Child, family, and childcare predictors of delayed school entry and kindergarten retention among linguistically and ethnically diverse children

Concern about kindergarten retention is on the rise within the current climate of high-stakes testing and escalating kindergarten expectations. Kindergarten retention has been linked in previous research to various risk factors such as poverty, low maternal education, single parent status, minority status, English language learner (ELL) status, and male gender. However, these factors are also associated with poor school readiness and low kindergarten performance--the very reasons children are retained in the 1st place. This study teases apart unique and combined predictors of delayed entry into kindergarten and kindergarten retention with a large (n = 13,191) ethnically diverse, at-risk sample of children. Delayed kindergarten entry was rare for this sample but more likely among boys, native English speakers, those with poorer school readiness, less maternal education, and greater resources, and those who attended childcare rather than public school prekindergarten (pre-K) at age 4 years. Boys were more likely to be retained in kindergarten, but only because of their poorer school readiness. After strong effects for age 4 school readiness were controlled, only poverty, ELL status, and preschool program attendance predicted retention. ELL students were less likely to be retained than were native speakers, and those who attended public school pre-K programs were less likely to be retained, compared with those in childcare at age 4 years. After controlling for children's actual performance in kindergarten their 1st time, Caucasian children and children with lower language and social skills at age 4 years were more likely to repeat kindergarten.     

Daily alcohol use and romantic relationship functioning: evidence of bidirectional, gender-, and context-specific effects

Whether beneficial or harmful, cause or effect, the nature of associations between drinking and close relationship processes remains unclear. The present study examined these issues by using daily reports of alcohol use and relationship functioning from 69 heterosexual couples over 3 weeks. Multilevel modeling indicated that alcohol had both positive and negative effects on relationship processes and that effects were more positive for women, and when small amounts were consumed, partners drank together, or they consumed similar amounts. Interestingly, however, positive effects on intimacy and partner behaviors were not mediated by sexual contact. In the reverse direction, women were found to drink more than men in response to relationship difficulties and feeling disconnected from their partner (i.e., low intimacy). Overall findings indicate that associations between drinking and relationship processes are complex and bidirectional and that they may be more important for women than men.     

Women and Leadership: A Developmental Paradox?

In this article, the author explores the nature of leadership from a gendered perspective, specifically addressing leadership challenges for women. Leadership challenges, gender stereotypes, and definitions of leadership are discussed. Recommendations for professional redefinition of leadership within the counseling profession and strategies for successful negotiation of leadership roles are provided.     

Religious Diversity From a Jewish Perspective

The exploration of spiritual and religious diversity may receive less attention in counselor education than is warranted, resulting in counselors who are unprepared to deal with spiritual and religious issues in counseling. This trend could have a negative impact on Jewish clients, as well as on other religious clients, who feel that issues related to their identity are ignored. The Council for Accreditation of Counseling and Related Educational Programs (2001) has recognized that religious diversity is an integral component of the multicultural counseling movement, but counselor education and training programs, as a whole, still need to embrace this standard.     

Drawing Limits: contemporary views on biotechnology

Biotechnology deals with the stuff of life; living things can be changed and barriers between species broken down. Through biotechnology human beings are ‘playing god’ in ways that have not been possible before. This article discusses some findings of the Biocult project, which investigated the views of 956 young people on risk and safety in relation to biotechnology [1]. The article focuses on the responses of young people aged 11 to 18 to the statement ‘human beings can use science and technology to do what they want’ set in the context of answers to other questions on specific applications. Despite the emphasis on individual freedom of choice found in surveys of personal morality, most young people spontaneously brought in notions of limits and barriers to human action in the field of biotechnology. The ways these limits are justified are of interest as they uncover ethical thinking which may or may not be religious or spiritual.     

Constructing blockmodels: How and why

Blockmodel approaches to network analysis as developed by Harrison White are shown to fall in a broader class of established data analysis methods based on matrix permutations (e.g., clique detection, seriation, permutation algorithms for sparse matrices). Blockmodels are seen as an important generalization of these earlier methods since they permit the data to characterize their own structure, instead of seeking to manifest some preconceived structure which is imposed by the investigator (e.g., cliques, hierarchies, or structural balance). General algorithms for the inductive construction of blockmodels thus occupy a central position in the development of the area. We discuss theoretical and practical aspects of the blockmodel search procedure which has been most widely used (CONCOR algorithm). It is proposed that the distinctive and advantageous feature of CONCOR is that it solves what is initially presented as a combinatorial problem (permutations of matrices to reveal zeroblocks) by representing the problem as a continuous one (analysis of correlation matrices). When this representation strategy receives further development, it is predicted that the fairly crude empirical approach of CONCOR will be supplanted by more powerful procedures within this same class.     

The relative accessibility of semantic and deep-structure syntactic concepts

Three experiments were conducted to determine the relative accessibility of semantic and deep-structure syntactic concepts. In Experiment 1, which employed a concept-formation task, subjects learned the concept “deep-structure subject” more slowly than the case concept “experiencer.” In Experiments 2 and 3, which employed a new recognition memory procedure, subjects performed more poorly when the sentences to be remembered were differentiated on the basis of deep-structure syntactic relations than when they were differentiated on the basis of semantic relations. These results favor Fillmore’s case grammar, or another semantically based theory, rather than the “standard theory” of Chomsky in a model of linguistic behavior.     

Abnormal behavior after intracerebral injection of polypeptides from wheat gliadin: Possible relevance to schizophrenia

Accumulating evidence suggests that: (1) gluten-like proteins in cereal grains may produce psychiatric symptoms in schizophrenics as well as in celiac patients; (2) the genotypes for these two disorders may have one or more but not all, genes in common. Gluten fed to treated schizophrenics on a cereal grain-free, milk-free diet exacerbates their symptoms; ingestion of polypeptides resulting from peptic-pancreatic digestion of wheat gliadin (from gluten) produces psychiatric and other symptoms in celiac patients. To test their effect on behavior of normal rats we bypassed the protective barrier systems by intracerebral injection of a potent subfraction of gliadin polypeptides which produces psychiatric symptoms in celiacs. Eighteen exploratory experiments in 4 rats demonstrated that intracerebral injection of these polypeptides may variably produce stereotyped movements, prolonged “chewing in air,” “catelepsy” and seizures, all after an unusually long latent period. The lowest dose producing “catalepsy” was 600 μg, and that for seizures was 500 μg. Since we used a mixture, one or more polypeptides in it may be considerably more potent. The accumulated evidence suggests the following working hypothesis: One or more of the polypeptides produced by peptic-pancreatic digestion of certain glutamine-proline rich food proteins(e.g., cereal grain glutens) are psychotoxic and may enter the brain of the schizophrenic or celiac because the small gut, and possibly other, barrier systems (enzymatic, immunologic, membranous, other) suffer defects of an unknown nature due to one or more abnormal genes common to both diseases; and that the differences in the two diseases are determined largely by the dissimilar components of the genotypes.     

Considering methodological integrity in counselling and psychotherapy research

Within the field of counselling and psychotherapy research, qualitative methods have been a longstanding tradition of inquiry due to the mutual interest of therapists and researchers in both internal experiences and intersubjective processes. Methodological integrity is a conceptual framework that has been advanced to increase the rigor of these methods. In this paper, we consider the value of this concept for counselling and psychotherapy researchers and reviewers. This framework guides investigators and reviewers to consider how procedures can be adapted to meet the goals of specific studies, given their characteristics and approach to inquiry. In this brief article, we exemplify the relevance and application of this concept to this field by describing the decision‐making process within the designing of a qualitative research project to investigate clients' needs within rape crisis counselling. Through this exemplar, we also provide guidance to counselling and psychotherapy researchers on considerations during the process of research review and reporting.