Three Days to Walk: a personal story of life writing and disability consciousness in China

Through a close reading of Three Days to Walk, a memoir of disability by Chinese writer Zhang Yuncheng, this paper develops a new understanding of self-narrated life writing and its intersection with disability consciousness in the contemporary Chinese context. It examines the changing nature of disability life writing since the end of the early 1980s, a time when the images and voices of disabled began to emerge from effective cultural invisibility and silence. In a move away from state-sponsored ‘triumph over tragedy’ biographical narratives typical of the immediate post-Cultural Revolution period, Three Days to Walk is characteristic of a new popular trend to publish self-narrated life stories that reveal unique and intimate histories of disability experience both imbued with and propelled by a burgeoning sense of disability consciousness in the Chinese context.     

Early Childhood Education Centre Director Perceptions of Challenging Behaviour: Promising Practices and Implications for Professional Development

Given their key role in overall programme quality, it is critical to examine how early childhood programme centre directors in the United States perceive challenging behaviour. Participants completed a survey asking which behaviours they perceive to be most problematic, the number of children dismissed or expelled from the programme during the last year, and the most commonly used strategies for addressing challenging behaviours. Results point to several promising practices and highlight the variability in access to evidence‐based practices based on programme type. Areas that warrant more targeted professional development are discussed, and findings are situated within the larger early childhood context.     

Telling and Re‐telling Stories: The Use of Narrative and Drawing in a Group Intervention with Parents and Children in a Remote Aboriginal Community

The Let's Start Parent‐Child Program is a manualised parent‐child program which aims to improve educational, social and emotional outcomes for Aboriginal parents and their four‐ to seven‐year‐old children. It has been implemented in the Northern Territory, Australia on the Tiwi Islands and in Darwin since 2005. This paper outlines the adaptation of the program to include narrative approaches, the sharing of stories and the use of expressive arts as a way to build understanding between program leaders and participating families. An example from a recent program is used to illustrate how the sharing of stories and expressive use of art engages and binds group participants together. It supports parents to tell their own stories, to speak about their lived experience, to reconsider aspects of their own and their children's experiences and to achieve an increased awareness of their personal resources and a sense of self‐empowerment. The program is designed and delivered with sensitivity to individual parents, children and families, where cultural and interpersonal differences and different developmental and family situations can be taken into account.     

American Indian/Alaska Native Elders: A Growing Demographic that Is Changing How We View Aging

Today, AIAN Elders are more actively engaged in their families and communities, encouraging the development of intergenerational programs, language and cultural revitalization, being stewards in research conducted in their communities, as well passing on their knowledge and experiences on how to live as healthy Native people. Elders have traditionally been quiet and observant of their environment, but the current and future cohorts of Elders are advocates, leaders, and culture bearers for their families and communities and they are now in positions of leadership. Western society acknowledges the value of traditional knowledge and AIAN Elders are viewed as exemplars of healthy aging and their lessons and experiences can be attributed to our own lives. This commentary highlights the paradigm shift in how society views older adults, specifically AIAN Elders and their role in health and wellbeing.     

What Cruising Infants Understand about Support for Locomotion

“Cruising” infants can only walk using external support to augment their balance. We examined cruisers' understanding of support for upright locomotion under four conditions: cruising over a wooden handrail at chest height, a large gap in the handrail, a wobbly unstable handrail, and an ill‐positioned low handrail. Infants distinguished among the support properties of the handrails with differential attempts to cruise and handrail‐specific forms of haptic exploration and gait modifications. They consistently attempted the wood handrail, rarely attempted the gap, and occasionally attempted the low and wobbly handrails. On the wood and gap handrails, attempt rates matched the probability of cruising successfully, but on the low and wobbly handrails, attempt rates under‐ and overestimated the probability of success, respectively. Haptic exploration was most frequent and varied on the wobbly handrail, and gait modifications—including previously undocumented “knee cruising”—were most frequent and effective on the low handrail. Results are discussed in terms of developmental changes in the meaning of support.