Apples and Oranges: A Rejoinder to Smith and Siegel

This article reiterates the view that belief and knowledge can be conflated based on having a common form. The pedagogical advantage is that teachers are less likely to close off student discussions needed to help students develop an understanding of the characteristics and limitations of scientific knowledge. It is also less likely that a teacher's non-scientific presuppositions will be masked as science. The Smith and Siegel stipulated criteria for a distinction between belief and knowledge are, therefore, irrelevant to my argument. It is not that one can't stipulate criteria for distinguishing belief and knowledge; it is that for sound pedagogical reasons one shouldn't.     

Continuities between speech and spelling in a case of developmental dyslexia

This paper explores the relationship between speech and spelling in a single-case study of developmental dyslexia. JM, a developmental dyslexic with a well-documented history of speech, reading and spelling difficulties, was examined when he was 13–14 years old. He still had subtle articulation difficulties causing some disfluency and his use of phonetic voicing was atypical. We argue that these difficulties were recapitulated in his spelling where he was more sensitive to the prosodic aspects of words than normal spellers, exhibiting a strong tendency to spell accurately words which are stressed on the first, rather than the second syllable. He also had more difficulty with phonetic voicing and spelling errors reflected this uncertainty. Thus, when word-specific (orthographic) spelling information is unavailable, JM, like all spellers, must make use of phonological spelling strategies. In his case, these are compromised because of underlying phonological speech problems. It is argued that, while young children make use of a phonological frame on which to organize orthographic information, dyslexics, like JM, who have inadequate phonological representations, are unable to do so. This has a detrimental effect on their acquisition of spelling.     

Career counselling for the 21st Century -- integrating theory and practice

This article describes the development of a model of career counselling that will be responsive to the nature of career in the 21st Century. It begins by providing a commentary on the relationship between theory and the practice of career counselling, from the early 1900's to the present day. Drawing from contemporary research and theorizing, the article argues for an integrated approach to theory and practice. A framework that integrates developmental perspectives on career learning and client-centred career counselling is proposed. The ontological, epistemological and methodological characteristics of the framework are considered. The development of a constructivist, hermeneutic model of career counselling is then described and demonstrated.     

Counter-conduct in creative university research: deliberations on freedom

This article describes how a political assemblage currently at work in higher education is re-articulating academic subjectivities. This assemblage draws together entrepreneurial and humanist concepts of creativity into an intellectual resource that can change national economies. Academics are urged to use their creativity to counteract the narrowing funding base of the university. The article first introduces a history of the concept of creativity and explains how governmental agendas for creative industry and creativity in education emerged. Second, it describes a practice-based research project that grapples with the difficulties of knowledge transfer between the ‘creative’ and ‘social science’ academic disciplines. This raises questions about creative knowledge and reveals some ethical tensions in the performance of academic research. The research project is then positioned as a ‘counter-conduct’, used to short-circuit the procedures implemented for the conduct of creative research in the creative, entrepreneurial university.     

Teaching Practices Grounded in Foundational Knowledge,Visions, and Contexts

Drawing on our experiences as teacher educators in two programs designed specifically to prepare teachers for particular contexts, this article illustrates how we design our courses to help new teachers link foundational understandings to specific teaching practices in particular school and classroom contexts. We describe our integrated approach, in which candidates learn theory and practice simultaneously, breaking down the dichotomies of theory and practice while connecting to specific contexts or settings and understanding the relationship of practices to visions of good teaching.     

New Routes to the PhD: Cause for Concern?

Recent developments suggest that the PhD is at a turning point. Professional groups have criticised the so‐called ‘traditional PhD’. New routes to the PhD are proposed by several bodies and endorsed by one funding council. In light of these developments, it is appropriate to ask what the implications are for the PhD and for the academy. A focus group was used to gather student responses to these developments. The findings show qualified support: students agree that the PhD should cater for different careers but challenge what they see as a simplistic channelling of PhD routes. This paper demonstrates apparent consensus on the need for change in the PhD and reveals movement beyond reconceptualisation towards reconstruction. However, we argue that there is cause for concern in the lack of attention paid to student views and the continuing neglect of quality issues in the PhD.     

Joint Attention and Conversation in Mother-Infant-Sibling Triads

The current study investigated the general nature of joint attentional and conversational interaction in mother-infant-sibling triads. 9 19-month-old infants and 9 24-month-old infants were videotaped during 20 min of free play with their mothers and preschool-aged siblings around a common activity. Analyses revealed that even 19-month-old infants were capable of participating in triadic interactions and conversations, and that the proportional frequency of both these measures increased with age. Triadic conversations were nearly 3 times longer and elicited nearly twice as many infant turns per conversation as dyadic conversations. Infants were more likely to join into an ongoing conversational topic than to initiate one themselves, and they were more likely to take a turn in those conversations if they were in a joint attentional state with the speaker. Infants were just as likely to respond to a comment or request directed to another person as they were to one directed to themselves, indicating reliable comprehension of language not addressed to them. These results suggest that the mother-infant-sibling interactive context differs in important ways from the mother-infant dyadic context and that it is a richer language learning environment than previously supposed.     

Developing a sustained interest in science among urban minority youth

This study draws upon qualitative case study to investigate the connections between the “funds of knowledge” that urban, high‐poverty students bring to science learning and the development of a sustained interest in science. We found that youth developed a sustained interest in science when: (1) their science experiences connected with how they envision their own futures; (2) learning environments supported the kinds of social relationships students valued; and (3) science activities supported students' sense of agency for enacting their views on the purpose of science. © 2006 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Res Sci Teach 44: 466–489, 2007