Behind the Blackout Curtains: Female Focalization of Atlantic Canada in the <Emphasis Type="Italic">Dear Canada</Emphasis> Series of Historical Fiction

Novels from the Dear Canada series of historic fiction, published by Scholastic Canada, currently populate the shelves of school classrooms and libraries across Canada. This study explores two Dear Canada novels that chronicle significant moments in Atlantic Canadian history: Janet McNaughton’s novel (Flame and ashes: The great fire diary of Triffie Winsor. St. Johns, Newfoundland, 1892, Scholastic Canada, Toronto, 2014) which explores the Great Fire of Newfoundland in 1892, and Julie Lawson’s novel, No Safe Harbour (No safe harbour: the Halifax explosion diary of Charlotte Blackburn, Halifax, Nova Scotia, 1917, Scholastic Canada, Toronto, 2006), which explores the Halifax Explosion of 1917. Kenneth Kidd (Child Lit 33: 120–149, 2005) notes that “subjects previously thought too upsetting for children are now deemed appropriate and even necessary” in children’s literature (p. 12); indeed, the themes of both Flame and Ashes and No Safe Harbour resonate with recent attempts to represent broader and more diverse ranges of experiences in children’s fiction. Like many other texts in the series, these texts explore economic hardship and psychological distress. Furthermore, they explore events through the eyes of subjects who have, historically, had very little agency: female children. Drawing on narrative theory and feminist standpoint theory (Fuller in Writing the everyday: women’s textual communities in Atlantic Canada, McGill-Queen’s University Press, Montreal, 2004), this study examines the narrative techniques McNaughton and Lawson rely on to counterbalance difficult historical events with the appeal of young protagonists who offer subjective responses to the historical moment. This study considers both the ideological challenges and the possible advantages of circulating historical knowledge that is linked to girlhood and profoundly rooted in place. Ultimately, I argue that these young female narrators provide important inroads for interrogating what counts as history in historical narratives.     

Digital <Emphasis Type="Italic">learning trails</Emphasis>: Scaling technology-facilitated curricular innovation in schools with a <Emphasis Type="Italic">rhizomatic</Emphasis> lens

Technological advances in the form of ubiquitous computing has altered the learning landscape today. Contemporary modes of learning afford curricular innovations in schools. While learning journeys of decades ago entailed field trips to places of interest such as museums and zoos where students completed tasks or worksheets after each trip, the learning journeys of today are facilitated by technological tools such as smart devices and global positioning systems. Learners are moving away from being mere content consumers through technology-facilitated dialoguing and content creation (Tay and Lee 2014; Tan et al. 2011). In this paper we unpack tenets of a technology-facilitated curricular innovation (CI) through a case study analysis of the development and implementation of a Digital Learning Trails (DLT) project. Through tracing the trajectory of the DLT project, we identify factors related to the scalability and sustainability of this CI that was developed in one school and subsequently used by more than 200 schools in Singapore. We posit that scaling curricular innovations in schools can be conceptually provisioned through a rhizomatic lens where innovation is characterized by multiple trajectories, allowing for recontextualizations of CIs. We argue that, (1) the pedagogic process in the context of education and scaling is based on supporting apprentice-schools to make multiple recontextualizations; (2) the enculturation process of a school adopting and implementing a particular innovation is based on a rhizomatic rather than linear, conception of the development of expertise; and (3) the process of CI implementation is based on developing the capability to not only make multiple recontextualizations but also to accumulate enough capital to send out new ‘roots and shoots’ as it spreads.     

Measuring change in career counseling: Validation of the <Emphasis Type="Italic">Career Futures Inventory</Emphasis>-<Emphasis Type="Italic">Revised</Emphasis>

This retrospective chart review study examined the factor structure of the Career Futures Inventory-Revised (CFI-R; Rottinghaus et al. in J Career Assess 20:123–139, 2012) and its utility as a career counseling outcome measure using a sample of 332 clients from a university career center. The CFI-R examines career agency and other career adaptability dimensions germane to clients’ career concerns. Confirmatory factor analysis results supported the proposed factor structure. Changes in CFI-R scale scores are reported for 116 clients who received counseling. The use of the CFI-R as an effectiveness outcome measure for individual, group, and classroom career interventions is addressed.     

What a Girl! Fighting Gentleness in the Picture Book World: An Analysis of the Norwegian Picture Book <Emphasis Type="Italic">What a Girl</Emphasis>! by Gro Dahle and Svein Nyhus

The Norwegian picture book What a Girl! (original title Snill) by Gro Dahle and Svein Nyhus was published 2011 and immediately gained a large audience. The book tells the story about a girl who always behaves in the ways expected of her: she never confronts her parents, her teacher or her classmates. This behaviour makes her invisible; she disappears into a wall, causing those around her to take notice. After a while, she fights herself out of the wall, emerging a completely different girl, a strong girl with a will of her own. However, she does not come alone: she has taken with her all the silent females, who had disappeared into the wall before her. The picture book story has fascinated both young and adult readers, and many student teachers have discussed it as part of their curriculum at university. The experienced reader will find intertextual relationships to other texts, where women disappear into the wall such as Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s The Yellow Wallpaper (1899) and Patrice Kindl’s The Woman in the Wall (1997). The less-experienced reader will encounter a fascinating story of a girl fighting for her freedom and self-esteem. This article will present a multimodal analysis of the cover page and some significant spreads building on social semiotic theory and tools for analysing multimodal texts. The analysis will give a basis for discussing the development of the main character as a liberation project.     

Between Fiction and Reality: Maps and Cartographic Logic in the Works of Peter Sís

This article examines the use of maps in the works of Czech author- illustrator Peter Sís in order to consider the role that cartography plays in the construction of four of his biographical picturebooks: Follow the Dream: The Story of Christopher Columbus (2003/1991), Starry Messenger: Galileo Galilei (1996), The Tree of Life: A Book Depicting the Life of Charles Darwin, Naturalist, Geologist and Thinker (2003), and The Pilot and the Little Prince: The Life of Antoine de Saint-Exupéry (2013). The profusion of maps found in Sís’s biographical picturebooks expresses an understanding that the exploration of identity is intimately linked with the exploration of the spaces in which that identity is formed. The maps represent three basic functions for Sís: first, he uses maps to situate the reader in a specific time and place; second, maps are elements that initiate adventure; and third, the profusion of maps, combined with other textual elements, raises a question that runs through all of Sís’s work regarding the limits of representations of reality. The article illustrates the three functions by presenting a walk through the pages of the four chosen picturebooks, describing and analysing the different types of maps that Sís uses.     

Intensification and isolation: Alienated teaching and collaborative professional relationships in the accountability context

The global educational landscape continues to change in response to three forces: a new paradigm of curriculum approaches that has shifted from teaching to learning; public demand for evidence of this learning; and decentralization of public schools (Sahlberg in Journal of Educational Change, 12(2):173–185, 2011). These changes have had what many researchers identify as a negative effect on the work of teachers (Cochran-Smith and Lytle in Harvard Educational Review, 76(4):668–697, 2006; Griffin and Scharmann in Journal of Elementary Science Education, 20(3):35–48, 2008; Hargreaves and Shirley in Phi Delta Kappan, 90(2):135–143, 2008; Hill in Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, 29(2):95–114, 2007; Jennings and Rentner in Phi Delta Kappan, 88(2):110–113, 2006; McNeil in Contradictions of school reform: Educational costs of standardized testing. Routledge, New York, 2000). One effect is alienation, which may take many forms including disengagement from work, isolation and neglect (Brooks et al. in Educ Policy 22(1):45–62, 2008; Macdonald and Shirley in The mindful teacher. Teachers College Press, New York, 2009; Zielinski and Hoy in Educ Adm Q 19(2):27–45, 1983). In this article, I use data gathered from interviews with teachers and school counselors in a suburban district outside a Rust Belt city to demonstrate that the reach of alienated teaching in the accountability context extends beyond teachers’ own work to impact the entire school community. In particular, I show that alienated teaching further isolates school counselors and teachers, whose work has long been organizationally separate, from collaborative professional relationships and ultimately prevents students from receiving the types of support services they need for postsecondary success.     

Drawing Out the Resistance Narrative via Mapping in <Emphasis Type="Italic">The Selected Works of T. S. Spivet</Emphasis>

Though many children’s texts include maps that visually demarcate their journeys, modern texts rarely involve active mapping by child characters themselves, suggesting that children cannot (or should not) conceptualise the world for themselves, but require an adult’s guidance to traverse it. Reif Larsen’s The Selected Works of T. S. Spivet (2009), however, views the child as active cartographer and expands the conversation on the relationship between children and space to uncover new (or more nuanced) understandings of children’s place in society, and their constant tension in finding selfhood. This article examines how the act of mapping in literature often leads a character away from home to a place where the child can reconstruct “home” within his or her memory—a memory that instils resistance against the status quo of the child’s position in life. Cartography’s direct relationship with children experiments with and subverts the binaries of child/adult, fantasy/reality, civilised/primitive and home/memory of home, completely dismantling them in the specific example of Larsen’s novel and demonstrating that the child protagonist’s space is neither solely real nor fantastic. Mapping induces the young protagonist to move into alternative spaces, and to resist social pressures in order to assert fuller agency over his or her identity formation.     

The Cartographic Eye in Children’s Picturebooks: Between Maps and Narratives

This article examines the place occupied by maps in children’s picturebooks. After a brief overview of the different roles that are assigned to maps in children’s books, the article considers five French picturebooks—Warja Lavater’s Le petit chaperon rouge (1965), Olivier Douzou and Isabelle Simon’s L’autobus numéro 33 (1996), Véronique Vernette’s Cocorico poulet Piga (1999), Rebecca Dautremer and Arthur Leboeuf’s Le loup de la 135 ^ème (2008) and Kochka and Fabienne Cinquin’s Dans ma ville, il y a… (2011)—in order to focus on how the narrative, whether enclosed, superimposed or linked to the text in some other way, is evoked by the geographic shape of the maps. It is argued that the particular use and function of a map depends on its shape or placement in a book, distinguishing between the incorporation of maps only as a significant picture (its use) from the subject within the whole narrative (its function). Thus the article articulates what uses a map can have within a narrative. It also explores the mechanics of the iconotext, showing that a cartographic picture fulfils a precise, rather than a general, function of spatialisation. Hence three main functions of spatialisation in maps and mapping are distinguished, whereby an author could use maps to help a character discover, conquer, or organise a space.     

Controversial opinion: evaluation of <Emphasis Type="Italic">EGR1</Emphasis> and <Emphasis Type="Italic">LAMA2</Emphasis> loci for high myopia in Chinese populations

Functional studies have suggested the important role of early growth response 1 (EGR1) and Laminin α2-chain (LAMA2) in human eye development. Genetic studies have reported a significant association of the single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) in the LAMA2 gene with myopia. This study aimed to evaluate the association of the tagging SNPs (tSNPs) in the EGR1 and LAMA2 genes with high myopia in two independent Han Chinese populations. Four tSNPs (rs11743810 in the EGR1 gene; rs2571575, rs9321170, and rs1889891 in the LAMA2 gene) were selected, according to the HapMap database (http://hapmap.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov), and were genotyped using the ligase detection reaction (LDR) approach for 167 Han Chinese nuclear families with extremely highly myopic offspring (<?10.0 diopters) and an independent group with 485 extremely highly myopic cases (<?10.0 diopters) and 499 controls. Direct sequencing was used to confirm the LDR results in twenty randomly selected subjects. Family-based association analysis was performed using the family-based association test (FBAT) software package (Version 1.5.5). Population-based association analysis was performed using the Chi-square test. The association analysis power was estimated using online software (http://design.cs.ucla.edu). The FBAT demonstrated that all four tSNPs tested did not show association with high myopia (P>0.05). Haplotype analysis of tSNPs in the LAMA2 genes also did not show a significant association (P>0.05). Meanwhile, population-based association analysis also showed no significant association results with high myopia (P>0.05). On the basis of our family- and population-based analyses for the Han Chinese population, we did not find positive association signals of the four SNPs in the LAMA2 and EGR1 genes with high myopia.     

“We’re Friends,We Have to be in This Together”: Examining the Role of Culturally Relevant Peer Interactions in Urban Youth’s College Readiness and Access

This paper analyzes how and why ten Black and Latina/o youth attending an urban public high school engage culturally relevant peer interactions (Knight and Marciano in College ready: preparing Black and Latina/o youth for higher education—a culturally relevant approach. Teachers College Press, New York, 2013) in preparing for, applying to, and/or enrolling in college. The study reconsiders culturally relevant pedagogy (Ladson-Billings in The dreamkeepers: successful teachers of African American children. Jossey-Bass, San Francisco, 1994) as an analytic tool for exploring youth’s culturally relevant peer interactions as supportive of their college-going processes (Tierney and Colyar in Preparing for college: nine elements of effective outreach. SUNY Press, Albany, 2005) and new media literacy practices (Ito et al. in Living and learning with new media: summary of findings from the Digital Youth Project. The MacArthur Foundation, Chicago, 2008. http://www.macfound.org/media/article_pdfs/DML_ETHNOG_WHITEPAPER.PDF). Research findings include: new understandings of the reciprocal nature of youth’s culturally relevant peer interactions; and new enactments of youth’s college-going new media literacy practices. Recommendations for educational policy, practice, and research supportive of students’ college readiness and access are discussed.     

Incidental spatial memory in the domestic dog (<Emphasis Type="Italic">Canis familiaris</Emphasis>)

We built upon previous work by Fujita et al. (2012, Animal Cognition, 15(6), 1055–1063) to create an experiment that investigated the presence of incidental memory for the spatial location of uneaten food in the domestic dog. Here, we dissociated potentially incidental spatial memory from the incidental memory for the characteristics of objects, in this case, food bowls. Eighteen household domestic dogs of various breeds and age were presented with four bowls. Each bowl contained either a novel object, treats the dog could consume, treats it could not consume, or it was left empty. Following a delay, the dogs returned to the laboratory and were presented with empty bowls in the same spatial orientation as the initial exposure and could move freely between bowls. This experiment required no previous training outside of basic obedience and so avoids the possibility that performance on the test was a conditioned response. We hypothesized that domestic dogs would be able to remember the location of uneaten food when presented with an unexpected memory test. We found that dogs in this study showed no evidence that they encoded spatial location in the absence of other cues that could be used to distinguish food bowls at specific locations. This suggests that dogs in previous experiments were more dependent on incidentally encoding the “what” and “in what” of this task than the “where,” in the absence of features making each location distinct.     

“But The Soldier’s Remains Were Gone”: Thought Experiments in Children’s Literature

In this article thought experiments are uncovered as key stimuli of philosophical potential in children’s literature and their presentation and function is examined in a selection of focal texts, including: Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (1865) and Through the Looking-Glass (1871); Even the Parrot by Dorothy Sayers (1944); Nina Bawden’s Carrie’s War (1974); and A Game of Soldiers (1985) by Jan Needle. The thought experiment is a device common to science and philosophy and has been recognised as an heuristic tool in literature generally, but here children’s literature is drawn into the conversation, revealing that—as a dynamic mechanism of children’s narrative—thought experiments have a long-standing and particular role to play in books for young people. This paper connects with a recent turn in children’s literature discourse toward the conditions of power in books for young readers; it moves on the debate by demonstrating that the apparatus of thought experimentation places the implied child reader in a position of philosophical responsibility and forward thinking. Presenting thought experiments in different ways, formal properties of the thought experiment—such as conversational mode, double engagement and modal positioning—are identified and shown to open up a philosophical space of subsequence in children’s texts.     

The processing of positional information in a two-item sequence limits the emergence of symmetry in baboons (<Emphasis Type="Italic">Papio papio</Emphasis>), but not in humans (<Emphasis Type="Italic">Homo sapiens</Emphasis>)

When trained to associate Stimulus A to Stimulus B, humans can derive the untrained symmetrical B to A relation while nonhuman animals have much more difficulties. Urcuioli (2008, Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Behavior, 90, 257-–282; 2015, Conductal, 3, 4-–25) proposed that the apparent difficulty of animals in symmetry testing reflects their double encoding of the information on the stimuli (identity and relation) and their positional (i.e., spatial and temporal/ordinal) characteristics. This comparative study tested the emergence of symmetry in humans and baboons in a task in which the position of the stimuli was manipulated independently of their relation. Humans and baboons initially learned to associate pairs of visual shapes on a touch screen in a specific order. Three pairs of (A-B, C-D, and E-F) stimuli were used in training. After training, the two species were tested with the B-A, F-C, and E-D pairs. The B-A pairs preserved the association initially learned with A-B but reversed the positional information relative to training. The F-C pair neither preserved the association nor the positional information of the training pairs, and positional information were the only cues preserved in the E-D pair. Humans showed a response time advantage for B-A, suggesting symmetry, but also for E-D, suggesting that they also process positional information. In baboons, the advantage was found only for E-D, suggesting that they only process positional information. These results confirm that the processing of stimulus pairs differ between nonhuman animals to humans.     

Investigating a case of hidden misinterpretations of an additive word problem: structural substitution

According to numerous studies (Barrouillet & Camos 2002; Brousseau 1988; Chevallard 1988; Riley et al. 1984; Schubauer-Leoni & Ntamakiliro, Revue Des Sciences de L’éducation, 20(1): 87–113, 1994; Vergnaud 1982; Xin, The Journal of Educational Research, 100(6):347–360, 2007), a combination of many factors, including curriculum, didactic contract and task design, can potentially lead to students experiencing difficulties in developing of a full understanding of addition and subtraction and their relationship in problem solving. Few studies (Conne, Recheche En Didactique Des Mathématiques, 5, 269–332, 1985; DeBlois, Éducation et Francophonie, 25(1), 102–120, 1997; Giroux & Ste-Marie, European Jornal of Psychology of Education, 16(2), 141–161, 2001) describe the misinterpretations of problems as a factor related to learning difficulties. We have studied how and why elementary school students misinterpret the mathematical structure of a simple additive word problem and what kind of possible (hidden) misinterpretation may occur. We analysed possible mechanisms of misinterpretations in word problem solving, discussing various examples of correct and incorrect solutions resulting from the misinterpretation of a problem. We gave the elementary school students a word problem, which could potentially be misinterpreted, and observed their solving strategies. Our results show how the particular form of mathematical misinterpretation—structure substitution—may help students obtain a correct answer and thereby hinder the development of their mathematical reasoning. We further discuss different ways of addressing this phenomenon in teaching practice.     

Domesticated dogs (<Emphasis Type="Italic">Canis familiaris</Emphasis>) tend to follow repeated deceptive human cues even when food is visible

There is abundant evidence that domestic dogs (Canis familiaris) readily follow pointing and other cues given by humans. But there has been much less research into the question of whether dogs can learn to discriminate between different humans giving repeated honest or dishonest cues as to food location, by ignoring the information imparted by the deceiver. Prior research has demonstrated that even after repeated exposures to deceptive cues with respect to food location, dogs failed to learn to ignore those cues completely. Kundey, De Los Reyes, Arbuthnot, Coshun, Molina, and Royer (2010) found the same outcome in a similar experiment. The purpose of the current experiment was to determine if dogs could learn to discriminate between an honest and a deceptive human by ignoring the deceiver’s cues even when it was obvious that the container being pointed at was not baited by using two transparent containers. Eight dogs were tested. On 20 cooperator trials, the experimenter stood behind the baited container and cued the dog, located midway between the containers and 3 m away, to approach it. On 20 deceiver trials, a different experimenter stood behind the empty container and cued the dog to approach that container. Results replicated prior research in that, even though the containers were transparent, the dogs failed to learn to distrust the deceiver completely and went to the empty and indicated container on more than half of the deceiver trials.     

Unforgivable Blackness: Visual Rhetoric,Reader Response,and Critical Racial Literacy

Perceptions of black representations in literature and other visual mediums as positive or negative continuously cause consternation and debate (Fleetwood, 2011). Because African American children are literacy participants and consumers, they are not immune from experiencing this tension. This essay considers the effects and affective threads of racism and racialization connected to visuality (Foster, 1988), and how educators might support and nurture children’s roles as aesthetic critics and critical readers of books featuring racial imagery and representations. The young African American readers in this study resist a picturebook using colorist logic and macro-level social indexing of phenotypic traits. The author argues that negative social messages about blackness within the larger ethos of society, as well as the absence of diverse representations in children’s literature, contribute to such interpretations. She suggests explicitly teaching African American children about counter-visuality and the ways in which “art works” to shape and transform understandings about complex experiences like racism.     

Morphological awareness and reading in second and fifth grade: evidence from Hebrew

Research suggests that morphological awareness facilitates word decoding, improves lexical knowledge, and helps reading comprehension (Carlisle, 2010; Nagy et al., 2014; Verhoeven & Perfetti, 2011). The present study examined the relationship among morphological awareness, word recognition and reading comprehension in 153 second- and fifth-grade Hebrew speakers at an elementary school in Israel. Students were given morphological awareness tests and tests for word recognition and reading comprehension. Three types of morphological awareness were analyzed: inflection, derivation and construct formation. Overall, students with low morphological awareness in derivation and construct formation showed relatively poor achievement in word recognition and comprehension. All three types were found to correlate with reading comprehension in readers with high morphological awareness. These readers also exhibited good reading skills. The results are discussed with regard to the special characteristics of Hebrew morphology and reading process, which aid morphological decomposition.     

Scholarly Learning as Vocation: A Study of Community and Broad Access Liberal Arts College Faculty

In this study we extended Neumann’s scholarly learning theory (2009)?and Hansen’s theory on vocation (1994, 1995) to explore the scholarly learning of faculty members employed at institutional types not typically recognized for faculty work beyond teaching. Through interviews with 22 participants, we studied the content of and reasons for faculty engagement in scholarly learning. Our analysis found that the content of participants’ scholarly learning focused on expanding and constructing disciplinary knowledge whereas their reasons connected to a sense of obligation and personal fulfillment. Such findings confirmed Neumann’s suggestion that administrators should conceptualize the academic profession as a learning enterprise.     

“Unless Someone Like You” Buys a Ticket to this Movie: Dual Audience and Aetonormativity in Picturebook to Film Adaptations

As critical study of adapted texts moves away from a focus on fidelity to explore questions of adaptive practice, picturebook to film adaptation offers unique opportunities to redirect discourse related to the value of adaptive changes. Because feature-length films made from children’s picturebooks require filmmakers to add substantial content, they open discussion of how adaptive changes engage key ideas related to children’s literature more broadly, including dual audience, didacticism, and aetonormativity. This essay explores how these concepts transform in picturebook to movie adaptation, drawing on two family films made from iconic picturebook source texts—Dr. Seuss’s The Lorax (1971) and Chris Van Allsburg’s Jumanji (1981)—to posit that added content foregrounds adult presence within the story and participation in viewership far more than in the films’ picturebook counterparts, positioning adults as learners while at the same time reinforcing adult/child hierarchies.     

Rotational stress influences sensitized,but not habituated,exploratory behaviors in the woodlouse, <Emphasis Type="Italic">Porcellio scaber</Emphasis>

Terrestrial isopods (or woodlice), like the members of the other arthropod taxa, have a sophisticated nervous system that makes them sensitive to specific environmental factors. They can search for survival-related opportunities (e.g., approaching food sources or avoiding sunny areas). Two experiments examined how rotational stress could influence the propensity of common woodlice, Porcellio scaber to exhibit survival-related behaviors such as traveling and rearing up in a hostile environment. Experiment 1 assessed the behaviors of stressed and nonstressed woodlice exposed to a familiar or a novel environment without rewards. Experiment 2 assessed the effects of stress in woodlice given a free choice between a familiar and a novel environment without rewards. In the nonstressed individuals, the results showed a decrease in locomotor activity (habituation) and an increase in the time spent rearing up (sensitization) on the arena’s walls over time. In the stressed individuals, repeated rotation had a detrimental effect on the time spent rearing up, but locomotion was decreased only in the stressed individuals that were not preexposed to the test environment beforehand. In addition, immobilization periods—as a plausible indicator of stress—were longer in the absence of preexposure. It is suggested that preexposure had some antistress protective effects on habituated but not on sensitized, exploratory behaviors in woodlice.