Terra Incognita: How Research Can Help to Chart Unexplored Terrain in Adult Literacy

The aim of this article is to make initial suggestions as to how certain aspects of adult literacy and numeracy education would benefit from research resources. The author identifies several issues affecting literacy research, such as limited research capacity and lack of a shared international forum. He then discusses four aspects in more detail: models of literacy, the benefits of literacy education, instructional practices, and the effects of diverse settings for practice. In all of these areas, he argues, it is important that attention is paid to the distinction between research about and research in literacy and numeracy education, as these two types of research serve different purposes using different strategies. The article closes with a call for more reliable research-based information in order to inform and enrich the professional judgement of educators.     

Children's concepts of gears and their promotion through play

The mechanical transmission of motion, which is observable in gears’ turning direction (TD) and turning speed (TS) can be understood as part of the core concept “force and motion”. Previous studies have suggested that most children before the age of nine have naïve concepts of gears’ TD and TS. However, these studies relied on children's explanation data and might have therefore underestimated young children's potential. Moreover, these studies did not examine whether preschoolers can overcome their naïve concepts through teaching. Recently, educators have proposed guided play as an educational approach that combines children's play with teacher guidance in a purposefully designed environment. We conducted two subsequent studies. In Study 1, we investigated the children's (naïve) concepts of gears’ TD and TS with a cross‐sectional approach using a nonverbal test procedure. This study comprised 248 children aged 5–10 years and 73 adults. The results showed that the proportion of children with adequate concepts increased with age. More specifically, 7‐ to 8‐year‐olds differed significantly from 5‐ to 6‐year‐olds, indicating a developmental shift around this age. However, naïve concepts of TS were more persistent with age than naïve concepts of TD. Altogether, the results indicated the potential to foster 5‐ to 6‐year‐olds’ concepts of both TD and TS in an intervention. Thus, in Study 2, we developed and tested a guided play intervention to foster 5‐ to 6‐year‐old children's concepts of TD and TS. We conducted a prepost‐intervention design with a guided play group (n = 19) and a free play group (n = 21). The results suggested stronger learning gains in the guided play group (d_TD = 0.337, d_TS = 0.758) than in the free play group (d_TD = 0.224, d_TS = 0.158).     

NEGOTIATING POLITICIANS’ RESPONSIBILITIES IN NEWS INTERVIEWS

News interviews are contexts in which political responsibilities are articulated and negotiated. Although the accountability interview is recognized as a commonsense practice in journalism, and the research on political interviews is substantial, it partly remains to explore how responsibilities are negotiated in different forms of questioning in journalism. This study investigates three generic forms of questioning: accountability questioning, the clarifying of promises, and the principal assessments. Key features of the different forms are specified. The empirical study investigates how the questionings are performed in news on industrial crises in Sweden, in the different political regimes in the 1970s and the 2000s. The data consist of 27 news interviews with the formally responsible Ministers. The method is based on Conversation Analysis and includes detailed analyses of questions and answers. The study shows (1) how the forms of questioning differ when it comes to the action agenda and in how responsibilities are invoked and negotiated; (2) how the questionings tend to reproduce particular expectations of Governmental interventions; (3) how increased assertiveness and adversarialness in interviewing coincide with reduced expectations of political responsibilities.     

Disabilities Among Norwegian Students Found Eligible for Special Education

The prevalence of different disabilities in a sample of 780 students found eligible for special education in Norway is presented in this article. Each student was judged in relation to 10 different disabilities, and the frequencies of the different disabilities were reported. Almost all students had more than one problem or disability. It is argued that statistics related to students with disabilities that ascribe each student only to one category of disability do not provide a correct picture of the prevalence of different disabilities. The most common disabilities reported in this study were psychosocial problems, intellectual disability, and communication disorders that were found in about 40 to 50% of the students. About one third of the students were reported to have attention deficit disorder or physical disabilities, 25% experienced social stress outside school, and 20% had medical problems. Hearing and visual impairments are reported for about 5% and 6% of the sample respectively.     

Our stories matter: storytelling and social justice in the Hollaback! movement

ABSTRACT

As feminist and anti-racist scholars and activists have long known, which stories predominate and which are marginalised is always a question of power and authority – about who is entitled to speak, and who has the authority to decide the meanings of words and actions. Storytelling can be used as a tool for social justice, as exemplified by the international feminist movement Hollaback! and its regional and worldwide struggle to end street harassment and make public spaces accessible for everyone. This article examines the practice of sharing stories within one specific Hollaback! group, highlighting the timeliness of the online storytelling technologies promoted by the movement and considering this work as an example of extra-academic feminist education. The article concludes by questioning to what extent feminists manage to formulate their own localised struggles through storytelling within the feminist movement as a whole.     

Task-related variation in communication of mothers and their sons with learning disability

The purpose of the present study was to examine whether mother-child communication patterns vary as a function of the type of the task. Groups of learning disabled (LD=30) and normally achieving boys (NLD=30) were videotaped interacting with their mothers in two different tasks. The children were matched for age (8 to 11 year-olds) and for parent’s SES. The results indicated that the teaching task differentiated the groups more than did the story task. Academic character of the teaching task increased mothers’ task involvement in both groups. Mothers of the LD group showed, however, significantly more dominance and expressed less emotionality while teaching their child. Mothers’ interaction partly followed from their children’s behaviour on this task. The children with LD did not cooperate with their mothers and were not emotionally involved in the teaching task as highly as were the normally achieving children. Corresponding features of interaction were not found for the LD group in the story task. Consistency of children’s communication across the tasks was significant in the LD group. The normally achieving boys were more responsive to changes in task conditions showing different behavior as a function of task.