Education Commons^™

Connecting The Dots: Threat Assessment, Depression And The Troubled Student, Valerie Harwood

Valerie Harwood

On April 18, 2007, a package containing over twenty digital videos arrived at the NBC building in New York city. Within a short time the material had been publicly broadcast, and images of Seung Hui Cho soon appeared on Youtube. Two days earlier the twenty-three year-old university student had been responsible for what has been claimed to be the worst mass shooting in the United States. Just days after the mass shooting, the Governor of Virginia, Timothy M. Kaine convened a review panel that was comprised of nine “nationally recognized individuals” across the disciplines of “law enforcement, security, governmental management, …

Neither Good Nor Useful: Looking Ad Vivum In Children's Assessments Of Fat And Healthy Boides, Valerie Harwood

Valerie Harwood

Fat bodies are not, fait accompli, bad. Yet in our international research we found overwhelmingly that fat functioned as a marker to indicate health or lack of health. A body with fat was simply and conclusively unhealthy. This paper reports on how this unbalanced view of fat was tied to assessments of healthy bodies that were achieved by the act of looking. Despite the efforts of health education in each of the three countries in our study, children and young people cited the act of looking at bodies to assess health and when they did they arrived at the conclusion …

The New Outsiders: Adhd And Disadvantage, Valerie Harwood

Valerie Harwood

Recent research has pointed to the uneven distribution of diagnoses of Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, with disproportionately high numbers in areas marked by poverty (Gifford Sawyer et al., 2004; Olfsen et al., 2003). This chapter examines this issue of ADHD and social and economic disadvantage. Drawing on research with youth professionals from some of the most disadvantaged communities in Australia, the chapter puts forward the case that the ADHD phenomenon has highly problematic effects on the lives of children and young people in these communities. The intent is to show how the ADHD phenomenon interacts with disadvantage, and suggest how …

Diagnosing Disorderly Children: A Critique Of Behaviour Disorder Discourses, Valerie Harwood

Valerie Harwood

Based on the author's in-depth research with children diagnosed with behavioural difficulties, this book provides a thorough critique of today's practices, examining:

*The traditional analyses of behavioural disorders and the making of disorderly children *The influence of the 'expert knowledge' on behavioural disorders and its influence on schools, communities and new generations of teachers *The effect of discourses of mental disorder on children and young people *The increasing medicalisation of young children with drugs such as Ritalin.

This book offers an innovative and accessible analysis of a critical issue facing schools and society today, using Foucaultian notions to pose critical …