or poor previous professional development, limited options for current training, ‘‘busyness’’ and associated disinterest in yet another topic that might increase job demands, and professional ‘‘aloofness’’ and pathologizing that may increase distance versus connection with youth and families.
School/Program Barriers At the level of the school/school mental health program there are also a number of impediments. These include biases and stereotyping of particular racial/ ethnic groups, limited time for and generally poor use of in-service professional development, limited ongoing supervision, limited resources for cultural competence initiatives, lack of leadership and role models that emphasize the importance of cultural competence, and other agendas (such as improving student behavior and academic performance) that may be viewed as competing versus complementary to a cultural competence enhancement agenda.
Course content was presented in the context of a format that combined lecture, discussion, and skillbuilding activities, components thought to help develop the tripartite model of cultural competence. It is important to note, however, that having only one course designated as the ‘‘diversity course’’ fails to adequately meet the goals of a truly cross-cultural training curriculum. Rather, training in the area of cross-cultural competence is most effective when it is infused throughout a course of study. In this sense, trainees are learning about the relevance of cross-cultural competence as it relates to various perspectives and areas of study. A comprehensive approach also demonstrates the value that the training institution places on graduating culturally competent trainees. To build on the foundation of pre-service professional development experiences to continue to promote culturally competent teaching and practice, ongoing professional development after graduation is necessary (Paternite & Johnston, 2005). Professional development opportunities that include mentoring, staff development days, guest speakers, roundtable discussions, supervision and attendance at professional conferences are ways that teachers and mental health professionals can continue to enhance cultural competence (Clauss-Ehlers, 2006).
Why a Cultural Competence Agenda in Schools? Strategies to Address Barriers A commitment to cultural competence in education and mental health promotion can be cultivated through professional development. To address this void, graduate schools of psychology and education can provide trainees with coursework that promotes the three aspects of cultural competence: knowledge, skills, and awareness (Clauss-Ehlers, 2006). The first author, for instance, has taught a course entitled Individual and Cultural Diversity. The purpose of this course is to provide students enrolled in a 5-year teacher education program with a comprehensive understanding of diversity and how it plays out in the classroom. The course looks at dimensions of diversity such as race and gender, but moves beyond these variables that are typically associated with diversity efforts to also examine factors such as ethnicity, language, sexual orientation, age, social class, cultural values, exceptionality, and bullying.
To move towards providing professional development, mentoring and supervision that promotes cultural competence requires a commitment by schools and school mental health program leaders. How is this commitment developed and maintained? Essentially, this becomes an issue of advocacy for the cultural competence agenda. A starting point for advocacy in schools is to organize and present information that will help frame the idea of cultural competence in a way that helps school leaders consider it an integral part of school functioning (Aponte & Bracco, 2000; HoganBruen, Clauss-Ehlers, Nelson, & Faenza, 2003). Organizing and/or highlighting demographic information is a good first step that supports this argument. For example, almost all school systems maintain data on the student body including percentages of different racial/ethnic groups, students receiving reduced/free lunches, students receiving special education services, among other
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variables. In addition, as mentioned, the No Child Left Behind Act mandates that data is collected by racial/ethnic and other groupings to track school performance for diverse groups of students. Such data collection processes often reveal differences in performance across subgroups. Despite these findings, analysis and action planning to increase supports to diverse groups in a way that reduces barriers to learning is often limited to school leaders. Broadening this analysis and action planning to include educators, school mental health staff, families, and youth will enhance the quality of planning, raise awareness of the importance of cultural competence, improve relationships and school climate, and improve academic outcomes for student subgroups (Clauss-Ehlers & Wibrowski, 2007). Within the mandates of the No Child Left Behind Act, each school and school system must analyze and report data on eight ‘‘cultural’’ groups. These are American Indian, Asian, African American, White, Hispanic, Economically Disadvantaged, Students with Disabilities and English Language Learners. These different groups must be assured equal achievement. The consequence of any of these groups not meeting certain expectations results in the entire school and or school system being designated as failing. As a result of this expectation, schools must examine how different each group is from others in terms of academic achievement and must provide remedies for the underachieving groups. These remedies must rise above the historical attempts at providing ‘‘good plans and good services’’ and now be evaluated in terms of adequate yearly progress by all students. Here, the definition of culturally competent education and service could be translated to address the question, ‘‘Do all children achieve?’’ One of the primary tenets of No Child Left Behind is that if performance deficits for any of the eight ‘‘cultural’’ groups are identified, then a redistribution of resources must occur, either by enhancing resources to enable improved performance for groups identified as not achieving, or families are permitted to move their children to a new school. One method to enhance resources to schools that are ‘‘failing’’ in these dimensions is to increase the proportion of ‘‘highly qualified staff ’’ (HQS). School systems have attempted to move HQS to failing schools by either providing incentives for HQS to work in these schools, to make it easier to transfer non-HQS to other schools, or to restrict the movement of HQS to other schools.
By defining how data should be analyzed and providing an expectation that all children achieve the No Child Left Behind Act has, to some extent, defined which ‘‘cultures’’ are essentially different and in need of assurance of equal treatment. It has also defined the measure of culturally competent education and treatment as those services that lead to equal achievement. Thus at the level of advocacy and policy influence, school and mental health leaders can site the provisions of the No Child Left Behind Act to justify why the school/ school district should focus on enhancing cultural competence in the midst of all the other mandates and pressures of education. That is, culturally competent efforts will assist the school/district in understanding and responding to the needs of different cultural groups, to enable effective supports to these groups, promoting equal academic achievement as mandated by the act. On a daily level, progress toward enhancing cultural competence in schools will require working closely with the school principal and administrative team (HoganBruen et al., 2003). Educators and school mental health staff invested in advancing the cultural competence agenda can prioritize relationship development with members of the school leadership team, and in individual interactions with them by: a) emphasizing the benefits of focusing on cultural competence (as above), b) offering ongoing assistance in analysis and action planning, and c) offering ongoing assistance in outreach activities to students, families and school staff representing the different cultural/ethnic groups of the school and surrounding community. Another significant agenda relates to relationship development with school board members and district leaders to convey the importance of focusing on cultural competence and to gain their support in moving forward. This brings us to an essential dimension of this agenda—actual outreach to and involvement of youth, families, and people from the surrounding community in school improvement planning and action (ClaussEhlers & Weist, 2004). This outreach and involvement can be framed as a genuine effort to understand the perspectives of diverse school and community members towards school climate improvement and strategies to help students succeed while also supporting their families. This relates to perhaps the most significant recommendation of critical issues meeting participants; that is, cultural competence reflects an honest and committed approach to attain genuine empathy for the diverse groups of people served by the school.
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Through such collaboration, the objective for educators and mental health professionals alike is to work toward what Aponte and Bracco (2000) call the development of ‘‘cultural competency with helping networks.’’ Cultural competency with helping networks refers to a network of contacts and relationships that are created between the school system and the surrounding community whose objective is to address a shared agenda. The culturally competent helping network may focus more intensively on specific problems within the school or in the community such as discipline, community violence, and substance abuse, than on the development of cultural competence per se. It is therefore appropriate to identify issues that can be effectively alleviated by culturally competent interventions. As a result, collaboration can focus on specific community issues while simultaneously addressing the role and impact of cultural influences on the issue at hand (Clauss-Ehlers, 2008). An important issue and caveat to this writing is that there is limited research literature that documents the empirical benefits of focusing on cultural competence in schools. Our recommendations are admittedly experience based and attempt to put forth a logic model of why this agenda should be of importance. From a scientific perspective there are many unanswered questions, including: (a) what are the best approaches to train staff in cultural competence?; (b) what is the most important content in such training?; (c) what are the qualitative (e.g., staff job satisfaction) and quantitative (e.g., changes in student achievement) outcomes from a strong focus on cultural competence?, and; (d) are there potential cost savings to such an agenda? These are but a few of the many questions that would benefit from systematic research.
Suggested Reading American Psychological Association. Office of Ethnic Minority Affairs (1993). Guidelines for providers of psychological services to ethnic, linguistic, and culturally diverse populations. American Psychologist, 48, 45–48. American Psychological Association (2003). Guidelines on multicultural education, training, research, practice, and organizational change for psychologists. American Psychologist, 58(5), 377–402. Aponte, J. F., & Bracco, H. F. (2000). Community approaches with ethnic populations. In J. F. Aponte & J. Whol (Eds.), Psychological
intervention and cultural diversity (2nd ed.). (pp. 131–148). Boston: Allyn and Bacon. Clauss-Ehlers, C. S. (2006). Diversity training for classroom teaching: A manual for students and educators. New York, NY: Springer. Clauss-Ehlers, C. S. (2008). Sociocultural factors, resilience, and coping: Support for a culturally sensitive measure of resilience. Journal of Applied Developmental Psychology, 29(3), 197–212. Clauss-Ehlers, C. S., & Weist, M. D. (Eds.). (2004). Community planning to foster resilience in children. New York, NY: Kluwer Acaedmic. Clauss-Ehlers, C. S., & Wibrowski, C. (2007). Buillding resilience and social support: The effects of an educational opportunity fund academic program among first- and second-generation college students. Journal of College Student Development, 24(5), 574–584. Cross, T. L., Bazron, B. J., Dennis, K. W., & Isaacs, M. R. (1989). Towards a culturally competent system of care—Volume I. Washington, D.C.: CASSP Technical Assistance Center, Georgetown University Child Development Center. Hobbs, F., & Stoops, N. (2002). Demographic trends in the 20th century: Census 2000 Special Reports. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office. HoganBruen, K., Clauss-Ehlers, C. S., Nelson, D., & Faenza, M. M. (2003). Effective advocacy for school-based mental health programs. In M. Weist, S. W. Evans, & N. Lever (Eds.). Handbook of school mental health: Advancing practice and research (pp. 45– 59). New York: Kluwer Academic/Plenum Publishers. Kagawa-Singer, M., & Chung, R. C. (1994). A paradigm for culturally based care in ethnic minority populations. Journal of Community Psychology, 22, 192–208. Olneck, M. (1989). Americanization and the education of immigrants, 1900–1925: An Analysis of symbolic action. American Journal of Education, 97, 398–423. Paternite, C. E., & Johnston, T. C. (2005). Rationale and strategies for central involvement of educators in effective school-based mental health programs. Journal of Youth and Adolescence, 34 (1), 41–49. SEDLetter. (2000). A regional review. SEDLetter [electronic version], 12(2). Retrieved January 29, 2003, from: http://www.sedl.org/ pubs/sedletter/v12n02/3.html Sue, S. (1998). In search of cultural competence in psychotherapy and counseling. American Psychologist, 53, 440–448. Sue, D. W., & Sue, D. (1990). Counseling the culturally different: Theory and practice (2nd ed.). New York: Wiley. U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. (1999). Mental health: A report of the Surgeon General. Rockville, MD: U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Substance and Mental Health Services Administration, Center for Mental Health Services, National Institutes of Health, National Institute of Mental Health. U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. (2001). Mental health: Culture, race, and ethnicity- A supplement to mental health: A report of the Surgeon General. Rockville, MD: U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Substance and Mental Health Services Administration, Center for Mental Health Services, National Institutes of Health, National Institute of Mental Health.
Racial Disparities in School Services Charles R Ridley . M Karega Rausch . Russell J Skiba
A remarkably consistent identifier for disparities in educational and psychological services is race (Children’s Defense Fund, 1974; Dunn, 1968; Ridley, 2005; Skiba & Rausch, 2006). In fact, some scholars have argued that race is the central construct for understanding psychological and educational inequity (Ladson-Billings & Tate, 1995). Racial disparities have a long history and continue to be an issue in contemporary practice. Issues of racial inequity currently in the literature include diagnoses of pathology and psychological illness (Garcia Coll & Garrido, 2000), disproportionate and perhaps inappropriate psychological and educational services provided (Harry & Klingner, 2006; National Research Council [NRC], 2002), misunderstanding of the relationship between culture and patterns of thinking and behavior (Gay, 2000; Sheets, 2005), and frequent removal from school for disciplinary reasons without evidence of higher rates of misbehavior (Skiba, Michael, Nardo, & Peterson, 2002). Racial disparities in the diagnoses of psychological problems in the school setting have been raised as concerns because of their association with (a) decreased access to the general education curriculum (Harry & Klingner, 2006; Klingner et al., 2005), (b) services that may fail to meet student needs (Connor, 2006; Klingner et al., 2005), (c) disability labels that may stigmatize students (Connor, 2006; Hilliard, 2004; Losen & Orfield, 2002; Skrtic, 2003), (d) lower expectations for student performance (Klingner et al., 2005; Losen & Orfield, 2002),(e)physicalandpsychologicaldistance,separation, and arbitrary creation of differences between students (Ferri & Connor, 2006; Klingner et al., 2005), and (f) poor post-school outcomes (Blackorby & Wagner, 1996). The continued existence of a wide range of racial and ethnic disparities raises an important paradox. The inequity exists in educational and mental health systems populated by school mental health and educational providers who express a desire for more equitable outcomes for students of color. A central question thus becomes: How do systems continue to perpetuate racial inequity regardless of the positive intentions of the practitioners who define those systems?
Given this grounding, this chapter will provide a summary of historical disparities in school service delivery and dominant social science mental health models of practice and illustrate how schools and mental health service delivery systems are attempting to change in contemporary practice to better serve minority youth. We will argue that contemporary understandings of racial inequity, with a focus on causes, individual prejudices, and bigotry rather than on consequences and implications, may hinder the advancement of more equitable service delivery and associated outcomes. Finally, we will suggest appropriate steps for changing professional practice.
Historical Context Influencing the Present Early Educational Theory and Practice Early accounts of educational services provided by White political leaders for African American youth suggest that the purpose and practices of schooling for this population substantially differed as compared to that provided to White students. Such accounts date back to 1787 when the New York African Free School was established by the Manumission Society of New York (Rury, 2002). This school, specifically for the few children of ex-slaves living in New York, was established to provide an education in traditional Protestant morality. Due to perceived inappropriate behavior, such as playing music or dancing in their homes, it became a purpose of formal education to attempt to teach African Americans more ‘‘proper’’ behavior (Kaestle, 1983; Rury, 2002). This purpose was quite different than what was taught at many other schools at the time serving White students, where the focus was to reinforce or extend the values and behaviors taught by the family unit (Rury, 2002). Policy and popular support for publiceducation prior to the 1950s was consistent with the theory that the function of schooling was to reproduce existing social arrangements, not change them (Apple, 2004; Bowles & Gintis, 1976; Rury, 2002; Sleeter & Grant, 2003). Because racial differences reflected distinct, fixed, unalterable, and ‘‘natural’’ characteristics that were manifestations of behavioral, intellectual, temperamental, and moral inner realities (Smedley, 1999), reproducing the
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commonly accepted racial hierarchy was a ‘‘commonsense’’ notion of schooling. As Rury (2002) stated: " The purpose of schooling, in that case, was to prepare
each group for its inevitable social destination, and not to raise thorny questions about equality and fairness along the way. . ..If African Americans occupied a servile position in the social order, it was not the educational system’s task to change that. . . Differences attributed to race and gender were seen as biologically based, and thus taken to be God-given and not subject to human or institutional intervention (p. 168).
Continuance of Racial Inequity to the Present Not until the end of World War II and the U.S. Supreme Court decision in Brown v. Board of Education (1954) was national attention paid to the inherent conflict between the values of equal opportunity and equal protection, and the clear differences in the quality of schooling along racial lines. As Brown and 1960s Civil Rights legislation put an end to the doctrine of ‘‘separate but equal,’’ the public began to grapple with the notion of how schools could exist where students of color attended segregated schools, schools with lower per pupil expenditures, teachers who were compensated less, inferior building infrastructures, and less access to community resources among other disparities (Irons, 2004; Rury, 2002). While the Brown decision provided a legal end to government sanctioned segregation in schools, other social and school policies and practices were created or re-organized having the effect of de jure segregation in U.S. schools (Irons, 2004; Rury, 2002). Movement by many White families out of urban areas to suburban locales (i.e., ‘‘White flight,’’ Rury, 2002) and the establishment of policies allowing White students to attend private segregated schools subsidized by public vouchers (Irons, 2004) provided the opportunity for White students to continue to attend all-White schools. Furthermore, the argument has been made that the establishment and increased use of ability grouping and academic tracking allowed for segregated education in ‘‘integrated’’ schools (Mickelson, 2001; Oakes, 1985). Persistent racial educational inequities remain to the present. For example, the increasingly racially diverse student population is being taught in schools that are segregated at levels not seen in over 30 years,
and by a teaching staff that is increasingly White (Frankenberg, Lee, & Orfield, 2003; Sleeter & Grant, 2003; U.S. Bureau of the Census, 2000). Frankenberg et al. (2003) provide data illustrating that White students on average attend schools that are more than 80% White, and the proportion of Black students attending majority-White schools during the 1990s declined to rates lower than any year since 1968. In addition, the percentage of teachers of color has dropped considerably, while the percentage of the teaching force that is White has increased to approximately 85–90% (National Education Association, 2003; U.S. Bureau of the Census, 2000). Moreover, racial disparities continue to be evident in the percentage of students tracked in high and low ability programs (Mickelson, 2001; Oakes, 1985), dropout and high school graduation rates (Holzman, 2006), measures of academic achievement (Jencks & Philips, 1998), rates of out-of-school suspension and expulsion (Skiba & Rausch, 2006), access to highly qualified teachers (Darling-Hammond, 2004), and quality of school facilities (Kozol, 1992, 2005).
Early Mental Health Theory and Practice Attention to equitable mental health service systems has gained national attention only since the civil rights movement of the mid twentieth century (Dunn, 1968; Ferri & Connor, 2006; Ridley, 2005; Smith & Kozleski, 2005). Researchers have documented overt and covert forms of racial inequity in mental health service delivery, and reported that such inequities are evident in a variety of treatment settings, especially schools. Numerous studies since the 1950s have documented the existence of inequitable practices clearly based on race: " This research, an accumulation of more than a half
century of scholarly inquiry, yields a clear, unavoidable conclusion: Racism exists in mental health care delivery systems across the United States. . .Professionals cannot dismiss racism as an anomaly in the face of such an overwhelming body of literature attesting to its pervasiveness (Ridley, 2005, p. 7).
Evidence suggests that early models of mental health and therapy substantially contributed to racial inequity. Psychology has historically conceptualized mental health according to four models, each making its own contribution to pathologizing individuals of
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color: (a) the normality model; (b) the deficit model; (c) the medical model; and (d) the conformity model (see Ridley, 2005 for an in-depth discussion of each of these models). These models assumed a singular, universal, cross-culturally shared, and objective standard for mental health, and thus mental health was judged and interpreted by the same standards across cultures, races, backgrounds, and contexts. Those who did not meet this mental health standard were judged to be biologically, genetically, or culturally deficient. Because the focus of mental health practitioners was to diagnose and destroy intra-individual sources of illness, little attention was paid to external phenomena that may cause presenting problems, such as the stress of discrimination. To the degree that these assumptions were dominated by descriptions drawn from White, middle-class experience, the mental health status of people of color would often be considered deviant, deficient, and pathological. Uncritical use of these models with their embedded assumptions may well have contributed to higher rates of observed ‘‘mental illness’’ among African Americans.
The Intersection of Mental Health and Education Specific to schools, Lazerson (1983) argues that mental ability testing was a powerful impetus for the creation of special education programs and services in the early 1900s, and use of these programs and services had the effect of segregating large numbers of African American students from their peers later in the century. Early research using standardized tests identified a high proportion of African Americans and foreign born immigrants as ‘‘feeble-minded’’ and supported separate educational approaches or even institutional segregation as the only viable educational treatment (Goddard, 1912; Terman 1916). Such practices and their embedded assumptions led to the moving of proportionally large numbers of African American students into separate programs and schools, especially during the 1950s with the growth and racial diversification of the student body (Lazerson, 1983). Some authors contend that current racial inequities in special education systems have the effect of maintaining racial segregation in schools. Immediately following the Brown decision, when African Americans attended historically White schools in some areas of
the country for the first time, Lazerson suggests that separate special education programs and services allowed ‘‘. . .school systems to both incorporate large numbers of non-White pupils into the schools while simultaneously segregating them within the schools’’ (p. 40). Ferri and Connor (2006) suggest that, in the wake of the civil rights movement, separating students based on their perceived ability became more socially acceptable than sorting by race. Yet whatever the rationale for such sorting, the outcome is the same; special education identification and placement in separate classes and schools for disproportionate numbers of African American students has had the effect of continuing the separation of races in educational programming and experiences.
Continuance of Racial Inequity to the Present There is little convincing data that psychologists, therapists, counselors, teachers, and administrators actively use a diagnosis of psychopathology or referral to special education for the primary purpose of stigmatizing and segregating large numbers of students of color from their mainstream peers; rather, racially disparate outcomes often seem to be the product of a complex series of institutional and individual actions, no one of which is intended to discriminate, but which together result in a set of outcomes that are clearly discriminatory (Harry & Klingner, 2006; Ridley, 2005). Regardless of intent, however, psychological service providers (i.e. school psychologists, counselors, and therapists) are among those with the greatest influence on decisions concerning special education eligibility, and on subsequent educational plans to meet student needs (Harry & Klingner, 2006; Harry, Klingner, Sturges, & Moore, 2002; Mehan, Hartwick, & Meihls, 1986). Whether or not the outcome is the result of conscious decision-making or intention, the intransigent disproportionate diagnosis of African American students as needing special education services and placement in more restrictive settings remains a sign of continuing racial inequity in psychological services (Ferri & Connor, 2006; Hilliard, 2004; Smith & Kozleski, 2005). As far back as the 1960s, African American students have been diagnosed disproportionately with disabling conditions, and placed in more restrictive settings such as separate classrooms and schools compared to their
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peers (Dunn, 1968; National Research Council [NRC], 2002; U.S. Department of Education, 2006). African Americans are 2–3 times more likely to be found in more judgmental disability categories that are related to intellectual and behavioral capacity (i.e., mental retardation and emotional disability), and not disproportionately diagnosed with other, more objective conditions (i.e., hearing impairment, orthopedic impairment, visual impairment, deaf-blind) (NRC, 2002). Most areas of the country show marked Latino underrepresentation in special education (Perez, Skiba, & Chung, 2008), although some research has documented Latino overrepresentation in the disability categories of learning disability and speech-language impairment especially in areas of the country with large Latino populations (Smith & Kozleski, 2005). Recent fieldinitiated research from the Office of Special Education Programs (OSEP) has found that African American and Latino students with diagnosed disabilities attend segregated school settings at rates 2.5 and 1.8 times higher than their White peers. Even in school districts with relatively high rates of overall inclusion, minority students are between 2 and 3 times less likely to be in inclusive educational settings (Skiba, Poloni-Staudinger, Gallini, Simmons, & Feggins-Azziz, 2006; Smith & Kozleski, 2005). Such findings have prompted some to suggest that the benefits associated with inclusive practices have extended primarily to White middle-class students (Ferri & Connor, 2006; LeRoy & Kulik, 2001; Smith & Kozleski, 2005).
Attending to Common Assumptions A number of unsubstantiated assumptions are made regarding the factors that perpetuate disproportionality. First, the overlap of race and poverty has led to an assumption that the overrepresentation of African American students in special education is primarily a function of the difficult circumstances associated with economic disadvantage (MacMillan & Reschly, 1998). Multivariate analyses simultaneously testing the impact of both race and poverty on measured disproportionality have found poverty to make only a weak and inconsistent contribution to disproportionality; the effect of poverty is primarily to magnify pre-existing disparities due to race (Skiba, Poloni-Staudinger, Simmons, Feggins-Azziz, & Chung, 2005). Also, it is questionable that poverty is a causal variable for racial differences. Some have argued that because racially discriminatory social policies and
practices created the overlap of race and poverty, poverty alone cannot account for racial differences (Harry, Klingner, & Hart, 2005). Second, it is a widespread belief among educators that special education identification and placement is caused by inadequacies in a child’s home life (Skiba, Simmons, Ritter, Kohler, Henderson, & Wu, 2006), and poor parenting in particular (Harry & Klingner, 2006; Harry et al., 2005). Yet there is no evidence that African American families are more dysfunctional than other families. In their recent ethnographic study of racial disproportionality in special education, Harry and Klingner (2006) found that negative comments and perspectives about African American families were among the most common and pervasive of all the perspectives held by educators. Families of African American students were described as neglectful, incompetent, and dysfunctional, but such claims were often made without any firsthand knowledge of the actual circumstances of families. Moreover, even where less-than-optimal family arrangements were observed among some African American families in this study (e.g. single-parenting), the presence of compensatory cultural messages and resources (e.g. care-taking by extended family members) often helped mitigate potential negative effects. The researchers concluded: " The saddest part of these stories is that the family
strengths we were able to discover in just a few visits and conversations went unnoticed by school personnel. . . This lack of recognition, a recognition supplanted by disdain and disinterest, contributed directly to decisions that were not in the children’s interest. . .(Harry & Klinger, p. 90).
Finally, the 24th annual report to Congress on the implementation of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) (U.S. Department of Education, 2002) hypothesized that ‘‘it is possible that the differences in placement by race/ethnicity may reflect the disproportional representation of some minority groups in disability categories that are predominately served in more restrictive settings’’ (p. III-45). Stated differently, perhaps African American students are in more restrictive settings because they are diagnosed with disabilities (i.e., mental retardation and emotional disabilities) requiring more restrictive placements. Studies that have investigated racial differences in placement have found, however, that race makes an
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independent contribution to disparities in placement even after accounting for differences in category identification (LeRoy & Kulik, 2001/2004; Serwatka, Deering, & Grant, 1995; Skiba, Poloni-Staudinger et al., 2006). In a recent study specifically dedicated to testing the placement disproportionality by disability category hypothesis, Skiba, Poloni-Staudinger et al. (2006) found that African Americans more likely were in restrictive environments compared to other students with the same disability label. Further, African American disproportionality in placement was the most marked in disability categories that are primarily educated in more inclusive settings. Students identified with a Speech and Language (SL) or Learning Disability (LD) have among the highest likelihood of being in an inclusive setting compared to all other disability categories (SL, 87% inclusion; LD, 47% inclusion; U.S. Department of Education, 2006). Yet, it is precisely these categories that African Americans were found to have the highest rates of exclusion: African Americans were found to be 3.2 and 7.66 times more likely to be in a separate class placement for LD and SL respectively, compared to other students with the same disability label.
Summary Educational services offered to African American students in public educational systems were originally established in an attempt to change the behaviors, values, and practices of these students; the education was qualitatively different from schooling offered to other students that was intended to reinforce values and behaviors taught by the family unit. (Rury, 2002). Psychological models of mental health aided in disparate service delivery, through embedded assumptions and practices that predisposed people of color to be diagnosed with higher levels of observed ‘‘mental illness.’’ An example of racial inequity in school-based psychological services is the disproportionate representation of African American students in special education, and in particular their disproportionate rate of placement in more restrictive settings. Finally, while many school practitioners attribute such disparities to commonly held assumptions, such as poverty, dysfunctional family processes, or disabilities requiring more intensive services, available evidence has not supported these hypotheses as fully explaining racial disparities in school services.
Contemporary Models and Approaches The data presented in the previous sections paint a fairly bleak picture for students of color in public education. Are there contemporary psychological and educational models and practices that may create school contexts for greater racial equity?
Policy and Practice Attempts to Address Racial Inequity Recent federal policy reforms have begun to address racial educational inequities. The No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 provides a federal mandate requiring school systems to attend to racial differences in academic achievement as measured by standardized test scores. To be in compliance with federal law, states are required to monitor the educational progress of each racial group, and develop intervention plans when school systems do not show adequate yearly progress over time. Further, IDEA requires states to examine racial differences in special education identification, placement settings, and disciplinary actions. If significant disproportionality exists in the state or the local educational agencies, the state is required to review and revise policies, procedures, and practices used to identify and place students. Perhaps more importantly, the most recent re-authorization of IDEA in 2004 mandates states to require districts with significant disproportionality to reserve 15% of IDEA funding to provide coordinated early intervention services targeted toward overrepresented racial groups (Public Law 108–446, 2004). Also, there exists federal and state attempts to remediate racial disparities in special education by providing states and local school districts with technical assistance in their remediation planning and implementation (see e.g. Klingner et al., 2005; Skiba et al., 2004). Emerging theories from the field of multicultural education offer educational practitioners with alternative conceptualizations and methods that address educational inequities (Banks & Banks, 2004; Bennett, 2006; Gay, 2000; Klingner et al., 2005; Ladson-Billings, 1994/2001; Sleeter & Grant, 2003). For example, the theory of culturally relevant and responsive pedagogy (Gay, 2000; Ladson-Billings, 1994/2001) posits that changes in teaching approaches, such as making the curriculum more relevant and accessible to the lived
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experiences of students of color may enhance the educational achievement of these student groups. Available research on effectiveness of federal policy and alternative teaching theories is limited, however, the limited findings are unclear.
Emerging Models of School-Based Mental Health Services An emerging model of mental health, the biopsychosocial model, may result in more equitable outcomes for people of color (Ridley, 2005). Unlike previous mental health models, the biopsychosocial model takes into account every major influence on human functioning, including physical health, interpersonal and social competence, and psychological and emotional well-being (Lewis, Sperry, & Carlson, 1993). Taylor (1990) describes this model as one that assumes ‘‘biological, psychological, and social factors are implicated in all stages of health and illness’’ (p. 40), and thus, rather than attributing presenting problems to intra-individual sources exclusively, psychologists and counselors using this model are required to attend to multiple sources of information and address presenting problems in a holistic, systemic, and contextual manner. Unlike the medical model in particular, the biopsychosocial model is intended to prevent or mitigate problems, and thus is a health promotion model (Engel, 1977; Ridley, 2005; Sperry, 1988). By taking a more comprehensive approach in understanding health and illness, the biopsychosocial model may reduce the potential for bias leading to the misinterpretation of the behaviors of people of color. More specific to school-based mental health practices, the emerging problem-solving preventative model of practice represents a shift from an emphasis on clinical diagnosis, identification and placement, to an understanding of how to improve the studentcontext fit for better student outcomes (Deno, 2002; Tilly, 2002). The problem-solving model represents a shift from a sole focus on intra-individual problems to a focus on how problems are a function of individual, school and community contexts. Importantly, this model not only addresses situations where the student-school fit is not optimal, but also is preventative in that it attempts to improve this fit for all students. It also places increased emphasis on (a) a thorough understanding of all of the elements of a presenting problem, (b) identifying and using student strengths,
(c) hypothesizing which variables (external and internal to the student) are likely contributing to the problem, (d) administering interventions, which often include changes to school contextual variables, designed to remediate the problem, and (e) measuring the treatment integrity and effectiveness of chosen interventions and modifying/revising intervention plans as necessary. While the problem-solving and biospychosocial models appears to hold some promise to provide more equitable service delivery, the legacy, structure, and tools associated with differential diagnosis may still lead to an emphasis on intra-individual deficits rather than systemic inadequacies. To the degree that such systemic inadequacies are stronger causes of student problems, intra-individual interventions will likely be ineffective and inappropriate. For example, Harry and Klingner (2006) found that weak teaching was among the strongest correlates of academic and social problems. They defined weak teaching as: " . . .classrooms in which teachers were often distraught
or angry; where rough reprimands, idle threats, and personal insults were common. . .instruction was frequently offered with no context. . .no attempt to connect to children’s previous learning or personal experience. . .rote instruction took the place of meaningful explanation and dialogue. . . . poorly planned lessons were at the heart of the problem (p. 56).
The authors hypothesize that such classroom contexts, found in large numbers in poor and Black neighborhoods, may relate to racial disproportionality: ‘‘When applied to special education placement. . .we have no way of knowing how referred children would have fared in more appropriate educational settings’’ (pp. 68–69). Yet, such systemic instructional inadequacies are rarely if ever the focus of intervention efforts.
Summary New educational and mental health theories and models offer hope of achieving equity in schools (Kaestle, 1983; Rury, 2002). Focusing on the student-context fit rather than exclusively on intra-student deficits and intra-student interventions clearly is a needed shift in practice. Nevertheless, practitioners may continue to overlook or minimize the impact of social, structural, and systemic forces unless strong incentives and support to do otherwise are put into place. There also
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is need to test the effectiveness of emerging theories and practices.
Key Issues In contemporary practice, we must assume that most psychologists, counselors, therapists, teachers and administrators generally support more equitable outcomes for students of color. Yet, paradoxically, these professionals co-exist in schools with marked racial disparities. An emerging body of literature has identified the phenomenon of the ‘‘well-intentioned’’ professional who perceives him/herself (and are perceived by others) as non-racist (King, 1991; Trepagnier, 2001). How is it that such systems continue to produce racial inequity, irregardless of the intentions and ‘‘nonracist’’ practices of educational practitioners?
Cultural Reproduction Theory One explanation of this paradox can be found in the theory of cultural reproductive systems and actions (Bowles & Gintis, 1976). Developed as an explanation of the perpetuation of social class hierarchies, the theoretical framework of cultural reproduction has been utilized by equity researchers to demonstrate how institutional and individual actions maintain a hierarchical status quo at the expense of less-privileged groups (Harry & Klingner, 2006; Mehan, 1992; Oakes, 1985). Cultural reproduction implies that individuals become a part of institutional patterns through consititutive actions (Mehan et al., 1986; Mehan, 1992) that can reproduce the status quo without being consciously aware of their contribution to inequity. While these systemic patterns of thought and behavior may not come to conscious awareness or mean to cause harm, they still have the specific effect of injuring members of racial/ethnic minority groups, and thus have been termed indirect or unintentional institutional racism (Feagin & Feagin, 1994). It is important to note, however, that cultural reproduction and institutional racism are not abstract structural entities devoid of human action and interaction: cultural reproduction and institutional racism have been and continue to be created and re-created by individuals within institutions, and hence are amenable to change by addressing the unintentional yet destructive perspectives and behaviors of the individuals who
make up those institutions (Arredondo & Rice, 2004; Harry & Klingner, 2006). Recent ethnographic investigations have found clear evidence of reproductive processes that may well contribute to inequitable outcomes in special education. In an ethnographic study focusing primarily on the contributions of school psychologists to special education assessment and decision-making, Harry et al. (2002) found that while psychological testing is often perceived as an objective procedure designed to reduce the influence of individual judgments, in fact, the process is often highly idiosyncratic, as psychologists choose tests or test batteries that are more likely to produce the results they, or the teachers making the referral, wish to see. Using Heller, Holtzman, and Messick’s (1982) conclusion that disproportionality could be viewed as a problem if there is evidence of inappropriate practice or bias at any phase of the process, Harry and Klingner (2006) tracked the opportunity to learn, special education eligibility decisionmaking process, and special education programming. They found a number of institutional constraints and constitutive actions that influence special education placement and programming for minority students, including poor teacher quality, large class size, arbitrary application of eligibility decision-making criteria, tardiness in placement processes, and special education programs that were themselves ineffective or overly restrictive. The authors argue that such findings suggest the need for increased attention to school-based risk as a contributing factor to inequity in special education.
Emerging Ideas for Remediation and Conclusions Although the need for cognitive simplicity may lead to preference of relatively linear hypotheses for explaining racial disparities, no single simple explanation fits the data on racial disparities in school services. Instead, disproportionality is a product of a number of social forces interacting in the lives of children and the schools that serve them. However, we have yet to devise a comprehensive plan to remediate the problem. Promising models are emerging that may provide a more culturally competent route for providing service in both special education and mental health services. Yet interventions based on those models have not been fully conceptualized, much less implemented or evaluated. Thus an important principle to bear in
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mind is that of local evaluation. It is incumbent upon local educators and mental health practitioners to assess the current degree of racial disparity in their systems, explicitly examine their assumptions and behaviors regarding inequity, design alternative programs or interventions, and evaluate the extent to which those interventions are in fact reducing educational inequity. Specific recommendations in each area follow. Assess current disparities. Published data in special education, school discipline, and mental health appear to indicate that racial disparities are so widespread in America as to constitute the norm. It is thus important for local practitioners to examine their own data critically, with an eye towards identifying potential problems leading to disproportionality. Such data is extremely helpful in knowing specific areas in need of attention, and can serve as baselines for progress monitoring. Examine all assumptions: There are clearly a variety of explanations one could apply to data that indicate inequalities in schooling and mental health. Each is based on a different set of assumptions and each leads to a different set of proposed interventions. For example, a psychologist who accepts arguments that differences in intelligence and achievement test scores are primarily genetic in origin (e.g., Herrnstein & Murray, 1994) likely will presume that racial disparities are natural and normal, and there is not much to be done about it. Educators who believe that racial differences are caused by socioeconomic differences likely will believe that disproportionality is due primarily to family or community issues, and to focus primarily on improving pre-school services, or learning to deal with the ‘‘culture of poverty’’ (see e.g., Payne, 2005). Finally, those who believe that our educational systems have traditionally discriminated against students of color and that some of those habit patterns may still be reproduced in our systems, may emphasize the role of institutional systems in creating disproportionality, and likely will focus on changing the nature of services being provided. It is critical that all hypotheses, especially those originating from communities of color, be equally represented and valued in our discussions of inequity. Some scholars have argued that alternative hypotheses and remediation efforts have been systematically devalued or ‘‘silenced’’ (Delpit, 1995), producing only a limited range of hypotheses for racial disparities in school services (King, 2005; Patton, 1998). If schools or
districts are to be effective in addressing racial disparity at the local level, their leadership must examine their underlying assumptions and explore a diversity of explanatory hypotheses for inequity. Such a process may lead to more effective intervention efforts. Evaluation. Evaluation can be difficult for school practitioners and often viewed as a task for which there is insufficient time. Failure to evaluate interventions, however, greatly increases risks of the continued replication of ineffective practice. All interventions meant to create more equitable conditions—whether changes in referral practices, multicultural education, or increased training for educators—should be evaluated to ensure that our best intentions are truly making a difference. One cannot assume that efforts to improve a system will change racial and ethnic disparities in particular, and thus it is critical to monitor the effect of intervention efforts on disproportionality. For example, a school district might develop a sophisticated intervention procedure (e.g., Response-to-Intervention (RTI)) to reduce special education referrals. But if it did so only by reducing the referrals for the majority of students (e.g., White students), such a project could increase disproportionality even while reducing overall referrals. Therefore, monitoring changes in disproportionality is paramount. It is of interest that we were able to find only one empirical investigation of an intervention on racial disproportionality in special education (Gravois & Rosenfield, 2006). These researchers reported that after two years of implementing Instructional Consultation Teams, not only were students in treatment group schools at a lower risk for special education evaluation and placement, but disproportionate rates of referral and placement were reduced in these schools as well. Current racial inequities in our mental health and education systems are not by any means new. They are the product of hundreds of years of oppression, discrimination, and segregation. Contemporary policy and practice reforms in mental health and education attempt to address these continuing and long-standing problems, but it remains to be tested if such attempts are indeed effective. Confronting racial disparities is uncomfortable and often an emotionally charged experience. But unless professionals are willing to work through their discomfort, it is almost certain that their efforts will fail to correct the inequities still embedded in our institutions.
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Suggested Reading Apple, M. W. (2004). Ideology and curriculum (3rd ed.). New York: RoutledgeFalmer. Arredondo, P., & Rice, T. M. (2004). Working from within: Contextual mental health and organizational competence. In T. B. Smith (Ed.), Practicing multiculturalism: Affirming diversity in counseling and psychology (pp. 76–96). Boston, MA: Allyn & Bacon. Banks, J. A., & Banks, C. A. (2004). The handbook of research on multicultural education (2nd ed.). San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass. Bennett, C. I. (2006). Comprehensive multicultural education: Theory and practice (6th ed.). Boston, MA: Allyn & Bacon. Blackorby, J., & Wagner, M. (1996). Longitudinal post school outcomes of youth with disabilities: Findings from the national longitudinal transition study. Exceptional Children, 62, 399–414. Bowles, S., & Gintis, H. (1976). Schooling in capitalist America. New York: Basic Books. Brown v. Board of Education, 347 U.S. 483 (1954). Children’s Defense Fund (1974). Children out of school in America. Washington, D.C.: Author, Washington Research Project. Connor, D. J. (2006). Michael’s story: ‘‘I get in so much trouble just by walking’’: Narrative knowing and life at the intersections of learning disability, race and class. Equity and Excellence in Education, 39, 154–165. Darling-Hammond, L. (2004). Inequity and the right to learn: Access to qualified teachers in California’s public schools. Teaches College Record, 106, 1936–1966. Delpit, L. (1995). Other people’s children: Cultural conflict in the classroom. New York: New Press. Deno, S. L. (2002). Problem solving as ‘‘best practice.’’ In A. Thomas & J. Grimes (Eds.), Best practices in school psychology IV: Vol. 1 (pp. 37–55). Bethesda, MD: National Association of School Psychologists. Dunn, L. M. (1968). Special education for the mildly retarded: Is much of it justifiable? Exceptional Children, 35, 5–22. Engel, G. L. (1977). The need for a new medical model: A challenge for biomedicine. Science, 196, 129–136. Feagin, J., & Feagin, C. (1994). Social problems: A critical powerconflict perspective. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall. Ferri, B. A., & Connor, D. J. (2006). Reading resistance: Discourses of exclusion in desegregation and inclusion debates. New York: Peter Lang. Frankenberg, E., Lee, C. & Orfield, G. (2003). A multiracial society with segregated schools: Are we losing the dream? Cambridge, MA: The Civil Rights Project at Harvard University. [online]. Retrieved February 1, 2006, from http://www.civilrightsproject. harvard.edu/research/reseg03/AreWeLosingtheDream.pdf Garcia Coll, C. & Garrido, M. (2000). Minorities in the U.S.: Sociocultural context for mental health and developmental psychopathology. In A. J. Sameroff, M. Lewis, & S. M. Miller (Eds.), Handbook of developmental psychopathology, (2nd ed.) (pp. 177–195). New York: Kluwer Academic/Plenum Publishers. Gay, G. (2000). Culturally responsive teaching: Theory, research and practice. New York: Teachers College Press. Goddard, H. H. (1912). The Kallikak family: A study in the heredity of feeble-mindedness. New York: MacMillan.
Gravois, T. A. & Rosenfield, S. A. (2006). Impact of instructional consultation teams on the disproportionate referral and placement of minority students in special education. Remedial and Special Education, 27, 42–52. Harry, B., & Klingner, J. (2006). Why are so many minority students in special education? Understanding race and disability in schools. New York: Teachers College Press. Harry, B., Klingner, J. K., & Hart, J. (2005). African American families under fire: Ethnographic views of family strengths. Remedial and Special Education, 26, 101–112. Harry, B., Klingner, J., Sturges, K. M., & Moore, R. F. (2002). Of rocks and soft places: Using qualitative methods to investigate disproportionality: In D. J. Losen & G. Orfield (Eds.), Racial inequality in special education. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Education Press. Heller, K. A., Holtzman, W. H., & Messick, S. (Eds.). (1982). Placing children in special education: A strategy for equity. Washington, D.C.: National Academy Press. Herrnstein, R. J., & Murray, C. (1994). The bell curve: Intelligence and class structure in American life. New York: Free Press. Hilliard III, A. G. (2004). No mystery: Closing the achievement gap between Africans and excellence. In T. Perry, C. Steele, & A. Hilliard III, Young, gifted, and Black: Promoting high achievement among African-American students. Boston, MA: Beacon Press. Holzman, M. (2006). Public education and Black male students. Cambridge, MA: Schott Foundation for Public Education. Irons, P. (2004). Jim Crow’s children: The broken promise of the Brown decision. New York: Penguin. Jencks, M. & Philips, M. (Eds.) (1998). The Black-White test score gap. Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution Press. Kaestle, C. F. (1983). Pillars of the republic: Common schools and American society, 1780–1860. New York: Hill & Wang. King, J. E. (Ed.) (2005). Black education: A transformative research and action agenda for the new century. New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates for the American Educational Research Association. King, J. E. (1991). Dysconscious racism: Ideology, identity, and the miseducation of teachers. The Journal of Negro Education, 60, 133–146. Klingner, J. K., Artiles, A. J., Kozleski, E., Harry, B., Zion, S., Tate, W., Duran, G. Z., & Riley, D. (2005). Addressing the disproportionate representation of culturally and linguistically diverse students in special education through culturally responsive educational systems. Education Policy Analysis Archives, 13, 1–43. Retrieved July 1, 2006, from http://epaa.asu.edu/epaa/v13n38/ Kozol, J. (1992). Savage inequalities: Children in America’s schools. New York: Crown. Kozol, J. (2005). The shame of the nation: The restoration of apartheid schooling in America. New York: Crown Publishers. Ladson-Billings, G. (1994). The dreamkeepers: Successful teachers of African American children. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass. Ladson-Billings, G. (2001). Crossing over to Canaan: The journey of new teachers in diverse classrooms. San Francisco, CA: JosseyBass. Ladson-Billings, G., & Tate, W. F. (1995). Toward a critical race theory of education. Teachers College Record, 97, 47–68.
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Racial disparities in school services Lazerson, M. (1983). The origins of special education. In J. G. Chambers & W. T. Hartman (Eds.), Special education policies: Their history, implementation, and finance (pp. 15–47). Philadelphia: Temple University Press. LeRoy, B., & Kulik, N. (2001). The demography of inclusive education in Michigan: State and local district findings. Detroit, MI: Developmental Disabilities Institute. LeRoy, B., & Kulik, N. (2004). The demographics of inclusion: Final report materials for U.S. Department of Education Office of Special Education Programs Grant. Detroit, MI: Wayne State University. Lewis, J. A., Sperry, L., & Carlson, J. (1993). Health counseling. Pacific Grove, CA: Brooks/Cole Publishing. Losen, D. J. & Orfield, G. (Eds.) (2002). Racial inequity in special education. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Education Press. MacMillan, D. L., & Reschly, D. J., (1998). Overrepresentation of minority students: The case for greater specificity or reconsideration of variables examined. The Journal of Special Education, 26, 20–36. Mehan, H. (1992). Understanding inequality in schools: The contribution of interpretive studies. Sociology of Education, 65, 1–20. Mehan, H., Hartwick, A., & Meihls, J. L. (1986). Handicapping the handicapped: Decision making in students’ educational careers. Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press. Mickelson, R. A. (2001). Subverting Swann: First and second generation segregation in the Charlotte-Mecklenburg schools. American Education Research Journal, 38, 215–252. National Education Association (2003). Status of the American public school teacher 2000–2001. Washington, D.C.: Author. National Research Council (NRC) (2002). Minority students in special and gifted education. M. S. Donovan and C. T. Cross (Eds.). Washington, D.C.: National Academy Press. Oakes, J. (1985). Keeping track: How schools structure inequality. New York: Vail-Ballou Press. Patton, J. M. (1998). The disproportionate representation of African Americans in special education: Looking behind the curtain for understanding and solutions. Journal of Special Education, 32 (1), 25–31. Payne, R. K. (2005). A framework for understanding poverty (4th Rev. ed.). Highlands, TX: aha! Process Inc. Perez, B., Skiba, R. J., & Chung, C. (2008). Latino students and disproportionality in special education. Bloomington, IN: Center for Evaluation and Education Policy. Public Law 108–446 (2004). The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act. 118 STAT 2739. Ridley, C. R. (2005). Overcoming unintentional racism in counseling and therapy (2nd edn.). Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Publications. Rury, J. L. (2002). Education and social change: Themes in the history of American schooling. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Serwatka, T. S., Deering, S., & Grant, P. (1995). Disproportionate representation of African Americans in emotionally handicapped classes. Journal of Black Studies, 25, 492–506. Sheets, R. H. (2005). Diversity pedagogy: Examining the role of culture in the teaching-learning process. Boston, MA: Allyn & Bacon.
Skiba, R. J., Michael, R. S., Nardo, A. C. & Peterson, R. (2002). The color of discipline: Sources of racial and gender disproportionality in school punishment. Urban Review, 34, 317–342. Skiba, R. J., Poloni-Staudinger, L., Simmons, A. B., Feggins-Azziz, L. R., & Chung, C. G. (2005). Unproven links: Can poverty explain ethnic disproportionality in special education? Journal of Special Education, 39, 130–144. Skiba, R. J., & Rausch, M. K. (2006). Zero tolerance, suspension, and expulsion: Questions of equity and effectiveness. In C. M. Evertson & C. S. Weinstein (Eds.), Handbook of classroom management: Research, practice, and contemporary issues (pp. 1063–1089). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Skiba, R. J., Simmons, A., Ritter, S., Kohler, K., Henderson, M., & Wu, T. (2006). The context of minority disproportionality: Practitioner perspectives on special education referral. Teachers College Record, 108, 1424–1459. Skiba, R. J., Simmons, A. B., Ritter, S., Rausch, M. K., Feggins, L. R., Gallini, S., Edl, H., Mukherjee, A. (2004). Moving towards equity: Addressing disproportionality in special education in Indiana. Bloomington, IN: Center for Evaluation and Education Policy. Skiba, R. J., Poloni-Staudinger, L., Gallini, S., Simmons, A. B., & Feggins-Azziz, L. R. (2006). Disparate access: The disproportionality of African American students with disabilities across educational environments. Exceptional Children, 72, 411–424. Skrtic, T. M. (2003). An organizational analysis of the overrepresentation of poor and minority students in special education. Multiple Voices, 6(1), 41–57. Sleeter, C. E., & Grant, C. A. (2003). Making choices for multicultural education: Five approaches to race, class, and gender (4th ed.). New York: Jossey-Bass. Smedley, A. (1999). Race in North America: Origin and evolution of a worldview (2nd ed.). Boulder, CO: Westview Press. Smith, A. & Kozleski, E. B. (2005). Witnessing Brown: Pursuit of an equity agenda in American education. Remedial and Special Education, 26, 270–280. Sperry, L. (1988). Biopsychosocial therapy: An integrative approach for tailoring treatment. Individual Psychology, 44, 225–235. Taylor, S. E. (1990). Health psychology: The science and the field. American Psychologist, 45, 40–50. Terman, L. M. (1916). The measurement of intelligence. Boston: Houghton Mifflin. Tilly III, W. D. (2002). Best practices in school psychology as a problem-solving enterprise. In A. Thomas & J. Grimes (Eds.), Best practices in school psychology IV, volume 1 (pp. 21–36). Bethesda, MD: National Association of School Psychologists. Trepaniger, B. (2001). Deconstructing categories: The exposure of silent racism. Symbolic Interaction, 24, 141–163. U.S. Bureau of the Census (2000). Census 2000 EEO data tool. [Online]. Retrieved August 1, 2006, from http://www.census. gov/eeo2000/index.html U.S. Department of Education, (2006). 26th annual report to Congress on the implementation of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, Volume 1. Washington, D.C.: Author. U.S. Department of Education, (2002). 24th annual report to Congress on the implementation of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act. Washington, D.C.: Author.
Looking into the Future: New Directions in Cross-Cultural School Psychology Beth Kleinman-Fleischer
Throughout the twentieth century, school psychology has developed and transformed with the evolution of the populations and intellectual philosophies in the United States (U.S.).1 In the twenty-first century, a growing theme within the field of school psychology is diversity. The U.S. Census Bureau (2000) projects that by 2050, 53.7% of school-age children and adolescents will be ‘‘minorities’’ (Brown, Shriberg, & Wang, 2007). The field of school psychology has gradually responded. A. H. Miranda and P. B. Gutter (2002) found that, within the four leading school psychology journals, the number of articles related to diversity grew proportionately from 1990 to 1999, compared with a study they cite by R. M. Wiese Rogers (1992) of journals from 1975 to 1990. Brown, Shriberg, and Wang (2007) also found that diversity-related articles increased from 2000 to 2003. Within the realm of diversity, English language learners (ELLs) are a growing population. The National Center for Education Statistics data (NCES, 2006) indicate that 18.8% of school-age children and adolescents speak a non-English language at home, and 5.3% of school-age children and adolescents have difficulty speaking English (Brown, Shriberg, & Wang, 2007). There has been much discussion within the field about how to best work with ELL populations, including how they fare and adapt to increased high-stakes testing. This increased testing has also compelled school psychologists to move beyond their traditional role of implementing psychological assessments, into a broader role of consultation, collaboration, and advocacy on many levels within the school system. Research methods within the field have also adapted to the country’s more diverse populations, leading some scholars to advocate that we move from being dominated by positivistic, 1
Although school psychology is an international field, it is difficult to compare the United States with other countries, as training and standards vary from country to country. Thus, for the sake of concision, this chapter will focus on school psychology in the United States.
quantitative-focused research to using more qualitative and mixed methods. A final issue within school psychology is training. With the percentage of students of color far outnumbering the percentage of school psychologists and teachers of color, it is imperative that training programs more actively recruit diverse faculty and students as well as increase their overall multicultural focus.
English Language Learners English language learners are a quickly growing population with whom school psychologists can expect to work more and more frequently (Baca, 2007). For example, data from the U.S. Department of Education, Office of Civil Rights (2000), suggested a 72% increase in ELL students between 1992 and 2002 (Lopez & Truesdell, 2007). A concern within the field of school psychology is that ELL students achieve at a significantly lower level than mainstream students (Baca, 2007). One study found that in reading, over three-quarters of ELL students performed below level in third grade; in mathematics, over half performed below level in eighth grade (Zehler et al., 2003; as cited in Lopez, 2006). Compounding these statistics, there are not enough school staff, such as special education teachers and school psychologists, trained to work with ELL students (Baca, 2007). Lopez (2006) cites NCES (2002a) data for the 1999–2000 school year that indicated ‘‘41% of teachers in public schools taught ELL students; yet only 12.5% of those teachers had eight or more hours of training on how to instruct that population’’ (Lopez, p. 61). Within the field of school psychology, only approximately 10% of practitioners speak a second language (Rogers, 2005). Because of this lack of qualified instructors and funding deficits, the National Clearinghouse for English Language Acquisition and Language Instruction (2001) reports that ‘‘the number of ELL students who receive services in their native language has significantly decreased between 1992 and 2002’’ (Lopez, 2006, p. 60). Most students do not have access to bilingual programs, which would provide instruction in both English and their native language. Currently, most ELL students receive instruction in non-bilingual classrooms while receiving supplementary services in English as a second language (ESL) programs (Lopez, 2006).
C. S. Clauss-Ehlers (Ed.), Encyclopedia of Cross-Cultural School Psychology, DOI 10.1007/978-0-387-71799-9, # Springer Science+Business Media LLC 2010
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In reaction to these statistics, some researchers have advocated the instructional consultation (IC) model, which Lopez (2006) defines as ‘‘the interaction between the learner, the task and the treatment’’ (p. 59). Silva (2005) found that instructional consultation teams (ICTs), which generally consist of school staff from multiple disciplines, were better able to lower ELL special education referrals and placements than pre-referral interventions teams (Lopez, 2006). Part of the potential for IC is that it not only treats the ELL student as an individual, but examines the entire system in which the student operates, including the way the student is being instructed and whether this instruction is a good fit for the student’s learning needs. To meet this goal, ICs meet with teachers to help them adapt their teaching for the ELL student, with regard to both the student’s conceptual framework as well as his or her cultural context (Lopez, 2006). Although IC has the potential to improve the learning of ELL students, there is still much research that needs to be done. According to Lopez (2006), little research has investigated the IC process with ELL students. There also needs to be further examination of the collaboration between the IC and teacher consultees, as well as research on the most effective instructional interventions for ELL students. Ingraham (2000) believes that more research is needed on ‘‘. . . power differentials associated with privilege or cultural/professional status, and the intersection of consultant, consultee(s), and client(s) individual and cultural variables’’ (Lopez & Truesdell, 2007, p. 91). With regard to their work with student clients, some researchers strongly advocate that instructional consultants are trained in second language and literacy learning and that they be prepared to use qualitative as well as quantitative and experimental research designs (Lopez & Truesdell, 2007). The issues of ELL students are compounded by the increase in high-stakes testing, resulting from the mandates of the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) of 2001.
assessments in alignment with their own content standards and implement consequences for schools failing to make annual yearly progress (AYP) for two or more years in a row (Roach & Frank, 2007). The states determine the goals for their schools and all schools receiving Title I funds must exhibit AYP as defined by the state (Shriberg & Kruger, 2007). Under NCLB, all students,2 including ELLs, are assessed for AYP. Jones (2007) discusses concerns among educators that these tests are not an accurate measure of ELL students’ learning and can lead both teachers and students to increased frustration. Jones, citing the Center on Education Policy (2006) argues, ‘‘states and districts consider the NCLB requirement for ELL students one of the law’s greatest challenges because of the instructional time and resources that it consumes’’ (p. 80). As have teachers in other disciplines, ELL teachers have had to restructure their lessons to accommodate a kind of ‘‘one-size-fits all’’ test preparation (Jones, 2007). NCLB also ‘‘requires reading assessments using tests written in English for any student who has attended school in the U.S. (excluding Puerto Rico) for 3 or more consecutive years, with LEA discretion to use tests in another language for up to 2 additional years’’ (U.S. Department of Education; NCLB, no date, Stronger Accountability section, link number 5). This requirement contradicts research that suggests ‘‘it takes 7 to 10 years to obtain high levels of language proficiency in a second language’’ (Lopez & Truesdell, 2007, p. 85).
Other Issues with High-Stakes Testing
High-Stakes Testing and ELL Students
High-stakes testing affects all student populations, teachers, administrators, and other school personnel. Kruger, Wandle, and Struzziero (2007) discuss the stressors that high-stakes testing places upon public schools. Schools that do not make sufficient AYP can receive negative press attention and even compelled restructuring. High-stakes testing is also very expensive (e.g., costs of developing and administering the tests), and the federal government does not cover all of these expenses. Thus, money is taken from other areas that may better serve a given school’s population (Jones, 2007).
NCLB mandates that every year students in grades 3–8 (and at least one high-school grade) are assessed in reading and mathematics. States must develop these
2 States must have 95% participation from subgroups defined by race/ethnicity, disability, English proficiency, and other areas (Roach & Frank, 2007, p. 12).
High-Stakes Testing
Looking into the future: new directions in cross-cultural school psychology
Such systematic stressors filter down to teachers. Kruger, Wandle, and Struzziero (2007) cite studies suggesting that teachers are less likely to experience stress if they feel they have control over their teaching and curriculum. They claim that high-stakes testing removes this sense of autonomy from teaching, as some teachers are punished for low test scores and forced to link their curriculum with test content. As Roach and Frank (2007) describe it, ‘‘Under NCLB, monitoring and reporting the results of largescale assessments provide a technology for shaping and controlling educators’ behavior from the top down’’ (p. 18). All of this ultimately hurts students, as creativity and educational experiences not assessed on the state exams are neglected for ‘‘teaching to the test,’’ which some teachers believe makes their lessons more superficial and less engaging. Teachers have argued that these test-teaching approaches often focus on drilling and limit their abilities to adapt their teaching to students’ needs (Jones, 2007). Jones (2007) also cites studies suggesting that the poorest schools were most influenced by ‘‘teaching to the test.’’ As well as high-stakes testing affecting teachers’ abilities to teach, it also has a direct effect on students. Some states exert strong external pressures on students to perform well, relating test scores with graduation and grade promotion. Although not many studies have analyzed the relation between stress and highstakes testing for students, the research that has been done suggests that the stress these tests cause students is significant. Based on Hembree’s (1988) finding that students with lower academic ability were more likely to suffer from test anxiety, which causes poorer performance on achievement tests, it seems that students with disabilities are especially disadvantaged when taking high-stakes tests because they may already have high test anxiety and low academic skills, which highstakes tests serve to exacerbate (Kruger, Wandle, & Struzziero, 2007). In addition to the anxiety that high-stakes testing may provoke in students, researchers have suggested (although more definitive research is needed in this area) that testing may cause students to become more extrinsically than intrinsically motivated to succeed academically, eroding their love of learning (Jones, 2007). Although there are clearly negative effects of NCLB upon schools, teachers, and students, some positive aspects can be argued. The inclusion of all students in the testing provides a more public barometer with
which to account for the progress of ELL students, students who aren’t achieving, and students with disabilities. Although curriculum standardization has definite downsides, it can also be helpful for teachers to have clear standards with which to align their lessons (Elliott, 2007). Standardized testing is also efficient: it is a way to assess a school quickly and scientifically (Roach & Frank, 2007) (though arguments can be made about whether these tests truly measure what they should be measuring) and maintain accountability for teachers and schools.
The Role of School Psychologists in High-Stakes Testing At the time of this writing, a few months before the 2008 presidential election, it is difficult to predict the degree to which NCLB may be amended or even eliminated with the next administration. It is likely, however, that high-stakes testing will dominate the political landscape of education for the foreseeable future and will continue to be a significant means of assessment for schools, students, and teachers. Thus, it is imperative that school psychologists continue to play a key role in helping students, teachers, and the school at large in coping with the challenges presented by highstakes testing. School psychologists can work as leaders on the school-wide level, as consultants to teachers, and with individual students and their parents to help schools adapt to NCLB. On a systemic level, Kruger, Wandle, and Struzziero (2007) propose that school psychologists provide school-wide methods to cope with the stress of high-stakes testing. For instance, school psychologists can lead workshops in relaxation training, a technique that research has supported in reducing responses to stress, and can involve both teachers and students in the process. School psychologists can also reach out to inform parents about the stress associated with high-stakes testing and provide them with resources and strategies to use at home with their children (Kruger, Wandle, & Struzziero, 2007). Shriberg (2007) argues that school psychologists increase their leadership within the schools: " ‘‘While individual situations vary, school psychologists
who can combine their vision for role expansion and positive change with a commitment to data, advocacy, and interpersonal savvy within a complex educational
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structure have the opportunity to assume leadership in this current educational climate where test scores have been given tremendous prominence and importance’’ (p. 165).
If school psychologists feel that changes need to be made within the system, they must advocate for these in a way that appeals to key stakeholders. School psychologists also need to be alert to the potential for inappropriate referrals as a result of highstakes testing. In states that have graduation rates dependent upon passing standardized tests, but that also provide alternatives for students with disabilities, there is a pressure to over-diagnose students. Therefore, it is essential for school psychologists to have a deep understanding of how testing operates at the state level and potential repercussions at the school level. This issue of inappropriate referrals especially affects ELL students. Unlike special education students with Individualized Education Programs (IEP) or students with 504 plans, ELL students are not provided with exemptions or mandated accommodations under NCLB. Thus, school psychologists must especially monitor this population to ensure that referred students are truly struggling with a learning disability rather than language acquisition (Elliott, 2007). Instead of inappropriate referrals, Elliott (2007) recommends using the response to interventions (RtI) approach to insure appropriate help for ELL students. RtI is a way to ensure that effective instruction is matched with the student’s needs. Over a period, RtI examines how quickly and successfully the student learns. Decisions are made based upon data analysis (Elliott, 2007). School psychologists can also help students who are not granted accommodations under IEPs or 504 plans to see if their state might grant them accommodations for state and district testing (some states do allow this) or teach them how to manage the test without accommodations (Elliot, 2007), or both. School psychologists can help teachers create an encouraging classroom environment. Teachers can reduce competition, which has been linked to test anxiety, and instead promote cooperative learning (Kruger, Wandle, & Struzziero, 2007). School psychologists, who will need to be familiar with the instructional environment, can also help teachers educate their students about test-taking strategies (Elliott, 2007). Elliott (2007) recommends that such strategies be part of daily instruction. She suggests that school
counselors physically observe classroom instruction to gain a better sense of pedagogical weaknesses and to train teachers to monitor their own progress through data assessment. With their background in assessment, school psychologists can also assist teachers in understanding test data so as to apply it to their teaching (Roach & Frank, 2007). Beyond expanding their work with teachers, school psychologists can further develop their role in helping individual students cope with high-stakes testing. They can identify students who are particularly vulnerable to the stress of such testing and involve them in one of the many programs that have empirical support, many of which involve behavioral and cognitive behavioral (CB) techniques with students working in groups. School psychologists can also ensure that the students’ parents receive training in CB techniques so they can reinforce what their children are learning. Studies have shown that children whose parents also received CB training fared better in their struggles with anxiety than those whose parents did not (Kruger, Wandle, & Struzziero, 2007).
Future Research in High-stakes Testing Although some research has been completed that is relevant to our current high-stakes testing environment, with the significant role that NCLB plays for teachers, students, and the overall school culture, it is clear that much more is needed. According to Shriberg and Kruger (2007), ‘‘to date, despite geometric increases in articles on high stakes testing appearing in leading education journals during the last five years, this research has been largely absent from the school psychology literature’’ (p. 3). Other scholars acknowledge that further research is greatly needed to explore areas such as how increased testing has affected teacher hiring and attrition rates (Jones, 2007), the extent to which testing has helped or hindered instruction (Roach & Frank, 2007), how testing has affected students’ intrinsic and extrinsic motivation (Jones, 2007), and how accommodations affect high-stakes test performance (Elliot, 2007). Nichols (2007) suggests that some of the existing research on high-stakes testing has measurement weaknesses: it is difficult to assess the effects of such testing not only because testing policies can be quite
Looking into the future: new directions in cross-cultural school psychology
different between states, but also because individual states frequently vary their policies. Even if NCLB in its current form is revised by the next administration, it seems unlikely that high-stakes testing will decrease, as such assessments offer a relatively systematic, seemingly objective method of tracking school progress at both the federal and state levels. Thus, it seems probable that significantly more research will address the school psychologist’s role in high-stakes testing.
Mixed-Method Research Traditionally, school psychology research has focused on individual adjustments rather than contextual effects. Although this focus on individual learning has served school psychologists well in many ways, some scholars have argued that school psychology research models do not deal sufficiently with ecological and systematic variables, causing the field to move slowly in integrating multicultural issues (Bursztyn, 2007). According to Bursztyn (2007), as culturally and linguistically diverse (CLD) students continue to be overrepresented in terms of issues that include high dropout rates, high referral rates, and negative adjustment, they become more difficult for school psychologists to push into the background. The contextual realities of CLD students must be acknowledged for school psychologists to help them fully succeed. To adapt to an increasingly diverse population, Bursztyn (2007) argues that school psychology researchers need to amend their models. He claims that traditional empirical methods used by school psychology researchers have worked well for individuals but break down when used to study systems, which are what need to be studied in schools’ current multicultural contexts. School psychology research has generally operated under a positivistic framework, focusing on objectivity and aiming for a detached perspective. The research uses ‘‘objective’’ measurements such as behavior checklists and test scores, which, Burszytn (2007) argues, do not reveal the depth of the participants’ subjective experiences. This positivistic paradigm confines the research to a narrow perspective, focusing only on the areas consistent with the researchers’ worldviews without exploring alternative perspectives. Positivism
ignores the idea that individuals have their own subjective experiences, instead viewing subjectivity as biased. Bursztyn (2007) recommends that researchers become more comprehensive with their techniques. Although they should not abandon the more quantitative, positivistic approaches, it is useful to integrate more qualitative, subjective approaches such as ethnographic or case studies. Such studies can provide greater insight into the contextual experiences of research participants and provide a more nuanced perspective into diverse populations, while not sacrificing the precision that can be gained through quantitative data-driven studies. Powell, Mihalas, Onwuegbuzie, Suldo, and Daley (2008) argue that, although psychological research has been dominated by quantitative studies, school psychology practitioners have been using both qualitative and quantitative approaches for quite some time, as assessments call for integrating multiple data from standardized test scores to interviews. They explain: " ‘‘What most differentiates the mixed methods research
process from the monomethod research process is the fact that the former compels researchers not only to make decisions about the individual quantitative and qualitative components, but also to make decisions about how these components relate to each other . . .’’ (p. 294).
Mixed-method approaches are on the rise in several fields. In a recent study of 15 major electronic bibliographic databases across several fields including psychology and medicine, Collins, Onwuegbuzie, and Jiao (2007) found that most mixed-method articles were published during or after 2001 (Powell, Mihalas, Onwuegbuzie, Suldo, & Daley, 2008). Powell, et al. (2008) also found that 13.7% of the four major school psychology journals from 2001 through 2005 used mixed-method research of some kind, with a slightly upward trend. Of the overwhelming monomethod research published in these journals, most involved quantitative rather than qualitative studies. Powell et al. (2008) hypothesize that one reason for the dearth of qualitative studies may relate to school psychology programs placing little emphasis on qualitative research training. Powell et al. (2008) advocate more mixed-method research. They especially emphasize the need for qualitative research, because it provides benefits such
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as increased flexibility, the ability to address more complex questions, and ‘‘the opportunity to combine macro and micro levels of a study’’ (p. 306). Hitchcock, Sarkar, Nastasi, Burkholder, Varjas, & Jayasena (2006) demonstrate how a mixed-method approach can be used to generate culturally specific instruments. These authors used ethnographic and factor analytic methods to study students in Sri Lanka. They argue that researchers too frequently use a blanket approach to target populations, using instruments developed for a general population of American children and adolescents, rather than adapting to specific cultural groups. They advise school psychologists: " ‘‘When working in a multicultural setting, the qualita-
tive procedures can serve as models for service planning and identifying relevant cultural issues, and the development of a survey from this information can be used to quantify such information in the event a large enough sample warrants the additional effort. These skills can help school psychologists understand the idiosyncratic needs of a local culture, develop nuanced assessment skills and in turn develop highly targeted interventions’’ (p. 31).
Esquivel and Flanagan (2007) also promote the qualitative approach, focusing on narrative assessment as a way to gain insight about how children and adolescents perceive and make meaning of the world around them. They state, ‘‘Although scientific rigor and evidencebased practice are tenets critical to the profession, it is equally important to be aware of holistic ways of understanding and to be open to exploring the use of multiple methods within an integrative paradigm’’ (p. 278).
Training of School Psychologists As the U.S. becomes increasingly diverse, it is essential that school psychologists become aware of cultural differences and stressors unique to various groups, without neglecting within-group differences. Unfortunately, studies suggest that there are not enough school psychologists in practice who are adequately prepared to work with CLD populations (Lopez & Rogers, 2007). Although the U.S. Census Bureau (2002) projects that White student populations will decrease as
non-White student populations increase, this pattern has not occured for teachers (Rogers, 2005). In fact, according to the NCES (2002b), non-White public school teachers actually decreased from 1971 to 1996 (Rogers, 2005). According to Rogers (2005), 90% of public school teachers are White, whereas 40% of public school students are people of color. Within the field of school psychology, ‘‘the racial, ethnic, and linguistic diversity among practicing (practitioners and faculty) school psychologists has not kept pace with the rapid demographic changes occurring in the United States’’ (Rogers, 2005, p. 997). Although the American Psychological Association (APA) (2002) and the National Association of School Psychologists (NASP) (2000) have tried to address these concerns, calling for school psychology to increase coverage of multicultural issues and create more diverse field placements, there are several barriers, outlined by Lopez & Rogers (2007) that make it difficult for such programs to implement APA and NASP’s guidelines effectively. One obstacle is that the APA and NASP do not actually articulate how to translate these guidelines into practice. A second obstacle is that faculty themselves may not be sufficiently trained to teach their students about multicultural issues, as the emphasis on the CLD population is a more recent phenomenon. Third, CLD faculty members may leave their university jobs at an increased rate because of personal and institutional difficulties (Hendricks, 1997, as cited in Lopez & Rogers, 2007). Fourth, school psychology programs may have difficulties recruiting CLD students because of issues such as high tuition costs or a lack of writing skills by potential bilingual students. Such barriers are compounded by the fact that CLD students may feel uncomfortable with few CLD faculty as role models. Finally, field placements in diverse settings become a challenge because of the aforementioned lack of training that practicing school psychologists have received. The few bilingual school psychologists who are supervisors may experience burn out because they are in high demand to serve the needs of the bilingual population within a given school. To address these various issues, Lopez and Rogers (2007) suggest active recruitment strategies (e.g., financial support) to attract CLD students, increased bilingual training, and better retention of CLD faculty. Rogers (2005) calls for additional research to explore whether the multicultural training that does exist for
Looking into the future: new directions in cross-cultural school psychology
school psychology students has led to effective results in the field, which CLD recruitment techniques have been most effective, and the extent to which multicultural training is currently taking place in school psychology programs. For school psychologists who are already practicing, Lopez and Rogers (2007) suggest more thorough definitions of cross-cultural competencies for practitioners, increased bilingual school psychology training programs, and the creation of national and regional training centers focusing on diversity issues.
Conclusion It is clear that the field of cross-cultural school psychology is in flux. The national demographics of school psychologists themselves do not reflect the demographics of the populations they serve, and much of the research conducted in the field of school psychology, which often has a positivistic focus, is not necessarily the best fit for multicultural populations. There are not enough bilingual school psychologists and teachers to accommodate the growing number of ELL students, and the current high-stakes testing environment makes it especially important that vulnerable populations are provided with assistance. Yet there is reason for optimism. With an upward trend in diversity articles within school psychology journals (Brown, Shriberg, & Wang, 2007), and the APA (2002a) and NASP (2000) establishing guidelines with a focus on multicultural training, it seems that the field is, slowly but surely, working to accommodate the increasingly diverse populations it serves. Just as school psychology training programs must work to recruit CLD students and faculty, as well as to provide a multicultural curriculum, researchers must try to integrate more qualitative studies in their repertoire. School psychology practitioners are encouraged to expand their traditional roles to become leaders in their schools, collaborating with teachers, administrators, and other stakeholders to create an instructional environment that befits their diverse populations. School psychology plays a significant role in the educational landscape: it is essential for researchers and practitioners throughout the field to embrace the increasingly diverse population of the U.S.
References American Psychological Association. (2002). Guidelines and principles for accreditation of programs in professional psychology. Washington, D.C.: American Psychological Association. Baca, L. (2007). Bilingual special education commentary: The education of English Language Learners with special needs: The challenge for school psychologists. In G. B. Esquivel, E. C. Lopez & S. Nahari (Eds.), Handbook of multicultural school psychology (pp. 659–664). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Brown, S. L., Shriberg, D., & Wang, A. (2007). Diversity research literature on the rise? A review of school psychology journals from 2000 to 2003. Psychology in the Schools, 44(6), 639–650. Bursztyn, A. M. (2007). Directions for future research: A research agenda for multicultural issues in education, assessment, and intervention. In G. B. Esquivel, E. C. Lopez, and S. Nahari (Eds.), Handbook of multicultural school psychology (pp. 639–658). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Center on Education Policy. (2006). From the capital to the classroom: Year 4 of the no child left behind act. Retrieved March 30, 2006 from http://www.cep-dc.org/nclb/Year4/Press/ Collins, K. M. T., Onwuegbuzie, A. J., & Jiao, Q. G. (2007). A mixed methods investigation of mixed methods sampling designs in social and health science research. Journal of Mixed Methods Research, 1(4), 267–294. Elliott, J. (2007). Providing academic support for teachers and students in high stakes learning environments. Journal of Applied School Psychology, 23(2), 87–101. Esquivel, G. B., & Flanagan, R. (2007). Narrative methods of personality assessment in school psychology. Psychology in the Schools, 44(3), 271–280. Hembree, R. (1988). Correlates, causes, effects and treatment of test anxiety. Review of Educational Research, 58(1), 47–77. Hendricks, F. M. (1997). Career experiences of Black women faculty at Research 1 universities. Dissertation Abstracts International, 57(12A). (UMI No. 9717161). Hitchcock, J., Sarkar, S., Nastasi, B., Burkholder, G., Varjas, K., & Jayasena, A. (2006). Validating culture- and gender-specific constructs: A mixed-method approach to advance assessment procedures in cross-cultural settings. Journal of Applied School Psychology, 22(2), 13–33. Ingraham (2000). Consultation through a multicultural lens: Multicultural and cross-cultural consultation in schools. School Psychology Review, 29, 320–343. Jones, B. D. (2007). The unintended outcomes of high-stakes testing. Journal of Applied School Psychology, 23(2), 65–86. Kruger, L. J., Wandle, C., & Struzziero, J. (2007). Coping with the stress of high stakes testing. Journal of Applied School Psychology, 23(2), 109–128. Lopez, E. C. (2006). Targeting English language learners, tasks and treatments in instructional consultation. Journal of Applied School Psychology, 22(2), 59–79. Lopez, E. C., & Rogers, M. R. (2007). Multicultural competencies and training in school psychology: Issues, approaches, and future directions. In G. B. Esquivel, E. C. Lopez, & S. Nahari (Eds.), Handbook of multicultural school psychology (pp. 47–67). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
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Looking into the future: new directions in cross-cultural school psychology Lopez, E. C., & Truesdell, L. (2007). Multicultural issues in instructional consultation for English Language Learning Students. In G. B. Esquivel, E. C. Lopez & S. Nahari (Eds.), Handbook of multicultural school psychology (pp. 71–98). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Miranda, A. H., & Gutter, P. B. (2002). Diversity research literature in school psychology: 1990–1999. Psychology in the Schools, 39, 597–604. National Association of School Psychologists. (2000). Standards for training and field placement programs in school psychology. Bethesda, MD: Author. National Center for Education Statistics (2002a). Schools and staffing survey, 1999–2000: Overview of the data for public, private, public charter, and Bureau of Indian Affairs elementary and secondary schools. Washington, D.C.: National Center for Education Statistics. National Center for Education Statistics (2002b). Schools and staffing survey, 1999–2000: Overview of the data for public, private, public charter, andBureau of Indian Affairs elementary and secondary schools. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of Education. National Center for Education Statistics. (2006). Number and percentage of children ages 5–17 who spoke a language other than English at home and who spoke English with difficulty by selected characteristics: 2004. Retrieved March 13, 2007 from http://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/2006/section1/tableXLS.asp? tableID = 530 National Clearinghouse for English Language Acquisition and Language Instruction (2001). Survey of the states’ limited English proficient students and available educational programs and services, 1999–2001 Summary report. Washington, D.C.: National Clearinghouse for English Language Acquisition and Language Instruction. Nichols, S. L. (2007). High-stakes testing: Does it increase achievement? Journal of Applied School Psychology, 23(2), 47–64. Powell, H., Mihalas, S., Onwuegbuzie, A. J., Suldo, S., & Daley, C. E. (2008). Mixed methods research in school psychology: A mixed
methods investigation of trends in the literature. Psychology in the Schools, 45(4), 291–309. Roach, A. T., & Frank, J. L. (2007). Large-scale assessment, rationality, and scientific management: The case of no child left behind. Journal of Applied School Psychology, 23(2), 7–25. Rogers, M. (2005). Multicultural training in school psychology. In C. L. Frisby & C. R. Reynolds (Eds.), Comprehensive handbook of multicultural school psychology (pp. 993–1022). Hoboken, NJ: Wiley. Shriberg, D. (2007). The school psychologist as leader and change agent in a high-stakes era. Journal of Applied School Psychology, 23(2), 151–166. Shriberg, D., & Kruger, L. J. (2007). Introduction and overview: High stakes testing. Journal of Applied School Psychology, 23(2), 1–6. U.S. Department of Education. NCLB. Retrieved August 31, 2008 from http://www.ed.gov/admins/lead/account/saa.html# regulations U.S. Census Bureau. (2000). Projections of the total resident population by 5 year age groups, race, and Hispanic origin with special age categories: Middle series, 2050 to 2070. Retrieved February 24, 2004 from http://www.census.gov/population/projections/ nation/summary/np-t4-g.pdf. U.S. Census Bureau. (2002). Projections of the resident population by race, Hispanic origin, and nativity: Middle series, 2050–2070. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Census Bureau. U.S. Department of Education Office of Civil Rights. (2000). OCR elementary and secondary school survey. Retrieved July 6, 2005 from http:/205.207.175.84/ocr2000r/. Wiese Rogers, R. M. (1992). Racial/ethnic minority research in school psychology. Psychology in the Schools, 29, 267–272. Zehler, A. M., Fleischman, H. L., Hopstock, P. J., Stephenson, T. G., Pendzick, M. L., & Sapru, S. (2003). Descriptive study of services to LEP students and LEP students with disabilities (Vol. I). Research report. Submitted to the U.S. Department of Education, OELA. Arlington, VA: Development Associates.
Part II CrossPart II Cultural School Psychology Topics in Cross-Cultural School Psychology Topics in
AACAP American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry (AACAP) >
ABPsi >
Association of Black Psychologists (ABPsi)
Academic Achievement in Minority Children Antonia Hernandez
The increase of immigration to the United States (U.S.) since the 1980s has resulted in a racial/ethnic heterogeneous group of children throughout the country. Since the 1980s, the Asian population has almost tripled, the Latino population has more than doubled, the Native American population has increased by 62%, and the African American population has increased 31%, while the non-ethnic population remained almost the same. (The terms African Americans and Blacks, and Native Americans and American Indians, will be used interchangeably throughout this entry). As a result of these changes, 40% of the current public school age population comprises students of color. This percentage is expected to increase rapidly in the upcoming years. For instance, it is expected that by the year 2020, more than two-thirds of the school-age population will be Hispanic, Asian American, African American, or Native American, with Hispanic youth accounting for more than 20% of the total. In 1993, the U.S. Census Bureau predicted that the minority population will account for 50% of the U.S. population by the year 2050. There are salient differences in educational achievement levels among children of color. For instance, African American and Hispanic youth are noted for high dropout rates, whereas Asian Americans are
more likely to have higher educational attainment levels. Academic achievement is influenced by several variables. On an individual level, variables such as gender, ethnicity, and family socioeconomic status have been regarded as the most prominent factors. Extraneous variables that influence school success include time spent doing homework, time spent watching television, participation in extracurricular and other structured after school programs, and employment status. An additional variable concerns language. Specifically, many children of color speak another language in the home other than English. It has been reported that the language spoken in the home is considered an important variable because of its influence on a child’s success in school. Students from non-English language backgrounds tend to have lower academic achievement and are nearly twice as likely to leave school before graduation compared with their English speaking peers. Although differences have been noted in the school performance of children of color, there is little consensus about the causes of these discrepancies. Several theories have been introduced throughout the literature to better understand differences in academic achievement. One theory states that differences in academic achievement relate to socialization practices in the family that lead youngsters from some racial/ethnic groups to develop more positive achievement-related attitudes and behaviors. Thus, several studies have noted that children from homes with high stress levels are more likely to be exposed to maladaptive behaviors that lead to violence, substance abuse, and academic underachievement. A second theoretical approach is that cultural values are different among racial/ethnic groups, especially those that concern the value of educational success. The work of the late Dr. John Ogbu postulates that diverse racial/ethnic groups have different perceived notions of discrimination within educational and occupational institutions. The main tenet of this theory states minority youth believe they will face a glass ceiling that will prohibit them from benefiting from the occupational and educational rewards of their hard work. Consequently, they exert minimal effort where academic work is concerned and some may develop an oppositional frame of reference because of their status in the mainstream society. Their perceptions are further influenced by the social context in which they arrived in the U.S. (for example, voluntary or involuntary). The theory states that those individuals in the involuntary groups marginalize themselves, reject schooling, and,
C. S. Clauss-Ehlers (Ed.), Encyclopedia of Cross-Cultural School Psychology, DOI 10.1007/978-0-387-71799-9, # Springer Science+Business Media LLC 2010
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as a consequence, fail in the American school system. Ogpu argued that, to a certain extent, minority youth participate in their own oppressions and that such marginalized youth, not realizing that their behavior is to their own detriment, immobilize themselves from their social and academic strata. Finally, cultural discontinuity theory asserts that immigrants face disadvantages due to language, cultural, and social interactional conflicts between the home and the school. Various studies have noted that immigrant attainment increases with extended duration in the U.S. and higher levels of acculturation to American society. Theorists who take an ecological–cultural perspective assert that immigrant attainment is affected by the interaction of several variables such as motivation to immigrate, perceptions of opportunity, and labor market payoff for attainment. Furthermore, ethnicity and educational attainment vary in terms of academic achievement.
Racial/Ethnic Groups and Academic Performance Hispanic/Latino Youth Hispanics are a heterogeneous group with salient differences in socioeconomic status, age, country of origin, and the social context in which they immigrate to the U.S. The term Hispanic encompasses various ethnic groups that include Mexican American, Cuban, Puerto Rican, Central and South Americans. Traditional Hispanic families are hierarchical, with special authority given to the elderly, parents, males, and figures of authority. The U.S. Hispanic population has grown dramatically in recent years, now comprising 13.3% of the total U.S. population. Unfortunately, this increase is not evident in the proportional representation of Hispanics in educational attainment levels. In 2002, 59.3% of non-Hispanic Whites, aged 25 or older, had graduated high school or some college, compared with only 45.9% of Hispanic youth. Hispanics have the highest rates of high school dropout and are less likely to enroll in college. The Hispanic population is considered to be the most academically vulnerable group of people in the U.S. Forty-four percent of Hispanic students start kindergarten somewhat behind their peers, and by age 13 they are at least 1 year below expected grade level. More than 40% of Hispanics drop out before they complete high school.
Among Hispanic students, achievement levels in reading and mathematics climbed substantially throughout the 1970s and 1980s but stalled in the 1990s. Currently, only 14% of Hispanic fourth graders reach proficient or advanced levels. By the end of high school, a large portion of Hispanic students have mathematics and reading skills that are only at a level of White students of middle-school age. Consequently, neither college enrollment nor completion has increased for Hispanics in the past 20 years. Despite these findings, it is critical to note that there are some schools, districts, and even entire states where Hispanic students excel. For example, Hambrick middle school in Aldine, Texas, is composed of 71% of Hispanics of whom 85% come from impoverished homes. Hambrick’s students scored in the top fifth of all Texas middle schools in both reading and mathematics in 2000, 2001, and 2002. Additionally, disparities in academic achievement between Hispanics and Whites have been reduced in Pueblo, Colorado and achievement levels for all groups of youth have been heightened. Similarly, in Delaware the reading gains for Hispanics students have outpaced the entire nation for fourth-grade students. The literature shows that contributing factors to the above success rates were associated with: the school’s mission to develop appropriate developmental and academic guidelines for children at all grade levels; viewing state standards and assessments as valuable benchmark and leverage points; accepting the need for public accountability for ultimate results; viewing poverty and family problems as barriers that can be surmounted; and building systems that promote communication between educators, administrators, parents, and the students themselves to meet academic standards.
African American Youth African Americans differ in their geographical upbringing (for example, urban, suburban, rural), class, and income level. African Americans are descendants of Africans who were brought to the U.S. involuntarily between 1619 and 1808. After 1808 the importation of slaves to the U.S. became illegal. The thousands of slaves who were previously imported, however, remained slaves throughout the nation until slavery was abolished in 1865 through the passage of the thirteenth amendment in the U.S. constitution.
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Despite the end of slavery, American Blacks were economically and educationally behind their peers because of segregation and discrimination. Currently, a large proportion of African Americans live in poverty. In 2002, 22.7% of African Americans lived below the poverty level compared with 7.8% of non-Hispanic Whites. According to the U.S. Census, in 2002, 21% of Black families were poor compared with 6% of non-Hispanic White families. The average income of African Americans is still lower than that of Whites, and unemployment of Blacks, particularly of young men, remains higher than that of Whites. Today, African Americans constitute about 13% of the total U.S. population. In 2000, they composed 17% of the total public school enrollment, an increase of 2% since 1972. In 2003, 58.3% of all African American high-school graduates enrolled in college within 1 year (compared with 35.8% in 1982). For non-Hispanic Whites, the college participation rate in 2003 was 66.1%. Thus, the college enrollment gap was less than 8%. In the past three decades the percentages of African Americans with a high-school diploma increased by almost 40%. Many areas of the country have shown that African American students are excelling academically. For instance, in Centennial Place Elementary School in Atlanta, Georgia, the student population is 91% African American, 79% low income, and is in the top 10% of the entire state of Georgia in reading. In addition, the same school outperforms 88% of other Georgia schools on the state’s mathematics test. The literature shows that these success rates are attributed to several factors that stem from institutional to individual levels that enable academic achievement. For instance, such schools have clear goals and standards that dictate what students should learn at benchmark grade levels; they provide all students with challenging curricula that are aligned with such standards; they provide extra instruction to students when they need it; and such academic institutions are aware that good teaching matters more than anything else. Gender differences in academic achievement have been noted among African American youth. For instance, it has been reported that African American females attain higher rates of high school completion and are more likely to enroll in college than African American males. African American male students have reported lower levels of positive perception of the educational system and, consequently, are more likely to become disengaged from schools and have lower
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levels of academic achievement than their female counterparts. Resilient variables that have protected youth from academic underachievement include parental support, positive school and community experiences, educational aspirations, and motivation.
Asian American Youth Asian Americans are a diverse group of people where salient differences can be noted because they are foreign born, U.S. born, immigrant and/or refugee, multi-ethnic, and multiracial, transnational, and panethnic, and increasingly multi-generational. Asian Americans constitute only 4.4% of the total U.S. population. In 2003, the U.S. Census reported that Asian Americans had the highest proportion of college graduates. Among individuals 25 and over, 48.3% of Asian Americans had a bachelor’s degree compared with 29.7% of non-Hispanic Whites, 16.3% of Blacks, and 13.5% of Latinos. Several studies reported that Asian Americans were most likely to believe that doing poorly in school had negative repercussions, devoted relatively more time to their studies, were more likely to attribute success to hard work, and were more likely to report that their parents have high standards for school performance. In 2003, the Department of Education reported that the number of Asian American students taking advanced placement examinations in the twelfth grade increased by 36.4%. In addition, in 2002, 95% of Asian students aged 18–24 attained a high school diploma. The average SAT score, which is a college admissions test in the U.S., showed that in 1990 the median mathematics score for college admissions was 501 nationwide. The average score for Asians was 528. Asian American students have also been noted to acquire high grade point average (GPA) scores compared with other groups of people. The National Education Longitudinal Study of 1988 found that Asians had the highest grade point average (3.24) compared with 2.96 for Whites, 2.74 for Hispanics, and 2.73 for Blacks. Recent statistics from the Digest of Education Statistics report the following patterns: the percentage of high school seniors who reported being in the college preparatory or academic track were 51% of Asians compared with 46% of Whites, 36% of Blacks, 31% of Hispanics, and 23% of Native Americans. The literature shows that variables such as parental involvement, time spent on task, and study habits
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among Asian American youth have enabled this group to excel academically at all grade levels. For instance, a study showed that 65% of Asian American parents with children in kindergarten through grade 12 were more likely to take their children to a library in the past month compared with 41% of White, 49% of Black, and 44% of Hispanics families. In addition, Asian American parents who were more involved in their children’s education knew what courses were relevant for the college of their choice compared with parents who were less involved. Asian American youth have also been noted to spend more time studying and working on homework assignments compared with other minority groups. Asian American youth also spend an average of 14 hours a week studying, whereas other groups spend 8–10 hours a week. Although Asian Americans have attained high levels of academic achievement, wide discrepancies have been noted among the diverse youth that comprise this category. According to the 2000 U.S. Census, college attainment among Vietnamese Americans and other Southeast Asian Americans remains under 20%. Cambodian Americans, Hmong Americans, and Laotian Americans have been noted to have lower levels of college attainment, amounting to 9.1, 7.4, and 7.6%, respectively. Moreover, subsequent generations, specifically post-second generations, attain lower levels of academic success. Many believe that this is a result of adhering to the dominant society’s values on education and the rejection of their parent’s cultural value of attaining education. Many Asian parents value education because they believe in it and respect it. Many Asian individuals place such value on education as a result of Confucianism, where scholars and educators are placed high in the social hierarchy. It cannot be assumed that all Asian Americans achieve academically and do not need support. Rather, it is important to assess each student individually and determine the type of support they may need.
Native American Youth Native Americans are heterogeneous and differentiated by their tribal adherence. The term ‘‘Native American’’ includes over 500 different groups and reflects their great diversity of geographic location, language, socioeconomic status, school experience, and retention of traditional spiritual and cultural practices. Although Native Americans differ from one another in customs
and values, they share a history of having lost their ancestral lands, forced education in boarding schools, systematic attempts to eradicate their language and religion, and restrictions on their traditional means of obtaining a livelihood. In addition, the term ‘‘Alaska Native’’ refers to the indigenous group of people of the Americas native to the state of Alaska. They include Inupiat, Yupik, Aleut, and several native people, such as Tlingit, Haida, Tsimshian, Eyak, and other Northern Athabaskan peoples. In 1912, the Alaskan Native Brotherhood was founded, and in 1972 the U.S. Congress passed the Alaskan Native Claims Settlement Act which enabled the establishment of the 13 Alaska Native Regional corporations to administer land and financial claims. Native Americans and Alaska Natives are two indigenous groups of people native to the Americas who are distinguished by their legal treatment within the U.S. For instance, Alaska Natives were not issued titles of land under the Dawes Act. Instead, they were treated within the statute of the Alaska Native settlement act, which is a savings clause that preserved allotment applications. As of 2001, up to 300,000 acres are still pending determination of entitlement. Another difference is that Alaska Natives are allowed to harvest whales and other marine animals under the Marine Mammal Protection Act of 1972. Finally, Alaska Native tribal governments have no power to collect taxes for business done in tribal land because Alaska Natives (except Tsimshians) do not hold reservations; this was implemented by the U.S. Supreme Court decision in Alaska v. Native Village of Venetie Tribal Government in 1998. In 2000, the U.S. Census reported that about 4.3 million, or 1.5%, of the U.S. population, were Native American or Alaskan native. About 33% of Native Americans were under the age of 18, making a significant portion of this population relatively young. Approximately 30% of Native Americans live on reservations, although numbers have been decreasing because of limited available resources such as housing, educational opportunities, employment, and health care. Over 60% of Native Americans are of mixed heritage, having Black, White, and Hispanic backgrounds. The educational levels of Native Americans were below the national average in 2000. It was estimated that 29.2% of Native Americans who were 25 years or older graduated high school. In addition, 11.5% of Native Americans aged 25 or older had attained a bachelor level education. Native Americans have been
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noted for attaining fewer years of formal education compared with other racial groups. The literature has often associated this with American Indian children’s perception of teacher and peer acceptance to their cultural background. Native American children do relatively well during the first few years of schooling. However, research shows a pattern of decline and school dropout that develops in the primary grades. Many students begin their academic life happily and optimistically, but by fifth and sixth grade may begin to withdraw and become pessimistic, resistant, and indolent in the classroom owing to poor teacher–student relationships (i.e., the students belief that the teacher does not care about them), trouble at school (i.e., disagreements with school staff), value of the school system (i.e., the students belief that school is not important for their future goals), and a lack of American Indian culture within the educational system. S.D. Lemon, author of the book entitled ‘‘The education of Indian Children: Long Plains, Dakota Plains, Dakota Tipi Indians, Manitoba, 1965–1979,’’ observed that teachers associated American Indian children with negative attitudes such as lacking career aspirations and motivation, and displaying lower levels of school performance. Researchers have hypothesized that such beliefs may lead American Indian children to experience higher rates of rejection, depression, and anxiety. Although Native American students were more likely to drop out of school than White or Asian American students in 2003, they were less likely to have dropped out when compared with Hispanic youth. Furthermore, in 2003, Native American fourth- and eighth-grade students scored lower on the National Assessment of Educational Progress reading and mathematics assessments than White and Asian/Pacific Islander students. However, Native American fourth-grade students scored higher on these reading and mathematics assessments than their African American counterparts. In 2003, more Native American high school students took advanced placement tests than in previous years. It is estimated that 20% of Native Americans that graduate high school continue on to college. Native Americans in post-secondary institutions are becoming more representative and are acquiring moderate levels of post-secondary education. For instance, the enrollment of Native American students in degreegranting institutions has more than doubled in the past 25 years. In 2003, at least 42% of Native Americans 25 years and older had attended at least some college. The National Center for Education Statistics
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reported a major increase in college enrollment in 2000 for Native Americans. Several explanatory factors were noted. First, there has been an increase in graduation and college applications for Bureau of Indian Affairs schools. These schools are funded and operated by the Bureau of Indian Affairs and are attended almost exclusively by Native Americans. There have also been changes in performance on criteria for college admissions for Native American youth. For instance, more Native Americans are taking the SATs, and their scores have increased compared with previous years. In 1976, for instance, the average combined mathematics and verbal SAT score was 808, whereas in 1995 it had increased to 850. The national average SAT score is 910. There has also been an exponential increase in Native American women going to college. For example, in 1976 only 37,600 Native American women enrolled in college compared with 74,400 in1994, an increase of 98%. For Native American males, the total college enrollment rate rose by 38% during the same years.
Influential Variables Socioeconomic Status Children of color are more likely to live in urban cities and attend the public school system. In the 1970s, the 20 largest urban cities in the U.S. comprised 38% of minorities; however, in 2000 the percentage of minorities in urban settings was 60%. In 2007, the National Center for Education Statistics reported that there were 47 million children in elementary and secondary public schools. It is estimated that 40% of students attending public schools are children of color. The limited availability of financial resources can have a detrimental effect on the academic success of children of color in educational institutions. In addition, demographic factors in the teaching profession have been noted as being primarily White Americans who are female, middle class, suburban and monolingual whereas their students are increasingly youth of color who are urban residents and multilingual. Without formal training about the role of the diversity in the classroom as well as active recruitment of teachers of color, the racial/cultural experience of students may not be understood. Compounding the effects of poor school conditions, low-income families may live in neighborhoods
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that are higher in crime and lower in public services compared with high-income neighborhoods. Families who struggle to provide the basic necessities for sustenance find it difficult to provide adequate food and health services for their children. Consequently, such financial constraints may inhibit parents to give their children educationally enriching experiences such as travel, summer camp, and music lessons, many of which cost additional fees. According to the 2004 U.S. Census Bureau, both the number of individuals in poverty and the poverty rate increased between 2003 and 2004. The official poverty rate in 2004 was 12.7%, an increase of 0.2% since 2003. In other words, 37 million people were in poverty, up 1.1 million from 2003. Approximately 24.7% of Blacks, 21.9% of Hispanics, 9.8% of Asians, and 24.4% of Native Americans live in poverty in the U.S. It is of great concern that a large proportion of U.S. children come from impoverished backgrounds. Despite the fact that many families of color strive for economic security, factors such as language barriers, lack of education, discrimination, and (for some) undocumented status result in higher rates of high school dropout, post-secondary enrollment, and college completion. Such actual and perceived barriers can contribute to higher levels of acculturative stress and decreased motivation to attain higher levels of education.
Parental Involvement Parental involvement has been correlated with students’ academic achievement. This correlation has been found to be fairly consistent regardless of demographic variables (for example, age, ethnicity, sex, or socioeconomic status) or measure of achievement (for example, achievement tests, grades, grade point average). In addition, parental support has been linked to college attendance and persistence. Parental involvement may occur in various ways including communication between parents and teachers, communication with children about school issues, number of hours parents volunteer in their children’s schools, parental involvement in school activities (for example, school conferences), attendance at meetings organized by the school, parental involvement in school-related activities, and parental expectations of their children’s educational attainment. Parental support is believed to motivate students to achieve, succeed, promote educational commitment, and educational aspirations.
Parents are the most salient influence in a child’s longterm educational plans. The parents’ ability to form accurate beliefs and expectations about their children’s performance is essential in structuring the home and educational environment so that students can excel in post-schooling endeavors. It has been reported that adolescent competence is higher among youngsters raised in authoritative homes where parents are responsive and set appropriate limits. Three components that categorize an authoritative home include parental acceptance or warmth, behavioral supervision or strictness, and psychological autonomy or democracy. For example, authoritative parents are not only warmer, firmer, and more democratic than other parents, they are also more involved in their children’s academic life, more likely to make joint decisions, and more likely to maintain an organized household with predictable routines. Parental authoritativeness contributes to a child’s psychosocial development which facilitates his or her school success. It has been suggested that better performance in school is just one of many possible manifestations of psychosocial competence. Although such influential characteristics are pertinent for the academic success of children of color, parents face several barriers to such involvement. For instance, some parents lack the ability to speak the English language and, as a result, feel they are unable to engage in school activities conducted in English. Other parents may come from different countries with different educational systems and thus not understand how the educational system works in the U.S. Consequently, the parent may not be able to provide as much academic support and advocacy. Parents may also feel their role is not to be involved, but rather to show respect for the teacher’s authority through noninvolvement. Furthermore, some parents may be faced with having to work two jobs and thus find it difficult to be involved in homework supervision and school activities. Academic institutions can develop programs that invite parents to be more involved in their children’s academic life. Educational institutions may hire teachers, counselors, and community liaisons of diverse backgrounds to communicate with parents who do not speak English. Report cards, letters to parents, and conferences can be tailored to a specific language to promote greater parental involvement. Moreover, for parents from countries where teachers were viewed as the authorities and parental participation was not necessarily
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encouraged, simply inviting parents to be involved in the life of the school can be helpful for families.
Educational Aspiration The level of aspiration, which is a measure of the level of performance an individual sets for him- or herself, is often based on experiences of personal success and failure. Academic achievement has been found to influence educational aspirations among all children. For instance, studies have shown that Mexican American students with higher grade point averages were more likely to succeed in high school and were less likely to drop out. Furthermore, students reported that parental expectations, grades, and acculturation were significant effects on their expectations. Various studies have shown that children of color, regardless of socioeconomic status and demographic characteristics, are cognizant that education is a means of socioeconomic advancement. Heightened educational aspirations reduced the likelihood of dropping out of high school among all racial/ethnic groups.
Suggestions In summary, several strategies are supported by the literature and suggest ways to enhance the academic achievement of children of color. It is widely known that the collaboration of schools, communities, and families is important for academic success. Efforts from state and district levels include the development and implementation of clear standards that form the basis of curriculum development and instructional practice to specify student’s competencies by subject and grade. Institutions can have accountability standards to promote and ensure high quality and good performance of all administrators and educators. Early childhood development and initiatives are important in ensuring that preschool programs will foster young children’s development of social and school readiness skills. In addition, education programs for parents can show them how to make a concrete commitment to their children’s academic success, promote their children’s cognitive and social development, gain knowledge in improving their home as a learning environment, and take advantage of school and community resources that support achievement. The school climate is another important conduit of achievement. Educational institutions can promote
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positive expectations that all students can achieve, demand that all students excel, and encourage preparation for higher education. They can also identify and develop student potential through individualized assessments and appropriate placements. Finally, recruitment, retention, and ongoing professional development of qualified teachers who are knowledgeable in their subjects and culturally sensitive to the needs of diverse student populations are necessary to promote culturally and academically relevant educational environments. See also: > Adolescent ethnic identity; > African American youth; > Asian/Asian American youth; > Cultural resilience; > Educational resilience; > Hispanic Americans; > Latino/Latina American youth; > Native American youth
Suggested Reading Davis-Kean, E. P. (2005). The influence of parent education and family income on child achievement: The indirect role of parental expectations and the home environment. Journal of Family Psychology, 19(2), 294–304. Lemon, S. D. (1979). The education of Indian Children: Long Plains, Dakota Plains, Dakota Tipi Indians, Manitoba, 1965–1979. Manitoba: Queen’s Printers. Meece, L. J., & Kurtz-Costes, B. (2001). Introduction: The schooling of ethnic minority children and youth. Educational Psychologist, 36(1), 1–7. Ogbu, U. J., & Simons, D. H. (1998). Voluntary and involuntary minorities: A cultural–ecological theory of school performance with some implications for education. Anthropology & Education Quarterly, 29(2), 155–188. Steinberg, L., Dornbusch, M. S., & Brown, B. B. (1992). Ethnic differences in adolescent achievement: An ecological perspective. American Psychologist, 47(6), 723–729. U.S. Census Bureau. (2003). Educational attainment in the U.S.: 2003. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office.
Suggested Resources On-line Writing Lab—http://owl.english.purdue.edu/handouts/ esl/eslstudent.html: This website offers students who speak English as a second language an array of resources. Individuals will find general resources, on-line resources, and help with specific academic tasks. Ed.Gov—http://www.ed.gov/parents/academic/help/tools-forsuccess/index.html: This website presents publications for parents and teachers. Topics inform and educate parents on how they can be more involved in their child’s academic life. Topics for teachers offer suggestions on how to implement a culturally responsive curriculum.
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Access and utilization of health care
Access and Utilization of Health Care Nancy Bearss
The health care system in the United States (U.S.) has evolved over the past half century to be one of the most complex health care delivery systems in the world. It does not provide universal access to all Americans so its utilization is primarily income dependent. The U.S. government has chosen to let private insurance and private enterprise take the lead in the provision of health care with oversight and regulation by federal and state government. At the same time this country has developed the most sophisticated technology in the world for diagnosis, treatment, and ongoing medical care. There has been, essentially, no rationing of health care in this country, unlike other developed nations. This has led to a system that is indeed a paradox, where some people have access to the system that exceeds their medical need, and others have no access to health care, up to 52 million Americans according to recent estimates. In this country, unlike other nations, there is not one payer of health care, but several, and individual access and utilization of health care is dependent upon the payer. According to the latest U.S. census report, 55% of Americans were covered by employer-based private insurance. Employers contract with private health insurance companies to provide health care coverage to their employees. The cost of this coverage approaches 30% of the employee’s total wages and, over the past few years, employees have been asked to pay a percentage of this cost, known as co-pays, for medical services. In addition, many employers do not start coverage until the employee has been working for 6 months. Finally, employers vary in the range of services that they provide. Some will offer family coverage and some will limit coverage to specific medical services, hospital care only, for example. Individuals who are terminated from employment after a probationary period must be offered the Consolidated Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act (COBRA), a continuation of their current health care coverage for 18 months. The employee bears the burden of the premium to sustain his/her health care coverage but cannot be terminated from their health care, in spite of termination of the
employment. Other than these instances, employer health care coverage has gone unregulated and employers have seen premiums increase steadily each year. Twenty-seven percent of the American population is covered by government insurance. This includes federal programs such as Medicare (for individuals over 65 years of age) or Medicaid (for individuals living below the poverty level), or individuals who are covered as federal government employees (military or veterans coverage). By far this health care coverage allows the easiest access and utilization of the health care system. In addition this coverage allows for the most oversight of quality and prevention. Three percent of Americans pay for their own health insurance. This is very costly, and the coverage ranges from catastrophic care only to full medical coverage. Finally, 15% of Americans are uninsured; these vulnerable citizens tend to use emergency rooms only in a medical crisis. Community health centers are available as a safety net for the uninsured, but the presence of these centers around the country is patchy and they are not supported to the level they need to meet this huge demand. They are especially scarce in rural areas. School-based health centers have evolved over the past two decades to serve some of these uninsured children. In summary, Americans have access and utilize health care based on their economic and employment status. See also: > Health insurance; > Medicaid; implications of medications/illness
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Suggested Reading Starfield, B. (2000). Is U.S. health really the best in the world? Journal of the American Medical Association, 284(4), 483–485. US Census Bureau. (2004). Income, poverty and health insurance coverage in the United States: 2003. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office.
Suggested Resources The US Department of Labor—www.dol.gov/ebsa/consumer_info_ health.html: This website has consumer friendly versions of labor laws that protect people from losing health insurance, define the ability of employees to submit for health coverage and allow employers to understand their responsibility in providing health care coverage. It also has several links to other websites that review health benefits and labor implications.
Accountability The National Center for Health Statistics—www.nchs.gov: This national database covers the most recent information on health care utilization and access to care. The National Association of Community Health Centers—www. nachc.org: Community Health Centers are separately funded by private and public monies to provide health care to individuals who are uninsured or underinsured. This website has a regional list of these centers throughout the country. National Association of School Based Health Centers—www. nasbhc.org: The National Association of School Based Health Centers (NASBHC) links individuals to states that offer School Based Health Centers (SBHCs). SBHCs are a valuable resource in addressing medical needs of children and youth who may be uninsured or underinsured.
Accountability Julia Shaftel
Accountability in education is meant to insure that schools accomplish their educational mission. Accountability systems consist of four components: 1. Standards—descriptions of what children should know and be able to do. 2. Assessments—measures of how well children perform on the standards. 3. Goals—targets for improvement. 4. Incentives—rewards for good performance and sanctions for performance that does not meet goals. The notion of accountability comes from accounting, or keeping accurate records of business transactions. Because the concept is actually fairly new in education, schools, districts, and states are feeling their way with respect to the methods and procedures used to assure desired instructional outcomes. Each state creates curricular standards in major subject areas. Local school districts may also prepare standards. Subject-specific standards are promulgated by national educational groups representing those subjects. For example, the National Council of Teachers of English and the International Reading Association have jointly developed comprehensive standards for the English language arts for grades kindergarten through the grade 12 (K-12 includes children who are on average between the ages of 5 and 17). Of these 12 standards, Standard 9 addresses diversity in language
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use across cultures, ethnic groups, geographic regions, and social roles. Standard 10 focuses on the development of English language skills for students whose first language is not English, and recommends that the first language should be used to improve English skills. Large-scale achievement tests are widely used to evaluate how well students perform. High quality educational assessments are developed and administered by professionals with expertise in educational measurement. Portfolios and performance assessments can provide rich information about procedural and behavioral skills in authentic settings. Indirect methods such as rating scales completed by students, teachers, parents, and even peers may play a role. Other data, such as graduation and attendance rates, add to the overall picture of school performance. Assessments must be aligned with curricular standards to accurately measure student progress. In other words, test questions or samples of student work used for assessment must correspond to the curricular standards that students are expected to know. However, alignment of tests and standards present challenges. One of them is that instructional standards may be broadly stated while test questions must be specific. Another is that tests cannot cover the entire curriculum but instead contain only a small proportion of all of the possible questions that might be asked. Without alignment, however, test results do not demonstrate what students know and cannot be used to guide instruction and improve programs. Early references to accountability concepts appeared in ‘‘A Nation at Risk,’’ written in 1983 by the National Commission on Excellence in Education, that recommended educational standards in key academic subjects, achievement tests administered at majortransition points, and other diagnostic procedures to evaluate America’s schoolchildren. Accountability was included in the Improving America’s Schools Act (IASA) of 1994 with the requirement that schools assess the progress of students from low income economic backgrounds enrolled in Title I programs. The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) of 1997 made participation in district-wide and state-wide assessments obligatory for all students with disabilities. In 2001, IASA was reauthorized as No Child Left Behind (NCLB), that required states to prepare challenging educational standards in core academic content areas, and evaluate student progress for all groups of children, including students with disabilities, racial and ethnic minorities, and English language learners.
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Accountability
NCLB calls for the assessment of all children in specified grades in critical subjects including reading, mathematics, and science, according to content and proficiency standards developed for those subjects by each state. Tests are designed to assess the achievement of student groups to identify and remedy poor educational opportunities at weak schools and reward high performing schools. The purpose of large-scale testing under NCLB is to promote better education for all students, particularly those groups at risk for lower educational attainment, such as minority and economically challenged students and English language learners. Children with disabilities must also be assessed, and alternate testing methods and test modifications are permitted for a small proportion of these students. Scores on these tests must be aggregated and made available to the public by groups defined on the basis of race and ethnicity, socioeconomic status, and disability. Recognizing the critical link between teacher quality and educational outcomes for children, NCLB also calls for high standards and qualifications for teachers. Scores on the National Assessment of Educational Progress are used to compare results across the states, which use different standards and assessment methods. NCLB also provides sanctions for schools and districts that do not demonstrate adequate progress toward attainment of standards for all groups of students. Consequences for poor school performance include greater parental choice over school enrollment and free tutoring services for students. NCLB also requires that schools achieve adequate yearly progress, or AYP, to avoid sanctions. AYP is defined by the percentage of students who achieve proficient scores on state assessments. States initially had a great deal of leeway in determining baseline levels for the determination of AYP, but NCLB requires states to improve the proportion of children achieving proficiency each year until 2013–2014, when 100% of students must be proficient. AYP must be attained for all student subgroups, including minority students, English language learners, and students with disabilities. The size of reported subgroups must be large enough to protect the confidentiality of individual test scores, and for subgroup results to be stable and reliable. In any accountability system, statistical details, such as the minimum subgroup size, the setting of proficiency cut scores, and the size of confidence intervals to protect against measurement error, can have a tremendous impact on AYP and apparent school success. Ironically, states that initially set the most
ambitious achievement goals also had more schools failing to meet AYP and, therefore, being classified as needing improvement, with the consequent threat of sanctions and public disapproval. Conversely, in states with more modest progress goals, more schools met the goals, and states could tout these results as evidence of success. Tests used for educational assessment that have important consequences for individuals or schools are called high-stakes tests. The use of high-stakes tests must be carefully monitored for unwanted side effects. Narrowing of the curriculum to match test content, leaving less time for non-tested subjects such as music, history, and physical education, is a major risk when implementing accountability assessment. Inappropriate teaching outcomes may include excessive drill on practice test questions or the elimination of recess. Unethical practices such as alternative activities or field trips for low-achieving children on test days, or outright cheating, may be consequences of extreme pressure to do well on accountability assessments. Accountability assessment under NCLB is intended to evaluate entire schools, yet some states have carried accountability further by making sanctions and rewards available to individual students and teachers. Tests designed for assessing educational programs are not necessarily valid for other purposes, including decisions about individual students such as grade retention or high school graduation. Furthermore, high-stakes decisions should never rest on the outcome of a single test. One test cannot capture the breadth of a child’s knowledge and skills needed to make critical educational decisions. Even the most carefully constructed tests are imperfect, and no single test score is a sufficient indicator of a student’s knowledge in a subject area. The outcomes of decisions about individual students must be carefully evaluated before they are implemented. Grade retention produces generally negative outcomes, such as increased risk of dropping out of school. When the child bears the blame and takes the punishment for failing to do well, pressure to improve instruction for all students may be reduced because failures are attributed to students rather than to program deficiencies. Similarly, when teachers are rewarded for student progress, unanticipated outcomes may result. Excellent teachers may be tempted to transfer to high performing schools where they become eligible for financial rewards based on student performance, thus reducing the number of high quality teachers at low-achieving schools where they are greatly needed.
Accreditation
Educational accountability systems may have a greater negative impact on ethnic and language minority students, especially when those students are disproportionately enrolled in schools and districts with fewer instructional resources. These students may not have sufficient opportunity to learn from qualified teachers using excellent materials, to prepare adequately for statewide tests, or to receive remedial assistance when they struggle. The population of students learning English is growing rapidly, yet many schools and districts do not offer bilingual classes or services for students learning English as a second language, and few teachers are adequately prepared to instruct English language learners in content areas. Accountability assessments are not valid measures of content knowledge for students whose poor English proficiency inhibits their ability to comprehend and respond to test questions. While NCLB recognizes the special needs of English language learners, and calls for their improved educational attainment, no mention is made of bilingual education or consideration of literacy level in the first language. Accountability in education, with its framework of standards, assessments, goals, and incentives, is generally regarded as necessary and useful by the American public. However, educational accountability is a complex issue from a legislative as well as a statistical perspective. Just as educators must be held accountable for teaching and students for learning, legislators and the public must be held accountable for creating and maintaining fair and equitable educational systems. Unequal distribution of resources cannot help but result in unequal distribution of outcomes. To be valid measures of educational attainment for all students, including disadvantaged youth and other potentially vulnerable student groups, accountability programs must recognize and enhance both the students’ opportunity to learn as well as their performance on educational assessments. See also: > Collaborative and cooperative learning; > Education; > No Child Left Behind (NCLB); > Outcomes-based education
Suggested Reading Forrest, S. N. (2004). Implications of no child left behind on family literacy in a multicultural community. Clearing House, 78, 41–45. Hamilton, L., & Stecher, B. (2004). Responding effectively to testbased accountability. Phi Delta Kappan, 85, 578–583. Sirotnik, K. A. (2002). Promoting responsible accountability in schools and education. Phi Delta Kappan, 83, 662–673.
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Suggested Resources Mid-continent Research for Education and Learning Policy Briefs— http://www.mcrel.org/topics/policyBrief.asp: This website provides policy briefs that discuss national policy issues and their impact on state and local educators. National Association of School Psychologists Position Statements— http://www.nasponline.org/information/position_paper.html: This NASP website provides NASP position statements on a variety of school related issues.
Accreditation Thomas J Huberty
Training programs in School Psychology are approved by a state department of education to prepare students for professional roles as school psychologists and require that programs meet state guidelines for licensure. In the majority of states, a minimum of sixty graduate hours and completion of an internship are required. The majority of school psychology programs are housed within colleges or schools of education, most of which are approved to grant degrees in education by the National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education (NCATE). Accreditation is a voluntary process by which training programs seek recognition by an independent and non-governmental body that it is meeting the standards or expectations of highquality training in the respective field. In School Psychology, there are two accrediting/approval bodies: the American Psychological Association (APA) and the National Association of School Psychologists (NASP). There is also a distinction between accreditation and approval. Accreditation refers to the process of a program defining its philosophy, goals, objectives, and training model and comparing it to an accrediting body’s standards or guidelines for what a professional training program should contain. Approval indicates that the approving body has a more specific and defined set of requirements and expectations that programs must meet to be approved. The American Psychological Association accredits only doctoral programs in school psychology (Ph.D., PsyD, or Ed.D.). (Often, APA-accredited programs are incorrectly referred to as ‘‘APA-Approved’’ programs.)
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Although the majority of school psychologists do not possess doctoral degrees, APA does not review or accredit nondoctoral programs. APA considers the minimal level of training for a psychologist to be at the doctoral level. APA-accredited programs train students in foundations of psychology (individual differences and biological, social, and learning bases of behavior), as well as in methods and techniques of psychological practice and in research methods. APA also accredits predoctoral internships that meet its accrediting guidelines, although not all school psychology students complete APA-accredited internships. Completing both APA-accredited programs and internships is most advantageous for students who wish to become licensed for independent practice. Some states may require that doctoral level psychologists complete APAaccredited programs and/or APA-accredited internships. Conversely, NASP approves nondoctoral master’s and specialist level programs, as well as doctoral programs. NASP has a specific set of requirements that programs must meet to be given approval. Both APA and NASP specify that programs emphasize diversity and train students toward becoming culturally competent practitioners. Doctoral programs that are APAaccredited are considered to meet NASP approval status and are not required to submit separate applications apart from their nondoctoral programs. NASP also works in tandem with NCATE to approve nondoctoral programs in school psychology and the training requirements for both bodies are closely aligned. NASPapproved programs must submit a self-study and report specifying how they comply with training program requirements. Most programs are approved for tenyear periods, with interim reports due every five years. Completion of a NASP-approved program often facilitates licensure or certification as a school psychologist to work in the public schools. There may be slight variations in licensing requirements from state-to-state, and it is possible that a recent graduate might be given a provisional or temporary license to work in the schools while completing remaining requirements. Doctoral students who graduate from APA-accredited programs and complete an APA-accredited internship and complete required post-doctoral supervised experience are eligible to be licensed for independent practice as well as to work in the public schools. Students in nondoctoral programs must complete a 1,200 hour internship in a school setting and at least 600 hours of practicum prior to the internship. Graduates of doctoral programs must complete a 1,500 hour internship. Graduates of
NASP-approved programs are eligible to obtain the Nationally Certified School Psychologist (NCSP) credential, which includes passing the Praxis II examination in school psychology. Some programs may require that students take and/or pass this examination as a requirement for graduation. The NCSP is recognized by approximately thirty state departments of education as meeting requirements for initial issuance or renewal of certification or licensure as a school psychologist. See also: > American Psychological Association (APA); > Cross-cultural school psychology; > National Association of School Psychologists (NASP); > School roles in mental health
Suggested Reading National Association of School Psychologists (July 15, 2000). Standards for training and field placement programs in school psychology/Standards for the credentialing of school psychologists. Bethesda, MD: NASP.
Acculturation Antonia Hernandez
The process of acculturation refers to the changes that occur when a group of people experience ongoing contact with another group of people who differ in cultural values, behaviors, and attitudes. As a result of this sustained contact, changes in the original pattern of behavior may be noted among the non-dominant group of people. The process of acculturation has a psychological and social impact. Changes in behaviors, attitudes, values, and cultural identification are examples of the acculturation experience that transpire on an individual basis. The process of acculturative impact includes variability and changes in a group’s customs and economic and political life. Psychological changes are noted in individuals’ attitudes toward the acculturation process, their cultural identities, and social behaviors. The experiential process of adaptation has core psychological features that include skills that are necessary to successfully maneuver through the culturally enigmatic process.
Acculturation
Theoretical Models Two theoretical frameworks have dominated the study of this complex cultural phenomenon, the unidimensional and bi-dimensional perspectives. Initial research on immigration theorized that immigrants would be absorbed into mainstream society in a linear fashion. In other words, immigrants would lose their ethnic identities as they irremediably adhered and adopted values, behaviors, and attitudes of the host society. The unidimensional model postulates that acculturation occurs on a continuum that ranges from the immersion in the person’s culture of origin to the immersion in the dominant or host culture. A limitation of the unidimensional model is its failure to measure how an individual balances both cultures as he/she goes through the process of acculturation. In the 1970s a prominent researcher, John W. Berry, proposed a bidimensional process of acculturation that states individuals are able to maintain and link aspects of their culture of origin as they settle into mainstream society. For the bidimensional model, acculturation consists of two distinct independent dimensions: adherence to the dominant culture and maintenance of the culture of origin. A major strength in this model is that it captures the realities and challenges associated with the acculturation process. The two independent dimensions facilitate the measurement of the processes that take place when individuals come into direct and continuous contact with a different culture, as well as the changes that occur when individuals attempt to balance both their own cultural identity and the acquisition of novel values, attitudes and behaviors. Similarly, Jean Phinney introduced a bidimensional model of two independent dimensions at the core of people’s cultural identity. Following this framework, individuals may have distinct identities with reference to their cultures of origin and mainstream society. Two issues have been noted in this model: the nature and maintenance of an individual’s cultural heritage and identity, and the degree to which individuals seek to enmesh themselves within mainstream society. As these aspects of the acculturation process intersect with each other, the process can be broken down into four sectors: (a) Assimilation, where individuals adhere to cultural aspects of the dominant new society while maintaining little aspects of their own cultural legacy; (b) Separation, individuals maintain aspects of their culture of origin while rejecting any and all adherence to the dominant society’s cultural values; (c) Marginalization,
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individuals reject both cultural aspects of the dominant society and their culture of origin; 4)Integration, the last sector of this acculturation quadrant, where individuals maintain and adhere to cultural aspects of both the dominant society and their culture of origin.
Acculturation Factors Acculturation affects individuals on various levels of functioning- cognitive, behavioral, and affective. A prominent difficulty in specifying the various domains that are affected by this phenomenon is that it can be viewed as a process that can have an impact on individual or group levels. There is a dualistic effect in the process of acculturation as it affects the culture of a group and changes the psychology or behavior of the individual. The contextual factors that influence groups of people and individuals in this process are important because they directly affect how individuals adapt to a new culture. Individuals or groups of people may enter this process voluntarily or involuntarily. Some individuals or groups may physically relocate to a new environment or have their territories invaded or colonized by another group of people. The theory of acculturation emphasizes that the course of adaptation varies in individuals; similarly, the level of difficulty experienced throughout the process (acculturative stress), and finally the actual outcome experience of the acculturation process differ amongst groups and individuals. Demographic factors have been noted in the literature as being significant contributors to the acculturation process; age, gender, language, religion, socioeconomic status of the family, and others have often been identified as sources of variation that directly influence how individuals adapt to a new environment. Differences in cultural values, attitudes, and behaviors may contribute to psychological, behavioral, or social difficulties that affect the adaptation experience on an individual or group basis. Consequently, these differences may lead to conflicts as individuals try to adapt to a new environment. For instance, studies have shown that adolescent problem behavior and acculturation have often been linked to discrepancies in parent-child acculturation levels, that is, when parents maintain traditional values and acculturate at a slower pace than their adolescent children. Intergenerational acculturation gaps produce a clash in values and expectations between parents and teens that can result in increased family conflict, parentchild alienation, and youth maladjustment.
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Researchers have utilized markers of acculturation such as generation status and English language use, and have noted a link with a range of externalizing outcomes including conduct problems, juvenile arrests, alcohol and substance abuse, and early sexual activity. For example, it has been noted that acculturated Latino youth tend to display more psychological problems as they acquire and adhere to cultural values of the dominant society. On the other hand, studies have shown that more acculturated youth who utilize the English language at home tend to do better academically. Variable results have been presented throughout the literature in reference to individuals with differentiating levels of acculturation, making this a vital research area to further understand this complex cultural phenomenon.
The Case of Latino Youth and Values The Latino/Hispanic population in the U.S. has grown dramatically in recent years, now comprising 13.3% of the total U.S. population. Currently 50% of Latinos are under the age of 26. It is estimated that Latino youth will grow to nearly 29% of the total U.S. population by the year 2050. Latinos are a heterogeneous group and show salient differences in terms of their socioeconomic status, race, age, country of origin, and the social context in which they leave their country of origin and migrate to the U.S. The term Latino encompasses various ethnic groups primarily Mexican American, Central and South American, Cuban, and Puerto Rican. Traditional Latino families are hierarchical, with special preference given to the elderly, parents, males, and figures of authority. As a result of such formative cultural values in the Latino culture, the experiential process of acculturation undergone by most Latinos is important to address. For instance, familismo, a core cultural value across various Latino subgroups, carries the expectation that the family is the primary source of support, loyalty, and solidarity. Latinos are expected to identify with familistic orientation and comply with traditional cultural scripts. Another core value in the Latino culture is personalismo that stresses interdependent relations and a warm personal way of relating. Along the lines of personalismo, is the cultural concept of simpatı´a that emphasizes harmonious social relationships, and avoidance of interpersonal conflict. Finally, respeto promotes dignity and respect towards others, particularly to parents and figures of authority.
As a result, less acculturated family members may be more strongly invested in establishing and maintaining harmonious and respectful relationships and be less accepting of conflict. On the other hand, more acculturated individuals may adhere to European American approaches that value direct communication that may lead to more conflict. Different acculturative levels between parents and youth and subsequent differences in views and behaviors may, in turn, explain differences in family conflict such as parent-child conflict.
Measurement Scales Acculturation measures utilize sociocultural, behavioral and psychological characteristics to understand where individuals or groups of people stand in terms of their adaptation to the dominant society. Acculturation rating scales increase understanding of the impact of cultural variables on psychological adjustment. A prominent measure of acculturation for Mexican Americans is the Acculturation Rating Scale for Mexican Americans II (ARSMA-II), developed by Israel Cuellar and colleagues. This scale has been designed to assess the acculturation of Mexican Americans from diverse socioeconomic, educational, and linguistic backgrounds. ARSMA-II measures acculturation through an orthogonal, multidimensional approach. This instrument identifies the four distinct acculturation strategies or outcomes mentioned earlierAssimilation, Separation, Integration, and Marginalization. A major limitation of ARSMA-II is that it restricts its utility only to Mexican Americans. Research is necessary to examine the current validity of this scale. It is one of the first measurement scales to lay the foundation for future researchers to improve and test innovative bidimensional measures, not only for Mexican Americans but for other groups of people as well. It is important to be cognizant of the various limitations that are posed by acculturation measurement scales. First, acculturation measures need to take into consideration the contextual factors surrounding the acculturation process. Many individuals may be voluntary or involuntary migrants and, as a result, the adaptation process is experienced differently by diverse individuals or groups of people. Second, the acculturation process is a developmental phenomenon that cannot be captured by a measurement scale alone and, as a consequence, may be lost in theory, due to the changes that occur throughout time. As a result, the
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influence of time and context should be at the forefront of measurement strategies since these are crucial components of the acculturation process. See also: > Adolescent ethnic identity; > Immigration
Suggested Reading Gonzales, N. A., Knight, G. P., Morgan-Lopez, A., Saenz, D., & Sirolli, A. (2002). Acculturation and the mental health of Latino youth: An integration and critique of the literature. In J. Contreras, A. Neal-Barnett, & K. Kerns (Eds.), Latino children and families in the United States: Current research and future directions (pp. 45–74). Westport, CT: Praeger. Nguyen, H. H. (2006). Acculturation in the United States. In D. L. Sam, & J. W. Berry (Eds.), Cambridge handbook of acculturation psychology (pp. 311–330). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Phinney, J. (2003). Ethnic identity and acculturation. In K. Chun, P. B., Organista, and G. Marin (Eds.), Acculturation: Advances in theory, measurement, and applied research (pp. 63–81). Washington, D.C.: American Psychological Association.
Achievement Tests James A Bovaird
Achievement tests, sometimes referred to as standardized tests, measure the degree to which skills taught within schools or training programs have been attained by an examinee. Attained skills can range from narrow definitions, such as spelling, to broad skills, such as graphical interpretation. The primary function of achievement tests is to measure current skill level in a well-defined domain, but achievement tests can be used to identify specific learning deficits, academic strengths and weaknesses, class-wide or school-wide achievement deficiencies, and appropriate instruction levels. They also can be used to evaluate the success of educational programs and group students according to skill level. Locally produced achievement tests are more appropriate for day-to-day instructional and grading decisions, while centrally produced evaluations are generally more appropriate for placement, guidance and counseling, selection, and public policy decisions. Curricular decisions are generally based on centrally
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produced measures and supplemented by local instruments. Use of achievement tests in the decision-making process is often referred to as high stakes testing. A distinction must be made between achievement tests and other well-known forms of testing like aptitude and ability tests. Aptitude tests focus on homogeneous segments of ability, making few assumptions about the specific prior learning experiences of the examinees and focusing instead on predicting future performance in school or training programs. While ability tests can also be used to identify future potential, they are used to estimate general cognitive ability, or intelligence, by assessing a broader assortment of skills than pure aptitude tests. In contrast, achievement tests measure current mastery of skills related to school and training programs. Thus, they measure the effects of standardized educational experiences to gauge present subject mastery. Despite the conceptual distinction between these types of tests, the information provided by each is very similar, often resulting in strong correlations between all three types of tests. The term standardized test actually refers to the use of uniform administration procedures, but its synonymous use with achievement testing is often perceived to imply the availability of normative data. While most locally produced classroom assessments given to students are a form of achievement test (usually criterion-related), all major standardized achievement tests are centrally produced for a large constituency by various testing companies or state agencies. They are designed to be marketed to a wide audience and include information that every student at the intended level has had the opportunity to learn. The wide marketing of centrally produced achievement tests also means that normative information is available. Such normative information provides meaningful comparisons with other students at the same educational level. If several tests are concurrently normed, or co-normed, on the same sample, test users can more effectively relate performances on all tests. Ideally, achievement tests should provide comparative information to relate an examinee’s performance to his or her peers (norm-referenced) along with an assessment of the extent to which the examinee has mastered the set of educational objectives aligned with the test (criterion-referenced). However, tests cannot logistically be both norm-referenced and criterionreferenced. Criterion-referencing requires test content that is closely tied to educational outcomes. As a result, when the focus of the test is broad, criterion-referenced
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tests require a large number of items to reliably assess a large number of objectives. Some test developers have attempted to match existing items from normreferenced tests to educational objectives, a process referred to as objective-referencing, but this practice is generally not recommended. Early achievement tests were comprised of individual tests on separate school subjects such as math and reading. These tests were expensive, time consuming, and required more training for teachers or test administrators. The individual test format was replaced by batteries of tests that could be administered together. Test batteries are comprehensively planned to provide integrated coverage, minimal duplication, and joint coverage of important material. Most modern achievement tests are multilevel batteries with separate subtests for different grades or levels and overlapping sections for examinees to enter and exit at grade-appropriate locations. The use of batteries also allows for co-norming of the multiple subtests so that the shared standardization sample better facilitates comparing performances on one test with performance on another. As students progress in age, presentation of testing materials shifts from a teacher-paced oral format to a student-paced entirely written format. There is an accompanying progressive shift in the nature of the material as well from specific analysis of sharply defined competencies at early levels to a broad survey of complex skills at higher levels. Achievement tests and portions of the larger multilevel batteries that are intended for elementary school students focus on the basic skills of operating with words and numbers, including word analysis and encoding skills, while assessments intended for secondary school and college levels shift the emphasis to knowledge of word meanings, reading continuous text, and specific curricular areas and course contents. As the curriculum begins to differentiate at these higher educational levels, less material is common to all students, thus there is less need for a uniform comprehensive assessment.
Major Group Batteries The most prevalent type of achievement testing occurs in the form of group administrations of centrally produced batteries where a large number of students complete the examination under highly structured testing conditions. Rather than emphasizing recall of facts, most modern group batteries measure informationacquiring and information-processing skills like reading
comprehension, written language, math, listening skills (elementary only), basic concepts (science, social studies, humanities), study and research skills, as well as providing a composite achievement score. While content is fairly consistent across the major test batteries, the various batteries differ by publisher and in the means by which achievement is assessed. The Iowa Test of Basic Skills (ITBS) is published by the Riverside Publishing Company. Originating in 1935, the ITBS is a measure of achievement for students in kindergarten through ninth grade. Its companion tests, the Test of Achievement and Proficiency (TAP) and the Iowa Test of Educational Development (ITED), are appropriate for ninth through twelfth grade students. The TAP contains a mixture of basic skills and content which is closer to the core of secondary education. Thus, the ITBS and the TAP collectively make up the Riverside Basic Skills Assessment Program. The ITED was developed after World War II to evaluate skills learned during military service, emphasizing general knowledge and the ability to read and understand material from various fields. The entire test is a good predictor of later academic performance, but its subtests are not effective diagnostic tools. The ITBS, TAP, and ITED were all conormed with the Cognitive Abilities Test (CogAT). The Psychological Corporation publishes both the Metropolitan Achievement Test (MAT) and the Stanford Achievement Series (SAT). The MAT began in 1930 as the curriculum assessment instrument for New York City. Co-normed with the Otis-Lennon School Ability Test (OLSAT), the MAT is appropriate for kindergarten through twelfth grade students and includes a survey battery, diagnostic batteries, and writing tests. The SAT series, not to be confused with SAT administered by the College Board, consists of the Stanford Early School Achievement Tests (SESAT) for kindergarten through first grade assessment, the Stanford Achievement Tests (SAchT) for first through ninth grade, and the Stanford Test of Academic Skills (TASK) for eight grade through the first year of college. There are also several group-administered achievement tests aimed toward the secondary school and college levels. The Tests of General Educational Development (GED) developed by the American Council on Education is administered for high school equivalency certification. It assesses writing skills (both in multiple choice and essay formats), social studies, science, reading, and mathematics, and its successful completion allows college applications, jobs, and promotions that ordinarily would require a high school
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diploma. In addition, the Cooperative Test Division of the Educational Testing Service (ETS) produces a series of tests designed for students who have completed a specific course. The College Level Examination Program (CLEP), also from ETS, seeks to provide a uniform nationwide procedure for evaluating experience claimed as equivalent to college courses in 35 areas. Other major centrally produced achievement tests include two tests published by McGraw-Hill, the California Achievement Tests (CAT) and the Comprehensive Tests of Basic Skills (CTBS); the Sequential Tests of Educational Progress (STEP-III), a companion to the School and College Ability Tests (SCAT-III); and the Science Research Associates Achievement Series.
Major Individual Batteries While group tests are frequently used to pursue institutional goals like administering a test to an entire group of students (i.e., class, school, or district) to monitor overall group achievement, individual batteries are often used to assess individual learning difficulties. They are administered one-on-one, typically in clinical or educational settings, for the purpose of diagnosing learning disabilities, providing documentation of impaired performance, and identifying specific skill deficits. Typically, a student’s performance on a group battery raises a flag. More precise estimates of ability and achievement are then obtained through individual tests where the examiner can observe clinical details and further hypothesize about the student’s cognitive capacities. A larger-than-expected discrepancy between cognitive ability scores and achievement test scores can be indicative of learning disabilities. Most batteries, both group and individual, are co-normed with an ability test to better allow for evaluating achievement implications as moderated by ability. For instance, a high ability test score combined with low achievement may indicate the need for an intervention, while a low ability test score would be consistent with low achievement and result in no intervention. The American Guidance Service publishes the Kaufman Test of Education Achievement (K-TEA) and the Peabody Individual Achievement Test (PIAT). The K-TEA provides a systematic method for qualitatively evaluating subtests errors. The K-TEA has both a brief version and a full version that are both applicable for students ages 6–18. The PIAT is a 60-minute individual assessment appropriate for students ages 5–18.
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The Woodcock-Johnson-III Tests of Achievement (WJIII), published by the Riverside Publishing Company, is appropriate for individuals of age 2 through adult. The WJ-III is unique in that it was co-normed with a cognitive ability test of the same name. The Wide Range Achievement Test (WRAT), distributed by Psychological Assessment Resources, Inc. is appropriate for people ages 5–75 and is primarily used as a screening instrument. See also: > High stakes testing; > Intelligence/Intelligence Quotient (IQ); > Testing and measurement
Suggested Reading Gronlund, N. E. (2005). Assessment of student achievement (8th ed.). Boston, MA: Allyn & Bacon. Rudner, L. M., Conoley, J. C., & Plake, B. S. (Eds.) (1989). Understanding achievement tests: A guide for school administrators. Washington, D.C.: American Institute for Research.
Suggested Resources The Riverside Publishing Company—http://www.riverpub.com: This website provides products for assessment in various categories ranging from cognitive to early childhood to neuropsychological. National Council on Measurement in Education (NCME)—http:// www.ncme.org: This organization promotes scholarly efforts to advance scientific measurement in the field of education and improve instruments and procedures as well as disseminate knowledge in the field of scientific measurement in education.
ADHD >
Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD)
Adolescence Patricia M Raskin
Although there are many different models of adolescent development, most of them acknowledge the relative plasticity of human development across the life span,
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and the usefulness of the contextual view of development in adolescence. The biological and psychological growth spurts that occur between the approximate ages of 11 and 18 (although some children begin earlier, others later) are profound, characterized by more changes than any other stage of life except infancy. The development that occurs during adolescence has two substages: the changes from childhood to early adolescence, and from middle- to late-adolescence. The physical and psychological changes that occur in this period are often unsettling to the children themselves, their families and friends, and even the institutions with which they are affiliated. Although some of the characteristics that emerge during adolescence, such as the physical events of puberty and peak height velocity, have a strong genetic component, these physical changes are marginally correlated with behavior, if at all. Further, the correlations that do exist suggest that hormonal changes may serve primarily as an activating effect, increasing the likelihood of excitability and arousal for adolescents. The changes that occur tend to foreshadow adult appearance, identity, and values. Further, these changes are emergent, that is, they are often glimpses into the adult-in-becoming, rather than stable traits and characteristics per se. Adolescence is a time of trial and error, and those behaviors and attitudes that are identity-congruent can become the foundations of stability in adulthood.
The Role of Culture The existence of adolescence has been documented as a stage across cultures in a representative sample of preindustrial societies across the world. Further, all the societies studies shared: (1) the notion of a transitional period between childhood and adulthood, although the length of that period varied, (2) sex segregation, and (3) a distancing between boys and their families, making the peer group more important to boys than to girls.
Cognitive Development The most important change to occur in adolescent thought has to do with what Piaget called formal thought. This stage differs from earlier cognitive phases primarily in the degree that adolescents can
make use of abstractions. Piaget believed that this development occurs primarily because the information adolescents obtain about themselves and the world cannot be understood with the cognitive structures in place prior to adolescence without resorting to abstraction, a disequilibrating event demanding growth. Thus, adolescents are forced to broaden their thinking to help them understand the world around them. An alternative way of conceptualizing adolescent cognition is to consider the greater ability in cognition to be due to an increase in information-processing capacity. This approach emphasizes the greater knowledge and skill in handling information, which comes with age, rather than the more psychologically-based reasoning of Piaget. Vygotsky suggested that learning does not take place in a vacuum, but rather that mental functioning begins in and develops out of social interactions, and that these interactions frequently provide effective scaffolding for cognitive performance. It should be noted that few gender differences have been observed, and those that have can largely be accounted for by differential socialization.
Gender The role of gender cannot be ignored in adolescence. Initially because of the sex differences in the timing of the attainment of reproductive maturity and adult height, it is reasonable to consider the proposition that boys and girls experience adolescence quite differently. Many gender effects, however, interact with other important developmental tasks, and have more to do with how men and women are perceived and treated than about sex differences per se. An example of such a gender difference has to do with self-esteem. In one longitudinal study of 91 young adults, for instance, it was found that despite the general stability of self-esteem over time, young men were more likely to increase in self-esteem, while young women were more likely to experience a decrease in this trait. This finding was replicated in a much larger study (N = 1160), and the gender differences were found to be consistent across ethnicity The increase in men’s self-esteem has been associated with social norms, that is, the increase in boys’ self-esteem was associated with ambition and self-orientation, whereas an increase in girls’ self-esteem was associated with their ability to relate to others.
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The Development of the Self A critical developmental task of adolescence is the differentiation of the self. This component of adolescent growth is partly a function of the proliferation of social contexts to which adolescents are exposed. Adolescents describe themselves quite differently, depending on whom they are with, in what role. They suggest further, that adolescents can come to those views through two different conscious formulations: (1) the looking-glass self, that is, the sense of self worth is derived from how others feel about them, and (2) self-worth as originating from within, that is, valuing oneself first as a cue to others to value you. Another, not unrelated task, is the formation of identity, a sense of ‘‘who I am.’’ Now capable of abstract reasoning, during this period adolescents become aware of themselves in relation to society as a whole. They begin to explore, and, if successful in this task, make commitments to an occupational and ideological sense of self. The principal components of this quest are to develop a sense of sameness and unity, and to be seen as stable in this regard by others. There is considerable research on this task, much of which has been done using the identity status paradigm. In this conception, adolescents are theorized to move from Diffusion (no active decision-making, nor are there commitments to a specific occupation or ideology), or Foreclosure (a wholesale adoption of parental commitments, without exploration), through Moratorium (a period of active decision-making and doubt, with no firm commitments), to Achievement (a stable sense of identity and commitment to occupation and ideology). The successful resolution of this identity quest, according to Erikson, is identity synthesis. The unsuccessful quest results in identity confusion. There is some question, however, about whether the statuses are truly developmental, or are more reflective of character types.
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Ethnic identity is specifically about one’s awareness of and commitment to one’s ethnic origins and culture. Adolescents are especially sensitive to ethnic and cultural backgrounds. Ethnic identity development is comprised of three stages: unexamined, exploring, and achieved. Adolescents in the unexamined phase have little understanding of the meaning ethnicity has, and they adopt the prevailing cultural beliefs wholesale. Those who are actively exploring are beginning to look at what their cultural membership means in relation to the dominant culture, while those who have achieved an ethnic identity know something about their cultural history, have made commitments to their group membership and can articulate the role it plays in their lives. A strong ethnic identity can provide a buffer to discriminatory experiences, and serve as a foundation for the development of the coping skills necessary to maintain selfesteem and mental health in a dominant cultural climate that denigrates minority group membership. It has been suggested that cultural continuity may act as a holding environment in the midst of the uncertainty generated by adolescent processes. There appears to be an inverse relationship between strong ethnic identification and suicide, that is, strong cultural identification may provide a psychosocial buffer against suicide in adolescents, whereas minority ethnicity per se, however, has sometimes been identified as a risk factor for adolescent suicide. Surprisingly, these findings were reversed in a large study of Hawaiian adolescents. In this research, cultural identification put adolescents at greater risk than ethnicity alone. It is important to note that the study of attitudes about one’s own ethnicity has been of little interest to researchers of the dominant group, and little attention has been paid by those researchers to the psychological aspects of having an ethnic identity within a dominantly White culture. Because identities are embedded in systems of power, identity is a highly political issue, and individual identity is always being negotiated in relation to collective identity defined in part by the in-group.
Ethnic Identity Formation Ego Development Adolescents who grow up in families with cultural traditions that are different from the Eurocentric practices and values that are pervasive in the U.S., face a three-part developmental task. They must learn (1) the tenets of their own culture, (2) the culture reflected in U.S., institutions, and (3) how to be bicultural.
Another component of the development of the sense of self is associated with personal self-knowledge. A frame of reference for the organization of specific personality traits emerges in adolescence and becomes a source of individual differences in the adult personality.
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Specifically, ego development refers to a constellation of characteristics: impulse control, conscious preoccupations, and cognitive complexity, especially in intrapersonal and interpersonal spheres. From least mature to most mature, the stages are preconformist (presocial, impulsive, self-protective, ritualistic), conformist (two levels: conformist, self-aware; most adults fall into the conformist category) and postconformist levels of development that include the conscientious, individualistic, autonomous, and integrated stages. Research suggests that from about the age of 14, a range of ego levels can be ascertained in any age group. Further, there is evidence of some heritability of this trait, independent of cognitive function.
Moral Development Kohlberg found that children’s ideas about right and wrong develop in parallel ways to their cognitions and self-concepts, i.e., from simpler to more complex, layered perspectives. He defined six stages of moral development, subsumed into three global categories: (1) preconventional, in which moral values reside in external events rather than in persons and standards, (2) conventional: in this stage, moral values reside in performing good, maintaining the order, and meeting others’ expectations, and (3) the postconventional system of thought, in which values are derived from principles that can be applied irrespective of circumstances. Adolescents tend to move from stage 2 at about thirteen years of age and to stage 3 between 16 and 18 years of age. During college, adolescents are likely to move to stage 4. Gilligan argued that the theory and method had a male bias that failed to reflect women’s more relational values. There is little empirical support for her criticism, however.
Parental Relations Family experiences continue to be important factors in adolescent development, even though they undergo transformation during this phase. A secure attachment to parents helps give adolescents the confidence to explore outside the family, and is associated with their perceptions of competence during times of transition. Although social scientists have written about conflictual relations between parents and adolescents
since the beginning of the industrial revolution, there is no clear consensus of normative turbulence. What has been documented is evidence that with age, adolescents perceive themselves to become more emotionally and behaviorally independent of their parents. There is, however, evidence to suggest that even as this disengagement occurs, a transformation occurs that maintains continued closeness and warmth in the relationship. Although disengagement has been found to be evident in the amount of time teens spent with their families as they got older, much of this had to do with pulls from the outside, for example, time with friends, rather than affective disengagement. Although they found some evidence of this in early adolescence, by late adolescence, individuals tended to report more favorable (and less unilateral) interactions with parents. There is some evidence to suggest that the more often families eat together, the more health and well-being can be enhanced. This is probably one indicator of the degree to which the family values closeness.
The Role of Peers Much of adolescents’ time is spent with peers, mainly talking and hanging out. Interactions with friends are open, accepting, and uncritical. Indeed, peer socialization is more important at this stage, and potentially more conflicted than at any other stage. Although these relationships have been studied to some extent, the research tends to be limited to White, middle-class adolescents. Social acceptance matters to many teenagers. There is some evidence to suggest that those who are accepted are physically attractive, intelligent, and competent. They are perceived by others to be friendly, cooperative, helpful, and sensitive to the needs of others. Interpersonal understanding may be one of the most important characteristics. Social acceptance is not the same as popularity. In order to be popular, boys need to be athletic, girls need to be seen as having a good personality and being in the right crowd. Popularity, however, is also not the same as being dominant in the peer group (i.e., having high status). High status adolescents may not be as well liked as their more popular peers. In early adolescence, popular teens tend to be more able than their less popular peers to integrate and balance both their intra- and interpersonal needs, to control impulses, and to see multiple perspectives when there is conflict.
Adolescent ethnic identity
The Role of the School Because adolescence is a time of turning outward, schools play an important part in the social development of adolescents. In the United States, schoolwork accounted for an average of 25–30% of adolescent waking hours. Because of the variability in ethnic identity formation at this stage, students can respond quite differently from each other to discrimination. Good schools can develop and empower pupils, while bad ones can encourage mediocrity and worse. In general, the larger the school the lower the students’ average achievement. Poor performances in school either directly harm a student’s self-perceptions, or lead the student to not identify with academics to protect the sense of self-worth. This disidentification can lead to dropping out, and dropout rates are highest for Black and Hispanic students. For many African American and Hispanic students, school becomes an aspect of life to overcome, in part, because schools reflect the structural racism in American society. During adolescence, students become increasingly vulnerable to stereotype threat. The consequences of stereotype threat can include lower academic performance both for minority groups and for women.
Adolescent Health It is during adolescence that many positive health behaviors are consolidated; additionally, important health risk behaviors emerge during this period as well. Mortality rates increase in adolescence, not because of disease, but because of risky behavior. The leading cause of mortality in adolescence is unintentional injury. Suicide is the third leading cause of death. Perceived parent and family connectedness seems to serve as a buffer across all ethnicities, as does emotional well-being for all girls, and high grade point average for all boys. Cross ethnicity risk factors included prior suicide attempts, violence (both as victim and perpetrator), alcohol and drug use, and a history of treatment for mental health. The major causes of adolescent morbidity include substance abuse and dependence, reproductive health problems, and sexually transmitted diseases. Mental health problems also figure prominently during this phase of life. The increase in risk behavior has been associated with self-reports of appearing older than one’s peers, and can vary across ethnicity, gender, temperament, and socioeconomic status.
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See also: > Cross-cultural families; > Ego identity statuses; > Gender bias; > Adolescent ethnic identity; > Sociocultural factors; > Suicide
Suggested Reading Aronson, J. (2004). The threat of stereotype. Educational Leadership, 62(3), 14–19. Erikson, E. H. (1968). Identity: Youth and crisis. New York: Norton. Phinney, J., Cantu, C. L., & Kurttz, D. A. (1997). Ethnic and American identity as predictors of self-esteem among African American, Latino, and White adolescents. Journal of Youth and Adolescence, 26(2), 165–185.
Adolescent Ethnic Identity Annie I Lin . Derald Wing Sue
Adolescence is a tumultuous period of rapid but uneven biological, emotional, physical, and cognitive changes that create confusion and feelings of awkwardness in young people. It is also a time where identity issues become salient and important. Part of the adolescent turmoil is the inner conflict of values, beliefs, and self-concepts that are being clarified and negotiated during a precarious stage of life. Due to the intense selfconsciousness of this period, social reactions to the youngster may have an acute effect on self-esteem. Achieving a stable and positive identity and consequent feelings of self-worth are major challenges to adolescent development. Identity formation does not take place in a vacuum; it is determined by a unique combination of intrapersonal, interpersonal, and environmental factors and their interplay in the world of the adolescent individual. Although reaching a sense of personal identity is no small feat for any youth, the task is even more daunting for minority youngsters because of conflicting cultural messages, varying socio-political histories, and their salience to ethnicity and treatment in society. First, ethnic minority youths are exposed to a bicultural background composed of values and traditions from their own group and that of the larger society. Second, each ethnic group became part of mainstream culture for a wide array of reasons that included forced enslavement, political asylum, conquest, and
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economic reasons. Third, due to a distinct phenotype, virulent ethnic messages from the mainstream culture make ethnic identity issues central to the minority adolescent. Research has found the quest for ethnic identity meaning to be significantly more common for Asian American, African American, and Latino American groups than their White counterparts; it is rated as more important by all minority groups. Research has also demonstrated that ethnic pride is positively correlated with self-esteem. Therefore, a positively valued ethnic identity seems to be fundamentally related to achieving a clear, positive, and secure sense of self with important psychological implications for racial/ethnic minority groups.
Ethnic Identity Ethnic identity refers to an individual identification with a particular social group based on race, language, religion, or national origin in shaping values, beliefs, attitudes, and behaviors. Developing an ethnic identity may bring an awareness of the self within a group, a sense of belonging, and respect and pride toward the group. Part of the quest for ethnic identity is acknowledging adolescent feelings toward their racial/ethnic heritage, appreciating the salience of ethnicity in shaping their lives, espousing a stance toward their ethnic group, and choosing the strength of ethnic identification. This developmental task may be compounded by other factors such as racism and negative racial stereotypes prevalent in the society, as they all contribute to the course and final outcome of the ethnic identity quest.
Ethnic Identity: The Familial Context Generally, it is through parents and significant others that children make their first identification with an ethnic group. Research reveals that African American parents generally socialize their children to be proud of their race, and to develop positive feelings and self-esteem toward their African American heritage. Parental sensitivity to cultural diversity through modeling or frank and honest discussions of race and racism have been found to foster positive adolescent ethnic identity. Some studies reveal that Eurocentric attitudes are less prevalent among young African American children whose parents teach them about their group’s history
and racial heritage. It would appear that parental involvement in the ethnic community and culture is associated with adolescents’ sense of ethnic identity.
Ethnic Identity: The Communal Context Success of ethnic socialization of a minority child hinges on the phenotypic distinctiveness of the ethnic minority group, the ethnic density of the adolescent neighborhood, as well as the support of the ethnic community. The phenotypic distinctiveness of the ethnic minority group may prevent mainstream assimilation, invoking the sharpening of phenotypic differences, thereby providing an incentive for an ethnic identity search. In addition, the substantial presence or absence of the adolescent’s ethnic community in his or her neighborhood could affect the retention or loss of ethnic ties. When the ethnic community has considerable presence in a neighborhood, it is easier for the adolescent to acquire cultural knowledge and find role models. Furthermore, if the ethnic community is able to provide significant group activities, it facilitates the attachment of the adolescent to the community. However, if the community lacks cohesiveness or a sense of mutual support the adolescent may not be able to identify with that ethnic group regardless of its presence in the youth’s neighborhood.
Ethnic Identity: The Societal Context Due to the powerful effects that media and education have on American minority youth, racism, and derisive racial stereotypes play a vital role in the ethnic identity development of the adolescent individual. Socializing agents, such as the media and public education, present Euro American values and models as the ideal at the expense of other cultural values. Value conflicts may occur for the minority youth if they are evaluated in American society according to a standard that is antagonistic to their cultural values. For example, Asian American youths may be taught by parents to value ‘‘restraint of strong feelings’’ while Western values promote spontaneity and expression of feelings. Consequently, these youths may feel conflicted about the differing values and beliefs between traditional Asian American and Euro American cultures. In addition to reconciling conflicting values, vilified group members
Adolescent ethnic identity
may need to deal with the disparagingly different images of their group in society. Regardless of how adolescents of color may choose to identify ethnically, they may be called upon to cope with direct or indirect experiences with racism and negative racial stereotypes at the individual, institutional, and cultural levels and their coping mechanisms may have significant implications for their ethnic identity development and self-worth.
Psychological Implications The process of ethnic identity formation seems to sequentially progress through a number of phases varying from lack of awareness of one’s racial/cultural heritage, to mixed feelings of self-deprecation, and finally some type of resolution, stabilization, and racial/ethnic pride. Racial/cultural identity models describe a process that begins with an unexamined ethnic identity. During the initial phase, there may be many negative feelings toward the self and one’s group as the adolescent of color internalizes the negative stereotypes of their ethnic group often rejecting their culture of origin. At this phase, minority adolescents may also experience feelings of inferiority, inadequacy, and anxiety as they try to assimilate into the mainstream society. Triggered by direct exposure to racism, lack of positive role models, and misinformation regarding the history of their cultural group, minority adolescents may begin to doubt their existing worldview and cultural frame of reference. At this point in time, adolescents of color may feel a sense of shame and confusion for holding denigrating attitudes toward their ethnic group in the past, and feeling resentment and anger toward Whites. They may begin to experience a heightened awareness of racism and to distance themselves from White society while intensely involved with their ethnic group. Attempts to integrate ethnic attitudes transmitted from family members and denigrating stereotypes originating from the dominant society are common during this stage. This developmental process is fraught with uncertainty and distress, a risky period where adolescents may become alienated from society if they could not attain a social sense of belonging. If minority adolescents manage to resolve the crucial issues that arose during the last phase, they may experience an ethnic commitment and a renewed sense of self as they reach a more integrated and stable ethnic
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identity. Adolescents of color will now hold positive attitudes toward their own group, other groups, as well as the dominant group. Once this ethnic identity is achieved, youth of color will exhibit a calmer demeanor in dealing with racism, confidence in one’s ethnic identity, adaptive participation in various cultural contexts, and higher self-esteem compared to previous phases. In facilitating the achievement of a committed and positive ethnic identity for adolescents of color, parents, teachers, and ethnic community members must all play a role in facilitating this process of identity formation.
Interventions Given the communal context of ethnic identity formation, it may be important to create community services that provide a forum for minority adolescents to experience a sense of belonging and validation. Particularly for the adolescent family, it may be crucial to encourage the development and maintenance of existing social support systems. Educating parents of means in resolving their own ethnic identity conflicts will enhance their effectiveness as cultural transmitters and role models for their children. Training, services, and opportunities provided by schools or other organizations for parents in clarifying their cultural misconceptions and alleviating their fears regarding the mainstream culture may be conducive to the identity formation of the adolescent. In school, programs that assess the ethnic identity development of minority children and generate opportunities to learn their native language and culture should be included in the academic curriculum. Additional training in equipping teachers of ethnic minority students to be cognizant of multicultural issues in classroom instruction and revisions of existing curriculum to incorporate a multicultural emphasis would also be helpful. See also: > Ethnicity; > Ethnic identity development; > Ethnic minority youth; > Minority identity development model
Suggested Reading Fuligni, A. J., Witkow, M., & Garcia, C. (2005). Ethnic identity and the academic adjustment of adolescents from Mexican, Chinese, and European backgrounds. Developmental Psychology, 41(5), 799–811.
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Lee, R. M. (2005). Resilience against discrimination: Ethnic identity and other-group orientation as protective factors for Korean Americans. Journal of Counseling Psychology, 52(1), 36–44. Shih, M., & Sanchez, D. T. (2005). Perspectives and research on the positive and negative implications of having multiple racial identities. Psychological Bulletin, 131(4), 569–591.
Adolescent Parents Yo Jackson
According to the National Campaign to Prevent Teen Pregnancy, 900,000 teenagers become pregnant each year in the United States (U.S). Although the rate of teen pregnancy is declining, more than 4 out of 10 teenage girls in the U.S. become pregnant before reaching 20 years of age. Of these pregnancies, over half result in live births suggesting that close to half a million adolescents become parents before they reach adulthood. Of the children born to adolescent mothers, according to Royce and Balk, 30–50% involves a father younger than 20 years old, suggesting that the number of teen mothers is greater than the number of teen fathers. Given that adolescence is a significant and often difficult time of development, examination of the needs of teens who take on adult tasks, such as childrearing, is especially important. Receiving adequate prenatal care is often a problem and girls who become pregnant in adolescence tend to experience poor weight gain, anemia, and pregnancy-related hypertension. Whereas most adult mothers get prenatal care from the beginning of their pregnancy, younger adolescents are likely to get no prenatal care or only get care during the third trimester. As a result, teen mothers tend to have a higher infant mortality rate, experience more prenatal complications, and have babies with lower birth rates than children born to adult mothers. Adolescent parents, both mothers and fathers, also tend to experience less education, limited family support, and lower socioeconomic status than their peers. Moreover, the relationship between the teen mother and father tends to be conflictual and in some cases, marked by domestic violence. Even when the
relationship between the teen parents is positive, the majority of child-rearing responsibilities are left to the teen mother. Some teen mothers rely on their own parents to assist them in childcare, but the end result is often a teen that has to take on the role and responsibilities of a single parent. The data on teen fathers suggests that these teens also tend to come from low income families and are often the product of teen mothers. Most teen fathers do not live with their children although they tend to have semi-regular contact with them. Some research suggests a bleaker picture for fathers of children born to teen mothers indicating that at least 30% of these fathers are incarcerated at some point. As a result, teen mothers tend to have less parenting support and more stress than their peers. Although teen parents, especially mothers, tend to show a decline in their use of alcohol, cigarettes, and other drugs during pregnancy, the use of these kinds of substances tends to increase after the baby is born. Teen parents tend to be less knowledgeable about child development and posses limited parenting skills. Some research shows that teen parents tend to talk, smile, and touch their infants less than other mothers of equal socioeconomic status and are also less likely to be accepting and understanding of their infant’s behavior. Parents who are limited in their understanding of developmental expectations are at greater risk for using harsh and negative discipline practices than parents who comprehend developmental changes. This rejecting parenting style is associated with lower self-esteem, anxiety, and behavioral problems in children. A cycle can develop where the parent is rejecting toward the child and subsequently, the child withdraws from the parent, making the parent–child interaction less reinforcing and positive for both individuals. As a result, future positive contact becomes less and less likely. Research suggests that in addition to the risk for negative parent–child relationships, 33% of children born to adolescent parents drop out of school, 31% experience depression, and 25% become adolescent parents later in life. The research, however, is not consistent in its findings on factors related to good outcomes for teen parents. A 17-year follow-up in 1987 showed that the generally accepted negative outcomes for teen African American mothers were not found. More than two thirds of the teens had completed high school, were
Adolescent parents
employed, and did not depend on the government for income. Their children, however, demonstrated greater behavioral and emotional difficulties at school and home than children reared by adult mothers. According to East and Felice, a repeat pregnancy occurs in 35% of adolescent mothers with 17% of those girls delivering a second child within 2 years of the first child. The difficulty of rearing two or more children before reaching adulthood increases the stress on the teen and her partner, making it harder for both teens to complete school and demonstrate good parenting skills. The research also suggests that risk factors for repeat pregnancy include not returning to school within 6 months, being married or living with a male partner, and receiving childcare assistance from the adolescent’s mother. Not retuning to school and living at home and living with a male partner may give the adolescent the impression of living in an adult role without a complete grasp of what adult responsibilities entail. Frequently, second pregnancies are intentional and prevention efforts have been directed toward setting educational goals, treatment for postpartum difficulties and parenting skills, and helping the teen make a plan for the future. Efforts have also included increasing the teen’s knowledge of contraceptives; however, this has not met with universal success given that not all cultures in the U.S. share the same degree of prohibition against teen pregnancy. Having family support in general seems like a positive effort to promote good outcomes for teen parents, however, the literature is mixed in its endorsement for the role of family members assisting adolescent parents. Family support for the teen may limit the teen’s ability to take on adult roles when positive family assistance is provided. It is often difficult for parents of teen mothers to know what role to play as their teen moves into the parenting role. As the teen is simultaneously learning the sometimes challenging tasks of adolescent development, they are also taking on the role of adult parent and living in an environment where they may be viewed by their own parents as a child. It is no surprise that conflict might erupt in this context. Although it is helpful to reduce daily stress when teens receive assistance with childcare from their parents, they may not fully understand the responsibilities that come with taking care of a child, making the arrival of another child seem less stressful or undesirable. One clear benefit of family support for the teen parent, however, is that family support does tend to improve
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outcomes for the children of teen parents. Because parents can provide the teen with financial support, child-rearing information and much needed breaks, the child of a teenager is more likely to thrive then if reared with the teen parent alone. Teens that live at home, however, may benefit from greater economic stability, but ultimately their reliance on parents for childcare and financial assistance may limit the teen’s ability and willingness to live a more independent life. The picture for teen parents is not automatically bleak and some efforts have attempted to document factors related to positive outcomes for teen parents. Most research on outcomes for teen parents has explored not only the long-term outcome for the teen parent, but also the parent–child relationship and the outcomes for the child born to teen parents. On the whole, good outcomes for teen parents are defined as completion of high school or employment. In general, research shows that teens who complete school before becoming pregnant, who participate in programs for pregnant adolescents, who remain in school while pregnant, do not become pregnant again before adulthood, and those who feel a sense of control over their lives tend to demonstrate the best long-term outcomes. Teens who have friends and positive family relations with their own parents are also more likely to complete school and become gainfully employed. Programs targeting teen parents show some promise for buffering the negative effects of rearing a child during adolescence. For example, school-based programs provide multidisciplinary services designed to improve parenting skills while keeping the teen in school. Getting and keeping the teen in school is the focus to promote long-term success for the teen and the child. Teens are taught child development, appropriate child-rearing practices, and are given emotional support both during and after the pregnancy. Other non-school-based programs also have a multidisciplinary approach. These often include medical care and advocate a ‘‘life skills’’ focus for the teen parent. Teens are taught methods for applying and securing employment in addition to effective parenting techniques. The desire is to provide all medical and support services in one setting and on one day of the week so that medical visits can be timed with parenting classes and peer support group meetings. Thus far, research on programs that promote peer support only or role model programs that seek to provide support for both parent and child have yet to show
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Adoption/adopted children
long-term positive outcomes with regard to preventing future pregnancies, sustaining parenting skills, and improved child social/educational development. Regular home visits, however, do show some positive effects in terms of reducing future pregnancies, reducing dependence on government financial aid, and reducing risk for child abuse. Visits also appear to reduce antisocial behavior on the part of the adolescent mother as well as the risk for maladjustment for the children of adolescent parents. It may be that the personalized attention and support designed to meet the individual needs of each parent are more effective in helping teen parents meet their personal long-term goals for success. See also: > Adolescence; > Family therapy; > Pregnancy, Teaching about; > Sex education
Suggested Reading American Academy of Pediatrics Committee on Adolescence (2005). Adolescent pregnancy: Current trends and issues. Pediatrics, 116, 281–286. American Academy of Pediatrics Committee on Adolescence and Committee on Early Childhood, Adoption, and Dependent Care (2001). Care of adolescent parents and their children. Pediatrics, 107, 429–434. East, P. L., & Felice, M. E. (1996). Adolescent pregnancy and parenting: Findings from a racially diverse sample. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. Kirby, D. (2001). Emerging answers: Research findings on programs to reduce teen pregnancy (summary). Washington, D.C.: National Campaign to Prevent Teen Pregnancy.
Adoption/Adopted Children Liliana Lo´pez Levi
Adoption refers to a judicial proceeding in which a child establishes a new permanent family relationship bound to different parents than those who gave him or her birth. It is the legal process that some people follow to have children of their own, when biological means are not possible or not considered adequate. Adoption is an alternative way of building a family. It is important
because the family constitutes the fundamental and natural unit of society. When birth parents are unwilling or unable to provide a child with the basic requisites of life, adoption may occur, although this is not always the case. A child can be given up for adoption for several reasons: for example, if the birth parents are young and not prepared to raise a child; if they already have a family and cannot cope with another member; if one or both parents passed away; if severe personal or health problems make it impossible for the parents to take care of the child; or if a difficult situation in their country of origin such as war, hunger or disaster prevents appropriate care. The new adoptive parents acquire the right of custody and the obligation of support, parental care, guidance, and protection. They become responsible for ensuring the child receives healthcare and education in a loving environment and within the bounds of a family. Adoption establishes a lifelong commitment by everyone involved. Some children are adopted by their relatives, and others are adopted by people with no former relation to them. Adopting a child when not married can make the process more difficult but not impossible. There are many examples of single mothers or single fathers who have successfully adopted children. In some places adoption by homosexual couples is allowed, whereas in others it is a controversial matter. Adoption may also occur when someone remarries and the new spouse establishes legal bonds with the children of the former couple. Jurisdictional regulations can be traced back to ancient times. They can be found in the Code of Hammurabi and in Roman law. Here adoption was meant to ensure the continuity of a family and to guarantee inheritance in cases when there where no descendants. Nowadays, laws vary from one country to another, but there are also international standards that allow adoption from one country to another. When children are adopted by unrelated adults, the identity of the birth parents can be kept confidential, as well as information about the adoptive family. This has been considered positive in many places around the world because it helps avoid complex or problematic situations, and establishes a new independent life for all the people involved. However, in the United States (U.S.), open adoption, in which the birth parents and the adoptive parents meet with each other and even maintain a relationship, is becoming more accepted. In such
Adoption/adopted children
cases, the prospective adoptive parents and the birth mother are put into contact by doctors, lawyers, social workers, or some other mediator; sometimes they advertise to find one another. In this case, it is important to get legal advice from a lawyer who is familiar with the process to fulfill requirements of the state or country where the adoption will occur. Children can also be adopted through public or private agencies. In the U.S., the foster-care system places children under the care of a family, which may be able to subsequently adopt them. Fostering and adoption are considered to be in the best interests of the child. Their aim is to ensure the child’s physical and emotional wellbeing, guaranteed access to healthcare and education, and exposure to a loving environment. To find a new family for the child, agencies must check on the candidates for parenthood. They evaluate the reasons for adopting, health conditions, socioeconomic situation, habits, and values through a home visit to check where the child will live, among other things. Medical and psychological exams are performed, and sometimes the prospective adopting parents have to prove that they have no criminal past. Going through the assessment can be difficult and requires great patience and tolerance. The complicated paperwork, and other problems such as increased demand for adoption, the anxiety that prospective adoptive parents feel, and ignorance about the process and its implications, have encouraged black-market adoption. This refers to the selling of infants for a profit. Even if it constitutes a solution for some families, black-market adoption can lead to problems in the future. Legal arrangements were established in the best interest of the child and the adoptive parents. When the new family has solid legal bonds, the state is obliged to protect them. This is not the case with black-market adoption. A child can be adopted regardless of age, gender, ethnic group, health condition, or origin. It is easier to find a family for a baby, and becomes more difficult as the child ages; it is also easier if the child has no health problems. If a child does have a health problem, the new family should be chosen so that they can suitably deal with it. In the U.S., the Adoption Assistance and Child Welfare Act supports families who adopt children with disabilities. In some places it is harder to adopt than others. Developed countries have a smaller birth rate, and there are fewer children in need of new families; birth
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control and abortion play important roles in these cases. Another factor that reduces the number of children for adoption is the decreasing stigma attached to single mothers and their children. On the other hand, infertility problems have increased and thus created a stronger demand for children. As a consequence of these realities, many couples choose to explore possibilities of adoption outside their own country. In developing countries, poverty is a frequent reason people give their babies up for adoption. In some countries, such as China, population policies do not encourage families to have more than one child. Some tragedies such as disasters or wars also produce helpless children, and external aid is required to handle the situation. All of the aforementioned promote international adoption. International adoption by American families has increased significantly in the past decade. When cross-cultural adoption takes place, the new family faces several challenges, which can be due to physical and language differences, among others. See also: > Adolescent ethnic identity; > Ethnic minority youth; > Family therapy
Suggested Reading Coughlin, A., & Abramowitz, C. (2004). Cross-cultural adoption: How to answer questions from family, friends and community. Washington, D.C.: LifeLine Press. Gilman, L. (1998). The adoption resource book: Everything you ought to know about creating an adoptive family (4th ed.). New York, NY: HarperCollins Publishers.
Suggested Resources My Adoption Agency—http://www.myadoptionagencies.com/: This website provides information about services, location, contact methods, types of adoption, adoption financial aid, and many more subjects. Adoption.com—http://www.adoption.com/: This website provides information and resources for birthmothers, prospective and current adopting parents, professionals and agencies. It includes a feature that facilitates the reunion of birth families and adopted children. Adoption.org—http://www.adoption.org: This website has information on many issues related to adoption such as articles on fostering, international adoption, parenting issues, as well as forums and chats.
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Advanced placement
Advanced Placement Elizabeth Weiss-DeBoer . John S Carlson
Advanced placement (AP) courses are college-level courses taught with the same texts and at a similar speed to normal college courses. Like honors classes, AP courses implement curricula at a faster, more intensive pace than comparative high school classes. AP courses provide an excellent opportunity to prepare for the college experience. Increasing numbers of collegebound students use it for such experience.
College Preparation The benefits of being enrolled in AP coursework stretch beyond the college preparatory experience. The college admissions process is becoming more competitive each year. Factors such as coursework, grade point average (GPA), SAT scores, and AP test scores are becoming increasingly significant in determining a student’s acceptance into college. AP students benefit from an extra GPA point added to grades from their advanced courses. In addition, since AP courses follow a standard curriculum across the U.S. and end with national AP exams, AP courses are the prime and standardized index for student potential. Students who have attended AP courses are more likely to graduate from college, indicating a safer investment for the college. Furthermore, teaching AP courses is an indicator of the quality of the high school that the applicant attended. Many colleges consider high school quality and simply being from schools with AP courses can often have a mild boost in the probability of the applicants’ acceptance. Finally, if a student passes an AP exam, they are able to claim college credit for that course. If several AP courses are completed in this manner, it may serve to decrease the time until graduation. Thus, when comparing college-bound students with a heavy AP background to those of the ‘‘traditional’’ high school education, students from AP backgrounds may be considered more favorably for college acceptance.
Access The number of AP courses available to students has grown remarkably within the past 10 years, and the
number of students enrolled in AP courses has more than doubled since 2003. There has also been a general growth in the representation of minorities in AP classrooms but this growth has not been evenly distributed across economic strata. Compared to more impoverished areas (with schools that teach predominantly Latino or African American students), predominantly White upper-middle-class areas have both a greater number of schools with AP courses and a greater number of AP courses within these schools. From the college-bound Latino or African American student perspective, affirmative action policies helped to alleviate some of the socioeconomic status (SES) inequalities of applicants from uneven economic opportunity backgrounds. However, due to changing state and university policies, affirmative action is slowly being eliminated from many college admissions processes. Further, enrollment caps for incoming college freshman classes may only lower the prospects of talented students without access to AP courses. Mexican and African American youth are less likely to be enrolled in AP courses than their Asian and White peers. Unfortunately, research is lacking regarding specific differences in AP enrollment between students of various ethnic backgrounds. However, current research indicates that it is the economic, not ethnic, status that plays a role in determining the resources and connections that will assist a student into enrolling in AP courses. This small body of research stands in opposition to numerous other factors that suggest ethnicity plays an important role in AP enrollment. Despite criticism of ethnic and socioeconomic bias in standardized tests (i.e., Pre-SAT (PSAT) and SAT), some high schools use PSAT and SAT test scores as a cut off for enrollment in AP courses, often eliminating potentially successful students. Large schools, often found in urban areas with high minority attendance rates, are known to host a great diversity in AP courses, but generally have reduced rates of AP participation among their students. Magnet schools tend to reduce African American student AP participation and small or rural African American may not offer AP courses at all. Even when minority youth are in schools that have a high number of AP courses, there are still barriers to their enrollment into AP programs. Enrollment rates of minority students in math, science, and English AP courses are lower than that of White and Asian students. Furthermore, many students are placed in special education curricula for behavioral issues, even when they are capable of standard or more challenging coursework. Once placed in special
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education, few of these students are able to make a transition back to regular coursework as the two academic tracks are too dissimilar. These barriers must be addressed to increase the proportion of Latino and African American students enrolled in AP curricula. Past research also suggests that parental background and SES are positively correlated with a student’s academic achievement. Specifically, 75% of Black and Latino families are of low income status. This low income status reduces the likelihood of AP enrollment by 40%. Parents’ negative experiences with the education system may be carried across generations. This may explain why Latinos report lower confidence in math, science, and writing. Low parental academic achievement can also affect a student’s AP and college prospects, as there is reduced knowledge about college in the home. This may explain why parents with lower education backgrounds are generally less aggressive in pursuing AP status for their children (compared to more educated parents). In particular, Black and Latino students are less likely than their White and Asian peers to have a parent or guardian involved in their education to connect them to academic enabling resources. However, even with low socioeconomic status and parental background, minority students have been shown to succeed if they can gain access to educational resources. For example, one study found that access to educational resources had a significant impact on academic success above and beyond parents’ educational background. Another study found that successful Latino college students had used college preparatory coursework and other resources that influenced their view that college was an attainable goal. The gap between minority students and higher achievement will continue until interventions are formed. Parents, teachers, guidance counselors, and communities need to be involved in these intervention efforts. Schools come in as a critical target for these efforts. Race-matched role models and mentors in schools (e.g. race-matched AP instructors) have been shown to increase minority AP participation. Providing highly trained and culturally sensitive AP teachers may increase minority AP recruitment by creating an environment conducive to advanced learning. This is especially true given that some research shows minority students can discourage one another from academic success. Hiring Black AP instructors has been shown to significantly increase Black student participation.
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In addition, AP incentive programs that provide financial assistance to teachers and schools for the development of AP curricula and test fee assistance to students with financial need have been shown to significantly increase minority participation. Some programs have increased Black student participation by about 100%. Also, increasing the variety of AP courses increases the likelihood of a minority student enrolling in a course. Furthermore, when operating in larger schools, creating smaller schools within school programs that are separated from the larger school and smaller in size can increase minority AP enrollment. It is also preferable to require that schools remain flexible, allowing students to shift in and out of AP courses. Community involvement is another important intervention. For example, in Dallas, Texas, business and community leaders funded teacher training and student achievement incentive programs. Several federal grant programs also support intervention efforts. Finishing an AP class is positively correlated with passing an AP exam. Currently, the percentage of Latino and African American students who pass the exam is lower than that of Asian and White students. The reasons behind lower exam scores may be similar to the reasons behind reduced African American and Latino student AP enrollment. However, the benefits of being enrolled in AP courses are still present: Taking an AP course may not secure a passing test score or college credit, but passing the course is still an indicator of the student’s ability to handle college level work. Obtaining a higher education has been seen as the most salient factor when it comes to social and cultural flexibility. It has been shown that rigorous coursework, such as that provided by AP instruction, decreases the achievement gap for minority students. Furthermore, the environment within an AP classroom encourages behaviors that lead to academic achievement, forming a ‘‘culture of learning.’’ It would be beneficial to create a better system for minority AP education in that its success would create for easier transitions into the college environment for students, which would lead to their personal and future generations’ improved social mobility, education, and cultural empowerment. Such efforts may have the potential to break longstanding and cross-generational trends of poverty and low education. See also: > Assessment of culturally diverse students; > Education; > High schools; > Reform; > School, Size of ; > Under-representation
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Suggested Reading Camara, W. J., & Schmidt, A. E. (1999). Group differences in standardized testing and social stratification. College Board Report No. 99–105. Retrieved September 27, 2006 from http://www. collegeboard.com/research/pdf/rr9905_3916.pdf Contreras, F. E. (2005). Access, achievement, and social capital: Standardized exams and the Latino college-bound population. Journal of Hispanic Higher Education, 4(3), 197–214. Klopfenstein, K. (2004). Advanced placement: Do minorities have equal opportunity? Economics of Education Review, 23(2), 115–131. Solo´rzano, D. G., & Ornelas, A. (2002). A critical race analysis of Advanced Placement classes: A case of educational inequality. Journal of Latinos Education, 1(4), 215–229. Solorzano, D. G., & Ornelas, A. (2004). A critical race analysis of Latina/o and African American advanced placement enrollment in public high schools. High School Journal, Feb/Mar, 15–26.
Suggested Resources CollegeBoard—www.collegeboard.com/student/testing/ap/about. html: This national website offers information on AP and other resources involved in college preparation. United States Department of Education—http://www.ed.gov/ news/speeches/2004/03/03302004a.html: The United States Department of Education offers AP Incentive Program grants to eligible organizations to assist them in increasing the participation of low-income students in pre-AP and AP courses and tests.
African American Youth Michael A Lindsey . Von Nebbitt
African American youth comprise a large percentage of the African American population. There were 39.2 million African Americans, as of July 1, 2004, of which 32% were under the age of 18. In terms of the general population of 70.5 million Americans citizens, African American youth represented 16% (11.3 million). According to year 2003 statistics, the ten to nineteen-year-old group of African Americans constituted 14.7% of the total youth population, with an equal ratio of males to females. The majority of African Americans in the United States (U.S). are identified as non-Hispanic or nonCaribbean in their ethnic heritage, meaning that they were born as citizens of the U.S. and claim African
American as their race. Their values and customs mirror that of American citizens, generally, in the sense of traditional Western values such as a individualism and materialism. However, traditional African values such as a strong sense of community and familial connection (i.e., group versus individual success) still hold some vestige in the African American community. African Americans, while historically protected by their family and group-orientation (i.e., the prominence of the Black church in the African American community), still endure the negative, indirect consequences of slavery and its legacy of segregation and discrimination. As a result, African Americans face persistent challenges to historically maintaining strong institutions in their community that protect an essential subgroup, children and youth, from poor social, psychological, and behavioral outcomes. African American youth are overrepresented in the juvenile justice system, experience poor educational outcomes, and have high rates of physical and mental health problems among the total population of youth in the U.S.
Environmental and Contextual Challenges In 2000, law enforcement agencies made an estimated 2.4 million arrests of persons under the age of 18. Although African American youth constituted 16% of the youth population that year, they accounted for 55% of the arrests for violent crimes and 27% of property arrests. In 2000, 50% of the arrests for murder and 56% of the arrests for robbery involved African American youth. The Violent Crime Index arrest rate for African American youth (555) was nearly four times the rate for White youth (146) in 2000. For the Property Crime Index, African American youth arrests (1,885) were more than double the corresponding rate for White youth (958). Similarly, the drug offense and public disorder case rates for African American youth were nearly three times the rates for White youth. In addition to being arrested for violent crimes, African American males have the highest homicide victimization rate of any race or gender in the U.S. Of the 2,100 juvenile murder victims under 18 years of age in 1997, 47% were African American males. Official delinquency reports can potentially systematically underestimate the scope of juvenile crime. Official delinquency reports may reflect patterns of law enforcement and may not accurately reflect patterns of
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crime perpetration. Some researchers encourage the use of self-report and official delinquency data. While others found no difference in self-reported delinquent behavior among African American and White youth, a finding inconsistent with official delinquency reports. Once in the juvenile justice system, African American juvenile offenders are treated more punitively then nonminority offenders. When variables such as offense and prior records were considered, African American youth were more likely then non-African American youth to be processed in juvenile court and detained in juvenile justice facilities. In 1997, though 26% of juvenile arrested involved African American youth, they constituted 32% of adjudicated cases, 45% of cases involving detention, and 40% of the residential placement population. This differential treatment becomes more punitive the more African American youth penetrate the juvenile justice system, having a sort of cumulative effect. Consequently, a greater proportion of African American youth are being detained in juvenile correctional facilities. In contrast to higher arrest and adjudication rates, African American adolescents have later onset and lower prevalence of alcohol and other drug use than White and Hispanic adolescents. For example, being African American is associated with lower levels of drug use in sixth and ninth grade. Research in the mid to late 1990s examining patterns of drug use among Cuban American, African American, and non-Hispanic White school-aged students (grades 1–6) indicates that African Americans had the lowest rates of lifetime alcohol and cigarette use (32.4% and 11.6%, respectively). African American students (82.1%) were significantly less likely than White and Hispanic students (96.3% and 93.1%, respectively) to have had at least one drink of alcohol during their lifetime. African American students (77.7%) were also significantly less likely than White students (89.4%) to have ever used marijuana. White students (43.8%) were significantly more likely than African American students (5.7%) to have ever used cocaine (e.g. powder, crack, or freebase). African American students (11.7%) were significantly less likely than White students (61.4%) to have ever used other illegal drugs (e.g. LSD, PCP, ecstasy, mushrooms, speed, ice, and heroin). In grades 10, 11, and 12 African American students (27.8%) were significantly less likely than White students (38.7%) to have tried marijuana before age 13. Research examining patterns of drug use as African American students get older follows a consistent
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pattern. African American high school seniors reported lower lifetime and annual prevalence than White and Hispanic high school seniors for virtually all drugs. This can also be said for African American students in eighth and tenth grades. Not only do African American students have the lowest lifetime, annual, and 30-day prevalence rates for alcohol use, they also tend to have the lowest rates for daily drinking.
Education and Academic Achievement Since the early 1970s, African American youth have experienced a significant increase in educational attainment levels, particularly regarding the number of youth who graduate from high school. From 1972 to 2000, the percentages of African American young adults without a high school diploma declined by nearly 40%. African Americans were 17% of the public school enrollment in 2000, up by 2% age points from 1972. Despite these advancements, African American youth have higher dropout rates, lower high school completion, and poorer academic preference than their White counterparts. Dropout rates among 16- to 19-year-olds differ by race and ethnicity. Educational statistics over the past three decades (from 1972 to 2000) show that the status dropout rates for White youth (6.9%) have persisted at levels that are lower than the rates observed for African American (13.1%) youth. The event dropout rates for African American and White youth are 6.1% and 4.1%, respectively. Of those African American students who remain in school, their academic performance lags behind their White counterparts. Comparisons in mathematics and reading levels of African American and White children at various points between grades 1 and 12, revealed gaps in achievement at every grade studied between African American and White students on the same grade level. Even for children with similar levels of prior achievement one or two grades earlier, mathematics and reading scores of African Americans were generally lower than the corresponding scores of Whites. African American youth have made gains in completing high school. Their high school completion rate rose from 72.1% in 1972 to 83.2% in 1990. In 2000, the African American completion rate was 83.7%. In addition, the gap between African American and White completion rates narrowed in the 1970s and 1980s.
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However, like White rates, African American completion rates appear to have stabilized in recent years and the gap between the two racial/ethnic groups has thus also stabilized. The immediate college enrollment rate among African American high school graduates remained fairly constant from 1972 to 1983, and then increased from 1983 to 2000, from 38% to 55%. Since 1983, immediate college enrollment rates for African Americans have increased faster than those for Whites, reducing the gap between the two groups.
Sexual and Reproductive Health African American youth have an earlier onset of sexual activity. African American youth reported using condoms at a higher rate than Hispanic and White, 70%, 55.2% and 55%, respectively. However, African American youth reported being pregnant or having gotten someone pregnant at 1 or more times higher rate than Hispanic and White youth, 13.4%, 6.4%, and 4.3%, respectively. Of youth who reported being sexuality active in the last 3 months, African American youth reported that they used birth control pills to prevent pregnancy the least (21% White, 7.8% Hispanic, and 7.7% African American). Moreover, African American youth have a higher abortion ratio (number of abortions per 1,000 live births in the same age group per year) than Hispanic and White youth. In 2004, African American youth comprised 16% of the U.S. population ages 13–19; however, in that same year African American youth accounted for 61% of the reported cases of AIDS. In 2004, the rate of chlamydia among African American females was seven and a half times higher than the rate among non-Hispanic White females (1,722.3 and 226.6 per 100,000, respectively). The chlamydia rate among African American males was 11 times higher than that among non-Hispanic White males (645.2 and 57.3 per 100,000 respectively). From 2000 to 2004, gonorrhea rates decreased by 19.1% for African Americans from 778.1 to 629.6 cases per 100,000 in the population. In 2004, the gonorrhea rate among African Americans was 19 times higher than the rate for non-Hispanic Whites, down from 28 times greater in 2000. African Americans accounted for 41% of cases of primary and secondary syphilis in 2004. During 2003–2004, the rate of primary and secondary syphilis increased 17% among African Americans, reflecting a 22.2% increase in the number of cases among men (from 2,005 to 2,450) and a 1% increase among women
(from 805 to 813). The rates for chlamydia, gonorrhea, and syphilis were not reported specifically for African American youth.
Mental Health A definitive statement about the mental health status of African American youth is not possible. Epidemiological data on depression, anxiety, and other mental health problems among African American youth are contradictory and inconclusive. More research is necessary to understand the breadth, depth, and scope of mental health among African American youth. Some current trends indicate that African American youth disproportionately experience mental health problems like depression, anxiety, and disruptive behavioral problems. Environment plays a key role in the expression of these mental health problems. African American youth who live in urban settings experience disproportionately more depression, anxiety, and behavioral problems because of environmental stressors like poverty, violence, and high rates of illegal drug activity. Mental health problems are also strongly linked to family characteristics among African American youth. Depression, anxiety, and aggressive/disruptive behavioral symptoms among African Americans are likely to be elevated when the head of the household has low socioeconomic status (SES), receives limited social support, and abuses illegal substances. Despite the mental health challenges experienced by African American youth, mental health services to combat the problems that may accompany their struggles have been inefficient, culturally insensitive, and fragmented. The result has been a lack of evidence-based mental health practice and an underutilization of mental health services by this group. Even when African American youth do engage in treatment, the majority of them average only two to three treatment sessions. This is especially true in community-based mental health service delivery to African American youth. Schools and communities, however, can partner to provide an array of services (i.e., expanded school mental health programs) to meet the growing mental health and educational needs of African American youth. School mental health programs can serve four important functions regarding the emotional and psychological needs of this population. They include: (1) reducing the impact of risk exposure; (2) reducing the negative chain reaction following risk exposure;
African American youth
(3) establishing and maintaining self-esteem and selfefficacy, and (4) opening up new opportunities. Among urban African American youth, for example, research indicates that expanded school mental health services improve academic performance, behavior, and attendance. Positive relationships with school personnel (i.e., teachers, mental health practitioners/ counselors) can have a positive effect on the mental health and well-being of African American youth who experience individual and family stressors that impact their educational and social performance.
Heterogeneity: Differences Among African American Youth Youth within the broad category of African Americans differ depending upon a number of factors. For example, the experiences of rural African American youth differ from the experiences of urban African American youth; African American youth from upper-income families may not face some of the challenges that African American youth from low-income families encounter. The African American youth population is not homogenous. Thus, it is important to understand the heterogeneity of this population as attempts are made to identify risk and protective factors influencing their academic achievement and psychological well-being. African American youth face many obstacles, yet they continue to overcome adversity through strong connections with family members, positive relationships with adults outside the family, and increased connectedness to historically powerful entities like the church and other community-based entities such as Big Brother, Big Sisters, or 100 Black Men of America, Inc. Despite the mounting evidence of risk and negative outcomes among African American youth, the triumphs of these youth in the face of seemingly insurmountable risks are noteworthy. Vulnerability and protective factors that increase or reduce risk are important to note regarding individual, family, and neighborhood/community factors that increase or reduce risk for this population.
Vulnerability and Protective Factors Researchers argue that salient protective and vulnerable factors and processes affect at-risk individuals as they operate on individual, family, and community levels.
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Protective factors are internal and external resources that modify or buffer the impact of risk factors. Vulnerability factors are internal characteristics that increase the likelihood that an individual will succumb to risk exposure. For example, being an adolescent male within an urban context is a vulnerability to increased involvement in illicit activities and being a female within this context is a vulnerability to increased mental health symptomology. It should be noted, protective factors and mechanisms are catalytic in that they may increase self-esteem and efficacy and may lead to the opening of new opportunities; they may also reduce the impact of risk factors and negative chain reactions associated with risk situations. Perhaps no area is as widely contrasted in terms of outcomes among African American youth than genderspecific outcomes. For example, research indicates that African American girls fare better in traditional educational settings than boys as indicated by grades and classroom decorum, and are likely to attend college at higher rates than boys. Several factors may explain these gender-specific differences, including the fact that youth who have a high degree of parental support and who experience school communities as caring have positive educational outcomes. School engagement and academic motivation have also been identified as positive influences on educational achievement among African American youth. Historically, African American boys have not been supported as well as girls in traditional educational environments and are often disengaged from schools and academic achievement. This reality for boys may be explicative of the disparate gender differences we see regarding school engagement and achievement outcomes for African American boys versus girls. Gender-specific differences have also been noted regarding mental health outcomes among African American youth. For example, similar to studies in the general population, African American girls are more often depressed than boys. Moreover, African American boys are more likely to exhibit more externalizing behaviors and these behaviors may account for their overrepresentation among school suspensions and their disproportionate involvement in the juvenile justice system. African American youth, however, may be protected from negative outcomes related to their mental and behavioral health. For example, research has found that protective influences against mental health and behavioral problems among African American youth
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include parental supervision (among girls) and parental encouragement (among boys). Moreover, research has also found that African American youth whose fathers were involved in their care, even if they are not physically in the home, have better behavioral outcomes in school. The majority of African American youth grow up in single parent, typically female-headed, families. Statistics indicate that 60–70% of African American families are headed by single mothers. Some research has indicated that children who grow up in single parent families are more likely to experience poverty and associated psychosocial stressors (i.e., increased access to drugs and delinquent peers) and are more likely to be involved in antisocial and delinquent behaviors. Because African American youth are disproportionately reared in single parent families, they are at increased risk for experiencing the ill affects and stressors associated with growing up in single parent families. These facts certainly paint a bleak picture regarding the outcomes of children reared in single parent families. However, these facts are oriented towards a deficit model regarding this family structure. At the other end of this continuum is the adaptation and coping-focused model, which tends to highlight the positive interactions that African American youth from single parent families enjoy with their family members, that is, kinship support. Among African American youth, kinship support has been associated with high scholastic self-concept, low levels of antisocial behavior, and low use of alcohol and drugs. In this family context, childrearing is traditionally seen as the collective responsibility of the extended family, thus single parents experience a wealth of support from family members and friends regarding childrearing responsibilities. Moreover, parental qualities such as warmth also protect children regarding child anxiety outcomes (i.e., sad, shy, withdrawn), whereas corporal punishment is predictive of acting-out behavior. Studies also suggest that support from extended family members may also decrease the negative impact of familial stressors (i.e., being reared in a single parent family) on child mental health (i.e., anxiety). Thus, development in a single parent family does not have to be pathological and successful parents in this situation often find ways to extenuate the positive aspects of this experience in interactions with their children—interactions that are typically encouraging, supportive, and exhibit some level of parental demandingness.
African American youth are more likely than other groups to live in low-income families and reside in neighborhoods characterized by high violence and drug exposure. Living in such contexts heightens their risk of maladaptive adjustment. For example, it was found that children exposed to chronic neighborhood violence were more anxious and fearful of being left alone, played more aggressively, had more difficulties concentrating, and experienced memory impairment. Similarly, it was found that inner-city adolescents exposed to higher levels of community violence endorsed more fears (e.g., fears of injury, the unknown, and danger) than those with lower exposure. Neighborhood or environmental influences place urban youth at particular risk of involvement in violent behaviors in several ways, including: diminished economic opportunity, high concentrations of poor residents, high levels of transiency, high levels of family disruption, low community participation, and socially disorganized neighborhoods. Families can serve as a moderating influence regarding the effects of neighborhoods and communities. Attachment to community and its impact on child outcomes was examined among a sample of African American caregivers and youth. It was found that the association between how well a parent knew his or her neighbors and the presence of child behavior problems differed depending on the degree of neighborhood economic impoverishment, such that children in poor neighborhoods had higher internalizing problems when their parents reported knowing many neighbors. Additionally, further studies indicate that when individuals from the community or local organizations (i.e., mentors, religious leaders) positively interact with youth, the risk of maladaptive adjustment to neighborhood-level risk is mitigated. Organizations such as Big Brothers, Big Sisters, or 100 Black Men of America, Inc. have instituted mentor and academic enrichment programs in low-income, African American communities that have made positive contributions to the lives of African American youth.
Resilience and African American Youth From a basic understanding, resilience entails maintaining functional competence in the face of risk. Resilience is broadly defined as the ability to achieve positive adaptations in the context of significant threats to
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development. Resilience can be further characterized by the interaction of biological, psychological, and environmental processes. Though the resilience framework provides an excellent lens through which to understand African American youth development, few social and behavioral scientists have written on its application to African American education and mental health. Hence, empirical studies that identify factors that lead to positive adaptations despite the presence of risk among African American youth are scarce in the professional literature. Of the limited resilience research conducted among African American adolescents, it has been found that a number of individual characteristics act as protective, compensatory, and vulnerability factors within high-risk situations. Resilient African American youth from highly stressed environments exhibit the following protective characteristics: (1) diverse, flexible social skills; (2) positive peer and adult interactions; (3) high cognitive skills; and (4) resourcefulness in new situations. Individual resiliency, however, in the African American community should be viewed in the context of major values that characterize the adaptive responses to the historical and social experiences of African Americans in the U.S. Included among these values is the importance of: (1) religion and the church and (2) flexible roles and the extended family network. The church has long been considered the central or most important institution in the African American community. When African Americans have been historically marginalized and disenfranchised in other contexts (i.e., employment, educational opportunities), they could always experience a sense of empowerment through religious expression and service to the community of fellow African American worshipers in church. Attending church on Sunday mornings has been very much a family ritual in many African American families, and the church has shaped the values and belief systems of many African American families. Even among those African Americans who do not attend church, their current or historical religious perspectives shape their views on marriage, abortion, adoption, and childrearing practices. In terms of service to youth and building on the strengths of African American youth and their families, the church often provides opportunities for African American youth to receive spiritual and moral encouragement, academic enrichment via tutoring and mentoring programs often offered through the church, and access to positive adults and role models whom youth can look to for guidance and support.
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A strong family and social network in which family members and other adults (i.e., neighbors, family friends) are positively connected to each other can serve to build the strength of children and families. African Americans have historically been a group that values family ties and connections to a large network of family and fictive kin. Such ties and connectivity serve to foster family resiliency by improving parents’ general disposition, decreasing feelings of being overwhelmed by parenting tasks, and providing additional tangible and intangible information resources. Studies on family resiliency also indicate that high levels of community support in African American families has been linked to greater levels of social interaction in children, higher levels of academic achievement, and overall enhanced social and emotional well-being. See also: > Community interventions with diverse youth; > Cultural resilience; > Mentoring diverse youth; > Resilience building prevention programs
Suggested Reading Clauss-Ehlers, C. S. (2004). Re-inventing resilience: A model of ‘‘culturally-focused resilient adaptation.’’ In C. S. Clauss-Ehlers, & M. D. Weist, (Eds.), Community planning to foster resilience in children (pp. 143–159). New York: Kluwer Academic/Plenum Publishers. Gibbs, J. T. & Huang, L. N. (2003). Children of color: Psychological interventions with culturally diverse youth. New York: Jossey-Bass. Hrabowski, F. A., Maton, K. I., Greene, M. L., & Greif, G. L. (2002). Overcoming the odds: Raising academically successful African American young women. New York: Oxford University Press. Hrabowski, F. A., Maton K. I., & Greif, G. L. (1998). Beating the odds: Raising academically successful African American males. New York: Oxford University Press. LaGrange, R. D. (2004). Building strengths in inner city African American children: The task and promise of schools. In C. S. Clauss-Ehlers, & M. D. Weist, (Eds.), Community planning to foster resilience in children (pp. 83–97). New York: Kluwer Academic/ Plenum Publishers.
Suggested Resources Center for Disease Control (CDC)—http://www.cdc.gov: The CDC is the principal agency in the U.S. government for protecting the health and safety of all Americans and for providing essential human services. National Center for Educational Statistics (2005)—http://nces.ed. gov/pubs2002/digest2001: The purpose of the Digest of Education Statistics is to provide a compilation of statistical information covering the broad field of American education from pre-kindergarten through graduate school.
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Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (2003) Statistical Briefing Book (OJJDP/SBB)—http://www.ojjdp.ncjrs.org/ ojstatbb/population/overview.html: The OJJDP/SBB provides access to online information via OJJDP’s website to learn more about juvenile crime and victimization and about youth involved in the juvenile justice system. 100 Black Men of America, Inc.—http://www.100blackmen.org/: This is an organization of professional African American men committed to the intellectual development of youth and the economic empowerment of the African American community based on the following precepts: respect for family, spirituality, justice, and integrity. 100 Black Men has chapters throughout the U.S. and offers mentoring and educational enrichment programs for African American youth.
Clubs are examples of this type of program that offers a variety of activities and programs for teens who have specific interests, needs, or talents. The extended day model promotes programs often run by schools designed to increase student academic success. These programs serve students of any age and often focus on those in the grades subject to high-stakes testing. These programs may also use a range of strategies including remediation and enrichment. The extracurricular model encompasses a wide range of activities, lessons, team sports, and clubs that bring young people together with adult teachers and coaches.
After-School Programs
After-School Programs for Elementary and Middle School Students
Jo-Anne Manswell Butty . Charlynn Small . Velma LaPoint . Cheryl Danzy
After-school programs for children occur during afterschool hours and exist in schools and community centers serving students from one school or different schools. There are three types of after-school arrangements: daycare, after-school, and extended school day programs. They can also be classified into four program types: (a) school-age childcare, (b) youth development, (c) educational after-school programs, and (d) extracurricular activities. Further, schoolbased after-school programs are usually administered by: schools, community- based organizations, and community (university)/school partnerships.
After-School Program Models There are four major after-school models. The schoolage childcare model emerged during the 1980s, growing out of the childcare movement designed to meet the needs of working families. School-age childcare programs typically provide a range of activities, so allowing children a fair amount of choice from day to day. The positive youth development model evolved from adolescent prevention programs during the 1980s. Recognizing that the deficit-oriented model of drug abuse or pregnancy prevention had limited effectiveness, advocates of this approach work with young people to build on their assets and engage them in their communities. Boys’ and Girls’
Most after-school programs target children at the elementary school level. Research reveals that the vast majority of children enrolled in these programs are third grade or younger. Once children enter middle school, they are much less likely to participate in afterschool programs and their participation drops even further when they enter high school. However, middle school programs have become increasingly common over the past decade because of the new No Child Left Behind (NCLB) legislation that requires all students to master several academic benchmarks as they face key transitions from elementary to middle school and middle school to high school. Children in urban environments, especially low-income children of color, are placed at increased risk for failing to meet these benchmarks because they may face major challenges involving their families, schools, communities, and the larger society. After-school programs can provide an avenue for helping urban students successfully navigate across key developmental, social, emotional, and academic challenges. Of course, such programs must be appropriate to the age and development of the children, as well as challenging, culturally relevant, and connected to the children’s daily lives.
After-School Programs and Extended Learning Extended learning after-school programs are mostly an extension of the school day and often sponsor tutoring, homework help, and academic support
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for low-performing students. The goal of these school-sponsored programs is increased student performance, with the assumption that more time in such a program will result in better outcomes for students. For many students, especially underachieving students, ‘‘more school’’ is sometimes not the answer. Thus the goal of many of these academically oriented programs is to engage community partners and achieve desired goals by providing a wider variety or more focused after-school activities and opportunities for the development of the whole child.
After-School Programs and TwentyFirst Century Skills Over the past decade, school districts have seen extended after-school programs move from a smattering of academic support activities to a central function of the school system. However, a gap still exists between the knowledge and skills most children learn in school and the knowledge and skills required for the twentyfirst century. Students need to learn academic content through real world examples, applications, and experiences both inside and outside the school. Well-designed after-school programs can fill this gap. Despite increased federal funding for twenty-first century community learning centers, disparities in access and quality persist. Programs in affluent or middle class neighborhoods are more likely to have computer labs, playing fields, direct instruction in the arts, enrichment activities, and sports, and are more likely to provide snacks or meals than programs in poorer neighborhoods.
After-School Programs and Urban Communities After-school activities have the potential to counteract the effects of a range of factors that contribute to urban children’s lack of opportunities and underachievement. Resiliency and asset-based research allows us to understand the factors that help promote engagement in learning for all students. Included in these factors is a sense of oneself as a competent learner and appreciation of the knowledge and assets students bring from home/community to the classroom. In particular, quality after-school programs are thought to buffer children against negative outcomes by offering them (a) supervised, constructive activities and positive
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enhancement of critical skills; (b) an organized program for reinforcing the school curriculum and cultivating strengths; (c) more time for academic instruction; and (d) a safe harbor during peak hours for violent juvenile crime and victimization. Race, class, and ethnicity remain powerful predictors of school achievement. Despite several decades of educational reforms, the achievement gap persists. After-school programs are a promising strategy for providing marginalized young people with (a) learning opportunities and experiences that are available to most middle and upper-class students; (b) experiences that broaden their horizons, build on their interests and skills, and facilitate positive relationships withadults and peers; and (c) links to classroom expectations.
Effective After-School Programs Evidence suggests that effective after-school programs should include proper staff training, a well-developed infrastructure, and buy-in from family members. For older students there should be student buy-in and involvement in program development. The research also highlights the following features of positive developmental settings: (a) physical and psychological safety; (b) appropriate structure; (c) supportive relationships; (d) opportunities to belong; (e) positive social norms; (f) opportunities for skill building; and (g) integration of family, school, and community partnerships.
Effects of After-School Programs Studies show that after-school program participation is associated with higher grades and test scores, especially for low-income students. After-school programs have been linked with greater engagement in learning, improved attitudes toward school, higher expectations for school achievement, better work habits, and higher attendance rates. Research also suggests that participation in after-school programs yields a variety of social and emotional benefits for youngsters, such as improved self-esteem.
After-School Programs and Group Differences Many parts of the United States have experienced a sudden, rapid growth of different immigrant
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populations. Often these youths are challenged by cultural adaptation that can affect development, but bring a wealth of assets with them. In recent years there has been a proliferation of school-based programs aimed at various multicultural groups. In addition to an emphasis on activities that focus on high academic achievement, multicultural educators believe it is essential for youth to be provided with different experiences aimed at addressing some of their challenges and including the requisite opportunities that allow continued commitments to their community cultures and values. In addition to school-sponsored after-school programs, there has been an increase in developmental research comparing different types of activities. This includes a growing number of programs specifically designed to address the needs of multicultural elementary and middle school youth. For example, the Escuelitas (Spanish for ‘little school’) is a comprehensive, culturally informed after-school program that targets Mexican American girls from third through eighth grades, to proactively address teen pregnancy prevention and other community problems. This is done by providing girls with multiple opportunities to learn about their culture and by facilitating their knowledge of how community shapes their lives as Mexican American girls. Conversely, in response to a large population of immigrant youth (mostly Latino), a rural after-school mentorship program was created with the aim of fostering a more bicultural identity, as well as empowering students to find academic success. National survey results of after-school programs found 56% of responding programs enroll youth from more than one language group, and one in four serves English Language Learners (ELL). Very few program directors reported having enough bilingual staff to work with these youths in their home languages and even fewer staff who are trained effectively serve youths who speak little English. Half the programs that enroll a significant number of ELLs do not have any staff who speak the home languages of the participants and their families.
positive attitudes, and behaviors. When properly designed, after-school programs can have strong positive effects on children’s academic, social, and emotional lives. This is especially true for students whose personal circumstances put them at higher risk of school failure and for those ethnic and cultural groups who may be new immigrants. See also: > Community approaches to improving child success; > Community schools; > Urban schools
Suggested Reading Mendez-Negrete, J., & Saldana, L. P. (2006). Can a culturally informed after-school curriculum make a difference in teen pregnancy prevention? Preliminary evidence in the case of San Antonio’s Escuelitas. Families in Society, 87(1), 95–104. Miller, B. M. (2003). Critical hours: After-school programs and educational success. Retrieved January 30, 2005, from http:// www.nmefdn.org/uimages/documents/critical_Hours.pdf. U.S. Department of Education (2003). When schools stay open late: The National Evaluation of the 21st century community learning centers program. Washington, D.C.
Suggested Resources National After-School Association—http://www.naaweb.org/: The National After-School Association is dedicated to the development, education, and care of children and youths during their out-of-school hours. Federal After-School website—www.afterschool.gov: This government sponsored website aims to connect after-school providers to Federal resources that support children and youth during out-of-school hours. It also provides useful information on running a program and activity ideas.
Aggressiveness Holli E Sink
Conclusion Effective after-school programs of all arrangements and program types must strive to meet the needs of all young people to experience success and competence, and to develop healthy relationships with adults and peers, together with a rich variety of skills,
Aggression is used to describe a myriad of different behaviors, thus a concise definition of this broad term has been constantly debated. In general, aggressiveness describes acts that are destructive, hostile, or harmful. Aggressiveness may refer to overt acts (e.g., physically fighting or verbally threatening) or more indirect acts
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(e.g., spreading rumors or purposely excluding others). To understand aggression better, research has focused on various types of aggression and different motivations for aggressive acts. For example, the distinction between proactive (purposeful actions to gain a desirable goal) and reactive (defensive reactions to situations perceived as hostile) aggression has been important in understanding underlying motivations that lead to aggression. Bullying (i.e., repetitive, proactively aggressive acts targeted at weaker individuals or groups) is a prevalent concern, especially in schools, that dominates much of the current research on aggression. It has traditionally been thought that males are generally more aggressive than females. However, more current research suggests that females may be less physically aggressive than males, but tend to aggress in a relationally oriented way when they are aggressive. Society’s main concern is focused on physical aggression. Acts such as the Columbine High School shootings and the September 11th terrorist attacks illustrate the particularly detrimental impact physical aggression can have on individual victims, families, schools, and communities. Aggressive behavior is one of the most frequently cited symptoms that cause children and adolescents to be referred to mental health institutions and is one of the most common behaviors encountered by those working within the juvenile justice system. Individuals who persistently behave aggressively not only adversely affect their victims and communities, but aggressors themselves are more likely to have negative outcomes. Aggressive children are more likely to be rejected by peers compared to children who are not aggressive. Additionally, aggressiveness in childhood may lead to later delinquency, violence, and drug abuse. When young children are consistently aggressive, they are commonly diagnosed with Oppositional Defiant Disorder, and if aggressive behavior persists in later childhood, a diagnosis of Conduct Disorder may follow. Patterns of severe aggressive behavior in adulthood are usually associated with the diagnosis of Antisocial Personality Disorder. Research suggests several common predictors that are likely to lead to aggression, including domestic abuse, poor parenting, and exposure to violence. Domestic violence, one of the most common predictors of aggression, serves as a model for children to resolve conflicts through aggressive acts, particularly in interpersonal relationships. Similarly, harsh and rejecting parenting, poor parental supervision, abusive, and neglectful parenting, separations from parents and exposure to violence via
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television, video games, or friends are also common predictors of aggressive behavior. Research suggests that when children experience inappropriate responses from their parents, they are more likely to have difficulty regulating their own emotions, often leading to problems with aggression inhibition. On a positive note, research suggests that healthy parental attachment, consistent discipline, high parental involvement, close parental monitoring, and minimal exposure to violence all decrease the likelihood that children will be aggressive. Research has consistently shown that aggressiveness is stable over time. That is, children who are described as aggressive at young ages are more likely to be aggressive and violent in adolescence and later into adulthood. Thus, it is imperative to intervene with aggressive children early in childhood at the first signs of persistent aggressive behavior. For interventions to be most effective, they should involve many systems (i.e., home, school, and community) and should strive to teach aggressive children alternative ways to behave by replacing aggressive behavior with prosocial behavior. Evidence suggests that the school environment is very influential in children’s behavior. Therefore, rewarding prosocial behavior school wide is often an effective way to reduce the likelihood of aggressive acts. Similarly, social skills training is particularly effective when used alongside other prevention or early intervention strategies. Teaching appropriate social skills can increase the likelihood of aggressive children establishing trusting relationships, thus lowering the likelihood of victimizing others. When teaching appropriate social skills, it is crucial to teach skills that are culturally appropriate, as the relevance of these skills may vary greatly depending on the community. See also: > Bullying; > Community violence; > Conduct disorders; > Early intervention; > School violence; > Social skills
Suggested Reading Chang, L., Schwartz, D., Dodge, K. A., & McBride-Chang, C. (2003). Harsh parenting in relation to child emotion regulation and aggression. Journal Family Psychology, 17(4), 598–606. Crenshaw, D. A., & Mordock, J. B. (2005). Understanding and treating the aggression of children: Fawns in gorilla suits. New York: Jason Aronson. Crick, N. R., & Grotpeter, J. K. (1995). Relational aggression, gender, and social-psychological adjustment. Child Development, 66(3), 710–722.
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Suggested Resources The Center for Disease Control’s Division of Violence Prevention— http://www.cdc.gov/ncipc/dvp/dvp.htm: This website includes information and statistics regarding violence and various resources related to violence in general, including youth violence. National Youth Violence Prevention Resource Center—www. safeyouth.org: This website provides resources for professionals, parents, and youth striving to prevent youth violence. Illinois Center for Violence Prevention—http://www.icvp.org/ index.htm: The Illinois Center for Violence Prevention is a statewide nonprofit group that seeks to prevent violence across the life span. Stop Bullying Now!—http://stopbullyingnow.hrsa.gov/index.asp? area¼main: This website summarizes the concept of bullying and offers ways for children and adults to deal with bullying. It also offers creative ideas that teachers can use in the classroom.
American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry (AACAP) Natasha K Segool . John S Carlson
The American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry (AACAP) is a nonprofit organization dedicated to the promotion of positive mental health among children and adolescents. Founded in 1953, AACAP is composed of child and adolescent psychiatrists and other physicians who work to promote the comprehensive evaluation and treatment of psychiatric disorders in children and adolescents through research, training, advocacy, prevention, and collaborative efforts. According to Mental Health: A Report of the Surgeon General, approximately 21% of children and adolescents meet diagnostic criteria for a mental health disorder; however, more than two thirds of these children do not receive specialized treatment. Among those children who do receive treatment, the use of psychotropic medications among children and adolescents under the age of 20 has increased significantly over the past decade, with approximately 6% of healthinsured youth reporting the use of psychotropic medication in 1996. Stimulant and antidepressant medications were the most commonly prescribed psychotropic medications among minors. In 2004 and
2006, respectively, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) issued black box warning labels for antidepressant and stimulant medications due to concerns that antidepressants may be associated with increased suicidality and stimulants may be associated with increased cardiovascular risks among children and adolescents. However, in both cases, the AACAP recommended the continued use of these medication treatments along with careful monitoring. There are numerous barriers that limit access to adequate mental health services for children and adolescents who are experiencing psychological distress. The most prominent barrier is the shortage of trained professionals to treat emotional, behavioral, and developmental disorders in American youth. One of AACAP’s current legislative priorities is the Child Health Care Crisis Relief Act, H.R. 1106/S.537, which is designed to address the shortage of child mental health professionals by creating funding incentives to encourage the recruitment of professionals to the fields of child psychology and psychiatry. Cultural, ethnic, racial, and social factors also influence whether or not people seek help for mental health concerns, who they seek help from, the types of social supports they have, the stigma attached to mental illness, and how they experience symptoms of mental illness. With respect to race and ethnicity, minority populations are less likely to seek treatment than Whites and are more likely to seek informal sources of support such as clergy, family, and friends before seeking professional help for mental health concerns. This difference may be related to greater fears of treatment and mistrust of mental health professionals in minority populations. Furthermore, a disproportionate number of minority children live in poverty in the U.S., and poverty is associated with poorer mental health. Additionally, children who are uninsured or who have private insurance are significantly less likely to receive mental health services than publicly insured children. This indicates that although public insurance such as Medicaid offers important access to care for some children living in poverty, many children do not access care due to limitations in private sector service provision or financial barriers. Schools and primary care physicians are frequently the first to detect and provide initial treatments to children with mental health needs and they function as a gateway to specialty care services. The public school system is the primary mental health service provider for nearly half of all children who have serious
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emotional disturbances that receive treatment. Only one in five children ever accesses specialty services such as psychological or psychiatric services. In recognition of this large gap in service provision, child and adolescent psychiatrists, psychologists, social workers, and primary care physicians must work to develop a greater understanding of the sociocultural factors associated with lower rates of mental health service utilization. By developing greater cultural sensitivity, mental health professionals will be able to better recognize and support the mental health needs of children and adolescents living in diverse cultural, family, and community settings. See also: > Access and utilization of health care; > Psychotropics; > School roles in mental health; > School-Community Mental Health Centers
Suggested Reading Burns, B. J., Costello, E. J., Angold, A., Tweed, D., Stangl, D., Farmer, E. M., & Erkanli, A. (1995). Children’s mental health service use across service sectors. Health Affairs (Project Hope), 14, 147–159. Kataoka, S. H., Zhang, L., & Wells, K. B. (2002). Unmet need for mental health care among U.S. children: Variation by ethnicity and insurance status. American Journal of Psychiatry, 159, 1548–1555. Thomas, C. R., & Holzer, C. E., (2006). The continuing shortage of child and adolescent psychiatrists. Journal of the American Academy of Child Adolescent Psychiatry, 45, 1023–1031. Zito, J. M., Safer, D. J., dosReis, S., Gardner, J. F., Magder, L., Soeken, K., et al. (2003). Psychotropic practice patterns for youth: A 10-year perspective. Archives of Pediatric & Adolescent Medicine, 157, 17–25.
Suggested Resources The American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry— http://www.aacap.org U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (1999) Mental Health—http://www.surgeongeneral.gov/library/mentahealth/ home.html: A Report of the Surgeon General. Rockville, MD: U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, Center for Mental Health Services. U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (2001) Mental Health—http://www.surgeongeneral.gov/library/mentalhealth/ cre/: Culture, Race, and Ethnicity–A Supplement to Mental Health: A Report of the Surgeon General. Rockville, MD: U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, Center for Mental Health Services.
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American Psychiatric Association (APA) Joseph B Layde The principal professional organization of United States (U.S.) psychiatrists is the American Psychiatric Association, which somewhat confusingly goes by the same initials (APA) as the American Psychological Association, a professional organization of psychologists. Psychiatrists are medical doctors who, after medical school, have completed residency training in the specialty of psychiatry. Over 35,000 U.S. and international physicians are members of the American Psychiatric Association, which traces its history to 1844, when it was founded as the Association of Medical Superintendents of American Institutions for the Insane. The organization’s name was changed in 1892 to the American Medico-Psychological Association; its present name was adopted in 1922. The provision of excellent mental health care for psychiatrically ill children and adults is the paramount goal of the American Psychiatric Association. The association works to ensure effective, humane treatment for those with mental illnesses, mental retaration, and substance abuse problems by educating the public about mental disorders, encouraging excellence in the education of psychiatrists and other physicians, and advocating public policy changes to ensure the availability of effective treatments to all patients who could benefit from them. The American Psychiatric Association also promotes research into the causes and treatments of mental disorders and represents the professional interests of psychiatrists. The organization publishes, among many documents, Practice Guidelines for a variety of disorders, and the Principles of Medical Ethics with Annotations Especially Applicable to Psychiatry, which includes procedures for handling complaints of unethical behavior by psychiatrists. The annual spring meeting of the American Psychiatric Association brings together thousands of psychiatrists from around the U.S. and the world; scientific reports on the diagnosis and treatment of mental illness are the main focus of that meeting. The American Psychiatric Association’s annual fall meeting, the Institute on Psychiatric Services, places more emphasis on public and community psychiatry, with
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particular attention paid to improving the day-to-day social lives of patients. The publishing arm of the American Psychiatric Association, American Psychiatric Publishing, Inc. (APPI), publishes seven professional journals, including the premier journal of U.S. general psychiatry, American Journal of Psychiatry, the multidisciplinary journal Psychiatric Services, and the journal of university departments of psychiatry, Academic Psychiatry. APPI is also a leading U.S. publisher of books on psychiatry and mental health, and publishes the bestselling Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) for the American Psychiatric Association. The DSM, currently in its 4th edition, Text Revised (DSM-IV-TR), is the authoritative classification guide for psychiatric illnesses, and is widely used in fields beyond psychiatry, including psychology, social work, and the law. An affiliated corporation of the American Psychiatric Association, known as the American Psychiatric Institute for Research and Education (APIRE), was founded in 1988 to consolidate efforts to encourage scientific research as a basis for psychiatric practice, and public policy on mental health. The philanthropic and educational arm of the American Psychiatric Association is the American Psychiatric Foundation (APF), which funds educational programs, fellowships, grants, and awards devoted to improving public education about mental illness. Seventy-six district and state branches provide local professional organizations for psychiatrists in the U.S. Puerto Rico, and Canada. Each district branch elects representatives to the Assembly of the American Psychiatric Association, that meets twice annually to discuss mental health policy, governmental relations and legislation relating to mental health, standards of psychiatric practice, and other areas of interest. Councils, committees, and task forces constitute the so-called ‘‘components’’ of the organization, that have an annual meeting in September. The Board of Trustees of the American Psychiatric Association comprises the chief officers of the organization, trustees elected out of seven geographical areas of the U.S., Puerto Rico, and Canada and at large, as well as representatives of psychiatric residents—‘‘members-in-training’’—and psychiatrists who have recently completed residency training—‘‘early career psychiatrists.’’ The American Psychiatric Association provides referrals for children and adults to psychiatrists
throughout the U.S. and Canada through its district branches and through a central Answer Center, which can be reached toll-free by telephone 1–888–35PSYCH (1–888–357–7924) from the U.S. and Canada, and þ1–703–907–7300, from outside the U.S. and Canada. See also: > American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry (AACAP); > American Psychological Association (APA); > Cultural psychiatry
Suggested Reading American Psychiatric Association (2000). Diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders, (4th ed.). Text revision. Washington, D.C.: American Psychiatric Association.
Suggested Resources American Psychiatric Association—www.psych.org: This is the website of the APA and provides detailed information about the APA and membership, updated news, guidelines, and research. HealthyMinds.org—www.healthyminds.org: This APA supported website focuses on mental health issues of interest to the general public.
American Psychological Association (APA) Julia Shaftel
The American Psychological Association (APA) is the largest association of psychologists worldwide. The mission of the APA is to advance psychology as a science and profession for the promotion of health, education, and human welfare. The APA supports psychological research, maintains high educational and ethical standards for psychologists, and seeks to increase psychological knowledge through professional meetings and publications. Recent issues of the Monitor on Psychology, the monthly APA
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newsletter, contained articles focusing on Asian and Hispanic psychology and mental health. Multicultural concerns and issues are frequently highlighted in APA publications. There are 53 divisions within the APA, each devoted to a branch of psychological research and training. Division 16, School Psychology, features publications, scholarships, grants, conferences, and educational opportunities for school psychology students, trainers, and practitioners. Division 16 publishes School Psychology Quarterly, a peer-reviewed journal of school psychological research. Division 45 is the Society for the Psychological Study of Ethnic Minority Issues, which encourages research and promotes public welfare through the application of psychology to ethnic minority concerns. Division 45 publishes the journal Cultural Diversity and Ethnic Minority Psychology. Many branches of the APA seek to serve the public through psychology. The Public Interest Directorate addresses the advancement of human welfare and the fundamental problems of human justice for all segments of society. Program areas highlight women; disabilities; minority groups; aging; children, youth, and families; and lesbian, bisexual, and gay concerns, among other topics. Recent publications have addressed anti-semitism, HIV/AIDS and women of color, and the psychological aspects of international conflict. In addition, the Public Interest Directorate supports projects, publications, and scholarships to increase psychological knowledge about public interest issues. The Valuing Diversity project is an example of such an effort. This project has compiled two databases of professional research and model programs to assist communities to address diversity issues. The Office of Ethnic Minority Affairs (OEMA) within the Public Interest Directorate provides scholarships and awards and promotes research and grantfunded activities involving ethnic minority group issues, such as disparities in health care and the response to Hurricane Katrina. This office also seeks to improve the training of psychologists with respect to multicultural issues and diversity. In 2002, the OEMA published the Guidelines on Multicultural Education, Training, Research, Practice, and Organizational Change for Psychologists, that seeks to provide psychologists with resources for addressing multiculturalism and diversity in psychology training, research, and practice.
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Children, Youth and Families (CYF) is a section of the Public Interest Directorate that promotes the development and dissemination of knowledge, policy analysis, advocacy, and public information about a range of education and children’s mental health issues. Among numerous topics addressed by policy statements on the CYF website are violence in video games, bullying, children with disabilities, children’s mental health, school dropout prevention, and homelessness. The APA’s Education Directorate is the center that addresses educational issues of all kinds. The mission of the Directorate includes enhancing the quality of teaching and of learning outcomes, increasing financial and public policy support for education, and serving the needs of our multicultural society. The Education Directorate oversees seven programs, including the Center for Psychology in Schools and Education (CPSE). This program connects the activities of the APA with federal agencies and professional societies toward improving the education and development of children and adolescents. Topics recently addressed by the CPSE include the needs of gifted children, teaching practices, and zero tolerance policies for violations of school rules. See also: > American Psychological Association (APA): Office of Ethnic Minority Affairs (OEMA) and Committee on Ethnic Minority Affairs (CEMA); > Counseling; > National Association of School Psychologists (NASP); > School psychologist
Suggested Reading Opipari-Arrigan, L., Stark, L., & Drotar, D. (2006). Benchmarks for work performance of pediatric psychologists. Journal of Pediatric Psychology, 31(6), 630–642.
Suggested Resources American Psychological Association—www.apa.org: This is the official Webpage of the APA. Here can be found a variety of resources, departments, and information on the Office of Ethnic and Minority Affairs, the Center for Psychology in Schools and Education, and guidelines for psychologists. For example, on the Kids and the Media webpage at http://www.apa.org/topics/ topickidsmedia.html are book reviews, articles in the popular press and scientific journals, and APA resources about children and media such as TV and video games. Some of the many other APA website topics include anxiety, depression, sleep, learning and memory, race, stress, and testing issues.
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American Psychological Association (APA) Minority Fellowship Program (MFP) Jacqueline A Conley
The Program The American Psychological Association (APA) Minority Fellowship Program (MFP) began in 1973 under the auspices of Dalamas Taylor. The program was developed as a training program for doctoral students and postdoctoral trainees who were ethnic and racial minority researchers. Since 2005, over 1072 Fellows have received support through the MFP. Financial support for this program is federally funded. Today, program supporters/sponsors include: the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH), National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA), National Institute Neurological Disorders and Strokes (NINDS), and the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA).
Objectives of the Program The overall objectives of the MFP are to increase the knowledge of mental health issues of ethnic minority groups and to improve treatment modalities delivered to diverse groups. This undertaking is achieved through collaborative efforts with doctoral students and postdoctoral trainees and experts in particular areas along with funding support by various federal agencies.
Fellowships The MFP has two categories for fellowships: Psychology and Neuroscience. Each fellowship has basic eligibility criteria and applicants can only apply for one fellowship program at a time. Listed below are the fellowships offered through the MFP. The Mental Health and Substance Abuse Services (MHSAS) Predoctoral Fellowship is geared to those pursuing doctoral degrees in clinical, counseling, and
school psychology, or other mental health services areas. Potential fellows should have a particular interest in mental health and substance abuse research, delivery of services, and policy. The MHSAS Postdoctoral Fellowship is geared to those who are early career doctoral recipients and are interested in developing a career in mental health services research. The Mental Health Research Fellowship (MHR) is geared to those pursuing careers in research psychology related to ethnic minority mental health. The HIV/AIDS Fellowship is geared to those pursuing careers as research psychologists specializing in HIV/AIDS. This fellowship requires the submission of a specific application. The Substance Abuse Research Fellowship (SAR) is geared to those pursuing careers as research psychologists specializing in substance abuse. This fellowship requires the submission of a specific application. The Diversity Program in Neuroscience Fellowship is geared to those pursuing careers in neuroscience. Both predoctoral and postdoctoral fellowships are offered. The doctoral fellowship is opened to students in psychology or any life science discipline related to neuroscience.
Deadlines and Awards The application deadline for all the fellowship programs is January 15th of the year in which support is being sought. The awards are announced in April.
Selection Criteria The basic requirements are considered during the selection process:
Commitment to ethnic minority mental health and substance abuse services Knowledge of ethnic minority psychology or mental health services issues Fit between career goals and training environment selected Potential to become a culturally competent mental health service provider demonstrated through accomplishments and goals Scholarship/grades Letters of recommendation
American psychological association (APA): office of ethnic minority affairs (OEMA) and committee on ethnic minority affairs (CEMA)
Stipends The stipends are issued by the MFP and vary yearly based on the amount set by the federal funding agency. Stipends are provided for up to 3 years; however, stipend support for 3 years is provisional and must be renewed each year. Reappointment is contingent upon the satisfactory academic progress of the fellow and continued support from the federal funding agency. APA/MFP contact: 750 First Street, NE Washington, D.C. 20002-4242 Phone: (202) 336-6127 Fax: (202) 336-6012 See also: > Education funding; > Rewards
Suggested Resources American Psychological Association: Fellowships—http://www. apa.org/pi/wpo/fellows.html: This APA website offers a directory of selected scholarships, fellowships, and financial aid information for women and ethnic minorities. American Psychological Association—http://www.apa.org: This is the official homepage for the APA. This site provides information for psychologists, students, and the public regarding issues in the field of psychology.
American Psychological Association (APA): Office of Ethnic Minority Affairs (OEMA) and Committee on Ethnic Minority Affairs (CEMA) Dinelia Rosa
The American Psychological Association’s (APA) Office of Ethnic Minority Affairs (OEMA) was created to increase the scientific understanding of how culture pertains to psychology, and how ethnicity influences
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behavior. Among the most salient tasks of OEMA are efforts to increase and enhance the delivery of appropriate psychological services to ethnic minority communities and to encourage all psychologists to develop some minimal level of multicultural competence. It also seeks to promote both greater inclusion of ethnic minorities in organized psychology and the development of public policies that support the concerns of ethnic minority psychologists and their communities. The OEMA also promotes recruitment, retention, and training opportunities for members of ethnic minorities in psychology. Some of the specific programs administered by OEMA are the Diversity Project 2000 and Beyond; Committee on Ethnic Minority Recruitment and Retention (CEMRRAT) Implementation Grant Fund for the APA 5-Year Plan for Ethnic Minority Recruitment, Retention and Training, and the Psychology in Ethnic Minority Serving Institutions (PEMSI) initiative. The OEMA is actively involved in publications, special projects, and grants in an effort to reach its goals. OEMA also administers federally funded projects related to school violence prevention, health disparities, and the integration of mental health into public primary healthcare settings. In addition, OEMA operates a Psychology and Racism project and a job bank service. Finally, the office provides administrative support for the APA’s Committee on Ethnic Minority Affairs (CEMA); Commission on Ethnic Minority Recruitment, Retention, and Training in Psychology Task Force (CEMRRAT2 TF); Textbook Initiative Work Group (TIWG); and the Council of National Psychological Associations for the Advancement of Ethnic Minority Interests (CNPAAEMI). The APA Committee of Ethnic Minority Affairs (CEMA) was established by the Executive Committee of the Society for Industrial-Organizational Psychology (SIOP) and is administered by OEMA. It began with general concerns related to industrial and organizational aspects of concern to ethnic minorities (Native American/Alaskan Native, Asian/Pacific American, African/Caribbean American, and Latino/Hispanic American). Among the goals of CEMA is to increase the scientific understanding of those aspects of I-O psychology that pertain to culture and ethnicity; increasing educational, training, job, and career opportunities for ethnic minority persons in I-O psychology; and promoting the development of culturally sensitive models for the delivery of services in I-O psychology.
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CEMA has evolved into a more inclusive agency, and now its vision is to enhance ethnically diverse and multicultural environments in such a way that all APA members will see themselves as more competent and empowered to achieve their own and collective goals. CEMA is also committed to disseminate its mission throughout APA to such an extent that its values and goals will reach the larger community. CEMA has promoted the integration of a multicultural psychology and is a contributor, together with other divisions and committees, to the APA Guidelines on Multicultural Education, Training, Research, Practice, and Organizational Change for Psychologists approved in 2002 as APA policy by the Council of Representatives. These fundamental guidelines were implemented to promote and ensure cultural sensitivity and competence throughout activities included in the profession of psychology. See also: > American Psychological Association (APA); > Cross-cultural psychology; > Ethnicity
Suggested Resources APA—Office of Ethnic Minority Affairs—http://www.apa.org/pi/ oema/homepage.html: This is the official homepage of OEMA and offers access to publications as well as information about projects and programs. APA Guidelines on Multicultural Education, Training, Research, Practice, and Organizational Change for Psychologists—http:// www.apa.org/pi/multiculturalguidelines/formats.html: An APA report.
American School Health Association (ASHA) Susan F Wooley
ASHA was founded as the American Association of School Physicians on October 27, 1927 at the annual meeting of the American Public Health Association in Cincinnati. The charter members represented 29 states and Canada. Interest in the Association grew so rapidly that in 1936, the American Association of School Physicians opened its membership to all professionals interested in promoting school health. The organization officially became ASHA.
The American School Health Association (ASHA) unites the many professionals working in schools who are committed to safeguarding the health of schoolaged children and youth. ASHA is a multidisciplinary organization of administrators, counselors, health educators, physical educators, psychologists, school health coordinators, school nurses, school physicians, and social workers. Its mission is to protect and promote the health and well-being of children and youth through coordinated school health programs as a foundation for school success. To accomplish its mission and provide national leadership, ASHA has adopted five goals: 1. Interdisciplinary Collaboration. Promote interdisciplinary collaboration among all who work to protect and improve the health, safety, and wellbeing of children, youth, families, and communities. 2. Professional Development. Provide professional development opportunities for all those associated with school health programs. 3. Advocacy. Provide advocacy for building and strengthening effective school health programs. 4. Research. Encourage quality research to strengthen school health programs. 5. Resources. To fulfill these initiatives, ASHA must acquire human, fiscal, and material resources. Vehicles used to accomplish these goals include the peer-reviewed, indexed Journal of School Health; an annual conference with over 100 professional sessions; books and monographs related to the work of school health professionals; a members-only listserv where participants can share new findings and resources plus get assistance with issues; continuing education contact hours available through both conference attendance and self-study options; advocacy on behalf of issues related to the health and welfare of students and school staff; grant-funded special projects; and a website. The Journal of School Health’s ten issues per year are available both in print and on-line versions. ASHA’s commitment to interdisciplinary collaboration extends to how it does business. Grant-funded and other projects involve relevant groups; other interested groups hold meetings and trainings in conjunction with the annual conference; and ASHA has formal liaisons with many coalitions and organizations. ASHA’s more than 2,000 members live in every state in the U.S. and in over 50 other countries. More than half of members practice in kindergarten through
Anxiety
grade 12 schools or advise and oversee health education or health services programs in schools or state agencies charged with managing school health programs. Members have the option of joining Sections, that are discipline specific (i.e., mental health professionals, physicians, nurses, health educators, and school health coordinators), and Councils, that focus on cross-disciplinary issues of interest. Available councils include Administrative Support for School Health; Alcohol, Tobacco, and Other Drugs; Early Childhood Health Education and Services; Food and Nutrition; Health Behaviors; Indigenous Health; Injury and Violence Prevention; International Health; Physical Education and Physical Activities; Research; School Health Instruction and Curriculum; and Sexual and Reproductive Health. See also: > Center for School-Based Mental Health Programs (CSBMHP); > School-Community Mental Health Centers; > School roles in mental health
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or dangerous situations. However, persistent and excessive anxiety can lead to negative outcomes with regard to youths’ interpersonal relationships, social competence, and school adjustment if left untreated. Resistance to going to school, an inability to concentrate, difficulty with friends, and sleep problems on an ongoing basis are potential indicators of anxiety. Beginning at a very young age, children begin to experience feelings of anxiety around strangers or during separation from primary caregivers. When children are a bit older, anxiety can result from thinking about imaginary creatures such as monsters or real-life creatures such as cats and dogs. Besides feeling anxious about academic performance, school-age children may experience anxiety through interactions with teachers and peers. This, in turn, may result in low self-esteem, teasing, or bullying from others, and social alienation.
Types of Anxiety Suggested Reading O’Rourke, T. W. (2005). Promoting school health: An expanded program. Journal of School Health, 75(3), 112–114.
Suggested Resources www.ashaweb.org: This is the site of ASHA
Anxiety
Anxiety becomes a disorder when a high degree of distress and worry start to interfere with a child’s ability to function in daily life, which includes functioning in family, school, or social settings. Anxiety disorders are among the most common forms of mental problems in children and adolescents. Between the ages of 9 and 17, approximately 13% of youngsters experience some kind of anxiety disorder. The lifetime prevalence for anxiety disorders, as a group, is about 25%. In addition, about 50% of children and adolescents with anxiety disorders are often diagnosed with a second anxiety disorder or with other forms of mental disorder, such as depression. Several types of anxiety disorders can have an effect on children and adolescents.
Ya-Ting Tina Yang
Generalized Anxiety Disorder Anxiety is a stress-related response that is often characterized by worry, concern, fear, and nervousness. The state of anxiety was once considered to be normal in the developmental process. It is not uncommon for children and adolescents to experience feelings of anxiety in situations such as the first day of school, the first date, giving presentations, or taking exams. Such mild, brief anxiety may actually help the individual stay alert and focused on tasks as well as face challenging
Generalized anxiety disorder (GAD) is characterized by constant, intense worry and stress about upcoming events and occurrences that can lead to the presentation of physical symptoms such as restlessness, fatigue, difficulty concentrating, muscle tension, or sleep disturbance. Youngsters with GAD may worry about their academic performance, sports activities, natural disasters, their future, the safety of family members, and their own health. Even when a child is not being judged and
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has always performed well in the past, he or she still ruminates and worries excessively. Owing to this anxiety, this type of child may be a perfectionist or unsure of him- or herself. The child may redo tasks if he or she perceives flaws or imperfections in assignments. This child may need constant approval and reassurance from others.
Separation Anxiety Disorder Separation anxiety is common and considered normal among infants and toddlers; however, it not as appropriate for older children or adolescents. The hallmark sign of separation anxiety disorder is that the child exhibits great upset when faced with the possibility that he or she may be separated from the caregiver. Youngsters with separation anxiety disorder often fear for the safety of their parents. They worry that their family members may get into accidents or die. As a result, they have difficulties leaving their parents to attend school, fear being alone, and withdraw from social activities that take them away from their parents. Fear of separation can lead to dizziness, nausea, or palpitations.
Social Anxiety Disorder Social anxiety disorder is characterized by a persistent and intense fear of social situations with the worry that the individual will be embarrassed or humiliated publicly. Situations such as having to write, speak, or perform in front of class or in public can elevate anxiety. Children and adolescents with social anxiety disorder are overly self-conscious, fear looking foolish, and are afraid of making mistakes or responding with the wrong answer. As a result, they may fall behind in school and even avoid going to school or attending social events completely. Youngsters who feel anxious in these situations are not often able to articulate their fears and as result may exhibit psychosomatic symptoms such as palpitations, tremors, sweating, diarrhea, blushing, and muscle tension.
Panic Disorder Panic disorder is characterized by repeated and unexpected ‘‘panic attacks’’ with no apparent reason.
Panic attacks are marked by periods of intense fear that last from minutes to hours. They are characterized by symptoms that include heart palpitations, shortness of breath, sweating, trembling, and/or a feeling of imminent death. Children and adolescents with panic disorder often feel anxious most of the time, including the time between each panic attack.
Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder Children and adolescents with obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) are trapped in thought and/or behavioral patterns that occur repeatedly and of which they have no control. Children with OCD may engage in repeated hand washing and counting rituals and demonstrate the need to have things arranged in a specific way. The repetitive thoughts or behaviors are difficult to end even when the child or adolescent recognizes them to be senseless and distressing.
Posttraumatic Stress Disorder The onset of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) can occur after the child or adolescent witnesses or experiences a stressful event, such as physical or sexual abuse, a shooting, gang violence, earthquake, or tornado. Children and adolescents with PTSD may reexperience the trauma through continual flashbacks and nightmares, coupled with constant fear and anxiety. As a result, they may have sleeping problems in addition to having difficulty concentrating, being irritable and/or overly sensitive, and having an inflated startle response. With PTSD, youngsters’ interest and participation in their usual activities are remarkably diminished and they may emotionally alienate or detach themselves from others.
Specific Phobias Specific phobias are characterized by intense unrealistic fears towards exposure to a specific object or situation. Some of the common childhood phobias include: the dark, animals, injections, blood, storms, heights, water, elevators, driving, flying, tunnels, and closets. Children, unlike adults, may not be able to articulate their fears; in turn, they may avoid the situation or they may have tantrums, crying, clinging, fidgeting, headaches, and stomachaches.
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Cultural Aspects of Anxiety
Suggested Resources
Issues such as differing cultural values and adjustment to a new country may contribute to higher levels of anxiety. For example, those who speak fluent English may have lower levels of anxiety than those who are not fluent in English when living in a predominantly English-speaking culture. Acculturation may also contribute to anxiety as the child or adolescent and his or her family try to adjust to the new host culture while maintaining ties to the culture of origin.
Anxiety Disorders Association of America—http://www.adaa.org/: The Anxiety Disorders Association of America (ADAA) is a national, nonprofit organization composed of professionals with goals of improving lives of individuals who suffer from anxiety disorders by promoting the prevention, treatment, and cure; raising professional and public awareness; supporting research in finding out causes and treatment; and speaking on behalf of people with anxiety disorders in legislating, media, and medical/scientific community settings.
School Refusal
APA
Anxiety in children can lead to school avoidance or school refusal. Regardless of the form of anxiety experienced, children sometimes have trouble going to school on a regular basis or struggle staying in school once present. This is especially common among school-age children between the ages of 5 and 6 and between 10 and 11, who are often in a transition phase from one school to another. At this point the child may experience separation anxiety, be fearful of making friends or being bullied, or have concerns about their academic performance. The child may feel anxious not only when separated from caregivers, but also riding on a bus, eating in a cafeteria, or interacting with other children or teachers. If school refusal that results from anxiety is overlooked, it can have a negative impact on children’s self-esteem, interpersonal skills, coping skills, and education. Caregivers and teachers are encouraged to seek out professional assistance regarding appropriate treatment options if they suspect a child’s or adolescent’s anxieties are more than just a temporary maladjustment. See also: attacks
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Ethnic minority youth;
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Panic disorder/
Suggested Reading Bernstein, G. A., Borchardt, C. M., & Perwein, A. R. (1996). Anxiety disorders in children and adolescents: A review of the past 10 years. Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, 35(9), 1110–1119. Glover, S. H., Pumariega, A. J., Holzer III, C. E., Wise, B. K., & Rodriguez, M. (1999). Anxiety symptomatology in MexicanAmerican adolescents. Journal of Child and Family Studies, 8(1), 47–57.
American Psychiatric Association (APA); > American Psychological Association (APA)
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Arab American Children Karen L Haboush
Figures from the 2000 U.S. Census suggest the number of Arab Americans is at least 1.2 million, reflecting a 40% increase between the 1990 and 2000 Census. Many Arab American groups estimate the number of Americans with Arab ancestry is closer to 3.5 million. School psychologists may work with these children as 25% of the Arab American population is under 25 years of age. The 2000 Census identified Arabs as those individuals whose ancestry originates in Arabic speaking countries, even though not all individuals from these countries consider themselves Arab. Arabs emigrate from 22 countries in the Middle East (including Lebanon, Syria, Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Yemen, United Arab Emirates, and Kuwait) as well as from North Africa (Morocco, Tunisia, Algiers, Sudan, and Libya). Palestinian Arabs reside within various Middle Eastern countries including Lebanon, Israel, and Syria. Considerable variability exists regarding the economic, political, ethnic, and religious composition of each of these countries, making generalizations regarding Arabs, and hence Arab Americans, difficult.
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Nevertheless, most Arabs possess a shared heritage, that includes Arabic as their native language and upholds the central importance of religion and family as traditional values. Upon immigrating to the U.S., variability among families increases depending upon the degree of acculturation to either Western or Arab culture. Immigration of Arabs to the U.S. has occurred in several waves, beginning prior to 1900 when many of the poor came looking for better economic conditions. A second wave occurred after World War II and the creation of Israel. Beginning in 1975 with the Lebanese Civil War and following subsequent wars in Arab countries (i.e., Gulf War, Iraq-Iran War), immigration has increased to the U.S. The largest percentage of Arab Americans are Lebanese followed by Egyptians and Syrians, and most Arab Americans are second and third generation. Compared to other U.S. immigrants, levels of education and family income tend to be higher for Arabs, which may allow them to culturally assimilate more fully. Nevertheless, 22% of Arab American children under 18 years of age live in poverty. Because more recent immigrants have emigrated in response to wars, these children and their families may arrive with symptoms of post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), have lower levels of education, fewer economic resources, and remain less acculturated. Iraqis and Moroccans make up the largest group of recent arrivals. When working with Arab American children, degree of acculturation to either Western or Eastern/Arab culture can influence the acceptability of school psychology interventions. Upon emigrating, Arab American youngsters may undergo a process of alternately accepting and rejecting aspects of their traditional (Arab) and new (Western) cultures. Although many Arab American children eventually embrace features of both cultures, the degree to which a child identifies more strongly with Arab or Western culture is determined by many factors, including country of ancestry, religion, education level, and economic and community status following emigration. Arab American children are most concentrated in ethnic communities in California, Ohio, New York, New Jersey, and Michigan. Generally speaking, Arab Muslims may have more difficulty acculturating than Arab Christians since the latter tend to be more identified with the West and are less visible targets of bias owing to Western dress. Indeed, following September 11, 2001, incidents of bias against Arab American
and/or Muslim children have been documented with increasing frequency in schools. Two central features of Arab culture involve the dominant role of religion and the family. School psychology practice with Arab American children will be most successful if the influence of acculturation upon these two variables is assessed.
Religion Religion occupies a central role in Arab culture and its importance cannot be underestimated. Arab American children may identify more strongly with their religion rather than their country of ancestry. The two predominant religions are Christianity and Islam, but Arab countries vary considerably in terms of number of members of each religious group who comprise their population. Although the majority of Arab countries are predominantly Muslim, the largest percentage of Arab Americans are Christians of Lebanese ancestry (often, Maronites). Other Christian groups include various Orthodox sects as well as Catholics and Presbyterians. The proportion of Muslims among recent Arab American immigrants has increased. Included among the Muslim groups are the Sunni, Shi’ite, Druze, and Alawai. Longstanding historical divisions have existed among Arab Christians and Muslims as well as among the subgroups that comprise each faith. Intermarriage between Christians and Muslims, as well as between the different subgroups that comprise each faith (i.e., Sunni and Sh’ite, Catholic and Orthodox) is rare. Because religion is so important for both Christians and Muslims, acceptability of psychological interventions is enhanced when religious values are considered. Such assessment also aids the establishment of effective working alliances with Arab American children. Children who are more identified with traditional Arab culture may be more likely to accept religious, rather than psychological, explanations for problems. In turn, they may maintain an external, rather than internal, locus of control, reflecting beliefs that Allah, rather than personal responsibility, determines behavior. Therefore, counseling interventions should consider a level of personal initiative that is consistent with the child’s beliefs about his or her own locus of control. Religious values should also guide the steps taken by school psychologists to
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establish effective working relationships. For example, a Muslim girl may avoid prolonged eye contact with unfamiliar males. Discussion of sexual matters is generally not encouraged. Statements made by school psychologists reflecting knowledge of religious beliefs often help solidify the working alliance with more traditional Arab American children.
Family Arab culture is considered collectivist in that the collective good is more highly valued than personal independence and autonomy. The extended family is the central collectivist unit. Arab American children, whether Christian or Muslim, are raised to look inside the family for solutions and guidance rather than looking outside. Personal autonomy and separateness are not valued in the same way as in Western culture. Thus, depending upon level of acculturation, school psychologists must ensure their interventions are tailored so as not to threaten family stability. Traditional Arab families are patriarchal. The number of Arab American households headed by women is much lower than it is for the U.S. population as a whole. Although the role of mothers is important, and has been strengthened under Islam, fathers maintain considerable authority. Brothers may even have authority over female siblings. In some ethnic communities, gender segregation occurs among children, especially those attending Muslim schools. Sexuality reflects the patriarchal aspects of Arab culture in that males are accorded more sexual freedom. Divorce, homosexuality, domestic violence, and premarital sex are not openly discussed. Because of the central importance of family, Arab American children who disclose sexual abuse may risk being perceived as shaming the family. In line with a strong collectivist emphasis, Arab American children are raised with the expectation that they should maintain family honor. As a result, child-rearing practices, while often loving and affectionate, also involve a good deal of shaming. The idea of giving children personal choice, which is common in Western culture, is less common in traditional families. Shaming is not intended to harm children, but rather, to uphold the importance of maintaining family honor.
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Education Education is highly valued for both boys and girls. Reflecting this value, U.S. Census figures show that Arab Americans tend to be more highly educated at the high school, college, and postgraduate levels than some other groups. In part, education for boys is viewed as contributing to the family’s financial security whereas education for girls, in more traditional families, enhances desirability as a marriage partner. For Muslims, the Quar’n emphasizes the importance of religious education. In Arab culture, parents award teachers a good deal of authority, in line with the high degree of respect that is typically shown to authority figures. Consistent with many Arab governments that do not allow for dissenting opinions, as well as the strong collectivist emphasis, education stresses rote memorization of facts rather than critical inquiry. Thus, recently emigrated Arab American children may be unaccustomed to the more active, questioning role that American schools afford students. Likewise, Arab American parents may be less accustomed to advocating for their children in school systems. More traditional parents may be less likely to adopt the kind of active teaching role that many American parents embrace as a cultural norm. English is a second language for many Arab American children. Census figures reveal that while English is spoken in three out of four Arab American homes, a second language is spoken by 69% of the population over 5 years of age. Arabic, which is written from right to left, tends to be a very expressive language. Special education is still developing in many Arab countries, and while laws exist that require inclusion, the practice is unevenly implemented. As a result, children with disabilities have sometimes been kept at home due to concerns about preserving family honor. Upon emigrating to the U.S., more traditional and/or recently emigrated families may not understand the school’s attempts to include their children. Among traditional families, explanations for disabilities often involve religious and/or medical explanations, rather than psychological ones. In such families, psychological problems are viewed as those that should be solved within the family or by religious leaders rather than outside professionals. Emotions tend not to be openly expressed in more traditional families and counseling approaches that emphasize
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short-term, solution-oriented approaches, rather than insight into one’s feelings, may at least initially be a better fit with the more traditional family. Moreover, as a result, Arab American children may present with more somatic concerns. The emphasis on not openly expressing emotions is consistent with cultural values that emphasize family honor and cohesiveness. Islam also encourages kindness to those with disabilities.
Suggested Resources
Assessment
ASD
Many of the most widely used psychological tests for assessing intelligence and social-emotional functioning have been translated into Arabic. Many Arab countries do not emphasize punctuality and speed and recently emigrated Arab American children may be unaccustomed to the emphasis on speed that often characterizes intelligence and achievement tests. School psychologists using translators should be aware that because of its greater emotional expressiveness, responses to personality tests given in Arabic sometimes appear more disturbed. On scales assessing mood disorders, depression is often expressed in the form of somatic complaints. Because Islam forbids suicide, children may deny suicidal ideation if directly questioned. An alternative approach involves asking if they had ever wished Allah might ease their suffering by ending their life. Because of religious prohibitions pertaining to the creation of images, asking Muslim children to complete drawings as part of a psychological assessment should be avoided. See also: > Academic achievement in minority children; > Adolescent ethnic identity; > Ethnic minority youth
Suggested Reading Dwairy, M., & Van Sickle, T. D. (1996). Western psychotherapy in traditional Arabic societies. Clinical Psychology Review, 16, 231–249. Haboush, K. L. (2005). Lebanese and Syrian families. In M. McGoldrick, J. Giordano, & N. Garcia-Preto (Eds.), Ethnicity and family therapy (3rd ed.) (pp. 468–486). New York: Guilford Press. Nassar-McMillan, S., & Hakim-Larson, J. (2003). Counseling considerations among Arab Americans. Journal of Counseling and Development, 81, 150–160.
http://www.aafscny.org: This website describes the Arab American Family Support Center in NY. http://www.aaiusa.org: This website has information on Arab American demographics. Information on the development of psychological services in Arab countries—http://www.ArabPsyNet.com
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Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD)
ASHA >
American School Health Association (ASHA)
Asian/Asian American Youth Kevin Nadal . Derald Wing Sue
Introduction Asian Americans are the fastest growing racial/ethnic minority group in the United States (U.S.). As a group, they have multiplied eightfold from 1.4 million in 1970 to 11.9 million in 2000, and are projected to increase to 20 million by 2020. Although they are only 3.6% of the U.S. population, their numbers increased 72% between 1990 and 2000, outpacing every other racial/ethnic group in the country. Moreover, Asian Americans account for one-third of all immigrant arrivals since the 1970s. As a result, the number of Asian immigrant youths in the U.S. has increased significantly. The term ‘‘Asian American’’ refers to a person having origins in any of the original peoples of the Far East, Southeast Asia, or the Indian subcontinent including
Asian/Asian American youth
over 40 distinct ethnicities, that include Filipino, Asian Indian, Vietnamese, Chinese, Japanese, Pakistani, Korean, Hmong, Bangladeshi, and Cambodian. While Pacific Islanders are separated from Asian Americans in the U.S. Census, they are sometimes lumped into this category when discussing multicultural issues. According to the 2000 U.S. Census the largest ethnic group within the Asian American population is Chinese American, with 2.9 million individuals in the U.S. (or 23% of the entire Asian American population). This is followed by Filipino Americans (2.4 million or 19.9%), Asian Indians (1.9 million or 16%), Korean Americans (1.2 million or 10.3%), Vietnamese Americans (1.2 million or 10.3%), and Japanese Americans (1.1 million individuals or 9.6%). Finally there are ‘‘Other Asians’’ (1.2 million or 10.3%) that include groups such as Pakistanis, Bangladeshis, Laotians, and Cambodians.
Heterogeneity of Asian Americans When discussing Asian Americans, it is important to recognize the heterogeneity of the population. First, there are hundreds of languages within the Asian American racial group, including Tagalog, Hindi, Cantonese, Mandarin, Vietnamese, Japanese, and Farsi. Secondly, there are over 20 major religions within the Asian American racial group, ranging from Hinduism, Buddhism, Sikhism, Catholicism, Taoism, and Confucianism. Thirdly, there are many physical differences between the major Asian subgroups. For example, while East Asians (e.g., Chinese, Japanese, and Korean) may have a lighter peach skin tone and smaller eyes, Filipino Americans and Southeast Asians (e.g., Vietnamese, Cambodian, Laotian) may hold a light to dark brown skin tone, and South Asians (e.g., Asian Indians, Pakistanis) may have a dark brown skin tone and larger eyes. Because of this heterogeneity, it is common for Asian Americans to identify in terms of their ethnicity (e.g., ‘‘Indian,’’ ‘‘Filipino,’’ ‘‘Korean’’), instead of the broader racial category of Asian or Asian American.
Asian American History and Demographics The first Asians who arrived in the U.S. were a small group of Filipino Americans who landed in Moro Bay, California in 1587, which is 30 years earlier than the
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Pilgrims landed on Plymouth Rock. However, the first Asians to arrive in large numbers were the Chinese who settled on the West Coast in the middle of the 1840s. They are credited with building the transcontinental railroads in the U.S., while undergoing very poor living conditions and facing blatant racial discrimination from Whites. The Japanese arrived shortly after in the late 1800s and also worked as laborers in railroads, canneries, and mining, among other locations. To limit the number of incoming Asian immigrants, the U.S. government enacted the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 and the 1924 Immigration Act, which limited (and later forbade) the number of Chinese immigrants. It was not until the 1965 Immigration Act, in which quotas were no longer based on race, that Asian immigration began to increase again. Currently, tens of thousands of Asians immigrate to the U.S. on an annual basis. Most Asians that immigrated post-1965 include professionals of various careers, including doctors, nurses, and engineers. These Asians immigrated for better employment opportunities and a better future for their children. Finally, approximately 2 million Southeast Asian refugees have arrived in the U.S. since 1975. These refugees come primarily from Vietnam, Cambodia, or Laos. While other Asian immigrants have had time to prepare for their move to the U.S., refugees often escape their homecountriesfrompersecution and other tragic conditions, arriving without education, money, or resources. Currently, most Asians who immigrate are educated and oftentimes come to join other family members who have already settled the U.S. Additionally, because Filipinos and Asian Indians are the fastest growing Asian immigrant groups, the majority of Asian Americans have changed from predominantly East Asian American to a fair distribution among Asian subgroups. The children of Asian immigrants are often defined in three ways. First-generation Asian American youth consist of Asians who immigrated to the U.S. in their late adolescence (i.e., one who immigrates from the Philippines when he/she is 18 years old or later). This generation is said to have maintained much of the values from their country of origin and oftentimes has difficulty becoming accustomed to the new values in the U.S. Second-generation Asian Americans are individuals who are U.S. born and have foreign-born parents (i.e., one who was born in the U.S. and whose parents were born in India). These individuals oftentimes are taught the cultural values, language, and customs of their parents’ home countries, while
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learning the values and norms of being American in the U.S. The 1.5 generation consists of foreign-born Asians arriving in the U.S. prior to age 13 (i.e., one who was born in China and immigrated at 12 years old). Because they spent their childhood in their home country, they were able to develop much of their values, beliefs, and personality before immigrating to the U.S.; however, because they immigrated during adolescence, they still have the ability to further develop their identities. According to the 2000 U.S. Census approximately 25% of the Asian American population is under age 17, 10% between the ages of 17 and 24, and 65% over the age of 24. Among members of the second generation (American born with at least one foreign-born parent), the average age is even lower for new immigrant groups. For example, the 0–17 age cohort accounts for 70–89% of all second-generation Asian Indians, Koreans, Vietnamese, and other Asians. Census data also reveal that Asian American children tend to do better in school compared to the general U.S. population, regardless of their immigrant status, language usage, and family situation. This academic achievement leads Asian Americans to gain admission into colleges and universities in very high numbers. However, it is important to recognize the within-group differences between Asian American ethnic groups with regard to education. For example, Southeast Asians, Pacific Islanders, and Filipino Americans often exhibit higher rates of high school drop outs and college attendance than East Asians (Chinese, Japanese, Korean) and Asian Indians. Moreover, previous studies have shown that generational differences affect educational achievement: the longer the time that an Asian American is in the U.S., the lower the risk that she/he will drop out of school.
Acculturation Acculturation can be defined as the systematic process where one cultural group comes into contact with another group and experiences changes in attitudes, values, and beliefs as they adhere to the values of the dominant society. For Asian Americans, the process of acculturation is unique to immigration status and experiences. Asian American youth who immigrate to the U.S. (i.e., first generation and 1.5 generation) experience a change in cultural values, beliefs, habits,
and language upon arrival. While they have learned certain cultural norms and standards in their home country, they must adjust to dominant cultural norms and standards in the U.S. For example, a 15-year-old Vietnamese adolescent who comes to the U.S. must acculturate by adopting cultural norms that might not be common in Vietnam (e.g., speaking English, communicating loudly and directly). On the other hand, second-generation Asian Americans may experience the process of acculturation differently. Although these individuals were born in the U.S., their foreign-born parents may teach them certain cultural values, beliefs, and habits that they as children maintain in their homes. When the Asian American child attends school for the first time, he/she must learn to adjust to the dominant American cultural norms and standards that may not be practiced at home. For example, a 6-year-old second-generation Japanese American child might enter school and have difficulty maintaining eye contact with her teachers because her parents taught her that children should not make eye contact with her authority figures or elders. To be successful in school, this child will have to acculturate to the American standards, where it is appropriate and respectful to maintain eye contact with authority figures. When these Asian American youth discover conflict between their Asian and American values, they oftentimes experience acculturative stress. For example, while a Korean American may be taught Asian values of being respectful of his/her parents and not arguing with elders, his/her American values might teach her to be vocal, individualistic, and to always speak whatever is on her mind. This conflict of wanting to please and respect the authority of her parents while also wanting to express his/her opinions may cause stress in the individual’s life. Asian American youths are also often pressured by family members to adhere to strong Asian cultural values over American values. Moreover, many Asian American youth are taught to be proficient in their respective native languages to preserve their culture, ancestral history, and ethnic identity in the U.S. As a result of balancing both their Asian and American identities, many Asian American youth develop a bicultural identity. Bicultural Asian Americans are able to acquire and adjust to the cultural norms and values of the dominant American society, while also maintaining a strong connection with their ethnic/cultural group.
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Asian American Racial/Cultural Identity When living in the U.S., Asian Americans and other people of color may develop a racial/cultural identity as they struggle to understand themselves within their own ethnic culture, the dominant culture, and the oppression that exists between the two cultures. Through understanding an Asian American’s racial/ cultural identity, one can discover this individual’s attitudes and beliefs about his/her own racial/cultural group, the dominant group, and other people of color. One racial identity model presented by Atkinson and colleagues, the Racial/Cultural Identity Development model, maintains that people of color may undergo five stages of racial/cultural identity development: conformity, dissonance, resistance and immersion, introspection, and integration. The first stage of development is conformity, in which the individual maintains a preference for the dominant cultural values, while rejecting their own Asian group membership and values. For example, a Pakistani American who refuses to speak with his/her parents in his/her native language in public settings shows that he/she is embarrassed of his/her language and would rather speak English, the dominant language. Moreover, an Asian American who chooses to identify as ‘‘American’’ instead of ‘‘Asian’’ or ‘‘Pakistani’’ is an example of someone who is trying to distance herself from her ethnic roots. The second stage of development is dissonance, which is identified as the individual’s conflict when he/she encounters information or experiences that are inconsistent with beliefs, attitudes, and values held by the dominant culture. For example, when an Asian American in the conformity stage believes that all Asians are reserved, unsociable, and inarticulate encounters an Asian American leader who breaks these stereotypes, the individual may experience conflict. Additionally, recognition of the privilege and oppression of the dominant group leads to dissonance, particularly when Asian Americans experience discrimination based on their race/ethnicity. The third stage of development is resistance and immersion, which is categorized by the complete endorsement of ethnic cultural views and rejection of the dominant culture. An Asian American at this stage may only associate with other Asian Americans and people of color, while contending that Whites cannot be trusted. In the fourth stage, introspection, the
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individual realizes the psychological distress and fatigue due to the intense feelings of the resistance and immersion stage. The individual may also be dissatisfied with rigid group views and the pressure to conform to those views. For example, an Asian American in the introspection stage may realize that it is pointless to be angry at all White people and may find conflict when he/she encounters a White person who is genuine and racially conscious. The final stage of this model is integrative awareness (considered to be the optimal level of development), which is when the Asian American can appreciate his/her own cultural heritage and that of the dominant culture. Conflicts that are related to rigid views of either culture are resolved and he/she can now see the positive and negative aspects of both cultures. During this stage, the individual is committed to eliminate all forms of oppression and has a strong sense of self. When discussing racial/cultural identity with Asian Americans, it is important to understand that many variables might influence their experiences. First, it is likely that the experiences of foreign-born Asian Americans will differ from American-born Asian Americans. When foreign-born Asians immigrate to the U.S., they come from a country where they are of the dominant culture but experience discrimination in the U.S., where they are of the minority group. This may also cause internal discord because many Asian immigrants choose to move to the U.S. for opportunity and freedom, yet are discriminated in the country where they chose to settle. In addition to generational differences, other factors may affect an Asian American’s racial/cultural identity development in the U.S. Exposure to members of their own racial/cultural group and other people of color may influence their racial/cultural identity. For example, if Asian American adolescents are born and/ or raised in a geographic area where there are many Asian Americans, they may have an easier time identifying with their Asian racial groups. Moreover, if Asian American adolescents are born and/or raised in a predominantly White geographic area, they may be more likely to conform to White cultural values and reject Asian American values. Experiences with racism and discrimination may also have an impact on racial/cultural identity development. The more that an Asian American is racially discriminated against, the more aware he/she may be of racial dynamics between groups. For example, if a
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Cambodian American adolescent is consistently insulted by White peers, with messages that he/she is a foreigner and needs to speak better English, he/she may advance more easily between the conformity and dissonance stages than another Asian American who does not experience these racially charged statements. At the same time, if a Taiwanese American adolescent is raised in a neighborhood where he/she does not receive blatant discrimination (or where he/she is not aware of it), it may be more difficult for the individual to move from the conformity to dissonance stages because he/she may not recognize the salience of race in his/her life. Different Asian ethnic groups may experience different forms of racial discrimination and stereotyping which might also influence their racial/cultural identity. For example, an Asian Indian may receive different stereotypes (such as being a terrorist or unclean) than a Southeast Asian, who might receive stereotypes such as being a criminal or uncivilized. As a result, the different stereotypes that these individuals face may influence how they perceive the dominant culture and how they behave accordingly.
Asian/Asian American Values When discussing Asian and Asian American values, it is important to recognize that because of the heterogeneity of the group, it becomes impossible to identify values that apply to all Asian ethnic groups. While there may be many similar cultural values (which may stem from basic Confucian, Taoist, Hindi, or Buddhist values), each Asian ethnic group may understand each value differently and may apply different meanings to these values, based on the history, traditions, and uniqueness of each ethnic culture. Moreover, when applying these values to Asian Americans, it is essential to understand that the relevance of these values will apply to an individual’s level of acculturation and racial/ethnic identity development. Given this, various Asian values are highlighted to understand the differences between Asian American values and Western/European American values. One of the most overarching values for Asian Americans is maintaining harmonious relationships. Simply stated, Asian Americans are taught to be collective and group-oriented, instead of competitive and individual-oriented. This may take several forms for an individual. First, the notion of familialism refers to the sense that Asian Americans are expected to put the
needs of their families before themselves. Decisions must be made with the consent and consideration of one’s family. Additionally, everything that an Asian American individual does or is should be a representation of his/her family. The idea of loss of face includes the notion that Asian Americans should avoid bringing shame to the family at all costs. The fulfillment of obligation is also a key component in understanding the need to maintain harmonious relationships. Asian Americans are expected to be obligated to their family members above all others and to maintain family ties, regardless of the situation. Another value also taught within the Asian American family is the withholding of expressing true emotions and feelings towards others. Many Asian Americans are taught that it is inappropriate to express true feelings to other people, oftentimes leading to indirect communication within Asian American families. Because it is disrespectful and inappropriate for Asian Americans to express their true feelings towards others, many Asian Americans may choose an indirect communication (i.e., finding a ‘‘middle person’’ to explain perspectives to others, behaving passive aggressively to express emotion). This is also related to the Asian value of respecting elders and authority. In Asian American families, the authority figure always has the control and jurisdiction in decision-making and rules; younger Asian Americans are expected to adhere to authority figures and elders. Simply stated, not only is it inappropriate to express emotions to others, but it is especially inappropriate to argue with or express emotions to authority figures. Another value that is often important to Asian Americans can be described as reserve, reticence, deference, and humility. Asian Americans are taught that it is better to be quiet and peaceful, instead of being loud and boisterous. It is not appropriate for Asian Americans to be direct in their communication, nor is it appropriate for Asian Americans to be competitive or aggressive with others. As a result of this, Asian Americans are often taught to ‘‘not make waves,’’ which essentially means to be obedient and respectful towards others. A final set of Asian American values includes academic and occupational achievement. Many Asian Americans are taught that education is one of the most important values, over other values such as recreation or leadership. Because many Asian American parents immigrated for a better life for their children, they have certain expectations for their children to accomplish the
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‘‘American dream.’’ Getting an education and obtaining a prestigious career allows for an Asian American to bring pride and status to his/her family, while fulfilling obligations to the family as well. With these values of academic and occupational achievement come several other values, including self-control and self-discipline. Many Asian Americans will be able to use self-control and self-discipline to manage their emotions and behaviors, to achieve academically. Oftentimes, these Asian Americans might use shame and guilt to push themselves to achieve the highest educational and occupational accomplishments. The potential of bringing shame to the family and the guilt and pressure to bring status to the family are both reasons for wanting to excel academically. As a result, Asian Americans may suppress negative emotions and do whatever is necessary to achieve. When discussing these Asian American values, it is important to understand the impact that both acculturation and ethnic identity will have on their retention or application. For example, when discussing reserve, reticence, deference, and humility, it is important to recognize that a more acculturated Asian American may see the value in being loud, direct, and competitive to succeed in the U.S. Moreover, an Asian American with a higher status of ethnic identity might see that by being reserved and reticent, that she/he is perpetuating stereotypes of Asian Americans and allowing for them to be viewed the invisible and/or submissive minority. Another example might include how an Asian American reacts to the value of withholding the expression of true feelings and emotions towards others. A more acculturated Asian American (who values direct communication) might see the detriment of not expressing her/his emotions to others; by not expressing feelings, an acculturated Asian American might recognize that she/he is suppressing emotions that are likely to be hurtful in the long run. At the same time, an Asian American with a higher level of ethnic identity might recognize that it is important to express her/his true feelings particularly when combating stereotypes and speaking up to authority figures. Because Asian Americans are viewed as passive and submissive, an Asian American with a higher level of ethnic identity might make more direct attempts at being more assertive and aggressive. At the same time, it is important to understand that some of these values are conflicting. For example, while Asian Americans are taught to be collective/cooperative, they are also taught to achieve academically. So while
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they may be expected to be collective in the home and with their family, when they go to school they may learn it is more important to be competitive to succeed. While their families teach them to be reserved and humble, their schools teach them to be vocal and direct.
Model Minority Myth The Model Minority Myth contends that Asian Americans are well-educated, successful, and law-abiding citizens in the U.S. While some may view this myth as positive, this notion can be negative in many ways. First, the Model Minority Myth encourages the stereotyping of Asian Americans as quiet, submissive individuals who will not speak out, complain, or protest against group norms. In doing so, Asian Americans are often overlooked and made invisible because they are seen as passive and nonthreatening. For example, because Asian Americans as a group might be successful in college, Asian Americans may be overlooked for scholarships, outreach, and retention programs, when in fact Southeast Asians and Filipino Americans have low rates of college retention and graduation. Moreover, because of the Model Minority Myth, college administrators oftentimes neglect to provide services for Asian Americans because they are viewed as not having problems and/or not experiencing the same types of stressors as other racial/ethnic minority groups. Another negative aspect of the model minority myth is that it causes tension with other people of color (i.e., African Americans, Latino/Hispanic Americans, and Native Americans) who are stereotyped as the opposite of the model minority (e.g., non-educated/unintelligent, criminal). Oftentimes, people of color are compared to Asian Americans and taught to be more like them. The message is that if Asian Americans can immigrate into the U.S. and become successful, then other racial/ethnic minority groups can too. This leads to tension and resentment between Asian Americans and other racial/ ethnic groups, which oftentimes takes the form of intragroup conflict and hostility. People of color may foster resentment towards Asian Americans because Asian Americans are being stereotyped as being ‘‘good minorities.’’ Consequently, Asian Americans may foster resentment towards the Model Minority Myth, because it leads to other people of color and Whites failing to acknowledge the experiences of Asian Americans as a racial/ethnic minority group.
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Contemporary Experiences of Asian American Ethnic Groups Given the fact that Asian Americans may vary in physical appearance, languages, religious orientations, and cultural values, there may be myriad experiences that Asian American youth undergo. While Asian American adolescents may have similar experiences (e.g., balancing the bicultural identity of being Asian and American, overcoming the Model Minority Myth), there are many between-ethnic group differences. Through understanding both these common and unique experiences, one can gain a thorough awareness of an Asian American individual’s holistic identity. Southeast Asian Americans are often the children of refugees or refugees themselves. They or their parents come to the U.S. without education and with little resources. As a result, their experience in the U.S. is one which is not of the Model Minority. They are often from working class families and have a lower per household income than other Asian American groups. Moreover, compared to other Asian American ethnicities, they have higher high school drop out rates and lower rates of college admissions. Many Southeast Asians face a unique acculturative stress, which arises from conflict and alienation both at home and at school, as well as adjustment due to their refugee experience. As a result, there has been a significant rise in Southeast Asian gangs and criminal activity among these youth, which has led to a greater need for resources and social supports for this community. While Filipino Americans have a longer history in the U.S., a majority of the youth are children of professionals that immigrated post-1965. Unlike other Asian ethnic groups, it has been found that second-generation Filipino Americans achieve less academically than both Filipino American immigrants and other second-generation Asian Americans. Moreover, Filipino Americans are oftentimes mistaken for other racial/ethnic groups, including Hispanic/Latino, potentially as a result of distinct physical differences and 350 years of Spanish colonization. This may lead to potential identity confusion and acculturative stress. As a result, many times Filipino adolescents will identify with Hispanic/Latinos and African Americans as a way of recognizing their unique experience as an ethnic group. Asian Indian and other South Asian Americans also have a unique experience in the U.S. Because they are more physically different than other Asian Americans, it sometimes becomes necessary to justify
their experience as Asian American. Moreover, Asian Indians are oftentimes grouped with Arab Americans, leading to being stereotyped as terrorists, which other Asian Americans do not have to face. Consequently, Asian Indian Americans may experience additional identity stress in that they have to justify that they are Asian but also that they are not Arab. There are several generational differences within the Chinese American group. Second-generation Chinese American youth must balance the expectations of doing well in school while dealing with the pressures from home. Concurrently, there has been a rise in Chineseimmigrant youth who have arrived in the U.S. by virtue of family reunification. These Chinese immigrant youth have difficulty adjusting to school and tend to come from urban/working class backgrounds. Japanese Americans are the only Asian American group who have a noticeable third generation (grandparents immigrated to U.S. and parents were born in the U.S.). Because of a longer history in the U.S., it is important to notice that Japanese American youth may speak English more proficiently than most Asian groups. See also: > Academic achievement in minority children; > Ethnic minority youth
Suggested Reading Lee, J., & Zhou, M. (Eds.) (2004). Asian American youth: Culture, identity, and ethnicity. New York: Routledge. Uba, L. (1994). Asian Americans: Personality, patterns, identity, and mental health. New York: Guilford Press.
Suggested Resources Asian American Studies Center Online—http://www.sscnet.ucla. edu/aasc/: This website offers information on Asian American studies, ranging from census reports, new research studies, and journal articles.
Asperger’s Syndrome, PDD Yvette Frumkin Feis
Asperger’s syndrome is one of several disorders belonging to the more general category called Pervasive Developmental Disorder or PDD. Asperger’s syndrome
Asperger’s syndrome, PDD
is characterized by severe impairment in social interaction along with restricted and repetitive patterns of behavior, interests, and activities. First described by Hans Asperger in 1944, the disorder usually involves specific patterns in language, cognition, and movement. Language is characterized by stilted and repetitive speech and emotionless expression, while vocabulary and grammar may be very good. Cognition functions may show concrete thinking and limited common sense within the context of intellectual potential that reflects the full spectrum, although many children with Asperger’s syndrome are advanced in verbal abilities and lagging in nonverbal abilities. Obsessions with particular or idiosyncratic topics such as dates, history, music, or sports result in a wealth of information about a slender subject area. Individuals with Asperger’s syndrome may have a great memory for trivia and may talk repeatedly on the topic without awareness that it may be of little interest to others. Nonverbal learning disabilities are not uncommon. Unusual patterns of movement are frequent. Odd forms of self-stimulatory behaviors are performed. Movements may appear awkward or clumsy. Reciprocal interactions may be inept. Due to the lack of shared interest, poor social skills, and awkwardness in speech and movement, children with Asperger’s are often isolated or taunted. Tantrums, sleep disturbance, or aggressive behavior may result from social and communication problems. Specific diagnostic criteria for Asperger’s syndrome are outlined in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fourth Edition (DSM-IV): A. Qualitative impairment in social interaction, as manifested by at least two of the following: 1. Marked impairments in the use of multiple nonverbal behaviors such as eye-to-eye gaze, facial expression, body postures, and gestures to regulate social interaction 2. Failure to develop peer relationships appropriate to developmental level 3. A lack of spontaneous seeking to share enjoyment, interests, or achievements with other people (e.g., by a lack of showing, bringing, or pointing out objects of interest to other people) 4. Lack of social or emotional reciprocity B. Restricted repetitive and stereotyped patterns of behavior, interests, and activities, as manifested by at least one of the following:
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1. Encompassing preoccupation with one or more stereotyped and restricted patterns of interest that is abnormal either in intensity or focus 2. Apparently inflexible adherence to specific, nonfunctional routines or rituals 3. Stereotyped and repetitive motor mannerisms (e.g., hand or finger flapping or twisting, or complex whole-body movements) 4. Persistent preoccupation with parts of objects C. The disturbance causes clinically significant impairment in social, occupational, or other important areas of functioning D. There is no clinically significant general delay in language (e.g., single words used by age 2 years, communicative phrases used by age 3 years) E. There is no clinically significant delay in cognitive development or in the development of ageappropriate self-help skills, adaptive behavior (other than social interaction), and curiosity about the environment in childhood F. Criteria are not met for another specific Pervasive Developmental Disorder or Schizophrenia The prevalence of Asperger’s syndrome is not known. The course of the disorder is usually continuous and lifelong. The diagnosis for Asperger’s syndrome is made through observation of behavior, parent report, and language and cognitive testing. While there are no blood or genetic tests that are able to positively diagnose this condition, these tests are employed to rule out other disorders. All PDDs are characterized by severe and pervasive impairment in several areas of development, reciprocal social interaction, communications, or the presence of stereotypic behaviors, interests, or activities. Besides Asperger’s syndrome, disorders in the category of PDD include Autistic Disorder, Rett’s Disorder, Childhood Disintegrative Disorder, and Pervasive Developmental Disorder-Not Otherwise Specified. The latter disorder is used when symptoms do not meet the criteria for classification into one of the other disorders or when symptoms are not severe enough to warrant diagnosis of one of the other disorders. The word pervasive may be misleading in this category name as many children who meet the criteria for inclusion have very specific areas of difficulty, may have normal or better intellectual abilities, and may even excel in some areas. The cause of PDD is unknown. Much research has been conducted in an attempt to uncover causal
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relationships. More is known about what is not related to PDD than what is. Parental attitude is not related, and no parental behaviors have been found to cause PDD. Stress is not a causal agent. However, PDD is four times more prevalent in boys than in girls. Specific medical conditions are frequently associated. Hypersensitive hearing, sound sensitivities, or ability to tune out sounds are often found with individuals with PDD. Mild motor problems, clumsiness, and toe walking are frequently noted. Mental retardation, chromosomal abnormalities, congenital infections, and structural abnormalities of the central nervous system are sometimes concurrent with PDD. Interventions include positive behavior management techniques, structured routines, and school inclusion programs that emphasize appropriate social and communication skills. Occupational therapy is recommended for movement disorders. Different types of medications are useful to treat different associated symptoms such as anxiety or hyperactivity. For the best success, intervention programs must be customized to the individual child’s needs and ability levels, rather than the diagnostic category. Asperger’s children often need more support than first appears necessary. While some may cope well in a mainstream class with additional support, others may need the greater structure of a special education class. See also: > Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD); > Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA); > Special education
Assessment of Culturally Diverse Children Lisa A Suzuki . Lan Ngo . John Kugler
Appropriately assessing culturally diverse children involves not only examining abilities and behaviors but also integrating relevant information regarding the examinee’s historical, economic, and social context. In the past, terms such as ‘‘cultural deprivation,’’ and ‘‘cultural disadvantage’’ have been used as reasons for substandard performance by members of racial and ethnic minority groups on various ability measures. However, numerous researchers note that these tests reflect information deemed important by the dominant, majority culture. Historically, tests have been based upon a deficit model indicating that any performance that deviated from the cultural mainstream was viewed as deficient. This does not take into account that culture is a complex construct that influences what an individual values, as well as one’s worldview, language, problem solving abilities, and more, all of which have clear implications for assessment. The following focuses on culture as it potentially influences numerous aspects of the assessment process including: (a) general testing issues (e.g., test development), (b) forms of assessment, (c) areas of assessment (e.g., cognitive abilities, personality and socio-emotional characteristics), and (d) factors to be considered in the psycho-educational evaluation of children.
Suggested Reading American Psychiatric Association (2000). Diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders (4th ed.), text revision. Washington, D.C.: American Psychiatric Association. Attwood, T. (1998). Asperger’s syndrome: A guide for parents and professionals. London: Jessica Kingsley Publishers. Moore, S. T. (Ed.). (2002). Asperger Syndrome and the elementary school experience: Practical solutions for academic and social difficulties. Shawnee Mission, KS: Autism Asperger Publishing Company.
Suggested Resources Camp Make Believe—http://www.campmakebelievekids.com/ AspergerSyndrome.htm: This website provides resources and programs to assist professionals, parents, and children with Asperger’s syndrome, attention deficit disorder (ADD), attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), autism, and other social challenges.
General Testing Issues The use of various measures has been challenged based on concerns of item and test bias, and issues regarding the validity of measures developed in one cultural context and applied to children from diverse backgrounds. For example, criticisms related to the use of particular aptitude (i.e., intelligence) tests within racial/ethnic minority groups have resulted in court cases and legal bans on the use of such measures in certain educational settings. Allegations of discriminatory assessment practices escalated in the late 1960s and 1970s following the civil rights movement that drew attention to the tracking of students and placement into special education programs based upon group and individually administered intelligence tests.
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Specific concerns pertained to the overrepresentation of racial and ethnic minority students in non-academic vocational and special education programs for the educable mentally retarded. The more visible cases included: Diana v. State Board of Education (1970), Covarrubias v. San Diego Unified School District (1971), Guadalupe v. Tempe Elementary School District (1972), and Larry P. v. Riles (1972, 1979). These cases ended in victory for plaintiffs from the African American, Mexican American, and American Indian communities and brought attention to the disparities in education related to race and ethnic background. To understand these challenges to the use of various measures the reader should be familiar with the following terms:
Cultural Loading All tests are culturally loaded to some extent. That is, they reflect artifacts (e.g., knowledge, values) of the culture(s) in which they were developed. Even tests that do not require verbal administration or answers (i.e., nonverbal measures) are considered culturally reduced but not culture free.
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selection bias and over-interpretation. Selection bias refers to situations where the results of testing have a differential effect upon inclusion of students in special programs (e.g., gifted programs, special education, job placement). Over-interpretation occurs when broad judgments are made about a child based upon one indicator (e.g., test performance) while other potential indicators of ability (e.g., adaptive behavior) are ignored. As noted earlier it is critical that a multilevel and multi-factorial assessment be the evaluation of choice.
Item Bias Experts may be brought in to review the content of test items to determine if they are biased with respect to particular racial and/or ethnic groups. Criticisms have been raised regarding this practice given that often there is no formal criteria provided to expert panels to be used in their evaluation process and bias cannot be ‘‘eyeballed.’’ Studies have revealed that items experts identified as ‘‘unfair’’ with respect to culture were not the ones that differentiated group scores. Examination of item passing rates for different racial and ethnic groups on measures of intelligence have often yielded no evidence related to cultural bias.
Test Bias Test bias refers to systematic error resulting in differences in test scores based upon group (e.g., racial and ethnic) membership. These differences are a result of test characteristics rather than ‘‘true’’ differences with respect to the construct being measured. Test bias has been examined with respect to differences in means (average scores) on particular measures, differential predictive validity, and differential construct validity between groups. It should be noted that average score differences between racial and ethnic groups on a particular measure are not necessarily indicative of test bias. Disparities may be reflective of important group differences that are relevant (e.g., score differences related to socioeconomic statuses). Predictive validity refers to whether an instrument is an equally good predictor of particular outcomes (e.g., achievement) for different racial/ethnic groups. In this context, construct validity refers to whether measures have the same factor structures for different racial and ethnic groups. Bias can be introduced into the assessment process based upon how the scores are used as in the cases of
Norming The most popular instruments used in assessment are generally based upon national norms. This means that racial and ethnic minority group members are included in the same proportion as they are in the overall national census. This practice is generally assumed to be appropriate, however, when actual numbers are identified the inclusion of particular groups may be miniscule in comparison to the dominant White majority. For example, the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children—IV (2003), the most popular individualized intelligence test in the United States (U.S) has norms based upon the 2000 U.S. Census. The total number of children included in the standardization sample was 2,200. The technical manual reports percentages of inclusion for different racial and ethnic minority groups in relation to 11 age groupings. The actual numbers were approximately 1,420 White, 343 African American, 335 Hispanic, 92 Asian, and 28 Other. The creation of special norms
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based upon racial and ethnic group membership can be useful in certain instances given that test scores can be interpreted from multiple perspectives (e.g., national norms, regional norms, local norms).
Forms of Assessment A number of forms of evaluation have evolved to assess the performance of children related to cognitive abilities (aptitude and achievement), personality, and socio-emotional functioning. In this section we address five primary methods used in the assessment of children (i.e., interview, observation, quantitative instruments, projective instruments, and alternative forms) and provide a brief discussion of potential cultural implications for each.
Interview The information obtained in the clinical interview forms the backbone of the assessment process when evaluating all children. This practice involves not only the child or youth but parents and other involved stakeholders (e.g., extended family members). A thorough interview is especially important in assessing children from diverse cultural backgrounds. For example, when assessing recent immigrants or refugees, educational and health records may not be available, therefore, information obtained from the interview in terms of a detailed psychosocial history may fill in important gaps. In addition, areas such as psychological mindedness (e.g., the examinee and/or families understanding of the problem as psychological and/or emotional), acculturation, child’s strengths and weaknesses, socioeconomic status, cultural norms of behavior, and community resources should be considered.
Observation Observing a child provides critical information in the assessment process. An astute evaluator can obtain information by observing their behavioral presentation (e.g., dress, eye contact, attitude), affect and mood (e.g., reactivity, intensity), speech and language (e.g., level of verbal output, prosody—rate and rhythm of speech, fluency, reading comprehension and writing), thought processes and content (e.g., perceptual disturbances), and cognitive functioning (e.g., memory,
calculation). All of these observational areas are influenced by culture. It is critical that the evaluator be sensitive to potential cultural differences when interpreting and drawing conclusions based upon observed behavior. Observations conducted in a culturally sensitive manner may prove very useful in examining potential socio-emotional issues pertaining to a particular child. For example, a child’s dress and level of eye contact may be determined by cultural norms. A lack of eye contact is often seen as a sign of respect in Asian cultures but may be interpreted as inattention or dishonesty in a Western context. It is important to note that cultural norms influence verbal and nonverbal behavior. For instance children may be judged to be passive and nonassertive in the classroom, however, several cultures emphasize showing respect by not questioning those in authority (i.e., teachers). It should be noted that observations may include behavioral checklists and/or rating scales.
Quantitative Instruments The majority of instruments used in evaluating children in the schools yield numerical scores that are quantified based upon national and regional norms. Examples of these measures include most grade level performance tests and those used for accountability (i.e., high stakes testing). These tests have been identified as the ‘‘gatekeepers’’ to higher education given that one’s performance is often linked to future opportunities in educational settings (e.g., Stanford Achievement Tests, SAT, Graduate Record Examination, Law School Admissions Test). The use of quantitative instruments has produced the greatest number of challenges in the assessment of culturally diverse children. As noted earlier in relation to court cases arising from usage of intelligence tests (e.g., tracking children into special education and vocational programs), society’s focus on test scores has posed numerous problems for members of diverse communities. Different cultures reinforce particular forms of ability and only select areas are considered in the traditional assessment process.
Projective Instruments Projective tests involve the presentation of ambiguous stimuli (e.g., pictures, inkblots, incomplete sentences)
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in which theoretically the test taker projects (e.g., organizes) aspects of him/herself (e.g., personality, values, beliefs) to make meaning of what he or she sees. Popular measures in this area include the Thematic Apperception Test (TAT), Children’s Apperception Test (CAT), and the Tell-Me-A-Story Test (TEMAS). For each of these measures the child is presented with a picture depicting a particular scene and asked to tell a story including how the story begins (what happened before the picture) and then what happens. The stories are analyzed for themes that are then interpreted in conjunction with other data obtained about the child’s background. The TEMAS is a multicultural TAT in which the pictures are designed to pull for culturally relevant themes. The TAT also includes an objective scoring method. In each of the narrative assessment tools cultural factors should be considered in the interpretation of the relevant themes. Drawing tests like the House-Tree-Person, Human Figure Drawing, and Kinetic Family ask the child to draw pictures reflecting their inner life. Children draw before they learn to write so their pictures represent a very primitive and elemental form of communication. Cultures apply different conventions in portraying reality that in turn may have an impact on drawing test results. For example, even the use of color in the drawings can have different meanings. The color red in the Chinese culture is a symbol of good luck in comparison to the association with more negative themes (e.g., anger, blood) in Western culture. In assessing culturally diverse children, drawings should be used as stimuli for discussion allowing the individual to elaborate on the meaning of various aspects of the drawing.
Alternative Forms of Assessment There are a number of alternative forms of assessment that can be used to complement more formal measures. These include portfolio assessment (i.e., evaluation based upon a collection of work), authentic assessment (i.e., test questions resemble complex tasks undertaken outside of the school environment) and curriculum-based assessment (i.e., assessments that are linked to local curriculum and instruction). In each of these forms, information is gleaned from assessing particular aspects of the child’s educational experiences. These alternative measures may be used to supplement other forms of assessment.
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Issues that Influence Assessment There are a number of cultural variables that can potentially have an impact on the assessment process. These include: acculturation, socioeconomic status, educational background, and language.
Acculturation Acculturation refers to change in the behavior, attitudes, values, and beliefs of a group based upon contact with another culture. One model of acculturation is one-dimensional and assumes changes in the direction of the dominant culture. A second, bidirectional model suggests that individuals must deal with varying degrees of adapting to and integrating into the dominant culture while maintaining aspects of their original culture. Competent assessment practices are dependent in part on understanding the individual’s degree of acculturation.
Socioeconomic Status Socioeconomic status (SES) has an impact on the measurement of psychological phenomena. Poverty increases risk factors such as perinatal disease, malnutrition, lead poisoning, limited health care, substandard housing, family disorganization, low self-esteem, low expectations, premature termination of future goals, and other environmental barriers to future success. For example, it is well documented that students from high SES families perform better on achievement tests than students from low SES families. This observation can be attributed to the lack of resources available to students from low SES backgrounds stemming from a combination of low levels of parental education, low-status parental occupation, large family size and the absence of one parent. Students from low SES families are at greater risk for low achievement, while high SES is linked to greater social support and fewer school and behavior problems. SES also affects the risk factors associated with psychopathologies among children. Stressful events, poverty, a paucity of social support, and other conditions associated with low SES have been identified as risk factors for behavioral or emotional (e.g., depression) problems in child development.
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Assessment of culturally diverse children
Educational Background Measures of aptitude and achievement assess what a child has learned. Differences in instruction (e.g., school curriculum, classroom instruction, and number of years of schooling) and educational resources between various communities and countries may contribute to discrepancies in test results between various racial and ethnic groups. In addition, emphasis on different academic abilities in various cultural groups may have an impact on the results of achievement tests. Cultures reinforce particular ability areas. A reliance upon tests as measures of achievement, ability, and accountability have been emphasized more in Western cultures. Not all cultures emphasize individual competition, test-taking skills, speed, and obtaining one right answer. Some cultures value group harmony, cooperative engagement, and understanding that there may be multiple answers to abstract tasks and perseverance.
successfully completing these tasks often involves using language as part of problem solving
Equivalence In educational settings as diverse as U.S. schools, it is important to have reliable and valid assessment instruments that can be used across various cultures and languages. When translating and adapting instruments for use in other cultures and languages, investigators must strive to keep the new version as similar as possible to the source language version while maintaining cultural relevance. However, the cultural equivalence of such tests is questionable, and subsequently, the meaning of the outcomes and scores on these tests are unclear. The following forms of equivalence should be taken into consideration during the assessment process with individuals from diverse cultural backgrounds.
Language The variety of languages used by diverse students can pose a host of challenges in assessment. For example, over 200 languages are spoken in the public schools in Chicago. According to the U.S. Census, an estimated 18% of children between the ages of 5 and 17 speak a language other than English at home. Given the multitude of languages spoken by a diverse student population, formal testing, especially in the areas of achievement and aptitude have become a focus of debate. Researchers have suggested that children should always be tested in their native language except in instances where they have been primarily educated in an English based school system. Asking a child if they can be tested in English is not appropriate since they may answer affirmatively given the differential power dynamic between their position and that of the evaluator. It should also be noted that children tend to pick up aspects of social language more quickly, therefore, they may appear proficient on the playground or in situations when conversing with peers. Their ability to understand academic language required in the testing situation may not be at the same level. Children may also engage in code switching in which they express more emotionally laden content in their native language even when speaking English. Although nonverbal measures reduce the effects of culture and language,
Functional equivalence: the degree to which test scores have the same meaning across different cultures Conceptual equivalence: the extent to which cultural groups are equally familiar with the content of test items and consequently attach the same meanings to these test items Linguistic equivalence: whether the language used in tests has been equalized so as to uphold the same meaning across different cultural groups Psychometric equivalence: the degree to which a test measures the same things at the same levels across different cultures Testing condition equivalence: whether testing as a means of assessing ability and testing procedures are equally familiar and acceptable to differing cultural groups Contextual equivalence: whether the cognitive ability to be assessed is evaluated similarly in the various environments in which the person functions Sampling equivalence: determination that representative samples of each racial or ethnic group are comparable at the test development, validation, and interpretation phases
There are various ways in which equivalence can be undermined in the assessment process. Attaining linguistic equivalence is particularly difficult due to the numerous sources of error that can occur in translations.
Assessment of culturally diverse children
Literal translations: Problems occur when items are translated too literally, resulting in nonsensical phrases, poorly constructed sentences, or the loss of original meaning Mistranslations: Imprecise translations can occur when the original purpose or meaning of the original items are not understood by the translators Altering items: Slightly altering an item may be necessary to provide the most acceptable wording for respondents as idioms used in one culture may not have direct translations Generating new items: Although generating new items may be important in translating a test, the final measure may no longer be comparable to the original version and should be considered a different test. Deleting words, items, or scales: Part of an item, the entire item, or an entire scale may not be applicable to a new culture, and thus, may need to be replaced or removed. However, in some cases, removal can create scoring problems and the established validity of the original measure may no longer apply.
Trained bilingual evaluators are helpful in the translation process. There should be a pilot phase for a newly translated measure, in which the instrument is administered to a group representing the target population and a discussion of the assessment items is held with pilot participants. Once pilot data is collected, statistical procedures could be applied to a larger norm sample and the results analyzed to establish validity and reliability. Equivalence is often examined through statistical analyses of measures and selection procedures.
The Process of Assessment The process of assessment includes the determination of whether an evaluation is needed, selection of particular measures (quantitative and qualitative), the administration of selected instruments and procedures, interpreting results, and formulating the written report. It should be noted that the testing process itself is based upon an interaction between the evaluator and the evaluated. Thus, testing is a social situation and the attitudes of both parties can have an impact on the results. An evaluator may possess technical expertise in the administration of particular measures but lack
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the sensitivity and cultural knowledge necessary to establish rapport and gain the trust of the examinee. Prior to engaging in the assessment process the evaluator should familiarize themselves with the cultures existing in the community that they serve. Knowing the culture in which a child resides can help in the identification of salient questions to be asked during the interview and potential sources of support in the process (e.g., translators, interpreters).
Pre-referral Data Gathering Professionals should gather information from parents and guardians prior to making a decision to refer for testing. Information regarding health, education, and past services may be helpful in deciding whether an evaluation is appropriate. For example, if the child has recently immigrated and just entered the American school system then allowing them time to adjust to their new environment is crucial and other support services may be accessed to help in this process. Time may not be needed if educational records or reports from guardians indicate that the child had special services in their homeland. Parents may be considered the ‘‘cultural experts’’ given their close association with the child. Professionals and other ‘‘trusted members’’ (e.g., parent leaders) from the community can also serve as ‘‘cultural brokers’’ to assist the examiner in gaining an understanding of the cultural context in which the child and their family reside. Based upon the gathered information, if a problem is identified an informed decision can be made about whether an evaluation is needed. Conducting observations of the child in the classroom setting also provides important information to understand their current educational context.
Selecting Instruments When an evaluation is deemed necessary then appropriate instruments should be selected based upon the identified problem. The cultural relevance of the measures should also be considered. It is critical that the evaluator obtain up-to-date information about the cultural implications of using the chosen instruments. They should be cognizant of the scoring patterns (if any) for racial and ethnic minority groups and their
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inclusion in the norming and standardization procedures used in the test development process. These issues are often addressed in the technical manuals provided for standardized measures. Some of the specific questions to be addressed include: How were cultural factors integrated in the development of the test? Was the measure normed on a representative sample including members of various racial and ethnic minority groups?
Making Recommendations Recommendations should be made with respect to the strengths and weaknesses of the child’s performance with attention to the child’s background and observations during testing. Consideration of the influence of cultural factors should be noted whenever relevant.
Communicating Results Administering Tests The evaluator should explain the purposes of the test to the child and family and provide a brief description of what the testing will entail. Establishing rapport with the child is critical prior to formal testing. When administering the test the evaluator should be vigilant in observing behavior and insuring that the child understands the various tasks being presented. This is clearly more easily accomplished in an individual setting than a group testing situation. Problem solving strategies and motivation play a major role in successful performance. Examiners may engage in ‘‘testing the limits’’ procedures to gain important information regarding the child’s abilities. These procedures may include extending time limits, allowing usage of paper and pencil for math items, repeating items or parts of items in an orally administered test, and interviewing the child about the reasoning behind their response. Examiners should also be aware of how their own behavior may effect the testing situation. For example, where the evaluator sits in relation to the child may have an impact on the results. When testing American Indian children, examiners should sit to the side of the child or diagonally across to avoid staring directly at them while they are tested.
Interpreting Results and Writing the Report The written report should reflect an integration of all of the data obtained during the evaluation. Any deviations in administration should be noted along with impressions by the evaluator regarding the child’s performance on the tests. Background information should be noted whenever relevant to assist the reader in understanding the results in a culturally sensitive context.
When sharing the results of the testing with parents(s)/ guardian(s) opportunities should be provided for additional exchanges of information. The parents may recall information about relevant history that is spurred by the findings of the evaluation. The assessment of culturally diverse children is a complex process involving multiple sources of information (e.g., parent, child, cultural brokers), different types of measures (e.g., quantitative, qualitative) and multiple areas (e.g., personality, aptitude). Tests can be used as effective markers of a child’s strengths and weaknesses, and can facilitate understanding of their progress. No test has been created that is not influenced by culture. The evaluator should never lose sight of the primary purpose of assessment, that is, to obtain a true estimate of the psychological constructs being addressed for that particular child. Assessment is a dynamic process and tests measure only samples of behavior at one point in time that can be influenced by cultural as well as situational factors. See also: > Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI), Multicultural Applications; > Racial/ethnic group differences; > TEMAS (Tell-Me-A-Story) Multicultural Thematic Apperception Test
Suggested Reading Suzuki, L. A., Ponterotto, J. G., & Meller, P. J. (2001). Handbook of multicultural assessment: Clinical, psychological and educational applications, (2nd ed.) San Francisco, CA: Jossey Bass. Suzuki, L. A., & Kugler, J. (2001). Multicultural assessment. In E. R. Welfel, & R. E. Ingersoll (Eds.), The mental health desk reference (pp. 279–285), New York: John Wiley & Sons. Takushi, R., & Uomoto, J. M. (2001). The clinical interview from a multicultural perspective. In L. A. Suzuki, J. G. Ponterotto, & P. J Meller (Eds.), Handbook of multicultural assessment: Clinical, psychological, and educational applications (pp. 47–66). San Diego, CA: Jossey Bass.
Attendance Van Widenfelt, B. M., Treffers, P. D., de Beurs, E., Siebelink, B. M., & Koudijs, E. (2005). Translation and cross-cultural adaptation of assessment instruments used in psychological research with children and families. Clinical Child and Family Psychology Review, 82(2), 135–147. Valencia, R. R., & Suzuki, L. A. (2001). Intelligence testing and minority students: Foundations, performance factors, and assessment issues. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
Association of Black Psychologists (ABPsi)
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Jones, Dr. Na’im Akbar, Dr. Linda James Meyers, Dr. Thomas Parham, and Dr. Maisha Bennett. Dr. Reginald Jones published the first book on Black psychology in 1972. Dr. Thomas Parham developed a therapeutic approach and interventions to work with African Americans. In addition, Dr. Parham was instrumental in the development of the American Counseling Association’s Multicultural Competencies. The future vision of ABPsi is to continue with its critical work that focuses on African psychology, to provide forums for new and senior professionals, to provide and disseminate information to Black communities, and to be a voice for multicultural issues.
Jacqueline A Conley
The Association of Black Psychologists (ABPsi) is an organization that serves Black psychologists and the larger Black community. It was established in 1968 by a small group of Black psychologists from across the United States (U.S.). Its mission is to seek liberation of the African mind, to empower the African character, and to illuminate the African spirit. To achieve its goals, ABPsi hopes to promote and advance the profession of African psychology, influence and affect social change, and develop programs to assist with problem solving in Black communities and other ethnic groups. The ABPsi’s continued growth demonstrates the importance of providing mentorship and a medium for communication among students in the field of psychology. As a result, the Student Circle was launched in 1993. The Student Circle provides opportunities for psychology students in the association to serve in leadership roles and obtain mentorship. The ABPsi has three media to communicate and disseminate information to its members and the professional community: The Journal of Black Psychology, the PsychDiscourse, and annual conventions. The Journal of Black Psychology is a peer-reviewed journal which contains scholarly research that advances the field of psychology as well as African psychology. The Psych Discourse is a monthly newsletter that provides current information relevant to the association and the field of psychology. Finally, the association hosts an annual convention where professionals and students come together for a meeting of the minds and dissemination of research. The ABPsi has over 1400 members in various chapters across the U.S. and abroad. ABPsi has had many prominent psychologists as leaders. Some of the most notable past presidents include: Dr. Reginald
See also: > American Psychological Association (APA); > American Psychological Association (APA): Office of Ethnic Minority Affairs (OEMA) and Committee on Ethnic Minority Affairs (CEMA); > American Psychological Association (APA) Minority Fellowship Program (MFP)
Suggested Resources Psychdiscourse—http://www.PsychDiscourse.net: PsychDiscourse is the official news journal of The Association of Black Psychologists. Association of Black Psychologists—www.abpsi.org: This website provides a list of Black psychologists by state for consumers seeking professional services. Membership applications, job postings, and other valuable information can also be found.
Attendance Jo-Anne Manswell Butty . Velma LaPoint . Cheryl Danzy . Charlynn Small
School attendance is an integral part of students’ school success from preschool through grade 12. It has been used in research and practice as one indicator of school engagement. Several academic interventions have been used to increase student engagement and, in turn, promote school attendance. When students are actively engaged in the learning process, they are motivated to attend school regularly. Some educators acknowledge challenges to student attendance and may want to only teach students who have consistent
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and excellent attendance. This response, however, is oversimplified and consequential—students cannot afford to forsake themselves and educators cannot afford to let them. Policies and laws governing student attendance exist at the state and district level with varying kinds of penalties to students and parents or family members entrusted with students’ education and care. In extreme cases, students, parents, and/or family members may be found to be in violation of truancy laws and become involved in the juvenile and/or criminal system. Different students are engaged in schooling at different rates and components. Student attendance rates are generally higher in private schools than public schools and in suburban schools than urban schools, although older suburban schools may have profiles similar to older urban school systems. Research suggests that some students may be more engaged, for example, in co-curricular schooling activities but less engaged in academic programming, or vice versa. Studies have also suggested that some groups of students of color show different rates of school engagement or attendance. This suggests that educational interventions geared toward students, based on their interests and ethnicity may be more effective in improving student engagement and, thus, student attendance. If these programs are not implemented, some students may be less engaged in schools and receive less critical basic and higher level skills that are needed not only in school, but in other school-to-career transitions and settingscollege, training programs, and/or the workplace. Some studies suggest that students may not attend school for several reasons because they (a) may want to avoid educational subjects they dislike or find difficult; (b) are bored or unchallenged by schoolwork; (c) need and/or would rather earn money by working; (d) have family and peer challenges, language differences, and other social problems; and/or (e) are fearful of being victimized by school crime and violence. Many of these reasons were presented from students primarily at urban, low-income elementary and secondary schools which are disproportionately students of color. Many school districts are developing new and/ or revising current attendance policies to promote student attendance where they: (a) use student attendance rates and/or participation in courses as a part of students’ final grade where points are deducted for absenteeism; (b) deny course credit to students after excessive absenteeism; (c) use incentives to reward high and/or improved attendance to individual students and student groups (e.g., homerooms, specific
classes); (d) implement improved attendance monitoring systems; and (e) implement specific interventions for students and families with family problems (e.g., telephone and personal interviews, counseling, referrals to human service agencies). Promoting school attendance involves concerted efforts among all stakeholders—students, educators, parents and family members as well as community members. Many school districts and individual schools have successfully maintained high attendance rates among students, using culturally responsive strategies for an increasingly culturally diverse student body, by improving and sustaining high quality (a) pedagogy, classroom climate, and teacher effectiveness with smaller learning communities; (b) support systems during key student transitions from elementary to middle and high school; (c) school-to-career theme-based groupings in middle and high schools; and (d) parent, family, and community engagement to reinforce educational goals, objectives, and standards. See also:
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Student motivation; > Truancy
Suggested Reading Epstein, J. L., & Sheldon, S. B. (2002). Present and accounted for: Improving student attendance through family and community involvement. The Journal of Educational Research, 95(5), 308–318. National Center for Education Statistics. (2002). Indicator 17: Students’ absence from school. In The condition of education, 2002. Washington, D.C.: Institute of Education Sciences, U.S. Department of Education. Retrieved July 6, 2006, from http:// nces.ed.gov/pubs2002/2002025_3.pdf. Railsback, J. (2004). Increasing student attendance: Strategies from research and practice. Portland, OR: Northwestern Regional Educational Laboratory.
Attention Deficit/ Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) Courtney B Ferrell
Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) was first described in 1845 by Dr. Heinrich Hoffman in a collection of poems entitled ‘‘The Story of Fidgety Philip.’’ Since that time, ADHD has been known by several other names including Minimal brain
Attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD)
dysfunction, Hyperkinetic disorder, and Attention deficit disorder (ADD). The most current term, ADHD refers to a neurodevelopmental disorder (The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, DSMIV-TR) that is defined by the three subtypes of (1) Predominately Inattentive, (2) Predominately Hyperactive-Impulsive, and (3) Combined Type. ADHD is a highly prevalent disorder. It is estimated that between 3–7% of children within the United States (U.S.) (DSM-IV-TR) and 4% of adults suffer from ADHD. According to parental report data from the 2002 CDC annual National Health Interview Survey (NHIS), approximately 4 million children within the U.S. who are under the age of 18, have been diagnosed with ADHD. Essentially, in a classroom of 25–35 children at least one child will have ADHD. ADHD is 3–10 times more common in boys than in girls. However, these numbers may be inflated as several studies have brought into question the possibility that ADHD is underdiagnosed in girls. Questions of this nature have arisen given that the symptoms of ADHD in girls tend to be less severe than those for boys and thus draw less attention from parents and teachers. In addition, it appears that girls more often exhibit symptoms of the inattentive subtype than boys, which can sometimes be more difficult to diagnose than the other two subtypes. Although it is well documented that ADHD is a highly prevalent disorder, very little is known regarding the differences in prevalence, diagnosis, and treatment of this disorder in children from different racial and ethnic backgrounds. According to the results of the NHIS, a survey of approximately 40,000 households, 7% of children ages 6–11 were reported by there parents as having an ADHD diagnosis. Of this 7%, the majority of children were White (4%), followed by African American children (2%), and Hispanic children (1%). However the differences in prevalence rates may be due to factors other than race or ethnicity, such as economic status. In addition, several studies have indicated that there are ethnic and racial differences in treatment rates for ADHD. Specifically, White children are 4:1 more times likely to receive treatment for their ADHD symptoms in comparison to African American children.
Etiology Given the complexity of ADHD and the likelihood that there are numerous factors contributing to the development of the disorder; the exact cause of ADHD is
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not known. However, genetics, environmental risk factors, and psychosocial adversity all have been implicated in the development of this disorder. Increasing evidence exists that suggests a strong genetic component involved with the development of ADHD. Family studies and twin studies have shown that there is a 2–8% increased risk for ADHD in parents and siblings of children with ADHD. Children who have at least one parent diagnosed with ADHD are at an increased risk for developing the disorder themselves. Given these findings, studies are now underway to examine which specific genes are involved with the transmission of ADHD. In addition to genetic factors there are several theories that suggest ADHD is caused by an imbalance in certain chemicals in the brain that regulate and control executive functioning (e.g., behaviors such as attention, planning, and impulsivity). Specifically, it is hypothesized that people with ADHD have an inefficiency in dopamine levels. Essentially, their dopamine transporter levels are high, which causes the removal of dopamine from the brain prior to gaining the full effect of this neurotransmitter, hence resulting in symptoms of inattention, impulsivity or hyperactivity. Environmental risk factors have also been shown to be associated with ADHD including diet, low birth weight, maternal smoking during pregnancy, exposure to alcohol or cigarettes, and lead contamination. Pregnancy and delivery complications such as eclampsia and poor maternal health have also been implicated in the development of ADHD. Furthermore, family environment factors such as (1) severe marital discord, (2) low social class, (3) large family size, (4) paternal criminality, (5) maternal mental disorder, and (6) foster placement have also been associated with ADHD symptoms.
Psychopathology The core symptoms of ADHD are inattention, hyperactivity, and impulsivity. Given that children normally display these behaviors, it can be difficult to differentiate between what is considered normal behavior from more problematic behavior that is indicative of ADHD. According to the DSM-IV-TR for one to receive the diagnosis of ADHD, the symptoms of inattention, hyperactivity, and impulsivity must be at levels that are maladaptive or inconsistent with developmental level. Additionally, there must be noticeable
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functional impairment across the domains in which one is involved (e.g., school, home, outside activities). Children who are inattentive often have a hard time keeping focused on the task at hand. However, it may appear that these same children will have no difficulty paying attention when doing a task that they enjoy. Difficulty arises when conscious effort and attention to complete a task are necessary (e.g., homework). Specific symptoms of inattention may manifest as (1) failing to pay close attention to details or making careless mistakes, (2) difficulty with sustained attention, (3) appearing not to listen when spoken to directly, (4) difficulty following through with instructions, (5) difficulty with organization, (6) avoiding activities that require sustained mental effort (e.g., school work), (7) often losing items necessary for the completion of a task, (8) easily distractible, and (9) often forgetful. Hyperactive children seem to always be constantly in motion. Sitting still during structured activities such as eating at the dinner table or school lessons are often difficult. Symptoms of hyperactivity may be (1) frequent fidgeting, (2) excessive running or climbing at times when it is inappropriate, (3) not remaining seated when asked to do so, (4) difficulty engaging in quiet activities, (5) appearing constantly ‘‘on the go,’’ or (6) excessive talking. Children who are impulsive often fail to think before they act. Their impulsivity often leads to blurting out inappropriate comments or grabbing toys from others because of difficulties waiting their turn. Impulsive symptoms are commonly evidenced as (1) frequently blurting out responses to questions before they have been completed, (2) difficulty awaiting turn, or (3) often interrupting while others are talking. The overall symptom profile of ADHD leads to many complications throughout daily rituals. Areas of impairment often associated with ADHD include both academic and social difficulties. For example, 20–30% of children with ADHD also have a learning disability. In general, children with ADHD irrespective of having a learning disability are at higher risk for academic failure than children without ADHD. These children also experience greater levels of stress, selfblame, and social isolation in comparison to their classmates. In addition, given their hyperactive and impulsive behavior, children with ADHD often have difficulties with peer relationships and are more often exposed to family conflict. These children also
experience physical impairments with coordination, making them more prone to accidents.
Assessment and Diagnosis The diagnosis of ADHD should be made by a professional with training specifically in ADHD. Psychiatrists, psychologists, developmental/behavioral pediatricians, and behavioral neurologists are the most common professionals who make ADHD diagnoses. A thorough ADHD exam often involves multiple assessments. Initially, a clinical interview covering the DSM-IV ADHD diagnostic criteria is administered with the parent(s) and the child, followed by the assessment of other mental health disorders that are known to have similar symptoms to ADHD, such as depression and anxiety. Rating scales of the child’s behavior are then provided to parents, teachers, pediatricians, and children themselves. Computerized tests of attention are usually given to provide an objective measure of the child’s ability to attend to a sustained task. In addition to the above assessment measures, some children are also administered an intelligence test to rule out the presence of a learning disability.
Treatment Options There are several options available for the treatment of ADHD. Among these options is the use of medication and behavioral/educational interventions. Currently, the most effective treatment option is a combination of medication and behavioral intervention. For many years the first line agent for treatment of ADHD has been stimulant drugs. These drugs are believed to work by enhancing the neurotransmission of dopamine and neuroepinephrine in the brain. Stimulant medications include methylphenidate (e.g., Ritalin, Concerta) and amphetamines (e.g., Adderall). Although stimulant medication has been found to be largely effective, there are several side effects to consider. Specifically, children who take stimulant medication have reported loss of appetite, headaches, insomnia, mood problems, and tics. Non-stimulant medications such as atomoxetine (e.g., Strattera) are also used to treat ADHD, although the efficacy of these medications has not been as good as that of stimulant medication. Psychosocial treatments have been used alone and in conjunction with medication. Typical psychosocial
Authentic assessment
interventions involve contingency management of behavior. Specifically, the aim is to modify the child’s physical and social environment through positive reinforcement and punishment to manage ADHD symptoms. Parent training that focuses on teaching parents how to manage their children’s disruptive behavior has also been found to be effective in the management of ADHD symptoms. See also: > Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT); Impulsive behavior; > Neuropsychological assessment
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Suggested Reading Barkley, R. A. (2000). Taking charge of ADHD. New York: Guilford Press. Wender, P. A. (2000). ADHD attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder in children and adults. Oxford: Oxford Press.
Suggested Resources NIMH (National Institute of Mental Health)—http://www.nimh.nih. gov/healthinformation/adhdmenu.cfm: NIMH is a federal agency under the United States (U.S.) Department of Health and Human Services. It is the lead federal agency for research on mental and behavioral disorders. CHADD (Children and Adults with Attention Deficit Disorder)— http://www.chadd.org/: CHADD is a national and international nonprofit organization dedicated to providing education for those with ADHD.
Authentic Assessment Lisa M Beck . Thomas Hatch
Authentic assessments emerged in the 1980s as alternatives to traditional methods of assessing students’ performance in schools. Authentic assessments are designed to encourage students to perform tasks that they might encounter in the ‘‘real world’’; they encourage students to produce knowledge and engage in disciplined inquiry that requires them to use their prior knowledge, gain an in-depth understanding of the problem being addressed, and employ a variety of different skills and intelligences. They are often
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designed to give students multiple opportunities to revise and improve upon their work and to be active participants in the evaluation of their performance, progress, and learning. Authentic assessments take many forms and can be implemented in a variety of ways. Portfolio construction, journals, debates, labs, and research projects are just a small sample of the large number of authentic assessment activities teachers can use to learn about their students. Correspondingly, teachers can construct tasks that reflect what they think their students need to know and what they need to be able to do to be productive and successful adults. Unlike standardized tests, the primary goal of authentic assessment is not assessment alone. The goal is to construct learning situations that incorporate and integrate a wide variety of cognitive and social skills that are meaningful and connected to the students’ prior knowledge, backgrounds, and school and community contexts. Authentic assessments can also be used to promote substantive conversations and enable teachers to evaluate students as they engage in tasks. As a result, proponents argue that in authentic assessment activities, students assume more responsibility for their learning, have numerous opportunities to demonstrate their skills and knowledge, and can continue to learn and develop while being evaluated. Authentic assessments of students provide data that teachers can use to reflect on, evaluate, and construct curricula, as well as to demonstrate students’ learning to parents and colleagues.
An Alternative to Traditional Assessment The most widespread form of student assessment in the United States (U.S.) is standardized, normreferenced, multiple-choice tests. Despite their prevalence, there is mounting concern by many in the field of education that these tests are inappropriate and ineffective in assessing student learning. One of the biggest concerns about standardized tests is that they do not assess the knowledge and skills that students will need to succeed in the workplace. Thus, while norm-referenced, standardized tests often ask students to recall information or use skills in ways that are only relevant in school, authentic assessments are designed to give students experience with meaningful tasks that
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simulate those they may encounter in the future. Both process and product are evaluated and, in many cases, there is no one ‘‘right’’ way to complete an authentic assessment activity. Ideally, students are required to use higher-level and lower-level thinking skills as they are constructing and integrating knowledge, and to apply what they are learning in a variety of situations. Many argue that authentic assessments can provide teachers with a wider array of information about their students than traditional tests. As a result, in many school settings, teachers employ both standardized and authentic assessments to gain the most accurate and complete picture of their students’ learning. Using authentic assessments in conjunction with tests can also reinforce the concept that learning is continuous, complex, and dynamic, and should not be simplified to the memorization and reproduction of facts.
Implementation To implement authentic assessment in their classrooms, teachers must first determine what skills and information they want their students to learn and apply. The standards for the assessment should be clearly defined and reflect knowledge that will help students succeed in the workplace. Teachers can then use the standards and their understanding of their students to determine what model/s would be most appropriate and meaningful. For example, teachers of young children might find that observation, portfolios, and group projects are the best methods for assessing their students authentically. Teachers of older students might find that debates, oral presentations, scientific experiments, and research projects hold the most promise for assessing student learning. In addition to considering the ages, backgrounds, and prior knowledge of their students, teachers can also consider the context of the classroom, school, and community in which they work. A debate might be more meaningful if it reflected issues that were relevant to the students in that community. Once the authentic assessment task is determined, the next step is to define the criteria for evaluation, outline the standards and expectations for the task, and share this information with the students. One way to do this is to create rubrics that provide detailed descriptions of each criteria outlined. The information can then be used to plan curricula, evaluate students, and reflect on their performances.
Each step in the authentic assessment model can allow for direct observation of students’ performances. As students are expected to self-evaluate in many authentic assessments, teachers may want to include them in the construction of evaluation procedures and goals. The authentic assessment task may culminate with students sharing what they have learned in a performance, piece of art, debate, oral presentation, portfolio, or another form that can be observed by students, parents, and/or other members of the community.
Challenges of Implementation Although there are some researchers, educators, and policymakers who argue that authentic assessment is a more comprehensive, appropriate, and effective way to measure student learning, there are many challenges in its widespread use. First, teachers may not have the time, energy, or motivation to design and implement authentic assessments in their classrooms. Second, policy makers and administrators in the U.S. continue to need and want the kind of succinct scores provided by standardized tests. Third, the time already devoted to established standardized tests leave little time and opportunity for experimentation and development of suitable alternatives. Finally, part of the difficulty in implementing authentic assessments may come from the fact that authentic assessment requires administrators, policymakers, teachers, and parents to shift their thinking away from the traditional view of measuring student performance. Critics of authentic assessments point out that they can be costly and time-consuming to develop and implement. Considerable work needs to be done so that authentic assessments can be employed reliably across a variety of different contexts. See also: > Assessment of culturally diverse children; > Multiple intelligences; > Portfolios
Suggested Reading Darling-Hammond, L., Ancess J., & Falk, B. (1995). Authentic assessment in action: Studies of schools and students at work. New York: Teachers College Press. Fischer, C. F. & King, R. M. (1995). Authentic assessment: A guide to implementation. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press.
Autism spectrum disorders (ASD) Newmann, F. M. & Archbald, D. A. (1992). The nature of authentic academic achievement. In A. R. Tom (Ed.), Toward a new science of educational testing and assessment (pp. 71–83). Albany: State University of New York Press. Wiggins, G. (1993). Educative assessment: Designing assessments to inform and improve student performance. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) Jennifer Nyeste
Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) is a term that groups together five specific disorders under one umbrella: autistic disorder or autism, childhood disintegrative disorder (CDD), Asperger’s syndrome, Rett’s syndrome, and pervasive developmental disorder-not otherwise specified (PDD-NOS). The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders-Fourth Edition (DSM-IV) defines autism as a pervasive developmental disorder marked by social and communication impairments along with a restricted repertoire of activities and interests. Though the term ASD appears to be focused on autism, the spectrum aspect of ASD implies that it is not a single condition, but rather a disorder that results in individuals presenting a wide range of abilities and disabilities. Individuals with ASD vary in areas of development from severe problems to above average abilities. Individuals with autism often have impairments in communication, impairments in social skills, and restricted and repetitive behavioral patterns or range of interests. Approximately 50% of children diagnosed with autism do not talk to communicate. The 50% that can verbally communicate are said to often repeat what they hear someone else say. This process is often referred to as echolalia. Children with autism also have problems with social interactions. They appear to live in their own world and typically do not initiate social situations. Individuals with autism also demonstrate stereotypic behaviors, meaning they do things in rigid patterns and often demonstrate disruptive behavior if their routines are violated. Approximately 75% of those diagnosed with autism also have mental retardation, and thus only 25% of the autistic population has
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a normal level of intelligence. This range of cognitive ability has led to the now common terms of low functioning autism vs. high functioning autism, identifying those with mental retardation as low functioning, and those without mental retardation as high functioning. About 5% of autistic individuals fall into a highly functional category of the autistic spectrum. This small percent of individuals are recognized as autistic savants, those who have specific talents or abilities such as superior memorization skills, outstanding art and music capabilities, and can perform remarkable calendar and mathematical calculations. Individuals with Childhood Disintegrative Disorder (CDD) differ than those diagnosed with autism in that individuals with CDD are not diagnosed until age 5 or 6, much later the average age of 3, when those with autism are diagnosed. CDD is much rarer than autism. Individuals with CDD developmentally regress, losing already acquired language and social skills until eventually, their behaviors become similar to those with autism. The most striking characteristic of the syndrome is an intense interest in very specific subjects. For example, individuals can be obsessed with clocks; refrigerators; and train, or plane and bus schedules. The key to the diagnosis is that obsessive behavior significantly impairs social functioning. Asperger’s syndrome is unique in that communication is not delayed, however, the social use of language is a challenge for individuals with Asperger’s, as they often cannot interpret concepts or read others’ feelings or emotions. Children with Asperger’s do demonstrate many of the same behaviors as those with autism, such as repetitive behaviors and preoccupation with rigid routines. However, those with Asperger’s have normal intelligence as there is no significant delay in cognitive development. Rett’s syndrome is sometimes misdiagnosed as autism. It is characterized by poor motor and social skills. Those diagnosed with Rett’s develop normally through about 5 months after birth. Between 5 and 48 months, however, a child will begin to lose acquired skills and begin deceleration of head growth. Individuals diagnosed with Rett’s syndrome often have better social skills than those with autism, however, most children with Rett’s have mental retardation more severe than those with autism. PDD-NOS is a diagnosis that is made when children do not display more than one problem in areas of communication, social behaviors, or when the problems exist but are mild. The DSM-IV does not define
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common characteristics for PDD-NOS as this disorder shares a combination of traits with autism, CDD, Asperger’s and Rett’s. Regardless of the specific diagnosis, individuals diagnosed with ASD face severe deficits in basic areas of functioning, making it a challenge for parents, educators, and other professionals to meet the needs of these children in an educational and social context. ASDs are lifelong. Due to the range of both diagnoses and severities, the development of special education programs for these students will also range.
Identification In 1943, Dr. Leo Kanner of Johns Hopkins Medical School first described autism after observing a group of children and the nature of their communication skills. This was right around the same time that Hans Asperger, and Austrian pediatrician, described a similar condition later called Asperger’s syndrome. Even with all the research that succeeded Dr. Kanner and Dr. Asperger, ASD still remains a rather mysterious disability. Until recently, children were not diagnosed with autism until the age of 5, but now it is possible to diagnose children before the age of 3 with the help of new diagnostic testing and research that looks at children’s language, motor skills, and social interactions at very early ages. Still, only 50% of children with ASD are said to be diagnosed before kindergarten. Of course, as aforementioned, since some of the specific disorders under ASD have different symptoms that occur at different stages of development, a child can go undiagnosed until age 5 or 6, or be diagnosed as early as 5 months. For example, CDD is a regressive disorder, and thus, the child will appear to develop normally until age 5 or 6 making identification impossible until the onset of such symptoms occurs. A child with Rett’s can begin to regress as early as 5 months. While early identification of ASD can help parents and educators put together interventions and plans to help the child educationally, socially, and behaviorally, it is important to note that there are no cures for ASD. There are treatments for ASD, though it is determined on an individual basis with the help of health professionals, families, and teachers. Treatment options can range anywhere from special instructional and
behavioral therapy, dietary intervention, and medication prescriptions to a combination of all the above.
Prevalence and Causes While there is no specific number on record, and different research yields slightly different numbers, it has been estimated that the prevalence of ASDs have increased from 4 to 5 cases per 10,000 individuals in the 1960s to 5 to 31 cases per 10,000 individuals in the 1990s. These numbers come from epidemiological studies and the data collected by states about enrollment in special education programs. Some explanations of such an increase in prevalence include the improvement of diagnostic methods, the use of the broader category of ASD rather than exclusively autism, as well as the idea that there has simply been an increase in the disorders. These possibilities are debatable, as there is not much evidence supporting any one over the other. However, many experts and parents believe that the condition is simply growing in numbers, but cannot explain why this may be. This is where the causes of ASDs become another debatable mystery. As in the prevalence case concerning ASD, the causes are not clearly definable either. There are a number of suggestions out there by experts, though no precise causes exist. Most experts believe that ASDs have a genetic basis. Some believe that it is a lifelong neurological disorder, and/or that at least some forms of autism are caused by injury to the brain stem or frontal lobe. People speculate that environmental toxins, gastrointestinal anomalies, and ingredients in certain vaccines are possible causes, but again, there is little evidence to such speculations.
Education In 1990, the United States (U.S.) Congress added autism as a disability category to the Individuals with Disabilities Act (IDEA). In 1991, approximately 5,500 students were educated in the U.S. under this category of IDEA. Ten years later, this number grew dramatically to serve approximately 65,500 students specifically with autism. This dramatic increase in numbers has consequently established a need for educational programs in schools as well as the need for skilled and competent educators. There is a continuous controversy regarding what type of programs are most
Autism spectrum disorders (ASD)
effective. One major factor concerns the debate over the least restrictive environment (LRE) provision in the 1997 Reauthorized Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA). This provision generally stipulates that learners with disabilities are entitled to educational services in maximally normalized settings that offer the same access to the general education curriculum as their developmentally typical peers. A controversy associated with ASD and education is that not all are convinced that every student with ASD should be included in general education classes. However, research shows that many students with ASD perform well and should be integrated into general education classrooms. Since the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act of 2001, the law now holds states, districts, schools, principles, and teachers accountable for both the performance of their general education and special education students. This puts even more pressure on educators to improve the academic performance of their students. One very important component that exists to accomplish the goals of NCLB is the idea of multidisciplinary teams of professionals (i.e., teachers, administrators, school counselors, school nurse, child study team) working together to identify the needs of each child with disabilities, including those with ASD. See also: > Asperger’s Syndrome, PDD; > Inclusion; > Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA); > Learning disabilities; > Mental retardation; > Special education
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Suggested Reading Iovannone, R., Dunlap, G., Huber, H., & Kincaid, D. (2003). Effective educational practices for students with autism spectrum disorders. Focus on Autism and Other Developmental Disabilities, 18(3), 150–165. Simpson, R. L., de Boer-Ott, S. R., & Smith-Myles, B. (2003). Inclusion of learners with autism spectrum disorders in general education settings. Top Language Disorder, 23(2), 116–133. Yell, ML., Drasgow, E., & Lowrey, KA. (2005). No Child Left Behind and students with autism spectrum disorders. Focus on Autism and Other Developmental Disabilities, 20(3), 130–139.
Suggested Resources National Institute of Mental Health Website—http://www.nimh. nih.gov/publicat/autism.cfm: This website offers information on Autism Spectrum Disorders, including symptoms, causes and treatments, statistics, and information on support services and coping groups. National Autism Association—http://www.nationalautismassocia tion.org: The National Autism Association is an organization whose mission is to educate and empower families affected by autism and other neurological disorders. They advocate on behalf of those who cannot fight for their own rights, while ra ising public and professional awareness.
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Bicultural Efficacy Lourdes India Ivory
Bicultural Efficacy, Bicultural Competence, and Culture The term bicultural efficacy has been defined and explained by LaFromboise et al. as an important dimension in the development of bicultural competence. Bicultural efficacy is an individual’s belief or confidence in his or her ability to live effectively and satisfactorily within two cultural groups without having to compromise his or her own sense of cultural identity. Bicultural efficacy is considered a crucial factor in acquiring and developing bicultural skills and is directly related to one’s ability to develop bicultural competence. Moreover, bicultural efficacy is also defined as an individual’s perceived expectation regarding his or her ability to handle the challenges of living within two cultures (without negative psychological outcomes) or having to compromise his or her personal and cultural identity. As self-efficacy has been positively associated with performance, bicultural efficacy has also been positively associated with bicultural competence. Bicultural competence is considered an important aspect of interacting within two cultures. It is relevant for both majority and minority persons who attempt to acquire competence in a bicultural and/or multicultural setting. In addition, the development of cultural efficacy is considered a vital factor in assisting individuals to become more effective within bicultural and/or multicultural settings. LaFromboise et al. state specifically that bicultural efficacy can determine an individual’s ability to acquire ‘‘a range of culturally or situationally appropriate behaviors or roles in a second culture’’; to perform efficiently within one’s role; to communicate skillfully (both verbally and nonverbally); to uphold roles and
affiliations within one’s culture of origin; and to handle and manage acculturation stress. The manner in which culture has been defined is important when discussing bicultural competence and bicultural efficacy. A commonly agreed upon definition of culture has not been established. Nevertheless, there exist many theoretical explanations that concern the meaning, influence, and significance of culture. Culture, as defined in the literature, includes, among other factors, the acquisition of a specific set of beliefs, values, norms, morals, customs, institutions, individual dynamics, life histories, and overall experiences. Culture is also presented as involving the process whereby knowledge, skills, and attitudes are acquired and transmitted from generation to generation. Language transmission is also considered a relevant component of culture. Furthermore, culture is viewed as a learned behavior and as a construct distinct from ‘‘race’’ and ‘‘ethnicity.’’ The behavioral model of culture addresses what is required to become biculturally competent. There is, however, no universal standard used to measure bicultural competence. Nonetheless, bicultural competence includes social skills, personality development, and the ability to manage effectively the challenges of living within two distinct cultures. Both culture and/or a form of culture can be found among ethnic and racial groups. Subcultures can also exist within cultures. In regard to a bicultural existence, the effective management of living within two cultures can influence the development of bicultural efficacy. Bicultural competence and bicultural efficacy are positively associated.
Models of Second-Culture Acquisition, Bicultural Competence, and Bicultural Efficacy Five models of second-culture acquisition and how they relate to the development of bicultural competence are reviewed and discussed by LaFromboise et al. These five models are: assimilation, acculturation, alternation, multicultural, and fusion. The alternation model of second-culture acquisition is identified as the one model that most effectively promotes bicultural competence and bicultural efficacy. In the assimilation model, the individual is expected to engage in a process whereby he or she gives up his/ her own cultural identity/heritage and fully engages in the new host culture which is usually the dominant
C. S. Clauss-Ehlers (Ed.), Encyclopedia of Cross-Cultural School Psychology, DOI 10.1007/978-0-387-71799-9, # Springer Science+Business Media LLC 2010
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culture. It is postulated that an individual is motivated to assimilate because of his or her desire to be accepted by the target culture. The acculturation model, unlike the assimilation model, involves a process where the individual seeks competence in the majority culture without completely giving up his or her identification with the culture of origin. The process of acculturation has also been presented as a process that is involuntary—that is, an individual may forcibly learn a new culture for survival reasons. In the multicultural model, cultures can be distinctly maintained while individuals from a particular culture interact with other cultures in addressing national or economic needs. The individual can positively identify with his/her own culture while simultaneously acquiring a positive identity in constructively engaging in mainstream society. The fusion model of secondculture acquisition indicates that cultures sharing an economic, political, or geographic domain will fuse together with the end result being that of a new culture emerging from the fusion of the different cultures. The alternation model of second-culture acquisition—presented as the most effective model in promoting bicultural competence and bicultural efficacy—postulates that an individual is capable of being both knowledgeable about his or her own culture of origin and that of the secondly acquired culture. Moreover, the individual is able to comprehend what is required concerning two different cultures and can alter his or her behavior when deemed appropriate and/or necessary. This model includes the assumption that an individual can experience a sense of belonging in two distinct cultures without surrendering his or her own sense of cultural identity. According to this model, an individual is capable of possessing ‘‘dual modes of social behavior’’ and of being able to select appropriately the particular mode of social behavior required in a given situation or setting. He or she can be expected to interact positively and competently within two cultures, possess bicultural efficacy, and view both cultures as positive and meaningful. In this model, the individual, him- or herself, determines how and to what extent he or she will interact with his or her own culture and/or the second culture. The alternation model of second-culture acquisition is considered the most effective model for acquiring bicultural competence and the development of bicultural efficacy since it includes both positive identification and affiliation with one’s own culture of origin and with the secondly acquired culture.
The extent to which one acquires bicultural efficacy is related to an individual’s perception concerning his or her bicultural competence. An individual is expected to be influenced positively in acquiring bicultural competence when he or she possesses bicultural efficacy. Furthermore, one’s ability to acquire bicultural competence is contingent upon, but not limited to, one’s stage of ethnic identity development, individual personality, personal identity, affective processes, ego strength, selfconfidence, and perception of self-sufficiency. LaFromboise et al. maintain that bicultural competence involves an awareness of and knowledge about the cultural beliefs and values of the culture of origin and the secondly acquired culture; positive attitudes toward both cultural groups; the acquisition of bicultural efficacy; the development of communication skills—having communication ability—verbal and nonverbal—in one’s culture of origin and the secondly acquired culture; the ability to acquire a role repertoire (range of culturally or situationally appropriate behaviors or roles); and, groundedness—the ability to establish a support system in both the culture of origin and the secondly acquired culture. The acquisition of bicultural competence fosters the development of bicultural efficacy. Conversely, bicultural efficacy is a critical factor in the development of bicultural competence.
Overall Outcomes Regarding Bicultural Competence and Bicultural Efficacy Biculturalism is believed to foster both a sense of efficacy when functioning within societal institutions as well as a positive view of and identification with one’s own culture of origin. Henceforth, psychological wellbeing is associated with bicultural competence. Bicultural individuals are reported to have enhanced physical and psychological health and to persevere in spite of bicultural challenges. The performance of those who are biculturally competent is expected to be better vocationally and academically than that of those who remain monocultural. Bicultural individuals are able to engage in what has been termed cultural frame switching; that is, having the ability to move from one culture to another given various factors such as one’s interpretation of a situation and cultural cues. Furthermore, religion and spirituality are other factors that can have an impact upon and influence bicultural competence and bicultural efficacy. For some
Biculturalism
individuals, religious faith serves as a lens through which culture is viewed, evaluated, interpreted, accepted, rejected, and so on. That is, many view religious faith as an integral and vital part of their lives and, as such, a determining factor regarding the acquisition and transmission of personal and religious beliefs, values, roles, behavior, customs, traditions, style of communication, and so forth. Skills training interventions for acquiring bicultural competence have been viewed as an effective and necessary modality for preparing individuals to interact appropriately within different cultural settings. Helping individuals develop bicultural competence (inclusive of bicultural efficacy) can reduce intergenerational culture value conflicts and acculturative stress. Developing skills necessary to manage and negotiate both one’s own culture of origin and other cultures can enhance bicultural competence, a component needed to acquire, develop, and maintain bicultural efficacy. See also: > Acculturation; identity development
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Suggested Reading Berry, J. W. (2005). Acculturation: Living successfully in two cultures. Journal of Intercultural Relations, 29(6), 697. LaFromboise, T., Coleman, H. L. K., & Gerton, J. (1995). Psychological impact of biculturalism: Evidence and theory. In N. R. Goldberger, & J. B. Veroff, (Eds.), The culture and psychology reader (pp. 489–535). New York, NY: New York University Press. Szapocznik, J., Rio, A., Perez-Vidal, A., Kurtines, W., Hervis O., & Santisteban, D. (1986). Bicultural effectiveness training (BET): An experimental test of an intervention modality for families experiencing intergenerational/intercultural conflict. Hispanic Journal of Behavioral Sciences, 8(4), 303–330.
Biculturalism Teresa LaFromboise
In 1967, the Supreme Court overturned the remaining state laws against interracial marriage.1 The consequences of this significant decision can be seen in 1
Loving v. State of Virginia.
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the over 1 million Americans born in the 1970s and 1980s who are of more than one racial heritage. The birth rate of multiracial babies is over 25 times higher than that of any other racial category. Approximately 70% of African Americans are multiracial, as are most Latinos, Filipinos, American Indians, and Native Hawaiians. In the 2000 census, 6.8 million people reported their heritage as being of two or more races. Most definitions of biculturalism refer to psychological duality associated with simultaneously learning the rules of behavior, expectations, values, and developing a sense of security and personal identity in more than one culture. A bicultural person may be seen as possessing two cultural identities as a result of socialization within two cultures concurrently. There is also a developing understanding that being an American and a person of color in the United States (U.S.) today are not mutually exclusive. Many individuals participate at different levels as members of two cultural groups, particularly as the world becomes more global through the use of evolving technologies. Racial identity can be situational, without necessarily reflecting ambivalence about either heritage. The environments in which one socializes can have a significant impact on identity, as identity is drawn from an interactional process within social environments in which the self is reflected by others. A person may have overlapping or distinct identities in each of these environments. For children, many of these racial identity development processes are negotiated through parents, but when these children reach young adulthood, they may have to re-negotiate their identity with unfamiliar individuals who have a different history of race relations. Additionally, one’s private identity may be different from the public identity that is assumed or validated by others. Bicultural persons are often found to be confident, secure, well-adjusted, open to different worldviews and socially tolerant. Bicultural individuals are able to demonstrate behavioral and cognitive flexibility in diverse settings, act as cultural brokers among people of different backgrounds, and hold membership in various cultural groups without necessarily feeling marginalized. Bicultural individuals are often quite independent and self-reliant, as they must endure extended periods of social isolation from their primary group for the purposes of education, training, and work. Alternatively, a dual identity may negatively affect normal ethnic socialization, as individuals have the
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added pressure of deciding whether to choose a singular ethnic identity or develop biculturally. One psychological threat is marginalization, feeling as if one is between two cultures, but does not fully belong to either one. The person may feel cut off from both groups, and suffer from self-hatred, low self-esteem, and feelings of inferiority, as well as being predisposed to mental health problems. Biculturalism can be understood as a strategy for coping with discriminatory practices in society. It provides a psychological safety net where the individual can withdraw when necessary to receive nurturance and support from the family following periods of time in an environment that may be unwelcoming. Often, this support revalidates the person’s self-esteem and provides a basis for maintaining ties to their ethnic culture(s). Thus, biculturalism offers both external group support and internal coping resources. Bicultural individuals acquire a level of bicultural competence through involvement in both cultures, including observations, interactions, reflection, and training. Bicultural competence has been operationalized to include individuals who posses: (1) a sense of belonging in both cultures without compromising one’s sense of cultural identity, (2) dual modes of social behavior that are suitably used in different situations, (3) the ability to alternate behaviors based on the culture in which one is immersed, (4) the ability to uphold a positive relationship with both cultures without feeling pressure to choose between them, and (5) the ability to assign equal status to both cultures, even if she/he does value or prefer them equally.
Ways of Becoming Bicultural Bicultural involvement refers to the process of adaptations to environmental changes, which may be of natural or cultural origin. An individual may become bicultural by being born with more than one cultural or ethnic heritage. Children with parents from dissimilar cultures have a greater chance of being socialized to the cultural practices, standards, and values of more than one culture. Little literature exists that focuses on the emotional and psychological welfare of multiheritage children. The ‘‘one-drop rule’’ is often maintained by many people, regardless of the overall cultural/ ethnic background of an individual. This conception may result in a form of discrimination, as a bicultural,
multi-heritage person will be perceived as a member of one culture, but not as belonging to both cultures. However, the dominant perspective supports the position that multiethnic people not only have positive relations with both White people and people of color, but they also have good relations with mixed race and minority peers. A second way that individuals become bicultural is through immigration. Individuals are socialized to the norms and values of their country of origin, and then must adapt to their new surroundings. First generation individuals typically come to the U.S. during their adult lives, and therefore may find less pressure to conform to the norms of the majority society when they are seen as having more stable ethnic identities. There are also increasingly more established ethnic enclaves in certain areas of the country, so some first generation immigrants are able to resist the pressure to acculturate to American culture. Of course, the process of adaptation may be influenced by the discrepancy between the immigrant’s former and current life. A third manner of becoming bicultural lies in being of the ‘‘one-and-a-half ’’ generation: individuals who immigrate as children. These children are likely to have more exposure to the host culture than their parents though academic involvement, peer socialization, and media use. Thus, these children often take on roles as translators and cultural brokers. This generation of children may experience great pressure for enculturation in the primary culture as a result of parental fear of a dilution of cultural awareness and ethnic pride. The fourth method of becoming bicultural is when children are born to immigrant parents. These children are usually expected to maintain the beliefs and values of the parents’ country of origin, and are often taught the language of this country, a skill that can serve as another link to their ethnic heritage. However, at the same time, they are expected to become ‘‘American.’’ To adapt to these dual roles, children of immigrants or refugees develop competence in both cultures, often serving as a bridge between parent culture and that of the majority group. The fifth way of becoming bicultural is as a third or later generation. Often, these individuals are more loyal to their ethnic heritage than they are knowledgeable of many of the cultural dimensions, such as language and history. Language is often learned formally during school at a later age rather than informally in the family from birth.
Bilingual education programs: maintenance, transitional, and dual language
This type of individual tends to maintain biculturalism by choice, seeing it as a benefit and source of pride. Many times, even though a third or later generation individual may have no familiarity with his/her ethnic culture, she/he is still perceived as a person of color and treated as such by others with certain stereotypes in mind. The final way of becoming bicultural is through adoption and foster care. Adoption experts vary in their opinions about this type of adoption. Some believe that children should always be placed with at least one parent of the same race or culture so the child can develop a strong racial or cultural identity. For example, the Indian Child Welfare act was created in 1978 to re-establish tribal authority over the adoption of American Indian children and strengthen American Indian families and culture. The National Association of Black Social Workers asserts that only African American parents can properly teach their children how to handle racism. Other experts believe that race should not be considered when searching for a loving family that can meet the needs of a particular child.
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Suggested Reading Gaskin, P. F. (Ed.) (1999). What are you? Voices of mixed-race young people. New York: Henry Holt Company. Harris, D. R., & Sim, J. J. (2002). Who is multiracial? Assessing the complexity of lived race. American Socialogical Review, 67, 614. Rockquemore, K. A., & Brunsma, D. L. (2002). Beyond Black: Biracial identity in America. Thousand Oaks: Sage Publications.
Bilingual Education Programs: Maintenance, Transitional, and Dual Language Kathy Escamilla
Introduction Strategies for Coping Bicultural involvement may be a strategy for coping with discrimination in society, as one learns two distinct behavioral repertoires, a process which is seen as adaptive for minority individuals. People use different strategies depending on the nature of the situation. Three strategies that are used to attempt to cope with cultural diversity—separation, assimilation, and acculturation—assume that the process of secondculture acquisition is linear, where individuals either disconnect themselves from their culture of origin and immerse themselves in the second culture or they completely separate themselves from contact with the second culture. The strategy of alternation assumes that it is possible to alternate between two different cultures without having to choose one culture over another. The greater the range of culturally appropriate behaviors or roles that one is able to develop (termed ‘‘role repertoire’’), the higher the level of bicultural competence an individual possesses. See also: > Academic achievement in minority children; > Adolescent ethnic identity; > Ethnic minority youth
Over the past three decades, the number of culturally and linguistically diverse students in United States (U.S.) schools has grown at a rapid rate. Culturally and linguistically diverse students (also called English Language Learners and hereafter referred to as CLD) are those students who speak a language other than English and who bring diverse cultural heritages to their classrooms. The group of CLD students in the U.S. is ethnically and linguistically diverse. In 2000, federally funded bilingual and English as a Second Language (ESL) programs served 198 different language groups. The vast majority (about 67%) of these students were born in the U.S. and are therefore U.S. citizens. In urban areas, this population is the fastest growing of all school-aged populations. The linguistic repertoires of CLD students vary widely. Some enter school speaking no English while others are functional in English but lack reading and writing skills in English. Still others have varying levels of proficiency in both their native language and English. While the diversity of this population has been well documented, it is equally important to note that there are heavy concentrations of students speaking one of several languages. For example, 75% of all CLD students
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speak Spanish as a primary language. Further, 85% of all of the linguistic diversity is accounted for by five language groups (Spanish—75%; Vietnamese—4%; Hmong, Cantonese, Korean, Laotian, and Navajo— 2% each language). The above numbers are important as a means of discussing instructional program models to serve this population. Over the past 30 years, in the midst of a large and growing research base that supports bilingual program models as the most effective instructional approaches for CLD students, the actual number of CLD children receiving bilingual education has dropped sharply. This reduction may be attributed to three varied but connected forces. First, voter initiated referendums in three states with large CLD populations (California 1998; Arizona 2000; Massachusetts 2002) have eliminated most bilingual education programs in these states. Next, policy makers have incorrectly concluded that the diversity of the CLD population (i.e., too many different languages) means that bilingual education is not feasible. Finally, as a result of the federal mandate of No Child Left Behind (2002), many administrators and teachers are faced with new high stakes testing mandates and accountability requirements that can only be met in English. As a result, many have opted out of bilingual education programs. The earlier result is that currently only about 10% of the CLD children in the U.S. are in bilingual education programs. The vast majority of CLD students are in English medium programs. English medium programs for CLD students focus on teaching English but do not make formal use of a student’s native language in instruction. Bilingual education programs, on the other hand, are educational programs that utilize a student’s native language as a medium of instruction, and at the same time, teach English as a secnd language. There are many different types of bilingual education programs. They include Transitional Bilingual Education (early exit and late exit), Maintenance Bilingual Education (also called Developmental or Enrichment), and Dual Language Programs (also called Two-Way Immersion, or Two-Way programs). Following is a discussion about the various types of bilingual programs. It should be restated that bilingual programs are only available for about 10% of the CLD population nationally and that 95% of all bilingual education programs in the U.S. are early-exit transitional programs.
Each of the types of bilingual education programs will be discussed via the theoretical foundations of the program, its goals, advantages and disadvantages, and research support for the approach.
Transitional Bilingual Programs Transitional Bilingual Education Programs (TBE) use a student’s native language as a medium of instruction for all or part of the school day for a temporary period. TBE programs use students’ native languages as a medium of instruction while simultaneously teaching English as a second language. The main purpose of a TBE program is to use a student’s native language as a bridge to English. The main goal of a TBE program is transition to and ultimate proficiency in English, not the development of bilingualism or biliteracy. Transitional Bilingual Programs are further divided into early-exit TBE and late-exit TBE. Early-exit TBE programs last from 2 to 3 years, while late-exit programs can last from 5 to 6 years. TBE programs begin by having the majority of the school day conducted in students’ native language, with daily instruction in ESL. Overtime, less of the students’ native language is used and the amount of English instruction increases. Again, it is expected that students will exit from these programs into all English programs in a short period of time. The rationale for TBE programs is that a student’s native language is a resource that can be utilized to help students learn English. The theoretical framework is that of language transfer, meaning what is Sample Language Allocation Plan: Grade
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English/% Time
Late-Exit Transitional Bilingual Program K 80% 20% 1 75% 25% 2 50% 50% 3 25% 75% 4 20% 80% 5 0 100% Early-Exit Transitional Bilingual Program K 75% 25% 1 50% 50% 2 25% 75% 3 20% 80% 4 0% 100% 5 0 100%
Bilingual education programs: maintenance, transitional, and dual language
known and learned in one language can positively transfer to another language. The following visuals illustrate an example of language allocation plans in a late-exit program, and an early-exit program where Spanish is the native language and English is the second language. In this model, the transition is complete by fifth grade. In early-exit models, the transition is generally complete by the end of third grade. The advantages of TBE are that at least for a short period of time, students are learning content (e.g., reading/writing, math, and science) while they are learning English, and thereby not getting behind in subject matter content while they are learning English as a second language. Further, a seminal study conducted by Ramı´rez et al. (1991) compared early-exit TBE to late-exit TBE, to English immersion programs, and found that the most effective educational program option was the late-exit TBE, the next most effective was early-exit TBE and the least effective was English immersion. These study results have been further supported by at least four research syntheses. While TBE has some advantages for CLD children, these programs also have some disadvantages. Criticism of these programs include that most are early exit in nature and therefore do not allow children enough time to learn English well before they are transferred out and thrown into all English classrooms. Further, the model assumes that children enter a particular school in kindergarten and that there is little or no mobility. CLD students, in reality are highly mobile, and many CLD children enter U.S. schools in second, third, or fourth grades or later. The model has been criticized for segregating children linguistically within a school, and thereby stigmatizing and marginalizing children who do not speak English. While the model as a linguistic model has theoretical merit, it does not specifically address cultural issues and many have argued that these cultural issues are as important as linguistic issues in building effective instructional programs for CLD students. Finally, TBE programs have been criticized as viewing students’ native languages as problems to be remediated rather than as linguistic resources to be valued and developed. In this model, native languages are used as temporary bridges to English and therefore viewed simply as a vehicle to encourage English acquisition rather than of value in their own right. Unfortunately, while students in TBE programs generally learn English, they frequently lose their native language in the process and the ultimate outcome is subtractive bilingualism.
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Maintenance Bilingual Programs (Developmental or Enrichment) Maintenance Bilingual Programs (MBE also known as developmental or enrichment) share some components with TBE programs; however, they also differ in some significant ways. MBE programs also use student’s native languages and English in school curricula beginning in kindergarten. MBE programs, however, place less emphasis on transitioning students to all English classrooms, or exiting students from programs. Students in MBE programs receive content area instruction in both languages for as many grades as the school system can provide. The vast majority of MBE programs in the U.S. are kindergarten to fifth grade or kindergarten to sixth grade programs with no continuation in middle and high school. The following
Sample Language Allocation Plan Grade
Spanish/% Time
Maintenance Bilingual Program K 80% 1 75% 2 50% 3 50% 4 50% 5 50%
English/% Time 20% 25% 50% 50% 50% 50%
graphic illustrates the difference in language allocation between TBE and MBE programs. Ideally, MBE programs include a curriculum infused with a multicultural curriculum perspective and equal amounts of native language and English use for kindergarten through twelth grade, with continuing opportunities at the university level. Realistically, however, such programs are not only uncommon in number, but also limited to elementary grades. Research on MBE programs has established their efficacy when compared to other programs models (TBE, English immersion, pull-out ESL). These studies have established that MBE programs produce high academic achievement in both the native language and English after 4–6 years of MBE schooling. In contrast to TBE programs, the goals of MBE programs are for students to become bilingual and biliterate and academically competent in two languages. Biculturalism is also a goal for these programs. The advantage to these programs is that they view
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Bilingual education programs: maintenance, transitional, and dual language
language as a resource rather than a problem and view each language as legitimate in its own right. The disadvantages of MBE are similar to TBE in that the programs assume a stable population and the CLD population is highly mobile. MBE programs that are one way in nature (e.g., Spanish to English) also run the risk of linguistic segregation within schools. Further, MBE programs became the center of a political controversy in the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s when some writers and researchers raised concern that native language maintenance was not the task of the federal government. MBE programs, however, also became sources of great pride and dramatic improvement in achievement in some programs such as the Navajo bilingual schools and the Yupiak and Inuit bilingual programs in Alaska. Again, it should be noted that fewer than 5% of all bilingual education programs in the U.S. are MBE.
Dual Language Programs (Two-Way Immersion, Two-Way Bilingual) Many MBE programs have evolved into dual language programs. These dual language programs have the same goals as MBE programs (bilingualism, biliteracy, biculturalism). However instead of being structured for CLD students alone, they have added students who are monolingual in English and who wish to develop bilingual proficiencies. There are several different language allocation models for dual language programs. The example included later is known as a 90/10 model where the program begins by providing 90% of the instruction in a student’s native language. For Spanish speaking (or other CLD groups), this is
Spanish and for native English speakers this is English. As students progress through the grade levels, the amount of instruction in the second language is increased until a 50/50 allocation of both languages is achieved. Other programs begin with a 50/50 language allocation from the beginning of the program. Dual language programs are unique in that they are the only bilingual program options that require linguistic integration (50% of the students in the program must be non-English speakers and 50% must be native English speakers). They are also unique in that they are governed by a set of standards for implementation that has been created by the Center for Applied Linguistics. The vast majority of public school dual language programs in the U.S. are Spanish/English programs. However, there are private dual language programs in the U.S. that offer a variety of languages including French, Chinese, and Korean. Dual language programs were first implemented in San Diego, California in 1975 and have grown in popularity nationally. However, less than 1% of all U.S. bilingual programs are dual language in nature. The advantage of dual language programs is that they encourage integration of language and ethnic groups rather than segregation. They provide status and validation to minority languages in the U.S. They encourage cross-cultural friendships among students and cross-cultural collaboration among parents. They expand the concepts of language as a resource. Dual language programs have become increasingly popular during the early years of the twenty-first century and preliminary research on their efficacy has been positive and has suggested that this option may be the most effective for increasing the academic achievement and English acquisition of the large and growing number of
Sample Language Allocation Grade
Spanish Native Language Group Spanish
Plan: Dual Language Program 90/10 Model K 90% 1 80% 2 75% 3 50% 4 50% 5 50%
Native English Language Group
English 10% 20% 25% 50% 50% 50%
English 90% 80% 75% 50% 50% 50%
Spanish 10% 20% 25% 50% 50% 50%
Bilingual school psychologists
CLD student in the U.S. Current research views these programs as ‘‘best practice’’ for CLD students and as an opportunity for monolingual English speakers to study a second language during the early years of elementary school. Ideally, dual language programs would provide opportunities for students to participate in them from kindergarten through high school and then on to higher education. In reality, however, dual language schools are primarily kindergarten through grade 5 schools with a few middle and high school programs nationally. Disadvantages of dual language programs are much the same as for other bilingual program options. The program models assume that all students will begin the program in kindergarten and remain through the end of the program. Further, there is a shortage of bilingual teachers and dual language programs frequently struggle to find highly qualified teachers who have high levels of proficiency in two languages. Finally, in districts that are highly influenced by CDL students, the implementation of a dual language program may mean that bilingual teachers who are needed to teach CLD students are reassigned to teach monolingual English students thereby depriving CLD students of the most qualified teachers. Despite these advantages, Dual Language Programs are still considered to be the best programs for CDL students. See also: > Bicultural efficacy; > Bilingualism; > English as a Second Language Instruction (ESL); > Language needs in the multicultural classroom
Suggested Reading August, D., & Shanahan, T. (2006). Developing literacy in secondlanguage learners: Report of the national literacy panel on language-minority children and youth. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Ovando, C., & Collier, V., (1998). Bilingual and ESL classrooms: Teaching in multicultural contexts. Boston: McGraw-Hill. Ramirez, D., Yuen, S., Ramy, D., & Pasta, D. (1991). Final report: National longitudinal study of structured-English immersion strategy, early-exit and late exit transitional bilingual education programs for language-minority children. San Mateo, CA: Aguirre International. Slavin, R., & Cheung, A. (2003). Effective reading programs for English language learners: A best-evidence synthesis. Washington, D.C.: Center for Research on the Education of Students Place At Risk (CRESPAR).
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Bilingual School Psychologists Elizabeth D Palacios . Rebecca S Martı´nez . Charles R Ridley
As demographics continue to change in our nation’s schools, so do the expectations and responsibilities of school psychologists. Since the 1980s, the prediction has been that the number of people of color would increase dramatically. Between 1980 and 1992 the percentages of population increase for ethnic groups were as follows: Asian and Pacific Islanders 123.5%; Latinos 65.3%; Native American/Eskimo/Aleut 30.7%; African American 16.4%; and non-Latino White 5.5%. These changes have had a dramatic impact on our nation’s schools and agencies who serve children and adolescents. Children of color now make up 36% of the nation’s youth population with an expected increase to 48% by 2020. In stark contrast, in 1999 school psychologists were 92.04% White, 3.13% Latino, 2.14% African American, 0.93% Asian/American/Pacific Islander, 0.40% Native American/Alaskan Native, and 1.36% Other (Unspecified). In response to this disparity of representation in the field of school psychology, training programs began to incorporate cross-cultural issues into their curricula. In the area of research and publications on cultural issues from 1990 to 1999, there was a slight increase in the amount of publications focused on this theme (i.e., from 9% to 10.8%). However, the success of addressing cultural issues in training programs is still debatable. In one study, nearly 70% of the respondents believed that their training was inadequate with respect to knowledge in bilingual psychoeducational assessment. At least 80% of the respondents perceived that their level of training was less than adequate in areas such as second-language acquisition and its relationship to assessment, bilingual and psychoeducational assessment, and how to interpret the results of bilingual psychoeducational assessments.
Cross-Cultural Competence School psychologists who serve ethnically, culturally, and linguistically diverse students are bound by professional ethics and federal law to be competent, fair,
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nondiscriminatory, and knowledgeable. Cross-cultural competency begins with a professional’s self-awareness of biases, assumptions, and values. This promotes an understanding of the worldview of others. Finally, culturally competent school psychologists apply their cultural knowledge base to effectively serve the needs of diverse students. Effectively teaching cross-cultural competence in school psychology training programs has been a major challenge. Well-meaning trainees learn about cultural trends, issues, facts, and figures and believe that they are well equipped to serve minority students. It is not until the trainee experiences self-awareness, identifies biases and stereotypes, and explores the journeys of others from other cultures that true transformation occurs. To add to the complexity of developing cross-cultural competence is the matter of language. As children acculturate, language is sometimes maintained in the family.
Spanish-Speaking Populations With the 2000 Census, Latinos/as emerged as the largest racial minority in the U.S. representing 12.5% of the U.S. population. Not only are school psychologists expected to be competent in assessment, prevention, intervention, consultation, and counseling, but also in their knowledge of language acquisition. Many students are going to school with little or no skill in the English language. These students have been identified as second-language learners (SLL), English-language learners (ELL), culturally and linguistically diverse (CLD), bilingual, and limited English proficient (LEP). The federal definition describes the LEP student as having difficulty in speaking, reading, writing, or understanding the English language. Difficulties with the English language may preclude academic success if academic instruction is primarily in English. To complicate the problem, state definitions vary in the methodology and criteria for qualifying as an LEP student; thus posing additional challenges for the school psychologist.
Definition of a Bilingual School Psychologist The assessment of bilingual students has been the topic of much controversy for many years and continues to be a source of contention. Since the case of Diana v. California (1970), school psychologists have been warned about discounting linguistic differences and
cultural influence. In Diana’s case, she was labeled as mentally retarded after receiving an IQ score of 30. After being reassessed with the same instrument by a bilingual psychologist in both Spanish and English, she received a higher score by 50 points and no longer met the criteria of mental retardation. As a result, the competence of the bilingual psychologist in this case prevented the student from being mistakenly recommended for special education. Although the overrepresentation of minority children in special education has been carefully researched and addressed, not much has changed in education. The National Research Council conducted a recent review, Minority Students in Special and Gifted Education (2002), and concluded that after three decades, the overrepresentation of minorities in special education still exists. Furthermore, there is another side of the problem in assessing bilingual students. Students who have special needs may be overlooked because their academic difficulties are attributed to being a non-native English speaker. Competent bilingual school psychologists make sound assessments by investigating students’ language difficulties from their emotional and intellectual capacities. A Bilingual School Psychologist refers to an individual who is licensed to practice school psychology as a profession and demonstrates competency in a second language other than English. The psychologist facilitates the transference of students’ knowledge obtained in the primary/native language to be utilized in the second language (English). Some school psychology graduate programs in states like Texas, Arizona, New Mexico, and New York offer additional courses to students who wish to attain a specialization in bilingual school psychology. Students must be proficient in a second language and must demonstrate the proficiency through oral and written examinations to be recognized as a bilingual school psychologist. Through the additional courses (in most cases 6 h), the student engages in coursework emphasizing bilingual and multicultural issues. The student also is placed in bilingual internship sites with bilingual supervisors. This additional training prepares the bilingual school psychologist to be competent not only linguistically, but cross-culturally as well. The advantages of becoming a bilingual school psychologist are abundant. One visible advantage is skill in assessing students’ capacities in both English and their native language. With children of immigrants, many factors may have an impact on the results of assessments. One factor is the children’s level of acculturation. Their migration experiences, level of support, parents’ level of education and
Bilingual verbal ability tests (BVAT)
socioeconomic status, and reason for migration are all part of the acculturation process and how the student sees him/herself. Another factor is the level of development of their primary language. When students immigrate to an English-speaking environment, they may begin to lose their primary language as they acquire their secondary language thus placing the student in an academic limbo and affecting the outcome of an assessment whether it is administered in English, their native language, or both. Recent studies provide support for children continuing to develop their primary language at home while learning English at school. In addition to the ability to assess in two languages, school psychologists are also encouraged to address cultural differences. These include differences in communication styles, family roles, physical space, values, belief system, and cultural mores and incorporate these considerations in their assessments and interventions.
Interpreters The Individuals with Disabilities Education Improvement Act (IDEA), the Protection of Pupil Rights Act (PPRA), and the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) of 1974 provide protection and guidelines for administering evaluations, obtaining informed consent, and providing written notice in the language of the student and parents (unless it clearly is not feasible). While bilingual school psychologists are still quite a small but growing portion of the professional field, the number of culturally and linguistically diverse school-age children continues to grow. Interpreters can be used to help meet this challenge. The problem with using interpreters is that many states do not have consistent minimum requirements. At the least, interpreters should be equally fluent in English and the native language of the student/parent. It is preferred that they have at minimum a high school diploma with communication skills that are appropriate for the tasks at hand. However, the problem of interpreters becoming emotionally involved, changing the content of the conversation, or breeching confidentiality is always a risk. When members of the National Association of School Psychologists were asked about assessing language minority students, 85% of the respondents agreed that the practice of using a bilingual school psychologist to administer tests in both English and the child’s native language is usually or always acceptable.
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When asked about having an interpreter translate traditional tests from English to another language during the testing session, 56% of the respondents rated this as never or rarely acceptable. When it comes to best practice methods in working with linguistically diverse children, there is no complete agreement among school psychologists. The need is clear for training and increasing the number of bilingual school psychologists. See also: > Culturally competent assessment of Englishlanguage learners; > Interpreters
Suggested Reading Bainter, T. R., & Tollefson, N. (2003). Intellectual assessment of language minority students: What do school psychologists believe are acceptable practices? Psychological School, 40(6), 599–603. Fagan, T. K., & Wise, P. S. (2000). School psychology: Past, present, and future (2nd ed.) Bethesda, MD: National Association of School Psychologists. Gibbs, J. T., & Huang, L. N. (2003). Children of color: Psychological interventions with culturally diverse youth. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass. Miranda, A. H. (2002). Best practices in increasing cross-cultural competence. In A. Thomas, & J. Grimes (Eds.), Best practices in school psychology IV (pp. 353–362). Washington, D.C.: National Association of School Psychologists. Rhodes, R. L., Ochoa, S. H., & Ortiz, S. O. (2005). Assessing culturally and linguistically diverse students: A practical guide. New York: Guilford Press. Rueda, R., & Windmueller, M. P. (2006). English language learners, LD, and overrepresentation: A multiple-level analysis. Journal of Learning and Disability, 39(2), 99–108.
Suggested Resources National Association of School Psychologists: http://www.nasponline.org/index.html
Bilingual Verbal Ability Tests (BVAT) Justin M Walker . Robyn Hess
As the population of children who speak another language other than English continues to grow in the United States (U.S.) the practices of educational
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Bilingual verbal ability tests (BVAT)
professionals and their use of assessment tools must also strive to meet the needs of the populations they serve. To counteract the disproportionality of minority students placed in special education, assessment approaches must reflect best practice in providing nonbiased, culturally sensitive measures of linguistic ability. Since federal legislation mandates that children be evaluated in their native language, traditional assessment measures may not be meeting the needs of school psychologists working with second language learners. The Bilingual Verbal Ability Tests (BVAT#) by Mun˜oz-Sandoval, Cummins, Alvarado, and Ruef is one attempt at providing a measure of a student’s language skills in both English and in his or her native language. Based on components of the Woodcock– Johnson—Revised Tests of Cognitive Ability (WJ-R COG), students are first asked to complete test items in English. The questions that were answered incorrectly are then repeated in the student’s home language. Administration is relatively brief and can be completed in approximately 30 minutes with very few materials. All the test items are drawn in color. The first test is Picture Vocabulary where students name familiar and unfamiliar objects. Test 2 is Oral Vocabulary where students provide synonyms and antonyms for selected items. Finally, in Test 3, Verbal Analogies, students verbally complete a word relationship. For example, ‘‘Hat is to head as mitten is to ____.’’ The BVAT assures that dialectal variations are considered and items that cannot be translated are left out when administering in the student’s native language. The resulting composite score is the individual’s bilingual verbal ability (BVA) and includes all the items the learner was able to respond to correctly, both in English and in his or her home language. In addition, a measure of cognitive academic language proficiency is provided. This number is used to determine an individual’s level of English proficiency. Because the BVAT is standardized and norm referenced, percentile ranks, standard scores, and age and grade equivalents are provided. All scoring is accomplished through the use of a computer program, which, in addition to calculating scores, generates interpretive information for each of the reported areas. The actual test administration can be carried out by untrained persons. However, the BVAT manual does strongly recommend that the administrator of the test be a native speaker of the target language. However, when this is not possible, the legal and ethical considerations in using an interpreter as well as
the importance of adequate training are recognized and the BVAT Comprehensive Manual dedicates an entire chapter to the training and monitoring of ancillary examiners. The BVAT has been translated by trained bilingual assessment professionals. The BVAT itself was standardized as part of the normative process of the WJ-R COG. The standardization sample consisted of 5,602 subjects age 5 and above. The authors have established reliability (high 1980s to mid 1990s) and concurrent validity with other language proficiency instruments and cognitive ability measures. Although not representative of all language learners, the BVAT has moved culturally competent assessment in the right direction by providing professionals with a tool that is more appropriate for second language students than many of the traditional measures of cognitive ability and vocabulary. The BVAT clearly helps professionals distinguish the differences between a student’s verbal ability and English language proficiency. Although no single test score should ever be used to make decisions, such information can provide deeper insight of abilities and may fuel recommendations for placements and services to be provided. See also: Johnson
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Nondiscriminatory testing;
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Woodcock-
Suggested Reading Cummings, J. (1984). Bilingualism and special education: Issues in assessment and pedagogy. San Diego, CA: College Hill Press. Mun˜oz-Sandoval, A. F., Cummins, J., Alvarado, C. G., & Ruef, M. L. (1998). Bilingual verbal ability tests: Comprehensive manual. Itasca, IL: Riverside Publishing. Paredes Scribner, A. (2002). Best assessment and intervention practices with second language learners. In A. Thomas, & J. Grimes (Eds.), Best practices in school psychology IV. (pp. 1485–1500) Bethesda, MD: National Association of School Psychologists.
Suggested Resources Riverside Publishing Company—http://www.riverpub.com/: This website provides products, services, events, and training related to assessment issues. National Association of School Psychologists—http://www.nasponline.org/information/pospaper_assess.html: This website presents a position paper on assessment practices.
Bilingualism
Bilingualism Elizabeth D Pen˜a . Lisa M Bedore Bilingualism occurs when there is a practical need to use more than one language. In the United States (U.S.), children may learn a second language when they enter the educational system at either preschool or kindergarten. There is a great deal of variability in how well children perform in each language. This variability is based on when and how children become bilingual, the amount of time exposed to each language, and the kinds of language needs for each situation.
Types of Bilinguals Timing in the acquisition of the first and second language can influence proficiency in each of the languages. Simultaneous bilinguals are those who are exposed to two languages from birth. Simultaneous bilinguals may grow up in families in which one parent or caregiver speaks one language to the children, whereas the other parent or caregiver speaks a different language, or where a parent uses both languages interchangeably. If exposure to two languages begins before the age of 2 years, a child may be considered a simultaneous bilingual. Sequential bilinguals are those who learn a second language after beginning to learn their first language. Some sequential bilinguals begin acquisition of the second language relatively early—in preschool or by school age. These bilinguals are considered early sequential bilinguals. When sequential bilinguals begin learning a second language after adolescence, they are considered late sequential bilinguals. Most school-age U.S. bilinguals are early sequential bilinguals. Children become bilingual because their families elect for them to or because their circumstances dictate the need to acquire two languages. Some families establish rules such as designating one parent as the person to whom the child should speak Spanish, and the other parent as the person to whom the child should speak English. Alternatively, they may select certain days for using Filipino and other days for using German. Other families use their languages interchangeably, guided by the context of language use. Thus, all family members might use Spanish with grandparents and English with friends from work or school. However, they elect to use the two languages as a family; thus, these children become bilingual because their families choose
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bilingualism. These children are referred to as elective bilinguals. Other examples of elective bilinguals include those who select and enroll in courses in a second language (e.g., in middle school or high school) with the goal of becoming bilingual. Some people combine taking second-language courses and travel to another country to become bilingual. Circumstantial bilinguals are those who become bilingual because they need to meet the demands of two languages. For example, some children and their families become bilingual because they emigrate to another country where their home language is not spoken. To function in the community and school, they must learn the language of the host country. In the U.S., much of the bilingual population comprises circumstantial bilinguals. Bilingualism through the lifespan is variable, depending on the everyday demands to communicate in each language. For children, this variability comes into play in the different demands of home and school. Children learn the vocabulary, grammar, and interaction style consistent with the situations in which they need to speak each language. For example, it is not unusual for children to be familiar with vocabulary related to home demands in the home language and vocabulary related to school demands in English. There may not be a functional need for children to know school-related vocabulary in the home language and vice versa. In terms of communication style, children may learn to use language at home related to the expectations in those contexts. Similarly, the ways in which children are expected to interact, ask questions, and respond may be different from the way they learn to do so at home, and so most children will learn to meet those demands. The U.S. system of schooling emphasizes learning English as rapidly as possible. Even with bilingual education, most bilingual children eventually replace their home language with English. If they maintain the home language, it is typically for social and familiar interaction rather than for schooling and academic purposes. Thus, children who at kindergarten were dominant in the home language are typically dominant in English by middle to high school.
Mutual Linguistic Influences Bilinguals are able to master the linguistic rules of each of their two languages and to keep them separate. However, bilinguals’ languages may influence each
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other in terms of the phonological, lexical-semantic, syntactic, and discourse systems. At the phonological level, for example, children may pronounce sounds in the second or school language using the sounds from the first or home language. Sounds that are similar to each other across languages (such as the Spanish /t/, which has an earlier voice onset time compared with the English /t/) may be sounds that children change in the target language. In addition, sounds that are distinct sounds in one language may be difficult to pronounce if their home language does not distinguish between those sounds. For example, in English we distinguish between the /r/ and /l/ sounds, which are produced in the same general area in the mouth. On the other hand, in Japanese, /r/ and /l/ fall in the same category. English speaking learners of Spanish may struggle with the Spanish /r/ even though they produce the tap as an allophone of the English /t/ (as in the word ‘‘butter’’). In terms of word use, children may not know all words for concepts they know in both languages. Thus, they may insert or borrow a word from the other language to express themselves. These insertions are called ‘‘borrowings’’ or ‘‘code switches.’’ For syntax, children in the process of becoming bilingual may use the home language rules of word order rather than those of the target language. Balanced bilinguals—those who have equal exposure to both languages—also evidence influences of one language on another. Although many of these influences in more stable bilinguals are not errors per se, there may be over- or underuse of some forms that vary somewhat from what is pragmatically expected. For example, in languages where dropping the pronoun (such as Italian or Spanish) is permitted, Italian–English bilinguals may be less likely to delete it in Italian because it is not permissible in English. Many young, bilingual, school-age children are still in the process of becoming bilingual. This process takes longer in some domains of language than in others. Children may demonstrate a great deal of vocabulary knowledge and comprehension early in second language learning, but continue to have stronger performance in their first language in syntax, for example. Content that is contextually supported is mastered earlier in a second language than more complex, decontextualized content. Therefore, children may show faster learning of English for some school subjects than others. This rate of learning depends on previous experience with the subject, its complexity, and whether it can be supported by visual demonstrations that help the child understand the ideas.
Bilinguals are thought to share concepts between their two languages. There are links between the conceptual idea or representation and the word in each language. When a word is used more in one language than in another, the link may be stronger in that language than the other. Thus, bilinguals most typically have mixed dominance. This dominance shifts over time and in response to contact with each of the two languages. Based on these different linguistic profiles, there are several implications for testing bilinguals.
Assessment of Bilinguals Bilingual assessment, whether for language, cognition, performance, or other domain, can be complicated. There are few standardized tests designed to be used with bilinguals. Thus, the procedures used for assessment in a bilingual’s two languages need to be considered carefully. Assessment of bilinguals is not as straightforward as testing in both languages and comparing the two scores. Nor should bilinguals be tested in only one—albeit the stronger—language. Assessment of bilinguals is best completed broadly, considering performance in both languages in an integrated way. If a typically developing bilingual child is tested in each of their two languages, often they will demonstrate typical performance in each language, but in the lower range. However, if examiners look at what kinds of things bilingual children know in each of the languages, they are likely to find that they were able to answer questions correctly in the home language but not the school language, while responding to questions in the school language but not the home language. These patterns of results demonstrate the problem with testing in both languages and simply comparing a total score in each. Each score is likely to underestimate the whole of what the individual child knows. Like testing in two languages and comparing the two, an examiner should not merely test in the so-called dominant language. As in the above example, children may not have encoded all their concepts in the stronger language. Bilingual children very often know concepts in the weaker language that they do not know how to express well in the stronger language. Therefore, this strategy can also underestimate a child’s ability or performance. A bilingual or conceptual approach to bilingual assessment is to test in both languages in an integrated manner. How this testing occurs depends on what is
Biracial
being tested; it may be best to test in each language independently and then integrate the findings, or to test bilingually. When testing each language independently, children may be reluctant to code switch out of the school language and into the home language, even if they know the correct response in the home language. However, children will often switch to the school language while being tested in the home language. Thus, it is useful to test in the home language initially, followed by the second language. If a child then code switches, the language of response can be noted, and responses scored as correct or incorrect regardless of the language used to respond. Another approach is to test in one language first and then return to the items missed, testing them in the other language. This approach may be more efficient than complete testing in both languages, but going back only to missed items could inadvertently signal to the child that those items were answered incorrectly. Waiting a few days between testing each language is a possible solution. However, the bilingual testing is conducted, an integrated approach will optimally represent the underlying concepts that a bilingual child knows. See also: > Bilingual education programs: Maintenance, Transitional, and Dual language; > Code switching; > Culturally competent assessment of English language learners; > Language deficits
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representation of children born to couples of interracial relationships. Nearly 7 million (2.4%) of Americans described themselves as multiracial in the 2000 Bureau of the Census. According to the 2000 Census, Biracial children (under 18 years of age) made up 4% of society. Census officials claim the number of interracial couples more than quadrupled between 1970 and 1995. While this group of individuals has unique qualities and strengths, they also encounter potential problems that need to be further explored and addressed. Individuals of mixed heritage usually identity themselves as ‘‘multiracial.’’ Multiracial individuals include those who comprise three or more races as a result of their ancestors’ interracial marriages over the generations. Mixed heritage includes not only race but ethnicity and culture as well. Biracial individuals strictly refer to those whose parents are each of a different race. There are numerous issues confronting Biracial individuals. To understand and support the challenges Biracial individuals encounter, the following topics will be examined: a historical perspective of Biracial children and their families, the societal myths about interracial families, the problems experienced by Biracial children including identity development, the attitudes, and experiences of parents of Biracial children, the strengths and attributes of multiracial families, and finally the implications for educators who work with Biracial children.
Suggested Reading Bialystock, E. (2001). Bilingualism in development: Language, literacy, and cognition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Goldstein, B. (2004). Bilingual language development and disorders in Spanish-English speakers. Baltimore, MD: Brookes. Kroll, J. F., & De Groot, A. M. B. (Eds.) (2005). Handbook of bilingualism: Psycholinguistic approaches. New York: Oxford University Press.
Biracial Mary Cipriani-Price . Ben K Lim . Donna J Alberici
Families with mixed cultural and ethnic backgrounds are more common than ever before. The new face of America is that of a multicultural society with increased
History of Challenges Encountered by Biracial Individuals There are significant issues facing Biracial individuals. Although considerable attention has been given to ethnic diversity, very little attention has been given to the Biracial population. This group has remained misunderstood and marginalized by the sociopolitical forces of oppression and racism as well as those who simply do not understand this distinct group. In the United States (U.S.) today, there are more and more people who find that they do not fit into one racial category; however, society continues to struggle with tensions and prejudices in blending color lines. This issue is not the only one for the U.S. as racial classification has been debated worldwide throughout history. This can be seen in a social phenomenon commonly known as ‘‘passing,’’ which was a result of not wanting to be labeled as a ‘‘minority’’ in the social
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community of the Biracial individual. Some of the ‘‘blurred racial lines’’ of famous individuals are interesting to examine. For example, Alessandro de Medici, a major sixteenth century Italian Renaissance figure, had an African heritage that was rarely mentioned. Alessandro, the first duke of Florence, was patron to some of the leading artists of his era and his remains are buried in a famous tomb fashioned by Michelangelo. It could be argued that he was the first Biracial head of state in the modern western world. He was born in 1510 to a Black serving woman in the Medici household. Historians today believe that Alessandro was fathered by Pope Clement VII, who was Cardinal Giulio de Medici at the time of Alessandro’s birth. Another example of ‘‘passing’’ was Queen Charlotte, wife of the English King George III (1738–1820). Charlotte was a descendent to a Black branch of the Portuguese Royal House and passed as a member of the British Royal Family despite having an ‘‘unmistakable African appearance.’’ Actor Peter Ustinov, who through his father is a member of the Old Russian nobility, possessed the heritage of the Ethiopian Royal Family through his mother. His Swiss maternal grandfather wed an Ethiopian princess to insure his loyalty to the Emperor of Ethiopia, while working there as a military engineer. There are also many prominent American families, in the south and throughout the country, that have ‘‘passed’’ and have ‘‘blurred racial lines.’’ In societies dominated by classification systems that until recently did not recognize Biracial individuals, there have been a lot of stigmas attached to having more than one racial identity. As such, Biracial individuals and especially children in comparison to peers with same race parents, encounter increased challenges with isolation, discrimination, and acceptance in the community. Historically, the U.S. has been a nation demarcated by color, race, and ethnic polarities. There have been numerous conflicts surrounding racial equality. The 1954 Supreme Court decision (Brown v. the Board of Education) declared the permissive or mandatory segregation that existed in 21 states unconstitutional, and that was a giant step toward complete desegregation of public schools. In 1967, the Supreme Court (Loving v. Virginia) ruled laws forbidding interracial marriages as unconstitutional. One component of the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s involved the protest that U.S. citizens had to categorize themselves as either White or Black. During this period, most Biracial individuals were considered and identified as Black. The existence
of Biracial individuals in the U.S. is not new, and these political struggles have produced a greater acceptance of interracial marriages and their offspring. In the mid 1990s, U.S. citizens who categorized themselves as Biracial sought to have slots designating their Biracial status placed on official documents and voting ballots. Without the Biracial status, Biracial individuals felt they had little identity and were invisible to the nation. By the year 2000, the Federal Office of Management and Budget allowed residents for the first time to identify two or more racial designations. In 2003, schools were mandated to do the same and amend all forms reflecting racial categories; a change that affected more than 2 million students. The mainstream U.S. culture and institutions have reflected the beliefs, norms, and values established by White European Americans who have controlled the economic, educational, social, and political power. Historically, people of color were not part of this mainstream and thus seen as ‘‘less than’’ the majority of this country’s citizens.
Myths about Interracial Individuals and their Families Today’s society continues to endorse myths pertaining to interracial families that affect Biracial individuals. One such myth states that children bearing the physical attributes of a particular race should be raised exclusively within that racial identity, regardless of the children’s experience of connectedness to that race. This has the potential to alienate the children from their other heritage and possibly cause ambivalence toward that race as well as a sense of fractured loyalty to the parent of the other ethnicity. Many interracial families began to challenge the myth, ‘‘Society will define your child as Black, and so you should raise him as Black.’’ This means that children will be seen as the society labels them regardless of their identification with that label. Some countries have developed names for people of mixed heritages. In the U.S., there is the example of Creole, who is descended from French, Spanish and sometimes African Caribbean ancestry and they live primarily in the south, such as New Orleans, Louisiana. However, as a country that is multicultural, there are not enough accepted terms to cover most Biracial children thus leaving them without identity and prone to the myths that govern society.
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Inaccurate perceptions, fueled by insensitivity and bias, foster other societal about mixed family ethnic groups. Many hate crimes against Biracial children and interracial families are based primarily on the perception that the purity of a single race is compromised and that Biracial individuals are inferior to single-race individuals. Interracial families and multiracial children have been perceived to be a threat to existing races and thus a threat to society. Other stereotypes include the beliefs that interracial partners marry to ‘‘get back’’ at a racist community or to gain wealth and status, that interracial marriages always have higher divorce rates than other marriages, that Biracial children have more social and psychological problems than other children, and that Biracial children receive negative comments from other children while monorace children do not. Many of these myths are still accepted by our society and sometimes unknowingly perpetuated by professionals who work with Biracial individuals.
Biracial Children The experiences of Biracial children are unique in many ways. There are varieties of unique issues for Biracial children to navigate as they face numerous social and psychological obstacles. For example, Biracial children may experience a sense of being ‘‘different’’ in physical appearance. Often, Biracial children are approached by people who question whether they are ‘‘mixed’’ or even more bluntly ask, ‘‘What are you?’’ For instance, Biracial children can have blond hair, White skin and blue eyes, along with all other kinds of skin, hair and eye color types; physical features differ widely. These questions may bring up feelings of inferiority. However, more importantly, if their physical appearance resembles that of a particular racial or ethnic group then these children are at risk of being seen as belonging to that group rather than for whom they are most identified. While the obvious definition of a Biracial child includes any child of mixed parentage such as Hispanic/White, Black/White, and Asian/Black, there is a need for the child to have an identity. Children who are born to White parents of mixed European ethnic groups often choose one parent’s ethnic origin over the other as their ethnic identity. In many patriarchal cultures, Biracial children are expected to choose the race of their fathers. Ethnic identity reflects a pride in a
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heritage that has strong emotional overtones even though the ethnic identity may not be displayed in their everyday behavior. Children of interracial couples have been expected to choose one race over the other because races were and are considered to be mutually exclusive. Since racial characteristics are usually based on physical appearance, it was possible for Biracial children to classify themselves as one race but be seen by others as another. On top of all that, Biracial children are still often questioned about their identity. When facing issues of racism, Biracial children may experience discrimination from both ethnic groups, not only within their community, but also from their extended families. Like most children, Biracial children want to be accepted and belong as Americans, with common values of freedom, and equality for all. Every citizen acquires this from birth, but many multicultural persons and communities of color do not feel that they belong, nor are they accepted by the dominant culture. They feel this way, even more so when an extended family member is rejecting of the child’s biracial characteristics. Children may not feel like they do not have ‘‘enough’’ of anything. Some psychological problems that they face are feelings of rejection by extended family, by Anglos for not being White, as well as rejected by other persons of color for ‘‘not wanting to be part of a minority.’’ Biracial children both want and need their extended family, peers, and teachers to recognize them as members of more than one ethnic or racial group without discrimination. Often times, there is a lack of trust by Biracial children and their parents toward the dominant culture and the school system. Some parents may tell their children to deny or hold back certain information if it goes against the mainstream. For example, children may be told to say that their ethnicity is Spanish, if they perceive it to be bad to be Mexican. In such instance, their parents may have good intentions to protect their children by preparing them to overcome any odds that they may encounter in the world but it has bad repercussions. These Biracial children may have feelings of guilt or embarrassment about their family. They may feel abnormal about themselves, and deny part of their identity. On the other hand, some parents of Biracial children may assure them that they are ‘‘good enough’’ as they are, yet they are advised to behave and perform better than they normally might to survive the subtle discrimination from a culturally different society.
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Lastly, children of mixed heritage may experience harassment from both White and minority students in school. This harassment can be especially difficult during the middle and high school years. Developmentally, this is the time when children begin to individuate from their family of origin to explore their individual identity. They experience an increased need for membership within a peer group. Cultural competency for these Biracial children may mean teaching them to function effectively within the dominant cultures and at the same time, helping them to maintain a positive identity along with a secure sense of self as members of a unique group of people.
Biracial Identity Development Children’s identity development is dependent on having a secure sense of who they are, where they come from, and how their families and communities support their identity. The process of developmental transitions for Biracial children can be more complicated than those of single-race children. Biracial children have parents who come from two different races and/or ethnicities. Interracial marriages with marked cultural differences may experience severe marital stress. In such environments where the family unit is divided by differing ethnic traditions, potential pressure may be placed on children to understand and adapt to conflicting roles. Children of a dual heritage may have identity problems related to feelings of uncertainty surrounding their ethnicity. It is not uncommon that they struggle to be accepted not only by their communities, but also by their extended family members. One of the most important tasks for children between 6 and 11 years of age is their development of self-concept. During the elementary school years, children begin to formulate sets of self-concepts through interrelationships with peers, teachers, and significant adults as well as the environment in which they live. From ages 11 through 18, the critical developmental task for children is the search for identity and moving through the turbulence of role confusion. There is little research on identity development of Biracial children; however, the limited studies do indicate that adolescent Biracial children experience confusion about their identity. This age group has strong developmental needs for belonging to their peers and they also need successful role models of Biracial adults that have
negotiated through this process. In a society, where the identity of Biracial individuals has not been given sufficient attention, this can be a difficult task. This period of identity development is challenging for all children, but even more so for Biracial children who must grapple with their dual race/ethnicity rather than develop an identity from one race/ethnicity. As such, Biracial children have the unique tasks of understanding the impact of their dual ethnicity on their social status while coming to terms with cultural realities and the psychology of difference. Biracial children, in the midst of their identity formation, remain especially vulnerable as they continue to struggle in a culture that is still partially closed to them as persons of color and biethnic heritage. Mainstream society must be vigilant not to deny Biracial individuals an identity that reflects who they truly are; otherwise, they could be rendered invisible. Often these children perceive themselves as marginalized between two cultures. Achieving a strong sense of identity is an important psychological task for children as they base their identity on their social contexts, including their gender, class, ethnic, and racial membership(s). It is known that their psychological development suffers when a solid identity does not form. There are potential ramifications in not developing a strong sense of self. It is important to note that Biracial children who are not successful with formulating a solid sense of self and cannot embrace one or both cultures may encounter problems academically, develop poor social skills, and experience social isolation. They may develop negative attitudes about adults, struggle with depression, experience psychosomatic disorders, and suffer through interfamilial conflicts. Often, Biracial children can be negatively affected by feeling the pressure to assume a single cultural identity, while, at the same time, they may feel guilty toward the parent with whom they do not identify. They might also deny aspects of themselves while in the presence of one ethnic group; feeling the need to be loyal to that ethnic group even if the denied aspects are not who they fully are. It is helpful for interracial parents to help their children to develop an identity that is based on the collective heritage of both parents. This is more than the development of dual identity. It is a rich collection of equal, varied, and different parts that make up each parents’ family of origin. Thus, children may struggle as they attempt to
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merge their dual heritage without abandoning their ethnic or racial legacy.
Parents of Biracial Children One of the significant issues for interracial families is the transmission of cultural heritage from parent to child. Biracial children are particularly vulnerable to the multicultural issues their parents may struggle with such as how their relatives perceive and treat them and societal discrimination. This process may be worse for the development of their children especially since having to gain extended family approval or community acceptance is not a struggle most other children who are born into one race deal with. Studies have indicated that the greater the difference in cultural backgrounds, the more difficult it will be to adjust to marriage. Interracial couples are, at first, attracted to the differences in the backgrounds of each other. However, under marital stress, such differences may exacerbate their stress levels and act as barriers and threats to the harmony of the family unit. Within the context of unresolved conflicts that involve invisible loyalties to separate ethnic groups, children may be triangulated into the dynamic of parental discord. Children have an innate need for a secure environment for successful growth and development. A home environment in which parents have a mutual respect and care for one another provides much needed stability for children. Multiracial couples need to agree on child-rearing practices, and how they will communicate to their children their dual ethnicity. Interracial couples have different ways in which they transmit their cultural heritage to their children. Some parents may believe that race is not an issue and they emphasize the common humanity of all races. Others may favor one racial identity over the other depending on the social environment. Many mixed marriage parents seem to socialize their children to have a dual identity focusing on a strong influence from both parents’ heritage. Many parents report that they want their Biracial children to develop an identity that reflects their dual heritage. It is important to note that irrespective of the views of the parents, Biracial children may have a difficult time incorporating their different races into one identity, whereas their other non-Biracial peers do not have to worry about this developmental task.
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Strengths and Responsibilities of Interracial Families There are inherent strengths in interracial families that are often overlooked by those who look to monorace families in setting the standard for family health. Top on the list is the intrinsic value of living in an increasingly culturally diverse U.S. as well as increasing diversity as on a global level. Mixed ethnic families challenge the inherent ethnocentricity of people to accept the common humanity of all races. Multiracial family groups continue to teach others the quality of resilience that helps them continue to cope in the face of social isolation, shame, and marginalization by members of their community. They continue to discover ways to be interdependent, find meaning from stressful events, and demonstrate an optimism that connects them as a family group and gives them a sense of cohesion and strength. In recent decades, society has begun to acknowledge the extraordinary contributions of Biracial individuals. These individuals have overcome social and cultural challenges. As adults, they developed pride in coming from a Biracial background because they have an understanding on how to live successfully in multiple worlds. Because of supportive family members who exposed them to both cultural heritages, they developed a comfort level in moving back and forth between cultures. As Biracial individuals, they went through the difficult process of struggling with how to define themselves. However, having successfully navigated through such internal conflicts surrounding identity confusion, they emerged with an intrinsic sense of pride in knowing both worlds and having successfully lived in both. Bilingual individuals have experienced the richness as described by Maya Angelou, who wrote about the challenge of living in several worlds and communicating effectively in them. As our multicultural society grows, it is important not to overlook Biracial individuals and especially children. Creating environments that support children to develop a solid identity is important. As some studies have shown, Biracial children who grow up incorporating a ‘‘Biracial’’ identity are better adjusted than Biracial children who grow up with an identity that is derived solely from one of the parents. Parents and educators play an important role in this development and can foster ways to support the
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belief and experience that the American society is richer because of our increasing diversity. Parents can teach their Biracial children to preserve the richness of the customs and languages of both cultures, and creatively model appropriate behavior on how to treat those who are different. Parents can teach their children to exhibit patience with those who ask them questions about being Biracial. In a world that is still marked by racial boundaries and tensions, parents can seek to build bridges by teaching their children about both of their cultures and to embrace all other cultures of their children’s friends. Ultimately, Biracial families are the convincing evidence that races can coexist not just in the same household but in the same neighborhood as well.
the year to understand each student’s family, ethnic heritage, parental concerns and terms used when making reference to their children’s ethnicity are important. By doing so, school systems are better equipped to serve their Biracial students specifically and to the entire student body in general. Biracial children who are raised in a nurturing environment with involved parents, are expected to thrive and be successful. It is also important for educators to continue to support these children while they attend school; since the social context of Biracial children is vital to their positive development. Educators who value diversity and offer a diverse curriculum will not only help Biracial children but children of all races and ethnicities.
Implications for Schools
Conclusion
The number of multiracial and multiethnic children in our nation’s schools continues to increase. This is dramatically changing the face of our schools. With the increase in Biracial and biethnic children in schools, the school system is certainly the most pivotal and challenging environment for multicultural nation building. Efforts should be made to ensure that school books and class discussions pertain to the contributions of all people, including those of mixed racial and ethnic backgrounds, who have composed the rich history of this nation. Schools need to examine and work to change what historically has been a single-race approach to diversity. Curriculums need to be revised in light of the needs of the changing kaleidoscope of diversity. Ways to celebrate multiracial and multiethnic children, their families, their histories and their traditions and festivities need to be encouraged. Teachers, counselors, and administrators should explore different resources to better their understanding about interracial children and how to support their needs and development. To improve their cultural awareness and competency, it is recommended that educators meet with interracial families, visit biethnic organizations, stay current in literature reviews, and attend multicultural training conferences. To foster better understanding of parental views and opinions, educators not only need to be informed of the issues Biracial children encounter on a daily basis, they must also understand each child’s family context and unique perspective of their Biracial experience. Scheduling parent teacher conferences early in
The factors that determine the ability to develop a cohesive and fulfilling identity include qualities such as resilience, positive attitudes, and prosocial behaviors. The process of developing an identity is complex for Biracial and multiracial youth. Many characteristics that influence the process include the need for Biracial individuals to select a personal and family identity. This identity represents a number of issues such as their own attitudes about their racial and ethnic status, their family’s acknowledgement of their own cultures, society’s historical trend to separate those of different races, and the effects of racism. Communities, institutions, and those in the helping fields can challenge all people to value our common humanity and emulate the unique attributes and contributions of Biracial children and their interracial families. For educators and counselors, there must be an ongoing process to learn about and respect the beliefs, concerns, and attitudes of Biracial and multiracial individuals and their families. School personnel and mental health professionals are in an ideal position to promote greater understanding and cultivate meaningful support. Through collaborative efforts, Biracial individuals will have the opportunity to develop solid identities and the positive self-concepts necessary to foster success in school and the community. See also: > Acculturation; > Adolescent ethnic identity; > Cross-cultural school psychology; > Cultural diversity; > Cultural resilience; > Discrimination; > Stereotyping
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Suggested Reading Kaeser, G., & Gillespie, P. (1997). Of many colors: Portraits of multiracial families. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press. Kendal, B., & Halebian, C. (1997). Trevor’s story: Growing up biracial. Minneapolis: Lerner Publications. Thomas, V., Karis, T. A., & Wetchler, J. L. (Eds.) (2003). Clinical issues with interracial couples: Theories and research. New York: Haworth Press.
Suggested Resources Culture, Race, and Ethnicity: A Report of the Surgeon General— www.surgeongeneral.gov/library/mentalhealth/cre: A link to multiple sources of information on working with culture, race, and ethnicity
Biracial/Multiracial Identity Development Beth Kleinman-Fleischer
Introduction Multiracial individuals often struggle in terms of their identity as they face societal pressures to choose a single race rather than embrace their multiple backgrounds. They may also feel marginalized by the racial group(s) to which one or both of their parents belong. Some scholars have developed models to trace the identity development of biracial/multiracial individuals.
Poston’s Biracial Identity Development Model In 1990, W.S. Carlos Poston claimed that biracial identity development had not been given adequate attention. He viewed previous identity development models (e.g., Cross’s model of identity development for African Americans, Morten and Atkinson’s Minority Identity Development Model, and Stonequists’s Marginal Person Model) as flawed when applied to biracial individuals.
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In response, Poston developed his own tentative biracial identity development model, noting that the model was based on the limited research that had been conducted on biracial individuals as well as information provided by support groups for them. In Poston’s model, the biracial individual moves through various stages, each of which incorporates changes in reference group orientation (RGO) attitudes (i.e., how the biracial individual feels towards his or her racial groups). The first stage of Poston’s model is ‘‘Personal Identity.’’ At this stage, the biracial individual is generally young and his or her RGO attitudes are less developed than his or her personal identity. In other words, the individual’s sense of individual identity is better formed than his or her racial/ethnic identity. Poston cited 1987 research by Phinney and Rotherham in which they found that young children’s early understandings of their own race and ethnicity are not always constant. Sometimes they may even demonstrate a lack of racial/ ethnic awareness altogether. A biracial child’s sense of self relates to issues such as self-esteem learned from within the family. The second stage is ‘‘Choice of Group Categorization.’’ Poston described this as a time of potential ‘‘crisis’’ and ‘‘alienation’’ for the biracial individual because he or she feels societal pressures to choose a racial identity and thus may make a choice, even if it is an uncomfortable one. In terms of which identity the biracial individual selects, Poston cited research conducted in 1980 by Hall that states the individual will choose the race based on ‘‘status factors’’ (i.e., the racial make-up of the individual’s neighborhood), ‘‘social support factors’’ (i.e., acceptance from family and cultural groups), and ‘‘personal factors’’ (i.e., cultural knowledge, physical appearance). Because the general age group of the individuals in this stage is still relatively young, the individual lacks the cognitive development and understanding of multiple cultures that would enable him/her to embrace a multiracial identity. Instead, the race of one of the parents is most likely to be chosen. This stage (along with the third stage, Enmeshment/Denial) is where biracial individuals encounter the greatest difficulty in terms of adjustment and identity confusion, as they struggle against feelings of having betrayed the parent whose race they did not select. In the third stage, ‘‘Enmeshment/Denial,’’ the biracial individual feels a great sense of confusion and guilt. On the one hand, the individual still feels compelled to choose the race of one parent. The individual
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may even feel embarrassed about having a parent of the ‘‘other’’ race and wish to hide this parent from peers who represent the more ‘‘acceptable’’ race. Yet the individual simultaneously feels guilty for being disloyal to one of his or her parents and his or her own biracial background. Poston suggested that many biracial adolescents may be in this stage and will remain there until they are able to appreciate both of their cultures and move past their feelings of guilt and anger. During the fourth ‘‘Appreciation’’ stage, biracial individuals begin to truly value their multiple cultures. Although the biracial individual may still identify primarily with one culture (as determined by the factors discussed in the second stage), he or she is more interested in learning about his or her other background and possibly becoming involved in activities related to both identities. In this stage, the individual expands his or her RGO attitudes. In the fifth and final ‘‘Integration’’ stage, biracial individuals are able to acknowledge and appreciate all facets of their identities. Poston describes individuals at this stage of development as experiencing a sense of ‘‘wholeness,’’ ‘‘integration,’’ and ‘‘security.’’
Root’s Four General Resolutions of Biracial Identity In 1990, Maria P. P. Root noted that, traditionally, psychological theories provide only one healthy route for resolving identity issues. She emphasized that, in fact, there may be multiple avenues. She proposed four healthy resolutions for biracial identity development. In the ‘‘Acceptance of the Identity Society Assigns’’ resolution, biracial individuals accept the race that society has selected for them (e.g., the subordinate race in that particular society). Although this identification may be the result of oppression, it can be healthy if the individual embraces this identity and has a strong relationship with his or her extended family of that race. One potential challenge that individuals may face is that society may categorize them differently if they move to another part of the United States (U.S.) In this case, individuals will likely continue to view themselves the way they had previously, especially because they have such a deep connection to their extended family of that race. The ‘‘Identification with Both Racial Groups’’ resolution, as the name implies, is where the biracial individual accepts both parts of his or her racial identity.
This resolution is most healthy if the individual does not change his or her behaviors across groups and feels equally accepted when with both races. Yet it is also important for the individual to understand that he or she is a unique combination of two races. This strategy is the most difficult to apply, and individuals may only develop this strategy in those parts of the U.S. where there is greater acceptance for mixed marriages and biracial children (e.g., the West Coast). The individual who adopts this resolution may need to develop strategies to cope with society’s resistance to their claiming equal membership in both groups. In ‘‘Identification with a Single Racial Group,’’ the biracial individual chooses to affiliate with one racial group. The difference between this resolution and the ‘‘Acceptance of the Identity Society Assigns’’ is that it is the active individual, rather than society or appearance, that determines racial group membership. The obvious challenges an individual who has chosen this strategy may face is if the chosen identity conflicts with the identity society has selected. Such a conflict is more likely to occur in certain parts of the U.S., such as the South, where there are more stringent codes against an individual who identifies him or herself with a race that differs from the one that society has deemed appropriate for him or her. To maintain a healthy identity, the individual must truly feel accepted in the selected racial group (without denying the other part of his or her racial identity), and be able to acknowledge and cope with resistances he or she may face when society does not agree with this choice. The individual may have to move to a different part of the U.S. to feel comfortable living out the identity that he or she has chosen. A biracial individual who has chosen the resolution of ‘‘Identification as a New Racial Group,’’ may feel most connected to other biracial individuals. These individuals may be able to move between their two racial groups but also stand apart from them because they feel most connected to their own biracial identity. This strategy may be easiest to adopt in an area where biracial individuals are an accepted part of society such as Hawaii. An individual adopting this strategy would have to be able to defend his or her biracial identity if society tries to compel him or her to choose only one identity. In the discussion of her model, Root emphasized that individuals may move among these four resolutions rather than statically remain in one. She states it is most important that biracial individuals
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acknowledge both sides of their racial identities, are able to choose how they would like to be identified, and are able to cope with resistances from society over their racial identification choices (e.g., blaming racism rather than themselves).
Jacobs’ Identity Development in Biracial Children In 1992, James H. Jacobs described his identity development model for Black–White biracial children based on a study of their interactions with dolls. He interviewed biracial children by having them engage in nine tasks involving wooden dolls prepared especially for the interview. The dolls included both sexes, three sizes (for adult, child, and baby), and six skin and hair color combinations. Based on his findings from these interviews, Jacobs developed his identity development model for preadolescent Black–White biracial children. He titled the first stage, ‘‘Stage I, Pre-Color Constancy: Play and Experimentation with Color.’’ Children in this stage have not yet achieved color constancy (the ability to understand the stable nature of skin color), nor do they generally view color in a critical way. However, they are usually able to identify their own skin color correctly. In terms of play, the children tend to experiment with different color combinations. Children in this stage who do not show this unbridled playfulness may have been exposed to racial prejudices or other experiences that have lowered their self-esteem. The second stage is titled ‘‘Stage II: Post-color Constancy: Biracial Label and Racial Ambivalence.’’ Biracial children generally enter this stage at approximately 4 1/2 years of age. The children have both a better awareness of the constancy of their own race and of society’s racial prejudices. As the title indicates, this stage is marked by ambivalence. Children in this phase may begin by rejecting Blacks in favor of Whites, and then they may proceed to reject Whites in favor of Blacks. Although biracial children generally achieve a sense of color constancy on their own, their parents are sometimes the motivating force behind their understanding of their own biracial identities. For instance, Jacobs found in his own study that if a parent had described their child to the interviewer in biracial terms (e.g., half Black and half White), the child generally described him or herself in the same way, often
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using the same language. Nonetheless, Jacobs mentioned other studies that demonstrated some children acknowledging their biracial identities despite parental prodding to consider themselves as being of only one race. In terms of their interactions with the dolls, the children, once they had acknowledged their biracial backgrounds, represented their families (through their doll choices) to reflect these backgrounds. Some of them engaged in perceptual distortion, choosing a darker shade for the dolls representing themselves and/ or their family members. According to Jacobs, this ‘‘mistake’’ actually reflects the children’s understanding of how they fit into their racial class: they are choosing a darker color to represent how they believe they are viewed by society. The ambivalence of this stage is important, just as the free-play with dolls of different colors is in Stage I. If the child can fully experience this ambivalence, a more unified identity can later be achieved. The final stage is ‘‘Stage III, Biracial Identity.’’ The ages of children in this stage range from 8 to 12. In this stage, biracial children have a better understanding of how racial group membership rather than actual skin color is what categorizes them as biracial. In other words, children at Stage III are more aware than those at Stage II of how racial social grouping is related to, but not entirely the same concept as, skin color. They better understand that they are biracial because of their parents’ membership in different racial groups, rather than their different skin colors. The ambivalence that marks Stage II decreases throughout Stage II (children whose ambivalence does not diminish through Stage II may have suffered from difficult racial experiences in the past and may exhibit psychopathological symptoms) and continues to lessen in Stage III until the child reaches what Jacobs calls a ‘‘unified ego-identity.’’ It is also possible that, for some children, ambivalence returns with the sexual identity issues that characterize adolescence. Such ambivalence in adolescence is wrestled with and resolved in much the same way as the ambivalence of Stage II, where the child moves from preferring one race to preferring the other. Eventually, the conflicting beliefs that the child has transform into a more unified identity. See also: > Black racial identity development; > Ethnic identity development; > Minority identity development model
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Suggested Reading Hall, C. C. I. (1980). The ethnic identity of racially mixed people: A study of Black-Japanese. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of California, Los Angeles. Jacobs, J. H. (1992). Identity development in biracial children. In M. P. P. Root (Ed.), Racially mixed people in America (pp. 190–206). Newbury Park, CA: Sage. Phinney, J. S., & Rotherham, J. J. (Eds.) (1987). Children’s ethnic socialization: Pluralism and development. Newbury Park, CA: Sage. Poston, W. S. (1990). The biracial identity development model: A needed addition. Journal of Counseling and Development, 69, 152–155. Root, M. P. P. (1990). Resolving ‘‘other’’ status: Identity development of biracial individuals. In L.S. Brown & M.P.P. Root (Eds.), Diversity and complexity in feminist theory (pp. 185–205). Binghamton, NY: Haworth.
Black Intelligence Test of Cultural Homogeneity (B.I.T.C.H.) Jennifer M West
The Black Intelligence Test of Cultural Homogeneity (B.I.T.C.H.™) is a 100-item multiple-choice test designed to address the issue of racial bias—particularly in African American people embodied in traditional standardized norm referenced IQ tests. The B.I.T.C.H. was developed in 1972 by Dr. Robert Williams, an African American psychologist, to demonstrate that variations in experience equals variations in test scores. Dr. Williams’ rationale for developing the B.I.T.C.H. was to counter the bias in traditional intelligence tests that produce scores that are a result of subjective cultural references and essentially measure one’s familiarity with the White middle class cultural value system. The B.I.T.C.H. is a test composed entirely of words, terms, and expressions that are particular to a subculture within the Black population. Specifically, the content of the test items reflect generational specific information about the cultural experiences of Black people living in urban environments. The majority of the test items deal with one’s knowledge of Black slang. For example, the test taker is asked to define the following terms by choosing the correct answer: (1) Boot:
(a) cotton farmer, (b) Black, (c) Indian, (d) Vietnamese citizen, and (2) Clean: (a) just out of the bathtub, (b) very well dressed (c) very religious (d) has a great deal (answers are b for both items). The test items are supposed to emphasize the point that intelligence tests are more subjective than objective and high scores on these tests are more of a reflection of familiarity with specific cultures than one’s lack of ability to do something or become something. Research on the B.I.T.C.H. shows that Black children from low-income urban areas scored significantly higher than their White suburban counterparts by a wide margin when asked such questions as ‘‘When do the welfare checks come?’’ or ‘‘Who did Stager Lee shoot?’’ The premise of the B.I.T.C.H. is that these types of questions measure intelligence just as much as questions such as, ‘‘What color is an emerald?’’ and ‘‘What does one do in Aspen?’’ In both cases the language is being used as a mechanism for tapping intellect. That is, responses to these questions, regardless of vernacular, reflect an individual’s verbal comprehension and general fund of information—skills that reflect intelligence. The basic assertion underlying the B.I.T.C.H. is that differences in scores are due not to differences in general ability but rather to differences in socialization experiences and language. Research that examines the differential impact of the B.I.T.C.H. on Black and White populations illustrates that when a test is based on a minority group’s perspective, members of that group will have IQ scores on the test that are significantly higher than scores among the majority group. Consequently, test results that involve comparing an individual’s answers to scored responses obtained by a norm referenced group can only be considered fair and valid if the person being tested has had the same opportunity as the norm group to learn the information being tested. The B.I.T.C.H. is not intended to be a culture-fair nor a culturally common test. Rather this test is considered a culture-specific test that is used to determine the taker’s ability to function symbolically or to think in terms of one’s own culture and environment. The B.I.T.C.H. proved to be controversial for many because it intentionally inverted racial bias in favor of African Americans. Given its culture-specific information, the purpose of the B.I.T.C.H is not to be highly correlated with traditional aptitude tests. This is consistent with the report of low correlations between the B.I.T.C.H. and the California Achievement Test.
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See also: > Nondiscriminatory testing; > NormReferenced Test (NRT); > System of Multicultural Pluralistic Assessment (SOMPA)
Suggested Reading Williams, R. L. (1972). The BITCH-100: A cultural specific test. St. Louis, MO: Williams & Associates, Inc. Williams, R. L. (1974). Scientific racism and IQ: The silent mugging of the black community. Psychology Today, 48, 317–326.
Black Racial Identity Development Celeste Owens
The Nigrescence model (or the Black Racial Identity model) was introduced by William Cross Jr. in 1971. Nigrescence, a French word meaning ‘‘the process of becoming Black,’’ outlines five stages that Blacks or African Americans typically follow in a journey toward an integrated racial identity. Since its inception, Nigrescence theory has evolved from one that outlined stages (now called statuses) of identity change as they related to the Black Power Movement to a theory that includes six other levels of Nigrescence. This perspective accounts for a full spectrum of Black identities and highlights the within-group variance of a diverse people. While this theory was designed to outline the racial identity development of adults, it also has relevance for African American youth as they approach adolescence and adulthood.
The Nigrescence Theory The five stage model purported to outline the experience of racial identity conversion in African American adults and consisted of the following statuses: (a) Preencounter, (b) Encounter, (c) Immersion–Emersion, (d) Internalization, and (e) Internalization-Commitment. An individual in the Pre-encounter status has not yet begun the process of developing a racial identity and little thought is given to the Black experience. This
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person views the world as being non-Black, anti-Black, or the opposite of Black. His personal views may or may not reflect self-hatred; however, there is a reverence and idealization of White culture. In the Encounter status a person has an experience (i.e., usually racial in nature) that shatters his previous view of the world and jolts his assumptions about race. A litany of questions about race and racial identity emerge that leads to the next stage entitled Immersion– Emersion. This status begins with the immersion process that is marked by intense involvement in Black culture. In fact, everything of importance and value must be relevant to Blackness. This type of thinking leads to a devaluing of everything associated with White culture. Immersion eventually gives way to Emersion as the individual starts to integrate this status of Black racial identity into his or her personality while also acknowledging the strengths and weaknesses of Black people. The process of integrating the conflicts between past and present worldviews characterizes the Internalization status. During this phase the individual finds a renewed appreciation for all races and cultures. Gone are the anti-White feelings and this individual starts to develop non-Black friendships and connections. The individual in the Internalization-Commitment stage has reached all of these milestones but also maintains a high commitment to social activism. The individual in this status remains an advocate for causes that are meaningful to the group.
The Revised Nigrescence Theory In 1995, Cross revised his model to address six issues: (a) a differentiation between personal identity and reference group identity as related to the Black self concept; (b) identification of the vast array of identity profiles; (c) identity socialization covering infancy through adolescence and early adulthood; (d) adult identity conversions, the original focus of his model; (e) identity recycling or the process in which Black adults experience identity enhancement or enrichment across the life span; and (f) identity function or the various ways that Black adults learn to engage the environment. On their road to becoming adults, children must pass through several stages, or take specific steps. These stages offer an opportunity for learning and growth: infancy (birth to age two), early childhood
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(ages 3–8 years), later childhood (ages 9–12) and adolescence (ages 13–18). Persons 18 and over are considered adults in United States (U.S.) society. Normal U.S. adolescent development typically begins in the middle school years and is punctuated by various steps that include intellectual, moral, and social development. Cross examined various Black identity types as they relate to children and adolescents.
The Application of Social Identity Profiles to Youth Development According to Cross, adolescents in the Pre-encounter socialization stages of Assimilation, Self-Hatred, and Miseducation do not acknowledge race as a salient part of their racial identity or have very negative feelings about their cultural/ethnic background. The theory states that those youth in the Assimilation phase apply little significance to racial group identity. Instead, they embrace a social identity that is organized around a sense of being an American and assimilating with the majority culture. On the other hand, those youth with a social identity of Self-Hatred or Miseducation have negative feelings about their race, having accepted as truth the negative stereotypes associated with being Black. As a result, these youth feel unsure of themselves and some have extreme self-loathing. This internalized view of self may manifest in a number of different ways. For example, African American youth may dislike their physical appearance and physical characteristics that are not European in nature (e.g., skin color). These youth may be ostracized by peers due to these features or bully others who share these physical characteristics in an attempt to project negative feelings about themselves. Youth in the Immersion–Emersion Anti-White and Intense Black Involvement socialization stages have experienced a racial encounter that has shattered their old racial identity. As a result of this encounter, the adolescent is overwhelmed with guilt, shame, anxiety, and depression as he or she attempts to internalize this experience. Contributing to these feelings is the realization that he or she is of an ethnic/cultural group that is not fully valued or appreciated in this society. Subsequently, youth at this point of development can be consumed with a hatred of White people and preoccupied with activities that engage them in Black culture.
Lastly, the Internalization stages of Nationalist, Biculturalist, and Multiculturalist are marked by shifts in perspective. At this point, the intense hatred toward Whites is replaced by either a healthy appreciation of Black culture, both Black and White culture, or all cultures. Cross suggested that individuals who reach adulthood with a Nationalist, Biculturalist, or Multiculturalist Black identity type will not be in need of a racial identity conversion. However, these socialization types are not usually experienced until adulthood. The Nationalist person stresses an Africentric perspective about oneself and the surrounding world. In contrast the Biculturalist person gives equal importance to Black and White culture, embracing American and African cultures. Finally, the Multiculturalist feels very much apart of Black culture but also places high value on appreciating a wide range of cultural events and activities. This person places almost equal weight to the multiple categories that contribute to a person’s sense of identity.
Implications for African American Youth This theory offers those adults working with youth a lens from which to view and understand the social development of children and adolescents. Helping a young person through this process will include being culturally sensitive and aware of the social and racial implications for African American youth. Developing a relationship with these youth allows for observations of change in behavior (i.e., decreased self-esteem and aggression). See also: > Acculturation; > Black Intelligence Test of Cultural Homogeneity (B.I.T.C.H.); > People of color
Suggested Reading Cross, Jr. W. E., (1995). The psychology of Nigrescence: Revising the cross model. In J. G. Ponterotto, J. M. Casas, L. A. Suzuki, & C. M. Alexander (Eds.), Handbook of multicultural counseling (pp. 93–122). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Cross, Jr. & W. E., Vandiver B. J. (2001). Nigrescence theory and measurement: Introducing the Cross Racial Identity Scale (CRIS). In J. G. Ponterotto, J. M. Casas, L. A. Suzuki, & C. M. Alexander (Eds.), Handbook of multicultural counseling (2nd ed., pp. 371–393). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
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Suggested Resources Youth Activism—http://ya.ssrc.org/: This website is sponsored by the Social Science Research Council and contains articles about African American youth. Institute of the Development of African American Youth (IDAAY, Inc.)—http://www.idaay.org/home.htm: The Institute for the Development of African American Youth, Inc. (IDAAY) is a community-based, nonprofit organization, serving Philadelphia and Montgomery Counties. This program offers information about programs that work for African American youth.
Block Scheduling Nancy Otskey
Block scheduling is a reform model of restructuring the traditional high school or middle school schedule of ‘‘class periods.’’ In the United States (U.S.) during the early to mid-1990s it became one of many models of school reform that arose in the decade following the 1983 report ‘‘A Nation at Risk,’’ which sought to improve student achievement. High school schedules for most of the twentieth century had remained the same, using the ‘‘Carnegie unit’’ as the cumulative amount of necessary points to attain for graduation. This can be viewed as a measurement of seat time spent during the 4-year high school period. Traditions in education have long been entrenched in the U.S. simply because they were indeed that, a tradition. However, as early as 1959, J. Lloyd Trump questioned the ‘‘traditional method’’ of high school scheduling. He proposed changing it to a schedule of classes with varying lengths of time as dictated by the instructional needs of students. Under this proposal, a class could meet for a 40-minute lecture, a 100-minute lab, and a 20-minute help session each week, while other classes might be shorter periods. Trump encouraged teachers using this model to experiment with a variety of instructional strategies. In 1994, the National Commission on Time and Learning published its’ report called ‘‘Prisoners of Time,’’ which focused on learning rather than time spent in school (a look at the traditional ‘‘Carnegie unit’’ approach to graduation requirements). The report recommended block
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scheduling as a way to give teachers the opportunity to engage students in more active learning and thus moving the focus from time to learning. In 1984, John Goodlad also questioned the traditional high school scheduling. He claimed that it did not allow for individualized instruction, extended lab work, remediation, or enrichment and that much time was wasted on changing classes throughout the school day. By the late 1990s many high schools across the nation changed over to the block scheduling model for the reasons cited above. The state of North Carolina, for example, had 74% of their high schools on a block schedule by 1998. The classic model of block scheduling is often referred to as the ‘‘44 model,’’ but there are many variations. The ‘‘44 model’’ is arranged as four courses per semester with classes meeting for 90 minutes each on a 2-day rotating schedule, rather than two semesters of 50-minute classes. Students complete eight total classes per school year (within two separate semesters). An example of a ‘‘modified block scheduling’’ might be two to three 90-minute blocks along with a variable or split 45-minute class according to subject content or desired flexibility. Some of the touted benefits to block scheduling over the traditional 50-minute periods schedule are the following:
It is more conducive to differentiation (differentiated instruction) Greater immersion in the subject matter Improved school climate because of less discipline problems (because of less frequent movement in the buildings with the frequent changing of classes with the traditional scheduling) Greater student/teacher rapport Increased student engagement as a result of more interactive instruction Less accumulated time wasted on class start-up and wind-down procedures Less amount of total planning for teachers Students can focus of four rather than eight subjects a semester
Despite the above benefits, skeptics have criticized this method stating it poses difficulties when students transfer from non-blocked high schools. Two such issues concern transferring credits and whether course content has or has not been covered. Critics also refer to what is a perceived loss of instructional time (to
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cover the curriculum) from the two semesters of 50-minute classes, to one semester of 90-minute classes. However, the loss of instructional time at the beginning and end of each 50-minute class with opening and closing procedures seems to cancel this out, therefore it is only a ‘‘perceived’’ loss. Critics mention the fact that when students are absent there is much more work to make up (and instruction lost). However, that is countered with an absent student only having four classes, rather than eight classes to ‘‘make up.’’ Critics mention possible boredom of students with the length of the class and worry that subject content retention is lost from one level course to the next because of the gap (a semester and a summer) between the two. Since advanced placement exams (AP) are traditionally administered in the spring, this poses a problem with retention of subject content for students who have AP classes in the fall semester. Proponents counter that these exams be administered twice a year if this is problematic. One key to success with a block schedule structure is adequate professional development for the teachers (and administrators) implementing it. Teachers must be properly prepared before the transition takes place and have ongoing high quality professional development that supports instructional strategies that are appropriate for a block format. The traditional lecture method that teachers relied on to ensure covering the curriculum with the 50-minute class periods is not appropriate for the 90-minute classes, as this is a passive method and can lead to boredom among the students. More active teaching strategies tend to engage students better and are amenable to the 90-minute blocks. Strategies such as cooperative learning, inquiry, synectics, and discussion, among others, lend themselves to this format but teachers must be well prepared in these methods to be effective. Teachers must also use the full 90 minutes for instruction and change the classroom activity every 10–15 minutes to be most effective. Block scheduling can lead to more in-depth study of subjects, resulting in more thorough understanding, while supporting the development of critical thinking skills among students as well as individualizing instruction to meet varied student needs. High schools that have implemented block instruction also report less discipline problems. Reasons cited for this benefit are less time spent switching classes, increased rapport between student and teacher, and better peer relationships fostered by cooperative learning methods
that combine academic learning and classroom management. See also: assessment; > Tracking
Advanced placement; > Authentic Collaborative and cooperative learning;
> >
Suggested Reading Goodlad, J. I. (1984). A place called school. Ney York: McGraw-Hill. National Commission on Time and Learning (1994). Prisoners of time. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office. Queen, J. A. (2003). The block scheduling handbook. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press.
Suggested Resources Block Scheduling—www.blockscheduling.com: This website offers up to date information on block scheduling.
Book Banning Darla Linville
Book banning is a practice of censorship that involves removing a book from the public consumption, either before it can be published, or after it has been published, by taking it off the shelves of libraries and bookshops. In the United States (U.S.), book banning currently takes place at the local level, in local libraries and schools. However, in the 1940s and 1950s national enforcement was used to keep communist ideas out of the country, and even now homosexual material is still at risk of being labeled pornographic and seized at the border. In other countries the censorship may take place at a national level to regulate the circulation of images, ideas, or the works of a specific author. For example, in Turkey, following the comments made by novelist Orhan Pamuk concerning the killing of Armenians and Kurds in Turkey, a new law was established that prohibits public statements and publications that defame Turkishness and Turkish institutions. In the Soviet Union art and literature, as well as music and plays, had to be approved by government censors
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before they could be published or performed. Several novels were smuggled out of the Soviet Union and other dictatorships in Europe and published in other countries before returning to the land of their conception. In Indonesia under Dutch colonial law, the Hate Articles were used to justify political repression and book banning in the name of keeping dissident groups from propagating hate and instigating rebellion among the population. Historically, book banning has been used to silence anti-government ideas and groups, as when the Nazis burned books that presented ideas contrary to Hitler’s and burned texts that favorably talked about or were created by Jewish people. Every year in the U.S. certain books come to be seen as dangerous and are challenged by concerned members of the public. In 2005, the American Library Association reported 450 attempts to remove books from public and school libraries. Although books are screened before selection for addition to library collections or curriculum, once a challenge has been made the book must be examined closely to respond to the complaints of the public. The complainant must also present his or her specific objections to the book and often must demonstrate that he or she has read the entire work or understood the context, rather than just skimming the text for controversial material. The most common reasons for challenges in the U.S. are obscenity, controversial ideas or subject matter, and language. Obscenity complaints often focus on depictions of sex in books for children and adolescents, including children’s books that address the question of how pregnancy and birth take place, teen books that depict sexuality and sex acts between teens, and pictures that contain nudity. In particular, sexual subject matter marketed to pre-pubescent children (e.g., books that feature pre-pubescent characters or characters going through puberty who deal with sexual issues) pushes the envelope of what is considered ‘‘age appropriate’’ for many parents and other adults. While books that introduce the functions of pregnancy and birth are considered very useful and helpful by some caregivers, others wish to shield their children from exposure to this information until they are older. The question of what information is ‘‘appropriate’’ for children of different ages is nebulous, subjective, and varies greatly depending on the values of specific communities and families. Other controversial ideas and subject matter that frequently trigger complaints include violence, racism, the supernatural, socialism, and other ideas opposed to capitalism, doubts about religion, rebellion against
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parents, homosexuality, and drug use. Such complaints may be made by those who fear ideas that counter prevailing social structures. In contrast, complaints may also come from those who consider themselves socially liberal and who oppose the prevailing social structures and think that the book in question reiterates structures of dominance, discrimination, or stereotypes. Language complaints are concerned with an abundance of cursing or language that blasphemes against religion. More than any other type of complaint, these can come from people who have not read the work of literature but rather have simply counted the number of times various words appear. These complaints often do not take into consideration the story’s context or the story’s need to use strong language to convey emotional content. Authors often feel censored by their editors, who may try to avoid complaints and challenges by removing controversial content before the book is even published. Many dismiss complaints and challenges to controversial material in books, as children and adolescents are often exposed to obscenities much more frequently by watching movies, playing video games, or simply attending schools. Legally, book banning often holds up, at least at the local level. Local school boards often side with community members to support the removal of a controversial book from a school’s library or curriculum. Recently, there have been efforts in Oklahoma and Alabama to use the state legislature to move books containing references to homosexuality out of the public libraries or areas of the libraries that children peruse. However, such extreme reactions are rare. More often, challenged books are kept from becoming required reading in schools. This solution appeases parents while allowing students to exercise free will when choosing their reading material. In addition, this solution stops the standards of one family or group from becoming the standards for the whole community. See also: > Moral education; > Reform; > Tolerance
Suggested Reading Agee, J. (1999). ‘‘There it was, that one sex scene’’: English teachers on censorship. English Journal, 89(2), 61–69. Foerstel, H. N. (1994). Banned in the U.S.A.: A reference guide to book censorship in schools and public libraries. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press.
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Staples, S. F. (1996). What Johnny can’t read: Censorship in American libraries. The ALAN Rev 23(2), http://scholar.lib.vt.edu/ ejournals/ALAN/winter96/pubCONN.html.
Suggested Resources The American Library Association—http://www.ala.org/ala/oif/ bannedbooksweek/bbwlinks/explorebbw.htm, http://www.ala. org/ala/oif/aboutoif/aboutofficeintellectual.htm: The Banned Books Week Materials, as well as the Office for Intellectual Freedom of the American Library Association, provide statistics, lists of banned materials, and suggestions for responding to challenges to library and school curriculum materials. National Coalition against Censorship—http://www.ncac.org: This website provides many resources about censorship battles occurring in different arenas, including education.
Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka DeAnn Lechtenberger
During the 1950s, American public schools were racially segregated with the assumption that Black and White students were to receive a ‘‘separate but equal’’ education regardless of their school campus location. Unfortunately during this time in history, most Black public schools were academically and often physically inferior to the public schools of their White counterparts. The Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka decision initiated educational and social reform throughout the United States (U.S.). The case served as a catalyst in launching the Civil Rights Movement. Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka and the individuals involved in this landmark case is the story of the struggle of democratic ideals for all of America’s children. The widely disseminated story about how this case actually evolved begins with a man named Oliver Brown who sought to enroll his daughter, a Black third-grader named Linda, in a White Topeka, Kansas elementary school only seven blocks away from their home. Linda Brown had been walking one mile, through a railroad switchyard, to attend the nearest Black elementary school. Her family felt it was unsafe and unfair
not to allow Linda to attend the closer White neighborhood school. According to reports, the principal of the White school refused to admit Linda, so Oliver Brown sought the council of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) in Topeka, Kansas. The NAACP had been seeking evidence to challenge public school segregation policies and the Browns’ complaint was considered by many to be the right case at the right time to present this challenge. In 2001, on the 50th anniversary of Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, the Brown family released the ‘‘real story’’ on their family website in hopes of finally setting the record straight on this historical court case. In reality, according to the Brown family, the Topeka NAACP, led by McKinley Burnett, assembled a group of 13 parents who agreed to be plaintiffs on behalf of their 20 children and set out to legally challenge an 1879 Kansas state law that supported the creation of racially segregated elementary schools in certain cities based on population. This would become the 12th case filed in Kansas focused on ending segregation in public schools. At this time, Topeka operated 18 neighborhood schools for White children, while African American children had access to only four schools scattered throughout the city. In February of 1951, the Topeka NAACP filed an injunction on the parents’ behalf that would forbid the continuation of segregation in Topeka public schools. Although this was a class action suit, it was named forone of the original plaintiffs, Oliver Brown. The Brown v. Board of Education case was first heard in the U.S. District Court for the District of Kansas in June of 1951. The NAACP argued that school segregation sent a negative message to Black students that they were inferior and therefore had to attend schools that were separate, but not equal in their academic programing. Dr. Hugh W. Speer, an expert witness for the plaintiff, testified in court that when Black children were denied educational opportunities with White children, who represented 90% of American society, Black children’s learning would be significantly impeded. He continued to state publicly that the Topeka Public Schools’ curriculum or any other school curriculum could not be equal for Black students who were being educated in segregated school settings. The Board of Education defended the notion that because segregation existed in Topeka and elsewhere in American society at this time, segregated schools simply prepared Black children for the segregation they would face throughout their lifetime. The Board also
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argued that segregated schools were not necessarily harmful to Black children; citing that great African American leaders such as Frederick Douglass, Booker T. Washington, and George Washington Carver had overcome being educated in segregated schools and made major contributions to science, literature, and other important professional fields of study. The NAACP’s request for an injunction put the court in an extremely delicate and controversial position. In trying to examine both sides of the issue, the judges agreed on one hand with the expert witnesses regarding the insensitivity and negative impact of a segregated public education for Black children. On the other hand, the case of Plessy v. Ferguson set the precedent of allowing separate but equal school systems for Black and White students and no Supreme Court ruling had ever overturned this decision. Due to the precedent of Plessy, the court felt ‘‘compelled’’ to uphold the former ruling in favor of the Topeka Board of Education. On October 1, 1951, the NAACP appealed to the Supreme Court using the Brown case combined with a total of five cases under the heading of Brown to challenge segregation in Kansas, Washington, D.C., Virginia, Delaware, and South Carolina. The Brown case eventually represented over 200 plaintiffs, including a dozen attorneys and community activists who helped organize people in each of these locations. The Supreme Court first heard the case on December 9, 1952, but the judges failed to reach a final decision. Finally on May 17, 1954, Chief Justice Earl Warren read the unanimous Court decision that sided with the NAACP citing that separate but equal has no place in America’s public educational system. The ruling further stated that the plaintiffs and others who were forced to attend segregated schools were being deprived of the equal protection guaranteed by the 14th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. Although the ‘‘separate but equal’’ doctrine of Plessy for public education was struck down by the Supreme Court to require the desegregation of American public schools, the Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka decision did not abolish segregation in other public areas, such as restaurants, transportation, and restrooms. The Courts did not set a specific timeline requiring the desegregation of public schools, but it did declare that segregation that existed in 21 states was indeed unconstitutional. Even though this was a giant step toward the desegregation of American public
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schools, the changes that would result from this landmark court case were only just beginning. The Brown case initiated the end of segregation in public places mandated by law in the U.S. Within 20 years, through the Civil Rights Movement, led by Dr. Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. and the African American community, along with forward-thinking White Americans, enough pressure began to be applied on legal and political systems to bring down statesupported segregation in all public facilities. Although America paid a high price for this moral conversion in the form of public riots, continued racial tension, and assassinations; additional government programs were created to enforce the Court’s decision such as courtordered busing for public schools and affirmative action. Although the nation soon discovered that changing the attitudes of Americans in respect to race relations could not be legislated or dictated by the courts, America began the slow adjustment toward the ideals of equality and justice in the public arena. As documented throughout the race riots of the 1960s and the civil disturbances in Los Angeles in 1992, racial hatred and violence have not been completely eradicated with the Brown decision. It was Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka that forced Americans to face each other and find out if they were willing to live up to the ideals written in the Constitution by the country’s founding fathers. As of 2004, the 50th anniversary of Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, a few of the parents involved in the case were still living; Oliver Brown died in 1961. See also: > Academic achievement in minority children; > Desegregation; > Discrimination; > Human rights; > Prejudice; > Racism: Individual, Institutional, and Cultural
Suggested Reading Williams, J. (1987). Eyes on the Prize: America’s Civil Rights Years, 1954–1965. New York: Viking Penguin Inc.
Suggested Resources The Brown Foundation—http://brownvboard.org/summary/: A tribute to the attorneys and plaintiffs in the landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision of 1954 Brown v. Board of Education. The Brown Foundation is dedicated to building future leaders
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by developing, implementing, and supporting programs that invest in children. Cornell Law School—http://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/cases/ historic.htm: Provides a collection and description of historic U.S. Supreme Court decisions.
Bullying Amanda B Siebecker . Susan M Swearer
Definition Bullying may be the most prevalent type of aggression experienced by school-aged youth. Bullying has been defined as any form of aggression in which one student or group of students repeatedly harasses a target (i.e., victim) verbally or physically. The three key components or characteristics of bullying behaviors are (1) the behavior is intended to harm, (2) the behavior occurs repeatedly over time, and (3) there is an imbalance of power. While bullying is a subset of aggression, these three characteristics should be present for the behavior to be considered bullying. For example, punching someone in the face is a single act of aggression, unless it occurs over and over again and the target is unable to defend him or herself. In addition, the imbalance of power need not be physical; it can take the form of intellectual or a perceived power differential (i.e., social status). Bullying behaviors have been further refined to include either direct or indirect behaviors and relational or physical aggression. Direct forms of bullying include face-to-face confrontation, which may be physical (i.e., punching) or verbal (i.e., name-calling). Indirect bullying, on the other hand, includes a third party. Indirect bullying may take the form of spreading rumors, teasing, threatening, or harassing and may be communicated verbally, on the Internet, using text messaging, graffiti, among other forms. Relational bullying is considered a form of aggression where the relationship is under attack. For example, a student may get others to leave the target out of a group, thus removing supportive relationships and damaging relationships. Physical bullying includes the more stereotypical bullying behaviors such as hitting, kicking and punching.
Researchers and educators are recognizing that bullying is not relegated to absolute roles, rather students engage in bullying and victimization in multiple roles. Specifically, participants in bullying interactions include people other than the bully and the victim. Rather, involvement in bullying occurs along a continuum and there are at least four roles along this continuum: bullies, victims, bully victims, and bystanders. Bullies are students who engage in victimizing a target. Victims are those students who are repeatedly victimized by a bully and have difficulty defending themselves. Bully victims are students who both bully others and who are victimized by others. Finally, bystanders are those students who observe the bullying interaction. Two types of bystanders have been identified in the literature: passive and active. Passive bystanders standby and silently observe the bullying while active bystanders engage in encouraging the bully or defending the victim. The continuum illustrates that students can function in multiple roles and that these roles are not fixed nor are mutually exclusive.
Prevalence Determining the prevalence of bullying among schoolaged youth is a difficult task. Currently there is no standard method of measuring bullying; therefore determining the frequency with which it occurs is somewhat problematic. In a recent study of 15,686 students in grades six through ten, 29.9% of students reported involvement in bullying (13% bullies, 10.6% victims, and 6% bully victims). Another study found that 88% of students observe bullying as a bystander and 77% of students are the victim of bullying. Worldwide rates of bullying behaviors range from 3% to 20%.
Impact While bullying is increasingly being recognized as a serious problem in schools, researchers and educators are still in the beginning stages of understanding the long- and short-term impact of bullying. Studies have found that students involved in bullying are at greater risk for internalizing and externalizing problems than those who are not involved in bullying. Students may be at higher risk for psychosocial problems, behavior and academic problems, relationship problems, and legal problems. Even more concerning is that the
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effects of bullying can be seen long after children are no longer in school. A recent meta-analytic review of the research on victims of bullying found that victims of bullying may be more likely to be depressed, lonely, anxious, and experience low self-esteem and negative self-concept. In addition, as a result of this psychosocial maladjustment, victims may also experience peer relationship problems. Victims may experience lower academic grades from difficulty concentrating or increased truancy due to fears of being victimized. Victims appear to lack social support from their peers. Research suggests that peer support is an important component in dealing with the stress of being bullied. When students are isolated from their peers they lose an important support system and are left to deal with the bullying on their own. Victims may also take actions into their own hands when they feel as though nothing is being done to help them. For example, bullying was found to be the common denominator in 2/3 of the 37 school shootings investigated by the Secret Service. Like victims, bullies also experience psychosocial problems. However, the research presents a somewhat more ambiguous picture of bullies. Some studies have found that they may be the most depressed or least depressed and may suffer from anxiety, specifically, social anxiety. Bullies may be rejected by others (peers or adults) or they may be popular and accepted by others. They are also at high risk for substance abuse and school dropout. In addition, bullies are also at risk for problems in adulthood. Specifically, 60% of students who were identified as bullies in grades 6–9 were convicted of a crime by the age of 24. Bully victims are likely the most impaired group along the bully/victim continuum because they experience a combination of the effects experienced by both bullies and victims. Bully victims have been found to experience the highest levels of depression, anxiety, and aggression compared to bullies, victims, and notinvolved students. They are also at the highest risk for suicidal ideation.
Gender Differences It appears that boys tend to be more involved in bullying in all participant roles when compared to girls. However, when relational aggression is included in studies of bullying, the gender disparity is more equal. Overall, research is somewhat unclear regarding
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specific gender differences in bullying behavior. Previous research indicated that boys were more involved in bullying. However, more recent studies that have included relational bullying in their definition reveal a slightly different picture. Boys tend to experience more physical bullying while girls experience more relational bullying. While boys may experience relational bullying, girls are more likely to be targeted and are more affected by this form of bullying than are boys. In general, it appears that boys and girls are equally likely to be bullies but boys are more likely to be victims. Little research has investigated gender differences in bully victims and bystanders roles.
Development From a developmental perspective, the incidence of bullying looks like a bell curve in that bullying steadily increases toward the end of elementary school (grades 4 and 5), peaks in middle school (grades 6–8), and declines in high school. While bullying steadily decreases, as students get older, it may never completely disappear. Research suggests that students may change tactics, for example, reports of sexual harassment increase at about the time reports of bullying decrease. This suggests that the form of bullying tends to follow a developmental pathway. Bullying in elementary schools tends to include more overt physical aggression. Whereas, bullying in middle and high school includes more covert behaviors (i.e., verbal teasing, social exclusion). Therefore, as physical bullying decreases relational bullying may remain constant. Unfortunately, as students get older, they are more likely to join in bullying and less likely to help victims.
Ecological Perspective Bullying should be conceptualized as behavior resulting from an interaction between the child and his or her environment. Therefore, the problem does not simply lie within the child; rather it is the result of a number of factors such as child characteristics, school and community and home environment, learning history, societal norms, and peers. An environment may contribute to incidence of bullying by harboring a climate where bullying is accepted as normal and as a right of passage, where there is little supervision by adults, or a lack of
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adult intervention when bullying is observed, or by ignoring victim reports of bullying.
Conclusion Bullying is a complex phenomenon, which is adversely affecting the majority of school-aged youth. There are long-term psychological and behavioral consequences associated with involvement in bullying (i.e., suicidal ideation and criminal behavior). While research is still uncovering new facets of the bullying dynamic, it is important to recognize there are multiple roles that students can employ in bullying interactions. In addition, bullying is not only direct, physical aggression; rather it can take the form of direct verbal aggression or indirect harassment. Bullying is not only a problem among boys but is increasingly being recognized as a problem among girls. Finally, if we are to begin understanding bullying behavior, we must consider it from both ecological and developmental perspectives. See also: > Aggressiveness; > School violence
Suggested Reading Espelage, D. L., & Swearer, S. M. (Eds.) (2004). Bullying in American schools: A social-ecological perspective on prevention and intervention. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc. Garbarino, J., & DeLara, E. (2002). And words can hurt forever: How to protect adolescents from bullying, harassment, and emotional violence. New York, NY: Free Press. Smith, P. K., Pepler, D., & Rigby, K. (2004). Bullying in schools: How successful can interventions be? New York: Cambridge University Press.
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Career Education Velma LaPoint . Jo-Anne Manswell Butty . Cheryl Danzy . Charlynn Small
The National Career Development Association (NCDA) posits that career development is and should be a lifelong task, beginning at the preschool level and continuing through retirement. While the need for early career development exists, experts have found that a majority of students do not receive adequate career education from their families and/or schools for several reasons: family members’ lack of technical information and skills; high ratios between the number of counselors and students; counselors saddled with administrative vs. career development tasks; and high stakes testing being emphasized over high quality teaching and career development and education. Many experts suggest that these challenges are related to the larger challenge of improving student academic achievement and social competence and the challenge to connect school and classroom curricula to systematic career development and education. Career development experts assert that it is important to define some terms related to career development because education and related programming are shaped by how terms are used in creating, implementing, and evaluating career development interventions. Several terms relating to career education are defined here in greater specificity: (a) career : a lifestyle—more than just work or a set tasks, where it is broadly the course of events constituting a life or the total set of roles played over a lifetime; (b) career development: lifelong psychological and behavioral processes and contextual influences shaping one’s careers over the life span with career patterns, decision-making style, life-role self concepts, and life-role integration; (c) career development interventions: activities that empower people to cope effectively with career development tasks such as developing self-awareness, occupational awareness, decision-making skills, job-search skills, coping with job stress via individual and group career counseling, career development programs, career education, computer-assisted career development programs, computer information delivery systems, and other forms of client career information delivery systems; (d) career counseling or career guidance: a formal relationship in which a professional
counselor assists a client or group of clients with career concerns such as career goal setting, coping more effectively with career concerns, and evaluating clients’ career progress; (e) career development programs: systematic programs of counselor-coordinated information and experiences designed to assist clients with career goals, objectives, activities, and methods for evaluating the effectives if activities; and (f) career education: systematic teaching that seeks to influence the career development of persons through using various types of strategies (e.g., providing occupational information, infusing career-related concepts into the academic curriculum, providing career planning courses, and offering worksite-based experiences). Career development theory, research, and practice should be inclusive for diverse student groups. Unfortunately, this has not been the case largely because career development and education historically focused on the career development and life experiences of middle-class, European American males. Issues of occupational stereotyping, discrimination, environmental barriers, and other forms of bias may impede the career development of diverse populations. Many experts have found that the fields of career development and career education have an impact on social change as they seek to meet the career needs of increasingly diverse populations. Career education has many applications and will be described, focusing generally on school-aged students, in several areas: (a) historical notes; (b) career education with diverse populations; (c) career education for students in schools with connections to community settings; and (d) future trends in career education.
Historical Notes Career development interventions have been influenced by political, social, educational, and cultural forces nationally and globally. Experts have identified six stages in the growth of career development and education: (a) Stage One (1850–1919): Growth of industrialization and fall of agricultural jobs, beginning of career and vocational educational movement in schools and at college level, and growth of mental measurement movement; (b) Stage Two (1920–1939): Growth of career education and guidance in elementary and secondary schools; (c) Stage Three (1940–1959): Growth of career education and guidance in colleges and universities and counselor training in higher education institutions;
C. S. Clauss-Ehlers (Ed.), Encyclopedia of Cross-Cultural School Psychology, DOI 10.1007/978-0-387-71799-9, # Springer Science+Business Media LLC 2010
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(d) Stage Four (1960–1979): Growth of career development professional organizations; (e) Stage Five (1980– 1989): Growth of information technology, career counseling private practice, and career outplacement services; and (f) Stage Six (1990-Present): Growth of changing demographics; continued emphasis on multicultural counseling; continued development of technology; and focus on school-to-work transitions. In the early 1900s, there was controversy related to an unwelcome influx of ethnic groups and growth of industrial urban areas with accompanying widespread poverty and exploitation. Experts believed that youth should have knowledge of their needs and future career options and thus have greater career satisfaction and face less exploitation if occupational information could be given to students, teachers, and parents. While these beliefs were well founded, practices indicated another reality where many educators and career practitioners reinforced the social status of discriminated groups. Similar economic, social, and demographic conditions exist today much like those that fueled the development of career development interventions at the turn of the last century with the suggestion that educators and counselors have unique opportunities to avoid the biases of the profession’s early efforts through career education and related interventions.
Career Education with Diverse Populations: Economically Disadvantaged Persons Economically disadvantaged groups are generally comprised of three groups: (a) chronically poor persons who are born into poverty and raised in families without economic resources for their basic needs; (b) unemployed or newly disadvantaged persons who are unemployed and can bridge brief periods of unemployment by using available resources or persons who have no resources or employment to return; and (c) underemployed poor persons who are mainly in low-wage, marginal jobs that involve little skill and wages that are insufficient to exceed poverty standards. Career development challenges faced by these groups may include the lack of basic educational skills, inability to obtain vocational training, and incongruence between self-concept and low-level jobs. Persons with limited educational background are generally relegated to the most marginal work opportunities. Literacy,
basic mathematics, and language proficiency are the minimal requirements for almost every occupation and many poor youth drop out of school before they reach the grade level where career education and skills may be most helpful. Many career-related challenges of these groups need career education and interventions in four areas: access to basic adult education, personal and/or career counseling, information about career and work opportunities, and vocational training and placement. Access to career education and careerrelated opportunities resources may be thwarted by a lack of services such as transportation or childcare.
Ethnic Minority Group Members Ethnic minority groups comprise at least one third of persons in the workforce with the largest numbers being African Americans, Latinos, Native Americans, and Asian Americans. The numbers of ethnic minorities are rapidly increasing and represent the majority of persons in some states or states’ regions. These individuals are disproportionately low-income and face challenges described earlier. Career experts must be prepared to understand the worldviews, values, languages, religion and spirituality, customs, traditions, and histories of hardship of ethnic minority groups as well as the within-group diversity among them (e.g., Socio-economic status (SES), race, immigration regency). Ethnic minority group members may face limited educational opportunities and discrimination, which can result in high unemployment, underemployment, low-paying jobs, and family instability due to economic instability. Some recent immigrants may also experience limited English proficiency, cultural shock, alienation, and new cultural adaptations. Diverse cultures may also have different conceptions of the family, gender roles, and work-family roles. In some ethnic minority groups, career may have a collective, not an individual meaning where it may be viewed as an outcome for the betterment of the group and not just the individual. Career education for these groups should focus on the need for quality schooling (e.g., high school graduation and further technical training, college graduation), the ways that culture influences career development, and culturally responsive career education materials and strategies (e.g., involvement of ethnic group communities, use of group counseling strategies).
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Girls and Women Girls and women experience special problems in career development which have not been adequately addressed in career development theories and interventions. The sex-role stereotyping of occupations begins at an early age and may remain a lifelong concern. Girls and women face two challenges that must be considered in career education and counseling—the socialization of and impact gender roles have on career development and the biological fact that women can bear children. Despite the feminist movement, women typically remain the primary person responsible for the home and family and are generally concentrated in poorly paid occupations. Realities regarding career choice, role participation, and discrimination in the workplace must be addressed when providing career education and counseling to girls and women. Career intervention strategies should seek to broaden the kinds of careers female students are exposed to, help them access school and community connected career development programs, and prepare females for stereotypes and discrimination that they may face in their career development.
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employ diverse strategies to address the persons’ self concept, social status, life roles, work roles, the severity of functional limitations, and the person’s adjustment to limitations including feelings of inferiority and negative stereotypes. Both state and private rehabilitation agencies provide numerous career-related services such as psychological assessment, skills assessment, special education and skills training, job placement, and postemployment services. Some laws and policies (e.g., Education for All Handicapped Children Act, the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, Individualized Education Program) include provisions to meet children’s educational goals, objectives, evaluation, and transition services for school-to-work or continuing education, usually by the ages of 14 to 16. Career practitioners can use a number of interventions with students with disabilities such as developing student career plans, providing career information on work roles, responsibilities, discussion about workplace realities (e.g., discrimination and stress), providing pre-vocational skill training (e.g., care of work materials, learning to be punctual), providing life skills training, and other career education skills (e.g., interviewing skills, social skills, interpersonal employee–employer skills, and workplace change).
Persons with Disabilities Individuals with disabilities represent another group that generally experiences discrimination in career development programming. Several changes have been made to describe individuals with disabilities to negate stereotypes and false information. The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) identifies a person with a disability as one who has a physical or mental impairment that substantially limits one or more major life activities. These disabilities may or may not be a vocational hindrance. The ADA prohibits discrimination in all employment practices including job application, hiring, firing, advancement, compensation, training, and other employment conditions. The career development needs of persons with disabilities may include several areas such as difficulty adjusting to and accepting physical disabilities, attitudinal barriers, being stereotyped or labeled ‘‘disabled,’’ lack of individuals with disabilities who serve as role models, selfconcept and social/interpersonal skills, independent living skills, and architectural barriers. Career practitioners should view a disability as multifaceted and
Sexual Minority Groups Individuals who are gay, lesbian, bisexual, or transgendered (GLBT), also called sexual minorities, represent a group that is discriminated against in schools and other institutions. Homosexuality and bisexuality are not types of physical or mental disabilities according to the ADA. Experts suggest that there appears to be a growing trend for more open discussion about the effects of sexual orientation on career development given the number of GLBT persons who openly discuss the kinds of challenges they face, especially in the workplace. There is a growing number of companies that support their own GLBT employee organizations and support networks. However, despite the increased acknowledgement of GLBT issues, there is little research on the career development of GLBT persons. Literature on the career needs and status of GLBT youth is generally focused on adolescence—a time period that is heightened in sexual identity development. Socially, GLBT youth may be rejected by their
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families and friends and may face health risks of drug abuse, suicide, and HIV/AIDS. GLBT persons continue to be stereotyped in terms of the kinds of jobs they should hold, based on traditional male or female jobs for members of a given sex. They are often threatened by psychological or physical violence engendered by homophobia, and may form a dislike of themselves through their own internalized homophobia. They face discrimination in the workplace such as threats, lack of advancement, ostracism, sexual harassment, termination, or the ‘‘lavender ceiling.’’ Career practitioners should be aware that there is diversity among GLBT persons including diversity within and across ethnic groups of African Americans, Latinos, Asian Americans, and Native Americans. It should be noted that ethnic minority GLBT persons report that they are only marginally accepted in their respective communities and struggle with parallel psychological processes of identity: ethnic identity and sexual orientation identity. Career education should prepare GLBT individuals for the kinds of stereotypes and discrimination that they may face in their career development. Career intervention strategies, including career education, should aim to help GLBT persons find acceptance in the workplace.
Career Education for Students in Schools with Connections to Community Settings Over the past 30 years numerous educational initiatives have focused on promoting career education in kindergarten through grade 12 schools. The most ambitious programs were developed during the 1970s and focused on helping children and adolescents broaden their career aspirations, learn decision-making skills, acquire vocational skills, and develop an appreciation of students themselves. The career education thrust of the 1970s, by the mid-1980s, had been swept from schools by several events: (a) the ‘‘back-to-education basics’’ educational movement the criticized career education at the elementary school level because certain activities (e.g., field trips to worksites, attention on employees) reduced time spent on core subjects; (b) career education programs were built on external funds with few if any plans from school district funding for program sustainability; (c) overloading teachers with additional career education programs; (d) the negative association of the term ‘‘career education’’ with ‘‘vocational education’’ where many middle-class parents were concerned that their
children would be diverted from college preparatory curricula; and (e) underdeveloped local political support among educators, parents, and the business community. However, career education, along with the corresponding notion that general education and career education should be linked, within schools and connected to communities within the world of work, was more resilient than many people believed. Although high school has traditionally been viewed as a time when most students begin to prepare for college or a career, many experts believe that students should be exposed to continuous and comprehensive career development experiences starting early in the elementary school years. Students are expected to meet numerous developmental academic, social, and benchmarks as they face key transitions from elementary to middle school, middle to high school, and high school to postsecondary career preparation in college, technical training institutions and the workplace which includes military and entrepreneurship opportunities. Yet, many students do not graduate from high school because they drop out physically or psychologically. The National Occupational Information Coordinating Committee (NOICC) issued several reports on career education programs in schools including one report identifying seven processes that under gird career education in schools: classroom instruction; counseling, assessment, career information, placement, consultation, and referral and provided competencies and indicators based on students’ developmental and academic levels within three areas—Self-knowledge (Competencies I through III), Educational and Occupational Exploration (Competencies IV through VIII), and Career Planning (Competencies IX though XII).
Elementary School NOICC has provided the competencies and indicators for elementary school students: (a) Competency I: Knowledge of the Importance of Self-concept; (b) Competency II: Skills to Interact with Others; (c) Competency III: Awareness of the Importance of Growth and Change; (d) Competency IV: Awareness of the Benefits of Educational Achievement; (e) Competency V: Awareness of the Relationship Between Work and Learning; (f) Competency VI: Skills to Understand and Use Career Information; (g) Competency VII: Awareness of the Importance of Personal Responsibility and
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Good Work Habits; (h) Competency VIII: Awareness of How Work Habits Relate to the Needs and Functions of Society (i) Competency IX: Understanding How to Make Decisions; (j) Competency X: Awareness of the Interrelationship of Life Roles; (k) Competency XI: Awareness of Different Occupations and Changing Male/Female Roles; and (l) Competency XII: Awareness of the Career Planning Process. For many decades elementary school teachers have been aware of the need for students to cultivate an awareness of themselves and community opportunities. Career education at the elementary level should involve systematically providing knowledge and skills throughout the curriculum and the ongoing collaboration of teachers and counselors. These activities are generally conducted by one or more teachers rather than related systematically to other career education in a given school. Experts suggest that elementary school children have impressions of the work world, sex-typing of occupations, roles that parents and others play in different work settings, and the formation of their personal abilities, even before entering school. While some impressions are often overgeneralized, inaccurate, and restricted, children generally embrace some occupations as possibilities and remove others from their consideration in the present or future. Career education at this level seeks to help children avoid premature closure of future career options—not to force children into making premature career choices.
Junior High School or Middle School At the middle or junior high school level, NOICC has described the following competencies and indicators: (a) Competency I: Knowledge of the Influence of a Positive Self-concept; (b) Competency II: Skills to Interact with Others; (c) Competency III: Knowledge of the Importance of Growth and Change; (d) Competency IV: Knowledge of the Benefits of Educational Achievement to Career Opportunities; (e) Competency V: Awareness of the Relationship Between Work and Learning; (f) Competency VI: Skills to Locate, Understand, and Use Career Information; (g) Competency VII: Knowledge of Skills Necessary to Seek and Obtain Jobs; (h) Competency VIII: Understanding of How Work Relates to the Needs and Functions of the Economy and Society; (i) Competency IX: Skills to Make Decisions; (j) Competency X: Knowledge of the Interrelationship of Life Roles; (k) Competency XI: Knowledge
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of Different Occupations and Changing Male/Female Roles; and (l) Competency XII: Understanding the Process of Career Planning. Students at the junior high/middle school level make major developmental and school transitions, namely between childhood and adolescence, and between general and specialized education, respectively. Students in this age group have needs for diversity in experiences, self-exploration, meaningful participation, positive peer and adult interaction, physical activity, and competence and achievement. It is should also be recognized that there are a wide range of maturity levels in the student population in areas of: pubertal changes, rates of male and female growth, and general unevenness of physical, emotional, social, and intellectual development within and between the population of boys and girls. Thus, career education programs must recognize the important transitions and diverse maturity levels among students at this level. It is important that both teachers and career counselors provide career education to students and parents about the consequences of curricular and course choices made now and planned for senior high school so that later options will not be temporarily delayed or permanently closed. Students cannot explore or choose educational or occupational goals if they do not know about them. Quality career development and education programs should be relevant, accurate, and timely. Research suggests that cultural differences, namely ethnic/racial and gender, in career information, availability of role models, self-efficacy, and bias towards or away from particular choices become major factors in planning and implementing career education programs at the junior high/middle school level. Career education at this level emphasizes exploration and planning while not implying that the earlier emphasis on self-awareness and career awareness have been completed, but rather as children grow, there are new demands and tasks that they should also complete. For most students, self-awareness and career awareness will be refined as self-exploration, career exploration.
High Schools NOICC has provided the competencies and indicators for high school students in the following areas: (a) Competency I: Understanding the Influence of a Positive Self-concept; (b) Competency II: Skills to Interact
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Positively with Others; (c) Competency III: Understanding the Importance of Growth and Change; (d) Competency IV: Understanding the Relationship between of Educational Achievement and Career Planning; (e) Competency V: Understanding the Need for Positive Attitudes Toward Work and Learning; (f) Competency VI: Skills to Locate, Evaluate, and Interpret Career Information; (g) Competency VII: Skills to Prepare, Seek, Obtain, Maintain, and Change Jobs; (h) Competency VIII: Understanding How Societal Needs and Functions Influence the Nature and Structure of Work; (i) Competency IX: Skills to Make Decisions; (j) Competency X: Understanding the Interrelationship of Life Roles; (k) Competency XI: Understanding the Continuous Changes of Male/ Female Roles; and (l) Competency XII: Skills in Career Planning. High school students, like students at the younger grade levels, also undergo a number of transitions including preparing for the transition from high school to work. As many as 25%t leave school before graduating from high school and the rates may be 40–60% in high schools with low-income ethnic minority group students. Because many students complete their formal schooling with high school, there is a need to assist all students to develop and implement career plans. As mentioned, career development and career education have not been implemented in a systematic way across all grade levels so that during the high school years, there are individual differences in the degree to which previous career interventions have been effective. Thus, career education programs should address the heterogeneity in career development among adolescents and facilitate students’ understanding of the advantages and disadvantages of various postsecondary options under students’ consideration. Many high schools across the nation have implemented career education programs, with promising evaluation outcomes, in an effort to reach all students and extend classroom to learning to the world of work: (a) career academies (or schools within schools) where schools are organized into broad-based academic/ career-based programs (e.g., mathematics/science, communications, business, teaching) where students can complete college preparation work in addition to hands on, work-related knowledge; (b) cooperation education that structures students’ in school learning with experiences in paid jobs; (c) required community service programs where students can explore possible careers as well as learn knowledge and skills; (d) tech-prep
programs (or 2 + 2 programs) in which a combined secondary/postsecondary program that leads to an associate degree or 2-year certificate, provides technical preparation in at least one occupational field (e.g., applied science or practical art), builds on students’ competence through a sequential course of study, and leads to a placement of study; and (e) apprenticeship programs to provide skill development opportunities.
Future Trends in Career Education The rapidly changing world of work will continue to be influenced by many forces such as technological developments, an interdependent global economy, an increasingly diverse workforce, a changing or disappearing social contract between employer and employee (e.g., corporate downsizing, jobless economic recovery), and the intertwining increases of work and family roles (e.g., companies with parental leave and child care; increases in the number of persons working at home). Experts suggest that career education and development interventions need to be revised to meet the career tasks confronting people in the twenty-first century. First, in the area of career information, there will be continuing efforts to improve the delivery of occupational information provided by federal and state governments, nonprofit organizations such as colleges and universities via the Internet (e.g., Occupational Outlook Handbook), and from businesses with and without fees. Both career counselors and the public will have increasing access to career information through various systems such as computer assisted career guidance systems (CACFS) in public agencies and in persons’ homes. In the area of job searches, job openings will increasingly be made online. This has implications for certain diverse groups who may not have viable access to online resources. Second, career counseling will be increasingly recognized as a specialty that requires expertise in three areas: personal counseling, career counseling, and career assessment. Career decisions should be viewed as value-based decisions where clients are empowered to clarify and articulate their declared values that can be implemented as career professionals. Career professionals can move to counseling-based career assistance because of the considerable overlap between career and general life concerns. The focus can be on multiple life roles where context can be incorporated into career development interventions. Career development
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interventions can address the totality of career concerns people experience so that they can be empowered to live a good life as well as make a good living. Moreover, career professionals can function as collaborators in the career counseling process with a focus on the relationship. This role clearly mandates that career professionals have multicultural career education and career development skills. Career practitioners can move beyond objective career assessment. While objective career assessments may be helpful in identifying viable career options, there can also be a focus on the process of making meaning out of life experiences—this can be the backdrop for examining one’s values, interests, and skills that can then be connected to career options. Third, career education and counseling of diverse groups will continue to be a major focus in the field. Career development interventions must address the status and needs of diverse populations where social and economic barriers prevent specific groups from fulfilling their career aspirations, goals, and objectives. These groups described earlier include ethnic minority groups, male and female youth, persons with disabilities, and sexual minority persons. Finally, there will be a greater focus placed on career information for adults who are beyond the basic schooling and college-level years. Fourth, although career development programming will continue to be important in the future, it will be secondary to the school reform movement, with its emphasis on high stakes testing and core subject outcomes that grip many of the nation’s public schools. This means that career development practitioners and advocates have to link career development programming to expected outcomes of school reform such as academic achievement, high school completion, enrollment in college, and graduation from college. See also: > Academic achievement in minority children; Community approaches to improving child success; > Cultural issues in education; > High schools; > Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender (GLBT); > Middle school; > School counselor; > School-to-work; > Students with disabilities
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Leong, F. T. L. (1995). Career development and vocational behavior of ethnic minorities. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum. Niles, S. G., & Harris-Bowlsbey, J. (2005). Career development in the 21st century. Mahwah, NJ: Upper Saddle River, Erlbaum. Sue, D. W., & Sue, D. (2003). Counseling the culturally diverse: Theory and practice. New York: Wiley.
Suggested Resources Association of Computer-Based Systems for Career Information— http:www.acsci.org: ACSCI is a professional association, formed in 1978, for the advancement of career information and its delivery. This website offers membership, news, and information about upcoming events. National Career Development Association: The National Career Development Association (NCDA) is a division of the American Counseling Association (ACA). The mission of NCDA is to promote the career development of all people over the life span. The NCDA provides service to the public and professionals involved with or interested in career development, including professional development activities, publications, research, public information, professional standards, advocacy, and recognition for achievement and service.
CASEL Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning (CASEL) >
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Suggested Reading Brown, D. (2003). Career information, career counseling, and career development (8th ed.). New York: Allyn Bacon. Herr, E. L., Cramer, S. H., & Niles, S. G. (2004). Career guidance and counseling through the lifespan: Systematic approaches. New York: Allyn & Bacon.
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CEMA American Psychological Association (APA): Office of Ethnic Minority Affairs (OEMA) and Committee on Ethnic Minority Affairs (CEMA) >
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Center for School Mental Health (CSMH) Mark D Weist . Nancy Lever . Sharon H Stephan . Ellie Davis . Lois T Flaherty
Recent reports have documented an increase in federal, state, and local support for school mental health (SMH) programs. SMH programs are becoming a significant force in addressing the widely agreed upon crisis in youth mental health care in the United States (U.S.), while also improving efforts by schools to reduce barriers to student learning. SMH is a relatively new and tenuously supported field, however, additional efforts are needed to better integrate training, practice, research and policy. The Center for School Mental Health (CSMH) at the University of Maryland School of Medicine seeks to address these needs and assist in advancing successful and innovative policies and programs in SMH. The CSMH was originally funded as the Center for School Mental Health Assistance in 1995 by the Maternal and Child Health Bureau of the Health Resource and Services Administration (HRSA). In 2000, the Center was refunded by HRSA, with co-funding by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA). In 2005, the Center was funded for another five years, through 2010, by HRSA. The mission of the CSMH is to strengthen policies and programs in school mental health to improve learning and promote success for America’s youth. Center staff, an experienced, interdisciplinary and diverse team works closely with federal project officers, Advisory Board members, stakeholders and collaborators throughout the U.S. to further the Center’s three overarching goals. The three goals and their associated objectives are directed toward facilitating progress of the Achieving the Promise (2003) initiative, in particular to pursue the initiative’s recommendation 4.2 which is to ‘‘improve and expand school mental health programs’’ (see > www.mentalhealthcommission.gov). Goals and objectives comprise an interconnected agenda to further build a Community of Practice within SMH and to enhance understanding of successful policies and programs, broadly disseminate policy analyses, and facilitate actions to advance the field through this community.
The first goal of the CSMH is to enhance understanding of successful and innovative school mental health policies and programs across urban, suburban, rural, and frontier settings as well as across local, state, national, and international levels. Pursuing Goal 1, specific objectives focus on the completion of issue briefs and policy analyses on 16 critical themes in SMH and on key federal policy initiatives including No Child Left Behind, the current Elementary and Secondary Education Act; the Achieving the Promise Initiative; and the Reauthorized (in 2004, with regulations promulgated in 2006) Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA). The second goal of the CSMH is to further develop a rapid, innovative, and widespread communications framework to disseminate findings and recommendations on successful and innovative policies and programs in SMH to all interested stakeholders. To achieve this goal, specific objectives relate to the development of a broad communications framework that emphasizes the Internet, including the CSMH website (> http:// csmha.umaryland.edu) and collaboration with the IDEA Partnership (see > www.ideapartnership.org), other national organizations, federal agencies, and state and local agencies and communities. A focus of this communication framework is to broadly disseminate issue and policy briefs and relevant updates and other information to a broad network of over 50,000 diverse individuals. Here, the CSMH also seeks to promote knowledge development in the SMH field through relevant research and interactive meetings and forums, resulting in professional presentations to diverse audiences in SMH, education, family and youth advocacy, children’s mental health, and other child serving systems and publications (i.e., research articles, book chapters, and user-friendly and web-focused articles). The third and final goal of the CSMH is to promote knowledge utilization and action toward the advancement of successful and innovative policies and programs in SMH. To pursue this goal, with the IDEA Partnership and many other collaborators as above, the CSMHA is helping to build a National Community of Practice on School Mental Health. The community seeks to enhance relationships, information sharing, dialog, and collaboration, to promote the ‘‘collective intelligence’’ and mutual support of a rapidly growing SMH field that reflects a ‘‘shared agenda’’—families, students, schools, mental health and other child and
Center for school-based mental health programs (CSBMHP)
adolescent system staff working together to advance integrated approaches to reduce academic and nonacademic barriers to learning among youth. With the support of the IDEA Partnership, an annual meeting of the community is held, systematic state initiatives focusing on SMH are moving forward, and ten practice groups are pursuing deeper dialog and collaboration in ten prioritized focus areas in the field (e.g., Youth involvement and leadership, developing a common language, family partnerships, quality and evidence-based practice). In between annual meetings which are held in conjunction with the CSMHA’s Annual Conference on Advancing School Mental Health, community members share knowledge, provide mutual support, and plan and implement relevant projects through email, conference calls, and active involvement through the Internet. See also: > Home-school partnerships; with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA); in mental health
Individuals School roles
> >
Suggested Reading Weist, M. D. (2005). Fulfilling the promise of school-based mental health: Moving toward a public mental health promotion approach. Journal of Abnormal Child Psychology, 6, 735–741. Weist, M. D. et al. (2003). Handbook of school mental health: Advancing practice and research. New York, NY: Springer Publishers.
Suggested Resources The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) Partnership— www.ideapartnership.org: The IDEA Partnership is a coalition of over 50 professional organizations and many U.S. states who seek to advance learning, health and mental health for youth in schools. Center for School Mental Health (CSMHA)—http://csmha.umary land.edu: The CSMHA website provides information on training events and resources. The School Mental Health Connection—www.schoolmentalhealth.org: This is user-friendly resource that provides practical tools for effective school mental health for families, youth, educators and clinicians. The National Community of Practice on Collaborative School Behavioral Health—www.sharedwork.org: This website provides a forum for mutual support and multiscale learning among different professional organizations, practice groups, states, and communities.
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Center for School-Based Mental Health Programs (CSBMHP) Carl E Paternite
In existence since 1998, the Center for School-Based Mental Health Programs (CSBMHP) at Miami University operates within the Department of Psychology. Eight university faculty members are affiliated with the Center, along with a 3/4-time Program Assistant. More than a dozen graduate students work with CSBMHP as research assistants and/or in clinical/consultation traineeships. Center activities are funded by a variety local, state, and federal grant and contract funds, by a private foundation grant and by university cost sharing. An important goal of the Center is to build collaborative relationships with schools and community agencies to address the mental health and school success of children and adolescents through multifaceted programs. The intent is to promote the development and implementation of effective programs and practices to enhance healthy psychological development of school-age students and reduce mental health barriers to learning. As a university-based Center, CSBMHP is committed to ongoing applied research, preservice education of future clinicians, in-service training of educators and mental health professionals, and direct clinical and consultative service. CSBMHP also leads the Ohio Mental Health Network for School Success (OMHNSS), which is funded jointly by the Ohio Department of Mental Health and the Ohio Department of Education. The Network consists of affiliate organizations in six regions of the state, with each affiliate, in turn, creating an action network within their region. The mission of the statewide Network is to help Ohio’s school districts, community-based agencies and families work together to achieve improved educational and developmental outcomes for all children—especially those at emotional or behavioral risk and those with mental health problems. CSBMHP and OMHNSS work have garnered statewide and national attention. CSBMHP faculty and OMHNSS affiliates have been involved extensively in state-level and national public policy advocacy and technical assistance related to school mental health services.
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Recent efforts in this regard have included leadership for Ohio’s Mental Health—Education—Families Shared Agenda Initiative; subcommittee work for Ohio’s Access to Better Care Initiative; consultation with the Ohio Department of Education Community Collaboration Model for School Improvement Initiative; consultation with the IDEA Partnership; consultation with the Center for School Mental Health Analysis and Action (University of Maryland); and coleadership of the Mental Health Education—Integration Consortium (MHEDIC). CSBMHP and OMHNSS embrace and examine service delivery within the framework of the expanded school mental health (ESMH) model. ESMH incorporates key elements reflected in the recommendation of the 2003 President’s New Freedom Commission to expand and improve school mental health services. These elements include: (1) family–school–community agency partnerships, involving close collaboration between school-employed mental health staff and community-employed mental health professionals working in schools; (2) commitment to a continuum of mental health education, promotion, assessment, problem prevention, early intervention, and treatment; and (3) services for youth in general and special education. CSBMHP initiatives also prioritize attention to application and examination of the principles of community science as a means to bridge the gap between research and practice. In this regard, explicit attention is paid to the mechanisms and processes needed to develop, support, and sustain effective practices in real world settings. The community-centered emphasis of community science focuses attention on local needswithin schools, sees ‘‘best practice’’ as process rather than magic bullet programs, and emphasizes control by school-based and school-linked practitioners (educators and ‘‘mental health’’ professionals), parents/ families, and community stakeholders. Local participation in school mental health initiatives is promoted and oriented toward accountability in the delivery process within schools. Engaging school-based personnel, and their community partners, in planning, implementing, evaluating, sustaining, and continuously improving school mental health practices, based on locally determined needs, builds local capacity to improve the quality of practice and achieve positive mental health and academic outcomes. See also: > Center for School Mental Health (CSMH); > Center for the Advancement of Mental Health
Practices in Schools; education
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Multicultural issues in special
Suggested Reading Flaspohler, P. D., Anderson-Butcher, D., Paternite, C. E., Weist, M. D., & Wandersman A. (2006). Community science and expanded school mental health: Bridging the research to practice gap to promote child well being and academic success. Educational and Child Psychology, 23(1), 27–41. Wandersman, A. (2003). Community science: Bridging the gap between science and practice with community-centered models. American Journal of Community Psychology, 31, 227–242. Weist, M. D. (1997). Expanded school mental health services: A national movement in progress. In T. Ollendick & R. J. Prinz (Eds.), Advances in Clinical Child Psychology, Vol 19, (pp. 319– 352). New York: Plenum Press.
Suggested Resources Center for School-Based Mental Health Programs (CSBMHP) at Miami University—http://www.units.muohio.edu/csbmhp/: This website describes the regional, state, and national work of CSBMHP. The IDEA Partnership—http://www.ideapartnership.org/mission. cfm: The IDEA Partnership is ‘‘dedicated to improving outcomes for students and youth with disabilities by joining state agencies and stakeholders through shared work and learning.’’ The Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning (CASEL)—http://www.casel.org/home/index.php: The CASEL mission is to ‘‘enhance children’s success in school and life by promoting coordinated, evidence-based social, emotional, and academic learning as an essential part of education from preschool though high school.’’
Center for the Advancement of Mental Health Practices in Schools James R Koller · Karen J Weston
Historically, traditional approaches to the identification and treatment of mental illness in children and youth have focused on medical models of pathology, eg., what is wrong with the child. In so doing, client deficits or
Center for the advancement of mental health practices in schools
functional limitations are identified and compared to a standard rubric like the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders: Text Revision (DSM-IV-TR) to establish eligibility for services. If eligible, the resultant assistance might include the diagnosis of a disability, provision of therapy and/or placement in school services for individuals with special needs. However, in the fall of 1998 the American Psychiatric Association, in concert with participating state departments of mental health, met with representatives of university based training programs to advocate for more prevention driven efforts toward mental health promotion. As a result of this challenge, in a paradigmatic shift, the Missouri Department of Mental Health made the decision to establish a unique program at the University of Missouri-Columbia. Subsequently, the Center for the Advancement of Mental Health Practices in Schools (Center) was established in the Department of Educational, School and Counseling Psychology. The Center was formed as a direct response to the realization by local, state and federal agencies for the need to increase prevention driven mental health services in the school and related community settings. As a result, the overall goal of the Center is designed to focus on the prevention of mental illness with the corresponding promotion of positive, evidence-based mental health practices for children, youth and the professionals who serve them. Specifically, the Center’s mission is fourfold: first, to increase awareness of mental health issues as they have an impact on the school, community, students, teachers, administrators and families; second, to provide education through evidence based practices for all school based personnel to improve the knowledge and skill levels in the area of mental health; third, the Center strives to be a valuable resource for educators and other community mental health personnel to implement best practice resources for their students; and fourth, the Center serves as an advocate for all students, families and school personnel faced with the escalating challenges of dealing with mental health concerns in today’s classroom and community. Currently, the Center is actively involved in a number of activities based on the realization that since the typical student learner spends the majority of his/ her day in the classroom, it is imperative that the teacher be a knowledgeable consumer of mental health principles and practices. With such knowledge, a favorable academic learning environment is created while the student’s self-concept has the opportunity
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to flourish. In response, the Center created a unique, nationally recognized online graduate program that leads to the culmination of a graduate degree (either a M.S. or Ed. S.) with a focus in mental health. Located in the College of Education, in an American Psychological Association (APA) approved psychology department, students also have the option of taking selected individual coursework to advance their skill level in specific content areas. Developed from numerous focus group discussions around the State of Missouri comprised of participants from schools, agencies and the larger community, all coursework is designed to meet the mental health needs of all children and school personnel by providing individuals with evidence based knowledge and strategies concerning prevention, early identification and intervention. Courses are taught by doctoral level experts from around the United States (U.S.) in fields such as psychology, psychiatry, law and education and are designed to offer practical applications of psychological concepts. As a result, online students worldwide gain competency in a number of skill based content areas not typically available in a face to face graduate curriculum. Examples of online coursework include bullying and violence prevention, anxiety and depression, teacher stress and burnout, building resiliency in children, communicating with angry parents, mental health issues and diversity, building an effective community systems of care model, current legal and ethical issues in mental health, collaborating with families, school-wide Positive Behavior Supports, and a course dealing with psychiatric problems in the classroom. All content is based on current research based evidence, is applicable to all learners regardless of previous school employment, undergraduate or graduate major, gender, social context and/or multicultural variables. One distinct advantage of the online program is that the learner has direct and continuous contact with professors throughout the semester. Moreover, a variety of school-based professionals from around the world can interact and exchange ideas and practices across diverse settings. To date students enrolled represent professions including occupational therapy, speech and language pathology, all levels and types of teachers, school administrators, school social workers, nurses, school psychologists, school counselors and psychiatrists. At the preservice level, the Center is committed to the preparation of all teachers to be knowledgeable consumers of mental health principles and practices in addition to their preparation of more content driven academic pedagogy. In so doing, the Center,
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collaborating with the acclaimed University of Missouri Teacher Development Program, is establishing a unique comprehensive and integrated systems (freshman through senior) curriculum designed to ensure the acquisition of evidence-based mental health knowledge and practices within all teacher preservice development. Relatedly, the Center is also collaborating with the governing State of Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education to advocate for the promotion of state legislation requiring that all newly certified teachers demonstrate minimum competency in school mental health prevention and early intervention practices. In addition to the training of all preservice level teachers, the Center has been actively involved in revamping presevice training of other school based personnel including school psychology. Although school psychology graduate programs typically provide students with basic training in the prevention and intervention of mental illness, the focus remains on pathology. As a result, the practicing school psychologist typically does not become involved in student issues until significant problems already exist. And, in spite of their training, school psychologists are often underutilized for this role relegated instead to the task of tester or psychometrician. Similarly, the Center acts as a resource for the training of other preservice school based personnel in prevention driven, evidence based practices including counselors, administrators, nurses and social workers all of whom serve as advocates for not only the learner, but also for the classroom teacher. With proliferating mental illness rates occurring among today’s youth, there has been a corresponding increase in the school drop out rate. To compound this problem, there has also been a significant increase in teacher drop out rates from the profession. This is due to a number of contributing factors including their own mental health status often exacerbated by school related stress problems. The Center is actively involved in on site individual and group consultation, intervention, program design and evaluation with numerous Missouri schools and agencies serving the mental health needs of students, staff and families. Examples include developing and delivering numerous conferences and workshops on a variety of issues including classroom management, discipline, recognizing the signs and symptoms of teacher burnout, how to increase effective communication strategies with co-workers and how to identify and intervene with students at risk for negative outcomes (suicide, self-injury, abuse, and dropout). In its commitment to expand the advocacy of mental health principles and practices throughout the
nation, the Center actively participates in a number of collaborative projects that subscribe to the promotion of proactive mental health practices. For example, exemplary school districts in the State of Missouri are members of the MU Partnership for Educational Renewal (MPER). Each year member schools demonstrating progressive school practices are granted small awards to enhance specific school improvement projects. Increasingly, school districts openly solicit assistance from the Center, specifically to help school staff establish a clear link between emotional health and academic achievement. Another state project the Center is developing is the Mental Health in Rural Schools (MHRS) Network, an online learning community that provides evidence based information and direct, online consultation to rural schools that often lack mental health resources. Four rural school districts pilot tested the site during the 2005-2006 school year with the goal to open the network statewide during the 2006-2007 school-year. Utilizing this technology allows rural, isolated schools the opportunity to establish a community of practice with each other and with the Center. Nationally, over the last few years the Center has been the fortunate recipient of awards including the National Association of State Directors of Special Education (NASDSE) and the National Association of State Mental Health Program Directors (NASMHPD). The purpose of this award was to establish a shared agenda in Missouri around children’s mental health – a mission and vision shared by schools and mental health agencies. Subsequently, the Center conducted a statewide series of focus groups with broad stakeholder representation (i.e., urban and rural, families, school professionals, prevention specialists and mental health providers). The final report provided key insight at the community level regarding commonly held mental health perspectives across groups as well as the perceived barriers to creating a cooperative school, agency and community mental health shared agenda. Fortuitously, the final project report recommendations became a key support for the development of Missouri Senate Bill 1003 (Children’s Comprehensive Mental Health Services Initiative) subsequently established as law in December 2004. This law now mandates that, in the State of Missouri, all child serving agencies, including schools, must work together to identify and promote evidence-based practices within school based mental health. The Center will continue to remain an active participant in helping to translate the law into effective school based mental health practices.
Centre for immigration and multicultural studies
Conclusion Unquestionably, the rate and severity of mental illness continues unabated in society today and specifically in our nation’s schools. To proactively combat this alarming increase, it is readily apparent that a paradigmatic shift from an exclusive mental illness paradigm to a more balanced mental health model is mandatory. In this regard, the Center for the Advancement of Mental Health Practices in Schools remains committed to a prevention focused, evidence based practices approach to mental health systems advocacy in today’s schools and the expanded community of which it is a part. Clearly, the responsibility of the development of proactive youth, prosocial mental health rests with all child serving agencies. As the school is the hub of the community, it must start here, in concert with the family. However, the necessary full array of mental health instruction and care must be provided in a coordinated systematic effort across all systems within the community, across the state and nationally. See also: > Center for School Mental Health (CSMH); > Center for School-Based Mental Health Programs (CSBMHP); > Mental Health-Education Integration Consortium (MHEDIC)
Suggested Reading Koller, J., Osterland, S., Paris, K., & Weston, K. (2004). Differences between novice and expert teachers’ undergraduate preparation and ratings of importance in the area of children’s mental health. International Journal of Mental Health Promotion, 6, 40–46. President’s New Freedom Commission on Mental Health (2003). Achieving the promise: Transforming mental health care in America. Final Report for the President’s New Freedom Commission on Mental Health (SMA Publication No. 03-3832). Rockville, MD: Author. Weist, M. (1997). Expanding school mental health services: A national movement in progress. In T. Ollendick & R. J. Pring, (Eds.), Advances in clinical child psychology (vol. 19, pp. 319–352). New York: Plenum Press.
Suggested Resources Center for the Advancement of Mental Health Practices in Schools website—http://schoolmentalhealth.missouri.edu: This website offers further information on the programs and resources available from the Center at the University of Missouri-Columbia.
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Centre for Immigration and Multicultural Studies James Jupp
Australia has developed over the past 50 years from a predominantly British and Irish-derived society to being ethnically and racially very mixed. Having built its population through immigration since 1788, it now numbers nearly one quarter of its 20 million people as overseas-born. While small numbers from outside the British Isles settled over the years, this change is mainly the result of a planned and organized immigration program that began in 1947 and has continued ever since. Preference for British subjects and the exclusion of non-Europeans had become settled policies long before 1947. As a result, little was known or understood about continental Europeans or Asians. As sources of immigrants were constantly expanded, this lack of knowledge presented a problem for policy makers and often seemed threatening to the general public. The notion that social harmony might be disturbed if society became more multicultural was deeply entrenched in Australian thinking. By the 1970s original favored sources became prosperous and less willing to migrate to the other end of the world. Australian academics were slow to respond to these changes. Many were still redefining Australian society as distinct from the British original. Governments were anxious to avoid social tensions, especially as these might affect electoral outcomes. They were also aware that settlement for permanent residence and citizenship required public services suitable for new clienteles who did not speak English. The academic pioneer in this area was the Australian National University in Canberra, which launched academic studies in the 1970s concerned with immigrant integration. Public policy shifted away from assimilation towards multiculturalism by the mid-1970s, as in Canada. This meant accepting that there were many different languages, religions, folkways, and practices that needed to be understood rather than simply dismissed as un-Australian. To meet the intellectual issues involved, a number of academic centers were established. These received little government support, compared with the situation in Canada. However, they were eligible for
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publicly funded competitive grants. Among these centers was the Centre for Immigration and Multicultural Studies set up at the Australian National University in 1988. This grew out of a massive, publicly funded encyclopedia The Australian People, which detailed all the major ethnic groups in Australia, as well as a history of immigration and topics related to immigrant settlement, ethnic relations and Aboriginality. A second and revised edition was published, also with public funding, in 2001. Work published by the Centre has included a study of refugee settlement issues (1994), the translating and interpreting needs of women (1993), evaluation of the official access and equity strategy for non-English-speaking immigrants (1992), urban concentrations (1990), and many papers and reports on multicultural and settlement policy. A change of government in 1996 led to much of this kind of work being defunded, inhibiting the growth of research centers and even their abolition in some cases. The Centre moved its interests towards more general issues, publishing work on immigration policy since the end of White Australia (2002), the English in Australia (2004), and a number of statistical and chronological reports on languages and settlement. The Centre is currently engaged in compiling an encyclopedia of religions in Australia, which will detail the greatly increased variety of religions resulting from the creation of a multicultural society. See also: > Cultural diversity; > Prejudice; Individual, Institutional, and Cultural
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Racism:
Suggested Reading Jupp, J. (2001). The Australian people. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Jupp, J. (2004). From White Australia to Woomera. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
Suggested Resources Centre for Immigration and Multicultural Studies Page— http://cims.anu.edu.au: This website provides information about the CIMS and related links and lists recent publications.
Certification, Alternate Routes to Andrea E Antonson
Alternate routes to teacher certification are optional methods for obtaining teacher certification. Traditionally the prospective teacher had to complete a bachelor’s degree and an approved teacher training program, as well as supervised student teaching, before applying for standard certification, and pursuing employment. By law, individuals cannot teach in public schools without certification. Therefore, shortages in the supply of teachers led to the demand for rapid certification methods. Alternate routes to certification enable candidates who lack standard certification to enter teaching fields without having to go back to college and major in education. In some states, a provisional certificate may be issued to a teacher with a bachelor’s degree in the subject area of interest, authorizing employment on the condition that standard certification requirements will be completed within a set period. In some states, an emergency certificate may be issued. This is a substandard, temporary certificate that is granted out of necessity when there is a lack of suitably certified candidates to fill a position. Renewal is contingent upon satisfactory progress toward completion of coursework and certification. With an increasing demand for teachers and the desire for a better solution than the emergency certificate, New Jersey enacted legislation in 1984 for an alternate route to certifying teachers. Soon after, Texas and California developed alternate route programs to address their growing demand for teachers. In 2006, 47 states, plus the District of Columbia, had alternative teacher certification programs. At the time of writing, North Dakota and Rhode Island have yet to implement alternate route programs, and Alaska has discontinued its program. Just as the traditional teaching certification requirements vary from state to state, and from institution to institution, so do the alternate route possibilities and certification titles. Essentially, teacher certification programs have the following characteristics: they are designed for individuals who have at least a bachelor’s degree; coursework and experience is designed specifically for teaching and is field-based;
Character education
applicants to the program must pass a screening process including interviews and competency exams; candidates work closely with mentor teachers and candidates must meet high performance standards for completion of the program. The states that produce the most new teachers through alternate route programs are the states with the oldest and most established programs: California, New Jersey, and Texas. In 2004, the number of teachers certified through alternate route programs from these three states accounted for nearly one-half of the nationwide total of teachers certified through alternate route programs. However, these programs are growing rapidly in Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, South Carolina, and Virginia. Alternate routes to certification provide teaching opportunities to individuals who previously thought certification was unattainable because of time and financial constraints. In New Jersey, the largest source of qualified minority teachers has been through alternate routes. People coming into alternate route programs tend to be older, are people of color, more men than previously, have academic degrees other than education, and have experiences in other occupations. Many people are career changers, teachers who were trained years ago but they never taught, retirees, and students. They are individuals making a definite decision to enter the field of education at this point in their lives; as a result, early data indicate that rates of teacher retention are higher for individuals certified through alternate programs than through traditional means. Alternate routes to certification have resulted in bringing together a richness of people, academic degrees, talents, and career experiences that enhance the quality of teachers in the profession. The job outlook for opportunities in the field of teaching looks promising. Many teachers are expected to retire between 2004 and 2014 and will need to be replaced. The increasing representation of youth of color in school enrollment calls for increased recruitment of teachers that reflect this diversity. Shortages in the number of teachers continues to exist in urban areas, where schools tend to be overcrowded and lesser-equipped, and in rural locations owing to lower teacher salaries. There is also a growing need for teachers in specific subject areas, such as mathematics, science, bilingual/bicultural education, and special education. Alternate routes to teacher certification programs provide a solution to today’s demand for
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an array of teachers in these specific subjects and geographic locations. See also: > Education; > Substitute teachers
Suggested Reading Feistritzer, C. E. (2005). Profile of alternate route teachers. Washington, D.C.: National Center for Education Information. Feistritzer, C. E. (2006). Alternative teacher certification: A state-bystate analysis. Washington, D.C.: National Center for Education Information.
Suggested Resources National Center for Alternative Certification—http://www.teachnow.org/: This website is a one-stop source of information about alternate routes to teacher certification, including a state-by-state analysis. National Center for Education Information—http://www.ncei. com/: This website provides an authoritative source of information about alternate teacher preparation and certification in the U.S.
Character Education Leslie Ditta
Being an individual of character is valued in society. There are codes of honor and ethics in fields such as medicine, law, and the military, as well as ethical standards in professions like psychology and education. At its core is the idea that to be an individual of character, one must be taught what character is, and how to live out its principles. Consequently, the character education initiative has become an important aspect of United States (U.S.) education. Character education seeks to create school environments where students develop ethics and achieve. Aspects of character education have always been taught in U.S. schools: treat others kindly, follow the school rules, and be responsible. With events such as the 1999 Columbine school shooting, it has become evident that there are children dangerously lacking
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interpersonal values for interacting with others. Since then, along with The No Child Left Behind Act of 2001, schools are now required to include character education as part of their curriculum, to develop students’ moral attitudes and work to prevent further tragedies such as Columbine. There are many ways that character education can be implemented in a school’s environment and curriculum, at any grade level. Typically it is the responsibility of the school counselor to promote and educate character development among the students of a school. However, the school system itself has to support the notion of character education. Character education is not a remedial fix after a student has exhibited behaviors, choices, or attitudes that are lacking in moral virtue. Rather, it is a proactive and preventive approach that seeks to change the climate within a school so that students will choose to act with character simply because it is right and expected—not as an apology or consequence. The implementation of the character education initiative starts by selecting a framework with relevant lessons, activities, and efforts. A primary character education framework used across the U.S. is called Character Counts. Character Counts focuses on what is called the Six Pillars of Character. These six pillars include the following values: caring (being kind to others), fairness (playing by the rules, sharing, and being open-minded), respect (treating others as you would like to be treated), responsibility (doing what you are supposed to), trustworthiness (being honest), and citizenship (be a good member of society, follow rules). Six pillars is a brief number of values to focus on, yet they are broad enough to encompass many traits and behaviors. Character Counts was created in 1992 by the Joseph & Edna Josephson Institute of Ethics, a public, nonprofit organization founded by Michael Josephson in honor of his parents. Another common framework implemented within schools is that of service learning. Service learning, when paired with character education instruction, enables students to apply what they learn to real life situations. This in turn will benefit the group who receives the service. The scale for service learning can range from providing a service within one’s own community such as his or her school, to other schools within the community, or within other public organizations. Service learning can promote academic achievement, social and personal growth, and career
and life development. Helping others is a universal theme that can be adapted across cultures. The nationwide character education movement is being promoted in schools as a primary vehicle to develop ethical values among youth. It cannot be overlooked or forgotten, however, that the responsibility of raising moral individuals does not solely rest on educators; the most influential forces shaping youth are families, primarily parents. Parents and educators serve parallel roles in children’s lives. Not only do parents raise their children, but they also serve as teachers, teaching children the values cherished by the family. Teachers, whose primary responsibility is to teach content and skills, along with morals, often serve as ‘‘parents away from home’’ to the students they teach. Teachers often employ parenting techniques as part of their teaching. With such an overlap, it seems impossible to raise ethical individuals without teachers and parents working together as partners, complimenting and supporting the actions of the other. As part of the development of character education programs, an invaluable and essential component must be parent involvement. See also: > Community approaches to improving child success; > Conflict resolution; > Parental involvement in education; > School counselor
Suggested Reading Greer, C., & Kohl, G. (1995). A call to character. New York: Harper Collins. Kilpatrick, W., Wolfe, G., & Wolfe, S. M. (1994). Books that build character: A guide to teaching your child moral values through stories. New York: Touchstone.
Suggested Resources Character Counts—http://www.charactercounts.com: Used within schools and businesses, Character Counts provides the framework of the ‘‘Six Pillars of Character’’: caring, fairness, respect, trustworthiness, citizenship, and responsibility. Adopting these behaviors as a character-promoting program has made this the most widely used approach to character education. Project Wisdom—http://www.projectwisdom.com: Project Wisdom’s history can be traced back to the beginning of the character education movement. By providing positive messages to be used in schools, this program helps to promote a positive, ethical, and caring environment.
Charter schools Character Education Partnership—http://www.character.org: A national organization that advocates and leads the character education movement. The Character Education Partnership provides definitions, effective practices, and a forum for exchanging ideas about character education.
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district regulations and for accountability measurements to be concerned with student outcomes rather than method or process. The first charter school law was passed in Minnesota in 1991, followed by California in 1992. Currently 40 states have charter school laws. Of the over 88,000 public schools in the United States (U.S.), there are approximately 4,100 charter schools, which enroll an estimated 1.2 million students. Charter schools most often serve minority and low-income students. For instance, currently the average minority population in charter schools is 60%.
Tyondra Jefferson . Mark Kiang
Selection Process A charter school is a publicly funded primary or secondary school that serves as an alternative to traditional school settings. The two underlying principles of charter schools are autonomy and accountability. Charter schools differ from traditional public schools in that they are not held to the same rules and regulations as public schools. Charter schools have total control of business, finance administration, and curriculum development and implementation. In exchange for this freedom, charter schools must demonstrate an innovative educational philosophy and be held accountable for student outcomes. Charter schools are typically smaller than traditional public schools, with a median enrollment of 242 students compared to 539 students in traditional public schools. To gain authorization to function in such a manner a sponsor must award the school a charter or a contract that details the performance specifications of the school. A charter is typically granted for 3–5 years and includes the school’s mission, educational philosophy, goals, students it aims to serve, assessment techniques, and methods to measure success. Some examples of sponsors are local school boards, universities, state education agencies, and the federal government. Charter schools sponsored by a district have the same powers as other local schools, while charter schools given nonprofit corporation status usually have greater autonomy. The charter school movement was born out of the need to address the shortcomings of the public school system. Public schools are often overcrowded, underfunded and provide an inadequate curriculum. In 1988, Albert Shanker, the President of the American Federation of Teachers, initiated a reform of the public school system by calling for charter schools or ‘‘schools of choice.’’ In theory, Shanker delineated these schools to be free from most of the confinements of both state and
While charter schools provide unique opportunities, hopeful students and their families must undergo an often rigorous selection process to gain admittance. The charter school applicant pool is typically large and frequently charter school evaluation boards are very selective. Charter schools tend to consider potential students based on needs-based requirements such as whether a child receives Title I funding. In addition candidates’ academic ability/performance is considered in the acceptance process. Even with these stipulations there often exists a large number of qualified applicants. To address this, most charter schools utilize a lottery system that involves random selection from a pool of students who meet requirements.
Classroom Setting/Teaching Strategies Charter schools provide smaller class sizes, that provide students increased teacher interaction and guidance. The classroom learning environment in charter schools has been noted to have less disciplinary problems and more positive peer interaction. Classroom teaching involves a variety of instructional strategies including cooperative learning, peer instruction, and learning stations. One practice that is commonly implemented in charter schools is a system called ‘‘looping.’’ Looping is an educational strategy where teachers follow the same group of students for a period of time. If a teacher is given a first grade class, for instance, the teacher will stay with that class for the next 4 years. This allows the teacher to monitor his or her own strengths and weaknesses as well as understand the students’ growth. In
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some cases, schools encourage looping to build stronger connections between students and teachers. This technique gives the teacher time to understand and address the educational needs of his or her students.
Curriculum Charter school curricula vary according to the mission of the school. Some demonstrate an evenly divided focus on traditional subjects such as math, reading, writing, science, and social studies. However, because charter schools allow for greater freedom, their curricula often offer unique concentrations and innovative approaches. For example, some charter schools are geared towards music or the arts. One unique approach utilized by some charter schools is an integrated curriculum that promotes the marriage of two subjects. For example, a charter school that integrates English and social studies may offer a curriculum where the two subjects are concurrently taught in the same classroom setting, with social studies content supporting English vocabulary acquisition, and written composition providing a foundation for social studies comprehension. Project-based learning is another unique component offered by some charter schools. Project-based learning gives middle and high school students the opportunity to gain real-world professional experience. A charter school may offer research study projects with major companies and universities. Some high school level charter schools offer College Preparatory course work. College Prep prepares students to experience post secondary education by enabling them to enroll in college level courses. One major initiative offered by some charter schools is the multi-grade classroom. This enables older students to assist younger students through peer group instruction. This strategy has potential benefits for all parties. Teachers can implement a versatile curriculum, younger students receive additional attention and mentoring, and older students may be motivated through increased responsibility. After school activities are another prominent feature of charter schools. In 2001, nearly eight million children returned to homes with no adult supervision. To provide safe and productive alternatives to returning to empty homes, many charter schools provide after school academic enrichment and recreational activities.
Accountability Accountability is a crucial aspect to the establishment, operation, and livelihood of a charter school. Those charter schools that do not meet their contracted requirements are placed under scrutiny by state legislatures that hold them accountable for unmet achievement levels. Charter schools must provide an annual progress report to the board of education that details academic performance. The report also addresses areas of concern, plans for improvement, and efforts to meet the mission of the charter school. If the charter school fails to meet the mission or fails to demonstrate fiscal responsibility the state may deny or revoke the charter.
Community Outreach Charter schools often foster working relationships with community-based programs. These provide students with the opportunity to participate in community services and activities.
Effectiveness Studies conducted to assess the effectiveness of charter schools have generally yielded mixed findings. While some studies have shown that charter schools lag behind public schools, these studies compare public schools offered to the general population to all charter schools, the majority of which are aimed towards populations that already exhibit poor academic performance. When charter schools aimed at the general population are compared to similar public schools, studies show that charter schools yield favorable results. A 2004 analysis of the 2003 National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), or ‘‘The Nation’s Report Card’’ by the National Assessment Governing Board (NAGB) showed that, on average, fourth grade charter school students score lower than their peers from traditional public schools on the NAEP. Critics of this report point out that the sample of students studied were only a small percentage of the fourth grade charter school student population. In addition, most studies that take demographics into consideration find at least comparable and, more often, larger academic gains in charter schools in comparison to public schools. Most studies have found that
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charter schools show improved performance over time. Since most charter schools are relatively new, this finding is particularly promising. Another telling fact is that charter schools tend to receive less funding than traditional public schools. In a 2005 study that examined funding across 16 states and Washington, D.C.—a group that serves 84% of the charter school population—it was found that charter schools receive on average 22% less funding per student than do surrounding district schools. Funding for charter schools is typically worse in urban school settings. Amidst all of the research regarding charter schools that has been done, it should be noted that statistics must be viewed objectively. Just like public schools, charter schools vary considerably and widespread generalizations should not be made.
Outlook The number of enrollees in charter schools are expected to grow in upcoming years given the implementation of educational laws such as No Child Left Behind that aim to provide equal educational opportunities for all children regardless of economic class or cultural background. As a testament to the optimism that the U.S. as a nation seems to hold in regards to the potential of charter schools, one must look no further than New Orleans. Since the destruction of Hurricane Katrina in 2005, over half of the New Orleans schools that are re-opening are doing so as charter schools. See also: > Magnet schools; > Vouchers
Suggested Reading Ainsworth, W. J. (2002). Why does it take a village? The mediation of neighborhood effects on educational achievement. Social Forces, 81(1), 117–152. Berends, M., Chun, J., Schuyler, G., Stockly, S., & Briggs R. J. (2002). Challenges of conflicting school reforms: Effects of new American schools in a high poverty district. Santa Monica, CA: RAND Publications.
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website provides the public with reports on school performance, accountability, and other topics on the status of education in the U.S. Delaware State Board of Education—http://www.doe.state.de.us/ CharterSchools/expect.html: This website offers important information on the dynamics and expectations of charter schools in Delaware.
Child Abuse Elias Mpofu . MinJung Helen Doh . Chris Mattise . Magen M Mutepfa . Nareadi Phasha . Almon Shumba . Mercy R Montsi . J A Muchado
Child abuse is one problem that is as old as the human race. It is an intentional and vicious act that is driven by power and control over the most vulnerable population: children. Throughout much of ancient history, the intentional killing of children was condoned by society through the practice of infanticide. For example, laws in ancient Greece and Rome prohibited the raising of ‘‘defective’’ or ‘‘unfit’’ children. Infanticide was justified as late as the nineteenth century in parts of Europe, as children were considered to be parental ‘‘property’’ existing in a period (historically between the ages of birth to age seven) not yet vested with the right to live. Child abuse occurs across gender, race, ethnicity, socioeconomic status (SES), geographical location, and cultural background. Children experience abuse at the hands of their close relatives, neighbors, and peers, as well as people outside their homes. Child abusers may be people who are thought to be responsible citizens and are often known and trusted by the victim children. Child abuse is prevalent in all countries, and preventing its occurrence is a goal for national and international communities. The following considers the conceptualization of child abuse, its prevalence, correlates, and prevention in cross-cultural perspective.
Conceptualization of Child Abuse Suggested Resources Innovations in Education: Successful Charter Schools—http:// www.ed.gov/admins/comm/choice/charter/index.html: This
According to the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, child abuse is when a parent, guardian, or caregiver mistreats a child sexually,
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physically, or emotionally resulting in injury, emotional or psychological harm, or serious risk of harm to the child. There are three forms of child abuse that are known internationally: sexual, physical, and emotional. Child sexual abuse occurs when a child is used for sexual purposes by an adult. It involves exposing the child to any sexual activity, including sexual intercourse, fondling (making a child touch or be touched sexually; or touching private parts, buttocks), harassment, kissing, hugging, prostitution, and showing pornographic materials to children. Sexual abuse is inherently physical and is often accompanied by emotional abuse. Emotional abuse occurs when a child’s needs to be loved, wanted, safe, and worthy are not met by adults or caregivers. A child exposed to sexual abuse also suffers psychologically. Physical abuse is the deliberate application of force on the child’s body, which may result in injury or intentional injuries. It also includes behavior such as kicking, pushing, pinching, beating, hitting, shaking, burning, choking, or dangerous use of force or restraint used on the child. Child labor is a form of abuse that is common in developing countries, whereby children are used as domestic workers, in farms, building construction, and manufacturing. In terms of physical labor, India is known to have the largest number of working children in the world. India is estimated to have 60–100 million children workers under the age of 14 years. Of these, 10 million are known to be slaves, and another 15 million are bonded labor. With a population of 186.8 million children between the ages of 5 and 14 years working as child labor in Sub-Saharan Africa, and an estimated 49.3 million economically active children, it is apparent that child labor is rampant in Africa. A form of child labor prevalent in school settings in developing countries involves students doing domestic chores for teachers during school hours and at community schools that provide on-site housing for teachers. The domestic chores include cooking and cleaning, making the teacher’s bed, buying groceries for teachers, fetching water and firewood. In most cases, the abusing teacher is not aware that he or she is abusing the student, and the victim (the student) does not know that he or she is being abused. Neglect is another prevalent form of child abuse, and often is both physical and emotional. Emotional (or psychological) abuse occurs when a parent or caregiver does not provide essential requisites to a child’s emotional, psychological, and physical development. Physical neglect occurs when a child’s needs such as
food, clothing, shelter, medical care, and protection are not adequately met. Emotional neglect involves rejecting, degrading, humiliating, or scolding the child in public, in front of peers, or in private. It also involves attacking the child’s sense of self in ways that would make the child lose self-confidence. Children with disabilities are particularly vulnerable to abuse in homes, residential and other facilities that care for them. Having a significant developmental disability (e.g., mental retardation or autistic spectrum disorders, speech and language communication disorder) increases the chances sixfold that the child will experience some form of abuse compared with peers without disabilities. In these settings, the education curricula for the students includes training in selfcare, appropriate expression or use of emotions, social skills, and transition to community. Children with assisted self-care may be inappropriately touched by caregivers, fondled, and coerced to engage in sex. They may place their caregivers who are under stress levels over those expected and find themselves at risk of abuse and neglect. They may also be emotionally abused by inappropriate application of behavioral management reinforcers beyond what is required to learn from their educational programs. Similarly, they may be emotionally abused by caregivers with unmet emotional needs who demand it from the children with developmental disabilities in their charge. The children with developmental disabilities may also experience physical abuse and neglect from family or caregivers who perceive the children as less than full humans, undeserving of quality care, or unable to appreciate care. Children with developmental disabilities are particularly vulnerable to abuse as family, caregivers and peers expect that they would not be able to report the abuse. Children worldwide experience abuse in school settings and from peers. For example, they may experience severe and chronic bullying in the school’s classrooms, hallways, and playgrounds. Child victims of peer aggression, rejection, and bullying have suffered in silence, fearing not only a bully’s retaliation but the inadequacy of their teacher’s ability to recognize and stop the bullying. Children’s awareness of high rates of victimization in schools are associated with more negative perceptions of the school’s overall climate, decreased levels of engagement in school, and higher rates of daily anxiety and social aversion. These effects occur on children even if they are not direct victims or perpetrators. The experience of bullying
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could result in a negative developmental spiral that is activated by the interaction of social skill deficits, behavior problems, and peer rejection. Chronic exposure to hostile overtures and victimization from peers can lead to persistent feelings of resentment, loneliness, anxiety, depression, and alienation. Without intervention, long-standing distress with peers evolves into increasingly chronic and compelling feelings of helplessness, social anxiety, and aggression. Child trafficking is a form of child abuse that is rampant both in developing and developed countries. It involves the movement or displacement of children under the age of 18 years within or beyond the borders of a country by an intermediary with the intention of abusing and exploiting the children. It is often characterized by coercion, deception, violence, restricted movement, and the abuse of authority, practices that violate children’s rights. Within-country trafficking of children is also common; and in developing countries it tends to involve children moved by coercion or deception from rural to urban areas for physical or sexual exploitation. Some delinquent children may run away from home because of ongoing or chronic abuse.
Prevalence of Child Sexual Abuse Statistics on child abuse from around the globe are difficult to establish for many factors, including poor law enforcement, documentation, and underreporting. We believe that the statistics on the prevalence of child sexual abuse would vary widely by type of abuse and the cultural context in which it occurs. For example, the recent statistics on criminal abuse perpetrated on children in South Africa reveal a total of 53,802 incidents reported to the police in 2002–2003, whereas 56,737 were reported in 2004. Sexual abuse was the most prevalent type of child abuse and accounted for 60% of the cases, followed by physical abuse. About 28 million of the South African population of 46.9 million are children. It is apparent that cases of child abuse in that country are seriously underreported. Sexual exploitation of children by tourists has been rampant in Asian countries. Sri Lanka, Philippines, and Thailand were considered as the paradise for child sex in the 1980s, and tour operators openly promoted child sex tourism, especially with young boys. Because of these open promotions and lack of enforcement of child abuse laws, pedophiles from
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around the world enthusiastically flocked to the Asian countries for child sex. Sex tourists abused young children and the children were mostly victims of kidnapping or slavery from having been sold by families in poverty. In the United States (U.S.), over three million child abuse cases were reported in 1997 alone. Of that number, approximately 13% were sexually abused. According to the U.S. National Center on Child Abuse and Neglect (NCCAN), the number of American children who were seriously injured by all forms of child abuse rose from 141,700 to 565,000 (a 299% increase) between 1986 and 1993. The U.S. Advisory Board on Child Abuse and Neglect declared child maltreatment a ‘‘national emergency’’ as far back as 1990. An estimated 872,000 children were determined to be victims of child abuse or neglect in 2004. Children with reported disabilities account for 7.3% of all child abuse victims in the U.S. Child protective workers in the U.S. are 68% more likely to take initial action on reports where children are identified as possessing a disability than when children possess no disabilities. Most child abuse cases in the U.S. and internationally go unreported. Approximately one in four women and one in ten men in the U.S. were victims of sexual abuse when people were asked to report retrospectively.
Correlates of Child Abuse in Cross-Cultural Perspective Several factors are associated with the prevalence of child abuse. We consider only a few of the major factors: poor law enforcement, economic deprivation, sociostructural problems, previous experience of abuse, and cultural factors. Poor law enforcement. Despite the existence of international conventions on children’s rights and incountry laws against child abuse (see prevention section below), many law enforcement systems (i.e., federal and state police) have inadequate training or resources to counteract child abuse. Police in some developed countries and many developing countries are reluctant to investigate crimes in low SES neighborhoods or communities they perceive to be prone to violence. For example, some South African police do not aggressively investigate crimes in low SES townships, informal settlements, and other predominantly Black communities, for fear that their cars could be hijacked. Police are rarely seen in those neighborhoods
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that also have high risk for child abuse. South African police appear to give higher priority to law enforcement in White communities from the apartheid era while overlooking crimes reported by Blacks, including apparent child abuse crimes. In the absence of law enforcement, perpetrators of child abuse are not reported or convicted and are thus perpetuating the practice. Moreover, perpetrators can threaten and intimidate the victimized child and/or her/his family with impunity to isolate the victims from seeking help from law enforcement. Economic deprivation. Although child abuse is prevalent across SES, it is more prevalent in impoverished neighborhoods. For example, innumerable young girls in India from poor families are forced to marry elderly men or individuals who seek perverted sexual practices. These girls are often sexually abused and then sold to brothels. Some of the Indian girls are given away in marriage by their families to older boys from well-resourced families to add to the social and economic status of their families of origin. Indian girls in arranged marriages are expected to labor for their inlaws’ family while also freeing their biological family from the obligation of parenting. These forms of child marriage have been gaining the attention of many child advocates who have been voicing the harmful effects such as inadequate socialization, deprivation of education, and high rates of enforced widowhood. Nevertheless, these abusive practices are widespread among India’s poor, and in many low-resource, developing countries in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. The impact of poverty on the occurrence of child abuse is also apparent in South Africa. High unemployment and poverty among young South African Blacks emerging from apartheid frustrated many youths who perceived no opportunities to enhance their social advancement. These frustrations may have resulted in the abuse of children. For example, young men in Black townships organized themselves into gangs and engaged in violent behavior toward younger women (12–17 years), contributing to the increase of abuse against girls. Lack of employment opportunities continues to be a serious problem among most Blacks living in historically Black townships, informal settlements, and remote rural areas. Fathers and mothers from the impoverished remote rural areas migrate to the cities for job opportunities, and in the process, may neglect their children in the villages. These labor migrants leave their children on their own or with relatives. Some of the children attempt to follow their
parents to the cities, and when they fail to find them, take up life in the streets, including child labor and prostitution. Children who lack healthy custodial care are vulnerable to abuse by relatives and strangers. For example, they could be required to do menial and other tasks not expected for their age, and for the primary benefit of their care providers. Structural problems. The lack of child protection units, victim friendly courts, shelter homes, and places of safety in many developing countries adds to the vulnerability of children to abuse. Often, the poor national road infrastructure makes traveling a major challenge and discourages abused children and their families or allies in the community to report abuse to law enforcement. A poor road network also reduces the chances that law enforcement agents would visit areas in which there are children at most risk of abuse. Countries experiencing a fundamental change of their sociopolitical and economic structures often get caught up in bigger political issues rather than social issues such as child abuse. For example, in Bulgaria’s transition from communist to a pro-Western form of government, child abuse issues tended to be peripheral to the national rehabilitation agenda. The preoccupation with national socioeconomic transformation may overshadow the safety needs of children in vulnerable communities, such as in the poorer neighborhoods. Children in many countries undergoing major political upheavals such as in Africa, Eastern Europe, the Middle East, the Caribbean, and Latin America are at great risk for abuse. Previous experience of abuse. Children with a history of abuse are also likely to experience repeated or continued abuse in other contexts/settings. For example, Zimbabwean female children with a history of previous sexual abuse were more likely to be sexually abused by adults and peers. Some of the adults or peers who knew the child’s history of sexual abuse perceive them to be vulnerable and actually abuse him or her. The child victims of abuse may believe that accepting the abuse would make them worthy to the perpetrator. Cultural factors. The cultural norms of a society also place children at risk of child abuse. For example, schools in several developed and developing countries practice corporal punishment and consider it ‘‘reasonable spanking’’ to express disapproval of chronic misbehavior. Children could endure harsh physical abuse both in schools and their homes in societies that endorse corporal punishment. In most societies in
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the developing countries, numerous forms of child maltreatment are perceived as private family affairs, so that reporting the abuses by family members is considered a taboo. Some cultures have the expectation for children to be submissive to adult authority. In such circumstances, when confronted by child traffickers, the children may be submissive to the trafficker, whom they perceive to be authoritative. Survivors of trafficking may never report to their parents or guardians for fear of being blamed for the abuse.
Preventing Child Abuse Many countries across the globe combine a legal approach to preventing child abuse with sociostructural interventions to ameliorate conditions that portend risk for abuse in children, and education to create a wider awareness of child abuse in the general population. Interventions have also been targeted at children and communities with known risk factors. Legal interventions. It has been almost 15 years since the international community ratified the Convention on the Rights of the child, which gave high priority to the rights of the children, to their survival, and protection. Individual member countries of the United Nations have put in place strong legislation consistent with the Convention, and many countries in the developing and developed world had legal instruments to protect children from abuse before the adoption of the UN Convention. As an example of anti-child-abuse legislation, South Africa’s Section 28 of the Bill of Rights states unequivocally that children have the rights to: (a) be protected from maltreatment, abuse, and degradation; (b) be protected from exploitative labor practices; and (c) not be required or permitted to work services that are inappropriate for the person of that child’s age, or which place at risk the child’s well-being, education, physical or mental health, or spiritual, moral, or social development. The U.S. Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment Act (2003) (CAPTA) identifies a minimum set of acts or behaviors that define child abuse and neglect as any willful recent act or failure to act by a caretaker resulting in death, serious physical or emotional harm, sexual abuse, or exploitation of a child. The CAPTA also considers actions that pose apparent or imminent risk of harm to a child to be abusive. The Japanese judiciary established the Child Abuse Prevention and Child Relief Act in 1933 to engender a safe living environment for
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children under the age of 14. In addition, Japan has several other laws to ensure the well-being of children. There are several countries with a reliable legal structure to protect children, and which they follow strictly. For example, in the U.S., children’s safety is monitored by the child welfare system, a network of organizations including public agencies, private and community-based organizations, designed to work together in each community. Child welfare systems receive and investigate reports of possible child abuse and neglect, provide services to families who need assistance in the care and protection of their children, arrange for children to live with foster families when they are not safe at home, and arrange permanent adoptive homes or independent living services for children leaving foster care. In 2004, an estimated 3 million referrals involving 5.5 million children were made to child protective agencies in the U.S. Of those reports, 63% provided sufficient information to suggest that a report was warranted. Although the remaining 37% of reports may not have met the legal definition of abuse, the child protection worker may have referred the person reporting the incident to other community services or law enforcement for additional assistance. All U.S. physicians and human service professionals (such as therapists, social workers, and teachers) are required to report any form of suspected abuse according to law enforcement. Under U.S. law, perpetrators, who may be parents or guardians, are often mandated to receive remedial counseling and education to prevent further abuse. If parents fail to comply with the demands of the court, their parental rights are often terminated. Similarly, the Spanish law system has a high regard for the voice of children. The law requires children up to 12 years of age to give their acceptance for family foster care or adoption. Minors also have the right to be represented by a person of their choice in legal proceedings resulting from the abuse. The opinions of children who have been abused have priority over those of family if the children have been subjected to abusive treatment. Interventions Targeting Vulnerable Communities and Children. There are three levels of prevention: universal, selective, tertiary. Universal prevention, applied to child abuse, involves educating the general population on child abuse to discourage the onset of new cases of child maltreatment. For example, Canada emphasizes parent education, social support, and community services to educate the general population about child abuse or maltreatment. Selective prevention activities
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are aimed at individuals or communities with higher maltreatment risk factors (e.g. poverty, parents of children with disabilities). Family-life education programs for pregnant teenagers, and requisite care for disability classes for families with children with special needs children, are some of the selective prevention activities in the U.S. Tertiary prevention involves the services to individuals or families after abuse has been detected. Australia has the Safety House program, which has clearly identified houses and schools where children can seek help in case of any abuse or maltreatment. The program also focuses on educating children so they can recognize the signs of danger when they find themselves at risk of physical or sexual abuse.
Conclusion Child abuse is prevalent across societies. Its severity in children is heightened by the fact that one form of abuse is often accompanied by other forms. Understanding interrelationships among specific types of child abuse and their correlates is important in its prevention and treatment. Effective interventions combine legal, sociostructural, and targeted interventions. Preventive efforts that take into account the objective risk for child abuse in family and communities are likely to be successful. Prevention of child abuse is about safeguarding children’s rights. See also: > Adoption/adopted children; > School violence
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Bullying;
Child Traumatic Brain Injury Rolland S Parker
Brain Trauma Traumatic brain injury (TBI) is recognized as the ‘‘Silent Epidemic’’ since the actual number of TBIs that occur in the United States (U.S.) is unknown, and individual instances are frequently unidentified. Brain injury causes a disorder of adaptation, i.e., the capacity to integrate one’s needs and ability to perform effectively with the environment. Accidents causing brain trauma are caused by physical forces (i.e., impact and acceleration/deceleration caused by falls, vehicular accidents, falling objects, assault, sports injuries, child abuse, neurotoxins, electricity, and loss of oxygen or increased levels of carbon monoxide). Mechanical forces create brain movement and pressure waves that stretch fibers, impact of the brain with the inside of the skull creating contusions (bruising of the surface of the brain), skull fractures that indent the brain, and other microscopic neural effects such as tearing nerve fibers, cellular trauma caused by damage to membranes and the release of toxins. TBI has effects that impair neurobehavioral performance and creates impairing symptoms (see Taxonomy, below).
Suggested Reading
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Human Sciences Research Council. (1997). Child abuse in South Africa. Journal of Marriage and Family Life in South Africa, 4, 46–81. Schwartz-Kenney, B. M., McCauley, M., & Epstein, M. A. (Eds.) (2001). Child abuse: A global view. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press. U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Administration on children, youth, and families (2006). Child maltreatment 2004. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office.
The outcome of a child’s TBI will be significantly determined by the brain’s state of development at the time of trauma. Brain injury implies some pattern of disturbed or impaired function, varying with the location and extent of the trauma. Developmental patterns vary over the adult lifespan. A newborn’s brain is one fifth of its adult volume. Brain volume is 90% of its final adult volume by age 6. Girls’ brains are on the average 12% smaller than boys, which is explained largely by differences in height and not by gender differences in cognitive performance. The genetic program is modified by negative influences that impair or delay brain development (malnutrition, maternal drug abuse, viral infection). Positive influences are stimulation and experience. There are increases in
Suggested Resources The Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC)—Unique. www. unicef.org/crc/index.html Domestic and International Law Obligations—Children’s Rights. www.hrw.org.
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white matter (axons or long neuronal connection between brain structures) across ages 4–20, and a preadolescent increase of cortical gray matter (masses of neurons) followed by regionally specific post-adolescent decrease. The frontal and parietal lobes peak at about age 12, the temporal lobe at about age 16, and occipital lobe at age 20. The frontal and parietal gray matter peaks 1 year earlier in females, corresponding with the earlier onset of puberty. The frontal and parietal thinning was associated with higher vocabulary scores, perhaps related to the higher verbal performance often found in females. This may indicate an influence of gonadal hormones. Further implications for neurobehavioral functioning are indicated by the parallel between the developmental pattern and cerebral glucose metabolism and slow-wave sleep amplitude. The infant’s characteristic anatomy renders it vulnerable to TBI. After a blow to the head, or rapid change of speed caused by a car crash, the disproportionately large head is poorly supported by undeveloped neck muscles. This increases brain damage since the head rotates more in uncontrolled directions. These forces cause brain movement creating shearing (separation of brain layers and structures at different distances from the geometric center) and diffuse axonal injury (DAI) such as stretching and tearing of the axons connecting neural centers at different parts of the brain. The brain’s smaller size and stiffer tissue contributes to patterns of TBI and behavioral outcome differing from adults. The skull is thin, and the sutures are incompletely solidified, exposing the brain to impact forces and penetration, and inducing excessive brain tearing because it moves past the brain’s blood vessels, which are fixed at one end to a position in the skull. The unmyelinated brain (lacking an external layer to the nerve fibers) is softer, permitting excessive stretching of both brain and vessels.
Non-Recognition of Children’s TBI Identification of TBI symptoms is enhanced by considering the expected rate of development and the age of normal expression of a function. Delayed expression causes non-recognition of the actual etiology of symptoms and makes rehabilitation less effective. Some forms of damage are detected when developmentally advanced motor and intellectual demands are first placed upon the injured child. Since academic norms are matched to expected development, the effect of
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TBI may be unobserved until the child has reached an age to express particular abilities and fails ageexpected functions. This contrasts with immediate, but perhaps slow deficits in abilities that formally were performed at a higher level. Early intervention may ameliorate the extent of some disorders. The existence of concussive head injury in children is frequently unknown. One reason is that after a long interval, disorders may not be associated with the accident. Undocumented injuries as high as 89% have been reported. When there are symptoms of unknown origin it may not be attributed to an accident for many reasons. The child can forget or be too young to remember. The accident may be intentionally concealed by the child, caretaker or parent. Frequently, a possible TBI is not revealed since the child is not brought for medical attention. Even at an emergency room or after admission to a hospital the parent may not be given a diagnosis or told to anticipate later dysfunction. Since loss of consciousness after a head injury is less common in children than in adults after a comparable injury, possible TBI may not be considered by the physician. The child might appear shaken up but not actually unconscious. If there was child abuse it is concealed. Thus there is non-attribution of symptoms to the accident and TBI is unsuspected. Since health care providers usually do not inquire as to prior head injury, late development of symptoms helps to conceal attribution of a disorder to a prior TBI. Moreover, the practitioner has to be alert to the presence of multiple conditions and overlapping symptoms (e.g., TBI, posttraumatic stress disorder, and the depressive reactions) to make an accurate diagnosis. Non-recognition has unfortunate effects: the educational, social, and medical needs of the child are ignored; reduced public health statistics underestimate the safety and service needs of the community; treatment is inappropriate since dysfunctions are attributed to incorrect causes; and, the child may be rejected or treated as a troublemaker, a faker, or lazy. The social costs are higher in children than with adults because the period of survival is longer than with adults and the adult has better developed coping procedures that remain useful. Child abuse causing head injury (shaking) is the leading cause of death and morbidity of infants and preschoolers. As noted above, infants’ relatively large heads and weak neck muscles enhance head motion during shaking. Abuse is to be suspected when there
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is a history of repeated head trauma, especially if accompanied by limb fractures or other injuries. Shaking a child subjects the brain to rotational forces that produce diffuse damage. Suspicious injuries are retinal hemorrhage (broken blood vessels in the neural, receptive area of the eye), subdural hemorrhage (inside the lining of the brain), and intracerebral hematoma (blood clot inside the brain) without external signs of trauma to the head and neck. The consequences include failure to thrive, pallor (paleness of the skin), irritability, jitteriness, hypertonia (loss of muscular tone), hyperreflexia (exaggerated strength of muscular reflexes), pituitary damage, meningoencephalitis (inflammation of the brain and its membranes), permanent brain damage, cerebral palsy, seizures, mental retardation, defects of vision and hearing, microcephaly (abnormal smallness of the head, i.e., capacity less than 1,350 ml.), and death. Half of the survivors are left with permanent neurological handicaps.
and unknown (5%). The frequency of occurrence of TBI per 100,000 are for age 0–4, 1,121; age 5–9, 659; and age 10–14, 629. The majority of pediatric head injuries are described as ‘‘minor,’’ but in fact this refers to the apparent anatomical trauma, insofar as there is no surgical-level injury, e.g., a major brain hemorrhage. In fact, some of these children may ultimately manifest significant cognitive and social problems. The actual incidence of TBI is gravely underestimated for these reasons: Many children are not brought to an emergency department or physician, or require hospital admission; the fact of an accident is deliberately concealed by the child or caretaker, or the injured child is too young or too confused to report the event. Overall, falls are the most common cause of head injury in the age group 0–15 years. For more serious injuries, pedestrian injuries from motor vehicle accidents were most common, followed by falls, pedal cyclists, and then occupants of motor vehicles.
Loss of Consciousness
Polytrauma
Since it is difficult to assess the consciousness level in infants and older children, mistakes are often made. The severity of a head impact can be overestimated or, more frequently, underestimated. An injured infant cries or whimpers and is thought to be fully ‘‘conscious’’ thus, serious brain damage is overlooked. Pre-verbal infants cannot offer the motor and verbal responses of the Glasgow Coma Scale, a frequently used measurement assessing the intensity of concussive brain trauma. Older children who are frightened but fully conscious may withhold speech or cooperation. Children’s brain trauma is less likely to be associated with loss of consciousness (LOC) than adults’ posttraumatic amnesia (PTA) is with TBI. However, it is followed by lethargy, irritability, and vomiting. Lethargy may be a sign of altered consciousness (less than normal alertness, confusion, loss of orientation as to surroundings), possible signs of concussive brain injury. A seizure may subsequently follow a trauma experienced without loss of consciousness.
Usually an accident causing a head injury results in other injuries as well. The neurobehavioral outcome may be an impairment whose severity is influenced by the interaction and cumulative effect of both the brain and body injuries. Thus, assessment and treatment of the child’s immediate performance loss and later dysfunction must consider both TBI and injuries to other parts of the body, e.g., bone, soft-tissue (muscles, ligaments, tendons, blood vessels), internal organs, and peripheral nerves. Some somatic and neurological consequences of an accident include limited range of motion, pain, headaches, dizziness, and seizures, among others. Indirect behavioral impairment occurs when the injury is chronic. There are behavioral and health effects, in addition to the actual brain trauma, due to physiological dysregulation of these body systems: circadian (daily rhythms such as sleep/ wake; hormonal secretion), immune, inflammatory, and hormonal.
Phases of Traumatic Brain Injury Epidemiology (Causes of Head Injury) For children age 0–14 years, the proportions of different causes of head injury are as follows: falls 39%; motor vehicle traffic (11%), assault (4%), other (41%),
The brain’s condition, and the neurobehavioral consequences of an accident causing TBI, are not static. The immediate brain tissue injury may be made worse because of hemorrhage and brain swelling that kills
Child traumatic brain injury
tissue through pressure and interference with the blood supply to other parts of the brain, chemicals released inside brain cells that are toxic, and degeneration of neurons long after the initial injury. The chronic unhealed wound and other causes of stress interfere with bodily functions. This creates behavioral disturbance whose cause may not be understood directly or attributed to the accident. This worsens the outcome and makes it more difficult to find treatment for the injured person’s problems. Primary phase-The immediate mechanical damage to brain, blood vessels and other tissues caused by impact to the head, rotation of the head caused by acceleration and deceleration of the body and neck during a mechanical injury causing the brain to move, stretch and shear its inner structure, and strike against the inner structures of the skull. Secondary phase-Tissue pathology caused by the initial trauma: hemorrhage, ischemia, brain swelling resulting in forced movement of sections of the brain against and past the internal dividers (meninges, or lining of the brain, which extends beyond the surface of the brain into the midline and also dividing the brain into internal compartments while supporting its structure), anoxia (reduced oxygen supply), physiological disturbance of brain function, and necrosis (death of brain cells) caused by neurotoxins and anoxia condary phase-Tissue pathology caused by the initial trauma: hemorrhage, ischemia, brain swelling resulting in forced movement of sections of the brain against and past the internal dividers (meninges), anoxia, physiological disturbance of brain function, and necrosis caused by neurotoxins and anoxia. Tertiary phase-Late developing physiological disorders: Direct glandular damage; damage to a major physiological control site, i.e., the hypothalamus; disorders of the immune, inflammatory, and circadian systems. Vulnerability to diseases includes: syndrome of inappropriate antidiuretic hormone from head trauma (SIADH), hypothyroidism (reduced secretion of the thyroid gland), hypopituitarism reduced secretion of various pituitary gland hormones), diabetes insipidus (secretion of excessive amounts of urine, sometimes following head injury causing damage to the posterior pituitary gland and reduced secretion of antidiuretic hormone which leads to excessive excretion of water), and developmental disorders of children. Quaternary phase-Late developing neurological conditions: Stress-related brain damage, premature cerebral atrophy and dementing conditions (e.g.,
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enhanced incidence of Alzheimer’s Disease), posttraumatic epilepsy, movement disorders, cochlear dysfunction (hearing loss) and vestibular dysfunctions (balance problems). Hemidystonia (one-sided abnormal twisting movements, and abnormal posturing of the neck, trunk, face, and extremities) associated with brain damage has a longer latency in children injured before age 7 than adults. Pentary phase-Chronic stress effects upon personality and health: TBI and co-morbid acute and chronic stress have an impact on mood, cognitive efficiency, functioning in the community, stamina, and health. (a) Reactions to continued impairment and social disabilities; (b) Systemic effects of unhealed injuries: chronic reaction of hormonal, inflammatory, immune and circadian systems to persistent damaged tissue, resulting in reduced stamina, vulnerability to infectious disease, tissue exhaustion, fatigue, burnout, organ damage, sexual dysfunction, and stress related health disorders. This condition is known as allostatic overload, ‘‘burnout’’ or ‘‘overload.’’ It results in stress-related diseases, e.g., infections, cardiovascular disease, cancer, and ‘‘sickness behavior’’ (malaise, fatigue, loss of appetite, apathy, social withdrawal, inactivity).
The Taxonomy of Neurobehavioral Disorders The entire range of behavior may become impaired or dysfunctional after TBI. The domains of the following classification become differentiated at different ages. Thus they may not yet be functioning in younger children, and may not develop appropriately when a young child suffers brain injury. 1. Neurological and Sensorimotor: Dysfunctions directly attributable to diffuse brain injury, and to injuries of definable centers and circuits of the central nervous system. Some symptoms: Loss of general intelligence and memory, dizziness, imbalance, seizures, loss of vision, hearing, and coordination. 2. Somatic: Developmental, Performance and Neurobehavioral: Developmental disorders of children associated with hormonal disorders due to injury to the hypothalamic-pituitary axis; performance reduction directly consequent to damaged tissue; systemic dysregulation caused by chronic stress. Some somatic disorders are limited range of motion, pain, and headaches.
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3. Cognitive Functioning: Executive Functioning and Mental Control. Disorders of Concentration (continuing performance for a useful interval), Information Processing (converting stimuli into meaningful units), Mental Control, and Executive Functioning (cognitive autoregulation). 4. General Intelligence: Mental Ability Level, Comprehension, and Problem Solving. 5. Learning and Memory. 6. Personality Style, Psychodynamics, and Identity. 7. Empathy and social life. 8. Adaptation: Coping with community requirements and improving current condition, utilizing motivation and pragmatic communications. 9. Stress Reactions: Acute, Chronic, Psychological, Physiological, Dissociative. Stress may be defined as a condition, momentary or extended, psychological or physically injurious, that creates physical and/or mental trauma, which are not self-healing after a brief interval.
Characteristic Developmental Problems of Children The actual proportion of persons who have lifelong disabilities after TBI described as ‘‘minor’’ is not actually known. The level of disability is not precisely predictable at the time of injury. The number of symptoms is related to the intensity of the head injury. Outcome is also dependent on whether the environment is supportive, indifferent, or hostile; the consequences of bodily accidents also incurred in the accident; developmental factors such as possible disturbances caused by hormonal injury such as is caused by damage to the brain-pituitary gland and target glands controlled by the pituitary; the maturation of the brain at the time of trauma, and the developmental consequence of the brain damage; the location and extent of the brain damage (diffuse, localized, lateralized mostly on one side of the brain, or extensive); the age at injury; the post-injury interval when the child’s status is studied; social support such as the parents, availability of rehabilitation services such as special education and psychotherapy for the child and parents; the child’s store of information and skills at the time of injury; potential for behavioral compensation by the alternate cerebral hemisphere, among others.
The outcome of children’s TBI is affected by poorer coping capacity due to lesser cognitive and social skills at the time of injury. TBI also reduces the child’s capacity to reach the potential level of cognitive, physiological and personal development. Here are some examples of TBI induced later problems: Reduced memory and learning ability interfere with cognitive development; Behavioral disorders antagonize peers and teachers, leading to rejection and reduced selfesteem; poorly functional sensorimotor capacities such as balance and coordination makes the child more vulnerable to further injuries, and reduces skill and thus social acceptability in play activities and sports. Expression of dysfunction may take years until behavior becomes conspicuous because milestones are not reached. Intellectual deficiencies are more apparent in the older child, upon whom more demands are made, although the child’s outward appearance may appear ‘‘recovered.’’ The child may perform for years in school on the basis of previous knowledge while learning little new information. Only when more difficult problems are to be learned, memory for new information is insufficient, or there is a need to learn new and more difficult cognitive schema, are reduced grades manifested. The frontal lobes are vulnerable to injury, which may create a lack of personality development and maturity usually achieved around the age of puberty. Consequently, immaturity persists, but the developmental deficit that may be diagnostic of brain damage will not be noteworthy until long after the accident. Subsequent developmental disorders (cognitive disorders; persistent immaturity or misbehavior) may not be manifested until years after the accident, when chronic immaturity reveals that the child has not achieved developmental milestones.
Patterns of Outcome 1. Immediate. Significant dysfunction can be detected right after the accident. Frequently the child experiences a permanent deficit without complete recovery. Characteristic disorders are loss of sensation, motor coordination, strength, reduced mental ability, and personality problems such as regression and impulsiveness. 2. Improvement through the use of compensatory mechanisms. If there is a permanent reduction of a function, the child or adult can partially adapt
Child traumatic brain injury
in several ways, neurologically or behaviorally. For example, if there is damage to structures of the left cerebral hemisphere that support verbal ability, the plasticity of undamaged neural structures in the right hemisphere may take over some activities. However, careful neuropsychological examination may reveal that reduced ability and disordered performance exist since the alternate structures may not be capable of performing both original and added functions. In the case of poor memory, the person can be counseled to keep a notebook or put notes on the wall reminding one of tasks to do or ask the other person to repeat what has been said. 3. Early arrest of development, and/or reduced rate of progress. The uninjured child usually develops at such a rate that the relative position in the age group is maintained. One measure might be the age-normed percentiles in tests of intelligence or academic achievement. Another indicator would be not achieving the expected level of personality development known as maturity. The child remains impulsive, lacking foresight, and unwilling to accept responsibilities and other characteristics of adolescence. This may be described as initial progress leveling off at a low plateau. This kind of outcome may require years to be expressed. Not reaching physical sexual maturity is discussed below. 4. Delayed Onset of a Disorder after Apparent Normal Functioning. See Tertiary and Quaternary phases of TBI. Certain disorders occur years later because they are due to fatigue of bodily systems caused by unhealed or chronic injuries, or because continued neurological degeneration caused by the initial trauma takes a long period for it to be so extensive that a disorder is created or released.
Adaptive Disorders These neuropsychological functions are often impaired: Perceptual organization; visual-motor constructional tasks; attention deficits that interfere with working or short term memory; long term and academic memory; processing speeds and reaction time, good judgment and reality testing, language, among others. One differentiates between dysfunction of functions that support adaptive tasks (information processing or executive
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function) and major integrative activities of daily living. Some disorders affect complex integrative (higher) processes, while others are consequences of focal injuries (e.g., sensorimotor dysfunctions). Emotional changes after TBI are variable, and proportional to the severity of the injury—some seem to be transient. It is estimated that 20% of children with head injuries require special educational services because of residual disability. Initial performance will be modified by what has been learned to that point, potential for compensation by the alternate hemisphere, and interference with lateralized functions (primarily processed by the left or right cerebral hemispheres) caused by TBI, e.g., language (usually left hemisphere) and spatial organization (largely right hemisphere). Intellectual deficiencies are more apparent in the older child, upon whom more demands are made. Yet, the child’s outward appearance may appear ‘‘recovered,’’ or subsequent developmental disorders may not have been manifested since the child has not achieved developmental milestones. Anxious children have a higher incidence of other symptoms after controlling for injury severity. However, anxiety intensity appears to be independent of the extent of neurological injury. Ongoing stressors enhance symptom maintenance. Children with TBI exhibit long-term behavior problems in spite of cognitive recovery. Inadequate social competence, or troublesome behavior, may cause rejection by peers and teachers. The symptoms of children’s postconcussive syndrome are consistent with those of adults: Cognitive dysfunctions; language; behavior; increased likelihood of enrollment in special education, motor skills, psychosocial measures, educational lag, unemployment, troubled family relationships; health; memory, attention, problem solving, headaches, dizziness, fatigue, sensorimotor performance; academic achievement (language and reading, calculation, writing, spelling) with increased likelihood of enrollment in special education or educational lag; behavioral disorders with reduced social competence; Reduced IQ; deficient behavioral adjustment; poor motor skills; increased likelihood of unemployment; and/or troubled family relationships.
Dysfunctions of Sexual Development Normal physiological development (growth and sexual maturity) is the outcome of integrated hormonal
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functioning. This is vulnerable to impact or movement of the brain which causes it to move, stretching or tearing hypothalamic-pituitary structures. Hypothalamic damage can reduce gonadal hormone inhibition resulting in premature puberty with short adult stature. Delayed or absent adolescence may be caused by hypothalamic or anterior pituitary lesions that interfere with hormonal developmental patterns of inhibition and then release leading to sexual maturity (ovulation, menarche, e.g., the first menstrual period, and male secondary sexual characters). Precocious puberty (sexual precocity) is variously defined as the appearance of secondary sexual development before age 8 in girls and 9 in boys. Brain trauma and radiation therapy may be followed by delayed puberty or precocious puberty. Growth disorders include retardation of maturation, or accelerated growth and skeletal maturation with premature growth cessation, can commence within a few months of injury. Non-development of sexual maturity can occur due to pituitary insufficiency or gonadal failure consequent to hypothalamic insufficiency: loss of libido, impotence, amenorrhea and sexual infantilism.
Cross-Cultural Issues The reported sequelae are unsurprisingly similar in different nationalities. Special concerns may arise because of cultural differences within a family in approaching such problems as illness. Some individuals do not understand the health-care system, or may not want to challenge professionals. Brain injury causes shame in some ethnic groups; therefore, family members may not be informed of a relative’s TBI. Cultural differences affect response to the health care system. Obtaining information may require the use of a translator since friends and family may not be fluent in medical terminology; problems occur when they are not oriented as to the special characteristics of brain injury. Even these personnel may not be properly oriented to work with a TBI patient. To the extent that parental origin affects the caregiver style, the child’s outcome is affected. Coping strategies may differ. Avoidant strategies predict poorer family outcome than acceptance. Examination of a child who is native to a culture using a language significantly distinct from that of the examiner requires care against mistaking characteristics of the language with familiar
neuropsychological disorders. Using the Japanese language as an example, there are differences of syntax, lexicon, orthography, and phonology. The major European languages utilize the word order Subject-VerbObject, while Japanese utilizes Subject-Object-Verb, which might suggest an aphasic disorder. Lateralization of verbal functions which are dependent upon the visual structure of language may also be reversed (to the left cerebral hemisphere as opposed to the right). Nevertheless, particular symptoms occur across languages, e.g., aphasia (inability to understand or express oneself through language) and agrammatism (speech unconforming to grammatical rules). Acculturation can be categorized as traditional, marginal, bicultural and assimilated. Particular procedures are normed on groups that may be socio-economically or ethnically so disparate from the patient (rural and/or international) that they inaccurately indicate functional weaknesses and fewer strengths than they express in their environment. Further, those from rural environments are exposed to different conditions than those in urban environments: patterns of interpersonal violence (including intimate partners), types of neurotoxic exposure, stress, agricultural accidents, lack of medical coverage and treatment. These represent a potential for different pre-existing conditions that must be considered in studying examination performance. Other educational and cultural variables affecting performance include: unavailability of suitable norms, reflecting dialect differences within presumably unified groups (e.g., Spanish and Arabic speakers); lack of familiarity with test taking; varying levels of linguistic competency; socioeconomic status; lack of familiarity with writing implements; and, level of formal education. A psychological procedure may emphasize particular cognitive abilities, which may by discrepant with a culture, or the stage of development at which particular abilities are learned. This may affect later neuropsychological performance. Further, the examiner is concerned whether a procedure normed on one segment of a population speaking a given language is generalizable to another without significant performance differences. A history of discrimination, or growing up in totalitarian regimes, may result in an attitude where ‘‘honest’’ behavior is rarely rewarded, therefore affecting the presentation of claims to obtain proper compensation. See also: > Neuropsychological assessment; > Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD); > Stress/stressors
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Suggested Reading Broman, S. H., & Michel, M. E. (Eds.) (1995). Traumatic head injury in children. New York: Oxford. Ferraro, F. R. (Ed.) (2002). Minority and cross-cultural aspects of neuropsychological assessment. Lisse, The Netherlands: Swets and Zeitlinger. Parker, R. S. (2001). Concussive brain trauma. Boca Raton, FL: CRC Press. Parker, R. S. (2002). Recommendations for the revision of DSM-IV diagnostic categories for co-morbid posttraumatic stress disorder and traumatic brain injury. NeuroRehabilitation, 17, 131–143. Sellars, C. W., Vegter, C. H., & Ellerbusch, S. S. (1997). Pediatric brain injury: The special case of the very young child. Houston, TX: HDI. Semrud-Clikeman, M. (2001). Traumatic brain injury in children and adolescents: Assessment and intervention. New York: The Guilford Press.
Childhood Georgia Yu
Understanding how children develop can help parents raise their children more effectively, lead society as a whole to adopt wiser policies regarding children’s welfare, and answer intriguing questions about human nature. Children are influenced by their early experiences, but some are able to overcome even the most traumatic backgrounds. Child development research is important for a number of reasons. First is to gain information and understanding that can help parents raise their own children successfully. Second is to gain insight into social policy issues related to children and to help society adopt policies that promote children’s well-being. Thirdly, is to better understand human nature in general.
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development. Both Plato and Aristotle believed that the long-term welfare of society depended on children being raised properly. Careful upbringing was essential, because children’s nature would otherwise lead to their becoming rebellious and unruly. Plato emphasized self-control and discipline as the most important goals of education. Aristotle agreed with Plato that discipline was necessary, but he was more concerned with fitting child rearing to the needs of the individual child. Plato believed children are born with innate knowledge, while Aristotle believed that all knowledge comes from experience and that without experience, the mind is merely a potential. Roughly 2,000 years later, the English philosopher John Locke and French philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau proposed ideas that were related to, but also somewhat different from, those of Plato and Aristotle regarding how parents and the general society can best promote child development. Locke, like Aristotle, viewed the child as a tabula rasa, or blank slate, where development largely reflects the nurture provided by the child’s parents and the broader society. He believed that the most important goal of child rearing is the growth of character. Whereas Locke advocated first instilling discipline and then progressively increasing the child’s freedom, Rousseau believed that parents and society should give children maximum freedom from the beginning. Rousseau claimed that children learn primarily from their own spontaneous interactions with objects and other people, rather than through instruction by parents or teachers. He even argued that children should not receive any formal education until the age of 12 when they reach ‘‘the age of reason’’ and can judge for themselves the worth of what they read and are told. Before then, they should be allowed the freedom to explore whatever interests them. Although these philosophical views raised fundamental questions, they were based more on impressions and general beliefs than on systemic observations that could reveal how children actually develop.
Historical Foundations in the Study of Child Development
Beginning Research on Children
Some of the earliest recorded ideas about children’s development were those of Plato and Aristotle. These two Greek philosophers, who lived in the fourth century B.C., were particularly interested in how children’s nature and the nurture they receive influenced
A research-based approach to understanding child development began to emerge in the nineteenth century, in part as a result of two converging forces: social reform movements and Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution.
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During the Industrial Revolution, many children in Europe and the United States (U.S.) worked as paid laborers. Some were as young as 5 or 6 years old, and spent as much as twelve hours a day working in factories or mines, often in extremely hazardous conditions. These harsh circumstances concerned a number of social reformers, who began to study the effects of the conditions on the children’s development. In addition to the first child labor laws, these and other child social reform movements established a legacy of research conducted for the benefit of children and provided some of the earliest descriptions of the adverse effects that harsh environments can have on children’s development. Later in the nineteenth century, Charles Darwin’s work on biological evolution inspired a number of scientists to propose that intensive study of child development might lead to important insights into the nature of the human species. Darwin himself was interested in child development and in 1877 published an article titled ‘‘A Biographical Sketch of an Infant,’’ which presented his careful observations of the motor, sensory, and emotional growth of his own infant son. Darwin’s ‘‘baby biography’’—a systematic description of day-to-day development—represented one of the earliest methods for studying children.
Emergence of Child Development as a Discipline In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, child development began to emerge as a formal field of inquiry. A number of universities established departments of child development, and the first professional journals devoted to the study of child development were founded. Also emerging during this period were the first theories of child development to incorporate important research findings. One prominent theory, that of Sigmund Freud, was based in large part on results from experiments with hypnosis and analysis of patients’ recollections of their dreams and childhood experiences. On the basis of this evidence, Freud concluded that biological drives, especially sexual ones, were a crucial influence on development. Another prominent theory was that of James Watson, which was based on the results of experiments examining the effects of reward and punishment on the behavior of rats and other animals. Watson concluded that children’s development is controlled by environmental
conditions, especially the rewards and punishments that follow particular behaviors.
Enduring Themes in Child Development The modern study of child development has resulted in the establishment of particular themes, which help us to answer some fundamental questions about children. The first is whether nature and nurture coexist in the development of children. Nature refers to the biological component inherent in each individual. This genetic inheritance influences everything from our physical appearance, personality, intellectual ability, and mental health to certain preferences. Nurture refers to the environment, both social and physical, that influence development, including the womb from which the child spent the prenatal period to where the child grows up, what schools the child will attend, and what friends the child will have and interact with. Today developmentalists recognize the interaction between nature and nurture. Rather than asking which is more important, developmentalists ask how nature and nurture work together to shape development. One of the main lessons of research on the nature-nurture interaction is that the timing of experiences is often crucial. For example, the timing of puberty influences girls’ reactions to junior high school. Many other instances where the timing of experience is critical occur in the first year or so after birth. In particular, if highly abnormal experiences occur early in life, they often have especially serious and lasting deleterious effects on development. A second theme is the active child. With all the attention paid to the role of nature and nurture in development, what is often overlooked are the ways in which children contribute to their own development. Even in infancy and early childhood, this contribution is reflected in many ways. Three important contributions occur during the child’s first years: attentional patterns, their use of language, and their play. Children first begin to shape their own development through the selection of what to pay attention to. Even newborns look towards objects that make noise and move. This preference helps them to learn about important parts of the world, such as people and other animals. Once they begin speak, usually around 9 to 15 months, development of their mental activity becomes evident in their use of language. For example,
Childhood
toddlers often talk when they are alone in the room and no one else is present to reward them or react to what they are saying. Only if children were internally motivated to learn language would they practice talking under these circumstances. Children’s play also provides many examples of how their internally motivated activity contributes to their development. Children play by themselves for the sheer joy of doing so, but they also learn a great deal in the process. Children’s active contribution to their own development is also evident in particular activities Around the age of 2, children sometimes engage in socio-dramatic play, an activity in which they pretend to be different people in make-believe situations. In addition to being inherently enjoyable, these makebelieve games teach children valuable lessons, such as how to cope with fears. Children’s contributions to their own development increase as they grow older. When they are young, their parents are important determinants of their children’s environments. In contrast, older children and adolzescents choose many environments, friends, and activities for themselves. These choices exert a huge impact on their future. A third theme is whether development is continuous or discontinuous. Some scientists envision children’s development as a continuous process of small, incremental changes. Others believe that the process is a series of sudden, discontinuous changes. Researchers who view development as discontinuous start from a common observation: children of different ages seen qualitatively different. A 4-year-old and a 6-year-old child, for example, seem to differ not just in how much they know but also in the way they view the world. A common approach in understanding age-related differences among children comes from stage theories, that propose that development occurs in a progression of distinct age-related stages. According to these theories, a child’s entry into a new stage involves relatively sudden, qualitative changes from one coherent way of experiencing the world to a different coherent way of experiencing it. One of the most well-known stage theorists is that of Jean Piaget. Piaget’s theory of cognitive development holds that between birth and adolescence, children go through four stages, each characterized by distinct intellectual abilities and ways of understanding and reasoning about the world. Other theories include Sigmund Freud’s theory of psychosexual development, Erik Erikson’s theory of psychosocial development, and Lawrence Kohlberg’s theory of moral development. Each of these stage theories
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propose that children of a given age show broad similarities across many situations and that their behaviors differ sharply at different ages. Even though these stage theories have been very influential, in the past 20 years, researchers have concluded that in most aspects of development, changes are gradual instead of sudden, and that development occurs skill by skill, and task by task, instead of in a broadly unified way. This view of development is less dramatic, but a great deal of evidence supports it. One such piece of evidence is the fact that a child often will behave in accord with one stage on one task but in accord with a difference stage on another task. This variable level of reasoning makes it difficult to view the child as being ‘‘in’’ a particular stage. A fourth theme is the mechanisms with which change occurs. A useful framework in trying to understand this particular theme is Darwin’s theory of evolution. According to evolutionary theory, species originate and change through two main processes: variation and selection. Variation refers to the differences within and among individuals. Selection involves the more frequent survival, and therefore the greater reproduction, of organisms that are well adapted to their environment. Through the joint operation of variation and selection, species that are better adapted to a given environment become more prevalent in that environment over time, while less well adapted species become rarer or disappear altogether. From a psychological viewpoint, variation and selection appear to produce changes within an individual’s lifetime. Psychological variation involves the diverse ways in which people think, act, and relate to each other. Psychological selection includes increasing reliance, with age and experience, on the most useful of these ways of thinking, acting, and relating. Together, such variation and selection seem to produce a wide variety of positive changes in psychological functioning. In biological evolution, the organisms that are best adapted to the environment tend to increase in number over time. Similarly with cognitive development, the most efficient strategies increase in use as children increase in age and experience. Thus, as children generate the correct answer to a problem increasingly often, they come to associate the answer with the problem, which allows them to retrieve it from memory more often. Evolutionary accounts have proved useful for understanding development in many areas beyond arithmetic. These include development of
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social relationships, sex differences, language, and sports. New variations in these areas emerge out of the universal tendency for children to play and explore their environments. Selection occurs through children’s increasing use of those variations that allow them to meet their goals consistently, quickly, and easily. The fifth theme is how sociocultural context plays a role in child development. Children grow up in a particular set of physical and social environments, in a particular culture, under particular economic circumstances, at a particular point in history. These make up the physical, social, cultural, economic, and historical circumstances that constitute the sociocultural context of a child’s life. The most obviously important parts of children’s sociocultural contexts are the people with whom they interact (e.g., parents, grandparents, relatives, siblings, day-care workers, friends, peers) and the physical environment in which they live (e.g., their home, day-care center, school, neighborhood). Another important but less tangible part of the sociocultural context concerns the institutions that influence children’s lives (e.g., school systems, religious institutions, sports leagues). Yet another important set of influences include the general characteristics of the child’s society (e.g., its wealth and technological advancements, values, beliefs, attitudes, traditions; laws and political structures). One method that developmentalists use to understand the influence of the sociocultural context is to compare the lives of children who grow up in different cultures. Such comparisons often reveal that practices one culture takes for granted and views as ‘‘natural’’ may be different from other cultures. Contexts of development differ not just between cultures but within cultures as well. In multicultural societies, many contextual differences are related to ethnicity, race, socioeconomic status (a measure of social class based on income and education). Virtually all aspects of children’s lives, from the food they eat to the parental discipline they receive to the games they play, are influenced by these characteristics. The sixth theme is individual differences between children. Anyone who has had experience with children appreciates their uniqueness- their differences not only in physical appearance but everything from activity level and temperament to intelligence and emotionality. These differences among children emerge very quickly. There are four factors that have been identified that could contribute to the differences among children within and among families. These factors include
genetic differences, differences in treatment by parents and others, differing effects on children of similar experiences, and children’s choices of environments. A final theme is how research can promote children’s well-being. Improved understanding of child development often leads to practical benefits. Several examples include programs for helping children cope with anger or recommendations regarding how to obtain valid eyewitness testimony from young children. Another type of benefit that child development research has yielded is procedures for diagnosing developmental disorders early, when they can be corrected most easily and completely. Another valuable application of child development research has been programs for helping children learn more effectively. Not only are these programs beneficial in trying to prevent later problems, but they are also intervention-focused in helping children overcome these problems and difficulties.
Jean Piaget’s Theory of Cognitive Development As mentioned earlier, Jean Piaget is one of the most influential theorists within child development research. Piaget’s theory has withstood the test of time because his observations and descriptions of children vividly convey the flavor of their thinking at different ages. Another reason is the exceptional breadth of his theory. A third reason is the thoughtprovoking observations Piaget used to support the theory. Finally, another reason is the theory’s intuitively plausible depiction of the interaction of nature and nurture and the recognition of both continuities and discontinuities in development. Piaget’s fundamental suggestion about children was that from birth onward they are active mentally as well as physically, with their activity greatly contributing to their own development. His approach is often labeled constructivist, because it depicts children constructing knowledge for themselves in response to their experiences. The ‘‘child scientist’’ is the dominant metaphor in Piaget’s theory. He believed that nature and nurture work in conjunction to produce cognitive development. Nurture includes every kind of experience the child encounters, and nature includes the child’s maturing brain and body; his ability to perceive, act, and think; and motivation to meet two basic functions that are central to cognitive growth: adaptation and organization. Adaptation is the tendency
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to respond to the demands of the environment in ways that meets one’s goals. Organization is the tendency to integrate particular observations into coherent knowledge. Piaget depicted development as involving both continuities and discontinuities. The main sources of continuity include assimilation, accommodation, and equilibrium that work together from birth to propel development onward. Assimilation is the process by which people translate incoming information into a form that they can understand. Accommodation is the process by which people adapt current knowledge structures in response to new experiences. Finally, equilibrium is the process by which children, and others, balance assimilation and accommodation to create a stable, coherent understanding of the world. First, children are satisfied with their understanding of a phenomenon (equilibrium). Then, children perceive that their understanding is inadequate (disequilibrium), because they recognize shortcomings in their understanding but cannot generate a superior alternative. Finally, they develop a more sophisticated understanding that eliminates the shortcomings of the old one. This new understanding provides a more stable equilibrium. Although Piaget placed some emphasis on continuous aspects of cognitive development, the most famous part of his theory concerns discontinuous aspects, the distinct stages of cognitive development. Piaget viewed these stages as products of the basic human tendency to organize knowledge into structures. The central proponents of Piaget’s stage theory include the following: qualitative change, broad applicability, brief transitions and invariant sequences. Piaget believed that children of different ages think in qualitatively different ways. The type of thinking characterized by each stage pervades a child’s thinking across diverse topics and contexts. Children do not move from one stage to the next quickly and easily. Instead, they pass through a brief transitional period in which they fluctuate between the type of thinking characteristic of the new, more advanced stage and that of the old, less advanced one. Individuals everywhere and in various historical periods progress through the stages in the same order; no stage is skipped. Piaget hypothesized that children go through four stages of cognitive development: sensorimotor, preoperational, concrete operational, and formal operational. The sensorimotor stage is between birth and 2 years. During this period, the infant’s intelligence
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develops and is expressed, through sensory and motor abilities. Through the maturation of their sensorimotor abilities and the application of these learning mechanisms to their experiences, infants learn about people and objects and construct rudimentary forms of fundamental concepts such as time, space, and causality. Throughout this period, they live largely in the here and now: their intelligence is bound to their immediate perceptions and actions. In the preoperational stage, between the ages of 2 and 7, toddlers and preschoolers become able to represent their experiences in language, mental imagery, and symbolic thought. This allows them to remember their experiences for longer periods of time and to form more sophisticated concepts. However, Piaget viewed children at this stage as unable to perform operations, or reversible mental activities. The inability to perform such operations results in young children having difficulty thinking in consistent, logical ways. Instead, they focus on single, perceptually striking aspects of an event or problem, even when multiple aspects are important. In the concrete operational stage, between ages 7 and 12 years of age, children can reason logically about concrete objects and events. However, they have difficulty thinking in purely abstract terms and in combining information systematically. The final stage of cognitive development is the formal operational stage, ages 12 and beyond, children can think about concrete events but also about abstractions and purely hypothetical situations. They can also perform systematic scientific experiments and draw appropriate conclusions from them.
Information-Process Theories Information-process theorists view children as undergoing continuous cognitive change. Important changes are viewed as occurring constantly, rather than being restricted to special transition periods between ages. Cognitive growth is viewed as typically occurring in small increments rather than abruptly. This depiction differs from Piaget’s belief that children progress through qualitatively different stages separated only by relatively brief transition periods. Also basic to information-processing theories is the assumption that children are active problem-solvers. Problemsolving involves a goal, a perceived obstacle, and a strategy or rule for overcoming the obstacle and
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attaining the goal. Two key cognitive processes that are emphasized in information-processing analyses of children’s problem solving are planning and analogical reasoning. Analysis of the information-processing requirements of planning indicates that it requires a kind of strategy choice, in which the individual decides to forgo immediate attempts to solve the problem in favor of analyzing which strategy is likely to be most effective. Within this perspective, several factors seem likely to lead children, especially young ones, to choose not to plan even when doing so would help them solve problems. Planning requires children to inhibit their desire to move directly toward the goal. A large part is due to the maturation of the frontal lobe, which plays an important role in inhibition, and has not matured yet. Young children tend to be overly optimistic. They think they can remember more, communicate more effectively, and imitate a model more accurately than they actually can. Plans can fail, either because they were inherently flawed or because they were badly executed. This high failure rate makes planning a less attractive option than if planning were consistently successful. It is important to note that brain maturation, in combination with experiences that reduce over-optimism and demonstrate the value of planning, leads to an increase in frequency and quality of planning well into adolescence. People often understand new problems in terms of familiar ones. Successful analogical reasoning requires ignoring superficial dissimilarities and focusing on underlying parallel relationships. As with planning, a rudimentary form of analogical reasoning emerges around children’s first birthday. This early competence, however, is initially limited to situations in which the new problem closely resembles the old. Superficial similarity between the original and new problems continues to influence analogical reasoning well beyond infancy. Even in middle childhood, younger children often require more surface similarity to draw an analogy than do older ones.
recognizing the difference between living and nonliving things, identifying human faces, finding one’s way around the environment, and learning language. A second feature of the core-knowledge approach is the assumption that in certain areas of probable importance in human evolution, young children reason in ways that are considerably more advanced than Piaget’s theory suggested were possible. If children under the age of 6 or 7 were completely egocentric, they would assume that other people’s knowledge is the same as their own. From this perspective, there would be no point to making a false statement because the other person would know it was false. But studies of young children’s deceptions indicate that 3-year-olds understand that other people can be fooled. The question is how children come to have such sophisticated knowledge so early in life. Core-knowledge theories depict children as active learners, constantly striving to solve problems and to organize their understanding into coherent wholes. In this aspect, these theories’ perspective on children’s nature resembles those of Piagetian and informationprocessing theories. The way in which core-knowledge theories differ strongly from Piagetian and information-processing theories is in their view of children’s innate capabilities. Piaget and information-processing theorists believe that children enter the world equipped only with general learning abilities and that they must actively apply these abilities to gradually increase their understanding of all types of content. In contrast, core-knowledge theorists view children as entering the world not only with general learning abilities but also with specialized learning abilities that allow them to quickly and effortlessly acquire information of evolutionary importance. Where the central metaphors within Piagetian and information-processing theories are the child as scientist and the child as computational system the central metaphor in the core-knowledge approach is the child as well-equipped product of evolution.
Sociocultural Theories Core-Knowledge Theories The core-knowledge theory reflects two features in research. The first is the focus on particular areas such as understanding of other people, that have been important throughout human evolutionary history. Other key areas viewed as core knowledge include
Sociocultural approaches emphasize that much of development takes place through direct interactions between children and other people. Rather than viewing children as individuals trying to make sense of the world through their own efforts, sociocultural theorists view children as social beings, enmeshed in the lives of
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other people who want to help them acquire the skills and knowledge valued by their culture. A major player among the sociocultural theorists was Russian psychologist Lev Vygotsky. He portrayed children as social beings, intertwined with other people who are eager to help them gain skills and understanding. Vygotsky viewed them as intent on participating in activities that happen to be prevalent in their local settings. Whereas Piaget emphasized qualitative changes in thinking, Vygotsky emphasized continuous, quantitative changes. Among the important aspects of Vygotsky’s legacy is the idea that cognitive change originates in social interaction. Vygotsky and contemporary sociocultural theorists have proposed a number of more specific ideas about how change occurs. One of these ideas is guided participation, in which more knowledgeable individuals organize activities in ways that allow less knowledgeable people to engage in them at a higher level than they could manage on their own. Three other related concepts include: intersubjectivity, social scaffolding, and the zone of proximal development. Sociocultural theorists believe that the foundation of human cognitive development is our ability to establish intersubjectivity, the mutual understanding that people share during communication. Effective communication requires participants to focus on the same topic and on each other’s reaction to whatever is being communicated. Children’s learning is also aided by social scaffolding, in which more competent people provide a temporary framework that supports children’s thinking at a higher level than children could manage on their own. Ideally, this framework includes explaining the goal of a task, demonstrating how the task should be performed, and helping the child execute the most difficult parts. This is, in fact, the way parents tend to teach their children. Through the process of social scaffolding, children become capable of working at a higher level than if they had not received such help. At first, this higher-level functioning requires extensive support, then it requires less support, and eventually it becomes possible without any support. The higher the quality of scaffolding, the greater the child’s learning. In analyzing the process of social scaffolding, Vygotsky used the term zone of proximal development (ZPD) to refer to the range of performance between what children can do unsupported and what they can do with optimal support. Implicit in this label is the idea that development is most likely when a child’s
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thinking is supported by a more knowledgeable person at a somewhat higher level than the child can manage, but no so far beyond the unaided level that the child would be lost. See also: > Childhood depression; > Early childhood education; > Emotional intelligence; > Parent attachment; > Sociocultural factors
Suggested Reading Hertzman, C., & Weins, M. (1996). Child development and longterm outcomes: A population health perspective and summary of successful interventions. Social Science and Medicine, 43(7), 1083–1095. Parker, S., Greer, S., & Zuckerman, B. (1988). Double jeopardy: The impact of poverty on early child development. Pediatric Clinics of North America, 35(6), 1227–1240.
Suggested Resources Early Childhood Research and Practice (ECRP)—http://ecrp.uiuc. edu/: A bilingual website journal on the development, care, and education of young children.
Childhood Depression Kelly Brey Love . Susan M Swearer
It has only been within the past two decades that the majority of clinicians and researchers reached agreement that children can experience a depressive disorder. Initially, researchers believed children’s lack of psychosexual development prohibited development of depression in childhood. There has also been disagreement regarding which symptomatology comprises childhood depression, and how it differs from depression in adults. Many clinicians and researchers shared the belief that depression in children was ‘‘masked’’ by other symptoms (e.g., aggression, enuresis, anxiety, among others). More recent research has identified and emphasized the similarities between depressive symptoms experienced by adults and children. Cohort data suggest that the age-ofonset of depression has decreased, and prevalence has
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increased as compared to children born in the first half of the 20th century.
Prevalence While depression does occur in childhood, it is more likely to manifest in adolescence and adulthood. Estimates vary, but it appears that between 0.3-2.5% of prepubertal children may be diagnosed with Major Depressive Disorder, and between 0.6-2.5% with Dysthymic Disorder Depression in preschoolers is less common than in older children, and is typically associated with instances of extreme abuse and neglect. Depression is equally present in both males and females in childhood, however, a gender difference does appear after onset of puberty, with more females reporting depressive disorders than males.
Assessment Childhood depression can be assessed via several different strategies. Self-report scales, semi-structured clinical interviews, peer report or nomination, parent/teacher/ caregiver rating scales, behavioral observation, and biological and/or psychophysiological measures have all been utilized to assess depression in young children. The most commonly used methods of assessment are self-report and parent/teacher/caregiver rating scales. An obvious difficulty affecting both diagnosis and treatment of depression is that young children often prove to be poor informants of their feelings, and in particular, have difficulty identifying the temporal and causal relationships between their moods and events.
Course A Major Depressive Episode is a period lasting a minimum of two weeks consisting of either depressed mood or anhedonia. In children and adolescents, the mood may be irritable rather than sad. A Major Depressive Disorder is a clinical course characterized by one or more major depressive episodes, without history of manic, mixed or hypomanic episodes. Dysthymic mood is described as a generally ‘‘low’’ mood, infrequently experiencing joy or excitement. Those experiencing dysthymic mood are often described as feeling ‘‘down in the dumps.’’ Dysthymic Disorder is comprised of a chronically depressed mood that occurs most of the day (more days than not) for
at least two years. For children, the duration only needs to be one year, and their mood may be irritable rather than sad or depressed. The initial one to two years (depending on age) of the Dysthymic Disorder must be free from a Major Depressive Disorder. The course of a major depressive episode and dysthymia in children present differently than in adults. A major depressive episode typically lasts for 32–36 weeks in children or adults, and has a maximal recovery rate of 92%. Recovery for a major depressive episode is relatively protracted, with the greatest improvement in reduction of depressive symptomatology occurring between the 24th and 36th week. The average length of Dysthymic Disorder is much longer than a major depressive episode, at 3 years. The younger the child is at onset, the more likely they are to experience a relapse, and are more likely to have recurrent episodes of depression as adults.
Comorbidity It is well established that children who are depressed often experience additional psychological disorders. Anxiety is the most commonly diagnosed comorbid disorder with depression in children, with 25–50% of depressed youth also diagnosed with an anxiety disorder. On average, children who experience comorbid psychological disorders report more severe impairment and often suffer more long-term consequences.
Criteria The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders: Text Revision (DSM-IV TR) outlines the criteria for the different mood disorders. Diagnostically, there is little difference in adult and child criteria for a diagnosis of depression with the exception that the duration of dysthmia is 1 year for children instead of 2 years, and ‘‘irritability’’ can be considered a manifestation of dysphoric mood. The DSM-IV TR criteria for a major depressive disorder requires persistent depressed (or irritable) mood or a marked decrease in interest or pleasure in most or all daily activities for at least two weeks. In addition, four of the following features must be present during the same two week period: weight loss or gain, sleep disturbance, psychomotor agitation or retardation, fatigue, feelings of worthlessness or guilt, reduced concentration, or recurrent thoughts of death. Symptoms must lead to
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significant distress or impairment of functioning and must not be due to substance misuse, physical illness, or bereavement.
Etiology- Familial Environment/ Genetics Familial and environmental factors play a large role in the development of depression in young people. High parental criticism, parental discord, and poor parent-child communication has been associated with onset and course of depression in youth. Both depressive symptoms and disorders have been significantly associated with undesirable life events. Parental psychopathology also appears to be a significant risk factor for both the development and the course of childhood depression. Forty-five percent of children with mothers diagnosed with depression met criteria for a major depressive disorder, compared to 11% of children who were diagnosed as depressed whose mothers were not depressed. A longitudinal study of depressed children whose parent(s) were also depressed found more severe episodes of depression in a ten-year follow-up than children without depressed parents. Experiencing single risk factors (e.g., pre-pubertal onset, familial history of depression, parental psychopathology, stressful life events, and low family support) appears to be associated with an increase in being diagnosed with childhood depression. However, when these risk factors are experienced in combination, the likelihood of impairment in the child is greater. Many researchers have found that an increased number of risk factors is associated with increased impairment. Risk factors, such as the diathesis-stress model that has been validated in studies of adult depression have also been validated for childhood depression. Children who have a general negative cognitive style (irrespective to the onset of a stressor) report higher levels of depression after a stressor in comparison to children who do not endorse a negative cognitive style. It is important to note that due to developmental considerations, few studies have examined the relationship between cognitive style and depression in children under the age of eight.
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comparison to non-depressed peers, even after the depressive episode has subsided. biological disregulation among depressed children is found in their neurochemistry, specifically identifying serotonin, neorpinephrine and acetylcholine as contributing to mood disorders. When a child is depressed, it is likely due to a combination of genetic vulnerability and exposure to severe trauma or stressors. Thus, the manifestation of childhood depression appears to be a mix of both ‘‘nature’’ and ‘‘nurture.’’
Prevention School based prevention programs involving preadolescents at risk for depression found that students participating in either a school based cognitive training program, social problem-solving program, or combined cognitive and social problem-solving program reported significantly fewer depressive symptoms than a control group.
Treatment Treatment for childhood depression has significantly lagged behind treatment for adults. It is only in the past 10–15 years that studies have been conducted testing the efficacy of psychopharmacological and therapeutic treatments.
Pharmacotherapy The use of serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) appears to be somewhat effective in treating childhood depression. A recent study found that 56% of patients 7–17 years old receiving the SSRI fluoxetine demonstrated clinical improvement compared to 33% receiving placebo. Tricyclic antidepressants, which are frequently prescribed for treatment of depressed adults, have received mixed conclusions when used with children. This lessened success with children may stem from the developmental changes occurring in the neurotransmitter system.
Psychotherapy Etiology- Biological There also appears to be a biological component for depression in children. Research has found that depressed children hyposecrete growth hormones in
Cognitive Behavioral Treatment: Individual cognitive behavioral interventions have proven effective in reduction of depressive symptomatology; lessening duration of depressive episodes, and in facilitating
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remission of a depressive episode in children and adolescents. Cognitive behavioral treatment typically includes pleasant events activity scheduling, self-control skills, problem solving, and cognitive restructuring. Treatment can be time limited, often between 10–12 sessions, over a five to 12 week duration. Behavioral Treatment: Many behaviorists believe depression occurs from a lack of reinforcement in the environment. If a child does not receive reinforcement (e.g., praise, interactions, touch), depressive symptoms may occur. Reinstatement of reinforcement in the environment will likely result in reduction of depressive symptomatology. Little research regarding this type of treatment has been conducted with children; however, research has found that increasing social reinforcers is an effective treatment with depressed adults. See also: > Anxiety; > Child abuse; > Childhood; > Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT); > Depression
Suggested Reading American Psychiatric Association (2000). Diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders: Text revision (4th ed.). Washington D.C.: American Psychiatric Association. Ginsburg, S. D., & Twentyman, C. T. (1987). Prevention of childhood depression. In R. F. Munoz, (Ed.), Depression prevention: Research directions (pp. 93–103). New York: Hemisphere Publishing Corporation. Kazdin, A. E. (1990). Childhood depression. Journal of Child Psychology, 31, 121–160. Stark, K. D., Laurent, J., Livingston, R., Boswell, J., & Swearer, S. (1999). Implications of research for the treatment of depressive disorders during childhood. Applied & Preventive Psychology, 8, 79–102.
Children’s Literature Anne E Cunningham
A Brief Historic Perspective Within the context of human history as a whole, the idea that children should have books to read that were specifically written for them is relatively new. Prior to the mid-1400s, the literacy heritage of Europe consisted of the oral tradition and parchment manuscripts, which
were rare, costly, and usually prized possessions of only nobles and priests. The invention of moveable type in the 1450s by Johannes Gutenberg, however, made possible the mass production of books. By 1476, William Caxton, returning from Germany after learning the process of mass production, established England’s first printing press. At that time, most children’s books were not written to interest children, but instead to improve either their manners or their minds. Though not written for children, three of the books published by the Caxton press became children’s classics, including The Book of the Subtyle Historyes and Fables of Esope (The Fables of Aesop). Caxon Press books were beautiful, but too expensive for most people. Soon, however, chapmen (peddlers) were selling crudely printed booklets, called chapbooks, for pennies. By the seventeenth century, books that retold fairy tales became common in France, thanks to Charles Perrault, who recognized that children needed literature of their own. In the 1740s, the idea of children’s storybooks became established to some extent as the middle class became larger and its social position strengthened. In 1744, John Newbery began publishing a line of children’s books that were intended for children’s diversion rather than sheer instruction, including Mother Goose, Robinson Crusoe, and Gulliver’s Travels. With Newbery’s success, publishers realized there was, indeed, a market for books written especially for children. The nineteenth century brought such classics as The Grimm Brothers’ Fairy Tales, A Book of Nonsense (Edward Lear), Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (Lewis Carroll), Little Women (Louisa May Alcott), The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (Mark Twain), and Merry Adventures of Robin Hood of Great Renown in Nottinghamshire (Howard Payle). Classics published specifically for children in the twentieth century and the early twenty-first century included texts providing diversion, in addition to literature reflecting the diverse nature of society. During this time, attention to nonfiction, historical fiction written in diverse genres (e.g., poetry), and realistic fiction that tapped into many aspects of children’s lives (including difficult topics such as the death of a friend or relative) flourished. Here are a few examples: The Velveteen Rabbit (Margery Williams Bianco), The Story of Babar (Jean de Brunhoff), And to Think I Saw It on Mulberry Street (Dr. Seuss), Make Way for Ducklings (Robert McCloskey), The Island of the Blue Dolphins (Scott O’Dell), Zeely (Virginia Hamilton), African Traveler, The Story of Mary Kingsley (Ronald Syme),
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The Cay (Theodore Taylor), Moja Means One: Swahili Counting Book (Muriel Feelings), A Taste of Blackberries (Dorie Smith), Frog and Toad (Arnold Lobel), Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry (Mildred Taylor), Dragon Wings (Laurence Yep), Grandfather’s Journey (Allen Say), Lincoln: A Photo Biography (Russell Freedman), Joyful Noise: Poems for Two Voices (Paul Fleishman), Witness (Karen Hesse), and A Year Down Yonder (Richard Peck).
Multicultural Children’s Literature Multicultural or cross-cultural literature is literature about racial or ethnic minority groups that are culturally or socially different from a country’s majority population. Many of the goals of multicultural education—such as building respect across cultures, building an understanding of cultural differences, and sharpening the sensitivity toward the commonality of all people—are fostered through multicultural literature. In any society, a lack of books about minorities or inaccurate depictions of minorities can perpetuate stereotypes and result in psychological exclusion. Thus, children’s literature represents an important avenue to bridge cultures. In the U.S., a host of changes in social life and literature have occurred since the 1940s, when Americans began to express publicly their growing objections to the use of certain stereotypes in children’s books. As multicultural groups became more prominent, for the most part after the 1970s, a concurrent change in the literacy depictions of cultural groups emerged. Groups such as the Interracial Council on Books for Children, and transformation within publishing companies themselves, led to changes in the literary depictions of minorities and, in general, reflected more diversity. Additionally, the status of multicultural literature was enhanced as teachers and librarians began to include these works in their collections. Most journals that publish articles about literacy and journals of literary criticism, such as Booklist, Book Links, and Horn-Book Magazine, include information about multicultural literature. The inclusion of multicultural literature in basal readers also has a positive effect on creating climates in which minority students and their classmates gain heightened respect for individuals, as well as for the contributions and values of cultural minorities. More and more literary criticism includes evaluation criteria for multicultural literature. Typical questions reviewers are asked to consider include
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(Norton, 2003, p. 460): Are the characters portrayed as individuals instead of as representatives of a group? Does the book portray physical diversity? Is the culture accurately portrayed? Are the factual and historical details accurate? Does the author accurately describe contemporary settings? At the time of this writing, multicultural books can be found in all genres, from poetry and drama to fiction—traditional tales, folklore, historical fiction, contemporary realistic fiction—to nonfiction, including biographies and informational books about history, geography, culture, and people. Publishers are also responding to the need for bilingual titles that extend subjects as well as children’s interests.
The Evolution of the Use of Children’s Literature in the Classroom The use of authentic, unabridged children’s literature for the teaching of reading in the classroom has had an uneven history; however, as of the 1980s, balanced literacy, which includes the use of authentic literature, is seen as integral to the education, health, and wellbeing of all students, including second language learners. From the 1940s through the 1990s, basal programs dominated reading materials used for instruction in American elementary classrooms. By the mid-1990s, however, practices had changed, due to the availability of high-quality children’s literature, the popularity of the whole language movement, and the prominence of reader-response theory introduced by Louise Rosenblatt (1991), among others. Data from the 1991 National Assessment of Educational Progress revealed that half of the fourth-grade teachers polled, nationwide, reported a heavy use of children’s literature in their classrooms. More recently, smaller surveys have shown that more than 90% of teachers agree that literature should comprise a significant part of school life. One characteristic of the fairly recent movement toward literature use has to do with its strong theoretical underpinnings that encompass reader response theory. This emphasizes the relation between the text and the reader in the reading process. Using John Dewey’s term, transaction, in 1991 Rosenblatt emphasized that reading is dynamic, where readers shape meanings based on the text and their prior knowledge and motivation, while at the same time the text itself shapes the readers’ new experiences and orientations. Literature-based instruction in classroom settings includes literature discussion groups, reading aloud, literature-based reading in the content areas,
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and the use of literature with special populations. These practices are intended to improve children’s motivation to read, attitudes and feelings of self-efficacy about reading, and general reading ability. Implications from several studies on the use of literature in the classroom have led reading scholars to suggest that quality literature be a staple in all school settings. See also: > Cuento therapy; > Poetry, Teaching; > Reading aloud to students
Suggested Reading Cullinan, B. E. (Ed.) (1987). Children’s literature in the reading program. Newark, DE: International Reading Association. Martinex, M., & Roser, N. (2003). Children’s responses to literature. In J. Flood, D. Lapp, J. R. Squire & J. M. Jensen (Eds.), Handbook of research on teaching the English language arts (pp. 799–834). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Mullis, I., Campbell, J., & Farstrap, A. (1993). NAEP 1991 reading report card for the nation and the states: Data from the national and trial state assessments. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office. Norton, D. (2003). Through the eyes of a child. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Merrill/Prentice Hall. Rosenblatt, L. (1991). Literature: S.O.S. Language Arts, 68(6), 444–448.
Suggested Resources Ramsey Library Research Guides: Multicultural Literature Resources— http://bullpup.lib.unca.edu/library/rr/multcultlit.html: This website emphasizes large, general sites that lead to more specific resources. The primary focus is on literature for children and young adults. University of Delaware Library: Resources for Children’s Literature—http://www2.lib.udel.edu/subj/chld/: Includes databases, electronic journals, Internet resources, and research guides for children’s literature.
Children’s Personal Meaning Profile (PMP-C) Joshua D Walker The Children’s Personal Meaning Profile (PMP-C#) is a children’s version of The Personal Meaning Profile (PMP) and for use with children from the ages of 5–12.
The PMP is a self-report assessment that identifies the various sources which imbue an individual’s life with a sense of meaning. The PMP is based on a prototypical structure of the implicit theories that humans hold regarding what makes life worthwhile. The PMP is comprised of seven subscales representing those areas of life in which one seeks and experiences some degree of existential fulfillment. These are labeled achievement, relationship, religion, self-transcendence, selfacceptance, intimacy, and fair treatment. Beyond The PMP’s value in identifying these separate domains of meaning-making, the PMP is also useful in assessing the magnitude (i.e., the degree of congruence with an ideally meaningful life), breadth (i.e., the number of different sources from which one derives a sense of meaning), and balance (i.e., the relative similarity in scores across the seven areas of life that provide meaning) of one’s personal meaning structure. Standing in the mainstream of research on personal meaning and purpose in life, the PMP and its associated studies contribute to the growing body of literature that focuses on positive traits and psychological strengths. Accordingly, the notion of a meaningful life has, in various formulations, been associated with wellbeing, adaptive coping, and therapeutic growth. The relevance and usefulness of meaning-in-life as a psychological construct to both mental and physical health has appealed to researchers and practitioners alike, and new directions in the study of personal meaning and new extensions of its possible applications have made it accessible and helpful to school psychologists and counselors in particular. The PMP-C adapts the original format to include a series of questions designed to explore some of the areas more deeply, yet appropriately for younger respondents. For example, regarding intimacy, the interview would discover how important it is for the child to have a very close relationship with someone who really cares about him/her and with whom he/she can share everything, and whether he/she has someone who provides this (e. g., his/her parents and/or brothers and sisters). With these deeper questions, the PMP-C is not only able to identify what children value, but also the gap between what they value and what they are actually able to experience. The scope of the PMP-C is also extended, seeking to explore variations across cultures. For instance, the PMP-C asks children living in America whether they previously maintained or currently maintain a close relationship with someone living in their home country. This flexibility to account for the
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experiences of recently immigrated children allows this instrument to respond to the growing need for cultural sensitivity in assessment and counseling tools. The prototypical structure of the ideally meaningful life involves a positive and mature attitude toward life in general and toward oneself in pursuit of a productive, purposeful life—and one that is connected to the community and spiritual/religious realm. In recent literature, alienation from one’s community or religiosity/spirituality has been shown to limit one’s fulfillment in other areas because one’s culture profoundly influences one’s psychosocial development. This presents a special challenge in cross-cultural situations where the shared meanings of one’s family of origin are potentially incongruent with those of the host society or majority culture. Feelings of estrangement, loneliness, alienation, and powerlessness are often accompanied by a sense of meaninglessness as children struggle to make sense of their new environments and process the complexities of cultural conflicts. Counselors and school psychologists need to be prepared to help children navigate the challenges of acculturative stress, especially as it is complicated by their young age, possible racial/ethnic identity crises, language barriers, and privacy issues. The PMP-C holds promise as a method for exploring and assessing the inner world of children in a manner that is both culturally sensitive and psychometrically sound. As researchers and practitioners become better able to understand a child’s personal sense of meaning—how it both constructs and is constructed by the beliefs, feelings, motivations, values, experiences, and relationships that comprise the identity of self and community, they will become better able to improve the meaning-making capabilities of children facing adversity. See also: > Assessment of culturally diverse children; > Discrimination; > Prejudice; > Racism: Individual, Institutional, and Cultural; > System of Multicultural Pluralistic Assessment (SOMPA); > Worldview
Suggested Reading Wong, P. T. P., & Fry, P. S. (Eds.) (1998). The human quest for meaning: A handbook of psychological research and clinical applications. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Wong, P. T. P., & Wong, L. C. J. (Eds.) (2006). Handbook of multicultural perspectives on stress and coping. New York: Springer.
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Suggested Resources Website for the International Network on Personal Meaning (INPN)—http://www.meaning.ca/index.html: The INPM is dedicated to advancing health, spirituality, peace and human fulfillment through research, education and applied psychology with a focus on the universal human quest for meaning and purpose.
Chinese Youth Grace Wong
Chinese Americans are the largest group among Asian youth in the United States (U.S.). While Asian immigrants comprise 3–4% of the American population, Chinese people comprise nearly one fourth of the Asian population within the U.S. The largest concentrations of Chinese Americans are in California, New York, Hawaii, and Texas with large communities also found in New Jersey, Massachusetts, Illinois, and Washington.
History Chinese people have been in the U.S. primarily since the middle of the nineteenth century. With the exception of scholars and diplomats who had a greater chance of bringing their families, a large portion of Chinese people in the U.S. were men, singled or married with wives and children still overseas. The discovery of gold at Sutter’s Mill in 1848 that led to the California Gold Rush of 1849 brought many Easterners westward while bringing Chinese from Southern China. Aside from the hope of striking it rich, some looked to escape poverty and starvation. Many defied imperial laws against immigration to leave China and to make their fortune with plans of returning to their homeland. Without intentions to set down roots in ‘‘Gold Mountain’’ as many Chinese referred to America, many of the children of Chinese Americans in this group were raised overseas with their fathers visiting periodically until the child was of age. Generally, only the sons joined their fathers in the U.S. So many Chinese men had come to the West coast in the mid-to-late nineteenth century that at one point, one of four people in California was Chinese.
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Willing to take low paying jobs to compete against other laborers, the labor unions began to rally against Chinese ‘‘coolies.’’ A ‘‘yellow peril’’ was declared and with the rise of xenophobia, the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 was enacted, further restricting not only Chinese men, but also the immigration of women and children. Since anti-Asian sentiments were not limited to the Chinese, Japan responded in a series of facesaving measures in 1907–1908 called the Gentlemen’s Agreement which limited its own citizens from immigrating to the U.S. in exchange for schools in San Francisco, California not to discriminate against Japanese students. For the latter part of the nineteenth and first half of the twentieth century, immigration restrictions were so tight that only relatives of U.S. citizens were allowed into the country. The Chinese Exclusion Act was not repealed until 1943 when it became embarrassing for America to have an Immigrant Exclusion law against its war ally. Eventually, the Johnson and Nixon administrations further changed the inequity of quotas, allowing more immigrants to come from Asia. With the largest groups of Chinese immigrants arriving at the shores after the mid 1960s, intact Chinese families became more common and issues concerning children and adolescents began to raise attention. The Chinese immigrants who came during this later era were of several types. The first group was sponsored by relatives already in the U.S. The second group came under refugee status (post-WW II refugees) and a third were foreign students who elected to stay in the U.S. after their studies. The latter group was also identified as part of the ‘‘brain drain’’ when top scholars from other countries were drawn to opportunities in the U.S. By and large, these new immigrants were better educated and already westernized, readily integrating into American society in a way that the previous group was not able to as well as not allowed to prior to the Civil Rights Movement. Prior to the Civil Rights Movement, most Chinese were limited to professions such as restaurants, laundry, domestic work, and work in dried goods stores. Rights that were won from the Civil Rights Movement gave all minority groups greater access to educational and professional opportunities. These immigrant groups had great expectations of themselves as well as their children to be successful academically. Many had gone through the devastation and losses of World War II in Asia and were driven to reestablish themselves in their new home. Since work opportunities were more readily accessible,
they entered into professions such as the sciences, medicine, business, the arts, and law, a part of American society that was not previously available. Thus, the existing Chinese in America and the newer group of Chinese immigrants became a part of mainstream American life in a way that their predecessors were not allowed to before.
The Two Faces of Model Minority As this generation grew up, formed families, and made headways in society, expectations for their children to succeed was natural. The Chinese culture has a longstanding emphasis on education. The Chinese philosopher Confucius (5 B.C.) raised education to moral superior status. Education, over the next twenty-five centuries, was seen as the way out of poverty. Success through the examination system in China allowed the poor to move upward and become officials. Academics became an emphasis within the culture and esteemed with honor and respect. Like Jewish immigrants, the success of Chinese and other East Asian immigrants easily contributed to the Asian stereotype of being a Model Minority. However, the flaw of this myth is that Asian Americans represent only 3–4% of the overall population and those present in the U.S. are a pre-selected group with a high representation of foreign students and refugees who were from professional backgrounds. The small sample size and the selective representation skew the population in the direction of greater success than normal. The expectation of academic success has both its strengths and weaknesses. The strength is that the new immigrant group moved up quickly into competitive environments and financial success. The weakness is that sometimes the stress of this requirement for success is undue pressure, leading to mental health problems such as anxiety, depression, and even suicide. As a group, Asian Americans over the age of 25 have the largest percentage of college graduates (44%) compared to the general population (24%). While Chinese Americans (and Asian Americans) quickly outgrew their proportional representation in colleges, literature also well documented the underutilization of mental health services in college counseling centers. Chinese youth report a higher than average percentage of depression and anxiety and yet seek college mental health services less than their White, African American, and Latino counterparts. A significant contributor is
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the cultural tendency to keep problems private and not cause self or family to ‘‘lose face.’’ This often leads to Chinese students’ hesitancy to show embarrassing behavior and bring shame on oneself and ones family. Simultaneously, the lack of knowledge about mental illness and its signs and symptoms also lead to failure to recognize mental health problems as soon as they appear and get help in times of crisis. Other research has indicated that Chinese Americans do seek help, but often at a later stage of distress, thus, showing up at clinics with more severe psychiatric problems. Sometimes the problems are at a severity in which more serious interventions such as medication and hospitalization are required. The Model Minority myth projects the image that the community is doing well which can lead to overlooking existing problems. Many immigrant children grow up in households where parents work longer hours since new immigrants often work at a lower social stratum than in their original homeland to make ends meet. Children are often left to grandparents, babysitters, or occasionally left on their own once they are old enough to fend for themselves, while still being expected to work hard academically. Surprisingly, some survive and even become successful, but many others do not, leading to poor performance in school, truancy, and emotional adjustment problems. Immigrant children, particularly the oldest children, sometimes function as mini-adults with all the responsibility placed on their shoulders but without the authority over their younger siblings. The lack of parental supervision greatly contributes to the rising phenomenon of truancy. While the truant behavior is not necessarily gang-related, staying out of school can have a significant impact on academic performance and future career choices. Older siblings in particular act as parent substitutes—often because parents rely on their children to translate and to negotiate the new environment. Not all children take on the role of parentified child well and various forms of rebellion including pregnancy, drugs, and spending sprees are known to occur. As the People’s Republic of China opened its doors for immigration, a larger proportion of the recent Chinese come from China rather than Taiwan, Hong Kong (which is now a part of China), Singapore, Vietnam, and the rest of Southeast Asia. While many are still coming for academic reasons, a greater majority now come as relatives who are sponsored by relatives in the U.S. Also, a smaller proportion are in the
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U.S. without documentation. Eager for economic success, this new group of immigrants is more focused on surviving financially and less emphasis is placed on academics compared to the foreign students of the past. The recent phenomenon in the last two decades has been for some of the new immigrants to send their newborns back to China to be raised by grandparents so that both parents can focus on financial survival. Some of the children return to the U.S. by kindergarten or during the elementary school years. Mental health providers working for school systems have noted an increase in referrals for evaluation for this group of children. More specifically, several problems have been observed. After living with grandparents for their formative years in China, the children often return to the U.S. after years of separation from their parents and experience difficulties in academic and social adjustment. Problems range from poor academic preparation to parent/child bonding and other behavioral issues. Children who were sent to less prosperous urban and rural parts of China often encounter schools with sub-par academic standards and poor medical care, resulting in a lack of interventions for developmental needs such as for diet, speech, and hearing problems. In addition, the ‘‘One Child Policy’’ in China that was originally intended to keep the population explosion in check, resulted in the choice of couples to abort females in hopes of having a son. Since families can only have one child, the preciousness of the child has led grandparents to treat their grandson (and the occasional granddaughter) like royalty, indulging the child with whatever they can offer. When these children return to the U.S., they face a number of adjustment issues. Academically, the children have fallen behind their peers and catching up is often a struggle. Schooling in China is most likely not in English. Their parents are often not in the position to meet academic needs as some of the parents may not have mastered the English language and some have not had much education themselves. Also, parents are virtual strangers to their children as they have had little time to bond. Discipline is more difficult when parents and children have not established an emotional connection. Sometimes there are feelings of guilt about sending the child to China. This can contribute to feelings of conflict about discipline.
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Unfamiliar with their own children, parents may not have an awareness of the child’s emotional, medical, and academic needs leading to failure to recognize the seriousness of their children’s problems at school. Lack of knowledge can contribute to failure to comply with recommendations for treatment and/or the unrealistic expectation of school systems to take care of all of the child’s problems. Children under this circumstance can become very discouraged about their own ability to manage in the academic environment. Often mental health providers need to provide psychoeducation for parents to encourage compliance with suggested interventions for their children.
Youth and Gangs Some teens choose to join gangs in their local community to find affiliation, belonging, and efficacy in the world. While the temporary sense of protection provides some relief, many other problems develop from gang affiliation including violence and criminal behavior that effect later life options. Drugs, alcohol, and anti-social behavior become woven into the fabric of life, all of which are difficult to break away from. For young men, the affiliation requires loyalty and, sometimes, surrendering personal and family information that can never be taken back, allowing the gang to maintain leverage over its members. Straying from the gang can mean personal danger as well as potential harm to family. For young women who are girlfriends of gang members, sexual favors are sometimes demanded by other gang members. Sometimes families have had to move away to escape the reaches of the gangs and to provide a fresh start for their teenager.
Immigration and its Stress on the Fabric of the Family Even with the support of parents, not all parents are able to provide adequate help for their children. Parents and grandparents who immigrate to the U.S. without adequate English speaking skills, academic training, emotional development, or cultural flexibility may find themselves alienated from their children. Younger generations often acculturate faster than older generations as children are exposed to western education and values on a daily basis. Social rules, communication styles (e.g., direct vs. indirect), values, and
much more begin to differ between the generations as children acquire the new values while the parents still retain values from the old world. This generation gap can lead to clashes within the family over issues ofdating, power, money, independence, interracial marriage, and expectations of future support for aging parents. How acculturation is worked out depends on the flexibility and openness of both parties. The best examples of acculturation are often a healthy blend of the new and old view and the appreciation for both. See also: > Academic achievement in minority children; > Asian/Asian American youth; > Confucianism; > Ethnic minority youth; > Korean American youth; > Racism: Individual, Institutional, and Cultural; > Stereotyping
Suggested Reading Lee, C. L., & Zane, N. (Eds). (1998). Handbook of Asian American psychology. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Tung, M. P. (2000). Chinese Americans and their immigrant parents: Conflict, identity, and values. Binghamton, NY: Haworth Press. Louie, V. S. (2004). Compelled to excel: Immigration, education, and opportunity among Chinese Americans. Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press.
Citizenship Leslie Ditta
Civics education, which is now more commonly known as citizenship education, has been part of education curricula for decades. There is debate, however, about citizenship education. Different models of citizenship education are used: one is the European model, which focuses on democratic skills and practices; another model is the United States (U.S.) model, which focuses on personal virtues, namely justice. Some of the debates about citizenship education are as follows: Should schools help bring up students as good, democratic citizens? What aspects of citizenship should be taught? How should citizenship be taught? In many ways, schools and families have to work as partners to develop and educate children. When school and family reinforce lessons, students can internalize these
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lessons better. Consequently, a debate arises whether citizenship should be taught in school, or if it should be reserved for family teaching. As citizenship contains many morals, one view is that families should be responsible for teaching their children values needed in society and world. On the other hand, is the view that citizenship needs to be reinforced in school, as incidents of crime, substance abuse, and other undesirable behaviors are common among many youths. The existing viewpoint that citizenship should be taught in schools leads to the next debate: What elements or perspectives of citizenship should be taught? An approach to take is teaching democracy, democratic skills of citizens, and democratic practices. This approach is commonly found in European education. Because students will become adults in a democratic society, they need to learn in school how the society and government works, thereby being able to be a good citizen. Another approach is teaching citizenship about an individual’s rights and virtues. This approach is common in the U.S. The theory behind this approach is that if an individual feels that he or she has a right, he or she will act in a way to uphold that right and will expect the society to uphold it. For instance, if a U.S. citizen believes he or she is free, he or she will act free, and will look for ways that a democratic government defends his or her rights. This emotional approach is also found in U.S. program philosophies of character education. Citizenship education is now a greater focus in schools because of its link with character education. Schools are engaging several approaches in an effort to enhance the citizenship qualities among their students. The first approach is to look at the present curriculum. Citizenship education is a topic that can be taught across disciplines. Primarily, citizenship education falls naturally into the discipline of social studies. Civics curriculum defines good citizen traits and behaviors that are expected to help contribute to the greater good of the society. Citizenship education also fits in with the language arts. Some propose that to teach about citizenship, students should have models to reference. To do this, the curriculum is infused with multimedia resources of historical figures, past and present, and those from diverse cultures. Various video documentaries and books tell accounts of the lives of heroes. Trade books and novels are also effective tools to use in younger grades, as they are written to grab the readers’ attentions, in addition to presenting the facts of the person being studied.
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Whether at home or in school, children need to be exposed to the idea that citizenship does not mean the same in all cultures. There are elements of citizenship that all cultures contain, like a hierarchy, rules, and consequences. Understanding that people have different ideas of what being a good citizen means and what government should be can help with appreciating and tolerating differences among people and cultures. Once students have been given instruction that helps them understand the workings of society, and of the roles of inhabitants it becomes the student’s task to act like law-abiding, good citizens. Some schools are providing students with greater responsibility in decision-making, specifically in the area of discipline, to promote this development. The idea of choice becomes central to this approach. Instruction enables students to see, through activities and discussion, that people have the ability to choose, and to make choices based on their personal values and those of society, but also to consider the consequences of their choices on the society, or on themselves. When situations arise in which discipline is required, the focus turns to character and citizenship. Students are encouraged to see that good character and citizenship is everywhere, not just in isolated lessons. Whatever approach is taken, the key to success is to have a united front. Families will be the primary teacher of values and citizenship to children; however, it is inevitable that schools will have to address these values and systems at some point, even if citizenship is not a content area in the curriculum. Thus, to have an entire school that shares common vocabulary, procedures, and attitudes towards citizenship education will ensure that students learn about this area. See also: > Bullying; > Character education; > Classroom management; > Discipline; > Service learning
Suggested Reading Lickona, T. (1991). Educating for character: How our schools can teach respect and responsibility. New York: Bantam Books. Meltzer, M., & Saul, E. W. (1994). Nonfiction for the classroom. New York: Teachers College Press. Quenk, R. (1997). The spirit that moves us: A literature-based resource guide, teaching about the holocaust and human rights. Gardiner: Tilbury House. Zehr, H. (2002). The little book of restorative justice. Intercourse, PA: Good Books.
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Suggested Resources Public Broadcasting Station (PBS)—http:///www.pbs.org: A resource to educators, The Public Broadcasting Station (PBS) has a video library of biographies that can be utilized during class discussion of heroes and great citizens. New Jersey State Bar Foundation—http://www.njsbf.org: The New Jersey State Bar Foundation has compiled resources for educators to use for conflict resolution and instruction in character education.
Class Size Anna L Harms . John S Carlson
Class size refers to the number of children taught within a single classroom. Dating back to the 1920s, the topic of class size has been of great interest to school staff, parents, politicians, and economists. While the idea of having smaller classes is appealing to nearly all, it is necessary to establish whether small classes will, in fact, lead to improved student outcomes, and whether such outcomes warrant financial funding. Despite being one of the most widely investigated topics in education, only the past 10–15 years of research has been able to yield substantial findings. This research has been facilitated by the implementation of several exemplary class-size reduction programs. Three foundational projects included Tennessee’s Project Student/Teacher Achievement Ratio (STAR), Wisconsin’s Student Achievement Guarantee in Education (Project SAGE), and North Carolina’s program in Burke County. There is some disagreement regarding what qualifies as a ‘‘small’’ class. While some consider fewer than 20 students in a class to be small, many argue that student gains are not seen unless the class size is 15 or fewer. Research examining both short-term and long-term student outcomes has shown several benefits of small class size. Lasting academic gains were found for the three class size reduction projects identified above. Specifically, the longer students were enrolled in small classes, the higher their standardized test scores in both reading and math. These gains were also durable, as students continued to receive better grades in high school and were more likely to enroll in more difficult classes. Students who have been in small classes in the elementary years are also more likely to apply for college. Both the STAR and SAGE projects found that
the beneficial effects of small class sizes were largest for African American students in urban schools, which lends support for using smaller class sizes as an intervention for narrowing the achievement gap. Special education classes are most often small in size, consisting of fewer than 15 students, and research shows that having fewer students in a special education class is also related to greater academic gains. Evidence that students who experience academic difficulties benefit from small class sizes further suggests that smaller class sizes are important for promoting student achievement. Internationally, average class sizes in Belgium and Italy tend to be among the smallest (20 students per class), while China and Korea have some of the largest average class sizes (40 students per class). In contrast to the United States (U.S.), data on class size and student achievement indicates that, outside the U.S., countries with larger average class sizes have slightly greater student achievement. It is also important to recognize the distinction between class size and student/teacher ratio. Student/ teacher ratios are typically calculated by dividing the total number of students in a school by the total number of staff. As a result, a student/teacher ratio can be misleading, particularly if support staff, who are not responsible for instruction, are included in the calculation. Critics of class size reduction efforts frequently cite research based on student/teacher ratio data as evidence that small classes do not lead to academic gains. Research findings suggesting that smaller class size can be beneficial to students does not necessarily warrant an immediate large-scale movement for all schools to reduce class size. Rather, class size transitions need to be undertaken with a great deal of thought and planning. Budgets must be planned to accommodate the hiring of new teachers and instructional space must be allocated appropriately. Districts must ensure that new teachers are well trained, and that current teachers have access to professional development. See also: > Achievement tests; > Classroom management; > School, Size of
Suggested Reading Achilles, C. M., & Finn, J. D. (2005). Class size and pupil-teacher ratio confusion: A classic example of mixing ‘‘apples and oranges’’. National Forum of Applied Educational Research Journal, 18(2), 5–25.
Classroom management Finn, J. D. et al. (2001). The enduring effects of small classes. Teachers College Board, 103(2), 145–183. Krueger, A. (2003). Economic considerations and class size. Economics Journal, 113, 34–63.
Suggested Resources National Education Association Web Page on Class Size: http:// www.nea.org/classsize/research-classsize.html Reduce Class Size Now Web Page: http://www.reduceclasssizenow. org/structuredAbstracts.htm
Classroom Management Bridget Luebbering
Educators generally agree that classroom management is any action taken by the teacher to establish order, engage students, and elicit cooperation. Therefore, classroom management is a term that encompasses an abundance of strategies within the field of teaching. These techniques can range from the smallest details (the physical arrangement of a classroom) to the most complicated (the student-teacher relationship). Consequently, classroom management covers many different topics, including effective instruction, disciplinary actions, classroom procedures, teacher attitudes, classroom environment, and motivational techniques. Classroom management can become very complicated because it involves many rapid, unpredictable, and often public classroom events that have both a related past and a probable future. For instance, when an angry, disruptive student enters the classroom at the beginning of the day, the teacher must immediately deal with this behavior in the presence of many bystanders. In addition, although the student’s anger was caused by past events, the teacher’s reaction to this anger will affect the future of their student-teacher relationship. Consequently, one of the biggest obstacles of classroom management is that teachers often have little time to prepare for classroom problems that must be handled immediately and effectively. Unfortunately, if problems are not dealt with correctly, they may have a huge impact on the student, the teacher, and the classroom environment. Therefore, classroom management strategies must be used to prevent discipline problems and maximally engage students in active learning.
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Research has shown that classroom management is one of the largest factors affecting academic success. While successful management requires training, hard work, and careful planning, it is an effective use of available school resources and serves many purposes within the classroom. One purpose of classroom management is to help teachers establish order and create environments where learning is maximized for every student. In today’s increasingly diverse classrooms, classroom management helps to create rules and procedures to ensure that every student is treated fairly and has the opportunity to learn to the best of their ability, regardless of race, culture, ethnicity, or disability. A second purpose of classroom management is to create teachable moments where students not only acquire the concepts being taught but also learn how to work with and respect every individual in the classroom. Through effective classroom management strategies, students learn not only their own rights and responsibilities but also appropriate ways to work in groups, accomplish tasks, and act responsibly. By working together, students and teachers learn how to appreciate individual differences and all the various ways these differences are beneficial to the classroom experience. To accomplish these goals, teachers must use effective classroom management techniques. While there are many different classroom management strategies, certain characteristics are fundamental. Primarily, techniques should be preventative rather than reactive, meaning that many problems are eliminated before they occur. Secondly, since it is impossible to avoid every problem, strategies must be planned rather than improvised. Given that classroom problems may arise rapidly, teachers need to plan how they will handle a variety of different situations and problems. Finally, effective strategies should be tailored to fit the unique needs and culture of the students, teachers, and school. Classroom management techniques will not be effective unless they coincide with the values of everyone in the classroom. One of the greatest benefits of effective management is that is lays the foundation for successfully working in a multicultural classroom, which is a growing need in today’s society. To illustrate, over 20% of American students are ethnic minorities, 40% are economically disadvantaged, 2% have limited English capabilities, and 16% have disabilities. The number of students with learning, behavioral, and other educational disabilities in general education classes has
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tripled over recent years. In fact, 47% of students with disabilities are spending 80% of their day in regular classrooms. Therefore, more teachers are being asked to manage increasingly diverse classrooms. Unfortunately, many teachers do not feel prepared for this responsibility. Ninety-eight percent of teachers rate their skill and knowledge in planning for general education students as good or excellent. However, only 39% give themselves a high rating for their ability to plan for special education students. Without a plan, teachers may respond to student behavior from the perspective of mainstream, sociocultural norms, which may lead to discrimination against students. By creating a classroom management plan, teachers will have a preset method to handle discipline problems and therefore be more likely to consistently react to every student in a similar manner, regardless of race, ethnicity, or disability. In addition, students also see how the teacher responds to every student fairly and thus, can learn to model similar behavior. A second way that effective management can benefit multicultural classrooms is through influencing the classroom climate. Since effective management provides equal status, consistency, and fair treatment for every child, it helps to decrease the stereotypes and hostility that may arise from the diversity and cultural gaps in the classroom. It also helps teachers create a positive classroom environment, where the individual differences of everyone in the classroom are appreciated and encouraged. This allows every individual to share and teach others about their own cultural values, which works to decrease problems such as racism and discrimination. Practicing effective management strategies not only promotes positive classroom environments but also has the benefit of helping teachers establish positive relationships with every student in class. As a foundation for effective management, students who have positive relationships with their teachers are more likely to follow their request. In fact, research demonstrates that the quality of the student-teacher relationship is the most important aspect of classroom management. When students see that their teacher is not only treating everyone fairly but also valuing their own individual differences, they begin to respect the teacher and are more willing to build a positive relationship. To establish effective relationships, teachers must have an increased awareness of the students’ needs and also establish appropriate levels of dominance and cooperation. Teachers can use the following basic
classroom management techniques to accomplish these goals: (a) establish clear behavioral expectations by explaining the rules and consequences to students before behavior problems arise, (b) establish and clearly explain learning goals for every student by providing clarity of the content of material and offering both positive and negative feedback, (c) show assertive rather than passive or aggressive behavior by using appropriate tone of voice and body language, (d) establish cooperation by having flexible learning goals and taking a personal interest in the students’ lives, and (e) show positive classroom behaviors such as eye contact and I-messages. Effective management is not simply beneficial to a multicultural school. Rather, it is a prerequisite to a successful classroom. Optimal learning cannot occur without effective management because disruptive behaviors are likely to interfere with instructional activities and distract other students. Indeed, lack of discipline has been reported as one of the biggest obstacles to student learning for the past three decades. Discipline issues can be minimized by making students feel welcome, safe, and supported, which are all primary goals of effective management strategies. Since not all discipline problems can be eliminated, effective management also helps teachers handle the discipline problems that do arise. While teachers without effective management strategies simply improvise their reactions to discipline problems, teachers with a classroom management strategy have a consistent and clearly stated plan about how to handle discipline problems. Teachers who simply improvise discipline procedures increase the probability of confrontations, creating an unpredictable classroom environment, thus increases the stress level on themselves and their students. The effect this has on the mental health of teachers is significant and it is important to note that one third of all teachers quit within the first 5 years of teaching. Classroom management techniques can help reduce teacher stress by engineering classrooms so that the students are more responsible for their behavior than the teachers. If teachers can focus on preventing discipline problems through classroom management procedures, it is hoped that they will have fewer discipline problems, less stress, and more time for their own work. Therefore, it is crucial for teachers to be trained in evidence-based classroom management strategies to promote the academic success and emotional wellbeing of every individual in the classroom. Good classroom management techniques increase not only
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student/teacher productivity and satisfaction but also the teacher’s ability to provide students with an effective learning environment. Effective management strategies help to reduce teacher stress and discipline problems while simultaneously creating positive environments and relationships that support a multicultural classroom. See also: > Teacher burnout; efficacy; > Time management
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Suggested Reading Levin, J., & Nolan, J. (2000). Principles of classroom management: A professional decision-making model, (3rd ed.). Needham Heights, MA: Allyn & Bacon. Marzano, R., Marzano, J. S., & Pickering, D. J. (2003). Classroom management that works: Research based strategies for every teacher. Alexandria, VA: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development. Stone, R. (2005). Best classroom management practices for reaching all learners: What award-winning classroom teachers do. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press.
Code Switching Jose Mercado
Code switching is a linguistic phenomenon that involves the use of two languages within the same conversation. While what was previously viewed as a mode of communication for those with language deficiencies and lower intelligence, current research has shown to be a complex form of communication between bilinguals with psychosocial and cultural implications. The following is an example Code switch: ‘Voy para el mall para comprar sneakers’ Translation: ‘I’m going to the mall to buy sneakers’
Sociolinguistic Factors Why do bilinguals code switch? At a linguistic level, code switching has been used involuntarily during translation. As a result of not being able to recall a
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word or phrase in either the dominant or secondary language, code switching has been used as a form of word retrieval. The inability to recall the word or phrase has been shown not to be a failure of word knowledge, but rather reminiscent of the tip-of-the-tongue (TOT) phenomenon that involves the inability to recall known information at a particular moment. Current research has also found a structural component in the switching process which debunks the myth that code switching involves grammarless mixing of the two languages. Current findings show a competence in maintaining the integrity of both languages during the switching process. Therefore, no ‘new grammar’ has been created and both the qualitative and quantitative distinctions of both languages have been maintained. Further evidence has found a varying level of code switching ability, giving credence to the notion of code switching being a mode of bilingual ability. The level of competency in either language has been shown to directly correlate with the sophistication of code switching. For example, those dominant in one language tend to code switch in shorter phrases (verdad? right? tu sabes? you know?). In bilinguals who have an equally high level of competency in both languages, intra-sentential switching appears to be most common (‘I am going to your house para lavar mi ropa’/to wash my clothes). This level of switching is not taught, but rather is an intuitive sense of linguistic proficiency.
Psychological Factors Code switching has been found to be motivated by both conscious and unconscious factors. On the conscious level, switching serves as a means of expression of feelings in one language that the bilingual speaker may feel is not present in the alternating language. Unconscious factors include the process of receiving, storing and retrieving information. Unconscious switching can be placed into three categories: 1. Momentary inclination. Linguistics research has shown that the choice of language usage in switching is not as a result of limited knowledge in either language, but rather a momentary availability of a word or phrases within the context of the conversation. 2. Frequency of exposure. Psycholinguists have determined that the frequency that speakers of a language are exposed to certain words will play an
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important role in determining their choice in code switching phrases. Therefore, it is an unconscious learned response that will cause someone to choose an English phrase over a Spanish phrase, especially when it is used within the informal surroundings of the community. Conversely, in cases of modern technology and business-related language, bilinguals tend to switch to English, possibly due to the formality and lack of exposure to those areas. 3. Untranslatability. Within the context of bilingualism, there lies a dual cultural personality. Cultural influence plays a significant role in code switching as a means of communication. Bilingual speakers are often bound to cultural words and phrases that are not easily translatable. Words such as sweetie pie in English would not reflect the same context if used in Spanish. Therefore, code switching has been enmeshing of two languages and cultures to form coherent thoughts.
Emphasis Bilingual speakers often use code switching as a means of changing tone or emphasis in conversation. The use of contrasting language is an excellent way of giving colorful expression or minimizing a particular thought: ‘I was climbing a tree y parti my brazo’ (and I broke my arm). The use of switching is a signal by the speaker that a meaningful thought is approaching.
became an integral part in other research in linguistics and an expansion of study in other fields such as the process of acculturation in immigrant communities. Research at this time did not focus on code switching. Code switching was a mere by-product of other studies in psychology, linguistics and anthropology, which revolved around bilingual speakers and immigrants. Moreover, code switching had not been given a name. The term code switching, sometimes also referred to as code mixing or code shifting, was introduced as early as 1953 when Einar Haugen introduced the term in his book Bilingualism in the Americas. See also: > Acculturation; > Bilingualism
Suggested Reading Becker, K. R. (1997). Spanish/English codeswitching: A syncretic model. Bilingual Review, 25(1), 3–31. Benson, E. J. (2001). The neglected early history of codeswitching research in the United States. Language & Communication, 21(1), 23–36. Clauss, C. S. (1998). Language: The unspoken variable in psychotherapy practice. Psychotherapy: Theory, research, practice, training, 35, 188–196.
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) Rhonda Turner · Susan M Swearer
Historical context Study of contemporary code switching began to develop in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Before this time switching was seen as a smaller issue surrounding a larger discussion of dialects. It was not until authors such as Joshua Fishman and Michael Clyne that code switching became a field for further research. Prior to this time little attention was given to code switching and whatever attention existed was negative. Individuals who used code switching were seen as unintelligent, and using switching was equated with deviant behavior patterns. Works by Einar Haugen, Uriel Weinreich and Charles Ferguson, before the 1960s, would later be seen as having set the stage for more contemporary code switching literature. This phenomenon later
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) is a form of psychotherapy that focuses on the role of cognition in the expression of emotions and behaviors. CBT assumes that maladaptive feelings and behaviors develop through cognitive processes which evolve from interactions with others and experiences in the environment. The goal of therapy is to identify the maladaptive cognitive process and to learn new ways of perceiving and thinking about events. These new ways of thinking will lead to more positive behavioral and emotional responses. CBT is a general classification of psychotherapy. It encompasses several different approaches that share the same theoretical underpinnings. Among the cognitive behavioral approaches being practiced today are Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy, Cognitive
Cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT)
Therapy, Rational Behavior Therapy, Rational Living Therapy, Schema Focused Therapy and Dialectical Behavior Therapy.
History of CBT A precursor to the development of CBT was the emergence of Albert Bandura’s Social Learning Theory. Unlike the prevailing psychodynamic or behavioral views of psychological disturbance, Bandura viewed people as consciously and actively interacting cognitively with their environments. He introduced the notion that cognitive mediation occurs in the stimulus-response cycle of human behavior. This suggestion that people think before they do offered a new target for therapeutic intervention and set the stage for the development of CBT. Cognitive Behavioral Therapy has its origins in the work of Albert Ellis and Aaron T. Beck in the late 1950’s and early 1960’s. During that time, Albert Ellis, seeking an alternative to psychodynamic therapy which he viewed as indirect and inefficient, developed Rational Emotive Therapy (RET). Later termed Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy (REBT), Ellis’ approach emphasized the role of cognitions in determining a person’s feelings and behaviors. Ellis was particularly influenced by the Stoic philosophy which held that people are upset not by events, but rather by the view they take of them. He was also influenced by the psychotherapist Alfred Adler, who posited that behavior stems from thought. REBT holds that psychological disturbances stem from irrational beliefs. These irrational beliefs usually take the form of an individual’s insistence that things should, ought, or must be different from the way they are. Cognitive errors including overgeneralization, interpreting small events to have great meaning (i.e., believing that an everyday mistake is evidence of complete incompetence), and catastrophizing, turning a small problem into an insurmountable one, are targets of therapy. In REBT, the therapist directly confronts these irrational thoughts and unrealistic expectations. Also influenced by the Stoicists, and Adler, Aaron T. Beck developed a structured, short-term, present focused treatment for depression. Beck’s approach, termed Cognitive Therapy was based on Beck’s observation that his patients with depression held idiosyncratic cognitive biases. From this, Beck developed a model of depression depicting a cognitive triad characterized by a
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negative view of the self, the world and the future, along with a perception of the self as inadequate, alone, and worthless. Beck maintained that similar systematic biases in information processing are characteristic of most psychological disorders. For example, anxiety disorders are characterized by a pervasive sense of physical or psychological danger while paranoid thinking involves a bias assuming that others are prejudiced, abusive or critical. Whereas the REBT therapist actively confronts and attempts to persuade the client that his/her thinking is irrational, in Cognitive therapy the client is engaged in a spirit of collaborative empiricism. That is, through a combination of Socratic questioning and behavioral experimentation, the therapist and client work together to determine the accuracy (or inaccuracy) of the client’s thoughts and beliefs. In the 1970’s Donald Meichenbaum developed a treatment approach he termed Cognitive Behavior Modification. Meichenbaum’s early research on the role of cognition in behavior originated in his observation of persons with schizophrenia engaging in self instruction in their efforts to maintain assigned ‘‘healthy talk’’ to receive reinforcements. Stemming from this observation, much of Meichenbaum’s work centered on the internal dialog, or ‘‘self-talk’’ that underlies individual’s affect and behavior and is the foundation for the development of coping skills. Meichenbaum suggested that cognitive behavior modification was aimed at creating a bridge between strictly behavioral and strictly cognitive treatment modalities and has been successfully applied in the treatment of anxiety, anger, and stress.
Applications of CBT Over the years, CBT has been used to treat a wide variety of psychological disorders, across a variety of populations and settings. Among adults, it has been proven effective in the treatment of major depressive disorder, generalized anxiety disorder, social phobia, substance abuse, obsessive-compulsive disorder, and couples’/ marital problems. CBT has also been applied to the treatment of post-traumatic stress disorder, personality disorders, chronic pain, antisocial behavior, hypochondria and schizophrenia. As previously noted, CBT uses performance-based procedures and structured sessions along with cognitive intervention techniques to produce changes in thinking, feeling and behavior. This model translates well to
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working with youth and their families. Cognitive Behavioral approaches adapt well to the demands of children’s differing developmental levels. Although it provides structure for treatment, cognitive behavioral therapy is flexible allowing for adaptations to meet individual client’s developmental needs. With younger children the treatment process will likely have a behavioral emphasis, focusing on operant techniques to modify behavior. As cognitive abilities develop, the focus of therapy can shift to the mediating cognitions that determine emotion and behavior. It has been suggested that children as young as age 5 can benefit from cognitive behavioral therapy. For children who are not developmentally ready for more abstract forms of thinking, CBT focuses on concrete skills including problem solving and rehearsal of positive coping statements. Although the research is less extensive than in the adult literature, CBT has been proven effective with children and youth across a variety of presenting problems in a variety of modalities. Youth ranging in age from preschool to college have benefited from CBT approaches provided to the individual, with their families, or in groups, and in outpatient or inpatient treatment settings. The efficacy of CBT in the treatment of childhood or adolescent aggression, anxiety, social anxiety, depression, obsessive-compulsive disorder, suicidal ideation and eating disorders has been empirically supported in a number of studies.
Principles of CBT While there are multiple approaches to CBT, according to the National Association of Cognitive Behavioral Therapists (NACBT), they share several characteristics. First, CBT is based on the cognitive model. That is, feelings and behaviors stem from thoughts, not from external stimuli. This sets the stage for CBT’s hopeful assumption that the individual can alter his/her feelings and behaviors, even in the face of intractable situations. Second, CBT is time limited. Unlike psychoanalysis which can last for years, CBT extends for an average of 16 sessions, across types of presenting problems. Judith Beck notes that treatment for depression and anxiety generally ranges from four to 14 sessions. The timelimited nature of therapy holds true in applications with children and adolescents as well as adults, although protocols adapted from adult therapy approaches may need to be extended to allow for development of the therapeutic alliance and to build skills in meta-cognition and problem solving. Treatment protocols for youth
depression and obsessive compulsive disorder generally entailing fewer than 20 session have been empirically supported. Third, CBT recognizes the importance of an effective therapeutic relationship between therapist and client although this is not the focus of treatment. Factors contributing to a positive therapeutic relationship include warmth, empathy, caring, genuine regard and, particularly with youth, a collaborative spirit. The CBT therapist focuses on teaching the client to serve as his/her own therapist by identifying and modifying distorted thought patterns. Similarly, CBT emphasizes collaboration and active participation. Client and therapist are viewed as a team. The client is actively engaged in the therapeutic process, with input on session topics and homework. According to Judith Beck, cognitive therapy teaches patients to identify, evaluate and respond to their dysfunctional thoughts and beliefs. In a spirit of collaborative empiricism, the therapist helps the client evaluate his thoughts by examining the evidence that either supports or refutes them. Cognitive behavioral therapists use Socratic questioning to develop an understanding of their clients’ concerns and encourage clients to question themselves. In addition to being collaborative and active, CBT is based on an educational model. The aim of therapy is to teach the client to be his/her own therapist, emphasizing relapse prevention. Positing that maladaptive behaviors and emotional reactions are learned, CBT aims to help the client unlearn the old reactions and develop new ones by altering his or her cognitive responses. Cognitive behavioral therapy is goal oriented and problem focused. Unlike its psychoanalytic predecessors, cognitive therapy maintains that the thoughts contributing to a patients’ distress are not deeply buried in the unconscious. As a result, CBTemphasizes the present, and on ameliorating symptoms in the here and now rather than on lengthy analysis of the client’s developmental history. A related principle of CBT is that it is structured and directive. In keeping with its time-limited nature, CBT employs a specific agenda for each session. This consistency of structure facilitates generalization by providing a formula the client can use when acting as his or her own therapist after termination of therapy. The therapist and client generate the agenda collaboratively keeping the client’s goals for therapy in mind. Further, CBT uses homework, tasks to be completed between therapy sessions.
Collaborative and cooperative learning
Conclusion CBT has rapidly increased in popularity over the last forty years. It enjoys strong empirical support, and the body of research into its efficacy is expanding with each passing year. Given symmetry between the time limited nature of CBT and the demands of cost containment and managed care, this growth seems likely to continue. See also: > Childhood depression; > Desensitization; > Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD)
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learning in small groups have used the term cooperative learning. Although some distinguish between cooperative and collaborative learning, others do not make a clear distinction. This article will employ the terms interchangeably. Several of the many researchers whose ideas figure prominently in this article include Brigid Barron, Ann Brown, Elizabeth Cohen, John Frederiksen, Lynn and Douglas Fuchs, Rachel Hertz-Lazarowitz, Joseph Jenkins, David and Roger Johnson, Alison King, Angela O’Donnell, Rollanda O’Connor, Annemarie Palincsar, Shlomo Sharan, Robert Slavin, Noreen Webb, and Barbara White.
Suggested Reading Beck, A. T., & Weishaar, M. E. (1995). Cognitive therapy. In R. J. Corsiniand, D. Wedding (Eds.), Current psychotherapies (5th ed.) (pp. 229–261). Itasca, Illinois: F.E. Peacock. Beck, J. S. (1995). Cognitive therapy: Basics and beyond. New York: Guilford. Friedberg, R. D., & McClure, J. M. (2002). Clinical practice of cognitive therapy with children and adolescents: The nuts and bolts. New York: Guilford.
Suggested Resources The Association for Behavioral and Cognitive Therapies (ABCT)— http://www.aabt.org/aabt: The website of the Association for Behavioral and Cognitive Therapies provides an overview of the organization as well as resources about CBT and therapist referrals. The Beck Institute for Cognitive Therapy and Research—www. beckinstitute.org: The Beck Institute offers cognitive behavior therapy training programs, conducts research on the efficacy of CBT and provides direct clinical services. National Association of Cognitive Behavioral Therapists—http:// www.nacbt.org: The website of the National Association of Cognitive Behavioral Therapists provides information on CBT and therapist referrals.
Goals of Collaborative Learning One main goal of collaborative learning is to promote student academic learning, but there are other goals, as well. These include (a) enhancing students’ ability to work effectively in groups, (b) reducing racial prejudice, sexism, and other forms of prejudice by fostering interaction, respect, and friendships among diverse students, (c) nurturing altruism and prosocial action, and (d) reducing social status differences (differences between ‘‘good’’ and ‘‘poor’’ students among students in a class). Research on the effectiveness of collaborative groups demonstrates that well-designed group tasks can achieve these goals. When collaborative group tasks are well designed, collaborative learning promotes greater learning than individual learning. However, poorly designed collaborative groups can be ineffective and even detrimental.
Group Processes that are Associated with Learning Seven group processes associated with learning in cooperative groups are:
Collaborative and Cooperative Learning
Clark Chinn
Collaborative learning is a task structure for learning in which students work together in small groups, with little or no moment-to-moment teacher involvement in any single group. Many researchers who investigate
Effective groups are highly engaged on group tasks There is positive interdependence, which means that students can accomplish the tasks only by working together; the task is structured so that it is not possible for students to succeed by working separately Students attend jointly to tasks. This means that students are paying attention to the same aspects of the task as they collaborate Students exhibit respect for each other
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Participation by different students in the group is balanced. This does not entail that all students participate equally but only that there are meaningful contributions by all group members Students employ higher-order social and cognitive strategies during their interactions. Effective social strategies include orderly turn taking, offering encouragement, and asking for input from those less involved in the discussion. Effective cognitive strategies include giving explanations and elaborations; merely asking for and receiving answers without explanations is negatively associated with learning There is uptake of ideas. Uptake refers to students listening to and responding meaningfully to their peers’ contributions. Uptake can include both building constructively on peers’ ideas as well as critiquing their ideas
Obstacles to effective group interaction include (a) offtask talk, (b) social loafing—in which some students allow other students to do all the work, (c) unequal interaction, (d) negative interactions such as anger, ridicule, and racist or sexist remarks, (e) working independently instead of together, or splitting up work instead of collaborating, (f) low-quality interactions that do not involve much thinking, and (g) reinforcement of students’ beliefs that some students are not capable of contributing.
Effective Instructional Approaches Educational researchers have developed and demonstrated the effectiveness of a number of instructional procedures for promoting the seven core processes and to avoid the obstacles. The Use of Rewards. Several reward structures are possible within collaborative learning. One is to provide a single group reward for a group product (e.g., an overall grade to a group project). A second is group study for individual rewards (e.g., students study together but take tests independently). A third is group rewards for individual learning, in which all students in a group receive the same reward, but the reward is given on the basis of average group performance or average group improvement. For example, a group of five students might study for a math test. They would receive a reward (such as class money to be traded for privileges or prizes) based on the average improvement over the last math test. Robert Slavin’s
Student Teams-Achievement Divisions (STAD) is an instructional format based on group rewards for individual learning. Slavin has provided evidence that reward structures that do not involve group rewards for individual learning do not benefit students. However, others such as Elizabeth Cohen have argued that when tasks are more complex and involve higher order thinking, rewards are not necessary in group work and may even be counterproductive. Guided Cooperation. Guided cooperation methods comprise a variety of specific methods for directing students to use targeted cognitive strategies during their interactions. For instance, scripted cooperation has students take turns summarizing text passages and giving feedback to each other on the quality of their summaries. These processes explicitly require students to engage in summarization and monitoring understanding, two strategies that are widely recommended to promote reading comprehension and memory. Guided peer questioning has students study a text by asking each other questions about the text; students construct questions by filling in question stems such as ‘‘Describe ____ in your own words’’ or ‘‘Explain why _____.’’ Researchers have found guided cooperation methods to be effective. Complex Tasks. More recent research on collaborative learning has focused on more complex, more authentic tasks. These tasks require use of multiple strategies and diverse knowledge. The tasks are complex enough that students must share ideas and information to succeed; even the highest performing students will fall short without access to others’ ideas. The tasks are challenging and open-ended, requiring students to share diverse perspectives to succeed. They often require students to consider multiple sources of information and to conduct various types of investigations. The use of variety in activities, including hands-on investigations, motivates students and encourages the use of deeper learning strategies. Group Investigation (developed and investigated by Sharan, Shachar, and Hertz-Lazarowitz and their colleagues) is one method that employs complex tasks. In Group Investigation, teachers select a general topic; student groups choose their own subtopics to explore. The groups follow a general procedure for investigating these subtopics. The work involves substantial research, culminating in a presentation to their peers. Students who learn through Group Investigation learn more than students in control classrooms without collaborative learning.
Collaborative and cooperative learning
Other methods that engage students in complex tasks include Aronson’s jigsaw, Brown and Campione’s communities of learners, the Johnson’s constructive controversy, and Bereiter and Scardamalia’s Knowledge Forum. Scaffolding Complex Tasks. Students can carry out complex tasks only with scaffolding—assistance that enables students to complete tasks that they could not have carried out without the assistance. Methods of providing scaffolding in group tasks include preteaching needed knowledge and strategies, decomposing tasks into simpler tasks, providing prompts that direct students to use particular strategies, and giving hints. Many researchers have also advocated assigning social and cognitive roles to each student in a group. For instance, one student in a group can be responsible for making sure that each student explains his or her ideas, another can check whether reasons are relevant, and so on. Another particularly effective method is having student groups evaluate their own performance using task-relevant criteria that they may help develop. Preparing Students for Group Work. Students can be prepared for group work through team-building activities and training students to use targeted social and cognitive strategies. There is no single best size and composition for groups. Effective methods have employed students working in groups ranging from two to five or six. Although some have recommended that groups be heterogeneous in terms of proficiency, gender, and ethnicity, there are problems with this proposal. Consistent assignment of heterogeneous groups in this way can actually enhance the salience of proficiency, gender, and ethnicity. One current recommendation is to assign groups flexibly according to interest in particular topics, a need to work on a particular strategy, and so on.
Collaborative Learning and Students at Risk for School Failure When designed well, collaborative learning is an instructional method that can enhance the performance of students at risk for school failure. In addition, there is evidence that collaborative learning can improve interethnic liking and can increase interethnic interactions. According to some scholars, collaborative learning methods particularly benefit students from
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cultural groups that value group collaboration over competition among individuals. Poorly designed collaborative learning has the potential to be detrimental to students with low academic status, including a variety of students at risk for school failure. Complex Instruction, developed by Elizabeth Cohen and her colleagues, is a format for collaborative learning that has been shown to be effective at reducing status differences and improving academic achievement. Complex instruction involves the use of complex tasks. Teachers employ a multipleability treatment, in which teachers repeatedly emphasize that there are many cognitive abilities needed to perform the task successfully, that no one student has all of the cognitive abilities, and that all students have some of the cognitive abilities. Teachers also publicly note the contributions of lower-status group members, and they train lower-status students to be expert in tasks so that they can teach their peers. The Fuchs’s Peer-Assisted Learning Strategies (PALS) and Palincsar’s reciprocal teaching are cooperative learning methods with demonstrated benefits for students who risk school failure. PALS is a pair-learning approach designed to improve students’ reading comprehension ability. It relies largely on guided questioning focused on retelling text passages, summarization, and predicting what will come next, and it also uses STAD-like reward structures. Reciprocal teaching involves students taking turns leading group discussions; it focuses on the strategies of generating questions, summarizing, clarifying, and predicting. Studies have documented benefits of well-designed collaborative reasoning for English as a Second Language (ESL) students in the United States (U.S.) ESL students in third and fourth grade made impressive gains in language arts, reading, mathematics, and oral English ability after participating Complex Instruction. PALS benefits ESL learners as well as learning disabled students. Another approach using STAD-like formats has also proven effective with ESL students. Thus, collaborative learning appears to be effective with language learners as well as with students of differing cultural backgrounds. Apart from carefully scripted approaches such as PALS, there is mixed evidence on whether collaborative learning is effective for students with learning disabilities (LD). Researchers have reported conflicting results. It is particularly important for teachers to attend to status differences when groups include special education students, as special education
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collaborative for academic, social and emotional learning (CASEL)
students are more likely to be ignored and left out during group learning. In a review article, O’Connor and Jenkins summarize several techniques that are likely to benefit students with LD’s in collaborative groups. These include (a) having LD students work in groups with helpful partners, (b) providing social skills training to LD students, (c) using the multiple-abilities manipulation described earlier, (d) establishing norms of respect, (e) encouraging students to keep track of how well they are distributing turns and providing help with strategies and conceptual knowledge to LD students outside of the group work time. See also: > Education; based education
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Suggested Reading Honig, M. I. (2003). Building policy from practice: District central office administrators’ roles and capacity for implementing collaborative education policy. Educational Administration Quarterly, 39(3), 292–338.
emphasizes the inextricable link between social and emotional skills and academic achievement, and uses rigorous science to influence policy and expand practice. Its current projects focus on implementation of sustainable schoolwide SEL, educational leadership, standards and assessment. CASEL, based at the University of Illinois at Chicago, has identified five core social and emotional competencies:
Collaborative for Academic, Social and Emotional Learning (CASEL) Jennifer Axelrod
Social and emotional learning (SEL) is the process of acquiring the skills to recognize and manage emotions, develop caring and concern for others, make responsible decisions, establish positive relationships, and handle challenging situations effectively. In an increasingly diverse global society, learning these skills is critical for the healthy development of young people. SEL as a field was established by the Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning (CASEL) founded by Daniel Goleman, Eileen Rockefeller Growald, and Timothy Shriver in 1994. CASEL’s mission is to establish social and emotional learning as an essential part of education by advancing both the science and evidence-based practice of SEL. CASEL’s work integrates cognitive, social, and affective components of learning,
Self-awareness: Accurately assessing one’s feelings, interests, values, and strengths; maintaining a wellgrounded sense of self-confidence. Self-management: Regulating one’s emotions to handle stress, control impulses, and overcome obstacles; progressing toward personal and academic goals; expressing emotions appropriately. Social awareness: Taking the perspective of and empathizing with others; recognizing and appreciating individual and group similarities and differences; using family, school, and community resources. Relationship skills: Establishing and maintaining healthy relationships; resisting social pressure; preventing, managing, and resolving interpersonal conflict; seeking help when needed. Responsible decision making: Making ethical and safe decisions respectful of others; considering likely consequences of various actions; applying decision-making skills to academic and social situations; contributing to the well-being of one’s school and community.
Evidence-based SEL programs teach these competencies intentionally, sequentially, and in ways that are developmentally and culturally appropriate. They establish contexts where these skills can be expressed, practiced, and encouraged. Optimally, programs are implemented in a coordinated manner throughout the school day; lessons are reinforced in the classroom, during out-ofschool activities, and at home; school staff receive ongoing professional development in SEL; and families, schools, and communities work together to promote children’s social, emotional, and academic success. Much of the educational power of SEL lies in its providing educators with a common language for working with children from different racial, ethnic, and socioeconomic backgrounds and for helping all children succeed in school and life. A meta-analysis by CASEL researchers highlights findings connecting SEL interventions with improvements in academics, including standardized test scores.
College board
CASEL’s home state of Illinois has provided leadership in recognizing SEL as essential to education, developing SEL Standards that specify the skills all children should have before graduation. Other school districts, states, and countries are building from the Illinois standards to guide their SEL policies and practices. See also: > Character education; > School roles in mental health; > Social skills
Suggested Reading Zins, J. E. et al. (2004). Building academic success on social and emotional learning: What does the research say? New York: Teachers College Press.
Suggested Resources Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning (CASEL)—www.casel.org: This website provides a step-by-step guide and 40 tools take school leaders and stakeholder teams through the process of planning for and accomplishing the changes needed for sustainable SEL.
College Board Kevin A Kupzyk . James A Bovaird
The College Board is a non-profit membership association that was assembled with the primary purposes of helping students find the right post-secondary school and prepare for college. It is composed of more than 4,300 universities, colleges, schools, and other educational organizations. The College Board, founded in 1900, is headquartered in New York City with regional offices throughout the United States (U.S.). Originally known at the College Entrance Examination Board, the main goal of the College Board is to ease the transition from high school to higher education for both students and colleges, additionally providing students with advice on applying for college and financial aid information. The College Board develops the SAT, the Preliminary SAT (PSAT)/National Merit Scholarship Qualifying Test (NMSQT), the Advanced Placement (AP) Program, and the College Level Examination Program (CLEP).
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The College Board developed the first ‘‘College Boards’’ for use as entrance examinations by 12 selective northeastern U.S. colleges to compare applicants from around the country as fairly as possible, despite diverse high school experiences. The ‘‘College Boards’’ became the SAT to provide colleges and universities with a tool to evaluate the college preparedness of potential students. Development of a nationally standardized test eliminated the need for students to take examinations at each school to which they were applying. The College Board contracts with the Educational Testing Service (ETS) to develop and administer the SAT, and to provide programs that help students prepare for the exam. The PSAT/NMSQT is a co-sponsored program by the College Board and the National Merit Scholarship Corporation (NMSC). Like the SAT, the PSAT/ NMSQT assesses critical reading, math problem-solving, and writing skills. However, the PSAT/NMSQT is taken prior to the SAT so that students may receive feedback on relative strengths and weaknesses so that they may better prepare for college. The PSAT/NMSQT is also the gateway for NMSC scholarship competition. The AP Program provides students with the opportunity to take college-level courses in high school. Upon successful completion of a final exam, students may earn college credit for the course at participating colleges. The CLEP Program allows students to demonstrate collegelevel achievement by passing an undergraduate level college exam. Thousands of colleges and universities grant credit and/or advanced standings upon passing CLEP examinations. Through the Office of Academic Initiatives, the College Board facilitates educational improvement through research involving assessment approaches, teaching, and learning. In consultation and collaboration with the academic community through supporting the work of academic researchers and scholars, the College Board also works to build consensus on academic standards, provide scholarly publications, develop academic programs, and organize conferences and seminars to inform professionals of developed standards and programs. Another entity within the College Board, the Office of Government Relations, works to shape federal and state legislation, regulations, and programs in order to further access and fairness in education for all students. Through work with strategic partners, the Government Relations staff deals with several policies such as assessment, financial aid, and affirmative action.
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Comics/jokes/humor
The governing body of the College Board is the Board of Trustees, which are elected and appointed by College Board member delegates. The Board of Trustees then nominates a chair and vice chair, who are elected bi-annually by College Board members. The president of the College Board is responsible for managing the organization. In addition to advising the president, trustees are responsible for making legal decisions and approving the mission, strategic goals, and budget. The College Board maintains regional offices located in six regions of the U.S., each provides services specific to their respective regions. Annual regional forums are held to bring secondary and post-secondary professionals together, allowing attendees to share ideas and knowledge regarding strategies for preparing students for higher education. The forums also provide a means of having their issues and ideas heard by member representatives who are a part of the College Board’s national assembly. See also: > Achievement tests; measurement
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Suggested Reading Johanek, M. C. (Ed.) (2001). A faithful mirror: Reflections on the college board and education in America. New York : The College Board.
Suggested Resources The College Board—www.collegeboard.com: This website contains information for students, parents, and educators on the services offered by the College Board and information about the organization.
Comics/Jokes/Humor Jesse A Metzger
Humor has long been recognized as having a valuable role in helping people cope with stressful situations and providing a change of perspective during times of difficulty. Although there is only a small body of
work on humor in the school setting, past research has examined how children use humor (e.g., what are the functions and role expectations of the ‘‘class clown’’), as well as whether humor influences children’s ability to learn in the classroom. Research on humor has also illuminated the extent to which it can be culturally mediated; that is, informed and influenced by an individual’s sociocultural background. Theory and research has frequently highlighted the social nature and functions of humor among children. Some see the role of class clown as an avenue through which children negotiate power in a social context. Humor offers a unique way for children to join the classroom ‘‘discourse,’’ to contribute to or alter the classroom environment (over which they may otherwise have no control). Some researchers also suggest that class clowns may use humor to overcome feelings of boredom or disconnectedness, or as a way to compensate for perceived educational or social inadequacies. A study that examined outcomes of perceptions of student humor, for instance, found that being the class clown led to prestige among boys attending private high schools. This finding supports the notion that humor can lead to desired social outcomes. The interaction of students’ and teachers’ use of humor has also been studied. Results show that greater ‘‘humor-orientation’’ in teachers was associated with increased student perceptions of learning, and that students with a high humor-orientation reported learning more with teachers who also had a high humororientation. In addition, this study found that humor was related to teachers’ responsiveness to student needs. Taken together, these findings indicate that humor has an important role in children’s social and academic development. This evidence is contrary to the traditional belief that student humor (whether in the form of ‘‘class clowning’’ or in terms of a general orientation toward and receptiveness to humor) is something to be curtailed or subjected to discipline. Given the cultural diversity that characterizes many schools in the United States (U.S.), any discussion of humor in the school setting must give attention to the ways in which the definition, meaning, and quality of humor can vary greatly as a function of culture. Humor may manifest itself differently and serve various functions within diverse ethnic, racial, gender, and other sociocultural groups. For example, research has shown that humor among boys in English secondary schools served as an organizing principle for masculinity. Elizabeth Simons found that among
Community approaches to improving child success
African American adolescents, joking (which included verbal contests often called ‘‘playing the dozens’’) revealed information about their attitudes and beliefs towards school that were not easily available from other sources. In the Latino community, bromas are jokes that may use sarcasm or irony to express underlying anger. Bromas may function as a way for children and adolescents to communicate defiant feelings without directly defying authority. These examples all serve to illustrate the importance of cultural context when understanding the role of humor in the school environment. See also: > Adolescence; > Childhood
Suggested Reading Hobday-Kusch, J., & McVittie, J. (2002). Just clowning around: Classroom perspectives on children’s humour. Canadian Journal of Education, 27, 195–210. Nayak, A., & Kehily, M. J. (2001). ‘Learning to laugh’: A study of schoolboy humour in the English secondary school. In W. Martino, & B. Meyenn (Eds.), What about the boys?: Issues of masculinity in schools (pp. 110–123). Buckingham, England: Open University Press. Simons, E. R. (1991). Students’ spontaneous joking in an urban classroom. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, Berkeley: University of California.
Community Approaches to Improving Child Success Charlynn Small . Velma LaPoint . Jo-Anne Manswell Butty . Cheryl Danzy
Community approaches to improving child and adolescent success involve families and communities. Community partnerships may include a bevy of persons and organizations that individually and collectively create, implement, evaluate, and fund these programs. Community approaches to improve child success can focus on two types of evidenced-based approaches—supplementary education (SE) and positive youth development (PYD) programs. Because (SE) seems to focus generally on improving child success in schools, through community approaches, PYD programming will be more fully described below on the basis of its broader scope.
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Defining Supplementary Education SE is defined as both formal and informal developmentally enriched learning activities that seek to improve youth academic achievement as well as social competence in schools by youth’s parents, family members, or staff of community-based organizations, generally occurring outside of schools and beyond their regular school day or year. Some scholars believe schools, as currently organized, cannot provide totally for the educational and social needs of youth. SE can occur within the youth’s families where parents provide children’s basic needs, influence youth’s friends and peers, guide and limit television viewing, provide reading materials and computer technologies, and have other family members’ (e.g., grandparents) assist students because of their own skills and experiences such as encouragement and other rewards for academic achievement, as well as traveling and related experiences with diverse cultural groups and in a variety of settings. SE can occur, for instance, in community settings such as mentoring and tutoring programs, weekend and after-school academies, faithbased activities, public libraries, and folkloric and cultural events such as museums exhibits, festivals, and other activities that expose youth to nationally and globally diverse cultures. The main thesis of SE is that high academic achievement and social competence are related to the students’ exposure to high quality family- and community-based learning activities that occur both in-school and out-of school, in support of academic learning and achievement—activities that are the ‘‘hidden curriculum’’ of high academic achievement. Higher income parents, families, and community members automatically and routinely provide these activities for their children because they have the resources. SE is generally underused for and by many low-income students of color— African Americans, Latinos, Native Americans and Asian Americans. The parents, family and community members, and educators of these students may not be economically positioned or know how to participate in SE opportunities.
Defining Positive Youth Development As a relatively new concept with few standardized definitions, PYD has generated abundant and increasing research work. Proponents, however, do agree on
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some basic constructs and ideals. A core concept is the coordination and delivery of a number of youth services such as those provided by various agencies, foundations, federal government programs, and organizations. The goal is to enhance overall youth health and well-being, social and behavioral competencies, and academic success. Professionals and others seek to link youth with the kinds of relationships and activities believed to facilitate healthy development. There are four PYD distinguishing features. First, it is comprehensive in its scope as it combines different components from various ecological contexts to create evidenced-based strategies, opportunities, and experiences that promote youth and community development. Second, PYD promotes access to resources and opportunities. Third, PYD is developmental in nature, with active youth participation being an essential component for optimal outcome. Fourth, PYD is symbiotic as different settings work collaboratively to positively influence youth and vice versa. Concepts and principles from multiple academic disciplines including education, medicine, public health, political science, psychology, social work, and sociology are used to produce strategies for successful youth outcomes. There are some additional important PYD tenets. First, many researchers have long considered that being healthy is defined as the absence of pathology. Risk factors for pathology, and interventions aimed at addressing them and their effects, have received considerable attention. Few scholars would argue that a reduction in youth at-risk behavior (e.g., substance use, non-marital sex, pregnancy, violence, school failure) would increase the probability of positive developmental outcomes. However, there is also considerable interest in examining and defining the attributes and traits that encourage resilience and lead to success in the family, school, workplace, and other community settings. There is also interest in broadening the view of developmental success to include not only factors that contribute to individual, but to community success. Second, most researchers show consensus around PYD principles: (a) all children can learn and are able to achieve success; (b) stakeholders, with a vested interest in having thriving families and communities, help youth achieve success by coordinating meaningful, nurturing relationships within these contexts; (c) PYD is enhanced exponentially when youth are engaged simultaneously in several different relationships; (d) ethnic, racial, gender, and social backgrounds should have no bearing on
youth’s ability to benefit from these nutrient-rich relationships; (e) the community should be viewed as an essential component where a system of services can be delivered; (f) youth must necessarily be engaged in their own development, actively involved in organizing these potentially successful relationships within and across their families and other ecological and familial contexts, which they should also help arrange; (g) developmental contexts in which nurturing relationships take place should be designed to support youth and provide potential opportunities and resources; (h) all youth have developmental assets (e.g., various skills, competencies, and values) that contribute to learning and success; and (i) an emphasis on reducing healthcompromising behavior. Third, several researchers have examined PYD, developmental psychopathology, and prevention terminology. Voluminous studies have been generated on interventions and preventive measures for curbing substance use, violence, teen pregnancy and other behavior challenges. Fewer studies have focused on best practices or strategies for promoting resilience and other prosocial behaviors. On the other hand, PYD is more than just prevention. Preventing youth problems by itself does not necessarily prepare youth for productive community membership. Prevention research tends to focus on the processes and dynamics involved in designing and mobilizing developmental settings. PYD mobilizes people and resources with the ultimate goal of promoting youth health and well-being. This view is taken a step further with an emphasis on the active role that young persons take in shaping their own contextual environments. PYD is considered a line of inquiry regarding the ways in which youth become motivated, socially competent, and compassionate adults.
Historical Notes The term PYD can be found in literature on juvenile delinquency as early as the late 1940’s. Researchers linked delinquent behavior casually with contextual factors, and believed that behavior change would not occur merely by ‘‘fixing the child.’’ This assumption generated further thought leading to initiatives designed to identify and organize community resources aimed at helping youth with special needs. In the early 1970’s, federal agencies began to re-conceptualize the notion of juvenile delinquency and examined what keeps ‘‘good youth on
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track,’’ versus ‘‘why do youth get into trouble?’’ Successful youth appeared to have four critical behavioral and attitudinal assets—competence, usefulness, belongingness, and, empowerment. In this re-conceptualization, the emergence of PYD is apparent—the importance of context in shaping development, as well as a shift toward viewing development in terms of strengths instead of weaknesses. This represented a major paradigmatic shift from prevention, although some researchers would argue that there is still a conceptual overlap between prevention and PYD. In addition to reconsidering the notion of context in shaping development, federal agencies began to seriously consider the benefits of enhanced resources and opportunities for all youth. Another major influence of this paradigm shift was the research and reports by the Carnegie Corporation focusing on an alarming trend of 10–15-year-olds being exposed to and engaging in high rates of risk behaviors and developmental threats. In addition, it was determined that a high percentage of young persons were in greater need for assistance than was originally believed. Proposed interventions for this group of youth were focused less on services offered and on treatment, but more on environmental influences. Interventions were aimed at family, school, and other community contexts. Major emphases were placed on reengaging youth and families. There were also other federally and foundation-sponsored conferences focusing on the concept of PYD. In the mid 1990’s, a reaffirmation of earlier Carnegie reports called for community mobilization and systemic change.
School-based Programs For the majority of youth, school-based programs generally are linked to successful academic outcomes. In addition, findings indicate that these associations can be generalized across youth from various racial, ethnic, and socioeconomic groups. For example, results from several studies suggest that some urban African American youth participants in school-based programs viewed them positively and regarded their school environments as more supportive than students who were not participants in these types of activities. Research suggests that highly structured, school-based programs organized outside-of-school hours offer promise for the development of youth, including certain underserved youth from some urban, racial, and ethnic groups.
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However, there is also evidence to suggest that a number of the stereotypes and misperceptions about youth of color were developed, reinforced, and perpetuated in public schools. African American and Latino children have often been perceived as unsuccessful academically. Historically, African American youth have been placed disproportionately in special education classes or programs, or have been placed in alternative education programs. Research indicates similar trends for Latino children whose numbers also are increasing among those attending beleaguered Title 1 schools. Nearly one third of Latinos, over age 25, completed less than 9th grade. Low high school graduation rates and high drop out rates for this group suggests that this is a trend that will continue. Low academic achievement has long been associated with disruptive behavior. Devaluing racial and ethnic group students’ cultural wealth further aggravates low academic achievement. Students, who often become disengaged from teachers and from what schools symbolize, giveup trying, are ‘‘pushed out’’ or ‘‘drop out’’ of schools. Given these circumstances, community-based programs are alternatives that can have a significant role in the development of these children, as they provide a context for the rediscovery and formation of their individual and cultural identities.
Community-based Programs Research work documents the program characteristics of PYD for multicultural youth placed at-risk for problematic behavior. Community-based programs provide non-formal learning opportunities for youth, with the purpose of creating high quality experiences that are responsive to different youths’ interests and developmental needs. About seven million children participate in some type of out-of-school program. And while this number includes children from many underrepresented groups, reports indicate that youth of color participate in community-based programs far less than White European youth. The degree to which youth participate in programs depends on several important factors including opportunities and motivation. Youth of color tend to participate in these types of programs at much lower rates, in part because of structural barriers such as lack of availability, location, and transportation. Lower rates of involvement in community-based programs by children of color have led some to conclude that approaches that take into
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account children’s cultural and linguistic backgrounds should be developed with the assumption being that programs that are culturally responsive would lead to increased participation and thus, greater PYD. When designing community-based programs aimed at facilitating PYD development for youth of color, especially in urban communities, several important community contexts should be considered. First, activities that occur within safe and nurturing contexts, with caring adults, allow for self-understanding and acceptance. These programs are also attractive to parents and family members who live in high-risk problem neighborhoods. The facilitation of mentor relationships, which contributes to the development of certain behavioral attributes, can also occur within these contexts. Another aspect to consider is that urban communities are often comprised of both similar and diverse racial and ethnic families. These communities are ideal settings for cultural identity formation and awareness. Finally, due to certain social conditions (e.g., physical isolation, concentrated poverty, and public neglect) urban youth are frequently exposed to risk factors that challenge PYD. Thus, youth living in these conditions, often have had to adopt value systems and survival strategies that resemble and are different from other communities bereft of these conditions. The process of identity formation for children of color, which is derived in part from the community context, is essential to their healthy psychosocial development. The role of community in this process often rests in large measure on the make-up of the community as well as its relation to neighboring communities. For example, the socialization of United States (U.S.)born Latino children is that of the barrio or Spanishspeaking segment of many urban neighborhoods. A variety of diverse groups from Central and South America have migrated to neighborhoods that have long been inhabited by many Puerto Ricans. Certain aspects within these communities have changed considerably as a result. The Puerto Rican corner grocery or bodegas has changed into abarroteras, or grocery and general stores due to the arrival of Mexicans (particularly from the state of Puebla). Because of the changing dynamics, U.S.-born Puerto Ricans living in them may consider themselves mostly in terms of their U.S. experience rather than in terms of their Puerto Rican heritage. Conversely, Latino youth from more homogenous segments probably have a stronger identity with people in the region or segment where they live. Still, for other U.S.-born Latino youth the situation
becomes even more confounded if they also have some African ancestry as is the case with Hispanic Caribbeans. This is just one example of the relevancy of the community cultural context that can influence the process of identity formation for youth of color. For this reason, it should be considered in the creation of PYD programs. Additional challenges are faced by other youth of color. For example, African Americans who live in some urban communities must confront challenges posed by stereotypical images often presented by the media and other venues as deviants (e.g., teen pregnancy, substance abuse, gratuitous violence, and welfare dependency). These youth must consider these stereotypical, cultural icons as they struggle to form their own individual identities. Consequently, programs for these youth usually focus on intervention and prevention, rather than on enhancing the attributes that will make them successful as adults. In addition, because the various cultures of these youth frequently are viewed as lacking rather than distinct, much of their individual ethnic identity is lost when efforts are made by schools and other institutions to assimilate these children into the mainstream culture with no regard for their own. Another example relating to stereotypes of ethnic minority youth relates to Asian American youth. Asian Americans are a diverse group of persons including Japanese, Chinese, Koreans, Filipinos, Indians, and Vietnamese. Asian Americans are often referred to as the ‘‘model minority’’ because it is believed that they have overcome challenges of racism, low socioeconomic status, unfamiliarity with American culture, and limited English language proficiency to attain educational and economic success comparable to or even exceeding that of White European Americans. While there is a vast body of research on high academic achievement among Asian Americans, it is accompanied by findings that some Asian American students during adolescence have negative and mixed attitudes and behaviors about achievement. They experience, for instance, resentment of parental/teacher/peer expectations and pressures to succeed, refusing to study, skipping classes, and not intending to pursue college-indicating struggle and ambivalence toward academic achievement. It should also be noted that within certain sub-groups there are low-income Asian Americans who experience social problems associated with this status (e.g., inadequate basic living needs, gang violence, and neighborhood crime).
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Neighborhood-based Programs High rates of participation in neighborhood-based programs by urban students have been reported. This seems to suggest that program participation within this context may have important implications for these youth. There are numerous accounts in the literature of the benefits of youth programs in urban and disadvantaged neighborhoods. Results of several studies examining the effects of Boys and Girls Clubs, and similar organizations within these environments, indicate lower incidence of drug-related arrests, and fewer documented reports of juvenile crime. Another benefit noted regarding many of these types of out-of-school organizations is that they often reach out to aid families of the youth they serve. As with any organized program, these neighborhoodbased out-of-school programs may not prove successful for all youth. Some youth may profit from one aspect or component of a program while others find no value in that same component. The extent to which this occurs may depend on factors such as gender, race, ethnicity, or individual needs. Also, the quality of the program will likely determine its contribution to the promotion of PYD or not. Sometimes these programs are less wellstructured, offer fewer substantive activities, have irregular hours, and may not be well-supervised by responsible adults. Youth participating in programs with less rigorous standards have engendered more behavioral problems than youth who did not attend these programs.
Faith-based Programs Studies have shown that youth who have a faith or spiritual base show lower rates of delinquent and antisocial behaviors. However, it is not known whether lower rates of problem behavior among youth with a spiritual or religious base are correlated with religious or spiritual group affiliation. For some youth, especially racial and ethnic group youth, spirituality and religiosity may be tied to their general cultural background, which happens particularly among some African Americans, Native Americans, Latinos, and Asian Americans. There is also research suggesting that other diverse groups of young people (e.g., rural or suburban working class) may profit from participation in faith-based group activities as well. Results of several studies examining youth involvement in religious or community-service oriented activities were encouraging. Positive outcomes
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associated with these groups were increased self-esteem, fewer incidents of problem behavior, and improved efforts toward academic achievement.
Team Sport Activities Rates of youth participation in team sport activities vary. Research suggests that adolescent females engage in both school-sponsored athletics and out-of-school athletics at a rate much lower than males who seem to have more confidence in their athletic abilities, and place a higher value on athletic achievement than females. Results of one longitudinal study showed that between age 9 and 17, girls evidenced a sharp decrease in their levels of physical activity. By age 17, many of the respondents (significantly more girls of color in urban communities) indicated that they engaged in no leisure-time physical activities, which suggests that they are in danger of not getting enough exercise. Many community-based organizations with limited budgets and well-established athletics programs for boys tend to fund those programs almost to the exclusion of programs for girls. This exclusion significantly limits opportunities for girls to develop their skills, and gain the other benefits promoted by team athletics. Research suggests females’ self-evaluations may also be compromised by limited participation in these activities. Another study indicated that team sports involvement predicted greater self-esteem in a sample of urban teenage girls, suggesting obvious potential benefits. Budget cuts to funding for other publicly supported services such as parks and recreation programs also limit opportunities for participation in team athletics. Low budgets and lower requirements to school health and physical education curriculum further limit options for team sports, and may contribute in part to an alarming trend in the increasing rates of childhood obesity which poses significant health problems (e.g., hypertension, diabetes, musculoskeletal and joint problems, and depression) to youth and their future adult health status. Organized team sport activities have both proponents and opponents of youth engagement in these activities. Proponents suggest that youth can gain enhanced social skills, increased self-esteem, and increased academic achievement while opponents indicate participation in team sports has been associated with problem behaviors such as underage drinking, vandalism, and less value placed on team collaboration. While few
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studies document the effects of team activities on the development of low-income youth, there is evidence that these children engage in organized athletic activities far less frequently than do other children. A better understanding of the importance of participation in organized team athletics and the skills, competencies, and other benefits gained from it, could facilitate greater efforts to have more equitable programs to meet the needs of all youth.
Mentoring Programs More than 2 million children have established mentoring relationships with supportive non-parent, adult role models. Mentors can be teachers, extended family members, neighbors, and volunteers from a range of community-based, profit and non-profit organizations to help facilitate PYD. Mentoring includes a variety of approaches to help young persons with tasks assisting with homework, attending cultural events, and negotiating difficult personal situations (e.g., conflicts with family, teachers). Adults who build successful relationships with youth usually express a passion about young people and their work with them. They tend to believe that the work they do makes a real difference in the lives of youth. While research suggests that young persons from any socioeconomic background can benefit from mentoring, there is evidence that suggests that welladjusted, middle class children profit less from these types of relationships than do youth dealing with some adversity, including those living under high-risk conditions as well as those from affluent backgrounds. Some research indicates that an estimated two-thirds of mentoring relationships with youth living in high poverty have been unsuccessful. This failure is largely due to a poor match between adults and youth. Often if the mentor and youth are from extremely different backgrounds, there are few similarities upon which to build a relationship. There is evidence to suggest that young persons fare poorly when repeatedly exposed to short-lived relationships. For this reason, a good fit is critically important between youth and mentors. Similarly, it has been found that not all youth are well-suited for mentoring. Youth who present serious emotional or behavioral challenges often require professional treatment, and mentoring should not be viewed as a substitute for counseling or therapeutic services. Mentors, on the other hand, can provide
knowledge, encourage positive attitudes, and facilitate learning of skills and discipline for life success especially in apprenticeships, internships, or similar programs organized around performance or production of final products.
Rites of Passage Programs The purpose of education is to transmit accumulated wisdom and knowledge of a society from one generation to the next to aid in preparing youth for membership, and promoting their active participation in the maintenance and development of that society. The system of education in any country reflects that culture’s perspectives, values, mores, and traditions and thus, countries and societies often differ in their educational systems. Consequently, immigrant children or those not indigenous to a specific country are subject to a socialization process and participation in an educational system that may or may not value their primary culture. Scholars have argued that historically, American public education has focused on one purpose for White European Americans, and on another for youth, namely African Americans, Asian Americans, Latinos, and American Indians. They have asserted that European Americans have been educated to assume positions of power in society, while other groups have been educated to fill less powerful or subordinate positions. This view suggests the continued importance of providing education, socialization, and other expressions from the original cultural perspective of the group. One strategy used to meet the educational needs of these groups is rites of passage programs. A rite is a ceremony or celebration and passage refers to movement from one stage to another. Regarding African American rites of passage programs, five stages of development have been identified in the traditional African spiritual life cycle: (a) birth refers to passage from the spiritual world; (b) puberty refers to passage from childhood to adulthood; (c) marriage refers passage to communal and independent living; (d) eldership refers to passage to the stage of wisdom; and (c) death refers to passage back to the spiritual world. Many cultural rites of passage programs focus on the adolescent phase because this is the point at which children are socialized and prepared for adulthood. Rites of passage programs for these youth are necessarily guided, educational processes which include certain developmental tasks. The goals are to facilitate knowledge and the acceptance of the responsibilities,
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privileges, and duties of adult members of their society. Within the context of rites of passage programs, youth can be exposed to some of the cultural experiences and history lessons that will facilitate knowledge and acceptance of one’s own cultural richness. Also within this context, youth have opportunities to participate in activities that help them acquire an appreciation of community engagement through service. Research indicates that a great number of these types of programs have different populations, goals, and objective and have positive outcomes for African American youth, parents, and family members. Another example of a rites of passage program is the Minnesota-based Chicano–Latino Youth Leadership Institute (ChYLI) which addressed a variety of challenges, e.g., familial disruption, substance use and other high risk behaviors, low educational attainment, and delinquency. The program sought to encourage, empower, and develop leadership skills of Chicano Latino youth. PYD was promoted through a number of leadership activities, community service projects, and different supervised workshops with an emphasis on increasing knowledge and understanding of Chicano Latino culture. Positive outcomes included increased levels of community involvement, improved peer relationships, and higher graduation rates than non-program participating Chicano Latinos. Another rites of passage program offered by Lane Community College in Oregon initially targeted African American teens as a way to intervene in the lives of those who might be at risk of academic failure and drop-out, substance abuse, or delinquency. Through self-development exercises, literary arts, history classes, and career planning workshops the program sought to help youth establish strong identities and lasting connections to heritage, community, and to college in that predominantly European American environment. The program was successful and subsequently, three other rites of passage programs were developed for Asian Americans, American Indians, and Latino youth using each group’s own ethnic history and cultural traditions as the basis distinctive for their program’s curricula.
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color, given that such programs are effective in improving youth academic achievement and social competence. There is a need for parents and family members to provide for SE and PYD programming, although some parents and family members may not be able to afford such programs; however, some families may be able to pay varying fees. At the same time, some community-based organizations, with government and private corporate and foundation support, may be able to provide for such programming as they seek the most effective ways that these programs can be sustained in order to promote PYD and outcomes. It is critical that professionals understand the youth’s culture and receive education in undergraduate and graduate programs as well as career professional development exercises if the U.S. wants to successfully face the challenges of increasing racial and ethnic groups in schools, communities, and society at large. See also: > Career education; > Community interventions with diverse youth; > Cultural resilience; > Ethnic minority youth; > Mentoring diverse youth; > Multicultural education; > Prevention
Suggested Reading Benson, P. L., Scales, P. C., Hamilton, S. F., & Sesma, A. (2006). Positive youth development: Theory, research, and applications. In W. Damon, & R. M. Lerner (Eds.), Handbook of child psychology, (6th edn.) (pp. 894–941). Hoboken, NJ: Wiley. Clauss-Ehlers, C. S., & Weist, M. D. (2004) Community planning to foster resilience in children. New York: Kluwer Academic Press. Congress, E. P., & Gonzalez, M. J. (Eds.) (2005). Multicultural perspectives in working with families, (2nd ed.). New York: Springer. Maton, K. I., Schellenbach, C. J., Leadbeater, B. J., & Solarz, A. L. (Eds.) (2004). Investing in children, youth, families, and communities: Strengths-based research and policy. Washington, D.C.: American Psychological Association. Morrissey, K. M., & Werner-Wilson, R. J. (2005). The relationship between out-of-school activities and positive youth development: An investigation of the influences of communities and family. Adolescence, 40, 67–86.
Suggested Resources Conclusions There is a need for increased access to SE and PYD programming, especially for low-income youth of
Kansas State University Community Health Institute—http://www. kstatechi.org/links_youth.html: This section of the K-State CHI website provides links to several other websites with useful information about promoting positive youth development.
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Community interventions with diverse youth
Community Interventions with Diverse Youth Robbie J Steward . Chandra M Donnell
Of this nation’s 63 million children, approximately 15 % (9.5 million) suffer from emotional or life traumas that require psychological service intervention. Of these, over 70% will not receive adequate treatment. What must the mental health profession do to increase accessibility of services to children so that the probability of their academic and life success will increase? The following presents an overview of issues associated with school- versus community-based service delivery and describes a non-traditional model of training and service delivery to children and adolescents based on comprehensive collaboration between the two.
School-based Service Delivery Although one identified site for intervention in the social and psychological adjustment of children is the school building, there are several reasons that services should expand beyond the school setting. The following section identifies and discusses a select number of these reasons. First, not all school-age children, required by state law to attend school, attend regularly. Parents with severe psychological or physiological concerns are at times unable to function sufficiently to prepare children for school. Students in urban areas who have poor attendance during high school have been found to have sporadic attendance during the elementary years as well. Instead of attending school, older children may assume family responsibilities usually reserved for adults (e.g., primary caretakers of younger siblings or disabled or impaired parents or guardians, and/or major contributors to household finances). Irregular access to transportation may also contribute to nonattendance. Children may decide independently not to attend without parents’ awareness for a wide variety of reasons. Under- or unsupervised older children with psychological (e.g., depression) or physiological (e.g., substance addiction) concerns may be incapable of functioning adequately enough to attend school or take advantage of services when they do attend. Because of budget cuts that reduce staff, who typically attends to
truancy, absenteeism may continue indefinitely. Unfortunately, it is also in these school districts that experience the most budget cuts that district policies allow a larger number of absenteeism before effecting academic progress. For example, in some school districts, promotion to the next grade level after having missed up to 45 days in the academic year is common. Teachers and administrators who do not regularly monitor attendance exacerbate the problem. It would be these children, those who are not present and who most need guidance, assistance, and support, who would benefit least from school-only based interventions. Unfortunately, these characteristics are typical descriptors of urban school settings, which typically have large racial/ ethnic minority student populations from lower socioeconomic backgrounds and a larger representation of students who are identified as possibly finding academic failure. In many academic settings the most vulnerable often do not receive services that address children’s psychological/emotional well-being. The second reason is that the probability for exposure to counseling appears to increase with age and with the severity of the symptoms exhibited by the child. Although early identification of problem behavior does occur at the elementary level, symptoms typically remain ignored until middle- or high school. There appears to be a direct correlation between the perception of the severity of the child’s problem and the physical size of the child. For example, symptomology in children appear worthy of attention by mental health professionals only when the behavior poses an immediate threat to the school, teachers, and/or other students. Consequently, those children who exhibit signs indicating need for intervention may not receive necessary attention from a mental health professional until school disciplinary activity or the legal system requires such. Intervention, then, only occurs in conjunction with punishment. Time delay in service delivery and the presentation of service with punishment increases the probability of the development of selfdefeating cognitions and behaviors that do not respond easily to intervention. Such delays in assessment and intervention increase the probability of prolonged experiences of academic failure. Third, school-only intervention strategies perpetuate the notion that the ‘school system’ bears the primary responsibility of attending to the cognitive and affective needs of the child. Although often expected, teachers are not trained to attend to the many emotional needs and skill deficits resulting
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from a child’s developmental delays, early life trauma, or neglect. In addition, the school schedule and infrastructure in its current form does not all allow school counselors, who are trained to implement prevention and intervention programming, to attend to the comprehensive set of emotional needs and issues that an increasing number of students bring to the setting. Even when available for providing counseling services, the average counselor-student ratio is 1:500 in many high schools. In summary, school interventions alone appear to provide the opportunity for service delivery to those children who need it the least and are the most functional. This is a positive outcome for these children need guidance and assistance too. However, this focus of service delivery indicates that many children who are in dire need of mental health intervention, will not receive adequate treatment and, may consequently experience the long-term, future consequences of untreated psychological/emotional ills. The rate at which the problems of children are increasing is causing grave concern among clinical, agency, and school counselors alike. Community-wide mental health intervention programming, which is inclusive of the school setting, would seem imperative in service delivery that would meet the needs of all children.
Barriers to Community-wide Mental Health Service Delivery for Youth Although the points listed above support the necessity of community-wide intervention for youth, there are at least three reasons that explain why such services seldom occur within non-traditional settings. First, university academic departments responsible for the training of school psychologists and other mental health professionals (i.e., counselors, counseling psychologists, clinical psychologists, psychiatrists, and social workers) may have limited vision about opportunities for training and service delivery to those who need it most. For example, in spite of having long-standing ties within specific communities, these ties may only include schools, mental health agencies, and hospitals as sites for practica and internships. Trainees may not be familiar enough to venture out beyond these traditional connections or even encouraged to think about doing so. In addition, guidelines for tenure and promotion may not support faculty to
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expend the necessary time and effort in the development of training sites with no current structure for mental health service delivery to children. Status quo is maintained. Another example is that academic departments and programs may work independently to develop guidelines and opportunities for practica and internships within communities. Creative thinking about how departments across different disciplines might collaborate to provide training opportunities that facilitate the development of competent mental health service provider to children in non-traditional, more efficient ways may not be conceptualized and implemented. Second, although prevention is becoming a primary focus of service delivery within some communities, intervention activities consume most professionals’ schedules. Current training sites may serve clientele who: are aware of the concepts of mental health and mental illness; have been referred by another professional (i.e., physician, judge, or school); and/or, value the current traditional means of service delivery. Potential sites for prevention for a broader clientele are often overlooked given that the need for intervention appears so much greater among those who are currently accessing the services. The third reason that impedes community-wide programming is rooted in the community culture. For many community members, contact with mental health professionals often occurs simultaneously with discipline or punishment by the school or legal system. What makes this tie between therapy and punishment even more binding is that therapy is recommended as a last alternative, when the patience of all other adult authorities has been diminished. For this reason, many community members, who are most in need, choose to avoid mental health professionals. Those who are mandated to access services (e.g., court-referrals) may be labeled as resistant by professionals. In such cases, psychologists, psychiatrists, social workers, and counselors are perceived as the enemy no matter where they may be located. The onus is on the mental health profession to provide a more salient interpretation of services provided. Building trust within the community between traditional and future sites for service delivery is critical. Developing new opportunities for prevention and treatment intervention activities at sites where children and adolescents may experience empathy, unconditional positive regard, support, and guidance without a sense of punishment will begin the process of altering negative community cultural norms related to mental health and mental illness.
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The fourth, and perhaps most critical barrier for a limited service delivery focus is the lack of available funding. Without the necessary creative collaboration, the implementation of traditional service delivery within the confines of well-established and financially secure agencies and institutions (e.g., schools, hospitals, and community mental health agencies) is easier than considering the expense of the development of non-traditional community sites. Clearly defining key deterrents to the expansion of mental health service delivery to children in conjunction with, but beyond the confines of the school, is the first step of the development of effective communitywide programming. The following section describes one model for program development specifically designed to circumvent each of the deterrents indicated above.
School Community-University Collaboration: A Model for Community-Wide Training and Service Delivery This model is based upon a set of general guidelines associated with the work of Professional Development Schools (PDSs), which are models of optimal levels of collaboration between university faculty and kindergarten through grade 12 school settings. The following presents a list of underlying guidelines that expand mental health service delivery to children and adolescents in a cost-effective and efficient manner in the author-developed Student-Teacher-Parent Support Unit regarding work in a PDS: (a) collaboration among school settings, community sites, and university training programs is imperative; (b) the university must assume the leadership role in the development of the collaborative relationship across campus and with target community sites; (c) the collaboration must be reflected in well-integrated service delivery offices within the physical structure of a location frequented by community members; (d) the collaboration must be reflected in a well-integrated staff consisting of individuals from the surrounding community as well as those from the university; (e) the collaboration must be reflected in the development of the method of service delivery and based upon the needs of the community organization; (f) the collaboration must be reflected in the development of in-service training modules developed by both university and community staff; (g) program development must include a balance
of both prevention and treatment intervention components; (h) guidelines for program and staff evaluation must be well defined prior to the implementation of the program; and, (i) well-defined research questions must guide the collection of information from staff and those served for the purpose of program evaluation and research so that outcomes might contribute to the body of knowledge addressing service delivery to youth within the community. These guidelines, which closely parallel and circumvent the barriers indicated in the previous section, can be used in the development of a school and communitywide, training and research model for mental health service delivery to children. This Service-delivery, Training, and Research Model for school-community intervention, from this point on will be referred to as STaR. The STaR model serves as a means to more substantially link children’s emotional/psychological health with that of academic persistence and success through the development of effective school, university, and community site liaisons.
The Role of the University in the Implementation of the STaR Model Universities provide resources that would certainly circumvent costs of the expansion of service delivery to children and adolescents within the community. Faculty participants bring a comprehensive knowledge of theory and methods of intervention, grant writing skills, and academic appointments that allow time for service. Undergraduate and graduate students, who are required to enroll in both (usually unpaid) practica and internships, bring energy, eagerness to use newly acquired skills and to positively influence children’s lives, as well as a willingness to learn. Both bring the skills and interest in the process of program development, program implementation, and research that will be provided by each site. Incentives to engage in each of these activities fit with universities’ guidelines for degree attainment for students (e.g., theses and dissertations) and the tenure and promotion process for faculty (e.g., teaching, research, and service). Training within such a setting would insure trainees with in-vivo cross-cultural challenges of not only working with children and parents who may be culturally different, but also having to form working alliances with colleagues having different worldviews and theoretical perspectives. Both faculty and trainees
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would be required to make cultural shifts in work within non-traditional training settings. Program evaluation and ongoing data collection would serve as incentives to both faculty and students who are committed to research.
Implementation of the STaR Model First, participating faculty and students within departments responsible for the training of mental health professionals (e.g., school psychology, psychiatry, clinical psychology, counseling, counseling psychology, educational psychology, social welfare, the ministry, and others) must dialogue about expectations for future training, practicum or internship on-site supervision, program development, and service delivery. The outcome of this contact should be threefold: one set of guidelines for practicum/internship experiences; one set of expectations for onset supervision; and, schedules for volunteer faculty rotations for the on-site supervision of trainees within non-traditional sites for training, research, and service delivery. All three must represent professional organizational and ethical standards that are satisfactory to representatives from each discipline. This multidisciplinary approach in the development of human service teams has been found to be successful in community service delivery and to positively influence the professional development of all participating parties. Second, the objective of regularly scheduled meetings of faculty who volunteer to serve as on-site supervisors should change over time. Initially, site identification, strategies for contact, and the generation of specific research questions and methods for data collection will be addressed. (After sites have been identified and staffed with trainees, the role of these meetings would be the supervision of supervision, including the discussion of ongoing issues presented to trainees at the site.) Third, faculty would present trainees with descriptions of each practicum/internship site. Two levels of trainees would be targeted: those who are prepared to enroll in practicum and internship hours; and, those who are beyond this point in their training (e.g., enrollment in dissertation credits). Barring any licensing requirements for supervision, the more advanced students could serve as on-site supervisors in conjunction with the faculty on-site representative. Doctoral level clinical supervision coursework with a practicum component is another alternative resource
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for advanced level trainees’ contribution to service delivery at no cost. Initially, participating faculty and trainees across academic disciplines would meet to discuss training guidelines and to generate possible research questions that interest trainees, particularly those who are at the thesis or dissertation stage of their program. However, after these discussions, supervision of trainees, program maintenance, evaluation and improvement become primary objectives. Fourth, once sites and participating trainees have been identified (as discussed below), trainees must participate in staff orientation and be prepared to provide a staff orientation to the training expectations of the departmental faculty. These dialogues would result in a shared understanding of how community site and university staff might remain beneficial to each other in the process of service delivery to the clientele. Fifth, for those sites without available administrative support staff for record keeping, participating faculty would contact local community colleges, vocational schools, and secretarial schools or schools of business to identify interns who are available and interested in having an experience in office management. Current site administrative support staff and university faculty would assume responsibility for the supervision and evaluation of these interns. Sixth, all participants would work collaboratively to develop a site-appropriate office structure for record keeping, the scheduling of individual as well as group services provided, and monitoring of client contact and consultation hours. Supervisors would work closely with trainees in the development of a balanced training experience that includes: activities related to professional development (e.g., record-keeping, case presentations, program development, supervision, consultation); intervention and prevention service delivery to clientele; supervision; and consultation with site staff. Once the structure has been implemented and staff members have been identified, like all other well-established programs, maintenance and refinement of service delivery and program evaluation become the remaining objectives.
Identifying Potential Sites for STaR: The Criteria for Site Selection First, potential, optimal community site selections would be those where both children and parents or
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guardians frequent on a regular basis. This would be particularly important given that parental or guardian consent is required for professional contact with children. Given some of the barriers discussed above, opportunities for service delivery would occur in sites where children are in their natural settings beyond the school day. School administrators’ and counselors’ survey of students and parents regarding children’s out of school activities would identify these potential sites. Second, sites would include staff members who already have regularly scheduled, close contact with children. This provides faculty and trainees with some understanding of the issues individual children bring to the setting, and assists in the identification of the need for assessment and potential points of intervention for service delivery. Third, targeted sites must agree with the basic ‘required’ professional guidelines for training that have been developed by faculty from multiple disciplines as reflected in the policies and practices of respective professional organizations and state professional codes. Much discussion about the required guidelines for training across different disciplines is needed prior to this stage, and it is critical that this agreement is in written form and signed by all parties involved prior to contact with community settings. Fourth, sites must agree to the underlying STaR guidelines that assert the need for integration of the university staff within the existing structure and the collaboration between the two in service delivery to children and their parents within the community. Existing cultural norms that adhere to legal guidelines of practice and have indicated some level of efficacy over time are to be respected and serve as the basis of all other practices that university faculty and trainees bring to the setting. Respect of these norms should be integrated into the final agreement of policy and practices in service delivery and result in a document signed by all parties represented. University representatives should anticipate some resistance and skepticism in efforts to establish working alliances with sites wherein the delivery of mental health services has not previously existed. On the other hand, they also must be prepared to listen for and correct unreasonable expectations that community members may have about the outcome of their presence. Sensitivity to the realistic reservations that many community members may have about mental health professionals and psychology, in general, is a necessity. Adherence to
the principles of collaboration and integration of community, university, and school staff is key to success. The following is a list of potential community sites for mental health service delivery to children: before and after school programs; churches, temples, and mosques; physician’s, especially, pediatricians’ offices; community childcare services (e.g., Kindercare, university and community college childcare and child development centers); learning centers; Big Brothers and Big Sisters; YMCA and YWCA; community youth centers; women’s shelters; women’s resource centers; safe houses for abused children and those who have run away from home. All are sites wherein the presence of children is ‘normal’ and service delivery can occur without interfering with children’s acquisition of academic competence during the regular school day schedule. In addition, for the most part, these are settings that are ‘parent-approved’ and existing staff members not only have ongoing contact with parents or guardians, but also have some sense of children’s family dynamics. Notice that sites listed allow for service delivery to children across all developmental stages and, therefore, for early intervention and follow-up as children may move from one setting to another as they mature.
The STaR Model and Service Delivery To overcome any negative perceptions related to the profession of mental health it is critical that each site adheres to a preventive psychology model of service delivery that is more future-oriented than most ‘treatment’ oriented community facilities. In the field of psychiatry, there is one model that emphasizes the continuity that exists between what is commonly thought of as ‘prevention’ and what is normally termed ‘treatment’. This model divides preventive activities into three different categories: primary, secondary and tertiary. Primary prevention aims to reduce incidence by preventing new cases of the development of disorders or dysfunctional behavior sets. Clienteles who receive primary prevention are those who are completely free of dysfunctional behaviors and who may be at risk for developing such disorders. Secondary prevention is intended to result in early detection of a disorder and to provide effective treatment at an early stage in the development of the disorder. It differs from most treatment because early cases are actively sought out and
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treatment is likely to be less intensive than would be the case if the disorder had progressed further. Shortening the duration of the disorder and the overall prevalence within the community are the primary objectives. Tertiary prevention is intended to prevent disabilities and handicaps that may be associated with a disorder. The idea that a disorder need not necessarily produce disability, and that a disability need not necessarily result in handicap, is central to the notion of tertiary prevention. It must be noted that although there are several other approaches to prevention that indicate points of assessment and intervention within communities, the typology fits that of the STaR model for service delivery to children. For instance, it expands the opportunity for parents to access mental health services for their children at sites where they are most familiar and comfortable. Enlisting support and guidance from strangers is not ‘normal’ for many within certain communities. In addition, it has been found that the majority of potentially helpful interpersonal transactions for people with psychological problems take place outside the formal mental health system and the majority of psychological problems never find their way to mental health professionals at all. It would seem critical that mental health professionals are trained to become integral parts of socially accepted sites within the community culture instead of remaining an isolated entity to be approached only under the most extreme and severe circumstances (e.g., post-incarceration) or becoming an intrusive force which evades the personal life-space of community members without invitation as part of an intervention plan (e.g., home visits). Although the use of a well-established theoretical model in the development of assessments and intervention strategies is supported, it is also strongly recommended that existing modes of service delivery be staffed by those who are not formal mental health agents, but mental health agents nonetheless (paraprofessionals). The reason for this recommendation is due to confusing results in the literature that indicate no significant difference in service delivery outcomes regardless of the status of the service deliverer (professional vs. paraprofessional). In fact, a meta-analysis of the literature comparing the client contact outcome between professionals and paraprofessionals favored paraprofessionals in service delivery. Because the STaR model advocates collaboration, it is important that faculty and university students take every opportunity
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to learn what is currently effective in the informal service delivery system within the community site. Although indicated above, several modes of service delivery that fit the needs of the site and that of the surrounding community should be considered for implementation. Individual contact with youth and parents would only be one of many intervention strategies available. Structured therapy, and support groups for both parents/guardians and children would be provided. Family therapy, parent training, and couples’ groups are other available options. Skills training (e.g., social skills, stress management skills, anger management, decision-making and goal setting skills, coping skills, and parenting), and career development would be just two of the areas highlighted in programming. Normal life transitions might be addressed as well (e.g., school transition, school to work transitions, preparation for surgery, and children of divorced parents). Assessment and interventions that address learning styles and academic skill deficits would be a part of the services provided. The possibilities are as many as the site and university staff might consider appropriate. Given the multi-disciplinarian emphasis for service delivery, it is important that the connections between the students’ emotional/ psychological development, health, academic success, and persistence are acknowledged and positively reinforced. With this system, school staff members (i.e., counselors, school psychologists, teachers, and administrators) have an extended list of referral sites for parents when problem behaviors and potential for academic failure are immediately noted. Staff of the newly developed non-traditional community sites could serve as consultants for parents, teachers, school psychologists, and counselors in their work with referred children as well as the children within the general population. The depth and breadth of the outcome of service delivery would be expanded to not only correct developmental problems, but to enhance children’s normal development through increasing their exposure to prevention-focused interventions.
The STaR Model and Research The identification of research topics must address issues of program evaluation as well as individual interests of faculty, trainees, and onsite staff. This component is not only invaluable to faculty and trainees, but to the community agency as well. This is particularly true in cases
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where the site is supported by grants or soft money resources that require verification of efficacy. All service delivery and training activities should be framed within the context of evaluation and research at all STaR community sites. However, the development of research friendly service-delivery sites is often quite complicated. This is particularly true if research is done with the intent of publication in professional journals. The messiness of service delivery within communities can directly contradict the neatness required in most research designs. To circumvent this messiness, some leaders in the field have suggested four essential methodological research design features which must be considered to maintain internal validity which is often missing in studies at community sites: random assignment of clientele, duration of treatments, well-defined descriptions of interventions, and clearly indicated personalsocial characteristics of mental health care providers and the clientele that might confound results. Ideal facilities would include opportunities for audio and/ or videotaping, particularly for process research. Clients’ ongoing and final evaluations of sessions, in addition to the evaluations of sessions by those providing services would be maintained. Supervision evaluations provided by supervisors and supervisees across disciplines would certainly provide a significant contribution to the literature. Best practices are more clearly delineated as a result of the identification of empirically-supported interventions and practices. These suggestions only address the basic data collection that all sites might strive to attain. The possibilities are limitless and the potential of optimal outcomes increased. In addition to the consideration of possible topics, it is critical that adherence to the university’s human subjects’ guidelines and procedures are reinforced in both training and service delivery. Completion of consent for participation in research and program evaluation forms must be a part of the intake process. Agency staff, parents and/or guardians and youth should be asked for consent or assent so that all will be informed about the reasons for the data collection and how the results will be used. Finally, the often, most tedious endeavor of identifying authorship of any manuscripts to be submitted for publication can become problematic, particularly in cases that include participants across disciplines and institutions (i.e., community agency staff and the university associates). It would appear critical that well-defined guidelines for authorship rankings, sole
authorship, and multiple authorships be established during the initial stages of site development. Early discussions about these specific issues is even more important given that all participating faculty would at some time during the academic period be responsible for the oversight of data collection. Confusion about this seemingly minor issue may not only jeopardize the research component, but the success of the STaR site. Relationships among faculty and trainees across disciplines could be damaged, causing conflict where collaboration is required.
Summary With the emotional needs of children in today’s society growing exponentially within our changing culture, interventions beyond the school, but linked to the school and children’s academic well-being, are needed to provide a more comprehensive strategy for mental health service delivery to children and adolescents. Collaboration among the school, the university training programs, and community sites that have typically been uninvolved in mental health service delivery may be the key to meeting these needs. The STaR youth model of service delivery is just one proposed means of inexpensively attending to and preventing the negative experiences with which many of today’s children are confronted. See also: > Access and utilization of health care; > Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning (CASEL); > Early intervention; > School roles in mental health
Suggested Reading Bronfenbrenner, U. (1979). The ecology of human development: Experiments by nature and design. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press. Carpenter-Aeby, T., & Aeby, V. G. (2001). Family-school-community interventions for chronically disruptive students: An evaluation of outcomes in alternative schools. School Community Journal, 11(2), 75–92. Perkins, D. D., Crim, B., Silberman, P., & Brown, B. B. (2004). Community development as a response to community-level adversity: Ecological theory and research and strengths-based policy. In K. I. Maton, C. J. Schellenbach, B. J. Leadbeater, & A. L. Solarz (Eds.), Investing in children, youth, families, and communities: Strengths-based research and policy (pp. 321–340). Washington, D.C.: American Psychological Association.
Community psychology
Suggested Resources School Community Partnerships—http://kcsos.kern.org/schcom/ stories/storyReader$98: The website offers information on how school and community partnerships can result in improving attendance, increase academic performance, and strengthen families. Standards for Professional Development Schools—http://www. ncate.org/documents/pdsStandards.pdf: The website provides a comprehensive overview of a model for school and university alliances toward the improvement of kindergarten through grade 12 education.
Community Psychology Shannon Gwin Mitchell . David Lounsbury
Community psychology is an area of specialization within the broader field of psychology (Division 27 of the American Psychological Association). It emerged in the U.S. in the 1960’s, taking a progressive, proactive approach towards key social issues including poverty, racism, and health/illness. Community psychology in the as practiced in the U.S. is a blending of the fields of social psychology, political science, and community development. Practitioners in this field use the various principles of psychology to enhance the health and functioning of people, and the communities in which they work and live.
Theoretical Framework The specialization in community psychology differs from more traditional psychological theory and practice in numerous ways. Most importantly, instead of taking an individualistic, positivistic approach towards the study of behaviors and behavior change, community psychology adopts a systems perspective in which the reciprocal relationship between individuals and the various social structures comprising their communities of interest and affiliation (e.g., family, neighborhood, occupation, ethnicity) is the focus. Known as the ecological model, this theoretical orientation holds that people and their behaviors can only be understood within their cultural, historical, geographic, economic, and social contexts. The focus ranges from micro-systems,
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such as families, through macro-systems, including the socio-political circumstances. Another core difference between community psychology and more traditional, applied psychology concerns the issue of values. Rather than adopt a value-free orientation, community psychologists embrace the fact that personal and cultural values guide their work and consider the pursuit of social justice a core goal for the field. This perspective is understandable given both the progressive movement that spawned the field and the ecological model that continues to guide it. Community psychologists view all behaviors as the result of a person’s adaptation to their environment and to the available resources, competition, and barriers within their niche. This means that issues such as health, competence, and even ‘‘normality’’ must be understood from that person’s perspective. Rather than focus on what a person or community is doing ‘‘wrong,’’ community psychologists often focus on the group’s strengths, competencies, and talents, and bring them to the fore when working to institute positive change. Respect for cultural and ethnic diversity is also central to the field. This includes respect for the similarities and differences among members of diverse racial, ethnic, religious, social class, and age groups, as well as for persons with different sexual orientations and ability levels. Community psychologists believe that promoting health is more fiscally responsible and effective than waiting to provide treatment until after a problem has developed. In many cases, there simply is not a sufficient corps of trained practitioners to provide treatment to all of those in need. In other cases, needless suffering is endured because prevention or early intervention services were not in place. The field’s prevention orientation mirrors that of the field of public health, although social and behavioral effects can sometimes be difficult to measure and may take years to see.
Key Research Topics While the range of topics studied within the field has changed over the last 40 years, some of the key topics that have been the focus of continued research interest and application include: empowerment, psychological sense of community, self-help/mutual-help, social
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support, health promotion/wellness, and stress/coping. Research by community psychologists can be found in journals dedicated to their specific discipline, such as The American Journal of Community Psychology or The Journal of Community Psychology, but is also frequently found in the journals of other, related fields, including The American Journal of Evaluation, American Journal of Public Health, Health Education and Behavior, and Law, Psychology and Public Policy.
Research Methods and Focus The ecological analogy describes not only the theoretical perspective within the field of community psychology, but also its research and intervention process. Since behaviors are viewed as the product of ecological influence impinging upon a person at multiple levels, community psychologists frequently intervene at multiple levels, as well. This is particularly true when attempting to change or prevent deeply ingrained behaviors. Action research is considered the ideal model in community psychology. Action research is conducted with the specific goal of improving an organization, and is very context-specific. It involves the researcher (working in collaboration with the participants) defining a problem, creating and implementing an intervention, observing and evaluating the effectiveness of the intervention, and then, potentially, re-defining the problem and repeating the process until a satisfactory level of change has been achieved. Action research has been described as a ‘‘spiral’’ process. Research conducted by community psychologists often has the researcher taking a supportive role, rather than assuming the position of ‘‘expert.’’ It is assumed that the community members must guide community change and development if it is to be useful, realistic, and lasting. This means that community members are often involved in identifying the problem, developing possible solutions, and implementing the changes. The community psychologist often facilitates the process, offers alternative perspectives, provides technical assistance, assists community members in the formation of coalitions or the targeting of other un-tapped resources, and may help community members in defining outcome goals and evaluating outcome effectiveness. In sum, the research process is collaborative and applied, and the ultimate goal is to build community capacity.
International Development of Community Psychology Because of its person-in-context emphasis, community psychology has evolved slightly differently around the world, including other Western countries (e.g., Canada and Western Europe), Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, and Latin America. While the U.S. version of community psychology significantly contributed to the creation of the field in other countries, there are some distinguishing differences. Some countries tend to place greater emphasis on community development and social justice issues than does their U.S. counterpart. Others are more strongly influenced by alternative fields within and without psychology, including critical psychology, feminist theory, health psychology, sociology, and even political psychology and Marxist ideology.
Training in Community Psychology Although professionals from numerous other disciplines may work along side community psychologists, or identify with one or more of the same theoretical ideas, there are specific graduate training programs offered in community psychology. In the U.S. most community psychology training programs are at the doctoral level, although a few offer terminal masters degrees. Community psychology training programs are classified as either free-standing (i.e., independent of other psychological interest groups), community/clinical programs (i.e., offering a primary, secondary or equal emphasis of community psychology training alongside training in clinical psychology), or community psychology/interdisciplinary (i.e., community programs aligned with non-psychology departments). See also: > American Psychological Association (APA); > Community approaches to improving child success; > Cultural diversity; > Cultural resilience; > Discrimination; > Ecology; > School-based prevention
Suggested Reading Levine, M., & Perkins, D. V. (1997). Principles of community psychology: Perspectives and applications. (2nd ed.). New York: Oxford University Press.
Community schools O’Donnell, C. R., & Ferrari, J. R. (Eds.) (1997). Education in community psychology: Models for graduate and undergraduate programs. New York: Haworth Press. Trickett, E. J., Watts, R. J., & Birman, D. (1994). Human diversity: Perspectives on people in context. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.
Suggested Resources Society for Community Research and Action–http://www.scra27. org: The SCRA is Division 27 of the American Psychological Association, serves many different disciplines that focus on community research and action. Its members are committed to promoting health and empowerment and to preventing problems in communities, groups, and individuals.
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The community school represents a major response to this set of challenges. To address the needs of a changing population, community schools form partnerships with organizations in the community that help them better connect to students, families and the surrounding community. Community schools are public schools that are open to students, families and community members before, during and after school, throughout the year. They serve as the center of the community, integrating academics with other services and opportunities. As both a place and a set of partnerships, community schools mobilize an array of community resources— education, youth development, family support, health and human services, family and community engagement, community development—and connects such resources to student learning and development. Community schools recognize that multiple supports— physical, emotional, social and academic—are required for all students to succeed.
Amy Berg
The History of Community Schools The demographic makeup of the country, and its schools, is changing. Today, approximately 38% of public school students are identified as belonging to a minority group. By the year 2010, it is projected that in seven states and Washington, D.C. more than half of all students will belong to a minority group. Today, nearly 20% of America’s school-age children speak a language other than English at home. This is a trend that has been emerging over the past 30 years. Although the demographic makeup of schools has shifted, that shift is not reflected in the diversity of school staff. Among teachers, only 10% of secondary teachers and 14% of kindergarten through grade 6 teachers are minorities. At the administrative level, 16% of principals, and 4% of superintendents are people of color. Half of all schools have no minority teachers. These changes present a unique set of challenges for schools. Often, schools lack the expertise to be responsive to this diverse group of students and their families. Many teachers and principals began to work at a time when schools were less diverse. Younger staff may not have had the training in preparation programs to be truly culturally competent. Many of these teachers and principals are finding that it often takes an authentic connection to the community to truly engage it.
For more than 100 years, community schools have promoted the idea that school, community and family are inextricably joined and must work closely together. While the strength of the community school movement has ebbed and flowed over the years, the idea that the best way to address the needs of an economically, racially and ethnically diverse student body is through schools working together with community partners and families has remained constant. In the late nineteenth century, Jane Addams’ settlement house movement brought recreational, health and educational services to working-class, largely immigrant neighborhoods in Chicago and similar urban-industrial centers. By the early 1900s, John Dewey’s concept of the ‘‘school as a social center’’ encouraged advocates to bring these opportunities into public schools. Fostered by the Charles Stewart Mott Foundation and its work in Flint, Michigan, a formal movement to promote community education gained national visibility in the 1930s. By the 1970s, Congress provided important seed money for the movement with the passage of the Community Schools Act and the Community Schools and Comprehensive Community Education Act. Since the late 1980s, various local, state and foundation-funded efforts have produced new models
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that further developed the key features of community schools and greatly increased their numbers. Approaches designed to mobilize the assets of communities and address barriers to learning resulting from poverty, changing demographics and other contemporary facts of life emerged alongside more established community education programs. In 1998, the community school movement received a major boost from the twentyfirst century community learning centers program. Based on a community education strategy, the new federal initiative promoted the development of local after-school programs as a way to build community schools. In the past decade, community schools have seen a resurgence. The need for schools to find ways to address the issues that often surround cross-cultural education is one reason for this. To address this issue, community schools, because of their unique relationship with the community, are able to tap the experience and resources of the community. Lead agencies—partners that share responsibility with the school for results—often have more experience and expertise working with students and families from different cultures. Often these lead agencies are community-based organizations that are run by and serve people of color.
Addressing the Needs of a Diverse Population In community schools, partners who share their assets and expertise with the school are important sources of social capital. For young people, social capital increases exposure to role models and life options. It enhances their sense of connectedness to others, their sense of security and their belief in the future. For people of all ages, social capital makes it easier to share expertise, succeed individually and contribute to a healthy community. For many—especially those from less affluent communities and lower-income families—social capital, like financial capital, is not readily available. Community schools consciously work to change this. They build social capital, for example, through mentoring relationships with caring adults. School-to-work learning experiences significantly increase young people’s knowledge of career choices and help them develop the skills needed to pursue them. From poetry slams to career days to ‘‘shadow government’’ exercises,
community schools enhance students’ cultural literacy and social competence. At Stevenson-YMCA Community School in Long Beach, CA, where three-fourths of the student body is Latino and 72% are considered English Language Learners, the school is doing just this. The school and the YMCA have established a Community Leadership Institute as a way to channel people into leadership roles throughout the community. Parents also serve as teachers in adult education programs and teach teachers about parent engagement and communication with Latino families. Stevenson parents are now taking the skills they have honed in these programs to middle schools as their children progress out of elementary school. Working collectively through closeknit relationships, parent, students and staff at Stevenson have been able to address community concerns, build upon community assets, and develop a comprehensive community school that directly reflects the community it serves. At George Washington Community School, in Indianapolis, Indiana, the entire school community is committed to making the school a place where all are welcome and diverse groups of people feel comfortable and accepted. The school has been particularly effective in creating an environment that fosters understanding and communication among students who come from a variety of backgrounds. Through a partnership with La Plaza, a group that works to empower and integrate the Latino community of Central Indiana, George Washington engages Latino youth and their families to increase high school graduation rates and prepare youth for college. While many were not able to initially maintain this program in schools due to budget restraints, the relationship with the community and the commitment to building a culturally competent school, helped George Washington find a way to keep the program. Experiences like these create confidence, hone skills and help people who come from different cultures and life experiences come together. Tapping the expertise of community groups, families and students removes barriers to communication and understanding that often exist between the school and the community.
Conclusion Community schools are effective in addressing the academic, social and physical needs of young people, as well as the needs of their families. Evaluation data
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from organizations such as the Academy for Educational Development, the Stanford Research Institute, the Chapin Hall Centers for Children and other groups, compiled by Joy Dryfoos, an authority in the field, demonstrate the positive impact of community schools with regard to learning, achievement, healthy youth development, family functioning and community life. Indeed, the author’s own research shows that community schools show improvements in grades, test scores and attendance and reductions in behavioral problems and suspensions. Community schools are also an effective way to address the challenges that changing demographics often present. Throughout the history of this movement, these schools have paid particular attention to issues of race, ethnicity and class. Research shows that these schools are providing enhanced outcomes particularly for minority and under served youth. As U.S. demographics continue to change, this approach to educating all youth to high standards will become an increasingly effective education reform strategy. See also: > Community interventions with diverse youth; > Educational partnership; > Outcomes-based education; > Urban schools
Suggested Reading Blank, M., Melaville, A., & Shah, B. (2003). Making the difference: Research and practice in community schools. Washington, D.C.: Coalition for Community Schools. Blank, M., Berg, A., & Melaville, A. (2006). Growing community schools: The role of cross-boundary leadership. Washington, D.C.: Coalition for Community Schools. Melaville, A., Berg, A., & Blank, M. (2006). Community-based learning: Engaging students for success and citizenship. Washington, D.C.: Coalition for Community Schools.
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Asset-Based Community Development website—http://www. northwestern.edu/ipr/abcd.html: The ABCD Institute shares findings on capacity-building community development in two ways: (1) through extensive and substantial interactions with community builders, and (2) by producing practical resources and tools for community builders to identify, nurture, and mobilize neighborhood assets.
Community Violence Tara Mathews . Stacy Overstreet
Community violence is defined as chronic exposure to interpersonal violence that occurs in neighborhoods where children and families live. Community violence refers to that which occurs in public places, and although frequently interrelated, does not include violence that occurs within the home, at school, or in the media. Exposure to community violence comes in many forms, as youth experience violence through personal victimization, witnessing events in their neighborhoods, and hearing about events that have occurred in their communities. These experiences include life-threatening events such as attacks with guns and knives, as well as events that imply danger, such as drug deals, seeing a dead body, and hearing gunshots in one’s neighborhood. Children and adolescents in the United States (U.S.) report astonishing rates of community violence exposure, and in recent years, community violence has been described as a public health epidemic. This issue has received increased national attention, by media and researchers alike. However, we are only beginning to learn how to protect youth from community violence and the various negative outcomes that exposure has been linked to.
Suggested Resources Coalition for community schools website—www.communityschools. org: The Coalition for Community Schools is an alliance of national, state and local organizations in education, youth development, community planning and development, family support, health and human services, government and philanthropy as well as national, state and local community school networks. Schools of the twenty-first century at Yale University—http:// www.yale.edu/21C/immigrant.html: The school of the twentyfirst century runs several programs devoted to improving the lives of immigrant families and children.
Rates Although national rates of violent crime have been decreasing since their peak in the 1990s, rates of community violence are actually increasing. Surveys have revealed that community violence affects children of all ages and backgrounds, crossing racial, socioeconomic, and geographical boundaries. However, rates of community violence are highest for ethnic minority children living in poor, urban communities. Because they
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are more likely than other ethnic groups to live in urban areas, African American and Latino American children are at the highest risk for exposure, and report alarming rates of violence in their neighborhoods. In fact, some urban areas in the U.S. have even been compared to war zones, as community violence occurs chronically and is a part of everyday life for those who live there. Survey research suggests that by the time they reach middle childhood, most children living in inner cities have been exposed to serious acts of violence, such as shootings and stabbings. Although this varies by research study, statistics on community violence in urban areas demonstrate that as many as 100% of children have heard about violence in their communities, 99% have witnessed violence, and 70% have been personally victimized in their neighborhoods.
Consequences In addition to the direct consequences of exposure to violence, such as physical harm, hospitalization, and in some cases, death, exposure is associated with mental health, behavioral, and academic problems in youth. Exposure to community violence is often traumatic, as it can be life-threatening and challenge children’s perceptions of safety in their neighborhoods. The most common consequence of exposure is Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), which is an anxiety disorder that can result after exposure to a traumatic event. Research has found that as many as one-third of children and adolescents who have been exposed to community violence suffer from symptoms of PTSD, which include reexperiencing the traumatic event, which may come in the form of intrusive thoughts or nightmares; emotional numbing and avoidance of things that remind one of the trauma, such as walking a certain path to school where one has been witness to violence; and persistent symptoms of increased physiological arousal, such as an exaggerated startle response and difficulty concentrating. Although not as common as PTSD, symptoms of depression have also been linked to exposure to community violence. Like PTSD, depression is a serious mental health concern and is characterized by feelings of sadness or irritability, loss of interest in activities, feelings of worthlessness, difficulty concentrating, and changes in eating or sleeping patterns. Also a significant concern, depression is often associated with thoughts of death and suicide. Little work has been done to identify
how and why depression develops in children who experience community violence. However, it has been suggested that chronic exposure to stressful and dangerous situations may contribute to depressive feelings of helplessness, hopelessness, and ineffectiveness among children, who are typically unable to do anything to change their environments. Externalizing behavior problems are also common among children and adolescents exposed to community violence. Specifically, aggression and other disruptive behaviors are frequently observed, including increases in fighting, gang involvement, rule-breaking, and the use of weapons. Various explanations have been offered for the increased level of aggression among violence-exposed youth; however, none has been supported conclusively. For example, it has been suggested that children and adolescents who are chronically exposed to violence in their communities may be desensitized to violence and may view it as a normative and effective means of attaining one’s goals. It has also been suggested that the parents of children living in dangerous neighborhoods may be less likely to discourage the use of aggression and violence as it may be necessary for the purpose of self-defense. Not surprisingly, community violence is also associated with school problems among children and adolescents. Recent studies have demonstrated that youth exposed to community violence are at risk for frequent absences, grade retention, and poorer academic achievement, in the form of grades as well as standardized test scores. This is likely related to the emotional and behavioral problems that violenceexposed youth experience, which may impede both motivation and ability to do well in school. Symptoms such as difficulty concentrating, fatigue due to sleeping difficulties, disruptive behavior, and a diminished interest in activities may have deleterious effects on academic performance.
Protective Factors Taken together, the effects of community violence on youth are tremendous, and are undoubtedly taking a toll on society at large. In an attempt to discover how we can protect youth from these effects, researchers are beginning to explore protective factors, which refer to characteristics of the child, family, and more distal environments that serve to buffer high-risk youth from poor outcomes. Although little is known about
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the specificity of these protective factors in the context of community violence, three categories of protective factors have been identified, including ‘individual’ factors, such as a high intelligence level; ‘family’ factors, such as parental social support and parental monitoring; and ‘extrafamilial’ factors, such as having connections to prosocial organizations. Among children exposed to community violence, however, social support is the only of these factors that has consistently shown a buffering effect. A high level of social support, which refers to the perception that others are available to provide emotional and practical support, appears to have some ability to protect children from the effects of community violence. Children often receive social support from their immediate family members, as well as from extended family, peers, teachers, and clergy. The receipt of positive and stable social support can protect youth from the consequences of community violence by providing them with feelings of security, as well as opportunities for receiving advice and expressing emotions such as fear and anxiety. However, it appears that among youth who report high levels of exposure, such as many of the children living in poor urban areas, even social support loses its ability to buffer youth from being affected.
Future Directions Research on community violence is still in its infancy, and additional work is necessary to fully understand the scope of the problem as well as its effects on youth. Because they are at the highest risk for exposure, most research has been conducted with youth living in urban areas. However, community violence occurs in suburban and rural settings as well and there is a need for additional research regarding how children and adolescents who live in such areas are affected. Additionally, researchers are beginning to study children’s beliefs about their communities to examine how subjective factors, such as perceptions of safety and predictability, may play a role in the development of mental health problems. Also of interest is examining the effects of community violence on normative developmental processes, such as cognitive development, the ability to regulate one’s emotions, and the ability to form relationships. It is believed that the stress, anxiety, and fear associated with exposure to community violence may jeopardize these processes,
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making children more vulnerable to developing mental health, behavior, and academic problems. Researchers are also interested in examining characteristics of violent events themselves, such as a child’s relationship to the victim and the perpetrator. It has been suggested that the more proximal a violent event is to a child, the more harmful the consequences will be. For example, hearing about the stabbing of a family member or friend may be significantly more traumatic than witnessing the stabbing of a stranger. Perhaps of most importance, potential protective factors should be further explored to identify buffers for the effects of community violence. For instance, researchers are beginning to examine coping strategies, such as problem solving, behavioral avoidance, and distraction, to discover whether particular strategies are more effective in protecting against the effects of community violence. Family functioning has also been explored and some studies have suggested that parents can protect their children through frequent monitoring of their children’s whereabouts and behaviors, and by creating an atmosphere of family cohesiveness. Additionally, it has been suggested that positive school environments may be protective by providing children with a safe haven; however, those at the highest risk for exposure to community violence often face the accumulative risk of attending unsafe, poorly funded, and overburdened schools. Finally, the identification of protective factors can inform the development of prevention and intervention programs; the more we know about what protects youth from the tremendous effects of community violence, the more effectively we can intervene. See also: > Aggressiveness; > Childhood depression; > Conflict resolution; > Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD); > School violence
Suggested Reading Overstreet, S. (2000). Exposure to community violence: Defining the problem and understanding the consequences. Journal of Child and Family Studies 9, 7–25. Overstreet, S., & Cerbone, A. (2005). Psychological effects of armed conflict and community violence. In C. L. Frisby & C. R. Reynolds (Eds.), Comprehensive handbook of multicultural school psychology (pp. 769–794). Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons. Stein, B. D., Jaycox, L. H., Kataoka, S., Rhodes, H. J., & Vestal, K. D. (2003). Prevalence of child and adolescent exposure to community violence. Clinical Child and Family Review 6, 247–264.
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Suggested Resources The National Center for Children Exposed to Violence—http:// www.nccev.org/violence/community.html: This website provides a variety of resources related to community violence such as statistics and links to literature and other relevant websites. National Youth Violence Prevention Center—http://www.safeyouth. org/scripts/teens/community.asp: Provides community violence prevention strategies and links to other helpful websites.
Computer Based Testing James A Bovaird
In contrast to the traditional pencil-and-paper mode of test administration, computer-based testing (CBT) is the administration of an examination via a computer. CBT began in the 1970’s with research on the statistical reliability of ability estimation and various adaptive testing formats. Early research assumed dichotomous scoring and a unidimensional response model. The 1990’s saw a rapid expansion of CBT thanks to vast improvements in the speed, computing power, and cost of computers. CBT has become a common form of test delivery for numerous licensure, certification, and admissions tests including (but not limited to) the Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery (ASVAB), Graduate Record Examination General Test (GRE), Test of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL), Graduate Management Admission Test (GMAT), Professional Assessment for Beginning Teachers (PRAXIS-PPST), National Board for Professional Teaching Standards (NBPTS), Automotive Service Excellence (ASE) test, and American Dietetic Association (ADA) test. Computer-based testing presents several administrative, logistical, technological, and substantive advantages over the pencil-and-paper format. Perhaps the most notable advantage is the level of administrative control given test administrators over the testing conditions. For instance, the amount of time allowed and the type of feedback used for individual items or the entire test can all be controlled by the test administrator. From a logistical perspective, CBT can reduce testing time, provide immediate scoring, allow more frequent testing, provide the opportunity for walk-in testing, allow individual administration, and increase test security by reducing the possibility that examinees
can provide information to one another. More complex item types available through computerization itself enables a much broader range of technological measurement advances through increased capacity for expanded visualization (including true color, zooming, and object rotation), audition (incorporating audible commands, prompts, or items), and interaction. Test administrators can capitalize on the automated nature of computers to develop or compile, process, and score tests, including complex responses such as open-ended questions. Finally, from a substantive perspective, CBT has the potential to assess new skills, some even better than other testing formats, and can allow access to data that is not available from a pencil-and-paper format (e.g., response time). Computer-based testing is not without its unresolved problems, however. CBTs require access to computer testing centers, although testing via the Internet may alleviate this limitation. The security of CBT items, the reliability of the test-delivery systems, and the expense of developing the test and the testing environment are also of concern. Finally, the psychometric quality of the tests, the adequacy of the supporting theoretical models, and the issue of whether test bias occurs due to the effect of access to technology on performance are active areas of inquiry. Recent legislation, most notably in the state of New York, has raised additional issues related to test security by requiring certain levels of item and test disclosure. A special form of testing called computer-adaptive testing (CAT) is of particular relevance to modern testing and is only possible through the computer-based platform. Adaptive tests rapidly adjust the difficulty level of the test to match the ability level of the examinee. A CAT starts at a difficulty level that is deemed most likely to be accurate for the examinee (usually ‘‘average’’). Depending on the accuracy of the initial response, which is immediately scored by the computer, the item presented next is either more or less difficult than the last one. Thus the items administered are appropriate for the examinee’s ability level. Through an iterative process of testing, updating the ability estimate, and re-testing, a CAT can arrive at a more accurate ability estimate than what can be obtained by a non-adaptive test. Some of the notable advantages to a CAT beyond those that are inherent to any CBT are: fewer test items (as many as half when compared with pencil-and-paper tests), less time required since test items outside the test taker’s proficiency level are excluded, enhanced test security because all examinees are potentially administered a different set of items,
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improved examinee test-taking motivation, and reduced average test score differences across ethnic groups. Current foci for research on CBT and CAT involve technical problems such as item bank maintenance, pre-testing items to obtain item statistics, and item and test security. See also: > High stakes testing; > Intelligence/Intelligence Quotient (IQ); > Testing and measurement
Suggested Reading Bartram, D., & Hambleton, R. (Eds.) (2005). Computer-based testing and the internet: Issues and advances. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons. Mills, C. N. Potenza, M. T., Fremer, J. J., & Ward, W. C. (Eds.) (2002). Computer-based testing: Building the foundation for future assessments. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
Conduct Disorder LeShawndra N Price
Conduct disorder, a mental disorder first diagnosed in childhood or adolescence, can be defined as a persistent pattern of antisocial behavior in which youth consistently disregard and violate the rights of others and the age-appropriate norms or rules of society. The disordered behavior of youth with conduct disorder occurs across multiple settings (e.g., at home, school, or in the community) and substantially impairs their ability to function socially, at home, school, and/or work. These behaviors fall into four categories: aggressive behavior that causes or threatens physical harm to other people or animals, deliberate property damage or destruction, deceit or theft, and serious rule violations. Conduct disorder symptoms are the most frequently reported source of referral for psychiatric services for children and adolescents.
Diagnostic Criteria for Conduct Disorder The diagnostic criteria for conduct disorder as stated in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders-IV (4th ed.) Text Revision is as follows:
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A. A repetitive and persistent pattern of behavior in which the basic rights of others or major ageappropriate societal norms or rules are violated, as manifested by the presence of three (or more) of the following criteria in the past 12 months, with at least one criterion present in the past 6 months: Aggression to people and animals (1) often bullies, threatens, or intimidates others (2) often initiates physical fights (3) has used a weapon that can cause serious physical harm to others (e.g., a bat, brick, broken bottle, knife, gun) (4) has been physically cruel to people (5) has been physically cruel to animals (6) has stolen while confronting a victim (e.g., mugging, purse snatching, extortion, armed robbery) (7) has forced someone into sexual activity Destruction of property (8) has deliberately engaged in fire setting with the intention of causing serious damage (9) has deliberately destroyed others’ property (other than by fire setting) Deceitfulness or theft (10) has broken into someone else’s house, building, or car (11) often lies to obtain goods or favors or to avoid obligations (i.e., ‘‘cons’’ others) (12) has stolen items of nontrivial value without confronting a victim (e.g., shoplifting, but without breaking and entering; forgery) Serious violations of rules (13) often stays out at night despite parental prohibitions, beginning before age 13 years (14) has run away from home overnight at least twice while living in parental or parental surrogate home (or once without returning for a lengthy period) (15) is often truant from school, beginning before age 13 years) B. The disturbance in behavior causes clinically significant impairment in social, academic, or occupational functioning. C. If the individual is age 18 years or older, criteria are not met for Antisocial Personality Disorder. Specify type based on age of onset: Conduct Disorder, Childhood-Onset Type: onset of at least one criterion characteristic of Conduct Disorder prior to age 10 years Conduct Disorder, Adolescent-Onset Type: absence of any criteria characteristic of Conduct Disorder prior to age 10 years
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Conduct Disoder, Unspecified Onset: age at onset is not known Specify severity: Mild: few if any conduct problems in excess of those required to make the diagnosis and conduct problems cause only minor harm to others Moderate: number of conduct problems and effect on others intermediate between ‘‘mild’’ and ‘‘severe’’ Severe: many conduct problems in excess of those required to make the diagnosis or conduct problems cause considerable harm to others
Prevalence and Etiology of Conduct Disorder Although rates of conduct disorder vary between six and 16% according to population sampled and methods of assessment, research from the National Comorbidity Survey Study Replication (NCS-R), a nationally representative study of mental disorders in the general United States (U.S.) population, estimates that the lifetime prevalence of conduct disorder is 9.5%. Rates of conduct disorder tend to be higher in urban samples and among boys (12.0% in boys vs. 7.1% in girls in the NCS-R). Research on the origins of conduct disorder indicates that child and adolescent antisocial behavior cannot be traced to a single factor or a single defining situation. Instead, multiple risk factors contribute to and shape such behavior over the course of development. Some factors are related to characteristics within the child, such as neurological deficits, difficult temperament, and propensity to interpret hostile intent in social encounters, but others relate to factors within the environment, including family, peers, school, and neighborhood context, which enable, shape, and maintain aggressive and antisocial behavior. Such forces as weak bonding, ineffective parenting (poor monitoring, ineffective, excessively harsh, or inconsistent discipline, inadequate supervision), coercive parent-child interactions, exposure to violence in the home, poor peer relations, association with deviant peers, and a climate that supports aggression and violence puts children at risk for conduct disorder and for being violent later in life. A child is more likely to develop conduct disorder if he or she has a sibling with conduct disorder or a parent with antisocial personality disorder.
Types and Course of Conduct Disorder The DSM-IV identifies two subtypes of conduct disorder based on age at onset. The childhood-onset type is defined by the onset of at least one criterion characteristic of conduct disorder prior to age 10. Generally, children with childhood-onset conduct disorder are physically aggressive towards others, have academic difficulties, and have difficulties in peer relationships. Children with childhood-onset conduct disorder are also more likely to have a concurrent diagnosis of oppositional defiant disorder or attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) during early childhood, and often have symptoms meeting full criteria for conduct disorder prior to puberty. Left untreated, childhood conduct disorder has a poorer prognosis than adolescent-onset conduct disorder. In keeping with this distinction of onset of presenting conduct disorder symptoms, the adolescent-onset type is defined by the absence of any criteria characteristic of conduct disorder prior to age 10. In general, these youth have less severe symptoms than childhood-onset youth. Adolescent-onset youth tend to display less aggressive behavior, have more normative peer relationships, and their conduct disordered behavior tends to discontinue after adolescence. Adolescent-onset youth are less likely than those with the childhood-onset type of conduct disorder to have persistent conduct disorder and develop antisocial personality disorder in adulthood. The first symptoms of conduct disorder may occur as early as the preschool years, but usually significant symptoms appear during middle childhood or early adolescence. Conduct disorder has a high stability over time. Childhood conduct disorder often persists into adolescence and predicts antisocial behavior in adulthood. Conduct disorder is often associated with either extraordinarily low or extremely inflated selfesteem, early onset of alcohol, tobacco, and illicit drug use, early age at first sexual intercourse, and high levels of risk-taking and reckless behavior. Children with conduct disorder are often diagnosed with coexisting learning problems, ADHD, oppositional defiant disorder (ODD), substance abuse, and/or mood disorders. Without early and comprehensive treatment, youth with conduct disorder often develop additional coexisting problems and the conduct disorder symptoms become more severe. The symptoms of most children diagnosed with conduct disorder remit by adulthood. Research
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consistently shows that less than 50% of youth with conduct disorder meet diagnostic thresholds for adult antisocial behavior disorders after age 18. However, adolescent conduct disorder is one of several factors shown to predict adult antisocial disorders.
Interventions Although early identification and intervention is the optimal goal, many youth with conduct disorder are not identified until later in childhood or into adolescence. Preventive interventions implemented in the primary contexts in which youth develop and are socialized can help address trajectories leading to persistent conduct disorder. Two examples of interventions that have been rigorously tested and proven effective in decreasing antisocial behaviors in children and adolescents are the Linking Interests of Families and Teachers (LIFT) Program and Multisystemic Therapy (MST). The LIFT program is a school-based intervention designed for first and fifth grade children from neighborhoods characterized by high levels of juvenile delinquency and their parents. The intervention is designed to target aggressive child behavior and coercive interactions in the family, classroom, and with peers on the playground. The ten week intervention consists of components for the family and the classroom. The family component consists of six two-hour parent training/support group sessions that focus on positive encouragement, clear discipline, problem solving, parental monitoring, and support of academic engagement. The classroom component consists of two highly interactive social skills training sessions per week for ten weeks, focusing on classroom rules, compliance and participation, and interpersonal and conflict resolution skills. Teachers also use the Good Behavior Game, that positively reinforces children for good behaviors. Parent and classroom components are integrated so that similar behavior issues are targeted in both contexts. Research examining the immediate outcomes of the LIFT intervention for both first and fifth grade children in the intervention compared with children in the control group indicated decreased physical aggression on the playground, an increase in teacher ratings of child positive behaviors with peers, and decreased mother aversive behavior during motherchild interactions. Mothers who exhibited the highest pre-intervention levels of aversive behaviors showed
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the largest immediate reductions. Similarly, the most physically aggressive children benefited most from the intervention. That is, the more aggressive the child was initially, the greater the reduction in aggressive behavior at the time of the post-intervention assessment. The three-year follow-up of the original fifth grade children from the LIFT program examined the delay of onset of police arrest and substance use (i.e., alcohol, tobacco, marijuana) during the middle school years. Compared to children in the intervention group, children in the control group were 1.55 times more likely to be arrested during middle school and 1.49 times more likely to report patterned alcohol use. No difference was found between groups on selfreported tobacco or marijuana use during middle school. While the research hypothesized that youth rated as at higher risk at baseline would be most likely to benefit from the intervention during middle school, statistical analyses did not support their hypothesis. Multisystemic Therapy (MST) is a treatment methodology for serious, violent, and chronic juvenile offenders who are at high risk for out-of-home placement and their families. MST typically aims to improve caregiver discipline, enhance family relationships, decrease association with deviant peers, increase association with prosocial peers, improve youth school or vocational performance, and develop and maintain a social support network to help achieve and maintain such changes. MST is family-based and provides intensive treatment services in the natural environment where problems occur (e.g., homes, schools, neighborhoods). Research findings indicate that MST demonstrates considerable promise in the treatment of youth antisocial behavior, substance abuse, and emotional disturbance. Research comparing MST to individual therapy (IT) on the prevention of criminal behavior and violent offending among juvenile delinquent offenders at high risk for committing additional serious crimes showed increased supportiveness and decreased conflict-hostility for family interactions among families receiving MST. In contrast, families that received IT either deteriorated (indicating decreased supportiveness), showed increases in conflict hostility, or showed no change on measures of supportiveness and conflict hostility. MST also resulted in decreased self-reported psychiatric symptomatology in parents and decreased parental report of behavior problems in youth. More importantly, MST produced long-term changes in youths’ delinquent criminal behaviors. At four years post-intervention, the overall recidivism rate for MST completers was
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less than one-third the overall rate for IT completers (22.1% vs. 71.4%). Recidivists who completed MST had fewer arrests than did recidivists who had completed IT; and recidivists in the MST group had been arrested for less serious crimes than their counterparts in the IT group. Further follow-up that took place on average thirteen years later revealed that the overall recidivism rate for the IT group was significantly higher than the MST group (81% vs. 50%). Moreover, compared with the MST group, IT children were 4.25 times more likely to be rearrested during the follow-up period, 2.57 times more likely to have an arrest for a violent offense, and 3.33 times more likely to have an arrest for a drug offense. Treatment of conduct disorder can be complex and challenging, and might include behavior therapy with the parents and child or pharmacotherapy. Behavior therapy uses conditioning to make more desirable behavior more likely and decrease or eliminate undesirable behaviors. Behavior therapy may also include skills building for the child, such as anger management, and parent education including management strategies for the child with conduct disorder. Often, a therapist will coordinate the establishment of a behavioral plan with school and home to maximize effectiveness. Special education may be necessary for youth with coexisting learning difficulties. Treatment may also include medication in some youth, especially for those with attention problems, impulse problems, or depression. Yet, pharmacological interventions alone have not been demonstrated to be consistently effective in treating conduct disorder. Some stimulant and antipsychotic medications, including methylphenidate and risperidone, have been found to reduce aggressiveness effectively in children with conduct disorder. See also: > Aggressiveness; > Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD); > Bullying; > Character education; > Moral education; > School violence; > Social skills
Suggested Reading American Psychiatric Association (2000). Diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders (4th ed.). Text Revision. Washington, D.C.: Author. Eddy, J. M., Reid, J. B., Stoolmiller, M., & Fetrow, R. A. (2003). Outcomes during middle school for an elementary schoolbased preventive intervention for conduct problems: Follow-up results from a randomized trial. Behavior Therapy, 34, 535–552.
Moffitt, T. E., Caspi, A., Rutter, M., & Silva, P. A. (2001). Sex differences in antisocial behaviour. New York: Cambridge University Press. Schaeffer, C. M., & Borduin, C. M. (2005). Long-term follow-up to a randomized clinical trial of multisystemic therapy with serious and violent juvenile offenders. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 73(3), 445–453.
Suggested Resources NIMH: Youth In A Difficult World-A brief overview of Multisystemic Therapy—http://www.nimh.nih.gov/publicat/youthdif.cfm: This section of the NIMH website provides an overview of Multisystemic Therapy. American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry Fact Sheet— http://www.aacap.org/publications/factsfam/conduct.htm: This website provides a list of facts concerning child psychiatry and behavior. PERMISSIONS: Diagnostic criteria reprinted with permission from the American Psychiatric Association Association. Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (4th ed.) Text Revision. Washington, D.C.: American Psychiatric Association, 2000.
Conflict Resolution Megan Maguire
Violence and bullying will at some point affect the majority of students in our nation’s school systems. In fact, one national survey found that 33% of high school students have reported their involvement in a physical altercation within the past school year. Some of these students will be the aggressors of violence themselves, some students will be the victims of the bullies, and some students will be the witnesses during an incidence of bullying. Teachers and other adults within a school system must create an environment where students feel protected from bullies and are comfortable reporting instances in which they have been victimized. Conflict resolution training enables teachers and professionals to help students not only to deal with bullies in school, but also to teach bullies about the reprehensive effects of their behavior. Appropriate conflict resolution paired with character education may be a valuable tool against bullies within school systems. Conflict resolution programs are a relatively new addition to United States (U.S.) schools. Introduced
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in 1994, the concept of conflict resolution as part of an educational curriculum is only 12 years old. However, more than 5,000 schools in the U.S. offer programs that address conflict resolution. The goal is to teach students a new way of handling conflict, communicate with the other students about how to hear the other person’s viewpoint, and discuss disagreement until a compromise can be the final solution. Programs exist in every state and in every type of school, whether rural, suburban, or urban. These programs also now target children from kindergarten to high school.
Conflict Resolution Many conflict resolution programs exist in school systems. There are three general goals to a conflict resolution program. These goals are: to maintain order and peace within the school, use conflict as an instructional tool, and build upon core goals and objectives of the curriculum. Conflict resolution programs should be taught at all grade levels and the focus should be relevant to students at all ages. A very popular and widely used form of conflict resolution is peer mediation. This program teaches social skills to students. Peer mediation typically only involves a few students who are trained to act as impartial mediators between other peers. It is important to select a diverse group of students to act as peer mediators. All segments of the school’s entire population should be represented equally. The conflicts that arise most often in peer mediation situations for elementary and middle school students are fighting between students and verbal abuse. However, the most commonly addressed issue during a high school peer mediation session concerns friendship arguments, followed by verbal abuse and fighting. The goal of peer mediation is to provide students with an opportunity to consider and express their feelings about a given situation. Most conflicts are resolved within one peer mediation session. Students trained in peer mediation are educated about the function of conflict resolution and peer mediation. Students undergo training sessions where they learn many skills necessary to help their peers handle conflict peacefully. Peer mediators learn the following skills: self-introspection, consideration about how to best deal with conflict, negotiation, cooperation, problem solving, anger management, and active listening
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skills. Students will also participate in simulated peer mediation sessions during their training. As opposed to peer mediation, conflict resolution is taught to a large student body such as an entire grade or school. Conflict resolution training programs aim to teach students how to manage their anger, gain control over their natural responses to aggression, identify conflict, and avoid possible physical conflicts. The ultimate goal of conflict resolution is to give students the requisite skills to avoid physical confrontation and solve conflict peacefully on their own. Conflict resolution programs address issues that can perpetuate violence within the school. Topics include prejudice, discrimination of individuals, sexism, and racism. A typical conflict resolution program teaches students the following steps to resolve a conflict peacefully: set ground rules, listen, find common interests, brainstorm possible solutions to the conflict other than violence, discuss perceptions of the suggested solutions, and peacefully reach a compromise. Many programs also address the issue of anger management to help students find ways to express their anger without violence or aggression.
Effectiveness Conflict resolution and peer mediation appear to be an effective way to reduce student conflict. Schools that implement a conflict resolution program tend to see less incidents of general disruptive behavior. These trends are especially visible in elementary schools. Conflict resolution programs also tend to affect student attitudes toward conflict resolution. Prior to conflict resolution education, for instance, some studies found that more students were likely to use aggression or violence to resolve an issue. After conflict resolution training, however, students were more inclined to resolve a conflict positively, using the taught methods of communication. Students seem to have a positive reaction to conflict resolution programs. For example, teachers have noted that students engage in fewer fights and demonstrate more respectful behavior. On an administrative level, it has been noted that following conflict resolution programs there was an increase in attendance and a decrease in suspensions. Also, administrators report spending less time dealing with disciplinary related matters.
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A high level of diversity in a school is correlated with a high level of conflict. The cultural values a student holds may have an impact on how that student interprets messages from others and determines what behavior is and is not appropriate. Members of different cultures often hold different help seeking behaviors. These help seeking behaviors might be an indicator of how receptive a student might be to conflict resolution or peer mediation. For example, African American individuals may be less likely to engage in help seeking behavior than White Americans. School personnel and student mediators involved in conflict resolution must be trained to effectively help members of all cultural groups.
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Hanson, M. K. (1994). A conflict resolution/student mediation program: Effects on student attitudes and behaviors. Journal of Scholarly Research 12(4), 9–14. Inger, M. (1991). Conflict resolution programs in schools. ERIC/CUE Digest Number 74. 3 p.
Suggested Resources Conflict Resolution in the Classroom—http://www.gigglepotz. com/peace.htm: This website is a resource for teachers and administrators offering many approaches to help students develop conflict resolution skills.
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Training for conflict resolution occurs both at the student and faculty/administrative level. Teachers must be trained to resolve student conflict effectively and act as mediators. Additionally, it is the responsibility of the administration to see that school staff is trained in modeling and teaching appropriate conflict resolution behaviors. School personnel should be trained in the basic behaviors of conflict resolution, including: negotiation, cooperation, problem solving, anger management, and self-introspection. Students benefit from participation in programs that encourage the skills that are taught in conflict resolution programs. Some studies have shown that in a school year in which students were the recipients of peer mediation, 60% of the students had no referrals for misbehavior. Conflict resolution skills are best understood by students when the lessons are part of a long-term curriculum. That is, teachers must incorporate the skills that students are learning in all areas of study at all times. Communication skills taught in a conflict resolution class should be modeled in English class, reinforced in Physical Education, and praised in History. Teachers can also gain greater classroom management by incorporating themes from conflict resolution into their daily lessons. See also: > Aggressiveness; > Bullying ; education; > Community violence; management; > School violence
Suggested Reading
Character Classroom
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Wan-Chun Jenny Chen
Confucianism is a philosophy of life, not a religion. It talks about the way of being human, and how to conduct an effective life for the benefit of society (a country). The value system of Confucianism has been rooted in Chinese lives and has deeply influenced Chinese beliefs, concepts, value, behavior, and education. Founded by Kung-futze, which means ‘‘the master Kung,’’ also known as Confucius (551–479 B.C), Confucianism focuses on how to live in a social environment with regard for ethics and politics. The core ideas developed in Confucianism are about Jen, Tao, De, and Li, which describe the way of people and the way of governing. Jen (仁) is the foundation of Confucianism. Jen recognizes the importance of benevolence, charity, and kindness. It is the essence of human beings and a core value. Jen, considered Confucianism, can be applied to three groups: 1. For individuals, such as caution and perseverance. Caution can be shown in many ways. For example, people who have caution in conversation will interact with people with integrity and reliability, thus showing Jen. Perseverance might be interpreted as an attitude towards jobs and personal faith. Taking responsibility and having a clear mindset result in justice, which is a manifestation of Jen.
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2. For interpersonal relationships, such as respect, trust, and kindness. 3. For politicians, for example, serving the country with virtue and loving fellow countrymen. Politicians with kindness and altruism love their people and improve their lives. These are practices of Jen. Tao (道) is a road of righteousness and guides the living to act as they should. With Tao, people who understand their duties appropriately base their behavior on their roles without overstepping responsibilities. Therefore, the country follows regulations and is prosperous; people are satisfied with their government and life. De (德) involves societal virtues and people’s moral character. De is the foundation of a country. Confucius mentioned that when the ruler has De, his people will possess wealth and his country will be strong. De insures that blessings will be bestowed upon descendants and their business dealings will be successful. Purifying the heart is one approach to achieving De, and De facilitates Jen. Li (禮) is developed through Jen and is demonstrated through behaviors such as respect, ethical virtues, and loyalty. Li, recognized as culture, is a standard for appropriate behaviors to maintain the social order. It is also viewed as a system for the polity which regulates the way to govern the country, providing a clear path for politicians and people to follow. Another aspect of Confucianism pertains to the five relationships that are at the foundation of society: the relationship between husband and wife, the relationship between father and son, the relationship between elder brother and younger brother (siblings), the relationship between friends, and the relationship between ruler and minister. Each relationship and role invokes duty toward others. Their connections to others lead to the essential interactions in a society. Deference to authority is an approach to the harmony of the family as well as to the government of a country. For example, superiors have the responsibility of benevolence and the care of subordinates. Meanwhile, subordinates have a duty to respect and to be loyal and compliant to their superiors. Based on these mutual interactions, the five relationships are well established and thus the harmonious society, which is the consequence of these wellstructured rapports, is stable. Therefore, the emphasis on group orientation becomes a force that leads society, and people in a group should sacrifice individual needs, desires, and wishes for the benefit of the group.
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Education is deeply influenced by Confucianism, and everyone has an equal right to receive an education. Education is highly valued and brings honor to a family. Education teaches people about Jen, Tao, De, Li, and thus people are able to serve their government with these virtues. Confucius believed that anyone can benefit the country if he/she is educated. Hence, Confucius devoted himself to advocate his political philosophy and educate his followers. Strengthening self-capacity with education is an approach to devoting self to the benefit of the country (or society), to eliminating poverty and to freeing people from low social status. Educated people can govern successfully. See also: > Culture
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Suggested Reading Creel, H. G. (1975). Confucius and the Chinese way. New York: Harper & Row.
Consultation Mitchelle Johnson
Consultation within schools can be defined as an indirect method of service delivery in which a consultant or help giver (e.g., school psychologist) works with a consultee (e.g., teacher or parent) to help a client (e.g., students) who is exhibiting behavioral and/or academic difficulties. Several models of consultation exist that focus on various areas such as mental health, behavioral change, organizational change, and instructional change. Each focus area follows a problem solving process and emphasizes a collaborative relationship between consultants and consultees. The stages of problem solving generally include: entering the system (e.g., the school), establishing rapport, contracting, problem identification and analysis, intervention planning and implementation, and evaluation. Multicultural consultation represents an alternative approach to the consultation helping process and is applicable to each of the problem solving stages.
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Context communication
Multicultural consultation is defined as a culturally sensitive, indirect service requiring adjustments to the consultation process by the consultant so that the needs and cultural values of the consultee, the client, or both are met. The research generally suggests that the success of the multicultural helping framework is contingent on the ability of the consultant to address issues of cultural diversity (i.e., race, gender and ethnicity), and is not based on the actual cultural background of the consultant. Cross-cultural consultation is viewed as a subset of multicultural consultation and is applicable when at least one member of the consultation triad (consultant, consultee, and client) differs culturally from the others.
Application to the Problem Solving Process A number of approaches are important to successfully establish a rapport within a multicultural framework. The consultant must seek to develop a trusting relationship with the consultee (parent or educator), and acknowledge the consultee’s concerns, particularly related to racial issues, multicultural differences, experiences and language. It is also important to value the consultee’s frame of reference in terms of cultural perspectives and language experiences. Becoming more knowledgeable about the history, values, and beliefs of the cultural groups being serviced can also facilitate the helping process. During problem identification and analysis, the problem is viewed as a ‘‘mismatch’’ between the client (e.g., child) and other factors, such as the environment in which the client is embedded. Applying a multicultural consultative framework at this level requires that the consultant recognize how their cultural values are rooted in their professional interpretation of a problem. It is also critical that the problem identification tools used to identify referral concerns are sensitive to cultural and linguistic differences. In addition, approaches such as using interpreters when communicating with clients from linguistically diverse backgrounds is fundamental in addressing the concerns, priorities and resources of such populations. Strategies such as reframing can be helpful in developing alternative explanations of the consultee’s view of the problem as well as other issues. Goals and interventions should be selected to match the consultees’ and clients’ cultural perspectives
(e.g., childrearing practices or beliefs). Moreover, to successfully guide the consultation, the consultant must identify variables that could potentially impede the helping process such as: (a) the consultee’s lack of knowledge/skill in applying an intervention; (b) a lack of trust of the consultant or in the plan; and (c) a mismatch between the needs (e.g., limited time/ skill, differences in cultural values) of the consultee and what is required to implement an intervention. Thus, the consultant must be flexible and creative in developing solutions. During the intervention and implementation stage positive outcomes can be assured when resistance that results from a poor match between features of the program and consultee knowledge and skills are adequately addressed. Additionally, tools used in the evaluation stage can target short and long term goals related to cultural and linguistic factors. See also: > Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning (CASEL); > Cross-cultural consultation; > Home-school partnerships
Suggested Reading Rogers, M., & Lott, B. (Eds.) (2005). School consultants as change agents in archieving equity for families in public schools. Journal of Educational and Psychological Consultation 16(1–2), 113–125.
Suggested Resources National Association of School Psychologist—http://www. nasponline.org/: This website provides resources for culturally competent consultation in schools. Information is relevant for school psychologists and school personnel.
Context Communication Colette L Ingraham
Context communication involves the cultural and situation-specific expectations that are embedded within interpersonal communication. It is composed of the
Context communication
communication patterns shaped by the culture, called cultural context, as well as the specific situations and expectations within which communication occurs. Culture is influenced by the values, customs, and traditions of a given group. Cultural context forms the lens or paradigm from which meaning is derived, thus an understanding of a group’s culture helps one understand its ways of communicating. Situation-specific expectations relate to a particular circumstance, time, or place. For example, one would use a different type of communication when teaching new information versus when socializing with friends. Edward T. Hall classified communication and cultures as high-context (HC) or low-context (LC) as a way to describe the degree of cultural understanding needed to gain meaning from communication. He described HC messages as those where understanding is contingent on familiarity with the message-sender’s culture. LC messages are relatively direct and do not require cultural understanding to determine their meaning. Many individuals use both HC and LC communications, depending on the circumstances, such as HC communication patterns within their family, and LC patterns when asking for directions. HC messages often include subtle and indirect nuances that are interpretable only by those who are familiar with the message-sender’s culture. They may include nonverbal cues, indirect communications, gestures, colloquial expressions, and embedded meanings that are not easily understood by those unfamiliar with the sender’s culture. Those who are experienced in the same cultural context are able to make sense of the message and can interpret the sender’s intent, beyond what is directly communicated. Thus, in HC communication, the message receiver must understand the sender’s culture to read between the lines and, thus, gather the true meaning of the message. For example, the invitation, ‘‘Come over tonight and bring something to share’’ is an example of a HC message because one must understand the expectations for the situation and culture to know the appropriate item to bring to the gathering. Would one bring a home-cooked dish, chocolates, games, movies, or even jokes to the event? Clearly one must understand the context for such an invitation to have ideas of the appropriate and respectful things to bring. In contrast, LC messages are direct and require little understanding of the sender’s culture. The words themselves convey the message and there is little
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doubt about their meaning. No inferences, multiple meanings, or extensive understandings of the communication context are needed to comprehend what the message-sender is saying. The directive, ‘‘Stand up right now’’ is an example of LC communication. In addition to classifying communication messages, Hall also grouped countries along a HC and LC continuum. HC cultures have social norms and customs based on traditions and homogeneous cultural values, whereas LC cultures are more heterogeneous, with diverse groups and values. LC cultures use direct communications and can change rapidly because they are not as tied to traditional ways. When members of HC and LC cultures interact, conflict can arise because they operate from different patterns of communication and values. For instance, people from HC cultures may expect to work from a traditional system of respecting the elders, following long-standing patterns of introductions, and gift-giving, whereas people from the LC cultures may feel comfortable simply introducing each person as they walk into the room, without regard for their status or position. Such behavior may be seen as disrespectful by members of HC cultures. These context communication concepts have been used to explain cross-cultural differences that can create conflicts and misunderstandings. See also: > Cross-cultural consultation; > Cross-cultural families; > Cross-cultural competence in school psychologists’ services
Suggested Reading Gudykunst, W. B. (1994). Bridging differences: Effective intergroup communication (2nd ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Hall, E. T. (1976). Beyond culture. Garden City, New York: Anchor Press/Doubleday. Ingraham, C. L. (2006). Context communication. In Y. Jackson (Ed.), Encyclopedia of multicultural psychology (pp. 110–111). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
Suggested Resources BeyondIntractability.org—http://www.beyondintractability.org/ essay/communication_tools/: This website includes a useful discussion about context communication from the perspective of communication across cultures across cultures. It includes resources and links that are of interest.
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Corporal punishment
Corporal Punishment
Arguments Supporting Corporal Punishment
Robert W Burke
In spite of recurrent controversy, the use of corporal punishment in kindergarten through Grade 12 public schools is authorized by state law in 21 states; its use is banned by state law in the remaining states and in the District of Columbia. According to the Center for Effective Discipline, a steady decline in the frequency of administration of corporal punishment by school personnel in the United States (U.S.) has been evident during the past 30 years. For example, in 1976 an estimated 1,521,896 students received corporal punishment in schools; in 2003, that number had dropped to 301,016 students. Depending on one’s position concerning the use of corporal punishment, this decline may be regarded as a significant improvement in the conditions of schools or, conversely, an unfortunate trend that has contributed to the widespread misbehavior of students currently plaguing many schools. This sharp contrast in perspective underlies the beliefs, values, and arguments advanced by opponents as well as proponents of corporal punishment.
Proponents of using corporal punishment both in the home and at school seem to base their position on a long-standing set of deeply-held traditional beliefs and values. Primary elements of this belief and value system include the following:
Defining Corporal Punishment Although a precise, universally-accepted definition of corporal punishment does not exist, the following statement explains what appear to be the key identifying elements of actions that may be regarded as corporal punishment: Corporal punishment refers to any action of a parent, other adult, or caretaker that intentionally inflicts or causes pain or physical discomfort in a child for the purposes of punishment or containment. Corporal punishment includes, but is not limited to, spanking, slapping, smacking, hitting, shaking, biting, shoving or pulling a child; denying, restricting, or rationing a child’s use of the toilet; forcing physical exertion, requiring a child to remain motionless, or isolation of a child in confining spaces; denying a child access to needed water, food, or sleep. Such treatment is potentially traumatic even if it does not meet the legal requirements for a definition of child abuse under current legislation (> http://www.nospank.net/apa-let.htm).
The belief that, since the physical pain caused by corporal punishment supposedly does not linger, the recipient can ‘‘get over the punishment quickly’’ and resume daily life. The belief that corporal punishment acts as a deterrent to the recipient—as well as to other students. The interpretation of revered texts (including, for example, the Bible and the Qur’an) in manner that they are seen as supportive of the use of corporal punishment. The belief that corporal punishment, when properly administered, is the most effective form of discipline for misbehaving, disrespectful, and noncompliant children and adolescents. Polls consistently indicate that an overwhelming majority of American adults believe that corporal punishment is sometimes necessary. In fact, the U.S. chose not to sign the 2004 United Nations ‘‘Rights of the Child Proclamation’’ because of the document’s sanctions against parental use of corporal punishment.
Arguments Opposing Corporal Punishment In contrast to proponents’ reliance on traditional belief and value systems, opponents of corporal punishment base their position primarily on the substantial body of empirical evidence developed by scholars in the fields of psychology, social work, and pediatrics. Highlights of findings from this composite research base include the following key points: In an official policy statement opposing corporal punishment, the American Academy of Pediatrics reported that:
Corporal punishment is of limited effectiveness and has potentially deleterious side effects.
Council for Indian education
The more children are spanked, the more anger they report as adults; the more likely they are to spank their own children; the more likely they are to approve hitting a spouse; and the more marital conflict they experience as adults. Spanking has been associated with higher rates of physical aggression, more substance abuse, and increased risk of crime and violence when used with older children and adolescents.
Elizabeth T. Gershoff, in reporting her findings from a meta-analytic study that combined 60 years of research on corporal punishment, indicated that:
The only positive outcome of corporal punishment was immediate compliance; however, corporal punishment was associated with less long-term compliance. Corporal punishment was linked with nine other negative outcomes including: increased rates of aggression, delinquency, mental health problems, problems in relationships with their parents, and likelihood of being physically abused.
In an official position statement opposing corporal punishment, the National Association of School Psychologists (NASP) emphasized that:
The empirical evidence suggests that corporal punishment ‘‘negatively effects the social, psychological, and educational development of students and contributes to the cycle of child abuse and proviolence attitudes of youth.’’
See also: > Discipline
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Suggested Reading Gershoff, E. T. (2002). Corporal punishment by parents and associated child behaviors and experiences: A meta-analytic and theoretical review. Psychological Bulletin, 128(4), 539–579.
Suggested Resources Center for Effective Discipline—http://www.stophitting.com: This website provides information for parents on effective discipline, news updates, religious views, and laws concerning the discipline of children. National Association of School Psychologists—http://www. nasponline.org/information/pospaper_corppunish.html: This is an NASP website that presents a position statement on corporal punishment in schools.
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Council for Indian Education Shamagne N Richardson
The Council for Indian Education is a non-profit corporation that provides teacher training and culturally authentic reading material for Native American students. The organization’s mission is to improve the education of Native American students. Teachers are equipped by the Council with information on traditions, Native American culture, and ways in which their instruction can be adapted to the needs of their Native American students. The organization provides instructional materials that will give Native American students an opportunity to learn reading skills; these materials relate to their backgrounds, interests, and experiences, and promote a better self-concept, more interest in learning among Native American students, as well as stronger intercultural relationships. In addition, this instructional material gives non-Native American students a better understanding of their Native American neighbors. The Council began as a small project by John Woodenlegs, president of the Northern Cheyenne Tribe, in 1965. The now intertribal organization was initially formed with the purpose of gathering information for a series of small books about the Cheyenne that were to be used to teach reading to the Cheyenne children. This project lasted for about 5 years, but some of the committee members decided to continue the initial charter as well as introduce other tribes to this opportunity. The committee then formed a non-profit corporation, The Council for Indian Education. The current organization, presided over by Dr. Hap Gilliad, consists of a board of directors and approximately one hundred members. An Intertribal Editorial Board reads and evaluates all material before publication, to ensure its authenticity and quality. The Council offers workshops to schools. It also publishes and selects authentic reading materials to sell to schools. Most of the books published by the Council are sold to elementary schools. To meet the Council’s standards, these instructional materials must accurately interpret Native American life, culture, and ideals. Guidelines for authors are provided and include the use of substitution terminology rather than terms that are used inappropriately by authors and can be
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mistakenly taken as prejudicial. Other terms that have no derogatory implications such as the word princess can also be considered inappropriate. See also: > Native American schools; > Native American youth
Suggested Reading Gilliad, H. (2005). Native American way of life: Understanding American Indian cultures. Montana: Council for Indian Education. Gilliad, H. (2005). Teaching the Native American: Understanding American Indian cultures, (4th ed.). Montana: Council for Indian Education. Reyhner, J. A. (1994). Teaching American Indian students. Oklahoma: University of Oklahoma Press.
Suggested Resources http://www.cie-mt.org: This website is a direct link to the Council for Indian Education, 1240 Burlington Avenue Billings, Montana 69102-4224, U.S.
Counseling Mark Kiang
Since its professional emergence in the 1940s, counseling has been a dynamic, multifaceted, ever-evolving specialty within which many dichotomies have arisen. At its foundations, counseling revolves around a relationship between a counselor and client(s), in which the client(s) seek, voluntarily or not, some form of help from the counselor. In the relationship, the counselor seeks to help his or her client through three specific lenses: crisis, tertiary, and development. The crisis lens concerns helping those people in emergencies—in urgent situations that require immediate action. The tertiary lens entails the counselor seeking to help clients remedy a particular problem and equipping them to prevent future problems from occurring. The development lens involves the development of individuals, who do not necessarily
suffer from any immediate problems, in the healthiest way possible. Barbara F Okun has described this ‘‘working alliance’’ as being a relationship that is authentic, warm, and empathic. Charles Gelso and Bruce Fretz have outlined five unifying themes of counseling psychology. The first unifying theme is that clients are generally, although not in all cases, characterized by intact personalities. Counseling psychology tends to serve those who have problems in living rather than those suffering from severe disturbances. A second unifying theme is an optimism with which there exists a focus on clients’ strengths and assets and in developing them further, as opposed to a concentration solely on the sickness. The counselor possesses a belief in the client’s coping abilities. A third emphasis is on relatively brief interventions. This differs from clinical interventions, which tend to last for relatively longer periods of time. Fourth is an emphasis on person–environment interactions rather than solely considering the person as an independent being. The counselor examines the client’s life and the ways in which environmental factors affect and are affected by the client’s beliefs and behaviors. The fifth unifying theme is an interest in the educational and career development of individuals. This interest in developing an individual’s ability to take on an appropriate occupation has its roots in the foundations of early counseling and currently represents an important aspect of high school and college counseling. It is important to note that the aforementioned themes only roughly approximate the dynamic climate of counseling and should be considered as generalities rather than definitional characteristics of the profession.
Counseling Theories/Approaches Within the practice of counseling there exist diverse theories and approaches. As noted by Okun, throughout its history, counseling has evolved as the foci on models for therapy have shifted. Counseling began with an initial focus on traditional psychodynamic approaches based largely on Freudian theory. This focus aimed to resolve issues from one’s past as they relate to current anxieties. In the 1970s and 1980s, integrated cognitive and behavioral approaches emerged. In these models, the concentration is on the ‘‘here and now’’ and in changing an individual’s overt behavior. This was followed by a systemic approach in
Counseling
which family interactions were examined. Currently, the focus is on the ecological perspective with a concentration on outcome-oriented, brief therapies. Elements of each of these highlighted perspectives are evident in the practice of counseling today.
Cross-Cultural Concerns in Counseling A current topic of much discussion, debate and examination within counseling circles concerns cross-cultural aspects of the profession. United States (U.S.) demographics, both in society and in the counseling profession, have changed and expanded greatly since professional psychology emerged in the 1940s. This phenomenon has allowed for the broader representation of our society in counseling and for the development of counseling services to better accommodate diverse cultures. This, in turn, has required new perspectives and roles to be fulfilled within counseling. The field of counseling began as a burgeoning profession during World War II to address the needs of servicemen. Counseling was needed to prepare men for going into service, to help them deal with posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and to prepare them for careers upon their return. The great majority of the counseling clientele were White Anglo males, as were the counselors. The practice of counseling at that time was based on theories, in particular that of psychoanalysis, which catered to the same demographic. As U.S. demographics increasingly changed, the need for a more culturally sensitive and adaptable counseling environment became evident. This need was further emphasized by social movements during the 1950s and 1960s, which brought about desegregation of schools and universities and the creation of community health centers. Counselors during this era consequently encountered a number of ethnic minorities that they rarely had come into contact with before. The everincreasing diversity in the counseling field continues to this day.
Counseling’s Response Since the early 1990s, counseling, in theory and in practice, has been at the forefront of psychology professions in terms of cross-cultural/multicultural awareness and sensitivity. In 1992, the American Counseling
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Association (ACA), the largest association to represent professional counselors in various practice settings, published an outline of Cross-cultural (also called Multicultural) Competencies and Objectives in two of its journals—the Journal of Counseling and Development and the Journal of the Association for Multicultural Counseling and Development. The Competencies and Objectives were approved and contributed by the Association for Multicultural Counseling and Development (AMCD) and delineated competencies to guide the practice of counseling with respect to culture, race and ethnicity. The AMCD defines multicultural as encompassing the five major racial/cultural groups in the U.S.: African/Black, White/European, Hispanic/Latino and Native American, or indigenous groups. Multiculturalism has also come to incorporate the diversity of other demographic variables such as socioeconomic status (SES), religion, gender, and sexual orientation, to name a few. Despite the ACA’s and AMCD’s attempts to render counseling accessible to a diverse array of clientele, counseling on the whole still tends to cater to the Anglo American majority. Gelso and Fretz found that many researchers agree that counselors’ shortcomings are in the area of providing culturally sensitive and responsive therapy. Gelso and Fretz conclude that these limitations are the overriding bases for underutilization and the high drop-out rate of mental health services among people of color.
Counseling in Schools Forms of school counseling pre-date counseling in a broader sense Counseling in the form of vocational guidance in schools started at the beginning of the twentieth century. The Bureau of Vocational Guidance was established in 1908 by Frank Parsons, the ‘‘Father of School Guidance.’’ Its purpose was to assist young people in their transition from school to work. In the 1940s, school counseling was greatly influenced by new military testing of students and by Carl Rogers’ theories on helping relationships. In the 1950s, the U.S. government established the Guidance and Personnel Services Section in the Division of State and Local School Systems. The U.S. ‘‘space race’’ with the Soviet Union, upon the Soviet launch of Sputnik I, sparked great development in vocational counseling as the U.S.
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sought to encourage students to pursue math and the sciences under the National Education Act (NEA). Since that time the profession of school counseling has continued to grow and define itself. The American School Counselor Association (ASCA) states that a certified/licensed school counselor possesses the skills to address the academic, personal/social, and career development needs of all students. Professional school counselors have a master’s degree or higher in school counseling and must meet state certification/licensure standards. They are employed primarily in elementary, middle/junior high, and high schools. The school counselor is responsible for the development of his or her students and maximizing their potential. The counselor must also demonstrate an awareness and accommodation for the concerns of parents/caretakers and educators. School counselors carry out their duties through four ASCA-defined areas: school guidance curriculum, individual student planning, responsive services, and systems support. The school guidance curriculum area is the planning of lessons designed to help bring about desired competencies in students. Individual student planning consists of school counselors developing ongoing systemic activities to help students establish goals and develop future plans. The responsive services aspect of school counseling is based on the helping relationship between the counselor and students and is concerned with prevention and intervention activities. These activities include individual or group counseling, consultation with parents and educators, and providing information. Finally, system support involves the overall management and continual improvement of the school counseling program and the counselor him- or herself.
School Counseling’s Effectiveness Numerous studies, based on both qualitative and quantitative measurements, have shown that school counseling is successful in many aspects. Research has shown that counseling guidance has a positive effect on academic achievement, reducing victimization, decreasing classroom disturbances and on successful career development. Furthermore, studies support that programs/interventions designed to improve mediation skills, prevent violence and problem behaviors, prevent school drop-out and reduce test-taking anxiety have all been highly effective.
See also: > School counselor; > Grief counseling
Suggested Reading Gelso, C., & Fretz, B. (2001). Counseling psychology (2nd ed.). Belmont, CA: Wadsworth Group/Thomson Learning. Okun, B. (2002). Effective helping: Interviewing and counseling technique (6th ed.). Pacific Grove, CA: Wadsworth Group.
Suggested Resources The American Counseling Association–www.counseling.org: The American Counseling Association promotes growth and development of the counseling profession and of those who are served. It provides updated news and resources to aid both counselors and students in their research, career pursuits and advancement of knowledge. The American School Counselor Association–www.schoolcounselor.org: The American School Counselor Association (ASCA) supports school counselors’ efforts to help students focus on academic, personal/social and career development so they achieve success in school and are prepared to lead fulfilling lives as responsible members of society. ASCA provides professional development, publications and other resources, research and advocacy to more than 18,000 professional school counselors around the globe (adapted from website).
Creativity Melanie L Bromley . James C Kaufman
Creativity is a difficult concept to define and operationalize, in part because researchers disagree on what it is. Most research and theory-based definitions of creativity, however, boil down to two components. First, creativity must represent something different, new, or innovative. Second, it also must be useful, relevant, and appropriate to the task. The most common measures of creativity are the Torrance Tests of Creative Thinking (TTCT). These tests were based on Guilford’s work on divergent thinking. There are four components to the test: fluency, flexibility, originality, and elaboration. Fluency is the quantity of ideas a person has; flexibility is how many different categories these ideas fall into;
Crime in schools
originality is how unique these ideas are; and elaboration is how well-defined and detailed the ideas are. Typical questions might be to ask for different uses of a toothpick. More recently, creativity has been measured through the Consensual Assessment Technique, which involves the rating of creative products, such as a picture or a poem. Other common methods include self-report, teacher ratings, and testing people who are known to be creative or considered creative by their peers. There are several studies that have investigated cultural differences in measures of creativity. Specifically, studies have not shown a significant difference between African Americans and White Americans on the TTCT or on rated creative products. Research has indicated that bilingual students in general may have an advantage in creative abilities. However, studies of verbal creativity have shown higher scores for White Americans than Hispanic Americans, although these differences may be due to language difficulties during test administration. The results for Asian Americans are less clear. Artwork produced by American-born college students was rated as more creative than art produced by Chinese-born students by both American-born and Chinese-born raters. Yet a similar study that compared American and Chinese drawings of geometric shapes found that the two groups were rated similarly for creativity by both American and Chinese raters. In both studies, American and Chinese judges tended to agree on which products were creative and those that were not. See also: > Intelligence/Intelligence Quotient (IQ); > Learning styles; > Personality Tests: Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI) and Millon Clinical Multiaxial Inventory (MCMI)
Suggested Reading Kaufman, J. C. (2005). Non-biased assessment: A supplemental approach. In C. L. Frisby, & C. R. Reynolds (Eds.), Children’s handbook of multicultural school psychology (pp. 824–840). New York: Wiley. Kaufman, J. C., Baer, J., & Gentile, C. A. (2004). Differences in gender and ethnicity as measured by ratings of three writing tasks. Journal of Creative Behavior, 38, 56–69. Niu, W., & Sternberg R. J. (2001). Cultural influences on artistic creativity and its evaluation. International Journal of Psychology, 36, 225–241.
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Crime in Schools Sycarah Grant . John S Carlson
Criminal activity within schools has been an area of concern for school boards, researchers and governmental agencies. In the 2003 school year, the United States (U.S.) Department of Education’s Indicators of School Crime and Safety for 2005 found that students aged 12–18 were victims of approximately 1.9 million nonfatal crimes at school, including approximately 1.2 million thefts and 740,000 violent crimes. Statistics show trends in victimization decreasing over the last decade. In addition to student victimization, teachers also report being the victims of crimes in the schools where they work. Annually, from 1999 through 2003, teachers were victims of approximately 119,000 thefts and 65,000 violent crimes. In both survey years, teachers in central city schools were more likely to be threatened with injury or physically attacked than teachers in urban fringe or rural schools. With the number of criminal acts taking place in schools, it is important to target them for interventions that deter students from criminal behavior. Schools are an excellent focus of intervention because they are readily staffed with individuals trained to help children develop into academically and socially responsible citizens. First, schools need to be aware of the factors that may increase the possibility of crime in schools. There may be negative characteristics of the school, such as easy availability of drugs, alcohol, and weapons. Students may have had negative schoolrelated or peer related experiences or associate with delinquent peers. Students may have individual characteristics that predispose them to committing crimes, including early problem behavior, impulsiveness, rebellious attitudes, and low levels of social competency. The culture and climate of the surrounding community is one of the strongest predictors of a disorderly school setting and the risk of crime in school. Schools in urban, poor, disorganized communities experience more disorder and crime in comparison to other schools. These schools also demonstrate less leadership, teacher morale, teacher mastery, school climate and physical resources required to fix the problem and improve the system. This lack of human resources can create a vicious cycle, where the schools that need the
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most prevention and intervention services are the least able to provide them. Research on crime prevention programs has identified effective strategies for reducing crime in school. Several effective strategies include: building school capacity to initiate and sustain innovation, school-wide campaigns that clarify and communicate norms about in-school behaviors, and comprehensive long-term instructional programs that teach and continually reinforce a range of social competency skills. In addition, programs that teach ‘‘thinking skills’’ and those that group youths into smaller ‘‘schools-within-schools’’ where there are smaller units with more supportive teacher-student interactions and greater flexibility in instruction have both been shown to be effective. The U.S. government has also passed legislation that aims to address the issue of crime in schools. In 1994, the U.S. passed the Gun Free Schools Act that requires states to pass legislation to enforce ‘‘zero tolerance’’ federal gun free school laws by expelling students who bring firearms onto school property for more than 1 year. Schools often expand these rules to include substance abuse and aggressive behavior. Many states also receive financial assistance for their local drug and violence prevention programs under the Title IV and the Safe and Drug-Free Schools and Communities Act. Lastly and more recently, the No Child Left Behind Act mandates that states must report safety statistics for every school. Students who attend chronically dangerous schools or who are victims of violent crimes at school must be able to transfer to a safer school. See also: > Bullying; > Conflict resolution; > Emotional intelligence; > Gangs; > School violence; > Social skills
Suggested Reading Hawkins, J. D., Catalano, R. F., & Miller, J. L. (1992). Risk and protective factors for alcohol and other drug problems in early adulthood: Implications for substance abuse prevention. Psychological Bulletin, 112, 64–105. Howell, J. C., Krisberg, B., Wilson, J. J., & Hawkins, J. D. (1995). A sourcebook on serious, violent, and chronic juvenile offenders. Newbury Park, CA: Sage Publications.
Suggested Resources To promote a violence-free school—http://nces.ed.gov/pubsearch/ pubsinfo.asp?pubid¼2002375: This website is designed to
describe the Safety in Numbers Handbook. The Handbook can be used by school, district, and state staff to improve the effectiveness of their efforts to collect and use disciplinary incident data. Keep Schools Safe—http://www.keepschoolssafe.org/: This website helps deal with the many issues related to the safety and security of schools.
Crisis Intervention Lindsay Mahony
Currently, 70–96% of students in 15 large United States (U.S.) school districts are comprised of ethnic minority students. In addition, greater than 70% of these students do not have full English proficiency and one out of every seven speaks a different language at home. Clearly, the cultural diversity among U.S. students and schools continues to grow throughout the country. Because of this growing diversity, the goal of many schools’ crisis response teams is to have a culturally diverse group of helpers, with members from each culture represented in the school. Unfortunately, this goal has not been reached, with most crisis workers belonging to the dominant, North American Anglo culture. To avoid potential conflicts or barriers to effective connections made between these students and their crisis response team members, it becomes essential for these dominant-culture helpers to become competent multicultural crisis counselors. The following three dimensions have been proposed to comprise the competent multicultural crisis intervener: (1) Counselor awareness of one’s own assumptions, values, and beliefs, (2) Understanding the world view of the culturally different client, and (3) Developing appropriate intervention strategies and techniques.
Counselor Awareness of One’s Own Culture Culture has been defined as the shared language, ideas, beliefs, values, and behavioral norms of a group of individuals with a group identity. As mentioned previously, many crisis response team helpers are members of the dominant, North American Anglo culture and
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are often unaware that their own values and attitudes are not universally shared. Being flexible and open to all value and attitudes among diverse racial and ethnic groups of youth is a first step towards culturally competent crisis intervention in schools. Once aware of these values and attitudes, differences between cultures may be more apparent and the allocation of appropriate resources during times of crisis will be executed. One example of cultural difference is illustrated by what the dominant Euro American and Latino cultures view as being in control of life events. The dominant Euro American culture largely believes that individuals can change and control the events in their lives. This is in contrast to the Latino cultural belief that God or fate control life events. For many members of the Latino culture, religion plays a monumental role and is an integral part of every day life. During environmental crises, then, Latinos may benefit more from interventions focusing on religion and God’s meaning for such events, whereas the European American culture may not benefit from such an intervention. As depicted in this example, explicit acknowledgment of one’s own culture is critical for becoming a competent multicultural counselor. Such acknowledgement allows for heightened awareness of differences between one’s own culture and those of others and the employment of appropriate interventions during times of crisis.
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terrorism and other violent acts. However, while acknowledging these added stressors, it is crucial to avoid using a deficit model when working with students of color. In addition to having extra stressors, students of color may also have extra resources for coping such as extended family, religion, and resilience. It is important to emphasize and utilize these strengths when working with diverse students during times of crisis. An additional part of culturally competent crisis intervention is to recognize how diverse cultural groups cope with crises. For some Middle Eastern cultures, for instance, outward expression of grief by wailing, crying, and self-mutilation are considered normal for a survivor following the death of a loved one. Yet to members of the Euro American culture, this response may be considered a breakdown of ordinary coping abilities. To understand an individual’s response to a particular situation, it is necessary for crisis team helpers to find the meaning of responses for each of their students. The utilization of cultural informants or mentors may be useful for communicating to helpers what normal reactions to various traumatic events are for particular cultures. Additional strategies and techniques may be utilized when working with culturally diverse students that not only denote multicultural competence, but also further the helpers’ understandings of cultural and individual differences and coping mechanisms. These strategies and techniques are discussed in the next section.
Understanding the World View of the Culturally Different Understanding cultural differences has important implications for crisis intervention and prevention. Using the previous example, when assisting Latino children during a crisis, religion may be an important consideration for effective intervention. Through the acquisition of new cultural understandings and skills, crisis helpers from the dominant culture can learn to work more effectively with students of different cultures. When attempting to understand the cultures of various minority groups, it is important to bear in mind the life events and stressors that may have influenced their members’ perceptions of the world. These stressors may include poverty, discrimination, the need for assimilation, potential changes in gender roles, role reversals between children and adults, divided families, poor health, and increased susceptibility to posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) as a result of witnessing
Developing Appropriate Intervention Strategies and Techniques Many clinicians generalize about students from different cultural backgrounds, yet one cannot assume an individual will share all of the ideas, values, and norms of the group with which he or she identifies. One technique to help crisis workers become more aware of individual differences between students, even if from the same cultural background, is the Culturagram. The Culturagram is a diagram that places each student in the center and connects him or her to ten aspects of his or her culture. These aspects include reason(s) for immigration, length of time in the community, legal status, age of student at the time of immigration, language spoken at home and in the community, health beliefs, impact of crisis events, holidays and special events, contact with cultural institutions, and values about family, education, and work. Together,
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knowledge in these areas helps the crisis worker better understand each student within a cultural framework, pointing not only to areas for potential intervention, but also to assets and strengths of the individual. This technique also inhibits the crisis workers from generalizing and stereotyping individuals of a particular culture or background. Some additional strategies that may be utilized to aid crisis workers in dealing with students from diverse cultural backgrounds include the following three principles: (1) Be concerned and competent, (2) Listen to the facts of the situation, and (3) Reflect the individual’s feelings. The first principle, be concerned and competent, entails behaviors such as being aware of the status of one’s self and of others. With regard to status, for example, when working with the family of a Mexican American student, depending upon level of acculturation, initial communication may be directed towards the father to acknowledge his status within the family. The second principle, listening to the facts of the situation, involves the use of culturally appropriate listening skills to establish rapport and foster open communication between the crisis worker and his or her student(s). For example, being aware of nonverbal communication norms for different cultures is important. Eye contact and proximity, for instance, vary from culture to culture, so it is vital to be aware of these differences to portray competence as a multicultural counselor. Often in the African American culture, for example, it is more important to maintain eye contact while speaking than when listening; For the Euro American culture, the reverse is true. Lastly, various cultures may express their feelings surrounding a particular crisis in different ways, with some individuals holding their emotions in and others being overly expressive. Many Latino groups, for instance, are more expressive when conveying emotions than White Americans. It therefore becomes crucial for the crisis worker to reflect these individuals’ feelings to clarify one’s understanding of them and convey appropriate responses. Additional strategies specific for crisis interventions of diverse groups include the reestablishment of the students’ social support networks, engaging in focused problem solving, and dealing with language issues appropriately. One way to facilitate the reestablishment of social support networks for students of color is to utilize the students’ coping resources of family and religion. In some cases, when families are disrupted due to immigration and/or changing role reversals, group work or interventions may be more effective than individual
work as they support the collective orientation commonly valued by many cultures and may serve as a substitute in the absence of otherwise cooperative and cohesive family systems. With regard to religion, the relaxation of strict separation between church and state in schools may facilitate a more positive crisis resolution for some students of color. As mentioned previously, religion plays an integral part of many cultures and therefore is a valuable resource for coping during times of crisis. With regard to focused problem-solving, it is important to know how mental illness and specific crisis events are perceived by students of color and their families, as this perception may impede the effectiveness of many crisis interventions. For example, some cultures believe that mental problems as a result of crises are a sign of weakness and bring shame to the individual and his or her family. Therefore, services provided through a medical setting may appear more acceptable. Finally, the issue of language is pertinent to effective multicultural crisis intervention. If possible, it is most helpful for the crisis interveners to speak the same language as their clients. However, as mentioned previously, this match is often hard to achieve, making the use of interpreters a more common practice in many schools’ crisis intervention programs. A few key principles should be implemented when choosing an appropriate interpreter. It is essential that the translator has some knowledge of the political and cultural background from which the client comes and that he or she is aware of the ethical concept of confidentiality. It is also important for the translator not to elaborate on the client’s responses inappropriately and to know how to convey the meaning of the client’s physical gestures and other nonverbal communication. Since many diverse students will be paired with dominant-culture helpers, it is important for these crisis interveners to do what they can for their students, being as competent as possible. It is perhaps more essential, however, that these helpers know how to facilitate suitable referrals to culturally appropriate counselors. Follow-ups to ensure smooth transitions and proper crisis resolutions for these students are a crucial part of the intervention process and should be implemented along with every referral. See also: > Community interventions with diverse youth; Cross-cultural competence in school psychologists’ services; > Culturally competent crisis response; > Culturally competent practice >
Critical thinking
Suggested Reading Congress, E. P. (2000). Crisis intervention with culturally diverse families. In A. R. Roberts (Ed.), Crisis intervention handbook: Assessment, treatment, and research, (2nd ed.) (pp. 430–449). New York: Oxford University Press. Sandoval, J. (2002). Culture, diversity, and crisis. In J. Sandoval (Ed.), Handbook of crisis counseling, intervention, and prevention in the schools, (2nd ed.) (pp. 39–55). London: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Sodowsky, G. R. & Johnson, P. (1994). World views: Culturally learned assumption and values. In P. Pedersen, & J. C. Carey (Eds.). Multicultural counseling in schools: A practical handbook (pp. 59–79). Needham Heights, MA: Allyn and Bacon.
of information, sifts through the inputs received, tests those inputs relative to other standards, and uses the sifted information to inform decisions. Critical thinking involves analysis and synthesis of information and can help a person make sense of the world. Several academic subjects include the development of critical thinking skills. Health literacy by definition includes being a critical thinker. Science as inquiry depends on thinking critically and logically. Historical and literary analyses involve critical thinking. Some critical thinking skills that curricula often include are to:
Suggested Resources The Center for Trauma Response, Recovery, and Preparedness— http://www.ctrp.org/resources_cultural_comp.htm: The Center for Trauma Response, Recovery, and Preparedness website provides clinical, educational, and scientific expertise to enhance the capacity of behavioral health providers in safely and effectively meeting the needs of people affected by crisis. National Association of School Psychologists—http://www. nasponline.org/culturalcompetence/index.html: School psychologists who are culturally competent ensure that consultation, intervention, and assessments are appropriately designed to meet student, staff, and parental needs. The National Association of School Psychologists’ Culturally Competent Practice website was developed as a collection of resources to assist school psychologists, educators, and parents in their efforts to enhance the mental health and educational competence of all children.
Critical Thinking Susan F Wooley
Critical thinking is a way of approaching any subject, content, or problem in which the thinker is deliberate about the process of thinking and reasoning and imposes intellectual standards upon his or her thinking. People are constantly bombarded with information from their own senses and experiences as well as from what they read, hear, or see from various media. Everyone thinks, but when not using critical thinking skills much human thinking is biased, distorted, partial, or uninformed. A critical thinker seeks out credible sources
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Raise vital questions and problems and then state them clearly Gather and assess relevant information Use abstract ideas to interpret information and come to well-reasoned conclusions and solutions Test ideas against relevant criteria and standards Think open-mindedly, recognize and assess one’s assumptions, the implications, and the practical consequences Communicate effectively with others to figure out solutions to complex problems
Thinking critically requires not only having such skills but also using them. No one uses critical thinking skills in all situations. Everyone has episodes of undisciplined or irrational thought and areas of more or less background with which to make comparisons. For this reason, the development of critical thinking is a life-long endeavor. People sometimes use critical thinking skills to win an argument by pointing out the flaws in someone else’s statement. Ideally, people use critical thinking in an unbiased way using criteria such as clarity, accuracy, precision, consistency, relevance, sound evidence, good reasons, depth, breadth, and fairness. When used in this way, critical thinking can reveal cultural assumptions and lead to probing questions and new ways of thinking. Critical thinking is self-directed, self-disciplined, self-monitored, and self-corrective thinking. It requires that the person agrees to standards of excellence and to applying them. It involves effective communication and problem solving abilities and a commitment to overcome one’s biases. See also: > Creativity; > Cultural issues in education; > Democracy, Teaching about; > Literacy; > Media literacy
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Suggested Reading Facione, P. A. (2006). Critical thinking: What it is and why it counts. Insight assessment. Available at http://www.insightassessment. com/pdf_files/what&why2006.pdf
Suggested Resources Internet School Library Media Center (ISLMC)—http://falcon.jmu. edu/ramseyil/critical.htm: This critical thinking page, which is part of the school library section at James Madison University, has general information, lesson plans and bibliographies to help educators interested in higher order thinking skills. The Critical Thinking Community—www.criticalthinking.org/: Consisting of the National Council for Excellence in Critical Thinking and Moral Critique and the Foundation for Critical Thinking, the Critical Thinking Community provides educational materials, professional development workshops, and conferences designed to develop critical thinking. The National Center for Teaching Thinking—http://www.nctt.net/ lessonsarticles.html: This website offers lesson plans for use in a variety of subject areas.
Cross-Cultural Competence in School Psychologists’ Services Matthew Lau Theodore J Christ
Competencies for the practice of school psychology are defined by the National Association of School Psychologists (NASP) and the American Psychological Association (APA). Documents such as the Professional conduct manual (PCM) and The blueprint for training and practice III (BP-III) provide guidance and standards for the practice of school psychology. For example, Guideline 6 in the PCM states, ‘‘School psychologists have the sensitivity, knowledge, and skills to work with individuals and groups with a diverse range of strengths and needs form a variety of racial, cultural, experiential, and linguistic backgrounds.’’ The guideline goes further, to recognize that biases are inherent to the human condition and that school psychologists are ethically bound to recognize their own biases and to work to provide an equitable service to all individuals. Issues of multicultural and multilinguistic
competencies are of substantial importance as the population of the United States (U.S.) continues to become ever more diverse. Seventy-five percent of all respondents identified themselves as ‘‘White alone’’ when they responded to the U.S. census in 2000. That information does not reflect the increasing diversity of the country. In 2005, The American community survey revealed that one in five (20%) residents speaks a language other than English at home. Other data suggests that 10% of students qualify as English Language Learners (ELLs). The most prevalent non-English language in the U.S. is Spanish. Other common languages include Vietnamese, Hmong, Korean, Arabic, Haitian Creole, Cantonese, Tagalog, Russian, Navajo, and Khmer. Many ELL students are concentrated in California, New York, Texas, Florida, Illinois, and New Jersey. However, ELL populations continue to grow dramatically in many states around the country. For example, the ELL population has grown by 210% in Minnesota from 1991–1992 to 2001–2002. In this context, cultural competence must reference language diversity. The student population continues to diversify, but the field of school psychology has not diversified. In a 1999–2000 survey, over 90% of school psychologists identified themselves as White. This disparity has led to a call to recruit school psychologists who are multilingual and from diverse cultures. Some have argued that school psychologists should share cultural and language background with the students they serve. Nevertheless, all school psychologists can and should establish competencies to serve their community of children. Regardless of background, school psychologists can learn to serve students who are culturally and linguistically diverse. The following domains of crosscultural competencies for school psychologists are proposed. School psychologists should carefully examine their own cultural values, personal beliefs, and biases. Bias is inherent to the heuristics that humans use to understand their world. School psychologists should be aware of their own biases and work to provide equitable service to all children. Intense emotions that accompany personal beliefs about controversial issues such as sexual orientation, premarital sexual activities, abortion, and ritualistic practices (e.g., female circumcision, spiritual healing) must give way to tolerance and evidenced-based practice. Nevertheless, it is important for school psychologists to recognize their own limitations. This will help identify when to confer with
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colleagues and when to refer clients to other service providers who do not share an insurmountable bias. This does not limit the school psychologist’s responsibility as a mandatory reporter of illegal or dangerous activity—even if the activities are acceptable within some cultures. Some other cultural values and expectations may be incongruent with mainstream values, and school psychologists are ethically and legally required to act within the law. School psychologists need to demonstrate understanding of, and sensitivity to, the differences and similarities between ‘‘mainstream’’ American values and other ethnic/cultural values. It helps to understand the motives and rationales behind certain behaviors and practices when they are unfamiliar. It is often possible to emphasize similarities between cultures, which can be used as a starting point for understanding. It is the responsibility of the school psychologist to foster mutual respect and cooperation. School psychologists must recognize the diversity within and between cultures and ethnic groups. For instance, Hispanic or Latino can be divided into four other major ethnic subgroups: Mexican, Puerto Rican, Cuban, and Central and South American. Moreover, Asian American comprises members from over 28 subgroups. In addition, individuals’ attitudes, beliefs, and values can be substantially influenced by personal experience, educational level, socioeconomic status (SES), and time spent embedded within the U.S. culture. Although ethnicity is often used as a proxy for culture, school psychologists must avoid superficial generalizations and stereotypes. Evidence-based instructional strategies and programs typically have positive effects for all students. There is little evidence to support the belief that students require culturally specific instruction. Datadriven and research-based practices are expected to benefit culturally diverse students. Certainly, best practices also imply that these students are carefully and frequently monitored to ensure that changes can be made if necessary. For social–emotional interventions, culturally sensitive practice should be incorporated in planning and implementation to maximize success, align with cultural expectations, and reduce potential barriers. The school psychologist must explore whether culturally distinct norms and communication patterns contribute to school-based problems. School interpreters are essential team members. They help to bridge the language barrier among students, staff, and parents. Some can assist with translating written
materials. They can also take on a role as a cultural liaison. However, many interpreters are trained in school psychology. School psychologists should develop specialized skills when they have to work through an interpreter to collect assessment data. Both the interpreter and the school psychologist might require additional training. Relatives, friends, or other students are not good candidates to be used as an interpreter. Many school psychologists rely on published norm-referenced assessments. Many of those assessments are highly suspect for bias against non-majority groups. Researchers have argued that the unique experiences of culturally and linguistically diverse students are not represented in the normative samples of these standardized measures. Therefore, there is questionable validity for the interpretation of normreferenced test scores when the target student is nonWhite or affiliates with a non-majority culture. School psychologists must develop competencies to detect measurement bias and report potential bias along with assessment outcomes. See also: > Cross-cultural school psychology; rally competent practice
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Suggested Reading American Psychological Association (2002). Ethical principles of psychologists and code of conduct. Retrieved January 1, 2005, from http://www.apa.org/ethics/. Frisby, C. L., & Reynolds, C. R. (Eds.) (2005). Comprehensive handbook of multicultural school psychology. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley. National Association of School Psychologists (2000). Professional conduct manual. Bethesda, MD: National Association of School Psychologists. Ysseldyke, J., Morrison, D., Burns, M. K., Ortiz, S., Dawson, P., Rosenfield, S., et al. (2006). School psychology: A blueprint for training and practice III. Bethesda, MD: National Association of School Psychologists.
Cross-Cultural Consultation Charles R Ridley . Lanaya L Ethington
Cross-cultural consultation occurs when the cultures of the consultant, consultee, or client do not match.
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In this context, culture is defined as the ideas, beliefs, skills, customs, values, and social behavior of a particular group of people. For example, the consultant and consultee may identify with a culture that is different from the client, the consultant and client may share a culture that is different from the consultee, or the consultant may identify with a cultural group dissimilar to that of the consultee and client. It may also be the case that the consultant, consultee, and client each identify with a different cultural group.
Cross-Cultural Consultation Competence Competence is the predetermination and attainment of the outcomes of one’s profession or vocation by coordinating and integrating relevant competencies. To be competent to engage in cross-cultural consultation, consultants must exhibit competencies in awareness and identification of cultural components to the process. First, consultants must be aware of their own cultural identification, assumptions, and values so that they can recognize how it may influence their practice. Second, consultants must be aware of how the mainstream culture may affect minority cultures’ experience and identification. Third, consultants must be able to identify and value an alternative worldview. Lastly, consultants must be able to attend to cultural variables in the diagnosis, assessment, and treatment phases of their interventions.
Consultation Roles Consultants play a number of roles in their practice. There are five roles that are especially relevant to cross-cultural consultation. As advocates, consultants attempt to protect the rights of those who are unable to help themselves. This may be especially important when consultants advocate for social justice or confront racism and oppression. For example, consultants may advocate for clients who are being underserved in schools due to cultural misperceptions. As experts, consultants function as technical advisors who provide particular knowledge, advice, or service to the consultee. This may occur when consultants with cultural expertise apply it to their practice. For example, an Asian American consultant may use his/her knowledge of Asian cultures to help integrate Asian immigrants into American mainstream society. As trainer/educators,
consultants attempt to change the consultee’s professional functioning. Consultants use this role to create conditions in which the consultee can develop skills. Consultants who are serving to raise the intercultural sensitivity to teachers and administrators may provide workshops or training to raise cultural awareness. As investigators, consultants gather information, analyze it, and give feedback to consultees. This may involve consultants identifying any underlying cultural components to problems. For example, parents of students who seemingly do not comply with school procedures may be influenced by their cultural backgrounds. Consultants may be able to discern cultural components in situations and make them explicit to consultees and clients. As process specialists, consultants observe and facilitate the consultee’s problem-solving processes. In schools, consultants may use their cultural expertise to identify cultural components to problem-solving processes that affect the consultee and client.
Consultation Principles Effective consultants operate from a basis of sound principles, and five principles are important as guidelines for cross-cultural consultation. Collaboration is the process of establishing a working alliance and recognizing how both parties can contribute to the process. By collaborating with consultees, consultants are able to include the clients’ cultural values in the process of problem conceptualizations rather than imposing their own cultural values onto the situation. This allows consultants and consultees to co-construct how they conceptualize the problem and the desired outcomes toward which they strive. Problem reframing occurs when consultants challenge and broaden the consultee’s problem definition. Reframing is the process by which the consultant reconceptualizes the problem, without changing the facts, so the clients and consultees may develop a different perception of the problem. In cross-cultural consultation, consultants should attempt to enter the consultee’s frame of reference by attending to the cultural, sociopolitical, and psychological contexts that affect the consultee’s perception of the problem. By entering the client’s frame of reference, consultants are able to reframe the problem so that it is culturally appropriate to the client. Using an open systems perspective allows consultants to consider the dynamics and interactions between organizations and their environments. In cross-cultural consultation, consultants need to be
Cross-cultural dissonance
aware of how the cultures of the students, parents, and administrators of the school interact with each other. This may also be considered attending to the cultural context in which the consultation occurs. The principle of accountability requires consultants to continually assess and monitor their own performance, as well as seek constructive feedback about their performance. This requires consultants to be familiar with cultural differences in power differentials that may affect the feedback they receive. For example, when interacting with members of a culture who communicate indirectly and defer to authority figures, consultants may not receive explicit comments regarding their performance. Finally, the principle of ethics holds consultants ultimately responsible for conducting themselves in an ethical manner. Although there is not a specific ethics code for consultants, they are encouraged to abide by the ethical code of the helping profession with which they are affiliated. It would be considered ethically inappropriate for consultants to practice outside of their area of expertise, and consultants need to be aware of their limits and make the appropriate referrals when necessary. In cross-cultural consultation, it is important for consultants to be aware of how their cultural values may have an impact on their performance.
Challenges of Cross-Cultural Consultation
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consultants may inadvertently deny potentially important cultural components to the problem. A final challenge to cross-cultural consultation is the lack of appropriate knowledge or skill when interacting with members of a different culture. Although consultants may enter into a consultation relationship with the belief that they have the adequate knowledge and skill level to be effective, the consultation process may elucidate cultural deficits or misperceptions. See also: > Context communication; > Cultural diversity; > Culturally competent practice; > Multicultural teacher training; > Worldview
Suggested Reading Holcomb-McCoy, C. C. (2004). Assessing the multicultural competence of school counselors: A checklist. Professional School Counseling 7(3), 178–186. Ingraham, C. L. (2000). Consultation through a multicultural lens: Multicultural and cross-cultural consultation in schools. School Psychology Review 29(3), 320–343. Ridley, C. R. (2005). Overcoming unintentional racism in counseling and theory: A practitioner’s guide to intentional intervention (2nd ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
Cross-Cultural Dissonance Ben K Lim . Soh Leong Lim
When consulting cross-culturally, consultants need to recognize the difference between being culturally sensitive and overemphasizing culture. That is, cultural differences between consultants, consultees, and clients do not inherently imply that the problems are cultural in nature. Rather, consultants need to balance cultural information with developmental issues and the school environment when assessing a problem. Also, it is important to recognize within-group variation; that is, although a consultee or a client may identify as a member of a particular cultural group, consultants need to recognize individuals’ uniqueness and personal history. Another challenge to crosscultural consultation may occur when consultants adopt a ‘‘color-blind’’ approach where individuals are treated the same regardless of their race, gender, ethnic, or cultural background. Although consultants may use a color-blind approach to be egalitarian and objective,
Cross-cultural dissonance (i.e., intergenerational conflict) occurs within immigrant families as children acculturate more quickly to the dominant United States (U.S.) culture than their parents. These young people learn the subtle nuances of English in school and many begin to embrace Western values such as freedom and individual rights, expressiveness, and emotional congruence. These values may be antithetical to their own cultural heritage. For example, the traditional Confucian values of family obligation and duty, deference, and emotional restraint among East Asian families may run counter to the values placed upon individualism and assertiveness found in Western society. There are four ways minority families accommodate to the host culture when they migrate to the U.S. First, if the families are not English-speaking, it is
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natural for them to seek people of their own ethnicity and live among them. As long as they do not have to interact with other people beyond their cultural enclaves such as ‘‘Little Italy’’ or ‘‘Chinatown,’’ they manage well. However, beyond their ethnic enclaves, they may be dependent on their more acculturated children and community leaders to help them navigate the complexities of American bureaucracy. Second, there are families who assimilate themselves totally to the dominant majority. They take great pains to extricate themselves from any aspect of their own culture. They not only live in a White community and attend a White church, they also do not associate with their own people at all. They attend English classes, learn American history, and adopt an American lifestyle and beliefs. Third, some immigrants who have escaped their country because of economic, political, or religious persecution, may harbor a hatred for anything that reminds them of their past and may even refuse to speak their own language. Such extreme actions of emotional cut-off from one’s cultural heritage have shown to be unhealthy for psychological well-being. Sometimes immigrants in such situations find that they are not fully accepted either by their adopted culture or by their own cultural groups. This can give rise to marginalization by both the host culture and the individual’s own ethnic group. Families in this category suffer from identity crisis and experience extreme cross-cultural dissonance. Finally, the fourth way of acculturation is known as biculturalism or multiculturalism. Studies have shown that the ability to function in both cultures is the essence of cultural competence. This requires an immigrant to be open to learning new experiences, be willing to take risks, and be prepared to embrace and celebrate the strengths of diversity in both their own and that of their host country. Individual family members do not have the same rate of acculturation. Sometimes both generations may move in the same direction with the parents acculturating slower than the children. Even though this may seem cross-culturally consonant, it may also give rise to problems in the parent-child relationship, For instance, parents who are not acculturated at the same pace can become dependent on the child to translate documents and conversations. This role reversal in immigrant families is sometimes referred to as a parentification of children. A disconcerting situation for immigrant families is when two generations acculturate in different
directions. For instance, the parents become more isolated from the host culture and hold on to their traditional ways, while the children decide to assimilate fully with the majority culture. In this case, cultural dissonance takes place and misunderstandings can easily result because due to the clash of cultures and differing values that play out in the household. Since the school is often the focal point of multiculturalism, school personnel and clinicians need to become culturally aware and sensitive to the potential for cultural dissonance between parent and student, teacher and student, and among multicultural groups in the classroom. It is critical that teachers are aware of the potential for cultural dissonance between themselves and their students as well as among the generations of the family whose student is in their classroom. See also: > Cross-cultural competence in school psychologists’ services; > Cultural diversity; > Racial/ethnic group differences
Suggested Reading Lee, M. Y., & Mjelde-Mossey, L. (2004). Cultural dissonance among generations: A solution-focused approach with East Asian elders and their families. Journal of Marital and Family Therapy, 30, 497–513.
Cross-Cultural Families Kathryn de Bruin . Ben K Lim
Terms Defined Culture refers to the values and beliefs that are institutionalized in a people’s collective life, whereby inherited meanings, morality, beliefs, and ways of behaving are preserved. Culture takes on a particular life that is often more readily seen by those on the outside looking inward. Race relates to people who share biologically transmitted traits that are defined as socially significant. The United States (U.S.) Census Bureau has six major racial categories based on distinct physical characteristics.
Cross-cultural families
The six major categories are: White, Black or African American, Hispanic/Latino, American Indian and Alaska Native, Asian, Native Hawaiian and other Pacific Islander, and other race. Each major category is then subdivided into further sections. Class identifies the social stratum whose members share certain economic, social, or cultural characteristics. Examples include the lower-income, working, middle, upper middle, upper, and in some communities, social castes. Class intersects with other cultural variables such as education and race. Family has traditionally referred to people who are related to one another by birth, adoption, or marriage. Usually families have parents, children, and relatives. Family can be viewed as the basic unit to which children are born or adopted and together they progress through one family life stage to another. With the breakdown of traditional families in the American society, ‘‘family’’ is increasingly defined as members of a household or community who live together in close and supportive relationships.
The Myth of the Melting Pot The Declaration of Independence as written by Thomas Jefferson states that, ‘‘. . .all men (and women) are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, among which are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.’’ Freedom, democracy, and equality are core U.S. values; they seek to help all people to live together respectfully irrespective of ancestry, gender, race, creed, sexual orientation, or disabilities. The ‘‘melting pot’’ is a term used to describe this process of cultures fusing together and each group of people losing their identity. This may seem desirable to create an emergent nationhood. This paradigm is based on the notion that ancestry and cultural heritage are inconsequential to one’s well-being. For cultures that are expressly different from the White majority, however, there is a lot to sacrifice both communally and psychologically.
The Multicultural Alternative Culture influences society at multiple levels. It influences daily practices such as family life and the kinds of occupations people choose. Family is understood
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differently in various cultural groups. It lies anywhere on a continuum from the nuclear family on one end, to families that embrace kin and community, and on the other end of the continuum, to families that include descendants and ancestors. Life transitions are emphasized differently in families of different ethnicities. A family generally goes through six family life cycle stages: the unattached young adult, the newly married couple, the family with young children, families with adolescents, launching children and moving on, and the family in later life. As a family negotiates through each stage, family members take on different roles, and develop through various family life transitions. Culture plays an important role in the expression of each family life cycle stage. For instance, the Italian family often emphasizes the eminence of weddings, Jewish communities consider the Bar Mitzvah an important rite of passage, and the Irish view death as the most important transition, Everyone in the U.S. has a unique heritage, and with the exception of American Indians, Americans have come from foreign lands at different times. Immigrants bring with them different ways of living life, being a family, and practicing beliefs. They come together to this country, and depending on their identity development and various intergenerational and contextual stressors, adjust to their new homeland in various ways. Psychologically, families who remain connected with their past and have a firm sense of identity are able to express themselves freely in their present and future endeavors. The greater the degree to which they know about and appreciate their own distinctiveness, the greater capacity they have to accept differences in other people. Paradoxically, this further enhances tolerance and unity as people learn to live and grow together. This paradigm does not reinforce the idea of the ‘‘melting pot.’’ It encourages multiculturalism. A more suitable metaphor may be a salad bowl. Each vegetable in the salad bowl maintains its uniqueness and yet by itself, it does not provide the delicious taste that salad produces. Diverse families add much flavor to American society when they are able to integrate their unique heritage with the new sociocultural environment. Social scientists are finding that during times of stress and crisis, people revert to old or familiar sources of comfort, such as rituals, behaviors, and beliefs with which they grew up. The unique heritage that is a deep part of people’s ancestry cannot be denied. This heritage longs to find its expression, in family patterns, beliefs,
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thinking, feeling, and behavior. There are social and psychological benefits to being true to one’s heritage. Developmental psychologist Erik Erikson has written extensively on psychosocial identity development. He purports that during various stages of life, individuals must make an adjustment to self and to the social environment. The social milieu plays an important role, and the term ‘‘identity crisis’’ is used for people who are confused about the transition that they are negotiating due to societal cultural expectations. This is an individual perspective, but this is not dissimilar to family identity. Families move through various life stages. Transitions will occur smoothly once the life tasks for a particular stage have been achieved. Transitions from one life cycle stage to another are often marked through different rituals and traditions in different cultures. The desire to belong is basic to any human being. It fulfills a deep psychological need for identity and historical continuity. Every family relationship with the exception of marriage occurs without choice. People are born into families. Despite the innate desire for connection, family members do try to disconnect from family. This occurs through various cut offs, albeit divorce, moving geographically or simply ‘‘disowning’’ one another. The following describes various crosscultural family groups.
American Indian Families There has been a tendency to see American Indians as a homogenous group, resulting in a blurring of the distinctions between a number of different tribal groups and clans. The American Indians endured a history of genocide. They were labeled as uncivilized and denigrated for their customs and religious beliefs. Families were torn apart by the relocation plan in the 1950s and 1960s. As people migrated to cities, alcoholism soared, suicide and violence increased. School drop out rates rose, along with teenage pregnancy and unemployment. American Indians are reclaiming their cultural heritage. American Indian history is included in school curricula; stereotypes are being replaced with new respect. Diversity in tribe, language, and lifestyle is being acknowledged. American Indians share some common values including strong family ties, an attachment to the natural environment, and a distinct spirituality. A child’s primary relationship is with his or her grandparents and grandparents may or may not be
biological grandparents but could include a great aunt or other relations. When someone marries into a family, they are treated as biological relatives. People identify themselves by the tribe they belong to, by their relatives, and by the family they represent. Because of the history of victimization of American Indians by missionaries, school teachers, and social workers, skepticism of the helping profession remains strong. School counselors will have to be aware of this history and work hard to build rapport with American Indian families. This can be done by displaying personal authenticity and showing genuine respect and concern when working with American Indian families. American Indian people value listening and periods of silence are not uncommon.
African American Families African American families have migrated from a number of African countries. Amongst themselves they are diverse in many ways although there are a number of similarities as well. The majority of African Americans originally lived in the south, but they are now represented in larger cities all over the U.S. The ancestors of African Americans came to the U.S. during the Atlantic slave trade in the seventeenth century. They were brought over as cheap labor. This involuntary migration gave them a sense of inferiority. White preference, discrimination, and oppression exacerbated their experience. Disillusionment that evolved from the oppression caused many to turn to substance abuse, which some consider another form of slavery, albeit psychological in nature. African Americans originated from a social structure of tribes with close-knit family groups. African Americans continue to hold the family and kin in high regard. The family offers a tremendous support network. Counselors may invite extended family to discussions at school, taking into consideration that people who are involved in the children’s lives and considered ‘‘family’’ may or may not be blood related. The African American family tends to be more multigenerational, including different combinations of roles within the units. It is more acceptable for women to work outside the home, similar to the tradition in Africa, where women’s contributions went beyond just childbearing. Women have found it easier to find work in this country than African American men, contributing to a more subtle aspect of racism, where African
Cross-cultural families
American men are seen as less productive and unable to provide for their families. In many families, both males and females work. This results in more egalitarian relationships among African American couples in comparison to couples from other cultures. A growing number of women choose to become single parents rather than remaining childless. It is not uncommon for children to perform some of the parental duties when parents are working or when families are large. African American people are sensitive to protocol issues, they expect to be addressed as Mr., Mrs., Ms., or Dr. Respect is an important value. A culturally sensitive counselor will communicate this by focusing on family strengths, asking permission, avoiding familiarity initially, and avoiding professional jargon. Death and mourning is an important life cycle phase. Funerals are emphasized, often lasting four to seven days. Family members attend out of respect and will make great efforts to be present at the funeral.
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and when making personal introductions. Since education and expertise play a key role among most Asian cultures, a display of the counselor’s licenses or diplomas will enhance their credibility. Counselors are expected to be experts and are often sought for authoritative answers and direct advice. Ambivalence may be considered a weakness. Asian families may be less expressive and assertive. Love may not be verbally or physically communicated. Instead, it may be shown in concrete and pragmatic ways. Family harmony is to be kept at all cost and emotions that may disrupt harmony to the family are not expressed outwardly. A major consequence of this is psychosomatization, the physical expression of emotional and mental distress. Therefore, a competent cross-cultural school counselor will take greater notice of the medical complaints expressed by the person while also attending to nonverbal cues.
Latino American Families Asian American Families Asian American families emigrate from different countries in Asia. According to the U.S. 1990 Census, five main Asian ethnic groups in the U.S. include Chinese (23% of the Asian population), Filipino (19%), Japanese (12%), Korean (11%), Asian Indian (11%), and Vietnamese (9%). Asian culture is ancestor-oriented and collectivistic rather than individualistic; dependency oriented rather than independence-oriented. Among the Chinese people, for instance, the family name comes first, followed by the individual name. This illustrates the importance of the family in the culture. There is a great sense of duty and obligation to the family; the need to be accepted by the community is paramount. The culture is shame-based and so ‘‘facesaving’’ and maintaining harmony is important in interpersonal relationships. Moral order is maintained through respectful manners. Conveying genuine concern and showing interpersonal etiquette is an important part of familial relationships. Family structure is hierarchical, with the line of authority extending from the fathers, to first-born sons, male sons, and then to mothers and daughters. It is important to assess the family structure in work with Asian and Asian American families. The Asian culture gives great deference and honor to those in authority. Counselors establish credibility by using official titles when addressing the head of the family
Latinos (or in some contexts known as Hispanics or Chicanos/as), have a multidimensional identity, representing a variety of nationalities, skin colors, cultures, traditions, values, beliefs, worldviews, and languages. A majority of Latinos living in the U.S. originate from Mexico (67%), Puerto Rico (13%) and Cuba (6%) while others come from the Dominican Republic and Central and South American countries (14%). National heritage is of extreme importance among Latinos as it provides a sense of pride and identity. Latinos work hard to maintain their language, traditions, and ways of life. They have a strong sense of family unity, personal warmth, and respect for elders. Some of the more important values are family unity, welfare, and honor. The family guarantees protection and provision. The system of kinship includes both biological and those not related by blood, such as adopted children and godparents. A school counselor might utilize the family as a source of support and information. This can be done by inviting extended family members to school meetings. Family interdependence (familismo) is very important to the culture; however, it tends to be patriarchal in organization and role expectations. Men (machismo) and women (marianismo) are taught different codes for behavior. Older children have greater authority than younger children, with males having greater authority than females.
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Religion is very important for Latino communities. The majority of Latinos identify with Roman Catholicism. Religion permeates their lives. Many also incorporate folk healing beliefs (curanderos/as). There is a loyalty to others and the focus on the quality of interpersonal relationships is important (personalismo). In this sense, Latinos may have a loyalty towards the school counselor or teacher if they are trustworthy and considered friends as well as professionals. Many Latinos come from a legacy of loss and oppression. Many have immigrated to the U.S. with the hope for a better life but find that they face oppression and discrimination in their new host country as well. This can add to their distrust of school, legal or social service systems. It is important to be sensitive to the individual’s distress and distrust of the system. Formality, especially initially, is viewed as a sign of respect, such as addressing people by surname unless invited to do otherwise.
Middle Eastern Families Arab Americans have their own unique culture. Arab people refer to those related to the tribes of Arabia, who speak the Arabic language, and who embrace Islam as their religion. Islam spread mostly during the seventh and tenth centuries A.D. Thereafter, the Muslim people were forced to live under different governmental systems, such as when the Ottoman Empire conquered the Arabs, and the Europeans occupied their lands after World War I. During this time, two waves of immigrants arrived to the U.S. In the 1980s, the Arab world experienced a rekindling of loyalties and a resurgence of Islam and these were accentuated by the Gulf War in 1991. After the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, Arab Americans experienced alienation and discrimination. Arab American families may feel friction between Western secular values and their own Islamic culture. For Arab families, the family unit is the basis of community. Men, women, and children are given particular duties and roles to perform for the good of the family. Marriage is arranged by the family and is not based on romantic love. Arab people are also encouraged to marry within their own culture. Arab parents are more likely to engage in authoritarian disciplinary styles, such as lecturing their children, and using punishment to instill fear. Because the Arab family is closely knitted, seeking help is seen as being disloyal
to the family and community. Families are more likely to turn to Arab-oriented services during these times. Arab children are likely to spend more time with their mothers, and the mothers may sometimes take the role of mediators between the children and their fathers. While school counselors may have initial contact with students’ mothers, it is essential to get the fathers as heads of the family involved. This is respectful of the family hierarchical system. Families are more likely to get involved if the school counselor will do home visitation or are willing to speak with the parents on the telephone.
Jewish American Families Jewish Americans have immigrated from Spain, Germany, the Soviet Union, Eastern Europe, South Africa, and Israel, among other countries. The family is considered a haven and there is a strong connection with previous generations. Jewish families are open to examining their family functioning, thus giving them a family perspective of problems. This makes Jewish families likely to seek out psychotherapy. Other family values include education and professional achievement, with success being strongly sought after. Getting married and raising children are important values in this culture. Jewish parents are likely to be very involved in their children’s schooling. Parents are more likely to be democratic in their child rearing, having more open boundaries between parent and child. Parents talk openly with children and put an emphasis on communication. Jewish families tend to be child-focused; children are encouraged to talk about their problems. Jewish mothers hold primary responsibility for child rearing. Success in parenting is valued and parents are expected to sacrifice to see children succeed, particularly male children. Children then repay their parents with the pleasure of success. Life cycle rituals are important to Jewish families. Grief is expressed through several different mourning rituals including the ‘‘sitting shiva’’ and the ‘‘unveiling.’’ Children become adults when they celebrate the ‘‘bar mitzvah.’’ Suffering is shared easily because ethnic tragedies such as the holocaust are a central part of the Jewish history and are not denied. Suffering is dealt with directly, as important work to be done, and is experienced in community rather than independently. The preservation of Jewish heritage is essential because
Cross-cultural families
of historical persecution as well as living away from the homeland. Jewish families may live in Jewish communities, and may immigrate in groups. Intermarriage is frowned upon for this reason, as is the notion of a family member rejecting Jewish cultural background.
European American Families In 1990, Whites made up 80% of the U.S population. They come from all over Europe and identify themselves as ‘‘Americans.’’ An immigration law in 1790 stated that only Americans of European descent could become U.S. citizens. America was then understood as being ‘‘White.’’ Many of these families have been in the U.S. for three generations or longer, and may not identify with their ancestral ethnicity. While this is the case, aspects of ethnicity that were shed may subconsciously manifest later in life or in future generations, and White individuals may find themselves reverting back to customs and practices of their heritage. Generally, European Americans have not experienced the degree of discrimination that troubled either earlier immigrants or immigrants from other ethnic groups. Many European American families are religious. For instance, the church is very important to Irish American families. The most ritualized life cycle transition to Irish Americans is that of dying. A funeral is often postponed for a few days to allow all family members to be present. No expense is spared at a funeral. Because life is filled with suffering and pain that is endured alone, for the Irish, death opens the door to the afterlife, which is a relief. Privacy and individual rights are important values, and so many topics are not discussed with persons outside of the marital dyad or nuclear family. Families, particularly those of Anglo descent, may find themselves isolated and without a supportive network. This individualism can get in the way of finding familial help and support during crises. Self-initiation and selfreliance are valued in this culture. With autonomy as a core value, suffering and difficulty is often experienced alone and in silence. Individuals or families will work hard and privately to overcome obstacles and deal with grief. Values of independence and hard work are instrumental in helping European Americans achieve success in the U.S. These families are optimistic and confident. On the other hand, the lack of family rituals and traditions, particularly around dealing with
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difficulty and pain can become the nemesis of these families and communities. Irish American families also believe that suffering is a private matter. They have traditionally believed that it is their own sin that results in suffering. These deep core beliefs led to the tendency to keep problems private rather than to seek out help. Families may turn to alcohol before they turn to a counselor in times of trouble, leading to higher rates of addiction among members of this group. Italian American families are very close to nuclear and extended family members. ‘‘La famiglia’’ includes all relatives by marriage, giving them a large support network. Members of the Italian American community will be less likely to move away to pursue individual goals. These families focus on the enjoyment of life, seen in being together and eating together. The life cycle stage most emphasized here is marriage.
Counselors as Cultural Brokers In light of national diversity, school counselors need to be culturally competent. An awareness of how race, religion, immigration status, class, age, disability, and sexual orientation affect family identity is important. Few people will fit exactly into the general descriptions given above. Hence, these descriptions serve only as a starting point from which to begin to understand people in the context of their culture. Given the number of multiracial individuals in the U.S., it is wise to refrain from guessing or assuming a person’s ethnic identity. Respect can be shown by asking people about their ethnic background and how they self-identify. Counselors need to posit themselves as learners when working with cross-cultural families. Acknowledgement of ignorance and taking a ‘‘notknowing’’ stance as a learner are helpful characteristics for the culturally sensitive counselor. Misunderstandings may be avoided this way and the cultural gap can be better bridged. Culturally sensitive counselors belong to a particular culture themselves. All people see the world through their own cultural lens. The goal is not to be free of a particular culture. Instead, as cultural brokers, school counselors recognize that they are unable to remain aloof and be free of value judgments. Learning about one’s own heritage and its impact on the counseling process is a first step towards becoming culturally aware.
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Cross-cultural learning styles
See also: > Ethnicity; > Family therapy; > Melting pot
Suggested Reading McGoldrick, M., Giordano, J., & Pearce, J. K. (Eds.) (1996). Ethnicity and family therapy. New York: Guilford Press. McGoldrick, M. (Ed.) (2002). Re-visioning family therapy: Race, culture, and gender in clinical practice. New York: Guilford Press. U.S. census Bureau. (2000). American fact finder: Profile of selected Economic Characteristics. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government printing office. Walsh, F. (Ed.) (1982). Normal family processes. New York: Guilford Press.
school system. Primarily these students were from marginalized and economically depressed cultural communities. Teaching practices were perpetuating social divisions along lines of class and color of skin. As a result of extensive research, there are several ways that learning styles have been categorized and conceptualized. In the midst of all these theoretical constructs, the attempts to connect cultural influences to the way students learn has been haphazard. The following will give an overview of learning styles, investigate the impact of culture on the way students learn, provide important parameters for using information about learning style, and suggest an umbrella approach to serving all students in a multicultural class.
Suggested Resources Learning Styles U.S. Census Bureau—http://factfinder.census.gov/: This website presents U.S. demographic statistics from 2000. American Psychological Association (APA) Multicultural Guidelines—http://www.apa.org/pi/multiculturalguidelines/: This APA website provides a document featuring guidelines on multicultural education, training, research, practice, and organizational change for psychologists.
Cross-Cultural Learning Styles Marcella LaFever
Culture and Teaching The importance of, and the cultural influences on learning styles in the classroom, are not new topics. Over the past 30 years, several theories have been advanced about how students, from kindergarten to post-secondary education, learn and process information. Even before that, theorists had been investigating the influences of culture on cognitive processes. These fields of study have converged in research on how to create culturally inclusive classrooms and attention to cross-cultural learning styles. The critical examination of standard teaching practices in North American schools was catalyzed by the civil rights movement and the recognition that educational institutions were not serving the society as a whole. It was proposed that these practices were in fact excluding many students from advancing within the
Many definitions of learning styles have been posited. However, in its most basic form, learning style refers to the preferences that a learner has for processing and retaining information. Processing of information includes how the learner thinks about information, how the learner relates to others in the classroom, and how the learner relates to the environment and classroom experiences. Designations for learning styles include such things as how students take in information (visually, verbally, hands-on), how they organize and process information (through activities, by reflecting, by induction or deduction), and the rate at which students progress toward the learning goal (one thing at a time, by looking at the big picture). Teachers have an important role to play in how and when information is disseminated so that possibilities for student processing and retention are maximized. Students who have a learning style that matches the learning style of the teacher have a higher rate of success in the classroom. For example, if a teacher has been successful in his/her own learning by working alone using memorization and reading, it is likely to be his/her tendency to expect the same from students. Students who match this style are successful in that particular classroom. In general this creates a need for the teacher to expand the repertoire of teaching techniques beyond those that have been comfortable.
Cultural Impact on Learning Styles Culture is a historically shared system of codes and symbols, deeply imbedded within each individual, that
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provides a way of interpreting and giving meaning to social interactions. Social interactions include those that take place in a classroom and throughout the process of learning. Therefore, it makes sense that cultural background will in some way have an impact on student learning. For example, when communicating in the classroom, if a student’s cultural learning has put emphasis on being conscious of the well-being of others (collectivism) rather that achieving rewards for themselves (individualism), they are less likely to feel comfortable giving personal opinions in front of the rest of their classmates. If this sort of communication is expected in the classroom, those students will be seen as ‘‘not participating’’ or ‘‘not trying.’’ Culture influences the way a student perceives, organizes, and processes information. If a teacher knew which particular cultural preferences were present in the classroom it might make sense to have students design a curriculum that matches the resulting learning style. On the other hand, although culture may be a deeply imbedded system that is shared by a group, individual differences (especially within a North American context) must be taken into account across teaching contexts. To make an assumption that all Hmong students need to work in groups because they come from a culture that values collectivism would be counterproductive to them and their classmates. It is more useful to remember that all students use all learning styles at some point in their learning but may prefer to start with a particular preference.
In the classes where the students felt they learned a lot, compared with those where they felt they did not learn a lot, the 95% critical value for a w2 test with 99 degrees of freedom was 124.34. The w2 value for these data was 527.34, greater than the critical value of w2 (99, N = 100, p Culturally competent practice; > Learning styles
Suggested Resources New Horizon for Learning—http://www.newhorizons.org/strategies/ front_strategies.html: This website offers information on some of the most widely implemented methods for helping all students to learn more successfully. The information includes a description of how the teaching and learning strategies work, where they have been applied, results,books,websites,andotherresources,andwheretofindfurther information from experts in the field.
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Cross-cultural psychology
Cross-Cultural Psychology Erika Niwa . Catherine S Tamis-LeMonda
Diversity has become a buzzword in the disciplines of education and psychology. References to culture, ethnicity and race pervade empirical and theoretical writings of the past three decades. Consequently, the field of psychology has shifted from an emphasis on universal developmental processes to an emphasis on developmental processes in context. Although early theorists such as Vygotsky and Erikson recognized the role of culture in human learning and development, the mid 1960s witnessed the beginning of the modern movement in cross-cultural psychology, which culminated in the creation of the International Association of Cross-Cultural Psychology (IACCP) in 1972. To illustrate the growth in cultural studies, a search of PsychInfo from 1960 to 1970 yields 2,854 publications with the term ‘‘culture’’ in the abstract. From 1970 to 1990, that number more than tripled to 9,035, and between 1990 and the present, over 31,000 publications contain ‘‘culture’’ in the abstract. Nonetheless, most psychological research continues to be conducted in Western societies by Western psychologists, although this trend is changing. In this piece, select theories and findings from the field of cross-cultural psychology are briefly reviewed and applied to the study of children’s school experiences and achievement. Any treatment of the broad topic of cross-cultural psychology calls for a working definition of the term ‘‘culture.’’ Although culture has been defined in countless ways, most definitions focus on symbolic (i.e. values and beliefs) and/or behavioral aspects of human development. Here we conceptualize ‘‘culture’’ as encompassing both symbolic and behavioral dimensions. Specifically, we borrow Rogoff ’s definition of culture as a shared set of beliefs, attitudes, values and patterned routines and ways of doing things that exist within communities. This definition considers culture to be a dynamic, rather than static, constellation of membership and participation in multiple groups. The term cross-cultural psychology often refers to studies that are based on comparisons of behavioral or psychological phenomena across cultural groups, although many cultural studies are focused on withingroup behaviors and views. Cross-cultural work is particularly important for distinguishing universal processes
from those that vary across cultures. Cross-cultural inquiry enables scholars to meaningfully refine and revise current theories to accommodate the beliefs and behaviors of different communities, thereby moving beyond theories that have been predominantly founded on research with White, middle-class, American samples. Such research offers the unique opportunity to use natural cultural variation as a tool to further unpackage cultural correlates. Finally, cross-cultural studies inform the design and implementation of culturally sensitive services and interventions (including those used in school settings).
Challenges to Cross-Cultural Psychology Despite the importance of cross-cultural work, it is plagued by a number of challenges. Four are particularly noteworthy: (1) determining the bounds of a cultural community, (2) addressing the psychological and psychometric equivalence of instruments and constructs across different groups, (3) disentangling cultural influences or meaning from other variables, such as socioeconomic status, and (4) studying the dynamic relations that exist between individuals and cultural communities. The first challenge to cross-cultural work is to define the boundaries of a community or cultural group. One approach is to focus on ‘‘society’’ or ‘‘country’’ as the unit of analysis, such as in studies that compare parenting practices in the United States (U.S.) and Japan. Although this strategy has the potential to yield insights into similarities and differences at macro-levels, it can be problematic. Clearly, culture is not synonymous with country, and countries are not homogeneous units. Studies that compare individuals across societies must take into account a vast intra-society heterogeneity. Furthermore, as countries become increasingly diverse in terms of the demographics of their populations, there is an even greater need to carefully select subgroups within a society and to examine the variability that exists within those subgroups. As an extension of this approach, some scholars use a more focused and localized concept of community to deal with intra-group variation. This is achieved, for example, by studying participants from ethnic enclaves who reside in particular geographic or regional locations. For example, investigators at New York University’s (NYU) Center for Research on Culture, Development, and Education
Cross-cultural psychology
(CRCDE) focus their work on within-group variation in specific ethnic groups in New York City (e.g., Dominican, Chinese, African American) who reside in specific neighborhoods. This focused approach to the notion of community permits examination of participants’ thoughts and actions at the intersection of ethnicity and context. A second challenge concerns instrument and construct equivalence across groups. Much cross-cultural research compares populations from dramatically different backgrounds on the same variables. However, because cultures differ dramatically in their geography, customs, religion, labor markets, belief systems, social class structure, and education to name a few, measures that are appropriate to members of one community may be inappropriately applied to members of other communities. For example, what does it mean to compare the parenting views or practices of mothers living in Thailand to mothers living in New York City? If these two groups of mothers differ in their responses to a particular questionnaire what might explain those differences? Their cultural views? Familarity with testing? Willingness to share personal information with a stranger? Literacy levels? Economic conditions? The issue of cultural equivalence is particularly problematic if the instruments being used have not been developed or normed on the group being studied. In fact, the majority of extant instruments (e.g., IQ tests, depression inventories) have been normed on predominantly White, middle-class, American samples. Similarly, many of the main constructs that guide thinking in developmental psychology, including ‘‘attachment,’’ ‘‘formal operations,’’ and ‘‘morality,’’ are based on a history of research that assumes relatively universal processes of development. In recent decades, such work has come under fire, leading to questions about the generalizability of certain constructs and associated theories to diverse communities. These recent efforts have illuminated a number of cultural assumptions that undergird much research. As such, the field of cross-cultural psychology has appropriately pushed for a re-examination of many accepted constructs. One example of a construct that is highly culturespecific is that of ‘‘self esteem.’’ Numerous studies conducted primarily with U.S.-born children reveal the beneficial effects of self-esteem for children’s academic and psychological outcomes. However, in a comparative study of mothers in the U.S. and Taiwan, Miller and colleagues found self esteem to be a culturally-situated parental goal for children. American mothers viewed
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self-esteem as something that should be fostered in children so as to promote positive developmental outcomes, whereas Taiwanese mothers felt that children should be left to naturally develop, and that feeling good about oneself was an unhealthy goal. In fact, the term self-esteem does not even exist in Mandarin Chinese or Taiwanese, and Miller and her colleagues were challenged to find a phrase that paralleled the English phrase. This work illustrates the complexity of studying concepts or constructs that might hold entirely different meanings for individuals of different communities. A third challenge to cross-cultural studies concerns the difficulties of disentangling culture from other demographic characteristics of groups, including socioeconomic status. Oftentimes, differences in cultural beliefs or ways of behaving might be attributed to differences in the economic resources available to different groups. For example, early studies comparing African American parenting styles to those of Anglo mothers revealed differences in disciplinary styles and punitiveness, with African American mothers often being characterized as more harsh than Anglo mothers. However, such studies are often based on comparisons between low-income African American parents and middleincome Anglo parents, thus confounding race with economic status. When middle-income African American mothers are studied, they share the same child-oriented disciplinary tactics as their middle-income, Anglo counterparts. It may be that stressors such as unemployment and financial strain contribute to higher levels of maternal depression and higher levels of punitiveness, which would in turn explain greater authoritarianism in lowincome African American parents. The importance of disentangling cultural sources of variance from other sources also extends to studies on academic achievement and opportunity. Much research has highlighted inequalities in American public schools and illustrates the deeply entrenched and historically situated relationship that can exist between culture, race, and class. Although such a discussion is beyond the scope of this entry, it is important to keep in mind when constructing, conducting, and interpreting group differences in views and behaviors. Finally, all cultural comparisons are challenged by the need to consider the dynamics of individuals’ lives. Culture is always changing, and individuals belong to many cultural groups at one time. Therefore, the assumption that a given group will have stable characteristics, behaviors or views is simplistic. This issue is termed ‘‘The Box Problem’’ by Rogoff. The Box Problem refers
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Cross-cultural psychology
to interpreting culture as a ‘‘fixed categorical property of individuals.’’ Such ‘‘boxes’’ are assumed to be both homogeneous and mutually exclusive, which fails to consider the dynamic nature of cultural groups. At any given point in time, an individual is negotiating membership in and ways to behave across a number of communities. For example, a child might behave a certain way when at home but behave differently when at school, in line with the expectations of the two cultural communities. The notion of shifting membership is exemplified in Yip’s study of ethnic identity in Chinese American university students. Students were randomly contacted over a one-week period and asked to report on who they were with, what language they were speaking (Chinese or English), and which identity (e.g., gender, ethnic, age, family role) was most salient to them at that particular moment in time. The students did not know that involvement in the study had anything to do with being Chinese. Yip found that salience of ethnic identity (how ‘‘Chinese’’ students felt at any given point in time) fluctuated by situation, context, and the individuals who were around the student. Across developmental time, individuals become members of an increasing number of cultural communities (e.g., work, school, peers, religious institutions, family). For example, a preschooler growing up in a Mexican immigrant home might spend the majority of time in a relatively homogeneous community, surrounded by primary caregivers who are Mexican as well. The young child will eat certain foods and be expected to behave in certain ways. However, upon entry to school and thereafter, the same child will be increasingly exposed to the mainstream culture, and will assimilate parts of that culture into his or her identity. By adolescence, the individual might be considered bi-cultural, facilely shifting over the course of a single day between the mainstream American school setting and the customs of the Mexican family. In summary, cross-cultural psychology is faced with a number of challenges, including the complexity of defining the bounds of a community, disentangling culture from other relevant factors in human views and behavior, evaluating the equivalence and validity of instruments and constructs across different groups, and recognizing the dynamics of culture as individuals traverse different cultural communities within and across developmental periods. The next section turns to discussion of theoretical frameworks that have been applied in cross-cultural psychology.
Theoretical Frameworks and Ideologies One of the most influential theoretical frameworks that has been used to study cultural similarities and differences is the distinction between ‘‘collectivistic’’ and ‘‘individualistic’’ cultures and the related themes of ‘‘interdependent’’ versus ‘‘independent’’ selves or ‘‘relatedness’’ versus ‘‘autonomy.’’ Traditionally, ‘‘individualist’’ cultures are those in which independence and autonomy are paramount and social ties to the group are fragile. This orientation stresses the importance of individual achievement, personal choice, self maximization, personal rights and intrinsic forms of motivation. In comparison, ‘‘collectivist’’ cultures are those in which people place the interests of the group before the self and loyalty to members of the in-group is met with protection and support. Collectivist cultures value interpersonal harmony, interdependence, conformity and belongingness. Themes of filial piety and ‘‘Guan’’ in China, ‘‘Respeto’’ and ‘‘Familismo’’ in Latino cultures and ‘‘Suano’’ in Japan reflect ideals associated with collectivistic cultures. Adopting this framework, parents in ‘‘Western’’ cultures, such as North America and Western Europe, have been portrayed as promoting values associated with individualism. In contrast, parents in Asian, Latino and more rural, subsistence cultures have been described as promoting collectivism. The individualistic-collectivistic framework sheds light on the ways in which cultural priorities come to shape children’s behaviors and developmental outcomes. For example, from an individualistic perspective, academic achievement is considered a vehicle for increasing a sense of self-worth. However, in collectivistic communities, individual achievement serves the needs of the group. For example, Asian American children perform better on tasks to benefit the family rather than to feel better about themselves. There is a sense of obligation to do well in school to not shame the family. Another contrast between individualistic and collectivistic orientations is evidenced in research on ‘‘personal choice.’’ Iyengar and Lepper found that Anglo American children display higher task performance, increased interest, and persistence when they make their own choices. In contrast, Asian American children have better outcomes when close adults or peers make choices for them. Such work helps to unpackage the ways that cultural views and practices come to define relations between motivation and achievement.
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Moreover, these findings are relevant to school contexts, where different notions of choice and achievement might affect children’s academic outcomes. Despite the usefulness and importance of the individualistic-collectivistic framework, it contains limitations that are being addressed by current scholarship. Clearly, individualism and collectivism are not unitary and necessarily independent constructs. Rather, people from all cultures share the universal goals of developing as individuals and contributing in meaningful ways to their communities. There exists enormous within-group and intra-individual variation in the emphasis that is placed on these cultural priorities, and current research is exploring how these values relate to one another within and across time. In summary, cultural communities have been found to differ in the emphases they place on individual growth and achievement versus relatedness to the larger group. Studies suggest that individualism is a Western phenomenon that occurs in more technologically advanced societies, and that Asian, Latino, and indigenous groups tend to focus on the individual’s role in meeting the needs of the larger group. What are the many factors that explain these differences in cultural priorities? Have they developed as a functional adaptation to specific affordances and constraints, such as the goal to help others under conditions of limited resources? These questions have yet to be fully answered. Nonetheless, cultural frameworks such as individualism-collectivism, although useful, come with limitations, and recent work sheds light on ways to evaluate the co-existence of these different cultural priorities.
Educational and Policy Implications Inherent to cultural systems are the values placed on certain behaviors or beliefs. For example, in India, the emotion of lajya (shame) and the corresponding facial expression of ‘‘biting one’s tongue’’ are deemed to be important virtues for women. Menon and Shweder’s study examining the meaning of lajya showed its important role in expressing one’s rightful place in society, duties and responsibilities, and the ability to be modest and shy, particularly in the presence of social superiors. The authors also note that the value attached to this emotion and expression appears to be patently different from Western conceptions of shame. This evaluative component of culture is particularly relevant to the school context. For example, an
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integral part of cognitive development is learning how one’s community defines intelligence. Such lessons pervade school systems where students become hyper-aware of what it means to be ‘‘smart.’’ Clearly, however, evaluations of what is ‘‘smart’’ can vary dramatically from community to community. What happens when different cultural ideologies confront one another? The potential harmonizing and clashing of cultures is particularly salient in a school setting. While there are many benefits that can be reaped from the ‘‘coming together’’ of diverse groups and cultures, there are also challenges faced when different cultures come in contact. Oftentimes, children from diverse cultural backgrounds come to school with a set of culture-specific behaviors that may not be equally valued in the classroom setting, and may in fact conflict with the behaviors that are expected and privileged by their teachers. Examples of this include cultural differences in the sorting and categorization of objects. In Glick’s classic study, he asked Kpelle participants to sort 20 objects. The subjects sorted the objects into functional (e.g., potato with hoe, knife with orange), rather than categorical (e.g., tools in one group, foods in another), groups. The researcher considered the categorical grouping to be more appropriate, but when asked, the participants said that a wise man would categorize the objects in functional ways. When asked how a fool would categorize the objects, the Kpelle participants grouped the objects by category. Another example of a potential mismatch between behaviors is the role of observation in children’s learning. In Mejia-Aruaz et al.’s study, Mexican and European American children were taught how to fold origami by observing a woman demonstrate and describe the steps. Mexican American children used more ‘‘intent participation’’ and focused observation, whereas the European American children asked more questions and probed for additional information. In the next two sections, we present examples of challenges that children may encounter when faced with different cultural experiences in two specific domains—narrative development and ethnic identity.
Narratives The process of certain behaviors becoming privileged in ways that differentially favor certain cultural groups over others is illustrated in the example of children’s
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storytelling or narratives. Children’s development of narrative skills unfolds in highly specific cultural contexts. In recounting personal experiences, narrators must process how the events happened and reflect on how those experiences should be told to others. Such reflections on what makes a good narrative are grounded in cultural beliefs and practices. Heath’s classic study on narrative development in African Americans from rural communities in the Southeastern U.S. illustrates the problems such children have fitting in with the linear storytelling styles of middle-income, mainstream cultures. In mainstream Western cultures, events are chronologically ordered in ways that lead to a climax and resolution. This temporally-based way of relaying a story or personal experience is favored in most U.S. school settings. These expectations about ‘‘proper’’ narratives often closed out African American children who told stories with varying structures that did not revolve around a single climax, and lacked a clearly marked beginning or ending. Instead, African American children continued to tell the story for as long as their listeners remained entertained. Although these multi-themed stories were highly valued in the African American community, they were considered to be unfocused in the school context, and were therefore not valued. Similarly, research on Haitian American children’s narratives highlights how mainstream expectations about what constitutes a good narrative resulted in children’s narratives appearing to be less developed. Haitian American children’s narratives were characterized by the repetition of words and images, extra details to draw the audience into the story, and were linked to the experiences of their listeners, rather than to their own perspectives. However, similar to African American children’s narratives, they did not use chronology and climax resolution as central aspects of storytelling. Another example of a culture-specific narrative style is illustrated in observations of the Kwara-ae people of the Solomon Islands. The Kwara-ae use narratives as a means of maintaining good relations among family members and creating interpersonal bonds. Consequently, the stories of the Kwara-ae are characterized by a focus on discussing, evaluating, and resolving social conflicts and personal problems. Cultural styles also affect the length and form of narratives. For example, Japanese children are more likely to relay short narratives about a collection of experiences, without providing elaborate detail of one specific experience, regardless of follow-up questions.
When sharing narratives with their children, Japanese mothers were found to request less description, offer less evaluation and display more verbal attention to their children than White American mothers. This may stem from Japanese cultural beliefs about the importance of early empathy training. Together, the above studies highlight the educational and developmental consequences of mismatches between the narrative skills that children bring to school and teachers’ expectations about what constitutes a good story. The implications of this research are particularly important, given that narrative skills have been linked to children’s language acquisition and later academic achievement. Moreover, these cross-cultural investigations on children’s narratives and schooling highlight the inherently cultural experience of educational institutions. The very tradition of schooling is deeply rooted in a cultural context, and whether or not a student is a member or foreigner to the norms of the school institution can make a difference in their academic performance over time.
Ethnic Identity Ethnic identity is another developmental domain that significantly affects children’s academic achievement and well being. Ethnic identity is an important dimension of one’s larger personal and social identity, as well as a critical aspect in the search for self, particularly in racial and/or ethnic minority groups. Discrimination, and its relation to majority and minority power status, can influence multiple aspects of ethnic identity. In particular, the ethnic identity development of individuals who are members of the majority is repeatedly endorsed by mainstream institutions, whereas the ethnic identity of minority groups is often not supported. To illustrate, research has revealed that the negative effects of being an immigrant youth were reinforced, not reduced, when children attended suburban schools. However, the positive effects of advantaged group membership of Anglo American youth remained even when they attended inner-city schools. In addition, work on contextual dissonance (in which a salient characteristic of an individual is at odds with characteristics of the predominant group in a given social context) has shown that individuals from lower valued social groups are more affected than higher valued social groups when immersed in a dissonant context.
Cross-cultural psychology
A solid sense of ethnic identity is related to positive outcomes, such as self-esteem, and can also function as a buffer against stigma. Phinney argues that understanding one’s ethnic identity allows individuals to maintain a sense of self when faced with discrimination and prejudice. However, there are also negative outcomes related to a poor sense of ethnic identity that place youth at risk. For example, research has documented that the threat of negative stereotypes about one’s racial or ethnic group can lead to lower performance on standardized tests. Such ‘‘stereotype threat’’ can also affect social and emotional outcomes, extending to peer relationships. Risks for negative outcomes are further compounded by the presence of other challenges that may threaten the healthy development of ethnic identity among immigrant youth. Struggles around ethnic identity can be further heightened for immigrant youth for whom schools are a primary cultural institution and the main setting for interactions with peers. Although developing new peer relationships is a means for gaining independence from parents for American youth, friendships are particularly challenging for immigrant youth who may experience difficulties connecting with their new American peers. When unpackaging the concept of ethnic identity, it is important to note that children develop multiple identities and are continually navigating numerous cultures, such as those at school, home, and with peers. This integration of multiple cultures has often been examined through the lens of acculturation. Acculturation refers to the process by which a child learns the behavior patterns and belief systems of a new culture. Healthy acculturation is characterized by the child’s ability to move seamlessly between cultural contexts. For example, in Fuligni, Yip, and Tseng’s study, they found that Chinese adolescents in the U.S. were able to quite effectively balance family obligations with academic responsibilities without affecting their psychological well-being. Classrooms also present a context for specific forms of acculturation. Children come to learn what is valued in schools and classrooms and incorporate these values into their behavioral repertoires. This is beautifully illustrated in Wertsch’s analysis of show-and-tell episodes in classrooms. He observed the ways in which teachers communicated their preferences to children about how to share objects during show-and-tell. One child brought a piece of lava to share with the class, and was praised for answering questions about its physical
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properties. However, the teacher showed no interest in the child’s description of who gave the child the lava. Over time, children learned to participate in showand-tell in ways that were privileged by their teachers— for example, focusing on facts about objects rather than tangential information. Eventually, students internalized these preferences, and even began to judge other children by the same standards. They evaluated statements as ‘‘good’’ if they seemed scientific, rather than personal or emotional. This examination of ethnic identity, and the many cultural worlds that children and youth travel through, sheds light on the complex relationship between ethnic identity and positive developmental outcomes. In particular, implications of this research must inform theories of social and emotional development and academic engagement. From the perspective of cultural and ethnic identity development, it is important for children and adolescents to simultaneously maintain contact with their culture of origin while learning about and engaging with a new cultural landscape.
Conclusion In summary, cross-cultural research presents a number of challenges, yet is critical to understanding the experiences of people living in dynamic, multi-cultural societies. Cross-cultural research promises to inform policies that promote children’s academic achievement in schools, and their development into fully functioning members of their communities. It is particularly important to explore the ways in which different cultural groups successfully co-exist and learn from one another, and to recognize the role of educators and schools in helping children negotiate their cultural differences. Teachers play a central role not only in instruction and classroom behaviors, but in ensuring that deficit models are not applied to children from different cultural backgrounds. If children or teachers in the classroom view certain children as less competent or motivated than others, this can have adverse consequences for students. Further, when there is a mismatch between the skills of the child and those that are valued in the school setting, there can be detrimental consequences. In increasingly multi-cultural and diverse schools and communities, there is the potential for a great number of positive developmental
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outcomes. Teachers, staff and administrators should support children’s adjustment to shifting cultural spaces. In closing, Berry’s model of acculturation offers a useful framework for characterizing the adjustment of children from different backgrounds who experience new cultural surroundings. His model specifies four possible pathways of individual acculturation: marginalization, separation, assimilation and integration. Marginalization refers to rejection of one’s own culture along with being ostracized from the mainstream culture. The outcome for children is a sense of pervasive isolation. Separation occurs when individuals hold on to their native culture while shunning and avoiding contact with people from other groups. If children come to feel excluded from the mainstream, rather than integrating new ways of thinking and acting into their behavioral and psychological repertoires, they may come to feel less capable, valued and engaged. Assimilation is the mirror image of separation, in which individuals shun their cultural heritage and seek to associate only with individuals from the mainstream. Children who leave behind their heritage to adopt mainstream ways of acting may feel their true selves are silenced in these educational and social situations. Finally, integration, the most psychologically healthy pathway, includes maintaining cultural integrity while simultaneously participating as an integral member of the larger mainstream culture. Children are flexible and have the capacity to adapt and learn from different cultures at all points in development, and educators play a key role in this process of integration. See also: > American Psychological Association (APA); > Cross-cultural learning styles; > Culturally competent practice; > Cultural psychiatry
Suggested Reading Berry, J. W., Dasen, P. R., & Saraswathi, T. S. (Eds.) (1997). Handbook of cross cultural psychology (2nd ed.). Boston: Allyn and Bacon. Matsumoto, D. (Ed.) (2001). The handbook of culture and psychology. New York, NY: Oxford University Press. Rogoff, B., & Angelillo, C. (2002). Investigating the coordinated functioning of multifaceted cultural practices in human development. Human Development, 45, 211–225. Suzuki, L. A., Meller, P. J., & Ponterotto, J. G. (Eds.) (1996). Handbook of multicultural assessment: Clinical, psychological and educational applications. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.
Cross-Cultural School Psychology Kiran Mala Singh
Cross-cultural school psychology can be defined in a variety of ways. The American Psychological Association (APA) and American Counseling Association (ACA) refer to the cross-cultural movement within the field of psychology to adapt practices to suit the characteristics and needs of those who seek mental health assessment or treatment as a professional responsibility. Its popularity in recent years is reflective of the widespread thinking that culture and its various aspects are an undeniable factor in the psychology of school children and young adults. It also comes out of increasing demographic changes across the United States (U.S.). Projected population estimates for the year 2020 suggest that one of three children attending public schools in the U.S. will represent a racially, ethnically, or culturally diverse group. Identified as one of the four principal pillars of expertise needed by all school psychologists, cross-cultural competence has been acknowledged in School Psychology: A Blueprint for Training and Practice II. A majority of training directors define cross-cultural competence as a psychologist’s knowledge, awareness, and sensitivity to differences in culture. In a school context this translates into the school psychologist’s ability to deliver culturally appropriate, non-biased services. Cross-cultural school psychology competency in general is the knowledge and skill that school counselors and psychologists should practice in the delivery of psychological services to diverse student populations. Services include the proper and most fair assessment and testing tools used by educators in evaluating students of diverse cultures, English as a second language (ESL) students, as well as those students with special needs or disabilities, classroom and learning settings that encourage bi- or multilingual students to learn in their own native tongue as well as in English, incorporating mandatory, ongoing diversity training and constant retraining of school educators and counselors, and increased involvement with parents of diverse students. Perhaps a more drastic measure in ensuring cross-cultural psychology is adequately incorporated in schools comes with the increased push for culturally diverse counselors of all backgrounds and
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their implementation in various school systems around the country. Cultural competent school psychologists can recognize the differential values found in the educational school system and how they may clash with culturally and linguistically diverse youth.
APA Guidelines The APA has mandated multicultural guidelines. The implementation of such guidelines is a benchmark in the field of psychology, setting a precedent that all psychologists should be engaging in culturally relevant education, training, research, practice, and organizational development, making it clear that culture is fundamental to the study of an individual. As a tool to assist in the understanding of how multicultural issues affect work with individuals who are different from the practitioner, the following six guidelines were incorporated in 2003. According to APA guidelines psychologists should first recognize attitudes and beliefs that may negatively influence work with culturally diverse clients. This is considered the basis for all subsequent guidelines, pointing out that recognition and dismissal of the idea of privilege and personal biases as a counselor is the first step. Guideline two encourages psychologists to understand their culturally diverse clients and calls for sensitivity to the worldviews of ethnically and racially different individuals. Counselors must be aware of the world around them, the world at large, and the context in which they are living, understanding and respecting the worldviews of others they seek to counsel. The incorporation of multicultural perspectives in education is guideline three. This calls for psychologists to address multiculturalism in clinical training programs, making multicultural study a fundamental core within the study of psychology. It gives weight to the argument that an individual cannot be viewed separately from his or her culture and all it encompasses. Guideline four calls for culturally sensitive psychological researchers to recognize the importance of conducting culturecentered and ethical psychological research among persons from ethnic, linguistic, and racial minority backgrounds. This guideline is tied directly to demographic changes across the nation with regard to immigration into the U.S. Guideline five states that psychologists are encouraged to apply culturally appropriate skills in clinical and other applied psychological practices. Hence, it is not enough to know
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about cultural diversity, rather, it is imperative that such diversity training be put to use. The sixth and final guideline encourages psychologists to use organizational change processes to support culturally informed organizational/policy development and practices. Due to demographic shifts within the U.S., a psychologist’s roles may change. Psychologists are encouraged to shift with such changes as they occur.
The Absence of Cross-Cultural Psychology Why has culture been absent thus far with regard to school psychology? Some studies point toward the absence of culture in older texts. Others site the discrepancy as reflective of the misunderstanding of what a cross-cultural psychologist does. This argument explains the lack of attention paid to culture. It explains the dearth of understanding about what cultural psychology is and its beginnings, research, goals, and importance. Cross-cultural psychology has existed for decades, dating back to about the 1950s when it was termed, ‘‘comparative anthropology.’’ It was later termed, ‘‘ethno-psychology,’’ ‘‘societal psychology,’’ ‘‘psychological anthropology,’’ and ‘‘cultural psychology’’ in the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s, respectively. The idea that an individual does not exist apart from his or her environment has been long withstanding. The incorporation of that same person’s culture, not only their societal surroundings took some time. As stated in the multicultural guidelines and agreed upon by most psychologists is that research must systematically consider culture in design, implementation, and interpretation of data. Such crosscultural research must be done in the context of the group (e.g., racial, ethnic) in which it is being studied. Furthermore, such research must be ongoing and updated as census results prove demographic shifts, changes, and patterns. An overriding goal of crosscultural school psychology is the incorporation of culture study and comparison with regard to a student’s own personal culture against that of the dominant, majority culture in which he or she is educated. It calls for an understanding and inclusion of parental/cultural influences, assumed and expected gender roles, language barriers, religious values, educational values, and general lifestyle differences. As the counselor, it is imperative that such influences are taken into consideration when counseling a student. Not accounting for a student’s home life and
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upbringing is seeing only half the picture with regard to the mental health of that student. Assimilation and acculturation are also noteworthy and must be examined. The extent to which a student adjusts to a new school environment plays a big role with regard to language, understanding rules of conduct and what is or is not ‘‘appropriate’’ behavior, the value he or she places on his/her education, what that education means to him/her and the family structure, what other extra curricular activities a student may participate in, among other factors. Until more recently, there was no clear consensus about how to define and encompass the full range of cross-cultural school psychology competencies. Previous examinations of cross-cultural school psychology competencies were lacking in their comprehensiveness. There had been little understanding of the knowledge and skills required of school counselors and psychologists while working with and for racially, ethnically, culturally, and linguistically diverse students and their parents. Current literature states that cross-cultural school psychology competencies include challenging assumptions and valuing others and being genuine in all interactions under the three main areas of competence: awareness, knowledge, and skills. These competencies recognize a student’s context, including race, gender, socioeconomic status, sexual orientation, abilities, age, religion, national origin, and power.
Emergence and Importance The emergence and recent popularity of the emphasis on cross-cultural work results from a consensus of thinking among the psychological community: incorporating culture when trying to understand human behavior. Cross-cultural psychology is an extension of one of the foundations of human psychology, that human behavior is meaningful within and because of its social context. It seems there has been an increased calling for the acknowledgment and emphasis on culture and its importance with regard to individual counseling. Obvious signs are the increasing numbers in immigration and the constantly changing faces of ‘‘Americans.’’ Another impetus includes demographic changes like the increasing Mexican/Mexican American population and the overwhelming necessity to speak Spanish, making it the ‘‘unofficial’’ second
language of the U.S. Asian immigration numbers have also been increasing, affirming their importance on education. Like most psychologists, cross-cultural psychologists acknowledge that both biological and cultural factors influence human behavior but also take into account the reciprocal influence between and among different cultures and cultural groups. The emergence of cross-cultural school psychology competence was initiated partially by the view that when a psychologist/counselor is lacking multicultural skills, critical resources are not engaged, there is no improvement on the cultural and linguistic aspects of the educational environment, educators and parents alike remain uninformed, and the student’s needs overall remain unmet, thus perpetuating a cycle. A national survey of multicultural training in school psychology programs found the following: 40% of the programs sampled did not offer specific coursework associated with working with diverse populations. Of the students attending the sampled programs, about 30% received little to no exposure to racial/ethnic minority children during practicum or internship. Such results only further support the need for reform and an establishment of a level of cultural competence within school systems. A goal of cross-cultural school psychology is to eliminate barriers between students of diverse backgrounds and their experience with the American school system. It can be presumed, that a student’s distress may be the result of the clash between his or her original culture and the values of a new one. Typical sources of static with regard to such students include: proper roles for men and women in family life and in society at large, proper sexual behavior, childrearing practices, responsibilities and rights of people at different ages, financial practices, property rights, standards in employer–employee relations, and religion, to name a few. School-aged children learn each of these within the classroom setting, from educators, peers, books, and exposure to outside influences other than family members. For counselors, a firm foundation in the understanding of cultures outside of themselves will only enhance the counselor–student/patient relationship. During its establishment, goals for cross-cultural psychology included, testing current psychological theories and practices, find new ways of studying psychology in terms of culture, and the integration of what has been learned to give psychology a broader
Cross-cultural school psychology
and more encompassing universality. This form of psychology is based on research that recognizes various cultural factors and ethnic influences on development and behavior.
Schools of Thought Absolutists declare that basically all human experiences are the same, regardless of cultural background. For example, feelings and emotions are basically the same across the board. For these types of theorists, culture plays very little into human characteristics. The anthropologists Boas and Herskovits made cultural relativism popular. Its emergence stemmed from the prevention of ethnocentric ideals and influences. Relativists are not interested in intergroup similarities, unlike absolutists. They strive to avoid evaluations and comparing. Universalist foundations are rooted in basic human characteristics. They believe that basic human characteristics are shared but culture influences how they are displayed. That is to say, those human characteristics that are universal to humanity are varied in the way they are expressed due to cultural influences.
Value in School Settings The cross-cultural perspective should be taken into account with regard to school counseling, be it personal or vocational. In personal counseling with students, be it in elementary, secondary or higher education, the implementation and practice of cross-cultural psychology is an integral part of the student’s collective well-being. This counseling accounts a part of the student’s life not seen. A larger, broader, and much more complete picture can be viewed by the psychologist who is learning from and about cultural issues and influences in a student. A much more comprehensive and appropriate assessment and treatment can therefore be provided by the counselor as well. Issues and contradictions with regard to family and cultural traditions can potentially play a huge role in the overall health and well-being of a student. The cross-cultural aspect of psychology allows counselors to view potentially unseen pressures and influences on a student. Personal pressures to maintain ‘‘old-world’’ traditions of a particular culture can weigh heavily on a student whose exposure to American ideals and culture may pit him
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or her against those very same ideals. For example, a traditional Indian girl is said to be very obedient and nurturing, living with her parents until she is married and then moves into her in-laws home. This is in stark contrast to American norms of independence and feministic ideas of equality. Cross-cultural school psychologists stress the importance of and recognize the distinction between values, morals, norms, etiquette, behavior, and a whole host of other variations within the U.S. and other cultures. It may be significantly important, for example, for an elementary school counselor to identify the rewards and punishment differentiations within diverse cultures. What is seen as a reward in one culture may not be rewarding in another, becoming especially important in grade school environments. Helping to foster and shape students’ relational skills with regard to acceptable behavior towards persons of the opposite sex, people in positions of honor or authority, the young, the elderly, relatives and strangers, the unfortunate, the successful, and others, relies heavily on the counselor’s cross-cultural psychological training or lack thereof. With regard to vocational counseling, cross-cultural psychology is arguably just as important. Traditional influences and pressures of an immigrant family, for instance, may be the reason behind high school student’s apprehensions about colleges, course(s) of study, degrees, and jobs. Adaptation of a much more accepting and open forum within counseling centers with cross-culturally trained counselors seems to be a much needed addition. Immigrant parents of first and subsequent generations of American immigrant children bear the brunt of cultural expectations and standards for success along with the burden of defining exactly what success in America actually means. For parents whose migrating to the U.S. was primarily based upon the future of their children, expectations and ambitions for their children can be overwhelming. Children may grow up with a sense of duty and obligation to their parents, sometimes neglecting their own goals and aspirations or worse, resenting their parents for pressuring them. Many times, immigrant children or children from culturally diverse families may be crumbling under the severe pressure from their parents to succeed and do well to justify their immigration or to support the family. In obligation to their parents for their sacrifice in leaving their homeland, some children find themselves selflessly pursuing educational and
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employment paths not of their choosing but that of their parents. A counselor’s sensitivity and understanding of cross-cultural influences and the delicate balance between an American lifestyle and traditional cultural values of their homeland, makes cross-cultural psychology in a schooling system invaluable.
CSBMHP Center for School-Based Mental Health Programs (CSBMHP) >
Competency Improvements The purpose of effective training and universality with regard to cross-cultural school psychology is to influence psychology students and professionals to be aware of the cultural issues to be effective therapists. A 2002 Delphi study from the University of Rhode Island and Queens College of The City University of New York, helped distinguish competencies integral to the implementation of effective cross-cultural school psychology training. In order of importance, the three competencies needing the most attention as identified by the study were: Assessment, Report Writing and Laws and Regulations. In the training of future school psychologists in cross-cultural competence, the APA and the National Association of School Psychologists (NASP) can put additional emphasis on these areas. They currently state that programs must provide a curriculum in diversity issues that leads to the development of competencies relevant to work with a clientele diverse in race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, nationality, and socioeconomic status. Further work must be done to precisely define characteristics of a truly culturally competent school psychologist. See also: > Cross-cultural competence in school psychologists’ services; > Cross-cultural consultation; > School counselor; > School psychologist
Suggested Reading Constantine, M. G., & Sue, D. W. (2005). Strategies for building multicultural competence. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley. Flores, L. Y., Lin, Y., & Huang, Y. (2005). Applying the multicultural guidelines to career counseling with people of color. In M. G. Constantine, & D. W. Sue (Eds.), Strategies for building multicultural competence (pp. 73–90). Hoboken, NJ: Wiley. Rogers, M. R., & Lopez, E. C. (2002). Identifying critical crosscultural school psychology competencies. Journal of School Psychology, 40(2), 115–141. Thomas, R. M. (2000). Multicultural counseling and human development theories. Springfield, IL: Charles C Thomas.
CSMH >
Center for School Mental Health (CSMH)
Cuento Therapy Giuseppe Costantino . Carmen Inoa Vazquez . Robert Malgady
Background Cuento Therapy, originated by the first contributor in 1979 as an integration of Puerto Rican fairytales and social cognitive psychology, was the first time that literature and psychology were integrated to develop a culturally sensitive narrative therapy modality for Latino children and their families. Developed at both the Hispanic Research Center and Fordham University and conducted at the Lutheran Medical Center, Sunset Park Mental Health Center on a National Institutes of Health (NIH) RO1 grant, Cuento Therapy was the first study of a culturally competent therapy outcome program. Subsequently, it has become the first culturally competent, evidence-based therapy modality for Latino youngsters.
Intervention In a study of a culturally sensitive treatment intervention with 5- to 8-year-old children, the first author developed a storytelling modality based on Puerto Rican cuentos or folktales, as a modeling therapy. The characters in folktales were posed as peer models
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conveying the theme or moral of the stories. The stories were selected from a vast array of Puerto Rican children’s literature with the consideration of captivating children’s attention to the models, which is critical to the first stage of the modeling process. Second, the models were adapted to present attitudes, values, and behaviors that reflect adaptive responses to the designated targets of therapeutic intervention, such as acting out, anxiety symptoms, and low self-esteem. The folktales were adapted to bridge both Puerto Rican and Anglo cultural values and settings. Reinforcement of children’s imitation of the models through active role-playing facilitated social learning of adaptive responses that were targeted in the stories’ themes. Thus, the treatment was rooted in the children’s own cultural heritage, presented in a format with which they could readily identify and imitate, and therapeutically aimed to affect psychosocial adjustment. Sessions took place in a group therapy room at the clinical site, with participants seated in a circle with child–mother dyads sitting together. Two cuentos were read by the therapist at each session, alternatively along with the child and mother. To balance gender, one cuento had a female and one a male as the main character of the story. Personal experiences of the participants were shared and verbally reinforced. Subsequently, the participants enact the cuentos through role playing and videotaping, and reinforcement then followed. The following is an excerpt from one of the Puerto Rican cuentos.
The Little Boy Who Wanted to Become a Big Man Not too long ago there was a boy called Juanito who did not want to go to school. One day, he told his parents: ‘‘I’m sick and tired of being treated like a boy, I’m old enough to do want I want to.’’ His parents were sad. His mother said: ‘‘You’re too little, you can’t leave us. . . I would get sick from worrying about you.’’ His father added: ‘‘Son, wait until you finish school, you’re too young. Don’t you know what happened to your grandfather? He left school and couldn’t get a good job. . . They all called him Donkey Juan [Juanito el Burrito].’’ The little boy Juanito left anyway, but he had a hard time to find places to sleep and had no money to buy food. He realized he was better off at home, but was afraid to return. Then he met Mister Fox and Mister Dog, who promised him a home and
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food. They promised him a bag of gold. But they wanted him to steal it from someone’s house. A neighbor saw the three of them and called ‘‘Police, Police!’’ The police came and caught Juanito, but not the other two. Crying, the boy wanted to go home. As he climbed the stairs to his apartment, he heard his parents crying because they missed him. He realized that his parents still loved him. From that day on he went to school, learned his lessons, and listened to his parents. . . on the way to becoming a man. In this treatment intervention, children were screened for presenting emotional and behavior problems in school and at home, and the most symptomatic were selected for inclusion in the study. The presenting problems were symptoms of anxiety, depression, and conduct disorders, at the threshold of diagnostic criteria according to the third edition, revised, of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. Their low socioeconomic status and high rate of single-parent household composition (60% female-headed households) also characterized these children as representing a population that may experience significant stressors.
Evidence for the Effects of Treatment The effectiveness of the cuento intervention was determined by comparing treatment outcomes with respect to a second folktale condition in which the same stories were not adapted to bridge cultural conflict, a mainstream (art/play) intervention, and an attention-only waiting-list control group. The evaluation of treatment outcomes indicated that the bicultural folktale intervention led to significantly greater improvement in social judgment and reduction in anxiety symptomatology relative to both comparison groups at the immediate post-test after 20 sessions and at a 1-year follow-up post-test. Further analysis revealed that the folktale intervention was most effective with younger children, 5–6 years old. Debriefing interviews conducted with 7–8-year-old children revealed that they viewed some of the cuentos as ‘‘childish.’’ This developmental consideration prompted the development of another narrative modeling modality that was appropriate for older children and adolescents. See also: > Children’s literature; > Cross-cultural learning styles; > Culturally competent practice; > Hispanic Americans; > Language arts, Teaching of
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Suggested Reading Bandura, A. (1977). Social learning theory. Englewood Cliff, NJ: Prentice-Hall. Bernal, G., & Scharron-Del-Rio, M. R. (2001). Are empirically supported treatments valid for ethnic minorities? Toward an alternative approach for treatment research. Cultural Diversity and Ethnic Minority Psychology, 7, 328–342. Costantino, G., Malgady, R. G., & Rogler, L. H. (1985). Cuento therapy: Folktales as a culturally sensitive psychotherapy for Puerto Rican children. Maplewood, NJ: Waterfront Press. Costantino, G., Malgady, R. G., & Rogler, L. H. (1986). Folktales as culturally sensitive psychotherapy for Hispanic children. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 54, 639–645. Costantino, G., Malgady, R. G., & Rogler, L. H. (1994). Storytellingthrough-pictures: Culturally sensitive psychotherapy for Hispanic children and adolescents. Journal of Clinical Child Psychology, 23, 13–20. Malgady, R. G., & Costantino, G. (2003). Cuento therapy for drug abuse. In A. Kazdin & M. Weisz (Eds.), Evidence based psychotherapy for children (pp. 225–235). New York: Guilford. Miranda, J., Bernal, G., Lau Kohn, L., Hwang, W-C., & LaFromboise, T. (2005). State of the science on psychosocial interventions for ethnic minorities. Annual Review of Clinical Psychology, 1, 113–142.
Practice and Organizational Development for Psychologists (APA, 2002). Ethical codes and guidelines of the APA (2005) and American Counseling Association (2005) have also called for mental health professionals to acquire knowledge and skills in providing services for a culturally diverse, visible and invisible, clientele varying in gender, race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, national origin, immigration status, age, religion, disability, language, and socioeconomic status. Defined from a psychosocial perspective as a network of domainspecific knowledge structures shared by members of a visible or invisible social-cultural group, culture is internalized into each individual’s self-concept and functions as a set of templates that guide and govern interpersonal expectations, perceptions, and interpretations across situations. The increased attention to multicultural competency, or lack thereof, has been driven, in part, by the growing racial and cultural diversity of the United States (U.S.) society at large, the monocultural assumption of traditional training models, and advances in multicultural theories and research.
Multicultural Counseling Competency Models
Cultural Competency Self Assessment Checklist Eric C Chen . Ryan Androsiglio
The civil rights era of the 1960s and 1970s set the stage for the multicultural counseling movement. In the late-1970s, discussions of multicultural counseling issues began to appear in academic journals, and a multicultural counseling competency position paper was published by Derald Wing Sue and colleagues in 1982, considered to be a classic in the multicultural counseling field, was published in The Counseling Psychologist. Since then, attention to multicultural issues in counseling has increased dramatically, and a flurry of systematic, well-organized professional association activity has had a major impact on the status of multicultural issues in counseling and psychology. The American Psychological Association (APA), for instance, officially authorized adaptations of the position paper by Derald Wing Sue and colleagues as the Multicultural Guidelines on Education and Training, Research,
In the competency report written by Derald Wing Sue and colleagues, there are 11 specific competencies for multicultural counseling practice. The report later underwent several rounds of revisions resulting in 31 competencies. These competencies were organized into three major categories: (1) counselor awareness of own assumptions, values, and biases, (2) understanding the worldview of the culturally different client, and (3) developing appropriate intervention strategies and techniques. In 1996, Patricia Arredondo further presented 119 explanatory statements that linked each of the three major categories to three dimensions of personal identity: attitudes and beliefs, knowledge, and skills. These two sets of categories produce a three by three matrix that is referred to today as the multicultural counseling competencies model. The most recent and comprehensive work on the multicultural counseling competency construct is the book Multicultural Counseling Competencies: Individual and Organizational Development published by Derald Wing Sue and colleagues in 1998. The text augments the list of 31 competencies to 34 and is more expansive than any of the previous works on
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the competency model. Various versions of competency models not only impact the practice and training of mental health professionals but also fuel much conceptual and empirical productivity. Furthermore, these competency models have been expanded to include three contexts in which mental health professionals function: (1) personal context includes counselors’ identity, beliefs, attitudes, awareness, knowledge, and skills, (2) professional context refers to counselors’ collection of roles such as therapist, consultant, teacher, or supervisor within the field of counseling psychology, and (3) institutional context where counseling practice occurs within institutional entities such as psychology departments, state agencies, and mental health clinics. In different contexts, counselors assume myriad responsibilities that may have different implications for culturally competent practice.
Self-Assessment Checklists A number of self-assessment checklists exist in the literature, including, for example, the Cross-Cultural Counseling Inventory-Revised (CCCI-R) by La Fromboise and colleagues, the Multicultural Counseling Awareness Scale (MCAS) by Ponterotto and colleagues, the Multicultural Counseling Inventory (MCI) by Sodowsky and colleagues, and the Multicultural Awareness-Knowledge-and-Skills Survey (MAKSS) by D’Andrea and colleagues. Inventories and assessments such as these all focus on three main factors: awareness, knowledge, and skills. As a unique feature, the MCI also includes a Multicultural Counseling Relationship scale, which examines a counselor’s stereotypes and comfort levels with minority clients. To more fully understand how these various factors come into play in the development of a multiculturally competent counselor, counselors must undergo a selfexamination in relation to larger contexts such as social interactions or the society at large. Specific attention is paid to counselors’ awareness, knowledge and skills, across three levels of self-awareness: Intrapersonal (internal qualities), Interpersonal (qualities in social interactions), and Extrapersonal (qualities regarding sociopolitical or sociocultural factors). The intrapersonal level of multicultural competence includes a self-awareness of one’s own internal processes, personality characteristics, thoughts, stereotypes, beliefs, biases and assumptions. The intrapersonal level also includes the ability to be self-reflective and
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self-aware. Through supervision and self-refection, counselors can hone in on blind spots or strengths. The interpersonal level is characterized by an awareness of how cultural factors impact counseling encounters. This dimension focuses on the here-andnow of the counseling session as well as other social interactions. This level involves the interactions between the counselor and client, the process and content of those interactions, and counselors’ multicultural awareness, knowledge, and skills that contribute to the interaction. The extrapersonal level of cultural competence involves knowledge about resources, barriers, cultural norms, traditions, and social policies that shape the worldview of both the counselor and the client. This also includes theories of identity development (e.g., gender role orientation, racial identity, gay identity). In addition, this level necessitates counselors to develop an awareness of how sociopolitical realities or perceptions contribute to the counseling relationship during the counseling process.
Use of the Self-Assessment Checklist Although the multicultural counseling competency model has been widely recognized by the counseling and psychology professions and embraced in training programs, the implicit assumption that multicultural awareness, knowledge, and skills translate into effective practice remains unsubstantiated. That is, while the model is specific about the necessary components of multicultural competence, it falls short of demonstrating how this competence is manifested in the counseling process. Each counseling encounter is multicultural in nature and is unique in itself; no model can predefine all of the richness and diversity of culture. After all, competence does not ensure effectiveness, and the development of cultural competence is an ongoing process. Once equipped with a set of basic cultural competencies, counselors are encouraged to examine how their cultural effectiveness, or lack thereof, results from: (1) factual knowledge: culturally relevant factual information; (2) generic clinical skills: fundamental counseling skills necessary for the development of working alliance, assessment, intervention, and termination; (3) theory-specific technical skills: the use of special procedures or techniques in the clinical setting based on a specific theory; (4) clinical judgment: the ability to apply knowledge and clinical skills to
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counseling a particular client; and (5) interpersonal attributes: personality characteristics and styles, past personal experience, or psychosocial skills that may affect the ability to function in a professional capacity. Given that culture is such a broad and rich vein of information, counseling practice is inevitably embedded in multiple sociocultural realities and contexts. The manifestation of culture(s) in the individual is idiosyncratic, depending on myriad factors, individual and contextual. Cultural knowledge should not be misused to stereotype clients. The multicultural counseling competency model and, by extension, the selfassessment checklist, can bring to counselors’ mind a format for examining diversity-related critical incidents and the surrounding contexts through reflection. During this reflective inquiry process, counselors are careful in the exploration of the client’s presenting concerns, respectful of each other’s experiences and reactions, while avoiding being trapped in two different ways: through either inadequate attention to other factors beyond racial and cultural variables or ignorance of within-group differences. Counseling is likely experienced differently by the client than by the counselor due, in part, to the dynamic interaction among the individual, group, and universal aspects of the human experience. The intentional-reflective stand also allows counselors to uncover and identify their errors, on one hand, and further enhance their effective practice that is both ethical and culturally appropriate, on the other. See also: > Cultural diversity; > Roles and responsibilities of multiculturally competent school counselors; > Selfassessment checklist for personnel providing services and supports to children and their families
Suggested Reading Constantine, M. G., & Sue, D. W. (Eds.) (2006). Addressing racism: Facilitating cultural competence in mental health and educational settings. New York: Wiley. Ponterotto, J. G., Alexander, C. M., & Grieger, I. (1995). A multicultural competency checklist for counseling training programs. Journal of Multicultural Counseling and Development, 23, 11–20. Ponterotto, J. G., Casas, J. M., Suzuki, L. A., & Alexander C. M. (Eds.) (2001). Handbook of multicultural counseling (2nd ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Pope-Davis, D. B., Coleman, H. L. K., Lu, W. M., & Toporek, R. L. (Eds.) (2003). Handbook of multicultural competencies in counseling and psychology (2nd ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
Cultural Diversity Amy Wickstrom . Ben K Lim
All families are multicultural. The threads that weave together the heritage of every family unit are unique, making it difficult for any family to fit into a description of a particular group. Moreover, the school setting is arguably the most common and natural setting by which families relate to others from a variety of diverse backgrounds. Cultural diversity within the United States (U.S.) continues to increase. According to the 2000 U.S. Census Bureau, approximately 77% of the population is White, 13% is African American, 4% is Asian, and 6% are other races. It is clear that diversity is a relevant issue within the U.S.; therefore, developing cultural competence among professionals within the school system is imperative. Here cultural diversity will be explored from a systemic lens that includes a broad range of issues such as power, gender, age, socioeconomic status, race, ethnicity, disability, religion, and sexuality in the context of the family and school system.
Families in the School Context Children and families must be viewed within their context if they are to be adequately understood. Effective models of working with families must consider the relationships families have with their wider environment including other individuals, friends, relatives, church, community resources, institutions, and social service agencies. Recognizing the impact of these systems upon families allows the clinician and school personnel to achieve a more complete and complex perspective of families. Furthermore, clinicians and school personnel are able to access and effectively intervene with families in a greater number of ways. Yet, consideration of children and families in context does not eliminate the issue of cultural bias and insensitivity. Instead, it elevates cultural competence to a position that warrants urgent attention. The school is among the most culturally diverse system that families interact with on a regular basis. From a systemic perspective, schools are similar to families in their fundamental organizational structure. For example, both seek to care for and educate the young, both have well-established belief systems that
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influence how they function, and both are comprised of various subsystems, (such as teacher-student, parentteacher, and parent-student subsystems) that facilitate some tasks and inhibit others. In the 1960’s, the community mental health movement lead to the establishment of a national mandate to provide mental health consultation for schools. The history of this process reflects the difficulty experienced in reconciling the idealism of some who believe the school system can be a place not only dedicated to academic excellence, but also to healing family and community life problems, and the pessimism of those who believe the school system cannot and should not be held responsible for managing any aspects of family functioning outside of the academic domain. In an effort to determine a midpoint between these opposing views, schools have evolved over the years to include a variety of innovative approaches for meeting the mental health needs of children and families. As a continuation of this evolution process, schools must now consider approaches that engage with the cultural complexities within their frameworks. For example, on-campus parent support groups may work well for White parents, but Latino or Asian parents may feel it is inappropriate to share personal concerns with adults outside their families. Asian parents may prefer educational workshops and Latino’s may prefer homebased interventions.
Definition of Cultural Diversity Culture develops from and within societal contexts. As such, it is a set of individual or collective meanings that are in a constant state of flux. In a sense, culture defies definition. While it provides people with a means of making sense of themselves and their life experiences, it is always provisional, political, and emergent. Culture governs and influences how children and families view themselves, how they relate to each other, and how they interact with their greater environment. It involves a broad range of diversity issues, including gender, age, socioeconomic status, race, ethnicity, disability, religion, and sexuality. These dimensions are central to all human experience; therefore, it is imperative that clinicians and school personnel consider culture as a primary guide when working with children and families in the school setting.
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Power Issues: Gender, Age, and Socioeconomic Status Power is an inherent part of daily life. It guides personal and professional relationships according to both subtle and overt differentials established by factors such as gender, age, and socioeconomic status. While power is typically measured by the amount of control one person has over another, it can also be viewed as the ability by which one person can strengthen, encourage, challenge, and love another. Within the school setting, professionals can strive to achieve the latter conceptualization of power within both the organization of the school system and the family. Rather than seeking maintenance of the status quo or problem relief, professionals in the school system can aim to empower children and families by recognizing the importance of societal rules, roles, and imbalances, and providing them with an opportunity to explore and make sense of these issues in a personally meaningful way. While many mental health professionals consider issues of overt dominance in clinical practice, studies have found that clinicians often fail to identify and address gender-related issues in their work with students and their families. This failure has important implications for the school setting. Rather than being part of the process that challenges maladaptive gender patterns, well-meaning professionals may accidentally perpetuate or re-create old ways of relating that do not serve men or women very well. School personnel must take conscious action to avoid gender bias, within both the organization of the school and how it relates to children and families. For example, men can generally be found in positions of greater authority within the school system (such as principal and other administrative roles), whereas women are often employed in lower hierarchical positions (such as teacher and librarian). Within the family, men often maintain the role of primary bread-winner, thereby placing women in a position of economic dependence. Therefore, common interactions between genders (such as a meeting between a male principal and a female parent, or a parent conference with a female teacher and male parent) must be considered from a gender-inclusive lens because of the inherent power differentials involved. Furthermore, there is a wide variance among different ethnicities regarding gender roles. For example, Latinos may expect girls to act in stereotypical feminine ways (marianismo); therefore, Latino parents may be uncomfortable allowing their daughters to join
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school sport teams. African American parents are often fearful for the safety of their sons due to their historical vulnerability to violence, drugs, incarceration, early death, and discrimination. As a result, the parents may take extreme positions with school personnel when talking about their son’s behavior or academic performance. When working with children and families, school personnel must be sensitive to these kinds of gender issues. This will provide a more comprehensive understanding of the presenting issue, thereby allowing them to empathically and collaboratively work with parents within their cultural context. Concerning power and its relationship to age, children have many experiences throughout their lives in which they feel they have little or no power and control. Generally, children live in an adult world governed by adult values, rules, and regulations. While the school system strives to relate to children in a non-threatening, comfortable manner, the school environment may not be different than the child’s larger environment. Children learn how to relate to others in school according to societal standards: they learn to obey their teacher, respect authority figures, communicate appropriately, and behave accordingly. Their power is limited by their youthful status, and their ability to express themselves and share their ‘‘voice’’ is restricted by their under-developed verbal skills. One way to reduce the negative consequences of this issue is to educate school personnel on the value of play in child development. While there are over four thousand languages spoken in the world, play is not considered one of them; however, it should be because it is the primary means of communication for a child and it is a universal language. Despite varying cultural heritages, all children use play to express themselves. Toys are their words and play is their language. Through the metaphor of play, children learn to work through and make sense of their life experiences. It is a means by which they learn to recognize, express, and regulate their feelings in developmentally appropriate ways. Play provides children with familiar, nonthreatening objects they can manipulate to reenact their past experiences or current thoughts and feelings. By doing so, children are able to gain a sense of power and mastery over their environment. They are empowered through play to trust themselves as well as their relationships with others. The primary objective of the school system is to facilitate a child’s learning. The establishment of mental
health programs within schools opened the door for clinicians to be a vital part of reaching this goal. The main question is not whether play should be utilized within schools, but how it should be used within schools. One increasingly common intervention with children in elementary schools is play therapy, which is a dynamic, interpersonal relationship between a child and, primarily, a therapist, whereby the child learns to explore, cope with, or resolve trauma, disabilities, losses, or other developmental tasks. Play therapy is both preventative and curative; therefore, it can be used to meet a wide range of developmental needs for both adjusted and maladjusted children. Just as adults cannot be expected to perform maximally at work when they are going through a divorce, the death of a loved one, or a major life transition, children cannot be expected to be ready to learn at school without being given the chance to make sense of the recent fight they heard between their parents, the family cat that died last week, or the recent family relocation. Thus, play therapy provides an excellent adjunct to the learning environment in school because it helps all children get ready to profit from the learning opportunities awaiting them. Social and economic class is a source of power differentials among people throughout all cultures. Classism is both discriminatory actions and attitudes which are based on differences between social or economic classes. A related concept is class-consciousness, which is defined as an awareness and feeling of identification with one’s own social or economic rank in society. Classism is held in place by a system of beliefs that ranks people according to occupation, level of education, and economic status. This system of beliefs obscures the reality of class differences and fosters several myths. One such myth is the belief that the U.S. is fundamentally a classless society. In stark contrast to this myth, the majority of wealth in the U.S. is in the hands of a small percentage of its population. The inequitable distribution of wealth prevents the whole society from enjoying the full benefits of people’s labor, intelligence, and creativity, and it contributes to misery and despondence for the poor and working classes. Another myth assumes that the U.S. is essentially a middle-class nation; however, the middle class is shrinking in size, and the gap between the rich and poor is bigger than ever before. Yet another myth involves the belief that everyone has an equal chance to succeed. . . hard work, sacrifice, and perseverance is all that is needed for success in the U.S. In reality, however, socioeconomic status has a significant impact on
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educational attainment. School performance and level of schooling completed is strongly correlated with class. For example, students with greater social status have a higher probability of getting better grades. Despite efforts to increase fair testing and school accessibility, current data suggest the level of inequity remains the same. A final myth states that the reason why the poor and working classes remain in their status is their lack of intelligence and their tendency to be overly emotional. Classism supports the notion that the upper class is smarter and more articulate than the poor and working classes, and these beliefs cause great pain to people by isolating them and preventing them from reaching their potential. The task of coping with and rejecting these erroneous beliefs is frequently a highly emotional process. School personnel must be sensitive to the impact of socioeconomic status and the aforementioned myths on families for a variety of reasons. For example, children from poor and working classes may feel disillusioned by the myth that hard work and perseverance is all that is needed to succeed. They may lose motivation because they are constantly bogged down by the cycle of poverty, both of their families and their neighborhood. Conversely, other poor or working class families may push their children to excel in school, believing that education is the only gateway to a better life in the future. Recognizing the myth of equal opportunity for all, teachers can help by providing specific academic guidance to children, each starting at different points in their socioeconomic context.
Ethnicity and Race Achieving a sense of belonging and historical continuity is a basic psychological need. Ethnicity describes a sense of commonality involving history and traditions that are transmitted through family generations and are reinforced by the surrounding community. Ethnicity transcends race, religion, and national origin, and is a major source of personal identity. People who are secure in their identity are able to act with greater freedom, flexibility, and openness to those from different cultural backgrounds. However, people often receive negative messages about their ethnic background and learn values from the dominant society that conflict with those they learned from their family heritage. In an effort to resolve this issue, they may ignore, cut off, or reject their cultural heritage. Some develop a sense
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of inferiority and self-hate, which can lead to aggressive behavior and discrimination toward other ethnic groups. Racism, which assumes that group differences are biologically determined and therefore unchangeable, involves the belief that one’s race is superior to another. It encompasses beliefs and attitudes about racial groups, which are often enacted by and reinforced through social, cultural, and institutional practices. Racism can be overt, involving easily detectable behavioral or verbal discriminatory acts, or it can be covert, subtle, hidden, denied, or discounted. Race and ethnicity are relevant to the school setting in many ways. Ethnic groups differ in what they view as problematic behavior, how they respond to problems, their attitudes toward seeking help, the emphasis they place on various life transitions, and their attitudes about group boundaries. For example, the English may view emotionality in children as problematic, while the Chinese may view anything that disturbs family harmony as problematic. Italians may respond to problems by seeking family support, eating, or selfexpression, whereas Norwegians may respond to problems by getting fresh air and exercise. These kinds of differences among ethnic groups are important to consider when working with children and families in the school system. Likewise, racism is also an important consideration for school personnel. It can take many forms in the school system, ranging from an academic curriculum that emphasizes European American history and does not address the history of other ethnic/cultural groups, to an African American student who is excluded by his peers from an all-White school basketball team. School personnel need to be sensitized to the presence of institutionalized racism and the many ways it can influence students and their families.
Disability and Special Education Another aspect of cultural diversity is the disability challenges that some students face within the school system. Over the past 30 years, the law determines that parental permission is required for the process of referral, evaluation, placement, and individualized education plans. Despite these changes, disabled students are often cast in the role of patients, and parents are in the role of respondents, who grant permission to authorities to carry out the various aspects of the
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placement process. Among minorities in the special education system, parental involvement is even less involved and informed. Empirical studies and conceptual discussions have determined the following challenges regarding minority participation in special education programs: lower levels of involvement than White parents, less knowledge of special education procedures, rights, and services, feelings of isolation and helplessness, lack of self-confidence when interfacing with professionals, need for logistical supports (such as transportation, child care, and respite), culturally based assumptions of noninterference by parents in school matters, and implicit and explicit discouragement of parental participation in the special education process by professionals. While the special education system continues to reflect mainstream American values and behaviors, the school system has made efforts to increase its cultural competence in this area. For example, school personnel have developed sensitivity to various cultural styles, and they are encouraged to take a more indirect approach to foster a relationship with parents that includes elements other than direct service issues. Additionally, school personnel are encouraged to use interpreters, even when parents are able to speak a little English. Difficulties with technical vocabulary and the subtle nuances of language and interpersonal behavior can lead to significant misunderstandings. Many schools have also developed outreach programs for minority parents. Advocacy programs teach parents their legal rights, help them understand the basic tenets of special education, and teach them skills for interacting with school professionals.
Religion The increasing diversity of the school system also brings with it different religious adherence among students. While the public school system has made every effort to stay out of issues of morality and religion, remaining neutral is very difficult and perhaps even unhelpful. School personnel have been reluctant to inquire into a family’s spirituality for a number of reasons, but doing so separates school personnel from accessing and understanding one of the greatest resources for many families. While religion will probably continue to be a sensitive issue within the school system, it is important that school personnel recognize the importance of religion in the lives of children and families.
There are many reasons for addressing the role of religion in families. For example, studies suggest that attendance of religious activities protects children from misbehaviors in and outside of school. Therefore, if the family is part of a community of believers, school personnel may recommend students to be involved in their youth activities. Also, religious institutions provide many kinds of support to families, including parenting classes, marital enrichment workshops, youth camps, and support groups. Families who are hesitant about referrals to counselors or social service agencies may feel comfortable accessing support services at their churches, synagogues, temples, or mosques.
Sexuality Since the goal of the school system is to facilitate the learning process for children, sex education is included in the majority of school curriculums; however, it is a controversial topic among parents, school personnel, and the larger community. While cultures vary in their expression of sexuality, the following guidelines for sexual development among children apply across diverse people groups. Some minority families may be more hesitant about discussing this topic at home and may expect the school to spearhead sex education for their children. Although there are general tasks for sexual development in children, the rate and nature may vary considerably from child to child. Normal sexual behaviors in children include those that considerable numbers of children demonstrate, although children who do not engage in these behaviors are not necessarily considered abnormal. Abnormal behaviors are those that indicate a child may be having difficulty with sexual development, may require additional sex education and/or assessment by a professional, or may be a result of a child’s unique personality or life experiences. From birth to 2 years old, much of a child’s learning is body-related. At this age, children learn to distinguish between male and female, playfully explore their own bodies, enjoy nudity, and have the capacity for sensory pleasure. Sometimes children have spontaneous sexual responses; however, they are reflexive and are not related to sexual arousal. At this stage of development, it would be abnormal to observe a child experience resistance, fear, or discomfort with touch from primary caregivers.
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During early childhood (ages 2–5), children begin to show an interest in the bodies of others, including both adults and children. They engage in playful, curiositybased sexual behaviors and games, such as ‘‘peeking,’’ ‘‘I’ll show you mine if you show me yours,’’ ‘‘playing doctor,’’ and ‘‘playing house.’’ Some children rub or touch their own genitals as a means of self-soothing and relaxation. Children at this age often engage in bathroom talk, show an interest in the basics of human reproduction, continue to enjoy nudity, and are developing the concept of privacy in relation to sexuality. Abnormal sexual behaviors include non-consensual sexual exploration with same-age playmates, or sexual exploration with a child that is significantly older or younger. Other problematic attitudes and behaviors include a persistent desire to be the opposite gender, performing physically harmful or painful sexual behaviors, oral-genital contact or exploration, penetration of another child’s vagina or anus with fingers or objects, sexual intercourse (actual or simulated), obsessive talk about sexuality, and public nudity or sexual behavior after learning the concept of privacy. During middle childhood (ages 5–8), children continue to grow in their understanding of sexuality. Characteristics of this stage of development are gender role socialization, continued cognitive sophistication and interest in human reproduction, the ability to link reproduction with sexual pleasure, increased need for privacy while bathing and dressing, awareness of sexuality in the media, peer talk about sexuality, and an awareness that different sexual orientations exist. Normal behaviors include curiosity-based sexual play with similar-age peers (often in private), touching of their own genitals for pleasure and/or relaxation, and talking about body parts and functions (often with slang of sexual language). Abnormal behaviors and attitudes include lack of knowledge relating to basic elements of human reproduction and signs of sexual abuse or exploitation. During late childhood (ages 9–12), children experience physical changes due to puberty, have a heightened concern about physical appearance, are attracted to the opposite sex, and develop an understanding of the rights and responsibilities associated with sexuality and relationships. Normal behaviors include dating, increased modesty or desire for privacy, physical intimacy (such as kissing), touching their own genitals, heightened interest in sexual media, and preoccupation with sexuality. Problematic sexual behaviors and attitudes include adult sexual activity, trouble with body image, compulsive genital touching, and trouble
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interacting with others in a socially or sexually appropriate manner. From age 13–18, children complete the changes of puberty. They experience increased attraction, sexual feelings, and desire toward the opposite sex or same sex. Children at this age may face peer pressure to be sexually active, and they may prefer romantic relationships in favor of close friendships. Problematic issues related to sexuality at this stage of development include violence, coercion, or exploitation in relationships (such as sexual harassment and date rape), as well as pregnancy, pornography, and sexually transmitted diseases. While these stages of sexual development tend to cut across cultural boundaries, there are significant differences in cultural norms of sexual expression. For example, Latino families go to great lengths to protect a girl’s virginity and keep her reputation unmarred. As a result, these families may not allow their daughters to talk with boys or go on dates without chaperones. In traditional Asian families, physical expressions of love and affection are uncommon; therefore, these children may be less likely to display some of the more overt sexual behaviors. It is important for school personnel to be aware of these kinds of cultural differences in sexual expression. When talking to a child about sexuality, it is important to do so with a calm, matter-of-fact, accepting tone. When adults speak to children about these issues in a non-blaming, non-shaming, non-judgmental manner, children learn that their sexuality is normal, positive, and healthy. Asking a child to show the adult where the child learned problematic sexual behaviors may be more comfortable to the child than being asked to tell about it. When a child has the option of showing an adult something, the child is given the option of using their primary means of communication, play, in addition to their developing verbal skills. Children can act out their experiences using dolls, doll houses, animals, cars, and other toys in a way that is comfortable to them. Nevertheless, sometimes children are responsive to specific, open-ended questions from adults about sexual behaviors. Adults may also find it helpful to talk with other people in the child’s life to gather further observations. School personnel should refer parents to the child’s pediatrician or a child therapist if abnormal sexual behaviors are observed. Sexual orientation as a diversity issue is increasingly being discussed in schools. Different cultural groups have differing views about the topic. It is
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important that children be respectful of the decisions that different individuals make regarding this issue. Homophobic attitudes must be confronted and dialogues encouraged by those who differ in their views.
Developing Cultural Competence Cultural competence is the ability of individuals to accept, understand, and relate effectively to culturally diverse groups of people. There are a variety of ways to develop cultural competence among school personnel. Some argue the best way for an individual to develop cultural competence is by thoroughly studying his/her own ethnic identity. By doing so, the individual can develop greater self-awareness. Culturally skilled individuals recognize how their personal background, attitudes, values, and biases influence their psychological processes. They are comfortable with differences between themselves and others and can recognize the limits of their knowledge and experience. Additionally, cultural competence can be developed by gaining an understanding of general characteristics of various ethnic groups. While there are many problems associated with stereotyping ethnicities, school personnel would benefit from a basic understanding of the values and beliefs associated with several groups. Perhaps one of the most effective skills of culturally competent individuals is the attitude of ‘‘not knowing.’’ School personnel are not required to know everything about cultural groups, and they could not do so even if they wanted to. An open-mind and curious stance may be all that is necessary to build a bridge with ethnically diverse groups. Finally, cross-cultural training groups may facilitate the development of cultural competence. In these kinds of groups, participants are asked to describe themselves culturally, identify who influences their sense of cultural identity in their family, discuss which cultures they understand best apart from their own, and explore the characteristics they like most and least in their own cultural group. They are also encouraged to take cross-cultural plunges by attending functions of other ethnic events and celebrations. By engaging in these activities, school personnel gain a multidimensional perspective of diversity. See also: > Cross-cultural competence in school psychologists’ services; > Cross-cultural families; > Crosscultural school psychology; > Cultural issues in education; > Racism: Individual, Institutional, and Cultural
Suggested Reading McGoldrick, M. (Ed.) (1998). Re-visioning family therapy: Race, culture, and gender in clinical practice. New York: Guilford Press. McGoldrick, M., Pearce, J., & Giordano, J. (Eds.) (2005). Ethnicity and family therapy (3rd ed.). New York: Guilford Press. Rothenberg, P. S. (Ed.). (2003). Race, class, and gender in the United States: An integrated study (6th ed.). New York: Worth.
Cultural Enmeshment Georgia Yu
It has been estimated that the number of biracial individuals in the United States (U.S.) is between one and ten million. According to the 2000 U.S. Census Bureau, there has been an addition of 126 racial combinations for the first time in history, giving biracial and multiracial individuals the option to self-identify with multiple heritage groups. As biracial people become empowered to claim their right to accurately label their heritage and the numbers of biracial individuals and families continue to grow, society is compelled to broaden its definition of race. Many theorists have argued that biracial individuals inherently live in two worlds, unable to enjoy the benefits of full membership within either group. Others have argued that being biracial allows individuals to transcend and transform socially constructed ideas of racial classification. Enmeshment is considered the third stage in the development of biracial identity. This stage occurs when an individual becomes confused and guilt-ridden at having to make a choice that is not a true reflection of his or her own identity. This individual experiences a lack of group acceptance and suffers from low selfesteem. The individual feels disloyal to one of his or her parents, and becomes concerned about how his or her peer group will respond if they meet the parents. The individual strives to resolve this guilt and confusion by identifying with both racial groups. The term ‘‘enmeshment’’ is also a concept taken from family systems theory, characterized by the relationship two or more individuals. Their lives and identities are so intertwined with each other that it is difficult to disentangle them for them to function independently.
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The family system can have the most crucial influence on the development of a child’s cognition. Through family, a child learns what is expected of him or her in society. The child learns to distinguish right from wrong. In this cognitive process, a child figures out how he or she fits into the world at large. A sense of self develops. If the child has a positive family experience, the child will have built a strong foundation to deal with the conflicts of life. If the family atmosphere is negative, the child fights a battle from the beginning. Basically, the family provides the first experience in life that influences the future. The dynamics of familial interaction are what help the child deal with issues such as identity formation, building self esteem, emotional perspectives, and intellectual development. In combining the ideas of a cultural identity and the family systems definition of enmeshment, cultural enmeshment is the idea that an individual cannot separate from the two or more cultural identities. The individual is torn between or among different cultures and is unable to identify with the more salient culture. Increased globalization and the effects of mass media, in which a ‘‘universal’’ or dominant cultural (namely Western and European America) is promoted, could predict increased cultural enmeshment and decreased importance of ethnic distinctions. However, increased similarity in cultural practices across ethnic groups is not associated with a reduction in the salience of ethnic identity. Although there may be challenges in conceptualizing and operationalizing terms such as race, culture, and ethnicity, they represent a multifaceted conceptual paradigm for understanding human diversity. These terms represent minority, socioeconomic, and immigrant status to many individuals even though these factors influence the lives of all families. They not only shape the study of various cultural groups, but have an impact on their economic, political, and social positions as well as acknowledge how within-group variation reflects and represents culture. See also: > Acculturation; > Biracial/multiracial identity development; > Culture; > Ethnic identity development
Suggested Reading LaFromboise, T., Coleman, H., & Gerton, J. (1993). Psychological impact of biculturalism: evidence and theory. Psychological Bulletin, 114(3), 395–412.
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Cultural Issues in Education Michael J Nakkula . Claudia Pineda
It is widely argued that since key concepts and information are embedded within cultural values, education is as much a matter of cultural socialization as it is a process of learning specific information or developing critical thinking skills. In fact, critical thinking skills are also enmeshed with cultural values, as successful critical thinking in one context might prove unsuccessful in another; in this way, critical thinking may be defined as mental strategies or behaviors that allow one to function at an optimal level within particular cultural contexts. Proponents of these views argue that one cannot adequately conceive of education outside of specific cultural parameters, and that to be educated is, in part, to be culturally socialized. In this regard, an educated person is a cultured person, a person whose learning has been cultivated through the values, goals, and practices of particular educational approaches.
Definitions of Culture Applied to Education Culture, as summarized from various anthropological definitions, is a shared (collective) organization of ideas (symbols and meanings) that includes the intellectual, moral, and aesthetic standards prevalent in a community. Morals are an integral component within almost all cultures as well as almost all educational approaches. Whether it is a formal part of the curriculum, an explicitly articulated value within a school’s mission statement, or an organizer of a school’s code of discipline, moral standards are central to day-to-day functioning in virtually all educational settings. How are teachers expected to treat students? How are students expected to treat one another? How are these expectations cultivated? These are all moral questions addressed by educators. In addition to these moral questions about how to best maintain order in a classroom setting, educators must also address questions about how to structure formal lesson plans; these lesson-plan questions also have moral underpinnings. How do educators teach students the moral lessons derived from history? How do they present the
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morality of our political and legal systems? In this regard, education is morally grounded whether or not the moral values are explicitly articulated. Aesthetic dimensions of culture are also prevalent within education. By aesthetic we mean standards and experiences of beauty and excellence. What constitutes great art? What allows people to experience ‘‘a good life’’? How do we create a better world? These are all questions with an aesthetic core, and they are all questions that education addresses on multiple levels. Recently, students have begun to ask educators why classical visual and musical arts are featured almost exclusively in some school curricula, as opposed to popular art forms derived from youth culture (i.e., hip-hop music, art and style). What about contemporary novels from the New York Times best sellers list? Are they merely ‘‘pop’’ culture successes, given that they have not yet stood the test of time? Questions like these about the role of culture and the degree of its importance to education are important aesthetic questions for educators.
Communication and the Culture of Education Communication is another key feature to most definitions of culture. What must students learn to be effective communicators, and what constitutes advanced communication skills? The academic skills associated with communication can have powerful cultural implications. For example, reading well is a matter of developing receptive communication skills within the culturally valued educational arena of literacy. What does it mean to read well? Does it mean reading widely? Reading quickly? Understanding deeply? All of these criteria play important roles in the development of excellent reading skills. This is critical from a cultural development perspective because knowledge—including culturally endorsed information—is passed along through reading. Further, reading contributes to the development and critique of culture. Ideas gleaned through reading contribute to individual and collective notions of what is important, what should be prioritized or privileged within a culture, and what should be changed. Cultural revolution, whether major or minor upheavals, utilizes literacy, particularly reading skills, as an integral tool. Active listening is a second aspect of receptive communication used to impart cultural knowledge in school. Throughout the elementary school grades,
children are prompted to listen attentively to teachers and peers. They are socialized to pick up cues that may help them understand the meaning of messages, ideas, and lessons. Active listening encourages students to listen beyond surface messages by connecting information heard in the present with related knowledge gleaned from prior lessons. Students’ culture, as well as their academic and other skills, is also partially built by educators’ scaffolding. The concept of scaffolding, first coined by the developmental psychologist Lev Vygotsky, argues that deep levels of learning require interpsychological connections, or the ability to connect one mind with another. Such connections are made through verbal communication as well as the active sharing of knowledge via apprenticeships in which teachers or other skilled adults model their knowledge through shared activity. Vygotsky’s well-known concept of scaffolding is derived from this perspective. By scaffolding, Vygotsky and other developmental psychologists refer to the mental and behavioral supports provided for learners in reaching toward highly challenging goals or complex skills. It is important for educators to recognize that cultural beliefs, attitudes, and values are passed along via interpsychological scaffolding, and that building receptive communication skills is essential to utilizing scaffolded support. Above all others, writing is the quintessential active communication skill prized by educators, including those who specialize in assessment. Writing not only allows one to communicate ideas clearly in a manner that can be shared by a broad range of people, but it also allows for the active construction of cultural knowledge. Technological innovations have sped the development and dissemination of culture, and as a result, modern communication skills must link reading and writing aptitude with technological literacy. Current demands on students include being able to communicate through email, chat rooms, via computer-generated magazines, and through cell phone text messaging. These various written modes of communication are shaping day-to-day existence and challenging long-standing cultural norms of communication. What was once private information is now commonly shared across an array of casual acquaintances, including those who exist only in the virtual reality of the internet culture. These technology-based shifts in communication bring formal education into relation with the larger world more pervasively and rapidly than ever before, raising new questions for educators regarding the nature
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of effective and constructive communication, and how it should be taught.
The Collective Component of Educational Culture The notion of collective norms—including values, beliefs, and behaviors—is central to most definitions of culture, and is highly applicable to education. From a multicultural perspective, schools are a locus of cultural intersections. In the United States (U.S.) (and in most highly industrialized countries) educators use agegraded standardized criteria for what should be learned within the general areas of literacy, mathematics, science, and social studies. Each subject area is organized around a coherent set of values regarding what should be learned by students at particular points in time. However, some question whether standardized educational criteria constitute fair assessments, since such criteria may be normed to one culture; this would give an advantage to students from that culture while putting students from other cultures at a disadvantage. In addition, many question the rationale behind standardization altogether, arguing that standardization will always be inexact given the vast disparities between students, and thus, the majority of students’ scores on standardized scales of aptitude are not representative of their true ability. Some examples of the vast disparities between students include the pace at which different students learn as well as the conditions under which they learn. Within any large urban school system, students come from dramatically differing family backgrounds, including differences marked by financial earnings, parent education levels, the home language of the family, and expectations regarding achievement. All these disparities affect students’ ability to meet standardized educational goals. The educational culture of the larger school system responds to these differences in a variety of ways. In some cases, students and families apply to and are assigned to schools that are deemed a proper fit culturally. This can mean assignment to schools in which academic achievement is a focal organizer, including magnet schools for high achievers, or exam schools in which students must meet particular academic benchmarks to be accepted. By definition, such schools reduce part of their cultural diversity by selecting only high achievers; these schools’ definitions of what constitutes high achievement and the way that they organize their curricula and values may further narrow
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their cultural diversity. Other schools recruit and select students by theme, such as those that emphasize the arts or particular athletic excellence. Although both of the aforementioned school types have different school cultures that are organized around very different cultural norms, they share a selectivity that narrows their capacity for cultural diversity. In contrast, many urban schools maintain strong values of cultural diversity by enrolling a full range of students that represent their communities, including students from different family backgrounds, linguistic backgrounds, socioeconomic experiences, and achievement values. Such schools, with their more diverse student body, are better able to recognize that students will learn at different paces. They understand that some students speak Spanish or Mandarin more fluently than English. Further, in some schools and school systems, differences such as these are embraced for providing experiential richness, while in others they might be viewed as obstacles to be overcome. There is currently debate about whether students whose primary language is not English should be integrated or separated from primarily-English-speaking students. Some school cultures push to integrate such students into ‘‘mainstream’’ classrooms as quickly as possible, while others endorse a more gradual transition. The approach taken reflects cultural values as much as it does educational ones. One challenge for many schools is how to balance enrolling a diverse student body while at the same time maintaining a unified and coherent school culture. What are the collective norms that can be created and shared by students and families from differing backgrounds? When norms valued by the school leadership and teaching staff are not shared by particular students or families, how are the differences addressed? Do the school norms change in response to such differences, or are students and families expected to adapt? These are key multicultural questions rooted in collective notions of culture that are addressed by most schools either explicitly or implicitly. They are also questions that school psychologists can help make explicit in their work with school colleagues in an effort to expand multicultural awareness.
The Organizing Component of Educational Culture To maintain a unified school culture, students and educators must share in collective experiences. These
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experiences are often organized around commonly understood symbols, rituals, and behavioral practices (e.g., school athletic teams’ symbols or mascots). School athletics provide perhaps the most common example of cultural organization. Most school athletic teams have a mascot such as a bulldog or warrior, around which a sense of collective identity is organized. This mascot is worn on athletic clothing, featured in school pep rallies, and sometimes even tattooed onto students’ skin. It represents a pervasive symbol of unity, whether such unity is real or merely desired. Athletic teams also have common rituals, such as practice structures and regularly shared stories or team myths. Rituals can also be destructive, such as excessive hazing of new students or new athletic team members. Within athletic performance, common behavioral practices include style of play, history of regular winning or losing, and coaching behavior. Taken together, these symbols, rituals, and behavioral practices contribute to a team culture, or school subculture. The unifying power of athletics culture may serve as a model for building other subcultures within schools, including gay-straight alliances and literacy clubs. It is much more challenging, of course, to organize on behalf of a gay-straight alliance than it is a football team. Nonetheless, some of the principles are similar. In some such alliances students embrace overt and subtle symbols such as clothing color, the location of ear rings and related piercings, and verbal constructions. Such symbols communicate commitment to the sub-cultural values and can be used to help organize supportive alliances. Rituals such as regular meeting times and places and consciousnessraising marches are also common. Other behavioral practices include writing proactive articles for the school newspaper and other publications, and organizing social gatherings that provide safe spaces for relationship building. Schools built on multicultural principles must work to address the needs and interests of as wide a range of students as possible. This task requires the complex demands of valuing and supporting student differences, helping to share and appreciate those differences, while simultaneously striving to keep the larger student body safe. Schools must properly balance the tension of highlighting and appreciating difference while protecting the safety of students who might be threatened or demeaned by virtue of such differences.
The Culture of Power in Education Many of the contemporary cultural issues in education can be classified as part of what some educational psychologists and sociologists have come to call the culture of power in education. The educational researcher Lisa Delpit has been among the most influential theorists and researchers in articulating the culture of power, specifically as it applies to Black youth who are being educated within educational systems organized by White middle class values. Delpit uses the concept of the ‘‘rules of the game’’ to argue that low-income Black students, and by extension other students of color, need to be taught the rules for success in White middle class society, given that this is the culture that dominates the economic opportunities for all students in U.S. schools. She argues that most school cultures are organized according to White middle class expectations for communication, behavior, and social interaction, and that students not of that culture need to be taught the rules of engagement if they are to succeed either with their White middle class teachers or others who have internalized these rules. The rules-of-the-game concept holds important implications beyond immediate communication and behavioral expectations. At the center of these implications is the cultural meaning of education itself. For many youth whose families have not experienced the socioeconomic benefits of education, school success is sometimes not perceived as connected to real-world success. For such students, ‘‘school smarts’’ do not translate into tangible benefits. ‘‘Smart kids’’ who are exhibiting high levels of school success are viewed as bookworms, nerds, or even social outcasts rather than the future holders of social or economic power. Even in cases where excellent students are seen as future successes, this perception often is attenuated by the perception that such success is only for certain types of students, either those who are White or who are ‘‘acting White.’’ The sociologist John Ogbu’s work investigates his theoretical conception of the ‘‘acting-White’’ phenomenon. Through their studies, Ogbu and his colleagues found that many students of color resisted educational success because they perceived success as ‘‘selling out,’’ or giving in to the White power structure. He and his colleagues found that many African American and Latino students viewed resistance to the authority (typically White teachers) behind
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educational success as more meaningful and powerful than acquiescing to that authority. For such students, present acceptance by peers was more meaningful than acceptance by teachers (this was true even if the students were told that teacher acceptance could lead to later acceptance and success by society-at-large), since the connections between academic success and later life-success seemed anything but guaranteed. Although Ogbu’s findings have been hotly contested, they have inspired alternative views of the culture of power in education, including the importance of who holds power and authority in educational settings and how these issues and their implications for student success can be understood and addressed.
Unveiling the Opportunity Structure The ladder of opportunity relates both to the rules-ofthe-game and to the acting-White phenomenon. The ladder of opportunity argues that an opportunity structure is readily apparent to middle and uppermiddle class (typically White) students whose parents have gone to college and succeeded at some level in the national economy. However, for students who do not have these examples in their lives, there is no visible ladder of opportunity where success at one rung leads to ascension to another. Middle school success is not viewed as a prerequisite for high school success, which in turn points toward a college degree, followed by a broader range of opportunities in one’s professional career. Although this progression can be explained to low-income students and is understood on some level, it is not perceived as a reality grounded in examples from everyday life. The task for educators—teachers, counselors, and psychologists—is to help make the ladder of opportunity realistically visible. A number of steps can be taken to address that task. First, it is important to clarify with students (typically middle and high-school students) the nature of their assumptions related to the relationship between educational success and future opportunities. Simply engaging in such culturally rooted discussions opens up opportunities for critical reflection and feelings of connectedness to the school culture. Students often do not feel acknowledged for their critical views of ‘‘the system,’’ and providing such acknowledgement can be liberating. Following a clarification of assumptions regarding current academic performance and future opportunity, an ongoing process of explicitly articulating the relationship
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between secondary schooling and longer-term career development must be undertaken. This can take the form of outlining a range of career options, the educational preparation necessary for accessing such options, the financial rewards associated with particular careers, and ultimately, constructing a plan for helping students move from where they stand in the moment to where they would like to go. This process typically takes years to complete, and as such constitutes its own cultural norms; these are norms for the culture of opportunity. According to critical education theorists, too many educators assume that such norms already exist, that students are aware of and engaged in the culture of opportunity unless they choose to actively resist it. While such resistance might indeed be at play, it is usually accompanied by a dramatic lack of awareness of the ladder of opportunity and thereby is a resistance to a concept that is purely abstract and seemingly irrelevant to their real lives. An additional step commonly taken to help make the opportunity ladder more realistically visible is to provide real-world experiences for potential first-generation college goers. At a modest level, such opportunities include internships or apprenticeships within professional career tracks. The medical profession, for example, provides a host of internship opportunities that allow students to better understand the range of options available in the medical field. Mock law and entrepreneurship programs in schools bring students into contact with lawyers and business innovators with whom they engage in interactive learning opportunities. Such processes allow students to gain first-hand exposure to real people engaged in real careers. To the extent possible, it is important for such models to include a diversity of professionals from different races, ethnicities, and genders because students need to feel that they are represented in these professions by people of their own and related backgrounds. Partnerships between middle schools, high schools, and universities also help students from low-income families see the ladder of opportunity. Through such programs, middle school students regularly visit the college campus, take academic and career development workshops there, and are tutored or mentored by college students. This helps students get a feel for the culture of higher education, even though they are not ready developmentally to take college coursework. They learn about the symbols and rituals of higher education, including the social benefits and academic rigors. Such approaches help middle school students
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begin preparing for college before beginning high school. At the high school level, such partnerships can help students actually take college courses and, in some cases even begin working toward a college degree. This can help students come to see college and collegerelated careers as realistic for them. Although the students view such programs as educational preparation, such initiatives are as much cultural preparation as academic preparation, because the programs make the opportunity structure, and the demands and expectations of it, real and reachable.
Peer Power—Peer Culture When youth feel disconnected from school (often because they feel disconnected from the adults who are associated with school), they commonly seek and exercise power within peer relationships. Young people create subcultures inside and outside of school as a means of taking control of their lives. School cliques have their own cultural norms, similar in some respects to school organizations, teams, and clubs. Contemporary research on such social groupings suggests that youth utilize connections to one another to create cultural stories or myths. These stories are then used to bind the group together as part of a living legend. Central to this experience is the capacity to create a world in which adults have little to no power. Accordingly, the rules of peer games are kept outside the awareness of adult authority figures. Power constructed within peer groups or conferred by such groups can, of course, be used in any number of ways. Parents and educators often experience enormous anxiety around concerns that the children they care deeply about might be engaged in ‘‘high-risk’’ behavior with friends. Such behavior—including excessive drinking and drug use, promiscuous sexual behavior, and dangerous driving—can indeed lead to destructive and even fatal outcomes. It can also, however, be used to construct youth subcultures consistent with traditional notions of adolescent experimentation. According to theories of adolescent experimentation, it is natural for youth to seek opportunities in which they can construct identities that are at least in part independent of adult norms. The culture of adolescent risk taking, as it has been framed by sociologist Cynthia Lightfoot, creates a context in which such experimentation takes place. It is a culture constructed by youth through shared risk taking, and a culture for youth in
which different aspects of being can be tried out or witnessed. When youth engage in high-risk behaviors, they can feel powerful because they perceive their own capacity to create shared meaning with their friends: this is a core aspect of adolescent cultural development. Without adults there to set the parameters, youth do it for themselves. They and their peers determine success and failure; they create their own codes of ethics; and they establish standards for aesthetic beauty and excellence. Through all of this, youth practice culture building through their risk-taking endeavors. A common question for educators and school psychologists is: How might we utilize such a process in school? Attempts to use this process in school activities have had mixed results. Efforts to create risk-taking in the classroom, for example, can yield positive results by engaging students and promoting student participation. However, adult-sanctioned risks are unlikely to replace youth-generated ones. Instead of trying to replace high-risk youth behaviors, educators should try to understand a fuller picture of risk taking and its importance to adolescent development, rather than just focusing on the potential dangers of high-risk behavior. The nature and purpose of peer networks represent another facet of peer power. Youth who are engaged in meaningful relationships with a range of peers are likely to have access to a broader world of opportunity. Research shows that youth who engage one another in activities that are linked with supportive adults—educators, coaches, mentors—are more likely to experience future success as an adult. This means that when one’s peer activities exist almost exclusively in realms devoid of adult involvement, those activities are more likely to be associated with future difficulties. The problem, it seems, is not necessarily one of engaging in high-risk behavior; it is, rather one of having little meaningful contact with valued adults. For example, youth who drink heavily with friends on the weekends, but also work together on educational goals supported by teachers or parents, are likely to feel empowered by both their peers and important adults. Such youth have a context of shared understanding that bridges the adult and peer worlds. In a sense, they have their own multicultural context. This experience is common for young people and can serve as a counterpoint to adult anxiety regarding youth risk-taking behavior, at least to a degree.
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Immigration and the Culture of Power in Education Students coming into primary or secondary school from another country face a number of additional cultural challenges. On top of the usual concerns about settling into a new school with a new set of peers, immigrant youth are settling into a new country. In many respects, the process of immigrant adjustment to school teaches us a great deal about cultural adjustment more generally. Acculturation is the concept used by anthropologists and sociologists to depict the process of learning and being socialized into a new culture. It is a process that occurs through a combination of conscious learning and unconscious absorption. Immigrants gradually come to take on aspects of their new context, and in time find these aspects to become a part of themselves. What was once foreign becomes internalized. A similar process occurs with education as well: concepts that initially seem impossible to comprehend can eventually become second nature; approaches to learning that might be novel and confusing at the outset can become ritualized over time. Students, like immigrants, are acculturating to new norms and expectations every day. When students are immigrants, however, the complexity of the acculturation process is magnified by varying degrees, depending largely on the complexity of their immigration experience. Students who arrive in U.S. schools as part of families that hold an instrumentalist attitude toward education, one in which education is viewed as central to building a better quality of life than existed in the country of origin, typically have a smoother transition to U.S. school culture than students from families who do not embrace such an attitude. The transition must be facilitated, however, by the receiving school culture. Schools that work to embrace students from other countries are more successful in supporting the acculturation process than those that are either neutral or unsupportive. The lack of support for immigrant students is at times associated with educators’ attitudes toward English language acquisition. Students who have not had substantial exposure to the English language typically will take longer to function at grade level than students who have had more exposure. This reality requires the patience and support of educators and student support professionals. More highly supportive schools for immigrant students plan for language-based transition processes and facilitate the learning challenges accordingly.
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Immigrant students who feel disempowered in school due to language challenges or a lack of support from adults and peers are likely to grow resistant to the educational and larger acculturation processes. These students increasingly begin to look outside of school for connection and support, and become progressively more at risk for longer-term educational failure. Such cases provide an unusual opportunity for school counselors and psychologists to play a pivotal role in student adjustment on multiple levels. Support can be provided directly to the student by building a warm and facilitating relationship; it can be provided by reaching out to the immigrant family to extend a welcome to the school and the country; and it can be provided by helping to build connections within the school to teachers, peers, and extracurricular opportunities. An additional complex array of challenges face undocumented immigrants in U.S. schools, particularly in this age of heightened anxiety over such issues. These students can find it difficult to reach out for needed support due to their immigration status. They commonly hide concerns out of fear of being discovered and potentially sent home to their country of origin. Further, undocumented immigrants face barriers to pursuing postsecondary education due to the paper work required for the college application process. The real and perceived lack of opportunity for postsecondary education can be demotivating for such students and lead to educational underachievement and failure. School counselors and psychologists working with undocumented immigrants face unique challenges as they explore opportunities with their students. In many cases, school professionals do not know their students’ immigration status and therefore struggle to make accurate assessments of educational and career-planning difficulties. However, whether documented or undocumented, the adjustment and developmental processes of immigrant students create unique cultural and developmental challenges. See also: > Cross-cultural learning styles; > Crosscultural school psychology; > Language needs in the multicultural classroom; > Urban schools
Suggested Reading LeVine, R. A. (1984). Properties of culture: An ethnographic view. In R. A. Shweder, & R. A. LeVine (Eds.), Culture theory: Essays on mind, self, and emotion (pp. 67–87). New York: Cambridge University Press.
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Lightfoot, C. (1997). The culture of adolescent risk taking. New York: Guilford Press. Ogbu, J. U. (1990). Cultural model, identity and literacy. In J. W. Stigler, R. A. Shweder, & G. Herdt (Eds.), Cultural psychology: Essays on comparative human development (pp. 521–541). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Vygotsky, L. (1977). Mind in society. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Suggested Resources http://cultureandeducation.org/—The Center for the Study of Culture and Education promotes research on the connections between culture and education. http://www.culturalpolicy.org/pdf/education.pdf—Center for Arts and Culture: Special issue paper on ‘‘Creativity, Culture, Education, and the Workforce.’’ http://unescoeducation.blogspot.com/—The United Nations Educational, Scientific, Cultural Organization (UNESCO) sponsors an informational blog on culture and educational initiatives.
Cultural Measurement Equivalence Joseph E Trimble
Cultural measurement equivalence refers to the possibility that interpretations of psychological measurements, assessments, and observations are similar if not equal across different ethnocultural populations. In principle, most cross-cultural psychological researchers agree that an analysis of cultural measurement equivalence occurs through the following concepts: functional equivalence; conceptual equivalence; stimulus equivalence; linguistic equivalence; and metric equivalence. Although five types of cultural equivalence are used to describe the dimensions of the concept there may upwards of 50 or more types that can be ordered into interpretive and procedural summary categories. On the surface the meaning of cultural measurement equivalence is straightforward yet it has created considerable discussion and debate in the literature as researchers and scholars struggle to disentangle its deeper meanings and applications. In cross-cultural psychology debates also abound on the influence of one’s worldview in understanding
and interpreting standardized tests and psychosocial scales. Moreover, many cross-cultural psychologists contend that comparing elements from different ethnocultural populations can lead to distortions of their worldviews. Given this contention, ethnocultural comparative research using psychological measures may be burdened with problems of ‘‘incomparability’’ and, thus, may lead researchers to draw conclusions about a finding that may not be valid or justified. Indeed, with some exceptions, most of the psychological tests and assessment scales used with different ethnocultural groups cited in the literature have not considered cultural measurement equivalence and item bias possibilities. To avoid these possibilities, attention must be given to the cultural measurement equivalence concept and item bias in measurement studies. In constructing and using psychological instruments and assessment tools in cultural-comparative or cultural-sensitive research, the investigator must give serious attention to equivalence matters. Embedded in the equivalence construct is the precept that comparisons between ethnocultural groups require that common, if not identical, measurement and assessment processes exist; in essence, the principle holds that a universal process must be developed to demonstrate and assess ethnocultural group comparability. Consequently, to achieve functionality, two or more behaviors must preexist as naturally occurring phenomena related or identical to a similar phenomena or circumstance; in essence, the behaviors serve a similar function for groups selected for study. Conceptual and stimulus equivalence exist when the meaning of stimuli, concepts, methods, among other variables, are similar or identical for culturally or ethnically different respondents. Linguistic equivalence is similar although the emphasis is placed on the linguistic accuracy of item translations. Metric equivalence or scale equivalence, probably the most technical and the most difficult to evaluate, exists when the psychometric properties of data sets from different ethnocultural groups reveal the same or similar coherence or structure. Of the five equivalence types, metric or scalar has received the least amount of empirical attention, perhaps because it is the most technical and/or poorly understood. For the psychometrician it may be the most important concern. Before a measure can be used in ethnocultural comparative research, it must first meet standards within the ethnocultural groups; then and only then can it be used between two or more groups. For example, use of forced choice scale
Cultural measurement equivalence
alternatives laid out in a linear manner may not fit with the cognitive and evaluative preferences of certain cultural groups; a Likert-type format may work for one group but not for another; thus, the researcher must find a common metric or scalar equivalence to pursue comparative measurement studies. Cultural measurement equivalence is similar to item bias. Item bias deals with the similarity or dissimilarity of scale outcomes across ethnic and cultural groups and thus is concerned with validity-threatening factors. In drawing a distinction between the two constructs, cultural measurement specialists typically assert that item bias is associated with construct, instrument, and method bias; item bias differs from cultural measurement equivalence because the latter deals more with the outcomes than with the factors that influence validity. Item bias deals with item contaminating factors and equivalence isolates bias and score comparability. Use of conventional scaling procedures in culturalcomparative research has introduced a number of methodological problems, especially in the use of a structured response format. Mounting research evidence points to the following problems: (1) Researchers tacitly, and perhaps incorrectly, assume that the numeric intervals between choice alternatives on a continuum are equal and can be assigned an integer value; (2) The number of choice alternatives are presumed, also perhaps incorrectly, to represent the full range of categories that an individual would use to evaluate an item; (3) The dimensions of the scale items may not truly be comparable between cultural groups; (4) The effects and the outcomes of the categorization process, difficult to define in any group, may be confounded by the possibility that not all cultural groups respond to stimuli in a linear manner. In the past decade, a few cross-cultural researchers and psychometricians have put forth a variety of interesting statistical algorithms for assessing the presence of forms of cultural measurement equivalence and culturally bound item bias. To assess metric equivalence, for example, some researchers have analyzed the scales or instruments with principal components or factor analysis. If the structural dimensions of instruments resemble one another then, presumably, the scales are equivalent across groups. Strength of the factor-based scales for the respective groups serves as partial criteria. Factor solutions have been expanded to include congruence coefficients and related manipulations to isolate the nature of the equivalence. For
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example, a few researchers have used factor solutions to examine the metric equivalence of personality scales administered to Asian and non-Asian populations and found that the factor solutions did not differ; item composition and the factor meanings varied appreciably as is often the case. Use of factor analysis in psychometric research and testing equivalence is not without criticism. Based on the growing debate, three critical points should be made: (1) Factor solutions rarely fit the data completely in cultural-comparative research due, for the most part, to nonrandom measurement and translation error and unspecified conceptual contributions to the obtained weights; (2) Factor solutions are suggestive; (3) Data should be, at a minimum, at the interval level. Most scales and inventories use binary or ordinal level response categories with presumed equality of the numerical distances between the alternatives; distortions can exist thus eroding the strength of the correlation coefficients. But it is possible that variables with limited categories are not compatible with factor analytic models because at minimum correlations often are used to define unstable constructs. A few cross-cultural researchers recommend use of covariance structural modeling or variants of confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) to test for equivalence. There are limitations associated with the use of exploratory factor models; the advances in confirmatory factor modeling, however, appear to overcome them. For example, in testing for measurement equivalence a few researchers used CFA algorithms and found that many of the scales and corresponding items were unstable across different cultural groups. Use of item response theory (IRT) to assess equivalence and bias has produced interesting findings. Use of IRT and corresponding differential item functioning (DIF) analyses can generate different item consistency outcomes where item bias is detected. The lines of research show promise for using IRT to assess equivalence of measures, scales, and tests. A growing number of researchers recommend a form of latent trait analysis, especially when the scale contains binary scores. The Rasch one-parameter model can be used however some researchers remind us that the model should be used with other analytic models that treat the data in a slightly different manner. Use of Rasch modeling to assess cultural equivalence has not been that extensive. A few studies using the approach, for example, found that: (1) Use of negatively worded items with culturally unique
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populations creates scale problems and item interpretation; (2) Item linguistic translation can create considerable variance in multinational focused scales; (3) Shorter versions of a scale can be constructed for use in cultural-comparative research however the longer version can be used with one cultural group without making any item adjustments; (4) and (5) Gender status and self-defined ethnic group respondents influence scale invariance and item nonequivalence of short scales originally believed to be reliable. See also: > Cultural diversity; > Cross-cultural competence in school psychologists’ services; > Stereotyping; > Worldview
Suggested Reading Byrne, B. M., & Watkins, D. (2003). The issue of measurement invariance revisited. Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, 34(2), 155–175. Dana, R. H. (Ed.) (2000). Handbook of cross-cultural and multicultural personality assessment. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Gerber, B., Smith, E. V. Jr. Girotti, M., Pelaez, L., Lawless, K., Smolin, L., Irwin, B., & Eiter, A. (2002). Using Rasch measurement to investigate the cross-form equivalence and clinical utility of Spanish and English versions of a diabetes questionnaire: A pilot study. Journal of Applied Measurement, 3(3), 243–271. Helms, J. E. (1996). Toward a methodology for measuring and assessing racial as distinguished from ethnic identity. In G. R. Sodowsky, & J. C. Impara, (Eds.), Multicultural assessment in counseling and clinical psychology (pp. 143–192). Lincoln: Buros Institute of Mental Measurements at the University of Nebraska.
Suggested Resources Institute for Objective Measurement—http://www.rasch.org: IOM’s website offers information on a wide variety of measurement programs and services.
Cultural Perspectives on Trauma Christina M Capodilupo . Derald Wing Sue Traumatic events are usually regarded as extreme stressors that occur outside the range of normal human
experience. A trauma is a frightening and horrific experience that is perceived to threaten the psychological or physical well being of the person. In most cases it is experienced as severe due to its unexpected, uncontrollable, and fearful nature. Trauma is associated with (a) natural disasters (hurricanes, floods, and earthquakes); (b) terrorism and war (the September 11th terrorist attack and combat trauma), and (c) individualized occurrences that place a person in harm’s way (rape, physical assaults, domestic violence, and car accidents). A person or group can be traumatized from passive witnessing of destructive and violent events to actual personal and physical violations. In the field of mental health, response to such trauma has been called posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). To be diagnosed with PTSD, a person must have experienced or witnessed an event or events that involve actual or threatened death, serious injury, or a threat to the physical integrity of self or others. The individual (a) reacts with intense fear, helplessness, or horror; (b) experiences persistent, intrusive, re-experiencing of the event, such as flashbacks or nightmares; (c) avoids the trauma and subsequent emotions, such as forgetting important aspects of the event, or feeling distant and cut off from people; and (d) has increased arousal, such as an inability to sleep, or being easily startled. There is not universal agreement as to what constitutes trauma. Emotional abuse does not fit the psychiatric standard of ‘‘threatened harm,’’ yet has been tied to the subsequent development of mental health problems. Moreover, sexual and racial harassment that is not physically threatening in nature can be experienced as traumatic, and a burgeoning body of research supports the idea that racism can lead to acute distress and other mental health problems. Because the diagnosis of PTSD depends on the social context, it is striking that researchers have attempted to study and understand the disorder independent of culture and sociohistorical dimensions. Culture influences the way an individual or group responds to its environment, hence culturespecific attitudes and beliefs can also affect the abilities of ethnic groups to manage trauma and cope with its effects. It can be expected that culture influences the definition of what is experienced as traumatic, the processes through which traumatic events are experienced, the meaning one makes of the traumatic event, as well as the healing process. Therefore, understanding culture is integral to understanding the unique situations of trauma survivors.
Cultural perspectives on trauma
Ethnic Group Differences While a limited number of psychological studies have examined ethnic group differences across experiences of PTSD, one large-scale study has found that national rates of PTSD (7.8%) do not differ significantly between Latino/Hispanics, African Americans, and Whites. However, African Americans were more likely than Whites to develop PTSD despite fewer experiences of trauma. Similarly, studies indicate that African Americans are at a higher risk than Whites for developing PTSD in a natural disaster context, and a growing body of research suggests that Latino/Hispanics experience significantly more PTSD than any other ethnic group. Empirical investigations of the manifestation of PTSD among ethnic groups have yielded mixed results. For example, some researchers have found that Latino/Hispanics infrequently endorse symptoms of ‘‘avoidance’’ while others have found an increased level of reporting avoidance symptoms. It is likely that that the cultural and ethnic diversity among Latino/Hispanic groups accounts for this differential finding. It is also likely that experiences of acculturation will differentially have an impact on PTSD symptomology among Latino/Hispanics. For example, Salvadoran refugees (low avoidance) differ significantly from second generation Puerto Ricans (high avoidance). Cultures that promote avoidance as a general approach to managing distress, such as among some Asian American or Latino/Hispanic groups, are likely to experience higher rates of PTSD, as avoidance behavior interferes with the cognitive processing of traumarelated memories and emotional distress, which can facilitate the maintenance of PTSD symptoms.
Culturally Specific Reactions to Trauma Research is limited with regard to ethnic differences in the presentation of specific PTSD symptoms. Some studies suggest that Latino/Hispanics and Asian Americans report higher frequencies of avoidance symptoms and lower rates of arousal than other ethnic groups, whereas African Americans have been shown to report low avoidance and high arousal symptoms. A possible explanation for the increase of arousal symptoms among African Americans is the history of racial oppression and continued experiences of racism. In fact, it has been posited that a healthy state of paranoia (which is associated with arousal symptoms such as being hyper-aware of
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one’s surroundings) is actually an adaptive and normative reaction for African Americans, who experience daily racial discrimination and bias. Researchers have posited that intrusive thoughts about the trauma may transcend cultural experiences, whereas avoidance/ numbing and hyperarousal may be highly influenced by cultural affiliation.
Culturally Specific Attitudes and Beliefs There are several culture-specific beliefs and/or experiences that may interface with experiences of trauma and make ethnic groups more susceptible to PTSD: fatalism, somatization, and racial/ethnic discrimination. Fatalism, the belief that events are inevitable and unalterable, is held by many Latino/Hispanics. Fatalism results in a passive coping style to trauma that elevates risk for PTSD, as active or problemsolving coping has been shown to lead to better outcomes than passive or avoidant coping. Somatization, which refers to physical expressions of psychological distress, is common among Latino/Hispanics and Asian Americans. Research has found a strong association between somatic symptoms and PTSD, again because somatization can be viewed as a passive or avoidant coping style. Racism and ethnic discrimination have been repeatedly shown to be correlated with psychological distress and PTSD symptomology. Further, studies suggest that increased exposure to racism is a risk factor for developing PTSD. Interestingly, Latino/Hispanics, though they generally experience less racism than African Americans, experience higher rates of PTSD resulting from racism. It has been suggested that because Latino/Hispanics receive less preparation for facing and dealing with racism from community and family sources than African Americans, they are more susceptible to the negative psychological consequences of this experience.
Cultural Coping Strategies While there are some culture-specific beliefs and values that render certain ethnic groups more susceptible to PTSD, there are also culturally-specific coping strategies to deal with stress that promote health and development. Unfortunately, these coping strategies can be misinterpreted and misconstrued as a pathological reaction to the traumatic event. For example, after
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September 11th, the New York Asian community used cleansing (e.g., to clear away the evil) and other protection practices to reduce anxiety, which could be misinterpreted by a mental health clinician as ‘‘avoidance’’ because the person is engaging in a ritual as opposed to processing their emotional reaction. Similarly, the length of time it takes for a person to reveal details about the traumatic event varies by culture, which can be misread as avoiding the trauma-related events or emotions. In some cultures, expressing mental health problems is associated with shame or stigma. After September 11th, a phone survey indicated that although Asians were the most exposed to the terrorist attacks based on location proximity, they had the least symptoms of PTSD; however, a follow-up study revealed that in fact Asians were uncomfortable discussing anxiety on the phone with a stranger. What may have appeared as a suppression of emotions related to the trauma, or dissociation from traumatic events can actually be explained as a normative culture-specific reaction. The criteria for PTSD can potentially identify as pathology what may be normal, constructive responses to trauma that do not require specific professional help. Understanding traumatic experiences through varied modes of psychological inquiry tend to reflect Eurocentric values of individualism, an internal locusof-control, and self-efficacy. These underlying values and treatment goals may not always be well matched with cultural belief systems that emphasize collectivism, fatalism, or the interpretation of negative events as significant communications or lessons learned. Understanding culturally specific responses to trauma and stress is crucial for planning and delivering mental health services to communities and individuals. For example, men of color have unique needs and are often not well served in mainstream programs; therefore culturally competent interventions specifically designed for this population need to be developed. Understanding trauma requires a rebuilding of the individual or group’s social world, which requires mental health professionals to learn the cultural nuances specific to the populations with which they work. Strategies and interventions must be developed through learning within a community, engaging community and religious leaders, and utilizing community resources. An appreciation of an individual’s culture, historical roots, beliefs, and views of mental health and healing is a necessary first step to approaching understanding of trauma and culture.
See also: > Culturally competent crisis response; > Disasters and disaster prevention; > Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)
Suggested Reading Carlson, B. E. (2005). The most important things learned about violence and trauma in the past 20 years. Journal of Interpersonal Violence, 20, 119–126. Marsella, A. J., Friedman, M. J., Gerrity, E. T., & Scurfield, R. M. (Eds.) (1996). Ethnocultural aspects of posttraumatic stress disorder: Issues, research, and clinical applications. Washington, D.C.: American Psychological Association. Perilla, J. L., Norris, F. H., & Lavizzo, E. A. (2002). Ethnicity, culture, and disaster response: Identifying and explaining ethnic differences in PTSD six months after Hurricane Andrew. Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology, 21, 20–45. Pole, N., Best, S. R., Metzler, T., & Marmar, C. (2005). Why are Hispanics at greater risk for PTSD? Cultural Diversity and Ethnic Minority Psychology, 11, 144–161.
Cultural Psychiatry Renato D Alarco´n Culture, defined as a set of behavioral patterns, lifestyle, meanings and values, shared and utilized by members of a given human group, includes a series of variables from the material (diet, housing, tools, economic practices) to the purely social or epistemological areas such as collective knowledge, habits, customs, beliefs, traditions, language, religion, social relations, and ethical principles. Culture is a dynamic phenomenon that shapes a group’s view of the world and is transmitted from generation to generation. The concept should be distinguished from two others, race (based on physical and biogenetic considerations that group individuals on the basis of physiognomic characteristics), and ethnicity that entails distinction and identification of groups on the basis of a common historical or geographic origins. Against the background of a millenarian connection between health, disease, and culture, Cultural Psychiatry could then be defined as the sub-discipline that occupies itself with the definition, description, evaluation, and management of all psychiatric conditions inasmuch as they are both object and reflection of cultural factors in a biopsychosocial context. Cultural psychiatry utilizes concepts and instruments of
Cultural psychiatry
social and biological sciences in an effort to advance a global understanding of psychopathological entities and their treatment. It promotes clinically and culturally relevant care of every patient, recognizing both his/her unique cultural legacy and universally valid principles of the management of emotional suffering. An inheritor of distinguished historical and anthropological traditions, Cultural Psychiatry is a relatively young discipline. Its origins can be located around the late 19th century with the first description of clinical entities found in exotic places, thanks to explorations of authors such as Deniker, Ellis, Hirsch, and Brill. Many authors consider Kraepelin as the founder of Cultural Psychiatry (which he called Comparative Psychiatry) when he reported in 1904 on his visits to Java and Borneo, where he studied presumed cases of schizophrenia. Later on, Freud’s influence, and that of followers and dissidents of psychoanalysis, identified definite sociocultural factors (even though they may have not called them so) in the genesis of behavioral maladaptations and mental disorders. In the last three decades, the field of Cultural Psychiatry has expanded with contributions from other disciplines, particularly psychology, sociology and anthropology, that started with the seminal biopsychosocial concept proposed by Engel, and continued with the growth of multidisciplinary and multifactorial approaches to health and illness, pronouncements by international health organizations emphasizing the totality of the human being in the fields of health and healthcare, significant social and political changes across the world, and the development of study groups, social programs, and academic centers devoted exclusively to the field. It is interesting that this growth has taken place in the midst of another revolution led by neurobiology and neurosciences.
Cultural Variables The following should be considered as important cultural factors that interact among themselves and with fields beyond culture to have an impact on diagnostic, clinical, and therapeutic processes in a patient.
Ethnic Identity It includes elements such as country of origin, family structure, attitudes towards medicine, psychology and
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psychiatry, views of the world, crossing of systems (demographic, social, educational, economic), affiliations (familiar and religious), behaviors, expectations, and values.
Language For many, it is the most significant cultural variable, powerful in the generation of identity, and a source and a vehicle of information, expressiveness, alienation, or support, protective or risk factors, and an essential element in the outcome of every clinical intervention. A variant, the so-called nonverbal language, includes physical distance among the interlocutors, visual contact, movements, and gestures.
Education It influences notably the outcome of any clinical interaction, emphasizing the good or bad results of communication between professionals, patients, and families.
Gender and Sexual Orientation These variables preside over connections and contacts, grouping and cultural responses that generate behaviors and have an impact on prevalence and severity of most clinical conditions.
Religion and Spirituality Both are potential sources of information, support, and explanation of illness. They contribute to ‘‘make sense’’ out of symptoms and symptom-related emotions and feelings, with a subsequent beneficial effect.
Age and Socioeconomic Status The ways in which society handles different age groups in the context of health and disease have an undeniable cultural basis. Similarly, socioeconomic status, as a reflection of levels of ability, opportunities, and collaborative or alienating connections between groups with varieties of financial and political power responds to important cultural sources.
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Diet At a more material level, dietary styles, although closer to biological areas (e.g., metabolic processes, food composition), reflect also a variety of collective beliefs, habits, customs, traditions, occupations and community objectives and rules of strong cultural facture, and have an even stronger impact on personality and behavior.
and ethnic factors. Poverty, low industrialization, strong or weak restrictive rules related to the use of alcohol and drugs, or sexual practices, and levels of acceptance and tolerance of behavioral disorders secondary to cognitive problems, are all culturally-based areas. As in the case of substance use and abuse disorders, their weight and impact vary from culture to culture.
Schizophrenia and Other Psychoses Culture-Psychiatry Interactions Culture plays different roles and interacts at various levels with psychopathology and therapeutics. It is an interpretive and explanatory tool that clarifies behaviors that, otherwise would be considered pathological. It is a pathogenic and a pathoplastic agent, that is, contributes to produce some clinical conditions, and shapes the symptomatic and syndromic presentation of clinical pictures, respectively. Culture is a diagnostic and nosological factor recognized by official nomenclatures and utilized in instruments measuring psychopathology. In this sense, a cultural perspective prevents the commission of socalled categorical fallacies, that is the attempt to pigeon-hole clinical entities or behaviors with a powerful cultural basis (particularly in non-Western societies or ethnic minority groups) into labels sanctioned by purely Western taxonomy parameters. Culture has also a therapeutic and a protective role on the basis of how families and communities deal with mental health and mental illness. Finally, it is an important component in the management and provision of care influencing interactions of the therapeutic dyad (patient and professional) as well as how society deals with mental illness, issues of stigma, tolerance, support and understanding, and the eventual direction that governments and bureaucratic structures take vis-a`-vis the care of those with mental illnesses.
Schizophrenia and other psychotic conditions show differences in prevalence and even outcome and prognosis in highly industrialized societies when compared with less developed, rural or agricultural communities. Similarly, their phenomenology varies on the basis of cultural complexities.
Mood Disorders These disorders have clear symptomatic differences in different cultural settings. Conceptualization, symptom presentation, severity, and impact of acculturation are factors that distinguish depression and bipolar mood disorders in different cultural areas.
Anxiety Disorders The high index of phobias in some ethnic groups (for example, African Americans in the United States) has been explained on the basis of stress resulting from discriminatory practices. The levels of anxiety and acculturative stress in newly-arrived immigrants and even in second or third generation of immigrant families, has a definite cultural basis related to adaptability, learning new cultural clues, educational and occupational opportunities, among other variables.
Cultural Aspects of Specific Clinical Entities
Somatization and Dissociative Disorders
Cognitive and Substance Use Disorders
These two types of disorders are, for many, the end result of what is called ‘‘idioms of distress,’’ a peculiar and unique way in which members of different societies externalize stress, or express a variety of personal and social predicaments through means more
In spite of strong biological components, these disorders respond to undeniable social, cultural, economic,
Cultural psychiatry
acceptable than gross pathological presentations. If mood and anxiety disorders are considered manifestations of characterological weakness, then pain or seizures can be better defined as ‘‘medical’’ or ‘‘physical’’ conditions without the associated stigma or social criticisms of shame and guilt.
Posttraumatic Stress Disorder A relatively new disorder in contemporary classifications, posttraumatic stress disorder has significant cultural connotations in terms of political oppression, response to natural disasters, war, interethnic conflicts, social isolation, migrations, international politics, and other factors that put to a test the way in which individuals or groups face adversity.
Other Disorders Finally, eating disorders, psychosexual problems, adjustment and personality disorders do all have a strong cultural basis. Religion, life events, racism, resilience, creativity, and features such as individualism and competitiveness versus sociocentrism and altruism are cultural factors that play a role in the occurrence and presentations of these and many other conditions.
Cultural Aspects of Psychiatric Treatment Patients and treating professionals do have cultural baggages that are non-transferable. Therefore, one must make an effort to understand the other’s cultural background and agenda, eventually presiding over the very essential nature of the relationship. In this context, the topics of transference and countertransference in psychotherapy have a cultural basis, much stronger than unprovable unconscious phenomena. Since the use of language may be a source of comfort or conflict, interpreters may be extremely useful in several circumstances. Therapists play the role of cultural brokers, and the adequate connection between patient and therapist should prevent both unfillable gaps or the phenomena of fusion and overidentification or enmeshment, that would prevent a good therapeutic outcome. There are numerous cultural models of psychotherapy. For instance, Morita therapy in Japan, for the
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treatment of moderate cases of obsessive-compulsive disorder, is based on periods of isolation and sociocognitive retraining. The use of heroes and heroins from the patient’s culture of origin has been successful with minority patients in the United States. Art therapy, variants of psychodrama, game therapy, cuento therapy (story-telling) and other techniques are important considerations. Some authors postulate the possibility of standardized psychotherapists in multicultural contexts. This is certainly an area that, in the current climate of globalization, may deserve specific research. Ethnopsychopharmacology is a growing field, based on the study of genetic profiles and the metabolic properties of enzyme sets over different groups of medications. Slow, intermediate, expansive (normal), and rapid and ultra-rapid metabolizers vary among different ethnic groups, with clear implications for the choice of medicines, doses, time and length of administration, and production of side effects. Similarly, the so-called nonpharmacological factors in pharmacotherapy do have a cultural basis, very closely related to the issues of doctor-patient relationship, beliefs and expectations, and social customs and habits analyzed above.
Conclusion Culture has a multitude of implications in the theoretical and practical areas of psychiatry. Its consideration is critical for the translation of diagnostic categories and explanatory models into codes understandable across the globe. Its adequate use will attenuate potential discrimination and stigma. Culture and therapy with special subpopulations such as children and adolescents, couples and spouses, families, aging persons, and medically-ill patients are areas of growing importance. Social phenomena such as political and social changes, migration, refugee issues, minority groups, intercultural marriages, and the many different theories regarding etiology and pathogenesis of mental illness make of Cultural Psychiatry one of the most important areas of development in the future. These and other topics such as cultural epidemiology, cultural psychiatry and education, cultural formulation in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders: Text Revision, culture-bound syndromes, and the bio-cultural connections in psychopathology must be priority subjects of research.
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Cultural resilience
See also: > Code switching; > Diversity in higher education; > Sociocultural factors
Suggested Reading Alarco´n, R. D., Foulks, E. F., Westermeyer, J., Ruiz, P. (1999). Clinical relevance of contemporary cultural psychiatry. Journal of Nervous Mental Disease, 187, 465–471. Kermeyer, L. J. (1989). Cultural variations in the response to psychiatric disorders and emotional distress. Social Science and Medicine, 29, 329–339. Kleinman, A. (1988). Rethinking psychiatry: From cultural category to personal experience. New York: Free Press. Tseng, W. S. (2001). Handbook of cultural psychiatry. San Diego, CA: Academic Press.
Cultural Resilience Caroline S Clauss-Ehlers
Overview and History Cultural resilience considers how cultural background (i.e., culture, cultural values, language, customs, norms) helps individuals and communities overcome adversity. The notion of cultural resilience suggests that individuals and communities can deal with and overcome adversity not just based on individual characteristics alone, but also from the support of larger sociocultural factors. In 2004, Clauss-Ehlers defined ‘‘culturallyfocused resilient adaptation’’ as how culture and the sociocultural context have an effect on resilient outcomes. The question presented by this concept is to consider those larger environmental variables that help individuals overcome the obstacles they face. Culturallyfocused resilient adaptation contends that adaptation to adversity is a dynamic rather than static process that includes character traits, a person’s cultural background, values, and supportive aspects of the sociocultural environment (i.e., a relationship with at least one caring adult). A review of the early literature associated with resilience generally provides grounding to understand the trend towards considerations of resilience in a larger sociocultural framework. The concept of resilience developed out of research in the field of developmental psychopathology. While first interested in studying parents with schizophrenia,
for instance, Garmezy ultimately explored what helped the children of such parents thrive and do well. Much of the literature that followed from Garmezy’s 1987 study focused on how individual traits in children helped them become ‘‘super kids’’ and overcome obstacles they faced. The character-trait approach to resilience focuses on the extent to which youth have certain characteristics that promote resilience. If a child did have these traits, they were thought to explain the youth’s coping ability. If the child did not, the idea was that practitioners, families, and systems were to help develop such individual traits to help him/her become more resilient. In 1999, Kumpfer organized resilience-promoting traits into five main groups: cognitive competence, spiritual/ motivational capabilities, social competence, emotional stability, and physical well-being. Two years later, in 2001, Davis reviewed the literature to discern those individual traits found to foster resilience. She identified the following as individual traits that foster resilience: secure attachment, easy temperament, an internal locus of control (i.e., the sense within the individual that he/ she can influence or change his/her environment), basic trust, active coping, sense of harmony, sense of meaning and purpose about one’s life, strong language skills, sound reading skills, can make friends, can ask for help, a realistic sense of strengths and weaknesses, and an interest in helping others.
Incorporating Culture Empirical Studies Although this important work makes a significant contribution, the trait-based approach to resilience leaves it ‘‘way too much up to the individual child.’’ Questions not answered by the trait-based approach include: How do protective processes interact with the environment? What about those children who are resilient in one situation but not in another? To what extent does resilience maintain itself over time? In other words, could a child show great resilience during the early years but a lack of resilience in young adulthood? These questions aim to explore the notion of context-dependent resilience that states resilience is a more dynamic concept than once imagined. Moreover, the trait-based approach to resilience research must be examined in its own context. Much early resilience research, for instance, was conducted on samples of primarily White participants. As a result, much needs
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to be learned about how resilience plays out among communities of color. Research is increasingly exploring how culture and diversity can interact with stress and protective factors at different developmental stages of life, the outcome being resilience. Several studies support the idea that culture can be incorporated into resilience and does, in fact, promote it. A 2000 study conducted by Belgrave et al. for instance, explored the effect of a culture-and gender-specific intervention program on the resiliency of 10- to 12-year-old African American girls. Adversities the girls confronted in their lives included adult responsibilities, early puberty, and being sexually active at an earlier age. The culture- and gender-based intervention was geared to promote the resources and positive relationships in the girls’ lives. The cultural component of the intervention focused on providing an Africentric worldview associated with the intervention. Thus, harmony, emotional awareness, and balance were some of the values included in the way that resources and relationships were developed. Findings indicated that culture significantly correlated positively with resilience. The intervention group, for instance, scored higher on the Africentric Values Scale, the Children’s Racial Identity Scale, and the Physical Appearance subscale of the Piers-Harris Self-Concept Scale compared with girls in the control group. The authors concluded that having positive emotions about one’s culture helps to decrease the presence of risky behaviors. In a 2006 study, Clauss-Ehlers et al. found that having strong ethnic and gender identities directly correlated with greater resilience. This study primarily consisted of a college-aged sample of women who reported on their past trauma histories. The women indicated if they had been teased or bullied in school; verbally, physically, or sexually abused; had an unavailable caregiver; and experienced racism or sexism. The study found that having an androgynous gender identity (i.e., a gender identity that incorporates traditional male and female gender roles) and actively learning about one’s ethnicity helped the women respond to and overcome these struggles.
Measurement Scales In addition to empirical studies that highlight the link between culture and resilience, preliminary research has empirically measured cultural resilience through
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scale development. Social-science scales aim to measure concepts quantitatively. Scales have been developed to measure countless variables, and resilience is no exception. In 2008, Clauss-Ehlers reviewed several critical resilience measures to determine the extent to which they considered culture in their structure and development. Scales reviewed included the Hardiness Scale, the Dispositional Resilience Scale, and the ConnorDavidson Resilience Scale (CD-RISC). Generally, the review found that these scales did not encompass cultural considerations. The Hardiness Scale did not consider possible relationships with sociocultural factors. Similarly, the Dispositional Resilience Scale defined resilience as a concept focused on hardiness and control. Cultural aspects of resilience were not included. Although some considerations were given with the CD-RISC (e.g., gender comparisons and some differences among racial/ethnic groups), such analyses were limited (i.e., comparing all non-White people with White people rather than looking at within- and between-group differences). To address this measurement gap, Clauss-Ehlers developed a preliminary measure of cultural resilience entitled the Cultural Resilience Measure (CRM). CRM scales include Childhood Stressors, Global Coping, Adaptive Coping, Maladaptive Coping, and Sociocultural Support. These scales reflect the model of culturally-resilient adaptation presented earlier. One item in the measure also asks about when (e.g., at what developmental life stage) the individual gained insight about his or her problem, if he or she did at all. This item is referred to as Insight Timing. Investigation of the CRM indicated that Adaptive Coping was positively associated with Sociocultural Support and Global Coping. A factor analysis found these three scales to result in Factor 1, the ‘‘sociocultural aspect of coping.’’ Factor 2 reflected ‘‘negative experiences encountered’’ (with high loadings for Childhood Stressors and Maladaptive Coping). Factor 3 suggested a possible ‘‘confluence among Sociocultural Support, Maladaptive Coping and Insight Timing.’’ An unexpected finding was that Insight Timing related to resilience. The earlier the individual was aware or had insight about her difficulty, the more resilience she reported. Finally, a regression analysis indicated the CRM captures cultural components of resilience. Results also supported the idea that resilience occurs in an ecological context. There were vast differences, for
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instance, reported by different racial/ethnic groups of women who participated in the study about the stressors they experienced as children. Respondents who selfidentified as lower class or lower middle class reported greater overall childhood stress compared with their middle, upper middle, and upper class counterparts. Socioeconomic variables were very much associated with other scales as well. Participants who self-identified as middle, upper middle, and upper class, for instance, reported much more sociocultural support than those who self-identified as being in the lower and lower middle classes. This study is a first attempt to develop a measure that integrates culture into how resilience is not only empirically investigated, but measured. Additional research can further develop reliability and validity data for the CRM. See also: > Assessment of culturally diverse children; > Educational resilience; > Resilience; > Resilience building prevention programs
Suggested Resources Resilience Research Centre—www.resilienceproject.org: The Resilience Research Centre has partners from countries throughout the world that use diverse research approaches to understand how youth and their families overcome hardships in their lives. The International Resilience Research Project examines crosscultural aspects of resilience from an international framework. Community Planning to Foster Resilience in Children—This book provides an overview of research, practice, and policy initiatives as they relate to cultural resilience. General sections include: Foundations, Promoting Resilience in Diverse Communities, Areas of Special Need, and Promising Resilience-Promoting Developments (see Clauss-Ehlers and Weist, 2004). Children, Youth and Women’s Health Service Kids’ Health Ages 6–12 Resilience Don’t Let Things Get you Down—www.cyh. com/HealthTopicDetailsKids.aspx?p¼335&np¼287&id¼1758: This webpage is written for children. As such, it presents information in a voice that is developmentally relevant for children between the ages of 6 and 12. Youth can click on questions and comments to learn more about resilience. These include: What is resilience? What helps you to become resilient? What you can do?
Suggested Reading Belgrave, F. Z., Chase-Vaughn, G., Gray, F., Addison, J. D., & Cherry, V. R. (2000). The effectiveness of a culture-and-genderspecific intervention for increasing resiliency among African American preadolescent females. Journal of Black Psychology, 26(2), 133–147. Clauss-Ehlers, C. S. (2004). Re-inventing resilience: A model of ‘‘culturally-focused resilient adaptation.’’ In C. S. Clauss-Ehlers & M. D. Weist (Eds.), Community planning to foster resilience in children (pp. 27–41). New York, NY: Kluwer Academic. Clauss-Ehlers, C. S. (2008). Sociocultural factors, resilience, and coping: Support for a culturally sensitive measure of resilience. Journal of Applied Developmental Psychology, 29, 197–212. Clauss-Ehlers, C. S., Yang, Y. T., & Chen, W. J. (2006). Resilience from childhood stressors: The role of cultural resilience, ethnic identity, and gender identity. Journal of Infant, Child, and Adolescent Psychotherapy, 5, 124–138. Davis, N. J. (2001). Resilience in childhood and adolescence. Panel presentation delivered at George Washington University, Media Conference, Washington, D.C. Garmezy, N. (1987). Stress, competence, and development: Continuation in the study of schizophrenic adults, children vulnerable to psychopathology, and the search for stressresistant children. American Journal of Orthopsychiatry, 57(2), 159–174. Kumpfer, K. L. (1999). Factors and processes contributing to resilience: The resilience framework. In M. D. Glantz & J. L. Johnson (Eds.), Resilience and development: Positive life adaptations (pp. 179–224). New York, NY: Kluwer Academic/Plenum.
Cultural Studies in Schools John Broughton
Culturalist Versus Scientific Paradigms Cultural Studies (CS) is a complex, versatile, unorthodox and innovative field of scholarly inquiry into the dynamics of cultural and subcultural transformation and insubordination. It combines highly sophisticated developments in academic theorizing with detailed cultural analysis geared to local and global activist practices. CS is studied directly in schools rarely, if ever. In this, it resembles Education (the discipline). However, CS has had a growing influence over the last 30 years in educational theory and practice, especially in alternative teacher preparation. Its critiques of professionalization and bureaucratization have challenged normative conceptions of what a teacher is and should be. For example, some in CS would argue that teachers are primarily ‘‘cultural workers,’’ over and above their responsibilities to the various standard curricular areas.
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CS is ‘‘post-positivist’’ in its approach to inquiry, meaning that it has distanced itself from the tradition of the natural sciences emulated by the social sciences, especially in North America and Britain. CS has mounted a thorough critical assault on experimental manipulations, clinical trials, variable-driven research, control-group comparisons, statistically based generalizations, the hypothetico-deductive model of inquiry, the assumption that knowledge is value-neutral, the notion of the centrality of science, the idea of theory-free observation, the emphasis on decontextualized information or ’’data,’’ and the naı¨ve belief in pure objectivity. In its own methodologies, CS has moved concertedly away from or beyond such traditional ‘‘scientific’’ approaches. The origins of CS are arguably in British workingclass and adult education, particularly in the areas of literary theory and cultural history, and CS retains much of the interpretive, conceptual orientation of those fields. Thus, it sits more comfortably with the arts and humanities than with the social sciences and so represents a major challenge to the knowledge and research bases of mainstream education, which for 60–70 years have been unequivocally and uncritically grounded in the social science paradigm.
Cultural Studies Versus Liberal Humanism As a critical and radical project, CS has positioned itself in opposition to liberal-humanistic approaches, which emphasize natural, organic notions of human development, equality, and moral responsibility at the expense of any serious examination of prevailing political or economic conditions. Liberalism tends to confound the cultural with the social and to reduce society to face-to-face interpersonal relations governed by a social psychology of competing individual interests. It espouses an ethics of appeasement, a conciliatory ‘‘contract’’ economics by which such conflicts are resolved in a supposedly fair and balanced way. Such an approach tends to move toward the harmonizing of differences rather than respecting them, and so it is inclined to minimize and hence suppress opposition (e.g., student critiques of curriculum or school governance), and to trivialize conflict as a temporary nuisance soon to be eliminated. A matrix of abstract human rights is often invoked as arbiter, but ethical and political practices and decisions are typically structured by a broadly utilitarian system.
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Traditionally, liberalism is committed to a piecemeal social reorganization through gradual, orderly change. Order itself is based on the natural individual acquisition of rational mastery, an assumption that sanctions the ‘‘skills’’ approach to education, the stress on achievement in schooling, and the foregrounding of standardized assessment (for teachers as well as students) as part of the burgeoning rhetoric of accountability. The liberal agenda, in education as elsewhere, tends to stress expertise and meritocracy, valorizing professionalism and putting its trust in established systems of advancement. Typically, it ignores relations of power and authority, and the domination sought by imperial and colonial states. Consequently, it unwittingly contributes to the conservative policies that the state employs to maintain social stratification and perpetuate structural or bureaucratic violence. Because CS is grounded in post-war and postWatergate critiques of illegitimate authority, it is sensitive to the ways in which state-sponsored schooling tends to serve as the armature of political socialization into state ideology. According to the CS critique of schooling, there is a pre-emptive vector in the apparatus of instruction that is directed toward ensuring the covert production of compliant citizens who channel their frustration and aggression into academic and co-curricular competitiveness, and who treat knowledge as private property. Not surprisingly, such an interpretation has fostered a burgeoning interest in techniques of ‘‘classroom management’’ as a way to ensure teacher control over this aggressive battle for supremacy. Arguably, such normalizing of strife as a natural part of student conduct has been generalized to the whole educational system by policy initiatives such as ‘‘No Child Left Behind,’’ which tends to pit schools against each other in a struggle to stay afloat while others succumb. At first glance, this zero-sum game suggests a return to the premodern social philosophies of belligerence and manipulation articulated by Hobbes and Machiavelli. However, historians have tended to trace it instead to the concerted commitment of recent Republican administrations to the promotion of a sociobiological theory of society—a neo-Darwinian view prevalent in the corporate sector according to which quality of output can only be improved by promoting a mutual struggle for dominance that results in the ‘‘survival of the fittest.’’ For CS, only an educational system imbedded in a dominant cultural regime that erases its nation’s social and intellectual history could sustain such a
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commitment, at the level of either the collective or the individual. CS, in contrast, is dedicated to restoring a historical awareness and sophistication in our youth that works against the prevailing institutional amnesia, capitalizes on the collaborative potential of young people, fosters their opposition to possessive individualism, and restores a more participatory rather than merely representative view of democracy. It thereby situates itself far from the pragmatist and progressivist movements in education that put their faith in democracy construed as a competitive, individualist meritocracy.
Critical Social Theory Much of the early purchase of CS on educational institutions was confounded with 70s ‘‘new sociology of education’’ drawing on the sociology of knowledge. Only gradually did CS in education wean itself from this paradigm, allowing humanities and arts approaches to gain credence. This trend typically has been characterized by skepticism about the supposed neutrality of knowledge or skills and about their privileged position in the grade school curriculum. CS brings to education a deep suspicion of cognitive intelligence as the primary cultivating instrument as well as an overall critique of technical rationality. CS situates itself in direct opposition to depersonalized notions of ‘‘information storage and transmission’’ that have been revived by the current popularity of both browser technology (the use of intelligent internet software to scan potential information sources) and human capital theory (the view that people can be characterized and assessed in terms of the sum of their marketable productive skills and technical knowledge). Instead, CS tends to focus on reinterpreting accepted and common sense cultural features and their formative processes from a position outside or at the margins of hegemonic structures. The materialist version of CS (often under the rubric of ‘‘cultural marxism’’ or even ‘‘post-marxism’’) retains a strong commitment to the idea of social science but tempered by its passage through the Frankfurt School critique of positivism, which queried not only the epistemological assumptions mentioned above but also the way in which the positivist worldview stresses mastery over inner and outer nature as a route to political domination. The contemporary, post-Frankfurt marxian school has renewed interest in material social reality within the convoluted dynamics of digitally-mediated, global turbo-capital-
ism, and has spawned a number of substantial new fields of research relating to commercial culture, such as Consumer Studies. Given the increasingly invasive influence of power economics in education, this approach has much to say about the overall structuring of schools, their administration, their curricula, their implementation of policy, their systems of tracking and evaluation, and their connection (or lack of it) to surrounding communities and neighborhoods. Needless to say, this analysis has had most to say about urban school reform, although its critique extends to suburban schools as well, if not to rural ones. According to critical social theory, the panicky post-Sputnik renaissance in U.S. science education that was geared to the Cold War arms race had the hidden agenda of fortifying technical reason as the core of schooling at the expense of moral and political awareness—an initiative uncomfortably reminiscent of the military and genocidal technologies of national socialism. Despite the recent shift of enemy from Soviet to Muslim, such a critique finds disturbing resonances in the contemporary era of educational conservatism, with its emphasis on reduced tolerance for diversity (especially for immigrant children); on organizational ‘‘efficiency’’ and vocational outcomes (especially earning potential); on constant surveillance of students through routinized, standardized, and decontextualized assessment; on the derogatory categories of ‘‘at risk’’ and ‘‘special education’’; on the so-called ‘‘accountability’’ of teachers; and on judgmental ‘‘pass/fail’’ grading of schools. Typically, all of the above are justified in terms of a conventional statistical logic, which paradoxically tends to encourage schools to engage in surreptitious exclusion, demotion, or even social promotion of students who are performing poorly, in order to improve numerical appearances. For critical theory, this increasing objectification through mandated cycles of ‘‘auditing’’—with its reductive focus on ‘‘performance,’’ ‘‘productivity,’’ and ‘‘evidence-based planning’’—represents an extreme, if not paranoid, form of social control via hypertrophied bureaucratization. In this regard, the Frankfurt approach is in the tradition of Max Weber’s skepticism about the progressive rationalization of education as ‘‘training.’’ It also shares the jaundiced eye of poststructuralists like Michel Foucault, whose social histories of control and ‘‘governmentality’’ have been applied to education more extensively in Europe than in North America. Some historians of education
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have noted the parallels between contemporary U.S. educational policy and the bureaucratism of the erstwhile Soviet system. Approaches such as that of the Frankfurt School have been criticized for fostering ‘‘conspiracy’’ theories, for homogenizing administrative logics and apparatuses across a heterogeneous range of instances, for paralyzing educational reform by massifying the problem to the point of intractability, for overestimating the power of vested interests, and for underestimating the potential of students, teachers, and other citizens for critical awareness and social activism. Critical theory certainly gained power by identifying the processes by which managerial systems and priorities tend to become internalized through students’ participation in standard, taken-for-granted educational practices. However, in the process of accounting for the absence of widespread progressive change, the theory has tended to obscure actual and potential processes of resistance and emancipation. The latter are visible, for example, in the recent questioning of ‘‘No Child Left Behind’’ or in the increased popularity of community service programs and other ‘‘social justice’’ initiatives.
Race, Class, Gender While the field of CS, in education as elsewhere, has benefited greatly from critical theory, CS scholars have argued that the key liability of the approach lies in its weak concept of culture, as a ‘‘lite’’ domain passively driven by economic and sociological factors. One area in which the traditional stress on sociology and economics has been modified is the field of ‘‘identity politics.’’ This demographically oriented approach emerged on both sides of the Atlantic in the 70s and 80s, fueled by the feminist critique of academic inattention to domestic labor and gender hierarchy. It was also driven by the burgeoning influence of feminists of color who saw themselves as in double jeopardy and who were concerned about whiteness as ethnic privilege. The vigor of this movement was potentiated by the emergence of new kinds of governmental authoritarianism and, despite the gains of the civil rights movement, a resurgence of White supremacism. The identity politics approach is colloquially referred to as ‘‘race/class/gender studies,’’ implying, for education, that the traditional focus on social stratification in schooling (e.g., public vs. private and urban vs. suburban schools) needs to be broadened
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to include ethnicity and masculinity/femininity as primary determinants of success and failure in education, and as dimensions of radical difference in needs, talents, experience, and learning styles. Rather than accepting the bland liberal definition of difference as ‘‘diversity,’’ such an approach focuses on the heritage of prejudice and discrimination, with education being one of the major sites at which exclusion and subordination are inculcated, rationalized, and acted out. The race/class/gender approach has been directed largely by sociological perspectives and priorities, although critical race theory has added some interdisciplinarity, and the socio-political movement of ‘‘critical psychology’’ has started to make a contribution that stresses the side of subjectivity. The sociological paradigm has often confronted race and class, but it has had a particularly hard time accounting for gender. For the first two thirds of the last century the preferred option was typically a discourse of ‘‘male’’ and ‘‘female’’ as genetically and chromosomally determined opposition, fueling the argument for single-sex schools in the independent sector. Since that time, a wealth of powerful psychological discourses has emerged, the most popular of which arguably has been the one adopting the Jungian notion of personality individuation in the form of ‘‘gender identity.’’ Departing from Jung, however, the contemporary approach to gender identity tends to treat it as something that only gradually takes shape in specific social contexts. Much as feminist theory led to the replacement of biological sex with ‘‘gender’’ and eventually with ‘‘gender identity’’ in the last part of the last century, the notion of ethnic identity largely displaced the outmoded concept of biological ‘‘race.’’ As both gender and ethnic identity ceased being seen as essential givens of the human individual, their crucial role in personality development and their variability and susceptibility to influence became more apparent, providing a place for ethnic and gender learning and teaching. As a result, attention has been drawn to the significance of teacher gender and ethnicity, as well as the discourses that suppress awareness of their role. To some extent, class too has been reconstructed as a process of identity formation, rather than an extrinsic, societally determined assignment. Recently the identity politics of the race/class/gender approach have been extended to include other domains of prejudice and discrimination. Chief among these are ‘‘ageism,’’ homophobia, and the disenfranchisement embodied in pejorative labels such as ‘‘dropout,’’ ‘‘at
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risk,’’ and ‘‘disabled.’’ The post-9/11 emboldening of Christian fundamentalists with visions of a new crusade, has drawn attention back to the phenomenon of ‘‘orientalism.’’ The revival of 1960s anti-Arab campaigns in the form of a more specific anti-Islam sentiment, still related to fantasies around fossil-fuel dependency, has had marked effects on schooling in areas of the country with high proportions of muslim residents. Another set of ethnocentric dynamics has followed upon the recent spotlighting of paradoxes in national practices around migrant labor and the injustices written into immigration law. The earlier, simplified notion of racism now has to take into account not only specific antipathies toward Mexicans, Chicanos, and even Mexican American citizens, but also a broader zenophobia of a paranoid kind, reminiscent of the cold war fears of an overt or covert Soviet invasion. The growing attention devoted to the education of immigrant children, and the post-Katrina scandals surrounding the provision of emergency education (or the lack of it), have further complicated the task of identity politics, challenging the scope and comprehensiveness of the race/class/gender approach. The increasing awareness that such dimensions are not so much determinate variables of growth but equivocal, labile, and malleable ways of being has opened up a further possibility: ‘‘race,’’ ‘‘class,’’ ‘‘gender,’’ etc. not only have their own biographical trajectory but are cultural formations, where cultural identity is highly variable and achieved only provisionally—often tentatively and precariously—through processes of cultivation. Where race/class/gender approaches are included in CS, these processes may depend less on the impact of shared values or the transmission of rules and rituals and more on active struggles, negotiations, and renegotiations, occurring at various levels, as a function of quite variable forms of cultural recruitment and participation, including practices of consuming and producing media and popular culture. CS has thus consolidated the representational status of ethnicity, class and gender as powerful regimes of mediation, opening up the potential for whole new ways of looking at curriculum and pedagogy.
Multiculturalism and the Culture Wars Multiculturalism is one response to such a challenge. However, in most schools multicultural initiatives have tended to degenerate into ‘‘flags, food, and
festivals,’’ as insignia of a muted, depoliticized vision of human differences. Multiculturalism of this kind departs from and directly opposes a CS approach in construing difference as unproblematic, as though it consisted in little more than delightful variations on a basic theme. This celebratory view is not only perniciously relativistic but also denies both prejudice and the hard fought battles to overcome it. Identity politics and multiculturalism have been met with an uneven response in education, and the reaction has been even bumpier in society at large. They have been blamed for the so-called ‘‘culture wars,’’ the policy clash between progressive and conservative traditions. This conflict used to focus on the urgency of women’s claims, particularly abortion rights, but it is now typically centered on education—from grade school through college. The culture wars are often described in pseudoneutral terms as though they represented a mere jousting between different value systems. However, they reflect much more basic political conflicts. These rotate around key issues of autonomy and heteronomy. In particular, conservatives have mounted the oddly but cleverly inverted accusation that they are oppressed and victimized by progressives who impose a rigid, compulsory paradigm of ‘‘political correctness,’’ curbing basic freedoms of thought, speech, and choice, and preventing constructive social change. CS has mounted several energetic campaigns to reveal the contradictions in such a complaint. CS scholars have been engaged in showing how the covert anti-intellectualism, sexism, classism, and White supremacism imbedded in such protestations have impacted schooling over a 25 year period, the beginning of which was marked by the Reaganist argument for a vigorous cleansing reform of our institutions of learning. The fusion of a corporate language of ‘‘excellence’’ with the civil defense rhetoric of a ‘‘war’’ on mediocrity was imprinted on the public in 1983 by A Nation at Risk, a government report of a national commission that called for a return to ‘‘basic skills,’’ ‘‘standardsbased curricula,’’ and objective ‘‘achievement testing.’’ The bipartisan No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 is arguably only the second phase of the earlier moralistic policy turn toward more fiscally conservative and disciplinary approaches to education. Perhaps the most distinctive contribution of CS in education has been to identify the ways in which popular media have dealt directly or indirectly with such policy issues, becoming complicit with particular policy objectives, resisting them, pursuing their implications,
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or even posing alternatives. For example, policy issues are often broached or dealt with tangentially in high school and teen movies, in hip-hop raps about schooling, or in popular adolescent literature, such as the satirical Harry Potter series. Such materials have been shown to be of utility in the secondary level classroom, raising the possibility of a degree of reflectivity about specific prejudices, about the notion of difference, about social justice, and even about education in general.
rubrics, which deviate sharply from standard anthropological and sociological approaches, and in particular from the functionalist account so dominant in the Anglo American academy:
Popular Culture in the Classroom
The general issue of the role of CS in the schools is often confused with the specific practice of using popular culture in the classroom. The latter has recurred frequently in different guises, associated with student-centered or experiential learning, multiple literacies, and differentiated instruction. The question of what popular culture is or includes remains contested: is it folk culture, youth culture, mass media, commercial culture, leisure activities, the culture of ‘‘the people’’ (populism), common culture, the culture of the streets, or just the practices of everyday life? A favored idea in contemporary pop-cultural teaching is the romantic notion that popular culture is a grass roots phenomenon, a mobilizing of popular sentiment in counter-cultural form, which allows for a radical democratization of curriculum and pedagogy. Those equating popular culture with commercial mass media and the entertainment industries have tended to argue against importing it into the classroom, or at least engaging it only opportunistically as a surreptitious means to the goal of instruction in high culture (using the movie ‘‘Clueless’’ to teach Jane Austen’s ‘‘Emma’’ or ‘‘High School Musical’’ in a class on ‘‘Romeo and Juliet’’). Then there are those who link popular culture to postmodernism. The historical significance in the U.S. and the U.K. of the pop art movement has encouraged not only an aesthetic wing of cultural studies (where it is connected to art history, visual culture, semiology, and ‘‘ways of seeing’’), but a faction that sees the current dominance and generativity of popular culture as a primary symptom of postmodernization.
Culture There is a variety of conceptions of culture abroad in CS, but most fall under one or more of the following
Culture as a whole way of life, including everyday life or the ‘‘lifeworld’’ Culture as inherently heterogeneous Culture as a volatile field of creative formation and transformation rather than a heritage of entrenched traditions Culture as a highly political, contested terrain, negotiated between a variety of emergent, residual, and subcultural formations—not as ‘‘shared values,’’ which tends to stress beliefs and ideas and to subordinate culture to society and hence to sociology Culture as exerting a ‘‘cultivating’’ influence, parallel but not reducible to processes of socialization Culture as a domain of power, typically organized hierarchically under a dominant or hegemonic coalition, ‘‘high culture,’’ assuming an elite authority and claiming to represent the state as its precious ‘‘national culture’’ ‘‘Low culture’’ as holding the potential for various forms of insubordination, ranging from revolutionary tendencies to alternative cultural productions and discursive subversions Culture as a set of intersecting discursive and signifying practices associated with characteristic spatial and temporal ordering and compression Culture as a field of collective identity-formation that embraces immigration, global diasporas, the burgeoning refugee phenomenon, hybridization, and transnationality ‘‘Culture’’ as a profoundly contested conceptual issue, requiring academic scholarship in philosophy and cultural theory and a rigorous ongoing practice of ‘‘cultural critique’’
Over time, the materialist and sociological economic paradigms, centered on an explicitly politicized project of radical social reform, have been supplemented with two additional types of CS, with quite divergent notions of culture: an indirectly political form, influenced more by continental theory, and a relatively depoliticized and often issues-based form. This last version is typically uninterested in alternative cultural production and is preoccupied instead with media, celebrity, and reified subdomains of popular culture (e.g., ‘‘girls gone wild,’’ or social networking web venues).
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Arguably six major turning points mark the history of the CS field, each of them involving some revision in the understanding of what culture is and how it works:
The revision of notions of working-class culture through a semiotic analysis of youth-cultural style The encounter with literary criticism followed by a distancing from its linguistic and textual biases The merger of visual studies with cultural studies to form a hybrid sub-discipline of visual-cultural studies The challenging of subcultures work as too exclusively concerned with male populations and entrenched sexist objectives The revival of interest in psychoanalysis and the theory of the subject in culture The rapprochement with postcolonial scholarship (studying the cultural legacy of colonial rule) and critical race theory (espousing the culturally constructed nature of race) that has led to a decentering concern with cultural identities, ethnicities as cultural formations, and global diasporas
It would be safe to say that none of these changes has directly affected schools, but their indirect influence is detectible in a number of places where formal school curricula have undergone recent revision. For instance, Art Education has allowed itself to embrace the broader field of visual culture and has occasionally flirted with the issue of subcultural and youth-cultural style. Music Education has often stretched its boundaries to include the study of popular music, partly in response to the school band movement, itself strongly influenced by Japanese schools. English Education has been responsive to paradigm changes in criticism and literacy studies, while its academic wing has taken up some of the semiotic and post-structural concerns with ‘‘the subject.’’ Social Studies has shown a trend toward what might be called ‘‘global studies,’’ in reaction to many of the initiatives in post-colonial research. Across the board, recent progressive initiatives in education—diversification in curricula, their renewed attention to difference and inclusiveness (despite the culture wars), the popularity of differentiated instruction, the growing state mandates concerning multiliteracies, and the erosion of the ‘‘high’’/ ‘‘low’’ distinction—may all have been affected to some extent by the evolving concerns of academic CS, many of which have been highly publicized. On the other hand, there are counter-trends such as the popularity
of ‘‘classroom management’’ and the fanatical Ruby Payne system for ‘‘understanding poverty,’’ which mark the limited extent to which CS critiques have impacted North American educators.
Hegemony and Counter-Hegemony A recurrent notion in CS that has exerted an influence on thinking about the politics of education is ‘‘hegemony.’’ This concept has been central to much CS, implying the broad role that culture or lifestyle plays in relations of power and authority, especially in the way that 1. Dominance is sustained not by coercion but by enabling a relatively spontaneous consent of the populace 2. Consenting youth and adults express their support via a wide range of lifestyle features and cultural choices 3. Hegemonic control is never homogeneous but requires the constant formation and renegotiation of alliances between an (often motley) assortment of competing groups 4. Power is always relatively provisional, precarious, and subject to erosion due to the vicissitudes of public assent 5. The meaning, articulation, and operation of hegemony are always inflected by specific spatiotemporal conjunctures 6. The grip of hegemonies is regularly threatened by the emergence of broad-based counter-hegemonies— themselves made up of contingent, temporary alliances—that challenge and often usurp apparently entrenched power One particularly relevant example from this generation of youth is hip-hop culture, which spans a broad front of music, dance, clubbing, DJing, MCing, fashion, jewelry, street art, postures, gestures, slang, and spoken-word poetry. Hip-hop has displaced mainstream, White, middle-class cultural forms such as rock and pop. It has roots in talking blues, poetry, reggae, and funk, as well as gang, pimp, and prison subcultures. It has generated major changes in the frequency and type of intertextual sampling and referencing. It has recently reached out to embrace other styles, such as trance, techno, and contemporary psychedelic music in the hybrid fusion termed ‘‘trip hop,’’ and has been
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adapted to Caribbean and Latino cultures through the hybrid of rap, dancehall, bomba, and plena called ‘‘reggaeton.’’ It has assimilated aspects of improv.-theater, stand-up comedy, and performance art, and has influenced each of those in return. It has helped revive and reinvigorate busking, tap dance, and skip-rope games. It has generated specific genres of cultural events such as ‘‘beatboxing’’ and the ‘‘slam,’’ modes of musical performance such as ‘‘freestyling,’’ and particular kinds of textual design such as ‘‘wildstyle,’’ as well as influencing formats of musical video, modern dance, sound recording, online communication, website design, and instant messaging. The paradox, which CS scholars study in detail, is that counter-hegemonic formations, originally oppositional in stance, in time often become full-blown, consolidated hegemonies, with their own pattern of dominance. These, in turn, are challenged by emerging alliances whose subcultural style subverts, more or less intentionally, the entrenched persuasion. For example, hip-hop stands in direct opposition to emerging alternative movements such as ‘‘postpop,’’ ‘‘emo,’’ ‘‘goth,’’ and ‘‘techno.’’ It also duels with mainstream pop and rock, which at several points have intersected to form a forceful ‘‘pop rock’’ alliance, spawning ‘‘soft rock’’ and ‘‘Hot AC,’’ as well as the emergence of a distinct ‘‘tweeny’’ genre of preadolescent girls’ music, the contemporary ‘‘boy bands,’’ and the renaissance of the ‘‘power ballad.’’ Hip-hop competes for space with these other stylistic formations not only in the peer culture of North American high schools but also in the increasingly accepted popular culture curricula that have been developed for middle and high schools in areas as diverse as English, media studies, social studies, math, and the arts. The multimedia range of hip-hop and the opposition it represents to mainstream White culture in North America (and elsewhere) have challenged a wide array of secondary school educators to take it on as content in their classrooms, providing students with opportunities to explore its kaleidoscopic complexity, to criticize its shortcomings (e.g., hypermaterialism and rampant gender-bias), and to understand the cultural context of people of color, who are so poorly represented in most standard public school curricula. In addition, the emergence of alternative cultural and subcultural styles provides opportunities to study the dynamic historical flux of cultural change, close-up and in process, with all the
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overtones of ethnic strife that they both reveal and conceal. CS work in education has argued that since much of the energy behind these shifting movements comes from adolescents and young adults, the study of the tides and cross-currents in popular culture can empower youth, encourage their creativity, capitalize on their subjective involvement, and allow them to exercise and develop what expertise they already possess in this area. As a result, new levels of academic motivation may be fostered, forging new connections between work and leisure activities, and breaking down the boundary between curricular and extracurricular activities as well as among different ethnic groupings in educational institutions. However, the extent to which this pedagogical agenda has been taken up in public and independent schools, the seriousness with which it has been pursued, and the degree of awareness of CS as the scholarly grounding for such endeavors all remain quite unclear and in much need of further research.
Misperceptions Since its inception a half century ago, CS has expanded in salience, popularity, and productivity. Nevertheless, as a field, it remains largely outside the mainstream. Whatever incorporation into higher education has taken place, including graduate schools of education, has tended to be premised on the notion that it is an integrative, interdisciplinary field, akin to American Studies. Its relevance to secondary education has often been couched in terms of its supposed resemblance to Social Studies (a contingent amalgam conventionally adopted for the purposes of certain grades of formal schooling) or Media Studies (a recent concession to technological and social-policy pressures associated with claims about the growing importance of multimedia and multiliteracies). CS, when it is pursued inside the field of education, is often confused with the Freudo-marxist tradition of Critical Theory and the postmarxist project of Critical Pedagogy stemming from the work of Freire. These two related but distinct endeavors tend to hold to a modernist project of emancipation from oppression, heteronomous interest, and false consciousness. CS has been critical of theories of ideology, domination, and exploitation, since they systematically a) ignore the richness and the complexity of unthematized everyday
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experience; b) minimize the independent, productive role of populist cultures, overestimating the power of the state and commercial interests; and c) underestimate the active and autonomous potential of audiences, fostering a counter-productive fatalism and paralysis. Nevertheless, critical pedagogy has made a valuable contribution in its depiction of educators as ‘‘cultural workers.’’ Unlike critical pedagogy, CS conceptualizes culture in a rich, dynamic, non-linear way and (especially recently) tends to be influenced heavily by post-structural, post-colonial, postfeminist and queer theory approaches that draw on semiotics, deconstruction, and discourse analysis. CS has provided several conceptual, historical and empirical refutations of the critical attack on popular culture as capitulating to late capitalist mass media consumption. It thereby occupies the peculiar position of exercising its critique even within the spectrum of radical education, making the formation of solidary counter-hegemonic alliances difficult. The Social Studies model does not fit Cultural Studies well. CS is not taught in schools, for example. It seems to be much more seriously concerned with establishing itself as a legitimate part of the core university curriculum. It has developed academic orientations and standards of its own and, in fact, shuns the uncritical mix-and-match pluralism of interdisciplinarity. While by no means conforming to a single, homogeneous paradigm, and in no way committed to a unified methodological approach, CS has emerged as a domain with the coherence, boundaries, and political dynamism of an academic discipline in its own right. However, at the same time, it has borrowed from postmodern thinking a profound critique of disciplinary integrity and legitimacy. It claims to be reflexively transdisciplinary or metadisciplinary in character and scope, spanning the disciplines—not only defying their boundaries but also providing a cultural-historical account of their various processes of formation and differentiation. Likewise, the Media Studies rubric does not do justice to CS. Given the above approaches to culture, CS departs from the social scientific ‘‘communications’’ model of culture, being concerned less with mass media and the effects of their influential messages than with the meaning of popular cultural formations, emergent subcultures, modes of representation, and improvisatory identities. For example, the emphasis on the role of print and news media and
the preoccupation with new media technologies are typically far less in CS than in Media Studies. However, CS approaches frequently share the political fate of Media Studies, often being relegated to optional remedial classes or to programs in ESL, community service, or extramural after-school and summer settings. Evaluations of such programs typically indicate that they show favorable outcomes along social as well as intellectual dimensions, with positive implications for performance in regular academic classes as well. However, often, the popularity of such classes with students and the high levels of motivation observed have been taken as cause for suspicion, serving to delegitimize and further marginalize such initiatives. There are ways, then, in which CS, like Media Studies, gets aligned with special rather than general education.
Institutional Location There are probably upwards of 150 university or college based CS programs around the world. However, it is hard to estimate this number with any reliability. For example, at the University of California in Santa Cruz, there have been three programs vying for the domain of CS: one more anthropological and postmodern, one post-structural/literary/historical, and one specifically feminist. At the University of Warwick, UK, CS is split into Cultural Policy Studies and Comparative Cultural Studies. CS is often pursued under different names, having to do with the particular biographies and exigencies of the academic and practical contexts in which they have arisen. For example, at New York University, CS falls under the American Studies program. At Parsons School of Design in New York it falls under Critical Studies. York University in Toronto has a program called Fine Arts Cultural Studies. At the University of California, Berkeley, the Department of Rhetoric engages in research and teaching that elsewhere could be called CS. At Wesleyan College, in Connecticut, CS finds a place under the aegis of the Institute for the Humanities. At Princeton, much CS research is housed in the progressive Institute for Advanced Studies. At the University of Western Sydney, Australia, CS is incorporated into the Centre for Cultural Research and, for a period, was also pursued under the umbrella of Critical Psychology. In other places, the business of CS may be disguised as Comparative Literature, Film Studies, or Queer Theory.
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In graduate schools of education, while there are still ‘‘Foundations’’ programs that include CS—often with hybrid names such as ‘‘Social and Cultural Bases of Education’’ – it is often the program in English Studies or English Education that sponsors academic CS theory and practice. English departments in colleges and universities often have been most welcoming to CS faculty and activities as, for instance, at Columbia University. It remains unclear whether the limited penetration of CS into schools of education is attributable to the prevalence of conservative, exclusive policies of traditional cultural literacy or to its own resistance to the individualism, technicism, and bureaucratic anti-intellectualism of most approaches to schooling practices. Where CS is positioned in relation to education, there is often more emphasis on teachers and teaching than on curriculum. For example, some CS faculty at the University of Western Sydney are located in the program on Narrative Discourse and Pedagogy, while the Institute of Education in London, UK recently instituted a new division of Culture and Pedagogy. However, CS can and should contribute to curricular work as well: it not only provides its own content but is well poised to afford a metadisciplinary perspective on curriculum theorizing as a scholarly practice. The increasing convergence of cultural theory with policy studies suggests that CS also may have a great deal to offer policy work. Although CS may not have offered much in the way of a vision of school administration or a critique of testing, it still provides a broad critical perspective on practice, failing to fit the common stereotype of a purely academic endeavor.
Denmark, and Japan, which may serve as prototypes for broader educational change. Rather than lamenting the propagandist effects of mass media, CS has tended to see popular culture as a potentially transformative and emancipatory domain of engagement for our youth. It has stressed active audiencing, creative consumption, and extended periods of what might be called ‘‘post-consumption,’’ which allows commodities to be revised, metabolized and integrated into everyday life and social relations (which thereby become cultural relations). The image of education implied by such a paradigm is one in which the role of the subaltern student is enhanced and foregrounded, while cultural forms indigenous to youth are allowed or even encouraged to challenge and subvert dominant codes. Some interpret such an intersubjective or dialogical rather than monological view of pedagogy as implying a constructivist epistemology, but CS has been largely critical of the individualistic relativism and even solipsism that such a view of knowledge implies. It has also been skeptical of the general overemphasis on education as knowing, preferring to view it as a set of potential lines of cultivation, where culture always contains moments of activism and insurgency. Because of the opposition to both conservative and liberal education that CS entails, it is unlikely to find a comfortable home in established institutions of schooling in the near future. However, it may in time establish itself as a legitimate oppositional or counter-hegemonic formulation of the educational project. Meanwhile it continues to make considerable inroads into independent, extramural, and experimental forms of schooling.
Conclusion
See also: > Multicultural education; > Multicultural teacher training
While CS is broadly represented in colleges and universities, and has a distinct presence in graduate schools of education, it may be the case that we have yet to see realized any systematic impact of CS on schooling. On the other hand, it could be argued that CS has cleverly sustained a ‘‘stealth’’ approach to education, infiltrating it systematically at the level of graduate education in the area of teacher preparation, and thereby indirectly and invisibly influencing a wide array of grade school students. Nevertheless, there are many promising, innovative projects initiated in schools here in the U.S., in the U.K., Canada, Australia, and now other countries such as France, Sweden,
Suggested Reading Buckingham, D., & Sefton-Green, J. (1994). Cultural studies goes to school: Reading and teaching popular media. New York: Taylor & Francis. Ellsworth, E. (1997). Teaching positions: Difference, pedagogy, and the power of address. New York: Teachers College Press. Frymer, B., Carlin, M., & Broughton, J. (2008). Cultural studies, youth and education. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books. Gaztambide-Fernandez, R., Harding, H., & Sorde-Marti, T. (2004). Cultural studies and education. Cambridge MA: Harvard Educational Review. Kelly, Ursula (1997). Schooling desire: Literacy, cultural politics and pedagogy. New York: Routledge.
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Culturally competent assessment of English language learners
Culturally Competent Assessment of English Language Learners Becky Pe´rez . Bryn Harris . Rebecca S Martı´nez . Charles R Ridley
Culturally competent assessment is more than the adequacy of tests to measure the abilities of culturally and linguistically diverse student populations. It is a comprehensive process involving the implementation of various strategies to identify and remedy educational conditions that systematically disadvantage particular student groups. School psychologists develop skills in culturally competent assessment by becoming familiar with background knowledge of their students’ community, understanding the group’s unique abilities, and using this information in the collection and interpretation of assessment data. Assessment of English Language Learner (ELL) students can be challenging. Due to their limited English proficiency, ELL students should be assessed cautiously when using traditional assessments created for their English speaking peers. Many assessment instruments rely heavily on language; as a result, the validity of these instruments may be influenced by a child’s level of acculturation. If the child’s acculturation is not taken into consideration, results of these assessments may not reflect the child’s true abilities. Furthermore, scores on these assessments can lead to inappropriate expectations or misdiagnoses. Therefore, in identifying the special needs of ELL students, school psychologists are encouraged to use an array of culturally competent strategies that accommodate the diverse needs and abilities of ELL students.
Assessment Considerations Before a psychological evaluation can be initiated, preliminary steps should be implemented that account for the student’s unique language abilities. School psychologists first should note that seemingly proficient verbal communication in English does not imply proficient comprehension in English. ELL students develop varying language abilities can be described by the concept of Cognitive Academic Language Proficiency (CALP). CALP refers to formal academic learning skills in
listening, speaking, reading, and writing. Language abilities should be evaluated for levels of proficiency prior to selecting assessment methods. New ELL students and their parents should be given a language survey (in the native language), collecting information about the child’s native language usage and other information about their previous education. When students have a native language other than English, language proficiency in the child’s native language as well as in English should be assessed by a trained professional. Both formal and informal procedures are to be employed, helping students to transfer prior language knowledge to learning their new language. If students have low abilities in both languages, additional evaluation should be conducted to rule out possible problems in hearing, learning, or language usage. Because ELL students are assessed in both their native language and English, a more accurate picture of the student’s abilities can emerge. Interpreters trained in psychological measurement may be used during this stage. Interpreters must be familiar with evaluation procedures, specific test instruments, and administration guidelines. Interpreters who do not possess knowledge of the assessment process are not encouraged to be included in this process because the validity of the results can be undermined. Nevertheless, if an interpreter is considered the best option in certain cases, school psychologists can be involved in and assist in the assessment session.
Use of Formal Assessment Procedures Both academic achievement and cognitive assessment batteries (e.g., Woodcock-Johnson-III, the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children-IV) are examples of formal assessment procedures. These assessment procedures require knowledge of the norm-sample used for standardizing the assessment. Moreover, assessments given to monolingual students should generally not be translated into the ELL student’s native language. Under some circumstances; however, qualified bilingual examiners may administer subtests that have been translated as long as results are interpreted with great caution. Tests that have been translated may not reflect the individual student’s specific dialect and may not be representative in the norm sample. Translated tests can lose standardization and produce results that often are inaccurate and invalid. Therefore, attention should be given to assessments that have been
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normed and standardized on the representative sample. The Wechsler’s Intelligence Scale for ChildrenFourth Edition in Spanish is an example of a formal cognitive assessment tool that included a representative ELL norm-sample. Unfortunately, finding assessment tools with a representative norm-sample can be difficult. Nevertheless, these tools are important for making eligibility decisions. When formal assessments are not available in the child’s native language, assessments may be modified and used informally to collect additional information. School psychologists can use less verbally loaded sections of a formal assessment tool to capture abilities such as processing speed, working memory, or visual-spatial abilities. Assessment directions can be modified to allow a teaching opportunity, where the school psychologists can teach the student the task and observe how the student responds. These techniques are more appropriate for ELL students who have higher levels of English proficiency. Information collected from these assessments should be used in combination with information gathered from other procedures. Otherwise, the information likely will not be valid and may be an inaccurate reporting of the unique abilities and needs of the student. Nonverbal tests are another form of formal assessments that have been used to assess ELL students. Given the seemingly less need for verbal skills in English, nonverbal assessments have been used to collect information about other cognitive processing abilities. However, nonverbal assessments require receptive and effective communication abilities, suggesting these procedures should only be used with children who have not achieved CALP in either their native language or English. An additional formal assessment tool is curriculumbased assessment and measurement (CBM). This technique involves monitoring and assessing curriculum skills to indicate mastery of content. CBM allows educators to monitor progress on specific tasks each week based on instructional content. Standardized probes can be given in the child’s native language as well as in English.
Use of Informal Assessment Procedures Assessments given to ELL students should allow them to demonstrate their knowledge regardless of language ability. Additional assessment methods that
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can capture a wider array of abilities include classroom observations, checklists and rating scales. These assessment techniques target individual student behaviors in the classroom as well as collect information about the educational environment and social interactions of the classroom context. Parent interviews also can provide valuable information about the home environment and previous education. Both dynamic assessment and performance assessment procedures can be used informally to collect progress information on an ongoing basis. These assessments are used to capture the student’s potential for learning. Dynamic assessment allows school psychologists to apply teaching opportunities to additional knowledge and skills the ELL student is able to learn. One example of a dynamic assessment would be testing the limits during an exam, where an examiner might ask the student to elaborate on an answer. On the other hand, performance-based assessments collect information about the student’s current knowledge and abilities. Portfolios are an example of performancebased assessments where students are evaluated on what they produce in the classroom over time. Another informal strategy is to enlist the assistance of school staff, family members, and community partners in assessment procedures. School psychologists are encouraged to work collaboratively with a multidisciplinary team to collect and interpret data from multiple sources. Individuals who have knowledge about ELL students and second-language acquisition as well as speech pathologists can be integral to the data collection process. Interpreters also can be used to assist in inviting ELL student parents for interviews, case conferences, and Individualized Educational Plan (IEP) proceedings. Assistance also might be sought from local community partners, such as social services, to assist in developing recommendations and providing additional resources that may be unavailable at the school level.
Summary As the population of ELL students in American schools increases, educators should take appropriate measures to ensure that these students receive the educational services they need. Culturally competent assessment practices can assist in collecting information and evaluating the needs of these students. In initiating the assessment process, a school psychologist should consider the educational backgrounds and challenges
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Culturally competent crisis response
experienced by ELL students. In addition, careful consideration of the limitations and applicability of traditional assessment tools to evaluate the needs and abilities of ELL students is essential. Therefore, modifying the procedures for collecting and interpreting data is an important consideration. ELL students should be assessed using a multifaceted evaluation, and no single assessment procedure should determine eligibility or placement. Finally, various stakeholders should be included in the assessment process. Their various perspectives help to increase the validity of assessment, eligibility, and proper recommendation decisions. See also: > Bilingual school psychologists; > Interpreters; > Language and educational assessment; > Language proficiency; > Limited English proficiency
Suggested Reading Miranda, A. H. (2002). Best practices in increasing cross-cultural competence. In A. Thomas, & J. Grimes (Eds.), Best practices in school psychology IV (pp. 353–362). Bethesda, MD: The National Association of School Psychologists. Rhodes, R., Ochoa, S. H., & Ortiz, S. (2005). Assessing culturally and linguistically diverse students: A practical guide. New York, NY: The Guilford Press. Skiba, R. J., Knesting, K., & Bush, L. D. (2002). Culturally competent assessment: More than nonbiased tests. Journal of Child and Family Studies, 11(1), 61–78.
communities. Those who are committed to enhancing their skills in cultural competency are more likely to be effective caregivers when challenging situations arise. For example, reports from a 1989 Stockton, California schoolyard shooting in a predominantly Southeast Asian community found that school officials had difficulty communicating with parents, and that police and medical crews were transporting unidentified children to the hospital, resulting in unnecessary confusion and anxiety for the frightened parents. As a result, parents were forced to wait for several agonizing hours before learning the location and status of their children. In another tragic example of the impact of culture on crisis, a Pakistani American teenager unsuccessfully attempted suicide in her school’s bathroom following an arranged marriage orchestrated by her single mother. School officials then had the arduous task of notifying her mother, who had not assimilated with American culture and spoke no English. Suicide attempts among minority students are not uncommon; data indicates that African American, American Indian, Mexican American, and gay and lesbian youths may be particularly at risk. Culture can influence what type of threat or event is perceived as traumatic, how individuals interpret the meaning of crisis, and how individuals and communities express traumatic reactions. These factors, along with the scenarios listed above, illustrate the importance of considering culture in crisis response.
Suggested Resources http://www.ncela.gwu.edu/—The National Clearinghouse for English Language Acquisition and Language Instruction Educational Programs (NCELA) provides a comprehensive website of resources for educators, parents, and community partners. http://www.nasponline.org/culturalcompetence/ell_educators. pdf—The National Association of School Psychologists (NASP) presents English Language Learners: An Introductory Guide for Educators, which provides information, guidance, games, resources and links to relevant websites for educators.
Culturally Competent Crisis Response Arlene Silva . Ted Feinberg
Developing Culturally Competent Crisis Plans There are many ways that school psychologists can incorporate cultural competence into their overall crisis plans and preparations. To begin with, crisis plans should identify and address the diverse needs within the school community. These would include:
School psychologists are increasingly involved in providing crisis response within multicultural
Identifying specific culture-related needs of the community, such as access to interpreters, religious figures, and healers. Maintaining a current profile of the cultural composition of the school/district community including specific or unique rituals or practices that would be important to know in advance of a crisis event. Identifying formal and informal community resources that can help meet diverse mental health needs. Developing a list of community resources able to lend assistance as interpreters and translators in the event of a crisis.
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Identifying the meaning of suffering, pain, and death relevant to the norms of the community’s cultural groups. Anticipating and identifying possible solutions to cultural problems that may arise in the event of a crisis. Identifying the full names of the parents and guardians of all children in the school, since last names can differ within families.
The Role of the Crisis Team The school- or district-wide crisis team plays an integral role in multicultural crisis response, and team members should be selected and trained accordingly. Ideally, team members should represent the cultural and linguistic makeup of the school community. When this is not feasible, the team should train and develop strong working relationships with outside cultural brokers, interpreters, and relevant community members willing to assist in a crisis. Ongoing team training topics can include awareness of cultural values and traditions, linguistics and literacy, immigration experiences and status, help-seeking behaviors, cross-cultural outreach techniques and strategies, and avoidance of stereotypes and labels. Crisis team members should also examine their own cultures, worldviews, and biases, including how these may affect the provision of mental health services. For example, cultural issues such as communication (decision and way to communicate verbally and nonverbally), personal space (appropriateness of physical contact and proximity), social organization (the influences of family, kinships, tribes, and religious, political, and economic organizations), time (variability in interpretation and measurement), and environmental control (belief about external versus internal control) can affect responses to crisis. In addition, crisis teams should establish relationships with community resources, including trusted organizations, service providers, cultural and faith-based community leaders, multicultural television stations, radio stations, and newspapers. Gathering information from and establishing working relationships with these community resources can speed up and improve effective response efforts before, during and following a crisis. To ensure continuing cultural competence, crisis teams should conduct regular evaluation of their crisis response efforts. This can include a needs-assessment of the school and community, and investigation of
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any barriers that are present when providing services during a crisis.
Reactions to Crisis When a crisis occurs, school psychologists and other responders should keep in mind that survivors may be reluctant to seek out mental health services and they typically react to and recover from crisis within the context of their individual backgrounds, viewpoints, and values. Expression of emotion, description of psychological symptoms, help-seeking behaviors, natural support networks, and customs in dealing with trauma, loss, and healing often vary by culture. It is also important to consider historical influences such as racism and discrimination, war, and interment, as well as social and economic inequality when preparing a crisis response. These factors may cause minority groups to distrust offers of assistance, face majority anger and blame, and have limited access to resources. In addition, groups who have previously experienced trauma (e.g., refugees) as well as those who have limited access to resources may be more susceptible to harm from crisis.
Including Cultural Brokers School psychologists should ensure that the crisis response is tailored to the population in need to the extent possible. One way to do so is to include crisis responders and cultural brokers (e.g., community leaders) from the affected minority group(s) before, during, and in the aftermath of any crisis situation. In addition, community-based groups can provide an important communication link with the cultural groups they represent. It is worthwhile to consider involving civic associations/social clubs, neighborhood groups, faith-based organizations/interfaith groups, mutual aid societies/voluntary organizations, health care and social service providers, and nonprofit advocacy organizations in the crisis planning and response plan, as well as in training with school crisis teams. To ensure an organized response, crisis responders should coordinate their work with each other, as well as with public and private service providers and agencies.
Communications Following a Crisis When a crisis occurs, disseminating timely information to the affected community is of utmost importance.
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To reach all members of the community, oral and written communication should be made available in languages other than English, including sign language interpreters as needed. Form letters prepared in advance for predictable tragic events (e.g., student deaths) in multiple languages can be adapted quickly when such events occur. In addition, written material should always be supplemented with other forms of information, such as radio, television, or announcements in the communities. Ideally, the primary language of crisis survivors should be used in delivering outreach and notification of other services. When native speakers are unavailable, interpreters with basic knowledge of crisis response who are also trained to accurately convey the tone, level, and meaning of the information presented in the original language should be recruited. However, it is usually inappropriate to use survivors’ friends and relatives as interpreters, and all interpreters should be informed of and sensitive to confidentiality issues. On an interpersonal level, responders should remain aware of culturally specific communication techniques such as the use of eye and physical contact and physical proximity, the integration of food and drink in discussions, the pace of conversation, and body language.
Acknowledge one’s own limitations and differences. These may include the inability to speak or understand the language, as well as confusion over certain customs, rituals, or spiritual understandings. The responder should try to convey a sincere desire to learn about these customs to be able to more effectively offer support. Ask survivors if they would like to go to a place of worship or a cultural center or if there are any ceremonies or rituals that are particularly directed at crisis in their culture. Refer parents to culturally appropriate postcrisis resources, such as ‘‘An activity book for African American families: Helping children cope with crisis.’’ Organize culturally appropriate commemorations and anniversary activities as well as informational handouts to explain these rituals and customs to the greater community. Use cross-cultural interventions such as group work, reduction of isolation, relaxation techniques, meditation, education about crisis in culturally relevant terms, and development of individual control. Monitor access to services, including crisis counseling, and design specific strategies to reach the unengaged as well as those whose traditions discourage seeking help.
Providing Culturally and Linguistically Competent Services
See also: > Crisis intervention; > Cultural perspectives on trauma; > Cultural resilience
Following a crisis, care should be taken to provide services that are accessible, appropriate, and equitable. Here are some tips for achieving these goals:
Suggested Reading
Always convey respect and good will by dressing appropriately, participating in access rituals, and saying ‘‘please’’ and ‘‘thank you.’’ Keep in mind that cultural conventions can vary significantly. Be aware of cultural social status and gender conventions. Try to match responders to students and families such that they will have a high status/level of acceptance within the culture in question. Help reestablish customs, rituals, and social relationships to enable survivors to cope with the impact of a crisis. Ask survivors to describe what they need for the responder to be of assistance to them. The responder should then tell survivors truthfully what is within his/her capacity to lend assistance.
del Valle, P. (2002). Traumatized refugee children. In S. E. Brock, P. J. Lazarus, & S. R. Jimerson (Eds.), Best practices in school crisis prevention and intervention (pp. 599–614). Bethesda, MD: National Association of School Psychologists. Jimerson, S. R., & Huff, L. C. (2002). Responding to a sudden, unexpected death at school: Chance favors the prepared professional. In S. E. Brock, P. J. Lazarus, & S. R. Jimerson (Eds.), Best practices in school crisis prevention and intervention (pp. 449–485). Bethesda, MD: National Association of School Psychologists.
Suggested Resources National Association of School Psychologists (NASP)—http:// www.nasponline.org/: This website provides resources for
Culturally competent practice addressing different crises such as natural disasters, war/terrorism and suicide, which are available in several languages. It also defines cultural competence and provides resources and presentations for running a culturally competent practice. In Mental Health: A Report of the Surgeon General—http://www. surgeongeneral.gov/library/mentalhealth/chapter2/sec8.html: This website offers an overview of cultural diversity and mental health services as well as an introduction to cultural diversity and demographics. It discusses both barriers and improvements in work with minority groups.
Culturally Competent Practice Debra Mollen . Charles R Ridley
The purpose of public education for children and youth generally is multifold: to provide students with the basic skills in reading, writing, and computing; to serve as an agency of socialization; and to help create the next generation of citizens who will shape, guide, and constructively have an impact on our society. Historically, the role of culture in United States (U.S.) education has navigated a complex path, reflecting the zeitgeist of the times through war, political upheaval, social change, and shifts in nationalized values. In response to and consideration of increased awareness and growing diversity, it is incumbent upon school personnel, particularly counselors, to ensure the provision of culturally competence practice.
A Historical Context The educational system has reflected the nation’s ideals of rugged individualism and steadfast patriotism, especially in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Embedded in these ideals were racist, sexist, heterosexist, and ethnocentric assumptions that remained largely unquestioned for the better part of the twentieth century. For example, Native American children often were educated in boarding schools apart from mainstream schools. Children whose native language was not English often were punished for speaking in their dominant language. Prior to the landmark case of Brown v. the Board of Education in 1954, African American children in particular were relegated to separate and inferior
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schools. The needs of gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender (GLBT) students were ignored. Girls often were treated unfairly, praised for sitting quietly, overlooked in class, and discouraged from pursuing math and science coursework and careers. With the advent of World War I, the educational system in the U.S. reflected the larger national values of a mono-cultural society. Racism, anti-Semitism, sexism, and homophobia were touted as hallmarks of nationalistic pride. It generally was believed that children ought to adopt these nationalistic standards which reflected the dominant groups’ values and beliefs. The civil rights movement of the 1960s and 1970s ushered in a new frontier for the educational system in this country. Values of pluralism and diversity began to permeate the climate of schools, and entrenched ideas came under question and challenge. Gradually but persistently, the lionizing of a monoculture diminished, giving way to recognizing, honoring, and celebrating differences. These changes have not been easily attained or swiftly accomplished, but the efforts make the outcome worthwhile. Research has provided convincing support for pluralism and multicultural education in the schools, from the structure of schools to the availability of support services for students with varying needs. For example, both White and African American students fare much better in desegregated schools as compared to being educated separately. African American students who are educated alongside their White peers are more likely to attend and complete majorityWhite colleges, have better jobs, live in interracial neighborhoods, have higher incomes, hold more positive attitudes toward Whites, and have more White friends than those who do not. Similarly, White students also benefit from integrated schools and report more positive attitudes toward African Americans than those educated separately. Similarly, as strides have been made concomitantly in the women’s movement, girls are now making substantial progress in education, narrowing the gap in math and science education and pursuing both college and graduate school at rates equal or even higher than those of their male peers. Although progress for improving the educational system for GLBT students is markedly slower, programs, such as the Safe Zone Foundation, designed to increase teacher and administrator sensitivity and GLBT student groups, show great promise for making U.S. education increasingly accessible to all students.
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Demographics and Considerations It now is incumbent of all school professionals, including teachers, administrators, and school counseling personnel, to ensure that current and future educational practices are inclusive and respectful of the rights of all students. Groups that historically have been neglected should be given priority. In many instances, the term minority no longer captures accurately the experiences of traditionally marginalized students because individuals from these groups often outnumber people from the dominant culture. For example, nationally the population now is comprised of about one-third people of color, and about 45% of students in public schools are non-White. In certain states such as California, Florida, and Texas, students of color already outnumber their White peers, and it is expected that people of color will outnumber White Americans by 2050. Students of color may face both overt and covert racism in schools, including tracking practices that yield placement in less challenging classes, disproportionately referring students of color for special education assessment and services, and failing to create and update inclusive curricula that address the needs, accomplishments, and contributions of people of color. Students who are nonnative-English speakers also are ubiquitous in public schools and have special needs to be addressed by educational personnel. Similarly, while girls have made significant strides in their educational attainment and in their overall achievement, concerns remain about their well-being and adjustment in light of the disadvantages that befall them. For example, sexual abuse, sexual harassment, eating disorders, date rape, and depression disproportionately affect girls and produce enduring effects that have an impact on educational, social, and emotional functioning. Likewise, GLBT students make up approximately 10% of schools’ populations, yet systematic programming and services for them are sorely lacking. Of serious concern, GLBT students are at risk of both verbal and physical harassment, violence, suicide, and homelessness.
The Emergence of Culturally Competent Practice Culturally competent practice is the purposeful, goaldirected delivery of services that consider, incorporate,
and honor diversity. Ensuring the attainment of culturally competent practice in school settings is a critical component for successful educational outcomes. Professionals who work in school systems must take steps to address the unique needs of all students with an aim toward achieving a safe and inclusive environment. Among the key personnel who can make strides toward creation of this environment are school guidance counselors and school psychologists. As identifiable helpers outside the purview of the classroom, counselors and psychologists can engender trust, identify and address both individual and systemic problems, and help foster a school environment that is welcoming and supportive of traditionally marginalized and oppressed groups. Historically, as schools were one of the common places where racism, sexism, and heterosexism were manifested, training for counselors and psychologists emerged from models steeped in Eurocentric values of individualism and personal responsibility. For example, Freudian theory, one of the earliest and most influential theories to the practice of counseling and psychotherapy, has been criticized for an over reliance on individual pathology, misogynistic implications, and cultural encapsulation. The work of Carl Rogers is also replete with references to selfhood, individuation, and selfactualization, failing to take into account cultural, systemic, and gender considerations that significantly have an impact on people and their problems. Other classic theories of psychology such as cognitive behavioral, existential, and Gestalt followed suit, advancing concepts that are inconsistent with the values of collectivistic cultures. Consequently, the need for culturally-contextualized practice became a necessity. Psychological theories provide a systematic framework to guide counseling practice. Sue and colleagues did pioneering scholarship which began to address the gap in psychological theories. They proposed a tripartite model of multicultural counseling competencies, focusing on the attitudes/beliefs, knowledge, and skills for which counselors should strive. In 1982, Sue’s group gave a general description of the three competencies. In 1992, Sue’s new group challenged the profession to implement multicultural counseling competencies and standards in counseling practice and education. In 2003, Arredondo reflected on the landmark work, stating the multicultural competencies addressed the importance of culture, race, and ethnicity in research, education, and practice. Since the publication of the two seminal articles, the counseling profession has witnessed an explosion
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of interest in the topic of cultural competence. Hundreds of publications and resources now are available. One of the most influential documents was commissioned by the Association for Multicultural Counseling and Development (AMCD) and authored by Arredondo and colleagues. Entitled ‘‘Operationalization of Multicultural Counseling Competencies,’’ the article extends the work of Sue and colleagues. The authors organized the competencies into three domains— counselor awareness of own cultural values and biases; counselor awareness of client’s worldview; and culturally appropriate intervention strategies. Overall, there are 31 Competency Statements and 119 Explanatory Statements described in the article. In 2001, Sue expanded on his earlier work and conceptualized a multidimensional model for developing cultural competence. The model has three primary dimensions. The components of cultural competence are essentially the same as those of the tripartite model, namely awareness, knowledge, and skills. The foci of cultural competence are individual, professional, organizational, and societal levels of intervention. The racial and culture-specific attributes of cultural competence revolve around five target groups: African American, Asian American, Latino/Hispanic American, Native American, and European American. Sue discussed members of these races in terms of universal, group, and individual levels of personal identity. He also explained that cultural competence is the multifactorial combination and interaction of the dimensions of the model. Although the two models provide an initial foray into culturally competent practice and move beyond Eurocentric ideology, they have been criticized on a number of grounds. First, neither model offers sufficient direction for culturally competent practice. For example, the multicultural competencies are descriptive: they describe what culturally competent practitioners should do. However, multicultural competencies are not prescriptive: they provide no guidance on which multicultural competencies are useful, why they are useful, when to use them, or how to put them into practice. Second, both models limit their scope to race and ethnicity, whereas most cross-cultural practice encompasses complex intersections of identities of race, gender, sexual orientation, social class, age, and other variables. The five racial categories included in Sue’s second model fail to take into account the fuller array of races and ethnicities with which people identify. The groupings also ignore the phenomenon of
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multiracial individuals who do not fall neatly into just one category of race or ethnicity.
Understanding Oneself as a Change Agent Counselors and psychologists can easily overlook the role culture plays in their own lives. This oversight can interfere with their overall effectiveness as agents of change. Self-exploration is critical for addressing areas such as personal resistance, prejudice, and stereotyping. Why is cultural self-awareness critical to culturally competent practice? Self-awareness can aid professionals in appreciating the complexity of culture and its role in the lives of their students, their students’ families, the school, and the community. It can help prevent professionals from projecting their racial and cultural biases, stereotypes, and unresolved issues onto their clients. Cultural self-awareness also can provoke professionals to commit themselves to ongoing professional development. In as much as the exploration of cultural self-awareness is always a work-in-progress, the experience can be daunting and humbling. The necessity of specialized training is apparent, especially for counselors and psychologists trained prior to the advent of the multicultural movement. In addition to developing skills in intervention, they need to examine the role of culture in their lives. Readings, reflective exercises, and peer or supervisory support can help contribute to becoming more culturally competent.
Major Themes and Issues The many topics in the literature pertaining to cultural competence may be subsumed under five general categories: 1. Assertion of Importance. The literature is replete with claims that cultural competence is integral to training, supervision, and practice. Noted scholars and professional organizations have argued cogently of this necessity. The rationale used to bolster this argument include several converging ideas: the dramatic increase among the non-White population in the U.S., the ethical issues associated with systematically disregarding culture in research and practice, promoting social justice, departing from an oppressive history in counseling, and continuing the multicultural dialogue in the profession.
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2. Definitional Challenge. The foremost challenge in advancing cultural competent practice among professionals is defining the construct. The construct lacks a unified and coherent definition, despite the proliferation of scholarship and research. Furthermore, although the case for cultural competence is wellestablished, fundamental questions regarding its actual usage remain unanswered: How do professional manifest cultural competence in their practice? Is cultural competence culturally-specific or culturally-universal? How does cultural competence lead to positive outcomes for clients? How is cultural competence differentiated from cultural incompetence? These unanswered questions make it difficult to state definitively when professional practice is truly culturally competent. In light of these definitional concerns, culturally competent practice can be defined as the beneficial incorporation of cultural considerations in mental health and school counseling treatment to facilitate therapeutic change. The incorporation of cultural data must be intentional, and it must occur during all phases of treatment, including alliance building, assessment and diagnosis, treatment planning, goal setting, and evaluation of outcomes. The overarching purpose of culturally competent practice is therapeutic change, which is constructive, second order transformation in a student’s cognitions, emotions, and behaviors, enabling them to move beyond dysfunction to well-adjusted lifestyles. 3. Training and Supervision. Suggestions to enhance training in cultural competence are multifaceted. Learning objectives include the following: displaying culturally responsive behaviors, having ethical knowledge pertaining to multicultural issues, cultural empathy, ability to critique counseling theories for cultural relevance, development of a theoretical orientation that is culturally relevant, knowledge of normative characteristics of cultural groups, knowledge of within-group differences, multicultural concepts and issues, and respecting cultural differences. Instructional strategies include the following: didactic methods, experiential exercises, supervised practica/internships, reading assignments, writing assignments, participatory learning, observational learning, technology-assisted training, introspection, and research experiences. Six program designs are traditional designs, workshop designs, separate course designs, interdisciplinary designs, area of concentration designs, integration designs, and combining program designs. Specific suggestions to enhance supervision include the following: evaluation
of supervisors’ cultural competence, work with diverse populations, and supervisors getting feedback from supervisees. 4. Evaluation. The evaluation of multicultural competence is essential to reach the goal of quality practice. Unfortunately, systematic evaluation is seldom conducted, and the efforts that have been enacted pose unresolved problems. For instance, several self-report instruments on cultural competence contain problems like content validity or having a social desirability confound. As a result, portfolios have been proposed as an alternative means of evaluation. Professionals and trainees can assemble materials that support their multicultural competence development over time. Portfolios have the advantage of empowering individuals to continually update evidence of their competence, but concern remains as to their reliability and validity. Another problem in evaluating cultural competence is the failure to link practice with intervention outcomes. Even though professionals may demonstrate proficiency in the identified skills and behaviors of cultural competence, a double inference must be made about the competence. First, it must be inferred that mastering the defined behaviors actually makes a professional or trainee competent. Second, it must be inferred that positive outcomes with clients are linked to the training in the defined behaviors rather than other factors. Neither inference may be correct. 5. Specialized Applications. Culturally competent practice has been applied to a number of specialized areas, providing further evidence of the ubiquity of cultural competence in the field. Several areas of application stand out as particularly relevant: managed care, health care, counseling children and families, school counseling, and treating clients who are HIV-positive and their families.
Culturally-Specific Guidelines for Guidance Counselors and School Psychologists Guidance counselors and school psychologists are in a unique position to be agents of change for a variety of constituents. Foremost, they serve the developmental and academic needs of the students. They may engage in testing and assessment, placement services, course planning, disciplinary interventions, academic and personal counseling, and advocacy. In each domain, the
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culturally competent practitioner can and should purposefully and consistently consider and incorporate culture. For example, tests and assessment instruments that have been normed on White, English-speaking children—or those which fail to provide these data— ought to be avoided or, at a bare minimum, cautiously interpreted in light of cultural considerations. In terms of diagnostic indicators, whether for academic placement or mental health concerns, clinical interviews that include culturally relevant information can help supplement testing batteries. Open-ended questions that access data about family constellation, acculturation, language acquisition, community ties, and social support provide a more complete picture of a student than do traditional paper-and-pencil measures. Counselors and psychologists also can exercise caution regarding placement services, particularly in light of data that show how certain groups (i.e., African American children) are over-represented in special education services while others (i.e., girls) are often overlooked. Guidance counselors and school psychologists also can integrate culture into their recommendations of courses, extracurricular activities, and book and media selections. While an array of culturally-relevant courses might not be available in traditional kindergarten through 12th grade school settings, professionals can recommend supplemental materials to classroom teachers, students, and parents that help provide a richer cultural perspective than a traditional curriculum allows. In secondary schools, guidance counselors often serve as information brokers and can help identify colleges and universities that offer academic programs that have an emphasis on cultural studies as well as those catering mainly to students of color for those who are interested. Helping to identify programs that offer coursework in Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender (GLBT) studies, Cultural Studies, and Women’s Studies could be a substantial aid, especially if students feel isolated during middle and high school. If there are local universities that have these emphases, resources might be available for counselors to access on behalf of their students. Oftentimes, the designated guidance counselor or psychologist is the sole provider of mental health services available to an entire school or district. A school employee in this position can help identify troubled students, provide counsel and support, and intervene at the classroom, school, and district levels. In all roles, culture ought to receive careful consideration in
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formulating diagnoses, treatment, and remediation. For example, a school psychologist can take culture into account when working with a child who has been referred for an evaluation for Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), asking how the child’s gender, race, and ethnicity might result in a tendency to either over- or underreport. In counseling students, guidance counselors can ask how the student’s sexual orientation might have an impact on her or his scholastic adjustment, friendships, and mood. Counselors can lend support for a gay student’s coming out process, acknowledge and validate an international student’s experience of cultural management, and address the ways gender stereotyping in the media influences a girl’s sense of herself. At the school and district levels, guidance counselors and psychologists can identify and address covert and overt racism, sexism, and heterosexism. They can help ensure that schools are safe for marginalized students, accessible for students with disabilities, and welcoming for international students. In addition to providing individual counseling as warranted, school psychologists and guidance counselors can also arrange for social groups and clubs and facilitate therapy groups that appeal to the needs of the students. Advising cultural groups or facilitating a school’s gay-straight alliance can go a long way in honoring students’ experiences and helping students identify culturally sensitive adults in the school. While some recommendations for guidance counselors and school psychologists are focused on direct interactions with students, much can be done to ensure that an environment is created that readily engages students from a variety of cultures and backgrounds. For example, the de´cor of offices, the kinds of reading materials on one’s bookshelves, and language used send clear and powerful signals to those who may choose to access these services on campus. Books and other reading materials that celebrate a range of cultures can be displayed, having depictions of both White and people of color around the office, and using gender-neutral language around dating and partnering can all help identify the school psychologist or guidance counselor as a safe, accessible adult. Finally, culturally competent practice entails an emphasis on prevention, advocacy, and outreach. Romano and Hage pointed out that prevention stops, delays, and reduces the impact of problem behaviors while promoting psychological and physical well-being by strengthening individual knowledge, attitudes, and behaviors and
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supporting institutional, community, and governmental policies. These initiatives require professionals to take a systems perspective, move outside their comfortable offices, and function as agents of social change.
Important Questions Is a universally accepted definition of cultural competence necessary? Scholars differ on the utility of a universally accepted definition of cultural competence; some argue for the need for a variety of definitions. However, the lack of consensus on meaning of such an important construct may hinder the communication of ideas among scholars, interdisciplinary collaboration, the formulations of testable hypotheses for research, the advancement of knowledge, and ultimately putting theory into meaningful practice. Is cultural matching a prerequisite for culturally competent practice? Some professionals believe that clients are most effectively served by counselors of similar ethnic, racial, or cultural backgrounds. Implicit here is the assumption that cultural competence derives from the common experiences that counselors and clients share. Presumably counselors are able better to identify and empathize with their clients than counselors who do not share these experiences. Two secondary assumptions follow: (a) cultural competence is independent of training and (b) cultural competencies require counselors to be members of the client’s race, ethnicity, or culture. Research on cultural matching is inconclusive. On the one hand, ethnic minority clients prefer to be matched with counselors from similar backgrounds, and matched dyads yield better utilization and benefit certain types of clients. On the other hand, no unequivocal evidence demonstrates that matched dyads yield better outcomes than unmatched dyads. These findings suggest that other factors affect cultural competence. In fact, counselors may show certain problems counseling clients from their own race or culture. They may over-identify with their clients, thereby incorrectly attributing the client’s problems to racism and minimizing the client’s psychopathology. On the other hand, counselors may deny identification with their clients, thereby discounting clients’ realistic reaction to racism and over-pathologizing the psychological presentation. Therefore, the profession is advised to adhere to this rule: cultural competence first and cultural matching second.
Is culture-specific knowledge a prerequisite for culturally competent practice? Culture-specific knowledge is a necessary but insufficient condition for culturally competent practice. There is value in learning about the predominant norms, values, belief systems, and characteristics of other cultures, especially for trainees who have had limited contact with individuals from other cultures. Seasoned professionals also may benefit such as in improving their responsiveness to clients’ subtle cultural cues. However, there are several reasons why culturespecific knowledge is insufficient. Professionals may not be able to translate their knowledge into meaningful practice. The fact that some professionals are ineffective with members of their own cultures suggests cultural competence requires more than having intimate knowledge of the client’s culture. Also, professionals who are armed with culture-specific knowledge run the risk of stereotyping their clients. In trying to match their clients against cultural norms, professionals may inadvertently overlook their uniqueness and individuality. The scientific finding that withingroup differences are greater than between-group differences bears reiteration. Professionals who are not cognizant of the rich variability among peoples are more prone to make invalid assessments and select inappropriate interventions. Is cultural competence different from counseling competence? The literature implies that cultural competence is either a subset of counseling competence or an altogether different domain of practice. The assumption underlying this point of view is that culture is not always relevant to counseling. By implication, certain awareness, knowledge, and skills are integral to cultural competence but not to counseling competence in general. By further implication, professionals can develop competence through traditional training, and considerations of culture are merely add-ons to traditional training. A different view is presented by stating that cultural competence is counseling competence, and these are not mutually exclusive domains of practice. Counseling that fails to account for the impact of culture is invalid, for truly competent practice beneficially incorporates cultural data into the process of therapeutic change. Five fundamental propositions underscore this position: (a) culture always participates in counseling; (b) culture is broadly defined to include the full range of human experiences, and these experiences play a critical role in clients’ psychological presentations;
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(c) cultural considerations are relevant to all counselor-client relationships, including dyads with counselors and clients from majority groups; (d) the ultimate goal of counseling is therapeutic change; and (e) all human beings change in identical ways because of common psychological processes. Is cultural competence a realistic expectation for most professionals? Professionals should regard cultural competence as a necessity. In light of our increasingly diverse society and the consequential rise of inter-group contacts, most professionals are destined to work with clients from other cultures. Even the few professionals who do not practice cross-culturally are not excluded: they might engage in professional activities that indirectly have an impact on clients from other cultures such as teaching, supervising trainees, conducting research, administering programs, managing agencies, and setting policy. Furthermore, professional codes of ethics such as those of the American Counseling Association and the American Psychological Association mandate competent practice with clients of various races, cultures, ethnic groups, and sexual orientations. Finally, as previously mentioned, culture’s ubiquity in society suggests that it always expresses itself in the content of clients’ psychological presentations, the norms and values of treatment settings, and the dynamics of the relationship between the counselor and client. Is cultural competence incompatible with evidencebased practice? Culturally competent practice and evidence-based practice are two major movements in applied mental health. Although both movements share the same ultimate goal—the successful treatment of clients—a growing controversy has emerged, pitting these movements against each other. On the one hand, evidence-based practice has been criticized for inadequately addressing multicultural issues and the relevance of treatments to diverse populations. On the other hand, cultural competent practice has been criticized as being more ideological and political rather than scientific and knowledge based. The authors of this contribution assert that the conversation between these movements is misdirected, for it rests on a set of flawed presuppositions and conceptual underpinnings: (a) the movements are mutually exclusive; (b) the centrality of therapeutic change is understated; (c) the aim of science in interpreting, predicting, and controlling natural events is applied inadequately; (d) key constructs such as cultural competence are not carefully operationalized; and
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(e) an overarching theoretical foundation in forming a dialectic between the two is conspicuously missing. See also: > Cross-cultural competence in school psychologists’ services; > Cross-cultural school psychology; > Cultural diversity; > Cultural issues in education; > Demographics; > Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender (GLBT)
Suggested Reading Mollen, D., Ridley, C. R., & Hill, C. L. (2003). Models of multicultural counseling competence: A critical evaluation. In D. B. PopeDavis, H. L. K. Coleman, W. M. Liu, & R. L. Toporek (Eds.), Handbook of multicultural competencies in counseling and psychology (pp. 21–37). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Pope-Davis, D. B., Coleman, H. L. K., Liu, W. M., & Toporek, R. L. (2003). Handbook of multicultural competencies in counseling and psychology. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Ridley, C. R., & Kleiner, A. J. (2003). Multicultural counseling competence: History, themes, and issues. In D. B. Pope-Davis, H. L. K. Coleman, W. M. Liu, & R. L. Toporek (Eds.), Handbook of multicultural competencies in counseling and psychology (pp. 3–20). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Ridley, C. R., Mendoza, W. D., & Kanitz, B. E. (1994). Multicultural training: Reexamination, operationalization, and integration. The Counseling Psychologist, 22, 227–289. Romano, J. L., & Hage, S. M. (2004). Prevention and counseling psychology: Revitalizing commitments for the 21st century. The Counseling Psychologist, 28, 733–763. Sue, D. W., Arredondo, P., & McDavis, R. J. (1992). Multicultural competencies/standards: A pressing need. Journal of Counseling and Development, 70, 477–486.
Culture Sara Unsworth . Megan Bang . Douglas Medin
Introduction There are a host of ways to think about culture and learning and almost all of them are interesting and relevant to education. To give but one example, crossnational studies comparing the math and science achievement of students in the United States (U.S.) with those of students from other countries have
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received much attention and are an impetus to school reform. The focus below is on the question of the extent to which cultural experiences outside formal classroom settings have an impact on the ways in which students engage with and learn material taught inside the classroom. ‘‘Cultural experiences’’ is a fairly broad term that the current authors aim to use in an encompassing sense. Creating a bridge between in-school and outof-school cultural practices may operate at a number of different levels, ranging from facts to framework theories for approaching the world. At the level of facts, for instance, a Native American child may be taught that all of nature is alive only to be told in school that geographical features like rocks, clouds and water are inanimate. At a slightly more general level, even the same knowledge base may be associated with differing conceptual organizations and/or differing methods of expression (e.g., communication styles including discourse and narrative) among members of different cultural groups, leading to differences in fluency, as a function of how this information is organized in curricula. At the level of framework theories and epistemologies there may be cultural differences in the (often implicit) assumptions about the nature of the world and where human beings fit with the scheme of things. Finally, there may be cultural differences in practices associated with interaction styles, discourse styles, and cultural identity that may affect the perceived legitimacy of formal educational systems. Over the past several decades informal or out-ofschool learning has received a great deal of attention. One major line of work examines learning in designed environments, as may be the case in museum visitor studies; another investigates non-designed settings or structured contexts where the learning outcomes are indirect (e.g., learning addition in the context of playing Dominos). The former line of research has (unfortunately) tended to neglect culture but the latter line has strongly embraced it. Given that minorities are particularly under-represented in science and mathematics this review will often draw on examples from these disciplines.
A Very Brief History Although studies of culture and learning have a long history, much of current research in this area can trace
its roots to Michael Cole and Sylvia Scribner who were responsible for stimulating American educational researchers’ interests in the cultural side of learning. Cole and Scribner’s early efforts focused on crosscultural comparisons and had an enormous impact— their empirical and methodological innovations served as a strong critique of the ‘‘differences as deficits’’ aura that had plagued much of comparative research. The founding of the Laboratory of Comparative Human Cognition (LCHC) marked a shift to a focus on how cultural practices and activities shape cognition within communities of learners. This work was inspired by research and theory associated with Russian psychology and eventually it led to the founding of the journal, Mind, Culture and Activity. This orientation to the cultural context of learning continues to thrive and broaden in contemporary research.
Definition of Culture One might define culture as the knowledge, values, beliefs and practices among a group of people typically living in geographical proximity who share a history, a language, and cultural identification. Importantly, knowledge, values, and beliefs are viewed as causally distributed patterns of mental representations, their public expressions, and the resultant behaviors in given ecological contexts. People’s mental representations interact with other people’s mental representations to the extent that those representations can be physically transmitted in a public medium (e.g., language, dance, signs, artifacts). These public representations, in turn, are sequenced and channeled by ecological features of the environment (including the social environment) that constrain interactions between individuals. It is also important to emphasize that ideas do not circulate in a vacuum without context—ideas are embedded within framework theories or epistemologies that are sometimes explicit but which also may be implicit. These epistemological orientations are an important aspect of the relation between in school and out of school cultures.
Conceptions of Nature Culture affects learning and knowledge construction. The potential for variation in conceptual knowledge across cultural communities is mediated by universal constraints on learning and the ways in which they interact with community-specific experiences. Several
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constraints have been hypothesized to mold concept formation in different domains, including biology, psychology, mathematics, and physics. It is well-known that the prior knowledge that children bring to the classroom is important to learning- therefore it is important to understand which forms of knowledge are likely to be universally shared and which may be culturally variable. The domain of people’s understanding of plants and animals (folk biology) represents a particularly rich source of data on classification systems and concept formation. The term concept refers to a mental representation. The term category refers to the set of entities or examples picked out by the concept. Biological concepts are believed to be processed and organized according to evolved cognitive structures that are functionally autonomous with respect to biological information and for this reason are thought of as belonging to a separate domain of cognitive processing. Building on decades of work in ethnobiology, research has shown that a few key principles guide the recognition and organization of biological information in similar ways across cultures, although important variation is produced by differences in expertise and other cultural factors. First, there is marked cross-cultural agreement on the hierarchical classification of living things, such that plants and animals are grouped according to a ranked taxonomy with mutually exclusive groupings of entities at each level. For instance, across cultural groups, the highest level of taxonomic organization includes the most general categories, such as the folk kingdom rank (which includes groupings such as plants and animals), and lower levels distinguish between increasingly greater degrees of specificity (e.g., life forms such as tree or bird; generic species level such as oak or blue jay). Furthermore, the generic species (in local settings the vast majority of genera are mono-specimic, hence the use of this term) level appears to be consistently privileged for inductive inference when generalizing properties across plants and animals (it is the most abstract level for which inductive confidence is strong and only minimal inductive advantage is gained at more subordinate levels). There is also cross-cultural agreement in the assumption that the appearance and behavior of every generic species is caused by an internal biological (and usually unspecified) essence that is inherited from the birth parents and is responsible for kindhood persistence in the face of physical and developmental transformation.
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But there is also considerable variability within these universal constraints in concept formation as a function of both experience with the natural world and cultural salience (two highly related factors). For instance, the basic level (the level at which they possess the greatest knowledge) for urban undergraduates is the life form (e.g., bird, fish, tree), but for groups that have more direct experience with the natural environment and greater expertise, the basic level corresponds to the generic species level. The remarkable cross-cultural agreement in the structure of folk biological organization is, at the same time, culturally variable. Correlations across groups of 0.70 appear quite strong but explain less than half the variance. Although some of these differences might be attributed to experience, other findings implicate cultural differences. For instance, when asked to sort biological kinds into categories, individuals from different communities vary not only in their taxonomic sorting but also in the degree to which they spontaneously sort along ecological dimensions. This difference is not as predictable on the basis of expertise alone. For example, Menominee Native American fisherman and European American fishermen, who both live in rural Wisconsin and have equivalent expertise about fish and fish habitats, differ in that Menominee fishermen are significantly more likely to sort in terms of ecological relationships. Similar differences in ecological orientation were found for children from these communities, such that Menominee children are more likely to reason about shared properties between living things using ecological relations, relative to rural European American children. In turn, rural European American children were more likely to employ ecological-based reasoning for shared properties than were urban children. In short, differences in ecological orientation reflect a confluence of experience-based and culturally-based factors in folk biological thought. Cultural differences in cognitive processing, concept representation, and behavior can be thought of as reflecting routines of practices or ‘‘habits of the mind.’’ Cultural groups establish practices over time, and the history of these practices may lead to regularities in the ways groups participate in the everyday activities within their communities. These practices may be associated, implicitly or explicitly, with different epistemologies that determine what sorts of things are presupposed, go without saying, and seem natural. For example, European Americans tend to conceive
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of nature as something external, to be cared for and respected; in contrast, Native Americans are more likely to see themselves as part of nature. These sorts of presuppositions are likely to be embedded in curricula and school practices and represent a challenge to students from culture and communities that do not share them. Cultural practices are not immutable, static traits that are attached to participants (a view which can lead to deterministic perceptions of cognition), but exist in tension with emergent goals, practices and situationallyspecific affordances. Thus, one might design a biology curriculum for Native American students emphasizing ecological relationships, but then build on this base to suggest the value of other forms of organization (e.g., taxonomic). There is increasing evidence that taking advantage of the cultural practices that children bring to the classroom leads to better motivation, identification with learning, and academic performance.
Culture and Mathematics Folk biological research has tended to compare different cultural groups and to identify robust similarities (and differences) in reasoning and representation. Studies of mathematical concepts have expanded on this strategy by using developmental comparisons and analyzing similarities between human and nonhuman species to identify universal or ‘‘core’’ principles. The domain of mathematics spans a wide variety of concepts, including numerosity, geometry, trigonometry, and so on. We will limit our review to numerosity, counting, and calculation. A great deal of evidence suggests that for humans and other species there are evolved principles that assist in the representation of numerosity and that different principles can constrain representations in particular ways, depending on the set size of elements. Importantly, however, it has been proposed that the systems for large and small numerosity can interact for humans in ways not possible for nonhuman species. Number words and verbal counting may link together systems for small and large numerosities so that, through counting, distinctions can be made between large numerosities that differ in as little as one element. The flexibility in concepts of numerosity afforded by natural language leads to questions about variability in representations of numerosity and counting as a
function of language and other cultural inputs. Some innovative research has examined the different counting systems that have emerged in different cultural communities throughout the world. For instance, Saxe reported that before contact with western culture in 1940, the Oksapmin people in the West Sepik province of Papua New Guinea used a 27 body part count system, beginning with the thumb on one hand and enumerating discrete points along the upper half of the body (including head and shoulders) and ending on the little finger on the other hand. Counting past 27 involves moving back along the same 27 points until the desired numerosity is reached. In addition to documenting this counting system, Saxe has tracked shifts in its use over time as individuals become more involved in the cash economy. He has found that the system becomes co-opted for arithmetic calculations in addition to or in the place of enumeration, and in some cases is even transformed to a base-10 system. Although cultural differences in counting systems are well-established, little work has examined the impact of these systems on the representation of numerosity. Other research has examined the ways in which mathematical concepts, such as calculation processes and representations, are shaped by context-specific goals and culture-specific practices. For instance, Jean Lave has found that grocery shoppers engage in mathematical calculations in response to specific shopping-related goals, and these calculations depend on the resources and environmental tools available to the shopper in the grocery store. In one example, Lave reported activities of a shopper who, upon suspecting a price error for a block of cheese, sorted through a bin of cheese to find a block of similar weight and noted the difference in price that confirmed his suspicions. Had the bin of cheese not been available, the shopper would have had to mentally calculate the correct price based on listed price per weight information. An important issue is the relation between these sorts of out of school goal-related strategies and in school mathematics learning. Saxe has found that community-specific goals lead to a greater frequency and therefore greater proficiency for some calculations over others. He found that 10–12 year old children in Brazil with little or no education who sold candy in urban streets were highly likely to use ratio calculations during vending activities and were better at ratio comparisons than same-aged children with formal educational experience.
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As one final example, Nasir has found that African American middle school and high school students vary in the extent to which they engage in mathematical calculations to evaluate basketball performance because of differences in the structure of the practice of basketball and level of commitment to basketball. High school students were more likely to calculate formal statistics (such as average and percent) of their own and others’ basketball performance and these calculations were higher when ways of keeping and reporting basketball statistics were increasingly available to students. Nasir’s work points out that the players’ use and approach to mathematics during their everyday cultural practice may differ dramatically from the approach taken to school mathematics—the use of mathematics in a students’ own cultural context is often more engaging. Related work with the children of sugarcane farmers found complementary tendencies to approach mathematical problem solving in different ways depending upon the value ascribed to the context or practice in play.
Epistemologies and Worldviews Another approach to understanding issues of teaching and learning from varying perspectives has been through the lens of epistemology and worldview. The literature tends to focus on the impacts of knowledge and orientations derived in out of school experiences on in-school learning and it tends to examine students’ views of knowledge and learning in the world at an abstract, domain-general level. Roughly speaking, worldview refers to an organized set of beliefs concerning how the world works. Much of the research on worldview and science education has been particular concerned with what happens in cases when students’ worldviews, derived from the cultures in which they live their everyday lives, clash with the worldview of science as carried out in science instruction. For example, Nancy Allen has suggested that some Native American students tend to view the world holistically and to reason in terms of cycles, in contrast with science classrooms, which tend to be more linear and reductionist in worldview. Other researchers have explored the ways in which students’ worldviews are aligned or different than teachers’ worldviews. Epistemology is closely related to, if not a synonym for, worldview. Epistemology refers to beliefs about
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the nature, validity, and scope of knowledge. Some researchers have explored the cultural differences in epistemology by comparing students’ cultural epistemologies with the epistemological assumptions made in in-school learning. Epistemological issues have been especially salient in research in science education. For example, there is a line of research that has been concerned with students’ epistemological beliefs about the nature of science itself. Some researchers have claimed that successful science education will require students to learn or replace the personal epistemologies they bring with them to the classroom with an epistemology that is aligned with a western scientific epistemology. Other researchers have challenged this idea of a monolithic epistemology by demonstrating the inconsistencies of students’ personal epistemologies across domains. This work suggests that it is reasonable to expect that epistemological beliefs for the domain of biology might differ from beliefs for the domain of math or art. Other work has shown that individuals’ epistemological beliefs are not consistent across contexts (classroom versus a doctor’s office versus in the context of family or work) even within a given domain. In short, a number of researchers argue that student epistemologies are not robust, coherent or stable theories of knowledge and learning. An alternative view emerging from this premise, proposes that rather than stable robust epistemologies, students have ‘‘epistemological resources’’ that are developed in everyday lives and appropriately employed in specific contexts. The resources are not part of a stable, context-independent theory or belief about knowledge and learning; they vary across settings depending upon the appropriateness of fit. Conceiving of epistemologies as potential resources rather than as deficits is an important development, but, to date, this work has not been concerned with cultural differences. It is commonly assumed that students’ epistemological resources are developed in the routine practices of students’ everyday lives, which no doubt varies significantly with cultural contexts.
Culture and Interaction Styles There is considerable evidence suggesting that interaction styles and engagement with particular activities and objects varies across cultural communities, and that this variation can affect the ways in which children engage with each other and with adults in
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the classroom. John Uzo Ogbu and Barbara Rogoff have had a large influence in this area, providing important empirical contributions and reviews of research endeavors relating to culture, family interaction, child rearing, and learning. This body of research has shown that children from other cultural communities (for example, rural Senegalese children, Navajo children, and U.S. Mexican heritage) spend more time observing other people than do middle class White children. In addition, children from farming communities in East Africa are likely to spend more time doing work on chores, and children in an Efe foraging community in the Democratic Republic of Congo and Mayan children in Guatemala are likely to spend less time involved in explicit lesson and scholastic play activities and more time observing productive adult work. Rural Indian and Mayan parents were less likely to impose their own agenda on children through mock excitement, praise, and rejection of children’s expressed wishes. This research supports Barabara Rogoff ’s distinction between intent participation, a learning process in which children listen and observe carefully with the intent to participate when capable, and assembly-line instruction, a learning process in which information is transmitted by experts independent of relevant activities and context. Rogoff has argued that although both kinds of learning are important in the lives of all children, there are differences in the value and emphasis placed on either model across cultural communities. There is also an extensive literature comparing interaction styles between East Asian and European American family members which suggest a number of cultural differences in interaction styles. Marc Bornstein and Qi Wang, among others, have shown that European American mothers are more likely just to label objects when communicating with their children about objects and Japanese mothers are more likely to use objects to help children learn about social relations. European American mothers are more likely to respond encouragingly to infants when they engage with the physical environment; Japanese mothers are more likely to respond encouragingly when infants are engaging with the social environment. Finally, Japanese and Chinese parents are more likely to engage in recounting and elaboration of children’s experiences with their children. Cultural differences in child rearing and socialization can often be linked to the overarching goals of the
community. The is evidence that middle class parents from bureaucratic/professional communities are more likely to practice reasoning, enforcement of isolation, and appeals to guilt when engaging with their children so that children could learn to manipulate interpersonal relations, ideas, and symbols in professional occupations, whereas working class parents are more likely to practice physical punishment and enforcement of compliance when engaging with their children so that children could learn respect for authority and conformity for more blue-collar type positions. The ways in which interaction styles affect learning spans a broad range. Take, for example, attentional patterns and attributional reasoning. Research has shown that children from communities that place a greater emphasis on intent participation in learning appear less distracted during practices that call for focused observation, and that children and adults from such communities are more likely to attend simultaneously to competing events that arise spontaneously rather than alternating between these events, as is the case for adults and children from communities emphasizing more assembly-line instruction. Other research indicates that Chinese and Japanese individuals are more likely than European Americans to describe themselves with respect to the context and the family (e.g., I am friendly at home), to make situational (rather than dispositional) attributions in causal explanations of events, and to possess less numerous and less detailed autobiographical memories. These differences likely map onto cultural differences in interactions and social relations. Additional research is needed to explore the implications interaction styles might have for classroom learning.
Culture and Discourse Styles There is also a large body of research relevant to culture and school that has focused on discourse practices, language, and literacy more specifically. Discourse refers to behaviors, ways of speaking, modes of interaction, and styles of reading and writing that characterize particular roles in socioculturally grounded contexts. Discourse practices can provide insight into the cultural values, beliefs, routines, and ideas that have become institutionalized in a community. Knowledge about culturally-specific narratives can provide teaching and learning tools.
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At least some of the structure and function of narratives and discourse styles varies systematically across communities. For example, several researchers (e.g., Susan Phillips) have examined narrative styles in Native American communities and have found differences in participation structure, rhythm of interaction, time for talking and listening, degree of comfort associated with speaking in front of an audience, and structure of narratives. Other researchers (e.g., Carol Lee) have examined African American English (AAE) vernacular and have found that (relative to American English) AAE involves sophisticated understandings of metaphor and analogy, as when individuals engage in ‘‘signifying’’ practices such as insult and rapping. Ethnographic research comparing communities consisting of Black working class people, White working class people, and racially mixed middle class people have revealed interesting community-specific literacy practices. In this research, families in the White working class community collected more reading and writing material within the home but rarely read this material and used reading and writing specifically for functional purposes (e.g., to help remember events). Families in the Black working class community collected less material but were more likely to engage in reading and writing practices that weren’t strictly functional (e.g., reading together for social reasons). When children from all three communities entered the school system, children from the racially mixed middle class community were the most successful, likely because of a greater similarity between their language use and that of their teachers. This research, and research like it, has led to a call for educational reform in which community processes and practices provide the starting point for curriculum and classroom design. In school versus out of school differences in discourse practices can lead to miscommunication and failure to recognize and make sense of students’ ideas and contributions in school. It is important not to essentialize culture. Culture is not a trait or homogeneous body of knowledge possessed by some community but rather (highly variable) the way in which people live. People live culturally and school systems are cultural systems, often developed largely from a middle/upper class European American perspective. Understanding the ways in which schools intentionally or unintentionally privilege particular discourse styles may be critical in improving schooling for
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children from non-dominant groups. Discourse styles are a means of identifying with one’s cultural group, and so can be actively engaged as negotiation strategies in different contexts, for example, as a form of resistance or as a form of openness to dominating hegemonic structures. One such practice may involve choosing African American English or American English, depending on the desire to indicate cultural solidarity in particular contexts.
Implications for Formal Education Cultural values, routines of practice, and ‘‘habits of the mind’’ play an important role in learning. Cultural ‘‘ways of knowing’’ influence what is learned and are an important part of what students and teachers bring to bear on the learning context. For instance, in the classroom the traditional western positivist ‘‘worldview’’ associated with science represents a cultural model that may be alien to members of some cultural groups. Science may often be presented as an a-cultural body of ‘‘truth’’ rather than as a socially-constructed meaning system and that in itself may create a cultural divide. Culture also likely influences what is integrated into background knowledge to form new or expanded ‘‘ways of knowing.’’ A number of education and social policy researchers argue that education must be multicultural in several senses, including forms of social organization that may variously match and mismatch the classroom teaching style and organization. These mismatches may affect student motivation for school success as students fail to see their ways of knowing in the classroom and are not engaged by conventional instructional strategies. Indeed, research suggests that maintaining cultural identity, traditions and practices is associated with better school adjustment and academic achievement. Education projects have been developed in response to a call for educational reform designed around culture-specific epistemologies, concepts, and practices described above. Educational programs such as the Cultural Modeling Project for African American literacy (designed by Carol Lee), Project KEEP for Native American science (designed by Roland Tharp), and other culturally-based curricula developed by researchers such as Glen Aikenhead and Barbara Rogoff, among others, have been successful in developing
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pedagogical practices that are sensitive to the fact that students come into the classroom with different perspectives and approaches to learning, and in scaffolding learning by engaging students through familiar ways of thinking and knowing. Culture matters. See also: > Cross-cultural families; > Worldview
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Cultural diversity;
Suggested Reading Medin, D. L., & Atran, S. (2004). The Native mind: Biological categorization and reasoning in development and across cultures. Psychological Review, 111(4), 960–983. Nasir, N. S., Rosebery, A. S., Warren, B., & Lee, C. D. (2006). Learning as a cultural process. In R. K. Sawyer (Ed.), The Cambridge handbook of the learning sciences. (pp. 489–504). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Rogoff, B. (2003). The cultural nature of human development. New York: Oxford University Press.
Curanderism Michael Kelly . Christian Griffin
Curanderism is the term used to refer to the folk healing practices found in many Mexican American communities. The term derives from the Spanish verb ‘‘curar’’ which means ‘‘to heal.’’ Curanderism views illness as comprising both natural and supernatural elements. Thus, curanderism intervenes on various levels, depending on the nature of the illness being healed. The historical influences of curanderism can be traced back to the folk-healing practices of early Aztec and pre-Columbian cultures. Eventually, these practices would fuse with Spanish Judeo-Christian beliefs as well as the practices of other European countries. Elements of the witchcraft practiced in Germany, for example, can be seen in certain forms of modern curanderism. The curanderism that is currently practiced in the United States (U.S.) and Mexico, then, is a unique amalgamation of beliefs and practices produced by both the Old and New World.
The practitioners of curanderism are curanderos (healers). These individuals are believed to have been given a divine gift (don) for healing. They act as instruments of God, and their faith provides them with the power to bring about healing. They are trained through apprenticeships conducted under the supervision of older and more experienced curanderos. The most common forms of curanderism are practiced by yerberos (herbalists), sobadores (masseurs), and parteras (midwives). The primary enemies against whom curanderos employ their gifts are Satan and the brujas (witches/ sorcerers) who work for Satan. It is believed that brujas may take the form of certain animals and cause people to suffer from ailments ranging from prolonged physical illness to uncontrollable love for another person. Many times, if an illness does not respond to a medical doctor’s treatment, it is assumed to have its origin in brujerı´a (witchcraft). Curanderos intervene against their enemies on one or more of the following three levels: material, spiritual, and mental. Each of these levels may require a natural and/or supernatural approach to the curandero’s intervention. On a material level, curanderos may provide such services as herbal treatments and folk massages. However, if a physical ailment is viewed as having been engendered by a supernatural force— ‘‘soul loss’’ (espanto) and ‘‘evil eye’’ (mal de ojo), for example, are believed to be material ailments brought about by the supernatural—the curandero will intervene for the patient on a supernatural level. Spiritual healing can be performed by a curandero in a manner similar to that performed by practitioners of Shamanism. Often times, spiritual healing seeks to cleanse the electromagnetic field around an individual and fill him/her with positive energy. Some curanderos also intervene on a mental level. Mentalistas often begin their training after something extraordinary happens to them as children. They are believed to be able to effect healing from a distance by simply wanting to heal someone, and are used to treat both physical and mental conditions. Since it is sometimes practiced without a medical license, curanderism is viewed by some Americans as an inherently suspect practice. Yet there is evidence suggesting that the use of curanderism is growing in some parts of the U.S. for many Hispanics and non-Hispanics alike, especially in the Southwest. Curanderos can procure licenses and work in
Curanderism
established healing centers. Moreover, modern curanderism is incorporating newly gleaned insights from psychology and biomedicine, which may lend more credibility to the practice. The faith-based aspects of curanderism persist, however; one of the most revered curanderos in Texas history Pedrito Jaramillo (1829– 1907) claimed that many of his patients were Anglos, and that his work with them, as well as with his other patients, was successful only when accompanied by their faith in God. Like other forms of alternative health care, curanderism does not appear to be threatened by the more empirical methods of treatment that have historically influenced Western medicine. See also: > Cultural perspectives on trauma; > Culturally competent practice; > Mexican American youth; > Worldview
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Suggested Reading Garza, M. (1998). Healing spirits. Hispanic Magazine, 11(6), 30–34. Torres, E., & Sawyer, T. (2005). Curandero: A life in Mexican folk healing. Albuquerque, NM: University of New Mexico Press. Trotter II, R. (2001). Curanderismo: A picture of Mexican-American folk healing. Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine, 7(2), 129–131.
Suggested Resources The Handbook of Texas Online—www.tsha.utexas.edu/handbook/ online/articles/CC/sdc1.html: This website provides a definition and description of curanderism.
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Data, Using (Accountability) Angela Ledgerwood
Using data to make decisions is commonplace in education. Types of data collected include demographic information, student achievement, and data related to the instructional process. Unfortunately, data often goes unused or underused in schools while other potentially useful forms of data are not collected at all. Reasons for this include existing data being inaccessible, a lack of training in how to use data, a fear that data will be used in a punitive manner, or the belief that data has little value. When strategically collected, data can be used for a variety of reasons such as research on accountability and the improvement of services. Additionally, access to data can help make a difficult or unpopular decision easier to make, can potentially guard funds, and may challenge assumptions or beliefs. Regardless of the type of data that is collected, within the education literature a number of suggestions are made for effective data use to occur in schools. First, a data-friendly environment must exist. Teachers and administrators need to feel supported in their data collection efforts and secure that the data will not be used in a punitive manner. Second, staff must be trained in data collection as well as its use. Third, the data that is collected should be tied directly to stated goals at the individual, classroom, school, or district level. Data can be reviewed to understand and measure the progress being made toward stated goals. Fourth, teachers must receive timely and continuous feedback of data for it to be incorporated into their instructional decisions. If data is collected and analyzed but results are not sent back to teachers in a timely fashion, the data will hold little to no value for them and will likely be viewed as a burden rather than a benefit. The effective use of data has become a pressing topic in education, especially data collection and use for accountability. This particular application of data use has increased greatly since the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act of 2001. NCLB pushes states to show annual progress to increase the number of students who are proficient in reading and math and to reduce the gap among students from different socioeconomic backgrounds. In an effort to demonstrate the required
progress, many states have implemented large-scale testing. This type of testing may be classified as low-stakes or high-stakes testing. Low-stakes testing is used to compare students to the national average and can influence changes in curriculum. In contrast, high-stakes testing has rewards and/or sanctions attached to the results. The types of tests used, grades targeted with testing, rewards or sanctions, and who is held responsible vary by state and sometimes by district. Some of the rewards and sanctions used include: public dissemination of testing results by school, offering vouchers to students in perpetually low-performing schools, students being required to pass a test to graduate or pass to the next grade, and more recently, tying teacher pay to student performance, and basing teacher bonuses on student performance. The widespread use of large-scale testing for accountability purposes has led to a number of criticisms. These include restricted local school autonomy, poor test design on standardized tests, possible measurement bias, concerns about the disparity in the passing rates of minority students, a narrowing of teaching to focus more on test content, and a lack of feedback on how to improve student learning. Conversely, it is argued by supporters that the public interest is served by increased and more regular monitoring of school performance as greater control and efficiency are introduced. See also: > Accountability; > Outcomes-based education
Suggested Reading Streifer, P. A. (2002). Using data to make better educational decisions. Landhman, MD: The Scrawcrow Press. Wilson, M. (Ed.) (2004). Towards coherence between classroom assessment and accountability. Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press.
Suggested Resources National Center for Research on Evaluation, Standards, and Student Testing—http://www.cse.ucla.edu/: This website is geared for parents and teachers. For parents it provides links, articles, and labs that contain assessment information for children from kindergarten through grade 12. For teachers, the site provides articles, tools, assessments, and rubrics.
C. S. Clauss-Ehlers (Ed.), Encyclopedia of Cross-Cultural School Psychology, DOI 10.1007/978-0-387-71799-9, # Springer Science+Business Media LLC 2010
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Daycare
Daycare Kathryn Powell . Stephen D Truscott
The term ‘‘daycare’’ encompasses many forms of preschool childcare programs ranging from universitybased facilities offering an array of services to Head Start programs designed to give children from families with low incomes an academic boost before kindergarten to home-based care offered by uncertified private individuals. Pedagogical approaches to daycare programming range from an emphasis simply on child supervision to more active forms of educational and social teaching informed by child development theory. Essentially, daycare is supervisory and sometimes educational care provided for preschool children; most often during the regular work and public school week schedule. Daycare has served an increasingly important role in the United States (U.S.) over the past 50 years. As more women enter the workforce by necessity or choice, many families need to supplement familial care for preschool children. Now more than half of all children aged 0–5 in the U.S. receive some form of daycare. Enrollment in kindergarten over the past few decades has become a normative experience for American children. Further, a nationally representative sample of kindergarten children indicated that 69% of the children entering kindergarten had formal, center-based experience prior to kindergarten. Different patterns of childcare are evidenced among various ethnic groups. African American children are more likely to experience center-based daycare than are White children, with the largest difference seen for 4-year-olds. Hispanic and Asian children are less likely to have daycare experiences prior to kindergarten. Such differences may reflect differences in the capacity of center-based programs to accommodate language differences for Hispanic and Asian families as well as issues related to more recent immigration patterns for these groups. As participation in daycare has increased, so has research on its effects on child development, academic skills, and behavior. This research now indicates clearly that students participating in quality early learning experiences are more ready for school than are students who have poorer quality experiences. These findings, coupled with the growing concern of educators, parents, and policy makers about school readiness and academic performance, particularly for children from
families with low incomes, have resulted in steadily increasing interest in identifying the elements of highquality daycare that have the greatest positive impact on children. Effective daycare takes a multidimensional perspective that incorporates attention to a wide range of factors, such as physical well-being and motor development, social and emotional development, approaches to learning; language development, and cognition and general knowledge. Some known key elements of highquality care include college-educated instructors or teachers who receive ongoing training in early development, programs with strong parent involvement and parent training built in, a curriculum focused on early child developmental principles, and emphasis on language development and preliteracy skills. The advantages of early education in high-quality daycare have been found to be particularly pronounced for children from families with low incomes. Given the association of poverty and minority status in the U.S., daycare is also particularly advantageous for many children of color. With such positive outcomes stemming from high-quality daycare, the question of whether such services are equally accessible to all must be considered. Many studies in the U.S. have documented an unequal distribution of high-quality daycare. Certain populations have consistently less access to such care. Six factors appear to be critical in determining access to highquality daycare: age, race/ethnicity, mother’s employment, family structure, mother’s education, and family income. Many of these factors are interrelated and differentially have an impact on children from minority cultural backgrounds. High-quality daycare is expensive. Without public support of quality programs, children from families with low incomes are especially vulnerable to the negative effects of substandard daycare environments. Persistent gaps in access to high-quality early education may contribute to negative cyclical effects of inequality in education and income. Children from families with low incomes are less likely to receive high-quality early education experiences, leading to poorer academic achievement, decreased adult income, and so on. For this reason, large increases in public expenditures for kindergarten, prekindergarten, Head Start, and child care subsidies were seen during the 1990s. Most of this funding has been directed at 3- to 5-year-olds. Currently, most 5-year-olds attend publicly funded kindergartens, and publicly funded daycare/preschool programs for 3- and 4-year olds are increasingly available.
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See also: > Early childhood education; Preschool mental health
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Preschool;
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Suggested Reading Bainbridge, J., Meyers, M. K., Tanaka, S., & Waldfogel, J. (2005). Who gets an early education? Family income and the enrollment of three- to five-year-olds from 1968 to 2000. Social Science Quarterly, 86(3), 724–745. Campbell, F. A., & Ramey, C. T. (1994). Effects of early interventions on intellectual and academic achievement: A follow-up study of children from low-income families. Child Development, 65, 684–698. Fantuzzo, J. W., Rouse, H. L., McDermott, P. A., & Sekino, Y. (2005). Early childhood experiences and kindergarten success: A population-based study of a large urban setting. School Psychology Review, 34(4), 571–588.
sometimes part of education about loss in general. Grief following the death of a loved one follows many of the same stages as grief following the loss of a parent through divorce or sometimes of the loss of employment or the loss of friends when a child’s family moves to a new community. Because death in modern society so often occurs in a hospital setting, many people have no personal experience of witnessing death. One purpose of death education is to help people understand death as a natural part of living. See also: > Counseling; > Grief counseling ; education; > Religion, Teaching about
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Suggested Reading
Death Education
Kubler-Ross, E. (1997). Death: The final stage of growth. New York, NY: Town stone. Scribner Moody, R. (1989). The light beyond. New York: Bantam Books.
Susan F Wooley
Suggested Resources Any combination of planned learning experiences that help individuals, groups, or communities gain the information and skills they need to deal with end of life decisions, grief, and related goal-setting constitutes death education. Within a school context, death education is sometimes incorporated into a health class that addresses the physical, mental, emotional, and social dimensions of health in ways that are tailored to students’ age and developmental levels. Sometimes death education that is primarily focused on grief counseling occurs as a ‘‘teachable moment’’ in response to a death in the school community or some large cultural event such as the attacks on September 11. Topics frequently included in formal death education include preparing wills, living wills, and medical directives; life and health insurance options; hospice; stages of death and dying; stages of grief; developmental understandings of death; funeral options; planning one’s memorial service or writing one’s obituary; and ideas about life after death. Sometimes death education uses a cultural perspective and considers what funeral rites in different cultures might reveal about that culture’s beliefs. For younger children, who often have trouble grasping the finality of death, death education is
Association for Death Education and Counseling—http://www. adec.org/: The Association for Death Education and Counseling is an international organization dedicated to promoting excellence in death education, care of the dying, grief counseling and research in thanatology. Based on quality research and theory, the association provides information, support, and resources to its multicultural, multidisciplinary membership and to the public. National Center for Death Education—http://www.mountida.edu/ sp.cfm?pageid = 307: The National Center for Death Education (NCDE) located at Mount Ida College in Newton, Massachusetts is an educational center dedicated to promoting knowledge and understanding in the field of thanatology. NCDE aims to help people enhance their own awareness of death as well as provide them with the resources to support the dying and grieving of all ages.
Debates in the Classroom Troy D Sadler
The noun form of the term debate refers to a discussion or deliberation of an issue in which opposing points
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of view are contrasted. In the context of classrooms, formal debates can be used as a teaching strategy in which students assume and represent disparate perspectives on an issue of interest. Teachers often assign students to different sides and require that they present appropriate arguments within a formalized oral format. Debate has a long history as a pedagogical resource for classroom teachers. Teachers from many disciplines including social studies, language arts, and sciences frequently use debate activities. Those who use debate in educational contexts cite a number of rationales. Debate activities frequently require in-depth student preparation, a process which likely has an impact on student learning outcomes far more dramatically than more passive activities such as reading from a text or listening to a lecture. Furthermore, when debating, students must often use higher-order cognitive processes. For example, to present a case and defend it in the face of contradictions, individuals must engage in analysis, synthesis, and evaluation. These types of cognitive practices are universally endorsed but can be difficult to promote. Debate provides teachers with a viable strategy for accomplishing these goals. Debate also changes the kind of discourses which emerge in classrooms. In many classroom contexts, teachers can dominate the classroom dialogue. Opportunities for student contributions are often mediated through relatively fixed initiationresponse-evaluation patterns. In this standard model, teachers initiate classroom discussion by means of a question; a single student provides a response; and then the class waits for the teacher to evaluate the student’s contribution. When classroom discourse proceeds in this fashion, teachers control the conversation direction and content. Students often have very few opportunities to contribute meaningfully to the discourses which shape their learning environments. In contrast, debate scenarios tend to maximize opportunities for students to talk and engage in peer-to-peer interactions. Based on discourse frameworks for learning, opportunities for students to talk are critical for meaningful engagement with disciplinary content. A final rationale relates to the position of debate and public discourse in democracy. Proponents of debate in United States (U.S.) classrooms argue that debate constitutes an essential element of a democratic government. As such, proponents state that citizens who live in a democracy should receive an education that includes opportunities to debate and dissent.
While all educators may not endorse every one of the rationales enumerated above, most would concur that the list represents a desirable collection of educational outcomes. However, opponents of classroom debate offer multiple critiques of the teaching practice. Classroom debates are usually framed in terms of two opposing sides charged with defeating the other. This framing process leads to a number of potential problems. Positioning two teams against one another suggests two sides to the issue, which can grossly oversimplify the nature of complex issues. This trend reinforces Western dualisms and disregards the diverse array of perspectives and nuanced positions which tend to emerge in less contrived discussions of complex issues. Oppositional framing in classroom debate also shifts the emphasis of student participants to winning rather than the development of well-reasoned solutions. In this sense, students may become more focused on somewhat trivial matters that can lead to victory than on the substantive aspects of the issues under consideration. In multicultural contexts, classroom debates can be particularly problematic because they tend to be advantageous to some while being disadvantageous to others. For example, students who are comfortable with public performance and argument may thrive in classroom debates, but for students who are less comfortable in antagonistic social settings, their experience of is likely to be counter-productive. Sociolinguistic research also suggests that White males tend to respond more favorably to debate contexts than other groups of students, while many females do not excel in openly confrontational learning environments. This pattern is also observed among students with nonWestern cultural backgrounds. Individuals whose life experiences promote the value of collaboration over confrontation can be put at a disadvantage in classroom debates. A challenge for educators, particularly for those working in multilingual and multicultural classrooms, is to establish meaningful opportunities for student discourse and disciplinary inquiry without creating necessarily oppositional learning environments. Traditional notions of debate during which two sides compete may not be an effective model for promoting student achievement. Rather, classroom activities that engage students in deliberative inquiry and discourse (rather than adversarial) may be a more effective approach.
Defense/coping mechanism
See also: > Citizenship; > Collaborative and cooperative learning; > Democracy, Teaching about
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the meaning or reality of a situation. They are an unconscious means of keeping oneself and others out of awareness by disguising unacceptable motives, feelings, or desires.
Suggested Reading Goodwin, J. (2003). Students’ perspectives on debate exercises in content area classes. Communication Education, 52(2), 157–163. Lee, J., & Bhavini, A. (2005). Debating debating: A reflection on the place of debate within secondary schools. Curriculum Journal, 16(4), 493–508. Tumposky, N. R. (2004). The debate debate. The Clearing House, 78 (2), 52–55.
Suggested Resources International Debate Education Association (IDEA)—http://www. idebate.org/ : The International Debate Association (IDEA) promotes debate and related activities throughout the world with the goal of fostering engaged citizenship and civic leadership. The site provides extensive resources for teachers and student debaters as well as others interested in public discourse. Web English Teacher—http://www.webenglishteacher.com/ debate.html: This website provides a number of links designed for teachers planning to use debates in their classrooms. Included among the useful content are potential topic lists, alternative methods for framing debate, and an evaluation rubric.
Defense/Coping Mechanism Tavis Walker . Ben K Lim
Defense mechanisms are unconscious processes that serve to protect the self from the painful experience of anxiety. They defend against anxiety aroused by external threats to self or by inner impulses, thoughts, or emotions that conflict with the values of one’s family, society, or own internalized standards or identity. Defense mechanisms do not change external circumstances; they are employed to reduce the awareness of anxiety when a conflict is perceived to be overwhelming, uncontrollable, or unalterable. In effect, defense mechanisms reduce the conscious experience of anxiety by denying or distorting one’s perception of
Types of Defense/Coping Mechanisms Sigmund Freud originated the concept of defense mechanisms. His daughter, Anna, expanded both the understanding and the number of defenses. Psychoanalysts have since added numerous defenses, categories, and subtle distinctions. Some of the most commonly described defense mechanisms are repression, denial, projection, rationalization, intellectualization, reaction formation, displacement, and identification. Repression, thought to be the most basic of defenses, is simply the exclusion of painful or threatening thoughts, impulses, or memories from conscious awareness. Denial involves denying the very existence of an external threat or the stimuli related to a threatening inner impulse. Projection is the exaggerated attribution of one’s own unacceptable thoughts or impulses to another person. Using false but socially acceptable explanations for behavior to disguise one’s true motives is rationalization. Intellectualization allows for the separation of affect from a painful event to deal with the situation in a detached intellectual manner. Reaction formation conceals from conscious awareness an unworthy motive or anxiety provoking impulse through the exaggerated expression of the opposite thought or impulse. Displacement allows impulses, often aggressive ones, to be expressed toward an alternate object when the object arousing the feelings is itself too threatening. Finally, identification involves taking upon oneself the attributes of a powerful, desired, or perhaps threatening person or group. Defense mechanisms can be distinguished from the broader category of coping mechanisms. Coping mechanisms serve the similar function of protecting an individual from the painful experience of anxiety provoked by internal or external conflicts, however, they are generally considered to be a product of conscious choice. There are a broad array of coping mechanisms, and they are generally less defined than defense mechanisms. Suppression, one example of a coping mechanism, is the conscious pushing aside of painful thoughts. The thoughts remain in awareness, but their anxiety-producing impact is lessened by the decision not to focus attention on them. Another
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example of a coping mechanism is the choice of a personal weakness or external obstacle to serve as an excuse in the event of failure. While a person may have to admit to a weakness, they are ultimately protected from acknowledging a more painful personal failure. Everyone uses defense and coping mechanisms to some degree. Defenses help to regulate emotions when circumstances are perceived to be beyond one’s control. They can be especially helpful in traumatic situations or when stresses are sudden or overwhelming. Defenses act as buffers that temporarily reduce the impact of anxiety and provide the needed time to process events or continue functioning until a person is able to deal with the anxiety-producing events directly. Defenses are damaging when they become a dominant pattern for coping with life’s stresses and emotional conflicts. Defense mechanisms can produce unexplained, irrational, and harmful behaviors. The very defenses meant to protect one from harm can themselves be damaging when applied as a pattern to everyday life. Defenses regulate emotions, but they do not solve problems. The deceptive nature of defenses prevents a person from confronting the reality of problems, accepting responsibility, and changing their circumstances or behaviors. Ultimately, defensiveness can damage relationships, sabotage functioning and accomplishment, and prevent growth, development, and problem solving. Some defenses are considered more adaptive than others because they permit conscious awareness and allow greater integration and gratification of thoughts and impulses. The Diagnostic and Statistical ManualIV-TR includes a defensive functioning scale with a hierarchical grouping of defense and coping mechanisms into seven levels based on defense style and degree of adaptation.
Cultural Influences Research shows that defense mechanisms can be used to describe mental processes across cultural boundaries, however the development and use of defenses may vary between cultures, subcultures, groups, and individuals. Culture, whether it is the culture within a family, institution, or society, shapes beliefs and attitudes. It designates what impulses, thoughts, motives, and emotions are socially acceptable. Culture
establishes values and attributes meaning to behavior. Societal beliefs dictate what thoughts and feelings are expressed, the form those expressions should take, and the consequences for failing to conform. Culture influences what is perceived as threatening, and therefore it determines what must be defended against. Closely related to culture and ethnicity is the history and experience of a people group. People groups subjected to oppression, war, genocide, natural disaster, poverty, or other stressors may develop unique coping patterns to survive. These coping mechanisms may be very active in recent immigrant groups, and they may be sustained well beyond the threat of any real danger. The interaction of differing cultures in academic settings is likely to arouse emotionally threatening situations and anxiety. Cultures often have differing educational values, behavioral expectations, and communication and learning styles. What is comfortable for students of one culture may be quite threatening for students of another. For example, open discussion, expression of individual opinions, and asking of questions may be expected in some cultures, however these same behaviors may represent a confusing and anxiety-producing challenge to authority in other cultures. Public correction may be the norm in some cultures, while in others it could elicit a deep sense of shame. The active, vocal, and dynamic learning style considered preferable in some cultures may conflict with classroom expectations and result in discipline. Such conflicts can evoke anxiety and put students in positions in which they act or desire to act in ways that violate what they or others consider acceptable. Efforts to cope emotionally can produce defensive and problematic behaviors in students. Academic failure and disciplinary action that result from cultural differences can threaten a student’s identity and self-worth. Psychological defenses may cause students to devalue the importance of academics, attribute their failures to others, passively accept labels, or aggressively defy authorities. These and other defensive behaviors can effectively sabotage the success of otherwise capable students. In addition to potential conflict in the academic arena, students must cope with anxieties aroused by multicultural social settings. Students of different cultures may feel threatened on a variety of fronts. Defense mechanisms may be employed to protect selfworth in an environment that devalues or fails to embrace cultural aspects of one’s identity. Students
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choosing to adopt aspects of the dominant culture may face inner conflict or conflict with parents or peers. Some students may cope by identifying with the dominant culture while rejecting their own heritage. Others may strongly oppose what they feel the dominant culture represents.
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being labeled a racist can threaten one’s identity as a ‘‘good person.’’ Individuals as well as entire institutions can deny, rationalize, and intellectualize in an effort to maintain a good image. Defenses on the individual and the group level can hinder relationships with other cultures, block acceptance of responsibility, prevent genuine cross-cultural understanding, and stunt personal and professional growth.
Cultural Competence As schools become increasingly multicultural, professionals need to be aware and culturally competent. A deeper understanding of other cultures’ values and the background of people groups can aid in understanding defensive reactions. Likewise, a deeper awareness of psychological defenses can open a window into understanding the values and fears of other cultures. Professionals should learn what is valued, expressed, threatening, and socially unacceptable in the cultures with which they deal. They should be particularly aware of unexplained, self-defeating, resistant, avoidant, or seemingly contradictory behaviors in students, as these may be signs of defensive reactions and the need to consider cultural factors. Professionals should learn the meaning attached to behaviors in other cultures, and they should carefully consider what values are closely tied to identity and self-worth in other cultures. Cultural knowledge can help prevent professionals from inadvertently triggering defenses that can sabotage student relationships, academic performance, and acculturation. It is also worthwhile to consider what problemsolving resources are available and acceptable options within various cultures. Different cultures have different expectations for how problems are to be resolved. Students may tend to lean more heavily on emotional coping mechanisms when real problemsolving options are limited by cultural expectations or when school resources are tailored to the needs of a particular culture. Cultural competency can produce creative and sensitive resources for problem solving. Finally, professionals need to consider their own fears, values, and defenses. Working with other cultures can often produce conflicts in values and threats to one’s own identity and cultural values. Professionals may at times feel a need to defend their values, beliefs, and behaviors when confronted with the differing values of another culture. For many, the fear of offending another culture, being politically incorrect, or
See also: > Anxiety; > Cross-cultural competence in school psychologists’ services
Suggested Reading Schmader, T., Major, B., & Gramzow, R. H. (2001). Coping with ethnic stereotypes in the academic domain: Perceived injustice and psychological disengagement. The Journal of Social Issues, 57(1), 93–111. Tori, C. D., & Bilmes, M. (2002). Multiculturalism and psychoanalytic psychology: The validation of a defense mechanisms measure in an Asian population. Psychoanalytic Psychology, 19(4), 701–721. Webb-Johnson, G. (2002). Are schools ready for Joshua? Dimensions of African-American culture among students identified as having behavioral/emotional disorders. International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, 15(6), 653–671.
Delusion Renato D Alarco´n
The word ‘‘delusion’’ comes from the Latin deludere— to deceive, to cheat. Delusion is defined as a pathological judgment, a firmly entrenched, persistent, and intense belief that is unfounded and therefore false for everybody and from every perspective except for the individual who elaborates it. He or she is absolutely certain of the content of the delusion, does not accept corrections or modifications, and is not influenced by reasons or arguments against it. Delusion is a cardinal symptom of a number of psychoses, major psychiatric disorders characterized by substantial break-ups of the individual with his or her surrounding reality. Cognitively, a delusion is an essential part of such fragmentation of the interpersonal and socio-environmental relationships of the affected individual, an attempt to justify or ‘‘explain’’ a distorted perception of the world.
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While paranoid schizophrenia with persecutory delusions is the prototypical example of this cognitive deviation, there is a broad variety of classifications of this type of thought disorder. Being an idiosyncratic misconception or misinterpretation of reality (in the perceptual, imaginative, and intuitive spheres), a delusion is not shared by others, does not require consensus and, therefore, if not addressed as a target of professional treatment, contributes significantly to a gradual devastation of the affected person’s everyday life and functioning. Delusions dramatically change the patient’s world of meaning and alter his or her personality in a bizarre manner. The period of time preceding the appearance of delusions, called the predelusional stage or trema, is characterized by anguish and perplexity, even though the individual is in a clear state of consciousness. While it should be differentiated from superstitions or strong religious beliefs, understandable in the cultural context of the person, the content of a delusion is certainly influenced by culture. Actually, content is one of the classificatory parameters of delusions, which then could be labeled as persecutory, referential, guiltridden, nihilistic, grandiose, jealous, hypochondriac or body-related, or linked to God or religion, personal ruin, vindication, or influence. According to its form, a delusion can be interpretive, imaginary, systematic, disaggregated, or delirious (when consciousness is compromised, and concomitant hallucinations occur). Related to direction, it could be retrograde or palingnostic, expansive, and metamorphosic. Finally, on the basis of their course, delusions can be episodic, chronic, recurrent, or residual. Furthermore, delusions can be autochthonous or primary (arising as an immediate experience with no external objective cause or explanation), autopsychic (related to the person’s own personality), and explanatory (attempting to give reasons for the false belief). The persecutory delusion, closely related to the delusion of reference, are the most dramatic and most studied: the person is convinced that other people are talking about him or her, misinterprets movements, tone of voice, facial expressions, and body language; that there is a plot about against him or her, or that characters on television shows or news reporters are disseminating information about his or her behavior. There are also secondary delusions, shared delusions, or folies a` deux. Finally, the so-called ‘‘organic delusions’’ can also be labeled as delirium, and are present in a variety of medical, neurological, and physical
conditions including epilepsy, brain injuries, drug intoxication, poisons, endocrine dysfunction, infections, electrolyte disturbance, post-operative states, or central nervous system repercussions from diseases of other organs such as liver, kidney, heart, or lungs. The most frequent psychiatric disorders in which delusions are prominent symptoms include all types of schizophrenia, schizoaffective disorder, brief psychotic episodes, mood disorders (depression and mania, or bipolar disorder), schizophreniform and body dysmorphic disorder. See also: phrenia
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Suggested Reading Hoffman, R. E., & McGlashan, T. H. (2003). Alterations of speech, thought, perception and self-experience. In A. Tasman, J. Kay & J. A. Lieberman (Eds.), Psychiatry (2nd ed.) (pp. 597–606). New York: Wiley. Jaspers, K. (1968). General psychopathology. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Marengo, J., & Harrows, M. (1989). Thought disorders in schizophrenia. In M. Tsuang & L. N. Simpson (Eds.), Handbook of schizophrenia (pp. 85–117). New York: Elsevier. Seidman, L. J., Cassens, G. P., Kremen, W. S., & Pepple, J. R. (1992). Neuropsychology of schizophrenia. In R. F. White (Ed.), Clinical syndromes in adult neuropsychology: The practitioner’s handbook. Amsterdam: Elsevier.
Democracy, Teaching About Liliana Lo´pez Levi
Democracy is a political system where the majority rules. The term is usually associated with voting and with a representative government but there is no single definition that is accepted worldwide. Some confusion is also derived from the fact that the concept is associated with legitimacy so there is resistance from regimes that do not entirely fill democratic conditions but wish to be considered democratic. Democracy basically refers to a contemporary phenomenon, although the word has a Greek origin that means ‘‘people’s government.’’ Democracy emerged in
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opposition to monarchy, from the necessity to find a way that would represent the ideas, basic needs, freedom, and requirements of the majority. Democracy is also a way to validate laws that are formulated, approved, and executed by a minority and applied fairly to a majority. Two possibilities have derived from this form of government: direct democracy and representative democracy. The first implies that all citizens decide on issues. This form of democracy is only practical in small communities such as unions. In representative democracy, decisions are made by a minority that represents the larger majority. This method puts the onus of decision making and execution in the hands of professional legislatures. Democracy is more than a set of constitutional rules and procedures that determine how a government functions; it is also a set of values that guarantee social equality and respect for the individual within a community. These social values include participation, plurality, tolerance, freedom, fairness, responsibility, and legality. Individuals with political rights in a democracy are known as citizens. In a representative democracy, citizens participate through elections where they vote for the person who they want to represent them and make decisions in their name. Referendums and plebiscites give people the chance to vote directly on a specific issue. Other ways to participate include being part of the government, being a member of a political party, working in communitarian organizations, or having direct communication with legislators. The principle of representation is that all voters feel they have the same possibility of representation, no matter the socioeconomic or cultural group to which they belong. This becomes a complex issue given the heterogeneity of populations as well as the multiple identities (i.e., religion, race, ethnicity, gender) that lie within the individual him- or herself. Plurality, tolerance, and fairness imply that heterogeneity is a positive characteristic that enriches society; differences must be respected and considered in favor of the community. Even if the majority rules, the minority must be included. Education plays an important role in democracy as it allows citizens to know their civil rights and obligations and it empowers them. Political values are important to guarantee equity and fairness. Norms, practices, and values are taught to form responsible and mature citizens.
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See also: > Citizenship; > Moral education; > No Child Left Behind (NCLB)
Suggested Reading Bobbio, N. (2006). Liberalism and democracy. London: Verso. Sartori, G. (1973). Democratic theory. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press.
Suggested Resources International Information Program—http://usinfo.state.gov: This website of the U.S. Department of State offers information on democracy, its principles and its values. The Carter Center—http://www.cartercenter.org/: The Carter Center promotes democracy and monitors elections around the world. It works towards empowering people to choose how they are governed. The ACE Project—http://www.aceproject.com/: The ACE Project is an electronic publication that has the aim to provides userfriendly, operationally oriented information on options, detailed procedures, alternative solutions and the administrative and cost implications associated with organizing elections.
Demographics Amanda Smith Collins . Erin A Harper . Sherrie Lynn Proctor . Stephen D Truscott
Demographic data are obtained from studies of populations and population samples. Demographers, also known as population experts, study statistics, changes, and trends in societal characteristics such as gender, race, ethnicity, and age. Researchers, educators, and psychologists rely heavily on demographic data to identify population needs and trends. Such information can be used to adjust theory and practice to better meet the needs of the current population and better plan for the future needs of a rapidly changing nation. In the United States (U.S.), the primary source of demographic data collection is the U.S. Census Bureau. The National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), located within the U.S. Department of Education and the Institute of Education Sciences, surveys all school
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districts in North America and is the chief federal source of educational data collection and analysis. Collecting demographic data that reflect accurately the characteristics of individuals and/or cultural groups has become increasingly difficult as the general U.S. population becomes more culturally complex. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, while non-Hispanic White Americans accounted for nearly 70% of the population in 2000, they are projected to account for only 50% of the population by 2050. Concurrently, the number of people of Hispanic origin will increase from nearly 13% to 25% of the total population over the 50-year period. Over 11% of the U.S. population is foreign born; with California having the highest percentage (26.2%) of citizens born outside the U.S. The U.S. is also linguistically diverse, with 17.9% of the population speaking a language other than English in the home. In states with high percentages of culturally diverse populations, many people speak a language other then English in the home. For instance, in California, 39.5% of people ages 5 and older speak a language other than English at home, followed by New Mexico (36.5%), Texas (31.2%), New York (28.0%), Hawaii (26.6%), Arizona (25.9%), and New Jersey (25.5%). Parallel trends in the U.S. school population have prompted culturally competent school psychologists to examine their practices to adequately address the needs of culturally and linguistically diverse (CLD) students. Culturally competent school psychologists can use school-wide, community-wide, and system-wide demographic data to inform their practices as evaluators, consultants, counselors, and prevention/intervention specialists. The National Association of School Psychologists (NASP) recommends that culturally competent educational service providers learn as much as possible about students’ cultural backgrounds, include neighborhoods and communities (and their volunteers) in school-based prevention and intervention efforts, understand culturally based expectations related to service delivery, and respect culturally based traditions related to interpersonal and institutional communication. Demographic data provide school psychologists with a basis not only for providing these culturally competent services, but also for identifying personal areas of cross-cultural weakness and addressing these through educational and professional development. Specifically, demographic data can assist school psychologists in providing and/or addressing the following six NASP domains of culturally competent
service delivery: (a) legal and ethical issues; (b) school culture, educational policy, and institutional advocacy; (c) psychoeducational assessment; (d) academic, therapeutic, and consultative interventions; (e) working with interpreters; and (f) research. Based on these six domains of culturally competent service delivery, school psychologists can use school-wide demographic data to provide the following components of culturally competent services in educational settings: a. Knowledge of and advocacy for aspects of organizational culture and values that promote achievement and mental health and reduce risk of inappropriate services for CLD students. School-specific demographic data related to race, ethnicity, country of origin, family structures, English as a second language (ESL), socioeconomic status (SES), dropouts, and neighborhood affiliations can aid practitioners in understanding the student body and raise awareness about particular issues of concern specific to local communities and schools. b. Knowledge of and skills in assessing CLD students, including consideration of variables such as environment, social issues, language development, second language acquisition, acculturation, educational history, quality of educational program, SES, and racism. Demographic data can provide school psychologists with information about what CLDrelated variables may be most salient in a specific setting and what additional education and/or resources may be needed to address those variables during assessment. Examining trend data can help local practitioners acquire new skills and competencies in anticipation of changing needs rather than as reactions to unforeseen crises. c. Understanding that normed tests may not be a valid measure for English Language Learners (ELLs) due to inappropriateness of norms, scores reflecting English proficiency, product as opposed to process orientation, fairness of content, and differences in educational background, acculturation, and economic situation. Without an in-depth understanding of the demographic makeup of the student body of a school, especially data related to age, race, ethnicity, country of origin, and disability/diagnosis information for the entire student body and individually referred students, school psychologists cannot insure that they are providing culture-fair assessments. Furthermore, demographic data can assist school psychologists in requesting and advocating for the system’s
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acquisition of assessment instruments that may aid in the provision of culture-fair assessment. These recommendations were echoed by Sharon-Ann Gopaul-McNicol who identified several multicultural competencies for monolingual school psychologists working with CLD learners that can be informed by demographic data, including the following: (a) cross-cultural ethical competence (the ethical burden of school psychologists to acquire specific training and expertise to work with CLD learners); (b) cross-cultural awareness (related to culturally based perspectives on education and achievement, including variations in performance motivation, learning style, the role of the family, and the effects of migration and relocation); (c) cross-cultural assessment competence (including use of assessment instruments/methods and communication of any limitations that these may hold for various cultural groups); (d) cross-cultural counseling competence; (e) cross-cultural consultation competence; and (f) cross-cultural research competence. Exploring the demographic data of a school, community, and system can help practitioners attain these competencies by focusing on the diversities extant within a service sphere; in this way, practitioners can identify areas of their education and experience that need strengthening to provide culturally competent services. Furthermore, without specific school or district data, practitioners may be at a disadvantage in terms of understanding the influence of demographic factors on student performance and behavior and on school– home relationships. Additionally, demographics can aid school psychologists in appropriately applying research efforts and/or research findings in their service sphere. Finally, knowledge of a school or system’s demographic structure aids practitioners in choosing and acquiring culture-fair instruments for the students served, and in avoiding the use of inappropriate instruments or methods. In addition to recommending cross-cultural competencies, NASP has developed a comprehensive database that provides information about specific demographic variables within the profession of school psychology. The database contains responses to regular surveys of NASP members and includes demographic characteristics and professional practices of many thousands of school psychologists from across the U.S. Demographic data pertaining to gender, ethnicity, age, professional roles, preparation, credentialing, and professional association memberships were analyzed
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and presented at the 2006 NASP Conference. Preliminary results revealed that the profession continues to be overwhelmingly White with school psychologists of color accounting for only 6.6% of practitioners. In contrast, school psychologists serve a high percentage of racial/ethnic minority students. Most school psychologists (98.24%) serve members of racial/ethnic minority groups, and 47% of practitioners reported that racial/ethnic minority students comprise one quarter or more of their student population. For 28% of school psychologists, racial/ethnic minority students make up 50% or more of the student population. As the student population grows increasingly diverse, it will be important for training programs and practitioners to diversify their skills and practices. Thus, university trainers, educators, administrators, and school-based mental health providers must actively and ethically collect, analyze, and utilize demographic data to best meet the needs of the CLD student population. Although national and local demographic data can be useful, there are some concerns about how such data are collected and how it might be used. One case study found that self-identification practices related to racial/ethnic classification tended to be inconsistent based on question format (e.g., open or closed) and response options provided (e.g., multiple choice or self-generated, ‘‘choose only one’’ or ‘‘circle all that apply’’), particularly with students of mixed heritage. To ameliorate inconsistencies in demographic data responses, it was suggested that more detailed demographic data be collected. Others have also cautioned against misuse of demographic data related to race, class, and gender. Thus, cross-culturally competent use of demographic data should avoid stereotyping or enacting prejudices, and strive for educating practitioners to meet the needs of diverse student populations. In this way, school psychologists’ responsible use of demographic data can facilitate achieving cultural competence in service delivery to all students. See also: > Adolescent ethnic identity; > Cross-cultural school psychology; > Cultural diversity; > Ethnicity; > Melting pot ; > Race
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Suggested Reading Curtis, M. J., Hunley, S. A., Walker, K. J., & Baker, A. C. (1999). Demographic characteristics and professional practices in school psychology. School Psychology Review, 28, 104–115. Lopez, A. M. (2003). Collecting and tabulating race/ethnicity data with diverse and mixed heritage populations: A casestudy with US high school students. Ethnic and Racial Studies, 26, 931–961. Mbugua, T., Wadas, J., Casey, M. A., & Finnerty, J. (2004). Authentic learning: Intercultural, international, and intergenerational experiences in elementary classrooms. Child Education, 80, 237–244. Miranda, A. H. (2002). Best practices in increasing cross-cultural competence. In A. Thomas & J. Grimes (Eds.), Best practices in school psychology IV (pp. 353–362). Bethesda, MD: National Association of School Psychologists.
Suggested Resources The National Association of School Psychologists (NASP)—http:// www.nasponline.org/: This is the official NASP website where one can apply for membership or gain access to resources such as guidelines for culturally competent practice, publications, and a book store. The National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) School District Demographics—http://nces.ed.gov/surveys/sdds/about.asp: This website provides date, products, and publications pertaining to education statistics.
Depression Sarah Butler . Judith A Cook
Recognizing Depression in Children and Youth Major depression in children and adolescents is a mental, emotional, and behavioral disorder that affects thoughts, feelings, behavior, and physical well-being. Children and adolescents who exhibit age-appropriate depressive symptoms for 3–4 hours per day, 3 days a week or more, meet diagnostic criteria for depression. On average, a single episode of depression among children or adolescents lasts from 7 to 9 months. Children exhibit depression in unique and individualistic ways that vary far more than in adults. Some-
times their symptoms are confusing to parents and teachers. For example, one depressed child may appear disruptive and rambunctious, while another appears hostile or irritable, and still another appears tearful and withdrawn. Some depressed children play too aggressively and injure themselves or others, so that their depression is misdiagnosed as Conduct Disorder or as Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD). Other children employ sad themes in their play such as portraying dark images in their artwork. Still others report physical complaints such as headaches or stomachaches. Like adults, depressed children and adolescents may cry often, withdraw from friends and activities they once enjoyed, report decreased levels of energy, experience disrupted sleep patterns, and show changes in appetite. Also like adults, they may display feelings of hopelessness, lack of enthusiasm or motivation, inability to concentrate, feelings of worthlessness, excessive guilt, or extreme sensitivity to rejection and failure. Compared to adolescents or adults, children in western societies tend to ‘‘somatize’’ or manifest their mental distress as a physical symptom or complaint such as headaches, muscle aches, or stomachaches. This also varies by culture. In cultures attaching greater stigma to mental illness, people tend to somatize their symptoms of depression, and this is true as well for both children and adults. Compared to adults, children and adolescents experience far fewer depression-related psychotic symptoms such as hallucinations (i.e., experiencing visual, auditory, tactile, olfactory, or gustatory sensations without external stimuli and with a compelling sense of their reality) or delusions (i.e., beliefs that are erroneous and held in the face of evidence to the contrary). When children and adolescents do experience psychotic symptoms they are more likely to experience auditory hallucinations (e.g., hearing voices) than delusions. Although easier to detect, adolescent depression is often overlooked as normal teenage moodiness. Some adolescents display the depressed symptoms mentioned above, engage in conflicts with their family and friends, and show deteriorating school performance. Other depressed adolescents engage in rule breaking, begin criminal activities, or experience obsessive thoughts about death that manifest as suicidal tendencies or a fear of dying. In particular, depressed adolescents are at a greatly increased risk of developing substance abuse problems. Parents and teachers should be aware that the risk of suicide in adolescent males rises precipitously
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if accompanied by substance abuse. Although many aspects of adolescent depression more closely resemble adult depression, adolescents’ mood and even physical attributes fluctuate far more than that of adults. Some adolescents are able to become distracted temporarily from their depressed affect, briefly enjoying a pleasurable event or activity they once enjoyed.
Prevalence of Depression in Children and Youth Before 1970, mental health professionals believed that children were incapable of developing depression due to their relative emotional and cognitive immaturity. However, the medical community now recognizes that children are susceptible to this form of mental illness. In the U.S., the prevalence of Major Depressive Disorder (the most serious, intractable form of the illness) is prevalent among approximately 1% of preschoolers, 2% of school-aged children, and 5–8% of adolescents. International studies conducted in the 1990s on the prevalence of depression among adolescents found rates that ranged from highs of 35% in Bulgaria, 23–36% in Russia, and 27–32% in Poland; to lows of 5–13% in China, 4% in Italy, 8–19% in Great Britain, and 9.5% in the United States (U.S.); with moderate rates of 10% in Sweden, 10–25% in Canada, 13% in Hong Kong, 12% in East Germany, and 13% in West Germany. Gender differences in prevalence of depression do not appear until ages 13–15 at which point twice as many girls as boys become depressed and this difference is maintained throughout adulthood.
Risk Factors for Depression Children with school problems, medical problems, learning disorders, and those who have experienced abuse, neglect, or trauma are at increased risk for depression. Adolescents living in rural areas, gay and lesbian adolescents, incarcerated youth, and pregnant teenagers are all at increased risk of developing the disorder. Additionally, poverty, stress, tobacco use, loss of a parent or loved one, break-up of a romantic relationship, natural disaster, warfare, and other traumas also place adolescents at higher risk of depression. Low self-esteem, poor interpersonal skills, and negative thought processes serve to cause or exacerbate
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depression by creating difficulty in social relationships with family and friends. Experts tend to agree that the younger a child develops depression, the more severe the problem and poorer the outcome. Individuals who experience an episode of depression in childhood have a greatly increased risk of recurrence within the next 5 years, and are five times more likely to battle depression as an adult. Unfortunately, despite serious consequences that include poor self-esteem, school failure, suicide, and substance abuse, 70% of children and adolescents with depression remain untreated.
Suicide The U.S. Surgeon General estimates that 90% of children and adolescents who commit suicide have a mental health disorder. Among 10–24-year olds in the U.S., suicide is the third leading cause of death. Studies suggest that there are two general types of suicidal youth. The first group is chronically or severely depressed and their suicidal behavior is often carefully planned over an extended period of time. The second group shows impulsive suicidal behavior often consistent with Conduct Disorder and accompanied by impulsive aggression directed at others. According to the World Health Organization, there is wide variation in reported suicide rates for youth aged 15–24 years. This may reflect sociocultural differences in suicide, underreporting, and differences in the legal definition of suicide. Nonetheless, some general trends are evident. The overall worldwide average is 22.0 per 100,000 for males and 4.9 per 100,000 for females. Regardless of country, the suicide rate for males is higher than for females, with male/female ratios ranging from 1.5 in Sweden to 11 times in Ireland. Among males, rates tend to be higher in Eastern Europe (44.9 in Lithuania and 44.7 in the Russian federation) and Northern Europe (33 in Finland and 28.2 in Norway), and lower in Western Europe (3.8 in Greece and 5.7 in Italy) and Japan (10.1). Fairly high rates are also found in New Zealand (39.9) and Australia (27.3), while rates for male youth are around average in the U.S. (21.9) and Canada (24.7). Suicide among female youth shows a similar trend, with higher rates in Eastern Europe (10.6 in Estonia and 6.7 in the Russian federation) and Northern Europe (6.7 in Sweden and 5.2 in Norway), and lower in Western Europe (0.8 in Greece and 2.3 in the
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United Kingdom and Japan (4.4). Rates in Australia (5.6), New Zealand (6.2), and Canada (6.0) tend to be above average while the rate for females in the U.S. (3.8) is below average. While youth suicide data for developing countries are largely unavailable, one recent study reported a surprisingly high suicide rate of 148 per 100,000 for females 15–19 years of age in Tamil Nadu in Southern India. Notably, young women in Tamil Nadu were much more likely to commit suicide than young men—the reverse of most of the rest of the world.
schools may be better positioned to help students who are dealing with depression since families may feel more comfortable seeking assistance in school settings than from mental health facilities. While teachers and even some mental health professionals are hesitant to diagnose a young person as depressed, for fear that the ‘‘label’’ will stigmatize a child, a valid diagnosis is essential to treat the individual effectively.
Importance of School Settings in Prevention, Identification, and Treatment
Adolescent suicide prevention involves education to alert students and the larger community to the problem of teen suicidal behavior and its associated risk factors. Education can be delivered in health classes, by the school nurse, school psychologist, guidance counselor, or outside speakers. In addition to discussing the risk factors for teen suicide, education efforts should focus on encouraging youth to inform teachers, parents, or other adults when they suspect a peer is suicidal. This is because youth often mistakenly protect a suicidal peer by maintaining secrecy. Interventions aimed at suicidal students should focus on protecting and assisting the student in distress. Post suicide intervention should occur immediately following a suicide in the school community, with a focus on helping students understand and process their feelings about the death of a peer. Schools should have a student suicide protocol in place involving teachers, staff, parents, students, and administration, with detailed plans and clear lines of communication.
As a primary arena for social and emotional development, healthy school environments can play an important preventive role in limiting childhood depression. Students at risk for depression can be helped to avoid this disorder through developing effective problem-solving skills, appropriate social skills,high self-esteem, and positive expectations for the future. This affords teachers and other educators with a unique opportunity to nurture and encourage these protective factors in their students. Studies have found that students who have relationships with at least one supportive adult, including teachers and other school officials, are better fortified against depression. Additionally, social support within a peer group can help a student cope with depression. Thus, schools are in a unique position to foster helping relationships by promoting friendships among classmates. Since academic performance among students of all ages tends to suffer at the onset of depression, the school environment can serve as a setting for early identification and referral. Teachers may be the first to notice deterioration in academic performance, frequent absences or tardiness, declining grades, or reluctance to participate in classroom activities. School-based mental health professionals are able to observe students in a variety of educational settings, making these clinicians more likely to accurately diagnose depressive disorders. Schools with on-site mental health resources often greatly reduce the need for special education programs through their ability to promote early recognition and treatment. In communities where mental health problems are highly stigmatized,
Dealing with Teenage Suicide in School Settings
Treatment for Childhood and Adolescent Depression Depression in both children and adolescents can be treated effectively using psychological therapies, education of the patient and family, and sometimes pharmacotherapy. A multipronged approach is often helpful in which individual and family therapy are accompanied by school counseling. Therapies successfully used with this population include play therapy, cognitive-behavior therapy, supportive therapy, interpersonal therapy, family therapy, group therapy, and psychodynamic therapy. The level of a child’s cognitive and emotional development typically guides clinicians in selecting the most appropriate treatment approach.
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For example, play therapy and parental education might be effective for depressed preschool-aged children, while cognitive-behavior therapy and family therapy might be more appropriate in older children and adolescents. In cognitive-behavior therapy, cognitive approaches help the youth identify and replace negative thought patterns and damaging self-appraisals, while encouraging him or her to use positive coping behaviors instead of ineffective or harmful ones. In pharmacologic treatment, selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) are most commonly used in children and youth because they have fewer toxic side effects than tricyclic antidepressants. However, recent evidence linking use of SSRIs to suicidal thoughts and behavior in children and adolescents, along with inconclusive research on the effectiveness of these medications for children, has called this practice into question. Because long-term data do not exist on antidepressant use in children, especially regarding its effects on the developing brain, many countries have issued ‘‘alerts’’ warning of the toxic side effects and increased risk of suicidal thoughts or behavior among children and youth taking antidepressants. A child’s or adolescent’s doctor and family are in the best position to assess the risks and rewards of prescribing psychotropic medication. A specific plan of care depends upon the child or youth’s unique circumstances, as well as the severity and duration of the depression.
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Suggested Reading Boyd, C. P., Kostanski, M., Gullone, E., Ollendick, T. H., & Shek, D. T. (2000). Prevalence of anxiety and depression in Australian adolescents: Comparisons with worldwide data. The Journal of General Psychology, 161(4), 479–492. Louters, L. L. (2004). Don’t overlook childhood depression. Journal of the American Academy of Physician Assistants, 17(9), 18–24. Roberts, R. E., Roberts, C. R., & Chen, R. (1997). Ethnocultural difference in prevalence of adolescent depression. American Journal of Community Psychology, 25(1), 95–110.
Suggested Resources HealthyPlace.com—http://www.healthyplace.com/Communities/ Depression/toc.asp#children: This extensive website offers in depth information about the characteristics, assessment, and prevention of depression in children and adolescents. It includes information regarding talking to children about the disorder, links to magazine articles, and possible treatment methods. National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH)—http://www.nimh.nih. gov/HealthInformation/depchildmenu.cfm: The NIMH hosts the informative page, Depression in Children and Adolescents, which includes basic depression guidelines as well as helpful information about antidepressant medications for children and adolescents. Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA)—http://www.nimh.nih.gov/HealthInformation/dep childmenu.cfm: SAMHSA’s on-line National Mental Health Information Center offers basic information through a question and answer format about major depression in children and adolescents.
Conclusion and Implications The evidence suggests that depression has a profound impact on children and adolescents. The mental, emotional, and behavioral facets of the disorder impair behavioral, social, and intellectual functioning. Perhaps because the disorder’s risk factors vary as widely as its symptoms, parents and teachers often struggle to recognize and deal with depression in their offspring and students. It is important to remember, however, that school-based prevention efforts are effective in this age group, and that early identification and appropriate treatment are successful in returning children and youth to happy, productive lives. See also: > Grief counseling ; > Self-esteem; > Suicide
Desegregation Jennifer Nyeste
Desegregation can be described as the process of ending, or breaking down imposed racial segregation. Conversely, the process of segregation refers to imposed separation or isolation on a race from the rest of the population at large. Historically in the Unites States (U.S.), tension has existed with regard to segregated versus desegregated communities. Since these concepts have such a long history, they are said to be embedded into the fabric of American society, making the fight for equality a very challenging feat. Desegregation is also associated with
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the American education system, and much of the legislation and controversy on desegregation revolves very specifically around desegregation of public schools. There have been numerous monumental court cases that have challenged the old ideologies of segregation, while paving the new way for civil rights in the U.S. Desegregation in the U.S. was a major focus of the civil rights movement, and was and has continued to be a controversial issue. Many go so far as to argue that America has taken steps backward toward a less desegregated society, more so than 30 years ago. This process is referred to as resegregation. One of the major goals of the civil rights movement in the U.S. was to desegregate and racially integrate society by means of legal precedent. Racial integration and desegregation, although similar and used sometimes interchangeably, have notable differences. Racial integration defines the larger picture of desegregation, as desegregation is largely a legal matter. The concept of desegregation seeks to accomplish the removal of legal discrimination on the basis of race. Integration is a continual process of achieving and maintaining cooperative association in which people share compatible values and goals. In essence, the goal was to integrate society, and desegregation of the classroom was to be the biggest agent of change.
Monumental Court Decisions The landmark Supreme Court decision, Brown v. Board of Education in 1954 is upheld as the single most important court decision in the history of American education. It overturned a previous court decision Plessy v. Ferguson that established that separate but equal school systems were a legally acceptable means of providing a decent and fair education to minority students. Brown v. Board of Education became the catalyst for desegregation in America. The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) argued that Black schools were inferior to White schools, and that there were poor physical conditions and limited resources available to them. The Brown decision established that segregated schools were not equal at all, and mandated that all public schools be desegregated across the U.S. with all deliberate speed. While Brown v. Board of Education was a great feat in the fight for equal rights for people of color, the case itself did not abolish segregation, nor did it eradicate the long-term effects of school segrega-
tion and exclusion. The law also did not call for a specific time frame to implement the desegregation of public schools. This was a whole separate struggle in the fight for desegregation of schools.
Implementing Desegregation Policy Brown v. Board of Education of 1954 only mandated desegregation in theory. It was a whole other challenge to implement the policy. One of the remedies to achieve racial or economic integration in U.S. public schools was to implement desegregation busing, or forced busing. Busing can be described as the transportation of children of color to schools outside their area of residence in an effort to integrate predominately White suburban schools. The court decision Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Education (1970) was one of the first attempts to implement a large-scale urban desegregation plan. Swann called for district-wide desegregation and allowed for the use of busing to achieve integration. Critics of forced busing feared that racially integrating schools would decrease the quality of the educational system and compromise students’ education. Some families of bused students were angered because busing often caused hardships with transportation for extracurricular activities and complications when students’ siblings were in other schools at opposite ends of the city. Some of those who felt uneasy about busing moved to predominantly White suburbs to avoid having to deal with busing, causing a decline in population of many large cities. Still there were other families who did support busing for various reasons. Some realized the opportunity that busing might pose for their children’s education, others could not afford to leave city life to relocate to the suburbs, while to some, moving to the suburbs would have meant exposure to harsh racial tension.
Desegregation Today The U.S., though long past Brown v. Board of Education (1954), continues to defend desegregation in the context of equal education. While research shows that African American pupils tend to perform lower on achievement and intelligence tests than do White pupils, there is no evidence to establish inherent superiority or inferiority of either race. What research does
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suggest, however, is that the academic success of children across racial groups correlates with their backgrounds. To this end, African American children of educated parents with cultural and economic advantages tend to learn and achieve as White children from such homes do. There is also evidence that says African American children living in impoverished conditions tend to achieve in school as White children from impoverished conditions do. Other research shows that the high school and college completion rates for African Americans have improved to an all time high of 79% and 17%, respectively. It is important to note, however, that these statistics still lag behind those of Whites with an 88% high school completion rate and 28% college graduation rate. Since colleges were desegregated as a result of a 1972 court decision, still only 12% of African Americans enrolled in traditionally White schools. A vast majority of African American pupils choose to attend historically Black colleges and universities. These statistics worry many that America is taking one step away from the desegregated school system and society that individuals fight to achieve and maintain over the last 50 years. Latino and Asian students were often lumped together with ‘‘equal opportunity’’ programs and ideologies, but realistically, there were many disparities facing Latino and Asian communities that went unaddressed throughout the civil rights movement and desegregating communities. It was only recently that bilingual education became an issue in the midst of equal opportunities, as Latinos and Asians in the U.S. often fell off the radar or between the cracks of the desegregated system. Resources and policies often focused on the integration of Blacks and Whites in America, ignoring the isolation revolved around language limitations. The early 1970’s started the movement toward desegregating predominately White and overwhelmingly Latino school districts. It wasn’t until the supreme courts ruling in Lau v. Nichols (1974) that basic English skills were deemed fundamental to the opportunity of a public education. This ensured that Limited English Proficient (LEP) students received the same opportunities as their English-speaking peers. However, huge gaps in achievement continue. Latinos are far less likely to graduate from high school or college, 57% and 11% respectively. These numbers lag well behind that of their African American and White peers. Language continues to be the most prevalent barrier in education for Asian students, as research has shown that 67% of Asian high school
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students remain LEP through their junior and senior years of high school, compared to only 43% of Latino students. With the continuation of immigration, mainly from Spanish speaking and Asian countries, the issues surrounding equal education continues to grow. See also: > Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka; School buses; > Limited English proficiency; > Multicultural education; > Plessy v. Ferguson
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Suggested Reading Blanchett, W. J., Mumford, V., & Beachum, F. (2005). Urban school failure and disproportionality in a post-Brown era: Benign neglect of the constitutional rights of students of color. Remedial Special Education, 26(2), 70–81. Pritchy, Smith, G. (2004). Desegregation and resegregation after Brown: Implications for multicultural teacher education. Multicultural Perspectives, 6(4), 26–32. Rumberger, R. W., & Palardy, G. J. (2005). Does segregation still matter? The impact of student composition on academic achievement in high school. Teachers College Record, 107(9), 1999–2045.
Suggested Resources Civil Rights Coalition—http://www.civilrights.org: This website offers information on research, campaigns, conferences, and news on civil rights issues. They have an immense library of historical data, and up to the minute updates on current civil rights issues. National Education Association (NEA)—http://www.nea.org: NEA is a volunteer-based organization supported by a network of staff at the local, state, and national level. This organization has a long history of advocating for its members, America’s children, and public schools. This website offers information on current and past issues in education. They provide a myriad of resources for parents, communities, and educators that range from workshops to fundraisers.
Desensitization Jennifer Davie . Theodore J Christ
Desensitization is a therapeutic procedure that is often used to reduce or eliminate undesirable cognitive or emotional responses such as irrational thoughts or
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fears that impede daily functioning. Common examples of desensitization include irrational fears of flying, public speaking, insects, or snakes. Irrational thoughts and fears may be automatic responses to particular stimuli. The goal of desensitization is to reduce or eliminate the association between the stimulus and a person’s maladaptive automatic response. Approaches to desensitization include systematic desensitization, graded real-life practice, confrontive exposure, and modeling.
Respondent Conditioning The association between a stimulus and maladaptive automatic response is often established by respondent conditioning. Respondent conditioning is a mechanism whereby a previously neutral stimulus is conditioned to elicit an automatic response. Pavlov’s dog serves as one well-known example. Here the neutral stimulus of a bell’s ring was presented to the dog just prior to the presentation of the meat stimulus. A dog naturally salivates at the presentation of meat without prior conditioning. Following repeated expose of the stimulus pair, the dog began to salivate upon the ringing of the bell only. The previously neutral stimulus of the bell was thereby established as a conditioned stimulus that elicited salivation. The dog did not choose to salivate upon the ringing of a bell but the response was automatic. Many cognitive and emotional responses occur automatically as a function of environmental stimuli. Respondent conditioning can function to establish automatic responses when an organism is repeatedly exposed to stimulus pairs. This mechanism is also likely to function in the case of either intensely traumatic or joyful events. The case of Little Albert is another classic example of respondent conditioning. Albert was an 11-month-old boy whose fears were conditioned within an experimental setting. Albert was exposed to a variety of stimuli. Among them were a white rat and a white rabbit. Albert’s responses were generally positive and typical of a young child. The rat and rabbit were neutral stimuli and did not elicit a fear response. The rat was subsequently paired with loud noises that were naturally startling and scary to the young boy. Subsequent to repeated pairings, the rat elicited a fear response when presented to Albert. The rat was established as conditioned stimulus. Albert generalized his fear to other white objects including the white rabbit, a white mask, and cotton balls. Albert was sensitized to respond fearfully when presented with a rat or other small white fluffy objects.
The case of Little Albert illustrates how respondent conditioning functions to establish automatic cognitive and emotional responses. Such conditioning does not have to occur through direct contact with objects or stimulus. An automatic conditioned response can be established indirectly by observing others, watching television, reading, or listening to stories. A person might come to fear the neighbor’s dog after they observe or hear stories about the dog’s aggression. Respondent conditioning operates within all species of animal. Although it is a beneficial learning mechanism, respondent conditioning can also function to establish maladaptive responses.
Systematic Desensitization Systematic desensitization is a therapeutic technique used to reduce or eliminate a maladaptive or undesirable cognitive or emotional response. The technique typically includes visualization and relaxation training. The client generates a list of stimuli or situations that provoke successively more intense levels of a response. This is typically described as a fear or anxiety hierarchy (usually totaling 12–20 levels). For example, if a person had an irrational fear of snakes then the hierarchy might begin with a snake in the woods outside of the person’s house, immediately outside their door then followed by other intermediate levels until the client is holding a snake. The client visualizes each situation on the hierarchy while engaged in a deep relaxation. As the client’s anxiety about one situation diminishes, the client moves up the hierarchy to visualize the next, more intense anxietyproducing situation. Relaxation can be accomplished using a variety of training techniques. For instance, individuals might systematically tense and relax different muscle groups. The treatment concludes once the final and most intense anxiety-producing situation no longer causes distress. The conditioned fear response is replaced with a relaxation response.
Graduated Real-Life Practice Graduated real-life practice, or graded practice, is similar to systematic desensitization in that it also employs a hierarchy of anxiety-inducing situations. However, in graded practice, people are gradually exposed to their fears in the real world (in vivo) so that the actual stimulus is used in place of visualization. This process
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can be more appropriate for children than systematic desensitization, especially those who are too young to produce complex mental imagery. If this method were to be used with the person who feared snakes, the person could first be in the same building as a caged snake that they knew the location of but could not see, then they could look at a snake in a cage across a room, then stand next to the cage, until they could actually hold the snake. In this method, repeated presentations of the conditioned stimulus (the snake) without the unconditioned stimulus (pain) should extinguish the conditioned response (fear). This technique can be paired with systematic desensitization so that the situations can first be visualized while relaxing before a person actually faces their fears in vivo.
Confrontive Exposure Confrontive exposure (also called flooding) is quite different than the step-by-step methods of desensitization described above. Though perhaps less enjoyable to experience than systematic desensitization, confrontive exposure is a comparably effective means of desensitization. In confrontive exposure, the hierarchy is eliminated, and the person must directly experience their most feared situation either by imagining it (known as implosive therapy or imaginal flooding) or exposure in vivo. The duration and number of exposures varies depending on the intensity of the person’s anxiety. Using the snake example, the phobic person might be exposed to a snake that was out of a cage that was slithering on and around them on the first session while being instructed to stay where they are. By confronting their worst fear, the goal is for the person to become freed of their phobia. Using this technique, prolonged and/or repeated presentations of the conditioned stimulus (the snake) without the unconditioned stimulus (pain) should extinguish the conditioned response (fear). However, confrontive exposure is also more risky because, if done incorrectly, it can increase a person’s sensitivity to the feared object or situation. This could occur, for example, if the person ran quickly out of the room with the snake before they had succeeded in decreasing their anxiety, therefore pairing more aversive consequences with the snake. Due to this potential consequence, consent should always be obtained before using confrontive exposure techniques, and such techniques should be used with caution.
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Modeling Modeling involves watching someone else acting in a positive manner while interacting with an object or participating in a situation that the person fears. This procedure works effectively with both children and adults. Modeling can be done in person or by watching videos, and it also allows for the use of an anxiety hierarchy, though it is not necessary. For instance, a person afraid of snakes could watch a video with a group of people calmly handling or playing with a snake without experiencing any adverse consequences. This technique is most beneficial when images in the video (or model) closely approximate what the person would actually experience if he or she were to confront the fear. In a modeling variation called participant modeling, the phobic person imitates the actions of another person in a step-by-step manner in vivo using an anxiety hierarchy. In modeling procedures, repeated presentations of the conditioned stimulus (the snake) being modeled without the occurrence of the unconditioned stimulus (pain) should extinguish the conditioned response (fear). See also: > Anxiety; > Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) ; > School counselor ; > School psychologist
Suggested Reading Deffenbacher, J. L., & Suinn, R. M. (1988). Systematic desensitization and the reduction of anxiety. The Counseling Psychologist, 16(1), 9–30. Thorpe, G. L., & Olson S. L. (1997). Behavior therapy: Concepts, procedures, and applications (2nd ed.). Boston, MA: Allyn and Bacon. Wolpe, J. (1992). The practice of behavior therapy (4th ed.). Boston, MA: Allyn and Bacon.
Suggested Resources Desensitization—http://www.csulb.edu/-tstevens/Desensit.htm: This website focuses on various aspects of desensitization such as anxiety hierarchies and deep muscle relaxation. Relaxation and Desensitization Scripts—http://clcpages.clcillinois. edu/home/cou052/relaxscript.html: The scripts available on this website can be used to take practitioners through the desensitization process word.
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Disasters and disaster prevention
Disasters and Disaster Prevention Liliana Lo´pez Levi
A disaster, according to the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) is ‘‘an occurrence of a natural catastrophe, technological accident, or human caused event that has resulted in severe property damage, deaths, and/or multiple injuries.’’ Throughout history millions of people have died, been injured, and lost property due to disaster. Statistics provide an understanding of the dimension of the problem, however, numbers say little about their significance due to the breaking of social institutions and relationships, the destruction of potential futures and the separation of families. Earthquakes, floods, hurricanes, tornados, tsunamis, droughts, volcanoes and fires, among others, have caused damage to human lives, property, and social organization for centuries. Although there is a tendency to associate tragedy with natural forces, a natural phenomenon is not enough to make a disaster. This leads to the distinction between natural phenomenon and disaster. If there is no effect on people’s lives and economy, for instance, a tornado occurring in the middle of a plain or a hurricane in the sea where no population can be found, then there is no disaster. A natural phenomenon is a manifestation of nature such as rain, wind, waves, earthquakes, or volcanic eruptions. A disaster takes place when this is combined with certain environmental, demographic, economic, cultural, or political conditions that lead to social damage that affects people, possessions, employment, institutions, social organizations, and/or their natural or cultural heritage. The event that leads to a hazard or potential loss, damage, injury, or death situation can be of a natural or human origin. Examples of natural phenomena that can produce a calamity are earthquakes, hurricanes, tornadoes, volcanoes, tsunamis, floods, droughts, desertification, deforestation, heat, fires, epidemics, landslides, mudslides, thunderstorms, tsunamis, and winter storms. The environmental hazards that have caused more deaths are floods, tropical storms, earthquakes, and droughts. Examples of human caused events are hazardous material spills, accidents, explosions, wars, terrorism, and fires.
When the disaster exceeds the response capability of a local jurisdiction and requires that national authorities or international groups get involved, the result is a large scale disaster. Hazard is the event that has the potential to threaten human life, health, and properties. Disaster is the realization of such hazard. After the event itself, a series of phases occurs. The first is the emergency stage, just after the event, when everything is in chaos and secondary disasters occur, such as fires. Work must be done immediately to save lives, rescue trapped or injured people, protect property from further damage and avoid a large scale disaster. Public transportation and services can be interrupted. The second phase occurs when emergency groups work to clear and remove debris and temporarily restore essential public facilities and services. Society, firemen, medical groups, rescuers, and even the army take action to face the situation. Local, state, or federal governments assess the damage and implement suggested strategies. Recovery is the next phase, when normal conditions are reestablished and people regain control of their everyday lives. This is followed by restoration where reconstruction of the area may be needed or change the site where the community is established. Disasters have been traditionally considered as extreme events that disrupt everyday life. It is important to note, however, that the problem is not only due to the occurrence of the sudden phenomena, but can also relate to potential risk factors present before the event occurred. Here it is important to consider vulnerable conditions for a given community. A family who builds a house in a flood or landslide area, for instance, even if they do so years before something happens, risks the potential for future hazard. A disaster starts with everyday practices and decisions, even if the people involved had no other choices. Potential damage is constructed with land use, but also with socioeconomic, historic, cultural, and political factors. Vulnerability refers to the susceptibility that people have to be affected by a natural, technological, or human caused event, as well as their capabilities to recover from the damage. In a disaster caused by a volcanic eruption, a town close to the volcano has more probability of being destroyed than one that is situated farther away. However, if the community that lives closer to the volcano has an effective alert system, a better road, more vehicles, better organization and
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more social relations, than the town that is farther away, that could make them less vulnerable. If a member of that community has his or her house insured, money in the bank, family or friends elsewhere to offer shelter and if the disaster does not affect employment, he or she will recover easier than someone without access to such resources. In general terms, children, elderly people, people with handicap, immigrants, and people who speak another language are more vulnerable. Resilience is an important factor that has helped explain recovery from traumatic events. Among the thing that can favor the capability of a social group to return to normal conditions is the access of community members to economic resources such as insurance, savings, land property; social resources such as experience, organization, communitarian participation; and organizational and technical resources such as basic security elements, knowledge, and technical support, among others. But returning to normal conditions should not be the only aim. A full recovery should also consider building new conditions that are less vulnerable and aim to protect against future harm. While many disasters cannot be avoided, there are things a society can do to lessen the loss of life and property damage that result. A first step is to conduct a hazard assessment. To determine the vulnerability of a community, hazard assessments identify events, such as floods, tornados, hurricanes, hazardous spills, and fires that can take place in the region. The source of the problem has to be identified as well as the area that can be affected. Population characteristics have to be evaluated in terms of demographic and economic characteristics as well as perception, experience, knowledge and capability to organize. Key facilities and services, such as hospitals, fire departments, police stations, communication and transportation networks, water, electricity and food supply systems, and possible shelter places must be identified. Next plans have to be made, carried out, and tested. The people involved have to be well informed and an effective communication system has to be established. The basic aim of the hazard assessment is to protect communities, people’s lives and properties. To reduce damage or loss in a disaster a community has to know its strengths and weaknesses, establish emergency procedures, have reliable communication systems, reinforce social bounds and networks, and develop an alert system. Government participation is important, but it will be
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more effective with a well organized, participating community. See also: > Grief counseling; crisis response
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Suggested Resources Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA)—http://www. fema.gov/: The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) is part of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS). Its mission is to lead in efforts to prepare the nation for hazards and effectively manage federal response and recovery efforts following any national incident. FEMA also initiates proactive mitigation activities, trains first responders, and manages the National Flood Insurance Program and the U.S. Fire Administration. The website offers information on hazards, risks, and disasters in the U.S. EM-DAT: the International Disaster Database—http://www. em-dat.net/index.htm: This website offers a specialized, validated database on disasters throughout the world, with the aim to facilitate preparedness, reduce vulnerability to disasters, and improve disaster management.
Discipline Robert W Burke
As used among teachers, administrators, and other personnel in pre-kindergarten–twelfth grade (PK-12) schools the word ‘‘discipline’’ is seldom used as a stand-alone term; instead, educators have universally adopted the broader, more encompassing phrase ‘‘classroom management and discipline’’ to examine and explain aspects of their work concerned with overt student behavior and maintenance of routine school or classroom operations. The over-arching term ‘‘classroom management and discipline’’ is useful as it conveys the broad scope of educators’ roles and responsibilities while simultaneously highlighting the inter-connectedness of the classroom as a physical and social context and student behaviors occurring within that milieu. Hence, most educators use the term ‘‘classroom management’’ to refer to their role in designing the physical arrangement of a classroom as well as the establishment of routine procedures and patterns of indivi-
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dual and group functioning. In contrast, however, are the divergent interpretations about the meanings associated with the word ‘‘discipline,’’ derived from the Latin ‘‘discipulus’’ meaning a student of another person’s teaching or modeling. For some contemporary educators, ‘‘discipline’’ carries a positive connotation, in that it is regarded as both a necessary means to educate students as well as a desirable outcome of their education. For others, however, ‘‘discipline’’ is a wholly negative term that implies any attempt by an adult to control or change a child’s behavior by use of any allowable means (including corporal punishment). For these educators, the term ‘‘guidance’’ more accurately conveys the mutually respectful, developmentally appropriate approach they advocate. Finally, in the recent past there has been an increased use of the term ‘‘positive discipline’’ to indicate educators’ quest for approaches that promote students’ responsible behavior without resorting to intimidation and punishment.
Models of Discipline and Classroom Management The advent of comprehensive, coherent models of classroom management and discipline did not appear until the early 1950s. Since that time about a dozen different models have been advanced—nearly all of which were designed by psychiatrists and psychologists. Each model is distinguishable either by its underlying theoretical foundation (e.g.., Behaviorist, Humanistic) or by its focus on certain features (e.g., observable individual student behavior, group behavior underlying causes of student behavior). Among school personnel, the following developers of discipline and management models have had varying degrees of impact on school and classroom practices throughout the United States (U.S.).
Authors Fritz Redl and William Wattenberg wrote in the 1950s and emphasized primacy of group structure and dynamics. They also focused on teachers’ understanding and group behavior and knowing how to direct it. Neo-Skinnerians were a school of thought in the 1960s that focused on the principles of behavior shaping developed by B. F. Skinner. A key focus here was on teachers’ use of behavior modification to reinforce desired behaviors.
In the 1970s, Jacob Kounin analyzed relationships between certain behaviors of teachers and consequent behaviors of students. This approach identified a core set of teacher behaviors shown to improve student engagement. Haim Ginott developed another approach in the 1970s that stressed the centrality of teacher-student communication. This author developed a framework for using congruent communication techniques that respect students’ feelings and invites cooperation. Rudolf Dreikurs, another person who developed a model in the 1970s, was the first to explore the underlying causes of student misbehavior. This model emphasizes the teacher’s creation of a democratic classroom and recognition of every student’s need for belonging. In the 1980s, Lee Canter created a discipline system called Assertive Discipline. The emphasis of this model is on establishing the teacher’s right to teach and the students’ right to learn in a classroom free from disruption. Also in the 1980s, Fredric Jones developed the Positive Classroom Discipline Model. This model highlights the use of teachers’ nonverbal communication and seeks to enhance student development of self-control. Thomas Gordon developed the Teacher Effectiveness Training Model in the 1980s with a focus on fostering teacher influence such that students are motivated to internally generate their own self-control. In the 1990s William Glasser created the Quality School Approach with an emphasis on motivating students by responding to their needs for belonging, power, fun, and freedom. Also in the 1990s, Richard Curwin and Allen Mendler designed the Discipline through Dignity and Hope Model with a focus on improving chronically misbehaving students while preserving their dignity.
Although other variations to classroom management and discipline exist, the ten models highlighted above constitute the predominant values, core beliefs, and theoretical frameworks used in most PK-12 schools today. It should be noted, however, that in professional preparation programs across the U.S., pre-service teachers may or may not be exposed to coherent courses
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of study that address classroom management and discipline. See also: > Classroom management; > Reinforcement
Suggested Reading Charles, C. M. (2004). Building classroom discipline, (8th ed.). Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley.
Discrimination Kristina Metz
Discrimination is the disproportionate distribution of goods, resources, and/or services based upon an individual’s group membership. Discriminatory acts are committed in many forms, including: overt or blatant discrimination; covert or hidden discrimination; intentional, when an individual purposely commits a discriminatory act; and unintentional, when an individual unconsciously commits a discriminatory act. The most prevalent types of discrimination are based upon race, religion, sex, sexual orientation, national origin, disability, ethnicity, and age. Governments worldwide prohibit discrimination based upon the former categories and enforce the banning of discrimination through civil rights legislation, equal opportunity laws, and institutionalized policies of affirmative action. Although overt discrimination has significantly decreased since the onset of these laws and legislation acts, covert discrimination, whether intentional or unintentional, is still readily present throughout societies worldwide, including within educational systems. It is important to note that although prejudice and discrimination are similar, they are not the same. Prejudice consists of the attitudes and beliefs an individual uses to prejudge an individual or group, whereas discrimination is an act or a behavior based upon prejudicial beliefs, which often has a negative impact upon the prejudged individual.
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Discrimination in Schools Discrimination in school systems is often covert and, therefore, difficult to record and nearly impossible to prove. Despite the lack of evidence of discriminatory acts, it is not hard to believe that unfair treatment occurs because prejudicial attitudes do not simply remain at the doorstep of a work place. These prejudicial attitudes easily transition into forms of discrimination when a teacher, school official, or student treats one child differently than another based upon preconceived biased notions. In 2000, the United States (U.S.) Department of Education Office of Civil Rights reported that 5,000 complaints of discrimination were filed within school systems and that 70% of these filed complaints were on behalf of elementary and secondary school students. These complaints included, but were not limited to, activities that violated religious beliefs, such as: forced participation in music class during the Muslim religious observation Ramadan, which prohibits celebratory rituals; inappropriate placing of children with special needs; lack of school staff involvement in prohibiting discriminatory slurs and hate acts on school grounds; and claims of unfair treatment based upon race, sexuality, learning capacity, and gender. These discriminatory acts not only cause a separation and/or gap between school children, but can hurt a child’s academic, cognitive, social, and emotional development. Additionally, negative attitudes towards the child can be internalized and, in turn, severely damage a child’s self-esteem. The following covers some of the most prevalent types of discrimination in school systems: racial, sex, sexual orientation, and disability. Although other types of discrimination are present in school systems, such as religious, national origin, and socioeconomic status, perhaps because of the difficulty of proving covert discrimination, there is little research and knowledge about these supplementary forms.
Racial Discrimination Racial discrimination refers to unequal treatment based upon an individual’s racial group. There are various forms of racial discrimination, including traditional and symbolic. Traditional or old-fashioned racism is blatant, unequal treatment based upon an individual’s race. Although traditional racism occurred
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frequently in past eras of slavery and racial segregation, it has significantly decreased because of the legislation and civil rights laws that ban racial discrimination. Symbolic racism is the hidden and often unintentional unequal treatment of an individual or group based upon race. This form of racial discrimination is often a result of preconceived notions that unknowingly affect how individuals view, treat, and interact with individuals of a particular race or ethnicity. Although traditional racism is rare in current society, residual effects still remain from past prejudicial eras in the form of symbolic racism. Despite U.S. efforts to stop racial discrimination and segregation, it is still prevalent in the educational system. Although racial segregation in school systems was banned after Brown v. Board of Education (1954) deemed segregation ‘‘separate, but not equal,’’ it still exists in public school systems. Poor, urban areas are overwhelmingly filled with families of color. Thus, public schools in low-income districts, that have less tax revenue to support the school system, are disproportionately filled with students of color. Simply put, individuals living in low-income communities generally go to low-income schools. For instance, African American and Latino American youth account for 90% of the student population in 60% of schools deemed low-income by the U.S. government. This overwhelmingly high concentration of children of color in poor, urban communities that attend low-income public schools not only results in racial segregation in the school systems, but also can be viewed as a form of racial discrimination as low-income school systems often lack the resources needed to contribute to academic success. In addition to the indirect racial segregation of schools, children of color also face the hurdle of biased testing. Approximately 250 million tests are given in the U.S. each year. These achievement and academic tests are used as measures to reduce or increase teachers’ salaries and expenditure levels for public education support. Standardized academic tests are viewed as a tool to allocate national and state funds, rewarding those school systems that are meeting the curriculum requirements with more money than their counterpart schools with poor test scores. This funding system is meant to be an incentive for school employees to meet requirements and to support thriving school systems. Schools that score at or above the national standard, which is created by the federal and state governments, will receive funding. In con-
trast, those that fall below the standard will receive little to no funding. Despite an impoverished learning environment due to lack of resources, students from low-income families are held to the same standard as their affluent counterparts. Children are expected to score at or above the mean on achievement tests for their school system and student body to receive the funding needed to obtain educational resources and employ qualified teachers. Problematically, research shows that achievement tests are correlated with socioeconomic status and are biased toward wealth, education levels, linguistic dexterity, and vocabulary breadth, which are all highly inter-correlated. These test biases result in a large portion of children of color from low-income families being unable to meet the testing requirements that allocate school funding. For instance, 75% of African Americans score lower than their White American counterparts on most standardized tests. They consistently score lower than their White American counterparts on vocabulary, reading, mathematics tests, and tests that are meant to measure scholastic achievement and intelligence. Discrepancies in test scores between African Americans and White Americans further widen the educational gap because many schools in low-income neighborhoods receive lower scores and, therefore, do not receive funding. The result of this practice is often that a school with fewer resources also receives less educational funding, thus perpetuating the cycle of fewer resources in low-income schools. In addition to the educational gap being perpetuated through unfair testing and funding strategies, children of color also face personal biases from teachers and school systems. At 90%, White individuals disproportionately account for most of the prominent school staff (e.g., principles, directors, teachers) whereas children of color often constitute up to 40% of the school population. This unequal proportion often results in conflicts and misunderstandings of cultural values, customs, and learning styles between school personnel and students of color. Although White teachers may not intentionally discriminate against a student of color, they may have preconceived notions about a student’s social or academic development owing to their racial/ethnic background. For example, a teacher may perceive a Spanish-speaking student who has not assimilated to the English language as less intelligent simply because he or she cannot readily converse with non-Spanish
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speaking classmates or school faculty. Because of this bias, English language learners are significantly overrepresented in special education classes. Additionally, research consistently shows that Latino students more frequently report being unfairly graded owing to race and/or ethnicity, are discouraged from joining advanced-level classes, disciplined wrongly by teachers, and cite teacher discrimination as their top reason for disengagement from school. Although the discriminatory acts may not be intentional, the perception of unfair treatment based upon one’s race is associated with lower self-esteem, decreased academic motivation, increased racial mistrust, problem behaviors, greater anger, and heightened depressive symptoms.
Sex Discrimination Although women’s educational rights have vastly improved over the past century, an educational gap between the sexes still exists. In the early years of education (i.e., elementary school), girls generally equal or surpass their male counterparts on standardized tests. By high-school graduation, however, females have fallen behind, particularly in the areas of mathematics and science. Some individuals insist that this gap is due to biological discrepancies that result in males excelling at mathematics/spatial abilities whereas women are generally more language orientated. Despite this popular belief, genetics cannot be the sole reason for the gender gap as there are no discrepancies in the mathematics/spatial abilities of males and females in China, a country that requires and encourages each gender to take advanced courses in these areas. Seemingly, the discrepancy is not caused by genetics, but how the sexes are treated differently within the American school system, including how teachers respond to children, the subjects each gender is encouraged to study, and how textbooks or resources portray the involvement of each gender in the subject. Children are treated differently at school because of their gender. For instance, studies have found that teachers, intentionally or unintentionally, treat students differently based upon their sex. Research consistently shows that girls and boys are praised for different reasons (i.e., girls are praised for complying with the rules whereas boys are praised for innovative thinking). In addition, males are more often called upon to answer abstract or complex questions whereas girls on average receive less attention in not only
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mathematics/science, but all subject areas. These seemingly insignificant discrepancies in treatment may be internalized and have a profound effect on student achievement, self-expectations, and self-esteem.
Sexual Orientation Discrimination Despite the fact that approximately 6% of the U.S. student body is gay, lesbian, bisexual, or transgender (GLBT), 75% of U.S. students have no state laws to protect them from harassment and discrimination based upon their sexuality. Despite the fact that 97% of students in public schools report hearing homophobic remarks from peers and witness prejudice attitudes towards GLBTstudents, a large portion of public administrators do not intervene and often ignore the threats and violent acts against this minority group. Such non-reaction may be due to the administrators’ own prejudicial beliefs or the perception that concepts surrounding sexual orientation are a moral and religious issue that should be addressed outside the school system. School administrations’ ambivalence to the mistreatment of GLBT students is severely damaging to their self-esteem, academic achievement, and physical and emotional health. Studies have found that GLBT students are twice as likely as their heterosexual counterparts to be in a physical fight on school grounds and three times as likely to be threatened or injured with a weapon on school grounds. These violent acts are not only physically and emotionally damaging to GLBT students, but also interfere with their academic success. For instance, 19.1% of GLBT students have reported missing school because of safety concerns compared with 5.6% of their heterosexual counterparts. In addition to threats of violence, four out of five GLBT students report they cannot identify an adult who supports and defends their sexual orientation and their personal rights. Threats of violence in combination with a lack of authoritative support have resulted in 28% of GLBT students feeling forced to abandon their education and drop out of school.
Discrimination against Students with Disabilities Approximately 6.6%, or 4.3 million, school-aged children report living with a disability. These disabilities range from mild learning disabilities, such as trouble
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sounding out words or the inability to focus, to severe cognitive impairments, such as mental retardation, or physical impairments, such as multiple sclerosis. Before the 1975 Public Law 94–192: Education for all Handicapped Children Act was passed, there was not a formal process to classify and provide services to children with special needs, nor were children with special needs guaranteed access to special education. Despite improvements in legislation and laws that aim to protect children with special needs, they are still often misclassified and not provided with the services required by law. The process of classification is subjective. Decisions of who to test, what battery test to use, subjectivity in interpreting test responses, and deciding upon the classroom environment in which the child should be taught, can result in misdiagnosis and inappropriate labeling and/or placement. For example, Census figures reveal that African American children are classified with mental retardation and emotional disturbances at 1.5–4 times more often than White children. One might contribute these classification discrepancies to socioeconomic factors because children of color more often live in poverty, which is strongly correlated with poor prenatal care, low birthweight, and other factors that attribute to disabilities. Studies have found a strong positive correlation between socioeconomic status and classification rates for mental retardation of Black children, especially males. Thus, the disproportionate amount of African American children classified with mental retardation is not due to health factors associated with socioeconomic status. In addition to these overwhelmingly disproportionate rates of minority children placed in special education, children of color are twice as likely to be removed from the general education classroom than their White counterparts. These misclassifications can stunt a child’s academic growth by placing him or her in a lower functioning class than needed. Additionally, the mislabeled child may internalize these outside perceptions, resulting in decreased self-esteem, academic motivation, and social interactions.
Conclusion Although laws have been passed that prohibit the unfair treatment of an individual based upon group membership, discrimination still occurs and is prevalent in educational systems. Legislation, such as the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, which is
an amended version of Public Law 94–142, is constantly updated to serve children’s rights better, to reduce discriminatory acts, and to ensure that all children have equal access to education and fair treatment in the school environment. For example, the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act was revised in 2004 for the testing of minority children, stating that English language learners must be tested in their most proficient language. Additionally, programs to promote equal rights and fair treatment of all children have been created and endorsed throughout states and communities. For example, some school districts require their staff to attend seminars and workshops involving the fair, unbiased treatment of all students, whereas other school districts require their students to attend an assembly or take a course about the diversity of race, religion, sexual orientation, mental capacity, and gender to help them better understand and relate to individuals from various backgrounds. Despite efforts in the U.S., children continue to be discriminated against based upon race, sex, sexual orientation, and disability, among other variables. Further research, legislation, and monitoring of school systems can help decrease the discriminatory acts that have the potential to emotionally, cognitively, socially, and academically hinder students. See also: > Prejudice; > Gender bias; > Nondiscriminatory testing
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Suggested Reading Esposito, C. (1999). Learning in urban blight: School climate and its effect on the school performance of urban, minority, lowincome children. School Psychology Review, 28, 365–377. Matuszek, P., & Haskin, C. (1987). Who are the disadvantaged and what should we do for them? The relationship of family variables to achievement and some implications for educational programming. Rural Education and Small Schools. (RC011190.) ERIC Document Reproduction Service No. ED 171 438. Reis, B., & Saewyc, E. (1999). Eighty-Three thousand youth: Selected findings of eight population-based studies as they pertain to anti-gay harassment and the safety and well-being of sexual minority students. Seattle, WA: Safe Schools Coalition of Washington.
Disproportionality in special education
Disproportionality in Special Education Zewelanji N Serpell
Disproportionality in special education has been conceptualized and studied in a variety of ways. In the more global sense, it refers to the over- or underrepresentation of students from particular racial/ethnic groups in special education programs. Disproportionality is also examined in reference to racial/ethnic placement in particular disability categories and/or educational settings. The calculation of disproportion has taken varied forms and sometimes yields contradicting results that make it difficult to utilize the data to shape policy and practice. The more basic approach has been to examine discrepancy between a racial/ethnic group’s membership in special education programs and their percentage in the general school population. Others have relied on a risk ratio calculated by dividing the number of students from a particular racial/ethnic group within a given disability by the total enrollment of that racial group. Yet another approach estimates disproportionality using an odds ratio that defines the extent to which membership in a given racial/ethnic group affects the probability of being identified with a particular disability category or being placed in a particular educational setting. Whichever method is utilized, it is abundantly clear that there exists significant disproportionality in special education in the United States (U.S.) at both the state and national level. The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) includes concrete stipulations requiring states and school districts to ensure children with disabilities have access to appropriate supports and instruction, and that these be provided in the least restrictive contexts. IDEA also mandates nondiscriminatory assessment, identification, and placement of students with disabilities. Hence, students who achieve poorly because of differences related to environmental disadvantage or ethnic, linguistic or racial differences cannot be identified as disabled. The extent to which states and school districts have met these stipulations for all students has been extensively challenged. The issues, however, are far from being simply about falsely identifying minority children without disability. Concern with overrepresentation might be mitigated if it were the case that students benefited from identification and were
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targeted for special services that improved their ability to successfully master the school curriculum. Instead racial/ethnic minorities identified as eligible for special education, particularly African Americans, are excluded from regular education classes and more likely to be placed in restrictive settings, receive inferior or inappropriate services, or fail to receive timely help at all.
Estimating Disproportionality An extensive literature documents persistent and disturbing patterns of disproportionality across disability, gender, and ethnic/racial categories. Disproportionality is not, however, consistently present across disability categories. That is, it is much more prevalent in subjectively determined categories like mental retardation (MR) and emotionally disturbed (ED). It is less prevalent in learning disability (LD) and tends not to be present in the more objectively determined or biologically based disability categories of visual, orthopedic, and hearing impairment. Research indicates that the greatest disparities exist in the categories of MR and ED, with the most striking disproportionality being documented for African American and Native American students. Asian Americans are generally underrepresented in most states and categories. Disproportionality also appears to exist for Latino students, although it is less consistently noted and there is evidence for both underrepresentation and overrepresentation. Recent estimates indicate that African American children are almost three times more likely than White children to be identified as MR and almost twice as likely to be identified as ED. In contrast, Asian/Pacific Islander students are only about twofifths as likely as their White counterparts to be identified as MR and a fifth as likely to be labeled ED.
Accounting for Disproportionality A key question regarding disproportionality in special education is to what it can be attributed. Arguments and related research tend to focus either on sociodemographic factors or factors related to the placement process. The former examine the extent to which biological, social, and environmental factors contribute to early cognitive differences between the racial/ethnic groups that might contribute to discrepancies in the incidence of disability. While com-
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pelling as an argument, research results are largely inconsistent. Some studies indicate a rise in minority placement in special education in high poverty schools, and others show a decrease. While the impact of sociodemographic factors cannot be entirely dismissed, special education placement of minorities is a far more complex phenomenon than suggested by simply linking race and poverty. A good example is Latinos for whom, despite widespread poverty, there is no clear indication of overrepresentation in special education programs or in particular disability categories. Moreover, studies examining the national pattern of disproportionate representation of African Americans in special education demonstrate that even after accounting for environmental factors a significant racial effect remains. Other factors that have been the focus of study are those related to the process by which students are referred for evaluation, deemed eligible for, and placed into special education programs. Among the most frequent reasons for referral to special education are reading difficulties and behavioral problems. The eligibility and the decision making process typically begins in regular education classrooms as these teachers are frequently the most likely and the first to recognize these problems. Given their role in initial screening, much effort has been devoted to deciphering the lens through which teachers make the critical decisions to refer a child for an eligibility assessment. Inappropriate referral or non-referral appears to be rooted in teachers’ perceptions of, and interactions with minority students and their inability to deal with problems they perceive or encounter in the classroom. For example, there are clear differences in the types of behaviors that prompt teachers to refer students of different ethnicities to the office for punishment versus to the school psychologist for assessment. In the 1970s the focus was the second step in the placement process—the assessment conducted by school psychologists. A plethora of papers and studies emerged targeting test bias. For African Americans the question of test bias centered on the validity of IQ tests. Additionally, there was concern with the use of the discrepancy between IQ and achievement to determine disability. That is, given that African American students tended to do poorly on both tests may have an impact on whether African American students were deemed eligible for special education. For students with limited English proficiency, for example, Spanishspeaking students, concern and litigation focused on
the need to test in the student’s primary language or incorporate other indices of ability such as nonverbal and adaptive behavior tests to establish eligibility for special education. Another assessment-related problem to which inappropriate identification has been attributed is the tendency in school contexts to not include parents in the assessment process. The last step in the placement process involves the assignment of a disability label and placement in the educational setting deemed most appropriate for that disability category. Minority students identified as eligible for special education, particularly those of African descent, are much more likely than their White counterparts to be excluded from regular education classes and educated in separate and overly restrictive settings. This is the case despite the previously discussed IDEA mandate that students be placed in the least restrictive setting and included in regular education classrooms to the degree possible. The practice of placing minority children in separate and overly restrictive settings has been attributed to culture and associated biases that influence how teachers view and respond to the behavior of ethnic minority youth.
Responding to Disproportionality Disproportionality in special education has been one of the most significant issues faced by the American public school system and it remains a highly politicized topic. As early as the 1970s it has been the basis for important litigation cases, major research efforts and significant shifts in educational policy. In the 1980s, the Office of Civil Rights was commissioned to conduct a study to determine factors that could account for disproportionality in special education. This effort yielded important information that contributed to IDEA’s requirement that states monitor and make concerted efforts to address disproportionality. States continue to be held accountable, such that they can be held liable if they fail to demonstrate clear efforts to ameliorate disproportionality. In the late 1990s a congressional mandate led the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights to commission the National Research Council to systematically study minority children in special education and gifted and talented programs. The Civil Rights Project at Harvard University also launched a major research effort to better understand racial inequity in special education
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and collated multilevel data to identify the extent of the problem and generate potential explanations and solutions. Decades of work suggest that while strides have been made in the category of mental retardation, racial/ethnic minority overrepresentation in special education persists. Efforts to ameliorate disproportionality have yielded shifts in the categories in which disproportionality exists rather than a substantial reduction in the identification of disability. The question, however, remains whether a reduction in disproportionality should be the goal. That is, reducing disproportionality does not guarantee improved educational experiences for minority children. In fact, it may simply perpetuate the substandard education they have so far received and for whom the system has arguably already failed. See also: > Assessment of culturally diverse children; > Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA); > Multicultural issues in special education
Suggested Reading Coutinho, M. J., & Oswald, D. P. (2000). Disproportionate representation in special education: A synthesis and recommendations. Journal of Child and Family Studies, 9(2), 135–156. Losen, D. & Orfield, G. (Eds.) (2002). Racial inequity in special education. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Education Publishing Group. Skiba, R. J., Poloni-Staudinger, L., Simmons, A. B., Fegging-Azziz, R., & Chung, C. G. (2005). Unproven links: Can poverty explain ethnic disproportionality in special education? Journal of Special Education, 39(3), 130–144.
Suggested Resources The Civil Rights Project at Harvard University—http://www.civilrightsproject.harvard.edu/: This website provides information about the racial inequity project and other civil rights’ related research and advocacy efforts at Harvard University. IDEA Partnership Projects—http://www.ideapractices.org/: This is the official website for the council on exceptional children and provides information regarding IDEA and resources for effective professional practice when working with students with disabilities.
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Distance Learning Julie M Bertel . Christina M Pate
Distance learning is a method of instruction delivered where the instructor and student are separated by distance and/or time. Distance learning was first introduced as a result of the development of the United States (U.S.) Postal Service in the nineteenth Century. This allowed for the development of instructional materials to be delivered to students of various cultures across the country regardless of their geographic location. This trend has continued to develop throughout the twentieth century, particularly in the last few decades as the field of instructional technology has rapidly progressed. Various methods of distance learning have emerged in the fields of traditional education and the workforce. These aim to provide mass education and/or training to interested students and employees from varied and numerous cultural backgrounds. Since the concept of distance learning was introduced, methods for delivering instruction have rapidly changed as the development and use of technology has increased. For example, delivering instruction through correspondence materials was one of the first methods of distance learning, followed by the use of oneway audio instruction via audio cassette tape and two-way audio instruction via telephone. Developing with technology, additional methods of audio–video instruction became available through use of the television, video camera, and two-way audio video. In the last decade, the format for delivering education from a distance has drastically changed since the introduction of two-way interactive video, computer-mediated learning, and video conferencing via satellite and desktop. In addition, the use of webbased/online instruction has become increasingly popular in the last two decades as use of the Internet has become worldwide. Distance learning has many uses. For example, the use of audio and video instruction can be used for individuals with vision and hearing impairments. Furthermore, distance education provides learning opportunities for individuals seeking to gain professional development, continuing education, higher education degrees, and high school credits. Increasingly, distance learning is being utilized as a means to train
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employees quickly and cost effectively in the workforce or as a consultation and/or instructional tool when used through video conferencing. Examples include medical/surgical instruction, psychological consultation, and educational decision-making conferences, among others. There are various advantages to distance learning. First, there are numerous modes of instruction, mentioned previously, that an individual can choose that best suits their learning style and access (or lack thereof) to technology. In addition, instruction is easily accessible to a broad range of students regardless of gender, socioeconomic status (SES), or geography. Recently, developments in technology made it possible to create international communication that brings together students and instructors from different societies, cultures, and experiences for learning. Moreover, distance learning provides flexible instruction available at many times and in many locations. This is particularly advantageous for those living in rural communities and/or for those who lack resources and access to a traditional education. Finally, in some cases, distance learning may be more cost- and time effective than traditional, face-to-face instruction for the learner and instructor. Despite its advantages, distance learning has some limitations. For example, success may be dependent on technology; some individuals lack the resources and/or access to technology or technical/physical issues with technology may provide some barriers to learning. In addition, distance learning requires self-motivation, commitment, and time management skills from students; some students may lack such self-discipline or may have disabilities that require further assistance that may not be provided through distance education. Furthermore, some instructional content may require additional support from community and/or university library resources, and practical experiences that are provided through an online community. Another limitation of distance learning is the lack of face-to-face interaction and miscommunication that may occur as a result. Finally, some types of distance learning limit opportunities for discussion when information is simply disseminated. Overall, inconclusive or contradicting research indicates the need for additional investigation in the area of distance learning. Some comparative studies found no significant difference between learning outcomes based on mode of instruction. Although numerous studies comparing the effectiveness of distance
education to traditional education exist, issues have been raised that question the research design of these studies (i.e., lack of experimental control, lack of random selection assignment of research participants, and failure to account for extraneous variables). Nonetheless, distance education will continue to play a vital role in educating individuals of various backgrounds due to the changing nature of our world. See also: > Education; > Technology
Suggested Reading Dabbagh, N. (2004). Distance learning: Emerging pedagogical issues and learning designs. The Quarterly Review of Distance Education, 5(1), 37–49. Moore, M. G., & Anderson, W. G. (Eds.) (2003). Handbook of distance education. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Saba, F. (2000). Research in distance education: A status report. International Reviews of Research on Open Distance Learning, 1(1), 1–9.
Suggested Resources African Distance Learning Association—http://www.physics.ncat. edu/~michael/adla/mision.html: The African Distance Learning Association (ADLA) provides national and international leadership in the field of distance learning in Africa. ADLA serves as a catalyst for the formation of partnerships between African educators, professionals, and students abroad and in Africa, advocating for the use of distance learning. United States Distance Learning Association—http://www.usdla. org/: The United States Distance Learning Association (USDLA) is a nonprofit organization designed to serve the needs of the distance learning community by providing advocacy, information, networking, and information.
Diversity in Higher Education Marybeth Gasman
Diversity within higher education refers to the inclusion of multiple and varied perspectives as well as the inclusion of individuals representing those perspec-
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tives at all levels within a college or university. Diversity can also refer to the variety of institutional types found within the landscape of higher education. The definition and use of the term diversity has expanded over time. Early on in the history of the Unites States (U.S.), diversity referred to the inclusion of immigrants from various White ethnic groups, but eventually encompassed ethnic and racial minorities as well as gays and lesbians. Prior to the nineteenth century, most U.S. college and university students were White and male. Early efforts to diversify the student body focused on increasing student representation from different genders and socioeconomic status levels. During this period, educational curriculum primarily focused on the classics (religion, philosophy, language, and science) and these subjects were almost exclusively taught by White men using traditional lecture methods. During the nineteenth century, women’s colleges and Black colleges took root, providing education to students who would otherwise be without opportunity. Although these institutions aimed to educate individuals of a specific gender or race, courses were still primarily taught by White men at women’s colleges and White men and women at Black colleges. Initially, these institutions provided an education that was largely vocational and practical (e.g., cooking, cleaning, farming, and sewing) compared to the traditional arts and sciences offered to White male students. Between 1860 and 1954, in most areas of the U.S., students attended segregated colleges and universities. On occasion, African Americans and Latinos were admitted in small numbers to northern institutions but this was rare and often controversial. The federal government legalized segregation beginning with the 1896 Plessy v. Ferguson decision, which proclaimed that separate could, in fact, be equal. Beginning in the late 1930s, with the help of the NAACP, students began to challenge the notion of separate but equal by attempting to gain admission to southern graduate schools. Two particularly important cases were Sipuel v. Board of Regents (1954) and Sweatt v. Painter (1950). Notably, the court declared in these cases that states not only had an obligation to provide graduate education for Blacks and other racial minorities, but that the education must replicate the intellectual level experienced by Whites. In 1954, Brown v. Board of Education struck down Plessy, and, in spite of the fact that Brown was a primary school case, it had a significant impact on higher education. Northern colleges and universities
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complied with the federal desegregation mandates, thereby diversifying their student bodies at a fast pace. Southern colleges and universities were slower to change, but with the help of the federal government, and often under military guard, many southern institutions were eventually desegregated. By the late 1950s, with the ensuing Civil Rights Movement, student activists at colleges and universities across the country demanded that curriculums reflect a diverse viewpoint. In 1964, the federal government passed the Civil Rights Act, providing equal access to public facilities, including state colleges and universities, and banning discrimination in employment and education. Specifically, the Act reinforced the Court’s ruling in Brown v. Board, making it illegal for public college and university students and employees to be discriminated against because of their race, color, sex, national origin, or religion. The Civil Rights Act was the impetus for an influx of racial and ethnic minorities into the nation’s colleges and universities. These new students were not complacent. In the late 1960s and 1970s, they called for women’s studies courses and Black and Latino studies programs. Moreover, they wanted universities to hire female, African American, and Latino faculty members to teach these courses and develop these programs. In 1965, the federal government enacted immigration legislation that removed the restrictive quota system placed on the many immigrants wanting to come to the U.S. This brought an influx of immigrant students into colleges and universities, creating even more student diversity (as well as diversity among the faculty and staff) in the areas of national origin and religion. During the 1970s, institutions of higher education began accepting more varied types of individuals and accepting them in larger numbers. In addition to doors opening at historically White institutions, community colleges expanded and tribal colleges were founded in an effort to educate the nation’s American Indian population. Due to the influx of new students, institutions of higher education were forced to expand their student life offerings, including programs for international students as well as U.S. racial and ethnic minorities. In 1965, publishers of college textbooks began introducing texts that addressed diverse cultures in response to demands from students and organizations such as the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. Textbooks included sections on anthropological and sociological issues related to various people of
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the world. Yet curriculum, by and large, retained a White, Eurocentric perspective. By the late 1980s and into the early 1990s, conflict arose as advocates of multiculturalism, typically with liberal political viewpoints, promoted increasingly radical curricular changes as a way to empower historically oppressed peoples. In contrast, conservatives advocated for a single culture and favored the deculturation or assimilation of immigrants and other minorities. Conservatives sought curricula based on a common set of values that reflected the White Protestant tradition in the U.S. Many colleges and universities eventually chose to adopt curricula that reflected the increased diversity of their students. However, campus constituencies still fight over this issue. For example, in 2006, students at the University of Pennsylvania staged a protest and signature campaign to convince faculty to add a course on ethnic and racial minorities to the core curriculum for arts and science majors. The enrollment of a diverse student body is still a source of heated debate at colleges and universities. Past legislation has been mixed on this issue. For example, in the case of Regents of the University of California v. Bakke (1978), the Supreme Court gave colleges and universities the authority to use race or ethnicity as a factor in admissions decisions. But in the case of Hopwood v. University of Texas (1996), the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals failed to recognize that diversity had an impact on educational experience. The verdict in the Hopwood case threw colleges and universities into a state of flux over the use of race in admissions even though it only applied to the fifth district (Texas, Louisiana, and Mississippi). Most recently, the Supreme Court debated the use of race for admissions in two cases: Gratz v. Bollinger and Grutter v. Bollinger. Both these cases were brought against the University of Michigan by students at both the undergraduate (Gratz) and graduate (Grutter) levels. The Supreme Court held that the benefits of diversity are worth pursing, specifically stating that the use of race as a factor in admissions decisions is within the law. However, they also decided that quotas and point systems did not hold up in court. In the words of Justice Sandra Day O’Conner, ‘‘In order to cultivate a set of leaders with legitimacy in the eyes of the citizenry, it is necessary that the path to leadership be visibly open to talented and qualified individuals of every race and ethnicity.’’ Although O’Conner’s support for using race as a factor in college admissions processes seems clear, many colleges and universities, fearful of law-
suits, have buckled under the current political climate and have decreased or even eliminated their racespecific programs. Currently, the racial and ethnic make-up of undergraduates at our nation’s colleges and universities is repassed in the 2006/2007 Chronicle of Higher Education Almanac as follows: American Indian (1%); Asian American (6%); African American (13%); Hispanic (10%); White (67%); and international (3%). Researchers in the field of higher education believe that it will be difficult to maintain and increase the current level of diversity without the use of race and ethnicity as a factor in admissions decisions. Beginning in the mid-1990s, colleges and universities experienced a new push for the inclusion of gay, lesbian, and bisexual students. This new demand for acceptance of diverse sexual orientations was expressed through efforts to end bullying and harassment. Gay, lesbian, and bisexual student groups sprung up across U.S. college and university campuses. Some campuses embraced this new diversity, while others crafted exclusionary statements to expressly acknowledge that diversity of sexual orientation was not welcome on their campus. Within the faculty ranks, diversity remains an elusive goal. According to the 2006/2007 Chronicle of Higher Education Almanac, American Indians account for less than 1% of the nation’s faculty with even international academics holding more faculty positions (3%). Asian Americans make up only 6.5% of the college teaching force, with African Americans at 5.5% and Latinos at 3.5%. Whites hold the majority of faculty positions, accounting for 80.5%. Although women have made great strides in their representation among college faculty, they still only account for 39%. These gender disparities are even more apparent when looking closely at where females are represented within the faculty ranks. Women make up 45% of faculty at the Assistant Professor level but only account for 24% of Full Professors. When one considers that early in the nation’s history a college education was exclusively White and male, striking gains have been made in diversifying the student body, faculty, and curriculum of the U.S. colleges and universities. However, these institutions do not reflect the diversity present in society-at-large. Continued efforts are needed at all levels to provide equality.
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See also: > Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka; Plessy v. Ferguson
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Suggested Reading Allen, W., Terenishi, R., & Bonous-Hammarth, M. (Ed.) (2006). Higher education in a global society: Achieving diversity, equity, and excellence. New York: Elsevier. Hale, F. (Ed.) (2004) What makes racial diversity work in higher education. Sterling, VA: Stylus Press. Smith, D. G., & Wolf-Wendel, L. (2005). The challenge of diversity: Involvement or alienation in the academy. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.
Divorce John Mustol . Ben K Lim
Currently in the United States (U.S.) about 50% of first marriages end in divorce and 60% of divorces involve children. One third of all children experience divorce and 25% of children spend time in a stepfamily. Investigators have found that about 25% of children of divorce have serious social, emotional, or psychological problems, compared to 10% of children from intact families. Other studies on the effects of family breakup on the children suggest that about one-third of children will adjust and do well, one-third will have moderate difficulties, and one-third will have more severe problems, with these effects lasting into adulthood. Longitudinal studies have also shown that children of divorce are more likely to experience divorce themselves. Poverty is associated with an increased risk of divorce, which often results in a lowered living standard for the custodial parent. Other predisposing factors contributing to divorce include the quality of the marriage and family life and maternal depression. Many factors affect children’s response to the divorce of their parents such as the age, temperament, wellbeing of the child, and poor parent–child relationships. Children exposed to high parental conflict, infidelity, and verbal, physical, or sexual abuse may have more difficulty with divorce. Children may face significant stressors during and after the breakup of the family such as moving to a new home, new school, and making new friends. Due to the
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disintegration of family patterns, there may be decreased supervision and discipline. Children may be triangulated by both parents and face ‘‘loyalty binds’’ if parents involve them in their conflicts or compete for their affection. ‘‘Parentification’’ may occur when, due to parental absence or weakness, the child is obliged to assume increased household duties, supervise younger children, or become the confidant of one parent. Children may lose contact with the noncustodial parent (usually the father). If a parent remarries, children may experience ambivalence and distress associated with their parent’s new partner. The problems of children in divorce may occur at many levels. There may be cognitive decline (poor academic performance), depression, somatic complaints, antisocial or aggressive behavior (acting out, substance abuse, sexual promiscuity), anxiety and/or withdrawal, poor self-esteem, and difficulty with close relationships. This may be more prominent in teens as they are learning about their sexuality and exploring intimate relationships. Although most children will slowly adjust in the postdivorce years, some will have more significant difficulties that continue into adulthood. Apart from some work on African American and Hispanic families, there is little data available on the effects of divorce on children of immigrant or other minority families. Although the concept of marriage and child-rearing practices may be different in different cultural subgroups, there is no reason to think that the basic needs of the children are different. Thus, it is likely that the same principles apply. Irrespective of the ethnicities of the families involved, counselors and other professionals need to focus on the welfare of the children of the divorcing parents. Children should be reassured of the love of both parents. Divorce should be explained to them on a level they can understand and they should be told what will happen. Custody should be handled in a way that minimizes conflict and litigation should be avoided where possible as it tends to exacerbate inter-parent conflict. Arrangements for custody and visitation should be tailored to the needs of the child and the situation. Noncustodial fathers should be obliged to provide financial support and to maintain involvement with their children. Finally, the parental role should be seen as a way to provide psychosocial support for children.
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Suggested Reading Amato, P. R. (2000). Consequences of divorce for adults and children. Journal of Marriage and the Family, 62, 1269–1287. Demo, D. H. (1988). The impact of divorce on children. Journal of Marriage and the Family, 50, 619–648. Wallerstein, J., Lewis, J., & Blakeslee, S. (2000). The unexpected legacy of divorce: A 25 year landmark study. New York: Hyperion.
Domestic Violence Shannon McKay-Cook . Donna Zanjanian
Domestic violence (also known as intimate partner violence, spouse abuse, and battering) is the willful use of violence and other forms of abuse to establish control and fear within a current or former intimate relationship. An individual who commits domestic violence may use physical abuse, emotional abuse, sexual abuse, social isolation, economic deprivation, mistreatment of children, threats, and intimidation to achieve control over another person. The definition of domestic violence may differ between various cultural groups, but, domestic violence is a widespread issue that has an impact on Americans in all communities, regardless of race, nationality, religion, economic status, age, or educational background.
Prevalence Domestic violence is a pervasive problem in the U.S. It is estimated that between 2 and 4 million women and approximately 800,000 men are abused by current or former partners each year. It is difficult to assess the rate of domestic violence in the U.S. because most victims and perpetrators do not disclose that they have been involved in partner violence. Members of immigrant communities are particularly unlikely to report issues of domestic abuse because of language and cultural barriers and the fear of deportation. Between 3.3 and 10 million children witness physical or verbal domestic abuse each year, ranging from insults
and hitting to fatal assaults. Estimates indicate that one third to one half of children who live in violent homes are also abused by their parents. In families where domestic violence occurs, children are physically abused or neglected at a rate that is 15 times the national average.
Risk Factors A combination of societal, relational, and individual factors contribute to the risk of being a victim or perpetrator of domestic violence. On a sociocultural level, traditional gender norms (e.g., that men should be dominant and aggressive, and that women should be submissive) and gender stereotypes may lead people to believe that domestic violence is a normal part of intimate relationships. This belief has an impact on the way that domestic violence is addressed by the criminal justice system, within communities and families, and by the victims and perpetrators themselves. Poverty and associated stressors (e.g., overcrowding) are also significant societal risk factors for domestic violence; in general, the higher the income of a community is, the lower the rate of domestic violence. Importantly, there are no measurable differences in the rates of domestic violence across ethnic groups in the U.S. when socioeconomic factors are taken into consideration. On a relational level, prominent risk factors for domestic violence include marital tension (e.g., frequent arguments), instability (e.g., separations or divorce), economic stress, and social isolation. Income and job status disparity between partners, especially if the male partner is under- or unemployed, also increases the likelihood that abuse will occur. Additionally, relationships that are dominated or controlled by the male partner are more likely to become violent. Recent immigrants dealing with the strain of immigration and acculturation, particularly those from societies that emphasize male dominance and tolerate violence against women, are at a particularly high risk for domestic violence. On an individual level, the primary predictor of domestic violence victimization and perpetration is a history of being abused or witnessing abuse between parents. Adolescents and adults who have experienced or observed abuse are more than twice as likely to repeat the same behaviors within their own intimate relationships than individuals who were not exposed to violence at a young age. Additional risk factors that
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specifically contribute to the perpetration of domestic violence include substance abuse—male partners who abuse drugs or alcohol are three-and-a-half times more likely to batter their female partners than males who do not abuse substances, depression and other mental disorders, and a desire for control in relationships. The key risk factors associated with a greater risk of victimization are gender and age; 85% of victims of partner abuse are women, and women between the ages of 16 and 24 comprise the largest group of domestic violence victims.
Warning Signs of Domestic Violence Exposure in Children and Adolescents Exposure to domestic violence has potentially adverse effects on the emotional, social, and cognitive development of children of all ages. Children who have been exposed to domestic violence may exhibit a wide range of short- and long-term responses to the trauma. Some warning signs in young children (pre-school and kindergarten age) include sadness, anxiety, irritability, confusion, avoidance, social withdrawal, psychosomatic complaints (e.g., headaches and stomachaches), and regressive behaviors (e.g., clinging and thumb-sucking). Young children may view themselves as the cause of the violence, and tend to feel more guilt and shame than other age groups. As with younger children, primary school age children are likely to exhibit symptoms of depression and anxiety after exposure to domestic abuse. Children exposed to domestic violence also tend to be aggressive and exhibit behavior problems at school and in their community, such as temper tantrums and fighting. Children may also internalize their responses to domestic violence, and may experience insomnia, phobias, low self-esteem, and impaired ability to concentrate. Academic issues, such as poor school attendance and low scores on exams and other assignments, are common warning signs in primary school age children. In general, boys are more likely to externalize problems through aggressive and violent behavior than girls, who tend to exhibit more depression, anxiety, and withdrawal. However, primary school girls who have been exposed to domestic abuse are more likely to act out in a violent manner than females of any other age group. Exposure to domestic violence is the strongest predictor of violent and delinquent behavior in adolescents, with 20–40% of chronically delinquent teenagers
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coming from violent homes. Adolescents who have witnessed abuse are twice as likely to commit criminal offenses and are arrested more frequently than other teenagers. Observing abusive behavior between parents is strongly related to involvement (as a victim or perpetrator) in dating violence in adolescents. Additionally, adolescents who have witnessed domestic violence are at risk of academic failure and school dropout. With repeated exposure to domestic violence, some children and adolescents may develop Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), a long-term mental health condition characterized by anxiety, depression, nightmares, flashbacks, and a number of other physiological, behavioral, and emotional symptoms. If not properly diagnosed and treated, some children and adolescents may abuse alcohol and drugs as a method of coping with PTSD.
Interventions in School Settings The primary factor that promotes resilience in children and adolescents who have experienced domestic violence is a strong relationship with a caring and competent adult. Academic and mental health professionals have the potential to provide valuable emotional support to children that can mitigate the negative impact of violence within the home. In addition, the school setting may be one of the only emotionally and physically safe havens for students who are subjected to domestic violence. It is important that school professionals are able to recognize the warning signs of domestic violence exposure and know what steps to take if they suspect that a child is witnessing or experiencing domestic abuse. Some warning signs may include: personality changes, absences from school, low self-esteem, fear of conflict, self-blame, or blaming others for everything. Steps to take to address the warning signs should include contacting the school counselor or social worker and developing a safety plan with the student. The school setting provides an ideal environment for educating students and their family members about domestic violence and fostering healthy attitudes and behaviors. Outreach efforts should be culturally and socially appropriate and take into account that families may be isolated from social networks or unaware of local resources. Such efforts could include providing educational materials to students and
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family members that address domestic violence and its impact on children’s growth and development. Additionally, school and mental health professionals could provide students and family members with information about community-based domestic violence services, such as crisis intervention, counseling, and parenting skills training, and how to utilize these resources.
Legal and Ethical Issues Intervention in suspected cases of domestic violence is not only difficult but raises ethical and legal issues. Mental health and school professionals are mandated to make a report to Child Protection Services (CPS) if they have reason to suspect that a student is being abused or maltreated. However, in the majority of states, legislation does not require that exposure to domestic violence be reported to CPS. If there is no statutory child abuse or maltreatment, the involved school and/or mental health professional should notify the school principal and refer the student to the appropriate mental health services provider. The involved professionals should develop a safety plan with the student and consider contacting the adult victim of violence if there are no immanent safety risks. Confidentiality is of paramount importance, particularly as a breach of confidentiality could jeopardize the safety of the child, family members, and school and/or mental health professionals. If safety is a concern, school and mental health professionals should consult with CPS and local domestic violence agencies for direction and support. Additionally, professionals that are working with individuals from varying cultures must be cognizant of the differing cultural traditions within those racial and ethnic minority groups when addressing concerns pertaining to safety of the children and other family members. See also: > Child abuse; dated reporters
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Suggested Reading Daro, D., Edleson, J. L., & Pinderhughes, H. (2004). Finding common ground in the study of child maltreatment, youth violence, and adult domestic violence. Journal of Interpersonal Violence, 19(3), 282–298.
Fantuzzo, J. W., & Mohr, W. K. (1999). Prevalence and effects of child exposure to domestic violence. Special Issue: Domestic Violence and Children. Future Child, 9(3), 21–32. Jaffe, P. G., Baker, L. L., & Cunningham, A. J. (2004). Protecting children from domestic violence: Strategies for community intervention. New York: Guilford Press.
Suggested Resources Family Violence Prevention Fund (FVPF)—http://www.endabuse. org: FVPF is a national, nonprofit organization that provides public education/prevention campaigns, pubic policy reform, advocacy programs, training, and organizing. National Coalition against Domestic Violence (NCADV)—http:// www.ncadv.org/: NCADV is a grassroots, nonprofit organization that provides information and resources about domestic violence. It also serves as a national network for state programs and local coalitions serving the needs of domestic abuse victims and their children.
Drama, Teaching Karen Cone-Uemura
Drama is a form of experiential learning that can be taught as a topic on its own or incorporated into any class curriculum. Teaching drama as its own subject requires specialized training but incorporating drama into the regular curriculum is something all teachers can be encouraged to do. Drama as an educational medium provides students with an opportunity to learn through doing. Because drama entails kinesthetic involvement, it can be appealing to students with a variety of learning styles. Students’ creativity is enhanced, as is their ability to work cooperatively in groups. Along with improving the students’ selfconcept, properly incorporating drama can also increase a student’s ability to empathize with others. This skill can be useful in conflict resolution and problem solving. Drama provides students with greater awareness of not only their own feelings, values, and beliefs, but also those of their peers. The use of drama in the classroom increases student participation, helps develop insight, and forges a sense of contributing to the group. At a fundamental level, drama is already part of each classroom. From preschoolers to postgraduate college stu-
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dents, the roles of instructor and student are dynamically at play. The creative teacher is open to experimenting with how to optimize his or her performance in the role of instructor to best capture the attention of students and maximize their growth and development. Types of drama appropriate with younger children include free play where students act out roles that are familiar to them (i.e., family, community members, characters from literature), pantomime, improvisational skits, puppetry, and formal plays. Similar drama forms can be used with older students, especially when teaching focuses on topics such as diversity, multicultural sensitivity, problem solving, counseling skills, and other areas where experiential learning and considering multiple viewpoints are beneficial. Drama is well suited to the teaching of specific subjects. It is applicable to social studies, for instance, as drama work can encourage students to learn about different cultures, norms, political systems, and historical events. Students can research any of these areas and create their own dramatic interpretation that can be presented to the rest of the class. For those students who may be reluctant to perform in this type of scenario, drama provides a number of opportunities for involvement. Nonactors can contribute to the research, writing, and staging portions of any production. These are all activities that require critical thinking, cooperation, and creativity. Drama can be effectively used in literary classes because any written piece can be brought to life by the students. Such use of drama promotes student understanding of literature as it embodies the life and times of the authors, playwrights, and poets being studied. The process of researching information on writers and subsequently creating dramatic works can also extend to the study of musicians, scientists, and other important historical figures. Teachers of many subjects can explore ways to incorporate dramatic techniques into their instructional repertoire. Drama where students engage in role-plays can be useful in conflict resolution and problem solving. Regular classroom teachers with some conflict management training can effectively employ simple role-play scenarios to help students work through interpersonal issues. By having students take on the role of the persons with whom they have a conflict, the goal is to help them develop empathy and an understanding of the other person. Being able to take on this viewpoint may subsequently allow each student to find solutions that are meaningful and appropriate.
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See also: > Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning (CASEL); > Counseling; > Creativity; > Multiple intelligences
Suggested Reading Greenwood, J. (2005). Journeying into the third space: A study of how theatre can be used to interpret the emergent space between cultures. Youth Theatre Journal, 19, 1–14. Riley, J. F. (1990). Sociodrama: Group creative problem-solving in action. The Gifted Child Today, 13, 28–30.
Suggested Resources Creative Drama and Theatre Education Resource—www. creativedrama.com: This website provides information for working in drama and theatre with children aged 4–9. The National Council of Teachers of English—http://www.ncte. org: This website provides information and resources for incorporating drama into the classroom.
Drug Education Susan F Wooley
Any combination of planned learning experiences that help individuals, groups, or communities gain the information and skills they need to make quality decisions about their use of alcohol, tobacco, prescribed, over-the-counter, or illegal drugs constitute formal drug education. Sound theories, such as social cognitive theory and the theory of planned behavior, guide the development and implementation of those learning experiences. Within a school context, drug education is usually one unit of a health class that addresses the physical, mental, emotional, and social dimensions of health in ways that are tailored to students’ age and developmental levels. The ultimate goal is to motivate and assist students in avoiding exposure to drugs likely to cause them harm and using medications in ways that are likely to have therapeutic effects for that person. Intermediate goals include developing students’ resilience, decision-making, goal-setting, communication and negotiating skills.
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Formal drug education in school consists of the development, delivery and evaluation of planned, sequential, and developmentally appropriate instruction, learning experiences, and other activities as part of health education, which is one component of a coordinated school health program. The content should derive from the National Health Education Standards (below) and guidelines available from some states. National Standards for Health Education in prekindergarten through grade 12 are:
Students will comprehend concepts related to health promotion and disease prevention to enhance health. Students will analyze the influence of family, peers, culture, media, technology, and other factors on health behavior. Students will demonstrate the ability to access valid information and products to enhance health. Students will demonstrate the ability to use interpersonal communication skills to enhance health and avoid or reduce health risks. Students will demonstrate the ability to use decisionmaking skills to enhance health. Students will demonstrate the ability to use goal setting skills to enhance health. Students will demonstrate the ability to practice health-enhancing behaviors and avoid or reduce risk. Students will demonstrate the ability to advocate for personal, family, and community health.
Topics frequently included in formal drug education include, but are not limited to: the physiological, psychological, and pharmacological effects of various substances; the social and legal consequences of illegal substance use and of substance abuse; the economic consequences of substance use; precautions when using medications; peer norms related to use of various substances; assertive communication; refusal skills training; goal-setting; stages of use through addiction; types of withdrawal; and treatment options for those affected by substance abuse. The United States (U.S.) Substance Abuse and Mental Health Administration has evaluated substance abuse prevention and treatment programs and identified those with evidence of effectiveness. Research on formal drug education has shown that programs which affect students’ drug-related behaviors positively share the following characteristics:
Research-based and theory-driven;
Include basic, accurate information that is developmentally appropriate; Use interactive activities that actively engage students; Provide opportunities for students to model and practice relevant social skills; Address social or media influences on behaviors; Strengthen individual values and group norms that support health-enhancing behaviors; Last long enough to allow students to gain the knowledge and skills they need; and Include training for teachers or other implementers.
Drug education also occurs informally through exposure to media, interactions with peers and adults, and oneon-one counseling with health and mental heath care providers. At the elementary school level, classroom teachers, school nurses, and school resource officers most often deliver formal drug education. At the secondary level, many schools offer drug education as part of separate health classes, some integrate drug education into other subject matter such as family and consumer sciences, science, or drivers education and some do both. See also: > Health education; > Resilience building prevention programs; > Sex education; > Social skills
Suggested Reading Fetro, J. V. (2000). Personal and social skills. Santa Cruz, CA: ETR Associates. Joint Committee on National Health Education Standards (2007). National health education standards: Achieving excellence, 2nd ed. Atlanta, GA: American Cancer Society. Taras, H., Duncan, P., Luckenbill, D., Robinson, J., Wheeler, L., & Wooley, S. (Eds) (2004). Health, mental health and safety guidelines for schools. Elk Grove Village, IL: American Academy of Pediatrics.
Suggested Resources Substance Abuse and Mental Health Administration—http://modelprograms.samhsa.gov: The mission of SAMHSA, an agency of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, is to build resilience and facilitate recovery for people with or at risk for substance abuse and mental illness. It works with communities on the prevention and treatment of the abuse of drugs, including alcohol and tobacco. Information about model programs that SAMHSA has identified can be found at the website above.
Drug-free school zones Drug Education Council—http://www.drugeducation.org/: This coalition of organizations dedicated to drug abuse prevention serves portions of Alabama with a variety of programs in the school and community. Its website contains excellent links to resources in the field of drug education. American Association for Health Education—www.aahperd.org/ aahe: The American Association for Health Education, which is part of the American Alliance for Health, Physical Education, recreation, and Dance, is the professional association representing over 7,000 health educators who practice in schools, institutions of higher education, community, health care, and work site settings.
Drug-Free School Zones Jose Mercado
As a response to the epidemic of crack cocaine in cities, the Comprehensive Crime Control Act of 1984 was passed. This law was intended to reduce the number of arrests for drug-related offenses in designated school zones as well as to reduce drug use among school-age children. By using community-based collaboration between various local agencies, drug-free school zones were seen as a model prevention and deterrence program. Partnerships between school, community and law enforcement were also seen as a protective social network that would decrease the chances of children engaging in deviant behavior. Decreasing the availability of drugs in and around schools was the primary focus in reaching these intended outcomes. As the federal law was written, those who were convicted of possessing or distributing controlled substances within 1,000 feet of public or private elementary, or secondary schools, or universities would be subjected to stiffer sentencing penalties. Since the federal law was enacted, most states have adopted their own drug-free school-zone laws, often expanding the sentencing guidelines or expanding the distance of the school zone. The effectiveness and equity of drug-free school zones are currently being called into question. In making their argument, opponents of drug-free schoolzone laws point to several factors. Several studies have found that arrests for drug-related offenses have actually increased since the law has been enacted. For example, in New Jersey, arrests rose from 8,000 in 1993
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to 14,000 in 2002, according to the State Commission to Review Criminal Sentencing. Opponents point to the densely populated zones in urban areas, where potential suspects are not even aware that they are in a designated school zone. Designated school zones have been found to range from 1,000 feet to 3 miles. Another concern was the disproportionate number of school zones in urban areas compared with suburban and rural areas, leading to a disparity in sentencing. In numerous urban settings, the sheer number of schools concentrated in certain areas would make it nearly impossible not to be in a designated school zone. In New Haven, Connecticut, for example, it was found that the only extensive area not within a designated school zone was the Yale golf course. A third argument is the racial disparity of people who fall within this statute. Since a greater percentage of African American and Latinos tend to live in urban areas, studies have shown that these two groups have been disproportionately affected by the sentencing guidelines. Therefore, according to opponents, the law is not achieving its intended goals. Rather, it is punishing a select group of people, not for their involvement in exposing children to drugs, but for where they live. Proponents of drug-free school-zone laws defend them as another tool in the war against low-level drug dealers. Politicians have shown their support of these laws for fear that not doing so will give the perception of not being tough on crime. For years, lawsuits have been filed contesting drug-free school-zone sentencing laws, without much success. Therefore, any change in the current make up of these laws will be up to federal and state legislators. In acknowledgment of some of the racial disparities, many states are in the process of reviewing their laws. Recommendations such as shrinking the area of designated school zones are currently being reviewed. See also: > Community violence; > Substance abuse
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Suggested Reading Gibbs, J., & Bennett, S. (1990). Together we can reduce the risks of alcohol and drug abuse among youth: A framework for community prevention planning. Seattle, Washington: Comprehensive Health Education Foundation. Gould, J. (2002). Zone defense: Drug-free school zones were supposed to keep dealers away from kids. But what happens
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when the zones engulf whole cities? The Washington Monthly, pp. 33–37.
Suggested Resources www.stopdrugs.org: This website provides information for communities interested in starting a drug-free school zone. Drug Policy Alliance—www.drugpolicy.org: This organization promotes the reform of many of the current drug laws including drug-free school zones.
Dyslexia Zalika S Wright
Dyslexia is a brain-based language disorder. It refers to a cluster of symptoms that result in difficulties with specific language skills, especially reading. Dyslexia is under the parasol of a learning disability (LD), which is a neurological disorder that affects the brain’s ability to receive, process, store, and respond to information. The term learning disability (LD) is used to describe the seemingly unexplained difficulty a person has with acquiring basic academic skills despite at least average intelligence, an adequate instructional history, and well-developed sensory functions (e.g., vision and hearing). Learning disabilities encompass physical impairments such as cleft lip or palate, and vocal abuse or
misuse dyslexia, alongside brain injury, minimal brain dysfunction, and developmental aphasia. Currently, almost 2.9 million school-aged children in the United States (U.S.) are classified as having specific learning disabilities (SLD) and receive some kind of special education support. Of those labeled with a learning disability, 85% have dyslexia. They make up approximately 5% of all school-aged children in public schools. These numbers do not include children in private and religious schools or home-schooled children. Despite popular opinion, dyslexia is not just the reversal of letter order or form in reading and writing. In addition to problems with phonological awareness (manipulating letter-sound correspondences) and word decoding, symptoms of dyslexia include: significant problems with reading fluency (painfully slow reading); a wide disparity between comprehension for spoken versus written material; difficulties with spelling, handwriting, and the recall of known words; and frequently substituting one small sight word for another (e.g., a, I, he, the, there, and was) in sentence construction. The term dyslexia derives from the Greek meaning poor language. It is widely understood that individuals diagnosed with dyslexia struggle with reading, writing, and spelling. However, cross-cultural implications typically are not considered when diagnosing the disorder. Thus, the labeling of dyslexia does not fall evenly across racial, ethnic, and socioeconomic distributions. Currently 30–60% of individuals labeled with dyslexia are minorities and from a lower economic bracket. One explanation for this is that symptoms associated with dyslexia such as decoding errors, difficulty with written language, and the substitution of one small
Early Childhood Education Robert W Burke
Overview That period in the human lifespan ranging from birth to age 8 is commonly referred to as ‘‘early childhood.’’ Hence, the broad field of early childhood education (ECE) (or, ‘‘early care and education’’) encompasses a variety of programs and practices intended to address children’s learning, as well as their care and nurturance. This inextricable, dual focus on children’s education and holistic development represents a distinguishing characteristic of the field’s theory and practice. By adhering to a ‘‘Whole Child’’ perspective, teachers and caregivers working with young children (and their families) intentionally address the following key domains of children’s education, growth, and development:
Physical—Daily nutrition and basic needs such as clothing, hygiene, monitoring of growth patterns; and development of gross and fine motor skills. Cognitive—Abilities related to cognitive functions including, for example, perception, communication, and information processing. Academic—Capacity to learn from formal and informal educational opportunities. Emotional—Awareness of feelings and enhanced ability to self-regulate emotions. Social—Personal identity; interpersonal relationships; and awareness of self in relation to social structures and norms.
Historical Development of Early Childhood Education Recognizing the historical development of the diverse values, beliefs, and practices constituting the field of ECE is key to understanding contemporary programs as well as collaborating effectively those professionals who provide early care and education. As developed and implemented in Europe and the United States (U.S.), the field of ECE embodies core dimensions and questions about human life such that its origins can be
traced back to ancient Greece, where philosophers and other leaders carefully considered issues like child-rearing, family life, social organization, and a well-rounded education that begins in early childhood. Indeed, many of these topics are as relevant today as they were 2,000 years ago. For example, Plato (428–348 B.C.) promoted the idea of state-sponsored nurseries because he recognized the learning potential of young children as well as the sense of community that would be created by such centers of learning. Other ECE practices advanced by Plato included the belief that girls should receive the same education as boys, and that the curriculum should consist of games, stories, play, music, and drama. Although many of Plato’s ideas were considered radical at the time, his influence is readily apparent throughout the history of ECE. The historical development of ECE in the U.S. was further influenced by a few European philosophers who advanced their ideas concerning the nexus of society, family, and child-rearing practices, as illustrated in the following examples:
Johann Amos Comenius (1592–1670)—Believed that social reform would result from education of all people; Suggested that formal education be organized by distinct grade levels that children would complete in sequential order. John Locke (1623–1704)—Applied ‘‘scientific laws’’ of the time to study human development; Advanced the idea that the human mind was a ‘‘Tabula Rasa/Blank Slate’’ at birth and that learning resulted from sensory experience; Provided parents with guidelines about children’s care and education. Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712–1778)—Believed in the inherent goodness of children; his highly influential book Emile advocated education based on freedom, interest, and activity Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi (1746–1827)—Suggested that school should be like a firm, loving family for the child; Emphasized that every person is unique; Stressed that ECE curriculum and instruction should be based on direct experience with real objects; Based his entire approach on sympathy and compassion. Friedrich Wilhelm August Froebel (1782–1852)— Developed the ‘‘Kindergarten System’’ of ECE, based on play.
As ECE expanded in both conceptual and applied arenas in the U.S., the field became more
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interdisciplinary. Scholars and practitioners alike tapped into additional, diverse knowledge bases (e.g., developmental psychology and neuroscience, among others), professional fields (e.g., education and social work, among others) and changing economic and social phenomena (e.g., the Industrial Revolution and Scientific Management). Influential American leaders emerged from these and other arenas, each advancing his or her beliefs about ECE, as shown in the following examples:
John Dewey (1859–1952)—Leading advocate of the Progressive Education Movement; Taught critical thinking, decision making, and social responsibility by creating Democratic Classroom Communities; Encouraged problem solving and independent thinking by teachers and students; Promoted teacher flexibility, creativity, and responsibility. Patty Smith Hill (1868–1946)—Restructured and unified Kindergarten and Primary Education; Emphasized teacher and parent collaboration; Revised ECE curriculum and developed theoretical frameworks for professional preparation programs; Advanced application of scientific knowledge to ECE practice. Arnold Lucius Gesell (1880—1961)—Introduced child study laboratory techniques such as two-way mirrors and cinematography; Promoted the expansion of nursery schools; Stressed respect for individual differences in children’s development and individualization of curriculum and instruction.
Although a comprehensive detailing of all the psychologists, philosophers, pediatricians, educators, political leaders, and advocates who have contributed to the still-evolving field of ECE is beyond the scope of this entry, it should be remembered that the sheer breadth of the field invites participation by an extraordinarily wide range of stakeholders.
Contemporary Perspectives and Programs In contemporary practice, alternative perspectives concerning theory and practice exist among early childhood professionals and other stakeholders involved in ECE. As the diverse philosophical perspectives, psychological theories, and corollary practices highlighted above have coalesced in ECE, four major
schools of thought concerning children’s growth, development, and education have emerged: I. Behaviorism (i.e., Thorndike, Skinner, Watson): From a behavioral perspective, the environment is regarded as the single most important variable in shaping children’s development and education. II. Social Learning (i.e., Bandura): In this perspective, children’s primary mode of learning occurs through observing and imitating others in the immediate environment. III. Humanistic (i.e., Rogers, Maslow): Children’s natural curiosity, passion for learning, and active imaginations should be valued and supported within democratic classrooms. IV. Constructivist (i.e., Piaget, Vygotsky): Children are viewed as active agents in the construction of their own knowledge, which is based on prior learning combined with teacher-facilitated experiences. In a similar vein, ECE programs adhering to one or more of the previously described perspectives can be found in various locations within most communities. Typically, such programs are offered in the following sites:
Homes: Programs of care and education that are provided in private residences constitute the most prevalent form of privately sponsored programs. It is estimated that about 40% of children who receive care outside of their own homes do so in privately run, home-based day care. Centers: Larger facilities that provide services for children are referred to as ‘‘child care centers.’’ These centers usually serve children between the ages of 3 and 5 years, most commonly for parents or guardians who are either employed full-time or attend post-secondary education institutions. Head Start: This federally funded program serves children from families with low incomes who are 4- and 5-years of age. In 1994, the Early Head Start program was initiated to meet the needs of children from families with low incomes under the age of 3. Both Head Start and Early Head Start are comprehensive programs, in that they provide a range of services to meet children’s needs including education, social/emotional development, physical and mental health, and nutrition. In addition, both programs adhere to a family focus that includes parent education concerning children’s health, welfare, development, and education.
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Core Beliefs and Values in Early Childhood Education The Code of Ethical Conduct and Statement of Commitment developed by the National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC, 1998)) identifies the following Core Values as paramount in the practice of ECE:
Appreciating childhood as a unique and valuable stage of the human life cycle Basing our work with children on knowledge of child development Appreciating and supporting the close ties between the child and family Recognizing that children are best understood and supported in the context of family, culture, community, and society Respecting the dignity, worth, and uniqueness of each individual (child, family member, and colleague) Helping children and adults achieve their full potential in the context of relationships that are based on trust, respect, and positive regard.
See also: > Childhood; > Early Head Start; > Montessori
Suggested Resources The National Association for the Education of Young Children— www.naeyc.org: The NAEYC is dedicated to improving the wellbeing of young children, with a particular focus on the quality of educational and developmental services for all children from birth through age 8. The Association for Childhood Education International—www. acei.org: This is a prominent resource that provides exhaustive information about the field of early childhood education and care.
Early Head Start Cheryl A Boyce . Louisa Banks Tarullo
Early Head Start is an intervention program for school readiness designed for pregnant women and children ages 0–3 to provide comprehensive
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education, health, nutrition, and services for children and families with low-incomes in all 50 states, the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico. Originally, Head Start was created in 1965 for children 3–5 years of age. However, the reauthorization of the Head Start Act in 1994 by the United States (U.S.) Congress created the new program Early Head Start to strengthen early intervention efforts. Research and practice suggests that early intervention for infants and toddlers through high quality programs can enhance the physical, social, emotional, and cognitive development of children; strengthen parents’ caregiving, language and literacy skills; and support the economic independence of parents. The long term success of Early Head Start is evidenced by significant gains in children’s cognitive development and their social-emotional development relative to other children who served as controls in research studies and received child care only or no early intervention services at all. Parents of children who participate in Early Head Start also show increased skills for developing their children’s language and literacy skill and social and emotional skills, as well as improving their own socioeconomic level. Early Head Start has continued its mission to encourage healthy prenatal outcomes, to enhance the overall developmental progress of the young child, to increase parents’ skills and knowledge of child development, to strengthen the family unit, and to promote community building and staff development through program implementation and services. Both profit and non-profit organizations may receive funds from the Head Start Bureau within the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services to provide early intervention services through Early Head Start. Local programs funded through Early Head Start serve as a national laboratory to investigate the impact of early intervention through continuous, intensive and comprehensive services for pregnant women and families with very young children. Early Head Start has provided services to over 300,000 children since its inception. It grew from a program of approximately $100 million to support 68 programs and more than 18,000 children in 1995, to a budget over $650 million to support over 700 programs and more than 62,000 children under the age of three in 2002. See also: > Early childhood education; vention; > Head Start
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Suggested Reading Administration for Children and Families (2002). Making a difference in the lives of infants and toddlers and their families: The impact of Early Head Start. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Administration for Children and Families (2003). Head Start FACES (2000): A whole-child perspective on program performance. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Garces, E., Thomas, D., & Currie, J. (2002, September). Longer-term effects of head start. American Economic Association, 92(4), 999–1012.
Suggested Resources Early Head Start Toolkit—http://www.headstartinfo.org/infocenter/ ehs_tkit1.htm: This website offers research and publications from the Head Start Bureau on Early Head Start. Early Head Start Almanac—http://www.acf.hhs.gov/programs/ hsb/programs/ehs/ehsalmanac.htm: This website contains information on the history and statistics of Early Head Start.
Early Intervention Dorothy S Strickland
There is a growing body of scientific evidence on the significance of the developmental impact of early experiences, caregiving relationships, and environmental threats. This work is strong and compelling. Virtually every aspect of early human development, from the brain’s evolving circuitry to the child’s capacity for empathy is affected by the environments and experiences that are encountered in a cumulative fashion, beginning early in the prenatal period and extending throughout the early childhood years. Researchers and early childhood development specialists no longer question whether early experience matters, but rather how these experiences shape individual development and contribute to children’s continued movement along positive pathways. Moreover, they seek appropriate ways to intervene where children and families are at risk. During the school years, emphasis on early intervention is supported by research evidence indicating that the pattern of school failure starts early and persists throughout a child’s school career. For example, longitudinal studies reveal that there is a near 90%
chance that a child who is a poor reader at the end of grade one will remain a poor reader at grade four. These children grow to dislike reading and, therefore, read considerably less than good readers both in and out of school. This is an important finding, since time spent reading is highly correlated with achievement in learning to read and reading ability is a key foundation for learning in the content areas. Another compelling reason to promote early intervention in school is the realization that supplementary remedial programs such as Title I and ‘‘replacement’’ programs that substitute for regular, in-class instruction have had mixed results over the years. Some suggest they even complicate the process for the struggling learners by offering instructional approaches that are philosophically different from those offered in the classroom. Regardless of the reason for low achievement, educators recognize their responsibility to provide programs that pre-empt potential problems early and thwart the likelihood of a chain of failure throughout the school years. A variety of approaches to prevention and intervention have reported some positive results. Family-oriented prevention programs tend to focus on both parents and their young children. Such programs may be located in a variety of settings and often target a number of outcomes. As the focus shifts from prevention to intervention, most programs reside in school settings. Many employ small group instruction; others restrict instruction to one-on-one tutoring models. Some intervention programs take place in the regular classroom with instruction supplied by the regular classroom teacher or by a learning specialist, often in reading or math. Others occur outside of the regular classroom and make use of well-supervised volunteers or paid tutors. Despite similar goals, implementation of intervention programs varies widely. Nevertheless, there is a fair degree of agreement regarding essential elements or components that should receive attention.
Implementation Components of Prevention and Intervention Programs Timing Many early childhood investigations focusing on interventions for infants and toddlers have reported findings that support the value of ‘‘earlier’’ and ‘‘more.’’ When
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children enter the kindergarten through grade 12 system it is also generally agreed that early intervention is preferable to extended remediation. Age-appropriate efforts aimed toward prevention and intervention begin during the pre-kindergarten years and receive special emphasis during the early primary grades.
Intensity and Duration Interventions for very young children have also been studied in terms of intensity and duration and these factors are found to be associated with measurable family impacts. For families of young children with developmental disabilities, the variability in service intensity is considerable. Differences in both amount and duration of intervention may be related to the age of referral, the nature, and severity of the child’s impairment, or the family’s resources and needs. School age struggling learners generally receive more time on task than children not considered at risk. This may occur in the regular classroom, in a pullout setting, or some form of extended day or summer schooling.
Materials Interventions for very young children may include materials designed for parents as well as books and toys with which parents and children engage interactively. More often than not, the focus is on specific strategies and routines. By school age, students for whom intervention is warranted are given materials they can handle successfully. For example, literacy intervention programs generally strive for materials that are interesting and engaging and provide a moderate degree of challenge without frustration.
Nature of Intervention For both pre-kindergarten and school age children, lessons and learning strategies generally consist of a variety of activities involving a well-formulated and consistent plan or approach. The ultimate impact of pre-kindergarten programs is largely determined by the degree to which families are able to incorporate specific intervention techniques into their everyday interactions with their children. For school age children, one-to-one and small group instructional formats are widely used.
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Documenting and Monitoring Progress Intervention programs generally include some type of assessment process in which individual progress is monitored on a regular, ongoing basis. Participants are evaluated in relationship to a set of predetermined program goals, benchmarks, or levels. Emphasis on motivation to learn along with attitudes and skills that promote independence are viewed as important goals for children and their families.
Professional Development Family and school intervention programs vary widely in their training and use of personnel. The professional development of teachers, aides, volunteers, and providers of all sorts is considered an important component of the success of all intervention models. A substantial body of research in child care settings has clearly linked well-trained, qualified teachers and staff to better outcomes, particularly for low-income children who are at risk for early developmental problems and later educational underachievement. The need for adequate professional training for staff to help them address a wide variety of special needs is evident at all levels and across all settings involving intervention.
Home/School Connection Teaching and learning are grounded in an understanding of the need to bridge the cultural and linguistic backgrounds of learners and their families as a base for growth. Thus, a systematic program of home support and involvement is characteristic of school-based intervention programs. Many include a built in monitoring system designed to provide feedback from the home. Strengthening the bond between home, school, and community and collaborating with local social service agencies are important elements of programs that seek to prevent or intervene where children are at risk.
School Intervention and Literacy Education No area of development has received greater attention in the school intervention literature than that of language and literacy. Experience in this area suggests
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that no matter how effective an intervention may be, it does not stand alone. The problems children who are having difficulty in language and literacy face are rarely unidemensional. Nor are the solutions. There is an extremely critical need for regular classroom teachers to build safety nets for children experiencing difficulty so that they can be identified early and their problems addressed within the regular course of instruction. Some have gone so far as to say that removing students from the regular classroom and placing them in resource rooms for special or compensatory education services may be counter productive in that it may prevent classroom teachers from realizing that something is wrong with the instruction in their own classroom. Obviously, many children will require help from specialists beyond that of the regular classroom. Nevertheless, the instruction received in the regular classroom will remain at the center of the child’s literacy program. There is a growing awareness of the need for prevention in the form of strong ‘‘first teaching.’’ This requires classroom teachers capable of identifying possible problems and skillful at differentiating instruction in order to intervene appropriately. Moreover, children who are given extra support outside the classroom often need continued support in the regular classroom even after they are released successfully from an external support program. These children often remain vulnerable even after they have ‘‘caught up’’ with their peers. Ongoing special attention to children with persistent learning difficulties must take place in the regular classroom. Vigilance within the regular classroom is needed to support and maintain the gains they have made; and this must extend well beyond the primary grades. In summary, there is overwhelming evidence that well-planned and executed intervention programs can improve the lives of young children and their families. Successful interventions are neither simple nor are they inexpensive. They require thoughtful planning and monitoring. Moreover, they require a highly qualified staff for successful implementation. There is a need to learn more about what it takes in resources and overall capability to improve the chances for successful outcomes from intervention programs that are both cost-effective and operationally effective in achieving well-defined goals. See also: > Childhood; > Early childhood education; > Early Head Start; > Head Start; > Preschool; > School-based prevention
Suggested Reading Shonkoff, J. P., & Phillips, D. A. (Eds.) (2000). From neurons to neighborhoods: The science of early childhood development. Washington, D.C.: National Academy Press. Snow, C., Burns, M. S., & Griffin, P. (Eds.) (1998). Preventing reading difficulties in young children. Washington, D.C.: National Academy Press. Strickland, D. S., Ganske, K., & Monroe, J. K. (2002). Supporting struggling readers and writers. Newark, DE: Stenhouse, Portsmouth, NH and International Reading Association.
Eating Disorders Janis H Crowther . Tricia M Leahey
The two most widely known eating disorders are bulimia nervosa and anorexia nervosa. Individuals with bulimia nervosa experience recurrent episodes of binge eating and use inappropriate compensatory strategies to counteract the weight gain associated with the binge episodes. Binge eating, a cardinal symptom of bulimia nervosa, involves the uncontrolled eating of a large amount of food in a given period of time, may be precipitated by restrained eating and negative emotions, and occurs, on average, twice a week in this disorder. There are two subtypes of bulimia nervosa: the purging type, which is distinguished by the regular use of self-induced vomiting or the misuse of laxatives, diuretics, enemas, or other medications; and the nonpurging type, distinguished by the use of fasting or excessive exercise. Individuals with anorexia nervosa refuse to maintain a minimally normal body weight for their age and height while simultaneously experiencing an intense fear of weight gain or becoming fat. This fear of becoming fat occurs even though the individual with anorexia nervosa may have lost considerable weight and is very emaciated. When anorexia nervosa develops post-menarche, females also experience amenorrhea, which is defined as the absence of at least three consecutive menstrual cycles. Like bulimia nervosa, there also are two subtypes of anorexia nervosa: the restricting type, which is distinguished by the absence of regular binging or purging; and the binge-eating/purging type, distinguished by regular binging or purging using the methods identified above. Both bulimia nervosa and anorexia nervosa are accompanied by body image disturbance.
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In 1994, a third eating disorder, binge eating disorder, was introduced as one of the disorders of eating in the Eating Disorder Not Otherwise Specified diagnostic category. Like bulimia nervosa, binge eating disorder is characterized by recurrent episodes of binge eating, over which individuals experience impaired control and considerable emotional distress. However, in contrast to individuals with bulimia nervosa, individuals with binge eating disorder do not use inappropriate compensatory behaviors, such as fasting, purging, or excessive exercise, on a regular basis.
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restrictive eating, and purging via self-induced vomiting or the use of laxatives or diuretics. Although the results vary slightly from study to study, the evidence that is emerging from this body of literature suggests that binge eating is reported at comparable levels among ethnic minority and White females. In the majority of studies, dieting is reported more frequently by White females than females from any other ethnic group, and purging is reported at comparable rates among females from ethnic groups and White females.
Risk and Protective Factors Prevalence of Eating Disorders Eating disorders are among the most common psychiatric disorders in girls and young women. According to the fourth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual published by the American Psychiatric Association, the prevalence of bulimia nervosa ranges from 1% to 3%; of anorexia nervosa, approximately 0.5%; and of binge eating disorder, from approximately 1% to 4.0%, with higher rates of binge eating disorder among overweight and obese individuals and among those seeking treatment for weight loss. There are gender differences in the prevalence of anorexia nervosa and bulimia nervosa, with approximately 90% of all cases occurring among females. The gender differences in binge eating disorder are less pronounced, with females about 1.5 times as likely to have this disorder as males. As these figures suggest, anorexia nervosa and bulimia nervosa are rare. However, there is some evidence emerging that suggests that binge eating disorder occurs at comparable rates among Black and White women. Anorexia nervosa typically begins during mid- to late adolescence, while bulimia nervosa and binge eating disorder have a slightly later age of onset, during late adolescence and young adulthood. Although not widely investigated, some evidence suggests that eating disturbances may have a later age of onset in some ethnic minority populations. Additional research is needed to investigate further the prevalence, onset, and natural course of eating disorders among ethnic minority groups. Currently, there are no definitive data on the prevalence of eating disorders among ethnic minority populations. However, a recent review (see below) summarized the growing body of literature on ethnic group differences in the symptoms of eating disorders, including binge eating, various forms of dieting and severely
Body image dissatisfaction is one of the most robust risk factors for eating disorders. Currently, among American and Westernized societies, the preference is for a very slender, almost prepubertal female figure, an ideal that is promoted by the media. Family members and peers may play an important role in transmitting this cultural ideal, also contributing to pressures to be thin. When girls and young women internalize the thin ideal, an ideal that may be difficult for them to attain, they may experience body dissatisfaction, which plays a central role in the development of severely restrictive dieting, some eating disturbances, and eating disorders. It is generally recognized that culture plays a role in the importance ascribed to weight and shape in the definition of the ideal figure. Cross-culturally, there have been cultures and societies that value larger body sizes and do not consider a thin figure attractive. One factor that has been identified as a potential protective factor involves ethnic differences in the ideal body image. Other factors thought to be relevant among some ethnic minority populations include greater acceptance of more diverse body types and sizes, greater weight tolerance, and less emphasis on achieving acceptance via appearance-related attributes. Although additional research is needed, evidence suggests that the body ideal among Black and Latina women may be larger than that of White women and Black women report less body and weight dissatisfaction than their White peers. Findings such as these may partially explain the lower prevalence of eating disturbances in which severely restrictive eating or dieting play a role among ethnic minority populations. However, to the extent that women from some ethnic minority groups are heavier than White women and are more accepting of this larger body size, they may be at
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increased risk for being overweight or obese and the health complications associated with these conditions. Two factors unique to ethnic minority women that may affect the development of eating disturbances and eating disorders are acculturation and racial and ethnic discrimination. Acculturation is the process through which an individual adopts the values, norms, language, and behaviors of a dominant culture. There have been two competing hypotheses regarding the role of acculturation in the development of eating disorders among ethnic minority women. The first argues that greater acculturation is associated with an increased risk for eating disturbances and eating disorders. This may be the case if adolescent and young adult women in ethnic minority groups receive conflicting cultural messages regarding the beauty ideal or they feel pressure to adopt Western cultural values regarding ideal body shape and weight. The second argues that lower acculturation is associated with increased risk for eating disturbances and eating disorders, because the stress of adhering to traditional cultural values may place a young woman in conflict with the majority or dominant culture. A related view focuses on identity development, noting that conflict or confusion regarding one’s identity, that may include one’s culture’s concept of the beauty ideal, may increase stress and lead to the development of eating disturbances and eating disorders. Ultimately, there may be several pathways to the development of eating disorders that differ by ethnicity, suggesting that it may be most important to understand the roles that acculturation, ethnic identity, and cultural conflict play within each ethnic minority group. Racial and ethnic discrimination also may increase risk for the development of eating disturbances and eating disorders, although their effects are not well understood or widely investigated. Experiences with racism and discrimination are very stressful events that often are perceived as outside of the individual’s control and precipitate negative emotions. One line of thinking is that eating disturbances may develop as a maladaptive way of coping with these experiences. In this context, eating symptoms, such as binge eating or purging, may function to distract the individual, if only temporarily, from the stressful experience, to reduce tension or other negative emotions, to numb pain, or to soothe or comfort the individual. There are promising treatments for eating disorders. For example, one of the most widely investigated forms of therapy for bulimia nervosa is cognitive behavior therapy. One major concern among mental health
professionals is that eating disorders among women from ethnic minority groups are underdiagnosed and, as a result, often do not receive treatment. In part, this may be due to the belief that eating disorders exist primarily among Western, non-Hispanic, White adolescent and young adult women, particularly from the middle to upper socioeconomic classes. To the extent that ethnic minority women are underrepresented among women seeking treatment for their eating disorders, it is not clear whether this reflects a failure on the part of clinicians to accurately diagnose and assess eating disorders among ethnic minority populations, the underutilization of mental health services by ethnic minority members, the absence of culturally sensitive treatment programs for eating disturbances and eating disorders among ethnic minority populations, or some combination of these factors. See also: > Acculturation; > Discrimination
Suggested Reading American Psychiatric Association (1994). Diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders (4th ed.). Washington, D.C.: American Psychiatric Association. Crago, M., & Shisslak, C. M. (2003). Ethnic differences in dieting, binge eating, and purging behaviors among American females: A review. Eating Disorders, 11, 289–304. Markey, C. N. (2004). Culture and the development of eating disorders: A tripartite model. Eating Disorders, 12, 139–156. Smolak, L., & Striegel-Moore, R. H. (2001). Challenging the myth of the golden girl: Ethnicity and eating disorders. In R. H. StriegelMoore & L. Smolak (Eds.), Eating disorders: Innovative directions in research and practice (pp. 111–132). Washington, D.C.: American Psychological Association.
Ebonics Meghan Nichols Taylor
African American Vernacular English (AAVE), also called Black English Vernacular or Ebonics as it is colloquially known, is a type variety (dialect, ethnolect, and sociolect) of the American English language. AAVE shares many characteristics with various Creole English dialects spoken by Black people in many parts
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of the world. It also has grammatical origins and pronunciation characteristics that are common with various West African languages. AAVE is most commonly thought to have pronunciation similar to that of Southern American English. AAVE’s development is traced back to the transAtlantic African slave trade, but also has features of sixteenth and seventeenth century English spoken in Great Britain and Ireland. To communicate with themselves and their captors, multilingual populations of African captives developed pidgins or simplified mixtures of two or more languages. Over time, some of these pidgins became fully developed creoles in the Americas and continue to be spoken by some today. The traits of AAVE that separate it from Standard American English (SAE) include: differences in the use of tenses, grammatical structures that can be traced to West African languages, and changes in pronunciation along definable patterns, many of which are found in creoles and dialects of other populations of West African descent. AAVE’s resistance to assimilation into Southern American English or more standard dialects is a result of cultural differences between Blacks and Whites. Language becomes a means of self-differentiation that helps forge group identity and solidarity. AAVE has survived through the centuries also as a result of various degrees of isolation from Southern American English and SAE through self-segregation from and marginalization by mainstream society. Many speakers of Ebonics are bidialectal—where they use both SAE and varying degrees of AAVE. In most cases, the degree of exclusive use of AAVE decreases with the rise in socioeconomic status, although almost all speakers of AAVE at all socioeconomic levels readily understand SAE. Many Blacks, regardless of socioeconomic status, educational background, or geographic region, use some form of AAVE to various degrees in intra-ethnic and informal communication. A stereotype is that AAVE is often perceived by people of mainstream American society as a language spoken by people who are uneducated. Among linguists, however, there is no such controversy, since AAVE, like all other dialects, shows consistent internal logic and structure. One of the largest educational debates regarding Ebonics was a resolution from the Oakland California school board on December 18, 1996 that wanted Ebonics to be officially recognized as a language or dialect. At its last meeting, the Oakland school board unanimously passed the resolution before stepping down
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from their positions to the newly elected board that held different political views. The new board modified the resolution and then dropped it. Had the new board decided to continue with the resolution, it would have affected funding and education-related issues. The Oakland resolution declared that Ebonics was not English, and it was not an Indo-European language. They claimed that the speech of Black children belonged to West and Niger-Congo African Languaged Systems, however, this claim was quickly ruled inconsistent with current linguistic theory, that AAVE is a dialect of English and therefore of Indo-European origin. Proponents of Ebonics instruction in public education affirm that their proposals have been distorted by political debate and misunderstood by the general public. Their underlying belief it is that some Black students may perform better in school and more easily learn SAE if textbooks and teachers acknowledged that AAVE was not a substandard version of SAE but rather a legitimate speech variety with its own grammatical rules and pronunciation norms. See also: > Cross-cultural learning styles; proficiency
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Suggested Reading Heynick, F. (1997). The Ebonics controversy: Exploring the roots of an African-American dialect. New York: Birch Lane Press. Perry, T. (1998). The real Ebonics debate. Boston, MA: Beacon Press.
Ecology Cheryl Danzy . Velma LaPoint . Jo-Anne Manswell Butty . Charlynn Small
Children are reared in multiple contexts that influence their development—families, schools, peers, faith-based organizations, media, marketplace, workplace, and other broader socioeconomic, political, and cultural settings. Ecology refers to these settings and interactions between these multiple and interrelated settings that influence and shape human behavior. With origins in the biological sciences, ecology initially referred to the study of interactions and relationships among all living organisms.
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Ecology
In the twentieth century, social scientists recognized that humans interact with one another in specific ways that have an impact on one another. It was deemed necessary to study human interaction in a separate field, and, hence, the origin of the field of human ecology. Human ecologists are interested in studying the complex ways that humans interact within and across these ecological settings. Particularly applicable to educators and school psychologists is the work of a prominent human ecologist and developmental psychologist, Urie Bronfenbrenner, who examined child development from an ecological framework. He theorized that, in addition to being shaped by bioecological factors, children develop in five distinct, but interrelated contexts: microsystem—the context that most directly has an impact on the child and is comprised of the immediate surroundings such as caregiver settings and households, neighborhoods, and schools; mesosystem—which is comprised of the structures that connect aspects of the mircrosystem (e.g., primary caregiver interaction with formal educators); exosystem, which is comprised of the larger contexts that have an impact on the child, but are settings where a child has no direct interaction (e.g., caregiver workplace settings and community resources); macrosystem—which is comprised of cultural norms, values, laws and societal expectations; and chronosystem— which is the time in which a child exists. Connections and interactions between and among each of the multiple contexts work together to shape children’s knowledge, attitudes, beliefs, behaviors, and worldviews. Children’s ecologies are not only immediate surroundings and the areas in which a child has direct interaction, but rather, the sum of all contexts that shape persons with which children interact. Many child development researchers and practitioners, especially those conducting research and working with ethnic minority children, have found that ecological settings are not always facilitative of children’s development and well-being. Many ecological settings are replete with structural barriers and inequalities in areas such as education, housing, healthcare where there are major disparities among European American children and ethnic minority children. Individuals from ethnic minority backgrounds must often learn to navigate between mainstream American culture, which may negate their culture and their own cultural norms. While these structural barriers may exist, ethnic minority children often learn optimal coping skills and develop resiliency skills,
which often emanates from their parents, family members, community members, and other stakeholders who provide supportive networks, resources, and systemic change in an effort to provide for children’s optimal development. Historically, some educational, psychological, and human service practitioners viewed ethnic minority children’s development and their culture from a deficit perspective. Thus, children who may have exhibited maladaptive behavior or learning problems were often viewed as having behavioral problems that resided with children themselves or their families. However, current and emerging research and practice, with the impetus coming from the growing ethnic diversity of child and family populations, educational, psychological, and human service providers, are using ecological frameworks and related research findings on children’s development, especially among ethnic minority groups, to guide their assessments and treatment modalities. By incorporating the ecological contexts of children and families of diverse cultures, school psychologists are poised to better understand and more effectively serve an increasingly ethnically and economically diverse body of children and their families. See also: > Community interventions with diverse youth; > Community psychology; > Community violence; > Home, Family, School liaison; > Homeschool partnerships; > School counselor; > School psychologist
Suggested Reading Bronfenbrenner, U. (1994). Who cares for the children? In H. Nuba, M. Searson, & D. L. Sheiman (Eds.), Resources for early childhood: A handbook (pp. 113–129). New York: Garland. Kearns, T., Ford, L., & Linney J. A. (2005). African American student representation in special education programs. [Electronic Version]. The Journal of Negro Education, 74(4), 297–310. Lerner, R. M., Lerner, J. V., Almerigi, J. B., Phelps, E., Gestsdottir, S. et al. (2005). Positive youth development, participation in community youth development programs, and community contributions of fifth grade adolescents: Findings from the first wave of the 4-h study of positive youth development. [Electronic Version]. The Journal of Early Adolescence, 25(1), 17–71. Overstreet, S., & Mazza, J. (2003). An ecological understanding of community violence: theoretical perspectives. [Electronic Version]. School Psychology Quarterly, 18(1), 66–87. Papalia, D. E., Old, S. W., & Feldman, R. D, (2001). Human development. New York: McGraw-Hill Higher Education.
Education
Education Linda S Behar-Horenstein . Alice Dix
Demographic Profile of Ethnic/ Minority Students According to the National Center for Education Statistics, public school enrollment reached approximately 48.3 million students in 2004. The projected enrollment for 2014 is 50.0 million students. The percentage of racial and ethnic minority students who are enrolled in public schools continues to increase as greater numbers of sociocultural and linguistically diverse students enter the United States (U.S.) or are born here. In 1972, 22% of public school students were from a racial or ethnic minority group. In 2003, this figure was 42%, largely due to an increase in Hispanic enrollment. The number of racial and ethnic minority students in public schools has dramatically increased from kindergarten through grade 12 (approximately ages 5 through seventeen). White students comprised 58% of all public school students in 2003 compared with 78% of the total public school students in 1972. Black students comprised 16% of all public school students in 2003, up only 1% from 1972. (The term ‘‘Black’’ will be used throughout these pages to be consistent with statistics presented by the U.S. Department of Education’s Institute for Education Sciences.) Hispanic students comprised 19% of all public school students in 2003 compared to only 6% in 1972. (The term ‘‘Hispanic’’ will be used throughout these pages to be consistent with statistics presented by the U.S. Department of Education’s Institute for Education Sciences.) Students characterized as other made up 7% of all public school students in 2003 compared to only 1% in 1972. Percentages were not specified for Asian/ Pacific Islander or Native American students. In the last two decades there have been substantial changes in the numbers of ethnic/minority students living within the Northeast, Midwest, South, and Western regions of the U.S. The most notable and dramatic change in racial/ethnic minority student body group representation occurred in the West. For instance, in 1972, the public schools in the West consisted of 73% White students, but this decreased to 46% in 2003. Black students in the West declined from 6% in 1972
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to 5% in 2003. The most significant increase occurred among Hispanic students who made up 15% of all public school students in the West, however Hispanic students accounted for 36% in 2003. Students in the other category were 6% in 1972 and 13% in 2003. The Northeast experienced less notable changes in the percentages of minority student enrollments. White students accounted for 81% of all students in 1972, but only 65% in 2003. Black students were 12% of all students in 1972 and increased to 16% in 2003. Hispanic students in the Northeast accounted for only 6% of all students in 1972, but this increased to 14% in 2003. Students in the category of other were only 1% in 1972, but this increased dramatically to 5% in 2003. The Midwest also experienced noteworthy changes in minority enrollment. White students accounted for 88% of all students in the Midwest in 1972 and decreased to 74% in 2003. Black students accounted for 11% in 1972 and increased to 14% in 2003. Hispanic students in 1972 were 2% of all students in the Midwest, but this figured tripled to 6% in 2003. Students classified as other made up 2% of Midwest students in 1972 and 5% in 2003. The South had some racial/ethnic groups that remained constant between 1972 and 2003 while others changed drastically. White students in 1972 accounted for 70% of all students in the South in 1972. This number dropped in 2003 so that White students accounted for only 54% of all students. The percentage of Black students remained constant between 1972 and 2003 at 25%. The percentage of Hispanic students in the South increased between 1972 and 2003 from 5 to 17%. Students classified as other accounted for 1% of all students in the South in 1972, but this rose in 2003 to 5% of all students.
Dropout Rates As of October 2002, students between the ages of 16 and 24 who dropped out of high school, or did not achieve high school diploma equivalency, (GED) have shown an alarming increase. The total dropout rate for all U.S. students was 10.5%. Hispanics had a dropout rate of 25.7% and accounted for 42.3% of all dropouts. Black students had a dropout rate of 11.3% and accounted for 15.1% of all dropouts. Asian/Pacific Islander reported a dropout rate of 3.9%, overall 1.7% of the total number of dropouts. A rate of 6.5% among Whites accounted for 39.2% among all dropouts.
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Although the exact reasons that youth dropout of school is not clear, there are several indicators that are clearly related to this problem. Family income level is a good indicator of factors affecting a students’ choice to dropout of school. Students in households with lower income levels have less resources provided to them to assist in their education or may feel compelled to leave school and get a job to help with the family’s financial situation. Another reason concerns the issue of language. Students who are not as able to successfully communicate in English have a higher risk of dropping out of school. Hispanic students represent the highest dropout percentage and this group also represents the highest percentage of students who admit to speaking English ‘‘not well’’ or ‘‘not at all.’’ This language barrier is a large contributor to the dropout rate of Hispanic students. Other indicators of dropout rates include the age and geographic region where a student lives. Students who are pursuing their high school diploma beyond the traditional ages of high school students are more likely to drop out. This may also relate to the need older students feel to enter the workforce to gain an income. It is also possible that perhaps these students feel embarrassed because they are older. Students living in certain geographic regions of the country constitute a higher dropout rate than students in other areas. Some of the differences according to region can be contributed to where greater percentages of ethnic minority students reside. An area with a greater percentage of Hispanic students will show a greater percentage of dropouts because of the fact that Hispanic students represent the greatest number of dropouts. Although no one definitive reason can explain the trends of dropout students in different regions of the country, it is clear that students in the South represent the greatest percentage of dropouts.
Students in Lower-Income or Poverty-Stricken Families The National School Lunch Program provides free or reduced lunches to students who meet specific income limitation limits. Students are eligible for free lunches if the family income level is below 130% of the annual poverty level. They are eligible for the reduced price lunch (they cannot be charged more than 40 cents for lunch) if their family’s income level is 130–185% below
the poverty level. As of 2005, 41% of all students in fourth grade were eligible for free or reduced lunches in the U.S. Of all fourth grade White students, 24% were eligible for free or reduced lunches compared to 70% of Blacks. Seventy-three percent of Hispanic fourth grade students were eligible for free and reduced lunches. Thirty-three percent of Asian/Pacific Islander and 65% of American Indian (including Alaskan natives) of all fourth grade students were eligible for free or reduced lunches.
Special Education According to the U.S. Department of Education, in 2000, approximately 3.9 million or 8% of all public school children in kindergarten through grade 12 were classified as having disabilities, including mental retardation, emotional disturbance, or a specific learning disability. Most students were classified as having a specific learning disability (2.8 million), mental retardation (647,000) and an emotional disturbance (438,000). The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) requires that children with disabilities receive free and appropriate education. This act originally came into being in October 1990, but has been amended on a few occasions and as recently as 2004. In 2000, almost twice as many male students as female students were classified as having a disability. Approximately 11% of male students and 6% of female students were classified with a disability. Individual percentages were reported for five racial/ethnicity groups. American Indians including Alaska Natives reported having approximately 10% of students with disability compared to 3% of Asian/Pacific Islanders, including Native Hawaiians. Black students reported having approximately 11% of students classified with a disability. Whites and Hispanic students reported having approximately 8% of their students with a disability. Black students classified with a disability accounted for 22% of all students classified with a disability, however the National Center for Educational Statistics reported that this figure was larger than the 17% of the total public school students that Black students accounted for in 2000. Overall, there is a disproportional representation of Black students with a disability when compared to all students with a disability. The disproportional representation of Black students with a disability may be, in part, due to the local, state, and district level policies
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that encourage the identification and placement of children in special education without questioning the cultural profiles and cultural implications that children bring to the learning process. Another reason for the over-representation of Black students with a disability may be teachers’ beliefs and preferences for what constitutes achievement and success in the U.S. Practices that are in place in schools and classrooms in which teachers prefer certain kinds of behaviors and certain academic learning styles over other may also contribute to the disproportional representation of Black students with a disability.
English as a Second Language Learners Students of different racial and ethnic groups who do not speak English as their first language require additional instruction services. Children between the ages of 5 and 17 who spoke a language other than English at home more than doubled between 1979 and 2003. In 2003, 19% of students spoke a language other than English at home compared to 9% in 1979. Students who spoke a language other than English at home and spoke English with difficulty increased from 3 to 5% from 1979 to 2003. Among languages other than English being spoken at home, Spanish was reported to be the most common. Rates for speaking a language other than English at home varied among different regions of the U.S. The West reported the largest percent of children, 31%, who spoke a language other than English at home compared to 19% in the Northeast, 16% in the Midwest, and 10% in the South. Among Black and White students, 5% of each group reported speaking a language other than English at home compared to 19% of American Indians. Asian/Pacific Islander and Hispanic groups reported the largest percentages of children speaking a language other than English at home with 65 and 68%, respectively. Only 1% of White and Black students reported speaking a language other than English at home and having difficulty speaking English, compared to 18% of Asian/Pacific Islander students and 21% of Hispanic students. Teachers and staff who provide services to English a Second Language (ESL) students report that it can be difficult to serve so many students. It can be even more difficult to help an ESL student who may speak a language that no one in the school is comfortable with. For students speaking languages other than Spanish,
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resources in the public school system are scarce. Although special testing accommodations are provided to ESL students, this practice continues to be a concern with the large number of ESL students and few available staff who can help them.
Educational Attainment among Ethnic/Minority Students The percentage of all racial and ethnic minority groups in the U.S. graduating high school is increasing. Approximately 87% of all 25- to 29-year olds in the U.S. reported completing high school and receiving their diploma in 2003 compared to 78% in 1972. In 2003, 88% Black students between the ages of 25 and 29 completed high school, up from 59% in 1972. Approximately 62% of Hispanics completed high school in 2003, compared to 48% in 1972. According to the U.S. Department of Education, Hispanic students are not closing the achievement gap with Whites as quickly as Black students. Findings based on selfreport data are included for 25- to 29-year olds who reported completing some college or a bachelor’s degree as of 2003. White students who completed at least some college were approximately 63%, while the total of all students completing some college was approximately 59%. Approximately 35% of White students in the U.S. completed a bachelor’s degree compared to approximately 28% of the total U.S. students who completed a bachelor’s degree. Approximately 50% of Black students completed some college while approximately 18% completed their bachelor’s degree. Among Hispanics, 30% completed some college compared to almost 10% completing their bachelor’s degree.
Barriers to Achievement among Diverse Students There are many factors that mitigate success achievement and completion of high school equivalency among diverse students. Most notable among these factors is the persistent Eurocentric approach to education that places children at risk for academic failure. Because public education relies heavily on the values of dominant conservative class views, there is often a disconnection between the home and school cultures for racial/ethnic minority children. Often, minority students are forced to negotiate between the school
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world and their home worlds without support or educators’ awareness. This is unresolved issue in education that may set minority groups upon a trajectory of academic failure and increase their susceptibility to factors such as excessive discipline referrals, school suspensions and expulsions, grade retention, and low academic achievement. Reports from the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) indicate that as early as third grade, for instance, African American students demonstrated significantly lower performance in reading, math, and science as compared to their White, Latino/as, and Asian/Pacific Islander peers. It is important to recognize the socio-political conditions that determine the accessibility to educational materials, resources, as well as the aesthetics of the learning environment. In addition, there are differences between how students socially construct knowledge and learning within and outside of the school. Educators who theorize about the usefulness of multiculturalism in education debate the belief that education and knowledge are non-neutral terrains. For example, some renowned multicultural theorists such as Banks, Grant and Lei have challenged the cultural hegemony that predominates the U.S. curriculum. Bilingual programs that integrate language and culture into their curriculum have also been criticized for segregating bilingual students from fluent-English speaking peers and for restricting opportunities for second-language acquisition. Those who advocate for English-only instruction argue for a rapid placement into mainstream classrooms. Bilingual education advocates support a two-way immersion approach. It is important, however, to point out that not all bilingual education programs are the same. For example, there are maintenance bilingual models and transitional bilingual programs. Maintenance bilingual models, also referred to as Two-Way Immersions (TWI) are believed to be more consistent with educational approaches that maximize social, cognitive, and academic benefits. These programs typically use both languages for the duration of the program and are usually implemented at the elementary level. These programs are taught to majority and minority students simultaneously, so they avoid segregation, they aim for high levels of biliteracy and bilingualism. A balanced group of native majority and native minority language speakers are used for instruction. There are varied program designs for implementation. The most common are 90/10 and 50/50 TWI approaches. In the 90/10 design students receive literacy development in
their native language until third grade when English literacy is introduced. In the 50/50 approach, students receive literacy instruction simultaneously in both languages. Transitional bilingual education programs are short-term, ranging from 2 to 3 years. In these programs the native language is used as bridge to learn English. Transitional bilingual education programs have been criticized form being subtractive and assimilationist. While all students are influenced by current trends in education such as mandated state testing, ethnic minority children, especially those from low-income families, experience multiple challenges that their middle class White counterparts may not face. Disproportionality in the achievement of nontraditional ethno-cultural groups within schools is fundamental to culturally appropriate pedagogy. This framework proposes that children, apart from their socio-economic background, are marginalized in culturally assaultive classrooms that fail to recognize or affirm their cultural values and beliefs. This framework theorizes that minority students arrive in the school environment with a set of unique and legitimate ways of being that are cognitively, linguistically, and behaviorally different from White middle-class norms. From the viewpoint of culturally appropriate pedagogy, school failure is attributed to the cultural incompatibility of the schooling environment, such as structure, content, curriculum, teaching practices, materials, assessment practices, and organization.
Overcoming Barriers to Sociocultural and Linguistically Diverse Student Achievement An increasing body of research demonstrates that family involvement is crucial to influencing students’ academic achievement. Family structures and processes strongly influence children’s academic success. Student academic and social competence improves when schools, families, and communities work together to promote student success. Parent involvement enhances student learning and achievement. In addition, improvement in language and literacy skills, acceptable school attendance, and reduction in grade retention have been shown. All families have stressors that pull them in multiple directions in a fast-paced society. School personnel must consider the question of resources in work with
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low income families. Parents’ time and energy for involvement is often influenced by the fact, that their work schedule often requires long or unpredictable hours. Low income families may have less access to professional support. Low income families may avoid school involvement when school personnel make unwarranted assumptions about their level of participation. Also, teachers sometimes assume that low income families lack the ability, interest, skills, time, motivation, or knowledge to participate. Moreover, traditional school practices tend to ignore the non-economic assets that families have. Often families are characterized as fitting into the Euro American lifestyle or they are presumed deficient. Many schools continue to perpetuate the norms, practices, and values of families that fit into the Euro American culture. Moving away from a deficit model of instruction so that educators and school personnel see children within the context of their families, communities and other social systems may permit schools to see the assets and needs that sociocultural and linguistically diverse students bring to school. The centrality of families has been recognized as a crucial component to student achievement. National educational goals have identified family and schools as partners as vital to the prevention of school failure among students. To create a culture of success, school personnel need to recognize that an unwillingness or inability to communicate is at the core of school failure. They may consider what practices can be altered to remedy this problem so that they can ensure the healthy cognitive, social and emotional development of children. School structures and practices can be developed to enhance parent-school relationships. For example, letting parents know that they are welcome, insuring that they are informed about their child’s progress and that school personnel respect them communicates that their concerns and suggestions are essential to forging these relationships. The principal plays a central role in establishing the school climate and sets the tone for parental involvement and program implementation. They also empower teachers and parents to reach for effective involvement. To ameliorate barriers that families may feel, the principal needs to describe the issues, needs and constraints faced by educators in the school building. Changing assumptions about school practices might begin as educators and administrators, ask how current school practices systematically include or exclude families and how practices can change to communicate
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a desire to include all families. To answer this question, the principal and teachers can audit the school handbook and archived newsletters and letters sent out by teachers and school staff to assess the tone of the writing and determine whether these communications are inviting or distancing. Improving the education of children from sociocultural and linguistically diverse families can also result when school staff displays positive attitudes toward their families. This practice is particularly important to empowering parents and to working with families effectively. Family-school discourse can be altered to enfranchise parents as equal partners. Beth Harry (1992) suggested that educators and administrators could provide ways for reciprocal rather than one-way interactions to engage in dialogue rather than monologue. Based upon her own ethnographic study of 12 Puerto Rican families and their children who received English as a second language instruction and services for mild disabilities, she suggested ways to engage parents in meaning involvement. Her recommendations include placing parents in active roles during conferences where school professionals could draw upon parent expertise and utilize a parent’s understanding of his/her child’s experiences and cultural aspects in ways that might help them better understand the child’s development, behavior, and ways of learning. During these conversations, school personnel can convey that parent involvement is valued and needed. Parents whose cultural backgrounds differ from the mainstream within the school district places them at distinct disadvantages by creating socio-cultural borders. Equalizing the balance of power between parents and educators, allows them to coconstruct a bigger picture about the conditions of the child’s life concerning learning and development. In addition, examining the way that families and educators currently connect and then altering existing structures to ensure that there is a shared responsibility for students, parents, and educators is one way to build trust and communication. For example, homework has been identified as one indicator of successful schools and successful students. Involving parents in student’s homework is one way to encourage students to spend more time completing assignments with higher quality work and promote positive communication between parent and child. Involving parents in this manner reinforces the importance of schoolwork, stimulates conversations between parents and family members and students about
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Education for all handicapped children act of 1975
students learning and may bring parents and children together as they exchange ideas. Principal leadership is vital as principals establish school priorities, direct the allocation of funding, and establish and influence the attitudes and morale of school staff. In addition, principal leadership and support are probably the most influential factors in determining a school’s capacity to implement new programs. Thus, if a principal asserts that involving families as partners with school personnel is a priority within the structure and function of school life, this message calls for immediate school-wide attention. Principals can set expectations for meaningful family participation by establishing the tone for interactions, providing opportunities for sustained positive interactions between families and educators, and modeling positive communication with all families. For example, holding bi-weekly breakfasts with grade level teachers can increase the interaction between students, parents, and educators in a relaxed environment. Principals can also advocate ensuring that system-level policies are enacted to support strong family-school interactions. Schools must work to overcome the challenges that often make involvement for low income and sociocultural and linguistically diverse families difficult. It is important that principals acknowledge their influence. The principal’s vision permeates throughout all facets of the school community. If the principal believes that all children can learn and this is a fundamental belief of educational philosophy, then teachers throughout the school may begin to rally their support and instructional practices. Rather than accepting the cultural hegemony that typifies public educationally practices, it is important to consider the various ways that children learn. To ensure the success of children in the school community, it is important that educators at all levels become attuned to the preferred modes of processing and perceiving within each individual child. When students are taught in ways that match their learning styles, outcomes are likely to be higher then when teaching modes are in contrast to their natural learning style. However, it is also important to balance this approach with teaching in modes where students have less dexterity so they can increase their ability to learn in varied ways. For public school education to be truly successful for all students, teaching and learning need to become an explicit process whereby teachers carefully explain to students how they plan to teach, what they plan to teach and why, and what they want students to demonstrate, do, or change, as a result of classroom
experiences. Each party in the teaching-learning process has specific tasks to accomplish. When these tasks are not clearly articulated and/or exemplified in ways that ensure students have a cognitive or visual understanding, the possibility exists that students will not learn what is taught. Developing flexible educational plans tailored to each student, providing smaller schools, decreasing bureaucratic oversight, de-emphasizing legislated accountability, placing more emphasis on equity in assessment, helping students discover how they learn best, how to study, and how to adapt their skills in challenging learning environments are key components for the next wave of educational reform. See also: > Educational partnership; > Ethnic minority youth; > Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA); > Principals
Suggested Reading Christenson, S. L., & Sheridan, S. (2001). Schools and families: Creating essential connections for learning. New York: Guilford Press. U.S. Department of Education, Institute of Education Sciences. (2006). The Condition of education: Participation in education. Retrieved September 12, 2006 from http://nces.ed.gov/ programs/coe/2006/section1/table.asp?tableID = 440
Education for All Handicapped Children Act of 1975 DeAnn Lechtenberger
In 1975, the United States (U.S.) Congress passed the Education for All Handicapped Children Act of 1975, also known as Public Law 94-142. This historic legislation was implemented in the public schools in October of 1977 once federal regulations were finalized. States receiving federal funds were required to comply with six federal mandates. 1. Zero Reject specifically mandates that all children, regardless of ability, be guaranteed a free and appropriate public education (FAPE). School districts were mandated to serve children ages 6-17
Education for all handicapped children act of 1975
(and ages 3-5 and 18-21 if the state also educated nondisabled children in those age groups). 2. Nondiscriminatory Identification and Evaluation was guaranteed to address practices that often resulted in the misidentification and placement of individuals into special education (i.e., culturally and linguistically diverse learners). A number of essential safeguards were also established including the use of assessments that would be: (a) administered in a child’s primary language, (b) given by qualified evaluation personnel, (c) individualized to assess specific areas of need, (d) consisting of more than one procedure, (e) selected so as not to discriminate against the child’s disability, and (f) directed by a multidisciplinary team in all areas related to the suspected disability. 3. An Individualized Education Program (IEP) is required for each student with an identified disability who qualifies for special education and/or related services. This plan will be developed by the IEP team, which consists of the parents, school personnel, and the identified child, if appropriate. The IEP must include information that identifies: (a) the student’s present levels of educational performance, (b) measurable annual goals including short term objectives, (c) objective criteria and evaluation procedures, (d) specific special education and related services, (e) percentage of the school day the student is in general education and an explanation of nonparticipation, (f) modifications to the general education classroom, (g) projected dates for beginning and the duration of services, and (h) annual evaluation of progress made on the IEP. This team may be convened at any time, but must meet a minimum of once a school year. 4. Least Restrictive Environment (LRE) is the component of PL 94-142 that mandates that children with disabilities, including students in public or private schools or other care facilities, are to be educated, to the maximum extent that is appropriate, with children who are not disabled. Special classes, separate school facilities or other removal of children with disabilities from the regular educational environment may take place only when the nature or severity of the disability requires the use of supplementary aids and services that cannot be provided in a satisfactory manner within a general or regular educational setting with non-disabled peers. The overall goal and philosophy behind this component is to have children with disabilities participate in
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regular education classrooms as is feasible and appropriate for each child. 5. Due Process is a system of safeguards put in place to ensure the rights of students with disabilities and their families. These procedures include: (a) written parental permission for evaluation, (b) written parental permission for placement in special education, (c) parental rights to review and question their child’s records, (d) parental right to an independent educational evaluation for their child, (e) parents (and school officials) have a right to a due process hearing, to present evidence, to have a lawyer present, and to call and confront witnesses, (f) parents and school officials have the right to appeal, and (g) confidentiality of student information is assured. 6. Parental Participation stipulates that parents of children with disabilities have the right to be included in decisions regarding evaluation, placement, and IEP development for their child. Parents are also given the right to access their child’s educational records at any time. School personnel are highly encouraged to communicate and work collaboratively with family members in all decisions regarding their children.
See also: > National Information Center for Children and Youth with Disabilities (NICHCY); > Parent Advocacy Coalition for Educational Rights (PACER Center); > Individualized Education Plan (IEP); > Inclusion; > Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA); > Special education
Suggested Reading Friend, M. (2005). Special education: Contemporary perspectives for school professionals. (2nd ed.). Boston: Allyn Bacon. Hunt, N., & Marshall, K. (1999). Exceptional children and youth (2nd. ed.). Boston: Houghton Mif flin Company. Turnbull, A., Turnbull, R., Shank, M., & Smith, S. J. (2004). Exceptional lives: Special education in today’s schools (4th. ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Merrill/Prentice Hall.
Suggested Resources Houghton Mifflin Student Resource Center—http://college. hmco.com/education/resources/res_prof/students/spec_ed/ legislation/pl_94-142.html: This website provides an overview and analysis of the Education of All Handicapped Children Act.
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Education funding
Education Funding Brian Lack
The United States (U.S.) spends more than $700 billion each year on education. Although there is some degree of variance among states, the federal government provides roughly 7–10% of this funding, with state and local districts providing the rest. Schools may receive additional funding through local donations from parents, corporate sponsors, and foundations, although the amount is generally nominal in comparison. Generally, about 60% of school budgets are spent on classroom instruction (e.g., teachers, materials). The remaining 40% is generally distributed as follows: 12% for instructional support (curriculum and staff development); 11% for operating and maintaining school facilities; and 11% on administrative services; and 6% on food and transportation services. The standard unit of funding analysis is the per-pupil expenditure, or how much money, on average, a school district spends on each student. In 2002–2003, the U.S. Department of Education reported that the national median per-pupil expenditure was $7,574. The U.S. spends more on public schooling each year than any other country in the world. School districts generally take into account the diversity of student needs when appropriating funds to schools. Students are weighted on the basis of individual needs because some students simply cost more to educate. For instance, because of the need for smaller classes, counseling, and special technology, a visually impaired student may require costs up to five times more than the regular education student who does not require such additional accommodations. This concept is often called ‘‘vertical equity,’’ because fairness is defined as imparting unequal resources to unequal students. ‘‘Horizontal equity,’’ on the other hand, is the opposite: allocating equal resources to students with unequal needs. Nearly every state in the U.S. employs the doctrine of horizontal equity in foundational grant funding, which is the minimum amount of funding that each student is to receive, before taking into account special differences. Early school reformers were leery of allowing state governments too much control over education budgets and policy decisions (ironically, as the number of schools has increased over the last 150 years, the number of school districts has plummeted—contradicting
the traditional value of decentralized school governance). Since the advent of the common school, local property taxes have constituted a major source of funding for public schools. Because of this, school funding is inextricably linked to politics. Because property values and tax rates obviously vary geographically—in addition to the fact that nearly 10% of students nationwide attend private schools—school funding has been one of the more politically controversial issues surrounding schooling in the U.S. Jonathan Kozol’s Savage Inequalities published in 1991 provided a vivid expose´ of how arcane funding formulas and widespread ignorance about the problems caused by the reliance on local property taxes have led to large disparities in per pupil expenditures. In many cases, for example, a particular school will receive twice the amount of funding per student than another school just a few miles down the road (in another school district). However egregious or benign one may render such differences, litigation is inevitable, for the notion of spending differences is inherently a political problem. Plaintiffs have battled state legislatures through the court system over school funding disparities since the 1960s, [Serrano v. Priest (1971) and Rodriguez v. San Antonio (1973) were two watershed cases], mostly over ‘‘equity’’ concerns or nominal differences in per-pupil spending. Since the late 1980s, a slightly different argument, known as the ‘‘adequacy’’ approach, which actually condones differences in spending per pupil, as long as inputs are related to educational need. Education elites have debated over how to define, or measure, an adequate education, and in spite of their efforts, state education clauses and political climate often make the most significant impact on how adequacy is measured. Another problem facing school funding reform is political will to change. Since court systems can only mandate rather than prescribe change, and policymaking power falls within the purview of the state legislature, policy action and implementation sometimes become political quagmires. Since the 1960s, school funding has maintained an incessant tenure on the education reform agenda, and today is inextricably linked to the modern school improvement effort that specifically espouses school choice and accountability. See also: > Accountability; education; > Vouchers
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Suggested Reading Carr, M. C., & Fuhrman, S. H. (1999). The politics of school finance in the 1990s. In H. F. Ladd, R. Chalk, & J. S. Hansen (Eds.), Equity and adequacy in education finance: Issues and perspectives. (pp 136–174). Washington, D.C.: National Academy Press. Hanushek, E. A. (2003). The failure of input-based schooling policies. Economic Journal 113, 64–69. Kozol, J. (1991). Savage inequalities: Children in America’s schools. New York: Harper. Monk, D. H., & Plecki, M. L. (1999). Generating and managing resources for school improvement. In J. Murphy, & K. S. Louis (Eds.), Handbook of research on educational administration, (2nd ed.) (pp 491–509). San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.
Suggested Resources National Center for Education Statistics—http://nces.ed.gov/ edfin: This website contains a dynamic array of historical statistics and studies concerning public school funding in the U.S. National Center for Education Statistics-Litigation—http://nces. ed.gov/edfin/litigation: This website offers a history and brief details of school funding court cases since the 1960s.
Educational Partnership Jack A Cummings . Charles R Ridley
An educational partnership is a relationship between two or more parties to solve an educational problem. Universities, businesses, community agencies, private foundations, service clubs, faith-based organizations, media groups, and parent organizations may collaborate with schools to form educational partnerships. School-based counselors, psychologists, and social workers also may form educational partnerships with teachers, principals, and parents. Thus, educational partnerships may include links to groups outside the school as well as within school networks. These partnerships develop when individuals and/or groups share a common goal. Partners share a perception that their collaboration will take advantage of opportunities to solve a significant problem. They also share the perception that the problem solving is either impossible or more difficult without the collaboration. Tushnet is an author who analyzed educational partnerships funded by the United States (U.S.) Office
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of Educational Research and Improvement (OERI). She noted that although educational partnerships may take different forms, such partnership entities are often characterized by a number of salient features. First, communication among the partners and to the larger community is paramount. Critical stakeholders communicate early, focus on the goals of the group, and address operational details such as delegating work and internally advertising new services. Second, educational partnerships often allocate resources to those individuals who are the targets of change. The allocated resources take the form of time and training. Two additional characteristics are also common in successful partnerships; the inclusion of evaluative practices and confronting problems by using them as an opportunity for positive change. Evaluations are essential for determining the effectiveness of partnerships, while positive change usually does not occur without confrontation. Involving parents and caregivers in the education of their children represents an important opportunity that too often is lost due to the disconnection between school and home. Parent involvement is often low, and the flow of information is typically one-sided—from school to home. Christenson is an author who has written extensively on family-school partnerships. She has noted that linguistic and cultural differences between home and school impede progress toward family-school partnerships. Parents may lack knowledge of ways they can support their children. They may have different expectations. They may have had negative experiences in their own schooling. They may have limited time due to work obligations. And in cases of immigrant children, parents may lack knowledge of the educational system. To have successful partnerships, Christenson advocates meeting parents ‘‘where they are.’’ To do this, one must understand their needs, goals, and availability. Understanding the effects of cultural and social capital in relation to the notion of supporting families to be engaged at school and with learning is integral to our success for partnering. Other authors offer important insights on establishing school, family, and community partnerships. A key part of the process is the identification of current services, personnel, leadership, infrastructure, and social capital. The authors take an asset-focused approach to mapping resources. This contrasts with a deficit-focused approach where the emphasis is on developing a prioritized list of deficiencies or problems. Mapping assets leads to an understanding
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of redundancies, gaps in services, and opportunities for collaboration. See also: > Community psychology; interventions with diverse youth
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Suggested Reading Adelman, H. S., & Taylor, L. (2006). The school leader’s guide to student learning supports: New directions for addressing barriers to learning. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press. Christenson, S. L. (2004). The family-school partnership: An opportunity to promote the learning competence of all students. School Psychology Review, 33, 83–104. Tushnet, N. C. (1993). A guide to developing educational partnerships. Retrieved November 29, 2006, from http://eric.ed.gov/ ERICDocs/data/ericdocs2/content_storage_01/0000000b/80/23/ 3a/9d.pdf
Educational Resilience Samantha Francois . Stacy Overstreet
Literature and research that examine the educational attainment of culturally and economically diverse students have documented the frequent challenges faced by these youth in United States (U.S.) school systems. The markers of academic failure such as high retention and drop out rates, lower grades, lower standardized test scores, and increases in behavioral problems are more frequently reported among ethnic minority youth, particularly those from low-income families. However, research has also examined resilience among ethnic minority youth where resilience is defined as academic success within the context of environments characterized by significant risk. Such educational resilience is not a fixed attribute associated with ability or an individual’s personality traits, but rather is fostered by attenuating risk factors in youth and their surroundings. Factors on all systemic levels can place youth at risk for academic challenges; more specifically, poverty, racism, and racial stereotypes can act as risk contributors to the academic success of ethnic minority youth from low-income backgrounds in particular. However, many research studies have demonstrated
that factors in the home (e.g., parental involvement, perceived parent support), school (e.g., perceived teacher support, physical environment of the classroom), and community (e.g., perceived support from members of the community, involvement in structured neighborhood-based activities) buffer the impact of these risk contributors, thereby promoting resilience in youth.
Risk Factors and Challenges Ethnic minority youth, particularly African American and Latino youth, are more likely than White and Asian/Asian American youth to live at or below the poverty line. Additionally, ethnic minority youth are more likely to experience discrimination as a result of racist beliefs and racial stereotypes. Therefore, poverty and racism are risk factors for ethnic minority youth in the U.S. because these phenomena predispose those youth to adverse outcomes in multiple settings. The aforementioned risk factors potentially threaten the ability of youth to be successful in academic settings through their association with mental heath issues such as depression, anxiety, and posttraumatic stress, and more general emotional distress such as fear, mistrust, and helplessness. In addition, poverty and racism can interfere with the opportunity for learning activities in the home and/or school. Therefore, social support becomes an important potential buffer to the negative impact of risk factors on educational outcomes because supportive others can help youth negotiate their emotional, psychological, and behavioral responses to risk factors in multiple environments.
Protective Factors and Supports in the Home Importantly, research has demonstrated that numerous factors help ethnic minority youth from low-income backgrounds combat the negative effects of poverty, racism, and racial stereotypes, which in turn cultivate the educational resilience of these youth. Positive family experiences and familial supports can promote educational resilience for low-income and ethnic minority youth. More specifically, perceived and actual parental and family support in ethnic minorities have a positive relationship with academic outcomes,
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such that as perceived and actual parental and family support increase so does youths’ academic performance. Similarly, studies have demonstrated that for African American youth in urban settings in particular, parental monitoring interacts with neighborhood risk factors to have an impact on academic outcomes, whereby as parental monitoring increases in the presence of increasing neighborhood risk factors, so does the academic performance of African American urban youth. Perceived support from a parent is a framework from which youths can explore contexts outside of the home and master the challenges within those contexts. Further, there is evidence that supportive relationships with parents beyond early childhood (i.e., adolescence) may continue to serve a similar purpose, providing a secure base from which early adolescents can explore the environment. These relationships become relevant in regard to the academic achievement, motivation and overall educational resilience in youth. For example, perceived support from parents may allow youth to achieve a sense of academic competence, as well as actual school achievement, by providing them with a secure emotional foundation. Youth may also perceive themselves more positively, as well as more competent, by virtue of the strength of perceived support from parents. Hence, the secure emotional foundation obtained as a result of supportive relationships with parents and other family members is what contributes to the protective effect of perceived and actual parental and family support and academic outcomes among educationally resilient youth. Parental involvement in the school context has been associated with youth school success, including better achievement and behavior, lower absenteeism, and more positive attitudes toward school. These associations have withstood the rigor of longitudinal studies, which have demonstrated that increased parental involvement leads to better academic functioning in youth. The importance of parental school involvement has also been documented within economically disadvantaged, ethnically diverse samples. Parental school involvement may lead to more positive academic outcomes in youth by fostering a sense of shared responsibility for children’s education. Such family–school connections may be particularly beneficial for youth from economically disadvantaged environments due to their increased risk of experiencing discontinuities between home and school.
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Protective Factors and Supports in the School Perceived support from teachers also has an impact on the academic outcomes of ethnic minority and low-income youth who are placed at risk for failure due to exposure to multiple risk factors. In samples of primarily Latino and African American low-income and urban youth, perceptions of teacher feedback, educational support from teachers, teacher expectations, and time spent interacting with teachers are associated with and/or predictive of educational resilience, which has been measured with school grades, standardized test scores, and/or other academic factors. As youths’ perceptions of the presence of teacher support increase, so does their academic performance. Various measures of school and classroom climate, facilities, and curricula also influence the educational resilience of youth placed at risk. An example of this is that youth who have a high sense of school belonging are more educationally resilient. Also, youth who are more satisfied with their schools, more engaged in classroom activities, spend more time on task, have more positive school ties, more curriculum exposure, and/or perceive more task orientation and organization in their classrooms are more educationally resilient. Additionally, school environments and classroom curricula that are more culturally responsive are associated with more educationally resilient youth. Therefore, classrooms and schools that acknowledge and incorporate into the curricula and mission of the school the unique cultural values, beliefs, and behaviors of the students have students that are more educationally resilient. Supportive and responsive learning environments are important in the education of all youth, but they are especially important to the educational resilience of youth who are placed at risk due to their race and/or socioeconomic background. Therefore, schools serving these populations can and should employ research-based techniques that increase the likelihood and predict the academic success of all its students, especially those who may be vulnerable due to social factors outside of their control. Establishing school and classroom climates that are supportive, culturally responsive, and academically challenging and fair can promote educational resilience in low-income and ethnic minority students.
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Protective Factors and Supports in the Community The risk factors associated with low-income neighborhoods, where many ethnic minority youth reside, can and do make these youth vulnerable to negative educational outcomes; however, the literature on neighborhood and community phenomenology also highlights protective factors and supports in these communities that promote resilience in its youth. Some protective factors that promote positive outcomes among low-income and ethnic minority youth and contribute to their resilience in contexts of risk identified in the literature include perceived supportive interactions with neighbors and other members of the community, involvement in community organizations, involvement in churches, and structured recreational and academic enrichment activities, such as team sports. The availability and quality of these community resources promotes the educational resilience of the youth who use them. Some specific findings among primarily African American and Latino youth were that youths’ perceptions of supportive interactions with neighbors was correlated to educational resilience in that youth who report more supportive relations with neighbors also report higher grades and higher school self-efficacy. Additionally, youth reports of more opportunities for engagement in neighborhood-based activities such as youth groups for sports, academic tutoring, summer programs, enrichment lessons, volunteer opportunities, and church or temple membership and participation are associated with more educational resilience. Although the literature on the protective effect of neighborhood and community-based supports and resources on the educational resilience of youth who are placed at risk is still growing, current findings are promising. Because of this history of social connectedness in the African American community and familisimo (a cultural value among some Latino populations where the needs of the family override those of the individual, and family unity and loyalty are valued over and above the individual), there is the possibility that perceived support from individuals in their community can have a positive impact on the educational resilience of these youth. Some studies have demonstrated that this sense of collectivity fosters in some youth a sense of responsibility to their
families and communities to succeed, thereby motivating them to do well academically, especially in the face of environmental and economic challenges. Potential mechanisms through which involvement in neighborhood and community-based structured activities foster educational resilience are access to caring and supportive adults, responsible peers, and skill-building activities. These mechanisms provide opportunities for youth who may have limited resources to be successful in contexts that are often plagued by risk factors; thus, their vulnerability is potentially offset by access to enriching activities and positive adult models in their neighborhoods and communities. See also: > Academic achievement in minority children; > Cultural resilience; > Resilience; > Resilience building prevention programs
Suggested Reading Waxman, H. C., Gray, J. P., & Padron, Y. N. (2003). Review of research on educational resilience. Center for Research on Education, Diversity & Excellence. Research Reports. (Paper rr_11). University of California, Santa Cruz. Retrieved 15 May 2006. http://repositories.cdlib.org/crede/rsrchrpts/rr_11. Luthar, S. S. (Ed.) (2003). Resilience and vulnerability: Adaptation in the context of childhood adversities. New York: Cambridge University Press. Luthar, S. S., Cicchetti, D., & Becker, B. (2000). The construct of resilience: A critical evaluation and guidelines for future work. Child Development, 71, 543–562.
Suggested Resources The Resilience Project—http://www.resilienceproject.com/: This website provides kindergarten through twelfth grade lesson plans, quotes, testimonials, and other resources for educators who want to foster resilience in their students. Resilience Research: How Can it Help City Schools?—http://www. ncrel.org/sdrs/cityschl/city1_1b.htm: This website reviews some empirical research on educational resilience and provides concrete suggestions for what parents and educators can do to promote resilience in youth. Also, there is an example of ‘‘resilience in action’’ at one school. The Resilience Guide for Parents and Teachers—http://www. apahelpcenter.org/featuredtopics/feature.php?id¼39: This website was constructed by the American Psychological Association and provides tips for building resilience in children and teens.
Ego identity statuses
Ego Identity Statuses Georgia Yu
The central psychosocial task of adolescence is the formation of a consolidated ego identity as a sense of personal sameness and historical continuity that transcends any particular moment or circumstance. By late adolescence and early adulthood, young people are expected to form a secure ego identity in occupational, educational, and political domains—areas that are believed to be salient to their psychosocial functioning in society. In the U.S., by the end of adolescence and early adulthood, youngsters are expected to form a cohesive sense of self in several salient domains following a period of active search among meaningful alternatives. Having a secure ego identity is associated with positive psychosocial outcomes. Erikson described ego identity consolidation as a developmental process that provides youngsters with meaning, direction, and purpose and allows them to form the sense of competence needed to function adaptively in adulthood. The concept of identity has been approached in many different ways. Several theorists have offered developmental models of identity, e.g., Erik H Erikson and Peter Blos. The present focus on adolescent identity is based on the Marcia ego identity status paradigm. Since the concept of identity status was introduced in 1966, Marcia’s ideas have generated a great number of studies. Researchers from different countries have studied identity status in populations, ranging from early adolescence to late adulthood.
Influence of Erik Erikson Marcia’s ideas spring from Erikson’s theory of psychosocial development. Erikson described eight psychosocial stages of development, each stage consisting of both physical and psychological development set in a social context. Each stage represents different developmental tasks that we all face during a lifetime, with identity as the primary psychosocial task of adolescence. Erikson viewed identity as built upon childhood identifications but as being more than the sum of these. He described the process of identity formation as being built upon the childhood processes of
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introjection and identification; that during childhood we incorporate the image of our parents (or other significant relations) and their roles, values, and beliefs. According to Erikson, our future identity formation requires such introjects and identifications. However, it is not until the individual is able to choose some of those childhood identifications, and discard others, based on her or his interests and values, that identity formation can begin. Erikson stresses that all the necessary ingredients for an identity are not present until adolescence. At that point in life, great physiological and cognitive changes coincide with growing social expectations. Identity, for Erikson, is the individual’s personal organization of experiences of biological and psychological development in relation to the recognition and regulation the individual receives in the social context. Marcia developed the identity status paradigm in an effort to operationally define and empirically investigate Erikson’s construct of identity. In interview studies, Marcia found that participants had different ways of arriving at an identity, and that they displayed diverse outcomes of identity formation. The differences found could be explained with reference to two important processes involved in the formation of an identity, namely exploration and commitment. Based upon the criteria of these processes, Marcia formulated four different identity statuses that describe different ways of forming an identity: Identity Diffusion, Moratorium, Foreclosure, and Identity Achievement. Identity diffusion is characterized by an absence of both identity search and commitment. Foreclosure is defined in terms of a commitment made based on parental values, without an active period of exploration. Moratorium is characterized by current involvement in an identity search without yet having achieved a commitment. Identity achievement is determined by clear commitment, following a period of active search. Identity-achieved individuals have gone through a period of exploration and have made identity-defining commitments. They are assumed to have successfully resolved the psychosocial task of adolescence. In interviews identity-achieved adolescents seem thoughtful and introspective; able to articulate how they have made their choices and why. From experimental studies we know that identity-achieved individuals perform well under stress, reason at high levels of moral development, and score high on measures of autonomy. No significant differences in intelligence have
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been determined between the identity statuses, but identity-achieved individuals are shown to be more creative and rational than other statuses. Individuals that go through moratorium are currently in the process of exploration and commitments are either vague or absent. These individuals actively struggle to arrive at commitments. However, moratoriums’ struggle to achieve identity is an ambivalent one. They alternate between rebellion and conformity. Empirical studies have shown that moratoriums are more anxious than the achieved or foreclosed individuals. Foreclosures are, on the other hand, the least anxious of the statuses. In interviews they appear goal-directed and well behaved, although inflexible and defensive. They are strongly committed, but their commitments are not the result of exploration. Foreclosed persons have adopted goals, values, and beliefs from parents or other authority figures without much critical thought. It has been experimentally determined that foreclosures are authoritarian, approval-seeking, and somewhat rigid in their thought processes. The fourth identity status is diffusion. Marcia explains that there are subtypes of all identity statuses. However, the diffusions have proven to be the most heterogeneous group. Identity-diffused individuals may have undergone some explorations, but they seem to be meandering more than actively exploring. Lack of commitment is characteristic of these individuals. Some diffusions have a ‘‘playboy/playgirl’’ attitude to life; they seem to drift aimlessly and carefree. Others may show severe psychopathology exemplified by social isolation and unhappiness. Interviews with diffusions tend to be short. Unlike the other statuses they do not have much to say in an identity status interview. On experimental measures, identity-diffused individuals have the most difficulty thinking when under stress and use less complex cognitive styles than do moratoriums and achievements. Research on identity status has repeatedly shown that persons who have undergone the explorationcommitment process are more relationally competent and mature than those who have not. The identity statuses are generally regarded as representing different levels of sophistication. Diffusion is considered the least advanced of the statuses, followed by foreclosure, moratorium, and identity achievement. Furthermore, the developmental assumptions are that the amount of identity achieved by each individual increases with age, and that relatively few late adolescents should be diffused.
See also: > Adolescence; > Adolescent ethnic identity
Suggested Reading Marcia, J. E. (1966). Development and validation of ego identity status. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 3, 551–558. Schwartz, S. J., Cote, J. E., & Arnett, J. J. (2005). Identity and agency in emerging adulthood: Two developmental routes in the individualization process. Youth and Society, 37(2), 201–229.
Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) Erika L Taylor . Theodore J Christ
The Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) of 1965 (Pub. L. No. 89–10) is one of the first and largest federal laws to provide monetary support for public education. The purpose of ESEA was to improve educational opportunities for children from lower socioeconomic backgrounds. While the Act was originally authorized through 1970, the government has reauthorized ESEA every 5 years since its enactment. As a result, ESEA has undergone numerous name changes over the years. Some of the major amendments include the Improving America’s Schools Act (1994) and the No Child Left Behind Act (2002). The Civil Rights movement (1954–1968), which aimed to abolish public and private acts of racial discrimination against African Americans, set the social and political climate of the time in the United States (U.S.) leading up to ESEA. In 1954, the historical Brown v. Board of Education case outlawed racial segregation in public schools, overturning the 1896 Plessy v. Ferguson ‘‘separate but equal’’ ruling. By the middle of the 1960s, many American school districts were integrated. Although the integration within public schools represented a substantial advance towards the goal of equality in the U.S., disparities in economics and academic achievement persisted. When Lyndon B. Johnson was elected president in 1964, he recognized the need for social reform. President Johnson pushed for immediate Congressional action to eliminate poverty and racial injustice, an agenda that was termed ‘‘The Great Society.’’ One
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outcome of this agenda was the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which Johnson signed shortly after he was elected president. This legislation prohibited discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, or national origin. The law also provided the federal government with the powers to enforce desegregation in public settings, including schools (Title III). Another program from the Great Society agenda was the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) of 1965. The ESEA was introduced by the Commissioner of Education Francis Keppel in January of 1965, and was subsequently passed on April 9, 1965. The act was developed on the premise that children from low-income families required more educational services compared to children from affluent families. As a result, ESEA established that special funds would be reserved for schools with a high concentration of children from low income families. Rather than provide a general aid package to all school systems, the allocation formulas for ESEA allocated funds to local education agencies (LEAs) with the greatest proportions of disadvantaged children. These funds were intentionally distributed through state education agencies (SEAs) to avoid the perception that the federal government was intervening in the rights and obligations of states to provide public education. Many of the educational programs that exist today are due to the ESEA of 1965. For example, Title I was established to provide supplemental educational opportunities for schools with high concentrations of children living in poverty. Today, Title I funds are provided to support either targeted assistance programs or schoolwide programs. Funding for targeted assistance programs support services to individual students who are reared in conditions such as poverty. Funding for schoolwide programs, such as Title I, is designed to improve the rate of development and achievement within school communities that serve a high proportion of students from disadvantaged conditions. Together these programs provide both intensive support to individuals and communities that are at risk for school failure, dropout, and low achievement. Probably one of the most recognized compensatory education programs that came from the ESEA legislation is Head Start. Head Start is a national program that seeks to prepare children from low-income families for entrance into formal education and success in school by providing a preschool education. Additionally, when the Bilingual Education Act was added as an amendment to ESEA in 1968, federal resources were
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provided for bilingual education programs. This act was created to help local schools districts address the needs of children with limited English proficiency. The ESEA influenced later legislation and policy. It established the education system as a viable nexus to prevent and remediate social and economic ills that establish disadvantage and vulnerability within specific segments of the U.S. community. The success of ESEA also prompted an increase in categorical funding within the public education system. In contrast to general purpose funds which can be used to pay for anything, categorical funds must be spent for specific purposes such as special education or teacher training. In addition, ESEA’s encouragement of state departments of education to administer federal education funds led to increased involvement of state governments in educational decision-making. Some of the major acts that derived from ESEA include the Bilingual Education Act, the Individuals with Disabilities Act (IDEA), and the Goals 2000: Educate America Act. Today, ESEA is known as the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB), and includes the most recent amendments. While the major premise of the law (to provide financial assistance to schools with children living in high poverty areas) remains the same, several new components have are gaining increased attention. Some of these include stronger accountability for schools regarding student achievement, increased flexibility and local control, and school choice options for parents of children in schools failing to demonstrate progress. See also: > Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka; > No Child Left Behind (NCLB)
Suggested Reading McClure, P. (2005). Segregation, civil rights and passage of the NSEA. Education Week, 24(33), 37–39. Million, J. (2005). Nurturing teachers in the famine of NCLB. Education Digest, 70(9), 16–18. Weaver, R. (2006). A positive agenda for ESEA. Education Leadership, 64(3), 32–36.
Suggested Resources History of Education—http://fcis.oise.utoronto.ca/~daniel_ schugurensky/: This website provides detailed reviews on select moments in the history of education in the U.S. during the twentieth century. The site also provides links to additional internet sources covering the history of education.
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Emic–etic distinction
Emic–Etic Distinction Fons J R van de Vijver
The emic–etic distinction refers to a difference made by cross-cultural researchers between two traditional research strategies used to study phenomena in different cultures. The terms ‘‘emic’’ and ‘‘etic’’ were borrowed from two strategies used in the study of linguistics (introduced by the linguist Pike). Phonemics attempts to identify all the sounds, or phonemes, used within one language. In contrast, phonetics analysis seeks to identify similar sounds across different languages and to develop a universal language coding system. In parallel, ‘‘etics’’ refers to research that studies cross-cultural differences (only superficially studying each individual culture), while ‘‘emics’’ refers to research that fully studies one culture with no (or only a secondary) cross-cultural focus. In addition, in ‘‘etics,’’ researchers seek to define common phenomena across cultures which can be used to define a set of universal phenomena among all cultures; ‘‘emics’’ lacks this aspect. Since the 1970s, there has been a controversy about which is the best research strategy for cross-cultural studies. Proponents of the emic viewpoint posit that phenomena should be studied from within their own cultural context and only with reference to this context. For example, studies of Chinese students’ learning strategies should provide a detailed overview of these strategies and relate them to presumably relevant features of Chinese culture, such as Confucian philosophy. In contrast, proponents of the etic strategy propose that the primary purpose of researching a culture is developing an understanding of cross-cultural differences and similarities. For example, etic researchers might use a questionnaire to compare the learning strategies of Chinese versus American students. The research methods employed in the emic and etic traditions also tend to differ. Emic research frequently uses methods from ethnography, whereas etic research largely draws from the research methods used in empirical psychology. Good examples of emic phenomena are culturebound syndromes, such as Pibloktoq (Arctic Hysteria), a behavior which is displayed solely by inhabitants of Greenland, Alaska, and Canada. Arctic Hysteria is characterized by a dissociative period, followed by a short period of extreme arousal and an uncontrollable
tendency to display dangerous or irrational behavior. A good example of an etic phenomenon is the cross– culturally invariant sequence of cognitive development as proposed by Piaget (sensorimotor, operational, and formal operational). In the last decade, there has been a growing appreciation of the complementary nature of emic and etic approaches, and many researchers now note that the two strategies are better seen as lying on a continuum rather than as mutually exclusive and incompatible research strategies. Rather than view the two strategies as dichotomous, the emic–etic distinction has been redefined as cultural specificity (emic) versus universality (etic). In this new approach, emic and etic approaches can co-exist and work together, because many phenomena studied in cross-cultural research have both universal and culture-specific aspects. For example, the learning strategies of Chinese students are likely to be composed of a large set of strategies that can also be found among non-Chinese students and of a small set of strategies that are unique to Chinese students. Another example is personality. There is significant evidence that the five-factor model of personality (which holds that personality structure comprises of neuroticism, extroversion, openness, agreeableness, and conscientiousness) is universally applicable. Although the Western five-factor model may occur in all cultures, the model may not yet fully capture all the culture-specific aspects of personality. Studies conducted in mainland China provide evidence that the five-factor model may be incomplete, for instance, as the model does not yet adequately measure the relational aspects of personality. See also: > Cross-cultural competence in school psychologists’ services; > Cultural diversity
Suggested Reading Berry, J. W., Poortinga, Y. H., Segall, M. H., & Dasen, P. R. (2002). Cross-cultural psychology: Research and applications (2nd ed.). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Harkness, J. A., Van de Vijver, F. J. R., & Mohler, P. P. h. (Eds.) (2003). Cross-cultural survey methods. New York: Wiley. Smith, P. B., Bond M. H., & Kagitcibasi, C. (2006). Understanding social psychology across cultures: Living and working in a changing world. London, UK: Sage. Van de Vijver, F. J. R., & Leung, K. (1997). Methods and data analysis for cross-cultural research. Newbury Park, CA: Sage.
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Suggested Resources Western Washington University: Center for Cross-Cultural Research— http://www.ac.wwu.edu/~culture/readings.htm: This Western Washington University Website offers online readings in psychology and culture that can be utilized by both students and professors.
Emotional Intelligence Erin K Maguire
Emotional intelligence (EI) is a concept with roots in the theory of social intelligence. EI is now used to refer to a collective group of qualities about a person with a certain ‘‘character’’ or ‘‘personality.’’ It signifies several qualities including a person’s ability to selfregulate one’s emotions and feelings, to delay gratification, and to motivate oneself. Different from cognition, EI also involves a metacognitive quality where the individual is able to internally discriminate among emotions, monitor one’s feelings with respect to others and use this self-regulation quality to guide one’s thinking and actions. EI contends that these qualities emotionally cushion a person to succeed on a daily basis without dissonance. Throughout the past several decades, increasingly more attention and research has sought to define EI, discover particular qualities that exemplify a person’s EI and develop ways to measure this concept. Several leading social scientists have led the forefront in defining and measuring EI. In the early 1970’s, Professor David McClelland from Harvard University studied qualities that contribute to higher job performance. His findings indicated that aspects of intelligence alone such as academic achievement, scholastic aptitude and impressive credentials did not predict a person’s success in a particular job. John Mayer and Peter Salovey developed four branches of EI. They stated that first EI includes accurate emotional perception and identification and the ability to perceive and encode information from the emotional system. It is known that nonverbal expression accounts for as much as 80% of human communication; thus EI stresses the importance of having the ability to recognize and process emotions
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in oneself as well as others. The second branch looks at the metacognitive process of formulating ideas about emotions and being able to rely on prior knowledge and experience with previous emotions to facilitate thought. EI emphasizes adaptive coping and adjustment to emotional surroundings. The third branch of EI involves understanding emotions. Each emotion encountered is associated with a number of communications. One particular emotion may emit different responses depending on a particular situation or prior knowledge associated with that emotion. Fully understanding and comprehending each emotion will thus allow one to empathize and relate better to others. Managing emotions is the last component of EI. This branch states that emotional management is best achieved when an individual has had previous experience with a particular emotion and is able to differenentiate between one’s response to one’s own emotional response as well as that of others. At the same time Mayer and Salovey were researching EI, Daniel Goleman’s interest in other aspects of intelligence culminated in his influential book Emotional Intelligence: Why it can matter more than IQ. Goleman’s definition of EI is comprised of five elements: the ability to identify one’s emotional condition and understand the linkage between emotions, thought and action; the capacity to manage one’s emotional states; the ability to go in and out of emotional states with a drive to achieve success; the ability to comprehend, empathize and influence other’s emotions; and the ability to have agreeable interpersonal relationships. Mayer and Salovey developed the Multifactor Emotional Intelligence Scale to assess EI. The outcome of this scale was a test to measure EI called the Mayer–Salovey–Caruso Emotional Intelligence Test (MSCEIT). Individuals who take the test receive an EQ (emotional quotient). High EQ scores indicate high competence on the EI model. See also: > Character education; > Intelligence/ Intelligence Quotient (IQ); > Testing and measurement
Suggested Reading Goleman, D. (1995). Emotional intelligence: Why it can matter more than IQ. New York: Bantam Books.
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Suggested Resources http://www.eiconsortium.org/: This website presents research associated with emotional intelligence with a focus on vocation-related research.
English as a Second Language Instruction (ESL) Youb Kim . Meredith McLellan . Mary Elizabeth Asbell
The significant number of foreign-born students in United States (U.S.) schools has brought English as a Second Language (ESL) instruction to the forefront of the nation’s educational agenda. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, 34.2 million people—12% of the total U.S. population—were born in foreign countries. Among them, 53% are from Latin America, 25% from Asia, 14% from Europe, and the remaining 8% come from other parts of the world. Breakdown by age shows that 3 million are of school age, including 0.7 million between the ages of 5 and 9, 1.1 million between 10 and 14, and 0.9 million between 15 and 17. U.S. Census Bureau data published in 2005 on the year of entry indicates that one third of these schoolage children arrived in the year 2000 or later, highlighting the need for language support in schools. ESL instruction in kindergarten through grade 12 school contexts is intended to provide language support for students whose first language is not English. In general, ESL instruction is based upon at least three assumptions about ESL learners. First, ESL students have developed oral and written language skills appropriate at their grade or age levels by the time they enter schools in English-speaking countries. Second, they possess age- or grade-appropriate cognitive skills. Third, although they are proficient communicators in their native language, they may not be able to express their thoughts in English, and they may not comprehend oral or written messages in English when they begin learning English as a second language. In addition, parents of ESL students are assumed to be capable of providing continuing support for students’ language, literacy, and cognitive development in their
native language. Based upon these assumptions, ESL instruction focuses on providing support in speaking, listening, reading, writing, and thinking skills in English so that ESL students can participate competently in general education classrooms, which may take several years. It is important for teachers to initially assess ESL students’ knowledge and skills in English. The purpose is to understand ESL students’ background knowledge in English in addition to getting information about their English language learning history through their self-report or their parents’ responses to questionnaires provided by the school. Teachers can use either standardized ESL tests or informal assessment tools to get a sense of ESL students’ initial knowledge in English. A few examples of standardized ESL tests available in the market include Pre-Las2000, Bilingual Syntax Measure, Language Assessment Scales, Maculaitis Test of English Language Proficiency, IDEA Proficiency Tests, and Language Assessment Battery. These tests are often divided into oral, reading, and writing skill subtests, except for the Bilingual Syntax Measure, which solely focuses on assessment of ESL students’ knowledge and development of English grammar in oral language. Teachers can also use informal assessment, such as measuring ESL students’ knowledge of English words of objects found in the classroom by showing an object and asking the students to say its English name. Depending on the student’s proficiency level, this might be expanded to reading, writing, and discussion segments (e.g., Where are you from?). To provide effective ESL instruction that supports ESL students’ language and cognitive development in English and successful transitioning into the general education classroom, teachers need to consider two axioms. First, they need to consider the instructional demand of the students’ grade level clusters (e.g., prekindergarten-K, 1–3, 4–5, 6–8, and 9–12). Equally important, teachers need to consider students’ English language skills identified through the initial ESL assessment (e.g., starting, emerging, developing, expanding, and bridging). While considering these two axioms as a way to conceptualize the nature of effective instruction, an overarching purpose should be on helping ESL students gradually take ownership of their own language learning and learn to use all language skills (speaking, listening, reading, and writing) in English actively and thoughtfully for academic, personal, and social purposes. The characteristics of ESL instruction
English as a second language instruction (ESL)
can be organized into emerging, beginning, and elaborating phases.
Emerging ESL Instruction ESL instruction for kindergarten to grade 12 (K-12) students with minimal to emerging English skills requires explicit and contextually rich instruction. Teachers need to use lots of authentic pictures, illustrations, and diagrams to build basic language skills— especially English vocabulary—for students at the emerging phase. Because students at this emerging phase do not possess English oral and written language communication skills, they may not respond or express their thoughts verbally for an extended period of time. Despite ESL students’ lack of exhibited communicative behaviors, teachers need to provide English instruction as explicitly as possible while attending to the match between students’ emotional maturity and instructional texts and activities. Instructional method and classroom activities at the emerging phase should focus on building ESL students’ experiential knowledge and basic language skills while making instructional accommodations for the emotional maturity of the students. For pre-K to first grade ESL students, instructional methods and activities based upon emergent literacy perspectives are effective. The Language Experience Approach to reading is a good example, as young ESL students will have an opportunity to develop experiential knowledge, interests, and language skills. For instance, teachers can bring in different types of fruits to the classroom and have students taste them. In the process, ESL students can learn the English names of fruits and commonly used adjectives that describe their distinctive characteristics, such as taste. Then, ESL students can draw a picture of fruits they like in their writing journal. These writing journals can be used as a space for ESL students to record their emerging knowledge about English. The Language Experience Approach is also useful for older ESL students with minimal to emerging English language skills. However, older ESL students are generally emotionally more mature and cognitively more capable, and teachers should consider these learner characteristics as they make instructional adaptations. For ESL students in second to fouth grade who have already developed literacy skills in their native languages, teachers can help them develop experiential knowledge about apple picking by going to an apple
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orchard in the fall. ESL students can make word cards which include a picture of an object that they saw on the field trip to an apple orchard on one side and its English name on the other side. Teachers can also provide informational texts which ESL students in grades 2–4 can comprehend. For ESL students in fifth grade and above who possess not only sophisticated literacy skills in their native languages but also a sense of cultural identity, teachers need to use instructional methods and activities that validate students’ cultural knowledge while also building basic English skills. For instance, teachers can invite ESL students to share their cultural knowledge about apple picking or apple orchards while helping them develop a basic English vocabulary and experiential knowledge about relevant topics. Along with developmentally appropriate instructional methods and activities, teachers need to support ESL students in the emerging phase emotionally by giving an abundance of positive feedback on their efforts.
Beginning ESL Instruction ESL instruction for K-12 students with beginning English language skills requires conceptually rich instruction while sheltering the cognitive demand of language used in oral sharing and written texts. Beginning ESL students possess basic vocabulary to express their thoughts, and they can read texts with simple language structure. However, their speech and written language production is marked by frequent grammatical errors. Because there is a great gap between ESL students’ receptive English language skills and expressive language abilities at this beginning phase, teachers need to exert great efforts to understand what ESL students are trying to communicate and provide conventional English language forms central to their expressive ideas while giving them emotional support for their communicative efforts. To provide conceptually rich instruction, teachers need to organize instruction thematically and use reading and writing activities while giving continued support to expand the size of students’ English vocabulary. For pre-K to fourth grade ESL students with beginning English language skills, teachers should plan instructional methods and activities based upon themes in which students are interested and which are emotionally appropriate for grade-level clusters. Baby animals are a good theme for pre-K to first grade students,
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and for students in grades 2–4, studying animal species would be emotionally more appropriate. For ESL students in grades 5 and above, teachers commonly use an instructional approach called sheltered instruction that focuses on grade-level content topic with simplified content and language to make ESL instruction accessible to these beginning ESL students. Along with instructional approaches that promote ESL students’ conceptual and linguistic knowledge in English, teachers need to provide linguistic resources that ESL students with beginning English skills can use to help them take ownership of expanding their English language skills. An example would be helping ESL students make a personal dictionary, in which students draw a picture and write a definition for a word they newly encounter. Teachers also need to give beginning ESL students lots of opportunities to practice their developing English language skills in a supportive classroom learning environment. A few good examples are weekly oral sharing of their experiences at home, writing an ending to a story, language games, and keeping a learning journal.
Elaborating ESL Instruction To provide effective ESL instruction for K-12 students who possess knowledge, experience, and skills to expand and elaborate English language for communication and content area learning, teachers should focus on deepening conceptual and linguistic knowledge with self-monitoring learning strategies. Elaborating ESL instruction is applicable to ESL students who exhibit between intermediate and fluent English proficiency on ESL tests. ESL students at this phase include students who possess English language skills to communicate their day-to-day needs and respond to teachers’ requests for participating in classroom activities, although they may exhibit difficulty comprehending complex language structures in oral and written forms. Because ESL students possess enough language knowledge and skills to learn more complex language forms and content, teachers should focus on expanding the repertoire of ESL students’ metacognitive strategies. ESL students from pre-K to first grade can participate meaningfully in the instruction designed for English-speaking students. Elaborating ESL instruction for students in second grade and above requires modification to expand English language knowledge based upon their grade-level clusters. A few examples of
such instructional methods are introducing common English morphemes such as the plural marker –s and the past tense marker –ed along with their functions. Guiding ESL students to use more interesting words during editing their own writing or peer editing would also be a good way to help ESL students expand their English knowledge. Thoughtful literacy activities are central for students at this phase. For example, effective instructional activities include independent reading, retelling a story, oral discussions about books they have read, and writing a written response to books they have read. For ESL students in fifth grade and above, teachers can provide sheltered instruction in content areas at their grade level with a focus on sheltering the complexity of language demand.
Delivery Mode of ESL Instruction: Pullout vs. Integrated As teachers consider the characteristics of effective instruction, they need to understand that there are two modes to delivering ESL instruction. Teachers can pull students who exhibit needs for ESL support out of their general education classroom for a certain period on a regular basis, such as daily or three or four times a week, and bring them to a separate classroom to provide focused ESL instruction. This is called pullout ESL instruction and is intended to provide language support in a protective environment. Teachers can also provide ESL support by going into ESL students’ general education classroom. In this mode of integrated ESL instruction, ESL teachers need to support ESL students to participate in general education classroom activities. In general, the delivery mode of ESL instruction is decided by the number of ESL students at each proficiency level, the ratio of ESL students and ESL teachers, and requests by the regular education teachers.
Parental Involvement Like any type of instruction at any grade level, parental involvement leads to positive educational outcomes for ESL students. Teachers can invite parents of ESL students to share their cultural heritage or observe their children in the classroom. Teachers can also involve parents in their children’s language learning by asking them to listen as their children read the word banks or
English language learners
books they bring home. The parent–teacher conference is a more formal channel through which teachers can help parents understand the strengths and needs of ESL students. However, the key is to understand that some parents may not have effective English oral language communication skills, and they may expect teachers to be the expert in providing the best education for their children. In such cases, teachers need to accommodate parents’ language proficiency in English and their expectations of teachers’ roles while helping them get involved in their children’s language learning so that their instructional efforts can reap fruitful results.
Summary In summary, ESL instruction in K-12 school contexts provides support for students whose first language is not English in speaking, listening, reading, writing, and thinking in English. Its goal is to help ESL students use English for academic, personal, and social purposes and ultimately to participate competently in general education classrooms. Because ESL students need to learn basic English communication skills as well as grade-level content knowledge, it may take several years for ESL students to achieve this goal. During this complex language learning process, teachers need to provide emotional support while using instructional methods, approaches, and materials appropriate for students’ growing English language knowledge and the demand of content in their gradelevel clusters. See also: > English language learners; > Limited English proficiency; > Teaching of English as a Second Language (TOESL)
Suggested Reading August, D., & Hakuta, K. (Eds.) (1997). Improving schooling for language-minority children: A research agenda. Washington, D.C.: National Academy Press. Garcia, G. G. (Ed.) (2003). English learners: Reaching the highest level of English literacy. Newark, DE: International Reading Association. Genesse, F., Lindholm-Leary, K., Saunders, W. M., & Christian, D. (Eds.) (2006). Educating English language learners: A synthesis of research evidence. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.
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Spangenberg-Urbschat, K., & Pritchard, R. (Eds.) (1994). Kids come in all languages: Reading instruction for ESL students. Newark, DE: International Reading Association. U.S. Census Bureau (2005). Foreign-born population tops 34 million, Census Bureau estimates. Retrieved March 5, 2007, http://www.census.gov/Press-Release/www/releases/archives/ foreignborn_population/003969.html Young, T. A., & Hadaway, N. L. (Eds.) (2006). Supporting the literacy development of English language learners: Increasing success in all classrooms. Newark, DE: International Reading Association.
Suggested Resources Office of English Language Acquisition—http://www.ed.gov/ about/offices/list/oela/index.html?src=mr: This website offers information on the mission and activities of the Office of English Language Acquisition, Language Enhancement, and Academic Achievement for Limited English Proficient Students (OELA). TESOL (Teachers of English to the Speakers of Other Languages, Inc)— http://www.tesol.org/s_tesol/index.asp: This global education association was founded in 1966 to share research and practical knowledge on and provide support for English language teaching to the speakers of other languages.
English Language Learners Guillermo Solano-Flores
The definition of English language learner (ELL) as someone whose first language (L1) is not English and is learning English may not reflect all the characteristics of the linguistic minorities who constitute over 9% of the U.S. public school enrollment from prekindergarten through grade 12. Unlike students learning a foreign language voluntarily through elective courses, English is a second language (L2) for ELLs— though not a foreign language—that they need to develop while they are also developing their L1. ELLs are individuals whose limited English proficiency (EP) limits their access to education. Major issues and concerns related to educating ELLs include: (1) equity (ELLs cannot benefit from instruction as much as other populations do); (2) test validity (test scores may not be accurate measures of their academic achievement if they do not possess certain linguistic competences that, although irrelevant to the construct measured, are needed in test taking); (3) their
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underrepresentation in talented and gifted education programs; (4) their overrepresentation in special education programs; and (5) their historical underperformance in standardized tests. Because EP tests provide only a partial picture of an individual’s complex pattern of linguistic skills, these instruments should be used judiciously to inform instructional (e.g., placement) and testing (e.g., inclusion) decisions for ELLs. Proficiency in a language is context-bound (it is shaped by different situations, topics, and interlocutors), multidimensional (it involves listening, speaking, reading, and writing), and system-based (it involves both L1 and L2). In contrast, practices for assessing EP tend to use decontextualized language tasks, do not address all language dimensions, and rarely pay attention to an individual’s L1. As a result, information about an ELL’s communication skills is fragmented, inaccurate, and inconsistent. An additional limitation of EP tests is that often they are based on English language arts or standards for English as a foreign language, which emphasize formal aspects of language (e.g., spelling, pronunciation) over functional communicative competences (i.e., pragmatic, discourse, and strategic) that are more relevant to a student struggling to learn a new language. Because language tests are sensitive to different aspects of language, making decisions on an individual’s EP should be based on multiple measures. In practice, however, these decisions are sometimes based on one test or on questionable criteria for identifying ELLs (e.g. race, last name, or country of origin). EP categories (e.g., ‘‘limited,’’ ‘‘proficient’’) are unlikely to address the tremendous heterogeneity of ELL populations because of multiple patterns of language dominance and multiple schooling, demographic, educational, and cultural factors. Although bilingual education programs can support ELLs in the development of their L2, to be effective, they must: (1) promote the development of L2 in addition to—not at the expense of—L1; (2) integrate (rather than segregate) linguistically diverse populations; (3) be based on a view of EP as a difference, not a deficit; and (4) be sensitive to the characteristics of the students’ communities. The effectiveness of these programs is shaped, among other factors, by social context and fidelity of implementation. Assessment policies should be consistent with the notion that, whereas ELLs develop a conversational fluency in a relatively short time, they need five to seven years to develop English as an academic language.
Valid measures of academic achievement for ELLs cannot be obtained by testing them after a short period of instruction in English. Also, assessment policies based on blanket approaches may be limited because of the heterogeneity of ELL populations; what works for one student may not work for others. Certain testing accommodations (e.g., test completion extended time, item linguistic simplification, test translation) are moderately effective in reducing the score gap between ELLs and non-ELL students in large-scale tests. See also: > Bilingual education programs: Maintenance, Transitional, and Dual language; > Bilingualism; > Culturally competent assessment of English language learners; > Language and educational assessment
Suggested Reading Abedi, J., Hofstetter, C. H., & Lord, C. (2004). Assessment accommodations for English language learners: Implications for policy-based empirical research. Review of Educational Research, 74(1), 1–28. Brisk, M. E. (2006). Bilingual education: From compensatory to quality schooling (2nd ed.). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Hakuta, K. (2001). How long does it take English learners to attain proficiency? University of California Linguistic Minority Research Institute. Policy Reports. Santa Barbara, CA: Linguistic Minority Research Institute. Retrieved from http://repositories.cdlib.org/ lmri/pr/hakuta, January 12, 2009 Klingner, J. K., & Artiles, A. (2003). When should bilingual students be in special education? Educational Leadership, 61(2): 66–71. Solano-Flores, G., & Trumbull, E. (2003). Examining language in context: The need for new research and practice paradigms in the testing of English-language learners. Educational Researcher, 32, 3–13.
Suggested Resources National Association for Bilingual Education (NABE)—http://www. nabe.org/about.html: The National Association for Bilingual Education (NABE) is a professional organization devoted to representing English language learners and bilingual education professionals. Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO)—http://www.ccsso. org/: The Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO) provides leadership, advocacy, and technical assistance on major educational issues, including the education and assessment of English language learners. Center for Applied Linguistics (CAL)—http://www.cal.org/: The Center for Applied Linguistics (CAL) is an organization for the promotion and improvement of the teaching and learning of languages, and for research on language issues.
Ethnic identity development
ESEA >
Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA)
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English as a Second Language Instruction (ESL)
Ethnic Identity Development Constance G Kim-Gervey
Accelerated immigration during the last third of a century has had a drastic impact upon the demographic makeup of the Unites States (U.S.). By 1998, one-tenth of the U.S. population was foreign born. In 2001, the first and second generation of immigrants totaled 55 million persons—one out of every five Americans. This changing demographic in the U.S. was one of the most striking changes noted in the 1990 and 2000 U.S. censuses. A corresponding, but limited, rise of awareness regarding issues of pluralism, discrimination, and racism has occurred in the popular culture since the 1960s. Growing awareness of societal differences in accordance with racial and ethnic groupings has been accompanied by social movements, as well as increased ethnic and racial consciousness. Similarly, a corresponding, but limited growth in awareness regarding racial and ethnic groups has developed in the field of psychology. The American Psychological Association (APA) has recommended a description of samples by ethnic group, and race and ethnicity has been included as an important factor for consideration across a variety of areas in the psychology field. Ethnic identity, in particular, has become a focus for developmental research because of its link to psychological adjustment. Empirical findings have
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related ethnic identity development to important psychological outcomes, including self-esteem, selfconcept, psychological adjustment as well as social relationships, societal resources, and identity development. Such studies have examined specific ethnic and racial groups (including Greek, Italian Americans, French Canadians, Jews, African Americans, Latinos, and Asian Americans) in disproportionate numbers (in the U.S. most studies have been conducted with White ethnic groups and African Americans).
Ethnic Identity Defined Models of both ethnic identity and racial identity exist. While they are related, these models are distinguishable through basic definitions of race and ethnicity. Models of racial identity are based on groupings by race, which is considered a biological construct consisting of shared biological, phenotypic, and genetic characteristics. Models of ethnic identity, on the other hand, are based on groupings by ethnicity, which is defined by shared traditions, language use, behavioral patterns or religious practices of people with a common ancestry. Defined broadly, ethnic identity is the component of an individual’s self-concept that is related to his or her connection with an ethnic group or groups. In the psychology field, a variety of researchers have studied ethnic identity in more specific terms, each highlighting different aspects of the individual’s connection with his or her ethnic group as most important. Altogether, across a variety of studies regarding ethnic identity, these aspects include: self-identification (the ethnic label an individual chooses for oneself); sense of belonging to one’s ethnic group; positive and negative attitude towards one’s ethnic group; use of ethnic language having friends in one’s ethnic group; affiliations with religions that are related to one’s ethnic group; participation in ethnic clubs, societies, or organizations; belief in political ideology and participation in political activity on behalf of one’s ethnic group; and finally, decision to live in a neighborhood with some proportion of same ethnic-group members. However, in part because the study of ethnic identity is still relatively young, psychologists have not yet come to consensus about which of these aspects of ethnic identity are indeed the most important. Ethnic identity is generally studied in one of the following ways: as a study of the strength of ethnic identity (defined as one or more of the aspects of
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ethnic identity listed above), or as a study of how far in ethnic identity development a person has come.
The Development of Ethnic Identity The development of ethnic identity has primarily been understood as a stage theory, modeled after the developmental theory of Eric Erikson. Erikson’s theory is grounded in the idea that a fundamental goal for adolescents is the achievement of a coherent, positive identity. The task of achieving this identity for the adolescent entails integrating knowledge about cultural and societal norms and perceptions, as well as childhood preferences, hopes, and self-concepts, into the adolescent’s ideas about who they are and who they will become. The process of developing this identity is linear, moving from exploration and commitment that eventually leads to one of four identity states, varying in the achievement of identity. Individuals who achieve identity have clarity about both their hopes and goals for their futures, and who they are; individuals who do not achieve a secure identity are left in a state of identity confusion or diffusion, with little knowledge about who they are and what they hope to achieve. Ethnic identity development follows the same trajectory described above. Ethnic identity development begins with a lack of awareness regarding ethnicity that typically involves a crisis or awakening that leads to exploration of the potential ethnic identity, and ends with clear understandings of ethnic identity, as well as comfortable and stable group memberships. A distinguishing element of ethnic identity development, as opposed to identity development, however, is the dynamic between the majority group and minority group culture. The first stage of ethnic identity development, unexamined ethnic identity, ranges from an individual showing no interest or concern with his or her ethnic group or with ethnic issues, to an ethnic individual’s preference for the cultural values of the dominant group over his or her ethnic group. At its extreme, the latter manifestation of this stage can also include the individual’s internalization of the negative stereotypes of his or her own ethnic group that are perpetuated in the dominant group culture. Ethnic identity search, or moratorium, is the second stage of ethnic identity development. A change occurs in this stage that prompts the exploration of ethnic
behaviors, cultures, and information by ethnic individuals. This change has been theorized as a range of possible occurrences, ranging from a shocking event that shakes the ethnic individual’s belief systems, to an emotionally intense time during which anger is expressed towards the dominant culture, to the simple new awareness of a misfit between the dominant culture’s views and the needs ethnic individuals perceive for themselves. The resulting exploration of ethnic information is ultimately a search for understanding not only ethnic group behaviors and beliefs, but also the dynamics and differences between majority and minority cultures. The final stage of ethnic identity development is ethnic identity achievement. Ethnic identity achievement describes a solid level of comfort, acceptance, and internalization of one’s ethnicity. Emotional stability, self-fulfillment, and pride in who one is make this identity the successful end goal of ethnic identity development. Studies have found that more achieved ethnic identity status is related to higher achievement of identity status, higher self-esteem for certain ethnic groups (specifically, African American and Mexican American), and good relations with family and peers. Generally, older students are more likely to have attained ethnic identity achievement than younger students; more college students than high school students have been found to reach ethnic identity achievement, and more tenth grade students than eighth grade students have reached ethnic identity achievement. As it is currently conceptualized, ethnic identity development as a stage theory makes several implicit assumptions. First, it implies that ethnic identity, once achieved, remains stable and thus requires little further reconsideration. As such, it does not yet account for the possibilities of change in ethnic identities that might occur as a result of particularly meaningful adult experiences. Second, since the stage model focuses upon the development of a single ethnic identity, it implies that having a single predominant ethnic identity is the norm—an assumption that will likely shift over time, as the U.S. becomes more and more bicultural and multicultural. Of course, the study of ethnic identity and ethnic identity development is relatively young and will likely continue to grow and change over time. See also: > Adolescent ethnic identity; > Black racial identity development; > Ego identity statuses; > Minority identity development model; > White racial identity development
Ethnic minority youth
Suggested Reading Erikson, E. (1986). Identity: Youth and crisis. New York: Norton. Phinney, J. (1990). Ethnic identity in adolescents and adults. Review of Research Psychological Bulletin, 108, 499–514.
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are social constructions that are not based on biological or genetic data, do not establish criteria to be used in determining a person’s race or ethnicity (e.g., selfidentification is the preferred method of categorization), nor do they identify or designate specific population groups as ‘‘minority groups.’’ The basic racial and ethnic federal government categories are defined as follows:
Courtney B Ferrell . Cheryl A Boyce . LeShawndra N Price
In the United States (U.S.), children or adolescents under the age of eighteen from the population’s less populous ethnic and racial groups are referred to as ethnic minority youth. The definition of a minority group varies depending on context, but generally refers to either a subgroup of the total population, or a group that is not necessarily a numerical minority, but is disadvantaged or otherwise has less power (whether political or economic) than the majority group. Members of ethnic groups are often characterized by a common ancestry, history, language, and shared values and traditions. In the U.S., the term ethnic minority has traditionally referred to the non-White population. However, as the numerical, social, economic, political, and cultural influence of traditional minority groups increases, it becomes less and less appropriate to do so. Here, ethnic minority youth will be defined as children and adolescents under the age of eighteen that selfidentify as American Indian or Alaska Native, Asian, African American or Black, and Native Hawaiian or other Pacific Islander. Given the frequency at which the terms ‘‘race’’ and ‘‘ethnicity’’ are used interchangeably in the U.S., Hispanic youth will also be considered ethnic minority youth. The U.S. federal government developed standards to provide consistent and comparable data on race and ethnicity across agencies for statistical and administrative purposes. The standards, originally issued in 1977 and subsequently revised and updated in 1997, describe a minimum set of categories for race (American Indian or Alaska Native, Asian, African American or Black, Native Hawaiian or other Pacific Islander, and White) and ethnicity (Hispanic Origin or not of Hispanic Origin). Respondents may select more than one racial group. The standards assert that the categories
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American Indian or Alaska Native. A person having origins in any of the original peoples of North and South America (including Central America), and who maintains cultural identification through tribal affiliation or community recognition. Asian or Pacific Islander. A person having origins in any of the original peoples of the Far East, Southeast Asia, the Indian subcontinent, or the Pacific Islands. This area includes, for example, China, India, Japan, Korea, the Phillipine Islands, Hawaii, and Samoa. African American or Black. A person having origins in any of the Black racial groups of Africa. Hispanic. A person of Mexican, Puerto Rican, Cuban, Central or South American or other Spanish culture or origin, regardless of race. White. A person having origins in any of the original peoples of Europe, North Africa, or the Middle East.
In 2003, there were 73 million children ages 0–17 in the U.S., or 25% of the total population. The racial and ethnic diversity of America’s children continues to increase. In fact, ethnic minority youth are the largest growing segment of the U.S. population. In 2003, 60% of American children were White, 16% were African American, 4% were Asian, and 4% were all other races. The percentage of Hispanic children has increased faster than any of the individual racial categories, growing from 9% of the child population in 1980 to 19% in 2003. By 2020, it is projected that one in five children will be of Hispanic origin.
American Indian and Alaska Native Youth The terms American Indian and Alaska Native (AI/AN) incorporate a diverse group of individuals including American tribal groups of Apache, Cherokee, Chippewa, Choctaw, Lumbee, Navajo, Pueblo, and Sioux. Currently, Cherokee and Navajo are the largest tribes. With respect to Alaska Natives, the Eskimos are the largest tribal
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group. According to 2004 Census data, there are 4.4 million American Indians and Alaskan Natives living in the U.S., which is approximately 1.5% of the total U.S. population. A third of the AI/AN population is under the age of 18.
Challenges American Indian and Alaska Native (AI/AN) youth face several obstacles within their community including, unemployment, poverty, alcohol and drug abuse, and mental health problems. The occurrence of alcohol and drug use is disproportionately high for AI/AN youth. Specifically, according to the 2004 Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration’s (SAMHSA) National Household Survey on Drug Abuse, 26% of AI/AN youth had used illicit drugs and 18% had consumed alcohol. Twenty percent of AI/AN youth reported substance abuse. Violence and crime are often associated with frequent rates of substance use and abuse. For American Indian and Alaska Natives, the majority of juvenile offenses are associated with alcohol or drug use. In 1997, the arrest rate for American Indian juveniles in relation to alcohol-related offenses was twice that reported for any other race. In 2003, AI/AN youth remained the largest group associated with alcohol related offenses in that 800 out of every 100,000 AI/AN youth were arrested in relation to liquor law violations. In comparison, 500 and 100 out of every 100,000 White and African American youth respectively, were arrested for liquor law violations. Furthermore, due to the high crime rates, AI/AN youth are 58% more likely to be victims of crime than youth of other races. Environmental factors such as drug and alcohol abuse, violence, and juvenile crime have placed AI/AN youth at great risk for the development of mental health problems. For example, suicide is a profound problem for American Indian youth. Studies have shown that a history of depression, family history of drug abuse, alcohol abuse, arrest history and racial discrimination are risk factors associated with suicidal behavior. Specifically, 30% of AI/AN youth have thought about or attempted suicide at least once. In addition, in 2000 the Indian Health Service, an agency within the Department of Health and Human Services, reported that 33.9 youth out of every 100,000 committed suicide. This number is 2.5 times that of the
national average and makes suicide the second leading cause of death for American Indian and Alaska Native youth. Steps have been taken to provide mental health treatment for this population. In 1965, the Office of Mental Health under the Indian Health Service was established on the Navajo reservation to serve as the primary provider of health and mental health services for tribal members. Currently, this office continues to be the main provider of mental health services; however, available resources have declined as the majority of services rendered through the Indian Health Service are alcohol related. American Indian and Alaska Native youth are faced with economic hardships such as poverty, poor educational attainment, and unemployment. Specifically, as of November 2004, 20% of American Indians and Alaska Natives lived below the poverty line and the median income for those employed was $34,740. For AI/AN youth, opportunity for employment in reservation communities is poor and has, in turn, pushed many youth away from their homes to more urban settings in search of better working conditions. However, in many cases moving away from the reservation leads to mainstream assimilation for these youth and therefore decreases their involvement in tribal cultural factors, which are often considered to be protective. With respect to education, 2000 U.S. Census data reported that 17% of American Indian youth between the ages of 16–19 were not enrolled in school and did not have a high school diploma. This number represents twice that of the national level. Furthermore, 18% of this group was unemployed in addition to not being enrolled in school.
Achievements Achievement for AI/AN youth is largely rooted in continued pride and development within their own culture. For instance, during the past several decades the education system within the American Indian community has moved away from the controversial boarding school model, which took children from their homes to assimilate them to mainstream culture. Currently, the majority of schooling involves the enrollment of AI/AN youth in schools in colleges that are run by tribal leadership. Culturally based educational programs such as the Hoop of Learning have successfully increased the number of American Indian youth who are completing high school and attending
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college. Specifically, in 2002, 100% of the Hoop of Learning students graduated from high school and 90% went on to attend college. In 1986, Running Strong for American Indian Youth, a program designed to raise funds to support the basic needs of American Indians and to support the development of opportunities for self-sufficiency and self-esteem for tribal youth, was established. Billy Mills, an Olympic Gold Medalist and a Sioux is the spokesperson for Running Strong for American Indian Youth. Since its inception, several teen centers have been constructed on many of the American Indian reservations. Programs such as college scholarships, children’s gardens, and enrichment camps have taken place through the Running Strong for American Indian Youth program.
Asian American or Pacific Islander Youth Asian Americans have origins in countries including China, Japan, Pakistan, Korea, India, the Philippines, Vietnam, and Laos and compose approximately 4% of the U.S. population, while Pacific Islanders have origins from islands in the Pacific and include Native Hawaiians. Pacific Islanders are reported at less than 0.5% of the U.S. population in the last census reports. Most Asian American or Pacific Islander (AA/PI) families reside in the western U.S. states, particularly California and Hawaii. In the next 25 years, the AA/PI population in the U.S. is expected to almost double from approximately 11 million to over 20 million people.
Challenges Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders (AA/PIs) reflect a rich diversity and heritage with over 40 different ethnic groups and over 100 languages and dialects including Chinese, Tagalog, Vietnamese, Korean and ¨ lelo Hawai’i. AA/PI families may be linguistically O isolated as the adults within the household may not speak English ably. While Asian Americans are immigrants and their descendants, Pacific Islander youth share a unique history as original inhabitants of land now claimed by the U.S., assumptions that Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders may be a well-adjusted group without challenges do not reflect
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evidenced-based reality. Research on the emotional, behavioral, health and academic functioning of AA/ PI children and adolescents has not fully recognized the characteristics and heterogeneity of the population. Asian American youths born in the U.S. or who immigrate at a younger age may have higher rates of behavioral and emotional problems as they are exposed to their American peers and communities. They may also experience familial conflict as they negotiate the cultural expectations of their parents regarding behavior and achievement. Pacific Islander youth may experience similar difficulties. High rates of poverty and poor access to health and education resources continue to be a challenge for Native Hawaiian youths. Alcohol and other drug related problems among youth, in their families and communities are another challenge for AA/PI youth.
Achievements While sometimes perceived as a ‘‘model minority’’ that surpasses other ethnic minority and majority groups on many typical indicators of success, AA/PI youth are exposed to a variety of socioeconomic and cultural factors that may hinder or promote their well-being. Barriers such as language, culture, and limited access to health and education programs contribute to a host of diverse developmental outcomes for Asian American and Pacific Islander youth. Asian Americans do outperform minority and majority families on many indicators, including socioeconomic status and educational achievement. Review of income data indicates that Asian families have the largest family income of any group in the U.S. Asian American youth have a high rate of high school graduation and college attainment. In fact, Japanese youth have the highest educational attainment of all youth. Southeast Asians have the highest rates of high school and college graduation. Cambodian, Hmong, and Laotian youth have the lowest rates of educational achievement within the Asian population. The family structure for AA/PI youth includes strong networks of relatives and non-relatives within their community. Success is highly valued within the family and community context. Culturally relevant prevention programs that employ the values of AA/PI families may benefit youth as they become more integrated into the U.S. social, cultural, educational and economic structural systems.
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African American or Black Youth African American youth are individuals under the age of 18, whose ancestors include an estimated 10–11 million Africans who were forcibly brought to the U.S. beginning in the early 1600s as slaves. Other terms that have been used to describe these children include Black, Afro American, or Black American. According to U.S. Census data, as of July 1, 2004, an estimated 39.2 million African Americans live in the U.S., comprising 13.4% of the overall population. Of this 39.2 million, approximately 32% are under the age of 18.
Challenges African American youth are exposed to a number of persistent societal and economic disadvantages including poverty, juvenile crime, poor access to healthcare, and lower levels of educational attainment. With respect to economic standing, 2004 Census data showed that Black households had the lowest median income ($30,134) in comparison to all other race groups. Specifically, the median income for White households was $48,977 and $57,518 for Asian households. The economic disparity continues in examining the U.S. poverty rates, as African American children are 2–3 times more likely to be affected by poverty than their White counterparts. In 2004, 24.7% of African Americans lived below the poverty line in comparison to 8.6% of Whites. Regarding access to health care, in 2004 19.7% of African Americans were uninsured, which is greater than the overall percentage of 15.7% of uninsured individuals within the total U.S. population. Furthermore, 13% of African American children were uninsured in 2004. Currently, the majority of mental health services for African American youth take place in the juvenile justice system and other settings outside of traditional mental health facilities. African American youth are overrepresented in the juvenile justice system. Although they comprise a small fraction of the U.S. population, African American youth account for 26% of juvenile arrests, 32% of delinquency referrals to juvenile court, and 46% of juveniles committed to secure institutions. As stated previously, studies indicate that much of the mental health problems of African American youth are mostly handled within the criminal justice system. Specifically,
research indicates that up to 75% of incarcerated youth have a diagnosable mental illness. Aside from the notion that mental health treatment for African American youth is often handled within the walls of the juvenile justice system, there are several other barriers to the appropriate care of mental health illness for African American youth. For example, there are issues of access to appropriate care, misdiagnoses of symptoms, and overall mistrust of the health care system. Specifically, in working with African American youth, counselors should be aware of the concept of ‘‘healthy cultural paranoia.’’ Healthy cultural paranoia refers to an understandable initial mistrust or wariness toward counseling. This behavior generally is a coping tactic to shield oneself from further potential racial discrimination. Although educational attainment has shown a steady increase within the African American population, an achievement gap between African American and White students continues to exist. Specifically, in 2004, 81% of African Americans ages 25 years and older had at least a high school diploma, whereas 90% of the White population had obtained at least a high school diploma. In further examination, the gap in educational attainment between these two races widens at higher educational levels, as 18% of African Americans held a bachelor’s degree or more, while 31% of Whites held a bachelors degree. Research has suggested that part of the reason for the disparity between African Americans and Whites regarding educational attainment involves the differences in availability of quality educational resources. Approximately 40% of African American students attend public school in urban school districts where many of these schools are funded under Title I of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965. The conditions of these public schools are generally inferior to schools in suburban areas. Specifically, students have less access to updated textbooks and new technology.
Achievements Despite environments that place African American children at greater risk for the development of mental health and substance abuse problems, African American youth typically maintain a high level of self-esteem. In grade school, African American children report more positive attitudes about school and their ability to perform than White children.
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Social networks such as extended family and religious/church participation have contributed to the development and strength of self-esteem within the African American community. Specifically, according to a 2002 survey, approximately 53% of African Americans reported that they attended church on a weekly basis. Studies have documented that church participation is associated with enhanced self-esteem and the experience of lower psychological distress. In addition, African American youth involved with the church are less likely to be involved in crime than are African American youth not involved in church activities. The African American family structure has also been noted to provide a buffer to psychological stress and negative effects of a child’s environment. For African American families, the role of grandparent has been historically and culturally important. Grandparents often serve as the backbone of the family by providing physical and spiritual support. In more recent years the role of grandparent within African American families has become increasingly important as a large segment of African American families are single parent families. Essentially, grandparents fill the role of the ‘‘other parent.’’ Furthermore, 11% of African American children are raised in families that are headed by a grandparent. For African American children who have a grandparent who is actively involved in their lives they have been reported to have higher selfesteem and sense of family connectedness.
Hispanic Youth Immigration and births have made Hispanics the youngest, largest and fastest growing ethnic population in the U.S. with over 35 million people. Two-thirds of the Hispanic population are Mexican American. The remaining Hispanic population in America is comprised of individuals from Puerto Rican, Cuban, South American, Central American, Dominican, and Spanish backgrounds.
Challenges Hispanic youth have heterogeneous experiences that may have an impact on their risk for health, academic and behavioral problems. Puerto Rican infants have higher death rates than White infants. Other public
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health concerns are emerging for Hispanic youth, including high rates of childhood obesity and Type II diabetes. In addition, educational attainment is limited. Half of all Hispanic youth do not obtain highschool diplomas. When compared to non-Hispanic White youth, Hispanic youth reported more anxiety, delinquency, depression, and drug use. Hispanic female adolescents across regions and ethnic groups are described as at higher risk for behavioral and emotional problems than other adolescents. Hispanic adolescents reported more suicidal ideation and suicide attempts than their non-Hispanic White and African American peers. Sadly, only about one-third of Hispanic female youth at-risk for suicide receive mental health treatment. Research indicates that Hispanic female youth who reside outside the continental U.S. are at decreased risk for suicide, which suggests negative consequences to acculturation in the U.S. According to data from the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration’s (SAMHSA) National Survey on Drug Use and Health (NSDUH) in 2002 and 2003, Hispanic youth aged 12–17 were less likely to report past month alcohol use and past month marijuana use than non-Hispanic youth. Moreover, U.S. born Hispanic youth were more likely to have used illicit drugs in the past month than foreign born Hispanic youth. Among Hispanic subgroups, Cuban youth report the highest rates of alcohol use, while Puerto Rican youth report the highest rates of illicit drug use. The interesting paradox that Hispanic youths may fare worse in the U.S. suggests that there are aspects of the culture that may increase their resilience, if it can be fostered in the U.S.
Achievements The Hispanic family structure serves as a stabilizing factor for many Hispanic children. Specifically, 67% of Hispanic families consist of married couples and 65% of Hispanic children grow up in homes with both parents. Factors such as these help to support strong self-esteem among Hispanic youth and have been used to set the ground work for several prevention programs. For example, in 2001 The White House established the ‘‘Initiative on Education Excellence for Hispanic Americans’’ which in part focuses on parental involvement to increase educational attainment. In addition, Hispanic youth have more recently been
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exposed to better economic conditions. According to 2004 U.S. Census data, the median household income for Hispanic families has remained stable at $34,241. From 1997–2002, Hispanic owned businesses increased by 31%, which was 3 times the national average. Despite health disparities, poorer educational attainment, and risk for emotional and behavioral problems among Hispanics, research suggests that youth who obtain positive developmental outcomes are supported by their rich cultural heritage. Community based programs that build upon the strengths of Hispanic families and traditions are promising avenues for combating barriers to success.
Multiracial Youth Multiracial children are a growing segment of the population. These children can be described as children born to parents from different racial and/or ethnic backgrounds or whose parents self-identify as being a member of more than one racial and/or ethnic group. Terms often used to describe these children include biracial, interracial, mixed or mixed race, and multiracial, which is the most inclusive term. The 2000 Census revealed that 2.4%, or 6.8 million, of the U.S. population reported more than one race. Forty-two percent of those reporting more than one race were under the age of 18. Among Hispanics reporting more than one race, 43% were 18 years old or younger. Among the 4.6 million non-Hispanics who reported more than one race, 41% were under age 18. The number of mixed-race children in the U.S. continues to steadily increase due to rises in interracial marriages and relationships. Publicity surrounding prominent Americans of mixed cultural heritage, such as athletes, actors, musicians, and politicians, has highlighted the issues of multicultural individuals and challenged long-standing views of race. However, despite some changes in laws and evolving social attitudes, multiracial children still face significant challenges. Research on multiracial children has reported both negative and positive developmental outcomes. Studies have reported that multiracial children are more likely to experience higher rates of problems related to racial identity development, social marginalization, isolation, behavioral conduct and academic concerns. Results from the Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health, a study of the influence of the social
environment on 90,000 7th to 12th grade adolescents’ physical and mental health, show not only were students who reported mixed racial heritage more likely to suffer from depression, substance abuse, sleep problems, and various illnesses, they also had higher rates of school suspension, skipping class, repeating grades, access to weapons, and earlier age at first sexual intercourse. The most common explanation for why multiracial children seem to be more vulnerable to poorer developmental and school outcomes is that multiracial children experience major difficulties with identity development, particularly racial identity development, and experience low self-esteem. Three theoretical explanations are suggested for why multiracial children seem to be more vulnerable to poorer outcomes. The first theory posits that multiracial people are more prone to low self-esteem and its problems because they are marginalized and socially isolated from the monoracial groups making up their racial heritage. This theory, the ‘‘Marginal Man’’ theory, was first proposed by Robert Park in the 1920’s. According to the theory, marginalization causes multiracial children difficulty in finding a group of peers with which they can identify. This isolation, subsequently, creates feelings of deficiency and low selfworth. A second theory hypothesizes that multiracial children are forced to select a particular mono-race with which they must identify. Based on the historical norm of the ‘‘one-drop rule,’’ also known as hypodescent, society identifies multiracial persons according to the race with the lowest social value among the races of their heritage. For example, a child born to an Asian parent and a White parent would be identified by society as Asian and would experience similar treatment as monoracial Asians. A child born to an Asian parent and an African American parent would be identified as African American, because the historical social hierarchy (which is rooted in a system of oppression and slavery) indicates that African Americans fall at the bottom of the hierarchy, followed by Hispanics, Asians, Native Americans, and Whites. Such categorization may be difficult for multiracial children, particularly if language, physical features, life in the family context, and/or how the child identifies him- or herself differs from how society views them. While laws related to hypodescent and antimiscegenation no longer have legal standing, stereotyping, a potential consequence of hypodescent, is something
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that all people encounter. Having to either live up to stereotypes or deny them is difficult and likely more complicated for multiracial children because they often must react to stereotypes of more than one racial and/or ethnic group. How one views him- or herself and how they perceive they are viewed by others is a critical component of racial identity development. A third theory suggests that multiracial children develop extreme racial identity confusion during adolescence. When children have more than one culture with which to identify, they must not only grapple with meanings of skin color and social position within society, but also values, expectations, customs, and traditions within each group. Similarly, choosing a peer group or dating partners reflective of their racial and cultural identity (salient activities during identity development during adolescence) may be difficult for multiracial youth. While all adolescents must make choices about their peers and dating partners, these choices may be more problematic for multiracial youth. Multiracial youth may feel the need to choose one group over another. Negotiation of identity for monoracial youth in these areas is generally consistent, but for multiracial youth, differences between groups may be stressful and lead to tension within the family or with peers, cognitive dissonance and/or confusion, and poorer mental health and psychosocial adjustment. Yet other research suggests that multiracial children are more likely to develop into more emotionally secure, assertive, independent adults. Studies refuting the marginal man hypothesis indicate that because of their position between two cultures, multiracial youth are able to retain high levels of ethnic identity and function as members of more than one culture without being in serious psychological conflict about those groups. The struggles multiracial youth face with their social groups, family, and within themselves are hypothesized to actually amplify multiracial youths’ sense of racial/ethnic identity, similar to the way that historically persecuted groups maintain high levels of ethnic identity because of their persecution (e.g., Jews following internment during the Holocaust, Japanese following internment in World War II, African Americans and the Black Pride movement following the early civil rights movement). Research on multiracial high school students has indicated that multiracial youth identify with multiple groups instead of a single group and appear to be comfortable doing so. In addition, several studies have indicated that no differences exist in levels of self-esteem or adjustment
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between monoracial and multiracial youth. Recent research also shows that multiracial children are as accepted, if not more accepted, by their monoracial peers. The learning and developmental needs of multiracial children do not differ from the needs of all children. However, the in-school and out-of-school experiences of multiracial children may have an impact on multiracial children more than monoracial children. Schools, teachers, and parents in partnership with schools can help facilitate positive racial identity development and psychosocial adjustment in all children. Given that schools represent a powerful socializing agent, racial and cultural diversity in coursework and skills development should be fully integrated into the school curriculum. For instance, in addition to celebrating ethnic and cultural heritage once a year (i.e., Black History or Latino Heritage Month), opportunities should be taken to elaborate on the contributions of ethnic and cultural groups as various concepts are presented throughout the instructional day (e.g., Asian Americans and the scientific discovery of hormones and medicines, American Indians’ historical role in U.S. military operations and government, discussions of literary elements in the works of Latino and Hispanic writers, discussions of African American contributions to number theory, mathematics, and computer science). Teachers have the ability to foster critical thinking skills and influence critical thinking about race, ethnicity, and culture in the youth they teach. As such, teachers must reexamine their own thoughts about race and ethnicity. Schools should offer culturally sensitive training opportunities to assist teachers in reflecting on their own beliefs and biases and developing culturally sensitive teaching strategies. See also: > Acculturation; > Adolescent ethnic identity; > Biracial/multiracial identity development; > Cultural resilience; > Ethnic identity development; > Ethnicity; > Mentoring diverse youth; > Multicultural teacher training; > People of color
Suggested Reading Banks, J. A., & Banks, C. A. M. (Eds.) (2003). Handbook of research on multicultural education, (2nd ed.) San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. Root, M. M. P., & Kelly, M. (Eds.) (2003). The multiracial child resource book. Seattle: Mavin Foundation.
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Suggested Resources Forum on Child and Family Statistics—http://www.childstats.gov/: This government website offers easy access to statistics and reports on children and families. U.S. Census Bureau Minority Links—http://www.census.gov/ pubinfo/www/NEWafamML1.html: This website provides links to facts about various minority populations.
Ethnicity Dinelia Rosa
An ethnic group is a human population whose members identify with each other, usually based on a presumed common genealogy or ancestry. Ethnic groups are also typically united by common cultural, behavioral, linguistic, or religious practices. Members of an ethnic group generally claim a strong cultural continuity over time. Ethnicity focuses more upon the connection to a perceived shared past and culture. ‘‘Ethnic,’’ derived from the Greek ethnos, meaning people, was used to refer to non-Greek peoples, or foreigners. The original term of ethnicity was associated with earliest forms of kinship-based ethnic group, most closely corresponding to the term ‘‘tribe.’’ Members of an ethnic group procreated only with members of their ethnic group. Partly because of invasions, migrations, and religious crusades, people began to procreate outside of their own kinship; this contributed to a further evolution of new ethnic groups. Ethnicity should be distinguished from nationality. Whereas nationality refers only to citizenship of a given state or country, the concept of ethnicity is rooted in the idea of social groups, marked by shared nationality. However, because many countries have multiple ethnic groups living within them, one’s nationality does not necessarily correspond to one’s ethnicity. Ethnicity and race should also be distinguished. Race refers to the categorization of people by genotype and/or phenotypic traits, whereas ethnicity concerns group identification. They both bring a unique set of experiences and worldview that would have an impact on the way the individual relates in the world. However, both terms have been erroneously interpreted as equivalent and used interchangeably. For example,
whereas Blacks can be perceived as one group, they may also have membership in diverse ethnic groups. A Black Hispanic Caribbean who self-identifies as Hispanic rather than as a Black person may encounter great conflict when identified by others as being Black. This erroneous interchange of race and ethnicity may cause feelings of unfair discrimination. Collectives of related ethnic groups are typically denoted as ‘‘ethnic.’’ For example in the United States (U.S.), the various Latin American ethnic groups and the Spanish are typically grouped as ‘‘Hispanics.’’ Similarly, Asian ethnic groups are grouped as ‘‘Asians,’’ and African ethnic groups in the U.S. are grouped as ‘‘African American.’’ One’s ethnic/racial identity may result from self-identification or from an imposition by others. Identifying other people’s ethnicity can be a powerful political tool for controlling and marginalizing. Political and economic powers have usually defined their ethnic/racial group as superior to the others. Being ‘‘White’’ has been associated with being intelligent and successful. This idea was reinforced through social systems, the educational system being the most influential. Being ‘‘Black’’ was identified with the opposite. Other ethnic groups such as Mexican American, Arab American, and Southeast Asians have also been labeled negatively. Ethnic identity has a powerful effect on the way people relate to others. Adolescents (of all ethnicities) are especially faced with challenges associated with processing their ethnic identity. For example, Whites are often not included in educational systems of information related to their own ethnicity and are then confronted when they are included in curricula covering how ‘‘Whites’’ have been unfair to people of color. In many instances, this can promote a negative image of their ethnicity and consequently of themselves; this may partly explain why many Whites identify with and adopt traits of other ethnic groups (e.g. music, style of dress, and slang language). Children of other ethnic groups confront different challenges such as distancing themselves from behaviors and customs that would identify them with their own ethnicity. They may prefer to speak English rather than their parents’ native language, or choose to dress and act like their American peers. Schools are an appropriate setting to teach students about ethnicity and ethnic identity. Therefore, teachers and other school professionals are faced with the challenges of themselves becoming sensitive to issues of ethnicity, to promoting class
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discussions, and creating opportunities for their students to experience different cultures. See also: > Cultural diversity; > People of color; > Race
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extended family households, it is necessary to understand the structure and function of extended families and their impact on child outcomes.
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Trends Suggested Reading Abizadeh, A. (2001). Ethnicity, race, and a possible humanity. World Order, 33(1), 23–34. Smith, A. D. (1987). The ethnic origins of nations. Oxford: Blackwell.
Extended Family Cheryl Danzy . Velma LaPoint . Jo-Anne Manswell Butty . Charlynn Small
The extended family can be defined as a kinship or fictive kinship network comprised of parents, children and other relatives, sometimes living in the same household. In some cultures, especially those comprising United States (U.S.) ethnic group families of color, extended families are the basic unit of social organization. Often these family members live together and form extended family households. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, an extended family household is formed when children live with a biological or adoptive parent and at least one other person outside of their immediate family. The definition of extended family includes other diverse families where parents may be gay, lesbian, or transgendered or where parents may be hearing and seeing impaired or with other physical or mental health challenges. Research suggests that the rate of extended family households is increasing and that these families are an asset in rearing children where they have shown positive educational and other developmental outcomes. The extended family has been especially instrumental in the development and well-being of children from ethnic group families of color, and in many cases, is more common than the nuclear households (households comprised of biological or adoptive parents and children only) that are characteristic of European American families. In working with children from increasingly diverse groups of families, including
While the extended family and its childrearing context are not unique, examination of population data offers insight about the diversity among American families. The U.S. Census Bureau revealed two significant trends regarding extended families. First, White American children were less likely (12%) than children of other racial and ethnic groups (22–24%) to live in extended family households. Second, the Census Bureau revealed an increase in the overall percentage of households comprised of extended family members—increasing from 8 million to 10.3 million in studies of the most recently available data. Most of the reported extended family households were formed by the presence of additional relatives rather than by the presence of nonrelatives in the household. In cases where extended family households are formed by the presence of non-relatives or non-relatives and relatives, children were more likely to be in the care of one parent only. The exception to this is found in households comprised of non-White, non-Hispanic children—where extended family households are equally as likely to be comprised of relatives and non-relatives. This is in contrast to the two-parent situations that are more likely when an extended family household is formed by the addition of relatives only. The increase in the number of extended family households is influenced by major societal political, cultural, economic, and social factors, namely (a) increased rates of immigration, (b) increased rates of children born to single parent mothers, and (c) decreased economic resources. Regarding immigration, it is common for newly immigrated persons to live with family members already in the U.S. when they first arrive. These family members serve as sponsors and provide an economic and social support system while an individual acclimates to the new environment. Extended families formed as a result of immigration status are most common among Asian and Pacific Islander children and Hispanic children, since they comprise the majority of new immigrants. Children born to single parents represent another factor in the increase of extended family households. These children are more likely than children born into
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two-parent households to experience periods of living with other relatives—especially grandparents. This tendency is largely attributed to the need for single parents to seek supplemental social and income support. Whereas sharing resources is often one of the primary reasons for an extended family household to form, single parents are more likely to rear their children in a household with other relatives or nonrelatives. Economic factors such as the lack of viable employment and affordable housing are contributing factors. When faced with a lack of economic resources, family members sometimes find the need to pool resources to make ends meet. In periods when the economy experiences a downturn, the presence of extended family households can be expected to increase. Finally, extended family households have become the norm or are more common among certain ethnic/racial groups such as African Americans and Hispanic Americans.
Types of Families and Extended Families Several social scientists and practitioners have described diverse typologies of U.S. ethnic group families of color. One typology indicates that there are 12 sub-types of Black families within three types of families. They are: (a) nuclear family with three sub-types: incipient nuclear comprised of a husband and wife only; a simple nuclear family comprised of husband and wife with one or more children; and an attenuated nuclear family comprised of a single parent, male or female, with one or more children; (b) extended family with three subtypes: incipient extended family comprised of a husband and wife and other family members; simple extended family comprised of husband and wife with one or more children, and other relatives; and an attenuated extended family comprised of a single parent, male or female, family, husband or wife, with one or more children, and other relatives; and (c) augmented family with six subtypes: incipient nuclear family with a husband and wife with one or more non-relatives; incipient extended augmented family with a husband and wife, other relatives and non-relatives; nuclear augmented family comprised of husband and wife, with one or more children and non-relatives; nuclear extended augmented family comprised of a husband and wife, with one or more children, relatives, and non-relatives; attenuated augmented family comprised
of a single parent, male or female, one or more children, and non-relatives, and the attenuated extended augmented family comprised of a single parent, male or female with one or more children and both relatives and non-relatives. These family types may exist among all families, but especially in ethnic group families of color.
Co-Residential and Custodial Grandparents Just as extended families and extended family households are not novel concepts, grandparents taking part in childrearing, and/or living in extended family households is not a new phenomenon. Historically, grandparents have always had a role in childrearing among all U.S. families. However, in the early 1990’s, researchers and policy makers noticed a significant increase in the role of grandparents in childrearing—both in primary caregiver capacities and in other roles. Due to the noticeable increase of children living in households with grandparents, the 2,000 Census added questions regarding grandparents and childrearing with data indicating that 5% of all children live in a household with a grandparent. Of these children, only 14% lived in a household with both a mother and father present, while the greatest number (45%) were living in a household with a mother and grandparent but no father present. The remaining 35% of children living in households with grandparents had neither a mother nor a father in the household. Data suggests that the reasons for increases in the number of co-resident and custodial grandparents are complex and varied. In some cases, grandparents live in households with children because they are dependent on the parents of their grandchildren for care and economic support. But, it appears that, in the majority of situations, co-resident and custodial grandparents are either partly or totally responsible for childrearing long- or short term due to: (a) parental work (e.g., military deployment in war-torn nations, employment in distant locations for better economic opportunities), (b) parental institutionalization in hospitals for mental or physical incapacitation (e.g., mental illnesses, drug abuse); (c) parental youth where children or adolescents are deemed too inexperienced to rear children; (d) parental economic instability with challenges in maintaining employment; (e) parental incarceration in jails or prisons (e.g., criminal offenses,
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child abuse); and (f) unfit parents where natural parents are self- or legally-defined as unable to appropriately rear children (e.g., involved in illegal or inappropriate lifestyles). In most cases, these caregiver relationships are long-term (expected to last 5 years or more). Research suggests that younger grandparents, (less than 60 years old), have been shown more likely than older grandparents to have caregiver responsibility for children—especially in a long-term arrangement. Research has also shown that Black families are more likely than Asian, Hispanic, and European American families to rely on grandparents as caregivers.
Benefits and Challenges of Extended Family Child Rearing The extended family, both in situations where parents are unable or unwilling to care for their own children, and where relatives and non-relatives provide supplemental care, has been shown to benefit children. Extended family members can help children provide unique learning opportunities, help children to adjust to formal educational settings, and avoid conditions that place children at risk in communities and society, especially in less than optimal environments (e.g., school failure, violence, drug abuse). Emergent strengths-based research suggests that extended family members can be a powerful asset to educators and other school practitioners. On the other hand, some extended families may face conditions that can render them vulnerable as they seek to rear children (e.g., aging adult family members with associated health challenges, inadequate economic resources). Some extended family members may also become frustrated, angered, and resentful towards parents especially if they view them as not fulfilling their own parental responsibilities and/or interfering with the family members’ own developmental needs as individual family members. It is important to fully understand and assess the nature, assets, and liabilities of extended family relationships, if present, on children in schools. By engaging the extended family and drawing upon its strengths, school practitioners can assist children in school adjustment and their overall well-being. See also: > Cross-cultural school psychology; > Culture; > Home-school partnerships; > Parental involvement in education
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Suggested Reading Bronfrenbrenner, U. (1972). Influences on human development. Hinsdale, IL: Dryden Press. Morton, D. D. (2000). Beyond parent education: The impact of extended family dynamics in deaf education. American Annals of the Deaf, 145(4), 359–365.
Suggested Resources Children’s Defense Fund website—www.childrensdefense.org: The Children’s Defense Fund (CDF) provides a strong, effective voice for all the children of America who cannot vote, lobby, or speak for themselves. It has a specific focus on the needs of poor and minority children and those with disabilities. Kinship Care Resource Center—http://www.kinshipcare.net/ index.html: The Kinship Care Resource Center provides support for the physical, emotional, cultural, and social well-being of kinship families in Michigan by linking families to community resources. National Council on Family Relations website: http://www.ncfr. org/—The National Council on Family Relations website (NCFR) provides a forum for family researchers, educators, and practitioners to share in the development and dissemination of knowledge about families and family relationships. The NCFR also publishes two journals and sponsors an annual conference.
Extracurricular Activities Jennifer Shannon
In the United States (U.S.), high school youth spend approximately 40% of their waking hours in leisure activities. With the right opportunities and caring adults, after-school hours can be the most valuable time for children to advance themselves and grow into healthy, functioning adults. For the youth who do not utilize this time in a structured and appropriate manner, these hours can be filled with drugs, alcohol, sex, crime, and maladaptive social networks. If filled with extracurricular activities, these time periods provide the potential for an abundance of educational, social, and athletic opportunities. Traditionally, highly structured extracurricular activities are defined as those having regular schedules, rule-guided engagement, and direction by competent adults. Additionally, the ideal extracurricular activity emphasizes skill development that increases in
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complexity, and performance that requires sustained active attention with clear feedback. It is not necessary that extracurricular activities be school-based, although those are often the most accessible. The National Center for Educational Statistics classified activities as falling into the following categories: Arts, Sports, Clubs, Academic Activities, Community Services, Religious Activities, Scouts, and Other. Comprehensive and detailed lists of specific activities are available at most schools and community centers. The wide array of benefits associated with participation in appropriate extracurricular activities include an increased engagement in school and potential for a stronger academic self-concept, as well as personal, social, and emotional self-concept development. Children who are actively engaged tend to have higher grade point averages (GPAs), better attendance and graduation rates, aspirations for higher education, and an increased rate of college attendance. Additionally, they are less likely to drop out of school prematurely than nonparticipating peers. Structured activities foster a sense of belongingness and may protect against dropout by facilitating students’ school identity and keeping them connected with the social fabric of the school. The degree to which this protective mechanism occurs may be contingent upon the extent to which students have an opportunity to participate in such activities. Students in smaller schools have a much higher rate of participation in extracurricular activities as compared to their peers at larger schools. The influence of school size on student engagement and school environment is indirectly associated with the dropout rate, as demonstrated by strong links to rate of participation in extracurricular activities. Participation has been associated with constructs such as self-concept development and life satisfaction. Furthermore, activities provide an opportunity to develop and enhance personal strengths and talents, contributing to positive self-esteem and identity formation. Most extracurricular activities involve youth in positive social networks, encouraging new connections with peers and relationships with unrelated adults. These supportive social networks create an environment in which positive interpersonal social skills are developed and encouraging adult role models provide guidance. Extracurricular participation appears to serve as protection against unacceptable societal behavior. For example, students involved in extracurricular activities experiment with tobacco, alcohol, and drugs, but to a
lesser extent than nonparticipating peers. While it should not be assumed that these activities provide guaranteed protection against deviant behavior, a preventative relationship is present. Students considered ‘‘at-risk’’ for dropout, crime, and violence may indirectly benefit from participation in extracurricular activities. Perhaps one of the most important factors associated with extracurricular participation is the promotion of resilience. Research suggests that participation in activities increases and enhances resilience among youth, helping them not succumb to a multitude of problems. Although limited research has been conducted on multicultural factors associated with extracurricular activities, preliminary data indicates that activities do facilitate the development of positive social relations across ethnic groups. To illustrate, it has been noted that interracial friendships are more likely to form in schools with integrated extracurricular activities, creating school climates that are more favorable to the formation of cross-race friendships. For the many benefits and positive associations often seen with extracurricular participation, youth should be encouraged to participate in appropriate structured activities and acquire the social, physical, and academic skills that will undoubtedly have an impact on many areas of their lives. See also: > After-school programs; > Retention; > Social skills
Suggested Reading Eccles, J. S., Barber, B. L., Stone, M., & Hunt, J. (2003). Extracurricular activities and adolescent development. The Journal of Social Issues, 59(4), 865–889. Gilman, R., Meyers, J., & Perez, L. (2004). Structured extracurricular activities among adolescents: Findings and implications for school psychology. Psychology in the Schools, 41(1), 31–41. Larner, M. B., Zippiroli, L., & Behrman, R. E. (1999). When school is out: Analysis and recommendations. Future Child, 9(2), 4–20.
Suggested Resources National Center for Education Statistics: Indicator 34—http://nces. ed.gov/program/coe/2004/section6/indicator34.asp: This website offers statistics and information regarding the after-school activities of children in the U.S. from kindergarten through the eighth grade.
Families and Advocates Partnership for Education (FAPE) Michael Kelly
The Families and Advocates Partnership for Education Project (FAPE) was one of four partnership projects formed through the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) of 1997. These partnership projects were begun in October of 1998 and were given funding for a 5-year period that ended in September 2003. In 2004, core FAPE projects were consolidated into the Unified IDEA Partnership, that continues to provide resources to students, parents, educators, and policymakers nationwide. The goal of establishing the four partnership projects was to improve the educational outcomes of students with disabilities by forming a nexus of community advocates, service providers, policy makers, and administrators who could more effectively implement IDEA’s provisions. The goal of FAPE was to ensure that families and advocates understood and implemented IDEA provisions at both local and state levels. Conceived as a grass-roots project and comprising a substantial number of partners, FAPE was able to establish and maintain a strong national presence among families and advocates of students with disabilities. To achieve a national presence, FAPE obtained the help of three different types of project partners: core partners, community partners, and extended partners. Core partners (e.g., Center for Law and Education, Family Voices) pledged to be involved in intensive efforts to execute the goals of FAPE. Community partners (e.g., National Down Syndrome Society, Epilepsy Foundation) made contributions mostly through their dissemination of information that was generated by the project. Extended partners such as the National Dissemination Center for Children with Disabilities distributed information that pertained to IDEA and how FAPE improved the lives of their constituents. FAPE reported having distributed items such as fact sheets and research briefs to over nine million people during the life of the project. FAPE also provided individual assistance to families, professionals, and community advocates, reportedly helping link over 70,000 individuals with information and resources germane to the well-being of students with
disabilities. Partners conducted over 500 workshops and presentations for local communities as well as state and federal conferences. FAPE also played an instrumental role in efforts to keep the work of students with disabilities closely aligned with the general education curriculum. See also: > Home, Family, School liaison; > Home-school partnerships; > Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA)
Suggested Resources Families and Advocates Partnership for Education (FAPE)—http:// www.fape.org/: This is the original FAPE website, with many of its products and reports still available. Unified IDEA Partnership—http://www.ideapartnership.org/: This is the Unified Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) Partnership website, with current information on the partnership’s activities as well as resources for families and educators.
Families and Schools Together Program Chihiro A Negron
The Families and Schools Together (FAST) Program is a community-based, supportive, multi-family group early intervention/prevention program for children from ages four to twelve. FAST is designed to strengthen relationships among families, children, and schools to reduce and/or prevent children’s negative behaviors such as school failure, drug abuse, substance addiction, violence, juvenile delinquency, child abuse, and mental health problems. The program implements a combination of concepts and practices associated with effective clinical techniques found in family therapy and play therapy. The program also incorporates research findings from family studies and child development. FAST is considered a non-traditional, culturally competent prevention program that aims to facilitate effective parenting strategies. Dr. Lynn McDonald developed the FAST program in 1988. Currently more than 600 schools across 45 states and five countries (Canada, Germany,
C. S. Clauss-Ehlers (Ed.), Encyclopedia of Cross-Cultural School Psychology, DOI 10.1007/978-0-387-71799-9, # Springer Science+Business Media LLC 2010
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Australia, Austria, and Russia) operate this program and report successful outcomes. More specifically, the FAST program is comprised of 8-week sessions where collaborative teams of well-trained professionals from community mental health agencies, school personnel, and parents meet to participate in structured, researchbased, fun activities. Some examples of such activities include family communication games, parent-mediated play with children, and a self-help support group for parents. The aim of these activities is to help parents and children develop bonds, mutual respect, and relationships with community organizations. The program also seeks to teach parents how to promote child development, interact properly, and understand children’s needs. After graduating from the 8-week FAST program, FASTWORKS, a 21-month family support group meeting follows. FASTWORKS is held monthly with the purpose of helping parents maintain the positive social networks and support systems built during FAST program participation. FAST graduate parents lead this follow-up curriculum with the initial assistance of professionals. Professional support gradually decreases, however, and eventually members come to develop their own leadership skills to maintain social networks. The contents of these meetings are determined by the participating families. Participation in the FAST program begins with a teacher’s or a school’s identification of at-risk children. Although schools are allowed to use individual screening criteria, all possible risk factors such as school performance, attendance, motivation, and attitudes toward schoolwork are evaluated and analyzed to determine a child’s circumstances. Once children have been identified, school personnel will contact the parents to discuss concerns and inform them about the FAST program. With parental permission, FAST graduate parents and FAST team professionals visit the child’s home to encourage them to join a FAST program. Typically, two to four 8-week sessions are held during a school year with 5–25 families participating in each cycle.
are delivered through family activities or conveyed through professionals or other key personnel’s attitudes. Theories tend to not be explicitly taught as the FAST founders believe that hands-on learning is more effective than lecture style learning. Brofenbrenner’s concept of social ecology is a core element of the FAST program. Social ecology theory states that the environment and community a child grows up in has great influence on his or her development. At a micro level, a child’s immediate family, close friend, neighbor, or school personnel may play a significant role in the establishment of a child’s cultural values and identity. Additionally, over the course of development, the extensive social, historical, and political contexts of a child’s family will affect maturation. Based on this theory, the FAST program encourages each family to build strong bonds among family, school, and community. In this way, multiple levels of the child’s social ecology are addressed. Coleman and Putnam’s social capital theory is another underpinning of the FAST program. This theory indicates that personal friendships, connections with other caring families, and/or relationships with people influence the economy, crime levels in the neighborhood, and even one’s life expectancy. The FAST program helps facilitate building relationships with other families, mental health agencies, and school personnel. Another theory that contributes to the FAST program curriculum is that of family stress. Family stress theory states that accumulated acute stress triggers physical, emotional, and relational crises. Such crises within a family may lead to domestic violence, substance abuse, illness, divorce, accidents, child abuse, neglect, and psychological illness. Reducing risk factors and building protective factors both seek to diminish and eliminate the negative outcomes of family crisis. Protective factors promoted through FAST are the mother-child bond, parent-parent bond, family cohesion, parent support, the parent-school relationship, the parent-community agency network, and empowerment of parent authority.
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The FAST program applies several theories that are relevant to child development and family therapy to promote resiliency and promote intimate relationships among family members. Theoretical approaches
Funded by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, the Department of Education, and the Department of Justice, the FAST program has been evaluated by two strategies. Experimental design is
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one method of evaluation that uses random selection (i.e., families in the FAST program) and a control group (i.e., those not in the program). Pre-post test analysis is a second strategy that evaluates outcomes within a single site. This procedure requires each new site for local evaluation and certification. Several research results are noteworthy. First, it was found that the FAST program had a consistently high retention rate. When FAST graduates reach out to other families, and if the other family joins for one trial session, 80% of families will remain until they graduate. The 80% retention rate was found to be stable across urban, rural, and suburban communities. Another positive outcome concerned academic and behavioral improvements among children. Research revealed that children enrolled in the FAST program demonstrated an increase in academic competence, academic performance, social skills, and attention. Moreover, this program helped to reduce children’s negative behaviors such as aggression, anxiety, depression, and attention span problems in the classroom. Positive changes in parent-child relationships were also reported. Specifically, children who participated in the FAST program demonstrated fewer family conflicts and less social isolation. FAST parents also reported an increase in the child’s respect for parental authority and improved positive communication between parent and child. The FAST program has been shown to have an impact on the communities where it is implemented. For instance, FAST graduate parents report having an increased involvement in school and in the community, including taking on leadership roles. Statistics revealed that 44% of parent participants returned to school to pursue adult education and 10% of parents became community leaders. Furthermore, 33% of parents were self-referred to mental health services, substance abuse treatment centers, or for counseling.
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families. When a collaborative team is selected, a certified FAST trainer begins the 3-month training program with the team. The training curriculum is comprised of three phases: (a) the two-day initial training where the team learns about content, values, structure, and the process of the FAST 8-week program; (b) three visits or phone consultation by trainers who directly observe, provide feedback, and check program integrity during the first FAST cycle; and (c) a 1-day training that allows teams to review the first FAST cycle and create programs for FASTWORKS. The FAST curriculum remains consistent with the original curriculum developed in 1988. The program center allows local sites to make 60% of FAST program components to fit the unique local needs of a new cite while 40% of the program must be exactly replicated. Ongoing support services provided by the FAST National Training Center located in Madison, Wisconsin are available for sites that seek to maintain high-quality curriculum and effective results for participating families.
Challenges To succeed with optimal outcomes, cooperation of significant personnel in the community (i.e., professionals from community-based treatment centers, school principals) is crucial. Budgeting is another issue. Implementing the FAST program can be expensive. It is estimated that one school might need approximately $37,000 in direct costs to cover the expense of two 8-week cycles. This cost does not include training and evaluation. In a survey of 80 schools that implemented the FAST program, it was rated as effective and useful but there were also concerns about cost. Some schools found it difficult to maintain program quality with limited funding. See also: > Families and Advocates Partnership for Education (FAPE); > Family therapy
Implementation The FAST program has a rigorous high-quality training manual and support system for new potential sites. Once school districts or local communities decide to administer a FAST program, the first step to implementation is the formation and training of a collaborative team comprised of professionals, school personnel, and culturally diverse representatives of enrolled
Suggested Reading Alliance for Children and Families. (1998). FAST guidebook: Sustaining program. Milwaukee, WI: Author. Fannery, D. J., Vazsonyi, A. T., Liau, A. K., Guo, S., Powell, K. E., Atha, H., Vesterdal, W., & Embry, D. (2003). Initial behavior outcomes for the peace builders: Universal school-based violence prevention program. Developmental Psychology, 39(2), 292–308.
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Suggested Resources Families and Schools Together, Wisconsin Center for Educational Research—www.wcer.edu/fast/: This website offers extensive information about the FAST program.
Family Fragmentation Yoko Takebayashi
Families with school-aged children are faced with various challenges in negotiating different generational values and children’s increasing needs for autonomy. For families of color, the stress of these negotiations may be complicated by oppression and discrimination by the mainstream society. In addition, some families may also face challenges related to immigration and acculturation. Such hardships can result in fragmentation of families. Thus, families of color at times require culturally specific intervention to bolster their ability to function as a cohesive unit. The lives of families of color are often disadvantaged by the negative impact of racism. Discrimination in employment, housing, education and social services can hinder social advancement. Ethnic minority children and adolescents typically begin questioning the impact of race and racism on their identity development, and require emotional validation of their experiences. Thus, it is paramount that the family support system remains intact to provide an emotionally nurturing environment for youngsters. However, stress resulting from oppression by society can make family support systems more vulnerable. Further, ambivalent or conflicting attitudes towards one’s own race can lead to internalization of racism or even blaming of a spouse for life difficulties. Needless to say, this is detrimental to marriages. It is known that a significantly higher proportion of families of color, particularly Puerto Ricans and African Americans, are headed by a single parent (usually female), in comparison to White families. In particular, single African American mothers are less likely to be divorced and most likely to have never been married. This increases the possibility that their children may be deprived of the emotional and economic advantages of being raised in two-parent
households. However, it is important to note that availability of an extended family system can provide a buffer against such external stress. It is also important to note that within African American and West Indian cultures, single-parenthood is perceived as neither atypical nor dysfunctional when there is extended family involvement. New immigrant families, on the other hand, commonly face unique stressors in the process of adapting to American culture. Two of the largest and fastest growing immigrant groups in the United States (U.S.) are Latinos and Asian Americans. Both cultures share collectivistic traits, in which interdependence within the extended family system is typically valued. Thus, physical separation from close-knit family kinship can significantly compromise the immigrant families’ support system. Another challenge is in managing stress related to acculturation. For example, immigrant families are often forced to navigate the complexity of the American school system before they develop sufficient language and cultural proficiency. Acculturative stress can at times hinder the families’ ability to function cohesively and to provide an emotionally supportive environment for each other. The varying rates of acculturation among family members can also make the family structure vulnerable. In general, youngsters tend to acculturate more rapidly than their parents, due to increased exposure to the mainstream culture through school and peer interactions. They may quickly adopt the mainstream American values of individualism, wherein the individual’s freedom of choice is more valued than collective goals or obligations. These values are often at odds with traditional family values commonly shared among immigrant parents, as is the case with Latinos and Asian Americans. These cultures value traditional, hierarchical family structures in which children are expected to submit to parental authority. This difference in values between children and their caregivers can exacerbate intergenerational and intercultural conflict significantly more than similar generational conflict experienced among non-immigrant families. The conflict arising due to the acculturation gap is identified as one of the risk factors that can potentially lead to youngsters’ low self-esteem, emotional adjustment and conduct problems. Interventions for families of color need to consider the unique cultural factors that contribute to their difficulties. Increased educational and support opportunities are needed for ethnic minority children as well
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as for their families to raise awareness of their heritage and to cultivate adaptive coping skills against racism. Bicultural effectiveness training can also enhance the skills necessary for social advancement and attenuate intergenerational and cultural conflict within the family system. See also: > Family therapy; > Immigration
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Suggested Reading Gonzales, N. A., Deardorff, J., Formoso, D., Barr, A., & Barrera, M., Jr. (2006). Family mediators of the relation between acculturation and adolescent mental health. Family Relations, 55(3), 318–330. Martinez, C. R., Jr. (2006). Effects of differential family acculturation on Latino adolescent substance use. Family Relations, 55(3), 306–317.
Family Therapy Ben K Lim . Soh Leong Lim
Emergence of Family Therapy Family therapy is a form of psychotherapy that seeks to solve the problems of the identified patient by involving members of the immediate or extended family. The basic premise is that the problems faced by a child are embedded within the multiples layers of significant relationships including the family and school system. Psychotherapy did not begin this way. As a profession, it began with Sigmund Freud and psychoanalysis. This is the first wave of psychotherapy, which subsequently was expanded by Freud’s students to include ego psychology, interpersonal psychology, and object relations. Freud was not interested in bringing in family members for therapy but he was interested in the unconscious introjected family. The second wave of psychotherapy was initiated by B.F. Skinner who heralded behavioralism, which later was augmented by cognitive psychology. This theory of counseling tends to be reductionistic, and seeks to change individual behaviors through identifying antecedents and
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consequences of problem behaviors. The third wave of psychotherapy was popularized by Carl Rogers, who observed that humans are more than just intrapsychic libidinal energies or conditioned behaviors. Humanists believe that to be fully human, patients must be in touch with their emotions and their potential to self-actualize. Rogerian or experiential therapists avoid seeing families to provide total unconditional positive regard for their clients and to safeguard the privacy of the therapist-client relationship. It was in the early 1950s that some psychiatrists in the hospital setting began to observe that there is a close correlation between the healing of the patient and the family system. The family is essential to maintaining the healing of the patient. It was also observed that in some families, when the patient improved, someone else in the family became symptomatic: Thus, the idea that change in one person in the family powerfully influences the whole family system. In a recursive manner then, changing the family system will also change the individual. Thus, the fourth wave of psychotherapy saw the emergence of family therapy with its focus on the person in context. The early fathers of family therapy were psychiatrists trained in psychoanalysis. For instance, Carl Whitaker, chair of the Department of Psychiatry at Emory University, Atlanta, focused on treating people with schizophrenia and their families. Murray Bowen of the Meninger Clinic, Topeka, Kansas, hypothesized that schizophrenia was precipitated in an undifferentiated family ego mass, and therefore hospitalized whole families for observation and treatment. Bowen extended the familial assessment beyond the nuclear family to three generations. Later social scientists such as Gregory Bateson, Jay Haley, Don Jackson, and John Weakland formulated the double-bind theory for family therapy in their work with patients diagnosed with schizophrenia. Using the double-bind theory, they surmised that schizophrenia made sense in the context of pathological family communication. They not only incorporated the work of Ludwig von Bertalanffy’s general systems theory but also incorporated the feedback loops of cybernetics to explain family systems dynamics. In addition to these, there were others who practiced family therapy independently such as John Bell at Clark University, Worchester, Massachusetts, and Nathan Ackerman in New York. Other early stalwarts in the field included Lyman Wynne, Theodore Lidz, Virginia Satir, and Ivan Boszormenyi-Nagy. The golden age
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of family therapy ignited in the 1970s and 1980s with the publication of Jay Haley’s ‘‘Strategic Family Therapy’’ and Salvador Minuchin’s ‘‘Structural Family Therapy.’’ Since then, feminist and postmodern critiques, managed care, and a resurgence of biological psychiatry have shaped and are shaping the direction of family therapy. Marriage and family therapy is definitely a growing mental health profession along with psychiatry, psychology, social work, and school counseling. Since 2005, 48 states (including the District of Columbia) regulate the profession by licensing or certifying marriage and family therapists. Other state legislatures are considering licensing bills.
Theories of Family Therapy Family therapists broke away from the dominant individualistic approach of psychotherapy, and embraced a systemic view of the understanding of families and treatment. In the last 50 years, different schools of family theory and therapy developed, each with its own group of followers. Broadly, there are a few metacategories, with each theory of family therapy concentrating on only certain aspects of human experience. Some theories, such as Object Relations and Bowen’s Family System Theory focus on the past as the source of family problems. Others such as Cognitive-Behavioral Family Therapy, Haley’s Strategic Family Therapy, and Minuchin’s Structural Family Therapy emphasize behavioral and structural change. Experiential theorists tend to focus on the present and seek to help families become more congruent with their emotions. Examples of such theories are Satir’s Conjoint Family Therapy and Whitaker’s Symbolic-Experiential Family Therapy. The post-modern influence on family therapy can be seen in the Collaborative Language Systems Approach, Narrative Therapy, and Solution-Focused Therapy. These theories encourage the flattening of the hierarchical relationship between therapist and families, which are evident in the early classical theories. Postmodern therapists take a one-down position and focus on collaboratively co-creating not just the goals but also the solutions to family problems. The following are highlights of four major schools of family therapy. Murray Bowen, a psychiatrist at the Meninger Clinic was the founder of the Bowen Family Systems Therapy. According to Bowen, anxiety, the underlying source of all problems, is passed on
from one generation to another. Bowen used the genogram as an assessment tool to chart the intergenerational transmission of biopsychosocial dysfunction. The genogram also identifies the triangles that exist to manage anxiety in the family system. In the couple subsystem, either member of the couple could form an alignment with a third person to manage the anxiety in the relationships; this is usually with the symptomatic child. A person can also align with a substance such as alcohol or with an activity such as work. In Bowen Family Systems Therapy, the focus of the treatment can be an individual or the whole family. The goal of therapy is to promote differentiation of self from one’s family of origin. Differentiation of self is the ability to take ‘‘I’’ positions and the ability to distinguish between intellectually and emotionally determined functioning. Individuals with higher levels of differentiation are less emotionally reactive and less likely to resort to emotional cutoffs to manage anxiety in the family system. The therapist, by being a non-anxious presence and coach, helps the client detriangulate and differentiate while staying engaged with the family. The Mental Research Institute (MRI) approach and others associated with it (e.g., Strategic Family Therapy and Brief Strategic Therapy) use short-term therapy. Key theorists among these brief therapy approaches include Gregory Bateson, Don Jackson, Paul Watzlawick Milton Erickson, Jay Haley, Cloe Madanes, and Georgio Nardone. Their problem-focused goals are to identify the sequence of dysfunctional behaviors that perpetuate the presenting problem, and then to intervene and provide a resolution. The therapist is often assisted by observers, who are behind the one-way mirror as objective cotherapists, and provide feedback to both the therapist and the family. The therapist, as a director, must plan how to interrupt the attempted solutions that exacerbate and perpetuate the presenting problem. Members are asked about their perception of the problem and how it has been handled in the past. In general, two major categories of directives are used: telling the client(s) to do something different or telling the client(s) to do more of the same (i.e. what they have been doing) such as symptom prescriptions or paradoxical injunctions. These techniques have been found to be very useful with highly oppositional clients. In Structural Family Therapy, Salvador Minuchin views the family as a group of interacting members who form a complex structure governed by rules, hierarchy, and boundaries. Using a family structural map, the structural family therapist assesses the family’s
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current transactional and relational patterns and decides whether the family boundary is rigid, diffuse, or clear. While a functional family has clear boundaries that promote interdependence with the parents as the executive subsystem, rigid and diffuse subsystems are either too disengaged or too enmeshed to be functional. As the expert, the therapist seeks to restructure the family so that its rules and roles become flexible; this is often necessary when the family moves from one developmental stage to another or when the family encounters a crisis situation. The therapist as boundary-maker enters the family system, and adapts, accommodates, and joins with the system’s rules, patterns, and worldview using enactments, unbalancing, affective intensification, and reframing. Virginia Satir, the only woman among the early founders of family therapy, is known as family therapy’s most celebrated humanist. Satir believes that people are resourceful. They have within themselves the ability to solve their problems and the potential to grow to be fully human. For that to happen, Satir believes the family must confront emotional repression and expand the emotional experience among members. The focus is personal growth rather than symptom relief. Satir believes that with personal growth, symptoms will spontaneously resolve themselves; this in turn, will change the family system. The process of therapy is more significant to the existential therapist than the content of therapy. Progress in therapy is viewed as the by-product. The therapist, as a change agent, models congruence, self-esteem, and personal growth. The therapist focuses on oneself as a change agent to enhance the therapeutic process. Satir makes astute observations of both verbal and nonverbal communication among family members. She uses sculpting, a nonverbal movement-oriented exercise, to help families share their feelings and perceptions of the roles and relationship dynamics in the family. Use of the Self-Mandala to discuss the client’s strengths, resources, and challenges is another technique. The Family Life Chronology is a tool that existential therapists use to trace the emotional time line of the client through the family developmental life cycle. Satir’s goal is to improve each family member’s self-esteem so that all members can communicate effectively and congruently with one another. Within the last twenty years, studies have shown that no one theory can claim a monopoly on clinical effectiveness. In fact, it is not the theory but the therapeutic relationship that accounts for a large
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variance in therapeutic outcome. Not all clinical issues can be effectively addressed with one therapeutic theory. Due to this consideration, more integrative and pragmatic approaches to treatment began to emerge in the field of family therapy. Greater effort is being made to integrate family therapy by incorporating techniques from different therapeutic approaches. Some integrationists are eclectic in their approach. They emphasize flexibility and adaptability on the part of the family therapist. For instance, some therapists may respond to one family with behavioral interventions while choosing to work on intergenerational issues with another family. The goals and problems of the family drive the rationale for treatment. Therapy is adapted to meet the family’s unique situation. Other integrationists are more selective. They adopt ideas from other models while holding on to the core assumptions of their primary theory. For instance, some structural family therapists may view family organization as the metaframework for their therapeutic approach. However, the selective integrationist may borrow techniques from other theories in an attempt to enhance second-order organizational change in the family structure. In this mode of integration, the incorporation of other approaches must be consistent with the therapist’s basic theoretical approach. Other therapists may be more innovative and develop their own integrative family theory. Beginning family therapists are encouraged to be familiar with the assumptions and practice of the original classical theories before developing their own integrative model. Recent trainees in family therapy can learn and adopt a theory consistent with their personality, culture, and worldview.
Systems Theory and Family Dynamics The common denominator underlying family therapy theories is the systemic view that a person’s presenting problem occurs within an ecosystemic context. The family is the primary socialization milieu of children; therefore, it is important to understand family dynamics to understand the problems presented by the youngest members of the family. The family has emergent properties, and is anchored on the systemic axiom that ‘‘the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.’’ As such, a small change in one individual will cause rippling changes throughout the family system. The systemic interactional framework reduces the
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tendency to focus on the individual child’s misbehavior while ignoring the influence that the behavior of parents, siblings or even teachers and fellow students can have on the child. Instead of labeling the child as ‘‘bad,’’ the family therapist tries to address potential changes in both the individual child and the larger familial and social context. Recursive causality, in contrast to a linear cause and effect sequence, does not posit a starting or ending point to misbehavior; instead, it understands the behavior at the interface between the child and the parental and social systems. For instance, the family therapist will look at all possible interrelated causes of the child’s behavior that may include the father’s drinking and job stress, the mother’s ill-health, the parental relationship, and the bullying that takes place in school. The family therapist must understand and assess the structure of the family such as boundaries, subsystems, hierarchy, and triangles. A boundary is the emotional fence that distinguishes individuals and other familial subsystem. Boundaries regulate the degree of closeness and distance between family members. The formation and maintenance of subsystems within the family such as the marital subsystem, parental subsystem, and sibling subsystem are necessary for intimate relationships to develop. Some families are enmeshed while others are disengaged emotionally. Clear boundaries allow the feedback loop to facilitate adaptation and change; rigid boundaries restrict adaptation and resist change. Diffuse boundaries occur in chaotic families that allow for too much change and adaptation. Boundaries also determine the structures of the family. Examples of subsystems in the family are the spousal, the parental, and the sibling subsystems. Families have an organized structure within which their members assume roles and carry out their responsibilities. From a systems perspective, a normal family is viewed as being organized hierarchically around the parental subsystem as the executive subsystem. This resonates very well in some minority immigrant cultures that may adopt a more authoritarian style of parenting. In such cultures, there is a high regard and respect for parents and older people in the community. On the other hand, the majority culture tends to take the opposite stance of being more democratic, where parents and children may assume equal rights. However, this can swing to the permissive extreme, where the children have little or no limits; the family may even be led by the children who determine the rules of the home and
undermine the role of the parents. The family therapist encourages parents to take authoritative leadership in the family and depending on the age of the child, collaboratively set rules and limits to help the child to become responsible and caring persons. The needs of both parents and children are respected and taken care of. Family members understand the roles and rules and yet are adaptable to change when the children develop with time or when there is a crisis in the family. Murray Bowen believes that a dyadic relationship, consisting of two persons, is inherently unstable. When tension reaches a certain level between parents, one parent may form a closer bond with a child as a way of reducing the tension with the other parent; thus forming an unhealthy triangle. However, the outcome results in no overall change in the parental subsystem. Parents that keep their distance from one another by triangling a child, become ineffective. For instance, the distant parent is reduced in status by a mother–child alliance, for instance, and the mother’s alliance with the child renders her ineffective in her role as mother. Dysfunctional triangles tend to be rigid and consequently, reduce the ability of family members to change or to resolve a conflict. They hamper the growth and development of individual family members because the energy needed to resolve the primary conflict is diverted into other areas. In making assessment in family therapy, it is important for the family therapist to observe the interactional patterns that yield the boundaries, subsystem, structures, and triangles in the school or family system. The goal of the family therapist is to encourage differentiation where the family members are able to relate to one another without fusion or emotional cutoff. This means the therapist will look at how well each family member maintains his or her own sense of self, while remaining emotionally connected to the family without triangulating others. It allows members to have a sense of autonomy, while at the same time, ensures that they are valued as important contributing members of the family.
Change in Family Therapy Change occurs as the family maintains clear boundaries and is open to feedback. In cybernetic theory, the processing of information comes through both positive and negative feedback loops. Family interactions occur and are maintained by these mechanisms. In
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negative feedback, attempts are made to correct a family system in trouble by reestablishing its previous state of equilibrium. For instance, a high school student may decide to leave home immediately after graduation because she is tired of the squabbles between her father and mother. Her parents may forbid her because she is sickly. This status quo enables the parents to continue fussing over her health without paying attention to the conflicts between them. This tendency towards maintaining an established equilibrium is known as homeostasis, which minimizes change in the family system. Sometimes change occurs but the underlying (and potentially dysfunctional) organization of that system remains intact. In family therapy theory, this is firstorder change; the family adapts or accommodates to a problem without delving into the deeper dysfunction in the family system. The change that family therapists often aim for is called second-order change. This requires a shift in the status quo. It requires a positive feedback loop that will enable the family to look beyond its familiar yet ineffectual ways of solving problems. For instance, in the example above, the teenage daughter may be coached by her therapist to move out of the home; she may discover that her health improves, and her parents may decide to go for therapy. A second-order change results in a win-win solution that is lasting. It is a morphogenetic change that requires a fundamental reorganization of the family system. In family therapy theory, a symptomatic system that focuses on a child can be said to undergo second-order change when a therapeutic intervention fundamentally disrupts the pattern of symptomatic interaction so that the misbehavior ceases without blame being placed on either the child or the parents. The family’s previous family structure, which reinforced the symptomatic pattern, is replaced by a different organization. This does not mean that all first-order changes are ineffective. First-order change is appropriate when the child’s misbehavior is mild or the child simply needs guidance. These misbehaviors are often dealt with in parenting classes. For instance, the child dawdles in the morning and the family is late for school and work. The problem can be resolved by some firstorder disciplinary action by the parent such as setting a consequence for the child. Open communication would help the parent and the child resolve the difficulty. Attempting to come to an agreement or compromise with the child would constitute a first-order change.
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Second-order change is required when major change must occur in the structure of the child’s ecosystem. For instance, when a child’s behavior changes and the grades dip from an ‘‘A’’ average to below passing, a second-order change may be called for. The misbehavior and poor school grades would be seen as reflecting the child’s ecosystem. A thorough discussion with the child, parents, and with the school authorities might be necessary to determine the appropriate solution. To focus on the child’s school problems alone by making suggestions about how to improve school performance without understanding other issues would be seen as an ineffective first-order strategy. At the systemic level, the child may be facing disruptions in family life: the family may have recently moved to a new community, the parents may be undergoing a divorce, or there may have been a death of a significant person in the child’s life. The child’s problems may have to do with dysfunctions in the school system. Changes to the ecosystem of the child constitute a second-order change.
The Effectiveness of Family Therapy According to the American Association of Marriage and Family Therapy (AAMFT), family therapy treatment is relatively short term, with an average number of 12 sessions. In a survey of AAMFT members, it was found that 65.6% of the cases were completed within 20 sessions. A compilation of research studies by the organization found that family therapy is as effective if not better than individual therapy for an array of mental health issues including adult schizophrenia, affective (mood) disorders, adult alcoholism and drug abuse, children’s conduct disorders, adolescent drug abuse, anorexia in young adult women, childhood autism, chronic physical illness in adults and children, and marital distress and conflict. Family therapy together with pharmacological treatment is found to be very effective when treating patients with schizophrenia, mood disorders, and multiple personality disorders. Members of the family become allies in the treatment by helping to monitor medication and providing instrumental and emotionally supporting environments for the rehabilitation for such patients. With the changing family structure shifting from the dominance of the nuclear family to an increase in numbers of single parents, family therapy is helpful in mediating the many intergenerational issues that may arise. Blended families need help with major adjustments such
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as sharing parenting responsibility and the involvement of grandparents. With multicultural diversity and increasing numbers of cross-cultural marriages, family therapy is definitely the treatment of choice to negotiate the different cultural expectations and norms when partners in a couple are of different cultural heritages. Some contraindications for family therapy include highly volatile couples where there is presence of domestic violence or child abuse and families in which one or both of the parents are psychotic, antisocial, or paranoid. Special skill is required when working with families whose cultural or religious values are opposed to, or suspicious of family therapy.
Cultural Considerations in Family Therapy The definition of family and family dynamics has been critiqued by feminists and postmodern multicultural scholars. Power issues and gender inequality in family therapy have been raised by feminist-informed theorists. Many of the classical theorists except for Virginia Satir were male; they tend to assume patriarchal structures as normative and not challenge gender inequality that may be the cause of many marital and family problems. Multicultural therapists question the concept of the family as understood in mainstream culture because in diverse families, the concept may extend beyond the four walls of the nuclear home. Latino American and African American communities, for example, include the network of kin and community in the concept of family. Some Asians such as the Chinese, may even include ancestors who have died as part of their family dynamics. There are some fundamental differences in the worldview between the majority culture and minority cultures. To be helpful to minority cultures, school counselors must be cognizant of these differences. The typical American family tends to be more nuclearfamily focused, while minority cultures may emphasize collectivism extending beyond the four walls of their homes. For instance, many Latino Americans not only seek to make a living in the United States (U.S.) but are obliged to send money back to their home country to support their extended families. While some mainstream families may emphasize individual rights and egalitarianism in familial and social relationships, many minority families may continue to be patriarchal and other-centered. Traditional gender roles with males
as breadwinners and females as homemakers may still be evident in minority families even though the females may be employed outside the home because of economic reasons. Respect for the elderly is evident by the way the elderly or those who are older are addressed; whereas, in mainstream U.S. culture, the hierarchy is more flattened and relationships tend to be more informal. Culturally sensitive therapists need to recognize the person in the minority family that wields the power and must know how to align with the power linchpin without becoming ineffectual in resolving the family’s problems. The therapist is seen as one with the expertise; therefore, adopting a curious and not knowing stance may not work as well in some minority cultures as in a Western culture. For many minority cultures, a more directive approach may be more appropriate. Not to do so is interpreted as weakness, indecisiveness, and perhaps even a lack of concern on the part of the therapist. In Western culture, personal growth may be a goal of therapy for many; however, in minority cultures, achievement and problem solving may be the desired goal rather than personal growth. Another major difference is how assertiveness is viewed. Mainstream American culture encourages assertiveness whereas in other cultures, assertiveness is not necessarily considered a virtue.
Cross-cultural Family Therapy Many minority cultures have social stigma regarding psychotherapy; they may be more apt to seek help within the family system or to see medical professionals or religious authorities. However, families that are more acculturated to a Western worldview may be more willing to seek family therapy. Out of the families respect for expertise, the family therapist can make respectful, concrete, and definitive suggestions, rather than ambivalent statements. For instance, instead of saying, ‘‘I am not quite sure how your child will do.’’ It may be better to say, ‘‘My recommendation is this. . .’’ Often psychoeducation will add to the credibility of the cross-cultural therapist. Since the extended family is important, the use of genograms to chart the intergenerational family can be helpful. The head of the family or any influential person in the clan can be invited as consultants or as ‘‘co-therapists’’ out of due respect for his or her role and position. The privacy of the family should be guarded because therapy can be construed as weakness and therefore shameful.
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Psychosomatic complaints need to be noted because these are often gateways to understanding the psychological state of the family. Some cultural groups, for instance, may somatize when they are under stress and may seek medical rather than mental health services. Another good principle to remember is to ascertain the counselee’s culturally conditioned interpretation of the presenting problem. As noted above, the family therapist may be the last person to be consulted. Questions such as ‘‘How have you dealt with the problem in the past?’’ ‘‘Whom have you talked to?’’ ‘‘What did they say?’’ may give helpful insights about how people handle their problems within their cultural contexts, which often includes religious authorities such as shamans, priests and temple mediums. Studies have shown the importance of the therapeutic relationship and this is most often the case for effective crosscultural therapy. Small talk about the family is helpful before launching into goals and interventions. The cross-cultural family therapist is a cultural broker who will not hesitate to explore the migration history of families served. Therapists need to be attuned to the stresses of migration even several generations later. These stresses include loss of identity and one’s cultural heritage as well as experiences of discrimination and oppression, among others. Some minorities are voluntary immigrants while others are not; involuntary immigrants include refugees and asylum seekers due to persecution or political unrest. Some immigrants are here legally while others are undocumented. Minorities usually do not seek mental health services unless there are severe mental disorders. A culturally competent family therapist will definitely help mitigate the problems faced by such families by being sensitive to the many ecosystemic layers of issues surrounding families from diverse backgrounds. The competent cross-cultural family therapist is open to a pluralistic philosophy, assumes a learning posture to diverse cultures, seeks to work at their own ethnocentricity, avoids the myth of sameness, and embraces the mosaic of diversity. See also: > Counseling; > Culturally competent practice; > Social work
Suggested Reading Sherman, R., Shumsky, A., & Roundtree, Y. B. (1994). Enlarging the therapeutic circle: The therapist’s guide to collaborative therapy with families and schools. New York: Brunner/Mazel.
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Suggested Resources American Association of Marriage and Family Therapy—http:// www.aamft.org: This is the official website of the American Association of Marriage and Family Therapy (AAMFT), a professional association that serves more than 23,000 members across the U.S. and Canada. The AAMFT encourages the development of marital and family therapy through theory development, research, and education. The organization also develops standards for graduate education and training, clinical supervision, professional ethics and the clinical practice of marriage and family therapy.
FAPE > Families and Advocates Partnership for Education (FAPE)
Father Involvement in Early Childhood Education Christine McWayne . Rodrigo Campos
Family involvement in children’s early educational experiences has been recognized for decades as a vital component of early childhood education. Although fathers play a unique and significant role in the development of their children, their role has not always been recognized as important or even relevant to children’s development. In many ways, this is because the role of fathers and the notion of fatherhood is dependent on cultural and sociohistorical factors. Fathers now play a distinctly different role in child development than did those of a generation ago, 50 years ago, and hundreds of years ago. In their 1997 publication, Pleck and Pleck delineated the evolution of fathers from the colonial, distant, moral leaders to modern notions of fathers as co-parents. In 2000, Cabrera and colleagues pointed out how the importance of father involvement to child development has gained increasing attention over the past two decades, and how this has been spurred on by the changing role of fathers within our society and
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the continued growth in the number of women into the post-industrial workforce. In fact, this growing recognition about the importance of father involvement has brought about national initiatives geared specifically toward increasing the participation of fathers in early childhood such as Head Start’s National Fatherhood Initiative and the Fathers at Work Initiative. Concurrently, the increase in available data about fathers and fathering has contributed to a growing appreciation of the role that fathers play in the care of young children.
Theorizing about Father Involvement Historically and overwhelmingly, in the literature, mothers have been recognized as being more involved than fathers in child-rearing activities. Recent research has found that father involvement has increased over the past several decades, blurring the distinction of the traditional child-rearing roles. However, for the most part, the father’s role in children’s development has been conceptualized by using traditional maternal models of childrearing. Theorists point out that using a maternal framework of involvement on paternal behaviors misses the unique ways in which fathers interact and contribute to child development. Despite limitations, the importance of the father’s role has been bolstered by research that shows that positive outcomes for children in the areas of academic achievement, behavior, and socioemotional skills are associated with increased levels of involvement of the father or father figure. Although much research has examined determinants or outcomes of father involvement, the literature has been what Tamis-LeMonda calls ‘‘largely atheoretical.’’ In the 1970s, investigations of paternal involvement were driven by conceptual dichotomizations of the ‘‘present’’ vs. ‘‘not-present’’ father. Conceptualizations of paternal involvement began to change in the 1980s, incorporating more multidimensional frameworks. For example, in 1987, Lamb, Pleck, Charnov, and Levine forwarded a tridimensional framework, where paternal involvement was organized around three distinct dimensions: engagement, accessibility, and responsibility. The engagement dimension encompasses direct interactions with the child, such as playing, talking, or feeding. Accessibility refers to the father’s availability or potential to be engaged with the child. Finally, responsibility reflects the level of accountability that fathers assume
in raising their children, such as meeting financial demands or health needs. Theories continue to develop as researchers respond to the need to identify unique contributions of fathers to children’s development. In 2004, Paquette posited differential functions of father involvement. Specifically, these are that fathers engage more in physical play which promotes risk taking and competitive behaviors, compared with mothers who engage in more make-believe play and care-giving behaviors which promote a sense of security. Others, like Marsiglio and colleagues, have called for a broader vision of father involvement, recognizing its differentiated nature while simultaneously considering the ecological context. For example, researchers should consider socioeconomic factors, linguistic differences, cultural background and the residential status of fathers in their theoretical formulations.
Methodological Limitations and Implications for Future Research These theoretical advances have spurred the field forward; however, the process of understanding father involvement has been challenged by methodological issues. For instance, many nonresidential fathers or low participation by fathers in research has limited the knowledge base. In addition, most research on father involvement has been conducted with majority culture, middle-income men; therefore, most measurement tools fail to capture the different cultural contexts of the increasingly diverse populations in the U.S. There is a need for more nuanced research to examine father involvement in children’s lives within and across diverse cultural groups. Researchers also call for investigations to consider the new social context and the changing landscape of the family structure (e.g., single-parent households and the presence of surrogate father figures). Some authors point out that past thinking has been constrained by an overreliance on temporal and observable facets of involvement. Measures are generally formatted to capture the frequency of direct engagement a father has with his child, or to compare the amount of time a father spends with his children relative to the mother. Others, like Hawkins and Palkovitz, argue that father involvement is more than just what fathers do and for how long they do it. Given the high level of intensity characteristic of how many fathers engage with their children, the more important
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issue may be one of quality vs. quantity. Therefore, a scale that asks for frequency ratings may not capture the meaningful ways in which fathers are involved. Clearly, there is a need for more research not only on the appropriate involvement constructs for fathers but how best to measure them. Another methodological concern stems from available data sources. Typically, mothers have informed what we know about father involvement. Although more recent research has gathered information about father involvement directly from fathers, data for mothers and fathers have been analyzed separately. Given the context for mothers and fathers who raise the same child is not independent, it will be important for future research to take into account the correlation between mother and father involvement. Dyadic hierarchical linear modeling would be ideal for determining the function of both individual and family-level factors as determinants for overall family involvement.
Implications for Practice As conceptualizations of father involvement continue to evolve, practitioners should also continue the critical evaluation of program practices for father involvement. In working with diverse populations, practitioners must take into account contextual factors such as linguistic diversity, differences in socioeconomic status, expectations of paternal roles in child rearing across different cultures, and structural or institutional barriers to involvement. Power differentials experienced by fathers, who are usually overlooked in policy formulation, especially minority fathers, continue to be strong enough to preclude active father involvement in many early childhood programs. These differences in perceived and ascribed power reduce the likelihood that fathers who come from lower socioeconomic positions, who also occupy lower status positions, will question or even engage school authority figures. For minority fathers, their own experiences of discrimination in the educational system may serve to enhance feelings of disconnection with their children’s school. In addition, practitioners should consider the ‘‘gatekeeper’’ role of the mother, especially when working with nonresidential fathers. Research has revealed that maternal gatekeeping is causally related to lower levels of father involvement and that the nonresidential status of the father is associated with more gatekeeping behaviors in mothers.
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School psychologists are in a position to help mitigate barriers to father involvement. Research with minority populations advocates for schools to promote ‘‘meaningful’’ involvement, rather than involvement that simply satisfies programmatic requirements. Therefore, father-involvement practices should be defined jointly by families and early childhood programs in terms of actions that are considered beneficial for children. The school psychologist, acting as a consultant to the family and school systems, is in an excellent position to advocate for more thoughtful involvement practices. Recent research has highlighted the importance of understanding involvement behaviors specific to the home environment where fathers may be more likely to engage with their children around education. Given that home-based involvement has been shown to be a strong predictor of classroom behavior, academic motivation, attention, persistence, and academic achievement for children from ethnic minorities, practitioners should seek to know more about fathering practices that are generally invisible to school staff. Typically, communication about home-based involvement is one-way: schools make suggestions to parents about home involvement practices. A greater understanding of what kind of home-based involvement behaviors are already in place and that contribute to academic success can inform current early childhood practice. Interviews or focus groups conducted to understand what these behaviors look like within the specific context of the home culture can set up a bidirectional system of exchanging best practices. These best practices can in turn benefit other fathers within the program who may not be engaging in these beneficial activities with their children. Furthermore, this dialogue may serve to help teachers gain a greater understanding of culture-specific methods of supporting children’s education at home and to adapt these practices in the classroom. See also: > Early childhood education
Suggested Reading Cabrera, N. J., Tamis-Lamonda, C. S., Bradley, R., Hofferth, S., & Lamb, M. E. (2000). Fatherhood in the twenty-first century. Child Development, 71(1), 127–136. Hawkins, A. J., & Palkovitz, R. (1999). Beyond ticks and clicks: The need for more diverse and broader conceptualizations and measures of father involvement. Journal of Men’s Studies, 8, 11–32.
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Lamb, M. E., Pleck, J. H., Charnov, E. L., & Levine, J. A. (1987). A biosocial perspective of paternal behavior and involvement. In J. B. Lancaster, J. Altman, & A. Rossi (Eds.), Parenting across the lifespan: Biosocial perspectives (pp. 11–42). New York: Academic Press. Marsiglio, W., Amato, P., Day, R. D., & Lamb, M. E. (2000). Scholarship on fatherhood in the 1990s and beyond. Journal of Marriage and the Family, 62, 1173–1191. Paquette, D. (2004). Theorizing the father-child relationship: Mechanisms and developmental outcomes. Human Development, 47, 193–219. Pleck, E. H., & Pleck, J. H. (1997). Fatherhood ideals in the United States: Historical dimensions. In M. E. Lamb (Ed.), The role of the father in child development (3rd ed.) (pp. 33–48). Hoboken, NJ: Wiley. Tamis-LeMonda, C. (2004). Conceptualizing fathers’ roles: Playmates and more. Human Development, 47, 220–227. U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (2004). Fatherhood Initiative. Retrieved May 30, 2006, from http://fatherhood.hhs. gov/index.shtml
First-Year Teachers Amy Padovano
First-year teachers are new, professional school staff members who instruct students in an area of academic curriculum in a private or public institution. They differ in age, gender, race, religion, and ethnicity, but work toward the common goal of enriching the lives of those they teach on a daily basis. New teachers can instruct a variety of age groups including preschool, elementary, middle, high school, and adult education courses. They also have the option of teaching in a public or private institution, each having its own set of qualifications. The United States (U.S.) Department of Education (DOE) groups the first-year teachers with teachers having 3 or fewer years of teaching experience. According to their 2003–2004 school year statistics, about 16% of public school teachers and 23% of private school teachers were considered beginning teachers with an even distribution of gender. During the 1999–2000 school year, the average beginning teacher was 29 years old. In comparison to White teachers, a greater percent of Black, Latino, and Asian/Pacific Islander teachers have 3 or fewer years of experience in both public and private schools. Public school statistics break down the percentage of beginning teachers according to race. The DOE’s
statistics show 26% of all Latino teachers, 21.6% of all Asian/Pacific Islander teachers, 18.9% of Black teachers, 17.8% of American Indian teachers, and 14.9% of White teachers are beginning teachers. In the private sector, percentages of beginning teachers also vary across racial/ethnic groups. Among Black private school teachers, 32.1% are beginning teachers, followed by Latino teachers at 31.5%, Asian/ Pacific Islander teachers at 27.6%, White teachers at 21.8%, and American Indian teachers at 20.1%. Among rural or small town teachers a total of 15% of all teachers have 3 or fewer years of experience. For urban areas their number is 20%. Statistics show that minority students comprise 36% of the U.S. student population while only 13% of all teachers are minorities. This trend continues to grow with the changing face of our nation as more youth of color enroll in school systems. The USDOE states that beginning teachers are more likely to be employed in both public and private settings that have the highest percentages of minority and limitedEnglish proficient (LEP) students. Similarly, public schools with the highest percentages of students eligible for free or reduced lunch are more likely to employ beginning teachers in comparison to schools with lower percentages of these students.
Qualifications The majority of first year public school teachers hold a bachelors degree, have completed a state approved teacher education program, and are licensed. State approved teacher education programs have a set number of subject and education credits, as well as a supervised teaching practicum. Other first-year teachers gain their teaching license through an alternate certification process that differs according to individual state standards. In a private school setting, first year school teachers do not need state licensure. Most private institutions prefer first-year teachers with bachelors degrees in education or in the subject they want to teach. Among public and private schools, beginning teachers can be both recent graduates as well as those with careers in other fields who are pursuing licensure. To attain licensure, one third of all states require first-year teachers to pass a written competency test made up of basic mathematic and verbal skills, the most widely used test being the National Teacher Exam.
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Recent federal policy supports the preparation of first-year teachers through alternate routes to handle the teacher shortage in the U.S., particularly in lowincome and inner city areas. Alternate routes vary among states but are usually programs for people who already hold a bachelors degree and wish to enter the teaching field. These programs are short term, intensive, and focus on curriculum, educational theory and classroom management. One nationally recognized alternate route program for first-year teachers is called Teach for America. In 2006, this program accepted 2,400 applicants to work in twenty-two different urban and rural school districts around the U.S. Teach for America teachers receive a five-week training program before they are placed in the school system. These first-year teachers have the opportunity to practice, observe, coach, and study fellow teachers to develop the requisite skills to become effective beginning teachers through the Teach for America program. One of many concerns school districts have in new teacher recruitment and retention is salary. According to a national poll, 78% of the public favored raising teacher salaries to deal with the teacher shortage. According to the American Federation of Teachers, with a bachelors degree, the beginning public school teacher’s average salary was about $32,000 for the 2003–2004 school year. It should be noted that salary varies from state to state and depends upon education level, experience, school district, and the cost of living of a particular area.
Expectations Beginning teachers are expected to take on the same responsibilities as veteran teachers. First-year teachers face the daily challenges of understanding the rules and culture of a new school along with traditional classroom demands such as classroom management, student motivation, and effective instruction. With the growing minority population, first-year teachers are expected to plan effective lessons for diverse populations. To support new teachers, some school districts offer training sessions to help first-year teachers understand the needs of the diverse population they serve. Many first-year teachers are also supported prior to their initial teaching experience by state approved teacher education programs at colleges and universities. According to the National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education (NCATE), current
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teacher education programs graduate those who teach according to state and professional standards, use instructional strategies based on current research of effective teaching methods, develop developmentally appropriate lessons according to student learning styles and background, reflect on instruction and feedback, and integrate technology into lesson planning.
Job Retention, Attrition, and Expectancy On average, 15% of teachers leave teaching within the first year, 30% within 3 years, and 40–50% within 5 years. To add to this, 15% of first-year teachers change schools after the first year. Many first-year teachers have cited inconsistent support from the administration, low salary, discipline issues among students, and a lack of freedom to do the job as key reasons they left the teaching profession or switched schools. First-year teachers are not guaranteed job security for the following school year in public institutions. Many public school districts have tenure laws that allow for job security after completion of the third year of teaching in the same school district. The job outlook for first-year teachers varies according to location, teaching specialty, and grade level of licensure. By the 2008–2009 school year, the nation will need to have recruited some 2 million new public school teachers due to enrollment increases, retirement, turnover, and career change, thus opening up the job market for first-year teachers across the nation. Urban area schools are among the educational institutions that are most in need of teachers.
Challenges Typical challenges of first-year teachers include discipline, classroom and time management, effective teaching techniques, student motivation, and applying classroom theory to practice. Unlike student teaching where student teachers shadow veteran teachers in the classroom, first-year teachers must control the classroom environment on their own by implementing effective discipline and classroom management policies to cultivate a well-organized working space for students. The effective instructional techniques learned in university classrooms must also be applied to everyday school activities.
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First-year teachers are often given the least desirable and most difficult positions in schools. Teachers are often faced with a lack of classroom supplies and even classroom space, which increases the stress level for the new teacher. At the middle and high school level, some first-year teachers struggle with their role as a teacher. Often this struggle centers on wanting to be seen as a friendly figure rather than an authority figure, which usually leads to a struggle to maintain and enforce school policy and classroom management. Other areas of concern for first-year teachers include performance appraisal, school policy and culture, student personal problems, student academic growth, and individual student differences. First-year teachers can become overwhelmed by school policy and district wide agendas. Academic growth is another area of concern for new teachers. Many novice teachers chart their progress according to student achievement instead of relying on their identified teaching goals and assessments as indicators of classroom success. Given these challenges, many beginning teachers struggle with separating their professional environment from their lives outside of work.
Supports The support given to first-year teachers has an impact on the quality of their professional experience and long-term professional learning. School systems across the U.S. have begun to emphasize induction, mentoring, and new teacher academies as ways to increase new teacher retention. In most induction programs firstyear teachers have monthly meetings with other new teachers, professional development workshops, mentoring with a veteran teacher, and training workshops. These programs range in quality and intensity depending upon the district. Induction programs aid new teachers in learning the values and philosophy of the school along with mentoring programs that assist teachers about expected behaviors. Other supports include parents, colleagues, and administration. Parents can support new teachers through active involvement in the classroom and through educational home practices for their children. Parents also aid first-year teachers through the positive feedback they offer about the teacher’s influence and implementing classroom rules and limit setting at home. School professionals are another support for firstyear teachers. Fellow teachers can provide information
about the school system and district, procedural norms, and lesson planning advice. They offer practical advice on classroom procedures, resources, and discipline. School principals and other district administrators encourage new teachers by promoting open communication. Many principals aid in this by introducing them to a mentor teacher, helping them make use of planning time, encouraging professional development, and approving their classroom discipline policies. See also: > Certification, Alternate routes to; > Mentoring teachers; > Pre-service teacher education: Multicultural education
Suggested Reading Depaul, A. (1998). What to expect your first year of teaching. (pp. 1–48). Wasghinton, D.C.: U.S. Department of Education Office of Educational Research and Improvement. Stotsky, S. (2006). Who should be accountable for what beginning teachers need to know. The Journal of Teacher Education, 57(3), 256–268. Watzke, J. L. (2007). Longitudinal research on beginning teacher’s development: Complexity as a challenge to concerns-based stage theory. Teaching Teacher Education, 23, 106–122.
Suggested Resources U.S. Department of Education—http://www.ed.gov/teachers/ landing.jhtml: This website offers information about teaching in the first year as well as training and degree programs available for veteran educators. National Education Association (NEA)—http://www.nea.org/: The National Education Association (NEA) focuses on excellence in education for students and educators. Information is provided for beginning teachers in the areas of mentoring, support, and dealing with challenges.
Foster Care Chihiro A Negron . Antonia Hernandez
Foster care is one of the crucial child welfare service delivery options that provides appropriate, familybased, temporary nursing facilities for infants,
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children, and youths, who are removed from their birth parents’ home because of evidence of child abuse, neglect, parents’ substance and/or alcohol abuse, maltreatment, and other strenuous circumstances, while maintaining the legal rights of children and/or family relationships with them. When infants, children, or youths are determined to live separately from their birth parents, social workers or caseworkers arrange a planned, goal-oriented, child welfare service in which an agency-approved, trained foster family takes charge of children’s welfare. Based on the fundamental concept suggesting that the family is the most significant and indispensable institution for rearing children, the United States (U.S.) child welfare service has been centered on foster care. The goal of foster care is to protect and nurture children in a safe environment to raise healthy children and adolescents. This includes improving the unhealthy situations children and youths may be in, meeting their developmental, emotional, and physical needs, fostering self-esteem and family relationships with their birth parents, and facilitating awareness of cultural and ethnic identity. Based on available statistics by the Adoption and Foster Care Analysis and Report System, approximately 513,000 children were in foster care in 2005 in the U.S. The public agency responsible for child welfare varies from state to state. For example, in Oregon and Washington states, state administration operates child welfare services. On the other hand, in some states, such as New York, California, and Colorado, each county or city administration has responsibilities for child welfare service.
History The preliminary system of current foster care and adoption began when Methodist priest Charles L. Brace established the New York Children’s Aid Society in New York City in 1853. New York City used to be filled with street children who were abandoned by their parents, lost their parents, or ran away from home. These children made their living through begging, robbery, gang activities, and prostitution. Worried about their situation and welfare, Priest Brace started the Place Out Program which aimed to seclude vulnerable children from poor circumstances. To provide children and youths with appropriate or better environments, the Orphan Train system was introduced. Orphans were sent to the Midwest by train as farm laborers in return
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for food and shelter. Orphan Train continued until the1930s and millions of children were given foster families through this system. At the same time, hospitals or other religious organizations, such as the New York Hospital, managed by Catholic nuns who were concerned about poor child support systems, started to take into care children who had been abandoned by their birth parents. At the beginning of the twentieth century, social concerns grew about young children having to work because of family poverty. Some states enforced child labor laws and decided to offer remedial payments to widows and their children. However, in 1929 when the U.S. entered the Great Depression, not only state-level but also federal-level remedies were necessary to solve problems related to poverty, and in 1935 the federal government enforced the Social Security Act and built a foundation for social security and a public assistance system to indemnify the right of subsistence. Around 1960, influential changes occurred to the children’s welfare system. Until then, the focus of child welfare was limited to those children and youths whose parents were unable to take responsibilities in rearing their children. Consequently, many children were exposed to parents who would inflict physical and/or sexual abuse, because spanking or hitting was accepted by society as a form of discipline, and as a result abused children were not eligible for protection by child welfare services. From 1950 to 1970, Dr. Kemp reported severe conditions of abused children, strived to prevent child abuse by training pediatricians, and stressed the need for a law that protected abused children. At the beginning of the 1970s, with his efforts, legislation started to consider child abuse a crime and protected victims of child abuse or neglect. The target population of child welfare changed from children in poverty to victims of child abuse. During the 1970s, the federal government unified state-level child welfare plans; professionals questioned whether temporary care was the best way for children, and decided to have permanent care planning that recommended the preservation of family unity. To achieve this goal, the federal government enforced the Adoption Assistance and Child Welfare Act of 1980, also known as P.L. 96-272. This act implemented the Permanency Plan that relied heavily on the principle of family preservation and focused on reunification with abusive or neglectful parents by providing parenting classes or therapies to parents. For some families, the family preservation program worked, but
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for many it failed and as a result, the number of children who remained in the foster care system increased rapidly during the 1980s and 1990s. In addition to this, the number of children who entered into the foster care system grew during the 1990s because of an increasing awareness of child abuse. The Adoption and Safe Family Act of 1997 was enforced by Congress to correct various problems of the former bill (the Adoption Assistance and Child Welfare Act of 1980) and to increase the number of children being adopted. This act encouraged agencies to explore adoption as an avenue of opportunity when parents had a severe history of child abuse. It also enforced the intervention of family courts within 48 hours of a child being in state custody and to plan a permanency goal within 12 months to move a child out of the foster care system quickly. Although foster care service in the U.S. aims to offer temporary and short-term care and set a standard of providing less than 12 months of foster care service, only 50% of children who exit foster care spend less than 12 months with foster families. Twenty percent of children stay in foster care between 1 and 2 years, and 19% of children are in foster care for more than 3 years, as reported by a survey in 2003. With aid for families including therapy, family education, and financial support, social workers encourage family preservation. Kinship care is also encouraged where relatives or very close family friends foster a child under extreme circumstances, temporarily or permanently, to maintain family relationships.
The Present Condition of Foster Care Currently, more than 500,000 children are in foster care. According to Adoption and Foster Care Analysis and Report System reports, the number of children who were in foster care in 2005 decreased 7% when compared with 2000. In 2005, 287,000 children exited foster care whereas 311,000 children entered the system. Compared with the data in 2000, the number of children who exited foster care increased 5%; however, children who entered foster care system increased 6%. Over 300,000 children enter foster care each year, and among them, more than 275,000 children are victims of abuse or neglect by their birth parents. The median age of children who are in foster care is 10.9 years. Although the average age of children in foster care is relatively high, a growing number of infants and
children under the age of 5 enter the foster care system. Some 39% of children in foster care are White, 35% are Black, 17% are Latino, and 9% are categorized as Other. Of the number of children in foster care, 53% are male and 47% are female. Once children are removed from their parents’ home, a caseworker determines where children will be placed by taking into account the child’s strength, character, and developmental needs to make the foster environment optimal to the child. There are five types of foster care homes: family foster care, kinship foster care, treatment foster care, residential/group care, emergency care, and Another Planned Permanent Living Arrangement (APPLA). When children are placed in family foster care, non-relative foster home the foster parents are assessed and licensed as certified foster parents. Some 46% of children in foster care lived with family foster parents in 2003. Candidates to become foster care parents are recruited by advertisements in mass media, personal contacts, flyers posted in church or public agencies. Foster parents are licensed after receiving training and assessment to ensure suitability for providing appropriate care of children who must live separately from their parents. Various support services are available for foster parents through child welfare agencies, such as further training and workshops to learn specific parenting skills to meet the needs of foster children to ensure an optimal outcome. Foster parents receive monthly maintenance payments to make an appropriation for the cost of caring for the children. The majority of foster parents are of working-class backgrounds. The number of children that may be found in a foster home is limited to six to eight children including foster parents’ legal children. Kinship foster care is provided by children’s relatives or close family friends, also called fictive kin. Kinship care can be formal or informal. For the formal kinship foster parents, training, assessment, and a license are required to take care of children in need. When relatives go through the formal procedures to become foster parents, they are eligible to receive a monthly payment for the costs and needs of the child. Informal kinship care involves only a brief assessment process to ensure the safety and suitability of the home. Those who become kinship foster parents with the informal process may not be able to have financial support from the government to take care of children. Treatment foster care, also called therapeutic foster care, requires foster parents to have more training to be able to handle problems with children who have certain
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medical or emotional problems, such as Human Immune Deficiency Virus (HIV), or severe emotional/ psychological needs. Therapeutic foster parents are also expected to provide more support for children and their families. The number of children who can be cared for in a therapeutic foster home is lower than in a nontherapeutic foster home because the needs of the child are greater. Residential/group care is also called congregate care or institutional care, and children who require special structure and services can be placed in residential/ group care. The facilities that provide residential/group care include community-based group homes, campusstyle residential facilities, and secure facilities. For instance, children who commit a serious crime who have a severe behavioral and/or psychological disorder may be placed in these types of facilities. The number of children who can be placed in a group home is seven, but other residential facilities may take more than ten children in need at one time. Some 19% of children in out-of-home care are placed in these settings. In some jurisdictions, children are placed into emergency care settings initially until caseworkers can find appropriate placements that meet the needs of the children. The length of care varies from less than 12 hours to 1 month. Institutions that provide this type of care are shelters, group facilities, or family emergency care settings that ensure the safety of the child. Another Planned Placement Living Arrangement (APPLA) is a case plan designed for children who are in out-of-home care and have no permanent, legal, and placement family goals. Decisions applying APPLA are made only when there is adequate explanation to leave all possible legal, permanent family goals out of consideration. Placement decisions are made by considering multiple factors, including a child’s strength, character, ethnicity, developmental needs, physical and psychological condition, caretakers’ skills, facilities, and children’s prospects for permanency with family care to promote stability and minimize the number of placements. Even though caseworkers and social workers make considerable efforts to place children in the right foster families, many children ended up drifting from one foster home to another. While children are in foster care service, caseworkers develop service and treatment plans to provide appropriate services to children and biological parents. They also monitor and evaluate a case plan and amend it if necessary to create a better solution for the child.
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Family Reunification and Termination of Parental Rights There are several ways children are followed after exiting the foster care system. Once a child is placed in the foster care system, social workers and professionals provide various services for parents for future reunion until they are assured that biological parents are able to provide appropriate care for children and that the home environment is safe, in a span of 1 year. Since the main goal of the current law is to accelerate the process of placing the child to permanent or adoptive families, states are required to terminate parental rights if a child has been in foster care for 15 of the most recent 22 months. A judge reviews the improvement of families and decides whether parents are eligible for regaining their children’s custody. In some severe cases such as existing child abuse, when an unsafe home environment will not change in the near future, parental lack of ability in meeting the child’s physical and psychological needs, or evidence of abandonment, the judge might terminate the parents’ rights to their child. Once the biological parental rights have been terminated, it is not possible for parents to regain them: parents lose authority over the child in every situation. Upon termination of parental rights, children also lose legal parents. It is the Juvenile Court’s decision whether the child stays in the foster care system, is placed in an adoption agency, or is placed in immediate adoption. In 2003, 55% of children were reunited with their birth parents and 18% were adopted. Some 15% of children who left the foster care system were determined to live with relatives or guardians permanently. Finally, 8% of those children were emancipated.
Challenges The foster care system faces many challenges to promote its services and obtain optimal outcomes. These include difficulties of providing adequate, accessible, and appropriate services for the families in their care, problems related to foster children of color, struggles to find and recruit foster parents who provide children appropriate care. First, social welfare agencies find it difficult to provide adequate services for foster children and foster parents. An increasing number of children in foster care have developmental deficits, psychological disorders, or physical illnesses when entering foster care. These children
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need to receive appropriate medical and/or mental health services to monitor or minimize their symptoms. Despite significant needs for mental health services for these children, many mental facilities do not accept Medicaid. Moreover, the limited number of institutions that accept Medicaid, sometimes limits the number of sessions. Furthermore, large caseloads and the small number of well-trained social workers contribute to this problem. Second, children of minority backgrounds have less opportunity of receiving appropriate services, which results in their staying longer in the foster system than those children of non-minority backgrounds. It is reported that children of color have fewer opportunities for family visits, fewer sessions with caseworkers, fewer completed written case plans, and fewer psychological or developmental assessments. This inequity might be a result of the lack of community-based services in poverty-stricken neighborhoods and might contribute to the limited number of parents able to obtain the help they need to get their children back. Studies show that a large number of children of minority backgrounds enter the foster care system due to parental abuse, neglect, and/or substance abuse, but fewer appropriate treatment programs are available for minority parents. Inequity of the foster care system for children of minority backgrounds can also jeopardize children’s developmental progress. Finally, difficulties recruiting foster parents creates serious problems for maintaining the foster care system given the number of homes necessary for children. Many foster parents feel that fostering deprived children with various needs is overwhelming and frustrating. Many foster parents report that they receive inadequate services that are necessary to meet the needs of children,
making the fostering of a child a complex and tough responsibility As a result, many foster parents who are licensed to care for children in foster care leave the foster care system within the first year after obtaining licensure. See also: > Adoption/adopted children; > Child abuse
Suggested Reading Silver, J. A., Amster, B. J., & Haecker, T. (1999). Young children and foster care: A guide for professionals. Baltimore: Paul, H. Brookes Publishing. Sinclair, I., Bakr, C., Wilson, K., & Gibbs, I. (2005). Foster care; Where they go and how they get on. London: Jessica Kingsley Publishers. Schwartz, T. (2005). Parenting for the state: A ethnographic analysis of non-profit foster care. New York: Routledge.
Suggested Resources Foster Care National Statistics—http://www.childwelfare.gov/ pubs/factsheets/foster.cfm: This website offers various updated statistics that relate to the present condition of foster care. It also provides fundamental information about the foster care service models that are currently in place, the theory or concept behind the model, and additional resources for adoption for parents considering to become foster parents or be potential adaptive parents. National Foster Parent Association (NFPA)—http://www.nfpainc. org: This association is one of the largest national organizations for foster parents. It provides information for training, assessment, and requirements for being foster parents as well as critical information for social workers and rofessionals in the field.
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Global Assessment of Functioning (GAF)
Gangs Caroline L Hilk . Michael C Mensink
Historically, a gang has been defined as any collection of individuals who engage in illegal activities. While this broad definition has served its purpose within a historical context, the definition of a gang within the context of the twenty-first century has changed, and now necessitates greater specificity. While many other types of gangs exist, such as outlaw motorcycle gangs and prison gangs, of specific concern to those who work in the field of education are youth gangs. Youth gangs are defined by the following characteristics: a self-formed group of three or more members united by mutual interests; using symbols to communicate; and collectively involved in crime and in control of a particular facility, territory, or enterprise. While typically comprised of juveniles or young adults, youth gangs may often be associated with adult gangs in the same area. The history of modern gangs can be traced back to the late 1960s, during the civil rights movement, when drug culture was increasing in the United States (U.S.). During the 1960s, groups such as the Crips were formed by African American youth within the city of Los Angeles to protect their neighborhoods from racial violence. Although the group formed with the intention of working toward political change, by the mid-1970s the Crips had become a criminal organization that committed robberies, sold drugs, and performed other illegal activities. A rival gang called the Bloods formed to challenge the Crips’ activities around Los Angeles during this period. Many other gangs were also formed during this time, usually located in impoverished neighborhoods within large cities. During the late 1980s, other cities within the U.S. began to see an influx of gang activity due to both the expansion of Los Angeles based gangs into other parts of the country, and their emulation by other disenfranchised youth living in impoverished neighborhoods. Throughout the 1990s, gangs such
as the Bloods and Crips continued to expand, gaining representation across multiple states and cities. Gang culture also became glorified during this time period due to the increased visibility of gang lifestyles presented favorably in popular music and media. Although the U.S. has reported an overall reduction in violent crime since the 1990s, gang activity continues to be a prevalent problem for both schools and law enforcement.
Risk Factors Risk factors that are predictive of gang membership are also highly correlated with delinquent behaviors such as violence and/or drug and alcohol abuse. These risk factors include a lack of economic opportunities and social acceptance, availability of drugs and weapons, and neighborhood disorganization. A family history of drug abuse, gang involvement, violence, and low socioeconomic status are also risk factors for gang involvement and criminal delinquency. In addition, youth who are struggling in school and have low academic aspirations are often drawn to the opportunities that can be created by gang membership. Negative labeling by teachers, administrators, or parents can also lead youthat-risk to build alliances with gang members. Socially marginalized individuals may view gangs as a safe haven in which they can develop a sense of identity. Individual characteristics that often coincide with gang involvement include early use of marijuana and/or alcohol, early sexual behavior, or externalizing behaviors such as aggression and hostility toward others. The more risk factors to which an individual is exposed, the more likely are his or her chances of joining a gang.
Gang Statistics Estimates based on the results of the 2004 National Youth Gang Survey conducted by the National Youth Gang Center and the U.S. Department of Justice indicate that approximately 24,000 gangs and 760,000 gang members are active across the U.S. within cities that have a population of 2,500 or more. Since 1999, law enforcement agencies have reported largely static rates of gang activity, with 79.8% of the law enforcement agencies (from cities with more than 50,000 residents) reporting some degree of gang activity during 2002– 2004. Twenty-eight percent of law enforcement agencies from smaller cities with populations from 2,500 to
C. S. Clauss-Ehlers (Ed.), Encyclopedia of Cross-Cultural School Psychology, DOI 10.1007/978-0-387-71799-9, # Springer Science+Business Media LLC 2010
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49,999 also reported some degree of gang activity during 2002–2004. Most of those affiliated with gangs are male, with only 6% of gang populations being female, as reported in the 2000 National Youth Gang Survey. Males also hold more primary roles in gangs, as indicated by the 2004 National Youth GangSurvey that found females typically perform assisting roles within criminal youth gangs. The most common criminal activity of gangs is selling drugs. For this reason, many gangs are associated with organized criminal organizations for the purpose of drug trafficking and distribution. Individual gang members are also often involved in a variety of other criminal activities such as vandalism, firearms possession, assault, theft, drug distribution, and homicide.
Indicators Maintaining a sense of group identity is crucial to the cohesiveness of a gang, and as a result many gangs adopt a set of symbols, signs, colors, and styles of dress that distinguish them from others. Baseball caps worn to one side are sometimes a sign of gang loyalty. Jerseys and handkerchiefs, typically with specific sports team logos or in particular color schemes, may be worn by gang members to show affiliation with a certain gang. Some gangs adopt identifying symbols that may be drawn on notebooks and clothing or appear on tattoos or in graffiti. Although any of these characteristics alone should not be considered as necessarily indicative of gang involvement, multiple warning signs appearing in combination should be viewed as potential indicators of gang affiliation. Youth who become involved in gang activity may become more secretive about their money, friends, and activities. Money from unexplained sources, friends whom parents are not allowed to meet, or a drop in school achievement may be warning signs of gang membership. Youth who have frequent negative contact with law enforcement are especially at risk and should receive some form of intervention, as involvement in criminal activity is the largest predictor of gang membership.
community response may be the greatest contributing factors to increasing gang activity. For neighborhoods and schools looking to address potential gang issues, community members must first acknowledge gang activity as a problem. Potential interventions must be evaluated, and a course of action then initiated in conjunction with the school, community, and law enforcement officers. Research suggests that a multi-faceted approach is most effective in reducing gang presence in a community. A balance of prevention, intervention and suppression is advocated by gang researchers. Prevention often takes the form of community and parent involvement, law enforcement programs for elementary students, and social and extracurricular activities. Parents, school officials, and law enforcement personnel can facilitate interventions by working to encourage and assist gang members who wish to sever their affiliation with a gang. Suppressing gang activity must be carried out by law enforcement officers, who target and prosecute high-level gang members to weaken overall gang structure and presence within a community. However, the role of school staff in reducing gang activity within a community should not be overlooked. It is important for school personnel to monitor known gang members or affiliates who may be interacting with students. Youth who may be pulled to become involved with a gang should be discouraged from pursuing relationships with known gang members, especially during their elementary and middle school years. Teachers, counselors and administrators should be able to recognize graffiti, signs, and slang that are related to gangs in the area. Schools can be instrumental in providing youth with positive social alternatives to joining gangs, such as sports teams and other extracurricular programs. Recognition of indicators can support prevention of gang membership starting as early as elementary school. Supportive teachers or school staff may provide a critical link during interventions with young gang members. See also: > Community violence; > Crime in schools; Drug-free school zones; > Gun-free school zones; > Sociocultural factors >
Reducing Gang Activity A disturbing trend within communities that face increasing gang activity is the tendency to deny the existence of a gang problem. The 2005 National Gang Threat Assessment notes that gang denial and a lack of
Suggested Reading Egley, A., Jr. & Ritz, C. E. (2006). Highlights of the 2004 national youth gang survey (OJJDP Publication No. FS-200601).
Gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender (GLBT) Peterson, D., & Esbensen, F. (2004). The outlook is G.R.E.A.T.: What educators say about school-based prevention and the Gang Resistance Education and Training (G.R.E.A.T.) program. Evaluation Review, 28(3), 218–245.
Suggested Resources Gang Resistance, Education, and Training (G.R.E.A.T.) prevention program—http://www.great-online.org/: The G.R.E.A.T. Program is a school-based, law enforcement officer-instructed classroom curriculum. The program’s primary objective is prevention and is intended as an immunization against delinquency, youth violence, and gang membership. National Youth Gang Center (NYGC)—http://www.iir.com/nygc/: The purpose of the NYGC is to assist policymakers, practitioners, and researchers in their efforts to reduce youth gang involvement and crime by contributing information, resources, practical tools, and expertise toward the development and implementation of effective gang prevention, intervention, and suppression strategies.
Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender (GLBT) Nancy Bearss
Definitions Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgender (GLBT) refers to gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender individuals or groups of individuals. Although all of these categories of individuals have different characteristics and distinct cultures they are similar in that GLBT individuals suffer from social stigmatization because they are not of the dominant heterosexual culture. Gay commonly refers to individuals involved in same sex relationships or individuals who are sexually attracted to persons of the same sex. Lesbians are women who are sexually attracted to women. Bisexual refers to individuals who are sexually attracted to both sexes. It should not be presumed that bisexual individuals have concurrent partners of different sexes. Transgender individuals can include all individuals who do not define themselves by a specific gender expression or those individuals who do not conform to their culture’s gender norm. There are a wide range of transgender individuals who do not identify with
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their biological, hormonal identity; they have the sexual characteristics of the opposite gender. Transgender individuals who have this distinction may define themselves as cross dressers or transsexual. There are also transgender individuals who are androgynous, intersex or two-spirited people. Androgynous and intersex individuals often have hormonal changes, either genetic or acquired, that allow them to identify with both sexes. Two spirited refers to the Native American belief that there are three genders, male, female and the malefemale gender. An individual who is male-female is known as a two-spirited person. Finally some individuals prefer to be non-gender identifying; they do not identify with the male or female gender regardless of their anatomy or hormonal exposure. Up until the twentieth century gender and sex were thought of as similar concepts. It was not until the middle of the twentieth century that gender identity (an individual’s inherent sense of maleness or femaleness) became a separate construct in contrast to the sex of individuals participating in sexual acts; heterosexual or homosexual. This realization, attained primarily through sociologic surveys of sexual behavior has led to an expansion of the old definitions of heterosexual and homosexual. Indeed people identify as gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgender more on the basis of their gender identity and sexual orientation (who one falls in love with, is attracted to or has fantasies about and who one has sex with) than solely the sex of the person with whom they have sexual relations. For example, a transsexual individual identifies as a person of the opposite anatomical sex and their sexual orientation is heterosexual. This leads to a need to distinguish between a person’s gender identity, their sexual orientation and their actual sexual experience. For example many gay and lesbian individuals may be in heterosexual relationships as a way to protect their gender identity in very repressive environments. Although homosexuality was common in many ancient cultures and is well documented in Greek and Roman mythology, it was not until the late 1960s that the GLBT community found a voice in the United States (U.S.). In 1969 the New York City police raided a well known gay bar on 57 Christian Street in Greenwich Village known as Stonewall Inn. Prior to Stonewall, raids on gay bars had been frequent and police actions against homosexuality were common. For example, in many areas around the world and the country homosexual behavior; kissing or holding hands with a person of the same sex, was cause for arrest on indecency
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was tolerated. On June 27–28th in 1969 the gay community in New York City openly resisted this harassment at Stonewall Inn. Stonewall Inn was a frequent target of raids: it operated without a liquor license, it had live entertainment by scantily clad young men, it was thought to have ties with organized crime and it was heavily frequented by minorities. It was also thought to be a central location for gathering information on gay men who worked on Wall Street. For whatever reason, the raid sparked outrage in the patrons of Stonewall and they attacked the police. The crowd was estimated to reach 2,000 with over 400 police officers. Riot control police were brought in and the riots continued into the following night. The raid on Stonewall mobilized GLBT communities all over the globe and created a platform around which GLBT people could organize. It is thought that many of these forces were already simmering among the gay community, perhaps in relation to the civil rights movement and a much more progressive political environment. The Gay Liberation Movement was formed by the end of July in New York, sparked by the outpouring of support after Stonewall. Special alliances were started that addressed issues of sexual freedom of expression through art, culture, lifestyle, education and politics. This movement has grown exponentially over the past decades so that anyone experiencing questions, discrimination or concern about issues of gender identity has a large repertoire of resources on which to draw. These include state and national organizations, advocacy groups, legal support and an expansive literature on GLBT issues and concerns. In spite of these efforts, discrimination continues to occur in the areas of workplace, marriage, access to medical and mental health services, education, housing and freedom from hate crimes. Many things have changed dramatically over the past four decades, most notable our access to information, while other issues, especially the personal struggle GLBT individuals have coming out to their families, friends and community have not changed. There are still many parts of the expanding culture in the U.S. that are very homophobic.
Development Sexual orientation and awareness of same sex attraction occurs in pre-adolescence for both girls and boys. Sexual attraction starts at about 9 years old for boys and 10 years of age for girls. Stages of acquiring sexual charges. Identities of individuals arrested in raids were
identity occur differently for GLBT youth. GLBT youth experience periods of realizing that one is different followed by a period of confusion. Experimentation with different sexual behaviors may occur during this time and a period of questioning can occur. Young people entering adolescence will sometimes identify as ‘‘questioning’’ as a result. In ideal circumstances a final period of acceptance and commitment will occur that allows GLBT youth to celebrate their sexual orientation and gender identity and fully embrace healthy sexual relationships. By 16 years of age both boys and girls have identified as gay, lesbian, transgender or bisexual. In less than perfect circumstances acceptance and healthy expression of sexual orientation may not occur until much later for GLBT individuals. During adolescence many gay, lesbian and bisexual youth may experiment with heterosexual relationships as a way of testing their sexual orientation or may deny their orientation because of risk of physical and psychological harm. Early onset of sexual activity and unprotected sex puts these youth at very high risk for unwanted pregnancy and sexually transmitted infections. Transgender youth are very conflicted during this stage and often experience confusion over their sexual orientation. Depression and anxiety may be present and is often under-identified in these young people.
Biology of Homosexuality Homosexuality is a biologically based, natural sexual behavior as evidenced by its presence in most mammalian species. There is ongoing research in the areas of genetics to try and localize a genetic predisposition with some early evidence of markers on the X chromosome. There are also family studies that imply an inheritance of homosexuality among twins and siblings. These studies are small and have not been replicated with the rigor needed to establish true genetic inheritance. There have also been some studies that have postulated the effect of sex steroids in utero on neural development and sexual behavior. Again, these studies have not proved consistent and there is much controversy over the idea that hormonal influence alone determines sexual orientation. Finally, environmental factors have been seen to influence sexual orientation. Children exposed to extreme cases of intolerance toward homosexuality or free expression of gender roles may never realize their true sexual orientation. This is true not just of GLBT individuals often recorded and open harassment of homosexuals
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but also of heterosexuals. A combined theory of genetic predisposition, exposure to sex steroids and psychosocial acceptance of gender role expression currently provides the best model for understanding the biology of sexual orientation.
Prevalence Prevalence studies with respect to homosexuality vary based upon data gathering methods. Surveys that use a very broad definition of homosexuality including homosexual attraction have prevalence rates in the U.S. that approach 40%. Large population surveys that use a much narrower definition of homosexuality, such as ‘‘have you ever been in a same sex relationship?’’ have prevalence rates of 4–5%. The popular media tends to use prevalence rates in the 4.5–5% range, while scientific data often results in more varied rates. Large population based data has seen somewhat lower prevalence rates (2–3%) while specific targeted studies done by gay friendly organizations have resulted in much higher rates, approaching 45%. These marked differences are a function of two study biases. One is the definition of homosexuality. Higher prevalence is seen in studies in which homosexuality is defined as any same sex attraction or behavior: kissing or touching. The other bias is the ability of the subject to trust that the results of the study will be kept confidential. Studies done by gay friendly organizations have more trust among their subjects than studies done by large organizations or government organizations. These studies, again, show a higher prevalence. Studies with adolescents approach 20% for both sexes. Prevalence rates in some studies report higher rates among men than women although when the operational definition is again broadened to include sexual attraction the rates are similar. Clearly the comfort and safety with which one reports their sexual orientation will determine true prevalence rates.
Risk GLBT individuals are at very high risk for homelessness, abuse and rejection. During adolescence and preadolescence, when GLBT youth are entering a stage of confusion, risk of harm is especially prominent. Harassment by peers is very common and severe verbal and physical harassment that occurs at school results in truancy, poor performance, and high drop out rates
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for GLBT youth. Many young GLBT individuals have to repeat a grade. The lack of support at school and recognition of the suffering born out of this discrimination leads to post traumatic stress disorder in GLBT youth. In addition, high rates of depression, suicidal ideation, high risk sexual behavior, domestic violence, unwanted pregnancy, substance abuse, emotional isolation, self loathing and self denial occur in GLBT youth. This results in overall higher morbidity and mortality rates among GLBT when compared to heterosexual youth. Young people in ethnic minorities may be at additional risk because of the pressure from their dominant culture to be heterosexual and the many sociologic burdens already carried by ethnic minorities. These burdens include poverty, limited access to resources and social isolation. This is especially true of cultures that promote a strong machismo male stereotype or a passive, dependent female stereotype. The personal issues GLBT youth face in minority communities with their families often prevent them from coming out or feeling comfortable in their own culture. In 1973, the American Psychiatric Association (APA) removed homosexuality from its list of mental disorders. In 1975, the APA adopted a resolution that further sought to remove discrimination against homosexuals from psychological treatment and practice. Most professional organizations have followed this lead. In spite of these efforts homophobia continues to prevent early assessment of risk and proper intervention among GLBT individuals. Two most harmful types of homophobia— religious fundamentalism and heterosexism—have been particularly damaging in preventing the proper care of GLBT individuals at risk. The American Psychological Association (APA) has set forth a series of 16 guidelines that promote the equal treatment of GLBT individuals. These guidelines are divided into five areas: 1. Attitudes. These four guidelines address the need for providers to initially understand that homosexuality and bisexuality are not mental disorders. In addition, providers need to evaluate their own attitudes towards sexuality and if prejudice does exist seek consultation or make referrals so that their clients are not at risk for further persecution. Finally these guidelines encourage all providers to realize that social stigmatization does exist and that it may prevent risk to successful treatment. This prejudice may also prevent the client from truly engaging in a therapeutic relationship with a provider.
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2. Relationships and Families. These four guidelines encourage the provider to address the importance of relationships that exist among GLBT individuals and their families and to be aware of the special circumstances underlying these relationships. Providers need to be sensitive to GLBT individuals who may not be legally or biologically related and be aware of the extra burden this may place on a specific therapeutic approach. 3. Issues of diversity. These five guidelines encourage providers to recognize, understand and respect the special problems encountered by all minorities in our culture. This includes GLBT individuals, individuals from minority communities, GLBT youth and individuals with special needs. As with all issues of cultural competence, ongoing feedback from clients is necessary to evaluate progress in identifying barriers to cultural competence. In addition the active promotion of culturally diverse providers is necessary to fully overcome these barriers. 4. The final three guidelines address the professional education of providers. Ongoing training, access to resources, supervision and consultation should be made available. 5. In addition to recommendations in the field of mental health, all health care providers have been made aware over the past three decades that GLBT individuals experience a higher risk of acquiring medical conditions that include: substance and tobacco use, suicide, anxiety and depression, and an increased incidence of sexually transmitted diseases. Unfortunately the epidemic of Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS) has been the main incentive for this change in the medical community. The complexity of this epidemic has forced providers to become competent in asking detailed questions about sexual practices and addressing these practices in a nonjudgmental manner. Ongoing training and education has been recommended in health practices to further ensure that risk identification and care is not delayed due to prejudice and ignorance.
Gay Youth GLBT youth are particularly vulnerable to risk. There are many reasons for this vulnerability, including age related factors and societal factors. Specifically youth people have differing views of sexual behavior than do adults.
Sex is justified as pleasurable, or as a new experience, often directed by peer views, not parental views. GLBT youth may have an even narrower view of sexual behavior, which makes them more vulnerable to high risk sex as a means of testing their sexuality. Secondly, there is a widening gap between physical sexual maturity and economic independence among young people, creating a large window of time for sexual experimentation outside of the confines of a stable relationship. Third, the lack of healthy communication about sex, especially for GLBT youth, furthers misunderstanding and lack of trust, leading to higher risk behavior. Fourth, the U.S. media promotes sex with an unrealistic image of sexual behavior, often associating sex, especially gay sex, with violence and exploitation. Finally, all adolescents have an inherent sense of immortality associated with their development. As a result of these many factors, resources for gay youth have evolved to support issues specific to young people. Health and mental health needs of GLBT youth are greater because of periods of confusion, lack of access to supportive adults, active discrimination and bullying, and higher rates of unprotected sex with multiple partners. A recent survey of GLBT youth conducted by the National Youth Advocacy Coalition in conjunction with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) found that 14% of the respondents ages 12–24 years of age reported having 20 or more sexual partners. In this same survey 13% of the respondents reported having exchanged sex for money and 5% reported trading sex for drugs. Condom use was 44% during their last sexual encounter in this survey, similar to rates seen among youth in the Youth Risk Behavior Survey conducted by the Centers for Disease Control of all youth. Mental health needs among GLBT youth are much higher than among heterosexual youth. In the above mentioned survey, 58% of the young people surveyed indicated in the past 6 months that they had felt depressed or had contemplated suicide. This is much higher than the 20% seen among all youth. Reasons for the depression ranged from fears about the future, family conflict and family estrangement. Twenty eight percent of these respondents had been forced to move away from their homes and 26% reported previous forced sexual activity. Rates of alcohol use, marijuana use, and tobacco are somewhat higher than among heterosexual youth although these figures tend to be more variable because of the hesitancy all youth have in reporting drug use. As with all youth, GLBT youth
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report having sex with those under the influence of drugs or alcohol. Young people of color who identify as LGBT are forced to deal with a variety of socioeconomic, cultural and family issues that may be unique. This may lead to further social isolation and put them at high risk for depression, unsafe sex, and discrimination. For example, young African American men who have sex with men are five times as likely to contract Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) than non-African American men. Many of the issues regarding health disparities also apply to GLBT youth. The lack of access to affordable care, the paucity of culturally sensitive providers and the lack of understanding of the specific ways in which culture has an impact on behavior are all barriers to reducing risk among GLBT youth. Some key guidelines to those working with GLBT youth are to understand the impact of the family on individuals, to be educated about specific cultures, and to include values that may not be readily accessible through regular encounters with young people. For example, many young people are raised in highly religious environments that promote heterosexual lifestyles. These need to be addressed in encounters with GLBT youth as they are often conflicted about their sexual orientation and their religion. The ability to acquire good resources for young people is essential and frank discussions about safe sex are necessary. Gay friendly environments have been successful in making youth more comfortable when talking about the problems they face. Finally, many GLBT youth have coped with difficult problems in creative and formidable ways. These include the creation of support groups, creative outlets such as music and literature, and actively seeking competent and understanding adults for support (Parents, Families and Friends of Lesbians and Gays, for example). Coping mechanisms that have been successful should be reinforced and supported.
Schools In response to the barriers experienced by many GLBT individuals there have been a wide variety of programs and policies that have emerged throughout our culture. These include support groups, local, federal and state policies that affect schools, housing and community access to care, specific legislation to protect people against hate crimes and popular cultural responses. In addition, most professional organizations have
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implemented sensitivity training into their professional education in response to the homophobia experienced by GLBT individuals. The response of public schools has been varied across the country. Health education has been a part of public education for over 100 years. It was not until the 1990s that comprehensive sex education was recommended as an integral part of health education in schools. This was in part due to high teen pregnancy and sexually transmitted infection rates experienced among public school children in the 1980s and the increased awareness that there are medical and psychosocial issues affecting all children who do not have access to comprehensive sex education, including GLBT youth. In the late 1990s there was a shift toward integrating health education more fully into the school environment and comprehensive school health education plans were promoted across the country. Comprehensive school health education serves to address all critical health issues confronted by children in school. Comprehensive school health education includes nutrition, physical education, prevention from disease, substance abuse, emotional and mental health issues, injury prevention, personal health, family life, human growth and development, and community, consumer and environmental health. School districts have developed extensive plans based on accurate information that is research based and developmentally appropriate to integrate health into all areas of the school curriculum that address the above mentioned areas. Education about sex and sexual orientation is usually a part of family life education although the implementation of comprehensive sex education has been varied in school districts across the county. Usually included in a disease based model to prevent pregnancy and sexually transmitted illnesses, sex educators have tried over the past decade to promote issues of sexuality and sexual orientation in areas of mental health and human growth and development. Sex education that promotes the following components has been suggested as a model for sex education as a part of comprehensive school health: 1. Accurate knowledge of human growth and development. 2. A healthy view of human relationships. This includes the promotion of family life as supportive and an ability to communicate in a manner that sustains health relationships, including intimate relationships.
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3. Skill building in the areas of value identification, personal responsibility decision making and communication. 4. Sexual behavior and sexual health. This includes adequate knowledge of the wide range of sexual behavior and the promotion of safe sex, including knowledge about contraception and condom use. 5. Society and culture. This includes knowledge of the influence prejudice, media and culture has on our sexual relationships. In 1993, the American Psychological Association developed a policy statement on Lesbian, Gay and Bisexual Youth in Schools. This policy recognizes that GLBT youth are at significantly greater risk for discrimination, harassment, violence, lower self-esteem, suicide, sexually transmitted diseases (STDs), and an exacerbation of any other problems they may encounter in the process of development. In response to this recognition, the APA, in conjunction with the National Association of School Psychologists, developed policies that promote safe and secure environments, develop specific interventions that lower risk and encourage tolerance, promote research that is scientific and addresses issues facing GLBT youth and that promote collaboration with other organizations. An example of the implementation of these policies is the Healthy Lesbian, Gay and Bisexual Student Project funded by the CDC in conjunction with the APA. This 5-year program created a working curriculum that educates professionals on site at schools to prepare them to address the needs of GLBT youth and build resiliency and reduce risk. In spite of these efforts to approach homosexuality and bisexuality in the larger context of sex education and to train educators at risk identification and building resilience, there has been strong resistance on local levels to specifically address issues that confront GLBT youth. School boards are hesitant to introduce the language of homosexuality or comprehensive sex education directly into the curriculum and abstinence only education is still promoted across the country in spite of ongoing research based evidence that it is not appropriate educational material. Eighty-four percent of GLBT youth still report being verbally harassed at school and over 39% of GLBT youth report being physically attacked. These rates are higher among minority youth that are GLBT. Efforts have also been varied across the country to protect educators who are GLBT. Schools located in regional areas where there is strong stigmatization against
homosexuality have had little success in implementing comprehensive sex education or in protecting educators who are GLBT.
Availability of Resources There are many organizations that represent the issues surrounding GLBT individuals. These range from legal support and political support to individual support in the way of counseling, health and support groups, to organizations that promote gay culture. GLBT individuals face many inequities that exist in our current law. Workplace issues include freedom from discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation, health benefits of partners and inclusion of partners in the application of the Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA). Federal issues include: 1. Protection from discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation 2. Domestic partner benefits 3. Same sex marriage 4. Access to equitable funding for STD, HIV diagnosis, treatment and prevention 5. Provision of partner sponsorship through the Immigration and Nationality Act 6. Inclusion of partners in the FMLA and the Health Insurance Privacy and Portability Act (HIPPA) 7. Policies regarding acquisition of library and classroom material, protection against hate crimes 8. Freedom from exclusion in organizations that receive federal funding or tax exempt status (such as the Boy Scouts) 9. Equitable treatment in the military All of these protections have the potential to affect schools and their communities and are often dealt with on local levels. Health and mental health organizations that address GLBT issues are often present in large urban areas. In rural areas, local public health departments have been diligent in providing as many resources as are possible in their regions but often these resources are very limited. GLBT individuals in remote areas often use the internet as a means of accessing support. Access to condoms, access to supportive mental health services and early identification of sexually transmitted infections, especially HIV, have been among the top priorities in the health communities serving GLBT individuals. Parents
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of GLBT youth have also organized to protect free expression of sexual orientation and allow GLBT youth to come out without dangerous consequences to their families and communities. See also: > HIV/AIDS; > Homophobia; > Same sex marriage debate; > Sexual development ; > Sex education
Suggested Reading National Guidelines Task Force (1996). Guidelines for comprehensive sexuality education (2nd ed.). Washington, D.C.: Sexuality and Information Council of the U.S.
Suggested Resources American Pubic Health Association (APHA)—www.apha.org: APHA has developed a caucus devoted to creating dialogue and support for public health workers and professional interested in GLBT issues. Parents, Families and Friends of Lesbians and Gays (PFLAG)— www.pflag.org: PFLAG is a support group for parent and families of children who are gay and lesbian. National Gay and Lesbian Task Force—www.TheTaskForce.org: Founded in 1973, the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force Foundation (the Task Force) was the first national lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) civil rights and advocacy organization and remains the movement’s leading voice for freedom, justice and equality.
Gender Bias Georgia Yu
Gender bias refers to behavior resulting from the underlying belief in sex-role stereotypes. The term ‘‘gender’’ is typically distinguished in the social and political sciences from ‘‘sex.’’ While sex refers to the biological bases for differentiating females and males, gender refers to the characteristics and behaviors that are prescribed to a particular sex by a given society and that are learned through socialization. Thus, gender is described as being a socially constructed idea not only because the meaning of masculinity and femininity are learned from the social groups in which we live, but also because each individual in a given society contributes to and actively recreates gender boundaries
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by performing the behaviors that are associated with being a male or a female. Even though they may differ slightly from culture to culture, gender stereotypes that define appropriate activities and behavior for men and women are prevalent in every culture. Awareness of the existence of these biases can help to overcome their negative effects. Gender bias (and its corollary, gender equity) describe the comparison of opportunities and treatment available to males versus those available to females. Today, gender bias is observed and discussed in societies and cultures worldwide. Parents and teachers of young people are especially concerned with unequal treatment of boys versus girls, particularly the effects this unequal treatment might have on child development. Economic development professionals have observed that, from subsistence to advanced economies, women are assigned different workloads, have different responsibilities for child and family welfare, and receive different rewards for performance. The behaviors and characteristics associated with males and females are not universal or timeless, lending credence to the viewpoint that gender is a social construct. What is considered appropriate behavior for women and men varies from society to society, and from time to time, and is largely dependent on the context within which it is observed and the interpretations of behavior that is culturally associated with sex differences. For example, in the United States (U.S.) during World War II, women were encouraged to work in factories for the war effort and were presented by the news media as strong and capable of physical labor. After the war, when the men returned and reacquired their jobs, many women were pushed out of the labor market. As a result, media images of strong women were switched, and women were presented as too weak, incapable of doing man’s work, and instead were encouraged to resume their dependent roles as housewives.
Gender Bias in Research Gender bias is inherent in the research process, and may influence how research questions are formulated, how studies are designed, how data is analyzed and interpreted, or how conclusions are drawn. Such biases can result in faulty research evidence that serves to support stereotyped or incorrect statements about women and their life experiences. In the worst cases,
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such faulty research may also serve to support discrimination towards women. Since early history, gender bias has played a big role in psychology, but this early gender bias was largely due to physical differences and appearances. Males were considered as strong and therefore superior to females, as their body structure and physical appearance were weaker than males. To combat these outdated and biased views, modern psychology has explored more about the female’s stronger side, including gender-specific emotional and behavioral competencies. Modern gender bias does not directly propose that women are inferior to men (or vice versa). Rather, modern gender bias is most prevalent in research, where faulty results indirectly support gender stereotypes. Such results are often faulty because data is analyzed against norms (whether they are theoretical norms, or scientifically calculated norms) that have been produced using male samples. In a recently published study, the investigators found that psychology researchers most often compare females against an implicit male norm, rather than on their own or vice versa. Where gender differences were observed in the research examined, they were described as being about males, and less often than as being about females. These faulty research methods are a reflection of researchers’ implicit viewpoints that males are the standard for the typical human subject.
The Psychological Concept of Power The psychological concept of power is gender biased. For example, many assumptions about leaders show them as having characteristics that are quite masculine. In contrast, female leaders have been described as strong care-takers which imply weak leadership skills. To combat this, female leaders may neither try to be stereotypically female nor try to imitate or aspire to stereotypically male behaviors. Rather, such female leaders are emphasizing uniquely female leadership skills, such as their better skills in diplomacy as well as being more level-headed and less risk-oriented in their decision-making.
Parental Influence on Gender Roles In a society rife with gender stereotypes and biases, children regularly learn to adopt gender roles which are not always fair to both sexes. As children move
through childhood and into adolescence, they are exposed to many factors that influence their attitudes and behaviors regarding gender roles. These attitudes and behaviors are generally learned first in the home and are then reinforced by the child’s peers, school experience, and in the mass media. However, the strongest influence on gender role development often occurs within the family setting, where parents pass on, both overtly and covertly, their own beliefs about gender roles to their children. Children learn at a very early age what it means to be a boy or a girl in our society. Through a myriad of activities, opportunities, encouragements, discouragements, overt behaviors, covert suggestions, and various forms of guidance, children experience the process of gender role socialization. It is rare for a child to grow into adulthood without experiencing some form of gender bias or stereotyping, whether it is an expectation that boys are better than girls at math or the idea that only females can properly nurture children. As children grow and develop, the gender stereotypes they are exposed to at home are reinforced by other elements in their environment and are thus perpetuated throughout childhood and on into adolescence. A child’s burgeoning sense of self, or self-concept, is a result of the multitude of ideas, attitudes, behaviors, and beliefs that he or she is exposed to. The information that surrounds the child and which the child internalizes comes to the child from the family through parent-child interactions, role modeling, and reinforcement of desired behaviors (such as parental approval or disapproval). As children move into the larger world of friends and school, many of these ideas and beliefs are reinforced by those around them. The media, and in particular, television, further reinforce what behaviors are culturally deemed gender-appropriate. Through all these sources of influence, children learn gender-stereotyped behavior. As children develop, these gender stereotypes can become firmly entrenched beliefs and thus, can become a part of the child’s self-concept. A child’s earliest exposure to what it means to be male or female comes from parents. From the time their children are babies, parents treat sons and daughters differently, dressing infants in gender specific colors, giving gender-differentiated toys, and expecting different behavior from boys and girls. Children internalize parental messages regarding gender at an early age, with awareness of adult sex role differences being found in two-year-old children. Children at two and
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a half years of age use gender stereotypes in negotiating their world and are likely to generalize gender stereotypes to a variety of activities, objects, and occupations. Children can even deny information that does not conform to their gender expectations, for example, a child whose mother is a doctor stating that only men are doctors. There is also evidence that for many parents, sons are preferred to daughters. Couples who prefer sons are more likely to use technology for selecting the sex of their child. This preference for male children is further emphasized by the finding that parents are more likely to continue having children if they have only girls than if they have only boys. Reasons given by women for their preference for sons are to please their husbands, to carry on the family name, and to give birth to a companion for the husband. Reasons for wanting daughters include having a companion for themselves and to have fun dressing a girl and doing her hair. Parents encourage their sons and daughters to participate in sex-typed activities, including girls’ doll playing and housekeeping activities and boys’ playing with trucks and sports activities. Children’s toy preferences have been found to be significantly related to parental sex-typing, with parents providing gender-differentiated toys and rewarding play behavior that is gender stereotyped. While both mothers and fathers contribute to the gender stereotyping of their children, fathers have been found to reinforce gender stereotypes more often than mothers. Boys are more likely than girls to do maintenance chores around the house, such as painting and mowing the lawn, while girls are more likely to have domestic chores such as cooking and doing laundry. This assignment of household tasks by gender leads children to link certain types of work with gender. While some studies have suggested that parent shaping as a socializing factor has little impact on a child’s sex role development, others suggest that parents are the primary influence on gender role development during the early years of life. Together, these results indicate that gender-role socialization is a twoway interaction. Thus, parents and children engage in reciprocal interaction, with children both responding to behaviors from parents as well as eliciting their parents’ behaviors. Social factors also influence a child’s development and thus, children’s acquisition of gender roles may best be understood in terms of their environmental influences.
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Parental attitudes towards their children also have a strong impact on the child’s developing sense of self and self-esteem, with parental warmth and support being key factors for the child. Often, parents give subtle messages regarding what is acceptable for each gender. These messages are internalized by the developing child. Messages about what is appropriate based on gender can be so strong that even when children are exposed to different attitudes and experiences, they will revert to stereotyped choices. These messages are particularly strong for young girls.
Historical Struggle in Education Today’s girls continue a three-hundred-year-old struggle for full participation in America’s educational system. During colonial times, school doors were closed for young women seeking knowledge; the home was considered the learning place for young women. The home, serving as the girls’ classroom, was where young girls learned the practical domestic skills for their inevitable future role as wife and mother. However, in 1767, a school in Providence, Rhode Island, began advertising it would teach reading and writing to girls. At the bottom of the advertisement, in small print, the advertisement noted the inconvenient hours of instruction. The girls were being taught either before or after the boys’ regular instructional time. Because the boys’ teachers needed additional income, they had opted to teach girls before and after school for a high fee. During the early nineteenth century, many cities began establishing separate high schools for girls. Most communities built one high school, but designated separate entrances for the boys and girls. The classes were on separate floors in single-sex areas where girls were taught by women and boys were taught by men. Following a considerable amount of frustration from women attempting to receive an education at male-dominated colleges, a bold alternative was created- female-only. Congress passed the Education Amendments of 1972, including Title IX. The preamble to Title IX stated: ‘‘No person in the U.S. shall, on the basis of sex, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subject to discrimination under any educational programs or activity receiving federal assistance.’’ A federal law had made sex discriminations in schools illegal. Under Title IX, sex bias was outlawed
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in school athletics, career counseling, medical services, financial aid, admission practices, and the treatment of students. From elementary school through the university, Title IX violators were threatened with the loss of federal funds. Title IX legislation changed the mode of operation in our schools. Better athletic programs for girls were instituted. Teachers began to carefully analyze books and resource materials for bias. As the 1970s came to an end, there were high hopes that Title IX might end gender bias. However, many schools simply did not take this law seriously. In many schools, vocational programs remained segregated with femaleonly cosmetology and secretarial courses and male-only electrical and automotive courses. In other schools, pregnancy was grounds for the expulsion of teenage mothers but not teenage fathers. During the budget cuts and staff realignment of the 1980’s under the Reagan-Bush administration, the heart of the equality movement was stopped. However, two Supreme Court decisions in 1992 and 1999 reinvigorated the gender equity movement when the boards of education were held liable for the violation of Title IX provisions. The Supreme Court acknowledged in Franklin v. Gwinnet County Public Schools et al. (1992) and Davis v. Monroe County Board of Education (1999) that institutions could be held liable for individuals in those institutions who participated in discriminatory behavior toward females.
Gender Bias in Education The goal of gender equity in education is the elimination of sex role stereotyping and sex bias from the educational process, thus providing the opportunity and environment to validate and empower individuals of both sexes as they make career and life choices. Some examples of gender bias in schools include how teachers respond to students, what students are encouraged to study, and how textbooks and other resources represent gender roles. A study commissioned by the American Association of University Women (AAUW) in 1992 entitled ‘‘Shortchanging Girls; Shortchanging America,’’ which compiled results from hundreds of research studies and articles on gender bias at every educational level, concluded that schools continue to perpetuate subtle discrimination against girls, stereotyping them as studious and well-behaved, while more aggressive students, usually the boys, may receive more attention from
the teacher. Additionally, a 1989 study of books used in high school literature classes found that 90% of the most frequently assigned books were written by males. The study found that girls did not receive as much attention from teachers as boys, and boys were called upon to answer more abstract and complex questions than girls. Instead, all too often, female high school students focused on their bodies and neglected their minds. Female students are affected by gender bias in many subtle but significant ways. Girls have lower expectations for their success in math and science, are more likely to attribute academic success to luck rather than to ability, and are more likely to equate academic failure to lack of ability. In contrast, boys are more likely to attribute failure to lack of effort. Boys are also more likely than girls to challenge the teacher when they do not agree with an answer. Generally, girls earn higher grades than boys, but boys outperform girls on standardized tests. Boys with higher SAT scores are more likely than girls with equal or better grades to be awarded academic scholarships. Early differences in the treatment of girls and boys can result in enduring learning patterns. Children spend more time with their teachers than any other adult except their parents. Consequently, teachers’ expectations and actions have a profound effect on student achievement as well as self-esteem. What teachers say and do not say, their body language, what they do and who they call upon, can influence children’s beliefs about themselves, others, and the world. The self-esteem of elementary girls remains high even though they receive less time, less help, and fewer challenges from their teachers. However, this constant reinforcement for passivity results in a decline in their independence and self-esteem; some describe this passivity as benign neglect. As a result of benign neglect, girls may have lower academic achievement as they move through school. After 25 years of research, documentation reveals numerous examples of subtle unconscious sexism that denies girls opportunities to excel in the classroom. Girls are rewarded for their conformity to classroom teachers (who often ignore them), and thus they pay a huge price for their compliance. Sex segregation, both during play and in the classroom, polarizes the sexes and contributes to female invisibility. Wellmeaning teachers often think they protect girls by this separation when, in fact, they encourage stereotypical patterns of passivity in girls and aggression in boys. Despite the loss of confidence and voice, the most profound effects of gender bias are evident in today’s
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high schools. During adolescence, many girls become over-socialized to contemporary stereotypical definitions of ‘‘femininity.’’ The messages they receive from the popular culture and mass media cause many girls to become preoccupied with physical appearance and perfection. Many of the models appearing in leading fashion magazines today are commonly 23% below normal body weight. Eating disorders, once considered prevalent among young women on college campuses, are now prevalent among many high school girls. It has been estimated that as many as 66% of high school girls are engaged in dieting. The stress of dieting and maintaining an attractive appearance can usurp energy that is necessary for learning in school. During most of the twentieth century, an invisible line dissected the courses offered in our nation’s high schools. In this division of curriculum, home economics was a female field, preparing girls for their roles as wives and mothers, while shop was reserved for boys. Girls were often disregarded by both teachers and parents as incapable of learning math and science. Finally, girls are now learning that math matters. Girls are now staying in math courses longer. Counselors or other teachers who feel sorry for girls enrolled in math and science courses, (if they find these subjects difficult), harm young girls when they only want to help. These school counselors, who many dismiss obstacles (that impede female students’ learning) are less likely to be as dismissive with male students. Young girls, though, tend to neglect to realize the high cost of dismissing their math/science courses. Girls who selfselect out of math, science, and computer technology classes are unknowingly making decisions that may affect the rest of their lives. In addition, the problem is growing: While girls appeared to gain ground in the sciences between 1960 and 1980, there is evidence that this trend is reversing. Although the cause is still unclear, it is well documented that between junior high and high school, girls begin to lose interest and perceive science, mathematics, and computer technology as masculine endeavors. As a result, many choose to opt out of these courses.
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leadership positions does not create a positive image for girls. For example, a female teacher with a male principal can send a powerful message to girls about their leadership capabilities and their position in society. In 1995, only 19% of all principals at a secondary level were female. Despite many qualified female applicants in the job pool, females are often overlooked for leadership positions. Teacher education programs also contribute to the problem. Rarely do students in teacher education programs receive gender equity training and instruction in gender-balanced teaching strategies. Teachers need to learn how to identify gender equity in instructional materials as well as learn about specific scholarships and contributions made by women in their content areas. Teachers who receive this training may become important change agents once they arrive in the classroom. To achieve equity, educators need to begin to teach girls when they are still young and their values have not yet been crystallized by their family and society. Guidance counselors and vocational educators need to provide career information to girls when they are in elementary school. There is also a for need female role models as mentors and opportunities to interact with women in the community who work in technical and nontraditional fields. Teachers must encourage girls as much as boys to pursue rigorous courses. Parents can increase science achievement by providing their daughters with science-related experiments at home, toys that are mechanical in nature, and science-related excursions. Parents begin treating their female and male children differently as soon as they enter the world. This is reflected in several ways: the way parents hold and play with their children as infants; the toys, books, television programs, and activities their children are exposed to as toddlers; and the type of encouragement children receive when trying new activities. Educators can help parents become aware of the impact of the culture and teach them to empower their daughters with their support and active involvement.
Gender Bias and Moral Development Gender Bias in Occupations The ramifications of gender bias are not limited to the educational arena. Although women make up 45% of the workforce in the U.S., 60% of professional women are in traditionally female occupations such as nursing and teaching. The lack of women in
Lawrence Kohlberg was a prominent psychologist from Harvard who developed the six stages of moral development from which he derived his cognitive-development theory of moral reasoning. Kohlberg’s original sample consisted of a cross-section of 72 Chicago area males aged 10, 13, and 16, whom he tested every 2–5 years for a span of 30 years. Differences among the
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three age groups suggested that the moral sense develops in distinct stages. Critics have suggested that there are some flaws in his theory in that moral development is not always upward and sequential- some individuals may skip stages in their development, others regress. Kohlberg’s test consisted of nine moral dilemmas, which researchers introduced one at a time to the subject. Each was followed by an interview comprising a long series of questions about what the subject considered the right or wrong course of action in each particular case. The first stage in Kohlberg’s theory is naı¨ve moral realism- action based on rules, and that motivation is the avoidance of punishment. The second stage is pragmatic morality- action based on the desire to maximize reward or benefits and minimize negatives consequences to oneself. The third stage is socially shared perspective- the action is based on anticipated approval or disapproval of others and actual or imagined feelings of guilt. The fourth stage is social system morality- action based on anticipation of formal dishonor, not just disapproval, and guilt over the harm done to others. The fifth stage is human rights and social welfare morality- the perspective is that of a rational moral person considering the values and rights that ought to exist in a moral society. The action is based on maintaining the respect of the community and one’s self-respect. The last stage is universal ethical principlesthe perspective is the moral view that all human beings should take toward one another and oneself, action is determined by equity, fairness, and concern about maintaining one’s own moral principles. However, feminist psychologist Carol Gilligan responded to Kohlberg’s theory in her seminal piece, In a Difference Voice: Psychological Theory and Women’s Development. Gilligan noted that child development theorist Jean Piaget observed that boys in their games were more concerned with rules while girls were more concerned with relationships, often at the expense of the game itself. Gilligan noted that women’s moral concerns are rooted in their sensitivity to the needs of others and the assumption of responsibility for taking care. Women must attend to voices other than their own and must include in their judgment other points of view. What appears to be women’s moral weakness, according to Kohlberg’s hierarchy of moral development, is that they consider their opinions of others as important as their own, an assessment that would relegate women to the third stage of moral development. Women’s moral weakness, which
ostensibly manifests in an apparent diffusion and confusion of judgment, is thus inseparable from women’s moral strength, an overriding concern with relationships and responsibilities. Women not only define themselves in a context of human relationship but also judge themselves in terms of their ability to care. In Kohlberg’s hierarchy of moral development, the focus is on individuation, autonomy, and individual achievement. His theory identifies the masculine tendency equated with personal autonomy as a higher stage of moral development than the feminine tendency to nurture, protect, and bond as a group. Studies on sex-role stereotypes have shown that the qualities deemed necessary for adulthood- the capacity for autonomous thinking, clear decision-making, and responsible action- are those associated with masculinity and considered undesirable as attributes of the feminine self. The stereotypes suggest a splitting of love and work that relegates expressive capacities to women while placing instrumental abilities in the masculine domain. Looked at from another perspective, these stereotypes reflect a conception of adulthood that is itself out of balance, favoring separateness over union and promoting an autonomous life of work than the interdependence of love and care. Women’s moral development centers on the elaboration of intuition and instinctive knowledge that is a function of anatomy coupled with destiny, and thus delineates a critical line of psychological development in the lives of both sexes. The psychology of women that has consistently been described as distinctive in its greater orientation toward relationships and interdependence implies a more contextual mode of judgment and a different, rather than an incorrect, type of moral reasoning. Given the differences in women’s conceptions of self and morality, women bring to the life cycle a different point of view and order human experience in terms of different priorities than men. See also: > Childhood; > Culture; > Discrimination; > Sexual orientation; > Multicultural teacher training; > Prejudice; > Self-esteem; > Single-sex education
Suggested Reading Atwood, N. C. (2001). Gender bias in families and its clinical implications for women. Social Work, 46(1), 23–36. Hyde, J. S., & Mezulis, A. H. (2002). Gender differences in research: A critique. Encyclopedia of women and gender. New York: Oxford University Press.
Generational differences
Generational Differences Constance Kindrick Patterson
Business fields such as marketing and human resources management have profiled several generations in contemporary society in the United States (U.S.). These profiles provide a basis for exploring differences among generational cohorts. The underlying premise of generational differences is that the experiences we have during our formative years shape the characteristics of the person we become. Formative experiences shared within a given generation can encompass a broad range of national and cultural influences including the overall economic situation, sensational events, media influences, heroes, and music. These experiences shape broad aspects of thinking, beliefs and values, how people are motivated, and their hopes and goals. The literature identifies four generational groups with specific patterns of experiences, values and expectations: Traditionalists, Baby Boomers, Generation X, and Millennials. The eldest generation is called the Traditionalist generation. Traditionalists were born between the mid1920s and mid-1940s, and currently they are among our country’s most well-to-do citizens. Members of this generation are characterized as conservative, consistent and reliable. They tend to be patriotic and understand dedication and sacrifice. They have survived hard times and are generally patient and hard working. There is a widely held belief in ‘‘paying dues’’ and working one’s way up through the ranks, building expertise along the way. Traditionalists often respect hierarchical structure and earned status. They tend to respect authority. While a majority of traditionalists are now retired, they have been loyal employees, appeared dedicated to their jobs, and generally made a lifetime commitment to a particular career. Traditionalists value logical approaches to solving problems. They tend to follow the rules and abide by established law. They do not value conflict and prefer change that occurs gradually over time. Traditions are important and building a legacy can be a key objective. Seniority and accomplishment are also respected. Rewards and recognition are earned over time and with hard work. Born between the mid-forties and 1960, Baby Boomers currently make up the largest generation group in the U.S. population. Boomers are characterized as optimistic
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and idealistic. They believe authority exists to be questioned and challenged and rules are meant to be examined and manipulated. As individuals they can be quite competitive; however, their strong sense of democracy fosters good teamwork in service of meeting common goals. Baby Boomers may tend to ignore interpersonal conflict and prefer to focus on building coalitions or networks. In the workplace, Boomers demonstrate a strong work ethic, are willing to dedicate themselves to a job and invest long hours to assure their work is performed well. They are often ambitious and want to build stellar careers. Sensitive to performance feedback, it is important that they obtain personal recognition for their contribution to completed work. When receiving rewards and recognition, they tend to prefer that it is personal and public. Recognition for working long hours is important. Boomers have been described as the ‘‘Me generation’’ because individuality and personal gratification are strong values. Many Baby Boomers have engaged in a series of soul-searching encounters, embracing new experiences that allow them to know themselves differently or change in some way that is significant to them. They are often more concerned with process than outcome, and can be impressed with money, title or material success. Health and wellness are important. Youthfulness is valued. Members of Generation X were born between 1961 and 1980, and include large numbers of former ‘‘latchkey kids.’’ They tend to be independent, resourceful and self-reliant. They can be entrepreneurial and are highly adaptable and flexible when faced with change. They are often skeptical about the world around them and are generally economically conservative. Technological competence and a willingness to both learn and take risks make Gen Xers valuable employees, but they risk undervaluing people skills and may undermine teamwork by striking out on their own. Gen Xers tend to distrust institutions and may demonstrate a tendency to be suspicious of leadership, criticizing leaders who are not competent. In professional situations, they appear to be more invested in their own development and well-being than in that of the organization. Gen Xers invest their efforts to build portable careers and expect to move between jobs. They value freedom and prefer informality and are likely to be committed to a lifestyle that allows them to maintain a balance of work and leisure. Having grown up with working parents, Gen Xers
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Gf -Gc model of intelligence
strongly value home and family and may prioritize family time over long hours at work. Born between 1981 and the turn of the century, Millennials are just now beginning to enter the workforce. This generation has never experienced a world without technology, and as a group, they are better educated and more creative than previous generations. They have often grown up in very childcentered, democratic families and tend to be sociable, optimistic and appear self-assured. Their attitudes are realistic and present-oriented. They refuse to buy into traditional standards and may have difficulty with blind acceptance of time-honored traditions and institutions. Diversity has been an influence on their lives, and they have concern about global issues. In the workplace, Millennials prefer to engage in meaningful work, and will enjoy an environment where their efforts can be seen as heroic. They need structure and enjoy supervision and feedback from those who have expertise. They have often learned to multi-task as young children juggling many interests and activities, and they enjoy change and variety. Millennials will avoid difficult people in the work environment, and prefer collective action, which makes them good team members. They are achievement oriented, and will work tenaciously and commit to achieving desired outcomes. They are likely to build parallel careers, and it is anticipated that they will enjoy moving from one career to another. The concept of generational differences has been criticized as having a middle class basis, and there are a number of factors that might influence how true the assumptions about generational differences fit a given subgroup. Those who grow up in lower income families may have less exposure to some important factors in mainstream culture in the U.S. that are important formative influences within this concept. Those whose families are quite wealthy may have very different experiences than their contemporaries. The degree of acculturation will affect how members of various ethnic groups experience the general culture in the U.S. Children who have exposure to multiple generations as they grow up may have more varied characteristics than the concept of generational differences would predict. Social changes, including increased geographic mobility during the past several decades, have decreased the numbers of people who grow up with access to extended families and ongoing exposure to multiple generations. Many people live significant parts of their
lives with few opportunities to interact outside age segregated activities and groups. Consequently, many professionals may have had little or no exposure to the differences in experiences of different generations, and do not understand their values and expectations. Personnel may have misperceptions and rely on stereotypes to interpret the actions of professionals from other generations. Since many human services require collaboration and teamwork, a lack of understanding across generations can have detrimental effects on working relationships and communication, undermining effective services. While descriptions of generational differences may prove to be overgeneralizations in some ways, they also provide a basis for developing and testing hypotheses about how people of varied ages may interact. Even brief descriptions of the generations suggest there is potential for misunderstanding based on beliefs, values and expectations. Exploring generational differences provides opportunities to gain understanding about potential problems that can arise when interacting with others. They can help professionals better meet the needs of clients and develop practical strategies for building better collaborative relationships when working across generations. See also: > Cross-cultural families; > Family fragmentation; > Family therapy
Suggested Reading Hicks, K., & Hicks, R. (1999). Boomers, Xers and other strangers. Albuquerque, NM: Focus on Family Publishers. Zemke, R., Raines, C., & Filipczak, B. (2000). Generations at work: Managing the clash of veterans, boomers, Xers, and Nexters in your workplace. New York: AMACOM.
Gf-Gc Model of Intelligence James A Bovaird
The Gf -Gc model of intelligence is a broad-based and general model of cognitive ability developed from the seminal work of Raymond Cattell in 1943. In the
Gf -Gc model of intelligence
1960s, one of Cattell’s students, John Horn, joined Cattell in developing the Horn–Cattell theory of cognitive abilities which is now also commonly known as the Gf -Gc model of intelligence. The original Horn–Cattell theory divides the overall construct of cognitive ability into two general classes of abilities based on inherent cognitive capacity and interaction with experience. Fluid intelligence (Gf ) is a problemsolving and information processing ability, while crystallized intelligence (Gc) is an accumulation of knowledge and skills throughout life. Fluid intelligence leads to the acquisition of crystallized intelligence. The Horn–Cattell model uses a capital G to specifically distinguish itself from Spearman’s g. Fluid intelligence represents flexible thinking and the ability to reason abstractly. It is considered to be largely nonverbal and a relatively culture-free, or independent of life experiences, form of mental efficiency that reflects a person’s inherent capacity to learn and solve problems. Fluid intelligence is utilized when a person becomes involved in various cognitive activities that require adaptation to a new situation. Common measures of fluid intelligence include number series, abstract analogies, and matrix problems. While fluid intelligence is considered to be culturefree, crystallized intelligence is highly culturally dependent. As the accumulation of knowledge and skills throughout life, crystallized intelligence results from the application of fluid intelligence to life’s experiences. Whereas fluid intelligence is used for novel situations, crystallized intelligence is used for tasks which require a learned or habitual response. Common measures of crystallized intelligence include vocabulary, reading comprehension, and general information. Horn and colleagues have empirically expanded the initial two-ability Horn–Cattell Gf -Gc model to include at least nine abilities through a series of factor analyses. The new types of abilities represent a wider variety of tasks and appear more related to biological processes than previous factorial theories such as Spearman’s two-factor theory, Thurstone’s primary mental abilities, or Sternberg’s triarchic theory. In addition to fluid (Gf ) and crystallized (Gc) intelligence, the expanded Horn–Cattell model includes abilities for quantitative knowledge (Gq), visual (Gv) and auditory (Ga) processing, short-term memory (Gsm) and longterm retrieval (G lr), and processing speed (Gs) and correct decision speed (Gt). Recently, similarities between the Horn–Cattell Gf -Gc model and John Carroll’s three-stratum theory have been emphasized,
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resulting in the combined Cattell–Horn–Carroll (CHC) theory. Further expansion to the CHC theory added abilities for domain-specific knowledge (G kn) or expertise, psychomotor speed (Gps) and ability (Gp), reading and writing knowledge (Grw), and three largely unexplored sensory abilities based on olfaction (Go), tactile awareness (G h), and kinesthetic awareness (G k). The CHC theory and its predecessors have had a significant impact on the development of major intelligence tests. Cattell originally developed the Culture Fair Intelligence Test (CFIT) in the 1920s to reflect his belief that fluid intelligence was culture-free. The CFIT is a nonverbal measure of cognitive ability that attempts to eliminate cultural bias in testing. The current form, released in 1961, has demonstrated high reliability and validity, but it has been found to be no more culturally ‘‘fair’’ than any of the other major tests of cognitive abilities and is in need of a revision. The Horn–Cattell theory also provided the basis for the fourth edition of the Stanford–Binet Intelligence Scales and the Woodcock–Johnson Tests of Cognitive Ability (WJ-R), and influenced the development of the Wechsler scales. The CHC theory was the basis for the 2001 revision of the Woodcock–Johnson Tests of Cognitive Ability (WJ-III) and has had a major impact on the structure of the fifth edition of the Stanford–Binet Intelligence Scales. See also: > Achievement tests; > Intelligence/Intelligence Quotient (IQ); > SAT
Suggested Reading Carroll, J. B. (1993). Human cognitive abilities: A survey of factor analytic studies. New York: Cambridge University Press. McGrew, K., & Flanagan, D. (1998). The intelligence test desk reference (ITDR): Gf-Gc cross-battery assessment. Boston, MA: Allyn & Bacon.
Suggested Resources Institute for Applied Psychometrics—http://www.iapsych.com/ IAPWEB/iapweb.html: The Institute for Applied Psychometrics is devoted to the application of psychological, educational, measurement and statistical procedures to issues and problems in education and psychology. The goal of IAP is to provide a bridge between psychological, psychometric, measurement and statistical theory and methods and applied practice in psychology and education.
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Gifted education
Gifted Education Scott Barry Kaufman . Michelle L Evans . James C Kaufman
Giftedness is a characteristic made up of many qualities; it can be innate or socially influenced, qualitative or quantitative. These assertions have been made by different psychologists over the course of a century. While contradictory in nature, these psychologists’ specific cultures and historical eras influenced their work, producing interesting insights into this intriguing topic. Some of these insights originated from the studies of Francis Galton, who found that people who had an exceptional ‘‘Natural Ability’’ tended to be related to other people with similar exceptional ‘‘Natural Abilities.’’ He concluded that exceptionally gifted families must therefore exist and be a valued commodity. Galton was the first to argue that giftedness is inherited. He believed that he could improve society by creating lists of gifted families who could then intermarry to produce superior children. In modern society eugenics is not an acceptable practice (and, indeed, is considered to be a particularly dangerous theory), but in 1904, this idea changed the way people thought about intelligence. If giftedness is something one is born with, then it can be measured and appropriately encouraged. At the same time, Charles Spearman was doing just that. He noticed that tests that purportedly measured intelligence correlated with one another. Spearman found that a general intelligence, a factor he called ‘‘g,’’ was found in all of these tests. Children could be high or low in ‘‘g.’’ Spearman viewed ‘‘g’’ as a mental energy, and hypothesized that it had a strong physical basis. Having a reliable way to measure intelligence catapulted the public’s interest in the theory of intelligence. For the first time, most of Western European and North American leaders saw children in terms of groups; children had low, average, and high intelligences. The first modern intelligence (IQ) test was developed by Alfred Binet. In 1905, he developed the Binet–Simon test, which classified a child’s intelligence relative to other people of the same age. Although IQ tests are often used in modern times for the testing of giftedness, Binet did not use the test in this manner. Oddly, while Binet is mostly remembered today for this test, it is not the area he did most of his work in. He did most of his
work in the field of cognitive development, and believed that intelligence could be influenced by environmental factors such as family, school, and health. However, these ideas were ahead of their time. Lewis Terman was the first psychologist to be specifically interested in gifted education. He was an advocate for teaching American teachers how to recognize and respond to giftedness. He also looked at the extent to which giftedness was inherited or determined by the environment. In his career he tracked students to see what sort of role these influences had on giftedness. He also brought the Binet test to America, where he gave it the name it is still known by today: the Stanford–Binet. Another influential researcher who helped lay the foundation for gifted education in the U.S. was Leta Hollingsworth. Her research suggested that gifted students had different developmental needs than average students. She demonstrated that adjustment problems displayed by the exceptionally gifted disappeared once they received accelerated material and were put with students who matched their ability level. She believed it was necessary that the gifted student be challenged in school, and that schools needed to change to meet these needs. American schools were not meeting the needs of the exceptional students. Tracking all of these students came with dire consequences for nonmajority group students in the U.S. Thomas suggested that the tools once used to identify a fleet of geniuses were now being used to subjugate immigrant students. Immigrant students generally did not speak English, and thus performed poorly on intelligence tests. They were discriminated against and put in special education classes. Gifted students missed out on an opportunity for a better education. In 1972, the U.S. Commissioner of Education, Sidney P. Marland’s report on the deteriorated state of gifted education re-energized the field. He estimated that only a small percentage of the 1.5 to 2.5 million gifted school children were benefiting from special educational services. This report increased public awareness about the situation of gifted education in the public schooling system. The report also supplied a broadened definition of giftedness. According to this definition, ‘‘gifted and talented children are those who demonstrate achievement and/or potential ability in any of the following areas: general intellectual ability, specific academic aptitude, creative or productive thinking, leadership ability, visual and performing
Global assessment of functioning (GAF)
arts, or psychomotor ability’’ (p. 10). This expanded definition also allowed more students from culturally diverse backgrounds to be included. Many of these students appeared to lack extensive parent involvement in school settings, and were often passed over for gifted education. The U.S. Department of Education report, National Excellence: A Case for Developing America’s Talent argued against barriers posed by traditional approaches in gifted education. Schools must encourage participation by low income and minority students with outstanding talents, it argued. Sternberg, Grigorenko, and Kidd failed to find genetic bases of racial differences in intelligence. Studies such as these helped turn educators toward theories of giftedness based on social and cognitive factors, rather than theories promoting biological determinism. Under this theory, gifted students have developed this set of behaviors and integrated them into their daily lives. With these expanded definitions of giftedness, schools were scrambling to meet the new requirements set by the government and researchers. Gifted students required a variety of educational opportunities and services that are not ordinarily provided through school. Some schools are trying to change this. The Schoolwide Enrichment Model (SEM) was a proposal for total school improvement that allowed each school the flexibility to develop its own unique programs based on local resources, student demographics, and school dynamics. The program united gifted students and adults who shared common interests. Together they practiced skills related to their area of interest. The emphasis of this program was on applying the knowledge and thinking skills to the area of giftedness, rather than completing a set curriculum. By instituting a hands-on approach to learning, the possibilities are almost limitless. Over the last century there have been many paradigm shifts, but each leader of thought had similar goals in mind: identifying children who needed special services and helping students get these services. Although models of giftedness have changed certain questions remain. Three topics will continue to challenge researchers: (1) the identification of gifted students, (2) the linking of theory to practice, and (3) the diversification of U.S. students. These topics are highly related to each other, and pose questions such as: Is there a single definition of giftedness, or are there many? If there are many definitions, how do we recognize gifted students? If the environments children grow up in influence their level
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of giftedness, how do we equip schools to promote giftedness? How do we increase the inclusion of minority students into programs such as these? These questions and more are necessary to consider so that gifted children may get the attention they need. Fortunately, there are many gifted researchers testing these questions so that future gifted students may have the resources they need. See also: > Educational resilience; gence; > Intelligence/Intelligence > Magnet schools
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Emotional intelliQuotient (IQ);
Suggested Reading Ford, D. Y. (1998). The under-representation of minority students in gifted education: Problems and promises in recruitment and retention. Journal of Special Education, 32, 4–14. Marland, S. P. (1972). Education of the gifted and talented: Report to the Congress of the United States by the U.S. Commissioner of Education. Washington, D.C.: Department of Health, Education and Welfare. Renzulli, J. S. (2002). Emerging conceptions of giftedness: Building a bridge to the new century. Exceptionality 10(2), 67–75. Sternberg, R. J., Grigorenko, E. L., & Kidd, K. K. (2005). Intelligence, race, and genetics. American Psychologist, 60(1), 46–59.
GLBT >
Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender (GLBT)
Global Assessment of Functioning (GAF) Georgia Yu
The Global Assessment of Functioning (GAF) is derived from the Global Assessment Scale (GAS). GAF makes up Axis V in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual-IV-TR coding system. It is used to measure the overall
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psychosocial functioning of an individual, including psychological symptoms, occupational, and social functioning. The GAF reports the clinician’s judgment of the individual’s overall level of functioning and how the individual carries out activities of daily living. This information is useful to plan treatment, measure the impact of treatment, and predict outcomes. The GAF scale is particularly useful for managed care-driven diagnostic evaluations to determine eligibility for treatment and disability benefits and to delineate the level of care required for patients. On completion of questions in the GAF Report, a 10-point range is automatically determined. Then, using the sliding scale, a GAF rating can be determined within this 10-point range. Explanation screens provide clarification of specific questions throughout the assessment. The report, which summarizes a patient’s results, can be produced immediately after an assessment. Subjects for which this measure is used include psychiatric patients and nonpatients. Cut-off points include the following: 91–100, 81–90, 71–80, and below 70.
Specific Meaning of Scores If an individual has a score between 91 and 100, the individual is thought to have superior functioning in a wide range of activities; life’s problems never seem to get out of hand; the individual is sought out by others because of his or her many positive qualities; and the individual experiences no symptoms. A score between 81 and 90 means the individual has none to minimal symptoms (e.g., mild anxiety before an exam); demonstrates good functioning in all areas; is interested and involved in a wide range of activities; is socially effective; generally satisfied with life; and experiences no more than everyday problems or concerns (e.g., an occasional argument with family members). A score between 70 and 80 means that if symptoms are present, they are transient and expectable reactions to psychosocial stressors (e.g., difficulty concentrating after family argument); no more than slight impairment in social, occupational, or school functioning (e.g., temporarily falling behind at work or in school work). A score between 61 and 70 means that there are some mild symptoms (e.g., depressed mood and mild insomnia) or some difficulty in social, occupational, or school functioning (e.g., occasional truancy, or theft within the
household), but generally functioning pretty well, has some meaningful interpersonal relationships. Scores between 51 and 60 means there are moderate symptoms (e.g., flat effect and circumstantial speech, occasional panic attacks) or moderate difficulty in social, occupational, or school functioning (e.g., few friends, conflicts with peers or coworkers). Scores between 41 and 50 mean the individual has serious symptoms (e.g., suicidal ideation, severe obsessive rituals, or frequent shoplifting) or any serious impairment in social, occupational, or school functioning (e.g., no friends, unable to keep a job). Scores between 31 and 40 mean that there is some impairment in reality testing or communication (e.g., speech is at times illogical, obscure, or irrelevant) or major impairment in several areas, such as work or school, family relationships, judgment, thinking, or mood (e.g., depressed, avoids friends, neglects family, unable to work, child frequently beats up younger children, defiant, or falling behind in school). Scores between 21 and 30 mean behavior is considerably influenced by delusions or hallucinations or serious impairment in communication or judgment (e.g., sometimes incoherent, acts grossly inappropriately, or suicidal preoccupation) or inability to function in almost all areas (e.g., stays in bed all day, no job, home, or friends). Scores between 11 and 20 mean there is some danger of hurting self or others (e.g., suicide attempts without clear expectation of death, frequently violent, or manic excitement), occasionally fails to maintain minimal personal hygiene (e.g., smears feces) or gross impairment in communication (e.g., largely incoherent or mute). Scores between 1 and 10 mean there is persistent danger of severely hurting self or others (e.g., recurrent violence) or persistent inability to maintain minimal personal hygiene or serious suicidal act with clear expectation of death. Finally, a score of 0 means there is inadequate information. See also: > Intelligence/Intelligence Quotient (IQ); > Testing and measurement
Suggested Reading Moos, R. H., Nichol, A. C., & Moos, B. S. (2002). Global assessment of functioning ratings and the allocation and outcomes of mental health services. Psychiatric Services, 53, 730–737. Startup, M., Jackson, M. C., & Bendix, S. (2002). The concurrent validity of the Global Assessment of Functioning (GAF). British Journal of Clinical Psychology, 41(4), 417–422.
Grade configurations
Grade Configurations Larissa Morlock . John S Carlson
Grade configurations, defined as the cluster of grade levels that coexist within a given school, vary significantly across the United States (U.S.). Elementary schools typically begin with kindergarten but vary in their termination point (e.g., elementary schools can offer grades kindergarten to third grade, kindergarten to fourth grade). After elementary school, students enter middle school (e.g., fifth to eighth grade or sixth to eighth grade) or junior high school (e.g., sixth to ninth grade or seventh to ninth grade) followed by high school or senior high school (e.g., grade nine to grade twelve or grade ten to grade twelve). Other configurations such as ‘‘center’’ schools, which consist of a single grade also exist in the U.S. While variation in grade configurations within schools appears to currently be the norm, a historical review of these issues indicates a number of consistencies. Prior to the 1920s, most schools were arranged in a two-level system that consisted of kindergarten to eighth grade schools and grade nine to grade twelve high schools. In the 1920s, there was a growing belief among educators that students in the middle grades could be more appropriately educated in separate school buildings and consequently junior high schools that housed grades seven to nine became increasingly popular. In the 1960s, middle schools that consisted of grades sixth through eighth emerged, eventually eclipsing junior high schools in popularity in the 1980s, and reflecting a shift in the philosophical perspective of educators. Whereas junior high schools were premised on the belief that young adolescents should focus on preparing for high school, middle schools were a product of the nascent child-centered perspective. Thus, middle schools conceptualized early adolescence as a seminal period in a child’s developmental trajectory that should offer opportunities for exploration. Consequently, middle schools tended to provide a more varied curriculum that involved a greater number of choices of exploratory or elective classes than was typically provided in junior high schools. The middle grade levels (e.g., grades six through nine) are often the primary focus of what is found in the literature on grade configurations. Middle schools remain one of the most popular grade configurations for young adolescents. Despite
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the widely-believed benefits of middle schools, however, educators must be cognizant of the unique needs of their target population. For example, for both urban and rural populations, the middle school model does not appear to be as effective. In the case of rural schools, moving to a middle school grade configuration often involves removing older children from an elementary school and leaving an insufficient population of students in that school to elicit state funding. In these cases, rural schools are often consolidated into other school districts, causing a decreased sense of community and ownership among children and their parents. Further, for students from rural communities who are in the sixth and seventh grades, attending elementary schools (e.g., kindergarten through sixth or seventh grade) or unit schools (e.g., kindergarten through grade twelve) have been shown to lead to better achievement than attendance at middle or high schools. Similarly, some research indicates that students in the middle grades (e.g., sixth through eighth grade) in urban areas have better achievement than their same-age peers who attend middle or high schools. Limited attention has been given to how demographic variables such as English Language Learners (ELL), socioeconomic status, and population changes within a community may influence grade configuration among schools. Attempts to reduce school district costs by creating split classes (e.g., having second and third grades meet together) or creating team teaching opportunities have been observed and appear to have less to do with a focus on student needs and more on district resources. Although preliminary findings suggest that grade configuration may play a role in the academic achievement of students from urban and rural communities, there is a paucity of research in this area. More research is needed to examine the nature and robustness of the relationship between grade configuration and academic success. See also: > Attendance; > Community schools; > Retention; > Rural schools
Suggested Reading De Young, A., Howley, C., & Theobald, P. (1995). The cultural contradictions of middle schooling for rural community survival. Journal of Research in Rural Education, 11, 24–35.
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Grading
Franklin, B. J., & Glascock, C. H. (1998). The relationship between grade configuration and student performance in rural schools. Journal of Research in Rural Education, 14, 149–153. Gill, B., Engberg, J., & Booker, K. (2005). Assessing the Performance of Public Schools in Pittsburg. Retrieved September 25, 2006, from http://www.rand.org/pubs/working_papers/WR315-1/
Suggested Resources Clearinghouse on Early Education and Parenting—http://ceep. crc.uiuc.edu/poptopics/gradeconfig.html: The Clearinghouse on Early Education and Parenting (CEEP) provides publications and information to early childhood and parenting communities. National Middle School Association—http://www.nmsa.org/: The National Middle School Association is a professional organization that aims to provide successful school experiences for young adolescents.
them toward greater achievement. For example, grades can function as rewards or penalties to motivate students, or they can provide students with feedback on their performance with the aim of directing future performance along lines desired by the teacher. Grading allows teachers to keep individual students on task while also maintaining control over the class as a group and managing their overall performance. However, grades also go beyond the classroom: educational institutions and professional employers also use grades as selection or certification criteria. Grades may be used to select students for courses, programs, entrance to institutions of higher education, and jobs. Grades are also used to certify that students have mastered particular skills or completed certain levels of education.
Elements of the Grading Process
Grading Gary Natriello . Hui Soo Chae
Grading occurs when an individual student’s performance is assessed and a symbol is assigned which represents the rating of that assessment. Grading is a common feature of modern schooling, and although specific patterns and practices may differ depending on level, grading takes place at all levels from preschool to postsecondary schooling. In the absence of defined systems to structure the grading activities of teachers, grading tends to rely on individual teacher preferences and subjective appraisals of student performance. In an effort to promote consistent and fair grades, schools have adopted various policies to govern grading practices. Ultimately, such policies are important because they protect the legitimacy of grading rubrics in the eyes of students, parents, and the broader public.
Purposes of Grading Grading serves multiple purposes, but these purposes can often conflict with one another. Within a school, grades often serve as important lines of communication between teachers and students. Using grades, teachers can send messages to students to motivate or direct
Grading begins when a teacher gives a student an assignment and ends only when the student receives a grade of some type, sometimes with additional feedback. With every assigned task, the teacher must also define a grading rubric: the set of criteria or standards which will be used to judge student performance. Ideally, a teacher’s grading rubric is directly communicated to students so that they can be well positioned to perform the task according to the expectations of their teacher. However, such criteria and standards are often left unstated, and students must rely on their own assumptions about how their teacher would like a task to be completed. Grading practices typically rely on a teacher’s assessment of some sample of student performance as the basis for rendering grades. For example, a teacher may give a quiz or test to gather a small sample of student performance. This sample of student performance is bounded by time limits for completing the test and the items included on the test. The sample of performance is then examined by the teacher, who renders a judgment as to the quality of the performance in light of the standards he or she has established. The judgment of the teacher is typically represented by various symbols. Common grading symbols include letter grading (e.g., A, B, C), percentage grading (e.g., 100%, 90%, or 80%), plus/minus grading (e.g., +/ ), pass/fail grading (e.g., P, F), or simple word or comment grading (e.g., excellent, good, fair, or poor). Such grades are written on tests, assignments, and report cards. Finally, cumulative grades for a given
Grading
year are entered on a permanent record or student transcript to summarize the student’s performance in each subject studied or class taken.
Grading Problems Students experience a variety of problems with grading. These problems may result in students who perceive their grades as illegitimate and may lead to student disengagement from the schooling process and reduced effort on school tasks. Some teachers may give conflicting tasks or contradictory evaluations that make it impossible for students to be successful. For example, students may be asked to complete an assignment ‘‘carefully’’ with an overly limited amount of time or they may be given too many tasks for the available time limit. Teachers may also give inconsistent and unpredictable evaluations that make it impossible for students to act to improve their grades. In group work situations, students may be graded on the poor work of other students that they did not control. When students misunderstand the tasks they are assigned in class and when they misunderstand the criteria that the teacher considers important for the task, student performance can suffer because of the inability of their teacher to effectively communicate his or her expectations. Tests that do not measure the things students have learned can also lead to unpredictable evaluations. Lastly, when classwork is simply too difficult or too complex, students will be unable to produce the desired results and thus will be unable to attain satisfactory grades.
Cultural Differences and Grading Cross-cultural differences can often intensify problems with grading systems. For example, many grading systems are criticized for being culturally biased because they tend to the values, norms, and knowledge of middle-class, White, English-proficient families. As a result, students who are from different socioeconomic or cultural groups may be at a disadvantage for grades. Such students may struggle with the conflicting values of their schooling environment versus their family values. Group work activities can present additional problems. Students from different socioeconomic or cultural backgrounds may experience difficulty participating fully in a group; as a result, they may have less
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control over the final group product and the resulting grade. Such difficulties may be connected to language differences that impede communication or differences in family conditions that limit out-of-school group work opportunities. Tests and some testing techniques have also been criticized as being culturally and socioeconomically biased. For example, oral exams administered in English may not accurately assess a nonnative English-speaker’s understanding of a concept or topic. In addition, some test questions may allude to a culturally-specific practice or context, which may have a negative impact on the test scores of students who are unfamiliar with such cultural references. Many standardized tests have been especially criticized, since they are often used as important selection criteria for acceptance into colleges and universities. For example, the Texas Assessment of Academic Skills (TAAS) has come under increased scrutiny for lacking culturally relevant items and content that connects to experiences of a diverse test population. Cultural bias in the grading process can also occur when a teacher observes and evaluates a student’s performance based on her/his own cultural experiences. For example, a teacher who grows up valuing a particular communication style may misinterpret certain forms of verbal participation as a sign of student disengagement or disrespect. White middle-class teachers who struggle with Black urban students are just one example of such a cultural mismatch. Similarly, teachers who share a common cultural experience with their students may view their behaviors more favorably. A teacher’s racial, ethnic, gender, economic, and linguistic background can all contribute to communication barriers that may have an impact on their assessment of a student’s performance. Specifically, such communication barriers contribute to misunderstandings about tasks, criteria, and standards. Cultural differences between teachers and students may ultimately lead to situations in which otherwise capable students view satisfactory grades as unattainable. The accumulated negative impact of cultural differences can overwhelm even the most capable students and leave them with a sense of futility that can cause them to withdraw and disengage from the educational process.
Culturally Aware Grading Processes For grading systems to engage students in schooling and to provide fair and accurate assessments of student
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learning, it is important that the grading process be sensitive to diverse cultural backgrounds, linguistic differences, and variations in learning styles. Grading systems should also not assume that all students of a particular background share a common experience or worldview. Diverse strategies can be employed to create a culturally responsive grading process. These include the more careful articulation of tasks and the criteria and standards to be used to assess them, the broadening of the methods used to gather information on student performance, and specific efforts to assist teachers in understanding the different patterns of behavior associated with the different cultural backgrounds of their students.
Grade Inflation There has been long-standing concern about grade inflation or the tendency for instructors to award higher grades at one point in time as opposed to an earlier point in time. The evidence for such inflation is difficult to assemble and assess, and the judgments as to the widespread existence of grade inflation are far from unambiguous. Nevertheless, there are sufficient examples of grade inflation in particular institutions to raise concerns that grades may not reflect student performance accurately or that grading standards vary among schools to the point where grades lose their meaning when they are used to assess students coming from different institutions, as in the case of college admissions. Grade inflation may be more likely to occur in those institutions with larger numbers of poorly prepared students as teachers inflate grades to avoid massive failure, but there is also evidence that grade inflation occurs in highly selective elite institutions. In the latter case the rising grades may be the result of pressure from highly articulate students and their tuition paying parents who demand grades that make them more competitive for postgraduate education and careers. Whatever the cause or pattern of grade inflation, there are several strategies that have been employed to control or adjust to it. One strategy to control grade inflation within an institution is to limit the proportion of high grades that can be given in classes and departments. Such policies force instructors to distinguish truly outstanding performance from good performance. This approach seeks to control the final distribution of grades without altering the evaluation process directly.
The International Baccalaureate Diploma Program, a two-year curriculum for high school students, structures the evaluation process through internal and external assessments to address grade inflation and unequal grading standards in high schools around the world. The assessments include those conducted internally by teachers who mark common student assignments driven by the standard curriculum, as well as other assignments and examinations graded externally. The grading system is criterion-based with grades determined by performance against set standards. Another approach to adjusting to the different grading standards that result when some institutions experience grade inflation is to contextualize the grades reported with additional information such as the distribution of grades. Some institutions contextualize grades achieved in classes by reporting the proportions of students receiving the same grade. So, for example, a report of an ‘‘A’’ grade in a class where ten percent of the students received the same grade takes on a meaning different than an ‘‘A’’ grade in a class where 60% of the students received that grade. College admissions processes use various strategies to achieve the same type of contextual understanding of applicants’ grades from different high schools with diverse grading standards. Specifically, the admissions process draws on information on class rank, the profile of the school with its curriculum and grade distribution, and on standardized test scores to interpret the grades on a student transcript. It is through such additional information that college admissions officials seek to avoid penalizing students whose schools are not experiencing grade inflation.
Alternative Grading Systems in Higher Education Some institutions of higher education have developed alternative systems of assessment that de-emphasize or eliminate symbolic grading systems entirely. Such systems generally rely on narrative evaluations of student performance in courses. The narratives run one to several paragraphs and seek to capture a more complete view of student performance. In some cases the narratives may be accompanied by a pass/fail designation or a grade. Some institutions provide the grade along with the narrative automatically while others provide the grade only upon the request of the student.
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Narrative systems of assessment are used by a small number of relatively small liberal arts colleges though several larger institutions also employ them. The rationale for using narratives to evaluate students includes being able to provide a more nuanced view of student performance that can include more detail on student development over time. Faculty in institutions who rely on narrative evaluations also maintain that students are more likely to explore new areas and take greater risks with their learning in the absence of fear of a poor letter grade. See also: > Achievement tests; > Assessment of culturally diverse children; > Culturally competent assessment of English language learners; > Racial/ethnic group differences
Suggested Reading Airasian, P. W. (2000). Classroom assessment: Concepts and applications. New York: McGraw-Hill. Brookhart, S. M. (2004). Classroom assessment: Tensions and intersections in theory and practice. Teachers College Record, 106, 429–458. Pellegrino, J. W., Chudowsky, N., & Glaser, R. (Eds.) (2001). Knowing what students know: The science and design of educational assessment. Washington, D.C.: National Academy Press.
Suggested Resources FairTest: The National Center for Fair & Open Testing—http:// www.fairtest.org/ National Center for Research on Evaluation, Standards and Student Testing—http://www.cse.ucla.edu/index.htm Teachers College Record Grading Collection—http://www. tcrecord.org/ContentCollection.asp?cid=23
Grief Counseling Jennifer Shannon
Death is an inevitable part of the human experience. The first experience is often encountered as a child. The terms ‘‘grief,’’ ‘‘bereavement,’’ and ‘‘mourning,’’ are all used in discussions of dealing with loss. Grief itself is defined as the internalized emotional reaction and
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response to loss. Bereavement is the state of having lost something, while mourning is the outward expression of grief, often culturally defined through traditional and creative rituals. The primary goal of grief counseling is to help the survivor come to terms with the loss and say goodbye to the deceased.
Grief in Children In the past there has been debate as to whether children have the ability to mourn. Today, it is generally accepted that children do have the ability to grieve and mourn, although in a different manner than adults. These emotional processes are instrumental in facilitating the healing process across the lifespan. The time frame and process of grieving in children and adolescents is distinct from adults due to developmental differences in cognitive and psychological stages. Through the grieving process, children experience and feel the same range of emotions as adults, but have greater difficulty in identifying specific emotions and expressing feelings. Since many children are unable to identify and verbalize the painful emotions they are experiencing, they are often manifested in uncharacteristically atypical or negative behaviors. For example, painful emotions may be expressed in physical and verbal aggression, temper tantrums, and mood swings. Many children experience sleep disturbances and changes in appetite, along with illness and somatic complaints, such as stomachaches and headaches. A child will often withdraw from or become excessively clingy to those in his or her life, and sometimes regress to an earlier stage of development. Denial is often an initial reaction and one of the most pervasive. Typically, children have a lower capacity to tolerate prolonged periods of sadness and pain, so will often avoid thinking or talking about their loss to ease the pain. Adolescents who are grieving have more of a grasp on the finality and permanence of death compared to younger children. Adolescents typically experience and express stronger emotions. To illustrate, adolescents frequently demonstrate anger and denial, as well as experience intense sadness and loneliness, often accompanied by guilt and a sense of helplessness. These are similar to the emotions experienced by an adult, but expressed in a manner appropriate to the developmental stage of life. Adolescents frequently attempt to suppress emotions they feel in response to a loss to avoid being different from peers.
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Children returning to school following the death of a loved one often experience difficulties. It is common for children to refuse to go to school at first, fearing emotional breakdowns in front of their peers or being treated differently, or possibly due to separation difficulties that may have developed. Many bereaved children often demonstrate a lack of concentration and interest, while others will completely immerse themselves in school as a means of distraction.
Role of Schools The availability of grief counseling and level of involvement on behalf of schools is varied, and often seen only in crisis situations. Thus, many schools inadvertently leave a void, and therefore neglect an area that could have a profound impact on the well-being of their students, many of whom will experience some form of loss during their enrollment. School-related factors are often heavily influenced following the loss of a loved one, as seen by increased absences, incomplete assignments, decrease in work quality, rebellious behavior, acting out, or withdrawing into depression or isolation. It is important that school counselors and support staff are in a position to help students mourn their loss and begin the healing process. In many cases, school counselors and psychologists have not been trained in this area and lack the knowledge and resources that could be very beneficial. For most children, schools provide a crucial support and social network, which is increasingly important in times of bereavement. The school environment can provide stability and security at a tumultuous time. Thus, there is an acknowledgement among researchers that schools should offer support for students experiencing loss. Schools often implement crisis counseling teams following the death of a student, as well as ‘‘drop-in’’ counseling, where areas are set aside and available for both staff and students the day of a crisis, and many days following. Additionally, many school counselors and psychologists offer individual and group counseling for bereaved children. Some schools incorporate peer group counseling and bereavement groups within the school setting. The rationale behind these groups is based on evidence indicating that social support can be beneficial to youth coping with loss, while positively affecting adaptation and adjustment following the loss. Additionally,
increasing evidence suggests that many adolescents find peers to be the most important form of support following a loss. In fact, peer group counseling has been demonstrated to be a valuable resource for bereaved students, leaving them with less need for general counseling and improved perceptions of their own behavior. Regarding child bereavement groups, support is mixed for their effectiveness, with much of the evidence anecdotal. However, it has been found that children from all ethnic, cultural, and socioeconomic (SES) groups that participated in a grief group reported a significant decrease in negative feelings and griefrelated symptoms, such as social withdrawal, depression, and anger. Even studies that have shown little or no statistical significance have demonstrated valuable practical significance, reporting that children felt that their experiences had been normalized through the interaction, and felt less alone. The primary goal of these groups is to alleviate suffering through mutual support and facilitate healing to help children function more effectively in the classroom and everyday life. These groups provide a safe place for children to express themselves and ask questions, while benefiting from sharing grief with peers.
Practices and Recommendations Professionals recognize that children have specific needs when it comes to grief counseling. One of the most basic needs is for the bereaved child to know that she/he will be cared for. They need to recognize that they did nothing to cause the death and must be helped to relinquish feelings of individual guilt. One of the most important questions children want answered is clear, concrete information about the death, including its causes and circumstances. It is very important to keep the children feeling important and involved, while continuing with routine activity that creates stability in the grieving child’s life. Finally, children who are going through the grieving process need someone to listen to and answer their questions. They also need to find ways to remember the deceased loved one. As this process is so developmentally interwoven, it is essential that the counselor use evidence-based methods that appropriately correspond with the child’s age and developmental stage. Individual counseling may be key for children, as they often try to be ‘‘strong’’ for their family, but may need individualized time
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and assistance to express true feelings that they fear may upset adults. Grief counseling provides a safe environment to express fears and imagination, clear up confusion, and come to terms on their own time. As recognized in considerable literature, children experience many losses, not just death. It is important to recognize and acknowledge all losses, whether it is the death of a pet, loss of a best friend, or death of a family member. It is crucial to express to the child that it is normal to grieve and suggest ways in which they can express their grief in both verbal and nonverbal ways. Additionally, it is important to let the child know that emotions such as anger and guilt are completely normal, while allowing an opportunity to express these emotions. One of the most important roles of the counselor is to be as reassuring and caring as possible as a sense of security is crucial.
Multicultural Factors Death and grieving are often closely tied to cultural backgrounds, with many of the conceptualizations of death, after-life, and appropriate expressions and rituals of grief being culture-specific. It is essential for grief counselors to have an understanding of different views of death within the cultural framework of their clients. It is especially important for schools to recognize that children of different cultures have had divergent experiences with death. Cultural and religious factors will both directly and indirectly have an impact on the manner of mourning, the length of mourning, and appropriate expressions of grief. For example, in traditional Jewish households, the family recognizes a 7-day period of mourning immediately following burial known as shiva. In Islamic culture, those who are grieving are encouraged to show their feelings openly. Talking about the death with the family is common practice. Whereas common White American mourning practices are subdued and dark clothes are worn, in some African American communities survivors mourn by dressing in white as a sign of resurrection and celebrate with music and hope. Every culture and religion has a unique way of responding and reacting to death and the grief process. It is crucial to consider cultural and religious factors when presented with a grieving child. Culture serves as a context through which the grieving child will manifest, express, and view their
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individual responses to death. Counselors must avoid reaching conclusions based on minimal or incomplete knowledge about another’s cultural view of death. Therefore, counselors are encouraged to recognize their own level of knowledge and ignorance, and ask questions when uncertain. It is often our cultural context that guides the external response to loss and death and it is crucial that multicultural sensitivity and understanding are interwoven into grief counseling. See also: > Culturally competent crisis response; > Death education; > Crisis intervention
Suggested Reading Jordan, J. R., & Neimeyer, R. A. (2003). Does grief counseling work? Death Studies, 27, 765–786. McGlauflin, H. (1998). Helping children grieve at school. Professional School Counseling, 1(5), 46–49. Smith, S. C. (1999). The forgotten mourners. Philadelphia, PA: Jessica Kingsley Publishers. Worden, J. W. (Ed.) (2002). Grief counseling and grief therapy: A handbook for the mental health practitioner. New York: Springer Publishing Company.
Suggested Resources New York University (NYU) Child Study Center—http://www. aboutourkids.org/aboutour/articles/grief.html: This website provides a variety of practical information regarding children’s grief, types of loss, coping responses, and advice to help the bereaved child.
Gun-Free School Zones Teresa P Clark . John S Carlson
In the U.S., the issue of gun related violence in schools has received substantial media and legislative attention. Concerns about increasing gun-related violence in and around schools led lawmakers to enact The Gun-Free School Zones Act of 1990, which made it a federal crime
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to possess a firearm within 1,000 feet of a school. In 1994, two additional pieces of significant legislation were enacted, (1) the Safe and Drug-Free Schools and Communities Act (SDFSCA) which was initially written into law as Subtitle B of the Title IV Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1986 and (2) the Gun-Free Schools Act (GFSA). The SDFSCA was a reauthorization of the Drug-Free Schools and Community Act (DFSCA) and added authorization for violence prevention. This act provides funding for states to provide education, early intervention, mentoring, rehabilitation, or referral to community services for at-risk students or professional development and training for school personnel. Under the GFSA, all schools from each state receiving federal funding (under the Elementary and Secondary School Act of 1965) must expel students who have brought a firearm to school for at least one year. In 2001, this legislation was reauthorized in the No Child Left Behind Act. Schools are also required to notify local law enforcement of any violations, which could prompt further legal action. All students are entitled to due process of law. However an exception is made for students who are eligible for special services under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) or Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act. If these students bring firearms to school they are judged on a case-bycase basis according to their special needs. Recent data indicate that ‘‘zero tolerance’’ policies are in place within 75% of public schools. Since the passing of the GFSA in 1994, there has been a steady decline in weapon related violence reported by schools. The reported number of expulsions decreased 16% from 2,554 in 2001–2002 to 2,143 in 2002–2003. The 2002–2003 data translates to a rate of .044 per 1,000 students. However, crackdowns in schools may not be eliminating violence among youth as more than 650,000 serious discipline actions were reported by schools in 2003–2004. In addition, school crackdowns may only be moving violence off of school property. Currently, youth ages 5–19 are at least 70 times more likely to be murdered away from school than at school. In 2000, the Civil Rights Project at Harvard University hosted a multidisciplinary summit to scrutinize the impact that Gun-Free School Zone policies are having on American children. The summit found a number of trends that may defeat the purpose of the SDFSCA including the use of faulty interpretations of the SDFSCA and GFSA laws to suspend or expel
students for relatively minor, nonviolent offenses. In addition, school officials were found to ignore the IDEA protections guaranteed to students with disabilities (Advancement Project/Civil Rights Project, 2000). Since the passing of the GFSA, there have been significant increases in the rates of suspensions and expulsions, and a disproportionate number of these suspended or expelled students were from minority groups. These trends may defeat the purpose of school violence prevention programs. International comparisons of the rates of firearm violence in schools are difficult to make given the lack of national prevalence data on school violence and inconsistencies in the definition of school violence. However, the available data on childhood violence suggests that gun related violence is declining while other forms of violence, especially bullying and intimidation, are on the rise. Most international initiatives have focused on taking a preventative rather than a reactive approach by attempting to reach at-risk children in their classes, families, and communities. Once at-risk children are identified, international violence prevention programs often promote the development of healthy and appropriate behaviors through the use of mentors, home-school support, crisis management, after-school programs or tutoring, and/or implementing social skills programs. See also: > Aggressiveness; > Conflict resolution; > Crisis intervention; > School violence; > Community violence
Suggested Reading Advancement Project/Civil Rights Project. (2000). Opportunities suspended: The devastating consequences of zero tolerance and school discipline. Cambridge, MA: Advancement Project/Civil Rights Project. Koch, K. (2000). Zero tolerance: Is mandatory punishment in schools unfair? Congressional Quarterly Researcher, 10, 185–208. Skiba, R., & Rausch, M. K. (2006). School disciplinary systems: Alternatives to suspension and expulsion. In Bear, George G., Minke, Kathleen M. (Eds.), Children’s needs III: Development, prevention, and intervention (pp. 87–102). Washington, D.C.: National Association of School Psychologists. Tobin, T., Sugai, G., & Colvin, G. (1996). Patterns in middle school discipline records. Journal of Emotional and Behavioral Disorders, 4, 82–94. U.S. Department of Education and Justice. (2003). Indicators of School Crime and Safety: 2003. Available at http://nces.ed.gov/ pubsearch/pubsinfo.asp?pubid = 2004004
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Suggested Resources Office of Special Education and Rehabilitative Services (OSERS)— www.ed.gov/offices/OSERS/Policy/IDEA/ Discipline_qa.doc: The mission of the Office of Special Education and Rehabilitative Services is to improve results and outcomes for all people with disabilities of all ages. Office of Safe and Drug Free Schools—http://www.ed.gov/about/ offices/list/osdfs/programs.html: The mission of the Office of
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Safe and Drug Free Schools is to create safe schools, respond to crises, drug abuse and violence prevention, ensure the health and well being of students and promote the development of good character and citizenship.Center for Effective Collaboration and Practice—http://cecp.air.org/school_violence.asp: The mission of the Center for Effective Collaboration and Practice is to support and promote a reoriented national preparedness to foster the development and the adjustment of children with or at risk of developing serious emotional disturbance.
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Head Start Christine McWayne . Linnie Green . Katherine Cheung
In 1964, in the midst of the civil-rights era and the War on Poverty, the United States (U.S.) federal government asked a panel of child-development experts to propose a program aimed at serving preschool children living below the poverty line. In 1965, Project Head Start came to fruition as a result of this initiative, and began as a federally funded summer preparatory program for preschoolers. Its initial aim was to promote children’s readiness for school in an effort to break the cycle of poverty. Over time, Head Start has developed into a comprehensive preschool program for children from birth to age 5 and their families from all 50 states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, and the U.S. territories.
Description Today, Head Start is housed within the Administration on Children, Youth, and Families (ACYF) in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS), and has served over 23 million children and their families since it began in 1965. It comprises two programs: (1) Early Head Start (EHS), which serves children prenatally to age 3, pregnant women, and their families; and (2) Head Start (HS), which serves children of ages 3–5 and their families. As of 2003, 39% of the Head Start agencies were within private and public non- and for-profit sectors, 32% in community agencies, 17% in school systems, and 12% in government agencies and Native American reservations. Of the total number of Head Start agencies, 49% were full-day, 42% were part-day, and 5% were home-based programs. In 2005, enrollment consisted of 906,993 children in HS, of whom 31% were Black or African American, 33% were Hispanic or Latino, and 35% were White. Also during that year, there were a total of 1,604 grantees, serving 19,800 Head Start centers around the country. During the 2004–2005 Head Start year, 12.5% of the Head Start enrollment consisted of children with disabilities, which met the minimum 10% requirement. The most recent reauthorization occurred in 1998 and included revised Program Performance Standards for successful implementation of program goals and
objectives. This reauthorization emphasized enhancing the quality of Head Start programs by promoting the professional development of teachers. Most importantly, the 1998 reauthorization shifted the historical emphasis from improved social competence for Head Start children to a focus on more specific academic readiness skills, particularly literacy and numeracy. Despite the relatively new focus on academic readiness, the program continues to embrace an approach to comprehensive services. These span the areas of medical, dental, and mental health, nutrition, parent involvement and community partnerships, early learning and literacy, and disabilities services. In addition, Head Start is dedicated to providing services that are responsive and appropriate given developmental, ethnic, cultural, and linguistic diversity. In addition to its comprehensive services, Head Start is unique among early childhood programs because of its two-generational focus, aimed at serving both preschool children and their families. Family and community members are seen as essential partners in the Head Start program, and as a result are involved in program operations, governance, and evaluation. Many Head Start programs provide services for parents in the areas of adult education (e.g., courses in English as a Second Language) and job training. During the 2004–2005 program year, 27% of Head Start staff members were parents of current or former Head Start children, and more than 890,000 parents volunteered in their local Head Start program.
Program Support Primary among organizations that support Head Start is the National Head Start Association (NHSA), which was formed in 1973 as a political advocate giving individual programs a unified voice in Congress. As a private, nonprofit organization, NHSA’s mission has since been extended to actively improve the program by providing staff training, research, information, and resources to enrich Head Start services. NHSA forms partnerships with federal, corporate, and nonprofit organizations to collaboratively meet the needs of the Head Start community, and is the only organization dedicated exclusively to support Head Start. By advocating for funding and other Head Start policies, NHSA supports initiatives such as maintaining highperformance standards and attracting higher-quality teachers (see www.nhsa.org for more information:).
C. S. Clauss-Ehlers (Ed.), Encyclopedia of Cross-Cultural School Psychology, DOI 10.1007/978-0-387-71799-9, # Springer Science+Business Media LLC 2010
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History of Research From the program’s inception, research has been conducted nationally and locally to determine its effectiveness. These studies have varied in research goals, samples, and methodologies; as a result, the findings have also varied greatly. Despite the range of studies and inconsistencies in the results, there are five seminal pieces of work that have largely influenced the development of Head Start over the past four decades as well as the current climate of research within the programs. The first major evaluation of the Head Start program was conducted in 1969 by the Westinghouse Learning Corporation. The study described a ‘‘fade-out’’ effect of the program, noting that although there were increases in cognitive (IQ) and language skills at the first grade level, these results diminished by the second and third grades. Widely criticized, the Westinghouse study contained several serious methodological flaws. The study failed to control for environmental factors (both home and school, for instance) and thus may have misattributed ‘‘fade out’’ to Head Start. Critics have also pointed out that children in the control group may not have been as disadvantaged as children enrolled in Head Start, and thus comparisons between the two were misleading. Moreover, the study failed to evaluate the program’s impact on health, socioemotional, and parental involvement outcomes, which are also integral components of the program. Overall, the study yielded inconclusive results on the impact of Head Start, but contributed to the skepticism toward the program. In 1976, in response to a growing concern over the purported ineffectiveness of early intervention programs such as Head Start, a group of 12 investigators, who had independently designed and executed early intervention programs in the 1960s, combined their data from a total of 15 studies and examined the results longitudinally. An independent organization, Consortium for Longitudinal Studies, analyzed the data. In general, results indicated long-term effects in four areas: school competence, life competence, children’s values and attitudes, and family impact. The study included a large and diverse sample, which allowed methods of analysis not possible with smaller samples, and provided powerful evidence for the long-term effects of early education programs such as Head Start. In 1985, McKey and her colleagues conducted a meta-analysis of 120 published and unpublished studies on the long-term effects of Head Start. Entitled The impact of Head Start on children, families, and
communities: Head Start Synthesis Project (or the ‘‘Synthesis Project’’), the study concluded that although children enrolled in Head Start gained immediate benefits both cognitively and socioemotionally, these advantages were not sustained long-term compared with their non-Head-Start peers. Nevertheless, these children enjoyed improved health status while enrolled, and parents reported higher levels of psychological well-being. However, in a 1989 publication, Gamble and Zigler reviewed the Synthesis Project and documented several methodological flaws. For example, studies included in the meta-analysis often varied widely for quality of program and adherence to Program Performance Standards (which did not exist before 1975). In response to inconsistent evidence available on the program, the Administration for Children and Families launched the Head Start Family and Child Experiences Survey (FACES) in 1997. FACES is a longitudinal study examining the characteristics, experiences, and outcomes of those served by Head Start. The study was also aimed at acknowledging areas for program improvement. With a national probability sample of 3,200 children and their families in 40 Head Start programs, six phases of data were collected with the first cohort of children who were followed through first grade. The results highlighted particularly significant gains for children who were among the lowest performing on school readiness measures, and a strong impact of family involvement on child wellbeing. The study also provided support for the link between classroom quality and child outcomes. New cohorts were launched in 2000 and 2003, and the FACES project is slated to continue through 2008. The Congressionally mandated Head Start Impact Study is the first national, randomized, longitudinal study of the effectiveness of Head Start. With data collection beginning in 2002 and planned through 2009, the Impact Study is focusing on the effects of Head Start in four key domains: cognitive, socioemotional, health, and parenting practices. Controlling for a multitude of factors, such as home environment and parental emotional health, preliminary findings indicate improvements in all domains, although most notably in the areas of language development and behavior.
Outlook In sum, since the inception of Head Start, there has been an ongoing debate about the long-term effects of
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early intervention programs. Experts in the field contend that it is unrealistic to expect gains from these programs to extend indefinitely past the life of these short-term interventions. Despite the overwhelming number of challenging factors that persist throughout development for many low-income individuals (e.g., poverty, discrimination, under-resourced schools), it is nevertheless impressive that the results of early intervention last as long as they do. However, scholars and policy-makers continue to question whether the high cost of early school readiness programs are justified by the existing evidence. Supporters of early intervention urge critics to remember that such programs have succeeded in narrowing the achievement gap between low- and middle-income children, and stress the multiple challenges children from impoverished communities face. Advocates state that although Head Start continues to serve as a significant resource in these communities, only with radical social and economic reform will children from low-income households mirror their more advantaged peers.
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Westinghouse Learning Corporation. (1969). The impact of Head Start: An evaluation of the effects of Head Start on children’s affective and cognitive development. Washington, D.C.: Clearinghouse for Federal Scientific and Technical Information. (ED 036321). Zigler, E., & Valentine, J. (1979). Project Head Start: A legacy of the war on poverty. New York, NY: The Free Press.
Suggested Resources National Head Start Association—http://www.nhsa.org/: This is the official website of the National Head Start Association. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Development—http:// www.acf.hhs.gov/grants/index.html: This website provides information on guidelines and open research opportunities pertaining to university-partnership and graduate student awards to encourage research.
Health Education Susan F Wooley
See also: Early Head Start; tion; > Preschool >
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Suggested Reading Brooks-Gunn, J. (2003). Do you believe in magic? Social Policy Report, 13(1), 3–14. Gamble, T. J., & Zigler, E. (1989). The Head Start Synthesis Project: A critique. Journal of Applied Developmental Psychology, 10, 267–274. Lazar, I., & Darlington, R. B. (1982). Lasting effects of early education: Report from the Consortium for Longitudinal Studies. Monographs of the Society for Research in Child Development, 47(2-3), 1–151. McKey, R. H., Condelli, L., Granson, H., Barrett, B., McConkey, C., & Plantz, M. (1985). The impact of Head Start on children, families and communities: Head Start Synthesis Project. Final report of the Head Start Evaluation, Synthesis and Utilization Project. Washington, D.C. : CSR, Inc. U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. (2003). Biennial report to Congress: The status of children in Head Start programs [online]. Arlington, VA. Retrieved from http://www.acf.hhs.gov/ programs/hsb/pdf/biennial_report_2003.pdf. U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Administration for Children and Families. (2006). Head Start Family and Child Experiences Survey (FACES), 1997–2008 [online]. Washington, D.C. Retrieved from http://www.acf.hhs.gov/programs/opre/ hs/faces/index.html#related. U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Administration for Children and Families (2006). Head Start Impact Study, 2000– 2006. Retrieved May 3, 2006, from http://www.acf.hhs.gov/ programs/opre/hs/impact_study/index.html.
Any combination of planned learning experiences that help individuals, groups, or communities gain the information and skills they need to make quality decisions about their health, safety and well-being constitute formal health education. Sound theories, such as social cognitive theory and the theory of planned behavior, guide the development and implementation of those learning experiences. Within a school context, school health education addresses the physical, mental, emotional, and social dimensions of health in ways that are tailored to students’ age and developmental levels. The ultimate goal is to motivate and assist students in maintaining and improving their health, preventing disease, and reducing health-related risk behaviors. Intermediate goals include developing students’ health literacy and facilitating their acquisition of the knowledge and skills they need to make healthenhancing decisions. Health literacy involves being critical thinkers and problem solvers, responsible and productive citizens, self-directed learners, and effective communicators. Formal school health education consists of the development, delivery and evaluation of planned, sequential, and developmentally appropriate instruction, learning experiences, and other activities. School health education is one component of a coordinated
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school health program. The content should derive from the National Health Education Standards (below) and guidelines available from some states. National Standards for Health Education for pre-kindergarten through 12th grade are:
Students will comprehend concepts related to health promotion and disease prevention to enhance health. Students will analyze the influence of family, peers, culture, media, technology, and other factors on health behavior. Students will demonstrate the ability to access valid information and products to enhance health. Students will demonstrate the ability to use interpersonal communication skills to enhance health and avoid or reduce health risks. Students will demonstrate the ability to use decision-making skills to enhance health. Students will demonstrate the ability to use goal setting skills to enhance health. Students will demonstrate the ability to practice health-enhancing behaviors and avoid or reduce risk. Students will demonstrate the ability to advocate for personal, family, and community health.
Topics frequently included in a health education course of study include, but are not limited to: hand and oral hygiene, family relationships, growth and development, mental and emotional health, injury prevention and safety, nutrition, physical activity, disease prevention and control, sexual and reproductive health, environmental health, responsibility for the health of self and others, consumer health, prevention of tobacco use, and prevention of alcohol and other drug use and abuse. Research on formal health education that has shown to affect students’ health related behaviors positively share the following characteristics:
Research-based and theory-driven Include basic, accurate information that is developmentally appropriate Use interactive activities that actively engage students Provide opportunities for students to model and practice relevant social skills Address social or media influences on behaviors Strengthen individual values and group norms that support health-enhancing behaviors Last long enough to allow students to gain the knowledge and skills they need Include training for teachers or other implementers
Health education also occurs informally through exposure to media, interactions with peers and adults, and one-on-one counseling with health and mental heath care providers. At the elementary school level, classroom teachers and school nurses most often deliver formal health education. At the secondary level, many schools offer separate health classes, some integrate health education into other subject matter such as family and consumer sciences or science, and some do both. Students receive more content and quality when there is a separate health course taught by teachers trained as health educators than when health education is integrated into other subjects. See also: > Drug education; > Sex education; > Resilience building prevention programs; > Social skills
Suggested Reading Lohrmann, D. K., & Wooley, S. F. (1998). Comprehensive school health education. In E. Marx, & S. F. Wooley with D. Northrop (Eds.), Health is academic: A guide to coordinated school health programs. New York: Teachers College Press. Joint Committee on National Health Education Standards. (2007). National health education standards: Achieving excellence (2nd ed.). Atlanta, GA: American Cancer Society. Joint Terminology Committee. (2002). Report of the 2000 joint committee on health education and promotion terminology. Journal of School Health, 72(1), 3–7.
Suggested Resources American Association for Health Education—www.aahperd.org/ aahe: The American Association for Health Education, which is part of the American Alliance for Health, Physical Education, Recreation, and Dance, is the professional association representing over 7,000 health educators who practice in schools, institutions of higher education, community, health care, and work site settings. American School Health Association—www.ashaweb.org: The American School Health Association (ASHA) unites the many professionals working in schools who are committed to safeguarding the health of school-aged children and youth. The Association is a multidisciplinary organization of administrators, counselors, health educators, physical educators, psychologists, school health coordinators, school nurses, school physicians, and social workers. It provides a forum for school health educators to coordinate their efforts with other members of the school health team.
Health insurance
Health Insurance Nancy Bearss
Health insurance in the United States (U.S.) consists of a mix of public an private coverage. Since the 1960s, government provision of health insurance has increased steadily to compensate for the gaps created by private health insurers. Government funded health insurance includes Medicare for individuals over 65 and Medicaid for individuals living in poverty. It also includes the Civilian Health and Medical Program of the Uniformed Services (CHAMPUS), a health benefits program that covers medical necessities only. CHAMPUS provides authorized in-patient and outpatient care from civilian sources, on a cost-sharing basis for military personnel. There are also a variety of insurance plans for federal, state and local government workers. Individuals not covered by a government program are covered by private insurance or have no health insurance. At any one time in the U.S. as many as 52 million individuals (15–16% of the population) are uninsured. In the 1990s, an effort was made to close this gap for children and the State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) was funded under Medicaid. SCHIP offers health insurance to children living over the poverty level for a small premium. It is managed through state Medicaid programs. Private health insurance has grown over the past century from providing catastrophic coverage (the initial Blue Cross plans) to providing a wide range of services, including outpatient visits, rehabilitation, inpatient services, surgery, pharmaceuticals, mental health services and dental services. Henry Kaiser created the first health plan in 1938 to provide health coverage for workers in Colorado who were building the Boulder/Hoover Dam. Health insurance has since grown from a small group of these creative initiatives by employers and medical providers to a multibilliondollar industry. Initially health insurance was fee-for-service and providers were reimbursed based on the service provided. Over the past two decades elaborate plans have evolved, ostensibly to cut costs, known as managed care. Managed care plans control an individual’s access to health care by several methods. The most common forms of managed care are HMOs (health maintenance organizations) that provide an individual
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with a ‘‘gate keeper’’ to oversee the care received in an effort to keep costs down. Preferred provider plans (PPO) are a form of HMO that allows some flexibility in choosing a provider and point of service plans (POS) are a hybrid of fee for service and PPO plans that allow consumers to further choose health care services but at a higher cost. Ideally, managed care focuses on primary care, prevention and comprehensive outpatient care that reduces the need for expensive inpatient treatment. The dramatic increase in the number of Americans with chronic diseases and the aging of the American population has prohibited this model from being cost effective. As a result there has been much controversy about the quality of care provided by HMO models and their true ability to keep costs down. Some success has been achieved through large HMOs such as Kaiser Permanente in providing quality care and reducing costs but many HMOs have failed over the past decade. These disparate outcomes have resulted in a return to a proportion of HMOs providing a fee for service model with more of the cost being born by the consumer. Employers, which provide 70% of the total health coverage for Americans, have shifted these costs to their employees by reducing the types of benefits they will cover, asking for higher co-pays by employees and asking employees to share the cost of premiums. In addition employers often change their coverage and consumers may have shifting health costs and uncertain coverage throughout their employment. This is especially true of employees with family coverage. This trend towards consumers and employees carrying a larger share of health care costs has created a general disillusionment with the health care system among Americans. There have been discussions of pushing the United States towards a system that could truly provide universal coverage. See also: > Access and utilization of health care; > Medicaid; > Social implications of medications/illness
Suggested Reading Institute of Medicine. (2001). Crossing the quality chasm: A new health system for the 21st century. Committee on Quality of Health Care in America, Washington, D.C.: National Academies Press.
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Suggested Resources Healthy People 2010—www.healthypeople.gov/: This website addresses access to health care and the nation’s progress towards universal coverage. Centers for Medicaid and Medicare—www.cms.hhs.gov/medicaid/: This website has links to all services provided by Medicaid, including state offices and State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) information. Individuals should call their state Medicaid office to access state specific information.
High Schools Michael J Nakkula
Cultural issues take on distinctly new forms of meaning in high school relative to earlier levels of education. The development and application of increasingly abstract thinking skills make high school an exciting and complicated period. Due to a combination of neuropsychological growth of the brain and the experiential background that comes with time, high school students are better able than their younger peers to make interesting interpretations of reality ranging from science to human relationships. The advanced complexity of their interpretive powers, however, does not mean that high school students will use their cognitive skills to make either their own lives or the lives of others any easier. Advanced thinking brings both new opportunities and new difficulties. When such thinking skills are applied to issues of cultural diversity the outcomes can be as diverse as the issues considered.
Cultural Implications of Abstract Thinking A traditional hallmark of adolescent identity development has been the challenging of parental and larger adult norms or ways of being. Adolescent rebelliousness has been viewed in this light, as has high-risk behavior such as substance use, school truancy, and promiscuous sexual behavior. While some developmentalists view such issues as an attempt to fit in or be accepted by the mainstream peer culture, others view it as a reaction to adult authority. Whatever the roots of adolescent
experimentation with new modes of behavior, particularly behavior that is commonly frowned upon by adults, this experimentation is partially an attempt by adolescents to expand their ways of thinking about the adult world. Although some forms of risk-taking behavior might be deemed impulsive or relatively thoughtless, most of it is premeditated to some degree because adolescents are comparing their actions with parental wishes, peer encouragement, safety assessments, and self on one’s own needs and interests. The ability to hold all of this information coherently requires advanced modes of thinking; it requires complex abstract thought. Adolescent thought processes have been described by developmental psychologists as theoretical thinking. Such thinking requires the utilization and integration of a number of complex steps. It requires, for example, the ability to consider behavior in one time and place and project what might come of that behavior under other conditions. This process is referred to as content or concept generalization. Younger children typically are unable to make such generalizations, or at best crudely unskilled at doing so. Theoretical thinking also requires imagining new behaviors and new experiences and planning for the implementation of these behaviors. It requires hypothetical cause and effect relationships among behaviors and feelings, and the implications of those effects on oneself and others. The theoretical mind works with hypotheses, speculation, and inference. It also devises strategies for testing these phenomena. In that sense, the theoretical mind is a complexly empirical mind as well. It is invested in testing reality as well as the limits of reality. It is common for parents and teachers to bemoan the regularity and intensity of adolescent limit testing. From the perspective of the theoretical mind, it is not surprising that the adults in adolescents’ lives feel this way. They are, in a sense, the materials and even instruments of adolescent experimentation. Youth manipulate each other and adults similarly to the ways in which scientists manipulate their own variables. In both cases, effects are assessed with great care and implications are then drawn from evidence. Precisely because of their ability to imagine, construct, and test new realities, adolescents are very much at the center of critiquing and creating culture. Their manipulative behavior might be viewed as cultural deconstruction, as attempts to scrutinize and take apart the adult world as they see it, which primarily includes the contexts of home and school. But they deconstruct with a purpose, for the most part, which is to recreate
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or revision a world that makes more sense to them, at least for their current stage of life. This deconstructive and revisioning process, it might be argued, is among the most important work adolescents can be doing in school. It is work that prepares them for potential adult leadership roles within their families, careers, and citizenship responsibilities. High school students turn their theoretical thinking onto the world of peer relationships as well as the world of adults. The construction and deconstruction of peer subcultures within and outside of school is virtually an everyday high school practice. Youth organize around music, movies, video technology, and around identity issues associated with race, ethnicity, social class, gender, and sexual orientation. Any number of sub-cultural identifications are used and discarded on a regular basis. Cliques have long been identified as subgroup affiliation types, which are defined by common interests, rituals, values, and either implicit or explicit loyalty pledges. In short, adolescent group affiliations are characterized by many of the factors that define adult cultural groups. Adolescent cliques provide comfort and satisfy affiliation needs, helping these youth to define themselves in relationship to, and in some respects in opposition to, adults and other youth. As adolescents think about the features and functions of their cliques or similar types of groupings, they define or identify themselves by markers of their own choosing—markers chosen by the ‘‘in-group’’ as opposed to being imposed externally. In this sense they create their own cultural identifiers and experiment with their value in comparison to other sub-cultural groupings.
The Diversity of High School Sub-cultures Cliques, or tight-knit peer groups, form one of many types of cultural subgroups in the high school setting. Other groupings include high-achieving or honor students, athletic teams, school bands and music groups, student council, gay-straight alliances, religious affiliations, and anti-school alliances. Each of these groups is organized loosely or more formally around particular goals and values. In some cases, the cultural boundaries surrounding the groups are quite fluid and group members participate in several groups simultaneously. At other times, the boundaries are more closed, with new membership possible only under carefully monitored conditions.
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High-achieving or honor students comprise a unique type of cultural subgroup. In some respects this is a group not of its own choosing. Members are bound together by both internal and external views of their high academic achievement. The honor students, as they are commonly known, earn their right to membership through their academic accomplishments. It is common for certain members of the group to embrace their inclusion with pride. They view themselves as school leaders, and many of their peers within the group as well as outside of the group may view them similarly. Parents and teachers typically hold them in high esteem. Other members want no part of such recognition. They do not want to perpetuate, as they see it, a view of themselves as different from their non-honor student peers. They want to be seen as ‘‘normal,’’ and feel caught between their ambitions for a successful future, their parents’ desires, and the perception they have of their peers’ impressions of them. Further, some high-achieving students feel a great deal of stress associated with the effort it takes to achieve at a high level. High achievement is frequently confused with high functioning in general. In reality, large numbers of high-achieving high school students experience a range of mental health challenges from minor depression and anxiety to more severe symptoms such as eating disorders and suicidal ideation. School success is not necessarily a marker of personal well-being. At the opposite end of the continuum are loosely organized anti-school alliance groups. These groups tend to be composed of students who have struggled in school and with school authority figures such as principals and teachers. Such students choose not to pursue improved relations with school personnel or, at times, with higher-achieving students who might be viewed as ‘‘sell outs.’’ Rather, they organize their collective identity in opposition to the status quo school culture. They commonly view themselves as tough and honest critics of a flawed, unfair, and uncaring system. Whether their view is accurate or distorted, it serves as a sub-cultural organizer. It helps shape a subgroup identity that minimally carries within-group status and support. Such benefits are immensely important to high school students who have long felt outside of the mainstream school culture. In many cases, students identified with anti-school alliances actually become successful students. They achieve despite their views of ‘‘the system.’’ Similarly, honor students often befriend peers with anti-school perspectives and strive
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to become part of this informal grouping. Accordingly, the cultural boundaries defining these first two subcultural groups are not completely closed, although for the most part they keep their members separated. Students involved in athletic teams are commonly referred to as jocks, whether they are male or female. Often implied in this moniker is the derogatory adjective ‘‘dumb.’’ As such, many students involved in athletic participation, particularly highly competitive varsity sports teams, strive to broaden their cultural identity affiliations. The ‘‘scholar-athlete’’ is perhaps the most prized hyphenated identity status of this type. Crossover students of this type are, in a sense, bicultural. They strive to embrace and integrate the strengths of both group affiliations and typically view themselves as more well-rounded than their peers who embrace one or the other of these group cultures. The intensity of training, skill development, and shared experience that goes into athletic accomplishment (and failure) can lead to extraordinary bonds for such groupings. In addition, successful athletes are perhaps more publicly revered than members of any other school subgroup. Valedictorians tend to be highly respected by their peers, but athletic team captains are more publicly admired. A challenge for many successful athletes is to disperse their energies across a wide-enough range of activities, including academic activities, to allow for the experience of success in other arenas. The public worship that often follows athletic accomplishment can make the relatively anonymous experience of academic success seem boring and irrelevant. As a result, the athlete who does not succeed academically is not necessarily a ‘‘dumb jock’’ but often merely viewed as being preoccupied or overextended. Student council has long been a context for high schools to promote a culture of leadership. It is interesting to look at the cultural integrating and segregating that can occur within student council groupings. High school presidents and their leadership teams can come from anywhere on the student body. In some cases, student council elections are popularity contests in which students with broad friendship networks win election. In other cases, students who are particularly strong academically but also are perceived to have effective social skills are nominated. Race and gender are at times important considerations in school elections. In other words, student councils and their selection or election processes tend to look very much like a local, state, or federal election. They can be culturally
determined popularity contests in which certain factors carry more weight in one context relative to another. Gay-straight alliances, sometimes called ‘‘Queer Groups,’’ are sub-cultural groups typically organized in response to forms of harassment and bullying. At other times, however, they are proactively organized to provide support for students who might be questioning their sexual orientation or who are seeking affiliation with others who might be gay, lesbian, bisexual, or transgender (i.e., one gender physiologically but feel like the opposite gender psychologically). Such groups have become more common over the past decade; in part because of the attention sexual orientation has received through state and federal legislation around civil unions and same-sex marriage. Until recently, homosexuality was viewed as a form of pathology by the American Psychiatric and American Psychological Associations. As struggles and questions over sexual preference have become recognized as psychologically normative, support for such questioning has become more common in high schools. Heterosexual students who join gaystraight alliances serve an important function within the group. They help make the in-group-out-group boundaries more permeable, signaling to the larger student body that the group’s membership needs broadbased support. Religious subgroups make up another interesting sub-cultural group found in high schools. Interestingly, religious organizing in schools can be more taboo than gathering together around sexual identity issues. Legal parameters related to the separation of church and state contribute to the fact that formal religious groupings are rare in public schools. However, informal groupings of this type are quite common. The nature of religious affiliations in public schools vary according to geographic region, religious demographics within schools, and the connections to related groups such as school choirs. The more intensely evangelistic the local area, the more likely it is that religious subgroups will exist in schools. For instance, in the northern Midwest, there is a large evangelical Lutheran population. In some high schools from this region, students will be identified first and foremost by their religious affiliation. Their status as an honor student, athlete, or other subgroup will be perceived as secondary to their church membership and the particularities of its evangelical practice. In some cases, the boundaries of such religious subgroups are quite permeable; in other cases and in other respects, they
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are quite rigid. For example, some evangelical groups would be opposed to affiliating with members of a gay-straight alliance due to a fundamental clash of core beliefs and values. Other such religious groups would be able to integrate with any type of out-group member quite seamlessly. Finally, groups related to music and the arts are an important sub-culture for adolescents. Artists, including musicians, can serve to integrate different cultures together, as the arts often pull from a diverse range of students from different subgroups within the larger high school. School plays, for example, include honor students and at times anti-school alliance members, depending on the nature of the play and the other players. School council members and students from gay-straight alliance groups participate in school bands, choirs, and other artistic endeavors. The arts, when taken to their broadest level, are about expressing reality in diverse and interesting ways. They can represent culture, critique it, make fun of it, and reshape it. High schools with varied and active arts programs are likely to appreciate the varied cultural representations in their midst. Unfortunately, many high schools have experienced dramatic cutbacks in their arts budgets due to recent United States (U.S.) legislation that monitors school system success based on standardized testing scores which do not (and cannot) measure artistic development. As the arts are cut, school culture is diminished. Nonetheless, the arts (and the cultural diversity they promote) struggle to survive in a climate of educational standardization.
The Structural Diversity of High Schools The varied nature of peer-group subcultures reflects one type of diversity common within high schools; larger structural issues reflect another type. At the comprehensive public school level, dramatic differences exist with respect to school resources and the composition of students attending comprehensive public schools. In rural areas and small towns, there is one comprehensive high school per region or town. While these schools often do not possess a level of resource allocation representative of moderately wealthy suburban high schools, for example, they do exhibit advantages over many other high school structures. In rural and small town schools it is common for all students living in those communities to attend the
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local high school. Strong alternative schools, such as charter, magnet, or private schools frequently are not available within these communities. As a result, children of local professional families attend school with children of poor and working-class families. This can provide a tremendous benefit to students from families with low incomes who, if they were living in most urban and many suburban areas, would likely attend school with a more socioeconomcially segregated student body. In communities where there is more school choice, wealthier families tend to send their children to more exclusive schools. While such schools tend to provide excellent academic opportunities, the lack of racial, ethnic, and socioeconomic diversity that often exists in affluent schools is viewed by many parents and students as a costly limitation, given the importance of learning effective intercultural communication skills in a society as diverse as the U.S. Clearly, the mere presence of socioeconomic diversity within a school is not a panacea for problems of unequal access to resources. Many diverse schools are tracked by academic achievement levels, effectively separating children whose families can provide more educational support from those whose families cannot. Nonetheless, the option for students from families with lower incomes to access the benefits of somewhat better resourced schools is an important benefit. There has been tremendous debate over the costs and benefits of creating advanced work classes (classes providing particularly challenging coursework for students not being adequately challenged by their regular classes) within comprehensive high schools. On one hand, they tend to reproduce the socioeconomic and racial segregation that exists in the larger society, and on the other hand they make more challenging coursework available to those students who can qualify for it academically. In theory, educators would like to see all high school courses be academically challenging, but in practice there are dramatic differences in what students can achieve academically by the time they reach high school. Within most suburban areas, school systems are highly segregated by average income levels. Wealthier suburbs with higher average incomes are able to create high schools built around a host of exciting opportunities for students. Such schools tend to have strong arts and athletic programs to accompany strong academic curricula taught by highly qualified teachers. These schools also tend to have relatively less diversity than other schools with respect to both race
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and socioeconomic status. In this regard, they are less culturally diverse. However, these schools also present numerous opportunities for their students. Even though wealthier suburban high schools are generally strong academically, they still lose many students from the area’s wealthiest families to more elite and challenging private schools, such as local day schools or more geographically distant boarding schools. As noted above, where there is more school choice, the wealthiest segment of the local population is more likely to access schools outside the comprehensive public high school. Lower-income and moderate-income suburbs feature high schools that tend to be fairly diverse socioeconomically and racially. Moderate-income suburbs commonly draw from all but the highest-income brackets of families who typically choose to enroll their children in regional private schools. As a result, comprehensive high schools in moderate-income suburbs often have a range of academic offerings as well as extracurricular activities. These academic and extracurricular activities serve as venues in many cases for crossclass and cross-race interactions. A common benefit of suburban high schools of all income levels is their proximity to the vast cultural resources of urban areas, including universities, museums, libraries, and athletic teams. This proximity fosters a certain level of exposure and access to community resources not as readily available in rural areas and smaller towns. A risk of lowerincome suburban schools is the likelihood of relatively little socioeconomic diversity. Wealthier families from lower-income suburbs are almost certain to enroll their children in private or parochial schools, resulting in the large comprehensive high schools that are largely poor and working-class, and in which there are substantially lower levels of parental involvement. Large and in even mid-sized cities of approximately 250,000 people or more have multiple high school options, such as those that are organized around particular themes such as the arts, science, entrepreneurship, or vocational training. In addition, there are magnet or exam schools that select students based on academic achievement, typically measured by standardized tests. As a result, city schools are culturally stratified in a variety of ways. The lack of racial diversity in many urban communities translates into a lack of White or Asian students. Schools in low-income Black and Latino neighborhoods are populated almost exclusively by Black and Latino students from families with low incomes. In wealthier neighborhoods within large cities, high schools tend to be more racially and
economically diverse. Students of color from families with low incomes are often bussed into such schools because they have qualified by virtue of academic merit or because they have benefited from a lottery system. While bussing students to more elite schools helps diversify the school’s demographics, it does not necessarily create authentic diversity within the school. Bussed students often feel like outsiders, and they often either exclude themselves or are excluded by their peers from various activities. Over the past 10 years, charter schools have gained a tremendous degree of momentum as a method of school reform designed to create greater access to highquality education for students from families with low incomes, primarily those residing in urban areas. Unfortunately, however, many charter schools—high schools and otherwise—have proven to show no improvement over local public schools. Others have ranged from showing moderate to great educational success. By definition, charter schools are able to build their educational culture around themes of their choosing. The ‘‘charter’’ around which they construct and implement their educational plan is a particular focus such as high school-university partnerships, science and technology, or business and entrepreneurship. Charter schools then have the leverage to hire teachers from outside the local school unions, including those without traditional teaching credentials to secure a staff specializing in the school’s focus or theme. Business people or science specialists with an interest in teaching can be hired to organize and teach in their specialized areas. By bringing in successful professionals within particular areas, it was argued, charter schools could expose students to educators who could mentor as well as teach them. Although this idea works in some cases, many charter schools have found that the lack of an adequate number of professionally trained teachers in their school has proven difficult. It is one thing to master a content area; it is another to master teaching it. Even though many charter high schools have struggled and even closed, others have found success in organizing around particular themes. School culture benefits from having students who are passionate about similar issues. Having an intense focus in an academic area like math and science, for example, can bring students who are diverse in other ways together around their common interests. Nonetheless, recent research has shown that smaller high schools, including charter schools, commonly suffer from the student perception that there is not an ample range of ‘‘normal’’ school options, such as competitive athletic
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teams, large dances and proms, and a broad menu of other extracurricular activities. While small schools allow students and faculty to get to know each other more intimately, this very intimacy reflects a lack of diversity in other respects. Small schools are sometimes perceived as being too claustrophobic for certain students who would prefer to be more anonymous, or to be more private. Such schools are often referred to as being like families, and although this is generally experienced as positive, it can also be experienced as stifling. Challenges to school psychologists and other school-based professionals vary according to the school structural issues. In rural and small town schools, psychologists—to the extent they are available—might focus on issues of access to a broader range of opportunities beyond the local community. Computer technology is helpful in facilitating such work. Psychologists in racially and economically segregated suburban and urban schools, on the other hand, might emphasize consciousness-raising activities that allow for reflection on cultural inequities. Those working in more racially and economically diverse high schools can strategize about means of recognizing and making better use of the diversity available within their school communities. Every high school setting faces challenges to cultural diversity; the nature of those challenges, however, is substantially linked to the structural realities of the particular school.
Cultural Transitions to and from High School Coming to high school from either junior high or middle school can be a culture shock for students. The degree of shock is related to the similarities and differences between the junior high or middle school and the particular high school. In some cases, students move from a neighborhood middle school to a larger regional or city high school and face a host of new people and social interaction styles. For extraverted students who thrive on social relationships, this can be an exhilarating experience. They enter an exciting world of social opportunities. These same students, however, can find themselves overwhelmed and over stimulated by social opportunities at the cost of academic failure. Introverted students, on the other hand, can find the energy of high schools intimidating and yearn for the familiarity and manageability of the local junior high or middle school. For such students, it is critical to find subgroups
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within the larger school within which they can establish a social comfort zone, or what some developmentalists have referred to as a homespace. The transition to high school can carry extraordinary significance that eludes students. For those who have a history of academic struggle, ninth grade can mark the beginning of the end of their formal education. By the time students reach the ninth grade, they are old enough to obtain at least part-time employment. Many students from families with low incomes access such work opportunities out of personal and family necessity. For these students, the combination of earning real money and experiencing academic difficulties (or even failure) points toward the likelihood of leaving school within a year or two. Large percentages of students who drop out of school do so between the ninth and tenth grade. In these cases, the transition to high school might be more accurately described as the transition out of formal education, at least for the time being. On the other end of the academic continuum are those students who experience the beginning of high school as the first big step in their pursuit of college and an already dreamed-of career. They pursue their new course work with vigor and actively plan for the development of a portfolio that will make them a promising college applicant. This type of thinking is very common among high school freshmen reared in families in which one or both parents are professionally successful. Application to competitive colleges is a right of passage for such students just as getting a first real job is such a right of passage for many students of poor and working-class families. These divergent experiences, which can readily be seen in the transitional processes to high school, serve to perpetuate the cultural differences within our society, including in our public and private school systems. In between these two extremes are those students who are neither the academic stars nor the struggling students quickly looking for a way out. They take what comes their way and they succeed adequately. One strength of such students is that they are open to a range of opportunities if those opportunities should find them. A risk they face is that they lack a clearer vision for their futures, or what developmentalists call a future orientation. They live in the moment for the most part and may be quite happy with their immediate circumstances. In fact, as their lives progress, they may remain gratified with what they have and what they can accomplish. With a clearer future orientation, however, such students would likely accomplish a great deal more, both during their high school years and
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beyond. Whether increased occupational and economic success would bring increased happiness or well being, however, is a very different question. At the other end of the high school period, the transition to what comes next can be even more complex and at times anxiety provoking than the transition to high school. The high achievers who began building their portfolios at the beginning of their freshman year tend to be finishing an extremely busy four years of their lives as they move out of the twelfth grade. Those who have received acceptance letters from the colleges of their choice likely feel that the work has paid off and eagerly anticipate the next challenge, the next intensely busy and productive four years, their four years of college. In the middle are their peers who are deciding between mid-level colleges, perhaps taking time off to work, or maybe joining the military and getting their eventual college education paid for. The low end of the achievement scale has taken on a different range of experiences in recent years. The strong emphasis on high-stakes testing leaves some seniors concerned about their ability to graduate with their peers, even though they may have passed all their courses. Others worry about their options following high school. For students of large urban public high schools who have scraped by academically, passed their high-stakes test, and will graduate on time, the options can be quite confusing. Does graduation from high school signal preparation for college, even if one barely made it through? Does it suggest that a skilled trade or fairly well paying occupation that does not require a college education is a more realistic choice? The answers to such questions are somewhat unclear. Community or junior colleges offer adult developmental coursework for high school graduates whose academic skills have not adequately prepared them for college. Many lower-achieving high school graduates will pursue such opportunities. For those young adults who can take advantage of it, the transition from high school is at least a transition toward another educational start. See also: > Adolescence; > Charter schools; > Cultural issues in education; > Magnet schools; > Urban schools
Suggested Reading Bartch, K. (1993). Adolescents’ theoretical thinking. In R. M. Lerner (Ed.), Early adolescence: Perspectives on research, policy, and intervention (pp. 143–157). Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.
Levine, E. (2001). One kid at a time: Big lessons from a small school. New York: Teachers College Press. Nakkula, M., & Toshalis, E. (2006). Understanding youth: Adolescent development for educators. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Education Press. San Antonio, D. (2004). Adolescent lives in transition. Albany, NY: SUNY Press.
Suggested Resources Jobs for the Future—http://www.jff.org/: This is the website for Jobs for the Future that aims to create strategies for educational and economic opportunity, specifically for socially and economically disadvantaged youth. Small Schools Project—http://www.smallschoolsproject.org/: The Small Schools Project’s goals include supporting small schools based on relationships, rigor, and relevance.
High Stakes Testing James A Bovaird . Anja Ro¨mhild
High stakes testing can be defined as including any and all achievement tests that are used to make decisions about students in kindergarten through high school graduation. Such decisions include promotion from grade to grade, placement in special programs, graduation, and college admission. Results of high stakes tests are also often considered an indication of the impact of the local education system, with public acclaim and financial award attached to positive designation. Tests in general, when used appropriately, can provide some of the best measures of student learning, but when used inappropriately or in isolation may have unintended consequences. Achievement tests provide information on student learning and teacher feedback on practices, methods, and curriculum. The tests themselves are not necessarily problematic, but their use and the attachment of high stakes based on performance may affect students or schools in unintended harmful ways. Major examples of achievement tests with attached high stakes include high school graduation examinations, standardized college entrance examinations such as the American College Testing (ACT) program and the SAT, the National Assessment of Educational Progress
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(NAEP) examination, and the various Advanced Placement (AP) examinations. Approximately one-half of all states use large-scale assessments of some type either for determining grade-to-grade promotion or as graduation examinations. Graduation exams are more likely in states with lower (than the national average) financial allocations per pupil, states with centralized governments (versus strong city and county governments), and highly populated or increasingly populated states, especially in the south and southwest. Considerable concern is caused by the tendency for states with higher proportions of African American and Hispanic residents (and lower proportions of White residents) and states with the highest poverty levels to use graduation examinations. Specifically, the concern is that minority students and those from low socioeconomic (SES) backgrounds will be disproportionately denied grade promotion or high school diplomas because they come from schools that tend to lack the resources to expose students to the knowledge and skills needed to pass these high stakes tests. The ACT and SAT examinations are used as college entrance examinations and influence admission. States differ on which test they emphasize, with east and west coast states tending to emphasize the SAT and Midwestern states emphasizing the ACT. These tests can serve as a measure of transfer, or the application of knowledge learned in one context on another context, and can be used to evaluate the validity of other high stakes tests such as graduation examinations. While those states that do not use high stakes graduation examinations tend to perform better on the ACT and SAT, the sample of students who take the ACT or SAT does not represent all students in a given state. Populations of special interest such as minority and students from low income families do not tend to take either test. The ‘‘nation’s report card,’’ the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) examination, began in 1969 as a national random sample to asses the math and reading performance of America’s youth. It was expanded to the state level in 1990. While state participation was voluntary, it allowed for comparisons among participating states. Under the administration of President George W. Bush, all states were required to participate in the NAEP examination. However, there are major limitations to using the NAEP to evaluate student or school performance. These limitations include the sample-based nature of the NAEP administration process (not all students are assessed), and the selective
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nature of the sample due to exclusion of students with limited English proficiency or with individualized education programs by local personnel. The national sample includes students in 4th, 8th, and 12th grades, but the state samples only include 4th and 8th grade students. Finally, there are no consequences or incentives (stakes) attached to the examination to encourage full student motivation. Students may take a variety of Advanced Placement (AP) examinations administered by the College Board. These tests are not used for retention or promotion decisions, but, based on level of performance— students may receive college credit prior to actually entering the institution of higher learning. However, most AP courses are taught by high school teachers as advanced high school courses. Consequently, such instruction can tend towards teaching-the-test rather than simulating actual undergraduate instruction. The use of standardized tests in the U.S. can be traced back to the early 1900s where they were used as a screening tool for immigration, to determine educational and vocational program placement, to determine military eligibility, and to segregate certain subgroups of the population (i.e., races, ethnicities, or social classes). Especially after the U.S. appeared to fall behind in the space race in the 1950s, journalists were quick to suggest the nation’s education system was at fault. As a response, test use increased as a means to assess school performance. The 1970s saw the introduction of minimum competency testing and various forms of tests of basic skills. However, by the mid-1980s, such tests were popularly viewed as ‘‘dumbing down’’ instructional content, and the minimum competency movement was abandoned only to be replaced by the introduction of high stakes testing to raise the nation’s achievement standards. As a consequence, every state but Iowa developed educational standards for its students, and every state except Nebraska implemented statewide assessment policies. Many states adopted a business model with rewards for high performance and sanctions for poor performance. More recently, school achievement test results have begun to have an impact on housing decisions with neighborhoods rated by achievement scores and scores directly affecting property values. President George W. Bush’s education agenda included granting federal education funds only to schools that meet state-determined achievement standards, and federal lawmakers proposed legislation that helped ensure that states deploy such tests fairly and appropriately. In particular,
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the No Child Left Behind Act mandated annual high stakes testing in math and reading of every child in third through eighth grades in the U.S. As of 2002, a majority of states have implemented incentives for high and/or improved scores, and a large majority of states hold schools accountable by publishing school and/or district report cards. Proponents of high stakes testing argue that such tests emphasize what is important for teachers to teach and students to learn. This view holds that teachers and students alike need an accountability mechanism to motivate them to work and that strong student performance encourages more success and poor performance prompts more effort to learn. Opponents have criticized this view as too simplistic and overly relying on extrinsic motivation, which yields only short-term gains. In addition, critics have argued that the goal of federal legislation like No Child Left Behind—that of bringing all children to the proficient level—is an unattainable goal that does not take into consideration social and hereditary factors that are not under the control of schools. Instead, such federal legislation puts the burden solely on teachers and students, which is likely to lead to unintended negative consequences. In contrast, some researchers have also pointed out some of the unintended positive consequences that federal legislation has brought about, including improved professional development for teachers, increased awareness of classroom practices, and a higher degree of assessment literacy among teachers. Supporters of high stakes testing contend that rigorously developed, standardized assessments provide more objective information on student performance than teacher-made tests. Critics on the other hand stress the importance of using a variety of evaluation tools for student achievement and teacher quality. The concern is that an over-reliance on high stakes tests leads educators to teach to the test and thus creates a narrowing of curriculum and instruction to those domains that are testable on standardized exams. Other areas of concern are the technical complexity of assessments, test fairness and the provision of appropriate accommodations to students with disabilities and English language learners, and the continuing gap in achievement scores between minority and majority student groups. The empirical research to date has produced conflicting evidence regarding the effects of high stakes tests on student performance. Results from international studies comparing assessment practice and student
achievement in different countries were in favor of high stakes tests. Research on NAEP assessment data also found a strong positive relationship between high stakes assessments and improvement of NAEP scores. However, when score results from state assessments were compared to those from NAEP, the SAT, and the ACT, there was no correspondence in the score trends between these assessments. Critics have thus argued that score gains or increased passing rates on state assessments are likely the result of improved testtaking skills, a lowering of educational standards and passing scores, higher drop-out rates and exclusion of low-achieving students. Minority students, English language learners and students with disabilities are especially affected. Indeed, there is evidence that these student groups are most affected by the negative consequences of high stakes testing. These groups experience higher rates of retention in grade and lower passing rates on high school graduation exams. In addition, research has shown that students who have been retained in grade are significantly more likely to drop-out of school later on. Thus, a disproportionately higher number of minority students may never participate in graduation tests because they are no longer in school. For these students, in particular, the success of high stakes testing will depend in large part on the degree to which it results in the implementation of successful school policies that lead to improved teaching and learning. Because of the high stakes involved when tests are used for grade promotion, high school graduation, earning expensive college credit, college entrance, and determining school desirability and funding, it is of utmost importance that their uses are appropriate and fair. In 1999, the American Psychological Association (APA), the American Educational Research Association (AERA), and the National Council on Measurement in Education (NCME) jointly issued the ‘‘Standards for Educational and Psychological Testing’’ designed to promote fairness in testing and avoid unintended consequences. This document emphasizes that high stakes educational decisions should not be based on the results of a single test, and when tests are used for decisions, there should be multiple available opportunities to demonstrate mastery of what the students have had a chance to learn. When an authority such as a school board or state department of education mandates a test, its uses should be clearly described, its impact must be monitored, and negative consequences minimized. Appropriate accommodations must be provided for
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students with limited English proficiency and for special education students. In addition, states should ensure that tests are used only for validated purposes and that high stakes decisions are not based on only one test. Tests must also be aligned with the state’s curriculum standards, measuring only the academic domain of interest with no extraneous factors, in a manner that is sensitive to potential quality differences between schools. Finally, where educational decisions are made that affect individuals in negative ways, it is important to provide effective educational support services and alternative avenues that allow these individuals to reach their educational goals. See also: > Achievement tests; > College Board; > SAT
Suggested Reading American Educational Research Association, American Psychological Association, & National Council on Measurement in Education. (1999). Standards for educational and psychological testing. Washington, D.C.: American Educational Research Association.
Suggested Resources American Psychological Association: Science—http://www.apa. org/science/standards.html: This website provides a link for ordering the Standards for Educational and Psychological Testing. This publication presents the laws and ethical standards of educational and psychological testing and discusses testing individuals with disabilities and different linguistic backgrounds.
Hispanic Americans Lourdes M Rivera
The United States (U.S.) is undergoing a major demographic transformation and the Hispanic population is playing a significant role in this change process. By the year 2050 it is estimated that 50% of the population will consist of minorities and 25% of the entire U.S. population will be of Hispanic origin. Compared to the rest of the population, Hispanics are a relatively young group and represent a large and growing percentage of the school aged population. It is estimated that by 2020
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one in five school aged children will be of Hispanic origin. Historically, Hispanics have faced significant challenges in the area of education and have had among the highest dropout rates of any group. The employment status, type of employment, and earnings of Hispanics are also of concern. Hispanics are overrepresented in low paying, service occupations that require minimal educational preparation and offer little opportunity for advancement. By virtue of their growing numbers Hispanics have and will continue to have a significant impact on the social, educational, economic, and political systems in the U.S. Thus, the success of Hispanics in the U.S. will have implications for the economic and social well being of the country as a whole. Given the relation between educational attainment and social/economic mobility, efforts need to be directed at addressing the educational needs of this growing population to increase their academic success and assist them in achieving their highest potential. For this to occur, schools need to be prepared to welcome and meet the needs of this population. A first step in addressing the educational needs of this population is having an understanding and appreciation for the complex diversity of Hispanics, their cultural values, and the challenges they face. When discussing the Hispanic population, it is important to be aware of the issue of identity and what it means for such a diverse group. The term Hispanic has been used by the U.S. Census to designate people of Spanish lineage or cultural heritage since the 1970s. Created by the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) in 1978, this umbrella term incorporates people from the Caribbean, Cuba, Puerto Rico, Central and South America with cultural heritage linked to Spain and who are Spanish speaking. The term Hispanic as a means of identifying this very diverse group, however, has generated some controversy over the years. For many people of Hispanic origin, the term ‘‘Hispanic’’ is seen as an imposition of identity by the OMB and as a racialization of this group. The term is also seen as a means of ignoring the great racial and ethnic diversity that exists among people of Hispanic origin. Others, who do not claim Spanish heritage, reject the linkage to Spain and therefore do not identify with the term; still others from Latin America who do not speak Spanish (e.g., Brazilians) are excluded from being identified as Hispanic. A preferred term of identification for many of Hispanic origin, especially from Latin America, is that of Latino/a. The term Latino/a is viewed by
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many as more representative of the diverse groups of people who have heritage from Latin America and the Caribbean. Additionally, this term is seen as including groups that do not have Spanish as their native language and as recognition of the racial and ethnic diversity of this group. Thus, the issue of identity and how members of this diverse group prefer to be identified continues to evolve and the terms Hispanic and Latino/a are often used interchangeably. As of the 2000 census, respondents were given the option of identifying as Spanish/Hispanic/Latino and asked to identify their race and country of origin. Other terms also in common use among members of this population to self-identify are based on national origin (e.g., Mexican American, Cuban American) or sociopolitical considerations (e.g., Chicano/a, La Raza). Clearly, although Hispanics share a similar cultural heritage, they are an extremely heterogeneous group and thus it is important to be cognizant of the diversity that exists among them. Hispanics vary by race and can be identified as White, Black, Asian, or a combination thereof. Hispanics also vary by ethnicity (e.g., Cuban, Puerto Rican) and country of origin (e.g., Colombia, Venezuela). In addition, Hispanics vary by social class and economic status, immigration status, language preference, and acculturation. These varied characteristics in turn contribute to the experience of Hispanics in the U.S., how they see themselves in this society, and the types of challenges they encounter. This diversity has implications for how best to work with members of this population and the types of services and interventions that might be most effective as relates to educational, social, and economic needs. Thus, though the term Hispanic or Latino may be used to identify a segment of the U.S. population that shares some cultural similarities, the group’s great diversity cannot be overlooked and attempts to understand the Hispanic population warrants acknowledgment and consideration of this complexity.
Demographics It is estimated that Hispanics comprise 14.2% of the total U.S. population, approximately 40 million people. The major Hispanic subgroups are Mexicans (64%), Puerto Ricans (9.6%), Central and South Americans (12.7%), Cubans (3.6%), Dominicans (2.6%), and the rest are of other Hispanic origin (U.S. Census, 2004). On the whole, the Hispanic population is relatively young compared to the rest of the population. The median age
of Hispanics in 2000 was 26 years compared to 36 years for non-Hispanic Whites, 30 years for non-Hispanic Blacks, and 32 years for Asians. Approximately 34% of Hispanics were under 18 years of age in 2002 compared to 23% for non-Hispanic Whites. The comparative youth of the Hispanic population in combination with the high fertility rate and increasing immigration from Central and South America, contribute to the growing population and more significantly to the increase in the school-aged population. Compared to other groups, Hispanic families tend to be larger. Approximately 30% of Hispanic families consisted of five or more people in 2000 compared to 12% of non-Hispanic White families. Hispanic families may also consist of extended family members (e.g., grandparents, aunts/uncles). When examined by family type, approximately 23% of Hispanic households were headed by women, 10% by males, and 67% consisted of a married couple. In 2002, 20% of all Hispanic families lived below the poverty level compared to 6% for non-Hispanic White and 23% for non-Hispanic Black families; for those Hispanic families headed by women, 36% lived below the poverty level. The majority of Hispanics (46.4%) live in or near large urban cities. The largest numbers of Hispanics (45%) reside in western states such as Arizona, California, and New Mexico; 33% reside in southern states such as Texas and Florida; and the remaining population is distributed throughout the Northeast (14%) and the Midwest (8%). The distribution of Hispanics throughout the U.S. also varies by subgroup membership, with Mexicans concentrated in California, Texas, and Arizona; Puerto Ricans and Dominicans in New York and New Jersey; and Cubans in Florida. Despite this concentration, the number of Hispanics increased in virtually every state between 1990 and 2000. For instance, the 2000 U.S. Census reported that the Hispanic population grew by at least 100% between 1990 and 2000 in 22 states; North Carolina saw an increase of 300% in the Hispanic population. As the Hispanic population continues to grow, these population increases in all states can be expected to continue.
Values Perhaps more than ever before, the need for cultural awareness and sensitivity to different values, perspectives and ways of viewing life are essential for school professionals. The impact of cultural values and beliefs may have a significant influence on the effectiveness of
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our educational system to adequately prepare and educate the growing numbers of Hispanics who are entering our schools. Educators and educational systems must gain an understanding and appreciation of the values held by Hispanics to effectively engage this population and develop strategies to ensure that their educational needs are met. Though consideration needs to be given to the great diversity among Hispanics, there is also much that they share in common. Perhaps the strongest and most significant value held by Hispanics is that of familismo. Familismo is a very important value held by most Hispanics and can be considered a major characteristic shared by members of this group regardless of subgroup membership. Familismo is manifested by a strong orientation toward family and a strong sense of interdependence and loyalty. For many, familismo contributes to one’s sense of identity and purpose. Within the Hispanic culture the influence and importance of family in an individual’s life is extremely powerful and may contribute to the tendency for individuals to make decisions within the context of the needs of the family. In effect, individuals may often place the needs of the family above their own individual needs and desires. In the Anglo culture, however, striving for independence and self-actualization are highly valued. This orientation is at odds with the Hispanic value of familismo and may be seen as selfishness on the part of the individual and the rest of the family. This has implications for motivating and working with Hispanic students and their families. Thus, when working with Hispanics it is important that this strong family orientation and its impact on individual’s decisions and choices be carefully considered and respected. By focusing on the family as the unit of consideration and respecting an individual’s strong sense of responsibility toward the family, it is more likely that school officials will be able to establish positive working relationships with students and their families. These relationships can lead to the development of effective strategies to facilitate the educational preparation and future planning of Hispanic students. School officials can build alliances with students’ families by providing information that can assist them in supporting the choices and decisions of students, realizing the advantages of perhaps having the student pursue particular goals (e.g., going away to college) even if at first they may see this as contradictory to the best interest of the student and the family. For example, by finding ways to engage families in the educational and decision making
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process and helping students communicate with their families their needs and goals, can contribute to enhancing students’ academic success. Unless the important role of the family in the individual’s life is recognized and valued, school officials may be working at odds with those they are attempting to serve. Another significant value shared by Hispanics is that of respeto or respect. Within the Hispanic culture, respeto is manifested by a sense of deference to those perceived to be in positions of authority or of higher status based on gender, age, or authority status. This value influences interactions among students and teachers, students and adult family members and parents with school officials. For example, as a sign of respeto, Hispanics may not question or openly disagree with school personnel for fear of being perceived as disrespectful. At times this tendency to defer to an authority or not question teachers and others in the school may be interpreted by school personnel as Hispanics lacking assertiveness or an interest in actively engaging in their children’s education. In fact, the family may view the school professionals as the experts when it comes to issues of education and thus differ to school officials. School personnel may need to actively provide opportunities and invite parents to engage with the school and become involved in their children’s education. Personalismo is another cultural value that greatly influences how Hispanics interact with others. Personalismo refers to the preference Hispanics have for personal, more intimate contact with others versus more impersonal or formal interactions. Though initial interactions with parents may require some formality, once a relationship is developed, a more relaxed and mutual way of relating is more conducive to promoting trust and investment in the relationship. Related to personalismo is the value placed on having and maintaining relationships with others that are free of conflict. This cultural value, simpatı´a, places much importance on promoting pleasant interactions with others and avoiding confrontations in personal and professional relationships. Thus, being able to engage students and parents in a more personal and friendly manner can be very effective in establishing positive working relationships. When parents feel welcomed and comfortable approaching school personnel with concerns and questions, when they can see the staff as partners in their children’s education, there is greater likelihood of establishing effective communication and positive working relationships that promote the academic success of Hispanic youth.
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Within the Hispanic culture, gender roles tend to be clearly defined and influence expectations and behaviors. For example, men are expected to protect and provide for their families. They are expected to be strong, brave and the authority figure. Women are expected to be gentle, nurturing, and take care of the child rearing and emotional needs of the family. Within the family, gender roles are transmitted to children and they are expected to take on responsibilities in keeping with the prescribed roles. This socialization process may influence the activities, behaviors and choices made by students and family members. For example, more restrictions may be placed on girls and they may be expected to assist in taking care of siblings and other household chores. Hispanic boys, however, may be granted more freedom and have less identified responsibilities in the home. It is important to consider how the influence of gender role socialization and expectations may be influencing students in school. The adherence to strict gender roles, however, is influenced by socioeconomic status, acculturation, employment experiences and other factors, and thus great variability may exist among families. Religion and spirituality within the Hispanic community are also of major importance and play significant roles in how Hispanics live their lives. Catholicism is the prominent religion and Hispanics often turn to their religion in times of need or crises. A reliance on God and fate may influence how Hispanics interact with their environment and be reflected in how much control they may feel they have over life’s circumstances. In addition to mainstream religious faith, Hispanics may also hold strong folk beliefs that are a blending of indigenous and Catholic influences. Clearly, for school professionals to effectively communicate with and meet the needs of the Hispanic population, an understanding of the values held by Hispanics and how these might manifest in the interactions with school officials is essential. However, it is important to reiterate that there is great diversity among members of the Hispanic community. When addressing issues of culture, other factors that may influence the extent to which these cultural values are adhered deserve consideration.
Acculturation Acculturation involves changes in behaviors, values, and attitudes as individuals adapt and function in a
new or different culture. Recent conceptualizations of acculturation have focused on the multidimensional nature of this process whereby individuals may hold on to aspects of their culture of origin, while also acquiring beliefs and attitudes of the new culture. Thus, an individual’s engagement in the acculturative process and status will have an impact on their attitudes, values and beliefs in different ways. Individuals who are more acculturated to their culture of origin may vary in their values, attitudes, behaviors from individuals who are more acculturated to the Anglo culture. Furthermore, given the multidimensional nature of the acculturation process, individuals may feel equally comfortable in and value both the Anglo culture and their culture of origin and thus can be considered bicultural. Bicultural individuals function equally well within their culture of origin and the mainstream culture and can draw upon the strengths in each to inform and enhance their lives. Acculturation is a very complex process and not a linear one in which more of one means less of the other. Acculturation can occur at the individual as well as the group level and can be influenced by a number of factors. Length of residence in the U.S., immigration status (i.e., documented, undocumented), socioeconomic status, and an individual’s or family’s plans for returning to their country of origin can influence the acculturation process. Acculturation status can also vary between members of a family, contributing to possible conflicts within the family. For example, acculturation status may vary between parents and children and can result in conflicts around expectations, values, and behaviors. Parents who are more acculturated to their culture of origin may hold strong traditional values and expectations for their children. Their children, by virtue of their involvement in mainstream culture and socialization through school and friendships, may want to adhere to more mainstream values and expectations, creating a conflict within the family. Acculturation has been found to influence many aspects of individuals’ lives, including adherence to cultural values, gender roles, perceived expectations, and identification of goals. More specifically, acculturation has been found to influence Hispanic students’ educational and career aspirations and expectations. School based professionals need to be sensitive to issues of acculturation and be prepared to identify and address how acculturation may influence students’ academic performance and behaviors, their goals and expectations as well as family relations. To engage parents and work with them in the best interest of their children, school
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professionals need to become aware of and sensitive to the multiple factors that may influence the family and their relationship with the schools.
Education and Development Hispanics are the largest minority group in the public school system. Of the 48 million students enrolled in public schools in 2003–2004, 18.5% (8.9 million) were of Hispanic origin. This number can be expected to rise as the Hispanic population grows. Perhaps the greatest challenge facing educators and society as a whole is the academic underachievement of Hispanic youth. The question of whether the educational system is prepared to adequately meet the educational needs of this diverse population is a monumental one that remains to be answered. Hispanics have long faced major challenges in the area of education and with the growing number of school-aged students enrolling in the schools, educational systems face major policy decisions that will need to be made to meet the needs of this population. Hispanic children are less likely than non-Hispanics to attend preschool prior to enrolling in kindergarten. They are underrepresented in secondary education and are more likely to leave school than their non-Hispanic peers. At all grade levels, Hispanics consistently academically under perform compared to their non-Hispanic White counterparts. In 2005, Hispanics in the fourth grade scored 27 points lower on the National Assessment of Education Progress (NAEP) reading assessment and 21 points in the mathematics assessment compared to their non-Hispanic White counterparts. For eighth graders, the difference was 27 points in reading and 21 points in mathematics. English language fluency is an area that needs attention to promote the educational achievement of the Hispanic school aged population. Of 5–6 million English Language Learners (ELL) in the schools, 75 to 80% are Spanish speaking. This has implications for students’ ability to engage in the educational setting and perform academically at expected levels. The ability for schools to address the language learning needs of Hispanics is critical in raising the academic achievement of these students. Hispanics have had the highest dropout rate of any ethnic or racial group in the U.S. in the past three decades. This is the case whether using event or status dropout rates. Event dropout rates are based on a given period of time or year in which the percentage of
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dropouts is calculated. By comparison, the status dropout rate is based on the number of individuals within a certain age group that have not completed a high school diploma or equivalency. In 2001, the event dropout rate for Hispanics was 8.8% compared to 4.1% for nonHispanic Whites and 6.3% for non-Hispanic Blacks. Among individuals between 18 and 24 years of age, 27% of Hispanics had not attained a high school diploma or equivalency compared to 11% of non-Hispanic Blacks and 7.3% of non-Hispanic Whites. The dropout rate for Hispanics is even higher for recent immigrants. In 2001, over 43% of Hispanics born outside the U.S. who were between 16 and 24 years of age were high school dropouts. Although Hispanics born in the U.S. were less likely to be dropouts than recent immigrants, they are still more likely to dropout than members of other racial and ethnic groups. Within higher education, the rate of attendance and completion by Hispanics is also of major concern. In 2000, Hispanics accounted for 14% of students enrolled in 2 year colleges and 7% in 4 year institutions. In 2000, 36% percent of 18–24 year old Hispanic high school completers enrolled in college compared to 44% of non-Hispanic Whites and 39% of nonHispanic Blacks. Although the rate of Hispanics enrolling in college has shown some increase, this has been predominantly in 2-year colleges. Of those who do enroll in college, the percentage who complete it is small. In 1999–2000, 9.1% of 2-year and 6.1% of 4-year degrees conferred were earned by Hispanics. At the graduate level, the number of degrees earned by Hispanics is even smaller; only 4.2% of master’s and 2.9% of doctorates were conferred to Hispanics. Given the relation between educational attainment and employment, the high dropout rate and the low college enrollment and completion rate among Hispanics contributes to limiting their employment options and earning potential. Although labor force participation by Hispanics tripled between 1980 and 2000, this increase was not accompanied by increased economic gains. Although more Hispanics are entering the workforce, they continue to be overrepresented in low status, low paying jobs that offer little opportunity for advancement. In 2000, over 60% of Hispanic women age 16 and older were employed in low paying jobs that offer little opportunity for advancement (e.g., sales and service) and 64% of Hispanic men were employed in construction and production jobs. Hispanic men and women tend to earn less than their non-Hispanic peers at almost all levels of
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education. In 2000, Hispanic males earned about $23,400 compared to $36,668 for White males and $28,160 for Black males. Hispanic females earned about $16,601 compared to $23,078 and $22,028 for non-Hispanic White and non-Hispanic Black females, respectively. With the growing demand for employees who have some post high school education or training to meet the needs of the labor market, Hispanics are at a significant disadvantage in being able to qualify for these jobs unless their educational needs are adequately addressed. The growing number of Hispanics has major implications for the social, economic, educational, and political future of the U.S. To ensure that the nation’s growing Hispanic population achieves economic and social mobility and becomes a strong participant in the nation’s growth and future, the provision of a quality education and the skills that will be demanded in the future are critical. Educational systems need to address the challenges of educating this growing Hispanic population from a systemic rather than programmatic approach. Examining how the entire educational system can be refined to better meet the needs of Hispanics and other minority students is critical to effect the changes needed to better educate this growing population. These efforts need to be directed at the prekindergarten through graduate school level. They require that all education professionals, parents, and community organizations make the education of Hispanics a priority. Research has shown that parent involvement in their children’s education has a significant positive impact on student academic performance and success. Schools need to increase efforts to involve parents in the education of their children. Parents need to be made to feel welcomed in the schools and equal partners in helping their children achieve academically. Schools need to begin to value the strengths among Hispanic students and their families and integrate these in the educational mission. Schools also need to partner with colleges, universities, and community organizations to develop creative and effective interventions to address the educational needs of Hispanics.
in theory, measurement, and applied research (pp. 17–37). Washington, D.C.: American Psychological Association. Casas, J. M., Furlong, M. J., & De Esparza, C. R. (2003). Increasing Hispanic parent participation in schools: The role of the counselor. In P. B. Pedersen & J. C. Carey (Eds.), Multicultural counseling in schools: A practical handbook, (2nd ed.) (pp. 105–130). Boston: Allyn and Bacon.
Suggested Resources Hispanic Scholarship Fund (HSF)—http://www.hsf.net/index.php: The Hispanic Scholarship Fund (HSF) is a national organization that provides college scholarships to Hispanics. National Council of La Raza—http://www.nclr.org: The National Council of La Raza is a national civil rights and advocacy organization that works to improve opportunities for all Hispanic Americans.
HIV/AIDS Nancy Bearss
See also: > Latin Americans; > Latino/Latina American youth; > Mexican American youth
Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS) was first recognized in the United States (U.S.) in 1981when young healthy gay men presented with severe opportunistic infections such as pneumocystic pneumonia. The syndrome was later found to be caused by the human immunodeficiency virus, a single stranded RNA retrovirus that is now prevalent throughout the world and the cause of a major worldwide pandemic. Since its recognition AIDS has killed more than 25 million people worldwide. It is one of the most damaging epidemics known to the human species. As of 2005 there are a total of 40.3 million people living with Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) in the world. Of those infected, 2.3 million are children under the age of 15. In 2005, 4.9 million people were infected with HIV. Of these cases, 700,000 were children under the age of 15. Over 3 million people died of AIDS in 2005. Of these, 570,000 were children under the age of 15.
Suggested Reading
Natural History of HIV
Berry, J. E. (2002). Conceptual approaches to acculturation. In K. M. Chun, P. B. Organista, & G. Marin (Eds.), Acculturation: Advances
HIV is transmitted person to person through intimate sexual contact, through blood products and from
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mother to fetus. It is not casually transmitted and the virus does not survive outside of the body. The virus attacks the immune system of its host, causing a dramatic decrease in the number of CD4 lymphocytes, a major component of an individual’s immune system. As a result individuals infected with HIV succumb to infections rare among health individuals, such as aggressive forms of pneumonia, systemic viral infections, rare forms of cancer and fungal infections. In addition the virus can cause severe non-infectious conditions that affect the brain, the heart, the nervous system and the musculoskeletal system. These changes happen once the CD4 cell count reaches below 200. Normal T helper/inducer cell counts (of which CD4 is one) are in the 500–1200 range. The natural history of the disease is as follows: 1. Within 2–3 weeks of the initial infection an acute retroviral syndrome occurs. The infected individual may have fever, chills and have a dramatic reduction in their CD4 count. Clinical recovery usually occurs as the immune system makes a recovery. This may take another 2–3 weeks. 2. Four to six weeks after infection the individual will have antibodies to the virus and they will test positive for HIV on any of the screening tests available. These include blood tests and tests of saliva. All of these tests are testing for antibodies, not direct virus. This is known as seroconversion. 3. On average, an individual will remain asymptomatic (disease free) for 8 years although they will continue to carry and shed the virus. They are able during this time to infect other individuals through sexual contact, the sharing of blood products or the sharing of needles during intraveneous (IV) drug use. They may not know that they are infected with HIV. 4. After an average of 8 years a person with HIV will become symptomatic with an opportunistic infection. A decline of their CD4 count to below 200 will accompany this and they will develop AIDS. 5. If untreated a person will die from AIDS within 1.3 years of the development of AIDS.
Current Interventions Efforts to curb the HIV epidemic have been in place for several decades with many of the programs showing success through rigorous evaluation methods. Sustained
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public health campaigns have successfully reduced transmission among men who have sex with men, among young people in parts of Africa, among sex workers in parts of Asia and among IV drug users in Spain and Brazil. Similar efforts are bringing down prevalence rates in very high epidemic ridden countries such as Haiti, Kenya and Zimbabwe. The largest increase in HIV infected individuals has been among women, with a million more women living with HIV (17.5 worldwide) in 2005 than in 2003. 13.5 of these women live in subSahara Africa. Hence efforts targeted towards women and children have begun in the past few decades. Reducing mortality from this epidemic has required a strong public health model. This includes the availability of antiviral therapy for people identified with AIDS. AIDS therapy includes a combination of strong anti-viral medicines known as Highly Active Antiretroviral Therapy (HAART) that must be taken over a long period of time. In addition, a strong public health campaign that identifies infected individuals early prevents transmission once infected and prevents new infections for those at risk must be in place. These efforts are most successful when pursued simultaneously. This model will require attention to underlying social issues that aggravate this epidemic. These include issues of social disparity, discrimination, stigma around sexual behaviors, disparate access to treatment and condoms, gender inequality and human rights violations. The rights of women and children to be protected from infection and have access to treatment once infected are especially crucial in the current epidemic. In addition, gender inequities may serve to prevent men from partnering in the prevention of this epidemic by reinforcing gender norms of boys as invulnerable and enforcing aggressive sexual masculine qualities. Marginalized groups such as prisoners, sex workers, IV drug users and men who have sex with men are particularly susceptible to disparities seen in the attempts to curb this epidemic. Finally the presence of other sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) puts one at a higher risk for HIV. Thus comprehensive strategies to prevent all STDs that include universal access to testing and treatment and condom campaigns have been successful in reducing the rates of HIV. Microbicides, in the form of vaginal gels that kill the virus, are hopeful in the prevention of HIV for women. They are currently undergoing clinical trials. In industrialized countries maternal transmission of HIV has been virtually eliminated by providing family planning services, antiretroviral therapy to the mother and newborn, safe deliveries that reduce
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transmission and infant feeding counseling. In high prevalence countries these efforts have not been as successful. The best long-term hope for this epidemic is a vaccine, but because of the unique nature of this virus and a lack of committed resources to vaccine development this work has been slow to evolve.
Issues for Youth HIV Testing. Twenty thousand new cases of HIV occur annually in 13–25 year olds in the U.S. Fifty percent of new infections worldwide occur among young people. Young people are at risk for HIV primarily because of high risk sexual behavior, drug use or both. Maternal transmission of HIV in the U.S. is rare although this should be kept in mind if a young child is diagnosed with HIV. Youth are especially susceptible to acquiring HIV because of the developmental issues they encounter including peer pressure, poor judgment, feelings of invulnerability, ignorance of the epidemic, lack of access to condoms or other prevention measures and denial of personal risk. Adolescent girls are at higher risk of contracting HIV because of hormonal changes that occur in their reproductive tract that make the cervical and vaginal tissue more susceptible to infection. Finally homeless youth and runaway youth are especially vulnerable to contracting HIV. Young people over the age of 12 can consent to HIV testing in most states although the laws may vary from state to state. As with any informed consent, the ability of a young person in need to consent should be weighed against their ability to interpret potential results and gain social support if they are at risk. Many states have specific statutes applying to the testing of minors for HIV. In states where these are not in effect minor consent laws dictate when testing can be done on minors. High risk youth should have access to testing and access to resources should they test positive. Young people who should have testing deferred include suicidal youth or teens who may be suicidal if they should have positive results, teens under the influence of drugs or alcohol, and youth who suffer from severe mental illness. Anonymous testing and confidential testing are available in most states. Many states have testing sites or personnel specifically trained to deal with youth at risk for HIV.
Treatment Issues Many young people infected with HIV do not present with opportunistic infections because they are early in the natural history of the disease. Because of this the treatment of youth focuses primarily on the behavioral consequences of having an incurable sexually transmitted disease and on the mental health issues facing young people with AIDS. Young people should be connected to practitioners specifically trained to treat HIV and AIDS both medically as new treatments become available and in the mental health fields. Young people with HIV often have depression and anxiety. In addition they are susceptible to issues of grieving when faced with their own mortality and the possible deaths of loved ones also infected with HIV. These children are especially prone to social isolation.
School-Based Issues Most schools across the country have adopted broad policies that include a comprehensive approach to students and faculty or staff with HIV. The following issues are addressed in these policies: 1. Attendance. A child who has HIV/AIDS has the right to attend school. 2. Employment. In accordance with the Americans with Disabilities Act it is illegal to discriminate against someone on the basis of HIV infection. 3. Privacy. These policies vary from district to district. In general school personnel are informed of a HIV infected student only on a need to know basis. This task is usually delegated as a confidential task to the school nurse in conjunction with the student’s primary care provider. Students and staff are under no obligation to disclose their HIV status. 4. Universal Precautions. All school staff should be trained in the practice of universal precautions to avoid contact with blood or blood products. 5. Sports. Young people with HIV are not prohibited from playing sports if cleared by their primary care provider. School employees involved in athletic programs or physical education classes should be trained in universal precautions to prevent exposure to any blood borne illness. 6. HIV prevention. Education to prevent HIV should occur at every educational level. This education should use sound research based methods and follow
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guidelines promoted by the Centers for Disease Control. Parents, families and communities should be engaged in this process to ensure its effectiveness. 7. Referral mechanisms. These should be in place for school employees to allow young people access to the best services outside of school. 8. Staff development. Ongoing staff development about the nature of this epidemic and its consequences to specific communities should be provided annually. See also: > Access and utilization of health care; > Prejudice; > Sexual development ; > Social implications of medications/illness
Suggested Reading National Association of School Psychologists (July 2005). Position statement on HIV/AIDS.
Suggested Resources American Civil Liberties Union—www.aclu.org//hiv/: The ACLU has compiled laws regarding HIV status. This website can also help in identifying state statutes with regard to minor consent laws. Center for Adolescent Health and the Law—www.cahl.org/: The Center for Adolescent Health & the Law supports laws and policies that promote the health of adolescents and their access to comprehensive health care. Centers for Disease Control—www.cdc.gov/hiv: The CDC has updated information on the HIV epidemic, school programs and policies and prevention programs. This link has a hotline number and can connect people to testing sites within their states. The CDC also has a clearinghouse with lists of materials related to HIV and AIDS. National Pediatric AIDS Network—www.npan.org: This website has many links to information about the diagnosis and treatment of HIV and AIDS among children and youth.
Holocaust Education Leslie Ditta
Great debate surrounds Holocaust education: who should be taught, how much should be taught, and what aspects should be part of the curriculum. These common concerns are found in literature on Holocaust
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education. What is agreed is that the lessons that can be learned from this human atrocity are those that everyone can be taught. There are various approaches educators can take to teach about the Holocaust. With regards to what aspects of Holocaust education to teach, a couple of points deserve consideration. First, as Holocaust education is not mandated in all school districts throughout the United States (U.S.), an educator can check the school’s curriculum guide to see what, if anything, is required to be taught. If Holocaust education is required, the school’s curriculum may also provide resources, lessons, activities, and other suggestions about how to broach the material. Next, when determining how to design instruction for Holocaust education, educators must take into account student grade level. This is where much of the debate over Holocaust education is focused: How young is too young to learn about the Holocaust? What and how much should be taught to students, especially those in younger grades? This debate has not been resolved. Following the school district’s decided curriculum can provide guidance for how to teach the Holocaust. If the school has no curriculum that outlines how Holocaust education can be presented at one’s grade level or if there is flexibility with regard to how to present the material, different approaches can be taken. One approach is to teach universal themes of tolerance and diversity by using various teacher created materials. Another approach is to use specific Holocaust resources, such as a children’s novel like Number the Stars, to develop a unit that teaches Holocaust history and lessons. There is a wealth of children’s literature and teacher resources designed for teaching the Holocaust. Fiction books for children, such as Daniel’s Story and Number the Stars, include resources made specifically to teach about the Holocaust. Both are age appropriate for use in elementary schools. Using this type of historicalfiction novel lets the elementary teacher take a crosscurricular, integrated approach to teaching about the Holocaust. Holocaust history, geography, character education, reading, and writing skills are lesson examples that a historical-fiction book can generate. The history and realism used to create some of the fictional accounts can be used as lessons about the events of the Holocaust. Even the nonfiction book The Diary of Anne Frank provides much detail about life in Eastern Europe during the Holocaust for Jewish people, as well as telling about the life of this amazing young girl.
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When selecting a children’s book about the Holocaust, some educators recommended that such texts are avoided for children under age seven as there do not seem to be any age appropriate materials. For the younger years, finding resources that discuss the general topics of tolerance, respect, and citizenship are better suited for lessons on humanity. Another approach to teaching the Holocaust is to focus on the Jewish children involved. In an effort to develop empathy among students, and in addition to teaching the history and moral ramifications of the Holocaust, incorporating discussion about the actual victims of the Holocaust (rather than fictionalized characters) can be more meaningful and allow for accurate teaching. Databases are available that provide the identities of Holocaust victims that can be used during instruction. One perspective is to first focus on the daily life of Jewish children prior to the Holocaust to learn about Jewish life prior to World War II, and of European society. It is at this point that discussion of the destruction of the Jewish people and culture during the Holocaust can begin. Students can identify the loss that took place, once they ‘‘know’’ what the children’s lives were like, before becoming victims. Additionally, it is important not to end the lesson(s) at the extermination. Here a focus on the children who survived and were able to reconstruct their lives, to eventually become successful, functioning citizens, in whatever land they settled after the war is important. The stories of children who survived the Holocaust not only depict what they survived at a particular time in history, but also teach hope, determination, and success against all odds. As with any history lesson, an important purpose of study it is to learn about events of the past, what precipitated them, what the ramifications were, and what society can do to prevent and successfully deal with any future event that resembles those of the past. Lessons of the Holocaust can explore how to prevent genocide. They can also focus on those brave individuals who risked their lives to save others. See also: > Character education; > Human rights; > Jewish American children; > Multicultural teacher training ; > Prejudice
Suggested Resources U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum—http://www.ushmm.org/education: The U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum is a memorial to
all those lives that were unjustly ended during the Holocaust. Resources, materials, and instruction about how to teach this sensitive but important topic are provided. Holocaust Teacher Resource Center—http://www.holocaust-trc. org: By providing positive lessons for educators, this website seeks to educate youth about prejudice and bigotry in a way that gives tribute to those who perished during the Holocaust. A Teacher’s Guide to the Holocaust—http://fcit.coedu.usf.edu/ holocaust: Strictly a resource for educators, suggestions for literature, photographs, media, documents and more are provided in lessons and activities that teach about the people and events of the Holocaust. New Jersey Commission of Holocaust Education—http://www. state.nj.us/njded/holocaust: As part of its state curriculum, the New Jersey State Department of Education has created a website for educators where they can access resources about the Holocaust.
Home, Family, School Liaison Tonia N Cristofaro . Eileen T Rodriguez . Catherine S Tamis-LeMonda
Children’s experiences at home and school are pivotal to academic achievement. Researchers and educators alike recognize that family and school institutions do not operate in isolation, but rather jointly shape children’s developmental outcomes. Numerous studies have documented the importance of home-school collaborations for children’s educational achievements. These collaborations refer to cooperative, reciprocal, and informative interactions between family members and individuals in school settings (namely, teachers, school personnel, and staff). Evidence-based research on effective homeschool collaborations is central to school policies concerning children from culturally diverse backgrounds. Parents’ involvement in children’s schooling is fundamental to successful home-school collaborations. The classic types of parent involvement activities/behaviors described by Joyce Epstein and her colleagues include: (1) parenting (e.g., provision of children’s basic needs); (2) communicating (e.g., home-school contact); (3) learning at home (e.g., parents’ involvement in learning activities); (4) volunteering and attendance (e.g., parents’ involvement in activities at school); (5) decision making (e.g., parental participation in school decisions);
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and (6) community connections (e.g., parents’ associations with community agencies). However, although these various forms of parent involvement continue to be investigated, alternative perspectives emphasize reciprocal relationships among families, schools, and larger communities. Proponents of this model of home-family collaborations note that families and schools are mutually responsible for building healthy partnerships. Therefore, school teachers, staff, and personnel should encourage and support parent involvement and make special efforts to engage hardto-reach parents or parents who feel excluded in some way from the school environment. National educational policies urge schools to promote the active participation of parents in their children’s education. For children who grow up in economically disadvantaged families, home-school collaborations are important to positive outcomes and schools should especially reach out to these families. Early Head Start and Head Start programs are two federally funded initiatives that have developed successful mechanisms for promoting reciprocal collaborations among parents, schools, and communities. These programs support parent involvement and empowerment so as to foster healthy early childhood experiences for families. Parents in these programs may be actively involved in Parent Policy Councils where they participate in policies and decision making about parent involvement and volunteer activities. For older students, schools that support strong home-school collaborations demonstrate higher student achievement, improved test scores, and greater participation in school activities by children. In terms of parental outcomes, family involvement in children’s education is associated with more positive experiences for parents in the school context, better communication with their children, and a greater understanding about parents’ role in their children’s schooling. Building a healthy home-school liaison requires schools and families to maintain relationships that are founded on trust and shared knowledge about and commitment to the factors that influence children’s learning and development. In light of the increased cultural and language diversity that characterizes children attending schools, it is essential for school systems to recognize different beliefs and expectations about education that parents and children bring to the school setting. Likewise, it is necessary for parents to be informed about the school’s philosophies and practices surrounding children’s learning and success. Even if goals and
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expectations are not explicitly shared by families and schools, fruitful home-school collaborations rest upon appreciation of the variety of cultural views and practices that represent heterogeneous communities. The current literature on home-school collaborations underscores the importance of nurturing these partnerships as a way to further support children’s academic, social, emotional, and behavioral outcomes. Proactive attempts to encourage families to become involved in children’s schooling are particularly important for the development of children from disadvantaged backgrounds. Parent training and family-focused interventions with children and adolescents have been found to benefit children’s school-related behavior and accomplishments. Further attention to the ways in which home-school collaborations influence multiple aspects of children’s development is warranted. See also: > Early Head Start; > Educational partnership; > Head Start
Suggested Reading Cox, D. D. (2005). Evidence-based interventions using homeschool collaboration. School Psychology Quarterly, 20(4), 473–497. Delgado-Gaitan, C. (1991). Involving parents in the schools: A process of empowerment. American Journal of Education, 100(1), 20–46. Fishel, M., & Ramirez, L. (2005). Evidence-based parent involvement interventions with school-aged children. School Psychology Quarterly, 20(4), 371–402. Valdez, C. R., Carlson, C., & Zanger, D. (2005). Evidence-based parent training and family interventions for school behavior change. School Psychology Quarterly, 20(4), 403–433.
Home-School Partnerships Mitchelle Johnson
There are numerous descriptors used to refer to homeschool partnerships (e.g., parent involvement). Differences in definitions are attributed to the overall goals of the partnerships, for example, increasing parent involvement in school based activities, or enhancing the contact between home and school to promote students’ learning
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abilities. Some definitions are also tied to the theories from which the constructs are derived. Although several models of parent school partnerships are available, no model on parent-school partnership to date specifically utilizes a multicultural framework. Thus far, the most integrative definition of the home-school relationship is derived from systems-ecological theory, a theoretical framework that integrates multicultural components. This model emphasizes the reciprocal effect of immediate settings (e.g., classroom) and larger contexts (school, home) to explain the contexts of development. It also seeks to address concerns resulting from differences in social class, family status, socioeconomic standing, and variation in beliefs held by the school or families about parents’ role in their children’s schooling. The issues addressed within this framework are specific to parents from diverse backgrounds including those from low income, minority, immigrant, and/or single parent families.
Definition Home-school partnership occurs through the processes of cooperation, coordination, and collaboration to enhance learning opportunities, educational progress, and school success for students in the academic, social, emotional, and behavioral domains. In addition, home school connection occurs when parents and educators have common goals, are viewed as equals, and both contribute to the process. This assumes that there are no prescribed roles or activities for families or educators, rather options for active realistic participation are created. Finally, this partnership involves shared responsibility between parents and educators for educational outcomes and is considered a preventative or solutionoriented focus rather than a remedial activity. In the research literature, parent involvement is often limited to participation in school-based activities or behaviors of parents (verbal or nonverbal) that foster motivation and academic success in their offspring (e.g., parental aspirations for their children). Homeschool partnership represents the broader concept encompassing a non-hierarchical, mutual alliance that includes parent involvement. Thus, parent participation and home-school relationship are related to, but differ slightly from, each other. Parent involvement has typically referred to six types of home and school focused activities. The research literature mostly focuses on
the first four descriptors, that include: (a) parenting and establishing a home environment to support learning; (b) communicating, or designing effective means of reciprocal communication between home and schools; (c) volunteering in schools or classrooms; (d) encouraging learning at home by helping children with activities that are specifically coordinated with school work; (e) being involved in decision making, advocacy and committee work; and (f) collaborating with the community to improve education for all children.
Influence of Home-School Partnership on Academic and Socio-Emotional Outcomes Research has shown that parent-school partnership positively affects the attitudes of teachers, parents, and students and is associated with higher academic outcomes. Parent involvement is especially related to positive outcomes for elementary school children from minority backgrounds. In particular, parental expectations (i.e., the degree to which a student’s parents holds high expectations for their offspring to achieve at high levels) and parental styles (i.e., demonstration of a supportive and helpful childrearing approach by a parent) are strongly linked with academic success at the elementary school level. At the secondary level, parenting style, that mediates the effects of parental involvement, appears to lead to positive outcomes. For White, Asian, Hispanic, and African American students, parental communication (i.e., the extent to which parents and their children communicate about school activities) and high academic aspirations (i.e., parents’ belief about the level of education that their children should attain) positively affect short- and long-term achievement. However, African American students in comparison to Latino and Asian American pupils seem to benefit the most from involvement in terms of academic gain.
Factors Affecting Parent-School Partnerships The relationship between educators, parents and the school is hindered by a number of obstacles. These barriers can be characterized as structural and psychological difficulties. Structural barriers dominate
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school-based discussions while psychological obstacles refer to attitudes of caregivers, teachers and those in the parent-school dyads. A structural barrier for families, particularly for immigrants, may include lack of familiarity with the American school system. Similarly, barriers that may affect educators’ ability to work with families and limit family-school relationships involves limited knowledge about working with students or parents from multicultural backgrounds and lack of interpreters. Exemplars of psychological barriers for families, educators and the family-school relationship respectively include: parents’ low sense of self-efficacy in helping their children succeed academically, educators’ stereotyped perceptions about families, and psychological and cultural differences that lead to biased assumptions about parents or teachers. Although all parents are involved in their children’s education, the type of involvement may differ across ethnic groups, and may vary based on the parents’ perceptions of their roles in their children’s education. Parents from African and Latino American backgrounds may view school differently than individuals from the dominant culture. Theorists suggest that many African American parents believe that the teacher’s domain is to educate their children while the parents’ task is to provide for the emotional, financial, and other needs necessary for a child’s development. Additionally, some Latino parents believe that their role is to provide nurturance and teach morals, respect and good behavior while the role of school is to instill knowledge. An important variable that affects the family-school partnership is the concept of ‘‘social capital,’’ that is, a parent’s social and cultural skills, and assets. In particular, White parents are more inclined to feel comfortable with school staff because these families share a similar cultural and social network, use the same vocabulary as teachers and feel entitled to treat educators as equals. In contrast, parents with less cultural capital (i.e., less economic status, educational level) may lack confidence that they can understand, challenge, and face teachers and other school professionals as equals.
Fostering Family-School Partnerships Developing family-school partnerships with families from diverse cultural backgrounds is accomplished
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when professionals recognize the embedded values and beliefs that underlie their interactions with parents and affect their professional interpretation of a problem. Beliefs that are assumed to be universal are, in fact, culturally specific. Thus, the concept of a ‘‘partnership’’ in and of itself is culturally loaded and can be viewed as a value or ideal of a culture and in particular, the majority group. Successful partnership consequently relies on constant awareness of oneself as a professional or individual, and an understanding of the worldview behind others’ perspectives. Meaningful partnership depends upon ‘‘a posture of culture reciprocity.’’ It avoids stereotypical solutions by viewing each family as unique and creates opportunities for empowerment that allow each party to learn from each other through their interactions. Thus, practitioners must determine how the cultural value of the family influences their interpretation of an issue or problem. Such perspectives require that professionals acknowledge and provide explicit respect to any cultural differences identified. Through discussion and collaboration, professionals must seek to determine the most effective ways of adapting professional interpretations or recommendations to the value system of the family. Four means of constructing quality familyschool relationships include: Approach, Attitudes, Atmosphere, and Actions. Families and professionals must adopt an approach that recognizes each party’s importance and contributions to children’s learning. Additionally, meaningful family-school relationships develop when teachers and parents hold constructive attitudes based on equality (e.g., the willingness to learn from each other) and correspondence (e.g., the blending of knowledge, skills, ideas and resources to benefit the relationship and student functioning). School efforts to create an atmosphere that is welcoming to parents (e.g., establishing trust) also enhances the family-school dyad. Actions by school professionals to ensure that the family-school partnership is a shared responsibility (e.g., implementing familyschool teams) are other means of fostering a meaningful family-school partnership. School based professionals should instead focus on the strengths of families and seek to increase cultural sensitivity by providing workshops that specifically address multicultural issues. Such measures can produce a more welcoming climate within the school. Moreover, the willingness of educators to be flexible
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in the times they meet with parents, and providing transportation and childcare during such meetings can also facilitate a welcoming environment. Furthermore, extending services through a parent coordinator to specifically address parents’ needs and concerns is another means of developing a welcoming atmosphere. Such a professional can help build family-school teams, increase problem solving across home and school environments, and identify as well as manage conflict. Another way to address structural barriers in the school is to increase informal communication with parents. For instance, when working with parents from linguistically diverse backgrounds, school professionals should provide interpreters and send notes home in the parents’ primary language. In the event that a parent cannot attend a meeting at the school, simply allowing a substitute family member to attend in place of the parent may prove useful. Finally, to develop an atmosphere of trust, it is imperative that correspondence with parents does not only occur during times of crisis or when a problem occurs. See also: > Community approaches to improving child success; > Parental involvement in education
Suggested Reading Christenson, S. L. (2003). The family-school partnership: An opportunity to promote the learning competence of all students. School Psychology Review, 18, 454–482. Epstein, J. L. (1992). School and family partnerships. In M. Alkin (Ed.), Encyclopedia of educational research, (6th ed.) (pp. 1139– 1151). New York: Macmillan. Jeynes, W. H. (2005). A meta-analysis of the effects of parental involvement on minority children’s academic achievement. Education and Urban Society, 35, 202–218.
Suggested Resources National Association of School Psychologist: Culturally Competent Practice—http://www.nasponline.org/culturalcompetence/index. html: This website provides resources for cultural competence. Immigrant Parents and the School: A Handout for Teachers—http:// www.nasponline.org/culturalcompetence/Immigrant Parents.pdf: The above is a link to a PDF-formatted handout for teachers with strategies for home-school communication and recognizing cultural differences.
Homeschooling Yvonne Yeh
Homeschooling—also referred to as deschooling or unschooling—is the educational notion of a child being taught at home. The idea of homeschooling developed around the 1940s when early researchers in childhood education Dr. Raymond Moore and his wife Dorothy began studying the confines of traditional schooling and the parent’s authoritative right in how their child was educated. Historically, families in the nineteenth century lived in an agrarian society, where the home served to educate the children. In 1852, Massachusetts passed the first state compulsory school law, arguing that the state had ‘‘compelling interest’’ for every child to be educated in order to become purposeful citizens. It convicted any child not attending school of the newly established law of truancy. School reformers, not dismissing the increasing presence of racial and economic segregation, began to question schools and what authority they had to teach democratic principles. Two landmark Supreme Court cases, Meyer v. Nebraska (1923) and Pierce v. Society of Sisters (1925), acknowledged the parents’ right to decide what should be taught in their child’s education by the 14th Amendment. In the 1960s, when the Supreme Court passed a bout of laws claiming that reading of the Bible and praying in schools violated the Constitution, the stage was about to be set for modern homeschooling. A prevalent theory during this time was the ‘‘School Mind versus Education Mind.’’ This theory considered which was necessary for learning: the school or the student. Those with a ‘‘school mind’’ supported the idea that the school system was necessary because it brought order. The ‘‘order’’ refers to processes of age groups, attendance, and testing. Those with an ‘‘education mind’’ disagreed and supported the idea that the school system was in fact not of ‘‘order’’ but of disorder because students were coming from various learning backgrounds to convene in one place. In 1977, fifth-grade school teacher turned school reformer John Holt published the first periodical pushing homeschooling, Growing without Schooling. Holt believed that forcing children to learn within the school setting produced students who were unhealthily
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self-conscious (i.e., a focus on grades), rather than students who were actually learning for themselves. In the 1980s, tax regulations closed hundreds of small Christian church schools. Many Christian parents took their children out of the public schools, because they felt their children were growing up as spiritual aliens. It was during this period that going to ‘‘school’’ at home really gained in popularity. Homeschooling is legalized in every state; however, the law is different and complex in each, examples being: number of homeschool ‘‘days,’’ qualification of teaching, and type of curriculum. It is recommended that homeschoolers join a support group and a state homeschool organization that informs the family of state laws. Conferences and curriculum fairs are held throughout the year as extra resources. Now there are about 2 million students who are homeschooled nationwide. See also: > Educational resilience; nerships; > Truancy
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Suggested Reading Bauer, S. W., & Wise, J. (2000). The well-trained mind: A guide to classal education at home. New York: W.W. Norton & Co. Gatto, J. T. (2000). The underground history of American education: A schoolteacher’s intimate investigation into the problem of modern schooling. Oxford: The Oxford Village Press.
Homework Jo-Anne Manswell Butty
Homework, a commonly used instructional strategy, is often defined as the time students spend outside the classroom in assigned activities to practice, reinforce, or apply newly-acquired skills and knowledge or learn necessary skills of independent study. The objective of homework is to learn new, yet simple materials, obtain additional practice with familiar information and procedures, and/or relate classroom subject matter to the outside world.
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Historical Overview Public opinion and attitudes toward homework have changed over the years and to date remain a hotly discussed topic by educators, teachers, parents, and students. Proponents often view homework as an important extension of in-school opportunities to learn, a vehicle for home-school cooperation in assisting students’ learning, and a context within which students can develop independence, time management, responsibility, and other self-regulation skills. Opponents claim that whatever value homework may have is not worth the problems it causes in creating significant family stress and possibly increasing social class differences in achievement by requiring children from families with fewer resources to struggle even more to keep up. With these opposing views in mind, there have been differing attitudes toward homework through different time periods. Homework was rarely viewed as a problem in the nineteenth century. Students in high schools were the only ones given homework with the common expectation of about 2–3 hours of homework per night. Organized homework in the elementary grades was rare. During this period, parental complaints about homework were few. During the 1890s–1940s, the rise and rapid dissemination of the child study movement and progressive education altered the context and public view on homework. Although homework burdens faced by high school students received more criticism than in the nineteenth century, the major focus of concern was on children in grades 4–8. Although homework was advocated as an important path to mental discipline, the drill and memorization routine was suggested as a threat to pre-teens’ physical and mental health. During the 1950s–1960s, there was a decline in the progressive education movement which was replaced by the academic excellence movement. This movement championed higher standards and grounded subject matter instruction in the conceptual approach of the academic disciplines. Homework was rediscovered as a way to catch up with the Soviet Union in science and mathematics. This resulted in a commitment to heavy homework loads to reveal the seriousness of purpose in education. Homework became an instrument of national defense policy. Favorable views of homework began to appear regularly in scholarly and popular educational periodicals in the 1950s and 1960s.
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From the 1970s to 2003, ideas and structures affecting the academic excellence movement fell and reemerged. Between 1968 and 1972, the political and cultural challenges surrounding the Vietnam War and the civil rights movement affected homework indirectly. Although interest in homework receded as a major topic in education, it was indirectly implicated in the general malaise regarding students’ lack of discipline and respect for authority. The big concern was not what type of homework might best enhance student achievement, but whether students could be persuaded to attend school regularly, pay attention to their teachers, and study seriously. Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, homework was seen again as a way to improve the standing in American children compared to students around the world. Educators, parents, and policy makers endorsed the virtues of homework. Its value was publicized both for academic and character-building purposes, and promoting America’s international competitiveness. While evidence during the 2000s indicates that parents overwhelmingly continue to support homework, anecdotal reports of deep parental concerns about excessive homework have appeared in the press with increasing frequency.
Homework Purposes and Functions Researchers have identified ten common reasons why homework is assigned to students, and many teachers assign homework for one of the following ten purposes: (a) Practice: to increase speed, mastery and maintenance of skills, (b) Preparation: to ensure readiness for the next class; to complete activities and assignments started in class, (c) Participation: to increase involvement of each students with the learning task; enjoyment of the fun of learning, (d) Personal development: to build student responsibility, perseverance, time management, self-confidence, and feeling of accomplishment; also to develop and recognize students’ talents and skills that may not be taught in class through extension and enrichment activities, (e) Parent-teacher communication: to enable teachers to inform and involve families in children’s curricular activities and enable parents to know what topics are being taught and how their children are progressing, (f) Parent-child relations: to establish communication between parent and child on the importance of schoolwork and learning; to demonstrate applications of school work to real-life situations and experiences; to
promote parental awareness of and support for students’ work and progress, (g) Peer interactions: to encourage students to work together on assignments; to motivate and learn from one another, (h) Policy: to fulfill directives from administrators at the district or school levels for prescribed amounts of homework per day or week, (i) Public relations: to demonstrate to the public that school is a place of serious work, including homework; also, productive interactions with the public may be designed as student-community homework assignments, and (j) Punishment: to correct problems in conduct or productivity. These purposes serve three main functions: (a) instructional (practice, preparation, participation, and personal development), (b) communicative (parent-teacher communication, parent-child relations, peer interactions), and (c) political (policy, public relations).
Research on Homework Existing data indicate that there is little or no relationship between the amount of homework and student achievement in the elementary grades and only a modest positive relationship in the secondary grades. Although findings on homework at the elementary grades may not enhance achievement very much, it may help students develop the study strategies and self-regulatory skills they need in later years. Further, it is suggested that the quality of assignments probably makes an appreciable difference both in what and how much students learn and in the kinds of learning and self-regulatory strategies they develop. Research shows that assigned homework should be appropriate, challenging, and relevant to meaningful aspects of a student’s performance. Frequent, small assignments allow students to reinforce their classroom learning and increase their success in the classroom. Also, subject specific interactive homework that encourages parent-child discussions at home positively affect students’ skills and achievement in the specific subject. Research further suggests that relationships are stronger for the amount of time students actually spend doing homework and for their rates of completing the assignment than for the amount of homework teachers assign. Elementary teachers are more likely to report using homework to review class materials and going over the homework in class. Secondary teachers more often report using homework as a way for students to prepare for upcoming classes or to follow up lessons
Homework
with enrichment or application activities. Struggling students take more time than other students to complete homework activities, partly because they get less work done at school and therefore have more to complete at home. Many students have negative attitudes toward homework, especially younger students who have not had its purposes explained to them effectively. Negative attitudes are especially likely if the homework typically involves worksheets and other repetitive low-level tasks.
Homework and Cultural/Group Differences Many studies show that parents from low income backgrounds care deeply about their children’s intellectual development, and employ rich and varied means to encourage both a love of learning and a deep value for education. Like their middle income peers, many parents from low income backgrounds provide a daily structure and place for homework completion, clearly communicate expectations and standards for both social behavior and academic performance, stay abreast of the dates for homework assignments and tests, and share stories of their own occupational difficulties which they believe their children can avoid by doing well in school. They also help with homework, even if they have difficulty understanding it, and visit schools when possible. When teachers assign homework, they must remember that students differ considerably in the time and resources they have available to them and in the amount and kind of assistance they can get from parents and other family members. Furthermore, homework should be assigned to truly help students achieve educational goals and never simply because one thinks students should have it every night or, worse still, to punish them for misbehavior. For students with specific cognitive or academic difficulties, homework should be assigned to provide additional practice in basic skills, individualize assignments for students’ unique abilities and needs, and provide extra scaffolding. Students who do not have access to computers, help from parents, a quiet place to study, have many household and care-giving responsibilities, or have to work after school are at a distinct disadvantage. Students with learning disabilities may find homework exigent. Homework challenges among these students can be attributed to two primary causes (a) student characteristics (e.g., poor motivation, problems in
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listening comprehension, lack of organizational skills), and (b) teacher deficits in making assignments (e.g., assigning work that is too difficult or time consuming, failing to ensure that students record assignments properly, or have the necessary materials). Research describes five strategies to improve homework results for students with disabilities: (a) give clear and appropriate assignments, (b) make homework accommodations, (c) teach study skills, (d) use a homework calendar, and (e) ensure clear home/school communication. Some strategies that research has shown to be effective in improving homework completion and task performance include the use of (a) reinforcements, (b) graphing, (c) cooperative study teams, (d) homework planners, (e) real life assignments, and (f) family involvement.
Homework in the Twenty-First Century Due to increased technology and the need to complete sometimes difficult assignments in a timely and accurate manner, many school districts and organizations offer homework hotlines. Additionally, there are numerous sites on the Internet where students can go for homework help. Furthermore, thousands of U.S. students are relying increasingly on overseas tutors to assist with homework. The tutors, who communicate with students over the Internet, are available around the clock, making homework help one of the newest industries to be outsourced to other countries. Hotlines and online homework sites can be effective and valuable tools for providing all students with necessary homework assistance. Homework is a critical means of communicating standards and expectations. Regardless of social class and ability, teachers’ standards for homework completion can enhance achievement, and develop students’ study strategies and self-regulatory skills. See also: > Teaching strategies; > Home-school partnerships; > No Child Left Behind (NCLB); > Study skills
Suggested Reading Cooper, H. (2004, Summer). Homework. Theory Into Practice, 43(3). This special issue of Theory Into Practice, edited by Harris Cooper, is meant to help school administrators and teachers use homework to best serve the interests of students and families.
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Suggested Resources Family Education Network, www.familyeducation.com National Education Association, www.nea.org The Parent Teacher Association, www.pta.org U.S. Department of Education, http://www.nclb.gov/parents/ homework/index.html
Homophobia Melinda Finkel-Konigsberg
Homophobia may be defined as the fear, dislike, and hatred of same-sex relationships or of people who love and are sexually attracted to those of the same sex. This fear or negative attitude toward lesbian and gay people may be generalized to those assumed to be lesbian, gay, bisexual, and/or transgender (LGBT) and anything connected to LGBT culture. Homophobia concerns lesbians (lesbophobia), gay men (gayphobia), bisexual people (biphobia), and transgender people (transphobia). Transphobia, which, although distinct from homophobia since it concerns gender identity and not sexual orientation, refers to social mechanisms often close to homophobic logic. Homophobia includes prejudice, discrimination, harassment, and acts of violence brought on by fear and hatred. Some violent examples from the twentieth century include the Nazi regime systematically incarcerating, castrating, torturing, and murdering thousands of LGBT individuals in concentration camps; Soviet gulags; blackmail and persecution in the United States (U.S.) in the McCarthy era; and hate crimes, such as the murder of Matthew Shepard, an openly gay student who was beaten to death in 1998. Homophobia occurs in schools and society on personal, institutional, and societal levels. It occurs within the context of a homophobic and heterosexist culture. Heterosexism is the assumption that all people are or should be heterosexual. Heterosexism excludes the needs, concerns and lifestyles of LGBT people while it gives advantages to heterosexual people (i.e., benefits of marriage and hospital privileges). It is often a subtle form of oppression that reinforces realities of silence and invisibility for LGBT youth. Parents, peers, and school staff who engage in verbal and physical abuse towards LGBT youth promote
negative outcomes including LGBT youth running away, being thrown out or forced to leave home (homelessness), substance abuse, truancy, dropping out of school, deviant behavior, isolation, depression, and suicide. Suicide is the leading cause of death among LGBT youth, primarily due to the negative consequences of growing up in a homophobic society. For instance, LGBT youth are three times more likely to commit suicide than their heterosexual peers. Several studies support the premise that the internalization of society’s negative views towards homosexuality (internalized homophobia) leads to depression, suicidal ideation, shame, and self-hatred in LGBT individuals. In addition, being an LGBT person of color can cause the need to deal with multiple identity issues, such as racism and homophobia, at the same time. Other specific issues LGBT individuals of color face include family and cultural rejection, limited role models and support systems reflecting one’s identity, and feeling forced to choose either the racial or the sexual orientation community over the other. Stereotypes of LGBT people of color are also harmful, such as depictions of Asians as submissive, dominated and desexualized or over-sexualized. Homophobia is experienced in all cultures, but there are differences both between and within different cultural groups. For example, homophobia is often seen as a major part of African American culture, driven by both religious and political forces. However, results obtained from empirical studies examining differences in White and African American homophobic attitudes have been inconsistent. Some studies indicate that there are no significant differences, while others find higher levels of homophobia in African Americans, especially enculturated African Americans who have high church attendance. Religiosity has commonly been found to predict negative reactions to LGBT individuals. While homophobia might not be greater in Latino communities, deeply rooted connections to machismo and religious traditions can cause issues of homophobia unique to Latino communities. Within the Asian community, the topic of sexuality may be unspoken. This culture of silence can foster homophobia. Coming out for Asian Americans may be additionally complex due to cultural and familial pressures, especially in the case of sons who are expected to carry on the family line. Though homophobia actively oppresses members of the LGBT community, it also hurts heterosexual people by inhibiting the ability of heterosexual people
Human rights
to form intimate relationships with members of their own sex, for fear of being perceived as LGBT. Homophobia has also been seen as a restricting factor on gender relations as to the weight associated with each role (i.e., compensatory masculinity). Male-to-male relationships often incite a stronger negative reaction in a homophobic person than female-to-female relationships. This double standard is reflected in the media. Portrayals of female-to-female relationships are often a form of female objectification and seen as a male turn-on or fantasy. However, sex between men is often taboo, seen as emasculating, and may reflect an insecurity of losing one’s manhood or fear of penetration. Young people may engage in sexual behavior at an earlier age to prove that they are heterosexual. Anti-gay bias has contributed significantly to the spread of the AIDS epidemic in terms of preventing schools and other organizations from creating effective and accurate sexual education programs that would prevent sexually transmitted diseases (STD’s). Psychologist Dorothy Riddle developed a homophobia scale that lists four negative homophobic levels (Repulsion, Pity, Tolerance, Acceptance) and four positive levels of attitude (Support, Admiration, Appreciation, Nurturance) towards lesbian and gay people and their relationships. Activist members of the LGBT community and allies (non-LGBT people with attitudes of Appreciation or Nurturance who work towards combating homophobia and heterosexism, both on a personal and institutional level), have achieved specific legislation that protects LGBT civil rights, and opposes hate speech and hate crimes. In 1973, the American Psychiatric Association removed homosexuality from its Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders and officially ended the illness model of homosexuality. The American Psychological Association (APA) followed suit in 1975 and affirmed that homosexuality was not pathological and urged its members to take the lead in removing the stigma that has long been associated with LGBT orientations. In 1998, APA further stated that it supported the dissemination of accurate information about sexual orientation, mental health, and appropriate interventions to counteract the bias that is based on ignorance or unfounded beliefs about sexual orientation. Programs, such as Safe Zone, are implemented into schools and organizations to educate trainees about homosexuality, homophobia, and heterosexism. These programs work to create a LGBT-friendly environment by making no
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assumptions about sexuality, using non-gender specific language, displaying LGBT-related symbols, learning about and referring to LGBT community organizations, providing role-models, and encouraging the institution’s administration to adopt and enforce anti-discrimination policies that include sexual orientation. In addition, in 2005, the International Day Against Homophobia (May 17), was officially established with the goal of articulating action and reflection to combat acts of violence associated with LGBT identifications. See also: > Gender bias; > Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender (GLBT); > Racism: Individual, Institutional, and Cultural; > Stigma
Suggested Reading Guidelines for psychotherapy with lesbian, gay, and bisexual clients. American Psychologist, 55(12), 1440–1451. Finkel, M. J., Storaasli, R., Bandele, A., & Schaefer, V. (2003). Diversity training in graduate school: An exploratory evaluation of the Safe Zone project. Professional Psychology: Research and Practice, 34, 555–561.
Suggested Resources Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network (GLSEN) website— http://www.glsen.org/cgi-bin/iowa/all/library/record/1279.html: This website features an activity for understanding homophobia with several scenarios that can serve as a platform for discussion. Safe Zone Program—http://www.cwru.edu/provost/lgbt/safezone/ reduce.html: This website provides suggestions for reducing homophobia in one’s community.
Human Rights Linda Serra Hagedorn . Susan W Herrera
Definition Human rights are the inalienable and universal rights entitled to people by virtue of their humanity. Human rights can neither be established, nor abrogated by governments or other authorities. Despite universality,
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human rights have historically been subject to debate, regulated, or disregarded by nations throughout the world. The first attempt to create laws to protect global human rights was enacted by the United Nations (U.N.) in response to the atrocities inflicted on humans during World War II.
aspects of life including schools, childcare, courts, recreation, foster/adoptive care, and healthcare. At the time of this writing, while the U.S. has ratified some of the associated optional protocols, it has not yet ratified the CRC. The only other country that has not ratified the CRC is Somalia.
Human Rights Laws
Protecting Human Rights
In 1948, the U.N. adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in response to genocide committed by the Nazis during World War II and the United States (U.S.) atomic bombing of Japan in response to the Pearl Harbor attack. These events prompted a paradigm shift viewing human rights as a universal issue affecting humanity worldwide rather than an internal issue of sovereign governments. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights was created to serve as the foundation for global human rights laws. Later, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and its Optional Protocol (1966) as well as the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (1966) were added to form the International Bill of Human Rights. Subsequently other covenants followed to ensure that human rights remain protected under all circumstances. All member nations of the U.N. are expected to adhere to these and other human rights laws and treaties ratified by the U.N. In addition to international doctrines, the U.N expects that all member nations will enact and adhere to national laws supporting human rights within their own countries. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights declares that freedom, justice, and peace in the world are dependent upon the acknowledgement that all humans have dignity and equal and inalienable rights. Further, regardless of nationality, ethnicity, religion, gender, language, social class, political opinion, or any other distinction, all humans are protected by law. In addition, everyone is entitled to personal, legal, educational, political, and economic freedoms, including the right to be free from fear. The Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) was adopted in 1989 by the U.N., declaring that as people, all children have dignity, and are entitled to human rights protections. This document, including its Optional Protocols (2002) specifically states that children are to be protected in all venues and in all
In spite of the existing laws, many nations fail to extend human rights to their populations prompting the creation of organizations designed to identify human rights violations and seek measures to improve human conditions. The Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights of the United Nations serves to promote and protect worldwide human rights. Independent organizations such as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch also keep vigil on the global state of human rights. One of the most effective means of ensuring and promoting human rights is through education that encourages respect for the dignity of humankind and an understanding of the plight of those who are the victims of violations. Amnesty International, Oxfam UK, the Human Rights Education Association, and the Office of the United Nations High Commission for Human Rights are among several organizations that provide access to textbooks, curricula, reference materials, and other resources for education on human rights.
The Status of Human Rights Today Abuses continue in spite of worldwide efforts to stop them. The United Nations, Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International are among many organizations that keep a close watch on human rights violations. One of the most tragic violations is occurring in the Darfur region of western Sudan, where an estimated 400,000 people have been killed since 2003 in what has been described as ethnic cleansing or genocide of the Fur, Zaghawa and Massaleit ethnic groups by the government-supported Janjaweed militia. See also: > Desegregation; > Discrimination; > Education for All Handicapped Children Act of 1975; > Health insurance; > Prejudice
Hypochondriasis
Suggested Reading McFarland, S., Mathews, M. (2005). Who cares about human rights? Political Psychologist, 26(3), 365–385. Donnelly, J. (2003). Universal human rights in theory and practice. New York: Cornell University Press.
Suggested Resources Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights—www.ohchr.org/english: This website is offered in several languages and provides updated news, reports, and human rights law information from around the world. Amnesty International—www.amnesty.org: Amnesty International aims to protect human rights. The website provides upto-date news, information, educational materials, and provides visitors the opportunity to take action in helping its causes. Human Rights Watch—www.hrw.org: The Human Rights Watch is dedicated to protecting human right around the world. The website provides news and opportunities to help, as well as links to audio and video media.
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While there are children who are more somatically oriented than others, hypochondriasis as a diagnosis is given in the late teens or early adult life when medical intervention seeking behavior becomes a pattern and the condition becomes chronic. Over time, the symptoms wax and wane. Teenagers who develop hypochondriasis have less direct control over medical care decisions, but will exhibit symptoms that interfere with social and education functioning, driving parents to seek medical resolution. Statistics available suggest that hypochondriacal patients (teens and adults inclusive) compose about 6% of a general practitioner’s caseload, but the true rate of hypochondriasis is not known. Only a small percentage recovers permanently while 95% continue to show symptoms of preoccupation with the fear of having an underlying disease. Anxiety disorders or personality disorders often pair with hypochondriasis, thus contributing to its chronicity.
Cultural Issues
Hypochondriasis Grace Wong
An individual with hypochondriasis is preoccupied with fears of having a serious underlying disease that medical doctors and examinations cannot detect. Normal body sensations are interpreted by the individual as proof of disease. Thorough medical examination generally fails to prove the presence of a medical illness and despite normal findings the patient insists there is a disease. The individual’s preoccupation with bodily symptoms causes significant distress to the point of impaired social and occupational functioning. Some of the common symptoms identified include changes in pace of heartbeat, bowel activity, coughing, general aches and pains, and general malaise. Internal and external physical change merely further support the presence of a serious ailment—yet to be diagnosed. As a result of the obsession, the individual frequently changes doctors and insists on additional examinations and laboratory work to the point beyond what is considered reasonable and counter to medical advice.
Some cultures that express emotional distress through somatization should be differentiated from hypochondriasis. Asian cultures such as the Chinese and Japanese describe feelings and emotions originating in body organs and can give the impression of being more somatically preoccupied. Emotional distress is often more socially acceptable when expressed through physical symptoms as verbalizing complaints is considered rude, confrontational, or can bring about loss of face for that individual or others in the group to which one belongs. Due to the concept of ‘‘ren’’ (e.g., to hold back, suppress, hold in) as a part of the valued discipline of self control, internalized distress can wear down physical health. Suppressed anger can turn into stomach ulcers or chronic aches and pains. Descriptions for feelings are built into the language in such a way that bodily equivalents are used to describe feelings. For example, one can describe feeling annoyed, anger, and pent-up as feel ‘‘pressured chi’’ and a ‘‘choking throat.’’ Individuals from these cultures, however, may appear to express emotional and psychological distress through somatization but not to the degree of a disorder. The use of somatization is in response to social pressures against open complaint rather than an obsessive fear of serious illness. To complain of body aches
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as a sign of depression is not the same as believing that body aches are a sign of ‘‘yet to be diagnosed’’ cancer. Some African, Latino, and Asian cultures believe that harm can be brought about through curses and demons. The source of serious illness can promote obsessive belief, but the source of the threat is not medical and undiagnosed. Here it is believed that the illness is non-medical in origin and from an external source wishing harm rather than an existing threat that is not yet diagnosed.
Treatment of Hypochondriasis Because the patient does not believe the doctor nor the evidence provided when test results do not support their hypothesis, treatment is often resisted. The individual is entrenched in the belief that symptoms are medically based and accepting psychiatric treatment is an admission that the cause is not physical. Hence, compliance with treatment is an issue both with medical recommendations and psychiatric referrals. Underage minors, however, would have a greater likelihood of receiving treatment because of parental supervision and encouragement to receive psychiatric treatment if the symptoms are troublesome and under
the recommendation of their primary physicians. When the minor becomes an independent adult, s/he is able to reject treatment readily (unless a good therapeutic relationship is well established) and can ignore the psychiatric aspect and continue to insist that the problem is medical in nature. Often, relatively minor hypochondriacal preoccupations are never identified as psychiatric and fall through the cracks without receiving treatment. Even cases that are referred to psychiatry may not be followed through by the patient as they prefer to go on to other physicians in hopes of finding the medical cause of the ailment. Possible options for treatment include medication to treat underlying anxiety and obsessions and psychotherapy to deal with self-defeating behavior, potential anger, anxiety, and depression. See also: > Somatization Compulsive Disorder (OCD)
disorder;
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Obsessive-
Suggested Reading Adams, H., & Sutkers, P. (2001). Comprehensive handbook of psychopathology (3rd ed.). New York: Plenum Press.
IDEA >
Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA)
IEP >
Individualized Education Plan (IEP)
Immigration Heidi Allison Bender . Patricia Ruiz-Navarro . Irina Feygina . Monika Echavarria-Son . Francisco X Gaytan . Luka Lucic
History of Immigration to the U.S. The ongoing debate about immigrant rights gained worldwide attention when pro-immigrant protest mobilizations took place across the United States (U.S.) in late March and April of 2006. Immigrant supporters, human rights activists, non-governmental organizations, and workers unions organized massive marches in response to the HR4437 initiative, which pronounces undocumented immigration a felony, and providing assistance to undocumented workers, a crime. Some media outlets referred to the rallies as ‘‘the biggest civil rights demonstration in the U.S. history.’’ In academic circles, the marches also sparked renewed mobilization and debate. However, for migration scholars, immigration issues, policies, and concerns have been at the forefront of discussions throughout the past century. Since the late nineteenth century, various immigrant groups have been viewed as undesirable and unwelcome by the U.S. government. As early as 1882, the Chinese Exclusion Act barred Chinese immigrants from entering the country. Two decades later, foreignborn individuals of Italian, Jewish, and Polish descent were deemed ‘‘objectionable’’ by the U.S. Immigration Commission. Pervasive xenophobia and ethnocentrism following World War I promoted unflattering
misrepresentations of people’s race, religion, and ideologies throughout the 1920’s, 1930’s and 1940’s. Legislation reflecting these beliefs, the National Origins Act (1924), limited migration from Asia and Europe, and restricted the number of new immigrants accepted from a given country to 2% of that nationality’s population already residing in the U.S. Due to the economy’s sudden decline, mass deportations of Mexican Americans occurred following the Great Depression. However, as the U.S. economy rebounded post- World War II, immigrant labor was again welcomed. Under the Bracero Program (1942– 1964), 4,000,000 Mexican ‘‘seasonal’’ farm workers were granted visas. Throughout this 16-year period, migrant workers regularly suffered mistreatment and abuse from their employers and contractors. After 15 years of temporal work in the U.S., Mexican workers again experienced a massive government-sponsored deportation under the Immigration Act of 1965. The Act abolished national quotas in favor of hemispheric ones, paving the way for increased migration from Latin America and the Asian continent. As a result, the U.S. experienced a steep rise in its foreign-born inhabitants from 1970 to 1980, with the country’s immigrant population climbing from 9.6 million to 19.8 million. Amid the civil and labor rights movement of the 1960’s, amendments were made to this Act, designed to restrict legal immigration. Yet, despite a climate of increased control, illegal immigration steadily began to rise. In 1986, Congress enacted the Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA), intended to manage uncontrolled immigration and to discourage employers from hiring undocumented staff. Under this legislation, nearly 3,000,000 people (74% of Mexican descent) were granted a path to citizenship, and provided with an opportunity for family reunification. However, for many, this Act fostered an atmosphere of discontent. Following the terrorist attacks of September 11th, 2001, the U.S. public grew increasingly concerned about the potential harms posed by individuals with foreign ties residing both inside and outside of the U.S. In response, a new era in immigration policy dawned, and is now overseen by the Department of Homeland Security. Foremost on this organization’s agenda is to secure the country’s borders, thereby reducing illegal migration. In spite of increased vigilance, wariness, and socio-political debate, the number of immigrants, both legal and illegal, continues to steadily rise. Currently, approximately 31.1 million immigrants reside in the
C. S. Clauss-Ehlers (Ed.), Encyclopedia of Cross-Cultural School Psychology, DOI 10.1007/978-0-387-71799-9, # Springer Science+Business Media LLC 2010
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U.S., representing over 10% of the country’s total population. The ethnic and racial make-up of immigrants into the U.S. has changed considerably in the past 100 years. Throughout the first decade of the twentieth century, Europeans accounted for 91% of all immigrants. A century later, in 2005, immigration is predominantly fueled by individuals from Latin America (32%; Mexico alone accounts for 30.71%) and Asia (25.8%), as compared to the 5.1% from northern and southern Europe.
Theoretical and Methodological Approaches Given its breadth and social importance, immigration has received a great deal of attention from social scientists through their explorations of the social, political, economic, and psychological aspects of the process. In particular, research on immigrant children has focused on educational processes and outcomes, which have far-reaching implications for the immigrants’ success in the professional and social spheres of the host society. Many immigrants arrive with little social and human capital and must build it throughout their lives. Education is often a key resource in acquiring the knowledge base necessary to become economically and socially successful. In addition, engagement in institutions of learning is a central means to cultural integration. A full understanding of the immigrant educational experience calls for research on the social, political, and economic challenges immigrants encounter, and the obstacles they face. What forms of prejudice do immigrants encounter and how do they deflect or cope with its’ negative impact? What is the role of family, culture, identity, and the school context in the educational experiences and outcomes of immigrant children? Social scientists research the complex social phenomenon of immigration through a variety of perspectives and theoretical frameworks. Political scientists, demographers, economists, and some sociologists conduct investigations ‘‘from above,’’ evaluating immigration at the macro level by focusing on the economic benefits, political implications, and management of socio-economic and socio-demographic changes. In contrast, sociologists, psychologists, educators, and anthropologists view research ‘‘from below,’’ examining immigration at the micro level by exploring the immigrant’s life experiences, educational outcomes, identity negotiations, political behavior, social networking,
community ties, mental and physical health. Researchers interested in the interplay between institutional contexts and individual immigrant experiences interconnect views ‘‘from above’’ and ‘‘from below.’’ The findings presented here are acquired through quantitative and qualitative means. Quantitative research primarily relies on large data sets collected using the census, large-scale surveys, and questionnaires, and analyzed by statistical modeling. Quantitative methodology is useful in identifying general trends and forecasting outcomes across different groups (e.g., identifying groups of immigrant children who are vulnerable to, or well suited for, dealing with educational challenges). In contrast, qualitative data is drawn from ethnographies, observations, interviews, case studies, and narratives designed to provide a more vivid, detailed, and subject-based insight into the experiences of individuals within their own social contexts (e.g., ethnographic studies of the role of ethnicity and gender in educational contexts).
Educational Outcomes among Immigrant Populations Currently, one in five school-aged children in the U.S. are immigrants. While modern day immigrant populations are, as a whole, more educated than those arriving during the last great migration of the early twentieth century, the amount of human and social capital newly arrived immigrants bring to their host country varies greatly between immigrant groups; a bimodal pattern of immigration often emerges. Many immigrants are affluent, highly-educated, and enter into high-level professional jobs (i.e., Asian immigrants oftentimes arrive with higher educational and occupational levels than those achieved, on average, by U.S.-born Anglo Americans). In contrast, others are poor, have considerably fewer years of formal education, and enter America’s lowest economic classes (e.g., ‘‘Labor immigrants’’ arriving primarily from Central America and Mexico). Despite these hardships, immigrant children are often academically successful and among the ranks of high school valedictorians, national merit-based award winners, and prospective freshman at Ivy League universities. At the same time, however, some groups of immigrant children are reported to have disproportionately high rates of school drop out and academic failure. According to existing research, success in school also varies by generational membership for many ethnic
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minority groups. First-generation immigrant children often experience highly positive educational, health, and psychological outcomes. Conversely, researchers report diminished academic aspirations and school performance in second generation immigrants. More specifically, second and third generation immigrant youth frequently experience more negative attitudes and declining educational outcomes as compared to their first generation counterparts. These findings are unexpected since successive generations of American youth have a better command of the English language and familiarity with American culture. Differences in educational outcomes between and within immigrant groups have given rise to much research on why some immigrants thrive while others languish in the educational system. Given the multiplicity of subgroups that exist within the immigrant population, there are numerous moderating variables that need to be considered to understand patterns of immigrant educational attainment.
Factors Influencing Immigrant Educational Outcomes The Stress of Immigration Among the many factors that underlie educational outcomes in immigrant populations, the first and perhaps most important aspect of the ‘‘immigrant experience’’ is the stress and complexity of relocating to a new country. An immigrant’s economic and social background, as well as his/her initial treatment upon arrival, are the two most important factors that mediate the amount of stress the individual will experience. These factors also mediate the individual’s ability to handle that stress. Factors that have a negative impact on an immigrant’s stress levels and mental health include escaping poverty or violence in the home country, encountering poor living conditions, language barriers, loss of social status, difficulty understanding and adjusting to new social settings, discrimination, and lack of social support from a co-ethnic community upon arrival in the host country. These experiences can increase the likelihood that an immigrant will suffer emotional and psychological distress (i.e., loneliness, depression, disorientation, demoralization, marginalization, and alienation). Furthermore, those who come to the U.S. as refugees may have experienced trauma prior to migration and may suffer extreme psychological stress (i.e., Post-Traumatic
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Stress Disorder). Although the negative impact of these initial stressors recedes with time, other aforementioned facets of the immigrant experience gain in prominence and influence social, economic, and educational outcomes.
Segmented Assimilation Many investigators have focused on the causes of the decline in immigrant youth’s performance and aspirations from the first to the second generation. The theory of segmented assimilation suggests that the contexts that immigrants come from, as well as the situations that they are immigrating to, help explain observable differences in educational and acculturation trajectories across generations of various immigrant groups. Immigrants will likely experience a better outcome over time if they migrate through legal channels with a high level of education and if mainstream society has a favorable attitude toward their presence. However, if an illegal immigrant arrives with low educational resources, and is poorly received by the host society due to language or socio-cultural differences, then educational and adaptive outcomes will likely diminish over time.
Stereotyping, Prejudice, and Discrimination Stereotyping, prejudice, and discrimination in educational, vocational, and social domains are often a constant presence in the lives of immigrants. Unfair treatment and exclusion can have long-term psychological and social effects, and can foster a climate of mistrust toward individuals and institutions that are perceived as discriminatory. Too often, stereotyping and negative attitudes place immigrant children, particularly second generation youth, in situations that can promote the development of negative identities. Immigration researchers refer to society’s impact on immigrant students as a ‘‘social mirror,’’ which reflects a vision of who they are through the eyes of others. Parents, teachers, and peers evoke positive or negative images through this mirror, which, whether accurate or inaccurate, serve as important sources for identity formation. Negative reflections can have an adverse impact on identity formation and, as a result, academic motivation and outcomes. In many instances, immigrant
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children report being acutely aware of how ‘‘unAmerican’’ they seem. This self-perception is often heightened by the divergence between customs and values practiced in the child’s home and community, and those of mainstream society. At the same time, an inability to embrace mirror images can result in exclusion and disengagement from American culture and institutions, such as schools. There are many other barriers that prevent the development of a positive sense of self for immigrant students. Discrimination by students and teachers, inaccessibility to adult role models, and detrimental institutional policies, all hinder the development of a positive self-identity. An opposition to mainstream institutions, such as education and formal schooling, might develop among immigrant students who feel that society does not respect their native culture and language. This oppositional stance places immigrant or minority individuals at odds with their educational process, thus limiting their potential for academic success. Stereotype threat is yet another powerful psychological process that can affect educational outcomes for members of minority groups. This term describes the acute awareness of achievement-related negative stereotypes held against one’s group, thereby creating anxiety and fear of confirming the perceived stereotype. Increased anxiety may interfere with, and decrease performance on, tasks to which the stereotype applies. The effect of stereotype threat is the strongest when group membership and negative performance-based stereotypes are salient, particularly in educational and diagnostic testing situations. Stereotype threat has been shown to significantly decrease cognitive performance on diagnostic testing among African Americans, as well as performance on mathematical tests among women. For example, recent studies conducted by Kay Deaux and colleagues reported that many West Indian immigrant college students, who are typically perceived as Black in the U.S., also experience the detrimental effects of stereotype threat. While first generation immigrants did not exhibit a decrease in performance on testing conditions that activate stereotype threat, U.S.-born second generation immigrants exhibited stereotype threat effects and a concomitant decrease in performance.
Family and Parental Involvement Other key factors in the educational experience of immigrant children include the encouragement,
participation, value systems, and cultural practices passed on from families to their children. Immigrant parents and their extended families often feel that school is an important factor for upward mobility into U.S. society and therefore impart a sense of respect and appreciation for the educational opportunities available to their children. It has also been argued that immigrant optimism acts as an important protective mechanism and buffers immigrants against the impact of negative external forces. Frequently, the gratitude that recent immigrants feel for the educational opportunities available in the U.S. results in strong encouragement of their children to succeed academically. For some immigrant groups, Mexicans and Central Americans, especially, education in their home country is not accessible past a certain grade level and the mandatory status of education in the U.S. is perceived as a tremendous improvement. Multiple investigations have found that immigrant parents generally have positive attitudes toward their children’s education, hold high aspirations for their academic success, and are highly motivated to help them thrive in school. Despite these positive attitudes, many immigrant parents do not adequately understand how to provide the concrete and specific guidance necessary for facilitating academic success. Rather, parents may believe that schools bear the majority of the educational burden; the parents’ role is to provide encouragement and not to collaborate or explicitly direct the child’s education. Thus, parents cede the specifics of their child’s education to the ‘‘experts,’’ and feel that teachers and school administration know how to best educate their children. Such deferential attitudes may unintentionally result in poor parental monitoring and a lack of understanding of the American school system. Although immigrant parents care a great deal about the quality of their child’s education, the active parental participation, advocacy, and collaboration necessary for academic success often goes unrealized. Parental involvement in the education process often entails navigating through the bureaucracy, a complex process even for parents with advanced degrees and proficient English language ability; even college educated U.S.-born parents report feeling overwhelmed and confused by the information needed to guide their children through the college admissions process. In general, parents feel that the information they receive is oftentimes difficult to understand and that school staffs are not always clear or forthcoming with the information they disseminate. Communication issues
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are compounded when parents are not fluent in English or have low levels of education. As a result, immigrants face even greater difficulties in helping their children achieve their education-related goals. When immigrant parents do not avail themselves of educational or social resources, a lack of continuity between home and school can arise and have negative consequences for the immigrant student.
Socialization Developmental scientists also highlight the importance of familial involvement in a child’s cultural socialization practices (e.g., the acquisition of ethnic and cultural values, beliefs, practices, knowledge, and language). These practices are influenced by length of stay in the host country, acculturation, language, perceived social, school and neighborhood contexts, changes in ethnic and gender identity, educational and occupational opportunities, and perceived discrimination. One form of cultural socialization emphasizes cultural practices, like exposing children to cultural literature, music, artifacts, fables, ethnic foods and culture-specific holiday traditions. A second form of socialization is related to discrimination, whereby parents caution their children about the stereotypes or social barriers they may encounter, which promotes feelings of mistrust toward the majority culture. This practice is especially salient for immigrants who are perceived as Black or African American. Qualitative data evaluating Caribbean immigrants, including individuals from the West Indies and the Dominican Republic, proposed that parents teach their children to differentiate and isolate themselves from U.S.-born African Americans, a minority group frequently targeted by discrimination and/or social injustice. As part of preparing children for bias, parents also directly and indirectly teach coping strategies as well as convey messages of egalitarianism which encourage respect for diversity.
Establishment of Identity The process of immigration disrupts an individual’s psychological and social development through exposure to a different ethos, rules, roles, norms, discourses, power structures, and cultural practices. Changing cultures demands complex adjustments on cognitive, interpersonal, and social levels, as well as at the level
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of the self or identity. A central task of adolescence is to integrate one’s roles in the world into a healthy and coherent sense of self to function successfully in adolescence and adulthood. This task is complicated for immigrant youth by the multiple and, at times, conflicting roles they must assume in the different contexts to which they are exposed. As immigrant children undergo a reconstruction of their culture and contexts, they experience complex changes in identity that are influenced by interactions with U.S. culture and institutions as well as interactions with their own ethnic culture and community. The process of identity construction is not immutable, but rather shifting and multifaceted, and is continually renegotiated as a child develops and interacts with his/her parents, peers, school, and neighborhood contexts. An influential framework for understanding immigrant identity was developed by John Berry, who proposed that identity is constructed along two important dimensions—the extent of identity with the host culture and the extent of identity with the home culture. Berry considers the immigrant’s motivation to acculturate to U.S. society and culture by taking into account whether it is of value for the minority individual to establish relationships with the larger, dominant society and maintain one’s ethnic identity and cultural characteristics. The negotiation between these choices gives rise to immigrant and minority individuals’ adaptation and identity development. Adaptation can take place in several forms: (a) assimilation, where the immigrant group gives up its culture and adopts the dominant culture; (b) integration, where the immigrant group maintains its own culture and also adopts aspects of the dominant culture; (c) separation, which occurs when the minority or immigrant group maintains its own culture, and does not adopt the dominant culture; and (d) marginalization, which occurs when the immigrant group neither maintains its own culture, nor adopts the dominant culture. It has been theorized that maintaining a bicultural balance between the native and newly-adopted cultures, while holding a positive attitude toward both groups, can help an individual in a cultural minority develop a healthy sense of self and protect him/her against negative educational outcomes. For example, fluent, English- and Spanish-speaking immigrant youth from bilingual households are the least likely to drop out of school. Furthermore, the maintenance of native language is beneficial because it allows a child to
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access social support from both family and the larger community, particularly when the family and community are non-English speaking. A child who experiences their home language and culture in an institutional context such as school will likely feel more valued in that setting and in the larger society, making the possibility of academic success appear more attainable. Seminal works in the field posit three types of immigrant identity: ethnic flight, adversarial identity, and bicultural identity. Ethnic flight refers to an identity constructed to fit in with the host culture and is associated with socializing primarily with peers from the mainstream culture and mimicking their behaviors and attitudes. Language is often an important tool; speaking English becomes a proxy for belonging and acceptance. Although children who employ ethnic flight may perform at competent academic levels, they may isolate themselves from building relationships within the ethnic community and lose the benefit of having a ‘‘buffer’’ from the negative effects of discrimination. Adversarial identity refers to negotiating a sense of self around rejecting mainstream values, often perceiving one’s options as either being ‘‘like them’’ or ‘‘betraying your own.’’ This negotiation becomes a constant source of conflict between future opportunities and present-day self, and may place immigrant children at increased risk for premature termination of their education, with a subsequent higher probability of unemployment. Many children develop bicultural or ‘‘hybrid’’ styles, and creatively make use of living in both worlds by embracing a sense of ethnic pride while also functioning competently in mainstream American society. Bicultural identity is associated with high academic achievement and is considered by developmental psychologists to be the most adaptive identity for immigrant children. While it was traditionally believed that rapid assimilation into mainstream culture was preferable, recent literature suggests that assimilation at the expense of previously-learned ideas, traditions, and connections to the ethnic community may be detrimental. Rather, the development of a healthy bicultural identity entails strengthening community affiliations, thereby providing immigrants with the necessary social, psychological, and economic assistance to maintain more positive attitudes toward education. Identifying with one’s ethnic group or country of origin can act as a protective mechanism by providing immigrant youth with the opportunity to resist and buffer themselves against delinquent
attitudes and behaviors that they encounter in their daily lives.
School Context: Problems and Possibilities The academic and future success of immigrant children in many ways depends on the educational contexts they encounter. Educational institutions play an integral role in the early phases of adaptation to the new culture. For most children, the first step in the acculturation process takes place in the classroom and includes learning a new language, social and cultural mores, and educational practices. The school context continues to play a central role in immigrant children’s long-term transition into adulthood. The presence of acute stressors, stereotyping, prejudice, and negative attitudes are common experiences for immigrant students and the school context can provide the necessary support to overcome these obstacles. At the same time, negative educational experiences can exacerbate the detrimental effects of these stressors. In an ethnographic study of a multiethnic high school, it has been shown that educational institutions have a powerful effect on why some Latino students fail while others succeed. In this view ‘‘from below,’’ students in a regular education, culturally and ethnically heterogenous high school program experienced racial and social stratification, indifference from the teachers, and perceived a lack of support necessary to succeed. As a result, these students were unmotivated to perform well academically or to strive for college education. Rather, students felt that their goals were unattainable, instead resorting to cutting classes and joining gangs. In contrast, children attending specialized academic programs in the same high school, which promote close collaboration between students and teachers, development of peer networks, and a demanding curriculum, were successful in high school and retained the aspirations necessary for future academic success.
Gender and Immigrant Education An ethnography of Latino Caribbean schoolchildren revealed the impact of gender on the lives of immigrant youth. Rules at the school studied were differentially enforced by gender and teachers perpetuated both
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‘‘racing’’ and ‘‘gendering’’ of students. For example, a ‘‘no hats’’ rule resulted in male students receiving sometimes severe punishments (e.g., suspension), while female students received lesser or no consequences for similar behaviors. As mentioned, the school environment was described as poorly equipped to deal with female problem behavior; the school employed only two female security guards, while the numerous male guards (who policed the boys) were not allowed to physically intervene with female students. Despite their best intentions, teachers provided different treatments and rule enforcement for boys, often failing to acknowledge and correct structural barriers impeding students’ success. Similarly, Mexican immigrant households have different academic and work trajectories depending on their gender. Female participants were described as having an easier time engaging with school, possibly due to the close monitoring of Mexican girls by their parents. Mexican boys, however, did not experience the same degree of parental monitoring. Consequently, females were more likely to end up in college or in ‘‘pink collar’’ service jobs (e.g., bank tellers or administrative assistants). Coupled with the gender-specific school-based discrimination described above, the Mexican boys likely felt that school was ‘‘not for them,’’ and as a result, terminated their educations prematurely, relegating themselves to blue-collar jobs with little chance of upward mobility.
Conclusion The study of immigration reflects how social contexts interact with individual psychological processes. While many questions remain unanswered, current research indicates that the success of immigrant children depends on educational environments that are sensitive to the experiences and obstacles encountered by immigrant children and that encourage respect for and engagement of children’s families, ethnic communities and cultural histories. Educational environments need to counter, rather than perpetuate, the detrimental effects of stereotyping, unfair treatment, and social stratification, and foster the development of healthy identities for immigrant children. Successful educational environments can be developed through collaboration among immigration researchers, educators, policy makers, and clinical practitioners, each of whom affect the practices and realities that immigrants encounter. Overall, research
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on immigration at societal and psychological levels needs to be more extensively applied toward developing organizations, programs, curricula, and policy that are specific to the needs of this ever-growing group. The current wave of migration is broad and diverse, and will require thoughtful collaboration between researchers and practitioners to channel the strengths that immigrants possess toward overcoming obstacles and attaining more successful outcomes.
Acknowledgements We would also like to acknowledge the contribution of Ms. Cristina Medellin-Paz to this entry. See also: > Immigration literature; > Cultural issues in education; > Cultural resilience; > Ethnic minority youth; > Acculturation
Suggested Reading Deaux, K. (2006). To be an immigrant: Psychological design and social fabric. NY: Russell Sage. Suarez-Orozco, C., & Suarez-Orozco, M. (2001). Children of immigrants. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press.
Suggested Resources Pew Hispanic Center—http://pewhispanic.org/: Pew Hispanic Center is a nonpartisan research organization supported by The Pew Charitable Trusts. Its mission is to improve understanding of the U.S. Hispanic population and to chronicle Latinos’ growing impact on the entire nation.
Immigration Literature Patricia Ruiz-Navarro
Immigration is an integral part of United States (U.S.) history. Migration scholars frame research questions using different theoretical lenses and through the use of a wide range of methodologies. For example, there are those interested in the cost-benefit analysis of migration; whereas for others, the focus revolves around migrants’
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identity negotiations and interpretations ranging from foreign policy to interactions and perceived attitudes. The former group may more often rely on census and survey data, while the latter relies upon ethnographies, structured interviews and narrative analysis. The majority of political scientists, demographers, economists, historians and sociologists tend to formulate research questions and support theoretical arguments by looking at overall causes and consequences of immigration. One might say that this type of approach views the framework of immigration ‘‘from above.’’ That is, overarching perspectives, processes and outcomes become the focus of study. Conversely, anthropologists, psychologists, educators, and some sociologists often contribute to the study of immigration from the perspective of the individual, contextualizing the framework of immigration ‘‘from below.’’ Those theoretical approaches of immigration ‘‘from above’’ and ‘‘from below’’ are, respectively, also referred to as ‘‘top-down’’ and ‘‘bottom-up’’ immigration studies. The literature on immigration ‘‘from above’’ studies political and economic effects within nations as well as the remaking of social and cultural factors. For example, publications on studies ‘‘from above’’ reflect an interest in global perspectives, and are sometimes used for diagnostic purposes (i.e., population growth, education attainment, household distribution, health standards). Meanwhile, scholars interested in immigration ‘‘from below’’ have also looked at e/immigrants’ background, education, language skills and social class as indicators of individuals’ social mobility and wellbeing. More often, as viewpoints from the sending countries become more widely spread, processes of emigration are covered in the literature. When speaking of emigration and immigration, they both refer to the same process of movement of peoples between international borders. The main difference is whether studies are conducted in reference to migrants, those living temporarily or permanently in a country that is not their country of origin, in their country of origin (emigrants) or the destination country (immigrants). In this line, studies on transnational migration have become an important piece to the puzzle of global movement of peoples. Not only attempting to integrate the global views from the receiving countries, studies of transnational migration also evaluates what simultaneously shapes the communities and peoples in the sending countries. Transnational studies have become a focus of attention for those interested in the intersection of factors
that simultaneously have an impact on individuals and communities in the sending and receiving countries. Methodologically, migration scholars may alternatively focus on different units of analysis as they explore the phenomenon of migration. The macro level, often linked to the study of migration from above, evaluates the context of where migrants come from and/or the results of immigration in the receiving country. Researchers using this perspective, whether they study the sending or receiving country, rely on census data and other types of social indicators (e.g., fertility rates, income, and demographic distribution). Some studies conducted at this level reflect a cost/benefit analysis of the impact of e/immigration on education, remittances, health and other services. At the micro level, the focus is on analysis from below. Researchers become interested in capturing an individual’s experience of e/immigration, identity negotiations and power structures by conducting ethnographies, utilizing structured interviews, and analyzing narratives that reveal migrants’ views of their own lives and their interpretations of domestic and foreign policy. Not all studies focus on a macro or micro sphere; others are interested in studies of institutions, governmental and nongovernmental, communities and societies, secular and religious ones. Thus, in addition to the macro and micro levels of analysis, the latter examples—studies of institutions—form part of the analysis at the meso level. For example, a growing body of migration literature focuses on religious communities. Longitudinal and cross-sectional studies have been conducted with different ethnic and religious groups studying them as entities unto themselves, or as spaces where social networks, identities and political and economic relations are shared or transformed. Research conducted by academics, reports produced by research institutes, autobiographies, documentaries, and even fictional works, provide a rich milieu of resource for the study of migration phenomenon. In regards to education, a number of authors have conducted studies drawing on differences based on gender, ethnicity and race of immigrant children and youth. Some of those studies focus on generational differences, levels of acculturation, language command and individual and social identities. In conducting research at the macro, meso and micro levels of analysis, migration scholars are studying the wide spectrum of political, economic, sociocultural and psychological exchanges taking place between states, institutions and individuals. Qualitative and quantitative data, ranging from census records to ethnographies, are being
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used by demographers and educators alike. Furthermore, cross-disciplinary studies and dialogue that promotes exchange of theories and methodologies is been more overtly discussed. See also: > Centre for Immigration and Multicultural Studies; > Immigration
Suggested Reading Brettell, C., & Hollifield, J. F. (Eds.). (2000). Migration theory: Talking across the disciplines. New York: Routledge. Deaux, K. (2006). To be an Immigrant. New York: Russell Sage Publications. Sua´rez-Orozco, C., Sua´rez-Orozco, M., Sua´rez-Orozco, B., & QinHillard, D. (Eds.). (2005). The new immigration: An interdisciplinary reader. New York: Routledge.
Suggested Resources The Center for Migration and Development—www.cmd.princeton. edu: This website provides access to interesting reports relevant to the topic of migration. Media Rights Film—http://www.mediarights.org/film: This website offers a wide selection of films and documentaries on topics related to immigration.
Impulsive Behavior Dinelia Rosa
Impulsive behavior is a quick reaction to a situation, typically without going through a thinking process prior to the reaction. People exhibiting impulsive behavior show an inability to analyze the consequences of an act before its execution, thus they tend to act without thinking first. Subsequently, some of the reactions can lead to reckless or irresponsible behaviors. Impulsive behavior is related to a poor regulation and inhibition of behavior, and difficulty in using cognitive and analytical skills. During preschool, children’s impulsive behaviors are mostly age-appropriate. Children will show difficulty following a classroom routine requiring delay of gratification, waiting for a turn, sharing with peers,
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and following basic commands. Preschool children also lack the cognitive skills and the analytical processing skills to think and process before responding to a situation. Preschoolers who are impulsive but curious may experience physical injuries. Early education years help children to develop age-appropriate self-control and delay of gratification. They also learn to develop limited but useful cognitive and processing skills that will equip them to respond less impulsively. These skills are very concrete and dependent on immediate gratification and rewards for the behavior achieved. As preschoolers move forward in school and develop more sophisticated cognitive skills, they are expected to show less impulsive behavior and more self-regulated responses. When children do not develop their ability to regulate their impulsive behavior in the classroom, problems may arise. Children who display impulsive behavior have difficulty internalizing rules and expectations that they can later translate into thoughtful behaviors, thus affecting self-control and self-regulation. This interferes with their ability to pay attention, withhold responses, delay gratification, understand cause and effect, and consequently respond appropriately to classroom expectations. Their academic performance may lag and academic achievement may be compromised. Impulsive behavior is typical in children with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), Conduct Disorder, and some Anxiety Disorders. However, it can also exist as an isolated symptom. In adolescents, alcohol and substance abuse can increase impulsive behavior. Also in adolescents, activities associated with risk-taking can lead to accidental and unexpected consequences led by impulsive reactions. Eating disorders such as anorexia and bulimia also have a component of impulsivity that contributes to these disorders. Impulsiveness is also a component of many other behavioral problems such as aggression, suicide, and homicide. Other behaviors with an impulsive component that can develop during adolescence and can continue throughout adulthood are obsessive behaviors such as gambling and compulsive shopping. Early assessment of impulsive behavior can help provide the individual with early interventions to address the impulsivity. Since it can be a symptom of disorders mentioned earlier, a psychological evaluation is recommended. It is important to include an assessment of the child’s family history around impulsive behaviors, but also to incorporate cultural issues that may be significant in understanding the child’s
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difficulty to regulate his or her behavior. Very often, children with difficulty in this area have lacked the necessary exposure to develop this skill prior to coming to school for the first time. Many times professional help outside the school is necessary. Interventions to help impulsive children may range from small changes in classroom routines to medication management. The intervention depends on the level of severity in the impulsivity, and whether the symptom is isolated of part of a constellation of symptoms, at which point the symptom is treated as part of a disorder. Children exhibiting impulsive behavior may require a significant amount of one-to-one attention from teachers and/or paraprofessionals. Classroom modifications may be necessary to help an impulsive student learn to regulate his or her behavior. Teamwork and collaborations between teacher and parent to establish consistency in the child’s behavior are also part of an effective treatment strategy. See also: > Anxiety; > Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD); > Counseling; > Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD); > School psychologist
Suggested Reading Fontenelle, D. H. & Clements, S. D. (1992). Are you listening? Attention deficit disorders: A guide for understanding and managing overactive, attention deficit and impulsive behaviors in children and adolescents. Gretna, LA: Wellness Institute. Halperin, J. M., Newcorn, J. H., Matier, K., Bedi, G., Hall, S., & Sharma, V. (1995). Impulsivity and the initiation of fights in children with disruptive behavior disorders. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 36(7), 1199–1211.
Inclusion Sara Bolt . Dawn Decker
education curriculum. Since state education agencies first created rules for compulsory education, a trend toward greater inclusion has been evident, particularly for educational services provided to students with disabilities. In 1975, the Education for All Handicapped Children Act was put into place to ensure that all students with disabilities had access to public education; however, only in the mid-1980s did educators adapt their instruction to better meet the needs of students with disabilities without removing them from general education classrooms. Madeleine Will, a former Assistant Secretary of the U.S. Department of Education, led related efforts that later became known as the regular education initiative. This trend toward greater inclusion of students with disabilities in general education classrooms continues today. According to a 2005 report from the National Center for Educational Statistics, the percent of students with disabilities who are educated in general education environments for at least 80% of their school day increased from 40% to 50% from 1994 to 2004. Although inclusion primarily concerns educating students with disabilities within general education classrooms, it also concerns incorporating non-native English speaking students into general education classrooms. For example, many non-native English speakers now receive pull-out services to facilitate the development of their English language skills; however, there is a concern that this approach can prevent students from accessing important content instruction that occurs in the general education classroom. As a result, there is now a greater push for general educators to provide adaptations to make their classroom instruction more accessible to students whose first language is not English. It is important to recognize that these historical trends toward greater inclusion have not come without criticism. One of the major criticisms stems from a belief that inclusion is driven by a desire to reduce the amount of money spent on special services for students with special needs. Many are concerned that without appropriate training and resources available to general education teachers, the quality of services provided to students with special needs in general education classrooms will be of poorer quality than those services available within separate settings.
Historical Perspective on Inclusion Although inclusion has a variety of meanings, it most commonly refers to general education classrooms that integrate students with special needs by providing special education services in parallel with the general
Goals of Inclusion Although we have defined inclusion as the practice of providing services to students with special needs in
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general education classrooms, it is important to recognize that inclusion is often considered a philosophy rather than an educational practice, and is therefore often aligned with specific educational goals. For example, some who advocate that students must be taught to work and live together also believe that inclusion allows all students, both those with and without special needs, the necessary exposure and opportunity to develop skills to live and work together effectively. Therefore, this social goal is often cited in arguments for inclusive educational practices. In addition, facilitating access to the general curriculum is often considered a goal of inclusion, such that all students have an opportunity to learn the same academic skills and knowledge as their peers. Strong advocates for inclusion often argue that because inclusion students can only keep up with their peers by being included within general education classrooms, inclusion should be considered a civil right (i.e., separate programming inevitably results in unequal programming). Furthermore, many suggest that inclusion can help reduce the stigma that may otherwise be associated with being placed in a special needs classroom.
Clarifying Components of Inclusion Proponents of inclusion assert that students with special needs have the right to be educated in the general education setting alongside same-age peers. However, it is important to distinguish the concept of inclusion from the concept of mainstreaming. Mainstreaming is the concept that students who belong in a separate educational setting can be temporarily moved out of their special needs classrooms and asked to exert extra effort to participate in general education classwork. Thus, in a mainstreaming model, it is assumed that students have to ‘‘earn’’ their way into the general education classroom by demonstrating that they have the skills necessary to function independently in that setting. Some experts also distinguish between inclusionists and full inclusionists. Inclusionists believe that it is the classroom teacher’s responsibility to educate most students with special needs, but such inclusionists also recognize the importance of providing a continuum of services (i.e., making sure that a variety of separate and more restrictive settings are available for those students who may need them). In addition, inclusionists acknowledge that full-time placement in the general education classroom may not serve the needs of all
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students, and that some students may benefit from services provided in separate settings. In contrast, full inclusionists assert that students with special needs should be educated in the general education classroom full-time. An important difference between inclusionists and full inclusionists is that they tend to advocate for different groups of students. Inclusionists tend to advocate for the inclusion of students with high-incidence disabilities (e.g., learning disabilities, mild-to-moderate mental retardation, or behavior disorders) whereas full inclusionists tend to advocate for students with more severe disabilities (e.g., severe mental retardation, severe conduct disorder, etc.). In terms of creating inclusive classrooms, strategies can be used to include students with special needs in the general education classroom both academically and socially. Academic strategies for inclusion can consist of teachers utilizing ‘‘best practices’’ or other researchbased instructional strategies (i.e., cooperative learning, classwide peer tutoring) to address the wide range of student skills present in the classroom. Strategies to promote the academic inclusion of students may include providing appropriate instructional adaptations and accommodations. Strategies to promote the social inclusion of students may include implementation of effective behavior management plans and explicit teaching of social and friendship skills. The standards-based reform movement has recently raised concerns about students with special needs not having access to the general education curriculum. Both the No Child Left Behind Act and the Individuals with Disabilities Education Improvement Act of 2004 emphasize that schools need to be held accountable for students with disabilities and English Language Learners (ELLs) so that higher academic achievement can be promoted among these students. One way that this legislation attempts to ensure that this will occur is through the mandated inclusion of students with disabilities and ELLs in state and district-wide assessment programs. Additionally, legislation has placed an emphasis on the idea that general education and special education teachers have a shared responsibility for educating students with disabilities which suggests a need for increased collaboration and communication between general and special education teachers. See also: > Classroom management ; > Collaborative and cooperative learning; > Education for All Handicapped Children Act of 1975; > Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA); > Tracking
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Suggested Reading Fuchs, D., & Fuchs, L. S. (1998). Competing visions for educating students with disabilities: Inclusion versus full inclusion. Childhood Education, 74(5), 309–316. Mastropieri, M. A., & Scruggs, T. E. (2007). The inclusive classroom: Strategies for effective instruction (3rd ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Merrill Prentice Hall. Wood, J. W. (2002). Adapting instruction to accommodate students in inclusive settings. Columbus, OH: Merrill Prentice Hall.
Individualized Education Plan (IEP) Stephanie M Reich
An individualized education plan/program (IEP) is a federally mandated plan for parents, teachers, school administrators, service personnel/paraprofessionals, and students (when appropriate) to work together to design instruction, accommodations, and services to children with special needs. Supported by the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), an IEP ensures that children with disabilities are entitled to a free and appropriate education. This means that public schools must provide children with disabilities specially designed instruction and services to meet their unique needs. These modifications to general education should be provided to children at no cost to their family. The first step in starting the IEP process is identifying which children have disabilities and are in need of services. This ‘‘child find’’ process can be initiated by schools or families. Teachers or other school personnel can recommend a child be evaluated for a disability, or parents could request that the school evaluate their child. Irrespective of the instigator of the evaluation, parents must consent to their child being evaluated. Thus, by federal law, a multidisciplinary team must determine that a child has a disability and that they are in need of special education or related services to benefit from the general education program. Once a child is identified as a ‘‘child with a disability,’’ as defined by IDEA, an IEP must be written within 30 days. Although federal law requires that individual education be provided, the form and format of the IEP is flexible and can vary from state to state, or school district to district, with some regions providing additional information or services. No matter where the
IEP is written, some aspects are mandated by law. These include the types of people on the IEP team and the content areas of the plan.
The IEP Team Parents or guardians are essential members of the IEP team. They are the members who know the child well and can inform the team about how the child learns best, what their strengths are, and which skills are being used at home. Teachers are another important part of the IEP team. Regular education teachers and special education teachers assist in writing an IEP. If the child is in a regular education class, the teacher of that class attends the IEP meeting to provide information about the general curriculum, to describe services, aids, or changes to the program that could help the child, and to suggest behavioral strategies for helping the child participate in the class. The general education teacher participates in the discussion and helps make decisions about how the general curriculum in the regular class could be modified to assist the child’s learning. The special education teacher is an expert in educating children with disabilities. Thus, they are another important member of the IEP team who can make suggestions about how to modify the general curriculum for the child, provide ideas for individualizing instruction, and offer ways to modify testing so the child can show what they have learned. In addition to helping write the IEP, the special education teacher may work with the student individually, team-teach with the general education teacher, and work with school staff to address the child’s learning needs. A school representative, such as the principal or vice principal, will also attend the IEP meeting. The school representative must be familiar with the resources available at the school and have the power to commit these resources and make sure they are provided as promised. If service is needed by the child but not available at the school, the school representative can arrange for supplemental services to be provided, even if off campus. Anyone with special knowledge or expertise about the child can also be a member of the IEP team. This could be a person whom the parents/guardians invite (e.g., a speech therapist, psychologist, family friend, minister) or someone the school requests (e.g., an occupational therapist, physical education teacher, social worker). The child may also be a member of the IEP team. Including the child in the design of their own
Individualized education plan (IEP)
educational plan ensures that they have a voice in the process and agree with the individualization of their educational program. If the child is receiving or is about to receive transition services, they are to be included in the IEP team. If the child is old enough to be transitioning out of the school system, a representative from the transition service agencies must be included in the IEP meeting. In such situations, the IEP meeting is different in structure because it is focused on helping the child’s transition from school to the next phase of life. The representative of the agency will identify skills needed for the transition, what types of service are available to the child, and whether the agency will pay for these services. If a representative is not available for the meeting, the school must make other arrangements for obtaining the agency’s participation in the child’s transition services. Once the IEP team is assembled, they will meet to discuss the content of the IEP. Although there is flexibility in the writing of the IEP, there are some core elements of every individualized education program that are required by law.
IEP Content Every IEP must begin by assessing the child’s current performance. By determining the child’s present levels of educational performance, the IEP team can determine what the child’s strengths are and where their limitations may be. Assessments of performance are made by looking at classroom tests, homework or assignments, individualized tests and evaluations/assessments done by professionals and paraprofessionals, as well as observations by parents, teachers, and other school staff. Areas of assessment include academic skills (e.g., reading, writing, math), social skills (e.g., making friends, socializing in class), sensory skills (e.g., sight, hearing), daily living/self-help skills (e.g., toileting, eating, dressing), communication (e.g., talking, listening), mobility (e.g., getting around the classroom, school, and community), and vocational skills (employment). Annual goals must be set during the IEP meeting. These goals must be measurable and should include short-term objectives and benchmarks. They may be social, behavioral, academic, physical, or related to some other need. Well written goals should include information about who will achieve them, what skill is being addressed, how and in what manner it will be achieved, in which settings it should occur, and by when it should be accomplished.
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Every IEP must list the services (including special education services) that will be provided to the child. This includes modifications to the program, supplementary services, as well as support for school personnel such as training and professional development to learn how to address the child’s unique needs. Examples of services include, but are not limited to, special education plans (e.g., learning to read Braille), occupational therapy, speech therapy, psychological counseling, parent training, physical therapy, and transportation. The IDEA mandates that children be educated with non-disabled peers (mainstreaming) whenever possible. As such, the IEP must explain the extent to which children will or will not participate with non-disabled peers in school activities and within the classroom. To promote contact with non-disabled peers, the IEP should consider modifications, accommodation, support, and supplemental aids to assist the child. The goal is for the child to be in the least restrictive placement possible. Part of the IEP meeting is to determine which, if any, modifications should be made to ensure the child’s participation in state and district-wide tests. If the test is inappropriate, the IEP should state why it is not appropriate for the child and how the child will be tested instead. The IEP meeting will determine where, when, and for how long services will be provided to the child. This plan will describe where the child will receive services, how long the session will last, and on which dates services will start and finish. For children who are high-school aged or older, the IEP meeting will address issues of transition service need, types of service available, and the processes for measuring progress toward transition. This part of the IEP will address what the child will do after high school. Starting at 14 years, this topic should be introduced into the IEP meetings. By 16 years, the IEP should provide specific statements about planning for transition services. Beginning at least one year before the age of majority, the IEP must include a statement that the child has been told of their rights that will transfer to them at the age of majority. The IEP should be reviewed annually and reevaluated every three years. It is reviewed annually by the IEP team to ensure the goals are being met and to identify any modifications that need to be made. The full educational program is reevaluated every three years and rewritten if needed. Parents and schools can call for a meeting whenever necessary to make changes to the IEP or to assess whether it is being implemented as intended.
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Overall, the passage of IDEA and subsequent amendments have ensured that children with special needs obtain the free and appropriate education they are entitled to, even if additional support and planning are needed to make this possible. See also: > Language and educational assessment; > School roles in mental health; > Section 504
Suggested Reading National Dissemination Center for Children with Disabilities (NICHCY) (1997). A student’s guide to the IEP. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of Education. U.S. Department of Education (2006). 34 CFR Parts 300 and 301 Assistance to states for the education of children with disabilities and preschool grants for children with disabilities; Final rule. Federal Register, 71(156), 46540–46845. U.S. Department of Education (2000). A guide to the Individualized Education Program. Washington, D.C.: Office of Special Education and Rehabilitative Services. Available online at http://www. ed.gov/offices/OSERS.
Suggested Resources US Department of Education: Office of Special Education and Rehabilitative Services (OSERS)—http://www.ed.gov/about/ offices/list/osers/index.html?src=mr: This website, maintained by the U.S. Department of Education, provides details on the rights of children with disabilities as well as copies of current legislation affecting children with special needs in school. Wrights Law—http://www.wrightslaw.com: This website provides thousands of articles, cases, and free resources on topics around special education rights, advocacy, and current legislation.
Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) Catharine L A Weiss . Jennifer E Mettrick
Legislative History The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), first passed in 1975 as the Education for All
Handicapped Children Act, is a United States (U.S.) law that provides federal funds to the states for education of students with disabilities. It sets out regulations to protect the rights of, and provides for, the individual educational and related service needs of infants, toddlers, children, and youth with disabilities. The 1975 legislation represented the first allocation of public resources for schools to provide free appropriate public education (FAPE) and related services, including mental health, to youth with disabilities. It also established due process in providing these services. IDEA, renamed the Individuals with Disabilities Education Improvement Act in 1990, was most recently reauthorized by Congress in 2004. IDEA today serves more than 6.8 million students and 200,000 eligible infants and toddlers with $12.4 billion in federal funds authorized for 2006 and planned increases of approximately $2.3 billion per year through 2011. Since 1975, legislative changes have been directed at the improvement of educational, social and posteducational outcomes of youth with disabilities. Throughout the history of the legislation, however, the fundamental principles have remained the same: to ensure that (a) all children with disabilities receive free appropriate public education with services tailored to individual special needs; (b) children with disabilities and their families’ rights are protected; (c) states receive assistance to provide education for all children with disabilities; and (d) the quality of services provided to children with disabilities are assessed. Several significant changes have been made, which include the expansion of FAPE to preschool aged children with disabilities in 1986, the 1990 change of name to Individuals with Disabilities Education Improvement Act, and the restructuring of IDEA into Parts A through D in 1997. In 2001, President George W. Bush established the Commission on Excellence in Special Education to collect information and study issues related to federal, state, and local special education programs and subsequently recommend policies for improving the educational performance of students with disabilities. As a result, the Commission recommended three major changes to IDEA: a focus on results-based accountability; the prioritization and implementation of schoolbased prevention approaches; and more flexibility in education spending to increase integration between special and general education. Congress incorporated these changes and reauthorized IDEA in 2004, with an effective date of July 1, 2005, as the Individuals with Disabilities Education Improvement Act (IDEA 2004).
Individuals with disabilities education act (IDEA)
Specifics of the Legislation Special education and related services for eligible children and youth are provided through public funding at no charge to children and their families. IDEA requires that states and schools identify and evaluate all youth with disabilities, regardless of the severity of the disability. Special education consists of unique individualized services that assist children in meeting educational standards set forth by state and local educational agencies for the general population of children without disabilities. For schools to receive federal funds, services must meet the standards set forth in IDEA regulations and State Education Agency (SEA) requirements, and must include an individualized educational program (IEP) for all eligible children. IDEA legislation contains four main sections labeled Parts A-D. Part A, General Provisions, includes regulations pertaining to IEP’s, therapy, behavioral therapy, hearing/vision screening, related services, handicapped services, testing and evaluation and assistive technology. Part B, Assistance for Education of All Children with Disabilities, goes into greater depth about the regulations regarding school-aged children with disabilities. Part B covers specifics related to funding, state eligibility, eligibility determinations, educational placements, IEP’s, procedural safeguards, monitoring, technical assistance, administration, and pre-school grants. Part C, Infants and Toddlers with Disabilities, covers similar specific details for children from birth to 2 years old. Part D, National Activities to Improve Education of Children and Disabilities, focuses primarily on distributing findings from funded grant projects under IDEA. To receive provisions under the law one must be identified as having a disability, which is defined as having a mental retardation diagnosis; a hearing impairment or deafness; a speech or language impairment; a visual impairment, including blindness; emotional disturbance; an orthopedic impairment; autism; traumatic brain injury or other health impairment; a specific learning disability; deaf-blindness or multiple disabilities. In addition, children aged 3 through 9 may be eligible for services if they meet SEA developmental delays criteria and children birth through age 2 may be eligible for services under Part C of IDEA. If parents or public agencies suspect that a child has a disability that affects educational performance, they can request an evaluation. Individual evaluations are conducted with parental consent to determine whether and what type of special educational services may be
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required. Evaluations must assess all areas related to the suspected disability and can include evaluation of their health, vision, hearing, social and emotional status, general intelligence, academic performance, communicative status, and motor abilities. IDEA mandates that the following procedures are followed in the evaluation process: (a) multiple assessments are used to determine if a disability is present, (b) evaluation tools are employed that do not discriminate based on race and/or culture, (c) evaluations are administered in the child’s native language, and (d) materials and procedures are selected to measure the extent of a disability and not reflect a child’s English proficiency. If a disability is present, an IEP, an educational program that is designed to meet each child’s unique needs, must be created. The IEP specifically outlines a student’s performance level, deficits, goals to be achieved, and what accommodations and interventions are planned to achieve the goals. Parents, under the law, are provided every opportunity to participate in their child’s IEP, which includes the development of the IEP, placement decisions and continual involvement in the services provided to their child. Special education instruction can occur in regular classrooms, special classes, special schools, at home, and in hospitals and institutions as long as they are provided in the least restrictive environment possible. A guiding principle in special education is to maximize integration into regular class settings as much as is appropriate. In making decisions about consequences for disciplinary problems, the disability must be taken into account. In addition to special education, children also are eligible for related services such as speech therapy and parent counseling.
Successes and Challenges of IDEA Since IDEA was enacted, access to education and the quality of instruction has significantly improved for students with disabilities. Before 1975, it is estimated that only 1 in 5 children with a disability received public education. Now there are 6.8 million children and youth receiving special education services. The national assessment of special education services ordered by the 1997 reauthorization of IDEA provides ongoing information about the participation and performance of students with disabilities in the system. Most students in special education attend regular schools and approximately half are in regular classrooms for most of the day.
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Over the last decade, inclusion in regular classrooms, high school graduation rates, college enrollment, and family participation in schools have risen for students with disabilities and dropout rates have decreased. Post-school employment levels for individuals who received special education are twice as high as for those who did not receive services prior to enactment of IDEA. However, outcomes in special education are better for some groups than others. For instance, the highest dropout rates have been found for students with emotional and behavioral disorders and the lowest for those with autism, hearing and visual impairments. Throughout the history of IDEA, there have been concerns about the disproportionate diagnosis of disabilities across gender and ethnicity lines. For example, boys are identified as having disabilities at greater rates than girls across all age groups. African Americans and students in poverty are also overrepresented in special education, with the former group demonstrating particularly high percentages in the categories of mental retardation, developmental delay and emotional disturbance. African Americans are more likely to be in restrictive educational settings and are more likely to be suspended or expelled from school. The under-identification of emotional and behavioral disorders in schools is noted by some as a serious problem. Research has shown that there are large numbers of youth with untreated mental disorders and that many are either failing to qualify for services under IDEA or they are misidentified. Given that youth with emotional and behavior problems have high dropout rates even when they have been identified, it is critical that this group receive appropriate and effective interventions. Beginning in 1997, IDEA’s regulations were expanded to address the needs of youth whose behaviors interfere with learning. The amendments required provisions for behavioral assessments and positive behavioral intervention strategies and supports. Today, three fourths of the students are classified as having learning disabilities or speech/language impairments as their primary disabilities. IDEA legislation has been enacted to address both under-identification and over-identification of disabilities. IDEA 2004 requires states to review and alter any policies and procedures leading to the disproportionate number of students with disabilities in respect to identification, placement and disciplinary actions. In addition, states now are required to provide comprehensive, coordinated, early-intervention programs for children in groups that are determined to
be overrepresented. Finally, research is being conducted presently to investigate the causes of overrepresentation of minority groups in the areas of diagnosis, discipline and placement. As more children are identified with special needs and the cost of services increases, policymakers are focusing on school-wide approaches and early intervening strategies as a means to proactively address the academic and behavioral needs of children. One critical change in IDEA 2004 is that it allows for the provision of Early Intervening Services (EIS) or pre-referral services to students in kindergarten through grade 12, with an emphasis on kindergarten through grade 3. EIS can be provided to students who are not identified as having a disability but who are in need of additional academic and/or behavioral supports to achieve success at school. States are allowed to use up to 15% of IDEA funds and other funds to implement EIS. The introduction of EIS means that, for the first time, IDEA funds can be directed toward the general education population with an increased focus on prevention. It is hoped that the provision of academic and behavioral support through EIS will reduce special education referrals and eventually decrease the costs of special education. There has been criticism of the federal government for not funding IDEA at the authorized level throughout its history. Congress was authorized to contribute up to 40% of the national average per pupil expenditure for each special education student. However, in 2006, states and school districts are receiving less than 18% of this authorized sum. Although federal funding has increased over the years, costs for special education have risen at a higher rate as the range of disabilities and numbers of students served have expanded. States and local school districts have struggled to fund the balance thus resulting in cuts in regular education and less ability to fund early intervening services for infants and toddlers. See also: > Disproportionality in special education; > Education for All Handicapped Children Act of 1975; > Multicultural issues in special education; > Special education
Suggested Reading Heward, W. L. (2006). Exceptional children: An introduction to special education, 8th ed. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Merrill Prentice Hall. Yell, M. L. (2006). The law and special education, 2nd ed. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall.
Intelligence/intelligence quotient (IQ)
Suggested Resources United States Department of Education IDEA information and resources page—http://www.ed.gov/policy/speced/guid/idea/ idea2004.html: This government website provides news, information, statistics and resources on the Individuals with Disabilities Education Improvement Act of 2004 as well as information on other related policies. National Dissemination Center for Children with Disabilities (NICHCY) IDEA information page—http://www.nichcy.org/idealist.htm: This NICHCY website provides materials that relate to the latest reauthorization of IDEA, IDEA 2004. Topics include assessment and procedural safeguards.
Intelligence/Intelligence Quotient (IQ) James A Bovaird . Jennifer L Ivie
Intelligence has been a focus of research for over a century. Herbert Spencer, a late nineteenth century British philosopher, is often credited with first referring to general cognitive ability as intelligence. This long-standing interest in the construct of human intellectual capacity has resulted in numerous definitions and theories. Common definitions of intelligence describe it as including the ability to reason, plan, solve problems, think abstractly, comprehend ideas and language, and learn; effectively perceiving, interpreting and responding to the environment; or the ability to understand complex ideas, adapt effectively to the environment, learn from experience, engage in various forms of reasoning, and to overcome obstacles by taking thought. While there is a general consensus within all definitions and theories that individuals differ in their levels of this ability or construct, there are two major schools of thought on the nature of intelligence. Some theories view intelligence as comprised of one common factor, g, or general intelligence. Other theories subscribe to the idea of different types of intelligence; however, the number of multiple intelligences is not always consistent between theories.
Intelligence as a Common Factor The historical proponents of the common factor of intelligence model were Galton and Spearman. A
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cousin of Charles Darwin, Sir Francis Galton proposed a theory of hereditary intelligence in 1883, claiming that ‘‘genius’’ was inborn and that individuals differed in their degree of energy and sensitivity. Galton felt that individuals of higher ability were more energetic and that those with greater perceptivity had access to larger stores of information for their intelligence to make use of. His research focused on psychophysiological testing that addressed the individual’s capacity for weight discrimination, touch, olfaction, taste, and pitch discrimination. Galton was also one of the first to employ questionnaire and survey methods to investigate mental imagery in different groups of people. Through his work in statistics and research on intelligence, Charles Spearman, a British psychologist and statistician who was influenced by Galton, concluded that there are specific (to the task at hand) factors, s, of intelligence, that are encompassed within the general factor, g, which is required to complete any task. He termed this theory his two-factor theory of intelligence. More recently, Eysenck took a ‘‘hard science’’ approach in researching intelligence, viewing it as a theoretical construct similar to the basic concepts of physics. Understanding the importance of factor analysis for determining the causal basis of differences in intelligence, he emphasized three distinct classes of phenomena associated with cognitive performance, which he defined as intelligences A, B, and C. His intelligence A is the brain’s neuroanatomy; B is the manifestation of A, that is, everything that influences its expression in real life behavior; and C is the level of performance on psychometric tests of cognitive ability. A student of Eysenck and a major proponent of hereditary intelligence, Arthur Jensen began researching intelligence through culture-free methods. Jensen concluded that there are two levels of intelligence: associative learning, or the simple retention of input; and conceptual learning, or the ability to manipulate and transform inputs and solve problems—the concept most similar to the idea of general intelligence. Much of Jensen’s work has focused on reaction time as a measure of cognitive ability, illustrating that stable negative correlations between reaction time and cognitive ability scores suggests that individuals who process information faster also tend to earn higher ability scores. Jensen’s conclusion was that there is a biological basis for individual differences that can be described as differences in the efficiency of brain processing.
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Intelligence as Multiple Abilities Unlike Galton, Spearman, Eysenck, or Jensen, a number of researchers believe that intelligence is made up of multiple factors. For instance, L. L. Thurstone proposed a multidimensional theory of intelligence that identified seven primary mental abilities including verbal comprehension, word fluency, number facility, spatial visualization, associative memory, perceptual speed, and reasoning. He saw intelligence as the ability to inhibit instinctive responses while those responses are still in a loosely organized form, using abstraction to redefine the instinctive behavior in light of imagined consequences. According to Thurstone’s initial theory, an individual could be high on one ability dimension and low on others; however, he accepted a hierarchical view of intelligence towards the end of his life. Robert Sternberg proposed a similar conceptualization of cognitive ability, but rather than seven intelligences, he defined intelligence through a triarchic theory. His theory subsumes Spearman’s g but then divides g into three facets or subtheories: the componential subtheory, or analytical intelligence, which includes metacomponents, performance, and knowledge acquisition; the experiential subtheory, or creative intelligence, which includes novelty and automation; and the contextual subtheory, or practical intelligence, which includes adaptation, selection and shaping. Raymond Cattell proposed the popular Gf -Gc model of intelligence as a general model of cognitive ability in 1943, which was expanded in collaboration with one of Cattell’s students, John Horn, in the 1960s. The original Horn-Cattell theory divided the overall construct of cognitive ability into two general classes of abilities: fluid intelligence (Gf ) as a problem-solving and information processing ability, and crystallized intelligence (Gc) as an accumulation of knowledge and skills throughout life. Horn and colleagues have since expanded the initial two-ability Horn-Cattell Gf -Gc model to include at least nine abilities more related to biological processes. Recently, similarities between the Horn-Cattell Gf-Gc model and John Carroll’s three-stratum theory have been emphasized, resulting in the combined Cattell-Horn-Carroll (CHC) theory. Finally, in 1983 Howard Gardner proposed a theory of multiple intelligences, defining intelligence as a construct consists of seven intelligences: spatial intelligence, musical intelligence, verbal intelligence, logical/mathematical intelligence, interpersonal intelligence, intrapersonal intelligence, and bodily/kinesthetic
intelligence. While Gardner’s theory has been very popular within the field of education, it has been not been as well received in the scientific community.
Intelligence Testing The contrast in how the nature of ability is conceptualized is also reflected in the development of modern intelligence testing. Modern testing has its recent roots in the work of Sir Francis Galton, Alfred Binet, and Robert Yerkes. Galton and Binet represent contrasts in how the nature of ability is conceptualized, while Yerkes represents a contrast to both Galton and Binet in that he progressed group testing versus individual methods. Sir Francis Galton is considered by some to be the founder of the modern testing movement. Galton’s testing tradition revolved around sensory, motor, and physiological measures of mental functioning. However, significant criticism within the field developed over concentrating testing on simple and highly specialized abilities, as practiced by the supporters of the Galton tradition. In contrast to Galton, Alfred Binet, who is considered by some to be the founder of modern intelligence measurement, and Theodore Simon proposed that mental functioning should be assessed by measuring complex intellectual functioning. The first known intelligence test, the 1905 Binet-Simon test, was designed to cover a wide range of cognitive functioning that included judgment, comprehension, and reasoning in addition to some sensory and perceptual tests in order to help identify children who were behind in their academic performance so that they could receive remedial education. This type of test today would most likely be considered an achievement test rather than a test of aptitude or cognitive ability. The Binet-Simon scale was developed to identify a child’s mental level or age equivalent. A child’s score on this test was compared with his/her peers’ scores to determine his relative intellectual level. Lewis Terman revised the BinetSimon test in 1916, renaming it the Stanford-Binet test and redefining the scoring mechanism from mental level to a ratio of mental age to chronological age, known as intelligence quotient, or IQ. The term IQ was first introduced in 1911 by a German psychologist, Wilhelm Stern. While Binet and Simon were not interested in normative comparisons and refused to refer to their scale scores as mental age, Stern introduced
Interpreters
IQ to represent a child’s intellectual standing relative to his or her age-mates. In 1960, a third edition of the Stanford-Binet Scales again redefined the scoring mechanism to a standard score adjusted to reflect the historical scaling of IQ. The fourth edition, in 1986, replaced the term IQ with the term standard age score. David Wechsler developed the Weschler-Bellvue Test in 1939 from a clinical tradition, perhaps providing the most influential current view on intelligence testing. Weschler used the patterns of test scores to measure the intelligence of adult patients, defining intelligence as a global capacity to interact with one’s environment through purposeful action and rational thought. Weschler’s testing framework is better described as a guide to the most informative use of test scores rather than a theory on the nature of intelligence per se. Weschler recognized that a major problem with the traditional IQ measure is that multiple ratios can result in an equal IQ score. As a solution, Weschler assigned a score which compares an individual to the mean of his/her peer group, or deviation IQ. He initially developed two tests to measure intelligence depending on a person’s age group: the Weschler Intelligence Scale for Children (WISC) for adolescents age 6 to 16, and the Weschler Adult Intelligence Scale (WAIS) for adolescents through adults. These tests included both verbal and performance subtests, similar to the subtests found on the Stanford-Binet tests. Weschler’s work also spawned the Weschler Preschool and Primary Scale of Intelligence (WPPSI-III) for children age 2–7. Other popular individually administered tests of cognitive ability are the Woodcock-Johnson PsychoEducational Battery derived from the CHC model, the Das-Naglieri Cognitive Assessment System based on the PASS (Planning, Attention, Simultaneous processing, and Successive processing) model, Raven’s Progressive Matrices, and the Universal Nonverbal Intelligence Test (UNIT). The Binet and Weschler scales, both individual assessment tools administered to only one person at a time, were the standard by which cognitive abilities were measured prior to 1921. This format was timeintensive, required a highly trained examiner, and was partially subjective. Out of practicality, group assessment tools began to be developed in 1917. As chairman of the American Psychological Association’s Committee on the Psychological Examination of Recruits, Robert Yerkes directed the development of Test Alpha, a paper-and-pencil test that could be administered to groups of 50–400 men under the supervision of a single
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Army psychologist. The test was composed of eight subtests (oral directions, arithmetical problems, practical judgment, antonyms, disarranged sentences, number series completion, analogies, and information), consisted of ten equivalent forms to prevent coaching, and was strictly timed. A nonverbal version of the screening measure, Army Beta, was developed for those recruits who were illiterate or had poor mastery of the English language. Army Alpha and Beta served as the role model for future group tests. Some additional group tests of cognitive ability are the Test of Cognitive Skills from the California Test Bureau (CTB), the Otis-Lennon School Ability Tests from the Psychological Corporation, and the Cognitive Abilities Test (CogAT). See also: > Achievement tests; > Gf-Gc model of intelligence; > SAT; > Testing and measurement
Suggested Reading Gardner, H. (1983). Frames of mind: The theory of multiple intelligences. New York: Basic Books. Herrnstein, R. J., & Murray, C. (1994). The bell curve. New York: The Free Press. Sternberg, R. J. (1990). Metaphors of mind: Conceptions of the nature of intelligence. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Suggested Resources Human Intelligence—http://www.indiana.edu/~intell/index.shtml: This website presents biographical profiles, discusses current controversies, and provides resources for teachers. The Journal Intelligence—http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/ journal/01602896: This website provides journal articles from Intelligence.
Interpreters Emilia C Lopez
In 2001, the National Clearinghouse for English Language Acquisition and Language Instruction estimated that over four million students who attend public schools were limited English proficient or English language learners (ELLs). The Clearinghouse also
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estimated that these students spoke over 400 different languages. Their families tend to have difficulties communicating with school professionals owing to limited skills in the English language. The number of ELLs will continue to increase during the twenty-first century. School psychologists and other school professionals often enroll the services of school interpreters to communicate better with ELLs and their families.
Definitions The term translation refers to the process of changing messages produced in one language to another language. The source language is that from which one translates, whereas the language into which the translation is made is referred to as the target language. The terms ‘‘interpreters’’ and ‘‘translators’’ are often used interchangeably; however, the translation literature differentiates those two terms. Translators engage in the process of translating the written language as when, for example, translating referral forms, psychoeducational reports, and individual educational plans (IEPs). Individuals who translate the spoken language are referred to as interpreters. The focus of this discussion is on interpreters or individuals who translate the spoken language. Professional interpreters typically translate using simultaneous or consecutive translation styles. In simultaneous translation, the interpreter’s translation is delivered a couple of seconds behind the speaker. Two common forms of simultaneous translation are whispered translation, in which the interpreter whispers the translation to the listener, and soundproof booth translation, where the interpreter speaks into a microphone and the message is delivered to the listener’s ear through earphones. In consecutive translation, the speaker delivers the message in the source language and stops to allow the interpreter to deliver the message in the target language. There are two forms of consecutive translation, continuous and discontinuous. In continuous translation, the interpreter waits until the speaker has finished the entire message before delivering the translation. In discontinuous translation, the interpreter delivers the translation at periodic breaks.
Interpreters in School Settings In school settings, interpreters work with school psychologists and other school professionals during such
activities as parent interviews, parent conferences, student interviews, and student assessments. Consecutive translation is the style that seems to be most prevalent in school settings. A major concern is that individuals who serve as interpreters in school settings do not have the training background nor possess the necessary skills to act as interpreters. School professionals often use bilingual personnel such as teachers or office staff to serve as interpreters. The process of working with interpreters is complex and demanding, and using untrained personnel as interpreters can result in miscommunications and inaccurate translations. School personnel also tend to rely on the students’ family members to translate. However, that can also result in miscommunication as family members may not have the language proficiency or language skills required to discuss instructional and programmatic (e.g., terms to discuss educational programs available) issues. Family members may also not feel comfortable translating all that is said during meetings or may not realize how important it is to translate all the information accurately. Children should also not be used as interpreters, especially as the content of the communication may include confidential and/ or sensitive information (e.g., information about a student’s background or mental-health history). The best route is to work with trained interpreters who understand the complexity of translating, exhibit high proficiency in the source and target languages, and have experience working in school settings.
Challenges Working with Interpreters School psychologists can encounter several challenges when working with interpreters to deliver psychological services in school settings. The greatest challenge is the potential for miscommunication. Miscommunications can occur as a result of information not being clearly translated or information being left out during the translation. Problems in translation can also occur when the interpreter lacks an understanding of the translation context, as in situations where there is not enough knowledge about schools and instructional programs. In such situations, interpreters may have difficulty translating information accurately because s/he lacks the background knowledge necessary to translate specific terms, concepts, or vocabulary (e.g., translation of terms such as neurological disorder or learning disability).
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The process of translating from one language to another is challenging in and of itself. For example, many words and concepts cannot be directly translated from one language to another. The meaning of words and concepts can also change when translated because they may have more than one meaning in the target language; or a word can be translated into many other words in the target language. Regional differences may also mean that the same word can be translated into different words depending on the speaker’s geographical origin. The developmental levels of words and concepts can also change when translated from one language to another. Metaphors, puns, and jokes tend to lose their meaning when literally translated. These challenges require that interpreters demonstrate high levels of language proficiency and possess a wide knowledge of vocabulary terms so they are able to translate messages while retaining the meaning of what is being translated into the target language. Communicating through interpreters is also challenging because the quality of the translation will depend on the interpreters’ skills, and on their understanding of the psychological services provided by school psychologists and other school professionals. For example, interpreters translating during assessment sessions need to have extensive knowledge about assessment procedures so that they can become assets to the assessors as they follow assessment procedures (e.g., in an assessment session interpreters should not coax students to respond to assessment questions). The presence of interpreters can also substantially change the quality of interaction between school psychologists and their clients. For example, in a parent conference the parent may establish better rapport with the interpreter and may even not establish eye contact with the school psychologist. In other situations, the parent may not feel comfortable with the interpreter because the parent and the interpreter may differ in terms of regional, educational, or socioeconomic backgrounds. These issues may result in different levels of interaction, rapport, and communication between school psychologists, interpreters and clients. The presence of an interpreter might serve as a barrier as well as a facilitator in the process of establishing rapport with clients. Interpreters can facilitate communication when they translate all that is said by all involved in the communication context and when they clearly convey content and meaning from the
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source to the target language. On the other hand, interpreters can hinder the communication process when they withhold information or do not translate everything that has been said. The interpreters’ feelings towards the clients and their reactions towards the issues being discussed may also interfere with their ability to deliver accurate translations. Interpreters may not be able to avoid a certain degree of personal involvement in their work and may attempt to change the content of the messages they translate to fit their own personal, political, social, or religious preferences. Thus, school interpreters must develop a clear understanding of their roles, along with the ability to reflect on how their own feelings and actions influence the delivery of psychological services to ELLs and their families. Ultimately, all information obtained through interpreters must be carefully examined and evaluated. Care and caution must be exercised to consider the quality of the translation and how the presence of the interpreter influenced rapport and interactions with the clients.
Translation and the Assessment Process School psychologists and other assessment personnel often opt for translating normed tests as a way to assess ELLs in their native languages. On-the-spot translations or translations that require interpreters to translate test questions as the assessment session progresses are extremely problematic because interpreters can make errors when translating vocabulary and concepts. Asking interpreters to translate test questions ahead of time is also problematic for several reasons. Test directions are frequently too technical or difficult to allow for easy translation. Also, versions of tests translated by practitioners and interpreters are rarely able to provide equivalent meanings across language. Furthermore, test adaptation experts argue that test translations result in significant changes in the underlying psychological constructs assessed by the translated version of the test. The bottom line is that test translation alters test validity for ELLs, and translated tests need to be validated following several procedures that include: (a) translating the test questions; (b) reviewing the translated version through an editorial review committee; (c) adapting the draft instrument on the basis of
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the comments made by the editorial review committee; (d) pilot testing the instrument; (e) field testing the instrument; (f) standardizing the scores; (g) obtaining validation data; (h) developing a manual and documentation; (i) training users; and (j) collecting reactions from users. The Standards for Educational and Psychological Testing state that the reliability and validity of a translated test should be established with the linguistic group that will be tested. The recommended practice is that school psychologists and other assessment personnel use tests that have already been translated and validated with language populations similar to that of the student being assessed. Several bilingual assessment tools and tests in languages other than English are available now, mostly in Spanish. Assessors can also rely on nonverbal tools (e.g., nonverbal tests of intelligence) and informal assessment tools in the native language.
Competencies for School Interpreters and School Professionals Because the process of translating is complex, interpreters need to have several competencies. The competencies entail: (a) high levels of proficiency in the source and target languages; (b) knowledge of the cultural backgrounds of the clients they are translating for; (c) knowledge and skills in the different types of translation style (e.g., simultaneous and consecutive translations); (d) professional conduct (i.e., behaving ethically, and adhering to confidentiality); (d) excellent listening skills; (e) excellent long-term and short-term memory skills; (f) sufficient knowledge of the situations in which they are translating to deliver messages that are contextually appropriate; (e) well-developed language skills to make sure that the information translated remains accurate, retains the original meaning, and evokes the same emotional response as the original messages; (f) knowledge of the educational context (e.g., familiarity with the education system, district policies, and school policies); (g) knowledge of technical vocabulary used by school psychologists such as diagnostic categories (e.g., learning disabilities, emotionally disturbed), educational programs (e.g., special education, acceleration, inclusion), and psychological terms (e.g., cognition, assessment, exceptionality); (h) an understanding of the cultural context of communication or differences in how disabilities are viewed by individuals from different cultures to bridge
the communication between school professionals and families of ELLs; (i) knowledge of developmental and psychological issues when translating for students of different age groups and to students with mental health, behavioral, and medical problems; (j) skills in establishing rapport with ELLs and their families, and in gaining their trust to create an environment that is conducive to collaboration and problem solving; (k) the ability to engage in professional and ethical behavior (e.g., maintaining confidentiality); and (l) a clear understanding of their roles and the ability to reflect on how their presence influences and alters clients’ (i.e., ELLs and their families) interactions with school professionals during a variety of professional situations (e.g., parent conferences, assessment sessions). School psychologists and other school personnel also need several competencies to work with interpreters. These competencies include: (a) skills in establishing rapport with ELLs and families through interpreters; (b) skills in interviewing clients through interpreters; (c) skills in conducting meetings and assessments through interpreters; (d) skills relevant to reporting results obtained through interpreters; (e) an understanding of the problems and challenges inherent in the translation process; (f) clear communication skills so that interpreters can understand what information needs to be conveyed in their translations; (g) awareness of the emotional and social aspects of using interpreters; and (h) skills in training interpreters to deliver psychological services.
Recommended Practices The practice of working with interpreters continues despite the lack of clear guidelines. Several rules are recommended to guide school psychologists and other school professionals in their efforts to provide educational and mental-health services to ELLs and their families. Districts should develop a system to coordinate the services offered by school interpreters Among the practices recommended are to develop: (a) a roster of qualified interpreters who can be shared across districts and/or schools; (b) guidelines for outlining interpreters’ roles; (c) guidelines for selecting interpreters, (d) guidelines for working with interpreters; (e) a system for monitoring the interpreters’ practices; (f) a plan for interpreter and school personnel training; (g) a reward system for compensating
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interpreters; (h) procedures such as supervision to help interpreters to improve their performance; and (i) plans for conducting formative and summative evaluations relevant to working with interpreters. Training experiences are needed for school interpreters and for school personnel working with interpreters. Local school districts and school psychology training programs can work collaboratively with interpreter training programs in universities across the nation to develop pre-service and in-service training programs for school interpreters, school psychologists, and other school personnel. Training programs can focus on the competencies previously outlined. Training experiences can involve courses as well as workshops targeted for different school professionals (e.g., interpreters, school psychologists) and can be delivered jointly (e.g., training interpreters and school psychologists together on how to conduct assessments). Practicum experiences can also be created so interpreters can receive practical experiences working in school settings with a variety of professionals. Hire school interpreters with adequate competencies. When bilingual school psychologists are not available, school psychologists should work with interpreters who demonstrate the competencies outlined earlier. Avoid using interpreters who have dual relationships with clients. Trained interpreters, school personnel, and community members who have dual relationships with specific clients should not provide translation services for those clients. It is not recommended to place school children and family members in the roles of interpreters. The confidential and sensitive nature of the issues discussed with children and parents precludes bilingual peers from acting as interpreters during interviews, conferences, and assessment situations. Peers and family members who act as interpreters may lack the language skills needed for the task. In addition, their personal involvement with the student and family may interfere with their ability to remain objective during the translation process. Provide adequate time to work with interpreters. Providing psychological services through interpreters is time consuming because of the many barriers that can be encountered during the process. Working with interpreters is also time-consuming because of the need to filter all communication through the interpreter. Sufficient time should be allocated for assessment sessions and meetings that necessitate the use of interpreters.
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Provide opportunities to establish rapport. Opportunities must be provided for interpreters to establish rapport with clients. Thus, school psychologists may want to ask interpreters to meet with ELLs and their parents before translation sessions so that they can work on establishing rapport with the family and/or client. School psychologists and other school professionals also need to allow time to introduce themselves and establish rapport through the interpreter. Conduct briefing sessions with interpreters. Before working with interpreters, school psychologists should conduct briefing sessions with them. If other school personnel are joining the school psychologist for activities such as meetings and interviews with parents, the briefing session should be conducted with all relevant personnel. Briefing sessions provide school psychologists the opportunity to discuss with the interpreters the background information needed to prepare for the translation session such as the purposes of the translation session (e.g., assessment, meet with parent), the procedures that will be used (e.g., interviews, meetings, assessment) and topics that will be discussed (i.e., special education issues, technical vocabulary). The briefing session is also the time when the school psychologist may want to explore the cultural issues that they need to be aware of to work with ELLs from diverse cultural backgrounds. Seating arrangements should also be established to ascertain that the school psychologist and other school professionals can face the client and/or family members. The client and family should also be able to look at the school professionals and the interpreter. The interpreter should also be provided with information needed to understand the context of the situation. Issues related to confidentiality should also be addressed. During the briefing session, decisions also need to be made about what types of translation style will be used (e.g., consecutive, simultaneous). Time should be provided after the debriefing session for the interpreter to translate any documents that will be needed during the translation session (e.g., psychoeducational report, Individualized Education Plan, letters). The school psychologist needs to discuss the technical terms that will be used during the session to help the interpreter to prepare for the translation session (i.e., diagnostic categories, special education terms, psychological terms). The interpreter should be encouraged to ask questions about any vocabulary or concepts that require more information. The briefing session is an opportunity to discuss cross-cultural
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issues from the perspective of communication and behavior. For example, the school psychologist may want to greet families in ways that are culturally appropriate and the interpreter may be helpful in that regard. The school psychologist may also want to explore with interpreters any communication or interaction patterns that are culturally appropriate. The school psychologist needs to communicate to the interpreter the expectation that everything will be translated to the clients and that the interpreter should translate all communication from the clients. If the appropriate assessment tools are available, the interpreter should review all assessment materials and should have the opportunity to ask questions relevant to them. The school psychologist should also review with the interpreter concepts related to standardization, validity, reliability, and conduct during assessment sessions (e.g., do not coax students). Use best practices when working with interpreters during translation sessions. School professionals need to take the time necessary to welcome children and parents through the interpreter. The interpreter should introduce him or herself, the school psychologist, and any other school professional present during the session. Time should be taken to establish rapport with the clients and family members. School professionals should speak directly to the clients and allow time for the interpreter to translate everything said during the session. The school psychologist should communicate to the clients that they need to stop periodically to allow the interpreter to translate their messages. The interpreter should be ready to ask the client to slow down or to speak in short sentences if the rate of speech is too fast or if the client is not stopping frequently enough to allow the interpreter to translate their messages. In situations where the interpreter and the clients become involved in long discussions, the school psychologist should be ready to interrupt the discussion and to remind the interpreters and the clients that all communications must be translated. It is important to remember that idioms, slang, and metaphors are difficult to translate. Taking note of concerns that need to be discussed after the translation session is recommended (e.g., terms that were difficult to translate or cross-cultural issues relevant to communication). During conferences and interview sessions, the interpreter should periodically ask the clients questions to establish that they are understanding the content of the communication. Asking clarifying questions is helpful in
situations where information was lost as a result of the translation. Conduct debriefing sessions. Debriefing sessions between school psychologists and interpreters are recommended to discuss the outcomes of the translation session. In addition, discuss any translation problems that may have surfaced during the session and their implications. Issues such as difficulty establishing rapport, cultural differences, and barriers in translating concepts or terms can be discussed to allow the interpreter and school psychologist to process issues that influenced the communication and interactions with clients and their families. Use multiple assessment methods. If an interpreter is needed to perform an educational or psychological evaluation, multiple assessment tools and procedures should be used. On-the-spot translations of standardized achievement and cognitive tools are not recommended. The first choice should be to use testing tools that have been translated and validated for the population being tested. If such tools are available, the school psychologist must provide the interpreter with training to assist in the assessment process. Interpreters need opportunities to familiarize themselves with testing tools and to practice administering the tests. Informal translations of cognitive assessment tools are not recommended, and nonverbal tools should be used instead. Any reports generated to describe data obtained through interpreters should include: (a) language and cultural data pertinent to the student’s background; (b) a statement clearly indicating that an interpreter was used; (c) a clear description of the extent to which the interpreter was needed; (d) the style of translation that was used (e.g., simultaneous, consecutive); (e) a clear description of any testing procedures that involved the use of interpreters; and (f) the validity and reliability of the findings. All test data should be interpreted within the context of the student’s cultural backgrounds and should be reported in qualitative format. If findings are questionable because the process of working with the interpreter did not yield valid assessment data, the test report should clearly state so and recommendations are to address the need for a bilingual evaluation by a qualified school psychologist.
Recommendations for the Future School psychologists and other school professionals must often work with interpreters because of the need
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to communicate with ELLs and their families. However, school professionals need clear guidelines in this area. National and state policies are needed that outline procedures to be used for working with interpreters in school settings as well as the qualifications for school interpreters. State education agencies and districts need to develop guidelines for training and giving credentials to competent school interpreters. The guidelines should address the need to hire interpreters with adequate training in translation, and with high levels of proficiency in English and the second language. Future research also needs to be conducted to further understand the process of working with interpreters and to guide practices for school professionals when working with them.
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families. In A. Thomas and J. Grimes (Eds.), Best practices in school psychology IV (pp. 1419–1432). Bethesda, MD: National Association of School Psychologists. Lopez, E. C. (2000). Conducting instructional consultation through interpreters. School Psychology Review, 29, 378–388. Rogers, M. R., Ingraham, C. L., Bursztyn, A., Cajigas-Segredo, N., Esquivel, G., Hess, R. et al. (1999). Best practices in providing psychological services to racially, ethnically, culturally, and linguistically diverse individuals in the schools. School Psychology International Journal, 20, 243–264.
Suggested Resources The National Association of School Psychologists—http://www. nasponline.org: The National Association of School Psychologists provides several documents focusing on working with interpreters.
See also: > Bilingualism; > Culturally competent practice; > English as a Second Language Instruction (ESL); > Language proficiency
Suggested Reading
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Lopez, E. C. (2002). Best practices in working with school interpreters to deliver psychological services to children and
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Intelligence/Intelligence Quotient (IQ)
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Jewish American Children Raymond Goldfield
Jews in America The Jewish people are a small but prominent minority in American culture, making up only 2% of the American population. However, the Jewish people have made prominent contributions in many fields such as entertainment, science, medicine, and literature. The first Jews came to America in 1654, escaping religious persecution, but did not find it completely hospitable in the new world either. America was primarily settled by Puritans, who came to America because they opposed the Anglican church and wanted to create a more religious society. Jews, while allowed to settle, were not exactly welcomed due to their different beliefs. The Jews found the most hospitable environment in Rhode Island, settled by Roger Williams as a place of religious freedom. Jews continued to settle in America in small numbers until the late nineteenth century. They held several prominent positions, including Supreme Court Justices. During the Civil War, a prominent Confederate Cabinet minister, Judah P. Benjamin, a strong believer in the right to secession but no fan of slavery, advocated freedom for slaves who sided with the Confederacy. His suggestion was not taken up, but he played a prominent role in one of the most important eras in American history. In the late nineteenth century, there was a sea change in Jewish immigration. The earliest Jewish immigrants were from Western European nations that included England, France, and Germany. The new wave, coming in much larger numbers due to poor conditions in Russia and Eastern Europe, came from a different culture and were often much poorer and found it hard to assimilate into American culture. They lived primarily in urban ethnic neighborhoods and specialized in crafts and trades. Many started successful businesses while knowing little English. During World War II, almost half of all Jewish American men fought in the war. After the Holocaust, many survivors immigrated to the U.S., helping to build the immigrant culture further beyond the first two waves. However, for all these immigrant waves, the assimilation was not smooth. AntiSemitism, prominent in Europe and a prime reason for the immigration waves, reared its ugly head in America
as well. Jews faced persecution from the Ku Klux Klan, were targets in race riots, and had to face Neo-Nazi activism in the U.S. before and after World War II. Jews were prominent figures in the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s, and two Jewish men, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner, were murdered along with James Chaney, a Black man, by White supremacists. Despite these difficulties, the small but prominent Jewish community in America has thrived in recent decades, despite a resurgence of anti-Semitism from old and new sources.
Challenges Facing Jewish American Children Jewish children in schools are often overlooked as a minority. This can lead to insensitive decisions that marginalize the population. For instance, in recent years, due to the testing regimen mandated by federal education law, schools have stepped up test preparation. This has come at the expense of the days off usually given for the High Holy Days, Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. While many schools in areas with prominent Jewish communities have reinstated the days after protests, in other schools, children and their families are forced to choose between missing critical days of study and observing the most important days of their religion. Other examples include snow days being made up on Saturday, which is traditionally the Jewish day of rest, and school lunches not offering a Kosher option. In addition, the federally mandated serving of milk with school lunches can cause problems for observant Jewish children, who are not allowed to mix meat products with dairy. One of the largest problems facing Jewish children today is the recent resurgence of anti-Semitism. While in the past, anti-Semitism generally came from a rightwing, White supremacist viewpoint, today’s hostility comes from many different sources. Stereotypes remain complete with claims that Jews control the media and the banks. In recent years, for instance, possibly spurred on in part by Mel Gibson’s controversial movie ‘‘The Passion of the Christ,’’ there has been an increase in comments regarding the ‘‘blood libel,’’ the 2,000-year old accusation that Jews are responsible for the death of Jesus. A controversial topic, many schools steer clear of covering religious issues such as this in history class, so the stereotypes and misconceptions that children learn remain unchallenged. A hostile environment is never conducive to learning and so, when a teacher or
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administrator does not confront this type of bigotry immediately, it can influence the learning process for Jewish children negatively. Studies of inclusive schools and cultural sensitivity by Gwen Meyer attribute this to the hostile environment. Studies have shown that when children are worried about harassment, their grades tend to go down. Despite cultural insensitivity and anti-Semitism, Jewish American high school graduates have among the highest GPAs and college acceptance rates. This has been related to the fact that, on average, Jewish families tend to be in the higher end of American earners, and as such can afford SAT prep classes, tutors, and private schools. In the lower grades, their standardized test scores are among the best. However, while the group as a whole does not suffer, each individual child who runs into problems will, and as such schools and cultural groups have begun to take steps to increase awareness of the challenges facing Jewish American children. Holocaust education has become a main stay in recent years in middle and high schools. Books such as The Diary of Anne Frank, Night, Friedrich, and Number the Stars have become required reading. By seeing the truth of the history of persecution that Jewish people encountered, children who are exposed to bigoted ideas are helped to shut them out and see the truth. In younger grades, it has become commonplace to work celebrations of other cultures into holiday celebrations. In many schools now, Hannukah craft projects accompany Christmas ones, and stories of Passover follow those of the trappings of Easter. By drawing non-Jewish children into the celebrations that their Jewish classmates partake in, the Jewish culture seems less foreign, and studies show that children are far less likely to mock or fear what they understand.
Trends in Education of Jewish American Children While the vast majority of Jewish American children attend public school, in recent years there has been a great increase in the number of Jewish day schools around the country, up by 15% in the last decade alone. Competition for places in these private schools is fierce, mostly by religious Jewish parents who want their children to get a combination of a top-tier education in the essential subjects while also being educated in the holy texts and history of the Jews. Approximately 185,000 students nationwide attend Jewish day schools.
The vast majority of these students are Orthodox, the most religious branch of Judaism, while many Conservative and Reform students attend public or nonreligious private school. The more common choice for religious education for Jewish children is part-time Hebrew schools, generally meeting on the weekend or a few days after school, for a few hours at the time. Many youths attend these schools in preparation for their Bar Mitzvah or Bat Mitzvah, the Jewish rite of passage for boys and girls at 13 or 12, respectively. While a large number cease their Jewish studies after this milestone, there are schools that cater to older students. Jewish studies programs at universities are gaining in prominence. While the position of defending Israel’s actions in the Middle East is unpopular on most universities, Jewish student’s groups and faculty are becoming more vocal in stating their side, and have waged several successful fights against what they perceived as an anti-Israel bias among faculty. While previously regarded as the province of Jewish students alone, these programs are now gaining in popularity, as are other ethnic study programs. Jewish students have among the highest rate of advanced degrees, including PhDs, and Jewish student associations are increasing in popularity and mainstream attention yearly, despite an overall drop in the number of Jews in the country due to assimilation and immigration to Israel. See also: > Ethnic minority youth; > Religious holidays
Suggested Reading Cohen, E. H. (2000). Mifgashim: A meeting of minds and hearts. Journal of Jewish Education, 66, 23–37. Markstrom, C. A., Berman, R. C., & Brusch, G. (1998). An exploratory examination of identity formation among Jewish adolescents according to context. Journal of Adolescent Research, 13, 202–222.
Suggested Resources The Jewish Children’s Learning Network—www.akhala.com: A nonprofit organization devoted to connecting parents and educators from Jewish day schools and classes around the country. Tzivos-Hashem—www.tzivos-hashem.com: A website for parents and kids, devoted to educating children about the Jewish faith and giving parents advice on how to further their children’s Jewish Education
KABC-II Kaufman Assessment Battery for Children-Second Edition (KABC-II) >
Kaufman Assessment Battery for Children— Second Edition (KABC-II) Elizabeth O Lichtenberger . Alan S Kaufman
The original Kaufman Assessment Battery for Children (K-ABC) was a popular instrument for assessing the cognitive abilities of children beginning at age 2½ years and extending to age 12½. Expanding on the previous edition, the Kaufman Assessment Battery for Children— Second Edition (KABC™-II) was developed to make the test appropriate for a wider age range and a wider range of abilities. Thus, the KABC-II is a measure of processing and cognitive abilities of children and adolescents between the ages of 3 years 0 months and 18 years 11 months.
History and Development The original K-ABC was developed by Alan and Nadeen Kaufman in the late 1970s and early 1980s, and was published in 1983. The K-ABC was rooted in neuropsychological theory—Sperry’s cerebral specialization approach and the Luria-Das successive—simultaneous processing dichotomy. Both the Sperry and Luria-Das models are characterized by a dual-processing approach that has been well supported by a large body of cognitive and neuropsychological research. The K-ABC’s theoretical underpinnings and its fairness in assessing children from diverse minority groups set it apart from traditional IQ tests, notably those developed from the Binet and Wechsler traditions. The size of group differences on tests of cognitive ability between White children and minority children are thought to reflect, in part, the ‘‘cultural fairness’’ of a test. Tests such as the Wechsler scales have typically yielded differences of about 15–16 points in favor of
White children versus African American children, but the K-ABC cut those differences in half. Numerous research studies have shown that Latino/a children and Native American children also tended to score higher on the K-ABC than on conventional measures, resulting in reduced differences between White and minority children. In revising the K-ABC and developing the second edition of the test, the KABC-II, the Kaufman’s considered several factors: the perspectives of psychologists and educators on the original K-ABC, the enormous amount of research on the test, and the current needs of clinicians as dictated by political, social, economic, and educational concerns. The goals for the KABC’s revision included: strengthening the theoretical foundations, increasing the number of constructs measured, enhancing the test’s clinical utility, developing a test that fairly assesses children from minority groups, and enhancing fair assessment of preschoolers. To achieve their goals, the test authors implemented major structural and conceptual revisions to the K-ABC. The K-ABC’s theoretical foundation in Luria’s sequential-simultaneous processing theory and cerebral specialization theory was modified and supplemented in the second edition. Unlike the K-ABC, the KABC-II is founded on two theoretical models: Luria’s neuropsychological model (expanded from the original sequential-simultaneous dichotomy to incorporate planning ability and learning ability) and the Cattell-Horn-Carroll (CHC) approach to categorizing specific cognitive abilities (which has been articulated by Flanagan, McGrew, and Ortiz). This dual theoretical approach gives examiners more flexibility in interpretation. The KABC-II yields a separate global score for each of these two theoretical models: the global score measuring general mental processing ability from the Luria perspective is the Mental Processing Index (MPI), and the global score measuring general cognitive ability from the Cattell-Horn-Carroll perspective is the FluidCrystallized Index (FCI). The key difference between these two global scores is that the MPI (Luria’s theory) excludes measures of acquired knowledge, whereas the FCI (CHC theory) includes measures of acquired knowledge. Only one of these two global scores is computed for any examinee. To create the dual theoretical basis, ten new subtests were created and eight old ones were removed, while eight original K-ABC subtests were retained. The subtests of the KABC-II are organized into three levels (Age 3, Ages 4–6, Ages 7–18). The KABC-II yields
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up to five scales, which vary depending on the age level of the child and the interpretive approach that the clinician chooses to take. From the Luria perspective, the KABC-II scales correspond to learning ability, sequential processing, simultaneous processing, and planning ability. From the vantage point of the CHC model, as applied to the KABC-II, the scales measure the following Broad Abilities: long-term memory, short-term memory, visual processing, fluid reasoning, and crystallized abilities. The names of the KABC-II scales reflect both the Luria process it is believed to measure and its CHC Broad Ability: Learning/Glr, Sequential/Gsm, Simultaneous/Gv, and Planning/Gf. However, the Knowledge/Gc scale that measures crystallized ability reflects only CHC theory, as it is specifically excluded from the Luria system. In addition to the MPI and FCI, and the five scales, the KABC-II has a Nonverbal Scale, composed of subtests that may be administered in pantomime and responded to motorically. The Nonverbal Scale permits valid assessment of children who are hearing impaired, have Limited English Proficiency, have moderate to severe speech or language impairments, and other disabilities that make both the MPI and FCI unsuitable. The KABC-II includes two batteries: a Core and an Expanded. The Expanded battery offers supplementary subtests to increase the breadth of the constructs that are measured by the Core battery, to follow up hypotheses, and to provide a comparison of the child’s initial learning and delayed recall of new learning. Scores earned on the supplementary subtests do not contribute to the child’s standard scores on any KABC-II scale (except for the special Nonverbal scale).
focuses on the integrative aspects of Luria’s theory, rather than on each Block’s specific functions, as it was designed primarily to measure high-level, complex, intelligent behavior. Whereas Luria’s theory was driven by his own clinical and neuropsychological research and his respect for the work of others, the Cattell-Horn-Carroll (CHC) model is a psychometric theory that rests on a large body of research. In the creation of CHC theory, two separate theories were merged: (1) Raymond Cattell’s original two-pronged Fluid (Gf)-Crystallized (Gc) theory, that was expanded and refined by John Horn to include an array of abilities (not just Gf and Gc); and (2) John Carroll’s theory of cognitive abilities, based on factoranalytic literature. Overall, the Carroll and Cattell-Horn theories were similar enough to warrant their merger into the new CHC theory.
Theoretical Foundations of the KABC-II
Luria’s Neuropsychological Theory states that three main Blocks or functional systems represented the brain’s basic functions. These three Blocks are responsible for arousal and attention (Block 1); the use of one’s senses to analyze, code, and store information (Block 2); and the application of executive functions for formulating plans and programming behavior (Block 3). Empirical research strongly supports Luria’s clinical documentation of the three functional units. Luria’s theory emphasizes the necessary integration and interdependence of these Blocks into functional systems to be capable of complex behavior. The joint operation of several brain systems is crucial for children to learn new material efficiently. The KABC-II
Use of the KABC-II in Cross-Cultural Assessment Although the KABC-II represents a substantial revision of the original edition, it has continued to provide a fair means to assess children who are not from the majority culture. Thus, the KABC-II battery was designed with the hopes that it would continue to minimize global score differences between ethnic minority children and White children. An analysis of clinical data from studies and reviews of the K-ABC pointed to several variables in the development of the original K-ABC that successfully resulted in substantially smaller discrepancies between children from varied ethnic backgrounds and children from the mainstream:
The elimination of knowledge-based subtests from the global score indexes, and the reduced emphasis on language and crystallized abilities for measuring overall cognitive ability. Design of subtests that were based on research that indicated fewer cultural differences (e.g., Face Recognition and Gestalt Closure). The reduced verbal load for the examiner and the examinee on each subtest that is a part of a global scale. The development of novel subtests that were designed to be intrinsically interesting to children of all ages. The simplification of administration and scoring thereby freeing the examiner to observe how the child took the test as much as correctness of content.
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The inclusion of teaching items where examiners were encouraged to modify wording, use gestures, and explain introductory items. The inclusion of subtest designs based on a theoretical model of brain function for assessing cognitive processes, as opposed to the assessment of acquired knowledge.
When developing new tasks for the KABC-II, interest value to children was regarded as the key to maintaining the original K-ABC’s legacy of reduced ethnic differences. In particular, new problem-solving and learning subtests were developed to be game-like and interesting in the hope that children and adolescents of all ethnic and socioeconomic backgrounds would be optimally motivated during the entire testing session. During development of the KABC-II, a tryout version of the test was administered to a group that comprised children from varied ethnic backgrounds. Two-thirds of the tryout sample consisted of either African American or Hispanic American children. The disproportionate number of children from ethnic minority backgrounds was to support item bias analyses as early in the process of test development as possible. Possible sex or ethnic item bias on the tryout results was evaluated using the Rasch method in which each subtest is calibrated independently for each subgroup of interest and the difference in an item’s difficulty values between groups is tested for statistical significance. Items that showed differential item functioning were carefully reviewed in an effort to understand the cause of the difference, and most of the identified items were eliminated or modified. During the tryout phase a group of 16 experts also reviewed the items, evaluating fairness to population subgroups such as ethnic groups, sex, socioeconomic status, educational, and physical disabilities. The next step in evaluating cultural fairness took place with the standardization sample. The primary purpose of test standardization is to gather data on a large sample of individuals that is representative of the population. The standardization data are used for final statistical evaluation of the difficulty, reliability, validity, and fairness of the items. A comparison of mean KABC-II global scores (MPI, FCI, and NVI) for the normative sample across ethnic groups (with scores adjusted for sex and socioeconomic status) suggests that the test authors were successful in meeting their goal of creating a culturally fair test. For example, for ages 3–6, the adjusted global score values are close to the normative mean of 100 for
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African American and Hispanic children (means of about 97 to 100); White children ages 3–6 averaged about 101. For ages 7–18, means are about 95 5 for African American, Hispanic, American Indian, Asian, and White children. (Means are not provided at ages 3–6 for American Indians and Asians because of small sample sizes.) The lowest Index for all of the ethnic minority groups was on the Knowledge/Gc Scale, which was most likely related to language and educational variables. As might be expected, the Knowledge/Gc Scale accounted for quite a bit of the socioeconomic variance for ages 3–6 (22.2%) and 7–18 (17.6%). In addition, the FCI was slightly lower for all ethnic minority groups than the MPI, again reflecting the influence of the Knowledge/Gc Scale and supporting the use of the MPI rather than the FCI for some populations. For children ages 7–18, African American children earned their highest mean Index (adjusted for sex and SES) on the Sequential/Gsm scale (100) followed closely by the Learning/Glr scale (98). In contrast, for that same age range, Hispanic children scored highest on the Simultaneous/Gv and Planning/Gf Indexes (99); the Simultaneous/Gv Index was highest for American Indian children (101) and Asian children (105). Most of the adjusted Indexes for Hispanic children were close to 100 except for the Sequential/Gsm scale (95), where the language load on Word Order and Number Recall may have interfered with performance. This observation is consistent with K-ABC data and other tests that have verbal-nonverbal distinctions. Results of these analyses of ethnic differences, both with and without adjustment for background variables, indicate that the KABC-II continues to have small differences between White children and children from ethnic minority backgrounds. A byproduct of examining the modest ethnic group differences on the KABC-II was the revelation of the importance of the variable of socioeconomic status (mother’s education level) in intelligence. Analyses of KABC-II data indicate that the amount of variance accounted for by ethnicity is much smaller than that accounted for by socioeconomic status. For example, at ages 3–6, ethnic differences account for less than 1–2% of the variance in both the MPI and FCI, in contrast to a huge 18–22% of the variance accounted for by socioeconomic status (mother’s education). At ages 7–18, the percents are 4–5% (ethnic differences) versus 11–14% (socioeconomic status). The effect of socioeconomic status was also similar
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on KABC-II Scale Index scores. The Knowledge/Gc Index produced the highest percents of variance across all ages for both ethnicity (6–7%) and socioeconomic status (18–22%). The trend across all KABC-II age groups for children to score progressively higher as mother’s education (a reflection of socioeconomic status) increases is consistent with a wide array of data on other instruments, including the original K-ABC. These results suggest an overall pattern that is understandable in light of the major role that the home environment and parental modeling have in the cognitive development and knowledge acquisition of children.
Conclusions about Using the KABC-II for Minority Assessment Overall, the KABC-II appears to be continuing the tradition set by the K-ABC for smaller global score differences between White and other ethnic groups. The resulting smaller differences were by design and forethought in test development. Additional factors adding to the cultural validity of the KABC-II are that sample items, instructions, and teaching can be conducted in the child’s native language. In addition, examiners can accept verbal responses that are said in the child’s native language as long as they are correct. This process allows for ease of administration, and also demonstrates that the KABC-II is adept at obtaining information about the child’s cognitive processes, not cognitions confounded by problems with language interpretation. See also: > Assessment of culturally diverse children; > Gf-Gc model of intelligence; > Intelligence/Intelligence Quotient(IQ); > Racial/ethnic group differences; > Sociocultural factors; > Testing and measurement
Suggested Reading Kaufman, A. S., & Kaufman, N. L. (2004). Kaufman Assessment Battery for Children—second edition (K-ABC-II). Circle Pines, MN: American Guidance Service. Kaufman, A. S., Lichtenberger, E. O., Fletcher-Janzen, E., & Kaufman, N. L. (2005). Essentials of KABC-II assessment. New York: John Wiley & Sons. Lichtenberger, E. O., Kaufman, A. S., & Kaufman, N. L. (1998). The K-ABC: Theory and Application. In R. J. Samuda (Ed.), Advances in cross-cultural assessment (pp. 20–55). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.
Kindergarten Donna Kresky . Stephen D Truscott
Ninety-eight percent of students in the United States (U.S.) attend kindergarten before enrolling in first grade. Nationally, among the approximately 4 million children who attend kindergarten, 60% are nonHispanic Whites, 19% are Hispanic, 15% are African American, and 3% are Asian. In the Southern and Western regions of the U.S., the proportion of students of color and those from different cultural backgrounds is even larger. In California, for example almost half of all public school students are Hispanic and about one quarter of all students are in English Language Learner programs. School enrollment is rising for a variety of reasons, but rapidly expanding immigration means that cross-cultural competence is increasingly important for both students and educational professionals. Changes occurring in U.S. demographics are greatest for younger students. Hence, school psychologists who work with kindergarten students are at the forefront of a major cultural shift within schools and communities. Kindergarten programs vary widely from state to state and school district to school district. Forty-three states, the District of Columbia, and the U.S. Virgin Islands require school districts to offer at least half-day kindergarten programs. In most states parents are not required to send their children to kindergarten, but nine states (AL, GA, LA, MD, MS, NC, SC, and WV), located predominately in the South, require students to attend at least a half-day program prior to entering first grade. Nationally, 65% of kindergarten students are enrolled in full day programs. Generally speaking, children of color and children from families with low incomes are more likely to participate in full-day kindergarten programs than are White children. The literature suggests that most children benefit from participating in full-day kindergarten programs. Children from low socioeconomic status, minority, and limited English proficient families appear to benefit even more than most students. Full-day, high quality kindergarten programs, then, may be an important way to narrow the achievement gap between children of color from low income families and White children from higher socioeconomic backgrounds. Full-day programs increase the time spent on early academic skills, teacher-directed individual work, cooperative group work, and child-initiated activities such as free
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play and learning centers. Such programs result in both short and long term gains in student achievement. Students in full-day programs demonstrate faster gains on language and early literacy measures, better attendance, and better preparation for primary grade learning, which results in overall achievement gains. These achievement gains persist at least through elementary school. Full-day kindergarten programs are also more successful in encouraging the development of positive social and behavioral skills such as peer interaction and originality than are half-day programs. No negative outcomes have been associated with fullday kindergarten programs. Effective kindergarten programs are based on developmentally and culturally appropriate practices as identified by the National Association for the Education of Young Children. Specifically, effective programs incorporate practices supported by research in child development and learning; attention to the strengths, interests, and needs of each child in the group; and knowledge of the social and cultural contexts in which each child lives. Effective programs present academic instruction within a play-based framework that emphasizes the development of social skills such as cooperation, negotiation, and working well within a group. The curriculum must also accommodate the wide variation in skills, abilities, interests, and needs that represent typical development at this age. An appropriate curriculum meets each child at his or her developmental level and within his or her cultural context while encouraging the development of new skills. Despite the preponderance of positive evidence regarding high quality kindergarten programs, kindergarten entrance rules vary from state to state, and sometimes from school district to school district within a state. The typical kindergarten student is five and one-half years old at the beginning of the school year. Parents with concerns about their child’s readiness for kindergarten may opt to delay the child’s entry into kindergarten. In some cases, school personnel may recommend that a child delay kindergarten entry based on readiness assessments. The practice of delayed entry is based on the belief that an additional year of development will allow the child to better meet the demands of kindergarten. However, this practice is not well supported by research. While children who delay entry into kindergarten may have a limited initial academic advantage, the benefits fade within the first few years of school. Parents of color are more likely to express concerns about their child’s readiness for
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kindergarten, but non-Hispanic White parents are more likely to delay their child’s entry into kindergarten. In contrast to delayed entry, high quality early educational experiences have been repeatedly demonstrated to narrow the achievement gap that exists between groups of children. See also: > Cultural issues in education; > Early childhood education; > Head Start; > Montessori; > Preschool
Suggested Reading DeCesare, D. (2004). Kindergarten. The progress of education reform 2004, 5(4). Education Commission of the States. Retrieved May 10, 2006, from http://www.ecs.org/clearinghouse/54/83/ 5483.pdf. Plucker, J. A., & Zapf, J. S. (2005). Short-lived gains or enduring benefits? The long-term impact of full-day kindergarten. Center for Evaluation & Education Policy Education Policy Brief, 3(4). Retrieved May 10, 2006, from http://www.ceep.indiana.edu/ projects/PDF/PB_Spring_2005_Full_Day_Kindergarten.pdf.
Suggested Resources National Association for the Education of Young Children—http:// www.naeyc.org/about/positions/daptoc.asp: This website provides information and resources for the education of young children.
KIPP (Knowledge is Power Program) Schools H Rachel Fender . Rebecca S Martinez
The Knowledge Is Power Program (KIPP) or ‘‘KIPP schools’’ are kindergarten through 12th grade public charter schools for students from traditionally underresourced rural and urban communities. Tuition at KIPP schools is free, and the opportunity for enrollment in a KIPP school is available to all students by lottery selection. KIPP schools emphasize a rigorous and balanced education that equips students with the skills, knowledge, and character imperative for success in and out of school. The underlying premise of all KIPP charter schools is that any student, regardless
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of his or her background or previous difficulty in school, will excel when educated in a rigorous academic environment with highly motivated, caring, and committed teachers. Indeed, KIPP teachers expect high achievement of all students and accept nothing short of excellent performance by making opportunities available so students can demonstrate success. As of 2006, there were 52 KIPP schools in 16 states, serving approximately 12,000 students. Most funding for KIPP schools is made possible by donations from private organizations (e.g., the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation). KIPP schools serve a student population that is demographically at-risk for school failure. Eighty-two percent of students at KIPP schools are eligible for free or reduced lunch, a standard index of poverty. Ninety-five percent of KIPP students are African American or Latino. Five guiding principles undergird all KIPP schools. The five pillars of KIPP are High Expectations, Choice and Commitment, More Time, Power to Lead, and Focus on Results. The High Expectations pillar refers to setting patent expectations of academic excellence for all students. Choice and Commitment, the second KIPP pillar, highlights parents’ decision to matriculate their children in KIPP schools as well as their commitment to support their children while enrolled in the KIPP program. The third KIPP pillar, More Time, refers to the longer than traditional KIPP school day. KIPP students attend school from 7:30 A.M. to 5:00 P.M. on weekdays, four hours on alternating Saturdays, and 3 weeks every summer. Furthermore, the average KIPP student is expected to complete 2–3 hours of homework each night. The fourth pillar is Power to Lead. Power to Lead refers to KIPP school administrators’ local control over budget and staffing decisions. Finally, Focus on Results, the fifth KIPP pillar, refers to the emphasis on measurable student achievement gains on standardized tests. Research shows that students at KIPP schools make impressive academic gains compared to peers in public schools. In an independent evaluation of the effectiveness of KIPP schools, the results showed noteworthy student achievement gains after the first year of enrollment in a KIPP school. Indeed, students enrolled in the KIPP charter schools outperformed peers attending demographically comparable public schools. Nevertheless, critics of KIPP schools assert these charter schools segregate students by their proclivity for success by drawing the most talented teachers, committed families and achievement-oriented
students away from surrounding schools. Despite this criticism, KIPP schools set high academic standards of success for all children, and their students demonstrate remarkable academic achievement. The KIPP school model certainly warrants a close examination by those interested in helping children succeed in and out of school. See also: > Academic achievement in minority children; > Charter schools; > Educational resilience; > Education funding; > Parental involvement in education
Suggested Reading Dory, H. C., & Drury, D. W. (2002). Evaluating success: KIPP educational program evaluation. Education Performance Network, Technical Report. Matthews, J. (2005). Assessing the KIPP schools: A new perspective. The Washington Post, March 29th, 2005.
Suggested Resources Official KIPP Homepage—http://www.kipp.org/: This is the homepage for the Knowledge is Power Program. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation—http://www.gatesfoundation.org/UnitedStates/Education/TransformingHighSchools/ Schools/ModelSchools/KIPP.htm.: This is the website for the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, which sponsors KIPP and many other global health and development initiatives.
Knowledge is Power Program >
KIPP (Knowledge is Power Program) Schools
Korean American Youth Kyung-hyun Kwon
Korean Americans are one of the fastest growing ethnic groups in the United States (U.S.). According to 2002 U.S. Census data, approximately 1.1 million Korean
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Americans reside in the U.S., which reflects a 37% increase since 1990. Of this number, about one-third of the population are children and adolescents. Secondgeneration Korean Americans are youth whose parents are first-generation immigrants. Because these youth are born in the U.S., they have American citizenship and are fluent in both English and Korean. These youth may share both traditional and American cultures. U.S. intervention in the Korean War during 1950– 1953 triggered the immigration of Korean children and wives of U.S. servicemen. These two groups have been a significant component of Korean immigration to the U.S. ever since that time. Currently, most Koreans who reside in the U.S. are those who have immigrated since 1965. When World War II ended in 1945, there were fewer than 10,000 Koreans in the U.S. In 1970, the total was 70,000. Since 1980, the number of Koreans entering the country annually has averaged about 33,000, and its present total is estimated to be more than 1.1 million. The largest Korean communities reside in the West Coast’s Bay Area (e.g., Los Angeles, San Francisco) and the East Coast (e.g., New York, New Jersey, Washington, D.C.). Korean immigrants view building a sound economic base as a key priority. Many Koreans work 10–14 hours a day, including Saturdays, Sundays, or both. Despite these efforts, they suffer from unstable employment conditions. According to the 2002 U.S. Census, 25% of Korean male workers and 29% of female workers experienced unemployment in 2001.
Community Koreans have formed an associational community based on an intricate network of clubs, secondary organizations, local churches, and news media. For example, in Los Angeles, Koreans have formed a territorial community called Koreatown. The immigrant community includes three generations: the elderly, adults, and children. Each of these generations is struggling to make a transition to a new life setting. The speed and magnitude of the transition varies significantly between them. Many Korean American children and adolescents are involved in similar patterns with other members because they are influenced by their parents, who are first-generation immigrants to the U.S. and were born and raised in Korea. Hence, youth live in Koreatown, participate in Korean associations, attend Korean churches, and
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identify as Koreans. In the Korean community, many Korean immigrants are hard-working, family-oriented, adventurous, and focused on educational attainment. Also, Koreans are strongly individualistic and selfreliant. They rely on their own opinion and do not easily yield or compromise.
Family Traditional Korean family organization is based on the values of Confucius, who was a practical man as well as a philosopher in China. Family is the primary unit of identification and the first school to educate Korean children. Children and adolescents learn to become adults and respect parents through their experience of the family. This notion can create a gap in terms of the value system between parents and children. For instance, what Korean American youth learn from their American school experience and what they are told in their families can differ. Currently, the traditional concept of the parent–child relationship remains, but the generation gap is becoming greater. Nevertheless, subordination to parents is an ethical standard and a social term. No son or daughter is expected to behave against their parents. One obvious problem with children is that of communication in Korean and English. Children tend to speak better English than their parents and many parents have had the experience of having their English corrected by their children. Also, children tend to forget Korean the more they live in the U.S. whereas parents still maintain their mother tongue.
Acculturation Many Korean American adolescents are faced with acculturative stress. Acculturative stress refers to overcoming the clash between Western individualistic cultural expectations (including that of one’s peers) and Eastern collectivistic cultural expectations (including that of one’s parents) as well dealing with racial or ethnic prejudice. Koreans share a common descent, language, history, culture, and ideals that are distinct from other Asian Americans. Individuals identify exclusively as Koreans and take pride in their culture. First-generation immigrants emphasize pride, and encourage the value of pride in their children as well, even if they are not born in Korea.
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Acculturative stress occurs when these traditional notions conflict with what is familiar for firstgeneration immigrant parents as opposed to what the second generation experiences. Despite this conflict, however, many second-generation Korean American youth indicate that their acculturation process is not as difficult as that endured by their parents. Nevertheless, acculturative stress appears to be an important factor that contributes to psychological distress among Korean American youth. Immigration status may have a significant effect on Korean American adolescents. This immigration experience adds to the normative stressors that occur during adolescence.
Mental Health Issues
Religion: Christianity
See also: > Acculturation; > Asian/Asian American youth; > Ethnic minority youth; > Immigration; > Racial/ethnic group differences
Christian churches among Korean immigrants in America have continued to play a major role in personal and community life ever since the first group of Korean immigrants settled in the U.S. Korean churches provide members not only with the opportunity to exercise religious values but also the chance to participate in educational and community services (e.g., English classes for adults and Korean classes for children). As a result, Korean churches mean more than being a religious organization: they provide multiple ways to create connections among members. Because of the variety of roles and functions being undertaken by Korean churches, it is difficult to isolate one single reason that explains the rapid growth of churches in Korean communities across the nation.
Education ‘‘What school do you go to?,’’ ‘‘What school are you from?,’’ are frequently asked questions among Koreans, that reflect the high value of education and good schooling. Because of the strong educational emphasis, Korean American youth are instructed to study hard and attend a good university. Most Korean parents want their children to finish at least four years of college and additional higher education (e.g., graduate school), as that can be required by society as well. Additionally, as first-generation parents have already experienced hard work in the U.S. due to limited education, they want their children to have a better education so that they can benefit from more lucrative career prospects.
Korean American youth have been found to experience severe depression. Possible reasons can be stress caused by acculturation, adjustment issues in school and community, unhealthy interpersonal relationships, conflict with parents (e.g., the generation gap), pressures for successful academic accomplishment and a decent future career, pressures from the values of Korean society, limited English proficiency, and concerns about parents’ adjustment issues as first-generation immigrants. Many studies have shown that a key element in psychological distress among Korean American adolescents is stress due to cultural conflicts with parents.
Suggested Reading Jung, W., & Stinnett, T. (2005). Comparing judgements of social, behavioural, emotional and school adjustment functioning for Korean, Korean American and Caucasian American children. School Psychology International, 26(3), 317–329. Kim, K., & Rohner, R. (2002). Parental warmth, control, and involvement in schooling: Predicting academic achievement among Korean American adolescents. Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, 33(2), 127–140. Suh, S., & Satcher, J. (2005). Understanding at-risk Korean American youth. Professional School Counseling, 8(5), 428–440.
Suggested Resources Korean American Historical Society (KAHS)—http://www.kahs. org/: This website provides a general overview and information about ethnic heritage and experiences of Koreans living in the U.S. Korean/Korean-American Gateway—http://www.geocities.com/ mokkim/index.html: This website is a collection of reviewed homepages, and other information about Korean and Korean Americans. Personal homepages of Korean American individuals are shown. USC Libraries: Korean-American Collection—http://www.usc.edu/ libraries/collections/korean_american/: This website is the digital archive that brings more than 13,000 pages of documents, more than 1,900 photographs, and about 180 sound files of Korean American experiences. This archive also reveals the organizational and private experience of Koreans in America.
Labeling Melissa Coolong-Chaffin . Matthew K Burns
Labeling succinctly defined is the act of identifying or classifying through words intended to describe that which is being identified. Labeling takes many forms in our society all of which can be conceptualized along a continuum from informal to formal using criteria that range from completely idiosyncratic and based on personal opinion to specifically defined by law. Informal labels include, among others, those which describe a person’s recreational preferences such as ‘‘runner’’ or ‘‘book worm,’’ occupations such as ‘‘teacher’’ or ‘‘salesperson,’’ behavioral tendencies such as ‘‘giver’’ or ‘‘taker,’’ or political affiliations such as Democrat or Republican. More formal labels, such as Learning Disabled have specifically defined criteria. Despite identical language, the definition of a category such as Learning Disabled may differ according to the educational background and professional affiliation of the entity doing the labeling, as will be discussed below.
Why Do We Use Labels? In a general sense, labeling is related to the social psychological construct of schemas, or cognitive structures that help individuals interpret complex information about other persons, things, groups, and situations efficiently. Schemas contain information about attributes and how concepts relate to other concepts. For example, when one sees a dog on the street, one is able to recognize it as belonging to a certain class of animals that have 4 feet, fur, sharp teeth, and are often kept by people as pets. In addition, each person has his or her own schema about dogs based on personal past experience. A person who was bitten by a dog as a child may also have the information that dogs should be avoided as part of his or her schema, and a person with a history of positive experiences with dogs may choose to approach and pet the dog as a result of information in that personal schema. Schemas help the individual process large amounts of information efficiently in a variety of ways. First, schemas guide memory by organizing information and thereby affecting what individuals remember and what they forget. Research has found that people tend to remember information better when it is either consistent
with their existing schemas or contradictory to those schemas, as opposed to when information is irrelevant to those schemas. Second, schemas allow individuals to make inferences about new situations or people based on information within their existing schemas. In this way, schemas can fill in gaps in information. Third, schemas help individuals make judgments about new persons or situations. In people’s quest for cognitive efficiency, the richness of detail in an experience is sometimes sacrificed. This can lead to drawbacks such as bias, erroneous factual conclusions, and improper inferences. There is also a societal foundation for labeling in that labels are often created by comparing behavior to a norm and deciding how much deviance from the norm is necessary to identify an abnormality. Perhaps the most infamous example of this societal foundation was the proposed mental disorder first described in 1851 by Samuel Cartwright called Drapetomania, which was defined as the uncontrollable urge of slaves to flee their captivity. Perceived societal demands of the day identified the running away of slaves as an abnormality because it was recognized as significantly deviant from that which suited the needs of society and therefore represented the norm. However, today’s standards recognize what was then the norm to be deviant from acceptable behavior.
Labeling in Schools To receive remedial and/or special education services a student must be assigned a label and declared eligible for such services. As such, labels serve the important function of accessing resources to address a problem or set of problems a student is exhibiting. Federal special education mandates describe 13 categories under which students can receive special education services including relatively high prevalence categories such as Specific Learning Disabilities and Emotional Disturbance, as well as relatively rare categories such as Visual Impairments and Traumatic Brain Injury. Each category is specifically defined and includes exact criteria as well as rule out factors. A major component of special education services in schools is to assess students to determine their eligibility for services based on the fit between the problems the student is experiencing and the criteria for labeling set forth in federal regulations. These legal categories or labels are specifically defined to facilitate objective and clear cut eligibility
C. S. Clauss-Ehlers (Ed.), Encyclopedia of Cross-Cultural School Psychology, DOI 10.1007/978-0-387-71799-9, # Springer Science+Business Media LLC 2010
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decisions. Ideally, different special education professionals could independently look at the same body of educational data and draw the same conclusion about whether or not the student is eligible for and in need of services.
Labeling in Medicine One example of labeling in the field of medicine is the various classifications of mental disorders described in the various editions of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) published by the American Psychiatric Association. The original impetus behind this formal classification system was the need to collect statistical information about the prevalence of the disorders during the 1840 United States (U.S.) census. The classification system has undergone numerous revisions by different professional entities over the last 150 years, addressing the need to not only collect statistical information, but also to aid in clinical diagnosis and treatment. Like educational classifications described above, the modern DSM diagnoses serve the practical purpose of accessing funding from various sources including medical insurance and state and federal monies for treatment of the disorders. The categories themselves contain descriptive information about signs and symptoms of the mental disorders, but admittedly lack consistent operational definitions to address all unique situations. In fact, the current version of the DSM (DSM-IV-Text Revision), published in 2000, advocated that trained professionals use their clinical judgment to apply the criteria listed for each disorder in the DSM as guidelines rather than as absolute criteria.
Effects of Labeling The main benefit of formal labeling in schools is to access funding for interventions such as special education. The idea of course being that these additional resources will improve the educational outcomes for the students served. However, educational labeling could serve three different purposes. First, labels lead to classification and diagnosis which could in turn lead to appropriate treatment of the problem. Second, labels serve as the basis for future research which can potentially shed light on etiology, prevention, and treatment in the future. Third, labels call attention to
problems and thereby lead to additional resources through legislation. Given the overlap between some categories in the special education mandate and categories described in the DSM, one potential adverse effect of labeling is confusion among parents and professionals. Consider the case where a parent brings her child to a clinical psychologist because of concerns about her child’s progress in learning to read. The psychologist, using DSM criteria, makes the diagnosis of Reading Disorder and suggests the parent contact the school to begin special education services to remediate the problem. However, current federal regulations allow for use of assessing a child’s response to research-based interventions to diagnose a learning disability. Thus, what is a learning disability in a clinical and school setting could be substantively different and the potential for confusion abounds. As stated above, many labels are societally defined because they deviate from a societal norm. Some have hypothesized that the result of these deviant labels (e.g., disabled, depressed, criminal, etc.) could result in individual behavior that is consistent with the label. Sociologist Robert Merton coined the expression ‘‘selffulfilling prophecy’’ to describe how an individual changes his or her behavior to be consistent with his or her perceptions of a situation. Therefore, it is quite plausible that attaching a label to an individual will lead to behavior that is considered an aspect of that label. Social psychology also suggests additional effects of labeling through attribution theory. When people perceive the cause of failure to be internal (attributed to the individual rather than the situation) and stable (or unchangeable), they are more likely to experience what psychologist Martin Seligman calls learned helplessness, which leads to decreased motivation, apathy, and even susceptibility to depression. For example, a child identified as learning disabled could perceive academic difficulties as the result of a lifelong internal condition, which could have the unforeseen effect of decreasing academic motivation and creating an unfortunate cycle. Research has found that children identified with a special education disability have higher rates of learned helplessness. Moreover, labeling children with special education labels also affects teacher expectations for these children and how the two interact in an instructional relationship. The discussion presented above focused on formal labels with specified criteria, but the effects of informal
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labels can be quite similar. From a multicultural perspective many of these informal labels become stereotypic when they result in generalizations about groups that are applied to individuals. These labels can then become the basis for racist behavior from individuals and the society that derived the labels to begin with.
from diverse linguistic, communicative, and cultural backgrounds requires the use of culturally sensitive testing materials and, ultimately, the design and implementation of culturally appropriate educational interventions.
See also: > Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA); > Special education; > Stereotyping; > Racism: Individual, Institutional, and Cultural
Goals of Language and Academic Assessment
Suggested Reading Michener, H. A., DeLamater, J. D., & Myers, D. J. (2004). Social psychology (5th ed.). Belmont, CA: Wadsworth. Seligman, M. E. P. (1992). Helplessness: On depression, development, and death. New York: W. H. Freeman. Thelen, R. L., Burns, M. K., & Christiansen, N. D. (2003). Effects of high-incidencedisability labels on the expectations of teachers, peers, and adults not in education. Ethical Human Sciences and Services, 5, 183–194. Ysseldyke, J. E., Algozzine, B., & Thurlow, M. L. (2000). Critical issues in special education. Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin.
Language and Educational Assessment Eileen T Rodriguez . Tonia N Cristofaro . Catherine S Tamis-LeMonda . Lisa Baumwell
Introduction Education is a top priority in the United States (U.S.). Given the rapidly changing demographics of the U.S. in recent decades, education and intervention professionals increasingly work with children and families from a variety of cultures, and are often called upon to evaluate the abilities and performance of children from different backgrounds. A major challenge facing education and intervention professionals is to ensure the appropriateness of educational placement decisions that rely, in large part, on interpretations of standardized tests of achievement. Enabling the use of an assessment system that is equitable for children
The principal goal of educational assessment is to provide a means for gathering accurate and useful information about the educational performance and progress of individual children or sub-groups of children. An implicit assumption of standardized test data is that they reflect underlying differences in children’s language, cognitive ability and academic competencies. The ultimate goal of such assessments is to inform the design and implementation of educational programs that are matched to the strengths and needs of specific students. Traditionally, standardized measures of student achievement have been utilized to make decisions on tracking, grade retention, and placement in special education programs. However, the disproportionate number of children from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds in remedial and special education programs has motivated educators, researchers, and policymakers alike to question the decision-making processes that dictate these placements. Comparative studies of language and academic achievement reveal that, on average, children from low income, and linguistic minority backgrounds perform less well than their more affluent, culturally dominant peers—by differences of more than one standard deviation on standardized measures of achievement. As one example, research indicates that Latino children generally lag behind their more linguistically competent White and African American peers when they enter kindergarten, a difference that appears to widen as children grow older. Further, at all levels of schooling, minority students from linguistically diverse backgrounds are more likely to be identified as ‘‘low performing’’ and, consequently, to be placed in low-track classes and special education programs. Assessment practices that are not sensitive to the cultural and linguistic nuances of minority populations can result in inappropriate educational placement, low expectations, and diminished learning opportunities for some of the nation’s most vulnerable youth.
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Assessing Language Proficiency of Culturally Diverse Students The increasing linguistic diversity among school-age children in the U.S. has made language proficiency a key construct in the assessment of academic performance. According to the 2000 U.S. Census Report, nearly one in every five people, or 47 million U.S. residents ages 5 and older, speaks a language other than English in their home—an increase of more than 15 million people (14%) from 1990. It is estimated that approximately five million limited English proficiency (LEP) students were enrolled in public schools for the 2003–2004 school year, a figure that represents approximately 10% of total public school student enrollment. In fact, the number of LEP students in U.S. schools has more than doubled over the past 15 years. Within the same time frame, LEP student enrollment has increased at nearly seven times the rate of total student enrollment. One of the major criticisms of standardized testing of students from language minority backgrounds is the use of assessment tools that have been developed for monolingual English-speaking children. Translation of English-devised tests into other languages is a common practice used to assess the language and academic competencies of students whose primary language is not English. Translation alone, however, is likely to yield invalid estimates of competencies in bilingual and language minority monolingual children. In assessments of language ability, for example, words may generally represent the same concept, but differ in their levels of difficulty across languages or cultural groups. Merely translating a test from one language to another may result in the organizing of items arranged by order of English difficulty, rather than reflecting the developmental order in which features of the target language are learned. Similarly, ensuring that words have a comparable frequency of use and convey similar meanings across languages are often difficult to maintain in translation. Thus, test adapters have a responsibility to provide evidence of reliability and validity of the translated test for use in different linguistic or cultural groups. That is, there is a need to empirically demonstrate that the instrument continues to measure the same qualities with the same degree of accuracy in the new population. Moreover, tests that are adapted to a new language or cultural group need to be renormed so that scores on the new version of the instrument can be adequately interpreted.
When assessing the competencies of language minority students, examiners should first determine the child’s dominant language and proficiency in English before deciding on the language or languages to be used when administering test items. When assessments are not available in the child’s native language, some modifications may need to be made during test administration. Children who are bilingual or limited in English proficiency often grapple with the syntactic forms of two languages. It may be necessary to give these children extra time to respond to questions, particularly on tests or items that are timed. Some bilingually proficient children may also shift from one language to another (termed ‘‘code switching’’) when responding to questions. Examiners should consider allowing the use of such speech conventions, particularly for children who may feel more comfortable or communicate more effectively when doing so. Moreover, because words or phrases in one language may convey different meanings in another language or culture, examiners may need to use comparable linguistic content in an effort to minimize bias in test items. In light of these considerations, examiners should be fluent in the language or languages in which the test is administered.
Cultural Considerations in Assessment It is also important for educators and intervention professionals to recognize differences in communication styles and norms across culturally diverse populations. A fundamental assumption of assessment is that all children understand the norms of discourse within the testing situation; performance, therefore, reflects children’s underlying competence. However, the sociolinguistic styles of some children may reflect culturallyspecific patterns of communicating that differ from the expectations of the testing environment. These culturally-shaped conventions of communication may make it difficult to distinguish competence from communication style. For example, children from some cultures are socialized to respect the authority of adults and to only respond when asked specific questions. In a testing situation, these children may respond with short phrases or nonverbal actions such as shrugging their shoulders, rather than with the elaborate prose that are expected of them—likely yielding underestimates of their true ability.
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In addition, standardized tests presuppose a particular cultural framework that is not universally shared. In fact, the conceptualization of key constructs—such as language proficiency—that are represented in assessment measures may differ across cultural groups. Thus, cultural bias cannot be eliminated simply by conforming to accepted norms for linguistic translation or by making item content familiar – instruments often reflect the abilities that are valued by the culture in which they were developed. For example, many language measures developed in the U.S. emphasize the development of decontextualized language skills. Such measures are likely to favor children whose language socialization was influenced according to the norms and values of the mainstream culture. When testing conventions are not universally shared, assessment instruments may ultimately measure the child’s lack of knowledge of these conventions rather than assessing the child’s skills per se.
See also: > English as a Second Language Instruction (ESL); > Language proficiency ; > Universal Nonverbal Intelligence Test (UNIT); > Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children-IV (WISC-IV) Spanish
Alternative Methods of Assessment
U.S. Department of Education, National Clearinghouse for English Language Acquisition and Language Instruction Educational Programs (NCELA)—http://www.ncela.gwu.edu/: This is the NCELA website that collects, analyzes, synthesizes and disseminates information about language instruction educational programs for English language learners and related programs.
On the basis of points raised in the above sections, many critics continue to question the validity of standardized measures for culturally and linguistically diverse populations. Given the shortcomings of current standardized tests of language proficiency in linguistically diverse populations, a number of researchers and educators advocate the use of both standardized and non-standardized assessments in student evaluation. One suggested alternative to standardized assessments is to judge students’ performance on tasks that are directly tied to curriculum standards. Proponents of these curriculum-bound methods assert that they accommodate a diversity of learning styles and are more responsive to cultural conventions of communication that are not captured by traditional standardized measures of achievement. In terms of language assessments more specifically, a variety of procedures can be implemented to obtain additional information about a student’s progress, including spontaneous speech and writing samples, and children’s sharing of personal narratives, which provide children with opportunities to convey knowledge in a larger sociocultural context. Assessment procedures that examine multiple sources of performance offer students the opportunity to demonstrate their competencies across settings and content areas, thereby providing more equitable standards of assessment.
Suggested Reading Geisinger, K. F. (1994). Cross-cultural normative assessment: Translation and adaptation issues influencing the normative interpretation of assessment instruments. Psychological Assessment, 6, 304–312. Gopaul-McNicol, S., & Armour-Thomas, E. (2002). Assessment and culture: Psychological tests with minority populations. San Diego, CA: Academic Press. Greenfield, P. M. (1997). You can’t take it with you: Why ability assessments don’t cross cultures. American Psychologist, 52, 1115–1124.
Suggested Resources
Language Arts, Teaching of Dorothy S Strickland
Perhaps no area of the curriculum is more sensitive to cultural and linguistic diversity than the language arts. In the United States (U.S.), English is the language of instruction in virtually all classrooms and most teachers are monolingual English language speakers. Nevertheless, there are ways that teachers can become culturally and linguistically aware of students whose backgrounds differ from their own and actually build on those differences to facilitate learning. At the very least, teachers need to be aware of the changing nature of the components of the language arts and the fact that they are interrelated, interdependent, and influenced by learner’s cultural and linguistic identities.
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The traditional components of language arts have expanded beyond listening, speaking, reading, and writing to include viewing and visually representing. The need for learning environments responsive to cultural and linguistic differences is also considered an essential element. Listening is an integral part of all language activities. More time is spent on listening than any other language art. Effective listeners are capable of restating, interpreting, and evaluating what they hear. Speaking is critical to both learning language and learning through the language arts. Talk is used to respond to texts and explore topics under study. Language learners need opportunities to talk for a variety of purposes and in a variety of formal and informal contexts. Reading is a process in which individuals connect with the ideas of others and construct meaning with written text. Readers use sound-symbol relationships, word meanings, and text structures to decode and comprehend. Prior knowledge and experience influence their understanding. Writing is used for personal expression and communication with others. Proficient writers are capable of writing in a variety of forms and for varied audiences. They make use of the writing process: prewriting, drafting, revising, editing, and publishing. Viewing involves the ability to comprehend and respond to visual messages of both print and non-print media. These include both traditional print media such a graphs, charts, diagrams, illustrations, and photographs as well as electronic media. Visually Representing involves the use of a variety of media to express ideas and share information. Charts, graphs, diagrams, pictures, and electronic media may be used to convey information. Visual representation involves many of the elements of good written composition, such as purpose, audience and clarity. Current trends in language arts instruction reflect the interrelated nature of the language arts and an understanding of the linguistic and cultural context in which children learn, including:
Greater emphasis on understanding and bridging the cultural and linguistic backgrounds of language learners as a base for language growth. Instructional planning involves an increased respect and consideration for the diversity among students and the effect on how language arts instruction is received and applied.
Greater emphasis on writing and its relationship to reading. Learners think, talk, and write about what they read as authors of their own work. They explore the similarities and differences among various text structures, uses of language, and literary devices. Students and teachers need to be aware that written language is different from spoken language regardless of the child’s home language or dialect. Greater use of trade (library) books combined with the use of textbooks. Once considered supplementary, literature, including multi-cultural literature, is now a key component of the curriculum. Teachers no longer rely solely on textbooks and commercial programs. Increased attention to the importance of student choice of topics to write about and materials to read. Choice within the curriculum has been found to increase student engagement in literacy activities. At times, students may be given a virtual free range of choice. More often, they are provided with a variety of choices from a pre-selection of offerings. Students’ choices may be influenced by their cultural backgrounds. Increased attention to the integration of the language arts with each other and across the curriculum. The language arts are taught as processes, instrumental to all learning, rather than products or ends in themselves. Students are helped to see their value as tools for learning. Increased emphasis on the use of ongoing, performance-based assessments that link directly to instruction. Day-by-day assessments of learning are the best evidence of what students know and are capable of doing. Analysis of writing samples, participation in discussions, and oral reading provide evidence to inform instructional decisions in personalized ways that standardized tests do not.
The language arts may be the most influential are of the curriculum for bridging home and school. Culturally responsive programs intentionally and respectfully build on what children bring to the classroom as they help them to improve their ability to communicate effectively. See also: > Language needs in the multicultural classroom; > Literacy; > Reading, Teaching
Language deficits
Suggested Reading Murphy, S., & Dudley-Marling, C. (Eds.). (2003). Literacy through language arts: Teaching and learning in context. Urbana, IL: National Council of Teachers of English. Strickland, D. S., Galda, L., & Cullinan, B. E. (2004). Language arts: Learning and teaching. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth Publishers.
Language Deficits Lisa M Bedore . Elizabeth D Pen˜a
Approximately 7–10% of children may present with developmental or acquired language disorders. Across languages and dialects, the manifestation of language impairment differs somewhat, and children from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds are at greater risk of being over- or underidentified as having language learning difficulties. Language deficits can be manifested in the domains of language content (e.g., vocabulary knowledge), language form (e.g., knowledge of the sound system as well as grammar and sentence structure), and/or language use (e.g., turntaking and other conversational skills). Deficits of language content are evident in conversational interactions in poor word comprehension or use of nonspecific vocabulary (e.g., this, that, or general descriptions of target words). Nonspecific vocabulary and word-finding difficulties seem to be manifested in similar ways across languages and dialects. However, knowledge of specific vocabulary is highly related to experiences. For bilingual children, one must be careful to consider knowledge across both languages. For children who use dialects or who are from low socioeconomic backgrounds, single word-vocabulary scores may be low even if they do not have language impairment. Additional tasks for these children to test vocabulary knowledge may include those that require use of itemlevel words that they know, definitions, descriptions, categorization, or analogies. Deficits of language form can be observed when children use sentences that are shorter than expected or when many of their utterances are not grammatical because of errors on single words (e.g., ‘‘walk’’ when the child meant ‘‘walked’’) or in sentence structure. In English, children have special difficulties with
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forms such as the past tense ‘‘–ed’’ (e.g., ‘‘walked’’) or the third person singular present tense ‘‘–s’’ (she walks). In Romance languages, such as French, Italian, or Spanish, verb tense marking tends to be accurate but children have difficulties with forms such as definite articles: ‘‘el nin˜o’’ (‘‘the boy’’ in Spanish) or ‘‘la table’’ (‘‘the table’’ in French). Furthermore, differences in dialect must be accounted for when evaluating children’s language skills. Across language groups, difficulties in the domain of language use are more likely to be observed in contexts in which a child must observe social communicative rules (e.g., conversation with peers, teachers, or parents, in classroom contexts). Children might have difficulty initiating interactions, providing an appropriate amount of information in conversation or narrative, or following turn-taking rules. Across cultures, children may follow different social conversation depending on who is in the interaction. Thus, for children from multicultural backgrounds especially, samples across these different domains will help to differentiate between language differences and language impairment. Clinical evaluation of language impairments should consist of a combination of interviews with parents, sampling of conversation and/or narrative language, and structured (standardized or nonstandardized) language measures. Developmental history can shed light on possible causes of language impairment. Language impairment can be associated with health conditions (e.g., hearing loss or epilepsy), developmental disabilities (e.g., Down syndrome, autism, or fragile X), or acquired conditions (e.g., traumatic brain injury). Some children demonstrate language deficits with no identifiable cause. When these children achieve scores in the average range on nonverbal IQ tests and demonstrate significant difficulties on standardized measures of language development, they may be referred to as having specific language impairment (SLI). When children demonstrate the same language difficulties but score from 70 to 85 on nonverbal IQ measures, they may be referred to as having general language impairment (GLI). The nature of the language-learning difficulties and the outcomes for children with SLI and GLI seem to be quite similar. See also: > Assessment of culturally diverse children; > Bilingualism; > English language learners; > Language proficiency
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Suggested Reading Craig, H., & Washington, J. (2006). Malik goes to school. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Earlbaum. Leonard, L. (1999). Children with specific language impairment. Cambridge, MA: Bradford Books.
Language Needs in the Multicultural Classroom Erica Ramos . Kristin Orlovsky . Emily A Rentz . Vincent C Alfonso
In recent years the United States (U.S.) has witnessed an increase in the cultural and linguistic diversity of its classrooms. For instance, students of ethnic minority groups currently make up more than 39% of the total student population. Approximately 35 million people living in the U.S. speak languages other than English. While these cultural and linguistic differences enrich society and provide new perspectives, they also present unique challenges for educators who must develop ways to teach students a new language and culture while also being sensitive to their primary language and culture. As the cultural and language diversity of the student population increases, that of teachers remains largely unchanged. Currently, for instance, the majority of teachers are White, female, and monolingual. As such, teachers face the challenge of learning about the cultural and linguistic differences among their students so they can effectively meet their educational needs.
Teachers’ Roles It is important that teachers are supportive and sensitive to the delicate process of acculturation that children experience as they interact with a new culture and language. An emphasis on positive student attributes can further instruction. This calls for a focus on the students’ linguistic, cultural, and intellectual resources as the basis for schooling rather than a mere focus on the difficulties immigrant students face as they adapt to the new dominant culture. One way to promote cultural sensitivity is for teachers to establish social networks with families to bring existing knowledge
from the community into their classrooms. Additionally, teachers can think about literacy in fundamentally new ways, beyond the skills of reading and writing, to encompass broader social and cultural practices with intellectual significance. Moreover, it is important for teachers to critically reflect on the social, political, and cultural nature of their work to effectively meet the needs of culturally and linguistically diverse students. This involves adapting a reciprocal learning process that takes into account both the teacher’s and the student’s cultural experiences. Gaining true understanding and sensitivity of cultures and languages other than one’s own requires much more than recognizing and accepting differences in clothing, food, music, and so forth. It requires an increased sensitivity to the subtleties of cultural attitudes and beliefs, and how they differ from their own. This understanding will allow teachers to communicate a respect for cultural differences and an awareness of how their nonverbal behavior may reflect the customs of their students and the students’ family members. When such subtleties are overlooked, miscommunication between students and teachers may result. For example, whereas it is appropriate for some cultures to maintain direct eye contact to demonstrate respect, these cues may be interpreted as disrespectful for people from other cultures. Similarly, it is important for teachers to be cognizant of the power and authority they may represent for individuals from different cultures. Due to a respect for the authority that the teacher role invokes, for instance, people from some cultures may be unwilling to contradict a teacher’s comments.
Language Differences It can be particularly challenging for teachers to meet the diverse linguistic and cultural needs in the classroom. These students, who are typically referred to as English Language Learners (ELLs), are therefore often placed in classrooms that provide instruction in their native language and in English, so that they may gradually acquire the new language as they follow the curriculum. Programs such as English as a Second language (ESL), Immersion Education, and many others aid in second language acquisition. An important educational aspect that is often overlooked, however, involves how to maintain the student’s native culture and language while simultaneously promoting processes of acculturation and second language acquisition.
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When one speaks of language needs in the classroom one readily thinks of bilingual students or ELLs, however, native English language speakers often have their own language needs that may be overlooked. Among English language speakers born and raised in the U.S., there are many nuances in dialects that often reflect cultural differences. As with ELLs, it is important that teachers recognize these nuances not as deficits, but as a result of cultural differences.
much sooner than they are able to use language in a more complex academic situation. While it takes approximately 2 years for ELLs to become proficient at conversation in a new language, it may take 5–7 years to acquire the level of language mastery necessary to conduct academic work in the second language. Thus, while students may appear proficient through their verbalization of the new language, they may in fact need more time to produce academic work in the recently acquired language.
Addressing Language Needs in the Classroom
See also: > English language learners; > Language arts, Teaching of ; > Teaching of English as a Second Language (TOESL)
There are several ways that educators can address the language needs of students in the classroom. One way to aid in the acquisition of a new language is to provide a classroom environment conducive to language acquisition. For instance, it is beneficial to label objects and display pictures or graphics that help the student understand his or her surroundings. These labels and pictures can be representative of student language and culture by including their primary language along with English and displaying pictures that include diverse cultural content. This presentation of visual stimuli not only aids in understanding a new language it also encourages the development and maintenance of the primary language by preserving a sense of cultural identity. It is also beneficial to provide students the opportunity to practice newly acquired language skills by listening to clear instructions and interacting with their English speaking peers. Two strategies can promote these goals. First, teachers can speak clearly and properly using appropriate gestures and body language so that the students recognize verbal and nonverbal cues. A routine is beneficial for younger students so they spend less time trying to understand instructions and can instead focus on the task. Second, activities that pair proficient English speaking students with ELLs provide an opportunity for students to socialize in a different language. It is also helpful for teachers to determine the level of linguistic understanding a student has acquired. Given that a disproportionate number of ELLs are referred for special educational needs, it is helpful for teachers to be aware of the different levels of language use and expression that may resemble disorders but are in fact, simply a part of the process of language acquisition. For instance, students are often able to use a newly acquired language in a conversational situation
Suggested Reading Brice, A. E. (2002). The Hispanic child. Boston, MA: Allyn & Bacon. Delpit, L., & Kilgour-Dowdy, J. (2002). The skin that we speak: Thoughts on language and culture in the classroom. New York: The New Press.
Suggested Resources New Horizons for Learning—http://www.newhorizons.org/ strategies/multicultural/adkins_dunn.htm: This website provides an international network of people, programs, and products dedicated to successful, innovative learning. In the Classroom: A Toolkit for Effective Instruction of English Learners—http://www.ncela.gwu.edu/practice/itc/divneeds. html: This is the website for the National Clearinghouse for English Language Acquisition. It provides classroom resources for English language learners. North Central Regional Educational Laboratory—http://www. ncrel.org/sdrs/areas/issues/content/cntareas/reading/li400. htm: This website provides ideas about how to develop curricula, strategies for teaching, and policies to promote student success.
Language Proficiency Louise C Wilkinson . Elaine R Silliman
Students’ success in school depends upon their being proficient in academic language, the language of classroom instruction. Whether English is the first or
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second language, academic language proficiency is a critical competence for students and refers to their learning to read, write, and spell. Academic language proficiency for students learning English as a second language in school means that students have mastered advanced English oral language skills sufficiently to think and talk like books and to participate in all classroom activities. In talking, reading, and writing, they can understand and easily use the vocabulary and grammar of the curriculum in subjects ranging from language arts to science to history and mathematics. Just like the home and community, United States (U.S.) classrooms are also special social situations, with their own requirements regarding the ways that teachers and students use language to communicate the curriculum. Three negative outcomes are likely when English language learning students lack proficiency in understanding and using academic language: First, they are unlikely to learn as they must from classroom experiences, including reading and writing activities. Second, their participation in classroom activities is significantly reduced. Third, this reduction in participation then interferes with their overall adjustment to school and hinders their subsequent academic achievement. Students differ in their language and communication skills when they enter formal schooling. Because prior school experiences are combined with home interactions, some children enter school knowing about how to use language for a variety of ‘‘schoollike’’ purposes, that is, they know a good deal about academic language. For example, in many North American families, infants and toddlers are introduced to story books even before they begin talking and learn to do ‘‘pretend reading’’ with their caretakers. These caretakers often teach the ‘‘story book routine,’’ in which questions with known answers are asked and answered by caretakers, such as ‘‘What is this (picture)?’’ ‘‘Where does the bunny live?’’ Eventually, young children can participate in their questionanswer exchanges and even begin to ask their own questions about the content of storybooks. These types of question-answer sequences are the roots of academic language because, in school, children are expected to answer questions as a way to evaluate what they know. However, not all families teach their young children in this way. Some may tell their young children oral stories and not use book-based stories. Their children are not asked known answer questions because the family’s cultural belief is that young
children do not have the skills to participate in conversational exchanges. This second group of students, many of whom are English language learners, may enter school with more of a cultural and linguistic mismatch between the expectations of their home and the expectations of school for how to participate in classroom activities. Mismatches can influence routine classroom events as, reading aloud, question and answer exchanges with teachers, and receiving evaluation of their oral contributions from teachers. How well English language learning students participate in these exchanges determines their success in learning. Although many English language learning students may enter school having some level of proficiency with everyday social language skills, such as skills in face-to-face talk, everyday social language knowledge is not enough for academic success. The educational failure of some English language learning students may be caused in part by differences in their academic language proficiency, particularly for those students who come from cultural and linguistic backgrounds that differ from the teacher and/or other students. While academic language plays a mediating role in well-run and successful classrooms—where all learners can learn—the social dynamics of classrooms are also critical for English language learning students to become proficient English readers and writers. Social dynamics are determined in large part by what students bring to school—their funds of knowledge or ‘‘capital.’’ There are four types of capital: (a) symbolic capital or the academic knowledge that mediates children’s social identities and status as competent readers and writers and is socially determined by how people interact with each other, the social organization of events, and how these events unfold; (b) cultural capital, the know-how valued by particular cultures, including the academic culture, to engage in the social behaviors appropriate for that culture; (c) linguistic capital, knowledge about spoken and written language and the academic purposes for which language is used in the classroom; and (d) economic capital, the material resources of families and schools that support children’s learning. These types of capital together influence differences in social identity, status, and power relations in the classroom. Many English language learning students who enter school not speaking English, are at risk for reading failure due to their minority linguistic status. As a group, too many of these students from lower income backgrounds enter school with insufficient symbolic
Language proficiency
capital, which then increases their risk for not having sufficient attention and status in the classroom. Because their English-speaking teacher and peers may not readily understand them, the English language learning student may lose the motivation to learn and withdraw from classroom participation. These social dynamics can potentially deny them the numerous and varied opportunities needed to become successful readers and writers. Best practices of teachers who successfully address this student need include: Hands-on and discovery based learning, and sharing of common goals, such as establishing a classroom community and maintaining high expectations for the success of all students. What are examples of key academic language proficiencies? One example is the depth of a student’s vocabulary knowledge. For English language learning students to become proficient readers, they must have a strong command of the general academic lexicon. What is in-depth vocabulary knowledge? Vocabulary knowledge includes distinguishing between basic meanings that, most likely, English language learners know in their first language, such as baby, clock, walk, eyes, happy, and sad, among others, and meanings more frequently acquired and used in English classroom situations as part of second language learning. Basic meanings are referred to as Tier 1 words, while meanings associated with talking like books are described as Tier 2. Examples of Tier 2 meanings include reality, sinister, mention, detest, splendid, absurd, conflicted, and entomologist. Many Tier 2 meanings are derivations; that is, prefixes and suffixes can change the meaning and pronunciation of a root word, such as real or critic, when the suffixes –ity and –ism are added to the root word. Tier 2 meanings combined with an understanding of word derivations are an essential aspect of academic language proficiency. Another example of academic language proficiency has been provided in 2005 by Terri Edwards, a second language teacher, who paints a rich portrait of the English language knowledge and strategies that students and teachers both need to handle their classroom learning effectively in English. Edwards describes five categories of academic language strategies: 1. Essential Survival Phrases: Such as asking for help, asking about language, polite requests and responses; ‘‘Could you repeat that?’’ ‘‘How do you say ‘bright’ in English?’’ 2. Classroom-Only Language: As exemplified by IRE sequences (i.e., question-answer-evaluation
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sequences) which consist of an initiation (I) by the teacher, a response (R) by the student, and an evaluation by the teacher (E); ‘‘What’s the answer to number one?’’—‘‘Five.’’—‘‘Yes, correct.’’ 3. Discussion Language-Opinions, Agreeing/Disagreeing, Suggestions, Advice, Negotiating: These strategies include invitations to participate in the classroom conversation or creating opportunities for more complex language expression through invitations to expand in meaningful ways; ‘‘What makes you think that?’’, ‘‘How might that concept be important?’’ ‘‘How did you calculate that sum?’’ 4. Grammar Terminology or ‘‘Metalanguage’’— Language used to describe language, which is often encountered in textbooks, such as ‘‘Which tense is used in his opening sentence?’’, ‘‘How would you divide that word into sounds?’’, and ‘‘Write sentences that include connectives.’’ 5. Teacher’s Classroom Management Language (also known as Teacherspeak!)—Teachers’ use of language to provide instructions and manage students’ behavior; ‘‘Ask me?’’ ‘‘Open your reading book to page 15,’’ and ‘‘Who knows what is the second problem to solve?’’ What can teachers and other educational professionals including parents do to help students develop academic language proficiency? First, how to best teach academic language knowledge and strategies remains a challenge. Teachers play the key role in creating a classroom environment where all students’ intellectual assets are maximized through a challenging curriculum that emphasizes academic language proficiency. Second, for native English speakers, this includes teachers’ responding strategically to differences in students’ ways of using language and conveying expectations for high levels of language and literacy in the classroom. For English language learners, in addition to those requirements, teachers must address vocabulary needs that are consistent with the demands of academic language. New word learning should be integrated across the curriculum. Finally, all educational professionals are responsible for mediating students’ learning of academic language; they must explicitly teach the kinds of word analysis approaches that support students’ vocabulary growth, as well as the comprehension strategies that, scaffold and promote students’ reading comprehension. See also: > Bilingualism; > Limited English proficiency
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Suggested Reading Beck, I. L., McKeown, M. G., & Kucan, L. (2002). Bringing words to life: Robust vocabulary instruction. New York: Guilford. Christian, B., & Bloome, D. (2004). Learning to read is who you are. Reading and Writing Quarterly, 20, 365–384. Cummins, J. (2000). Language, power, and pedagogy: Bilingual children in the crossfire. Buffalo, NY: Multilingual Matters. Wilkinson, L. C., & Silliman, E. (2000). Classroom language and literacy learning. In M. Kamil, P. B. Mosenthal, P. D. Pearson, R. Barr (Eds.), Handbook of reading research, Vol. III (pp. 337–360). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
Latin Americans Liliana Lo´pez Levi
Latin American people live in several countries, they communicate in different languages, and they belong to various ethnic groups. However, most speak Spanish or Portuguese, they are predominately Catholics, and they share a similar colonial past, a history of wars of independence, and attempts to integrate the cultural region that defines Latin America. Latin America is a cultural region that occupies Central America, Mexico, South America, and some Caribbean Islands. The concept of Latin America was created in the mid-nineteenth century in opposition to northern Anglo American countries. Basically, it refers to those countries that have Romance languages as the official language, even if there is a rich diversity and local variations, in coexistence with Native American languages, such as Aymara and Quechua spoken in the Andes region (e.g., Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, and Chile), Guarani, spoken in Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil and Paraguay, the Mapuche language spoken in Chile and Argentina, the Mayan languages spoken in southern Mexico, Guatemala, Belize, Honduras and El Salvador, and Nahuatl spoken in central Mexico. Latin America is the region of the American continent that was mainly conquered by the Spanish and the Portuguese, although some territories of the Caribbean that where French colonies are also included. In preColumbian times, the region was populated by different settlements, some of which formed important
civilizations, such as the Incas, the Mayas, and the Aztecs. At the beginning of the sixteenth century, the continent was conquered by the Europeans, who established their own socioeconomic and political organization and ruled for over 300 years. In the early nineteenth century, wars of independence occurred in most regions of Latin America under the leadership of men like Miguel Hidalgo, Simon Bolivar, and Jose´ de San Martin. With the triumph of their movements, local groups gained control of their territories and formed independent countries, mainly between 1810 and 1825. It was then that the actual political division of the continent was basically established. However, some changes continued until the twentieth century, for example Panama’s separation from Colombia and the independence of some British colonies, all of which led to the formation of the countries that today form the region. By the beginning of the twenty-first century, the major part of Latin America was formed by independent nations such as Chile, Argentina, Uruguay, Paraguay, Brazil, Colombia, Venezuela, Honduras, Nicaragua, Guatemala, and Mexico. However, there are still some territories that belong to First World countries, as states, provinces, or that are under their rule. This is the case of French Guyana, Guadalupe Island, Martinique, Puerto Rico, and Guantanamo. According to the United Nations Statistics Division, approximately 536 million people live in Latin America. They are a people of multiethnic origin who form multicultural groups. The great diversity comes mainly from Native Indian groups, the Europeans who migrated in colonial times, and the African population that was brought to the continent as workers and slaves. Other significant migrations have enriched Latin American culture in the past two centuries. There have been migrations in search of better economic conditions and money, such as the Italians who went to Brazil and Argentina, and migration for political reasons, such as the Jews who escaped from the Nazi and fascist regimes in Europe, or the exiled in Mexico as a consequence of the civil war in Spain (1936–1939). All of these groups became a very important part of the intellectual and economic life of their countries of destiny. Local groups and migrants, with their traditions, have formed the heterogeneity of today’s Latin American culture, which manifests in a wide range of expressions through popular art, music, gastronomy, literature, archaeological and colonial sites. Even if
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there is a strong influence of North American and European culture, there are local interpretations that emerge from tradition. The celebration of the Day of the Dead in Mexico, for instance, is a mixture of Catholic and pre-Hispanic traditions in which those who have died are remembered. Some communities of indigenous origin have developed alternative ways to understand, explain, and express the world. For example, in central Mexico, the Day of the Dead is a joyful party. People feast with food, visit their dead ones in cemeteries, and write humorous poems about how the living will die. The colonial past has played an important role in constructing a common regional identity, often referred to as the Bolivarian dream. Simon Bolivar, leader of various independence movements in South America, spread the will to unite Latin America. He had the idea of creating an American federation between all the Latin American republics that were gaining independence in the early nineteenth century. The region’s geographical diversity has also been a strong force toward the subcontinent’s fragmentation in terms of local, social, cultural, economical, political, and environmental differences. Latin American people face diverse social, cultural, and economic problems; the primary ones being poverty, crime, and social inequity. Many Latin Americans are forced to migrate to look for better opportunities, and many have gone to the United States, forming an important community that has expanded Latin American culture to the north, beyond its traditional frontiers. See also: > Hispanic Americans; > Latino/Latina American youth; > Puerto Rican youth
Suggested Reading King, J. (Ed.) (2004). The Cambridge companion to modern Latin American culture. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
Suggested Resources Latin American Information Center—http://lanic.utexas.edu/: This website of the Latin American Information Center in the University of Texas at Austin offers Internet-based information about Latin America. It has links to other sites with thematic information on the region.
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Latino/Latina American Youth Kristina Metz
‘‘Latino American’’ generally refers to individuals with ancestral ties to the nations of Latin America and the Caribbean, including even those nations in which Spanish is not spoken. However, since ‘‘Latino’’ is considered an ethnicity instead of a biological attribute, such as race, the definitions of ‘‘Latino American’’ vary greatly throughout the United States (U.S.). Since 1980, the U.S. government has used the terms ‘‘Hispanic’’ and ‘‘Latino’’ interchangeably, but even with this categorization system, census definitions of ‘‘Latino’’ differ across state borders. For example, an individual with a Puerto Rican father and African American mother would be categorized as Hispanic/Latino in Michigan, African American in California and biracial in Ohio. For this reason, the U.S. tends to simply categorize these individuals by their race, such as ‘‘African American,’’ ‘‘Caucasian,’’ ‘‘Asian,’’ or ‘‘Other.’’ Although individuals within the Latino community do distinguish between the various Latino races with terms such as ‘‘guerro/blanco’’ (light skin) and ‘‘moreno/prieto’’ (dark skin), the majority of Latinos define their ethnicity by the country of their ancestors’ origin. Here, the 2000 Decennial Census report definition of ‘‘Latino’’ is used that includes individuals residing in the U.S. who categorize themselves as Spanish/Hispanic/Latino descent from Mexican, Mexican American, Chicano, Puerto Rican, Cuban, or other Latin American nations.
History and Culture Despite the common misconception that Latino Americans are a cohesive group of newcomers to the U.S., Latinos are actually quite a diverse group who have resided in the U.S. for centuries. Since the early 1500s, Spanish explorers, with whom many Latinos claim ancestral ties, have settled in the Caribbean and Southern areas of the U.S., frequently expanding into the Latin American region. These Spanish explorers often intermarried with Native Americans, which constitutes the group of individuals who now identify themselves as Native American Latinos. In addition, these Spanish
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settlers recruited individuals from Asian nations to work as contract laborers in Cuba and Central America and imported Africans to work as slaves on sugar plantations in Mexico, Puerto Rico, Cuba, and the Dominican Republic. These individuals comprise the majority of Latino Americans of Asian and African descent. Therefore, since Latin and Caribbean Nations have included individuals from a wide variety of backgrounds/races for centuries, Latino Americans also consist of individuals from a variety of backgrounds and races. This diversity within the Latino American population leads to between-group differences such as immigration status, fertility rates, family structure, socioeconomic status and education. Despite these vast differences, however, Latino American individuals continue to share many cultural aspects. The California Identity Project reported that, despite variations in age and race, 96% of Latino Americans base their identity within the family, 84% considered Latino culture important, 78% were Catholic, and 67% were Spanish speaking. In addition, Latina women were usually considered a source of strength for family members and Latino men consistently reported their values to be family, valor, dignity, and honor. The study also found that the most prominent similarity between all Latino individuals is the large emphasis and importance placed upon creating and maintaining close relationships with both immediate and extended family.
Demographics Throughout the twentieth century there has been an enormous influx of immigrants coming to reside in the U.S. Since 1960, more than 50% of these immigrants have been of Latino heritage. In 2000, the Census Bureau reported approximately 35.5 million Latino Americans were residing in the U.S., accounting for approximately 12.5% of the total population. Although it may seem that the Latino American population is only a small portion of the entire U.S. population, it is the fastest growing group of classified individuals in the U.S. Between 1990 and 2000 the Latino population grew 58%—more than doubling a population within a decade. In fact, within the last 5 years the U.S. Latino population has increased by over 5 million, a 27% increase rate. This rate is three times faster than the growth of the entire U.S. population. Due to high fertility rates, 26% per 1,000 women (compared to
12.9% of the White population), which leads to a high level of growth within the Latino community, and high levels of immigration, Latino Americans are expected to become the largest minority group by the year 2010. If this trend continues, it is estimated that by 2050 there will be 130 million Latino Americans residing in the U.S., accounting for nearly a quarter of the population. Since the Latino population is rapidly growing, it is no surprise that the Latino youth cohort is expanding exponentially. In fact, of the 35.5 million Latino Americans residing in the U.S., approximately 30%, or 12.5 million, are under the age of 18 while only 24% of the non-Latino population is under age 18. The discrepancy between the two growth rates becomes even more evident in younger cohorts. In fact, children under the age of 6 account for 14% of the Latino population while this age cohort only accounts for 6% of the non-Latino population. In addition, only 31.6% of White families, compared to 58% of Latino American families, have children residing in their households. This reveals that although the Latino American population may currently be a smaller fraction of the entire population, with its exponential and rapid growth, Latino Americans will account for a very large portion of American youth in the near future. Although the Latino American population is quickly growing, this growth is concentrated in certain areas. Of the 35.5 million Latino Americans residing in mainland U.S., 57%, or 20.4 million, of this population currently reside in Arizona, California, Colorado, New Mexico and Texas. In addition to being highly concentrated in south and southwestern states, Latino Americans tend to reside in urban areas. It is important to note, however, that with the exponential growth of Latino youth, the population of Latino Americans in other areas is steadily increasing.
Latino American Youth and Education With the Latino American population growing rapidly, there is also a great influx of Latino American children into school systems. An estimated 42.5 million students are enrolled in kindergarten through grade 12 in the U.S. Approximately 6.8 million, or 16.2%, of these children are Latino. Yet, despite the fairly large percentage of Latino youth within the educational realm, school systems appear to be failing these children. Educational gaps between Latino American children and their counterparts are undeniable. This
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gap starts at an early age with pre-kindergarten Latino American children facing the added challenge of a language barrier. Although some Latino American children speak English fluently or even as their first language, the majority of Latino American youth start pre-school or kindergarten knowing little to no English. This language barrier within English speaking classrooms can cause the Spanish speaking children to lag behind their counterparts. In addition, even within a Spanish speaking classroom, a lot of emphasis and time is put toward learning the English language, taking time away from other academic areas. Additionally, a majority of academic assessments are given in English, often tracking Spanish speaking children into lower academic ranges due to poor performance that results from a language barrier. The gap in academic success between Latino and non-Latino children becomes even more evident as the children increase in age. For example, the 1996 National Assessment of Educational Progress report found that only 16% of eighth grade Latino American children were proficient in reading while this percentage was 45 for White children. By the age of 18, approximately 21% of Latino American youth drop out of school, over double the 10% national drop out average. Additionally, of the Latino American youth who do receive high school diplomas, less than 10%, compared to 30% of the rest of their peer counterparts, receive any type of advanced degree such as technical training or college. Since education level and income are positively correlated, the lack of education for some Latinos also leads to financial difficulties. In 2000, the median income of a Latino family was $34,397 while the median income for a non-Latino White family was $54,698. This decreased income leaves 29% of Latino American families living in poverty, compared to 13.1% of White American families. In addition, approximately 27.8% of Latino American children are living in poverty and, even if not below the poverty line themselves, 45.3% of Latino American youth are residing in neighborhoods where more than 18.6% of the families live in poverty. Although discrepancies between Latino American and non-Latino American populations in educational success and income are indisputable, the reasons behind these disparities are often a topic of debate. In the first half of the twentieth century, geneticists considered low performance on intelligence tests and difficulties of educational success among racial/ethnic minorities
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to be a reflection of genetic inferiority. Fortunately, this theory was quickly refuted. More recent theorists have stated that the incongruence between home life and school environment placed children of color at a greater disadvantage. Since 90% of teachers are White and 30% of students are children of color, cultural differences that effect learning are bound to exist. For example, the Latino culture tends to emphasize the ‘‘group’’ over the ‘‘individual,’’ and consider it rude to look directly at authority figures who are conversing with the individual. This can result in Latino American children being less individualistic and avoiding eye contact with superiors in the school environment. Although these are appropriate behaviors at home for Latino American children, an Anglo-Saxon school may often mistake this group dynamic as a lack of confidence, lack of motivation, and lack of respect for authority figures. Many theorists also believe that Latino Americans are not succeeding academically due to remnants of discriminatory beliefs, such as the geneticists’ theory that still linger in the educational realm. Theorists claim that societal constructs determine learning and that an overwhelming amount of individuals, including professionals within educational systems, expect less academic success from Latino American children than their counterparts. These lowered expectations stem from past false beliefs and the fact that much research on Latino American youth, despite good intentions, often emphasizes deficits, instead of the strengths, of Latino American communities. These negative views can create a self-fulfilling prophecy, harming the child’s educational progression and also discouraging educational employees from attempting to incorporate cultural difference within the school system. There are current trends that seek to address and eliminate gaps in educational achievement. Organizations and individuals have pushed for adequate funding within low-income schools, which often have a large percentage of Latino American students. In addition, these organizations want to incorporate Latino culture into educational programs/schools, involve families and parents in the programs, and promote the use of culturally and linguistically sensitive professionals in the school culture. Programs that employ these objectives are being implemented at both state and national levels. For instance, at the state-level, programs such as ‘‘Expanda Su Mente Y Lea’’ (translation: Expand Your Mind and Read) are being created. This program is delivered
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within a pediatric center in New Haven, Connecticut and works to increase literacy within Latino communities. The pediatric center donates books to families, discusses the importance of literacy with Latino parents, and works directly with children ages 6 months to 12 years on language and literacy skills. One of the most prominent examples of a national program is Head Start. This program provides educational, psychological, and social services to families and children from low-income areas, including Latino families. Services include free daycare for children where they work on academic skills that include reading, writing, and learning English if it is not their native language.
Conclusion Latino Americans are the fastest growing population. They are soon to be the largest minority group residing in the U.S. With this population growth comes the increase of Latino American youth. This youth cohort must be studied to implement programs and services to help these children succeed academically within what is currently a predominantly Anglo-Saxon school system. Although Latino American children currently tend to lag behind their counterparts in the educational realm, a key area of intervention concerns the inadequacies of school systems and communities to meet the educational needs of this under-served population. See also: > Academic achievement in minority children; > Assessment of culturally diverse children; > Ethnic minority youth; > Racial/ethnic group differences
Suggested Reading Annie E. Casey Foundation. (2003). Latino children: State-level measures of child well-being from the 2000 census. Kids count pocket guide. Balitmore, MD: Annie E. Casey Foundation. Hispanic Border Leadership Institute, Arizona State University (2002). A compromised commitment; society’s obligation and failure to serve the nation’s largest growing population. A report on the educational experience in five western states. Tempe, AZ: Hispanic Border Leadership Institute, Arizona State University. Hernandez, R., Siles, M. E., & Rochin, R. (2001). Latino Youth: Converting challenges to opportunities. JSRI Working Paper #50. Ann Harbor, Michigan: Michigan State University, Julian Samora Research Institute. White House Initiative on Educational Excellence for Hispanic Americans (2000). What works for Latino Youth, (2nd ed.). Jessup, MD: ED Pubs.
Learning Disabilities Misha Graves . Rebecca S Martı´nez
A learning disability (LD), broadly defined, is a condition that causes people to learn basic skills or information at a significantly slower rate than their peers. People with learning disabilities have an average range of intelligence, but differences in neurological processing result in problems with information input, integration, memory, and output. Although several distinct learning disabilities have been classified based on these specific mental processes, LD is often characterized by its effect on academic achievement in the areas of reading, writing, and mathematics. Not all learning difficulties—including some that fit the broad definition above—can be classified as learning disabilities. Children without LD can have difficulty learning due to low intelligence, emotional disturbance, or impairments in vision, hearing, or motor skills. In addition, people are not considered learning disabled if the disparity between their ability and achievement is due to cultural or environmental issues, such as limited proficiency in the English language or a lack of access to quality education. Significant progress has been made in the last 30 years in the study of learning disabilities. Although there are still many unanswered questions about LD, research has helped us to better understand the mechanisms of learning disabilities, and the effect that LD can have in all aspects of a person’s life. Also, major changes in the law have helped to guarantee access to appropriate education for children with learning disabilities, and encourage early identification and intervention using research-based instructional methods. Despite these advances, there is still significant debate among professionals and policymakers on how to best define learning disabilities, as well as identify and teach students with learning disabilities.
Historical Foundations Early Research. Learning disabilities have most likely always existed, but research on LD as a construct did not begin until relatively recently and public awareness surrounding learning disabilities has an even shorter history. The foundations of LD research began in the early nineteenth century, when neurologists began to
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investigate the relationship between the brain and human behavior by observing patients with brain damage. They soon discovered the phenomenon of brain localization (specific brain regions controlling specific behaviors), which made possible the idea that people could have normal intelligence, yet have specific skill deficits in reading, writing, and motor ability that did not affect other areas of functioning. In the late 1800s, researchers in Europe began to study otherwise intelligent adults who possessed severe reading deficits. The number of published case studies of adults with this condition, originally referred to as ‘‘word-blindness,’’ increased dramatically and in 1896, a child in England was identified with ‘‘congenital word-blindness.’’ Until the publication of this case, it had been assumed within the scientific community that dyslexia (a term that was slowly gaining favor) was an acquired neurological condition, since it had previously only been documented in adults. Following the publication of this report, dyslexia in children was reported more frequently, allowing researchers to identify trends, such as elements of heritability and a disproportionate number of boys with the disorder. In the United States (U.S.), research into reading disorders gathered momentum in the 1920s, and due to the relatively recent compulsory education requirement, educators observed that reading disorders were much more prevalent than previous estimates indicated. The cause of dyslexia was believed to be brain damage, based on similar symptoms observed in soldiers with brain injuries. Toward the mid-twentieth century, researchers, notably William Cruickshank, began to move beyond the then-current neurological paradigm and search for ways to effectively educate students with reading disabilities.
Increased Public Awareness The term ‘‘learning disability’’ was first published in 1962 by Samuel Kirk, using a definition stressing differences in skill levels within an individual. Within 2 years, another definition was published that included the requirement that a learning disability involve a significant discrepancy between aptitude and achievement. Soon, a federal government project began to study ‘‘minimal brain dysfunction,’’ the common clinical term for learning disabilities, and commissioned two separate task forces to decide on a name and develop an operational definition of LD. The first
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panel, a group of medical professionals, elected to keep the name ‘‘minimal brain dysfunction’’ and defined the disorder based on clinical manifestations and suspected neurological etiology. The second task force, a group of educators who agreed on the term ‘‘learning disability,’’ was unable to agree on a single definition and therefore published two definitions. The first definition, similar to the one proposed by Kirk, defined LD in terms of skill and processing deficits within an individual, while the second definition identified LD as a significant discrepancy between estimated academic potential and actual academic functioning. Congress passed the Education of the Handicapped Act in 1966, granting federal assistance and protection for children with disabilities in several areas. However, learning disabilities were conspicuously absent as a protected category from the Act, due to political pressure from traditional disability advocacy groups who were concerned that limited federal resources would be diverted to children with LD. In 1966, the U.S. Department of Education formed a committee, chaired by Samuel Kirk, to report on and create an official legislative definition for LD. The resulting definition, similar to Kirk’s original that did not mention an ability-aptitude discrepancy, was adopted by the federal government and still serves as the basis for LD law. Shortly after the committee report was issued, Congress passed The Children with Specific Learning Disabilities Act of 1969, that did not grant LD equal status with other disabilities, but did allow federal funding of research, teacher education, and pilot programs for LD service delivery. Learning Disabilities received full federal recognition in 1975, when Congress passed the Education for All Handicapped Children Act. This law granted all children with disabilities the right to free and appropriate public education (FAPE). When the law was fully implemented in 1977, schools were required to identify all children with disabilities and conduct a comprehensive evaluation of all students suspected of having a disability, and make any accommodation necessary to assure these students had access to high quality education. Schools were also required to include parents in the process of disability identification and the development of an individual education plan (IEP) for students with disabilities. The IEP would be updated annually with input from teachers, school psychologists, parents, and appropriate support personnel. The specific regulations of the law stopped short of providing states with a severe discrepancy formula for determining the presence of a learning
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disability, but they do endorse the concept of an aptitude-ability discrepancy as a requirement for LD. While this law has been amended several times, most recently in 2004, it remains the basis for learning disability education today.
Identification of Learning Disabilities The Discrepancy Model Since states are legally required to provide services for students with learning disabilities, most of them have adopted the significant aptitude-achievement discrepancy model as a part of their requirements for LD identification. Until the most recent revision, which became effective in 2006, IDEA stipulated that the multi-disciplinary team evaluating suspected learning disabilities could determine the presence of LD if two conditions were satisfied: (a) the child must be performing below the level expected for his or her age and ability level, and (b) the child must have a severe discrepancy between achievement and intellectual ability. A determination of a severe discrepancy is usually made following the administration of a standardized test to measure achievement in a particular academic area and a test of cognitive ability (IQ) by a school psychologist. Since both tests are usually norm-referenced with the same mean score and standard deviation, spotting a discrepancy is relatively straightforward. For example, if a reading disability is suspected, reading sub-score from the cognitive assessment (which represents ability, or expected performance) would be compared to the score on a reading achievement test. If the reading achievement score is 86 and the cognitive assessment reading sub-score is 109, the significant discrepancy would be presumed. On the other hand, if both scores were 86, then no significant discrepancy would exist, and the child would not be identified as learning disabled. Although the child’s reading achievement is significantly below that of his or her classmates (whose scores would theoretically average 100), the level of achievement would be expected based upon the cognitive ability score. Although the use of the discrepancy model is no longer required by IDEA or state education agencies, most schools continue to use it as a criteria for LD identification. However, because the process is straightforward and seemingly objective, in many cases a determination of LD is made only on the basis of an aptitude-achievement discrepancy. For a
number of reasons, the discrepancy model may not accurately identify or exclude the presence of a learning disability and other factors should be considered in a diagnosis of LD. The discrepancy model is less effective when comparing scores from some assessments to others. Different tests measure different abilities, and each assessment has its own set of subset scores that may not compare directly with a similar subset score from another test. Without a thorough understanding of what tests are measuring, practitioners could misinterpret the results. Also, IQ is not always an accurate reflection of the level at which a child could be expected to perform. IQ is simply a statistically weighted, general measure of intelligence and does not always translate to a specific ability. Cognitive assessments are also limited in their ability to measure a child’s true aptitude when cultural, language, or economic factors influence the score. The discrepancy model has been criticized for not identifying learning disabilities early enough, when educators have a better chance of a successful intervention. By its very nature, the discrepancy model requires that a child is performing significantly below his or her ability, which often indicates that the child is failing in school. If the discrepancy model is used as the sole determining factor in LD identification, children need to fall behind far enough to fail to receive special education services. Children who have learning disabilities but are highly intelligent or those with mild learning disabilities may perform in school comparatively to their peers for some time. When these children eventually fail, it may be too late for special education services to help them overcome the failure.
Response to Intervention Although there are 2.8 million children in U.S. schools who are currently eligible for special education services under the specific learning disability (SLD) designation, many of these children do not have genuine learning disabilities. Many of the students currently labeled as having a learning disability are instructional casualties who simply never have been taught how to read. In the last 25 years, schools in the U.S. have experienced a 283% increase in the number of students identified with SLD and receiving special education services. Population-based models, such as response to intervention (RTI) emphasize universal prevention and swift intervention of basic academic problems. These models hold significant promise for ensuring
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that all students master basic academic skills and consequently reducing the overrepresentation of SLD in special education. The U.S. Department of Education reports that there were approximately 2.9 million students who had learning disabilities during the 2001–2002 school year. This number represents an increase from the 1.2 million cases reported in 1970–1980. Some recent research indicated that the increased representation of students with learning disabilities in special education may be attributable to the overidentification of students who do not have learning disabilities, misidentification of students with disabilities other than LD, and underidentification of students with true LD. RTI holds significant promise as a method for preventing many learning difficulties, especially reading problems. RTI is built on a framework and a set of activities that emphasize prevention and swift, data-driven intervention as soon as student difficulties are detected. Unlike traditional educational approaches that address learning problems after students have experienced academic failure (e.g., the wait-to-fail discrepancy model), RTI emphasizes global prevention and focuses on positive academic outcomes for all students. RTI is a data-driven systematic method for identifying and responding to the needs of students who demonstrate academic and/or behavioral difficulties. It consists of a set of school-wide procedures intended to promote successful school outcomes for all students. When implemented with fidelity, RTI is a program where school personnel apply a twofold system of reliable high-quality instruction and frequent formative assessment of student progress. Decisions in RTI are anchored within a multi-tier system of options that correspond to student need. Decision makers in RTI include both regular and special education teachers as well as other key stakeholders including paraprofessionals, school psychologists, administrators, parents, and other related services personnel. Decision making in RTI emphasizes the prevention of problems, including learning disabilities, and timely interventions at the first sign of risk.
The Importance of Early Identification With a new provision permitting the allocation of 15% of federal funding to early-intervention initiatives, IDEA 2004 provides a tangible incentive for schools to embrace a new model of prophylactic service delivery. In addition to the use of a RTI model to identify
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LD, and other direct instructional efforts, early intervention could take such varied forms as professional development. Teachers learn to deliver evidence-based instruction and provide educational and behavioral evaluations and support.
LD and the Law Since 1977, children with learning disabilities have been guaranteed access to free and appropriate public education. On October 13, 2006, the final U.S. Department of Education regulations of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Improvement Act (IDEA 2004) part B, became effective, almost 2 years after Congress passed this important reauthorization. Many of the changes to the IDEA legislation are intended to align this legislation more closely with No Child Left Behind (NCLB) and therefore reflect broader trends in education, placing greater emphasis on research-based practices, early identification and intervention strategies for students determined to be at-risk, and higher standards of accountability with a focus on personnel qualification and measured improvement. While the changes in IDEA 2004 are broad, key provisions most likely to impact LD identification and service delivery fall under the following categories: (a) greater support for early-intervening services and scientific, research-based alternatives to identification of learning disabilities, such as response to intervention (RTI), (b) reduction of disproportionate disability identification based on race or ethnicity, and (c) changes to individual education program (IEP). Several of the final IDEA 2004 regulations grant states and school districts considerable latitude in adopting specific criteria for making a disability determination, deciding which services are warranted, as well as determining the appropriate personnel to deliver those services. States, however, may no longer require that schools use the severe aptitude-achievement discrepancy model in determining the presence of a specific learning disability. In addition, state regulations governing LD identification must allow the use of an RTI model that the U.S. Department of Education defined as ‘‘a process that examines whether the child responds to scientific, research-based interventions’’ in 2006. Although IDEA 2004 does not actively discourage the use of the discrepancy model, support for evidencebased models, specifically RTI, represents a major change from the previous version of IDEA. The change allows for seamless integration with NCLB, which also
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strongly supports the use of evidence-based instruction. Adapting another theme from NCLB, teacher accountability, IDEA 2004 prohibits LEAs from determining that a child has a disability if the determining factor is a lack of appropriate instruction. This provision has important implications for many students, including those who have limited English proficiency and otherwise may be misdiagnosed as having a learning disability. The use of an RTI model is one way to increase the likelihood that students will receive appropriate instruction based on their specific needs. In a discussion published with the final regulations, the Department of Education acknowledged that the use of RTI represents a major paradigm shift in special education, with an increased focus on achievement and successful outcomes for all students. To enable schools to successfully implement RTI models, The Department of Education Office of Special Education Programs (OSEP) will provide funding for training and technical assistance. The office is developing a RTI resource kit to assist schools with implementation. Unfortunately, large-scale change of this nature will be difficult, and undoubtedly, it will meet with resistance from some educators, those who have dismissed RTI as a viable alternative to the status quo. These educators have misconceptions or the mistaken idea that RTI has yet to generate any empirical support. IDEA 2004 contains several important revisions aimed at increasing the flexibility of IEP planning and revision processes. In an effort to streamline the process, provisions in IDEA 2004 also promote the consolidation of reevaluations with other IEP meetings and allow the implementation of changes to an IEP. They may be amended rather than completely redrafted without the need to reconvene the IEP team. In recognition of the preparatory function of education, new language requires IEPs to include specific, individualized postsecondary transitional goals for children 16 and older. The Department of Education is establishing two pilot programs in 15 states (a multi-year IEP program and a paperwork reduction program) with the goal of streamlining the IEP process.
Cultural Considerations Disproportionality in Special Education Since the inception of federally mandated special education programs in the United States, minority
students have been significantly overrepresented. Children belonging to racial and ethnic minority groups are referred for special education services by classroom teachers more often than their White peers, and they also are more likely to be identified with a disability and removed from the classroom. The largest disproportionality exists in children identified as mentally retarded or emotionally disturbed. Although the actual incidence of LD identification is not significantly disproportionate in minorities as a whole, African Americans and Native Americans are significantly more likely to be identified with a learning disorder than White students. In addition, the nationally aggregated data for disproportionality tends to have a leveling effect and obscure data from individual states that show a significant disproportionality in LD identification for all minorities. The cause of minority disproportionality has been conclusively identified, but many researchers believe a complex interaction of unconscious bias, limited resources in predominantly minority areas, and reaction to high-stakes testing to be responsible. By addressing other factors likely to inhibit a student’s achievement, early identification and intervention can be a useful tool in preventing unnecessary referrals for services or misidentification of disabilities, especially in the area of minority overrepresentation. While the allocation of federal funding for early intervention is generally left to the discretion of school districts, schools with a significant racial or ethnic disproportionality in special education referrals are required to fund early intervention efforts at the maximum 15% of their special education funding. To address the disproportionality of racial and ethnic minority students receiving special education services, states are required to collect and examine data on disability identifications, disciplinary referrals and actions, and placement in particular educational settings for these students. If a significant minority overrepresentation is determined, states must require school districts to provide comprehensive early intervention services for these groups as well as inform the public of efforts in place to reduce minority overrepresentation in special education. A greater awareness of the pervasive problem of LD over-identification and the importance of early identification and intervention were important factors in prompting lawmakers to reconsider the exclusive use of a discrepancy model in LD evaluation. In conclusion, the federal legislation allowing states to work out many of the details of intervention provides school psychologists with a new opportunity. They can influence the
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implementation of these regulations by establishing research-based practices aimed at reducing minority disproportionality. See also: > Labeling ; > Special education
Suggested Reading Brown-Chidsey, R., & Steege, S. M. (2005). Response to intervention: Principles and strategies for effective practice. New York: The Guilford Press. Fuchs, L., & Vaughn, S. (March 2006). Response-to-intervention as a framework for identification of learning disabilities. Communique´, 34(6), 1–6. Graner, P. S., Faggella-Luby, M. N., & Fritschmann, N. S. (2005). An overview of responsiveness to intervention: What practitioners ought to know. Topics in Language Disorders, 25, 93–105. McCook, J. E. (2006). The RTI guide: Developing and implementing a model in your schools. Horsham, PA: LRP Publications.
Suggested Resources Response to Intervention Reference List and Web Links—http:// www.nasponline.org/advocacy/rtireference.pdf National Research Center on Learning Disabilities—http://www. nrcld.org/ National Center on Student Progress Monitoring—http://www. studentprogress.org/
Learning Styles Mark Kiang
Learning is a process in which knowledge, skills, attitudes, and values are acquired through experience and study. Learning can cause a measurable, lasting change in behavior and allows for the creation or revision of mental constructs such as attitudes or values. Learning is vital to human development. Learning style denotes the ways that individuals receive and process information. Several of the more widely recognized models used for researching learning style include the Myers Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI), the DiSC assessment (Carlson Learning), and Howard Gardner’s Multiple Intelligence Model. Gardner’s theory is that the human being is capable of several relatively independent forms of information processing, each form referred
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to as an ‘‘intelligence.’’ These intelligences are logicalmathematical, linguistic, musical, spatial, bodily kinesthetic, interpersonal, and intrapersonal. According to Gardner, individuals differ in their specific profiles of intelligences. One of the most accepted models is the visual, aural, and kinesthetic (VAK) approach, which was advanced by American researchers Rita and Ken Dunn. While there are many different theories of learning and theorists may disagree on the specific terminology, most agree on three basic learning styles: VAK. A fourth category, reading/writing, is also sometimes listed. Collectively these learning styles are referred to as VAK or VARK (with the inclusion of reading/writing). Visual learners learn by seeing. In a classroom setting visual learners take comprehensive detailed notes and tend to sit in the front. They are generally neater, cleaner, and more organized. Visual learners like to see what they are learning and will often close their eyes to attempt to visualize or recall information. Visual learners are more receptive to illustrations and presentations that use color and are attracted to written or spoken language rich in imagery. Visual learners prefer stimuli to be isolated from auditory and kinesthetic distraction. Auditory learners learn by hearing. In a classroom setting they will sit where they can hear but do not necessarily need to pay attention to what is happening at the front of the room. Auditory learners remember best by verbalizing lessons to themselves and facilitate the acquisition of knowledge by reading out loud. Without these auditory tools, this type of learner has difficulty reading maps and diagrams as well as tackling conceptual tasks like mathematics. Kinesthetic learners learn by doing. They sit near doors or places where they can easily get up and move around. They tend to be uncomfortable in classrooms that lack hands-on opportunities. Hands-on activities such as cooking, construction, engineering, and art facilitate kinesthetic learners’ comprehension. Kinesthetic learners prefer to be active while taking frequent breaks. Their communication is often accompanied by hand and body gestures and touching. The kinesthetic learner is a tactile learner who becomes fidgety when bored. While this type of learner may remember an assignment he or she may have a hard time recalling details of what was said or seen. The fourth and less commonly mentioned type of learner is the reading and writing learner. This type of learner is most comfortable learning by processing text. Individuals can fall into any one or more of these four categories to varying degrees. The aforementioned
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descriptions are archetypal cases of these learning styles. While it is possible for someone to have above average learning in more than one of these styles, an individual typically is stronger in one learning style than in the others. Some researchers criticize the VAK or VARK (from here on referred to only as VAK) models as not being adequately validated by independent research. Others, however, continue to stand by the VAK model. The VAK model offers a general yet encompassing means to assess and accommodate learning styles. While more specific factions of learning exist, an educator who models the classroom and activities while taking into consideration the VAK model can attend to the majority of his or her students’ learning needs.
Learning Styles in Schools While there undeniably exists a variety of styles in which individuals learn, primary, middle, and high schools across the United States (U.S.), which serve students from kindergarten through 12th grade, often cater to some styles of learning at the expense of others. It has been observed that schools tend to emphasize visual and auditory types of learning rather than the kinesthetic mode. This means that students who prefer to be more physically active do not get the same opportunity to learn in a manner in which they are most effective. Two such examples are standardized tests and learning by way of textbooks—in general, neither emphasizes the tactile elements of learning. The result is that many schools, in their efforts to challenge and assess students, fail to effectively engage them to their full ability.
Cultural Influences on Students’ Learning Styles Learning styles are often developed through cultural and environmental experiences. It is not known exactly how culture influences learning, however, educators and researchers agree on the importance of understanding students’ different backgrounds and to respect and accommodate their similarities and differences. Spencer J. Salend asserts that our schools are predicated on the mainstream, middle-class culture and that this is pervasive in both the academic and social expectations of students. This often results in biases against students of color.
Cultural differences also affect the way individuals process, organize, and learn material. Students of color may have learning styles based on variation, movement, divergent thinking, inductive reasoning, and an emphasis on people. Without an acknowledgment of these styles, teachers may negatively misinterpret behavior in the classroom that is based on culturally influenced learning styles. Salend presents one such example. This involves a male African American student’s actions as he prepares for a performance. The student looks over an assignment in its entirety; rearranges posture; elaborately checks pencils, paper, and writing space; asks teachers to repeat directions that have just been given; and checks fellow student’s perceptions. While the African American student may see these actions as necessary, the teacher may interpret them as avoidance tactics, inattentiveness, disruptions, or signs that the student is unprepared. Polychronic cultures should be taken into account when considering the learning styles that exist within a multicultural class. The dominant U.S., Canadian, and European cultures tend to be monochronic. This implies a culture that prefers activities to be sequential and generally perform actions one at a time. Monochronic cultures place a priority on orderliness, punctuality, and meeting deadlines. These preferences and values translate into students who prefer to learn with one activity at a time and to work at a desk in the absence of conversation. The monochronic student finds engagement in multiple activities at the same time, such as talking and writing an essay, both unproductive and uncomfortable. Latin America, the Arab part of the Middle East, and sub-Sahara Africa are polychronic cultures. Polychronic cultures favor less structure and the freedom to change from one activity to another at will. A polychron enjoys taking on several tasks at the same time and is industrious in doing so. Teachers must recognize how this culture trait, which many ethnic minority students possess, relates to learning style in the classroom. It is important that teachers are cognizant of classroom exercises and structures that cater to monochronic learning styles and adjust activities to be receptive to polychronic learning styles. For instance, in the case of an assignment where book reports are written in class, the teacher may allow students to engage in open discussions while writing. Teachers should also guard against being critical of polychronic behavior when it is the favored learning style.
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Accounting for Individual and Cultural Differences Educators should be careful not to view research on learning styles as they pertain to cultures uncritically while making sweeping generalizations of particular groups. This can have the undesired effect of promoting prejudice when the goal is that of openmindedness. One can imagine cases in which the assumption of a learning style based on a student’s racial/cultural background can be detrimental. For example, a teacher’s assumption that a student ofcolor prefers group work to individual work and is therefore never given the opportunity to express herself individually can seriously inhibit the student’s development of self expression. There are vast differences among learners within diverse racial/ethnic groups.
Appreciating a Student’s True Abilities Nieto asserts that Gardner’s theory of multiple intelligences is relevant in assessing intelligence in crosscultural settings. The theory of multiple intelligences goes beyond the limited definition of intelligence in most schools, which often focuses on the logicalmathematical and linguistic intelligences and examines all forms of intelligence. This is of significance because profiles in these intelligences vary not only across cultures, but also from individual to individual. To merely consider a student’s ability to reason, make calculations and master language, which schools tend to focus on, is a severe oversight. Gardner’s theory goes beyond the VAK model and recognizes that individuals can be interpersonally, intrapersonally, and musically intelligent. In some cases, these forms of intelligences are a stronger predictor of success than those more traditionally accepted. For instance, several studies have shown that those with a strong emotional quotient (EQ), and therefore demonstrate stronger interpersonal and intrapersonal intelligences, generally have more successful careers and report higher levels of happiness and satisfaction. Strength in any of the various modes can imply an individual’s intelligence, while a deficiency in any one cannot negate it. To understand learning styles in all forms is to appreciate people of different strengths.
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See also: > Cross-cultural learning styles; > Intelligence/ Intelligence Quotient (IQ); > Multiple intelligences; > Nondiscriminatory testing
Suggested Reading Nieto, S. (2004). Affirming diversity: The sociopolitical context of multicultural education (4th ed.). New York: Pearson Education. Salend, S. J. (2005). Creating inclusive classrooms: Effective and reflective practices for all students (5th ed.). Prentice Hall, NJ: Pearson.
Suggested Resources Teacher.net—http://www.teachernet.gov.uk: This website is dedicated to aiding teachers and school managers in teaching, professional development, management, school-wide issues, and research
Life Cycle Patricia M Lenahan
Human life-span development is a constant process, beginning before birth and ending only with death. It is a process that is mediated by culture and includes biological processes as well as age-related norms and developmental tasks. The United States (U.S.), among other countries, is experiencing a dramatic increase in the number of individuals and families who are migrating here from other countries. Mass exodus of refugees and immigrants from war-torn areas of the world is introducing countless millions of children into a new cultural and social environment, one that often poses significant difficulties related to language barriers, expectations and assimilation into the majority culture. Many of these children may have also experienced physical or psychological trauma. Traumatic experiences place additional demands on the mental health system. School psychologists must become familiar with culturally acceptable ways to assess potential psychological disorders and respond to trauma. Similarly, educational institutions are faced with the challenge of providing services to children in multiple languages whose ethnic and cultural backgrounds are
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increasingly varied and whose life experiences may have included exposure to violence.
Parenting across Cultures Parenting is a universal phenomenon but approaches to child-rearing vary among cultures. What may be viewed as normal learning and emotional development in one culture may be seen as strange or even pathological in another culture. Most cultures, however, share a similar belief: our way is the healthiest way to raise a child. Behaviors of infants and children vary across cultures as a result of these parenting styles. Emotional behavior is learned during the first several months of life. These early experiences of infants and children are formative and help establish behavior patterns that will continue into adulthood. Parental goals for their children contribute to the child’s learning style and development. Several goals among U.S. parents, for instance, include helping their children become emotionally independent from their parents and developing expressive and language skills. American mothers may spend more time talking to their infants, looking at them, smiling, and otherwise interacting with their children. This emphasis on verbal interaction with infants is often accompanied by less touching and holding of infants and greater tolerance of infant crying. As a result, these infants may be described as more ‘‘fussy’’ and become more stressed. Behaviors associated with verbal interaction and holding/touching differ greatly from many other cultures where infants may not have the same type of verbal interaction but are held and touched more often. In many cultures, infants are held on or near a parent or family caretaker’s body most of the day and night. These parents attend to crying infants more quickly, often feeding the child. Overall, it is believed that the incidence of crying seems to decrease as a result of this type of parental behavior. The family and extended family members provide the childcare rather than relying on non-related babysitters.
The American norm of placing newborn infants in their own cribs, often in their own room, is viewed as part of the process of encouraging the child to develop independence, a highly valued goal. This has been described as a pedagogic model of parenting. It may also have a historical basis in that for many generations, newborns were separated from their parents in the hospital and parents of hospitalized children with chronic illnesses weren’t always permitted to stay with their children in their hospital rooms. This American value of separation and individuation prepares the child for greater independence and self-responsibility as he or she grows, a common expectation of individualistic societies. These views of parenting are not shared by all cultures. Many groups, faced with high infant mortality rates, have developed survival practices which include keeping the child near them at all times. This has been described as a pediatric model where the most important parental goal is to protect the health and survival of the child. In these pediatric models of parenting, infants and mothers sleep together, allowing the mother to more easily breast feed the infant on demand. It is believed that this pattern of frequent breast feeding has helped to decrease infant mortality rates by increasing weight gain and maintaining adequate hydration especially in areas where there are high rates of diarrhea. Unlike the American value of independence and self-responsibility, the goal of the pediatric model group is to raise children who are quiet and respectful and obedient to their parents and other adults. Eating behavior is also a learned behavior. Parents and children are often in conflict regarding what to eat. Parents who promote healthy eating and who apply food rules that emphasize healthy diets rather than allowing the child to select his/her own meals, frequently containing high fat and sugar, are likely to produce healthier children. Some studies have demonstrated that children whose parents have a higher socioeconomic status are likely to have better family dietary habits. Poorer families may not be able to purchase healthier food alternatives as a result of their income or reliance upon food banks.
Sleeping and Feeding Behaviors Significant cultural variations exist in sleep practices for infants and young children. These include bedtime rituals and routines (such as singing lullabies), soothing techniques, and familial/co-sleeping arrangements.
Learning through Play The value of play also varies across cultures. Parents can influence a child’s socialization and development
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through how they view play, what toys are offered or what games are encouraged. Gender role identification can be fostered through parental expectations and admonitions regarding ‘‘male’’ or ‘‘female’’ toys and games and participation in sports. Children learn how to socialize and how to share through the process of play.
Stress, Trauma, and Coping Styles of Children There is a great deal of evidence to support the view that children as young as infants can be affected by negative and traumatic experiences. Children of different ethnicities may experience significant differences in the types of stressors they encounter. Children learn how to cope with traumatic events through their culture. Coping strategies, the cognitive and behavioral responses children employ in response to stressful situations, vary among cultures. They are learned during childhood and progressively change throughout the child’s development. Individualistic cultures, those that tend to view trauma as shameful and something the individual should have controlled, avoided, or dealt with alone, do not make coping with stress and trauma easy for their children. If trauma is viewed as shameful, then it is not openly discussed which may worsen the effects on the child. These ineffective coping strategies can result in negative physical and psychological health. Children across cultures have numerous ways to cope with stress and trauma. Activities such as drawing, playing games, eating, drinking, and watching TV are employed frequently. Gender differences in coping have been identified among young children. Girls often cope by crying and cuddling with their pets while boys are more likely to watch TV or yell or scream. TV watching as a coping strategy has been observed among children dealing with parental violence and substance abuse. Preventive health experts consider watching TV as a contributor to childhood obesity, development of a sedentary lifestyle, onset of sleep disorders, decreased self-esteem, and social withdrawal.
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of an individual’s life and a major source of support. Individualistic cultures place a value on the individual (e.g., personal achievement, independence, competitiveness), while collective cultures focus on the family as the unit of support and emphasize loyalty and respect for others within the family and filial piety. The family provides the context in which values, traditions, health beliefs and practices are transmitted. Better family functioning may be associated with improved psychosocial well-being and higher self-esteem. Children and adolescents from collective cultures may experience more acculturation stress and intergenerational conflict as a result of their attempts to assimilate into the dominant culture.
Discipline Cultural variations exist in the types and extent of discipline that is commonly employed. This may include behavioral techniques such as ‘‘time out’’ or use of corporal punishment. Many cultural misunderstandings have occurred during the last three decades regarding cultural practices like ‘‘coining’’ which initially was viewed as child abuse rather than a culture-bound method for treating a health problem. Parents may expect schools to discipline their children for misbehaving while others believe that all discipline should come from the parents, not the school.
Communication across Cultures Cross-cultural communication issues include more than potential language barriers. Nonverbal communication difficulties may contribute to greater misunderstandings. Factors such as personal space, smiling, eye contact, the use of touch, silence, and time orientation are important nonverbal forms of communication. Parents may serve as the ‘‘culture brokers’’ for teachers and school psychologists in learning to understand the significance of these factors in relating to the children in their care.
Academic Achievement Family and Family Structure The concept of family and family functioning varies by culture/ethnicity. Families may be seen as a central part
Cultural differences can be observed in the way in which families emphasize academic achievement. Parental styles may be proscribed, expecting absolute
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obedience and respect for authority. Other parenting styles may encourage independence, individuality and recognize the rights of the child. These culturallymediated parenting styles may create tension for the educator whose value system differs from that of the parent.
Adolescence The developmental tasks of adolescence are often difficult for both parents and adolescents. However, these developmental stages differ among various cultures. In some cultures, childhood leads directly to adulthood and the assumption of adult roles and responsibilities, without experiencing the developmental stage of adolescence. Intergenerational stressors may develop as a result of the adolescent’s desire to adopt new cultural norms, lack of adherence to family values, traditions, and religious beliefs, the inability to communicate well with older family members due to language barriers, and failure to comply with traditional roles and beliefs. The physical and hormonal changes and the psychosocial issues of adolescents underscore the need to provide increased health and mental health resources for this at-risk age group. Preventive efforts should address sexual information and health, mental health disorders, and substance use.
LGBTIQ Adolescents One group of adolescents may be at increased risk for psychosocial and mental health problems. The health needs of LGBTIQ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgendered, intersex, and questioning) youth represent a core cultural competency concern. These needs must be addressed within a framework of preventive intervention, with the school providing a vital service component. It is important to identify ways to increase the knowledge base for school social workers and psychologists regarding the LGBTIQ students. This should include an increased understanding of the relationship between sexual attraction, behavior, identity and the provision of health-related information and services. Health and mental health risks faced by LGBTIQ youth including HIV infection and increased suicidality. Like all adolescents, LGBTIQ adolescents also need
effective direct counseling services to treat teens facing unintended pregnancy or sexually transmitted diseases (STD’s). One implication is that cultures that train for independence and self-responsibility may risk having more post-traumatic stress (PTSD) later in life. This outcome is thought to be due to the fact that these cultures do not support infants during stressful and traumatic events to the same extent as do cultures that emphasize dependence and mutual support.
Summary Parenting styles, cultural values, beliefs, and the role and function of the family may vary among different ethnic and cultural groups. While each group may be convinced that their child-rearing practices are ideal and those of other societies may be viewed as harmful, it is clear that all cultural and ethnic groups share a common goal: to attend to the psychological and physical well-being of their children. Teachers, school social workers, and school psychologists must be able to recognize their own cultural values and beliefs. They also must be able to identify situations where their values and beliefs may affect their understanding of the behaviors and the needs of children and adolescents from various backgrounds. Cultural competence is a process that includes ongoing self-assessment, avoidance of stereotyping individuals and groups based on their cultural or ethnic identity, an awareness of the cultural/ethnic expectations related to academic achievement and an openness to addressing the individual learning styles and needs of culturally diverse children. See also: > Adolescence; > Childhood; > Cross-cultural families; > Culture; > Ethnic minority youth; > Family therapy
Suggested Reading Buehler, C. (2006). Parents and peers in relation to early adolescent problem behavior. Journal of Marriage and Family, 68(1), 109–124. Mandara, J. (2006). The impact of family functioning on African American male’s academic achievement: A review and clarification of the empirical literature. Teachers College Board, 108(2), 206–223.
Limited English proficiency
Limited English Proficiency Anna M Pen˜a
The term ‘‘limited English proficient’’ or ‘‘LEP,’’ refers to an individual whose primary language is other than English and whose difficulties in speaking, reading, writing, or understanding the English language may be sufficient to deny the individual the ability to meet the state’s proficient level of achievement on assessments, the ability to achieve in classrooms where the language of instruction is English, and/or the opportunity to participate fully in society. Most students living in the United States (U.S.) read, write, speak, and understand English at a level that allows them to function successfully in the academic setting and society as a whole. There are many individuals, however, for whom English is not their primary language. According to the National Clearinghouse for English Language Acquisition (NCELA), approximately five million LEP students were enrolled in public school nationwide during the 2005–2006 school year. This number represents approximately 10% of total public school student enrollment, and a 57% increase over the reported 1995–1996 public school LEP enrollment. Currently, students who are LEP reflect current immigration trends of the past decade, with most LEP students reporting Spanish as their native language, followed by Vietnamese (2.4%), Hmong (1.8%), Korean (1.2%), and Arabic (1.2%). Students who speak a language other than English at home are not equally distributed across the country. California had the most LEP students in the country, with nearly 1.6 million, followed by Texas (684,007), Florida (299,346), New York (203,583), Illinois (192,764), and Arizona (155,789). In the U.S., limited English proficiency carries unique socioeconomic challenges. The link between socioeconomic status and English proficiency is complex and varied, but not necessarily causally linked. Likely, new immigrants with limited education and limited English proficiency have limited access to jobs that require both high levels of education and English proficiency. According to results from the 2000 Census, 65% of LEP children lived in poor families compared with 51% of bilingual children and 32% of English monolingual children. This supports the fact that LEP children are twice as likely to live in families
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whose income is below 185% of the federal poverty guidelines compared with either bilingual or English monolingual children. Limited English proficiency can be a barrier to accessing important benefits or services, understanding and exercising rights, or understanding information provided by federally funded programs. In the past, such barriers had an impact on access to curriculum for LEP children. There are several U.S. Supreme Court, state federal, and federal legislation decisions that helped shape the education of language minority students in the U.S. Some of the most influential federal legislation and court decisions for language minority students include Lau v. Nichols (1974), Castan˜eda v. Pickard (1981), and Title VI regulations of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which prohibits discrimination based on national origin. Most recently enacted federal laws that are particularly relevant to language access and include Executive Order 13166. Issued on August 11, 2000. Executive Order 13166, commonly known as the Limited English Proficiency Act, requires that all federal agencies develop and implement reasonable steps to ensure that LEP individuals have meaningful access to federally conducted programs and activities. Based on the current trend, it is estimated that the number of LEP children will continue to grow in the coming decades. States and districts will need to recognize the importance of designing LEP programs that provide equal access to linguistically diverse children. Programs implemented to address the special needs of LEP students will continue to be critical in assisting the academic development and future success of this growing population of students in the years to come. See also: > Bilingualism; > English language learners; > Language needs in the multicultural classroom; > Language proficiency
Suggested Reading Crawford, J. (2004). Educating English learners: Language diversity in the classroom (5th ed.). Los Angeles, CA: Bilingual Educational Services. Gottlieb, M. (2006). Assessing English language learners: Bridges from language proficiency to academic achievement. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press. Rhodes, R. L., Ochoa S. H., & Ortiz, S. O. (2005). Assessing culturally and linguistically diverse students: A practical guide. New York, NY: Guilford Press.
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Suggested Resources National Clearinghouse for English Language Acquisition & Language Instruction Educational Programs (NCELA) http://www. ncela.gwu.edu/: The NCELA supports the Office of English Language Acquisition (OELA) and is authorized to collect, analyze, synthesize, and disseminate information about language instruction educational programs for LEP children. U.S. Census Bureau http://www.census.gov/: The U.S. Census Bureau is a branch of the Commerce Department and responsible for taking the census. This website provides demographic information and analyses about the U.S. population.
Literacy Gigliana Melzi . Adina Schick
In a 2003 United Nations lecture Kofi Annan stated that ‘‘literacy is the key to unlocking the cage of human misery. . . to delivering the potential of every human being. . . to opening up a future of freedom and hope.’’ These powerful words convey the vital need to provide all members of society with the literacy tools necessary for their successful participation in today’s world.
Defining Literacy Historically, literacy has been tied to ancient symbolic representations, to the written word and to the printed text. To be deemed literate, an individual has needed to attain basic reading and writing skills in a given language to function successfully on a daily basis. This traditional perspective is representative of an etic approach to literacy, portraying literacy skills as universal, that is having the same meaning across cultural groups. The etic approach has proven to be well suited for research as it assumes a global definition and standard criteria for literacy. Moreover, this particular view allows for the development of measures to assess literacy competency across various populations irrespective of language or cultural background. Although following an etic approach has much merit, by assuming that literacy transcends culture and is universally quantifiable, it fails to consider the
diversity of the human experience. In the late 1970s, a group of researchers began to question this established view of literacy and suggested a broader conceptualization that took into account cultural variations and practices. This emic approach views literacy as culturally defined, encompassing skills and abilities valued by a particular community. Within this framework, literacy can only be understood and measured within a given society rather than being a universally definable construct. As an illustration, in some societies being able to read and write is no longer sufficient. Successful members of society must have at least basic computer literacy skills. Individuals who are unable to operate a computer might not be able to participate fully in their community and therefore might not be considered literate. In other societies, the oral transmission of language is valued more than the written-word. In some West African societies, as an example, children do not attend formal schooling. Instead, they are educated via oral tales and folklore, transmitted by the esteemed griots who, born into the noble caste, serve as teachers, librarians, and entertainers, sharing endless tales, epics and myths with their community. Surely the griots have amassed a wealth of knowledge and skill. Yet, are they ‘‘literate’’? If a strict etic approach were to be followed and literacy were measured by the ability to read and write, the griots would be deemed as lacking literacy skills. However, the emic perspective highlights that in societies such as this one, literacy is not related to reading and writing. Rather a literate individual is one who can remember oral tales, internalize them, and effectively share them with others, thereby transmitting traditions, values and beliefs to future generations. Thus, cultural norms are relevant when determining whether or not one is literate. In addition to cultural variations in how literacy is defined, there are socio-cultural variations as to the functions of literacy. While typically literacy is associated with educational achievement and opportunity, as well as with economic growth and success, in some cultural groups, literacy might be tied to other functions, such as religion. In these societies, for example, individuals lacking the literacy skills needed to perform religious tasks might be considered illiterate, even if they can read and write proficiently in the language used by the country in which they reside.
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Both the etic and emic approaches to literacy have value. While there are numerous advantages to viewing literacy as a universal construct, cultural practices cannot be ignored. The etic and emic approaches need not be viewed as mutually exclusive. Literacy skills can be conceived of as the ability to use cultural tools and representations to amass and share knowledge, evaluate information, solve problems and communicate with others. By blending the etic and emic approaches, cross-cultural comparisons remain feasible, while cultural variations are noted and considered.
Literacy Acquisition Recognizing cultural variations and nuances is imperative when considering how to promote literacy in young children in our current multicultural world. For schools to address literacy issues effectively, educators must be sensitive to the differing literacy experiences children have prior to attending schools, experiences which are grounded in their community’s practices of and beliefs about literacy. Years of research have highlighted the importance these emergent literacy experiences have for children’s literacy attainment in the school years. A challenge for current educators is to find ways to enhance knowledge of the varying factors that underlie literacy acquisition and, most importantly, to incorporate this knowledge effectively in the design of pedagogical practices and curricula. Numerous factors influence the acquisition of children’s early literacy; these can be categorized as child, home and school factors. Child factors might include, for example, the particular child’s cognitive ability, linguistic skills and attention span. Home variables might be maternal education, access to books, types of daily conversations, and the use of literacy by others in the home. Finally, school factors might include teacher-student ratio, teacher beliefs regarding literacy, classroom materials, as well as interactions between teachers and students, and among peers. Although all these factors individually play a role in both the process and outcome of children’s literacy development, a single factor is not as important as the adequacy of the combination of all factors. Depending on the home experiences and the skills children bring to school, diverse pedagogical approaches will work better for different children. Schools serve as mediators in the development of literacy, teaching
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requisite skills, while at the same time transmitting socio-cultural beliefs regarding what comprises literacy in mainstream society. Current practices engaged in by schools often do not correlate with the literacy practices children from diverse backgrounds experience at home. This is a matter of grave concern, as research has demonstrated that a mismatch between home and school use of language and literacy can have detrimental outcomes for children. The sharing of storybooks or oral storytelling between adults and children at home, for example, provides opportunities for children to engage in discourse with others, and, thus, supports emerging literacy skills. Numerous studies conducted in the U.S. demonstrate that children whose parents read to them show a greater interest in reading and have an easier time learning to read in school. However, the practices of book reading per se are culturally influenced. Parents from diverse backgrounds might differ in the extent to and the manner in which they read to their children. For instance, some parents might prefer to be the sole narrator rather than actively engage the child as a co-narrator. Given our pluralistic society, recognizing and incorporating these differences in our pedagogical practices is imperative. Preschool teachers need to also be attuned to the notion that even for children who have been highly socialized to literacy, the manner in which storybooks are shared in a school setting might likely be a new experience. As an illustration, teachers typically share books with large groups of children at a time. Since early storybook reading is often a home activity shared between mother and child dyads, children might not be used to listening to storybooks in this manner. Furthermore, children might be used to being allowed to interject, ask questions, and make comments, while a storybook is being read aloud. In contrast, other children might be used to listening to the story as it is read, without actively participating in the process. When classes are made up of students from diverse backgrounds and of varying ability, it becomes difficult to address each child’s accustomed style. However, an effective teacher will make an effort to incorporate children’s preferred styles and build on their existing literacy base. While it might not be realistic for teachers to read to children on a one-on-one ratio, perhaps they might be able to read to smaller groups of children. This would afford them a greater opportunity to observe
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the literacy skills the children have amassed, and enable them to better work with particular styles and preferences. Moreover, successful teachers engage parents in the literacy process and collaborate with them, as a way to build upon the socio-cultural literacy styles the children are exposed to at home, while at the same time guiding parents to support their children’s emergent literacy skills. While mainstream Western society typically associates literacy with reading and writing, in diverse cultures there might be different ways in which literacy is defined. Irrespective of the approach one takes in defining literacy as a construct, educators and researchers alike need to recognize the multiple factors involved in the development of early literacy skills. Only when all facets are considered and incorporated can literacy be effectively promoted in all children. See also: > Cross-cultural learning styles; > Cultural issues in education; > Early childhood education; > Home-school partnerships; > Language needs in the multicultural classroom
Suggested Reading Heath, S. B. (1983). Ways with words. New York: Cambridge University Press. Melzi, G., & Caspe, M. (2005). Variations in maternal narrative styles during book reading interactions. Narrative Inquiry, 15(1), 101–125. Scribner, S., & Cole, M. (1978). Literacy without schooling: Testing for intellectual effects. Harvard Educational Review, 48(4), 448–461. Van Kleeck, A. (2004). Fostering preliteracy development via storybook-sharing interactions: The cultural context of mainstream family practices. In C. Addison Stone, E. R. Silliman, B. J. Ehren, & K. Appel (Eds.), Handbook of language and literacy (pp. 175–208). New York: Guilford Press. Wagner, D. (1991). Literacy as culture: Emic and etic perspectives. In E. M. Jennings, & C. Purves (Eds.), Literate systems and individual lives: Perspectives on literacy and schooling (pp. 11–19). Albany: State University of New York Press. Yaden, D. B., Rowe, D. W., & MacGillivray, L. (2000). Emergent literacy: A matter (polphony) of perspectives. In M. L. Kamil, P. B. Mosenthal, P. D. Pearson, & R. Barr (Eds.), Handbook of reading research, Vol. III (pp. 425–454). Mahwah: Lawrence Erlbaum.
Magnet Schools Nancy Otskey
Magnet schools are a type of public school that offer students a curriculum that is centered on a specific theme. Examples of curricular themes may be: environmental studies, technology, performing arts, or international studies, to name a few. The curricular themes are often reflective of a local community’s needs and wants. The themes are designed to attract particular students whose interests and/or aptitude match the theme of the school. By offering such a choice, it is thought that improved achievement will result, because of improved satisfaction and a school more suited to one’s individual needs and interests. Magnet schools are funded publicly both from federal and local sources. The history of magnet schools can be traced back to the federal government’s order to desegregate public schools after the Brown v. Board of Education decision. Magnet schools are one form of school choice (with vouchers and charter schools). The concept of school choice was first brought to the forefront not by educators, but by economists who thought that education should be considered part of the free marketplace where learners and families as consumers would be able to choose a school most suited to their child. In addition, it was thought that choice would help to equalize opportunities for impoverished families by giving them a choice beyond their neighborhood schools. The forerunners of today’s magnet schools were called ‘‘alternative schools,’’ which opened during the late 1960s and early 1970s. The first alternative school opened in Tacoma, Washington, in 1968. This school was an elementary school called the McCarver School. It aimed to reduce racial isolation by offering choice to parents beyond their segregated neighborhoods. In 1969, the nation’s second magnet school opened in Boston called the William Monroe Trotter School. This school’s theme was a showcase for new teaching methods and hoped to attract White children to a predominantly Black school. In 1970, the city of Minneapolis, Minnesota, initiated an alternative school program in its southeast section that consisted of four elementary schools and one high school with different organizational designs. All were considered successful because teachers and students wanted to be there by reason of their own choice. Then, in 1971, the
term ‘‘magnet’’ began to catch on, with an alternative school in Houston, Texas, called the Performing and Visual Arts School. School officials there had referred to it as acting like a ‘‘magnet in attracting students,’’ and hence the term was born. Before the early 1970s, the federal courts had routinely ordered school systems to desegregate themselves (after Brown v. Board of Education) through busing. However, busing became a major controversy, resulting in much opposition. It was within this climate that magnet schools began to be viewed as a solution for desegregation. The city of Detroit, Michigan, pioneered this solution on a large scale by voluntarily desegregating its schools through the use of magnet schools instead of busing after the courts had ordered the city to remediate the effects of past discrimination. After the Detroit decision, almost every court order that mandated school districts to desegregate now offered a similar voluntary component to the districts as an alternative to forced busing. By the early 1980s most major cities had initiated a system of magnet schools, with approximately 1,100 within 140 urban school districts. Some of the often-cited advantages of magnet schools are the following:
An acceptable solution to desegregate school districts that are racially segregated by residence, thereby helping to ensure more equity in quality schools. That choice promotes better achievement through enhanced engagement because of increased satisfaction and a better match of students’ needs/interests/ aptitudes to the school’s specific curricular theme. That all students do not learn in the same way, and hence a magnet school system, centered on themes, can offer a more individualized approach to education through parent/student choice of school. Infuses free market, competitive principles into a sluggish public education system.
Although today’s magnet schools are still used in some instances to reduce racial segregation, they have also come to be regarded as superior choices within the public sector for all students, even in districts that are primarily homogeneous. Because of this, today’s magnet schools have sometimes become a vehicle for a kind of re-segregation because of a process often referred to as creaming. This process occurs when choice is offered to just some students because of the limited number of places available. As a result, it is often the highestachieving students with the most involved and/or
C. S. Clauss-Ehlers (Ed.), Encyclopedia of Cross-Cultural School Psychology, DOI 10.1007/978-0-387-71799-9, # Springer Science+Business Media LLC 2010
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educationally aware parents that gain admission because of a competitive admission process for the limited places. In contrast, controlled-choice plans, such as those offered in Cambridge Massachusetts, New York City’s District 4, and Montclair, New Jersey, avoid the creaming process and subsequent re-segregation by providing all students with choice. In such districts, all of the schools are magnet schools designed to draw families to them with their special curricular themes. All parents choose a school for their children at the time of registration (there are no zoned or neighborhood schools). Whereas the district ensures that racial balance is maintained in each school, most families get their children into either their first-, second-, or third-choice schools, thus reflecting the diversity of the community. See also: > Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka; > Charter schools; > Vouchers
Suggested Reading Kahlenberg, R. D. (2001). All together now: Creating middleclass schools through public school choice. Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution Press. Steel, L., & Levine, R. (1994). Educational innovation in multiracial contexts: The growth of magnet schools in American education. U.S. Department of Education.
Suggested Resources Magnet Schools of America—http://www.magnet.edu/index.htm: This comprehensive website provides general information about magnet schools as well as a listing and description of them and their themes throughout the U.S.
Mandated Reporters Megan Maguire
Professionals who work with children are required by law to report suspected child abuse or neglect; these professionals are known as mandated reporters. These professionals work in medical, law enforcement, and educational fields and are required by law to report any
suspicion of child abuse or neglect to the appropriate authorities. In addition to the responsibilities required by their professions, they are also required to act as a reporter of child abuse or neglect. Among the many professionals who act as mandated reporters are: social workers, professional counselors or psychologists, medical professionals, teachers, law enforcement professionals, and district attorneys. Mandated reporters who fail to make the appropriate reports when child abuse or neglect is suspected can be held liable by both the civil and criminal legal system. People other than mandated reporters can report abuse and neglect, and they are protected from liability for reports made in good faith. In some states the general public is supposed to report, in others those who develop film are mandated reporters. Mandated reporters are important as child abuse and neglect is a major social problem. However, child abuse is also a heavily under-reported social issue. In 1998, 2.8 million children were reported to be the victims of child abuse. Each week, child protective services (CPS) agencies throughout the United States (U.S.) receive more than 50,000 reports of suspected child abuse or neglect. While neglect is the most common form of child abuse, it is also the least reported type of abuse.
Responsibilities of a Mandated Reporter Many different professionals are given the responsibility to report child abuse. Any of these professionals, who have direct contact with children, can file a report. It is not necessary that a report comes from a supervisor. The following professionals are designated as mandated reporters: teachers, school counselors, teaching aides, bus drivers, licensed and unlicensed counselors, child welfare workers, day care workers, nurses and physicians, public assistance workers, group home workers, probation officers, and more. When a professional who is a mandated reporter starts to suspect child abuse, it is their responsibility to file a report. A mandated reporter is not required to provide or obtain material proof of the abuse; a reasonable amount of suspicion is enough to file a report. Upon suspicion of child abuse or neglect, a mandated reporter must contact the local office of CPS. In cases where abuse, (not neglect) is suspected, a mandated reporter may contact the local police
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station directly. Within 48 hours of the mandated reporter’s oral report, mandated reporters must also file a signed, written report with the local Department of Social Services. Within 24 hours of the oral report given by a mandated reporter, the CPS caseworker must begin an investigation. The investigation includes an evaluation of the child about whom the report was made, as well as evaluations of any other children residing in the same home. Child Protective Services must determine whether or not the children are at risk if they remain in the home. In the case that CPS determines that the children are not safe in the home, the CPS caseworker or the police may take the children into protective custody. Once removed from the home, the CPS caseworker will petition family court to mandate services to the family to ensure the protection of the children. Within 60 days of the initial oral report, CPS must determine whether the report is indicated or unfounded. If the report is indicated, then CPS concludes that there is actual abuse occurring in the home. However, if the report is determined to be unfounded, then CPS concludes that there is no apparent abuse occurring. Mandated reporters will not be held responsible if the abuse they suspected and reported was determined to be unfounded. Mandated reporters are immune from civil or criminal liability so long as their reports are premised on good faith. Any person who makes a report to CPS about suspected child abuse is protected from being sued. All states grant immunity from criminal or civic liability to professionals who report child abuse. In addition, many states have programs that pay for any legal fees that a mandated reporter might encounter.
Failure to Report Mandated reporters can and most likely will be held responsible for their failure to make a report to CPS when child abuse is suspected. It is unethical as well as illegal for a mandated reporter to fail to report child abuse. Any professional in the field of psychology who fails to report suspected child abuse is in violation of Principal 3: Moral and Legal Standards of the ‘‘Ethical Principles of Psychologists.’’ A mandated reporter who fails to make the appropriate report may be found guilty of a Class B misdemeanor. Penalties for not reporting child abuse might carry both monetary fines and jail time. A professional who fails to report suspected child abuse might be fined between $1,000
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and $5,000 and may also face up to 6 months of imprisonment in jail. While the responsibility of a mandated reporter seems to be very clear, it is not at all uncommon that a mandated reporter fails to fulfill their responsibility to report child abuse. In fact, one study found that 21% of psychologists with a notable background in ethical guidelines failed to report child abuse. Another survey of 328 licensed and practicing psychologists from Minnesota and Oklahoma found that 37% of the participants failed to report suspected child abuse. Mandated reporters give many reasons to account for their decision against reporting suspected child abuse. Counselors and psychologists might face an ethical dilemma when they must report a client’s disclosure about child abuse. Professionals such as doctors, police officers, surgeons, social workers, teachers, dentists, and psychologists have the responsibility to maintain the confidentiality of the information their clients disclose to them. Many counselors and psychologists feel that reporting their client’s accounts of child abuse might negatively affect the sense of counselor-client confidentiality although the limits to confidentiality include informing an outside person/ organization if the client states that s/he plans to harm oneself or someone else. However, they are also required to uphold the laws outlined by the courts as well as the ethical guidelines of their career. Another reason that might inhibit a mandated reporter from making the appropriate report is the lack if concrete proof of the existence of abuse. Psychologists and other mandated reporters claim that the most influential factor in their decision not to report child abuse is a lack of evidence of the actual abuse. However, it is important to note that mandated reporters are required to report on the suspicion of abuse, not on the proof of abuse. Studies have found that between 85% and 94% of practicing psychologists indicate that mandatory reporting laws are necessary to protect children. See also: > Child abuse; > Domestic violence
>
Corporal punishment;
Suggested Reading Kalichman, S. C. (1990). Reporting laws, confidentiality, and clinical judgment: Reply to Ansell and Ross. American Psychologist, 45(11), 1273–1275.
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Suggested Resources Youth and Family Services, DYFS—http://www.www.state.nj.us/ humanservices/dyfs/hotline.htm: This website is a resource for mandated reporters offering many links to services and also the phone numbers to the different agency hotlines.
Mania/Hypomania Renato D Alarco´n
Mania has several meanings, but for this reference work, it is defined as one of the two conditions inherent to the concept of bipolar disorder, also previously called manic-depressive illness or manic-depressive psychosis. Mania implies primarily an affective or mood state characterized by expansive euphoria, elation, increased psychomotor activity, restlessness, increased frequency and speed of thinking and speaking, eventual presence of delusional thoughts, and an overall (albeit superficial) level of enthusiasm, energy, loquaciousness, and increased vegetative functions such as eating, or libidinal impulses. The manic individual appears to exude endless optimism, or utters grandiose ideas (sometimes reaching a delusional state) such as being a hero, a genius, a potentate, a beauty, or a big political or sports figure. The individual smiles or laughs, speaks loudly, shows inflated self-esteem, makes irrelevant remarks, does not pay attention to the impact of his/her behavior on others in the environment, and has no self-control or self-judgment about the appropriateness of the displayed behavior. When admonished, the manic person either attempts to justify his/her behavior, resorting to convoluted explanations or, more frequently, becoming irritated, frustrated, and angry. Some individuals may show emotional lability, passing easily from a euphoric state to one of crying uncontrollably while regretting the ‘‘misunderstanding’’ from others. The cognitive performance of manic individuals is characterized by over-production, superficiality, flight of ideas (rapid shifting from one topic to another), a reflection of distractibility that may also result in ‘‘clang’’ or loose associations, or irruption of new trains of thought related to the preceding ones only by the sound of the words, not their meaning.
In cases of acute and severe mania, the symptoms can reach levels of incoherence, logorrhea (excessive verbosity), or, when the speed of thought is extreme, it may paradoxically result in blocking or catatoniclike behavior. Agitation and aggressiveness are frequent complications that may require hospitalization in many cases. Manic episodes may last days, weeks, or months. There is inter-episodic recovery in most cases, alternating with depressive phases, or normal periods. The term ‘‘hypomania,’’ or mania mitis, implies a less severe and intense form of the disorder. The individual is more ‘‘manageable’’ in social interactions, although, on occasions, paranoid behavior may be present. Patients who present four or more mood episodes (manic, hypomanic, or depressive) per year, are called ‘‘rapid cyclers.’’ There is a variety called ‘‘confusional mania’’ that has to be distinguished from delirium. Finally, ‘‘mixed mania’’ is characterized by the concomitant presence both of manic and depressive symptoms; this is said to be the most complex form of bipolar disorder, resistant to treatment, with the highest prevalence of suicide as a potential outcome. It is clear that mental-health professionals must be available to diagnose and manage these severe conditions. Possible organic, medical, or non-psychiatric conditions that can induce manic or maniform symptoms include brain injuries (traumatic, vascular, tumoral, or neurological), epilepsy, degenerative diseases (Parkinson’s and Huntington’s), endocrinopathies (Cushing’s or Addison’s disease, hyper- and hypothyroidism), metabolic disorders, infections (AIDS, HIV, and meningoencephalitis), autoimmune diseases (Lupus), or a variety of substances that include steroids, androgens, antiparkinsonians, stimulants, hallucinogenics, alcohol, opiates, and bronchodilators. As part of the category of bipolar mood disorder, mania and hypomania are being diagnosed more frequently and at earlier ages than conventionally thought. This means that teachers and school psychologists must pay attention to different types of disruptive behavior in youngsters, keeping these diagnostic possibilities in mind rather than considering the observed behaviors as variations of normality. Inquiring into family history may be helpful. Finally, yet importantly, potential complicating or confusing factors such as low socioeconomic status or reluctance to seek help may delay a correct diagnosis of these conditions.
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See also: > Delusion; > Depression; > Psychosis
Suggested Reading American Psychiatric Association (2000). Diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders (4th ed., text revised). Washington, D.C.: American Psychiatric Association. Goodwin, F. W., & Jamison, K. R. (1992). Manic-depressive illness. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Sussman, N., & Cancro, R. (1988). Differential diagnoses of manic depressive and schizophrenic illness. In A. Georgotas & R. Cancro (Eds.), Depression and mania (pp. 151–163). Amsterdam: Elsevier.
Mathematics Teaching Approaches William M Bart
Although there is universal agreement about the importance of learning mathematics, mathematics teachers have conflicting views about how mathematics should be taught. Many university mathematics professors oppose changes to current mathematics curriculums, wishing to maintain a traditionalist approach; however, many faculty members of education colleges, who specialize in the field of mathematics education, propose that mathematics curriculums should be altered to have greater student-teacher interaction and a larger focus on real-life problem-solving. Hence, the assignments in class tend to be authentic, i.e., drawn from real-life situations. For example, instead of having students solving problems on worksheets as may occur in a traditional setting, students may work on rather complex, real-life problems such as calculating the area of the school parking lot. Another feature is that courses in mathematics may integrate ideas from various traditional mathematical courses. For example, a secondary school course in constructivist mathematics may integrate concepts from geometry, algebra, and probability. Instruction tends to be problem-based and some problems require utilization of concepts and principles from different fields in mathematics to be solved. Another key feature is that assignments tend to involve work in small groups.
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The traditionalist approach has an array of features. First of all, there is acceptance of the belief that there is a corpus of knowledge termed mathematics that has been developed by mathematicians and that this corpus of knowledge can be subdivided into courses such as arithmetic, geometry, and trigonometry. The task of the mathematics teacher is to transmit the knowledge covered in a mathematics course to students. From a traditionalist perspective, a major educational task is to teach students enough mathematics so they have at least adequate training in mathematics (typically through pre-calculus) to permit them to master calculus in college. As a result, the traditionalist approach to mathematics teaching may also be termed the ‘‘college-preparatory’’ approach to mathematics teaching. There are additional features of the traditionalist approach to mathematics teaching. The teacher determines the content and method of instruction. Courses in mathematics tend to cover isolated domains of mathematical knowledge. For example, geometry covers concepts and theorems in geometry but not concepts in algebra. When engaged in an instructional unit, the teacher will comply with the following sequence: (1) introduce the content in the unit with some review of prior material; (2) explain new methods and/or illustrates new concepts; (3) assign individual tasks for seatwork or homework; and (4) grade the completed tasks and correct errors through additional explanation of ideas. Students may learn the course material either individually or in groups, and either in class or at home. In contrast, the constructivist approach to mathematics teaching has quite different features. Basic to this approach is the belief that ‘‘students construct mathematical knowledge for themselves by restructuring their cognitive structures.’’ The construction of mathematical knowledge results from the interaction of the teacher, the instructional activities, the students, and their cognitive structures. As the cognitive structures of the students change, so too may their conceptions of mathematical ideas. The constructivist approach to mathematics teaching is rooted in the ideas of Jean Piaget and Lev Vygotsky, who both theorized a progressive cognitive development in children. The constructivist approach to mathematics teaching has additional distinctive features. The assignments in class tend to be authentic (i.e., drawn from real-life) situations. For example, instead of having students solving problems on worksheets as may occur in a
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traditional setting, students may work on rather complex, real-life problems such as calculating the area of the school parking lot. Another feature is that courses in mathematics may integrate ideas from various traditional mathematical courses. For example, a secondary school course in constructivist mathematics may integrate concepts from geometry, algebra, and probability. Instruction tends to be problem-based and some problems require utilization of concepts and principles from different fields in mathematics to be solved. Another key feature is that the assignments tend to involve work in small groups. In summary, the traditionalist approach to mathematics teaching is marked by the centrality of the teacher in determining instruction and the field of mathematics in determining the content of courses in mathematics. On the other hand, the constructivist approach to mathematics teaching is marked by a problem-oriented curriculum involving authentic tasks completed by individuals usually working in small groups. See also: > Critical thinking; > Teacher efficacy
>
Teaching strategies;
Suggested Reading Cobb, P. (1988). The tension between theories of learning and instruction in mathematics education. Educational Psychologist, 23(2), 87–103. Cobb, P., & Bowers, J. (1999). Cognitive and situated learning perspectives in theory and practice. Educational Researcher, 28(2), 4–15. Friedman, T. (2005). The world is flat. New York, NY: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux.
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mathematics arises and is used in different cultures in mathematics education.
The Math Wars Since 1990, there has been considerable controversy among mathematics educators and research mathematicians, (particularly in the United States (U.S.) but also in Western Europe, notably in France and Great Britain), about the teaching of mathematics in schools. This controversy has been widely referred to as the Math Wars. One issue in the Math Wars concerns whether mathematics instructors in elementary and secondary schools should continue to focus on the attainment of skill and understanding using the traditional algorithms of pencil-and-paper arithmetic or whether the advent of calculator and computer technology suggests changes to both the curriculum and the pedagogy in schools. A second issue of debate in the Math Wars is how much influence professional mathematicians (particularly research mathematicians) should have over the curriculum and the pedagogy of school mathematics. In the U.S. (and, more recently, in France), these issues have resulted in heated arguments between mathematicians and mathematics educators in journals and at professional meetings. The preponderance of professional mathematicians generally favor a traditional curriculum and little or no use of technology in mathematics classrooms whereas mathematics educators, particularly those in colleges and universities, tend to favor the use of calculators in the classroom as well as such innovations as small group teaching and exploratory approaches to learning mathematics (usually called ‘‘constructivism’’). In recent years, there have been some faint intimations that the two sides in the Math Wars might reach an accommodation, but controversy is likely to continue because of the deep philosophical differences dividing the two sides.
Anthony Ralston
Ethnomathematics The following presents two different aspects of mathematics teaching: the tension between the mathematics education community and the mathematics research community about the teaching of school mathematics; and the role of ethnomathematics, the study of how
Ethnomathematics studies mathematics from the perspective of the various cultures in which mathematics has arisen. It proposes that math classes anywhere should use examples relevant to the indigenous people
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of that region. Ethnomathematics also posits that material on the history of mathematics should consider how and why mathematics has developed in various cultures. Controversy can arise, however, when, beyond its use for examples, ethnomathematicians urge that ethnic awareness become an essential part in teaching mathematics itself. Mathematics is, after all, universal; it is the same everywhere. Since the purpose of teaching mathematics at any level is preparation for learning further mathematics and for applying mathematics to practical problems, then only as the problems to which mathematics is to be applied vary from culture to culture should the mathematics taught also vary. But even then, whatever mathematical topics are taught can be taught just as they would be anywhere else. Otherwise, when an individual moves from one culture to another (which will be increasingly common in the twenty-first century), that person will be at a significant disadvantage mathematically if what has been learned is just the ethno component of ethnomathematics and not the mathematics itself. Ethnomathematics may well have a useful role to play in education generally, but, as mathematics is a cumulative subject, each part depending on welldefined predecessors, this aspect of mathematics must not be lost in any mathematics instruction. See also: > Assessment of culturally diverse children; > Cross-cultural learning styles; > Education; > Mathematics teaching approaches
Suggested Reading Jackson, A. (1997). The Math Wars: Parts I and II. Notices of the American Mathematical Society, 44, 695–702, 817–827. Wilson, S. (2003). California dreaming: Reforming mathematics education. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Ascher, M. (1991). Ethnomathematics: A multicultural view of mathematical ideas. Pacific Grove, CA: Brooks/Cole.
MBTI > Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI), Multicultural Applications
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MCMI Personality Tests: Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI) and Millon Clinical Multiaxial Inventory (MCMI) >
Media Literacy Ernest Morrell
The goals of media literacy are associated with helping youth to develop the skills necessary to understand and critique messages that are sent via radio, film, television, print media, and the Internet. Media literacy is also concerned with enabling youth to produce media content through these same genres in the digital age, when the tools of media production are more accessible to everyday citizens. Recently, media literacy has been closely tied to larger agendas of culturally relevant instruction and media education, given the significance of new media to the present and future lives of today’s students. Youth spend significant portions of their lives immersed in media. This immersion involves many forms including: watching film and television, playing video games, listening to music, reading print magazines and newspapers, and surfing and programming on the Internet. The increased involvement with media is largely a result of rapid changes in communications technologies over the past 30 years, most evidenced in the proliferation of the personal computer, cable television, and the Internet. However, the true origins of the media age date back to the early twentieth century and the advent of the radio and silent film. New media technologies have changed the way that knowledge is produced and shared. On the one hand, they have increased the availability of information. For example, through cable or the Internet it is possible to gather news from a variety of sources, even to watch or access programming that originates in other countries. It is also possible for the average citizen with access to the Internet to conduct his or her own independent research. Libraries, documents, and databases that would have once been inaccessible are now only a
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keystroke away for the savvy Internet researcher. On the other hand, the ability to send multiple messages to mass audiences can also lead to the homogenization of culture and the rapid spread of ideals and values that benefit the producers of media. For instance, Adolph Hitler, former Chancellor of Germany, immediately saw the potential of radio, film, and television to spread the values of the Nazi Party. In more contemporary examples, litigants have sued cigarette manufacturers for targeting minors in their advertisements. In the rulings against the cigarette companies, the courts found that advertising is powerful enough to affect youth’s smoking habits. Other examples include the film documentary ‘‘Super Size Me,’’ which links media images and advertising to fast food consumption and obesity. Other more subtle examples include the barrage of images that affect how young people construct themselves as gendered beings, as members of ethnic groups, and as citizens in society-at-large. For example, marginalized social groups such as racial/ethnic minorities and women have decried the various ways that their groups are portrayed via mainstream media. They contend that the public learns harmful social messages through media saturation that then produce harmful stereotypes. Media theorists, for instance, have shown how television and films depict African American males as lazy and violent and depict African American women as servants or as sexual predators. They have also shown how women in general are often treated as sexual objects that exist under the more powerful male gaze. Finally, parents and policymakers have expressed alarm over the ability of very young children to access adult programming and adult content via cable television and the Internet. On the Internet it is even possible for children and adults to mask their identities and have inappropriate communications. While the proliferation of media technologies present a unique set of challenges to educators and others who work with young people, they also represent unique opportunities for learning, development, and civic engagement. Media, for instance, have frequently been used to raise public awareness of social issues. For instance, television and the print media were significant in bringing public attention to the plight of African Americans in the South during the Civil Rights Movement. Filmmakers, musicians, and news broadcasters have also used media to champion the rights
of the under privileged and to advocate for personal freedom and social justice. With the advent of digital technologies, it is even now possible for everyday citizens to create films, music CDs, and websites that can be accessed by millions. The democratization of media productions allows students the power to create their own media texts and to contribute to the world of knowledge exchange. Given this new reality, schools are beginning to create opportunities for students to learn how to utilize these new media tools to send positive messages to other youth and adults. See also: > Literacy; > Adolescent ethnic identity; > Culturally competent practice; > Gender bias; > Racism: Individual, Institutional, and Cultural
Suggested Reading Alvermann, D. (1999). Popular culture in the classroom: Teaching and researching critical media literacy. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. Buckingham, D. (2003). Media education Literacy, learning, and contemporary culture. Cambridge: Polity Press. Hunt, D. (2004). Channeling Blackness: Studies on television and race in America. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Kellner, D. (1995). Media culture. New York: Routledge.
Suggested Resources http://www.teachingmedialiteracy.com: This website provides valuable resources for any educator interested in teaching media literacy to youth.
Medicaid Nancy Bearss
Medicaid was established as law in 1965 to provide medical benefits to low-income individuals. It is a joint program funded both by federal and state governments. States determine eligibility for Medicaid based on need. Under federal law, they are required to provide Medicaid to individuals in the following key categories:
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Categorically Needy Individuals 1. Families who qualify for Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) 2. Pregnant women 3. Children under the age of 6 whose family income is below 133% of poverty 4. Children of ages 6–19 with families whose income is up to 100% of poverty 5. Relatives or legal guardians who take care of children under the age of 18 6. Individuals who receive Supplemental Security Income (SSI) 7. Individuals living in medical institutions, such as long-term care facilities, who have monthly incomes up to 300% of the SSI standard
Medically Needy Individuals Thirty-seven states have medically needy programs. These offer medical coverage for persons who do not qualify because of income but who are still in need of medical care. The programs are mandated to cover: 1. Pregnant women through 60 days after they have delivered 2. Children under 18, and certain newborns up to a year 3. Protected blind individuals 4. Persons required to sign up for their employer’s health plan if it is cost-effective In addition, they may cover other persons such as children up to the age of 21 who are full-time students, caretaker relatives, aged persons, blind or disabled persons, and eligible persons who are enrolled in a health maintenance program.
Special Groups Medicaid also covers individuals who have special medical circumstances such as: 1. Medicare individuals whose income is below that of poverty 2. Qualified working disabled individuals 3. Individuals who work and whose income and resources do not allow them to qualify for medical
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benefits under SSI, but whose income does not allow them to afford medical coverage 4. Special medical conditions; these include women with cancer of the breast or cervix, and individuals with tuberculosis 5. Individuals who are enrolled in managed care with income eligibility as defined by the state Medicaid waiver program 6. Individuals in long-term care
State Children’s Health Insurance Programs (SCHIP) In 1997 Congress passed legislation that allowed Medicaid to expand its services to children up to the age of 19. The State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) expands health care to children living in households whose income is 200% of the federal poverty level or below. States were required to develop a Child Health Insurance Program (CHIP). States chose to expand their current Medicaid program to include children, create a separate CHIP, or use a combination of both. As of 2006, 6.6 million children were included in SCHIP, with enrollment continuing to grow. This is in addition to the 15 million children already enrolled in Medicaid. Families are asked to pay a minimum monthly premium for these programs. Schools have been instrumental in enrolling children in SCHIP programs.
Services Covered by Medicaid The following services are provided by Medicaid. SCHIP programs may differ in their coverage. Schools have been able to access medical, mental health, and nursing services for children through Medicaid. Again, this varies from state to state. School personnel should access their Medicaid director if there are questions about children covered under Medicaid in their state. State Medicaid offices are usually available for assisting schools and parents in accessing services for children. 1. Inpatient and outpatient care by licensed medical providers, including mental health services. Medicaid dollars fund Assertive Community Treatment (ACT) programs. These programs are comprehensive mental health programs that serve persons with serious and persistent mental illness. The
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programs are interdisciplinary, vary from state to state, and provide shared case-loads, 24-hour mobile crisis teams, outreach services, individualized treatment, medication, rehabilitation and support services. These comprehensive mental health programs have been one of the most successful components of Medicaid. Laboratory and imaging studies. Nursing services. Annual health screening and physical examinations for children under 21 years of age. Family planning services. Dental services. Home health services. Pregnancy care up to 60 days postpartum.
The Future of Medicaid Medicaid has grown from a small program in the 1960s, designed to cover women and children living in poverty, to the largest health insurance program in the country, covering over 51 million Americans. Without universal health coverage and with 50 million Americans already living without health insurance, Medicaid has grown to be a necessary safety net for the protection of many needy populations. The financial burden that Medicaid places on state and the federal governments has continued to be a point of controversy. The Centers for Medicaid and Medicare Services anticipate an annual increase of over 8% in Medicaid spending through the end of this decade. The debate continues. See also: > Access and utilization of health care; > Health insurance; > Social implications of medications/illness
Suggested Reading Weil, A. (2003). There’s something about Medicaid. Health Affairs, 22(1), 13–30.
Suggested Resources Centers for Medicaid and Medicare—www.cms.hhs.gov/medicaid/: This website has links to all services provided by Medicaid, including state offices and SCHIP information.
U.S. Department of Health and Human Services—www.cms.hhs. gov/schip: This website provides information on different topics that concern the SCHIP.
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Multigroup Ethnic Identity Measure (MEIM)
Melting Pot Oksana Yakushko . Alejandro Morales . Felicia Mohsen
The term ‘‘melting pot’’ is believed to have been introduced by the Jewish play writer Israel Zangwill in his preWorld War I play about the convergence of people and cultures in a single community. The phrase became a cultural and scholarly idiom to signify the belief that different cultural/racial/ethnic groups can form one homogenous group through interaction. Within this new homogeneous group, each culture is viewed as equally contributing and equally represented. The ‘‘melting pot’’ view of the cultural amalgamation is known in the social and behavioral sciences as the fusion model. However, the term ‘‘melting pot’’ has become a heated topic of debate among scientific communities, especially in the area of psychology. The recent scholarship on multiculturalism and diversity issues has caused the concept of the melting pot to be questioned. Racial and ethnic minority scholars argue that forming one cultural group from many varied groups is an illusion that contributes to continued ethnocentrism and oppression of minority groups that do not fit the cultural group ‘‘standard.’’ Furthermore, social scientists emphasize that even within one particular group exist marked within-group differences based on individuals’ particular country of origin, their gender, socioeconomic class, religious beliefs, and level of ability. The ‘‘melting pot’’ theory continues to infuse the secondary educational curriculum. Students learn from a mainstream-centric curriculum that suggests that contributions of diverse groups are subsumed under the umbrella of American values and practices.
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Multicultural scholars have suggested that a curriculum that supports the ‘‘melting pot’’ views provides the majority students with a false sense of superiority as well as the lack of awareness of unique contributions of individuals from other cultural groups. Moreover, the ‘‘melting pot’’ view contributes to the experiences of marginalization of students from minority cultures. For instance, one outcome of the ‘‘melting pot’’ hypothesis is the colorblind perspective in education, which continues to perpetuate students’ attitudes of racism and ethnocentrism by emphasizing that ‘‘color does not matter’’ and that ‘‘people are the same.’’ Hence, the ‘‘melting pot’’ ideology is becoming less acceptable both in larger society and within many schools across the United States (U.S.). The population of schoolchildren in the U.S. is more heterogeneous with regard to its racial and ethnic composition than ever before. Immigration is a major contributor to this increased diversity of U.S. schoolchildren. Living in a multicultural society, our schools must play an essential role in preparing our children for life in this diverse, complex, and interdependent world. Adjusting the educational structure of the school system to reflect the newest shifts in classroom composition will work toward building a multicultural education to ensure that students and families from all cultures will have skills to function together. Through a multicultural education that does not support the idea of the melting pot, children can learn about and value the diversity that exists in the U.S. and the world. Children can not only become aware of their own cultural ancestry but also become sensitive to other cultures, knowledgeable about viewpoints other than their own, and prepared to live in an increasingly pluralistic society. School psychology practices that emphasize multiculturalism can similarly focus on the importance of children’s cultural heritage and the unique contributions of each culture to children’s worldview and well-being. In-school and extracurricular counselingrelated activities must be inclusive of all students and services emphasize collaboration with minority teachers and staff. In this way, school culture and school services will be more receptive to the needs of all individuals and more affirming to the necessary value of human diversity. See also: > Acculturation; > Discrimination; minority youth; > Prejudice
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Suggested Reading Arnow, J. (2001). The school in a multicultural society. In M. Shafii & S. Shafii (Eds.), School violence: Assessment, management, prevention. Washington, D.C: American Psychological Association. LaFromboise, T., Coleman, H. L. K., & Gerton, J. (1993). Psychological impact of biculturalism: Evidence and theory. Psychological Bulletin, 114, 395–412. Meece, J., & Kurtz-Costes, A. (2001). Introduction: The schooling of ethnic minority children. Educational Psychologist, 36, 1–8.
Suggested Resources Teachers Against Prejudice at http://www.teachersagainstprejudice. org Mosaic Project at http://www.mosaicproject.org Teaching Tolerance at http://www.tolerance.org
Mental Health-Education Integration Consortium (MHEDIC) Carl E Paternite . Robert W Burke . Jennifer Axelrod
Background and Description The Mental Health—Education Integration Consortium (MHEDIC) is comprised of a multidisciplinary group of individuals interested in and committed to improving school outcomes for children and youth by enhancing mental health supports in schools. MHEDIC emerged from a critical issues planning meeting, convened in May 2002, by the Center for School Mental Health Assistance (now the Center for School Mental Health) at the University of Maryland (http://csmha.umaryland.edu). The meeting became the springboard for an on-going collaboration that has continued years after the initial meeting. The goals of the meeting were the development of recommendations and action steps to improve preparation of educators and mental health personnel to address the full range of mental health and psychosocial issues routinely encountered in the classroom. The discussion at the meeting highlighted the pressing need for reform in the training and provision
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of on-going supports for both mental health professionals and educators. As a result, a number of recommendations toward better equipping teachers to address student mental health concerns, as well as integrating education and mental health systems, were generated and the consortium was established. The consortium works to promote the integration of the fields while improving the standards of practice within each field through an emphasis on professional preparation and practice, including the utilization of evidence-based strategies. Currently, MHEDIC reflects a broad range of disciplinary backgrounds, including representatives from clinical psychology, school psychology, social work, school health, public health, child psychiatry, teacher education, educational leadership, mental health administration, and educational administration.
Mission MHEDIC’s mission is ‘‘to advance a systematic and emergent agenda that promotes the mental health professional preparation of educators and all other school personnel at all levels [pre-service, graduate, and in-service] as well as the professional preparation of mental health clinicians in understanding and working in educational environments. In addition, the mission includes effort towards promoting the integration of education and mental health systems as well as effective school-based mental health programs.’’
With other local, state, and national organizations, analyze and transcend barriers toward genuine integration of education and mental health systems, guided by the ideas and perspectives of students and families. Promote mental health/education integration and funding streams to support these efforts in the pursuit of best practice in school mental health programs offering a full continuum of services, including mental health promotion, early identification and referral, early intervention, and treatment for preschool through grade 12 students in both general and special education classrooms.
Summary Overview of Consortium Activities MHEDIC participants have collaboratively undertaken an extensive array of activities related to the Consortium’s mission and goals. Illustrative examples of such service, research, technical assistance, and publication endeavors include co-presenting at conferences, developing joint articles for publication, participating in yearly meetings in conjunction with the annual national conference on Advancing School-Based Mental Health, and collaborating on joint grant applications. See also: > Center for School-Based Mental Health Programs (CSBMHP); > Center for School Mental Health (CSMH); > Social implications of medications/illness
Consortium Goals Suggested Resources The goals of MHEDIC are:
Broadly increase awareness of the critical and central roles of teachers and all other school personnel as promoters of student mental health. Promote awareness of the role of mental health clinicians as facilitators of students’ educational success. Broadly increase awareness of the substantial associations between student mental health and school success. Spur the development and growth of promising pre-service, graduate, and in-service professional practice approaches to better equip teachers and school administrators to promote student mental health; and, to prepare mental health providers to be effective partners in educational systems.
www.units.muohio.edu/csbmhp/mhedic/index.html: This website provides information about the Mental Health-Education Integration Consortium as well as resources.
Mental Retardation Jason R Parkin
As outlined by the American Association on Mental Retardation (AAMR), cardinal traits of mental retardation (MR), those that comprise diagnostic definitions,
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include low intellectual capacities with corresponding, commensurate ability levels on measures of adaptive behavior that are both present before the age of 18. Intelligence refers to general mental capacity, the ability to reason and plan, solve problems, and think abstractly. Practically and for assessment purposes, intelligence for people or individuals suffering from MR represents a score on the individually administered, psychometrically standardized intelligence test that falls two standard deviations or more below the normative mean. Adaptive behavior consists of conceptual, practical and social skills that are learned and required for everyday functioning. The AAMR focuses on specific areas of adaptive skills such as communication, self-care, social, community-use, self-direction, health and safety, functional academics, home living, leisure and work skills. They can be assessed with rating scales (usually completed by an informed third party such as a parent or teacher) and also by appropriate observations. Placing adaptive behavior as a key component within a definition of MR represents a need to discriminate between individuals who demonstrate low scores on standardized intelligence tests, but nevertheless are not mentally retarded, and to control for potential cultural biases in measures of intelligence tests when assessing individuals from minority or low socioeconomic status (SES) groups. Adaptive behavior is situation specific and represents cultural expectations that may often be different at home than at school, perhaps one reason why parents often rate their children higher than do teachers. Besides intelligence and adaptive behavior, when applying these definitional dimensions in practice, the AAMR suggests that an appropriate assessment should take into account an individual’s ability to participate and interact in societal roles, physical and mental health, and also his or her broader environmental context. When assessing functional limitations it is important to consider whether the individual’s environmental context is typical of his or her age, peers and culture. An appropriate assessment also considers both cultural and linguistic differences, and similarly, recognizes differences in communication and behavior. Additionally, though individuals evaluated for MR may display significant deficits across a large number of domains, their limitations very likely coexist with individual strengths. Therefore it follows that the documentation of strengths and limitations must serve to outline necessary supports that over time should improve an individual’s functioning and quality of life.
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Four systems are used to classify individuals with MR, each may serve a different evaluative purpose. Both the International Statistical Classification of Diseases and Related Health Problems—10th Revision (ICD-10) and the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fourth Edition, Text Revision (DSM-IV-TR) focus on severity of retardation (i.e., mild, moderate, severe, profound) as a classification guide. Frequently, these classification systems are useful for the consideration of medical and mental health problems. As an alternative to classifying MR based on measured deficits, the AAMR’s Definition, Classification and Systems of Supports underscores the level of support an individual with MR requires for daily functioning, and may aid in evaluation when conceptualizing supports and treatment plans. Finally, the International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health (ICF) approach uses both severity and level of support in its classification scheme. The ICF system may demonstrate potential consequences from a lack of medical, community and educational support.
Brief History Previous to the nineteenth century, MR was generally not differentiated from mental illness. Categorized with terms like ‘‘idiot’’ or ‘‘imbecile,’’ it was considered a hopeless, institutionalized condition. Services for individuals with MR began in Europe, pioneered by physicians including Jean-Marc Itard, Jean Etienne Esquirol and Edouard Seguin. Seguin believed that individuals with MR were educable and his methodologies were influential and adopted in the United States (U.S.). Though successful education led to an increase in the number of U.S. training schools for individuals with MR designed to help them become productive members of society, the schools nevertheless shifted into large institutions used to house their charges. In the early twentieth century, popular attitudes viewed the existence of individuals with MR as a societal problem. Wariness, coupled with interest in the eugenics movement commonly led to forced sterilization practices. However, in the 1950’s and 1960’s literature written by parents of children with MR and the work of President Kennedy’s family did much to change public attitude. Nevertheless this period still saw a rise in the number of institutions used to house individuals with MR. The movement toward deinstitutionalization was
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aided by the passing of federal laws such as PL94-142, the original Education for All Handicapped Children Act (EHA) in 1975 that mandated a free and appropriate public education for all children.
Etiology Causes of deficits associated with MR are numerous and likely a result of interactions among genetic predispositions, developmental vulnerability, environmental insults and other risk factors. They can be classified into three categories: prenatal, perinatal and postnatal. Prenatal causes include chromosomal disorders such as Down’s syndrome, inborn errors of metabolism like Phenylketonuria and disorders of brain formation. Environmental influences such as maternal cocaine use can also cause MR during this period. Perinatally, labor problems, infections like meningitis and head trauma can lead to MR. Postnatal causes include, but are not limited to head injuries, infections, demyelinating or degenerative disorders, and environmental deprivation or neglect. Besides these disorders, individuals with MR may also show co-occuring medical, physical, mental health, academic and/or vocational problems. Though often there are clear organic causes to severe cases of MR, in many instances the origin of retardation is ambiguous. Cultural-familial retardation describes MR that may be caused by both sociocultural and genetic factors but has no clear organic etiology. These individuals typically represent the majority of individuals classified as mentally retarded, usually fall within the mild category range, and can be difficult to distinguish from the general population in most settings. Usually they are identified during their school years when they have trouble meeting academic demands.
Prevalence in School The U.S. Department of Education reported that during the 2001–2002 school year, children with MR represented 0.9% of the total school-age population and 10.3% of children who received special education. These figures placed MR as the third largest disability category, following specific learning disabilities and speech or language impairments. Within the MR population, prevalence rates varied by ethnicity with African Americans 2.99 times more likely to be classified as having
MR compared to White students. White, American Indian, Asian and Hispanic students demonstrated similar likelihoods of receiving an MR diagnosis. Alternatively, while other minority groups represented percentages near the 8.6 figure of White children labeled MR, in 2001, African Americans represented 17.4% of children labeled mentally retarded. Additionally, rates of MR are somewhat higher in males, who represent approximately 56% of the population.
Factors in Minority Mental Retardation Identification Rates As prevalence rates demonstrate, African Americans tend to display a higher rate of cultural-familial retardation when compared to other ethnic or racial groups. It is important to note that more severe forms of MR, those with clear biological determinants, do not show different levels of racial representations. Rather, disability categories considered to be high incidence and more judgmental or subjective (i.e., mild MR, serious emotional disturbance, specific learning disabilities) are prone to contain higher levels of minority students. Ethnic/racial, socio-demographic and academic achievement variables all appear related to the higher rates of African American students in special education and the mental retardation category, though these variables interact in complex ways. While each group of variables can predict identification rates, they are also significantly correlated with each other. Demographic variables such as a community’s median housing cost, percentage of children living below the poverty level and percentage of adults that do not have a high school diploma can predict classification rates of MR. However, including ethnicity as a variable in analysis can significantly increase predictability, especially in the case of African American students. Specifically, some research suggests that racial variables more clearly influence MR identification rates in African American students than in other ethnic groups. Moreover, MR classification rates for African American students may be higher in predominately White school districts. It is also important to note that low academic achievement is a strong predictor of referral to special education. Consequently, racial differences in achievement levels may also contribute to the high identification rates of African Americans in special education and the MR category.
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The number of African American students in special education due to the MR label has been a social concern for decades and addressed in a number of court cases such as Larry P. v. Riles and PASE v. Hannon. As evidence of the complexity surrounding the issue of minority representation in MR categories, judicial decisions can vary based on the case. See also: > Education for All Handicapped Children Act of 1975; > Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA); > Intelligence/Intelligence Quotient (IQ); > Multicultural issues in special education
Suggested Reading Burack, J. A., Hodapp, R. M., & Zigler, E. (1998). Handbook of mental retardation and development. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press. Harris, J. C. (2006). Intellectual disability: Understanding its development, causes, classification, evaluation and treatment. New York, NY: Oxford University Press. Oswald, D. P., Coutinho, M. J., Best, A. M., & Nguyen, N. (2001). Impact of sociodemographic characteristics on the identification rates of minority students as having mental retardation. Mental Retardation, 39, 351–367.
Suggested Resources American Association on Mental Retardation—www.aamr.org: The AAMR is an organization dedicated to promoting policies, research, effective practices and the human rights of individuals with mental retardation. U.S. Department of Education—www.ed.gov: The U.S. Department of Education home page can provide resources and statistics about mental retardation in public schools.
Mentoring Diverse Youth Ruth McKoy Lowery
In these first few years of the twenty-first century, the issue of diversity awareness in schools and communities at large has become more important in the United States (U.S.). As the racial demographics of people change across the country, smaller cities and towns are realizing that diversity is no longer simply
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an urban concern. The need to prepare all citizens to understand this changing population cannot be understated. A major factor is the responsibility of mentoring diverse youth to subsist within this changing cultural milieu so they can become productive citizens. Today, minority youth make up approximately 69% of the student population in urban school districts; however, they account for about 40% of the student population throughout the U.S. By the year 2020, approximately 47% of youth in the U.S. will be members of a minority group. Although the minority youth population is dramatically changing, the racial makeup of teachers remains relatively unchanged. Minority teachers make up about 36% of the teaching force in urban areas; however, they only represent about 5% of the teaching force across the country. With demographic shifts occurring in the U.S. and around the world, the need for cross-cultural understanding proves more important daily. As young children develop, they learn about different people’s cultures, mores, and customs. They see these differences in popular media, schools, and other public places like the grocery store, churches, and shopping malls. Children are aware of racial issues at even younger ages. Students do not attend school as blank slates; thus they begin to notice and question the differences and similarities among people by the time they are 2 years old. As young children begin to formulate their own ideas to help them understand the diversity they are experiencing, racial awareness and negative stereotypes of others begin to be absorbed, often at an age as young as three and a half. For children of non-majority heritage, the wounds of these negative assumptions can run deep. As their curiosity is piqued by differences around them, however, they learn to associate characteristics based on the opinion of others around them, particularly adults and their peers. It is thus vitally important that children have positive mentoring relationships to support their development and growth. The relationships young children establish with their peers and the adults around them continue to play a pivotal role in their overall experiences as they develop a sense of identity. It is thus important to provide positive learning experiences. All youth from majority and minority cultures benefit from cross-cultural encounters as they experience the lives of others outside of their lived reality. Youth also get to see that others who are ‘‘unlike’’ them have similar likes, needs, and experiences. Positive mentoring experiences can provide this exposure for diverse youth.
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Mentoring The idea of mentoring is not new but dates back to the medieval eras. Mentoring is the practice in which a more experienced person provides support and aid to a less experienced person in either professional or personal development. Mentoring has the power to develop resilience in youth and often serves as a beacon of hope for diverse youth populations. It is often implemented as an intervention mechanism to reduce negative psychological effects associated with students vulnerable to school failure. Mentors, often successful adults from diverse educational, racial, and socio-economic statuses, take their role seriously in helping to constructively shape the lives of diverse student populations. They can offer young people a sense of safety, and their involvement highlights individuals who are committed to these students’ positive wellbeing. Across the U.S., several programs and organizations, including the Big Brothers Big Sisters and Community for Youth, have spearheaded the charge in preparing diverse youth to succeed in school and beyond. These mentoring programs often provide support as students recover from different experiences affecting them, whether in school or at home. Mentors help students to develop a sense of trust, which in turn enables them to remain open to positive learning and stable emotional experiences. Mentoring can help diverse youth develop a positive self image, thus helping them do better in school.
Schools The need to prepare professionals to work effectively with students from diverse backgrounds is of utmost importance. Novice teachers in schools across the country are often unprepared to meet the needs of their culturally and linguistically diverse students. The teacher is often the only adult that many of these students communicate with regularly. Students are undoubtedly influenced by the interactions with their teachers. Thus, having teachers to help in the role of mentors to students would prove to be an invaluable experience. Teachers should be encouraged from their teacher preparation programs to become mentors for their students. As they learn about the world of students, they become more sensitized to their needs and experiences. This could then improve the teachers’ understanding of the varying experiences faced by students
and help them to better provide or seek out support for them. Preparing preservice teachers to be mentors can help them to identify and appreciate commonalities and differences between their ideas of the world and those of children who come from diverse cultural backgrounds. In addition, it can help students to see that teachers do more than impart information. Rather, teachers also enhance motivation and promote positive self-esteem in their students. They also have to learn to make these students’ parents feel welcome as they enable their classrooms to be safe and comfortable havens of learning.
Community Many mentors of diverse youth are often not associated with schools, but rather are contributing members of the community. Often associated with local businesses and volunteering programs, these mentors take time from their daily schedules to provide leadership, friendship, and invaluable time with their mentees. The strong, supportive, mentoring relationships of these individuals often help students vulnerable to social and academic failure improve their academic performance, school attendance, and self-image. A common practice of effective mentoring relationships is the matching of students with adult mentors based on similar personal traits. These young people get to learn from others who enjoy some of the same things, and they form bonds that may even continue to exist beyond the mentoring period. Mentors may attend field trips, conduct presentations in classrooms, participate in career exploration, and allow mentees to shadow them at work. Having members of the community participate in mentoring activities illuminates the collective practice of having others outside the school environment involved in developing strong men and women of the future. It ascertains the old adage, ‘‘It takes a village to raise a child.’’
Conclusion With the changing racial, socioeconomic, and cultural demographics affecting the growth of diverse youth in our society today, it is important that mentoring becomes a mainstay of their development. Youth experiences are shaped by what they learn from peers at a very
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early age, adults, books, media representations, and others around them. Thus it behooves us to help ascertain positive images at all possible avenues. School is a common place where students will interact with peers who are racially, ethnically, and socioeconomically different. The necessity in preparing culturally responsive teachers and community leaders who are able, willing, and prepared to meet the needs of youth from early childhood and on is paramount. Mentors and others concerned with the development of diverse youth play an important role in providing positive experiences for interaction and learning about different cultural groups. Mentoring programs can help create a comfortable and welcoming environment in schools and the community at large that assures children they are an important part of society, they are respected, and they have an equal opportunity to learn and develop into notable adult figures who will help mentor the next generation. Mentors have the power to help foster cultural pluralism within a culturally diverse, globally interconnected society. Mentoring programs can help increase the selfesteem and confidence of diverse youth. Stakeholders involved with the education and development of diverse youth—parents; educators; local, state, and national governments; youth organizations; and the community at large—can help shoulder this responsibility. See also: > Community interventions with diverse youth; > Parenting adolescents; > Student dropout
Suggested Reading Achinstein, B., & Athanases, S. Z. (2005). Focusing new teachers on diversity and equity: Toward a knowledge base for mentors. Teaching and Teacher Education, 21(7), 843–862. Day, A. (2006). The power of social support: Mentoring and resilience. Reclaiming Children and Youth, 14(4), 196–198. DuBois, D. L., & Karcher, M. J. (2005). Handbook of youth mentoring. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
Suggested Resources Community for Youth http://www.communityforyouth.org/index. html: Community for Youth is an organization that inspires and supports youth to identify and achieve their goals through mentoring, learning experiences, and participation in a powerful community. Rethink Schools http://www.rethinkingschools.org/: Rethinking Schools is an organization committed to equality and the vision
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that public education is central to the creation of a humane, caring, multiracial democracy. The organization tries to balance classroom practice and educational theory, and publishes articles written by and for teachers, parents, and students.
Mentoring Teachers Sara Smigell . Nate McCaughtry
Teachers confront many obstacles when they first enter the profession, regardless of how well prepared they are upon graduation. This professional phase is known as induction and spans the first 3–5 years of a teacher’s career. Most professions have a gradual learning process when starting a job; they start out with fewer responsibilities and get more added as they become more familiar with the job. New teachers, however, are thrown into the same, if not more difficult, positions as those who have been teaching for many years, especially in urban schools. Mentoring by more experienced teacher peers is often offered as a solution to helping teachers transition more smoothly into the profession, in the hopes of reducing teacher burnout and prematurely leaving the field of education altogether.
Problems of Induction During induction, new urban teachers face many concerns when transitioning from a supervised student teaching position to their own classrooms, which are often located in high-crime, lower socio-economic areas, and attended by primarily non-White youth. New teachers are commonly unsure of their skills in classroom management, planning, assessment, finding classroom resources, time management, working with co-workers, and dealing with parents. Many also struggle with the time management of assigned extracurricular duties, extreme amounts of paperwork, other non-teaching responsibilities, the lack or irrelevance of professional development, and developing relationships with co-workers and parents. Still other new teachers report challenges that include dealing with insufficient resources, providing culturally and contextually relevant teaching, teaching in violent communities, and youth’s non-education foci on sports. New
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teachers’ foremost concerns center on surviving (learning their new landscape), and being seen as competent educators. Teachers go through three stages during their induction, each with their own associated concerns. During the beginning/survival stage, teachers struggle with personal tribulations and professional competence. Their apprehensions include ineffective classroom management, student and peer acceptance, doubt of their teaching capabilities, and negative peer evaluations. During the next stage teachers are more confident in their abilities and tend to focus on individual children. Their concerns are more situational and include skill mastery, teaching methods, and classroom materials. The final stage is when the teacher has mastered his or her position within the classroom and the school. The concern now shifts fully to how he or she is affecting students. In urban areas, the first stage of induction can be even more pronounced as the quality of schools and the demands of the local community can create increasingly challenging contexts in which to start a career. Not only do new teachers have difficulties with the general responsibilities of teaching during induction, many face the additional predicament of misassignment. The misassignment of new teachers occurs in two manners: either the teacher is asked to teach a subject he/she is not certified to teach, or is placed in difficult situations such as rotating from classroom to classroom; working with low-skilled, disruptive or unmotivated students; teaching multiple, extremely large classes; and assignments to additional extracurricular activities. Misassignment, although very difficult for any teacher to manage, seems to happen more often to new teachers. It is ironic that the teachers who are most fragile are placed in settings that are the most difficult in the entire profession. As a result, new teachers often leave the profession within the first 5 years of work because they feel unable to deal with the challenges in their setting and report a lack of assistance and help in understanding and overcoming their challenges. New health, physical education, music, art and other ‘‘non-core’’ teachers seem to report most isolation at the start of their teaching careers. Their isolation leads to feelings of self-doubt, stress, and anxiety, decreasing a teacher’s professional self-confidence. These teachers frequently report feeling marginalized both because their subject areas are viewed as ‘‘extras’’ to the core curriculum, and because they are often the only teachers of those subject areas
in the school. They feel that core-subject classroom teachers only value their areas for the ‘‘prep period’’ it provides them. The supposed low status of these subjects often leads to poor workplace conditions such as inadequate classrooms, few resources, and an insufficient amount of time to conduct effective lessons, particularly in urban schools. In addition, physical education teachers frequently are only respected for their jobs as coaches, which can lead to feelings of conflict in their role as teachers. The negative experiences of new teachers described thus far have many consequences, the most important of which is increased teacher attrition. More new teachers are leaving the profession than experienced teachers. If urban education is to improve beyond its dismal state of affairs, it will have to find a way of recruiting and retaining more highly-qualified new teachers.
A Solution to Induction Problems Despite all the difficulties faced by new teachers, mentorship programs, in which experienced teachers help newer teachers through induction, show potential in decreasing the rate of new teachers leaving the profession. For example, it has been recommended that the initial 1–2 years of teaching be designed like a medical residency program, with a new teacher habitually seeking the advice and expertise of a veteran teacher regarding his/her teaching. Providing new teachers with much needed support and on-the-job training can prevent many from deserting the profession as well as enhance their effectiveness as teachers. There are many roles that a mentor may take vis-a-vis a mentee. These roles include a trusted guide, teacher, sponsor, supporter, host, counselor, guru, challenger, advisor, coach, trainer, protector, promoter, positive role model, developer of talent, confidant, opener of doors, protector, consultant, successful leader, patron, invisible godparent, helper, encourager, and/or befriender. Not only can mentors take on a variety of roles, there are also an array of characteristics that mentors are important such as the ability to identify a mentee’s strengths and weaknesses, motivate them to develop professionally, and guide them in how to behave within their community. It is also important for mentors to be open-minded, strong leaders, and have genuine feelings of interest and concern toward their mentees.
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Mentoring programs can be informal or formal in nature. Informal mentoring programs involve a natural, unplanned development of the relationship in the context of the participants’ common work setting. Mentors include professors/supervisors, school principals, former teachers, and co-workers, and most frequently fill the roles of teacher, confidant, role model, developer of talents, and sponsor. Usually the mentor and mentee converge for a specific purpose. When that objective has been met, the relationship dissolves, typically with no hard feelings. On the other hand, in a formal mentorship program, teachers receive specific training, monetary compensation and personal recognition, various resources and materials, and supplementary assistance from personnel outside the school district. The program also provides new teachers’ with assessment and program evaluation.
Results and Limitations Results of formal and informal mentoring programs reveal several outcomes. They include the characteristics effective mentors possess, benefits and limitations of participating in a mentorship program, and suggestions for future research in this field. Effective mentors are informal, consistent, demanding, informative, and have a desire to be a mentor. They are caring and willing to help their mentee. The benefits of mentoring programs are increased new teacher retention rates, improved teaching performances and abilities, increased job satisfaction, improved working conditions, and enhanced student achievement. New teachers routinely receive feedback and support in planning age-appropriate lessons, providing more instructional feedback to the students, and decreasing their feelings of isolation. Among mentors, benefits received as a result of their participation include enhancement of their skills in classroom management and discipline, validation of their own teaching abilities, and obtainment of new information and techniques through observations and dialogues with the novice teachers, as well as through professional development opportunities. Despite all the benefits of mentoring programs, some limitations and obstacles have been encountered. First, although many teachers express an aspiration to become a mentor in the future, many do not. This means that the teachers that have experienced the positive aspects of a mentoring program themselves sometimes do not continue to share their knowledge
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with the next generation of new teachers. It is important that organizers of mentoring programs select mentors who have a desire to perform that role on a consistent basis. Second, the two most common barriers are obtaining funding to provide participants’ stipends, and having adequate time for training. Lack of funding and training opportunities can limit the number of teachers who become mentors, and those that benefit from a more experienced peer. Mentoring programs must seek to compensate both mentors and mentees for mentoring that takes place outside of the school day, or seek ways to fund substitute teachers to provide leave time during the school day for mentoring. Forcing new teachers and their mentors to engage in mentoring on their own time and without compensation seems the option least likely to work effectively. Last, other obstacles faced in developing effective mentors include lack of training and expertise, lack of state involvement, and mismatched pairs of mentor/ mentee. Thus, mentoring programs should provide adequate training for prospective mentors and carefully match mentors with new teachers by paying attention to similar personalities, making sure they teach similar content areas (i.e., math, science, physical education) and in similar settings (i.e., secondary versus elementary settings, urban versus rural settings). Many suggestions have been made for future mentoring projects. For example, studying the effects mentoring has on teaching and teacher retention (especially in urban schools); in what ways mentors learn how to work with their assigned mentee; what facilitates the mentoring process; the relationship mentoring experiences have with professional development and teacher accountability; the perceptions of mentoring relationships and whether or not having a mentor influences one’s decision to become a mentor in the future; how mentors go about mentoring (e.g., the similarities/differences compared to the training received); how their self-efficacy as a mentor affects their ability to mentor; the effects that mentors have on their mentees’ teaching abilities; and how personality characteristics of mentors and mentees affect mentoring relationships.
Conclusion In short, although mentoring is a fairly new concept in the field of education, it has shown to provide new teachers with the support they need to transition into
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their new careers. Especially in urban schools where new teachers face many unique challenges, mentors may provide the key link to cultivating the next generation of effective educators to begin addressing many of the inequalities and inefficiencies that plague urban schools. See also: > First-year teachers; > Teacher efficacy
>
Teacher burnout ;
Suggested Reading Bey, T. M., & Holmes, C. T. (Eds.). (1990). Mentoring: Developing successful new teachers. Reston, VA: Association of Teacher Educators. McCaughtry, N., Martin, J., Hodges Kulinna, P., & Cothran, D. (2006). The emotional dimensions of urban teacher change. Journal of Teaching in Physical Education, 25(1), 99–119.
Suggested Resources http://mentor.creighton.edu/htm/telement.htm: This website offers information on Telementoring as a potential educational network.
Mexican American Youth Antonia Hernandez
Currently in the United States (U.S.), Mexican Americans constitute 66.9% of the total Hispanic population. This does not include the thousands of immigrants who live in the U.S. illegally. Each year approximately 400,000 illegal immigrants migrate to the U.S. The social context in which immigrants leave their homeland can often be described as one that is poverty-stricken, with high unemployment rates, and little prospect for economic mobility. Mexicans migrate from several regions and settle in various areas in the U.S. Mexicans have primarily migrated to the southwestern region of the U.S. but large Mexican communities can also be found in the Midwest and Northeastern regions of the country. Many Mexicans migrate to the U.S. illegally with very little or no education and, as a result, are of working
class status and hold blue-collar level positions. An illegal status often forces this community to hold low paying jobs with no benefits. The language barrier further impedes Mexican immigrants from prospering into better-held positions and economic statuses. Many migrate with the illusion of better social and economic opportunity, and educational prospects for their children. Unfortunately, many Mexicans live in poverty upon their arrival to the U.S. and their children endure discrimination based on their distinct physical features, language, and economic status. Second generation Mexican Americans are youth who have immigrant parents but because they are born in the U.S., have American citizenship and tend to be fluent in both English and Spanish. Unfortunately, Mexican American youth contend with a number of experiences and tensions, all of which influence adaptational outcome. Approximately 22.8% of Mexican households in the U.S. live below the poverty level. Due to this common socioeconomic status, Mexican American youth might live in neighborhoods where high levels of gang violence and substance abuse are witnessed on a daily basis. It is estimated that between 4% and 10% of Mexican American youth belong to gangs in the U.S. Discrimination, prejudice, and stereotypes influence Mexican American youth to form subcultures as a protective barrier to their inferior status in the U.S. Mexican American youth also have high levels of attrition rates in both secondary and postsecondary academic institutions. Approximately 50.6% of Mexican Americans ages 25 and older have a high school diploma and only 7.6% of Mexican Americans received a bachelor’s degree in 2002. The prevalence of these factors among Mexican American youth are thought to be associated with their levels of acculturation, values, socioeconomic status, and educational attainment.
Acculturation Acculturation can be defined as the process where one group of people comes into contact with another group and experiences changes in attitudes, values, and beliefs as they adhere to the values of the dominant society. Changes on an individual level occur in a triadic manner and encompass social, behavioral, and psychological factors. Mexican American youth who are either born or migrate to the U.S. undergo a unique experience as they are brought up in a dominant
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cultural setting where cultural values, traditions, and beliefs differ from the Mexican culture. As Mexican American youth adopt certain traits, beliefs, values and behaviors of the dominant culture acculturative stress can emerge. For instance, Mexican American youth with a strong ethnic identity as Mexicans may experience conflict as they juggle the values, beliefs, and behaviors of the dominant culture. Conspicuous cultural differences can make Mexican American youth feel out of place as they attempt to integrate their ethnic identities in a country that is not fully considered their own. Mexican American youth are also often pressured by family members to maintain strong cultural ties and be proficient in their native tongue to be accepted by their own people. As a result, many Mexican American youth have a bicultural identity. Given their upbringing in the U.S., they are able to acquire the language, behavior and attitudes of the dominant society but may experience rejection from the majority culture for maintaining strong cultural ties.
Values Mexican Americans share inherent cultural values with other Latinos throughout Latin America. Prominent cultural values present in the Mexican culture include familismo, marianismo/machismo, and respeto. Mexicans can be described as a set of people who share a collectivistic view of family. Familismo is a cultural value where the needs of the family override those of the individual. Family unity and loyalty are valued over and above the individual. This cultural value can be a source of acculturative stress to Mexican American youth as they attempt to adhere to the behavior and attitudes of the dominant culture. The individualistic society of the U.S. in which Mexican American youths are brought up in, for instance, values individualism and competition, whereas Mexican values are oriented to collectivism and cooperation. This difference can play out in the lives of Mexican American youth in social, academic, and interpersonal settings causing distress as they attempt to integrate both sets of value systems. For example, in academic settings Mexican American youth can be perceived as intellectually inferior than their peers for lack of classroom participation given the fact that they are not brought up to assert their views and ideas but instead to hold a cooperative stance with
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others. Teachers in academic settings need to be aware of this notion and incorporate ways that can lure such students to assert their thoughts and ideas within classroom discussions. The values of marianismo and machismo dictate gender roles and expectations for behavior. Marianismo takes the Virgin Mary as its prototype where the Latina woman has the sacred duty of self-sacrifice and chastity. This value emphasizes that women put the needs of their children and husbands before their own. On the other hand, machismo dictates that it is the duty of the man to protect, shelter, and feed his family. The concept of machismo is one that dictates chivalrous behavior but at the same time empowers males within the hierarchy of the family. These values structure gender roles. For Mexican American youth, such behavior can become a source of distress if they wish to move beyond culturally prescribed gender roles. Given the dictates of their value system on gender role behavior, such a system may conflict with their adaptation to the dominant culture. For instance, Mexican American youth who are raised to become domesticated mothers (for girls) or the breadwinner of the family (for boys) may struggle with the notion of narrow gender role differences as they acculturate to the dominant society. This is apparent in the case of Latina girls, for instance, who are caught between the pull to strive academically and also maintain household responsibilities. Counselors in academic settings need to be cognizant of such a cultural influence on the career and academic aspirations of Mexican American youth as they counsel those at various levels of acculturation. Finally, respeto refers to valuing and acknowledging hierarchical differences that differentiate individuals on the basis of age, gender, and class. Respeto may be considered a detriment to success among Mexican American youth given that they live in a country where assertive behavior is highly valued. Again, an example concerns the culture of class participation in the U.S. educational system. While class participation often makes up part of the student’s grade, the value of respeto mandates deference rather than participation. In fact, participation would be viewed as challenging the teacher’s authority. Thus, the individualistic nature of the U.S. society in which Mexican American youth grow up is in direct conflict with many of the values and beliefs that have been instilled in them by their parents. As a consequence, psychological and adaptational conflict may occur as Mexican American youth attempt to assimilate to the dominant culture.
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Socioeconomic Status Socioeconomic status (SES) has been linked with educational success, college attendance, and educational persistence among adolescents. While Mexican American youth are brought up in a first world country, many continue to live in poverty and struggle economically. In 2001, an estimated 22.8% of Mexicans and their U.S. born children lived in the U.S. below the poverty level. Many Mexicans immigrate to the U.S. with the intention of returning home once they reach economic security. As a result, they work to maintain language, traditions, and customs among their children. SES may be measured by a parent’s educational level, occupation, and income. Despite the goal of economic security, however, factors such as language barriers, educational barriers, and illegal status mean that many Mexican Americans hold low paying jobs with no health benefits.
Education Although Mexican Americans represent the largest Hispanic subgroup currently residing in the U.S., they lag significantly behind in secondary and postsecondary academic institutions. Mexican American youth have the highest high school dropout rates and the lowest number of college enrollees in the U.S. In comparison to other Hispanic subgroups, Mexican American youth represent the lowest number of high school graduates. The numbers are even more miniscule for Mexican Americans in postsecondary institutions. It was estimated in 2002 that only 7.6% of Mexican Americans had acquired a bachelor’s degree while Cubans represented 18.6%; Central and South Americans represented 17.3%; and other Hispanic youth represented 19.7% of the total number of college graduates. Educational attainment is a significant factor for socioeconomic mobility. As a result of academic underachievement such upward mobility is not attained by many Mexican American youth. Basic skills deficiencies have often been cited as the most critical educational challenges for Hispanics in the U.S. Studies have shown that Mexican American youth who do not speak English at home receive lower scores in the subjects of English and math. Unsuccessful classroom experience such as poor classroom performance and failing grades have also been correlated with dropout rates. As a result of nonacademic achievement,
students may begin to demonstrate patterns of disengagement from their studies. Although the staggering numbers that afflict Mexican Americans in academic institutions are high, it is also important to highlight the success of those who do achieve academically. Youth who are academically resilient are supported through a number of influential factors. Biculturalism, educational aspirations, social support, and parental involvement have all been noted to promote educational success among Mexican American youth. It is important that professionals in academic settings be informative, encouraging, and supportive of Mexican American youth as they aspire to go beyond secondary institutions. Having access to a support system at home and at school will reinforce academic success for this population. Finally, being able to balance both American and Mexican cultures can help Mexican American youth maneuver throughout the U.S. educational system. As mentioned, parental involvement is an important factor in educational attainment for Mexican American youth. Mexican origin parents with little formal education may not understand how the educational system works. As a result, they may be at a disadvantage when it comes to providing academic support and advocacy. Language barriers can have a negative affect on a parent’s confidence with regard to school interaction and helping their child with homework. Mexican origin parents may not have time to spend with their children because of multiple jobs they hold to meet financial obligations. Financial difficulties may also put parents in the predicament of having to ask their child to contribute to the household by seeking outside employment. It is critical that professionals in the educational arena are cognizant of the aforementioned stressors and predicaments in the lives of the Mexican American youth. The challenge faced by the U.S. educational system is to implement curriculum practices that provide effective learning environments that meet the needs of all children. To this end, educational institutions can hire more bilingual teachers, counselors, and community liaisons familiar with Mexican values who can communicate with parents and children at various levels of acculturation. Bilingual teachers can translate report cards, letters to parents, and inform them of events in Spanish to encourage parental involvement. Educational institutions can offer assistance by helping Mexican parents adapt to the way the educational system works. Outreach can be conducted through workshops, vocational
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informational nights, and the provision of English as a second language (ESL) classes. The ESL class provides English instruction to non-English speakers who are taught how to speak, write, and read in English.
Middle Eastern Youth
See also: > Academic achievement in minority children; > Acculturation; > Ethnic minority youth
The term ‘‘Middle Eastern,’’ or less commonly the ‘‘Near East,’’ refers to the cultural and historical region of southwestern Asia and northeastern Africa, spanning Morocco to Pakistan and including the Caucasus (Azerbaijan, Armenia, and Georgia). There are no clear definitions of what constitutes the Middle East and the countries that encompass this grouping vary according to different sources. Countries that define the Middle East include Bahrain, Cyprus, Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Israel, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Palestinian Territories, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Syria, the United Arab Emirates, and Yemen. Other countries such as Afghanistan, Algeria, Libya, Morocco, Pakistan, Sudan, and Turkey are occasionally included because of their close link with Islam. It is a region where Islam is the predominant religion; it is also the birthplace of Judaism and Christianity. As the site of ancient civilizations such as Phoenicia, Babylon, and Egypt, apart from being the birthplace of the three monotheistic religions, the Middle East is also viewed as the cradle of Western Civilization. The region today is strife with political and economic turmoil. Although not representative of all the people with Middle Eastern ancestry in the United States (U.S.), the closest approximation would be based on the figures of people who claim to be of general Arab ancestries or those who acknowledge being of Middle Eastern ancestry. Based on the 2000 U.S. Census, there are 1.2 million Arabs in the U.S., or 0.42% of the total population. The three largest groups in the U.S. are Lebanese, Syrian, and Egyptian, with those of Lebanese ancestry accounting for one out of four Arabs in America today. Other groups in the U.S. are Palestinian, Jordanian, Moroccan, Iraqi, and those who identify with the general term Arab or Arabic. Considering the recent focus on the Arab populations after September 11, the wars on Afghanistan and Iraq, and given that the countries that represent the Middle East are also inclusive of the Arab populations, emphasis will be placed here on the group of Arab Americans who are also Muslims. Arab American youth (under 18 years old) constitute 25% of the group. Female Arab youth represent a smaller proportion of the group compared with the general population. Sixty-nine percent of Arab Americans speak a language other than English at home, compared with 18% of the total population,
Suggested Reading Cuellar, I., Nyberg, B., & Maldonado, R. E. (1997). Ethnic identity and acculturation in a young adult Mexican-origin population. Journal of Community Psychology, 25(6), 535–549. Niemann, Y. F., Romero, A. J., Arrendondo, J., & Rodriguez, V. (1999). What does it mean to be ‘‘Mexican’’? Social construction of an identity. Hispanic Journal of Behavioral Sciences, 21(1), 47–60. Trusty, J., Plata, M., & Salazar, C. F. (2003). Modeling Mexican Americans’ educational expectations: Longitudinal effects of variables across adolescence. Journal of Adolescent Research, 18(2), 131–153.
Suggested Resources Chicano/Latino Net—http://clnet.sscnet.ucla.edu/: This website offers information on Chicano/Latino research from the University of California Riverside, UCLA and elsewhere. Association of Mexican American Educators—http://www.amae. org/index.html: The Association of Mexican American Educators is an organization that was established to improve education for students of Mexican and Latino descent; to advise state and local boards, administrators and facilities; provide training and support for Latino educators; and promote understanding and recognition of cultural differences.
MFP American Psychological Association (APA) Minority Fellowship Program (MFP) >
MHEDIC > Mental Health-Education Integration Consortium (MHEDIC)
Kaikok Lim
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though 65% of them speak English very well. Arab Americans are well-educated, having higher percentages of high-school graduates and holders of bachelors degrees than the total population. The high educational attainment of this group translates to higher income and earning levels as a group compared with the population at large. However, those who are living in poverty, 17% compared with 12% of the total population, are a cause for concern, showing that there is a considerable divide between the rich and the poor. Around 75% of Arab Americans are either native U.S. citizens or foreign born, naturalized citizens. People of Arab ancestry are approximately equally distributed among the four regions of the U.S. However, about half of all Arabs are concentrated in five states: California, Florida, Michigan, New Jersey, and New York, with the highest concentration in Michigan. Although the presence of this ethnic group is reasonably widespread and growing, many misconceptions about the group remain unsolved. The youths have to contend with the issues of tobacco use, discrimination in the schools, ethnic identity development, and gender relations in the U.S.
Tobacco Use Tobacco use is a prominent issue with Middle Eastern youth, especially because many of these youths come from countries in the Middle East where there are high rates of tobacco use, and it is used at a proportionately high rate by adults in the family. The influence of peers and family, and the ease of getting tobacco from neighborhood drug stores or from the parents make Middle Eastern youth especially susceptible to try smoking with few or no consequences. Youth may have been introduced to tobacco use through the innocuous use of the hookah or narghile (Middle Eastern water-pipe with nicotine), which is part of Middle Eastern culture and an accepted family social activity. Some of the reasons cited by youths to explain their tobacco use are: to be cool, to ‘‘hang out with the guys,’’ availability and accessibility of cigarettes, and feeling good about smoking (i.e., stress relief). Given that the youth have multiple reasons to pick up smoking and that they later face barriers in quitting such as having peers who smoke and families who use tobacco at home, it is advantageous to educate youth about the dangers of smoking and prevent them from starting it in the
first place. Research in understanding the adoption of tobacco use and the barriers in stopping it would help in creating better prevention programs in the future.
Discrimination in the School Although overt discrimination has become viewed with disapproval and is now legally banned in schools, covert discrimination has been increasing in the school setting. The erasure of the histories, cultures, and languages of the diverse group of Middle Eastern immigrants (through distortion of facts by the popular media, inadequate information about Arab Americans for educators, and incomplete information about U.S. involvement in the Middle East in U.S. history textbooks) leads to the lack of understanding of this particular ethnic group that is growing in the U.S. Terrorist attacks perpetrated by extremist groups largely comprising individuals of Middle Eastern descent, when combined with the lack of proper understanding of Middle Eastern culture, lead to stereotypical and misinformed information about Middle Eastern culture and religion, which results in making Middle Eastern youth feel alienated and misrecognized in the classroom. Blind patriotism has led some American students and even some teachers to verbally and physically bully youth of Middle Eastern ancestry. Some of these youth have never been out of the U.S. and have been part of the social fabric of the U.S. since they were born; thus, to dismiss them as outsiders is wrong, as they are as much the victims of terrorism as other citizens of the U.S. of different ethnic groups. Education and understanding of the cultural and religious background of Middle Eastern youth would help to clear the misunderstanding of this group and pave the way to better interethnic/racial relationships between students and other school personnel.
Development of Ethnic Identity Middle Eastern youth undergo identity development differently from other ethnic groups in the U.S. Ethnicity and religion combine to form a unique identity for this group. Although Middle Easterners are considered ‘‘White’’ in the U.S. Census data, Middle Eastern youth do not identify themselves as ‘‘Whites,’’ instead preferring to view themselves either as Arab Americans or
Middle Eastern youth
Muslim Americans, these terms often being used interchangeably. They identify themselves as Arabs to emphasize their ancestral roots and to exclude other Muslims who are not from the Middle Eastern region (Iran, Pakistan, and Turkey are countries not from the Middle Eastern region but which fall under the ‘‘Middle Eastern’’ category in most cases), and they self-identify as Muslims to emphasize their religion and to exclude those Arab Americans who are either Jewish or Christian. For many individuals of Middle Eastern descent, religion dictates the way a Muslim should behave, especially for females. Therefore, by distancing themselves from being too American or White, they are advocating the values that are in line with their religion. In the view of some Middle Eastern youth, there is a distinction between those who are newly emigrated from the Middle East and those who are second generation Middle Eastern youth. Those who are born in America value their American identity and distance themselves from recent immigrants until those immigrants have acculturated sufficiently to the dominant American culture. The development of Arab American identity is complicated, showing the interplay between trying to be both distant and linked to the two cultures at the same time. The identification of self as an Arab American shows the resolution of the identity struggle, combining the best of both cultures in the U.S.
Gender Relations The act of veiling or wearing the hijab (veil) among the Middle Eastern women could be either a personal religious choice or a cultural expectation. There is no clear agreement among the women whether it is mandatory according to the religion. Nevertheless, those who wear the hijab are held to a higher standard by the males compared with those who do not wear it. This is one example of how males in this group try to assert control over females within the community. Another would be the restricted interaction between Arab females and other ethnic males in the name of preserving the honor of the family and the community. On the other hand, Arab males are free to interact with other ethnic females, leading to the question of a double standard of social interaction. As second generation Middle Eastern female youth become familiar with the dominant culture of the U.S., and through better understanding and interpretation of Islam, there are signs of changes
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underway as females try to re-establish themselves as equals in the community. Islam treats both genders fairly and it is the cultural expectation that often prompts how the gender roles are played out in the community. The challenge of the status quo affects both male and female Middle Eastern youth as they grapple with the issues of gender roles and identity while upholding cultural values. There are no easy solutions to the issues Middle Eastern youth face today in the U.S. Nonetheless, there are two positive protective factors for Middle Eastern youth: religion and community. Strong religious faith helps this group overcome the challenges they face. Such challenges are considered trials sent by God to strengthen their faith. An involved community will ensure that youth work together and look out for one another so that no one violates cultural norms and societal expectations. Tapping into these protective factors and increasing understanding of this population will further future support for Middle Eastern youth. See also: > Adolescent ethnic identity; > Arab American children; > Racism: Individual, Institutional, and Cultural; > Smoking
Suggested Reading Abu El-Haj, T. (2006). Race, politics, and Arab American youth: Shifting frameworks for conceptualizing educational equity. Educational Policy, 20(1), 13–34. Ajrouch, K. J. (2004). Gender, race, and symbolic boundaries: Contested spaces of identity among Arab American adolescents. Sociological Perspectives, 47(4), 371–391. Kulwicki, A., & Rice, V. H. (2003). Arab American adolescent perceptions and experiences with smoking. Public Health Nursing, 20(3), 177–183.
Suggested Resources RAND Initiative for Middle Eastern Youth (IMEY)—http://www.rand. org/nsrd/cmepp/imey/: The RAND Corporation is an organization that was established to help improve policy and decision-making through research and analysis. Through its IMEY division, it hopes to seek an improved understanding of the complex setting affecting the Middle East’s younger generation and to help support them in the achievements of better lives and democratic societies. Middle East Studies Association (MESA)—http://www.mesa.arizona. edu/index.htm: The Middle East Studies Association (MESA) is a non-political association that fosters the study of the Middle East, promotes scholarship and teaching, and encourages public
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understanding of the region and its people through programs, publications, and services that enhance education, further intellectual exchange, recognizing professional distinction, and defending academic freedom.
Middle School Susan MacLaury . Michael L Hecht
Middle school educators have been engaged in a national debate for more than 20 years regarding how young adolescents are best educated. Over the past few years, there appears to be renewed support for the kindergarten through eighth grade model. This support stems from the transitional nature of early adolescence and the belief that students would benefit from remaining in a familiar educational environment in which they stay predominantly with one teacher rather than moving into a new school with multiple instructors. Ironically, this is the very same argument traditionally made by proponents of middle schools, who have sought to create smaller learning communities in which every student is known, in opposition to traditional junior high schools, which they perceive to be too rigid and impersonal. Certainly, the task of educating children in the United States (U.S.) particularly early adolescents, has become increasingly challenging as the composition of its student population becomes more multicultural.
Early Adolescent Development Early adolescence is a period of tremendous physical, emotional, social, cognitive and moral change. On average, children grow 10–20 inches and gain 40–50 pounds over a 5-year period beginning at puberty, which begins usually at around the age of 10 for girls and 12 for boys. There is considerable variation in the timing of secondary sex characteristics and their development has significance for youngsters’ psychosocial well-being. Girls who achieve menarche early, an event more common among Black females, tend to have a harder time than their later-developing peers. They must deal
with attention that may be either unwanted and/or potentially overwhelming, and as a result often have lower self-esteem and greater problems adjusting to changes. They are at greater risk for not completing their education and tend to have children and/or marry younger. On the other hand, boys who go through puberty early may have an advantage as their growth often enhances athletic ability and overall attractiveness. Hormonal changes also influence adolescent’s emotional reality. Females often experience considerable mood lability under the influence of increased levels of estrogen and progesterone, while males’ increased testosterone levels contribute to greater levels of energy and aggression. Both sexes tend to be self-conscious, sure that others are aware of flaws they presume they have. Research into brain development has necessitated the abandonment of earlier assumptions about abstract thought, sequential learning, and transfer of learning from one situation to another. The mental picture appears to be much more complicated; even more so when individual growth differences are acknowledged. Young adolescents are only beginning to transition from concrete to abstract thought as they also develop the ability to reason deductively and learn to problemsolve. At the same time, many evidence the ability to process narratives or stories. It is estimated that while approximately 95% of brain growth has been completed by puberty, the brain apparently continues to grow and change structurally well into the 20s. Some theorists believe that it develops from front to back, with tremendous implications for adolescent behaviors. The nucleus accumbens, for example, directs motivated behavior. If not yet mature, the owner of this brain may be inclined to seek large rewards for very little effort, not yet understanding the inherent connection between the two. In addition, the amygdala, which integrates emotional reactions with events that are or are not pleasurable, is still developing. As a result, young adolescents may be more prone to emotional outbursts, less able to contain their feelings, and even less able to accurately read others’ facial expressions, leading them to misinterpret social cues. The prefrontal cortex, called by some the ‘‘CEO’’ of the brain, is responsible for judgment, impulse control, anticipating consequences of actions, and goal-setting. Its immaturity may well account for much of the risktaking that is associated with this age group. Finally, the corpus callosum, a network of fibers connecting the brain’s two hemispheres, is still very much growing
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through adolescence. It appears to influence language learning and associative thinking and some researchers believe that in particular, a person’s ability to learn a new language declines after the age of 12. If so, this fact would have clear and disturbing implications for middle school students for whom English is a second language. Morally, young adolescents are moving from predominately egocentric thought to thought that is more socio-centric. As their abilities to understand others’ points of view increase, so may their capacity for empathy. They often begin to question authority. While parents play the most significant role in modeling morality for their children, peers become increasingly important during this period. Individuals tend to value what their friends do, and this can be a source of tremendous conflict, particularly if friends hold beliefs at variance with what a child is taught at home. This can be particularly problematic among immigrant communities, where traditional and peer values may clash. Socially, early adolescence mirrors the separationindividuation experienced by toddlers taking their first steps. Needing to try things for themselves, many young adolescents test their personal abilities, as well as family and school limits, to gain their bearings. They will practice ‘‘adult’’ behaviors, finding support early on in same sex groups, then increasingly with the opposite sex, ensconced in cliques that function as ‘‘families of peers.’’ Research suggests that ethnicity may be a variable in determining the primacy of parental versus peer influences on this age group. Black parents tend to be more direct in their expressions of anti-smoking norms for example, consistent with their more direct communication style tendencies. In contrast, peer norms seem to play a more important role for White adolescents. Families, in general, may be more salient for Mexican Americans. Even the structure or composition of families may vary across ethnic groups. For example, there are more single families in the Black community and extended family structures including relatives and friends are more frequent among Latino and Black families. It is not clear how these family structures influence family and peer relations, although we do know that critical family function such as monitoring and supervising adolescents, tend to decrease in single family homes. Early adolescence is thus a period in life in which individuals often make decisions that may
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have lifelong consequences before they have the full complement of cognitive, emotional and social skills to do so. Such youngsters are prime candidates for acting out in ways that may have an impact on their academic performance - indeed shorten their academic careers – as well as jeopardizing their health. Research shows that adolescents who are more proactive in their decision-making are less at risk than those who passively go along with their peers. School is the center of the early adolescent’s existence, largely because it is where their friends are and where they spend so much time. However, their social relationships can either support their desire to excel academically or constrain it and their self-esteem, and how they define themselves generally, can either compel them to challenge themselves or preclude their desire to participate in the learning process.
The Impact of Cultural Membership on the Early Adolescent Experience Early adolescence poses challenges for everyone but can be particularly demanding of individuals who lack English proficiency or face discrimination from fellow students, teachers or administrators, or whose cultural beliefs, supported by their families, are at variance with what they encounter in mainstream society. It’s estimated that 20% of all children now living in the U.S. are either themselves immigrants or are members of immigrant families. Being a recent arrival, or a member of a group that has traditionally been marginalized by mainstream U.S. society is clearly a factor both in the overall development of early adolescents and their potential academic achievement in middle school. While there are hundreds of different cultures represented in the U.S. today, the two largest groups are Blacks and Latinos. It is essential to also consider the degree of acculturation when appreciating the role played by culture. Acculturation is defined as changes that occur in one’s original culture over time as he or she is increasingly exposed to another. While it may generally be assumed that low-acculturated young adolescents have the greatest difficulty adapting to middle school and performing well, there is, in fact, evidence to suggest that in some respects, particularly health, first generation Americans actually appear to enjoy greater protections than second and third-generations. The stress of acculturation is a risk factor, particularly when combined
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with experiences of discrimination. As members become more acculturated, they leave behind the protective factors of their host culture (e.g., traditional values) without fully acquiring the protections of the new culture. At the same time, they are likely to be more immersed in mainstream U.S. culture, with the attendent stressors of adaptation and discrimination. Each successive generation appears to be at greater risk for substance abuse and domestic violence, for example. Thus, acculturation may actually increase adolescents’ risk potential. For example, many young adolescents in immigrant families face the pressure of ‘‘language brokering’’ or translating for older adults due to their superior language skills. Finally, socioeconomic status also plays a critical role in defining the experience of any cultural group. In the U.S., more than half of Black, Latino, American Indian and Asian children live in poverty. Low income levels by themselves place these youngsters at greater risk for unintentional pregnancies, sexually transmitted infections, substance abuse, unintentional injury and homicide, and poorer educational outcomes than the average population. As previously stated, there are dozens of different cultural groups represented in the U.S. today. The following reviews characteristics of different Latino, Black, and Asian groups. We do not intend to imply that White culture is normative, but in this limited space will try to highlight some cultural issues.
Latinos Latino children comprise the largest single cultural category of immigrants to the U.S., and approximately 2/3 of this group is Mexican. While it is very difficult to generalize across so many Central and South American countries as well as islands such as Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic, there are certain points to be made which may be helpful in understanding some of the more common characteristics. Overall, Latinos, who tend to prize ‘‘simpatı´a,’’ or the ability to get along with others, may be less assertive than their American-born counterparts, failing to get needed help from teachers. They may also be under greater stress at home, particularly if their families’ incomes are low and/or if parental language proficiency is limited. Such parents may not be able to provide the support and guidance necessary for their children to negotiate the American school system.
The concept of familismo (the priority on the group, especially the family) is key and family social events are the center of young adolescent Latinos’ lives. The stronger the family attachment and greater the direct parental control tends to lower the risk of antisocial behavior. These youngsters often believe that their achievement is shared by their loved ones and are frequently raised to be obedient and respectful in the classroom. Social skill development is very much emphasized within this context. Very little research has been done to date on the developmental characteristics of children from the large number of Central and South American countries immigrating to the U.S. One obvious issue, regardless of country of origin, is the child’s age when he or she arrives and whether or not there’s been a separation between the child and his/her parents for some prior period, as there often is. Those children who have been left by parents to be raised by other relatives and are later uprooted from all that is familiar culturally and asked to re-establish bonds with long-absent parents face enormous emotional and social challenges in an age already defined by change. Like other Latino groups, Mexican youngsters are expected to share fully in family responsibilities and benefit from the support of their relatives. One of the potential cultural conflicts for Latino children generally is that they are socialized to be collaborative and are then expected to act competitively in American school systems and to be seen as somehow lacking if they do not. Latino adolescents overall also face a greater risk of substance abuse than their age group generally, with more acculturated Latinos at greater risk than their less-acculturated counterparts. In addition, many Mexican adolescents face discrimination from the host society. They are often marginalized and may be induced to band together in gangs.
African Americans Nearly half of all African American children under the age of 18 live below the poverty level. This leaves families at greater risk for living in inadequate housing in areas that may be unsound environmentally, being forced to deal with high crime rates and less police protection, receiving health care that is substandard, and having limited access to upward mobility. Despite these potential problems for low-income families, the richness and strength of extended families proves
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to be enormously important to the emotional resiliency of young African American adolescents, and many report close relationships with grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins and godparents. In fact, while some research has indicated that early adolescence is a period of increased depression for many, and indeed White females evidence a fairly precipitous decline in self-esteem during these years, Black females appear to retain a strong, positive sense of self. Having faced generations of discrimination, African American youth tend to stay together socially and peer influence is key. If there have been earlier school problems, creating educational disparities between Black middle school students and those from other groups, there may be a tendency to devalue the school experience and reward other endeavors, like athletic or social prowess. In American society, young adolescent African American males may be perceived as threatening, which is a possible result of their perceived need to adopt a public persona of bravado to protect themselves. Parents may feel that they have to socialize their male children to eschew any emotionality lest it label them as weak and subject to victimization. Indeed, gang membership numbers among a number of groups, African Americans among them, have increased in recent years, further exacerbating inter-cultural fears and misunderstanding. Pressures on young adolescent males not to succeed academically are greater than on females, and greater numbers of African American females typically graduate from high school and go on to college than males.
Asians There are dozens of different Asian cultures represented in the U.S. and it is virtually impossible to generalize about them. The fastest growing Asian population consists of Filipino Americans, whose upbringing—similar to Chinese, Japanese, Korean and Asian Indian youth—teaches them to subordinate their personal needs to those of their family, to respect authority, and to assume responsibility for bettering their family’s standard of living. Like many other cultures, Filipinos try to avoid overt conflict and to get along with others. Education is prized and parents take great pride in their children’s accomplishments. The same tends to be true of Asian Indians in the U.S., 80% of whose parents are professionals with more education than the average American. They, too,
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are expected to conform to the social norms of their culture, which can be tremendously stressful in early adolescence as the child views the separation-individuation of youngsters from mainstream culture and may wish to emulate it. Many Indian families do not allow dating, and premarital sex is out of the question. Pressure to succeed is greatest on male students, for in many families female children are seen as individuals who ultimately will marry, move away, and join their husband’s families. The largest single Asian group in the U.S. consists of Chinese Americans, who vary widely in their degree of acculturation. Often taught to be quiet and nonassertive, such young adolescents may be unlikely to be active participants in classroom discussions or verbally expressive in social situations generally. With increased acculturation, family authority may begin to erode and this can cause a crisis for the family.
The Middle School Approach Middle schools are those designed for children from 10 to 14 years of age, either in grades 5–8 or 6–8, that are designed to provide an educational experience that is developmentally appropriate to this age group. The middle school reform movement began 30 years ago based on the belief that the typical junior high school, which tended to be large and impersonal, did not meet the needs of young adolescent learners. The literature on drop-out prevention, in fact, notes that when a child is well known by even one adult in his or her school, the likelihood that he or she will drop out before finishing high school is dramatically reduced. Middle level schools seek to differentiate their approach from elementary and high schools along several key variables. The middle school teacher relationship to students is an advisory one, rather than the parental role often played by elementary teachers, or the expert role adopted by high school instructors. In middle schools, classes are taught by interdisciplinary teams of four, representing language arts, social studies, mathematics and science versus the self-contained classroom taught by a single elementary teacher or the departmentalized approach of high school. The interdisciplinary approach serves several functions. It allows small groups of teachers to work with a manageable number of students over a 3-year period, usually no more than 100 students in total. It also lends itself to block scheduling, which in turn allows teachers
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to plan lessons creatively that may incorporate individual and group projects with less time constraint. It also promotes team-teaching around themes whose learning is repeatedly reinforced as it is integrated into different subjects. Students learn early on what teachers expect of them and their opinions can carry tremendous weight. Believing that ability-grouping undoubtedly increases some students’ motivation while it destroys others, proponents of middle schools have sought to replace it with classes that are heterogeneous in the hope that students would learn more cooperatively and less competitively, allowing also for differences among students’ cognitive growth. Thus, middle school students are grouped by how they can provide mutual support versus elementary students who are grouped by age and high school students who are grouped by subject. Scheduling in middle schools is intended to be flexible enough that teachers determine the length of time they need for given subjects and can vary this when necessary. This stands in sharp contrast to the high school class day, governed by bells signaling class changes. Differentiated instruction is essential at the middle school level. Students’ cognitive abilities change significantly over their early adolescent years, as previously discussed, and classes must be designed to respect multiple learning capacities simultaneously. Middle school educators are trained in early adolescent development and are expected to be more than content specialists. The entire middle school approach, at its best, is one that aims to know and work with the whole child. Ideally, teachers appreciate the emotional challenges faced by their students as they mature and their need for interpersonal support. Teachers strive to create small, caring communities of peers, both in the classroom and in advisories. Small groups for students are one of the hallmarks of the school reform movement. Administratively, governance is shared among administrators, teachers and students in middle schools. Usually a governing council is created in which school policies are jointly determined and implemented.
Implications of Early Adolescent Development and Cultural Membership for Middle School Educators Clearly, development, cultural and ethnic membership, socioeconomic status and degree of acculturation interface to have an impact on middle school students’
academic performance. Much has been written about the cultural and socioeconomic differences between the majority of American teachers and their students. While minority students now comprise approximately 30% of the American school population, more than 85% of this country’s teachers are White women, predominantly from the middle class. Teachers gain a certain amount of their pre-service training as students themselves, and undoubtedly many new teachers expect to teach students similar to those with whom they themselves attended school. However, it is far more likely that they will work with students from very different backgrounds than their own. Indeed, 1 in every 7 students in the U.S. today is growing up speaking a first language other than English. Adding to educators’ challenge is the reality that many pre-service and new teachers haven’t received adequate diversity training even though they will frequently be assigned to both inner city and rural schools with high percentages of immigrant students. At minimum, pre-service teachers from the cultural majority must be educated about the characteristics and needs of prospective students from multicultural backgrounds. They need to honestly examine their own beliefs about other groups and how these may intrude on their teaching. They must also be able to view cultural diversity as a source of potential richness in the classroom experience and not see students from different cultures as experiencing deficits of some sort.
The Culturally-Sensitive Middle School Classroom The following are general suggestions for middle school teachers to structure lessons that are developmentally appropriate and consider cultural and ethnic variations among students. 1. Because of the aforementioned neural changes in early adolescence, the questions of how long students can maintain focus and how much information they can retain are critical. One general principle for educators is to assume that the length of time a group can concentrate on a single teaching approach, particularly lecture, is probably no greater than that group’s age +2. Hence, if one is working with eighth graders, probably 15 minutes is the maximum time. Also, current educational theory suggests that the young adolescent brain
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can retain no more than 5–7 bits of information simultaneously. Lessons, therefore, need to be spare in content but rich in opportunities to process to increase the likelihood that information will be transferred to long-term memory storage and not lost after the exam. New information should be presented in limited amounts and students should have the opportunity to process it through a variety of means – small and large group discussion, cooperative learning projects, debates, and journaling, among other techniques. Teaching techniques must be varied, lecture limited, and efforts should be made to incorporate handson learning activities as much as possible, and these should involve multiple stimuli. Middle school teachers need to vary their approaches as much as they are able to engage the full complement of their students, regardless of their age, developmental stage, cultural membership or gender. Lessons should require problem-solving and decisionmaking. Teaching Socratically, giving case scenarios, and posing challenges that have to be addressed in cooperative learning groups are all good techniques to help students hone these skills. Students tend to recall material that has emotional resonance. By either teaching content with direct relevance to students’ lives or creating analogies, instructors better engage students both emotionally and cognitively and reinforce the chance that they will retain material. Keep developmental differences in mind when planning lessons and include a mix of concrete and abstract concepts and activities to ensure fuller participation by students. Create a predictable and safe physical, emotional, social and intellectual environment. Teachers must be clear about their expectations of student deportment with one another while sending the message that the class is equally responsible for creating a stimulating learning environment where full participation is the goal. Give students ample opportunity to engage in cooperative learning activities but check on them regularly to help them stay on track, being clear about benchmark measures. Students, like all of us, learn best when they feel included in the material being presented. Research suggests that when stories, images, and values of various cultures are represented, as in a multicultural approach, messages of all types including instruction are more effective.
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To teach students at varying developmental levels from different cultures and ethnicities, from a range of socioeconomic levels and degrees of acculturation, the single most important rule to follow may well be to cast the widest net. For those students, Latino and otherwise, who are more likely to relate collectively, incorporate group work. For African American students, who are more likely to respond eagerly to stories, provide ample time for discussion and role-play. For Asian students socialized to contain emotion and present themselves modestly, a more traditional didactic approach may be most helpful. Knowing that male students may thrive in competitive environments while female students may enjoy collaborative activities more, create group games to entice both genders. Of course, the challenge of the multicultural classroom is how to meet all these needs with inclusion being the key. Factoring in the concept of multiple intelligences, as posited by Howard Gardner, makes it clear that it is not a question of whether or not a student is ‘‘smart,’’ but how that student is smart. Presenting a core concept and providing students with a variety of approaches to learn and process not only helps improve retention but engages a greater number of students in the learning process overall. Equally important is the student’s perception that the classroom is a safe place–one where the student will be challenged to perform at a level he/she dared not hope he/she could achieve while being supported by a teacher who is interested in knowing the student in a way that promotes self-expression without fear of discrimination. Such a classroom also enables students to make important social connections in their lives and to receive the support needed to learn who they really are.
Conclusion The majority of young adolescents have serious doubts about how well adults respect them, with only slightly more than 1/3 believing that they do. While the middle school years are critical in so many ways, much more needs to be done to provide the developmental fit necessary to engage students in meaningful learning. At present we are losing these students. While 2/3 of sixth graders feel a part of their schools, this figure drops to 46% by eighth grade. When students of color, particularly males, are queried, the percentage is even lower. Middle school students seek caring teachers, although there is no universal definition as to whom these
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individuals are. In general, teachers are perceived as being respectful and caring of students when they treat them fairly, forgive them for making mistakes and, indeed, provide opportunities to learn from them. Most importantly, middle school students remain engaged in school and the learning process when they feel known and understood by administrators and teachers. See also: > Academic achievement in minority children; > Adolescent ethnic identity; > Cultural issues in education; > Cross-cultural learning styles; > Multicultural education
Suggested Reading George, P. S., & Alexander, W. M. (2003). The exemplary middle school. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth/Thomson Learning. Irvin, J. L. (Ed.). (1997). What current research says to the middle level practitioner. Columbus, OH: National Middle School Association. Johnson-Powell, G., & Yamamoto, J. (Eds.). (1997). Transcultural child development: Psychological assessment and treatment. New York, NY: John Wiley and Sons.
Minimal Brain Dysfunction Dinelia Rosa
Minimal Brain Dysfunction (MBD) is an obsolete term used in the early 1960s to describe what we know today as Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD.) The original term was changed in the late 1960s to Hyperkinetic Disorder of Childhood, later on to Attention Deficit Disorder, and most recently to Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder. Minimal Brain Dysfunction (MBD) or ADHD refers to an impairment of brain functions that affects the area of the brain associated with perception, behavior, and academic ability. More specifically, ADHD affects one or more of the basic psychological processes involved in understanding or in using spoken or written language, and is characterized by dyslexia, difficulty in writing, hyperactivity, or mental retardation. The original term made reference to the degree of lesion or damage to the brain causing the dysfunction.
As opposed to the big brain damage found in the diagnosis of cerebral palsy or retardation, the damage in Minimal Brain Dysfunction was considered relatively small. New research seems to indicate that the condition is caused by biochemical neurotransmitter deficiencies in the brain, which are genetic and maturational in nature. This predisposes the brain to an above normal susceptibility to any stress. Prematurity of the nervous system, especially the left hemisphere of the brain, has also been another explanation. Psychological and social factors are also associated with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder. Manifestations of Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder are grouped in two areas: learning disorders and behavioral problems. Disorders of listening, thinking, reading, writing, spelling, or mathematics are related to left-brain immaturity. Behavioral problems are related to right brain excesses. Learning difficulties related with visual, hearing, or motor handicaps, mental retardation, emotional disturbance, or environment disadvantage are not included in the definition of Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder. The incidence of ADHD is about 10% of all schoolchildren and is found more frequently in boys than girls. The reason for this is that boys have a higher incidence of right brain dominance than girls. The left-brain is associated with thinking and inhibitory processes while the right brain is related to level of activity. Treatment of this condition depends on the type of dysfunction, level of severity, and on whether the child has a combination of manifestations, learning difficulties, and behavioral problems. Interventions range from classroom behavior modification plans to medication. Parent and teacher collaboration is very important to help children with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder. See also: > Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD); > Dyslexia; > Learning disabilities; > Special education
Suggested Reading Barkley, R. (1998). Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder: A handbook for diagnosis and treatment. New York: Guilford Press. Nass, R. D., & Leventhal, F. (2004). 100 questions and answers about your child’s attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. New York: Jones and Bartlett Publishers.
Minority identity development model
Minority Identity Development Model Oksana Yakushko . Tabethah Mack . Derek Iwamoto
The earliest model of minority identity development was introduced by Dr. William Cross in the 1970s. His Model of Nigrescence is a theory of identity development that offers an explanation of the individual, dynamic process of transformation of African Americans. This model measured development on the basis of lower to higher levels of awareness of the impact of race on a person’s life. Cross’s theory sparked the emergence of multiple racial and ethnic-identity development theories and research, and continues to serve as a basis for models of minority identity development. Minority identity development models are based on the assumption that individuals from racial and ethnic minority backgrounds grow up and live in the context of discrimination and oppression. A typical model is anchored in the belief that this context of oppression leads minority individuals to develop attitudes and behaviors consistent with their internal struggle to integrate or resist societal views. Racial and ethnic identity development is a process of developing racial and ethnic self-consciousness, which involves one’s progression and regression into various stages of building a self-concept and self-esteem as well as a group-identity.
A Model of Minority Identity Development The key concepts in minority identity development models include the personality identity and social identity development components. The identity change process is seen as dynamic and involves re-socialization and nonlinear movement through the various levels of development. The five levels of individual minority identity transformation include: (1) Pre-encounter; (2) Encounter; (3) Immersion–Emersion; (4) Internalization; and (5) Internalization–Commitment. During the Pre-encounter, individuals typically exhibit a color-blind (i.e., ‘‘race does not matter’’) attitude and a majority culture-focused group frame of
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reference. At this level, individuals have low self-concept and may be uncomfortable with or ashamed of being a minority. Minority youth may avoid contact with other minorities because of the internalized messages of prejudice and discrimination. In the Encounter level, individuals become aware of discrimination and oppression, and may begin to consider what it means to be a minority. Often this awareness results from an incident of discrimination that helps the individuals become aware of the central role of race in their lives and how others perceive them. Individuals at the Immersion– Emersion level are likely to shift their reference group solely to their minority group. The pent-up frustration and anger towards majority-culture individuals may be quite evident at this time of development. For example, minority youth may perceive their educators and school administrators as being a part of a larger discriminatory society and may resist their help or instruction. On the other hand, minority youth may seek out mentorship and friendship with those minority adults and peers with whom they come into contact. Internalization marks a level when a person begins to feel secure and take pride in their identity. The last level of Internalization–Commitment suggests that individuals can begin to use their self-knowledge and understanding of oppression in socially active ways. For example, youth organizations that fight racism or discrimination based on other group memberships may become central to those adolescents who are in this latest stage of identity development.
Minority Identity Development of Children and Youth The process of minority identity development among children and youth may be further complicated when it conflicts with their needs to develop in other areas of their lives, such as educationally or socially. Parents and peers can exert tremendous influence on how minority youth experience their identities. Role models of positive minority identity development in their immediate environment can help youth recognize the significance of struggling with discrimination to establish an integrated, holistic, and affirmative sense of self. Moreover, the school environment is one of the key contributors to how minority youth view themselves. Racist or null (i.e., not actively anti-racist) school environments can result in youths’ stagnation in the
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early levels of minority identity development. Low self-esteem, low educational motivation and attainment, and acting out behaviors that minority youth might exhibit are consistent with their struggle to define themselves in an environment that denigrates them. Racial/ethnic minority youth who are subject to predominately White and non-responsive educational environments may feel isolated in their struggles against overt and covert acts of racism directed toward them. On the other hand, multicultural and anti-racist educational environments can provide minority youth with the encouragement to explore the impact of racism on their identities. Since the 1960s and 1970s, scholars and teachers have gathered an enormous amount of materials about various oppressed groups and have provided conceptual and practical maps for how to integrate multiculturalism into all aspects of education. Active steps on the part of the communities of color and their allies, educational systems, their administrators and educators to highlight the importance of diversity, and the significance and richness of multiple perspectives can help minority youth in their process of developing an integrated sense of self.
Practical Applications of Minority Identity Development in School Settings In addition to providing school personnel and students with a basic understanding of Minority Identity Development, it is imperative that a brief and broadly outlined set of applications be provided as an example for addressing the needs and expectations of students and school personnel working together in an everdiversifying climate. Minority identity development is a process of personal transformation that unfolds as persons interact with their environment. Adolescents belonging to the ‘‘minority’’ group may face more difficult challenges than those normally experienced during adolescent identity development. For example, experiencing discrimination based on ethnic identity, as well as pressure to assimilate or imitate the values, beliefs, and behaviors of White culture. Thus, realworld applications of the minority identity development model are recommended to comprehensively address the complexities of academic culture. Because the world of school does not exist in a social vacuum, focusing on practical solutions is important to the
overall well-being and social development of all youth, particularly youth who are members of the ‘‘minority’’ culture. These practical applications can provide real-world connections for students to engage in educational material and to bring their own experiences to the classroom environment, thereby making learning both personal and meaningful for them. Schools can teach all students (both from the minority and majority culture) to be more self-reflective, which may involve asking questions such as how students think their ‘‘race or ethnicity’’ has contributed to their sense of self and their roles in their family, school and society at large. The following are practical recommendations for application in school settings:
Infuse cross-cultural information into the curriculum to address issues related to identity development. The use of peer education, multimedia mechanisms (newspapers, television shows, music, etc.), recreational activities, and academic experiences are relevant. School personnel can model the types of behavior they expect to see in students. Serve as role models who provide students with positive, caring influence and reinforce positive attitudes about self, behaviors, and culture. Implement monthly auditorium diversity gatherings to provide students with an opportunity to develop empathy with others and learn problemsolving skills, which may include role-playing and cultural exercises, to process and validate the experiences of persons of color. Training in diversity for students and school personnel. Teach and model effective communication by creating a school environment for students to form diverse friendships and healthy relationships with adults. Deliberately draw attention to issues of diversity: for example, encourage youth to acknowledge and appreciate their physical characteristics and those of others they encounter. Recreational activities that provide students with an opportunity for social interaction and constructive problem solving and team building. Work academic experience: structured job experiences that connect students to supportive adults and community. Students will grow to learn that they play a crucial role in society.
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Implement a curriculum based on the cultural life experiences of diverse ethnic populations. Teach students to be more proactive than reactive through conflict resolution in the educational setting, training, and practicing in-group dynamics formation and facilitation skills.
These are just a few of the many ways in which the theoretical premises in the minority identity development models can be understood and executed in a school. See also: > Discrimination; > Prejudice
Suggested Reading Atkinson, D. R., Morten, G., & Sue, D. W. (1998). Counseling American minorities. Boston: McGraw-Hill. Bennett, M. J. (1986). A developmental approach to training in cultural sensitivity. International Journal of Intercultural Relations, 10, 179–196. Korn, C., & Burztyn, A. (Eds.) (2002). Rethinking multicultural education: Case studies in cultural transition. Westport, CT: Bergin & Garvey.
MMPI > Personality Tests: Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI) and Millon Clinical Multiaxial Inventory (MCMI)
Montessori LeShawndra N Price
The Montessori (pronounced Mon-tuh-SORE-ee) method of education was founded in 1907 by Dr. Maria Montessori, an Italian physician and educator. Montessori aims to foster intelligence and independence in children from birth to adolescence through interaction with the learning environment. The
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Montessori environment contains specially designed, easily manipulated materials that invite children to engage in learning activities of their own individual choice. Under the guidance of a trained teacher, children in Montessori classrooms learn by making discoveries through interactions with the materials. Montessori schools are found world-wide, including more than 4,000 private Montessori schools and 200 public schools with Montessori style programs in the United States (U.S.). The learning environment and role of the teacher in the Montessori classroom differentiates between traditional classroom experiences and experiences of children enrolled in Montessori schools. First, Montessori classrooms are intended for multi-age groups (i.e., 0–3, 3–6, 6–9, 9–12, 12–14). Because of this arrangement, older children share their knowledge with younger children. Next, whereas traditional classrooms emphasize teacher-directed activity, in the Montessori classroom only 20% of activity is teacherdirected and the remaining 80% constitutes independent activity. The Montessori teacher serves as a guide to exploration by preparing appropriate materials, introducing activities, and modifying the environment in support of each child’s intellectual development. Children enjoy multiple activities, freedom of movement, and opportunities for learning and discovery by the child are maximized. Children select their own activities and work at their own pace, allowing a mixture of freedom and self-discipline in an environment specifically designed to meet the developmental needs of the child. As a result, children become engaged in the learning process, build confidence, develop analytic thinking skills, and successfully solve problems independently. While Montessori classrooms differ at each age level, they share three fundamental elements that ensure success for all children when implemented correctly: the prepared environment, the materials, and normalization. The prepared environment refers to the design of the Montessori classroom and facility as an environment that maximizes independent learning and exploration. Multiple activities and a large amount of movement characterize the Montessori prepared environment. Montessori materials are easily manipulated, engaging, and isolate a single concept or idea. Many materials are self-correcting, clearly signifying if they are being used successfully. Materials are interrelated and build upon each other. Thus, continued exploration cultivates mastery at increased levels of complexity. Maria Montessori described normalization as the most
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important outcome of the Montessori method. Normalization describes the development of what Maria Montessori called normal characteristics of childhood—love of work, concentration on tasks, joy, sociability, and selfdiscipline—that only emerge when a child’s developmental needs are met. The majority of Montessori classrooms in the U.S. are preschool classrooms. Five distinct areas constitute the prepared environment in the Montessori preschool classroom:
Practical life enhances the development of task organization and cognitive order through care of self, care of the environment, exercises of grace and courtesy, and coordination of physical movement. The sensorial area enables the child to order, classify, and describe sensory impressions in relation to length, width, temperature, mass, color, and pitch, among others. Mathematics makes use of manipulative materials to enable the child to internalize concepts of number, symbol, sequence, operations, and memorization of basic facts. Language Arts includes oral language development, written expression, reading, the study of grammar, creative dramatics, and children’s literature. Basic skills in writing and reading are developed through the use of sandpaper letters, alphabet cut-outs, and various presentations allowing children to link sounds and letter symbols effortlessly and to express their thoughts through writing. Cultural activities expose the child to basics in geography, history, and life sciences. Music, art, and movement are part of the integrated cultural curriculum.
The preschool environment unifies the psychosocial, physical, and academic functioning of the child. Its important task is to provide students with an early and general foundation that includes a positive attitude toward school, inner security and a sense of order, pride in the physical environment, abiding curiosity, a habit of concentration, habits of initiative and persistence, the ability to make decisions, selfdiscipline, and a sense of responsibility to other members of the class, school, and community. This foundation will enable them to acquire more specialized knowledge and skills throughout their school career. See also: > Early childhood education; > Learning styles; > Preschool
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Suggested Reading Lillard, A. S. (2005). Montessori: The science behind the genius. New York: Oxford University Press. Lillard, P. P., & Jessen, L. L. (2003). Montessori from the start. New York: Schocken. Montessori, M. (1949). The absorbent mind. Madras, India: Kalakshetra Publications.
Suggested Resources Association Montessori Internationale website—http://www. montessori-ami.org/ Montessori Connections—http://www.montessoriconnections. com/: The website for the Montessori Community. American Montessori Society website—http://www.amshq.org/ Permissions: Portions of this entry were adapted from the website of the North American Montessori Teachers’ Association # 1996–2006 and are reprinted with their consent.
Moral Education J Mark Halstead
Moral education may be defined as helping children and young people to acquire a set of beliefs and values regarding what is right and wrong. This set of beliefs guides their intentions, attitudes and behaviors towards others and their environment. Moral education also helps children develop the disposition to act in accordance with such beliefs and values. More fundamentally, it encourages children to reflect on how they should behave and what sort of people they should be. For many people, these questions are linked to religious belief, but moral education programs treat religion and morality as conceptually distinct. Moral educators believe that many young people living in the contemporary world can become morally confused by exposure to factors that may destabilize their moral values, including television, print media, the Internet, social changes in family structures, poor role models in public life, the prioritization of economic values and continuing gender and ethnic inequalities. Postmodernism has also destabilized many ‘grand narratives’ about shared values and universal moral truths by exposing young people to a greater diversity of moral
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beliefs and practices, an increase in moral uncertainty and skepticism, and an ironic, almost playful detachment on the part of some moral thinkers. Moral educators believe that although many young people can handle large influxes of such stimuli, others may become confused or distraught by such exposure. Young people may require help integrating such information and making decisions about whether to retain or discard certain values, and how to retain their core values in a contemporary world. Moral education techniques change as children progress through different developmental stages. Children’s early moral education comes from largely implicit messages from their families and surrounding communities. For example, family members may also help young children understand and articulate their emotions, learn about living with others, develop ideas about right and wrong and develop prosocial attitudes such as trust, sharing, cooperation and helping others. Schools often continue the moral education begun at home, filling in the gaps in children’s knowledge of values and broadening their understanding and experience of personal qualities of character. In contrast to the family and community, schools typically place greater emphasis on public morality and the values of citizenship, tolerance, justice and acceptance of the rule of law. Many schools also encourage children to rationally reflect on the variety of factors they are exposed to. This rational reflection helps children learn how to make independent, rational and informed moral decisions, and construct their own developing framework of moral values. Such critical reflection on moral values continues throughout adulthood; in this way, moral education is a life-long experience. Schools may adopt a number of strategies for moral education. Adults who teach Character Education believe they have a duty to mold children’s character by directly teaching them moral values and shaping their behavior in an attempt to produce positive behavioral patterns and habits. In contrast, adults who teach Values Clarification believe that values should not be imposed on students. Rather, adults should help students clarify their own feelings and views on a wide range of moral issues. Still other adults believe their role is simply to facilitate the development of Moral Reasoning. Lawrence Kohlberg originally included Moral Reasoning as a component of his influential theory of moral development, which posits six invariant stages of moral reasoning that characterize
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judgments about issues of distributive justice. Thus, the teacher’s role is simply to stimulate moral development by encouraging students to move to progressively higher stages of moral reasoning. Finally, many feminist teachers view Caring as the best approach to teaching morality, which posits that one’s intuitive sense of concern or caring for others is a better guide to moral behavior than an ethical system based on a set of rational principles. Moral education may be taught through discrete courses or in an integrated fashion by including it in other subjects such as English, History, Drama, Science, Sport, Religious Studies or Citizenship. Many methods may be used such as circle time, discussion, role play, simulation exercises, co-operative learning, project work, pupil-directed research, problem solving, critical reasoning and philosophy for children. However, the culture of the schooling environment plays an important role in moral education. Moral values may be indirectly absorbed by children through the nature of relationships within the school, the dominant forms of social interaction, teachers who set a good example for the class, school rules and discipline policies (e.g. ‘caught rather than taught’), extra-curricular activities, the way conflicts are resolved, management styles, the attitudes and expectations of teachers, the nature of student involvement in the school, student sub-cultures, and other implicit aspects of the curriculum. An understanding of the moral life of schools is essential for professionals who seek to understand the way children learn values and develop into morally mature adults. See also: > Character education; > Religion, Teaching about; > Tolerance
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Suggested Reading Halstead, J. M., & McLaughlin, T. H. (Eds.) (1999). Education in morality. London: Routledge. Jackson, P. W., Boostrom, R. E., & Hansen, D. T. (1993). The moral life of schools. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.
Suggested Resources Journal of Moral Education – quarterly journal published by Routledge Journals (Taylor and Francis). Association of Moral Education website—http://www.amenetwork. org/
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Multicultural counseling
Multicultural Counseling Cross-Cultural Psychology; > School Counselor; > Roles and Responsibilities of Multiculturally Competent School Counselors >
Multicultural Curriculum Multicultural Education; > Cross-Cultural Psychology; > School Counselor; > Roles and Responsibilities of Multiculturally Competent School Counselors >
Multicultural Education Elaine Chan
Social Context of Multicultural Education North American society is becoming increasingly diverse through immigration and the birth of children into immigrant families. The foreign-born population in the United States (U.S.) represented 11.1% of the total population in the year 2000, for a total of 31.1 million people who were born outside of the country. In addition, over 22 million people in the U.S. changed their state of residence between 1995 and 2000. In Canada, 18.4% of the total population, for a total of 5.4 million people, were born outside the country, and 11.2% of the population identified themselves as members of a visible minority group. Accordingly, the number of immigrant and minority children in North America has increased significantly. More specifically, the number of immigrant children between the ages of 5 and 20 in the U.S. grew from 3.5 to 8.6 million from 1970 to 1995. Currently one in 15 children of school age was born outside of the U.S., and one in seven speaks a language other than English
at home. Of the 1.8 million immigrants who arrived in Canada from 1991 to 2001, 310,000 were between the ages of 5 and 16. Not surprisingly, multiculturalism has been identified as the key educational issue of the epoch. The increasing numbers of immigrant and minority students have changed the educational landscape of North American schools such that addressing issues pertaining to multicultural education have become critical for teachers, administrators, and curriculum policy makers as they work to meet the educational and social needs of this diverse student population. The role of schooling in shaping the development of children as future citizens of a culturally-diverse society cannot be underestimated. Not only is the academic performance of this population at stake but so too is their social development as contributing members of society. In many ways, schools may be seen as representing mini-societies in that what children learn in school will shape their sense of how they see society functioning as adults. A democratic school environment where children feel challenged as learners and valued as individuals, where their cultures are acknowledged in positive ways, and where they feel that they may contribute positively to their school environment helps to shape their sense of society as democratic. In fact, some researchers state that if schools are not democratic, the society in which they function cannot be democratic either. Statements such as these attest to the extent to which a society is greatly affected by the schooling experienced by children of that society. Given the role of schooling in shaping students as future citizens, the importance of what occurs in schools is obvious. Fundamental belief in the importance of equity of opportunity for all students is substantiated by the existence of equity policies adopted by school boards in North America. It is stated explicitly in these policy documents that the school board is committed to educational equity for all associated students, staff, parents, patrons, and community groups, regardless of economic status, race, ethnic background, culture, religion, sex, sexual orientation, age or mental, physical, or linguistic ability. School boards recognize that inequitable treatment may result in educational, social, and career outcomes that do not reflect the abilities, experiences, and contributions of students, employees, and parent and community partners, and that equity of opportunity, and equity of access to programs, services, and resources offered through their schools are critical to the successful
Multicultural education
achievement of all those involved. These policies are examples of the commitment of school boards to preventing inequitable treatment of individuals in ways that may limit their success or prevent them from contributing fully to society. These policies are set into a societal context whereby the rights and responsibilities of individuals are protected through the existence of national policies. The American ‘‘Bill of Rights’’ was drafted in an attempt to protect the rights of individuals, while the ‘‘Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms’’ is recognition of the importance of equal protection and equal benefit of the law without discrimination due to race, national or ethnic origin, color, religion, sex, age or mental or physical disability. The ‘‘Multiculturalism Act’’ in Canada acknowledges the racial, ethnic and religious diversity of Canadians, and supports the preservation and enhancement of the multicultural heritage of Canadians in the economic, social, cultural and political life of the country.
Acknowledging Student Diversity in School Contexts Recognition of the importance of equality of access to school-sponsored activities for all students is in accordance with the ‘‘Canadian Multiculturalism Act,’’ the ‘‘Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms,’’ and school board policies. These policies help to support multicultural education by guiding the development and implementation of school practices for their increasingly diverse population of students. Including the home cultures and languages of immigrant and minority students in school contexts is a means of affirming their diversity and their linguistic and cultural knowledge. Recognizing this diversity through school curricula and practices, however, is often a challenge for educators and policy makers. To begin with, the practice of accommodating for diversity in the curriculum may be controversial. Some believe in providing an academically differentiated curriculum to support immigrant and minority students as they develop English language skills, and programs to support the development and maintenance of maternal language proficiency. Others contest these programs and argue instead for immersion of these students into a regular, mainstream program as a means of expediting the process of assimilation into the mainstream society. Rather than
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supporting maternal language maintenance, they advocate for the provision of resources to develop English language skills quickly and to a high level of proficiency. There are also non-immigrant or mainstream students who do not see themselves as members of a minority group, and do not see the need for multicultural education or the importance of learning about diverse cultures and languages. This sentiment is especially pronounced in areas outside metropolitan areas where immigrants are known to settle. Given the increasing global diversity, however, issues of multiculturalism and diversity are of relevance to all communities. Immigration and migration have altered the ethnic and linguistic composition of North American communities such that even areas previously known to be relatively culturally homogeneous are becoming increasingly diverse. In addition to challenges associated with gaining support for multicultural education, acknowledging the home cultures of immigrant and minority students can be difficult even when the practice of accommodating for diversity in a school context is supported. Teachers, administrators, parents, students, and other members of the school community may have different ideas of what the term multicultural education means and how best to educate children about diversity. The term may be interpreted as the provision of education programs for an increasingly diverse population of school children. It may be interpreted as the development and implementation of curriculum and school practices that acknowledge the diverse languages and cultures that immigrant and minority children bring to their North American school contexts. The term could also be used to refer to the curriculum content used to teach children about the importance of positive attitudes toward diversity.
Student Perspectives For immigrant and minority students, English and maternal language development programs have the potential to shape their schooling experiences and sense of identity in significant ways. Examining student experiences at the intersection of home and school influences informs the development and implementation of these programs designed to facilitate the adaptation of immigrant students to North American schools.
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English Language Acquisition Lack of English language proficiency among immigrant and minority students is a substantial obstacle to assimilation and settlement into their North American school and neighborhood communities. Not only can the inability to communicate in English be a hindrance to academic success and access to higher education, ELL (English Language Learner) students have also referred to the lack of English proficiency as contributing to a negative sense of belonging among English-speaking peer groups in diverse school contexts. In addition, English as a Second Language (ESL) students experience a disproportionate rate of academic failure and school dropout when compared to non-ESL students. Research has identified these students as having an increased likelihood of leaving school before the completion of their high school diplomas, and as having an increased likelihood of being engaged in negative group activities such as gang membership and crimes. In an attempt to meet the language needs of minority students in North American schools, the number and range of English language development programs have increased dramatically. ESL programs were designed for students born in North America or newcomers whose first language is a language other than English or is a variety of English different from the kind of English used for instruction in North American schools. English Literacy Development (ELD) programs were designed for students new to North America whose first language is something other than English or is a variety of English different from that used for instruction in North American schools. Students in these programs are generally from areas of the world where their access to education has been limited, or where they may have had limited opportunities to develop language and literacy skills in any language. Availability and funding to support these programs, however, has been identified as being inadequate in meeting the language needs of the students. Although ESL students often attain native-like oral fluency after just a couple of years of immersion in a North American school, further support in the form of continued, intensive ESL classes are needed to help students to reach English language levels needed to successfully participate in the curriculum mandated by school boards and provincial or state ministries of education. This gap between need and availability is the result of limited school board budgets that cannot adequately
cover the years of intensive English language development support needed by students to succeed in advanced academic work. Academic success of English-minority students is further hindered by the frequency with which they are erroneously identified as having learning disabilities due to their limited ability to perform in the classroom and on standardized tests. English minority students are sometimes placed in Special Education programs that further limit their possibilities for advancement to higher education.
Maternal Language Maintenance In addition to pressure to achieve high levels of English language proficiency with sometimes inadequate support within the school context, immigrant and minority students may feel pressure from their parents and ethnic communities to develop and maintain proficiency in their maternal language. Support for the development and maintenance of maternal and heritage languages is important for a number of reasons. Language proficiency contributes to a sense of identity and affiliation in both the school context as well as in the home and in ethnic communities. Young adults of minority background who do not speak their family’s home languages reported feeling isolated in their own families when they were unable to express themselves adequately with older, non-English speaking family members. Furthermore, when younger generations of immigrant and minority families are unable to speak or to understand the home language beyond a basic level of proficiency, their parents, grandparents, and older members of their ethnic communities lose the ability to communicate ideas about living well in a constantly changing world, their hopes and fears for their future, and how they would like them to grow up. In short, they lose the ability to teach and communicate with their children.
Issues of Identity Given that immigrant and minority students may be learning to speak, read, and write in English, while at the same time, feeling pressure to maintain and to develop proficiency in their maternal languages and to behave according to cultural expectations, it is not surprising that they may feel they are being pulled
Multicultural education
in many different directions. Their sense of ethnic identity, while still fragile in this transient and cross-cultural school context, is constantly being negotiated. In extreme cases, students who have difficulties understanding and/or communicating in their maternal languages and English may feel like outsiders in both their school contexts and in their homes. The failure to support the maintenance and development of maternal language proficiency for students of ethnic minority background can have dire consequences for sense of ethnic identity and sense of belonging in their families and ethnic communities. Researchers call, instead, for the development rather than the denial of linguistic resources, and an enhanced awareness of theories such as the linguistic interdependence principle that draws upon knowledge of one language to enhance the development of another. Existing multiculturalism policies support the need for students to have their culture acknowledged in ways that contribute positively to their sense of identity. Despite the motivation to include the home languages and cultures of minority and immigrant students in school contexts, however, developing and implementing effective and respectful ways of supporting English and maternal language development is a challenge.
Cultural Practices and Traditions The inclusion of culture in the curriculum as a means of helping students to develop positive racial attitudes has been identified as one of many well-documented personal, professional and societal benefits associated with welcoming diverse cultures and languages into school contexts. In addition to concerns about being excluded from peer groups and failing to meet expectations of their teachers, students may live the tensions of parental expectations and standards for behavior that, at times, conflict with those of their peers, and ways in which they see themselves. Immigrant and minority students may also be under pressure to help their parents achieve success in their new countries through financial and/or business endeavors. The differences between linguistic and cultural practices in school and at home contribute to this sense of dissonance. Despite extensive research supporting the importance of recognizing maternal language development and maintenance in a school context, developing programs and practices to reflect these ideals is difficult. There are many who advocate for the inclusion
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of heritage language programs in schools as a means of supporting maternal language maintenance. As presented earlier, loss of proficiency in the maternal language may contribute to a loss of intimacy, warmth, and sense of belonging the language embodies among family members. It may further hinder access to the heritage culture as parents lose the ability to communicate freely with their children to teach them about their home culture in the language in which they feel most comfortable. The learning of international languages by all students is not only a means of teaching new linguistic skills, it is also a means to foster the development of supportive attitudes toward foreign languages and cultures. There are others, however, who advocate for English-only instruction with the goal of achieving high levels of English language proficiency to facilitate the adaptation and assimilation of immigrant and minority students into the mainstream culture. The devaluation of the home culture in favor of the majority culture, the ridicule experienced by children unable to speak English, and difficulties associated with maternal language maintenance contribute to hinder immigrant children from maintaining maternal language skills. Under these circumstances, even children who are able to communicate in their maternal language may hesitate to do so for fear of setting themselves apart from their peers. In addition to challenges of learning English and maintaining and developing their maternal languages, new immigrant and minority students may also live in families where they are struggling financially as their parents attempt to adapt to the North American work context. For these students, academic, physical, emotional, and social development challenges associated with economic insecurity are exacerbated by language barriers, the process of migration and acculturation, and limited access to support programs. Overall, there are many complexities of adaptation and assimilation into a North American school context, and supporting ESL acquisition and heritage language maintenance for immigrant and minority students through school-based programs that are not initially apparent to teachers, parents, administrators or policy makers. Many issues raised here highlight the extent to which challenges associated with ESL education represent only the tip of the iceberg with regard to issues that need to be taken into consideration as culturally and academically appropriate curricula are developed to address an increasingly
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diverse student population. Knowledge gained about students’ and teachers’ experiences of language learning and language teaching in their school contexts informs curriculum practice, research, and theory in a culturally-diverse society.
of interacting and accommodating for beliefs when they differ significantly, and to find ways of incorporating culture into the curriculum in ways that are relevant to the students.
Preparing Teachers to Work on Diverse School Landscapes
Student Experiences of Identity Tensions in a Culturally-Diverse School Context
As indicated in the previous section, it is essential to include culture in the school curriculum, and to support culturally-sensitive school practices in a school context. Developing and implementing culturally-relevant pedagogy and a culturally-sensitive curriculum that builds on the experiences and knowledge that students of ethnic minority backgrounds bring to North American school contexts represent ways in which the home cultures of students may be recognized at school. To accomplish these goals, the professional development of teachers must include the development of a body of knowledge about teaching and learning in culturally-diverse communities. There is a need for educators and policy makers to acquire knowledge and understanding of the cultural backgrounds of their pupils to diagnose strengths, weaknesses, and cognitive differences. The process of gathering this information, however, is a challenge for a number of reasons. Currently, much of the literature in multicultural education is an examination of curriculum from a teacher perspective, illustrating ways in which students responded positively to initiatives to acknowledge or to include the home cultures of the students into the school context. More in-depth examination of teacher experiences working with culturally-diverse students is needed. In addition to learning about the intricacies of teacher experiences as they work with students of diverse ethnic and religious backgrounds, the issue of White teachers teaching ethnically diverse students is increasingly drawing attention. The growing body of research that examines teacher/student participation in diverse school contexts has revealed many complexities. For example, there is an expectation for teachers, administrators, and other members of culturally-diverse school communities to be accepting and tolerant of the diversity of their students, and to support policies that emphasize the importance of ensuring that all children have equal access to opportunities and privileges available. Practically, however, there is also the need to develop ways
With respect to student experiences of the inclusion of culture in the school curriculum, there seems to be a tendency to overlook student voice in research on schooling. In particular, there is a puzzling lack of research that examined the curricular experiences of diverse students from the perspective of the students themselves. Existing research reveals ways in which ideas for innovative curricula and the good intentions of teachers, administrators, researchers, and policy makers may unfold in unanticipated ways. Programs intended to alleviate feelings of isolation sometimes contributed to immigrant and minority students feeling alienated from their peers, and parent and student responses to language programs often proved to be different from and much more nuanced than expected. For example, participation in school curriculum events may contribute to shaping a sense of ethnic identity in students of color in ways not anticipated by teachers, administrators or policy makers. When diverse students attend North American schools, they bring experiences of their home cultures that have developed through interaction with family and community members. Given the potential for vast differences between the home and school cultures, it is often the case that students experience identity tensions as they move between home, community, and school. In fact, this movement from home to school and back again each day for immigrant and minority children may even be referred to as a crossing of cultures. Learning about these cross-cultural school experiences in multicultural school contexts will further understanding of factors needed to facilitate the integration of immigrant and minority students into North American school communities. As described above, balancing affiliation to the home culture while simultaneously abiding by expectations of peer groups in the public school context may be difficult for immigrant and minority students. School experiences involving conflicting messages about the value of curriculum events may further complicate the development of their sense of ethnic identity in a North
Multicultural issues in special education
American context. Seemingly culturally-neutral school events may introduce tensions between foreign-born parents whose values and beliefs have been shaped by schooling experiences in their home countries and their children who are being educated in North American schools. Activities in and out of classrooms designed to acknowledge ethnic communities, and strengthen cultural awareness of others may evoke complicated, even conflicting, responses from students and their parents. School events may highlight differences in practices, beliefs, and values between norms in the home culture and those common in the school culture such that differences may show up as identity tensions for some students. In this way, curriculum may be perceived as the intersection of school narratives and histories. The inclusion of culture in the curriculum further highlights the complexity of the interaction of these narratives. Acknowledging the cultural contribution of diverse students in school contexts, however, is critical given the diversity of the current student population. According to cultural philosophies of diversity, there is an assumption that acknowledgement of diversity is important in multicultural societies, and that people are happier and more fulfilled when their home cultures are recognized. Teachers may take for granted that students and their families would want their home cultures to be included in the school context, and may make the assumption that acknowledging the diversity of their students through school events and activities would be positively received by the students themselves. Curriculum specialists and policy makers need to consider the complexities and tensions associated with implementing a culturally-sensitive curriculum as they move from theory to practice. Customs, practices, and languages played out in a school context contribute to students’ ethnic identity. Given the potential for curriculum events to shape the ethnic identity of students involved, it is essential to address ways in which the implementation of existing practices and policies can be informed by the lived experiences of students on diverse school landscapes. Knowledge about student, teacher, administrator, and parent experiences of multicultural education informs curriculum practices, research, and theory pertaining to the development of curriculum policies for diverse school contexts. Research that examines the school experiences of students of diverse ethnic, racial, linguistic, and religious backgrounds contributes to the field of multicultural education by informing teachers. Thinking about the kinds of programs needed to
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support multicultural education in school systems raises questions about: the impact of the inability to speak English; the loss of the ability to communicate with family members in their home language; and the role of North American schools in providing programs that support language and social development. Questions to be asked include: What is the goal of multicultural education? What kinds of curricula are needed to support English acquisition and maternal language maintenance among minority and immigrant students, and the development of knowledge and understanding of diversity among all students? How are educators to draw upon knowledge gained from experience to inform their work with diverse student populations? These questions help highlight the complexity of moving from multicultural education ideals to the practice of developing and implementing programs for immigrant and minority students in North American schools. These questions reinforce the need for further research to explore these issues. See also: > Cultural issues in education; ethnic identity; > Acculturation
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Suggested Reading Banks, J. A., & McGee Banks, C. A. (Eds.) (1995). Handbook of research on multicultural education. Toronto: Prentice-Hall International. Ladson-Billings, G., & Gillborn, D. (Eds.) (2004). The Routledge Falmer reader in multicultural education. New York: Routledge Falmer, Taylor & Francis Group. Nieto, S. (2005). Affirming diversity: The sociopolitical context of multicultural education (4th ed.). New York: Longman. Phillion, J., He, M. F., & Connelly, F. M. (Eds.) (2005). Narrative and experience in multicultural education. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.
Multicultural Issues in Special Education Lakeisha Jourdan . Zalika S Wright . Jennifer West
Special education, in theory, has developed out of a movement that initially pushed the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) into fruition. The
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goals and responsibilities of special education include: to design and implement instructional interventions for prevention; to evaluate instruction to help students with disabilities overcome learning obstacles; and to develop skills to help students actively participate in school and society at large. Special education is intended to be individualized, specialized, intensive, and structured. However, when evaluating the practices of special education in a diverse society, it becomes evident that special education is not living up to its potential to meet the needs of diverse students. The United States (U.S.) school system has continued to become more diverse in the student population served in classrooms today. The current wave of immigrants to the U.S. is the largest in history. It is estimated that by the year 2050, over half the student population will consist of Hispanics, Asians, Native Americans, and African Americans. Special education, as an extension of general education, is facing the same diverse needs of students that general education endures. Thus, the push for multicultural awareness and practice extends to special education to meet the needs of culturally diverse students. Special education has long been targeted for problems with over-identification of culturally diverse and minority students in the program, compared with population ratios and majority students. Referral bias from teachers, inappropriate assessment use or interpretation, and misunderstandings about student behavior and learning styles have all been implicated as major problems of special education. Educators, psychologists, and administrators have been criticized for their lack of knowledge and competence of the sociocultural, linguistic, community-based differences that exist between students, which many argue have led to the overrepresentation, overidentification, and ineffectiveness of interventions for diverse students in special education. Service providers and educators can enhance their competence in multicultural awareness and skills in identification, referral, assessment, and intervention to better serve the needs of a diverse student population. In addition, service providers must increase their cultural competence in the identification and assessment of specific disabilities within cultural groups. Although eligibility for special education can be categorized as mental retardation, specific learning disability, speech and language disability, emotional disturbance (ED), physical impairment, and other health impairments (e.g., attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), exposure to lead, among others) under IDEA, cultural differences can have an effect on
the manifestation of these disabilities. As such, they warrant specific consideration for each student. Approximately 1.5 million minority children were identified as having mental retardation, emotional disturbances, or a specific learning disability. More than 876,000 of theses cases were Black or Native American youth. It is evident that special education must address the issue of multicultural concerns. Multicultural competence is a willingness to recognize and accept that there are other ways of viewing behavior, as well as a willingness to meet the needs of those who are different, including those with disabilities. Multicultural practices in assessment and consultation for placement and services are essential in improving outcomes for all students, and in particular in reducing disproportionate placement and the achievement gap of culturally diverse students in special education. Each disability holds a particular set of concerns in relation to multicultural issues, and therefore can be examined separately.
Emotional Disturbance In the category of emotional disturbance, there is overrepresentation of minority students in programs for children with behavior problems. Arguments contend that misunderstandings of cultural differences, inaccurate assessment, and misdiagnoses have been a concern for identifying students with true emotional problems from those with behavior difficulties. Many of the students receiving services under this category either have learning disabilities that have not been properly assessed or identified, or emotional problems that are not being treated appropriately. Most assessment tools used to assess behavior are based and normed on data primarily gathered from White American middle-class children. Therefore, psychologists and educators need to be aware that diverse students embody values held by different cultures and family socialization patterns that greatly influence their behavior. Awareness that culturally different behaviors are not equivalent to deficits in social skills or behavior disorders can result in fewer misinterpretations and misdiagnoses of culturally different students as emotionally disturbed. Ultimately, to meet the needs of culturally diverse students, service providers must view student behavior within a cultural context, use balanced and culturally appropriate assessments, and avoid classifying behavioral differences as pathological.
Multicultural issues in special education
Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder Eligibility for special education services falling under the diagnosis of ADHD has increased dramatically over the past decade. Again, cultural differences are important when identifying what is socially appropriate behavior for some diverse students. Educators have tended to refer males at higher rates than females for suspected ADHD. Ethnic minority students have also been disproportionately referred by teachers for suspected ADHD compared with majority students. This phenomenon has been attributed to the significant cultural differences between the school and home socialization experiences of some ethnically and socioeconomically diverse student groups. Researchers have argued that what is perceived as hyperactivity varies significantly across cultures and countries, even when uniformed criteria are used. In fact, researchers have found that some cultural groups reinforce high levels of stimulation and energetic movement that can be manifested in ways that mimic ADHD. Consequently, service providers and educators must recognize that hyperactive behavior should be understood within the context of cultural environments and expectations, in addition to the recognition of differences between expectations of school and home. Identification and intervention of ADHD among diverse students must be embedded within a cultural context and understanding of individual differences and social expectations. Practitioners must be ready to examine behavior from a multicultural perspective using culturally appropriate assessments, understanding cultural expectations, and proposing interventions individually tailored for the student to navigate through home and school effectively.
Learning Disabilities Intervention and diagnosis for specific learning disabilities also address multicultural issues and have been criticized for ignoring multicultural differences between diverse students. In general, a learning disability is a disorder in one or more of the basic psychological processes involved in the understanding or use of language, spoken or written. Learning disabilities may manifest in the imperfect ability to listen, think, speak, read, write, spell, or do mathematical calculations. Currently, almost 2.9 million school-aged children in the U.S. are classified as having specific learning disabilities (SLDs) and receive some kind of special
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education. Children with learning disabilities make up approximately 5% of all school-aged children in public schools. Studies show that learning disabilities do not fall evenly across racial/ethnic groups: 1% of White children and 2.6% of non-Hispanic Black children were receiving learning-disability-related special education services. Reasons for this include the differences between what is expected to be known within an educational setting and what is expected to be known within the home/community setting, dialectical disparities between educators and students, and the validity/reliability of the instruments used in recognizing learning disabilities.
Speech and Language Special education services for speech and language require consideration of multicultural concerns as well. Nearly one million school-age children are diagnosed with speech and language impairment. Speech and language disorders often refer to problems in communication, which include areas such as oral motor function. Delays and disorders include simple sound substitutions, and the inability to understand or use language or the oral motor mechanism for functional speech and feeding. Some causes of speech and language disorders include hearing loss, neurological disorders, brain injury, mental retardation, drug abuse, physical impairments such as cleft lip or palate, and vocal abuse or misuse. As with many other disabilities, cultural influences should be considered when diagnosing speech and language disorders. Although many of the characteristics of a speech and language disorder are more definitive in their diagnosis as they relate to speech (hearing loss and physical impairments such as cleft lip or palate, and vocal abuse or misuse), cultural influences must not be ignored when making the final decision about language problems. Many of the symptoms that qualify children for a speech and language disability are based on the rules of standardized English, which often conflict with languages taught and spoken within communities of children.
Mental Retardation Special education has also long been criticized for the identification of culturally diverse and minority students under the disability of mental retardation. African American students are three times more likely
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as Whites to be labeled mentally retarded. Consequently, in at least thirteen states, more than 2.75% of all African Americans enrolled in special education were labeled mentally retarded compared with the national average of 0.75% for White students. Moreover, in no states did the incidence of mental retardation among White students rise above 2.32%. These statistics illustrate the need for more culturally responsive approaches to identifying and assessing mental retardation. As with all disabilities, the student-topopulation ratio should exist for the occurrence of mental retardation among cultural and ethnic groups. Therefore, the statistics indicate that there is a problem with the identification of minority students who are really eligible for special education services under the disability of mental retardation. Practitioners must be aware of cultural concerns when assessing intelligence and the kinds of assessments used to identify adaptive skills. Multiculturally competent providers will recognize the importance of identifying all relevant information from the classroom environment to the home and community environment in determining eligibility for mental retardation. Multicultural issues in special education involve culturally competent service providers, educators, and administrators collaborating with families to ensure the needs of all students are met. Multicultural competence permeates all areas of special education, from the referral and identification process to the intervention and treatment phase. It requires understanding and skill attainment to use culturally appropriate assessments and interventions to service diverse students, their families, and the school effectively. See also: > Multicultural education; > System of Multicultural Pluralistic Assessment (SOMPA)
Suggested Resources National Association of School Psychologist (NASP)—www.nasponline.org: This website offers news, resources, and membership for school psychologists.
Multicultural Teacher Training Lakeisha Jourdan
Multicultural teacher training is the link between the goals of multicultural theory and multicultural practice, translating theory and concepts into real-world practice for teachers in training. Through institutional change, multicultural training attempts to improve schooling by fostering the following: (1) changes in the curriculum; (2) inclusion of diverse classroom teaching materials; (3) increased awareness of teaching and learning styles, and their impact on diverse learners; (4) paradigm shifts among teachers and administrators; and (5) changes in the goals and norms of schools themselves. Multicultural teacher training developed as a response to meeting the goals of multicultural education. It is estimated that by the year 2020, students of color will represent nearly half of the elementary and high school population in the United States (U.S.). Yet, a major concern of the 1960s, which still persists today, is a mismatch between the race and gender of teachers with the student population and overall make-up of the U.S. population: approximately 87% of current teachers in the U.S. are White and 75% are female.
Suggested Reading Cartledge, G., Kea, C., & Simmons-Reed, E. (2002). Serving culturally diverse children with serious emotional disturbance and their families. Journal of Child and Family Studies, 11(1), 113–126. Gingerich, K. J., Turnock, P., Litfin, J. K., & Rosen, L. A. (1998). Diversity and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. Journal of Clinical Psychology, 54(4), 415–426. Marston, D. (2002). A functional and intervention-based assessment approach to establishing discrepancy for students with learning disabilities. In R. Bradley, L. Donaldson, & D. Hallahan (Eds.), Identification of Learning Disabilities (pp. 437–447). Mahwah NJ: Erlbaum.
Multicultural Teacher Training and Practices Multicultural teacher training must undergo the same paradigm shift that multicultural education has endured. The first step is in raising teachers’ awareness about how their own racial identity, class, gender, and other identities or beliefs are shaped by perspectives and ideologies of the dominant culture, the education practices rooted in these perspectives, and to question and rethink these paradigms. The result is teachers
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who are able to provide pedagogy that supports educational and social equality and change for the U.S. education system. The development of a clearer sense of their own ethnic or cultural identities and attitudes towards other groups will help prospective teachers understand that their students also bring with them their own ethnic and cultural identities. Prospective teachers can then be reminded of the importance of acknowledging and valuing diverse cultures. Teacher perspectives and teacher education programs play an irrefutable role in the mismatch between the needs of diverse students and the curricular approaches to education. Higher education has not been consistent in providing student teachers with significant experiences in working with students’ who are racially, culturally, socioeconomically, and linguistically diverse. Many teachers in training hold preconceived notions about ethnic minority students and those from low-income backgrounds. These kinds of barriers are, however, not static. Teacher judgments, perspectives, expectations, and instructional strategies can change. Many researchers argue that the first step in this change process begins with teacher education programs highlighting the dangers of maintaining negative and critical judgments about multicultural education. Multicultural teacher education programs are in a unique position to address the responsibility of developing a relationship with the communities in which they are located and the school populations that their graduates are preparing to serve. In this respect, they differ from regular teacher education programs by the specific concentration on diverse learners. Multicultural teacher training incorporates opportunities for prospective teachers to demonstrate competency in the multicultural field based on internships and practicum experiences in diverse urban schools. Prospective teachers can then become exposed to successful teaching in multicultural settings.
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curriculum reform, sensitivity to the diverse background of all children and understanding of students and their cultures becomes infused into the curriculum and learning of the teachers. A multicultural curriculum involves the teachers’ attempts to make the school and home cultures of diverse students more congruent with the examples, data, and information used in the classroom. This curriculum addresses the histories and contributions of diverse cultural groups and permeates all subjects.
Culturally Responsive Pedagogy Geneva Gay and others have argued for multicultural education to go a step further. The concept of culturally responsive teacher training has its focus in instructing teachers to use students’ cultural orientations, background experiences, and ethnic identities as predecessors to facilitate teaching and learning in the classroom. U.S. society and its schools, however, are not known for their readiness to accept the differences of others, especially in the educational system. In the U.S., there appears to be a strong socialization process that teaches individuals to devalue, suspect, and pretend to ignore differences, especially those that derive from race, class, ethnicity, and culture in the educational system. Teacher education programs should present information on characteristics and learning styles of various groups and individuals, and the dangers of using these learning styles as stereotypes. Prospective teachers need to learn how to assess their own instructional methods and compare those with the preferred learning and interactional styles in students’ homes and communities. Training programs can illustrate instructional and assessment styles to accommodate the cultural resources that each student brings to the classroom.
Challenges Curriculum Reform Multicultural teacher training should actively involve training teachers in curriculum reform. It should also educate teachers to rethink the current Eurocentric perspective in the curriculum. This can happen through teachers pushing for re-examination of textbook use and calling for accurate and culturally responsive teaching of historical events. When teachers are trained and included in a more diversified role in
Teaching multicultural education to teachers brings several challenges and dilemmas. Several researchers caution that all multicultural approaches are not equal, because some teacher educators prefer to use ‘‘safe’’ or liberal multicultural perspectives. However, this is in contrast to what critical multicultural perspectives teach. Multicultural perspectives are typically met with heavy resistance and are often referred to as ‘‘teaching against the grain.’’
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Education equity is not limited to processes, such as equal distribution of quality facilities and material resources. Rather, the multicultural approach contributes to the development of well-prepared or ‘‘highly qualified’’ teachers because they become current and knowledgeable in cross-cultural concerns and develop an ability and skill level specifically designed for diverse educational approaches. However, because many training programs minimally incorporate multicultural education without changing the format of presentation, thereby not making it different from regular teacher education, more teachers have become resistant to multicultural education. Teachers who have had minimal exposure to multicultural education in training often realize that when faced with real issues of race, class, gender, and language barriers, they are illprepared and tend to become resistant to any form of multicultural training in the future. In-services and workshops for practicing teachers can be enhanced by using the methods of multicultural teacher training programs to combat the resistance of those with the wrong type of exposure to multicultural training. Another challenge often contributes to overrepresentation in special education. Geneva Gay have proposed that many of the problems associated with diagnosing deficiencies grow out of the society’s belief that difference is equated with deficiency, and that therefore the ultimate goal is to make everyone believe, value, and act the same, especially in the school setting. A Nigerian professor, Ukpokodu, echoes these sentiments. She has reported that her major concern was for pre-service teachers who have been socialized into the belief that racial minorities are intellectually incompetent, and who, because of their socialization and training in the U.S. educational system, unknowingly undervalue and underestimate the potentials of diverse students. When teachers are ill-prepared during training to handle multicultural issues, they often may not know how to plan for children who do not fit the mold. They may become scared and resentful of these students and their parents, and thereby be more likely to have their own teaching criticized and resort to blaming the child for not learning. The environment created by this teacher response becomes even more destructive to the child, who may already have cultural, societal, and personal barriers to learning. This cycle can also lead to referring students for special education and diagnosing those students with malfunctions owing to a lack of knowledge about multicultural dynamics affecting behavior and interaction.
Multicultural teacher training is a critical step in changing the low achievement levels of many ethnic minority students. Its programs vary in process and content, but the overall goal is to train teachers who are skilled and knowledgeable about the diverse needs of students, their families, and the students’ communities, so that all students meet with success. See also: > Multicultural education; > Multicultural issues in special education; > Urban schools
Suggested Reading Banks, J. A., & Banks, C. A. (2001). Handbook of research on multicultural education. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass. Gay, G. (2002). Culturally responsive teaching in special education for ethnically diverse students: Setting the stage. Qualitative Studies in Education, 15(6), 613–629. Ukpokodu, O. N. (2003). Teaching multicultural education from a critical perspective challenges and dilemmas. Multicultural Perspectives, 5(4), 17–23.
Suggested Resources The National Association for Multicultural Education (NAME)— www.nameorg.org: This website connects users to a network of teachers, parents, and others supporting the goals of multicultural education.
Multigroup Ethnic Identity Measure (MEIM) Jean S Phinney
The Multigroup Ethnic Identity Measure (MEIM) is the most widely used survey measure of ethnic identity. It was developed for use with adolescents and young adults and can also be used with adults. It is of limited use with children who may not understand the concept of ethnicity. The original measure, published in 1992, was based on the developmental theory of Erik Erikson and the social identity theory of Henri Tajfel. It has undergone revisions to increase its clarity in relation to the concept. In the current version of the measure, ethnic identity is conceptualized in terms
Multiple intelligences
of two processes, exploration of the meaning and implications of one’s ethnicity, and commitment to one’s group. These processes parallel the exploration and commitment processes of ego identity formation described by James Marcia. Ethnic identity exploration involves learning about one’s ethnicity through activities such as studying or reading about it, talking to people, and taking part in ethnic events. The exploration subscale of the MEIM includes items such as, ‘‘I have spent time trying to find out more about my ethnic group’’; ‘‘I have often talked to other people to learn more about my ethnic group.’’ Research across ethnic and age groups has yielded reliability coefficients (Cronbach alphas) between 0.65 and 0.83. Ethnic identity commitment involves a clear sense of membership in one’s ethnic group and positive feelings about being a group member. Typical items in the commitment subscale are, ‘‘I have a strong sense of belonging to my own ethnic group’’; ‘‘I feel good about my cultural or ethnic background.’’ Reliabilities have been consistently high across ethnic groups, with alphas between 0.81 and 0.92. Factor analyses of the MEIM have demonstrated that exploration and commitment are distinct factors. Research has shown that they have different correlates; commitment is generally more strongly correlated with self-esteem than is exploration, while exploration appears more strongly related to the perception of discrimination. The commitment subscale corresponds closely with the common usage of the term ‘‘ethnic identity’’ and can be used alone to assess a sense of belonging to one’s group. The exploration and commitment subscales are related, with Pearson correlations ranging from 0.54 to 0.69 across studies. The two subscales can be combined into a single scale. Reliabilities for the single scale are typically above 0.90. High scores on the single scale indicate an achieved ethnic identity, defined by the presence of both exploration and commitment. An individual with an achieved ethnic identity has a secure sense of self as an ethnic group member, based on a clear understanding of the meaning of his or her group membership. Low scores indicate a diffuse ethnic identity, defined by the lack of both exploration and commitment. An individual with a diffuse ethnic identity has a relatively weak sense of belonging to his or her group and a lack of interest in the group. Individuals high in exploration and low in commitment are considered in moratorium; those high in
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commitment and low in exploration are in foreclosure. Because of the correlation between exploration and commitment, moratorium and foreclosure statuses may not be clearly identifiable using the MEIM. Validity of the MEIM is indicated by correlations between the scale and variables expected to be related to ethnic identity on the basis of theory. As would be expected theoretically, the MEIM is positively related to self-esteem and psychological well-being and negatively to depression. Norms have not been developed for the MEIM, because mean scores vary widely across ages and ethnic groups. The measure is most useful for examining the correlation of ethnic identity with other variables of interest or for making between-group or within-group comparisons in a single study. See also: > Adolescent ethnic identity; > Ethnic identity development; > Ethnic minority youth
Suggested Reading Phinney, J. (1992). The Multigroup Ethnic Identity Measure: A new scale for use with diverse groups. Journal of Adolescent Research, 7, 156–176. Roberts, R., Phinney, J., Masse, L., Chen, Y., Roberts, C., & Romero, A. (1999). The structure of ethnic identity in young adolescents from diverse ethnocultural groups. Journal of Early Adolescence, 19, 301–322.
Multiple Intelligences Raven E Cuellar
Historically, intelligence has been viewed as a single human attribute that can be measured uniformly in all individuals through standardized verbal instruments. In recent decades, theorists have put forth pluralistic models of human intelligence that call into question both the explanatory power of a single form of intelligence and the mainstream approach to intellectual assessment. Gardner’s theory of multiple intelligences (MI) expands common views of intelligence beyond pencil-and-paper tests to include knowledge of human cognition as well as sensitivity to diverse cultural backgrounds. It takes into account the wide range of cultural roles or performances that people throughout the
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world and throughout history have valued. For example, the sailors, poets, and craftsmen of a preliterate society would possess a highly divergent set of competencies from the surgeons, theologians, and psychologists of an industrialized society. MI posits that intelligence cannot be separated from the environmental or cultural context in which it is deemed valuable. Accordingly, Gardner puts forth a broad definition of intelligence as the ability to solve problems or create products that are valued in one or more cultural settings. Evidence for the range of intelligent performances was sought from a broad review of many scientific disciplines and sources. This review led Gardner to propose a set of eight criteria for verifying the existence of a distinct intelligence: (a) potential isolation by brain damage such that destruction in a discrete area negates a particular type of intelligent behavior; (b) the existence of exceptional individuals who demonstrate extraordinary ability in an area (e.g., savants, prodigies); (c) support from experimental psychological research that shows certain intelligences to be relatively autonomous; (d) supportive evidence from psychometric tests; (e) a distinctive developmental course leading from novice to master, with disparate levels of expert performance; (f) a distinctive evolutionary history which posits a link between increases in intelligence and enhanced adaptation to the environment; (g) an identifiable core operation or set of operations essential to performance of a particular type of intelligent behavior; and (h) the existence of culturally determined symbol systems that require encoding to infer meaning (e.g., written alphabets, numeric systems, and musical notation). MI proposes eight distinct but interactive intelligences that together can explain how humans perform and execute various activities. Importantly, no intelligence functions in isolation. Rather, most human activities utilize different combinations of intelligences, with all human beings possessing each to a greater or lesser extent. For instance, a competent lawyer must possess a combination of linguistic, logical, and personal intelligences, whereas an accomplished dancer must possess bodily-kinesthetic and musical intelligences to achieve competence. Gardner’s eight intelligences are as follows: 1. Linguistic intelligence describes the ability to communicate and make sense through language, as demonstrated by poets and lawyers. 2. Logical-mathematical intelligence involves using and appreciating logical, abstract or numeric relations, which is paramount in mathematics and science.
3. Spatial intelligence involves the ability to perceive, use, and transform visual-spatial relationships, as utilized in sculpture, architecture, and navigation. 4. Musical intelligence refers to the ability to communicate and create meaning from sound, as demonstrated by composers, performers, and connoisseurs. 5. Bodily-kinesthetic intelligence involves the skillful use of one’s body to produce movements or to manipulate objects, as with dancers, surgeons, and athletes. 6. Intrapersonal intelligence reflects the understanding of oneself, including the capacity to distinguish feelings and to draw upon self-knowledge to guide one’s behavior. Examples include monks and writers. 7. Interpersonal intelligence connotes sensitivity to the feelings, moods, and needs of others, which enables certain individuals to work effectively with others, such as teachers, therapists, and salespeople. 8. Naturalist intelligence refers to the ability to understand patterns found in natural environments, as demonstrated by biologists, zoologists, and naturalists. Gardner postulates the existence of two additional intelligences: spiritual intelligence, which involves recognition of the spiritual realm as the desired state of being, and existential intelligence, concerning one’s ultimate purpose in the world and sense of consciousness. However, Gardner acknowledges that evidence for these latter intelligences is less powerful and remains speculative at present. In recent years, MI has been extended into the study of creativity. It has also been embraced by the educational community, particularly for its critique of standardized testing and the movement to create measures that capture aspects of intelligence extending beyond linguistic and logical-mathematical factors. See also: > Creativity; > Cross-cultural learning styles; > Cultural issues in education; > Intelligence/Intelligence Quotient (IQ); > Learning styles; > Multicultural education
Suggested Reading Gardner, H. (1983). Frames of mind: The theory of multiple intelligences. New York: Basic Books. Gardner, H. (1998). Are there additional intelligences? The case for naturalist, spiritual, and existential intelligences. In J. Kane (Ed.),
Muslim American youth Education, information, and transformation (pp. 111–132). Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall. Gardner, H. (1999). Intelligence reframed: Multiple intelligences for the 21st century. New York: Basic Books.
Muslim American Youth Mayida Zaal . Nida Bikmen
‘‘Muslims’’—those who profess the faith of Islam— belong to one of the fastest growing religious groups in the United States (U.S.). As a result, increasingly more children identify as Muslim American in schools across the country. Islam’s presence in the U.S. is not a new phenomenon. It is a belief system that can be traced back more than 400 years to the arrival of African slaves (many of whom were Muslim) who were forced to strip themselves of their cultural and religious beliefs. Voluntary Muslim migrants began arriving in small numbers in the nineteenth century from the Middle East to the North American continent. Therefore, today’s Muslim American youth are from many ethnic and/or racial backgrounds and can come from families with a long history in the U.S. or from families who have recently immigrated. Muslim American youth have access to rich historical legacies, cultural and religious traditions, and family and community networks that are profound, identity shaping forces. Still, children who profess the faith of Islam struggle with their intersecting identities in an American context that is marred by intolerance. In their efforts to create cohesive identities, they must negotiate their experiences as adolescents/young adults, males/females, Muslims, Americans, and their national, racial or pan-ethnic identities. While it is important to recognize that ‘‘Muslim American’’ is a socially constructed category, this label serves a purpose for many young Muslim Americans. It identifies a religious, cultural, or political dimension of their social identities and allows them to organize as a collective with other followers of the same faith. However, it is impossible to define Muslim American youth as one holistic, encompassing group with particular characteristics. Muslims in the U.S. are highly diverse
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in terms of national origin, depth of religious conviction, sectarian divisions, language, ethnicity, race and social class. Having a greater understanding of Muslim American youth is of particular importance in an era (postSeptember 11, 2001) when Islam and Muslims in the Western world have come under increased scrutiny. The first step towards acceptance can come from gaining a true understanding of the core religious principles of Islam. The basic tenets followed by Muslims are guided by the Qur’an, the central religious text of Islam, believed to be the word of God as communicated to his messenger, the Prophet Mohommad. As well, the Hadith, writings reflecting the practices of the Prophet Mohammad, shape how Muslims are called to live their lives. Believers are required to adhere to the Five Pillars of Islam: (1) Shahada—to profess their belief in one God, Allah, and Mohammad as his messenger, (2) Salat—to pray five times a day in the direction of Mecca, (3) Swam—to fast from sunrise to sunset for 28–29 days during the holy month of Ramadan, (4) Zakat—to give charity according to their financial means, and (5) Hajj—to complete, at least once in a lifetime, a pilgrimage to Mecca. In addition to the Five Pillars, there are practices and beliefs which Muslims follow. These practices may manifest themselves differently according to cultural and sectarian traditions. While there is a growing interest on the part of educators, researchers, and psychologists to understand more about the experiences of young people who identify as Muslim American, little research has been done in this area. It is also important to remember that the range of experiences of Muslim American youth presented here reflect the limited literature available and should not be generalized. Still, working toward a nuanced understanding of both the multiple obstacles and barriers faced by Muslim American youth—as well as the particular vulnerability of this group—can assist educators in creating culturally responsive schools and classrooms. The following primarily reflects current research available on Muslim American youth of immigrant origin, namely those of Arab and Asian descent. Although African Americans make up more than one-third of the Muslim American population, their experiences as Muslims are embedded in an historical, racialized, and oppressive context that differs from that of Muslim youth of immigrant origin.
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Statistics Under current law, the U.S. Census Bureau is not permitted to ask people living in the U.S. questions regarding religious affiliation. It is therefore difficult to know the exact number of Muslim Americans within the total U.S. population. Several groups speculate that the number of Muslim Americans lies somewhere between 1.2 million and 8 million. These estimates are based on a number of statistical sources, including the number of worshippers attending mosques and the number of immigrants originating from the Muslim world. The varied sampling methods produce correspondingly large discrepancies in the estimates. In projecting the number of Muslim Americans, most studies do not account for the varying degrees of religiosity within Muslim communities. Those counted as Muslim may have either been born into the religion or converted into Islam. Within both groups are varying degrees of conviction and practice. It is believed that 36% of Muslim Americans were born in the U.S. This figure includes African Americans as well as the offspring of immigrants. An estimate of the number of children who identify as Muslim American is not available. Of the total population, the largest concentration of Muslims is found in the East Coast, mostly in the states of New Jersey and New York (32%). This is followed by Southern States including Florida and Texas (25%), and the Midwestern states of Illinois, Michigan and Ohio (24%). There are large Muslim American communities in California as well (18%). Muslims in the U.S. include immigrants from Asia, Africa, and the Middle East as well as nativeborn African Americans. The three largest ethnic/ racial groups among American Muslims are African Americans (estimated at 30–42% of the Muslim American population), South Asians (24–33%), and Arabs (12–33%). The remaining representative groups include migrants from Sub-Saharan Africa (10%), Iran (10%), Turkey (6%), and the Balkans (2%). There is also a small but growing minority of Latino and European American converts throughout the country. The dominant sect of Islam in the Muslim world, Sunni, is also the sectarian affiliation of the majority of Muslims in the U.S. Smaller divisions within these sects are also represented in the U.S., such as the Ahmadis and the Sufis. Shiite Muslims, who are a numerical minority in the Muslim world, are
overrepresented in Detroit—the city with the highest concentration of Arab Americans. About 15–20% of American Muslims are Shiite. In addition to national origin, sectarian membership, race and social class, American Muslims show great diversity in their degree of religiosity. Differences in religious practices can be attributed in part to the leadership and organizational structure of Islam. Islam is not centrally organized. Unlike faith traditions that focus on communal practice in a sacred space (such as in Catholicism, where one must attend mass presided over by a priest in a church), Islam’s personal practices of prayer and observance do not require attendance at a mosque. In the 1980s, only 10–20% of all American Muslims were estimated to attend mosque regularly. Attendance is, however, on the rise. A recent survey of a nationally representative sample of Muslims found that about 54% attend prayer services at a mosque at least once a week. Nearly half of this sample prays five times a day in accordance with one of the Five Pillars of Islam. Religious practices vary depending on the ethnic group membership, political ideology, and region of residence of the respondents. For example, Arab Americans, Muslims who are Republicans, and those who live in the Central/Great Lakes region were less likely to attend mosque weekly. An identifying factor associated by some with Muslim piety is tradition of dress. In Islam, there are expectations that men and women will dress modestly. Individuals and/or groups interpret the degree of modesty differently. For men, this can mean wearing a prayer cap and growing their beards. For women (and pubescent girls) modest attire can include wearing a full length veil or a hijab to cover their hair. Many Muslim American women do not wear traditional Islamic dress. Their reasons range from never having considered it to avoiding confrontation in a hostile environment.
Historical Background The three largest groups within the Muslim American population—African Americans, South Asians and Arabs – have very different histories in the U.S. While it is believed that Islam was a faith practiced among many African slaves brought to the U.S., Islam did not survive as a religious tradition within the genocide and diaspora of slavery. The proliferation of
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Islam among African Americans in the beginning of the twentieth century is therefore a relatively new phenomenon springing from the internal migration of African American families to the Northern part of the country where they encountered Islam as a ‘‘new’’ religion. Large numbers of African American families embraced Islam as an alternative to Christianity, a faith that had been promoted in the early lives of their communities by Americans of European descent. Blended with the struggle against racism and the growth of Black nationalism, Muslim identity among young African Americans has a distinct character when compared to the identity of young Muslims of immigrant origin. Muslim movements in the African American community began in the 1930s when large numbers of African Americans converted to the Nation of Islam led by Elijah Mohammed. This significant religious movement, led today by Louis Farrakhan, is not associated with the basic tenets of Islam and therefore considered a separate religion. W. D. Mohammad, the son of Elijah Mohammed, split from the Nation of Islam in 1975 and formed a group known today as the Muslim American Society. This community of Muslim follows traditions associated with Sunni Islam. With the exception of African American Muslims, the history of Muslim communities in the U.S. is a history of steady immigration in the second half of the twentieth century. However, following the attacks of September 11, 2001 there was a sharp decline in immigration from Muslim countries in the Middle East and surrounding region. This resulted from restricted access to the U.S. for citizens of countries with large Muslim populations. The drop can also be attributed to the reluctance of Muslims to live in a country that is increasingly hostile towards Islam and those who profess it. This trend may, however, be changing. Recent data from the Department of Homeland Security indicates that immigration from Muslim countries such as Egypt, Yemen, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and Morocco has significantly increased in 2005, reaching its preSeptember 11th levels. Asian Muslims in the U.S. often originate from the countries of India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Afghanistan, China, Malaysia, Indonesia, and Thailand. The majority originate from South Asia, namely Pakistan, India, and Bangladesh. Asian Muslim immigration peaked in the 1970s, following the U.S. Immigration Act of 1965. This Act opened the borders to large numbers of immigrants from Latin America, the Caribbean, and Asia. Many came as foreign students and settled in the U.S.
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Finally, Arab migration to the U.S. began during the decline of the Ottoman Empire in late nineteenth century, consisting largely of immigrants from Syria and Lebanon and with the majority belonging to the peasant class. However, many post-World War II Muslim immigrants were members of the urban elite, some of whom were fleeing war-torn countries. After 1965, in addition to Lebanon and Syria, the sending countries expanded to include Arab Muslims from Palestine, Egypt, Iraq, Jordan and Morocco. It is worth noting that a large number of the early Arab immigrants were Christian. Today, unlike the situation in the Arab peninsula, the majority (about two thirds) of Arab Americans are Christian.
Socioeconomic Status Recent estimates indicate that in general Muslims are better educated and financially more secure than the national U.S. average. With the exception of African American and Black immigrant Muslims, average household income in Muslim communities is higher than $45,000. Muslims are also more likely than the average American to have finished a four-year college. There are however, large variations between and within ethnic groups. South Asian immigrants who arrived in the 1960s and 1970s were predominantly graduate students, scientists and professionals who eventually made their way into upper-middle class lives. The second wave of immigration from South Asia, however, relied on family reunification and consisted of less educated, less skilled immigrants from small towns or villages. These immigrants tend to live in urban areas and work in ethnic enclaves. Overall, a report by the Arab American Institute shows that Arab Americans are highly educated and have the highest per capita ownership of businesses among all ethnic groups in the U.S. Nevertheless, similar to the case of South Asian immigrants, a sizable minority (11%), consisting mostly of recent Iraqi and Lebanese refugees and some Yemeni immigrants, live below the poverty line. The socioeconomic status of African American Muslims inevitably reflects the larger picture for African Americans in general. History of societal and institutional racism is part of their legacy of struggle and inequity, and is a substantial determinant of their social standing. Additionally, the fact that many African
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Americans convert to Islam in prison adds to the downward trending socioeconomic data among African American Muslims.
Acculturation and Values Given that the Muslim American population consists of largely first and second generation immigrants (with the exception of African American Muslims), adaptation to the predominantly Anglo-Saxon and JudeoChristian American context is an important area of research. Muslim communities like other immigrant communities need to adapt to the social, economic, and political life in the U.S. while at the same time maintaining and transmitting their religious heritage in a social context that is not always conducive to that endeavor. Acculturation experiences among young Muslims vary depending on their cultural background, the socioeconomic status of their families, the characteristics of the ethnic community in which they live, and the region of the U.S. in which they settle. These experiences are also further complicated by gender. The acculturation of Muslim immigrants to the U.S. should be understood in relation to the social beliefs about Muslims and Islam in American society. While the attacks of September 11, 2001 caused a dramatic increase in hate crimes and Islamophobia, anti-Muslim and anti-Arab sentiments were not new in the U.S. For example, derogatory media and movie portrayals of Arabs and Muslims were common in the pre-September 11th era. The images of Muslims as barbaric desert dwellers, violent thieves, terrorists and murderers appeared in cartoons, films, comic strips, and textbooks. These portrayals became exacerbated after the attacks and subsequent world events. As a result, young Muslim Americans not only carry the burden of resisting negative stereotypes, they often find themselves responsible for educating others. How the host country receives immigrant origin youth and how the host country receives their parents can greatly affect the experiences and pathways of acculturation. Muslim American youth of immigrant origin must make sense of the process of adapting to life in a new country filled with such societal stressors. Similar to other immigrant families, Muslim American families can experience dissonant acculturation; that is, a discrepancy between the acculturation styles favored by parents and those favored by their children. While parents tend to stress the importance of
cultural maintenance, children who grow up in the new country with fewer ties to the country of origin, and who can navigate the social system with greater ease than their parents, may tend to move towards the larger dominant society. Compounding the typical adolescent desire to move away from their parents is the discrepancy between parental expectations and their child’s choices. Intergenerational conflicts can result. Balancing their families’ expectations of appropriate conduct and the demands of the larger society (which they encounter at school, at work and in diverse peer groups) can be burdensome for Muslim youth. Some researchers suggest that Muslim adolescents adopt a selective acculturation strategy. For example, Arab American adolescents select the elements of the American culture that they find useful while remaining loyal to core aspects of their cultural heritage. While American identity may bring about power and privilege in some settings, acting American is also associated with negative behaviors that are not in harmony with Muslim values. These negative behaviors include a lack of loyalty, and a lack of obligation and responsibility to community and family. Living in ethnic communities is associated with feelings of belonging and being understood but also with the stress of community surveillance, gossip and a lack of privacy. Expectations for boys and girls may differ for Muslim American families. There may be differences in the types of activities in which boys and girls can participate outside of the home. For example, girls may not be allowed to participate in unsupervised co-educational activities. As in many other immigrant groups, women are seen as responsible for carrying and passing on cultural values and practices. Additionally, cultural expectations may be further complicated by existing gender inequities and sexism in the larger society. Most Muslim American women and girls do not wear hijab, traditional Islamic dress. Some believe the modesty that hijab is supposed to symbolize can be expressed in other ways, and still others do not want to be visible as a Muslim in the public sphere. Young girls who cover themselves may be doing so in compliance with family expectations or against their parents’ wishes. Contrary to popular American stereotypes, most Muslims assert that hijab in particular, and Islam in general, is not oppressive of women. On the contrary, they experience Islam as an empowering, liberating influence. Religious and cultural practices in Muslim American families discourage dating or romantic relationships
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before marriage. Muslim parents often worry about the mixed gender socialization emphasized in American schools, although the degree of concern varies greatly among families. Young people may have relationships without their parents’ knowledge or consent. Some families arrange ways for young people to meet and socialize that would not be considered ‘‘dating’’ in the Western sense. The prospect of marriage is another source of stress for young Muslim Americans. Some may be expected to marry after completing high school. Other families may require that their children complete college and/or graduate school before getting married.
Identity Development Like young people from most other immigrant groups, Muslim youth in the U.S. have to negotiate their religious, ethnic (e.g., Pakistani, Palestinian, Turkish) and national (American) identities. Most likely in an effort to counter the dominant negative discourse about Muslims, some Muslim American youth strongly identify in terms of a specific ethnicity. For example, Arab American youth in San Francisco, interviewed before the attacks, identified as ‘‘Muslim first, Arab second.’’ These youth made use of the Muslim identity, not only to claim a collective identity parallel to Blacks, Latinos, and Asians in the Bay area, but also to challenge gender dynamics of the Arab culture they considered oppressive. They asserted that Islam grants more equality for women to get an education, a career, and have more voice in marriage matters. Further, they advocated for interracial marriage within the Muslim American community and confronted what they saw as racism in their parents’ insistence on endogamy. By attributing the more oppressive elements of the community to the Arab traditions, they claimed a Muslim identity that provides the basis for a more egalitarian and inclusive community life. It is important to note, however, that the negotiation of ethnic and religious identities could be quite different within another community context. For example in Detroit, home to the largest Arab American community of both Christian and Muslim background, this identity negotiation process may involve negotiating borders between Arab and American identities. Young American Muslims understand and talk about their U.S. citizenship (or lack thereof) in complex ways. They emphasize multiculturalism, the importance of being connected to other racial/ethnic groups in the U.S. through friendships in their daily
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lives, and their transnational connections to their homelands. All of these are seen as compatible with their U.S. citizenship. However, they also express dissatisfaction with what U.S. citizenship represents when it comes to war and American foreign policy. Negotiating national identity has become even more challenging in the post-September 11th era. While many Muslim American youth claim to be proud of being American before September 11th, 2001, the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, along with policies such as the Patriot Act and immigration restrictions, led some young people to feel embarrassed about their American identity. Many felt like their sense of belonging to the larger society had been shattered. Several studies conducted after September 11, 2001 document the voices of young Muslim American youth as they express increased fears and increased connectedness to their ethnic and/or religious communities. In spite of the protective factors they may experience from their religious and ethnic affiliations, young Muslim Americans may express feeling tension as they navigate between worlds. They may struggle with the dominant peer culture and the opposing value systems that create added tensions at home and school. Some students may develop dual identities by accommodating the dominant culture in public spheres (i.e., school) and participating in their religious/ cultural practices at home. Reconciling these multiple identities and the inconsistent expectations can lead to confusion and dissonance among Muslim American youth. In addition, many negotiate a transnational identity—whether they actually reside both in the U.S. and in their home country or have an imagined sense of being at once here and there—with differences in social/cultural expectations between their country of origin and the U.S. Others view their multiple, malleable identities as an advantage and find they can easily and confidently flow through their many worlds without having to define themselves in a fixed hierarchical set of identities. The encounters between African American Muslims and Muslim Americans of immigrant origin have not always been positive. Some African Americans resent what they perceive as a lack of recognition as ‘‘real Muslims’’ by immigrant Muslims. The norms about appropriate conduct in the African American Muslim community may vary from those of immigrant communities, especially when it comes to gender norms and interactions among men and women. African Americans, especially under the leadership of W. D. Mohammed,
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are trying to establish their own contribution to Islam, a uniquely American form of Islam, by incorporating American values of egalitarianism. Nevertheless, they regard building relationships with the immigrant Muslim communities and the Muslim world at large as extremely important for an American Muslim identity.
Educational Experiences and Concerns School serves as a significant site of enactment for children’s lives; there, much of what is occurring in the world around them is replicated. Further, schools are often settings where the hierarchies of power and social and racial inequity present in the larger society are reproduced. Because of many of the issues we have described surrounding acculturation and social tensions for Muslim American youth, the context of schooling can provide a challenging, stressful, or safe context as young people make sense of their place in the world. Many Muslim American parents, like other immigrant parents, hope that their children will have a better life than they did, including access to educational opportunities that were not available to them. It is common for Muslim families to place great emphasis on education; they see it as a way for upward mobility in the new country. Often, they place upon their children all hope for achieving the American dream. While most Muslim American youngsters are doing well in school, they may find the pressure to live up to parental expectations especially stressful. Many Asian Muslims may also be challenged by unrealistic academic expectations perpetuated by the expectation that they live up to the standard of the so called ‘‘model minority.’’ Parents of Muslim American youth, like parents of other children and adolescents in the U.S. context, have a variety of options when choosing an educational setting for their child. These options are influenced in part, on where they live and the resources to which they have access. For instance, parents can send their children to a local public or charter school, pay for a private school (including religious schools) or choose to home school their children. Public schools serving large populations of Muslim American children may offer Arabic language classes. This may be of particular interest to parents who wish to have their children learn the language used in the Qur’an. Moreover, some schools offer services in Arabic and Turkish as part of their bilingual education programs for English language learners.
Parochial schools (e.g., Catholic, Protestant, Methodist, Islamic) may provide a viable option for parents seeking to place their children in a particular type of environment. Muslim American youth attend parochial schools for a multitude of reasons; therefore, it is not out of the ordinary to find Muslim American youth attending non-Muslim religious schools as well as Islamic schools. There are more than 230 private Islamic schools in the U.S. These can be co-educational or single-sex schools ranging from preschool to grade 12. Additionally, some immigrant parents with ties to their native country may choose to send their children to study abroad in their country of origin. This option may be expensive and limited to those with access to family and financial resources in their country of origin. For many youth, incorporating themselves into a religious or ethnic community may provide the protection they need to insulate against the tension and hostility that exists in the larger context. In addition to the religious and language classes that comprise some weekend Islamic schools, many mosques and religiously affiliated community centers offer youth groups for young Muslim Americans. These youth groups offer educational activities such as mentoring and social excursions that include trips to amusements parks and other leisure opportunities. The prevailing stereotypes and misrepresentations of Muslims in the U.S. media may seep into the school context and lead teachers and/or students to form biased opinions about Muslim American youth. Muslim American youth may find themselves dealing with lowered expectations about their academic ability or perceptions of lowered expectations, which can lead to students being placed in lower academic tracks. It is not uncommon for students to have to strongly advocate for themselves when requesting services such as guidance with the college application process. As they struggle with the negative stereotypes, Muslim American youth may be put in the position of having to teach other non-Muslim Americans about Muslim culture, such as educating them about their religious beliefs and practices—a responsibility that can be burdensome. Additionally, Muslim American youth, particularly boys, who challenge or question school authority may be stereotyped as too aggressive as the bias present in the world plays out in the classroom context. A recurring theme in research is that students do not feel protected by teachers and administrators during incidents of harassment and discrimination.
Muslim American youth
It is important for educators and all of those working with Muslim American youth to gain a better understanding of the heterogeneity of this population, the diversity of beliefs within it, the spectrum of traditions based on cultural histories and practices, and the multiple ‘‘locations’’ from which Muslim Americans originate. Learning more about students’ religious identities is not in conflict with the value Americans place on the secular nature of public education. Rather, by knowing more about students and their families, educators can be better prepared to meet students’ needs in an educational setting. It is particularly helpful to know more about the individual’s and the family’s sectarian affiliation, their native language(s) and their level of religious practice. Public schools that serve large populations of Muslim American students can adopt inclusive practices that respect students’ religious beliefs and traditions in the manner afforded to Christianity and Judaism. For instance, several school districts throughout the country include the Muslim holidays—Eid El Fitr and Eid El Adha—on their academic calendars and observe these days with school closings. Other school districts provide students who observe these holidays with excused absences. As well, important considerations that can be made in the school context include distributing the school lunch menu in advance so that students can plan ahead on days when foods containing pork are being served, providing spaces outside of the lunchroom for students during the fasting month of Ramadan, and allowing students to adapt the uniform requirements for physical education to their dress code needs (i.e., allowing students to wear long pants instead of shorts).
Conclusion For Muslim American youth, the rapid and often difficult changes that occur during adolescence are exacerbated and compounded by the social, racial, economic, and political conflicts around them. While grappling with typical adolescent angst, they are also combating and/or absorbing the dehumanizing images of Muslims that, after September 11, 2001, were further entrenched in Western society. They are moving through adolescence in an increasingly hostile American political and social climate that collapses religious affiliation with ethnic identity and vilifies those associated with the Middle East. This negative social mirror could be detrimental to the success of second generation immigrant
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youth who identity as Muslim or are perceived to be Muslim. The heightened political and social hostility experienced by Muslim youth creates an urgency that requires the attention of all of those who are involved in their lives. It is imperative that more work be done to understand the multiple experiences of Muslim American children in schools, to deconstruct and analyze the findings that apply to local and generalized contexts, and to recommend changes to the educational systems that serve them. Educators, social scientists, health care providers, policy makers, and researchers need to understand what this group of young people is contending with to create structures and institutions that support the layered identities of Muslim American youth and help them cope with the negative reception they may experience. The importance that religion or faithbased values play in the lives of many second generation immigrant youth cannot be understated; it is an area that cannot be overlooked for children of immigrants of all faiths, not just those who are Muslim. See also: > Adolescence; > African American youth; > Arab American children; > Asian/Asian American youth; > Middle Eastern youth; > Racism: Individual, Institutional, and Cultural
Suggested Reading Karim, J. (2005). Between immigrant Islam and Black liberation: Young Muslims inherit global Muslim and African American legacies. The Muslim World, 95, 497–513. Leonard, K. I. (2003). Muslims in the United States: The state of research. New York: Russell Sage Foundation. Maira, S. (2004). Youth culture, citizenship, and globalization: South Asian Muslim youth in the United States after September 11th. Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa, and the Middle East, 24(1), 219–231. Nimer, M. (2002). The North American Muslim resource guide. New York: Routledge.
Suggested Resources American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee Web Page—www. adc.org The Arab American Institute Web Page—www.aaiusa.org The Council on American Islamic Relations Web Page—www. cair-net.org Islamic Schools League of America Web Page—http:// www.4islamicschools.org/
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Myers-briggs type indicator (MBTI), multicultural applications
Project MAPS—Muslims in American Public Square Web Page— www.projectmaps.com/ Southern Poverty Law Center Teaching Tolerance Web Page— www.tolerance.org
Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI), Multicultural Applications Julia H Yoo . Daniel H Robinson
The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) is a selfreport questionnaire of a personality test that was developed by Katharine Cook Briggs and Isabel Briggs Myers utilizing Carl G. Jung’s theory of psychological types. After more than 50 years, MBTI remains one of the most widely used instruments around the world with more than two million administrations each year in the United States (U.S.) alone. Following Isabel Myers’ seminal study in the 1950s on a sample of 5,355 medical students, the number of published articles about the MBTI has continually increased with more than 4,000 research studies and journal articles since the publication of the first MBTI manual in 1962. The exponential growth of the MBTI can be seen in many areas. It has been used for counseling and psychotherapy, career counseling, teacher training, measurement for aptitude and achievement, and so forth. Unlike other personality instruments, the MBTI is based upon postulated dichotomies that are believed to reflect innate psychological or mental dispositions assuming the actual existence of ‘‘true preferences.’’ There are four dichotomies that make up 16 different types: Extraversion-Introversion, Sensing-Intuition, Thinking-Feeling, and Judging-Perceiving. As did Carl G. Jung, Myers and Briggs believed that the patterns of psychological type are a universal component of human nature. Although it was initially developed and tested primarily with the population of middle-class White Americans, many multicultural and international
MBTI research studies support the validity of the instrument when used appropriately in those cultures. Although this ‘‘type description’’ of MBTI is based on Jung’s theory that attempts to describe basic human mental processes that cut across cultural differences, cultural differences remain an unresolved issue. Especially, the translating issue remains as one of the challenges (i.e., choosing words with the correct nuance of meaning, modifying or substituting items to fit a certain culture). In addition, some studies with South Africans (including 930 Black people) and New Zealand Maori have revealed that MBTI may not be valid in cultures where the interest of group prevails over the interest of the individual due to the influence of collectivist values on cultural norms that affect individuals’ identity. Other reported practical issues with clients from other cultures are reading level, age, and language. Based on U.S. reading norms, a reading level of seventh grade is recommended. It is also reported that MBTI is only appropriate for clients 15 years of age or older because of the reliability issue. Seven to thirteen year-old children are recommended to use the Murphy-Meisgeier Type Indicator for Children (MMTIC). Finally, before administering, it is recommended to check language issues with English-as-aSecond-Language (ESL) clients regarding their familiarity with U.S. idioms. See also: > Black Intelligence Test of Cultural Homogeneity (B.I.T.C.H.); > Kaufman Assessment Battery for Children-Second Edition (KABC-II); > Raven’s progressive matrices
Suggested Reading Myers, I. B., McCaulley, M. H., Quenk, N. L., & Hammer, A. L. (1998). MBTI manual: A guide to the development and use of the MyersBriggs Type Indicator (3rd ed.). Palo Alto, CA: Consulting Psychologists Press, Inc. Suzuki, L. A., Ponterotto, J. G., & Meller, P. J. (Eds.). (2001). Handbook of multicultural assessment (2nd ed.). Clinical, psychological and educational applications. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.
NAEAACLD National Association for the Education of African American Children with Learning Disabilities (NAEAACLD) >
NAEP > National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP)
NAME National Association for Multicultural Education (NAME) >
NASP > National Association of School Psychologists (NASP)
National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) Ronald K Hambleton
The National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), or better known to many policy-makers in the U.S. as ‘‘NAEP’’ or the ‘‘Nation’s Report Card,’’ is a testing program of the U.S. Department of Education that has two main goals: (1) to determine the level of achievement of groups of students on a regular basis, and (2) to
monitor the achievement of groups of students over time. This testing program has become especially important for monitoring educational achievement for culturally diverse students, and considerable attention is given to both describing their level of achievement, and the gap between culturally diverse students and White students. Scores are reported for groups only (e.g., state, grade, ethnicity, as well as combinations of these groups). On the surface, NAEP is like many other testing programs in the U.S.: (1) policy-makers decide the subject matter and grade levels to be included in the assessment, (2) different committees convene to create detailed descriptions of the domain of content and skills that will be assessed (i.e., the content frameworks), (3) the test makers develop and pilot test their assessments and scoring procedures, (4) the assessments are administered, data are collected, and students scored, and finally, (5) score reports are provided to various audiences. A surface review of NAEP misses the fact that it is one of the most technically challenging and sophisticated testing programs in the world, one of the most carefully designed and implemented testing programs in the U.S., and has unique features that make it widely valued by policy-makers, educators, teachers, researchers, and the public. With regard to decisions about NAEP’s test content, the National Assessment Governing Board decides years in advance of the actual test administration on the subject matter and the grade levels that need to be assessed. In the past, subject matter has included reading, mathematics, writing, science, geography, civics, and U.S. history. Grade levels have been consistent—grades 4, 8, and 12. Contracts are awarded for compiling detailed content information to support test development, and NAEP makes a substantial effort to obtain a national consensus on the framework for their test content. Test design includes multiple-choice, short answer, and extended-answer items. It ensures that the content and skills are validly assessed. Nationally recognized experts write and review assessment materials, including an extensive review of testing materials for stereotyping and bias. In addition, U.S. pilot tests have had large sample sizes from around the country and ethnic groups have been oversampled to ensure detection of potentially biased test material. As a result, NAEP tests are constructed to produce reliable and valid information about the achievement status and growth of a diverse set of student bodies. Testing time takes about an hour. Then 30 minutes are given to administer student questionnaires. Student
C. S. Clauss-Ehlers (Ed.), Encyclopedia of Cross-Cultural School Psychology, DOI 10.1007/978-0-387-71799-9, # Springer Science+Business Media LLC 2010
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questionnaires ask students to describe themselves as well as their in-school and after-school activities. Teachers and administrators also complete questionnaires. To compile comprehensive information on student achievement within the short 60-minute-long test, a technique called ‘‘matrix sampling’’ is used. By dividing up testing materials into smaller blocks and administering different sets of blocks to each student, approximately 3.5 hours worth of testing material (when administered all at once) can be administered separately in only one hour. In addition, because every combination of blocks of testing material is used, data analyses can include inter-item correlations across blocks of questions. Survey recruitment, sampling, and administration can be challenging to execute well. Sampling experts and detailed national demographics information are used to draw student samples that can meet the precise criteria needed to generalize test results to the larger population as well as special subgroups of interest. Scoring is complicated by the NAEP’s use of openended questions. Intensive training is required to ensure inter-rater reliability between the raters scoring the current test as well as between raters of present and past tests. Scoring of the item responses involves the application of item response theory and ‘‘plausible values methodology’’ to ultimately produce student score distributions. The use of a matrix sampling test design can substantially broaden the content coverage of a test, but it complicates the estimation of score distributions for groups and subgroups of students. Regarding score reports, The U.S. Department of Education and the National Assessment Governing Board strive to make the NAEP accessible and meaningful to the layperson. Results are reported in terms of scaled scores (from 0 to 500) and performance categories (below basic, basic, proficient, and advanced) using easy-to-understand score reports designed to aid comprehension and limit misinterpretation by the average reader. Reports are available in a paper version or in electronic form on the Internet. These reports focus not only on the achievement status and growth of many groups of students, but also on the differences between White students and culturally diverse student groups. Using these reports, researchers can conduct many analyses such as investigations into the reading achievement gap between White students and Hispanic and Black students over the last 15 years in a particular state, subject, and grade level.
See also: > Achievement tests; > Assessment of culturally diverse children; > Multicultural education; > System of Multicultural Pluralistic Assessment (SOMPA); > National Association for Multicultural Education (NAME); > Nondiscriminatory testing; > Racial/ethnic group differences
Suggested Reading Campbell, J. R., et al. (1996). NAEP 1994 Reading Report Card for the Nation and the States: Findings from the National Assessment of Educational Progress and Trial State Assessment. Washington, D.C. National Library of Education, Office of Educational Research and Improvement, U.S. Department of Education. (ERIC Document Reproduction Service No. ED388962).
Suggested Resources National Center for Education Statistics—www.nces.ed.gov/ nationsreportcard/: This website provides the NAEP Nation’s Report Card statistic findings. National Assessment Governing Board—www.nagb.org: The Governing Board is an independent, bipartisan group whose members include governors, state legislators, local and state school officials, educators, business representatives, and members of the general public. Congress created the 26member Governing Board in 1988 to set policy for the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP)—commonly known as the ‘‘The Nation’s Report Card.’’
National Association for Multicultural Education (NAME) Jose Mercado
In 1990, at the annual conference of the Association of Teacher Educators, Dr. Rose Marie Duhon-Sells called a meeting to find individuals interested in forming an organization dedicated to advancing the cause of equity, diversity, and social justice in education. Out of this meeting, the National Association for Multicultural Education (NAME) was established. The founders of NAME wanted to address issues of multicultural education by creating a forum of debate, sharing knowledge, developing new ideas, promoting scholarly
National association for the education of African American children with learning disabilities (NAEAACLD)
research and education policy. Within this framework, NAME established a six-point consensus which now serves as the organization’s stated goals: 1. To respect and appreciate cultural diversity. 2. To promote the understanding of unique cultural and ethnic heritage. 3. To promote the development of culturally responsible and responsive curricula. 4. To facilitate acquisition of the attitudes, skills, and knowledge to function in various cultures. 5. To eliminate racism and discrimination in society. 6. To achieve social, political, economic, and educational equity. NAME’s philosophy is based on the concept of cultural pluralism. It is in a developmental process that NAME hopes those working in the field of education will develop the skills to be culturally competent. It is with this belief that a healthy debate about what is the accepted definition of multicultural education can take place. This philosophy encompasses an interdisciplinary approach with areas such as curriculum, testing and assessments, pedagogy, and counseling being on the ‘‘front line’’ for much of the debate. NAME does not limit its advocacy to age or grade range; rather, it takes a holistic look at what equity issues are occurring from pre-kindergarten to higher education. One forum where new ideas and scholarly work are presented is at the NAME annual conference. Since 1991, NAME has brought together members from across the country with expertise in various fields to share and present new research and discuss certain themes highlighted at each conference. Issues such as democracy in education, bilingualism, and achievement and assessment have been the themes of past conferences. In 1993, NAME began publishing Multicultural Perspectives, a quarterly journal which features articles, reviews, and program descriptions. It is given to all members of NAME. Some of the features include:
Advancing the Conversation Multicultural Windows Creating Multicultural Classrooms Personal Perspectives The Multicultural Library Technology Guide to New Resources NAME Regional News
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Currently, NAME is separated into ten regions covering all 50 states and territories such as Puerto Rico, the United States (U.S.) Virgin Islands, and Samoa. There is a current movement to reach out to international educators to give a voice to multicultural issues beyond U.S. borders. Local chapters of NAME also conduct conferences and workshops for educators to discuss relevant issues in multicultural education and to enhance professional development. See also: > Cultural issues in education; > Multicultural education
Suggested Resources National Association for Multicultural Education—http://nameorg. org: This is the official website for NAME.
National Association for the Education of African American Children with Learning Disabilities (NAEAACLD) Nancy R Tidwell
Since the 1960s, the disproportionate representation of African American children in special education has received national attention but little has been done to address the issue. National statistics for as recent as fall 2006 indicate that African Americans represented 20.52% of students in the special education category of specific learning disability, 28.79% in the category of emotional disturbance, and 32.75% in the category of mental retardation, even though African Americans represented only 15.04% of the estimated resident population. Simply put, compared with their White counterparts, African American students are almost twice as likely to be labeled as having behavioral problems and almost three times as likely to be labeled as mentally retarded. The dropout rate among minority children with disabilities has been 68% higher than for Whites— more than 50% of minority students in large cities
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drop out of school. Other failing students act out their feelings and have behavioral problems, building defenses that only get them in more trouble. The challenge of educating these children is further exacerbated with the advent of zero-tolerance policies, for which statistics indicate that African American students are suspended or expelled up to five times more than White students, even though research dispels a simplistic explanation of a disproportionate level of behavior and points to a biased system where a double standard appears to exist. Although poverty is often blamed as the reason for the disproportionate representation of African American students in special education, this overgeneralization is refuted by findings that as factors with wealth and better schooling increase, African American boys are at greater risk of being labeled mentally retarded. The poverty theory also fails to explain: (1) why gross racial disparities are only found in the categories of mental retardation and emotional disturbance, and not in the categories of specific learning disability or any medically diagnosed disabilities; or (2) why Latinos have a far lower identification rate for mental retardation and emotional disturbance than both African Americans and Whites, despite the fact that African Americans and Latinos share a far greater risk than Whites of poverty, exposure to environmental toxins, and low academic achievement. In addition, there is no agreed explanation for the broader-scale achievement gap, which is actually wider between middle-income African American and White students, or the success of so many schools in low-income African American communities, which have produced students well above the national average. Parents have long been a guiding force in bringing about and implementing special education programs. However, the voices of African American parents have been noticeably absent, even though African American children are disproportionately placed in special education. Both the long-held fears about mislabeling in the African American community and the general unavailability of information available in disadvantaged communities have contributed greatly to the lack of parent involvement. Yet, over 20 years of research and experience have demonstrated that the education of children with disabilities can be made more effective by strengthening the role of parents and ensuring that families of such children have meaningful opportunities to participate in the education of their children. Racial disparities are the result of many factors, but the power
differentials that exist between African American parents and school officials must be addressed. Mislabeling is a common denial of educational opportunity. It must also be emphasized, however, that some African American children need special education services, regardless of whether they have been identified or how they have been categorized. Highquality special education services must be available to these children, many of whom attend some of the poorest schools in the country. In addition, African American parents must be empowered to become strong advocates for their children through increased awareness of learning differences and the recently reauthorized federal law, the Individuals with Disabilities Education Improvement Act (IDEIA) of 2004. This law is most commonly referred to as the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA). It entitles school-aged children and youth with disabilities to receive a free, appropriate public education. Overemphasis on what is wrong with a child, without considering all that is happening around the child (e.g., poor instruction, low expectations of teachers, cultural differences), has resulted in biased assessment and placement practices. Fair treatment in these practices and the implementation of effective and appropriate instructional practices will eventually decrease the disproportionate representation of African American students in special education. See also: > African American youth; > Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA); > Learning disabilities; > National Information Center for Children and Youth with Disabilities (NICHCY)
Suggested Reading Kozol, J. (2005). The shame of the nation: The restoration of apartheid schooling in America. New York, NY: Crown Publishers. Losen, D. J., & Orfield, G. (2002). Racial inequality in special education: The Civil Rights Project at Harvard University. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Education Press.
Suggested Resources National Association for the Education of African American Children with Learning Disabilities—http://www.aacld.org: This is the official website of the NAEAACLD and provides news, publications, and numerous resources for parents.
National association of school psychologists (NASP)
National Association of School Psychologists (NASP) Arlene Silva . Ted Feinberg
The National Association of School Psychologists (NASP) represents and supports the school psychology profession through leadership to enhance the mental health and educational competence of all children. NASP values include:
A continuum of school psychological services is available to all children. A high degree of personal and professional competence is evident at all levels of the association. A high degree of professionalism and ethical conduct is encouraged and promoted at all levels of the association. Volunteerism is, currently and historically, core to the work of the association. Diversity is welcomed, respected, and honored at all levels of the association. Professional and association practices strive for empirically based and data driven confirmation of services rendered. Cultural competence is evident at the practice and association levels. High-quality professional development is valued and supported at all levels of the association.
NASP works to ensure that current and future school psychologists have the competencies and skills needed to support the diverse strengths and needs of children, families, and schools. NASP does this through its national convention, publications, training modules, approved provider network and continuing education as well as distance-learning opportunities, member support, approval of training programs, national credential (NCSP), and funding to support relevant research on best practices. NASP advocates for appropriate research-based education and mental health services for all children and families, and supports involvement of members in advocacy efforts at local, state, and federal levels. As America’s schools become increasingly diverse, NASP reaffirms its commitment to promote inclusive educational environments that respect and respond to differences in race, culture, ethnicity, and language.
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Through partnerships, recruitment efforts, bilingual publications, training, online resources, and advocacy, NASP endorses and promotes cultural competence in every area of school psychological service delivery. NASP’s strategic plan for the organization reflects the value that diversity is welcomed, respected and honored at all levels of the association. NASP’s Culturally Competent Practice website (www.nasponline.org/culturalcompetence) was developed as a collection of resources to assist school psychologists, educators and parents in their efforts to enhance the mental health and educational competence of all children. NASP has developed position papers on a variety of topics, such as early intervention services and school violence, that are of interest to professionals, consumers, and advocates. These position papers provide the officially adopted beliefs and views of the association (http://www.nasponline.org/information/posi tion_paper.html). In addition, fact sheets have been developed that provide timely, key information designed to help our members, consumers, and advocates understand and promote best practices that will benefit all children and youth (http://www. naspcenter.org/factsheets/). NASP has also developed a series of crisis response resources, some of which have been translated into a variety of languages, on topics including war and terrorism, suicide, and natural disasters (http://www.nasponline.org/NEAT/crisismain.html). In addition, NASP created and actively supports the National Emergency Assistance Team (NEAT), comprised of nationally certified school psychologists who have had formal crisis training and direct crisis experience in dealing with the aftermath of man-made and natural disasters. NEAT has responded to a number of major crises, including the Columbine school shootings and the recent hurricanes/floods that have had an impact on the Gulf Coast area of the United States. NEAT’s role varies according to the needs of each situation. Team members, however, are equipped to provide expertise in crisis intervention and to serve as an ‘‘extra hand’’ by providing direct intervention to individual students and faculty. Team members also help on-site counterparts regain their ‘‘emotional equilibrium’’ and focus on the most critical issues by coordinating intervention measures. See also: > American Psychological Association (APA); > School psychologist
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Suggested Reading Brock, S. E., Lazarus, P. J., & Jimerson, S. R. (2002). Best practices in school crisis prevention and intervention. Bethesda, MD: National Association of School Psychologists. Canter, A. S., Paige, L. Z., Roth, M. D., Romero, I., & Carroll, S. A. (Eds.). (2004). Helping children at home and school II: Handouts for families and educators. Bethesda, MD: National Association of School Psychologists. Thomas, A., & Grimes, J. (Eds.). (2002). Best practices in school psychology IV. Bethesda, MD: National Association of School Psychologists.
Suggested Resources www.nasponline.org: The National Association of School Psychologists (NASP) represents and supports School Psychology through leadership to enhance the mental health and educational competence of all children.
National Education Association (NEA) Jennifer Christ . Theodore J Christ
members from across the nation and 14,000 local-level affiliate organizations. A Representative Assembly (RA) was created in 1920 to establish the organization as a republic (i.e., where the interests of sub-groups are promoted by representatives). Presently, there are approximately 9,000 delegates nominated and elected each year at the local level. The RA then elects both a nine-person executive committee and a 172-member Board of Directors who serve as the association’s top decision makers. A handbook is published each year for members and others interested in education. The handbook gives background information, lists programs, describes policies, and provides contact information. Over the years, the reach of the NEA has increased, and currently, the NEA works to improve the state of education at local, state, national and international levels. The national NEA headquarters is located in Washington D.C. At the local level, the NEA and its affiliate local organizations raise funds for scholarships, bargain for contracts, and provide opportunities for professional training. At the state level, the NEA advocates to improve school resources, establish professional standards and deals with the legalities of public education (e.g., protect academic freedom and the rights of school employees). At a national level, NEA lobbies to project and improve the state of education. Finally, the NEA promotes and participates in activities and discourse to enhance education around the world.
Overview Mission, Purpose, and Goals The President of the New York Teachers Association, Thomas W. Valentine, established the National Teachers Association (NTA) in 1857. The goal of the NTA was to bring together teachers from across the nation for the purpose of improving the quality of education in the United States (U.S.) Forty-three members attended the first national meeting in Philadelphia. During the early years, the organization was open only to ‘‘gentleman,’’ and women could join only as ‘‘honorary’’ members. That policy was changed in 1866 when equivalent membership was opened to both males and females. The NTA continued to grow and was renamed the National Education Association (NEA) in 1870. Financial solvency was established in 1884 when members began to pay dues. Currently, the NEA is comprised of 3.2 million
The mission of the NEA is ‘‘to advocate for education professionals and to unite our members and the nation to fulfill the promise of public education to prepare every student to succeed in a diverse and interdependent world.’’ The NEA members follow a Code of Ethics, which was adopted by the association in 1929. The NEA Code of Ethics follows two primary tenets: to make a commitment to the student and a commitment to the profession. Both the mission and the Code of Ethics support the vision of the NEA, which is ‘‘a great public school for every student.’’ To this end, the NEA maintains three priorities: ‘‘improve the quality of teaching, increase student achievement, and to make schools safer, better places to learn.’’
National information center for children and youth with disabilities (NICHCY)
History Not long after the birth of the NTA, a Black Teacher’s association was established by twenty-three teachers from Ohio in 1861. The NTA and NEA have consistently advocated that all children should receive equitable educational opportunities. Some of the NTA’s largest advances in educational equity were made during the Civil War, when the then President, J. P. Wilkersham promoted a policy that ‘‘no seceding states be readmitted into the Union until they agreed to provide a free public school system for Black as well as White children.’’ This initiated major reform in public education, which was enacted nationwide (by both Northern and Southern states) after the end of the Civil War, with public school classrooms educating all children. Over the years, the NEA has also consistently worked to improve the conditions of school environments for the welfare of both teachers and students. As early as the mid-1800s, the NEA fought for educational reforms and high teacher quality. Prior to this reform, schools maintained only minimal requirements for teachers: to be a teacher, one only needed to be able to ‘‘read, write, and stay out of trouble.’’ Teachers were paid minimal wages and received very few resources and little support. Teacher training, professional standards, and the conditions have been at the forefront of the NEA’s reform efforts. To this end, in 1867, the NEA fought to establish a U.S. Department of Education at the federal level, which is now established and based in Washington D.C. See also: > Reform; > School standards
Suggested Reading Cuddy, D. L. (2000). NEA: Grab for power: A chronology of the National Education Association. Oklahoma, OK: Hearthstone Publishing.
Suggested Resources National Education Association Homepage—http://www.nea.org: This is the official NEA website and provides helpful resources for parents and educators, discusses relevant issues in education, and offers membership.
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National Information Center for Children and Youth with Disabilities (NICHCY) DeAnn Lechtenberger
NICHCY once stood for the National Information Center for Children and Youth with Disabilities, but with new funding awarded in October 2003, it was reorganized and renamed the National Dissemination Center for Children with Disabilities. This national dissemination center serves the United States (U.S.), Puerto Rico, and the U.S. territories and is operated through a cooperative agreement between the Academy for Educational Development (AED) and the Office of Special Education Programs (OSEP), U.S. Department of Education. AED collects, organizes, and disseminates current information about research-based information on effective practices for educating and providing services to children with disabilities. This includes information about how the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) and the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act 2004 (IDEA) affect children with disabilities as well as information about educational research programs and initiatives involving children with disabilities. The NICHCY and AED staff have researched, collected, and organized the latest information in a database that is made available to families, students, educators, researchers, and others who request topical information on children and youth with disabilities from birth through age 22. This information is easily accessed through an updated website where the public can request information, research topics, and ask NICHCY staff specific questions. Information is organized on the NICHCY website alphabetically by topic for easy access. Communications and materials are available in English and Spanish on a variety of topics including: specific disabilities, parent materials, disability organizations, transition, as well as resources and connections in every state. Announcements regarding funding sources and training conferences are also available on the NICHCY website. A research panel is also available to assist teachers or researchers who wish to identify quality journal articles or other literature to
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enhance their research on best practices in working with children with disabilities and their families. Parents can learn how to contact disability organizations, parent support groups, state agencies, and others around the country who can offer specific assistance about information requests. Center publications may be downloaded for free from the website or requested in hard copy or alternate formats, such as a computer disk, by contacting NICHCY at 1-800-695-0285 or emailing the staff at: [email protected]. Trained information specialists with expertise in special education, social work, research, as well as experience in parenting children with disabilities are also available to talk with callers about information requests and referrals to additional resources, as well as process requests for NICHCY publications. Perhaps the most unique and creative aspect of the NICHCY website is a special site called Zigawhat where young people with disabilities, their siblings, and their peers can learn, connect, grow, cope, and have fun. Zigawhat is colorful and informative. It contains a variety of links for educational games, puzzles, jokes, and storytelling. Additional links provide tips on how children with disabilities can make friends and deal with everyday life events. This interactive ‘‘kid friendly’’ website actually provides connections with other young people who have disabilities through a teen chat room, cyber pen pals, and online bulletin boards that address specific types of disabilities or issues that children may face. Children can also order resources as well as interact with the informational specialists on Zigawhat, which is also maintained by the NICHCY staff. See also: > Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA); > No Child Left Behind (NCLB)
Suggested Reading Cameto, R. (2003). Who are the children in special education? (Research brief). Washington, D.C.: Office of Special Education Programs.
Suggested Resources NICHCY Research Center—http://research.nichcy.org: This is a new Research Center housed at NICHCY, designed to connect the public with a database of the latest research evidence on a wide range of educational practices.
Native American Schools Joseph Watras
In the area that became the United States (U.S.), the cross-cultural contact of indigenous peoples and Europeans led to the spread of contagious diseases that nearly exterminated the Native Americans. The rulers of Europeans countries had justified the establishment of colonies as fulfilling the biblical injunction to teach all the peoples of the world. In their efforts to teach indigenous people, the European countries followed variations of two different models. One model of colonization came from the Spanish who regarded the Native Americas as subjects living within the Spanish empire. The other model of colonization came from the English who viewed the Native Americans as belonging to separate nations. In the area known as the Spanish borderlands that stretched from Florida to California, Spanish missionaries set up missions in which they admitted the Native Americans they considered Spanish subjects. Frequently, the walls of the missions enclosed agricultural fields, blacksmith forges, leather working shops, and churches enabling the Native Americans to follow European ways of life and to practice the Christian religion. Since the English colonists viewed Native Americans as belonging to separate nations, they established treaties acknowledging the rights and duties of the different sides. For example, Puritans in New England sought pacts guaranteeing mutual protection with various tribes, and they encouraged Native Americans to seek justice in colonial courts when colonists harmed them. Although few English colonists participated in missionary work, the English settlers tended to believe that exposure to European ways would bring about the Christianization of Native Americans. Unfortunately, after King Philip’s War in 1676, many English settlers took harsh measures against the American Indians. With the establishment of the new republic, officials followed the English example. For example, the Northwest Ordinance of 1787 called for just treatment of Native Americans. This plea did not deter settlers who desired land from forcing the resettlement of Native Americans into areas far from their homes. Although the U.S. Constitution gave little direction about whether or how the federal government could
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deal with Native Americans, the U.S. Congress exercised authority governing relations with the Indian tribes. For example, the U.S. Congress passed legislation in 1796 and 1806 creating an Office of Indian Trade in the War Department. The superintendent oversaw a network of government owned trading posts called factories. Stocking these posts with merchandise of good quality, the government traded for furs and sought to make the Native Americans become dependent on the government. The hope was that the trade with the so-called factories would convert the Native Americans. When Thomas L. McKenney took the office of superintendent in 1816, he urged passage of the Indian Civilization Fund Act that provided 10,000 dollars per year to endow schools and to help support missionary schools set up among the Native Americans. Advocates claimed that this act would enable the schools to transform the American Indians into Christianized citizens within a generation. Not only did the act fail to convert the Native Americans, John Jacob Astor and his political allies ended the government system of factories in 1822 giving Astor’s American Fur Company the rights to carry on the trade. McKenney continued his effort to support schools for Native Americans. In 1824, the U.S. Congress created the Office of Indian Affairs and appointed McKenney as its head. By 1830, McKenney could claim there were 52 schools enrolling about 1,500 students. In addition to federal efforts, some states established schools. For example, in 1825, Richard Johnson used funds derived from the sale of lands ceded by the Choctaw in Kentucky to establish an academy to teach Native Americans the elements of English and the mechanic arts. Although the U.S. Congress resisted appeals to increase spending on Native American education, the U.S. Supreme Court affirmed the authority of the U.S. Congress to control Indian affairs. In 1832, Chief Justice John Marshall decided the case Worcester v. Georgia in which he cited the English colonial experiences as precedents. Marshall based his decision on the fact that the Constitution gave the U.S. Congress the power of making treaties with foreign nations. Thus, Marshall confirmed the practice set up by policy makers to consider Native American groups to be independent nations in competition with each other and with the U.S. After Marshall made his decision, the U.S. Office of Indian Affairs adopted as a model the Methodist Shawnee mission in eastern Kansas established in 1839. This was a manual labor school designed to introduce
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Native Americans to European methods of agriculture and manufacture. Built by church funds, the school provided Native American boys training in agriculture and extended to Native American girls instruction in the domestic arts. Drawing students from such tribes as the Shawnee, Delaware, Kansas, and Peoria, the school sought to help Native Americans improve their standards of living and to teach them about Christianity. The school enrolled girls on the belief that women would carry European manners back to the tribes. In addition, since the school was located where the Native Americans lived, the costs were lower because the students did not have to travel to attend school. Manual labor schools spread widely. Supported by the U.S. Office of Indian Affairs, Christian missionaries established similar schools for various Native Americans throughout the west. By 1848, there were sixteen manual labor schools with 809 Native American students and 87 boarding schools with almost 3,000 students. As several epidemics swept through remaining tribes, populations dropped to the extent that people considered Native Americans to be a vanishing race. For example, in California, the number of American Indians declined from about 100,000 in 1853 to about 30,000 in 1864. After the U.S. Civil War, the federal government increased its efforts to assimilate the remaining Native Americans. In 1887, the U.S. Congress passed and U.S. President Grover Cleveland signed the Dawes General Allotment Act. This act called for surveys of reservations with portions of the land allotted to individual members of the tribes. The hope was that individual ownership of land would enable the Native Americans to become prosperous farmers. At the same time, U.S. commissioners of Indian affairs demanded that the Native Americans attending the schools sponsored by the federal government speak English at all times. The view was that these children had to learn the country’s language to participate in civic affairs. Several missionary groups opposed the requirement to speak only English. They had translated the Gospels into Native American languages and conducted religious services in those tongues. When Native Americans resisted the requirements to speak English, the office of Indian Affairs threatened to force children to attend English schools, but the office did not carry out its threat. Despite the controversies, the federal government increased its support of schools for Native Americans.
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By 1900, there were about 300 schools with enrollments of about 22,000 Native American students. About half of these schools were boarding schools. Many of the boarding schools were industrial schools, the largest of which was Carlisle Indian Industrial School in Pennsylvania. In this setting, far from the influences of their traditional life, the school immersed the Native American students in the ways of White people. Although the founder of Carlisle, Richard Henry Pratt, believed he could bring the rising generation of Native Americans to accept the ways of mainstream society, Pratt found that many of the graduates of his school drifted back to the reservations where their families lived and resumed their former lives. In the early 1920s, John Collier complained that the policies of the federal government threatened to extinguish indigenous ways of life from the U.S. With the support of the General Federation of Women’s Clubs, Collier launched a public campaign against the allotment of reservation lands and the industrial training schools. Collier raised such extensive criticism that the U.S. Secretary of the Interior, Hubert Work, commissioned the Brookings Institute to conduct a study headed by Lewis Meriam to determine the condition of Indian affairs. Completed in 1928, Meriam’s report asked the U.S. Bureau of Indian Affairs to revise its policies and its practices. In the section on education, the report complained about the separation of the schools from the daily lives of Native Americans and the harm caused young children by poor nutrition and excessive demands to labor. According to the report, the solution was for the department of education to adopt practices popular in progressive education rather than textbook oriented instruction. The following year, presidential administrations changed. When Herbert Hoover took office as U.S. President, he appointed Charles James Rhoads as U.S. Commissioner of Indian Affairs with the understanding that Rhoads would implement the changes recommended in Meriam’s report. Rhoads appointed the author of the education section of Meriam’s report to be the director of Indian education. During Rhoads’ administration, the education branch of the Indian Service hired more than eight hundred new elementary school teachers who had at least 3 years training beyond high school. In addition, the service encouraged teachers who lacked the necessary training to attend normal schools, offered summer courses for teachers on reservations, and stressed
the adoption of vocational training courses that were appropriate for life on the reservations. Despite these reforms, Collier continued his campaign of criticism. When Franklin Roosevelt took office as U.S. President, he appointed Collier to the office of commissioner. On taking office, Collier exerted considerable effort securing passage of the Indian Reorganization Act. Submitted as the Wheeler-Howard Act, this act was the basis of the Indian New Deal that ended the system of individual allotment of lands, and it gave Native Americans the freedom to organize into selfgoverning bodies. The Indian Reorganization Act required tribes to vote to accept the conditions of the act. The largest tribe at the time, the Navajo, refused to accept the conditions of the act. Furthermore, many Navajo parents complained when the Indian service spent $1.5 million to open reservation day schools built to resemble traditional hogans, hired local community workers to staff the schools, and adjusted the curriculum so that students learned about activities found in Navajo homes. The parents wanted more boarding schools whose academic curriculums and trained teachers enabled the children to prepare for work outside the reservation. After World War II, public opinion turned against the progressive notions of education on which the bureau of Indian affairs depended. In 1945, Collier resigned his position as commissioner of Indian affairs. The war had taken most of the personnel from his office, and the U.S. Congress had reduced the funds he needed. A few years later, in 1949, the Commission on Organization of the Executive Branch of the Government recommended that the U.S. Office of Indian Affairs seek to integrate Native Americans into the mainstream society by turning social programs, such as education, over to state agencies. The commission argued that the reservation day schools and the teachers offered inadequate academic instruction. During the civil rights movement of the 1960s, American Indian groups engaged in public demonstrations affirming their right for self-governance. For example, in 1970, members of the American Indian Movement seized Alcatraz Island in San Francisco Bay, and in 1973, they occupied a settlement at the Oglala Sioux Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota. As a result, in 1975, U.S. President Gerald Ford signed the Indian Self-determination and Education Assistance Act, Public law 93-638, to foster meaningful participation by American Indians in the planning, conduct, and the administration of services for Native Americans.
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Over the years, the U.S. Congress reauthorized the act and amended it to increase tribal authority over federally funded projects. Although PL 93-638 led to the opening of several Native American schools such as primary schools, middle schools, high schools, and community colleges, the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights issued a report in 2003 claiming the federal funding did not meet the needs of these schools. Although federal government had the sole responsibility of funding schools for the Native Americans, the U.S. Department of Education (DOE) dedicated less than 0.3% of its budget for Native American education. The U.S. Commission on Civil Rights found this appropriation to be low, and the commission noted that the DOE reduced the funds directed to Native American schools over the past two decades. As a result, the report complained that tribal colleges received 60% less per student than did other public community colleges. The commission found Native American students in elementary and secondary grades attending deteriorating school buildings, taught by underpaid teachers, following outdated curriculums, and suffering from cultural isolation. As a result, the report added that Native Americans had the lowest scores on achievement tests in reading and mathematics of any racial or ethnic group in the nation. The U.S. Commission on Civil Rights urged the federal government to recognize its obligations to Native Americans and fund the schools adequately. The report concluded that the federal government had to provide adequate support for tribal schools to enable the Indian nations to advance toward selfgovernance. See also: > Ethnic minority youth; > Native American youth
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Human rights;
Suggested Reading Prucha, F. P. (1984). The great father: The United States government and the American Indians. Lincoln, Nebraska: University of Nebraska Press. Senese, G. B. (1991). Self-determination and the social education of Native Americans. New York: Praeger. Szasz, M. (1974). Education and the American Indian: The road to self-determination, 1928–1973. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press. U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, (2003). A quiet crisis: Federal funding and unmet needs in Indian country. http://purl.access. gpo.gov/GPO/LPS49018.
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Native American Youth Lisa Medoff . Teresa LaFromboise
There are currently over 560 federally recognized American Indian tribes, many of which practice their own customs, maintain particular social organizations, and speak different tribal languages. The name ‘‘American Indian’’ is used to refer to all Native American individuals, including Alaska Natives, Aleuts, Eskimos, and those of mixed blood. The terms American Indian, Native American, and Native are used interchangeably in this writing but it should be noted that these words represent diverse people from distinct tribes. While many tribes share similar traditions and a common basis for beliefs, as with any group of individuals, complete homogeneity in those beliefs cannot be assumed. Approximately 2.5 million people identify themselves solely as American Indian and Alaska Native, but when including those who consider themselves part American Indian or part Alaska Native, the number increases to just over 4 million. Identification of tribal membership is complicated by bureaucratic ambiguity and complex eligibility criteria. Federal and state-managed treatment programs generally require one quarter genealogically derived Indian blood for eligibility for service; however, private agencies and community programs usually respect the rights of tribes to define their own membership criteria. The number of intertribal and between-culture marriages is increasing, a fact that worries tribal leaders who are concerned about blood quantum, which can affect the tribal enrollment status of future generations. Currently, American Indians are a young population, with approximately 840,300 individuals under the age of 18 and a median age of 28 years, in comparison with the national average of 35 years. Just over 30% of Native Americans live on reservations or in other census-defined tribal areas. The movement away from reservations has been attributed to limited employment and lack of educational opportunities, housing shortages, poverty, and inferior health care. Native Americans have faced a great deal of adversity in economic, social, and health matters. Impediments, such as governmental removal policies and the devastating poverty facing some reservations, served to chip away at many aspects of Native American culture by separating families and communities, either by force or by necessity. However, much of the traditional
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practices and beliefs still live on today, demonstrating the strength of cultural identity within Native individuals and the resilience of Native cultures as a whole.
Values Researchers make a distinction between an independent and an interdependent view of the self. The former, prevalent in many Western cultural contexts, includes a self-definition that is separate and autonomous from others. The latter, seen in many non-Western cultural contexts, emphasizes a more fundamental interdependence with others and the social context, with individuals often defining themselves in terms of social membership and roles, rather than with psychological and attributes and personal abilities. While individuality is not absent or discouraged within Native American culture, it is often understood within the framework of a focus on the ‘‘other.’’ Honor and respect are gained by sharing and cooperation. American Indian children may be seen as unmotivated in schools because of a reluctance to compete with peers or a desire to share answers with other tribe members. One behavior commonly seen in American Indian culture is the use of humor. Humor is a vital component of American Indian life, and can be used as a method of social control. It is often used to impart indirect criticism to maintain the harmony of the group. For example, at a sacred dance, clown dancers may entertain the crowd, and in doing so, single out a community member to reprimand through teasing and humorous demonstrations. This reprimand often serves to point out behaviors that are offensive to the rest of the community and directs the individual back to a healthier, more harmonious path.
Enculturation and Acculturation For many decades, attempts have been made to assimilate American Indians into the dominant culture. Many have been removed from their homes as children and placed in boarding schools with the intention of erasing all aspects of their traditional culture; others have been relocated from the reservation to large urban areas with the promise of housing and jobs, only to find themselves alone in the city with little assistance and limited contact with extended family or fellow tribal members. One difficulty that Native youth
often face is learning to function biculturally, in both American Indian and European American cultures, especially if they do not live on the reservation. However, high levels of bicultural competence, the ability to function effectively in diverse cultural settings, can serve as a protective factor for adolescent psychosocial health. Enculturation involves gaining knowledge of and identifying with one’s traditional culture; it is seen as the extent to which one identifies with his or her cultural heritage, takes pride in it, and participates in cultural activities. Although some researchers suggest that a strong cultural identity and participation in traditional practices are related to resilience and can buffer negative influences, leading to decreased problem behaviors, others disagree, arguing that enculturation may serve to increase the stress experienced by young minorities. Strong identification with traditional cultures may create contradicting demands and value conflicts between minority and majority cultures, as well as an increase in perceived discrimination. For example, living on the reservation often allows for more social interactions with tribal members, exposure to traditional culture, and community support, but may also bring negative consequences such as geographical isolation, high unemployment, and low income. However, living on the reservation is not a necessary component of enculturation, as cultural involvement and community support often occurs without regard to where a Native person lives. It is traditional for American Indians to mark developmental milestones with great ritual. Most tribes have ceremonies to welcome a newborn into the world. Children are recognized for their achievement throughout their lives. Rights of passage into adolescence, such as the first successful hunt, are marked with ceremony. Parents sometimes share children’s achievement with others at powwows or ceremonial encampments by sharing relevant information with a ‘‘camp crier’’ who visits among the participants to broadcast information about the child’s accomplishments. All of these traditional activities serve to cement a child’s sense of belonging to the community, as well as instill a sense of obligation to fulfill one’s duty as a tribal member. Most American Indian families consist of members with differing levels of cultural involvement and adherence to traditional teachings. For example, the grandparents of an extended family may live on the
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reservation, but speak only English. Some of their grandchildren may be bilingual, whereas grandchildren who live in the city may only speak English. However, all of the members of this extended family may be involved in enculturation activities such as beading, attending or participating in powwows, hunting, fishing, and cooking Native foods. Because of the family structure, girls are usually more involved in traditional activities. Maleoriented traditional activities require leadership and involvement with older men, but with current conditions, men are not as active in the traditional or ongoing activities of the tribe, and thus are not as available for this type of mentoring. It should not be assumed that every child has an equal opportunity to be involved in traditional activities; in attempting to determine the extent of involvement, opportunity must be taken into account. Two examples of common traditional activities frequently engaged in by Native Americans across the life span are the sweat lodge ceremony and the talking circle. ‘‘Sweats’’ are often conducted among American Indian groups for the purpose of purification and prevention. Participation in the sweat lodge involves preparatory fasting, prayers, and offerings throughout serial purification sessions, known as ‘‘rounds.’’ Participants make offerings for health and balance in life during a ceremony that lasts for several hours. A sweat lodge ceremony can help to integrate an individual who is recovering from substance abuse or emotional trauma back into the larger community. In the talking circle, sage or sweet grass is burned to produce purifying smoke and provide direction for group conversation. The leader begins by sharing feelings or thoughts about the group. Each participant is free to speak and interruptions are not allowed. A sacred object such as an eagle feather or talking stick is often circulated, and the ceremony concludes with the joining of hands in prayer. Both of these practices foster a sense of belonging and connection that affirms identity and acceptance by the community. There are many current attempts to enhance American Indian connectedness, particularly for urban youth who may not have direct access to the resources that are available on the reservation. Radio programs hosted by American Indians feature American Indian bands whose styles range from reggae to rock to blues. Litefoot, one American Indian entertainer, recently organized a gathering of American Indian youth intended to recognize the talent of these youth and to help them see how they can function effectively in a bicultural
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manner. These initiatives are an attempt to fill the essential role of integrating urban and reservation concerns with traditional values and practices. Another example of this integration is the White Bison Wellbriety Movement that promotes maintaining sobriety from addictions and aids in recovery from the harmful effects of drugs and alcohol on individuals, families and communities. White Bison encourages going beyond sobriety and recovery, and committing to a life of wellness and healing every day. Included in the Wellbriety for Youth activities are youth talking circles and caring adult Wellbriety mentor/friends to whom young people can turn.
Socioeconomic Status Due to outside interference, many tribes have encountered difficulty in sustaining intact family relations and preserving traditional ways of life. In many Native communities, the disruption of these traditions has served to impair healthy functioning, having an impact on social, economic, and educational arenas. Indian women and children are in more precarious economic and social situations than those of other groups in the United States (U.S.). Native American women are less likely to marry and are more likely to be divorced than U.S. women in general. Poverty rates for American Indian and Alaska Native children are nearly three times higher than that of the general population. Although average income varies from tribe to tribe, over 25% of Native Americans on reservations live in poverty. Only 50% of Native Americans available for the workforce in Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) service areas are employed; among those who are employed, approximately thirty percent earn wages that are below the poverty line. Eight percent of the U.S. homeless population is Native American. However, many Indian leaders feel that the future is optimistic for American Indians. There is a current trend toward increased tribal sovereignty, population growth, and an increasing economic base. Twenty-four tribal colleges currently exist, allowing both youth and adults to advance their education and engage in lifelong learning within a comfortable and familiar environment. Indian youth are increasingly able to emulate nationally known role models in areas such as politics, higher education, and entertainment. Contemporary economic development is often viewed in light of the rise of reservation gaming, which
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has contributed to increased economic opportunity, an emerging middle class, and in some cases, has attracted some urban Indians back to reservations or rural Indian communities. The passage of the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act of 1988 can be viewed as a source of Native empowerment, as revenues allow for employment training and investment in solutions to social and economic problems. On the other hand, some worry that reservation gaming enhances exposure to negative influences such as gambling and alcohol, and increases contact with non-natives, which may lead to further erosion of traditional values. Although some researchers have found that compulsive gambling seems to be on the rise among American Indians, tribal gaming has created jobs and increased education and training opportunities. Many tribes have invested in social programs such as establishing college scholarship funds, building childcare centers, and creating comprehensive health plans. The Harvard Project on American Indian Economic Development examined the impact of gaming on tribes in Oklahoma. They found that because of gaming, tribal nations were becoming more selfsufficient and were able to raise revenues for social programs and economic development, thus decreasing the insidious effects of welfare status on tribal members. Tribal governments spend a significant percent of the profits in efforts to revitalize native communities. Indian nations in Oklahoma and elsewhere have invested in community needs, such as highway infrastructure and health care. Contrary to concerns mentioned above, the Harvard Project concluded that the growth of tribal gaming is not likely to be associated with significant changes in the prevalence of pathological gambling. The Harvard Project also found that gaming monies have been used to support cultural preservation programs such as tribal history courses and native language immersion programs. Many Cherokee and Choctaw tribal members are able to discover their history and language for the first time because of educational programs funded by gaming. Miami tribal members have implemented a tribal library that includes historical documents and an archive of over 16,000 items. The Citizen Potawatomi Nation uses gaming revenue to host powwows and other traditional events, which strengthen connectedness and increase a sense of community. Perhaps most importantly, tribes are able to use their new capital to become major lobbyists at the state and federal level, advocating for programs that will serve their people.
Education American Indians attain fewer years of formal education than members of other minority groups and Whites. It is not uncommon to see lags in academic performance of 1 or 2 years in elementary school and 2–4 years in middle and high school. Estimations of high school dropout range from 30 to 60%. However, in some cases the urban Indian high school dropout rate has been reported to be as high as 85%, underscoring the importance of taking into account the distinctiveness of different tribes and regions. Just over 20% of Indian high school graduates enroll in college, compared to over 35% in the nation as a whole. Factors that have been found to influence the decision of Native Americans to remain in higher education include a caring adult role model or mentor who helps the individual develop a sense of purpose; schools and teachers who focus on the whole individual (in contrast to a more competitive, task-oriented environment); a strong sense of spirituality and moral purpose in life; and low levels of family stress. Impaired academic functioning is facilitated by educators who are unaccustomed to Indian ways of learning and interaction. Educators also lack information on language deficits, neurosensory disorders, and physically handicapping conditions that are common among Native American children. For example, otitis media (middle ear disease) is estimated to occur in over fifty percent of Indian children. Native American children enrolled in public schools have a higher frequency of developmental disabilities than children of other minority groups and White children. Some reservations have as much as one third of their children enrolled in special education courses.
Mortality and Health Substance abuse is one of the greatest problems faced by the American Indian, particularly in the form of alcoholism. For Native Americans, rates of malnutrition, alcoholism mortality, and cirrhosis of the liver are significantly higher than those of any other racial/ ethnic groups. Some explanations that have been put forward for the increased rates of substance abuse include feelings of hopeless and boredom; the high levels of acceptance of drinking within Indian families; the cultural values of autonomy and permissiveness which allow children to determine how much alcohol they
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want to consume; and peer pressure that turns drinking into a social event that promotes tribe cohesiveness. Turning down a drink may be seen as judgmental of others and disruptive to group harmony. Indian youth come into contact with drugs at an earlier age than White youth. Many researchers have found that Native American youth have the highest rates of alcohol and drug abuse. A pattern of alcohol abuse can have severe consequences for children in the form of fetal alcohol syndrome (FAS), which can result in mental and psychosocial retardation, such a poor impulse control, limited social skills, and poor judgment. The overall rate of FAS among American Indians is reported at five to ten times higher than that of other racial/ethnic groups. The homicide rate among American Indians is nearly one and a half times that of any other racial/ ethnic group, and the suicide rate is close to two times higher than that of other groups. American Indians experience twice the rate of violence than do individuals in the general population. Of the violent victimizations that are experienced by Native Americans, approximately 70% are committed by individuals who are not of the same racial/ethnic group. The mortality rate is over three times higher than that of other groups for motor vehicle accidents. Environmental contamination significantly affects Indian life expectancy, which is about 5% lower than the general population, and frequency of illness. Although there has been a trend of decreasing infant mortality rates in the postnatal period (the first year of life), this rate is close to 30% higher than that of the White population. Close to twenty percent of Indian youth have experienced some sort of abuse. The traumatic experiences of abuse and neglect are often exacerbated by problems associated with alcohol abuse and high morbidity and mortality rates within the community. Estimates show that up to 35% of Indian children have been forcibly removed from their homes for the purposes of foster care, adoption, and/or education in boarding schools. During these times, children were often raised by nonIndian caregivers in institutions or homes that may not have appreciated the specific cultural needs of the children.
Family One of the most devastating policies of the U.S. government was the boarding school experiment
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that began in the early 1700s and continued through the 1960s. As a result of the boarding school movement, traditional American Indian parenting practices have been severely compromised. It was believed that American Indian children would learn to be selfsufficient participants in the larger society if they were reared away from their families in boarding schools. Children as young as 5 years old were forcibly separated from their homes and sent far away to school, often across the country, for many years, for the purposes of spiritual conversion, education, and other forms of ‘‘civilization.’’ They were often severely punished for speaking their language or practicing any of their tribal customs. Since children had minimal interactions with their families, many lost their community identity and adapted to routine, institutional practices. When they returned to their communities after lengthy separations, family members often found they could no longer relate to their children, who were often deemed to be culturally incompetent. These disruptions in family living have produced generations of American Indian parents with a sense of uncertainty about how children should be raised. However, in recent years, there has been an attempt to rekindle traditional childrearing practices to strengthen the quality of life in Indian communities. In traditional times, children were highly valued and viewed as sacred beings because they had the most recent contact with the spirit world. All children were fully accepted as members of the family, clan, and tribe, whether they came from natural birth, were adopted, or were stepchildren. Many tribes believed that beginning with conception, the bestowal of unconditional love upon children was the primary role of American Indian parents, and thought that children could be taken back to the spirit world if they were not treated well. In the traditional extended family system, everyone shares responsibility for meeting the needs of children. No one person has sole responsibility for child rearing. Thus, when parents cannot raise their own children, members of the extended family take them in and treat them well. Grandparents recognize that age and life experiences are essential for child rearing. They readily offer assistance to parents, as young parents are not considered to have the years of experience necessary to raise children alone. Elders often adopt children when they lack strong family ties. Currently, middle-aged adults are taking on increasing responsibilities for running the tribe, thus placing more
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childrearing responsibility upon elders who remain at home. One prevailing expectation is the utmost display of respect for elders, who hold the most honored positions in the community. Many children are encouraged to visit older people on an ongoing basis, especially their namesake. Many of the methods of influencing appropriate behavior in children are based on the values that underlie traditional life. These include respect, bravery, generosity, and harmony. Respect is the foundation for discipline and authority. Many tribes believe that respect is situated at the very center of a person’s relationship with all others. Learning this concept begins with the child’s relationship with the family. Children learn early to show respect, especially to elders. In turn, adults show respect for children by being polite to them and using punishment sparingly, only when necessary. After misbehaving, a child might be ignored, or else quickly experience disapproving looks, words, or ‘‘tsk-tsk’’ sounds from adults. The values of generosity and harmony are also still seen today in many tribal communities. Adults often readily share resources, such as clothes and tools, with other members in the community, perpetuating the values of generosity and community responsibility. The concept of harmony refers to balance between all living things. This value involves people co-existing cooperatively with the forces around them. The harmony ethos provides regulatory norms for children. Avoidance and tolerance seem to be the most important methods of promoting this value. Children are encouraged not to insult or offend anyone. Within traditional families, adults demonstrate the importance of harmony by using diffuse communication patterns that go to great length to avoid direct confrontation or conflict. For example, information about a child’s misbehavior might be passed from the child’s mother to an aunt or uncle who has been designated as responsible for guiding the child’s character development. This indirect line of communication serves to keep the bond between parents and child harmonious and reinforces the extended family involvement in maintaining standards of behavior. In many contemporary American Indian families, relational values and their behavioral manifestations have remained intact. Extended family networks still provide extensive psychological support despite the fact that families have been transformed over time due to geographic movements and intertribal marriages. Indian families that live in urban areas tend to
have nuclear households, whereas families that live on the reservation are more likely to include extended family members. In contrast to the European model of an extended family that is defined as three generations within a single household, a traditional American Indian extended family will often comprise several households and relatives. Currently, many American Indian families function biculturally by maintaining some of the traditional ways of the tribe and blending them with conventional American practices. Families may shift along the continuum, becoming more traditional at times and less so at others. A key feature of contemporary American Indian families is the growing proportion of children within them who reside with only one parent. Women head over forty percent of American Indian households. Over fifty percent of American Indian women have never married, compared to less than 40% of all American women. The extent of single parenthood, never marrying, and divorce tends to be higher on reservations with high unemployment and poverty rates. However, it is important to note that what may appear to be a negative life event to an outside observer may, in fact, be a positive advantage for the individual within the tribal community. For example, an early pregnancy by an unwed mother is not necessarily a risk factor for American Indian women. They do not experience the stigma that is seen in other communities; in fact, the pregnancy may be seen as stabilizing them. Being a mother is viewed as sacred, and as such, one’s status in the community can be elevated. Although American Indian fathers provide part of the balance within a family, fathers are not seen as needing to be present in the household in order to contribute strength to the family system. Researchers have found no significant relationship between American Indian resiliency and the presence of a male caregiver in the household. When a parent is unable to instill moral values and provide guidance and support for children, the community is obligated to take responsibility for ensuring that children receive optimal levels of care. A sense of mutual obligation is prevalent in the extended family system. Individuals are expected to fulfill cultural obligations to family members, thus heightening the sense of connectedness and belonging that are such vital Native American values. Obligations can include caring for a young family member for an extended period of time or giving family members financial support without expectation of repayment. Mutual obligation can produce relationships which
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create a system of family support that is constantly maintained and secure; being a responsible individual in a collaborative relationship fosters a sense of approval and self-worth. One that even exemplifies such mutual obligation is a giveaway. A giveaway is usually held in conjunction with a special occasion such as a graduation, a return home from active duty in the military, or a marriage. During this ritual, a friend may speak for the family of the individual being honored and call forth family and friends to receive gifts, while discussing the role these individuals have played in the life of the honored person. In this way, the community acknowledges the individual as a part of the community, as well as displays gratitude to the community for supporting the individual. This practice points out the importance of the extended family and community in taking responsibility for rearing children, as well as demonstrating the obligation of the individual to continue the ways of the community.
Spirituality Adult members of Native American society transmit spiritual and religious beliefs through daily interactions and sacred rituals that increase the opportunity for promoting connectedness. A theme that is frequently seen in American Indian spiritual belief systems is that of interconnectedness of all things, both living and nonliving. Human beings are a small part of the larger structure of the universe. They are morally intertwined with the natural world such that the past of one’s family and community is linked to the present and teaches valuable lessons about proper and harmonious behavior. Spirituality integrates American Indian society, giving rise to collective consciousness and social cohesion; spiritual life and tribal life cannot be separated. Spiritual behaviors often include knowing traditional Native American songs and dances, practicing traditional religion, participating in sweat lodge ceremonies/fasting/ vision quests, and learning languages, songs, and practices from a traditional person. Religion is not generally seen as a separate institution from tribal life. The Native American Church serves as a resource for many American Indians. The church promotes abstinence from alcohol use, in addition to other ideals that promote health, wellness, and the preservation of cultural values. Members are encouraged to develop a strong social support
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network, and group meetings provide a safe environment in which members are able to express their emotions. It should be noted that many American Indians also belong to Christian churches and are able to draw strength, support, and a sense of belonging from these institutions in the same manner as other individuals. Many American Indian people do not see Christianity and traditional practices as incompatible.
Resilience Despite the various difficulties American Indians have encountered, many aspects of the culture have enabled it to survive great impediments, particularly the strength of extended family support and the sense of belongingness enhanced by enculturation. Enculturation can be defined as an involvement in traditional cultural activities, such as ceremonies, powwows, feasts, and preparing Native foods. In American Indian communities still living the traditions, there is a very close link between the family and the community, creating a protective space for positive youth development. Extended family and other community members often serve as active mentors and supportive role models. These adults take a special interest in youth, through both personal contact and by promoting involvement in traditional cultural activities. Both the concern of extended family members and the involvement in traditional activities serve to reinforce feelings of connectedness, emphasizing not only the responsibility of the community to care for individuals, but the obligation of those individuals to be productive members of the community. See also: > Academic achievement in minority children; > Biculturalism; > Ethnic minority youth
Suggested Reading Fryberg, S. A., & Markus, H. R. (2003). On being American Indian: Current and possible selves. Self and Identity, 2, 325–344. Horse, P. G. (2001). Reflections on American Indian identity. In C. L. Wijeyesinghe & B. W. Jackson III (Eds.), New perspectives on racial identity development: A theoretical and practical anthology (pp. 91–107). New York: New York University Press. Mihesuah, D. A. (1999). American Indian identities: Issues of individual choice and development. In D. Champagne (Ed.), Contemporary Native American cultural issues (pp. 13–38). Walnut Creek: Alta Mira Press.
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NCLB >
No Child Left Behind (NCLB)
NEA >
National Education Association (NEA)
Neuropsychological Assessment
of brain-behavior relations. The study of brain-behavior relations includes evaluation of intelligence, cognition, sensory abilities, motor skills, language, perception, attention, concentration, memory, learning, problem solving, sequencing, reasoning, decision-making, planning, academic skills, personality, and emotions. The integration of skills and subtle distinctions within each skill area are also studied. A comprehensive neuropsychological evaluation takes hours to complete. The most commonly used intelligence test takes about 90 minutes to administer and the most commonly used memory test takes more than 30 minutes to administer. Administration of other tests may range from a few minutes to nearly an hour. Reports of findings from neuropsychological evaluations are understandably several pages long.
Goals of Neuropsychological Assessment
Yvette Frumkin Feis
The purpose of neuropsychological assessment is to evaluate brain functioning across the age spectrum. Assessments may be used to document the nature and extent of dysfunction of cerebral processes to provide diagnosis, prognosis, and treatment of various disorders. Neuropsychological assessments are also useful in differentiating physiological conditions from emotional disorders.
Practice of Neuropsychology Neuropsychology is a professional specialty in the field of psychology. Neuropsychologists study the relationship between the brain and behavior. It is a specialty area in the field of psychology. A clinical neuropsychologist is a licensed psychologist with special training in understanding how behavior and skills are related to brain structures and systems. Other professionals such as psychiatrists or neurologists may specialize in neuropsychological assessment. Specialists in neuropsychology use information acquired through individual case studies or experimentation with groups of clinical and normal individuals to understand the localization of functions, cognitive processes, and development of normal and atypical patterns
There are different goals of neuropsychological assessment. In a research setting, neuropsychological assessment clarifies the behavioral and cognitive processes, or the way information is processed, in normal and clinical populations. Experimental neuropsychology uses methods from experimental psychology to uncover the relationship between the brain and cognitive functions. The majority of experiments involve studying healthy humans in a laboratory setting, although a minority of researchers conduct experiments with animals. By performing neuropsychological assessments on groups of individuals with a neurological injury or disease, learning disability, or genetic conditions, our knowledge base is increased providing neuropsychologists greater facility in making diagnostic judgments. Brain imaging technologies, such as functional Magnetic Resonance Imagining (or f MRI) or Positron Emission Tomography (PET scan) have greatly increased the knowledge base. Images of the brain are taken when an individual performs a certain task and may be compared to images when other tasks are performed in an attempt to understand how the activation of particular brain areas are related to the task. Also, the images of the brain for individuals with normal functioning and limited functioning can be compared to deepen the understanding of brain-behavior relations. An electroencephalograph (EEG) can provide information on the electrical activity of the brain, while Magnetic Resonant
Neuropsychological assessment
Imaging (MRI) and Computed Axial Tomography (CAT) provide information on structure of the brain. Neuropsychologists study brain functions while working in conjunction with neurologists or radiologists who perform these radiographic studies. Research provides understanding of the development of cognitive processes, the range of normal abilities, and the changes that occur along the life span. This research is essential so that comparisons can be made when diagnostic questions are raised for individuals with suspected problems. In a clinical setting, information acquired from the research setting is used for comparison. By comparing an individual’s scores to those from large databases matched on such factors as age and education background, judgments can be made about an individual’s level of functioning. Specifically, in clinical settings the goal of neuropsychological assessment may be one or more of the following. The pattern of functioning discerned from an individual’s neuropsychological assessment can be compared to those patterns typical of various clinical groups to aid in diagnosis. For example, there are different patterns of symptoms associated with dementia of the Alzheimer’s type, multi-infarct dementia, and dementia related to Pick’s Disease. Treatment recommendations may be tailored to an individual’s particular pattern of functioning. Not all head injuries produce the same constellation of symptoms. Accurate identification of cognitive and behavioral problems is necessary so that customized rehabilitation or retraining may be initiated that is most appropriate for that individual. Neuropsychological assessment can detect very mild or very specific problems. After a head injury or during a medical condition some individuals have mild or very specific problems that can nevertheless be stressful and daunting. Such individuals may feel that something is wrong, but are unable to explain it to others. Identification and delineation of mild or specific deficits diminishes anxiety about the problem and allows for rehabilitation, retraining, or developing of compensatory techniques to make up for these deficits. Neuropsychological assessment can identify an individual’s particular cognitive strengths and weaknesses. This information is useful to aid students or adults who have learning problems. Accommodations and modifications may be made to enhance learning style or the expression of acquired knowledge. Assessments can be very useful in differential diagnosis. For example it is important to know whether memory problems are the result of normal age-related
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changes or if they reflect an emotional or a neurological disorder. It is important to know if disorganized behavior is the result of a psychotic condition or neurological disorder. In an educational setting, neuropsychological assessments can differentiate attention problems from behavioral disorders. Treatment considerations are necessarily based upon the differential diagnosis. Patterns of an individual’s scores can be compared over time to determine whether there has been a positive or negative change in levels of functioning for certain abilities. It is important to know whether or not there has been recovery of symptoms following a stroke or head injury. Sometimes assessments are used to establish a baseline to document a person’s improvement following rehabilitation. Decisions regarding continuation of treatment, change in medication, one’s ability to return to work, or class placement are based on re-evaluation of functioning. Specific routines may be developed that are tailored to an individual’s strengths to help compensate for continued deficits at work, home or school. Prognosis for recovery is best when rapid gains are made following brain injury. Early detection of change in cognitive or behavioral function is important for medical diagnosis. Often times the earliest signs of the onset of a neurological disease are change in cognition or behavior. This is true in Huntington’s disease and the change in status from HIVþ to AIDS. Assessment is also used to identify problems related to medical conditions that can affect memory and thinking, such as diabetes, metabolic dysfunction, infectious diseases, or alcoholism. Assessments can be related to radiographic studies. For example, if a brain tumor or abnormal electrical discharge is found in one area of the brain, an assessment can determine whether and to what degree that abnormality may be affecting functions. The lack of abnormal neuropsychological findings can be very reassuring in such situations as well. Decisions regarding the type of interventions or whether in fact any intervention at all is required are based on the degree of functional symptoms as well as the radiographic findings. Forensic neuropsychological evaluations are necessary to help make determinations in a legal setting. In cases that involve a worker’s compensation claim, a law suit for negligence, or a claim of incompetence to manage one’s affairs, neuropsychological assessments are essential in making legal judgments. Additionally, malingering or faking cognitive disabilities can be differentiated from genuine disabilities in neuropsychological assessment.
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Methods of Neuropsychological Assessment To conduct a comprehensive and accurate neuropsychological assessment it is necessary to review prior reports such as medical records or school reports, obtain a thorough background history, make observations of behavior during the testing, administer a battery of tests, compare the test results to appropriately matched peers, and analyze the patterns of results to make interpretations regarding findings. Prior records and reports are important for comparison purposes. Such reports will help raise questions and direct the examiner to fine-tune the evaluation in a particular direction. Reports of prior motor problems will likely result in choosing an intelligence test without timed motor components. Reports of fluctuations in pattern of academic achievement noted in school reports can have implications for interpretations regarding differential diagnosis between capacity and motivation for students. Obtaining a thorough social, family, medical, personal, vocational, and educational history also has great influence on the neuropsychological assessment. Changes in these areas are particularly important. Implications about prior level of functioning can be estimated based on this information. Changes in social interaction often accompany changes in cognitive abilities because the individual becomes anxious about exposing weaknesses in cognitive functions in social situations. Such problems might include word-finding difficulty during conversations, memory lapses of prior engagements, or clumsiness. Newly acquired difficulty in visual-spatial relations may make driving to social engagements a very anxiety producing activity. A family history of dementia, stroke, and other medical conditions or emotional disorders is important to obtain because there may be genetic relevance. Concurrent medical conditions and symptoms are important to know because many medical conditions impair cognitive functions. Medications, fatigue, and pain can also cause decrements in cognitive functioning. The history of the symptoms is especially important. An inability to speak may be a sign of stroke if the onset is sudden, but may be an indication of an emotional disorder, elective mutisim, if it is intermittent over the years. Rating scales may be used to get a thorough representation of the problem area. Rating scales may involve self-report, may be given to caretakers, parents or teachers, and may cover cognitive skills, functional level, or behavior and emotional adjustment. Changes in personal activities
such as maintenance of hygiene, organization of living space, bill paying, sleeping, and eating habits have diagnostic implications as do changes in abilities to perform job responsibilities. Problems in acquiring academic skills or fulfilling school assignments can reflect problems in various cognitive areas or relate to emotional disturbance. Careful history taking can often help in making this differentiation. Observation of behavior during the assessment gives valuable information. An individual with a receptive language problem is likely to frequently misinterpret questions or instructions. A person with a primary visual convergence problem may be seen to tilt the head or cover an eye during reading tasks. Distractibility, impulsiveness, hyperactivity can interfere with testing performance. Anxiety and depression can interfere with tasks where concentration is required and signs may be observed or spontaneously reported. Level of effort, frustration tolerance, cooperation, defiance and fatigue significantly influences test performance. Tests used in neuropsychological assessments are measures of cognition or behavior. Tests sample a comprehensive range of behaviors in cognitive and emotional domains including intellectual processing, memory, learning, visual perception, auditory discrimination, psychomotor functions, spatial skills, expressive and receptive language, executive functions, sequencing, academic skills in reading, writing, spelling, and calculating, and personality characteristics. The battery of tests administered to sample these behaviors may be fixed or flexible. When a neuropsychologist administers a fixed battery of tests, the same tests and questions are administered to everyone. The Luria-Nebraska Neuropsychological Battery is an example of a fixed battery that was designed to cover a broad range of functional domains and to provide a pattern analysis of strengths and weaknesses across areas of brain function. This test battery reflects a quantitative adaptation of A. R. Luria’s qualitative assessment scheme. A flexible battery of tests is one in which tests are selected by the neuropsychologist at the time of the assessment. Referral questions, history, performance on prior tests administered, or qualitative observation of behavior during the assessment guide this selection. The test scores may be analyzed for patterns associated with known patterns in clinical populations. Test performance may be analyzed quantitatively or qualitatively. Quantitative results are compared with some normative standard, which may include data from groups of non-brain injured persons and groups of persons with
Neuropsychological assessment
various kinds of brain injury. Standardized norms provided by research studies are usually based on age and educational level to provide a valid comparison to be made between an individual’s performance and that of persons in known diagnostic categories as well as persons who do not have a diagnosis of brain injury. Negative variation from the norms of the general population may suggest impairment. Qualitative analysis of test results involves appreciating the process an individual may use in producing quantitative scores. In a qualitative analysis of an error in written arithmetic, for example, an examiner will look to see if the person failed the item due to inattention to the operational sign, memory of number facts, or disorganized spatial construction of the problem. Testing the limits is a technique used to give more qualitative information about the process being tested. For example, an individual failing a mental arithmetic item may have failed due to concentration problems or due to a lack of knowledge about the operational procedure, or due to an error retrieving a number fact. Testing the limits would involve allowing the individual to use a pencil and paper to figure out the same problem. If working the calculation is facilitated by pencil and paper, a concentration problem may be noted. If the answer is not facilitated with pencil and paper, other problems may be noted. The term ‘‘neuropsychological test’’ is considered by some to be a misnomer. Test are not neuropsychological, the interpretation of the test performance is neuropsychological, or based on neuropsychological principles. In fact, the tests themselves may be irrelevant. Edith Kaplan, a prominent advocate for the process approach in neuropsychological assessment, explains that a competent neuropsychologist must be versed in the understanding of cognitive and behavior functions associated with the brain and skilled in administration of testing instruments that elicit those functions for evaluation. Standardized tests are convenient devices to elicit behaviors, but in actuality, a skilled and experienced neuropsychologist who understands the principles of brain-behavior relations can make an assessment with whatever materials are convenient. Kaplan related the ingenuity of a neuropsychologist who used crackers and jam to complete an evaluation of visual-construction when the patient refused to work with the blocks provided in a standardized test. Test batteries, either fixed or flexible, standard or contrived, generate examples of how an individual functions across a wide range of skills and behaviors.
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Analysis of the pattern of performance across a large number of tests is key to an accurate interpretation of findings in a neuropsychological assessment. An interpretation is not made based on one indication alone of a problem, but indications of problems should be consistent across test responses. Conclusions are based on the samples of behaviors elicited through observation and test performance which is analyzed based on the principles understood from neuropsychological studies. Implications for work, school, family and personal life are provided along with specific interventions for rehabilitation, remediation, or compensation for areas of weakness. Many times counseling of the individual and family members is necessary to explain how cognitive and behavioral impairments may be expressed in daily life. Integration of information from test scores, behavioral observations, comprehensive history, and the consistency in emerging pattern of results, form the basis of interpretations, conclusions, and recommendations that constitute the art and science of neuropsychological assessment.
Disorders Associated with Neuropsychological Deficits Neuropsychological assessments are conducted on a wide range of clinical populations. To adequately interpret test results, the examiner must be knowledgeable about the presentation of symptoms in these clinical populations. This knowledge puts the observation, history, and test results into a meaningful context by providing a frame of reference. Some neuropsychologists specialize in one or more of these clinical populations. Head trauma, either closed or penetrating head injuries, is the most common cause of brain dysfunction seen for neuropsychological assessment. Improved emergency medical care has resulted in many more survivors of serious head injuries than in years past. Falls and motor vehicle accidents are the most prevalent causes of head injuries. While head injuries range in severity based on the amount of loss of consciousness, even mild head injuries with little (several minutes) or no loss of consciousness have been associated with cognitive impairments. Age, history of repeated head injury, prior alcohol abuse, and concurrent injuries and medical conditions are variables than influence magnitude of the associated symptoms following head injury. Vascular disorders such as stroke, arteriovenus malformations, and aneurysms have different patterns of
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onset of symptoms. Different types of symptoms are associated with vascular problems in different areas of the brain. Problems involving the posterior cerebral artery may result in visual or memory dysfunctions while brainstem problems may result in problems with movement or sensation. Transient ischemic attacks (TIAs) are temporary and reversal vascular problems are sometimes known as mini-strokes. While symptoms abate relatively quickly, they may indicate that a more severe stroke is imminent. Different dementias present different patterns of symptoms. Alzheimer’s disease has been studied extensively and patterns of memory, language, visualspatial abilities, problem solving and other behavior impairments in this type of dementia have been contrasted with those in multi-infarct dementia, Pick’s disease, Parkinson’s disease, Huntington’s Disease, and other conditions causing dementia. There are many toxins in the environment that are deleterious to brain functions. Some people are exposed to these toxins accidentally and some ingest them purposely. Alcoholism is known to accelerate brain aging. While well-established skills such as language and arithmetic are persevered, memory and sensori-motor abilities are more vulnerable to alcoholism. Research on the accidental exposure to toxins, such as carbon dioxide, solvents, heavy metals, and pesticides, reveal particular patterns of cognitive impairments. Tumors may cause brain dysfunction by destroying brain tissue, increasing intracranial pressure, and by causing electrical or hormonal disturbances. Tumors usually produce localized symptoms depending on their size, location, and rate of growth. While HIV carriers show no obvious signs of the disease, as the disease changes to AIDS, the earliest stages of this change are usually behavioral and cognitive. AIDS Dementia Complex involves concentration and memory problems, slowed mental processes, followed by motor problems and emotional disturbance. Evaluation of learning disabilities through neuropsychological assessment provides comprehensive understanding of the individual’s profile through documentation of learning styles and cognitive strengths and weaknesses. Learning disabilities may be verbally based, nonverbally based, motor based, or a combination of these. Differentiating the basis for the learning disability provides the child’s educational team with the information necessary to present academic material in the most effective fashion and test the achievement levels by the most fair means.
Neuropsychological assessment of children and adults with attention deficit disorder provides information on the nature and extent of this disorder. It allows for differentiating this disorder from other conditions that manifest similar symptoms such as weakness in the visual system or emotional disorders. This information is necessary for appropriate treatment to be selected or effective compensation techniques to be developed.
History of Neuropsychological Assessment The history of the study of brain-behavior relations goes back thousands of years. In 400 B.C., Hippocrates postulated that the brain was the seat of the intellect and controlled senses and movement. Claudius Galen, in the second century, used dissection of animals to study brain functions and related brain tissue to the general workings of the mind. In the 1800’s theories of localization of brain functions developed. Franz Joseph Gall, in the early 1800’s, published papers suggesting that specific areas of the brain related to different characteristics and skills. He thought that bumps on the skull corresponded to advanced development in specific mental abilities. This theory, which was afterwards disproved, was known as phrenology. Studying cases of localized damage, or lesions, Pierre Broca in the 1860’s found the center for expressive speech to be in the frontal lobes, while Carl Wernicke in the 1870’s found receptive language skills to be related to the posterior temporal cortex of the brain. By the early 1900’s, the studies of brain injured individuals resulted in, the understanding of many areas of the brain relating to specific areas of functioning. Hughlings Jackson was resistant to localization of function theories and put forth his view of hierarchical organization of brain functions around the same time. Other theories agreed with a more holistic approach, acknowledging specific brain functions along with inter-related functioning for more general functions of the brain. Findings that many different areas of brain damage could result in disruption of the same function added strength to this theory. Alexander Luria, in the 1960’s, published his neuropsychological assessment techniques for the study of higher cortical functions in man, outlining strategies for evaluating cognitive processing in functional systems and connections between brain functions that have
Neuropsychological assessment
formed the basis for contemporary neuropsychological assessment.
Cross-Cultural Issues in Neuropsychological Assessment While many neuropsychological assessment instruments take into consideration age or education, few take into consideration cultural differences. While some testing instruments offer normative data for Spanish speaking individuals, most assessment measures do not provide normal data for ethnic groups. Research providing normative standardization has been reported for various ethnic groups on a limited number of instruments, but the information at this point is not uniform across all instruments. Much research needs to be conducted to rectify this situation. Additionally, broad cultural differences may result in performance differences due to prior social experiences and attitude about test taking. Therefore, results of neuropsychological tests administered to individuals from cultures outside the normative sampling must be interpreted with caution.
Limitations of Neuropsychological Assessment Research is ongoing in the field. The more research that is carried out, the better our understanding of brain-behavior connections. Research, the distribution of information through journal articles and conference presentations, and the application of this information to clinical populations, are essential for state of the art interpretation of test results, diagnosis, and treatment recommendations. Sophisticated brain imagining devices, parallel developments in related fields of science, computer assisted analysis of information, and burgeoning interest in the field have greatly improved our knowledge base over the years. Yet, more research is needed because there are many questions that still need to be answered. New discoveries in the relationship between brain and behavior are being revealed continually, resulting in greater precision in diagnosis. In applying what is known to clinical evaluations, practitioners must use judgment for interpretation of neuropsychological assessment results. In effect, the conclusions made are as good as the clinician’s
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judgment. The assessor must consider many factors when developing a formulation. The behavior and abilities of the person being assessed may influence neuropsychological results in ways that must be accounted for. For example, a noncompliant child should not be considered an inattentive child. A person with vision problems could have problems selecting the right picture representing a verbal concept being assessed. Motivation, fatigue, anxiety, and depression can skew results. It would be inappropriate to give a timed intelligence test to a person with strong motor weaknesses. Since so many factors intertwine, a practitioner must be astute in observing what relates to the results, and not just report test scores. Practitioners’ skills in the interpretation of assessment results may be dependent upon their experience, awareness, and training. Many neuropsychologists acquire diplomat status from certifying institutions to demonstrate their competence in the field. Such certification helps ensure qualifications, but there are many extremely skilled experts in the field who have chosen not to obtain this documentation. Most psychiatrists, neurologists, and psychologists do not specialize in neuropsychological assessment. While many professionals understand the need for neuropsychological assessment and some may perform a brief, rudimentary screening, without years of specialty training in a doctoral program focusing on this area, they are not equipped for the hours of differential testing and finetuned interpretations necessary for a comprehensive evaluation. By inquiring about a practitioner’s background and training, or getting a referral from a trusted source, one may best discern who is qualified. See also: > Assessment of culturally diverse children; > Child traumatic brain injury; > Learning disabilities; > Nonverbal assessment
Suggested Reading Boll, T. J., & Bryant, B. K. (Eds.). (1988). Clinical neuropsychology and brain functions: Research, measurement, and practice. Washington, D.C.: American Psychological Association. Lezak, M. D. (2004). Neuropsychological assessment (4th ed.). New York: Oxford University Press. Loring, D. W. (Ed.). (1999). INS dictionary of neuropsychology. New York: Oxford University Press. Rains, G. D. (2002). Principals of human neuropsychology. Boston: McGraw-Hill.
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New freedom commission on mental health
Suggested Resources Neuropsychology Central—http://www.neuropsychologycentral. com/interface/content/resources/resources_interface_frameset. html: This website provides an overview of neuropsychological evaluation, and a FAQ section that contains information about evaluating various brain and learning disorders.
New Freedom Commission on Mental Health Dana Cunningham . Jennifer E Mettrick
In 2001, President George W. Bush implemented the New Freedom Initiative, which was designed to improve the educational and employment opportunities for individuals with disabilities. As an outgrowth of the New Freedom Initiative, the President’s New Freedom Commission on Mental Health (hereafter referred to as the Commission) was established in 2002 to study the United States (U.S.) mental health service delivery system and identify ways that the system could be improved to provide quality care to individuals with emotional, behavioral and mental health problems. The 22 member Commission was developed based on selections made directly by the President and included individuals connected to the mental health system such as administrators, providers and consumers of services. In addition, seven ex officio members from the Departments of Human Services, Labor, Education and Veteran Affairs were incorporated into the Commission. The President selected Michael Hogan, Ph.D., director of the Ohio Department of Mental Health, as chair of the Commission. The final composition of the Commission included representatives in mental health, substance abuse, housing and urban development, and education, as well as local and national leaders, and consultants. By executive order, the Commission was retained for 1 year to review the quality and effectiveness of mental health service delivery for both public and private systems. Specifically, they were charged to identify barriers to accessing mental health services for both adults and children, identify new and evidence-based mental health treatments and services for patients of all ages, and to examine and create policy options related to the integration of evidence-based research to service
provision. In addition, the Commission was required to coordinate with service providers and integrate their efforts within local communities. Eleven full commission meetings, which were open to the public, were held from June 2002 to April 2003. To obtain public opinions and feedback, the Commission established a website where information pertaining to the Executive Order, the Commission’s meeting notes, and summary reports could be accessed by the public. In addition, public comments could be placed on the website for review. Comments, personal stories and recommendations were sent to the Commission or provided inperson from over 2,500 individuals across the country. Through the eleven full commission meetings, a large body of information was accrued by expert testimony from national advocacy organizations, consumer leaders, educators, and other experts from the mental health and health care delivery systems. Evidence-based literature, federal reports and information from select programs around the country that were effectively providing mental health services were also incorporated into the pool of information. From these early testimonials and reports, the Chairman created fifteen subcommittees to examine further specific topic areas, which included acute care, children and families, co-occurring disorders, consumer issues, criminal justice, cultural competence, employment and income support, evidence-based practice, homelessness, Medicaid, medication issues, the relationship between mental health and general medicine, older adults, protecting the rights of children and adults with mental illness, rural issues, and suicide prevention. Based upon their investigation, the Commission identified several concerns with the provision of mental health services and reported that the mental health system was in a state of disarray. They identified five overarching barriers to receiving care from the mental health system. These barriers were: (1) fragmentation and gaps in care for children, (2) fragmented care for adults with serious mental illness, (3) high unemployment and disability among individuals with serious mental illness, (4) inadequate care for older adults, and (5) lack of attention devoted to mental health and suicide prevention. Specifically, they found that fragmentation and financing problems were primarily a result of dispersing responsibility for the provision of services between different agencies, programs, and different levels of governments. The Commission also reported that although those with serious mental illness are able and willing to work, America’s disability system does not allow for them to collect benefits
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related to mental health service and hold employment simultaneously, which resulted in ninety percent of those with serious mental illnesses unemployed. Racial and ethnic disparities were also highlighted as another major problem in the mental health system, as it was discovered that ethnic minorities access services at a significantly lower rate than the general population. Due to a lack of understanding by the general public regarding mental illness, stigma was identified as a significant barrier to accessing services. In addition, the Commission noted that another failure of the system was found in the level of commitment and provision of early identification services related to mental illness and emotional problems.
Commission Recommendations Based upon the Commission’s findings, a report was developed entitled, ‘‘Achieving the Promise: Transforming Mental Health Care in America.’’ The report provides a roadmap for improving the nation’s mental health systems. The Commission’s recommendations lie within the six goals set forth in the Final Report (see Appendix A for specific goals and recommendations). Based on the goal to have the public see mental health as essential to health, the Commission suggested that national strategies to reduce stigma associated with mental health should be more vigorous and that strategies around suicide prevention be promoted as well. With regard to the goal of early mental health screening, the Commission recommends supporting the development of early childhood mental health interventions, strengthening screening, assessment and treatment of those with co-occurring disorders, incorporating screening at the primary care level across the life span, and improving mental health programs in schools. The Commission highly recommends developing statewide systems that are consumer and family-centered that not only address mental health service provision but also encompass coordination of care, related health services, creation of employment opportunities, alignment of various funding sources, and the development of housing to reduce homelessness. These recommendations have the potential to increase the overall quality of life of those adults with serious mental illness and children with serious emotional disorders. To ensure that those with mental illness receive the most effective care, the Commission recommends that evidence-based research be tested in demonstration projects, that research should be used as the basis of
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policy related to services and that there be a dedicated effort to continually educate and train the mental health workforce on new and improved treatments and prevention strategies related to reducing the incidence of mental illness in youth and adults. In an effort to expand the knowledge base, connections need to be made between those with the knowledge base and policy makers. The Commission recommends that this can be done through increased use of technology to spread information not only to policy makers but to consumers as well. Lastly, the Commission reports that the elimination of racial disparities in the mental health system is vital to the creation of a system that will produce equal opportunity under the law. They recommend that to do this, culturally competent care for minorities needs to be developed, barriers to accessing services need to be addressed and incentives for mental health providers to practice in rural settings need to be established. Specific recommendations on child mental health were set forth by the Subcommittee on Children and Families. Based on the Subcommittee’s preface (i.e. that the state of children’s and adolescent’s mental health should be seen as a public health crisis and their vision that a coordinated system of care is needed for this population), the Subcommittee proposed several strategies to improve the mental health system of youth. The strategies include developing a mental health service system that provides children with emotional disorders with comprehensive family centered, home-based or community-based care and support, as well as creating a system that incorporates strategies to promote positive mental health and prevent the onset of emotional disorders in youth. The Subcommittee outlines ten policy options that they believe will help build a better mental health system for children and their families. Implementation strategies related to re-structuring the mental health system include creating a comprehensive approach to children’s mental health (which both state and federal governments must abide by), finding ways to finance a broader array of services (with particular focus on filling in service gaps), incorporating support services for children and their families, improving screening methods of high risk populations and young children 0–3 years of age, and increasing the financing and provision of prevention programs at community, state and federal levels. The Subcommittee on Children and Family also recommended several changes to service provision to strengthen family partnerships and supports, create
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individualized service and support plans (ISSPs) similar to those used by the education system (i.e., Individual Education Plans), and to strengthen mental health services to children within schools. Specifically related to strengthening mental health services in schools, the Subcommittee recommends expanding school roles related to prevention and early intervention services. The Subcommittee particularly recommends expanding efforts to promote the use of Positive Behavioral Support (PBS), as well as efforts to better educate teachers and school staff so that they can more accurately identify, assess, and work with children with emotional disorders. The Subcommittee also recommends expanding efforts to maintain the regulations set forth through the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA). In addition to changing state and federal structural components of the mental health system and increasing service provisions, the Subcommittee also addresses the need to utilize and disseminate evidencebased research related to children’s mental health interventions to mental health agencies, schools and families. Furthermore, the Subcommittee highlights the need to educate the mental health workforce on evidence-based practices for children as well as ensure that providers are adequately trained in cultural competent strategies for providing services to racial and ethnic minority youth. Finally, they stress the importance of implementing their suggested strategies in coordination with the structure of the adult mental health system to ensure seamless transition of services from adolescence to adulthood and coordination of family-centered services.
Implications for Cross-Cultural Practice Many of the goals and recommendations in the Commission’s report have specific implications for the provision of culturally-competent service-delivery in the school setting. Specifically, the report highlights the need for disparities in mental health services to be eliminated, with a specific recommendation to improve access to culturally competent services. Census estimates suggest that approximately 38% of youth who attend school belong to an ethnic or racial minority group. It is predicted that by 2020, the percentage of Hispanic, Asian, and Black youth who live in the U.S. will increase to 44%, while the percentage of nonHispanic White children will actually decline to 53%.
School teachers, administrators, and counselors must be prepared to deal with the rapidly changing demographics of the school system. Unfortunately, the quality and accessibility of information, training, and resources devoted to the provision of culturally competent services has not kept pace with the rapid increases in the diversity of the student population. This lack of attention has left many professionals inadequately prepared to provide services to culturally and linguistically diverse youth. Mental health services, as they are currently delivered, are not meeting children’s needs. Even more concerning is that families of ethnic minority heritage often do not receive the mental health services that they need. Data suggest that youth of color exhibit more symptoms of distress than White youth, including higher rates of suicide attempts and delinquent offenses. Furthermore, ethnic minority youth are more likely to be victims of sexual and physical assault, which result in higher rates of posttraumatic stress disorder in youth of color. Unfortunately, despite the disproportionate level of distress experienced by ethnic minority youth, there are extreme disparities in the utilization, access, and quality of mental health services between people of color and Whites. Insensitivity to cultural contexts has been identified as one factor that contributes to disparities in access and utilization of mental health services. National estimates indicate that mental health services meet the needs of 31% of non-minority children but only 13% of minority children. Furthermore, children of color tend to receive more mental health services in juvenile justice and child welfare systems than in schools or mental health settings. There are also numerous disparities with regard to access and utilization of mental health services in rural areas. Youth who live in rural areas have difficulty accessing services due to the small number of service providers in the community, as well as the distance between their homes and the providers. These disparities present unique opportunities for the practice of school mental health. As most youth spend the majority of their time in school, schools present a prime place to promote and support mental health. School mental health services could provide teachers and school staff with information to help them promote healthy child development and accurately identify youth in need of mental health services. If mental health services are provided in schools, this would increase the likelihood that the youth could receive intervention services early, and likely prevent the occurrence of more severe psychopathology, as many youth are first
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identified as having symptoms of mental health disorders in the school setting. Furthermore, with regard to providing accessible services, it has been recommended that out-of-home placements should be avoided as much as possible and youth should be able to return to their home communities in a timely manner. Expanding the breadth and increasing the quality of mental health services in low-income schools also provides an opportunity to decrease the stigma associated with receiving mental health services and allows services to be more accessible to families. Furthermore, school mental health provides the opportunity to intervene in the lives of youth who are at-risk of developing problems, but do not presently exhibit symptoms of distress. Thus, school mental health programs can provide the interventions to youth who are least likely to seek or receive services elsewhere. For ethnic minorities to receive excellent mental health care, it is imperative that service providers continually strive to attain cultural and linguistic competence in their services. This can be accomplished by such means as providing regular trainings on cultural competency, utilizing evaluative tools to assess competencies possessed by staff and the larger organization, providing language assistance services, incorporating race, ethnicity, and language variables into outcome assessments, and hiring an ethnically and culturally diverse staff. Unfortunately, although many service providers and programs recognize the importance of cultural competency, this understanding is rarely reflected in clinical practice and research. Providing effective mental health care to youth of color is also more likely to occur if treatment approaches are based on evidenced-based interventions. Unfortunately, research on the effectiveness of such interventions is limited. With the intent of providing more culturally relevant services, many clinicians may adapt an evidenced-based protocol to reflect the culture of the youth with whom they are working. Thus, modifying intervention approaches to be most effective with minority youth should be a goal of future mental health and education research. Considering the impact that the Commission’s Report will have on the provision of mental health services for ethnic minority youth, it is also essential to examine the societal influences that have an impact on the accessibility, delivery, and utilization of mental health services. As socioeconomic circumstances can impact the onset, course, and duration of mental health disorders, the disproportionate diagnosis of
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mental health problems in ethnic minority youth cannot be entirely addressed without also developing and implementing policies that improve the social standing of ethnic minorities.
Appendix A The goals and recommendations developed by the Commission are as follows:
Goal 1: Americans Understand that Mental Health is Essential to Overall Health Recommendations 1. Advance and implement a national campaign to reduce the stigma of seeking care and a national strategy for suicide prevention. 2. Address mental health with the same urgency as physical health.
Goal 2: Mental Health Care is Consumer and Family Driven Recommendations 1. Develop an individualized plan of care for every adult with a serious mental illness and child with a serious emotional disturbance. 2. Involve consumers and families fully in orienting the mental health system toward recovery. 3. Align relevant federal programs to improve access and accountability for mental health services. 4. Create a Comprehensive State Mental Health Plan. 5. Protect and enhance the rights of people with mental illnesses.
Goal 3: Disparities in Mental Health Services are Eliminated Recommendations 1. 2.
Improve access to quality care that is culturally competent. Improve access to quality care in rural and geographically remote areas.
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Goal 4: Early Mental Health Screening, Assessment, and Referral to Services are Common Practice
competent practice; > Early intervention; and early warning signs
Recommendations
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1. Promote the mental health of young children. 2. Improve and expand school mental health programs. 3. Screen for co-occurring mental and substance use disorders and link with integrated treatment strategies. 4. Screen for mental disorders in primary health care, across the life span, and connect to treatment and supports.
Goal 5: Excellent Mental Health Care is Delivered and Research is Accelerated
>
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American Psychological Association (2003). Psychological treatment of ethnic minority populations. Report by Council of National Psychological Associations for the Advancement of Ethnic Minority Interest. Washington, D.C.: Association of Black Psychologists. New Freedom Commission on Mental Health (2003). Achieving the promise: Transforming mental health care in America. Final report. Rockville, MD: DHHS Pub. No. SMA-03-3832. New Freedom Commission Website. http://www.mentalhealth commission.gov/ Office of Minority Health (2001, March). National standards for culturally and linguistically appropriate services in health care. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (2001). Mental health: Culture, race, and ethnicity—A supplement to mental health: A report of the Surgeon General. Rockville, MD: U.S. Public Health Service.
Recommendations 1. Accelerate research to promote recovery and resilience, and ultimately to cure and prevent mental illnesses. 2. Advance evidence-based practices using dissemination and demonstration projects and create a publicprivate partnership to guide their implementation. 3. Improve and expand the workforce providing evidence-based mental health services and supports. 4. Develop the knowledge base in four understudied areas: mental health disparities, long-term effects of medications, trauma, and acute care.
Goal 6: Technology is Used to Access Mental Health Care and Information Recommendations 1. Use health technology and telehealth to improve access and coordination of mental health care, especially for Americans in remote areas or in underserved populations. 2. Develop and implement integrated electronic health record and personal health information systems. See also: > American Psychological Association (APA); > Cross-cultural school psychology; > Culturally
NICHCY > National Information Center for Children and Youth with Disabilities (NICHCY)
No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Theodore J Christ . Erika L Taylor
The No Child Left Behind Act (Public Law 107-110), or NCLB, is a major reform of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA). This legislation was passed by the United States (U.S.) Congress and signed into law on January 8, 2002. The overall goal of NCLB remains the same as ESEA, which is to help close the achievement gap between disadvantaged and minority students and their more advantaged peers. The major
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provisions of NCLB include: setting high standards and accountability for schools; improving teacher quality; promoting parent involvement and providing options; and allowing state and local school districts more freedom and flexibility.
High Standards and Accountability One of the major goals of NCLB is to increase accountability for student performance. States must develop challenging academic content standards as well as measurable achievement standards for all students. In addition, states must implement a set of high-quality academic assessments to determine students’ yearly performance. Currently, statewide reading and math assessments must be made annually in grades 3 through 8; annual science assessments must also be administered beginning in 2007–2008. The results of these assessments must be reported for all students, and disaggregated by race, gender, English language proficiency, disability, and socio-economic status (note that exceptions are made for students with disabilities under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), such that alternate assessments or accommodations may be provided when necessary). It is expected that all students will meet the standards for proficient performance in the targeted academic areas by 2013–2014. According to NCLB, high performing states that effectively narrow the achievement gap and improve overall student achievement will be rewarded with bonus funds. Schools receiving Title I funds that fail to make adequate yearly progress (AYP) for students in any group will first receive assistance and then come under corrective action for persistent failure to demonstrate improvement in AYP. Schools that do not meet the AYP requirements for two consecutive years will be identified as ‘‘in need of improvement.’’ In these cases, the district is required to offer public school choice to all students in the district. This allows parents the option of sending their children to another public school within the district. Schools identified as ‘‘in need of improvement’’ must additionally develop a school improvement plan. If the school does not meet AYP goals in the third year, disadvantaged students may use Title I funds to transfer to a higher-performing public or private school, or receive supplemental educational services such as tutoring and after school programs. Schools
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failing to make improvements for four consecutive years are required to take corrective action such as removing staff, restructuring the school’s internal organization, implementing new curriculum, decreasing management authority, or appointing outside experts to advise the school. A related goal to high standards and accountability is to improve literacy. NCLB aims to have every child reading by the third grade through the ‘‘Reading First’’ initiative. The Reading First initiative provides states and local school districts federal funds to implement comprehensive, research-based reading programs in kindergarten through second grade. Participating states also have the option to receive ‘‘Early Reading First’’ funding to implement research-based reading programs in existing pre-school programs including Head Start. Early Reading First is based on the premise that who are children taught pre-reading and math skills in preschool enter school ready to learn.
Teacher Quality Another major provision of NCLB is to improve teacher quality. States and localities are given flexibility in the use of federal funds to focus more on improving teacher quality. States and districts are required to set high standards for professional development to ensure that federal funds promote research-based, effective practice in the classroom. In addition to funding professional development, states and school districts have the flexibility to use their funds to promote programs such as reforming teacher certification or licensure requirements, tenure reform and merit-based teacher performance systems, and differential pay for teachers in high-need subject areas.
Parent Involvement and School Choice NCLB ensures that parents are more involved in important decisions regarding their child’s education. As previously mentioned, parents of students in persistently low-performing schools are given the choice to move their child to another school within the district. Schools are further required to include parents in the school improvement planning process. Additionally, NCLB ensures that parents receive more
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information about the quality of their child’s school. To achieve this, states are required to issue detailed report cards on the status of schools and districts.
behavior is a manifestation of the disability). Funding for character education grants is also available to states and districts to train teachers in methods of incorporating character-building lessons and activities in the classroom.
State and Local Flexibility NCLB grants states and local school districts a moderate amount of freedom regarding how they may spend federal education funds. The intent is to put greater decision-making powers at the state and local levels. For example, many districts can transfer up to 50% of their federal formula grant funds that they receive from Improving Teacher Quality State Grants, Educational Technology, Innovative Programs, Safe, and Drug Free Schools programs to any one of these programs or to their Title I program without separate approval. In addition, charter options are offered to states and districts committed to accountability and school improvement. Under this program, charter states and districts would be freed from categorical program requirements if they are able to meet rigorous performance standards evaluated by the Secretary of Education.
Additional Provisions Another important goal of NCLB is to ensure that all children in American public schools learn English. States must set performance objectives to ensure limited English proficiency (LEP) students achieve English fluency within 3 years. States must also ensure that LEP students meet standards in core content areas that are at least as rigorous as those in classes taught in English. States that do not meet their performance objectives for LEP students could lose up to 10% of the administrative portion of their funding for all state administered formula grant programs established under the ESEA. Finally, NCLB aims to promote safe and drug-free schools by increasing funding for programs regarding drug and violence prevention as well as after-school learning opportunities. Teachers also have the power to remove violent or persistently disruptive students from the classroom in states that have adopted a zerotolerance policy for inappropriate student behavior (note that exceptions are made under the Individuals with Disabilities in Education Act for students with disabilities, such that the student cannot be suspended for more than 10 days if it is determined that the
See also: > Accountability; > Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA); > Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA)
Suggested Reading Barton, P. E. (2006). Needed: Higher standards for accountability. Educational Leadership, 64(3), 28–31. Mantel, B. (2005). No child left behind: Background. CQ Researcher, 15(20), 481–484. Skinner, R. (2005). State of the states. Education Week, 24(17), 77–80.
Suggested Resources The U.S. Department of Education—http://www.ed.gov/nclb/ landing.jhtml: This website provides information regarding the No Child Left Behind Act developed and maintained by the Bush Administration. Wrightslaw—http://www.wrightslaw.com/nclb/: This website provides articles, publications, and other resources about NCLB, including parental involvement, supplemental educational services, highly qualified teachers, transfers from failing schools, and public school choice.
Nondiscriminatory Testing Elias Mpofu
A priority in the provision of testing services is to support decision making for the participants in areas of need for which testing would contribute important information. The quality of decisions made about testing depends, in part, on the equity of testing (i.e., maintaining nondiscriminatory testing) in testing context, procedures, and outcomes. Observations about testing may also apply to the field of assessment (which subsumes the field of testing). Equity of testing is a multilayered
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construct and is characterized by comparability of procedures in testing, test scoring, and use of scores for all test takers. It also includes providing those taking tests with alternative opportunities to demonstrate competence, equipping students with mastery of requisite test taking skills, and arranging for appropriate testing conditions. Nondiscriminatory testing occurs when examinees have had an equal opportunity to learn, and expectancies to achieve to the same level with equal ability on the construct under measurement. For example, a randomly selected person of color with known ability should respond to an item in the same way as a randomly selected person with the same ability who is White. However, if, with the same objective ability, two people who differ on some category membership respond to an item differently than expected based on an objective measure, then an item may be functioning differently between the two groups. The reasons why an item may function differently between groups may be due to different meanings that the item has for one group versus the other; as a result, the interpretation of performance on the item is discriminatory. The item could also measure an unwanted nuisance factor for one group compared with another, which also would be discriminatory against the group in which the item measures the nuisance factor. A nuisance factor is that which is not the object of assessment and unduly influences the outcome of testing. Nondiscriminatory testing is premised on both technical adequacy (e.g., comparability of procedures) and sociomoral perspectives (e.g., opportunity to learn, consequences of test outcomes).
Rationale for Nondiscriminatory Testing Nondiscriminatory testing is free from contamination of test performance by examinees from the specific types of measure used, the characteristics of the consumer or providers of testing services, and context of testing. Its application reduces adverse impact on consumers from confounds to the testing process from interactions involving the characteristics of tests, consumers, providers, and contexts. Nondiscriminatory testing is a way of preventing social problems from consequential decisions resulting from the outcomes of unfair testing practices. For example, racial-minority students in North America are
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over-identified as having lower academic ability on tests or test procedures that may misrepresent their true ability. The consequences from using tests that are discriminatory include costly educational budgets from providing unnecessary supplemental educational programs, school withdrawal by students (who may be frustrated from the experience of insensitive assessments), and their subsequent involvement with the criminal justice system. Nondiscriminatory testing promotes societal justice by enhancing access to resources (e.g., education, employment) that may be denied populations for whom existing tests were inappropriate.
Nondiscriminatory Testing and Consumer Constituencies Providers of testing services (including professional testing agencies, teachers, and schools) aspire to provide nondiscriminatory testing to consumers. In educational settings, the consumers of testing services are primarily students, their families, and/or their significant others. Schools and teachers are often providers of testing services. In addition to being test providers, many schools and teachers are consumers of external professional testing services as well as the services of test development and marketing agencies. The complex overlap between the providers and consumers of testing and assessment services is concerning because the quality of testing conditions may vary between test providers and test takers. If there is reciprocity between test providers and test takers, it may become more difficult to improve testing conditions to the point of achieving testing equity. For instance, testing service providers, by their formal training in testing, may define equitable tests as those that are constructed based on the guidelines of their professional codes of ethics or legal guidelines. In contrast, lay consumers of testing services may perceive nondiscriminatory testing differently; they may be guided largely by sociocultural or other contextual–consequential concerns. As a result, the providers and test takers may have different definitions of what makes a test equitable and nondiscriminatory (based on which conditions are most salient to them as individuals). Extant discussions on nondiscriminatory testing falsely presume that equitable testing conditions are concretely and uniformly defined by all people.
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Conditions of Equity in Nondiscriminatory Testing Different individuals consider different testing conditions to be equitable or nondiscriminatory. As a result, they also hold different views about what makes a test inequitable. For example, test takers may regard themselves to be in a discriminatory or inequitable assessment setting if they are from a socioculturally disadvantaged group whereas the test grader is from a socioculturally privileged group; or, perhaps the test is not being appraised in the assessor’s mother tongue. Such inequitable conditions could supersede any objective aspects of the testing setting (e.g., uniform rules of administration). An equitable test setting is where the social characteristics of the examiner do not influence the performance of examinees. Thus, a person may appraise the equity of testing based on qualities of the test process or context that are subjectively salient to him or her, and/or other members of their culture of origin.
Influence of Perceptions on Outcome from Testing If a test is perceived as equitable, then it is more likely that the test’s outcomes will also be considered equitable, will be taken seriously, and will be accepted by test takers. This is especially important in the field of assessment, where the perceived accuracy of the test outcomes can mean the difference between seeking psychobehavioral interventions and ignoring test results. In the same vein, if a truly equitable test is falsely perceived as discriminatory, then the test results are more likely to be ignored or rebuked by test takers. This emphasizes the importance of face validity in testing and assessment (i.e., the ability of the tester to perceive that a test is truly measuring what it claims to). Perceptions of nondiscriminatory testing are relatively malleable. For example, sharing information with examinees that performance on the test was independent of race resulted in Black students achieving scores comparable to those of White peers. However, suggesting to the students that Black students tended to do badly on the test resulted in poor achievement by the Black students. The sources of claims about testing equity (e.g., historical, cultural, experiential, and other claims) may also be different for testing service providers and consumers. For instance, testing service providers often know more than the layperson about the quality of a given test, as they have received formal training in assessment and
have been socialized as testing professionals. Thus, they may share a belief in the ‘‘goodness’’ of the testing process. In addition, most have clinical experience and read research findings that support claims about the nondiscriminatory nature of a test with a variety of populations. On the other hand, lay customers, who may be from populations with a history of sociocultural marginalization from discriminatory testing practices, may be skeptical about claims made for equitable tests. Thus, the salience of a condition of equity of testing to service providers and consumers of assessment may differ from socialization about the testing processes and outcomes. Regardless of individual differences, the conditions of equity in testing are both actual and perceived. Perceived equity of testing is what a person believes about the testing process within a socioculturally defined performance context. Actual testing equity is the objectively verifiable processes of assessment that an individual potentially could experience. The degree of overlap between an individual’s perceived and actual equity of testing influences the perceived qualities of the testing process for that person. Individuals who perceive a greater congruency between their perceived and actual equity of testing are more likely to experience nondiscriminatory testing than those who perceived less congruency. However, for individuals from disadvantaged backgrounds, the perceived equity of testing may be synonymous with the actual equity of testing, resulting in experiences of discrimination in testing. This is because testing practices occur within an opportunity structure that influences perceptions of the equity of testing. Opportunity structure is the context and processes within which people in a particular sociocultural environment (e.g., social class, ethnic group) achieve their aspired goals (e.g., education, employment). It also provides the means or resources for achieving preferred goals. Opportunities to learn and practice requisite skills for test taking are restricted for people from disadvantaged backgrounds. As a result, they may hold perceptions of equity of testing that are different from those of the testing service providers or developers.
Consumer-Centered Nondiscriminatory Testing Educational and psychological testing historically has been the privilege of expert test constructors (who may be test service providers) rather than consumers
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(who may be students and their families or significant others). Consequently, most tests are not made by consumers, for consumers. As a result, consumers are more likely to view tests as agents of discrimination by a third party. Several studies have suggested that test service providers were limited in their ability to measure important outcomes reliably as perceived by their customers (e.g., patients, people with disabilities). For example, the views of family or significant others on important issues for a patient were closer to those of the patient than they were to those of the testing service providers. Educational and psychological tests could achieve greater relevance if they were developed with knowledge of conditions of equity that are salient to the consumers of the tests, broadly defined to include students and the people of a culture. Knowledge of the conditions of nondiscriminatory testing that are salient to consumers of testing is important for the quality of decisions following testing or the use to which the results of testing will be put. For example, a consumer (e.g., student, parent) who wants to use testing to determine competence on a skill may be less motivated to participate in testing that has an emphasis on some type of classification. Consequently, customers may invest less effort or commitment to testing for classification or its outcomes. Sensitivity to conditions of equity in testing that are salient to consumers in their diversity (e.g., by ethnicity, culture, gender) is important to engaging partners in testing (e.g., family, peers, teachers, schools) and for nondiscriminatory testing. See also: > Assessment of culturally diverse children; > Authentic assessment; > Racial/ethnic group differences
Suggested Reading American Educational Research Association, American Psychological Association, & National Council on Measurement in Education (1999). Standards for educational and psychological testing. Washington, D.C.: American Educational Research Association, American Psychological Association, & National Council on Measurement in Education. Gopaul-McNicol, S. N., & Armour-Thomas, E. (2002). Assessment and culture: Psychological tests with minority populations. San Diego, CA: Academic Press. Kea, C. D., Campbell-Whatley, G. D., & Bratton, K. (2003). Culturally responsive assessment for African American students with learning and behavioral challenges. Assessment for Effective Intervention, 29, 27–38.
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Nonverbal Assessment Ben K Lim . Soh Leong Lim
Assessment is essential to evaluate the development of children and adolescents as well as to formulate goals for remedial intervention or for vocational guidance. Many assessments, however, are based upon English speaking national standardization samples. This will often skew the results for racial/ethnic minorities for whom English is not the first language as well as for those who are biopsychosocially challenged, such as children with linguistic disorders due to deafness or autism. With increasing cultural diversity throughout the United States (U.S.), the validity and reliability of tests used with multicultural groups becomes questionable. As a result, the necessity of nonverbal assessments not based on spoken instructions or fluency in the spoken language are crucial. Nonverbal assessments are tests administered to evaluate students’ cognitive and intellectual performance that are not contingent upon verbal test instructions on the part of the counselor or spoken response on the part of the students. Nonverbal assessments provide a way to assess cognitive functioning and intellectual ability of culturally diverse individuals. Even the popular Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children (WISC) is dependent on spoken language literacy instructions. In recent years, some purely nonverbal assessment inventories have become available to evaluate the cognitive and intellectual functions of children. These tests use different techniques to determine cognitive reasoning and processing such as coding, matching, picture or form completion, picture absurdities, geometric analogies and sequences, and progressive matrices. Some of the most common nonverbal assessment tests with reasonable psychometric properties include one-dimensional inventories such as the Comprehensive Test of Nonverbal Intelligence (CTONI), the General Ability Measure for Adults (GAMA), the Naglieri Nonverbal Ability Test (NNAT), the Raven’s Progressive Matrices (RPM), and the Test of Nonverbal Intelligence -third Edition (TON1-II1). Examples of multidimensional inventories are the Universal Nonverbal Intelligence Test (UNIT) and the Leiter International Performance Scale (LIPS). The multidimensional tests are more comprehensive and assess different facets of the intelligence construct. These inventories can be used to predict academic and vocational outcomes.
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The choice of which tests to administer is dependent on the purpose of the assessment. One-dimensional tests are more precise and quicker to use. Two examples are the GAMA that assesses the ability to logically solve problems and the TONI-III that taps into abstract problem solving. Both are good for screening purposes. In contrast, the nonverbal multidimensional inventories have longer administration times and are useful for placement or decision making. The multidimensional inventories have both global and specific domain scores. Although these nonverbal assessments do not require the examiner’s verbal instruction, it is important that they convey a warm supportive attitude and nonanxious caring presence towards the examinee. The recent nonverbal inventories mentioned above are mindful of possible limited English proficiency and subsequent learning challenges. Using a language laden verbal assessment would be disadvantageous to those with limited language proficiency. At the worst, examinees may be considered less intelligent based upon standardized measures relying on verbal abilities. See also: > Nondiscriminatory testing; communication
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Suggested Reading McCallum, R. S. (Ed.). (2003). Handbook of nonverbal assessment. New York, NY: Springer. McCallum, R. S., Bracken, B. A., & Wasserman., J. D. (2001). Essentials of nonverbal assessment. New York: Wiley.
Nonverbal Communication Ben K Lim . Soh Leong Lim
There are two kinds of communication: digital communication and analogic communication. Digital communication is information that transmits linguistics and has logical grammatical syntax, however, it lacks the semantics of interpersonal relationship. Digital communication does not communicate meaning or attitudes. Usually the content of a conversation is conveyed digitally. Analogic communication, on the other hand, possesses the semantics and meaning of the conversation but
does not have adequate syntax; it is mainly nonverbal in nature. The relationship aspect of the conversation will predominantly be analogic. Humans consistently communicate with body language whether through gestures, postures, or tone of voice. While it is possible to postulate a person’s psychological state on the phone, the best way to understand the nonverbal communication is through face-to-face observation.
Difference between Verbal and Nonverbal Communication Verbal communication relies primarily on words as the sole channel of communication while nonverbal communication uses multiple channels such as body language, voice, and interpersonal proximity. When people talk, there is a clear beginning and ending, however individuals continue to communicate nonverbally, even in silence. The disadvantage of nonverbal communication is that it tends to be less clear than verbal communication. Nonverbals tend to be ambiguous. People can either choose to clarify a nonverbal gesture with a question e.g., When you laugh, are you thinking that what I said is ridiculous or are you surprised at what I share?. Alternatively, individuals can venture to make an intelligent guess.
Types of Nonverbal Communication The study of nonverbal communication include kinesics, which is the study of body postures and gestures; paralinguistics, the study of the use of voices; proxemics, the study of the use of space and distance; and chronemics, the study of the way people view time. Kinesics is the way people position themselves in relation to other people. In general, facing someone directly signals attention whereas looking away may mean a non-interest in the person. Being conscious of such postures will help teachers, for example, decide whether to intervene with a student. Postures also indicate how students feel about themselves. One of the early stalwarts of family therapy, Virginia Satir, emphasized the importance of working with nonverbals through a technique called sculpting. Sculpting is an exercise designed to capture a counselee’s perspective of the structure and interactional patterns in his or her own family. Without a spoken word, the counselee
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physically places all family members in postures representing their respective roles within the family. Each member is molded according to the perception of the counselee. In a situation where family members are present in counseling, everyone in the family will take turns to ‘‘sculpt.’’ This nonverbal exercise is often very influential as each member will subsequently process his/her own feelings about the family sculpt. Satir used different nonverbal postures, called survival stances, to make a point about how people relate without even being conscious of it. For instance, one of her four nonverbal stances is the placator. This can be sculpted by kneeling with one hand over the heart and the other extended upward. Placators are martyrs and willingly surrender their power and needs to someone else. The placator has taken a stance that says, ‘‘I live to please you.’’ Such a person has probably experienced guilt, pity, and self-contempt. Placators avoid conflict and seek to get along with others at all cost. They cannot have meaningful bilateral relationships. Another aspect of kinesics is gestures, usually involving hands or arms. Such gestures have communicative value. Some gestures constitute deliberate nonverbal behaviors that have a precise meaning known to virtually all members of a cultural group. For instance, nodding of the head means ‘‘yes,’’ and a shrug of the shoulders may mean ‘‘no.’’ Some gestures are unintentional such as fiddling with the earlobe, twirling a strand of hair, or the preening behavior of a teenager. Many of these gestures are indicators of social discomfort. Counselors can be aware of counselee nonverbal messages, especially from the face and eyes. It is not easy to read these nonverbals but careful observation can yield a great deal of information. The affect blend is the combination of multiple emotional expressions on the face. These microexpressions change very fast. They can range from being mad, sad, glad, scared, or feeling bad. The study of the use of the eyes has been used extensively by sales persons who see pupil dilation as a sign of interest and an indication to close a sale. Where the eyes look when talking with another person depends on the context; whether it is an intimate context or a social context. People in romantic relationships tend to look straight into the eyes whereas in many other social contexts, the gaze is between the eyes and the mouth. Meeting someone’s glance with the eyes is usually seen as a sign of involvement whereas looking away often signals a desire to avoid. In the classroom, this is obvious when the teacher asks a question and the student who does not want to answer
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or does not know the answer to the question will often look away. Paralinguistics involves the study of the use of vocal expressions such as rate, pitch, tone, number, length of pauses, and volume. Hotline counselors learn to guess the emotional state of callers by their paralanguage. Some people who are nervous tend to use nonlinguistic verbalization such as ah, um, urgh, and stammering. Touch is also a nonverbal form of communication. Children should be taught the difference between a good touch and a bad touch. A doctor’s touch on a child’s body during a physical exam may be appropriate but someone touching the child in the same way may be accused of child abuse. The proxemic theory developed by social anthropologist Edward Hall postulates how people use space. Hall identified different distances used in interpersonal relationships. The intimate distance ranges from skin contact to 18 inches. This is the personal bubble reserved for intimate relationships. Personal distance is between 18 inches and four feet. This is the armlength distance kept between friends. In some cultures, both the intimate and personal space is seen as one, and there is no concept of a personal bubble space. Social distance ranges anywhere from 4 to 12 feet. Beyond that is the public distance. However, proxemics itself is often culture-bound. Some Middle Eastern cultures may be very comfortable interacting within the personal bubble while some Western cultures would consider that an inappropriate intrusion of personal space. In the same way, chronemics, the study of how people use and structure time, is viewed differently in various cultures. While the dominant U.S. culture places value in punctuality, this is not the case in many other cultures that are not ruled by the clock.
Functions of Nonverbal Communication Some nonverbals reinforce the verbal message such as when a student talks about the death of her mother and bursts into tears or a father blames his child with an accusing finger. Some nonverbals are self-explanatory. For example, when asked where the principal’s office is, the student may simply shrug her shoulders to indicate that she does not know. It is a common practice among teachers to give points for participation in class. A teacher may observe those who are participating nonverbally. The student may
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not raise a hand (a nonverbal) to indicate that he or she wants to speak but the facial expression may indicate rapt attention to the discussion and the processes occurring in class. Such nonverbal indicators of participation may occur more frequently for students whose English is not their first language. There are nonverbals that are incongruent with the verbal message. For instance, a student may yell out that he is not angry when the analogical nonverbals scream out that he is furious with his friends. Such contradicting nonverbal communication is also known as a double message. It occurs when students simultaneously express different or contradictory messages with their verbal and nonverbal behaviors. This concept is used in lie detector tests where the anxiety a person feels is detected.
Nonverbals are culture bound and can be very ambiguous. Most cultures have some nonverbal ways of greeting. The Japanese bow from the waist, the Chinese raise their hands or nod the head, while in the United States (U.S.), shaking hands or, if more intimate, hugging are common modes of greetings. Eye contact is encouraged in the U.S. However, in the Asian culture, it is rude and disrespectful to make eye contact, especially with those in authority. Furthermore, a woman who looks someone in the eyes may be considered flirtatious. A headshake indicates no to a request in the U.S. For a South Indian, shaking the head from one side to another means the opposite. So just reading the headshake without the cultural context can be misleading. Calling someone with the index finger is acceptable in the U.S. but in some cultures it is considered bad manners. Speaking loudly may indicate warmth to a person from the Middle East but it can be misconstrued as being aggressive and offensive in other cultures. As the U.S. is such a diverse society, it is important to be curious and learn how nonverbals are used. When working with students, counselors need to listen to both nonverbal and verbal aspects of communication, especially with groups who may not speak English as their first language. Listening to nonverbals is an art that requires attentive visual observation and an ability to understand the context of the individual. >
Calero, H. H. (2005). The power of non-verbal communication: What you do is more important than what you say. Lansdowne, PA.: Silver Lake Publishing. Hinde, R. A. (Ed.). (1972). Non-verbal communication. Cambridge, UK.: Cambridge University Press.
Suggested Resources Journal of Nonverbal Behavior—http://gort.ucsd.edu/newjour/j/ msg03674.html: This website provides journal articles based on research and evaluation of nonverbal behavior.
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Culture and Nonverbals
See also: > Authentic assessment; > Nonverbal assessment
Suggested Reading
Language deficits;
Minoa Chang . Ben K Lim
Norm-referenced tests (NRTs) measure a person’s performance in relation to the performance of others on the same test. An NRT score determines a student’s placement on a normal distribution curve. NRTs are primarily useful to evaluate the success of a pupil’s efforts to learn as well as the teacher’s efforts to foster learning. NRTs assess a broad level of knowledge rather than mastery of a few specific areas. Different levels and aspects of achievement can be assessed by NRTs. Results are reported in one single score. This scoring procedure is consistent with the view that achievement of learning is a matter of more or less, not of all or none. It also implies that the primary responsibility for learning lies with the student, not with the teacher or the instructional system. NRT scores are often reported as percentiles or in ageequivalents or grade-equivalents. A percentile is the point in a score distribution below which a certain percentage of people fall. Thus, a percentile score of 65 means that 65% of the population scores below this person on the given test at hand. Percentiles are not standard scores. Rather, they are derived from raw scores. As a result, meaningful comparisons across tests are limited. By way of comparison, for example, what does it mean to compare the highest ranking student on a geography test with the highest ranking student on a biology test?
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Another important limitation of percentiles is that they are expressed in ordinal units that are not constant. This renders comparisons of gains and losses meaningless. For instance, the distance between 1st and 3rd percentile ranks is much greater than the distance between 41st and 43rd percentile ranks (that are closer to the middle of the bell-shaped curve). Age-equivalent and grade-equivalent scores are also non-standard scores. These may be even more difficult to interpret than percentiles. Age-equivalent scores compare a child with other children of the same age while grade-equivalent scores compare a child with other children in the same grade level. Several limitations can be identified for grade-equivalent and age-equivalent scores. Grade equivalents assume that growth across years is uniform. However, 1 month of growth is different in the first grade than it is in the 8th grade. Based on a 9- or 10-month school year, scores assume that either no growth occurs during the summer or that one summer month is equivalent to one month of school. Grade equivalents are only appropriate for subjects that are common to a particular grade level. Scores are affected by local curriculum and are not comparable across subject matter. Because grade-equivalents are extrapolated from existing observations, low-scores in low-grades and high-scores in high-grades are impossible to establish. Even in grades where norms exist, 50% of children may be below their grade level. This may especially be the case in the upper grades. NRTs are useful when comparing a child to the mean and standard deviation of a norm group. The meaningfulness of the score depends heavily on the adequacy of the norm group. A norm group must be representative of the population being sampled and appropriate for the purposes of the comparison. For example, psychologists and educational evaluators tend to use national samples that are often drawn from students sampled from different educational settings, different regions of the country, and in large enough numbers to be considered representative of students across the nation. When making
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comparisons among children of different backgrounds or assets norms can be misused. To avoid this, the norm group must correspond to important characteristics of the student tested that could require a separate norm. For example, it may be important to compare bilingual children to other bilingual children as there may be a pervasive bias in the comparison of a bilingual child to a monolingual norm group. Such a comparison may fail to indicate strengths or suggest problems that are simply due to differences between the bilingual child and the monolingual norm group. See also: > Achievement tests; > College board; > Intelligence/Intelligence Quotient (IQ); > Testing and measurement
Suggested Reading Ebel, R. L., & Frisbie, D. A. (1991). Essentials of educational measurement. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall. Cohen, R. J., & Swerdlick, M. E. (2004). Psychological testing and assessment: An introduction to tests and measurement. Mountain View, CA: McGraw-Hill.
Suggested Resources The National Center for Fair & Open Testing—http://www.fairtest. org/facts/nratests.html: A user-friendly website with practical information regarding norm-referenced tests and the fair use of scores. Glutting’s Guide for Norm-Referenced Test Score Interpretation— http://www.udel.edu/educ/gottfredson/451/Glutting-guide.htm: An in-depth guide to the importance of NRTs and interpretation of scores, using a sample psychological report.
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Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD) Rhonda Turner . Susan M Swearer
Once thought to be rare, Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD) is currently recognized as the fourth most common psychiatric disorder among adults, following only phobias, substance abuse and major depression. In fact, it has been estimated that 1 in 50 adults in the United States (U.S.) currently has OCD.
Epidemiology According to the American Psychiatric Association, the lifetime prevalence rate of OCD is estimated at 2.5% in the U.S. Recently, researchers and practitioners have found that OCD is much more common among children and adolescents than once was thought. Epidemiological data regarding OCD in youth is sparse, but prevalence estimates range from 1 to 3.6% for children and adolescents. This means approximately 1 in 200 children and adolescents, or three or four children in an average elementary school and as many as 20 in most high schools, have OCD. Clinical cases of OCD have been diagnosed in children as young as 3 years old. Researchers posit that prevalence figures may under-represent OCD’s occurrence in youth populations. Prominent researchers and practitioners postulate that the disorder often goes unrecognized and untreated due to possible secretiveness about symptoms or a lack of awareness about the disorder and the availability of treatment. Others note parents and general practitioners may fail to recognize a child’s ‘‘strange behavior’’ as symptomatic of OCD, attributing it instead to childhood phases. As a result, children and adolescents with OCD may be unrecognized and untreated. OCD differs from the developmentally appropriate affinity for routine and repetition displayed by most children. It is common for children to like things ‘‘just so’’ or to demand the same bedtime ritual night after night. OCD behaviors can be differentiated from these developmentally appropriate behaviors by their timing, nature, and intensity. Developmentally appropriate OCD behaviors tend to emerge early, are rare among adolescents, and are widespread. On the other
hand, diagnosable OCD behaviors emerge later, hinder rather than enhance the child’s development, and appear bizarre to adults and other children. Further, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-IV) of the American Psychiatric Association differentiates obsessions from simple worries about actual problems. It also requires that at some point in the illness, adults with OCD must recognize that the obsessions of compulsions are unreasonable and excessive before a diagnosis of OCD can be made. This component of insight is waived for children and adolescents. While the average age of onset of OCD is the early 20s, adolescent onset is reported by one third to one half of adult patients. Research indicates as many as 80% of adults with OCD experienced childhood or adolescent onset. Indeed, the modal age of onset for males is between ages 6 and 15, while the modal age of onset for females is between ages 20 and 29. Boys are more likely to experience onset of OCD prior to puberty, while girls with childhood OCD are more likely to report onset during adolescence. Although epidemiological data indicate no differences in prevalence related to ethnicity or geographic location, in clinical samples, OCD is more common among White children than African American children. Although the causes of OCD are unclear, most experts concur that it is a neurobehavioral disorder in which anomalies in the brain lead to problems in processing information. OCD has been linked to a lack of serotonin, a chemical messenger in the brain that carries information from one nerve cell to the next. Further, using positron emission tomography (PET) scans, it has been determined that areas of the brain including the basal ganglia, caudate nucleus and the orbital frontal regions are overactive in people with OCD. As a result, people with OCD report feeling as though their brain gets ‘‘stuck’’ or locked in a thought or worry and cannot move on. Practitioners stress that OCD is a biological disorder, not simply a behavioral disorder.
Diagnosis According to the fourth edition of the Diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders (DSM-IV), OCD involves anxiety caused by intrusive, unwanted thoughts or images (obsessions) and/or the use of repetitious intentional behaviors or mental acts (compulsions) to
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reduce the anxiety. The DSM-IV states that to be diagnosed, the symptoms of OCD must result in significant impairment in the individual’s academic/vocational and social functioning stemming either from the amount of time demanded by ritualistic compulsions (at least one hour per day) or from psychological distress. Among the most common obsessions experienced by adults and youth with OCD are fear of contamination, fear of harm to oneself and to others, and a desire for symmetry or exactness. Obsessions involve a combination of unwanted, intrusive thoughts, urges or images and corresponding negative feelings like fear or anxiety. Compulsions are repetitive behaviors that may be employed in an effort to reduce the negative feelings associated with obsessions. They include such behaviors or mental acts as excessive washing and cleaning, checking, counting, repeating routines, touching, and straightening. Among children with OCD, washing and checking rituals are particularly common. In an unfortunate cycle, compulsions are reinforced when they temporarily reduce anxiety. This, in turn, strengthens the urge to perform the compulsion and adds fuel to the obsession. Symptoms of OCD tend to both co-occur and to change over time, so the same individual with OCD will likely experience many different symptoms over time and these symptoms will wax and wane depending on environmental factors (i.e., stress).
Treatment While treatment for OCD in adults has been wellresearched, the literature base regarding its treatment among youth is more limited. What is known, though, is that OCD is treatable. Adult interventions utilizing behavioral, cognitive behavioral and psychopharmacological strategies have proven effective. In 1997 the Expert Consensus Treatment Guidelines for Obsessive Compulsive Disorder were developed after surveying 69 experts on OCD. These guidelines provide treatment recommendations for OCD in children, adolescents and adults. Overall, the experts recommended using Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) alone or in combination with psychotropic medication in the treatment of OCD. As noted above, CBT is widely regarded as the psychotherapeutic treatment of choice for OCD. This treatment generally consists of a series of 12–20 structured therapy sessions involving assessment and progress monitoring, therapist assisted exposure and response
prevention (E/RP), and homework assignments to be completed between sessions. Exposure involves reducing the anxiety associated with particular obsessions through repeated contact with the object of fear. For example, people with obsessions about germs are assisted by the therapist in gradually increasing their contact with ‘‘germy’’ objects (i.e. handling money) until the anxiety is eliminated. For maximum benefit, exposure (E) is combined with response prevention (RP), in which the person refrains from performing compulsions or rituals to reduce anxiety brought on by exposure. In the previous example, the person with obsessions about germs would first handle money, then refrain from hand washing. Such protocols have found well documented empirical support in adults and youth over the last 25 years with patients reporting a 50–80% reduction in OCD symptoms. Psychopharmacological treatment employing antidepressants, particularly the Tricyclic Antidepressant (TCA) Clomipramine, and Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitors (SSRI’s) have also enjoyed support in the literature. These medications work by increasing the levels of neurotransmitters in the brain. Clomipramine was indicated for the treatment of OCD by the FDA in 1989. It was soon followed by the SSRI’s, Fluoxetine, Citalopram, Sertraline, Paroxetine and Fluvoxamine. Treatment for OCD must be individualized. There is no single approach that works best for everyone although the consensus is that CBT alone, or in combination with an SSRI is likely to have the best effect. There is evidence that brain functioning can return to near normal with either CBT or medication therapy. Research regarding the individual and combined efficacy of treatment methods for OCD is ongoing. See also: > Anxiety; > Childhood depression; Behavioral Therapy (CBT)
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Suggested Reading American Psychiatric Association (1994). Diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders (4th ed.). Washington, D.C.: Author. Chansky, T. E. (2000). Freeing your child from obsessive-compulsive disorder. New York: Random House Inc. Grados, M. A., & Labuda, M. C. (1997). Obsessive-compulsive disorder in children and adolescents. International Review of Psychiatry, 9(1), 83–98 March, J. S., Franklin, M., Nelson, A., & Foa, E. (2001). Cognitivebehavioral psychotherapy for pediatric obsessive-compulsive disorder. Journal of Clinical Child Psychology, 30(1), 8–18
Outcomes-based education
Suggested Resources Obsessive-Compulsive Foundation (OCF)—http://www.ocfoundation. org: This website provides information and sponsors research on the nature and treatment of OCD. Additionally, the OCF sponsors support groups around the country and provides referrals for treatment providers. The Association for Behavioral and Cognitive Therapies—http:// www.aabt.org/aabt: This interdisciplinary professional organization is concerned with the application of behavioral and cognitive sciences to understanding human behavior, developing interventions to improve the human condition and promote the appropriate use of these interventions. The website provides resources and therapist referrals.
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OEMA > American Psychological Association (APA): Office of Ethnic Minority Affairs (OEMA) and Committee on Ethnic Minority Affairs (CEMA)
Outcomes-Based Education Julia Shaftel
Outcomes-based education was born in the public education reform movement of the late twentieth century and is exemplified in the No Child Left Behind Act of 2004 (NCLB). Outcomes-based education, as the name implies, focuses on measurable student achievement and performance outcomes rather than inputs such as the number of books in the library, square footage of classroom space, or years of teacher experience. Outcomes state what a student should know
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or should be able to do after finishing an academic course or a program of study. Outcomes are defined by educational goals called standards, which are typically accompanied by instructional objectives that express the knowledge and skills that students should attain in observable and measurable terms. Outcomes are assessed by testing students on the goals and objectives for a grade level or subject area. Therefore, outcomes are closely linked to standards-based education and accountability efforts such as the large-scale assessment of educational progress required under NCLB. The outcomes-based reform movement has grown from very specific to extremely broad application in federal law over the past 30 years. Since the Education for All Handicapped Children Act of 1975, outcomes for students with disabilities have been required in the individualized education plans (IEPs) that describe the specific educational goals and objectives for students receiving special education services. However, because these plans are individualized, each student is assessed on different outcomes. In its 1983 report A Nation at Risk, the National Commission on Excellence in Education recommended educational goals and outcomes for American school children and initiated the standards-based educational reform movement. Outcomes for children from disadvantaged economic circumstances were required by the Improving America’s Schools Act of 1994 (IASA), which required content and performance standards in reading and mathematics. Accountability was included in the requirement that schools assess the progress of students enrolled in Title I programs toward those standards. Outcomes in terms other than progress towards IEP goals and objectives were required for students with disabilities in the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act of 1997 (IDEA), which made participation in district-wide and state-wide assessments obligatory for all students with disabilities. This meant that students with disabilities who could participate in testing were to be assessed on the same educational goals and outcomes as their nondisabled peers. In 2004, IASA was reauthorized as NCLB, which required states to prepare challenging educational standards in core academic content areas and assess progress for all groups of children, including students with disabilities, racial and ethnic minorities, and English language learners. NCLB also called for high standards for teachers and paraprofessionals and includes sanctions for schools and districts who do not demonstrate adequate progress toward attainment of standards for all groups of students.
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The public has mixed feelings about outcomesbased education. As part of the National Dialogue on Standards-Based Education project at community sites around the country, Mid-continent Research for Education and Learning found general public support for the notion of outcomes and standards-based education with clear learning goals for students. Participants agreed that schools and districts should be held accountable for attainment of those goals. However, they wanted greater flexibility in standards and accountability assessments with evaluation of outcomes based on more than just scores on high-stakes tests. Students should be assessed in a variety of ways and have multiple opportunities to demonstrate outcomes. Concerns included questions about the relevance of state standards for local populations, especially in rural areas. The sentiments expressed through these dialogues suggested that legislators need to be more responsive to the educational interests and concerns of the public. However, there was recognition that standardsbased education and student outcomes are here to stay.
See also: > Individualized Education Plan (IEP); > Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA); > No Child Left Behind (NCLB)
Suggested Reading Lefkowits, L., & Arens, S. A. (2004). The national dialogue on standards-based education: Final report. Aurora, CO: Midcontinent Research for Education and Learning. McClure, P. (2005). Where standards come from. Theory into Practice, 44, 4–10.
Suggested Resources A Nation at Risk—http://www.ed.gov/pubs/NatAtRisk/index.html: This website provides a government publication of an open letter to the American people entitled ‘‘A Nation at Risk.’’ National Dialogue on Standards-Based Education—http://www. nationaldialogue.org/index.html: This website presents a report entitled ‘‘Where Does the Public Stand on Standards-based Education?’’
PACER Center Parent Advocacy Coalition for Educational Rights (PACER Center) >
Pacific Islander Youth Kaikok Lim
Pacific Islanders represent 874,000 people in the United States (U.S.), or approximately 0.3% of the total population. The term ‘‘Native Hawaiian or other Pacific Islander’’ is used in the 2000 U.S. Census to refer to people who have origins from Hawaii, Guam, Samoa, or other Pacific Islands, namely the Polynesian, Micronesian, and Melanesian range of islands. Although China, Indonesia, Japan, the Philippines, and Taiwan are countries with islands bordering the Pacific Ocean, the people that have origins from these countries are considered Asian. Native Hawaiian, Samoan, Guamanian or Chamorro, Tongan, Fijian, and Marshallese constitute the largest groups of Pacific Islanders in the U.S. today. As a group, they have very diverse languages and cultures. Around 44% speak a language other than English at home, compared with 18% of the total population. Economic and higher educational attainments are below average for Pacific Islanders. Only 14% who are 25 years and older have a bachelor’s degree or higher education, compared with 24% of the total population. In the U.S. today, over half of the total population of Pacific Islanders tends to concentrate in the states of Hawaii and California. Pacific Islander youths, those under 18 years old, constitute 35.6% of the group. Pacific Islanders are currently one of the fastest growing ethnic groups in the U.S. For many years, Pacific Islanders were grouped with other Asian Americans; thus the specific problems facing Pacific Islander youth were not made apparent. Now, categorized as a separate group, the three main issues of school performance, substance abuse, and youth violence, are becoming clearer and raise alarm about the need to better serve this group. Pacific Islander youth have low academic success, which has been underreported in the past. Lower parental expectations in pursuing education beyond high
school can translate to lower educational aspirations in Pacific Islander youth. Limited educational achievement would perpetuate the current economic standing of Pacific Islanders, who rank lower than average compared with the total population. As Pacific Islander youth become assimilated into mainstream American culture, there are higher proportions of substance abuse within the group. There are more Pacific Islander females who abuse substances, than males within the Pacific Islander group. Studies of youth violence have discovered that Pacific Islander youth tend to engage in more violent behavior than was previously estimated. Grouping Pacific Islander youth with other Asian American youth as one homogeneous category appears to have skewed data and underestimated the prevalence of violence. When Pacific Islander youths acculturate to the dominant Western culture and explore values of individualism, they often experiment with deviant behaviors as a means of establishing themselves as a separate entity. However, those youths who hold bicultural self-efficacy are less inclined to engage in violent behaviors, showing the capacity to negotiate effectively the multicultural situations that they are exposed to when interacting with family, community, school, work, and society. The issues facing Pacific Islander youth today are troubling; however, there are protective factors such as cultural values that include respect for elders, strong family ties, maintenance of harmonious social relationships, focusing on group needs over personal needs, and avoiding actions that bring shame on the family. These factors help insulate some youth from risk factors. Close monitoring of youth activities in their friendships and school progress, as well as expectations of spending more time with family, will help reduce the risky behaviors of youths. More research is needed on the role of protective factors in helping Pacific Islander youth of today lead healthy, productive lives. See also: > Academic achievement in minority children; > Asian/Asian American youth; > Community interventions with diverse youth; > Substance abuse
Suggested Reading DeBaryshe, B. D., Yuen, S., & Stern, I. R. (2001). Psychosocial adjustment in Asian American/Pacific Islander youth: The role of coping strategies, parenting practices, and community social support. Adolescent & Family Health, 2(2), 63–71.
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Hishinuma, E. S., Johnson, R. C. Kim, S. P., Nishimura, S. T., Makini, G. K., Andrade, N. N. et al. (2005). Prevalence and correlates of misconduct among ethnically diverse adolescents of Native Hawaiian/Part-Hawaiian and Non-Hawaiian ancestry. International Journal of Social Psychiatry, 51(3), 242–258. Mayeda, D. T., Hishinuma, E. S., Nishimura, S. T., Garcia-Santiago, O., & Mark, G. Y. (2006). Asian/Pacific Islander youth violence prevention center: Interpersonal violence and deviant behaviors among youth in Hawai’i. Journal of Adolescent Health, 39(2), 276.e1–276.e11.
Suggested Resources Asian & Pacific Islanders Youth Violence Prevention Center (API Center)—http://www.api-center.org/: The API Center is a collaboration between the University of Hawaii (UH) and the National Council on Crime and Delinquency (NCCD). The goal of the API Center is to prevent and reduce youth violence among the API population to position communities to become proactive in creating a safe and healthy environment for themselves.
Panic Disorder/Attacks Rebecca Littman
Overview Panic disorder was first recognized by the American Psychiatric Association (APA) in 1980. Panic disorder is the only psychological problem whose predominant feature is recurring panic attacks. The first attack may have taken place in a specific situation; however, further attacks are unpredictable as to time or place. Panic attacks come without any apparent warning, regardless of what the person is doing. People with panic disorder often anticipate and worry about another attack, and avoid places in which they may once have experienced an attack. This aspect of panic attacks may contribute to agoraphobia. Panic attacks are not predictable responses to specific fears (phobias), and the cause of the panic is not obvious. In panic disorder, panic attacks occur as frequently as once a week, and the fear of having a panic attack interferes with normal lifestyle. Panic attacks are common, affecting about one third of the population each year. However, only 1–5% of the
population actually is diagnosed with panic disorder. Panic disorder is a type of anxiety disorder that usually begins in late adolescence or early adulthood and affects women two to three times more often than men. If left untreated, panic disorder can lead to considerable worry or limitations in other areas of a person’s life. Peer relationships, functioning in school, and family functioning may suffer, or depression may develop. A trained clinician should integrate information from home, school, and clinical visit/s to make a proper diagnosis. Exact causes are unclear, however; there seems to be a connection with major life transitions that are stressful and a genetic predisposition to the disorder (see Treatment). Many people with panic disorder often feel as if they are having a heart attack and visit the emergency room several times before they are properly diagnosed.
The Panic Attack Panic attacks are discrete periods of intense fear or terror that have a sudden onset. Changes in the body and mind take place so rapidly and unconsciously that they are experienced as an ‘‘attack’’ of panic or anxiety. During panic, the body responds with many of the same physiological changes that take place during an emergency. However, panic is an exaggeration of the emergency response. Instead of being beneficial to the person, this emergency response becomes overwhelming. The more the person focuses on the internal changes occurring, the more anxious and fearful he/she becomes. Panic attacks can build gradually over a period of several minutes or hours or strike very suddenly. While they can last from a few minutes to several days, most do not last longer than half an hour. A panic attack causes the fastest and most complex reaction known within the human body. It immediately alters the functioning of the eyes, several major glands, the brain, heart, lungs, stomach, intestines, pancreas, kidneys and bladder, and the major muscle group. The heart increases its rate of contractions, the amount of blood it pumps, and the pressure it exerts, as blood is pumped into the arteries. The blood vessels in the arms, legs, and other parts of the body begin to constrict, reducing blood flow to those areas. At the same time, the vessels, which channel blood into the vital organs and skeletal muscles, expand, increasing their blood flow. While all this is occurring, rate of respiration increases and the pupils dilate.
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Symptoms Every person’s body experiences panic attacks physically, emotionally, and mentally in a unique way. The more symptoms occur at one time, the greater the feeling of panic experienced by the individual. The various anxiety-related symptoms described are controlled by the nervous system. The autonomic nervous system is comprised of the sympathetic division, responsible for the fight or flight response. When triggered, the sympathetic division suspends all nonessential activity in the body and increases activity in any system necessary to either fight or flee from external physical threat. When experiencing a panic attack, the person is actually experiencing an overreaction of the fight or flight response. The head begins to decrease in blood flow to the brain, and causes hyperventilation, which may result in feeling lightheaded, dizzy, or faint. Perspiration, hot and cold flashes, numbness, prickling or tingling, vertigo, and/or fatigue may occur. The mind becomes disoriented, confused. There is an inability to concentrate and derealization, depersonalization, and/or irritability can occur. Common fears are those of going crazy, fainting, dying, having a heart attack, making a scene, or becoming trapped. The eyes may flicker or twitch, and a problem focusing on an object, and/or blurriness can occur. The mouth and throat become dry, there is a difficulty swallowing, muscles in throat tighten, and/or the voice may tremble. Panic attacks tend to be accompanied by an increase in heart rate and rate of breathing, shallow breath, difficulty catching one’s breath, and pain or discomfort in the chest. The individual may experience the sensation of
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having butterflies in his or her stomach and suffer from nauseousness. The muscles tense, weaken, tremble, become numb, and there may be an inability to stand.
Causes Only a small percentage of panic symptoms persist because of a physical problem. It is not yet clear as to what exactly causes panic disorder (see > Table 1). There may exist a genetic predisposition to panic disorder as well as a biological malfunction. All ethnic groups are vulnerable to panic disorder. Causes may be physiological or psychological in nature. Hormonal imbalances, certain illnesses, and substances such as caffeine, prescription or over-the-counter medications, and illegal drugs can cause panic attacks. Major life transitions such as graduating or marriage, severe stress, separation anxiety, or generalized anxiety can also be causative factors. A history of emotional trauma, even if not remembered, may be behind panic attacks. Panic attacks can fall into three causal patterns: unexpected, situational, and situationally predisposed. People with panic disorder often have highly reactive bodies that respond more intensely to environmental stimuli such as noise, odors, medications, and temperature variations. It is easier for this type of person to experience an exaggerated fight or flight response when overburdened with mental, physical, or emotional stress. There is clear evidence that anxiety runs in families. Studies show that if one identical twin has an anxiety disorder, the second twin is more likely to have an anxiety disorder than nonidentical twins. Because
. Table 1 Causal factors associated with panic attacks High-anxiety personality traits ↑ Childhood background
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Frightening physical symptoms
↓ Misinterpretation of the symptoms ↓ Fears of any similar symptoms, negative anticipation, and internalization ↓ Anxiety/panic cycle ↓ Panic disorder with or without agoraphobia
←
The frightening physical symptoms can be caused by any one or combination of the following:
1. Genetic factors that result in a highly reactive body 2. Physical exhaustion due to a highly reactive body 3. Tendency to hyperventilate 4. Medical condition 5. Drug reaction
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symptoms of anxiety disorder are often relieved by medications that alter levels of chemicals in the brain, scientists believe that brain chemistry appears to play a role in the onset of anxiety disorders. People who have low self-esteem and poor coping skills may be more prone to panic disorder as well. Researchers also believe that the relationship between panic disorder and long-term exposure to abuse, violence, or poverty are important areas for further study. Every culture inherently carries different beliefs. Many times these different beliefs create their own unique basis for development of anxiety. Such an example exists within Korean culture whereby beliefs are held that when anger is suppressed for a long time, a group of symptoms develop called Hwa-Byung. People with Hwa-Byung have experiences that cause hurt, damage, and feel as if there is a boiling within the chest. Cultural inclinations of Koreans include maintaining continual family harmony and peacefulness, which can eventually build up and boil over. Hwa-Byung is found in females more frequently between the ages of 40 and 50. When they describe their symptoms, patients use terms such as mortification and worry. They often direct their feelings inwardly, rather than outwardly expressing anger. Physical symptoms of Hwa-Byung mimic that of panic disorder. Women tend to have a higher rate of Hwa-Byung due to the Korean belief that it is the woman’s job to bear misfortune, misery, and mistreatment silently, so her anger is not to be expressed but rather contained within. Because of Korea’s belief to live in harmony with the teachings of Confucius, the women (and men) have often had to swallow and suppress their feelings. Another such example of anxiety expression is characterized by ‘‘ataque de nervios,’’ that occurs among Hispanics. Symptoms include palpitations, a tightening of the chest, trembling, shortness of breath, problems with memory, and striking out at people. As seen in Hwa-Byung, traditional sex roles and historical context seem to play a part in ataques. The concept of machismo, where the male is felt to be responsible for the welfare and honor of the family, and a history of being a conquered people form a parallel. Ataque de nervios is seen as an episodic expression of anger that comes from having to put up with a buildup of anger over time. Hence, it is important not to just look at panic disorder alone, but to also understand its cultural context. Understanding background, context, and cul-
tural aspects of panic disorder provide a better sense of where the individual is coming from and what may have caused symptoms.
Treatment First and foremost, getting a thorough education on this disorder is of major importance. The person must realize he or she is not ‘‘going crazy’’ or having a heart attack to relieve some of the panic. A doctor should also rule out other possible medical conditions before providing an accurate diagnosis. A mental health assessment may be given to verify that physical symptoms are related to anxiety. There are several approaches to treating panic attacks. They can be used separately or in conjunction with one another. First, group, family, and/or individual psychotherapy can be effective in many cases. A counselor can help to control catastrophic thoughts during a panic attack. Relaxation techniques are learned, including training to breathe slowly and evenly throughout an episode of panic. Generally, cognitive behavioral therapy, which uses systematic desensitization, thought stopping, and challenging of irrational behaviors, is used. Psychoanalysis may also prove to be helpful in exploring past history on any stress or internal conflicts that may be the preliminary cause of attacks for the individual. Second, antidepressant medication may be highly effective in preventing panic attacks. Psychiatrists today often use the SSRI antidepressants because they have fewer side effects. Antidepressant medications can also help treat symptoms of depression, which are commonly associated with panic disorder. A third approach to treating anxiety attacks is to use an anxiolytic medication for the immediate relief of a panic attack. This is effective for the short term and at the first sign of a panic attack. Unfortunately, this medication can be highly addictive when used on a daily basis. The combination of antidepressant medication and psychotherapy is considered the most effective treatment for dealing with panic disorder. In schools, special education services may be available to children or adolescents diagnosed with panic disorder under specific categories such as health impaired emotional disturbance or behavior disorder. Accommodations may be requested and provided under section 504 of the rehabilitation act of 1973, which protects qualified individuals from discrimination
Paraprofessionals
based on their disability. This act forbids organizations and employers from excluding or denying individuals with disabilities an equal opportunity to receive program benefits and services. It defines the rights of individuals with disabilities to participate in, and have access to, program benefits and services. A student with panic disorder may have panic attacks at school, though the child may try to hide the symptoms while at school. As a result, a child may appear to have more symptoms at home than at school. A child may also be reluctant or unable to describe the attacks. This may lead to confusion about the nature of the child’s symptoms. There are many ways that schools can help a child with panic disorder succeed in the classroom. Meetings between parents and school staff, such as teachers, school counselors, or nurses, will allow for collaboration to develop helpful school structure for the child. The child may need particular changes within a classroom. Such changes are: check-ins and cues to the teachers or staff that a panic attack is occurring, providing more time to complete assignments, accommodating late arrival, adjusting homework load, developing relaxation techniques, identifying a safe place, encouraging the child to develop helpful interventions, providing assistance with peer interactions, and being aware that transitions may be difficult for the child. School faculty and parents together may be able to identify patterns of difficulty and develop remedies to reduce a child’s challenges at these times. School-based counseling can be effective in helping a child with panic disorder overcome the social, behavioral, and academic demands of the school setting. See also: > Anxiety; > Childhood depression; > ObsessiveCompulsive Disorder (OCD); > Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD); > Stress/stressors
Suggested Reading Janzen, E., & Reynolds, C. R. (2005). Special education almanac. New York: Wiley, John & Sons. Montgomery, B., & Morris, L. (2001). Living with anxiety. Cambridge: Perseus Publishing. Peurifoy, R. Z. (2005). Anxiety, phobias, and panic. New York: Warner Books Printing. Whitney, H. (2005). 50 signs of mental illness. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
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Suggested Resources American Psychological Association—http://www.apa.org/topics/ anxietyqanda.html: This website provides answers to questions on panic disorder. It outlines the causes, side effects, treatments, and identification of the disorder. American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry: Facts for Families—http://www.aacap.org/publications/factsfam/panic. htm: This website provides information on the differences between adolescent and adult panic disorder. Information includes treatment, symptoms, and social interactions.
Paraprofessionals Ane´ M Marı´n˜ez-Lora . Stephen M Quintana
Paraeducators, also known as paraprofessionals and teacher assistants, were formally first used in classrooms in the 1950s as a result of a teacher shortage. Paraeducators are low-wage school district employees that, although not licensed or certified to teach, are hired to provide a variety of direct services to students, including instruction. In the last four decades the number of paraprofessionals in schools has greatly increased and their roles, responsibilities, and involvement with students have also changed dramatically. Initially most paraeducators’ responsibilities were limited primarily to clerical, housekeeping, and monitoring tasks. Due to educational reform efforts across the country, many paraeducators now have positions that are instructional in nature and encourage active participation in the daily learning activities of students. In 1965, fewer than 10,000 paraeducators were employed by school districts. By 1995, however, there were at least 500,000 full-time paraeducator positions across the country—100,000 more than in 1990. Of this number, at least 270,000 paraeducators were reported to work in programs that provide services to students with disabilities. More than 70,000 were reported to work in compensatory educational programs such as English as a Second Language (ESL) programs. These numbers are believed to be conservative estimates, as many paraprofessional positions are not reported in official educational statistics. In many states where paraeducators’ salaries are paid by local revenues, for instance, paraeducator positions may
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Parent advocacy coalition for educational rights (PACER center)
not be reported by local education agencies (LEAs). In addition, because state department of education reports tend to focus on kindergarten to grade 12, information about the use of paraeducators in early childhood education and intervention programs (e.g., Head Start) is very limited. Most paraeducators are hired from the local school community and are primarily women who work in elementary schools (75%). Almost half of all paraeducators are hired to work in special education programs. In major urban and rural areas with high percentages of racial/ethnic and language minorities, the majority of paraeducators (i.e., 60–75%) are members of these groups. Despite the growing numbers of paraeducators in schools and their changing roles in the classroom, paraeducators have been a relatively neglected segment of school support personnel. Recent education reforms have addressed the training and supervision requirements of paraeducators. Until the amendment of Title I of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) and under the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act of 2001, there were no federal training requirements for paraprofessionals working in schools. Prior to NCLB, for instance, training requirements for paraeducators varied across states with most states having no established training plans, credentialing system, or special certification requirement. According to the National Education Association (NEA), 70–90% of paraeducators were hired without prior training. Title I now requires that paraeducators complete a minimum of two years of study at an institution of higher education and an associate’s degree or a rigorous standard of quality as demonstrated by academic assessment in the areas of reading, writing and math. The reauthorization of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Improvement Act (IDEA) in 2004 also addresses training and supervision requirements for paraeducators. IDEA requires LEAs to develop an infrastructure that provides paraeducators with appropriate training and supervision. Recent education reforms (i.e., IDEA) highlight a growing recognition of the important role that paraeducators play in classrooms and the need to adequately prepare and support them to be successful in instructional tasks. The fact that these reforms are at the federal level suggests that a national consensus of standardization in the training and supervision of paraeducators is currently being explored.
See also: > Multicultural teacher training ; > National Education Association (NEA); > Rural schools; > Substitute teachers; > Teacher efficacy; > Urban schools
Suggested Reading French, N. K. (1999). Paraeducators: Who are they and what do they want? Teaching Exceptional Children, 32(1), 67–75. Marks, S. U., Schrader, C., & Levine, M. (1999). Paraeducator experiences in inclusive settings: Helping, hovering, or holding their own? Exceptional Children, 3, 315–328. No Child Left Behind Act of 2001. Pub. L. No. 107–110 (2002). Pickett, A. L. (1996). A state of the art report on paraeducators in education and related services. New York: City University of New York, The National Resource Center for Paraprofessionals in Education and Related Services.
Parent Advocacy Coalition for Educational Rights (PACER Center) DeAnn Lechtenberger
The Parent Advocacy Coalition for Educational Rights, the PACER Center, was established in 1977 by parents of children and youth with a variety of disabilities who were seeking to support other parents facing similar challenges in raising a child with a disability. Currently the mission of the PACER Center is to expand opportunities for children and youth with disabilities and their families to improve their quality of life. The model continues to be one of parents helping parents. Resources and referral information is available to help families address the special needs of their children with disabilities through all stages of childhood and all disabilities. PACER is staffed primarily by family members of children with disabilities and is a part of a national coalition of over 18 disability organizations. The Center offers individual one-on-one assistance to parents and others to help answer questions regarding information on a variety of topics related to disabilities and the challenges of raising a child with special needs. PACER publishes a variety of publications, a newsletter, and provides a free catalog of publications with
Parent attachment
educational materials to help parents and professionals on issues related to special education and disabilities. These resources include a wide selection of workshop and conference materials that are available for download or can be ordered as a CD in English and Spanish. The Center also functions as a clearinghouse for resources on: (a) what works for children with disabilities; (b) government and legislative news and resources; (c) information regarding No Child Left Behind (NCLB) and Individuals with Disabilities Education Improvement Act of 2004 (IDEA); and (d) downloadable materials on scientifically based research topics. The Technical Assistance Alliance for Parent Centers’ national office is housed at the PACER Center in Minneapolis. This special project is funded by the U.S. Department of Education, Office of Special Education Programs to strengthen the connections between state education systems and the approximate 100 parent centers at both regional and national levels. Staff members in the parent centers and the Alliance office are often parents of children with disabilities or have disabilities themselves. The Alliance consists of one national office and six regional centers to support a coordinated technical assistance system that develops, supports, and coordinates Parent Training and Information Center Projects (PTIs) and Community Parent Resource Centers (CPRCs) under IDEA. The national office produces materials on IDEA and other special education topics and sponsors a national conference with topical strands on current issues facing the field of special education and families of children with disabilities. At least one PTI is established in each state to serve families of children and youth with disabilities from birth to age 22. These centers help families access appropriate educational services for their children through training, information sharing, problem solving, and connecting families to community resources for local supports and services. Through this assistance, parents are able to work more collaboratively and effectively with professionals to improve the educational outcomes for their children with emotional, learning, mental, and physical disabilities. The regional parent centers are often the first contact a parent has for technical assistance and referral services for their child. Each regional office sponsors an annual conference for parent center staff in the geographic area served by the regional office. Regional offices also develop individualized technical assistance plans for parent centers that includes training, publishing printed and Internet materials, and
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individualized technical assistance through conference calls, meetings, and site visits. See also: > Educational partnership; > Home, Family, School liaison; > Parental involvement in education
Suggested Reading Nelson, C. M., Jordan, D., & Rodrigues-Walling, M. (2002). Expand positive learning opportunities and results. Journal of Child & Family Studies, 11(1), 13–22.
Suggested Resources PACER Center—http://www.pacer.org: The PACER Center website provides links to articles, workshops, event information and more. What Works Clearinghouse—http://www.w-w-c.org/: The What Works Clearinghouse provides educators, policymakers, researchers, and the public with a central and trusted source of scientific evidence of what works in education. The Families and Advocates Partnership for Education (FAPE) project—http://www.fape.org/: The Families and Advocates Partnership for Education (FAPE) project is a partnership that aims to improve the educational outcomes for children with disabilities.
Parent Attachment Jessica L Larsen
Parent attachment is the bond between parent and child that is formed in the earliest parts of the child’s life. The importance of parental attachment was first observed between 1937 and 1943, when many child-care professionals in the United States (U.S.) and Europe noted that children who had been institutionalized at birth were either overly withdrawn and self-isolated, or were overactive. These institutions rarely provided more than just the physical care, and the children often experienced little early social interaction. Similar characteristics were observed in orphaned children raised in refugee camps or other institutional settings during World War II. These children tended not to develop normal emotional attachments with other people.
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Research and Theory The findings and observations noted in such children led psychologist John Bowlby to develop his theory of parent attachment. Bowlby believed that the process of maternal attachment is central to development. It is built and maintained by behaviors that create and sustain proximity between the caregiver and child. He believed that the attachment gave infants a secure base that would later give them confidence to explore their surroundings. The initial development of attachment takes place in four phases: 1. Phase 1: Nonfocused Orienting and Signaling. The infant produces innate signals, for example, crying, that bring the primary caregiver in close proximity. The interaction between the two then calms the infant. The primary caregiver and infant form the basis of the attachment and the infant forms expectancies and schemas about the interaction patterns. The baby develops the ability to discriminate the primary caregiver from others. 2. Phase 2: Focus on One or More Figures. The infant begins to preferentially respond to familiar people. The infant develops a sense of trust with the primary caregiver based on the infant’s expectations about their caregiver’s response and their fulfillment of these expectations. 3. Phase 3: Secure Base Behavior. The infant forms genuine attachment and actively seeks contact with their primary caregiver. The caregiver becomes a secure base, which encourages the infant’s exploration and mastery of their surroundings. The infant displays joy when greeting the caregiver and exhibits distress when the caregiver leaves. 4. Phase 4: Reciprocal Relationships. The toddler understands his or her parent’s feelings, goals, and motives and uses this information to organize their efforts to be in close proximity with them. Their distress at separation declines and a more mutually regulated relationship emerges. The usual outcome of these phases is an enduring emotional tie that brings together the infant and caregiver. It also results in the development of the child’s internal working model of attachment. This is the mental representation of the self, of the attachment figures, and of the relationships in general. It is based on the attachment with the primary caregiver, and Bowlby believed it has effects on the person’s
relationships and their expectations of significant others throughout their adult life. Mary Ainsworth continued Bowlby’s work by expanding on his theory and conducting research to support it. In the Ainsworth procedure called the ‘‘Strange Situation,’’ she tests the child’s attachment to the parent. This test is usually conducted when the child is between 12 and 18 months of age. The child is observed playing with toys for 20 minutes while he or she is exposed to seven episodes, including two separations from and reunions with the parent, and interactions with a stranger while the parent is in the room and while the child is alone. Observers rate the child’s responses to each episode. Ainsworth suggests that children’s reactions indicate one of three distinct patterns of child behavior that characterize their attachment bond. Secure attachment is one such form of attachment bond. Babies with this type of attachment do not hesitate to explore the many toys available in the room. They use the parent as the secure base, occasionally looking back to check on them or bring them a toy. They will engage with strangers when their parent is present. The infant will be visibly distressed upon the parent’s exit from the room but will go to her for comfort when she returns. A second type of attachment that Ainsworth originally categorized involves children who are depicted as insecurely attached. These children have a less positive attachment with their caregivers than securely attached children. Infants who are insecure/resistant, also known as insecure-ambivalent, are often exceedingly clingy to their parents during the beginning episode when they should be exploring. They do not approach strangers even when their parent is present. When the parent exits the room, the infant becomes extremely upset. During reunion, the infant often seeks contact with their parent, only to deny her attempts at providing comfort. Insecure-avoidant is the other type of insecure attachment that Ainsworth noted. These babies tend to avoid their parents in the Strange Situation. They show little emotion when the parent departs or returns. They do not explore very much, regardless of who is present. There is little emotional range displayed, regardless of who is in the room. Later researchers suggested that a fourth category of attachment be added to Ainsworth’s original three. The fourth subset of children displayed characteristics
Parent attachment
that did not fall easily into the other categories. Therefore they were given their own category: disorganized/ disoriented. These infants have no decipherable way of coping with the stress presented in the Strange Situation. Their actions are inconsistent and often contradictory. For example, they may exhibit fearful smiles while approaching their parent and avert their gaze. Their behaviors are marked by confusion and apprehension, and they often seem dazed. These infants seem to want to approach the parents, but they also seem to regard the parent as a source of fear from which they want to withdraw. Recent research has attempted to reveal the factors that foster a secure attachment. One crucial factor is the caregiver’s emotional availability. Emotional availability is the caregiver’s availability and willingness to form an emotional attachment to the infant. For example, those suffering from economic or mental distress may not be able to provide the child with emotional availability because they are consumed by their problems. Another factor that seems to be very crucial in the development of a secure attachment is parental sensitivity. Parental sensitivity is exhibited by responsive caregiving when a child is upset. Positive exchanges between parent and child, for example, laughing, smiling, and coordinated play, are also an example of parental sensitivity. A child’s temperament may also be a contributing factor to his or her attachment style. The child’s temperament may affect the manner in which the parents respond to the child and the security of the child’s attachment. For example, if the child is difficult, the parents may become frustrated and less sensitive to the child’s needs, therefore leading to an insecure attachment. Attachment across cultures has a surprising amount of similarity. Children’s reactions to the Strange Situation are similar across numerous cultures, including China, Western Europe, and various African countries. However, reactions to the Strange Situation indicate some differences in certain cultures. Although Japanese infants have an equal proportion of secure to insecure attachment as middle-class infants in the U.S., most of the insecurely attached infants have been classified as insecure/resistant. This may be due to the culture’s encouragement of oneness between parent and child and the different child-rearing practices in Japan that foster greater closeness and physical intimacy between parents and infants. Israeli children raised in a kibutz, a communal dormitory-like setting where the children sleep, are somewhat less likely to be securely attached
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and are more likely to show insecure/resistant behavior than other Israeli children who sleep at home. This may be because these children receive less consistent and sensitive caregiving at nighttime. Although the research has indicated these differences, they could be partly due to different prior experience with unfamiliar situations and people. For example, children enrolled in day care may react less negatively to the Strange Situation than those who are reared at home. This suggests that the Strange Situation is not an appropriate measure of attachment security in all cultures.
The Teacher–Child Relationship There are many similarities between the teacher–child relationship and the parent–child relationship. School can be stressful for children, and there is some evidence that children may use their teachers as a secure base, much like they use their parents. Furthermore, there is additional evidence that the quality of the teacher– child relationship is directly related to the child’s social and academic success. Those children who form secure attachments to their teachers have better social experiences and do better in school than those who form insecure attachments. A secure teacher–child relationship is generally characterized by low levels of conflict and positive affect, with the child using their teacher as a secure base for exploring and learning.
Child Care and Attachment Theory Concern has been expressed that child care may interfere with the formation of a secure attachment with parents. Older studies showed that some infants in day care may be slightly more likely to form insecure attachments with parents. According to a large, ongoing study funded by the National Institute of Child Health and Development, called the NICHD Study of Early Child Care and Youth Development, day care does not harm attachment for all children. However, there are some interesting caveats dealing with combinations of factors. Of parents judged less sensitive to their 15-month-old children, each of these factors was associated with insecure attachment: more hours of day care, low-quality care, or many different care situations. At 36 months, however, there was no indication that child care affected attachment. Furthermore, there is no research evidence that infants become attached
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to caregivers instead of parents; rather, infants form attachments to parents, caregivers, and others, while remaining most strongly attached to parents. Few center directors address with their staff issues of attachment. Honig’s 2002 book published by the National Association for the Education of Young Children can aide caregivers to understand how important their role is in promoting secure attachment between each young child and themselves in a group facility. It offers insights and ideas on how caregivers may go about achieving secure attachments by becoming better observers of the emotional well-being of each young child in the group. See also: > Childhood; > Social skills
Suggested Reading Ainsworth, M. D. (1985). Patterns of attachment. Clinical Psychology, 38(2), 27–29. Bowlby, J. (1988). A secure base: Parent–child attachment and healthy human development. New York, NY: Basic Books Inc. Honig, A. S. (2002). Secure relationships: Nurturing infant/toddler attachment in early care settings. Washington, D.C.: National Association for the Education of Young Children.
Suggested Resources About Kids Health Series on Parental Attachment—http://www. aboutkidshealth.ca/ofhc/news/SRATTarchive.asp: This website presents a six-part series that explores patterns of attachment, implications of attachment across a child’s life, and various influences on attachment. The NICHD Study of Early Child Care and Youth Development— http://secc.rti.org/: The most comprehensive child-care study conducted so far to determine how variations in child care are related to children’s development.
Parent Centers Mark Kiang
Parent centers, also referred to as parent-child centers, are community centers where families, particularly parents and caregivers, can access resources for raising their child or children. As there is no uniform definition of a parent center or specified regulations for what parent centers do,
the resources and services that parent centers offer and the mediums through which they are offered often vary. Dissemination of information can come in the form of parenting workshops, one-on-one counseling/advicegiving, resource libraries, skill-developing activities, resources via the Internet, and even telephone hotlines. While parent centers often offer professional advice and training, a large component of their service is in the form of parent support groups. Parent centers can be funded privately, federally, or by the state. Parent centers are usually situated in actual geographic center locations that may be visited by parents and children. However, they may also be entirely Internet-based and offer resources and information via a website. An example of the latter is The National Parenting Center which is a web-based parent information center that offers parents access to an expert panel for advice and identifies useful products and services for parents and children. While most parent centers generally offer open services to all parents and children, they often target specific populations with special needs. These include the economically disadvantaged, ethnic minorities, and families that have children with disabilities. Some parent centers focus specifically on parenting while others direct their efforts toward home-school collaboration and academic achievement. Often, these parent centers work in conjunction with schools.
Serving Families with Children with Disabilities A large portion of parent centers throughout the United States (U.S.) serve families that have children or young adults with disabilities. These parent centers often help parents navigate the education system to ensure that their child is receiving the optimal educational resources available to him or her. Support groups are a central component of parent centers that serve families with special needs. Groups are often centered on specific needs or disabilities and allow parents to both share advice and anecdotes as well as provide comfort and encouragement for each other. One such example is the Highlands Parent Center that serves Passaic County, New Jersey. This organization is the first federally funded community parent resource center in New Jersey and offers autism and Asperger’s syndrome support groups. The Alliance National Center currently heads a project funded by the Department of Education under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), called the Technical Assistance Alliance for Parent
Parent centers
Centers. This project aims to develop, assist, and unify parent centers in the U.S, as well as fortify their partnerships with state education systems. While there are many types of parent centers, the Alliance National Center defines parent centers, which are also referred to as Parent Training and Information Centers (PTIs) and Community Parent Resource Centers (CPRCs), as centers that specifically serve families of children, from birth to age 22, who have physical, cognitive, emotional, and learning disabilities. These parent centers aim to help families connect their children who have disabilities with appropriate educational resources and services, assist them academically, and mediate conflicts between families and schools. They also offer training and resources for parents and professionals working with children with disabilities so that they may better collaborate to provide the child with an optimal education. According to the Alliance National Center, there are approximately 100 of these particular centers in the U.S. and at least one per state. The Technical Assistance project is comprised of one national center and six regional technical assistance centers, including the PEAK Parent Center in Colorado Springs, Colorado and the Matrix Parent Network and Resource Center in Novato, California. The Matrix Parent Center is unique in that it is run primarily by parents of children with special needs. A large proportion of its services are parent-led and include support groups, workshops, and parent advisors. The national Alliance office is located at the Parent Advocacy Coalition for Educational Rights (PACER) Center in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Vocational and Educational Services for Individuals with Disabilities (VESID) operates five parent center locations throughout the state of New York. These parent centers assist parents of children with disabilities with support groups, information, in both English and Spanish, about relevant local services, seminars and training sessions for parents. Goals of these centers include informing parents about how to correspond with school district personnel and how to navigate the special education system. The VESID parent centers place special emphasis on assisting families in need such as minority families, immigrant families, foster families, and families living in homeless shelters.
Serving Economically Disadvantaged Families and Minorities Parent centers may be located in urban communities that are predominantly low-income and/or comprised
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of African American, Hispanic, or Asian residents. Parent centers in these areas aim to assist those who may face economic, educational, and social disadvantages and therefore confront additional challenges in raising a child. To accommodate an immigrant population, a parent center may, for example, offer bilingual services and provide center information pamphlets, newsletters, and resources in multiple languages. Services may go beyond just discussion of conventional parenting skills and assist parents in areas of life that indirectly have an impact on the raising of a child. This service can include helping parents with resume writing, job searches and finding housing. The Child-Parent Center (CPC) program currently has 24 centers located in Chicago public schools. The CPC provides educational and family support services for families with young children in preschool to third grade. The centers are primarily located in urban, high poverty areas and specifically target families who are economically disadvantaged. The majority of the families served are African American.
Parent Centers and Schools Parent centers often support or work in conjunction with children’s schools. These parent centers often facilitate parent involvement and understanding of their children’s education both at home and in the school setting. Literature suggests that centers be built around fostering a relationship between schools and parents in a manner that encourages parent participation while at the same time incorporating diverse cultural values to enrich their children’s education. In addition, centers should respect limitations that parents face, particularly in low-income areas, where parents may work long inflexible hours and have limited access to transportation. It has been suggested that four principles should govern a school-based parent center that aims to involve parents from diverse cultures: (1) Parents have their own place. Parents should plan the center themselves, with the help of school staff, so that they feel ownership and comfort at the center. In addition parents should set the goals and rules of the center; (2) Everyone learns from everyone else. The center should use a variety of strategies to gain the participation of hard-to-reach populations such as offering transportation vouchers. At the same time, these parent centers should revolve around the achievement of the children. The center can both display children’s works and offer academic
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tutoring; (3) The parent center is essential to the school’s operation. The center can ease the burden of parent relations experienced by congested school offices and offer parents more time and patience. The center should also serve as a place where parents get updated information about school happenings and other positive developments; and (4) The center is accessible and hospitable. The parent center should be cognizant of parents’ work schedules and availability and try to be open so that all parents who want to come may do so. If possible, a parent center should offer childcare so that more parents have the opportunity to participate. While parent centers aim to inform and educate parents, they must also be fun and engaging so that parents want to come back. The aforementioned Child-Parent Center (CPC) program acts as both an early childhood school and a parent center and in so doing, the CPC is able to directly incorporate parents in their child’s early education. The CPC is guided by the belief that parent involvement in the early years of a child’s education is a key to academic success. While the CPC is primarily a school, it requires parents to participate in the program at least one-half day per week. The CPC features a ‘‘parent room,’’ with a parent-resource teacher, that offers resources, guest speakers, training in nutrition and personal development, and even General Equivalency Diploma (GED) classes. Parents are also encouraged to participate in their children’s classroom activities such as helping teachers run lessons, working in small groups with children, and reading stories to the children.
Effectiveness There is very little research available that measures the effectiveness of parent centers as a whole. It is unlikely that there will ever be comprehensive empirical evidence of parent centers’ usefulness as the goals of parent centers are so varied. Anecdotal evidence, testimony, and government support, however, validate that parent centers are valuable resources for families and communities. Furthermore, there are existing studies that highlight the effectiveness of parent centers in specific areas. See also: > Home, Family, School liaison; > Parent Advocacy Coalition for Educational Rights (PACER Center)
Suggested Reading Yates, L. (1993). Building a successful parent center in an urban school. New York, NY: Teachers College, Columbia University, Institute for Urban and Minority Education. (ERIC Document Reproduction Service No. 30).
Suggested Resources The National Parenting Center—www.tnpc.com: The National Parenting Center offers advice to parents from an online expert panel. In addition parents can chat about parenting topics on a message board and have access to articles and brochures. Child-Parent Centers—http://www.waisman.wisc.edu/cls/Program. htm: There are 24 Child-Parent Centers (CPC) throughout Chicago Public Schools. The CPC program is an early intervention for young children and provides services for both children and parents. The CPC website provides an overview of the program and its curriculum as well as eligibility and contact information. PEAK Parent Center—www.peakparent.org: The PEAK Parent Center is one of six Parent Training and Information Centers (PTI) in the U.S. and is located in Colorado. PEAK provides assistance to families, specifically those with children who have disabilities, in a several different forums. The website offers a variety of information and resources including a calendar of events and employment opportunities.
Parental Involvement in Education Velma LaPoint . Jo-Anne Manswell Butty . Cheryl Danzy . Charlynn Small
Nationally, there have been continuous calls for and an emphasis on improving the academic achievement and social competence of students in United States (U.S.) schools. Parental involvement in education continues to receive national attention as one type of school and community partnership program that can improve student academic achievement and social competence. Although parents, especially mothers, have always been involved in education, parental involvement in education has changed over time in its expression and emphasis in certain ethnic groups. Over the past 20 years there has been an emphasis on the need for
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parental involvement in education which has resulted in a proliferation of parental involvement programs and the need to evaluate their effectiveness. Further, there are issues relating to cultural diversity in parental involvement in education, types of parental involvement in education, and whether these are unequivocally required for students to achieve high standards and be successful in schools. Underlying this debate is the notion that parents themselves are totally responsible for their children’s academic achievement and social competence, as opposed to understanding the complex totality of child, family, and the broader ecological network of influences. Despite these controversies, research shows that parental involvement in education has positive effects on students’ achievement and social competence, teachers’ attitudes, and parent–teacher relationships. Although research shows these positive effects, there are barriers to developing and sustaining positive parental involvement in education. At the same time, there are facilitators of parental involvement in education which can be implemented and sustained if all stakeholders are willing to collaborate on effective and culturally responsive strategies.
Definitions and Conceptualizations of Parental Involvement in Education The definition and conceptualization of parental involvement in education has grown broad and more inclusive over time, particularly in the past 20 years because of the increasing ethnic diversity of families and the need for greater stakeholder support of education outside students’ parents—parents and schools, individually and/or collaboratively, cannot achieve student success by themselves. Bronfenbrenner’s and other ecological theories indicate that children are part of a social system comprising several interrelated systems that have reciprocal influences such as families and schools. These theories are useful in understanding the nature of children’s behavior and how it is influenced by ecological subsystems and the overall environment. When there is greater continuity between home and school systems, there are greater opportunities for student success. Parental involvement in education can be defined as a set of activities generally focused on supporting students’ education by students’ parents. The term, ‘‘parental involvement in education’’ ostensibly is used
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interchangeably with various terms such as ‘‘parental involvement programs,’’ ‘‘home-school collaboration,’’ ‘‘parent, school, and community partnerships programs,’’ and ‘‘parent, teacher, student, and community partnership programs.’’ Some programs actually have students as a part of the educational stakeholder group. Over the years, parental involvement in education has been broadened to include students’ family members and more proximal community members. One of the reasons that this broader conceptualization of students’ parents exists is because families in the U.S. are more likely to be extended in definition and function. Also, community members are likely to be invested in improving schools in their own local communities or even at national and global levels. Other reasons related to the broadening definitions and conceptualization of parental involvement include various educational and social movements that focus on improvements in research on parental involvement in education, federal legislation mandating family involvement in schools, more women graduating from college who subsequently become actively engaged parents advocating for their children’s success in schools, and the effective schools movement with its interest in improving schools for traditionally underserved students. Parental involvement in education generally involves parents, family members, and community members working with school personnel—teachers and mid- and upper-level administrators and staff. The more proximal educational stakeholders— students, teachers, administrators, and family and community members—have become involved in providing personal, material, and financial resources for improving student achievement and social competence in areas such as curriculum and instruction, professional development, and academic support programs. More distal community stakeholders, who seek to improve schooling outcomes for students, may include a bevy of persons—elected officials who legislate and budget school funding, college/university professors who collaborate with school personnel to align student knowledge and skills with postsecondary requirements, workplace representatives who hire students as future employees, and funding officials for educational programs such as the federal government and foundations. Reflecting this broadened definition, parental involvement in this entry will also include family involvement, and where specifically noted, community involvement as a collaborator in promoting students’ educational success.
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Parental Involvement Programs Two nationally recognized parental involvement education programs, the National Network of Partnership Schools (NNPS) and the National Parent Teacher Association (NPTA) have defined parental involvement and/or delineated activities promoting parental involvement in education. The NNPS seeks to enhance student academic achievement and social competence by integrating high-quality school reform programs with a comprehensive, evidenced-based framework of school, family, and community partnerships. The NNPS framework, developed by Epstein, comprises three overlapping spheres of influence (OSI)—schools, families, and communities—that have collaborative practices to support student achievement and social competence. With students in the OSI center, student academic and social competence is promoted through six types of school, family, and community collaborative practice: (a) positive parenting, where parents and family members receive assistance in enhancing home environments to support children as students; (b) parent–teacher reciprocal communication focused on children’s progress and school programs that foster student success; (c) volunteering among parents as a means of engaging family and community help and support; (d) at-home learning where information is provided to families and communities about how to help students with homework; (e) collective decision making wherein family and community members are key players in planning policies and programs related to school governance, curriculum, and other areas; and (f) community collaboration to seek resources and services that can strengthen school programs, family practices, and student learning and development opportunities. One major theoretical assumption of the OSI framework is that students are likely to be more engaged, energized, and motivated about schooling (e.g., valuing education; motivation; parent and teacher expectations) when they experience specific, targeted, meaningful, and consistent information and reinforcement (interactions) from school personnel, family members, and community members. The NPTA is a volunteer child advocacy association that seeks to aid parents in helping their children to be successful students. It collaborates with many national education, health, safety, and child advocacy groups and federal agencies as it seeks to promote the welfare of the children and youth in home, school, community, and faith-based organizations. The NPTA seeks to
improve standards in home life, secure effective laws to protect children, foster closer collaborations between parents and schools to promote high-quality student education, and foster networks of support between educators and the public to promote children’s education and overall development. The NPTA is linked to state and local Parent–Teacher Associations (PTAs), where a national membership network is established to provide resources that benefit children and influence practices, policies, and laws that can promote students’ education.
Historical Notes The history of parental involvement in education can be traced to 1897 when the National Congress of Mothers emerged. This organization focused on the education of parents in child development, cooperation between home and school, promotion of the kindergarten movement, securing policies and laws for neglected and dependent children, and the education of young people for parenthood. In 1908 the National Congress of Mothers was renamed the National Council of Mothers and Parent–Teacher Association. In 1924 it changed its name to the National Congress of Parents and Teachers and today it is known as the Parent–Teacher Association. Throughout the early twentieth century, there were programs that stressed the importance of parental involvement in education such as the Child Study Association and the National Council of Parent Education. During the 1930s, the PTA emerged and grew throughout the country. Before the PTA was a national organization, there were not many opportunities for people of color to be involved. It was commonly considered a White European American middle-class women’s association. Consequently, by the time they were accepted into the PTA, some people of color, more specifically African Americans, formed partnerships within their own communities to promote academic excellence among not only their children but also others in their communities. Faith-based organizations, social clubs, and other self-help organizations were all important in the education of African American youth during this time of legal segregation. Throughout the Civil Rights Movement in the mid1950s through the late 1960s, there was social change that had a major impact on parental involvement in the
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education of students of color, especially for African Americans and Latinos. The kinds of change demanded by the Civil Right Movement were not well received by mostly White European American school educators and researchers. Instead of acknowledging their share of the responsibility for poor student performance, numerous teachers, principals, and other school administrators demanded that parents of color first change their cultural beliefs and practices. Instead of adhering to the demands of others, parents and community members became more visible and voiced their concerns as they lobbied and demanded better education for their children. Several court cases involving students and families, most notably African Americans and Latinos, were litigated in an effort to seek educational equity. The case of Brown v. Board of Education in 1955 became symbolic in the quest for racial equalities and needed remedies in public education. Federal initiatives requiring parental involvement in public schools have existed historically—Head Start, Follow Through, Title I, Goals 2000, and the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB).
Research on Effectiveness of Parental Involvement in Education Research has examined the rates of parental involvement in education, the effectiveness of it, and the need for further research that can inform effective policies and programs in parental involvement. Parental involvement in education is at a higher rate in the lower grades (e.g., pre-kindergarten through 6th grade) and decreases as students matriculate during middle and high school. One recent U.S. Department of Education study found that nationwide, as children get older, contacts between families and schools decline both in number and in the positive nature of such contacts. Reasons for this decline focus on three areas. First, it has been suggested that schools and staff members at the lower grade levels are more personable towards parents and family members. Students, parents, and family members generally have a single teacher with whom to interact about their children’s educational status. On the other hand, many middle and high schools are more depersonalized and organized across subjects and other departments. Parents and family members have several teachers and staff members with whom to interface. Some parents and family members feel that there is no single teacher with whom they can confer
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about their children’s overall school adjustment, engagement, performance, and behavior. Second, it has been suggested that many parents’ and family members’ lives become more complex, with greater tasks to handle with their adolescent children. It has also been suggested that some adolescents are likely to want to have greater independence from parents and family members in their lives, including their education. Third, research suggests that some middle- and high-school teachers themselves may have become less interested and less interactive with parents and family members because teaching middle-school students, including classroom management, has become more demanding. Research suggests that some middle school teachers are unprepared, and students are not achieving at a level that meets national standards. Teachers may feel overwhelmed and frustrated by the lack of resources for addressing multiple social and academic needs of students. There is also a large shortage of teachers who are specifically trained in the content, curriculum, and instruction of the middle grades. As a result, these teachers are often characterized as failing to have high expectations for student achievement and finding and/or using teaching strategies that can result in higher student outcomes. Research on parental involvement in education shows a positive relation between parental involvement and student achievement, improved attitudes toward school, higher attendance, and lower drop-out rates. Parental involvement in education also results in parents and children becoming more connected. Families have an improved understanding of schools, better relationships with teachers, and increased self-efficacy. Benefits to teachers include more positive relationships with families, better performance, and greater career satisfaction. Additional studies on parental involvement and the implementation and effects of school and community connections with families and students of various backgrounds show four major conclusions. First, teachers, parents, and students have little understanding of each other’s interests in children and schools. For example, many teachers do not know the information parents seek to be more effective in helping their children succeed in school. Second, school and classroom practices influence family involvement. Studies show that teacher practices to involve families are equally or even more important than family background variables such as race, social class, or marital status in determining
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whether and how parents become involved in their children’s education. Third, teachers who involve parents rate them more positively and stereotype families less. These teachers rate single and married parents, and more and less formally educated parents, equally in helpfulness and follow-through with their children at home. Finally, specific results or outcomes are linked to different types of involvement (e.g., parenting, communicating, and volunteering). These result in different practices, challenges, and outcomes for students, teachers, and parents. It is suggested that future research on school, family, and community connections focus on four topics: transitions, community connections, students’ roles in partnerships, and results. Transitions should examine the effectiveness of school, family, and community partnerships at important points in school transitions (e.g., regular, annual, and unscheduled transitions). Community connections should explore the components of ‘‘community’’ in school, family, and community partnerships that explain and predict student success. Student roles should investigate the role of students in school, family, and community partnerships. Because research indicates that many parental involvement programs have a positive impact on student achievement, and given the need for and growth of these programs, evaluation has begun to address their effectiveness. Evaluation is a critical issue as public schools seek to prepare young people for 21st-century academic, economic, social, and political challenges (e.g., a technology-based economy, fewer opportunities for unskilled employment, and a more diverse and competitive national and global work force).
Diversity Issues There are several diversity issues related to parental involvement in education: income, race/ethnicity, and family constellation (e.g., structure, sexual orientation). With increasing diversity among parents and families, there is a need to know about a family’s culture and status as schools work to engage families and provide educational support to students. Income Diversity. The first diversity issue relates to income. According to some researchers and practitioners, higher-income, more educated, and sophisticated parents do not depend solely on what happens in school for the education of their children. Here parents
use a wide range of supplementary education activities such as taking children to museums and providing their children with opportunities outside of their communities, to ensure that adequate academic and personal development is achieved. These types of supplemental activity and support are found in affluent middle- and higher-income families who have an availability of resources to share with their children. Some low-income parents may not have the financial means to engage in such supplemental activities. Even among affluent and academically sophisticated parents whose children may be in private schools, parental involvement in their children’s education may not be as high as schools would like. These parents may assume that their involvement is not needed for several reasons, such as their children receiving high-quality education, there not being a need for their proactive involvement in schools, and that their privileged and moneyed status taking care of their children’s existing and future educational and career needs (e.g., tutors, mentors, contacts). In addition, some parents may be self-absorbed with their own active lives, and use their wealth as a substitute for their involvement in their child’s education or lives generally. At the extreme of these issues are some parents, across socioeconomic groups, who present a challenge for schools as their intense advocacy for their children can be perceived as overbearing and even disruptive for school staff. Racial and Ethnic Diversity. There are several racial and ethnic diversity issues that relate to parental involvement in education. First, it is important to recognize that there is a great deal of diversity between and within ethnic groups—they are not monolithic, but have diverse physical appearances, histories, languages, cultures, and sub-cultures. School staff will have to recognize this diversity as they work with families in parental education programs. In general, all groups have faced discrimination in varying degrees related to being a society that, in various ways and to various degrees, has discriminated legally and informally— they have been marginalized economically, face pressures to assimilate and acculturate into U.S. society, and use varying kinds of coping skills and resiliency to maintain their cultural and personal integrity. At the same time, it must be recognized that some ethnic group members may view themselves as having fully assimilated into mainstream American culture and feel no need to outwardly or inwardly identify themselves with their own specific ethnic group.
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Low-income students of color may be taught by teachers who are not adequately prepared to meet the cultural, social, emotional, or academic needs of students. Research suggests that parental involvement is lower in urban schools, especially in public schools serving low-income people of color which include African American, Latino, Native American, and some Asian American groups. Several reasons have been identified for lower parental involvement in such schools. Many schools, as community-based and serving institutions, have challenges in working with students’ parents, family members, and community members. Low-income parents and families from ethnic groups may be marginalized by institutional barriers of race, class, gender, age, and other factors. These barriers may engender various responses from parents and family members such as alienation, apathy, and inconsistent participation in parental involvement programs that seek to benefit them. Some parents may feel intimidated by school staff, especially when culture and language differ. Some parents may also have had negative or traumatic experiences with school staff themselves and may carry such experiences into their children’s school, which often may be the same school they attended albeit with differing staff. Responses include parental resistance, assumptions about others, and failure to see differences as assets. Logistic factors can also serve as barriers to effective parent and family involvement in education such as lack of transportation, busy work schedules, and lack of child-care services. Family Constellation Diversity. Family life today is vastly different than in previous years. Historically, parental involvement programs generally had married mothers who did not work outside the home as the mainstay of parent involvement. These numbers greatly diminished when mothers became employed outside the home. Many parental involvement programs have responded to this change by being more inclusive and incorporating diverse family constellations. One type of family constellation is the single parent family, which has increased in society owing to high divorce rates and women bearing children outside of marriage. A second type of family constellation is the dual-career family. This family consists of two working parents with children. These families may find it a challenge to be proactively engaged in schools and other organizations that involve their children. A third type of family constellation is grandparents who have sole responsibility for raising their grandchildren for several reasons (e.g., parental illness and
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incapacitation, parental employment). Grandparents raising grandchildren is especially prevalent among people of color. Although many grandparents provide highquality childrearing and lives for their grandchildren, many face a host of challenges (e.g., insufficient financial resources, being overloaded with work and childrearing). A fourth family constellation concerns same-sex parent families. These parents often face stigma, discrimination, and other issues from school staff as well as other societal institutions. According to some experts, such issues should be viewed as deficits in the environment, dysfunctional transactions among ecological or environmental systems, or a lack of individual skills or strategies.
Controversies about Parental Involvement in Education Controversy exists about whether parental involvement in education is needed for student academic achievement and social competence. Although insufficient parental involvement in education has received most attention in the literature, increasing attention is being given to the issue of too much parental involvement. It appears that when some parents organized to bring additional funds and resources to their children’s schools, inequities were created among schools within the same district or across districts in the same city or state. Some districts have had to develop policies about how and what kinds of resources and funds can be raised for schools so that there can be equity in resources for children’s education. When some parents become overly zealous in their advocacy for their children’s education, they may become overbearing, undermining, and even disruptive to school staff. When parents become overly involved, they may feel that they know more than educators and administrators in providing for their children’s education. Another controversial area relates to re-focusing the rationale for parental involvement in education among youth of color from low-income backgrounds and their families. Some educational researchers and practitioners place their focus on effective classroom and district-level curriculum, instruction, governance, and funding as the future basis of academic achievement of youth of color—where schools alone can organize and offer effective instruction that can overcome many negative factors in children’s environments. They suggest that when schools fail, communities can
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operate independently of schools to take the necessary steps to overcome such failures. Other scholars and researchers have been forced or simply chosen to redefine and broaden the definition and conceptualization of parent/family involvement in education, to include community members who can show high rates of involvement in students’ education. Some scholars and practitioners have serious reservations about the effectiveness of this particular philosophy and policy, especially because parental involvement initiatives have not been effective. They indicate there is a need to overcome such barriers. Many school policies and practices have not addressed these barriers, which are often related to diverse socioeconomic backgrounds and cultures and the corresponding inequalities in schools. A related issue involves looking beyond standardized test scores and scripted instructional programs to focus energies on ‘‘educating the whole child’’ so that students are prepared to be respected citizens. Some educators state that the issue of student achievement and social competence is rooted in promoting a more holistic educational approach that is focused on developing the person rather than simply developing intellectual qualities. Some educational researchers, policymakers, and practitioners also suggest that there is a need for the same highly visible mobilization of activism to promote education, just as the Civil Rights Movement did 50 years ago with its emphasis on educational equality, high educational achievement, and effective education funding for children’s education, especially for students and families who are marginalized in society.
Barriers to and Facilitators of Family Involvement in Education Facilitating effective parent and family involvement in education can be done. For school staff members, it takes will, time, energy, and persistence to build effective parental involvement programs. When staff resources are used to initially develop and implement parent, family, and community involvement programs, the initial investment can have many immediate and long-term returns for teachers, students, and the school. One team of experts suggests using the four As to conceptualize effective parental involvement in schools: (a) ‘‘approach’’ refers to the general framework for interaction where there is mutual parent and teacher expectation to create
and sustain effective parental involvement in education; (b) ‘‘attitude’’ refers to the value of understanding diverse and multiple perspectives of stakeholders, and having an asset-based approach in working with students; (c) ‘‘atmosphere’’ refers to school climate being welcoming and inclusive; and (d) ‘‘action’’ refers to two-way communication, where mutually supportive roles for teachers and parents are created and sustained to develop and implement evidenced-based practices. School staff should initially take the lead in developing effective parental involvement programs, but their ultimate goal is shared accountability for student success by all stakeholders—educators, students, parents, family members, and community members. Given the various kinds of diverse groups of parents and family members in the U.S., teachers, administrators, and staff members are on the frontline of working with and empowering all families to effectively enhance children’s academic achievement and social competence at school, home, and in society. See also: > Community approaches to improving child success; > Home, Family, School liaison; > Parent–Teacher Association (PTA); > Urban schools
Suggested Reading Barge, J., & Loges, W. (2003). Parent, student, and teacher perceptions of parental involvement. Journal of Applied Communication Research, 31, 140–163. Christenson, S. L., & Sheridan, S. M. (2001). School and families: Creating essential connections for learning. New York: Guilford. Jeynes, W. (2003). A meta-analysis: The effects of parental involvement on minority children’s academic achievement. Education and Urban Society, 35, 202–218. Sanders, M. G. (2001). Schools, families, and communities: Partnerships for success. Reston, VA: National Association of Secondary School Principals. Wright, K., & Stegelin, D. A. (2003). Building school and community partnerships through parent involvement. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Merrill Prentice Hall.
Suggested Resources National Parent Teacher Association (NPTA)—http://www.pta. org/: This is the website of the National Parent Teacher Association (NPTA) that provides national information about ParentTeacher Associations, information about the NPTA national convention, and resources. Information is also provided in Spanish. Harvard Research Family Project—http://www.gse.harvard.edu/ hfrp/about.html: This is the website of the Harvard Family
Parenting adolescents Research Project, that helps philanthropies, policymakers, and practitioners develop strategies to promote the educational and social success and well-being of children, families, and their communities. National Network of Partnership Schools (NNPS)—http://www. csos.jhu.edu/P2000/: The National Network of Partnership Schools is a Johns Hopkins University organization that allows researchers, educators, parents, students, community members, and others to work together to enable all elementary, middle, and high schools develop and maintain effective programs of partnership.
Parenting Adolescents Yo Jackson
The adolescent years mark an important time of change and development. In addition to the physical changes that occur during this time, teenagers in the U.S. appear to be engaging in more and more behaviors that put them at risk for long-term problems. For example, according to the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), the 2003 Youth Risk Behavior Survey indicates that at least 33% of teens report using cigarettes, 22% report using alcohol, 22% report using marijuana, and 39% report having engaged in sexual intercourse. Parenting teenagers has never been an easy task. A recent survey indicates that over the past 10 years, adolescents are at greater risk than in previous decades for both physical and mental health problems. More than ever before, teenagers need guidance and good parenting to prevent or avoid health problems. The developmental tasks of adolescence pose a particular challenge for parents who must learn to allow their teenager greater freedom and responsibility while nurturing their self-esteem. Foster Cline and Jim Fay, best known for their Love and Logic series on parenting, suggest that parents of adolescents may make several mistakes in meeting the needs of teens. One example is what they call ‘‘helicopter parents’’ whose focus is on helping their children attack most problems by stepping in and taking over the problem. Instead of learning what they are capable of, teens learn that their parents see them as fragile and unable to meet the demands of their environment. Although their goal is to support the teen, a ‘‘helicopter parent’’ instead rescues their child from challenges and leaves their teen feeling insecure and vulnerable.
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Another style Cline and Fay consider ineffective is the ‘‘drill sergeant’’ parent that seeks to parent by insisting on order and compliance. Because adolescence is a time of self-growth and discovery, these parents are threatened by their child’s new sense of independence. The teen is given orders instead of choices and, subsequently, the parents exert too much power and control over their teen’s activities. When the parents of teens do not adjust their role to meet the teens changing developmental tasks, the teen is likely to rebel, be resentful of authority, and struggle with their ability to make decisions on their own. When teens do not have a sense of themselves, they are more likely to succumb to the opinions and direction of peers. Finally, some parents take to the other extreme and try to be ‘‘friends’’ with their teen in an effort to show support for the teen’s independence. Unfortunately, the ‘‘friends’’ approach is also not an effective parenting style, despite the teens’ advanced growing cognitive and emotional development. When parents do not insist on maintaining some expectations and rules, teens learn to govern themselves before they are truly able and, as a result, the adolescent is not prepared for real life consequences.
Developmental Stages of Adolescence Physical changes associated with adolescence include rapid increases in height and weight, acne, and maturation of the reproductive organs and glands. As a result, adolescents become more sensitive to their physical appearance. More than ever before, teens’ self-esteem becomes closely tied with their physical appearance. For both girls and boys, physical changes are associated with social changes. Girls who mature early and boys who mature late, compared to their peers tend to experience more stress and criticism from peers than girls and boys who mature late and early, respectively. Demands to both ‘‘fit in’’ and, at the same time, develop a sense of personal identity tend to have an impact on social relationships among teens and can result in increased difficulty with self-acceptance. Teens are also experiencing cognitive changes during this time, as their ability for abstract reasoning greatly improves. Problems can be approached systematically and complex issues, like moral dilemmas, can be understood from a variety of perspectives, even when those perspectives are contradictory. Teenagers
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begin to understand that conflicts can be resolved in a variety of ways as their thinking becomes less concrete. As a result, they are able to appreciate differences among various career paths and peers. Their increased perspective taking ability, however, also can increase the amount of conflict with parents. The culmination of these physical and cognitive changes means that adolescents are in a state of social flux, not yet adults, but also no longer children. Personal expectations and those from parents and society encourage them to take on more and more adult-like roles. For example, adolescents take a greater interest in the opposite sex, and begin the process of managing complex emotions and behaviors that often accompany more intimate relationships. As they get older and seek more independence, they gain more and more social and legal responsibilities (i.e., driving, working, voting) that may worry parents and increase conflict with their adolescents. Adolescents sometimes struggle to understand the consequences that come with managing new responsibilities and independence and parents may have difficulty knowing how to help their teens resolve new roles. If parents understand the developmental tasks of adolescence, they can be sure to appreciate the concerns that are typical for teenagers. For example, teenagers may become more concerned with their social status, feel the need to challenge the status quo, seem emotionally moody, and express a stronger desire for privacy. Parents who want to maintain a positive relationship with their teen should appreciate that his/ her concerns are not always the same as the parents’ concerns, and be patient with both the teen and their own adjustments to their parenting role.
Effective Parenting As teens move from less concrete to more abstract thinking skills, parents have to appreciate the teen’s ability and need to reason and use logic to sort out problems. Teenagers who have parents that micromanage their lives or exert too much control tend to resent them, and learn that their own reasoning abilities are not welcome or encouraged. Parenting adolescents may require a shift by the parent from rule maker to guide. Instead of giving orders, parents may be more effective in positing questions to their teen, requiring the teen to think about their actions and the subsequent consequences. By giving teens the opportunity to
think about their behavior, they are in a better position to develop a positive self-concept, and a reasonable ability to manage new responsibilities. The Project on the Parenting of Adolescents from the Harvard School of Public Health suggests five components for successful parenting of adolescents. One, parents have to remember to love and connect with their teen. The parent–teen relationship is enhanced by support and acceptance that accommodates and affirms the teen’s growing sense of maturity. Parents should be mindful of the rewards of their teen’s growth, expect increased criticism by the teen, listen to their teen’s opinions, and appreciate and acknowledge the adolescent’s sense of individuality. Second, parents should remember to monitor and observe their teen’s behavior. Knowing what activities the teen participates in, and who his/her friends are, will involve less direct supervision and more open communication and observation by the parent than in previous years. Like in earlier stages of development, however, children benefit from their parents knowing how the child is doing in school, being involved in school events, and knowing their child’s whereabouts. Parents should also be careful to watch for any warning signs of potential problems like changes in physical or mental health, skipping important school tasks or activities, or withdrawing from friends and family. Third, parents should maintain a clear but flexible set of expectations and boundaries for their teens. Encouraging their increased sense of competence and individuality is important, but not at the expense of family rules and values. Communication is the key, and discipline should be used as a tool for teaching, instead of dispensing punishments when angry or upset. It is also important that parents pick their battles and known the difference between small issues (i.e., style of hair choice) and larger concerns (i.e., drug use). Fourth, parents are encouraged to model and consult with their teen. Although teens are becoming more sophisticated in their logic and reasoning skills, they still need guidance and support from their parents in making decisions. As teens take on more and more responsibilities, parents should take an active role in assisting them in traversing the larger world. Keeping an open dialog about events the teen encounters increases the comfort level for both parties and enhances the parents’ ability to lead by example. Finally, parents should continue to ensure that the teen’s basic needs are taken care of, and that the adolescent has a network of supportive and caring adults
Parent–teacher association (PTA)
to act as resources. Taking an active role in helping teens develop relationships with other positive adults and activities within their community gives them a greater supply of support. Adolescence is usually described as a time of turbulence between parents and teenagers, mostly due to the expected but still unpleasant increase in conflicts between parents and teenagers. The developmental tasks of adolescence provide for improved reasoning skills on the part of the teenager and the arguments are usually the teen’s way of asserting their newly found understanding of the world and their independence. Research, however, indicates that despite the changes in the parent–child relationship that adolescence brings, most teens have a warm and close relationship with adults, especially their parents. Teenagers, like younger children, tend to care about what their parents’ think, and hold the opinion of their parents’ in high esteem. Parents who acknowledge their teen’s independence and appreciate their new reasoning skills find that the amount and degree of conflicts tend to decrease over time. When teens do not have a good relationship with their parents, it is usually a sign of a longstanding problem and not something new brought on uniquely by the change to adolescence. With their teen’s new sense of identity and independence, some parents fear a loss of control over the adolescent. Although monitoring of teen activities is important for teens to know what they are capable of, they have to experience some tests of their coping skills and abilities. The teen will likely have some experiences that are successful as well as some that are failures, but either way, these outcomes will be important lessons for the teens’ future growth. Parents should talk to their teen, discuss the choices the teen makes, and negotiate the limits of their newly found responsibility. By understanding the teenagers’ developmental changes, parents will feel less challenged by their conduct, can play a supportive role in the relationship and, thereby, decrease the likelihood of resistance to family rules. See also: > Adolescence; > Adolescent ethnic identity; > Family therapy; > Parental involvement in education
Suggested Reading Cline, F., & Fay, J. (2006). Parenting teens with love and logic. Colorado Springs, CO: Pinon Press.
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Pruitt, D. B. (1999). Your adolescent. New York: Harper Collins. Simpson, A. R. (2001). Raising teens: A synthesis of research and a foundation for action. Boston, MA: Center for Health Communication, Harvard School of Public Health.
Parent–Teacher Association (PTA) Warlene Gary
The Parent–Teacher Association (PTA) is a nonprofit organization that prides itself on being a powerful voice for children, a relevant resource for parents, and a strong advocate for public education. Membership in PTA is open to anyone who is concerned with the education, health, and welfare of children and youth. In 2007, PTA comprised nearly six million parents and other concerned adults devoted to the educational success of children and the promotion of parent involvement in schools. To remain relevant and a vital resource, PTA strives to find new ways to empower and meet the changing needs of its members and potential members. For example, in 2007, PTA launched Community Connections, a membership recruitment and program enhancement campaign designed to reach new immigrant populations and expand the influence of its existing membership from various ethnic groups.
PTA’s Mission PTA is a powerful voice for all children, a relevant resource for families and communities, and a strong advocate for the education and well-being of every child.
PTA’s Purposes The purpose of PTA is to promote the welfare of children and youth in the home, school, community, and place of worship; to raise the standards of home life; and to secure adequate laws for the care and protection of children and youth. PTA also aims to bring into closer
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relation the home and the school so that parents and teachers may cooperate intelligently in the education of children and youth. Finally, PTA works to unite educators and the general public in efforts to secure for all children and youth the highest advantages in physical, mental, social, and spiritual education.
Governance PTA is composed of 54 state congresses and nearly 26,000 local units in all 50 states, the District of Columbia, United States (U.S.) Virgin Islands, and Department of Defense schools in Europe and the Pacific. Every person who joins a local PTA automatically becomes a member of both the state and national PTA organizations. The national PTA organization, as directed by its board of directors, provides leadership, programs, support, and resources to its members at all levels of the association. State PTAs are the liaison between local PTAs and the national organization, helping each to function effectively and support and sustain the other. PTAs at the local level are valuable assets to their school communities by providing educational and parent involvement information, resources, events, and activities.
PTA’s Nonsectarian Policy PTA welcomes members representing a diversity of cultures, ethnic backgrounds, and political and religious beliefs. The purposes of the PTA acknowledge the importance of a spiritual life in the development of children and youth. As an association, PTA has the right to offer inspirational messages to open or close its meetings, but such messages by PTA leaders or invited religious leaders should be inspirational rather than sectarian, recognizing that in this pluralistic nation not all members share the same beliefs.
a healthy and safe environment in and out of school. They hold a variety of meetings and activities during the year to encourage social connection, disseminate information of interest to parents and other concerned adults, act as child and education advocates to their local lawmakers, and provide support and volunteer services to their local schools. They, like all PTA units, may hold workshops on student achievement, childhood nutrition, prevention of violence and bullying, and other topics of interest.
Early Childhood PTAs Preschool groups often include parents from several neighborhoods and various early-childhood programs. Their membership may include child-care providers, grandparents, and others concerned with the education and development of children from birth to age 5.
Parent–Teacher–Student Associations (PTSAs) PTSAs provide youth members with the opportunity to make a difference by developing leadership skills, learning about the legislative process, increasing their self-esteem, and contributing to the school. In turn, adult members gain a new perspective for program development, as well as acquire a better understanding of the youth of today.
Special Education PTAs (SEPTAs) SEPTAs provide information, networking opportunities, social interaction, and advocacy tools for parents of special-needs children at all grade levels. SEPTAs help ensure that children with special needs receive an education that allows them to reach their full potential.
Types of PTAs PTA Programs and Campaigns Elementary/Middle/High School PTAs PTAs at all education levels foster cooperation between parents, teachers, administrators, and other concerned adults to promote good-quality education, expand the arts, encourage community involvement, and work for
PTA programs and campaigns are created to organize and support parent involvement in children’s education. These programs are organized into three areas of concern: parent involvement, healthy lifestyles, and arts and culture.
Parent–teacher association (PTA)
PTA programs and campaigns are created with the help of leading experts on topics of importance to members. They are user-friendly and free to PTAs. Each program or campaign offers ideas for activities, helpful evaluation tools, and tips for involving all the key players in a school community. Some of the programs and campaigns developed for all PTAs include the following: Building Successful Partnerships, which is based on the National Standards for Parent/Family Involvement Programs, prepares volunteer leaders to speak to schools and communities about strengthening parent involvement and implementing parent involvement programs, plans, and policies in their local schools. Parent Involvement Schools of Excellence Certification program provides schools with tools to assess and enhance their commitment to parent involvement based on PTA’s National Standards for Parent/Family Involvement Programs. Those that meet stringent requirements for parent involvement become certified as Parent Involvement Schools of Excellence. Reflections Program is an annual arts program that allows children and youth to express themselves through musical composition, photography, visual arts, and literature. For many school districts with limited funding, this program provides great value at no cost. More than 700,000 children and youth typically participate in the Reflections Program each year. Teacher Appreciation Week is an annual campaign that provides ideas and resources to PTAs so they can recognize the contributions made by teachers to their children’s education and help build the important bond between teachers and parents.
History PTA was founded on February 17, 1897, as the National Congress of Mothers by Alice McLellan Birney and Phoebe Apperson Hearst. The organization was their attempt to rectify the abuses of child labor that kept children out of school, a criminal justice system that sought to punish, not reform, young offenders, and living conditions that were unsanitary and that fostered disease. The founders wanted to shine a light on the importance of children and create a groundswell of support to provide all children with the best that life could offer. In 1926, Selena Sloan Butler founded a parallel organization devoted to the welfare of African American children called the National Congress of Colored Parents
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and Teachers. This group pushed for better vocational education and greater children’s safety at home and at school. The group also led campaigns against illiteracy and worked for better educational facilities and higher salaries for teachers. Both organizations had a cordial relationship over the years. Finally, in 1970, the two organizations combined their strengths by merging into what is now known as PTA.
Major Accomplishments PTA has led campaigns over the years that have made a remarkable difference to children and education. In its founding year, PTA urged members to lobby for state legislation that would create kindergartens at schools throughout the states. From this early effort, kindergarten programs spread across the nation. In 1899, delegates to the national convention passed an historic resolution calling for the establishment of a national health bureau; after 14 years of advocacy, the federal government created the U.S. Public Health Service. At the turn of the twentieth century, to promote adequate nutrition for children, the PTA advocated for legislation that became the Food and Drug Act of 1906. The association called for printed information about the food values of packaged food as early as 1933. In 1946, PTA helped secure passage of the Richard B. Russell National School Lunch Act, which made the federal hot lunch program in schools a permanent fixture. Most recently, PTA came out in support of The Child Nutrition Promotion and School Lunch Protection Act of 2006, which urges all foods sold on school grounds in vending machines or other sources to meet minimum nutritional standards. Infant mortality was a cause PTA targeted. Resolutions in 1914 and 1915 to improve obstetric care heightened attention and helped ensure passage of the Sheppard-Towner Act of 1921, which established prenatal health centers. One of the most high-profile projects in PTA history was its participation in the field testing of the Salk polio vaccine in the 1950s. In 2005, in response to the devastation caused by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, the PTA co-founded the Kids of Katrina Fund to provide aid to stricken families, schools, and PTAs. It also initiated Adopt-a-PTA, whereby PTAs could provide aid to other PTA communities in need. Both programs are ongoing.
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See also: > After-school programs; > Community approaches to improving child success; > Educational partnership; > Families and Advocates Partnership for Education (FAPE); > Home, Family, School liaison; > Parental involvement in education
Suggested Reading National PTA (1997). The PTA story: A century of commitment to children. Chicago, IL: Author. National PTA (2000). Building successful partnerships. Bloomington, IN: National Educational Service. National PTA (2004). National standards for parent/family involvement programs. Bloomington, IN: National Educational Service.
Suggested Resources Harvard Family Research Project—http://www.gse.harvard.edu/ ~hfrp/: This is the website for the Harvard Family Research Project (HFRP), which strives to promote more effective educational practices, programs, and policies for disadvantaged children and youth by generating, publishing, and disseminating our and others’ research. PTA—http://pta.org: The official website of the national PTA organization.
Parent–Teacher Conference Leslie Ditta
Parent–teacher conferences can be stressful for both teacher and parent. Parents anticipate what they might hear about their child, and teachers anticipate the reaction parents may have to feedback that must be shared. Given the potential for anxiety amongst all participants, it is important to remember that the purpose of parent–teacher conferences is to come together as partners to help the child be as successful as possible. Establishing positive teacher and parent relationships while children are young is essential for student success. Research shows that as children proceed through upper school grades, parent involvement decreases. Having successful, effective teacher–parent relationships when students are in younger grades can form positive
parent perceptions towards school, teachers, and the teacher–parent relationship, which can continue through middle and high school. There are a number of ways teachers can prepare prior to the conference. If the teacher is uncertain about how to structure the parent–teacher conference, or how to handle certain scenarios that can arise, (i.e., that of an irate parent), discussion about strategies with other colleagues is helpful. Some school principals engage in role-plays with novice teachers. Here potential stressful scenarios that might arise are the focus of the role-play. Teachers have the opportunity to develop an effective response that they can then use during the actual conference. Materials should also be present during the conference, (i.e., samples of student work, teacher/parent contact information, student objectives) to further underscore the teacher’s feedback. Lastly, plan how much time to allow for the conference, as well as the purpose and points of interest to be reviewed. Greet parents with a pleasant tone at the start of the conference. It is important to convey feelings of acceptance for both parents and their child. Start the conference clearly by stating the purpose of the meeting. When sharing thoughts about their child, it is suggested that feedback start with strengths and positive comments. As the teacher moves into areas of concern, keep things simple and direct. Always be open to questions parents may ask. To stay within time constraints, and clearly communicate key points, the use of a three-point outline can be effective. Choose the three most important points to share with parents and state them clearly. The major points may include both negative and positive feedback. Be certain to include a positive statement about the child. Further parent understanding and buy-in by providing a concrete example to support each concern. When sharing bad news or negative commentary with parents about their child, be simple, clear; also use a tone of concern. If parents hear and see that the teacher cares about their child, adversarial confrontations may be prevented. If parents become agitated or confrontational take a moment to consider the cause of concern. An appropriate response may be to ask parents what they want the teacher to do, as well as their fears if the teacher cannot implement their wishes. Phrasing a response in this way encourages parents to put their concerns in the form of a question or request, instead of an accusatory or defensive statement. Recognize that parents may have good reason to
Parochial schools
be upset when they hear negative news for the first time. Often there are normal reactions of concern. Just as important as sharing information with parents, it is equally important to be an active listener. Teachers can be responsive by focusing on what the parents share. They can restate what parents have said as a way to clarify an understanding of questions and concerns. Convey empathy and share views in response to the parents. At the end of the meeting, summarize the points discussed and the questions and concerns shared. If follow-up or additional time is needed for discussion, discuss how this will be addressed. Thank parents for their time and commitment. After the conference, reflect, (even if for a short time), on what was discussed: What was successful? What didn’t work? Is follow-up needed? Seek out colleagues to discuss experiences that were difficult to address or understand. If parents appear to be unsatisfied or still distressed after the meeting, talk with the school principal about ways to continue to address the issue at hand. Multicultural differences are also an important consideration for both teachers and parents. If there are cultural differences between the family and the school, or the family and the teacher, efforts can be made to bridge the gap. For non-English speaking families, school staff can assist in translations during conferences. In addition, teachers can familiarize themselves with the multicultural backgrounds of their students to understand parent behavior, values, and perspectives during the conference. While these are simple steps, it takes patience, determination, and at times even courage on the behalf of the teacher. Remember to remain calm, be direct, and convey the message to parents that no matter what information will be shared about their child, it is all in an effort to help the child achieve and be successful. See also: > Academic achievement in minority children; Adolescent parents; > Community approaches to improving child success; > Home-school partnerships; > Summer learning loss >
Suggested Reading Fay, J. (1998). Putting parents at ease: Nine keys to effective parent– teacher conferences. Love & Logic Press. Lawrence-Lightfoot, S. (2003). The essential conversation: What parents and teachers can learn from each other. New York: Random House.
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Suggested Resources National Education Association—http://www.nea.org/helpfrom/ growing/works4me/relate/family.html: The National Education Association (NEA) provides resources for educators and parents to assist in successful collaboration. Education World—http://www.education-world.com/a_special/ parent_involvment.shtml: Strategies are provided to enhance and create effective parent–teacher conferences.
Parochial Schools Jessica L Larsen
According to the 2003–2004 Schools and Staffing Survey conducted by the National Center for Educational Statistics, there are approximately 21,578 parochial schools in the United States (U.S.) of which approximately 37% are Roman Catholic. The remaining 64% of the parochial section represent a wide range of religious groups including Christian, Protestant, Orthodox Jewish, Muslim and Orthodox Christian sects such as Russian, Greek and Byzantine faiths. Research on faith-based schooling is markedly underdeveloped. Concurrently, faith communities have not designated much priority to researching the outcomes of their particular schooling system. Research may produce evidence that faith communities find disturbing, which has set a precedent for religious authorities to deny the orchestration of empirical studies within their own school systems. The combination of these circumstances has resulted in a lack of educational studies and research examining faith-based dimensions around the world. In the U.S., the largest and most influential parochial school system is the Catholic school system boasting 37% of all parochial schools and 57% of all parochial school students. Due to the Catholic population in America and the number of Catholic universities and colleges, the Catholic parochial school system is also the most widely researched parochial school system in the U.S. Many studies deal with only the Catholic system or simplify the complexity of the other faith based schools by lumping them into one group. Future research on other religious groups is needed to understand the dimensions of their educational systems and to fill this academic lacuna.
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Additionally, due to the lack of empirical research, much of today’s political and public debate about faith based schooling has been dominated by prejudice and dated generalizations without much reference to research.
Defining Features
religious, moral, and social formation. This argument says that Christian values teach tolerance, mutual understanding and education for reconciliation in the curriculum. There is no empirical data to support either argument. There is a need for research exploring elements of racial justice and cultural understanding in various faith-based school curriculums.
Administration Enrollment Choice Parochial schools are owned and governed by a parish or religious body. The word parochial is derived from the Latin word ‘‘parochial’’ which by definition means parish. So literally, parochial schools are those schools that are supported by a parish, a community of people who follow the same faith. Parochial schools receive funding from non-public sources, both tuition payments and endowments from the religious group with which they are affiliated. Due to this fact, parochial schools are not mandated to abide by the same federal and state regulations as public schools.
Curriculum Parochial schools’ curriculum is supplemented by religious coursework. Some schools teach religion to instill their particular faith’s beliefs and traditions in their students, while others maintain a distinction between religion and academics. For most Catholic schools, it is the latter. Many Catholic school students in the U.S. are non-practicing Catholics. Rather, they attend Catholic schools for the educational benefits. Catholic doctrine is taught in Catholic schools and students are required to attend one mass weekly; however, the Catholic church does not discriminate based on religious affiliation. Much attention has been given to whether a faithbased curriculum promotes cultural understanding or prevents existing divisions in society from healing. The argument is that if groups do not socialize with each other they will develop ignorant of one another. Some believe that parochial schools, comprised of a homogenous population, reinforce religious or ethnic identities such that the children who attend them develop a preference for associating with members of the same group. However, it is also argued that parochial schools in no way teach a curriculum that engenders negative attitudes toward those outside of the group, nor does it inhibit students from interacting with others. Additionally, modern forms of Catholic education provide
Parochial schools have the freedom of enrollment choice. Students must go through the application process which can be rigorous and competitive. Of the schools that had admissions requirements, most Catholics schools incorporated standardized achievement tests scores and academic record in their enrollment decision process, while other religious groups included these elements as well as a personal interview.
Class Size Many parents choose to send children to private schools because of the reported benefits of smaller class size. While the particular benefits are debated, there seems to be a relevant connection between small class size and student performance, particularly for underprivileged, vulnerable youth. The average teacher to student ratio in a Roman Catholic school is 14:1 which is near the national average, while in other sectarian schools it is 10:1. While class size is not a contributing factor to outcomes at Catholic schools, it may be a contributing factor in other faith-based schools, which have smaller class sizes.
Diversity on Campus Parochial schools have long had a commitment to providing quality education to the underprivileged. In fact, many parochial schools, specifically Catholic schools, have historically served low-income populations. For Catholic schools, educating the poor is part of the Catholic mission. The number of students at or below poverty level is represented in the numbers of students who participate in the National School Lunch Program. Fifty-two percent of Catholic schools participate in the lunch program of which 17% of their students participate. For other religious schools,
Parochial schools
the percentage of participation is less, only 12% of schools, but at 29%, the amount of students within those schools who participate in the lunch program in much higher. Catholic schools may have more diversity on campus than other private schools. Catholic schools tend to have a higher percentage of Hispanic students in comparison to other private schools. Similarly, other religious parochial schools tend to have a higher percentage of Black students in comparison to other private schools.
Inner City Population Student Outcomes The Catholic school system has proven to reduce high school dropout rates and has a positive effect on rates of high school graduation. In addition, students from low-income backgrounds who attend Catholic school are more likely to reach post secondary institutions. In 2002–2003, an astounding 98% of Catholic schools sent at least half of their students to a 2 or 4 year college, compared to 80% of other religious denomination schools, 74% of non-sectarian schools, and 72% of public schools. These data suggest that more parochial schools send students to post-secondary institutions than private or public schools. For youth residing in areas where educational alternatives tend to be poor, a Catholic education may mean the difference between prematurely dropping out of high school and getting a college degree. Many administrators believe the positive effect that Catholic schools have on achievement can be attributed to a value for discipline. Additionally, it is argued that some combination of an emphasis on core curriculum, more homework, the decentralized nature of Catholic education, and Catholic schools being embedded within a larger communal organization provides additional support for student achievement. Others believe, however, that the seemingly positive private school effect on student outcomes could be a result of selection rather than an inherent benefit of the system. Since Catholic schools select above average students for enrollment, it is only natural that their students excel. Many studies have attempted to control for initial achievement to prove that something implicit within the Catholic school experience is responsible
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for the achievement rates. Research on this topic remains inconclusive.
The Public Funding Debate Tuition at most parochial schools is considerably lower than tuition at other secular private schools. Parochial school provides an option for families from lower socioeconomic backgrounds who appreciate the value of private education but cannot afford a more costly traditional private education. Despite the advantages parochial schools provide to these families, parochial schools have recently suffered from financial shortfalls. Catholic schools in particular have been affected from a substantial increase in overhead costs due to staffing patterns that have changed from being 90% religious staff (e.g., sisters, brothers, priests) in 1950 to 93% lay people in the last quarter of the twentieth century. In general, this change can be attributed to the decline of individuals entering religious orders, the loss of individuals from the orders, and the change of ministry emphasis from schools to social and pastoral ministries. Additionally, Catholic schools have experienced a loss of student enrollment. Many Catholic families have moved out of the inner cities to more rural areas and are having smaller families. The compounding of increased costs and lower enrollment has resulted in the closure of many parochial schools. Recently, politicians have suggested that public funding mechanisms may be an effective way of helping parochial schools continue to serve their communities. The debate about these issues concerns school voucher programs where parents would be given federal or state dollars for private and parochial school tuition. Parochial school proponents have suggested that indirect public funding in the form of tax subsidies and school vouchers could be a constitutional way for the state to invest in non-public forms of education. Supporters contend that parochial schools are, in fact, a good investment for government because they supply a less expensive, more effective alternative to public schools. Additionally, parochial schools force public schools to improve their performance by way of free market mechanisms and competition. Opponents of the school voucher program claim it violates the separation of church and state as stated in the Establishment Clause of the U.S. Constitution. Opponents also argue that vouchers would effectively take funds
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away from public schools whose performance is suffering from a lack of funding. In 2002, the issue reached the U.S. Supreme Court in Zelman v. Harris-Simmons in which Ohio’s school voucher program, which funds almost all of the tuition for low-income Cleveland students who attend private religious schools, was found to be constitutional. While the court found that the federal Constitution does not flatly prohibit vouchers, it later referred the voucher issue to individual states. In the 2004 Locke v. Davey decision, the court says that states are not obligated to finance religious education. These two rulings left the issue to state courts to decide the legality of voucher programs. National attention on the battle reached an all time high in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. In post-Katrina New Orleans, it was argued that vouchers would be the most efficient way to rebuild the schools. Also, it was argued that since a disproportionately larger number of students attended non-public schools in Louisiana before the hurricanes hit (one third in Louisiana as compared with the national average of 11%) withholding federal aid to these children and their schools would be a punishment for low to middle income families who were already making great financial sacrifice to enroll their children in non-public schools for academic, religious, and safety purposes. In December of 2005, after much political debate, President Bush signed the Hurricane Education Recovery Act, enacting the first federally funded voucher program for those affected by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. Shortly thereafter, the issue was again raised when the Florida Supreme Court struck down a voucher program for students attending failing schools, saying the State Constitution bars Florida from using taxpayer money to finance a private alternative to the public system. See also: > Academic achievement in minority children; > Class size; > Private schools
Suggested Reading Grace, G. (2003). Educational studies and faith-based schooling: Moving from prejudice to evidence-based argument. British Journal of Educational Studies, 51(2), 149–167. Strizek, G. A., Pittsonberger, J. L., Riordan, K. E., Lyter, D. M., & Orlofsky, G. F. (2006). Schools and Staffing Survey (SASS) characteristics of schools, districts, teachers, principals, and school libraries in the United States: 2003–04. National Center for Education Statistics.
Suggested Resources The National Center for Education Statistics (NCES)—http://nces. ed.gov/: The NCES, located within the U.S. Department of Education, is the primary federal entity that collects and analyzes data related to education. National Catholic Educational Association (NCEA)—http://www. ncea.org/: The National Catholic Educational Association has been providing leadership and service to American Catholic educators since 1904. Their website provides resources, news and information regarding Catholic education at all levels and in a variety of settings.
PBIS > Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports (PBIS); > Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports (PBIS): Process Considerations
PDD >
Asperger’s Syndrome, PDD
People of Color Yoko Takebayashi
The term ‘‘people of color’’ is used for groups of people in the United States (U.S.) whose phenomenological characteristics indicate their ethnicity: African Americans, Asian Americans, Latino Americans, and Native Americans. Other terms such as ‘‘ethnic minorities,’’ ‘‘subcultures,’’ ‘‘culturally diverse,’’ and ‘‘minorities’’ have also been widely used for groups with visible racial or ethnic traits. These terms imply an ethnocentric, White American perspective, and deny the impact of race in society. The term ‘‘people of color,’’ on the other hand, more accurately designates people who belong to specific ethnic groups by
Personality disorders
focusing on a social perception of race, which is based on color. Use of the terms ‘‘minority’’ and ‘‘majority’’ signify acceptance of existing racial power differences in the U.S. by people in both dominant and submissive social positions. The minority status is assigned from the perspective of the White-dominant society. This is, in fact, an inaccurate portrayal, as ethnic groups of color are collectively the majority of the world population. Even in the U.S., the number of people of color is increasing, and it is estimated that it will outnumber the White American population in the near future. Thus, the ‘‘minority–majority’’ distinction ignores demographic realities. Rather, this codification serves as a psychological reminder of the disempowered position of those who are not White. There is an implicit assumption that there is one dominant, common culture, and that other cultures deviate from its standards. Another objection to using terms such as ‘‘minority’’ or ‘‘culturally diverse’’ in addressing individuals with visible racial or ethnic traits is that they can be applied to myriad groups. For example, women, lesbian/gay/bisexual/transgender, and the physically handicapped are all included under the umbrella of minority groups. Although these groups also share a history of oppression and social inequality in the U.S., positions and experiences for individuals in these groups are qualitatively distinct from people of color. Thus, putting these individuals in the common category of the minority or culturally diverse group often results in confusion as to who is being focused on at that time. Such categorization trivializes each of the groups’ unique experiences and issues. Furthermore, discomfort in recognizing racial issues is minimized by using over-inclusive terms such as ‘‘minority’’ or ‘‘culturally diverse.’’ By doing so, the impact that race plays in politics and the allocation of social resources is often negated or not dealt with properly. By using the term ‘‘people of color,’’ the social significance of phenomenological characteristics, namely the color of a person’s skin, is recognized without negative connotations. This term evokes the sense of a person belonging to a culturally rich group while challenging the White ethnocentric worldview. Moreover, it promotes multiculturalism, in which multiple ethnocultural heritage and tradition can coexist and be equally valued. Finally, ‘‘people of color’’ serves to more accurately distinguish individuals who are oppressed by society based on their race and ethnicity from other oppressed groups.
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See also: > Ethnicity; > Ethnic minority youth; > Race
Suggested Reading Linnehan, F., Chrobot-Mason, D., & Konrad, A. M. (2006). Diversity attitudes and norms: The role of ethnicity identity and relational demography. Journal of Organizational Behavior, 27(4), 419–442.
Personality Disorders Georgia Yu
A personality disorder, as described in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders of the American Psychiatric Association, Fourth Edition Text Revision (DSM-IV-TR), is an enduring pattern of inner experience and behavior that differs markedly from the expectations of the individual’s culture. This pattern is pervasive and inflexible, has an onset in adolescence or early adulthood, is stable over time, and leads to distress or impairment. Personality disorders are a long-standing and maladaptive pattern of perceiving and responding to other people and to stressful circumstances. Ten personality disorders, grouped into three clusters (for example, A, B, C) are defined in the DSM-IV.
Pathology The origin of personality disorders is of considerable controversy. Traditional thinking holds that these maladaptive patterns are the result of early environments that are dysfunctional and prevent the evolution of adaptive patterns of perception, response, and defense. A body of data points toward genetic and psychobiologic contributions to the symptomology of these disorders. However, the inconsistency of the data prevents authorities from drawing definite conclusions.
Frequency In the United States (U.S.), personality disorders affect 10–15% of the adult population. Individuals may have more than one personality disorder. The following are
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Personality disorders
prevalence rates for specific personality disorders in the general population: paranoid personality disorder— 0.5–2.5%; schizotypal personality disorder—3%; antisocial personality disorder—3% of men, 1% of women; borderline personality disorder—2%; histrionic personality disorder—2–3%; narcissistic personality disorder—less than 1%; avoidant personality disorder—0.5–1%; obsessive-compulsive personality disorder—1%. There are no differences in prevalence across racial/ethnic groups.
History In general, patients with personality disorders have wide-ranging problems in social relationships and mood regulation. These problems have usually been present throughout adult life. These patients’ patterns of perception, thought, and response are fixed and inflexible, although their behavior is often unpredictable. These patterns markedly deviate from their specific culture’s expectations. To meet the DSM-IV threshold for clinical diagnosis, the pattern must result in clinically significant distress or impairment in social, occupational, or other important areas of functioning. Note that the disorder occurs in all settings (e.g., social as well as vocational), and is not limited to one sphere of activity.
Diagnosis Personality disorders generally should not be diagnosed in children and adolescents because personality development is not complete and symptomatic traits may not persist into adulthood. Therefore, the general consensus is that personality diagnosis is not made until the person is at least 18 years of age. Because the criteria for diagnosis of personality disorders are closely related to behaviors of young and middle adulthood, DSM-IV diagnoses of personality disorders are notoriously unreliable in the elderly population.
Groupings of Personality Disorders There are three major clusters of personality disorders: A, B, and C. Cluster A refers to the odd and eccentric disorders, e.g. paranoid, schizoid, and schizotypal personality disorders. Individuals with paranoid personality disorder display pervasive distrust and
suspiciousness. Common beliefs include the following: others are exploiting or deceiving the person; friends and associates are untrustworthy; information confided to others will be used maliciously; there is hidden meaning in remarks or events others perceive as benign; the spouse or partner is unfaithful. Schizoid personality disorder is uncommon in clinical settings. An individual with this disorder is markedly detached from others and has little desire for close relationships. This individual’s life is marked by little pleasure in activities. People with this disorder appear indifferent to the praise or criticism of others and often seem cold or aloof. Schizotypal personality disorder is characterized by the exhibition of marked eccentricities of thought, perception, and behavior. Typical examples may include: ideas of reference (e.g., believing that public messages are directed personally at them); odd beliefs or magical thinking; vague, circumstantial, or stereotyped speech; excessive social anxiety that does not diminish with familiarity; and idiosyncratic perceptual experiences or bodily illusions. Cluster B personality disorders are dramatic and emotional. These include antisocial, borderline, histrionic, and narcissistic personality disorders. Individuals with antisocial personality disorder display a pervasive pattern of disregard for and violation of the rights of others and the rules of society. Onset must occur by 15 years of age and includes the following features: repeated violations of the law; pervasive lying and deception; physical aggressiveness; reckless disregard for safety of self or others; consistent irresponsibility in work and family environments; a lack of remorse. Borderline personality disorder is characterized by a pervasive pattern of unstable and intense interpersonal relationships, self-perception, and moods. Impulse control is markedly impaired. Transiently, such patients may appear psychotic because of the intensity of their distortions. Borderline personality disorder is one of the most commonly overused diagnoses in DSM-IV. Diagnostic criteria requires at least five of the following features: frantic efforts to avoid expected abandonment; unstable and intense interpersonal relationships; markedly and persistently unstable self-image; impulsivity in at least two areas that are potentially self-damaging (e.g., sex, substance abuse, reckless driving); recurrent suicidal behaviors or threats or self-mutilation; affective instability; chronic feelings of emptiness; inappropriate and intense anger; and transient paranoia or dissociation. Patients with histrionic personality disorder display excessive emotionality and attention-seeking behavior.
Personality disorders
They are quite dramatic and often sexually provocative or seductive. Their emotions are labile. In clinical settings, their tendency to vague and impressionistic speech is often highlighted. Individuals with narcissistic personality disorder are grandiose and require admiration from others. Particular characteristics of this disorder include: exaggeration of their own talents or accomplishments; sense of entitlement; exploitation of others; lack of empathy; envy of others; and an arrogant, haughty attitude. Cluster C disorders are characterized by anxiousness and fearfulness. These include avoidant, dependent, and obsessive-compulsive personality disorders. Individuals with avoidant personality disorder are generally very shy. They display a pattern of social inhibition, feelings of inadequacy, and hypersensitivity to rejection. Unlike patients with schizoid personality disorder, these patients actually desire relationships with others but are paralyzed by their fear and sensitivity into social isolation. While many people exhibit dependent behaviors and traits, people with dependent personality disorder have an excessive need to be taken care of, which results in submissive and clinging behavior, regardless of consequences. Diagnosis requires at least five of the following characteristics: difficulty making decisions without guidance and reassurance; need for others to assume responsibility for most major areas of the person’s life; difficulty expressing disagreement with others; difficulty initiating activities because of lack of confidence; excessive measures to obtain nurturance and support; discomfort or helplessness when alone; urgent seeking for another relationship when one has ended; and an unrealistic preoccupation with fears of being left to fend for themselves. Individuals with obsessive-compulsive personality disorder are markedly preoccupied with orderliness, perfectionism, and control. They lack flexibility or openness. Their preoccupations interfere with their efficiency despite their focus on tasks. They are often scrupulous and inflexible about matters of morality, ethics, and values to a point beyond cultural norms. They are often stingy as well as stubborn.
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feelings and parental modeling. Support for the heritability of schizoid personality disorder exists. Schizotypal personality disorder is genetically linked with schizophrenia. Evidence for dysregulation of dopaminergic pathways in these patients exists. A genetic contribution to antisocial personality disorders is strongly supported. There may also be developmental or acquired abnormalities in the prefrontal brain systems and reduced autonomic activity in antisocial personality disorder. This may underlie the low arousal, poor fear conditioning, and decision-making deficits described in antisocial personality disorder. Psychosocial formulations point to the high prevalence of early abuse (sexual, physical, and emotional) in patients with borderline personality disorder. The borderline syndrome is often formulated as a variant of posttraumatic stress disorder. Mood disorders in firstdegree relatives are strongly linked. Biological factors, such as abnormal monoaminergic functioning (especially in serotonergic function) and prefrontal neuropsychological dysfunction, have been implicated but have not been well established by research. Little research has been conducted to determine the biologic sources of histrionic personality disorder. Psychoanalytic theories incriminate seductive and authoritarian attitudes by fathers of these patients. No data on biological features of narcissistic personality disorder are available. In the classic model, narcissism functions as a defense against awareness of low self-esteem. Avoidant personality disorder appears to be an expression of extreme traits of introversion and neuroticism. No data on biological causes are available, although a diagnostic overlap with social phobia probably exists. No studies of genetics or of biological traits of patients with dependent personality disorder have been conducted. Central to their psychodynamic constellation is an insecure form of attachment to others, which may be the result of clinging parental behavior. Modest evidence points toward the heritability of obsessive-compulsive personality disorder. Psychodynamically, these patients are viewed as needing control as a defense against shame or powerlessness.
Gender Rates Causes There may be a genetic contribution to paranoid traits and a possible genetic link between paranoid personality disorder and schizophrenia exist. Psychosocial theories implicate projection of negative internal
For Cluster A disorders, schizoid personality disorder is slightly more common in males than in females. In Cluster B disorders, antisocial personality disorder is three times more prevalent in men than in women. Borderline personality disorder is three times more
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Personality tests: Minnesota multiphasic personality inventory (MMPI) and millon clinical multiaxial inventory (MCMI)
common in women than in men. Of patients with narcissistic personality disorder, 50–75% of the patients are male. In Cluster C disorders, obsessive-compulsive personality disorder is diagnosed twice as often in men than in women. See also: > Anxiety; > Depression; > ObsessiveCompulsive Disorder (OCD); > Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)
Suggested Reading Johnson, J., Cohen, P., Brown, J., Smailes, E. M., & Bernstein, D. P. (1999). Childhood maltreatment increase risk for personality disorders during early adulthood. Archives of General Psychiatry, 56(7), 600–606. Millon, T., Davis, R. D. (1996). Disorders of personality: DSM-IV and beyond. New York: Wiley.
Suggested Resources National Mental Health Association (NMHA)—http://www.nmha. org/infoctr/factsheets/91.cfm: Information on personality disorders is available through the National Mental Health Association website.
assessments. With the accessibility of the Internet, individuals can take personality tests online, including the commonly used Myers-Briggs Typology Indicator (MBTI), to find out their personality ‘‘type’’ within four dichotomies (e.g., sensing vs. intuition, thinking vs. feeling, judging vs. perceiving, extraversion vs. introversion). Second, personality assessments are becoming more attractive to professionals within the field of industrial psychology in determining job placement and fit, employment recruitment, and performance appraisal. Third, there has been an increased use of personality assessments in forensic settings, such as within court and criminal systems. Personality assessments can provide a quick way to identify a client’s problems in the counseling process. In selecting interventions and making decisions about treatment, therapists can frequently benefit from having the information about a client’s personality at their disposal. Personality influences coping styles, needs and desires, responses to environmental stressors, interpersonal patterns, and intrapersonal sensitivity. Counselors can use information about a client’s personality to assist them in structuring the counseling relationship and selecting appropriate intervention and treatment strategies to work more effectively with the client.
History of Personality Assessment
Personality Tests: Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI) and Millon Clinical Multiaxial Inventory (MCMI) Georgia Yu
Structured personality assessments have been used in the field of counseling, school, and clinical psychology to determine the psychopathology, personality type, mental health status, or vocational interests of an individual. Such tests have importance for several reasons. First, there has been an increase in the use of personality
Though assessment is not a new phenomenon, personality tests were not used until the early twentieth century when the Stanford-Binet test was implemented to calculate an individual’s intelligence. From then on, group testing was administered during World War I for selection and classification of personnel. During the early 1920s and 1930s, assessment was not restricted to intelligence alone. At the end of War World I, there was an interest in determining men who were emotionally capable of serving. Thus began the use of personality assessments. Because many of the personality assessment tools were not of high quality, projective tests were developed to prevent examinees from faking. Selfreport assessments such as the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI1) were developed to assess the degree to which individuals portrayed themselves in overly positive or negative ways. In 1936, Gordon Allport and H. S. Odbert hypothesized that: ‘‘Those individual differences that are most salient and socially relevant in people’s lives will eventually become encoded into their language; the more
Personality tests: Minnesota multiphasic personality inventory (MMPI) and millon clinical multiaxial inventory (MCMI)
important such a difference, the more likely is it to become expressed as a single word.’’ This statement became known as the Lexical Hypothesis. Allport and Odbert worked through two of the most comprehensive dictionaries available at the time and extracted 18,000 personality-describing words. From this exhaustive list, they extracted 4,500 personality-describing adjectives they considered to describe observable and relatively permanent traits. In 1946, Raymond Cattell used the emerging technology of computers to analyze the Allport-Odbert list and created 181 clusters, asking subjects to rate people whom they knew by the adjectives on the list. Using factor analysis, Cattell generated twelve factors, and included four that he thought should appear. The result was the hypothesis that individuals describe themselves and each other according to sixteen different, independent factors. Cattell went on to develop the 16 Personality Factor Questionnaire, also known as the 16PF Questionnaire, which remains in universities and businesses for research and personnel selection. Although subsequent research has failed to replicate Cattell’s results and shown that he retained too many factors, the current 16PF takes these findings into account and is considered a very good test. In 1963, W. T. Norman replicated Cattell’s work and suggested that five factors would be sufficient. For the next decade or so, the changing zeitgeist made the publication of personality research difficult. Social psychologists argued that behavior is not stable, but varies with context, so that predicting behavior by personality was impossible. They argued that character, not personality, is something humans impose on others to maintain an illusion of consistency in the world. After 1980, three developments brought personality research into the modern era: personal computers, statistical aggregation, and the Big Five. Before the advent of personal computers, psychologists wishing to conduct large-scale statistical analyses needed to rent access to a mainframe. However, once personal computers become widely available, they could do this work on their desktops. Therefore anybody could easily re-examine the Allport-Odbert list. The question remained as to why they would do so, given that it had seemingly already been established that personality was an illusion. Secondly, it was argued that personality psychologists had considered behavior from the wrong perspective. Instead of trying to predict single instances of behavior, which was unreliable, it was thought that researchers should try
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to predict patterns of behavior. Social psychologists still argue that we impose consistency on the world, but with statistical aggregation it could be shown that there was in fact more consistency than was once thought. Finally, in a 1981 symposium in Honolulu, four prominent researchers reviewed the available personality tests of the day, and decided that most of the tests that held any promise seemed to measure a subset of five common factors, just as Norman had discovered in 1963. After the discovery of the convergence of the Lexical Hypothesis with the findings of theoretical research, a model was developed which states that personality can be described in terms of five aggregate-level trait descriptors, which are known as the Big Five. In psychology, the Big Five personality traits refer to the classification of an individual’s personality into categories of: conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, neuroticism and openness to experience. ‘‘Conscientiousness’’ concerns the way in which we control, regulate, and direct our impulses. ‘‘Extraversion’’ is marked by pronounced engagement with the external world. Extraverts (or extroverts) enjoy being with people, are full of energy, and often experience positive emotions. ‘‘Agreeableness’’ reflects individual differences in concern with cooperation and social harmony. Agreeable individuals have an optimistic view of human nature, and are considerate, friendly, generous, and willing to compromise their interests with others. ‘‘Neuroticism’’ refers to the tendency to experience negative feelings. Those who score high on Neuroticism may experience primarily one specific negative feeling such as anxiety, anger, or depression, but are likely to experience several of these emotions. ‘‘Openness to experience’’ describes a dimension of personality that distinguishes imaginative, creative individuals from those who are down-to-earth and conventional. Individuals characterized by ‘‘Openness to experience’’ are often intellectually curious and appreciative of aesthetic pursuits such as art, music, and literature. These Big Five traits are often measured in percentile scores, with the average mark at 50%. So, for example, a conscientiousness rating in the eighty-fifth percentile indicates a greater than average sense of responsibility and orderliness, whereas an extraversion rating in the fourth percentile indicates an exceptional need for solitude and quiet. Although these five broad dimensions of personality traits have been discovered
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Personality tests: Minnesota multiphasic personality inventory (MMPI) and millon clinical multiaxial inventory (MCMI)
through empirical research, they are a descriptive model of personality, not a theory, although psychologists have developed theories to account for the Big Five. There are numerous informal and formal assessment tools within personality assessment, many of which are used in schools. Within formal personality assessment, there are two major categories: structured personality instruments and projective techniques. Structured personality instruments are formalized assessments in which clients respond to a series of fixed questions or items. Projective tests vary from standardized instruments in that the client is asked to describe or tell a story, or respond in a particular way to relatively unstructured stimuli, such as the Thematic Apperception Test (TAT) or the Rorschach Inkblot Test. The intent of the personality assessment is less obvious with projective techniques than with the structured assessments. The unstructured format presumably guards against faking because the examinee is not sure what the examiner is evaluating. With projective techniques, clients are believed to ‘‘project’’ their personality characteristics in their responses. Thus, projective tests are considered by their proponents to be effective methods for uncovering latent or unconscious aspects of personality. Structured personality assessment has been grounded in the foundations of personality theory, particularly in the establishment of the Big Five personality traits and in determining whether people are mentally stable or have some form of psychopathology. However, in a world in which ethnic and cultural pluralism is becoming more salient, the United States (U.S.) professional constructs of personality and psychopathology are mostly culture-bound, selectively reflecting the experiences of particular cohorts: those who are White, male, Anglo-Saxon, Protestant, and upper middle class.
Cultural Context of Personality Assessment Because of culture-bound issues reflected in how personality tests have been created, cultural psychologists have raised questions about the nature of personality description provided by trait assessment; the accuracy and criterion validity of trait assessments; and the limited contextuality of the items themselves. Given that many of the personality assessments used have
been created from a cultural standpoint, in that they are individualistic and reflect a particular demarcation between mentally healthy and mentally ill individuals, such assessments may be less reliable or accurate in collectivistic cultures, compared with individualistic cultures. This may be the case because reporting one’s characteristics is a less natural task in collectivistic cultures. Secondly, clarity of self-concept can be less of a focus in collectivistic cultures. Thirdly, trait self-ratings may be distorted by self-enhancement tendencies in individualistic cultures, in which internal attributes are more central to one’s identity. Trait assessment may also be less useful in predicting behaviors in collectivistic cultures, where behavior can be more a function of social roles and norms than internal dispositions. Finally, it is noted that items in personality inventories are often general, with minimal specification of situational context. General items may transfer better across cultures, but are also less representative and contextual, reducing content validity. However, given innovations in testing as well as an increased awareness of cultural and contextual biases, personality-scale scores often do not take into account individual differences in culture, socioeconomic background, and other factors. See also: > Emotional intelligence; > Intelligence/ Intelligence Quotient (IQ); > Projective tests; > Testing and measurement; > Worldview
Suggested Reading Dana, R. H. (2000). Handbook of cross-cultural and multicultural personality assessment. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. de Vijver, Van F. J. R., & Leung, K. (2001). Personality in cultural context: Methodological issues. Journal of Personality, 69(6), 1007–1031.
Suggested Resources The Myers & Briggs Foundation—http://www.myersbriggs.org/: This website offers information about the Myers-Briggs Personality Inventory including resources in training and research. Social Psychology Network—http://www.socialpsychology.org/ person.htm: This website includes links related to personality theory and research, personality assessment, online personality tests, intelligence testing, and more.
Physical education, teaching
Physical Education, Teaching Raymond Goldfield
History of Physical Education Physical education has been a key part of early education practices. Although today physical education is primarily associated with sports and fitness, its initial beginnings at the start of civilization focused on practical survival skills such as hunting and gathering. This form of physical education often took precedence over more traditional educational subjects. As civilization developed and education became more formal, physical education was worked into the curriculum to various degrees, depending on the values of the culture. In Greece, for instance, physical activity and gamesmanship was a large part of the society, and it was commonplace for training in assorted Olympic sports to take place. In Sparta, military service was praised above all, so from an early age boys were trained in combat, often exclusively. Greek education is considered to have the most influence on what is today primarily called ‘‘gym.’’ Physical education was formalized in 1420, when Vittorino da Feltre, an Italian physician, began giving physical education classes to the children of Italy. This is the first recorded incident of classes being devoted solely to this field. The first case of physical education being a mandatory part of school curriculum came in Denmark, in the School Bill of 1814. A little more than ten years later, in 1825, Charles Beck became the first physical education teacher in the United States (U.S.). In 1826, a German poet turned American abolitionist named Charles Follen opened the first college gymnasium at Harvard and the first public gymnasium in Boston. The year 1861 was also important for physical education, as the first association, the Normal Institute of Physical Education, was founded. Similarly, Amherst College became the first university to establish a men’s physical education program. Five years later, in 1866, California made U.S. history by being the first state to pass physical education legislation. In 1885, the current-day American Association for the Advancement of Physical Education was formed. By 1925, all states had passed laws requiring some kind of physical education in schools. In 1957, the American
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Association for Health, Physical Education, and Recreation Youth Fitness Test was established. Presidents Eisenhower and Kennedy were the first American presidents to deal directly with the issue of physical education. Eisenhower formed the Council on Youth Fitness, which became the current-day President Council on Physical Fitness and Sports under Kennedy. The year 1972 brought a big change as Title IX regulations ensured equality in funding for physical education for male and female students. In 2000, Congress passed the Physical Education for Progress Act, giving schools the opportunity to obtain grants to improve their physical education programs. However, in 2001, President Bush placed a moratorium on the bill, stopping the grants at the current time. Today, physical education is still very common in schools, with most having it as a requirement in their curriculum. However, because of budget cuts as well as increasing academic pressures for students, many schools are cutting back on their programs, eliminating them earlier in the academic career. Currently, only one state, Illinois, has mandatory physical education in every grade, including private schools. Many states, such as New Jersey, leave the requirements up to individual school districts, within limits. For instance, schools in many districts are given the option of how many days the students have physical education, usually with three as the bare minimum. During the other days, students often have science laboratories or elective classes.
Proponents of Physical Education With many schools cutting back on physical education owing to time and financial constraints, the supporters of regular physical education have stepped up their campaign to keep daily gym classes a part of regular school days. The goal stated by supporters of physical education today is to ensure that students have the knowledge and skills, as well as the motivation, to lead a healthy life and keep active well into adulthood. It is also argued that with the childhood obesity epidemic, physical education is needed to ensure that children remain active. Some of the other goals stated by supporters of physical education include children learning the ability to work in a team while playing sports; to develop a healthy competitive nature; and to develop motor skills and physical fitness. In the earlier grades,
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physical education is seen as a way of teaching children how to cooperate and follow simple rules of game play. To counter proponents who want to cut physical education classes because of academic pressure to succeed, supporters of physical education contend that its presence provides a much needed opportunity for students to unwind and relieve stress. With many elementary schools already eliminating recess, physical education is seen by its promoters as the last place for youth to engage in any kind of physical activity during the school day.
Arguments Against Mandatory Physical Education Although most educators and scholars agree that physical education has benefits for students and should not be eliminated, there are those who believe the tradition of daily gym classes has passed its time and should be reduced or eliminated. They cite the liability of schools for injuries sustained by students in physical education classes, the potential for bullying, and the exclusion of less athletically gifted students as reasons to decrease the number of classes. Many schools are in a budget crunch, and after such electives as wood and metal shop and home economics are cut, gym is often considered as the next target to be trimmed from the budget because of its separation from the main academic curriculum. Although most schools still mandate physical education on a regular basis, these arguments have led some schools to eliminate gym in later grades, such as during eleventh and twelfth grades (i.e., starting at approximately age 16) or to make it less than five days a week. In addition, many have criticized the often traumatic locker room experience where students are required to change into gym clothes in a communal atmosphere. This can result in a hazing atmosphere for boys, and may result in increased self-consciousness associated with body image for girls.
In elementary schools, gym and health are generally separate, with both being taught throughout the year. Gym classes in both elementary and secondary schools are primarily a combination of game-playing and fitness tests. The games played could include softball, basketball, volleyball, kickball, or various other regional or foreign sports such as bocci. In later grades, there may be a weight room where students can engage in supervised body building. Whereas in elementary and middle school the activity is usually set by the instructor, it is common for high-school students to pick from a variety of activities. At certain points throughout the year, students may be rated on various physical fitness tasks, such as running a half-mile, doing sit-ups, chin-ups, or push-ups, or performing a relay. These tests are usually given at the beginning of the year, and then repeated one or two more times throughout the school year to gauge student progress. It is often the case that students are excused from gym class if they engage in other athletic activities in the school, such as playing team sports. A recent controversy centered around cheerleaders who wanted to be given the same privilege and have their team classified as a sport. After some initial hesitation, the administration granted them this privilege. Although physical education may differ in regions of the country for various reasons, including finances, climate, regional sports, and academic requirements, it is likely to remain a part of schooling for U.S. youth in some capacity. See also: > Health education; > American School Health Association (ASHA); > Classroom management
Suggested Reading Penney, D., Clarke, G., Quill, M., & Kinchin, G. D. (Eds.). (2005). Sports education in physical education: Research based practice. New York: Routledge.
Format of Physical Education in the U.S.
Suggested Resources
Generally, when physical education is discussed, most people think of gym class. Although this term refers to the traditional system, it is often combined with health education. A common system in middle and high school is to have gym for three semesters out of the year, and a classroom-based health class for the fourth.
Physical Education Central—www.pecentral.com: A resource for physical education and gym teachers, this website contains lesson plans, job listings, and feedback from students and faculty. The National Association for Sport and Physical Education (NASPE)—http://www.aahperd.org/naspe/template.cfm? template= publications-nationalstandards.html: This is the
Plessy v. Ferguson website of the National Association for Sport and Physical Education (NASPE), an official resource for physical education teachers. It contains official national standards as well as information about certification in each state, media and advocacy efforts, and programs for members. The American Alliance for Health, Physical Education, Recreation, and Dance—http://www.aahperd.org/index.cfm: The American Alliance for Health, Physical Education, Recreation, and Dance (AAHPED) is a coalition of five private advocacy organizations that promote physical activity among children and adolescents. Conventions for members are regularly held and information is provided about how to incorporate physical activity into school curricula.
PLAI > Preschool Language Assessment Instrument (PLAI) vs. A Thematic Version (PLAI-T) and Preschool Language Assessment Instrument- Second Version (PLAI-2)
PLAI-2 > Preschool Language Assessment Instrument (PLAI) vs. A Thematic Version (PLAI-T) and Preschool Language Assessment Instrument- Second Version (PLAI-2)
PLAI-T > Preschool Language Assessment Instrument (PLAI) vs. A Thematic Version (PLAI-T) and Preschool Language Assessment Instrument- Second Version (PLAI-2)
Plessy v. Ferguson Meghan Nichols Taylor
When the Reconstruction area abruptly ended in 1877, Southern state governments began passing Jim Crow laws that prohibited Blacks from using the same public accommodations as Whites. In the Civil Rights Cases
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of 1883, the Supreme Court ruled that the Fourteenth Amendment only applied to the actions of state governments and did not apply to private individuals. The result of this ruling was that persons were not protected against individuals or private entities that violated their civil rights. In particular, the Supreme Court invalidated most of the Civil Rights Act of 1875—a law passed by Congress to protect Blacks from private acts of discrimination. In 1890, Louisiana passed a law that required separate accommodations for Whites and Blacks on railroads, which included separate railway cars. In response, several citizens, both Black and White, formed an association dedicated to the repeal of that law. Homer Plessy, who was seven-eighths White and one-eighth Black and could ‘‘pass’’ as White, was persuaded to challenge the 1890 Louisiana Separate Car Act. In 1892, Plessy purchased a first-class ticket on the East Louisiana Railway from New Orleans. The Louisiana law still considered him Black and, therefore, required him to sit in the ‘‘colored’’ car. After boarding the train, Plessy informed the train conductor of his actual racial lineage. He seated himself in the Whites section and was immediately asked to move to the ‘‘Blacks only’’ section. When he refused, he was immediately arrested. When Plessy appeared before the Louisiana district court, the court ruled that a state had the constitutional power to regulate railroad companies operating solely within its borders and concluded that the Louisiana Separate Car Act was constitutional. Plessy went to court and argued that the Separate Car Act violated the Constitution’s Thirteenth and Fourteenth Amendments. Massachusetts lawyer John Howard Ferguson was the judge on the case. Ferguson had previously declared the Separate Car Act was unconstitutional on trains that traveled through several states. However, in the Plessy trial, Ferguson stated that Louisiana could regulate railroad companies that only operated within its state. Ferguson found Plessy guilty of refusing to leave the White car. The decision was appealed to the State Supreme Court in 1893 and appealed again to the U.S. Supreme Court in 1896. The majority opinion was delivered by Justice Henry Billings Brown, who attacked the Thirteenth Amendment claims by distinguishing between political and social equality. According to this distinction, Blacks and Whites were politically equal, but socially unequal. The eight-person majority was authored by Justice Brown and upheld by Louisiana statute. Plessy’s argument was based on the Thirteenth Amendment, but was rejected by the Court who saw no way in which the Louisiana statute violated it. In
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addition, the majority of the Court rejected the views that the Louisiana law fostered any inferiority of Blacks, in violation of the Fourteenth Amendment, instead claiming that the law merely separated races as a matter of social policy. The case of Plessy v. Ferguson cemented the legal foundation for the doctrine of segregation as legal as long as facilities were equal. Before this ruling, facilities such as toilets and cafe´s were found to be in poorer conditions when designated for Blacks compared with those that were designated for Whites. In Plessy’s case, the Court did not find a difference in quality between the Whites only and Blacks only railway cars. The ‘‘separate but equal’’ doctrine was promptly extended to cover several areas of public life, such as restaurants, restrooms, and public schools. See also: > Desegregation; > Prejudice
Suggested Reading Brook, T. (1997). Plessy v. Ferguson: A brief history with documents. Boston, MA: Bedford Books. Fireside, H. (2004). Separate and unequal: Homer Plessy and the Supreme Court decision that legalized racism. New York, NY: Carrol & Graf Publishers, Avalon Publishing Group, Inc. Lofgren, C. A. (1987). The Plessy case: A legal-historical interpretation. New York: Oxford University Press.
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Children’s Personal Meaning Profile (PMP-C)
Poetry, Teaching J Mark Halstead
Few subjects involve such a wide variety of teaching approaches as poetry. This is partly due to the sheer diversity of poetry itself, partly to the different views there are about reasons to study poetry, and partly due to the appreciation of poetry as an art form that involves creativity, imagination and a personal response. In addition, there are fundamental disagreements about
the way poetry should be studied. For some, it is important to understand the poet’s intention while for others it is simply the words on the page that matter. Still others put more importance on the context in which the poetry was written, or on literary theory as a key to poetic understanding. For some teachers, the study of poetry is an end in itself, whereas for other teachers it may have more extrinsic purposes, such as the transformation of students’ views and values, or their development of cultural or moral understanding. Poetry is often distinguished from prose in terms of form and content. Typically, the form of poetry involves rhyme and rhythm, metrical composition and the patterned arrangement of language in accordance with one or other of a number of conventional poetic genres (e.g., the sonnet, the elegy, the ode, the epic or the lyric). However, some poetic forms (e.g., free verse) involve the conscious rejection of most poetic traditions. The subject matter of poetry may range across the whole of human experience from the profound and sublime to the witty, the trivial and the ephemeral. Whatever its subject matter, however, poetry often lends itself to the concise expression of complex ideas through carefully chosen imagery and diction, and it may evoke profoundly imaginative and emotional responses. In line with this distinction between form and content, there are two main emphases in the teaching of poetry: developing an understanding of poetic craftsmanship and of poetic meaning. The former involves the skills of recognizing and using rhyme and halfrhyme, onomatopoeia, metaphors and similes, alliteration, assonance, enjambment, and a wide range of other poetic techniques. This approach is favored by those who believe that all learning must be capable of being assessed, and may involve a variety of teaching strategies including reading aloud, listening, group work, word games, haiku writing, awareness raising, visual aids, limericks, puns, performance, musical accompaniment and experimentation. Attempting their own creative writing may help children to understand what goes into the writing process. With regard to the latter emphasis, encouraging an understanding of poetic meaning may be harder to achieve. Sometimes it is best approached indirectly, by providing biographical details about the poet, comparing a poem with a painting, reading poems that express different attitudes to a single theme, or acting out a narrative poem. Such methods have some value, but may be less appropriate where the poetry engages in an exploration of profound issues of life, love, death, philosophical insight or deeply held belief. Sometimes
Portfolios
the poetry simply has to be experienced, so that one is drawn to it through its tone, mood and emotions, and the complexity of its meaning only gradually reveals itself. Many children develop a negative response to poetry, claiming that it is boring, elitist, and difficult to understand, and that it has no relevance to their lives. Perhaps the problem is that teachers who have been trained in the effective delivery of knowledge to students often feel less comfortable helping children to develop a genuine love of poetry or to see reading poetry as a pleasurable, even magical activity. However, when teachers are willing to take the plunge into this sparkling lake of unexpected pleasures, they will find that poetry not only enhances their students’ language development and communication skills and stimulates their imagination, but also helps their growth towards emotional maturity, by introducing them to some of humanity’s highest cultural and aesthetic achievements, extending their sympathetic experience of other worlds. Perhaps the most important justification for teaching poetry is its capacity to enrich and inspire. See also: > Drama, Teaching; > Language arts, Teaching of
Suggested Reading Duke, C. R., & Jacobsen, S. A. (Eds.) (1992). Poets’ perspectives: Reading, writing and teaching poetry. Portsmouth, NH: Boynton/Cook. Hall, L. (1989). Poetry for life: A practical guide to teaching poetry in the primary school. London: Cassell. Kock, K. (1999). Making your own days: The pleasures of reading and writing poetry. Old Tappan, NJ: Touchstone.
Suggested Resources The Poetry Society—http://www.poetrysociety.org.uk The Academy of American Poets—http://www.poets.org
Portfolios Lisa M Beck . Thomas Hatch
Stimulated by the collections of work samples that artists, architects and others use to document their
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skills and development, the use of portfolios in education grew substantially at the end of the twentieth century. While there have been some experiments to use portfolios with administrators and teachers (see for example the assessments of the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards), much of the work on portfolios has focused on students. For students, a portfolio is generally a collection of work that represents a range of activities accomplished over an established period of time. Thus, a portfolio can serve as a form of assessment that provides teachers with information about how their students learn, think, and approach the tasks they engage in both in and out of the classroom. As such, portfolios have been championed by many as a more ‘‘authentic’’ means of assessment than standardized tests. The forms of student portfolios can vary greatly from school to school, and even from student to student within the same class. The contents of a portfolio might be contained in a folder, scrapbook, or box. Recently, there has been increased interest in creating electronic portfolios that students, teachers, and parents can access online. Writing samples, artwork, photographs, and video tapes are just a small sample of the wide range of items that can be selected for a portfolio. A portfolio might represent a student’s performance within a particular theme, an individual subject, across several disciplines, or over the course of one or more years. One of the predominant goals of using portfolio assessment is to prompt students to take more responsibility for their own learning and assessment. Therefore, students can be active participants in selecting what work samples are placed in their portfolios. The age and abilities of students determine how involved students are in constructing their portfolios and developing the criteria for portfolio evaluation. Research has shown that including students in these processes enables them to better understand the functions and procedures of assessment practices. Another benefit of using portfolios in place of, or in conjunction with, traditional standardized tests is that portfolio assessments provide information about students’ multiple intelligences. Whereas standardized tests primarily assess logical and linguistic skills, portfolios can be used to assess those skills as well as spatial, musical, kinesthetic, and intra- and interpersonal skills. Unlike tests that are often mass-produced for a general audience, portfolios are constructed by students and can reflect a wide variety of interests, cultures, and backgrounds.
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Positive behavioral interventions and supports (PBIS)
In addition supplying teachers with more comprehensive information about their students, portfolios can also help parents gain a better understanding of what their children are accomplishing in school. Portfolios contain observable evidence of the activities students engage in, the content of the curricula, and students’ learning and progress. Parents can be given the chance to look through their child’s portfolio in parent-teacher conferences and throughout the school year. Portfolios can also give students opportunities to lead parent conferences and explain the selections and evaluations of their own work. See also: > Assessment of culturally diverse children; > Authentic assessment; > Multiple intelligences; > Student-led conferences
Suggested Reading Danielson, C., & Abrutyn, L. (1997). An introduction to using portfolios in the classroom. Alexandria, VA: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development. Hebert, E. A. (2001). The power of portfolios: What children can teach us about learning and assessment. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. Klenowski, V. (2002). Developing portfolios for learning and assessment: Processes and principles. London: Routledge Falmer.
Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports (PBIS)
plans, and evaluate practices to promote success for all students. The goal of a PBIS approach is to help schools create systems (e.g., discipline, behavioral reinforcement, data management) and procedures (e.g., collection of office referral data, teacher and clinician training, data-based decision-making) to produce positive behavior changes in students, teachers, and other school staff. Positive behavioral expectations are defined, routines are established, and procedures are developed to reduce disruptive behavior and reinforce positive behavior. One way that positive behaviors can be reinforced, for instance, is by students earning praise and small incentives or rewards. Although PBIS is designed as a universal intervention, some students may require additional assistance to be successful in the general education environment. The PBIS approach emphasizes a three tiered intervention model called the PBIS triangle. According to this model, it is estimated that 80% of students will respond to the universal intervention (termed the ‘‘green zone’’), while the remaining 20% will need additional support. More specifically, within this 20%, approximately 10–15% of children (termed the ‘‘yellow zone’’) will present difficult behaviors and need secondary prevention. The other 5–10% of students (termed the ‘‘red zone’’) will present the most challenging, vulnerable behaviors and will need tertiary prevention services. Linking PBIS with expanded school mental health and other services, such as schoolor community-based wraparound (a structured teambased approach for the development of individualized plans that are family-centered, community-oriented, strengths-based, and culturally competent) can help schools better address the academic, social, and emotional needs of a greater number of students. These additional supports are critical to the educational success and well-being of children who demonstrate frequent discipline problems at school.
Jennifer Pitchford . Nancy Lever . Catherine P Bradshaw
PBIS and Outcomes Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports (PBIS), also referred to as School Wide Positive Behavior Supports (SWPBS), presents a whole school systems approach that aims to create safer and more effective systems of support for all children. Through the application of behavioral, social learning, and organizational behavioral principles, PBIS helps schools identify needs, solve problems, develop strategies, implement effective
The three-tiered PBIS intervention structure is one of the most widely used school-wide prevention programs. It has demonstrated positive outcomes across diverse school settings. When implemented with high fidelity, for instance, the PBIS model is associated with a reduction in school office referrals. PBIS has also been associated with improvements in school climate and academic achievement.
Positive behavioral interventions and supports (PBIS): process considerations
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PBIS and Cultural Diversity
Suggested Resources
Recognizing the important role of culture and context, the PBIS approach can be adapted to meet a school’s unique needs and ensure educational success among students of diverse backgrounds and abilities. PBIS schools are encouraged to value diversity, promote cultural competency, and implement programs and strategies sensitive to cultural differences. Schools can also tailor the program to ensure cultural sensitivity and relevance to their local concerns. Furthermore, the PBIS structure is well suited for implementation at all school levels and in non-traditional schools, such as alternative schools and schools within the juvenile justice system. PBIS is also increasingly being used in educational settings with special populations, including children with traumatic brain injury, serious emotional and behavioral disorders, and hearing and visual disabilities.
National Community of Practice on Collaborative School Behavioral Health—http://www.sharedwork.org: See Connecting School Mental Health and Positive Behavior Supports Practice Group within the National Community of Practice on Collaborative School Behavioral Health. Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports website—http:// www.pbis.org: The U.S. Office of Special Education Programs has funded the National Technical Assistance Center on Positive Behavior and Intervention Supports. The Center provides capacity-building information and technical support about behavioral systems to assist states and districts in the design of effective schools.
Conclusion The PBIS approach offers an opportunity for a school community to implement a behaviorally-based system at a school wide level that defines expectations and promotes positive behavior within the school. PBIS and other universal behavioral approaches are important partners to advance a full continuum of mental health care in schools. See also: > Rewards
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Suggested Reading Bazelon Center for Mental Health Law (2006). Way to go: School success for children with mental health care needs. Washington, D.C.: Author. Dunlap, G., Clarke, S., & Steiner, M. (1999). Intervention research in behavioral and developmental disabilities: 1980 to 1997. Journal of Positive Behavior Interventions, 1, 170–180. Horner, R. H., Sugai, G., Todd, A. W., & Lewis-Palmer, T. (2005). School-wide positive behavior support. In L. Bambara, & L. Kern (Eds.), Individualized supports for students with problem behaviors: Designing positive behavior plans (pp. 359–390). New York: Guilford Press. McIntosh, K. Chard, D. J., Boland, J. B., & Horner, R. H. (2006). Demonstration of combined efforts in school-wide academic and behavioral systems and incidence of reading and behavior challenges in early elementary grades. Journal of Positive Behavior Interventions, 8(3), 146–154.
Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports (PBIS): Process Considerations Elizabeth Mullett-Hume
Positive behavioral interventions and supports (PBIS) is a process that enhances a school’s ability to identify, develop, and implement effective strategies that promote important social and academic outcomes and prevent behavior problems. This process creates a school culture that encourages positive behaviors and discourages problem behaviors, hence leading to a safe school environment for both students and teachers. The PBIS approach has been found to be effective at reaching its goals and the process has been acceptable to a wide variety of people. Positive outcomes include the improvement of school environments, a reduction both in-school and out-of school suspensions, and the improvement of behavior in non-classroom settings such as the lunchroom or playground. The focus of the PBIS process is to create and sustain environments that improve the fit between empirically validated approaches to reducing problematic behavior and the school environment. Positive behavioral supports, or the application of the PBIS process, decrease problem behaviors by making them less effective, efficient, and relevant. Positive behaviors are increased by improving students’ skills and rewarding desired
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Posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD)
behaviors. Negative behaviors are decreased by implementing consequences to the behavior. In PBIS, there is an underlying emphasis on using culturally appropriate interventions. The interventions are designed in a way that considers the important role that culture can play in the behavior of students and the values of the family and community. Interventions take into account the context in which the behavior occurs and the function of the problem. The intervention is designed to achieve outcomes that are acceptable to the individual, family, and the community. PBIS is utilized to develop interventions that span the continuum of behavioral supports. These supports are implemented on the primary, secondary, and tertiary (individual) levels. At the primary (universal) prevention level, system-wide efforts may include district- wide, state-wide, or school-wide programs. Primary prevention emphasizes teaching all students behavioral expectations and establishing supports for all teachers. The secondary prevention level provides specialized programs for the 5% to 15% of students who are at-risk for developing behavioral problems. The tertiary level provides individualized interventions for the 1 to 7% of students who are clearly displaying academic or behavioral difficulties. The tertiary level of prevention involves conducting a functional behavioral analysis (FBA) to develop an individualized behavioral support plan for the student. Regardless of the level of intervention being implemented, the PBIS problem solving and action planning process begins with school leadership teams reviewing data about the problem, developing measurable objects and outcomes, choosing practices that have been found to effectively achieve these outcomes, and establishing an infrastructure that supports the use of these practices. This process emphasizes continuous monitoring and evaluating progress to assess improvement and make changes as the need arises. See also: > Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA); > Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports (PBIS); > School roles in mental health
Suggested Reading Horner, R., & Sugai, G. (2004). School-wide positive behavior support. Implementers’ blueprint and self-assessment. Eugene, OR: University of Oregon, OSEP Center on Positive Behavior Support. Martella R. C., Nelson, J. R., & Marchand-Martella, N. E. (2003). Managing disruptive behaviors in the schools: A schoolwide,
classroom, and individualized social learning approach. Boston, MA: Allyn and Bacon. Sugai, G., Sprague, J. R., Horner, R. H., Walker, H. M. Preventing school violence (2000). The use of office discipline referrals to assess and monitor school-wide discipline interventions. Journal of Emotional and Behavioral Disorders, 8, Sum, 94–101. Office of Special Education Programs: Technical Assistance Center on Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports. (2005). School-Wide PBS. Retrieved September 10, 2005, from http:// www.pbis.org/schoolwide.htm
Suggested Resources OSEP Technical Assistance Center on Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports—www.pbis.org: This site offers information developing and implementing Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports. A wide variety of topics related to PBIS are discussed and an on-line library of resources is presented.
Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) Khym Issac De Barros
PTSD Defined Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) is the term used to categorize the survivors of severely and continued traumatic events. PTSD is a natural emotional reaction to a deeply shocking and disturbing experience after which it can be difficult to believe that life will ever be the same again. It is a normal reaction to an abnormal situation. PTSD as a psychiatric diagnosis is unique in that there is great emphasis placed on the traumatic stressor whether natural or man-made, i.e. the traumatic event may include war, rape, floods, abductions, vehicular crashes, kidnappings or hostage situations. On September 11th, 2001 when two aircrafts crashed into the World Trade Center in New York City and the footage that was replayed continuously by the television media, many people, children in particular, interpreted this as an ongoing attack. This traumatic experience caused some individuals to experience symptoms associated with PTSD or PTSS (Posttraumatic Stress Syndrome — an informal
Posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD)
category that refers to individuals at the threshold for PTSD). Characteristics such as sex, age, direct exposure to the attacks, and amount of time viewing television coverage of the September 11 were associated with PTSD onset. More than 60% of New York City adults living with children reported that one or more of their children were upset by the attacks. Statistics indicate that the estimated lifetime prevalence of PTSD among adult Americans is 7.8%, with women (10.4%) being twice as likely as men (5%) to experience PTSD at some point in their lives. This represents a small portion of those who have experienced at least one traumatic event. For instance, 60.7% of men and 51.2% of women reported experiencing at least one traumatic event. Further, individual differences such as distinguishing ones capacity to cope with catastrophic events play an important role in the determination of who suffers from PTSD. These individual thresholds can be a determinant of who is protected and who is vulnerable to developing PTSD. Cultural considerations must also be integrated into an understanding of PTSD. Refugees living in the United States (U.S.) who were trauma victims often continue to exhibit high levels of PTSD symptoms. Gender, like culture, also plays a significant role in how trauma is experienced and reported. For example, cultures that adhere to traditional views of masculinity and femininity tend to amplify the reports of female trauma victims. Conversely, those cultures that are less rigid in their adherence to traditional gender roles attenuate the differences in PTSD male and female disaster victims. Therefore, culture-specific responses to traumatic events suggest the need to view psychological symptoms in light of the possible adaptive nature of the behaviors due to political, social, economic, and historical perspectives. Individuals who are diagnosed with PTSD suffer a kind of haunting where the traumatic event plagues them, at times for decades. The onset of PTSD does not always immediately follow the horrific experience, sometimes there is a significant timeframe before the individual begins to experience symptoms. For instance, when symptoms show up 6 months or more after the traumatic event the diagnosis should read: PTSD with delayed onset. The horror can manifest itself in the form of a dominating psychological effect that may evoke panic, terror, dread, despair, daytime fantasies, nightmares or even psychotic reenactments. Individuals who suffer PTSD may sometimes encounter stimuli that can trigger the original trauma/horror
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creating mental imagery, emotional responses, and psychological reactions associated with the event. Due to the intense nature of these stimuli, individuals may employ avoidant numbing to help reduce the level of their exposure or minimize the intensity of their psychological response. These numbing strategies may come in the form of behavioral, cognitive or emotional methods. A behavioral strategy may be used in that the individual may decide to avoid a particular place that reminds him/her of the trauma. For example, a Vietnam Veteran who was injured and was the sole survivor in his unit after an explosion and is now suffering with PTSD may choose not to attend a 4th of July fireworks celebration. Individuals may also employ dissociation and amnesia to avoid or hide from the horrifying memories and feelings. PTSD makes it difficult for the individual to deal with or experience strong emotions, especially those associated with the traumatic event. These individuals may often separate cognitive from emotional aspects of their experience opting only to deal with the cognitive portion. This kind of emotional hiding makes it extremely difficult for the individual to engage in any meaningful interpersonal relationships. It is therefore quite common that the victims of trauma will complain about failed relationships and/or multiple failed marriages. In that same vein, their significant other may also complain of a lack of emotional support or affection stating that this is the reason for their relational problems. With this type of emotional disconnect, some individuals may suffer many symptoms of depression, namely isolation. Individuals may isolate themselves from their loved ones because they do not believe that their loved ones understand what they have experienced and will not be able to help them cope with this problem. These individuals may also turn to alcohol and other substances to help them avoid memories of the trauma. Individuals who suffer from PTSD are often noted to experience hyperarousal. This can be misdiagnosed with panic disorder or generalized anxiety disorder. It is not uncommon for these individuals to experience generic anxiety symptoms such as irritability, or insomnia. They experience hypervigilance or an exaggerated startle response to events that are part of the normal course of a given day. For example, the individual may react in a startled manner to the unexpected calling of his/her name. Similarly, if a door slams or if a tire blows out, an individual who suffers from PTSD may instantaneously fall to the ground seeking cover.
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Posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD)
Diagnosis There are four criteria that must be met for an individual to be diagnosed with PTSD known as the ‘‘4 Hs of PTSD’’ (Horror, Haunting, Hiding, Hyperarousal): Criterion A (Horror) — the person has been exposed to a traumatic event, Criterion B (Haunting) — the traumatic event is persistently re-experienced, Criterion C (Hiding) — there is a persistent avoidance of stimuli associated with the trauma and numbing of general responsiveness which was not present prior to the trauma, and Criterion D (Hyperarousal) — there are persistent symptoms of increased arousal not present prior to the trauma. In addition, criterion E indicates that the individual has been experiencing symptoms of haunting, hiding and hyperarousal for more than 1 month and criterion F, takes into account the fact that the disturbance causes clinically significant distress or impairment across the individual’s functioning. Those who suffer from PTSD may also experience varied intensity and duration of symptoms. For instance, individuals who suffer PTSD for less than 3 months may be said to have acute PTSD, while those who suffer for 3 months or more are said to have chronic PTSD. As noted earlier, some individuals may not experience an immediate onset of symptoms. Some individuals have been known to exhibit symptoms several months or even years after the traumatic event. To make a complete diagnosis, clinicians should indicate if the individual has a diagnosis of PTSD with Delayed Onset if symptoms arise at least 6 months after the trauma. Unlike many diagnoses, the PTSD diagnosis has two significant accomplishments: 1) It is the first diagnosis to incorporate much of the feminist literature on violence against women by recognizing the depth of distress, i.e., the effects of a single occurrence of trauma versus prolonged trauma. 2) It acknowledges an outside event (e.g., the traumatic event) as the cause of the psychological distress. The fourth edition of the Diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders (DSM-IV) reflects changes in the criteria to enable a more accurate diagnosis of PTSD for diverse ethnocultural groups. Due to cultural variations in the expression, experience and report of a traumatic event, an individual from a culture that eschews the reporting of strong negative emotions may
not have qualified for a diagnosis of PTSD. There is also evidence that some cultural groups may have a high tolerance for or acceptance of psychiatric symptoms. As such, an individual may be observed to have PTSD symptoms but does not qualify for a diagnosis of PTSD as he/she does not appear to be outwardly distressed.
Measures A variety of measures can help discern whether an individual should be diagnosed with PTSD. These include: 1) The Harvard Trauma Questionnaire. This questionnaire combines an assessment of traumatic stressors (e.g., torture, rape, murder, starvation) and traumatic responses (e.g., anxiety, depression, nightmares, alienation) in one instrument. This instrument is used across widely divergent cultures and populations. There are multiple versions of this scale, each with culture specific questions. 2) Mississippi Scale for Combat-Related PTSD (M-PTSD) is offered in two versions, a civilian version and a combat-related version. It is a 35-item scale that offers 5 Likert scale options (that range from 1 to 5) for the patient to choose. The patient is instructed to circle the number that best describes how he feels about each statement. Patients who score between 94 and 106 on the scale are said to be in the ‘‘Probable’’ range for PTSD. Patients who score 107 or above fall in the ‘‘Definite’’ range for PTSD. Scale norms are based on PTSD patients, psychiatric patients, and U.S. college studen. No account was given for ethnic differences in the aforementioned normative samples. 3) Clinician-Administered PTSD Scale (CAPS). CAPS assesses 17 core PTSD symptoms and inquires about social and occupational functioning. The measure provides guidelines to evaluate current and lifetime PTSD. Research evidence indicates that the CAPS has excellent reliability, yielding consistent scores across items, raters, and testing occasions. There is also strong evidence of validity: The CAPS has excellent convergent and discriminant validity, diagnostic utility, and sensitivity to clinical change. Currently, however, there is no literature that addresses the effectiveness of the CAPS with different cultural groups.
Posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD)
4) PCL: Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) Checklist. The PCL is a 17-item checklist that follows the DSM-IV diagnostic criteria for PTSD. Individuals are instructed to read each item and respond on a 5-point Likert scale, that best indicates how much he/she has been bothered by that particular symptom in the past month. Currently there are no studies that explore the use of this tool with diverse populations. 5) Beck Depression Inventory (BDI). The BDI is an assessment tool used to assess symptoms of depression. The BDI is comprised of 21 items, each with 4 possible choices numbered from 0 to 3. The individual is to select the statement that best describes how he/she has felt in the last two weeks, including the day of the assessment. Numbered choices are then added together to comprise the overall score. Score ranges are as follows: 0–9 normal range, 10–15 mild depression, 16–19 mild–moderate depression, 20–29 moderate-severe depression, 30–63 severe depression. This measure is psychometrically sound and available in Arabic, Chinese, Japanese, Spanish, and English.
Treatment Because treatment can be difficult to access, individuals who suffer from PTSD often go untreated. Untreated, PTSD symptoms can last a lifetime, impairing health, damaging relationships, and preventing people from achieving their potential. Common components of treatment include educating the individual about the disorder, exposing the individual to the event via imagery, examining and resolving feelings of anger, shame, or guilt, and by teaching coping strategies to deal with memories, reactions, and emotional numbing. For treatment to be effective, the clinician should be knowledgeable about the differences in beliefs and practices that emerge from gender, race, or ethnic socialization. The clinician should recognize the importance of, respond to, be knowledgeable of, and understand how gender, race and ethnicity can influence the victim’s interpretation of the traumatic event. By acknowledging the intersection of gender, race, ethnicity, age, sexual orientation, disability, socioeconomic status, religion, and other variables, the clinician will be able to craft a culturally sensitive plan for the trauma victim. Clinicians who are not astute about
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the impact of these characteristics risk missing critical information. Effective therapeutic treatments for individuals who suffer from PTSD include: cognitive therapy, exposure therapy, anxiety management, eye-movement desensitization and processing, group therapy, and for some, stress inoculation therapy. Pharmacotherapy is also helpful, as the appropriate medication may reduce the anxiety, depression, and insomnia associated with PTSD, and in some cases, may help relieve the distress and emotional numbness caused by trauma memories. See also: > Anxiety; > Cultural perspectives on trauma; > Cultural resilience
Suggested Reading American Psychiatric Association. (2000). Diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders (4th ed.). Washington D.C.: American Psychiatric Association. Barlow, D. H., Esler, J. L., & Vitali, A. E. (1998). Psychological treatments for panic disorders, phobias, and generalized anxiety disorder. In P. E. Nathan & J. M. Gorman (Eds.), A guide to treatments that work (pp. 288–318). New York: Oxford University Press. Blanchard, E. B., Jones-Alexander, J., Buckley, T. C., & Forneris, C. A. (1996). Psychometric properties of the PTSD Checklist (PCL). Behaviour Research and Therapy, 34, 669–673. Koivisto, H., & Haapasalo, J. (1996). Childhood maltreatment and adulthood psychopathology in light of file-based assessments among mental state examinees. Studies on Crime and Crime Prevention, 5, 91–104. Lauterbach, D., Vrana, S., King, D. W., & King, L. A. (1997). Psychometric properties of the Civilian version of the Mississippi PTSC scale. Journal of Traumatic Stress, 10, 499–513. Marsella, A. J. (1996). Ethnocultural aspects of posttraumatic stress disorder: Issues, research, and clinical applications. Washington, D.C.: American Psychological Association. Weathers, F. Huska, J., & Keane, T. (1991). The PTSD Checklist Military Version (PCL-M). Boston, Mass: National Center for PTSD. Weathers, F. W., Litz, B. T., Herman, J. A., Huska, J. A., & Keane, T. M. (1993). The PTSD Checklist (PCL): Reliability, validity and diagnostic utility. Paper presented at the Ninth Annual Conference of the ISTSS, San Antonio.
Suggested Resources The National Center for Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)— http://www.ncptsd.org or http://www.ncptsd.va.gov National Institute of Mental Health—http://www.nimh.nih.gov: This website is an educational resource about PTSD and other enduring consequences of traumatic stress. It is applicable to a variety of audiences.
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Poverty
Poverty Mark Kiang
Overview The problem of poverty is one that affects individuals and families in the United States (U.S.) and on a global level. In 2005, approximately one out of eight people or 36 million Americans were living below the poverty line. Poverty may be defined based on purely economic factors for practical and statistical objectives, however, there are many aspects of its debilitating power that are more difficult and even impossible to measure. Even while Census Bureau surveys can estimate the number of those suffering from poverty in the U.S., numbers cannot begin to tell the story of its painful related effects, ranging from hunger to feelings of powerlessness. Unfortunately, when it comes to the proportions of those who experience poverty in the U.S., there exists a great disparity that is divided along racial and ethnic lines. Just as disheartening is the fact that children suffer from poverty at a rate greater than the population at large. Poverty’s devastating direct and indirect effects on education intensify the likelihood that children will continue to live in a state of poverty into adulthood. There is hope, however, as research shows uneven but positive improvements in the state of poverty both on a national and global level.
Poverty Threshold The U.S. Census Bureau defines poverty using family income and the concepts of either poverty threshold or poverty guidelines. Poverty threshold was first introduced by Mollie Orshansky, a social science research analyst at the Social Security Administration, in the mid-1960s. The Orshansky Poverty Thresholds, as they were termed at the time, are income limits in dollar amounts used to determine poverty. The threshold limits are calculated according to family size and are still used today in adapted form, primarily for statistics and are simply called poverty thresholds. A family with a pre-tax income below the correlating threshold is considered to be a family in poverty. Orshansky arrived at poverty threshold numbers by multiplying the minimum cost of feeding a family of a given size by 3.
Poverty guidelines, also called poverty lines, are another measure that the U.S. government uses and are a modified version of poverty thresholds. Poverty guidelines are issued annually by the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and used for administrative purposes. To account for inflation, both poverty thresholds and guidelines are updated using the Consumer Price Index (CPI-U). Poverty thresholds and poverty guidelines are uniform throughout the U.S. and do not vary by state or region. In 2005, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, the poverty threshold for one person was $9,973. For households or families, the threshold varies slightly with the number of related children under 18 years, with the threshold increasing as the number of related children in the household goes up. For instance, given two households with five members, the threshold for the household with one adult and four related children under 18 years is higher than the one with three adults and two related children. For practicality, weighted average thresholds for family sizes will be presented. For a family consisting of two persons the threshold is $12,755, for three persons it is $15,577, for four persons, $19,971, for five persons, $23,613, and for six persons the poverty threshold is $26,683, at the time of this writing. While the U.S. government defines poverty in terms of income, the consequences of poverty go far beyond a simple lack of money in both direct and indirect ways. On the surface these consequences may be obvious- that the poor often lack adequate access to basic needs such as food and shelter. However, being poor also means being exposed to circumstances that greatly compromise one’s quality of life in many ways that those living outside of poverty may not be able to imagine. Living in poverty can mean living with greater exposure to diseases and natural disasters. In many cases, it entails a second-class status, receiving poor treatment from state institutions, having marginalized needs and a voice that goes unheard. Being poor also means that an individual is less likely to have access to high quality education—a fact that has many negative future implications.
Poverty and Education Poverty diminishes the education of children in several respects and the effects are more deep-seated in poor performance and other facets of school life than might
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appear on the surface. In 2005, 17% of children lived below the poverty threshold, well above the 12.6% national rate. Poverty is considered a very significant at risk factor. Being at risk entails being more likely to drop out of school, abuse drugs and alcohol, engage in criminal activity, and attempt suicide, among other consequences. Commonly, when examining poverty in schools, two types of poverty are looked at. The first is poverty on an individual level and the second is the measure of the poverty level within a school. For individual students, poverty is typically determined by whether or not a child is eligible to receive free or reduced-price lunch. A school’s poverty level is seen as a percentage of its students who are eligible to receive free or reduced-price lunch. Students who are eligible to receive free or reducedprice lunch are at risk for academic failure. This may not be surprising, however the pervasive consequences of high poverty levels in schools is revealing as to how poverty gains momentum and can cause an entire system to deteriorate. A ‘‘poor’’ or ‘‘poverty’’ school is often considered one in which over 40% of the students live in poverty or are eligible to receive free or reduced-price lunch. Most generally, in schools with above average levels of poverty all students suffer in academic performance, regardless of individual income level. Conversely, a low-income student is likely to achieve better educational results at a low poverty school or in classrooms where the majority of students are economically advantaged. Furthermore, more advantaged students score lower in high poverty schools than in low poverty schools. A partial explanation for the overall dismal performance of high poverty schools is the absence of skilled and motivated teachers. This is illustrated in a 1996 School and Staffing survey conducted by the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES). The study revealed that in high poverty schools principals reported dramatically increased difficulty in hiring teachers, teacher absenteeism as being a larger problem than in low poverty schools, and there is the greatest percentage of teachers who have 3 years or less of teaching experience. In addition, in schools with more poor students, teachers are more likely to be teaching subjects they did not major or minor in. The strategy of tracking occurs when students of similar academic performance are grouped into homogeneous sections, which often reflects income levels. This process can have the snowball effect of influencing schools with already high poverty levels to accumulate
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more low-income students while the more advantaged students leave. As this occurs, the academic gap between the haves and have-nots continues to grow. It has been shown that placing low scoring students in homogeneous classes only causes their performance and motivation to decline further. There is also evidence that heterogeneous classes, or those with mixed academic levels, help low scoring students to perform at higher academic levels while students who are already high achieving maintain their performance. Another explanation for poor academic performance of low-income students is the stressful effect that poverty has on families and parenting. Families living in poverty often lack some of the key components that contribute to academic success such as stability, security, and access to basic resources. Further, parents from poor families may be hindered from having positive emotional relationships with their children due to a number of poverty-related reasons such as having to work long hours, being a single parent and therefore having less time to spare between children, and being under constant stress. It may seem that there is little hope for students living in poverty in a school setting and that poor academic performance will lead to a life of chronic poverty. However, studies have shown that having a positive mentor in one’s life can help the at-risk student to perform better in school. In the classroom, teachers are being called upon to be cognizant of the culture of poverty and to be sensitive to the varying needs of this population. In some cases a poor child may be a homeless child. Teachers need to recognize that school attendance may be irregular and that homeless children are often forced to transfer schools. This instability can lead to acting out, being shunned by peers, and difficulty keeping up with schoolwork. Accordingly, on an administrative level, schools need to recognize cultural values of students and find a working balance between those values and the values emphasized on a school-wide level.
Poverty and Diversity The growing racial/ethnic diversity in the U.S. has significant implications on the state of poverty. In 2005, the flooding of New Orleans resulting from Hurricane Katrina and the subsequent relocation of thousands of suddenly homeless New Orleans residents. This crisis brought to the forefront of the national media the issue of race and poverty. The majority of those affected by the
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flood were poor and in New Orleans 80% of the poor were Black. Minorities in the U.S. generally live in poverty at higher rates than the White majority. The three-year average, from 2003 to 2005, of people living below the poverty threshold in the U.S. was 12.6% of the population. The percentage of White people living in poverty over that span is 10.6% in total and 8.4% when excluding Hispanic Whites. Apart from Asians (10.9% of whom live in poverty), minorities generally suffer from poverty at much higher rates. Blacks suffer from poverty at a 3-year average of 24.7%, nearly three times the White poverty rate, while the average for Hispanics is 22.0% and 25.3% for American Indians/Alaskan Natives. In recent years, poverty on the whole has worsened. There has been little improvement in poverty among minority communities. From 2002 to 2003, poverty on the whole rose from 12.1 to 12.5%, however, this is down from the average of the two previous decades. The number of Americans without health insurance rose from 15.2 to 15.6% from 2002 to 2003. From 2002 to 2003 the poverty rates of Blacks and Asians rose slightly while the rate for Hispanics declined slightly. Many factors contribute to the increased poverty of minorities. While there are many explanations, it is difficult to attribute the higher rates that minorities experience poverty to one overwhelming cause. In the case of poverty among Hispanic communities, one may look to the large numbers of recent immigrants and those who continue to arrive to the U.S. from Latin American countries. Many are undocumented immigrants who do not receive the same rights as U.S. citizens. Still, there are many who have legally immigrated to the U.S., who may struggle with English, and must currently toil in low wage jobs to the benefit of future generations. While African Americans have generally lived in the U.S. for several generations, this group has endured a history in America that includes enslavement, denial of civil rights, and discrimination. This mistreatment contributes partially to the current disproportionate number of Black Americans who live below the poverty threshold. In many ways that discrimination is still prevalent on a social and institutional level and is a factor in persistently high poverty rates among Black Americans. Some also believe that the concentration of poor Blacks in urban areas has perpetuated poverty within the community. Another explanation is the repercussions of our nation’s welfare program that was
implemented in the 1960s. While well intentioned, some argue that welfare programs killed poor Blacks’ spirit for survival as they became dependent on government handouts. Critics of welfare believe that the 1996 implementation of welfare reform will gradually improve the situation. See also: > Cultural issues in education; > Cultural resilience; > Educational resilience; > Racial/ethnic group differences; > Resilience building prevention programs; > Socioeconomic status
Suggested Reading Lippman, L., Burns, S., & McArthur, E. (1996). Urban schools: The challenge of location and poverty. Washington, D.C.: Department of Education, Office of Educational Research and Improvement. Triest, R. K. (1998). Has poverty gotten worse? Journal of Economic Perspectives 12, 97–114.
Suggested Resources Institute for Research on Poverty (IRP)—www.irp.wisc.edu/: The IRP is a department at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and this website provides updated news and events concerning poverty and a useful frequently asked questions section. National Poverty Center (NPC)—www.npc.umich.edu/: The NPC is a University of Michigan Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy organization and the website provides current newsletters and publications concerning poverty as well as informative poverty facts. U.S. Census Bureau: Poverty—http://www.census.gov/hhes/ www/poverty/poverty.html: This is the website of the U.S. Census Bureau and offers an overview of poverty, definitions of poverty terminology, and census data.
Pregnancy, Teaching About Margaret L Byram
The United States (U.S.) has the highest rates of teen pregnancy and births in the western industrialized world. Healthy People 2010 set the goal of 43 pregnancies per 1,000 for adolescent females aged 15–17 years
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old. The 1996 baseline was 68 per 1,000. Annually teen pregnancy costs have been at least seven billion dollars in the U.S. this past decade. Though the rates of teen pregnancy have declined within the past two decades, since 2001 the numbers are still significantly high for the entire country. One of every three girls has had sex by the age of 16, two out of three by age 18, and two of three boys have had sex by age 18. Statistics have shown that 34% of young women become pregnant at least once before they reach the age of 20. Eighty-one of the 34% of the young women are unmarried and eight out of ten of those are unintended pregnancies. According to the Alan Guttmacher Institute, about six million women in the U.S. become pregnant annually. Two-thirds of these pregnancies result in a live birth, about a quarter in abortions, and the remainder are miscarriages. Advocates for Youth report that the average age of teen mothers is between 17 and 19. African American teens between the ages of 10 and 14 are seven times more likely to give birth than their White peers. Older Hispanic teens, 18- to 19-year-olds, have a birth rate of 147.7 per 1,000, compared to 65.9 for their White, non-Hispanic counterparts. Between 1988 and 1995, most of the decline in teen pregnancy was due to improved contraceptive use especially condoms, and the reduction of the onset of sexual activity. Researchers would also like to attribute sexual education as being the reason for this decline. Twenty-three percent of most school districts teach abstinence as the only option to prevent pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases. Thirty-three percent teach abstinence as a preferred option. The majority of teachers, according to Family Planning Perspectives, believe that topics such as birth control methods, how to obtain them, the correct way to use condoms, sexual orientation, and factual and ethical information about abortion should be taught by the end of 12th grade. Currently these topics are being taught less often and later than teachers think they should. According to the Alan Guttmacher Institute of State Policies of sex and sexually transmitted diseases/ Human Immunodeficiency Virus (STD/HIV) education; 21 states require that abstinence be stressed when taught as part of sex education; eight states require simply that it be covered during instruction. Fourteen states and the District of Columbia require that sex education programs cover contraception. No state requires that contraception be stressed. Twenty-six states require that abstinence be stressed when taught as part of STD/HIV education; eight states
require that it be covered. Seventeen states require STD/HIV programs cover contraception; no state requires that it be stressed. Three states require parental consent for students to participate in sex or STD/ HIV education. Thirty-six states and the District of Columbia allow parents to remove their children from instruction. Almost all the teachers believe that a wide range of topics related to the prevention of pregnancy, Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS) and STDs should be taught in the public schools, and most believe these topics should be covered by seventh and eighth grades at the latest. Ninety-seven percent of teachers say that sex education classes should address where students can obtain a method of birth control, but only 48% are in schools where this is done. Teachers report that the most important message for their students is to give as much information regarding responsibility for their sexual relationships, parenthood, the importance of abstinence, ways of resisting pressures to become sexually active, and information about AIDS and other STDs. Once a student becomes pregnant, there are educational options for her to choose from. Federal law, Title IX, prohibits sex and pregnancy discrimination in schools that receive money from the federal government. A student cannot be excluded from educational programs, classes, and extracurricular activities just because she is pregnant. A school can ask to have a doctor’s note if the student wants to participate in an activity that the teacher feels may harm the health of the young girl and her baby. School officials cannot tell a young girl that she must leave her school or force her to transfer. If a student is offered an alternative school it must be comparable to the education she is currently receiving. Each state has examples of these alternative schools; New York has the Martha Nielsen School, which has been providing services to young girls for over 30 years. Schools may have a ‘‘leave’’ policy which allows the pregnant teen to leave as needed for the birth and then return to school exactly where she left academically. Some schools consider this medical leave. Students are entitled to home schooling if doctors feel that the teen may not be able to return to school successfully after the pregnancy. Pregnant students are encouraged to contact Teen Parent Services, a program designed to help young teen parents overcome obstacles that might keep them from earning a diploma. See also: > Adolescent parents; development; > Sex education
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Suggested Reading Neinstein, L. (2002). Adolescent health care: A practical guide (4th ed.). Philadelphia: Lippincott Williams & Wilkins. Van Winter, J. T., Harmon, M. C., Atkinson, E. J., Simmons, P. S., & Ogburn, P. L., Jr. (1997). Young mom’s clinic: A multidisciplinary approach to pregnancy education in teens and in young single women. Journal of Pediatric and Adolescent Gynecology, 10(1), 28–33.
Suggested Resources Sexuality and Information Council of the U.S. (SEICUS)—www.seicus. org: SEICUS presents comprehensive sex education standards. Advocates for Youth—www.advocatesforyouth.org: Advocates for Youth provides current research, information and resources for individuals concerned about topics addressing adolescent sexuality. Teen Pregnancy Prevention: National Teen Pregnancy and Birth Data—www.teenpregnancy.org: This website provides statistics and factual information based on 2004–2005 data on teen pregnancy.
other groups not only as different but also as strange and usually inferior. Stereotypes are more commonly focused on form of prejudice, and are negative, pervasive, and may be internalized by those who belong to stereotyped groups. In addition to holding negative beliefs, prejudice involves an expression of negative affect toward individuals or groups who are stereotyped. Display of hostile or derogatory behavior may also be central to manifestation of prejudice. Prejudice may also be covert, especially in the contexts in which its expression is prohibited or discouraged. Allport, whose work has shaped the understanding of prejudice as a social phenomenon, insisted that distinctions can be made between individuals who are ‘‘bigots’’ and for whom prejudice toward others predominates, from those for whom prejudice is covert and accompanied by guilt. Affective prejudice is not without negative consequences for those at whom prejudice is directed. Because prejudice is not only a cognitive but also an affective state, it can serve as a motivational force or an energy, which targeted individuals or groups will feel as a tension.
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Impact of Prejudice
Oksana Yakushko . Sarah W Thompson
Experiences of prejudice are among the most difficult and disempowering for individuals at whom it is directed. Prejudice has been shown to cause negative health effects for the individuals in the targeted group. Youth as young as middle and high school can show symptoms of elevated blood pressure and negative stress responses when experiencing incidences of prejudice. Stereotype threat, which is fear of performing or acting as is predicted by a common stereotype, can have a strong impact on academic behavior. Prejudice and stereotypes may be internalized, leading to difficulties in individuals’ identity development. However, resilience to prejudice also exists, and several scholars are beginning to examine protective factors that help youth and adults from stereotyped groups to withstand prejudice and function well.
Definition Authors like Farley have defined prejudice as attitudes and beliefs where an individual prejudges someone else or a group of people. This judgment is often negative and can be based on the existence of a personal characteristic such as race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, and disability, among others. This prejudgment takes the form of over categorization: the tendency to think of or react to everyone as fitting into one category (e.g., African American, Chinese, female, gay) in a more or less fixed way. Racial prejudice is a predisposition to react unfavorably to members of a racial group because of their group affiliation. Prejudice can take many forms including: (1) stereotypes, which are exaggerated beliefs associated with a category or a group of people, such as a racial, ethnic, or religious group; and (2) ethnocentrism, which refers to a tendency to view one’s own group as the norm and
Addressing Prejudice in Schools Teachers and parents tend to believe that prejudice does not influence the behavior of young school children because they may have had little exposure to
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discriminatory or hostile behaviors. However, research shows that children as young as 3 years old can show dislike for ‘‘others.’’ Studies with standardized measures reveal that 6-year-old children can display proWhite/anti-Black bias. Some scholars argue that these attitudes reveal children’s tendency toward valuing ingroup characteristics while devaluing out-group ones. These processes conform to children’s development of social cognitions. However, these early attitudes can form the basis for the development of established prejudiced attitudes and behaviors, and may be addressed by parents and educational systems. Schools have sought to address stereotyping through diversity initiatives and educational reforms. Thus, more open forms of prejudice are less prevalent than they once were. However, more subtle forms of prejudice still exist, such as symbolic racism in which social policy that would enable minorities to escape their disadvantaged position in American society is opposed. Beliefs about the achievement potential of a student based on group membership or the pathologizing of healthy reactions of minority individuals to the majority culture are other forms of prejudice that may still be found in school environments. As stated earlier, internalized forms of stereotypes contribute to children’s experiences of stereotype threat, which in turn influences their academic performance. Evidence suggests that the causes of prejudice must be sought in the characteristics and experiences of those who are prejudiced, rather than in the characteristics of those they are prejudiced against. Students and teachers who are prejudiced against one group are likely to be prejudiced against other groups as well. Possible individual causes of prejudice include a tendency to take out one’s feelings of frustration and aggression on someone other than the true source of the frustration. Another underlying cause of prejudice is a mechanism of projection or the minimization of undesirable characteristics in oneself by exaggerating those same characteristics in others. Lastly, an exposure to prejudiced attitudes while growing up, the pressure to conform, a sense of competition with other groups, the perception of one’s status as insecure, and a lack of tolerance for ambiguity and uncertainty have also been linked to development of prejudice in children and adolescents. Educators, scholars, counselors, and parents have actively worked on ways of addressing prejudice in schools. Empirical studies suggest that approaches that succeed in reducing prejudice in educational settings
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must be geared towards a particular situation. Consistent responsiveness to incidences of prejudice by school administrators and teachers provides students with an important opportunity to challenge their beliefs in a more constructive and open manner. School counselors and psychologists’ visibility in addressing incidences of prejudice will contribute to greater changes in the attitudes of the students from the cultural majority and to the safety of those students against whom stereotypes may be used. In addition, enlisting the aid of teachers who may have more exposure to students’ interactions is another way to provide a safe environment for students in which prejudice is addressed rather than ignored. Reduction of prejudice can also take on forms of lessons or activities that help students develop positive attitudes toward different racial, ethnic, and cultural groups. Research indicates that although children develop most of their prejudiced attitudes in their home environments, lack of school information that provides positive images of stereotyped groups further contributes to prejudiced views. Positive intergroup attitudes have been linked to exposure to consistent use of affirmative images of minority groups and individuals as well as the use of multiethnic materials in regular and sequential ways. Allport’s ‘‘contact hypothesis’’ provides several useful guidelines for helping students deal with their prejudiced views. According to him, the following four conditions can contribute to creating more positive interracial attitudes and behaviors during potential contact situations: (1) equal status of groups and individuals; (2) emphasis on cooperation rather than competition; (3) active involvement and approval of school personnel; and (4) interpersonal interactions in which students can connect to each other as individuals. Other strategies have also been discussed in the literature on diversity. Successful techniques for reducing prejudice in schools include the use of persuasive communications, focused education, intergroup contact, simulation exercises, and individual or group therapy. School counselors and psychologists are especially well positioned to address incidences of prejudice in their clinical contact with students. Helping students explore the roots of their prejudiced attitudes and behaviors as well as to develop greater empathy toward others may be included as goals of therapeutic treatment. See also: > Discrimination; > Homophobia; > Racism: Individual, Institutional, and Cultural; > Stereotyping
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Suggested Reading Ponterotto, J. G., & Petersen, P. B. (1993). Preventing prejudice. Newbury Park, CA: Sage.
Preschool Dinelia Rosa
The preschool stage is the second stage of development after the infancy stage. Development varies from child to child, and different areas of development within one child mature at different rates. During the preschool stage different areas such as intellectual, physical, social, and moral development begin to take different forms. Physically, the child grows, and develops motor skills such as walking, running, jumping, hopping, skipping, pushing, pulling, bending, grasping, throwing, catching, kicking, and other actions involved in receiving and moving objects. By the time most children reach 6 or 7 years of age, nearly all of their basic motor skills are fully developed. During the preschool stage, children become very active and eager to use their recent discovered motor skills. Many of these motors skills develop depending on the level of stimulation the child receives from caretakers and others. If a child is limited in their opportunities to explore the environment through physical movements, it is likely that physical development will be affected by these limitations. In the cognitive area, preschool children learn new information and basic cognitive skills such as short-term memory, basic decision-making processes, and the ability to plan and follow simple commands. For example, if preschool children are taught to put toys away at the end of a play activity, they will be expected to be able to independently do this task with practice. Choosing a toy to play with is a way to begin stimulating and developing the decision-making process in a preschool child. The concept of creating categories and classifications begins to emerge. During this stage, children enjoy playing with blocks that they can classify by colors and shapes. They also enjoy taking blocks in and out of a container. The thinking process of a preschool child is very concrete therefore, the conceptualization of their environment is concrete as well. If an object is not in front of them, it does not exist. This is the reason why
many preschoolers become so distressed during their first days in a preschool program when they see their caregiver ‘‘disappear.’’ Their thinking processes are also self-centered: this is the reason why preschoolers respond based on their needs and show difficulty understanding another perspective. Children in this stage of development seem to be self-absorbed in satisfying their own needs. Participation in a preschool setting allows preschoolers to expand their narrow view of the world and add other perspectives to their view of themselves and others. The emergence of these basic cognitive skills is fundamental for the academic development of a child. Children participating in day care and early education programs are stimulated through daily routine activities aimed at developing these cognitive skills, many considered readiness skills. For preschoolers who stay home, these readiness skills can be developed by other means available to parents and caregivers; however, the challenge to parents is great because the child’s development of readiness skills would primarily depend upon them. In the area of receptive language, the preschool child learns to identify pictures of objects and animals. Although she/he may not have the expressive word for the object yet, the image of the object is internalized. Pointing at objects is very common during this stage. In expressive language, the preschool child learns to name objects and animals. During infancy, early language consists of cooing, gurgling, babbling, and eventual repetitious letter combinations (e.g., ‘‘ga-ga-ga’’). During the preschool stage, children begin to combine from 2 to 5 words to create a basic sentence. Children generally know 50 or more words by 16–20 months. By age 2, a child may know as many as 300 words. The tendency to repeat what they hear is very common and this becomes a great vehicle to help children develop expressive language. Imitation is important to the child’s ongoing development of language. During this stage, it is very important that parents and caregivers do not respond to children’s needs only when they point at an object (e.g., giving cookies to a child after they point at the cookie jar). Stimulating the child’s expressive language by orally saying what the child is trying to say in a receptive way is a simple way of encouraging the child’s healthy expressive language development. Verbal interaction is important for language development. Other fundamental activities include reading with the child, listening to the child, and responding to the child’s questions.
Preschool language assessment instrument (PLAI) vs. a thematic version (PLAI-T) and (PLAI-2)
The social and emotional development of preschool children depends greatly on environmental stimulation. In their interactions with caregivers and other adults, children will begin to develop basic personality traits that will assist them in developing social skills such as self-esteem, self-control, and rudimental interpersonal skills. For a child to develop these skills, he or she must feel secure and safe in the environment. This will help the child to develop a sense of trust that will promote a sense of taking risks to explore the environment and to interact with others. Children begin to see themselves as individuals who are separate from their parents and able to explore the outside world. Independence is the primary emotional stage during the preschool years. Toilet training and language development, two basic skills, are significant in the child’s development of independence. The caregiver’s encouragement of these will promote a strong sense of independence, whereas overprotection or demands will contribute to a fragile sense of self and independence. During the preschool stage, children also begin to show moral development. From the self-centered perspective, children begin to develop the sense of right and wrong. They begin to want to do what gains the caregiver’s approval or that which is socially acceptable. Overall, the cultural background of preschool children has an important role in their general development. Child-rearing practices and cultural beliefs are the main contributory factors in the amount of environmental stimulation a child will receive. The way in which a child is stimulated varies from one culture to the other, as well as the level of autonomy given to develop their sense of independence. However, each culture has its own way of providing the basic elements for the healthy development of each child to help him or her become a functional adult within that culture. Among the responsibilities of providers offering services to preschool children are the awareness of cultural beliefs and differences in child-rearing practices, development of a basic knowledge of what these cultural differences are, and respect toward these cultural practices. Only then can the provider be in a position of assisting caregivers in improving their child-rearing practices so that the healthy development of their preschooler is enhanced. See also: > Early childhood education; > Ethnic minority youth; > Montessori; > Parent attachment; > Toddler Center
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Suggested Reading Warner, L. & Sower, J. C. (2004). Educating young children from preschool through primary grades. Boston, MA: Pearson.
Preschool Language Assessment Instrument (PLAI) vs. a Thematic Version (PLAI-T) and Preschool Language Assessment InstrumentSecond Version (PLAI-2) Dinelia Rosa
The Preschool Language Assessment Instrument (PLAI#) is a test used to evaluate a child’s abstract language abilities. It was developed for the assessment of children between the ages of 3 and 6 or older if the child presents language difficulties. The PLAI helps identify a child’s readiness in the language area. The PLAI is based on a model of instructional language that is comprised of four distinct levels of abstraction: Matching, Analysis, Reordering, and Reasoning. Matching refers to the close linking of verbal and perceptual information (e.g., Show me the. . .); Analysis refers to the identification and analysis of new information and/or their combining of perceptual components (e.g., What is happening in the picture? or How are these different?); Reordering relates to the reduction or restructuring of salient perceptual cues (e.g., Which is not the same?), and Reasoning relates to the prediction of events and the justification of ideas (e.g., What will happen if. . .?). The PLAI has been used extensively and been translated to other languages (e.g., Cantonese and Spanish). The PLAI-T# is a revised version of the PLAI that was developed in an effort to eliminate bias and address external issues that can confound young children’s performance, such as poverty, general oral language skills, dialectical variations, bilingual issues, home literacy practices, and standardized testing
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biases. In contrast to the PLAI, the PLAI-T is administered in a semi-structured manner, and substitutes real objects for pictures. Additionally, activities in the PLAI-T are grouped by theme. In 1998, a study was conducted to assess the effectiveness of the PLAI-T. Twelve African American and 12 White preschool children were first given items from the original PLAI under standard testing conditions and then were also given PLAI-T items using thematic interactions. The researchers sought to determine if task variability had an effect on language test scores. Results showed the African American group earned significantly higher test scores on items administered in the PLAI-T mode as compared to the original PLAI standardized format. Further research is needed to determine with certainty whether the PLAI-T is a better tool for language assessment among children of color. The Preschool Language Assessment Instrument was revised and normed on a sample of 463 children residing in 16 states (PLAI-2#). The PLAI-2 can provide information on how effectively a child integrates cognitive, linguistic, and pragmatic components by comparing that child against group norms. The PLAI-2 provides two types of assessments, a normreferenced (or formal) assessment and a nonstandarized (or informal) assessment. Like the PLAI, the PLAI-2 provides information on four levels of abstraction, Matching, Analysis, Reordering, and Reasoning. In addition, the PLAI-2 also includes information about two language modes: A Receptive Mode (characterized by nonverbal responses) and an Expressive Mode (characterized by verbal responses). The non-standardized assessment consists of two pragmatic measures: Adequacy of Response and Interfering Behaviors. ‘‘Adequacy of Response’’ evaluates the quality of the child’s expressive language on a fourcategory scale: Fully Adequate, Acceptable, Ambiguous, and Inadequate. ‘‘Interfering Behaviors’’ quantifies two major patterns of behavior that hamper interaction: underresponsive and overresponsive patterns of behavior. The PLAI-2 also allows for early identification of language and communication difficulties that might impede a child’s current or future academic performance. The test serves as a guide for structuring teaching or therapy to match a preschooler’s levels of functioning. The PLAI-2 helps delineate pragmatic behaviors that interfere with effective communication, assess discourse ability in children who have minimal or
no expressive language, and evaluates the effectiveness of intervention efforts. The PLAI-2 is representative of the current United States (U.S.) population. Reliability coefficients are provided for the entire normative sample as well as sample subgroups (e.g., individuals with disabilities, African Americans, Hispanic Americans, and gender groups). Validity studies have also been conducted to examine relevance for a wide variety of subgroups as well as the general population. See also: > Language and educational assessment; > Language deficits; > Language proficiency; > Preschool
Suggested Reading Fagundes, D. D., Haynes, W. O., Haak, N. J., & Moran, M. J. (1998). Task variability effects on the language test performance of Southern lower socioeconomic class African American and Caucasian five-year-olds. Language, Speech, and Hearing Services in Schools, 29(3), 148–157. McKey, P. (2006). Assessing young language learners. Cambridge language assessment series. United Kingdom: Cambridge University Press.
Preschool Mental Health Karin L Vanderzee
Preschool mental health is part of a developing field of early childhood mental health (ECMH). Research indicates that the preschool years (ages 2–5) are critical in the development of emotional, behavioral and cognitive skills. In fact, one-fifth of preschool children may have a mental health problem such as attention-deficit/ hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), oppositional behavior, anxiety, depression, or fears. Until recently, clinicians often adopted a ‘‘wait and see’’ attitude when problems were identified for two primary reasons: first, the difficulty of distinguishing between common, transient problems and those that may be precursors to clinical disorders; and second, the sensitivity of labeling young children with disorders. With growing evidence indicating that some types of problems first seen
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in the preschool years may persist into the school-age years (and sometimes beyond), and increasing knowledge of the effectiveness of early interventions, ECMH has emerged as a viable way to support overall positive development. Early childhood mental health services aim to reduce or prevent emotional and behavioral problems and promote the social and emotional well-being of all young children. Several tenets are central to the practice of ECMH; early childhood mental health is preventative, family-centered, relationship-based, culturally sensitive, interdisciplinary, developmentally considerate, and resilience-focused. The field attempts to provide services along the continuum from prevention to intervention and offers these services in a variety of settings. Prevention efforts such as teaching parenting strategies and educating children to label and talk about feelings support children’s emotional health and development, and are emphasized in school and community settings. Due to the critical role that family plays in early development, ECMH aims to strengthen parent-child relationships. Families are involved in setting goals for mental health services and caregivers play a central role in the mental health treatment of the child. Services in the field of ECMH strive to be culturally sensitive and practitioners culturally competent. This means that practitioners and researchers are familiar with different cultural groups and explore the ways in which particular assessment tools or treatments may be uniquely experienced by young children from various cultural backgrounds and their families. Recognizing that mental health needs influence and can be influenced by other aspects of children’s lives (i.e., physical health, cognitive development, language development, sleeping and feeding patterns, among others), ideal ECMH practices involve coordinating all services and collaborating across disciplines with all individuals who serve a particular child. Supports focus on creating safe, responsive environments that are crucial to healthy development. When healthy development may waver, those in the field recognize the capacity for people to overcome adversity, and they seek to foster resilience through broad interventions that identify sources of strengths and vulnerabilities in the child, family and community. Preschool children in need of mental health services are often identified by parents, preschool teachers and daycare providers. Parents frequently seek consultation from their child’s pediatrician about emotional and behavioral concerns. Parents, pediatricians,
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preschool teachers and daycare providers are in need of resources such as screening tools, assessment procedures and community referral sources so that young children may receive appropriate assessment and intervention. Formal assessment of preschool children for mental health problems may involve a variety of methods including: interviews with parents and/or teachers, interviews with the child, observations of the child, and parent and/or teacher ratings of the frequency of problem behaviors. Two diagnostic classification systems exist for young children: the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders IV- Text Revision (DSM-IV-TR) and the Diagnostic Classification: Zero to Three (DC: 0–3). Frequently, insurance companies require a diagnosis from the DSM-IV-TR. This classification system, however, has been criticized for its cultural biases and its limitations in correctly diagnosing the mental health problems of young children as it fails to account for developmental, parent-child relationship, and contextual variables. The DC: 0–3, on the other hand, does consider these variables in developing a diagnosis. It also recognizes that interventions that seek to strengthen the entire family are often best for the child.
See also: > Cultural resilience; > Early childhood education; > Early intervention; > Head Start; > Preschool
Suggested Reading Gimpel, G. A., & Holland, M. L. (2003). Emotional and behavioral problems of young children: Effective interventions in the preschool and kindergarten years. New York: The Guilford Press. Richman, N., & Lansdown, R. (Eds.) (1988). Problems of preschool children. New York: Wiley. Simpson, J. S., Jivanjee, P., Koroloff, N., Doerfler, A., & Garcia, M. (2001). Promising practices in early childhood mental health. Systems of care: Promising practices in children’s mental health, 2001 series, Volume III. Washington, D.C.: Center for Effective Collaboration and Practice, American Institutes for Research.
Suggested Resources Center for Evidenced-Based Practice—http://challengingbehavior. fmhi.usf.edu/index.html: Young Children with Challenging Behavior: The Center for Evidenced-Based Practice: Young Children with Challenging Behavior attempts to build awareness and increase the implementation of evidenced-based practices to address challenging behavior in children.
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Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration’s National Mental Health Information Center—http://www. mentalhealth.samhsa.gov/: The National Mental Health Information Center website provides mental health information relevant to the entire lifespan as well as specific information that pertains to children’s mental health.
Pre-Service Teacher Education: Multicultural Education Patricia Ashton . Ramesh Bakhtiari Conley
Multicultural education in pre-service teacher education refers to curriculum and teaching strategies for preparing teachers to improve the quality of education for students from diverse backgrounds. Recently, concerns have prompted the promotion of educational equity for students with disabilities as well as social justice for gay and lesbian students. The goals of multicultural teacher education typically involve: enabling teachers to develop positive attitudes and behavior toward diverse students, which includes maintaining high expectations for their achievement; imparting skills to help these students achieve academic success and emotional and social well-being; and developing commitments to foster social and economic equity and justice in schools and society. Commitments include eliminating racism and advocating equal access to resources and opportunities for advancement for diverse students. The general consensus among teacher educators and their pre-service students, practicing teachers, parents, and policymakers is that pre-service teacher education does not meet these goals of multicultural education.
Historical Background The concern that pre-service teacher education programs should include multicultural education emerged in the climate of social activism for racial justice stimulated by the civil rights movement during the 60s and early 70s. In 1972, prompted by the shootings of students at Kent State and Jackson State University
during student protests, the American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education (AACTE) established the Committee on Multicultural Education. In keeping with AACTE’s commitment to improving society through teacher education, the Commission issued a statement establishing that teacher education programs should foster the development of a culturally diverse society by infusing throughout their programs a multicultural curriculum that affirms the value of cultural diversity to American society. In 1976, the National Council for the Accreditation of Teacher Education added multicultural education to the standards used to accredit schools, colleges, and departments of education. The current NCATE standard requires institutions seeking accreditation to demonstrate that their curriculum enables prospective teachers to acquire the knowledge, skills, and dispositions that allows them to teach and work with diverse faculty and students in the university setting. Professional organizations that deal with issues of teacher education have also established standards for multicultural education in teacher education programs.
Issues in Multicultural Teacher Education During the 1970s and 1980s, the gap in academic achievement between White students and students of color declined, but, beginning in the 1990s, as immigration increased, the achievement gap began to widen again. The United States (U.S.) is undergoing the largest influx of immigrants since the early 1900s. This demographic change has widened the differences in ethnicity, culture, language, and socioeconomic background between teachers and students. Recent government estimates indicate that about 84% of public school teachers are White and middle class, while the percentage of their students who come from diverse backgrounds is about 40% overall and much higher in many urban areas and in Western states and will continue to grow in the foreseeable future. The dramatic increase in cultural differences between teachers and students, the gap in achievement, and lack of equity in access to qualified teachers and educational resources and opportunities between diverse students and White students have heightened concern for enhancing pre-service teacher education that focuses on multicultural education. Controversy within the teacher education community and in U.S. society regarding the issues of multicultural
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education has impeded progress in the development and implementation of multicultural teacher education. Among the issues fueling controversy among teacher educators are: whether coursework on multicultural issues should be taught in separate courses or infused throughout programs; whether content should focus on identifying specific differences among cultures or on more general issues regarding how to promote crosscultural understanding; whether the focus should be on providing pre-service teachers with opportunities to interact with others from diverse backgrounds or on developing knowledge about culture and cultural differences; and the extent to which teacher educators should enact the values of multiculturalism and social activism in their programs. In addition, as multicultural education has become the target of heated ideological debate and political action within society, multicultural teacher education has been embroiled in the process. This is particularly important given that questions have arisen regarding whether teachers should be encouraged to become agents of social change and whether the goals of multicultural education should include achievement of equal outcomes for all students or simply the provision of equal opportunities.
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To achieve the goals of multicultural teacher education, educators use a wide array of methods, including analysis of case studies of diverse students written from the perspective of their teachers and self-portraits written by diverse students in which they share their unique experiences and perceptions of negotiating multiple cultures at home and at school. Other methods include pre-service teachers’ conducting interviews with diverse students and their families, participating in simulations and discussions designed to increase their sensitivity to multicultural issues, and writing in journals where they can reflect on their own cultural values and their reactions to the information and experiences they acquire in multicultural education. Of the methods developed to improve teachers’ attitudes and practices with diverse students, field experiences have shown the most potential for enhancing teachers’ ability to work effectively with diverse learners. One of the most promising approaches to field experiences has been providing experiences in which pre-service teachers assume roles as participant-observers, typically as tutors, in diverse communities.
Future Directions in Multicultural Teacher Education Methods A common theme in textbooks written for multicultural teacher education classes involves challenging pre-service teachers’ beliefs that students from diverse backgrounds have personal, familial, and environmental deficits that prevent them from achieving at the level of White students. The particular way in which this theme is enacted in the curriculum and instruction of programs varies. Some programs focus on providing information about the histories and characteristics of diverse cultural groups, while others focus on developing pre-service teachers’ sensitivity and understanding of the discrepancies between diverse and mainstream cultures so that teachers can help their diverse students develop the knowledge and skills they will need to achieve in mainstream society. The goal in more activist approaches to multicultural teacher education is not only to enable teachers to enhance the achievement of their students but also to help their students acquire the knowledge, skills, and commitment needed to engage in social actions that combat racism and discrimination and promote democratic values, especially equality and social justice.
Research results have been mixed regarding the effects of multicultural teacher education in improving the preparation of teachers to meet the needs of their diverse students. Generally, such studies have not shown positive effects on teachers’ attitudes or practices. In fact, some studies have shown that pre-service teachers’ stereotypical beliefs about diverse students have increased in programs where the focus is on sensitizing them to cultural differences. Consistent findings across studies have indicated that course work and field experiences with diverse students have been added to students’ programs of study, but infusion of multicultural issues throughout students’ programs is less common, and most teachers report that their teacher education programs did not adequately prepare them to teach diverse students. Research has also shown that development of multicultural education is in part a function of the institutional support that colleges and universities provide, including the extent to which they offer opportunities for systematic programs of faculty development to increase faculty knowledge and commitment to infusing multicultural education in their courses, create policies that support recruitment of faculty and students from
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diverse backgrounds, and develop relationships with diverse communities to offer learning experiences for pre-service teachers that enhance their ability to work effectively with diverse students. The lack of research evidence regarding the positive effects of multicultural teacher education reflects the lack of funding for program development and research of high quality. Most studies are of questionable validity, with small samples limited to one class or one institution, and in which self-report measures were used to assess short-term outcomes (such as teachers’ attitudes to determine whether the attitude change was sustained or whether the experiences had an impact on their teaching or on their students’ learning). Analysts have noted that theoretical views of multicultural teacher education far outstrip research-based evidence. This emphasizes the need for empirical studies. Recommendations for conducting such research include designing large-scale studies longitudinal multi-site studies examining whether multicultural teacher educational practices improve teachers’ attitudes toward and practices with diverse students and, more importantly, whether their attitudes and practices improve their students’ learning and well-being. See also: > Multicultural education; teacher training
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Suggested Reading Cochran-Smith, M., Davis, D., & Fries, K. (2004). Multicultural teacher education. In J. A. Banks, & C. A. McGee Banks (Eds.), Handbook of multicultural education (pp. 931–975). San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass. Hollins, E., & Guzman, M. T. (2005). Research on preparing teachers for diverse populations. In M. Cochran-Smith, & K. Zeichner (Eds.), Studying teacher education: The report of the AERA Panel on Research and Teacher Education (pp. 447–548). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum. Zeichner, K. M., & Hoeft, K. (1996). Teacher socialization for cultural diversity. In J. Sikula, T. J. Buttery, & E. Guyton (Eds.), Handbook of research on teacher education (2nd ed.) (pp. 525–547). New York: Macmillan.
Suggested Resources National Center for Culturally Responsive Educational Systems— http://nccrest.edreform.net/subject/multiculturaleducation: This website contains annotated references on multicultural education and multicultural teacher education.
Prevention Sally M Hage . Sara Barnett
Social indicators measuring the status of children and adolescents in the United States (U.S.) point to the presence of a health crisis. Youth are at significant risk in areas such as substance abuse, violence, and school dropout rates, and access to quality health services is limited. Approximately 30% of 14- to 17-year-olds report involvement in multiple high-risk behaviors that jeopardize their potential for successful development. In addition, about 20% of youth experience mental health problems annually, yet 75–80% do not receive appropriate interventions. This gap in services is even larger among youth of color, who may experience mental health treatment as stigmatizing. The cost burden of not addressing children’ and families’ mental health is immense. Early and focused interventions have been shown to limit the chronicity and severity of symptoms and functioning limits. Therefore, expanding prevention efforts significantly reduces the costs of later mental health and other care. For this reason, leaders in public health, government and psychology have called for expansion of early intervention services and supports that emphasize prevention, early identification, and intervention to maximize positive outcomes. In sum, a movement is growing for preventive interventions to become a regular and integrated part of our nation’s school and communities. Traditional definitions of prevention include three dimensions of prevention activities: primary (i.e., stopping the problem before it occurs), secondary (i.e., delaying the onset of a problem) and tertiary (i.e., reducing the impact of a problem). Prevention refers to efforts that result in one or more of the following: (a) stopping a problem behavior from ever occurring; (b) delaying the onset of a problem behavior; (c) reducing the impact of a problem behavior; (d) strengthening knowledge, attitudes, and behaviors that promote emotional and physical well-being; and (e) promoting institutional, community, and government policies that further physical, social, and emotional well-being. Thus, the definition utilized in this chapter also includes efforts to enhance personal and collective well-being as well as initiatives that create social and political change aimed at improving environments where people live, learn, and work.
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History of Prevention and School Psychology The history of prevention as it pertains to school psychology is as old as the profession itself, dating back to the late 1800s. Whereas the first half of this time period houses the origins of school psychology and centers on the advancement and administration of psychological testing in school settings, the last half represents an expansion of the profession to include greater numbers of training programs, national organizations, regulations, responsibilities and best practice guidelines. To be sure, it is the changing nature of America’s social landscape and of the study of prevention psychology on the whole that has guided the changing nature of school-based prevention efforts. America’s newfound focus on the health and wellbeing of children during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries ushered in the call for school psychologists. Legal implementation of mandatory schooling, a juvenile court system, and child labor laws dominated social reform of the time. In line with these child-focused charges, early school psychologists aimed to prevent students’ failure to reach their potential in the classroom, where America’s children were thought to be kept safe and where they were being groomed to become leaders of the next generation. To facilitate children’s development, early school psychologists implemented prevention-oriented interventions geared to enhance students’ careers in both school and work. Early school psychologists were consulted about such issues as how to help former child laborers transition into academia; conducted examinations to assess the mental health and intelligence of students; served as vocational counselors; and aided teachers in placing students in special education classes, a nationwide initiative that was created in 1910 to give extra support to students who performed below the curve. Though early school psychologists served as consultants and counselors in the aforementioned ways, central to their work was testing and assessment. Whether subscribing to the school psychology model developed by Lightner Witmer, which focuses on the progress and achievement of individual students, or by G. Stanley Hall, which emphasizes the importance of general rules for testing, early school psychologists largely defined themselves as test administrators, as people of science who used assessment to prevent
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students from academic difficulties related to being tracked in classes that were either too advanced or not challenging enough. During the first half of the twentieth century, newly created easy-to-use intelligence tests (authored by the likes of Alfred Binet and Theodore Simon) complemented the use of pre-existing tests for cognitive functioning skills, including sensory, perception, and motor functioning. In addition to these individually-administered tests, standardized tests that could be administered to large groups, like those used to place recruits during World War I, were so too adapted for use in schools. Despite the fact that testing in schools—and school psychology prevention efforts by extension—was publicly lauded throughout the first half of the twentieth century, the quality of school psychology prevention services varied, for there existed little training protocol, formal credentialing or experienced supervision. For the past fifty years, school psychologists have acquired extensive training, exchanged information through organizational connections and gained increasing recognition as leaders in not just the assessment, but so too, the enhancement, of students’ social, emotional and academic development. No longer limiting their focus to testing as the primary means for undertaking school-based prevention initiatives, modern school psychologists are well trained in psycho-educational instruction and general counseling skills as well. With support for the holistic development of students—a tenant of modern day prevention psychology—today’s school psychologists specialize in interpersonal and conflict resolution skills, which they may teach to teachers, students and parents, alike. In addition, today’s school psychologists administer general clinical services, which may include both individual and family counseling. Meanwhile, much of the prevention work of today’s school psychologists still begins with testing, which now includes academic, social and emotional assessment. Further contributing to the effective implementation of today’s school-based prevention programs, modern school psychologists play the important role of mediator between parents, teachers, students and school counselors, in light of their expertise regarding individual students’ cognitive and behavioral tendencies. The individual attention allotted to students via these and other prevention efforts remains an important historical component to school psychology, particularly when one considers the long-standing criticism of America’s ‘‘herding students in and out’’ style of education.
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Models of Prevention for School Settings Prevention practice in schools needs to be informed by theory as well as by research. School-based prevention programs that are grounded in theory are considered more likely than atheoretical approaches to address the complex interactions of risk and protective factors that operate across multiple contexts. A number of theoretical models for prevention in schools are found in the literature. One of the most influential models in the field of prevention is the disorder reduction (DR) model, which consists of a biological, intrapsychic and developmental understanding of the individual. In this model, a student’s vulnerability to dysfunction exists along a continuum and, once gateway behaviors or negative symptoms are identified, preventive intervention may be applied to reduce one’s risk of damaging outcomes. A strength of this model is its flexibility, making it possible to target individuals at a variety of prevention sites— schools, families, communities or organizations—and to employ a number of different prevention methods (e.g., school support, psycho-educational groups, mentoring). However, the limitations of the DR model for work in schools are significant. Risk assessment, intervention strategies and programmatic success are conceptualized at an individual level. Broader ecological or systemic changes that could potentially disrupt factors that engender dysfunction are essentially neglected. As a result, prevention professionals must repeatedly intervene when identified negative symptoms emerge, rather than more usefully addressing societal or contextual factors that foster such trajectories. Further, this model risks pathologizing the worldview and lifestyle of marginalized populations, including ethnic minorities, women and students from low-income backgrounds, by not acknowledging the systemicallybased and socially-orchestrated origins of stressors and risk factors common to many of these populations. A second prevention model found in the literature is the health promotion (HP) model. The HP model aims to strengthen and enhance individual well-being by fostering social and emotional competencies and developing a person’s resilience. A major strength of the HP model for school settings is the focus on encouraging healthy behavior, and in developing protective factors, or those attributes that have been shown to lead toward stronger well-being. Such a focus
supports school professionals’ efforts to provide strength-based services, while identifying risk and protective factors and designing school prevention programs aimed to increase youths’ resiliency. At the same time, the HP model, similar to the DR model, is limited by its individual focus, and failure to address systemic, community and institutional barriers that impede the academic progress of low achieving students. Thus individual gains may be difficult to sustain in systems, communities, and institutions that remain static. A third model is the wellness model, which centers on nurturing five dimensions of mental health: healthy caregiver-child relationships, developmentally appropriate competencies for children, healthy environments for human relationships, effective management of stress, and empowerment of people in their lives. A major strength of this model is its focus on primary prevention and early intervention. In addition, this model includes a broad focus on systemic change. School professionals’ work, in this model, would be to promote programs to strengthen healthy relationships as well as social and academic competencies and coping strategies for managing psychological stress. Successful outcomes are measured not merely through individual gains, but also through environmental and systemic gains. The wellness model overcomes many of the limitations of the DR and HP models because of its early, universal and multidimensional approach to prevention work. A fourth model of prevention that emerges from the literature is the ecological model. The grounding principle of the ecological model is that behavior occurs in a context, and that to understand and prevent disordered behavior, thought or affect, prevention professionals must consider the context in which dysfunction or negative behavior emerges. Furthermore, a premise of this model is that one cannot successfully prevent dysfunction without in some way addressing the contextual factors that contribute to such behavior. A major strength of the ecological model is that for school professionals who work under this model, it provides theoretical support to address both individual and systemic well-being. Research suggests that prevention efforts that address both individual and contextual factors are more effective than prevention efforts aimed at individual factors alone. Thus, like the wellness model, the ecological model addresses systemic forces that lead to dysfunction, such as
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racism, violence, poverty and oppression. However, the ecological model is not without its limitations. Unlike the wellness model, the ecological model does not explicitly advocate for early, universal prevention efforts. Also, the ecological model is limited by its tendency to engage individuals or systems only after problem behaviors or pathologies have manifested. The social justice (SJ) model of prevention is theoretically grounded in the notion that pervasive sociopolitical inequity is the greatest contributor to psychological distress and dysfunction. The argument for the SJ approach is that prevention that is not directed at the basic social, economic and political conditions serves to maintain economic disparity. Unlike the other models previously discussed, the SJ model is largely focused on challenging the political and socioeconomic structures of power, privilege and poverty. For example, school professionals, in addressing issues such as the sexual abuse of girls and women, would need to challenge patriarchal power and the influence of media violence and sexually explicit entertainment. In sum, advocates of this approach suggest that prevention professionals must address entrenched cultural values and social forces that perpetuate dysfunction in societies. Hence, successful prevention efforts in the SJ model not only ameliorate injustice but also create sustainable, self-perpetuating systems that maintain a just society. A strength of the SJ model for school prevention efforts is that, at its heart, the SJ model is distinguished by a meta-perspective of prevention and a focus on broader, social intervention that gives attention and is sensitive to both cultural diversity and eliminating inequities. Hence, unlike the five previous models, the goal of the SJ model is to dismantle all forms of oppression, rather than simply attend to the individual or family context.
A School-Based Prevention Model While each of the prevention models previously outlined have unique strengths and limitations, together they highlight the fact that there is no single theoretical perspective that is ideal for prevention practice and research in schools. However, insight into which aspects of these models fit best with a school context can be found by comparing the assumptions of these models with the National Association of School Psychologists (NASP) Position Statement on Prevention and Intervention Research in the Schools. These
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assumptions may in turn be further integrated into the design of preventive programs and interventions that will simultaneously prevent negative outcomes and enhance positive development. The NASP Position Statement recommends that school psychology prevention researchers use broad-based strategies to address questions of effectiveness, acceptability, feasibility, social validity, integrity/fidelity, and sustainability of prevention programs. They also urge prevention researchers to address systemic, cultural and contextual variations across individuals, classrooms and schools. Finally, NASP advocates for partnerships among school psychology researchers and other investigators and practitioners from various disciplines. This approach emphasizes a developmental, preventive, contextual, systemic and multicultural approach to the specialty of school psychology research. School psychology programs need to apply the theoretical and research perspectives of developmental, counseling and multicultural psychology, in partnership with investigators and practitioners in related fields, to strengthen student academic achievement, career development and successful school transitions, particularly of students from low-income or marginalized communities. In support of quality and equitable education, school psychology professionals are obliged to advocate for all students to achieve successful educational outcomes. Hence, in addition to providing direct services to students, school psychology professionals need to address systemic community and institutional barriers that impede the academic progress of low achieving students. For example, school psychologists ought to work to ensure that all students receive quality academic and career information and counseling so that they are fully prepared to meet the challenges of postsecondary education and future employment opportunities. As agents of systemic change, for example, school psychologists could be involved on school curriculum committees to advocate for changes that address the educational needs of students, such as selecting culturally relevant educational materials. A strong focus in the area of multicultural competency offers the means through which school psychologists can contribute to the academic success of students from culturally and racially diverse backgrounds, as well as to broader educational reforms that promote equity and social justice. In addition, school psychology professionals need to focus on providing strength-based services, while identifying risk and protective factors and designing school prevention programs designed to increase
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youths’ resiliency to combat targeted behaviors. School psychologists assist students with building strengths that include a commitment to learning, positive values that guide their choices, social competencies that help them build positive relationships and succeed in life, and a positive identity to promote a sense of their own power and self-worth. In sum, school psychologists need to adopt a multi-systems approach that involves the peer group, school, and community in addition to the family as a way to fully understand students’ behaviors in the contexts of their lives. A final component of effective school psychology prevention work emphasizes the importance of conducting needs assessments and program evaluations to strengthen school programs that deserve continuation and stop those that do not. This goal seems especially important in the current climate of high-stakes testing and school accountability. In sum, the NASP position paper represents an exciting renewal in the training and practice of school psychology professionals. This renewal supports a broader role for school psychology in attending to the academic, career, and personal/social development of students. School psychologists are encouraged to not only address major student issues that affect learning, but also to develop school-community partnerships, to implement comprehensive and developmental prevention programs, and to address issues across multiple delivery systems from remediation to prevention for all students.
School-Based Prevention School provides the meeting ground for parents, teachers, psychologists and counselors to join in enhancing a child’s social, emotional and academic development wherein prevention programming plays a key role. Increased funding from the federal government currently aids said programming, the most effective of which are comprehensive in nature. Comprehensive school-based prevention programs require school personnel to acknowledge the needs of specific school populations and maintain a commitment to infusing prevention into all aspects of student life. Within this framework, teachers, psychologists, counselors and administrators take a holistic approach by assessing the needs of home, school and community environments, as systemic approaches to prevention in
school settings have proven far more beneficial than those that only focus on individual students.
Classroom Approaches Unfortunately, the federal government’s current plan for improving public education places far greater emphasis on the improvement of students’ test scores as compared to the improvement of their social skills and emotional stability. In comparison, school personnel who take a well-rounded approach to education recognize the ways in which traditional curriculum might be infused with activities that prompt critical thinking about morals and ethics. For example, in a school where students tend to rely on violence to settle disputes with fellow classmates, assignments that ask students to problem solve regarding hypothetical anger-inducing situations or read about a real life conflict and consider potential non-violent solutions may be incorporated into the curriculum. In this way, academic coursework is used to benefit students’ general well-being, enhance their moral character and increase their awareness of the dangers of involvement in risky behavior.
School-Wide Approaches In contrast to classroom-based approaches to prevention programming, school-wide approaches refer to the overall structure of a school. In a school where the majority of parents are unavailable to supervise their children in the late afternoon hours, low cost after-school programming may be offered. Such additions to the regular school schedule aim to prevent students from engaging in at-risk behaviors and to encourage students to continue with their studies when school lets out. Likewise, in a school where students struggle with the ever-growing problem of childhood and adolescent obesity, mandatory physical education classes and lessons on health and nutrition may be used to complement more traditional curriculum. Notably, though school administrators are positioned to make decisions regarding specific school offerings, it is likely that teachers, school psychologists and counselors—school personnel who spend the most time with students—are the ones who know how to best adjust a school schedule to fit the prevention needs of a specific student body.
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Multi-Setting Approaches Partnering with parents is an important way for school personnel to extend school-based prevention efforts beyond school grounds. Research has shown that benefits of parental involvement in their child’s school include stronger relationships between the parent and the child, greater academic achievement and higher graduation rates. Yet in order for these benefits to materialize, parents need to be notified of their child’s progress and provided with the skills and tools needed to help further said progress. Without breaking confidentiality, school psychologists who meet with students individually and on a regular basis should consider taking a family-systems approach by inviting parents to participate in discussions regarding issues in the home. Furthermore, research has shown that parents who are taught proper parenting skills, given positive reinforcement about their parenting abilities and treated with respect, gain confidence in both themselves and their children. Through home-school collaboration such as this, students can be monitored, supported and provided with consistent feedback and instruction both inside and outside the classroom. Meanwhile, families can be strengthened in the process.
Effective Implementation Effective implementation of a comprehensive schoolbased prevention program is of paramount importance. Tailored prevention programming that is delivered in classrooms and integrated into school schedules is not necessarily destined for success. Collaboration between teachers, school psychologists, school counselors and parents can exist in the absence of an effective schoolbased prevention program. For decades, many school prevention programs have offered a wide-range of important programming that addresses topics such as HIV/AIDS, pregnancy, world ethics, conflict resolution, family life, and others. Yet many of these programs fail because the learning styles and learning needs of students are not taken into account, as described below. To begin, timing is a critically important consideration since prevention programming is most effective when delivered before students meet with the temptation to participate in at-risk behavior. Also increasing students’ potential for learning is a positive school atmosphere wherein hope, trust, support,
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contentment, satisfaction and understanding sets the stage for prevention programming to be delivered in a meaningful way. To be sure, non-traditional prevention programming that is relevant to today’s world must be offered—programming that addresses, for example, safe behavior on the internet (i.e., the dangers of online chat rooms) and the importance of media literacy (i.e., an understanding of the way minority groups are portrayed in the news). As a rule, to garner students’ respect and attention, school-based prevention programming should be non-biased, age appropriate, structured and time-limited, with emphasis on one-on-one processing and/or group work. Finally, for prevention programming to continuously enhance its level of effectiveness, feedback from students, parents and teachers needs to be invited and follow-up assessments of students’ behavioral patterns need to be conducted for school personnel to measure the effectiveness of programs that have been implemented and make necessary changes to subsequently implemented programs.
Cross-Cultural Prevention in Schools The cultures of students who are influenced by a preventive program can vary enormously. One concern is that many school-based prevention programs emphasize Western values and were developed and validated in middle-class communities. Prevention scholars emphasize the importance of tailoring interventions to the specific context in which they will be implemented. School interventions should be carefully designed to meet the cultural, community and developmental characteristics of the child, school, and community. Existing research suggests that preventive interventions that are culturally-adapted to fit the specific context of student participants are more successful in recruiting and retaining participants. Several cultural factors are important to consider in designing prevention programs including students’ level of acculturation, acculturative stress, migration and relocation history, language preferences, socioeconomic status, geographic location, education, religion and spirituality, extended family support, racial and ethnic identity, relationship to nature, time orientation, and culturally specific risks and coping strategies. In addressing these factors, cultural adaptations should go beyond superficial changes, such as including ethnic
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minorities in written materials and addressing important cultural values and practices. In determining adaptations, however, efforts to preserve the integrity of core program elements should be made and, as much as feasible, program strength and dosage be sustained. Such efforts support the design and implementation of culturally relevant and effective preventive interventions. Finally, school psychologists who adapt and deliver programs with cultural sensitivity and awareness of cultural nuances need to themselves maintain a high level of cultural competence.
Conclusion Given that traditional mental health services systems have failed to significantly reduce the effects of debilitating social and emotional distress in the vast majority of the people of the U.S., a movement toward a primary prevention focus in schools offers much hope for improving the health and well-being of our nation’s children and families. Without a doubt, the movement towards a prevention focus in school settings has important implications for the training and preparation of school psychologists and other school professionals. To insure a high level of professional competency among school psychologists in the area of prevention, it is essential that students receive specialized training and supervised practice in the development, implementation and evaluation of prevention programs. In addition, incentives need to be created to encourage mid-career school psychology professionals to further incorporate prevention approaches into their work with children and families. Finally, efforts to build stronger collaboration between school and community professionals need to be put into place. In closing, the future beckons school psychology professionals to work together with researchers, educators, and policy-makers to design, coordinate, implement, manage and evaluate youth development programs for every student’s success. Through these collaborative efforts, school psychologists can make sure that no child is left behind and that all children and adolescents have the opportunity to realize their potential. See also: > School-based prevention; > Community psychology; > Resilience building prevention programs
Suggested Reading Greenberg, M. T., Weissberg, R. P., O’Brien, M. U., Zins, J. E., Fredericks, L., Resnik, H. et al. (2003). Enhancing school-based prevention and youth development through coordinated social, emotional, and academic learning. American Psychologist, 58, 466–474. Gullotta, T., & Bloom, M. (Eds.) (2003). Encyclopedia of primary prevention and health promotion. New York: Kluwer.
Suggested Resources Prevention Yellow Pages—http://www.tyc.state.tx.us/prevention: Prevention Yellow Pages is a worldwide directory of programs, research, and resources for youth, Texas Youth Commission Office of Prevention, 4900 North Lamar Boulevard, Austin, TX 78765-4260. American Association of Applied and Preventive Psychology— http://w3fp.arizona.edu/aaapp/: American Association of Applied and Preventive Psychology promotes clinical and preventive psychology, P.O. Box 3822, Tucson, AZ 85722. PREVLINE—http://www.health.org: PREVLINE is a comprehensive collection of prevention programs, resources, statistics, and government and private funding opportunities.
Principals Bradley S Portin
A principal is defined as the chief administrator of a school. While the principal’s role was historically linked with teaching (the principal teacher), in the last century, the role has become much more linked to administrative concerns. In fact, it is not uncommon to hear principals referred to as ‘‘building administrators’’— a term representative of their comprehensive managerial responsibility. Typically, the school leadership team is size and level dependent. Small elementary schools will, invariably, have a single principal, while a large comprehensive may well have several assistant principals who share the leadership load. The majority of principals begin as classroom teachers. In most states, licensure requirements specify some level of teaching experience, a graduate degree, and completion of a licensure program. Such previous experience prepares principals to meet the array of responsibilities they must assume—from safety and security to instructional supervision.
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Traditional Roles of Principals What are a principal’s leadership responsibilities? A recent 2003 national study conducted by Portin, Schneider, DeArmond, and Gundlach examined the host of roles and responsibilities that principals assume. This work identified seven core categories. Instructional leadership was the first critical function. This large category includes assuring the quality of teaching (often through traditional monitoring and evaluation roles), supervising curriculum implementation, assuring the adequacy of teaching resources, and identifying content and specialist leaders, and (in some cases) modeling effective teaching strategies. Cultural leadership roles, the second critical function, includes supporting and shaping the daily life of schools—its traditions and symbols—and establishing a tone for the way work is accomplished in that school. The third function is managerial leadership—a critical function that encompasses all the work that is undertaken to make the school run as an institution. This includes oversight of the school’s fiscal resources, transportation and scheduling, allocation of space, safety and security, and supplies. Although such tasks may seem trivial, a school can become chaotic if organization is inefficient. For many principals, it can be a challenge to find the time to balance managerial leadership tasks and the core work of supporting teaching and learning. Fourth, related to managerial tasks are all the human resource leadership functions that principals assume. This includes managing the staff ’s cycle of employment, from hiring to retiring, and ensuring that employees are supervised and supported in their professional growth. Especially in the last two decades, principals have also been called on for a host of strategic leadership functions. This fifth category includes managing transitions when a school must develop a sense of its future direction. Most principals are heavily involved in the establishment of vision statements, strategic planning, and developing goals—along with strategies to meet these aims. Increasingly, principals must pay more attention to the community outside the school fence. Changes in funding patterns, criticism of the adequacy of public schools to educate students have called for external development leadership, the sixth category of leadership functions. In this category of leadership, principals learn how to pursue grant funding, develop business partnerships, and engage with the broader community
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to elicit support for the school and its programs. More and more, schools have become centers for community resources—everything from social services to health care and as they do, it often falls to principals to ensure that it all comes to pass. The final, seventh, category is micro-political leadership. Micro-political leadership skills include all the skills that principals draw upon to create consensus in school policy decisions. For example, many schools have sparse resources, and internal turf battles can erupt over who gets possession of these resources. Principals can ameliorate such tension and come to agreement by challenging decision-making processes whenever different ideas for future action come into play.
New Challenges New societal shifts are affecting contemporary schools. These shifts include students’ increased mobility, increased immigration, increasing numbers of English language learners, growing special education populations, local economic downturns raising poverty rates, and an increasing awareness that historical patterns of inequity in access to educational resources has perpetuated an ‘‘achievement gap’’ (i.e., differential achievement patterns and opportunities across racial, ethnic, language, and economic groups). These new challenges have brought renewed public attention to schools, the learning outcomes for all students, and the adequacy of school programs and how school leadership can better meet students’ needs. Much of the attention can be seen behind reform legislation, such as the federal No Child Left Behind (NCLB) act. Mirrored in most states, NCLB provides provisions for the high-stakes testing of students and accountability measures that urge improved performance in schools. These overarching policies shape the roles and responsibilities of school principals.
Leading Learning The greatest shift in what principals do, and what they are expected to do, is linked to what is happening with teaching and learning in their schools. At one time, simply having a clean and calm school with few complaint calls to the school district superintendent were the hallmarks of success. This is no longer the case. The principal’s leadership role now includes promoting student learning, providing opportunities for the
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teachers to learn and grow in their instructional expertise, and building a school community that can adapt and grow with new conditions. After teachers, principals now exercise the greatest influence on student learning. This does not mean, however, that principals must become expert in all educational content areas, or must be exemplary teachers at every grade level to be effective. Rather, principals must understand what constitutes evidence that students are learning and must have the ability to marshal the resources and will of the school and its community to improve learning outcomes. As a result, modern principals must now work with analyzing various forms of data to understand which students are and are not being well served—the ultimate goal being to design strategies to enhance learning conditions. These tasks are too important to be left to a single individual. Principals are in a unique position (through role and authority) to exercise influence on what happens in their schools but they cannot do it alone. More than simply off-loading work through delegation, distributed patterns of leadership are currently more prominent. The principal may be the primary leader, but in distributed leadership models, the principal is a leaderamong-leaders, sharing responsibility and encouraging ownership in the critical learning tasks of the school.
Preparing for the Principalship How principals prepare to do this complicated work is currently under examination. Many believe that traditional models of preparation are ineffective. Hence, the challenge for programs is to provide substantive preparation in learning and organizational perspectives in a meaningful way during the pre-service phase, and with progressive support as new leaders transition into the role of principal. At the pre-service phase, the use of cohort models, substantive internships with high quality mentoring, and the theory-to-practice advantage of case-based learning all hold promise. For practicing principals, many states and districts are crafting learning opportunities that are based on the stage the principal is at in his or her career. These experiences include exposing principals to the specific contextual and environmental challenges of running schools in specific settings (e.g., being a principal of a low-income school; adapting to new overarching educational policies that rely on standardized testing results for decisions about school funding).
In addition, a number of states are experimenting with alternative, non-university based preparation and licensure, principals who come from fields other than education, or principals who are prepared for a particular placement (e.g., the Virginia School Turnaround Specialist Program at the University of Virginia). Charter initiatives, magnet, and alternative school designs (such as online schools) are also shaping expectations for future principals. See also: > Data, Using (accountability); > No Child Left Behind (NCLB); > Rural schools; > Suburban schools; > Teachers, Assessment of; > Urban schools
Suggested Reading Beck, L. G., & Murphy, J. F. (1996). The four imperatives of a successful school. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin. Fullan, M. (2001). Leading in a culture of change. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass. Portin, B., Schneider, P., DeArmond, M., & Gundlach, L. (2003). Making sense of leading schools: A study of the school principalship. Seattle, WA: University of Washington, Center for Reinventing Public Education. Sergiovanni, T. J. (2005). The principalship: A reflective practice perspective (5th ed.). Boston, MA: Allyn & Bacon.
Suggested Resources National Association of Elementary School Principal (NAESP)— http://www.naesp.org/: This is the NAESP website that supports elementary and middle school principals and school leaders. National Association of Secondary School Principals (NASSP)— http://www.nassp.org/: This is the NASSP website that provides advocacy for high school principals and school leaders. Interstate School Leaders Licensure Consortium—http://www.ccsso. org/projects/Interstate_Consortium_on_School_Leadership/ ISLLC_Standards/: This website presents a project of the Council of Chief State School Officers, which developed the standards for principal practice used by most states.
Private Schools Jessica L Larsen
According to the 2003–2004 National Center for Educational Statistics Schools and Staffing Survey, there are approximately 28,000 private schools, with
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467,000 teachers and 5.1 million students throughout the United States (U.S.). Approximately 76% of these are parochial schools and 24% are nonsectarian. Nonsectarian schools can include schools that are boarding and military schools as well as those based on a special program or that have a specific pedagogical emphasis.
Private School Characteristics Private schools are owned and administered by entities that are independent of any government. They are typically governed by an independent board of trustees. Private schools are found in the U.S. from preschool through tertiary institutions. Private schools receive funding from nonpublic sources such as tuition payments, religious bodies, endowments, alumni, and other private donations. Due to their private funding, they are not forced to abide by the same state and federal regulations as public schools. Private schools have the privilege of enrollment choice. Student and families choose private education; conversely, private schools choose which students to accept.
Class Size Many parents enroll students into private schools because of the potential benefit of smaller class sizes. In comparison to public schools, private schools have smaller average enrollments, class sizes, and student to teacher ratios. While the particular advantages of these factors are debated, small class sizes seem to foster closer working relationships between teachers and students which increases learning especially in vulnerable and younger students. Small class size gives teachers the ability to attune to subtle indicators of performance. Teachers can then evaluate the individual strengths and weaknesses of each student and design individualized interventions that guide the student to higher achievement. With a smaller number of students, teachers also have the resources to give quality feedback to parents and keep them informed of problems before they become exacerbated.
Curriculum Private schools typically have higher graduation requirements than public schools. There is an emphasis placed on mastering core knowledge at a young age
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to promote success in college. Private school students are required to take more coursework in social studies, mathematics, science, foreign language, and computer science. Students are not readily offered opportunities to opt out of taking these core classes. This allows for the schools to provide multiple sections of core classes rather than a wide array of electives. Teachers can assess ability and place students in a section that is an appropriate learning environment that will challenge but not overwhelm them. Because students are all taking the same core classes, they are more able to form study groups with peers and look to older classmates for additional tutoring. This contributes to the overall learning community of private schools.
Diversification of Campuses Traditionally, private schools have had less diversity on campus than public schools. In recent years, private schools have realized the importance of diversity on campus and have made a commitment to increasing diversity on their campuses. Racial/ethnic and socioeconomic diversity is essential to creating a positive learning environment by replicating the real-world heterogeneity of society. All students benefit from diversity on campus. Exposure to different and even opposing viewpoints helps to expand each student’s knowledge of a subject. Additionally, many private schools are dedicated to making a quality education accessible to low and middle-income students to satisfy issues of equality and justice. Private education has shown to increase achievement and attainment, reduce dropout rates, and improve critical thinking skills among youth of color and underprivileged students. While enrollment of youth of color on private school campuses is increasing, differences in racial and ethnic diversity between private and public education still pervade. In 2003–2004, 77% of all private school students were White, compared to the national average of 60% for public schools. Private schools had a lower proportion of Black (9%) and Hispanic (8%) students than public schools (16 and 17% respectively). Differences within sections of private schools also exist. Catholic schools contain a higher proportion of Hispanic students than other private schools. Additionally, Catholic schools were more likely than other religious schools to enroll students of color. This may be due to the fact that Catholicism is a widely practiced religion and has members from various
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ethnicities. Other parochial schools may only appeal to individuals who are of a given religious denominations; who, consequently, are also of a similar ethnic origin. Limited English proficient (LEP) students provide a cultural element to the school campus that might otherwise be absent. These students are able to introduce other students to cultures that may be new. Additionally, they can help native English speakers learning different languages pick up nuances and perfect pronunciation. However, for many schools, the staffing and training issues that arise with providing an LEP program overshadow the benefits offered to students. In 2003–2004, 13% of private schools had LEP students, while 51% of public schools had LEP students. Some private schools may not choose to report the number of LEP students to the federal government, so it is possible that the actual number of LES students in private schools is actually higher.
Student Outcomes and Educational Attainment In recent years, the public has begun to question the difference between public school and private school education. While many private school administrators contend that private school education is superior to public school education, research on the matter is inconsistent. The 2003 National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) scores for private school students were higher than those of public school students in both mathematics and reading, but when adjusted for certain student characteristics (gender, race/ethnicity, disability status, and identification as an English language learner) the differences in scores dramatically changed. For instance, the differences for fourth grade reading and eighth grade mathematics disappeared. For fourth grade mathematics, the public school children scored significantly higher than the private school children. It was only for eighth grade reading that the difference remained significantly higher for private school students. Class is a major factor associated with educational attainment in the U.S. A student from the top income quartile is more than six times as likely as a student from the bottom quartile to graduate with a college degree within 5 years of leaving high school. Students who attend private or parochial schools are more likely to complete a bachelor’s degree or a graduate degree by their mid-20s in comparison to their public school
counterparts. This effect is prevalent throughout all income quartiles. Those in the lowest family income quartile who attended private school were four times as likely to complete college than those who attended public school.
Class Diversification A recent topic of debate among school administrators concerns whether the emphasis on diversifying school campuses on the basis of race has diverted attention from one of the main tenants of diversity, to help those who are underprivileged in the name of equality and justice. Private schools have made efforts to diversify on the basis of race, but little attention has been given to class issues within the schools. One of the only measures of class diversity on campus that has been studied is the difference in the National School Lunch program. In 2003–2004, 19% of private schools were active in the lunch program, with 3% of students participating, while 56% of public schools received the service, with 25% of students participating. It is obvious from these differences that schools need to look at class bias as a future diversity issue to tackle. While many administrators believe that the issue of diversity has reached a plateau, looking at class issues revitalizes the discussion. A private or parochial schools education is considered a privilege. Upper-income individuals send their children to private school to maintain their privilege, give them the best opportunities, and the best possible future. For low-income families, a private school education means gaining privilege, an increased likelihood of attending college, and all the benefits associated with increased education. See also: > Academic achievement in minority children; > Class size; > Limited English proficiency; > Parochial schools
Suggested Reading Braun, H., Jenkins, F., & Grigg, W. (2006). Comparing private schools and public schools using hierarchical linear modeling. Washington, D.C.: National Center for Education Statistics. Strizek, G. A., Pittsonberger, J. L., Riordan, K. E., Lyter, D. M., & Orlofsky, G. F. (2006). Schools and Staffing Survey (SASS) characteristics of schools, districts, teachers, principals, and school libraries in the United States: 2003–2004. Washington, D.C.: National Center for Education Statistics.
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Suggested Resources The National Center for Education Statistics (NCES)—http://nces. ed.gov/: The NCES, located within the U.S. Department of Education, is the primary federal entity that collects and analyzes data related to education. The website provides data and analyses conducted by the group. The National Association of Independent Schools (NAIS)—http:// www.nais.org/: The National Association of Independent Schools represents approximately 1,300 independent schools and associations in the U.S. It acts as the national voice of independent pre-collegiate education and as the center for collective action on behalf of its membership.
Projective Tests Philip S Wong . Maia Jamadi
Many approaches to personality assessment are highly specific or structured and require a person to answer questions that may or may not be experientially relevant. In contrast, those personality tests in which relatively little structure exists (and only minimally shapes a person’s responses) are thought to induce reactions that are more personally meaningful and reflect individual dynamics. These personality tests, or more specifically projective tests, operate based on the conceptual assumption [initially articulated by David Rapaport in 1967] called the ‘‘projective hypothesis.’’ This hypothesis holds that in relatively unstructured or ambiguous tasks, a person’s responses are structured primarily by that individual’s unique personality. The way that a person perceives and interprets the world (which includes the test material) will provide evidence of predominant conflicts, needs, attitudes, and thoughts. Projective tests originated primarily in clinical settings where they were administered and used in conjunction with clinical interviews to help generate hypotheses that could contribute to a more accurate, elaborate, and meaningful diagnosis. Today, projective tests are used in a similar way, and are still among the most popular psychological tests. They are nearly always used with other methods of personality and intellectual assessment (often in a test battery) to arrive at a multifaceted understanding of the respondent. Their use in a battery of tests allows the psychologist to offset the strengths and weaknesses of individual tests in an effort to provide a comprehensive understanding of the person.
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The strengths of projective tests are numerous. Most prominently, projective tests provide an indirect way of assessing personality. Many structured personality tests rely on self-report approaches, which are susceptible to a respondent’s conscious, social biases or defensive efforts (e.g., portraying oneself in a socially desirable manner, or actively filtering what one wants others to know). In contrast, projective tests provide (to varying degrees) a covert means of assessing current functioning. The respondent is often unaware of the kind of understanding or interpretation generated from responses. In this way, projective tests are also less susceptible to faking. Further, projective tests may be quite useful in cross-cultural assessment because of their open-ended nature. This may be especially true of the Rorschach Inkblot Test and Storytelling Tests, because the respondent can answer without being affected too intensely by sociocultural limits (e.g., language limitations, attitudinal differences). The challenge when using such tests in cross-cultural assessment falls on the interpretive approach one takes (this issue will be elaborated further in specific sections below). The weaknesses of projective tests are also noteworthy. If one is evaluating the use of projective tests from a strict psychometric perspective, that is, that the approach is a ‘‘test’’ in a narrow sense, there are many shortcomings. Projective tests often do not have standardized administration; have limited norms; can suffer from variable reliability; and have controversial validity. There are some important exceptions to the aforementioned limitations (notably, the Rorschach Comprehensive System), however, in contrast to other intellectual and personality tests, projective tests do have these limitations. Yet, if one is evaluating the use of projective tests from the standpoint that they are really projective techniques rather than tests, these limitations are less problematic. Projective tests, that is, projective techniques, are used to generate clinically meaningful hypotheses that can help augment the practical value of psychological assessment. In other words, projective techniques can improve the clinical utility of psychological assessment, making therapeutic recommendations potentially more ‘‘user friendly’’ and practical.
Rorschach Inkblot Test The Rorschach Inkblot Test is one of the most frequently used methods of personality assessment and
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is also one of the most popular projective techniques. It was developed by Hermann Rorschach, a Swiss psychiatrist, and its current use in personality assessment was first described in 1921. The Rorschach is comprised of ten cards which have symmetrical inkblots printed on them. Some are in shades of gray and black and others include color. The main objective of the Rorschach is to evaluate an individual’s responses to the inkblots and infer from this an integrated picture of the person, including the individual’s approach to people, experiences of emotion, attitudes toward the self, and level of cognitive functioning. Early in its use, there were various systems of Rorschach administration, scoring, and interpretation. By the 1960s five major systems had developed in the U.S.—those of Samuel Beck, Bruno Klopfer, Marguerite Hertz, Zygmunt Piotrowski, and David Rapaport (with Roy Schafer). In 1974, John E. Exner Jr., first published the Comprehensive System, which is the most commonly used Rorschach scoring system today. In constructing the Comprehensive System, Exner culled all of the empirically sound features from the five major methods and condensed them into a single system. Because of its popularity, the amount of data using the Comprehensive System is quite large, increasing its research utility as compared to other scoring systems. Features of the Comprehensive System, many of which overlap with earlier systems, include the evaluation of responses based on location, quality, and content of the responses. The Comprehensive System is generally considered the most statistically supported Rorschach system. Alternative approaches also exist, although these have less empirical support. Paul Lerner, for example, using a psychoanalytic framework, considers the Rorschach as a method for accessing an individual’s internal world (such as defenses and object representations). Edward Aronow, on the other hand, supports a clinically oriented use of the Rorschach, which treats the administration like a clinical interview focusing on an individual’s perceptual orientation. Aronow also argues for the Rorschach’s utility in psychotherapy, approaching responses similarly to dream interpretation. The ambiguous nature of the test stimuli and the lack of an inherent assessment protocol have proven to be both an advantage and a disadvantage for the Rorschach. One advantage is that the Rorschach can be considered one of the more culturally unbiased psychological tests. Because the stimuli are ambiguous and not language based, there is less of a built-in cultural bias like many other psychology assessment
tools. The respondent is less bound by the culture in which the test was devised as he brings his own perceptual, cognitive, and cultural framework to the test experience. At the same time, there is still room for cultural bias, particularly in interpreting responses (e.g., judging them to be unusual or bizarre). Such disadvantages relate to the lack of a consensually agreed upon scoring system, that potentially has an impact on the integrity of the test. Therefore, as always, it is important for the test administrator to keep the respondent’s cultural context in mind during the interpretative process.
Storytelling Tests Compared to the Rorschach, storytelling tests involve a slightly more direct appraisal of an individual’s experience of the world. The Thematic Apperception Test (TAT), the Children’s Apperception Test (CAT), and the Tell-Me-A-Story (TEMAS) are examples of such tests. The TAT was developed in 1938 by Henry Murray at Harvard University. The TAT consists of 20 cards— 19 containing black and white images and one blank card. The task for the test taker is to make up a story that fits each picture, taking into consideration the characters, their thoughts and feelings, precipitating events, and subsequent events. Interpretation of the TAT involves both qualitative content and narrative analysis. Some cards are intended for males, some for females, some for children, and some for adults. Several cards are related to particular themes, for example, parent–child relationships, competition and rivalry, and death. Although the TAT has been used extensively in personality research, it is difficult to assess its psychometric properties because of the diversity of methods of administration, scoring, and interpretation. The strength of the TAT is its clinical utility. It has been proven valuable in accessing relationship themes in particular. It provides useful information about how one interacts with the world and those in it. Aside from the TAT’s less substantial psychometric properties, a major criticism of the TAT relates to bias. Many of the TAT cards include pictures that clearly reflect the generation in which the test was created— there is a lack of diversity of characters and environments. Therefore, not only is there an inherent cultural bias, there is also a socioeconomic and generational bias. At the same time, the TAT continues to have
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tremendous clinical utility as many respondents seem to still be able to draw on the themes, regardless of their identification with the images. Several variations of the TAT have been created that have attempted to correct for inherent biases. Two of the most popular are the CAT and the TEMAS. Both tests have been devised for children but the TEMAS was created to assess a wider diversity of children. The CAT cards substitute animals for humans, based on the notion that children relate to the interaction of animals more so than to complex human interactions. The TEMAS includes two sets of cards. One set is for White children and one set is for ethnic minorities. The environments depicted on the TEMAS cards also reflect a wider array of socioeconomic statuses.
Other Projective Techniques Other projective tests allow for appraisal of different aspects of an individual’s cognitive functioning in the context of the projective hypothesis. These tests include drawing, word association, sentence completion, and Early Memories Tests (EMT). The two most widely used drawing tests include House-Tree-Person (HTP) and Kinetic Family Drawings (KFDs). As the name suggests, the task of HTP is to draw a house, a tree, and a person. The drawings and the subsequent inquiry are intended to access general areas of conflict and self-perception. In KFDs, the test taker is asked to draw a picture of self and family doing something. The interaction, or lack thereof, among the characters is the primary focus of the interpretation. Although these drawing tests are not considered to have strong psychometric properties, the popularity of these tests has continued because of their clinical utility. Furthermore, because the items of evaluation in drawing tests are pictorial rather than language based, there is less inherent cultural bias than in verbal techniques. Verbal techniques that are considered to be projective tests include both stimuli and response in a verbal format. Two of the most popular are word association and sentence completion tests. In word association tests, the test taker is asked to respond to a series of words by giving the first word that comes to mind. The interpretation is based on the evaluation of thought processes and emotional conflict that may be reflected in word associations. Sentence completion has been utilized in both
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research and clinical practice. These tests fall conceptually between word association and storytelling techniques like the TAT. The task is to complete a sentence for which the beginning, or stem, is provided by the test administrator. The sentence stems are devised to elicit information relevant to personality. Sentence completion tests are often used because of the ease and flexibility of administration. Several variations on sentence completion tasks have been devised, some of which have been standardized. Because these techniques are inherently language based, the test administrator must be cognizant of the test taker’s language abilities. A lack of awareness on the tester’s part could lead to cultural bias and an invalid interpretation. Another verbal technique is the EMT. The respondent is asked to recall and report certain memories from early childhood. Like the TAT, several methods of administration and interpretation exist, which makes it difficult to assess the psychometric properties of the EMT. Also like the TAT, the strength of the EMT is in its clinical utility. It provides useful information about the respondent’s early experiences of significant relationships and of the self. The interpretation centers on qualitative content analysis based on themes and emotions. Although the EMT is a verbal technique, as both stimuli and response are in a verbal format, it is less structured than other verbal techniques. The task is quite open ended and is also more directly personal as the respondent is asked overtly to report on past experiences. Because the respondent is drawing explicitly on past experience within rather flexible parameters, there is potentially less inherent cultural bias than in other verbal techniques. See also: > Intelligence/Intelligence Quotient (IQ); Personality Tests: Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI) and Millon Clinical Multiaxial Inventory (MCMI); > Tell-Me-A-Story (TEMAS) Thematic Apperception Test >
Suggested Reading Anastasi, A., & Urbina, S. (1997). Psychological testing (7th ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall. Rapaport, D. (1967). Principles underlying projective techniques. In M. M. Gill (Ed.), Collected papers of David Rapaport (pp. 91–97). New York: Basic Books. Weiner, I. B. (1998). Principles of Rorschach interpretation. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
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Suggested Resources The Society for Personality Assessment—www.personality.org: This is the website of a collegial organization that promotes the development and ethical use of personality assessment techniques.
Psychosis Rebecca Littman
Overview The term psychosis was first used by Ernst von Feuchtersleben in 1845 as an alternative to insanity and mania. It stems from the Greek word psykhe, meaning mind, and osis, a diseased or abnormal condition. It was used to distinguish disorders of the mind from disorders of the nerves, neurosis. It is not insanity, which is a legal term used so that a person should not be held criminally responsible for his/her actions. Nor does the term refer to psychopathy, a personality disorder frequently associated with violence, lack of empathy, and socially manipulative behavior. Psychosis is a generic psychiatric term for a mental state in which the individual loses contact with reality and suffers from such symptoms as delusions, personality changes, disorganized thinking, and hallucinations. People with psychosis have severely impaired thoughts and perceptions of the world around them. This individual may fail to make sense of his or her surroundings, reacts inaccurately to them, and develops false thoughts or ideas about him or herself. Resulting behaviors can be seen as peculiar, abnormal, or even bizarre. The person is unable to talk about their experiences and understanding of the world because words do not describe their feelings and the thoughts they possess. Psychosis is seen to be a symptom of a severe mental illness and is not a diagnosis. It is particularly associated with schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, and severe clinical depression. Psychoses can either be attributed to an organic cause such as a problem in the structure, functioning, or chemistry of the brain or functional in which no organic cause can be found. However, physical conditions or abnormalities such as brain injury, other neurological disorder, drug
intoxication or withdrawal, lupus, electrolyte disorder, pain syndromes, thyroid disorders, epilepsy, tumors, and circulatory disorders can also induce psychosis. Approximately 1% of the general population and at least 2% of the adolescent population suffer from untreated psychosis. Psychosis occurs equally across all cultures, socioeconomic status, and genders. In most cases, the diagnostic criteria in adolescence differ from those in adulthood. Such criteria may include high levels of anxiety, incoherent speech, loss of concentration, preoccupation with inner thoughts, bizarre actions, and poor emotional control. Symptoms such as delusions and hallucinations may be more difficult to assess in a child than in an adult. The terms early psychosis and first episode psychosis mean that an individual is experiencing psychosis or a psychotic episode for the first time. The symptoms seem so real that often the person does not realize they are experiencing psychosis. Psychotic episodes are periods of time when symptoms of psychosis are strong and interfere with normal life. A psychotic episode commonly isolates the person from others and impairs family and social relationships. Difficulties in school and work performance arise and greater chances for unemployment, substance abuse, depression, self harm, absence from school, suicide, and illegal behavior occur. Lengths of these episodes vary from person to person and can last from only a few hours or days to a year or more; if the person is not given proper treatment. Approximately 3% of the population will experience a psychotic episode at some stage in their life. First episodes usually occur in adolescence or early adult life, and because of this, it is greatly important to treat psychosis early on. However, it is often hard to diagnose in young people because it is often mistaken for normal teenage behavior. It may also only be demonstrated in a child’s behavior, and not in their verbalizations which makes diagnoses even harder.
Symptoms Prodromal Phase The Prodromal Stage is the earliest form of psychosis. Common symptoms are social withdrawal, reduced concentration, depression, sleep disturbance, anxiety, suspiciousness, skipping school or work, and irritability. Most of these symptoms however, can be seen as normal adolescent behavior. During this time, there is a focus on changing a person’s thoughts, feelings, and perceptions.
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Acute Phase—Definite Psychotic Symptoms In the Acute Phase it is hard to miss the symptoms that start to arise. They are intense, active, and continuous. These symptoms begin to interfere with normal life functioning and are often separated between positive and negative symptoms. Patients usually come for treatment with delusions, hallucinations, and thought disorder at this stage. Positive symptoms are viewed as an excess or distortion of the person’s normal functioning.
Delusions Delusions are fixed false beliefs that other people would regard as groundless. They include a feeling of being followed or monitored (paranoid delusions), being plotted against, having special abilities or powers (delusions of grandeur), being controlled by forces or other individuals, among others. The person is unaware of any apparent contradictions. Example: a man that believes that someone has planted a radio transmitter in his brain that sends signals to Mars.
Hallucinations Hallucinations involve seeing, hearing, feeling, smelling, or tasting something that is not actually there. The most common is that of hearing things such as voices or sounds. They can be so real that a person is unaware that what they are hearing is not real. These voices interfere with normal life, making concentration and conversation difficult. The voices can be helpful, or hostile and nasty. This is the most recognizable symptom of psychosis. Example: a feeling as if one is covered in ants; seeing blue cows walking by; and smelling a constant odor that is not present.
Disorganized Speech or Behavior A person moves quickly from one topic to the next, or a person’s speech may not even be understandable. The behavior of the person may be disorganized as well. The person has problems performing normal activities such as cleaning, cooking, or even displaying appropriate responses such as laughing while talking about a death. One can even suffer from catatonia.
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Gestures, facial expressions, and emotions lose their natural cohesion. The person is unaware of his/her bizarre behavior and/or thought patterns. Negative symptoms show a decrease in or loss of normal functions. This includes little display of emotions, not speaking very much, difficulties in thinking or coming up with ideas, decreased ability to initiate tasks, lowered levels of motivation or drive. These symptoms can lead to depression, anxiety, suicidal thoughts, substance abuse, difficulties functioning, and/or sleep disturbance. If a student exhibits infrequent unusual/odd changes in behavior or thoughts, such as change in their perception of objects, brief bursts of hearing voices or seeing visions, unusual thoughts about themselves or people around them, depression, anxiety, reduced concentration and attention, reduced motivation and energy, and/or sleep disturbance, this could signal the beginning of the prodromal phase, and he/she should seek help immediately. The earlier the intervention, the better the outcome for the student. Unfortunately, not all cultures have equal access to treatment and services. Treatments must be tailored to age, gender, and culture. Overcoming the stigma of mental health treatment can offer equal opportunity across cultures and socioeconomic statuses to seek the help they need. Age, gender, and culture affect the diagnosis, course, and treatment of psychosis. There are fewer diagnostic and treatment procedures for African Americans than Whites. Also, major discrimination against minority groups promotes poor mental health. Racism and discrimination place minorities at a higher risk of developing mental disorders without hope for amelioration.
Causes At this time there are several theories about what causes psychosis, but nothing has been proven as definite. Because psychosis occurs in a variety of mental and physical disorders, it is likely to have multiple causes. Biology, stress, and drug use are three of the most common theories.
Biology There is strong evidence that some psychoses involve a dysfunction in the neurotransmitter in the brain,
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dopamine. Dopamine-blocking drugs tend to reduce psychotic symptoms, and drugs that boost dopamine activity can trigger psychosis in some people. It is widely believed that psychosis originates in the disorder of the metabolism in a person’s brain, especially the regulatory system. However, this research has not been conclusive. Individuals who have close relatives that experience psychosis are at greater risk of developing psychosis. There might be an inherited gene that can make a person more vulnerable to psychosis. Such research is being done on twins and adoption studies. It has been seen that both environment and genetic factors play a role in the development of psychosis. Researchers have also found mutations in several genes that may contribute to several disorders that include psychosis.
Stress People have different sensitivities to their environments, and in particular, to stress in life. Some people are more sensitive to their environment and stress, and are more likely to develop psychosis in response. The amount of stress that may trigger psychosis is likely to be different from one person to another. Social circumstances, upbringing, communication, mental attitudes, and social relationships can also play a role in vulnerability. However, researchers believe it is both biology and stress that play a role together, not separately, to form psychosis. Racial stereotypes and negative images can be internalized, lowering an individual’s self-worth and affecting one’s ability to deal with stress. Poorer living conditions, in which poverty, crime, and violence are persistent stressors, can also affect a person’s mental health. Not having a steady support system in a school, family, or community can increase the risk of psychosis. Schools can teach individuals how to deal with stressors and help give children appropriate support when it is absent in the home.
Treatment Treating psychosis involves education, medication, close monitoring of symptoms, stress management, and a strong supportive environment. If treatment is started in the prodromal stage, there is a greater success rate of recovery.
Recovery Stage The Recovery Stage marks a decrease or fade in acute symptoms. However, some symptoms may linger. Behavior may be seen as weak and lethargic.
Medication Medication can prepare the groundwork for therapy and rehabilitation. It helps to reduce tension and fear and relieves symptoms of psychosis. It is critical in preventing a relapse. There are many different medications available to treat psychosis. Medications used to treat psychosis are considered typical or atypical antipsychotics. Typical antipsychotics are haloperidol and loxapine. Atypical antipsychotics include risperidone, olanzapine, and clozapine which have fewer side effects. Antidepressant and mood stabilizers can also be used with the other medications. Unfortunately, many of these medications have side effects such as redness, dry mouth, blurred vision, and weight gain. Many people may not have access to proper medications due in part to prejudice or poverty.
Education Becoming educated about psychosis is an important part of treatment. It allows the individual and family to understand the experience of psychosis and what to expect with recommended treatments. It is important that the person suffering from psychosis learns to accept their disorder and what it entails. It is important to understand that psychosis requires long-term treatment.
Drugs Psychosis can be induced by drugs or can be assisted by drugs. Such drugs are amphetamines, marijuana, LSD. This may be seen from the changes in the brain and blood sugar levels these drugs produce.
Psychotherapy There is good evidence that psychotherapy can reduce distress, intensity, and frequency of the experiences. It
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provides a calm, supportive, and nonjudgmental atmosphere with the aim of helping the person understand their experiences, develop coping strategies, and improve their relationships and quality of life. Family therapy can strengthen the family and enable them to identify what is helpful and unhelpful. It is important that the person knows there is someone who can understand their experience. See also: > Anxiety; > Childhood depression; > Delusion; > Schizophrenia; > Substance abuse
Suggested Reading Bagajewicz, M. J., MacEwan, G. W., & Honer, W. G. (2004). Best care in early psychosis intervention. New York: Taylor & Francis. French, P., & Morrison, A. P. (2004). Early detection and cognitive therapy for people at high risk of developing psychosis: A treatment approach. New York: Wiley, Johns & Sons. Johannessen, J. O. (2006). Evolving psychosis: Different stages, different treatments. New York: Taylor & Francis.
Suggested Resources Early Psychosis Prevention and Intervention Centre—http://www. eppic.org.au/: Discusses different types of psychosis-spectrum disorder, phases of assessment, treatment, and recovery. Early Psychosis Intervention Program—http://www.psychosissucks.ca/epi/: This website provides a full description of psychosis and facts. It emphasizes the importance of early intervention with psychosis and the different treatment plans involved.
Psychotropics Renato D Alarco´n
A psychotropic is a drug or a pharmacologic agent that has as its main target the totality or partial areas of the central nervous system (CNS). The term phrenotropic has also been used in the past. Currently, ‘‘psychopharmacologic agent,’’ or ‘‘compound’’ seem to be more popular terms. These compounds have a variety of applications and, in their most generalized and legal use, are
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important components of the therapeutic arsenal of psychiatrists and other mental health professionals, as well as other areas of medicine. The term also includes drugs that may have an illegal use. Psychotropic agents are liposoluble and primarily metabolized in the liver, so that more easily excretable metabolites can be produced. With some exceptions, the metabolites are generally inactive. Their mechanisms of action vary from compound to compound, but they are mostly connected with the so-called neurotransmitter systems or groups of compounds carrying biochemical ‘‘messages’’ between neurons (individual cells of the Central Nervous System) or neuronal networks. The main neurotransmitter systems are dopamine, norepinephrine, serotonin, glutamatergic acid, and the gamma-aminobutyric acid—the latter considered more as a modulator or regulating agent than a neurotransmitter. The metabolic processes are ultimately linked to enzyme systems codified by different genes, the best known of which is the Cytochrome P450 system. On the other hand, psychotropic agents act in a variety of processes that take place both in the preand post-synaptic areas of neurons (synapsis is the space between neurons), as well as in the intersynaptic space itself. At the post-synaptic area, there are receptors to be occupied by these molecules; the ‘‘saturation’’ of these receptors may explain weak or deficient clinical results from the medications, or the production of toxic symptoms. Finally, there are a variety of potential factors determining inter-individual variations in the response to psychotropics. They include pharmacokinetics that involves what the body does to the drug (absorption, distribution, metabolism, elimination), pharmacodynamics or what the drug does to the body, type of formulation, doses, and modality of administration. Other factors are related to the patient (genetic, physiological, pathological, and psychological), or to the environment (e.g., concomitant administration of two or more competitive agents, diet, use of alcohol and tobacco, exposure to contaminating agents such as pesticides).
Types of Psychotropics According to their primary use in psychiatry, psychotropic drugs are divided into antipsychotics, antidepressants, mood stabilizers, anti-anxiety and other psychotropic agents. Drugs of abuse will also be briefly mentioned.
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Antipsychotics Also known as neuroleptics, major tranquilizers, and ataractics (this latter name, much less used at the present time), these compounds are mostly used, as the name implies, in psychoses (schizophrenia being the most typical), due to their sedative and tranquilizing effects. Actually, the history of modern psychopharmacology started with the development of the first antipsychotic, chlorpromazine, in the early 1950s by Delay and Deniker, two French researchers. Chlorpromazine and related drugs, including what are now known as classic (or ‘‘old’’) antipsychotics, improved significantly symptoms of behavioral disorganization, altered thought and perceptual processes (delusions and hallucinations), and some of the social handicaps that the patients experienced. Nevertheless, they produced significant adverse reactions or side effects, including extrapyramidal or parkinsonian symptoms such as tremor, motor slowness, speech difficulties, neuromuscular tightness, amenorrhea and hyperprolactinemia leading to galactorrhea. Furthermore, these medications had limited effect on the so-called negative symptoms of schizophrenia. Among the classic antipsychotics, most of them belonging to the phenothiazines family, the most frequently used have been, in addition to chlorpromazine, levomepromazine, perphenazine, trifluoperazine, zuclopenthixol, thioridazine, and haloperidol (a butyrophenone). Other drugs included in this group are thioxanthene, indolone, loxapine, and pimozide. The neurotransmitter involved with most if not all of these compounds is dopamine. There are two main families of dopaminergic (i.e., with affinity for dopamine) receptors: D1, coupled with the so-called protein G, and D2 with proteins GI. Due to the anti-dopaminergic effect of antipsychotics, the discovery and use of these compounds contributed to the development of the dopaminergic hypothesis of psychoses, particularly schizophrenia. The possible dysfunction of the dopaminergic system in schizophrenia has been confirmed by procedures such as functional magnetic resonance imaging ( f MRI), and positron emission tomography (PET). Since the early 1990s, a variety of new compounds called ‘‘atypical antipsychotics,’’ because they do not follow the metabolic pattern seen in the classic neuroleptics, have come into the market. The first atypical antipsychotic was clozapine, followed by olanzapine, risperidone, quetiapine, ziprasidone, and aripiprazole.
The production of several others was suspended due to undesirable side effects. The development of a new molecule for the treatment of psychosis takes from 5 to 8 years.
Antidepressants The first antidepressants were the monoamine oxidase inhibitors or MAOIs (tranylcypromine, phenelzine, and isocarboxazid). While effective and a significant addition to the therapeutic arsenal, back in the early 1950s, these medications were practically off the market less than 20 years later due to the requirements of complicated dietary arrangements to prevent undesirable side effects such as confusion, agitation, sweating, fever, muscular twitching, hypertension, and coma (all these symptoms grouped under the label of ‘‘serotonin syndrome’’). Recently, some MAOIs have been reintroduced using softer ways of administration such as skin patches for a less aggressive release into the human body. In the late 1950s the introduction of the tricyclic antidepressants, with its prototype compound, imipramine, brought a successful advance in the field. For the next 30 years, these compounds were the main tool in the pharmacological treatment of depression. They contributed to the development of the catecholamine/indolamine hypotheses of mood disorders with norepinephrine and serotonin as the prototypical neurotransmitters. The main tertiary amines (imipramine, amitryptiline, and clomipramine) are demethylated and transformed in active metabolites or secondary amines such as nortriptyline, desipramine, protryptiline and desmethylclomipramine, the first three also antidepressants in their own right. Their mechanism of action has to do with the correction of the depletion of epinephrine and serotonin in the intersynaptic space. Other antidepressant families include the so-called heterocyclics, such as amoxapine, and trazodone. By the late 1980s, a new group of antidepressants belonging to the generic label of selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) have come to dominate the pharmacological treatment of depression, primarily because their effect does not seem to be related to plasmatic levels, and also because the side effects may be more benign, and thus, the risk/benefit ratio is more favorable. By inhibiting the reuptake of serotonin into the presynaptic neuron, the availability of the neurotransmitter is higher, thus counteracting the depletion
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that seems to provide a biochemical explanation of most or all the typical depressive symptoms. The first SSRI in history was fluoxetine. Other compounds have followed, and the names of sertraline, paroxetine, citalopram, escitalopram, and fluvoxamine have become well known. Even though the results may not differ dramatically from one SSRI to another, the popularity of these compounds beyond psychiatry and into the practice of primary care physicians and other providers is evident. Finally, another group of antidepressants which are not tricyclics nor SSRIs (and are therefore called by same as ‘‘atypical’’) includes unique molecules such as heterocyclic compounds (maprotiline), bupropion, mianserin,mirtazapine,moclobemide,nefazodone,revoxetine, and duloxetine. Mixed compounds that work with both norepinephrine and serotonin systems are best represented by venlafaxine. One of the main driving forces in the search for new antidepressants (and psychotropics in general) is the production of less side effects such as weight gain, loss of libido, tiredness and gastrointestinal problems. There is evidence that diet low in tryptophane alters the serotonergic neurotransmission due to subsequent depletion of serotonin; this depletion has been found to be associated with significant depression and suicidal risk (in extreme cases, also with homicidal behaviors), even in the presence of normal levels of the enzyme tryptophane hydroxylase in the brains of those patients. There are up to 14 serotonergic receptors, a large family with implications for different disorders of the CNS. Interestingly enough, the main serotonergic receptor 5HT1A is also activated by atypical anxiolytics such as buspirone, and three atypical antipsychotics (clozapine, ziprasidone, and aripiprazole) which then are said to also have antidepressant and anxiolytic effects.
Mood Stabilizers The most representative psychotropic in this family is lithium carbonate, initially described in the late 1940s but forgotten until its reintroduction by the mid1960s. Lithium has indeed been very useful in the control of manic crisis, rapid cycling moods, and even as a co-adjuvant of antidepressants. It is generally a safe compound which, however, when used for longer periods may have an impact on kidneys (diabetes insipidus) or thyroid (hypothyroidism). Regular assessment
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of lithium plasma levels assists in the monitoring and prevention of these undesirable side effects. In addition to lithium, other mood stabilizers belong basically to anti-epileptic or anticonvulsant families of compounds. They include carbamazepine, valproic acid, lamotrigine, and topiramate as well as calcium-channel blockers such as verapamil. Sometimes the alpha-2 agonist clonidine is also considered a mood stabilizer as are other benzodiazepines (lorazepam) and some of the atypical antipsychotics. The mechanisms of action for mood stabilization are not well known at present.
Anti-Anxiety Agents Also known as anxiolytics or minor tranquilizers, this group includes benzodiazepines (the largest family), buspirone, antihistamine derivatives such as hydroxyzine, and old sedatives such as barbiturates and meprobamate, largely unused nowadays. The benzodiazepine family is one of the most popular groups of psychotropics, two of its members (diazepam and chlordiazepoxide) are among the top selling drugs in the market. They are used by millions of persons who may have from minor bouts of anxiety to significant panic attacks. They have sedative and hypnotic effects, alleviate symptoms of anxiety in a relatively rapid manner, and present little side effects in the short term. However, when used for more than 6 weeks, the potential for habituation, development of tolerance, and eventual dependency and addiction, increases. Among the main benzodiazepines following the original chlordiazepoxide and diazepam, other compounds such as lorazepam, temazepam, alprazolam, and clonazepam are in current use. The mechanism of action of the benzodiazepines has to do mostly with the gamma-aminobutyric acid or GABA-ergic system. It also seems to compete with calcium receptors in different parts of the CNS, particularly amygdala and other areas of the limbic system.
Other Psychotropic Agents Old sedatives/hypnotics such as meprobamate have been mentioned. Antihistaminic agents, used primarily as anti-allergic compounds, do also have significant
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sedative effect; these include popular drugs such as Benadryl. Zolpidem has been recently introduced.
Drugs of Abuse Also considered psychotropic agents but forbidden as therapeutic agents are a variety of compounds also known as psychodysleptics. They include hallucinogenics such as lysergic acid, stimulants such as amphetamines and amphetamine-related compounds, phencyclidine, mescaline, peyote, ketamine, and others. Some authors also use the concept of psychotropic to designate drugs with high abuse potential including opiates or opioids, stimulant, and others such as cannabis, nicotine, volatile inhalants, and miscellaneous intoxicants.
Conclusion Modern psychopharmacology uses a great variety of psychotropic agents. They have made a significant difference in the lives of millions. A contemporary phenomenon is the combination of different classes of psychotropics for the treatment of different conditions, which makes the classification described above somewhat irrelevant. Antidepressants are being used for anxiety and other disorders, anxiolytics are used in cases of psychotic agitation, and antipsychotics are also used for moderate or major cases of anxiety. Mood stabilizers are used practically in all kinds of conditions. Occasionally it is a matter of higher or lower doses, in other cases it is a justification of mechanisms of actions on the basis of the neurotransmitter systems involved. Finally, in many other cases, it may be the provider’s eagerness to assist his/her patients in the best possible way. Be that as it may, psychotropic agents are an undeniable part of life in our world today. See also: > Anxiety; > Depression; > Mania/hypomania; > Schizophrenia; > Social implications of medications/ illness
Suggested Reading Baldessarini, R. J. (1996). Drugs and the treatment of psychiatric disorders. In L. S. Goodman, L. E. Limbird, P. B. Milinoff, R. W. Ruddon, & A. G. Gilman (Eds.), The pharmacological basis of therapeutics (9th ed.) (pp. 399–430). New York: McGraw-Hill.
Manji, H. K., Bowden, C., & Belmaker, R. H. (2000). Bipolar medications: Mechanisms of action. Washington D.C.: American Psychiatric Press. Schatzberg, A., & Nemeroff, C. B. (Eds) (2005). Textbook of psychopharmacology (2nd ed.). Washington D.C.: American Psychiatric Press, Inc.
PTA >
Parent-Teacher Association (PTA)
PTSD >
Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)
Puerto Rican Youth Jason G Irizarry
Puerto Ricans, who also refer to themselves as Puertorriquen˜os, Boricuas (a derivative of Borinquen, the name given to the island by the original, native inhabitants), and/or Nuyoricans (describing those born in New York), have had a colonial relationship with the United States (U.S.) for more than 100 years. Consequently, Puerto Ricans are free to travel to the U.S. ‘‘Mainland’’ without restriction. Thus, almost half of all Puerto Ricans—who number more than 6.5 million in total—live in the U.S. In addition, there has been a constant circular migration pattern among Puerto Ricans with significant numbers of individuals moving back and forth from the island to the mainland and vice-versa. Therefore, any examination of Puerto Rican youth should take into account both the island and the Mainland contexts. Furthermore, because of problematic economic, health, and academic indicators
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associated with a large percentage of Puerto Rican youth, there is a need for practitioners and service providers to learn more about this group of young people.
Education More than one-third of all Puerto Ricans are under the age of 18. Because Puerto Ricans as a group are a relatively young population, there are significant implications for schools. Education is valued among most Puerto Ricans. The education system on the island is very similar to that in the states. It includes a public system of kindergarten through grade 12 schooling and boasts several reputable public and private universities. However, despite the extended presence of Puerto Ricans in the U.S., Puerto Rican youth on the mainland have not experienced widespread educational success. In fact, only approximately 63% of Puerto Ricans in the U.S. over the age of 25 are high school graduates- compared to over 80% of the total U.S. population. The percentage of Puerto Rican college graduates is equally disconcerting with approximate 12% of Puerto Ricans having completed a bachelor’s degree or higher as compared to 25% of the total U.S. population.
Cultural Hybridity The ease with which Puerto Ricans can travel back and forth from the U.S. mainland to the island, as well as the relatively short distances between Puerto Rican ethnic enclave communities in the states (the majority of which are in the Northeast) and the island, facilitate Puerto Ricans retaining strong cultural connections
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with the island and fosters the development of strong ethnic identities among many Puerto Rican youth. Circular migration also contributes to the development of hybrid identities—created as a result of interaction with individuals of diverse cultural backgrounds— where Puerto Rican culture is influenced by American culture, and values and Puerto Ricans contribute to cultural expressions in the states. For example, even though Spanish is considered to be the ‘‘mother tongue’’ of many Puerto Ricans, the majority of Puerto Ricans on the mainland and a large percentage of Puerto Ricans on the island speak English fluently. Spanglish, a mixture of Spanish and English, has also emerged as a popular discourse among many Puerto Ricans. Conversely, there has been a distinctly Puerto Rican influence in several areas of U.S. culture. For instance, the emergence of Reggaeton and other Puerto Rican musical forms within popular music. Although Puerto Rican youth have struggled to define themselves within a system in which they are simultaneously U.S. citizens and colonial subjects, they have, throughout history, played a significant role in Puerto Rican’s struggles for civil rights and social justice. Their successful participation in organizations such as the Young Lords, Aspira, and the movement to get the U.S. Navy to stop bombing the Puerto Rican island Vieques evoke hope for a brighter future for Puerto Rican youth. See also: Americans
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Suggested Reading Vidal-Ortiz, S. (2004). On being a White person of color: Using autoethnography to understand Puerto Ricans’ racialization. Qualitative Sociology, 27(2), 179–203.
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Race Sherrie Lynn Proctor . Amanda Smith Collins . Erin A Harper . Stephen D Truscott
The meaning of ‘‘race’’ has been long debated. The term is generally used to designate subgroups within a larger population, or even within all of humanity. Despite common usages, there are many variations in what the term ‘‘race’’ actually describes. Some believe race refers to biological characteristics reflected in an individual’s physical, mental, and behavioral traits. Others assert that race is a social-cultural construct encompassing historical, political, and cultural factors within American society. This latter view is held by the United States (U.S.) Census Bureau and the National Center for Educational Statistics, both of which adopted the U.S. Office of Management and Budget’s 1997 guidelines for data collection related to race and ethnicity data. For these agencies, race and ethnicity categories are based on social, cultural, and political definitions rather than biological, anthropological, or genetic criteria. Regardless of one’s perspective, classifying people on the basis of race is prevalent not only in society at large, but also in psychological and educational research, theory, and practice. The most widely accepted current racial classifications are used by the U.S. Census where people are asked to self-identify as White, Black or African American, American Indian/ Alaskan Native, Asian, Native Hawaiian/Other Pacific Islander, some other race, or two or more races. Importantly, the U.S. Census Department notes that the concept of race is different from that of Hispanic origin. However, although often used as a categorical variable, definitions for the term ‘‘race’’ are not as straightforward as mere categories for data collection, and the connotations and usages for ‘‘race’’ are numerous. Race can encompass genetic traits, nationality, history, geography, and lineage. Neither is the term ‘‘race’’ interchangeable with ‘‘ethnicity,’’ which refers to a shared history and culture, nor with ‘‘culture,’’ which refers to socially transmitted information (e.g., behaviors, beliefs, and attitudes). Indeed, ethnicity and culture may or may not be shared within a particular race, and people from multiple racial categories may share a common culture or ethnicity.
Construction of Race, Ethnicity, and Identity in the U.S. As noted, some posit that ‘‘race’’ is a socio-cultural construct rather than a biological category. Advocates of the socio-cultural position point out that over time in some societies such as the U.S., race as a cultural category has shifted to incorporate immigrant groups. For example, when Italians, Irish, and Eastern European Jews first arrived in America, they were viewed as ‘‘ethnic Whites’’ or ‘‘non-White.’’ Over time, these groups’ racial status changed to White. Yet, those who argue that race is a biological category counter that these groups were only able to transcend to White status because their physical characteristics resembled those of the accepted White race. African Americans, on the other hand, have not been able to easily cross racial categories in America. While this may be at least partly accounted for by noticeable physical differences between people of African and European descent, it is likely also due in part to the historical context in which Africans were brought to America as slaves for residents of European descent. Since that time in U.S. history, the term race has been used frequently to distinguish between people of color, most often Blacks and Whites. This pronounced color divide was long maintained by laws and policies developed to encourage social and economic discrimination against African Americans and other non- White racial groups such as American Indians and Hispanics. Today, the concept of race has become more complicated in the U.S. as new immigrant groups with a variety of physical characteristics arrive willingly without historical ties to slavery. Also in the U.S., recent rapid immigration from Latin America has challenged previously accepted racial categories, making existing categories less clear and necessitating changes in the ways demographers categorize U.S. citizens. In 2000, for example, more than 40% of Hispanics chose the ‘‘some other race’’ category on the U.S. Census form, compared with only 1% of the non-Hispanic population. As they may identify with more than one race, Hispanics often categorize themselves by ethnicity, not race. The distinguishing feature between these sometimes confusing terms being that the race construct is based on skin color, while ethnicity is based on ancestry.
C. S. Clauss-Ehlers (Ed.), Encyclopedia of Cross-Cultural School Psychology, DOI 10.1007/978-0-387-71799-9, # Springer Science+Business Media LLC 2010
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Changing Demographics, Immigration Policies, and Racial Tensions Population trends indicate that the racial/ethnic makeup of many industrialized countries is changing rapidly. By 2050, half of the U.S. population will be people of color, with the greatest increases in the Hispanic and Asian populations. These changes have been fueled by substantial increases in immigration from Asia, Latin America, and the Caribbean compared to pre1980s immigration that was dominated by people from Canada and Europe. In 2003, immigrants and their children made up 23% of the U.S. population. Rapid changes in immigration have rendered fundamental changes in society. Interracial marriages have steadily increased and by 2050, one in five Americans is projected to identify as having a multiracial background. American immigration patterns coupled by popular conceptions about race have long influenced public policy. Prior to 1882, anyone could immigrate to America. However, since then America’s immigration policies have been based on inclusionary and exclusionary practices. For instance, the first immigration law, the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act, suspended immigrants from China for 60 years. Yet, an immigration law passed in 1921 encouraged immigrants from Western Europe because they were thought to assimilate better into American society compared to those from Eastern and Southern Europe. Undoubtedly, immigration policies over the years have not only been tied to ideas about race, but also changed the racial, ethnic, and cultural makeup of America. This trend continues. In 2006, for instance, many citizens and politicians are considering comprehensive immigration reform meant to clarify the status of an estimated 8.5 million illegal immigrants who reside in America and represent many racial categories. The current debate about immigration reform is tied closely to conceptions about race in America and focuses on which racial and ethnic groups should remain in power or have access to the nation’s resources and which to exclude. The intersection of race, immigration, and policy provided clear evidence that ‘‘race’’ remains relevant to U.S. educators in the twenty-first century. Increasing immigration, both legal and illegal and most often by people of color, has caused tension among some Americans who believe immigrants tax America’s social, educational, and economic systems. Socially, immigrants often bring with them their own cultural
norms, values, and language. Many Americans believe that immigrants’ use of their native languages threatens America’s national identity. Such positions influence educational policies developed for English Language Learners (ELLs) in America’s public schools. In terms of economics, opponents of immigration argue that illegal immigrants take jobs away from American citizens, work for less money, and are generally taxing to the American public since they may not pay taxes yet often have access to free medical care and education. On the other hand, immigration advocates typically argue that America was founded by immigrants, has always been a land of immigrants, and that newcomers add wealth and diversity to our nation. Thus, opposing points of views on immigration and immigration policy combined with rapid increases in America’s cultural diversity have set the tone for heightened racial discord.
School-Aged Population and Race For some children of color, race may be a barrier to receiving an adequate public education. Although the Supreme Court ruled to desegregate America’s schools as a result of the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education ruling, public schooling in the U.S. is far from integrated and equal. Re-segregation has emerged as a trend over the past two decades as many efforts to integrate and ensure equal education amongst racial groups have been reversed. Since the Supreme Court’s 1991 decision in the Board of Education of Oklahoma City v. Dowell to revert to neighborhood school assignments, many state and federal programs designed to balance schools racially, while not always successful (e.g., busing minority students to schools with a high White population and vice versa), have been eliminated. Housing segregation by racial and socio-economic groups is a major reason for unequal public school funding. Schools are funded primarily by local property taxes. When low income people of color are confined to housing in poor, urban areas and low-income minority suburbs, segregated, low-income schools are almost inevitably produced. Children of color who attend schools in poor urban, rural, or suburban communities are more likely to encounter poorly qualified teachers, substandard curricula, overcrowded classes, and fewer technologically advanced resources. In addition to concerns about funding and equity, race and its relationship to special educational placement
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is particularly relevant for school-aged children of color. Government reports and research indicate that minority students, typically those identified as African American, Latino, and Native American, are often overrepresented in special education programs, while students identified as White, Caucasian, and/or European American are overrepresented in gifted education programs. Children of color are more likely to spend less time in general education classrooms and more time in special education than their White classmates. Reasons for the overidentification of minority students in special education programs abound: lack of standard definitions for high incidence disabilities; misdiagnosis; unconscious bias on the part of educational institutions against specific racial groups, perceptions of genetic inferiority and racism; bias in the referral, assessment, and placement processes; lack of cultural exposure and/or cultural disadvantage related to the high numbers of minority students who are impoverished; incongruence between the various learning styles of minority students and traditional classroom pedagogy; and the effects of institutionalized racism on the motivation and self-concept of minority students. Moreover, research also suggests that there is a tendency for students of color who are also ELLS or considered to have Limited English Proficiency (LEP) to be underidentified for needed special education services in favor of restrictive and segregated English as a Second Language (ESL) or bilingual classrooms or services; school personnel may assume that the academic difficulties of these students are language-related, rather than indicative of a legitimate disability. Awareness of the issue of racial disproportionality in special education and gifted education programs, as well as the factors that may contribute to this phenomenon, are critical characteristics of a cross-culturally competent school psychologist.
School Psychologists’ Job Roles and Race In 2003, 42% of public school children were reported as children of color, while the profession of school psychology remained predominantly White. Currently, school psychology demographic data indicate that although 93% of school psychologists are White, 98% of school psychologists report serving students who are members of racial minority groups. Yet, studies examining the cross-cultural competency of school
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psychology trainees have found weaknesses in training related to working with racially diverse populations. Few multicultural courses are offered during school psychology training and trainees often have limited exposure to racially diverse student populations during practicum and internship experiences. Thus, there is a need for all school psychologists to increase their crosscultural competencies. To facilitate this, the National Association of School Psychologists (NASP) developed guidelines for six domains of culturally competent service delivery. School psychologists who are adept in cross-cultural practices can collaborate effectively with parents, educators, mental health providers, and administrators to best serve an increasingly racially diverse student population. Most school psychologists spend the majority of their time completing initial evaluations to inform educational placement decisions. Some blame the disproportionate numbers of minority students who are labeled and placed in special education on bias in the standardized assessment tests used in this process. In fact, the over-classification of minority students has become so problematic in some districts that the Federal Office of Civil Rights has been called in to help reduce special education placement of minority children. This issue becomes increasingly salient when one acknowledges the increasing numbers of immigrant students with native languages other than English in America’s public schools. Some contend that a school psychologist who is unfamiliar with the diverse background of children may make assumptions that lead to inaccurate diagnosis and treatment. Some things cross-culturally competent school psychologists, mental health providers, and other educators can do to help decrease assessment bias include: (a) use of a multi-modal approach to assessment which involves examining information from various sources (e.g., behavioral observations, parent/teacher/student interviews, academic assessment, cognitive assessment, functional behavioral assessment, curriculum-based assessment, and other assessment forms); (b) adhere to the NASP guidelines for culturally-competent service delivery; and (c) consult with other educators who are familiar with the referred students’ racial background. An additional job role school psychologists often engage in is consultation. A national survey of school psychologists found that 28% completed 50 or more consultations during the 2004–2005 school year. Consultation within schools is a voluntary problem-solving
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process during which the consultant (i.e., school psychologist) provides indirect service delivery to the client (i.e., student) through consultation with the consultee(s) (e.g., teacher or parent). Race is particularly pertinent in school-based consultation since most school psychologists and teachers are White. Although limited, the findings on race in school-based consultation are interesting. Some findings suggested that consultants’ race did not have an impact on teachers’ perceptions of consultant effectiveness as much as consultant attention to multicultural and race-related information. Yet, some researchers argued that within the consultation process, school psychologists’ race is a critical factor if they are viewed as agents of interpersonal influence with teachers. Available cross-cultural consultation models can be used by cross-culturally competent school psychologists to improve service delivery to students of all races. Collette Ingraham, a researcher within school psychology, maintained that consultation practices needed to be investigated through a multicultural perspective and proposed a model of multicultural consultation that includes five domains: (1) Consultant Learning and Development. This involves the consultant understanding her own culture, respecting and valuing other cultures, understanding cultural saliency and how to build bridges across differences, and developing culturally relevant interventions appropriate for the consultee and client. (2) Consultee Learning and Development. This domain focuses on building consultees’ knowledge, skill, objectivity, and confidence. (3) Cultural Variations in the Consultation Constellation. This domain focuses on the similarities between consultant, consultee, and client. (4) Contextual and Power Influences. This domain focuses on influences by the larger society, disruptions in the balance of power, and cultural similarity within a differing cultural system. (5) Hypothesized Methods for Supporting Consultee and Client Success. This domain helps the consultant identify ways to support the consultee and client in cross-cultural learning, seeking cultural guides and teachers, and model bridging and processes for cross-cultural learning. Finally, counseling has been noted as a preferred job role for many school psychologists. A national survey found that 9% of school psychologists engaged in
thirty or more counseling sessions during the 2004– 2005 school year. Unfortunately, little research exists within the school psychology literature that examinies the effects of racial mismatch on school psychologists’ counseling practices. However, noting the need for school psychologists to have cross-cultural counseling competencies, Rogers and Ponterotto developed the Multicultural School Psychology Counseling Competency Scale (MSPCCS) that was published in 1997. The MSPCCS is a brief measure that assesses and evaluates the multicultural competencies of school psychology trainees. The MSPCCS is a valuable tool given that a large proportion of school psychologists report that they are not confident about their preparation to work with diverse populations. Further, this measure can help identify areas for targeted intervention in an effort to increase the cross-cultural competency of future school psychologists who, as practitioners, will undoubtedly encounter a racially, linguistically, and culturally diverse student population. See also: > Cultural diversity; > Culture; > Demographics; > Ethnic minority youth; > Ethnicity; > People of color
Suggested Reading Arnold, M., & Lassman, M. E. (2003). Overrepresentation of minority students in special education. Education, 124, 230–236. Chamberlain, S. P. (2005). Recognizing and responding to cultural differences in the education of culturally and linguistically diverse learners. Intervention in School and Clinic, 40, 195–211. Harley, D. A., Jolivette, K., McCormick, K., & Tice, K. (2002). Race, class, and gender: A constellation of positionalities with implications for counseling. Journal of Multicultural Counseling and Development, 30, 216–238. Loe, S. A., & Miranda, A. H. (2005). An examination of ethnic incongruence in school-based psychological services and diversity-training experiences among school psychologists. Psychology in the Schools, 42(4), 419–430.
Suggested Resources National Center for Education Statistics (NCES)—http://nces.ed. gov/: NCES is the primary federal entity (located within the U.S. Department of Education and the Institute of Education Sciences) for collecting and analyzing data related to education. The National Center for Culturally Responsive Educational Systems (NCCRESt)—http://www.nccrest.org/about.html: NCCRESt, funded by the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Special
Racial/ethnic group differences Education Programs, provides technical assistance and professional development to state and local school systems to close the achievement gap between students from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds and their peers, and reduce inappropriate referrals to special education by supporting a culturally responsive education for all students.
Racial/Ethnic Group Differences Jocelyn Williams . Elias Mpofu . Mercy R Montsi
Traditionally, the terms race and ethnicity have been used interchangeably within the scientific community and the general public. A prime example of the presumed interchangeability of these terms is reflective in the mixture of principles and criteria that the United States (U.S.) Census uses to distinguish ‘‘race’’ and ‘‘ethnicity,’’ including national origin, language, minority status, and physical appearance. Popular connotations of race still tend to be associated with biological expressions (e.g., skin color) and those of ethnicity with culture, even though there is recognition within academia and elsewhere that ‘‘race’’ is a socially constructed concept and is not biologically based. More explicitly, there is only one human race, the homo sapien which would obviate any comparison of races. The everyday notion of race as skin color is a social construction in so far as social categories are applied to persons based on skin color hue (e.g., light, colored), and presumed ‘‘racial differences’’ are based on the assumption that skin color was the same as race. The contemporary anthropological view of the term ethnicity is that it is not interchangeable with the term race. Ethnicity is viewed as pertaining to normative lifestyles for social groups so that ethnic differences are explained by group membership not genetics.
Race Race is a concept that was originally used by European scientists to classify people on the basis of geography and phenotype. Early European settlers to the U.S. often used race differences to justify social, economic, and political inequalities between groups. Historical
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research has also shown that the idea of ‘‘race’’ carried more meanings than mere physical differences would allow. Today it is understood that physical variations in the human species have no inherent meaning. Furthermore, there are more and more scholars in many fields who argue that race is a social mechanism invented during the eighteenth century to distinguish between those populations brought together in colonial America: the English and other European settlers, the conquered Indian peoples, and those peoples of Africa brought in to provide slave labor. In the context of colonial U.S. and imperial colonial Europe, ‘‘race’’ was a mode of classification devised to rationalize European attitudes and treatment of the conquered and enslaved peoples. At that time, the concept of ‘‘race’’ was not devised as merely a biological category but was used to illuminate dominant and subordinate species. Proponents of slavery in particular during the nineteenth century used ‘‘race’’ to justify the retention of slavery. Social stratification was further propagated when differences among the ‘‘racial’’ categories were projected to their greatest extreme when the argument was posed that Africans, Indians, and Europeans were separate species, with Africans the least human and closer taxonomically to apes. The colonial ideology used to magnify the differences among Europeans, Africans, and Indians, established a rigid hierarchy of socially exclusive categories bolstered by unequal rank and status differences, and provided the rationalization that the inequality was natural or God-given. Thus, rather than developing as a scientific concept, the current, debated, conceptualization of ‘‘race’’ in the U.S. was born out of a European classification system not an empirically supported delineation between groups.
Ethnicity The term ethnicity has been used interchangeably with race and culture. Ethnicity has been defined as ‘‘race, religion, country of origin, language, and cultural background.’’ Ethnicity has even been considered a biological construct that can be inherited which implies that ethnicity is the same as physical characteristics. In essence, the numerous conceptualizations of ethnicity mirror the operational inconsistencies of the term race, and it is debated whether ethnicity, like race, is biologically or socially determined. The same debate permeates the term ethnicity as it has permeated discourse about the term race. Is ethnicity a biological or a socially
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constructed concept? The debate that is uniquely part of the challenge to defining ethnicity is an extended conceptualization of ethnicity that extends beyond postulates about the biological or social origins. The contemporary conceptualization of ethnicity, however, involves a more multi-layered view of ethnicity as a lifestyle. Ethnicity can be viewed as referring to kinship and affiliation, commensality, intimate sharing, and belief. The aggregate of these domains supports the conceptualization of ethnicity as a lifestyle not a biological or social category. Kinship is conceptualized as including family, friends, and formal and informal groups with whom a person relates. Commensality refers to things, activities, and preferences shared with others (e.g., food preferences, gift exchanges, marriage partners). Belief involves ones’ family and group values, life views, and ideologies. Thus, people of a similar ‘‘race’’ may differ in ethnic membership in terms of their lifestyle reflected by their particular kinship circle, commensality, and beliefs.
Racial Differences The American Anthropological Association (AAA) is of the view that in the U.S. both scholars and the general public have been socially conditioned by a colonial historical heritage to view human ‘‘races’’ as natural and separate divisions within the human species based on visible physical differences. With the vast expansion of scientific knowledge in the twentieth century, however, it became clear that human populations are not clearly demarcated, biologically distinct groups. Evidence from the analysis of genetics (e.g., DNA) indicates that about 94% of physical variation lies within so-called racial groups. In addition, geographic ‘‘racial’’ groupings differ from one another only in about 6% of their genes. This data suggests that there is greater variation within ‘‘racial’’ groups than between them. Genetic data show that, no matter how ‘‘racial’’ groups are defined, two people with the same hue of skin color are about as different from each other as two people from any two different skin color hues. The social construction of race evolved as a worldview consistent with a body of prejudgments about human differences and group behavior and fueled with a sociopolitical climate of establishing superiority and inferiority. Presumed racial differences based on skin color are modern myths about the sources diversity
in human socioeconomic outcomes that are better explained by social policies and practices that are historically engineered to deprive persons with particular phenotypes. Health disparities within ethnic groups in the U.S. are explained mostly by unequal access to health care services than biological differences. The school achievement gap between Whites and African American students and in favor of White students in the U.S., for example, is explained by differences in learning environment variables rather than immutable biological factors. For example, studies on the school achievement of Black and White students in Zimbabwe (controlling for type of school) show no achievement gap in favor of Whites. Child rearing experiences would also explain differences in school enrollment and retention between U.S. White student and students of color. For example, about 35.6% of families of people of color in the U.S. are two-parent compared to 79.2% among White families, and school retention is higher in two than single parent families. Early and unwanted pregnancies, substance abuse and emotional behavioral disorders are also more likely with single parent families. Modern myths about race fuse behavior prejudgments and physical features together in the public mind, impeding an accurate comprehension of the sources of biological and social outcome variation among humans, implying that both are genetically determined. Not surprisingly, the racial myths bear no relationship to the reality of human capabilities or behavior, once the effects of social policies and practices are removed. The contemporary view is that there are distinct ethnic groups (categorical lifestyles) not races.
Ethnic Differences To the extent that ethnicity is a lifestyle issue, ethnic differences exist in all aspects of human culture, including preferred foods, dressing, music, art, customs, religion, et cetera. These differences are adequately explained by learning opportunity and exposure through cultural transmission processes. The relative coherence of ethnic identities is sustained, in part through intergenerational learning and also geographical contiguity of participants of an ethnic culture. For example, ethnic groups with geographical contiguity are likely to share generic values so that they may be perceived as more similar as compared to those in geographically disparate locale. Geographically contiguous ethnic groups are also
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likely to adopt ethnic identity elements from each other, adding to their perceived similarity. A person can acquire an ethnic identity different from his or her culture of origin through a variety cultural immersion or learning experiences. Unlike skin hue, ethnic differences are quite malleable and influenced in their qualities by opportunity to learn and choice to assume an identity. See also: > Acculturation; > Adolescent ethnic identity; > Cultural diversity; > Ethnicity; > Race
Suggested Reading Bennett, C. E. (1995). The Black population in the United States: March 1994 and 1993. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office (U.S. Bureau of the Census, Current Population Reports Series No. P20–480). Mpofu, E., & Conyers, L. M. (2004). A representational theory perspective of minority status and people with disabilities: Implications for rehabilitation education and practice. Rehabilitation Counseling Bulletin, 47(3), 142–151. Spickard, P. R. (1992). The illogic of American racial categories. In M. P. P. Root (Ed.), Racially mixed people in America (pp. 12–23). Newbury Park, CA: Sage.
Suggested Resources American Anthropological Association (AAA)—www.aaanet.org/ stmts/racepp.htm: This website offers information on anthropological study and affairs and provides in-depth conceptualization of ‘‘race,’’ ethnicity, and the argument against the scientific validity of racial differences.
Racism: Individual, Institutional, and Cultural Charles R Ridley . Seunghee Kwon
Racism has a long history in the United States (U.S.). In actuality, it has existed since the inception of the country, manifesting itself in atrocities initially against Native Americans, and subsequently against African Americans, Hispanic Americans, and Asian Americans. Responsible citizens in a democratic society would
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agree that racism should be eradicated from the mindset and practices of its individuals, institutions, and cultural ideologies. However, even after the Civil Rights Movement and the passing of civil rights legislation, racism continues to hold a profound grip on the country. When many people hear the term racism, they envision flagrant acts of violence by White supremacists such as members of the Ku Klux Klan (KKK). They may also envision bumbling acts of ignorance and stupidity like those such as by Archie Bunker. These widespread images truly reflect on this debilitating social problem, but they are too simplistic to explain racism’s complex manifestations in society. Racism can be defined as any ideology or behavior that induces, endorses, or sustains the mistreatment of certain groups of people based on their racial heritage. By definition, not only vulgar forms of harassment but also any action colluding in unfair treatment of individuals based on race falls under the rubric of racism. Therefore, unless well-meaning individuals actively fight against racism, they are complicit and inadvertently perpetuating the problem they believe to be wrong. Accordingly, the failure to combat racism is racist. Racism is oppressive in nature because inherent in racist ideology is the assumption that certain racial groups are superior to other groups, and thus, deserving of better treatment. As a form of oppression, racism grants a privilege to the dominant group at the expense of the rights and interests of the subordinate groups. In a racist society, members of racial minority groups are denied equal access to opportunities that would enhance their livelihood, economic and social achievements, and psychological well-being. One needs to look no further than our educational, health care, and mental healthcare systems to find widespread disparities between racial groups. Because racism systemically disadvantages members of minority groups, these individuals are considerably less powerful than members of racial majority groups, evidenced by major differentials in ownership and control over institutions and distribution of resources. The proposed definition of racism is useful for analyzing this social malaise systemically and not simply in terms of its symptoms, which is a major flaw in much of social science research. For instance, the literature repeatedly updates the extent of the disparities in our major systems. However, what is conspicuously absent from most analyses is an explication of the dynamics of the systems that perpetuate the disparities.
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These dynamics are the real problem. An argument could be made that the symptom focus rather than the problem focus of most social science analyses is itself further reflection on the racism embedded in the fabric of our society. For as long as the real problem is unexplained, real solutions are not possible. The definition presented here is broadly constructed to capture the multilevel nature of racism, including its various types, agents of racism, and understanding that racism is a shared problem of all racial groups.
Types of Racism: Overt and Covert Racism Racism is much more than malicious bigotry, which is just one form of racism. By definition, any action that perpetuates the existing race-based unfairness falls under the rubric of racism. Acceptance of this premise suggests that racism can translate into a variety of behaviors—many of which usually are not considered racist. Some actions obviously are racist; others are less obvious because their collusion in the systemic unfairness is subtle. Regardless of how apparent it is that an action is racist, any behavior is racism when its consequence is systemic victimization of people based on race. In adopting this premise, racism can be divided into two subtypes: overt racism and covert racism. Overt racism is always intentional, whereas covert racism can be either intentional or unintentional. Overt racism is expressed without masking the hateful or malicious intention of the perpetuator, which makes it distinguishable from impartial and equitable behaviors. It could be said that in overt racism the intentionality defines the behavior as racist. The motive of a mob of people lynching an African American man is unmistakable. The behavior of lynching leaves no guesswork about the intentions of the perpetrators. By contrast, the motives underlying covert racism are more difficult to ascertain. As a result, covert racism may not be easily identified as racism because, without knowing the perpetrator’s real motives, it may appear as neutral or appropriate behavior. When covert racism is unintentional, it can operate at an unconscious level. Consequently, even the agents of racism might be blind to their own racism. These individuals genuinely may believe that they are fair and egalitarian in their treatment of people from other races. Unfortunately, the consequences of their actions may be antithetical to their intentions.
Covert racism is more likely to be prevalent in a society that claims antiracism because the hidden motive protects the agents of racism from a moral accusation or social embarrassment. In fact, some observers believe that what has been banned since the later part of the twentieth century is not racism per se, but the overt form of racism. Civil rights legislation has been unsuccessful in banning covert racism, which has invaded our everyday life. The idea of covert racism provides insight into current unanswered questions. Why does racism still occur when people do not project themselves as racists? Why is it so hard to eradicate racism? How has racism maintained its grip in a society that officially repudiates it? A pervasive belief is that racism is the purview of certain hateful individuals. This type of thinking allows people to equate racism with racebased hatred and conclude that they are not racists because they do not have such animosity. However, people can be racist even though they do not have feelings of hostility toward a particular racial group. Because racism is a social phenomenon, individual racism necessarily mirrors racism embedded in the larger society rather than simply reflecting a smaller group of hateful personalities. The persistence of covert racism in society has been attributed to the mindset of the unintentional racist. Unintentional racists are perpetrators of racism just as much as are intentional racists. However, there is one important difference: unintentional racists deny they are racists. Because they are not prejudiced, they give no credence to the possibility of adverse consequences of their behavior to members of other races. Three factors interact and reinforce this mindset. First, miseducation—not lack of education— fosters an oversimplified cause—effect relation in unintentional racists’ conceptualization of racism. They deem prejudice to be the cause and racial prejudice to be the effect. The oversimplification must give way to consequential as opposed to causal explanations of racism. Racism must be determined by its consequences, not its causes. Second, dysconsciousness fosters an uncritical stance toward racial inequality. Unintentional racists take for granted their privileged position in society, and they justify racial inequity without questioning the beliefs under which their privilege exists. Third, buying into group norms functions as an extension of dysconsciousness. The uncritical thinking of the unintentional racist does not stop with the individual. It moves beyond the individual
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to the group as a whole. Members of the group then stand by the self-perception that the group is not prejudice and therefore not racist.
Agents of Racism In the social science literature, racism has been framed into three primary categories: individual racism, institutional racism, and cultural racism. Scholars do not agree on all the fine points of racism or that each of the aforementioned is a viable category of racism. However, these categories are pervasively discussed. Individual racism. Individual racism, either overt or covert, is practiced by one individual or a relatively small group of individuals. Consider this example. When an African American family moves into a predominantly White community, a former member of the KKK breaks the windows of the family’s home and sprays an offensive message on the garage wall. A married couple who live next door to the African American family openly expresses anger about the vandalism. In addition, the husband and wife immediately put their house up for sale. The behavior of the former KKK member unquestionably is an example of overt individual racism. Because of its tangible, malicious intention, we can call the person’s behavior racism with confidence. Moreover, it is behavior singularly enacted by the perpetrator, and thus, an instance of individual racism. By contrast, in the case of the next door couple, categorizing the behavior of moving is much more elusive. We cannot jump to the conclusion that the move is racially motivated. There can be numerous reasons prompting the behavior. The couple may be emigrating to another country. The husband or wife may have an unexpected job transfer. The husband and wife may have experienced financial reversal, necessitating them to sell their home. Prejudice does not weigh in on any of these reasons. However, the couple also could be prejudiced. The couple could move to avoid living in the same community with African American neighbors. Of course, the couple’s public justification may contradict a racial motivation. The husband and wife may state that they are protesting acts of violence. They may state that their consciences dictate that they not live in a community that condones this kind of behavior. The real motivation underlying the couple’s behavior is not obvious by observing the behavior. It may or
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may not be motivated by bigotry. Either is a possibility, unlike the behavior of the former KKK member whose behavior undeniably is racially motivated. Because much of covert racism is motivated by unconscious processes, the husband and wife may rationalize their actions. Their defensiveness may be an attempt to defend themselves against the pain of their own bigotry. They may not want to come to conscious terms that social exclusion is their typical pattern—a longstanding way of life. Race almost always is implicated in the couple’s important decisions such as the choice of a social circle, school, church, preferred shopping mall, work place, and partner. Nonetheless, they fail to see race as a common denominator across the various choices they make. Similarly, they are oblivious to the effects of their personal choices on the life experiences of people of color whom they have rejected. Individual racism typically is accorded to White people. But they are not the sole perpetrators of racism. People of any race, including those from racial minorities, can perpetuate racism. Racial minorities may behave in a racist manner against individuals from majority groups as well as individuals from their own minority groups. The key to determining their racism lies in the consequences of their behavior. Certainly, people of color also are influenced by racial prejudice embedded in the larger society, and they may internalize it in their personal belief system or identity. Consequently, they may adopt the worldview of the dominant group, including stereotypes and prejudice toward their own group. If people of color buy into White supremacy, for example, they are likely to perceive themselves as inferior to White people. These individuals may even victimize other people of color and refuse to associate with them. Such internalized racism exacts an unfortunate cost to self as well as to others. For example, individuals may find it difficult to establish a healthy personal identity and self-esteem if they fail to develop appreciation for their racial heritage. Alternatively, people of color may adopt ideologies of racism but toward a different target. They may mistreat anybody who is racially different from themselves including White people and racial minorities outside their own group. Perhaps, the most egregious outcome is that people of any race simultaneously can be a perpetuator and victim of racism. Institutional racism. Racism can occur in institutions such as corporations and public organizations, which include school systems. ‘‘Institutional racism’’
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was first coined by a Black activist, Stokely Carmichael, during the 1960s. Institutional racism refers to an institution’s operation of policies or procedures (e.g., recruitment, promotion) that systemically disadvantages the members of certain racial groups. Like individual racism, institutional racism can be either overt or covert; the former is always intentional whereas the latter is either intentional or unintentional. Unlike some individuals, however, institutions seldom can remain anonymous about their racially based practices. For this reason, institutional racism tends to have subtle manifestations, which protects the public image and reputation of the institution. An example of institutional racism is a company that prevents African American employees from wearing braided hairstyles. Such a racially biased rule can be expressed with a varying degree of directness. The more direct expression would be a written dress code that prohibits or discourages braided hairstyles. Although not as formal as a written policy, verbal comments by a supervisor in a staff meeting might be quite direct as well, operating in practice as an informal policy. In many cases, the rule can operate quietly without being spoken. For example, a newly employed African American female may realize soon not only is she one of a few African American employees but also the only person who wears braided hair. Also, she notices that nobody challenges employees who make a racial joke that is offensive to her. Because nobody directly tells the female employee to change her hairstyle, her decision to change her hairstyle can be framed as a personal choice—not one influenced by institutional racism. Although every member of a racist institution is not personally a racist or harbors bigotry, institutional racism stems from and is supported by individual racism, which often manifests itself covertly in institutions. Because the individual’s role in institutional racism is subtle and often invisible, it is hard to identify particular individuals who are responsible for institutional racism. However, no stakeholder in institutions can be entirely innocent, for the failure to combat racism is racism. Therefore, institutional racism is the collective failure of stakeholders to provide equal access and opportunities to people regardless of their race. Institutional racism demonstrates that racism generates a system of race-based advantage. As a group, people of color face unique barriers in their attempts to gain services from or memberships to various institutions. These include but are not limited to schools, the legal system, labor markets, financial institutions (e.g.,
banks), and healthcare systems. For example, people of color across all races have been underserved in the mental health institutions. Although one may argue that racial minorities voluntarily choose to underuse services available, it should be noted that the underuse of mental health services among racial minorities is at least partly because of the mental health system’s failure to provide culturally competent service. Furthermore, racial minorities generally have less earning power and thus are more vulnerable to poverty, which significantly constrains their access to fee-based healthcare facilities. Another illustration can be found in the multiple obstacles minority individuals may encounter when they try to pursue a career in the legal profession. Although the numbers have increased, racial minorities are still underrepresented in the legal profession nationwide. To identify their prospective students, most law schools heavily rely on scores of the Law School Admission Test (LSAT). As a group, minorities are known to perform differently than Whites on this test. Thus, the current admission practice tends to act discriminatorily toward minority students. The obstacles do not stop with access to law schools. Once they graduate from a well-known law school and get a position at a law firm, people of color may find it harder to become a partner than their White counterparts. Although employment opportunities available to people of color have changed over time, their subordinate status within institutions has largely remained unchanged. Generally speaking, people of color are less likely to move upward in their institutions and secure a managerial position. Furthermore, in a predominantly White setting, racial minorities are often regarded as tokens and their achievements are unfairly attributed to affirmative action plans rather than to their competence and hard work. Cultural racism. Culture is a guide to how people think, feel, and behave. Culture, therefore, is integral to an understanding of racism, particularly because racism has been a part of the culture of this country since its inception. Cultural racism has been defined as the cumulative effects of a racialized worldview. A racialized worldview propagates the idea that there are significant differences among races, and because of these differences, the dominant racial groups are favored over the subordinate racial groups. The effects of this racialized worldview are suffused throughout our culture, for they are prominent in our institutions, ideological beliefs, and everyday activities. The effects also are passed down from one generation to the next.
Racism: individual, institutional, and cultural
Two important concepts are imbedded in the definition of cultural racism: ethnocentrism and hegemony. Ethnocentrism is the preference people have for their way of life or culture. Preferences pertain to the full range of cultural artifacts, including values, norms, dress, habits, and traditions. Ethnocentrism can be benign in that it does not have to interfere with the preferences of people from other cultures. Therefore, in and of itself, ethnocentrism is not racist. However, it more likely remains benign only as long as one group has no contact with individuals from other groups who have an alternative ethnocentrism. As groups with different ethnocentric orientations come into contact with each other, a new dynamic takes place. The differences among the groups become salient, and previously benign preferences become malignant. The malignancy is expressed as hegemony. To preserve its ethnocentrism, one group eventually becomes dominant, exercising power and control over the new group with which it now has contact. Hegemony leads to a privileged in-group whose preferences are given priority over the preferences of the out-group. The system of privilege is maintained by formalizing it as natural and right, and adopting practices and values that serve the interest of the in-group. A compelling point is made about hegemonic dominance: to remain in power, an in-group will use any means necessary. At first, an in-group will use horrific strategies of dominance such as slavery, overt racism, legal control, and informal oppression and intimidation. Once these strategies begin to lose their grip, they will give way to newer and more subtle strategies of control. Paulo Freire, in his Pedagogy of the oppressed, identified subtle tactics such as conquest, divide and conquest, manipulation, cultural invasion, and false generosity. Steven Biko made yet another observation. He suggested that the mind of the oppressed is the most powerful weapon of the oppressor. In this statement, he implied that if oppressors could persuade oppressed people that they should be oppressed, then overt forms of oppression become unnecessary. The objective in hegemony, whether overt or covert, remains the same: dominance of the in-group’s preferences over the preferences of the out-group.
Combating Racism Most people agree that racism is wrong because it is a violation of human rights. Clearly, this social problem
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is inconsistent with the basic principles on which this country was founded. In response to the history of human rights violations in the U.S., the federal government has passed legislation making overt racism and discrimination illegal. For instance, Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act prohibits discrimination in hiring, placement, and promotion in the workplace. The race, color, sex, religion, ethnic background, or national origin of employees cannot be factors in these types of decisions, as these practices are deemed to be unfair discrimination. The legislation makes it easier for the legal system to monitor and enforce the practices of institutions with respect to its treatment of all peoples, regardless of their backgrounds. Therefore, to a large extent, the country has come a long way in its efforts to eradicate racism. Exactly how far has the country come in these efforts? The legal system generally has been effective in eradicating overt racism and discrimination. However, there is evidence of a more subtle problem: covert forms of racism have replaced blatant discrimination. In fact, the case has been made that unintentional racism now is the most insidious form of racial victimization. On the one hand, this form of racism is pervasive, and the consequences are just as harmful as the consequences of overt racism. On the other hand, unintentional racists are unaware of the harmful consequences of their behavior, but in believing that they are helpful or at least not harmful, they persist in practices that have adverse consequences for members of other racial groups. In accepting the premise that racism is primarily behavioral, strategies for comprehensively combating racism become more apparent: target the behaviors. Herein lies the problem and the opportunity. The problem is that because much of the racism that exists now is covert, it is not easily identifiable as racism. In fact, a plethora of behaviors that fall into the category of covert, unintentional racism go undetected even to astute individuals who are culturally sensitive and advocates of diversity. The opportunity is that because much of the racism is covert it forces society and advocates of change to think more critically and complexly about racism, moving beyond the oversimplified explanations that only deal with overt behavior and overlook the adverse consequences of covert racism. To this end, a variety of strategies have been proposed to combat racism. Collectively, these strategies have been termed antiracism. They are designed to limit, reverse, or completely eliminate racism.
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Training and education. Multicultural training has gained popularity over the past two decades. Some scholars regard it as a primary prevention strategy to end racism. The effectiveness of training and education in eliminating racism rests on two key components: (a) identifying a broad set of behaviors that result in negative outcomes for minorities but typically are not identified racism; and (b) invoking strategies to manage trainee resistance. First, as long as individuals are unaware of the harmful effects of their behavior, they probably will not recognize their need for change. Second, resistance to change can be managed by providing learning environments that are not threatening; classifying behavior on the basis of its consequences, confronting resistant trainees, and differentiating individual resistance from normative resistance. Several guiding principles to advance multicultural training have been suggested in the literature. Training should be trainee centered. Training should be developmental. Training should be outcome oriented. Training should be relevant to professional practice. In addition, several recommendations have been proposed to optimize training. Use didactic and experiential training methods. Design systematic, organized training experiences. Create training environments that are conducive to learning. Pre-evaluate trainees’ multicultural competence. Evaluate learning outcomes. Provide organizational leadership and support. Affirmative action. A broad-based approach to recruitment, retention, and advancement of minorities is needed in a variety of settings. Many institutions have pursued these goals through assertive efforts known as affirmative action. The Equal Employment Opportunity Act of 1972 (P.L. 92–261) gives the following definition of affirmative action: those actions that are appropriate for overcoming the effects of practices, policies, or other barriers—both past and present—to equal employment opportunity. The definition of affirmation action has been expanded to include the positive efforts to increase the representation of women and minorities in employment, education, and business. Based on this definition, it is clear that affirmative action is directed toward institutional racism. Two fundamental purposes of affirmative action have been delineated: (a) eliminating discriminatory practices against women and minorities; and (b) redressing the effects of past discrimination. The effectiveness of affirmative action policy ultimately rests on the achievement of these purposes among institutions.
Although the aforementioned goals are worthy, affirmative action has come under intense controversy, severe criticism, and formidable legal challenge. The central controversy pertains to efforts that involve preferential selection—selecting individuals on the basis of race, gender, or ethnicity. Ardent opponents of preferential selection deem the practice as a form of reverse racism. For instance, White applicants to selective colleges and universities have claimed that they were denied admission because of the preference given to so-called lesser-qualified minority applicants. The ruling of the Supreme Court in the summer of 2003 upholds certain types of affirmative action. Nevertheless, the dispute over affirmative action remains and strong positions on all sides of the issue prevail. Action research. Because the criteria for determining racism lie in its consequences of behavior, institutions could benefit by having data indicating the outcomes of its practices relative to various racial groups. For instance, in the mental health delivery system, ethnic minority consumers are more likely than White consumers to be misdiagnosed, get assigned junior professionals as their therapists, receive a less preferred modality of treatment, be represented disproportionately in mental health facilities, show a higher rate of premature termination, and report more dissatisfaction and unfavorable attitudes about the treatment. Determining the extent of these problems in specific settings is critical to implementing change. Action research involves the collection and analysis of data in the local setting to improve and redesign service delivery. In the mental health field, the seminal work of Stanley Sue is an excellent example of action research. He reported racial inequalities in the community mental health system in the state of Washington. His research prompted the state to make changes in its service delivery, resulting in better treatment outcomes for its minority consumers. See also: > Prejudice; > Race; ance; > Under-representation
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Suggested Reading Carmichael, S., & Hamilton, C. V. (1971). Black power: The politics of liberation in America. New York: Vintage Books. Dovidio, J. F., & Gaertner, S. L. (Eds.). (1986). Prejudice, discrimination, and racism. Orlanda, FL: Academic Press. Jones, J. M. (1997). Prejudice and racism (2nd ed.). New York: McGraw-Hill.
Reading aloud to students Pedersen, P. B. (2003). Reducing prejudice and racism through counselor training as a primary prevention strategy. In G. Bernal, J. E. Trimble, A. K. Burlew, & F. T. L. Leong (Eds.), Handbook of racial and ethnic minority psychology (pp. 621–632). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Ridley, C. R. (2005). Overcoming unintentional racism in counseling and therapy: A practitioner’s guide to intention intervention (2nd ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Thompson, C. E., & Carter, R. T. (1997). An overview and elaboration of Helms’ racial identity development theory. In C. E. Thompson, & R. T. Carter (Eds.), Racial identity theory: Applications to individual, group, and organizational interventions (pp. 15–32). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. Wellman, D. (1993). Portraits of white racism (2nd ed.). New York: Cambridge University Press.
Suggested Resources Global Issues.org: Racism—http://www.globalissues.org/Human Rights/racism.asp Racism-Wikipedia—http://www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racism
Raven’s Progressive Matrices
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patterns requiring a solution based on visual pattern recognition or analogic reasoning. The test requires ability to encode and analyze patterns and to conceptualize relations in a visual-perceptual context. Each item involves geometric shapes or figures arranged in a pattern. The task is to complete the pattern by selecting one choice from an array of possible alternatives. Each set of patterns begins with simple perceptual matching and increases in difficulty by requiring mathematical and abstract reasoning. Tests are not timed and instructions are simple. The test has high test-retest reliability. The Standard Progressive Matrices takes about 20–45 minutes to complete. The Coloured Progressive Matrices takes about 5–15 minutes to complete. The Advanced version can take up to an hour to complete. Tests are administered in a booklet form. Error analysis of individual responses reveals insight into thinking and problem solving limitations. Some errors involve repeating parts of the design, demonstrating concrete thinking. Others make perceptual errors. Perseveration, spatial neglect, and mental rigidity may also be revealed in the type of errors made. Since it provides a measure of intelligence free of language and time constraints and since it reveals a large amount of information about cognitive functions, Raven’s Progressive Matrices is often included in test batteries for evaluation of clinical populations.
Yvette Frumkin Feis
This test was developed by John Carlyle Raven as a culture fair test of general ability or intelligence. It measures a person’s ability to understand perceptual relations and to reason by analogy. Because it provides a measure of intellectual ability independent of language, motor skills, and formal schooling, it may be more suitable than other intelligence tests for individuals with special needs. Since John Raven developed the test in 1938, similar items have been incorporated into other tests of higher order cognitive functions such as the Wechsler intelligence scales. There are three different versions of Raven’s Progressive Matrices1. The Standard Progressive Matrices is intended for children and adults of average intelligence from age 6 to 80 years of age. The Coloured Progressive Matrices are intended for younger children and adults with lower than average intelligence. The Advanced Progressive Matrices are intended for adolescents and adults with above average intelligence. Each test involves presentation of a series of visually presented
See also: > Assessment of culturally diverse children; > Intelligence/Intelligence Quotient (IQ); > Nondiscriminatory testing ; > Nonverbal assessment
Suggested Reading Lezak, M. D. (2004). Neuropsychological assessment, (4th ed.) New York: Oxford University Press.
Reading Aloud to Students Anne E Cunningham
The report of the National Institute of Education (NIE), Becoming a Nation of Readers, argues that the single most important activity to build the knowledge required for eventual success in reading was reading
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aloud to children. It is generally agreed that reading aloud helps young children learn about the global features of text, such as the arrangement of text from left to right, and the characteristics of print versus pictures on the page. Through reading aloud, children learn that print represents written speech, that print has a permanent quality that allows rereading, and that the stories or articles in books can bring personal joy. Children who have been read to frequently know how to handle books, can identify the front and back covers, and view reading as something they can do—even if they cannot read in the literal sense. Reading researchers view this accomplishment as an important phase in early reading development. Experimental studies have shown that children who experience high-quality read-alouds have improved story comprehension and sense of text structure, compared to children who have not had this opportunity. Responsive adults tend to initiate discussion during read-alouds to describe information, share personal reactions, encourage children to remember parts of their own lives that relate to texts being read aloud, explain new vocabulary words, and ask children to predict what will happen next. Regardless of socioeconomic status, or ethnic or educational background, parents instinctively relate new information to the known. Though positive effects cross socioeconomic and racial lines, more affluent parents are twice as likely to read to their children daily as parents with fewer resources. The percentage of young children from Latino families experiencing read-alouds three or more times a week is less than Black children, and both groups of minority children are read to less than White children. Apart from demographics, children who are read to frequently more readily acquire early reading skills that contribute to reading achievement in the elementary years and onward. Teachers also read aloud to children; classroombased research suggests that reading in small-group settings provides the best type of literacy scaffolding, followed by reading one-to-one, and finally by reading aloud to the whole class. Researchers have also found that repeated readings of the same text have many benefits: students’ comments and questions increase and become more interpretive, and teachers and students discuss varied aspects of the text in greater depth. Older students also benefit from hearing books read aloud, especially in content areas such as social studies and science. Second language learners and students with special needs particularly benefit from hearing
more complex syntax and vocabulary in books read to them that are above their instructional or independent reading level, yet within their oral comprehension range. Indeed, read-alouds have been found to increase the speed of vocabulary acquisition in a second language in other countries, and this method has been beneficial for students acquiring English in the U.S. as well. With enhanced vocabulary development, second language learners will be more able to successfully comprehend the texts they encounter. Discussion about books read aloud to both older and younger students helps develop language and thought by further developing children’s understanding of content as well as their understanding of text structures. Vocabulary development is an important cognitive consequence of being read to for all children; it is thought that the bulk of vocabulary growth during a child’s lifetime occurs indirectly through language exposure rather than through direct teaching. For example, the relative rarity of the words in children’s books is greater than that in typical adult conversation. Thus, reading children’s books aloud in interactive ways promotes the understanding of unknown words and works to bolster aural vocabulary, which in turn supports reading fluency and comprehension, and ultimately may lead to a lifetime of reading. See also: > Children’s literature; > Cuento therapy; > Language arts, Teaching of; > Poetry, Teaching; > Reading, Teaching
Suggested Reading Cunningham, A. E., & Stanovich, K. (1998). What reading does for the mind. American Educator, Spring/Summer, 22(1, 2), 8–15. Storch, S. A., & Whitehurst, G. J. (2002). Oral language and coderelated precursors to reading: Evidence from a longitudinal structural model. Developmental Psychology, 38(6), 934–947.
Suggested Resources Literacy Connections—http://www.literacyconnections.com/: This website provides a wealth of information on reading, teaching and tutoring techniques, and adult literacy. American Library Association: Caldecott Medal Home Page— http://www.ala.org/ala/alsc/awardsscholarships/literaryawds/ caldecottmedal/caldecottmedal.htm: This website lists and summarizes the Caldecott Medal winners as well as the books that are honored.
Reading, teaching
Reading, Teaching Anne E Cunningham
Researchers and educators agree that learning to read is one of the primary goals of schooling and is key to students’ success in the classroom. There is also broadbased agreement that the process of learning to read occurs in phases over one’s lifetime, and that a synergy exists between the development of learning to read, write, and spell. All aspects of literacy learning are significantly boosted by the development of oral language: the bedrock of literacy development. It is also well acknowledged that learning to read takes place within the context of students’ social and psychological worlds. This entails what readers think about; see, perceive, and organize for memory and understanding; their attitudes and motivations. It includes their physical worlds, from their language development, including an ear for phrasal structures, to the physical acts of reading, such as eye movements and reading rates. For second language learners, the social, psychological, and physical contexts in which learning to read takes place have heightened significance because these contexts create a range of teacher response: from contexts that are seen as enhancements to learning and the classroom to contexts that are seen as pure challenge. For English language learners, the classroom is the critical juncture between their native language and learning to read in English. While the teaching of reading is a dynamic and fluid subject, findings from current reviews of research have begun the process of defining ‘‘what works’’ in reading education. As students begin to learn to read, the limiting factor in building meaning is the ability to decode with ease and accuracy. This is facilitated by systematic and explicit instruction in the principles of phonemic awareness, sound/symbol correspondences, and the alphabetic principle, which need to occur within the context of highly meaningful text reading. Culturally sensitive educators need to be fully aware of factors in the lives of English language learners, such as the sounds in alternative languages that overlap with English and those that do not. As decoding becomes less attention draining, the limiting factors in building meaning tend to be vocabulary and declarative knowledge, effective use of reading strategies for comprehension, and motivation coupled with attitudes about literacy. There are theoretical and empirical reasons to propose that reading volume also
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plays a significant role in reading achievement, as well as growth in vocabulary and declarative knowledge. Culturally responsive educators pay particular attention to texts chosen for instructional purposes, ensuring that the texts are culturally sensitive, motivating, and relevant to English language learners. In addition to ‘‘what works,’’ policymakers are paying increased attention to what teachers need to know to ensure that all students learn to read and write well in English by the end of third grade. All children, including English language learners, need much of the same instructional support that is effective for students and that is characteristic of good literacy programs—though English language learners may need more instruction, time, and support. For example, supportive teachers understand cultural factors that affect student learning, such as the propensity to be assertive or display knowledge. Exceptional teachers of second language learners have a firm grasp of linguistics, from the structure of sounds within words to the ways in which words are built; techniques that promote fluency, word recognition, vocabulary development (especially the use of cognates), and comprehension; and effective literature-discussion protocols that help students tap into their prior knowledge. See also: > Children’s literature; > Cuento therapy; > Language arts, Teaching of; > Poetry, Teaching; > Reading aloud to students
Suggested Reading August, D., & Hakuta, K. (Eds.) (1997). Improving schooling for language-minority children: A research agenda. Washington, D.C.: National Academy Press. Garcia, G. E. (2000). Bilingual children’s reading. In M. L. Kamil, P. B. Mosenthal, P. David Pearson, & R. Barr (Eds.), Handbook of reading research, Volume III (pp. 813–834). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Moje, E. B., & Hinchman, K. (2004). Culturally responsive practices for youth literacy learning. In T. L. Jetton, & J. A. Dole (Eds.), Adolescent literacy research and practice (pp. 321–350). New York: Guilford.
Suggested Resources National Center for Research on Cultural Diversity and Second Language Learning—http://www.ncrel.org/sdrs/areas/issues/ educatrs/leadrshp/le4ncrcd.htm: The National Center promotes the intellectual development, literacy, and thoughtful citizenship of language minority students, and an appreciation of the multicultural and linguistic diversity of the American people.
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Referral
Referral Ben K Lim . Soh Leong Lim
All mental health professionals, irrespective of their theory of counseling, are expected to do no harm to their clients. The principle of nonmaleficence, however, is insufficient; it is important for clinicians, as a standard of care, to do everything in the best interest of their clients to promote their wholeness and their wellbeing. In the school, this may mean referring the students one is working with to other professionals when there is inadequate progress in counseling or when the student requires other specialized services. Referral is a decision clinicians make to help students and their families find additional sources of help when they realize that the issues presented in counseling are beyond their scope of practice or scope of competence. For school counselors, the scope of practice is determined for the counseling profession by the education laws and regulations of each state. It defines the boundaries of the license, and what school counselors can legally do to help students and their families be more productive and better adjusted in the school system. There are some issues that are beyond the practice of the school counselors. One such example is treating more severe mental disorders; in such cases, referral to the psychiatrist or school psychologist may be made. Sometimes the students’ problems may be a trajectory of a conflict with parents then, a referral to a marital and family therapist may be appropriate. The scope of competence is an internally regulated standard of care, determined by each counselor. It is dependent on the counselors’ education, training, and experience. An issue may be within the scope of practice of the school counselors but not within their scope of competence. For instance, the new school counselor, who has no experience in assessing comorbidity, such as the existence of both substance abuse and eating disorder in a student, may seek supervision, transfer the case to a more experienced clinician, or refer to an expert or institution that specializes in the treatment of such disorders. Operating from an ecosystemic perspective, the school counselor may explore the many layers of interactions that impinge on the lives of the students. Each student, in addition to being a part of the school system, is also a member of a family; sometimes a dysfunctional home environment may exacerbate
poor performance in school. The students and their families are also part of their cultural community. There are resources within those communities that may help a student do well in school, such as scholarships and mentorship. In addition to the school, home, and community system, there are other agencies such Big Brothers/Big Sisters, youth groups, and even the juvenile justice system, that seek to help children develop into responsible citizens. A referral list of such agencies will help the school counselor have on hand a list of community resources and self-help groups. The school counselor needs to be adept at networking with other agencies and professionals who can provide expertise in specific areas and can accept referrals when made. Referral is part of the assessment process that should happen throughout counseling, from intake to termination. An early assessment of a student’s misbehavior should eliminate issues such as child abuse, suicide, homicide, and substance abuse. A situation such as child abuse is a reportable offence and must be referred to child protective services or other relevant agencies. Suicide accounts for many teenage deaths each year. School counselors must be equipped to assess suicidal ideation and differentiate among the nuances in male and female suicide attempts. Similarly, the potential for school violence may be thwarted if early assessment, intervention, and referral to the relevant authorities is made. Two other areas that require a referral include psychotropic medication by consultation psychiatrists and psychological testing with psychologists who are psychometrically trained. Making a referral is not an abdication of responsibility. It should not be seen as detracting from the school counselor’s role in being responsive to students. Rather, the process of making a referral aims to connect the student and his or her family with the most relevant resources possible. At the same time, counselors and psychologists need to be aware of the possible feeling of abandonment experienced by students when a referral is made. As such, clinicians are encouraged to discuss the difficult feelings a student may experience during the referral process. Part of this conversation includes an explanation about why the referral has been made and how it seeks to better the student’s current situation. See also: > Counseling; roles in mental health
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Reform Through Regulation
Patterson, J., Williams, L., Grauf-Grounds, C., & Chamow, L. (1998). Essential skills in family therapy: From the first interview to termination. New York: The Guilford Press. Sullivan, J. R., & Wright, N. (2002). The collaborative group counseling referral process: Description and teacher evaluation. Professional School Counseling, 5(5), 366–368.
The recommendations from A Nation at Risk dealt mainly with content, standards, and student time. In response to these recommendations, new state laws were passed placing more stringent requirements on schools and students. In contrast to the historically local approach to public education, most of this new regulation was instituted at the state or national level. For example, many states developed content standards by subject area, and schools were required to adhere to these standards when developing curricula. Graduation standards were instituted by content area, mandating a certain number of years of instruction in English, mathematics, science, social studies, and even foreign language. To measure student proficiency in each of these content areas, standardized, multiple-choice tests were developed based upon state standards. The culmination of this thread of the reform effort was the passage of the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act in 2001, which is currently in effect and mandates that all students will reach proficiency in all subjects by the 2013–2014 school year. NCLB also includes school staffing regulations that are intended to ensure that every school has an adequate supply of highly qualified teachers. With regard to schools that fail to make adequate progress in academics or are unable to comply with staffing regulations, NCLB calls for various corrective actions, including the possibility of complete restructuring. What is left unstated in these regulation-based reform efforts is the assumption that the traditional modes of teaching and learning can be successful as long as they are executed correctly. This assumption dictates that the proper approach to learning is to transfer information from the teacher to the student through whole-class instruction and to divide learning into content areas, each of which follow a set curriculum developed by trained professionals who are oftentimes located outside the school building. In this view, the key to turning around failing schools is not to change what teachers are doing, but rather to induce teachers to work more effectively and efficiently. It remains to be seen whether NCLB will be successful, but by the middle of 2006 more than 6,000 schools (about 13% of the number receiving federal funding) had not made sufficient progress toward full proficiency, and this number is expected to climb in the future under stricter testing requirements. Equally troublesome are NCLB’s staffing requirements, which
Reform Mark J Van Ryzin
The modern educational reform movement began with the 1983 publication of the influential government report A Nation at Risk: The Imperative for Educational Reform. This report was written by the National Commission on Excellence in Education under direction of the U.S. Department of Education. It formally documented the widespread malaise that had befallen the American system of public education. The report found, for example, that American students scored very low on standardized tests when compared to other nations and that illiteracy was unacceptably high, specifically for youth of color for whom the rate was 40%. The demand for remedial courses at the college level was on the rise, indicating a lack of preparation in secondary school. The phenomenon was found in the private sector as well, as employers were forced to deal with new employees who were unprepared for the workplace. These dire trends were echoed in a generation of educational research, which documented steady decreases in student motivation, engagement, commitment to school, and academic achievement as students passed from elementary to secondary school. At the same time, sociological research documented alarming increases in adolescent delinquency, dropout, and highrisk behavior. In response, several waves of educational reform were launched by state legislatures and state departments of education. Three general themes emerged: reform through increased external regulation, reform through new types of school governance, and reform through new types of school leadership. The first of these to emerge was reform through external regulation.
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small rural schools often fail to meet due to shortages of qualified teachers or the budgetary constraints inherent in small schools. At the same time, recent studies by the state governments of Ohio and Texas estimated that the price to state taxpayers of complying with NCLB could run as high as $1.5 billion and $1.2 billion per year, respectively. As a result, many states are considering whether to ‘‘opt-out’’ of NCLB and forgo federal education funding. This would set the stage for a confrontation between state and federal governments that would require either a massive remediation effort by state departments of education or a significant reformulation of the law at the federal level.
Reform Through School Governance Reforming education through changes to school governance emerged as a concept in the 1980’s, supported by individuals such as Albert Shanker, former president of the American Federation for Teachers. Under this concept, individual schools are given contracts or ‘‘charters’’ that grant them more freedom to explore alternative methods of teaching and learning while at the same time demanding that they take full responsibility for student success or failure. This approach can be seen as a direct contrast to the effort to reform schools through regulation. Whereas regulation implies centralization and reduced decisionmaking authority at the school level, the issuance of school charters requires decentralization and a release of decision-making authority to the schools. Through this decentralization, it was believed, innovation and change could begin to filter through the public education system. Initial experimentation with this idea occurred in Philadelphia in the late 1980’s, where chartered schools emerged within traditional district-run schools. From there, Minnesota became the first state to enact charter legislation in 1991, followed by California in 1992. By 2005, 40 states and the District of Columbia had enacted charter laws and over 3,600 chartered schools were operating across the United States (U.S.) serving more than one million children. Although chartered schools as a group can be vastly different from one another, there are several important conclusions that can be drawn from a survey of the schools that currently exist: 1. Chartered schools are generally smaller than districtrun schools. In 2000, the median enrollment in all chartered schools in the U.S was 137 students per school, whereas district-run schools in the states
with chartering laws had a median enrollment of about 475 students. 2. Chartered schools serve disadvantaged populations. Chartered schools enlist disproportionately high numbers of low-income, ‘‘at-risk’’ and minority students, and have higher percentages of students with special education and English language learner status. This is due to the fact that chartered schools are more often found in urban rather than rural areas and chartered schools are often used as an option of last resort for families with students who struggle to succeed in traditional district-run schools. 3. Chartered schools often use innovative methods. Chartered schools are much more likely to make use of innovative methods, such as project-based or inquiry learning, cooperative learning, advisory grouping, internships, service learning, distance learning, foreign language immersion and themebased curricula. 4. Teacher, principal and parent satisfaction is high. Research on chartered schools has demonstrated that the vast majority of these schools enjoy solid backing by parents. Principals and teachers in chartered schools also report high levels of satisfaction due to the smaller school size, the freedom to teach the way they like, and the opportunity to be involved in the educational reform effort. Student achievement at chartered schools is a point of contention, with some researchers claiming that chartered schools are doing well based upon the population of students they serve and others arguing that districtrun schools are superior. Large amounts of research can be found to support both sides of the argument, and it is unlikely that this issue will be resolved definitively in the near future. The argument over the merits of chartered schools ignores the vast amount of variation that exists in the chartered school sector. Some chartered schools are very much like traditional district-run schools, while others are quite different. What is needed is a framework with which to measure how schools differ from one another in terms of leadership, administration, pedagogy, and resources. From this, a clearer picture of the key factors that influence student achievement should emerge.
Reform Through School Leadership Reform through school leadership is the most recent reform effort to emerge and, ultimately, may be the most promising. In some ways, this reform effort can
Refugee youth
be seen as part of the chartered school movement, in that alternative forms of school leadership have arisen in chartered schools. On the other hand, not every chartered school experiments with alternative forms of leadership. The core of this particular reform effort is the notion that the success of a school depends ultimately on the willingness of each teacher to accept personal responsibility for the success of each and every student in school. However, in many instances, the schools are simply too large and teachers see too many students each day for this to happen. Some comprehensive high schools are so vast that teachers in different departments may only encounter one another a few times each year. Such an environment often encourages teachers to focus solely on their classroom and the subject they teach, rather than the entire school. Teachers who are believed to be doing an inadequate job are the responsibility of the principal rather than the staff as a whole, and there is a long series of steps that a principal must follow to dismiss a truly inferior teacher. Oftentimes, underperforming teachers are not removed from the school district but simply reassigned to another school, where they become someone else’s problem. To address these issues, some new chartered schools have organized as teacher professional practices, in which the teachers manage the school without the benefit of a formal administrator. In such an environment, teachers have much greater control over staffing, pedagogy, and school finances. As a result, teachers feel a greater sense of ownership over the school, a greater willingness to engage beyond their own classroom, and a greater sense of responsibility for the student body as a whole. In theory, this should lead to higher graduation rates, but teacher-run schools have not yet been studied in enough depth to support any substantive conclusions. See also: > Accountability; > Adolescence; > Charter schools; > No Child Left Behind (NCLB); > Rural schools; > Testing and measurement
Suggested Reading Center for Education Reform (2004). Annual survey of America’s charter schools. Washington, D.C.: Author. Education Evolving (2006). Teachers in professional practice: An inventory of new opportunities for teachers. Saint Paul, MN: Author.
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Sarason, S. B. (1990). The predictable failure of educational reform: Can we change course before it’s too late? San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass. U.S. Department of Education (1983). A Nation at Risk: The Imperative for educational reform. Available at http://www.ed.gov/ pubs/NatAtRisk.
Suggested Resources No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB)—www.ed.gov/nclb/landing. jhtml: The U.S. Department of Education website provides an overview the NCLB as well as progress updates made under the act. Center for Education Reform (CER)—http://www.edreform.com: Founded in 1993 to translate ideas into action, CER combines education policy with grassroots advocacy to work within the nation’s communities to foster positive and bold education reforms. CER advocates reforms that produce high standards, accountability and freedom (i.e., strong charter school laws), school choice programs for children in need, common sense teacher initiatives, and proven instructional programs. Education/Evolving—http://www.educationevolving.org: Education/Evolving is a Minnesota-based project committed to helping kindergarten through grade 12 education evolve and meet the challenges, demands, and opportunities of the 21st century. Education/Evolving is a joint venture of the Center for Policy Studies and Hamline University in Saint Paul, MN.
Refugee Youth Jacqueline Mosselson
International law prescribes human rights for all, but in the present system of world organizations, states are the guardians of refugees and the communities in which those rights must be realized. This basic dichotomy between the rights of the individual and the sovereignty of the state is not easily resolved. To become a refugee, a person has to be granted refugee status by a host country. Under international law, ‘‘refugee’’ has a precise meaning. According to the 1951 United Nations Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees, a person claiming refugee status must be judged by a state granting them asylum to have a wellfounded fear of being persecuted in their home country for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group, or political opinion. This definition, framed during the Cold War, has become too narrow and excludes people who have fled
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armed conflict. According to Prince Sadruddin Aga Khan, a former United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, the archetypal refugee is basically quite rare. In addition, the definition is vague on what constitutes a ‘‘well-founded fear,’’ or ‘‘persecution,’’ among other terms, creating a situation in which refugee status may be granted to some but not to others based more on the context in the host country than the claimant’s experiences. Broader terms are therefore often used; for example, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees uses the category ‘‘people of interest’’ to guide their services overseas to include all those who have fled or been forced to leave their homes for protection and safety. In January 2005, 19.2 million people fell under the general rubric of refugee, or person of interest, 50% of these individuals were children and adolescents. The experiences of many refugee youth are contrary to the basic needs of every child, which are to be protected by the international legal system according to the Convention for the Rights of the Child (CRC). These basic needs include: the need for continuity of care by a loved one, for shelter and food, for safety and security, and for good schooling. War and flight have an impact on a youth’s well-being, including withdrawal from social contact and from activities such as playing, laughing, and expressing emotions. In addition, the child must cope with sadness and guilt, aggression, insomnia, nightmares, flashbacks, and an inability to concentrate. These stress reactions are not merely transient phenomena that settle down once a child feels safe and secure. Relief from these symptoms may eventually happen, but in the case of children exposed to war, the long-term effects can continue for many years. Refugee youth react to life-threatening stressors in various ways. The more traumatic the events they have witnessed, the more likely it is that children will have difficulties settling into a new environment. Depression, anxiety, fears, and bereavement reactions, as well as post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) can occur, whereas many other child refugees show several stress symptoms that interfere with daily life but fall short of a diagnosable condition. Education is a vital tool for the recovery of child refugees, both in terms of adaptation to the new culture and in terms of the ability to cope with traumatic experiences of war and flight. It is a primary means to psychological and social healing, and is an essential stabilizing force for resettled refugees as it enables them to (re-)establish a sense of normality by resuming a
familiar student identity and structure in their lives after destruction, chaos, and resettlement. Refugees gain a sense of optimism and accomplishment through educational attainment, building their self-esteem and self-confidence, and importantly, regaining a sense of hope about the future. Schools are therefore in a crucial position to ensure that help is offered, both in providing a safe and caring atmosphere and in seeking appropriate outside support. Although educational underachievement is a significant contributor to stress and poor psychological health among refugee children, education and educational attainment are important contributing factors in assisting the reintegration of an identity in exile and the successful creation of a new life. Teachers report high achievement rates among refugees; and when not held back by school authorities, refugee students typically graduate in the top 10% of their class. The author Gilligan, however, cautions that those doing well in terms of academic achievement may be hiding depression or feelings of low self-esteem. As refugees from war are already at high risk for depression, particularly female adolescents, and although educational achievement might protect refugees from further trauma, educators must ask whether achievement rates correlate with balanced mental health. See also: > Childhood depression; > Cultural resilience; > Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD); > Resilience
Suggested Reading Garbarino, J., Kostelny, K., & Dubrow, N. (1991). No place to be a child: Growing up in a war zone. Lexington, MA: Lexington Books. Jones, C., & Rutter, J. (1998). Refugee education: Mapping the field. Staffordshire, UK: Trentham Books Limited. Kaprielian-Churchill, I., & Churchill, S. (1994). The pulse of the world: Refugees in our schools. Toronto, ON: OISE Press. Mosselson, J. (2007). Refugees and education in the United States: An exploratory study of Bosnian refugee experiences in New York City schools. Comparative Education Review, 51(1), 95–115.
Suggested Resources United Nations High Commission for Refugees—www.unhcr.org: This website offers an overview of refugee flows around the world, as well as more in-depth country profiles and discussions of specific issues confronting refugees.
Reggio Emilia The International Rescue Committee—www.theirc.org: This is the website for a U.S.-based refugee relief and resettlement agency. It contains information about refugee flows as well as resources and services for refugees. Refugee Education Sponsorship Program—www.respectrefugees. org: This website encourages youth to learn about refugees and to be involved in refugee issues. Resources are provided for youth and their teachers.
Reggio Emilia Nancy Otskey
The name Reggio Emilia, which has become associated with a model of early childhood education, is actually the name of the city in which this large municipal childcare and preschool program exists. Reggio Emilia is located in Northern Italy, in the province of EmiliaRomagna. This province is noted to be highly prosperous with inhabitants who value civic cooperation and a sense of community. Reggio gained attention in the United States (U.S.) in 1991 when Newsweek magazine declared that these preschools were the best in the world. Since then, many parent groups and educators throughout the world have visited Reggio with the hope of learning more about it and replicating the model in their own communities. The city itself is an affluent community of approximately 130,000 who strongly support public funding of the community and these preschools. The Reggio schools were the idea of a young journalist, Loris Malaguzzi, who studied pedagogy and lived in Reggio Emilia at the end of World War II. Malaguzzi wanted to make a contribution to the rebuilding effort of the war torn area. He decided that creating good schools for the city’s young children was a way to do this. Over the next few decades, Malaguzzi and a team of dedicated young educators who shared his vision worked to develop this municipal preschool program. The first preschools opened in 1963, followed by the infant and toddler childcare programs in 1970. The program provides daycare for infants and toddlers from three months of age through age two, and a preschool experience for children ages three through six. It is available free of charge for all city residents, of which about half of the municipality’s young children attend.
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The Reggio preschools can be viewed as a cultural expression of the community of Reggio Emilia. The preschools express both the ethical and social ideals that Malaguzzi and his followers took the time to articulate during the planning of the centers. The vision that forged the development of these schools was based on a view of young children that sees them as having an infinite wealth of potential and ability; abilities to wonder, investigate, and co-construct their own knowledge. This view extends to the belief that young children have many rights that are often not respected, especially with regard to expressing themselves creatively in their own way. These schools were developed to ensure that this view of the young child is honored, respected, and cultivated. The Reggio schools consist of thirteen infant and toddler day care centers and twenty-two preschools. A great deal of attention is given to the creation of the physical space for the centers; space that is both aesthetically pleasing and spacious. They are created in an open, airy, and light-infused fashion with inviting furniture and decor that is strategically placed to evoke a sense of comfort and wellbeing. The classrooms are designed to provide the children with stimuli for play, discovery, research, and interaction between each other and the staff. Classroom design seeks to further the sense among children that they are interconnected with one another. A multitude of learning materials are kept neatly on shelves. In addition to the classrooms are small alcoves and a large room called the ‘‘atelier’’ where children can work on creative art expressions. The atelier is staffed with a special teacher referred to as the ‘‘atelierista’’ who facilitates this creative work. There are interior gardens, an outdoor play area, and a common area where teachers can meet with families and one another to plan, collaborate and discuss student progress. The curriculum is centered on projects, and grounded in the scientific method of inquiry and investigation. It is also child directed/teacher guided; meaning that the curriculum is driven by the interests of the children, either by virtue of what is known to interest children of their ages, or the specific current interests of the children including serendipitous interests. These interests, what the children are excited about, dictate the direction of the curriculum with teacher guidance. In the classrooms, groups of children may spend several months exploring a theme of interest. Examples of such themes are the city itself, rainbows, sunlight, and shadows, to name a few. The themes are studied from
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multiple angles and are open-ended with regard to length of time, based upon the children’s continued interest. The unit of study is concluded by creating artful objects that uniquely express each child’s learning during the project. These objects are then placed on display for the other children, parents, and the community at large to view. The role of the teacher is mainly one of student observer, co-investigator, reflector and recorder of observations, and challenger of ideas. Teachers record their observations of the children during the investigations and use the information gathered to plan and facilitate further learning. They can be seen with clipboards taking notes as the children explore and work, thus documenting student work. Audio tapes, photographs and video tapes are also used for documentation of student work. The curriculum also emphasizes cooperation, mutual respect, and social problem solving. Relationship building is considered very important to the development and learning of the young child. In keeping with this philosophy, the classes are arranged as multi-year student-teacher partnerships where students and teachers are together for more than the traditional one school year. The centers have on-site kitchens with professional dieticians who oversee that nutritious meals are provided for the children. Special dietary needs or religious preferences are also accommodated. Reggio philosophy believes that family and school are seamlessly connected for maximum benefit of the child. The schools are administered by a team composed of the Director of Education, the Director of the Infant-Toddler Centers and Preschools, and a group of ‘‘pedagogistas’’ who coordinate and are responsible for the centers and schools assigned to them. It is the job of the pedagogista to establish pedagogical guidelines and organization of services, participate in meetings with families, organize and implement professional development initiatives, and coordinate the teachers and staff of the centers and schools. In addition, each center is governed by a Council that is elected every three years. The Council consists of parents, community members, teachers, staff, and the pedagogista. See also: > Portfolios
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Suggested Reading Cadwell, L. (2002). Bringing learning to life: The Reggio approach to early childhood education. New York, NY: Teachers College Press. Edwards, C., Gandini, L., & Forman, G. (Eds.). (1998). The hundred languages of children: The Reggio Emilia approach–Advanced reflections. Westport, CT: Ablex Publishing. Gardner, H. (1999). The disciplined mind. New York, NY: Simon & Schuster. Wurm, J. P. (2005). Working in the Reggio way: A beginner’s guide for American teachers. St. Paul, MN: Redleaf Press.
Suggested Resources Reggio Children—http://www.reggiochildren.it: This website aims to continue the mission of the Reggio Schools after Malaguzzi’s death.
Reinforcement Greogory K Reed
Reinforcement (Sr), as advanced by B.F. Skinner and over 40 years of experimental operant research, is a fundamental principle of learning. It describes the functional relationship between a behavior and its consequence. In simple terms, behaviors are learned (i.e., strengthened or made more likely to occur) when they are followed by pleasant outcomes. By contrast, behaviors are not learned (i.e., weakened or made less likely to occur) when they are followed by unpleasant outcomes. In more technical terms, reinforcement is defined as the process of strengthening behavior (increasing or maintaining the future rate or probability of behavior) through consequent stimuli. Thus, a reinforcer is any consequent stimulus that increases or maintains a behavior.
Categories of Reinforcement Reinforcers may be classified as ‘‘primary’’ or ‘‘secondary.’’ Primary (or unlearned) reinforcers are said to be ‘‘naturally’’ motivating to an individual; they obtain their reinforcing value through biological processes
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such as hunger (food) or pain attenuation (narcotics). Secondary (or conditioned) reinforcers are learned; they obtain their reinforcing value through pairings with (a) primary reinforcers, or (b) other, already established secondary reinforcers (e.g., money, tokens, honors, awards). Reinforcers also may be classified as positive or negative. Positive reinforcement (Sr+) involves the presentation of a stimulus following a behavior that results in an increased probability of that behavior occurring in the future. In other words, the individual is motivated to gain something. For example, Aniyah, a student in Ms. P’s class, screams during playtime; in response, Ms. P presents the Aniyah with a preferred toy. Thus, Aniyah may learn to scream to gain preferred toys. If so, then Ms. P has positively reinforced (maintained or increased) screaming. By contrast, negative reinforcement (Sr ) involves the contingent removal of an unpleasant stimulus or event that follows a behavior. In this case, the individual is motivated to engage in a particular behavior to avoid or escape something unpleasant. For example, suppose Aniyah also screams during independent seatwork and in response, Ms. P sends her to the principal’s office. In this case, Aniyah may learn to scream to avoid or escape task demands (independent seatwork). If so, then Ms. P. has negatively reinforced screaming. In sum, both positive and negative reinforcement increase the future probability of behavior. The difference, however, is that positive reinforcement involves the presentation of preferred stimuli following a behavior, whereby negative reinforcement, involves the removal of unpleasant (aversive) stimuli.
Reinforcement-Based Interventions Reinforcement is a major component of most behavior change programs. Traditionally, care providers (e.g., teachers, parents, vocational trainers) and clinicians have focused on contingency-based procedures to decrease problem behavior and increase appropriate behavior. For example, teachers often provide various rewards (e.g., stickers and/or extra activities) contingent only on either the absence of inappropriate behavior (e.g., blurting out), or on a child’s appropriate behavior (e.g., task completion). In operant terms, such procedures are referred to as differential reinforcement schedules.
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Differential reinforcement of alternative behavior (or DRA) is perhaps the most common differential reinforcement procedure. With DRA, the maintaining contingencies for problem behavior are weakened, while an alternative replacement behavior is simultaneously reinforced. For example, desired behaviors such as raising a hand or task compliance are reinforced, while undesirable behaviors such as noncompliance and disruption are placed on extinction (defined below) or punished. Differential reinforcement procedures are more effective when preceded by a functional analysis of the variables maintaining problem behavior (i.e., the existing reinforcers for problem behavior are identified). Treatments based on functional analysis results are effective because once the function for problem behavior has been identified, then: (a) the (functional) reinforcer can be withheld for occurrences of problem behavior (i.e., extinction), and (b) the functional reinforcer can be delivered contingent only on the absence of problem behavior (DRO) and/or on the occurrence of a replacement alternative behavior (DRA). Extant literature indicates that functionbased treatments often are considerably more effective than treatments based on arbitrarily chosen rewards (e.g., stickers). The primary reason for this finding is that arbitrary reinforcement-based treatments rely heavily on the assumption that the putative arbitrary reinforcer (e.g., stickers) for desired behavior (e.g., working quietly) can override the existing reinforcer (e.g. escape from an aversive task) for problem behavior (disruptive behavior). In other words, arbitrary reinforcementbased treatments set up a direct competition between the source(s) of reinforcement for (a) problem behavior and (b) desired behavior. Thus, such programs are effective only to the extent that the child/individual values the arbitrary reward (e.g., stickers) more than they do the existing (functional) reinforcer for problem behavior (escape/task avoidance). If the arbitrary reward is relatively less valuable, then the intervention will likely fail or produce inconsistent results. By contrast, function-based interventions eliminate or attenuate this competition because, as stated previously, the existing (functional) reinforcer for problem behavior is identified and removed (or minimized), while that same reinforcer is provided for desired behavior. In the above example, a function-based intervention might involve (a) escape-extinction (i.e., child
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is not allowed to escape or avoid seatwork following disruptive behavior), and (b) contingent breaks (i.e., child is allowed to escape [brief break] contingent on desired behavior such as work completion or appropriate communication).
Parameters of Reinforcement (Factors that Influence the Effectiveness of Reinforcement) Several factors influence the effectiveness of reinforcement-based programs (e.g., the schedule, quality/quantity, and immediacy of reinforcement, as well as the effort required to access reinforcement). Schedules of Reinforcement: Schedules of reinforcement have been widely studied and refer to when reinforcers will be delivered (i.e., the timing of reinforcement). In general, continuous reinforcement schedules (CRF) are highly effective for initial behavior change programs or for the acquisition of new behaviors because reinforcement is delivered for each occurrence of the target behavior (i.e., the individual experiences a very rich reinforcement history for engaging in the desired behavior). By contrast, intermittent reinforcement schedules allow for some behaviors to be reinforced, while others are not. Thus, intermittent schedules are usually more effective for maintaining already established behaviors (e.g., under increased time or response requirements). There are two types of intermittent schedules, ratio and interval. Under ratio schedules, reinforcer delivery depends on the number of behaviors that have occurred. In addition, ratio schedules can be either fixed or variable. When an individual receives reinforcement for a ‘‘fixed’’ (or predictable) number of behaviors, then s/he is under a ‘‘fixed ratio’’ (FR) schedule. For example, if Aniyah, a student is Ms. P’s class, receives breaks from independent seatwork every time she writes her name five times, then her behavior is under a fixed ratio-5 (or FR5) schedule. Fixed ratio schedules are predictable and result in high rates of behavior, as well as brief pauses in behavior following reinforcement (i.e., post-reinforcement pausing). Under variable ratio (VR) schedules, reinforcers are delivered for an average number of behaviors. For example, if a VR6, rather than a FR5, schedule were used in the above example with Aniyah, then on some occasions she would receive a break after writing her name five times, while other times she might receive a
break after writing her name only three times, or as many as seven or nine times. The bottom line is that the ratio of ‘‘reinforcement-to-required behaviors’’ is variable (or unpredictable). Consequently, Aniyah would not know when to expect reinforcement and thus, would likely work on a constant basis (no postreinforcement pauses) to increase her probability of obtaining a break. Interval schedules, as opposed to ratio schedules, depend largely on the passage of time rather than on the number of behaviors that have occurred. In other words, reinforcers are delivered only for the first response that occurs after a predetermined period of time has elapsed. As an example, suppose that Aniyah now receives a break from seatwork only if she is observed to be ‘‘working’’ (writing her name) when Ms. P comes around to check on her. Consider also that Ms. P checks on Aniyah every 15 minutes (FI 15-minutes schedule). In this example, Ms. P. might expect that Aniyah will work sporadically (if at all) during the first 5–10 minutes because it does her no good to work hard when Ms. P is not checking on her. However, Ms. P also might expect to see gradual increases in Aniyah’s productivity as the end of the 15 minutes interval approaches. This is because the opportunity to obtain reinforcement is tied to her behavior only after the fixed, specified period of time (15 minutes) has elapsed, and not on the number of times she writes her name. If Ms. P. wants to get Aniyah to work consistently during the 15 minute interval, she might want to start ‘‘checking’’ on Aniyah in an unpredictable manner (i.e., she might want to use a variable interval [VI] schedule). VI schedules result in more constant behavior patterns because the individual does not know when to expect their behavior to be reinforced. Thus, if Ms. P sometimes checked on Aniyah after 10 minutes, and sometimes after 15 minutes, and other times after only 3 or 5 minutes, then she might expect to see more stable rates of writing from Aniyah. In sum, schedules of reinforcement may be: continuous or intermittent; ratio or interval; and fixed or variable. Selecting the appropriate schedule of reinforcement is important for intervention because each schedule is associated with a particular pattern of behavior. Reinforcer Quality: Quality of reinforcement refers to the ‘‘value of the reinforcer’’ and can be described in terms of individual preference. As noted by Mace and Roberts in 1993 and demonstrated by Fisher and colleagues in 1992, preferred stimuli are generally of higher quality than low preferred or neutral stimuli
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in terms of their reinforcing value. In general, higher quality reinforcers are more effective for increasing or maintaining behavior than lower quality reinforcers. Reinforcer delay (or immediacy): Reinforcer delay refers to the length of time between a behavior and its intended reinforcer. In general, research has shown that organisms often will work harder (or at a higher rate) for immediate rather than delayed reinforcers. This is known as delay discounting (or de-valuing). In terms of intervention, reinforcement-based programs may be less effective if reinforcers are too delayed, which is common in academic settings when token economy systems and behavioral contracts are used. Effort: Effort has been broadly defined in the psychology literature as ‘‘the subjective sense of the amount of work required to perform some voluntary action.’’ In behavior analysis, response effort has been manipulated by increasing the degree of force or pressure required to emit a behavior or by increasing the ratio of behaviors required to access a given reinforcer. Applied researchers also have characterized effort as ‘‘the intensification of mental activity.’’ Thus, task difficulty also has been manipulated during examinations of response effort. In general, previous studies on response effort have reported findings consistent with the ‘‘least effort principle,’’ which asserts that with all other things being equal, organisms will allocate their behavior towards a goal that requires the least amount of effort. Thus, reinforcement-based interventions are likely to be more effective if behavior requirements are relatively easy or less effortful (at least initially) than if requirements are more difficult or effortful. See also: > Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT); > Impulsive behavior
Suggested Reading Fisher, W. W., Piazza, C. C., Bowman, L. G., Hagopian, L. P., Owens, J. C., & Slevin, (1992). A comparison of two approaches for identifying reinforcers for persons with severe and profound disabilities. Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis, 25, 491–498. Mace, F. C., & Roberts, M. (1993). Factors affecting selection of behavioral interventions. In J. Reichle, & D. Wacker (Eds.), Communicative alternative to challenging behavior: Integrating functional assessment and intervention strategies (Vol. 3, pp. 113–134). Baltimore: Paul H. Brookes. Thompson, R. H., & Iwata, B. A. (2005). A review of reinforcement control procedures. Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis, 38, 257–278.
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Suggested Resources Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis (JABA)—http://seab.envmed. rochester.edu/jaba/index.html: The Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis is a psychology journal that publishes research about applications of the experimental analysis of behavior to problems of social importance.
Religion, Teaching About J Mark Halstead
Religion is an important source of personal identity and it may have a profound influence on the behavior, thinking, attitudes and values of children and their families. Like other aspects of identity, religion is learned both through formal teaching and through less formal contact and interaction with other members of the faith group. Awareness of these processes is important for an understanding of the psychological development of individual children, and presupposes not only some knowledge of the diversity of faiths in contemporary society, but also an understanding of the different activities to which children are exposed in the teaching of religion. In fact, two distinct sets of aims and practices go under the heading of teaching about religion. The first involves deepening children’s understanding of the religion of their parents and the community into which they have been born, so that as they grow up they can take their place confidently in their community of faith. On this view, teaching about religion is directed towards nurture in a particular faith, the development of a particular religious identity and the preservation of that faith across the generations. The second set has nothing to do with the development of personal commitments and identity, but relates to the objective study of religion as an important dimension of human existence and experience. The aim of teaching about religion on this view is to broaden children’s horizons, to make them ‘‘religiously literate’’ citizens, and to encourage respect for others and crosscultural understanding, while at the same time leaving them free to choose their own path in life. In the past many countries’ public school curriculum included teaching about religion with the intention of initiating children into the dominant faith of the country concerned. Even today, this pattern of provision is not
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uncommon, especially in Catholic and Muslim countries. However, globalization, mass migration, secularization and other recent trends have brought a growing number of Western liberal democracies closer to accepting the doctrine of the separation of Church and State. This approach considers religion a private matter, and postulates that public institutions must be neutral between religious denominations, and between religious and non-religious worldviews. The result is that nurture in the faith is seen as a private matter which may be carried on in the home or in the Sunday school, madrasa, synagogue, gurdwara, temple or other place of worship. If children are taught about religion in the public school, this must be done in a non-dogmatic, phenomenological way, and must include a range of different world religions. Religion may be taught through a variety of disciplines (including history, sociology, psychology, philosophy or anthropology), or through its various cultural manifestations (art, literature, music and so on). Alternatively, religion may be taught as a distinct subject or course in which children learn about the beliefs, practices and values of particular world religions, including such things as their festivals, places of worship, forms of prayer, meditation and worship, ethical codes, sacred texts, prophets and leaders, stories, pilgrimages, rites of passage, denominational differences, symbolism, artefacts, lifestyles, religious experience, language and expression. Students may also be encouraged to reflect on religious diversity, dialogue between religions, non-religious worldviews, spirituality, the possibility of life after death, and other important questions raised by religion. Parents who are believers may have concerns about this dual approach to teaching about religion. They may feel that their children’s religious identity is under threat when their personal faith is presented as simply one in a group of equally valid faiths. They may think that the beliefs and values of home and family are being undermined. They may worry that their children are being encouraged in public schools to construct their own personal religious faith from a smorgasbord of different religions. Such parents usually have the option of sending their children to a religious or denominational school where their religious identity is recognized and supported. In the United States (U.S.), such religious schools are private (fee-paying) establishments. Nevertheless, more than 10% of all American children attend private religious schools. In countries including Great Britain, Israel and the Netherlands where denominational schools receive state funding, the percentages are
much higher. However, balancing the demands for cultural maintenance and social integration is a difficult task for governments and for individual schools. See also: > Multicultural education; > Parochial schools; > Religious/ethnic schools
Suggested Reading Nash, R. J. (1999). Faith, hype and clarity: Teaching about religion in American schools and colleges. New York, NY: Teachers College Press. Nord, W. A., & Haynes, C. C. (1998). Taking religion seriously across the curriculum. Alexandria, VA: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development. Thiessen, E. J. (1993). Teaching for commitment: Liberal education, indoctrination, and Christian nurture. Montreal, CA: McGillQueen’s University Press.
Suggested Resources Teaching about Religion—http://www.teachingaboutreligion. org/: This website provides resources for educators in a religious context.
Religious Holidays Michael Kelly
Despite the United States’ (U.S.) status as one of the most religiously active and observant populations in the Western world, there are no official religious holidays that all American public schools are required to observe. The federal government recognizes ten annual holidays, and in 1971 Congress passed legislation that required most of these holidays (for example, Presidents’ Day and Martin Luther King Day) to be observed on the Monday closest to the holiday. The one exception to the U.S. secular holiday tradition is Christmas, which is a federally observed holiday. However, most public school districts combine even Christmas into a ‘‘holiday break’’ that also includes an acknowledgment of Kwanzaa and Hanukkah. On more local levels, individual school districts can (and often do) elect to recognize religious holidays,
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though state and federal laws prohibit the explicit celebration of any religion. U.S. courts have ruled that school districts can cancel school days on religious holidays, such as the Jewish holiday of Yom Kippur, if it is clear that a significant number of students and faculty will be absent on that day. Additionally, though a school may decide to stay open on a particular religious holiday, schools cannot penalize students for missing school if they are observing their religious traditions on that day. Students are also permitted to make up work they miss on those days without penalty. Because of the tensions inherent in America’s pluralistic society, many schools struggle with how to discuss religious holidays within the school setting. Some schools minimize or eliminate religion from their formal curriculum and school assemblies altogether in an attempt to avoid these tensions; other schools emphasize the historical roots of the particular religious holiday and encourage students to learn about all the religious diversity in their school via cultural events such as school concerts. Whatever individual school districts decide to do, legal challenges to these actions will likely continue, with some parents incensed to see their religion excised from the curriculum, while others are angry at what they perceive as a school district’s promoting of a particular religion. Though most Americans describe their faith tradition as Christian (77% of the U.S. population in a recent national survey), 14% of Americans report having no religious faith tradition and those individuals may question why religion is allowed to be part of American public education at all. To respond to these many challenges, several leading education organizations such as the National Education Association emphasize a middle ground where all world religious holidays and traditions are taught and affirmed, but not celebrated formally or endorsed by the public school administration. See also: > Religious/ethnic schools
Suggested Reading Haynes, C., & Thomas, O. (2001). Finding common ground: A guide to religious liberty in public schools. Retrieved on October 15, 2006 from http://www.freedomforum.org/templates/document.asp? documentID=3979 Travers. L. (Ed.) (2006). Encyclopedia of American holidays and national days. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press.
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Suggested Resources National Conference for Community and Justice (NCCJ)—http:// www.nccj.org/national: The NCCJ is a group devoted to interfaith dialogue and celebrating religious diversity while keeping public schools secular. Anti-Defamation League—http://www.adl.org/religion_ps_2004/ teaching.asp: This is a guide created by the Anti-Defamation League to help educators, administrators, and parents sort out the complicated issues of teaching about religious traditions in public schools without crossing over into privileging one religion over another. The Graduate Center, The City University of New York—http://www. gc.cuny.edu/faculty/research_briefs/aris/key_findings.htm: This is the home page for the American Religious Identification Survey (ARIS), a national survey of American religious identity and attitudes last conducted in 2001.
Religious/Ethnic Schools Raymond Goldfield
History of Religious/Ethnic Schools in America There is a long history of schools devoted to teaching students of specific ethnic or religious backgrounds. Since the founding of the United States (U.S.), freedom of religion and non-establishment of religion has been a cornerstone of the culture. As such, religious education was often left to the parents or the church, as opposed to the public school system in many countries where there is an established religion. However, although no religion was officially taught in public schools, it was very common to open the day with a prayer, and to teach the Bible and Judeo-Christian practices. The U.S. was primarily a Protestant Christian, White nation in its early history, so the idea that the schools would espouse those values was hardly controversial. A movement towards diversification came with the arrival of mass numbers of new immigrants from Europe in the last nineteenth century. These immigrants were primarily Irish, German, and Russian — all Roman Catholic countries, and with a large Jewish population among them. This shifted the demographic balance of the country, and led to a change in the way public education was viewed. No longer was the Protestant perspective acceptable to everyone in the country. Further, the new
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immigrants, rarely able to effect change in the way things were taught in public schools, formed communities of their own, and their churches and temples often took charge of religious education for their children. When the resources of these communities increased, they were able to found religious schools, which taught the basic fundamentals of education along with religious and culturally specific lessons. As new ethnic and religious groups come to the country, they too opened religious schools. Hence, there is currently a small but growing number of Muslim, Buddhist, and Hindu religious schools throughout the country. A prime factor in the surge in popularity of religious schools concerns Supreme Court decisions in the late twentieth century that put strict limits on religious content in public schools. All school-sponsored prayer was strictly banned, as were classes on religion. This outraged many religious parents who pulled their children out of school to protest what they viewed as the school system turning its back on God. Many went to existing Catholic schools, and fundamentalist Christians, who were in the past satisfied with the Judeo-Christian teachings in public schools, started forming their own religious schools. Religious schools often overlap with ethnic-specific schools. Cultural groups are often bound by religion, and it is not uncommon to see Roman Catholic schools where virtually all the students are Irish or Italian. Yet, the history of ethnic-specific schools does not actually stem from religion, but rather, from another part of American history. The first ethnicspecific schools were founded by Black Americans, who, in the aftermath of slavery, with no social infrastructure or resources, attempted to make sure their next generation would have the education necessary to survive in a White-dominated culture. These schools generally provided the minimum, often in one room, with virtually no textbooks or supplies. Despite these limitations, however, they were the best option for many Black Americans during that period. Through the determination of the teachers working at these schools, many students thrived. Some students, for instance, went on to found all-Black colleges, some of which still exist today. The separate but equal doctrine, set out in Plessy v. Ferguson, created a legal standing for ethnically specific schools, separating Black and White students into segregated schools. However, the schools were not equal, and Black students often suffered from a lack of supplies and attended schools in poor locations. The schools attended by Black students were also severely underfunded and most students received a lesser education.
The inherent inequality of ‘‘separate but equal’’ led to the Supreme Court decision Brown v. the Board of Education, which overturned school segregation and outlawed ethnically-specific public schools. However, the mere act of outlawing these types of educational settings did not render them non-existent. Rather, a long battle ensued to desegregate public schools—it is still not over. For instance, many schools are still segregated not by law, but by population. In major cities and parts of the south, it is not unusual to see schools composed entirely of an African American student body. These schools tend to be given short shrift when it comes to budget decisions. There have, however, been prominent success stories when it comes to these schools. With devoted faculty and motivated students, inner-city schools with all-minority populations have received awards for academic excellence, won contests, and garnered national attention. Many in poor areas, however, continue to languish below the radar.
Trends in Religious/Ethnic Education With the growing popularity of religious schools, it is important to note the multiple types of religious education. The first, and most common, is the afterschool/Sunday program. These are often short (an hour or two per session), and focus exclusively on religious education as a supplement to a public school education. Sunday school after or during church is common for Christian children, Catechism classes prepare Roman Catholic children for their first communion, and most Jewish children attend Hebrew school in preparation for their Bar or Bat Mitzvah. The length of study is determined by the parents and the program, but this is generally considered an easy way for families without much time or money to ensure their children’s religious education. The second type of religious education is a fulltime parochial school. These are generally run either by a church or temple, or privately. The schools teach both religious and general education, and due to the added subject material, often have longer school days. Jewish schools are often run by nationwide companies, such as the Solomon-Schechter day schools, whereas Roman Catholic schools are traditionally run by local parishes. These schools receive no public funding, which is a source of controversy among many, but they also have far more freedom in determining course content and school schedule in comparison to public schools. These schools are licensed by the state, but
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have freedom to determine which teachers to hire. It is not uncommon to see younger teachers, without the necessary certification to teach in a public school, teaching in a religious school if they have a good command of the religion. There are fewer Muslim, Hindu, and Buddhist parochial schools, and these are generally found in areas where these religions are concentrated. These schools generally have a heavier emphasis on religious material than others. Muslim schools in the Virginia area have come under fire for teaching an overtly political curriculum and neglecting basic studies. Religious colleges are also growing in popularity. Rather than emphasize the teachings of the religion, religious colleges generally try to weave the teachings into the general atmosphere of the university. Many universities founded for one religion, like Fordham or Brandeis, no longer have a majority of students from that religion. Others, such as Jerry Fallwell’s Liberty University, promote their religious (and political) views aggressively in an attempt to attract the type of students desired by the school. These schools, while rather segregated, often develop an extremely strong sense of kinship due to the demographically similar student body. Private ethnic/cultural schools are a growing trend. These schools are not affiliated with any religion, but rather cater to a specific ethnic group, to teach the language and cultural heritage of the group. One of the most common are Chinese cultural schools. The first of these schools on the East coast was recently opened in Watchung, New Jersey. This school teaches kindergarten through 12th grade and starts lessons in Mandarin and the history of China at an early age. Members of the Chinese American community have had very positive reactions to the school, but there have been worries from other corners that the school is creating a new segregation and is too insular, isolating the children and denying them the opportunity to interact with students from other cultural backgrounds.
Controversial Issues in Religious/ Ethnic Education Questions of government oversight, government funding, and religion in public schools have driven many people to anger, and been a tentpole of multiple political campaigns. School vouchers is the issue that gets the most press. The price of parochial education has gone up drastically, and many working-class families
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are finding it hard to afford. School vouchers would give back a portion of the school taxes that all citizens pay, and allow parents to invest it in tuition for any private school, including religious schools. The Republican Party has long been a supporter of this, and President Bush campaigned on it. In addition to pleasing religious voters, many Republicans believe that people should have the right to spend their tax money if they’re not going to take advantage of the public school system. Several states, including Ohio, Colorado, Utah, and Florida offer vouchers, and the public has overwhelmingly supported the freedom of school choice it provides. The Supreme Court has upheld the use of vouchers to pay for religious education. However, school vouchers do have opponents. Strong supporters of church-state separation strongly oppose any government funding for religious education, even indirectly. This has motivated opponents to wage court battles and oppose candidates based on this issue. As the court has not ruled whether it is permissible for voucher programs to be started solely for secular schools, opponents of government funding for religious schools have changed tactics, and many are now advocating not an elimination of vouchers, but rather a limited program that would only allow their use for other public schools. The issue is likely to reappear in upcoming elections. A subject that has gained attention in recent years is that of content regulation in religious schools. The schools are generally not strictly regulated by the state, and there is very limited oversight of lesson plans. Supporters of the schools have claimed that it is their right to teach whatever content they wish, and any interference by the state violates separation of church and state. Others have become concerned about reports of the content being taught at some schools. For instance, after ‘‘The Passion of the Christ’’ was released in 2004, some Catholic schools came under fire for their teachings about the death of Jesus, implying that Jews were behind it and, thus, possibly fomenting Anti-Semitism. During the height of the Middle East conflict, both Jewish and Muslim schools came under fire for what was seen as one-sided teachings on the war. The case that drew the most attention, however, centered around Muslim parochial schools in the Washington D.C. area. In the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, the scrutiny of these schools increased, and it was revealed that many of the schools had purchased textbooks and maps from Saudi companies. The maps and textbooks were often filled with blatant inaccuracies
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and bigotry. Students were shown maps with Israel erased, and taught that a sign of the end of days would be for Muslims to rise up and kill Jews. When the story broke in the Washington Post, school officials denied the accusations. While these schools often boast impressive academic credentials, including many scholarship recipients, disturbing reports still emanate of schools teaching that the 9/11 attacks were justified, or that Israel was behind them. The schools steadfastly resist any scrutiny or oversight but the question of religious freedom versus security remains hotly debated. While religious schools are the subject of no small amount of controversy, perhaps even more present is the conflict over the role of religious education in public schools. Although school prayer was outlawed by the Supreme Court, many districts still try to find ways around it. It is common to see moments of silence in the morning, or voluntary student run prayers. These modest efforts continue to be met with controversy, but have so far been upheld. It was recently ruled that a student-led prayer before a football game was allowed, but not a coach-led prayer. Polls show a vast majority of Americans favor school prayer, but the Supreme Court has often ruled that a majority cannot overrule a minority’s rights, and that school prayer violates the rights of non-religious students. The debate over school prayer has spilled over into another issue of religion in schools: the teaching of evolution vs. creationism. The issue first emerged during the Scopes Monkey trial, where a schoolteacher was put on trial and convicted for teaching evolution to his students. Since then, evolution has been legalized and became the required teaching. But in recent years, there has been a resurgent effort to teach creationism in school, either instead of evolution or simply as an alternative theory. The Kansas School Board was the first in any state to mandate the teaching of creationism, or ‘‘intelligent design’’ in recent times, although multiple small towns from Louisiana to Pennsylvania have also experimented with it. While most of them treated intelligent design as an alternative theory, Kansas gained notoriety by removing most evolution material from the curriculum. This spurred a court battle, and recently, an appeals court determined that intelligent design was inherently religious in nature, and could not be taught as science. The court battle is still going on, and will not likely be resolved anytime soon. However, the flames were stoked when President Bush came out in favor of the theory and teaching it in schools. Recently, school boards that advocated the teaching have been turned out of power in
school board elections, leading to anger and threats from proponents such as evangelist Pat Robertson. Becoming more prominent in recent years is the issue of Bible education. While religious classes are prohibited in public schools due to the Constitutional separation of church and state, several schools in the South and Midwest have experimented with having optional classes that teach the Bible as great literature, exploring the moral, literary, and historical implications of the book. While there has been concern over a slippery slope towards teaching religion, this test program has received positive reaction from parents and students, and seems to pass legal muster due to the secular nature of the course. An issue that has gained mainstream attention in recent years is the debate between the school’s right to enforce admission guidelines that fit with the moral/ religious background of the school, and the state’s antidiscrimination laws, which prohibit discrimination based on various criteria, even in privately run schools. In Ontario, California, a girl was expelled from a Roman Catholic school when it came out that her mother was involved in a lesbian relationship. Gay rights groups around the country protested what they saw as an attack on a girl for her mother’s lifestyle choice, but the school defended its policy based on freedom of religion. The case is currently pending in a California court, and legal experts expect it to be overturned due to California’s strict anti-discrimination laws, which unlike many states, includes sexual orientation. The case will likely be appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court regardless of the outcome. The issue of gay rights vs. religious freedom is hotly debated, but other schools have removed students for similar reasons without much controversy. Orthodox Jewish schools have been known to expel students when they or their parents are seen working on the Jewish day of rest. Some Christian schools have removed students because the family didn’t attend church regularly. Many schools, to fend off potential legal challenges to these decisions, require the students and their families to sign codes of conduct when they enroll, agreeing to abide by certain moral rules. These contracts have generally held up when challenged in court.
Curriculum in Specialized Religious/ Ethnic Schools The challenge facing many religious and ethnic-centric schools and colleges is to balance the subjects the schools
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created to teach with the ones they are required to teach by the state. This is often a source of conflict between the school and parents, especially in religious schools. Often parents send their children to religious schools to learn about their faith, and put other subjects on the back burner. However, due to the No Child Left Behind Act, all schools are required to prepare students for standardized tests in writing, reading comprehension, and mathematics at multiple points from grade school to high school. This has created an increased focus on test preparation not only in public schools, but in many parochial schools as well. While most parents who send their children to parochial school understand the need for a balanced education, religious-minded parents have on occasion taken their children out of religious schools when the curriculum became too mainstream for their tastes, and began homeschooling. Homeschooling is becoming a more common alternative to public and parochial schooling, particularly among tight-knit religious communities. Due to national home-schooling curriculums that can be supplemented by the parent with the religious or ethnic subjects of their choosing, homeschooling has become more accepted as an educational practice. The trend of ‘‘homeschooling collectives’’ refers to groups of likeminded parents who get together to educate their children. These are becoming more common in small towns, particularly in the southern part of the U.S. The curriculum in privately-run parochial, religious, and ethnic schools generally involves a combination of universal subjects like math, English, science, social studies, and foreign languages, with a variety of specialized classes. For a Roman Catholic school, this could include bible study, history of the church, and moral education classes. For a Jewish school, it could include the history of Israel, Talmudic study, or Jewish law and ethics. For a Chinese cultural school, the curriculum will likely include the study of Mandarin Chinese or other languages of China, as well as special history classes on the history and culture of China. While the curriculum in standard subjects such as math and reading are generally supervised by the state in most cases, the curriculum in specialized subjects is decided by individual schools, as are the qualifications for teachers in those subjects. Therefore, it is common to see a much greater diversity in age, education, or discipline in teachers in ethnic and religious schools in comparison to public schools. In religious schools, it is often the case that teachers are members of the clergy or nuns. In Jewish day schools, it is common for young scholars in Jewish law and history, often even without
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a college degree, to teach classes. While education is considered a plus in these positions, what often matters far more to the schools in the passion that the teacher brings to the specialized subject matter.
The Future of Ethnic/Religious Schools in America While America’s population becomes increasingly more diverse, both in terms of racial/ethnic and religious backgrounds, and new immigrants continue to bring their culture and faith to America as they’ve done in previous generations, ethnic/religious schools are likely to become more popular, as more and more groups eschew the public school system to form their own educational installations. Different people have different opinions as to whether this alternative is good for America. Many conservatives worry about the trend towards specialized schools that cater to immigrant groups, because it might prevent these groups from integrating successfully into American culture. In addition, proponents of English as the national language worry about schools that teach students primarily in a foreign tongue. Another concern revolves around whether what’s considered to be American values are taught in these schools causing some to be suspicious of such schools. However, others, including new immigrants and parents raising the first generation of children growing up in this country, are strong proponents. They see this educational option as being easier to help instill a love of the original culture, language, and religion in their children if the child is surrounded by other people who are from that same culture. It takes the pressure of the parents to pass down their heritage. In addition, many parents worry about prejudice in public schools, especially if the child doesn’t speak English perfectly. At the same time, however, some parents worry about sheltering their children and keeping them from meeting people from different cultures while in school, and worry if this will leave them unprepared for college and adult life. Religious schools have been a part of America since shortly after the start of public education. Despite this history, there is still substantial debate facing these schools. While parents, educators, and policy makers debate the fine points of what should be taught, how it should be funded, and how much autonomy should be allowed, the number of students enrolled in religious/ ethnic schools continues to grow. Some are wary that these schools will increase the divisions, while others
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hail them for giving parents an alternative to what they view as one-size-fits-all public education. Religious/ ethnic schools are a growing factor in the U.S. education system and their importance is only likely to increase. See also: > Ethnic minority youth; > Religion, Teaching about
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Parochial schools;
Suggested Reading Dwyer, J. G. (2001). Religious schools v. children’s rights. New York: Cornell University Press. Herman, D. C. (1992). Planning for success: Effective insights and strategies for the administration of Jewish religious schools. Los Angeles, CA: Torah Aura. Kahlenberg, R. D. (2003). Public school choice vs. private school vouchers. Century Foundation Press.
Suggested Resources Catholics USA—www.catholicusa.com: A resource for Roman Catholic schools throughout the country. This website provides comparison charts, links to articles, a message board for Roman Catholic parents to compare notes, as well as other links for those interested in Roman Catholic schools. Council for the Advancement of Jewish Education—www.caje. org: The website of the Council for the Advancement of Jewish Education, a non-profit group dedicated to helping fund Jewish day schools around the country. It includes articles by prominent scholars in the field of Jewish education, information about fundraisers, and links to webpages of Jewish schools across the country. School Choices—www.schoolchoices.org/roo/vouchers.htm: A website that contains articles by prominent scholars and pundits on both sides of the voucher issue, as well as research, recommended reading, and a message board for debate.
Remedial Education Elias Mpofu . Frank R Rusch . Shih-Yi Chan . Petra Engelbrecht . Magen M Mutepfa . Nancy Ruhode . Karen Lee Seymour
In developed and developing nations, the legacy left by the introduction of basic or universal education is long. On the one hand, extensive reviews suggest ‘‘best practices’’ exist in relation to instructional
strategies needed to promote learning in the classroom. On the other, the outcomes of children and youth who are the principal targets of general education are varied and require an education that may be outside the mainstream of educational practice. The reasons for these variations in overall effectiveness are a result of the ‘‘mainstream’’ changing. The last quarter-century and the twenty-first century have witnessed an ever-expanding and diverse population of learners from the globalization of the world’s economies and cultural pluralism. As a result, schools around the globe enroll students with increasing diversity in background and learning needs. For example, students attending schools throughout Australia comprise an extremely diverse cultural and linguistic background and include those from migrant, refugee, asylum, and indigenous cultures. Australian students therefore present with a diverse range of learning and educational needs that sometimes requires individualized and specialized programming support, learning adjustments, and resourcing to maximize learning potential. Consequently, best educational practices have evolved to meet effectively the demands of educating and training future generations of citizens. Remedial and inclusive education holds promise for ensuring these future generations of citizens an equal opportunity to benefit from their educational experiences. Early, appropriate identification and timely, effective intervention strategies are imperative for those groups of students whose diverse learning needs may place them at educational risk. It is well acknowledged that students who fail to learn adequately when young, whatever the etiology, often develop later problems that may encompass school disengagement, retention, participation difficulties, alienation, social maladjustment, and mental health problems. It is particularly evident that schools can provide several protective factors for students including connectedness, belonging, and development of social competency. Although remedial educational practices differ across the globe, there is agreed consensus and determined effort for early identification and implementation of initiatives, strategies, and programs to address the needs of those students considered to be at educational risk.
What is Remedial Education? Remedial education is intended to address identified deficit skills in specific school subjects, typically
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reading, math, spelling, and related academic areas. The major goal is to improve learning outcomes for students at risk of achieving below their potential. Students in remedial education include those whose achievement level, progress rate, or behaviors differ from past performance and/or that of peers. Those who are underperforming or not gainfully engaged in their schooling are thought to require remedial education. Cross-national estimates of students thought to benefit from remedial education range from 10 to 20% of total student enrollment. The percentage is estimated to be higher for developing countries owing to the effects of student leaning in underequipped and overenrolled classrooms. For example, conservative estimates of South African students with remediable barriers place the proportion at about 60% of all school students. Remedial education, however, has also been more broadly applied to areas that include social behavior, work behavior, and higher education. The primary reason for this broad application is that the strategies that have been applied and practiced have worked exceptionally well. Results from many international studies indicate that students on remedial education placement made significant learning gains compared with pre-instruction levels of achievement and at-risk peers without remedial education.
Features of Remedial Education Major remedial teaching methods are displayed in > Table 1. Curriculum adjustments may be provided to several students with similar learning support needs. Students with higher support needs may require an individual education plan (IEP), specifically developed and tailored to the unique learning needs of the students. Students with high or extreme support needs may require specialized learning and teaching adjustments in association with regular input from parent/teacher conferencing and/or specialist teachers, interagency collaborative case conferences, and case management. Peripatetic tutors, school psychologists, and special-needs teachers are an integral part of remedial education services. School psychological services require informed parental or caregiver consent when direct assessment and psychological intervention is necessitated.
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. Table 1 Overview of remedial reading methods Remedial Method Assessment
Review
Presentation of material
Guided practice
Corrective feedback Independent practice
Examples Curriculum-based instruction Criterion referenced testing Norm-referenced testing Review previous learning Review prerequisite skills and knowledge State goal Present new material Model desired behavior Provide positive and negative examples Ask many questions Pace the lesson Include all students Provide explicit feedback Reinforce correct responses Use cues to promote desired behavior Provide examples for study Include parents/peers
There is variation in cross-national and national practices for access to remedial education services, the nature of their delivery, and program implementation. For example, the Australian Commonwealth Literacy and Numeracy Plan (CLNP) seeks to ensure that all students attain at least the literacy and numeracy skills required for schooling progress. Under the CLNP, Australian schools with the largest proportion of students vulnerable to low achievement in literacy and numeracy receive funding. These funds are used to develop programs aimed at helping students achieve the English and mathematics outcomes described in the Outcomes and Standards Framework. Subsequent intervention programs as well as strategies and provisions that support the plan are determined at individual system and school levels. In another example, Taiwanese students from families of lower socioeconomic status, indigenous, and/ orremote areas often need remedialeducation. To address family needs, the Educational Priority Area (EPA) program provides remedial education to schools with a higher than average ratio of students from single-parent families or in remote parts of the country. Remedial education is also offered to school dropouts, adolescent offenders, and to spouses from other countries.
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School Culture Influences on Remedial Education Many factors determine the success of remedial education programs. School culture is a leading influence, although it is often overlooked in accounting for the success of remedial education programs. School culture constitutes the beliefs, norms, and values of school personnel. These beliefs influence the allocation of resources and prioritization of programs. In the case of remedial education, how children with remedial education placements are viewed by school personnel influences the type of support they receive from the school. Positive attitudes by school personnel toward remedial education enhance the success of students in remediation.
Trout, A. T., Epstein, M. H., Mickelson, W. T., Nelson, J. R., & Lewis, L. M. (2003). Effect of a reading intervention for kindergarten students at risk for emotional disturbance and reading deficits. Behavior Disorders, 28, 313–326.
Suggested Resources United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization—http://portal.unesco.org/education/en/ev.phpURL_ ID=11891&URL_DO=DO_TOPIC&URL_SECTION=201.html: This website provides information and resources about inclusive education.
Resilience Current Trends Concerns have been expressed about the effects of negative stereotyping and marginalization of children who experience barriers to learning. These children are often labeled ‘‘special needs children’’ who need ‘‘remediation’’ to improve their learning and school coping skills. Consequently, the notion of learning supports is gaining wider use in educational programming for students with educational barriers. The concept of learning support reflects a departure from conventional notions of remedial education. Learning support focuses not only on the individual support of children who experience environmental barriers to learning but also on the development of inclusive communitybased systems of support. Strategies to address barriers to learning include the development of school-based learning support teams and special schools as resource centers for mainstream schools. See also: > Inclusion; > Individualized Education Plan (IEP); > Labeling; > Learning disabilities; > Special education
Suggested Reading Rivera, M. O., Al-Otaiba, S., & Koorland, M. A. (2006). Reading instruction for students with emotional and behavioral disorders and at risk antisocial behaviors in primary grades: Review of literature. Behavior Disorders, 31, 323–337. Rosenshine, B., & Stevens, R. (1986). Teaching functions. In M. C. Wittrock (Ed.), Handbook of research on teaching (3rd ed., pp. 745–799). New York: Macmillan.
Karen J Weston . Jason R Parkin
From At-Risk to At-Promise: The Resilience Movement In the mid-1980s, educators and researchers became interested in youth considered to be at high risk for school failure. The term ‘‘at-risk’’ originated with the landmark publication A Nation at Risk put forth by the National Commission on Excellence in Education in 1983. This report documented the decreasing quality of education in the United States (U.S.) and the increasing number of students in jeopardy, or ‘‘at-risk’’ of leaving school without necessary skills. Its findings sparked widespread educational reform and led to a flurry of legislation enacted to identify and support children considered to be at-risk. Identification of these children in schools generally focused on school and academic criteria (e.g., substandard basic skills, excessive absenteeism, and grade retention), family conditions (e.g., single parent household, poverty), attitudes and behaviors (e.g., negative behaviors, low motivation), and health status (e.g., fetal alcohol syndrome, chronic illness, Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder also known as ADHD). Factors commonly identified as placing a child at high risk include chronic poverty, developmental delays or disabilities, mother with little education, parental psychopathology, and moderate to severe perinatal complications. The focus on at-risk children also includes a variety of psychosocial domains. Researchers have observed
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that children with ADHD who do not use medication as part of treatment are at-risk for developing substance abuse in adolescence or adulthood. Adolescents with depression appear to be at significantly increased risk for later development of major depression, anxiety disorders, nicotine dependence, alcohol abuse, suicide, educational underachievement, unemployment, and early parenthood. Many studies identify risk factors for teen pregnancy, violent behavior, career underachievement, and so on. It stands to reason that risk factors tend to have a cumulative effect—a greater number of adversities in life increases risk for dysfunction. Emphasis on risk factors in the research has stemmed from a medical-driven, pathology, or deficit model of human behavior. That is, psychology has concentrated on what is wrong with an individual, not on what is right. The problem with this at-risk framework is that there seems to be no end to the number of negative outcomes for which an individual could be at risk. All individuals, no matter how successful in life, are at-risk for something. Additionally, the term ‘‘risk’’ carries with it the implication of ‘‘probability’’—meaning that if individuals are atrisk for certain negative outcomes, then they are destined to experience these negative outcomes; and once ‘‘damaged,’’ there is no hope for success. However, most children who are at-risk—for example, children who grow up in families with parents who are mentally ill, alcoholic, abusive, or criminally involved, in poverty, or war-torn communities—develop into healthy, successful adults. Labeling and dismissing at-risk children and identifying them by their problems or deficits may lower expectations for what these children are capable of achieving. In response to the problematic at-risk perspective, researchers started investigating positive aspects of human development, including resilience. The term ‘‘resilience’’ denotes the ability to successfully cope and adapt in the face of adverse life events or underlying psychological stress. One of the first researchers to undertake the study of resilience was Norman Garmezy. In his examination of children of mothers with schizophrenia, he found that the vast majority of children—those at-risk for developing schizophrenia or a related disorder—were ‘‘invulnerable’’ or ‘‘stressresistant.’’ He then sought to determine why some children were vulnerable to the development of mental disorders, whereas others were not. This led to his focus on ‘‘competence’’ as the central predictor of
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resilient behavior in children exposed to stressful events and trauma. Werner and Smith also conducted seminal research on resilience. Their longitudinal investigation of 698 children born on the island of Kauai in 1955 from infancy through adulthood provided an extraordinary portrait of the human capacity to survive and even thrive in the face of adversity. The majority of highrisk children in the study were no longer at risk in adulthood. They were competent, confident, and caring individuals. Recent findings generally corroborate those found by Garmezy as well as Werner and Smith.
Individual Protective Factors Although we often focus on children who are at-risk, much of the research related to overcoming risk factors has been devoted to the study of protective factors— characteristics that reduce the impact of adversity or stressful life situations. Some view risk and protective factors as a ‘‘balancing act’’—that is, the successful adaptation of an individual in the face of adversity is dependent on the number of protective factors that are in place to balance out the number of risk factors. However, it is important to be cautious when taking this approach. The number of risk and protective factors that lead to a positive outcome will vary widely according to the individual. Additionally, factors cannot be conceptualized quantitatively. One protective factor does not necessarily cancel out a risk factor, likely because it is nearly impossible to ascertain which protective/risk factors correspond with each other, or, even which risk factors are associated with any specific negative outcome. Most negative outcomes are the result of multiple risk factors, and the interaction between risks and protective factors is what is ultimately important to understanding outcomes. Intrinsic protective factors are often conceptualized as ‘‘traits,’’ characteristics of the individual’s personality that may mitigate the effects of stress and promote adaptation. For instance, sense of humor is a personality trait that can protect a person during difficult times, or provide a psychological buffer from stressful events. Other key protective factors identified in the resiliency literature include social competence, problem solving, autonomy, sense of purpose, a resilient personality, family and peer relationships, and school and community factors.
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Social Competence Social competence, an important measure of a child’s overall positive adaptation, plays an important role in resiliency. Developmental psychologists define social competence as the ability to meet major societal expectations according to a given age and stage of development. Being able to establish successful relationships with peers and authority figures is a major indicator of social competence. Other indicators of social competence include being sociable, having an easygoing disposition, being able to regulate emotions, possessing a willingness to approach new social situations, having a good sense of humor, and showing empathy and caring. Conflict resolution or conflict management also fits within the concept of social competence. Being able to manage conflict is critical to sustaining positive relationships with others. Children must learn to use communication and problem-solving skills in ways that will lead to peaceful, fair, and collaborative solutions to conflict. Often, children from disruptive backgrounds find conflict management difficult, as they may not have adults in their environment who model these skills. Social competence and conflict resolution skills may fall into the broader area of social intelligence, or being aware of and understanding peoples’ problems or needs and adapting to different social situations. Emotional intelligence also falls into this area and can be considered a type of social intelligence that relies on an individual’s abilities to monitor his or her own emotions as well as those of others’, to discriminate between emotions, and ultimately to make use of this information in planning and action. Whereas some assert important associations between emotional intelligence and successful life outcomes, others caution that research is far too preliminary to support such claims.
Problem Solving Problem-solving encompasses numerous skills, such as planning, flexibility of thought, decision-making, critical thinking, and insight. Resilient individuals possess many of these skills (though not all, and certainly not always). They tend to ‘‘think outside the box’’ and are willing to adapt to meet the demands of new situations. Creativity is another skill or trait that is critical to problem solving. Creative individuals have very
fluid, divergent thinking that allows them to generate solutions to problems that others do not see.
Autonomy Autonomy, defined as an individual’s sense of being independent and in control of what happens to them, includes many interrelated and overlapping concepts important to the concept of resilience. For example, locus of control is a personality construct referring to an individual’s perception of the locus of events. An individual with an internal locus of control is more likely to believe that she is going to succeed no matter what obstacles are presented. More specifically, a strong internal locus of control is related to higher stress tolerance, the ability to resist peer pressure, and the ability to take responsibility for one’s actions. Mastery motivation is critical to the development of autonomy. Some theorists argue that people innately need to feel competent and interact successfully with the environment. From very early in life, individuals are reinforced by parents for obtaining new knowledge and skills to improve competence. Performance goaloriented children, by contrast, are motivated by a compelling desire to outperform others and prove their superiority. They view effort as a sign of low competence, believing that competent people have no need to try very hard to succeed. Autonomous students tend to be driven more by mastery goals than by performance goals. Besides possessing an internal locus of control and a mastery orientation, autonomous individuals also tend to rate high in self-efficacy and self-awareness. They believe in their ability to succeed at specific tasks and are realistic about the amount of effort they need to expend. For example, students with high selfefficacy, compared to low-efficacy students, tend to take on more challenging tasks, exert more effort, persist longer, use more effective strategies, and generally perform at higher levels. Self awareness, an accurate perception of one’s abilities, is important to the development of self-efficacy, because it allows children to reflect on their success and apply this reflective knowledge to new challenges that arise, increasing their capacity for resilience. Some studies have demonstrated the importance of increasing self-awareness by promoting the ethnic identity of adolescents such that they have a clear sense and acceptance of their ethnicity. Like ego identity,
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adolescents often experience a crisis in ethnic identity, and this can compound risks for a population that is already at increased vulnerability. A well-developed sense of ethnic identity, however, is related to psychosocial well-being, positive school achievement, increased self-esteem and sense of competence, and an increase in positive relationships with parents and peers. Thus, ethnic identity appears to provide protection against adversity and fosters the development of resilience.
Sense of Purpose Setting goals is not only important to the development of autonomy; goal-setting also provides a sense of purpose and orients individuals toward achievement. Mastery goals are especially critical to academic achievement. However, prosocial goals, such as seeking acceptance or achieving for the success of the group, have much in common with academic goals. Both help to organize and direct behaviors and empower individuals to achieve more fully. Prosocial goals provide individuals with motivation that is based on feeling that their actions are meaningful. Together, academic and prosocial goals can instill in children a commitment to learning, perhaps the reason why both are positively correlated with academic success. Recently researchers have positioned the need to obtain the prosocial goal sense of belonging to school, (i.e., the extent to which students feel personally accepted, respected, included, and supported in the school environment) within the larger context of achievement goal theory. A student’s sense of belonging to school has been shown to affect academic motivation, engagement and persistence on school tasks, delinquency, substance use, and teen pregnancy.
The Resilient Personality If being resilient means possessing a certain amount of personal strengths or protective factors (resilient traits), is there such a thing as a resilient personality? Personality theorists propose that there are certain personalities that are healthier than others. Abraham Maslow, who was interested in people who had led full and productive lives, suggested that some people have ‘‘self-actualizing personalities.’’ These were people whose basic needs had been met and who, therefore,
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were free to pursue ‘‘higher’’ ideals, such as truth, justice, and beauty. Self-actualizers act independently because they have no need for the approval of others, and they accept their own and others limitations. They tend to be creative, full of good humor, and spontaneous. Maslow’s self-actualizing subjects under study included Abraham Lincoln, Albert Einstein, Albert Schweitzer, and Eleanor Roosevelt. Similar to Maslow, Carl Rogers proposed that there is a healthy personality, which he called the ‘‘fully functioning person.’’ The fully functioning person has high self-esteem and a self-concept that is positive and congruent with reality. Such a person has a positive view of his or her abilities and worth, and this view is reinforced by positive messages from others, who express approval, friendship, and love. Thus, both Maslow and Rogers focused on our potential; the ‘‘inner quest’’ that moves us toward positive behaviors and personal growth. Their ideas of the self-actualizing and fullyfunctioning individual certainly fit with the concept of a resilient person.
Environmental Protective Factors It is easy to conceptualize characteristics of resilient individuals dichotomously (i.e., they possess a resilient characteristic or they do not). However, it is more accurate to look at traits as being expressed by individuals according to their context or situation. A young child who seems independent in the school setting may be dependent on others at home. Personal strengths or traits are not fixed across contexts. So, although examining characteristics of individuals who are resilient is important to understanding how to promote resiliency in children and adolescents, it is also essential to keep in mind that the individual is part of a much broader context. The environment surrounding the individual plays a significant role in the development and expression of those resilient characteristics. This has led many researchers to look at protective factors in the environment that influence developmental pathways leading to resilience. Just as there are many individual factors that can help mediate risk factors and foster resilience, there are many environmental protective factors that have been demonstrated to be related to successful developmental outcomes. In general, these environmental factors can be further broken down into family factors, peer factors, and school and community factors.
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Family Factors One of the most important determinants of resilience in children and adolescents is the context of the family structure and the relationships therein. From the moment of birth, the parent-child bond provides the foundation for development across different domains, and, in particular, influences the quality of the relationships with individuals other than the parent. Secure attachments are related to trust, positive self-perceptions, and a lack of psychological problems. Researchers have found that children who form secure attachments with parents may experience more positive outcomes, such as having highself esteem and social competence in preschool, positive school adjustment in childhood, increased social skills and positive self-perceptions in early adolescence, and decreased antisocial and delinquent behaviors in adolescence. These findings appear to be consistent across ethnic groups. The importance of parental attachment aligns with the resiliency research in which a positive relationship with one or more adult caregivers has been demonstrated to be the key to positive developmental outcomes and resiliency during stressful life events. Parenting or child-rearing styles also play a role in moderating adversity and promoting resilience. Diana Baumrind first designated the four types of parenting styles commonly studied: (1) Authoritarian parents, demonstrate high control and low warmth, they are restrictive, punitive and express little warmth toward their child(ren); (2) Permissive parents are characterized by low amounts of control and a high degree of warmth and involvement; often they allow children autonomy before it is developmentally appropriate; (3) Uninvolved parents show low amounts of control and low warmth, they are generally indifferent to, or may be completely neglectful of their children; (4) Authoritative parents, in contrast with the first three types, encourage independence and nurturance, where parents accept children and involve themselves in their children’s lives; these parents exert some control and set some limits, but they grant autonomy in developmentally appropriate stages to encourage children to think and act on their own. Authoritative parenting has been associated with the most positive outcomes related to psychological well-being and competence. However, research does suggest that in some cultures and contexts, some authoritarian parenting is also effective. For example, in a high risk environment such as an unsafe neighborhood, having strict rules about how and where children spend their time may
protect the child and promote resilience. Also, there are large variations in terms of culture. In African American, Asian, and Hispanic families there may be more emphasis on parental authority than in White American families. However, children who have experienced chaotic, severely punitive, or inconsistent parenting are less likely to form a secure attachment with the parent, more likely to be subjected to the emotional detachment of the parent, and are at increased risk for negative developmental outcomes. The end result of much of the research appears to be that positive parenting, where communication lines remain open and the family unit is relatively conflict free, is associated with the most adaptive outcomes for youth and the promotion of resilience. If the child-parent attachment is poor, or parents are not emotionally involved in parenting, children are still able to acquire resilience skills through others in the family structure. Siblings may role model resilient behaviors and become supplemental attachment figures, providing an emotional bond, advice, and support. Relationships with grandparents, or other extended family members, may afford children the intimacy and affection of family connections and provide them with parental surrogates. Moreover, extended family members may allow children more autonomy than they have within their immediate family. Bonds with extended family members may have a somewhat different meaning for African American and White adolescents, as well as males and females. For example, African American adolescents are more likely to live with and receive support from their extended family than White adolescents. In addition, researchers have found that both African American and White females are more likely than males to identify relationships with extended family members (female family members in particular) as significant. In terms of resilience research, it appears that having a family member—not necessarily a parent—who is warm and caring, teaches empathy and respect, and also has high expectations, influences the positive well-being of children and adolescents. Certainly stressors in the family environment have the potential of mitigating protective factors. For example, children may be more at risk for negative outcomes if they live in a single-parent family, experience parental conflict or divorce, have a parent who suffers from mental illness or substance use disorder, witness domestic violence, or are the target of maltreatment within the family. However, when the actual percentages of children who experience negative
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outcomes as a result of family adversity are taken into account, only a very small percentage of children develop psychiatric problems, dropout of or fail at school, commit a violent act, develop a substance use disorder, and so on. The vast majority of children are able to adapt to dysfunction within the family and demonstrate resilience. When family systems are chaotic, it is prudent to provide support and parent education, building on the strengths of the family to promote resiliency.
Peer Factors Peers play an important socialization role in the development of children. Relationships with peers are increasingly important as children mature, particularly in adolescence where they are a source of identity formation. Not all friendships are positive, however. Adolescents who drop out of school are likely to have friends who have also dropped out of school and who have low expectations for school. Conversely, adolescents with friends who care about learning are more likely to be enrolled in challenging academic programs, less likely to drop out, and more likely to continue their education upon graduation from high school. Also, note that peer influences are the strongest and most consistent socializing influences on adolescent substance use. Positive peer relationships are associated with lower levels of problem behaviors, and can moderate the risks related to negative family and community environments and experiences. Peer groups allow children to learn important socialization skills when these are not taught in the family environment, and offer increased opportunities for the development of selfesteem and competence. Friendships provide a social context for experimenting with issues of trust, intimacy, and emotional support, and provide children with a connection to a larger group of individuals and, therefore, a sense of belonging. Children without these strong friendship bonds are at a greater risk for negative developmental outcomes, such as adjustment problems, stress, low self-esteem, and academic problems. Positive peer relationships are important across all racial/ethnic groups and for both genders, although some minor differences exist. For example, girls are more likely than boys to report emotional closeness in their relationships with friends of the same gender.
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Little research exists, however, on the qualitative differences in peer relationships experienced by different ethnic groups. Some studies have revealed that children in low socioeconomic urban settings have fewer opportunities to cultivate friendships. In high-risk environments, activities may be restricted for safety, and children may spend more time in the home rather than the community. In low income families, mainstay activities for children in other socioeconomic groups (e.g., soccer, dance lessons, and group outings) may not be available. Positive peer relationships, because of their strong association to well-being and resilience, should be promoted in the school setting so that children of all economic levels have frequent opportunities to practice skills for social and emotional competence.
School and Community Factors Because children spend a great number of hours at school, they provide an ideal context for the promotion of resilience. Researchers consistently report that schools, and in particular teachers, have a great capacity for ameliorating the risks experienced by children. Conversely, when schools fail to meet the needs of a student and failure or dropout ensues, the child is at great risk for experiencing negative outcomes, and is cited by some as the single strongest predictor of adolescent risk. Positive teacher relationships are known to produce positive academic outcomes. For some children, in particular those who have no connection to a loving adult in the family, the relationship with a caring and supportive teacher is crucial. If schools are going to actively promote the resilience and well-being of students, then focusing on developing positive and caring relationships between teachers and students must be a priority. Research suggests that teachers who work to establish positive relationships with their students— who demonstrate caring and confidence in their students, and who talk and listen to their students with respect—are more likely to elicit on-task behaviors and are less likely to have conflicts with students. Teachers can learn to respond therapeutically to students by offering supportive comments and gestures, diffusing confrontational situations, and helping students to reframe their thinking and perspectives on behavior to foster psychosocial development. From a systems perspective, schools can play a particularly important role in the promotion of
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resilience. Schools can establish a strong base from which to increase student resilience by following three principles. First, schools can do much by implementing their efforts early and by focusing on the prevention of serious problems or risk factors. Often schools respond to student problems once they occur. However, most problems have an associated developmental history consisting of early precursors that may in fact be more prone to amelioration. Second, as already mentioned, schools can begin to increase student resilience by paying attention to relationships. Accordingly, it follows that school psychologists can facilitate early interventions by educating school staff about developmental processes and helping teachers create positive relationships with and between their students. Third, efforts at resiliency promotion should be integrated within the traditional goals of school. Fostering resiliency occurs parallel to other educational and developmental goals; it can be interwoven into the broader mission of the school, and should not be viewed merely as an additional task of the schooling process. The larger community may also play a role in the conceptualization of resiliency. Though many community characteristics are important to considering when discussing a community’s influence on children’s resilience (i.e., overcrowded housing, levels of violence, etc.), often they are subsumed under the broader characteristic of living in poverty. Indeed poverty represents a great risk to child health and development because it does not just represent financial resources, but also carries with it a dearth of mental, physical and spiritual resources. Demographic neighborhood characteristics influence a number of negative developmental outcomes. For instance, the percentage of middle-income families (income greater than $30,000) in a neighborhood can predict childhood IQ, teenage births and school dropout, even when controlling for the effects of an individual family’s particular socioeconomic status (SES). These effects can be complicated, especially when considering how family factors may mitigate broader community influences. For example, although living in a low SES neighborhood can increase the likelihood of teenage pregnancy significantly, neighborhood effects can disappear when parents supervise their children’s social relationships. Unfortunately, poverty effects can undermine a family’s ability to buffer children from negative community influence. Neighborhood influence from high levels of poverty or violence can strain families.
Research suggests that mothers may suffer from lower self-esteem or depression, demonstrate a lack of hope for the future and personal empowerment, show lower aspirations and live in social isolation. Impoverished families may have increased health problems, untreated chronic illness, anemia from poor nutrition and an increased risk of substance abuse. Parents may not have finished high school, have few social supports and difficulty making decisions and planning with a limited budget. They may have unreasonable expectations for their children, and provide them with less supervision and punish them more harshly.
A Note on Resilience Promotion Research is clear: individuals who are more resilient are more apt to successfully navigate the challenges and adversities presented throughout their life course. Therefore, it is incumbent upon parents, schools, and communities to promote resilience in children, and to begin this promotion at an early age. Generally, resilience promotion programs target one or more of the following: (1) elimination or prevention of risk factors, (2) developing access to new resources, and (3) enhancing the systems and relationships required for positive development. All too often efforts to foster resilience take a practical, though oversimplified perspective. For instance, though high teacher expectations and competent social skills may correlate with resilience, merely addressing these concerns individually, and over a short period of time, will likely not lead to meaningful change. Attempts to foster resilience should not focus on individual sets of skills, but rather should be integrative by targeting multiple factors associated with resilient outcomes that have a solid, theoretical basis. These include providing the child with care and support from an adult role model, communicating realistic, achievable, but high expectations to the child, allowing the child to engage in meaningful participation in the family, school and community, and fostering within him or her a sense of belonging and competence. Resilience is more than the sum of specific skills or child attributes, rather it likely represents the synthesis of a number of variables, relationships and processes over a period of time. Above all, resilience promotion should be approached with the belief that all individuals, families, and communities have strengths and positive resources that lay the foundation for well-being and healthy development.
Resilience building prevention programs
See also: > Character education; > Conflict resolution; > Cultural resilience; > Educational resilience; > Emotional intelligence; > Multiple intelligences; > Resilience building prevention programs
Suggested Reading Benard, B. (2004). Resiliency: What we have learned. San Francisco, CA: WestEd. Clauss-Ehlers, C. S., & Wibrowski, C. (2007). Building resilience and social support: The effects of an educational opportunity fund academic program among first- and second-generation college students. Journal of College Student Development, 24(5), 574–584. Doll, B., Zucker, S., & Brehm, K. (2004). Resilient classrooms: Creating healthy environments for learning. NY: The Guilford Press. Milstein, M. M., & Henry, D. A. (2000). Spreading resiliency: Making it happen for schools and communities. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press. Synder, C. R., & Lopez, S. J. (2002). Handbook of positive psychology. Oxford, NY: Oxford University.
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families and children. These prevention programs have been formulated by psychologists and other health and mental health professionals to foster the psychological construct of resilience in children to promote wellness. They have proven to be effective at lowering rates of depression, criminal activities, abuse, teen pregnancy, suicide, and poverty along with other outcomes among youths.
Resilience Resilience is the ability to thrive, mature, and succeed despite significant hardships and adverse circumstances. Resilience is the ability to turn a high risk situation into a positive outcome. Research in this area attempts to answer why some but not all children from adverse backgrounds succeed. Questions asked are: What do these children do differently? What environmental factors help them to succeed? What cultural values are employed? What internal mechanisms help them become better adjusted?
Suggested Resources Bright Futures—http://www.brightfutures.org/: A national health promotion initiative out of Georgetown University, Bright Futures is dedicated to the idea that every child deserves to be healthy, and underscores the importance of trusting relationships between the child, health professionals, the family and the community. Search Institute—http://www.search-institute.org/: Researchers at Search Institute in Minneapolis have identified 40 ‘‘developmental assets’’ for each stage of development, which are important to healthy or resilient functioning and should be fostered by adults. These include external factors, such as family support and positive peer influence, as well as internal factors, such as high self-esteem.
Resilience Building Prevention Programs Jessica L Larsen
Resilience building prevention programs are a group of health interventions based on resilience research that prevent health problems by proactively strengthening
Research on Resilience Recent research attempts to hone in on those factors that promote resilience. These protective factors fall into three main categories: individual factors, family factors, and community factors. Individual factors linked to the overall resiliency of children include high self-esteem and positive self-concept, basic trust, easy temperament, secure attachment, flexibility, social skills, intelligence, internal locus of control, active coping style, and realistic self-esteem. Resiliency in families is promoted through caring relationships, communication, stability, high parental expectations, positive discipline methods, supervision, support, and opportunities for meaningful participation and contribution in the family. Community factors include influences exerted by peers and feelings of support by adults outside the family. Recent studies have shown that a positive school experience can compensate to some degree for an adverse home environment. Resilience processes lie in the environmental context as well as in individual traits. Research dealing with cross-cultural issues in resiliency focuses on the culturally specific agents that contribute to resilient outcomes. Children and adolescents of color are the fastest growing group in the United States (U.S.), comprising 30% of
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the population in the year 2000 (according to the U.S. Census Bureau). The multicultural nature of U.S. society indicates a need for programs and services sensitive to the needs of diverse communities and cultures. Youths from different backgrounds have diverse stressors and protective factors that affect their overall well being. Culture can interact with stressors so that risk has a different impact and manifestation on different individuals. Culturally specific characteristics may act as protective agents, such as family cohesion and structure found in a majority of Latin American families, an emphasis on education found in a majority of Asian American families, and a strong spirituality and community support found in a majority of American Indian families. Researchers have studied these differences and cited specific culturally relevant factors that can be addressed in the design of interventions employed in ethnically diverse communities.
Interventions Psychologists and school administrators have attempted to create resilience building environments within schools by employing resilience building prevention programs. Utilizing knowledge gained from resiliency research, these programs target children who may risk difficulties in an effort to enhance the protective mechanisms available to them. Many resilience prevention programs that proactively strengthen families and children have been designed and implemented with much success. Only a few have been subjected to longterm follow up evaluations. Cultural differences need to be taken into account when dealing with interventions on the family, school, and community level. Cultural background can greatly influence the type of resilience prevention programs that will be effective with any given group. Resilience as a construct takes on different meaning when varying cultural norms and values are taken into account.
School-Based Resilience Prevention Programs Many resilience prevention programs are school-based programs that seek to increase a child’s protective factors through structured curriculum, parent involvement, and positive role model relationships. Two such
school programs are the Primary Mental Health Project (PMHP) and its successor, the Promoting Resilient Children Initiative (PRCI). These two interventions were based on research from the Rochester Child Resilience Project, a series of studies with urban families and children, primarily focused on African American and Hispanic families, which aimed to increase knowledge of positive adaptation and resilience among minority youths. The PMHP and the PRCI have been proven to be a valid model in a variety of school settings (urban, rural sites). One of the first school-based resilience prevention programs was the PMHP. A key initiative in this program was to introduce trained paraprofessionals to the school setting to address young children’s behavioral and social-emotional needs. The program targets kindergarten through third grade individuals who display signs of emerging behavioral and social-emotional problems. In the program, teachers complete screening measures for all their students. These measures test for elevated aggression, disruption behavior, peersocial problems, and/or anxious withdrawn behaviors. Once the child is identified, they meet with a trained paraprofessional once a week. During these interactions the adult interacts with active listening and encouragement techniques that are designed to provide children with a supportive adult relationship. Outcomes from the program are promising, including short-term gains in classroom adjustment, reductions in aggressive disruptive behavior and enhanced peersocial competence. The PRCI, a second-generation intervention, is much like its predecessor PMHP in its target age and screening but has additional intervention methods. PRCI delivers expanded intervention objectives which require additional training and ongoing supervision components for school-based teams. PRCI targets the child as well as the child’s family and school environment, designed to enhance a family’s opportunities to identify and meet parenting goals and family needs through school and community resources. This intervention is directly based on a research finding that resilient families utilize community resources more than non-resilient families. It also includes standardized skill-development activities, extensively incorporating strategies for emotional-regulation and social cognitive competencies through work with an adult paraprofessional. Finally, the PRCI includes a teacher-consultation component that is designed to increase the child’s school bonding and assist them in
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generalizing positive relationships in early elementary years to future effective relationships in schools. This component was based on a research finding that identified school relationships and resources as a precursor for establishing a trajectory of competence and educational success. PRCI has been shown to be effective in reducing children’s classroom behavior problems and increasing children’s peer-social functioning and has shown to be more effective as compared to the firstgeneration PHMP model.
School Violence and Gang Prevention Programs Nationally, school violence and gang membership are increasingly problematic in education. Gangs are specifically associated with academic failure, truancy, and dropping out of school. Gang rivalries have become an increasing threat to school safety. Many schools have adopted a zero tolerance policy, installed metal detectors, toughened existing disciplinary codes, and increased security. Additional efforts have been made to stop violence before it happens. Prevention programs such as the High/Scope Perry Preschool Project and Se Puede are programs that have been designed and implemented in culturally diverse communities to reduce gang involvement in students and increase their individual resilience protective factors to foster better outcomes. The High/Scope Perry Preschool Project began in 1962 and targets children from poor African American families in preschool. The program emphasizes active child-initiated learning, problem solving, decisionmaking, planning, and a high degree of interaction between adults and children and among the children themselves. The program has been very successful at increasing individual protective factors that are characteristic of resilient children such as problem solving ability and self-esteem. It also increases family protective factors by having teachers conduct home visits to promote parental involvement in their children’s educational experience. The projects long-term outcomes include increased scholastic achievement, after school activity involvement, and high school graduation rates. It has proven to decrease gang involvement, drug use, and teen pregnancy rates. Se Puede, or ‘‘You Can’’ in Spanish, is a program that works to prevent gang involvement, gun violence, and drug use to improve academic performance
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among at risk middle school youth in a Tri-city area (Alamo, Pharr, and San Juan) of Puerto Rico that has a notoriously high gang involvement rate. The program includes individual and group counseling, a voluntary 1-year role model program, a curriculum component that introduces substance abuse and violence prevention skills; and monthly weekend camping experiences promoting survival skills and relationship development with participants. These activities promote individual resiliency protective factors such as self-esteem, self-reliance, self-reflection, problem-solving abilities, and pro-social skills. The program’s participants showed a decrease in gang and crime involvement as well as an improvement in school performance and individual skills among participants.
Culture Promoting Programs New research is finding that gender and ethnically congruent interventions promote resiliency in that they promote self-esteem, ethnic identity, and cultural values. One such program works with African American preadolescent females. The program incorporates two strategies: resource enhancement (gives access to new resources) and process orientation (supports relationships needed for successful development). It also incorporates a third intervention focused on strengthening Africentric values and traditions found among individuals of African descent such as spirituality and harmony. The program resulted in higher physical appearance self-concept. New research is finding that focusing on strengthening ethnic values and traditions found among individuals of a given ethnicity promotes resiliency in that it promotes self-esteem, ethnic identity, and cultural values. The program resulted in higher physical appearance self-concept.
Academic Resilience One line of study in resilience research is academic resilience, the ability to sustain high levels of achievement, motivation, and performance despite the presence of stressful events and adverse conditions is known as academic resilience. Academic resilience is associated with the child’s overall resiliency, but it is easily influenced by protective factors that can be supplied by the school environment. A supportive
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academic environment, a sense of belonging and certain cultural influences all contribute to resilient outcomes. A sense of belonging can have great cultural implications. Those who are marginalized due to ethnic minority status may find it difficult to find a sense of belonging. Resilience prevention programs can be implemented to reduce the effects of this marginalization or to take advantage of schools that are widely homogenous with minority children by encouraging their sense of belonging and connectivity with the school. In addition, schools that promote academic resilience in children employ effective classroom management techniques such as high structure, preparation, and planning; they emphasize school work, and insist that students take responsibility for their actions, their activities, and the maintenance of a positive atmosphere. See also: > Cultural resilience; > Educational resilience; Parental involvement in education; > Resilience; > School-based prevention >
Suggested Reading Gonazalez, R., & Padilla, A. M. (1997). The academic resilience of Mexican American high school students. Hispanic Journal of Behavioral Sciences, 19(3), 301–317. Wyman, P. A., Cross, W., & Barry, J. (2004). Applying research on resilience to enhance school-based prevention: The promoting resilient children initiative. In C. S. Clauss-Ehlers & M. D. Weist (Eds.), Community planning to foster resilience in children (pp. 249–266). New York, NY: Kluwer Academic/Plenum Publishers.
Suggested Resources The Center for Substance Abuse Prevention—http://prevention. samhsa.gov/: The Center for Substance Abuse Prevention (CSAP) provides national leadership in the Federal effort to prevent alcohol, tobacco, and other drug problems. CSAP provides information and tools that can be used by States and communities to build an effective and sustainable prevention infrastructure. The SAMHSA Model Program—http://modelprograms.samhsa. gov/: The SAMHSA Model Programs website features programs that have been tested in communities, schools, social service organizations, and workplaces across America, and have provided solid proof that they have prevented or reduced substance abuse and other related high-risk behaviors. The programs included have been reviewed by SAMHSA’s National Registry of Evidence-based Programs and Practices (NREPP).
Retention Robyn Hess
Retention refers to the practice of retaining or holding a child back in the same grade that has just been completed in the subsequent academic year. Grade retention has long been practiced in United States (U.S.) schools and is viewed by some as a viable strategy to help children to catch up academically, physically, and/or socially. Over the last 25 years, retention has become an increasingly popular method used by schools to hold students accountable for adequate academic growth. Despite the emphasis placed on evidence-based practice in many areas of schooling, the increased use of retention is not consistent with this trend. In fact, systemic research over the last 90 years (1911–1999) has not found a solid body of evidence to support the use of grade retention to improve academic achievement. The debate over the use of grade retention continues and is often defined in terms of an either/or solution: retention or social promotion. Instead, effective alternatives that promote student learning and result in positive, long-term outcomes are needed. Traditionally, the most common mechanism for retention is through a teacher recommendation or parental request. When a student demonstrates limited academic progress or seems immature compared to same-age peers, it is thought that having the student repeat a grade will allow the child to mature and/or gain needed academic skills. Retention may occur through other avenues as well. For example, when a student transfers to a new school from another school or district the decision is sometimes made to place the child at the same grade level that was just completed if there was a history of frequent moves or academic struggles. Some schools use a transitional kindergarten year for younger students with the idea that a year in between kindergarten and first grade would not hold a child back, but instead provide that child an extra year to mature. Finally, parents are sometimes asked to hold their children out for a year until the child is ‘‘ready’’ for school. Although these last two practices are not technically defined as retention, they represent different ways by which schools might delay children in their educational progress. As a result, some researchers have
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started describing children as ‘‘overage for grade’’ as it can be difficult to track their progress in school and much easier to define the outcome. Recently, schools have established widespread promotion policies where students will not move forward unless they meet pre-established criteria. For example, urban districts such as Chicago and New York as well as several state school systems (e.g., Texas, Florida, and California) have implemented strict policies ending the practice of social promotion to ensure that students are learning and that schools are demonstrating accountability for the academic growth of students. It has been suggested that some school administrators may believe that the threat of being retained will be an effective motivator for students and will encourage parents and teachers to direct more of their attention to students who are struggling academically. Although it is difficult to obtain national statistics on the number of children who are retained each year, it is estimated that by the time children reach third grade, one in five has been retained. Using 2001 data from the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), there were 47.5 million students in kindergarten through 12th grade and the average expenditure per retained child was more than $7,500. The overall annual rate of retention is estimated at 1–5% which would affect between 475,000 and 2.38 million children and cost approximately $3.5 and $17.8 billion each year. Of particular concern is the differential manner in which retention practices are implemented. For example, more males than females are retained each year, as are more students from low income and ethnically diverse backgrounds. For example, in 1999, 13% of Latino/a students in kindergarten through 12th grade had been retained whereas only 9% of White American students and 7% of Asian/Pacific Islanders had a similar educational experience. Both African American and Native American students reported that 18% had experienced retention. Familial variables such as low parental education, low family involvement, and number of moves are also related to higher levels of retention and are likely a reflection of the families’ lower socioeconomic status. In addition to these demographic variables, there are several more malleable characteristics that place children at risk for school retention. One of the greatest predictors of grade retention is poor early school performance. Children who have lower reading and math scores are much more likely to be retained than those with performance levels that are closer to grade
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level. As would be expected, children with learning disabilities are also more likely to be retained. However, retention decisions are not solely based on academic performance. Children who display more externalizing behaviors are more likely to be retained compared with children who are perceived as having poor peer relationships, who have adjustment problems, and/or who struggle with emotional well-being. Although much of the focus of research has been on children and their families, some findings indicate that there are important differences in school districts that implement higher levels of grade retention. For example, districts that are larger tend to retain more children than smaller ones. Because these larger districts have greater budgets, they are better able to absorb the cost of retention. Likewise, districts that have higher student to teacher ratios and a higher proportion of low income to high income students are more likely to retain students. These factors often characterize urban districts where the majority of students are African American and Latino/a, contributing to the disproportionate number in grade retention for these groups. Beyond the district are the characteristics of the community itself. The public has historically supported the idea of retention with the belief that students need to ‘‘earn’’ educational advancement through their ability and achievement. During times when schools are under greater public scrutiny, there is often a corresponding increase in the use of retention.
Outcomes of Grade Retention The literature that examines the effectiveness of grade retention on academic achievement and socioemotional outcomes has been mixed, with the majority suggesting negative long-term effects. For example, retained children consistently demonstrated persistently lower levels of academic achievement as compared to their promoted peers (even when controlling for relevant achievement and family variables), higher rates of special education placement, and lower levels of emotional well-being. The most negative effects appear to occur when students are retained early in their academic careers (i.e., first to third grade). Those researchers who have reported more positive findings for retention have supported only short term academic advantages. However, one longitudinal study found that although students who had been retained continued to lag behind their non-retained peers, the gap
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between the two groups had narrowed by the eighth grade. Many studies have also focused on the socialpsychological differences between retained and nonretained students. Again, some researchers have found limited support for the positive effects of retention (e.g., greater attachment to school), some have reported both positive and negative outcomes, while others have found only negative effects. It appears that most of the positive outcomes are observed in the short-term, and most often for middle class students who are retained after the primary grades. The apparent connection between being retained in school and later school dropout is of greatest concern. Retained students were twice as likely to drop out of school as their non-retained peers. If retained more than once, the student’s estimated likelihood of dropping out increases 11-fold. One model for explaining school dropout suggests that students who are poorly attached to school develop this disconnection over the years due to poor school performance and feelings of failure. From this perspective, holding students back in grade would increase the likelihood of dropping out by lowering students’ self-efficacy, compounding feelings of failure, and a negative attitude toward school. From a developmental perspective, retention produces the stigma of being older than one’s classmates. Recent evidence from both Chicago and Texas indicated that students who were required to repeat ninth grade because of tough promotion policies, were unlikely to finish high school. Furthermore, almost all students who were retained because of these policies were either African American or Latino/a. Retention appeared to place those students who were already at risk (e.g., low achieving, history of one retention) at even greater risk of not completing their education.
Alternatives to Retention It is clear that grade retention does not support longterm educational improvements and may result in more detrimental outcomes for those students who are most at risk for school failure. Given this information, it is important for educators to research and implement effective alternatives to grade retention. Some of the program options that have been found to reduce grade retention include quality preschool programs, small classroom size in the first 3 years of school, evidence-based reading programs, tutoring, summer school, and more individualized instruction.
Prevention of academic failure as well as early identification and intervention for children who are struggling academically will help more students achieve success in school. See also: > Learning styles; > Resilience building prevention programs; > Student motivation
Suggested Reading Alexander, K. L., Entwisle, D. R., & Dauber, S. L. (2003). On the success of failure: A reassessment of the effects of retention in the primary school grades (2nd ed.). Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Bali, V. A., Anagnostopoulos, D., & Roberts, R. (2005). Toward a political explanation of grade retention. Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, 27, 133–155. Eide, E. R., & Goldhaber, D. D. (2005). Grade retention: What are the costs and benefits? Journal of Education Finance, 31, 195–214. Orfield, G. (Ed.). (2004). Dropouts in America: Confronting the graduation rate crisis. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Education Press.
Suggested Resources National Dropout Prevention Center/Network—http://www. dropoutprevention.org/: This website provides a wealth of information, resources, and practical intervention strategies related to students who at risk of school drop out. National Association of School Psychologists (NASP) Center— http://www.naspcenter.org/: This website provides fact sheets for parents (in both English and Spanish) as well as teachers on grade retention.
Rewards Jo-Anne Manswell Butty
Rewards are attractive objects or events supplied as a consequence of behavior. There are two theories that explain a person’s reactions to rewards: (a) cognitive dissonance theory. and (b) cognitive evaluation theory. Cognitive dissonance theory explores reactions of people who act in ways that contradict their beliefs. In the case of rewards, when people work on a task to obtain a reward, they are likely to view their actions
Rewards
as extrinsically (or externally) motivated. In this case, offering a person a reward to work on a task they already enjoy provides more than adequate justification for their participation. When the reward contingency is no longer in effect, people often lose their justification and motivation for working on the task. In cognitive evaluation theory, all rewards have the potential to control or inform and therefore have an impact on intrinsic (or internal) motivation. Rewards control a person’s actions when they are given contingent upon an individual accomplishing a given task or performing at a certain level. Rewards provide information about a person’s skills or competence when they are linked to actual performance or progress. Research shows that different types of rewards affect intrinsic motivation. These seven types of rewards are:
Verbal rewards (positive feedback)—tend to enhance competence when given in an informational style and a person knows what was done well. However, verbal rewards can be undermining when given in a controlling style. In this case, while feedback is positive, it is usually given in relation to a person’s idea of what an assignment or project should cover. Tangible rewards (money, prizes, trophies)—can be enhanced when given in the context of respect for effort and when feedback emphasizes recognition of effort in a respectful manner. Tangible rewards can undermine one’s behavior when it is controlling. In this case, a person has not chosen the reward, and there is no recognition of or respect for interests, strengths, and weaknesses. Unexpected rewards and task non-contingent rewards (unexpected reward for performing a task well)—are not detrimental to intrinsic motivation because an individual or group may have put effort into a particular task because of their interest and engagement and not because they expected the reward. Engagement-contingent rewards (rewards are offered for simply working on a target activity)—can undermine intrinsic motivation since there are no specific performance requirements. The reward is really for work habits and is unrelated to the task itself. Completion–contingent rewards (reward offered for completion of a task)—can undermine intrinsic motivation because the reward is for completion and not for showing understanding or mastery of a particular task. It is particularly undermining for
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those who have difficulty with a particular task or for those who need time to reflect on their work. Task contingent rewards (combination of engagement contingent rewards and completion–contingent rewards)—have similar effects of engagement contingent and completion-contingent rewards which undermine intrinsic motivation. Performance-contingent rewards (reward for doing well at a task or performing to a standard)—can enhance motivation when a person interprets the feedback as information on their accomplishments. If, on the other hand, it is interpreted as controlling because the person has no choice in the reward, it may not be interpreted as a reward and can undermine intrinsic motivation.
Findings show that when rewards convey information that contributes to a person’s sense of efficacy and selfdetermined competence, they enhance intrinsic motivation. Interest is sustained even when the reward contingency is removed because people place the locus of causality inside themselves. If, on the other hand, rewards are perceived as controlling, individuals may attribute their actions to factors outside of themselves and lose their sense of determination. Once the reward contingency is no longer in effect, there is nothing compelling them to work at the activity so interest declines and intrinsic motivation diminishes. Using rewards in the classroom to foster motivation requires that teachers convey information that is linked to student progress, skill improvement, learning, and competence. When rewards are contingent on these outcomes, they convey to the student that they are learning, which builds self-efficacy and sustains motivation. Rewards linked only with spending time on a task regardless of performance level do not have this motivational effect. It is also important to be aware that different types of rewards may have different effects on different groups of individuals (e.g., boys vs. girls; younger students vs. older students). See also: > Classroom management; > Student motivation
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Reinforcement;
Suggested Reading Deci, E. L., Koestner, R., & Ryan, R. M. (2001). Extrinsic rewards and intrinsic motivation in education: Reconsidered once again. Review of Educational Research, 71, 1–27.
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Roles and responsibilities of multiculturally competent school counselors
Sansone, C., & Harackiewicz, J. M. (Eds.). (2000). Intrinsic and extrinsic motivation: The search for optimal motivation and performance. New York: Academic Press. Schunck, D. H., Pintrich, P. R., & Meece, J. L. (2008). Motivation in education: Theory, research, and applications (3rd ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Merrill Prentice Hall.
Roles and Responsibilities of Multiculturally Competent School Counselors
specifically applied to the roles and functions of school counselors. One limitation of the existing multicultural competencies frameworks is that they tend to be described in abstract, if not philosophical, terms that defy specification and offer limited utility for counseling practice. In an attempt to address this shortcoming, and given that multiculturally competent school counselors are expected to assume a number of roles in their school and surrounding communities, the typical roles taken by the school counselor and the goals, foci, and strategies central to multicultural competence are delineated in > Table 1. It should be noted that in actuality the roles of the school counselor as counselor, educator, consultant, and advocate are interrelated and overlap in varying degrees.
Eric C Chen . Vicky Ng
Roles of Multiculturally Competent School Counselors As our society becomes increasingly more culturally diverse, greater demands are being placed on counselors to provide services that are culturally sensitive, appropriate, and effective. One segment of society in which counselors continue to witness the growing proportion of racial and cultural minorities is within the school setting. Projections of the minority student population in elementary and secondary schools by the year 2020 are expected to be greater than the current majority of White American students. Because school counselors play a fundamental role in the learning and development of students, it is imperative that they are competent to serve a diverse student body. An indicator of this multicultural competence, for example, is school counselors’ sensitivity to issues of language, cultural values, and behavior norms in counseling practice. Multicultural competence among counselors in general has received much attention, both conceptual and empirical, in the past several decades as the need for serving a multicultural population has increased. As a natural outgrowth of the broader multicultural counseling competencies frameworks, specific school counselor multicultural competencies have also been proposed. These competencies encompass the areas of awareness of one’s own stereotypes and biases about others, knowledge about other culture groups, and specific skills in working with diverse populations. Although all of these competencies address counselors’ abilities to serve diverse populations, some of these competencies can be
As school counselors’ largest portion of time is spent working directly with students, the first two roles, counselor and educator, center on the direct provision of student services. In working with an individual student in a counseling context, multiculturally competent school counselors seek to gain more knowledge about the cultural and personal contexts of each student. A multicultural perspective not only guides school counselors’ initial case conceptualization of the student but also forms the basis for counseling goals and interventions. By placing the student’s presenting concerns in context, school counselors can be more effective while becoming aware of the limitations of their practice when applied across racial, cultural, and linguistic boundaries. In the role of educator to the student body at large, school counselors aim at engaging students in thinking about multicultural issues within the school. The goal is to provide educational opportunities through psychoeducational groups or learning activities to expand students’ experiences with multicultural issues and concerns. Ideally, students learn to form better relationships with one another through examination of the similarities and differences within and across various cultures. The two other roles, consultant and advocate, focus on school counselors’ functions and responsibilities within the school and the surrounding community and the impact of school counselors on their school and
Roles and responsibilities of multiculturally competent school counselors
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. Table 1 Goals, foci, and strategies for the development of multicultural competence for school counselors Roles of a multiculturally competent school counselor Counselor Goal
Focus
Strategy
Educator
Consultant
To create a receptive To raise students’ awareatmosphere of trust and ness about racial-cultural safety issues in their schools
Advocate
To evaluate program goals and activities from a multicultural perspective
To continuously model and initiate multicultural initiatives in the school and surrounding community. To utilize multicultural To expand students’ To act as gatekeeper for To promote and knowledge in effective knowledge- and skill-base future school counselors’ embrace case conceptualization about racial-cultural factors multicultural multiculturalism within and counseling that affect the school competence the general population planning climate and learning To engage minority To empower minority To provide suggestions students in utilizing students in the school for multiculturally sensicounseling services setting tive interventions in classroom and administrative procedures Educating students regard- Supporting and inform- Extending the multiculProviding culturally appropriate, sensitive, ing multicultural ing fellow colleagues and tural focus to the school and community and effective counseling components trainees in the school setting at large services Providing staff support Initiating and particiAwareness of students’ Creating a forum for through consultation pating in multicultural racial and cultural back- multicultural issues school and community ground and contextual activities information in case conceptualization Providing psychoeducaAssisting school counse- Advocating for minority Considering multicultional opportunities lor trainees in the devel- students to address tural factors within the opment of multicultural problematic school etiology of the problem policies competence Seeking out opportuOffering feedback Planning multiculturally Identifying nities to raise others’ regarding multicultural multiculturally (in)appro- appropriate school multicultural school issues functions priate counseling awareness strategies Sponsoring a multicultural Evaluating goals and student organization progress from multiple and multicultural perspectives
social communities. As consultants to other school personnel in the school setting, school counselors can assist teachers, staff, and administrators in developing and implementing interventions inside and outside the classroom to address diversity issues and concerns. School counselors, for example, can help teachers identify the nature and sources of challenges they experience with minority students. In the role of advocate, school counselors become aware of the psychosocial and environmental barriers that inadvertently affect the educational experiences of minority students. Thus, school
counselors are well positioned to serve as social change agents, that is, to effect institutional changes required for school systems and our society at large to become more responsive to the needs of minority students.
Implications for Practice and Training School counselors assume several unique roles and functions within the school and also in the outside community. Although each of the roles may function
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independently, school counselors are often called upon to perform several different roles in unison due, in part, to the multitasking and workload requirement of a typical school counselor. It is thus vital that school counselors be knowledgeable about these roles in general and become flexible enough to switch among them at any given time. As the need for multicultural competence has emerged in recent years, school counselors and school counselor trainees have been urged to enhance their multicultural training and competence by engaging in specific educational and experiential activities, whether it is collectively in an educational setting or individually by obtaining continuing education experiences. School counselor training programs also need to restructure their curriculum and instruction to include greater multicultural emphasis so that future school counselors are equipped with the knowledge and skills to tackle challenges in an increasingly diverse school setting. Although broad and somewhat arbitrary in nature, the typology as presented in Table 1 may be used for training as well. It may be used, for instance, in conjunction with the existing models in the literature, such as Ridley, Mendoza, Kanitz, Angermeier, and Zenk’s 1994 Multicultural Program Development Pyramid, as a starting point to further design graded learning activities and experiences to meet the needs of trainees. By embracing and performing the roles and functions of counselor, educator, consultant and advocate, school counselors will be better equipped to provide theoretically and ethically sound school counseling services in a variety of educational settings.
Suggested Resources
See also: > Counseling; roles in mental health
Poverty, Mental Health Problems, and Substance Abuse
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School counselor;
>
School
Suggested Reading Arrendondo, P., Toporek, R., Brown, S. P., Jones, J., Locke, D. C., Sanchez, J., & Stadler, H. (1996). Operationalization of the multicultural counseling competencies. Journal of Multicultural Counseling and Development, 24, 42–78. Holcomb-McCoy, C. (2004). Assessing the multicultural competence of school counselors: A checklist. Professional School Counseling, 7, 178–183. Ponterotto, J. G., Rieger, B. P., Barrett, A., & Sparks, R. (1994). Assessing multicultural counseling competence: A review of instrumentation. Journal of Counseling and Development, 72, 316–322.
AMCD Online—http://www.bgsu.edu/colleges/edhd/programs/ AMCD/: The website of the Association for Multicultural Counseling and Development, a division of the American Counselor’s Association, includes useful information related to multiculturally competent counseling and provides references to obtain the Multicultural Counseling Competence document.
Rural Schools Jody Lieske . Susan M Swearer
Nearly one in three public school students in the United States (U.S.) attends school in a rural area. A rural area is defined as an area with a population of 25,000 people or fewer. Rural America has often been portrayed as an idealized life that involves intact families, close ties with neighbors, low crime levels, and relatively stress free in comparison to the fast paced life of those who reside in urban areas. Although many benefits of rural living hold true, many factors such as poverty, mental health problems, substance abuse, and limited access to services create a more accurate picture of the challenges that students and school personnel experience in rural American schools.
Poverty poses a serious threat to students who attend schools within rural communities. A disproportionately higher number of rural families live in poverty in comparison to their urban counterparts. The increase in economic problems experienced by rural families is often accompanied by stress and isolation, which is correlated with a rise in mental health problems. Such family stress can have a devastating impact on young people’s motivation for success and school achievement and are precursors to dropping out of school, drug use, crime, and early childbearing. In conjunction with poverty and mental health problems, youth who attend rural schools can also
Rural schools
experience substance abuse issues. Alcohol is one of the most widely abused substances among rural teens. Data from the National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse show that, when compared with urban students, eighth graders living in rural areas are 104% more likely to use amphetamines. This includes methamphetamine, a highly addictive substance which can result in unpredictable, paranoid, and aggressive behavior and can cause brain damage. Rural eighth graders have also been found to be 83% more likely than those in urban areas to use crack cocaine; 34% more likely to smoke marijuana; 29% more likely to drink alcohol; and 70% more likely to get drunk.
Limited Access to Services Because of economic instability and isolation, rural schools often face the problem of accessing adequate school services. Since many rural schools are geographically isolated, the cost of program delivery is typically higher compared to non-rural schools. Funding inequities in many states often favor schools in metropolitan areas vs. those in rural areas. This restricts the amount of dollars that are allotted to rural schools. Furthermore, local funding can be unstable and sparse since such funding is often tied to the community’s economy which may fluctuate and be limited in rural areas. Because of the instability of school funding, rural schools face difficulty with school staff recruitment and retention of qualified teachers. Rural education employees encounter challenges such as lower salaries and benefits,
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lack of access to professional development opportunities, professional isolation, and the expectation to serve multiple roles within the school system and community. Attracting and maintaining education and health professionals who specialize in treatment programs for young people remains a key issue in providing accessible services in rural areas. Only 6.6% of substance abuse treatment providers who serve rural youth specialized in the areas of drug or alcohol abuse, as opposed to 17.8% of providers based in urban areas. Unfortunately, many rural communities not only lack appropriate mental health services, many families often can not afford treatment since they lack appropriate insurance. Furthermore, a disparity of access to mental health services within the rural school setting compared to urban schools presents a significant problem for the psychological well being of children and youth who attend rural schools. See also: > Access and utilization of health care; > Community schools; > Substance abuse; > Teacher burnout
Suggested Reading Hobbs, D. (1992). The rural context for education: Adjusting the images. In M. W. Galbraith (Ed.), Education in the rural American community (pp. 21–41). Malabar, FL: Krieger. Jacob-Timm, S. (1995). Best practices in facilitating services in rural settings. In A. Thomas, & J. Grimes (Eds.) Best Practices in School Psychology III (pp. 289–310). Washington D.C.: National Association of School Psychologists. Phelps, M., & Prock, G. (1991). Equality of educational opportunity in rural America. In A. J. DeYoung (Ed.), Rural education: Issues and practice (pp. 269–312). New York: Garland.
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Safe Sex Margaret L Byram
To be considered ‘‘safe,’’ individuals are free from danger and harm. When individuals engage in ‘‘safe sex,’’ they are trying to minimize the odds of contracting sexually transmitted diseases (STDs), including human immunodeficiency virus and acquired immune deficiency syndrome (HIV/AIDS). Safe sex minimizes the exchange of body fluids, semen, vaginal secretions, and blood. Safe sex is defined as using latex barriers such as condoms and dental dams for intercourse and oral sex, and/or by limiting sexual practices to less risky ones, with abstinence providing the highest form of safety. Safe sex can also be defined as a sexual practice designed to reduce the risk of catching a sexually transmitted disease: any sexual practice that does not involve the exchange of bodily fluids, including blood, sperm, vaginal secretions, and saliva. These practices minimize the risk of contracting HIV/AIDS and other STDs: sex without penetration or sex using condoms and nonoxynol-9 spermicide, and/or vaginal dams with consistency. According to Advocates for Youth, a recent study attributed 75% of the decline in United States (U.S.) teen pregnancy rates to teens’ better use of contraception and 25% of the decline to teens’ increased abstinence (see studies cited under Advocates for Youth in the Suggested Resources section). Although U.S. teens are increasingly adopting protective sexual behaviors, they face barriers to consistent use. Advocates for Youth reports show that in 1991, 49% of high-school teenage females said they had never had sex, compared with 55% in 2003. Among males in 1991, 43% reported never having sex, compared with 52% in 2003. Teens may be abstaining from or engaging in less sexual intercourse, but that does not mean that they are having safe sex. According to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention, sexual activity among teens has declined by 14% since 1995. However, the survey did not ask about oral sex, which has led teens to believe that sex without penetration is ‘‘safe sex.’’ According to the Kaiser Foundation, 20% of 12- to 17-year-old youth believe that oral sex is safe sex. Advocates for Youth researched these beliefs and found that 12- to 17-year-old youth who had abstinence education explained that ‘‘abstinence’’ actually included many sexual behaviors. In a similar study of college freshman,
37% described oral sex and 24% described anal sex as abstinent behaviors. Each year an estimated 3 million adolescents are infected with an STD. This accounts for 25% of the estimated 12 million new STDs occurring annually in the U.S. According to the Planned Parenthood Federation of America, what is understood about safe sex is that individuals need to examine honestly the risks they take, decide which risks to take, and find ways to make sex as safe as possible. The availability of condoms has proven to decrease the amount of STDs and HIV. Programs of condom availability also reduce risky behaviors. According to Advocates for Youth, studies show that availability programs do not encourage teens to initiate sex and do not cause sexually active teens to have more sex. The downside to this finding is that Advocates for Youth report that condom use among adolescents’ decreases as they get older: 62.9% of high-school freshman report using condoms during sexual intercourse whereas 49.5% of high-school seniors report using condoms. Educating youth that latex condoms provide an essential impermeable membrane barrier to HIV and STD particles and pathogens can increase the understanding about one of the best methods of contraception available. Unfortunately, in a recent poll conducted by Advocates for Youth, 32% of U.S. teens did not believe condoms were effective in preventing HIV and 22% did not believe that birth control pills were effective in preventing pregnancy. In 1992, a Gallup Poll found that 68% of adults surveyed said that condoms should be available in schools, and a separate survey of high-school seniors showed that 81% agreed that condoms should be available in schools. The Advocates for Youth National School Condom Availability Clearinghouse has found that 418 public schools in the U.S. make condoms available to students. Availability can mean many things. Some schools require counseling before receiving condoms. Counseling includes information on abstinence, proper storage of the condom, and at some schools a demonstration of condom use. Certain risks and consequences are not fully understood about unsafe sex. Unfortunately, permanent consequences that may accompany unsafe sex include sterility, birth defects after pregnancy, major illnesses, and possibly death. Safe sex is a vital practice for all individuals, especially since the 1980s and the discovery and spread of HIV/AIDS. AIDS is the sixth leading cause of death in youth aged 15–24 years. In 1997,
C. S. Clauss-Ehlers (Ed.), Encyclopedia of Cross-Cultural School Psychology, DOI 10.1007/978-0-387-71799-9, # Springer Science+Business Media LLC 2010
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one-half of all new HIV infections in the U.S. occurred in persons under the age of 25. The percentage of U.S. youth who received HIV education in schools increased by 59%, according to the Advocates for Youth. Between 1989 and 1995, HIV education in the schools increased from 54 to 86%. During that same period, condom use among sexually active youth in schools increased by 17%. Adolescents are realizing the uncertainty of unsafe sex and subsequent HIV infection, leading to their increase of condom use. Successful sex-education programs that have shown a better understanding of safe sex have the following components: (1) teaching skills that teens need to understand with regard to their own sexual desires; (2) teaching teens the decision-making process associated with safe sex; (3) making sure that the sex education program is culturally appropriate and age specific; and (4) ensuring confidentiality so that students will feel comfortable talking with the instructor about sex education. Making sure that students feel comfortable in their learning environment gives them the assurance of knowing they can express their feelings and experiences with confidentiality and privacy. Sex educators primarily comprise physical education teachers, health educators, biology teachers, or school nurses. Of 156 inner-city elementary school teachers, 19% reported receiving pre-service training in health education. Few states have training or certification requirements for teachers who offer sexuality or HIV/AIDS-prevention lessons. It is most effective when teachers receive professional training in how to teach these subjects. Teachers who receive this additional training are better prepared to teach sex education and have a better understanding of the material. There are numerous yearly conferences for teachers who provide continuing education credits. Unfortunately, sex education is not often the main topic of choice. Certification in sexual health is highly recommended for individuals who will be teaching sex education. See also: > Pregnancy, Teaching about; opment; > Sex education
>
Sexual devel-
Suggested Reading Darroch, J. E., & Singh, S. (1999). Why is teenage pregnancy declining? The roles of abstinence, sexual activity, and contraceptive use (Occasional Report, no. 1). New York: Alan Guttmacher Institute.
Demmer, C. (2002). Renewing HIV prevention efforts among youth. American Journal of Health Education, 33(6), 322–328. National Campaign to Prevent Teen Pregnancy. (2001). Halfway there: A prescription for continued progress in preventing teen pregnancy. Washington, D.C.: The Campaign.
Suggested Resources Advocates for Youth—www.advocatesforyouth.org: Advocates for Youth provides current research, information, and resources for individuals concerned about topics that address adolescent sexuality. Alan Guttmacher Institute (AGI)—www.agi-usa.org/: AGI provides a comprehensive overview of research on sexuality and sexual behavior. AVERT: Sex Education That Works— www.avert.org: This website provides a comprehensive explanation about studies and research that define those sex education programs that have been successful. Resources for educators and parents are provided.
Same Sex Marriage Debate Margaret L Byram
The current definition of same-sex marriage in the United States (U.S.) is a marriage between individuals who are of the same legal or biological sex. Other names for same-sex marriage are same-gender marriage, gay marriage, and homosexual marriage. It has been debated for many decades whether or not samesex marriage should be a licensed availability to state residents. As of 2007, according to the National Conference for State Legislature, Massachusetts is the only state that allows for same-sex marriage to be a licensed legal agreement. Rhode Island recognizes same-sex marriages from other states. Civil unions with state-level spousal rights to same-sex couples are recognized in Connecticut, Vermont, New Jersey, and New Hampshire as of 2008. Domestic partnerships that have state-level spousal rights are recognized in California and Oregon. States that have no explicit provision prohibiting marriages between individuals of the same sex are Connecticut, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Rhode Island, and the District of Columbia. Twenty-three states passed laws in response to marriage litigation in the mid-1990s. The law was
Same sex marriage debate
called the federal ‘‘Defense of Marriage Act,’’ which defends marriage between a man and woman, not honoring marriages between same-sex couples from other jurisdictions. Some of those states include Alabama, Colorado, Delaware, Maine, North and South Carolina, Virginia, and West Virginia. California is the only state that has a marriage law pre-dating 1996 that defines marriage as only between a man and woman and has passed a law purporting not to honor marriages of same-sex couples from other jurisdictions. Maryland, Wisconsin, and Wyoming have a marriage law pre-dating 1996 that defines marriage as only between a man and a woman or a husband and wife. Nebraska, Nevada, and Oregon have amended their state constitutions to purport to declare marriages between same-sex couples void or invalid. Kentucky, Mississippi, Louisiana, Utah, and Alaska are examples of states that have amended their constitutions to purport to declare marriage between same-sex couples void or invalid, and passed a law in response to marriage litigation in the mid 1990s and the passage of the ‘‘Defense of Marriage Act.’’ Currently in the public school system there are statewide laws and policies that set certain legal standards of harassment and discrimination based on the sexual orientation of either the student or same-sex parents of a student. California, Washington, D.C., Maine, Minnesota, and New Jersey have state laws that prohibit harassment and/or discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity in schools. Alaska, Florida, and Utah have state ethical codes for teachers prohibiting discrimination based on sexual orientation. There are fourteen states, including Arizona, Georgia, Texas, Virginia, and Nevada, with state laws that prohibit bullying in schools, but there are no categories of protection for such students. According to the National Adoption Information Clearinghouse, in 1990, 6–14 million children in the U.S. were living with a gay or lesbian parent. Each state has the legal right to determine the status of who is allowed to adopt a child. Today, only Florida and New Hampshire clearly ban same-sex couples from adopting children. No matter the sex of the parents, the child’s well-being is always considered. According to the Adoption Research Education Center, there is increasing research that concludes children raised by parents who are homosexual have no more problems than those raised by parents who are heterosexual. Another study concluded that children of gay parents are no different than their counterparts raised by heterosexual parents. In ‘‘Children of Lesbian and Gay
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Parents,’’ an article in Child Development in 1992, Charlotte Patterson states, ‘‘Despite dire predictions about children based on well-known theories of psychosocial development, and despite the accumulation of a substantial body of research investigating these issues, not a single study has found children of gay or lesbian parents to be disadvantaged in any significant respect relative to children of heterosexual parents.’’ Today in schools, it has been reported that 97% of students in public high schools report regularly hearing homophobic remarks from their peers. Thirty-four percent of lesbian, gay, and bisexual students surveyed had been the target of verbal assaults at school, or en route to and from class. Teachers are very familiar with the restrictions and frustrations about certain topics that contradict the separation between church and state, but in all school districts teachers must be unbiased and non-judgmental. The Gay, Lesbian, and Straight Education Network (GLSEN) put together lesson plans that allow for discussions of gay marriage and same-sex relationships in schools. Many school boards consider these materials to be in favor of gay marriage and gay/lesbian rights, and are currently not allowed in the classroom. One successful approach to addressing discussions of samesex marriage is teacher preparation and student readiness to address the topic. The key role of the teacher is to mediate unbiased and respectful discussion of the issues. GLSEN frequently suggests coercive approaches for teachers. The role of the teacher is to encourage critical thinking and problem solving as well as to communicate information necessary to complete the work. For example, teachers can use a lesson to introduce the question, what is marriage for? This allows students to discuss feelings, observations, and opinions in a mediated fashion. From this topic, teachers can lead into a lesson about the civil rights of marriage and requirements of their state. This curriculum is not a required implementation and is available to those school systems that want to use it. Forty-six schools of a random sample analyzed by the Sexuality Information and Education Council for the U.S. (SEICUS) showed that high-school health teachers formally taught about homosexuality. Among those teachers, 48% spent less than one class period teaching about homosexuality. Adolescents must understand the definition of gay, lesbian, and homosexual. In defining what sexual orientation means, adolescents must understand that sexual orientation is a part of a person’s life. According to
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SEICUS, different approaches to same-sex marriages and same-sex couples occur through education and learned experiences. Some helpful tips from SEICUS include: find out what schools are teaching and what is being taught at home so that discrepancies are disabled early; try to understand the child’s point of view, even when it differs from your own; provide information that is accurate, knowing that adolescents may obtain inaccurate information from the internet, media, and peers. Teachers must investigate the feelings of their students. Research has shown that there are two ways students look at same-sex couples and homosexuality. One is that some individuals are born with the trait to be gay, whereas the other is that some individuals prefer their lifestyle which is a choice. Besides parental and familial influences, favoring same-sex marriage and homosexuality can be based on the exposure to homosexual persons. Having a family member, colleague, or friend who is some individuals shows that adolescents tend to favor, or be more liberal to, samesex marriage and/or same-sex couples. The issue of same-sex marriage is a very controversial topic to discuss at the secondary- and/or middle-school level. The division of church and state must be taken into consideration because most religious affiliates do not agree with the idea of same-sex marriage. According to the PEW Forum on Religion and Public Life, a survey showed that youth, late teens to early twenties, are more supportive of same-sex marriages than older generations. The survey also showed that those with more education favor same-sex marriage more than those with minimal education. Statistics showed that even those over 65 years with a college education are three times more likely to favor same-sex marriage than those 50- to 65-year-olds who do not have an education. Another gap that divides opinions of same-sex marriage is religious beliefs and values. Those who have strong faith and continual religious practices are less likely to support same-sex marriage. Democratic and Republican parties will also have differing opinions of the civil union of same-sex couples. The most important influence children have about their opinions is their parents and family around them. According to SIECUS, 1 out of 3 parents feel comfortable speaking to their children about homosexuality, but wait for their children to bring up the topic. In a recent poll, 85% of people felt that sexual orientation should be included in sex education but not until grades 11–12. These influences can sway students to continue traditional family beliefs or allow the children to form their own opinions.
Educators must recognize this and be sensitive to the possible differing opinions of students. See also: > Discrimination; > Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender (GLBT); > Prejudice; > Sexual development
Suggested Reading Riggle, E. D. B., Rostosky, S. S., & Prather, R. A. (2006). Advance planning by same-sex couples. Journal of Family Issues, 27(6), 758–776.
Suggested Resources Human Rights Campaign—www.hrc.org: The Human Rights Campaign provides a national voice on lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) issues. It effectively lobbies Congress, mobilizes grassroots action in diverse communities, invests strategically to elect a fair-minded Congress, and increases public understanding through innovative education and communication strategies. National Conference for State Legislatures—http://www.ncsl.org: The National Conference for State Legislatures provides research, technical assistance, and opportunities for policymakers to exchange ideas on the most pressing state issues. It is a great resource for many grassroots projects, and many issues affecting the U.S. today. It is an effective and respected advocate for the interests of state governments before Congress and federal agencies. The National Gay and Lesbian Task Force (The Task Force)—www. TheTaskForce.org: Founded in 1973, the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force Foundation (the Task Force) was the first national lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) civil rights and advocacy organization. It remains the movement’s leading voice for freedom, justice, and equality. Sexuality and Information Council of the United States—www. seicus.org: SEICUS provides comprehensive sex-education standards. Research and publications about children with same-sex parents are also provided.
SAT James A Bovaird . Dylan Schenk The SAT1 is a standardized test designed to aid in the college admission process to overcome the enormous variability in course rigor and grading standards between and within high schools in the United States (U.S.). The SAT is intended to be an independent,
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objective, and standardized measure of college preparedness administered by the College Board, and developed, published, and scored by the Educational Testing Service (ETS). The acronym SAT formerly referred to previous titles of the same evolving test—the Scholastic Achievement Test, Scholastic Aptitude Test, and Scholastic Assessment Test. Originally known as the Scholastic Achievement Test, the SAT was first administered in 1901 as a measure of student achievement for those applying to colleges and universities in the northeastern U.S. After considerable development, the College Board changed the name of the examination to the Scholastic Aptitude Test in 1941. This name remains the most popular name and is still frequently used. In 1990, the College Board changed the name again to the Scholastic Assessment Test to reflect the impact that coaching schools such as Kaplan and the Princeton Review, among others, were able to have in successfully improving student performance. Susceptibility to coaching indicated that the SAT was not a measure of inherent aptitude, but rather a measure of learning that had occurred in school. Due to the redundancy in the use of the terms ‘‘assessment’’ and ‘‘test’’, the College Board formally changed the name of the examination to the SAT in 1994, indicating that it is no longer an acronym. The SAT is made up of the SAT Reasoning Test and the SAT Subject Tests. The SAT Reasoning Test is divided into three sections: Critical Reading, Mathematics, and Writing. There is an additional ‘‘equating’’ section that may vary in content upon each administration. One point is awarded for each correct answer, and onequarter point is deducted for each incorrect answer to a multiple-choice question. There are no deductions for student-produced responses or for unanswered questions. Each section is then scored on a scale from 200–800, where 200 is a low score. The Critical Reading section consists of sentence completion questions and passage-based reading questions concerning critical reading and sentence-level reading skills. The Mathematics section contains multiple choice and studentproduced responses covering 3 years of high school mathematics education. The Writing section is comprised of multiple choice questions and an essay. Two writing subscores are provided—a multiple choice score and an essay score—that are combined and reported on the 200–800 scale as the Writing score. The essay is scored by qualified readers who judge the work on the overall impression it makes on the reader. The SAT Subject Tests are a collection of twenty specific assessments intended to independently
measure knowledge and the student’s ability to apply that knowledge in five general content areas: English, mathematics, history and social studies, languages, and science. The SAT Subject Tests are used for admission, course placement, and student advising by some colleges and universities; some schools specify the required tests and others allow applicants to decide. Raw scores are calculated based on one point for each correct answer, no deduction for unanswered questions, and between a one-half to one-fourth point deduction per incorrectly answered question based on the number of response alternatives. Raw scores are then converted and reported on the 200–800 scale. The average score on the Critical Reading and Mathematics sections of the SAT Reasoning Test is intended to be about 500 with a standard deviation of about 100. Average scores for the Writing section will not be available until after the 2006 administration. Historically, the actual section averages vary from year to year, and various attempts to balance these changes have led to occasional complex statistical anomalies. As a result, the SAT was ‘‘recentered’’ in 1995, and all scores awarded after 1994 were reported with an ‘‘R’’ to reflect this change. The current SAT Reasoning Test made its debute in 2005 with alterations made in response to various issues concerning ambiguous questions and an increase in the number of perfect scores. The 2005 SAT Reasoning Test replaced the previous verbal section with the critical reading section, expanded the previous mathematics section, and added the writing section based on the previous Writing Subject Test. Common criticisms of the SAT involve claims that the test is a biased assessment, especially towards White males. SAT opponents have called for various solutions, including alternative forms for different demographic groups, making its use in admissions decisions optional, deleting ambiguous questions and sections, and the use of the American College Testing program (ACT) as an alternative assessment. See also: > Achievement tests; stakes testing
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Suggested Reading The College Board. (2005). SAT program handbook 2005–06: A comprehensive guide to the SAT program for school counselors and admissions officers. Princeton, NJ: The College Board.
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Suggested Resources The College Board—http://www.collegeboard.com: The College Board website provides information for parents and educators about the SAT and allows students to register and prepare for the SAT. The Educational Testing Service—http://www.ets.org: Provides products, services and resources for tests that the Educational Testing Service develops, including the SAT.
Schizophrenia Georgia Yu
Schizophrenia is a severe mental illness characterized by persistent defects in the perception or expression of reality. An individual experiencing untreated schizophrenia typically demonstrates grossly disorganized thinking, and may also experience delusions or auditory hallucinations. Although the illness primarily affects cognition, it can also contribute to chronic problems with behavior or emotions. Due to the many possible combinations of symptoms, it is difficult to say whether it is in fact a single psychiatric disorder. Diagnosis is based on the self-reported experiences of the patient, in combination with secondary signs observed by the psychiatrist or other competent clinician. There is no objective biological test for schizophrenia, though studies suggest that genetics and biochemistry are important contributing factors. Current research in the development of this disorder often focuses on the role of neurobiology, although an identifiable organic cause has not been found. In the absence of objective laboratory tests to confirm the diagnosis, some question the legitimacy of schizophrenia’s status as a disease.
History of Schizophrenia Accounts that may relate to symptoms of schizophrenia date as far back as 2000 B.C. However, ancient Greek and Roman literature has shown that, while the general population probably had an awareness of psychotic disorders, there was no recorded condition that would meet the modern diagnostic criteria for schizophrenia in these societies. This non-specific concept of ‘‘madness’’ has existed for thousands of years, but schizophrenia was only
classified as a discrete mental disorder by psychiatrist Emil Kraeplin in 1887. Kraeplin was the first to draw a distinction between what he termed dementia praecox (premature dementia) and other psychotic illnesses. In 1911, ‘‘dementia praecox’’ was renamed ‘‘schizophrenia’’ by psychiatrist Eugen Bleuler, who found Kraeplin’s term to be misleading, as the disorder is not a form of dementia, premature or otherwise. The term schizophrenia translates roughly as ‘‘shattered mind.’’ The word ‘‘praecox’’ implied precocious or early onset, hence premature dementia. Bleuler realized the illness was not a dementia, as it did not lead to mental deterioration. Rather, schizophrenia led to a sharpening of the senses and a greater awareness of memories and experiences. Despite its etymology, schizophrenia is not synonymous with dissociative identity disorder, also known as multiple personality disorder. Though some people diagnosed with schizophrenia may hear voices and may experience the voices as distinct personalities, schizophrenia does not involve a person changing among distinct multiple personalities. Although schizophrenia often leads to social or occupational dysfunction, there is little association of the illness with a predisposition toward aggressive behavior.
Incidence and Prevalence The onset of schizophrenia typically occurs in late adolescence or early adulthood. It is found approximately equally in men and women, though the onset tends to be later in women, who also tend to have a better course and outcome. The lifetime prevalence of schizophrenia is commonly given at 1%. However, a recent review of studies estimated it to be 0.55%. The same study also found that prevalence may vary greatly from country to country, despite the received wisdom that schizophrenia occurs at the same rate throughout the world. It is worth noting, however, that this may be in part due to differences in the way schizophrenia is diagnosed. The incidence of schizophrenia ranges between 7.5 and 16.3 cases per year per 100,000 individuals.
Diagnosis and Presentation The most commonly used criteria for diagnosing schizophrenia is from the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders IV- Text Revision (DSM-IV-TR). Schizophrenia is
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characterized by ‘‘positive symptoms’’ (those additional to normal experience and behavior) and ‘‘negative symptoms’’ (the lack or decline in normal experience or behavior). Positive symptoms, which are manifestations of psychosis, may include delusions, auditory hallucinations, disorganized speech, and thought disorder. Disorganized speech may include frequent derailment or incoherence or speaking in abstracts. Grossly disorganized behavior may include dressing inappropriately, crying infrequently, or catatonic behavior. Negative symptoms include features such as flat, blunted or constricted affect, poverty of speech (alogia), or the absence of motivation (avolition). Flattened affect is the lack or decline in emotional response. Each characteristic symptom must be present for a significant portion of time during a 1-month period and last for at least 6 months. Additionally, neurocognitive deficits may be present. These may take the form of reduced or impaired psychological functions such as memory, attention, problem-solving, executive function, or social cognition. Some people tend to classify the above two categories into types I and II: type I with predominantly positive symptoms, type II with predominantly negative symptoms. It is worth noting that many of the positive or psychotic symptoms may occur in a variety of disorders and not only in schizophrenia.
Five Sub-Classifications of Schizophrenia According to the DSM-IV-TR, there are five subclassifications of schizophrenia. The catatonic type is characterized by marked absences or peculiarities of movement. The disorganized type is characterized by the presence of thought disorder and flat affect. The paranoid type is where delusions and vivid, often horrifying, hallucinations are present but thought disorder, disorganized behavior, and flattened affect are absent. The residual type is characterized by the presence of positive symptoms at a low intensity. The undifferentiated type is characterized by the presence of psychotic symptoms, but the criteria for paranoid, disorganized, or catatonic types have not been met.
Causes of Schizophrenia While the reliability of the schizophrenia diagnosis introduces difficulties in measuring the relative effect of genes and environment (for example, symptoms
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overlap to some extent with severe bipolar disorder or major depression), there is evidence to suggest that genetic vulnerability and environmental stressors can act in combination to cause schizophrenia. The extent to which these factors influence the likelihood of being diagnosed with schizophrenia is debated widely, and currently, controversial. Schizophrenia is likely to be a disorder of complex inheritance (analogous to diabetes or high blood pressure). Therefore, it is likely that several genes interact which may increase risk for schizophrenia. This, combined with disagreements over which research methods are best, or how data from genetic research should be interpreted, has led to differing estimates over genetic contribution. Some researchers estimate schizophrenia to be highly heritable (some estimates are as high as 70%). However, genetic evidence for the role of the environment comes from the observation that one identical twin does not universally develop schizophrenia if the other one does. A recent review of the genetic evidence has suggested a 28% chance of one identical twin developing schizophrenia if the other already has it. However, the estimates of heritability of schizophrenia from twin studies varies a great deal, with some notable studies showing rates as low as 11.0–13.8% among monozygotic twins, and 1.8–4.1% among dizygotic twins. A recent review of linkage studies listed seven genes as likely to be involved in the inheritance of schizophrenia or the risk of developing the disease. There is also considerable evidence indicating that stress may trigger episodes of schizophrenia psychosis. For example, emotionally turbulent families and stressful life events have been shown to be risk factors for relapses or triggers for episodes of schizophrenia. In common with other forms of mental illness, abuse as a child and early traumatic experience have also been suggested to be a risk factor for developing schizophrenia later in life, although the ‘‘bad parenting’’ theory of causation is now largely held in disrepute on the grounds that it overlooks the likelihood that the parental incompetences may have been a result of schizophrenia in the parents, and the disorder itself in the offspring was actually transmitted genetically from the parents. Factors such as poverty and discrimination may also contribute to an increasing risk of having a schizophrenic episode due to the high levels of stress these lifestyles cause. The ‘‘social drift hypothesis’’ suggests that people affected by schizophrenia may be less able to hold steady or demanding, higher-paying jobs, consigning them to lower incomes thereby increasing stress levels and
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leaving them susceptible to lapsing into a schizophrenic episode. One particularly stable and replicable finding has been the association between living in an urban environment and risk of developing schizophrenia, even after factors such as drug use, ethnic group and the size of the social group has been controlled for. It is also thought that processes in early neurological development are important, particularly during pregnancy. Some researchers have proposed that environmental influences during childhood also interact with neurobiological risk factors to influence the likelihood of developing schizophrenia later in life. The neurological development of children is considered sensitive to features of dysfunctional social settings, such as trauma, violence, lack of warmth in personal relationships and hostility. These have all been found to be risk factors for the later development of schizophrenia. It is thought that the effects of the childhood environment, favorable or unfavorable, interact with genetics and the processes of neurodevelopment, with long-term consequences for brain function. This is thought to influence the underlying vulnerability for psychosis later in life, particularly during the adult years. See also: > Poverty; > Stress/stressors
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Suggested Reading Bentall, R. (2003). Madness explained: Psychosis and Human Nature. London: Penguin Books Ltd. Szasz, T. (1976). Schizophrenia: The sacred symbol of psychiatry. New York: Basic Books.
Suggested Resources World Health Organization—http://www.who.int/mental_health/ management/schizophrenia/en/: This website provides general information about schizophrenia.
School Buses Charlynn Small . Velma LaPoint
Student transportation is necessary for most U.S. public school systems. Buses transport about 25 million students annually. A million buses are used daily to
bring students to and from school and transport them to school activities. The cost is about $600 per student annually. About 60% of all U.S. children from kindergarten to grade 12 ride buses daily; full-sized buses hold about 90 students each. Many more students may ride smaller buses to private schools, if parents do not choose to transport them, or if students who are of age do not drive themselves.
Diversity Issues Information on use of school buses by diverse groups of students is minimal although some documents and practice suggest that certain challenges exist for students living both in proximal and distal rural and suburban areas. Students from these areas frequently travel longer distances and often along unpaved and hilly roads. In addition, frequent school closures due to safety issues in inclement weather are not uncommon. Particular challenges are also faced by students from low-income backgrounds. These challenges include parents or family members without transportation, and use of public buses by nonstudents, especially if going to out-ofboundary schools. Students of color and those from low-income backgrounds may face harassment and discrimination on buses because they are from those backgrounds. Also, students with disabilities have historically faced special challenges on buses such as a lack of specialized features and equipment.
Safety Issues Manufacturers must certify that buses meet state and federal standards, whether districts outsource services to private bus contractors or purchase buses to use with their own drivers. No minimum training skills are required across school systems nationally. Buses generally have the common bright yellow color as a safety feature for greater visibility or as a caution for other drivers. Although it is assumed that school buses are among the safest forms of transportation in the U.S., the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration reports 11 fatalities yearly of passengers under the age of 19 in accidents involving school buses. There is debate about the use of seat belts for student safety on school buses, focusing on whether they should be used for restraint for small children. Proponents argue that the two-point restraint seat belts will help in preventing children from being tossed
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around during crashes. Opponents indicate that although relatively inexpensive to install, they are inappropriate for small children because their bone structure is still developing, the restraint seats have no effect on the most common fatalities and injuries, and they are ineffective in catastrophic events such as when passengers need to rapidly egress from burning or sinking buses. A passive restraint system known as ‘‘compartmentalization’’ is currently used. This comprises wider, higher seats with energy-absorbing padding, to potentially protect students from a collision’s impact. Additional features include anchored frames to absorb force if children are thrown, and higher bus seating so that opposing cars are forced beneath seated students. Use of both systems is considered to be impractical because students may not consistently use active systems, whereas all children are protected by compartmentalization. Additional safety issues focus on health risks because of exposure to diesel exhaust fumes, and injury to younger pedestrian children while in danger zones in the vicinity of buses or by passing motorists.
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See also: > After-school programs; > Discipline
Suggested Reading Howley, A., & Howley, C. (2001). Eric Clearinghouse on rural education and small schools. Eric Document ED459969, Charleston, WV. Retrieved May 30, 2006, from http://www.ericdigests.org/ 2002-3/busing.htm Tull, H. (2003). Transportation and school busing. In The encyclopedia of education, Vol 7., (pp. 2573–2577). New York: Macmillan.
Suggested Resources National Association of State Boards of Education (NASBE)— http://www.nasbe.org/Educational_issues/Policy_Updates/11_ 10.html: This website presents the National Association of State Boards of Education policy on bullying in schools. National School Boards Association (NSBA)—http://boardbuzz. nsba.org/archives/cat_health_wellness.php: This website offers current news and commentary on health and wellness in schools.
Student Discipline Student discipline on buses continues to be problematic. Minor and major bus accidents can occur if drivers must divert their attention to manage student misbehavior. Many experts view student behavior on buses as an extension of student classroom behavior, whereby students on buses are liable to the same disciplinary measures governing classrooms. Several nationally publicized events of student misbehavior on and around buses, which involved violent incidents of bullying and other serious behavioral offenses such as fighting, assaults, sexual harassment, rapes, and murder, have captured the attention of parents, educators, and policy makers. Violent incidents on buses make students especially vulnerable because they are trapped in small spaces. These problems cause victims and would-be victims to have decreased interest in school and increased absences. Many states have adopted policies to protect children from bullying on school property and buses. The age of student passengers on buses is important because parents of younger children have expressed concerns about reported bullying, use of drugs, and violence. Effective training of students, teachers, and bus drivers to deal with student misbehavior includes incident reporting, adding school bus aides, using video cameras, involving parents, and age-appropriate penalties for student perpetrators.
School Counselor Saundra M Tomlinson-Clarke
School counselors are professionals who specialize in working with students in pre-kindergarten through grade 12 school settings. Evolving from the guidance profession, the school counseling profession has been influenced by several academic disciplines such as vocational guidance, psychometrics, mental health and clinical psychology and is presently part of two applied professions: counseling and education. School counselors are trained in the disciplines of counseling and education, with a knowledge base specific to the profession of school counseling. The American School Counselor Association (ASCA) prefers to use the term ‘‘professional school counselor’’ to define the specialists who work with children and adolescents within the context of the school setting. The definition and roles of a professional school counselor adhere to the professional roles and standards of ASCA. Professional school counselors are certified/ licensed professionals with a master’s degree or higher in school counseling or a closely related field of study
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and meet the certification/licensing standards, abiding by the laws of the state in which they are employed. Professional school counselors uphold the ethical and professional standards of the professional counseling associations. They are uniquely qualified by their training and experiences to address the developmental needs of all students. Professional school counselors can be distinguished from other counseling specialists by a focus on the developmental stages of student growth that includes specific attention to the needs, tasks and student interests associated with these stages of student development and achievement. Through comprehensive, developmental and systematic school counseling programs, school counselors foster achievement for all students with a focus on education, prevention and intervention services which are infused into all areas of the student’s educational experience. Professional school counselors encourage student achievement in the areas of academic, career and personal/social development and are employed in elementary, middle school/junior high, and high schools. Professional school counselors also are employed in district supervisory, counselor education, and post-secondary education settings. Professional school counselors support a safe learning environment and provide an important role in promoting equity and access to rigorous educational experiences for all students.
Historical Origins and Developments of School Counseling School counseling began during the late 1800s, early 1900s in response to social, political, and economic events occurring in United States (U.S.) society. The industrial revolution began, there was an influx of immigrant groups coming to the U.S., rural populations migrated to the urban centers, there was a growing need to match people and jobs, and concerns regarding child labor laws. There was a call for school reform as the U.S. society was changing from an economy that was based on agriculture to an economy that was based on manufacturing and industry. The change from an agricultural-based economy to an industrial economy necessitated a need for divisions of labor and a skilled work force. Frank Parsons, considered the father of the vocational guidance movement, focused his work on enhancing vocational adjustments by matching the aptitudes and abilities of young men with the requirements of the
occupation and environment. Parsons advocated that schools provide the education needed in a changing society. In the early 1900s, with a focus on the transition from school to work and the match between individuals and occupational placement, vocational guidance began. Parsons founded the Vocation Bureau in Boston in 1909, providing vocational guidance to youth out of school. Vocational counselors were responsible for making information about the individual and the occupation available. Vocational counselors needed to help individuals to understand the information and to use available information to make good vocational choices. During the early twentieth century, the popularity of psychometrics resulted in the development of intelligence scales used to classify people. In 1905, Alfred Binet and The´odore Simon developed a mental ability measure to help a French school system classify students for education instruction. In the U.S., the use of the Army Alpha and Beta tests popularized the notion of using group testing in education. In 1920, the cognitive development movement began and John Dewey emphasized the school’s role in promoting cognitive, personal, social, and moral development. During the 1930s and 1940s, trait and factor dominated school guidance. By 1945 and the end of WWII, school guidance was defined by a narrow focus on vocational guidance. Only a few states required guidance counselors to have special certificates. During the 1940s, Carl Rogers began to influence the profession. The humanistic movement in counseling reinforced the notion of a non-medical model of helping people. Clients began to be conceptualized as people and not as problems. The term guidance was eventually replaced by the term counseling. During the 1950s and 1960s, the guidance point of view was the focus of school reform. School counselors assisted individuals in making decisions and plans based on their life experiences. School reform efforts of the 1950s resulted in the placement of professionally prepared school counselors in schools, providing resources to support school counselors in their identified responsibilities. In 1959, James Conant, the president of Harvard University, advocated for one full-time school counselor for every 250–300 high school students. There were few school counselor preparation programs, and the number of school counselors was small. In 1952, school counseling was strengthened by the formation of the ASCA. In 1958, in response to the Soviet Union launch of Sputnik, Congress passed the National Defense
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Education Act (NDEA). This legislation challenged the ability of U. S. schools to prepare students in the scientific and mathematical skills needed to compete with the Soviet Union. The NDEA encouraged and supported high school students to study the sciences and mathematics and to pursue these disciplines in college. Although not the direct intent, this legislation helped to advance the development of the school counseling profession. There was a need to have more school counselors in high schools to test students, identify those students capable of pursuing the sciences and mathematics, and to help students prepare for college. The NDEA also provided funding to support the hiring of additional school counselors to help meet demands. Skills of school counselors were upgraded to meet NDEA goals. In the 1960s, following the White House Conference on Children and Youth, an amendment to the NDEA extended counseling services to elementary schools. School counselors identified elementary school students who showed promise in the sciences and mathematics. There was an increase in school counselor preparation programs, training counselors for elementary schools, 2-year and 4 year post-secondary institutions, non-degree and technical institutions. Later legislation focused on preparing students for the workforce through vocational education. The role of school counselors in preparing college-bound students in the sciences and mathematics was expanded to include preparing non-college bound students transitioning from school to work through vocational education. Legislation occurring in the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s, further supported school counselors and their role in schools and society. Specifically, in 1975, the Educational Act for All Handicapped Children expanded the role of the school counselor to include special education. School counselors assisted with appropriate placement services and Individual Education Plans (IEP), and provided counseling services to students with disabilities. The role of school counselors in school reform and the responsibility of school counselors to help all students to prepare for employability in society were acknowledged.
Training and Credentialing Most public school systems required advanced degree courses as part of a comprehensive program of study. As a certified/licensed professional holding a masters’ degree, some states also require additional requirements
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for certification/licensure. Degree and certification requirements may include the completion of a supervised practicum or internship. Courses in most school counseling training programs include: Human Growth and Development, Theories, Individual Counseling, Group Counseling, Social and Cultural Foundations, Testing and Appraisal, Research and Program Evaluation, Professional Orientation, Career Development, Supervised Practicum, and Supervised Internship. Some states also require that school counselors/ supervisors hold an administrative and or a supervisory license in addition to school counseling certification. Also, some states require continuing educational requirements to maintain a school counselor certificate/license. Current state requirements may change or be updated regularly.
Accreditation of School Counseling Programs The Council for Accreditation of Counseling and Related Educational Programs (CACREP) provides the highest professional standards for counselor training programs. CACREP is an independent agency recognized by the Council for Higher Education. Many state departments use CACREP standards as the minimum requirements for certification/licensure. CACREP renders accreditation for training programs in career counseling, college counseling, community counseling, gerontological counseling, marital/couple, and family counseling/therapy, mental health counseling, school counseling and student affairs. CACREP also renders accreditation for doctoral training in counselor education and supervision. ASCA supports the use of CACREP standards in establishing the requirements for school counselor training programs and for state certification/licensure for professional school counselors, ensuring the development of comprehensive school counseling programs. Based on the 2001 CACREP Standards for School Counseling Programs, students are required to meet core common curricular experiences in addition specific curricular experiences and demonstrated knowledge and skills in the following areas: (a) Foundations of School Counseling, (b) Contextual Dimensions of School Counseling, (c) Knowledge and Skill Requirements for School Counselors, and (d) Clinical Instruction. The reader can refer to the 2001 CACREP Standards for detailed requirements under each area.
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The CACREP Standards Revisions Committee is in the process of revising CACREP Standards for 2009. CACREP has accredited numerous counselor training programs. Some counseling programs may not seek CACREP accreditation, however, many will adhere to CACREP standards as a way of providing uniformity in training and to ensure that students meet the minimum requirements for credentialing/licensure. National credentials for professional counselors are provided by the National Board of Certified Counselors (NBCC).
(AACD in 1983 to more accurately reflect the needs and identity of the membership. In 1992, AACD changed its name to ACA to better reflect the organizations goals and membership. Also in 1992, ASCA moved away from using the term ‘‘guidance counseling,’’ identifying the profession as ‘‘school counseling.’’ Consistent with this transition, members of the school counseling profession began to identify as professional school counselors.
National Standards for School Counseling Programs Professional Affiliations of School Counselors Since school counselors are trained in the broader disciplines of counseling and education, there are a number of professional organizations that are relevant to their professional development and to which school counselors might choose to affiliate. The American Counseling Association (ACA) and ASCA both represent the professional needs of school counselors, providing ethical codes and policy statements. Although ASCA is a division of ACA, it handles its own membership which is more than 18,000 school counseling professionals. The mission of ASCA is to represent professional school counselors and to promote professionalism and ethical practices. ASCA provides professional development, enhances school counseling programs, and researches effective school counseling practices. The ASCA School Counselor is the division newsletter and Professional School Counseling is the journal for the Division.
Historical Origins of ACA and ASCADeveloping Professional Identity What is known today as ACA began in 1952 when four independent organizations joined together to create the American Personnel and Guidance Association (APGA). The four organizations joining to form APGA were the National Vocational Guidance Association (NVGA), the American College Personnel Association (ACPA), The National Association for Guidance Supervisors and Counselor Trainers (NAGSCT), and the Student Personnel Association for Teacher Education (SPATE). ASCA was formed in 1952, and became a professional member of APGA in 1953. APGA changed its name to the American Association of Counseling and Development
ASCA defines school counseling as a process of helping people by assisting them in making decisions and changing behavior. Professional school counselors work with all students, school staff, families, and members of the community as an integral part of the education program. School counseling programs promote school success through a focus on academic achievements, prevention and intervention activities, advocacy, and social-emotional and career development. Based on the National Standards for Counseling Programs, professional school counselors must be prepared to address three categories of student needs: (a) academic development, (b) career development, and (c) personal/ social development. Professional school counselors provide services to ensure that today’s students become productive adults in U.S. society. The mastery of basic and higher-order skills is a developmental process that is fostered through the three broad areas of academic, career, and personalemotional development. Specific student learning competencies are addressed by each of the three areas of student development. These competencies are designed to foster student learning in the elementary, middle school and high school years, and emphasize success in school and society for all students. Areas of student development that define specific knowledge, attitudes, and skills students should demonstrate as a result of participating in a school counseling program are listed. I. Academic Development Standard A: Students will acquire the attitudes, knowledge, and skills that contribute to effective learning in school and across the lifespan. Standards B: Students will complete school with the academic preparation essential to choose from a wide range of substantial post-secondary options, including college.
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Standard C: Students will understand the relationship of academics to the world of work, and to life at home and in the community. II. Career Development Standard A: Students will acquire the skills to investigate the world of work in relation to knowledge of self and make informed career decisions. Standard B: Students will employ strategies to achieve future career success and satisfaction. Standard C: Students will understand the relationship between personal qualities, education and training, and the world of work. III. Personal/Social Development Standard A: Students will acquire the attitudes, knowledge, and interpersonal skills to help them understand and respect self and others. Standard B: Student will make decisions, set goals, and take necessary action to achieve goals. Standard C: Students will understand safety and survival skills.
The ASCA National Model: A Framework for School Counseling Programs The ASCA National Model: A Framework for School Counseling Programs was created by ASCA to support student achievement in the areas of academic development, career planning and personal/social development by identifying the components of a comprehensive school counseling program and clarifying the roles and responsibilities of school counselors. Through this model, professional school counselors identify with a common mission. According to ASCA, school counselors should spend most of their time in direct service with students. The duties of school counselors are focused on the overall delivery of the total school counseling program through guidance curriculum, individual student planning, and responsive services. Inappropriate program tasks should be eliminated or reassigned to protect the duties and responsibilities of school counselors. The duties of school counselors should focus on the prevention needs of the student. School counseling programs are designed as collaborative efforts, involving students, families, teachers,
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administrators, and the school community. School counseling programs are an integral part of a student’s daily educational environment and focus on student achievement. The ASCA National Model provides a framework for designing, developing, implementing and evaluating a school counseling program, allowing states, schools and school districts to: 1. Establish the school counseling program as an integral component of the academic mission of the school 2. Ensure every student has equitable access to the school counseling program 3. Identify and deliver the knowledge and skills all students should acquire 4. Ensure that the school counseling program is comprehensive in design and delivered systematically to all students Consisting of four interrelated components, the ASCA National Model maintains an emphasis on the student as the important focus of educational reform, and presents a comprehensive approach to the interrelated components of: (a) foundation, (b) delivery system, (c) management system, and (d) accountability. The foundation provides the structure for the school counseling program. It is based on the underlying philosophy and beliefs that guide program development and ultimately, the school counseling program. A philosophy, beliefs and mission statement that supports the notion that all students can learn and achieve is critical to developing a school counseling program that benefits all students in the school. The delivery system describes what is needed to effectively deliver programs and activities. The ASCA National Model describes four delivery system interventions: (a) the guidance curriculum which is part of the student’s overall pre-kindergarten through grade 12 curriculum, (b) individual student planning consisting of activities designed to help students to meet personal goals, to make informed decisions, and to plan for a future, (c) responsive services which are part of the school counselor’s duties in helping students to address immediate needs, and (d) system support that allows for effective management and administration of the school counseling program. An effective management system is data driven and ensures that the school counseling program is well organized and reflects the needs of the school and the students who attend. A management system
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involves (a) agreements that detail how the school counseling program is organized and what the goals and objectives will be, (b) an advisory council appointed to review and make recommendations regarding the program and action plans for desired competencies to be achieved, (c) an analysis of the use of time spent in delivering the appropriate counseling responsibilities, and (d) a system by which the school community is informed of activities and plans in a timely manner. Accountability demonstrates the effectiveness of the overall school counseling program. Key to accountability is evaluation and the use of data linked to student achievement. Comprehensive school counseling programs are data-driven.
School Counselor Roles and Responsibilities in the Twenty-first Century The three C’s (counseling, coordination and consultation services) are taught in most school counseling training programs and are included in the guidelines for the development of comprehensive school counseling programs. However, with the emerging roles and responsibilities of professional school counselors, the triadic focus of counseling, coordination and consultation may be limited in defining the roles of professional school counselors in the twenty-first century. Professional school counselors have taken on new roles in the learning and development of students. No longer are school counselors relegated to office duties requiring the management of college applications, changing of schedules, or disciplining students. Professional school counselors are considered among the educational staff that is an integral part of school reform. Professional school counselors are a key part of an educational leadership team, providing assistance to students during the elementary, middle school, high school years and beyond. Professional school counselors are proactive leaders and advocates working within the context of the school with responsibilities for promoting success for all students through system wide changes and educational reform. Each year, students are entering school with life circumstances that teachers, counselors, and school administrators are not prepared to address. Students attending U.S. schools are diverse in culture and experiences. The increasing diversity resulting from
the changing demographic profile of the U.S. is currently reflected in schools. For many students, a language other than English is spoken at home. The influence of socioeconomic status affects school resources as well as some families’ ability to provide supports that foster student learning and achievement. There is a reported increase in mental, social and emotional problems among students in U.S. schools that begins early in the child’s life. Due to a variety of challenges present in today’s society, many students experience changes in family structures that are have been linked to factors that can have a negative impact on school achievement and overall socialemotional behavior. Low expectations for racial and ethnic minority students and students living in poverty create a system by which students from higher socioeconomic levels with educational and personal emotional supports are more likely to succeed, while students from lower socioeconomic levels lacking educational and personal-emotional supports are more likely to fail. Educational leaders acknowledge that inequitable educational practices fail to foster the high expectations needed to ensure that all students succeed. There is a growing belief that all students can learn. This belief has fostered an increased awareness that all students must receive access to an equitable and non-stigmatizing education. Acquiring multicultural competencies increases the likelihood that professional school counselors will be able to understand and meet the needs of diverse students, providing culturally appropriate services that are part of a comprehensive educational program. The National Model advocates program-centered school counseling services that are designed for all students rather than service-centered school counseling services designed for some students. ASCA’s expectations of professional school counselors state that the majority of time should be spent providing direct service to and contact with students. The foci of a school counselor’s duties are on the overall delivery of services through the guidance curriculum, individual student planning and responsive services. Indirect or system support services should only be a small percentage of the time spent in school counseling activities. ASCA recommends a ratio of 250 students to one school counselor. This is an ideal caseload that is not often realized due to the limited number of school counselors in a school. In actual practice, the national average of student to counselor is much higher, and more likely to be 478 students to one school counselor.
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The school counselor’s role and responsibilities must be protected so that school counseling programs fulfill the mission of student success and learning in academic, career and personal-emotional development. ASCA identifies duties and activities that are considered to be appropriate and inappropriate for school counselors. Appropriate Counseling Responsibilities for School Counselors
Designing individual student academic programs Interpreting cognitive, aptitude and achievement tests Counseling students with excessive tardiness or absenteeism Counseling students with disciplinary problems Counseling students about appropriate school dress Collaborating with teachers to present guidance curriculum lessons Analyzing grade-point averages in relationship to achievement Interpreting student records Providing teachers with suggestions for better study hall management Ensuring student records are maintained in accordance with state and federal regulations Assisting the school principal with identifying and resolving student issues, needs and problems Collaborating with teachers to present proactive, prevention-based guidance curriculum lessons
Inappropriate Counseling Responsibilities for School Counselors
Registering and scheduling all new students Administering cognitive, aptitude and achievement tests Signing excuses for students who are tardy or absent Performing disciplinary actions Sending home students who are not appropriately dressed Teaching classes when teachers are absent Computing grade-point averages Maintaining student records Supervising study halls Clerical record keeping Assisting with duties in the principal’s office Working with one student at a time in a therapeutic, clinical mode
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Students’ Developmental Needs and School Counselors Responsibilities The responsibilities of school counselors are unique to the developmental needs of the students that they serve. The ASCA National Model: A Framework for School Counseling Programs presents a guide for school counselors implementing the program. School counselors implement the counseling program by providing school guidance curriculum, individual student planning, responsive services and system support in meeting the developmental needs of students. In addressing the developmental needs of students at different levels of education, school counselors do not provide programs and services in isolation, rather comprehensive and systematic services are provided as part of the total education program. Elementary school counselors help students develop their academic self-concept, gain confidence as learners and develop positive relationships with peers, family and the school community. Collaborating with parents, teachers, administrators and students, elementary school counselors provide education, prevention, early identification and intervention that help all students achieve school success. Middle school counselors are uniquely qualified to meet the specific developmental needs of middle school students. Students during the middle school years are characterized by curiosity about self and others and an emerging self-identity. Middle school counselors collaborate with parents, teachers, administrators, students, and the community. Middle school counselors help students develop a positive self-identity, enhance personal growth and development, acquire positive social skills and values, make appropriate choices and set appropriate educational and career goals. Secondary school counselors work with students as they begin the transition into adulthood. Students at this developmental stage are heavily influenced by their peer group, and are exposed to increasing pressures that may be associated with high-risk behaviors such as drug use, alcohol use and sex. Academic pressures are an influence as students recognize their strengths and abilities as well as limitations. Decisions about life after high school create added pressures. Students usually know whether they are college-bound or noncollege bound. College bound students are faced with the pressures of applying and preparing for college, while non-college bound students are faced with the pressures of the transition from school to work. In
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delivering a comprehensive and systematic counseling program, secondary school counselors collaborate with parents, students, teachers, administrators, and the community. Secondary school counselors help both college-bound and non-college-bound students become contributing members of a global society. During the high school years, secondary school counselors help students achieve optimal growth, acquire positive social skills and values and prepare for and set appropriate educational and career goals. Post-secondary counselors, supervisors and counselor educators are challenged to continually expand their counseling knowledge and skill base. School counselor supervisor’s primary responsibilities include assessing the needs of students, and designing and implementing a comprehensive, developmental counseling program. A comprehensive school counseling program requires collaboration among well-trained and highly competent professional school counselors. Among the responsibilities of counselor supervisors are in-service and preservice instruction and supervision to promote school counselor training and professional development. ASCA identifies the professional preparation and continuing education of school counselor supervisors, post secondary counselors and counselor educator include: 1. Pre-service instruction and supervision in the development of counseling skills and school counseling curricula 2. Supervised field experiences and internships in public schools 3. In-service seminars and workshops, which enhance program implementation through individual and group supervision 4. Appropriate state credentials 5. Post-master’s study and/or doctoral degree in school district administration 6. Supervision, counselor education, counseling psychology or a related area School counseling directors and coordinators provide leadership at district and state levels and ensure a collaborative effort among school counseling professionals through the employment of highly qualified school counselors, the development, implementation and evaluation of comprehensive school counseling that benefits all students, the availability of professional development, consultation and supervision relevant to school counseling, and the use of performance appraisal instruments based on the appropriate role of the professional school counselor. ASCA identifies the challenge for school
counselor directors /coordinators as developing, implementing and evaluating comprehensive school counseling programs aligned with school, district and state missions with goals of promoting academic achievement and success for all students. See also: > Counseling; > Cross-cultural school psychology; > Ethnic minority youth; > School psychologist
Suggested Reading American School Counselor Association. (1997). Definition of school counseling. Alexandria, VA: Author. American School Counselor Association. (2004). Ethical standards for school counselors. Alexandria, VA: Author. Erford, B. T., House, R., & Martin, P. (2003). Transforming the school counseling profession. In B. T. Erford (Ed.), Transforming the school counseling profession (pp. 1–20). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Merrill Prentice Hall. Holcomb-McCoy, C. (2005). Investigating school counselors’ perceived multicultural competence. Professional School Counseling, 8, 414–423. Herr, E. L. (2002). School reform and perspectives on the role of school counselors: A century of proposals for change. Professional School Counseling, 5, 220–234.
Suggested Resources American School Counselor Association (ASCA)—www.school counselor.org: The American School Counselor Association (ASCA) supports school counselors in their efforts to help students to focus on academic, career and personal-social development. ASCA provides professional development, publications, research and advocacy to professionally school counselors globally.
School Psychologist Arlene Silva . Ted Feinberg
School psychologists help children and youth succeed academically, socially, and emotionally. They collaborate with educators, parents, and other professionals to create safe, healthy, and supportive learning environments for all students, and strengthen connections between home and school. School psychologists are highly trained in both psychology and education.
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They typically complete a multi-year training program that includes a year-long internship and emphasizes preparation in mental health, child development, school culture and organization, learning processes, behavioral and academic intervention, and effective instruction. School psychologists must be certified and/or licensed by the state in which they work. They may also become nationally certified by the National School Psychology Certification Board (NSPCB) if they meet the additional requirements and receive a passing score on the Educational Testing Service (ETS) Praxis examination administered at locations throughout the United States (U.S.).
What School Psychologists Do School psychologists work to help create the best possible outcomes for students within their educational contexts. School psychologists use research-based strategies to address student needs. They also engage in school and district-wide program evaluation, work with students individually and in groups, engage in consultation with teachers and parents, and develop programs to train teachers and parents on various topics. Some such topic areas of interest include: effective teaching and learning strategies, techniques to manage behavior at home and in the classroom, strategies for working with students with disabilities or special talents, substance abuse, and crisis management. What school psychologists do can be summarized as the following:
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Intervention
Implement and monitor academic and behavioral interventions in the classroom. Provide psychological counseling to help resolve interpersonal or family problems that interfere with school performance. Work directly with children and their families to help resolve problems in adjustment and learning. Provide training in social skills, anger management and strategies for effective, safe conflict resolution. Help families and schools manage crises, such as death, illness, or community trauma.
Consultation
Collaborate with teachers, parents, and administrators to find effective solutions to student learning and behavior concerns, and other student related performance problems. Consult with teachers to assist in the implementation of effective instructional techniques. Help others understand child and adolescent development and how it affects learning and behavior. Strengthen positive working relationships between teachers, other school personnel, parents, and service providers in the community.
Evaluation Prevention
Advocate for the best interests of students. Collaborate in the design of programs for children at risk of failing at school. Promote tolerance, understanding, and appreciation of diversity within the school community. Develop programs to make schools safer and more effective learning environments. Collaborate with school staff and community agencies to provide services directed at improving psychological and physical health. Reinforce the linkage between good mental and physical health and its relationship to academic performance. Develop partnerships with parents and teachers to promote healthy school environments.
Evaluate student eligibility and appropriateness for special services. Assess academic skills and aptitude for learning. Determine social-emotional development and mental health status. Evaluate and effectively intervene to enhance learning and instructional environments. Conduct a variety of related mental health and behavioral evaluations, including suicide-risk assessments.
Research and Planning
Evaluate the effectiveness of academic and behavior management programs.
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Identify and implement programs and strategies to improve schools. Use evidence-based research to develop and/or recommend effective interventions.
Where School Psychologists Work The majority of school psychologists work as practitioners in schools. However, they can practice in a variety of settings that include:
Public and private school systems Universities and research institutions Private practice School-based health centers Clinics and hospitals Community and state agencies
School Psychologists vs. School (Guidance) Counselors The professions of school psychology and school counseling have a number of similarities and differences in both training and practice. One essential difference is that school counselors are usually not psychologists, so their training in psychology tends to be less intensive than that of school psychologists. School psychology training brings together the knowledge-base of several disciplines: child psychology and development, education with emphasis on intervention and special education; and clinical child psychology. Relative to school counselors, school psychologists are more likely to have training in behavioral analysis, mental health screening and diagnosis, research methods (and application of research to classroom practices), and specific disability areas. School counselors are more likely to have training in vocational planning and the general educational curriculum. Finally, in most states, school psychologists are required to have 3 years of postmaster’s graduate school training and internship to become credentialed. However, most school counseling programs are master’s degree (1 or 2 year) programs. A doctorate is an option in both fields. School psychologists are often funded via special education monies, so their first responsibility is typically for the population of students vulnerable to failure and those with identified disabilities. School
counselors may not work with special education populations. School psychologists’ roles with students with special education needs include assessment (comprehensive evaluations of disability and risk), consultation regarding instructional and behavioral interventions, and direct interventions that include crisis prevention and intervention; individual and group counseling; and skill training. In this latter role, school psychologist responsibilities may overlap with those of the school counselors and other support staff. School psychologists will often work jointly with these other professionals, for example, by co-leading social skills groups and serving on crisis support teams.
Growing Up Isn’t Easy All children and adolescents face problems from time to time. They may:
Feel afraid to go to school. Have difficulty organizing their time efficiently. Lack effective study skills. Have difficulty reading. Fall behind in their school work. Lack self-discipline. Worry about family matters such as divorce and death. Feel depressed or anxious. Experiment with drugs and alcohol. Think about suicide. Worry about their sexuality. Face difficult situations, such as applying to college, getting a job, or quitting school. Question their aptitudes and abilities.
School psychologists help children, parents, teachers, and members of the community understand and find effective ways to resolve these concerns. The following situations demonstrate how school psychologists may typically approach problems.
Family Problems The teacher noticed that Carla, an able student, had stopped participating in class discussions and had difficulty paying attention. The school psychologist was asked to explore why Carla’s behavior had changed so much. After discovering that Carla’s parents were
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divorcing, the school psychologist provided counseling for Carla and gave her parents suggestions about how to deal with this difficult time. Carla’s behavior and self-esteem improved, and she felt more secure about her relationship with her parents. School psychologists can help with delicate personal and family situations that interfere with schooling.
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Suggested Reading National Association of School Psychologists (2002). Best practices in school psychology (4th ed.). Bethesda, MD: Author. U.S. News and World Report (February, 2002). Careers to count on. Washington, D.C.: Author.
Suggested Resources Reading Problems Tommy’s parents were concerned about his reading difficulties. They feared that he would fall behind and lose confidence in himself. In school the teacher noticed that Tommy understood what was presented in verbal form, but needed the help of his classmates to do written work. After observing Tommy in his instructional environment, gathering information about his reading and writing skills, and gathering information about the teacher’s instruction of these skills, the school psychologist collaborated with his parents and teacher to develop a plan to improve his reading and writing. The plan worked and both Tommy’s reading and his self-esteem improved. School psychologists can help prevent future problems when they intervene with learning problems early on.
A Student with Potential to Drop Out of School David was a high school student who often skipped class. His behavior was poor and he had been suspended from school for fighting on various occasions. After establishing a relationship with David, the school psychologist taught him techniques to help him relax and control his aggressive behavior. David’s mother and his teacher worked together on a plan designed by the school psychologist to establish limits and to improve communication. School psychologists recognize that changes in the school environment and at home can improve the quality of life for children and their families. See also: > American Psychological Association (APA); > Bilingual school psychologists; > Cross-cultural school psychology; > National Association of School Psychologists (NASP)
The National Association of School Psychologists (NASP)—www. nasponline.org: This is the website of an organization that represents and supports school psychology to enhance the mental health and educational competence of all children. Division 16 of the American Psychological Association (APA)— http://www.indiana.edu/~div16/index.html: Division 16 represents the interests of psychologists. Its goal is to enhance the status of children, youth, and adults as learners and productive citizens in schools, families, and communities.
School Response to Terrorism Salman Elbedour . Nazeh Natur . Odah Al-Rowaie . Rona Fields
Living in an Age of Terror In recent years, children have been confronted either directly or indirectly with terrorist attacks, wars, torture, tsunamis, and hurricane-induced floods. Any one of these disasters can traumatize children and their caregivers in the United States (U.S.), the most devastating terrorist attack occurred on September 11, 2001, known as ‘‘9/11.’’ Since ‘‘911,’’ the declaration of ‘‘war’’ on an unknown antagonist has immersed the American people in a state of prolonged stress and confusion. The nature of stress in the war on terror is related to a state of prolonged uncertainty in that the ‘‘enemy’’ or terrorist is neither recognizable nor originates in a particular neighborhood. This is particularly troubling for children whose trauma at this stage of development may have a longlasting negative influence. The impact, both direct when witnessed/personally experienced and indirect when exposed vicariously through media, can traumatize
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school children and require a response from their caretakers. The most dramatic example of the fulfillment of terrorist threat remains the trauma that was ‘‘911.’’ Since then, terrorism has become a global phenomenon rather than episodic, localized, traumatic experiences. Before the events of September 11, threats of terrorist attacks were geographically limited. With the exception of World War II, there has been no other act of terrorism that has captured the world’s attention like September 11. The subsequent anthrax attacks, the bombing of Oklahoma City, and the sniper shootings in Washington, D.C. in 2002 are other tragedies closely linked to terrorism. Domestic terror expands the cycle of terrorism and challenges the mental health of children. In 1988, when the book Planning for school emergencies was published, terrorist acts were mentioned but little attention was paid to planning and preparing for such incidents in schools. The tragedy at Columbine High School in April 1999 was a traumatic reminder of any such incidents that occurred in the preceding three or four years. West Paducah, Kentucky; Pearl, Mississippi; Fayettesville, Tennessee; and Springfield, Oregon: these were a few of the better-known tragedies where school children were terrorized, killed, or wounded by young terrorists. Most recently, there have been incidents of adults walking into schools and killing students and teachers in California and Pennsylvania. Each of these attacks constitutes threatening stressors that confirm the overwhelming and catastrophic nature of terrorism. School children are particularly vulnerable to instances of terrorism in schools, that have more specifically traumatized them vicariously and generated a major shift in focus in the area of school security. Given the uncertainties of where and when the next attack strikes, the threat of terrorism has been undermining children’s sense of security, competence, and invulnerability. To complicate matters further, while children have widely been traumatized through identifying with the child victims of terror and violence in distant places, many younger children are vulnerable to traumatic violence in fairy tales or films.
Coping with Terrorism: Risk, Vulnerability, and Resilience of Children Children need stable and predictable contexts for optimal growth and development. The loss of these basic
needs and assumptions as a result of terrorism jeopardizes adaptation and increases pathology. Children suffer two kinds of trauma as a result of terrorism: the terror itself and the fear of separation from family members. Trauma emanates from these threats but is complicated by the disruption of invulnerability and confrontation with the imminence of mortality. If the trauma is induced by a man-made disaster, it breaks down the assumptions about the relationship of the child to the rest of humanity and the essential rationality of the world, for the growing child who is so dependent on the benignity of a caring human. In times of terror, there can be very little in a child’s world that is meaningful or predictable and stable. Attachments can disintegrate and a formerly secure human environment becomes threatening. The degree of threat is measured for the child in the difference between others and him- or herself. That is to say, the ‘‘secret other’’ who perpetrated the catastrophe wears a face and form quite different from one’s own. This is the beginning of xenophobia and the loss of trust. Some children, however, are able to view a harsh experience in a positive, challenging light rather than as a threat. Yet, professionals need to be wary of the ‘‘sleeper effect.’’ The sleeper effect refers to a delayed reaction that can surface at some later time, even if the child displays no immediate symptoms in reaction to the traumatic experience.
Best Practices to Facilitate Recovery and Coping after Terrorist Attacks The increasing threat of terrorism has placed greater demands upon school psychologists to expand beyond the traditional service model and assume a more critical role in crisis management and intervention. However, there is little empirical evidence to identify best practices as a result of the limited research on schools and terrorism, as this field is in its infancy. Some therapeutic practices that have been found to be effective include promoting resilience, growth, and recovery in the face of terrorist attacks. These can be applied by professionals in schools. A powerful technique to help children cope with frightening emotions and experiences is through the use of the expressive and creative arts. These mediums allow an expression of positive and negative emotions, both of which can translate anxiety into hope and expectation. These mediums allow children to view
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their world not through a problem-focused, but rather a solution-focused, orientation. Visualizing positive emotions, such as hopes, dreams, and expectations for the future through art, for instance, can help children manage their traumatic experience and develop their own construction out of the overwhelming chaos. Play therapy can serve the same function. Through play, children may re-experience their past trauma, helping them anticipate the future from a corrected past. Narrative story telling is another recognized technique used to manage trauma. Here children are instructed to tell a progressive story that results in a complicated and elaborate tale of triumph over fear and confrontation with the unknown. Story telling normalizes traumatic events and helps children realize that their worries and distress are normal reactions to abnormal situations. Another possible, and related, technique is a selfinstructional strategy, known as ‘‘self-talk.’’ Self-talk helps children identify internal strengths and external support systems and how to use them. Research has also supported the efficacy and effectiveness of progressive relaxation techniques as a valuable tool to monitor and manage overwhelming emotions. School psychologists and clinicians can also emphasize the role of altruism in helping anxious children. During group-counseling sessions, children need to identify their human resources for shared survival. Children can then review how others reached out to them in a time of crisis and how they reciprocated. They identify themselves and each other in terms of what helped, or reach out through a ‘‘buddy service’’ that they can extend to their peers at a critical time. By focusing on the future rather than the past and how they can address the needs of others in time of crisis, children are provided with a sense of confidence and self-reliance. The development of consultation sessions to teachers and administrators is also an integral part of the healing process. Parents, as primary caretakers, benefit from some didactic instruction on anxiety and its treatment. Parents also need access to resources to sustain their own confidence and resilience. Conducting workshops on the dynamics of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and its relevant symptoms should be interwoven with the intervention. Reading brief vignettes aloud to educate parents about PTSD and to manage distress is critical for emotional processing. This kind of program should be implemented on a school-wide basis. It should be designed to address
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potential outcomes from prolonged exposure to traumatic stress such as PTSD and exacerbation or instigation of xenophobia. Positive psychology has greatly contributed to treatment plans for survivors. Humor and laughter are known to facilitate expression of fears and distressing material. Recent research in positive psychology has documented the benefits of incorporating spiritual, religious, and culturally responsive teachings that help children construct a positive outlook on life. Finally, children coping with acts of terrorism need professionals who help them avoid drawing bleak conclusions and xenophobic beliefs such as ‘‘kill or be killed.’’ School professionals need to provide children with a mature, balanced view of political conflicts and constructive methods of conflict resolution. Adults need to provide children with alternative interpretive ways of defining themselves, structuring their world, and differentiating their moral perspective from those who either perpetrated the terrorist attacks or who took revenge. See also: > Crisis intervention; > Culturally competent crisis response; > Cultural resilience; > Disasters and disaster prevention; > Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)
Suggested Reading Ayalon, O. (1983). Coping with terrorism: The Israeli case. In D. Meichenbaum & M. E. Jaremko (Eds.), Stress reduction and prevention (pp. 293–339). New York: Plenum. Comas-Diaz, L., Luthar, S. S., Maddi, L. R., O’Neil, H. K., Saakvinte, K. W., & Tedeschi, R. G. (2003). The road to resilience. Washington, D.C.: American Psychological Association. Goldman, L. (2003). Talking to children about terrorism. In M. Lattanzi-Licht, & D. J. Kenneth (Eds.), Living with grief: Coping with public tragedy (pp. 139–150). New York: BrunnerRoutledge.
Suggested Resources Coping With a National Tragedy—http://www.nasponline.org/ neat/crisis_0911.html: This online guide from the National Association of School Psychologists is available in several languages. Topics include: promoting tolerance and peace in children, helping children manage strong emotional reactions, preventing suicide, and cultural responses to trauma and crisis response.
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School roles in mental health
School Roles in Mental Health Sharon H Stephan
The provision of mental health services to students in schools involves many players, each contributing their own knowledge and expertise and assuming a unique role in the effort. The collaborative effort to develop a full array of school-based mental health services has been termed expanded school mental health (ESMH), because it reflects both the work of school-hired staff (including counselors, school social workers and school psychologists), and that of community providers who serve to augment the school’s existing services. Recognizing that schools alone cannot address student emotional and behavioral problems and that many, if not most, youth in need of services fail to access community services, many community agencies (e.g., mental health centers and health departments) have partnered with schools to improve access to and quality of mental health care for this population. Reflected in the ESMH framework is the notion that professionals across multiple disciplines, including education, social work, psychology, counseling and psychiatry, work together to provide a full continuum of mental health care to youth in schools. Implicit in this framework is that interdisciplinary work should incorporate the unique skills and training offered by individuals from different disciplines, resulting in a unified and complementary service delivery model. The services provided by professionals from different disciplines are likely to vary as a result of their unique training experiences, as well as the expectations and needs of the school. Below is a general description of the training and services that might be offered in select disciplines that make up the school mental health team. School Social Workers—The majority of School Social Workers hold a master’s degree in social work, which is the prescribed entry level in most states. Some states, however, do allow entry level at the bachelor’s level. According to the School Social Work Association of America, most school social workers offer direct services to students, families, groups, as well as providing classroom workshops, crisis intervention, and making referrals where necessary. In addition, School Social Workers may provide assistance with the assessment process for special education, and
may provide direct or indirect services to students in special education. Finally, School Social Workers often consult with teachers and administrators and are likely to participate in school teams. See www.sswaa.org. School Psychologist—School psychologists are highly trained in both psychology and education. They must complete a minimum of a post-master’s degree program that includes a year-long internship and emphasizes training in mental health, child development, school organization, learning styles and processes, behavior, motivation, and effective teaching. School psychologists must be certified and/or licensed by the state in which they work. They also may be nationally certified by the National School Psychology Certification Board (NSPCB). As detailed by the National Association for School Psychologists, services provided by School Psychologists include consultation, evaluation, prevention, intervention, research and planning. See www.nasponline.org. School Counselor—Professional School Counselors have a master’s degree or higher in school counseling or the substantial equivalent, and meet the state certification/licensure standards. The American School Counselor Association describes the role of school counselors as multifaceted and including school curriculum guidance (e.g., academic support, career awareness), individual student planning (e.g., academic planning, transition plans), responsive services (e.g., crisis intervention, conflict resolution), and system support (e.g., professional development, program management). See www.schoolcounselor.org. Community Mental Health Clinicians—Schools often collaborate with community mental health agencies and providers to augment the services offered by school-hired professionals. As such, their roles may vary greatly from school to school, and may include services along the entire continuum of mental health care from universal prevention activities to intensive treatment services. Community mental health clinicians represent a variety of disciplines including social work, psychology, counseling and psychiatry, each with their own training and certification requirements and expertise. School Health Providers—School health providers, including school nurses, nurse practitioners, physicians, and physicians assistants serve as critical members of the school mental health team. Often considered the ‘‘gatekeepers’’ for mental health problems in schools, health providers are key players in the identification and screening of mental health problems, and may also
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be involved in the delivery of mental health education and treatment. See www.nasbhc.org for more information on the role of mental health in School-Based Health Centers. Occupational Therapists—Occupational therapists hold a bachelor’s, master’s or doctoral degree. Certified occupational therapy assistants earn an associate degree. All occupational therapy practitioners must complete supervised clinical fieldwork in a variety of health and educational settings. They must also pass a national certification examination. Occupational therapists contribute to the mental health care of youth by helping them to develop the skills necessary to cope with daily living, such as time management and social skills. See www.aota.org for the American Occupational Therapy Association. The above descriptions are not meant to provide a prescriptive or comprehensive view of the services offered by each discipline, but rather present some examples of how each discipline might contribute to the delivery of mental health services in schools. While each discipline is likely to bring core competencies to the school mental health delivery team, it is also true that the boundaries between disciplines are often blurred. In fact, the school mental health providers often wear multiple disciplinary ‘‘hats’’ to provide the most needed services in a school. In addition, the mental health team consists of far more players than those in traditional mental health disciplines, and should include family members, educators, administrators, community representatives, and other system leaders including those from juvenile and social services.
Resource Mapping To provide effective and meaningful school mental health services, it is critical that schools take stock of the various disciplines and core competencies represented by their professional staff and match them to the identified needs of the school. There is an extensive literature on this process, reflecting the understanding that, to effectively develop and foster mentally healthy schools, it is essential to identify and manage resources. Historically, student support services that aim to reduce barriers to learning have been marginalized, contributing to the fragmentation and duplication of mental health services in schools. To reduce service duplication and division, schools should engage in an
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earnest effort to understand the various people and programs that exist to address problems in learning, behavior, and/or emotions, and subsequently work towards reducing duplication of efforts, and enhancing collaboration and linkages. See also: > Center for School-Based Mental Health Programs (CSBMHP); > Mental Health-Education Integration Consortium (MHEDIC); > Preschool mental health; > School counselor; > School psychologist
Suggested Reading Adelman, H. S., & Taylor, L. (2006). Mapping a school’s resources to improve their use in preventing and ameliorating problems. 977–990. In C. Franklin, M. Harris, & P. Allen-Meares (Eds.), The school services sourcebook: A guide for school-based professionals. New York: Oxford University Press. Brown, C., Dahlbeck, D. R., & Sparkman-Barnes, L. (2006). Collaborative relationships: School counselors and non-school mental health professionals working together to improve the mental health needs of students. Professional School Counseling, 3, 315–322. Flaherty, L. T., Garrison, E. G., Waxman, R., Uris, P. F., Keys, S. K., Glass-Siegel, M., & Weist, M. D. (1998). Optimizing the roles of school mental health professionals. Journal of School Health, 68, 420–424.
School Standards M David Miller
Performance standards have been established at the student, school, district and state level. Performance standards for students have been used for more than half a century to make decisions about students (e.g., graduation). School, district and state level performance standards have been established and widely used in the last 20 years to hold schools, districts and states accountable for student performance. Typically, teachers use established procedures to recommend standards to policy makers (e.g., state or U.S. Departments of Education). At the student level, a multitude of methods and extensive literature for setting performance standards exists. These often place students’ test scores into categories that describe performance. For example, the
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National Assessment for Educational Progress uses performance standards to identify students as Basic, Proficient, or Advanced. Other testing programs use different numbers of categories depending on the use of test scores. Performance standards can be used to provide descriptions of student performance or to make educational decisions about students (e.g., high school graduation or grade-to-grade promotion/retention). At the school, district, and state level, standards are typically set by policy makers using an aggregation of student level performance. Data can be aggregated in several ways including summing the percent of students who attain some level of performance or averaging scaled scores. School standards are used to hold schools accountable for the outcomes of schooling and can be set by policy makers at school, district, and state levels. School standards are usually based on a combination of content standards, performance standards, and opportunity to learn standards. Content standards specify what students should learn; performance standards specify how much students should learn; and opportunity to learn standards specify how students should learn. With multiple policy makers who are interested in the effectiveness of schools, a school may be operating simultaneously under multiple school standards with responsibility to multiple stakeholders. For example, many schools currently have a set of standards based on state policy and a second set of standards (also set by the state) based on the 2001 No Child Left Behind (NCLB) in addition to any standards that have been established locally. Multiple school standards can create mixed messages and lead to confusion about the actual performance level of schools for school personnel and the general public. School standards often include multiple sources of data and can be aggregated in many ways. Typically, school standards are based primarily on achievement test data but may also include other indicators of schooling such as school attendance at the elementary level or graduation rates at the secondary level. School standards can be set using a compensatory or non-compensatory model. A compensatory standard involves setting a single standard that may combine the results of multiple sources of data. For example, a single standard for an elementary school might include the percent of students in grades 3 through 5 who are proficient in reading plus the percent of students in grades 3 through 5 who are proficient in mathematics. The single standard allows a school to compensate for
weaker performance in one area by having stronger performance in another area. As a result, a school could meet the school standard even with weak performance in one content area or within one group of students (e.g., special education) as long as performance in another content area or within another group was high enough to compensate for the lower performance. In contrast to the compensatory models, noncompensatory models require schools to meet standards in multiple areas simultaneously. For example, school standards might include separate standards that have to be met in reading and mathematics. Furthermore, the standards could be applied separately by grade level or by the demographics of the students. In this way, standards must be maintained by each group in each content area; therefore, a school would be unable to meet their standard by having a high scoring group compensate for a low scoring group. An example of a noncompensatory standard is the current school standards required under NCLB.
No Child Left Behind and School Standards A central feature of NCLB is a strong emphasis on accountability for schools, school districts, and states. States are required to set high standards for academic achievement and all schools (and districts) are required to meet those standards each year. The state defines school standards (content and performance standards) with a common definition for growth over time (i.e., adequate yearly progress). Schools are then required to meet the goals defined as adequate yearly progress (AYP). Schools that do not meet their AYP targets are subjected to school improvement, corrective action and restructuring consequences. The accountability system is based on a noncompensatory model of standards so that all subgroups of students in grades 3 through 8 and one grade in the high school (10–12) must meet pre-established goals in reading and mathematics. Beginning in 2007–2008, one grade at the elementary level (3–5), middle school level (6–8), and high school level (10–12) will be required to meet pre-established goals in science. The pre-established goals are set by the state but must increase so that all students are proficient in 2014. By using a strictly non-compensatory model of standards, schools must meet standards for each
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subgroup and this requirement forces schools to close the achievement gap between subgroups. Subgroups targeted for accountability have been defined as major ethnic/racial groups (i.e., American Indian/ Native American, Asian American, Black, Hispanic and White), economically disadvantaged students, limited English proficient (LEP) students, and students with disabilities. If any subgroup fails to meet the school standards, the school as a whole fails to meet the standards. Consequently, schools are required to focus on each subgroup, particularly the subgroups that have fallen behind in academic achievement. School standards also require that at least 95% of the students enrolled in each subgroup are tested. Standards are also separated by content area so that each subgroup must meet standards in reading, mathematics, and science (beginning in 2007–2008). Finally, high schools are required to meet standards set for graduation rates and elementary and middle schools must meet an additional indicator set by the state (e.g., attendance rates).
Consequences of Meeting or Not Meeting School Standards Performance standards for individual students can be used in a multitude of ways. If a student fails to meet a standard, the consequences might range from requiring additional diagnostic testing for instructional planning to requiring extra learning experiences (e.g. after school programs or summer school) to grade level retention. If a student does meet a standard, potential consequences might include grade-to-grade promotion and high school graduation. Meeting and failing to meet school standards (AYP targets) also has a wide range of consequences prescribed by NCLB. When schools meet their standards or when schools substantially close the achievement gaps between subgroups of students, states are required to provide academic achievement awards. Schools may receive extra funding and Title I funds can be used to financially reward teachers. However, schools that do not meet their AYP targets are subject to improvement, corrective actions or restructuring. When schools fail to meet their AYP target in two consecutive years, the school is identified as being in need of improvement. For schools that have not met school standards and are in need of improvement,
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NCLB prescribes a series of consequences that change over a 5 year period. Consequences for the first 2 years are considered a process of school improvement; the third year would require corrective action from outside of the school; and the final 2 years would be based on restructuring the school. In the first year that a school is identified as being in need of school improvement, schools receive technical assistance to address the specific academic achievement problem that led to their identification. That is, specific content at specific grade levels for specific subgroups are targeted and changes are made to increase academic achievement to close any achievement gaps. In addition, students must be offered public school choice and schools must develop a 2-year plan for school improvement. In the second year, the school improvement process undertaken in the first year (public school choice and supplemental educational services) continues and supplemental services are made available to low-income families. In the third year, the local education agency (LEA) must begin corrective actions which must include one of the following: replacing school staff responsible for the continued failure to make AYP, implementing a new curriculum with professional development, decreasing management authority at the school level, extending the school day or school year, appointing an outside consultant to advise the school on its plan for making progress toward their AYP target, or reorganizing the school internally. With continued failure to meet AYP targets, states are required to begin a process of planning restructuring in the fourth year and implementing that restructuring in the fifth year. Restructuring options include reopening the school as a charter school, replacing the principal and staff, contracting with a private management company, or state takeover. See also: > Accountability; > Data, Using (accountability); > High stakes testing ; > Reform
Suggested Reading Cizek, G. J. (Ed.). (2001). Setting performance standards: Concepts, methods, and perspectives. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Linn, R. L., & Herman, J. L. (1997). A policymaker’s guide to standards-led assessment. Denver, CO: The Education Commission of the States.
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Suggested Resources No Child Left Behind (NCLB)—http://www.ed.gov/nclb/landing. jhtml: This U.S. Department of Education website gives an overview of No Child Left Behind (NCLB) and provides updated news on its effectiveness as well as resources for parents and educators.
School Violence Jami Givens . Susan M Swearer
A safe school is a school where the educational climate fosters a spirit of acceptance for all children. It is a place where students can learn and teachers can teach in an environment free of intimidation and fear of violence. Over the past decade, school shootings have increased anxieties about the safety of our schools. As a result of highly publicized acts of school violence in the media, national attention has recently focused on violence in public schools. School violence is defined as any action or threat of action resulting in intimidation, coercion, physical harm, or personal injury. While estimates of school violence vary, acts of school violence range from bullying to violent deaths; including self-mutilation, suicide, and homicide. The most prevalent forms of school violence involve verbal and physical harassment, bullying, selfdestructive behavior, systemic and structural oppression, and physical fighting.
Prevalence While recent school shootings such as the tragic event at Virginia Tech University galvanize attention on the issue of school violence, aggression and violence are typically committed by a small number of students. While these events are rare, there appears to be an increase in student homicides in recent years. In a 2001 study of school-associated violent deaths from 1994 to 1999, Anderson and colleagues found 220 school-associated violent deaths. As with the Virginia Tech tragedy, all but one event involved multiple victims and in many instances the shooter also committed suicide.
Other non-fatal acts of violence have been reported by school officials and students. According to school principals surveyed during the 1999–2000 school year as part of a national study on school crime and safety, 71% of public elementary and secondary schools experienced at least one violent incident during that year. In 2004, another study reported that 56% of elementary school students witnessed another student being beat up and 87% witnessed someone else being hit, slapped, or punched at school in the past year. Approximately 1,466,000 total violent incidents were reported in public schools during the 1999–2000 school years. These incidents included rape, sexual battery, physical attacks, physical fights, threats of physical attack, and robbery.
Risk Factors These violent incidents may have been triggered by an event such as a threat, betrayal, or loss, but may also have been the end result of a long line of multiply determined risk factors for violence. It is important to identify risk factors of violence to focus on violence prevention efforts. The more risk factors the student is exposed to, the greater chance he or she will engage in violent behavior. Therefore, interventions that target multiple risk factors are important and necessary in violence prevention. Despite the importance of identifying the risk factors of youth violence, there have been relatively few longitudinal studies identifying such predictors. In 2000, Hawkins and colleagues examined predictors of youth violence and found a relationship between individual, family, school, peer, and community factors. Individual factors related to school violence included pregnancy and delivery complications, low resting heart rate, internalizing disorders, hyperactivity, concentration problems, restlessness, risk-taking behavior, aggressiveness, violent behavior, antisocial behavior, and favorable beliefs toward deviant or antisocial behavior. Family factors found to be predictive of violence included parental involvement in crime, child maltreatment, poor family management, low parental involvement, weak family bonding, family conflict, favorable parental attitudes towards substance abuse and violence, and parent-child separation. School factors included academic failure, low bonding in school, truancy, and frequent school transitions. Peer-related factors included delinquent siblings,
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delinquent peers, and gang involvement. Community factors predictive of violence were poverty, community disorganization, access to drugs and weapons, neighborhood crime, and exposure to violence and racial prejudice. In 2003, Miller identified that students who lived in neighborhoods with high or mixed levels of crime were more likely to have higher incidents of violence than those students who lived in neighborhoods with low levels of crime. The percentage of male students enrolled in the school was also predictive of violence rates in the school, with higher percentages of males related to higher rates of school violence.
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Centers for Disease Control reported that among students nationwide, 5.4% reported not going to school because they felt unsafe at school or unsafe on the way to or from school. In 1998, Elliot, Hamburg, and Williams reported that 20% of students surveyed feared using the restrooms at school and avoided hallways, locker rooms, and stairways because of their fear of violence. In 1993, Olweus purported that anti-bullying programs should be implemented using a schoolwide approach to increase student satisfaction, improve the social climate, and decrease antisocial behavior.
Psychological Consequences Gender Gender provides an important context for violence in the schools. Violent behavior is far more prevalent in males than in females. In fact, males report being victims of violence 10 to 15% more often than females. When females become violent, it is usually preceded by relation aggression. However, this phenomenon extends to boys as well. Sometimes a bullying interaction can take a dramatic turn from verbal attacks to assault. For example, both the massacres at Columbine High School and at Virginia Tech were preceded by reported incidents of relational aggression towards the perpetrators by their peers. These bullying incidents are important to recognize as risk factors for school violence. In 2001, Anderson and colleagues found that perpetrators of school-associated violent deaths were more likely than victims to have been identified by their peers as having been bullied at school. Practitioners working with students should address bullying early before it erupts in violence.
The School Climate When violence is prevalent in a school, the climate of the school is adversely affected and the cycle of violence is perpetuated. To decrease rates of school violence, there must be changes in the school environment. The characteristics of the environment or the cultural context in which violence occurs should be targeted for intervention. Not attending school due to fear of violence is directly related to victimization at school and indirectly related to the school climate. In 2004, The
Psychological trauma is evident in witnesses and victims of violence. Persistent victimization from violence leads to higher rates of depression, anxiety, and loneliness compared to nonvictimized children. Students who have experienced violence are more likely to have failed academically, to have less favorable beliefs about their education, and to think their school has a problem with vandalism. Specific symptoms may develop as a result of exposure to violence. These symptoms may include disruptions in patterns of sleeping and toileting and impulsive acting out. Students may also re-experience the trauma in the form of distressing thoughts or flashbacks of the events. They may also fantasize about actions of intervention or revenge. Witnessing violent events may have severe consequences on student’s academics, behaviors, and mental health. Elementary and high school students exposed to high levels of violence at school reported clinical levels of anxiety, depression, dissociation, and posttraumatic stress compared to students exposed to low levels of violence. These outcomes become worse when the violence is persistent and the rates of exposure are high.
Prevention and Intervention Since the school shootings in the late 1990s, schools have increased efforts to ensure the safety of their students. These measures include increased monitoring and surveillance, as well as increased use of police officers or security guards to prevent students from bringing weapons to school. However, these measures do not address students’ rationales for bringing
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violence into their schools. For example, the focus on gun violence in schools does not address the real problems and fears facing schools, rather it deflects from what caused students to use the guns in the first place. Other efforts to deter school violence include harsher and longer sentences for youth offenders, leading to an expanded role for the courts in the schools. However, there is little evidence harsher punishments deter violence and lead to rehabilitation. Additionally, zero-tolerance policies employed by schools may increase the risk of violence for the student and society as a suspended student is more likely to drop out of school and gain more access to unstructured time to be deviant. Insights into the causes of school violence are necessary to facilitate interventions that can increase the safety of schools and support the success of all students. Strategies need to focus on encouraging a positive school climate and discouraging crime. Although violence intervention programs should primarily address the perpetrators and victims of violence, the programs should also address the needs of the students who witness violence at school. See also: > Bullying; > Conflict resolution; > Gangs
Suggested Reading Gerler, E. R. (Ed.) (2004). Handbook of school violence. New York: Haworth Reference Press. Goldstein, A. P., & Conoley, J. C. (Eds.) (1997). School violence intervention: A practical handbook. New York: Guilford Press.
School, Size of Michael Kelly
United States (U.S.) schools are currently bigger than they were in previous decades. In 1940, the average school had about 127 students. By the 1990’s, average school enrollment had soared to over 600 students per school. Moreover, in many urban and suburban settings, it is not uncommon to find high schools with enrollments of more than 2,000 students. Increases in school size have been precipitated by a number of societal factors, including scientific and economic ideas about efficiency and economy adopted from the private sector. The consolidation of schools and school districts has
been viewed by many as a way to more uniformly administer and assess academic curricula. During the 1990’s, there was a reversal in the trend to increase school size as incidents of violence in public schools and national educational endeavors engendered a number of downsizing initiatives among schools throughout the U.S. A substantial amount of recent research looks at the strengths and weaknesses of small and large schools. Large schools, which for a while seemed to provide solutions for some problems in the education system, are currently viewed as being somewhat less effective than they were once thought to be. One major benefit of attending a larger school is that it may have more curricular offerings from which to choose. Since large schools may have a great number of resources, they may provide a student with academic opportunities that he or she would not receive in a small school. It must be noted, however, that quantity and quality are not synonymous, and that while large schools have been found to sometimes offer a broader curriculum than small schools, some research suggests that students at small schools tend to perform as well or better than those at large schools. Additionally, while large schools were once viewed as being more cost-effective than small schools, much of the research determining cost-effectiveness looked only at cost figures and tax rates. When taking into account more long-term factors, such as trends in employment and crime, it is more difficult to truly estimate the costs associated with small and large schools. Furthermore, there appears to be a ‘‘U-shaped’’ rather than a direct relationship between school size and costeffectiveness. That is, increasing the size of a school relates to decreasing its costs only up to a certain point; after that, a further increase of size comes with a disproportionate increase in costs. Small schools have their own unique blend of strengths and weaknesses. Their weaknesses include potential curricular shortcomings and having fewer educational and administrative resources than larger schools. However, current research seems to posit that smaller schools are in general as good as, and in many cases better than, larger schools. More specifically, when measured in terms of academic achievement, small schools consistently appear to do as well as or better than large schools. This outcome is especially pronounced when looking specifically at poor and minority students. While it is difficult to tease out all of the variables related to the outcome measures of small school and large schools—no one has yet proposed a causal relationship—there are indicators that small schools positively affect student performance.
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The optimal size of a school is difficult to determine. Since the quality of a school is influenced by many factors, researchers have been hesitant to offer a specific number as an optimal school enrollment. Generally researchers have proposed that elementary schools should have no more than 300–400 students, and that secondary schools should have between 400 and 800 students. See also: > Accountability; > Education
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Suggested Reading Cotton, K. (1996). School size, school climate, and student performance. School Improvement Research Series. Retrieved October 1, 2006, from http://www.nwrel.org/scpd/sirs/10/c020.html McRobbie, J. (2001). Are small schools better? School size considerations for safety and learning. West Ed Policy Brief: Retrieved October 3, 2006, from http://www.wested.org/online_pubs/po-01-03.pdf Ready, D., Lee, V., & Welner, K. (2004). Educational equity and school structure: School size, overcrowding, and schools-within-schools. Teachers College Record, 106(10),1989–2014.
Suggested Resources The Education Commission of the States (ECS)—http://www.ecs.org/ html/issue.asp?issueID=105: The ECS is a 30-year old interstate resource designed to coordinate and share information about effective educational practices and policies. The Rural School and Community Trust—http://www.ruraledu.org/ site/apps/nl/content3.asp?c=beJMIZOCIrH&b=1842453&ct=2907931: This website provides a synthesis of the literature on small schools that argues for more small schools in rural areas.
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Mental health concerns and risky behavior can influence all students’ classroom behavior and academic achievement, regardless of racial/ethnic background or socioeconomic status. Students who experience serious emotional difficulties are at a decreased capacity to concentrate on their school work, complete tasks, or even attend school. Those with learning and/or behavioral problems can also disrupt the educational experiences of others in the classroom. Seventy-five to eighty percent of children with emotional and behavioral problems do not receive appropriate interventions due to factors such as limited access, not being insured, or receiving ineffective treatment. This suggests the strong need for promoting mental health and preventing emotional and behavioral problems before they develop. School-based prevention programs can increase both access to mental health promotion programs and access to effective interventions. The vast majority of students in the United States (U.S.) attend schools and transportation to and from schools is often more readily available than it is to other locations. A number of school-based prevention programs have been found to be effective at reducing emotional and behavioral problems including substance use, delinquent behavior, depression, and suicidal behavior. Academically, some school-based prevention programs have reduced in-school and out-of-school suspensions.
Levels of Prevention Based on a public health model, school-based prevention programs are generally categorized into three levels: primary, secondary, and tertiary. These levels differ in the number of students targeted and the intensity in which they are implemented.
Elizabeth Mullett-Hume
Primary (Universal) Prevention Need for Prevention Today’s schools face more challenges than ever. Schools are serving more economically, racially and ethnically diverse populations and students as a whole are experiencing a wider variety of emotional and behavioral challenges. Furthermore, large percentages of students are involved with substance use, risky sexual behavior, violence, and have mental health difficulties.
Primary prevention programs are designed to address the specific risk factors for a problem, the conditions in which they occur and the environmental factors that contribute to the development of a problem. Primary prevention programs are designed to prevent the development of a problem for the 80–90% of students who are not currently experiencing it. In the context of schools, primary prevention programs can range from those that address specific problems (e.g., violence prevention), to those that implement effective
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school and district wide policies, change the school environment, or teach a social skills curriculum.
Secondary Prevention The secondary prevention level targets the 5–15% of students who are vulnerable to developing behavioral problems and/or academic skill deficits. Here the goal is to reduce current behavioral problems or increase skills to manage them. At the secondary prevention level, specialized interventions provide additional support to small groups or individuals. These inventions may include behavioral contracts, conflict resolution training, or remedial academic programs.
Tertiary Prevention The tertiary level of prevention targets the 1–7% of students who clearly display academic and/or behavioral difficulties. The goal is not only to decrease the frequency of future behavioral problems, but also to increase adaptive skills and functioning. At this level, prevention plans are developed individually for students. Tertiary prevention interventions are most successful if they are comprehensive and involve both the school and the family.
Community level risk factors include violence as an acceptable response to frustration, limited access to services, and social or cultural discrimination. The presence of multiple risk factors over a longer duration of time increases the likelihood that students will experience more negative outcomes. A key role of school-based prevention services and programs is to increase protective factors. Protective factors also exist across multiple domains and may include the presence of social skills, positive social supports, optimism, effective problem solving skills, positive self-esteem, and good coping skills. At the family level, having a supportive family, family harmony, and the monitoring of children tend to contribute to positive outcomes. School-level protective factors include a positive school environment, a sense of belonging, an appreciation of cultural differences, and recognition of positive achievement and behavior. At the community level, having access to services, participation in community groups, strong cultural identity and pride are frequently sited protective factors. When developing school-based prevention programs, it is important to consider the role that risk and protective factors play in the prevalence of problems. Evaluating the risk and protective factors operating in a school or for an individual child guides the development of successful prevention programs.
Risk and Protective Factors
Characteristics of Effective School-based Prevention Programs
An underlying theory of prevention programs is that child development is influenced by multiple risk and protective factors. Risk factors increase the probability that a negative outcome will occur, while protective factors tend to buffer the effect of risk factors and increase positive adjustment. No one risk factor completely accounts for poor adjustment, just as no one protective factor completely accounts for positive adjustment. Unfortunately, many children are exposed to multiple risk factors across different domains. At the individual level, risk factors include poor social skills, difficult temperament, beliefs about aggression, impulsivity, and experiencing multiple traumas. Family risk factors include poor supervision of children, discipline styles, having a parent with a substance or mental health abuse problem, and low maternal education. School factors include inadequate behavior management, low levels of school resources, school failure, and alienation from the school or from class peers.
Most schools currently offer some sort of prevention programming, from academic programs for those vulnerable to school failure to programs that aim to prevent substance abuse or violence. Unfortunately, many school prevention programs have not been evaluated to determine their effectiveness. To facilitate the identification and dissemination of effective prevention programs, different organizations and government agencies have created lists of ‘‘model’’ or ‘‘effective’’ programs. The difficulty in interpreting these lists, however, arises from a lack of consensus about the guidelines for evaluating prevention programs. The result is that not every program is on every list. In addition, various groups use different descriptors to describe the effectiveness of a program. For example, the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) created the National Registry of Evidence-based Programs and Practices (NREPP)
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which uses the terms ‘‘Promising Programs,’’ ‘‘Effective Programs,’’ and ‘‘Model Programs’’ to categorize prevention and treatment programs. Promising Programs are those that have shown some positive outcomes. Effective Programs have consistently shown positive outcomes and have been implemented well and evaluated utilizing strict criteria. Model Programs are those that have met SAMHSA’s scientific standards and the developers have agreed to provide materials and technical assistance to those who want to implement the program. Many other programs follow the approach described by the American Psychological Association’s (APA) Division 12 Task Force on the Promotion and Dissemination of Psychological Procedures. The task force defined procedures as either being ‘‘probably efficacious,’’ meaning that the outcomes obtained were better than those who did not receive treatment or as ‘‘well-established’’ indicating the program was compared to an already established intervention and was independently tested by other researchers. Despite these differences in how programs are categorized, several characteristics of effective school-based prevention programs have been identified. Prevention that targets multiple domains for intervention, such as the child, family and school, are more effective than those that solely focus on the child. For school-aged children, prevention programs that change the environment are also especially effective. These programs clearly define, teach and communicate expected behaviors, develop reward systems and punishments for negative behavior, and monitor students’ behavior. Individual interventions that are interactive in nature and teach specific behavioral and cognitive behavioral skills are more likely to reduce problematic behaviors. No matter the focus of the intervention (environment vs. individuals) programs that require the active involvement of parents generally create more emotional and behavioral changes than those that do not. Successful prevention programs are well-coordinated, monitored, evaluated and improved over time. More intensive, multi-year programs tend to have greater long-term impact than short-term programs. Caution is needed when interpreting the effectiveness of school-based prevention programs. At this point, researchers are still developing an understanding of the range of people that prevention programs work for and in what contexts. Before 1991, less than 25% of prevention programs consisted of a majority of nonWhite participants or an equal number of non-White
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and White participants. Today, 91% of the model prevention programs listed on SAMHSA’s National Registry of Effective Programs and Practices website target multiple cultural groups. The question remains, however, about the degree to which these programs translate for use with groups of students not initially targeted by the program. For example, to what extent does a program that has been developed for use with African American and Latino youth who live in large urban areas translate to use with rural White students who live in Appalachia? Both mental health program providers and students carry norms, values, and beliefs acquired from their cultural backgrounds. Successful implementation of a prevention program therefore requires that those who design the program and those who it is intended to serve share compatible values, beliefs, and norms or are able to communicate, understand, and work with cultural differences. Cultural values affect every aspect of a prevention program including beliefs about the development and prevention of a problem, the identification of problem behaviors, the kinds of programs that students and parents prefer, and evaluation methods. New evidence suggests that prevention programs designed specifically for use with African American and Asian students are as effective as prevention programs designed for use with White students. However, even if programs are developed for use with a specific cultural group, adaptations may still be needed during program implementation. Cultures change over time (particularly youth cultures) and a wide range of differences exists even among those in the same cultural group or community. There is some evidence that cultural adaptations lead to small increases in effectiveness of prevention programs and larger increases in family involvement. Cultural adaptation of prevention programs involves implementing culturally sensitive modifications to a program to incorporate a traditional cultures’ background into the program. Unfortunately, no national standards currently exist that describe how to best modify programs to fit the needs of specific cultural groups or local communities. Difficulties about how to adapt a program arise when planners try to balance the need for fidelity and the need for culturally relevant intervention. Experts at the Oregon Social Learning Center have utilized a model of cultural adaptation to successfully modify a parenting program for use with Latino families. Their adaptation of the program included collaboration with Latino therapists and mental health advocacy groups. As a group, the Center evaluated the
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existing components of the program that were thought to be important in creating behavior change. These components were then analyzed to determine whether they were culturally relevant and if the method of delivery was culturally appropriate. Intervention components that addressed the cultural experiences of Latino community members (e.g., discrimination) and culturally specific risk and protective factors were incorporated. Finally, focus groups were utilized to present the modified program to parents. Focus groups provided a way to receive feedback about the cultural relevance of the program, identify potential barriers to acceptance, and strategize about implementation.
Implementing School-based Prevention Programs Several factors relate to the successful implementation and long-term success of school-based prevention programs, whether culturally adapted or not. Prevention programs are more likely to be successful when they begin with a needs assessment to tailor a program to fit the school’s needs and when school staff, parents/ caregivers, and community agencies collaborate in development and implementation. Incorporating these key stakeholders in the prevention process helps ensure that prevention components are consistent with the values, traditions, and social norms of the population being targeted. This process also increases buy-in from all stakeholders. Spending time at the onset of a programmatic endeavor to develop the school’s infrastructure and organizational support of a program is vital to ensuring the effective, efficient and sustained use of school-based programs. Effective training, staff development and supervision are other important factors in the successful implementation of prevention programs. Staff members who are trained in the delivery of a prevention program are more likely to fully implement it and achieve greater changes in student behavior. Finally, developing and implementing an evaluation of the program’s outcomes is a critical piece in the program implementation process. On-going evaluations that provide information about outcomes allow those involved in the prevention program to make adjustments that aim to increase the likelihood of success. See also: > Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports (PBIS); > Resilience building prevention programs
Suggested Reading Castro, F. G., Barerra, M., & Martinez, C. R. (2004). The cultural adaptation of prevention interventions: Resolving tensions between fidelity and fit. Prevention Science, 5, 41–45. Durlak, J. A. (1997). Primary prevention programs in schools. Advances in Clinical Psychology, 19, 283–318. Weisz, J. R., Sandler, I. N., Durlak, J. A., & Anton, B. S. (2005). Promoting and protecting youth mental health through evidence-based prevention and treatment. American Psychologist, 60, 628–648. Wilson, D. B., Gottfredson, D. C., & Najaka, S. S. (2001). Schoolbased prevention of problem behaviors: A meta-analysis. Journal of Quantitative Criminology, 17, 247–272.
Suggested Resources The Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning— www.casel.org: This website offers information on enhancing children’s academic success in through coordinated, evidencebased social, emotional, and academic programs in schools. Updated information on recent findings and theoretical updates are available. SAMHSA’s National Registry of Evidence-based Programs—http:// modelprograms.samhsa.gov/: This website offers information on programs which have been found be effective in preventing substance abuse and emotional or behavioral problems. Information describing the programs and how to implement them is available.
School-Community Mental Health Centers Melissa Pearrow
When integrated with community services to provide a continuum of care for youth, school mental health programs do more than ensure academic achievement. Recent federal reports (e.g. President’s New Freedom Commission on Mental Health; Mental Health: A Report of the Surgeon General) recommend the expansion and improvement of school mental health programs and stipulate that schools must be partners in the mental health care of youth given the relationship between emotional health and school success. These recommendations have more recently been supported through federal funding sources such as the
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Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS). These funds have resulted in the expansion of schoolbased health centers to include mental health services to complement the medical and dental services, in addition to funding two national centers, at the University of Maryland—School of Medicine and the University of California, Los Angeles, to provide technical assistance to school health centers providing mental health support services. The resources provided by these centers range from newsletters and public policy advocacy to professional training and implementation support for mental health service providers within the school setting. National longitudinal studies indicate that although 48% of middle and high schools nationally offer some level of mental health counseling, there were serious disparities in availability by region, urbanicity, and school size. For example, 83% of urban systems provided mental health counseling, while only 31% of rural systems provided these same services. Of schools situated in the northeast, 86% provided mental health services, compared to 28% of schools in the midwest. However, these studies were limited by small sample sizes, stressing the need for more research on a national sample of schools. To obtain a representative sample of public schools, DHHS sponsored the first national survey to gather more information on the scope of mental health services provided within public schools. This survey, which is reported on in School Mental Health Services in the U.S. 2002–2003, found that almost half (55%) of the schools have contracts or other formal arrangements with one or more community-based organizations or individual providers for student mental health services. Again, differences were noted based on the location of the school setting, with urban schools spending more resources dealing with aggression or disruptive behavior, and suburban and rural systems using more of their resources on social, interpersonal, or family problems. Approximately one third (32%) of school districts exclusively use school or district-based staff to provide mental health services with the most frequently provided services including assessment of emotional or behavioral disorders, behavior management consultation, and group counseling. About one quarter (23%) of school districts only contract with outside providers for mental health services, medication management (43%) being the most frequently provided service. More than 30% of the school systems outsourced
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services in the areas of substance abuse counseling and family support services. Additionally, in 36% of the schools surveyed, mental health services were provided by a combination of school and district-based staff and outside providers with contractual agreements, most common in large districts. Schools that have contractual agreements with community service agencies increase the capacity of the school districts to provide services and are more likely than schools without such arrangements to coordinate service planning across agencies (50 vs. 29%, respectively). Survey participants also note the importance of both formal and informal relationships with community providers.
Benefits of School-Community Mental Health Service Delivery Partnerships between schools and community agencies can be mutually beneficial when addressing the mental health needs of youth. Several advantages of providing mental health services in schools have been identified, whether the services are provided by school- and district-based staff or community agencies. These advantages include improved educational outcomes by decreasing absences, decreasing discipline referrals, and improving test scores. Interventions can be implemented in the natural environment where emotional and behavioral difficulties can impact functioning. Additionally, through partnerships, schools gain increased support to address mental health issues through additional staff and added financial support, and community agencies can access youth whom they otherwise may be unable to reach. A noteworthy aspect of the school setting is that it provides a trusted and familiar environment where transportation barriers are reduced or eliminated, and where early intervention, well care visits and screenings can occur without major disruptions to the family. When services are provided in a school based setting, children and adolescents who may have difficulty accessing community resources for various reasons, can reduce these access barriers. For example, it has been found that children of immigrant families are more likely to access services when they are provided in school-based health centers, schools being therefore a critical gateway for that sub-population. The existence of such centers becomes imperative given the disparities in access and availability of quality mental
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health services for individuals and families from racial, linguistic, and ethnic minority backgrounds. Finally, school-based mental health services can provide secondary prevention services to children or adolescents identified as displaying ‘‘at-risk’’ behaviors, thus allowing for earlier involvement of communitybased agencies. Examples of services that might not fall within the domains of the educational system but that can be provided at school-based centers include substance abuse cessation, smoking prevention, and sex education. Connections to community resources can be provided to the students and families through the school-based centers, an approach which, in theory, allows for sustainability beyond the school hours and school years.
child or adolescent later being unwilling to re-engage when these limitations are overcome. The solution to these problems requires strategies for effective multi-agency collaboration, founded on effective communication between leaders of the various systems. It is important that all parties share in decision-making processes, and mutually support the goals developed to address the needs of the student body. This trans-disciplinary work demands mutual respect, and a desire to learn about the roles and functions of other disciplines (e.g., general and special education, school administration, clinical psychology, social work, school psychology, psychiatry). Ideally these collaborations are led by school-hired mental health staff as they better identify with and understand the issues of the students, families, and staff.
Challenges of School-Community Mental Health Service Delivery
See also: > Center for School Mental Health (CSMH); > New freedom commission on mental health; > UCLA School Mental Health Project, Center for Mental Health in Schools
Despite the many benefits to schools, community agencies, and the youth they serve, there are noteworthy concerns. One concern is that mental health service providers can retain the medical model of intervention where treatment focuses on the individual child or adolescent. As this young, dependent population is more vulnerable than adults to their familial environments, this concern can limit the effectiveness of outcomes. While parental/guardian consent is required for treatment, it does not ensure the engagement of the child’s caretaker in the treatment process, as they are no longer arranging and transporting them to appointments. This reduced contact with mental health providers may result in an easy access point to children and adolescents but at the expense of the caretakers’ involvement. Other concerns arise when treatment providers come to the school to see the child but do not provide consultation to the education staff. While the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA) clearly restricts the disclosure of confidential information, it also restricts the ability of school professionals who work daily with the child to have information that can assist them while supporting the struggling child or adolescent. Furthermore, mental health services provided by other community-based agencies are usually governed by the limitations and mandates of the insurance companies that compensate professionals for their services. An undesired discontinuation or termination of services can result in the
Suggested Reading New Freedom Commission on Mental Health (2003). Achieving the promise: Transforming mental health care in America. Final paper. DHHS Pub. No. SMA-03-3832. Rockville, MD: U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Pearrow, M., & Wheeley, P. (2007). The role of schools in mental health service provision. In W. Fisher (Ed.), Researching community and mental health: Community based mental health services for children and adolescents (Vol. 14). England: Elsevier. U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (1999). Mental health: A report of the surgeon general. Rockville, MD: U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, Center for Mental Health Services, National Institutes of Health, National Institute of Mental Health. Weist, M. D., Ambrose, M. G., & Lewis, C. P. (2006). Expanded school mental health: A collaborative community-school example. Children and Schools, 28, 45–50.
Suggested Resources Center for School Mental Health—csmha.umaryland.edu: The mission of the Center for School Mental Health (formerly the Center for School Mental Health Analysis and Action, CSMHA) is to strengthen policies and programs in school mental health to improve learning and promote success for America’s youth. School Mental Health Project—http://smhp.psych.ucla.edu: This website discusses current school mental health topics and provides resources, news and networking opportunities.
School-to-work
School-to-Work Jose Mercado
In 1994, President Bill Clinton signed into law The School-to-Work Opportunities Act (STWOA). This act provided federal funding to states to create programs that encouraged partnerships with business, government, and community organizations to assist students with the transition from school to the work environment. Under federal law, states were allowed the flexibility to develop their own model of programs according to their local needs. However, the STWOA did outline three elements that all programs had to incorporate: 1. School-based learning entails classroom instruction that links work experience with the skills necessary to prepare for a particular career. It provides opportunities for collaboration between teachers and employers in the development of a curriculum that connects academics to occupational skills. 2. Work-based learning involves structured workplace training in an area of interest for the student’s career. It also covers areas such as job mentoring, integrating classroom and job site instruction, and the training of mentors. 3. Connecting activities involves linking employers to schools and maintaining relationships to foster school- and work-based learning. This connection is done at the administrative level. Before the STWOA, the lack of connection between school and the world of work was seen as a major concern, especially among vulnerable students and those who were not on a college track. During the education reform of the 1980s, which heavily emphasized college preparation, there was criticism that the school-to-work transition was not addressed. At the same time, the 1983 report entitled A Nation at Risk highlighted the shortcomings of the American education system in its ability to prepare students for work. This report documented the changing work environment and America’s failure to develop a workforce that can keep up with changing skill requirements. During this time, research in the field of learning and pedagogy studied the effects of learning in context. Psychologists took the position that learning is best done in environments where those skills were actually
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used. The idea of this new approach was that students would be more engaged in learning if they could experience firsthand the practical application of what they had learned. A key goal is that the approach very much reduces the feeling of disengagement a student may feel toward school. The term ‘‘School-to-Work’’ is an umbrella term that covers a variety of career initiatives. The intent of the STWOA was not to fund programs in perpetuity, but rather to be a catalyst in the development of new programs that would eventually be self-sufficient or maintained at the state level. The following activities have resulted from this legislation:
Apprenticeship: usually a multiyear program designed to combine school and work in a specific occupational area. This will lead to either a postsecondary program, entry-level position, or a continued apprenticeship program. Career major: a sequence of academic courses based on a specific occupational area. Cooperative education: an instructional model where students alternate academics with job experience. Internship: students work on a job site for a specified period of time in the area of study. The internship is usually completed in the middle or end of academic study. Job shadowing: the student follows the employer to learn more about the occupation. This is intended to help the student narrow career choice.
Benefits of School-to-Work Programs The proponents of school-to-work claim encouraging findings associated with research conducted on various programs. Students who participated in school-towork programs were found to have better attendance rates, grades, and graduation rates then nonparticipants. These students were also more likely to go to college and earn higher wages. Psychologically, participants had a better understanding of the workplace and displayed self-confidence and maturity. Additionally, studies have found that school-to-work students maintained good grades and took more challenging courses. Advocates of school-to-work argue that these outcomes are as a result of students feeling motivated because of the practical learning that is
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taking place. Students feel they are learning with a purpose and therefore wish to contribute their own learning process. However, studies of the effect of school-to-work participation on standardized test scores have proven inconclusive. School-to-work programs have been shown to work well with vulnerable students. Research has shown that participants in these programs have a lower dropout rate than students who do not participate in schoolto-work. According to the 1997 National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY), a result for students who participated in academic career programs was reduced dropout rates. Further research has shown that STW programs attract a disproportionate number of academically marginal students. In a study of 4,370 students, for instance, school-to-work programs attracted a large percentage of Head Start students. The author of this study concluded that school-to-work programs can play an important role in helping marginal students graduate and enter the mainstream workplace. One criticism of school-to-work programs is the perception that ‘‘hands on’’ instruction diminishes the authenticity of the learning process. By focusing less on academics and more on career and job preparation, critics felt that higher-achieving students would be adversely affected. Moreover, there was a fear that such programs would create job tracks and thereby limit student options. However, all current research says otherwise. Although test scores have not shown to have improved, all other criteria for academic success have been positive. Students are graduating from high school prepared for college and are more likely to choose a major early. The exposures to various career options have motivated students to assess their career interests and develop the professional skills necessary in the global job market. The types of jobs that school-to-work participants find vary from those of non-participants. The qualities of jobs were higher and the number of ‘‘dead end’’ jobs was reduced. Positive outcomes were noted on the teacher and employer side. Teachers were found to benefit by enhancing their professional development. Learning new teaching techniques increased their motivation and in many instances renewed their enthusiasm for teaching.
local programs. As of 2001 (when federal funding was set to expire), 24 states had introduced legislation to maintain their programs. The movement towards school-to-work initiatives is evident in the development of career academies and small learning communities within schools. A literature review of more than 100 school-to-work programs has shown the positive academic and non-academic outcomes associated with involvement. Academic and social development are the most obvious benefits of these programs. Not only are students benefiting, but teachers and employers also experience positive outcomes. Teachers are motivated, employers are getting a quality work product, and students are prepared for postsecondary education while preparing for the world of work. This collaboration has yielded strong results in empirical studies. As this model continues to build momentum, future research should explore more long-term outcomes. See also: schools
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Suggested Reading Caputo, R. K. (2003). Early education experiences and school-towork program participation. Journal of Sociology and Social Welfare, 30(4), 141–156. Gehring, J. (2001). School-to-work seen as route to more than just a job. Education Week, 20(30), 21–23.
Suggested Resources http://www.tc.columbia.edu/~iee/papers/stw.pdf: This website offers a full report of an evaluation of 132 school-to-work programs sponsored by the Columbia University Institute on Education and the Economy.
Science, Teaching Jeffrey Jay
The Future of School-to-Work As federal funding for school-to-work programs has ended, many states have passed legislation to maintain
Many psychologists and educators have suggested that educational practices can best enhance students’ learning when they are designed to have a primary focus on the
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learner. At the beginning of the twenty-first century, those responsible for science education in the United States (U.S.) seem to be aware of this fact; the majority of curricula are designed from a constructivist perspective regarding teaching and learning, and the role of inquiry within the teaching and learning process has been enhanced. It is also heartening that in an era of increasing federal legislation regarding schooling and testing, and national standards that dictate content and curriculum, most science teachers continue to strive to find educationally sound ways to help individual learners. Over the past 10 years, National Science Education Standards have been infused within curricula and have influenced both instruction and what is learned. Indeed, authors of the Standards started from a knowledge base that focused on three key principles: most of what students learn is influenced by how they are taught; teacher behavior and action are influenced by how teachers view the science enterprise; and a student’s ability to understand develops through both independent and social processes. Due in part to these three guiding principles, there has been more teacher/ student and student/student discourse and less whole class lecture within classrooms; there has been a greater emphasis on student understanding of concepts and developing inquiry abilities and less fact and information memorizing; extended time for investigations has taken the place of the typical one class period lesson; authentic labs have taken the place of ‘‘cookbook’’ type labs; and, there has been more integration of science with other disciplines where appropriate. The systematic shift in science education over the past years was perhaps due in some part to the 1983 Nation at Risk report and what seemed a nationwide disregard for science and scientific literacy by the populace. Science has typically been seen as an elite, intellectual endeavor done mostly by White males whose esoteric theories and experiments are conceived and conducted just for the sake of doing science. Yet, on occasion, these theories and experiments lead to practical jobs and utility for the masses. Since the early 1980s there has been slight progress in changing this perception. Currently, however, 70% of Americans do not have a basic understanding of the scientific process. Further, women make up 46% of the labor force in America, yet comprise only 23% of the science and engineering labor force. Similarly, African Americans, Hispanics, and Native Americans make up 24% of the U.S. population, yet comprise only
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7% of the science and engineering labor force. In time, it will be documented whether current federal government efforts and major organizations in science education led to a more scientifically literate populace, and more equitable opportunities for all to engage in the enterprise. The National Science Teachers Association (NSTA) is currently the preeminent organization for science educators in the U.S. Membership in 2005 was approximately 56,000 individuals, representing a broad spectrum of science education. The organization publishes position statements, preambles, rationales, and declarations on many educational, technological, and societal facets that affect science teaching and learning. Declarations for the NSTA position statement on multicultural science education were constructed to achieve goals that included more equitable opportunities for all students. The following tenets are included with the declarations: schools are to provide science education programs that nurture all children academically, physically, and in the development of a positive self-concept; children from all cultures are to have equitable access to quality science education experiences that enhance success and provide the knowledge and opportunities required for them to become successful participants in our democratic society; curricular content must incorporate the contributions of many cultures to our knowledge of science; science teachers are knowledgeable about and use culturally-related ways of learning and instructional practices; science teachers have the responsibility to involve culturally diverse children in science, technology, and engineering career opportunities; and, instructional strategies selected for use with all children must recognize and respect differences students bring based on their cultures. Science educators laud the goals of NSTA regarding multiculturalism in the discipline, yet we must know that the real work of implementation will be the responsibility of individuals within classrooms. The development of culturally appropriate instructional and assessment content and methods and the construction of specific lessons for local and regional teachers are not easy tasks. Despite challenges presented by these tasks, however, they are being undertaken enthusiastically. The traditional/conventional practice of transmitting knowledge to students via whole class lecture is giving way to new instructional content and methods that illustrate our cognizance of diversity, the importance of practical activities, the utility value that students can see in an
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appropriate science curriculum, and the goal structures that diverse individuals from diverse groups bring to instruction and learning. Multicultural science instruction that once appeared on the surface to be merely tokenistic and additive in nature is indeed becoming more transformational. See also: > Academic achievement in minority children; > Classroom management ; > Teaching strategies; > Learning styles
Suggested Reading Banks, J. (Ed.) (2002). Multicultural education: Issues and perspectives. Boston, MA: Allyn & Bacon. National Research Council (1996). National science education standards. Washington, D.C.: National Academy Press.
Suggested Resources National Science Teachers Association—www.nsta.org: This website provides science education news and resources for science teachers at all levels.
Screening and Early Warning Signs Veronica Raggi . Catharine L A Weiss
Screening consists of assessment methods aimed at identifying individuals exhibiting problems or at risk of developing problems. The goal of screening is to identify problems early so that they can be appropriately treated before conditions worsen. Screening and early identification also attempt to increase cost-effectiveness because issues identified early should require less intensive interventions. Screening for health problems such as lead poisoning and vision or hearing difficulties is routine and accepted practice. Mental health screening is a method of identifying individuals at risk of having mental health problems who may benefit from intervention or further evaluation. It can involve assessment of a wide range of functioning including behavioral and emotional
difficulties such as anxiety, suicide, substance use, eating disorders, learning problems, and trauma history. In schools, screening for depression and suicide risk is most common. Some screening tools focus on the detection of diagnosable mental health disorders whereas others assess for specific problem symptoms or behaviors. Screening tools most often gauge the presence of disorders and deficits rather than aptitudes or strengths. Arguments for the need for mental health screening of youth are bolstered by evidence of a large gap between mental health needs and use of mental health services. It is estimated that as few as one-sixth to one-third of youth with diagnosable disorders actually receive any mental health treatment. Untreated mental illness results in substantial emotional and financial costs for individuals, families, and communities. Screening is particularly useful in the identification of internalizing disorders such as anxiety, depression, or suicidal ideation, which are not as easily identified as acting out or externalizing disorders. Typically, screening is a relatively brief procedure designed to evaluate a broad group of individuals. Some guidelines recommend that instruments should take no longer than 10–15 minutes to administer and should be applicable to diverse populations. Effective screening instruments need to be tailored to the target population, with attention to the ethnic and linguistic composition of youth, age, and cognitive and attention functioning. Procedures should also be simple to administer so that a variety of health and mental health professionals can use them. Universal or population screening targets all individuals in a setting or group for assessment; however, screening can also be strategic, whereby the procedures are applied only for certain subgroups already thought to be at higher risk. Universal screening requires more resources and thus is best used when the consequences for not identifying individuals with problems or disorders are great. Mental health screening is usually conducted through self-report and individual interviews in which students are asked whether they are experiencing mental health symptoms or other risk factors, to identify the presence of ‘‘red flags’’ or critical indicators of mental health problems. These are followed up with second stage, more comprehensive assessments by trained clinicians of those students identified as high risk to determine if an outside referral for services or further evaluation is appropriate. Schools are used as settings for screening because they offer access to most youth and are stigma-free settings. Schools often have access to children from
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diverse ethnic and socioeconomic backgrounds. Moreover, because good emotional functioning enhances learning and school climate, schools can directly benefit from identification and the need for more comprehensive treatment of mental health problems. Preventive measures can also reduce referrals to special education and decreases cost to schools. Nevertheless, using schools as screening sites is not routine practice. National estimates suggest that only 2% of schools conduct universal screening for mental health problems and 26% of schools conduct no mental health screening at all.
General Considerations in Screening Key measures of validity of a screening method or tool are sensitivity and specificity. Sensitivity and specificity are measures of a test’s ability to correctly classify an individual as having a disorder or problem or not. Sensitivity refers to the proportion of truly disordered persons who are identified as disordered by the screening method. A highly sensitive test means that few disordered cases are missed or that there are few false-negative results. The specificity of a test is the proportion of truly nondisordered individuals who are identified by the screening method. A highly specific test means that there are few false-positive results or few identified as having the disorder or not. In screening for mental health problems, compared with medical problems, it can be difficult to set the cut-off that indicates a disorder. Deciding on thresholds calls for a balanced approach between not overreacting to what may be normal variations in behavior or development and overlooking what may be a serious problem. Depending on the nature of the problem being screened, acceptable levels of sensitivity and specificity may vary. Although the goal would be to have screening tools that are high in both sensitivity and specificity, it is often the case that tests have high sensitivity and then later assessment is conducted to rule out the false positives. For instance, when screening for suicide, which has severe consequences, high sensitivity may be much more important than low specificity so that affected individuals are not missed. However, if follow-up assessments have negative outcomes, such as high expense, tests with higher specificity may be more appropriate. Initial screening procedures are generally expected to result in a high degree of false positives or overidentification of problems. Thus, screening should not be used as the basis for a diagnosis. Follow-up
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assessments are required to ensure that interventions are targeted appropriately. The predictive value of a test should also be considered in selecting screening instruments. Positive predictive value is the proportion of all people with positive tests who have the disorder or problem. Negative predictive value is the proportion of all people with negative tests who do not have the disorder. The predictive value of a test is highly dependent on the prevalence of the disorder being studied. Thus, because most of the disorders targeted for mental health screening are relatively rare in the general population, predictive values will be lower with universal screening. On the other hand, tests will perform better when assessing subgroups with higher percentage rates of the disorder or problem. Thus, the composition of the target population must be considered when choosing screening instruments.
Cultural Considerations in Screening Cultural sensitivity in screening requires consideration of how the presentation of risk factors, symptoms, and warning signs may vary across cultures and ethnic groups. For example, some cultures are more likely to endorse somatic symptoms when feeling depressed or anxious, such as muscular or joint pain and fatigue. These ethnic groups are also more prone to minimize or deny any connection between their somatic symptoms and a mental health problem. For many cultures, mental health problems may be considered socially unacceptable and stigmatizing, which leads individuals within these groups to minimize any psychological component to their suffering. As children are socialized by their parents from an early age, many school-age children retain the viewpoints of their family and culture of origin. Therefore, when developing screening tools and using them in schools, it is critically important for mental health professionals to be aware of and respond to the cultural factors that may affect the selfreport and symptom presentation of minority youth. Cultural factors may also affect the openness of minority children and adolescents to report emotional or psychological difficulties. Many ethnic groups within the U.S. uphold collectivist values, which attach importance to working toward common goals, social harmony, and the suppression of interpersonal conflict. For example, many Hispanic American communities uphold collectivist values that place primary
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importance upon respect for the family and the maintenance of family bonds. For these ethnic groups, psychological problems are often considered more appropriately addressed within the family, which shares responsibility for individual problems, or through a spiritual or community leader who understands cultural values and beliefs. For children raised with these values, sharing one’s problems with an outside professional or reporting one’s problems on a self-report questionnaire may result in discomfort and difficulties with disclosure. Some children may fear the consequences of disclosure of their problems or suicidal thoughts. Finally, care must also be taken that normal variations of behavior, beliefs, or experiences within that culture are not interpreted as psychopathological in nature. Cultural traditions and behaviors that may seem abnormal through the lens of the mainstream culture may be considered normal behavior in that particular culture. For example, specific religious practices or beliefs that include visions of a religious figure or of a deceased loved may be easily misdiagnosed as psychotic in nature. Cultural awareness and sensitivity are therefore necessary components of the screening process and may have implications for the way screening is conducted. Minority youth may be more comfortable expressing feelings in their native language. Completing questionnaires in a private location and conveying the confidentiality of responses may be particularly important in encouraging certain minority youth to openly express their feelings. Demonstrating understanding and sensitivity when addressing discomfort or difficulties with disclosure during screening, respecting values and beliefs, and working to build trust may also be crucial components to the effective screening of minority youth. Current screening procedures are typically brief and often impersonal. Therefore they may not be ideal for prompting disclosure from many minority children and youth. Furthermore, less research has examined the validity and reliability of screening procedures for use in minority youth populations and whether variations in these procedures may result in greater accuracy (e.g., meeting with a clinician compared with completing a self-report questionnaire, use of open- versus close-ended questions, level of privacy of the interview, presentation of questions in the native language, etc.). It is currently unclear whether universal screening procedures in schools are appropriate and effective for use with minority students, as well as the
ways in which these programs may need to be tailored to more accurately identify at-risk minority students.
Identification of Culturally Significant Risk Factors Similarly, cultural sensitivity in screening for mental health problems requires consideration of how the presentation of risk factors may vary across cultures. The acculturation and socioeconomic challenges, and chronic life stresses that many minority children face, put them at increased risk for depression, suicidal behavior, and substance abuse. Screening procedures should be especially cognizant of the unique challenges that are common to many minority youth. Assessing for specific risk factors that may be common in certain ethnic groups may improve the identification of at-risk minority youth who may otherwise be overlooked by typical screening procedures. This may be particularly important given that many minority youth may be less likely to directly disclose emotional difficulties or suicidal thoughts and behaviors. One of the most important factors influencing minority youth is that of acculturative stress. Acculturative stress is the result or impact of multiple stressors resulting from attempts to integrate into mainstream culture. This stress may involve ethnic conflict, perceived discrimination and prejudice, disruptions of support systems, perceived poor life chances, language barriers, living in high-crime areas, coping with poor housing, and inadequate schooling. Internal conflict often results as youth must often choose between family/cultural values and the values of mainstream culture. Discrepancies between adolescent and parent acculturation may result in increased family conflict where the parent continues to uphold traditional values about gender and family roles, discipline, and other parenting practices, whereas the adolescent adopts the values of mainstream culture. Pressures to assimilate and attempts to fit in may also lead to identity confusion. All of these stressors put the child or youth at higher risk of developing mental health problems. For example, according to a large national survey, Latino/a youth are significantly more likely than European American and African American students to consider suicide and to make a suicide attempt. Research suggests that acculturative stress and other sociocultural factors may account for these differences. Native
Screening and early warning signs
American youth have the highest youth suicide rate in the U.S., although this rate varies according to geographic region and tribal area. The prevalence of suicide behaviors in Native American youth is thought to be associated with acculturative stress that results from the disruption of tribal culture as attempts are made to integrate into mainstream culture. These difficulties lead to depression and feelings of hopelessness. Finally, although African American youth have consistently experienced lower suicide rates than Whites and Hispanic youth, over the past 15 years suicide rates among African American adolescent males have tripled, signaling a rising epidemic. This compares with a steady decline in all other ethnic groups over this same period. Reasons for this increase may involve acculturative stress as well as socioeconomic challenges, which result in less access to advanced treatment such as psychosocial therapy and antidepressant medication. Therefore, when screening for mental health problems in schools, attention must be paid to identifying students from minority groups who are experiencing high levels of acculturative stress, and those with socioeconomic challenges that may limit the ability of families to benefit from screening procedures and referrals. Other barriers to health care may include language and transportation issues, belief in the stigma of mental illness, and strict reliance on extended family and spiritual leaders. These issues may also be important considerations when providing sensitive feedback and referrals for additional treatment services.
Screening for Depression and Suicide in Schools Screening in schools most commonly assesses for suicide and depression. Rates of depression and suicide risk among school-aged youth are alarming. According to a recent school-based national survey of students aged 14–18 years, 16.9% of students had seriously considered attempting suicide, 13% of students had made a plan about how they would attempt suicide, 8.4% of students had actually attempted suicide, and 2.3% had made a suicide attempt that resulted in injury, poisoning, or overdose that had to be treated by a doctor or nurse in the 12 months preceding the survey. Furthermore, 90% of teens who commit suicide have a mental health issue at the time of their death, but are usually not receiving treatment.
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The incidence of clinically significant depression in children and youth ranges from 20% to 30% across large epidemiological studies that use self-report rating scales based on established adult cut-off scores. Because of the many at-risk youth who go undetected and/or untreated, as well as the serious implications of depression and suicidal ideation, universal screening procedures in schools have become more widely used to identify at-risk youth for further evaluation and treatment. For example, Columbia University’s TeenScreen program (www.teenscreen. org) promotes voluntary national mental-health and suicide-risk screening programs for youth aged 11–18. The program was designated by the New Freedom Commission on Mental Health as a model program. This initiative provides free technical assistance and helps communities set up screening programs in local agencies, including schools. Sites participating in the TeenScreen program are provided with access to materials and to suicide, depression, and mental-health screening questionnaires (available in English and Spanish). The TeenScreen program uses a multistage assessment. Students who have parental consent and have themselves assented to the screen complete a brief, self-report questionnaire, the Columbia Suicide Screen. This valid and reliable screening measure indicates the likelihood that a youth is at risk for suicide or has a significant mental health problem. Students who screen positively are then given the computerized version of the Diagnostic Interview Schedule for Children (DISC), a structured interview that consists of yes/no questions. The DISC has been found to accurately distinguish children and adolescents with a variety of mental health disorders from those without these disorders. Youth who meet diagnostic criteria for a mental health disorder based on the DISC are then evaluated by a clinician to determine the need for treatment or further evaluation. Other widely used and effective programs, such as the Signs of Suicide (SOS) program, use similar multistage assessments in combination with suicide awareness-based curricula for teachers and students. The screening measure used by the SOS program is the Brief Screen for Adolescent Depression (BSAD). The BSAD allows the student to score their own questionnaire and to personally decide whether to seek help based on the results. Although evidence suggests that these screening programs significantly reduce suicide attempts in students who have been screened, screening remains a hotly
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contested issue. A review in 2000 of available suicide screening instruments conducted by the National Institutes of Health asserts that each measure has strengths and weaknesses, and that the necessary research has not been done to systematically evaluate their usefulness. For instance, there is a lack of studies that assess the predictive validity of suicide screening measures (i.e., do they predict future ideation and suicide attempts). Furthermore, screening measures for suicide generate many false positives: students who are identified as at-risk but who are in fact not. A recent study using one screening measure in high schools identified 29% of students as at-risk, prompting the researchers to suggest that the feasibility of using these measures in real settings needs to be tested. Alternatively, high rates of false positives may be inevitable given the low base rate of suicidal behavior. Inclusion of a high rate of false positives may be necessary to ensure that at-risk students are not missed. Suicide risk is also not consistent over time among teens and thus multiple screenings each year may be necessary. Disagreement also exists about who is the most accurate informant of mood symptoms, parent or child. Lack of self-awareness or social inhibition may lead some children and adolescents to underreport their own symptoms of depression. Youth may also be more likely to confide in peers as opposed to adults; therefore they may underreport symptoms during screening procedures conducted by school professionals. These issues complicate the screening and assessment process and may lead to higher rates of false negatives through use of screening instruments.
Warning Signs for Depression and Suicide in Youth Identification of warning signs for depression and suicide through screening programs is critically important as they are used to target at-risk children with the greatest need for follow-up assessment and intervention. Warning signs for depression include difficulties in sleeping or eating, excessive irritability, loss of pleasure or interest in activities, feelings of hopelessness or pessimism about the future, sensitivity to being rejected by others, excessive guilt, slow or lethargic body movements or extreme agitation, difficulties in concentrating or making decisions, and fatigue or loss of energy. Warning signs that should be carefully attended to when screening for suicide risk include
extreme psychological distress, self-devaluation and self-hate, hopelessness including verbalized comments of despair, a preoccupation with death which involves excessive writing, talking, drawing, or reading about it, making final arrangements for death such as giving away possessions, expressing a wish to join deceased loved ones, expressing apathy toward life and an anticipation of death, refusing help, and a sudden change in behavior, appearance, thoughts, or feelings such as sudden happiness. Also, especially with younger children, difficulties understanding the finality of death may lead to suicide attempts in response to situational crises such as the death of a loved one, without a full understanding of what it means to experience death. Warning signs suggest a closer relationship to suicidal behaviors or a more imminent risk, as opposed to risk factors, which suggest a more distant connection. Therefore, warning signs when present in youth should be treated with the utmost concern. Warning signs should be examined in any depression or suicide risk assessment, and distributed to parents, teachers, adolescents, and other school professionals to increase awareness and attention to these signs in others.
Support for and Concerns about Screening Support for mental health screening is increasing on the national agenda. The 2003 President’s New Freedom Commission on Mental Health final report on mental health care emphasizes that mental disorders frequently are not identified and thwart academic success for a substantial number of students. The report argues for a transformed mental health system in which it will be common practice to do routine screening for early identification of mental health problems, similar to how physical health problems are screened. The report specifically calls for schools to have a greater role in detecting mental health difficulties and linking students to appropriate services. Because of its drastic consequences, screening for suicide has been a specific focus of federal initiatives. In 2001, aiming to move toward a nationwide model, a National Strategy for Suicide Prevention (NSSP) was implemented by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. This comprehensive framework includes specific recommendations that schools should be involved in the prevention of suicide, including devising and implementing effective school screening
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programs. Although federal initiatives support early identification methods, there are no nationwide procedures or mandates in place for mental health screening in schools or referrals for at-risk students. The issue of implementing screening procedures in schools has generated strong debate and concerns about how and whether it should be done. In particular, federal support for universal screening programs in schools has garnered strong opposition from some groups. There are concerns about the possible negative consequences of basing screening efforts in schools. First, it has been argued that the purpose of schools is teaching and that it is inappropriate for mental health matters to fall under their purview. Second, screening on a large scale is very expensive, raising serious questions about who should be responsible for funding. Beyond surveying students, additional effort, support mechanisms, and money are required to ensure that there will be services available and that they are used effectively. Third, there is concern that screening may violate the rights and privacy of students and families. Also, across different cultures, using standardized measures may not be appropriate. Fourth, there is the potential for negative effects when students are incorrectly identified. Negative outcomes may include possible stigmatization of identified students or, more seriously, making it more likely for a student to commit suicide because they have been informed that they are at risk. Because of these concerns, high school principals may not allow school-wide screenings of students and may be more favorable toward staff education and student educational programs. Beyond ethical and financial concerns, screening is not a foolproof strategy. Across studies, research has shown that measures are more likely to incorrectly identify students as at-risk when they are not, but less likely to miss at-risk students. High numbers of falsely identified students may overburden already limited assessment and treatment resources. In contrast, proponents of screening contend that the potential to save lives and prevent suffering outweighs the potential difficulties, and that many of the concerns are unfounded. They argue for a change in perspective toward viewing mental health treatment as beneficial. As recommended by the New Freedom Commission, broad screening is best implemented at sites that are known to have unaddressed behavioral problems. Just as screening for medical problems such as vision and hearing is routine, evaluating children’s
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emotional functioning is equally essential. Supporters of screening assert that valid and reliable measures of identifying youth at risk do exist. Furthermore, parental rights are not violated because schools are required to obtain consent from guardians to administer measures, and screening is voluntary for students. Additionally, those in favor of screening suggest that students may not be as vulnerable as critics fear. Research has not supported concerns that students may be harmed by screening alone. In fact, the school environment will be improved if appropriate interventions result in more successful students. In trying to decide whether to implement a screening program, there are several factors that local schools and districts must attend. For example, strategic planning should attempt to gauge the needs of individual schools in relation to the school and community’s abilities to respond to those needs. In addition, the community as a whole should consider the availability of trained staff and other resources to conduct the screening, and the availability of mental health providers trained in evaluating and treating those youth identified by the screening. Considerable resources will also be required for technical assistance in obtaining parental consent and student assent for participation, selecting age-appropriate screening measures, and developing and implementing screening procedures. See also: > Early intervention; > Prevention; > School roles in mental health; > Substance Abuse; > Suicide
Suggested Reading Goldston, D. B. (2000). Assessment of suicidal behaviors and risk among children and adolescents. National Institute of Mental Health, Bethsheda, MD. Retrieved August 22, 2006 from http:// nimh.nih.gov/suicideresearch/measures.pdf Shaffer, D., Scott, M., Wilcox, H. et al. (2004). The Columbia Suicide Screen: Validity and reliability of a screen for youth suicide and depression. Journal of the American Academy of Child, 43, 71–79.
Suggested Resources Columbia University TeenScreen Program—http://www.teensc reen.org/ SOS Signs of Suicide Program—http://www.mentalhealthscreen ing.org/
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Section 504
Section 504 Thomas J Huberty Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 (29 USC } 794) is a federal law that prohibits discrimination against persons with disabilities by entities that receive public funds, such as schools. (Section 504 uses ‘‘handicapped’’ to refer to persons with disabilities.) Section 504 has been applied more frequently over the past several years to serve students who have, or who are considered to have, a disability that affects their educational performance. Section 504 specifically prohibits a school, program, or activity that receives federal financial assistance from:
Denying a qualified person with the opportunity to participate in or benefit from a benefit, aid, or service that is available; Providing a qualified individual the opportunity to participate in or to benefit from a benefit, aid or service that is not equal to those afforded to others; Providing a qualified individual an aid, benefit, or service that is not as effective as that provided to others; Providing different or separate aids, benefits, or services to qualified people or to a class of qualified people unless such an action is necessary to provide aids, benefits, or services that are as effective as those provided to others; Aiding or perpetuating discriminations against qualified persons or assisting an agency or organization that discriminates on the basis of disabilities; Denying a qualified person the opportunity to participate as a member of a planning or advisory board, or; Otherwise limiting a qualified person the enjoyment of any right, privilege, advantage, or opportunity enjoyed by others who may receive and aid, benefit, or service (Sec. 104.4).
Section 504 defines a person with a disability (‘‘handicap’’), i.e., ‘‘qualified person,’’ as someone who has a physical or mental impairment that substantially limits a major life activity, has a record of such an impairment, or is regarded as having such an impairment. In a school setting, ‘‘learning’’ is the primary major life activity that is applicable to Section 504, but can include self-care,
performing manual tasks, walking, seeing, hearing, speaking, breathing, and working. More specifically, a ‘‘physical or mental impairment’’ is considered to be any physiological disorder or condition, disfigurement, or anatomical loss that affects bodily systems or a mental or psychological disorder, such as mental retardation, organic brain syndrome, emotional or mental illness, and specific learning disabilities. A ‘‘record of impairment’’ means that a person has a history of, or has been misclassified as having, a mental or physical impairment that substantially affects a major life activity. ‘‘Having an impairment’’ is defined as either: (a) a person having a physical or mental impairment that may not impose a substantial impairment on a major life activity, but a recipient of federal funds treats the person as if there is such a limitation; or (b) is considered to have an impairment as the result of others’ attitudes toward such impairment or has no impairment but is treated as if one exists (Sec. 104.3). For students in public schools, a ‘‘qualified individual’’ under Section 504 is of the age when people without disabilities are provided services, who is of the age under mandatory state law to provide services to students with disabilities, or who is eligible to receive a free appropriate education under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA; 20 USCS }} 1400 et seq.). Any student who meets one of these criteria must be provided a free appropriate public education, although he or she may not be eligible to receive services under the IDEA.
Responsibilities of Local School Systems All public schools that receive federal funds must have procedures to comply with Section 504. Each system must appoint a system-wide Section 504 coordinator, who may be a superintendent, principal, or other designated person. The school must develop and implement a Section 504 compliance plan and notify the public of its intent not to discriminate on the basis of a physical or mental disability; a commitment to provide equal access to education, activities, programs, and employment; its responsibilities under Section 504; and contact information for the coordinator. The school also must develop, implement, and provide notice of procedural safeguards and rights of parents, guardians, and students for identification, evaluation,
Section 504
and placement of individuals who have, or who are believed to have, a disability. The school must have a ‘‘child find’’ procedure to identify and locate all students with disabilities who reside within the school district boundaries by referral from a parent or professional of the school system. An evaluation must be conducted for students who have been hospitalized, on homebound care, or on written request by a parent or guardian. A school can refuse to evaluate, but must provide the parent/guardian with information about the right to request a due process hearing to challenge the refusal. After receipt of the referral for evaluation, a meeting with the parent or guardian should occur to explain the process and to obtain consent to proceed. The evaluation is to be provided free of charge to the family. After completion of an evaluation, the school is to arrange a conference with the parents to discuss the results and should include the building principal, general education teacher, assessment team members or representatives, school nurse (as needed for medical issues), the child (at the election of the parent), other persons who have information pertinent to the case, and other persons the parents wish to accompany them. At the conference, the participants, including the parents, determine if the student is eligible for services under Section 504. If the student is eligible, a written service plan is developed that describes reasonable modifications and accommodations necessary to assist the student to progress through the curriculum, such as individualizing classroom assignments or increased time to take tests. The plan must also provide for at least an annual review and can be done more often, as needed. Often, Section 504 plans are developed for students who have disciplinary problems that are determined to be related to an emotional or behavioral problem. If such a situation exists, the student has protections against being suspended or expelled if the behavior is a manifestation of the disability. If a causal relation exists, the student may not be suspended or expelled, but an alternative plan may be developed, such as placement at an alternative school program, appointment of an instructional aide, or other appropriate accommodation. A particular issue that occurs often is for children who have Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD). These children may not be eligible for special education instruction and related services under the IDEA, but may need modifications
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and accommodations for inattention or other ADHDrelated problems.
Section 504 vs. IDEA Although there are similarities between Section 504 and the IDEA, there are some fundamental differences. Section 504 is a nondiscriminatory statute that provides no funding to recipients. The IDEA is, in effect, a grant program that provides federal funds to assist public schools to educate students with disabilities who require special education instruction and related services. The IDEA is also more specific and prescriptive about what schools must do to identify and educate students with disabilities. For example, the IDEA has specific disability categories, such as mental retardation and learning disability, whereas Section 504 does not have categories. The IDEA categories are used for funding and are not intended to be equivalent to medical or psychological diagnoses. The IDEA is also more specific about the nature of the Individualized Education Program that must be developed for each eligible student and how it is to be implemented. Each state must develop its own regulations that correspond with provisions of the IDEA, which is not required under Section 504. Although local school districts are responsible for ensuring that they comply with Section 504, state departments of education are responsible for ensuring that schools are in compliance with IDEA and the corresponding state regulations. If parents have concerns about IDEA-related issues, the state department of education is the agency to receive and investigate the complaint, whereas enforcement authority for Section 504 rests with the Office for Civil Rights of the U.S. Department of Education. Both statutes provide parents or schools the opportunity to convene a due process hearing to resolve a dispute, where an impartial hearing officer (IHO) is appointed to preside and issue binding decisions. Due process hearings and appointment of IHOs under the IDEA are the responsibility of each state department of education, which maintains a list of qualified IHOs. Hearings and the appointment of hearing officers under Section 504 are not coordinated by state departments of education, but by local school districts. Both the IDEA and Section 504 have provisions to assure that hearings are conducted in a fair and impartial manner.
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Self-assessment checklist for personnel providing services and supports to children and their families
Section 504 is an important statute to assure that students with disabilities do not encounter discrimination because they have special educational needs, but who may not be eligible for services under the IDEA. School personnel must be knowledgeable of the rights of eligible students under Section 504, as well as with its procedural and substantive requirements.
providing services and supports to culturally diverse children and families. 2. I am cognizant of the reasons why and ways in which I need to modify my practice to be culturally appropriate and effective when working with families of diverse backgrounds.
See also: > Discrimination; > Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA); > Students with disabilities
3. I am aware of cultural differences in the roles and expectations of family members. 4. I understand that roles, norms, structures, and functions of family systems are defined differently across cultures. 5. I am knowledgeable about culturally diverse methods of parenting and discipline. 6. I recognize that families are often the primary decision makers in choosing what services and supports to use.
Suggested Reading Madaus, J. W., & Shaw, S. F. (2004). Section 504: Differences in the regulations for secondary and postsecondary education. Intervention in School and Clinic, 40(2), 81–87.
Self-Assessment Checklist for Personnel Providing Services and Supports to Children and Their Families Eric C Chen . Angela E Kang
Failure to understand the cultural background of children and their families may lead to faulty assessments, poor use of services, and alienation of children and families from the community. The aims of multicultural competence with children and families are to make services more accessible and acceptable to all cultural groups so that professionals, when working with families across cultures, may provide services with knowledge and sensitivity in a nonjudgmental way. To this end, the following checklist is developed to assist the professional in becoming aware of their assumptions, understanding the multicultural family system, and collaborating with the larger community when providing services and supports to children and their families.
Awareness of Self 1. I avail myself to professional development and training to enhance my knowledge and skills in
Understanding the Multicultural Family System
Collaborating with the Community 7. I am aware of community resources available for culturally diverse children and families. 8. I am knowledgeable about the procedures for referring families of diverse backgrounds for government and community services. 9. I advocate to ensure that my agency’s mission, policies, and procedures incorporate principles that enhance culturally appropriate and effective practice. 10. I consult with community leaders and members to assist with child and family concerns.
The checklist above provides personnel with a starting point for becoming competent providers of services and supports to children and their families. Competence in providing services and support to children and their families requires that personnel are knowledgeable about the impact of culture on the family system. Therefore, the checklist serves as a useful tool for personnel in examining their own awareness, knowledge, and skills. It also allows personnel to become aware of the fact that norms stemming from the majority culture may not be applicable when assessing attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors of students, parents, and families of diverse backgrounds. School personnel providing services to children and their families play a vital role in empowering culturally diverse families by assuming leadership in developing school–family–community partnerships.
Self-esteem
Central to this role is a perspective that focuses on family systems in context. That is, an understanding of the family system cannot be achieved without due attention to the impact of social–political contexts. In the case of immigrant families, for example, public opinion, which reflects the social–political context, has been increasingly ambivalent and divisive, if not negative or hostile, about immigrants and immigration policy. In this context, the adjustment process is even more difficult for immigrant families, who often face the challenges of language acquisition and of adaptation to the new educational, legal, employment, and health care systems. Effective professional practice thus requires a certain degree of understanding of a broader context in which sociopolitical and economic forces impact the experience of children and families of diverse backgrounds. With the use of the checklist, school personnel are encouraged to develop school–family–community mental health teams and case management teams to promote active collaboration between communities and schools. In addition, the checklist may be used by school personnel in consultation with others to gather relevant personal, family, and other contextual information to direct students and their families to community resources that can assist them. See also: > Counseling ; > Cultural competency selfassessment checklist ; > Multicultural counseling; > School counselor; > Roles and responsibilities of multiculturally competent school counselors
Suggested Reading Davis, H., Spurr, P., Cox, A., Lynch, M., Von Roenne, A., & Hahn, K. (1997). A description and evaluation of a community child mental health service. Clinical Child Psychology and Psychiatry 2, 221–238. Goode, T. D. (1999). Promoting cultural diversity and cultural competency: Self-assessment checklist for personnel providing services and supports to children with special health needs and their families. Washington, D.C.: National Center for Cultural Competence. Keys, S. G., Bemak, F., Carpenter, S. L., & King-Sears, M. E. (1998). Collaborative consultant: A new role for counselors serving at-risk youths. Journal of Counseling and Development 76,123–134. Keys, S. G., & Bemak, F. (1997). School–family–community linked services: A school counseling role for changing times. The School of Counselor 44, 255–263.
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Self-Esteem Sumru Erkut
Definition Self-esteem has been generally defined as the evaluation of the self; it is an affective response to one’s self-description. The evaluation refers to a judgment of worth based on one’s self-concept. In every day terms, self-esteem can be expressed as ‘‘I like who I am,’’ ‘‘I don’t like who I am,’’ or someplace in between. In this sense, related words such as self-confidence, selfworth, self-image, and positive self-regard can be used interchangeably. This definition has its roots in the views of one of the founders of modern psychology, William James. He emphasized that self-evaluation is influenced by one’s self-perceived competencies in important domains. Embedded in James’ view of selfesteem is one’s perceived competency in those domains deemed important by the individual. For example, Maria would like herself if she viewed herself to be good at math and basketball. It would not matter that she is one of the worst violin players in her class because being good at school and sports is more important to her than being good at music. The answer to the question, ‘‘how does one know if one is good or good at something’’ has been explored by social interaction theorists who have emphasized that people come to know who they are and how good they are based on the feedback they receive from significant others. The notion of self-evaluation as derived from others’ views has given rise to the notion of the ‘‘looking glass self,’’ as in, ‘‘I am who I think others think I am.’’ It reflects the point of view that we learn about who we are by internalizing reflected appraisals, which are other people’s perceptions and evaluations of us. The intellectual legacy of William James and social interaction theorists has been most influential in formulations of self-esteem as an individual personality trait, which is believed to have wide relevance to how people behave, think, and feel in societies that are referred to as independence-fostering or individualistic. Cross-cultural researchers have questioned the relevance of traits that describe people in individualistic societies to that of people living in more collectivist
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societies that value interdependence. Consequently, a significant body of research has examined self-esteem cross-culturally, with particular emphasis on whether self-esteem has similar meanings and correlates in individualistic and collectivist cultures.
Roots and Correlates of Self-Esteem Researchers have studied the roots of individual self-esteem within their definitions and theoretical approaches. Followers of William James have examined which domains have the greatest impact on one’s self-esteem overall, or global self-esteem. In North American samples, physical appearance has turned out to be the single most important predictor of global self-worth across the life course starting with middle childhood. Among North American adolescents, global self-esteem correlates most highly with physical appearance, followed by scholastic competence, social competence, behavioral conduct, and athletic competence. There are gender and racial differences in basing one’s self-worth on physical appearance. The primacy of appearance undergirding global self-esteem tends to be more widespread among female adolescents and among White adolescents. Empirical findings have also supported the social interactionists’ theoretical propositions that self-esteem is influenced by significant others’ views of one’s self. A number of studies have shown that high self-esteem in children and adolescents is related to parental reports of warmth and acceptance and low levels of parent-child conflict. The reciprocal reports of children’s and adolescents’ perceptions of parental warmth, parental support, and parental acceptance, as well as reports of strong affective ties with parents are also related to high self-esteem. Cross-cultural studies carried out in Germany, China, Vietnam, and Australia also underscore the importance of parental warmth for children’s high self-esteem. Longitudinal research in Finland has shown that there is a reciprocal relationship between parents’ childrearing and child temperament on children’s self esteem. Mothers’ hostile child-rearing attitudes (i.e., emotional rejection of the child, intolerance regarding the child’s behavior, and a strict disciplinary style) predicted low self-esteem over 3 and 6 years, which is in line with previous crosssectional research that showed parental reports of low emotional warmth and acceptance to be related to a child’s low self-esteem. This research also lent credence
to child temperament as a moderator of parents’ warmth and discipline style in that children with difficult temperaments were more likely to elicit debilitating parental practices. Among older adults, hopefulness appears to be one of the key elements of self-esteem. What appears to distinguish adults with high self-esteem from those with low self-esteem is the belief that one has control over one’s life and that things will work out. Among retirees ages 51 and older, the best predictors of self-esteem were a sense of agency, optimism, and lack of hopelessness.
Why the Interest in Self-Esteem? The general public, educators, psychologists, mental health professionals, and child and adolescent advocates have long been interested in self-esteem because of the assumed association of low self-esteem with poor academic performance, depression, and engaging in such health risk behaviors as drug abuse. This assumption implies that self-esteem can be protective of better physical health, mental health, and good academic outcomes. The belief in the ‘‘protective’’ powers of self-esteem is so strong that it is routinely assessed as an outcome variable in evaluations of youth intervention and prevention programs. Many programs have been set up with the expressed purpose of boosting children and adolescents’ self-esteem. One of the more famous of these is the California task force on selfesteem and social and personal responsibility. In the 1980s, proponents of the task force argued that boosting young people’s self-esteem would reduce crime, teen pregnancy, drug abuse, and underachievement in school. The National Association of Self-Esteem (NASE) is another high visibility initiative whose continuing mission is to improve quality of life by creating, facilitating, and supporting a positive change in individuals and their communities through the application of the principles of self-esteem. Despite the general enthusiasm for self-esteem as a beneficial, ‘‘protective’’ characteristic, empirical studies have not uniformly found low self-esteem to be associated with poor academic achievement, or conversely, high self-esteem with high academic achievement. In a prospective study of 23,000 high school students, selfesteem in 10th grade was only weakly associated with academic achievement in 12th grade and academic achievement in 10th grade was trivially correlated with
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self-esteem in 12th grade. Another prospective study found no correlation between global self-esteem measured between ages 9 and 13 and substance use and early sexual activity at age 15 among school children and adolescents in New Zealand. In a literature review of self-esteem, researchers concluded low self-esteem is not a risk factor for violence against others (including child and partner abuse), racial prejudice, drug use, alcohol abuse, or academic underachievement. Rather, high self-esteem is more likely to be associated with socially maladaptive and health risk behaviors. On the other hand, relatively low self-esteem is a risk factor for suicide, suicidal thinking, and depression among people of all ages. Indeed, the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual, which mental health professionals use for diagnosing mental health problems, low self-esteem is one of the criteria for clinical diagnosis of depression and related mood disorders; another criterion is suicidal ideation or attempts. Research on self-esteem has consistently found a relationship between depression and low self-esteem and a relationship between high self-esteem and life satisfaction. In a cross-cultural study of over 13,000 college students in 31 countries showed that the relationship between life satisfaction and self-esteem is stronger than the relationship between life satisfaction and financial satisfaction except in very poor countries. Beyond these two associations (depression with low self-esteem and life satisfaction with high self-esteem), relationships of other variables of interest to people committed to boosting self-esteem have been inconsistent, very small, or opposite of what was hoped for. Some researchers have found teen pregnancy and victimization by others to be associated with low selfesteem. But even in these cases, association does not equal causation, low self-esteem was one of several risk factors and self-esteem likely interacted with these other risk factors. While it may be that young women who have low self esteem put themselves into situations where they don’t or can’t practice contraception, the opposite can also be true that an unwanted pregnancy can lower one’s self-esteem. Similarly, low self-esteem may make it difficult to avoid being victimized but it could also be that victimized people feel bad about themselves.
Interventions The general enthusiasm for self-esteem has spawned self-help books, workshops, and formal programs that
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directly or indirectly target boosting self-esteem. Many formal self-esteem interventions have not been systematically evaluated. Some interventions appear to work but not much is known about why they work. Interventions that work best are grounded in relevant theory, are intended specifically to boost self-esteem and not change in a related trait, and are targeted at samples that have low self-esteem.
Measuring Self-Esteem Researchers who developed measures of self-esteem have had to come to grips with measuring it as a general, global evaluation of the self or a multi-dimensional composite whose different dimensions are reminiscent of William James’ reference to important domains. The Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale, a measure that assesses self-esteem as a single dimension, is perhaps the most widely used measure of self-esteem in North America and around the world. It was developed using a large and multiethnic sample and over the many years of its use has yielded acceptable reliability and validity estimates. Yet there remains some controversy over whether the scale is truly tapping a single dimension or two interrelated dimensions. A number of studies have suggested that the Rosenberg is composed of two subscales, one tapping a positive view of the self and the other measuring a negative self-image while others have claimed to have confirmed its unidimensional factor structure. Whether self-esteem is a unidimensional or bidimensional construct has implications for its application in some Asian cultures where it is not socially desirable to boast about oneself, but modesty, and even selfcriticism, is viewed as a virtue. In these cultures scores on the liking the self and not liking the self subscales may have different meanings than they do in the West. In one study the Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale was translated into 28 languages and administered it to 16,998 participants across 53 nations. The results showed that positively and negatively worded items were correlated within cultures but the differences between averages of positive and negative items were smaller in developed nations. The researchers concluded that direct crosscultural comparisons using the Rosenberg Self-Esteem scale may have limited value because negatively worded items can be interpreted differently across cultures. It has been hypothesized that self-esteem would reveal a different structure in cultures on the collectivist/ individualistic continuum. To examine the cross-cultural
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validity on the Rosenberg self-esteem scale, researchers administered the Scale to 11th grade students in four countries—the U.S., the Czech Republic, China, and Korea. The U.S. and the Czech Republic were selected to represent the more individualistic societies and Korea and China the more collectivist societies, based on a study rank-ordering 68 countries on collectivism versus individualism. In this study only nine items of the 10-item Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale were employed because one of the items, ‘‘I wish I could have more respect for myself ’’ had been shown not to correlate with the other items among Chinese college students and community samples of adults did not perform similar to the other items in this study either. Results showed that a two-factor solution was the best fit to the data from all four countries. Mean self-esteem subscale scores showed U.S. and Chinese adolescents to have high self-esteem as indicated by their scores on both subscales. Czech adolescents had lower self-esteem scores as indicated by high scores on the negative selfimage subscale while Korean adolescents had lower self-esteem as indicated by their low scores on the positive self-image subscale. Thus, the collectivism versus individualism construct was only partially successful in predicting self-esteem outcomes. This may be because cultural factors other than collectivism/individualism may also be contributing to average self-esteem scores in different societies. In other words, the structure of self-esteem may be similar across societies but its meaning may not be, making direct cross-cultural comparisons questionable. Other researchers have reached the same conclusion comparing Chinese and Western children and adolescents.
Multidimensional Scales Researchers who envision self-esteem to be a multidimensional construct have developed subscales to measures its different domains. The domains correspond to researchers’ views of topics that are relevant to the developing self-concept of children and adolescents. For example, the Piers-Harris Children’s SelfConcept Scale has six subscales that assess Behavioral Adjustment, Intellectual and School Status, Physical Appearance and Attributes, Freedom from Anxiety, Happiness and Satisfaction, and Popularity. The scale provides a total score that aims to reflect overall selfesteem plus subscale scores and has high internal consistency. A revision which used a geographically diverse
standardization sample has expanded the age range from 4th to 12th grade students to ages 7–18 and reduced the number of items from 80 to 60. The Coopersmith Self-Esteem Inventory (SEI) also tests different domains of self-esteem: Total Self-Esteem, Lie Scale, School-Academic Life, Social-Peers, HomeParents, and General Self. As a unidimensional scale, SEI has been found to have considerable construct validity but not across its different dimensions. The Hare SelfEsteem Scale also assesses different domains—School, Peers, and Home—which can be summed to yield a total self-esteem score. Some scholars have argued that both unidimensional and multidimensional measures of self-esteem are valid because they measure different constructs and have different uses. The Harter Self-Perception Profiles for children who are between 3rd and 8th grade and a separate one for teenagers yield a global self-esteem score analogous to a unidimensional measure of selfesteem as well as separate scores on different domains of competence. The Self-Perception Profile for Children assesses Scholastic Competence, Social Acceptance, Athletic Competence, Physical Appearance, and Behavioral Conduct as separate domains in addition to a measure of Global Self-Worth. The Self-Perception Profile for Adolescents was developed with students from grades 8 through 11. In addition to the five domains assessed for the younger age group, the adolescent version includes three subscales that tap domains of competence that are appropriate to the developmental tasks of adolescence: Job Competence, Romantic Appeal, and Close Friendships. All subscales have adequate internal consistency and the Global SelfWorth scale correlates with Rosenberg’s Self-Esteem Scale. For children younger than third graders (i.e., 8 years of age), there is a pictorial scale that is also multidimensional, containing four subscales: Cognitive Competence, Physical Competence, Peer Acceptance, and Maternal Acceptance. There is no global self-worth scale for this age group because the developers believed that, beyond judging their competence in specific domains, children younger than eight have not developed the cognitive capability to make global judgments of their self-worth. Multidimensional scales have not received as much attention from researchers who do cross-cultural research. This is understandable considering that the multidimensional approach to self-esteem is rooted in William James’ emphasis on one’s self-perceived competencies in important domains, which suggests that
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important domains can be specific to culture and historical time. For example, in preliterate societies academic competence would not be an important domain at all but skill in hunting or gathering might be. Similarly, athletic competence is not likely to be an important domain for girls who live in societies where girls are relatively cloistered, while it may be for boys in the same societies because boys traditionally have more freedom of movement. Therefore, while multidimensional approaches to measuring self-esteem such as the developmentally sequenced scales Harter SelfPerception Profile measures are theoretically and empirically compelling in Western societies, their validity for cross-cultural use awaits further study. This is not to say that the notion of multidimensional assessments of self-esteem does not have cross-cultural validity. Rather, the particular measures developed in the West may not be tapping the domains of competence that are important for different societies.
State Measures of Self-Esteem The measurement approaches described so far are based on conceptualizing self-esteem as a trait, which is a stable, enduring personality characteristic. There have been attempts to assess relatively short-lived states of self-esteem because self-esteem can fluctuate in response to situational contingencies. The State SelfEsteem Scale measures context-specific feelings related to performance, social, and physical self-esteem. The trait and state conceptualizations are not mutually exclusive. One can have an enduring assessment of one’s self-worth at the same time that self-worth can go up or down from that baseline for short periods of time in response to immediate environmental conditions. The State Self-Esteem Scale has been employed in societies other than the U.S. but its measurement properties have not been systematically studied in a cross-cultural context.
Demographic Correlates of Self-Esteem Age. Self-esteem is a developmental characteristic of individuals in that its composition, correlates, and level change over time. Harter’s approach to measuring self-esteem differently across childhood through adolescence (Harter, 1985, 1988; Harter and Pike, 1984)
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emphasizes that the domains composing self-esteem change with developmental periods. Research suggests developmental trends in the correlates of self-esteem: parental warmth may be the most significant input for younger children’s self-esteem, satisfaction with one’s appearance for adolescents, and satisfaction with one’s life for adults. Large-scale studies conducted in North America have shown that an overall sense of self-esteem is relatively high in childhood, drops during adolescence, rises-gradually throughout adulthood, and then declines sharply in old age. There is cross-cultural evidence to support the decline of self-esteem in adolescence. Regarding decline in self-esteem among older adults, however, there is less of a consensus. The positive feelings associated with youth characteristic of Western cultures are less prevalent in societies like Japan, where old age has been more revered. Perhaps in contrast to the Western emphasis on youth, in societies where age brings respect and prestige, older adults may not experience a sharp decline in self-esteem. Gender. Several studies, mostly carried out in the West, have indicated that gender may play an important role in the development of self-esteem. Across the life course gender differences are observed especially during adolescence when adolescent boys tend to have slightly higher self-esteem than do girls. Some researchers have found that there may be qualitative differences in women’s and men’s self-esteem in that, women’s self-esteem tends to be more closely related to significant others, whereas men’s self-esteem is more closely related to independent achievements. Additionally, gender-related sociocultural norms may also play a role. Adolescent girls who do not subscribe to traditional views of femininity tend to have higher selfesteem than girls who internalize traditional views of femininity, such as viewing their appearance in a more objectified way and subverting their selves to maintain relationships. Also implicated in the traditional views of femininity is self-effacement. It may be that the general trend of slightly lower self-esteem among adolescent girls relative to boys is in large part driven by some girls holding traditional views of what it means to be female. Race/Ethnicity. In the U.S., belonging to an ethnic or racial minority group that has historically been persecuted and currently discriminated against has led many researchers to assume that minority individuals would have lower self-esteem than individuals in the majority. This issue has been most frequently
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studied with respect to African Americans in the U.S. but also among other racial and ethnic groups. The consistent finding of these studies that compare levels of self-esteem across race and ethnicity is that African American children and adolescents score higher than White children and adolescents. For example, one meta-analysis examining race differences in self-esteem found that African Americans scored higher than Whites but Whites scored higher than other racial minority groups, including Hispanics, Asians, and American Indians. Most of these differences were smallest in childhood and grew larger with age. African American and Hispanic samples scored higher on measures without an academic selfesteem subscale, and their self-esteem was higher in groups with high socioeconomic status. The authors interpret these results as being most consistent with a cultural interpretation of racial differences in selfesteem. Gender plays a role in racial/ethnic patterns in self-esteem. Racial differences are most pronounced in the higher self-esteem of African American adolescent girls compared to White girls. The relative advantage of African American girls has also been attributed to their being more resilient to thinness norms in their body image relative to White adolescent girls. Sexual Orientation. Many sexual minority individuals have been victims of others’ homophobia, while at the same time experiencing self-doubts, even loathing due to internalized homophobia, which has led researchers to assume that sexual minority youth tend to have lower self-esteem than their opposite-sex attracted peers. This assumption was strengthened by research that suggested that sexual minority youth are at higher risk than their heterosexual peers for contemplating or attempting suicide. In a study of a representative sample of Minnesota high school students, while suicidal intent and suicide attempts were found to be significantly more common among gay and bisexual-identified male adolescents, there were no significant differences for female adolescents based on sexual orientation. On the other hand, analyses of the 1998 Youth Risk Behavior Survey of Massachusetts, also based on students from a representative sample of the state’s high schools, showed that sexual minority adolescents were estimated to be three times more likely than their opposite sex-attraction peers to have attempted suicide in the past year. The concerns over the impact of homophobia and the elevated risk for suicidal ideation and suicide
attempts has fueled speculation that sexual minority status is associated with low self-esteem. Indeed, researchers who explored the relationship between demographics, etiology, and adolescent suicide and found that depression, low self-esteem, self-dislike, and self-criticism were important predictors of suicidal ideation. Other research presents a more complicated picture of adolescent self-esteem that varies by gender and by importance placed on physical appearance. The National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health, a large-scale study of a representative sample of U.S. high school students found that, in spite of higher levels of suicidal ideation reported by sexual minority girls, there were no differences in self-esteem between sexual minority and opposite-sex attracted girls. Results also indicated a positive relationship with mothers ameliorated the stigma of sexual minority status in predicting suicidality. Regarding the role of physical appearance, among gay adolescents and men lower levels of self-esteem are associated with a concern over appearance (thinness and muscularity), more so than for heterosexual men. In a sample of Australian college students more gay men were found to suffer from disordered eating and body dissatisfaction than heterosexual men while lesbians had lower rates of disordered eating and body dissatisfaction than heterosexual women. Even when lesbians were found to be as concerned as heterosexual women about their weight, lesbians’ conception of physical attractiveness related to their physical health and being in shape rather than more conventional feminine ‘‘prettiness.’’ Socioeconomic Status. Initial studies of the correlates of self-esteem started from the premise that there is a close relationship between one’s social status and one’s sense of self-worth, but research on the topic did not necessarily support the assumed relationship. Subsequently, age was introduced in an attempt to clarify inconclusive evidence that had been gathering concerning the relationship between self-esteem and socioeconomic status (SES). The results showed that age moderated the relationship between SES and selfesteem in that there was no relationship between adolescents’ self-esteem and their parents’ SES but parents’ SES was moderately related to their own self-esteem. Subsequent studies of the relationship between these two variables have more or less confirmed early findings regarding the role played by age. A meta-analysis of 446 samples showed a small but significant relationship
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between SES and self-esteem. The authors report that the effect size is very small in young children. The strength of the relationship increases during young adulthood until middle age but declines in old age. Gender and racial/ethnic differences in the relationship between SES and self-esteem were also observed in the meta-analysis. The strength of the relationship increased over time for women but decreased over time for men and was higher for Asian and Asian American samples. In all instances, however, the effect sizes remained relatively small; SES was not a major predictor of self-esteem.
Conclusion High self-esteem is best captured as a sense of being happy with one’s self. High self-esteem is not a major contributor to socially desirable outcomes such as academic achievement and responsible behavior. Selfesteem has more relevance to mental health in that low self-esteem is associated with depression and suicidality, in fact low self-esteem is among the clinical criteria for diagnosing depression, another criterion of which is suicidality. Thus, even if it may not be worthwhile to design programs to boost an average child or adolescents’ self-esteem from ‘‘moderately high’’ to ‘‘high’’ or ‘‘very high,’’ educators need to be concerned with low self-esteem. See also: > Childhood depression; > Emotional intelligence; > Ego identity statuses; > Social skills
Suggested Reading Baumeister, R. F., Campbell, J. D., Krueger, J. I., & Vohs, K. D. (2005). Exploding the self-esteem myth. Scientific American, January, 84–91. Elbaum, B., & Vaughn, S. (2001). School-based interventions to enhance the self-concept of students with learning disabilities: A meta-analysis. Elementary School Journal, 101(3), 303–329. Emler, N. (2001). Self-esteem: The costs and causes of low self-worth. York, UK: Joseph Roundtree Foundation. Harter, S. (1999). The construction of the self: A developmental perspective. New York: Guilford Press. Twenge, J. M., & Crocker, J. (2002). Race and self-esteem: Metaanalyses comparing Whites, Blacks, Hispanics, Asians, and American Indians. Psychological Bulletin, 128, 371–408.
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Service Learning DeAnn Lechtenberger
It is difficult, if not impossible, to have only one discrete definition to describe the variety of programs and activities that are sometime classified under the heading of ‘‘service learning.’’ Researchers and practitioners alike have struggled for years to define this term. One common thread that is consistently woven into the design and definition of service learning programs is the combination of service and learning outcomes with the intent that the service learning activity will change the recipient and the provider of the service. The learning springs from participation in service activities and is reciprocal for all involved. The concept of service learning is primarily based on the views of John Dewey, an educator and philosopher, who believed that effective education occurs when students are actively involved in their learning. Dewey promoted the idea that the community is an essential element of educational experience. Community can expand a student’s education and develop a stronger and more responsible society for future generations. Service learning can be broadly defined as a form of experiential education where students and instructors engage in the practical process of applying what is taught in the classroom to real world situations. More specifically, service learning is a pedagogy that brings together well thought out academic work with meaningful public service. These educational experiences allow students to reflect on what they learn through active application as opposed to more traditionally structured coursework. Although service learning comprises only a portion of coursework involved in secondary schools or university classes, students benefit from the unique application of skills and objectives organized by the instructor to meet identified community needs. Student understanding is accomplished by the combination of service tasks with structured opportunities that provide connection to selfreflection, self-discovery, as well as the acquisition of values, skills, and knowledge content. Service learning provides opportunities for ‘‘teachable moments’’ to transpire in naturally occurring settings while contributing to the greater good of society. The term ‘‘service learning’’ is frequently used to describe a wide array of community activities such as volunteering, community service programs, and
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organized field studies, as well as practicums and internships in a specific area of study. The primary purpose of these types of community-based experiences is to enhance professional development in real life circumstances. The primary purpose of service learning experiences is to attain mastery of academic course objectives and skills through service to the community. Through service learning experiences, individuals have the opportunity to think differently about their discipline and community-based experiences. Additionally, service learning provides a holistic approach to intellectual and professional development that enhances students’ sense of ethical and social responsibilities. True service learning provides students with academic and intellectual skill development coupled with the chance to problem solve and address community needs. In 1990, the Corporation for National and Community Service defined service learning as a process that: (a) promotes learning through active participation in service activities; (b) provides structured time for students’ reflections through writing, discussing, or thinking about their service experiences; (c) provides opportunities for students to use knowledge and skills in real-life circumstances; (d) expands learning beyond the classroom and into the community; and (e) cultivates a sense of caring for others. In 1998, the W. K. Kellogg Foundation began an initiative entitled Learning in Deed: Making a Difference through Service Learning. This initiative was established to broaden the use of service learning in kindergarten through grade 12 school districts across the United States (U.S.). Learning in Deed: Making a Difference through Service Learning built on over a decade of work by the Kellogg Foundation to support service learning as a way to enhance the learning of America’s youth in a meaningful way. Examination of service learning through this initiative demonstrated that learning could provide the opportunity for youth to become more engaged and educated about their community and the world through the development of civic and social responsibility. The National Commission on Service Learning asserts that service learning: (a) connects academic content and standards; (b) involves students in identifying and meeting real community needs or problems; (c) benefits both the community and the providers of the service(s) by combining a learning experience with a service component; (d) can be utilized by any discipline or subject content area as long as it can be tied to a learning goal; and (e) applies to individuals
across the lifespan, from the young to the old. These descriptors of service learning open up the field not only to school children, but to adults in the community as well. Service learning easily lends itself to university and college courses, thereby inspiring many institutions of higher education to strengthen their partnerships with community-based organizations. Institutions of higher education in the U.S. may view their role as preparing the next generation of citizens by teaching the democratic ideals of the country, furthering the development of ethical and moral character, and cultivating an educated, engaged citizenry. Service learning programs provide the opportunity to engage the academic community with the larger community while supplementing student learning, improving instruction, and benefiting those involved in the experience. During the 1999–2000 academic year, the Campus Compact with The Center for Liberal Education and Civic Engagement surveyed 349 university and college campuses to collect information about how service learning was being implemented across the U.S. The findings indicated that 712,000 students participated in some type of service, 12.2% of the faculty offered service learning courses, 6,272 service learning courses were taught, and 9% of the campuses required service learning coursework for graduation. Today, over 500 higher education institutions have signed the Compact with the Association of American Colleges and Universities to develop a deeper understanding of the relationship between advanced education and civic accountability through service learning programs. A service learning type of education is viewed by many as critical for the continuation of self-governing societies such as the U.S. A significant number of universities and colleges have even revised their mission statements to include these ideals and have begun to encourage not only faculty and staff, but also students to be more involved in their surrounding communities. Service learning offers higher learning institutions and communities the opportunity to build partnerships to further develop the linkage between education and civic responsibility. Partnerships of this nature provide in-depth educational experiences for individuals and significant improvements in local communities. For the 2000–2001 academic year, the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) estimated that more than 13 million students were involved in service learning activities. Although these numbers are
Sex education
impressive, one must remember that not every school campus uses the same definition of service learning. For example, a school may adopt a roadside park to clean up their community. Even though this aims to help the community’s children, this can be viewed as a volunteer activity rather than a more reflective, formal service learning experience. However, if this volunteer activity were coupled with a science or math activity (i.e., measuring the amount of pollution collected in the park; speculating about the impact of trash on park ecosystems) then one could consider this an authentic service learning experience. Service learning is a teaching tool that fosters the development of values and principles such as tolerance, caring, fairness, respect for others, and a sense of responsibility to be civically knowledgeable and active. Genuine service learning experiences seek to be meaningful as participants practice cooperation and reflect upon the knowledge acquired from the service learning experience. These reflections may challenge participants’ values, but experience will also provide immediate and personal emotional responses to modern day situations and issues that affect neighborhoods, schools, and other areas of the community. Participation in service learning activities seeks to promote learning that has no contrived right or wrong response, but provides an experience that can foster a lifetime of learning. See also: > Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning (CASEL); > Community psychology
Suggested Reading Boyer, E. L. (1996). The scholarship of engagement. Journal of Public Service and Outreach, 1(1), 11–20. Chapdelaine, A., Ruiz, A., Warchal, J., & Wells, C. (2005). Servicelearning code of ethics. Bolton, MA: Anker Publishing. Cone, D., & Harris, S. (1996). Service-learning practice: Developing a theoretical framework. Michigan Journal of Community Service Learning, 3, 31–43. Fiske, E. B. (2001). Learning in deed: The power of service-learning for American schools. Battle Creek, MI: W. K. Kellogg Foundation. Howard, J. (2000). Academic service learning: Myths, challenges, and recommendations. Essays on Teaching Excellence, 12(3). Root, S., Callahan, J., & Biilig, S. H. (2005). Improving service-learning practice: Research on models to enhance impact. Greenwich, CT: Information Age Publishing. Zlotkowski, E. (1998). Successful service-learning programs: New models of excellence in higher education. Bolton, MA: Anker Publishing.
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Suggested Resources National Service Learning Clearinghouse (NSLC)—http://www.ser vicelearning.org/: The NSLC, a program of Learn and Serve America, operates a website that supports the service-learning efforts of schools, higher education institutions, communities, and tribal nations. Campus Compact of 2004—http://www.compact.org/civic/ CLECE/: This is the website for the Center for Liberal Education and Civic Engagement, which is the result of a partnership between the Association of American Colleges and Universities and Campus Compact.
Sex Education Margaret L Byram
Sex education is a process of education where the individual acquires information, and forms attitudes/ beliefs about sex, sexual identity, relationships and intimacy. Sex education seeks to help students make informed choices about their behavior and to feel confident and competent when they act on these choices. The Healthy People 2010 report documented a baseline of 64% of females between the ages of 18 to 24 who reported receiving formal instruction on birth control methods, safe sex, the prevention of sexually transmitted diseases (STDs), and abstinence before turning 18 years of age. These data were reported in 1995. The Healthy People 2010 report has a target of providing formal sex education to 90% of adolescents, especially middle to high school students, by the year 2010. At the high school level, sex education aims to reduce risks of potentially negative outcomes from sexual behavior, such as unwanted pregnancies and sexually transmitted diseases. The National Guideline Task Force publication on guidelines for comprehensive sexuality education defines what a sexual healthy adult should know: human development, relationships, personal skills, sexual behavior, and sexual health. Sex education in schools today experiences a constant debate of differing opinions of parents and cultural expectations. Beyond formal sex education, youth today learn more information about sex and sexuality from advertising, television and magazines. Providing
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youth with appropriate sex education allows adolescents to explore reasons why people engage in sexual relations and to think about how it involves emotions, respect for one’s self, and respect for others. Effective sex education aims to enable youth to make decisions about positive relationship qualities. Sex educators cover sensitive topics, such as sexual orientation, teen pregnancy, and Human Immunodeficiency Virus and Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (HIV/AIDS). According to the Alan Guttmacher Institute, 1 in 5 sex education teachers believes that restrictions imposed on sex education prevent them from meeting their student’s needs. These pressures come from the fear of an adverse community reaction based on what is taught and what is communicated at home by the students. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has cited the finding that a significant proportion of educators in secondary school systems feel they need additional training in the areas of teen pregnancy, STDs and HIV prevention. Studies have shown that sex education should start early, before young people reach puberty, and possibly before they have established patterns of behavior. The foundation of information allows for more complex knowledge to develop over time. Debates have been brought up that starting sex education too early may lead to sexual arousal, curiosity, and sexual experimentation. No evidence, however, has proved this actually occurs. Parents can play an important role regarding sex education at home as most sex education classes may be held during blocks of time and are unable to provide all the information necessary. Programs that involve parents allow for notification of what is being taught in school and provide skills to promote a dialogue at home. This can be beneficial given research that indicates a disconnect between communication about what goes in the classroom at home. The Urban Institute, for instance, found that levels of communication between parents and their teenage sons about sex remained low. The publication Family Planning Perspectives of 2000 reported that 57% of males aged 15–19 experienced an information gap between teaching about birth control and actually having intercourse for the first time. Fifty-four percent of adolescents reported a lack of knowledge about STD’s and 46% of adolescents, both boys and girls, reported that they did not know how to say no to sex. Abstinence-based programs are another aspect of sex education. The main focus of these programs is to educate and teach youth that abstaining from sex
until marriage is the best means of ensuring that they avoid HIV, STD’s, and unplanned pregnancies. Two abstinence-based programs that have been developed in the U.S. are Project Reality and Love Waits. The Alan Guttmacher Institute states that despite years of evaluation in this area, there is no current evidence that indicates that abstinence-only education delays teenage sexual activity. Moreover, recent research shows that abstinence-only strategies may deter contraceptive use among sexually active teenagers, thereby increasing their risk of unintended pregnancy and STDs. According to the Kaiser Family Foundation, and the ABC Television station research, Sex in the 90’s: 1998 National Survey of Americans on Sex and Sexual Health showed that 81% of Americans favor broader sexuality education programs over those that discuss only abstinence. In 2000, the Kaiser Family Foundation found that 65% of parents surveyed believed that sex education should encourage young people to delay sexual activity but also prepare them to use birth control and practice safe sex once they do become sexually active Today many sex education policies are decided upon at the state level. Even then, school districts have a considerable degree of latitude to determine exactly what form of sexual education will be implemented. Lawmakers and parents have struggled for years about the discussion of sex education in schools. In 1999, according to former Surgeon General David Satcher, evidence indicated that comprehensive sex education programs that provide information about both abstinence and contraception can help delay the onset of sexual activity in adolescents, reduce their number of sexual partners, and increase contraceptive use when they become sexually active. See also: > Pregnancy, Teaching about; > Sexual development
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Suggested Resources Advocates for Youth—www.advocatesforyouth.org: Advocates for Youth provides current research, information and resources for individuals concerned about adolescent sexuality. Alan Guttmacher Institute (AGI)—www.agi-usa.org/: AGI provides a comprehensive review of research on sexuality and sexual behavior. AVERT: Sex Education That Works—www.avert.org: This website provides a comprehensive review of research about successful sex education programs. Resources for educators and parents are also provided.
Sexual development
Sexual Development Nancy Bearss
Sexual development includes not only the development of the endocrine, anatomic and physiologic systems that allow individuals to reproduce, but also the psychosocial integration of that biology into an individual that is gender defined and able to develop healthy interpersonal, intimate, sexual relationships. Sexual development begins during the first trimester in-utero when surges of sex hormones from the ovaries and testes mediated by pituitary hormones create development of the genitalia. Erectile response is noted in utero at around 16 weeks of gestation. At birth infants will respond not only to these hormonal influences that define them as male or female but also to patterns of identification defined by their primary care takers. Parents have been observed to treat their sons and daughters differently during the first year of life, holding, touching and being more expressive with their daughters while giving their sons greater autonomy and independence and allowing rougher play. Gender identification begins during the first 3 years of life when children begin to note differences between boys and girls and also identify themselves as male and female. Children will often play with parts of their bodies, especially their genitalia, during this stage of development. This behavior is as natural as playing with their fingers or ear. It is to be observed but not treated in a negative manner. It is during these early years that children are most susceptible to gender roles enforced around them. They will notice gender roles in the division of labor, for example, if only women cook in their experience they will identify this as a female characteristic. During ages 2 through 5 children begin to develop cognitive functions that allow them to name and understand their gender and also relate to people around them. It is during this time that children learn to name their reproductive anatomy and are susceptible to negative messages related to naming or defining genitalia. Parents are especially important during this period. Parents who teach their children proper anatomy such as penis and vulva or use books and teaching aids for the body that do not separate out sex organs from other body parts will encourage healthier sexual development in their children. By the age of 3 most children have fully identified as male or female. By the time children are five they have
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developed to know that they will always be male or female, a concept known as gender constancy. It is during this time that children will start to exhibit gender role behaviors that conform to adult expectations. Children will also exhibit opposite gender role behavior, with 10–15% of mothers reporting that their children enjoy dressing up like the opposite sex. Transsexual children may start to exhibit some confusion during this stage of development. This may manifest as a dislike for their genitalia or anxiety when confronted with a specific gender role. It is important for these children to seek specific support during this time. About 1 in 100,000 individuals are born transsexual. From the ages of 5 until pre-adolescence, children are undergoing cognitive development that further allows them to understand reproductive anatomy and physiology and gender roles. The most significant teachers of these concepts during this time are parents. In the absence of parental teaching of anatomy, physiology, sexual behavior and intimacy, children will learn from their dominant culture. Exposure to negative messages about sex, sexual exploitation, or negative gender roles are especially damaging during this period as children may not be able to articulate their concerns. During pre-adolescence, the secretion of sex hormones begins under the regulation of hormones from the pituitary gland and the hypothalamus. Growth and development accentuate during this period with boys beginning adolescence around age 9 and girls around age 10. The stages of sexual maturity that occur are manifested both physically and psychologically. Physical development is measured by stages known as the sexual maturity indices, formerly known as Tanner staging. In girls the physical stages include breast development and pubic hair development, with stage 1 being no breast development or pubic hair and stage 5 being full pubic hair and mature breasts with full nipple development. Menstruation usually indicates full sexual maturity in adolescent girls. It usually takes 2–3 years for a girl to fully complete her sexual development. For boys pubic hair and penile development are usually the best indicators of sexual maturity. Stage 1 in boys involves no pubic hair and a childlike penis with stage 5 being full adult pubic hair with a fully developed scrotum and a penis that has increased in both length and diameter. Boys usually complete their sexual maturity in less time than girls, often within 1 year. This may create some tension among the sexes
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as girls may view themselves as physically inferior during this time, whereas up until this time children were often able to play as physical equals. Both sexes exhibit growth in their long bones during adolescence and will experience dramatic increases in height. By the time adolescents have completed sexual maturity their bone epiphysis have closed and they most likely have completed the majority of their physical growth. Sexual attraction also develops during preadolescence. Relationships will develop that are sexual in nature and adolescents will tend to have very intense relationships for short periods of time. Messages about intimacy and interpersonal communication are very powerful. Parents are very influential during this time and parental supervision has been shown to reduce high risk sexual behavior among adolescents. In the absence of parental supervision young people will experiment with sexual behavior often resulting in unsafe sex. Expanding and developing communication skills that allow young people to abstain and providing access to condoms and contraception should they choose not to abstain are essential during this developmental time. Gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender (GLBT) youth will experience stages of sexual development that are somewhat different from heterosexual youth, because of the dominant heterosexual culture. GLBT youth may experience a period of questioning and shame before accepting their sexual orientation. This puts them at high risk for depression, anxiety, suicide, and high risk sexual behavior. Full sexual maturity is complete by the ages of 12–14 in United States (U.S.) children. By the end of high school over 55% of young people are sexually active. This number has been consistent over several years. The age of onset of sexual activity is 14–16 years of age for most American teens and over 50% of these encounters are high risk or unprotected. This has resulted in high rates of sexually transmitted infections and pregnancy among American teens.
education and education about sexual development is usually integrated into general health classes. In spite of national standards that define comprehensive sex education, children receive a large variety of information from schools regarding sexual development. This information is often scattered throughout the curriculum and often based on a public health model of disease and pregnancy prevention. Because of this, sexual development is often misunderstood among children and the majority of information about sexual development occurs at home or through the media. Parents often do not have adequate access to information regarding the teaching of sexual development to their children and may miss critical opportunities to support their children in making healthy choices about sexual behavior. See also: > Gender bias; > Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender (GLBT); > Safe sex; > Sex education
Suggested Reading Bullough, V. L., & Bullough, B. (Eds.) (1994). Human sexuality: An encyclopedia. New York: Garland Press. Haffner, D. (2000). From diapers to dating. New York: Newmarket Press.
Suggested Resources Sexuality and Information Council of the U.S. (SEICUS)—www. seicus.org: SEICUS presents comprehensive sex education standards. Advocates for Youth—www.advocatesforyouth.org: The Advocates for Youth website provides current research, information, and resources for individuals concerned about topics that address adolescent sexuality. Alan Guttmacher Institute (AGI)—www.agi-usa.org/: AGI provides comprehensive research on sexuality and sexual behavior.
Sexuality and Schools
Sexual Harassment
Comprehensive sex education has been shown to reduce high risk sexual behavior. Comprehensive sex education includes accurate information about anatomy, physiology, interpersonal relationships, communication about intimacy, abstinence and the delay of sexual intercourse, methods of birth control and condom use. Sex
Megan Maguire
Sexual harassment is an issue that plagues the schools of our nation. Sexual harassment occurs in our school systems between school personnel (i.e., teachers and
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administrators) and students as well as between students. Previously, sexual harassment between teachers and students has received the most attention. However, much attention has recently been given to studentto-student sexual harassment. Recent studies show that sexual harassment occurs much more often between students than it does with the teacher as the aggressor. In a representative study of the U.S., 87% of female students and 71% of male students reported being the victim of sexual harassment at the hands of other students. Another study revealed that 80% of adolescent students report that they have been the victim of sexual harassment by their peers. This is in contrast to the 20% of female students and 8% of male students who report sexual harassment at the hands of their teachers. The aggressors of sexual harassment, whether it is student-on-student or teacheron-student, are typically male. In fact, studies have shown that the perpetrators tend to be males regardless of the sex of the victim.
Sexual Harassment Defined There is a very large spectrum of what is considered to be sexual harassment. Sexual harassment is considered to be any form of unwelcome behavior of a sexual nature. Forms of sexual harassment fall into three categories. These categories: physical, verbal, and nonverbal. Physical sexual harassment is typically perceived to be the most severe form of harassment. Physical sexual harassment is any form of unwanted physical contact. This includes unwanted touching, unwelcome sexual advances, pulling at clothing, sexual assault, or even rape. Verbal sexual assault includes requests for sexual favors, comments about body parts, sexual jokes or invitations, and any other inappropriate comments of a sexual nature. Nonverbal sexual harassment includes showing pornographic materials or cornering an individual in a sexually threatening manner. Verbal harassment is the type of sexual harassment that occurs between students most frequently. School personnel, on the other hand, seem to commit nonverbal and physical sexual harassment most frequently. Sexual harassment also differs by the gender of the victim. Female students tend to report being the victim of nonverbal and physical harassment more than male students. Male students report more verbal harassment than do female students.
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Legal Issues Students are protected from sexual harassment under the Civil Rights Act of 1964. This act was initially put into legislation to protect victims of sexual harassment in the workplace. In 1972 the act was amended to extend its protection to those in an educational program. The U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights offered a new definition of sexual harassment in 1997. According to Title IX (Education Amendments act of 1972) sexual harassment is defined as behavior that is sufficiently severe, persistent, or pervasive so that it adversely affects a student’s education or creates a hostile or abusive educational environment and the conduct must be sexual in nature. This law also states that schools will be held responsible in the situation that sexual harassment is knowingly occurring between students, yet the school does not act to protect students. A school can be sued for its failure to protect students from teacher-on-student, as well as, student-on-student sexual harassment. Schools are required to award monetary compensation to the victims of sexual harassment. One such example is the 1992 case of Franklin v. Gwinnett County Public Schools. Here the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that a school district would pay monetary damages to a student who was sexually harassed by her teacher. In the 1999 case of Davis v. Monroe County Board of Education, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in favor of the plaintiff. The board of education was required to pay damages to the victim of student-on-student sexual harassment. In the Davis case, school officials were aware of the harassment but failed to act upon the reported events. Under Title IX, it is the responsibility of a school district to develop and implement a policy against sexual harassment. These policies should outline the grievance procedures to be followed when instances of sexual harassment occur.
Effect on Students Sexual harassment creates a very hostile environment where academic and personal development is severely hindered. Victims of sexual harassment may display symptoms of depression, engage in self blame, experience helplessness, self-doubt, and avoid school. Sexual harassment elicits a wide variety of emotional responses from the victim. A common response is fear. The Hostile Hallways study was commissioned by the
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American Association of University Women and looked at the effect of the school climate on female students. According to the Hostile Hallways study, a third of students fear being sexually harassed in school. Fear also prevents students from reporting sexual harassment. Sexual harassment also affects the student’s sense of identity. Seventeen percent of students in the Hostile Hallways study reported a feeling of identity confusion following their harassment. Victims of sexual harassment often experience a decline in academic performance. The Hostile Hallways study found that victims of sexual harassment do not want to attend school as a result of the harassment. Victims are also likely to avoid participating in classroom activities to discourage further attention from the harasser. All of this contributes to the academic decline following the experience of being sexually harassed. While both male and female students are negatively affected by harassment, it appears that male and female students react differently to it. Girls tend to report feeling more fear as a result of the harassment in comparison to their male counterparts. Female students also report more feelings of embarrassment, self-consciousness, and lack of confidence more so than their male counterparts.
Difficulties with Sexual Harassment Sexual harassment is a difficult issue to attack in that it is very seldom reported. Students are very reluctant to report instances of unwelcome sexual attention. One study found that only 56% of students that experience sexual harassment share their experiences with another person. In the Hostile Hallways study less than 10% of victimized students reported the harassment to an adult within the school. Less than a quarter of the victimized students reported the harassment to their families. Victims are more likely to report the harassment to a friend. Additionally 63% of the students in the Hostile Hallways study reported their harassment to a friend. This study also found that 23% of students did not report their harassment to anyone. Another difficulty that has been encountered in attempts to address sexual harassment is the ambiguity of student-on-student sexual harassment. Harassment perpetrated by a teacher toward a student is more easily identified as the different power status is easily visible. Teacher-on-student sexual harassment is more likely to be reported than peer sexual harassment. However, as there is no power difference between
students it is difficult to deem what behavior is to be considered sexual harassment and what behavior is ‘‘normal’’ for adolescents. Physically intrusive behavior is more often identified as sexual harassment than is nonphysically intrusive behavior. Students are more likely to perceive inappropriate touching as sexual harassment than they would jokes of a sexual nature.
What Can Schools Do? It is the responsibility of the school district and the professionals within the school to protect students from sexual harassment. This responsibility extends beyond uncovering and reporting occurrences of harassment. Schools must provide a nonhostile environment for students. Teachers and other professionals must be educated about detecting and handling sexual harassment. On a curriculum level, schools must develop a nonsexist environment. This means that only nonsexist teaching methods will be employed. Schools must also prepare and educate students about what should be done in the case that they are a victim. Many students are not fully aware of behaviors that constitute sexual harassment. Students need guidance in determining which behaviors are mere flirting and what behavior is harassing. Another area in which student education can help deter harassment is empowerment. Students with a heightened sense of empowerment are less likely to tolerate harassment and more likely to report. Teachers, counselors, and principles must make students aware that harassment will not be tolerated and that they will be protected. Students should be aware of the resources that are available if they are the victims of sexual harassment. Lastly schools must create an effective antiharassment policy in which student reports are responded to effectively. Students, teachers, parents, and administrators must all be familiar with this policy. This policy should address the issue of confidentiality. Many students fear the repercussions of reporting harassment. Student must be ensured that their reports will be kept as confidential as possible, that they do not need to face the accused harasser, and that the victim will always be protected. This policy should also make clear the consequences of sexual harassment to the individual doing the harassment. See also: > Bullying; bias; > Human rights
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Suggested Reading Butterfield, D. D. (1995). Student-to-student sexual harassment and discrimination. BYU Education and Law Journal, 21–33. Stone, C. B. (2000). Advocacy for sexual harassment victims: Legal support and ethical aspects. Professional School Counseling, 4(1), 23–30.
Suggested Resources ED/OCVR: Sexual Harassment: Its Not Academic—http://www.ed. gov/about/offices/list/ocr/docs/ocrshpam.html: This website is a resource center for administrators, teachers, and students affected by sexual harassment.
Sexual Orientation Melinda Finkel-Konigsberg
Sexual orientation refers to a person’s enduring emotional, physical, romantic, or sexual attraction and the expression of that attraction. Many individuals, when it comes to their sexual orientation and gender, do not lie on one end of the spectrum, but somewhere along the continuum. Sexual orientation is distinguished from other components of sexuality, including biological sex and gender. Gender can be divided into identity, expression, and attribution. Gender identity concerns how an individual views her or himself in relation to how society defines a man or a woman. Gender identity is different from sexual orientation. For example, many people inaccurately equate homosexual men with being effeminate, and homosexual women with being masculine. Assumptions that gay men want to be ‘‘women’’ and that lesbians want to be ‘‘men’’ are incorrect. Gender identity is the sense that one is a male or female. It is usually manifested by the age of three or four years. Gender expression is the way an individual expresses him or herself with regard to cultural norms for feminine and masculine behaviors. Gender attribution is what someone assumes about a person’s gender by the way the person appears. Sexuality may also vary greatly from individual to individual. If a person perceives men to be at one side of the spectrum and women on the other, the person may be attracted to males or females. There is a question
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about whether an individual is attracted to the biological sex of the other person or if the individual is really attracted to the other person’s masculinity or femininity (gender). Each person’s sex, gender, and sexuality are personal, complex, and unique to that person. Sexual orientation is not static and exists along a continuum that ranges from exclusive homosexuality to exclusive heterosexuality, including various forms of bisexuality. Bisexual people can experience emotional and sexual attraction to both their own sex and the opposite sex. Many bisexual individuals are primarily attracted to men or women, but do not deny their lesser attraction, acted upon or not. Bisexual people have a range of sexual behaviors. Like lesbians, gay men, or heterosexual people, some bisexual individuals have multiple partners, some have one partner, and some go through periods without any partners. Bisexual people experience homophobia from the heterosexual community and may receive pressure and skepticism from the gay and lesbian community. There may be the misperception that a bisexual identity is an attempt to avoid the stigma of a homosexual identity. Persons with a homosexual orientation are commonly referred to as gay (both men and women) or as lesbian (women only). However, the terms bisexual, gay, and lesbian sometimes separate the gay community unnecessarily. Though the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender (LGBT) community sometimes uses labels for political reasons and to increase their visibility, each person is unique and may not fit into distinct categories. Sexual orientation differs from sexual behavior in that the former encompasses feelings and self-concept, whereas the latter encompasses behavior. Individuals may or may not express their sexual orientation in their behavior. Dr. Alfred Kinsey, a pioneer in the study of sexuality, suggested that it is necessary to consider a variety of activities to assess an individual’s rank on the continuum from exclusively heterosexual to exclusively homosexual. These activities include fantasies, dreams, thoughts, frequency of sexual activity, and emotional feelings. Kinsey stated it is impossible to determine the number of individuals who are ‘‘homosexual’’ or ‘‘heterosexual.’’ It is only possible to determine behavior at a given time. Despite this assertion, various studies have estimated that, at any given time, 10% of the population identifies as homosexual. Numerous theories about the origins of sexual orientation exist. Most current research concurs that
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sexual orientation is probably the result of a complex interaction of biological, environmental, and cognitive factors. Although homophobia and heterosexism pervade society, homosexuality is not an illness. Four decades of objective, well-designed scientific research indicates that homosexuality is not associated with mental disorders or emotional or social problems. Sexual orientation is not a preference and, therefore, cannot be voluntarily changed. Sexual orientation is shaped at an early age in most people. Though it varies from person to person, an awareness of sexual orientation usually emerges during early adolescence unless the child has had prior sexual experience. The sense that one ought to claim a gay, lesbian, bisexual, or heterosexual orientation does not usually manifest itself until later in life, usually after puberty and often not until full adulthood. Several models of the formation of sexual identity explain the process, from a conscious awareness that sexual orientation is relevant to integrating sexuality as one component of identity. One of the foundational theories of gay and lesbian identity development is the Cass Psychosocial Model of Homosexual Identity Formation. This describes a sixstage process of gay and lesbian identity development. These stages are: identity confusion (first awareness of same-sex attraction, feelings, or thoughts); identity comparison (examination of the implications of a gay or lesbian identity with acceptance of the possibility of being a gay man or lesbian, including isolation or social alienation); identity tolerance (acknowledgement that he or she is not the only one who is gay or lesbian and active seeking out of other lesbians, gay men, or community resources); identity acceptance (acceptance of him- or herself and the ability to see a positive connotation to lesbian or gay identity while continuing to increase involvement in LGBT culture); identity pride (immersion in LGBT culture while minimizing contact with heterosexuals; may include disclosure of sexual orientation); and identity synthesis (integration of one’s sexual identity with all other aspects of self, and sexual orientation seen as only one component of self rather than defining his or her entire identity). Although the stages are sequential, individuals may revisit stages at different moments. Considerable recent evidence suggests that biology, including genetic or inborn hormonal factors, plays a significant role in sexuality. Many reasons exist for an individual’s sexual orientation and the reasons vary for each person.
See also: > Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender (GLBT); > Gender bias; > Homophobia; > Sex education
Suggested Reading American Psychological Association. (1998). Appropriate therapeutic responses to sexual orientation in the proceedings of the American Psychological Association, Incorporated, for the legislative year 1997. American Psychologist, 53(8), 882–939. Cass, V. (1979). Homosexual identity formation: A theoretical model. Journal of Homosexuality, 4, 219–235. Finkel, M. J., Storaasli, R., Bandele, A., & Schaefer, V. (2003). Diversity training in graduate school: An exploratory evaluation of the Safe Zone project. Professional Psychology: Research and Practice, 34, 555–561.
Suggested Resources The Kinsey Institute for Research in Sex, Gender, and Reproduction— http://www.kinseyinstitute.org/research/ak-data.html The Cass Model of Homosexual Identity Formation Posted on the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Website—http://lgbt. unc.edu/allies/articles/stages.html
Sheltered Instruction Jana Echevarria
The academic achievement of English language learners (ELLs) is a critical issue confronting educators today because the burgeoning number of ELLs in United States (U.S.) schools affects policies, curricula, instruction, as well as almost every aspect of schooling. English language learners are defined as those students—regardless of cultural background—for whom English is not their native language. Many of these students learn to speak English fairly quickly but there is an important difference between conversational ability, known as basic interpersonal communicative skills (BICS), and the academic language necessary for completing academic tasks. This academic language, called Cognitive/Academic Linguistic Proficiency (CALP), is more complex and cognitively challenging than everyday language. Standards-based instruction, that relies on academic language proficiency, demands more from students than a simple understanding of spoken English. With
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each grade level, the rigor of the curriculum increases as does the academic language associated with it. That is, ELLs are learning challenging, grade-level content such as science, social studies, and math, in a language that they do not speak, read or write fluently. Sheltered instruction is a way of teaching that makes subject matter understandable for English language learners while at the same time developing their second language proficiency. Sheltered teachers use specialized strategies and techniques that make information, concepts and academic tasks understandable. An explicit definition of sheltered instruction and clarification of the strategies and techniques teachers should use came about through the development of the Sheltered Instruction Observation Protocol, or SIOP Model. The SIOP Model consists of 30 features of instruction organized around eight components: Preparation, Building Background, Comprehensible Input, Strategies, Interaction, Practice/Application, Lesson Delivery and Review/Assessment. Sheltered lessons that contain these elements have been shown to be effective for English language learners. Typically, sheltered instruction is associated with learning through English, however sheltered techniques are also used in instructional programs where another language is the medium of instruction, such as in two-way immersion programs (e.g., Spanish-English or Korean-English programs).
History of Sheltered Instruction The ESL profession has long been at the forefront of teaching immigrant students and its methodologies have adapted to the changes schools have experienced over the past few decades. English as a second language programs previously focused on grammar translation or the direct method of instruction, but by the 1970’s, ESL classes employed the communicative method. Students were taught to use language in meaningful, relevant ways by discussing material of high interest, often self-selected, and experimenting with language usage was encouraged. An outgrowth of the communicative method was content-based ESL. Gradelevel curriculum replaced topics of interest as it was viewed as meaningful, relevant content for teaching English. The intent of the content-based ESL approach was to better prepare students for their transition into mainstream classes. However, content-based ESL instruction has not been sufficient to help all ELLs succeed
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academically. The dramatic increase in the number of ELL students has resulted in a shortage of teachers qualified to offer ESL instruction or bilingual instruction and has moved the teaching of content out of specialized classes and into mainstream classes. Sheltered instruction was developed as an approach that enables mainstream content teachers to provide instruction to these students within their own classes, rather than limiting appropriate instruction for ELLs to the ESL classroom. Since the 1990’s, sheltered instruction has been advocated as an approach that will benefit ELL students. Sheltered instruction uses a variety of techniques to make lessons understandable for students such as demonstrations, use of visuals, cooperative learning, hands-on activities and graphic organizers. However, until recently, teachers tended to select their favored techniques rather than have a comprehensive model of sheltered instruction to guide systematic implementation of effective practices. This resulted in programs that were uneven in quality and effectiveness, with large numbers of ELL students in mainstream classes where their teachers were not adequately prepared to teach in ways that facilitated their acquisition of language and content. In the late 1990’s, researchers developed a model of sheltered instruction that has been scientifically validated and shown to improve the achievement of ELLs. Known as the SIOP Model (Sheltered Instruction Observation Protocol), it is an effective way for these students to gain access to content material while acquiring English skills. The SIOP Model is used in all of the 50 states in the U.S. and in schools in more than a dozen countries around the world.
Current Significance of Sheltered Instruction English language learners as a group have experienced persistent underachievement which has become illuminated significantly by the high stakes testing and individual accountability enacted through No Child Left Behind (NCLB). On nearly every measure, ELLs tend to lag behind their native English speaking peers and demonstrate significant achievement gaps on state and national assessments. Further, the educational reform movement has had a direct impact on English language learners, as states have moved to implement high-stakes testing
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and standards-based instruction for all students. Classroom instruction is guided by standards for core subjects such as social studies, mathematics, science, and language arts. In many mainstream classes, little or no accommodation is made for the specific language needs of English language learners, placing them at a deficit when they are expected to achieve high academic standards in English. Imagine the difficulty of being expected to perform at grade level in a language you are still in the process of learning. Many times, the difficulties students experience in school are caused by inappropriate modes of instruction that do not take into account their linguistic needs. Recent research on instruction for English language learners has shown that these students can participate fully in grade level, standards-based instruction if the features of such instruction support their learning needs.
Features of Sheltered Instruction High quality sheltered instruction for ELLs is cognitively challenging yet differentiated for students’ academic and linguistic needs and abilities, and focuses on developing academic English. Some of its specific features include: Focused instruction. Students and teachers alike benefit from each lesson having an explicit content and language objective. The content objective is the knowledge or skill that students attain, based on standards. The language objective ensures that critical English language development is not overlooked and that some aspect of language is practiced daily. Effective sheltered teachers report that their instruction is more focused when they have objectives written on the board as a focal point of instruction and they also report that students are more motivated and engaged when the point of the lesson is unambiguous. Tapping students’ background. All students come to school with a variety of experiences and knowledge. Sheltered teachers capitalize on this knowledge and make connections between new concepts and students’ personal experiences. These connections help students organize new information as part of their cognitive processing. Explicit vocabulary development. An essential aspect of reading is vocabulary development. For students learning English, who don’t have the same level of English vocabulary on which to draw as native speakers, it becomes even more important. ELLs need to have vocabulary words written, pronunciation modeled,
words repeated numerous times and in a variety of ways, and opportunities to use the words in context. Key vocabulary should be emphasized across all content areas. Review and practice is an important instructional ‘‘habit’’ to develop as repeated exposure to vocabulary increases retention. In selecting key vocabulary, there ought to be a focus on teaching words that students aren’t likely to encounter through conversational experiences as well as those words they will encounter frequently in texts. Opportunities for interaction. Language development is an active process and students learn English most effectively when they are actively involved in the process of communicating with each other. Instructional activities should integrate opportunities to communicate about concepts, skills and information through meaningful activities connected to what students know and have experienced. Whole group instruction is effective for introduction of new material and for teaching new skills and concepts. However, interaction is stifled when whole group instruction is used exclusively. Teams, partners, and groups facilitate interaction; within smaller groups, students can engage in genuine dialogue with peers and/or the teacher. Supplementary materials. Sheltered lessons are characterized by an abundance of supplementary materials. Information that is embedded in context allows ELLs to understand and complete more cognitively demanding tasks. Since lectures and pencil-and-paper tasks centered on a text are difficult for English language learners, use of supplementary materials is necessary to bring meaning to lessons. Review/assessment. ELLs need to review key vocabulary and concepts, and teachers need to assess how well students retain the information—through frequent feedback to students and informal assessments throughout the lesson. Sheltered teachers offer multiple pathways for students to demonstrate their understanding of the content. See also: > English as a Second Language Instruction (ESL); > English language learners; > Limited English proficiency
Suggested Reading Echevarria, J., & Graves, A. (2007). Sheltered content instruction: Teaching students with diverse abilities (3rd ed.). Boston: Allyn & Bacon.
Single-sex education Echevarria, J., Vogt, M. E., & Short, D. (2008). Making content comprehensible for English Language Learners: The SIOP Model (3rd ed.). Boston: Allyn & Bacon. Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages, Inc. (1997). ESL standards for pre- K–12 students. Alexandria, VA: Author.
Suggested Resources National Clearinghouse for English Language Acquisition and Language Instruction Educational Programs (NCELA)—http:// www.ncela.gwu.edu/: Funded by the Office of English Language Acquisition (OELA), the National Clearinghouse for English Language Acquisition and Language Instruction Educational Programs (NCELA) collects, analyzes, synthesizes and disseminates information about language instruction educational programs for English language learners and related programs. Sheltered Instruction Observation Protocol (SIOP)—http://www. siopinstitute.net: This website presents the Sheltered Instruction Observation Protocol (SIOP) Model, which was developed to provide teachers with a well articulated, practical model of sheltered instruction.
Single-Sex Education Raymond Goldfield
History of Single-Sex Education For most of history, single-sex education, or the separation of boys and girls into different classes or often entirely different facilities, has been commonplace. This trend started with the very first public schools, in ancient Sumer, located in the southern part of Mesopotamia in what is now Iraq. In the vast majority of ancient cultures, only boys were educated. The schools were entirely male, while girls were kept home to learn practical skills from their mothers. The start of public education for girls was slow and fitful. Philosophers such as Plato were among the earliest proponents of education for both boys and girls. However, most cultures did not put this into practice, and those that did have free public education generally limited it to their male citizens. After the Renaissance of the fifteenth century, which brought art and culture to the masses, education became more of a priority for many cultures, as schools
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exclusively for girls began to show up, primarily in England and America. However, the vast majority of these were private institutions, generally known as ‘‘finishing schools,’’ aimed more at creating proper young ladies than at teaching the material that boys learned in their schools. In America until the twentieth century, most elementary schools were simple oneroom schoolhouses. For most of the 1700s and 1800s, women were not educated in most public schools. It is estimated that in colonial times, only a third of women could even sign their names. When public education for both sexes became more commonplace in the early twentieth century, boys and girls did learn together, simply because it was easier for the schools to have only one teacher on duty. However, in big cities, where there were multiple elementary schools, it was commonplace to divide the classes by sex. Single-sex education was far more prominent in secondary schools and colleges. Many private women’s colleges developed across the country, including Mount Holyoke, Wesleyan, Wellesley, and Barnard, all of which are still operating today. Public women’s colleges also existed, but court rulings against state funding for colleges that only admit one sex forced them to admit men, as well as forcing the Virginia Military Institute and other all-male military institutions to admit women. The sole remaining public women’s college in the nation, Douglass College at Rutgers, is currently facing elimination in a consolidation plan for the college. In the case of single-sex public schools, they continue to exist, although in much smaller numbers than they used to. Currently, there are only 11 single-sex public schools in the country, although countless private institutions, both parochial and secular, still exist. These schools include Aviva High School in Los Angeles, and many military-themed schools for boys, although the vast majority are religious. Roman Catholic high schools in particular have a very high number of single-sex schools. The few remaining public institutions have long been under threat of shutdown, due to a 1972 law called Title IX, which forbids unequal treatment based on sex in education. Even in the 1960s boys and girls were often separated into gender-specific classes, often tailored to the roles they were expected to play in life. The most common example in of this is when boys were made to take Shop classes, while girls were placed in Home Ec and sewing classes. Title IX ended this, and guaranteed that students could choose classes according to their interests. However, the Bush administration has
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in recent years began movement toward promoting single-sex education, saying it does not believe that single-sex education is inherently unequal. As such, the debate continues to rage, and advocated for and against single-sex education both continue to push for what they believe is the best way to help children learn.
Arguments for Single-Sex Education Western High School in Baltimore was established in 1844. It is an all-girl school, the oldest in the country. Over 1,000 girls from all races, ethnic groups, religions, and financial backgrounds attend this school. It also has one of the highest college acceptance rates of any school in the country. Advocates of single-sex public education point to Western High School as a primary example of the benefits of this system. There are strong advocates of single-sex education from both sexes. Advocates of the benefits of single-sex education for girls say that there remains an inherent gender bias in mixed-gender schools. Studies show that boys are more likely to be called on in class. This has been attributed to the fact that boys tend to be more vocal and aggressive, thus drowning out the girls. On the same note, it has been proven that boys get into the vast majority of trouble at school. Advocates for girls say that because the boys monopolize the teacher’s attention with their misbehavior, girls are likely to get shortchanged. Also, women’s advocates say there is often a double standard in how misbehavior is treated, due to an unspoken expectation for girls to be more quiet and reserved. Myrna and David Sadker found that in the case of children calling out loud in class without raising their hands, girls are significantly more likely to be reprimanded while the same behavior in boys is often ignored. In secondary education, women’s advocates say that girls benefit from not having the personal distraction of boys to keep them from learning. With hormones raging, high school and even middle-school students are often preoccupied with the opposite sex. It is argued that single-sex education prevents this, keeping students more focused on their studies. In addition, it removes a lot of the personal conflicts that occur between girls over romantic feelings for boys, and helps form longer-lasting friendships. There have been fewer studies of the benefits of single-sex education for boys. However, anecdotal studies indicate that a lot of the same benefits apply for
boys. The lack of personal distractions helps keep adolescent boys focused on their studies. The lack of temptation to impress girls helps keep some of the bullying and cliques in check, and in general, studies show that boys in single-sex classes develop a tighter kinsmanship. Also, in an all-male environment, where discipline is emphasized and the boys are exposed to strong male role models on a daily basis, there is more of a drive to succeed, and test scores go up and dropout rates go down. Inner-city schools, where single-sex education is often tried as a test solution to the problems, have shown marked improvements in the boys’ classes. In a boys-only school, the curriculum could be tailored to their specific needs. There has been a lack of research on the benefits of single-sex education for boys, but studies have shown improvement in performance and male bonding in the few test schools, particularly those in inner-city schools. In addition, recent studies have shown that boys learn differently from girls, and excel in different subjects. While this is still a developing and controversial theory (as evidenced by the uproar when Harvard President Lawrence Summers discussed learning differences in men and women last year), it is still a topic of discussion among advocates of singlesex education.
Arguments Against Single-Sex Education The support for single-sex education among women’s groups is anything but universal. In fact, many of the most prominent women’s groups in the country, such as the National Organization of Women and the Feminist Majority Foundation, have condemned the Bush administration’s recent moves toward legitimizing these schools, as have many general civil-rights groups. A large number simply oppose any wateringdown of the regulations of title nine, saying that a strong antidiscrimination line must be respected, regardless of the short-term benefits. Others debate the findings arguing the benefits of these schools. Many fear that the schools specifically for girls will attract less funding than those for boys. In addition, there is concern that these schools will not adequately prepare children for adult life, where they will have to interact with people of both sexes on a daily basis. There is also the fear that gender stereotyping will continue or even increase when one gender is by themselves, teaching children the roles that society
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has stereotyped them into without the benefit of the other gender to pose an alternative. Many opponents of single-sex education come from feminist and women’s rights groups. They are very hesitant to roll back the clock on the level of integration in public schools, remembering how recently it was that women did not have the choice to learn the same material as men. In addition, they fear that the residual gender bias will spill over into these new schools, resulting in girls-only schools that do not have the same resources or opportunities of boys-only schools. They argue that integration is critical to equality, and just as it was impossible for ‘‘separate but equal’’ schools for race in the Jim Crow South to be equal, it is also impossible for gender-segregated schools to be equal. There are very few arguments against single-sex education for boys, although there are worries about social development. Some advocates say that by depriving boys of this critical social interaction, for instance, harms their ability to interact with women in adulthood. See also: > Sexual development; > Sexual harassment
Suggested Reading Bushweller, K. (1994). Turning our backs on boys. The American School Board Journal, 181(5), 20–25.
Suggested Resources National Association for Single-Sex Public Education—http:// www.singlesexschools.org/: A nonprofit organization involved in research on and promotion of single-sex public schools. The Trouble with Single-Sex Schools—http://www.theatlantic. com/doc/prem/199804/single-sex: A critical analysis of the pros and cons of single-sex schools from a graduate of a private women’s college.
Smoking Marcia Rubin
Smoking and other tobacco use are the leading preventable cause of death in the United States (U.S.). Smoking and the use of smokeless tobacco leads to a
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variety of health consequences ranging from increased coughing and phlegm production and decreased lung function to an increase in the number and severity of respiratory illnesses; decreased physical fitness (both performance and endurance); and adverse changes in blood cholesterol levels. In turn, these outcomes can result in heart disease, stroke; chronic lung disease; and cancers of the lung, mouth, pharynx, esophagus, and bladder. In addition to these negative physical outcomes, recent research by the National Institute of Mental Health and the National Institute on Drug Abuse has documented that chronic cigarette smoking during adolescence can increase the likelihood of developing a variety of anxiety disorders such as generalized anxiety disorder, panic disorder and agoraphobia in early adulthood. Exposure to secondhand smoke is equally harmful; the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency considers secondhand smoke a Group A carcinogen. Those most affected by secondhand smoke are children. More than 6 million youth are exposed to secondhand smoke daily, and more than 10 million youth aged 12–18 live in a household with at least one smoker. Because their bodies are still developing, exposure to the poisons in secondhand smoke puts children in particular danger of severe respiratory diseases and can hinder the growth of their lungs, cause new cases of asthma or worsen existing asthma; and increase lung cancer risk as an adult. In addition, new research links secondhand smoke to intellectual impairments and behavioral problems such as early grade retention, reduced vocabulary and reasoning abilities, and poor cognitive performance on achievement tests.
Tobacco Use among American Youth Each day approximately 4,000 youths in the U.S. aged 12–17 try their first cigarette. If these patterns continue, an estimated 6.4 million young people can be expected to die prematurely from a smoking-related disease. Although the percentage of high school students who smoke has declined in recent years, rates remain high: 22% of high school students report current cigarette use (i.e., smoked cigarettes in the preceding 30 days). Nationwide, 58% of students have tried cigarette smoking (i.e., at least one or two puffs at some time in their lives). Eighteen percent of high school students have smoked a whole cigarette before age 13; ten percent
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report smoking cigarettes on 20 of the 30 preceding days. Fifteen percent of students report having smoked cigars, cigarillos, or little cigars in the past month. Seven percent of high school students use smokeless tobacco (11% males and 2% females). Adolescents who use smokeless tobacco are more likely than nonusers to become cigarette smokers. The younger people begin smoking cigarettes, the more likely they are to become addicted to nicotine. Young people who try to quit suffer the same nicotine withdrawal symptoms as adults. Several studies have found nicotine addiction to be similar in addiction intensity to heroin, cocaine, and alcohol. Of all addictive behaviors, cigarette smoking is the one most likely to become established during adolescence. Of high school students who are current smokers, 54% have tried to quit in the past 12 months. Cigarette smoking varies among and within racial/ ethnic populations. Non-Hispanic White students (25%) are significantly more likely than Black (15%) and Hispanic students (18%) to report current cigarette use. The 1998 Surgeon General’s report, Tobacco Use among U.S. Racial/Ethnic Minority Groups, examined tobacco prevalence among non-Hispanic Blacks, American Indians/Alaska Natives (AI/ANs), Asians/ Pacific Islanders, and Hispanics; later studies examined subsets of these four primary minority groups. In these later studies, current cigarette smoking was assessed by asking respondents, ‘‘During the past 30 days, have you smoked part or all of a cigarette?’’ Persons who answered ‘‘yes’’ were classified as current smokers. Among youths, AI/ANs had the greatest cigarette smoking prevalence (27.9%), followed by non-Hispanic Whites (16.0%), who had greater cigarette smoking prevalence than nine other sub-populations. Among non-Hispanic White youths, females had a greater prevalence of cigarette smoking (17.2%) than males (14.9%). Among non-Hispanic Black youths, males had a greater prevalence of cigarette smoking (8.2%) than females (5.9%). Smoking prevalence varied substantially by sex only among non-Hispanic Whites (i.e., females had a greater prevalence) and among non-Hispanic Blacks (i.e., males had a greater prevalence). Other national youth surveys report no overall difference between males and females in smoking prevalence. The similarity in prevalence among Asian and Hispanic youths might reflect a loss of cultural constraints regarding smoking among females. Disparities in smoking prevalence are attributed to various factors. For example, non-Hispanic Black
youths are less likely to regard smoking as part of their lifestyle and perceive strong parental and community disapproval of smoking. Strong parental disapproval also is observed among Hispanic populations, especially regarding smoking among females. However, no single factor determines the prevalence of cigarette smoking among racial/ethnic populations; current smoking prevalence is the result of complex interactions of multiple factors, including socioeconomic status, cultural characteristics, acculturation, stress, advertising, cigarette prices, parental and community disapproval, and abilities of local communities and schools to mount effective tobacco use prevention and control initiatives. There is a lower prevalence of youth cigarette smoking among the majority of racial/ethnic minority populations than among non-Hispanic Whites. However, among adults, the prevalence in certain populations (e.g., non-Hispanic Blacks, Koreans, Vietnamese, and Puerto Ricans) is similar to that of non-Hispanic Whites. Multiple factors might account for this similarity. For example, cessation rates among certain racial/ethnic populations might be lower than those among nonHispanic Whites. Racial/ethnic minority populations commonly have less access than non-Hispanic Whites to culturally and linguistically appropriate anti-smoking educational materials, media messages, and cessation services. Moreover, racial/ethnic minority populations have been targets of tobacco industry marketing efforts, including sponsorships of cultural events and funding of organizations.
Tobacco Use Prevention and Control Culturally sensitive interventions are needed to decrease cigarette smoking and other tobacco use among specific racial/ethnic populations with high smoking prevalence and to prevent increases among groups with lower smoking prevalence. Such efforts begin by gathering baseline data. This information might include data on the prevalence and patterns of tobacco use among youth in various segments of the community, the adult community’s knowledge, attitudes, and practices relating to youth and tobacco products, the degree of readiness for change in various sectors of the community (e.g., the willingness of the police to enforce laws prohibiting the sale of tobacco to minors), and the existing efforts addressing tobacco issues, especially interventions to prevent tobacco use among youth. For example, what type of tobacco use prevention programs are
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offered in schools? It is often helpful to learn what the tobacco industry is doing regionally to promote tobacco use among youth; for example, giving away tobacco-related ‘‘gear’’ at concerts. Finally, effective intervention programs must also collect data about where youth can participate in lowor no-cost cessation programs, and where and how easily minors can purchase tobacco products. To gather such information, successful community-based programs solicit the early involvement of general community members; representatives of local organizations such as the American Lung Association, the American Heart Association and the American Cancer Society; law enforcement agencies; schools; and the local media. An integrated approach assures that the various program components support and enhance each other. Once all the data are collected, a target group for intervention can be identified and goals and objectives identified. Members of the target population should be recruited to help write realistic goals and objectives. The objectives should be as specific and realistic as possible for each target group and identify:
The action or change expected (a reduction in the number of middle school youth experimenting with tobacco) The amount of change expected (a decrease from 15 to 10%) The time frame for change (in the next 3 years) How progress will be measured (using the middle school version of the Youth Risk Behavior Survey)
Activities can then be selected that have been shown to be effective in achieving the objectives with the targeted population. Particular attention to ethnic and cultural values, as well as community context is critical. Several organizations and agencies often collaborate to implement successful programs and strategies. For example, a team comprised of a law enforcement official, an adolescent, and a volunteer from the American Cancer Society might visit retail merchants who sell tobacco and distribute posters or written materials that reinforce ‘‘no sale to minors’’ laws. Similar teams can also visit with judges who are sometimes reluctant to impose consequences on local merchants for violating adolescent tobacco sales laws. Such collaborative efforts and targeted visits provide an important foundation for multi-component prevention efforts. Adolescent involvement in all aspects of the program is critical. Young people are particularly valuable in the planning and implementation of community
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programs directed at youth. They understand the values, attitudes, perspectives, and beliefs of their peers and positive youth role models drawn from all segments of the youth culture can serve as powerful deterrents to future tobacco use. Providing youth with opportunities to acquire new knowledge and skills as well as demonstrate responsibility yields multiple benefits both to the youth and to the community. Finally, effective interventions must make a commitment to sustained effort. Three years of programming are the minimum necessary to establish sustainable behavior patterns within a given cohort and to establish a climate where being tobacco free is the norm for young people. Success in prevention also means continuous community involvement in meaningful activities with a high probability of success. In summary, effective tobacco prevention and control initiatives for youth could result from: (1) increasing the capacity of specific populations to address tobacco use within their own communities (i.e., enhanced skills related to community assessment, program development and implementation, outreach, collaboration, and evaluation); (2) conducting educational campaigns that are culturally competent and targeted to the specific needs and concerns of particular populations; and (3) drawing on the strengths and assets of the members of the communities including the youth themselves. Initiatives based on these practices can reduce disparities related to tobacco prevalence, exposure to secondhand smoke, and the burden of tobacco-related disease. See also: > Impulsive behavior; > Substance abuse
Suggested Reading U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. (1998). Tobacco use among U.S. racial/ethnic minority groups—African Americans, American Indians and Alaska Natives, Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders, and Hispanics: A report of the Surgeon General. Atlanta, Georgia: U.S. Yolton, K., Dietrich, K., Auinger, P., Lanphear, B. P., & Horning, R. (2005). Exposure to environmental tobacco smoke and cognitive abilities among U.S. children and adolescents. Environmental Health Perspectives, 113(1), 98–103.
Suggested Resources 2003 Youth Risk Behavior Survey—http://www.cdc.gov/tobacco/ nyts2000.htm: This website features a study that provides a
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Social implications of medications/illness
comprehensive look at tobacco use among middle school and high school students. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)—http://www.cdc. gov/HealthyYouth/YRBS/data/2003/yrbs2003codebook. pdf: The CDC website offers the most current information about use and prevalence among middle school and high school students. Information is available on minority youth. Data is available by state and certain cities.
Social Implications of Medications/Illness Nancy Bearss
Social determinates of health are well established and have been addressed in national, state, local, professional, and school s