Issues in boys' education: a question of teacher threshold knowledges?

This paper exploresthe effects of specific teacher threshold knowledges about boys and gender on the implementation of a so‐called ‘boy friendly’ curriculum at one junior secondary high school in Australia. Through semi‐structured interviews with selected staff at the school, it examines the normalizing assumptionsand ‘truth claims’ about boys, as gendered subjects, which drive the pedagogical impetus for such a curriculum initiative. This research raises crucial questions about the need for the formulation of both school and governmental policy grounded in sound research‐based knowledge about the social construction of gender and its impact on the lives of both boys and girls and their experiences of schooling. This is crucial, we argue, in light of the recent parliamentary report on boys' education in Australia which rejects gender theorizing and given the failure of key staff in the research school to interrogate thebinary ways in which masculinity and femininity are socially constructed and institutionalized in schools through a particular ‘gender regime’. While some good things are happening in the research school, the failure to acknowledge the social construction of gender means that ultimately the school's programs cannot be successful.     

Preservice teachers’ perceptions of an ICT-rich learning environment: Development of an instrument

This article reports the development of an instrument to measure preservice teachers’ perceptions of the Study Landscape (SLS), which is an ICT-infused learning environment that encourages preservice teachers to direct their own learning to build a two-way relationship between theory and teaching practice. This study comprised a qualitative and quantitative part. Six factors derived from interviews with users formed the basis of the instrument: (1) Support of Learners’ Initiatives; (2) Support of Information Searches; (3) Support of Interaction; (4) Relationship with Fellow Students; (5) Relationship with Teacher Educators; and (6) Relationship with SLS Staff. Once developed, the questionnaire was responded to by 186 students. Analysis of the data supported five out of six factors.     

Positive Youth Development Among Diverse Racial–Ethnic Children: Quality Afterschool Contexts as Developmental Assets

Positive youth development (PYD) deserves more empirical attention, particularly among children of diverse racial–ethnic backgrounds. Given the need among families for monitoring and supervision during out‐of‐school time, community‐based afterschool is a potentially promotive ecological setting. This study explores the quality of afterschool experiences upon PYD. This multimethod study includes over 500 elementary school children in Grades 2–5 (M_age = 8.80, SD = 1.12). The sample comprises of 49% White, 27% African American, 7% Latino, and 17% mixed race/others with 45% free/reduced lunch eligible children. In multilevel models, independently observed quality across time positively impacted competence, connection, caring for all youth, and cultural values for racial–ethnic minority youth. Afterschool fosters PYD, including sociocultural dimensions, when comprised of appropriately structured, supportive, and engaging interactions.     

Problem solving in the rat: Piecemeal acquisition of cognitive maps

The purpose of this experiment was to compare the problem-solving performance of rats allowed to explore either one or two tables of Maier’s three-table-problem apparatus on successive days. The feeding experience and test trial were administered on the day after all tables and runways had been explored in this piecemeal fashion. No rat that explored only one table and runway per day was able to solve the problem, whereas 60% of the rats that explored two tables and their interconnecting runways did solve the problem. All rats that explored the entire apparatus on each exploratory day were able to solve the problem. These data support the notion that animals can conceptually link objects experienced successively into cognitive representations which specify the constant relationships existing between those objects. The existence of such an absolute spatial mechanism makes it unnecessary for an organism to depend upon relative spatial mechanisms such as routes or cues.     

Infants' Reliance on a Social Criterion for Establishing Word-Object Relations

The language children hear presents them with a multitude of co-occurrences between words and things in the world, and they must repeatedly determine which among these manifold co-occurrences is relevant. Social factors—such as cues regarding the speaker's referential intent—might serve as one guide to whether word-object covariation should be registered. In 2 studies, infants (15–20 months and 18–20 months in Studies 1 and 2, respectively) heard novel labels at a time when they were investigating a single novel object; in one case the label was uttered by a speaker seated within the infant's view and displaying concurrent attention to the novel toy (coupled condition), whereas in the other case the label emanated from a speaker seated out of the infant's view (decoupled condition). In both studies, subsequent comprehension questions indicated that infants of 18–20 months registered a stable link between label and object in the coupled condition, but not in the decoupled condition, despite the fact that covariation between label and object was equivalent in the 2 conditions. Thus, by 18–20 months children are inclined to establish a mapping between word and object only when a speaker displays signs of referring to that object.     

Description and field test of a career development course for male youth offenders with disabilities

This project was supported in part by a grant from the U.S. Department of Education, Office of Special Education and Rehabilitative Services.     

Behavior genetic analysis of mouse emotionality: II. Stability of factors across genotypes

Three emotionally divergent strains of mice (SWR/J, A/HeJ, and SJL/J) were mated to produce three populations: a pure strain population (N = 90), an F₁ population (N = 120), and an F₂ population (N = 96). All Ss were tested on a battery of measures of emotionality. Each population was factored separately by principal components factoring with varimax and promax rotations. Factorial invariance was assessed quantitatively by congruence coefficients. Eight of the resultant factors were found to be replicable across populations. These were autonomic balance, motor discharge, territorial marking, acrophobia, tunneling-1, tunneling-2, underwater swimming, and audiogenic reactivity. Of the eight factors, motor discharge was most distinct in each population and tunneling-1 was least distinct.