Child Psychology in Action

Linking Research and Practice

John Harris

• Publisher: Taylor & Francis
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN: 9781138740761
• eBook ISBN: 9781351727792
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: Educational Psychology
• Index: Psychology

Originally published in 1986, there was a divorce between the immense amount of research taking place in child psychology and the real world of professional carers or teachers working with children at the time. The aim of this book was therefore to examine the relationship between research and practice in order to promote links between the two. The discussions are wide-ranging and the book will be of interest to many groups of readers. These include: (1) developmental psychologists and others involved in applied research with children and their families; (2) those involved in training professionals such as teachers, social workers and speech therapists who will work with children; (3) educational and clinical psychologists whose work involves psychological intervention with children and their caretakers; and (4) students of educational or child psychology.

PART ONE: FAMILIES

Families provide a universal context for child rearing and one which has been considered as having a crucial influence on the development of children. Since families clearly vary both in the kind of care they provide and in terms of the quality of care, it is not surprising that psychologists have taken a particular interest in the relationships which exist between aspects of family life and developmental progress. It is also understandable why families have become one of the key areas for intervention designed to influence developmental outcomes.

The Family Matters Project, described by Mon Cochran in Chapter 1, sets out to test the proposition that a particularly effective way of helping children is to help their parents to be more confident and skilful in utilising the resources available in the community for coping with the problems and stresses of family life.

In Chapter 2 Pam Harris elaborates the distinction between what psychologists and other professionals think parents ought to know about child development and what parents see as useful and helpful information, when provided with the possibility of making an informed choice. Interestingly, there is relatively little agreement between the two.

Sue Gregory in Chapter 3 considers the implications of research on child language for early intervention within families of young deaf children and in doing so she argues for a move away from a concern with spoken language and the need for a greater sensitivity towards the communicative, as opposed to linguistic, needs of the deaf child and his family.

The final chapter in this section is by Sheila Wolfendale who provides an overview of recent programmes in the United Kingdom which have been designed to increase parental involvement with children and different aspects of their formal and informal education.

1			THE PARENTAL EMPOWERMENT PROCESS: BUILDING ON FAMILY STRENGTHS
			Moncrieff Cochran

‘Empowerment’ is a term very much in vogue in the United States at the moment, especially among ‘revisionist’ thinkers and practitioners in the human services. What is empowerment? Is the concept new, or simply a rehash of old ideas? How might it be manifested in a workable programme of family support? What basic challenges to standard practice in the delivery of human service programmes are presented by the empowerment approach? The chapter which follows will begin with some discussion and a working definition of the empowerment concept. The principles embodied in the concept will then be illustrated with the use of a case study, a programme of support for young families called Family Matters. Following presentation of the case study there will be a systematic effort to measure the programme against specific criteria contained within the definition of empowerment. The chapter will conclude with a discussion of several issues raised by the Family Matters example which have special significance for those who would apply the social sciences in the service of individuals, local communities and the larger society.

The Empowerment Concept

While no comprehensive attempt to trace its roots has yet been undertaken, the concept of empowerment appears to have emerged in the United States during the early 1970s in response to the social and economic power struggles of the previous decade. With such lineage it can be assumed that political ideology played a part in shaping the meaning of the concept. In that context it is interesting to note that the term empowerment has been used in the past decade by thinkers on the political right (Berger and Neuhaus 1977) as well as the left (Freire 1973; Solomon 1976). This breadth of utility can be thought of as testament both to its possible significance and to its lack of clear definition.

A comparison of various efforts to define empowerment reveals both similarities and differences. One commonality is an underlying assumption – not shared by traditional human service providers – that individuals understand their own needs better than others are able to understand them (Berger and Neuhaus 1977; Rappoport 1981; Whitham 1982; Cochran and Woolever 1983). Implied in this assumption is another shared element in these conceptualisations; that individuals should have the power both to define their own needs and to act upon that understanding (see also Baker-Miller 1982).

Differences in definition involve whether empowerment is a state or a process, and whether empowerment as a process involves only change in individuals and mediating structures or also in controlling structures. Berger and Neuhaus (1977) imply – the title of their book notwithstanding – that individuals are more or less empowered, as if empowerment were a state (like anger or wealth). Other authors refer quite explicitly to empowerment as a process. Baker-Miller says that to empower is to foster growth in others. Cochran and Woolever refer repeatedly to a process, and suggest that it may contain a predictable series of identifiable steps. Rappoport introduces the term ‘collaboration’ to describe the nature of involvement by the helping professions in the process of empowering others. Whitham begins with the process involved in Freire's largely cognitive concept of ‘critical reflection’, and extends it to include the interpersonal processes which provide the conditions for such reflective appraisal.

Those defining empowerment as a process are themselves in some disagreement over which unit(s) of society should be the focus of efforts to empower. Baker-Miller and Rappoport have the individual as their focus, although Rappoport is also concerned with the part played by the helping professional in the process. Cochran and Woolever are also concerned with a process involving changes in individuals, but include as change agents in that process para-professionals and informal peer support groups. Whitham gives special emphasis to the interpersonal aspect of empowerment, arguing that the collective dimension permits individuals to risk change and ensures that structural changes in institutions and organisations retain human dimensions. Berger and Neuhaus (1977: 7) focus on what they call ‘mediating structures’ – family, neighbourhood, church, voluntary association – arguing that these ‘are the principal expressions of the real values and the real needs of people in our society’. They propose that these structures will, if empowered by the public policies of society, in turn empower the individuals embraced within them. Donald Barr, whose principal interest is in the politics of power and human services, proposes that the empowerment process gives special attention to knowledge about power as it relates to the controlling structures in society; schooling and employment in particular (Barr, Cochran, Riley and Whitham 1984). One implication to be drawn from Barr's concern with key controlling institutions is that the empowerment process could include, or even emphasise, efforts to alter power relationships between those governed by and governing such institutions, on behalf of more equal distribution of power in the community as a whole.

Virginia Vanderslice has recently (1984) presented an evolving definition of empowerment which takes into account the writings of those referenced earlier in this chapter. She refers to empowerment as ‘a process through which people become more able to influence those people and organisations that effect their lives and the lives of those they care about’ (p. 2). In addition to the assumptions common to all those working with the empowerment concept Vanderslice stresses as a goal the making of ‘meaningful changes in institutions’, and argues that in order for such a goal to be reached the empowerment process must include people working together on behalf of something greater than themselves as individuals.

Vanderslice refers to empowerment as a developmental process, and even identifies some steps in that process. Yet empowerment must involve more than the normal course of development if it is to make a unique contribution to practice in psychology and improvement in the human condition. What distinguishes the empowerment process from those engaged in by individuals in the normal course of living? Developmentalists are interested in understanding how individuals proceed from one developmental stage or phase to another, and the changes that occur throughout this life course. Those involved with the empowerment process assume that development occurs, but recognise and systematically acknowledge those obstacles to development which operate outside the spheres of influence of the developing individual. Such obstacles include social class structure, structural differentiations by race and gender, and perhaps even the influences of bureaucratisation upon individuals and groups. An entire ‘school’ of theorists has emerged during the 1970s and 1980s around the general thesis that schools and work-places are organised to maintain power differentials based upon historically and physiologically defined differences in class, gender and race (see, for example, Willis 1983; Anyon 1980). For individuals assigned less value by those criteria the unequal distribution of resources based upon such discrimination represents an obstacle which stands in the way of full development throughout the life span. Developmental psychologists do not, as a rule, give such impediments to development a central place in their enquiries. They are more likely to ‘control them away’. The proposition offered here is that such obstacles are indeed central to the empowerment concept, although not always explicitly acknowledged as such. The proposal is that empowerment only becomes germane to the developing individual when barriers to the normal course of development are encountered, the removal of which are beyond the present or future capacity of that person as an individual. These obstacles are the raison d'être of the empowerment process, and therefore progress in overcoming them must be seen as the basic purpose underlying that process.

Useful for understanding the concept of empowerment in this context is the theory of ‘resistance’, which ‘celebrates a dialectical notion of human agency that rightly portrays domination as a process that is neither static nor complete’ (Giroux 1983: 289). Giroux argues that in all societies where structural inequities exist there is resistance to those structures. It follows that the empowerment process must, to be complete, provide an outlet for those energies of resistance in the service of overcoming obstacles to the realisation of full developmental potential.

A case study, presented in the next section of this chapter, will be used to identify some of the implementing issues and programmatic challenges involved in applying the empowerment concept at the local community level. The reader needs criteria with which to judge the success of the empowerment process described in the case study. As a way of establishing those standards the following definition of empowerment has been distilled from the previous discussion:

Empowerment – an interactive process involving mutual respect and critical reflection through which both people and controlling institutions are changed in ways which provide those people with greater influence over individuals and institutions which are in some way impeding their efforts to achieve equal status in society, for themselves and those they care about.

A Case Study: The Family Matters Programme

In 1976 three Cornell University professors, Urie Bronfenbrenner, William E. Cross Jr and the author, set out together to study ‘the capacity of urban American environments to serve as support systems to parents and other adults directly involved in the care, upbringing and education of children’ (Bronfenbrenner and Cochran 1976). They wished to include as part of that study the development and testing of a modest set of supports for families with young children. While at that time empowerment had not evolved as a unified concept, these thinkers were aware that they wished to develop a programme designed as a clear alternative to what they viewed as the ‘deficit model’ characterising most social programmes for individuals and families in American society. The assumptions, goals and workings of the home-visiting and cluster-building programme which emerged over the five years of the project, and the ecological orientation which framed the undertaking, provide the material for this case study.

Sample, Research Method and Conceptual Framework

The study involved 276 families in the city of Syracuse, in western New York State. Each family contained a three-year-old child. The families were evenly distributed among 18 Syracuse neighbourhoods, and family incomes ranged (in 1978) from about $US5,000 to $US50,000 per year. About one-third of the families were Afro-American, and the families were also about one-third single parent in structure.

The families in ten of the 18 project neighbourhoods, 160 in all, were offered the family support programme. The control group consisted of the families in the remaining eight neighbourhoods. Prior to programme assignment the parents in all 276 families participated in a series of in-depth interviews, which provided demographic data, perceptions and descriptions of the neighbourhood, world of work and personal social networks, perceptions of family members, and descriptions of the child's daily activities. These data constituted the baseline phase of an evaluation strategy designed to provide information about the impact of the Family Matters programme upon the performance of children in school. Since then, the programme has been completed and follow-up data collected. The measures used for collection of that follow-up information paralleled those administered at baseline, but also included additional information about children's school performance and contact between home and school.

What was the conceptual basis from which we approached the tasks of examining family stresses and supports, and the development of a family supports programme? The ecological perspective takes as its starting point the view that human behaviour is explained not only by the biological characteristics of the individual and the influences associated with the immediate setting containing that person, but also those external settings that have indirect impact through their effects upon the mental health and general well-being of the individual (for example, the legal system, welfare system, system of governance). Thus, growth is conceived as a series of encounters across as well as within ecological systems that both include and are external to the home environment. One can imagine a set of concentric circles, with the family at its centre (Bronfenbrenner 1979). Each circle represents an ecological system. From this perspective interest in development extends beyond, for instance, parent-child or husband–wife relations in the centre circle. The goal is to learn more about how the developing person transitions in to and out of involvement with systems beyond the immediate family, and how these larger systems might support or impede those transitions. One such encounter, the transition from home to school, is a major event in the life of a child and was one of the major focuses of the family support programme.

Although the ecological framework incorporates a number of systems through which human behaviour may be influenced (mass media, education, empl...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of Figures
• Preface
• Introduction
• PART ONE: FAMILIES
• PART TWO: SCHOOLS
• PART THREE: PROFESSIONAL TRAINING
• Overview
• Contributors
• Author Index
• Subject Index