Outdoor play in early childhood education settings: Is it safe and healthy for children?

Outdoor play is an important and integral part of a high-quality early childhood education curriculum. Outdoor play environments should have equipment that is safe and developmentally appropriate for the children served. The appropriate adult-child ratio should be maintained to prevent unnecessary accidents as well as provide the interaction needed to assist children in developing outdoor physical, social, and language skills. Each facility should have teachers with up-to-date CPR and first-aid training to take care of emergency situations.     

What Would Physical Educators Know About Movement Education? A Review of Literature, 2006–2016

This review article identifies the conceptual underpinnings of current movement research in physical education. Using a hermeneutic approach, four analogies for movement education are identified: the motor program analogy, the neurobiological systems analogy, the instinctive movement analogy, and the embodied exploration analogy. Three issues related to logical consistency and its relevance for movement education are raised. The first relates to tensions between the analogies and educational policy. The second concerns differences among the four analogies. The third issue relates to the appropriateness of specific analogies for dealing with certain movement contexts. In each case, strategies for improvement are considered. The article concludes with a brief summary, along with reflections on issues that require further attention.     

Publishing in Scotland: Reviewing the Fragile Revival

A comparison of analyses of the Scottish publishing industry carried out in 1992, 2002 and 2007 underscores the fragility of the sector within a small country within the English-language community. A number of indices reveal either stability or stagnation and the picture emerges of the remarkable tenacity of publishing in Scotland. Although there is already a significant and vital element of state support for publishing in Scotland, further intervention will be necessary to ensure fulfilment of its potential.

For want of a better word: unlocking threshold concepts in natural sciences with a key from the humanities?

The process of identifying threshold concepts invites experts to reflect on their discipline in a new way with the ultimate goal of improving learning and teaching. During a workshop to identify threshold concepts in biochemistry, we asked a group of natural scientists to explore ‘signification,’ a threshold concept from the humanities, as a mechanism to push them out of their comfort zones and recall how it feels to experience learning from a student’s perspective. In addition to accomplishing this goal, we subsequently realized that signification could also help us uncover and remedy ways in which use of scientific terminology impedes learning in biochemistry. Using the results of a survey of university teachers that aimed at refining a list of possible threshold concepts, we present three scenarios to illustrate the challenges that teachers and students encounter when attempting to cement a label (the signifier) and a concept (the signified) into a coherent sign. Based on these findings, we propose that teachers can better explore threshold concepts if they carefully consider the role terminology plays in learning and teaching. Thus we describe the ‘terminological canyon’ through which university teachers must journey in order to produce effective learning and teaching activities related to the threshold concepts. While the work described here pertains to biochemistry, we believe the process and findings can be generalized to a broad range of disciplines.     

The impact of self-assessment,planning and goal setting,and reflection before and after revision on student self-efficacy and writing performance

Reading and Writing - Writing on-demand, text-based analytical essays is a challenging skill to master. Novice writers, such as the sixth grade US students in this study, may lack background...     

Exploring Names and Identity Through Multicultural Literature in K-8 Classrooms

Children's names reflect their gender, culture, religion, language, and family history. Use of students' personal names has the power to positively affirm identity and signal belonging within the classroom and school community. However, naming practices also have the power to exclude, stereotype, or disadvantage students. For many students from diverse cultural and linguistic backgrounds, their names can be a source of cultural conflict and a watershed for issues of identity and belonging within the school setting. Through multicultural explorations of students' names, educators can affirm students' cultures and identities, and draw upon these as resources to support learning and development from early childhood through the adolescent years. The purpose of this article is to (a) discuss the importance of a person's name to cultural identity, (b) describe strategies to build multicultural communities in K-8 classrooms through exploration of students' names, and (c) suggest multicultural children's literature and curricular activities to teach about the importance of personal names, and develop cross-cultural understandings.     

Evaluating e‐book platforms: Lessons from the e‐book accessibility audit

E‐books are a potential assistive technology, offering significant advantages over print books, and accessible materials are now a financial and legal necessity within UK academia. It is often difficult to find supplier information on accessibility, for example, whether files have been tagged for reading order or whether the interface has been tested with assistive technologies. Equally, library staff may lack confidence in identifying accessibility features, making it hard to promote them to students or demand them from suppliers. This article reports on a crowdsourced e‐book audit of 44 e‐book platforms that was undertaken by 33 UK universities during 2016. The research scored different platforms for a range of accessibility issues, and the resulting open data set is presented in a manner that can be interrogated by libraries looking for specific features. A key finding was that the platform can dramatically affect the accessibility of a publisher's content, making it important for publishers to work with suitable vendors to disseminate their publications.     

The Contest of Faculties: On Discerning the Politics of Social Engagement in the Academy

McLuhan: Hot and Cool. Edited by Gerald Emanuel Stearn. New York: Dial, 1967; pp. xxii+312. $6.95.

Politics and Television. By Kurt Lang and Gladys Engel Lang. Chicago: Quadrangle, 1968; pp. 315. $6.95.

The Image Candidates: American Politics in the Age of Television. By Gene Wyckoff. New York: MacMillan, 1968; pp. xiv+274. $6.95.