Scholastic Development Research Articles

Association between seropositivity for Toxoplasma gondii, scholastic development of children and risk factors for T. gondii infection

We evaluated the possible association of seropositivity for Toxoplasma gondii and certain risk factors for T. gondii infection with the scholastic development of children. One hundred children aged 6-13 years attending the Hospital Municipal de Maringá Paranáa, Brazil, participated in the study. Serologic tests for IgG and IgM anti-T. gondii (indirect immunofluorescence (capture ELISA) were performed. The Scholastic Performance Test (SPT) for writing, mathematics and reading was applied to each child, and the result was classified as high, average or poor. The guardian of each child responded to a questionnaire about certain aspects of the child's living situation and diet. The prevalence of seropositivity for T. gondii was 8%. An association between seropositivity for T. gondii and scholastic development in the mathematics subtest and also consumption of fresh cheese were observed. Children with exposed soil, sand or grass lawn in their peridomicile were 9.116 times more likely to be infected by T. gondii. The findings showed the need to test school-age children for this parasite, educate families with T. gondii-positive children, provide training to educators, monitor recreation areas, and raise awareness of the need for care in handling food.

Education by Any Means Necessary: Peoples of African Descent and Community-Based Pedagogical Spaces

This study examines how and why peoples of African descent access and utilize community-based pedagogical spaces that exist outside schools. Employing a theoretical framework that fuses historical methodology and border-crossing theory, the researchers review existing scholarship and primary documents to present an historical examination of how peoples of African descent have fought for and redefined education in nonschool educative venues. These findings inform the authors’ analysis of results from an oral history project they conducted into how Black Bermudian men utilized learning spaces outside schools, such as the family, Black church, and athletics clubs, to augment their personal and scholastic development. Based on their historical and empirical research findings, the authors argue that educational actors (including teachers, administrators, policy makers, and researchers) focused on school-based issues like the academic achievement gap would do well to recognize the impact learning spaces outside of schools may have on student scholastic success, particularly for minority men.

Perceptions and Practices of Stimulating Children’s Cognitive Development Among Moroccan Immigrant Mothers

We explored the perceptions of children’s cognitive development among Moroccan Arabic and Berber immigrant mothers who cannot read, who are less educated, middle educated or highly educated in the Netherlands. A series of in-depth interviews was conducted with 22 mothers with young children (mean age = 5 years and 6 months). Qualitative data analyses revealed five major themes that are of significant importance to these mothers: moral attitudes, social values and religiousness; conversation, reading and playing as stimulating activities; importance attached to education; parental expectations; attributions of school success. The parental perceptions about the cognitive development of young children differed according to their own educational level. Mothers who cannot read and mothers with less education emphasized the development of moral, social and religious values for strengthening the cultural identity of their children. This sense of identity would enable them to function within their own cultural group and help them to perform well at school. School success was attributed in large part to a combination of the efforts of the child and the school. Middle and highly educated mothers, on the other hand, valued scholastic development and attributed school success to their own efforts and to the kind of support the child received. The ethnic background of the parents, whether Arabic or Berber, did not make a difference in the perceptions.

Reaching for Independence: Counseling Implications for Youth With Spina Bifida

Spina bifida, a congenital physical disability, is indirectly associated with difficulties in scholastic achievement, social development, and self‐determination. Environment can have an impact on psychosocial development and impede functioning academically, socially, and vocationally. Counselors must be aware of the societal atmosphere to identify potential difficulties and more efficiently meet the needs of children and adolescents with spina bifida.

Retrospective study on intellectual and scholastic development of 10–18-year-old former patients with febrile convulsions in the anamnesis

Retrospective study on intellectual and scholastic development of 10–18-year-old former patients with febrile convulsions in the anamnesis

Development of the Scale for Program Facilitators to Assess the Effectiveness of After School Achievement Programs

The purpose of this study was to develop the Scale for Program Facilitators (SPF) to assess the effectiveness of after school achievement programs through four steps: (a) identification of a theoretical framework, (b) formulation of the initial scale, (c) test of content validity, and (d) conducting confirmatory factor analyses (CFA). A comprehensive review of literature revealed that after school programs commonly have four key objectives: (a) Scholastic Development, (b) Social Behavior, (c) Caring Environment, and (d) Personal Inspiration. The preliminary scale with 18 items was formulated by following these objectives as the theoretical framework, along with conducting a review of literature, on-site observations, interviews with program facilitators, and conducting a test of content validity by a panel of experts. Research participants (N = 2,995) were program facilitators, who were asked to use the preliminary SPF scale to evaluate the program attendees under their direct supervision. Adopting the Maximum Likelihood and the Weighted Least Squares estimation methods in the CFA, the four-factor model was confirmed providing good fit to the data. Discussions were made in the context of the scale development and its potential application in evaluating after school programs.

Perceived Academic Control and Failure in College students: A Three-Year Study of Scholastic Attainment

Although self-initiative is recognized as instrumental to success in college, some students do not take responsibility for their academic development and fail to make the transition from high school to college. This problem is exacerbated when bright, highly skilled students drop courses or quit college entirely. Research into this paradox of failure reveals that, although high academic control benefits learning-related emotions, cognitions, motivation, and performance, it is not sufficient to ensure optimal success. Along with academic control other factors are implicated in the paradox. In this 3-year longitudinal study, four groups of students who differed in academic control (low, high) and failure preoccupation (low, high) were tracked using broad indices of scholastic development. Overall, students higher in academic control obtained better 3-year GPAs and withdrew from fewer courses. More notable, however, high-academic-control students who were concerned about failure had better 3-year GPAs and also were less likely to withdraw from courses or quit university than the other three groups. Paradoxically, high-academic-control students who were less concerned about failure did poorly. In qualifying the assumption that more perceived control is always better, these results are interpreted following social cognition theory.

Analysis on origin and evolution of mumps

There was a preliminary recognition on mumps during the Qin-Han to Sui-Tang dynasty, laying a foundation for the scholastic development on this topic in later generations. The title of this disease was identified in Song-Jin-Yuan dynasty with gradual deepening on its principle-method-formula-medication system, a great progress of recognition as compared with the previous ages. In the Ming-Qing dynasty, the recognition became even more systematic, with certain breakthrough in the system of principle-method-formula-medication. In modern age, the experiences were inherited and developed to integrate to modern biomedicine, so that the theory and clinical practice become even more perfect.

Endosulfan’s Effects: Saiyed’s Response

I would like to respond to the comments of both Abraham and Indulkar about the origin and results of our study (Saiyed et al. 2003).

What limits children's working memory span? Theoretical accounts and applications for scholastic development.

Explanations of working memory span in children were studied in a longitudinal follow-up of J. N. Towse, G. J. Hitch, and U. Hutton (1998). Reading span and operation span were lower when within-task retention intervals were lengthened. For each task, variation in span between test waves and age cohorts was systematically related to changes in processing speed. The two spans explained substantial shared variance in both reading and arithmetic scores, with some evidence for domain specificity. Combined span scores predicted unique variance in scholastic attainment over a 1-year interval. The authors concluded that working memory span is constrained by rapid loss of active codes and is not simply a measure of capacity for resource sharing. Working memory is also implicated in scholastic development.

What limits children's working memory span? Theoretical accounts and applications for scholastic development.

Explanations of working memory span in children were studied in a longitudinal follow-up of J. N. Towse, G. J. Hitch, and U. Hutton (1998). Reading span and operation span were lower when within-task retention intervals were lengthened. For each task, variation in span between test waves and age cohorts was systematically related to changes in processing speed. The two spans explained substantial shared variance in both reading and arithmetic scores, with some evidence for domain specificity. Combined span scores predicted unique variance in scholastic attainment over a 1-year interval. The authors concluded that working memory span is constrained by rapid loss of active codes and is not simply a measure of capacity for resource sharing. Working memory is also implicated in scholastic development.

Aquí No Se Habla Español: Stories of Linguistic Repression in Southwest Schools

For some Americans, the growing number of heritage language speakers in the United States signals a threat to the cultural fabric of U.S. society. For these individuals, English is the only language that is appropriate for the indoctrination of youth into our nation's social order. Recent events in the United States' political landscape, such as the passage of California's Proposition 227 and Arizona's Proposition 203, attest to the notion that schools remain one of the most ardent battlegrounds for the English language policy debate. Nonetheless, school-based language policy decisions have been made too hastily, often relying on rash assessments of public opinion or personal biases. What school language policymakers have failed to consider are the potential long-term consequences to the social, academic, or linguistic development of heritage language speakers these policies affect. In the present paper, several accounts of Spanish speakers whose heritage language clashed on school grounds are provided. The stark memories from their youth reveal that the establishment of formal or informal English-only policies at school, and the manner in which those policies were enforced, often did shape their personal, scholastic, and language development over time.

Developing early childhood programs for children and families at risk: Research-based principles to promote long-term effectiveness

Early childhood programs for economically disadvantaged children are comprehensive interventions designed to help prevent school failure and social difficulties by promoting healthy child and family development. Eight principles of early childhood interventions were reviewed to highlight the research-based characteristics of programs that promote long-term effects on children's development. Effective programs not only enhance children's scholastic development but also can reduce the need for later remedial education and human welfare services. The effects of the Chicago Child-Parent Center, a large-scale early intervention program, were described to illustrate the importance of designing and implementing programs that have all the features of programs demonstrating long-term success for children and families.

A follow-up study of students in Slovenia: The 1976 generation

The paper presents the main results of nearly nine years of a follow-up study. All Slovene secondary school students, who in scholastic year 1975/76 were in the last class of at least four-year secondary schools were followed-up during higher education from 1976/77 to 1983/84. Study efficiency is analyzed by gender, family educational background, type of secondary school, delay of the first enrollment, abilities, early scholastic achievement and regional development.

Comments on L. M. Dunn's Bilingual Hispanic Children on the U.S. Mainland: A Review of Research on Their Cognitive, Linguistic, and Scholastic Development

Dunn's arguments are flawed and his conclusions inadequate. The genetic position, which attempts to explain academic differences among students of different ethnolinguistic backgrounds, is scientifically unfounded. The implications of IQ test results must be re-examined in light of socioeconomic and cultural differences in a broader historical perspective; such tests have already been determined biased and inaccurate as measures of ability, even among Anglo students. Dunn appears unaware that many minority group members have done well despite prejudicial educational practices. Historically, xenophobia has strong roots in this country, and Dunn has contributed to increase it. He has taken an arrogant position attempting to give credence to genetic arguments without really understanding genetics or anthropology.

Regression in the service of the ego in young children.

Analysis of studies of primary process thinking as manifested in Rorschach and TAT production of young children (ages 6 to 10) indicate that children show approximately the same amount of primary process production as do young adults (48% vs 54%). However, this primary process does not appear to be clearly related to the child's creative, scholastic, or perceptual-motor development as measured by appropriate tests. High levels of primary process appear to be significantly related only to the negative qualities of the personality, that is, to high levels of tension, anxiety, and poor control of aggression. It is possible that young children have not yet learned to use it in the service of the ego, although they do not seem to be encumbered by its presence.

A Thomistic Analysis of the Concept of Repression

THE THOMIST A SPECULATIVE QUARTERLY REVIEW OF THEOLOGY AND PHILOSOPHY EDITORS: THE DoMINICAN FATHERS oF THE PROVINCE OF ST. JosEPH Publishers: The Thomist Press, Washington 17, D. C. VoL. XXV OCTOBER, 196~ No.4 A THOMI$TIC ANALYSIS OF THE CONCEPT OF REPRESSION A KEY idea in the theory of psychoanalysis is the idea of repression, the concept of a dynamic and unwitting expulsion of certain images, ideas and affects from the consciousness of the mind. From one point of view, repression is invoked to account for the existence of unconscious thoughts and motivations; from another, it is conceived as a primary agent of neurotic states and of behavior which is more or less pathological; and from still another, it it allotted an important role in normal psychological growth and development. From any of these points of view, it is a phenomenon worthy of close study. The evidence concerning repression is tqday so varied and extensive that its existence can no longer be reasonably doubted. Nevertheless, the concept has not been universally accepted by psychologists, outside of the psychoanalytic schools, and possibly to some extent because there are still problems to be solved in understanding precisely what repressiOn Is. 468 464 MICHAEL STOCK It is not likely that many descriptions of repression will be found in text books of scholastic psychology, and this is unfortunate . The psychoanalytic investigations and descriptions of repression are, after some years of refining and re-defining, worthy of serious attention. This present article will attempt to summarize the salient features of the theory of repression, and show how it might fit into a scholastic development of psychology, and, in particular, into the psychology of St. Thomas Aquinas. I. DEsCRIPTION oF REPRESSION FROM PsYcHOANALYTIC LITERATURE . A. The General Idea of Repression. Repression belongs generically to the category of psychological reactions which in psychoanalytic literature_ are called mechanisms of defence. The context in which mechanisms of defence are discussed is mental anguish, which is variously termed mental pain or psychological tension or anxiety. Given a state of mental distress, distinct from physical pain, the mind might adopt, or perhaps we should say, experience, a psychological response whose aim is to escape from the disagreeable situation. The various psychological respon!les (about ten are generally recognized) are the mechanisms of defence, among which repression holds a unique place. There are many ordinary kinds of responses which people might employ to diminish mental distress. They might try to work it off, or to dist:.;act themselves with pleasures, or go to sleep, or talk it over with a friend-these are not mechanisms of defence. The term is restricted to largely spontaneous and indeliberate psychological reactions which work almost like reflexes (hence the term ' mechanism ') and which in fact succeed in one way or another in overcoming mental pain. One of the more commonly recognized mechanisms of defence is projection. By this reaction, a person who is experiencing a disagreeable feeling of hatred for another, escapes the sense of guilt by attributing the hate to the other; he begins to believe A THOMISTIC ANALYSIS OF THE CONCEPT OF REPRESSION 465 that he is hated. Another defence mechanism is reaction formation : a person overcomes disagreeable feelings of hate by overcompensating expressions. of kindness and benevolence, and vehement protestations (to himself and others) of his good will. A third mode of defending against an unwanted feeling of hate towards another is to turn it against oneself, to let it expend its force in self-recriminations. All of these mechanisms have one thing in common-they distort a feeling or attitude and make it unrecognizable to its possessor. Repression, which is like them in being an attempt to escape a disagreeable feeling, differs in its mode of operation. It does not distort 11 feeling, image or idea; it simply expels it from consciousness. It is crucial to the concept of repression to understand that it does not annul or annihilate the feeling or idea that it expels. It simply removes it from the sphere of awareness. It is a negating action vis-a-vis internal perception, a blocking off or inhibiting of consciousness concerning some mental phenomenon . The phenomenon persists afterwards in...

Die Gedanken des heiligen Albertus Magnus über die Gottesmutter by Albert Fries, C.Ss.R.

BOOK REVIEWS Die Gedanken des heiligen Albertus Magnus iiber die Gottesmutter. (Thomistische Studien. Schriftenreihe der " Freiburger Zeitschrift fiir Philosophie und Theologie" VII. Band.) By ALBERT FRIES, C.Ss.R. Freiburg Schweiz: Paulusverlag, 1959. Pp. 4~8, with indices. ~6 Swiss Francs. It is now several years since two scholars, working independently, showed that St. Albert the Great did not write the famous Mariale super missus est. Through more than half a century of critical studies, the Albertine authorship of the Mariale had never been seriously called into question, even when other writings were recognized as inauthentic, e. g., De laudibus (actually Richard of St. Lawrence), and the Biblia mariana. St. Albert was declared a Doctor of the Church in 198~; that he was also doctor marianus was usually demonstrated from the Mariale, with its stress on Mary's role in the redemptive work of Christ, not only through her consent at the Annunciation, but also by her compassion on Calvary. Up to the midfifties , many studies on the mediation and spiritual maternity of Mary invoked the authority of St. Albert, chiefly on the strength of the Mariale. In 1954 Albert Fries, C. Ss. R., a member of the St. Albert Institute for the new Cologne critical edition of St. Albert (in publication since 1951), reported on his researches. After examining the Mariale, Biblia mariana, Compendium super Ave Maria, and other shorter Marian titles attributed to Albert, he came to the verdict that all these expressly Marian works were not written by St. Albert. (Cf. Die unter dem Namen des Albertus Magnus iiberlieferten Mariologische Schriften, literarkristische Untersuchung , in the series Beitraege zur Geschichte der Philosophie und Theologie des Mittelalters, Band XXVII-Heft 4, Muenster Westf., Aschendorffsche Verlagsbuchhandlung, 1954.) In the same year, and on the same basis of internal evidence, Bruno Korosak, 0. F. M., published Mariologia S. Alberti Magni eiusque coaequalium , in the Bibliotheca Mariana Medii Aevi, fasc. VIII, Romae, Academia Mariana Internationalis, 1954. Korosak also excludes the Mariale and a number of other titles from the list of genuine Albertine writings, although he admits as probably authentic some of the smaller works refused by Fries. It is no wonder that the question began to be asked, " What then remains of the Marian theology of St. Albert the Great? " At the end of his 1954 volume, Fries published a list of authentic Marian writings of St. Albert with capsule indications of their content. Now, in his new book, 478 BOOK REVIEWS 479 Die Gedanken . . . Fries shows that a great body of Marian doctrine is to be found in St. Albert's exegetical and theological writings. Rather than being a " maverick," St. Albert was very much a theologian of his time: he did not essay a systematic treatise in Mariology: that was not to be effectively done until Suarez in the seventeenth century. Rather, he studied our Lady; her privileges, her place in the plan of salvation, in the context of the rest of theology and of sacred Scripture. Many of the positions on Marian doctrine taken by Albert became classic-to be adopted by St. Thomas as his own, and to provide the solid and sober groundwork for further scholastic development. Fries arranges his materials in chronological order-twenty-four titles, both printed and manuscript, which contains Marian passages. They cover ascetic theology, systematic theology (e.g., commentaries on the Sentences of Peter Lombard, but also De incarnatione, and even Quaestiones mariologicae), and exegesis (as the Postilla super Isaiam, but especially the gospel commentaries). The commentary on St. Luke receives the most attention-pp. ~09-8~5, a small book in itself. In addition to the Lucan commentary, the Super III Sententiarum and the Commentarium super Matthaeum rank as the most important sources of Albert's Marian theology. The central element in Albert's Mariology is its Christological orientation . Fries puts it well "Not the Mariology of a system, but Mariology in a situation, as a function of Christology." Nonetheless, Marian theology may be called a preoccupation of the saint, who uses every opportunity to speak of Mary in connection with other truths of the faith or in commenting on sacred Scripture. The Eucharist and our Lady are the two...