Verbal energy: attending to poetry

This paper contends that the current English curriculum does not adequately acknowledge the potential of poetry to make meaning through sound. It reflects on how sound may embody or communicate meaning, and seeks enhanced conceptions of this aspect of poetry for pedagogy and the curriculum. It begins with the attention the mainstream press gave to Seamus Heaney's remarks about Eminem, and progresses to consider Heaney's notion of ‘verbal energy’ in the light of developing conceptions of multimodal ‘new literacies’. It suggests that new approaches could accord with an oral heritage approach to poetry while also acknowledging the influence of the communicational environments pupils experience beyond English classrooms. Throughout, the author draws on material that has informed his on‐going Teacher Training Agency‐sponsored project exploring the ways in which pupils approach poetry as sound, soon to be detailed on web resources for the English teaching community.     

Technical Education,the Performance of South Wales Industrialists and the Haldane Commission

The article begins with a brief introduction to the development of Welsh society and industry between 1870 and 1914. This is followed by a review of Welsh education, especially technical education, in that period, highlighting its backwardness and the factors accounting for that backwardness. The report of the Haldane Commission is then examined against a background of a brief statement of the ‘revisionist’ case. Against the British Retardation theory, the performance of south Wales' industrialists is assessed. This reveals that in contradiction to the ‘revisionist’ view that British industrialists did as well as could have been expected, such was not the case in south Wales.     

Predicting Parent-Child Differences in Perceptions of How Children Use the Internet for Help With Homework,Identity Development,and Health Information

Bioecological systems theory provides a framework to understand how factors in the child's environment contribute to parent-child differences in estimations of how often children are helped by their Internet use. A national sample survey of 456 matched parent-child pairs investigated how parents-child relational factors, parental attitudes toward the Internet, and the bio-ecology of the child, are related to differing perceptions of the frequency of using the Internet to seek help with homework assignments, to aid in identity development, and to find health information. While previous research shows that parents underestimate risky online behaviors, we investigate whether parent-child differences will emerge in regards to how often the child engages in the behaviors under investigation here. The findings show that parents overestimate these online activities, suggesting they are biased in their estimations. Parent-child relational factors emerged as predictors of parental overestimation for each of these online activities, with trust perceptions as the most consistent predictor. Parental attitudes toward the Internet predicted parent-child differences in perceptions of how frequently the child used the Internet for help with homework and identity development, while the bioecology of the child was only predictive in the case of using the Internet for help with homework.