The role of culture in understanding child sexual offending : examining feminist perspectives

Psychological theories on child sexual abuse continue to dominate etiological and rehabilitative approaches to understanding and treating sexually abusive behavior. However, even though psychological researchers are motivated toward development of comprehensive and highly integrated theories, there has been continued neglect of the cultural dimensions of child sexual abuse. Feminist theories of child sexual abuse have been particularly helpful in filling this explanatory gap, as they have persisted in locating sexually abusive behavior within a cultural context. In this paper we review and critique selected feminist theories on child sexual abuse with the aim of establishing their explanatory scope and utility. Overall, we found that feminist perspectives were useful in justifying and establishing social policies aimed at preventing the sexual abuse of children from ever commencing. However, despite this strength, they offer little guidance in the treatment of individual offenders.

Striving for balance : Australian perspectives on the future of schooling

Interview participants comprised a purposive, theoretical sample of 10 senior education policy leaders from across Australia. Participants argued that the current bureaucratic organisation of schooling would persist in the future because of intensifying pressure for schools to satisfy diverse political priorities; current funding arrangements had established a quasi-market model by default; unresolved tensions about a national curriculum and standardised assessment/accountability for students, teachers, and schools, and a shortage of dynamic, innovative leaders to reconnect public schools with their communities.

Promoting children's social and emotional wellbeing in childcare centers within low socioeconomic areas: strategies, facilitators and challenges

Althought childcare centres have a vital role to play in the social and emotional development of children, the strategies used to promote children’s wellbeing in such settings are not well researched. This study aimed to identify the strategies, facilitators and key challenges for promoting children’s social and emotional wellbeing as reported by childcare directors and workers during semi-structured interviews. They reported mainly informal strategies with few formalised policies, curricula or strategies. Staff reported frequent difficulties communicating with parents and/or children due to many families speaking little or no English. Lack of staff training and inadequate resources for activities were other key challenges they identified. Perceived facilitators included staff having strong relationships with each other and sharing a common philosophy, as well as having an open door policy for parents. Systematic development of skills to promote children’s social and emotional wellbeing could help leverage childcare staff’s potential to promote children’s wellbeing during a crucial stage of child development.

Financial structure and policy of Australia's retirement system

Inoreasing life expectancies for both males and females in the Asia-Pacific region have resulted in an ageing population. Given an ageing p'opulation, adequate income is of increasing importance to people who will experience longer periods in retirement. This paper provides an overview of the structure of the Australian retirement system which includes a means-tested government provided age pension, retirement savings and voluntary savings. Despite policy Initiatives to boost retirement savings and income, it is concluded that due to the relative immaturity of this system it will fail to provide many community groups (baby-boomers, females, low income earners, long-term unemployed, part-time workers) with an adequate retirement income.

Children, visual images, and narratives

Book reviews of 
- Colomer, Teresa, Bettina Kümmerling-Meibauer, and Cecilia Silva-Diaz, eds. New Directions in Picturebook Research. New York: Routledge, 2010
- Edwards, Gail, and Judith Saltman. Picturing Canada: A History of Canadian Children’s Illustrated Books and Publishing. Toronto: U of Toronto P, 2010
- Harding, Jennifer, and Pat Pinsent, eds. What Do You See? International Perspectives on Children’s Book Illustration. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars, 2008
- Lerner, Loren, ed. Depicting Canada’s Children. Waterloo: Wilfrid Laurier UP, 2009
- Pantaleo, Sylvia. Exploring Student Response to Contemporary Picturebooks. Toronto: U of Toronto P, 2009

Influence of family factors and supervised alcohol use on adolescent alcohol use and harms : similarities between youth in different alcohol policy contexts

Objective: Harm-minimization policies suggest that alcohol use is a part of normal adolescent development and that parents should supervise their children's use to encourage responsible drinking. Zero-tolerance policies suggest that all underage alcohol use should be discouraged. This article compared hypotheses derived from harm-minimization and zero-tolerance policies regarding the influence of family context and supervised drinking on adolescent alcohol use and related harms among adolescents in Washington State, USA, and Victoria, Australia. two states that have respectively adopted zero-tolerance and harm-minimization policies.

Method: Representative samples of seventh-grade students (N = 1,945:989 females) were recruited from schools in each state. Students completed comprehensive questionnaires on alcohol use, related problem behaviors, and risk and protective factors annually from 2002 to 2004 when they were in ninth grade.

Results: Relationships between family context and alcohol use and harmful use were very similar in both states. Adult-supervised settings for alcohol use were associated with higher levels of harmful alcohol consequences. Adult-supervised alcohol use mediated the links between favorable parental attitudes to alcohol use and ninth-grade alcohol use for students in both states.

Conclusions: Despite policy differences in the two states, relationships between family context variables and alcohol use and harmful use are remarkably similar. Adult-supervised settings for alcohol use resulted in higher levels of harmful alcohol consequences, contrary to predictions derived from harm-minimization policy. Findings challenge the harm-minimization position that supervised alcohol use or early-age alcohol use will reduce the development of adolescent alcohol problems.

Problematic placement : pathways pre-service teachers’ perspectives on their infant/toddler placement

The inclusion of an infant/toddler placement in a ‘pathways’ early childhood teaching degree, where students already have qualifications and experience in working with young children, can be problematic. This pilot study investigated student teachers’ views on their infant/toddler (birth-to-two-years) placement. Sixty-six students completing their early childhood education degree at an Australian university responded to a survey seeking their perspectives on the effectiveness of the placement in developing teacher confidence, knowledge and skills, and the quality of the supervision they received. The participants had entered their degree with a two-year Diploma of Children’s Services. Responses indicated significant dissatisfaction with the quality of supervision, the absence of teacher-mentors, and the lack of opportunities to practise new approaches. Participants commented that they ‘already knew’ how to work with this age group, and that they aspired to work with older children. The results align with other findings on factors associated with positive placements, and raise questions about the effectiveness of the infant/toddler placement in its current form.

Engaging teachers : towards a radical democratic agenda for schooling

Engaging Teachers' makes a deliberate attempt to reclaim the education discourse captured by new right politics and connect it with a radical democratic agenda for schooling. On its agenda are education markets, policy, leadership, professionalism, and communities. Engaging with these is conceived on at least two levels. First, as an invitation to teachers to become involved in reconstructing schooling for socially just purposes and in democratic ways. From this perspective, the politics of engagement is not simply a matter of acquiescence or resistance but is informed by a commitment to generate alternatives: teachers, parents and students making things happen rather than having things done to them. Also signalled is an intent to work collectively, exploring and acting on common interests and across uncommon ground. Second, the book also celebrates teachers engaging in these reconstructive efforts in attractive and meaningful ways. The attraction is decisions about schooling made by those they affect as well as decisions that are meaningful because they engage the interests of all.

The lived experience of flexible education : theory, policy and practice

The range of rationales that underpin conceptions of flexible education, and the re-making over time of the official meaning of flexibility in national education policy, have led to the point where flexibility might be found, or be required, in nearly every aspect of Australian higher education. This paper seeks to identify those rationales and the development of public policy rhetoric that have framed the development of the meaning of flexible education over time in an Australian context. By considering the intersection of theoretical and policy perspectives on flexible education with the realities of teaching and learning practice in the discipline context of engineering, this paper proposes the essential importance of individual context and agency in the making of real meaning from, and creating practical boundaries around, the otherwise tenuous definitions of flexibility often offered by institutional policy.

Quantities of foods consumed by 12- to 24-month-old New Zealand children

Aim:  The present study aimed to estimate small, median and large daily quantities of frequently consumed foods and identify which food groups are important sources of key micronutrients for 12- to 24-month-old New Zealand children.

Methods:  A community-based cross-sectional survey was conducted in three cities in the South Island of New Zealand. Healthy toddlers (n = 188) were randomly selected using multistage sampling. Three non-consecutive 1-day weighed food records were collected from each child and the frequencies and daily quantities of foods and beverages, and important sources of iron and zinc, were determined.

Results:  Fifty percent or more of the children consumed the following foods at least once over 3 days (median gram intake among toddlers who consumed the food): milk (366 g), white bread (29 g), banana (70 g), potato (34 g), cheese (12 g), apple (39 g), ‘Weetbix’ whole-wheat breakfast cereal (16 g), yeast extract spread (‘Marmite’, ‘Vegemite’) (2 g), carrot (17 g) and margarine (4 g). Dairy, cereals and the meat/fish/poultry/eggs/nuts food group were the most important sources of iron and zinc in the toddlers' diets, providing 69.1% of iron and 86.3% of zinc.

Conclusion:  This research provides dietitians, other health professionals, researchers and policy-makers with detailed information on daily quantities of foods and beverages frequently consumed by toddlers that can be used for dietetic counselling, dietary assessment, and to develop food-based dietary guidelines specifically for toddlers.

Preventing mental health problems in children : the families in mind population-based cluster randomised controlled trial.

Background

Externalising and internalising problems affect one in seven school-aged children and are the single strongest predictor of mental health problems into early adolescence. As the burden of mental health problems persists globally, childhood prevention of mental health problems is paramount. Prevention can be offered to all children (universal) or to children at risk of developing mental health problems (targeted). The relative effectiveness and costs of a targeted only versus combined universal and targeted approach are unknown. This study aims to the effectiveness, costs and uptake of two approaches to early childhood prevention of mental health problems ie: a Combined universal-targeted approach, versus a Targeted only approach, in comparison to current primary care services (Usual care).
Design

Three armed, population-level cluster randomised trial (2010-2014) within the universal, well child Maternal Child Health system, attended by more than 80% of families in Victoria, Australia at infant age eight months. Participants: Families of eight month old children from nine participating local government areas. Randomised to one of three groups: Combined, Targeted or Usual care. Intervention: (a) the Combined universal and targeted program where all families are offered the universal Toddlers Without Tears group parenting program followed by the targeted Family Check-Up one-on-one program or (b) the Targeted Family Check-Up program. The Family Check-Up program is only offered to children at risk of behavioural problems. Analysis: Participants will be analysed according to the trial arm to which they were randomised, using logistic and linear regression models to compare primary and secondary outcomes. An economic evaluation (cost consequences analysis) will compare incremental costs to all incremental outcomes from a societal perspective.
Discussion

This trial will inform public health policy by making recommendations about the effectiveness and cost-effectiveness of these early prevention programs. If effective prevention programs can be implemented at the population level, the growing burden of mental health problems could be curbed.

Learning between schools and hospitals – young people and a curriculum of (dis)connection

As noted in other papers in this volume, a group of health and education researchers and practitioners came together to further develop their understanding of the situation of young people, who were clients of The Royal Children's Hospital Education Institute in 2007 in Melbourne, Australia. The resultant research project, funded by the Australian Research Council Linkage Grant, aimed to understand young people's perspectives on who they are and what matters to them in relation to education connectedness, identity, social relationships, and experiences with professionals. The project team was aware of the persisting patterns of relationships between the hospital, schools, young people, and their families. They were also cognizant of the heavy emphasis in the research and professional literature on evidence from relevant family adults and from health and education professionals. The intention of this project was to put the young people at the centre a study with the stories they told through word and image. Identity issues and school connections framed the analytical work. Thirty-one adolescents dealing with chronic illness participated in this longitudinal qualitative study for a 3-year period of their lives. Given the apparently active role of teachers and health professionals in the lives of these young people, the researchers wanted to include the various relevant adults to see what coherence or lack of coherence existed in the categories, emphases, and values they expressed compared with those of the young people. The researchers have had to determinedly keep their focus on the data from the young people and not be seduced by the familiar and readily accessible data from these professionals. Nonetheless, this data set does provide a ‘curriculum conversation’, which is profitably read behind the stories of the young people and in the foreground of new pathways of curriculum construction. It is this data which informs the work reported in this paper and which has led the researchers to resist the rhetoric of currently held story lines in this field, to see beyond the present hierarchies of power over relevant ‘knowledges’, to maintain a dual focus with the young people at centre stage and the professionals as ‘walk ons /extras’ and to argue for a ‘curriculum of connection’ between young people and the relevant education and health professionals. These issues are readily engaged in arguments for change through the interweaving of larger discourses of inclusivity, curriculum, and policy. This paper works those intersections in the everyday positionings of professionals and young people.

What to do when you can’t (afford to) collect your own data? : a test case using the longitudinal study of Australian children to investigate the influence of parental context on media use and obesity

The dramatic rise in childhood obesity prevalence in the last two decades has prompted concern about the risk factors that may precipitate or maintain weight gain, or both, in early childhood. Media use has long been implicated in policy debates in Australia, particularly around limits to advertising. However the Australian research funding ecology and dominant paradigms in Australian communication and media studies have resulted in a lack of independent, nationally representative studies upon which to base advice. Australian researchers often can’t afford to collect the kind of data they would like in order to intervene productively as policy actors. As a test case for innovative ways round this dilemma, this paper mobilises secondary data analysis methodologies to explore potential influences of parenting on children’s media use and their weight status.

The research reported here uses data from the first three waves of the Longitudinal Study of Australian Children. Results from a path model suggest that children of mothers who were less consistent in the way in which they enforce their rules were more likely to adopt unhealthy lifestyle behaviours, such as sedentary behaviour and consuming unhealthy snacks. Of the lifestyle behaviours considered, time spent watching television or DVDs was the only predictor of child weight status in late childhood. These results suggest a clear pathway linking consistent parenting and other parental practices, children’s lifestyle behaviours and weight status.