Discourse Roles,Gender and Language Textbook Dialogues: Who learns what from John and Sally?

ABSTRACT Much work has been done on gender stereotyping in textbooks for foreign language teaching. However, little has focused on the language of dialogues, which are a characteristic feature of language textbooks. In the light of this gap, this article describes the author's own study analysing discourse roles in dialogues in three recent text books for the teaching of English as a foreign language. The results showed an encouraging level of gender fairness. The authors then explore whether this fairness was achieved through the creation of gender balance in social and occupational roles, and suggest that this was so in the case of these three books. They also discuss the negative implications of gender-imbalanced dialogues for female students + language practice opportunities. This study has implications for language teachers, teacher educators, and writers and publishers of language teaching materials.     

Examining the Construct Validity of Enacted Support: A Multitrait–Multimethod Analysis of Three Perspectives for Judging Immediacy and Listening Behaviors

Scholars of supportive communication are primarily concerned with how variations in the quality of enacted support affect individual and relational health and well-being. But who gets to determine what counts as enacted support? There is a large degree of operational heterogeneity for what gets called enacted support, but little attention has been afforded to the issue of whether these assessments are substitutable. In two studies we use self-reports, conversational partner-reports, and third-party ratings of two quintessential behavioral support indicators, namely, listening and immediacy. Using a multitrait–multimethod (MTMM) design, Study 1 found (1) little association between the enacted support assessments and (2) a high degree of common method variance. A second study found moderate-to-high degrees of effective reliability (i.e., consistency of judgments within a set of judgments, or mean judgments) for enacted support evaluations from the perspective of unacquainted and untrained third-party judges. In general, our data provide cautionary evidence that when scholars examine evaluations of enacted support, perspective matters and might ultimately contribute differently to well-being and health.     

Low-Income Central American Immigrant Mothers' Goals and Their Children's Classroom Competencies in Preschool

Research Findings: Unlike other Latino groups, there is little information about the early socialization of children from Central American (CA) immigrant families. This study examined CA immigrant mothers' short-term goals and the implications of these goals for children's behavior in preschool. A total of 47 low-income mothers described their goals for their children's behavior at home/with family and at school. Nearly all mothers described relatedness-oriented goals for their children at home and at school. Mothers emphasized autonomy-oriented goals predominantly for the school context. Mothers' emphases on certain goals in the home, but not goals for school, predicted teacher reports of children's social cooperation and approaches to learning in the classroom. Practice or Policy: Educators should be aware that relatedness-oriented goals are highly salient for CA immigrant parents. Immigrant parents might benefit from more information regarding the general goals of preschool. Educators should encourage mothers to set multiple early goals for their children, including learning-related goals for home. Educators and CA immigrant parents may support home–school continuity for children through mutual understanding of goals and values.     

Blocking in autoshaped lever-pressing procedures with rats

Rats will approach and contact a lever whose insertion into the chamber signals response-independent food delivery. This “autoshaping” or “sign-tracking” phenomenon has recently attracted considerable attention as a platform for studying individual differences in impulsivity, drug sensitization, and other traits associated with vulnerability to drug addiction. Here, we examined two basic stimulus selection phenomena—blocking and overshadowing—in the autoshaped lever pressing of rats. Blocking and overshadowing were decidedly asymmetrical. Previously reinforced lever-extension conditioned stimuli (CSs) completely blocked conditioning to auditory cues (Exps. 1 and 2), and previously nonreinforced lever-extension CSs overshadowed conditioning to auditory cues. By contrast, conditioning to lever-extension CSs was not blocked by either auditory (Exp. 3) or lever-insertion (Exp. 4) cues, and was not overshadowed by auditory cues. Conditioning to a lever-insertion cue was somewhat overshadowed by the presence of another lever, especially in terms of food cup behavior displayed after lever withdrawal. We discuss several frameworks in which the apparent immunity of autoshaped lever pressing to blocking might be understood. Given evidence that different brain systems are engaged when different kinds of cues are paired with food delivery, it is worth considering the possibility that interactions among them in learning and performance may follow different rules. In particular, it is intriguing to speculate that the roles of simple cue–reinforcer contiguity, as well as of individual and aggregate reinforcer prediction errors, may differ across stimulus classes.     

Attachment‐Related Biases in Adolescents’ Memory

Attachment theorists propose that individuals’ internal working models influence their social information processing. This study explored links between attachment representations and social information processing by examining adolescents’ (n = 189; M_age = 16.5 years) attachment‐related memory biases. Participants completed laboratory tasks assessing memory for (a) emotionally salient childhood events, (b) adjectives describing their parents, and (c) generalized parent‐related characteristics not specific to their own parents. As expected, dismissing attachment (assessed using the Adult Attachment Interview) was linked across tasks to a deactivating strategy in which memory for emotional childhood events and attachment‐relevant stimuli was reduced. In contrast, evidence that preoccupied attachment was linked to a hyperactivating strategy in which memory was heightened emerged only in relation to emotional childhood events.     

“How people read and write and they don't even notice”: everyday lives and literacies on a Midlands council estate

This article presents data from a British Academy‐funded study of the everyday literacy practices of three families living on a predominantly white working‐class council housing estate on the edge of a Midlands city. The study explored, as one participant succinctly put it, “how people read and write and they don't even notice”. This alludes to the ways in which everyday practices may not be recognised as part of a dominant model of literacy. The study considered too the ways in which these literacy practices are part of a wider policy context that also fails to notice the impact of austerity politics on everyday lives. An emphasis on quantitative measures of disadvantage and public discourse which vilifies those facing economic challenge can overshadow the resilience and resourcefulness of individuals and families in making meaning from their experiences. Drawing together consideration of everyday lives and the everyday literacies which are part of them, this article explores the impact of the current policy context on access to both economic and cultural resources, showing how literacy, as part of this context, should be recognised as a powerful means not only of constricting lives but also of constructing them.     

Transforming the doctorate from residential to online: A Distributed PhD Learning Technologies

This article discusses a systemic change that expanded the doctorate in Learning Technologies at the University of North Texas to include a distributed option, delivered primarily online. It provides an overview of the development process from concept to initial implementation. The article examines the specific differences that make the online version different from its residential counterpart. We share both the challenges that emerged as well as suggestions for improvement that have come from our experience.     

Business of Broadcasting

Joseph S. Johnson and Kenneth K. Jones' Modern Radio Station Practices (Belmont, Calif.: Wadsworth, 1972—$7.95)

Edd Routt (double letters in each name correct) The Business of Radio Broadcasting (Blue Ridge Summit, Pa.: Tab Books, 1972— $12.95)

Giraud Chester, Garnet Garrison, and Edgar Willis' Television and Radio (New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts, 1971—$11.95)

Evelyn Sarson (ed.). Action for Children's Television (New York: Avon Discus Books, 1971— $1.25, paper)

The Fourth Network (New York: The Network Project, 102 Earl Hall, Columbia University, 1971—$3.00, paper)

William Kuhns' Exploring Television (Chicago: Loyola University Press, 1971—$3.20, paper; with a Teacher's Guide available for $1.00, paper)

Wayne Green's (ed.), The Fascinating World of Radio Communications (Blue Ridge Summit, Pa.: Tab Books, 1971—$6.95/3.95)

The Wit and Wisdom of Archie Bunker (New York: Popular Library, 1971—.95, paper)     

Foreign and International Media

Allan M. Winkler's The Politics of Propaganda: The Office of War Information, 1942-1945 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1978—$11.95)

46. Mass News Media and the Third World Challenge by Leonard R. Sussman (80 pp.)

49. International News and the American Media by Barry Rubin (71 pp.)

Kees Van Der Haak and Joanna Spicer's Broadcasting in the Netherlands (London and Boston: Routledge &; Kegan Paul, 1977—$7.95, paper)

Tomo Martelanc, et al. External Radio Broadcasting and International Understanding: Broadcasting to Yugoslavia (Paris: Unesco/ New York: Unipub, 1977—$2.75, paper)

John A. Lent's Asian Mass Communications: A Comprehensive Bibliography-1977 Supplement (School of Communications, Temple University, Philadelphia, Pa. 19122—$25.00 1 paper)     

Clogging the Machinery: the BBC's experiment in science coordination, 1949–1953

In 1949, physicist Mark Oliphant criticised the BBC's handling of science in a letter to the Director General William Haley. It initiated a chain of events which led to the experimental appointment of a science adviser, Henry Dale, to improve the ‘coordination’ of science broadcasts. The experiment failed, but the episode revealed conflicting views of the BBC's responsibility towards science held by scientists and BBC staff. For the scientists, science had a special status, both as knowledge and as an activity, which in their view obligated the BBC to make special arrangements for it. BBC staff, however, had their own professional procedures which they were unwilling to abandon. The events unfolded within a few years of the end of the Second World War, when social attitudes to science had been coloured by the recent conflict, and when the BBC itself was under scrutiny from the William Beveridge's Committee. The BBC was also embarking on new initiatives, notably the revival of adult education. These contextual factors bear on the story, which is about the relationship between a public service broadcaster and the external constituencies it relies on, but must appear to remain independent from. The article therefore extends earlier studies showing how external bodies have attempted to manipulate the inner workings of the BBC to their own advantage (e.g. those by Doctor and Karpf) by looking at the little-researched area of science broadcasting. The article is largely based on unpublished archive documents.