Maternal Quality Standards for Children's Television Programs

On the basis of telephone interviews carried out among a random sample of mothers with children between three and 12 years of age (n = 357), this study investigated the standards mothers use to evaluate the quality of four types of children's television programs: cartoons, news programs for children, educational children's programs, and dramatic children's programs. A factor analysis resulted in a list of seven types of quality standards that, in mothers' eyes, children's programs should satisfy. The three quality standards mothers considered most important for children's programs were: (a) comprehen‐sibility, (b) aesthetic quality, and (c) elicitation of involvement. Additional standards were: (d) entertainment, (e) innocuousness (absence of detrimental effects), (f) credibility, and (g) presence of role models. According to mothers, credibility was a standard that should be fulfilled primarily by news and educational programs for children. For news programs, aesthetic quality, entertainment, and the presence of role models were thought to be minor considerations. Less‐educated mothers were more concerned about the entertainment value of children's programs than better‐educated mothers. As compared to mothers with older children, mothers with younger children were more likely to consider innocuousness important, and to view credibility as unimportant in children's programs.     

The Development of Programmes for Young Children in Japan

Japan is one of the countries which have been producing and broadcasting a large number of programmes for children, both educational and entertainment, and both types of programme have been widely watched by children in other countries in recent years. This article introduces the characteristics of Japanese children's television viewing and some examples of studies on the development of new television programmes for young children and then discusses the possibility of the development of international television programmes for children.     

Exploring the Impact of Television Watching on Vocabulary Skills in Toddlers

With the rising incidence of television consumption in children, the aim of the present study was to investigate the impact of such habits on vocabulary skills in young children. Very little research has targeted a key cognitive skill—vocabulary—during the toddler years, which represent a critical developmental period. We recruited toddlers, aged two to three, from British child care centers. Parents indicated the television watching habits of their children in different genres (educational, cartoons, baby DVDs, adult entertainment) in order to investigate potential differential effects. We also included other key variables linked to vocabulary acquisition: short-term memory (verbal and visuo-spatial) and reading habits (fiction and educational books). The findings indicated that television did not impact vocabulary scores, either positively or negatively. Instead, reading educational books and short-term memory skills predicted vocabulary performance.     

Parental Mediation of Children's Viewing in a Changing Television Environment

For 25 years, Israeli television operated as a virtual monopoly, with one single channel shared by Educational TV and the Public Broadcasting Authority. Young viewers were exposed to non‐commercial quality programs primarily geared for children. The introduction of cable television challenges the ways parents control their children's viewing and fills the role of mediators between television and the child. This study is based on two surveys among parents of Israeli children aged 2‐8. The first was conducted with 537 parents in 1989, prior to the introduction of cable TV, and the second with 552 parents who had cable in 1993, when cable TV penetrated half of all Israeli homes. The results indicate that the introduction of cable TV changed strategies of parental control and mediation and parents’ assessment of television's influence on children. Active parental mediation was closely related to the attribution of learning values to children's viewing and to gratifications attributed to educational television broadcasts. Loosening of control and allowance for independent children's viewing was closely related to the attribution of entertainment value to children's viewing and to viewing of cable television.     

手机教育游戏的价值和设计原则探讨

随着移动终端的发展、教育游戏的日趋完善,将手机游戏引入教育领域必定会掀起一股娱乐教育的热潮。文章尝试提出手机教育游戏的定义,分析其教育价值,并从开发应用角度、教育学习角度、游戏娱乐角度三个角度阐述手机教育游戏的设计原则,最后展望了其发展前景。     

How the dialectical imperative shapes network news content: The case of CNN vs. the entertainment networks

This essay compares an all news network's (the Cable News Network) response to a news story's dialectical imperative with that of the entertainment networks (ABC, CBS, and NBC). Using the 1988 nominating convention coverage as subject matter, the author applies narrative principles to interpret a content analysis of those telecasts. The results indicate significant distinctions in narrative structure as the entertainment networks aired a “talent‐based” production whereas CNN produced an “event‐based” interpretation of the two conventions.     

Straight Roads and Winding Tracks: Swedish educational policy from a gender equality perspective

A review of Swedish educational policy and educational research indicates that labour market considerations have had a high visibility. Straight routes through the educational system have been laid out in order to equalise and make the system more efficient. Empirical studies show that women's strategies to combine education, work and family often resulted in ‘winding tracks’ through education. Predominant research models tend to adjust to the ‘straight roads’ of educational policy while women's winding routes have been set aside. The current Swedish goal of equality between men and women gives work and parenthood the same weight for both sexes. This article discusses whether this goal could set a challenging framework for a research agenda where more gender‐sensitive methodologies are developed as well as gender‐sensitive concepts, upgrading women's knowledge, experiences and values.     

Power/Knowledge for Educational Theory: Stephen Ball and the Reception of Foucault

This paper explores the significance of the concept of power/knowledge in educational theory. The argument proceeds in two main parts. In the first, I consider aspects of Stephen J. Ball's highly influential work in educational theory. I examine his reception of Foucault's concept of power/knowledge and suggest that there are problems in his adoption of Foucault's thought. These problems arise from the way that he settles interpretations into received ideas. Foucault's thought, I try to show, is not to be seen in a confined way. In the second part, I seek a different reading of Foucault's notion of power/knowledge in order to break with this tendency to confine, referring to the work of Gilles Deleuze. I draw particularly on Deleuze's thought of the outside as a means of manifesting the significance of power/knowledge in relation to processes of subjectification. At the end of the paper, I suggest how educational theory might be reconceived in the light of potencies of power/knowledge that the paper has demonstrated.     

Students Returned from Abroad in the 1990s

Since the 1980s, the increasing cost of education has been a global trend, and there is a growing demand for increasing efficiency in different countries. As a result, education economists began focusing on the issue of efficient allocation of educational resources and borrowed production function from economics to study educational production issues in order to provide empirical evidence for maximization of the effectiveness of educational resources. This paper employs the multiple linear regression model to build a model for the relationship between the allocation of educational resources and student academic performance in public junior secondary schools in rural areas of China's western region. It also provides a decision basis for different levels of government and schools to draw educational resources allocation policies for junior secondary schools in rural areas of China's western region and to improve the quality of education.     

传播学视角下韩国综艺节目“Running man”的节目特色分析

随着电视媒体的跨地区、跨文化传播的速度不断加快,近年来,一些来自国外的电视节目不断进入中国观众的视野之中。韩国著名的电视综艺节目"Running man"就是其中之一,收视率不断飙升的背后必定有其制胜法宝。基于此,从传播学视角出发,以"Running man"为样本进行研究,探讨"Running man"的节目特色的同时分析取得成功的原因,以期为我国的电视综艺节目提供一些可参考的建设性意见。     

School Racial Composition and Student Educational Aspirations: A Question of Equity in a Multiracial Society

This article uses survey data on 15,800 high school students from 3 urban school districts to investigate the impact of school-level support for higher educational attainment and school racial composition on students' actual educational aspirations. We examine students' perceptions of school support for postsecondary participation and test alternative measures of school racial composition in order to account for the increasingly multiracial makeup of today's urban high schools. We include both school-level and student-level characteristics in a multilevel logistic regression model to see if perceived school support for higher educational attainment differs by school racial composition. The results provide support for the hypothesis that school racial composition and school support have an effect on students' reported educational aspirations, and that alternative specifications of school racial composition provide different interpretations of these important relationships.     

Definitions of the ‘Subject’: The relations between the discourses of educational assessment and the psychology of motivation and their constructions of personal reality

This article engages critically in a study of two areas of academic discourse, educational assessment and the psychology of motivation, in order to examine the dialectical relationships between their modes of classification, ordering and defining, and the construction of personal realities. Its approach draws on post‐structuralist thinking associated with critical discourse analysis and Foucault's genealogical method. The first section raises questions about the use of metaphor and its function; the second provides ‘readings’ of three research texts on children's attributions for their different ideological assumptions; the third brings together issues about the ‘subject’ and ‘emancipation’. The text raises questions about educational assessment's positioning within a paradigm associated with the social construction of knowledge.     

Educational Goods and the Ethical Dimensions of Educational Policy and Practice

This essay is a commentary on Brighouse, Ladd, Loeb and Swift's Educational Goods: Values, Evidence, and Decision-Making. It discusses the book's conceptualisation of childhood goods, and it comments at length on its place within the larger philosophical enterprise of promoting normatively and evidentially sound decision-making in education. A thesis of the commentary is that the book provides an important form of orientation to educational policy decision-making, but that the goods and distributive values it identifies would need to be supplemented in order to adequately address aspects of educational practice beyond the kinds of policy matters it discusses. These would include the content of education, the scope and division of educational authority, and the manner in which such authority should be exercised, for example pedagogically, in shaping student conduct, and in communicating and implementing educational policies.     

From traditional to formal education in the lower Arabian Gulf, 1820–1971

This article charts the development of education in the lower Arabian Gulf from its traditional beginnings in the nineteenth century to the provision of more formal schooling and eventually a ministry of education following Britain's withdrawal from the region in 1971. In order to provide a better understanding of the complexities and relative advances and setbacks to this development, special emphasis is placed on the social, economic and political context of education's trajectory; including the lower Gulf's dependent relations with its Imperial protector and its reliance on foreign educational aid from Kuwait.     

A SELECTED LIST OF TEXTBOOKS AVAILABLE FOR USE IN THE GRADED SUNDAY SCHOOL

This study investigates Suhrawardi's epistemological and philosophical point of view in order to analyze and elicit its educational outcomes. His philosophy, which can be called eclectic philosophy (involving intellect and intuition), regularly proposes a different philosophical system with intuitionist outlook. It is the combination of two philosophical and mystical views, namely Aristotle's logical reasoning and Plato's mysticism. Suhrawardi has rather suggested this belief in the field of acquiring knowledge by humans that depends on three levels of knowledge, namely intuitive knowledge (using senses), knowledge via observation (mystical intuition), and illuminated knowledge. The third level of knowledge leads a human to the verity of knowledge. Therefore, this view about knowledge, and process of this knowledge acquisition, will have educational implications such as aims, principles, and teaching–learning methodology.     

The Effects of the Occupations of Working Mothers on the Educational Inequality

ABSTRACT

Working mothers with children of school age are a recent phenomenon in the Netherlands, but are more common in other European societies. The social and scientific significance of this work for life chances in general and for educational inequality in particular is still not clear and subject of heated debate. In this article the effects of paid work outside the home by the mother and of the level of her work on her child's educational attainment at the end of primary school are estimated with ANOVA and LISREL for the most recent nationally representative cohort of Dutch primary school‐leavers in the late 1980s (the VOCL‐'89 cohort), controlling for other characteristics of the mother, her household, husband and children. The study is a follow‐up of a comparable analysis of an older cohort of Dutch primary school‐leavers in the late 1970s. The results of this most recent analysis show that the dilemma between working outside the home and working as a housewife is a false one. The central question for the educational chances of a child is not whether its mother works or not, but the level of her work. Working in labouring jobs has a negative effect on children's educational attainment compared to working as a housewife; this in contrast to the positive effects of working as a shopkeeper, farmer or employee. This also holds after controlling for all other relevant characteristics. These effects are substantial and cannot be explained by other characteristics. However, the effects are not similar to the effects of the level of her husband's job on the educational attainment of their children. This means that the conventional as well as the radical view must be replaced by a more moderate one. This also means that in order to get an accurate estimation, the mother's job has to be included in any measurement of parental class of pupils. The effects of the level of the mother's job on the educational attainment of her children do not differ between boys and girls. These results neither confirm suggestions of the model‐function of working mothers for their daughters, nor suggestions of the need of boys to be controlled by a mother at home. The effects of the level of the mother's job also do not differ between ethnic groups. The last two results are contrary to some results from the USA. In this article the effects of the mother's job on her children's educational attainment in a nationally representative cohort of the late ‘70s (the SMVO cohort) are compared to those of this recent VOCL‐'89 cohort. Despite the growth in the percentage of working mothers during the ‘70s and ‘80s in the Netherlands (mostly part‐time jobs) the effect of the level of the mother's job did not change. A possible consequence of these results is that a general change of the tax and wages system from one based on households with one wage‐earner to one based on individuals might be detrimental to families of parents with a low educational level, who are limited to less qualified jobs.     

Developmental trajectories of children's educational expectations in China: Contributions of academic achievement and maternal expectations

This longitudinal study examined the overall and heterogeneous developmental trajectories of children's educational expectations and the effects of children’'s previous academic achievements and maternal educational expectations on these trajectories. The educational expectations of 3868 Chinese children (1839 girls; M_age = 9.42 ± 0.52) were investigated six times from the 4th to 6th grades. Children's previous academic achievement and maternal educational expectations were also collected during the first wave. The results showed that Chinese children's educational expectations generally increased in middle childhood and could be categorized into four classes: high stable-increasing, low stable-increasing, low quickly-increasing, and high quickly-decreasing. Furthermore, maternal educational expectations have the greatest influence on the initial level of children's educational expectations, whereas previous academic achievement has the greatest impact on the increasing rate of children's expectations. In addition, both factors contribute to classifying children into a high-stable increasing class in comparison to the other three classes. The findings indicate that Chinese children increase their educational expectations in middle childhood and continually adapt their expectations mainly based on their previous achievements. These findings could advance our understanding of the development of children’s educational expectations in the middle childhood period and provide educational practitioners with prospective factors to increase children’s educational expectations.     

How Parent Perceptions Relate to Elementary Children’s Portable Technology Use by Gender and Grade Level

This study examined how parents' reports of children’s technology use in the home varies by a child’s gender or grade level. Framed by technology adoption models, this mixed-method study gathered parent reports of their elementary child’s use of portable technology for entertainment and learning in the home, collected from 120 surveys and 13 individual interviews with survey respondents. Results across the four 2×2 ANOVAs yielded three significant main effects: gender and entertainment devices, gender and entertainment apps, grade level and learning apps. No significant effects were found among any of the interaction variables or within the ANOVA summary for learning devices. Interview data revealed girls are interested in reading with Kindle, whereas parents are reluctant to provide boys with portable technology because of their preference to play games. Strategies are provided for teachers, support specialists, and parents to improve how children use technology. Implications for app developers are suggested.     

Learning landscapes

This article explores the metaphor of learning landscapes, a tool developed in order to map children's experiences of, and attitudes to, learning (mathematics) before and after the transfer from primary to secondary school. Firstly, the continuing problems surrounding school transfer and why a re‐examination of this is required are considered. Secondly, as background to the metaphor, the sociocultural influences which impinge on educational processes are discussed. Following that, the core of the article develops the metaphor, seeking to demonstrate its pertinence to the study of children's schooling, the learning of mathematics and school transfer. The article also questions the potential of some of the current educational reforms to deliver sustained improvement.