The values and purposes of human movement

Recognizing the role that physical activity has in assisting young children attain desired objectives, early childhood educators should continually be investigating avenues for involving children in movement experiences. Caregivers should be aware that for the child, movement is one of the most utilized vehicles of nonverbal interaction and expression. All children enjoy physical activity. Playing makes a child happy.Wayne Eastman is on the faculty of the Fisher Institute of Applied Arts and Technology (Early Childhood Education), Corner Brook, Newfoundland, Canada.     

Bodies,identities and performances: reconfiguring the language of gender and schooling

In this paper I seek to address a series of tensions in the ways we think, write and speak about gender in classrooms and playgrounds, and in the language we use to describe children and their behaviour. I shall examine some of the concepts we use for describing gender relations among children and consider the extent to which they are still useful. My main focus is on hegemonic masculinity; the female as Other; and ‘doing’ boy or girl, masculinity or femininity. I conclude that we need to take the language we use extremely seriously, and that in our work we need to primarily be focused on ensuring that all children are able to have ‘livable lives’ in school and elsewhere.     

Tomboys and girly-girls: embodied femininities in primary schools

This paper is about how 9–11-year-old children, particularly girls, co-construct tomboy and girly-girl identities as oppositional positions. The paper sits within a theoretical framework in which I understand individual and collective masculinities and femininities as ways of ‘doing man/woman’ or ‘doing boy/girl’ that are constructed within local communities of masculinity and femininity practice. Empirical data come from a one-year study of tomboy identities within two London primary schools. The paper explores the contrasting identities of tomboy and girly-girl, how they are constructed by the children, and how this changes as they approach puberty. The findings suggest that the oppositional construction of these identities makes it harder for girls to take up more flexible femininities, though it is possible to switch between tomboy and girly-girl identities at different times and places.     

Situational specificity makes the difference in assessment of youth behavior disorders

In this article we examine the ability of contextual information to enhance assessment of behavior problems in schools. Capitalizing on the multisituational structure of the Adjustment Scales for Children and Adolescents, exploratory and confirmatory analyses with a representative national sample (N = 1,400, ages 5–17 years) revealed three unique and reliable behavioral situtypes (problems in Peer Contexts, Academic Contexts, and Teacher Contexts). The situtypes were found internally consistent and structurally generalizable across age, sex, and ethnicity. Multiple logistic and discriminant analyses confirmed the ability of the situtypes to identify accurately those youth independently diagnosed as emotionally disturbed, as well as distinguish those diagnosed as learning disabled. Information gleaned from the situtypes was substantially better able than conventional psychopathology syndromes (attention‐deficit hyperactivity, oppositional defiance, etc.) to forecast later academic achievement. Implications for informing motivation and intervention are discussed. © 2005 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Psychol Schs 42: 121–136, 2005.     

Power/knowledge, gender and curriculum change

This paper considers the relationship betweenpower, gender and curriculum change. Writingfrom a Foucaultian standpoint, the authorconsiders how teachers react to and resist bothimposed and voluntary educationalinnovations. She looks at how subject status,personal identity and career history affect howa teacher is likely to react to a particularproposed change, and how this is affected bygendered power/knowledge relations withinschools. The author concludes that genderedpower/knowledge relations are central to theintroduction and implementation of change, andthat those proposing educational innovationsneed to have a greater understanding of thosewho will be subject to them. This is animportant area in which basic educationalresearch can be of practical utility.