Teaching for Emergent Disciplinary Drawing in Science? Comparing Teachers’ and Children’s Ways of Representing Science Content in Early Childhood Classrooms

Research in Science Education - This classroom-based study aims to contribute knowledge about children’s opportunities to make use of drawing to make meaning in science. Employing a social...     

Too Much Familiarity! The Developmental Path of the Fluency Heuristic in Children

We tested whether changes in attribution processes could account for the developmental differences observed in how children’s use fluency to guide their memory decisions. Children ranging in age from 4 to 9 years studied a list of familiar or unfamiliar cartoon characters. In Experiment 1 (n = 84), participants completed a recognition test during which the perceptual fluency of some items was enhanced using a prime. In Experiment 2 (n = 96), participants completed a source recollection judgment on their recognition decisions. Primed items were recognized at a higher rate than unprimed items. However, while young children rely on fluency for all items, older children use fluency only for unfamiliar items. This pattern came together with a reduction in familiarity-based—but not recollection-based—memory responses.     

Emergent identity and dilemmatic spaces: pre-service teachers’ engagement with EAL collaboration

Integrationist policies that promote the mainstreaming of English language learners are well established in many English-speaking countries. This has led to the embedding of English as an additional language (EAL) methodology in teacher education, and also to the notion of collaboration between English language teachers and content area teachers. Teacher positioning is integral to the processes of collaboration, and in this article it is argued that both sociocultural identity constructs and the notion of dilemmatic spaces can be used jointly to explore this positioning. A framework that draws upon these two theoretical perspectives is discussed. It was developed to investigate pre-service teachers’ (PSTs’) perceptions of collaboration with EAL teachers, and is applied to three secondary PSTs who were undertaking an EAL methodology course in an Australian university.     

What Does Prone Skateboarding in the Newborn Tell Us About the Ontogeny of Human Locomotion?

The crawling behavior of sixty 2-day-old newborns was studied while they were supported prone on a mini skateboard and on a pediatric mattress without additional support. Analyses of the number and types of limb movements and their characteristics, the coactivation of limb pairs, and the displacement across the surface, revealed that newborns can crawl with locomotor patterns similar to those documented during quadrupedal locomotion in animals and human adults. This was particularly apparent on the skateboard. This discovery suggests that locomotor circuitry underlying quadrupedal locomotion develops during fetal life. Drawing upon other evidence for a quadrupedal organization underlying bipedal gait, we argue that early quadrupedal training may enhance interventions designed to hasten the onset of independent walking.     

Rethinking sexual agency: proposing a multicomponent model based on young people’s life stories

Sexual health policies explicitly aim to encourage young people to take responsibility for their sexuality to prevent adverse outcomes such as unintended pregnancies, STIs and sexual assault. In Europe and North America, ‘choice’ has become a central concept in sexual and reproductive health policy making. However, the concept of choice is not unproblematic, not least because the cultural emphasis on individual responsibility obscures structural limitations and inequalities, and mutual responsibility between partners. Moreover, studies on the life stories of young people show how agency is forged and expressed within a social context and is manifested through responsiveness to others. This raises the question of how we can conceptualise sexual agency in a way that includes this sociality. How can we rethink sexual agency beyond autonomy? This article explores these issues using data from four separate research projects that shared the aim of exploring young people’s sexual agency in different areas. Drawing on findings from these studies, it advances a multicomponent model of sexual agency that connects individual choice to the social, moral and narrative context which young people navigate.     

Memories as Useful Outcomes of Residential Outdoor Environmental Education

Residential outdoor environmental education (ROEE) programs for youth have been shown to yield lasting autobiographical episodic memories. This article explores how past program participants have used such memories, and draws on the memory psychology literature to offer a new perspective on the long-term impacts of environmental education. Qualitative interviews with 54 teens at two research sites 5 years after a ROEE experience revealed a variety of directive and social uses for their memories, including participating in outdoor recreation activities, being more knowledgeable about and appreciative of the local ecology, engaging in environmentally responsible behaviors, and reminiscing with friends about the experience.