Developmental changes in endogenous control of attention: the role of target familiarity on infants' distraction latency

This study evaluated the interactive effects of endogenous and exogenous influences on infants' attention allocation by assessing the role of target familiarity on distraction latency during object exploration. In Experiment 1 (N = 54), infants' distraction latencies as they investigated both familiar toys (ones they previously had seen in a familiarization procedure) and novel toys (ones they had not seen in the familiarization procedure) were assessed longitudinally at 6.5 and 9 months of age. In Experiment 2 (N = 32), infants' distraction latencies were assessed at either 6.5 or 10 months as they investigated either familiar or novel targets. In both experiments, older infants, but not younger infants, exhibited longer latencies as they investigated novel toys as compared with their latencies as they investigated familiar toys. These results are discussed in terms of developmental changes in the interactive effects of endogenous and exogenous factors controlling attention allocation.     

The many pathways of academic coordination

Faculties, departments, chairs and other operating segments of academic systems are organized around a large number of disparate specialties. The parts are weakly interdependent, since the task structure generates systems in which operations are loosely coupled. Coordination then becomes an unusual problem. Order may be more emergent than planned, and stabilized by emotional and symbolic bonds as much as by administrative structure. Various groups and processes not normally studied as a part of deliberate coordination are involved in the ordering of academic activities and actions. This paper details four major pathways of coordination: by bureaucracy, profession, politics, and the market. All four are involved in all national academic systems, but in widely varying strengths and combinations. The bureaucratic means are well-known, reflected in the formal administrative structures of institutions and systems. Professional coordination is rooted in subject expertise and in the group relations and devices that allow professors to rule at various levels. Political coordination has many sub-forms, with the struggle of interest groups expressed particularly in the actions of regular officials of regimes and parties, the corporatist relations of external groups to government, and the organized efforts of strata within academic systems to act politically. Market coordination also has a variety of sub-forms, operating particularly by means of a consumer market, a labor market, and an institutional market. Various compounds of these four major types are evident, including the linkage of such opposites as bureaucracy and market. The many tasks and interests inherent in academic systems are reflected increasingly in the struggle of corresponding ministries, departments, bureaus, and divisions against one another within government itself. This struggle, too, is a form of coordination. Since each of the major pathways of coordination performs needed functions, policy becomes a matter of balance and mutual adjustment among the many ways by which academic activities are concerted.Edited version of a plenary address given at the Fourth International Conference on Higher Education, University of Lancaster, 29th August–1st September, 1978. I am indebted to my colleagues in the Yale Higher Education Research Group for their comments on earlier drafts of this paper.     

Understanding inclusive STEM high schools as opportunity structures for underrepresented students: Critical components

Inclusive STEM high schools (ISHSs) can be viewed as opportunity structures for students underrepresented in STEM. By opportunity structures, we mean an education that provides not only access to high quality STEM curriculum and instruction or “opportunity to learn,” but also the capacity to create learning environments where students can build STEM social capital and the dispositions, knowledge, skills, and networks to be successful in STEM college majors and careers. This is a cross‐case analysis of case studies that describe the design and implementation of eight “exemplar” ISHSs. Beginning with 10 hypothesized critical components, we found evidence for all 10, but present in unique patterns of prominence, depending on the school context. Further inductive analysis located an additional four emergent critical components that complete the picture of how these successful ISHSs were able to achieve their goals. Importantly, across schools, four components stood out as foundational: a flexible and autonomous administrative structure; a college‐preparatory, STEM‐focused curriculum for all; well‐prepared STEM teachers and professionalized teaching staffs; and supports for students in underrepresented groups. Although many of the critical components found in the ISHSs are also found in the school reform literature, these schools also had characteristics unique to STEM education. This paper is important in understanding STEM high schools as opportunity structures and as a school reform alternative that can help solve equity and social mobility gaps in STEM.     

The level of Internet access and ICT training for health information professionals in sub-Saharan Africa

BACKGROUND: Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) are important tools for development. Despite its significant growth on a global scale, Internet access is limited in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). Few studies have explored Internet access, use of electronic resources and ICT training among health information professionals in Africa. OBJECTIVE: The study assessed Internet access, use of electronic resources and ICT training among health information professionals in SSA. METHODS: A 26-item self-administered questionnaire in English and French was used for data collection. The questionnaire was completed by health information professionals from five Listservs and delegates at the 10th biannual Congress of the Association of Health Information and Libraries in Africa (AHILA). RESULTS: A total of 121 respondents participated in the study and, of those, 68% lived in their countries' capital. The majority (85.1%) had Internet access at work and 40.8% used cybercafes as alternative access points. Slightly less than two-thirds (61.2%) first learned to use ICT through self-teaching, whilst 70.2% had not received any formal training in the previous year. Eighty-eight per cent of respondents required further ICT training. CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS: In SSA, freely available digital information resources are underutilized by health information professionals. ICT training is recommended to optimize use of digital resources. To harness these resources, intergovernmental and non-governmental organizations must play a key role.     

Counteracting fabricated anti-gay public pedagogy in Uganda with strategic lifelong learning as critical action

Political, cultural and social fallout following the introduction of the anti-homosexuality bill in Uganda in 2009 intensified fabrication of an anti-gay public pedagogy of negation and nemesis that fuelled the passage of the Anti-Homosexuality Act, 2014. The Government of Uganda, conventional Anglicanism and US evangelical Christianity were all implicated in developing this homophobic public pedagogy. This article provides an extensive account of what transpired to result in prohibition of lifelong learning focused on Ugandan sexual minorities. In the face of this prohibition, the article calls for lifelong learning as critical action constructed as strategic public counter-pedagogy aimed at recognizing and accommodating sexual minorities in the face of homophobia. This critically progressive counter-pedagogy would include a pragmatic turn to comprehensive health education as a starting point for inclusive, holistic learning. The article also considers the important role that media could play in this work. It explores contemporary realities of advancing and deploying lifelong learning as critical action in Uganda, examining the current dire state of education in the nation. It concludes by considering the status of Uganda’s tenacious quest to entrench gay apartheid amid what is now a growing trend toward global gay inclusion.     

From failure to success: Changing the experience of adult learners of mathematics

For the last few years, the author has been part of a team developing a mathematics course for students most of whom are women, many of whom are black and all of whom are attempting to gain entry to a teacher-training course by successfully completing a one year re-entry course. It is a requirement that teacher-training students should have attained a suitable standard in mathematics. Further Education colleges where re-entry courses are sited have a sad history of student failure in mathematics. The theoretical environment in which the development of this course took place is described in order to place the course in context. In particular, attention is drawn to the re-definition of mathematics which encourages student enquiry and experimentation in order to establish a basis for understanding the subject, and to the teaching/learning model which creates an environment of respect and confidence. The roles of students and staff in a learning environment of this kind are discussed. Particular attention is paid to the attitudes and feelings of the students and the effects on their expectations.     

Community Education and child-care programs

The Community Education Services (CES) division of the Children's Television Workshop (CTW) is CTW's community-outreach arm. This article describes how CES works with parents, children, experts, and local groups to develop special multimedia products, four of which are discussed. Two of the products—a fire-safety kit and a natural-hazards packet—were designed to teach young children how to protect themselves in life-threatening emergencies. Two other products—CES'sSesame Street preschool education materials and its3-2-1 Contact andSquare One TV after-school materials—are attempts by CTW to respond to societal changes that have increasingly shifted the burden of child care onto preschool and after-school programs.