Understanding of Affective False Beliefs, Perceptions of Parental Discipline, and Classroom Behavior in Children from Head Start

Fifty-five children (21 boys, 34 girls) between the ages of 3 years 6 months and 5 years 6 months from 3 Head Start classrooms were administered 5 affective false belief tasks and 5 hypothetical scenarios that measured their perceptions of parental discipline. A subset of 40 children were rated by their teachers for behavior problems in the classroom. Results indicated that children performed better on questions about their own false beliefs than on questions about others' false beliefs. Overall, children performed below average on the false belief measures. Children expected parents in the hypothetical scenarios to use power-assertive methods of discipline more often than induction or love withdrawal. As predicted, total false belief scores were negatively correlated with classroom behavior problems. Children who stated that they or the child in the scenario would feel sad after being disciplined were also less likely to experience behavior problems in the classroom. The results of this study, together with the results of previous research, suggest that children from Head Start populations are not performing as well on measures of false belief understanding as children from traditional preschool populations. The causes of this discrepancy and possible interventions should be explored in future research.     

Expert versus novice users: Power rules in virtual space

This study sought knowledge of the decision-making used by learners when interacting with multi-media environments. Mounting evidence on related thinking processes appeared to expose a gap in the prior knowledge, vocabularies and values used when entering cyberspace. We were curious to know about the decision making judgements made by learners and any associated rules or strategies they had developed to interact with new and emerging information technology environments. How decisions are undertaken are considered major issues for educational institutions at local, national and global levels with ramifications for civic and community life. In a sample drawn from a senior high school and university we investigated students’ responses to different questions including: What ways of knowing are used by learners? What codes of behaviour apply? Are they age and gender related? The responses provide a rich and fascinating insight to the ways in which people are interacting with the new media environments. ‘Experts’ versus ‘novices’ appeared to provide the major distinction.     

Mediational significance of PTSD in the relationship of sexual trauma and eating disorders

OBJECTIVE: To examine the mediational significance of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and the development of eating disorder symptomatology following sexually traumatic experiences. METHOD: Seventy-one victims of sexual trauma and 25 control subjects completed interviews and questionnaires assessing eating disorder psychopathology and posttraumatic stress disorder symptomatology. Mediational analyses were conducted examining the relationships among trauma, posttraumatic stress, and eating disorder symptoms. Mediational significance was assessed by the drop in the overall correlation between trauma and eating disorder symptoms when PTSD symptoms were included in the regression model. RESULTS: There is a significant association between a history of trauma and eating disorder symptoms. Also, there was a significant association between a history of trauma and posttraumatic stress disorder symptoms. Importantly, the relationship between trauma and eating disorder symptoms was significantly reduced when posttraumatic stress disorder symptoms were included in the regression analyses, indicating mediational significance of the posttraumatic stress construct. These findings were most pronounced for the physiological arousal and avoidance components of posttraumatic stress disorder. DISCUSSION: The present findings support the idea that individuals who develop eating disorders after sexual trauma are likely to have experienced posttraumatic stress disorder symptomatology. These findings have significant implications for causal models of eating disorder onset in trauma victims. Furthermore, clinical interventions for traumatized eating disordered individuals may benefit from a focus on posttraumatic stress symptomatology.     

Time Use and Mathematics Achievement among American, Chinese, and Japanese High School Students

Cultural differences in the structure of adolescents' daily lives were examined by interviewing representative samples of 578 grade 11 students, aged 16–17 years, in Minneapolis, Taipei (Taiwan), and Sendai (Japan) about the amounts of time they spent in a wide variety of activities. Studying, interacting with peers, and watching television were the most frequent activities in all 3 locations, but the relative importance of each activity differed among the locations. Chinese students spent significantly more time than American students engaged in academic endeavors, such as attending school and after-school classes and studying. Japanese students did not spend significantly more time studying or attending after-school classes than American students, but they did spend more time attending school. American students, in turn, spent more time working and socializing with friends. Differences in adolescents' use of time were related to both cross-cultural and individual differences in mathematics achievement.     

Informal writing-to-learn as a dimension of a student profile

In this paper an aspect (student questioning) of a pedagogical model of writing-to-learn will be explored. It will be shown that the task of keeping a journal (as defined within the model) has two salient assessment features: The journals differentiate between students at a particular grade level; and, they show a growth in sophistication over successive years. These two features of writing-to-learn recommend its use as a dimension for profiling students' progress in learning mathematics. It will be argued that profiles developed from journal writing enrich the picture of the student as learner.     

Assessing alignment between information technology educational opportunities,professional requirements,and industry demands

Information technology (IT) and computing are growing fields, offering far more job opportunities than applicants. Yet, little data are available to indicate how course content, employer needs, and additional learning opportunities work together the prepare graduates to enter the IT workforce. To understand the extent to which learners were prepared to for these highly technical careers, we used text analysis to examine the extent to which course syllabi, job postings, internship postings, and industry certifications from information technology preparation programs at state college and two universities commonly reflected national IT curriculum knowledge areas. Integrated data suggested that while the two-year and four-year programs imparted key technical skills, to qualify employers sought applied, or “soft,” skills such as critical thinking, problem solving, teamwork, and written and verbal communication. These soft skills were more difficult to detect as learning outcomes, but the determination of the extent to which the examined programs foster these skills presents a fertile area for subsequent research.     

Psychophysiological and behavioral evidence for varying forms and functions of nonsocial behavior in preschoolers

Four-year-old children showing low levels of social behavior in a laboratory play session with unfamiliar peers were classified as reticent (unoccupied or onlooking behaviors) or solitary-passive (solitary constructive or exploratory play). Compared with a group of more social children, the children in both low-social groups were rated high on maternal reports of shyness and displayed a pattern of right frontal EEG asymmetry. However, only the reticent group was elevated on measures indicative of a fearful temperament, both concurrently and retrospectively. A subset of children in the solitary-passive group showed increasing levels of reticent behavior over the course of the visit, suggesting that for some children solitary-passive behaviors provide a means for coping with feelings of unease.     

The quest for institutional autonomy in the Dutch higher education sector

The term ‘market forces’ has become one of the great clarion calls of the modern era. They are seen as providing the flexibility and responsiveness necessary to allow the satisfaction of consumer demands. Market forces is a term used chiefly to describe economic relationships. Can the characteristics of an economic system be used to characterise the wider society? In particular can increased flexibility and responsiveness to the needs of the consumer play a role in the shaping of Dutch educational policy? In the Netherlands the exigency of financial restraint has prompted educational expenditure cuts. Concomitant to these has been a move towards decentralisation, with self-regulation at the institutional level. Moves that have been characterised as constituting a change in the power structure. This paper argues that the operation of market forces and the promotion of institutional autonomy requires financial independence. Without financial autonomy institutional autonomy may well be a pipe dream.     

Understanding the Transfer Deficit: Contextual Mismatch,Proactive Interference,and Working Memory Affect Toddlers’ Video‐Based Transfer

Researchers tested the impact of contextual mismatch, proactive interference, and working memory (WM) on toddlers’ transfer across contexts. Forty‐two toddlers (27–34 months) completed four object‐retrieval trials, requiring memory updating on Trials 2–4. Participants watched hiding events on a tablet computer. Search performance was tested using another tablet (match) or a felt board (mismatch). WM was assessed. On earlier search trials, WM predicted transfer in both conditions, and toddlers in the match condition outperformed those in the mismatch condition; however, the benefit of contextual match and WM decreased over trials. Contextual match apparently increased proactive interference on later trials. Findings are interpreted within existing accounts of the transfer deficit, and a combined account is proposed.