An investigation of the relationship between maltreatment and alcohol and other drug (AOD) problems in African -American and Hispanic adolescent girls

Maltreatment experienced in childhood or adolescence is a known risk factor for later problem alcohol and/or other drug (AOD) use (Bailey & McCloskey, 2005; Shin, Edwards, Heeren, 2009). A growing body of empirical work has found significant associations between adolescent girls’ AOD use and maltreatment experiences. However, questions remain as to how this relation unfolds with African-American and Hispanic adolescent girls. Guided by four relational models that have been proposed in the literature, this study examined the links between maltreatment, trauma symptoms, and alcohol and/or other drug (AOD) problems in a sample of 170 African-American and Hispanic adolescent girls who were participants in a school-based AOD use intervention. Results of this study revealed that maltreatment experiences (physical and emotional abuse) were positively related to trauma symptoms, which were positively related to AOD problem severity, alcohol abuse, alcohol dependency, drug abuse, and drug dependency. Perceived discrimination moderated this relation between sexual abuse and trauma symptoms, such that more perceived discrimination resulted in a stronger effect of sexual abuse on trauma symptoms. Ethnic identity moderated the relation between sexual abuse and AOD problem severity, such that ethnic identity demonstrated protective properties in the relation between sexual abuse and AOD problem severity. My research adds to extant knowledge on the relation between maltreatment and AOD use in adolescent girls and suggests the importance of developing interventions targeting maltreatment and AOD use concurrently.

An Investigation of the Relationship Between Maltreatment and Alcohol and Other Drug (AOD) Use Among African-American and Hispanic Adolescent Girls

Maltreatment experienced in childhood or adolescence is a known risk factor for later problem alcohol and/or other drug (AOD) use (Bailey & McCloskey, 2005; Shin, Edwards, Heeren, 2009). A growing body of empirical work has found significant associations between adolescent girls’ AOD use and maltreatment experiences. However, questions remain as to how this relation unfolds with African-American and Hispanic adolescent girls. Guided by four relational models that have been proposed in the literature, this study examined the links between maltreatment, trauma symptoms, and alcohol and/or other drug (AOD) problems in a sample of 170 African-American and Hispanic adolescent girls who were participants in a school-based AOD use intervention. Results of this study revealed that maltreatment experiences (physical and emotional abuse) were positively related to trauma symptoms, which were positively related to AOD problem severity, alcohol abuse, alcohol dependency, drug abuse, and drug dependency. Perceived discrimination moderated this relation between sexual abuse and trauma symptoms, such that more perceived discrimination resulted in a stronger effect of sexual abuse on trauma symptoms. Ethnic identity moderated the relation between sexual abuse and AOD problem severity, such that ethnic identity demonstrated protective properties in the relation between sexual abuse and AOD problem severity. My research adds to extant knowledge on the relation between maltreatment and AOD use in adolescent girls and suggests the importance of developing interventions targeting maltreatment and AOD use concurrently.

Accommodating Muslim Minorities in Secular Societies: Public Education in England, Scotland, Ontario, and Quebec

Abstract This thesis examines one of the most sensitive challenges facing contemporary democracies: the accommodation of Muslim minorities in public institutions and services. It focuses on the field of education, and on two particular issues: the public funding of Islamic schools and the accommodation of Muslim needs in public secular schools. The analysis is based on an examination of outcomes in four jurisdictions that differ significantly in the level of accommodation that has emerged: England, Scotland, Ontario, and Quebec. I seek to explain why such variation in outcomes exists among these four cases. I draw on four bodies of literature to underpin the theoretical framework: historical institutionalism, political mobilization by civil society, political parties, and ideationalism. My argument can be summarized simply; historic church-state settlements, unique in each case, are the most important factor explaining the variation in outcomes in England, Scotland, Ontario, and Quebec. In some cases, the historic church-state template is incrementally adapted to accommodate Muslim minorities. In other cases, relatively little accommodation occurs and the path-dependent trajectory of church-state relations remains entrenched. While the historic church-state template is a necessary factor in the explanation, it does not fully account for the variation. For a more complete picture, I demonstrate that there are several additional key factors that also shape the outcomes: first, national identity and public attitudes towards immigration and immigrants; second, the extent of mobilization by political agents, such as civil society organizations and historic churches; and third, the response of political parties to demands by Muslims for institutional accommodation. Ultimately, I conclude that Muslims in these jurisdictions are receiving some accommodation, but the process is slow and partial. This thesis makes important theoretical and empirical contributions to the discussion of Muslim integration in liberal democratic states. First, a framework has yet to be developed that considers the theoretical implications of institutional accommodation of Muslims; I address this gap. Second, this research demonstrates the utility of historical institutionalism in explaining the adaptation of church-state templates to accommodate Muslims’ demands. Last, this study makes an original contribution by comparing the cases of England, Scotland, Ontario, and Quebec in the accommodation of Muslims in education. A comparison of Canada with the United Kingdom has not yet been done.  

Patterns of time use among regional and rural adolescent girls: associations with correlates of physical activity and health-related quality of life

OBJECTIVES: To describe patterns of time use among regional and rural adolescent girls and compare identified clusters with respect to correlates of physical activity (PA) and health-related quality of life (HRQoL).

DESIGN: Cross-sectional PA and lifestyle survey.

METHODS: Data were from Year 7-9 adolescent girls (aged 12-15 years) from 16 schools involved in a cluster-randomised trial in regional and rural Victoria, Australia (n=494). Time use data were collected using 24-h Previous Day Physical Activity Recall (PDPAR-24) questionnaire, collapsed into 17 categories of time use. Differences between time use clusters with regard to demographics, correlates of PA and HRQoL measured using PedsQL 4.0 Generic Core Scales, were investigated.

RESULTS: Two time use clusters were identified and were associated with correlates of PA and HRQoL. Girls who spent significantly more time in teams sports, non-team sports, school classes, watching TV and sleeping had higher levels of positively aligned PA correlates (e.g. self-efficacy, perceived sports competence) and HRQoL than girls characterised with high levels of computer use and video gaming. CONCLUSIONS: These findings highlight how different activity patterns of regional and rural girls affect HRQoL and can inform future intervention strategies to improve PA levels and HRQoL. Clusters characterised by low levels of PA and high computer use and video gaming require targeted interventions to address barriers to their participation.

‘There isn’t kind of a White History Month or anything like that for them’: equity, schooling and the problematics of group identity politics

This paper explores issues of equity and group identity at ‘Hamilton Court’, a large comprehensive multi-faith and multi-cultural school located in England. The exploration draws on data gathered from a study that examined the conditions, structures and practices associated with productively addressing issues of justice and cultural diversity. The paper focuses, in particular, on the voices of two learning mentors, ‘Rosanna’ and ‘Yasmeen’. With reference to a cultural event at the school based around an Asian-inspired Bollywood Dance Festival, the school’s approach to absence requests on the basis of religious observance, and the disadvantage experienced by a particular White British working class boy, the paper highlights tensions and problematics associated with issues of equity, schooling and group identity. The paper makes a theoretical contribution to debates in this area. Further illustrating the limitations of distributive understandings of equity that begin with group identity politics and fail to consider matters of context in struggles against cultural oppressions, it examines the possibilities of an equity approach that instead begins with a focus on overcoming these relations of oppression.

The politics of Britishness: multiculturalism, schooling and social cohesion

This paper is set against a backdrop of contemporary concerns about Britishness. It explores the dominant view that unprecedented levels of cultural diversity within western contexts such as the UK are undermining social cohesion and are attributable to minority groups’ failure to connect or assimilate with mainstream ‘British’ (read White Anglo) culture. The paper focuses on how these issues play out for several of the key teachers at ‘Hamilton Court’, a large English comprehensive multicultural school. Despite the school being a socially cohesive space, these teachers were concerned with students’ lack of affiliation with ‘British’ culture. The paper examines these concerns through critical lenses that problematise reductionist and racialised understandings of Britishness and assumptions that associate an affiliation with Britishness with generating social cohesion. Against this backdrop, the paper provides further warrant for continued critical discussion about issues of Britishness, multiculturalism and schooling.

Boys, productive pedagogies and social justice

The issue of boys' education continues to dominate the gender agenda in Australian Education. Whilst concerned with the direction much of this debate has taken, we recognise that there are issues for some boys stemming from the ways in which certain masculinities have been valorised within the various communities that different boys inhabit. This paper will draw on a range of voices from schools to stress the importance of providing boys with curricula, pedagogies and assessment tasks that provide them with opportunities to explore and critically analyse their personal experiences of what it means to be 'masculine'. We argue that such an approach to boys' education has to avoid treating boys as 'disadvantaged' and instead has to be cognisant of the complexities surrounding gendered relations of power operating within boys' various communities. We suggest that the productive pedagogies framework provides an avenue through which such an approach to boys' education can be taken up in schools. We are mindful, however, that the gender just enactment of this pedagogical framework requires that teachers draw on key threshold knowledges about gender, masculinity and schooling. We present some of these knowledges and demonstrate their imperative in moving beyond reinscription to transformation of the gendered relations that constrain boys' and girls' schooling experiences.

Schooling and social justice through the lenses of Nancy Fraser

This review essay draws on Nancy Fraser's work as featured in Adding insult to injury: Nancy Fraser debates her critics to explore issues of schooling and social justice. The review focuses on the applicability and usefulness of Fraser's three dimensional model for understanding matters of justice in education. It begins with an overview of the principles of economic, cultural and political justice as they are reflected in specific examples of equity and schooling policy and practice.This is followed by (1) a consideration of Fraser's concerns that current forms of identity politics are reifying group identity and displacing matters of distributive justice and (2) with an account of her concerns about the political justice issues of representation and misframing in the contemporary global era. With reference to the sphere of Indigenous education, the review examines some of the problematics involved in pursuing distributive, recognitive and representative justice. Fraser's'status model' is presented as a way through these problematics because it engages with a politics that begins with overcoming status subordination rather than with a politics of group identity. Against this theoretical backdrop, the final section of the review briefly considers some of the future challenges for schooling and social justice.

Schooling and social justice through the lenses of Nancy Fraser

This review essay draws on Nancy Fraser's work as featured in Adding insult to injury: Nancy Fraser debates her critics to explore issues of schooling and social justice. The review focuses on the applicability and usefulness of Fraser's three-dimensional model for understanding matters of justice in education. It begins with an overview of the principles of economic, cultural and political justice as they are reflected in specific examples of equity and schooling policy and practice. This is followed by (1) a consideration of Fraser's concerns that current forms of identity politics are reifying group identity and displacing matters of distributive justice and (2) with an account of her concerns about the political justice issues of representation and misframing in the contemporary global era. With reference to the sphere of Indigenous education, the review examines some of the problematics involved in pursuing distributive, recognitive and representative justice. Fraser's ‘status model’ is presented as a way through these problematics because it engages with a politics that begins with overcoming status subordination rather than with a politics of group identity. Against this theoretical backdrop, the final section of the review briefly considers some of the future challenges for schooling and social justice.

Supporting minority students through a reflexive approach to empowerment

Referring to the experiences of three Muslim refugee girls recently settled in Australia, this paper examines issues of schooling and empowerment. The paper draws on teacher and student interview data from a study that investigated inclusive approaches to addressing issues of cultural diversity in a secondary state high school in Queensland. The paper foregrounds the girls’ highly positive views of their experiences at the school; views that reflect the girls’ access to spaces of empowerment but belie the complexity and tensions involved in how empowerment was understood and approached by educators at the school. Theorising empowerment through poststructural understandings of agency, the paper examines conditions and ways of understanding that make possible spaces of empowerment for the girls. In particular, the paper argues for a reflexive approach to empowerment that is informed by an understanding of the framing discourses shaping minority student identity and a critical reflection on educator and school positionality.

Kids, counsellors and troubles-telling : morality-in-action in talk on an Australian children’s helpline

This chapter investigates one instance of ‘morality-in-action’, which transpires when children describe their troubles to the adult counsellors at Kids Help Line, an Australian national helpline that deals specifically with callers aged approximately 5-18 years. We focus, in particular, on how a young female caller who has forged a medical certificate in relation to a problem with school attendance, determines both what to report, and how this should be disclosed. Throughout the call, the moral implications of the troubles talk are delicately managed by both caller and counsellor. The call takes the form of an extended story (Labov & Waletzky, 1997) that includes a preface (‘I have some problems at school’), an orientation (“I was sick, went to the doctor, stayed home”), a complicating action (“I went back to school and photocopied my certificate from last time”), result (“I got caught”) and evaluation (“I don’t know why it happened”). As the account unfolds, we observe how both the student and counsellor seek to make sense of these actions. While this account is partly about deception, both the caller and counsellor delicately sidestep naming this action, precluding this implication. For example, the counsellor lets stand the caller’s main assessment of the trouble. He simply asks, “so what happened then,” when the caller reports that her forgery was discovered. The caller, from the very beginning of the call, seeks to find out why she could have done this, “you see I don’t know why it happened”. As the call unfolds, the counsellor follows the opening provided by the caller and they put forward motives for consideration. By agreeing that the motives are to be explored, the act takes on a character other than deception.

Children's self-talk and academic self-concepts: The impact of teachers' statements

Data were collected from 269 Australian primary school children in grades 3 to 7. Self-report questionnaires measuring students' perceptions of the frequency of positive and negative statements directed to them by their teacher, their positive and negative self-talk; and their reading, mathematics and learning self-concepts were administered. Positive statements made by teachers were found to be directly related to positive self-talk and to maths and learning self-concepts. Teachers' positive statements were also indirectly related to reading self-concept through positive self-talk. Negative statements made by teachers were not predictive of self-talk or self-concepts for the total sample but were predictive of maths self-concept for girls and negative self-talk for boys. Implications for teachers and educational psychologists are discussed.

Gender differences in children's classroom behaviour and teacher-child relationships in early childhood: An Australian Study

Background: In the early school years, children need positive attitudes to school and experiences that promote academic and social competence. Positive relationships between children and teachers make a significant contribution to school achievement and social competence. Girls are more likely to display positive classroom behaviours and positive approaches to learning than boys. Gender differences have also been noted in teacher-child relationships. This study investigated the relationship between gender differences in classroom behaviour and gender differences in teacher-child relationships in the early years. Method: Data were drawn from The Longitudinal Study of Australian Children (LSAC). LSAC is a cross-sequential cohort study funded by the Australian Government. In these analyses, Wave 1 (2004) and Wave 2 (2006) data for 4464 children in the Kindergarten Cohort were used. Children, at Wave 2, were in the early years of formal school. They had a mean age of 6.8 years (SD= 0.24). Measures included a 6-item measure of Approaches to Learning (task persistence, independence) and teacher ratings on the SDQ. Teachers rated their relationships with children on the short form of the STRS. Results: Girls were found to have more positive relationships with their teachers and to display more positive classroom behaviours than boys. Teachers described their relationships with boys as less close than their relationships with girls and rated girls as displaying more positive approaches to learning and fewer problem behaviours than boys. Positive teacher – child relationships were significantly related to more positive classroom behaviours. The quality of the teacher-child relationship at time 1 (Wave 1) was the best predictor of the quality of the teacher-child relationship at time 2 (Wave 2). Conclusions: Findings highlight the importance of developing positive learning related classroom behaviours in understanding successful school transition and the key role played by early positive teacher-child relationships in promoting school adjustment.

Ethnic differences in body composition and anthropometric characteristics in Australian Caucasian and urban Indigenous children

The objective was to compare ethnic differences in anthropometry, including size, proportions and fat distribution, and body composition in a cohort of seventy Caucasian (forty-four boys, twenty-six girls) and seventy-four urban Indigenous (thirty-six boys, thirty-eight girls) children (aged 9–15 years). Anthropometric measures (stature, body mass, eight skinfolds, thirteen girths, six bone lengths and five bone breadths) and body composition assessment using dual-energy X-ray absorptiometry were conducted. Body composition variables including total body fat percentage and percentage abdominal fat were determined and together with anthropometric indices, including BMI (kg/m2), abdominal:height ratio (AHtR) and sum of skinfolds, ethnic differences were compared for each sex. After adjustment for age, Indigenous girls showed significantly (P < 0·05) greater trunk circumferences and proportion of overweight and obesity than their Caucasian counterparts. In addition, Indigenous children had a significantly greater proportion (P < 0·05) of trunk fat. The best model for total and android fat prediction included sum of skinfolds and age in both sexes (>93 % of variation). Ethnicity was only important in girls where abdominal circumference and AHtR were included and Indigenous girls showed significantly (P < 0·05) smaller total/android fat deposition than Caucasian girls at the given abdominal circumference or AHtR values. Differences in anthropometric and fat distribution patterns in Caucasian and Indigenous children may justify the need for more appropriate screening criteria for obesity in Australian children relevant to ethnic origin.

Intergroup relations and Muslims’ mental health in Western societies

This review article proposes that theories and research of intergroup contact, prejudice, and acculturation, enhance understanding of the current intercultural relations between Muslims and non-Muslims in Western societies, such as in Australia. The actual and perceived prejudice that many Muslims studying, working, and living in the West have been experiencing following the 2001 terrorist attacks, adds an additional layer of stress to the psychosocial adjustment of Muslim immigrants and sojourners, affecting their cross-cultural adaptation and mental health. Stephan and colleagues’ Integrated Threat Theory argues that the perceived threat experienced by all parties, explains the acts of prejudice. Berry’s acculturation framework highlights that adaptive acculturation is determined by congruent host nation policies and practices and immigrant acculturation strategies. Implications for multicultural policy, intercultural training, and mental health practice, and suggestions for future research, are discussed.