A historical reflection on literacy,gender and opportunity: implications for the teaching of literacy in early childhood education

This paper presents a historical reflection on gender and literacy, with a view to informing the present teaching of literacy in early childhood. The relationship between gender, literacy and opportunity in the labour market is examined, given that despite girls’ achievement in literacy, in comparison with boys’, women continue to earn substantially less than men. In order to understand this relationship, this paper reflects on literacy as a socio-historical construct as well as examining the ways in which the past is constitutive in forming enduring notions of gender that penetrate all elements of society, including the literacy classroom. This critical analysis of what is learned about and through the medium of literacy in the early childhood classroom has major implications for the teaching of literacy today. It is argued that in order to address this issue, early childhood educators need to value and nurture children’s digital literacies as well as create learning environments that allow all children genuine opportunities to question, challenge and explore dominant discourses that are embedded in text.     

No time to think: Reflections on information technology and contemplative scholarship

This paper argues that the accelerating pace of life is reducing the time for thoughtful reflection, and in particular for contemplative scholarship, within the academy. It notes that the loss of time to think is occurring at exactly the moment when scholars, educators, and students have gained access to digital tools of great value to scholarship. It goes on to explore how and why both of these facts might be true, what it says about the nature of scholarship, and what might be done to address this state of affairs.     

Use of the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test with low-functioning autistic children

The Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test (Dunn, 1965) was adapted to facilitate administration to low-functioning autistic children who do not have a pointing response. By cutting the plates into individual pictures, children can respond by giving the examiner the target picture. Ten autistic and 10 preschool-aged children were given both the standard form (Form A) and the adapted form (Form C) by the same examiner less than one week apart. Several t-tests were calculated to test the hypotheses that the adaptation would not affect raw scores of normal, preschool-aged children; yet lowfunctioning autistic children would score significantly better on the adapted version. It was concluded that the two forms of the PPVT are equivalent forms when a pointing response exists, and it is therefore valid to use the published norms for the adapted version.     

Disentangling genetic and environmental influences on early language development: The interplay of genetic propensity for negative emotionality and surgency,and parenting behavior effects on early language skills in an adoption study

Parenting and children's temperament are important influences on language development. However, temperament may reflect prior parenting, and parenting effects may reflect genes common to parents and children. In 561 U.S. adoptees (57% male) and their birth and rearing parents (70% and 92% White, 13% and 4% African American, and 7% and 2% Latinx, respectively), this study demonstrated how genetic propensity for temperament affects language development, and how this relates to parenting. Genetic propensity for negative emotionality inversely predicted language at 27 months (β = −.15) and evoked greater maternal warmth (β = .12), whereas propensity for surgency positively predicted language at 4.5 years (β = .20), especially when warmth was low. Parental warmth (β = .15) and sensitivity (β = .19) further contributed to language development, controlling for common gene effects.     

The Impact of Children's Static versus Dynamic Conceptions of People on Stereotype Formation

Recent cognitive-developmental research has contributed much to our understanding of children's stereotyping. The present research identified another factor influencing stereotyping — children's theories about the malleability of human attributes. In two studies, 122 sixth graders learned about several different students' behaviors in unknown schools. In Study 1, they judged a school characterized by mostly negative behaviors, and in Study 2 they judged two schools (characterized by either mostly negative or positive behaviors). Across studies, children with a fixed view of personality (relative to those with a more malleable view of personality) made more extreme trait ratings of both the "positive" and "negative" schools, generalized their trait judgments to an unknown student, perceived greater within-school similarity and between-school differences, and showed less desire to interact with students in the "negative" school. Ways in which examining these theories may broaden our understanding of the origins of stereotyping and how to lessen it are discussed.