Early risk, attention, and brain activation in adolescents born preterm

The relations among early cumulative medical risk, cumulative environmental risk, attentional control, and brain activation were assessed in 15-16-year-old adolescents who were born preterm. Functional magnetic resonance imaging found frontal, temporal, and parietal cortex activation during an attention task with greater activation of the left superior-temporal and left supramarginal gyri associated with better performance. Individual differences in early cumulative risk are related to patterns of brain activation such that medical risk is related to left parietal cortex activation and environmental risk is related to temporal lobe activation. The findings suggest that early risk is related to less mature patterns of brain activation, including reduced efficiency of processing and responding to stimuli.     

Teaching for Understanding in Earth Science: Comparing Impacts on Planning and Instruction in Three Professional Development Designs for Middle School Science Teachers

This paper compares and contrasts the impacts of three professional development designs aimed at middle school Earth science teachers on how teachers plan and enact instruction. The designs were similar in their alignment to research-based practices in science professional development: each design was of an extended duration and time span, included follow-up support to teachers, and incorporated active learning approaches in the professional development. In addition, the designs had a high level of coherence with other reform activities and with local standards. The main difference among the designs was in the roles of teachers in designing, adopting, or adapting curriculum materials. Evidence from teacher survey and observation data indicated that all programs had positive impacts on how teachers planned and enacted teaching for understanding, but differences among programs was more evident in their impacts on instructional planning.     

Promoting and recognising excellence in the supervision of research students: an evidence‐based framework

One issue universities face is the need to demonstrate excellence in postgraduate research supervision at the individual, faculty and university level. While poor supervision might become obvious over time, with grievances, withdrawals and poor completion times and rates, this paper focuses specifically on identifying and demonstrating supervisory excellence. Currently, the amount and range of evidence used to support claims of supervisory excellence tends to be limited, leaving supervisors, faculties and institutions in a position where demonstrating excellence remains difficult. This paper proposes two inter‐dependent ideas which, considered together, help to redress this problem. The first is a ‘map’ for the collection and use of evidence of supervisory excellence. The second is a ‘template’ for a ‘supervisory excellence report’. The ‘map’ details the organisational elements, uses of data, and data types which can be considered. The ‘report’ explains one simple and potent way to organise and present these data for multiple purposes. Together they constitute a much‐needed framework for promoting and recognising excellence in the supervision of research students.     

Ensuring the Provision of Accessible Digital Resources

A lack of awareness of disability issues in the provision of digital educational material is resulting in a situation where much of this material is, to some degree, inaccessible to people with certain disabilities. Current and proposed disability legislation in countries such as the United States and the United Kingdom means that any educational material produced by institutions, and which has accessibility barriers, may soon be illegal. This paper discusses the issues involved in the provision of accessible digital material, with a heavy emphasis on Web‐based resources, with a view to raising awareness and avoiding a potentially embarrassing situation for educational institutions. The various assistive technologies used by disabled people to access digital material are discussed, along with the problems by inaccessible material, illustrated by examples of inaccessible Web pages. Solutions for ensuring the accessibility of digital material are provided, including a discussion of open standards and guidelines and principles of accessible content design     

‘Let Them Eat Caviar’: Alternative pathways for university students attending to ‘unfinished business’

This paper reports on a study into the educational experiences of a group of students who are accessing tertiary education through alternative entry programmes. There were three purposes for the study. The first was to identify why the students either did not finish school or go to university after school. The second was to explore the students' stated reasons for returning to university later in their lives. The third was to share the students' secondchance experiences in their first semester as university students. The study drew on theoretical ideas surrounding how students who reject school, or who have been rejected by school, may come to view education as unfinished business in their lives. Reconnection with education coincides with wider processes of individuals defining and redefining educational identities.     

Emergent Literacy in an Early Childhood Classroom: Center Learning to Support the Child with Special Needs

A child with special needs will flourish and benefit from an early childhood environment that empowers learning. Center learning empowers a child to be actively engaged in self-directed learning based on strength, ability, and interest. Center learning can enhance interactive language, story response, art, reading and writing-like behavior, collaboration, buddy activity, and independence. All of these empowering areas of development are strongly related to the child's emergent literacy development. The variety of center learning experiences is limited only by the imagination; this article provides a selection of start-up ideas for the early childhood educator.     

Early career experiences of navigating journal article publication: Lessons learned using an autoethnographic approach

The successful publication of peer reviewed academic journal articles is an essential achievement for early career researchers (ECRs) seeking to establish themselves in their profession. However, this journey can pose several significant challenges for ECRs. We use an autoethnographic approach that draws deeply on our lived experience as ECRs to capture our recent and current experiences of negotiating the academic journal article publication journey to explore the tensions, contradictions, and benefits encountered in the journey. We critically examine challenges we experienced in choosing a target journal and negotiating the follow‐up process; undertaking revisions; and our experiences of limitations and possibilities in peer review and editorial support. While the peer review journal writing process has played a significant role in supporting us to become more effective ECRs, we also highlight challenges we faced negotiating ethical quandaries in this space, as well as illustrate how our preconceptions of a simple publication journey were confounded by subsequent experience of the complex realities of the space. We also suggest that educational interventions are indicated to provide ECRs support in foundational knowledge about what constitutes valuable revisions, an effective paper, and the scope of issues that can be addressed to make a paper more effective, with reference to the possibility of academic mentoring to support this need. Finally, we explore our findings in light of the tensions imposed by the relative inexperience and lack of power yielded by ECRs.