Differences in Social Adjustment and Classroom Behavior Between Children Retained in Kindergarten and Groups of Age and Grade Matched Peers

Children are routinely retained in kindergarten because of perceived academic and social difficulties. The current study compared retained children with matched samples of age and grade mates using teacher ratings as an index of their social and academic skills. Retained children showed decreased conduct problems and shy-anxious behavior over time compared to a matched set of initial kindergarten age-mates. Compared to a matched group chosen during the repeated year, retained children did not differ on problem behaviors but showed lower tolerance for frustration and poorer work habits at the end of first grade. Compared to themselves over two and a half years, retained children showed reductions in behavior problems and task orientation while their tolerance for frustration and peer relations remained unchanged.     

The Founding of ATTW and its Journal

Don Cunningham, the founding editor of The Technical Writing Teacher and a founding member of ATTW, recalls key moments in the history of ATTW and its journal, and the people who shaped the organization in its early years.     

Identity and Environmental Education

In exploring the relevance of 'identity' and its politics to environmental education research, this article describes how issues pertaining to personal identity might be understood, both conceptually and empirically. Second, it emphasizes how the postmodern phenomenon of 'identity-seeking' in a steadfastly consumer culture is relevant to unresolved questions about the critical aspirations of environmental education. It concludes with recommendations for research, curriculum and pedagogical development about how the 'intelligent body' might be utilized in inquiry to clarify the connections of the politics of identity processes and the environmental problematic.     

Sleep Tight,Act Right: Negative Affect,Sleep and Behavior Problems During Early Childhood

Temperamental negative affect and insufficient sleep have been independently associated with behavior problems during early childhood. However, it is unknown whether these factors interact to contribute to behavioral difficulties in young children. The current study examined the interactions between temperamental negative affect and both sleep onset time and sleep midpoint, assessed by actigraphy, in predicting externalizing and internalizing behaviors in a sample of 117 children (34–69 months of age). Children with high temperamental negative affect and either later sleep onset time or later sleep midpoint were more likely to exhibit externalizing and internalizing behaviors. These results emphasize the association between temperamental negative affect and behavioral difficulties, particularly for children with insufficient sleep.     

Beyond educational psychology: Steps toward an educational semiotic

In this paper, I argue that educational psychology is deeply embedded in an objectivist epistemology, the consequences of which seriously undermine our ability to inform educational practice. In the remainder of the paper, I provide an introduction to semiotics, the doctrine of signs, and offer four global concepts (the sign, semiosis, inference, and reflexivity) that I believe set semiotics apart from other, more or less related, approaches within psychology and educational psychology (e.g., constructivism). I conclude the paper by responding to some of the more frequently asked questions I have encountered in attempting to define an educational semiotic.     

Credential disconnection: a Marxist analysis of college graduate underemployment

Despite the world slowly recovering from the 2008 recession and reducing levels of unemployment, the problem of underemployment persists. Underemployment is a problematic work status determined by an array of factors, including hours worked, comparative wages, and various subjective elements. This particular employment condition is affecting a great number of college graduates, specifically in the realms of subjective underemployment where the skills and education obtained in one’s college experiences are not utilized in one’s occupation. In this way, college graduate underemployment (CGU) is the product of a dialectical interplay between higher education institutions and the world of work. A Marxist analysis is utilized here to parse out the nuances of this relation. Marx’s original examination of capitalism illustrates how the forces of capital manipulate labor power as a commodity. Capitalist manipulation, coupled with technological dynamism and automation, gradually appropriate skills from the worker into the larger apparatus of capital. Formerly limited to manufacturing, this formal subsumption has now moved to modes of labor that require a college education, forcing college graduates, across nearly all disciplines, to assume work discordant to their degree. Moreover, with new labor paradigms consisting of disempowered part-time work, CGU will continue to be an obstacle that graduates must navigate, beckoning more critical educational experiences.     

Learning computer programming at a distance

Several strategies for distance education in computer programming are described with particular reference to the provision of computing facilities and the integration of theory and practical work. Experience from two years of presentation of two different courses has shown that the most satisfactory results are obtained with portable stand‐alone microcomputers loaned off‐campus, and course design based on a modified Keller plan in which each unit has interactive practical exercises preceding the discussion of theory topics.     

Post-metatheorizing Environmental Behaviours in Environmental Education

A five-participant dialogue is constructed using Kollmuss and Agyeman's (2002) model of pro-environmental behaviour, Stern's (2000) coherent theory of environmentally significant behaviour, the Hart and Nolan (1999) and Rickinson (2001) critical reviews of the environmental education research literature and this repondent's views. The dialogue demonstrates how metatheoretical development might selectively sensitize and circumstantially advance the practical aspirations of environmental education.     

Less Hope,More Paint: On the Political War Being Waged in Urban Contexts

Abstract

In this response to the call for transformative models of teaching students in urban contexts, the author presents his own experiences in becoming a critical pedagogue, the path that led him there, and three models of classrooms that he sees in such contexts. He emphasizes the need to reject an apolitical stance in urban education, and provides a brief example of such a classroom learning environment.