News in an Age of Competition: The Case of Sensationalism in Dutch Television News, 1995–2001

Recent years have seen changing and shifting technologies as well as an uncertain economic climate. This research focuses on how audiences have reacted to these shifts, using a number of different sources of data to test hypotheses related to spending time and money on media. We suggest that previous studies examining audience expenditures and diffusion of new technologies may have overlooked the stressful economic conditions surrounding diffusion of some of those technologies. We find an increase in entertainment technology purchases as well as time spent with new and traditional media during recession years, beyond that indicated by the longer term trends. While there is a general decrease in coviewing behavior in recent years, the recession years reversed the trend. Results are discussed in terms of the constancy hypothesis and our hypothesis that the media provide outlets for reducing stress during difficult economic times.     

Educational Media

Jay Stein's Mass Media Education, and a Better Society (Chicago: Nelson-Hall, 1979---$ )

Gavriel Salomon's Interaction of Media, Cognition, and Learning (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass Publishers, 1079---$ )

Dennis D. McDonald et al, Directory of Public Broadcasting Information Resources (Washington: Corporation for Public Broadcasting, 1979--- free , paper)

Religious media communication, two recent titles     

Broadening Conceptions of Curriculum for Young People: Reports from three student-teachers on exchange

Research reports prepared by three Australian preservice teachers--Paula Shaw, Chris Sharp and Scott McDonald--undertaking their teacher education practicum in Canada, form the basis of this paper. The reports provide critical insights into three aspects of education for young people in both Canada and Australia. They also provide critical insight into the ways in which a practicum research project, along with the opportunities afforded through an international experience, enabled the preservice teachers to broaden their understanding of the curriculum for young people, of issues relevant to the diverse needs of young people, and of themselves and their priorities as teachers. The preservice teachers investigated three topics: attempts to reduce homophobia in schools; the presence or absence of Aboriginal content in the school curricula in British Columbia and Queensland; and "schools-within-schools" as a means to meet the needs of diverse student populations. Linda Farr Darling from the University of British Columbia provides a response to the three reports.     

The influence of explicit nature of science and argumentation instruction on preservice primary teachers' views of nature of science

There exists a general consensus in the science education literature around the goal of enhancing learners' views of nature of science (NOS). An extensive body of research in the field has highlighted the effectiveness of explicit NOS instructional approaches in improving learners' NOS views. Emerging research has suggested that engaging learners in argumentation may aid in the development of their NOS views, although this claim lacks empirical support. This study assessed the influence of a science content course incorporating explicit NOS and argumentation instruction on five preservice primary teachers' views of NOS using multiple sources of data including questionnaires and surveys, interviews, audio‐ and video‐taped class sessions, and written artifacts. Results indicated that the science content course was effective in enabling four of the five participants' views of NOS to be improved. A critical analysis of the effectiveness of the various course components led to the identification of three factors that mediated the development of participants' NOS views during the intervention: (a) contextual factors (context of argumentation, mode of argumentation), (b) task‐specific factors (argumentation scaffolds, epistemological probes, consideration of alternative data and explanations), and (c) personal factors (perceived previous knowledge about NOS, appreciation of the importance and utility value of NOS, durability and persistence of pre‐existing beliefs). The results of this study provide evidence to support the inclusion of explicit NOS and argumentation instruction as a context for learning about NOS, and promote consideration of this instructional approach in future studies which aim to enhance learners' views of NOS. © 2010 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Res Sci Teach 47: 1137–1164, 2010     

The TeachScheme! Project: Computing and Programming for Every Student

The discipline of project management has been available for almost 40 years. This paper examines several factors that make the management of software development projects more difficult than the management of many other kinds of projects. These factors negatively impact the software project managers' success in estimation and scheduling, planning, responding to schedule and budget pressures, monitoring project status and managing the integration, and testing phases of the project. Techniques for addressing each of these difficulties are described, and topics that need to be incorporated into software project management courses to address these issues are outlined.     

NO ONE LEFT TO PUSH: THE PUBLIC POLICY OF AGING AND BLINDNESS

The decline in psychometric measures of general intelligence (g) and performance of similar laboratory-based tasks has been pivotal in shaping psychogerontology's views of the aging intellect, and by extension, the ability to learn. However, parallel to this is the consideration that the motivation and intellectual needs of older adults may change. The study presented here found that levels of need for cognition are closely related to older adults' performance on Piagetian tasks, indicating an intellectual lifestyle preference that operates alongside, and interactively with, performance on traditional intellectual measures. The implications of this are discussed.     

Moments of social inclusion: asylum seekers,football and solidarity

Abstract

Established in 2012, ‘the Seekers’ are a football club in Melbourne, Australia. Initially set up to provide social recreation for various refugees and asylum seekers, the Seekers have more recently entered a team in the mainstream league competition. Based on ethnographic fieldwork, this paper considers how football facilitates forms of social inclusion for team members, both in relation to the action of the sport and the political and social context of Australian society more broadly. In many ways the field of sport is highly contested as players engage with the mainstream; however the solidarity forged through playing creates the possibility for moments of social inclusion in other ways. The capacity of sporting interactions to facilitate social inclusion for male team members is vexed, though there is evidence to suggest that, in the correct conditions, sport can contribute to an individual’s capacity to access employment and educational opportunities.     

Children Who Read Words Accurately Despite Language Impairment: Who Are They and How Do They Do It?

Some children learn to read accurately despite language impairments (LI). Nine- to 10-year-olds were categorized as having LI only ( n  =   35), dyslexia (DX) only ( n  =   73), LI + DX ( n  =   54), or as typically developing (TD; n  =   176). The LI-only group had mild to moderate deficits in reading comprehension. They were similar to the LI + DX group on most language measures, but rapid serial naming was superior to the LI + DX group and comparable to the TD. For a subset of children seen at 4 and 6 years, early phonological skills were equally poor in those later classified as LI or LI + DX. Poor language need not hinder acquisition of decoding, so long as rapid serial naming is intact; reading comprehension, however, is constrained by LI.