Listening to the Logos: Speech and the Coming of Wisdom in Ancient Greece

This essay examines accounts of visits to Civil War prison sites, cemeteries, and battlefields that were generated by the popular speaker Anna E. Dickinson during an 1875 lecture tour of Southern states. An ardent Unionist, Dickinson visited places that she believed to exemplify Union sacrifice and Confederate wrongdoing. We analyze her accounts—captured in letters to her mother—in order to understand how this rhetorically skilled public figure used these visits as opportunities for invention and interpretation, generating textual responses oriented toward public memory-making. We argue that her letters enact what we call a pilgrim-critic persona, which both demonstrates an affective connection to places and undertakes a critical investigation of what happened there. Employing the concept of the pilgrim-critic enables this analysis to contribute to rhetorical studies of public memory by highlighting the inventional resources used when visitors interpret their experiences of memory places.     

The Benefits of Part‐Time Undergraduate Study and UK Higher Education Policy: a Literature Review

Part‐time study in the UK is significant: nearly 40 per cent of higher education students study part‐time. This article reports on a literature review that sought to understand the economic and social benefits of part‐time study in the UK. It concludes that there are substantial and wide‐ranging benefits from studying part‐time. The article also aims to place the discussion in the current policy context by drawing attention to the fact that while part‐time study is seen as important for increasing the global competitiveness of the UK economy, expansion of higher education has tended to focus on the young, full‐time student; furthermore, part‐time study is less generously resourced compared to full‐time study. New policy pronouncements made in 2009 appear to recognise these policy contradictions, which state that most future growth will be in provision other than the full‐time, 3‐year undergraduate degree. Indeed, the Government's independent review of fees has recognized that parity of funding is an issue and its recommendations on part‐time study have been endorsed by the government.     

Cable and New Media

Mary Alice Mayer Phillips' CATV: A History of Community Antenna Television (Evanston, Ill.: Northwestern University Press, 1972—$9.75)     

Development of Gender Typicality and Felt Pressure in European French and North African French Adolescents

Trajectories of gender identity were examined from Grade 6 (M_age = 11.9 years) to Grade 9 in European French (n = 570) and North African French (n = 534) adolescents, and gender and ethnic group differences were assessed in these trajectories. In Grade 6, boys of both ethnic groups reported higher levels of gender typicality and felt pressure for gender conformity than girls. European French girls and boys and North African French girls reported decreasing gender typicality from Grade 6 to Grade 9, whereas North African French boys did not change. Felt pressure decreased among girls, did not change in European French boys, and increased in North African French boys. Ethnic and gender differences in gender identity development are discussed.     

Does engagement in Forest School influence perceptions of risk,held by children,their parents,and their school staff?

In a climate where, it is claimed, children now spend very little time out of doors because adults fear for their safety and impose a ‘zero risk childhood’ on them, Forest School aims to offer learners the opportunity to take ‘supported risks’. This study investigated perceptions of risk associated with the outdoors, held by children, their parents and practitioners, and whether accessing Forest School impacts on these perceptions of risk. Practitioners were generally either strongly risk-averse or strongly permissive; Forest School influenced them to be less risk-averse in some respects. Parents held ambiguous perceptions, wanting to keep their children very safe but also to help them develop strong and confident attitudes to risk. Implications for research and practice are discussed.     

The socially skilled teacher and the development of tacit knowledge

Skilled interpersonal relations are crucial for effective teaching and learning but much professional knowledge here is tacit and thus not easily communicated. This article presents the results of a study that examined the tacit knowledge of trainee and experienced teachers in relation to various problematic interpersonal aspects of school life. Trainee (n = 501) and experienced (n = 163) teachers in secondary schools were presented with a series of hypothetical vignettes and asked to rate each of 128 potential response options. Trainees completed the survey at the beginning and end of their professional training year. It was found that experience appeared to be related to the capacity to identify ‘bad’ responses, but there was little difference in relation to the identification of ‘good’ responses. Further differences between novice and experienced teachers in relation to preferred strategies are reported. Implications for teacher education and for future research are identified and discussed.     

‘A Glance from God’: Zadie Smith's On Beauty and Zora Neale Hurston1

Zadie Smith's most recent novel, On Beauty (2005 Smith, Z. 2005. On Beauty, London and New York: Penguin.  [Google Scholar]), declares its connection to E. M. Forster's Howards End (1910 Forster, E. M. 1910. Howards End, London: Edward Arnold.  [Google Scholar]) with its first line, while the novel's title comes from Elaine Scarry's On Beauty and Being Just (1999 Scarry, E. 1999. On Beauty and Being Just, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.  [Google Scholar]). At least as important for understanding Smith's central vision are the novel's allusions to Zora Neale Hurston's Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937 Hurston, Z. N. 1987. Their Eyes Were Watching God, London: Virago Modern Classics.  [Google Scholar]) and Tell My Horse: Voodoo and Life in Haiti and Jamaica (1938 Hurston, Z. N. 1990. Tell My Horse: Voodoo and Life in Haiti and Jamaica, New York: Perennial Library.  [Google Scholar]).     

“I think I can,but I'm afraid to try”: The role of self-efficacy beliefs and mathematics anxiety in mathematics problem-solving efficiency

This study investigated the role of self-efficacy beliefs, mathematics anxiety, and working memory capacity in problem-solving accuracy, response time, and efficiency (the ratio of problem-solving accuracy to response time). Pre-service teachers completed a mathematics anxiety inventory measuring cognitive and affective dispositions for mathematics, before completing an operation span task to measure working memory capacity, rating self-efficacy for mental multiplication, and then solved computer-based multiplication problems at two complexity levels. A simultaneous regression design was used to assess the unique variance associated with each variable. There were two new findings; the differential role of self-efficacy on response time and efficiency, and the potential compensatory relationship between self-efficacy and mathematics anxiety related to efficiency outcomes. Educational implications and suggestions for future research were proposed.