Self-reported childhood and adolescent sexual abuse among adult homosexual bisexual men.

From May 1989 through April 1990, 1,001 adult homosexual and bisexual men attending sexually transmitted disease clinics were interviewed regarding potentially abusive sexual contacts during childhood and adolescence. Thirty-seven percent of participants reported they had been encouraged or forced to have sexual contact before age 19 with an older or more powerful partner; 94% occurred with men. Median age of the participant at first contact was 10; median age difference between partners was 11 years. Fifty-one percent involved use of force; 33% involved anal sex. Black and Hispanic men were more likely than white men to report such sexual contact. Using developmentally-based criteria to define sexual abuse, 93% of participants reporting sexual contact with an older or more powerful partner were classified as sexually abused. Our data suggest the risk of sexual abuse may be high among some male youth and increased attention should be devoted to prevention as well as early identification and treatment.     

Changing practice: The National Literacy Strategy and the politics of literacy policy

Drawing on a recent ESRC‐funded research project, 1 this paper will explore some of the contradictory structural features of the National Literacy Strategy (NLS), which have helped shape its evolution over time, and reflect on some of the tension points which have arisen at different levels of implementation as the Strategy unfolds. In the process, the paper will consider NLS not so much as a neutral means of transferring ‘what works’ from one site to another, but rather as itself constituting a new social context in which literacy teaching and learning take place. It will pay particular attention to the new pace of teaching that NLS has ushered in and the way in which this is driven by the kind of planning regime that NLS introduced.     

From traditional to nontraditional scheduling: Planning for Saturday students

Some colleges have responded to adult students nontraditional scheduling needs by expanding traditional program offerings to Saturday times. In 1984, a survey of Saturday students was conducted at one such college, a two year University of Wisconsin Center in Waukesha County, to generate information useful in institutional planning and scheduling. Results of the survey of 158 Saturday students revealed that participants were older, employed full time and, more often, women. Forty percent were new or re-entry students. Continuing students increased credit loads through the Saturday option. Both continuing and new students realized benefits from Saturday class times. The article concludes with recommendations for further development of UW-Waukesha's Saturday class program.     

To Work or Play? Junior Age Non‐fiction as Objects of Design

This paper examines change and variation in the design of non‐fiction texts which have a junior‐age readership. Using a multimodal analysis, which draws from Kress and Van Leeuwen’s work, it argues that different forms of presentation of non‐fiction offer different ways of reading non‐fiction texts, which as yet are neither fully described nor recognised. Using the contrasts between linear and non‐linear design, the paper suggests that non‐fiction texts can be more or less firmly orientated towards reading as work or reading as play, contrasts which readers’ own choices in different contexts of use make apparent. From this point of view, the eclecticism of the National Literacy Strategy’s references to non‐fiction texts provides a starting point for renewed exploration of what non‐fiction is and how it really works for its readers.     

Rethinking inequalities between deindustrialisation,schools and educational research in Geelong

Inequalities have historically been conceptualised and empirically explored with primary reference to the human. Both measurements of educational inequalities through the production of data about students, teachers and schools, and ethnographic explorations of inequalities in the spoken accounts of human actors in schools can elide affective histories and material geologies of the earth that entwine with societal inequalities, and political questions of the relation between particular human bodies and the earth. In this article, we question: What might it do to rethink the concept of educational inequalities beyond human relations, from within a specific geographical territory? We seek to rethink inequalities including but exceeding these human relations; we argue that inequalities between humans, and between humans and the more-than-human, are materially generated and perpetuated. We offer three theoretical trajectories that consider the affective, spatial and material dimensions of inequality to rethink the relations between inequality, deindustrialisation and schooling. Educational research is implicated in the (re)production of inequalities, as well as having the potential to be part of the production of more equitable relations.     

The effectiveness of classroom-based instructional assessments for progress monitoring purposes in Texas Reading First schools

The purpose of this article was twofold. First, the assessment materials from four core reading programs were informally reviewed for their adherence to Texas Reading First progress monitoring guidelines for kindergarten and the beginning of Grade 1. Conclusions support existing concerns regarding the variability in the quality and quantity of assessment materials within and across programs as well as concerns about whether the materials lend themselves to progress monitoring purposes at 2-week intervals for students who are struggling readers. Second, recommendations are made for the development of progress monitoring tools that are concise, easy for teachers to use, and that provide clear guidelines regarding the use of progress monitoring data to drive instruction. Accordingly the recent development of a progress monitoring tool that parallels the Texas Primary Reading Inventory (TPRI), which is an assessment tool used in approximately 95% of Texas Reading First schools was discussed.