MEMORY STRATEGIES REPORTED BY OLDER ADULTS FOR EXPERIMENTAL AND EVERYDAY LEARNING TASKS

Semistructured interviews were used to identify memory strategies used by 35 older adults. Five types of tasks were used: paired‐associate learning, free recall, serial recall, rule learning, and reading comprehension. For the first three tasks, two types of materials were developed: experimental and everyday. The nine memory activities were presented separately. Participants were asked to describe the strategies they would use for each activity. Order of presentation for the experimental and everyday materials was counterbalanced. Examination of the frequency data revealed differences in the number and type of strategies reported for the five types of learning tasks. An analysis of variance revealed that the group receiving the three everyday tasks first reported a significantly greater use of strategies on all tasks. These results indicate that the elderly may have limited repertoires of alternative memory strategies and that the types of materials used can significantly affect their performance.     

Silent Films and Strange Stories: Theory of Mind,Gender, and Social Experiences in Middle Childhood

In this study of two hundred and thirty 8‐ to 13‐year‐olds, a new “Silent Films” task is introduced, designed to address the dearth of research on theory of mind in older children by providing a film‐based analogue of F. G. E. Happé's (1994) Strange Stories task. Confirmatory factor analysis showed that all items from both tasks loaded onto a single theory‐of‐mind latent factor. With effects of verbal ability and family affluence controlled, theory‐of‐mind latent factor scores increased significantly with age, indicating that mentalizing skills continue to develop through middle childhood. Girls outperformed boys on the theory‐of‐mind latent factor, and the correlates of individual differences in theory of mind were gender specific: Low scores were related to loneliness in girls and to peer rejection in boys.     

HOPE VI Neighborhoods and Neighborhood Schools: Understanding How Revitalized Neighborhoods Influence School Environments

As detailed in the articles throughout this issue, the U.S. education system experienced a number of structural developments throughout the 20th century. These changes served to shift the landscape of decision-making authority in multiple areas of primary and secondary schooling. This article provides an international perspective on the changes undergone by the American system, painting a broad picture of where the trends in the United States’ educational system fit within changes worldwide. To best understand the possible implications of changes in the United States, I describe trends in educational centralization and decentralization in other nations, placing the American changes in a broader context shedding light on where education in the United States could be headed.     

Teaching Interprofessional Practice: An Exploratory Course Assignment in Social Work and Speech Language Pathology

The professions of social work (SWK) and speech language pathology (SLP) often involve the provision of services to a diverse group of client populations in a variety of settings; this is particularly true when meeting the complex needs of children and their families. It is widely accepted that collaborative treatment approaches utilizing multidisciplinary teams is an effective method of practice when serving children who are developmentally delayed or challenged, yet there is little information in the literature regarding the quantity, quality, and efficacy of collaboration among professional disciplines serving child populations. This article addresses the identified gap in the pedagogical literature regarding collaborative case management approaches between social workers (SWKs) and speech language pathologists (SLPs) using a case example describing a child in need of early intervention services. Following the case study, sample assessment questions are provided (utilizing the professional standards from both SWK and SLP) as a measure of professional competency and practice behavior. Finally, a discussion of the practical ways SWKs and SLPs can be trained in order to be mutually supportive in meeting the needs of children requiring multidisciplinary services through a collaborative or trans-team approach is provided.     

Parents,professionals and ADHD: what the papers say

Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) has risen rapidly to public and professional prominence in the UK in recent years. In this paper, we explore some issues that emerge from an analysis of newspaper articles on ADHD and look at the discourses that are constructed discourses which contribute to defining what ADHD is, through argument and counter-argument. We contextualize these arguments in a developing consumerism and the changing relationships between the public and experts.     

A Twin Study into the Genetic and Environmental Influences on Academic Performance in Science in nine‐year‐old Boys and Girls

We investigated for the first time the genetic and environmental aetiology behind scientific achievement in primary school children, with a special focus on possible aetiological differences for boys and girls. For a representative community sample of 2,602 twin pairs assessed at age nine years, scientific achievement in school was rated by teachers based on National Curriculum criteria in three domains: Scientific Enquiry, Life Processes, and Physical Processes. Results indicate that genetic influences account for over 60% of the variance in scientific achievement, with environmental influences accounting for the remaining variance. Environmental influences were mainly of the non‐shared variety, suggesting that children from the same family experience school environments differently. An analysis of sex differences considering differences in means, variances, and aetiology of individual differences found only differences in variance between the sexes, with boys showing greater variance in performance than girls.     

Middle-class young women: agentic sexual subjects?

There are a number of gaps in current understandings of the links between young femininities, agency and social class. Building on recent work, we examine how closely young middle-class women in one fee-paying school in England take up so-called top girl discourses and explore whether and how such discursive positions are linked to agentic practice within sexual and intimate relationships. Only one young woman in our study appeared to relatively successfully embody the idea of a ‘top girl’ and, through the use of an ‘I am powerful’ narrative voice, appeared also to demonstrate the most sustained, agentic approach to her sexual and intimate relationships, as well as many other parts of her life. Although other young women also drew on this idea of themselves as powerful, their narratives demonstrated fewer moments of agency, largely because they desired equally confident, assertive men as their partners (whom they understood would be dominant to them).     

Education for citizenship in Key Stages 1 and 2

ABSTRACT

This paper considers the current context and looks ahead to the opportunities that may now exist to develop education for citizenship. The place of citizenship in Key Stages 1 and 2 is discussed in the light of the National Commission's recommendations, the Dearing review of the curriculum and OFSTED's inspection framework. Questions about what is happening in schools are then raised. Answers to these questions were pursued through case‐studies of ten schools. An account of the findings under nine headings is presented and key issues summarized.     

Let them eat Shakespeare: prescribed authors and the National Curriculum

In this article, we examine the debate that surrounds prescribed reading lists in the English National Curriculum. In particular, we attempt to locate the role which ideas about heritage and social and moral values have played in constructing this debate. We begin by examining the English National Curriculum's origin in the 1980s as a conservative exercise in stemming cultural crisis, and the discourse about literature's role in the curriculum which this helped construct. We then examine how this discourse has influenced, and continues to influence, the educational policy of prescribing a list of authors and consider the assumptions that are embedded in this policy. Finally, we reflect upon how the material conditions of the classroom provide a site of resistance, or difficulty, for the officially sanctioned discourse concerning literature's role in the curriculum.     

Rogue Waves,Remakes, and Resurrections: Allegorical Displacement and Screen Memory in Poseidon

Poseidon, the 2006 remake of the Vietnam-era disaster film The Poseidon Adventure, functions rhetorically as a symptomatic response to the historical trauma(s) of 9/11, revising the narrative of its cinematic predecessor and producing a screen memory that marks the changed cultural and historical context that demanded its repetition in the first place. Operating in an allegorical register, Poseidon displaces traumatic memories of 9/11 and thus contributes to the repetition and rewriting of traumatic history in search of mastery over tragic loss.