Daddy,or serendipity

Philip Pullman grew up in what was then Southern Rhodesia, in Australia and in North Wales. He took an English degree at Oxford, and taught in middle schools in that city for thirteen years. He now divides his time between writing and lecturing at Westminster College, Oxford. His novelThe Ruby In The Smoke, the first part of a trilogy, won the International Reading Association Children's Book Award in 1988, and the other parts both made the ALA Best Book for Young Adults list. He has also written two illustrated novels for younger readers, books for teenagers and an adult novel.     

ICT and educational (dis)advantage: families,computers and contemporary social and educational inequalities

Because access to new technologies is unequally distributed, there has been considerable debate about the growing gap between the so‐called information‐rich and information‐poor. Such concerns have led to high‐profile information technology policy initiatives in many countries. In Australia, in an attempt to ‘redress the balance between the information rich and poor’ by providing ‘equal access to the World Wide Web’ (Virtual Communities, 2002 Virtual Communities (2002) About us. Available online at: http://www.virtualcommunities. com.au (accessed 18 August 2002)  [Google Scholar]), the Australian Council of Trade Unions, Virtual Communities (a computer/software distributor) and Primus (an Internet provider) in late 1999 formed an alliance to offer relatively inexpensive computer and Internet access to union members in order to make ‘technology affordable for all Australians’ (Virtual Communities, 2002 Virtual Communities (2002) About us. Available online at: http://www.virtualcommunities. com.au (accessed 18 August 2002)  [Google Scholar]). In this paper, we examine four families, one of which had long‐term Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) access, and three of which took advantage of the Virtual Communities offer to get home computer and Internet access for the first time. We examine their engagement with ICT and suggest that previously disadvantaged family members are not particularly advantaged by their access to ICT.     

The inheritance of behavioral wildness in house mice (Mus musculus L.)

Fourteen behavioral measures were ranked according to their ability to differentiate performances of a wild population of mice from three domestic inbred strains. These “wildness” rankings were then analyzed for their ability to predict genetic and Genotype by Environment interactions. Genetic parameters were derived from analysis of three inbred domestic strains and their three hybrid crosses via the diallel technique of genetic analysis. Genotype by Environment interactions were assessed both as mean differences in stock performances resulting from rearing in a laboratory vs naturalistic environment and as differences in environmental variability within stock genotypes. Behavioral characters ranking high on “wildness” failed to demonstrate any unitary pattern of Genotype by Environment interactions. The diallel genetic analysis revealed many examples of additive variation but relatively few examples of dominant variation. An extremely wide range of interactions occurred between genotype and rearing environments, with “wildness” and “developmental homeostasis” concepts both failing to account for all the observed interactions.     

The beginning of decoding

It is widely agreed that children recognize their first words in a different way than they later decode. One hypothesis is that sight words are recognized as wholes, another that they are recognized by parts. Two experiments were devised to compare these hypotheses. In one, children were taught a sight word accompanied by a salient extraneous cue and then tested for recognition of the word and the cue. In the other, children were taught sight words, then tested for recognition of each half of the word. The children were found to recognize the cue but not the word; they recognized one half of the word but not the other. The results support the idea that first words are recognized by selective association.     

The Many Faces of Human-Machine Interaction

Interactive processes are fundamental to all forms of training and learning activity. Within educational technology increasing use is being made of both simple and sophisticated machines as instructional aids. Because of their growing applicability in all areas of educational practice it is important to understand the basic nature of the interactive processes involved in using such machines. This paper provides an overview of the techniques and mechanisms of human-machine interaction and outlines the status of some ongoing research trends in this area.     

Strategies for Broadening Participation in Advanced Technological Education Programs: Practice and Perceptions

Expanding and diversifying the STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) workforce is a national priority. The National Science Foundation is investing efforts at post secondary education institutions to engage individuals who have been historically underrepresented in STEM. This paper investigated the use of strategies to broaden participation in STEM by grantees of NSF’s Advanced Technological Education (ATE), who are primarily located at 2-year colleges. The ATE program focuses on developing and improving technician training programs to prepare students for employment in fields that rely on advanced technologiessuch as nanotechnology, photonics, and mechatronics. A survey, conducted annually by the authors of this study, was used to collect data from ATE grantees on their use and perceptions of strategies to broaden participation in STEM. The findings showed that strategies related to motivation and access to enhance recruitment are more widely used then strategies that improve retention. Respondents identified strategies related to providing financial assistance, mentoring, and conducting outreach activities as the most effective for reaching and engaging underrepresented minority students in academic programs. Despite these perceptions, these strategies seem to be underutilized among this group.     

Aquatic-Aerobic Exercise as a Means of Stress Reduction during Pregnancy

The goals of this research were to explore the current literature regarding associations between psychological stress and adverse fetal outcome, associations between aerobic exercise and psychological stress reduction, and associations between aerobic exercise and fetal outcome. The published studies that were located provide evidence of the following: 1) Stress reactivity increases physiologically during pregnancy, 2) pregnant women may experience additional stressors that are usually not experienced in a nonpregnant state, 3) psychological stress in pregnancy is associated with adverse fetal outcome, 4) exercise can be a method of stress reduction, 5) exercise in pregnancy is not associated with adverse fetal outcome, and 6) exercise in pregnancy may provide benefit to the fetus. Data were analyzed from an original study and associations were reported between psychological stress-management activities and participation in aquatic aerobic exercise classes. No reports were available investigating an exercise-induced reduction in psychological stress with fetal outcome.     

Teacher motivation to implement an educational innovation: factors differentiating users and non-users of cooperative learning

This study applied expectancy theory to integrate the numerous and disparate explanations that researchers and educators have proposed to account for teacher resistance to implementing cooperative learning as an educational innovation. The cooperative learning implementation questionnaire (CLIQ) contained 48 items grouped under three broad motivational categories: perceived value of the innovation, expectancy of success, and perceived cost. These items accounted for 42.3% of the total variance in self-reported use of cooperative learning among 933 teachers. Expectancy of success issues were most important in differentiating users and non-users, suggesting that increased emphasis on professional development should be used to enhance teachers' beliefs that they can succeed in implementing an innovation in their own context. This may require both follow-up support and adaptation of the innovation.