Women scholars: Closing the publication gap

As more females receive advanced degrees in business and enter the field of teaching in higher education, the role of females as publishers in scholarly journals will increase. Data collected from 27 business-oriented journals covering a 23-year time period support this premise. The purpose of this article is to present that data in order to show the changing role of women in publishing and to highlight some of the similarities and differences between female and male authors.     

Evaluation of Self by Young People with Down Syndrome

There have been relatively few studies of self-esteem with young people with moderate and severe intellectual disability. One reason for this is likely to be measurement difficulties. The purpose of the present study was to assess the usefulness of three measures of self-esteem in 72 young people with Down syndrome aged from 17 to 24 years. Forty-five young people, mean VMA 5 years 10 months, were assessed on the Pictorial Scale of Perceived Competence and Social Acceptance for Young Children and the Joseph PreSchool and Primary Self-Concept Screening Test. Nineteen young people, mean VMA 8 years 9 months, completed the Self-Perception Profile for Learning Disabled Students. Validity was assessed by reading scores and by interviews with the young people and their parents. Eight young people with the most severe intellectual disability could not do any test; the remainder were able to respond to the format of the appropriate tests. On all measures they rated themselves positively. Internal consistency estimates were high, but validity was only demonstrated for the Self-Perception Profile for Learning Disabled Students, supporting its use with the young people who had VMAs of around 7 years. Evaluation of self also showed a standard developmental trend.     

Left Alone: end time for Marxist educational theory?

This paper provides an external account of the demise of the ‘old’ Marxist educational theory flowing from social reproductionism/ resistance theory. Five developments are explored in terms of how they have undercut the ‘old’ educational Marxism: hyper‐academicism; dislocations/disjunctions between theory and practice; the postmodern challenge; the new liberal ‘Left’ challenge; and, the ‘death of Marxism’ syndrome. The first two elements form the basis of some important ‘lessons’ for the revitalisation of Marxist perspectives on education. It is also argued that, although the five trends and developments have posed a serious challenge for the ‘old’ Marxist educational theory, nevertheless, it will probably circulate for some time‐‐given revivals, revisits, and as a source of easy criticism for anti‐Marxists. Finally, there has been a recent flowering of new approaches to theorising education from a Marxist perspective, which this paper maps out.     

Think tanks,education and elite policy actors

The past decade has seen think tanks operate in sophisticated ways to influence the development of education policies. In this paper, I reflect upon the influence of think tanks in the formation of national reform, using the Common Core State Standards initiative in the USA as an illustrative case. In doing so, I explore how certain think tanks, headed by political elites and backed by significant philanthropic funding, have sought to influence the reform initiative. My central argument is that meanings and practices associated with political publics are being transformed as elite policy actors gain influence. Through mobilising significant political and economic power, elites work through think tanks to influence policy debates, re-frame policy problems and advocate for particular policy solutions. The new public formations that are resulting appear to be shifting the conditions of possibility for policy making in education.     

The Communicative Work of Biology-Journal Captions: Lessons for Technical and Professional Communication

The authors examined a corpus of figure captions from technical and professional communication (TPC)-journal articles to test their sense that TPC captions do not fulfill their communicative potential as well as, they sensed, journals in science often do. The authors performed a content analysis on captions from biology-journal articles and iteratively tested a coding scheme of caption content. The resulting scheme can help in analyzing caption content, developing captions, and imparting a variety of TPC-related skills to students.     

Editorial: A Vision of a Fair and Efficient,Diverse and Inclusive,Cumulative Science of Child Development in the Best and Worst of Times

If you have come here in search of the submission requirements at Child Development, this is perhaps not the editorial you are looking for. Consider visiting instead our revised instructions to authors . Nor does this essay simply detail the priorities of the incoming board and the initiatives we will be implementing over the next 6 years, though these are summarized in Table 1. Rather, this editorial was written to articulate clearly the scientific values underlying current plans and policies at the journal in support of publishing the highest quality and highest impact research on child development. I emphasize two interrelated themes: (a) our plans for continuing to emphasize and enhance diversity and inclusion in research on child development and (b) our policies that remove impediments to cumulative developmental science. Discussion focuses primarily on how we are incentivizing efforts to achieve these widely held yet too often neglected goals, taking as its point of departure emerging challenges to a fair and efficient editorial process at the journal. In so doing, I mean to highlight the essential work of continuously cultivating editorial structures that firmly embed in developmental science fundamental scientific values, principles that make it possible for research on child development to flourish in both the best and worst of times.     

Sensory, cognitive, and linguistic factors in the early academic performance of elementary school children: The Benton-IU project

Standardized sensory, perceptual, linguistic, intellectual, and cognitive tests were administered to 470 children, approximately 96% of the students entering the first grade in the four elementary schools of Benton County, Indiana, over a 3-year period (1995--1997). The results of 36 tests and subtests administered to entering first graders were well described by a 4-factor solution. These factors and the tests that loaded most heavily on them were reading-related skills (phonological awareness, letter and word identification); visual cognition (visual perceptual abilities, spatial perception, visual memory); verbal cognition (language development, vocabulary, verbal concepts); and speech processing (the ability to understand speech under difficult listening conditions). A cluster analysis identified 9 groups of children, each with a different profile of scores on the 4 factors. Within these groups, the proportion of students with unsatisfactory reading achievement in the first 2 years of elementary school (as reflected in teacher-assigned grades) varied from 3% to 40%. The profiles of factor scores demonstrated the primary influence of the reading-related skills factor on reading achievement and also on other areas of academic performance. The second strongest predictor of reading and mathematics grades was the visual cognition factor, followed by the verbal cognition factor. The speech processing factor was the weakest predictor of academic achievement, accounting for less than 1% of the variance in reading achievement. This project was a collaborative effort of the Benton Community School Corporation and a multidisciplinary group of investigators from Indiana University.     

Distance education: The future of library and information services requirements

This paper considers the role of library support for distance learning activities at the University of Surrey, with specific reference to the MA in Linguistics (TESOL) and the MSc in English Language Teaching Management. These courses represent a major challenge to support services for distance learners, as the students have no face‐to‐facc contact with staff, and most of them live and work overseas. Firstly the courses are described as operating along a number of clines that define a distance learning operation, and the issue of resource support is considered. We then turn to the role of the library in supporting distance learning students, and consider the ways in which the role of the library in distance learning programs is expanding and changing to meet the challenges of the future. The specific example of the Distance Learners’ Information Service (DiLIS) of the George Edwards Library (GEL) is presented as an example of good practice.