Preschool children's reasoning about ability

Young children's reasoning about ability was investigated among 155 preschoolers (M = 4 years, 10 months) across 3 studies. Results suggest that preschoolers are sensitive to mental state information when making judgments about another child's ability: They judged a child who finds a task easy to be smarter than one who finds the same task hard. Systematic patterns of errors on recall tasks suggest that preschoolers perceive positive correlations between (a) exerting effort and experiencing academic success, and (b) being nice and having high academic ability. Results from a comparison group of forty 9- to 10-year-olds (M = 9 years, 10 months) suggest that the preschool findings generally reflect emerging patterns of reasoning about ability that persist into later childhood, but that the perceived correlations between high effort and academic outcomes and between social and academic traits diminish with age.     

Development of sex-trait stereotypes among young children in the United Staes, England, and Ireland

The Sex Stereotype Measure II (SSM II), a 32-item revision of the Williams, Bennett, and Best Sex Stereotype Measure, was developed to assess children's knowledge of conventional, sex-trait stereotypes defined by American university students. The procedure employed brief stories and human figure silhouettes which were individually administered to 5- and 8-year-old children in the United States, England, and Ireland and group administered to 11-year-olds in the United States. In the United States, knowledge of sex-trait stereotypes was found to develop in a linear fashion between the ages of 5 and 11, with more male traits than female traits being known at each age level. Cross-nationally, there was a high degree of similarity in the nature of the sex stereotypes being learned by the children in the 3 countries, although the rate of learning appeared slower among the Irish children. In all countries there was a clear progression in sex-stereotype learning from age 5 to age 8. English boys had greater knowledge of stereotypes than English girls, but this was not true in Ireland and the United States. Generally, knowledge of male stereotype traits appeared to develop earlier while knowledge of the female traits increased more rapidly between ages 5 and 8. The similarity in sex-stereotype learning in the 3 countries is discussed, and studies in progress in other countries of greater cultural diversity are noted.     

Teaching About Sound: A Select Historical Examination of Research

The teaching of the science topic sound, a popular topic in science instruction, is selectively analyzed over the past century using evidence excerpted from a prominent teacher practitioner journal (School Science And Mathematics). Shifting innovative recommendations on how teachers of science should teach the sound topic are identified in the categories of content and pedagogy. Historical connections to the scientific development of sound, identification of what constitutes the subject matter of sound, recommended general pedagogical strategies, and best practices for teaching strategies associated with the sound concept are examined. Discussion relates to the influence of contextual factors in a given time period (social and theoretical) on the design of curriculum materials used to guide instructional practice. One implication for science teacher education is the need for science teachers to develop an historically and philosophically grounded perspective by examining both the teaching practices on a science topic over an extended time and the historical scientific development of the science topic.     

Searching the right database. A comparison of four databases for psychiatry journals

Journal coverage is one factor that affects the retrieval of relevant information from bibliographic databases. The aims of this study were to investigate the coverage of databases for psychiatry journals, and to assess the overlap between databases. Psychiatry journals were identified using Ulrich’s International Periodicals Directory and then analysed to see which bibliographic databases indexed the most journals. A total of 213 abstracting and indexing services were listed as indexing at least one of the 977 psychiatry journals identified. The four most frequently cited databases (PsycLIT, EMBASE, BIOSIS and MEDLINE) indexed 506 (52%) of the psychiatry journals. Of these 506 journals, PsycLIT indexed 367 (73%), EMBASE 337 (67%), BIOSIS 243 (48%) and MEDLINE 236 (47%). Combining the databases with the highest yields (PsycLIT and EMBASE) increased the number of journals indexed to 461 (91%). The four databases combined accounted for 90% of all psychiatry journals found to be indexed by at least one abstracting and indexing service. More than 400 journals were not indexed at all. Variations in the overlap between PsycLIT, EMBASE, BIOSIS and MEDLINE, and the high proportion (35%) of journals indexed in only one of these four databases emphasize the importance of searching more than one or even two databases to ensure optimal coverage of the literature.     

Culture wars in the classroom: Prospective teachers question science

Does studying about the nature(s) of science contribute to a prospective teachers' effectiveness as a science teacher? This research grew out of a course created by a science educator and historian of science who believed prospective teachers needed more complex understandings of the cultural wars surrounding science. The research team consisted of five prospective teachers who participated in the course as well as the two instructors. This paper describes the experience of participating in the course from both perspectives. We argue that studying the cultural wars over science contributes to prospective teachers' professional growth as much because the course elicits tacit beliefs about school science as it introduces more complex understandings of science. We found that prospective teachers' tacit beliefs about school science were their greatest barrier to developing more complex understandings about the nature(s) of science. We contend that willingness to grapple with complexity and developing a professional identity by locating oneself in the conversations about the nature(s) of science are better criteria for determining the professional growth of prospective teachers than knowledge measures. Finally, we argue that prospective teachers should be viewed as professionals who are responsible for finding their own voice, making their own decisions, and considering the consequences of their beliefs on their practice. This study raises questions critical to teacher education programs for prospective teachers and teacher‐educators alike. © 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. J Res Sci Teach 37: 895–915, 2000     

Following the action in action learning: towards ethnomethodological studies of (critical) action learning

Action learning is a pedagogical practice that helps participants learn by talking about their workplace action with fellow participants (‘comrades in adversity’) in their action learning set. This paper raises questions about the action in action learning, such as: how do members of an action learning set learn from and through each other? How do they learn through their developing conversation and interaction?

To answer such questions, I argue that, ‘ethnomethodology’ (the study of ‘member's methods’ or ‘folk methods’ for doing any kind of practical action) is useful for showing the intricacy of the practical learning process in action learning, as in learning in action, more generally. The paper illustrates the conversational and interactional work of members doing things and learning together in action (for example discovering things in science and in board meetings); and argues that this approach may also be used to study action learning in practice.