Parents' reported use and views of strategies for managing the behaviour of their preschool child

The aim of the research was two-fold: firstly, to investigate strategies used by Australian parents to encourage desirable child behaviours and to decrease undesirable behaviours; secondly, to determine the acceptability and perceived usefulness to parents of various strategies. The research encompassed two studies. In the first study, 152 parents of children aged under six years completed questionnaires to identify their disciplinary practices. In Study 2, 129 parents reported on the acceptability and perceived effectiveness of various parenting strategies (modelling, ignoring, rewarding and physical punishment) for influencing child behaviour. Most parents in Study 1 reported using techniques consistent with positive parenting strategies. The use of physical punishment was also reported, but predominantly as a secondary method of discipline. In Study 2, the techniques of modelling and rewarding were found to be more acceptable to parents than were ignoring and smacking. The findings highlight the need to raise parental awareness and acceptance of a broader range of positive ways to manage child behaviour.

Motivation in children with intellectual disabilities

This article addresses the questions of whether there are motivational deficits in children with intellectual disabilities, whether those with Down syndrome are more likely to display motivational deficits, and how motivation might be supported. The available literature that has examined motivation in children with intellectual disabilities was considered and integrated to address the questions outlined above. There is little published research on this vital topic. Reports on motivational problems differ depending upon the method of data collection. Observational studies using structured tasks generally reveal no differences between children with intellectual disabilities and typically developing children matched for mental age. When reports of parents or teachers are used, children with intellectual disabilities appear to have deficits in motivation. No evidence was found for a particular deficit in children with Down syndrome. The results of this review challenge the perception that children with intellectual disabilities will generally have motivational problems, although it is clear that motivation is a complex construct, not easily examined in those with intellectual disabilities. Strategies for addressing problems and for maintaining motivation, based on theory and evidence, are provided. These strategies are applicable across a range of settings including the home, school, and more adult-oriented services.

Death on the front page : “Awesome things” and this thing called humanity

It has been called “the world’s worst recorded natural disaster,” and “the largest earthquake in 40 years,” galvanizing the largest global relief effort in history. For those of us involved in the discipline and/or the practice of communications, we realized that it presented a unique case study from a number of perspectives. Both the media and the public became so enraptured and enmeshed in the story of the tsunami of December 26, 2004, bringing to the fore a piece of geography and a peoples too rarely considered prior to the tragedy, that we felt compelled to examine the phenomenon. The overwhelming significance of this volume comes from its being a combination of both academic scholars and development practitioners in the field. Its poignancy becomes underscored from their wide-ranging perspectives, with 21 chapters representing some 14 different countries. Their realities provide not only credibility but also an unprecedented sensitivity to communication issues. Our approach here considers Tsunami 2004 from five communication perspectives: 1.) Interpersonal/ intercultural, 2.) Mass media, 3.) Telecommunications, 4.) Ethics, philanthropy, and development communication, and; 5.) Personal testimonies and observations. You will learn even more here about the theory and practice of disaster/crisis communication.

iPads in the Early Years : Developing Literacy and Creativity

Digital devices like smart phones and tablet computers are becoming commonplace in young children’s lives for play, entertainment, learning and communication. Recently, there has been a great deal of focus on the educational potential of devices like iPads in both formal and informal educational settings. There is now an abundance of educational ‘apps’ available to children, parents, and kindergarten and pre-school teachers that claim to enhance children’s early literacy and numeracy development and creativity. To date, though, there has been very little formal investigation of the educational potential of these devices. This book discusses the impact on children’s learning when iPads were introduced in three very different kindergartens in Brisbane, Australia. Chapters outline how researchers worked with pre-school teachers and parents to explore how iPads can assist with letter and word recognition, the development of oral literacy and talk around play. The book also considers the possibilities for using iPads for creativity and arts education through photography, storytelling, drawing, music creation and audio recording.

Digital Media Literacies in the Early Years

This chapter addresses children’s development of digital media literacies with iPads in preschool settings. The authors argue that children living in post-industrial societies participate in ‘transmedia’ experiences that call for new understandings of media literacy that recognise children’s ability to successfully participate in complex media ecologies. The chapter outlines a model for digital media literacies that includes the application of digital materials and media concepts through the processes of media production and media analysis. This model is then used as a framework to interpret children’s media production work across the preschools in our project.

Networking iPads into Preschool Spaces

This chapter explores preschools as networked spaces into which iPads were introduced, which involved the mediation of complex relationships between children and adults, physical and virtual technology and other materials like toys, play spaces, art materials and books. The chapter aims to explain how these human and non-human ‘actors’ come to coexist and lead to the development of literacy and creativity in specific ways. This approach particularly draws attention to specific challenges faced by the teachers as they negotiated a range of complex demands and obstacles to make the iPads available to the children for play and learning.

Drawing and writing on the screen

This chapter focuses on the physicality of the iPad as an object, and how that physicality affects the interactions children have with the device generally, and the apps specifically. Thinking about the physicality of the iPad is important because the materials, size, weight and appearance make the iPad quite unlike most other toys and equipment in the kindergarten space. Most strikingly, this physicality does not ‘represent’ the virtual vast dimensions of the iPad brought about through the diverse functions and contents of the apps contained in it. While the iPad is small enough and functional enough to be easily handled and operated even by young children, it is capable of performing highly complex, highly technological tasks that take it beyond its diminutive dimensions. This virtual-actual contrast is interesting to consider in relation to the other resources more commonly found in a kindergarten space. While objects such as toys, bricks, building materials often do prompt the child to imagine and invent beyond the physical boundaries of the toy, they not have the same types of virtual-actual contrasts of a digital device such as the iPad. How then, might children be drawn to the iPad because of its physical, technological and virtual difference? Particularly, how might this virtual-actual difference impact on the physical skills associated with writing and drawing: skills usually learnt through the use of a pencil and paper? While the research project did not set out to compare how digital and paper-based resources affect writing and drawing skills there was great interest to see how young children negotiated drawing and writing on the shiny glass surface of the iPad.

Visual arts learning with iPads

In this chapter Knight & Dooley discuss arts learning and issues of educational authenticity via children’s engagement with iPads (O’Mara & Laidlaw 2011; Shifflet, Toledo & Mattoon 2012). The chapter begins by considering common perceptions about art and how these popular beliefs and conditions affect and influence how children’s art is defined and valorized. The art produced by children using iPads is then discussed through key observations and reflections, and the chapter concludes with some recommendations when selecting apps for making art.

Troubling dissemination : experimentations with the salon as conference event

Salons became popular in Europe in 17th Century as sites of philosophic and literary conversation. A group of female academics interested in Deleuzian theories experimented with the salon to challenge presentation and dissemination norms that hierarchize and centralize the human. For Deleuze and Guattari (1987), assemblages are shifting and decentering, so how might assemblages of chairs, tables, bodies, lights, space, help to trouble thinking about the methodological conventions around academic disseminations? The authors discuss the salon as a critical-cultural site: Cumming presents Deleuze and play-dough, an exploration of how the playful dissemination format of the salon prompted a re-reading of a methodological vignette from earlier research. Knight, an arts-based researcher, uses video art as a creative methodology to examine conceptualizations of rhizomes and assemblages at the salon as a dissemination site. The authors conclude that the salon, as a critical, cultural site disrupts hierarchized ways of approaching and presenting research.

Drawing out critical thinking : testing the methodological value of drawing collaboratively

Early childhood research has long established that drawing is a central, and important activity for young children. Less common are investigations into the drawing activity of adults involved in early childhood. A team of adult early childhood researchers, with differing exposures and familiarities with drawing, experimented with intergenerational collaborative drawing with colleagues, students, family members and others, to explore the effectiveness of drawing as a research process and as an arts-based methodology. This testing prompted critical thinking into how drawing might facilitate research that involves young children, to operate in more communicable ways, and how research-focused drawings might occur in reference to a research project.

Geminin and Brahma act antagonistically to regulate EGFR–Ras–MAPK signaling in Drosophila

Geminin was identified in Xenopus as a dual function protein involved in the regulation of DNA replication and neural differentiation. In Xenopus, Geminin acts to antagonize the Brahma (Brm) chromatin-remodeling protein, Brg1, during neural differentiation. Here, we investigate the interaction of Geminin with the Brm complex during Drosophila development. We demonstrate that Drosophila Geminin (Gem) interacts antagonistically with the Brm–BAP complex during wing development. Moreover, we show in vivo during wing development and biochemically that Brm acts to promote EGFR–Ras–MAPK signaling, as indicated by its effects on pERK levels, while Gem opposes this. Furthermore, gem and brm alleles modulate the wing phenotype of a Raf gain-of-function mutant and the eye phenotype of a EGFR gain-of-function mutant. Western analysis revealed that Gem over-expression in a background compromised for Brm function reduces Mek (MAPKK/Sor) protein levels, consistent with the decrease in ERK activation observed. Taken together, our results show that Gem and Brm act antagonistically to modulate the EGFR–Ras–MAPK signaling pathway, by affecting Mek levels during Drosophila development.

Community arts in early childhood

Community arts can take many forms, including murals, installations, festivals and performances. The work can be produced by artists solely, by artists working with community groups, or by community groups. Community arts can be on a grand-scale covering whole streets, parks or even towns, or small- scale, such as a mosaic in the corner of a play area. It can be extremely impacting and a permanent fixture, or fragile and small and designed to blow away in the wind. But, common to all these different forms of community arts are the criteria that community arts are made in, for and/or by, the local community.

Herpes simplex 2 risk among women in a polygynous setting in rural West Africa

OBJECTIVES: To determine risk factors for herpes simplex 2 (HSV2) infection in women in a polygynous rural Gambian population. METHODS: Data from women who participated in a cross-sectional survey of reproductive health were matched to their own and, for women who had been or were married (ever-married), their spouses' data collected in a cross-sectional survey of fertility interests, including information on marital histories. RESULTS: Data were available on 150 never-married and 525 ever-married women. HSV2 prevalence was 16% amongst never-married women and 36% amongst ever-married women. For ever-married women, their own personal characteristics (age, ethnicity and genital cutting status) and events from their husbands' marriage history were important determinants of HSV2 infection. Women whose husbands married for the first time over age 35 were at greater risk than women whose husbands married by age 24 [odds ratio (OR) 2.72, 95% confidence interval (CI) 1.20-6.10]. Women whose husband reported interest in a new marriage were more likely to be HSV2 positive (OR 1.91, 95% CI 1.18-3.09). Women whose husbands were currently monogamous but had had previous marriages (OR 2.76, 95% CI 1.30-5.88) and women in currently polygynous marriages (OR 2.88, 95% CI 1.66-5.01) were three times as likely to be HSV2 positive as women who were their husband's only wife ever. CONCLUSION: Much transmission of HSV2 in this setting occurs within marriage where opportunity for personal protection is limited. High levels of transmission within marriage may undermine the impact of sexual behaviour change programmes aiming to reduce HSV2 and HIV incidence and complicate their evaluation.

Do children and adolescents with Down syndrome have deficits in motivation?

There appears to be a general acceptance that individuals with intellectual disability (ID) have deficits in motivation. Yet research with infants and young children has usually identified few differences in motivation for children with ID compared with those of the same mental age who are developing typically. Studies of motivation in children with ID in the middle years of childhood or adolescence are almost non-existent. However, research conducted more than 30 years ago (Harter & Zigler, 1974) continues to be cited as evidence of motivational deficits in those with ID even though the life experiences of people with ID have changed dramatically since that time.

Prevalence and predictors of advance directives in Australia

Background Advance care planning is regarded as integral to better patient outcomes yet little is known about the prevalence of advance directives in Australia. Aims To determine the prevalence of advance directives (ADs) in the Australian population. Methods A national telephone survey about estate and advance planning. Sample was stratified by age (18-45 and >45 years) and quota sampling occurred based on population size in each State and Territory. Results Fourteen percent of the Australian population has an AD. There is State variation with people from South Australia and Queensland more likely to have an AD than people from other states. Will making and particularly completion of a financial enduring power of attorney are associated with higher rates of AD completion. Standard demographic variables were of limited use in predicting whether a person would have an AD. Conclusions Despite efforts to improve uptake of advance care planning (including ADs), barriers remain. One likely trigger for completing an AD and advance care planning is undertaking a wider future planning process (e.g. making a will or financial enduring power of attorney). This presents opportunities to increase advance care planning but steps are needed to ensure that planning which occurs outside the health system is sufficiently informed and supported by health information so that it is useful in the clinical setting. Variations by State could also suggest that redesign of regulatory frameworks (such as a user-friendly and well publicised form backed by statute) may help improve uptake of ADs.