This essay reviews Vygotsky's work on defectology. First, Vygotsky's cultural heritage as a Jew during the transformation from Tsarist Russia to the Soviet Union is considered as a factor in his views on defectology and inclusion. The review then outlines his perspective on the "defect," including his definition of "defect," his view of the…

The purpose of this study was to describe the experience of critical self-reflection by life coaches. Life coaching is expanding within many disciplines including education, health care, business, social work, and wellness. Life coaching involves a coach working with an individual or groups aimed at effecting change for professional and personal…

The purpose of this research was to investigate the cognitive abilities that explain reading comprehension across childhood and early adulthood. Drawing from the standardization sample of the Woodcock-Johnson III, analyses were conducted with large samples at age levels spanning early childhood to early adulthood: 5 to 6 (n = 639), 7 to 8 (n =…

This article reports on doctoral research into the leadership practice of members of senior leadership teams in primary schools in England. We present the research findings as a visual construct representing school leadership as an integrated, holistic and dynamic process, named the PIVOT framework of leadership. This original structure connects…

First-year undergraduates on degree programmes in the arts, humanities and social sciences were found by this qualitative study to experience inquiry and research in four distinct ways. Research as "gathering information" and "exploring others' ideas" was associated with learning by engaging independently with a knowledge base.…

This study investigated gender differences in the relationship of early physical and relational aggression to later peer rejection and overt and covert antisocial behaviors. Significant gender differences were found indicating physically aggressive boys were more likely than girls to experience later peer rejection. Early physical aggression was…

In this article I explore Amartya Sen's contention that individual freedom represents both the objective of development and the means through which development is to take place. Examining the conceptualisation of freedom central to Sen's capability approach, I distinguish between two notions of freedom, autonomy and agency, where the former…

This article reviews a particular computational modeling approach to the study of psychological development--that of constructive neural networks. This approach is applied to a variety of developmental domains and issues, including Piagetian tasks, shift learning, language acquisition, number comparison, habituation of visual attention, concept…

The aim of the present study was to explore and compare systematically the developmental patterns of certain aspects of imitation, longitudinally from 2 to 10 months, in interactions of infants with grandfathers and grandmothers. Sixteen infants were video-recorded at home in the course of spontaneous dyadic interactions with maternal grandfathers…

Packing is a problematic mealtime behavior that is characterized by pocketing or holding solids or liquids in the mouth without swallowing. In the current study, we examined the effects of a chaser, a liquid or solid consistently accepted and swallowed by the child, to decrease packing of solid foods in 3 children with feeding disorders. During…

This paper takes a critical look at the applicability of the Jungian view on individuation and imagination. While Jungian ideas can bring something fresh and necessary into educational practice, personal enthusiasm might blind us to a dissonance between educational goals and the therapeutic goal of analytical psychology. The case is made with…

Children's, adolescents', and adults' (N = 96 7-8, 10-11, and 13-14-year-olds and university students) epistemological development and its relation to judgments and reasoning about teaching methods was examined. The domain (scientific or moral), nature of the topic (controversial or noncontroversial), and teaching method (direct instruction by…

The global nature of social problems indicates how important it is for social workers to be involved in international issues. For example, overseas experience in social work programs is in consonance with the Council on Social Work Education's emphasis on global context of social work practice. In view of this, some schools of social work are…

Higher education in South Africa is challenged by academic and social demands. Universities, therefore, have to produce graduates who will be able to function optimally within their field of study, as well as act as agents of change in their social environment. The main purpose of this article is to theorise about applying Engestrom's expansive…

Objective: The aims of this study were threefold: (1) examine the prevalence of Posttraumatic Growth (PTG) among severely traumatized youth, (2) systematically describe the PTG reported, and (3) study the course of PTG from pre- to post-treatment. Method: The sample consisted of 148 severely traumatized Norwegian youth (M age = 15, SD = 2.2, 79.1%…