Transactional and Cascading Relations Between Early Spanking and Children's Social‐Emotional Development

The authors tested a series of models linking spanking and child social‐emotional outcomes using a sample of 3,870 families from the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing study. Spanking was measured by the number of times the focal child was spanked by the mother at ages 1, 3, and 5. Internalizing and externalizing symptoms were assessed using the Child Behavior Checklist at ages 3 and 5. Child emotionality was used to index child behavior at age 1. A series of nested transactional and cascade models was tested through structural equation modeling. The final model supported transactional effects between spanking and child externalizing behaviors over child ages 1, 3, and 5. In addition, one cascade effect was found: Spanking at age 1 was related to greater externalizing behavior at age 3, which was related to greater internalizing behavior at age 5. Implications for family theory and future research are discussed.     

Arts policy and practice for disabled children and young people: towards a ‘practice spectrum’ approach

This article argues for an approach to the evaluation of arts policy and practice for disabled children and young people that goes beyond the dialogic antagonism between Disability Arts and community arts, and towards a ‘practice spectrum’. Little is known about the extent to which a Disability Arts perspective has extended into arts policy and practice for disabled children and young people. The article aims to redress this knowledge gap. It is based upon two sets of data collected in relation to the East Midlands region of England during 2014. First, a critical evaluation was conducted of official and institutional attitudes to arts practice with disabled children and young people. Second, interviews exploring contemporary practice were conducted with 24 arts organisations. Their practice represents a diverse range of art forms and programmes undertaken in the region, and a range of attitudes and positions taken towards disabled children and young people. We argue that the best way to conceive of current practice is as a spectrum, as opposed to an antagonism between community arts and Disability Arts perspectives. There is, however, little evidence of the penetration of a Disability Arts perspective into policy and practice for children and young people.     

Conceptualising informal institutions: Drawing on the case of guanxi

Institutions regulate social life through formal rules and sanctions. These are distinguished from another source of social regulation, the informal incentives and constraints inherent in cultural currents and customary practices. Informal practices may be based not simply on cultural forces, though, but expectations regularised by informal rules and sanctions, which may operate as informal institutions. One approach holds that informal institutions arise out of formal institutional voids. Another holds that informal institutions operate in response to situations in which formal institutions frustrate the interests of individuals and groups who engage informal institutions to augment, compromise, or subvert formal institutions. After developing the concept of informal institution, the article goes on to indicate how an informal relationship pervasive in modern China, guanxi, may be understood as an informal institution. It is shown that by drawing on the case of guanxi the scope of the concept informal institution can be extended and also that our understanding of guanxi is enriched when the concept of informal institution is applied to its analysis.     

THE HERMITE DISTRIBUTION AS A MODEL OF DEMAND DURING LEAD TIME FOR SLOW-MOVING ITEMS

Heretofore, the Poisson and the Laplace distributions have been used to model demand during lead time for slow-moving items. In this paper, we present a Poisson-like distribution called the Hermite. The advantage of the Hermite is that it is as simple to use as the Poisson and the Laplace are. Moreover, the Hermite is the exact distribution of demand during lead time when unit demand is Poisson, P(Λ), and lead time is normally distributed, N(μ, σ²), so long as (μ/σ²)≥Λ. Thus, the Hermite can enhance the accuracy of analysis as well as add to the tools available to the analyst.     

Individualized Transition Planning for Students With Learning Disabilities

Many transition plans for students with learning disabilities suffer because (a) they often focus on the employment needs of students with more severe cognitive and physical disabilities and (b) they are not required until as late as 14 years old, sometimes too late for many students with learning disabilities. Lack of effective transition planning may result in inadequate postsecondary adjustment problems (e.g., under‐ or unemployment, restricted participation in community and leisure activities). The authors describe specific problems in transition planning for students with learning disabilities and offer suggestions for designing K‐12 transition plans that are uniquely suited for these students.     

The Rise of the West—or Not? A Revision to Socio-economic History

The debate over the "Rise of the West" has generally been over which factor or factors—cultural, geoographic, or material—in European history led Europe to diverge from the World's pre-industrial civilizations. This article aims to shift the terms of the debate by arguing that there were no causal factors that made Europe's industrialization inevitable or even likely. Rather, most of Europe would not and could not move toward industrialization any more than China or India or Japan. Rather, a very accidental combination of events in the late seventeenth century placed England on a peculiar path, leading to industrialization and constitutional democracy. These accidents included the compromise between the Anglican Church and Dissenters, and between Crown and Parliament, in the settlements of 1689; the adoption of Newtonian science as part of the cosmology of the Anglican Church and its spread to craftsmen and entrepreneurs throughout Britain; and the opportunity to apply the idea of the vacuum and mechanics to solve a particular technical problem: pumping water out of deep mine shafts in or near coal mines. Without these particular accidents of history, there is no reason to believe that Europe would have ever been more advanced than the leading Asian civilizations of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.