Being ‘nice’ or being ‘normal’: girls resisting discourses of ‘coolness’

In this paper we consider discourses of friendship and belonging mobilised by girls who are not part of the dominant ‘cool’ group in one English primary school. We explore how, by investing in alternative and, at times, resistant, discourses of ‘being nice’ and ‘being normal’ these ‘non-cool’ girls were able to avoid some of the struggles for dominance and related bullying and exclusion found by us and other researchers to be a feature of ‘cool girls’ groupings. We argue that there are multiple dynamics in girls' lives in which being ‘cool’ is only sometimes a dominant concern. There are some children for whom explicitly positioning themselves outside of the ‘cool’ group is both resistant and protective, providing a counter-discourse to the dominance of ‘coolness’. In this paper, which is based on observational and interview data in one school in the south of England, we focus on two main groupings of intermediate and lower status girls, as well as on one ‘wannabe’ ‘cool girl’. While belonging to a lower status group can bring disadvantages for the girls we studied, there were also benefits.     

Learning and remembering strategies of novice and advanced jazz dancers for skill level appropriate dance routines

This study examined the influence of the challenge level of to-be-learned stimulus on learning strategies in novice and advanced dancers. In Study 1, skill-level appropriate dance routines were developed for novice and advanced jazz dancers. In Study 2, 8 novice and 9 advanced female jazz dancers attempted to learn and remember the two routines in mixed model factorial design, with one between-participants factor: skill level (novice or advanced) and two within-participants factors: routine (easy or difficult) and performance (immediate or delayed). Participants were interviewed regarding the strategies used to learn and remember the routines. Results indicated that advanced performers used atypical learning strategies for insufficiently challenging stimuli, which may reflect characteristics of the stimuli rather than the performer. The qualitative data indicate a clear preference of novice and advanced performers for spatial compatibility of stimuli and response.     

Generic tendencies in majority and non‐majority supreme court opinions: The case of justice Douglas

Using a sample of Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas' Supreme Court opinons as the data base, this study investigated the question of whether majority or non‐majority status constitutes a variable sufficiently strong to predict the rhetorical quality of the opinion. The three traditional schools of legal philosophy, Natural Law, Legal Positivism, and Legal Realism, provided the basis of three hypothetical rhetorical genres which were found to be present in statistically similar frequencies in all opinion types. These findings (1) call into question the conventional wisdom that majority and dissenting opinions represent different rhetorical sub‐species, and (2) suggest that a more fruitful avenue of analysis looks to the generic architechtonics of Supreme Court opinions rather than to the relatively more superficial dimension of stylistics.     

Memory Self-Efficacy,Aging, and Memory Performance: The Roles of Effort and Persistence

The relative importance of mental effort, as indicated by strategy use, and persistence as potential mediators of the memory self-efficacy (MSE)/memory performance relationship was investigated within a sample of 26 adults aged 65 years and older. It was found that persistence but not strategy use was predictive of performance on a free-recall task. Age-related declines were found in persistence, performance, and MSE but not in strategy use. Counter to expectation, neither strategy use nor persistence was significantly related to a global measure of MSE. These results highlight the importance in MSE research of distinguishing mental effort and persistence, of task-specific measures of MSE, and of considering age-related changes within the elderly population. Implications for MSE intervention programs are briefly discussed.     

Young children,gender and the heterosexual matrix

In this paper I consider the adult focus of current mainstream gender theory. I relate this to how the concept of the heterosexual matrix originates in a social contract which excludes children from civil society. I argue that this exclusion is problematic both for theoretical reasons and from the perspective of children themselves. I start by discussing the nature of the heterosexual matrix and its foundations. I consider the implications for participation which arise from being named as a child, how that affects children's attempts to claim participation in civil society, and how this is related to children's naming of themselves as gendered. I then briefly consider the possibility that, because of their exclusion, children might also be considered to be exempt from the heterosexual matrix. However, I argue, there is considerable evidence that children are actively sexual beings who also work hard to claim inclusion in local practices of heterosexuality. I end by suggesting that there are three key reasons for this: that the discourses of normative sexuality provide children with a language to express sexual feelings; that self-insertion in the heterosexual matrix is a way for children to claim rights to participation; and that taking up heterosexual formations is a means whereby children can experience the power of naming themselves as part of the social world.     

Experientially learning how to communicate science effectively: A case study on decoding science

The need for science communication programs is matched with the need for program evaluation. This case study is an evaluation of the “Decoding Science” program (DSP) [Rodgers et al. (2018). Science Communication, 40(1), 3–32], a science communication training program, and examines key experiential-learning themes [Kolb, D. A. (1984). Experiential learning: Experience as the source of learning and development. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall]. Specifically, we discuss the program's emphasis on learning that science communication is a process that (a) is continual, (b) involves conflict resolution, (c) requires adaptation to the world, (d) requires environmental interaction, and leads to (e) knowledge creation. Additionally, we discuss our analysis of student feedback. Results suggest that the DSP successfully utilizes experiential learning to facilitate the learning of science communication techniques and that future evaluations can lead to the development and improvement of science communication training programs.     

Familial and Institutional Factors: Job Satisfaction for Female Counselor Educators

Job satisfaction based on familial and institutional factors was explored for 157 female counselor educators. Results indicate that female associate professors had lower levels of intrinsic rewards domain after controlling for institutional type. Parental responsibility and partnership status were equivocal, with significant interaction effects after controlling for Carnegie Classification.