Reviews

Liebert, Burt and Liebert, Marjorie, (1979) A Schoolwide Stcondary Reading Program: Here's How. Holbrook, David (1980) English for Meaning Ahuja, G. C. and P. (1979) How to Increase Reading Speed     

Managing Risk and Experiencing Danger: tensions between government AIDS education policy and young women's sexuality

Much of the early panic relating to AIDS has focused on non‐heterosexual sexualities and the identification of high risk groups. It can be argued that fear of the spread of HIV and AIDS into the heterosexual population was the spur for the development of government policy in this area. The protection of the population in general depends on changes in high risk sexual practices, and the part played in these changes by young women has been given scant attention. We argue here that the sexual knowledge and practice of young women are crucial factors in the spread of HIV and AIDS, and that information on these factors is limited and interpreted within a framework of patriarchal ideology which obscures the power relations embedded in sexual relations. These issues are discussed using data from an investigation of young women's sexual beliefs and behaviour (the Women Risk and AIDS Project — WRAP) in relation to government AIDS education campaigns.

     

Integrating pharmacology topics in high school biology and chemistry classes improves performance

Although numerous programs have been developed for Grade Kindergarten through 12 science education, evaluation has been difficult owing to the inherent problems conducting controlled experiments in the typical classroom. Using a rigorous experimental design, we developed and tested a novel program containing a series of pharmacology modules (e.g., drug abuse) to help high school students learn basic principles in biology and chemistry. High school biology and chemistry teachers were recruited for the study and they attended a 1‐week workshop to learn how to integrate pharmacology into their teaching. Working with university pharmacology faculty, they also developed classroom activities. The following year, teachers field‐tested the pharmacology modules in their classrooms. Students in classrooms using the pharmacology topics scored significantly higher on a multiple choice test of basic biology and chemistry concepts compared with controls. Very large effect sizes (up to 1.27 standard deviations) were obtained when teachers used as many as four modules. In addition, biology students increased performance on chemistry questions and chemistry students increased performance on biology questions. Substantial gains in achievement may be made when high school students are taught science using topics that are interesting and relevant to their own lives. © 2003 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Res Sci Teach 40: 922–938, 2003     

Amount of training effects in representationmediated food aversion learning: No evidence of a role for associability changes

Rats acquired aversions to food pellets when a previously trained signal for that food was paired with a toxin, but only after minimal signal—food training. After extensive signal—food training, signal—toxin pairings had no effect on food consumption even after manipulations that enhanced the associability of the signal. By contrast, conditioned responding to the signal retained its sensitivity to devaluation of the food reinforcer by food—toxin pairings after extensive training. These results suggest that the nature of associatively activated event representations changes over the course of training.     

Entrepreneurship education: Enhancing or discouraging graduate start-up at the University of Pretoria

In-depth interviews were conducted with a sample of BCom Entrepreneurship graduates, as well as a control group to determine whether the exposure to entrepreneurship education can enhance actual business start-up. Information was collected on how they experienced the learning approaches, and the value which they had derived from the degree. This was done as a case study at the University of Pretoria. More entrepreneurship graduates started businesses than the control group. Findings of the various constraints to start-up ? of the entrepreneurship graduates’ group ? focused on the lack of a viable business idea and know-how, as compared with the other graduate groups, who indicated that fear of failure and aversion to taking risks were their main constraints. The entrepreneurship graduates were less risk averse than the control group.     

Girls and Occupational Choice: anti‐sexism in action in a curriculum development project

This paper is an interim report on the Girls and Occupational Choice Project at the Institute of Education, London. The research design and methods used are briefly described but the paper focuses on the action research component of this project, and discusses anti‐sexist curriculum development and implementation in a number of schools. The emphasis is on methodological and political issues which arise in doing anti‐sexist action research in the educational setting.     

Management style and nature‐of‐problems as predictors of information source importance

The research reported here describes aligning talk in simulated employment interviews. Alignment talk is used metacommunicatively by speakers to bracket, transform, or qualify other talk, hence it assumes great importance in how communicators define and evaluate situations. Four features of alignment talk appear both in the scholarly literature and in the speech of interview participants in our data: accounts, meta‐talk, formulations, and qualifiers. Each of these features are described in the present report, and their uses in job interviews are explored. It is concluded that these devices serve to accentuate role differences between interviewer and applicant, and to enforce rather stringent norms of how one talks in the job interview. Implications for interviewing practice are discussed.     

Should eminence based on outstanding innovation be the goal of gifted education and talent development? Implications for policy and research

Systemic goals for gifted programs can take many forms. The authors place most program goals into a dichotomy — those that address the present academic needs of gifted students in schools and those designed to prepare future eminent path breakers and innovators. To clarify our arguments, we first define eminence and then offer examples from national mission statements that target gifted programs either to academic needs of advanced students or future needs of society. Although we support both goals, we promote the latter, even in light of the complications that we delineate. To demonstrate a model of eminence development that might be implemented more widely, we present a prototype program generated at the American Psychological Association. We close our argument with recommendations and implications for research and policy.     

The Missing Element to Achieving a Citizenship-as-Practice: Balancing Freedom and Responsibility in Schools Today

The new Social Studies curriculum recently introduced in Alberta proposes to encourage students to affirm their place as citizens in a democratic society. Grounded in Biesta’s (2007) argument that regardless of a Program of Studies’ best stated goals and intentions, if a school is not structured democratically the chances of the program being successful are limited. In this article, I question what makes a school democratic as opposed to undemocratic by proposing that the new curriculum is grounded in a representational view of knowledge which leads to a document that is overly conceptualized and presents a view of citizenship as one that can be achieved rather than one that is practiced (Biesta & Lawy, 2006). I argue that it is the representational curriculum and the public school’s organizational structure with its emphasis on duties and responsibilities and the virtual absence of freedom and rights that make these schools fundamentally undemocratic places. In order to pursue this line of inquiry, I juxtapose schools in the public system with a private school which claims to be a participative democracy. This juxtaposition revealed that a school that gives students freedom first and trusts that they will act responsibly with it, is more likely to lead to a citizenship that is practiced rather than one that is simply achieved. While it is not the intention of this paper, to recommend that all schools adopt the model of the private school in this study, it does help us understand why Biesta (2007) is not overly optimistic regarding schools being able to achieve a citizenship that is practiced as opposed to one that is achieved.