Cambios evolutivos en el patrón de lateralización en dos grupos de inmigrantes

Resumen

Se han estudiado los cambios evolutivos de la participación hemisférica cerebral en 80 estudiantes de instituto germanosuecos y en 28 adultos polaco-suecos que llegaron como refugiados políticos desde Polonia a Succia. Mediante un estudio transversal tomando como principal variable independiente la duración de la estancia en Suecia, se encontró que la competencia en la segunda lengua (sueco) variaba desde cero hasta un nivel similar al de los nativos. Se tomaron varias medidas lingüísticas en los dos idiomas como el nivel de palabras mediante pruebas taquistoscópicas y el nivel de palabras y frases con escucha dicótica. Los resultados de las diversas modalidades mostraron la menor participación del hemisferio izquierdo a mayor nivel de bilingüismo. El cambio gradual hacia el hemisferio derecho ocurrió tanto en los bilingües tempranos como en los tardíos, y en la L1 y la L2 en idiomas similares. En idiomas diferentes se obtuvo un efecto significativo marginal sólo para la L2. Se discuten los resultados en función de las hipótesis actuales sobre la lateralización y se ofrecen datos en contra de la hipótesis de los estadios.     

TEACHER TRAINING AND SCHOOL PRACTICE

In their previous article (Educational Research, 13, 1) the authors discussed the attitudes of 1,000 pupils in selective secondary schools towards literature generally and towards GCE ‘O’ and ‘A’ level examinations. In that article they explored pupils’ expressed likes and dislikes of texts prescribed by GCE examining boards; they now consider these same pupils’ preferences in their leisure reading, and conclude that present methods of teaching English often fail to take into account ‘consumer’ response, particularly in poetry and drama reading.     

Recent experimental strategies for prejudice reduction in American schools and classrooms

Through an analysis of policy documents, archival material, interviews and journal articles, this paper attempts to map those discourses which have become an important part of the meanings and practices that make up the physical education curriculum in New South Wales, Australia, from 1880 to 1980. It uses a feminist perspective to argue that the dominance of a masculine agenda, built around organized sport and the human movement sciences, has marginalized other pedagogies and other forms of physical activity, such as gymnastics and dance, which are more likely to be associated with women. Physical education possesses characteristics which make it a particularly potent site within education for discourses about the body. When organized sports dominate the curriculum, the valuing of individual achievement through aggressive competition, within a context of male dominance, becomes the normative standard. This typically works against women's and girls’ participation in physical education and physical activity; it also contributes to the (re)production of notions of women being ‘weaker’ and ‘lacking’ in relation to male superior strength and skill. There has been a marked and continuing absence of oppositional discourses in Australian physical education to contest the dominance of the masculine tradition. Contestation has been framed primarily within liberal feminist or ‘equal opportunity’ discourses which rarely challenge the dominant forms of physical education. Further analyses using feminist perspectives are required to challenge existing curricula.     

Exposure to Parental Depression in Adolescence and Risk for Metabolic Syndrome in Adulthood

The psychosocial consequences of living with a depressed parent have been well characterized. Less well known, however, is how this exposure is predictive of later physical health problems. The present study evaluated how parental depression across youths’ adolescence (ages 11–18) was associated with youth metabolic syndrome at age 25 (n = 391). Youth self-regulation and health behaviors were considered as possible moderators of the link between parental depression and youth metabolic syndrome. Analyses revealed that parental depression in adolescence was associated with a composite score reflecting metabolic syndrome components in early adulthood. Furthermore, self-regulation and health behaviors moderated this link, such that links between parental depression and the metabolic syndrome existed only for youth with low self-regulation or unhealthy behaviors.     

Report to the President on the Use of Technology to Strengthen K–12 Education in the United States: Findings Related to Research and Evaluation

The Panel on Educational Technology was organized in April 1995 under the auspices of the President's Committee of Advisers on Science and Technology (PCAST) to provide advice to the President on matters related to the application of information technologies to K–12 education in the United States. Its findings and recommendations were set forth in March 1997 in the Report to the President on the Use of Technology to Strengthen K–12 Education in the United States. This report was based on a review of the research literature and on written submissions and oral briefings from a number of academic and industrial researchers, practicing educators, software developers, governmental agencies, and professional and industry organizations involved in various ways with the application of technology to education. Its most important finding is that a large-scale program of rigorous, systematic research on education in general and educational technology in particular will ultimately prove necessary to ensure both the efficacy and cost-effectiveness of technology use within our nation's K–12 schools. Finding that less than 0.1 percent of our nation's expenditures for elementary and secondary education are currently invested to determine which educational techniques actually work, and to find ways to improve them—an extremely low level relative to comparable ratios within the private sector—the Panel recommended that this figure be increased over a period of several years to at least 0.5 percent, and sustained at that level on an ongoing basis. Further, because no one state, municipality, or private firm could hope to capture more than a small fraction of the benefits associated with a significant advance in our understanding of how best to educate K–12 students, the Panel concluded that such funding will have to be provided largely at the federal level in order to avoid a systematic underinvestment (attributable to a classical form of economic externality) relative to the level that would be optimal for the nation as a whole. This paper originally appeared as Section 8 of the report.     

International trends in health science librarianship: Part 2--Northern Europe

This is the third in a series of articles exploring international trends in health science librarianship in the first decade of the 21st century. The invited authors were asked to reflect on developments in their country--viz. Austria, Belgium, France and the Netherlands. Future issues will track trends in the Nordic countries, Southern Europe and Latin America. JM.     

Self-rated competences questionnaires from a design perspective

This paper provides a theoretical review of self-rated competences questionnaires. This topic is influenced by the ongoing world-wide reform of higher education, which has led to a focus on the learner outcomes of higher education. Consequently, questionnaires on self-rated competences have increasingly been employed. However, self-ratings are often criticised for their lack of validity. Our intention is to outline some principles of good questionnaire design and to use these principles to contrast questionnaires on self-rated competences. We begin with an overview of research about questionnaire design. Then we introduce seven questionnaires and portray them in terms of their design characteristics. A comparison reveals some significant points: biographical data need to be handled more carefully, and there is an overuse of vague and abstract language. On the positive side, all of the questionnaires that were examined provide reliable sub-scales covering important facets of competences.