Kathleen Walker

• Kent State University

PurposeThis study assesses children’s understanding of terrorists and the role of sociopolitical context in their conceptualizations. Gender and age effects also are explored. MethodologyChildren aged 5- to 12-years from the United States and Northern Ireland were interviewed using a semi-structured survey. Interviews were audio recorded and transc...

The current study focuses on data collected from children in the United States shortly after the Yugoslavia-NATO conflict. Fifty-six children in two Midwestern states were asked to draw a picture of peace and a picture of war. Two major themes, peace as interpersonal interactions and peace as negative peace, emerged from the qualitative analysis of...

Researchers have shown that about 40% of our happiness is accounted for by intentional activity whereas 50% is explained by genetics and 10% by circumstances (Lyubomirsky, Sheldon & Schkade, 2005). Consequently, efforts to improve happiness might best be focused in the domain of intentional activity: willful and self-directed activity (Sheldon & Ly...

The growing popularity of social networking sites prompted the qualitative analysis of two sources of public communication within a sample of 44 MySpace profiles created by emerging adult women majoring in human development and family studies. Six major themes emerged from the comments: (1) friendly greetings/inquiries, (2) expressions of affection...

This research incorporated an ecological approach to examine American and Northern Irish children's understanding of the 2003 war in Iraq and the sources of information from which they acquired that understanding. Responses to interviews indicated that the children from the two countries had some common conceptions of and sources of information abo...

There is increased interest by parents in communicating with their children about political violence. However, limited attention in the scholarly literature has focused on parent—child communication about war and terrorism. In response, the purpose of this study is to assess, within their respective ecological contexts, American and Northern Irish...

Early childhood educators are in a unique position to provide peace education to young children and have been called to do so by their professional organizations. This article is intended to support early childhood educators in these endeavors by providing an overview of young children’s conceptions of peace, war, and peacemaking strategies. In add...

This article presents children’s descriptions of peace and war from two very different sociocultural environments: Belgrade, Yugoslavia, and the midwestern United States. Interviews were conducted shortly after the 1999–2000 NATO-Yugoslavian active conflict; therefore, one meaningful contrast between these two contexts is the exposure these childre...

The field of family studies is particularly suited to service-learning, but one area that has not received much attention in this regard is that of parenting education. This article highlights a series of parenting education workshops that were incorporated into a parent-child relationships course, utilizing a developmental assets framework. Studen...

Despite the apparent ease and regularity with which adults label individuals and groups as "the enemy," little is known regarding how children understand this concept. The current qualitative study examined the concept of enemy as understood by 105 3- to 12-yr.-old children from two sides of an international conflict--Yugoslavia and the United Stat...