Learning in virtual worlds: Using communities of practice to explain how people learn from play

Although there is interest in the educational potential of online multiplayer games and virtual worlds, there is still little evidence to explain specifically what and how people learn from these environments. This paper addresses this issue by exploring the experiences of couples that play World of Warcraft together. Learning outcomes were identified (involving the management of ludic, social and material resources) along with learning processes, which followed Wenger's model of participation in Communities of Practice. Comparing this with existing literature suggests that productive comparisons can be drawn with the experiences of distance education students and the social pressures that affect their participation.     

Developing a School Focused Approach to Continuing Professional Development in Sustainability Education

This article has two aims. Its first is to describe how findings from a questionnaire survey of 96 UK primary schools influenced the theory of action adopted in the SEEPS Project, (Sustainability Education in European Primary Schools, 1997) funded by DGXI and DGXXII of the European Commission and Scottish Natural Heritage. SEEPS is a continuing professional development (CPD) project developed by representatives from 11 European educational systems. The first section of the article outlines how the Project came to adopt a school focused theory of action in CPD, in preference to a centralised or school-based approach. School focused CPD trains trainers and provides them with adaptable materials that can support individualised CPD programmes decided in and by the school and its staff. The second aim is to outline and analyse some of the more interesting inter and intra-regional relationships, correlations and differences which emerged from the survey. We have only included those findings that illuminate CPD provision in sustainability education. This article seeks to share data with others working in environmental education and sustainability education and to stimulate a debate about the relevance of school focused approaches in international discussions about CPD in environmental and sustainability education.     

You go this way and I'll go that way: developmental changes in infants' detection of correlations among static and dynamic features in motion events

Four experiments utilizing the habituation procedure examined 10- to 18-month-olds' ability to detect and encode correlations among features in a motion event (N = 136). Infants were habituated to two events in which objects-with distinct parts and a distinct body-moved across a screen along a rectilinear or curvilinear motion path. Infants were then tested with one familiar event and three events in which one feature of the object (parts, body, or motion path) was presented in a novel combination with the other features. The results of the experiments revealed that 10-month-olds process independently static features in an event, but do not process correlations among dynamic features; whereas 14-month-olds detect the correlation between an object's parts and its motion trajectory, but only when the movement of parts is correlated with the motion of the object. Further, the data show that 18-month-olds detect correlations between all three features when the parts of the object move, but they detect only the relation between parts and motion path when the parts do not move. It is proposed that infants develop representations for the static and dynamic properties of objects through a sensitive perceptual system that detects individual features, whole objects, and movement properties, and a domain-general associative learning mechanism that encodes independent features and correlations among features.     

Children and stress: Sources,reactions, and interventions

Stress in childhood is universal, an inevitable part of life. No child reaches adolescence without having to cope with the normal developmental and environmental stresses of weaning, toilet training, entry into school, and the inevitable increasing demands for self-control and responsibility.Diane Shrier is clinical associate professor and director of child and adolescent psychiatry at the New Jersey Medical School in Newark.     

Leading them to books—For life

Promoting lifelong reading, learning, and library use is a goal of most youth-serving librarians. The Young Adult Services Department of the Mesa, Arizona, Public Library is finding that more teens are entering adulthood each year as library users and supporters, and they are bringing their children to the library, too. This article shares a YA librarian's perspectives on how to provide successful reader advisory for teens and how to get young adults to read on their own, building the foundation of a lifelong interest in reading, an interest passed from generation to generation. Building this foundation depends on dedicated, well-trained specialists in YA library service, the publication of well-written and attractive books for teens, school and public library administrative support. Diane P. Tuccillo has been head of the Young Adults Services Adult Services Department at the Mesa (Arizona) Public Library since 1980. She has had articles published in a variety of professional journals includingEmergency Librarian, Voice of Young Advocates (VOYA), andThe ALAN Review, and is a regular book reviewer forVOYA, Kliatt Young Adult Paperback Book Guide, andSchool Library Journal.     

GENDER BIAS: ANALYSIS OF FACTORS CAUSING MALE UNDERREPRESENTATION IN SURVEYS

Using data from a 1987 telephone survey of over 1,000 Illinoisadult residents, this research looked into factors causing maleunder-representation in surveys using the last-birthday methodof respondent selection. Differences by sex in rates of refusaland non-contact (after respondent selection) were evaluatedfor relative contribution to gender bias. Accuracy of informant'sresponse to the birthday question was gauged by checking againstbirth dates of adults rostered during the interview. Other factors,such as the proportion of informants who do not know the lastbirthday, or who misreport from a desire to be the one interviewed(or not interviewed), were evaluated for relative effect onsample representation of males and females.