The relationship between attributes of a children's radio program and its appeal to listeners

An approach was developed to investigate the link between attributes of a children's radio program and children's judgments of appeal. Program tapes were divided into 28 segments and were rated for the presence of 30 attributes. Through multidimensional scaling analysis, attributes were organized into six clusters of Superattributes on the basis of their co-occurrence across the 28 segments. Superattributes were labeled and assigned scores that reflected the degree to which each was present in the 28 segments. A sample of 42 children 8–12 years old listened to the test tapes and provided a written judgment of their interest in the program at each segment. Results revealed that the Superattributes Instruction, Intro Talk, and Jokes were negatively associated with children's interest, while Popular Music was positively correlated with interest. In planning programs and understanding the effects of radio on children, designers and researchers should pay special attention to those formats in radio programming that are familiar to children, especially popular music and instructional material.     

Early Childhood Education as a Scientific Discipline: a state‐of‐the‐art perspective

The objective of early childhood education is to address the totality of issues and areas of activity relevant to young children. In spite of the considerable growth in knowledge concerning children and childhood, this objective has yet to be attained at the theoretical level. Proceeding from the vantage point of a retrospective of the conceptions of the two classical theorists, Rousseau and Frobel, the case is made for grounding early childhood education in the dimensions of subjectivity, intersubjectivity, society and history in order to be able to analyse its various tasks in their respective specificity and reciprocal dependence. The attempt is made to characterise the challenges facing such a theory and to outline the resulting systematic issues for a pedagogy of early childhood.     

Stichwort: Entwicklung im Erwachsenenalter

In this review article, “aging and learning” is discussed from the perspective of life span developmental psychology. Accordingly, aging is regarded as a continuous and multidimensional process which is characterized by a potential for change (plasticity) at all ages. We give an overview of age-related changes in two psychological domains which are considered to be highly relevant for learning processes, namely cognitive resources and resources related to personality, motivation and emotion. In addition, we describe developmental contexts which were shown to contribute to plasticity in the second half of life. The findings allow for the conclusion that learning is possible throughout the adult life span, albeit under changing conditions. Key implications for learning processes and learning contexts are discussed.     

Teachers' social class,professional dispositions and pedagogic practice

Through theoretically driven case studies, the research reported here considers the ways in which students in different social class settings are inducted into school knowledge. The paper brings to the centre the social class positioning of teachers in considering their role in schooling processes. The central question of the paper is whether we can establish a relationship between teachers' own social class backgrounds, their professional dispositions and their pedagogic practice. The interest emerges from a long-standing assumption that teachers are middle class, and reproduce the practices associated with that social location. The paper is exploratory and is not able to provide a definitive answer to the question of the relationship between class, professional disposition and pedagogic practice. Although it suggests a relationship between teachers' social class position and schooling practices, the main contribution of the paper is to offer a metric for exploring the issue further. That is, through a specifically selected sample, the paper provides a means for considering the implications of teachers social class background, professional dispositions and pedagogic practice for the processes of the reproduction of social inequality, and its interruption.     

The linkage between the education and employment systems: ideal types of vocational education and training programs

ABSTRACT

This article contributes to the literature by proposing a methodological approach that scholars in all research fields can use to develop high-quality explanatory typologies. We argue that every typology should be constructed using a systematic, transparent process and must have a strong theoretical foundation to validate its explanatory value. Drawing on Max Weber’s typology theory, we apply our approach to construct three ideal types of vocational education and training (VET) programs. By bypassing heterogeneous context conditions, our typological approach enables us to compare VET programs based on the criteria that are relevant to an explanation of youth labor market outcomes. We build on Niklas Luhmann’s theory of social systems, which helps elucidate the significance of the linkage between actors from the education and employment systems in VET. The first ideal type, with maximal linkage, entails equal power-sharing between both kinds of actors. We expect such a VET program to have the most favorable outcome. The other two ideal types, in which one system has all the power, result in either undesirable youth labor market outcomes, such as unemployment or skills mismatch, or lack of access to further education.     

Schule Im Rechtsstaat

Ohne ZusammenfassungAbkürzungen BVerfG Bundesverfassungsgericht - BVerfGE Entscheidungen des Bundesverfassungsgerichts, hrsg. von den Mitgliedern des Bundesverfassungsgerichts. - BVerwGE Entscheidungen des Bundesverwaltungsgerichts, hrsg. von den Mitgliedern des Gerichts - JR Juristische Rundschau - NJW Neue Juristische Wochenschrift     

Impact of HIPPY on home learning environments of Latino families

This study investigated effects of Home Instruction of Parents of Preschool Youngsters (HIPPY), a paraprofessional home visiting program, on parents and children. The program site served low-income, Spanish-speaking families. On average, mothers were 31 years old (SD = 4.78) and children were 3 or 4 years old (M = 3.92, SD = .92). Participants (n = 54) had more parenting self-efficacy and more enriched home environments than families on a waiting list (n = 54). In a regression on home environment, participation in the intervention was a stronger predictor than maternal education, depression, and stress. A third-grade follow-up of children in the program showed significantly higher math achievement when compared to low-income Latino third graders in the same school district. These findings appear to validate the HIPPY model, which suggests that parents gain confidence as their children's teachers through their experiences in the program. HIPPY successfully addresses the need for culturally sensitive programming aimed at improving educational achievement among minority children.