Pivot to Telehealth: Narrative Reflections on Circle of Security Parenting Groups during COVID‐19

In response to COVID‐19 hygiene and physical distancing restrictions, our service rapidly shifted to delivering Circle of Security‐Parenting? (COS‐P) groups via telehealth. In this article we report the perspectives and experiences of the group facilitator and the parents who received the intervention during the COVID‐19 pandemic. We use semi‐structured, qualitative interviews to explore the advantages, challenges, and positive impacts of the online parenting group from the perspectives of the group leader and the five group participants. Participants’ narrative reflections show that they were satisfied with the convenient and engaging online delivery of the program and would recommend it to other parents. Parents reported significant improvements in their parenting and greater awareness of their strengths and struggles. The online delivery of COS‐P resulted in more efficient service delivery, greater attendance rates, and adherence to the model. The stressors on the experienced facilitator, due to the abrupt transition and multiple technical and communication challenges, may have been mitigated by supervisor and collegial support, as well as careful preparation for herself and the participants. Future research should investigate the effectiveness of online versus face‐to‐face delivery of the intervention, including what works for whom.     

Infant Preferences for Structural and Prosodic Properties of Infant‐Directed Speech in the Second Year of Life

While a large literature discusses young infants' preference for an infant‐directed speaking style, few studies have explored preferences after the first year. The present work compares infants' preference for two different properties of IDS speech: prosodic changes (primarily pitch and pitch variability) and structural properties (utterance length; lexical repetition). We found that both 12‐ and 16‐month‐old infants continued to prefer listening to speech with the prosodic properties of IDS, but neither age showed any preference for speech with the lexical repetition and short utterances typical of IDS.     

Why smart people believe that schools shortchange girls: What you see when you live in a tail

Why do so many smart people believe that schools shortchange girls when girls do so much better in school? Girls get better grades in every subject, go to college and graduate from college more often, and surpass boys on standardized tests of writing skills and reading comprehension. Boys do surpass girls in mathematics and science achievement and get a disproportionate number of doctorates in mathematics and the physical sciences. But more boys also end up at the bottom of the barrel, labeled impaired and assigned to special education classes. A fair judge might call the school gender wars a draw. The reason that this charge rings true is conspicuous male success in the unrepresentative universe that the policy elite inhabits. Highly visible male success in a field comes in part from a pattern few people know about—greater male variability in many human characteristics that puts more males at the very top (but also at the very bottom) of a distribution. The schools are shortchanging students, but the shortchanged group is African-American males, not girls. *** DIRECT SUPPORT *** A03BB001 00005     

The EPA Health Risk Assessment of Methylcyclopentadienyl Manganese Tricarbonyl (MMT)

This paper describes the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's assessment of potential health risks associated with the possible widespread use of a manganese (Mn)-based fuel additive, methylcyclopentadienyl manganese tricarbonyl (MMT). This assessment was significant in several respects and may be instructive in identifying certain methodological issues of general relevance to risk assessment. A major feature of the inhalation health risk assessment was the derivation of Mn inhalation reference concentration (RfC) estimates using various statistical approaches, including benchmark dose and Bayesian analyses. The exposure assessment component used data from the Particle Total Exposure Assessment Methodology (PTEAM) study and other sources to estimate personal exposure levels of particulate Mn attributable to the permitted use of MMT in leaded gasoline in Riverside, CA, at the time of the PTEAM study; on this basis it was then possible to predict a distribution of possible future exposure levels associated with the use of MMT in all unleaded gasoline. Qualitative as well as quantitative aspects of the risk characterization are summarized, along with inherent uncertainties due to data limitations.     

Ethical Comportment in Organizations: A Synthesis of The Feminist Ethic of Care and the Buddhist Ethic of Compassion

This article describes a mode of ethical behavior in organizations called ethical comportment that is the enactment of the principles of elements common to the feminist ethic of care and the Buddhist ethic of compassion. The paper outlines the main tenets of care and The Eightfold Path of Buddhism, a mode of practicing compassion, demonstrating the similarities in values and practices that embody what the author considers to be ethical comportment in organizations. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Broadening Career Horizons for Students in At-Risk Environments

Researchers and practitioners embarked on a collaborative venture to develop, implement, and evaluate a career intervention program for 7th grade students who were at-risk for vocational underachievement. Students participating in the Career Horizons Program demonstrated enhanced confidence in performing tasks related to investigating, selecting, and implementing a career choice. They also considered a greater number of careers and selected those that were congruent with their interests. No change was found in confidence regarding degree of self-knowledge. Suggestions are provided for improving on the development and evaluation of career exploration programs to enhance career self-efficacy and broaden the career horizons of students in at-risk environments.     

The Board as a Monitor of Organizational Activity: The Applicability of Agency Theory to Nonprofit Boards

Monitoring, as an important function for boards of directors in both the private and nonprofit sectors, receives widespread attention throughout the empirical (Chait, Holland, and Taylor, 1996; Eisenhardt, 1989; Golden‐Biddle and Rao, 1997; Kosnik, 1987) and normative literature (Axelrod, 1994; Block, 1998; Carver, 1997; Houle, 1997; Ingram, 1989). Despite the consensus about the significance of this crucial board responsibility, scholars know little about the ways in which a nonprofit board actually performs its monitoring function. In this article I report on an empirical study of the monitoring behavior of twelve nonprofit boards of directors. Agency theory provides the framework for this analysis. I show that the way in which individual board members define their relationship with the chief executive and understand the scope of the monitoring function influences how, or if, they monitor agency action. The findings also show that, given ambiguous rules of accountability and unclear measures of performance, nonprofit board members tend to monitor in ways that reflect their professional or personal competencies rather than paying attention to measures that would indicate progress toward mission‐related goals and initiatives.