Search results

This paper examines the effects of immigration, urban residency, poverty, and race/ethnicity on the education of students in K-12 school. Findings of this study critiques the gaps between NCLB policy and its implementations as well as the outcomes, and makes several recommendations. This chapter recommends multiple standards and assessment approaches for accountability. The author believes that accountability must be addressed along with, equality, and fiscal adequacy. Accountability can work in a pluralistic nation only when diversity is taken into serious consideration. Recognizing this diversity is critical in developing successful strategies and effective approaches for working with immigrant families and students. Education policy for disadvantaged families and communities should not be limited to conventional education policy alone. Socioeconomic policies that benefit lower-income families and communities also should be recognized as educational policies on behalf of children.

An evaluation study is reported of the Leicestershire Libraries and Information Service Book Bus service to children in the inner areas of Leicester. A qualitative approach was taken using interviews with the Book Bus staff, and with both present and former users. The popularity of the service was confirmed and a positive correlation established between use of the Book Bus and the use of other libraries by Book Bus members.

The purpose of this study was to explore children’s pathways through homelessness within the South African context, with particular attention paid to pathways out of homelessness. This study focusses on factors influencing children’s successful transitions out of homelessness.

A qualitative exploratory design was used, using interviews with nine children who had exited or were in the process of exiting homelessness. Interviews were conducted at a children’s shelter in Pietermaritzburg or in the children’s home environments. Interviews were analysed thematically.

An ecological framework was used to frame the factors influencing children’s pathways in, through and out of homelessness in the children’s narratives. These included institutions, relationships and intrapersonal strengths and resources. The study suggested that constructive relationships with shelter staff and parental figures, as well as intrapersonal strengths, were the most prominent factors in children successfully negotiating their way through their homelessness. The importance of a relationship with the paternal family within some African cultures was also a point of leverage.

Implications for policy and practise include the need for systemic change, as well as greater support for shelters and shelter staff. The issue of rivalry in the shelter context and the role of the paternal family in the reintegration process require more research attention. The research is limited to homeless children in Pietermaritzburg, South Africa.

This study provided feedback to the shelter regarding their strategies for assisting homeless children off the streets. It further provided evidence for the importance of the work of the shelter, to strengthen advocacy efforts. This may be useful to others in similar circumstances.

This study highlights the importance of macrosystemic interventions in the efforts to assist homeless children, while at the same time not ignoring the inter and intra, personal elements to enhancing their well-being.

This paper is singular in its exploration of factors influencing children’s successful transitions out of homelessness within the South African context.

Purpose – This chapter draws on tenets of the “new” sociology of childhood, which posit that children are affected by social structures in the same way that adults are, to formulate an explanation for the black–white test-score gap.

Methodology – It builds on an analysis of ethnographic fieldnotes, which recorded the experiences of early elementary school students in a racially homogeneous school in a low-income African-American neighborhood.

Findings – The case is made that the children were oppressed by adults in the school. Being in school was almost a wholly negative experience for children. Students' active strategies to protect the self were ineffective, which led to their shutting down emotionally. Like adults in similar social contexts, children's energy was devoted to self-protection rather than to being a student.

America began the process of funding public education beyond the military colleges and American Indian School in 1965 with the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA). ESEA has evolved over the past 40 years to be called No Child Left Behind (NCLB). NCLB has had three major evaluations in which I participated in the last two evaluations by the U.S. Department of Education and each evaluation found that NCLB did not make a difference in the education lives of the students who received services from the program; but it did not harm. This chapter explored all the school choice options available to k-12 students in public and private schools; and reviewed the evaluation of these school choice options. Research reveals that for disadvantaged students, traditional public schools outperform private schools and charter schools. Voucher programs are also reviewed. This chapter concludes that educational equity is not adequately addressed by NCLB, school choice programs, charter schools or the traditional public schools.

Lead is a well-established environmental contaminant that over the last 50 years has become recognized as a neurotoxin with its greatest concern for the developing child (i.e. both in-utero and postnatally). What is problematic is that children exposed to lead often come from lower socioeconomic status (SES), are largely Black communities and are further at increased risk for developing adverse childhood experiences (ACEs). The literature on ACEs had focused much on trauma, single parenting, child abuse, lack of finances and stress, etc., but has not considered the intersectionality of these ACEs as risk factors within environmental neurotoxic exposures such as lead poisoning. This is important as most low SES communities are Black. In particular, within the New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA), Black families have been neglected of proper lead-abatement to their apartments for nearly 70 years.

This is a viewpoint/perspective paper that examines the lived experiences of Black folxs in NYCHA through a Black critical theory (BlackCrit) and antiblackness framework pertaining to ACEs, and lead poisoning within the NYCHA system of New York City. This perspective paper draws upon the last three years of news reports, five decades of publicly available data sets from NYCHA and the comptroller to raise an awareness of how Black children are treated by NYCHA generation after generation which can be argued as a mass atrocity against NYCHA residents. Furthermore, the systematic and institutionalized racism and environmental injustices by NYCHA and the state can also be considered as a crime against humanity. As such, BlackCrit could help to position awareness, advocacy and knowledge about Black folxs residing in NYCHA to achieve fair, safe and affordable public housing to experience Black joy across future generations.

Thus, rather than civic and state government response efforts focusing their full attention and resources to serving and supporting individuals affected by ACEs they should equally consider the environments in which Black people live and also allocate funds proportionally to address these areas often overlooked. Moreover, proportions of these funds should be redirected especially to lead-abatement and removal of known sources of lead exposures, evaluation of suspected sources of lead exposures (i.e. drinking water, baby food and formula, children’s juice and cereal products, superfund and other waste sites, electronic recycling plants, etc.) and accompanied by all affected children undergoing full and comprehensive neuropsychological testing and follow up studies paid for by the state. The goal should have two fundamental objectives: (1) accepting accountability for failing to address these preventable neuropsychological issues directly affecting Black children generation after generation and (2) offering the proper waived or reimbursable supports and resources to help Black children sustain the best quality of life (QOL) trajectory possible when diagnosed with lead poisoning.

The manuscript is a viewpoint/perspective paper grounded in BlackCrit and an antiblackness framework. There are ample public news reports and public data available from NYCHA on these matters over the last three years. However, the scope of this paper was not to delve too deep into these numbers per se, but rather to address the concerns leading up to and arguably contributing to, at least in part, to these numbers of lead-exposed Black children in NYCHA. Lead poisoning has never been considered as an ACE and its relationship to mass atrocity research is novel which may pave a new avenue for research of this kind through the utility of BlackCrit and antiblackness framework to support and advocate for change so that Black children can be provided with a basic human right of safe housing and experience Black joy.

BlackCrit has not been used in the context of lead poisoning research. Mostly individuals and families of middle- and low-income have been studied in the context of poverty and lead poisoning. However, many people who live in poverty, in public housing, within New York are Black. Thus, Black children are generation after generation exposed to unaddressed lead-abatement and it appears that now more than ever BlackCrit should become the framework for how this work should be discussed in the literature to raise awareness to state governments regarding Black folx's persistent lead poisoning, NYCHA's neglect and mass atrocity research as a long overdue advocacy effort to bring the necessary voice, authentic narrative, and actual knowledge of the lived experiences of Black families in NYCHA with lead poisoning.

The goal of this viewpoint/perspective paper should have two fundamental objectives (1) NYCHA and New York State accepting accountability for failing to address these preventable lead poisoning issues directly affecting Black children; and (2) offering the proper support and resources to help Black children sustain the best QOL trajectory possible when diagnosed with lead poisoning.

Lead poisoning research has never been approached through a mass atrocity and BlackCrit framework and perspective. This is the first report on bridging these fields within the context of NYCHA public housing neglect of lead-abatement and continued poisoning of current and future generations of Black children. This failure of NYCHA lead-abatement contributes annually to economic loss in New York State for many years to come which could be entirely avoided.

The purpose of this article is to discuss a humanistic perspective on corporate community involvement (CCI), proposing the concept of humanistic corporate community involvement (HCCI). This concept is illustrated through a case study.

The understanding of humanism applied is one drawn from Catholic social teaching. The case has been developed from the personal experience of one of the authors (Mammoser), enriched with interviews and reports, along with some public information, which helps to understand the socio‐cultural context.

HCCI is defined by four characteristics: recognizing and respecting human dignity and rights, fostering integral human development, acting virtuously; this means that the social actions included in CCI have the direct motive of doing good, and organizing social actions in accordance with both the Principle of Solidarity and the Principle of Subsidiarity. The specification of these characteristics can vary from one situation to another. Here we discuss a real case in which these characteristics underlie a successful project in the USA, jointly developed by the US company Walgreens and the Midtown Educational Foundation, a Chicago‐based NGO.

The case study does not seek to suggest that this is the only way for CCI with a humanistic approach, but to shed light on and motivate other similar initiatives.

Findings provide new horizons to undertake CCI and a project, which could be included within the best practices in this field.

The paper provides a new approach to CCI based on a humanistic perspective, which enriches other approaches. In doing so, it does not consider such involvement as a means for public relations, reputation enhancement, and ultimately profits. It goes beyond a generic contribution to public good, or of a fair return to society for what a company has received from it. Integral human development of individuals and communities is its goal.

This article aims to provide a case study example of the uses of podcasting in a multicultural educational setting.

Pre‐service undergraduate teaching majors collaborated with graduate students enrolled in an educational technology course and clients of a community agency service minority, low‐income youth to produce a “radio” show podcast.

The project demonstrated the potential and limitations of using a podcast to improve the literacy skills of inner city youth and technical proficiency of pre‐service teaching majors.

The study was limited to its one‐semester implementation phase.

This is an example of the use of technology among low‐income minority youth and its ability to close the digital divide as well as the social divide between inner city youth of color and white pre‐service teachers and technology majors.

Because of the digital divide, podcasting has not been introduced into under‐resourced environments such as inner‐city community agencies. Additionally, pre‐service teaching majors are not generally taught the pedagogical uses of MP3 players.

In this volume, researchers have brought their expertise to bear on the ambivalence enacted and expressed by adult children and their parents towards each other. As Lüscher and Pillemer note in their seminal article (1998), using ambivalence as an organizing concept for the study of intergenerational relationships allows researchers to explore the inherent contradiction of roles and obligations. For example, at what point does a child become an adult child? Is this a judgment that both parent and child make? What happens when parent and child disagree? Even raising the question misses the point: One can never unidimensionally be an “adult child.” In the subtle and dynamic consciousness within which each of us dwells, we are always an adult and a child to ourselves and to our parents, as they were to theirs.

The purpose of this study is twofold. Firstly, this research aims at helping countries implement an equitable, innovative and context-appropriate stay-home game plan for the millions of disadvantaged and under-privileged students severely affected by the forfeiture of school closures; and secondly, this study proclaims that the burgeoning popularity of gamification has the potential to lay the bedrock foundation for ‘Literacy in the New Norm’.

The temporal closure of schools around the world to limit the spread of the COVID-19 has resulted in massive educational disruptions triggering adverse effects and bringing much of education under grave threat. Through a review of the current empirical and conceptual literature, this study proposes a new gamification concept in a non-technology environment.

Well underway are global dialogues that hold conversations on implementing mitigation strategies to counter the looming global health crisis. This has generated the impetus for a more concerted effort by concerned governments and international organizations to identify appropriate solutions for the continuity of learning so that the learning never stops. While educators and learners plunge further into the core of reconstructing education, the authors recognize that the fundamentals of technology and virtual connectivity have all along contributed to the multi-faceted e-learning stage set. However, concerns regarding the paradigm shift to remote online learning would certainly exacerbate inequalities cardinally felt across disadvantaged communities around the globe.

As the world is currently bound by strict isolation measures, learners of all ages have been relegated to the confines of their homes. For the most part, the stark realities of technological mishaps that have befallen underprivileged school children, serve as a reminder to help target children all over the world who are in most peril of losing ground in terms of continued education. It is on these grounds that the criterion set out in this article elucidates the nature and scope of a supplementary stay-home game plan detailing the use of game affordances that bear intelligently in the creation of home-based activities for parents to give it their best effort in fostering a collaborative and meaningful parent-child relationship that spawns the new language of literacy in the new norm.