LIFESTYLE MANAGEMENT,PROACTION, AND EDUCATIONAL EFFICACY

Lifestyle management is gaining new popularity among individuals dedicated to maintaining and improving the quality of their life during middle age and as they grow older. Since many aspects of well‐being and life satisfaction in later life have been linked to good health, lifestyle management would appear to provide ideal educational gerontology programming content. This idea provides the focus for a renewal of middle‐aged and older people's participation in education gerontology.

It is important to stress that the potential for a renewal in educational gerontology is contingent upon a reexamination of the approach employed in program planning. Mature adults must be afforded a renewed understanding of the efficacy of education throughout life as a means for achieving goals related to greater quality as well as quantity of life.

This discussion will focus on lifestyle management as a learning area that should become increasingly attractive to middle‐aged and older persons, and the role educational efficacy and proaction play as important precursors to lifestyle behavior attitude change.     

The Development of a Service-Learning Program for First-Year Students Based on the Hallmarks of High Quality Service-learning and Rigorous Program Evaluation

We describe six hallmarks of high quality service-learning and explain how these considerations guided the development of a Transitional Coaching Program (TCP) during the first three years of implementation. We have demonstrated that the TCP is acceptable, feasible, and sustainable. Improvements have been seen in the degree of impact on learning objectives, but statistically significant change has not yet been achieved. This project highlights the importance of looking beyond satisfaction and engaging in rigorous assessment of learning objectives and ongoing quality improvement through attention to best practices and evidence-based, continuous quality improvement.     

The IEA Studies of Reading and Writing Literacy: a 1996 perspective

The paper reviews IEA literacy studies. It analyses them in the light of theories of literacy, cross‐cultural perspectives, and their practical and theoretical value. It points out that, despite some well‐grounded theoretical perspectives, in reality, the IEA instruments test only certain aspects of ‘formal’ literacy. The paper explores the cultural colonisation of IEA instruments by ‘Western’ literacy forms, expressed partly through the training and administrative structures of the IEA and partly through the existing international dominance of such forms. It looks at the implicit assumptions made about literacy through the use of particular statistical item response models and suggests that there are important lessons to be learnt from the IEA experience. It concludes with some suggestions for future work.     

“I Do Lots of Things”: Children with cerebral palsy’s competence for everyday activities

This study explored how children with cerebral palsy describe competent performance in everyday activities and sought to better understand the processes by which the children developed competence. Five children with cerebral palsy aged six to 17 years participated in a three-step procedure that included two observations, one semi-structured interview with narrative elaboration, and one cognitive interview. Three factors influenced the competence of children in this study: the environment—people, places, and objects; the quality of the activity—fun and importance; and the child’s personal characteristics—strengths and impairments. The process of building competence was characterised by practice and problem-solving. The outcome of this process was being competent or “doing lots of things”. Children played an active role by problem-solving impairment-related challenges or environmental barriers. “Doing” was not related to the child’s skills or level of independence, but to engagement in activities considered fun and important to the child.     

Comprehension in disciplinary learning: An examination of elementary readers' processing and recall

The authors explored elementary students' comprehension of informational text in disciplinary learning. Forty on-grade-level readers in Grades 2–5 participated. A priori and emergent coding was used to analyze 120 verbal protocols and 120 oral recalls. Analyses of variance and correlations showed students' processing and recall of procedural text contrasted with their processing and recall of biography or persuasive text. Also, second-grade students did not process informational text as actively or recall informational text as well as third- through fifth-grade students did. An expanded focus on students' comprehension of informational text in disciplinary learning and further study of the relationships among students' text use, text processing and recall, and development are warranted.     

Fake News as a Critical Incident in Journalism

This study examines how American newspapers made sense of the issue of fake news. By analysing newspaper editorials and considering the problem of fake news as a critical incident confronting journalism, this study found that news organizations in the US recognize fake news as a social problem while acknowledging the challenge in defining it. They generally considered fake news as a social media phenomenon thriving on political polarization driven by mostly ideological, but sometimes also financial, motivations. Therefore, they assigned blame for the rise of fake news to the current political environment, to technological platforms Google and Facebook, and to audiences.     

Prizing children's science information books: the text,reading and the reader

The Royal Society Young People's Book Prize is awarded annually in the United Kingdom for the best science information book, and the winning book is chosen by panels of young people. This article discusses the findings of a study of the responses to the books and to their judging experience of young people who participated on panels in the 2011 Royal Society Young People's Book Prize. Interviews were conducted with 46 young people, aged from 8 to 14 years, from across the United Kingdom. The nature of contemporary non‐fiction books is discussed, specifically science information books. The impact of their design and format on reading is explored, as is the social nature of reading, which was a consequence of the judging panel context. The young people had opinions on the age range for which each book was most suitable, but they generally did so in such a way as to include themselves. It was found that their judging responsibilities contributed to these young people displaying a positive reading identity and sense of self‐efficacy.     

Teachers' Mini-Case Studies of Children's Mathematics

This article reports findings from a five-day summer institute conducted with 27 practicing primary-grade teachers. The institute was part of a year-long professional development project that supported teachers' thinking about children's arithmetical understanding. From Quicktime movies that contained excerpts of six children's interviews, pairs of teachers developed mini-cases about the children's arithmetical understanding. At the end of the institute, the teachers presented their mini-case studies to the group. Teachers developed two types of hypotheses: hypotheses about children's thinking and hypotheses about what it means for children to know and do mathematics. After providing examples to clarify the two types of hypotheses, we address the challenges we faced in developing multimedia inquiry-based environments that facilitated teachers' thinking about children's arithmetical thinking. This revised version was published online in August 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.