Overcoming Inequality in Schooling: A Call to Action for Community Psychology

Community psychology, indeed psychology as a discipline, has been largely absent from the table of school reform. Schools are critical socializing forces in society and serve as the one institution through which the full diversity of our child population passes. At the start of the 21st century, despite successive waves of legislation, the goals of the civil rights struggle for equality in educational opportunity have yet to be achieved. Negative self-fulfilling prophecies, reflected at individual, interpersonal, institutional, and societal levels, play a critical role in creating and perpetuating unequal opportunities to learn. Such effects as well as pathways for preventive intervention are best understood through ecological lenses. Our field must commit a greater share of resources to collaborative and systemic change for a broader learning so that all children, regardless of their differences, have continuing and nonstigmatized opportunities to develop into competent adults.     

Caring,Social Policy,and Homelessness

Care theory offers a way to overcome a weaknessof liberalism – its reluctance to intervene inthe private lives of adults. In caring for thehomeless, we must sometimes use a limited formof coercion, but our intervention is alwaysinteractive, and the process of finding asolution is one of negotiation between theneeds expressed by the homeless and the needswe infer for them.     

The Process of Family Reconstruction after DNA Testing for Huntington Disease

The needs of families to reconstruct their relationships in response to the DNA testing for Huntington disease of one or more of their asymptomatic members are presented. Data were collected from family interviews with 18 families, and from their responses on a post interview questionnaire. Findings are that families need to (a) address unfinished business associated with the decision for testing; (b) bring family members, peripheral in the decision for testing, into the loop; (c) reorganize patterns of communication and roles altered by the testing and heal ruptures in family membership; and (d) revise family stories about illness to provide a meaning for HD and explain the test results in a way that leaves them with a sense of mastery. Findings suggest that families should be more involved in the initial decision for testing of a member and that protocols should be established to provide help for their ongoing adjustment.     

John Dewey,The Other Face of the Brazilian New School

This paper intents to analyze the influence of John Dewey’s ideas in the movement that defended the educationl renovation in Brazil (named New School) at the end of the 1920s and in the 1930s. For this, it explains two trends of that movement: the first is described by the metaphor of industrial or mechanical efficiency, whose emphasis was in the power derived from the disciplinary idea of progress, which was embedded in the process of rationalization of the social relations submitted by a factory model; the second, developed by influence of Dewey, is characterized by a project of democratization of society and school that prevented the individual massification and the adoption of the rationalizing model inspired by the factory without any criticism. When Dewey was put in the center of the debate on political, pedagogical and social goals of the Brazilian New School, he was called to introduce a series of concepts that helped to find the balance between the respect for individuality and the observation of the social needs. This paper has some of the conclusions of a major research project, “Philosophy and Science in the New Educational Discourse (Brazil: l930–1960),” sponsored by CNPq.     

Introduction

This issue of Clinical Child and Family Psychology Review, Children Exposed to Domestic Violence: Current Status and Research Directions, addresses the current status of our knowledge as well as critical research needs in the area of children exposed to domestic violence. Although much has been learned in recent years about children exposed to violence, significant research gaps remain, the identification of which may help to build a more complete and rigorous science base in this area. This journal issue represents the distillation of a 3-day workshop on children exposed to violence, held in July of 2002, that identified what is known about children exposed to violence and what this information tells us about future research directions. Although many federal agencies have supported some research in this area, there is a need for more targeted attention on the topic, particularly with regard to measurement, sampling, and interventions/services. The papers in this issue were selected with these themes in mind. Although no single issue could cover the entire field, we intend to offer a representative sample of where we are and where we need to go with the hope of stimulating additional thought, collaboration, and research in this important area.     

Betrayal And Paranoia: The Psychotherapist's Function as an Intermediary

We present an approach to the problem of structuring a therapeutic alliance with patients presenting paranoid symptoms, using both psychoanalytical and cognitive techniques. Initially, we focused on one of the main aspects of the paranoid worldview: the fear of being betrayed and the tendency to betray. This is a defense maneuver, through which patients deny their passivity, and the impotence in the relationship with their own internal needs and with the significant people in the external world, including the therapist. In our experience to build up a working relationship, both a psychoanalytical interpretation of unconscious conflicts and the cognitive analysis of dysfunctional beliefs are needed. Often, in more serious cases, the role of nonqualified object must be accepted at the beginning, due to the patient's need to be in control of the situation. Only then can a therapeutic phase begin, in most cases, through an integrated approach that includes pharmacological, psychodynamic, and cognitive modalities.     

The National Research Council Report on the Prevention of Reading Difficulties in Young Children and the Process of Dubitation

The author examines two significant issues, the adjudication of evidence and the architecture of instruction in the context of research on beginning reading. In particular, he reflects on his participation as a member of the National Research Council's committee that published the recent report entitled Preventing Reading Difficulties in Young Children (1998). The National Academy of Sciences panel of experts process is contrasted with a more explicit process for codifying scientific evidence and including quantitative experimental research as the primary source of evidence. In addition, the author argues for the importance of attending to the architecture of instruction in beginning reading.     

Effects of a Danish Student‐Centered Prosocial Intervention Program Among Japanese Children

Japan and Denmark represent two different educational cultures. Where Danish students in general report high scores on self‐esteem, Japanese children report low. A student‐centered and interaction‐based prosocial intervention program that was designed according to Danish educational culture was administered to children aged 11–12 years in Japan. Questionnaires measuring the children's quality of life (QoL) and metacognitive awareness were applied. Overall, the results showed that the student‐centered intervention improved the emotional well‐being aspect of QoL among Japanese boys. In contrast, Japanese boys’ scores on the declarative knowledge of metacognitive regulation declined. The teachers’ attitudes towards the intervention program were analyzed by use of interviews. The effect of the student‐centered intervention program is discussed with respect to the educational cultures in Japan.     

The Effect of Religious‐Based Mentoring on Educational Attainment: More than Just a Spiritual High?

Although research has found a positive relationship between various forms of adolescent religious involvement and educational outcomes, little research has examined connections to educational attainment. Using a nationally representative sample of youth (the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health—Add Health), we examine the extent to which adolescent religiosity facilitates educational attainment (i.e., high school completion and college enrollment) and whether informal mentorships formed during adolescence with religious and nonreligious adults can help explain the link between adolescent religious involvement and educational attainment. The findings confirm that, like academic outcomes, religious youth are more likely to complete high school and enroll in college even when controlling for other individual and interpersonal factors that affect educational attainment. Furthermore, informal mentorships, particularly those with adults who have official religious positions (e.g., priest, minister, rabbi) play an important role in college enrollment.     

Besoin de cognition,besoin d’évaluer,besoin de clôture : proposition d’échelles en langue française et approche socio-normative des besoins dits fondamentaux

Introduction and objectivesAfter leading a validation of questionnaires about three fundamental needs in French language (need for cognition, closing and evaluation), we tested in two studies that fundamental needs could be subjected to social constraints and could be considered differently than exclusively like stable personality characteristics and motivational drivers of action.MethodUsing the paradigm of judges (study 1) and the paradigm of identification (study 2), the results argue for a normative approach, at least as regards the need for cognition and assess.ResultsThe results of the first study show that individuals consider more favorably targets with strong need rather than low need and especially in social contexts with high social utility (that is to say, the professional context in comparison with the friendly context). The results of the second study show that when the questionnaires about needs “as would a person having been previously well or poorly assessed” participants get higher scores high on the need for cognition questionnaire in the first case than in the second. The results regarding the need for closure are more mixed.ConclusionThe results are discussed in a socio-normative perspective.