Factor structure of the McCarthy Scales for Children experiencing problems in school

The McCarthy Scales of Children's Abilities (MSCA) were factor analyzed for a group of 6- to 8 1/2-year-old children referred for school-related problems. The sample was composed of 300 rural eastern North Carolina public school children with a mean GCI of 88.1. Evidence was found for factors similar to three of the six MSCA Scales: General Cognitive, Verbal, and Motor. Coefficients of congruence were computed and compared with earlier analyses of the standardization data. The results were interpreted as generally supporting the MSCA's validity with children experiencing problems in school. Implications for interpretation of the MSCA Scales were presented.     

Constructing Curriculum Guidance 4: The politics of textual inclusion and exclusion

This paper explores the political process of constructing Curriculum Guidance 4: Educating for Economic and Industrial Understanding. It is a study of discourse management through the process of text production, which focuses upon textual inclusion and textual exclusion as a process of struggle around the aim of controlling the meaning of curriculum policy through its representation. In seeking to satisfy different audiences, textual inclusion and exclusion is analysed in terms of what cannot be said and what must be said The paper explores the contested nature of curriculum knowledge and how the selection of what constitutes, and what does not constitute, official knowledge is the product of conscious choice based upon ideological and political motives and intentions.     

The Use of Epidemiological Methodology as a Means of Influencing Public Policy

To best influence policymakers, researchers need to provide information and measures of effects that reflect the nature of policy decisions. Specifically, policymakers are often interested in factors associated with changes in the number of cases or rate of disorders in a community. Regression/analysis of variance (ANOVA) models, which focus on the prediction of means, slopes, and variances, do not directly address such questions. In contrast, epidemiological statistics, which focus on differences in proportions of cases, do provide such information. Three epidemiological measures of effect (the risk-ratio, the odds-ratio, and the population attributable fraction) are reviewed; their value as tools for informing public policy is discussed; and examples are provided illustrating their use. Researchers are encouraged to consider adopting an epidemiological perspective as part of their work.     

Providing a Foundation for Deductive Reasoning: Students' Interpretations when Using Dynamic Geometry Software and Their Evolving Mathematical Explanations

A key issue for mathematics education is howchildren can be supported in shifting from `because it looks right' or`because it works in these cases' to convincing arguments which work ingeneral. In geometry, forms of software usually known as dynamicgeometry environments may be useful as they can enable students tointeract with geometrical theory. Yet the meanings that students gain ofdeductive reasoning through experience with such software is likely to beshaped, not only by the tasks they tackle and their interactions with theirteacher and with other students, but also by features of the softwareenvironment. In order to try to illuminate this latter phenomenon, and todetermine the longer-term influence of using such software, this paperreports on data from a longitudinal study of 12-year-old students'interpretations of geometrical objects and relationships when using dynamicgeometry software. The focus of the paper is the progressivemathematisation of the student's sense of the software, examining theirinterpretations and using the explanations that students give of thegeometrical properties of various quadrilaterals that they construct as oneindicator of this. The research suggests that the students' explanations canevolve from imprecise, `everyday' expressions, through reasoning that isovertly mediated by the software environment, to mathematicalexplanations of the geometric situation that transcend the particular toolbeing used. This latter stage, it is suggested, should help to provide afoundation on which to build further notions of deductive reasoning inmathematics.