Reading on Screen: Exploring Issues in Reading for Information with CD-ROM

This article describes the insights gained by a group of primary teachers investigating the implications of CD-ROM for English with their KS2 pupils. As part of the IT in English project, they researched pupils' use of the CD-ROM and its effect on their learning. They developed effective strategies to help pupils cope with the reading demands and edit their own texts. Positive effects on critical reading, collaboration, and use of conventional information books were observed.     

Maternal Separation Anxiety: Its Developmental Course and Relation to Maternal Mental Health

Maternal separation anxiety is a construct that describes a mother's experience of worry, sadness, or guilt during short-term separations from her child. This investigation examined potential differences in psychological correlates between mothers with high and low levels of anxiety when their children were 8 months, 3 1/2 years, and 6 years of age. High levels of maternal separation anxiety had different psychological correlates contingent upon the age of the child. Depressive symptomatology and separation anxiety were unrelated at times 1 and 2, but when the children were 6 years old, mothers who had the highest levels of anxiety tended to have more depressive symptomatology, fewer coping skills, a more negative representation of self, and embraced more traditional sex-role values. Study findings are discussed with respect to their relevance to the mother's role as developmental partner to the child and linked to major theoretical perspectives that address the mother-child relationship.     

A View from Australia

Until 50 years ago the purpose of publishers in Australia was to act as distributors for overseas companies, mainly British. From 1970 onwards a local publishing industry began to develop, taking advantage of the greatly increased investment by publishers in distribution systems to service the “closed market.” In 1991 the “30-day rule” was introduced, leading to an increased amount of local printing of overseas titles, and a growing number of rights purchases of overseas-published books. The pros and cons of “separating out” Australian rights are addressed in this paper.