Historical Inquiry in an Informal Fan Community: Online Source Usage and the TV Show The Tudors

This article examines an informal online community dedicated to The Tudors, a historical television show, and the ways in which its members engaged with a variety of sources in their discussions of the drama’s real-life past. Data were collected over a 5-month period. The analysis included the types of sources used in conversation; members’ purpose for invoking and reaction to sources; as well as topic, participation, and response patterns in the discussion forum. The community is a space in which popular culture and the discipline of history meet. Members come together because of a fictional depiction of the past, yet a desire to corroborate, clarify, contextualize, or uncover what really happened leads users to participate in detective-like inquiry work and the learning of new topics they had not previously considered. Members also challenge and critique one another’s positions and the sources other members invoke in multiple ways, including by using more formal disciplinary heuristics in this informal setting. Key differences emerge in members’ purpose for invoking sources, with popular media used more frequently for illustrating a point or asking a question and nonfiction works most invoked to support and argue historical claims.     

A collaborative network for first responders: Lessons from the CapWIN case

It is increasingly important for government agencies to collaborate across jurisdictional and functional boundaries. Interorganizational systems supporting interagency collaboration must accommodate a wide range of factors from the external environment and participating organizations as part of their design and operation. This paper presents the findings from a case study of CapWIN, a collaborative network created to enable first responders to share information across jurisdictional and functional boundaries as they work together during emergencies and other critical events. The study examines how aspects of the external environment and the agency context impeded or facilitated the CapWIN collaborative network and the interorganizational system (IOS) that supports it. We identify factors affecting information sharing and collaborative processes, and describe how these factors interact to enable and constrain an IOS. The paper concludes with suggestions for further research on the interplay of environmental, organizational, and technical aspects of interagency collaboration networks as they evolve over time.     

Infants Prefer Infant‐Directed Song Over Speech

In their everyday communication, parents do not only speak but also sing with their infants. However, it remains unclear whether infants' can discriminate speech from song or prefer one over the other. The present study examined the ability of 6‐ to 10‐month‐old infants (N = 66) from English‐speaking households in London, Ontario, Canada to discriminate between auditory stimuli of native Russian‐speaking and native English‐speaking mothers speaking or singing to their infants. Infants listened significantly longer to the sung stimuli compared to the spoken stimuli. This is the first study to demonstrate that, even in the absence of other multimodal cues, infant listeners are able to discriminate between sung and spoken stimuli, and furthermore, prefer to listen to sung stimuli over spoken stimuli.     

Reaching the students that student‐centred learning cannot reach

Student‐centred learning has the potential to engage a more academically diverse student body than the more conventional teacher‐centred approaches. In spite of the evidence in favour of student‐centred learning, a recent study showed that it was ineffective for around 30% of undergraduates in a large and diverse group studying business operations management. The possible reasons for this are explored in two ways. First, the literature relating to student engagement and participation is reviewed from three different perspectives: the sociological, the epistemological and the approaches to learning perspectives. Second, all three perspectives are applied to data generated from the original study within the context of a post‐1992 university. The advantages of a three‐perspective approach over a single‐perspective approach are discussed. Finally, the development of a holistic model integrating all three perspectives is called for, to be used as a guide for further empirical research into student engagement and as a tool for evaluating and developing inclusive and engaging learning environments.     

The validity of reading comprehension rate: Reading speed,comprehension, and comprehension rates

This article describes a secondary analysis of a brief reading comprehension rate measure, percent comprehension questions correct per minute spent reading (%C/M). This measure includes reading speed (seconds to read) in the denominator and percentage of comprehension questions answered correctly in the numerator. Participants were 22 4th‐, 29 5th‐, and 37 10th‐grade students. Results showed that reading speed accounted for much of the variance in Broad Reading Cluster scores and subtest scores of the Woodcock–Johnson III Tests of Achievement across all grade levels. Converting reading speed to the rate measure %C/M increased Broad Reading Cluster variance accounted for in the 4th‐ and 5th‐grade sample, but decreased the Broad Reading Cluster variance accounted for in the 10th‐grade sample. Discussion focuses on the importance of reading speed and the failure to enhance validity of a brief rate measure in more skilled readers by incorporating a direct measure of comprehension. © 2009 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

Boundary Crossing during Pre-service Teacher Training: empowering or hampering professional growth?

Yuli Rahmawati’s paper presents an auto-ethnographic inquiry into her lived experiences as a science teacher in different countries. Through her reflections and analysis of events, Yuli captures and builds a model of her identity and explores the influence of inter- and intra-cultural perspectives in shaping how she recognizes herself and brings meaning to her professional life. Yuli’s insights and explanations of teaching within different cultural contexts highlight the importance of personally relevant and meaningful knowledge, where expectations and accepted norms, that might fit well within one community, may be seen quite differently in another. While for Yuli, this led to professional growth as she inquired and made sense of her new context, my concern is that the social and cultural change could, in some instances, lead to disengagement rather than professional growth. My concern is that the conflict that arises from boundary crossing may be experienced even stronger by inexperienced professionals, such as pre-service teachers. The learning trajectory of pre-service teachers is steep; they need to gain stronger knowledge of curriculum and pedagogy and an awareness of how their students learn. They also need to build confidence in their professional self and what they can do to support and trigger student learning. For this to happen, in the tight time frames available on teacher education courses, pre-service teachers need to understand and engage with the new community that they are placed in very quickly, to make sense of both their role and that of others within the community. This paper suggests that pre-service providers should carefully consider the learning opportunities offered by school contexts, that may vary dramatically from the social and cultural contexts experienced by their teachers as part of their own education, to prevent disengagement or misunderstanding hampering professional growth.