Vocabulary Development and Trajectories of Behavioral and Emotional Difficulties Via Academic Ability and Peer Problems

This study investigates associations between trajectories of children's vocabulary development and subsequent behavioral and emotional difficulties via two potential mediating mechanisms; literacy and peer problems. Nationally representative data from 4,983 Australian children were used to examine trajectories of receptive vocabulary (4–5, 6–7, and 8–9 years) and hyperactivity-inattention, conduct problems and emotional symptoms (8–9, 10–11, 12–13, 14–15 years), and literacy and peer problems (8–9 years). Lower growth in vocabulary was related to trajectories of hyperactivity-inattention, conduct problems, and emotional symptoms. Literacy was a key mediator explaining these associations. Results were consistent for children below the 50th percentile for vocabulary at 4–5 years compared to the full sample. These findings suggest that early literacy-based interventions may alleviate declining academic, emotional and behavioral functioning in adolescence.     

Students’ experiences of studying physics concepts: The effects of disintegrated perceptions and approaches

Recent research on student learning has revealed that a number of students in any learning context are unable to distinguish between contrasting contextualised approaches to learning. In other words, the relationship between their perceptions of the learning context and their approaches to learning disintegrates and becomes incoherent. These students are observed to be among the lower academic achievers in their group. This paper reports on the results of a study which shows that physics students’ prior understandings of key concepts are systematically related to the way they approach their studies, their perceptions of the learning context and the quality of the outcomes of their studies. As with previous studies, one group reported disintegrated learning experiences. As a group they were found to have the poorest pre-conceptual knowledge, to have the poorest postconceptual knowledge, and to be the lowest achievers. These results are consistent with the earlier studies, but extend them by showing that disintegrated perceptions and approaches are related to students’ understanding before and after the subject as determined using qualitative indicators of understanding as well as assessment results.     

Perspectives on Socialization Factors in University Students in the People's Republic of China and the United States

This paper focuses on the socialization factors of undergraduate students that lead to the readiness for education.Factors such as parental socialization,student background characteristics,pre college normative pressures and influences,and non college refernce groups will be helpful in relating to reality of undergraduate students.This information will help both faculty and administrators meet the needs of students by understanding the processes of development and change in their college years.     

Where are the grounds for grounded theory? A troubled empirical methodology meets Wittgenstein

This article provides a critical exposition of the epistemological underpinnings of a recent redevelopment of Grounded Theory (GT) methodology, ‘Constructivist’ GT. Although proffered as freed from the ‘objectivist’ tenets of the original version, critical examination exposes the essentialism threaded through its integral analytic practices. Movement towards a position critical of an external referent, discernible within Wittgenstein’s later works, is the apparent target of Constructivist GT. However, despite its championing of indeterminate, multiple meanings, the notion of correspondence to the world, discernible within the Tractatus, persists. In order for Constructivist GT to achieve coherence, Socio-Linguistic Realism is suggested here as a stance which would help sharpen its distinction from the atomism of the original version of GT. However, in order for such repositioning to extend to all its analytic practices, particularly coding, further development would be required so that it can accommodate the notion of context bound meanings and language use. As it stands, its fuzzy epistemological position translates into rather ambiguous analytic coding practices. Further, an ill-defined conception of linguistic meanings and the intermittent positing of referents external to the social contexts researched does little to foster a secure methodological position with a clarified notion of grounding.     

Competing voices: a Figured Worlds approach to theorising graduate perspectives on career success

ABSTRACT

Becoming a university graduate has long been considered the route to individual occupational and social mobility, while educating more citizens has been assumed to add to a nation’s human capital and competitiveness. University education has come to be associated with individual and societal aspiration. However, changes in the labour market associated with globalisation, technology, and fears of graduate underemployment have served to question this. This paper seeks to uncover the meaning that individuals construct about their early careers as they navigate such uncertain contexts. It reports on a study based on the graduate population of one university in England. Analysis tests the value of Figured Worlds theory. Using the construct of ‘self-authoring’, this paper identifies competing voices around employability and career success. Findings reveal how graduates orchestrate varied voices, in order to find ways to figure their experience and what it means to be a successful graduate.     

Han Chinese racism and Malaysian contexts: cosmopolitan racial formations in Tan Twan Eng’s The Garden of Evening Mists

ABSTRACT

This essay explores what it means to theorize Han racism in Malaysian contexts, where ethnic Chinese constitute a minority. Given the history of Malay political dominance and recent intensification of Malay-Muslim ethno-nationalism as part of a backlash against the historic change of government in 2018, theorizing Han racism might seem like a move to downplay these factors and minimize the various forms of racialized violence directed at Chinese identified bodies. To the contrary, I show that doing so involves tracking the transnational process of racial production, which requires understanding how racist and capitalist modes of hierarchy operate in tandem, and how racial discourses are used by the state to manage domestic political exigencies and global economic forces to facilitate ongoing capitalist accumulation. I then turn to consider the arena of world Anglophone literature, which has emerged as a transnational site for narrating Chinese Malaysian experiences, by considering an exemplary text, a 2012 novel by Tan Twan Eng, The Garden of Evening Mists. In examining the material and ideological conditions of the global literary marketplace in shaping the novel, I consider how the cosmopolitan nature of global Anglophone literary production can obscure the racial underpinnings of its cultural productions as in the case of Tan’s novel.