Doulas as community health workers: lessons learned from a volunteer program     

Kane Low L  Moffat A  Brennan P 《The Journal of perinatal education》2006,15(3):25-33

Doulas, women who primarily provide social support during childbirth, have been associated with a number of positive health outcomes. Because the primary model of practice for doulas is a fee-for-service model in which families privately hire a doula, many expectant women who could benefit from doula support are unable to access the service. The Doulas Care program, located in Ann Arbor, Michigan, represents one model in which doulas provide services without charge. As a result of their extended role in the community, doulas who work with the Doulas Care program have unique educational needs. Through the use of focus groups with the program's volunteer doulas, educational needs related to overcoming barriers to being a doula working in the community were identified. Recommendations for education and training are made to improve the support doulas offer as community health outreach workers.  相似文献   

A meta-analytic investigation of therapy modality outcomes for sexually abused children and adolescents: an exploratory study   总被引：1，自引：0，他引：1  

Hetzel-Riggin MD  Brausch AM  Montgomery BS 《Child abuse & neglect》2007,31(2):125-141

OBJECTIVE: The purpose of the current study was to investigate the independent effects of different treatment elements on a number of secondary problems related to childhood and adolescent sexual abuse, as well as investigate a number of different moderators of treatment effectiveness. METHOD: Twenty-eight studies that provided treatment outcome results for children and adolescents who had been sexually abused were included in the meta-analysis. Different aspects of psychological treatment, such as specific treatment modalities (individual, cognitive-behavioral, etc.) or secondary problems (behavior problems, psychological distress, etc.) were investigated. RESULTS: The overall mean weighted effect size for the meta-analysis was d=.72 (SE=.02). The results indicate that psychological treatment after childhood or adolescent sexual abuse tended to result in better outcomes than no treatment. There was significant heterogeneity in the effectiveness of the various psychological treatment elements. Play therapy seemed to be the most effective treatment for social functioning, whereas cognitive-behavioral, abuse-specific, and supportive therapy in either group or individual formats was most effective for behavior problems. Cognitive-behavioral, family, and individual therapy seemed to be the most effective for psychological distress, and abuse-specific, cognitive-behavioral, and group therapy appeared to be the most effective for low self-concept. CONCLUSIONS: The choice of therapy modality should depend on the child's main presenting secondary problem. Further research should be conducted investigating other possible moderators and secondary problem outcomes.  相似文献   

Mother-Child Play: Sequential Interactions and the Relation between Maternal Beliefs and Behaviors   总被引：1，自引：1，他引：1  

Amy Melstein Damast  Catherine S. Tamis-LeMonda  Marc H. Bornstein 《Child development》1996,67(4):1752-1766

This investigation of mother and toddler play had 2 goals. The primary goal was to examine the types of play mothers introduce in direct response to their toddlers' play. A secondary and exploratory goal was to examine the relation between maternal knowledge about child play and actual maternal play behaviors. 50 mothers and their 21-month-old toddlers were observed at home during free play. Mother and child exploratory, nonsymbolic, and symbolic play were coded. Sequential analyses revealed that mothers adjusted their play to their children's play level by responding to their children with play that was either at the same level or at a higher level than their children's play. Furthermore, mothers who were more knowledgeable about early play development more often responded to their children's play by introducing higher level play. These findings suggest that mothers tend to play with their toddlers in ways that might promote their child's development, and that mothers with more knowledge about play development provide their children with appropriately challenging play interactions.  相似文献   

Teacher–Child Interactions in Early Head Start Classrooms: Associations With Teacher Characteristics     

Sherri Castle  Amy C. Williamson  Emisha Young  Jessica Stubblefield  Deborah Laurin  Nicole Pearce 《Early education and development》2016,27(2):259-274

ABSTRACT

Research Findings: The current study examined characteristics of 71 Early Head Start lead teachers in relation to classroom interactions with infants and toddlers. Measured teacher characteristics included education, years of experience, beliefs about child rearing, depressive symptoms, and the temperamental characteristics of positivity and frustration. Teacher–child interactions were measured using the Classroom Assessment Scoring System, Toddler Version (La Paro, Hamre, & Pianta, 2012). Results indicated that field of degree was directly associated with the majority of dimensions of teacher–child interactions. Examination of teachers’ years of experience and intrapersonal characteristics revealed a number of significant interactions, indicating that teacher experience and appropriate beliefs may serve as protective factors in the presence of psychosocial risk factors. Practice or Policy: Overall, our findings suggest that both early childhood education degrees and years of experience are directly or indirectly associated with multiple dimensions of teacher–child interactions, confirming that these patterns established for preschool teachers hold for teachers of infants and toddlers. These results also suggest that years of experience and progressive beliefs about children may be especially important for teachers who are depressed or who have low levels of positivity and high levels of frustration. Implications for future research, as well as preservice and in-service professional development, are discussed.  相似文献   

An exploratory investigation of the effect of working in an environmentally themed facility on the conservation‐related knowledge,attitudes and behavior of staff     

Amy Groff  Donna Lockhart  Jacqueline Ogden  Lynn D. Dierking 《Environmental Education Research》2005,11(3):371-387

In the past decade, we have seen an increased focus on measuring the impact of zoos, aquariums, and other free‐choice learning environments on the conservation‐related knowledge, attitudes and behavior of the visiting public. However, no such studies have been conducted on the impact of such environments on the staff working in these facilities – the very staff that in turn interact with the public on a daily basis. Clearly these interactions are recognized as being important; for example, the thousands of staff employed by Disney’s Animal Kingdom are regularly provided with conservation‐related training – both formal, in‐class experiences, as well as more informal experiences with animals; these are a mixture of compulsory and freely chosen experiences. An exploratory qualitative study was conducted to investigate the impact of working at Disney’s Animal Kingdom on staff knowledge, attitudes, and behavior related to animals and their conservation. The resulting findings offer preliminary evidence that working in an environmentally themed setting has a positive impact on all of these variables, and that particular experiences – notably experiences in back‐of‐house animal holding areas and with animal staff – are key. These findings suggest that further investigation into the impact of working in such learning settings could be fruitful in understanding the role that the work place plays in supporting the free‐choice learning of staff. This is important both from the perspective of the staff themselves, and in relation to the impact that these individuals may have on visitors to free‐choice learning settings.  相似文献   

Educational effects of the Tools of the Mind curriculum: A randomized trial     

W. Steven Barnett  Kwanghee Jung  Donald J. Yarosz  Jessica Thomas  Amy Hornbeck  Robert Stechuk  Susan Burns 《Early childhood research quarterly》2008

The effectiveness of the Tools of the Mind (Tools) curriculum in improving the education of 3- and 4-year-old children was evaluated by means of a randomized trial. The Tools curriculum, based on the work of Vygotsky, focuses on the development of self-regulation at the same time as teaching literacy and mathematics skills in a way that is socially mediated by peers and teachers and with a focus on play. The control group experienced an established district-created model described as a “balanced literacy curriculum with themes.” Teachers and students were randomly assigned to either treatment or control classrooms. Children (88 Tools and 122 control) were compared on social behavior, language, and literacy growth. The Tools curriculum was found to improve classroom quality and children's executive function as indicated by lower scores on a problem behavior scale. There were indications that Tools also improved children's language development, but these effects were smaller and did not reach conventional levels of statistical significance in multi-level models or after adjustments for multiple comparisons. Our findings indicate that a developmentally appropriate curriculum with a strong emphasis on play can enhance learning and development so as to improve both the social and academic success of young children. Moreover, it is suggested that to the extent child care commonly increases behavior problems this outcome may be reversed through the use of more appropriate curricula that actually enhance self-regulation.  相似文献   

Causal Connections Between Mathematical Language and Mathematical Knowledge: A Dialogic Reading Intervention     

David J. Purpura  Amy R. Napoli  Elizabeth A. Wehrspann  Zachary S. Gold 《Journal of research on educational effectiveness》2017,10(1):116-137

The acquisition of early mathematical knowledge is critical for successful long-term academic development. Mathematical language is one of the strongest predictors of children's early mathematical success. Findings from previous studies have provided correlational evidence supporting the importance of mathematical language to the development of children's mathematics skills, but there is limited causal evidence supporting this link. To address this research gap, 47 Head Start children were randomly assigned to a mathematical language intervention group or a business-as-usual group. Over the course of eight weeks, interventionists implemented a dialogic reading intervention focused on quantitative and spatial mathematical language. At posttest, students in the intervention group significantly outperformed the students in the comparison group not only on a mathematical language assessment, but on a mathematical knowledge assessment as well. These findings indicate that increasing children's exposure to mathematical language can positively affect their general mathematics skills. This study is an important first step in providing causal evidence of the importance of early mathematical language for children's general mathematical knowledge and the potential for mathematical language interventions to increase children's overall mathematics abilities.  相似文献   

Reflective analysis as a tool for task redesign: The case of prospective elementary teachers solving and posing fraction comparison problems     

Eva Thanheiser  Dana Olanoff  Amy Hillen  Ziv Feldman  Jennifer M. Tobias  Rachael M. Welder 《Journal of Mathematics Teacher Education》2016,19(2-3):123-148

Mathematical task design has been a central focus of the mathematics education research community over the last few years. In this study, six university teacher educators from six different US institutions formed a community of practice to explore key aspects of task design (planning, implementing, reflecting, and modifying) in the context of comparing fractions using reasoning and sense-making. By presenting results of their implementation of two tasks with 63 prospective elementary teachers across three institutions and their reflective analysis of the implementation, the authors highlight the importance of collecting and analyzing data and reflecting on this analysis to inform the redesign of tasks. The authors also found that considering different types of tasks (problem solving vs. problem posing) helps illuminate different aspects of prospective elementary teachers' understanding, which can inform task redesign. Finally the authors contribute to the knowledge base on reasoning strategies for comparing fractions and prospective elementary teachers’ knowledge of these strategies.  相似文献   

“‘I Was Gonna Go Off,but My Best Friend is White.”: Hispanic Students’ Co-Cultural Reasoning in a Hispanic Serving Institution     

Amy Aldridge Sanford  C. Kyle Rudick  Keith Nainby  Kathryn B. Golsan  Stephanie Rollie Rodriguez  Christopher J. Claus 《Communication quarterly》2019,67(2):158-177

The researchers engaged in a qualitative analysis (using journaling and focus group methodology) of the communicative behaviors of Hispanic students with White institutional members at a medium-sized, Southwest HSI. Utilizing Co-Cultural Theory and Elaborative Coding analysis, the authors mapped how Hispanic students narrated their co-cultural communication and reasoning (i.e., why they engage in one strategy rather than another). The findings show that, although Hispanic students used almost all co-cultural strategies, their responses were clustered primarily around assimilationist strategies – indicating that they engage in a high degree of self-monitoring and self-censorship when interacting with White institutional members in an HSI. These results suggest that even when Hispanic students constitute a large or majority part of the institution’s population, they still feel the need to engage in behaviors that navigate White norms. The study concludes by examining the findings for co-cultural theorizing as well as providing insights for instructors who wish to engage in inclusive teaching practices.  相似文献   

Quantifying Qualitative Scholarship: A Fool’s Errand or a Methodological Necessity?     

Amy M. Magnus  Jenny S. West  Daniel W. Scott  Cheryl Maxson  Jody Miller 《Journal of Criminal Justice Education》2019,30(2):223-249

This paper describes our efforts to systematically generate knowledge from ethnographic and other qualitative scholarship as a way of bridging intellectual gaps found in quantitative research. We ground this scholarly endeavor in the study of gangs, which has a lengthy history in the field of criminology, yet lacks a coherent, coordinated, and comparative understanding of gang dynamics, behavior, and impacts. We discuss the importance of acknowledging the multiple and mixed methodologies used in gang scholarship and detail the inductive, deductive, and iterative process that helped us (1) develop a comprehensive coding instrument for coding a range of qualitative works, (2) establish the instrument’s inter-rater reliability, and (3) remain cognizant and reflexive about the strengths of both quantitative and qualitative research. Finally, we share the critical yet informative challenges we faced throughout the project and conclude with reflections on why the project was unsuccessful in the way we originally envisioned.  相似文献