Parenting and the behavior problems of young children with an intellectual disability: Concurrent and longitudinal relationships in a population-based study

We examined parenting behaviors, and their association with concurrent and later child behavior problems. Children with an intellectual disability (ID) were identified from a UK birth cohort (N  =  516 at age 5). Compared to parents of children without an ID, parents of children with an ID used discipline less frequently, but reported a more negative relationship with their child. Among children with an ID, discipline, and home atmosphere had no long-term association with behavior problems, whereas relationship quality did: closer relationships were associated with fewer concurrent and later child behavior problems. Increased parent-child conflict was associated with greater concurrent and later behavior problems. Parenting programs in ID could target parent-child relationship quality as a potential mediator of behavioral improvements in children.

Parenting a child with haemophilia while living in a non-metropolitan area

The experience of living in a non-metropolitan area and parenting a child with haemophilia is relatively unknown. Using Interpretive Phenomenological Analysis (IPA), the following study explored the experiences of seven parents, from which four themes emerged: ‘bearing the brunt of diagnosis’ captures the impact of the diagnosis; ‘if you can’t help me, who can?’ reveals experiences with the health system; ‘tackling the challenge of treatment’ encompasses difficulties in adhering to the treatment regime; ‘I need you to understand’ reflects desires for others support and understanding. These themes should be considered when developing support systems and interventions for parents living in non-metropolitan areas.

An integrative view of aggressivenss in adolescence : development of a new measure and assessment of parenting and attachment effects

128 p. Retirada a solicitud de la autora 03/03/2016

O desenvolvimento da autonomia em adolescentes cariocas e sua percepção do estilo parental paterno

A adolescência feminina é marcada por muitos desafios, frutos das transformações que ocorrem na vida desta jovem. Com a puberdade, as diferenças biológicas entre os sexos se acentuam, sendo significativas as demandas e as expectativas socioculturais. Para as adolescentes, o desenvolvimento das mamas e o aumento dos quadris formam um novo corpo, suscitando novas sensações e sentimentos. Na adolescência intermediária, a jovem se depara com a tarefa de lidar com a sua sexualidade, com decisões morais, vivenciar o aumento de novos relacionamentos com seus pares e equilibrar a autonomia com a responsabilidade. A forma como a adolescente vivencia estas mudanças é moldada pelas características pessoais, crenças e práticas, que refletem o seu contexto. Na cultura ocidental, uma das questões típicas da adolescência é o desenvolvimento da autonomia, relacionada ao contexto familiar. Apesar das transformações sociais, a família continua a desempenhar um papel essencial na formação do indivíduo, tendo as atribuições de cuidado, de apoio e de afeto. No contexto familiar, por meio do estilo parental, são comunicadas as atitudes dos pais em relação aos seus filhos, criando um clima emocional, no qual as práticas parentais são expressas. Estudos dedicados aos relacionamentos pais-filhos especificam a importância da presença do pai para a dinâmica e o clima emocional familiar e sugerem que o gênero do progenitor pode influenciar a forma que ele se relaciona com sua filha. Assim, o objetivo deste trabalho se desdobra em dois. O primeiro é promover uma reflexão a partir de uma revisão de literatura contemplando essa temática. O segundo é investigar a relação entre a percepção do estilo parental paterno e o desenvolvimento da autonomia da filha adolescente. Para isso, utilizamos um método quantitativo, com aplicação de escalas sobre autonomia, interdependência e autonomia-relacionada e estilo parental. Participaram do estudo 50 adolescentes do sexo feminino, entre 14 a 16 anos, de famílias intactas, residentes no Rio de Janeiro. Os resultados apontaram para a existência de uma relação entre o desenvolvimento da autonomia e a percepção do estilo parental paterno. Quanto mais as adolescentes percebiam seus pais como autoritativos, maiores eram seus escores em autonomia-relacional e menores em autonomia. De um modo geral, as adolescentes da pesquisa apresentaram uma tendência à autonomia-relacionada e a perceber seus pais com o estilo parental autoritativo. Com base nestes resultados, concluímos que a maneira que as adolescentes percebem seus pais vai estar relacionada ao modo que vão desenvolver sua autonomia, indicando a importância de futuras pesquisas que explorem a relação pai-filha na adolescência em um contexto brasileiro.

Changes in innovation styles - comprehensive study of the changes in innovation styles to identify the causes and effects of different influencing factors and capabilities to create a general innovation pattern.

An investigation in innovation management and entrepreneurial management is conducted in this thesis. The aim of the research is to explore changes of innovation styles in the transformation process from a start-up company to a more mature phase of business, to predict in a second step future sustainability and the probability of success. As businesses grow in revenue, corporate size and functional complexity, various triggers, supporters and drivers affect innovation and company's success. In a comprehensive study more than 200 innovative and technology driven companies have been examined and compared to identify patterns in different performance levels. All of them have been founded under the same formal requirements of the Munich Business Plan Competition -a research approach which allowed a unique snapshot that only long-term studies would be able to provide. The general objective was to identify the correlation between different factors, as well as different dimensions, to incremental and radical innovations realised. The 12 hypothesis were formed to prove have been derived from a comprehensive literature review. The relevant academic and practitioner literature on entrepreneurial, innovation, and knowledge management as well as social network theory revealed that the concept of innovation has evolved significantly over the last decade. A review of over 15 innovation models/frameworks contributed to understand what innovation in context means and what the dimensions are. It appears that the complex theories of innovation can be described by the increasing extent of social ingredients in the explanation of innovativeness. Originally based on tangible forms of capital, and on the necessity of pull and technology push, innovation management is today integrated in a larger system. Therefore, two research instruments have been developed to explore the changes in innovations styles. The Innovation Management Audits (IMA Start-up and IMA Mature) provided statements related to product/service development, innovativeness in various typologies, resources for innovations, innovation capabilities in conjunction to knowledge and management, social networks as well as the measurement of outcomes to generate high-quality data for further exploration. In obtaining results the mature companies have been clustered in the performance level low, average and high, while the start-up companies have been kept as one cluster. Firstly, the analysis exposed that knowledge, the process of acquiring knowledge, interorganisational networks and resources for innovations are the most important driving factors for innovation and success. Secondly, the actual change of the innovation style provides new insights about the importance of focusing on sustaining success and innovation ii 16 key areas. Thirdly, a detailed overview of triggers, supporters and drivers for innovation and success for each dimension support decision makers in putting their company in the right direction. Fourthly, a critical review of contemporary strategic management in conjunction to the findings provides recommendation of how to apply well-known management tools. Last but not least, the Munich cluster is analysed providing an estimation of the success probability of the different performance cluster and start-up companies. For the analysis of the probability of success of the newly developed as well as statistically and qualitative validated ICP Model (Innovativeness, Capabilities & Potential) has been developed and applied. While the model was primarily developed to evaluate the probability of success of companies; it has equal application in the situation to measure innovativeness to identify the impact of various strategic initiatives within small or large enterprises. The main findings of the model are that competitor, and customer orientation and acquiring knowledge important for incremental and radical innovation. Formal and interorganisation networks are important to foster innovation but informal networks appear to be detrimental to innovation. The testing of the ICP model h the long term is recommended as one subject of further research. Another is to investigate some of the more intangible aspects of innovation management such as attitude and motivation of mangers. IV

Learning styles and performance in the introductory programming sequence

Thomas, L., Ratcliffe, M., Woodbury, J., and Jarman, E. 2002. Learning styles and performance in the introductory programming sequence. SIGCSE Bull. 34, 1 (Mar. 2002), 33-37.

Learning styles, personalisation and adaptable e-learning

Common Learning Management Systems (for example Moodle [1] and Blackboard [2]) are limited in the amount of personalisation that they can offer the learner. They are used widely and do offer a number of tools for instructors to enable them to create and manage courses, however, they do not allow for the learner to have a unique personalised learning experience. The e-Learning platform iLearn offers personalisation for the learner in a number of ways and one way is to offer the specific learning material to the learner based on the learner's learning style. Learning styles and how we learn is a vast research area. Brusilovsky and Millan [3] state that learning styles are typically defined as the way people prefer to learn. Examples of commonly used learning styles are Kolb Learning Styles Theory [4], Felder and Silverman Index of Learning Styles [5], VARK [6] and Honey and Mumford Index of Learning Styles [7] and many research projects (SMILE [8], INSPIRE [9], iWeaver [10] amonst others) attempt to incorporate these learning styles into adaptive e-Learning systems. This paper describes how learning styles are currently being used within the area of adaptive e-Learning. The paper then gives an overview of the iLearn project and also how iLearn is using the VARK learning style to enhance the platform's personalisation and adaptability for the learner. This research also describes the system's design and how the learning style is incorporated into the system design and semantic framework within the learner's profile.

Grandparents and parenting: towards a theory of grandparenthood

This paper explores the changing role of contemporary grandparents with many demonstrating a willingness and ability to take on parental responsibilities for their grandchildren, where they may face challenges and opportunities in difficult times. Three main forms of grand parenting are identified in the literature, those who have primary responsibility and are raising their grand children as their main carers perhaps in response to crisis situations, those who live in extended families and participate in care, and those who provide day care while the child’s parents work. The latter has increased because of the increasing frequency of divorce, single parenting and the lack of available or subsidised child care in the United Kingdom. When grandparents step into a troubled situation and attempt to offer stability and security for their grandchildren they may have to manage the combined responsibilities of family caregivers and parental figures. Grandparenthood is a tenuous role, lacking clear agreement on behaviour norms. In the culture of advice and parenting support, while care must be taken not to undermine parenting skills or make judgements about the ability to cope with the demands of childcare, an exploration of the impact on grandparents and children must be undertaken. Due to the complex web of interrelated factors the process and outcomes of care giving by grandparents is not well known in the literature. It is proposed therefore that it is timely for research to be undertaken to explore and develop a theory of Grandparenthood.

Managing the risk of parenting

The aim of parents is to enable their children to become autonomous individuals capable of participating fully in the culture in which they live (Korbin 1997). Furthermore, the quality of parenting is reflected in an adult’s ability to recognize and adequately meet a child’s needs in a developmentally and emotionally appropriate manner (Donald & Jureidini 2004).Within contemporary society however, parents are faced with the tensions of providing boundaries whilst affording children rights. This in itself brings risks and a common thread that runs through approaches to parenting is the attempt to define a threshold of acceptable parenting. Above the threshold and a parent is good enough and below is not good enough. This paper will consider what the minimum requirements are and explore different dimensions of parenting. The concept of good enough parenting will be revisited in relation to risks that parents have to take, within the context of contemporary policy related to improving outcomes for children as enshrined in the Every Child Matters: Change for Children Agendas (Department for Education and skills 2003). The current dominance of a risk management approach to safeguarding children will be addressed within the context of a ‘risk society’ and the importance of the safety and well-being of the child will be examined It will be suggested that we need to achieve a better balance of ensuring the safety of the child, meeting the child's developmental needs, and supporting family functioning if we are to help parents manage the risks.

Can childhood neglect be prevented through parenting skills training?

Child neglect continues to be the most prevalent form of child maltreatment, yet it has received less specific research attention than other forms of maltreatment (Zuravin, 1999). It is only in recent years that neglect has been seen as a phenomenon that needs to be conceptualised separately to other forms of abuse (Gershater- Molko et al., 2002). Although the term ‘neglect’ is used generally when children do not receive minimal physical and/or emotional care, there is no single agreed definition; one possible reason for this is the lack of consensus about minimally adequate standards of childcare either within professional groups or existing research (Rose and Meezan, 1996; Stone, 1998).