Fostering Resilience among Couples Coparenting a Young Child with Autism: An Evaluation of Together We Are Stronger

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to evaluate a 4-week caregiver training program designed to promote resilience among couples raising a child with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). Seven couples with a child between the ages of 3 and 9 completed a group-based training focused on values, communication, coparenting, and managing stress. Pre-post assessment of parenting stress, dyadic satisfaction, coparenting, life satisfaction, and hope showed that although parenting stress did not decrease, significant increases were observed in dyadic cohesion, coparenting, and hope. Implications for the development of couple-focused interventions to promote resilience among parents raising a child with ASD are discussed.     

School-Based Services for Pregnant and Parenting Adolescents

The literature on adolescent pregnancy and parenthood is reviewed from the standpoint of services which can be provided within school settings, and in which special services personnel can play a central role. Five potential service areas are discussed: school-based student child care, contraception information and distribution, sexuality values clarification, improvement of parenting skills, and case management/counseling. Exemplary programs are identified and discussed within each of these five areas, and program elements and implementation issues are discussed.     

Academic Achievement Probes

Academic instruction continues to be an important componenet of curriculum for students with mild mental retardation, although relatively little recent research has been reported on basic skills assessment and programming. In the current study, students in elementary EMR programs were administered a series of two academic probes in spelling and in two computational skill areas in arithmetic to determine their stability of performance and thus the reliability of the measures, indicating that these academic probes were reliable assessment tools. Implications for the use of such curriculum-based measures with handicapped students are discussed.     

Responses of School Psychologists and Special Education Teachers to Administrative Pressures to Practice Unethically

Abstract

Responses of school psychologists (N = 141) and special educators (N = 130) to ethical dilemmas involving conflicts between administrative directives and ethical obligations were examined. Respondents completed a survey asking them to predict their own and others' responses to four ethical dilemmas. The majority of respondents predicted that they, immediate colleagues, and professional peers would make the choices judged as ethical in all situations. Predictions of ethical response were highest for self prediction and varied across the four dilemmas. Respondents who viewed their immediate colleagues as supportive of autonomous decision making were more likely to predict ethical choices than those who viewed their colleagues as supporting deference to administrative authority. No differences in predictions related to gender, degree level, job security, preservice training in or knowledge of professional ethics or special education law were found.     

An Evolutionary Process with an Uncertain Future

Summary

Inclusion is discussed as a long-term evolutionary development since the era of compulsory schooling. Special education is seen as a late comer in a generally broader societal movement. Themes in this volume on inclusion and conclusions relevant to the future are provided.     

Families in Crisis

Abstract

Families are in crisis. With an increasing array of problems affecting children in the home, from child abuse to familial alcoholism, schools are facing a vast array of behavioral and emotional concerns affecting childhood behavior. Unfortunately, many negative behaviors are learned at home. Violent and aggressive behaviors, for example, as well as drug and alcohol abuse, are often demonstrated by parents. From a community perspective, schools are in a pivotal position from which to intervene. Yet, many school-based mental health professionals, including school psychologists, school counselors, and school social workers, lack the knowledge to provide direct interventions. This article examines contemporary problems facing families, considers the home-school linkage, and explores interventions for schools and school-based mental health professionals.     

Reasonable Impartiality and Priority for Compatriots. A Criticism of Liberal Nationalism’s Main flaws

Distinguishing between reasonable partiality and reasonable impartiality makes a difference in resolving the serious clashes between priority for compatriots versus cosmopolitan global duties. Defenders of a priority for compatriots have to acknowledge two strong moral constraints: states have to fulfil all their special, domestic and trans-domestic duties, and associative duties are limited by distributive constraints resulting from the moral duty to fight poverty and gross global inequalities. In the recent global context, I see four main problems for liberal-nationalist defenders of priority for compatriots: (i) Reasonable particularists often forget that associative duties for compatriots compete with many sub-national and trans-domestic associative duties. (ii) They tend to forget that associative national duties compete with other, strong special (contractual, reparative) obligations regarding not only citizens and residents inside nation-states but also trans-domestic obligations across state borders. (iii) They do not properly discuss the problem of unallocated duties in addressing global poverty and insecurity. (iv) The design of supra-national and global mediating institutions, and the crafting of policies to remedy the misallocation of duties and to coordinate the required state activities is an urgent task neglected by liberal nationalists. In the recent context, reasonable partialitys bias towards partiality is most unwelcome and morally dubious. Reasonable impartialitys bias towards cosmopolitanism helps to stimulate a drastic shift in obligations and stimulates productive trans-national institutional design.     

John Nash: The Sufferings of Those Who Loved Him

This article, as a sequel to three previous papers on John Nash by Capps (2003, 2004a, & 2004b), focuses on the other side of Nashs beautiful mind by examining the sufferings of those who loved him. Nashs mistress and wife, appear to have suffered the most by Nashs narcissistic and paranoid schizophrenic tendencies due to his noncommittal and disrespectful attitudes. Nashs exploitive and experiential ways of relating to his close male friends (special friendships) seemed to have caused much pain and agony in at least two of his special friends. In addition, Nashs two sons also suffered from his lack of affection and responsibility. Thus it is crucial for people in mental health professionals as well as in pastoral care and counseling not only to care for the mentally ill but also for those who are around him or her.     

Mentalizing strategies for navigating the social world in adolescence

Mentalizing—the ability to represent or infer the mental states of others—continues to develop into and throughout adolescence. Increased mentalizing sophistication during adolescence is thought to support the navigation of increasingly complex social relationships and contexts. However, developmental science has yet to aggregate the seemingly disparate findings from research relating mentalizing to functional outcomes, such as internalizing mental health concerns, into clear and comprehensive theories that explain individual variability during adolescence. In this review, we describe approaches that have been used to measure mentalizing during adolescence and propose a methodological framework to measure mentalizing as a multi-dimensional process that continues to develop as a response to the environment during adolescence.     

Job burnout and job leaving in public school teachers: Implications for stress management

This study addressed the questions of whether selected teacher and organizational variables contributed to (a) significant amounts of variance in teachers' scores on three components of burnout, and (b) teachers' intentions to leave special education teaching. Study participants (N =490) included a sample of respondents to a survey of all of the 1096 special education teachers in Hawaii. Instruments used in this study included the Maslach Burnout Inventory, the Porter Need Satisfaction Questionnaire, and the Special Education Teacher Survey. Results of multiple regression analyses indicated that for the burnout components, Emotional Exhaustion and Depersonalization, relatively large and significant amounts of variance could be accounted for by a set of predictor variables. For the third burnout component, Personal Accomplishment, the variance accounted for by a set of predictor variables was significant but small. Stepwise discriminant function analysis was used to distinguish between teachers who stated they did or did not intend to leave special education teaching. Eight variables were identified as predictors of Intention to leave special education teaching, correctly classifying 73% of teachers into the appropriate Yes-Leaving and No-Leaving groups.This research was conducted in partial fulfillment of requirements for the Doctoral dissertation by the first author.