Young Children’s Memories for Social Actions: Influences of Age,Theory of Mind,and Motor Complexity

Children learn actions performed by a social partner better when they misremember these actions as their own. Identifying the factors that alter the propensity to make appropriation errors is critical for optimizing social learning. In two experiments (N = 110), we investigate the developmental trajectory of appropriation errors and examine social-cognitive and motor-related factors in 3- to 8-year-olds. Children with better theory of mind (ToM) skills made fewer appropriation errors for motorically complex actions. Appropriation errors did not differ as a function of ToM if children could perform the corresponding actions. A second experiment replicated this effect and found no influence of collaborative context on appropriation errors. This research sheds light on the complex relations among development, social-cognition, and motor-related factors.     

Developing a web-based toolkit for new mothers about postpartum pelvic floor health in collaboration with a professional medical association

Background:Few electronic resources are available for new mothers with concerns about changes in their pelvic floor following childbirth. Patients may struggle when seeking authoritative information regarding pelvic floor conditions online given the sensitivity of the topic as well as the inadvertent connection to obscene or demeaning content found online. A health sciences librarian partnered with the Motherhood and Pelvic Health Study, an interdisciplinary research group, to provide expert searching skills for a particularly challenging health condition that patients struggle to find useful information on.Case Presentation:A custom rubric was developed to evaluate existing information products, which included criteria for cultural sensitivity, conflicts of interest, and other red flags. This evaluation process enabled the research team to identify top-tier evidence-based materials that were culturally congruent. This collaborative evaluation process led to the creation of a web-based toolkit resource for new mothers concerned about changes in their pelvic floor. The toolkit connects women to pertinent information on a national health organization''s patient portal, supplemented by videos created by the team to serve as models of communication for women and health care providers.Conclusion:When developing a web-based resource, health sciences libraries can partner with research teams to find, evaluate, and disseminate information. Culturally congruent toolkits such as this one can improve access to health information and lead to improved health outcomes. To ensure that the information highlighted in toolkits is both culturally congruent and authoritative, research teams should form advisory committees and partner with relevant professional medical associations.     

Knowledge building and vocabulary growth over two years, Grades 3 and 4

Productive knowledge work and high-level literacy are essential for engagement in a Knowledge society. In the research reported in this article, students were engaged in sustained collaborative knowledge building in science and social studies. The vocabulary growth of 22 students over Grades 3 and 4 was traced, based on their entries to Knowledge Forum—a knowledge building environment used as an integral part of classroom work. It is the communal space where knowledge work–ideas, reference material, results of experiments, and so forth–is entered and continually improved. Analysis of lexical frequency profiles indicated significant growth in productive written vocabulary, including academic words. In a Grade 4 inquiry, students incorporated almost all the domain-specific terms at and below their current grade level, and most of those expected for upper grade levels (5–8) based on the curriculum guidelines. Domain-specific and academic words were correlated with depth of understanding. High correlations between student engagement in knowledge building and vocabulary growth suggest that productive vocabulary can be developed through sustained knowledge building in subject areas.     

Citizens now and for the future? Leaders,learners, and 14–19 Reform in England. Messages from research

How do researchers and practitioners understand and interrogate education reform when it is heralded as the solution to many problems, not all of which are educational? As importantly, how can applied educational researchers delve ‘beneath the skin’ of ‘given’ problems to solve or report, and suggest a range of explanations? In this article, the issue is leadership for ‘citizenship’ and the research project, conducted in 2007–2008, refers to participants’ understandings about 14–19 Reforms to ‘produce’ confident and responsible citizens. From contested theoretical and policy as well as research perspectives, this paper explores how citizenship is being framed and understood. Specific attention is given to students’ voices. Findings suggest that educating for citizenship is far from uppermost in the minds and reported activities of many who work or study in the organisations sampled. Implications for practitioner and academic communities are considered, not least the appropriate promotion of education for citizenship that is coherent, holistic, and feasible rather than peripheral or rhetorical.     

Dos modelos explicativos de los procesos de composición escrita

Resumen

Se analizan dos modelos de los procesos de composición escrita Decir el conocimiento y Transformar el conocimiento con el propósito de captar las diferencias esenciales entre escritores expertos y novatos. La idea básica que subyace a estos modelos es que la principal diferencia entre los procesos de composición de expertos y novatos radica en la manera que el conocimiento es introducido en el proceso de composición y en lo que posteriormente le sucede a ese conocimiento. Se presentan además investigaciones educativas, cuya finalidad fue la de fomentar el desarrollo del modelo Transformar el conocimiento. Se supone que la tarea del científico cognitivista debe ser no sólo la de describir los procesos cognitivos sino la de encontrar aquellas diferencias que son significativas desde un punto de vista educacional. Si queremos ayudar a los alumnos a adquirir una estructura de «transformar el conocimiento» en los procesos de composición, es necesario llegar a modelos explícitos de competencia madura y poder diseñar procedimientos que transformen la competencia que los alumnos traen a la tarea espontánea. Los resultados de aplicar diversas estrategias educacionales sugieren que es posible transmitir los procedimientos complejos de solución de problemas que poseen los expertos, y que al hacerlo se pueden ampliar las facultades de los alumnos para escribir. Sin embargo, los estudios educativos también indican que pasar de «decir el conocimiento» a «transformar el conocimiento» en la composición, no es un proceso de crecimiento sino de reconstrucción de una estructura cognitiva.     

Designs for Collective Cognitive Responsibility in Knowledge-Building Communities

This article reports a design experiment conducted over three successive school years, with the teacher's goal of having his Grade 4 students assume increasing levels of collective responsibility for advancing their knowledge of optics. Classroom practices conducive to sustained knowledge building were co-constructed by the teacher and students, with Knowledge Forum software supporting the production and refinement of the community's knowledge. Social network analysis and qualitative analyses were used to assess online participatory patterns and knowledge advances, focusing on indicators of collective cognitive responsibility. Data indicate increasingly effective procedures, mirrored in students' knowledge advances, corresponding to the following organizations: (a) Year 1—fixed small-groups; (b) Year 2—interacting small-groups with substantial cross-group knowledge sharing; and (c) Year 3—opportunistic collaboration, with small teams forming and disbanding under the volition of community members, based on emergent goals. The third-year model maps most directly onto organic and distributed social structures in real-world knowledge-creating organizations and resulted in the highest level of collective cognitive responsibility, knowledge advancement, and dynamic diffusion of information. Pedagogical and technological innovations to enculturate youth into a knowledge-creating culture, with classroom practices to encourage distributed and opportunistic collaboration, are discussed.     

Sustaining Knowledge Building as a Principle-Based Innovation at an Elementary School

This study explores Knowledge Building as a principle-based innovation at an elementary school and makes a case for a principle- versus procedure-based approach to educational innovation, supported by new knowledge media. Thirty-nine Knowledge Building initiatives, each focused on a curriculum theme and facilitated by nine teachers over eight years, were analyzed using measures of student discourse in a Knowledge Building environment–Knowledge Forum. Results were analyzed from the perspective of student, teacher, and principal engagement to identify conditions for Knowledge Building as a school-wide innovation. Analyses of student discourse showed interactive and complementary contributions to a community knowledge space, conceptual content of growing scope and depth, and collective responsibility for knowledge advancement. Analyses of teacher and principal engagement showed supportive conditions such as shared vision and trust in student competencies to the point of enabling transfer of agency for knowledge advancement to students; ever-deepening understanding of Knowledge Building principles; knowledge emergent through collective responsibility; a coherent systems perspective; teacher professional Knowledge Building communities; and leadership supportive of innovation at all levels. More substantial advances for students were related to years of teachers' experience in this progressive knowledge-advancing enterprise.     

Popular Culture and Advertising

WHATEVER HAPPENED TO MADISON AVENUE? ADVERTISING IN THE '90s by Martin Mayer (Boston: Little, Brown, 1991—$22.95, ISBN 0-316- 55154-6, 269 pp.)

THE CODES OF ADVERTISING: FETISHISM AND THE POLITICAL ECONOMY OF MEANING IN THE CONSUMER SOCIETY by Sut Jhally (New York: Routledge, 1990—price not given, paper, ISBN 0-415-90353-X, 225 pp.)

ROCK AROUND THE BLOCK: A HISTORY OF ROCK MUSIC IN EASTERN EUROPE AND THE SOVIET UNION by Timothy W. Ryback (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990—$21.95, ISBN 0-19-505633-7, 272 pp.)

MUSIC AT THE MARGINS: POPULAR MUSIC AND GLOBAL CULTURAL DIVERSITY by Deanna Campbell Robinson, Elizabeth B. Buck, and Marlene Cuthbert (Newbury Park, CA: Sage, 1991—$39.95/19.95, ISBN 0-8039- 3192-1 hard, 0-8039-3193-X paper, 312 pp.)

THE MANY LIVES OF THE BATMAN: CRITICAL APPROACHES TO A SUPERHERO AND HIS MEDIA edited by Roberta E. Pearson and William Uricchio (New York: Routledge, 1991—$39.95/13.95, ISBN 0-415-90346-7 hard, 0-415-90347-5 paper, 213 pp.)

BROADCAST ADVERTISING: A COMPREHENSIVE WORKING TEXTBOOK by Sherilyn K. Zeigler and Herbert H. Howard (Ames: Iowa State University Press, 1991—$34.95, ISBN 0-8138-0072-2, 358 pp.)

FUNDAMENTALS OF ADVERTISING RESEARCH by Alan Fletcher and Thomas Bowers (Belmont, CA: Wadsworth, 1991—price not given, ISBN 0-534-14778-X, 364 pp.)

THIS BUSINESS OF MUSIC by Sidney Shemel and M. William Krasilovsky (New York: Billboard/Watson-Guptill, 1991—$27.50, ISBN 0-8230-7706-3, 688 pp.)