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.     

Educational administration and history Part 2: academic journals and the contribution of JEAH

In this article, we examine the role of academic journals in the development of the field. In particular we focus on JEAH as an illustrative example of an academic journal that has, from the outset, reflected and portrayed intellectual developments in educational administration and history. We argue that academic journals, in effect, are one of the most visible and ostensibly powerful forms of knowledge production that can be a highly political and contested process. Moreover, attempts over the past few decades to utilise qualitative or quantitative measures to weigh and measure the (apparent) status and impact of academic journals serve to invoke ratings wars that can only rebound to the disadvantage of scholarship in discipline of education and the field of educational administration and history.