Early Intervention Can Improve Low-Income Children’s Cognitive Skills and Academic Achievement

National Head Start program conceptualized while psychologists were beginning to study preventive intervention for young children living in poverty.
Findings
As a group, children who live in poverty tend to perform worse in school than do children from more privileged backgrounds. For the first half of the 20th century, researchers attributed this difference to inherent cognitive deficits. At the time, the prevailing belief was that the course of child development was dictated by biology and maturation. By the early 1960s, this position gave way to the notion popularized by psychologists such as J. McVicker Hunt and Benjamin Bloom that intelligence could rather easily be shaped by the environment. There was very little research at the time to support these speculations but a few psychologists had begun to study whether environmental manipulation could prevent poor cognitive outcomes. Results of studies by psychologists Susan Gray and Rupert Klaus (1965), Martin Deutsch (1965) and Bettye Caldwell and former U.S. Surgeon General Julius Richmond (1968) supported the notion that early attention to physical and psychological development could improve cognitive ability.
Significance

These preliminary results caught the attention of Sargent Shriver, President Lyndon Johnson’s chief strategist in implementing an arsenal of antipoverty programs as part of the War on Poverty. His idea for a school readiness program for children of the poor focused on breaking the cycle of poverty. Shriver reasoned that if poor children could begin school on an equal footing with wealthier classmates, they would have a better of chance of succeeding in school and avoiding poverty in adulthood. He appointed a planning committee of 13 professionals in physical and mental health, early education, social work, and developmental psychology. Their work helped shape what is now known as the federal Head Start program.

The three developmental psychologists in the group were Urie Bronfenbrenner, Mamie Clark, and Edward Zigler. Bronfenbrenner convinced the other members that intervention would be most effective if it involved not just the child but the family and community that comprise the child-rearing environment. Parent involvement in school operations and administration were unheard of at the time, but it became a cornerstone of Head Start and proved to be a major contributor to its success. Zigler had been trained as a scientist and was distressed that the new program was not going to be field-tested before its nationwide launch. Arguing that it was not wise to base such a massive, innovative program on good ideas and concepts but little empirical evidence, he insisted that research and evaluation be part of Head Start. When he later became the federal official responsible for administering the program, Zigler (often referred to as the “father of Head Start”) worked to cast Head Start as a national laboratory for the design of effective early childhood services.

Although it is difficult to summarize the hundreds of empirical studies of Head Start outcomes, Head Start does seem to produce a variety of benefits for most children who participate. Although some studies have suggested that the intellectual advantages gained from participation in Head Start gradually disappear as children progress through elementary school, some of these same studies have shown more lasting benefits in the areas of school achievement and adjustment.
Practical Application

Head Start began as a great experiment that over the years has yielded prolific results. Some 20 million children and families have participated in Head Start since the summer of 1965; current enrollment approaches one million annually, including those in the new Early Head Start that serves families with children from birth to age 3. Psychological research on early intervention has proliferated, creating an expansive literature and sound knowledge base. Many research ideas designed and tested in the Head Start laboratory have been adapted in a variety of service delivery programs. These include family support services, home visiting, a credentialing process for early childhood workers, and education for parenthood. Head Start’s efforts in preschool education spotlighted the value of school readiness and helped spur today’s movement toward universal preschool.

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Family-Like Environment Better for Troubled Children and Teens

The Teaching-Family Model changes bad behavior through straight talk and loving relationships.
Findings

In the late 1960′s, psychologists Elaine Phillips, Elery Phillips, Dean Fixsen, and Montrose Wolf developed an empirically tested treatment program to help troubled children and juvenile offenders who had been assigned to residential group homes. These researchers combined the successful components of their studies into the Teaching-Family Model, which offers a structured treatment regimen in a family-like environment. The model is built around a married couple (teaching-parents) that lives with children in a group home and teaches them essential interpersonal and living skills. Not only have teaching parents’ behaviors and techniques been assessed for their effectiveness, but they have also been empirically tested for whether children like them. Teaching-parents also work with the children’s parents, teachers, employers, and peers to ensure support for the children’s positive changes. Although more research is needed, preliminary results suggest that, compared to children in other residential treatment programs, children in Teaching-Family Model centers have fewer contacts with police and courts, lower dropout rates, and improved school grades and attendance.

Couples are selected to be teaching-parents based on their ability to provide individualized and affirming care. Teaching-parents then undergo an intensive year-long training process. In order to maintain their certification, teaching-parents and Teaching-Family Model organizations are evaluated every year, and must meet the rigorous standards set by the Teaching-Family Association.
Significance
The Teaching-Family Model is one of the few evidence-based residential treatment programs for troubled children. In the past, many treatment programs viewed delinquency as an illness, and therefore placed children in institutions for medical treatment. The Teaching-Family Model, in contrast, views children’s behavior problems as stemming from their lack of essential interpersonal relationships and skills. Accordingly, the Teaching-Family Model provides children with these relationships and teaches them these skills, using empirically validated methods. With its novel view of problem behavior and its carefully tested and disseminated treatment program, the Teaching-Family Model has helped to transform the treatment of behavioral problems from impersonal interventions at large institutions to caring relationships in home and community settings. The Teaching-Family Model has also demonstrated how well-researched treatment programs can be implemented on a large scale. Most importantly, the Teaching-Family Model has given hope that young people with even the most difficult problems or behaviors can improve the quality of their lives and make contributions to society.
Practical Application
In recent years, the Teaching-Family Model has been expanded to include foster care facilities, home treatment settings, and even schools. The Teaching-Family Model has also been adapted to accommodate the needs of physically, emotionally, and sexually abused children; emotionally disturbed and autistic children and adults; medically fragile children; and adults with disabilities. Successful centers that have been active for over 30 years include the Bringing it All Back Home Study Center in North Carolina, the Houston Achievement Place in Texas, and the Girls and Boys Town in Nebraska. Other Teaching-Family Model organizations are in Alberta (Canada), Arkansas, Hawaii, Kansas, Michigan, Mississippi, New Jersey, North Carolina, Ohio, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Virginia, and Wisconsin.

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Believing You Can Get Smarter Makes You Smarter

Thinking about intelligence as changeable and malleable, rather than stable and fixed, results in greater academic achievement, especially for people whose groups bear the burden of negative stereotypes about their intelligence.
Findings

Can people get smarter? Are some racial or social groups smarter than others? Despite a lot of evidence to the contrary, many people believe that intelligence is fixed, and, moreover, that some racial and social groups are inherently smarter than others. Merely evoking these stereotypes about the intellectual inferiority of these groups (such as women and Blacks) is enough to harm the academic perfomance of members of these groups. Social psychologist Claude Steele and his collaborators (2002) have called this phenomenon “stereotype threat.”

Yet social psychologists Aronson, Fried, and Good (2001) have developed a possible antidote to stereotype threat. They taught African American and European American college students to think of intelligence as changeable, rather than fixed – a lesson that many psychological studies suggests is true. Students in a control group did not receive this message. Those students who learned about IQ’s malleability improved their grades more than did students who did not receive this message, and also saw academics as more important than did students in the control group. Even more exciting was the finding that Black students benefited more from learning about the malleable nature of intelligence than did White students, showing that this intervention may successfully counteract stereotype threat.
Significance

This research showed a relatively easy way to narrow the Black-White academic achievement gap. Realizing that one’s intelligence may be improved may actually improve one’s intelligence, especially for those whose groups are targets of stereotypes alleging limited intelligence (e.g., Blacks, Latinos, and women in math domains.)
Practical Application

Blackwell, Dweck, and Trzesniewski (2002) recently replicated and applied this research with seventh-grade students in New York City. During the first eight weeks of the spring term, these students learned about the malleability of intelligence by reading and discussing a science-based article that described how intelligence develops. A control group of seventh-grade students did not learn about intelligence’s changeability, and instead learned about memory and mnemonic strategies. As compared to the control group, students who learned about intelligence’s malleability had higher academic motivation, better academic behavior, and better grades in mathematics. Indeed, students who were members of vulnerable groups (e.g., those who previously thought that intelligence cannot change, those who had low prior mathematics achievement, and female students) had higher mathematics grades following the intelligence-is-malleable intervention, while the grades of similar students in the control group declined. In fact, girls who received the intervention matched and even slightly exceeded the boys in math grades, whereas girls in the control group performed well below the boys.

These findings are especially important because the actual instruction time for the intervention totaled just three hours. Therefore, this is a very cost-effective method for improving students’ academic motivation and achievement.
Cited Research

Aronson, J., Fried, C. B., & Good, C. (2001). Reducing the effects of stereotype threat on African American college students by shaping theories of intelligence. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 1-13.

Steele, C. M., Spencer, S. J., & Aronson, J. (2002), Contending with group image: The psychology of stereotype and social identity threat. In Mark P. Zanna (Ed.), Advances in experimental social psychology, Vol. 34, pp. 379-440. San Diego, CA: Academic Press, Inc.
Additional Sources

Blackwell, L., Dweck, C., & Trzesniewski, K. (2002). Achievement across the adolescent transition: A longitudinal study and an intervention. Manuscript in preparation.

Dweck, C., & Leggett, E. (1988). A social-cognitive approach to motivation and personality. Psychological Review, 95, 256-273.

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Finance and digital transformation

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Popular Culture Arts – As Interpreted by a Renowned Digital Artist

The phrase “Spinning Pop” generally refers to iconic people, places and events of our day – Popular culture arts which can be recorded visually through daily compilations of manipulated digital images. The resulting images are posted online and disseminated via online media and social networks. The work is diaristic in nature, intended to metaphorically record a spectator’s experience of the contemporary digital age from a popular culture arts perspective. The resulting work intentionally has a painterly aesthetic acknowledging the artists historical painting practice. With 6.7 billion human faces surviving on this planet, these images portray historically a glimpse of a notary event or face for each particular day.Adapting Pop Art’s notion of mass media imagery into the context of the contemporary digital age, it draws on a myriad points of reference. Utilising fractured images to provide an allusion to the digital noise pounding away daily into our sub consciousness. This popular culture art diverges from the traditional Pop Art notion of a pronounced repetition of a consumer icon, instead focusing on the deluge of contemporary digital content. The compilation of the fragmented imagery is vividly distractive, not unlike cable surfing or a jaunt through Times Square.This popular culture art is premised on the belief that Pop art in its beginnings, freeze-framed what consumers of popular culture experienced into iconic visual abstractions. With the advent of the techno age, visual information circulates in such quantities, so rapidly and exponentially, that to comprehend a fraction of it all becomes a kind of production process in itself.Unsurprisingly, as a collective of artists examine every facet of life, utilizing all available resource, materials and mediums to depict their interpretation of the world about them. The use of digital photo manipulation, and the creation of random imagery is just not surprising, nor outside the ‘norm’ of our brave new world. Photography has for many decades had to combat the accusation of ‘But is it Art?’, and thus as technology develops at such an astonishing pace, photographic manipulation is the medium at the proverbial ‘coal face’ or cutting edge, at which you would expect to find artists operating.

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How to Publish Books With Today’s POD Technology

With today’s technology, it is now easier than ever to get your books published. There are many POD (Print on demand) services that print books professionally, quickly, and inexpensively. In this article, we discuss some of the important issues to think about when writing and getting your book published.ISBNThe International Standard Book Number (ISBN) makes your book “official” and is required if you want to sell your book and make it available in libraries. Publishers can buy ISBN numbers in bulk, so it is often a good idea to work with a publisher instead of paying a premium to own a single (or several) ISBNs. You can buy ISBNs from the Bowker agency in the U.S. Although Bowker is the only official agency in the U.S. to sell ISBNs, you can also obtain ISBNs from publishers and other firms that resell ISBNs.Note that in addition to obtaining the ISBN and using it within your book, a barcode of the ISBN also needs to be created for the book cover. Finally, the ISBN and relevant book information needs to be registered with the Bowker agency’s database. You will need a different ISBN for each format in which you wish to publish your book. The ISBN is the first thing that people wonder about as they think about writing a book. What are some other things to consider?Industry StandardsBefore you start writing, you should be aware of – and try to stick with as many industry standards as possible. Your publisher and editor should be a good resource. Please be aware of the following standards:You will need to decide on the size of your book. Is it 6 inches x 9 inches? Or 5.5 inches x 8.5 inches? Check with your printer to make sure this is a good standard size that they can print. And then set your paper size correctly in your word processor.
Font: Some people like to use Times New Roman, but note that this font was designed for newspapers. Some good fonts to use for a book include: Garamond, Georgia, and Bookman.
Font size: Most trade paperbacks are printed with a font size from 10 to 12, but this is not set in stone. Think of your target readers and audience, and the length of the book, when deciding on your font size.
Margins: You can check out the margins on some books that you like. I like to leave a slightly larger margin on the edge of the page that will be bound.
Page numbering can normally be set on the outside bottom edge of each page.
Make sure your page layout is good. No paragraph headers at the bottom of the previous page, for instance! Creating the PDF DocumentWith today’s print on demand technology, once you have your book written, edited – and settings correct (fonts, font size, margins, page layout, etc.) – it is as simple as creating a PDF document, right? Or is it that easy?It IS as easy as creating a PDF document, but there are a few things to remember, that are required by most print on demand printers. Again, working with an experienced publisher will help smooth the process.Embed your fonts in the PDF document,
Make sure graphics are rendered with at least 300 dpi (dots per inch) for the best appearance, and
Make sure the output PDF is the correct size for the book.Note that most publishers purchase software such as Adobe Acrobat to accomplish all of these goals when producing a professional and print-quality PDF document. The publisher and printer will use the PDF to create your book!Cover Design This is more important than you think. A nice cover will attract readers to your book. Make sure your cover is professional, attractive, and matches the theme of your book.Using a PublisherSome authors may decide to use a publisher when they write their books. The publisher’s expertise and knowledge is often well worth the nominal cost to use an industry professional. A knowledgeable publisher can often save an author time and trouble. In some cases, the cost of the publisher is just a little more than purchasing your own ISBN!Publishers will typically work with their authors to customize services. Some authors merely need an ISBN and some help with formatting issues. Others will want editorial assistance. A good publisher should serve the needs of their authors.An additional benefit that should not be underestimated is that using a third-party publisher gives your book added prestige. This may be particularly important if the book is a credibility-builder for your business.SummaryWith today’s technology, it is easier than ever for new authors to write a book and get it published. Just be careful of some of the things we listed above and you will be the proud author of a professional-quality, beautiful book. We wish you well — and happy writing!

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