Listening to children’s views of spiritual and metaphysical concepts: A new dimension to educational psychology practice?

Educational psychologists (EPs) have for many years been developing techniques for listening to children. The aim of the present research was to investigate ways of listening to the “spiritual” views of children in order to develop questions that educational psychologists might use as part of the assessment repertoire. The study explored children’s spiritual concepts such as their purpose for “being on the planet” and the “meaning of their life”. The findings suggest that primary and secondary school children from mixed religious backgrounds can respond to spiritual questions in a clear way. In addition, most children believed that spiritual views influence how children behave. Further research is required to explore whether children’s views of spiritual concepts are linked to learning and progress in school and in life.     

龙虾怎样奏“乐”

自然界的动物在遭遇危险的时候,有各种各样的御敌招数,如毒蛇喷射毒液,章鱼喷出墨汁,电鳗放电,壁虎断尾求生等,还有的动物变换身形、虚张声势以吓唬敌人,而龙虾的防卫术则尤其别具一格。     

Adoptive Gay Father Families: A Longitudinal Study of Children’s Adjustment at Early Adolescence

Findings are presented from the second phase of a UK longitudinal study of 33 gay father, 35 lesbian mother, and 43 heterosexual parent families when their adopted children reached early adolescence. Participants predominantly lived in urban/suburban areas and were mostly white and well-educated. Standardized interviews, observations, and questionnaires of parental mental health, parent–child relationships, and adolescent adjustment were administered to parents, children, and teachers between 2016 and 2018. There were few differences between family types. However, adjustment problems had increased in all family types, with better parenting quality and parental mental health associated with fewer adjustment problems. The findings contribute to adoption policy and practice, and to theoretical understanding of the role of parental gender in child development.     

The Vertex Project: Children Creating and Populating 3D Virtual Worlds

This paper outlines early investigations and initial outcomes of The Vertex Project, a school‐based action research project currently underway at Middlesex University. The project aims to explore the potential of Shared 3D Virtual Environments as creative learning tools for children, and looks into the challenges facing their practical integration into the primary classroom. Working in partnership with three primary schools, the project sets out to investigate the teaching and learning possibilities offered by Internet based 3D virtual environments, placing particular emphasis on the opportunities provided by the active participation of children in the design and construction of their own virtual worlds, and in the creation of avatars with which to represent themselves within these spaces.     

Use of rich-media resources by engineering undergraduates

The ability to develop and distribute digital teaching resources in higher education has developed rapidly over the last decade but research into how students use such resources has received limited attention. This study uses questionnaire results, Internet analytic data and semi-structured interviews to examine the use of three types of rich-media teaching resources – lecture podcasts, key-concept videos and tutorial solution videos – by engineering undergraduates. It is found that students value all three types of resource, especially for revision and as a supplement to lectures. Students find short, focused resources more useful than longer ones. Non-native English speakers and those with disabilities derive particular benefits from the resources. The effect of rich-media resources on lecture attendance is found to be small, and two-way.     

In‐Place and In‐Time

This article presents parallel and collaborative research and teaching practices that expand approaches to encountering site through the lenses of observation and performative drawing. These drawing practices record phenomena, whilst in their presence, through a designed temporal framework. This asks the drawer to observe over a duration of time and to record the world in motion. By spending an extended period of time in the presence of the phenomenon of our study, with active receptivity, our capacity to see shifts. Rather than the drawn outcomes of this observation recording a past time, the notion of experiential time – and an expanded present – is embedded in the act of drawing. These processes of observation and performative drawing allude to Edmund Husserl’s expression of a ‘thickened present’. The outcomes of this drawing practice demonstrate that observational techniques are embodied, relational, temporal and generative and so offer an alternative approach to site analysis. How this approach sits within the larger domain of spatial temporal relationships and forms of drawing are also considered.     

Coloured overlays and their benefit for reading

Children in mainstream schools compared text on white paper with identical text covered in turn by each of ten differently‐coloured plastic overlays. More than 50% reported improved perception with one or more colours, and were given the best colour to use. About half used the overlays for more than three months and their reading speed increased when the overlays were used. In Study I children were examined twice using different methods and examiners. 47% chose the same colour on both occasions, and showed the greatest improvement in reading fluency, reliable at retest. In Study II children were issued with a random colour, and the greatest improvements in reading speed occurred when the random colour was the same as that previously chosen. Phonological reading strategies were not related to visual symptoms, or the benefit from overlays. Across individuals, reading speed varied by a factor of more than three, for good and poor readers. Study III provided estimates of the prevalence of improvements based on a sample of 426 children from 12 schools: 5% of children read more than 25% faster with a coloured overlay.     

A Dual Inheritance: The Politics of Educational Reform and PhDs in Art and Design

This paper examines the changing relationship of art practice to academic research in higher education since 1960. Whereas art practice was often conceived of as divorced from any notion of academic or theoretical work in the post 1960 art school, by the 1990s the ground had changed to such a degree that it was possible to pursue doctoral study in art practice. This emergence of practice‐based PhDs can be considered as part of a larger shift in art education and its acceptance of theory.     

Temporal patterns of schedule-induced drinking and pawgrooming in rats exposed to periodic food

Five rats were exposed to fixed-time food schedules, ranging from 30 to 480 sec. Three rats displayed a postfood pattern of schedule-induced drinking, with short latencies from food delivery to drinking at all interfood interval durations. In contrast, drinking for the other 2 subjects tended to occur at lower overall levels, and drinking bouts frequently began in the middle of the interfood interval, such that the latency from food delivery to drinking increased dramatically as the interfood interval increased. Observation of these 2 subjects revealed that another form of licking-pawgrooming-occurred reliably after food delivery and before drinking bouts. A between subject comparison of the 3 postfood drinkers and the 2 pawgroomers revealed that, in addition to a common topography (repetitive licking), pawgrooming and drinking were similar with respect to their temporal locus, relation to the interfood interval, and extinction baseline levels. These similarities suggest that drinking and pawgrooming are induced by a common mechanism. Cohen, Looney, Campagnoni, and Lawler’s (1985) two-state model of reinforcer-induced motivation provides a useful framework for the interpretation of these results.