Debt: the reality of student life

During the 1980s, a political consensus developed concerning the need to increase participation in higher education (Walker and Wright, 1990). How to finance this increase, however, was a matter of contention. While successive Conservative governments demonstrated a commitment to increasing the number of students, this aim was subordinate to their central concern of controlling public expenditure, which meant they were not prepared to meet the cost of expansion totally from the public purse. As a consequence, alternative ways of financing students were introduced which, as this paper will demonstrate, have led to a higher education system subsidized by student debt.     

Correlation: From Picture to Formula

Correlation is introduced intuitively early in the school curriculum by considering patterns in scatter diagrams. Later on, various formulae are used for calculating correlation coefficients. This article suggests ways in which the formulae can be related to the scatter diagrams.     

Infant joint attention, temperament, and social competence in preschool children

Infant joint attention has been observed to be related to social-emotional outcomes in at-risk children. To address whether this relation is also evident in typically developing children, 52 children were tested at 12, 15, 24, and 30 months to examine associations between infant joint attention and social outcomes. Twelve-month initiating and responding to joint attention were related to 30-month social competence and externalizing behavior, even when accounting for 15-month temperament ratings, 24-month cognition and language, and demographic variables. These results suggest that, in addition to associations with language and cognition, infant joint attention reflects robust aspects of development that are related to individual differences in the emergence of social and behavioral competence in childhood.     

Language and theory of mind: a study of deaf children

Theory-of-mind (ToM) abilities were studied in 176 deaf children aged 3 years 11 months to 8 years 3 months who use either American Sign Language (ASL) or oral English, with hearing parents or deaf parents. A battery of tasks tapping understanding of false belief and knowledge state and language skills, ASL or English, was given to each child. There was a significant delay on ToM tasks in deaf children of hearing parents, who typically demonstrate language delays, regardless of whether they used spoken English or ASL. In contrast, deaf children from deaf families performed identically to same-aged hearing controls (N=42). Both vocabulary and understanding syntactic complements were significant independent predictors of success on verbal and low-verbal ToM tasks.     

DISCUSSION, COLLABORATIVE KNOWLEDGE WORK AND EPISTEMIC FLUENCY

ABSTRACT:   This paper argues for an action-oriented conception of learning in higher education: one which marries higher order learning (coming to understand) with apprenticeship in knowledge work. It introduces epistemic tasks, forms and fluency as constructs that are useful in giving a more precise meaning to ideas about collaboration in knowledge construction. Discussion is seen as central to collaborative knowledge work and we examine the role of discussion in supporting weaker and stronger interpretations of collaborative knowledge construction.     

Developmental trends for object and spatial working memory: a psychophysiological analysis

This study examined developmental trends in object and spatial working memory (WM) using heart rate (HR) to provide an index of covert cognitive processes. Participants in 4 age groups (6-7, 9-10, 11-12, 18-26, n=20 each) performed object and spatial WM tasks, in which each trial was followed by feedback. Spatial WM task performance reached adult levels before object WM task performance. The differential developmental trends for object and spatial WM found in this study are taken to suggest that these WM components are separable. Negative performance feedback elicited HR slowing that was more pronounced for adults than for children. The development of performance monitoring as indexed by covert HR slowing following performance feedback contributes to WM performance.     

Homicides in Higher Education: Some Reflections on the Moral Mission of the University

This essay on the ethical mission of the university explores extremes of anti-social behavior, visiting numerous crime scenes before concluding that contemporary higher education has lost the capacity—and even the language—for taking character development seriously. In his attempt to determine whether coincidently traditional-liberationist-diversiphilic-apathetic colleges can morally improve their charges, Peter Wood collects a wrenching compendium of violent academic mayhem.