The Moving Window Technique: A Window Into Developmental Changes in Attention During Facial Emotion Recognition

The strategies children employ to selectively attend to different parts of the face may reflect important developmental changes in facial emotion recognition. Using the Moving Window Technique (MWT), children aged 5–12 years and adults (N = 129) explored faces with a mouse‐controlled window in an emotion recognition task. An age‐related increase in attention to the left eye emerged at age 11–12 years and reached significance in adulthood. This left‐eye bias is consistent with previous eye tracking research and findings of a perceptual bias for the left side of faces. These results suggest that a strategic attentional bias to the left eye begins to emerge at age 11–12 years and is likely established sometime in adolescence.     

In Good Faith: Schools,religion and public funding

In Good Faith: schools, religion and public funding, MARIE PARKER-JENKINS, DIMITRI HARTAS & BARRIE IRVING, 2005 Aldershot: Ashgate, 254 pp., ISBN 0 7546 3351 9 £16.99(pb), 0 7546 3350 0 £55 (hb)     

Scholarship and ideology in education policy studies

Devolution and Choice in Education: the school, the state and the market, GEOFF WHITTY, SALLY POWER & DAVID HALPIN, 1998, Buckingham: Open University Press. £15.99, 170 pp., ISBN 0 335 19711 6     

Similarities and Differences in the Play Activities of Children in Two Public Schools with Contrasting Environment

Based on previous work by H. G. Murray, this study examined relationships between overt classroom teaching behaviors of college instructors and student ratings of teaching effectiveness. One hundred seven students who enrolled in six sections of an introductory psychology course rated instructors on 12 measures of teaching effectiveness and reported the frequencies of 20 observable, inclass teaching behaviors. Relationships between teaching behaviors and student ratings were examined by simple, multiple, and canonical correlation procedures. A complex pattern of relationships emerged. The canonical analysis revealed a two-dimensional structure consisting of instructor clarity and student-teacher rapport dimensions. Teaching behaviors loading on these dimensions were examined.     

Evaluating a Tutorial Program Containing Volunteer Subjects

Student teachers enrolled at Kansas State University and Northeastern State College (Oklahoma) in the spring of 1967 were compared on (1) maintenance of philosophic orientation, (2) adherence to teaching attitudes, (3) reaction to student-teaching, and (4) performance on related criteria. The GNC Scale of Logical Consistency in Educational Ideas determined their philosophic orientation. The Minnesota Teacher Attitude Inventory determined their attitudes toward potential teaching situations. Comparisons were made before and after student teaching by institution, teaching level, and sex. GNC, MTAI, and ACT levels, methods and student-teaching grades, and grade point averages were tested for intercorrelation.

K. S. U. students were more logically consistent and empirically oriented in their ideas about education before and after teaching participation. Teaching attitudes were best maintained by the elementary students in both institutions. N. S. C. students showed greater intercorrelation among all the criteria. Low logical consistency by N. S. C. students may signify disagreement between theoretical and practical educational views. Maintenance of teaching attitudes by K. S. U. elementary students suggests variable effects of professional courses. Agreement among academic and educational criteria by N. S. C. students suggests a greater unaminity of educational ends and means.     

Thinking skills: The question of generality

This paper examines the question of whether there are useful general thinking skills. It offers a working definition of 'thinking skill' and identifies ways in which this concept has been over-applied. Thinking skills, used across domains, are not inevitably weak as a result of the generality-power tradeoff. Admitting that thinking skills require domain-specific knowledge for their application, it is contended nonetheless that there are general thinking skills that involve substantial amounts of domain-independent knowledge. These skills usually address 'generic thinking tasks', common mental challenges that people face in many practical and intellectual endeavours, including the 'domain of practical affairs'. The educational implications of these findings are discussed.     

Book reviews

William J. Baker and James A. Rog (eds.), Sports and the Humanities: A Symposium (University of Maine, Orono, Maine, 1983), Pp.126. $8.95.

William J. Baker, Sports in the Western World. (Totowa, N.J., Rowan and Littlefield, 1982), Pp.viii + 360. $19.95 (hardback).

J. Bale, Sport and Place: A Geography of Sport in England, Scotland and Wales. (London, C. Hurst; Lincoln, University of Nebraska Press, 1982). Pp.187 £9.50.

J. A. Mangan, Athleticism in the Victorian and Edwardian Public School: the Emergence and Consolidation of an Educational Ideology. (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1981). Pp.368. £28.

Beryl Furlong, Carnegie 1933–1983: College and School. (University of Liverpool, 1983). Pp.40. NP.

Gerald Redmond, The Sporting Scots of Nineteenth‐Century Canada. (London and Toronto, Associated University Presses, 1982). Pp.347. £16.50 (hardback).

Steven Tischler, Footballers and Businessmen (New York, Holmes and Meier, 1981). Pp.154.