Recovery of the rabbit’s conditioned nictitating membrane response without direct reinforcement after extinction

Three experiments demonstrated that, following the extinction of an established conditioned stimulus (CSA—e.g., tone), the pairing of a novel, cross-modal stimulus (CSB—e.g., light) with the unconditioned stimulus (US) results in strong recovery of responding to the extinguished CSA. Experiment 1 demonstrated that the recovery of responding to CSA is not the result of US reinstatement but is attributable to pairings of CSB with the US. Experiment 2 demonstrated that the recovery of responding is specific to CSA and is not the result of cross-modal generalization. Experiment 3 revealed that a large number of CSB-US pairings in Stage 1 significantly reduced the amount of recovery to CSA during subsequent CSB-US trials. Experiment 3 also provided unexpected evidence of cross-modal secondary extinction. The extinction and subsequent recovery of responding seen in the present experiments is discussed with respect to possible contributions from contextual associations, CS processing, US processing, conditioned response expression, and layered excitatory associations.     

The Similarities and Differences between Joyce’s "epiphany" and Woolf’s "Moment of Being" in Woolf’s Novel The Mark on the Wall

"Theory of Epiphany" James Joyce used in his literature is to explain an aesthetic process of the stages of artistic creation. Virginia Woolf’s conception of "moments of being", later develop into the stream of consciousness, is considered as the major techniques in her short stories. In this paper, the major features of the two techniques are compared and contrasted with reference to Joyce’s early fictions and Woolf’s The Mark on the Wall.     

The Similarities and Differences between the Goals of Bilingual Education in China and the United States

This paper studies the similarities and differences between the goals of bilingual education in China and the United States. China and the U. S. have similar purposes in providing bilingual education to language minorities at the elementary-secondary school level. The Americans use bilingual education as a remedy, but most Chinese treat it as a tool for tangible interests. American colleges and universities provide monolingual instruction only, but their Chinese counterparts are promoting bilingual instruction today. Many have considered American bilingual education a failure. The validity of China＇s collegiate bilingual instruction is under debating. More research work must be done before we learn how bilingual education may be efficiently and effectively provided to different groups with various educational needs.     

Negotiating identity between career and family roles: A study of international graduate students’ wives in the US

This paper is based on a long-term ethnography of an adult creative writing class situated in a major urban art gallery in the United Kingdom. It takes the claims of one group of older adults—that creative writing made them ‘feel younger’—as the starting point for exploring this connection further. It places these claims broadly within theories of learning in later life that advocate creative expression and reminiscence as important practices for educators of older adults. However, the main analysis employs anthropological theories of creativity and ageing in order to question the cultural assumptions about creativity and the period of older age informing theory and practice. The paper argues that the value of creative writing for the individuals studied lies both in the fact that it is a relational (rather than individual) process and a means of being in the present. These findings contradict traditional conceptions about creativity as future-oriented and older people as retrospective; they also raise questions about narratives of empowerment, individual agency and the importance of ‘reminiscence’ in some of the literature on older adult learning.     

Relationships between the use of test results and US students’ academic performance

In this study, we examined relationships between the use of test results and US students’ math, reading, and science performance in the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) 2009. Based on a literature review, we hypothesized that the 16 items in the PISA school questionnaire, which are related to the use of test results, can be categorized according to 4 factors. We validated this hypothesized factor structure using a confirmatory factor analysis and then obtained composite scores for each factor. As revealed by a multilevel analysis, when student and school demographic variables were controlled for, using test results to hold schools accountable to authority and the public was significantly positively related to students’ performance across all 3 subjects. No statistically significant relationship, however, was detected between students’ performance and the following uses of test scores: informing parents of their children’s performance, providing information for instructional purposes, and evaluating teachers and principals.     

Black women’s bodies,ideology, and the public curriculum of the pro- and anti-choice movements in the US

This paper explores how opposite sides of the abortion debate employ a discourse of endangerment to mobilise political support for their ideologies about black women’s bodies. I examine the role of black women within that rhetorical strategy through various rhetorical artefacts. To analyse these artefacts, I employ the theoretical framework of ideological or ideographic criticism. This framework helps us see how the artefacts used by both pro and anti-choice movements ‘condition’ the audience not merely to adopt a set of ‘beliefs and behavior, but a vocabulary of concepts that function as guides, warrants, reasons, or excuses for behavior and belief’. Though the two sides of the abortion debate differ in their overt political views, they turn out to share an implicit ideology about black women. This ideology prevents the voices of black women from being heard and valued in a debate that is nonetheless focused on black women’s bodies.     

Re-orienting Ethiopia’s educational policy in the classical humanist perspectives of renaissance utopias

Ethiopia has launched a grand scheme of renaissance to realise fast-paced economic growth. The two Growth and Transformation Plans spanning five years each (2010/11– 2015/16 and 2016/17 – 2020/21) outlined major targets towards which the country intends to mobilise all its resources. In the education sector, this vision is understood as producing a workforce that can realise massive industrialisation. However, what is conceived as ‘renaissance’ in Ethiopia and what kind of education is viewed as capable of bringing it is very mechanical, reductive and utilitarian compared to the Renaissance movements of the late-medieval Europe, which were holistic endeavours to culturally uplift and humanise individuals and societies. The purpose of this paper is to compare the educational views of Christian humanists – the European renaissance thinkers who wrote the early-modern renaissance utopias – with what is conceived today as ‘renaissance’ education in Ethiopia as embedded in major educational policy documents.     

Changes in the basic ICT skills of freshmen between 2005 and 2009: Who’s catching up and who’s still behind?

In the last decade, ICT use has expanded enormously in most Western countries. In line with this development, we hypothesised that freshmen at university would not only have mastered more ICT skills, but would also use computers more often than their counterparts of 5 years previously. To compare students’ opinions and behaviour between 2005 and 2009, responses to two online questionnaires (N = 714 in 2005 and N = 1529 in 2009) offered at a large university were compared. The main variables of the Technology Acceptance Model (as well as facilitating factors, study motivation and some contextual variables) were used as predictors to explore the possible changes between 2005 and 2009 in the mastering of 19 ICT skills, and the frequency of the use of computers for six different tasks. The results of the study show that freshmen became more proficient in some ICT skills, while proficiency in other skills did not change or even dropped. Gender is still an important factor to predict ICT skills and the frequency of using computers, but it is shown that for some skills female students have caught up with their male counterparts.     

Similarities in Mark Twain and Lu Xun’s Writing Styles-The Employ-ment of Sharp Contrast

Both Mark Twain and Lu Xun were the most well-known writers in the world literature. They were famous for bit-ing style of writing and the way of using humor and irony, which won high praise of public....     

Practices of boundary-work in the collaboration between principals and private sponsors in England’s academy schools

This article presents one of the few qualitative studies to empirically examine the collaboration between private sponsors and principals in the context of England’s academy schools policy. It uses the concept of boundary-work to illuminate the multiple dynamics involved in the collaboration between principals and business sponsors. By analysing qualitative interviews with principals and sponsors from a local authority case study the article reveals the working relationship between these actors to be characterised by three boundary-work practices: drawing, negotiating and contesting boundaries. These practices are described before exploring their implications for existing understandings of England’s academies policy. This analysis directly answers calls in the literature for in-depth case study research which explores the collaboration between academy sponsors and principals, and the article’s interpretivist approach to boundary-work is shown to be a valuable theoretical approach which has received little attention in studies investigating the role of private actors in education. The article concludes by advocating for more studies of education policy to use boundary-work as a lens through which to understand the role being played by new actors in education, and argues that this perspective would be particularly valuable for examining the context of England’s increasingly diversifying schooling landscape.     

Comparisons between Liang Shiqiu’s and Zhu Shenghao’s Hamlet from the Perspective of Translator’s Subjectivity

For the Chinese versions of Hamlet, Liang Shiqiu’s and Zhu Shenghao’s translations can be called the classic. Because the two great translators have their own choices, their versions differ a lot. In the translating process, translator’s subjectivity plays an important role and it is one of the major reasons for emerging different translation. The thesis mainly talks about Liang Shiqiu’s and Zhu Shenghao’s different versions from the perspective of translator’s subjectivity by comparison.     

Greenhouse affect: the relationship between the sustainable design of schools and children’s environmental attitudes

This study aims to determine if primary school children’s environmental attitudes can be predicted by whether their school had been designed or adapted for sustainability. A New Ecological Paradigm (NEP) scale for children was adopted to measure attitudes, with supplementary questions added to align this scale to the Australian context of the study. In addition, the original adult NEP scale was used to determine relationships between children’s environmental attitudes, their School Design and their Parents’ and Teachers’ Environmental Attitudes. Data collected from grade 4, 5 and 6 primary school children, their parents and teachers were analysed via three multiple regressions. The results indicate that sustainable design in schools improves the environmental attitudes of children towards perceptibly green building features, such as solar panels, the use of recycled water, natural daylighting and outdoor classrooms including food-producing gardens.     

A mediation meta-analysis of the role of maternal responsivity in the association between socioeconomic risk and children’s language

This meta-analysis tested maternal responsivity as a mediator of the association between socioeconomic risk and children's preschool language abilities. The search included studies up to 2017 and meta-analytic structural equation modeling, allowed us to examine the magnitude of the indirect effect across 17 studies (k = 19). The meta-analysis included 6433 predominantly White, English speaking children (M_age = 36 months; 50% female) from Western, industrialized countries. All paths in the model were statistically significant, notably, the indirect effect was significant (b = −.052), showing that maternal responsivity may be a proximal intervening variable between socioeconomic risk and children's language development. Moderator analyses found that the indirect effect was stronger for sensitive parenting than warmth and when parenting was assessed in the family home.     

A longitudinal study of the role of children’s altruism and forgiveness in the relation between parental aggressive discipline and anxiety of preschoolers in China

Using data collected over a 1-year period on a stratified random sample of 368 parents with children studying in nurseries (mean age = 3.97 years), this study assessed the predictive effects of parental corporal punishment, parental psychological aggression, preschoolers’ altruism, and preschoolers’ forgiveness on preschoolers’ anxiety symptoms in Hong Kong, China. Results of hierarchical regression analyses showed that parental psychological aggression, preschoolers’ altruism and preschoolers’ forgiveness at Time 1 significantly predicted preschoolers’ anxiety at Time 2, when controlling for the initial level of preschoolers’ anxiety and important demographic variables that co-vary with preschoolers’ anxiety. Moreover, preschoolers’ altruism moderated the predictive effect of parental psychological aggression on preschoolers’ anxiety symptoms. The study has several significant contributions. First, the study supports the predictive effect of parental aggressive discipline on preschoolers’ anxiety. Second, we provide evidence that preschoolers’ altruism and forgiveness negatively predict preschoolers’ anxiety symptoms. Third, preschoolers’ altruism and forgiveness are shown to protect them against parental psychological aggression. A dual-focus approach to intervention and prevention is proposed to reduce aggressive discipline by parents as well as to enhance altruism and forgiveness in children. Parent training programs could be provided to teach parents positive discipline strategies. Home-based or school-based interventions could be designed for preschool children to foster and enhance their altruism and forgiveness.     

The Difference in the Main Conflict between Shakespeare ’s Hamlet and Feng Xiaogang’s The Banquet

Famous Chinese director Feng Xiaogang made a film The Banquet in 2006, which is adapted from Shakespeare’s play Hamlet. However, accounting for the background and cultural difference, the main conflict...     

Exploring the relationship between process and outcome in young children’s learning: stage one of a longitudinal study

The first phase of a small-scale, longitudinal study which is part of the Effective Early Learning (EEL) Project, a UK based, national, early childhood evaluation and improvement initiative is described. A key developmental proposition is that children who operate in a rich and stimulating learning environment and experience high levels of involvement and engagement in their learning will achieve enhanced learning outcomes. The EEL Project aims to investigate the validity of this proposition. In particular, it explores the relationship between one of the key process measures in the EEL Project, the Child Involvement Scale (CIS), and the outcome measures being used by early childhood settings to monitor academic progress in the UK, namely Baseline Assessment in English and Mathematics (BAEM) at 4 years of age, and Standard Assessment Tasks (SAT) at 7 years of age.     

Co-operatives and education in the Basque Country: the ikastolas in the final years of Franco’s dictatorship

This article analyses the creation of the schools called ikastolas throughout the Basque Country from the 1960s onwards. The name ikastola refers to a unique school model whose major characteristic is to teach the majority of subjects in the Basque language, or euskera. It outlines the reasons why some of these schools took a co-operative organisational form and describes their major characteristics. The first part analyses the opportunities created under the Francoist regime for this kind of school, despite the repressive character of the dictatorship in other fields. The second part of the paper examines the important influence of the Mondragón co-operative movement, especially through its financial institution, in the creation of these educational co-operatives. The third and last part emphasises the role played by social mobilisation in defence of the Basque language in the creation of these schools and how this factor tied in with a co-operative governance system.