CHILDREN'S FEARS ABOUT PERSONAL AGING

The present study was designed to investigate the effect age has on children's attitudes toward personalaging and if anxiety over aging was a contributing factor in the development of these attitudes. A total of 206 students (108 males and 98 females), ranging in age from 9-17 participated in this study.The participants were drawn from a religious education program for public school students and a parochial elementary school in a central Massachusetts town. The participants showed little real concern over the prospect of aging. Some differences were seen on the four subsets of the scale used. The participant's age was the most salient predictor in the assessment of attitudes toward personal aging. A close relationship with a grandparent contributed to positive attitudes and lessened fear of older adults.     

Bereavement on the college campus: Establishing an effective ritual for the classroom and beyond

We often know an individual student who is dealing with loss, but what about when the whole campus is grieving? Kristine M. McCusker and Laurie B. Witherow describe how their campus created a support system for faculty to help facilitate healing.     

Ties That Bond: Youth Sport as a Vehicle for Social Identity and Positive Youth Development

An emerging area of research has focused on understanding how the group dynamics of a sport team influence positive youth development (PYD). The identities that youth form through their membership in sport teams (i.e., social identities) have been found to influence teammate behavior and team performance. Yet, minimal work exists on social identity and PYD in youth sport. Purpose: The purpose of this study was to investigate the relationship between social identity and PYD in sport. Method: Youth engaged in recreational sport (N = 219; M_age = 11.61 years, SD = 1.39 years) completed measures of social identity and PYD in sport. The social identity measure assessed 3 dimensions including ingroup ties (IGT; perceptions of similarity, bonding, belongingness), cognitive centrality (importance of being a team member), and ingroup affect (IGA; feelings associated with group membership). A regression analysis was performed separately for 4 PYD outcomes (personal and social skills, goal setting, initiative, negative experiences) with the 3 dimensions of social identity entered as predictors. Results: Regression analyses revealed that IGT and IGA were positively associated with personal and social skills (R² Adj. = .29). Further, IGT predicted initiative (R² Adj. = .16), whereas IGA was positively associated with goal setting (R² Adj. = .17) and negatively associated with negative experiences (R² Adj. = .08). Conclusion: The findings extend previous research highlighting the benefits of social identity on teammate behavior and team performance and demonstrate how social identity may contribute to PYD through sport.     

The service university in a service society: The Oslo case

This article aims at presenting the University of Oslo as a case of a Scandinavian university experiencing policy and structural changes as a consequence of changes in government's thinking on university finance. In this situation the active marketing of research based services might be a new source of revenue, and hence the following question comes up: How is the service function of the University perceived by the University and its clients in the Oslo region? The University of Oslo case is explored by reviewing available policy documents, statistics, regulations, charters and legal acts issued by the university itself and the Ministry of Education. In addition, information obtained through interviews with key actors at the university and key clients of the Oslo region, is presented. The study concludes that the University of Oslo is taking careful steps in the service direction.     

Missed Opportunities for Science Learning: Unacknowledged Unscientific Arguments in Asynchronous Online and Face-to-Face Discussions

We explored the scientific argumentation that occurs among university biology students during an argumentation task implemented in two environments: face-to-face in a classroom and online in an asynchronous discussion. We observed 10 student groups, each composed of three students. Our analysis focused on how students respond to their peers’ unscientific arguments, which we define as assertions, hypotheses, propositions, or explanations that are inaccurate or incomplete from a scientific perspective. Unscientific arguments provide opportunities for productive dissent, scientific argumentation, and conceptual development of scientifically desirable conceptions. We found that students did not respond to the majority of unscientific arguments in both environments. Challenges to unscientific arguments were expressed as a question or through explanation, although the latter was more common online than face-to-face. Students demonstrated significantly more epistemic distancing in the face-to-face environment than the online environment. We discuss the differences in discourse observed in both environments and teaching implications. We also provide direction for future research seeking to address the challenges of engaging students in productive scientific argumentation in both face-to-face and online environments.     

Mathematical problem solving by pre-school children

In this article we provide new evidence for mathematical problem-solving abilities of pre-school children. These problem-solving behaviours occurred in a study of sharing of discrete items by dealing, in which we examined the abilities of three categories of counters to solve a discrete re-distribution problem. We detail the problem solving strategies used in the context of sharing by dealing as a common action scheme of pre-school children in clinical interviews.