Digital Commons Network^™

Building Effective School-Family-Community Partnerships Through Community Dialogues; And Super Friends, Super Readers! Engaging Community To Support Young Children's Social Emotional Development, Angel Fettig, Kaitlin Gould, Lauren Brodsky

Office of Community Partnerships Posters

Super Friends, Super Readers! guides children through interactive shared reading sessions by using dialogic reading techniques that aim to support the development of social emotional skills. In a separate project, UMass Boston and the YWMC offered a series of community dialogues among a diverse group of parents and educators to instill a greater sense of trust and overcome unintentional racial divides that have impeded effective parent engagement and student achievement.

An Evil Threat To Marriage, Children And The Future: Queer Theory, "The Passion Of The Christ," And Evangelical Political Rhetoric, Richard Wolff

Journal of Religion & Film

This article employs queer theory to analyze Mel Gibson’s film The Passion of the Christ (2004) for its portrayal of queer characters (Satan and Herod) in contrast with non-queer (Pilate and Claudia, Seraphia, Simon the Cyrene, and Mary, Christ’s mother), and how it depicts the former as evil and the latter as good. In particular, these contrasts involve self-indulgent or predatory sexual expression versus a healthy marital relationship, and evil versus loving influences over children, who represent hope for the future. Finally, the article looks at the film’s heavy marketing to American evangelicals and how the symbolic representations in the …

Swim For Fun: The Importance Of Open Swim For Children With Special Needs, Sarah K. Lowes

Capstone Projects and Master's Theses

Swimming can be a valuable activity for children with special needs, but parents may not feel comfortable taking their child to public pool facilities. The researcher investigated how parents feel about taking their child with special needs to open swim. Members of aquatic organizations were asked how to create a safe swim program that allows children to have their own time to swim. Findings from the interviews and research literature revealed that children with special needs would benefit both physically and socially from having an open swim program tailored to them. An open swim program was developed that provided children …

The Development Of English And Chinese Oral Language Through Drawing For Primary Grade Students, Minzhi Yu

Capstone Projects and Master's Theses

This research explored how the drawings of five-to seven-year-old children reflect their interests and emotions. This research also evaluated the role these drawings played in their literacy education and development. Two groups of students were compared in regards to the impact drawing had on their literacy development. The experimental group received the drawing intervention while the control group received literacy instruction only. Teachers were interviewed to ascertain whether the intervention affected the students’ literacy development, as well as to gain insight into children’s thinking emanating from their drawings. It was found that the students who used drawing as a complement …

Maturing Justice: Integrating The Convention On The Rights Of The Child Into The Judgments And Processes Of The International Criminal Court, Linda A. Malone

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Pubh 4230 A - Maternal And Child Health, Val Malika Reagon

College of Public Health: Faculty Syllabi (2014-2021)

This course will review the historical and contemporary maternal and child health trends and issues. The application of health behavior and education theories to understanding the health status of women and their children will be central to the course. Emphasis is on promotion and education efforts designed to improve the health, well­being, and quality of life for women and children globally.

Flourishing Rights, Wendy A. Bach

Michigan Law Review

There is something audacious at the heart of Clare Huntington’s Failure to Flourish. She insists that the state exists to ensure that families flourish. Not just that they survive, or not starve, or be able, somehow, to make ends meet—but that they flourish. She demands this not just for some families but, importantly, for all families. This simple, bold, and profoundly countercultural demand allows Huntington to make a tremendously convincing case that the state can begin to do precisely that. Failure to Flourish is a brave, rigorously produced, carefully researched, and politically astute book. Huntington seeks to persuade a wide …

Cyberbullying Prevention: Intervention Effects On Student Involvement, Sarah Nash Bumpas

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Capstones

Repeated studies show that cyberbullying is pervasive amongst adolescents. Cyberbullying can lead to self-harm, depression, and suicidal thoughts. Educators are called to intervene in educating students about cyberbullying through research and federal legislation. However, there is little research examining whether this education is taking place or having an effect.

This study investigates the relationship between the incidences of cyberbullying victimization and offending over time and the direct cyberbullying instruction and activities facilitated by classroom teachers. The study took place amongst sixth graders in Jefferson County Public Schools, a large urban school district located in northern Kentucky. Students in one school …

Effects Of Explicit Print Referencing On The Print Awareness Of A Child With Severe Disabilities, Mallory Roberts, Blake Hansen

Journal of Undergraduate Research

This great opportunity of being awarded an ORCA grant allowed me to pursue and share my research with others at an Applied Behavioral Analysis International Conference. I was able to take my research study and present it with many ABA professionals at the conference held in Chicago, IL. Participating in such a conference enlightened my understanding of my own research method and taught me many other research methods unique from what I already knew.

Tackling Wicked Food Issues: Applying The Wicked Problems Approach In Higher Education To Promote Healthy Eating Habits In American School Children, Ann Marie Fauvel, Danielle L. Lake

Faculty Peer Reviewed Articles

Life-long healthy eating habits linked with sustainable local agricultural practices, as “wicked problems” in the United States, are intractable, on-going, and high-stakes issues. An interdisciplinary university course was developed to engage students in participatory research and fieldwork on the inextricably linked dimensions of food, health, and sustainability. Students worked with community partners, stakeholders, and experts to address the specific interdisciplinary issues of diet and promotion of healthy eating habits in American school children. Using a “bottom-up” approach, students co-developed projects with stakeholders (including school children) to empower movement for change. This interactive research process created an iterative feedback loop which …

Gender Differences In Depression Across Parental Roles, Kevin Shafer, Garrett T. Pace

Faculty Publications

Prior research has focused on the relationship between parenthood and psychological well-being, with mixed results. Some studies have also addressed potential gender differences in this relationship, again yielding varied findings. One reason may be methodological choices pursued in these studies, including the lack of focus on combined parental roles (for example, biological parent and stepparent). The authors used data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, 1979 (N = 6,276) and multinomial treatment models to address how combined roles influence depressive symptoms in mothers and fathers. Further, they explored potential gender differences. Their results indicated that having multiple parental roles …

Show And Tell?: Students' Personal Lives, Schools, And Parents, Emily Gold Waldman

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

Public schools learn about their students' personal lives in many ways. Some are passive: a teacher observes a student kissing someone, or overhears a conversation among friends. But schools also engage in more active information-gathering about students' personal lives, through surveys and informal conversations between students and teachers, administrators, school psychologists, counselors, coaches, and other personnel. This Article explores the competing privacy considerations that result from such encounters. Once schools have learned highly personal information about their students, does it violate those students' privacy rights to disclose that information to their parents? Or does keeping the information secret violate the …

Bullying And Peer Victimization: An Examination Of Cognitive And Psychosocial Constructs, Kisha M. Radliff, Cixin Wang, Susan M. Swearer

Department of Educational Psychology: Faculty Publications

Research has demonstrated a link between internalizing factors and bullying perpetration and peer victimization; however, few studies have examined predictors of cognitive and psychosocial factors, such as locus of control and hopelessness. The current study examined cognitive and psychosocial factors in bullying perpetration and peer victimization in a sample of 469 middle school students. A mediator model of hopelessness was also investigated. Students involved in bullying reported a greater external locus of control compared with peers who were not involved in bullying. Bully victims endorsed the highest externality. Results showed that hopelessness fully mediated the relationship between verbal/relational victimization and …

Liturgy, Anthropology, And Life Cycle, Kathy Smith

Symposium on Worship Archive

How do children worship best? How can worship help young people through the teen years? What practices of worship resonate most with adults and elderly people? This workshop will look at the human life cycle and the developmental stages that all people grow through (cognitive, sensorimotor, psychological, moral, and faith development), and will consider what this means for all ages to participate fully in worship.

A Moral Developmental Perspective On Children's Eyewitness Identification: Does Intent Matter?, Toni Spring, Herbert D. Saltzstein, Bianca Vidal

Publications and Research

Plain English Abstract These studies are based on the assumption that when adults, adolescents or children identify someone as the "guilty" one, i.e., the person who committed the act, they are not only making an identification based on memory and thinking, but also a moral decision. This is because, by the act of identifying or not identifying someone, the eyewitness runs the risk of either convicting an innocent person , i.e., making false positive error or letting a guilty person go free, i.e., a false negative error. Our interest is less in the overall accuracy of their identifications and more …

“It’S A Puzzle!” Elementary School-Agedyouth Concept-Mapping The Intersections Ofcommunity Narratives, Jesica S. Fernández, Angela Nguyen, Regina Day Langhout

Ethnic Studies

We present a concept-mapping activity, developed within a youth Participatory Action Research (yPAR) after-school program, to demonstrate how the activity contributed to young people’s conceptualization of social structures as interconnected. We analyze fieldnotes from the Change 4 Good yPAR program, which includes primarily Latina/o 4th and 5th grade students attending a California public elementary school. We discuss the concept-mapping activity in terms of its processes and outcomes, and how youth constructed interconnected meanings from thematic community narratives.

Playing With Knives: The Socialization Of Self-Initiated Learners, David F. Lancy

Sociology, Social Work and Anthropology Faculty Publications

Since Margaret Mead's field studies in the South Pacific a century ago, there has been the tacit understanding that as culture varies, so too must the socialization of children to become competent culture users and bearers. More recently, the work of anthropologists has been mined to find broader patterns that may be common to childhood across a range of societies. One improbable commonality has been the tolerance, even encouragement, of toddler behavior that is patently risky, such as playing with or attempting to use a sharp-edged tool. This laissez faire approach to socialization follows from a reliance on children as …

From Temperament To Character, Andrew Mullins

Philosophy Conference Papers

No abstract is available for this paper.

Young Adult Children’S Communicative Management Of Emotions About Divorce And Divorce Disclosures: Creating And Applying A New Measure, Jenna Shimkowski

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Although scholars have examined the impacts of divorce on children, there has been little research focused on how children communicatively manage and make sense of their emotions following the divorce. Theoretically, the communication field is lacking in the knowledge of ways in which children of divorce handle the emotions that can arise in their new family system. This dissertation consists of two studies. Study 1 included identifying the strategies that young adult children report using to manage their emotions regarding parents’ divorce and creating a new measure based on children’s reports of these management strategies. Young adults reported using verbal …

Children As A Reserve Labor Force, David F. Lancy

Sociology, Social Work and Anthropology Faculty Publications

Human life history is unique in the great length of the juvenile or immature period. The lengthened period is often attributed to the time required for youth to master the culture, particularly subsistence and survival skills. But an increasing number of studies show that children become skilled well before they gain complete independence and the status of adults. It seems, as they learn through play and participation in the domestic economy, children are acquiring a “reserve capacity” of skills and knowledge, which they may not fully employ for many years. The theory offered here to resolve this paradox poses that, …

An Exploration Of The Culture Care Experiences Of Puerto Rican Families With A Child With Special Health Care Needs As Perceived By The Family Caregiver, Karen S. Rousseau

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Advances in medical care have resulted in rising numbers of children living with chronic illness. Nurses care for families with special needs during all aspects of their care from the office visit, the inpatient stay, and in the home. Therefore, nurses need to be highly skilled and sensitive to the families' cultural needs in order to assist with coping and the daily challenges they face. This study explored the culture care experiences of Puerto Rican families with a child with special health care needs as perceived by the family caregiver. This family member is the individual who has the greatest …

Personality Factors And Adversities Faced As Predictors Of Resilience Of Children In Foster Care, Ciera Lipps

Theses & ETDs

Psychological resilience is considered a combination of internal and external factors that lead to positive psychological development despite facing adversities. Personality factors and the number of adversities faced by an individual have been examined in relation to resilience in children in the general population, however, how these factors relate specifically to children who are in foster care has not been examined. Based on previous findings with adults, it was hypothesized that extraversion, agreeableness, and conscientiousness would be positively correlated with resilience in children in foster care, while neuroticism would be negatively correlated with resilience in these children. It was also …

Military Law: Time To Mandate Best Interests Of The Child To Restrict Deployments Of Parents That Affect Preschool Children, John A. Lynch Jr.

All Faculty Scholarship

As America viewed the first massive deployment of its all-volunteer force at the beginning of the first Persian Gulf War, one journalist commented:

When this war is over, Americans need to do some serious thinking about the all-volunteer armed forces, the one legacy of the Vietnam War with which the nation seemed comfortable. Among other things, we have to decide whether a single parent, and, in many cases, both parents, should be deployed in war zones.

Is the nation's reliance on an army of volunteers worth the emotional grief that comes from ripping military parents away from their children? Do …

A Model To Compare Community-Based And Outpatient Settings For Pediatric Rehabilitation: An Example From South Carolina, Charlene Lenker

MUSC Theses and Dissertations

Implementation of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) has changed the dynamics of how health care is delivered throughout the United States. The purpose of this study was to develop a cost model as a tool that may be customized to calculate costs and compare community-based and outpatient settings for pediatric rehabilitation in South Carolina. Community-based services, in contrast to the outpatient rehabilitation setting has raised questions among rehabilitation professionals and payers of whether outpatient services in contrast to community-based services are more cost-effective, or at least cost neutral. The use of a cost model is important to identify cost-comparisons of …

Children And Disaster Education: An Analysis Of Disaster Risk Reduction Within The School Curricula Of Oregon, Texas, And The Philippines, Ashley Merchant

MA IDS Thesis Projects

For the past few decades, there has been a significant increase in the intensity and frequency of disasters. This has created a growing interest in the issue of disaster risk reduction among the global population. Past research has shown that proper planning and the use of protective measures can reduce the effects of a disastrous event. Preparedness is not only the responsibility of a nation’s government or relief agencies, but also of every member of the community, including the vulnerable population of children. The United Nations has called for disaster risk reduction education to be implemented in schools around the …

Expressive Arts As A Means Of Increasing Well-Being In Children, Danielle L. Barnes-Smith, Jordan Frotz, Hanasara Ito, Johannah Kohorst, Emily Vascimini

Undergraduate Theses, Professional Papers, and Capstone Artifacts

The purpose of this research is to discover the extent to which expressive arts increase well-being in children. Expressive arts are being defined here as theatre, dance, art, and creative writing. Well-being is defined as self-efficacy and self-worth. The project was carried out in a four-week expressive arts program designed to teach fifth grade elementary school students a variety of artistic disciplines (i.e. theatre, dance, art, and creative writing). Both before and after the workshop, the students completed measures of self-worth and self-efficacy; these measures were used to identify changes in students from the beginning of the program to the …

Discovering The Chinese Mining Child: The Archaeology Of Children And Childhood In Multicultural American Mining Communities, Nicole A. Lane

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Children made up roughly one-quarter of the population of industrial boomtowns in the

North American West, underscoring the connections of family to places commonly

thought to be bachelor communities. By comparing artifacts and historical contexts from

three mining communities (Butte, Montana; Deadwood, South Dakota; and Sandpoint,

Idaho) established in the late 19th century, this thesis will contribute to archaeologies of

children, childhood, and socialization, examining material remains as a line of evidence

to study the ways in which relationships, gender, race, and class pervaded the lives of

children in these industrial settings. The methods employed here integrate information

from historical …

Visual Processing In Reading Disorders And Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder And Its Contribution To Basic Reading Ability, Michelle Y. Kibby, Sarah M. Dyer, Sarah A. Vadnais, Audreyana C. Jager, Gabriel A. Casher, Maria Stacy

Publications

No abstract provided.

Transition: A Concept Of Significance To Nursing And Health Care Professionals, Nabeel Al-Yateem, Charles Docherty

Centre for Innovation in Medical Education

The concept of transition has growing significance within the healthcare settings. Healthcare professionals’ encounters with patients and family during periods of health-illness transitions in addition to other transitions (e.g., developmental) can be significant. Therefore healthcare professionals should be aware of the meaning and the process of transition, to ensure efficient and competent provision of care. This paper will explore the concept of transition in the context of healthcare, and will suggest strategies to enable professionals to manage transition effectively.

Group Social Skills Interventions For Children With Aspergers: The Effects Of Parent-Guided Social Skills Software, Ryan M. Kelly

Theses and Dissertations

Asperger’s syndrome (AS) has recently become controversial as a unique pervasive developmental disorder. Although it is apparently different than low-functioning autism, it has been deemed too similar to high-functioning autism (HFA) to be considered a distinct diagnosis in the DSM-5 classification system. However, despite the removal of AS from the DSM-5, research shows that both AS and HFA are significantly different than autism with cognitive impairment (intelligence quotient <= 70), and therefore have different treatment needs. These needs primarily include specialized social skills training. Youth with AS/HFA who obtain sufficient social skills often report greater levels of quality of life and lower levels of anxiety and depression. Their parents also report less parental stress. Although a growing number of evidence-based social skill interventions exist, few use an experimental design and incorporate special interest areas (i.e., the pervasive interests of children with AS), generalization techniques (e.g., different settings, parent inclusion) or computer mediation, which research suggests is needed. Using an experimental design, this study investigated the incremental benefits of parent-guided social skills software (i.e., Social Express) in improving social, emotional and behavioral functioning in the child, as well as reduce parental-stress in the parent. Thirty youths with AS/HFA enrolled in a 9-week social skills group at a clinic participated in this study, as well as their parents. Half were randomly assigned to receive Social Express. Results indicated that the treatment group showed significant improvements in social motivation compared to the control group. No significant main effects were found in regards to other social skills, internalizing problems, adaptive skills, parental stress, or life satisfaction; however, it should be noted that this study is limited by a small sample size. Other significant effects may exist, and should be investigated in the future with a larger sample size.