Emotional Determinants of Infant-Mother Attachment

The present study examined the assumption that emotion-related characteristics of mothers and infants contribute to the development of infant-mother attachment in the first year of life. Mothers' emotion and personality characteristics were assessed with expressive-behavior ratings and self-report scales. Infant characteristics were measured by emotion and temperament questionnaires (mother report) and objective coding of facial expressions of emotions. Attachment classifications were determined by means of the Strange Situation procedure, and a continuous-variable index of attachment security was derived by a discriminant function procedure. Mothers' emotion experiences, expressive behaviors, and personality traits were significant predictors of the level of security of the infant-mother attachment. Infants' expressive and temperamental characteristics as rated by their mothers were also significant predictors of attachment security.     

Voices from Manukau: recruitment and success of traditionally under represented undergraduate groups in New Zealand

This paper describes a research project, “Voices from Manukau”, that investigated the impact of a joint initiative by a university and an institute of technology in New Zealand. The purpose of the initiative was to increase the participation of students traditionally under represented at tertiary-level study, particularly Māori (indigenous people) and individuals from Pacific Island nations. Many of the participants were adults who had not experienced high levels of success during their compulsory period of education and they lived in low socio-economic areas. We found that participation of under-represented groups increased. The “Manukau” students were as successful as other undergraduate students studying at the university. Of particular interest was the high level of success of Māori and Pacific Island students.     

Exploring the contribution of professional staff to student outcomes: a comparative study of Australian and UK case studies

This paper reports on the second stage of a comparative study between two higher education institutions: one in Australia and the other in the United Kingdom, which explored the contributions of professional staff to student outcomes. The first stage acted as a scoping exercise to ascertain how the contributions of professional staff to student outcomes could be investigated. The second stage of the study aimed to undertake a more in-depth exploration of self-reported behaviours in a range of professional staff roles, within the two case studies. The main finding of the comparative study is the broad similarities between the case studies, in self-reported behaviours that contribute to successful student outcomes. Four key factors were identified, which enable or inhibit the contributions of professional staff to successful outcomes. Three of the four factors were found to be the same in both case studies, whereas technology was more important in the Australian case study.     

Dangerous activities within an invisible playground: a study of emergent male football play and teachers’ perspectives of outdoor free play in the early years of primary school

This research was carried out during a study which focused upon the rough and tumble play of children in the early years department of a suburban primary school in northern England. The child sample’s playtime activities were ethnographically observed over a period of 18 calendar months, during which time interviews were also carried out with the children’s class teachers and several other adults taking part in the children’s daily school routines. It was found that the narratives created by a cohort of four‐and‐a‐half‐ to six‐and‐a‐half‐year‐old boys around their football (soccer) play were socially and symbolically complex, providing evidence that such play is a highly valuable developmental activity. However, the interview data indicated that owing principally to very low adult:child ratios in playground supervision, the focus of the adults was strongly directed towards negative aspects of outdoor free play.     

Balancing Economic and other Discourses in the Internationalization of Higher Education in South Africa

Since the end of the apartheid era in South Africa, “internationalization” of higher education has been a popular theme as the country takes its place as a regional leader in education and research in sub-Saharan Africa. However, competing discourses of internationalization have produced economic and moral dilemmas rather than the realization of philanthropic academic aims. The process of internationalizing higher education in South Africa has been greatly compromised by under-funding and over-crowding of post-secondary education institutions in the country.     

Speech and Language Difficulties in Children With and Without a Family History of Dyslexia

According to recent psychological theories of situation model construction, readers routinely and quickly construct inferences that elaborate causal antecedents of explicit events in the text, but not inferences about causal consequences. The process of forecasting lengthy causal chains into the future is taxing on working memory, so these inferences are either not constructed or their construction consumes a comparatively large amount of reading time. This study collected self-paced sentence reading times from younger and older adults who read expository texts on scientific and technological mechanisms. Readers were also measured on working memory span, general world knowledge, reasoning ability, and reading frequency. Multiple regression analyses on the reading times revealed that (a) causal consequence inferences were more time consuming than causal antecedent inferences and (b) noncausal elaborative inferences were not constructed. The pattern of beta weights for inference variables was remarkably similar for younger and older adults and was unaffected by other measures of individual differences. The process of constructing causal inferences is therefore stable and predictable across different groups of readers.     

Reading-Related Skills in Earlier- and Later-Schooled Children

We investigate the effects of age-related factors and formal instruction on the development of reading-related skills in children aged 4 and 7 years. Age effects were determined by comparing two groups of children at the onset of formal schooling; one aged 7 (later-schooled) and one aged 4 (earlier-schooled). Schooling effects were measured by comparing the later-schooled group with earlier-schooled age-matched controls. There were significant effects of age and schooling on phonological awareness and visual–verbal learning, and an effect of age, but not schooling, on vocabulary and short-term verbal memory. We conclude that age-related factors and reading instruction contribute to the development of phoneme awareness and that vocabulary and verbal memory improve with age.