Who Cares About Caring in Early Childhood Teacher Education Programs?

The ability to care for oneself, near and distant others, animals, plants, human-made objects, and even ideas is an antidote for violence in its many forms as experienced in childhood as well as adulthood. This article makes a case for facilitating the development of the ability to care as children develop. The authors emphasize the importance of teachers facilitating this development. However, early education teachers may not be able to nurture the ability to care in others without the ability to care being facilitated in their own development. This article emphasizes the importance of creating caring teacher education programs as a model to foster its development in preservice early education teachers.     

Utilizing elements of The Apprentice in the strategic communication campaigns course

Courses: Strategic Campaigns, Advertising/Public Relations Campaigns

Objectives: The purpose of this semester-long project is student application of research-based strategic communication strategies and techniques used in executing a professional strategic communication campaign for a client.     

Seeking a Mexicana/Mestiza Critical Feminist Ethic of Care: Diana’s Revolución of Body and Being

This Chicana Critical Feminist Testimonio reveals a Mexican/Mexican-American Ethic of Care and Testimonios of struggle and survival informing curriculum and pedagogy of one Mexican/Mexican-American female educator of predominantly Mexican/Mexican-American students. This work is part of a larger ethnographic study conducted through multiple methods. Findings here reveal Diana’s Ethic of Care, a (re)framing of social justice revolution/Revolución at the intersection of race, class, gender, language, and immigration status. As Diana (re)constructs and (re)claims her Mexican/Mexican-American identity, she likewise endeavors toward her students’ dignity and academic access. Findings have curricular, pedagogical implications for all educators serving marginalized youth and youth of color.     

Self-Evaluations and Intergroup Attitudes in Children Aged Three to Nine

The effects of individual and group performance on children's evaluations of themselves and in- and out-group were examined. 128 girls and boys aged 3, 5, 7, and 9 years were randomly assigned to alleged "fast" or "slow" teams and asked to make various self, interpersonal, and intergroup evaluations. These showed strong developmental changes. Intergroup comparisons were made as early as 3 years, and this age group was sensitive to the relative standing of their team. However, the 5-year-old children showed markedly high self-evaluations, very strong in group bias in their evaluations of the 2 teams, and a high level of group cohesion irrespective of their own team's alleged performance. Gender differences were observed in self-evaluations after team assignment (boys responding more than girls to their team's alleged performance). The implications of these findings for recent work based on cognitive-developmental and social identity theories are discussed.     

Player one,playing with others virtually: what’s next in game and player studies

This essay describes current research in player studies, focusing on how play is a social activity, and how sociality is mediated and performed in a variety of settings. It starts by explaining the concept of tandem play and then moves to an exploration of gameplay that is performed for differently sized audiences via the Twitch.tv platform. Our research finds that even single-player gameplay can very often be a social activity. Additionally, how we perform gameplay is contingent on multiple factors, including where we and others are physically located, whether play is professional or amateur, and how particular play platforms shape our expectations for play and spectatorship actions.     

Stability of repeated student evaluations of teaching in the second preclinical year of a medical curriculum

The second preclinical year of the medical curriculum at the Medical Faculty of the University of Lausanne in Switzerland includes nine multidisciplinary organ-system-oriented modules consisting of lectures and problem-based-learning tutorials. This study reports the experience accumulated with the evaluation of lectures during the academic years 1998–1999 and 1999–2000. The ratings of the different modules were highly variable, indicating the ability of students to have a critical view on the teaching and the teachers. There was a close to very close correlation between the ratings obtained during the two study years. The high discriminative capacity of students in evaluating the teaching and the teachers was also supported by their critical point of view expressed in free comments. Our observations stress therefore the reliability of teaching evaluations systematically performed by medical students.     

Does the Cognitive Interview Promote the Coherence of Narrative Accounts in Children With and Without an Intellectual Disability?

We examined whether the cognitive interview (CI) procedure enhanced the coherence of narrative accounts provided by children with and without intellectual disabilities (ID), matched on chronological age. Children watched a videotaped magic show; one day later, they were interviewed using the CI or a structured interview (SI). Children interviewed using the CI reported more correct details than those interviewed using the SI. Additionally, children interviewed using the CI reported more contextual background details, more logically ordered sequences, more temporal markers, and fewer inconsistencies in their stories than those interviewed using the SI. However, the CI did not increase the number of story grammar elements compared with the SI. Overall children interviewed with the CI told better stories than those interviewed with the SI. This finding provided further support for the effectiveness of the CI with vulnerable witnesses, particularly children with ID.