Relationships among rapid digit naming, phonological processing, motor automaticity, and speech perception in poor, average, and good readers and spellers

In this article, we explore the relationship between rapid automatized naming (RAN) and other cognitive processes among below-average, average, and above-average readers and spellers. Nonsense word reading, phonological awareness, RAN, automaticity of balance, speech perception, and verbal short-term and working memory were measured. Factor analysis revealed a 3-component structure. The first component included phonological processing tasks, RAN, and motor balance. The second component included verbal short-term and working memory tasks. Speech perception loaded strongly as a third component, associated negatively with RAN. The phonological processing tests correlated most strongly with reading ability and uniquely discriminated average from below- and above-average readers in terms of word reading, reading comprehension, and spelling. On word reading, comprehension, and spelling, RAN discriminated only the below-average group from the average performers. Verbal memory, as assessed by word list recall, additionally discriminated the below-average group from the average group on spelling performance. Motor balance and speech perception did not discriminate average from above- or below-average performers. In regression analyses, phonological processing measures predicted word reading and comprehension, and both phonological processing and RAN predicted spelling.     

Inner‐city femininities and education: ‘race’, class,gender and schooling in young women’s lives

This paper considers how urban, ethnically diverse working class girls’ constructions of femininities mediate and shape their dis/engagement with education and schooling. We discuss how girls generated a sense of identity value/worth through practices such as ‘speaking my mind’—which prioritized notions of agency and visibility and resisted the symbolic violences associated with living social inequality. However, we argue that this strategy was inherently paradoxical because it countered dominant discourses of the normative (middle class) female pupil and hence resulted in drawing girls into conflict with schools—a position that many girls came to ‘regret’. We illustrate how the girls’ attempts at resistance and transgression were constrained by gender‐ and class‐based discourses around moral worth, as girls struggled to be recognized as ‘good underneath’ and attempted to ‘change’ over the course of the project and their final year/s of schooling (to ‘become good’). This process, we suggest, illustrates the implication of reflexivity in the production of gendered and classed identities and inequalities, and illuminates how an internalization of multiple discourses of authority and surveillance of the self is integral to the production of the working class female educational subject.     

Dimensions of student success: a framework for defining and evaluating support for learning in higher education

ABSTRACT

The capabilities students need for success during and beyond higher education extend far beyond specific discipline skills to include the development of productive mindsets, the management of life circumstances and the way they relate to others and identify with their profession. The provision of support for these capabilities at university can be both diverse in scope and diffuse in delivery. Consequently, the development of streamlined and integrated evaluation strategies to measure the extent to which these capabilities are being successfully delivered can be challenging. This paper describes how one Australian university used a collaborative process to design an evaluation framework for student learning services. The framework, a first for this university, represents the breadth of student support, including a typology of support for learning: connectedness, mindsets, self-management, professional identity and academic capabilities. These terms, coined as dimensions, form the scaffold of university-wide delivery of support for learning initiatives.     

Gender in the neoliberalised global academy: the affective economy of women and leadership in South Asia

As higher education (HE) institutions globally become increasingly performative, competitive and corporatised in response to neoliberal rationalities, the exigencies of HE leadership are being realigned to accommodate its value system. This article draws on recent British Council-funded research, including 30 semi-structured interviews, to explore women’s engagement with leadership in HE in South Asia. A potent affective economy was discovered. Leadership was associated with affects such as competitiveness, aggression, impropriety, stress and anxiety, in ways that were intensified by highly patriarchal and corporatised HE cultures. Indeed, its difficulties and toxicities meant that leadership was rejected or resisted as an object of desire by many women. We illuminate how different forms of competition contribute to the affective economy of HE leadership. The research also raises wider questions about the possibilities of disrupting dominant neoliberal constructions of HE if those who question such values are excluded (or self-exclude) from leadership positions.     

Adrenocortical Responses to the Strange Situation in Infants with Disorganized/Disoriented Attachment Relationships

Salivary cortisol levels were assessed in 19-month-old infants following the Ainsworth Strange Situation procedure. 38 infants participating in Project Steep at the University of Minnesota served as subjects. Project Steep is a longitudinal intervention program designed to promote healthy parent-child relationships and to prevent emotional problems among children born to mothers who are at high risk for parenting problems. Following the Strange Situation, saliva samples were collected and assayed for cortisol, a steroid hormone frequently examined in studies of stress. Behavior during the Strange Situation was coded by trained coders, and attachment classifications were determined for each infant. Cortisol concentrations did not differ between the 6 Avoidant/Resistant (A/C) and 17 Securely Attached (B) toddlers. Toddlers ( n = 11) who were classified as having Disorganized/Disoriented (Type D) attachments exhibited higher cortisol concentrations than toddlers in the traditional (ABC) classifications. Results of this study were consistent with a model of stress reactivity that conceptualizes the organization of coping behaviors as a factor that mediates physiological stress responses.     

Coffee Houses May Stir Intellectual Activity

Abstract

Although faculty agree that critical thinking is an important learning outcome for college courses, experts disagree on how to define and conceptualize critical thinking. Some researchers see it as a general skill, similar to reading or mathematics. Others see it as highly specific to each academic discipline, with critical thinking in one discipline being qualitatively different than critical thinking in another discipline. However, researchers to date have not yet tried to conceptualize how critical thinking might systematically vary across disciplines. The purpose of this study was to gather definitions of critical thinking from faculty in a range of disciplines and compare these domain-specific definitions to each other. Across disciplines, faculty defined critical thinking as applying knowledge to new situations, considering different viewpoints, evaluating options and evidence, and having a critical thinking disposition. The article concludes with suggestions for fostering critical thinking skills in general education courses.     

Implementing the Framework Agreement in a small HEI: From principles to practice

‘Leeds University is recruiting its first marketing director – one of a new breed in the sector, equivalent in status to pro vice‐chancellors…According to Leeds, the marketing director will be the “guardian of the brand”’ (Times Higher Education Supplement, 23 July 2004)

‘A brand revamp…is on the cards for Anglia Polytechnic University…[with] marketing work to develop the university’s reputation in a few high‐quality disciplines.’ (Times Higher Education Supplement, 6 August 2004)     

Telecommunications and Cable

Ken Marsh's Independent Video (San Francisco: Straight Arrow Books, 1974—$7.95, paper)

Richard H. Davis and Allen E. Edwards' Television: A Therapeutic Tool for the Aged (Publication and Media Projects, Andrus Gerontology Center, University Park, Los Angeles, Calif. 90007—$2.25, paper)

Irving W. Larson (ed.) EIA Electronics Multimedia Handbook (Indianapolis: Howard W. Sams, 1975—price not known, paper)

Kendall Webster Sessions' 2nd Class FCC Encyclopedia (Blue Ridge Summit, Pa.: TAB Books, 1975—$10.95/7.95)

Mary Louise Hollowell (ed.) Cable Handbook: 1975-1976—A Guide to Cable and New Communications Technologies (Communications Press, 1346 Connecticutt Ave., N.W., Washington, D.C. 20036—$7.35, including postage, paper)

Gilbert Gillespie's Public Access Cable Television in the United States and Canada (New York: Praeger Special Studies, 1975—price not given, but likely around $12.00 or so)