The Room Is Long and Narrow

In this paper we analyse some of our experiences with peer review and argue that the process should be rethought. Rather than a gate-keeping device, the ideological function should be acknowledged as well as acknowledging that the true (idealistic) purpose of publishing is to air and develop new ideas – in effect to evolve the community. Given this, peer review as a process would be better thought of as helping authors to develop their ideas and to share them. Such a process involves attempting to understand what an author is trying to do and helping her achieve her goal. It is critically constructive and creative rather than destructive/deconstructive. In recognising this we articulate the true purpose of the peer review process and of participating in it – or at least the democratic purpose for which it was conceived. This involves enabling divergent opinions to be heard and this in turn enables the evolution of the field from within, for the danger is if evolution does not come from within it is imposed from without.     

Freelance Technical Writers and Their Place Outside Corporate Culture: High and Low Corporate Culture Styles

Freelance technical writers perform their work outside their clients' corporate culture, and this occurrence is becoming more and more common. It is important to understand the significance of the separation between technical writers and corporate culture, especially given that some freelance technical writers never meet their clients in person. Does corporate culture play a significant role for the freelance technical writing professional?     

Weaving new meanings: evaluating children's written responses to a story telling resource package

This paper documents an evaluation of children's written responses to a story telling package used in an intervention project set up by the National Association for the Teaching of English as part of the larger Inspire Rotherham literacy campaign. The brief was to provide a group of primary teachers with innovative and inspirational approaches to raise the aspiration of Key Stage 2 children (age range 7‐9) and to improve their skills in story writing. The schools, who were self‐ selecting, were given a DVD of a professional story teller narrating tales appropriate to the age group, used alongside drama and role play workshops which helped the teachers engage children in aspects of narrative. The children were asked to retell one of their own favourite stories in writing before hearing the DVD stories and then to repeat this activity at the end of the 6‐week project. They were asked to include both pictures and writing. Their texts were analysed to provide both quantitative and textual data. Children were shown to have adopted many features of the language of the oral narratives they had heard in the second task improving both the structure and imagery of the stories they produced.     

Crime scenes and mystery players! Using driving questions to support the development of statistical literacy

We argue that the development of statistical literacy is greatly supported by engaging students in carrying out statistical investigations. We describe the use of driving questions and interesting contexts to motivate two statistical investigations. The PPDAC cycle is use as an organizing framework to support the process statistical investigation.     

First grade teachers’ knowledge of phonological awareness and code concepts: Examining gains from an intensive form of professional development and corresponding teacher attitudes

The study examined the efficacy of an intensive form of professional development (PD) for building the knowledge of first-grade teachers in the areas of phonological awareness and phonics. The PD featured frequent in-class support from highly knowledgeable mentors for one school year, in addition to an introductory two-day summer institute and monthly workshops. Pre- and post-assessment of participants on a Teacher Knowledge Survey (TKS) indicated weak knowledge of phonological awareness and phonics concepts prior to PD and large, significant gains in each area by year-end. In addition, to investigate factors potentially associated with teachers’ responses to training, a Teacher Attitude Survey (TAS) was administered before and after the PD. The TAS measured teachers’ attitudes regarding PD, external and internal motivation to participate, intentions to actively engage in learning and implementing new instructional methods, sense of self-efficacy as reading instructors, and premises about reading instruction (e.g., about whole language). Attitudes on a subset of these factors, teachers’ initial knowledge scores on the TKS, and years of teaching experience (estimated by age) accounted for significant portions of the variance in performance on the TKS after training.

Explaining school‐based curriculum satisfaction: a case study

This paper examines the contradictory effects of teaching multicultural education in two American white women's university classrooms. The authors use discourse analysis to understand the confusing results of teaching about difference. In this analysis, course readings and a field trip to an urban school are examined in regard to the instructors' intentions and students' responses. The authors understand the puzzling results of their teaching by examining the positivist dimensions of their pedagogy, including the belief in rational approaches to overcoming racism, sexism and other systems of oppression, the belief in the possibility of replacing 'bad ideas' with 'good' ones, and the perpetuation of knowledge grounded in a binary system of meaning-making and language use. The authors conclude with ideas for a postpositivist approach to knowledge, experience and action, that emphasizes the production of interpretations.     

Hurricane Sandy Exposure Alters the Development of Neural Reactivity to Negative Stimuli in Children

This study examined whether exposure to Hurricane Sandy‐related stressors altered children's brain response to emotional information. An average of 8 months (M_age = 9.19) before and 9 months after (M_age = 10.95) Hurricane Sandy, 77 children experiencing high (n = 37) and low (n = 40) levels of hurricane‐related stress exposure completed a task in which the late positive potential, a neural index of emotional reactivity, was measured in response to pleasant and unpleasant, compared to neutral, images. From pre‐ to post‐Hurricane Sandy, children with high stress exposure failed to show the same decrease in emotional reactivity to unpleasant versus neutral stimuli as those with low stress exposure. Results provide compelling evidence that exposure to natural disaster‐related stressors alters neural emotional reactivity to negatively valenced information.