Reviews

Annals of Dyslexia -     

Young Students’Informal Statistical Knowledge

This article reports some results of an informal study of very young children's reactions to some visual displays of data.     

How does the ecological foraging behavior of desert kangaroo rats (Dipodomys deserti) relate to their behavior on radial mazes?

Experiment 1 showed that laboratory-reared desert kangaroo rats, like domestic Norway rats, efficiently search for food on a radial arm maze (RAM) by avoiding revisiting arms within a trial. By placing an RAM on the floor so the animals could approach food from any direction, Experiment 2 tested whether efficient search by kangaroo rats was based on tactics of distance minimizing, central-place foraging, trail following, or meandering. In contrast to the dominant trail-following tactic of domestic Norway rats (Hoffman, Timberlake, Leffel, & Gont, 1999), kangaroo rats tended to distance minimize, whether maze arms were present or not. Experiment 3 indicated that kangaroo rats treated a floor configuration of eight food cups as twopatches of four, based on beeline travel between patches and meandering within them. We conclude that similar performance in an elevated RAM by different species can be based on different tactics, and we suggest that a laboratory apparatus can be used to cast light on niche-related mechanisms.     

Social Construction of Computer Experience in a First-Grade Classroom: Social Processes and Mediating Artifacts

Based on a Vygotskian perspective, as well as a broader socio-cultural perspective, we propose a transactional model of social processes and artifacts to investigate young children's social construction of their computer experience. An ethnographic study was conducted in a first-grade classroom at a public school located in a Midwest town. A grounded-theory approach was used to analyze video, field notes, interviews, and artifacts. The results indicate that young children constantly negotiate between their own individual and collective goals in the classroom and the affordances of the environment, as they create their own definition of computer use while simultaneously conforming to the rules set by the teacher. The artifacts students use—the computer, a timer, and waiting lists—both enable and challenge children's social negotiation. In this negotiation process, children socially construct not only their computer experience, but also their early school experience on a whole. The transactional model provides a useful theoretical framework to study children's social practice as well as practical suggestions for teachers to optimize students' collaborative interaction.     

Māori university graduates: indigenous participation in higher education

Māori, the indigenous population of New Zealand, are gaining university qualifications in greater numbers. This article describes the history of Māori university graduates, their current situation and the implications for indigenous futures. Section one provides a brief overview of historical policies and practices that, similar to those used on other indigenous populations, resulted in the widespread exclusion of Māori from university education until the 1970s and 1980s. Section two describes findings for Māori university graduates (n?=?626) from the Graduate Longitudinal Study New Zealand (GLSNZ). Results show that nearly half (48.4%) were the first member of their immediate family to attend university. Humanities/education (50.8%) was the most common domain of study followed by commerce (17.7%), science/engineering (15.4%), health sciences (10.9%), law (2.8%) and PhD study (2.4%). More Māori graduates were females (71%). One-third of graduates were parents, and being a parent was associated with a lower likelihood of studying science and engineering compared to those participants without children. The most common areas/fields that participants wished to work in post-graduation were education and training (28.3%), health care and medical (17.4%) and government (11.8%). Despite increases in higher education participation and completion, parity remains an issue. Similar to previous indigenous research findings, Māori are under-represented as graduates (7.1% of the total sample) and in particular as postgraduates (5.8%) considering that Māori constitute 14.9% of the New Zealand population. Contemporary indigenous graduates are critical for indigenous development. Over the next 10 years, the GLSNZ will follow graduates and provide insights into Māori graduate outcomes.     

Classroom Peer Acceptance, Friendship, and Victimization: Destinct Relation Systems That Contribute Uniquely to Children's School Adjustment?

The proposition that relationships make differential (i.e., unique, redundant, contingent) contributions to adjustment was examined by investigating the linkages between children's participation in different types of peer relationships (i.e., friendship, peer acceptance, peer victimazation) and their adjustment to school. Relationship measure were gathered for 5-to 6- year-old children(105 males, 95 females) twice during kindergaten (i.e., fall and spring) nad were correlated with adjustment indicators at each time of assessment and used to predict changes in school adjstment over time. Examination of the relative associations between the relationship measures and children's adjustment revealed of both unshared (i.e., unique) and shared (i.e., redundant) linkages, depending on the form of adjustment examined.These findings suggest that adjustment may be influenced by the diverse experiences (i.e., provisions) that children encounter in different forms of relationship, and that certain types of relationships may have greater or lesser adaptive significance depending on the adjustment outcome examined