A Contradiction in Terms?

Andrew Brennan, reader in philosophy, Stirling University, Scotland, questions the views expressed in recent journal articles on philosophical aspects of special education. He moves to the University of Western Australia next month, where he has been appointed to the chair in philosophy.     

Childhood movement skills: predictors of physical activity in Anglo American and Mexican American adolescents?

We assessed the relationship between young children's movement skills and their physical activity in early adolescence. Balance, agility, eye-hand coordination, and skinfold thicknesses in 207 Mexican American and Anglo American children (104 boys, 103 girls) were measured at ages 4, 5, and 6 years. Habitual physical activity was assessed at the age of 12 years by two interviewer-administered 7-day recalls. Ethnic differences in movement skills were not found. Young girls were better at jumping and balancing, and young boys were better at catching. Tracking of skills was low, and children's early childhood skills were not related to their physical activity 6 years later. Further studies involving additional movement skills and other populations are recommended to determine if enhanced movement skills in children promote subsequent physical activity.     

Complexities of Vietnamese femininities: a resource for rethinking women's university leadership practices

This paper develops a dialogical encounter between northern-inspired theorisations of gender and Vietnam's historical and cultural differentiation identified through the presence of matriarchy in ancient societies and its popularity in folklore and contemporary politics. The article draws on interviews with 12 senior women from 8 universities in Northern and Southern Vietnam. Three main themes are explored: (1) the Vietnamese woman as ‘general of the interior’; (2) the ‘woman behind the throne’; and (3) ‘behind a woman is another woman’. These themes illustrate the distinctiveness of a historically produced Vietnamese gender order as reflected in current university women's experience. By providing insights into the complex dynamics of Vietnamese women's ‘informal power’, as evident in both spheres of home and university, the paper presents a discussion of forms of Vietnamese femininity that contributes to re-theorising Connell's concepts of ‘hegemonic masculinity and emphasized femininity’.     

Strategies used by teachers to rate student behavior

Upon completing the Teacher Report Form (TRF; Achenbach, 1991) on a randomly selected child in their current classroom, teachers were surveyed about the approaches or strategies they used to formulate their ratings. In Phase 1, teachers identified eight rating strategies. In Phase 2, a new group of teachers indicated the extent to which they relied on the eight strategies. Rather than the two approaches hypothesized to be foremost, (“I compared the child to other children in the same classroom,” “I compared the child to other children of the same age”), teachers relied primarily on their “experience with the child in many different settings.” © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.     

Children's Memory and Comprehension of Two Science Programmes

A total of 111 children, 55 aged 8 to 9 years and 56 aged 14 to 15 years of age, watched one of two single‐topic prime‐time science programmes. Recall and comprehension scores following the viewing of the programmes were assessed. In addition, a number of demographic factors including age, sex, linguistic fluency, prior television viewing and reading habits were investigated as possible predictors of learning from television. It was found that age was a significant factor in both recall and comprehension, but even more important was general knowledge. Sex and linguistic fluency was neither systematically nor frequently associated with good performance. Prior viewing habits concerning science programmes on television and reading behaviour were found to have particular effects but were not major predictors of performance. Knowledge growth (defined as differences in performance between pre‐ and post‐test performance on key, repeated, items specifically addressed by the viewed programme) was consistently observed. This major finding indicated clearly that children can learn prime‐time television science information.     

Plausibility and the construal of grammatical relations in illocutionary sentences by deaf and hearing children.

Groups of deaf and hearing children who had not fully mastered the rules for the assignment of the subject of the dependent verb for sentences of the form: Noun Phrase ₁ (NP₁) + Illocutionary Verb + Noun Phrase ₂ (NP₂) + to + Infinitive Verb were tested for the influence of four kinds of plausibility cues. In three sets the social power relations holding between the occupants of the respective NP's were used to construct plausible, neutral and implausible frames as judged by the tendency to construe NP₂ as the subject of the dependent verb. In the fourth, implausible verb (IV), the dependent verb referred to an action difficult for others to control, and so was neutral for regular illocutionary verbs requiring NP₂ as subject, but positive for NP₁ construals appropriate to the irregular illocutionaly verb, promise. The hearing children proved sensitive to the plausibility cues, showing much larger differences in success with the regular and exceptional verb for the plausible than for the implausible set, with the neutral and IV sets occupying intervening positions. Deaf children did not respond to the plausibility variable. It was concluded that although it had been demonstrated that the referential meaning of individual words can influence the construal of meaning of word combinations, the strategy might not be successful with the deaf unless preceded by further training in the denotative and connotative meanings of individual words.     

Uneasy alliances: University,workplace, industry and profession in the education doctorate

The phenomenon of Professional Doctorates in Australia has come at a time of great change in the higher education sector. Such change includes an intensified imperative for universities to establish ‘partnerships’ with industry and the professions. The Professional Doctorate is, in part, a consequence of such changes and is also helping to effect them. However, in its examination of the Education Doctorate, this paper problematises the notion of partnerships and indeed the various policy constructions of the parties involved. Through fictionalised accounts of standpoints of a higher education policy maker, an EdD student, an academic in an EdD program and a member of the education industry, it identifies some of the tensions involved within and between such categories. In so doing it suggests some matters that require research and pedagogical attention.