Sharing Books and Learning Language: What do Latina Mothers and Their Young Children Do?

This study examined low-income, Spanish-speaking, immigrant Latina mothers' book sharing behaviors in relation to their children's vocabulary. Participants were 47 3-year-old children and their mothers. We addressed two research questions: (a) What interactive behaviors are evident when low-income immigrant Latina mothers and their 3-year-old children look at books together? (b) For these children and their mothers, which book-sharing behaviors are related to children's expressive language? Overall, our results indicated that mothers were involved in several kinds of interactions with the books. They enhanced their children's attention to the printed text, promoted interaction or conversation with their children about what was in the books, and somewhat less often, used more complex literacy strategies. Mothers who did these things most had children with the largest vocabularies even when mothers' vocabulary was taken into account. Implications for designing interventions for similar families are discussed.     

Stigmatised learners: mature-age students negotiating university culture

Research on the socially-situated nature of learning shows how practices and identities are affected by participation in communities, but very little is known about how mature-age students experience the relational dynamics of university. Based on data from a qualitative study of first-year students, we consider written accounts by older learners to examine how they negotiate the culture of higher education. We found that mature-age students encounter a university culture dominated by younger students, who draw separating boundaries between the social and the academic and stigmatise older students because of their academic practices. Drawing on Lave and Wenger’s learning theory, we examine the way mature-age students negotiate the process of becoming legitimate members of the learning community, and the resistance they face in doing so. Knowing how mature-age students learn, and how to support them, depends on examining their negotiation of university culture, as well as their differing aspirations and needs.     

Adolescent Weak Decoders Writing in a Shallow Orthography: Process and Product

It has been hypothesized that students with dyslexia struggle with writing because of a word-level focus that reduces attention to higher level textual features (structure, theme development). This may result from difficulties with spelling and/or difficulties with reading. Twenty-six Norwegian upper secondary students (M = 16.9 years) with weak decoding skills and 26 age-matched controls composed expository texts by keyboard under two conditions: normally and with letters masked to prevent them reading what they were writing. Weak decoders made more spelling errors and produced poorer quality text. Their inter-key-press latencies were substantially longer preword, at word end, and within word. These findings provide some support for the word-level focus hypothesis, although we found that weak decoders were slightly less likely to engage in word-level editing. Preventing reading did not affect differences between weak decoders and controls, indicating that their reduced fluency was associated with production rather than reading difficulties.     

Career Decisional States of Australian and South African High School Students

The influence of contextualfactors on the career decision states of 429South African and 623 Australian male andfemale students in grades 8 to 12 wasinvestigated. The results for both nationalsamples on the Career Decision Scaledemonstrate that grade, gender, and theinteraction of grade and gender impact on thedevelopmental progression of career decisionbehaviour. Gender differences across nationswere more pronounced for males than females.Both South African and Australian students aremore decided in lower grades. Internationaldifferences suggest that South African studentsare less certain and evidence greaterindecision than Australian students. Theimplications for educational decision pointsand career education practices are discussed.     

The implications of size for educational development in small territories: The case of Macau

The educational issues associated with the small size of countries have long been neglected by administrators and academics. Recent work by the Commonwealth Secretariat has done much to remedy this neglect, but the topic is still in its infancy. This paper contributes to the body of literature by providing a specific case-study. By focusing on Macau, it also helps balance the bias of existing work, most of which concentrates on Commonwealth countries.

---

Zusammenfassung Erziehungswissenschaftliche Fragen, die mit einer kleinen Ländergröße verbunden sind, sind lange von Verwaltungsbeamten und Wissenschaftlern vernachlässigt worden. Jüngere Arbeiten des Commonwealth-Sekretariats haben viel dazu beigetragen, diesem Versäumnis abzuhelfen, aber die Behandlung dieses Themas steht noch im Anfangsstadium. Dieser Artikel stellt einen Beitrag zur Gesamtheit der Literatur dar, indem er eine spezielle Fallstudie liefert, und dadurch, daß das Augenmerk auf Makao gerichtet ist, hilft er darüberhinaus, die Einseitigkeit bereits vorliegender Arbeiten, die sich überwiegend auf Commonwealthländer konzentrieren, auszugleichen.

---

Résumé Administrateurs et universitaires ont longtemps négligé les problèmes éducatifs liés aux petits pays. Le travail qui a été entrepris récemment par le secrétariat du Commonwealth a contribué pour une grande part à pallier cette négligence, mais ce thème en est encore à ses débuts. Cette étude de cas spécifique apporte sa contribution à l'ensemble de la littérature qui existe sur ce sujet. En mettant l'accent sur Macao, elle permet également de rétablir l'équilibre dans les travaux existants qui se focalisent essentiellement sur les pays du Commonwealth.