First five years are identified as a critical period of child growth in scientific literature. In 1998, California voters passed Proposition 10 that appropriated a 50 cent per pack tax on cigarettes and other tobacco products to support early childhood development. As a result, Kern County Children and Families Commission administered over $10…

Teachers in the United States are using Facebook as a way to communicate and interact with family, friends and members of the school community. While Facebook has become a tool for this communication, many teachers are being reprimanded for their actions and interactions on the social networking website. The purpose of this qualitative…

The purpose of this study is to demonstrate a practical application of social network analysis in the field of education using a large-scale data source. Using the Early Childhood Longitudinal Base Year data, a network is identified by examining the connections that occur between supports, both inside and outside formal special education resources…

A defining feature of American higher education is the provision for authority over the institution by an external governing board consisting of lay members of the public (Thelin, 2004). Studies of higher education governing boards typically focus on structure and performance (Kezar & Eckel, 2004; Kezar, 2006; McGuinness, 2003; Minor, 2006;…

This paper provides the conceptual foundations for a study funded by the Australian Research Council and industry partners Yooralla and Jewish Care titled "Understanding 'encounter' as a dimension of social inclusion for people with intellectual disability." Since the early 1980s, disability policy has envisioned the social inclusion of people…

Graduate employability is an important concern for contemporary universities. Alongside the development of employability skills, it is also crucial that students of bioscience, a "non-vocational" subject, have awareness of the breadth of potential careers that can follow from their initial degree. Over the past five years we have developed the…

Social networking is more than catching up with family and long-lost friends; it's turned into a professional resource for educators to exchange ideas and expand their professional learning network (PLN). According to the report "School Principals and Social Networking in Education: Practices, Policies, and Realities in 2010," most responding…

New communication technologies and constructivist pedagogy have the great potential to build very powerful paradigm shifts that enhance Internet Protocol Television (IPTV) in distance education. Therefore, the main purpose of this chapter is to explore the new concerns, issues and potentials for the IPTV delivery of distance education to…

Cellular telephones and social networking sites pose new challenges to the maintenance of therapeutic boundaries. One such difficulty is the possible development of dual relationships between clients and counselling professionals as a result of communicating by these means. Most regulatory bodies advise professional counsellors and psychologists…

Family child care (FCC) providers often experience isolation from other early childhood and child care professionals. Yet, research suggests that providers who network with other providers, engage with community resources, and belong to support groups tend to offer higher quality child care. For example, the Family Child Care Network Impact Study…

Background: Several studies have reported relationships between life events and psychological problems in people with intellectual disabilities. In contrast to the general literature, data have consistently been collected via proxy informants and putative moderator variables such as social support have not been examined. Materials and Methods:…

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to follow up on the 2009 publication "Building a virtual branch at Vancouver Public Library (VPL) using Web 2.0 tools" and to explore the work that VPL has been doing in the social media space over the past two years. Design/methodology/approach: Following the launch of its new web site in 2008,…

In this study the authors explored the social inclusiveness of classrooms with culturally competent teachers who were identified both by their participation in in-service diversity training and by principal nomination. The design of this study is quantitative, using a one-way ANOVA to analyze whether students (N = 125) in classrooms with teachers…

Children with Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) and their families are different. Parents often surf the Internet in search of supportive solutions to the unique challenges they face. One source of insight for parents raising children with ASD comes from blog writers and the parents who surf the net to read their blogs, or cyberparents. The study…

This paper advocates the adoption of a mixed-methods research design to describe and analyze ego-centered social networks in transnational family research. Drawing on the experience of the "Social Networks Influences on Family Formation" project (2004-2005; see Bernardi, Keim, & von der Lippe, 2007a, 2007b), I show how the combined…