Family-Peer Connections: The Roles of Emotional Expressiveness within the Family and Children''s Understanding of Emotions

The purpose of this study was to explore patterns of parent and child emotional expressiveness within the family context, to examine links between these patterns and children's peer relations, and to examine whether these links might be mediated by children's understanding of emotions. Subjects were 61 kindergarten and first-grade white, middle-class children and their parents. Parent and child expressiveness were assessed in a laboratory ring-toss game designed to elicit a range of emotional responses. Parent expressiveness in the home was also assessed with Halberstadt's Family Expressiveness Questionnaire. The questionnaire, completed by both mother and father, assesses a range of emotions in a variety of settings typical of many families, and consists of items tapping both positive and negative expressiveness. Children were interviewed about their understanding of emotions across a broad range of areas. Results indicated that maternal expressiveness (home) and paternal expressiveness (home and laboratory) but not children's expressiveness with parents were associated with children's peer relations. Although children's understanding of emotions was generally not associated with family expressiveness, understanding predicted children's peer relations. In addition, children's understanding influenced the links between maternal expressiveness in the home and peer relations and between paternal expressiveness in the laboratory and peer relations. This pattern of results underscores the importance of the emotional climate of the family for the development of children's social relations with peers.     

Representing self‐in‐society: education for citizenship and the social‐subjects curriculum in Scotland

The documented social‐subjects curricula for Scottish 5–16 year olds are analysed for representations of ‘self‐in‐society’. Such representations are important in Scotland because it is expected that the new Education‐for‐Citizenship framework will in part be delivered through the social subjects. However, citizenship education is also relevant throughout the UK and beyond and our analysis of the social subjects has wider relevance.

An ideal‐type analysis was used on documents including national guidelines, examination syllabuses, examination papers, and assessor instructions. Our analysis suggests that in these documents: the self is seen as an abstract; people are understood by category; society is the sum of discrete institutions; self‐in‐society is fully defined; and this representation of society is not contested. This representation becomes increasingly exclusive with age/ability and may be linked to assumed modes of curricular division, teaching and assessment. We discuss how this overall picture might affect students’ sense of ‘agency’ in the light of citizenship education. We conclude that the social‐subjects’ curricular representation of self‐in‐society may not fully support the Scottish Education‐for‐Citizenship framework.     

A quantitative evaluation of the influence of the lithosphere on the anomalies of gravity

A quantitative investigation is made of the influence of a strong elastic lithosphere on departures from isostasy. Isostasy is shown to be a special case of a more general principle that may be called the principle of isobaric equilibrium. This principle which expresses the condition for vertical equilibrium is formulated quantitatively both in terms of the resultant vertical stresses in the lithosphere and in terms of measurable gravity anomalies. Employing the principle, a stress function may be determined that permits an estimate of the fraction of the uniform superposed load carried by the lithosphere. By applying this method, it is found that for the central region of a block to be in substantial isostatic adjustment (96 per cent.), the linear dimension of the load must approximate characterizing the elastic deformations of the lithosphere is determined by appeal to geological data from deltas and regions near a thrust fault. The values so obtained suggest a value of 50 ± 15 Km. for the effective thickness of the lithosphere. The deformed figures of the lithosphere for certain special types of load have been worked out together with the stress function that measures both the gravity anomaly and the resultant vertical stress.     

Establishing an Equitable and Fair Admissions System for an Online Doctoral Program

The field of educational technology has seen marked growth from just a small number of distance-based doctoral programs to nearly 20 today. Creating and sustaining a quality doctoral program of any kind requires a substantial amount of work; the additional challenges of online programs both increases and changes the nature of the efforts required. Among these challenges is creating an admissions process that treats people fairly, does not create a burdensome system for applicants or those involved in the selection process, and ensures the selection of a solid foundation of high quality candidates with whom faculty can mentor, who add value to the program, and who can benefit from the program. This paper explores common admissions requirements among institutions offering a distance or hybrid doctorate in educational technology and examines the specific admissions system used by the Department of Educational Technology at Boise State University.     

Lives on file: a critical assessment of the career portfolio genre

This article examines the ideological dimensions of the career portfolio. This genre, an increasingly common part of high school and post-secondary school curricula, invites students to collect items from multiple domains and to reflect upon what these items say about who they are and where they are going. Through a critical analysis of the primary instructional form used in one school's career portfolio program, this article describes how the genre calls students to present themselves as certain kinds of people inhabiting certain kinds of worlds. More specifically, it is argued the genre prompts students to individualize themselves and endorse in their portfolios a middle-class ideology of self-cultivation and self-promotion.