An early reader two decades later: a follow‐up case study on the Metacognitive reading strategies of ‘Jan’

This is a follow‐up study regarding one of the early readers whose metacognitive reading strategies were explored in my 1991 qualitative case study research, published in Reading, 29 (2), 30–33. Unique factors in the original study involve the inclusion of young children as informants related to self, task and text. Six‐year‐old ‘Jan’ is now almost 26, and a semi‐structured interview method was used to examine effects the previous study may have had on her development as well as her current preferences regarding reading strategies, comparing her profile to that of her past reading self. In addition, the contemporary qualitative study explores conclusions regarding the reading process that might assist educators in the teaching of reading as well as facilitate further research with young children. Results of this follow‐up study support involving young children as informants regarding their literacy events and imply the need for further research regarding adult readers, related to further understandings of the reading process and best educational practice.     

Children's drawing and painting from a cognitive perspective: a longitudinal study

This paper describes a longitudinal study undertaken with 40 pre‐schoolers during their last six months in an early childhood centre and their first six months at school. The study presents an investigation of the pathways that child drawers and painters make towards representational depictions. As such its primary focus is on cognitive processes. Monthly samples of 40 children's drawings and paintings were collected over a 12‐month period that included the children's transition into formal schooling. CrossTabs analysis showed that the relevant cognitive abilities tended to present in clusters and that patterning may be a serious component both in its own right, as well as in facilitating representational depictions, as previously claimed by Booth.     

Antenatal prediction of mother-infant difficulties

A prospective study of 143 "low risk" pregnant women expecting their first baby was conducted in Newcastle, Australia. The study was designed to examine the contribution of a woman's perception of her own childhood experiences, her trait anxiety level, socioeconomic status, and social support network to difficulties in her relationship with her baby during the baby's first year. The women were initially interviewed during pregnancy and followed up 3 and 12 months postpartum. Follow-up measures included the Dimensions of Perinatal Adjustment, the Neonatal Perception Inventory, the Ainsworth Strange Situation, and information from hospital records, family doctors, and baby health centre sisters. Women who perceived their social network as less supportive during pregnancy were likely to see their one-year-old babies (p less than .05) as more difficult. The other antenatal measures were not significantly predictive of outcome.     

Spirituality in children and young people: a suitable topic for educational and child psychologists?

In this article the concept of spirituality, especially with relation to school age children and young people, is discussed. Some of the possibilities and constraints present in this area are noted, especially the unease with which many researchers and practitioners view such a difficult to define topic and also its traditional association with religious organisations.

However, in more recent literature, the spiritual dimension has been seen as a universal human characteristic (within which spirituality in religion is viewed as a sub‐set), which is characterised by a deeper state of meaningfulness. In the case of children and young people, modern writers have argued that the encouragement of spiritual growth is important because it is related to a non‐material, ethical and self‐awareness aspect of their development and is a necessary counterbalance to the attainment‐focused demands of the National Curriculum.

As an aid to future study in this area, a possible measurement of spirituality in school‐aged children (The SQ Pupil Inventory) is reproduced at the end of this article. This inventory represents the work in progress of the late Beverley Ruddock who was carrying out her doctoral research in this topic until her sudden death in late 2008.     

‘Othering’ the archive—from exile to inclusion and heritage dignity: the case of Palestinian archival memory

This paper seeks to address, from the critical perspectives of cultural heritage discourse, the issues at stake in critically apprehending the archive as both a technology of disinheritance and one of potential inclusion and re-inheritance. The first section draws on the work of Jacques Derrida, Edward Said and other critics whose work has sought to address the marginalizing capacity of dominant European/North American archival and cultural–museological institutions. The remainder of the paper grounds these conceptual–ethical issues in the context of Palestinian cultural politics and memory-work. This critical framework is used not only to draw out the absences and silences in archives and cultural institutions, and the epistemological and ‘real’ violences at play in what Derrida characterises as ‘archive trauma’, but responds to Said’s call to ‘re-read’ the colonial archive ‘contrapuntally’ in order to create an ‘othering’ of dominant archival discourse. What is needed to provoke such an ‘othering’ is a commitment to rethink the archive in terms of alternative understandings of ‘hospitality’, ‘memory-work’ and what Derrida has referred to as ‘heritage dignity’. This strategy is capable of apprehending in greater depth the moral-ethical ‘debts’ and ‘duties’ and the operational ‘responses’ and ‘responsibilities’ towards ‘inclusion’ and towards full recognition of those constituencies which have been disenfranchised or exiled outside the realms of dominant cultural–institutional discourse.