Kylie Smith

Anxiety of children and adolescents who stutter: a review.

PURPOSE Adults who stutter have heightened rates of anxiety disorders, particularly social anxiety disorder, compared with non-stuttering controls. However, the timing of anxiety onset and its development in relation to stuttering is poorly understood. Identifying the typical age of anxiety onset in stuttering has significant clinical implications and is crucial for the management of both disorders across the lifespan. The present review aims to determine the scope of the research pertaining to this topic, identify trends in findings, and delineate timing of anxiety onset in stuttering. METHODS We examine putative risk factors of anxiety present for children and adolescents who stutter, and provide a review of the research evidence relating to anxiety for this population. RESULTS Young people who stutter can experience negative social consequences and negative attitudes towards communication, which is hypothesised to place them at increased risk of developing anxiety. The prevalence of anxiety of young people who stutter, and the timing of anxiety onset in stuttering could not be determined. This was due to methodological limitations in the reviewed research such as small participant numbers, and the use of measures that lack sensitivity to identify anxiety in the targeted population. CONCLUSIONS In sum, the evidence suggests that anxiety in stuttering might increase over time until it exceeds normal limits in adolescence and adulthood. The clinical implications of these findings, and recommendations for future research, are discussed. EDUCATIONAL OBJECTIVES The reader will be able to: (a) discuss contemporary thinking on the role of anxiety in stuttering and reasons for this view; (b) describe risk factors for the development of anxiety in stuttering, experienced by children and adolescents who stutter (c) outline trends in current research on anxiety and children and adolescents with stuttering; and (d) summarise rationales behind recommendations for future research in this area.

Early Childhood Professionals and Children's Rights: Tensions and Possibilities around the United Nations "General Comment No. 7" on Children's Rights.

Young children’s views are heard rarely in public debates and are often subordinated to adults’ views. This article examines how early childhood staff could support and enhance young children’s participation in public decision making. We argue that when early childhood staff use their expertise in young children’s physical, social and cognitive development to facilitate consultations with young children, they are likely to reinforce the view that young children are unable to form and express their own views. Whatever their intentions, this weakens the notion of children’s rights and undermines young children’s participation in public decision making. In contrast, when staff use their expertise in child development to collaborate with young children, new social structures can emerge in which everyone’s voice is heard. This approach reaffirms staff’s status as experts, but redefines their expertise. Instead of being experts acting on behalf of children, staff become equitable collaborators with children, advancing citizenship for all.

Rethinking approaches to working with children who challenge: Action learning for emancipatory practice

SummaryThis article describes an action-learning project that helped teachers to rethink their approaches to children who challenge. The project enabled and encouraged teachers to reflect critically on why and how particular children challenged them and then to use their critical reflections to strengthen their capacity to work with those children. The outcomes were that participants changed their model of children who challenge, their classroom practices and their view of themselves as teachers; strengthened their desire and ability to respond to children who challenge; and increased their ability to reduce the stress in their work. The project was small-scale, but it was significant. Mainstream approaches to children who challenge use pharmaceutical or behavioural means to change children’s behaviour, effectively marginalising early childhood staff from both the ‘diagnosis’ and the ‘treatment’. TheChildren Who Challenge approach is a critique not just of the ‘medicalisation’ of behaviour defined as problematic or challenging, but also of the drift to a technocratic, top-down micro-management of education and, by implication, of children.Children Who Challenge poses an alternative — the autonomous, reflective teacher-researcher who is a member of a reflexive community committed to improving the classroom and pedagogic effectiveness by emancipating it.RésuméCet article décrit un projet d’action-étude basé sur la recherche qui a visé à aider des professeurs à repenser leurs réponses aux enfants qui défient. Le projet a permis et a encouragé des professeurs à se refléter pourquoi et comment les enfants particuliers les ont défiés et employer alors leurs réflexions critiques pour renforcer leur capacité de travailler avec les enfants qui défient. Les résultats étaient que les participants ont changé leur modèle de l’enfant qui défie, leur didactique et leur vue d’eux-mêmes comme professeurs; a renforcé leur désir et capacité de répondre aux enfants qui défient; et amelioré leur capacité de réduire l’effort dans leur travail.Le projet était de petite taille, mais il était significatif. II a cherché à établir la capacité et la confiance du personnel de réfléchir en critique sur les origines et les implications de leurs pratiques courantes autour des enfants qui défient; pour changer un aspect de leur pratique courante pour améliorer des rapports avec ces enfants; et pour évaluer de tels changements. En revanche, les approaches courants pour les enfants qui défient ont tendance d’employer des moyens pharmaceutiques ou psychologiques pour changer le comportement de l’enfant, marginalisant des ‘diagnostics’ et du ‘traitement’ le personnel qui enseignent les plus jeunes.ResumenEste artículo describe un proyecto de investigación — acción, basado sobre la búsqueda de ayuda para que los profesores re piensen sus respuestas a los niños/as que los desafian. El proyecto ha permitido fortalecer a los profesores en sus reflexiones respecto del porqué y cómo algunos infantes particulares los han desafiado y emplear estas reflexiones críticas para reforzar su capacidad de trabajar con aquellos infantes que los desafían. Los resultados han sido que los profesores participantes han modificado sus modelos del niño/a que desafía, sus estrategias didácticas y su visión de ellos mismos como profesores; ha reforzado su deseo y capacidad de respuesta frente a los infantes que los desafían y ha mejorado su capacidad de reducir el esfuerzo en su trabajo.El proyecto tuvo una pequeña magnitud pero es significativo. Buscó establecer la capacidad y la confianza del personal para reflexionar y criticar los orígenes e implicaciones de sus prácticas, en torno al tema de los infantes que Iso desafiaban; para mejorar algunos aspectos de sus prácticas corrientes y para mejorar las relaciones con los niños/as; y para evaluar tales cambios. Las aproximaciones corrientes para los niños/as que desafían, es fuertemente influenciada por la tendencia a emplear medios farmacológicos y psicológicos, que permiten cambiar el comportamiento de los infantes, marginalizando de estos tratamientos y diagnósticos al personal que trabaja educativamente con los niños/as.

Edu-capitalism and the governing of early childhood education and care in Australia, New Zealand and the United States

This article examines the effects of edu-capitalism and neoliberal education policies across Australia, New Zealand and United States to disrupt hegemonic policy logic based on neutral human capital. Current frameworks, standards and assessment tools govern and control how early childhood educators see and assess children and in turn develop and implement pedagogy. Issues of gender, class and ethnicity are invisible with the assumption that all children who are offered high-quality early childhood programmes have equal opportunities to be productive and therefore successful citizens. Success can be understood through universal outcomes for children and markers of what quality teaching looks like for educators. This epistemological shutter renders race-, class- and gender-based privilege as invisible or non-existent. In doing so, dominant White Western understandings of the world drive what and who is marked as ‘success(ful)’, while non-Western knowledge continues to be seen as primitive, insignificant and in need of intervention. Through analysing policy text supported by the work of post-thinkers, the rethinking, re/imagining, and remapping of early childhood that this article performs do not offer consensus but make room for both problematizations of and possibilities within the contemporary concerns of different theoretical and geographical perspectives from Australia, New Zealand and United States.

The Dynamics of Whiteness: Children Locating Within/Without

In this chapter we explore how discourses of whiteness construct and reconstruct diverse identities and possibilities for children in their worlds. We ask, what does this mean for early childhood? Do we need to rethink how we work with young children around the politics of “race” in order to create greater equity for all? As Foucault (1985) argued: There are times in life when the question of knowing if one can think differently than one thinks, and perceive differently than one sees, is absolutely necessary if one is to go on looking and reflecting at all. (p. 8)

Children as capable evaluators: evolving conceptualizations of childhood in NGO practice settings

This paper explores the conceptualization of children and how this limits and enables opportunities for children to be active participants in society. These conceptualizations are put into applied settings by showcasing a practice example of a non-government organization, Windermere, facilitating an evaluative feedback session with children. This provides a new angle from the bulk of peer-reviewed literature which focuses on academic research with children. The practice example extends the conversation about the importance of listening and hearing the voice of children and contributes practical information to add to the development of child aware competencies. By linking theory and practice, this paper investigates ways of practicing, thinking and acting differently for and with children.

Discourses of childhood safety: what do children say?

ABSTRACT This article will report on a project, which consulted children about their understandings of safety in relation to the people and places in their lives. Thirty-nine children aged between three and five years attending preschool and long day-care services reflected on their experiences of what is safe and unsafe in their world through dialogue, artwork and construction. The services were based in an inner city in Australia. The article will then examine discourses of safety to explore how children limit their own capacity and willingness to actively and independently engage with the world outside their family and home due to concerns of safety. This examination raises questions for educators, researchers, policymakers and families about how the effects of how adults observe, monitor and restrict childrens play and movement to keep them in close proximity in order to keep them safe.

Exploring “Race-Identities” with Young Children: Making Politics Visible

Politics is about power—the power to define the world and act in it and on it. Power is the capacity to exercise influence in the world about what is doable, permissible, desirable, and changeable in your lives. Inserting politics into the “racing” of children leads us to explore how power operates in young children’s lives as they construct their “racial” classifications, comparisons, preferences, and status assignments. It requires us to ask how children and others exercise power in defining and influencing what is doable, permissible, desirable, and changeable in relation to “race” in their lives. Three ideas about identity are central to putting politics into researching young children’s identities in order to acknowledge the complex dynamic of the social contexts in which they live, learn, and produce their racialized lives: Identity is chosen not fixed; it is therefore changeable. Identity is formed in and through discourse and therefore identity choices are limited or made possible through discourse. Identity is actively performed, not passively given.

Anxiety in 11-Year-Old Children Who Stutter: Findings From a Prospective Longitudinal Community Sample

Purpose To examine if a community sample of 11-year-old children with persistent stuttering have higher anxiety than children who have recovered from stuttering and nonstuttering controls. Method Participants in a community cohort study were categorized into 3 groups: (a) those with persistent stuttering, (b) those with recovered stuttering, and (c) nonstuttering controls. Linear regression modeling compared outcomes on measures of child anxiety and emotional and behavioral functioning for the 3 groups. Results Without adjustment for covariates (unadjusted analyses), the group with persistent stuttering showed significantly increased anxiety compared with the recovered stuttering group and nonstuttering controls. The group with persistent stuttering had a higher number of children with autism spectrum disorder and/or learning difficulties. Once these variables were included as covariates in subsequent analysis, there was no difference in anxiety, emotional and behavioral functioning, or temperament among groups. Conclusion Although recognized to be associated with stuttering in clinical samples, anxiety was not higher in school-age children who stutter in a community cohort. It may be that anxiety develops later or is less marked in community cohorts compared with clinical samples. We did, however, observe higher anxiety scores in those children who stuttered and had autism spectrum disorder or learning difficulties. Implications and recommendations for research are discussed.

Leading otherwise: using a feminist-poststructuralist and postcolonial lens to create alternative spaces for early childhood educational leaders

The recognition of the importance of quality programmes and services for very young children is evident in the political agendas of many countries around the world. This focus has been accompanied by increasing recognition that effective leadership in early childhood programmes makes a positive difference to the outcomes for children, families and communities. Research into early childhood leadership, however, has not kept pace with the changes that are occurring within the field. In this paper, we argue that characteristics of the field including the feminized nature of the field, diverse settings, staffing, policies and purposes of early childhood education require a different conceptual framework than what currently exists. Because we live and work within highly gendered and raced discourses, it is difficult to find a space to reflect on the meaning(s) of leadership for contemporary early childhood educators that is not informed by existing (and often Western masculine) knowledge(s) about who a leader is and what a leader does. This paper draws from the work done by feminist poststucturalist and postcolonial theorists and seeks to further discuss how dominant constructions of educational leadership can be troubled and reconceptualised in ECE contexts.