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This chapter argues that there are many, just many many variables which contribute to academic performance as measured in degree outcome, and, as such, simple bivariate analysis is inappropriate. We use structural equation modelling, and explore the contribution of academic behavioural confidence, to make the point that it does contribute to academic performance, but to a lesser extent than self-efficacy theory argues. We suggest that this is because degree outcome is made up of many efficacy variables, which we argue are better captured overall in academic behavioural confidence.

This study examined the effectiveness of the Triple P‐Positive Parenting Program in a government child health service delivery context with Chinese parents in Hong Kong. Specifically, the study sought to identify pre‐intervention variables that might predict programme outcomes such as level of clinical improvement and programme completion. Participants were 661 parents of pre‐school and primary aged children participating in a group version of the Triple P‐Positive Parenting Program. There were significant decreases in disruptive child behaviours, levels of parenting stress, general stress and anxiety and an increase in parenting sense of competence. Greater change in reports of child behaviour problems was related to lower levels of family income, new immigrant family status, and higher pre‐intervention levels of parenting stress. The present study provides a profile of parents who are most likely to benefit from parent training programmes.

This piece is a review of the animal selfhood literature in sociology, organized into four main parts. First, I review the sociological literature of human–animal interactions, in which sociologists claim that animals possess selves. Second, I review how sociologists have referred to the self, from which I construct five criteria of selfhood, including self as attribution, self-awareness, intersubjectivity, self-concept/reflexivity, and narration. Third, I address how animals have selves using these criteria, drawing on sociological and ethological evidence. Fourth, I critique the animal interaction sociologists’ specific claims of animal selfhood, including their epistemological failure to distinguish between human accounts of animal subjectivities and animal subjectivities, and their empirical failure to show how animals act toward themselves. Ultimately, I conclude that animal selves, particularly in an elemental Meadian sense, are potentially real, but in most cases are unobservable or unverifiable phenomena.

The purpose of this paper is to evaluate and compare the effectiveness of two intervention formats of the Positive Parenting Programme (Triple P) – Level 4 Group Triple P (TP) and brief parent discussion group (DI) with the waitlist control group (WL).

Participants included 91 Chinese parents with preschool children in Hong Kong from eight preschools, who were randomised into the two intervention conditions (TP and DI) and a waitlist control group (WL). Parent participants completed measures on child behaviours and parenting stress before and after intervention.

Results indicated that there was a significant decrease in post-intervention child behavioural problems in the TP group, with a medium effect size when compared to the WL group. There was a decrease in post-intervention child behaviour problems in the DI group, compared with the WL group. No significant difference was found in post-intervention child behaviour problems between the TP group and the DI group.

The positive results in the present study support the extension of the implementation of Triple P interventions to the preschool setting in Hong Kong. The effectiveness of the brief parent discussion group in reducing parental report of child behaviour problems provides preliminary support for its potential as a universal preventive parenting intervention in the local context.

The study was the first evaluation of the Level-4 Triple P programme in a local school context as well as the first evaluation of effectiveness of the brief parent discussion group in the local context at the time of the study.

Qualitative researchers working with young people consistently face challenges in trying to ethically gain insight into their inner thoughts and worlds. The purpose of this paper is to examine how the use of generative tools in conjunction with qualitative interviewing with young people can enhance creativity and reflexivity, while mitigating adult-child power dynamics.

This paper draws upon ethnographic research conducted by the author examining the interplay between emotion, communication, and schooling at a public high school. Participant observation, use of generative tools to make collages representing each student’s experience, and in-depth interviews guided by the student-created visuals were triangulated to more fully understand the students’ experiences.

Generative tools foster reflexivity in both researcher and participants, lesson adult-child power dynamic concerns, and foster creativity without the requirement of drawing ability. Integrating the collaging process into in-depth interviews enabled students to privilege their primary thoughts, experiences, and concerns related to the issues being studied, mitigating concerns over adults overpowering and controlling the focus of the interview.

Generative tools can complement and enhance time-honored qualitative methods to alleviate ongoing concerns about ethical and accurate research with young people. Researchers are encouraged to embrace creative methods to engage young people in ethical and thoughtful reflection on and sharing of their experiences. Creative methods are also useful in empowering young people to imagine their world otherwise creating new possibilities for the future.

The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the use of two psychometric measures as predictors of end of year outcome for first year university students.

New undergraduates (n=537) were recruited in two contrasting universities: one arts based, and one science, in different cities in the UK. At the start of the academic year, new undergraduates across 30 programmes in the two institutions were invited to complete a survey comprising two psychometric measures: Academic Behavioural Confidence scale and the Performance Expectation Ladder. Outcome data were collected from the examining boards the following summer distinguishing those who were able to progress to the next year of study without further assessment from those who were not.

Two of the four Confidence subscales, Attendance and Studying, had significantly lower scores amongst students who were not able to progress the following June compared to those who did (p < 0.003). The Ladder data showed the less successful group to anticipate a poorer performance at graduation relative to their year group than did the other group (p < 0.05).

The results suggest that these two psychometric measures could be instrumental in predicting those at risk of non-completion; such identification could enable the targeted use of limited resources to improve retention. Given the background of limited resources in which institutions are exhorted to improve retention rates, this approach, facilitating the early identification of those at risk of non-completion, could enable focused use of additional support to reduce attrition.

Considers the requirement for information security within the domain of online distance learning. A generic module structure is presented which represents a high level abstraction of the different stages of the educational process. Discusses the main security issues that must be considered at each stage. These various requirements are being addressed in practice by the security framework being developed by the SDLearn research project, a collaborative initiative between higher academic establishments in the UK and Germany.

Focusing on gender as an aspect of diversity, the purpose of this paper is to review social studies research on technology, and suggest a new direction, with gender redefined from a gap to be eliminated to a difference to be explored.

This paper is a literature review of research on gender, technology, and social studies from 1987 to 2007.

Previously, men had more access and used more types of technology than women, but a shift to web‐based computing eliminates some gender gaps. Women dominate online communication. Although “male” technology culture interferes with girls' self‐efficacy in schools and potential computer careers, the new Web 2.0 “participatory culture” holds promise because it relies on collaboration and networking, two well documented female strengths.

The gap notion of gender is questionable because: technology culture has been constructed as male; and social studies education, where women greatly out number men, pays little attention to gender. Evidence suggests that girls and women use technology well when it serves their interests, which may not be the same as men's. Defining gender as difference helps researchers answer calls to integrate “21st century literacies” into future studies and put gender equity at the center of future technology policy.

Very little has been written about gender as a facet of multicultural social studies education in its relation to social studies.

The purpose of the present chapter is to provide an overview of issues facing families of children and youths with emotional and behavioral disorders (EBD). We argue that although much is written about families of individuals with disabilities, comparatively little is known about families with children in this category. We suggest that the diversity of family contribution to the individual's EBD makes studying families of this population as a unitary group quite difficult. Despite the difficulty in adequately capturing families of individuals with EBD as a single unit, we describe what is known about (a) parental satisfaction with services for children with EBD, (b) issues affecting parental and family involvement in special education programming and decision-making, (c) the impact of a child with EBD upon siblings, and (d) interventions for EBD that involve families. We conclude by pointing to areas of need for additional research and noting that while educators are in a unique position to assist families of children with EBD, they are restrained by lack of adequate training, competing policy agenda, and constraints on the resources necessary to add this responsibility to the role of classroom teachers.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze how “New Deal” regulatory initiatives, primarily the Securities Acts and the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), changed US auditors’ professional knowledge conception, culminating in the 1938 expansion of the Committee on Accounting Procedure (CAP), the first US body to set accounting principles.

The paper combines Halliday’s (1985) knowledge mandates with Hancher and Moran’s (1989) regulatory space to attain a theory-based understanding of auditors’ changing knowledge conceptions amid regulatory pressure. It draws on a range of primary and secondary sources to examine the period from 1929 to 1938.

Following the stock market crash, the newly created SEC aimed to engage auditors as a means to regulate companies’ accounting practices based on a set of codified principles. While entailing increased status, this new role conflicted with the auditors’ knowledge conception, which was based on professional judgment and personal integrity. Pressure from the SEC and academics eventually made auditors agree to a codification of their professional knowledge and create the CAP as a cooperative regulatory solution.

The paper explores the role of auditors’ knowledge conceptions in the emergence of today’s standard setting. It is suggested that auditors’ incomplete control of their professional knowledge made standard setting a form of co-regulation, located between the actors occupying the regulatory space of accounting.