Curious play: children’s exploration of nature

This article explores the concept of ‘curious play’ as a theoretical framework to understand and communicate children’s experiences of free play in nature. The concept emerged interactively from three sources of inspiration: an ethnographically inspired study of children playing in nature; as a critique of the concept of ‘risky play’ being the dominant discourse on children’s play in natural environments; and from phenomenological and cultural-historical theories of children’s play and play environments. The article illustrates this interplay through an analysis of two empirical examples, and argues that curious play offers a comprehensive and existential approach to understanding the interplay of children playing in nature and children’s growth. Thus, children are conceptualized as active explorers and playful agents whilst embodying and creating knowledge, skills and understandings of themselves and their life-worlds.     

Mobilizing the generic potential of culture-centered counseling

Culture-centered perspectives arechanging the field of counseling to be moreresponsive to special interest groups and toadapt culturally encapsulated assumptions incounseling. This article will discuss thegeneric benefits of a culture-centeredperspective, the importance of an `orthogonal'self, the conceptual framework of a CulturalGrid and the training of counselors to hear theself-talk of culturally different clients.These are examples of the generic potential ofmaking culture central rather than marginal tothe counseling process.     

Deaf pupils' reasoning about scientific phenomena: school science as a framework for understanding or as fragments of factual knowledge

Many studies have been conducted on hearing pupils' understanding of science. Findings from these studies have been used as grounds for planning instruction in school science. This article reports findings from an interview study of how deaf pupils in compulsory school reason about phenomena in a science context. The results reveal that there is variation in the extent to which pupils use scientific principles for reasoning about science phenomena. For some pupils, school science seems to have little to offer as a framework for reasoning. The results also generate questions about the need in school instruction of deaf and hard-of-hearing pupils to consider the specific teaching and learning situations in a deaf environment.     

Multitasking during Web search sessions

A user’s single session with a Web search engine or information retrieval (IR) system may consist of seeking information on single or multiple topics, and switch between tasks or multitasking information behavior. Most Web search sessions consist of two queries of approximately two words. However, some Web search sessions consist of three or more queries. We present findings from two studies. First, a study of two-query search sessions on the AltaVista Web search engine, and second, a study of three or more query search sessions on the AltaVista Web search engine. We examine the degree of multitasking search and information task switching during these two sets of AltaVista Web search sessions. A sample of two-query and three or more query sessions were filtered from AltaVista transaction logs from 2002 and qualitatively analyzed. Sessions ranged in duration from less than a minute to a few hours. Findings include: (1) 81% of two-query sessions included multiple topics, (2) 91.3% of three or more query sessions included multiple topics, (3) there are a broad variety of topics in multitasking search sessions, and (4) three or more query sessions sometimes contained frequent topic changes. Multitasking is found to be a growing element in Web searching. This paper proposes an approach to interactive information retrieval (IR) contextually within a multitasking framework. The implications of our findings for Web design and further research are discussed.     

Attitudes and self-efficacy as significant predictors of intention of secondary school teachers towards the implementation of inclusive education in Ghana

European Journal of Psychology of Education - The intention of teachers towards adopting inclusive practices is vital to determining teaching behaviour in classrooms. Although some previous studies...     

Foreign Correspondents in the Cold War

This article analyses the transnational production processes of foreign correspondence in the Cold War. It examines the double role of foreign correspondents as reporters and Cold War political agents. Recent scholarship has explored the activities of Western correspondents reporting from the Communist world. Little is known, however, about Eastern bloc correspondents in the West. Drawing on the rarely studied files on East German foreign correspondents held by the Deutsches Rundfunkarchiv, the article problematizes the image of GDR journalists as obedient intelligence officers and highlights the dilemmas of journalists deployed to defend national interests. Focusing on the Nordic countries in the mid1970s, the article provides detailed insights into the politics and practices of East German foreign correspondence before the digital revolution. The article thus shows the benefits of going beyond the traditional focus on media content to analyse the daily practices as well as the political and symbolic significance of journalism. It contributes to the growing historical research on foreign correspondents and the media in East Germany and beyond.     

Double Blind: Supervising women as creative practice-led researchers

Abstract

Many women creative practice-led researchers appear inhibited by a number of factors directly connected to their gender. This article discusses these factors, including the culture of visual arts professional practice, the circumstances surrounding women postgraduate students and unproductive self-theories about intelligence and creativity. A number of feminist strategies are discussed as potential interventions that may assist women creative practice-led researchers and their supervisors to reap more personal and professional rewards from their postgraduate research.     

Character and organization

In recent years, questions of ‘character’ have become increasingly prominent in a range of policy contexts, from education to social welfare and from business to healthcare. What unites these various contemporary paens is an assumption that building ‘character’ is a crucial component of ethics and that it holds the key to establishing and maintaining virtuous conduct; moreover, that the cultivation of ‘character’ is at best under-valued and at worst actively undermined and denigrated in any number of contemporary economic and organizational practices. In this paper, we seek to interrogate key aspects of this upsurge of interest in ‘character’ as it has been articulated in particular recent and on-going debates about the reform of organizational life. We argue that this ‘turn’ suffers precisely from an abstraction and lack of contextual specificity – not simply in relation to questions of ‘character formation,’ but also in regard to matters of organization, and indeed the relationship of the one to the other – that severely curtails both its ethical reach and explanatory power.     

Construction and validation of a survey instrument to determine the gender-related challenges faced by pre-service male primary teachers

The gender-related challenges facing males entering the primary-school teaching profession have been well documented in the academic literature over recent decades. The majority of these data have come about through qualitative reports. Whilst qualitative methods provide important perspectives into these issues, the use of valid and reliable quantitative survey tools has received less attention. This paper discusses the construction, piloting, and subsequent tests for reliability and validity involved in developing a robust survey tool to measure the gender-related challenges faced by pre-service male primary teachers during their university study and professional experience in schools. Utilizing Senocak's four stages of survey development and Rasch modelling techniques, data analysis showed high levels of validity and reliability for the survey tool.