Teaching Transfer Strategies to Children with Moderate Learning Difficulties

Dr David Sugden is the tutor to courses in special educational needs at the School of Education, Leeds University. Mrs Margaret Newall teaches in a special school; in 1984–5, as a research assistant at Leeds University, she took part in a study of ways to improve learning and memory in pupils with moderate learning difficulties.     

Policies for Reporting Test Results to Parents

What are the state and district policies on reporting test results to parents? How well do local districts follow state policies?     

Neighborhood matters: racial socialization of African American children

Differences in racial socialization practices and their effects were examined in a sample of 241 African American 1st graders (average age 6.59 years) living in an urban area. Child outcomes included cognitive development, receptive language skills, and child problem behavior. The cultural environment of the home was associated with higher cognitive scores for boys living in high negative social climate and low social capital neighborhoods and for girls living in high social capital neighborhoods. The positive association of promotion of mistrust and child behavior problems was magnified in neighborhoods that had low levels of social capital. A high negative social climate in the neighborhood attenuated the positive association between preparation for bias/promotion of mistrust and externalizing problems.     

Population policies and education: exploring the contradictions of neo‐liberal globalisation

The world is increasingly characterised by profound income, health and social inequalities (Appadurai, 2000 Appadurai, A. 2000. Grassroots globalisation and the research imagination. Public Culture, 12(1): 1–19. [Crossref], [Web of Science ®] [Google Scholar]). In recent decades development initiatives aimed at reducing these inequalities have been situated in a context of increasing globalisation with a dominant neo‐liberal economic orthodoxy. This paper argues that neo‐liberal globalisation contains inherent contradictions regarding choice and uniformity. This is illustrated in this paper through an exploration of the impact of neo‐liberal globalisation on population policies and programmes. The dominant neo‐liberal economic ideology that has influenced development over the last few decades has often led to alternative global visions being overlooked. Many current population and development debates are characterised by polarised arguments with strongly opposing aims and views. This raises the challenge of finding alternatives situated in more middle ground that both identify and promote the socially positive elements of neo‐liberalism and state intervention, but also to limit their worst excesses within the population field and more broadly. This paper concludes with a discussion outling the positive nature of middle ground and other possible alternatives.