Intra-generational education: Imagining a post-age pedagogy

This article discusses the idea of intra-generational education. Drawing on Braidotti’s nomadic subject and Barad’s conception of agency, we consider what intra-generational education might look like ontologically, in the light of critical posthumanism, in terms of natureculture world, nomadism and a vibrant indeterminacy of knowing subjects. In order to explore the idea of intra-generationalism and its pedagogical implications, we introduce four concepts: homelessness, agelessness, playfulness and wakefulness. These may appear improbable in the context of education policy-making today, but they are born of theorising our practices in the age-transgressive field of Philosophy with Children. We argue that these concepts help to reconfigure intra-generational relations, ways of being and becoming. They express the longing, corporeality and visionary epistemology of nomadic enquiry. These inventions express a non-hierarchical philosophy of immanence. We draw some tentative conclusions about educational practices more generally.     

‘Drawing the Leaves Anyway’: Teachers Embracing Children’s Different Ways of Knowing in Preschool Science Practice

This study explores if and how teachers combine practices of science and of preschool (children 1–5 years old) into preschool science practice. Views of knowing may differ between science practices, traditionally associated with masculinity and rationality, and preschool practices, traditionally associated with femininity and caring. Recognising this, we have chosen to focus on how teachers’ talk constructs and relates to possible ways of gaining knowledge and reaching explanations of phenomena in preschool science. The analysis builds on two concept pairs often associated with gender as well as knowing: objective-subjective and logical-intuitive. The analysed material consists of 11 group interviews where preschool teachers talk about activities concerning science content. Our results show that several ways of knowing are possible in work with science content in preschool. These include ways of knowing more associated with subjectivity, such as ‘individual liking’ and ‘whole-body perception’, as well as more associated with objectivity, such as ‘noticing differences and similarities’. Furthermore, the results show that the teachers’ talk moves readily between possibilities associated with femininity (subjective and intuitive) and masculinity (objective and logical). This indicates that the teachers in this study have found ways to handle science in preschool that goes against presumed tensions between science and preschool practices. The results contribute to more nuanced ways of describing and thinking about science in preschool and pave the way for further development of science education in early childhood education.     

Body_machine? Encounters of the human and the mechanical in education,industry and science

This paper unveils the body_machine as a key element of dynamic mental maps that have come to shape both educational praxis and research. It traces and analyses instances in which the human and the mechanical encountered each other in metaphorical, material and visual forms, thereby blurring to some extent the boundaries between them while capturing and mobilising specific forms of knowing and acting. The paper studies, first, how certain ‘orienting frames of reference’ and associated ‘experimental systems’ managed to materialise around the body_machine and penetrate theory and praxis; and, second, what visual and textual sources related to a vocational school may reveal about where and how the body_machine has come to operate in education, industry and science. The paper centres on early twentieth-century photographs and analyses these not only as media presenting, representing and interrogating common thought and practice but also as agents of meaning-making around the body_machine.     

Vision for action in toddlers: the posting task

Three experiments examine 18- to 24-month-old (N = 78) toddlers' ability to spatially orient objects by their major axes for insertion into a slot. This is a simplified version of the posting task that is commonly used to measure dorsal stream functioning. The experiments identify marked developmental changes in children's ability to preorient objects for insertion, with 18-month-olds failing completely and 24-month-olds succeeding easily. In marked contrast, 18-month-olds preorient their empty hands for insertion into the same slots. This developmental dissociation between aligning hands and aligning objects to slots suggests that the key developmental change is in action with the goal of object-to-object alignment versus action on an object.     

Effects of working memory training on reading in children with special needs

This study examines the relationship between working memory and reading achievement in 57 Swedish primary-school children with special needs. First, it was examined whether children’s working memory could be enhanced by a cognitive training program, and how the training outcomes would relate to their reading development. Next, it was explored how differential aspects of working memory are related to children’s reading outcomes. The working memory training yielded effects, and these effects appeared beneficial to children’s reading comprehension development. Working memory measures were found to be related with children’s word reading and reading comprehension. The results show that working memory can be seen as a crucial factor in the reading development of literacy among children with special needs, and that interventions to improve working memory may help children becoming more proficient in reading comprehension.     

Patent validation at the country level—The role of fees and translation costs

One feature of the European patent system that is heavily criticized nowadays is related to its fragmentation and the induced cost burden for applicants. Once a patent is granted by the EPO, the assignee must validate (and often translate) it and pay the renewal fees to keep it in force in each country in which protection is sought. The objective of this paper is to assess to what extent validation and renewal fees as well as translation costs affect the validation behavior of applicants. We rely on a gravity model that aims at explaining patent flows between inventor and target countries within the European patent system. The results show that the size of countries, their wealth and the distance between their capital cities are significant determinants of patent flows. Validation fees and renewal fees further affect the validation behavior of applicants. Translation costs seem to have an impact as well. The implementation of cost-reducing policy interventions like the London Protocol will, therefore, induce a significant increase in the number of patents validated in each European country.     

Classroom behavioral interventions: Do teachers consider the function of the behavior?

Teachers and school psychologists are often involved in designing classroom behavioral interventions. Functional behavioral assessment, mandated under certain circumstances by IDEA (1997), is considered a best practices approach in designing behavioral interventions. A functional assessment can result in an intervention tailored to a specific student's needs. The purpose of this study was to determine whether teachers considered the function of a behavior when determining a classroom intervention. A sample of 209 Kentucky teachers were given scenarios of students exhibiting problematic behaviors. Information was provided so that the function of the behavior was apparent. The results found that few teachers considered the behavioral function when deciding upon an intervention. Few differences were found between regular and special education teachers. Implications for school psychologists are discussed. © 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.     

The social construction of ability in movement assessment tools

This paper focuses on how ‘ability’ is conceptualised, configured and produced in movement assessment tools. The aim of the study was to critically analyse assessment tools used for healthy and typically developed children. The sample consists of 10 tools from 6 different countries. In the study, we pay special attention to content and evaluation methods. The theoretical analysis explores and discusses what kind of movement ability the tools construct. The theoretical framework is inspired by Bourdieu's concepts of habitus, capital and field which are used as analytical tools to explore how the testing processes and content shape what is regarded as ability. Our findings show both a great variation of concepts and evaluation methods and a narrow view of what is regarded as valuable to assess. The assessed movements are strongly related to traditional sports and construct a specific form of physical capital. None of the tasks assessed take place in natural outdoor environments. Open skills, rhythmical movements to music or tasks including a wider range of flexibility are also absent in the assessment tools. The explored tools and tests assess a limited number of decontextualised movements and produce a narrow view of ‘ability’. Hence, the testing process itself often promotes a child who is physically mature and benefits those who have experience of traditional sports. In other words, the assessed ‘taste for sport’ and the ‘embodied physical capital’ construct what is considered to be legitimate knowledge in relation to movement and physical culture. Accordingly, the social construction of movement ability through assessment tools is far from a neutral concept and could affect how children see themselves and their ‘ability’.