The challenging academic development (CAD) collective

Nurse education is characterised by dissonance, ambiguity and uncertainty. Such a context makes demands on the educator's authenticity or sense of self. This paper reports an attempt to provide a space where dissonance, ambiguity and uncertainty could be held, tolerated and examined and where authenticity could be recovered or developed through the practice of artistry. Three art workshops were offered to eight nurse educators over a period of three months. Each of the participants and the co‐facilitator were subsequently interviewed. All welcomed the opportunity to find meaning in their practice and to be listened to in a climate of empathy, acceptance and congruence. They undertook novel activities that allowed for discovery and surprise. They explored their sense of self and coined fresh metaphors to communicate their experiences. The paper argues that there is room for approaches to academic staff development that go against the mainstream.

La formation des infirmières se caractérise par la dissonance, l'ambiguïté et l'incertitude. Un tel contexte exerce des pressions sur l'authenticité et le sens de soi d'un éducateur. Cet article rend compte d'une tentative de fournir un espace o[ugrave] l'authenticité peut être redécouverte et développée au moyen de la pratique artistique. Trois ateliers artistiques ont été offerts à huit formateurs d'infirmières sur une période de trois mois. Des entretiens ont été effectués auprès de chaque participant et du co‐facilitateur. Les répondants ont tous accueilli l'occasion de trouver un sens à leur pratique et de pouvoir être écouté dans un climat d'empathie, d'acceptation et d'harmonie. Ceux‐ci on entrepris des activités nouvelles faisant place à la découverte et à la surprise. Ils ont exploré leur sens de soi et ont trouvé de nouvelles métaphores pour communiquer leurs expériences. Cet article défend l'idée que des activités de développement pédagogique qui vont à l'encontre de la majorité ont leur place.     

Different for women? The challenges of doctoral studies

This exploratory study investigates gender-specific differences in the challenges of the doctoral experience through the observations of a counsellor working with doctoral students. The article first contextualises the study within the literature investigating doctoral attrition and gender equity, showing that identity transformation over the doctorate is problematic in particular aspects for women. We confirm that cultural expectations regarding women passivity, family nurturance and (at least symbolic) subordination to male authority can cause tensions between women's social relationships and academic performance which values assertiveness, clear communication and confident management of power relationships. We identify various conflicts between the female roles of the social sphere and the academic arena that problematise the identity transition of the doctorate from student to independent researcher.     

The role of SES in Chinese (L1) and English (L2) word reading in Chinese‐speaking kindergarteners

The present study investigated the relationships between socioeconomic status (SES) and word reading in both Chinese (L1) and English (L2), with children's cognitive/linguistic skills considered as mediators and/or moderators. One hundred ninety‐nine Chinese kindergarteners in Hong Kong with diverse SES backgrounds participated in this study. SES explained unique variance in English word reading even after age, phonological processing, vocabulary and working memory were controlled. However, the effect of SES on Chinese word reading became nonsignificant when these control variables were included. Moreover, phonological awareness showed a full mediating effect on the relationship between SES and Chinese word reading. Both phonological awareness and vocabulary were found to partially mediate the association between SES and English word reading. These findings complement our understanding of the relation between SES and reading development in Chinese societies and may have policy or intervention development implications.     

Cheating Behaviors among Undergraduate College Students: Results from a Factorial Survey

Using a factorial survey administered to college students at two Universities, this study examines students’ tendencies to engage in academic misconduct. The relation of strain, self-control, and deterrence theories to likelihood of cheating are further explored. The results suggest that increasing the severity of the punishment for cheating does not deter academic misconduct; however, several variables indicating an increased certainty of being caught did decrease the likelihood of cheating behaviors. Only the strain variables that indicated a student had an ill family member or that the student found the course difficult significantly increased academic misconduct. Although self-control did not have a direct effect on cheating it indirectly affected cheating behaviors through students’ perceptions of getting caught and their perception of wrongfulness of the cheating behavior. Policy and future research implications of the findings are further discussed.     

Phonological awareness and morphological awareness: differential associations to regular and irregular word recognition in early Korean Hangul readers

A large battery of reading related skills were orally administered to 111 4-year old and 118 5-year old Korean kindergartners, who were also tested on reading of regular and irregular Korean Hangul words. In regression equations, speeded naming was uniquely associated with reading of both regular and irregular words. In contrast, only the three measures of phonological awareness at the levels of phoneme onset, coda, and syllable uniquely explained Hangul regular word recognition, whereas only morphological awareness consistently explained irregular word recognition. Results suggest somewhat different cognitive demands for reading of regular and irregular words, based on the dual-route model, in Korean Hangul.     

Rethinking Big Science. Modest,mezzo, grand science and the development of the Bevalac, 1971-1993

Historians of science have tended to focus exclusively on scale in investigations of largescale research, perhaps because it has been easy to assume that comprehending a phenomenon dubbed "Big Science" hinges on an understanding of bigness. A close look at Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory's Bevalac, a medium-scale "mezzo science" project formed by uniting two preexisting machines--the modest SuperHILAC and the grand Bevatron--shows what can be gained by overcoming this preoccupation with bigness. The Bevalac story reveals how interconnections, connections, and disconnections ultimately led to the development of a new kind of science that transformed the landscape of large-scale research in the United States. Important lessons in historiography also emerge: the value of framing discussions in terms of networks, the necessity of constantly expanding and refining methodology, and the importance of avoiding the rhetoric of participants and instead finding words to tell our own stories.     

Judicious imitation: children differentially imitate deterministically and probabilistically effective actions

Three studies look at whether the assumption of causal determinism (the assumption that all else being equal, causes generate effects deterministically) affects children's imitation of modeled actions. These studies show even when the frequency of an effect is matched, both preschoolers (N = 60; M = 56 months) and toddlers (N = 48; M = 18 months) imitate actions more faithfully when modeled actions are deterministically rather than probabilistically effective. A third study suggests that preschoolers' (N = 32; M = 58 months) imitation is affected not just by whether the agent's goal is satisfied but also by whether the action is a reliable means to the goal. Children's tendency to generate variable responses to probabilistically effective modeled actions could support causal learning.     

Quality Learning of Physics: Conceptions Held by High School and University Teachers

This paper reports an exploration of the conceptions of quality learning held by two samples of physics teachers – final year, high school physics teachers and academics teaching first year university physics. We begin by outlining our view of quality learning, that is a view of learning in which learners take control of their own learning and engage with active construction and reconstruction of their own meanings for concepts and phenomena. This view of quality learning recognises the crucial role of the affective dimension of learning on the extent to which students engage with and maintain such constructivist and metacognitive approaches to learning. The study explored the qualitatively different ways in which individuals conceptualise quality learning in physics, using semi structured interviews that explored aspects of learning that the respondents regarded as worth fostering in their classrooms. The interview approach was a modification of the Interview-About-Instances approach that allowed the possibility of interviewees suggesting instances of particular relevance to their view of quality learning. This process resulted in a considerable quantity of rich and complex data related to a large range of aspects of physics learning. These data are summarised here, and the qualitatively different conceptions of the respondents with respect to four significant aspects of physics learning are discussed. These aspects are: doing experimental work; linking physics to the real world; students taking responsibility for their own learning and being confident/feeling proud of what you can do.