An Inquiry into Liberty,Slavery, and Thomas Jefferson’s Place in American Memory

Abstract

This article presents a guided inquiry into Thomas Jefferson’s place in American memory. It centers on Jefferson’s liberty-based articulations and his involvement in slavery, which are paradoxical when juxtaposed. Evocative primary sources and competing secondary sources ground the inquiry. Discipline-specific strategies direct students through the stages of inquiry. Close reading, text-based writing, and informed action intertwine with history literacy, historical thinking, and historical argumentation. Discussion focuses on logical curricular extensions.     

Therapeutic Assessment with Children in Family Therapy

Therapeutic Assessment with Children (TA‐C) is a brief semi‐structured intervention in which psychological assessment is used to help families with children and adolescents to change. In this paper we introduce the TA‐C model, describe its semi‐structured format and exemplify how it can be applied by family therapists.     

Good Friendships among Children: A Theoretical and Empirical Investigation

Ethical dimensions of friendship have rarely been explicitly addressed as aspects of friendship quality in studies of children's peer relationships. This study identifies aspects of moral virtue significant for friendship, as a basis for empirically investigating the role of ethical qualities in children's friendship assessments and aspirations. We introduce a eudaimonic conception of friendship quality, identify aspects of moral virtue foundational to such quality, review and contest some grounds on which children have been regarded as not mature enough to have friendships that require virtue, and report a qualitative study of the friendship assessments and aspirations of children aged nine and ten (n = 83). In focus group sessions conducted in ten schools across Great Britain, moral qualities figured prominently in children's assessments of friendship quality. The findings provide evidence of children having friendships exhibiting mutual respect, support, and valuing of each other's good character.     

Fighting words? Joning as conflict talk and identity performance among African American preadolescents

This study examines how preadolescent African American students in Washington, D.C., used a linguistic practice called ‘joning,’ a style of verbal play similar to ritual insults, in peer interactions. Sociolinguists have focused on how children socialize each other into vernacular styles appropriate for peer group use but often assume that they disalign with social and linguistic norms for classroom behavior. Drawing from a nine‐month ethnographic study that the author conducted in an after‐school program, this article analyzes the structure and function of joning as a vernacular style of African American Vernacular English and its uses in constructing classroom identities. Joning often facilitated student learning, but it was perceived as a socially and physically risky linguistic practice because of its uses as conflict talk in the local community. Focusing on preadolescence as a key stage of language socialization, this article shows how minority students modify peer‐learned linguistic practices to pursue academic success on their own terms.     

Decision‐Making in Paediatric Rehabilitation: Exploring Professionals' and Children's Views on Decision‐Making Involvement

The article explores the distinction that professionals make between difficult and less difficult decisions in paediatric rehabilitation interventions. This distinction is explored by looking at the involvement of two children in decisions regarding paediatric rehabilitation interventions. The article argues for a clinical practice where children's experiences are extensively used to improve practice and to accommodate the child's right to participate in medical decisions concerning their own body and life. The different ways the children and the professional describe their experiences provide an avenue for a discussion on how medical reasoning can curtail children's involvement in decisions.     

Managing the process of change in residential child care: A consultancy approach

This article explores the impact of a consultancy undertaken with groups of residential child care staff within a large local authority who were experiencing considerable changes in their working environment as a result of a review of residential care structures. The authors were invited to engage directly with staff on an individual and group basis to help them work through the barriers they perceived to changing their approach to practice. The theoretical underpinning for the work was Charles Handy's [1993, Understanding Organisations (Harmondsworth, Penguin)] belief that change is more likely to have a positive outcome when staff have an investment in and contribution to the change processes. The model of change utilised within the sessions with staff was Kurt Lewin's three stages of 'unfreezing', 'change' and 'refreezing'. The consultancy raised a number of issues about the process of change and how this can be achieved within the residential child care context. In particular, it highlighted the problems of assuming that change is a linear process which can be directly controlled and managed in the flux and uncertainty which characterises this sector.     

Through the Ages: Developing Relationships Between the Young and the Old

This article evaluates a program between students at a primary school and aged care residents. The aim of the program was to increase respect and appreciation between the groups. Visiting programs between children and the elderly are well documented, and assumes that the contact will benefit both groups. However the research is contradictory. To ensure that this program was achieving its goals, pre-post test data using the Children’s Perceptions of Aging and Elderly test was collected. Significant improvements in attitude were seen in two items. Overall, there was an improvement in attitude in 12 of the 18 instrument items.