The Significance of Gender Boundaries in Preadolescence: Contemporary Correlates and Antecedents of Boundary Violation and Maintenance

Previous research has established the importance of gender boundaries as a normative aspect of development in middle childhood. Here, the nature and importance of gender boundaries as an individual differences construct was explored. Ratings of gender boundary violation and gender boundary maintenance were made of 47 10–11-year-old children participating in a series of summer day camps. These ratings were supported by videotape-based behavior codings of gender boundary violating behaviors and by live observations of sheer number of associations with members of the opposite gender. In addition, considerable external validation of these individual differences was obtained. Children low on gender boundary violation and (especially) children high on boundary maintenance were independently judged by camp counselors to be socially competent. They also were found to be higher on a friendship variable, based on observation. Those who violated boundary were especially unpopular with peers, based on a child interview. Finally, boundary violation and maintenance were related to attachment history and to early measures of parent-child generational boundary distortions.     

Children's Reasoning About Self-Presentation Following Rule Violations: The Role of Self-Focused Attention

Rule violations are likely to serve as key contexts for learning to reason about public identity. In an initial study with 91 children aged 4–9 years, social emotions and self‐presentational concerns were more likely to be cited when children were responding to hypothetical vignettes involving social‐conventional rather than moral violations. In 2 further studies with 376 children aged 4–9 years, experimental manipulations of self‐focused attention (either by leading children to believe they were being video‐recorded or by varying audience reactions to transgressions) were found to elicit greater attention to social evaluation following moral violations, although self‐presentational concerns were consistently salient in the context of social‐conventional violations. The role of rule transgressions in children’s emerging self‐awareness and social understanding is discussed.     

Production Guides

Martin Clifford's Microphones: How They Work and How to Use Them (Blue Ridge Summit, Pa.: TAB Books, 1977—$8.95/ 5.95)

James Carroll and Ronald Sherriffs, TV Lighting Handbook ($12.95, 226 pp.)

Harry Kybett, The Complete Handbook of Videocassette Recorders ($9.95/5.95, 280 pp.)

Dave Ingram, The Complete Handbook of Slow-Scan TV ($14.95/9.95, 304 pp.)

G. Paul Smeyak's Broadcast News Writing (Columbus, Ohio: Grid Publishing, 1977—$7.95, paper)     

Jakob Leupold's Imaginary Automatic Anamorphic Devices of 1713

In 1713, the scientific instrument-maker Jakob Leupold published designs for three machines were the first attempt to design machinery with internal moving parts that replaced human agency in creating original images. This paper first analyzes his text and engravings in order to explain how he proposed to do this, given contemporary materials and command of physical forces. Next, it characterizes the devices as a transition from concepts of incision to concepts of mirroring, taken as models of the history of mechanical reproduction. And finally, Leupold’s replacement of the sighting grid with differential gears points to a set of problems appearing in contemporary philosophy represented in Rococo artistic production of this period as well. Taking the proposed devices in context, they help to theorize the complex notions of creative activity in Rococo visual culture. Taken as an episode in the history of communications, they instance the development of conceptions of personhood and of physical forces at stake in the invention of automated media.     

The Inter-relationship of Science and Religion: A typology of engagement

This study explores whether the religious background of students affects their opinions about and attitudes to engaging with scientific explanations of the origins of the universe and of life. The study took place in four English secondary schools representing three different contexts (Christian faith-based; non-faith with majority Muslim catchment; and non-faith, mixed catchment). It comprised questionnaires and focus groups with over 200 students aged 14–16, supplemented by teacher interviews. The analysis approach was informed by grounded theory and resulted in the development of an engagement typology, which has been set in the context of the cross-cultural border crossing literature. It divides students into categories depending on both the nature and amount of engagement they were prepared to have with the relationship between science and religion. The model takes into account where students sit on four dimensions. These assess whether a student's preferred knowledge base is belief-based or fact-based; their tolerance of uncertainty (do they have a need for resolution?); their open mindedness (are they unquestioning or inquiring?); and whether they conceptualise science and religion as being in conflict or harmony. Many Muslim students resisted engagement because of conflicting religious beliefs. Teachers did not always appreciate the extent to which this topic troubled some students who needed help to accommodate clashes between science and their religious beliefs. It is suggested that increased appreciation of the complexity represented by their students can guide a teacher towards an appropriate approach when covering potentially sensitive topics such as the theory of evolution.     

Response to ‘Assessment of Practical Work in Ireland: A critique’ by P. Matthews and P. McKenna

We welcome all constructive contributions to the debate on the assessment of practical work in Ireland, and offer a number of comments in relation to the points raise by Matthews and McKenna.     

A bibliometric analysis of academic publication and NIH funding

Academic productivity and research funding have been hot topics in biomedical research. While publications and their citations are popular indicators of academic productivity, there has been no rigorous way to quantify co-authors’ relative contributions. This has seriously compromised quantitative studies on the relationship between academic productivity and research funding. Here we apply an axiomatic approach and associated bibliometric measures to revisit a recent study by Ginther et al. (Ginther et al., 2011a, Ginther et al., 2011b) in which the probability of receiving a U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH) R01 award was analyzed with respect to the applicant's race/ethnicity. Our results provide new insight and suggest that there is no significant racial bias in the NIH review process, in contrast to the conclusion from the study by D. K. Ginther et al. Our axiomatic approach has a potential to be widely used for scientific assessment and management.     

The psychoanalytic view of teaching and learning, 1922–2002

Various psychoanalysts have written about the implications of psychoanalytic theory for teaching and learning. Although many curriculum scholars have offered their personal interpretations of the relevance of psychoanalytic theory to education, there is very little in the educational literature about what psychoanalysts themselves have had to say about the acts of teaching and learning since the rise (and, some would suggest, decline) of psychoanalysis over the last century. This study examines a wide range of educational themes that emerge from a reading of various psychoanalysts over the last eight decades. In general, the psychoanalysts argue that, in order to be existentially authentic, teaching and learning must involve the teacher and student in all their psychodynamic complexity as emotional and ethical beings. I also examine the psychodynamic concepts of transference, counter‐transference, and object relations in some depth because they have figured prominently in psychoanalytic discourse about education.     

Pervasive and Non‐pervasive Conduct Problems in a Clinic Sample Aged 4–8 years: Child,family and day‐care/school factors

Differences between pervasive (home and day‐care/school) versus non‐pervasive (home only) conduct problems were examined in regard to various child, parent/family, and day‐care/school characteristics in an outpatient clinic sample of 120 children aged 4–8 years. All children scored above the 90th percentile on the Eyberg Child Behavior Inventory for home problems and met the criteria for a possible or a confirmed diagnosis of oppositional defiant behaviours. The proportion of children with pervasive conduct problems was high, 83%. Teachers in day care and school reported children in the pervasive group to have significantly more attention and internalizing problems as well as lower social competence scores than those in the non‐pervasive group. Children in the pervasive group also showed consistently more problems in their relationships both with teachers and peers than those in the non‐pervasive group. The implications for assessment and treatment of children with conduct problems in these age‐groups are discussed.