Talk about texts: reading as a social event

Drawing on anthropological evidence that interactions with texts are often mediated through oral language practices and Vygotsky's ideas about the primacy of social dialogue for individual intellectual development, the authors argue that children's informal talk about both electronic and printed texts throws new light on the reading process as a whole. They analyse children's talk about a school library book, a piece of graffiti, a television programme and a film to show how readings are shaped by the social organization and personal relationships of the readers, whether in curriculum activities, friendship groups or at home in the family. Readings are constructed, contested and negotiated through talk at the point where texts are first calculated and reshaped again when they are jointly recalled. Talk also helps to construct the text's legitimate audience and the reader's position within it.     

The Structure of Events and Event Representations: A Developmental Analysis

In this study, we investigated how the temporal order and variability of events influence 3- and 5-year-old children's developing event representations. Children participated in 3 different events: a logical-invariant (making fundough), a logical-variable (shape collage), and an arbitrary-invariant (sand play) event. At each age, half of the children experienced the events once prior to recalling the events both verbally and behaviorally; the other half experienced the events 4 times, recalled the events verbally after each experience, and behaviorally reenacted the events only after the last experience. Children verbally recalled more and organized their recall better for the logical events than for the arbitrary event, and these differences remained stable with increasing experience. The sequencing of behavioral recall was also more accurate for the logical events than for the arbitrary event across age and condition, but amount of recall did not differ, with one exception. 3-year-old children in the single experience condition recalled less about the variable event than the invariant events. The results indicate that both the structure of the event and children's representational capabilities influence children's developing representations of events.     

Post-it Culture: Post-modernism and Art and Design Education

This paper examines the phenomenon of Post-modernism and its growing relationship to art and design education and its limitations in that context. It examines how and why an authentic architectural style developed into a late twentieth century philosophy, was exploited by visual artists, and was then applied to art and design education. The paper looks at a range of issues and concepts coterminous with the growth of post-modern thought, particularly the idea of post-historicism. In that sense it posits Post-modernism as one narrative amongst a number. The language of Post-modernism is also explored, as is the idea of a ‘post-medium age’. It is then suggested, using the argument of Post-modernism itself, that art and design education for the next millennium depends upon the recognition of the need for a range of new narratives.     

Designing Training for Global Environments: Knowing What Questions to Ask

As instructional design professionals are being asked more frequently to develop interventions for global environments, they must account for many complex intercultural communication and corporate globalization strategy variables. Simple rules of etiquette and stereotypes about particular cultures are tempting but dangerous assumptions upon which to base the design and delivery of training for multicultural learners. On the other hand, a full understanding of the subtle cultural differences that could impact global training is beyond the expectations to which instructional designers could reasonably be held. A more sensible approach than trying to know all the answers is knowing what questions to ask in the needs analysis and assessment phases. Based on a synthesis of literature and instantiated by several short examples, a framework for identifying important issues for instructional design and delivery in global settings is presented.