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The 2nd International Conference on Children's Rights in Education hosted approximately 150 child-centered international policy makers, who discussed the implications and implementation of children's rights to guide educational policy, research, and practice. This report presents an annotated agenda of the conference proceedings and, based on the presentations and discussions, a number of recommendations that describe the elements and the context that need to be in place to make children's rights in education a reality. Opening presentations are annotated, dealing with the role of conferences in policy change, implications of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) for a 14-year-old, and the significance of general comments on the Convention's article 29, on the aims of education. Subsequent presentations then summarized pertaining to the following areas: (1) the CRC and the protection, education, and participation of children; (2) education and culture; (3) cultural values; (4) alternative forms and meanings of education; and (5) education, the media, and the electronic communications revolution. Discussion streams then summarized; streams dealt the following topics: (1) human rights respecting learning communities; (2) children affected by war; (3) child labor; and (4) children and violence. The report the outlines factors to be addressed in the realization of children's right to child-centered education, and offers recommendations for developing child-centered learning opportunities. Finally, report describes the "Children as Partners" project to provide governments and civil society organizations with critical information and resources to help them implement proven best practices to promote and manage meaningful participation of children in decision-making. (HTH)

School psychology, the professional application of psychology to education environments and programs, has evolved during the last hundred years to become a critically valuable source of support for the learning and development of children and youth throughout the world. This review of "The Handbook of International School Psychology" found it to be the best available source for understanding the profession's history of development, nature, present status characteristics and the challenges and potentials for its future internationally and for the diverse sample of 43 countries included for specific attention. The book's editor-authors and country chapter authors have produced quite interesting and useful material in a highly readable form. The review gives the future of the profession and its yet un-reached potential particular attention, noting constraints limiting the profession's practices and contributions such as traditionally heavy emphasis on the provision of assessment and preventive/ corrective interventions focused on problems in learning and students with disabilities, oversight and control by non-psychologists and narrowly dedicated funding. Suggestions are made for a more expansive future of contributions by clarifying the professions' purposes, broadening the meaning of special needs, employing an assets model, bringing interventions to the foreground, shifting to a stronger internal locus of control and drafting a new social contract with communities emphasizing promotion of the full healthy development of all children and youth. Recommendations are also made for transforming the "Handbook" into a living internet process of information provision, discourse on issues, consensus development, resource support and guidance for the profession.

Presents an overview of an evolving program of surveying the judgments of children and significant adults in their lives regarding the importance and existence of children's rights in homes and schools. Provides the history, purposes, design, process, and general all-country composite findings for the project. Identifies cross-country patterns for some topics judged to be particularly important to school psychologists. (Contains 10 references, 5 tables, and 15 figures.) (GCP)

Child maltreatment, defined as acts of commission or omission that harm a child physically or psychologically, adversely affects millions of children nationwide. Since almost two-thirds of these children are of school age, schools could be among the best resources available to combat child maltreatment. This paper examines the responsibilities and policies of Indiana public schools regarding child maltreatment. Section I defines child maltreatment and reviews federal and Indiana laws and reporting requirements. Section II focuses on the ethical and professional responsibilities of educators. Section III presents the results of survey responses from 203 of the state's 304 school corporations to determine their policies and procedures for handling child maltreatment. In section IV, suggestions are offered to improve school policies and procedures that include inservice and preservice education, school policies to ensure accountability in abuse situations, coordination with community child services, state support for maltreatment programs, and standardized record-keeping practices. References and survey data are included. (LMS)

Fourth grade students (N=669) in a suburban middle class school corporation were given the Paired Hands Test (PHT), measuring the others-concept, in conjunction with a special needs screening process. The screening process required that all fourth grade teachers tentatively identify all children having a significant learning-behavioral problem of a specific type and then judge each identified student's functioning for each of 23 specific behavioral-learning problem characteristics. Screening results were analyzed by educational-psychological specialists to determine special need patterns. PHT results were compared for all relevant identified major groups and subgroups and for fourth graders referred for psychological evaluations by traditional procedures. In general, students identified as having special needs had lower others-concepts than those not so identified. Subgroup comparisons indicate that some special needs groups have low others-concepts while some do not and suggest that the PHT provides information not available from other sources. (Author)