Ordinary Children Research Articles

Broken Lives and Other Stories

In Her Startling Collection Of Short Stories, Broken Lives and Other Stories, Anthonia C. Kalu creates a series of memorable characters who struggle to hold displaced but dynamic communities together in a country that is at war with itself. Broken Lives and Other Stories presents a portrait of the ordinary women, children, and men whose live have been battered by war in their homeland. Written in response to the Nigerian Civil War, known on the Igbo side as Ogu Biafra - the Biafran War - this collection focuses on the everyday conditions of the local people and how their personal situations became entangled in national crises. The stories capture a diversity of issues, from the implications of self-rule and the presence of soldiers among civilians, to masquerades, air raids, and rape. Through her riveting narratives, Kalu draws the reader into the depths of some of Africa's most troubling issues, such as the concern for safety during the frequent outbreaks of hostilities, which can range from civil unrest to armed combat. How do young people, women, and the elderly cope during those crises? Are the struggles for national political power greater than the everyday struggle for decent living by the person on the street? While conveying the vitality and joy of Africa's women and youth, Broken Lives and Other Stories also examines the impact of the brain drain caused by wars and instability within the continent itself. Both the war against women and women's constant war to survive in contemporary Africa are brought into sharp focus throughout these stories. For readers interested in the last thirty-five years of unrest across Africa, this collection is essential reading.

Women and conflict transformation: Influences, roles, and experiences

At first glance it would appear that despite women's vital participation in peace-making processes, they are for the most part marginalised or belittled. However, moving away from the idea of women as outsiders and/or victims, we find evidence of their involvement in projects initiated and driven by them and/or in activities in which they work in equal roles alongside men. Many women in conflict areas are advocating and working effectively with approaches to lasting positive peace that transcend traditional male-dominated structures and ideologies. Large numbers of ordinary women, men, and children are working mostly behind the scenes to achieve justice and equality. Women are very much involved but get far less recognition than men. The scale and diversity of largely unacknowledged but effective grassroots peace efforts worldwide, particularly among women, requires much greater recognition by the international community. This article is based on a research project that uses an oral testimony approach and a multicultural perspective to give voice to women working in the field in a wide range of transformational processes.

‘I never thought they would enjoy the fun of science just like ordinary children do’– Exploring science experiences with early years teacher training students and children with severe and profound learning difficulties

Alison Bishop and Phyllis Jones both work in the School of Education at Northumbria University where they teach on undergraduate and postgraduate programmes. Phyllis Jones specialises in disability issues and Alison Bishop focuses on early years education. For the project described in this paper, they combined their areas of expertise, devising a small–scale research project to explore the experiences of a group of early years science specialist student teachers as they took part in workshops with a group of early years children with severe and profound learning difficulties. The research explores the changing attitudes and perceptions of the students with regard to the learning and teaching of science with young children. It becomes clear that there is a realization for many students that science can make a significant contribution to the education of children with severe and profound learning difficulties in the early years. The authors also discuss the need for training to equip the students to meet the challenges and rewards of working with children with severe and profound learning difficulties in their future teaching careers.

Interactive environment by narrative playmates toys

Narration is an important part of play. Toys inspire children to imagine stories. Adding the power of the computer to toys environment can make playing time more cognitive as well as more entertaining. This paper describes our work in developing physical human-computer interface, which merges ordinary children's playsets with computer that can see via a webcam in order to enhance children's playing technique. The proposed interface with the tracking technology and narrative control can turn a normal child's playset into a fantasyland where children can sense of their world in ways that were not feasible up to date.

Research ethics in pediatric environmental health: Lessons from lead

From my perspective, the ethical problems in pediatric environmental health research stem from a profound societal lack of understanding about the role that environment plays on health. An Institute of Medicine report states the environmental health hypothesis as follows: ‘‘Healthy environments promote individual and community health; unhealthy environments can create substantial morbidity, mortality, and disability, in addition to sapping economic welfare of societies’’ [16]. The connection between the environment and health is amply illustrated by lead. The purpose of my contribution is to describe empirical research findings as they pertain to lead and to explore the ethical consequences for failing to apply the environmental health hypothesis toward treating this preventable disease. Empirical research about the connection between community lead contamination and environmental health is from a series of studies conducted in New Orleans, LA, beginning in 1989 and being concluded in 2002. The exceptional sensitivity of young children to lead is related to their crawling and hand-to-mouth behavior plus their physiological need for minerals such as calcium and iron [1]. Children are super efficient absorbers of environmental minerals, and excessive lead absorption is one of the manifestations of these childhood characteristics. In addition to neurotoxicity, childhood exposure has long-term consequences to the immune and respiratory systems [3]. The total tolerable daily intake for lead is about 6 mg/day for very young children [2]. One of the first empirical studies we conducted was on the amount of lead children pick up on their hands during indoor and outdoor play at daycare centers of New Orleans. The usual approach for studying lead exposure is to screen children’s blood lead. Inserting needles into veins is traumatic to many children, and for this and other reasons, studies involving blood lead screening have been prohibited by most daycare centers. As an alternative approach for evaluating environmental health we developed a protocol for a hand wipe study of children that was benign and provided direct information to the owners of the daycare center about environmental trouble spots on their property [19]. Each child was its own control. First children’s hands were wiped after playing indoors. Then, the children went outdoors. Finally, the children’s hands were wiped a second time as they were returning inside from the outdoor play area. At private daycare centers in the inner city, the indoor play resulted in an average of 4 mg lead per hand, while outdoor play resulted in 28 mg lead per hand. In the outer city, children had an average of 3 mg lead per hand inside and 4 mg per hand after outdoor play. It is important to note that private daycare centers had bare soils. The study also included public daycare (Head Start) centers where the outdoor play areas had rubberized ground cover and no bare soils. In that situation there was only a small increase (from 1.4 to 1.9 mg lead averages per hand) between indoor and outdoor play [19]. We reasoned that on ordinary inner-city private properties children pick up and ingest more lead than children living in outer-city locations because the inner-city environment, especially outdoor play areas, contained larger quantities of accessible lead. While daycare centers may differ from ordinary homes, the findings are suggestive of the broader environmental health situation; lead-contaminated environments are linked with unhealthy levels of lead exposure by children. Further empirical research was conducted to test the environmental health hypothesis. Our studies focused on surveying the distribution of lead in the residential environment of the entire city of New Orleans located on the Mississippi River delta. New Orleans soils are of alluvial origin, meaning that they were transported as sediments by the Mississippi River from the entire watershed and were subsequently deposited (as alluvium) during annual flooding in the river delta. The fresh alluvium deposited along the river provides a measure of the modern background. The median background of alluvial soil lead is about 5 mg/g

The graves are not yet full: race, tribe and power in the heart of Africa

Bill Berkeley describes his fifteen years of reporting on Africa, providing a series of firsthand encounters with key players in six countries-Liberia, Zaire (now Congo), Sudan, Rwanda, Uganda, and South Africa. . Since 1983 journalist Bill Berkeley has traveled through Africa's most troubled lands to seek out the tyrants and military leaders who orchestrate these nations' seemingly intractable wars. Shattering once and for all the myth that ancient tribal hatreds lay at the heart of the continent's troubles, Berkeley instead holds accountable the Big Men who came to power during this period, describing the very rational methods behind their apparent madness. Weaving together insightful historical analysis and his own keen observations of ordinary men, women, and children struggling in the midst of terrible violence, Berkeley insists that what the world often sees as uniquely interethnic troubles are in fact rooted in the international politics of colonialism and the Cold War. The Graves Are Not Yet Full provides a convincing explanation for the last half-century's cycle of revolution and genocide in Africa, detailing the stirring history of these nations' quests for peace and independence over the last seventeen years. Berkeley's incisive analysis does much to bring recent African history into sharp focus while at the same time illuminating just what it is that allows societies-wherever they may be-to accept, and sometimes embrace, violence.

小児喉頭狭窄の問題点

Various controversial problems have been pointed out for the treatment modality for patients with cicatricious stenosis of the larynx as follows : 1) successive change of the autografted mucosa and/or skin, 2) timing of complete closure of the tracheostoma, 3) influence of puberty upon the air-way, and 4) influence of puberty upon vocal functions. Thirty-six patients more than 15-year-old and 23 patienets less than 15-year-old, both with cicatricious stenosis of the larynx, were retrospectively reviewed in this study. As a result, following conclusions were obtained.1) Autografted mucosa/skin can be alive accompanying prominent cicatricious change below the grafted mucosa/skin, suggesting this histopathological change may bring re-stenosis of the air-way. 2) The trachestoma should be closed preferably after puberty, especially for patients undergoing posterior cricoid split (PCS) maneuver. For patients without PCS complete closure in childhood may cause no serious problem. 3) Patients treated their stenosis in childhood may have no restenosis of the air-way even in adulthood. 4) Patient with laryngeal stenosis may experience voice change at puberty as like ordinary children.

'If I had a friend in a wheelchair': children's thoughts on disabilities.

The purpose of the present study was to examine what notions there are among ordinary preschool children and schoolchildren about physically handicapped children using wheelchairs. Forty-eight children-16 children of preschool age (half boys, half girls, aged around 6), 16 children in primary school class 2 (half boys, half girls, aged around 8) and 16 children in class 4 (half boys, half girls, aged around 8)-constituted the investigated group. The method used was a combination of drawings produced by the children themselves serving as a projective image, interview questions in connection with the drawings and a self-assessment scale, based on Osgood's semantic differential technique. The results showed that most children had favourable attitudes towards a child in a wheelchair. They were willing to include the disabled child in their games and recreational activities, and they considered that the disabled child would have many friends and a high self-esteem. However, they saw real obstacles for the disabled child both in play situations and in other environmental settings. No tangible differences between the sexes could be found; however, differences by age were present. The results were discussed with regard to earlier research and topics for further research are suggested.

The Development of Language Processing Strategies: A Cross-Linguistic Study between Japanese and English

Ever since the notion of explanatory adequacy was promoted by Chomsky in his 1965 Aspects, linguists and psycholinguists have been in pursuit of a psychologically valid theory of grammar. To be explanatorily adequate, a theory of grammar can not only describe the general characteristics of a language but can also account for the underlying psychological processes of acquiring and processing that language. To be considered psychologically valid, a grammar must be learnable by ordinary children (the problem of acquisition) and must generate sentences that are parsable by ordinary people (the problem of processing). Ultimately, the fields of language acquisition and processing are concerned with the same goal: to build a theory that accounts for grammar as it is acquired by children; accessed in comprehension and production of speech; and represented within the human mind. Unfortunately, these two fields developed independently and have rarely been well-informed about each other's concerns. Both have experienced past difficulties as a result. Recently, new models have been developed with full consideration to cross-linguistic diversity. Gone are many of the basic assumptions of conventional models, and in their place a variety of innovative and more flexible assumptions have emerged. However, in their attempt to address cross-linguistic issues, these processing models have yet to fully address the developmental challenge: How can a child without a stable grammar process language and still manage to acquire new grammar? This book attempts to develop a model of language processing that addresses both cross-linguistic and developmental challenges. It proposes to link the setting of a basic configurational parameter during language acquisition to the different organization of processing strategies in left- and right-branching languages. Based primarily on Mazuka's doctoral dissertation, this volume incorporates various responses to the original proposal as well as the author's responses to the comments.

‘for the common good of all’: education and the hertfordshire garden cities, 1904-1939

This article analyses two dramatically different perceptions of education, but each characterised by the great importance it attached to vocational education. The first was held by Hertfordshire Local Education Authority (LEA) and the second by two internationally famous utopian communities – Letchworth and Welwyn Garden Cities – that established themselves within it. While the reactionary LEA saw an essentially practical vocational education as all that mattered in elementary education, with secondary grammar schools the preserve of the elementary pupils’ social superiors, the garden cities fervently upheld that practical, vocational and secondary education should be offered, without discrimination, and with equal status and funding, to all. The article contends that despite all the startling differences in social, political, economic and educational outlook, the garden cities and the LEA did not spurn each other. Instead, a positive relationship evolved which transcended popular suspicions and served each party well in difficult times. It saw, for example, the LEA encouraging developments completely out of step with the Conservative policies it generally wholeheartedly endorsed, and it signalled that there were other ways of making educational progress beside the government's interpretation of the 1926 ‘Hadow’ Report and the total independence sought by, or forced upon, most supporters of ‘progressive’ schooling. The article analyses this unusual and hitherto ignored relationship, and in so doing it highlights the irony that St Christopher, the one Hertfordshire garden city school to attract the admiration of educational historians, turned its back on all the efforts to bring high quality schooling to the ordinary children in these burgeoning towns

"Daddy's Gone to War": The Second World War in the Lives of America's Children.

Looking out a second-story window of her family's quarters at Pearl Harbor naval base on December 7, 1941, eleven-year-old Jackie Smith could see not only Rising Sun insignias on wings of attacking Japanese bombers, but faces of pilots inside. Most American children on home front during Second World saw enemy only in newsreels and pages of Life Magazine, but from Pearl Harbor on, the war--with its blackouts, air raids, and government rationing--became a dramatic presence in all of their lives. Thirty million Americans relocated, 3,700,000 homemakers entered labor force, sparking a national debate over working mothers and latchkey children, and millions of enlisted fathers and older brothers suddenly disappeared overseas or to far-off army bases. By end of war, 180,000 American children had lost their fathers. In Daddy's Gone to War, William M. Tuttle, Jr., offers a fascinating and often poignant exploration of wartime America, and one of generation's odyssey from childhood to middle age. The voices of home front children are vividly present in excerpts from 2,500 letters Tuttle solicited from men and women across country who are now in their fifties and sixties. From scrap-collection drives and Saturday matinees to atomic bomb and V-J Day, here is Second World through eyes of America's children. Women relive frustration of always having to play nurses in neighborhood war games, and men remember being both afraid and eager to grow up and go to war themselves. (Not all were willing to wait. Tuttle tells of one twelve year old boy who strode into an Arizona recruiting office and declared, I don't need my mother's consent...I'm a midget.) Former home front children recall as though it were yesterday pain of saying good-bye, perhaps forever, to an enlisting father posted overseas and sometimes equally unsettling experience of a long-absent father's return. A pioneering effort to reinvent way we look at history and childhood, Daddy's Gone to War views experiences of ordinary children through lens of developmental psychology. Tuttle argues that Second World left an indelible imprint on dreams and nightmares of an American generation, not only in childhood, but in adulthood as well. Drawing on his wide-ranging research, he makes case that America's wartime belief in democracy and its rightful leadership of Free World, as well as its assumptions about marriage and family and need to get ahead, remained largely unchallenged until tumultuous years of Kennedy assassination, Vietnam and Watergate. As hopes and expectations of home front children changed, so did their country's. In telling story of a generation, Tuttle provides a vital missing piece of American cultural history.

Mental and somatic health and social adjustment in ordinary school children during childhood and adolescence related to central nervous functions as expressed by a complex reaction time.

A cohort of ordinary Swedish children were followed up from school entry through childhood and adolescence and checked retrospectively from birth to the age of 6 years regarding psychiatric and physical health and contact with the social welfare authorities. The children were allocated to different risk groups at age 7 on the basis of their psycho-physical development expressed as complex reaction time (CRT). It was previously shown that many of the slow CRT children have problems in psychomotor and language development at school, and that many leave compulsory school with poor achievements in Swedish and gymnastics as continuing signs of their developmental delay. This study shows that slow CRT children have an increased prevalence of child psychiatric problems. At an early age there were symptoms of aggression, hyperactivity and withdrawal in conjunction with developmental delay. During adolescence, depression, maladjustment and psycho-somatic disorders were prominent features, often in association with developmental delay, dyslexia and poor motoric skill. These children could have a disadvantage at school and in society and they felt themselves "handicapped" and were stressed by feelings of limited future possibilities. In adolescence, many of them were in need of help, especially financial aid from the social welfare services. The findings stress that a slow cognitive processing ability seen as a slow CRT must be considered a handicap of importance and a risk-factor in the society of today, with primary or secondary psychic and social manifestations often in a multifactorial setting of biological co-morbidity and family problems. In contrast, an advanced CNS development with a fast CRT may be seen as a protective factor.

Investigating the literacy, language and memory skills of children with Down syndrome

This paper presents the first phase of a longitudinal study following 24 children with Down syndrome who are receiving their education in mainstream primary schools. The literacy, numeracy, language and memory skills of the children with Down syndrome were compared to 2 groups of children selected from their classmates. The comparison groups were a group of typically developing children who were average readers in the classes and a group of children who were matched to the children with Down syndrome for reading age. The baseline data revealed that the children with Down syndrome had uneven cognitive profiles with relatively advanced reading skills compared to their other cognitive skills. The group of ordinary children who were matched to the children with Down syndrome on reading ability, attained significantly higher scores than the children with Down syndrome on all assessments other than reading. However, the reading matched group who were generally of below average reading ability for their age, were also significantly delayed relative to the average readers on measures of language, number and memory. As a group the average readers were average or above average on all measures. A cross-sectional analysis which divided the children with Down syndrome into 3 groups according to age and school year group indicates steady progress in all skills as the children move through primary school.

Dyslexic children learn a new visual strategy for reading: a controlled experiment

Recent studies by Geiger, Lettvin and Zegarra-Moran have proposed a new non-reading test for the diagnosis of dyslexia, and a new method for remediation. The latter involves the learning of a “visual strategy”. On adult dyslexics the test was reliable and the remediation apparently effective. The purpose of this study is to confirm the usefulness of the remediation and test with children. Dyslexic children (3rd-6th grade) were divided into two groups. The experimental group (9) was given a new remedial regimen of practise. The control group (6) continued the remedial process given in their school. After 3 months of practising their separate regimens all the dyslexic children who were in the two groups were retested and compared. The “experimental” dyslexics improved in reading by 1.22 grade level on average while the “control” dyslexics improved by 0.17 grade on average. The form-resolving field (FRF) plots narrowed significantly for the experimental dyslexics while they changed little for the control dyslexics. At the end of the second testing the control dyslexics were also given the new regimen of practise. Five months later all the dyslexic children were tested for the third time. The initial control dyslexics who later practised the regimen (2) improved in reading by 2–2.5 grades and their FRF plot narrowed. The experimental dyslexics continued to improve yet further. All the dyslexic who practised the new regimen started at an average of 2.5 grades behind their expected grade/age level and after 8 months were at an average 0.75 grades behind their expected grade/age level. This is on average 1.75 grade level improvement in reading within 8 months, a rate of improvement larger than that of ordinary reading subjects. The dyslexic children were compared with matched grade/age ordinary reading children for reference. The study confirms the usefulness of the test and the applicability of the remediation method for children. It also shows that improvement under that method is quite rapid.

Family Undoing

Since it was first coined the term ‘an ordinary life’ has become a shorthand way of expressing the principle that people with learning difficulties have a right and a need to live like others in the community. For most people an ordinary life means marriage and children. Yet people with learning difficulties still face an uphill struggle in proving their fitness for parenthood (Booth & Booth, 1992). Here Sarah Armstrong tells her story in her own words. The Armstrongs illustrate the challenge that practitioners still have to address in finding a balance between child protection and family support. As Prosser (1992) has argued, professional practice too often ‘seems to see the good of the child requiring the sacrifice of the family’. The possibility that parent–child relationships are worth supporting even though they may not meet all the child's needs has to be regarded more seriously (Gilhool & Gran, 1985). The literature on parenting by people with learning difficulties (see, for example, Tymchuk et al., 1987) has drawn almost exclusively on expert, official, clinical or professional sources of evidence; the parents as people rarely make any appearance (Booth & Booth, 1993). In a context where wide discrepancies often exist between parent and professional perspectives (Llewellyn, nd.), the development of more responsive services entails listening carefully to users like Sarah Armstrong (especially on issues like access and counselling). Although not representative of parents with learning difficulties in any statistical sense, her story is true to the experience of many parents in our study (Booth & Booth, forthcoming).

Psychiatric disorders in Japanese secondary school children.

Approximately 2000 ordinary secondary school children were investigated using screening methods such as the Rutter teacher's and parent's questionnaires and a diagnostic interview. The prevalence estimate was 16% for the 12-13-year-olds and 14% for the 14-15-year-old children. Disorders were identified in boys more often than in girls (boys: girls = 2.4:1, as the ratio of prevalence estimates). Emotional disorders were equally common in boys and girls. However, conduct disorders were found more frequently in boys (boys: girls = 7:1). Out of the children who were judged as having psychiatric disorders only one had received any professional help except from that given by teachers, regardless of severity.

Sequence and Structure in the Concept Development of Children with Emotional and Behavioral Difficulties

We investigated the order of acquisition of concepts and cognitive processes in children with emotional and behavioral difficulties and the extent to which these children show similarity to ordinary children in sequence and structure of development. Similarity in developmental sequence was strongly supported by scalogram analyses and has clear implications for organizing teaching, but similarity in structure was less clear. Cognitive processes however, and the nature of the children's reasoning were clarified by the method of exploration used. This was particularly fruitful for providing insight into the difficulties children may have. The findings thus contribute to understanding with a view toward furthering concept development in children with emotional and behavioral difficulties.

A Analysis of the Dietary Status on Autism and Autistic Children in Comparison with Ordinary Children

A Analysis of the Dietary Status on Autism and Autistic Children in Comparison with Ordinary Children

Attitudes of special foster parents and residential staff towards children

SummaryThis paper compares the attitudes of special foster parents and residential staff towards children in their care. The exercise was carried out as part of a comparative study of care practice in ‘special’ foster homes (accommodating children traditionally considered too old or difficult for fostering) and ordinary community or children's homes. Overall, care practice in the foster homes was significantly more child oriented than in the children's homes. This finding cannot, however, be explained in terms of attitudinal differences between foster parents and staff. Staff attitudes generally appeared more conducive to the provision of child oriented care than those of the foster parents.

Sequence in hearing impaired children's development of concepts.

Summary. The question of sequence in hearing impaired and hearing children's development of concepts was investigated and a similar order of acquisition of conservation was found regardless of delay. The 24 partially hearing unit, 28 deaf school and 30 hearing ordinary school children, with individual exceptions, yielded the ordering: conservation of number, substance, length, weight, area, volume. Scalogram analyses supported the order with coefficients of reproducibility of C1 = 0·93 (z = 4·2 P < 0·0002) for the hearing impaired and C1 = 0·96 (z = 4·9 P < 0·0002) for the hearing. Whilst scalogram analyses clarified the preferred ordering, they also indicated that more than one sequence was significant, and that there was no single fixed order of development.