Uses a symbolic interaction approach to examine the dimensions of symbolic crises faced by adoptive families and adoption advocates resulting from changing adoption patterns and motives, language transformations that create tensions, and media misrepresentations of adoption. Explores common myths about adoption spread by popular news and…

Examined psychosocial engagement of adopted adolescents as a function of longitudinal patterns of stability and change in parents' perceptions of the child's compatibility within the family. Identified five patterns of stability and change in compatibility. Found that a sense of compatibility within the family is related to the emergence of…

North Carolina secondary agriculture teachers (n=126) recognized the benefits of integrating biotechnology. Funding, equipment, and teacher knowledge were the greatest barriers to integration. Those most likely to teach biotechnology have some training and believe that the state-adopted integration course fulfills their curriculum needs. (Contains…

Discussion of adoption models for learning technologies focuses on how the use of models tends to channel and constrain thinking. Topics include the importance of practice over theory; needs assessment; committees or consultants; developing a framework; data collection, analysis, and interpretation; implementation; and evaluation and revision.…

Repertory grid analysis of data from 336 Australian career and vocational teachers and other teachers revealed how they constructed meaning for career-vocational education (CVE). Interviews and questionnaires indicated that CVE lacked status in schools. A causal model was developed to show that institutionalization of CVE resulted from personal…

Explores the history of the federal Adoption Incentive Program, the first federal child welfare outcome-based incentive program to rely solely on administrative data; discusses the program in the context of other federal child welfare incentive programs. Considers the use of data to project program utilization and costs, set baselines for the…

This article describes an evaluation conducted with a juvenile who was facing transfer into the adult system after an encounter with law enforcement officers. Adopted at age one from an Eastern European orphanage, Andrei experienced conflict, bringing him into contact with special education, mental health, and juvenile authorities. While there…

Efforts to improve the public welfare and child welfare system sparked an unprecedented amount of federal legislation in the 1990s, including the Adoption and Safe Families Act of 1997 (ASFA), the Multiethnic Placement Act of 1994 and Interethnic Adoption Provisions of 1996 (MEPA-IEP), and welfare reform. Such reforms allow an unprecedented degree…

Historically, a shortage of skilled and dedicated foster parents has existed in America. Lesbian, gay, or bisexual (LBG) foster parents have received little attention in the published literature. This article documents the challenges and successes of a group of 60 LGB foster parents. All participants provided foster parenting for public (state or…

Foster Parent College was recently developed through Northwest Media, Inc. as an interactive multimedia training venue for foster parents. Users can take brief parenting courses, either online (http://www.FosterParentCollege.com) or on DVD, on a variety of topics dealing with serious child behavior problems. Currently, these problems include…

Associations between experiences and outcomes could be due to (a) continuation of adversity or (b) organismic changes, including experience-expectant and experience-adaptive developmental programming. The adoption into British families of children who had been reared in profoundly depriving institutions in Romania presented an opportunity to test…

Based on qualitative information from in-depth interviews and quantitative data from a survey of 425 adoptive families conducted in summer 2001 in rural China, this study attempts to explain the social and demographic patterns of adoption and investigate the roles of the State and families in adoption processes in contemporary rural China. Within…

Case method teaching was first introduced into American higher education in 1870 by Christopher C. Langdell (1826-1906) of Harvard Law School (HLS), where it became closely associated with a complex of academic meritocratic reforms. "Mr. Langdell's method" became, in fact, emblematic, "creating and embodying cultural values and…

In this paper, the authors propose that psychological safety, a sense of interpersonal trust and being valued in a work team, is an important determinant of groupware technology adoption in an educational setting. They develop and test a model of antecedents and consequences of psychological safety. Data were collected from 361 university…

Purpose: Language and speech are difficult to assess in newly arrived internationally adopted children. The purpose of this study was to determine if assessments completed when toddlers were first adopted could predict language outcomes at age 2. Local norms were used to develop early intervention guidelines that were evaluated against age 2…