Leslie M. Babinski

Childhood Conduct Problems, Hyperactivity‐impulsivity, and Inattention as Predictors of Adult Criminal Activity

This study reconsiders the relationship of childhood Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) and childhood conduct problems with adult criminal activity by clarifying the role of the cardinal behaviors associated with the DSM-IV ADHD subtypes (inattention and hyperactivity/impulsivity). Since their childhood (average age 9 years), 230 male and 75 female subjects have been followed prospectively and were interviewed as young adults (average age 26 at follow-up). Early childhood behavior ratings by parents and teachers were examined to determine the role of conduct problems, hyperactivity-impulsivity, and inattention in predicting adult criminal involvement as measured by both official arrest records and self-report. Results show that both hyperactivity-impulsivity and early conduct problems independently, as well as jointly, predict a greater likelihood of having an arrest record for males, but not for females. For male subjects with 10 or more self-reported crimes, both early conduct problems and hyperactivity-impulsivity were significant predictors, both alone and in combination. Therefore, it appears that predominantly the symptoms of hyperactivity-impulsivity, but not inattention, contribute to the risk for criminal involvement over and above the risk associated with early conduct problems alone.

Safe Passages: Providing Online Support to Beginning Teachers

In this article, the authors describe the design, implementation, and outcomes of an online support community for beginning teachers, called the Lighthouse project. The goal was to investigate the use of online collaborative consultation in providing social, emotional, practical, and professional support to beginning teachers. Group members included 12 first-year teachers, 4experienced teachers, and 8 teacher education faculty members. Types of issues discussed and the impact of the support community on beginning teachers were examined using three data sources: messages generated by participants, follow-up phone interviews, and an online survey. Qualitative and quantitative results indicated online discussions provided teachers with the opportunity to clarify their thinking about complex educational issues and make more informed decisions about their professional practice. In addition, the project provided beginning teachers with increased emotional support, decreased feelings of isolation, increased confidence, more enthusiasm for work, increased reflection, ability to adopt a more critical perspective, and improved problem-solving skills.

The effects of training community leaders in prevention science: Communities That Care in Pennsylvania

Abstract This paper examines the effects of training community leaders in prevention science in the context of Communities That Care (CTC). The data analyzed here comes from an evaluation of CTC in 21 Pennsylvania communities, including in-depth interviews with 203 community leaders. The association of attendance at training sessions was investigated at the individual and community levels. Multi-level modeling supported the findings from the corelational analyses at each level separately. The findings suggest that training is positively, albeit modestly, linked with participant attitudes and knowledge, and with internal and external functioning of the CTC coalition. Training was not linked to perceived community readiness nor perceived CTC efficacy. In addition, some evidence suggests that the long-term influence of training in this context may be found at the group or coalition level, not at the individual level.

A comparison of self-report of criminal involvement and official arrest records

Self-reports of arrests and official arrest records were compared for 250 male and 80 female participants in the ongoing Hyperactivity Follow-Up Study of Young Adults at University of California at Berkeley. For males, kappa coefficients indicated good statistical agreement between arrest records and self-report measures for 7 of the 12 types of crimes. Statistical agreement, however, may not be the most meaningful yardstick to judge concordance. Additional analyses reveal that for almost all of the crimes examined, one third or more of those with an arrest record for the crime failed to reveal this information on the self-report measure. Arrests for both some high-frequency, less serious crimes and some low-frequency, more serious crimes were not revealed in the subjects’ self-reports. An examination of the unique information gained from self-reports found that the subjects most often reported committing public disorder crimes for which they were not caught (over 30%) and were least likely to self-report crimes against people (less than 10%). Furthermore, subjects with more convictions were more likely to accurately self-report their criminal involvement. Since both self-report and official records each contribute unique information and reflect different sources of error, it is proposed that a combination of both types of records is the most inclusive indicator of criminal activity in adulthood. Aggr. Behav. 27:44–54, 2001.

The Roles of Facilitators and Peers in an Online Support Community for First-Year Teachers

The first year of teaching can be especially difficult for novice teachers. Teachers often have little opportunity to meaningfully reflect on their practice with others who are experiencing similar challenges. The Lighthouse Project used a telecommunications network to provide 12 beginning teachers with a forum for engaging in professional problem solving with mentors, university faculty, and each other. The research questions for this preliminary study included examining the types of issues the teachers discussed as well as how they and the mentors and university faculty used the online forum to provide emotional, social, and intellectual support. Over a 6-month period there were 48 initiating messages that were coded and grouped into 8 content categories. The 394 responses were coded into 5 categories that described their function; that is, the type of response that was provided. The content analysis indicated that replies consisted primarily of fostering a sense of community (34.8%) or providing advice (21.3%). Other responses were coded as sharing knowledge (20.1%), relating a personal experience with the issue (16.0%), or encouraging reflection (7.9%). An analysis of variance was conducted to determine if the beginning teachers and faculty differed in how often they provided each of these types of responses. The results indicate that the first-year teachers were more likely to respond with messages that related a personal experience while the faculty was more likely to share knowledge or encourage reflection. The results of this study suggest that beginning teachers and faculty serve different functions in an online teacher support community.

Factors associated with school psychologists' perceptions of campus violence

Recent concern about school violence has increased demands on school psychologists to respond to safety concerns on their school campuses. In this study, 123 school psychologists responded to a survey about their perceptions, experiences, and readiness to meaningfully address school violence. School psychologists reported that they do not worry about their personal safety at school (78%), but most felt unprepared to deal with school violence (73%) and had received no specialized training in this area (85%). A principal components analysis of the types of violence school psychologists perceived to occur on their campuses identified a range of incidents from bullying to antisocial behavior. School psychologists working in inner-city schools were more likely to believe that their schools had high levels of violence (45.6%) compared with those working in urban-not inner-city (14.3%), suburban (4.9%), or rural (0%) schools. Recommendations to prepare school psychologists to help prevent, reduce, and respond to campus violence are discussed.

Pairing nurses and social workers in schools: North Carolina's school-based Child and Family Support Teams.

When children are struggling in school, underlying causes often include physical or behavioral health problems, poverty, abuse, and/or neglect. Children’s poor physical health status has been linked to deficits in memory and reading ability.1 Children with behavioral problems are much more likely than others to have lower grades, miss school, be suspended or expelled, and drop out.2–4 Access to needed health and human services is critical to vulnerable children’s success in school. Yet, need often does not predict use. Approximately, 7% of children overall have an unmet need for health care, with the poor, near poor, and uninsured being 3 times more likely than their peers to be underserved.5 Only about 1 in 5 children in need of mental health care receive services.6 Even available services are often fragmented, making it more difficult for families both to access and utilize them effectively. Increasingly, the federal government, child advocacy groups, and private funders are therefore encouraging any organization that identifies an at-risk child, to convene a team including representatives of all relevant agencies. These teams should include parents as full partners to identify both child and parent needs and to build service plans on strengths as well as needs.7 Given their primary role in children’s lives, schools are a logical base for such coordination. The current article describes an innovative effort in North Carolina to help at-risk children thrive academically and remain with their families: the school-based Child and Family Support Team Initiative (CFST). The following provides an overview of the program and a profile of the children served in the program’s first 2 years.

Consultation in New Teacher Groups: School Psychologists Facilitating Collaboration Among New Teachers

There is a growing recognition of the need to provide new teachers with formalized mentoring and as a result induction programs are now flourishing around the country. Elements of successful induction programs include formal mentorship, reflective practice, and collaboration. The New Teacher Group (NTG) is one form of induction program that meets these criteria. This qualitative study examined how the process of consultee-centered case consultation (CCC) facilitated collaboration, problem-solving, and professional development in an NTG. Over the course of the school year in this NTG, a developmental shift was evident in which the teachers’ descriptions of themselves and their students became more positive and replaced the more negative descriptors that were found early in the consultation process. The participants’ negative images of themselves, such as inadequate and frustrated, were replaced with positive images that conveyed their evolving ability to think flexibly and effectively. The new teachers’ approach to problem solving also underwent a change in which they increasingly began to use professional concepts and methods to identify and define problems. NTGs offer school psychologists an opportunity to expand their consultation role within school districts.

Mediation of Consultee's Conceptual Development in New Teacher Groups: Using Questions to Improve Coherency

This qualitative study applied methods used in discourse analysis to investigate how a consultants questioning supported the goal of group consultation to empower beginning teachers to become effective problem solvers in their work environment. The focus of the study was on the process of questioning and communicative coherency as the group evolved over the course of the school year. The participants in this study were 7 White elementary school teachers in their first year of teaching. There were 12 sessions held over an 8-month period. The investigators found evidence of a parallel process between the coordinate consultation process and coherency in consultative discourse, such that as the coordinate process developed and improved, so did the coherency of group discourse. Implications for practice, training, and future research are discussed.

Improving Young English Learners' Language and Literacy Skills through Teacher Professional Development: A Randomized Controlled Trial.

Using a randomized controlled trial, we tested a new teacher professional development program for increasing the language and literacy skills of young Latino English learners with 45 teachers and 105 students in 12 elementary schools. School-based teams randomly assigned to the intervention received professional development focused on cultural wealth, high-impact instructional strategies, and a framework for collaboration. We observed each teacher three times during the school year and assessed students individually at the beginning and end of the school year using the Woodcock Muñoz Language Survey (WMLS). Using an intent-to-treat (ITT) analysis, we found effects for the intervention on teachers’ implementation of high-impact instructional strategies and students’ language and literacy skills.