Social transmission of information about multiflavored foods

We fed demonstrator rats diets made by adding three, four, or five different flavorants to powdered Purina Rat Chow. We then allowed each of these demonstrator rats to interact with a naive observer rat for 30 min. We found that (1) observers exhibited enhanced preferences for many of the individual flavorants in the multiflavored diets that their respective demonstrators had eaten and (2) the probability of an observer exhibiting enhanced preference for an individual flavorant in its demonstrator’s diet decreased as the number of flavorants in that diet increased. In Experiment 2, the individual members of pairs of subjects were each fed one of two different four-flavored diets. The subjects in each pair interacted for 30 min, then each chose between two single-flavored diets. One of these single-flavored diets contained a flavorant in the four-flavored food that a subject had itself eaten; the other single-flavored diet contained a flavorant in the four-flavored diet that a subject’s partner had eaten. The subjects showed enhanced preferences for six of eight flavorants in the four-flavored diets that their respective partners had eaten.     

Children's Understanding of Knowledge Acquisition: The Tendency for Children to Report That They Have Always Known What They Have Just Learned

Children's attention to knowledge-acquisition events was examined in 4 experiments in which children were taught novel facts and subsequently asked how long they had known the new information. In Experiment 1, 4- and 5-year-olds tended to claim they had known novel animal facts for a long time and also reported that other children would know the novel facts. This finding was replicated in Experiment 2, using facts associated with chemistry demonstrations. In Experiments 3 and 4, children were taught new color words. 5-year-olds, but not 4-year-olds, distinguished between novel and familiar color words, reporting they had not known the novel words before the test session, but they had always known the familiar words. 4-year-olds in Experiment 4 were better able to distinguish novel and familiar color words when the teaching of the novel words was an explicit and salient part of the procedure.     

Socially induced diet preference can partially reverse a LiCl-induced diet aversion

I examined the capacity of a socially induced enhanced diet preference to reverse the effects of a LiCl-induced diet aversion. I found that rats poisoned after eating a novel diet (Diet NPT) would consume substantial amounts of Diet NPT following interaction with a conspecific that had eaten Diet NPT. Neither rats interacting with a conspecific fed some other diet nor rats exposed to Diet NPT itself exhibited reduced aversion to Diet NPT. This surprising capacity of social interaction to ameliorate even profound toxicosis-induced aversions suggests that social influence may be a major experiential determinant of the diet preferences of free-living rats.     

Good readers but at a cost? Attitudes to reading in England

The results of the Progress in International Reading Literacy Study 2001 (PIRLS) were reported in 2003. In addition to data about the reading achievements of 10‐year‐olds in 35 countries, the study also collected questionnaire information from children, their teachers, headteachers and parents. One aspect of the data that attracted comment in the media was the fact that, despite high achievement on the reading tests, children in England were reported as having relatively poor attitudes to reading, compared to children in many other countries. A review of the results of selected surveys over the past 30 years suggests that there may be some evidence of attitudes to reading in primary schools becoming less positive. Preliminary analysis of the attitude and achievement data from PIRLS suggests a more complex picture than that presented in the summary index published in 2003.     

‘Reading’ the nursery classroom: A Foucauldian perspective

This paper examines ways in which styles of language usage mediate attempts at describing classroom practice. The authors' particular focus centres on discursive power and they seek to illustrate some of the effects and consequences of applying certain Foucauldian concepts and analytical procedures within depictions of interactions between children and with the teacher in a nursery classroom. The paper begins by introducing an example of children's play. To this are applied analyses which stem from readings of Foucault. In so doing, it is shown how power both permeates and defines subjective positionings and where, as a consequence, individuals experience themselves as both powerful and powerless. A second example is offered in which a teacher talks to a child. The authors' analyses of this can, they believe, be perceived as a reflexive act, where the teacher's own beliefs, including her feminism, are critiqued and redefined.     

RESEARCH REPORT

The study explores teachers’ experiences of teaching a context‐based chemistry course, Salters Advanced Chemistry, as compared with teachers of a conventional course. Second, main factors that appear to influence decisions over whether or not to adopt context‐based courses are investigated. Two hundred and twenty‐two teachers’ views of a context‐based and a conventional school advanced chemistry course were obtained from a questionnaire. Responses were analysed in six dimensions: motivation, chemical knowledge and development of concepts, learning activities, assessment, challenge to teachers and students, and teacher support. Both sets of teachers agreed that the context‐based course is more motivating to study and teach, that students would be more interested in chemistry and more likely to go to university to study chemistry, that students would be better able to study independently but that it is more demanding to teach and study. The groups differed principally about concept development and teaching strategy. The context‐based teachers believed that their course gave as good a foundation for further study as a traditional course and that the spiral curriculum was advantageous. Conventional course teachers disagreed with both statements. One significant implication to emerge from the study is the crucial role played by in‐service support in influencing the impact of a curriculum innovation.