Thinking aloud: children's interactions with text

This article describes a small‐scale exploratory study in which young children were taught to think aloud as they read, revealing some of their thought processes as they made sense of the text. The children spontaneously made predictions, adjusted their understanding, entered imaginatively into the characters' feelings and related their reading to events in their own experience. They had difficulty, though, in appreciating a surprise ending. The think‐aloud method proved fruitful for research purposes and could offer valuable insights to teachers.     

COGNITIVE STRUCTURES OF CREATIVITY: IMPLICATIONS FOR INSTRUCTIONAL DESIGN

While creativity of the order which produces paradigm shifts in a knowledge domain is usually the result of the efforts of creative experts, any novel outcome of the work of a problem solver can be referred to as “creative”, be it process or product Any individual, regardless of level of expertise, is capable of creativity if he or she employs the entire cognitive system differentially and synergistically. Consequently, the aim of instruction aimed at enhancing creativity should be to provide opportunities for learners to use all three knowledge orders for creative problem solving. The paper provides various ways in which this may be done.     

Schedule-induced behavior in rats: Pellets versus powder

Food-deprived rats develop polydipsia on an intermittent schedule (fixed time 60 sec) of food pellet delivery, but not on an identical schedule of food powder delivery. This result was demonstrated with separate groups receiving each type of food and was replicated using rats as their own controls. Powdered food not only prevented the development of polydipsia, but it abruptly terminated ongoing polydipsia in rats that were switched from the scheduled delivery of pellets to powder. Ethological analysis of the behavior showed that the rats receiving powder were not engaging excessively in some behavior other than drinking. After discounting several factors, we concluded that the amount of oral activity associated with feeding, which occurred immediately after food delivery, was reciprocally related to the level of drinking.     

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.     

Still keen and committed: piloting an instrument for identifying positive veteran teachers

ABSTRACT

Since the mid-1980s, the working lives of teachers has become an enduring research topic. Much research has focused on early-career teachers and is often reported from deficit positions, i.e. why they leave the profession. However, career trajectory studies have described a small cohort of veteran teachers who remain positive and committed to teaching. This article reports on the creation and piloting of an instrument designed to test whether this positive cohort can be empirically identified within a wider teaching population. Four constructs (experimentation, challenge, comfort and leadership) drawn from Huberman (1993), and Day and Gu (2007) formed the basis for an online pilot survey completed by 145 teachers. Exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis supported three of the four factors (experimentation, comfort, leadership), with challenge loading strongly with experimentation. Initial findings suggest the potential of the instrument in helping identifying positive veteran teachers within systems, as well as the voracity of the research approach. Examining and articulating how these veteran teachers maintain their positive outlook may prove valuable as many countries confront an ageing teaching workforce, increasing student numbers and difficulties in retaining experienced teachers, meaning those who remain will be expected to sustain their commitment for longer.     

Internationalization of the women's magazine industry in Taiwan context,process and influence

This paper looks at the impact of internationalization on the women's magazine industry in Taiwan. It addresses the growing concentration of ownership and control at the international level, how the subsequent standardization has affected advertising, and the implications this has had for the magazines’ readership.

The influx of international magazines to the Taiwanese market since the mid 1980s saw a marked shift of advertising toward transnational brand products. With this in mind, content analysis was conducted to compare advertising in local magazines with that of locally available editions of international titles. The domestic titles, New Woman and Nong‐nong and the Chinese editions of Cosmopolitan and Marie Claire were analysed for 1995. The results indicate that commercial forces have resulted in Taiwan's women's magazines presenting the international stereotype of women in aesthetic roles.     

African American women and violence: gender,race, and class in the news

This study uses discourse analysis to examine the representation of violence against African American women in local TV news coverage of Freaknik, an annual “spring break” ritual that drew African American college students from throughout the country to Atlanta, Georgia in the 1990s. It draws on Black feminist theory in its examination of the ways that gender, race, and class intersected to shape the representation of the victims, the perpetrators, and the violence. The results indicate that the convergence of gender, race, and class oppressions minimized the seriousness of the violence, portrayed most of its victims as stereotypic Jezebels whose lewd behavior provoked assault, and absolved the perpetrators of responsibility. Coverage also reinforced race and class stereotypes by representing locals as underclass troublemakers prone to crime while students were linked to law‐abiding, middle class values and norms. In demonstrating the utility of addressing the intersectionality of gender, race, and class, this study argues that such an approach is necessary to the study of representation.