Conversations with Five Highly Successful Female Educational Psychologists: Patricia Alexander,Carol Dweck,Jacquelynne Eccles,Mareike Kunter,and Tamara van Gog

Educational Psychology Review - Previous studies have investigated the characteristics, influencing factors, and working strategies of highly successful educational psychologists. These studies,...     

Managing Masculinities: The Metrosexual Moment

In this essay, I explore the historical moment of metrosexuality in popular culture that, I argue, rather than simply a fad, constituted a logical premise vital to assuaging the “crisis” in masculinity engendered by the phenomenon of commercial masculinity. I trace the ways in which the fleeting trend of metrosexuality was articulated rhetorically in US popular culture in such a way as to rationalise commercial masculinity in targeted, explicit ways. I argue that metrosexuality served a crucial rhetorical function for the reconciliation of commercial masculinity with normative masculinity by organising homosociality in strategic ways. Accordingly, I suggest that apparently transient popular cultural trends might best be understood in terms of their location in—and strategic rhetorical function for—broader cultural discourses.     

Make it relevant! How prior instructions foster the integration of teacher knowledge

Instructional Science - Preservice teachers face the challenge of integrating multiple types of knowledge, such as pedagogical–psychological knowledge and subject-specific pedagogical...     

Perceiving "outside the box" occurs early in development: evidence for boundary extension in three- to seven-month-old infants

This investigation examined whether infants display boundary extension-a tendency to remember more of a visual scene than was presented. Three- to 7-month-olds were familiarized with a photograph of a visual scene, and tested with wide-angle versus close-up views of the scene. Infants preferred the close-up, indicating that they perceived the wide angle (the one consistent with boundary extension) as more familiar. Converging experiments showed that: (a) infants did not spontaneously prefer the close-up, (b) adults did not judge the wide angle to be more similar to the familiarization stimulus, and (c) infants spontaneously preferred the close-up when the photographs depicted outline objects without backgrounds. The findings suggest that infants anticipate information that lies beyond the borders of a scene view.     

Riding the information highway—towards a new kind of learning

Adults' motivation to participate in continued education is of immediate interest, as lifelong learning is now considered as the solution to the pressing problems of increased levels of unemployment, not least among unskilled workers. Many theories concerning motivation and adult education maintain that individuals are innately motivated to learn, and conclude that motivation problems result from various dispositional, situational and structural impediments. If such barriers are removed, adults will be naturally motivated to educate themselves. This article argues against these theories and maintains that motivation should not be regarded as something residing within the individual. It is rather a construct of those who see it lacking in others. A critical reading of the literature shows how motivation theory stigmatizes people held ‘unmotivated’ in that the theories ascribe motivation problems to the individual, while assuming the basis upon which the problem is formulated for granted, and making those who formulate the problem invisible. Instead of a problem solver, motivation becomes a euphemism for direction and control. This article suggests that motivation should be seen as a relational concept, rather than as residing within the individual. Adults' motivation, or lack of this, is best understood in relation to those who formulate the problem. Instead of asking what motivates adults to study, research should focus on who states that this is a problem, and why, and the reasons for this conclusion. This approach makes the operations of power visible, and demonstrates how the discourse of lifelong learning, as a necessary political response to economic and technological determinism, constructs adults as inadequate.     

How word decoding, vocabulary and prior topic knowledge predict reading comprehension. A study of language-minority students in Norwegian fifth grade classrooms

This study examined the contribution of word decoding, first-language (L1) and second-language (L2) vocabulary and prior topic knowledge to L2 reading comprehension. For measuring reading comprehension we employed two different reading tasks: Woodcock Passage Comprehension and a researcher-developed content-area reading assignment (the Global Warming Test) consisting of multiple lengthy texts. The sample included 67 language-minority students (native Urdu or native Turkish speakers) from 21 different fifth grade classrooms in Norway. Multiple regression analyses revealed that word decoding and different facets of L2 vocabulary explained most of the variance in Woodcock Passage Comprehension, but a smaller proportion of variance in the Global Warming Test. For the Global Warming Test, prior topic knowledge was the most influential predictor. Furthermore, L2 vocabulary depth appeared to moderate the contribution of prior topic knowledge to the Global Warming Test in this sample of language minority students.     

Reinventing Privilege: The New (Gay) Man in Contemporary Popular Media

In recent years, the gay man/heterosexual woman couple configuration has become a genre unto itself in mediated popular culture, resulting in unprecedented mainstream visibility for gay men. Major mainstream films, such as My Best Friend's Wedding, Object of My Affection, and The Next Best Thing, showcase this combination as their centerpiece, as does the highly rated prime-time network situation comedy, Will & Grace. In this essay, I assess this particular performance of gay identity in order to discern what qualities render it – as presented in this configuration – not only acceptable but popular, given the heteronormative sensibilities that characterize the mainstream audience to which it is directed. I argue that, in these texts, homosexuality is not only recoded and normalized in these representations as consistent with privileged male heterosexuality but is articulated as extending heterosexual male privilege. In so doing, blatant sexism is reinvented and legitimized, and gay male identity simultaneously is defined by and renormalizes heteronormativity.