Creating a Climate of Self-Awareness in Early Childhood Teacher Preparation Programs

This article discusses the importance of helping preservice teachers develop a sense of self-awareness. This involves, in part, helping preservice teachers develop an ability to examine and identify the personal characteristics, beliefs and attitudes that make them who they are and influence the way they think about teaching and learning. The authors offer several suggestions for creating a climate in teacher education programs that will promote a developing sense of self-awareness in preservice teachers.     

Sex and Social Class Inequalities in Education: a re‐examination

Fifteen years ago attention was drawn to the neglect of sex differences in the sociology of education, and to ways in which social class differences in attainment could not ignore these sex differences. The original propositions concerning these differences are re‐examined and expanded in a neo‐Weberian analysis of the work‐marriage, class‐status, education complex, and considered in relation to the available empirical evidence. The alternative feminist‐Marxist approaches are found to be incompatible with the evidence of sex and social class differences in non‐capitalist societies.     

Organisational Change in Secondary Schools: an action approach

A longitudinal study of a sample of secondary schools has shown that over a period of ten years there have been changes in grouping practices, an expansion of examination opportunities, and a tightening of the control of school work. The prefectorial system has a reduced importance and has been deritualised, as has the school assembly. There is less sex differentiation of pupils’ school work and behaviour. These changes are explained using an action approach derived principally from Weber, concerned with the social construction of school organisation, whch is briefly compared to other possible explanations.     

Evolving journal costs: implications for publishers,libraries, and readers

In this article, we summarize the cost implications of print and electronic publishing for scientific scholarly journal publishers, libraries, and scientists. In each case, we developed detailed cost models to demonstrate the importance of factors that affect publishing and decisions made by libraries and scientists to determine whether to subscribe to a journal; if so, in print or electronic medium, and, if not, what alternative information sources to use. In all instances, estimates of unit cost are essential for understanding the dynamics of the economic and systemic interdependencies of publishers, libraries, and readers.     

Reflections on the First International iPED Conference,Coventry TechnoCentre,UK, 10–11 September 2006

Through reflection on the First International iPED Conference 2006, and its overarching theme of ‘Pedagogical Research and Academic Identities’, this paper considers the achievement of the wider aims of the conference, which were to facilitate dialogue between researchers in order to explore the conference themes collaboratively, and to provide networking opportunities which would enable participants to build alliances. The abstracts for all papers mentioned are available via the conference website www.coventry.ac.uk/iped2006.     

Political bias in the news coverage of Taiwan's first presidential election: A comparative analysis of broadcast TV and cable TV news

This research examines how TV reported the campaign and the candidates during Taiwan's first‐ever presidential election in 1996.

A content analysis of evening news coverage of six TV stations indicated that the state‐owned broadcast TV stations were far more likely than the privately owned cable TV stations to give a greater amount of coverage and soundbites to the ruling party presidential and vice presidential candidates, using the ruling party officials as principal news sources. The TV Stations’ coverage also contained more news favourable to the ruling party candidates than to other candidates.

The future may well see a turning point in TV election coverage as well as in general news coverage in Taiwan. The three state‐owned broadcast TV stations face competition from privately owned cable TV stations and may soon be confronted with the loss of public trust and audience, unless they can provide fair and balanced news free from government control.     

Pedagogy for partisanship: research training for Black graduate students in the Black intellectual tradition

Current and former students of two professors in a southern research university and a community educator, all participants in an African-centered research collaborative/apprenticeship, describe what and how we study together and our struggle to use our knowledge and research in service to our community. We uplift the works of key Pan-African/Black/Africana Studies/Nile Valley scholars to illustrate the African epistemic foundation of our collaborative/apprenticeship. We describe how we utilized the methodology of narrative inquiry to explore our experiences as participants in the HeKA (Heritage Knowledge in Action) research collaborative and how HeKA has provided ways of knowing and being centered in our culture and heritage. We present our findings, which include some of the dilemmas of Black doctoral students and emerging scholars engaged in HeKA and how this collaborative/apprenticeship serves as an emancipatory praxis to enable the next generation to realize their goals of partisan research and pedagogy in higher education.     

Teachers’ Emotion Minimizing Language and Toddlers’ Social Emotional Competence

Teachers in toddler classrooms are important agents of emotion socialization. The current study examined teachers’ use of emotion minimizing language in toddler classrooms and toddlers’ social emotional competence. Teachers’ emotion minimizing language is described as language that purposefully distances them from a child’s emotions and discourages children’s expression of their emotions. Research Findings: Results indicate a negative relationship between teachers’ emotion minimizing language and toddlers’ social emotional competence when program quality, child age, and child gender are controlled. Practice or Policy: Implications relevant to teacher preparation programs and professional development are discussed, with a primary focus on the methods by which teachers are trained to use language to respond to young children’s emotions.     

Changing cognitions in parents of two‐year‐olds attending Scottish Sure Start centres

The study examined how preschool intervention programmes set up by three Scottish local authorities changed parents’ cognitions. Quantitative parent outcomes were measured using Parenting Daily Hassles Scales (N = 88). A matched comparison group of parents (N = 55) recruited from the same areas of disadvantage but whose children did not attend the intervention programmes also completed questionnaires. Qualitative outcomes were evaluated using semi‐structured interviews (N = 30). A significant group × time interaction effect was found for daily hassle cognitions, Parenting Task–Intensity, Challenging Behaviour–Frequency and Challenging Behaviour–Intensity, with comparison group parents showing an increase in their experience of hassles during the ‘terrible twos’ compared with intervention group parents. Complementary qualitative data indicated that intervention group parents had gained valuable new insights into their children’s behaviour, changing how they thought about their role as parents and their behavioural and developmental expectations of their children. Implications for parental engagement in preschool programmes are discussed.