“We Have a Great Task Ahead of Us!”: Child-Hate in Roald Dahl’s The Witches

The depictions of cruel witches in Roald Dahl’s novel The Witches echo the cruel, abusive measures taken by adults in the historical treatment of children. The concept of child-hatred, described by Lloyd Demause and other critics, is an effective lens through which to view the hyperbolized hatred of children described in The Witches. However, Dahl’s text deals with more than just the explicit hatred of children. In fact, in its characterization of Grandmamma as an adult that truly values the state of childhood, and in Dahl’s narrative treatment of both his child protagonist and his child audience, Dahl’s text counters the notion that we have progressed to a culture that values and, at times, sacralizes the child. The Witches presents to readers the possibility that child-hatred is not some now-defunct phenomenon, but rather an extant danger in the historical present of childhood, a danger made ever more threatening by its ability to hide under a mask of benevolence. With the many instances of both child-protection and child-hatred that pervade The Witches, the text serves as an apt illustration of the ambivalence inherent in many works of children’s literature, which has been a central concern for scholars of children’s texts for decades.     

What Do Test Score Really Mean? A Latent Class Analysis of Danish Test Score Performance

Latent class Poisson count models are used to analyse a sample of Danish test score results from a cohort of individuals born in 1954–1955, tested in 1968, and followed until 2011. The procedure takes account of unobservable effects as well as excessive zeros in the data. We show that the test scores measure manifest or measured ability as it has evolved over the life of the respondent and is, thus, more a product of the socioeconomic status of the parents and the human capital formation process than some latent or fundamental measure of pure cognitive ability. We find that variables which are not closely associated with traditional notions of intelligence explain a significant proportion of the variation in test scores. This adds to the complexity of interpreting test scores and suggests that school culture and possible incentive problems make it more difficult to understand what the tests measure.     

Ethical issues associated with information and communication technology in counseling and guidance

For more than 50 years, literature on the use of information and communication technology in counseling and guidance has presented ethical issues related to the development and use of technologies in practice. This paper reviews the ethical issues raised, organizing them into three categories: Social equity, resources, and services. Career professionals’ efforts to address these ethical issues are introduced via a discussion of ethical, credentialing, and accreditation standards. The article concludes with a call for additional standards development, training resources, and research to shape the use of rapidly changing technologies in ways that ethically and effectively enhance client services.     

Does improving school level attendance lead to improved school level achievement? An empirical study of indigenous educational policy in Australia

Current federal government policy initiatives in Aboriginal education and social welfare reform are based on assumptions about the relationship between increased attendance and increased student performance on standardized tests. There are empirical assumptions underlying these policy interventions and their accompanying public debates. Our aim here is to empirically explore the relationships between patterns of student attendance and patterns of student achievement in schools with significant cohorts of Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander students at the school level. Based on an analysis of the publicly available data reported on the ‘MySchool’ website, we find that reforms and policies around attendance have not and are unlikely to generate patterns of improved achievement. Questions about the rationale and rhetoric of government policy focused at the school level as opposed to the need to focus on pedagogy and curriculum are discussed.     

Perceptions of Barriers to the Evaluation of Workplace Learning Programs

The need to evaluate training programs is indisputable. Measurement can serve a range of purposes, from informing improvements to shaping existing and future courses, to determining the return on training investments. Yet research suggests that evaluation, when accomplished, is most often used to solicit participant reactions. This study examined barriers faced by learning and performance professionals when they attempt to conduct evaluation in their organizations. Lack of access to data in the workplace and reporting data in meaningful and actionable ways are two of the most prominent barriers identified by practitioners. Recommendations for addressing key barriers in the workplace are presented.     

A Tale of Two Crocoducks: Creationist Misuses of Molecular Evolution

Although some creationist objections to evolutionary biology are simplistic and thus are easily refuted, when more technical arguments become widespread it is important for science educators to explain the relevant science in a straightforward manner. An interesting case study is provided by misguided allegations about how cytochrome c data pertain to molecular evolution. The most common of these misrepresentations bears a striking similarity to a particularly glaring misunderstanding of what should be expected of a transitional form in a fossil sequence. Although evangelist Kirk Cameron’s ridiculous injunction of a hypothetical ‘crocoduck’ as an example of a potential transitional form is frequently invoked to illustrate the ignorance of many critics of evolutionary science, a strikingly analogous argument was applied to cytochrome c data by biochemist Michael Denton in 1985. The details of this analogy are worth exploring to clarify the fallacy of the widely circulated molecular argument.