A New Marketing Paradigm for Electronic Commerce

The World Wide Web possesses unique characteristics that distinguish it in important ways from traditional commercial communications environments. Because the Web presents a fundamentally different environment for marketing activities than traditional media, conventional marketing activities are becoming transformed, as they are often difficult to implement in their present form. In this article, we discuss the idea that these changes portend an evolution in the 'marketing concept' and argue that in order for marketing efforts to be successful in this new medium, a new business paradigm is required. In this new approach, the marketing function must be reconstructed to facilitate electronic commerce in the emerging electronic society underlying the Web.     

Interference and Inhibition in Cognition and Behavior: Comments on the Commentaries

In our target article (Dempster & Corkill, 1999a) we presented an overview of recent work on interference and inhibition in cognition and behavior. The commentators provided highly informative feedback about a range of implications of this new body of work for educational psychology, including learning disabilities. In our response to the commentators, we reply to two relatively broad topics they touch on: consciousness and the functionalist tradition of American psychology. We also remark on two relatively narrow issues raised by the commentators: what constitutes irrelevant information and perseveration in the missing addend task.     

How is radial arm maze behavior in rats related to locomotor search tactics?

Norway rats have been shown to depend on short-term spatial memory to find food on a radial arm maze (RAM), but what locomotor search tactics are involved in using this memory effectively? Four experiments distinguished tactics of distance minimizing, central-place search, trail following, thigmotactic search, and random search by using different configurations of a RAM placed flat on the floor of an arena. These search tactics make similar predictions on an elevated RAM but predict different outcomes on a floor RAM because the rats are free to approach the food from any direction. After initial trials dominated by exploration, rats traveled along arms to food, even when the resultant distance was up to three times the minimum distance. With no food present, rats also traveled along arms; with no arms up to present, they traveled along walls to food. It appears that both maze arms and arena walls engage mechanisms related to trail following in rats.     

Parental choice of childcare in England: Choosing in phases and the split market

This article explores how parents choose childcare settings for their pre-school children within a context of complex policy on eligibility for free provision and a developing market. Using data from interviews with 17 mainly middle-class parents in England, we explore in detail how parents go about choosing a childcare setting and the different phases of this process. This adds further nuance to the existing literature on choosing practices and the dysfunction and inequalities of a neoliberal childcare market, and also updates the discussion to include recent policy developments such as the provision of ‘30 hours free childcare’ for 3 and 4-year-olds. We conclude that parental choosing involves a series of decisions in two or three phases, which start from practical considerations, followed by quality comparison and then back to practical constraints if a decision has not been made. The options open to parents are split between not only those able to accommodate shorter ‘free’ provision and those that require longer periods of childcare to work, but also between those with children under three and above. Contrary to previous findings in this area, this split may work to the disadvantage of some middle-class families, whose children attend lower-quality settings as a result.     

A New Method for Evaluating Knowledge,Beliefs, and Neuromyths About the Mind and Brain Among Italian Teachers

Teachers often face situations that require them to apply knowledge about the mind and brain to education. Past studies have indicated that even if teachers show interest in cognitive neuroscience, they show high rates of adhesion to neuromyths. In the most commonly used questionnaire, however, respondents do not compare neuromyths and correct information based on neuroscience. The present study proposes a multiple‐choice questionnaire that presents scenarios occurring in school. The most commonly used and the new questionnaire were administered to 174 Italian teachers. In the most commonly used questionnaire, teachers generally had the same likelihood of accepting neuromyths as the literature reports. In the new questionnaire, the levels of both general knowledge and beliefs about neuromyths were significantly lower. Moreover, it suggests that teachers' adhesion to neuromyths in realistic situations does not match their explicit beliefs. Thus, the present research proposes that the use of questions based on feasible scenarios is a useful method to assess neuromyths.     

In pursuit of the effective neighborhood information system: User-friendliness and training

The goal of this research is to address the effectiveness of Neighborhood Information Systems (NIS) as an Information Technology (IT) tool in assisting community development. NISs are hybrid applications of Geographical Information Systems (GIS) and web technologies that provide demographic, social, and economic information to community stakeholders. Government agencies, nonprofit organizations, and community organizations engage in decision-making process for community development, and NISs are designed to help information-sharing and effective and participatory decision-makings for community development stakeholders.     

Educational leadership and social activism: a call for action

The purpose of this article is to argue for a social activist stance in educational leadership that fundamentally addresses social change and human emancipation. This call for social activism is framed within neoliberal, neoconservative, and authoritarian populist discourses in the USA, which to social justice educators and leaders had devastating effects on education. Empirical data from an activist high school principal, activist university professor, and activist priest reflects their development of political clarity, political capacity, political collaboration, and an ethic of risk. It is suggested that the work of socially active educational leaders needs to be broadened to include such things as public policy advocacy, networking, organising, community development, and scholarship. Finally, the article concludes with a variety of ways educational leaders can demonstrate their social, moral, and political activism as they challenge the status quo, fight for social justice, and come to understand the politicised notion of leadership.     

Harry Potter: Agency or Addiction?

This article considers limitations on agency for characters in the Harry Potter novels, in particular, how far they are driven by an addictive yearning for their beloved dead. As well as Harry’s yearning for his dead parents, Dumbledore’s guilt, Snape’s longing and Slughorn’s craving can be read as evidence of addiction rather than love, while the Sorting ritual throws into doubt agency among the students in general.