The Magellan project: Developing global citizens through independent study abroad

Washington & Jefferson College undergraduate Magellan Scholars explore the world on their own. Tori Haring‐Smith describes this unique program and explains why it offers so much more than a traditional study abroad experience.     

Emergent Supervisors: Comparing Counseling Center and Non‐Counseling‐Center Interns' Supervisory Training Experiences

Predoctoral interns' responses to an internship supervision training questionnaire indicated that counseling center interns supervised more trainees, received more supervision in their supervisory roles, reported more supervision training activities, and yielded higher supervisor development scores than did non‐counseling‐center interns. A qualitative analysis of participants' responses showed that non‐counseling‐center interns desired more supervision training and opportunities to provide supervision during their internship year than did counseling center interns.     

Childhood Ideology in the United States: A Comparative Cultural View

Childhood ideology functions in each nation as a complex of ideas about what children are like and how best to teach and socialise them. One important domain of childhood ideology concerns ideas and practices related to children's development and behaviour management. Drawing from an analysis of popular childrearing magazines and early childhood education materials in the United States, this cultural study describes contemporary American mainstream beliefs concerning children's early emotional and behavioural development. In particular, the paper explores themes of emotional expression, autonomy, individuality, power, and consumerism. Some comparisons with Japanese views on child development and emotional/behavioural socialisation are also made. The paper suggests that popular ideas and techniques of emotional and behavioural management in the United States in both families and early childcare environments reflect a dominant ideology of children that has potentially negative consequences for children's welfare. Furthermore, childhood ideologies, while retaining culturally specific values and ideas neither remain static nor exist in isolation from one another. The paper questions the global diffusion of a Western-style professionalised discourse of child psychology that may not be applicable to all nations and their children.     

Skills for Independence for Children with Cerebral Palsy: a comparative longitudinal study

Thirty‐six children with cerebral palsy, aged 3.5 to 4.5 years were compared on their skills for independence. Of the 36 boys and girls, 19 children were enrolled in a Conductive Education Program in Birmingham and 17 were enrolled in British special education programs in the Greater Manchester area. Skills for independence were measured with the Vineland Adaptive Behavior Scales via teachers’ responses, once a year on three occasions. Parents were interviewed using the Developmental Profile 2, once a year on three occasions. The results of two‐way ANOVA with one repeated measure on both teachers’ and parents’ responses indicate that there was no significant difference between the two groups in their skills for independence. However, both groups performed significantly better as they were getting older. Despite the strong emphasis on independence in Conductive Education, the children's level of independence was no different from their counterparts. Thus, the claim for the effectiveness of Conductive Education is not supported by the study.     

Learning science through technological design

In the course of a decade of research on learning in technology‐centered classrooms, my research group has gained considerable understanding of why and how students learn science by designing technology. In this article I briefly review two dimensions in which science and technology share fundamental similarities: (a) the production and transformation of representations and (b∥ the action‐oriented language describing the two domains. Because it is fundamentally problematic to derive what ought to happen in science classrooms from other dimensions, I provide three episodes to illustrate what and how students know and learn science during technological design activities. Episodes and analyses embody the two dimensions previously outlined. Because these episodes are representative of the database established during an extensive research program, I suggest there is sufficient ground for using and investigating science‐through‐technology curricula. © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. J Res Sci Teach 38: 768–790, 2001     

Why Do We Want to Change Teachers’ Beliefs and How Could We Support These Changes? The Case of Conceptions of Learning

The theoretical part of this paper argues for an embedding of the question of stability and change of teachers’ conceptions of learning into the researchers epistemological standpoint. The empirical part illustrates this statement by showing how changes in a teacher's conception of learning could be understood from a constructivist perspective. According to this perspective, conceptions are related to other relational and environmental variables that form a meaningful configuration. Thus, although conceptions of learning appear as relatively stable cognitive structures, they are also related to environmental variables to be managed by the teachers’ educators. This research result determines the discussion of the basic questions addressed in the title of this paper: why do we want to change teachers beliefs and how could we, as teachers’ educators, support these changes.     

Translating Policy into Practice: the teaching and learning experience

Student diversity has increased within Australian universities. This has changed the teaching and learning needs of students. The implementation of quality was aimed at enhancing the quality of the higher educational product. However, the policy, while providing an accountability framework at the institution level, failed to provide the structural mechanisms needed to achieve quality in the teaching and learning the students receive, that is the sub‐faculty level. Other factors, such as the potential growth of non‐government resources in the form of more international students have perhaps a greater chance of improving the quality of teaching and learning within the faculties, because they provide both the funds and an incentive for more funds as a reward for implementing quality assurance within the teaching and learning function of universities.     

WHAT CONSTITUTES EFFECTIVE RESEARCH? A CASE STUDY

The aim of this study is to elicit from staff members and from postgraduate students their personal constructs of research effectiveness. Based on Kelly's Personal Construct Theory, the repertory grid technique was used to elicit, analyse, discuss, and negotiate individual and group constructs of research with the result of arriving at a greater group consensus and a clearer picture of shared criteria for research effectiveness.     

Child care in Kenya

Kenya—East African nation of big game, tourism, thorn trees, and white sand beaches—is facing a new challenge in preschool education. With nearly 20 percent of the children under five in some type of child care situation, it is possible that everyday preschool experiences may be leading children either closer to, or away from, the values of their parents. The test for this relatively new nation is to find the proper balance between the goals of the preschool and the values of both traditional and modernized parents. It is a topic of equal importance in any nation where a great many preschoolers are cared for by persons other than their parents.     

ICT and educational (dis)advantage: families,computers and contemporary social and educational inequalities

Because access to new technologies is unequally distributed, there has been considerable debate about the growing gap between the so‐called information‐rich and information‐poor. Such concerns have led to high‐profile information technology policy initiatives in many countries. In Australia, in an attempt to ‘redress the balance between the information rich and poor’ by providing ‘equal access to the World Wide Web’ (Virtual Communities, 2002 Virtual Communities (2002) About us. Available online at: http://www.virtualcommunities. com.au (accessed 18 August 2002)  [Google Scholar]), the Australian Council of Trade Unions, Virtual Communities (a computer/software distributor) and Primus (an Internet provider) in late 1999 formed an alliance to offer relatively inexpensive computer and Internet access to union members in order to make ‘technology affordable for all Australians’ (Virtual Communities, 2002 Virtual Communities (2002) About us. Available online at: http://www.virtualcommunities. com.au (accessed 18 August 2002)  [Google Scholar]). In this paper, we examine four families, one of which had long‐term Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) access, and three of which took advantage of the Virtual Communities offer to get home computer and Internet access for the first time. We examine their engagement with ICT and suggest that previously disadvantaged family members are not particularly advantaged by their access to ICT.