Robert W. McChesney. The Problem of the Media: U.S. Communication Politics in the 21st Century. New York: Monthly Review Press, 2004, 367 pp., ISBN 1583671056 (paperback)

This study investigates the relationship between adolescents' exposure to news, fictional police/crime shows, and reality police shows and their perceptions of the performance, distributive fairness, and procedural fairness of the police and the link with their overall attitude toward the police. Based on the literature, a hypothetical model of media influence is proposed and tested empirically in a cross-sectional survey of 356 Flemish adolescents. Watching reality shows was negatively related to adolescents' perceptions of how fairly the police exercise their authority. Exposure to the news negatively predicted respondents' perceptions of the distributive fairness of the police. Adolescents' beliefs about police performance were not related to media exposure. Exposure to fictional police shows did not significantly predict police perceptions. The results suggest that news and reality police shows play a small but significant role in adolescents' fairness perceptions of the police.     

The Gendered Subject: Students' subject preferences and discussions of gender and subject ability

Girls have recently caught up with boys in the sciences in terms of achievements at GCSE, and continue to out-perform boys at languages at this level. However, there remains a sharp divergence in subject choice according to gender at A level and beyond. This paper seeks to discover whether or not there has been a shift in secondary school students' constructions of gender, school subjects, and subject ability. It examines the responses of secondary school students concerning their favourite, and least favourite, subjects according to gender. It also explores their statements concerning gender and ability at school subjects, analysing the various gender narratives reflected in these. It is argued that there has sometimes been a blurring of the gender dichotomy in terms of students' favourite subjects, although their least favourite subjects were more traditionally gendered. Moreover, the majority of students claimed that the sexes have the same ability at all subjects; and of those who argued there are gender differences in ability, the majority argued that girls have greater ability at various subjects.     

British‐Chinese pupils’ constructions of gender and learning

British‐Chinese pupils are the highest achieving ethnic group in the British education system, and British‐Chinese boys’ performance equals that of girls. This paper investigates aspects of British‐Chinese pupils’ constructions of learning, focusing particularly on subject preferences and their constructions of themselves as pupils. The results are analysed according to gender as well as social class, and demonstrate that British‐Chinese pupils’ constructions of gender, subject preference and self‐image as pupils differ in some respects from those of pupils from other ethnic groups. Reasons for such differences are considered, and the paper also reflects on the implications of these findings in relation to broader findings concerning the stereotyping and ‘othering’ of the British‐Chinese within the British education system.     

Creating a Delicate Balance: the doctoral supervisor's dilemmas

Abstract

Central to the problems facing supervisors of doctoral students is creating a delicate balance between dominating the student's research and neglecting it. Too much control threatens the originality of the PhD and the autonomy of the novice researcher; too little can delay completion and even lead to total failure. Here, supervisors reflect on their successes and failures in the management of that delicate balance. They frequently construct their accounts using contrasts between the past and the present: comparing their own experiences as students with how they supervise now, or comparing current practice with their own early experiences as a supervisor. Such individual accounts and their characteristic rhetorical formats reflect contemporary policy themes at a more general level within the academic profession.     

Networked Activism and the Broken Multiplex: Exploring Fractures in the Resistance Performance Paradigm

The current research explored a new social movement network in the northeastern United States in order to build on past research concerning a Resistance Performance Paradigm (RPP). In particular, I found that the network in the northeastern community displayed characteristics of RPP but did not construct a “multiplex” of coordinated resistance as had emerged in past RPP research. I interviewed 20 activists in order to assess how the northeastern network was different from previous RPP research, and whether such differences accounted for the lack of a multiplex of coordinated resistance. The interviews revealed that the network was fractured over (a) what issues to address and (b) how to approach/protest any such issues. Further data analysis revealed that the fractures stemmed in part from activists' uncertainty about a listserv used by all of the activists in the network. Such findings constitute an additional characteristic of RPP: the capacity of a network to efficiently circulate narratives to all points in a network.     

Accuracy of pacing during breaststroke swimming using a novel pacing device,the Aquapacer™

Generally, swimmers pace themselves using their own judgement and the poolside clock during swimming training, fitness testing protocols or scientific investigation. The Aquapacer? is a new pacing device that can be used to pace the swimming speed or stroke rate of the swimmer. The aims of this study were to determine if breaststroke swimmers could pace accurately during submaximal swimming using a poolside clock (Study 1) and the Aquapacer? (Study 2), at swimming speeds at, just above and just below maximal 200 m time-trial speeds (using the Aquapacer?, Study 3) and under three different race pacing conditions (using the Aquapacer?, Study 4). Between 8 and 15 male national or club standard 200 m breaststroke swimmers participated in each of the studies. The swimmers in Study 2, despite being less well trained than the swimmers in Study 1 and part of a more heterogeneous group in terms of swimming performance, repeatedly demonstrated less random error in pacing, suggesting that the Aquapacer? may be preferable to the poolside clock when swimmers are being required to pace accurately. The Aquapacer? also enabled swimmers to pace accurately at racespecific swimming speeds (until fatigue precluded them from holding pace) (Study 3), and through a change in pace at race-specific speeds (Study 4), which suggests that it may be of use in entraining racing strategies.     

Teaching a large Russian language vocabulary by the mnemonic keyword method

This study evaluates the effectiveness of a mnemonic procedure, called the keyword method, for teaching a large Russian language vocabulary to college students. The method divides the study of a vocabulary item into two stages. The first stage requires the student to associate the spoken Russian word with an English word (the keyword) that sounds like some part of the foreign word; the second stage requires the student to form a mental image of the keyword interacting with the English translation. Thus, the keyword method can be described as a chain of two links connecting a foreign word to its English translation through the mediation of a keyword: the foreign word is linked to a keyword by a similarity in sound (acoustic link), and the keyword is linked to the English translation by a mental image (imagery link). A computer controlled curriculum using the keyword method served as a supplement to the second-year Russian language course at Stanford University. Students studied a large basic vocabulary over an 8 to 10-week period. Data obtained during the study and student reports indicate that the keyword method was highly effective.Stanford University