Notes and News

This article explores mentoring within the context of post‐16 working class urban youth and their transition from compulsory education to the labour market. The difficulties inherent in such a transition in a post industrial context are highlighted utilising the concepts of risk, individualisation and liminality. The authors reflect upon their own experiences in initial teacher education and draw parallels between mentoring in this area and mentoring urban youth. They consider a model of cognitive mentoring for incorporation into vocational education and training programmes and develop a set of guiding principles for such programmes which are intended to empower young people in the process of navigating and negotiating their routes into flexible and fast changing labour markets.     

Winter Reference-Land (Blame It on the Lake-Effect)

[This column is a collection of stories of one reference librarian’s dialogues with a host of patrons, which occur over a variety of media, including Web chat, phone, face-to-face, and immersive environments. Some names, places, times, and events have been changed to preserve anonymity.]     

Stanton's “Solitude of Self” as Public Confession

Elizabeth Cady Stanton opened her now famous “Solitude of Self” by asserting her desire to make manifest the “individuality of each human soul.” Using Stanton's attempt to display the human soul as a case study, I consider in this essay the capacities of language to disclose the self. I argue that, for Stanton, self-disclosure is fundamentally performative: The “Solitude of Self” evokes the “inner-being we call ourself” through a reliance on, and a subsequent violation of, a distinctively narrative logic. As this violation takes from the audience the sense of order that the narrative had theretofore provided, it puts the audience in a position where they, now shorn of narrative and the order it provided, can experience firsthand the solitude of self.     

Growth,functional capacities and motivation for achievement and competitiveness in youth basketball: an interdisciplinary approach

The interaction of multiple influences on the path to sport success is not yet fully understood by sport scientists. In this study, we examined variation in body size, functional capacities and motivation for achievement, competitiveness and deliberate practice of youth basketball players associated with differences in biological maturity status, chronological age and years of training experience. Reflecting the importance of interactive effects, we examined the relationships between the psychological variables and functional capacities. Fifty-eight male basketball players aged 9.5 to 15.5 years were considered. Variables included chronological age, estimated age at peak height velocity, stature, body mass and sitting height by anthropometry; the Work and Family Orientation and Deliberate Practice Motivation Questionnaires were also used. Finally, the Line Drill test and Yo-Yo Intermittent Recovery level 1 (Yo-Yo IR1) tests were used as functional capacities indicators for basketball. Variance components models derived from series of multilevel linear regression models revealed a substantial variation by maturity status for body size, functional capacities indicators, mastery and will to excel. The influence of estimated maturity status on mastery and will to excel was independent of age and years of experience. In contrast, no relationships were observed between psychological variables and functional capacities indicators. We conclude that growth-related changes are relevant to understanding players´ motivations for achievement, competitiveness and deliberate practice. This should be of interest to those involved in the selection and development of youth basketball players.     

Job aids and performance support: Moving from knowledge in the classroom to knowledge everywhere by Allison Rossett,and Lisa Schafer

Allison Rossett, CPT, teaches at San Diego State University and is equally at home in the consulting world, where she has helped a global mix of companies and other organizations. Lisa Schafer is one of the principals in Collet and Schafer, which focuses on performance improvement in Fortune 100 companies. Job Aids and Performance Support: Moving from Knowledge in the Classroom to Knowledge Everywhere (ISBN 978‐0‐7879‐7621‐7) is published by Jossey‐Bass/Pfeiffer. This publisher may be reached at (800) 274‐4434 (phone) or (800) 569‐0443 (fax).     

GLOBE—The Science Behind Launching an International Environmental Education Program

Global Learning and Observations to Benefit the Environment (GLOBE) is an international science and environmental education program that enables school children to learn about the environment by taking scientific measurements of their natural surroundings and sharing their data with scientists via the Internet. By carefully following protocols and using approved measurement devices, students around the world are developing an archive of standardized data that can also be used in professional research. GLOBE is divided into several separate investigations, each focused on a different aspect of the environment. They include land cover, soil, hydrology, phenology, haze, and the atmosphere. Each investigation has a team of scientists who have worked with students and teachers to develop detailed protocols for the students to collect data. In addition, the scientists are exploring ways of using that data in their own research. This article is mostly about the work of GLOBE scientists—but also some students and teachers—in the first 5 years of the program. It is intended to provide an overview of the scientists' efforts to develop a meaningful learning experience around gathering environmental data for research.     

Students as co-producers in a multidisciplinary software engineering project: addressing cultural distance and cross-cohort handover

This article reports an undergraduate software engineering project in which, over a period of 2 years, four student teams from different cohorts developed a note-taking app for four academic clients at the students’ own university. We investigated how projects involving internal clients can give students the benefits of engaging in real software development while also giving them experience of a student-staff collaboration that has its own benefits for students, academics, and the university more broadly. As the university involved is a Sino-Foreign university located in China, where most students are Chinese and most teaching staff are not, this ‘student as co-producer’ approach interacts with another feature of the project: cultural distance. Based on analysis of notes, reports, interviews, and focus groups, we recommend that students should be provided with communicative strategies for dealing with academics as clients; universities should develop policies on ownership of student-staff collaborations; and projects should include a formalised handover process. This article can serve as guidance for educators considering a ‘students as co-producers’ approach for software development projects.     

Youth’s Sibling Relationships Across the Course of a Parent’s Military Deployment: Trajectories and Implications

The present exploratory study explored the trajectories and implications of at-home (military unaffiliated) parents’ perceptions of youth’s sibling relationships across the course of a parent’s military deployment. Participants included 109 families with at least two siblings (older sibling and younger siblings age: M = 10.85, SD = 3.92 and M = 7.89, SD = 3.58, respectively) and one parent serving in the National Guard. Data were collected via in-home interviews, at six time points across the deployment cycle. A series of multilevel models revealed increases in sibling disharmony during the months a deployed parent was away, but showed signs of recovery in the year after they returned. Increases in sibling disharmony were positively associated with increases in youth’s externalizing behaviors above and beyond the effects of parenting.     

Acknowledgements

In this article, I describe how, despite good intentions and carefully considered procedures, strategies, and protocols developed to enhance parent-professional collaboration, collaborative interactions in public schools privilege the interpretation of the professional over that of the parent. As a consequence of this imbalance of power among professionals in schools, the collaborative ethic is far from that originally mandated by the Education for All Handicapped Children Act of 1975. I further suggest that, in the context of the traditional bureaucratic organization of schools, hierarchical authority and well-established power structures will further determine the potential for meaningful collaboration. This analysis holds implications for the implementation of Public Law 99-457, which places even greater emphasis on parental involvement and enduring partnerships with professionals.