The role of planning in outdoor adventure decision-making

ABSTRACT

This article explores the influential role of planning on recognition-primed decision-making. Considerable prior thinking occurs and there is a need to trace and account for the cognitive processes that precede and guide decisions in dynamic outdoor environments. Seven expert leaders from four countries were interviewed about memorable decisions made on outdoor journeys with an educational focus on land, sea and ice. Four stages of planning were identified: (1) long-term preparation; (2) formal leadership meetings; (3) day-by-day planning on route and (4) thinking immediately prior to the event. The stages sequentially capture the planning progression, illuminating the cognitive processes at each stage to culminate in option selection. In each decision situation, planned goals and actions were implemented through the creation and re-creation of micro-plans. As windows of opportunity presented themselves, the flexible execution of plans was a key feature. Planning provided the solid bedrock upon which decisions were made.     

Race and the Education Reform Act

The abandonment of a commitment to the achievement of social democratic consensus in the Thatcherite project and the emphasis on individualism and the market means that a new source of cultural hegemony has to be sought. It is being attempted by the inculcation of a particular form of nationalism using the family and schools as a vehicle. The exact parameters of what constitutes Britishness are achieved by the marginalization of groups and movements that threaten the particular Thatcherite model of the nation and the imposition of a limited, and racist, model of culture. Within education a struggle is developing over content as the government seeks to impose a National Curriculum that reflects its ideology while structural changes hasten the commodification of education. Both the curriculum and structural changes are likely to have a detrimental effect on black and working-class pupils.     

Classroom Activities and Areas: Regularity of Use and Perceptions of Adaptability by General Early Educators

This report describes a mail survey of general early educators from Head Start, public school pre-kindergarten, public school kindergarten, and community preschool/child care programs. The purposes were to secure information about the availability of classroom activities and areas, and to obtain the respondents' perceptions of the ease with which activities and areas could be adapted to accommodate children with disabilities. Of the 893 mailed questionnaires, 483 (54.1%) were returned and coded. The respondents reportedly used a wide range of classroom activities and areas, and they rated those activities and areas as moderately easy to adapt. Also, respondents from mainstreamed programs used slightly more activities and perceived the activities as easier to adapt than did respondents from non-mainstreamed programs. The findings appear to indicate that placement of children with disabilities in segregated programs cannot be justified on grounds that integration will restrict the range of activities available to typically developing children, or on the grounds that the adaptations are perceived by program staff as too difficult to be accomplished.     

Teachers’ Work,Curriculum and the New Right

This paper examines New Right arguments on educational provision, including the establishing of a voucher scheme and the introduction of elements of a free market’ into public sector education. The paper examines the right‐wing allegation that educationalists have ‘captured’ the school curriculum and the argument on the need for ‘consumer capture’ of education. It discusses the New Right tactic of privatisation by stealth, and the argument that gradualism provides the most effective means of securing educational reform. The paper discusses arguments put forward by the Right on the idea of a General Teaching Council (GTC) and argument on the need for the development of a teacher labour market freed from national salary scales. It goes on to examine Mary Warnock ‘s proposals for a GTC and her views of teacher education. The paper examines the likely effects of the implementation of right‐wing education policy, concluding that the 1988 Education Reform Act will prepare the ground for the privatisation of education and the development of a teacher labour market of the kind proposed by the New Right.     

Improvements in equity in the participation of young people in higher education in Australia during the 1980s

This paper addresses the question of the extent to which there were improvements in equity in the patterns of participation of young people in higher education in Australia during the 1980s. Data from theYouth in Transition longitudinal surveys of Australian youth are used to assess the effectiveness of the Labor Government's equity initiatives since 1983 in this area. The conclusion is that participation by young people in higher education in Australia did generally become more equitable under Labor during the 1980s, though differences in higher education participation rates persisted between certain sub-groups of the population.     

Psychosocial Factors That Predict the College Adjustment of First-Year Undergraduate Students: Implications for College Counselors

The authors describe psychosocial factors that predicted college adjustment of 1st-year undergraduate students on the basis of studies conducted in 2 universities of differing size, focus, and geographic location. Academic self-confidence, positive attitudes toward the university, and faculty and peer support significantly predicted more successful adjustment to college.