Infants' Responses to Facial and Vocal Emotional Signals in a Social Referencing Paradigm

The independent effects of facial and vocal emotional signals and of positive and negative signals on infant behavior were investigated in a novel toy social referencing paradigm. 90 12-month-old infants and their mothers were assigned to an expression condition (neutral, happy, or fear) nested within a modality condition (face-only or voice-only). Each infant participated in 3 trials: a baseline trial, an expression trial, and a final positive trial. We found that fearful vocal emotional signals, when presented without facial signals, were sufficient to elicit appropriate behavior regulation. Infants in the fear-voice condition looked at their mothers longer, showed less toy proximity, and tended to show more negative affect than infants in the neutral-voice condition. Happy vocal signals did not elicit differential responding. The infants' sex was a factor in the few effects that were found for infants' responses to facial emotional signals.     

‘Everything was black and white … ’: primary school pupils’ naive reasoning while situating historical phenomena in time

This study focuses on problems in pupils’ reasoning when they situate historical phenomena in time. The context is the Dutch curriculum with 10 eras and characteristic features, which was implemented to support pupils in orientating themselves in time. Twenty-two pupils aged 6–12 conducted assignments in which they had to place historical phenomena in time. Next to problems that were described in previous studies, problems were identified that related to the names and icons of the 10 eras, which sometimes helped, but also hindered pupils in their reasoning. Awareness of these problems is helpful for teachers, teacher trainers and educational policymakers.     

Building strong parent–teacher relationships in primary education: the challenge of two-way communication

This study investigates which subjects teachers talk about with parents in parent–teacher conferences and other contact moments, and how they communicate with regard to these subjects. Fifty-five in-depth interviews were carried out with teachers from special education schools, at-risk schools serving low socio-economic status children and mainstream primary education schools in the southern part of the Netherlands. The results illustrate that (1) two-way communication is used the most in at-risk schools, (2) teachers find it difficult to involve parents in the decision-making process concerning special care for the child, and (3) the teachers’ attitude towards parents is best when it comes to difficult discussion topics. When situations are really difficult, teachers stand alongside the parents instead of addressing them from their expert role, asking them ‘How can we solve this together?’. Teachers should be more aware of this quality, and not be afraid to address difficult subjects or conflicts.     

Who takes the cake in community and economic development? ‘Going along' with metaphor to problematize the collective impact of a place-based promise programme

ABSTRACT

Linguists understand metaphors to be shortcuts to an individual’s tacit knowledge about the world. As ethnographers and planners building a university-school partnership and seeking to understand residents’ perceptions of their urban neighbourhood, attention to use of metaphor allowed us insight into an insider’s mental model of who is in the community. In this article, we describe how, in our interview-based ethnographic needs assessment, one of our project participant’s metaphors helped us discern the lived nature of social stratification as racialised economic inequality. This insight not only informs our partnership work but subverts some important assumptions about programme impact. Our experience suggests metaphor analysis contributes an important tool for ethnographic interpretation.     

Students’ use of personal technologies in the university classroom: analysing the perceptions of the digital generation

Faculty frequently express concerns about students’ personal use of information and communication technologies in today’s university classrooms. As a requirement of a graduate research methodology course in a university in Ontario, Canada, the authors conducted qualitative research to gain an in-depth understanding of students’ perceptions of this issue. Their findings reveal students’ complex considerations about the acceptability of technology use. Their analysis of the broader contexts of students’ use reveals that despite a technological revolution, university teaching practices have remained largely the same, resulting in ‘cultural lag’ within the classroom. While faculty are technically ‘in charge’, students wield power through course evaluations, surveillance technologies and Internet postings. Neoliberalism and the corporatisation of the university have engendered an ‘entrepreneurial student’ customer who sees education as a means to a career. Understanding students’ perceptions and their technological, social and political contexts offers insights into the tensions within today’s classrooms.     

Investigating the role of a Web-based tool to promote collective knowledge in medical communities

The paper reports a case study where a relatively lightweight technology in the form of a Web-based questionnaire was used to support members of a real community of professionals in externalizing and sharing their good practices and achieving a better awareness of and agreement on topics of common interest. We focused on an important medical association that counts more 1000 doctors all around the world as its members. In particular, we report how this association used the occasion of the on-line survey enabled by our technology to increase the awareness of its members about the actual heterogeneity of preferences existing in their daily clinical practice, and to trigger discussion toward a better consensus on best practices, appropriate indications, and treatments of choice for their profession and practice. We also report the result of a post-hoc evaluation of the Web-based technology employed, and draw some implications for the better design of this kind of tool in order to collect and share collective knowledge in specific professional domains.     

Comparing Efficiency of Public Universities among European Countries: Different Incentives Lead to Different Performances

This paper analyses the relationship between the public funding systems of higher education in Italy and the Netherlands and their universities' performances. Empirically, an efficiency analysis on 13 Dutch and 58 Italian public universities is conducted. The findings show that the relative efficiency of Italian and Dutch universities is strongly influenced by the policy perspective adopted. If the goal is to realise the European goals and minimise resources employed for obtaining a high number of graduates, Dutch universities turn out to be more efficient. However, Italian universities are much more efficient if the priority is to minimise the costs for a given level of activity, such as number of students.