Tracing the Cascade of Children’s Insecurity in the Interparental Relationship: The Role of Stage‐Salient Tasks

This study examined whether children’s difficulties with stage‐salient tasks served as an explanatory mechanism in the pathway between their insecurity in the interparental relationship and their disruptive behavior problems. Using a multimethod, multi‐informant design, 201 two‐year‐old children and their mothers participated in 3 annual measurement occasions. Structural equation modeling analyses indicated that coder ratings of children’s insecure responses to interparental conflict from a maternal interview predicted observer ratings of their difficulties with stage‐salient tasks (i.e., emotion regulation, autonomy, resourceful problem solving) 1 year later after controlling for initial stage‐salient task performance. Stage‐salient task difficulties, in turn, predicted experimenter reports of children’s behavior problems 1 year later. Associations remained robust in the broader context of other pathways hypothesized in prevailing developmental cascade models.     

Valuing the Advanced Learner: Differentiating Up

In today's educational climate, differentiated instruction is a common practice for students who need remediation; what is less common is to Differentiate Instruction for the advanced learner. Contrary to popular perceptions, advanced learners do not automatically differentiate instruction on their own. Students who have the potential to excel within the curriculum are sometimes ignored due to a variety of classroom challenges. Asking students about their interests and questioning their perceptions are places to begin differentiating for advanced learners. All children, including advanced learners, should have the opportunity to be challenged and to excel in their classroom curriculum.     

Feed-forward assessment,exemplars and peer marking: evidence of efficacy

The paper reports the findings of evaluative research that attempted to rigorously assess the efficacy of a feed-forward, formative assessment intervention. The aim was to improve participants’ conceptions of quality, and hence improve the quality of a complex piece of summative assessment, by asking them to mark exemplars produced by former students. Feed-forward assessment has theoretical support in the literature, but empirical confirmation has been slight. Research findings were encouraging. A statistical model incorporating feed-forward was developed which accounted for a large effect in the improvement of results for the summative item. Importantly, there was improvement across student ability levels. Students, in the main, made accurate judgements about different levels of exemplar quality, although they had some difficulty discerning different pathways to high-quality products. Qualitative analysis indicated improved student conceptions of coherence and integration in the summative piece.     

‘No Reefer Madness Please—We're British’: accounting for the remarkable absence of mediated drugs education in post-war britain 1945–1985

This paper draws upon archive material to explore the reasons for the absence of any drugs education films, or ‘mass-mediated drugs education’, during the immediate post-war period in Britain. The term ‘mass-mediated drugs education’ is used to refer to any drugs education messages communicated via the mass communication technologies of the twentieth century—the ‘high modern age’. While this might appear a rather narrowly defined interest in media history, the evidence offered in explanation provides some important insights into the assumptions made about mass media by British policy-makers and political elites during the ‘high modern age’ of mass communication. In contrast to Britain, during the same period in the United States, a plentiful supply of drugs education films was generated through the energies and interests of state agencies and moral entrepreneurs. Many of the US films of the ‘reefer madness’ era of the 1930s and the short ‘social guidance’ films of the fifties and sixties still remain in circulation, thanks to YouTube and other video file sharing sites where they are widely relished for their hysterical and wildly exaggerated treatment of the dangers of illicit drug use. However, in Britain there is an absence of any drugs education films or mass-mediated drugs education during the fifties and sixties, while the first government-sponsored mass-mediated drugs education was not produced until the mid-1980s, five decades after the first US films appeared.     

The Teacher's Role in Creating a Positive Verbal and Nonverbal Environment in the Early Childhood Classroom

Teachers play a critical role in establishing the verbal and nonverbal environment in the early childhood classroom. Within this article, children's literature is used as a vehicle for enhancing understanding of (a) how teachers talk to children, (b) how teachers allow children to talk to each other in positive and reinforcing or negative ways, and (c) how teachers help children talk to themselves about their learning and participation in class. The role of the teacher as a positive, conscious, and deliberate model of self-regulated learning is promoted.     

Virtual(ly) Athletes: Where eSports Fit Within the Definition of “Sport”

Electronic sports, cybersports, gaming, competitive computer gaming, and virtual sports are all synonyms for the term eSports. Regardless of the term used, eSports is now becoming more accepted as a sport and gamers are being identified as athletes within society today. eSports has even infiltrated higher education in the form of an intercollegiate athletic sport, as two university athletic departments have made eSports an official varsity sport where scholarships are provided to collegiate eSports athletes. Thus, the intertwining of eSports and university athletics brings into question whether eSports should be considered sport by broader society. This article provides a brief history of eSports, a further developed definition of eSports, and a comparison of eSports to traditional philosophical and sociological definitions of sport. The purpose of this article is to provoke thought on the academically accepted definitions of sport and debate whether eSports should be considered a sport. Attention will be given to the following components of sport: play, organization, competition, skill, physicality, broad following, and institutionalization.