"The policy exists but you can't really use it": communication and the structuration of work-family policies

Although work-family benefits are increasingly important organizational policies, limited research addresses the impact of communication on benefit utilization. However, communication is significant because the perceived appropriateness of work-family benefits emerges through interaction. For example, when coworkers complain about "picking up the slack" for those using family leave, their discourse may impact future decisions of other workers regarding whether they utilize the work-family benefits available to them. We apply Giddens' (1984) Structuration Theory to examine organizational members' discursive responses to conditions (and contradictions) present in utilizing work-family benefits in a governmental organization. We argue the daily discursive practices of individuals can either reinforce or undermine formally stated work-family initiatives, and in turn discuss the implications of this "structuration" of policy.     

Using Quality of Family Life Factors to Explore Parents’ Experience of Educational Provision for Children with Developmental Disabilities in Rural Australia

Australian education service provision includes the delivery of quality educational programmes to rural and remote living children. However, according to their parents, many children with developmental disabilities (such as Down Syndrome and Autism Spectrum Disorders) who are living in rural country areas in New South Wales (NSW) still do not have access to an acceptable education programme. This study aimed to use quality of life factors via a family quality of life scale to explore 51 parents’ experience of educational service provision for their children with developmental disabilities in rural NSW. The results indicated that successful engagement with the school system is strongly affected by the views, assumptions, expertise and prejudices of teaching and care professionals. Further research into how local educational service providers may assist rural Australian families with a child with IDD in rural and remote locations is warranted.     

Framing equity through a closer examination of critical science agency

Cultural Studies of Science Education - Science for all has been touted as the primary path to equity in science education in the USA. We argue that without attention to the power imbalances that...     

Developmental changes in endogenous control of attention: the role of target familiarity on infants' distraction latency

This study evaluated the interactive effects of endogenous and exogenous influences on infants' attention allocation by assessing the role of target familiarity on distraction latency during object exploration. In Experiment 1 (N = 54), infants' distraction latencies as they investigated both familiar toys (ones they previously had seen in a familiarization procedure) and novel toys (ones they had not seen in the familiarization procedure) were assessed longitudinally at 6.5 and 9 months of age. In Experiment 2 (N = 32), infants' distraction latencies were assessed at either 6.5 or 10 months as they investigated either familiar or novel targets. In both experiments, older infants, but not younger infants, exhibited longer latencies as they investigated novel toys as compared with their latencies as they investigated familiar toys. These results are discussed in terms of developmental changes in the interactive effects of endogenous and exogenous factors controlling attention allocation.     

Generating connections and learning with SemNet,a tool for constructing knowledge networks

In this paper we examine the impact of using a Macintosh-based knowledge organization toll SemNet, with prospective elementary and middle school teachers enrolled in an upper division biology course. The course models for students the ways in which they will be able to teach hands-on, minds-on science in K-8 classrooms and provides them with an in-depth understanding of a relatively small number of biology topics. This study examines changes in learning habits, metacognitive processes, retention, retrieval, and learring among students enrolled in this course. Students using SemNet tend to exhibit a significant increase in deep processing as measured by self-report. Also on the basis of self-report, SemNet students appear to acquire some cognitive skills that transfer to other courses, such as identifying main ideas and tying ideas together. SemNet students retained and retrieved nearly twice as much information about a topic, the digestive system, as a reference group. Although neither the SemNet nor the reference group exhibited transfer skills as we meansured them, there is evidence that SemNet student changed their thinking strategies.     

Cross-linguistic analysis of vocabulary in young children: spanish, dutch, French, hebrew, italian, korean, and american english

The composition of young children's vocabularies in 7 contrasting linguistic communities was investigated. Mothers of 269 twenty-month-olds in Argentina, Belgium, France, Israel, Italy, the Republic of Korea, and the United States completed comparable vocabulary checklists for their children. In each language and vocabulary size grouping (except for children just learning to talk), children's vocabularies contained relatively greater proportions of nouns than other word classes. Each word class was consistently positively correlated with every other class in each language and for children with smaller and larger vocabularies. Noun prevalence in the vocabularies of young children and the merits of several theories that may account for this pattern are discussed.     

What's the point? Children's understanding of didactic stories

When do children reliably understand that a simple narrative text such as a fable is conveying a point or moral lesson? What role does culture play in influencing understanding? These questions were explored in a cross-sectional sample of 192 children, aged 7, 9 and 11 years drawn from the two largest groups in Singapore, Chinese and Malays. During interviews the child participants were read traditional Aesop's, Chinese and Malay fables and manipulated fables and fable-like stories, and asked to identify and generate the points or morals. The sample and design of the study allowed for comparisons with similar American research. The evidence suggests that, as predicted, cultural background exerts a positive influence on this ability. A number of ethnic differences in response between the Chinese and Malays emerged and possible reasons for these are discussed.