‘Standing back’ or ‘stepping up’? Exploring climate change education policy influence in England

This paper explores the nature of climate change education-related policy influence in England at a time when public consciousness about the need to accelerate climate change action was heightened, and as the 2018 climate strikes gathered momentum around the world. Informed by Foucault's concept of ‘governmentalities’, and using data generated through 24 exploratory interviews and reflexive thematic analysis, we examine the extent to which influential individuals were advocating for policy change. We discuss the nature of policy influence with particular reference to the ‘stances’ that individuals adopted relative to climate change education policy influence and noting a common tendency exhibited amongst participants which was a tendency towards ‘deference’. Coupling our insights with theorisations of dissent, we consider how ‘infra-political dissent’ could support key individuals to ‘step up’ and influence for more effective policy relative to climate change education, and to other areas of education or environment policy.     

Screen media exposure and young children's vocabulary learning and development: A meta-analysis

This meta-analysis synthesizes research on media use in early childhood (0–6 years), word-learning, and vocabulary size. Multi-level analyses included 266 effect sizes from 63 studies (N_total = 11,413) published between 1988–2022. Among samples with information about race/ethnicity (51%) and sex/gender (73%), most were majority White/Non-Hispanic and between 40%–60% female. Analyses revealed a small overall positive relation between screen media exposure and vocabulary (r = .23). Experimental studies yielded a small-to-medium effect (r = .30), with stronger effects for e-books than TV/video or games/apps, and non-significant effects for video chat. In correlational studies, there was no overall association between vocabulary size and naturalistic media exposure (r = .07), with the exception of naturalistic exposure to educational media (r = .17).