Educated for the 21st century?

Using cameos of children whose schooling spans the millennium and of teachers' attempts to foster their individuality and talents under pressures for conformity, we question whether the long‐term educational interests of pupils are being fully served. We suggest that even for the secure and stable majority the school curriculum has serious shortcomings in limiting the freedom and creativity of teachers and in prioritising technicist over humane values. Moreover, the goal of social inclusion depends considerably on educational inclusiveness. We ask whether the depth of social and psychological disadvantage in Britain is within the capacity of the current system to correct. Copyright © 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Computer learning and risk assessment in child protection

The volume and complexity of information in child protection cases means that there can be an overwhelming number of factors which seem pertinent to decision-making but which obscure any pattern within it. This paper examines the applicability of a technique known as computer learning to the area of risk assessment in order to extract any underlying patterns. The paper proposes first that there are a few key interrelated, broad-level concepts used to assess and thereby classify risk. These can be used as the basis for producing a set of rules under which a social work team operates. The classification of risk made by one social work team on 20 child protection cases was analysed to find underlying patterns of their decision-making. These patterns are presented in the form of ‘decision trees’, as a way of illustrating the group's past experience in assessing risk. The results are evaluated in terms of the complexity and plausibility of the decision tree produced. © 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Understanding Links Between Punitive Parenting and Adolescent Adjustment: The Relevance of Context and Reciprocal Associations

There is considerable debate regarding the extent to which punitive parenting adversely impacts youth well‐being. Using an ecological–transactional model of human development, we examined reciprocity and contextual variability in associations between maternal punitive discipline and adolescent adjustment among 1,147 low‐income, urban youth followed through adolescence. Longitudinal structural equation modeling results indicated that delinquency and depressive symptoms during pre‐ and early adolescence (Time 1) were associated with increased punitive discipline about a year later (Time 2). When mothers reported less Time 2 neighborhood disorder, punitive discipline at Time 2 was associated with increased delinquency (for boys) and depressive symptoms (for girls) during mid‐ to late adolescence (Time 3). The costs of punitive discipline for adolescent adjustment are best understood considering the dynamic, transactional, and contextual nature of development.     

Supporting Family Life: A Survey of Homeless Shelters

Survey data from a national sample of homeless family shelters (N = 59) were analyzed to describe the family support programming available to residents. Data were reporled on facility and resident characteristics and family support programming, as well as on facility admission criteria and program participation requirements. Four independent valiables (length of stay, shelter capacity, sponsorship, and program philosophy) were examined for their relationship to the family-oriented services offered. Facilities sheltered an average of 17 families, with a range of 2-200; the average length of stay for families was slightly over 5 months. Regarding family programming, services of an educational nature were more popular than those focused on providing support or therapy/intervention; services to parents to further adult development were more often offered than those either directed to parents in their parenting roles or to the family as a unit. Vbtually all shelters (98%) applied eligibility criteria to families seeking admission. The most common reasons for exclusion were active drug (86%) and alcohol (83%) abuse by a family member; 40% also refused acceptance to falnilies with adolescent n'lales. Seventy-eight percent of facilities mandated panicipation in some support services. Smaller shelters operated with greater numbers of exclusions (x = 5.98773; p < .05); larger shelters had higher percentages of mandatory family programming (x =

9.21823; p < .06). These findings shed light on shelter directors' beliefs about the etiology of family homelessness and proper steps to solve the problem.     

Whispers in the library: a response to Liz Trinder's article on the state of social work research

In this journal, Liz Trinder (1996) helpfully describes three types of social work research. Using examples from studies undertaken by the Dartington Social Research Unit over a 30-year period, this reply explores the overlap and complimentarity between types of research and suggests ways in which several sources of evidence will lead to a common conceptual framework in UK children's services.     

La réhabilitation politique de Piłsudski dans une vision communiste de l’histoire (1982–1989)

This paper attempts to identify anti-Semitic themes in contemporary Russian literature, compare them to Imperial and Soviet precedents, and assess their significance and popularity at present. As the USSR collapsed, several factors combined to create an atmosphere conducive to the full and vulgar expression of anti-Semitism. The most important were the end of censorship of ethnic hate literature, the prominent role of Jewish oligarchs in the privatization of national resources through a series of schemes and scams, the related decline in general living standards, and the loss of Russia’s international status as a superpower. Nevertheless, the overall trend, after a virulent period during the late 1980s and 1990s, has been towards marginalization of anti-Semitic views and images.     

Education: Thirty Years of Change -For Better or for Worse?

SUMMARY. 1963-93 is a paradoxical period for British education. The drama of change was clear to see and vivid to experience. The opening years of high optimism and expansion were followed in the seventies by questioning and concern which led in the eighties to an unprecedented application of national control. But whether children and young people are getting a better deal in 1993 than in 1963 remains an open question.     

On Jointly Estimating Parameters and Missing Data by Maximizing the Complete-Data Likelihood

One approach to handling incomplete data occasionally encountered in the literature is to treat the missing data as parameters and to maximize the complete-data likelihood over the missing data and parameters. This article points out that although this approach can be useful in particular problems, it is not a generally reliable approach to the analysis of incomplete data. In particular, it does not share the optimal properties of maximum likelihood estimation, except under the trivial asymptotics in which the proportion of missing data goes to zero as the sample size increases.     

Projecting From Advance Data Using Propensity Modeling: An Application to Income and Tax Statistics

This article proposes and evaluates two new methods of reweighting preliminary data to obtain estimates more closely approximating those derived from the final data set. In our motivating example, the preliminary data are an early sample of tax returns, and the final data set is the sample after all tax returns have been processed. The new methods estimate a predicted propensity for late filing for each return in the advance sample and then poststratify based on these propensity scores. Using advance and complete sample data for 1982, we demonstrate that the new methods produce advance estimates generally much closer to the final estimates than those derived from the current advance estimation techniques. The results demonstrate the value of propensity modeling, a general-purpose methodology that can be applied to a wide range of problems, including adjustment for unit nonresponse and frame undercoverage as well as statistical matching.