Social Outcomes Associated With Media Viewing Habits of Low-Income Preschool Children

Research Findings: The purpose of this study was to examine the relationship between preschool children's social outcomes in the classroom (including hyperactivity, aggression, and social skills) and their media viewing habits (including the amount of television they watch and whether they watch videos/movies that are rated as inappropriate for young children). The participants were 92 low-income pre-kindergarten-age children for whom we obtained parent reports of media viewing habits and teacher reports of classroom behavior. The results suggested that viewing of inappropriate content was associated with higher hyperactivity and aggression scores and a lower social skills rating, whereas the amount of viewing was not related to these classroom outcomes. Policy: There has been a great deal of focus on how both the amount and content of television viewed affects social development in middle and later childhood. These studies have helped influence the development of guidelines for parents of young children to limit media viewing. The findings from the present study suggest that school personnel and others should monitor the content of what preschoolers are watching and should educate parents about the potential impact of media viewing on children's classroom behavior.     

High-Quality Preschool: The Socioeconomic Composition of Preschool Classrooms and Children's Learning

Research Findings: As policymakers expand access to preschool, the sociodemographic composition of preschool classrooms will become increasingly important. These efforts may create programs that increase the concentration of children from low-income families or, alternatively, foster the creation of socioeconomically diverse preschool classrooms. What effect the creation of such contexts would have on very young children remains unclear. Using multilevel methods and data on 2,966 children in 704 prekindergarten classrooms, this study explores the relationship between socioeconomic classroom composition and children's social and cognitive development. The results indicate positive associations between the mean socioeconomic status (SES) of the class and children's receptive language, expressive language, and mathematics learning, regardless of children's own sociodemographic backgrounds and the characteristics of their classrooms. However, the analyses indicate no association between the development of social competence and class mean SES. Practice or Policy: The links between classroom SES and language and mathematics development were comparable in size to those associated with instructional quality and even children's own SES. Neither structural nor instructional characteristics of prekindergarten classrooms explained these relationships, suggesting the possibility of direct peer effects. The findings indicate that the composition of children's classrooms should be considered an important aspect of preschool quality.     

Conservation of stained glass windows with protective glazing: Main results from the European VIDRIO research programme

The methodology of protecting the European stained glass windows against environmental risk (e.g. meteorological factors, air pollution, microorganisms) by means of an external glazing is not new. In spite of many scientific studies carried out in the last 20 years, some questions were still up for discussion. The European VIDRIO (2002–2005) project gave an answer to these questions. The research carried out by the different project partners established a new multidisciplinary approach aimed at evaluating the efficiency of the protective glazing systems and their effects on stained glass windows conservation, and finally at assessing the most appropriate strategy to preserve stained glass windows. Scientific results showed that the so-called isothermal glazing (i.e. ventilation by the air coming from the inside of the building) protected efficiently the ancient stained glass window from environmental attack (i.e. rain, pollutants, condensation, thermal shocks) with very limited secondary effects. The scientific research highlighted that its efficiency was strongly related to the technical design of the protective system. In particular, the ventilation and the size of the interspace had to be carefully considered. The research developed within the VIDRIO project was turned into general recommendations to the owners and practitioners on the best practice for the stained glass windows future conservation.     

The noise of thoughts: The turbulent (sound‐)worlds of Jean‐Luc Godard

This article examines the role of noise in various aspects of Jean‐Luc Godard's filmmaking practice. Beginning with an analysis of 2 ou 3 choses que je sais d'elle (1966), it suggests that the loud noise on the soundtrack functions to disrupt the search for meaning in this film that is precisely about knowledge and cognition, providing an image of thought as an unpredictable and uncontrollable process. The influence of 1970s theoretical biology and information theory is analysed in Sauve qui peut (la vie) (1979) which applies Henri Atlan's ‘order from noise’ principle to the composition of shots, the construction of scenes and the development of narrative. Finally Godard's presentation of a complex, deterritorialised capitalist economy is considered in Nouvelle Vague (1990), and it is suggested that Godard's creation of aesthetic events – both through editing and through sound design – implies a different conception of temporality to the sequential logic of financial speculation and risk management.     

“All for One and One for All?” - Knowledge broker roles in managing tensions of internal coopetition: The Ubisoft case

Coopetition, i.e., cooperation between competing actors, has become a pervasive strategy for innovative firms. The primary focus of studies investigating coopetition centers on inter-firm relationships, highlighting the benefits, limits and configurational patterns of cooperative relationships between competing firms. Only a small, emerging group of studies seeks to extend the concept to the intra-firm level, stressing the existence and effects of competition and cooperation between units that are part of the same organization. This paper contributes to this latter group by investigating the effects of internal coopetition on knowledge and innovation sharing and highlighting the fundamental role of knowledge brokers in managing the resulting tensions. Based on a qualitative case study of the video game publisher Ubisoft, we stress how the tensions raised by internal coopetitive settings limit knowledge sharing between units, and we analyze the mechanisms through which the knowledge broker helps to overcome these limits. We identify three main functions of this knowledge broker that allow the promotion of knowledge and innovation transfer to occur between coopeting units: (1) protecting the unit’s competitive advantage by introducing a lagging principle in the transfer process, (2) reducing sharing costs by standardizing innovative solutions, and (3) enhancing awareness of and trust in innovative solutions by centralizing knowledge diffusion.     

Using Number Lines to Solve Math Word Problems: A Strategy for Students with Learning Disabilities

Students with learning disabilities (LD) consistently struggle with word problem solving in mathematics classes. This difficulty has made curricular, state, and national tests particularly stressful, as word problem solving has become a predominant feature of such student performance assessments. Research suggests that students with LD perform poorly on word problem‐solving items due primarily to deficits in problem representation. Therefore, it is imperative that teachers provide these students with supplemental problem‐solving instruction that specifically targets the development of representational strategies. This article describes how one representational strategy, using number lines, can be used to model word problems as part of a comprehensive problem‐solving intervention to improve the conceptual understanding of math word problems and, subsequently, the problem‐solving performance of students with LD.     

Understanding students’ conceptions of sustainability

There has recently been significant emphasis placed on environmental education through, for example, the UN’s Decade of Education for Sustainable Development. Despite this, there is still considerable debate within the literature as to how the aims of environmental education can be achieved within schools. It seems likely that if there is a lack of agreement as to what education for sustainable development should include, then this will impact students’ understanding of sustainable development. This paper presents findings from research investigating how one class of 12‐ to 13‐year‐old geography students in the UK understands the concept of sustainability. The research used concept‐mapping and semi‐structured interviews to explore the students’ understandings of sustainability, within a case study framework. The substantive findings of this research suggest that there is a wide variety of understanding of sustainability among the students, but that generally they allude to three: the nature, purpose and timescale of sustainability. The paper also considers the impact of method on researching students’ subject understandings, in particular the use of context when considering abstract concepts, such as sustainability, and the different results obtained when conducting interviews versus concept maps.     

Gender Differences in Teacher Response to School Inspection

Teachers’ responses to inspection were investigated using a questionnaire survey of a random sample of 821 secondary school teachers who had undergone a full OFSTED inspection and in‐depth interviews with a further 35 teachers. The research found that inspection causes additional stress and that female teachers, regardless of level of seniority, felt more nervous about inspection than male teachers. Both male and female teachers felt more nervous when an inspector of a different gender to themselves was observing them in the classroom. Teachers’ affective responses to inspection alter their behavioural ones, thus affecting the resultant picture not only of the school itself but also of schools in this country‐‐a picture on which future advice and policy may be based. Explanations for gender differences are sought using the frameworks of stress and power differentials.     

“Inhabitants of the Earth”: Reasoning About Folkbiological Concepts in Wichi Children and Adults

Across the world, people form folkbiological categories to capture their commonsense organization of the natural world. Structured in accordance with universal principles, folkbiological categories are also shaped by experience. Here we provide new evidence from the Wichi—an understudied indigenous community who live in the Chaco rainforest and speak their heritage language. A total of 44 Wichi (6- to 8-year-olds, 9- to 12-year-olds, adults) participated in an induction task designed to identify how broadly they attribute an invisible biological property (e.g., an internal organ) from 1 individual (either a human, nonhuman animal, or plant) to other humans, nonhuman animals, plants, natural kinds, and artifacts. Research Findings: These results (a) clarify the content of the Wichi’s categories and the words they use to describe them, (b) showcase the power of covert (unnamed) categories, and (c) fortify the view that human-centered reasoning is not a universal starting point for reasoning about nature. Practice or Policy: Implications of these findings for early science education are discussed. In particular, we discuss (a) how the Wichi’s construal of the natural world may be best integrated when they reach the (Western science–inspired) classroom and (b) how the current results bear on central issues in early science education more broadly.