“Wildest dreams”: the racial aura of celebrity safari

This paper deploys theories of aura to explore the celebrity safari as a mode by which famous people authenticate Africa as a distant, timeless place for a global audience. Their safari depictions create an imagined mystical locale, an aura, that imbues cult value and maintains transnational racial divides. The celebritized racial aura constructs a nostalgic paradise that sits in contrast to the many narratives of misery and privation that celebrity representation also creates. Thus aura commodifies the continent as a kind of playground for the desires of Western publics.     

Enhancing Teachers' Knowledge and Use of Inquiry Through Environmental Science Education

Journal of Science Teacher Education -     

Recreational activities and motor skills of children in kindergarten

Background: Developmental theorists suggest that physical activity during early childhood promotes fundamental motor skill (FMS) proficiency; and that differences in FMS proficiency are largely related to children's experiences.

Aim: To examine associations between participation in different types of recreation/leisure and FMS proficiency of boys and girls in their first year of school. We hypothesized that there would be positive associations between FMS proficiency and participation in organized sport, physical activities, and active physical recreation; but not for other types of recreation/leisure.

Method: Participants (n?=?74) were kindergarten children (Mage?=?5y11?m; boys?=?55%). Parents completed the diversity dimension of the Children's Assessment of Participation and Enjoyment (CAPE) survey. The CAPE measures children's participation in everyday activities outside of mandated school activities in the past four months in five types of formal and informal activities, specifically: Recreational activities, Physical activities, Social activities, Skill-Based activities, and Self-Improvement activities. Two categories of activities were also reported: Organized Sport and Active Physical Recreation. Locomotor and object control skills were assessed using the Test of Gross Motor Development-2 and static balance was assessed using a stork stand. Sex-based differences in motor skills and participation were examined using chi-squared analyses. Correlation coefficients were used to examine relationships between motor skills and CAPE sub-domains and categories. Linear regression was used to examine whether the type of activity predicted motor skill proficiency and the reverse.

Results: There were no sex-based differences in locomotor skills; whereas boys' object control skill scores were significantly higher than girls, and girls' stork stand scores were higher than boys'. Although there were no sex-based differences in the more active categories of recreational pastimes; girls participated in significantly more formal and informal dance and the prevalence of participation in team sports was significantly higher for boys. For boys, participation in physical activities predicted both locomotor and object control skill scores, organized sport predicted object control skills, and active recreation predicted stork stand times and object control skill scores. These relationships were not evident among the girls.

Conclusions: These findings illustrate that young children participate in a narrower array of physically active recreational pursuits compared with less active pursuits. There were notable sex-based differences in the relationships between participation and motor skill proficiency. For girls, none of the associations between recreational pastimes and motor skill proficiency were significant. This suggests that the motor proficiency of girls, as assessed in this study, is neither a precursor to, nor an outcome of, participation in active recreational pastimes. Contrastingly, the findings for boys support theory that suggests that physical activity is driving the acquisition of particular types of motor skills. Less active recreational activities were not associated with motor skill levels of boys, whereas each of the more active categories of recreational pastimes (active recreation, physical activities, and organized sport) predicted at least one sub-type of motor skill. It also seems clear from our findings that more light needs to be shed on how to optimally portray young girls' motor skill proficiency; as well as the relationships between their participation and motor skills.     

Principles for the design of teaching

In this introductory article, after some initial discussion of an appropriate approach to mathematics as a curriculum subject, we sketch a theory for designing teaching, based on mathematical activity, situations, tasks, and interventions, exposing and resolving cognitive conflicts, changes of structure and context, feedback, reflection and review. We next review the main psychological principles underlying this theory, then consider some examples of teaching designs in the light of the theory. Thus we open the discussion of the theme of this issue, which continues with the fuller discussion of other examples in the remaining articles.     

The use of a computer simulation to promote scientific conceptions of moon phases

This study described the conceptual understandings of 50 early childhood (Pre‐K‐3) preservice teachers about standards‐based lunar concepts before and after inquiry‐based instruction utilizing educational technology. The instructional intervention integrated the planetarium software Starry Night Backyard™ with instruction on moon phases from Physics by Inquiry by McDermott (1996). Data sources included drawings, interviews, and a lunar shapes card sort. Videotapes of participants' interviews were used along with the drawings and card sorting responses during data analysis. The various data were analyzed via a constant comparative method in order to produce profiles of each participant's pre‐ and postinstruction conceptual understandings of moon phases. Results indicated that before instruction none of the participants understood the cause of moon phases, and none were able to draw both scientific moon shapes and sequences. After the instruction with technology integration, most participants (82%) held a scientific understanding of the cause of moon phases and were able to draw scientific shapes and sequences (80%). The results of this study demonstrate that a well‐designed computer simulation used within a conceptual change model of instruction can be very effective in promoting scientific understandings. © 2007 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Res Sci Teach 45: 346–372, 2008     

The Role of Negative Affect and Physiological Regulation in Maternal Attribution

Objective. Mothers who attribute child misbehaviors to children’s intentions, and not to situational causes, show more hostile parenting behaviors. Why are some mothers more likely than others to make more hostile attributions (i.e., high intentional attributions and low situational attributions) when confronted with child challenging behaviors? We examined the relation between mothers’ perception of child challenging behaviors and their hostile attributions of child misbehaviors, with an emphasis on how maternal negative affect and resting vagal activity moderated this relation. Design. One hundred sixty mothers of 3- to 7-year-old children reported their perceptions of child problem behaviors, their attributions regarding child misbehaviors, and their temperamental negative affect. Mothers’ respiratory sinus arrhythmia was measured during resting state. Results. Maternal perceptions of child challenging behaviors were positively related to hostile maternal attributions, and this relation was strongest in mothers with high negative affect and low resting RSA. Conclusions. These findings indicate the importance of considering mothers’ affective and physiological attributes when examining social-cognitive processes in parenting.     

Affective knowledge versus affective pedagogy: the case of native grammar learning

ABSTRACT

In recent years, there has been growing interest in the role of affect within education. Within this paper, the authors make a distinction between affective pedagogy, which they refer to as ways of teaching that are designed to evoke particular emotional states, and affective knowledge, which they refer to as aspects of knowledge or knowing which seem to bring forth particular emotions organically. Using explicit grammar knowledge as a test case, they explore student teachers’ affective responses to learning, drawing upon interview data and observations made during a series of grammar courses. They argue that grammar learning is a potential source of pleasure, wonder and intensity. The findings provide an important counter-narrative to the prevailing discourse of grammar as dull and threatening. They also draw broader conclusions about the significance of affect in education, drawing upon affect theory and recent work on epistemic emotions.