Multiple determinants of caregiver behavior in child care centers

In this study of the multiple determinants of professional caregiving, 237 caregivers (age range: 18–56 years) from 64 Dutch child care centers were extensively observed during their interactions with the children (0–4 years) in their usual care group. The choice of potential determinants of the caregiving quality was guided by Belsky's [Belsky, J. (1984). The determinants of parenting: A process model. Child Development, 55, 83–96] model of the determinants of parenting. Consistent with Belsky's model, quality of caregiving was found to be multiply determined by characteristics of the caregiver, the children and the caregiving context. More specifically, lower-quality care was provided by younger caregivers, to younger children, and by caregivers reporting higher physical occupational workloads. The differences between the participating child care centers proved to explain more variance in the quality of professional caregiving than the differences between the individual caregivers.     

Development and evaluation of a short RIASEC interest inventory

International Journal for Educational and Vocational Guidance - This study set out to develop a short interest inventory based on Holland’s model of vocational personality types using items...     

Concept-guided development of technology in ‘traditional’ and ‘innovative’ schools: quantitative and qualitative differences in technology integration

The integration of technology into the classroom remains a challenge for those involved. A concept-guided approach to the development of technology has been suggested as a way of meeting this challenge. This multiple case study was performed in the context of a project in which five elementary schools in The Netherlands with a school concept that was labeled as either ‘traditional’ or ‘innovative’ developed and realized up to four technology-supported learning arrangements in line with their schools’ educational concepts. Through embedded case studies, including analysis of the learning arrangements and focus group interviews with the teachers involved, we found that in general the developed technology use became integrated in the teachers’ classroom practices at all schools to a similar extent. Some differences were found between the schools, but hardly any were found between the school types. Both practical and theoretical implications of these findings are discussed.     

Mid-career academic women and the prestige economy

Drawing on 30 semi-structured interviews with women academics based in London higher education institutions in the UK, this paper investigates the gendered nature of the prestige economy in academia. We explore how mid-career academic women strategise their career development and the opportunities and barriers they perceive, particularly in relation to the accrual of academic esteem. Concept maps were used to facilitate dialogue about career plans and provided an artefact from the interviewee’s own perspective. The analysis draws on the concept of prestige, or the indicators of esteem that help advance academic careers, against the backdrop of a higher education context which increasingly relies on quantitative data to make judgements about academic excellence. The interviews indicated that women generally feel that men access status and indicators of esteem more easily than they do. Many women also had ambivalent feelings about gaining recognition through prestige: they understood the importance of status and knew the ‘rules of the game’, but were critical of these rules and sometimes reluctant to overtly pursue prestige. The findings are valuable for understanding how women’s slow access to the highest levels of higher education institutions is shaped by the value that organisations place on individual status.     

Developmental Relations Between Reading Comprehension and Reading Strategies

We examined the developmental relations between knowledge of reading strategies and reading comprehension in a longitudinal study of 312 Dutch children from the beginning of fourth grade to the end of fifth grade. Measures for reading comprehension, reading strategies, reading fluency, vocabulary, and working memory were administered. A structural equation model was constructed to estimate the unique relations between reading strategies and reading comprehension, while controlling for reading fluency, vocabulary, and working memory. The results showed that there was a unique effect of reading strategies on reading comprehension, and also of reading comprehension on reading strategies.     

Superlatent inhibition and spontaneous recovery: Differential effects of pre- and postconditioning CS-alone presentations after long delays in different contexts

In two pairs of three-stage conditioned taste aversion experiments, we examined the effects of delay interval (1 or 21 days) between the second and third stages, and of context in which the animals spent the delay (same as or different from the context of the other stages) on latent inhibition (LI) and spontaneous recovery following extinction. In the LI experiments (Experiments 1A and 1B), the first stage comprised nonreinforced presentations to saccharin or to water. In the second stage, rats were conditioned by saccharin paired with LiCl. In the extinction experiments (Experiments 2A and 2B), the order of the stages was reversed. For all experiments, Stage 3, the test stage, consisted of three presentations of saccharin alone. There was a super-LI effect in the saccharin-preexposed group that spent the 21- day delay in the different context (Experiment 1A). When the delay was spent in the same context, there was no difference in the amount of LI between the short- and long-delay groups (Experiment 1B). Conversely, there was a spontaneous recovery effect in the long-delay/same-context group (Experiment 2B), but not in the long-delay/different-context group (Experiment 2A). The pattern of results, incompatible with current explanations of delay-induced changes in memory performance, was interpreted in terms of an interaction between the delay conditions (same or different delay context), which modulate the extinction of previously acquired context-CS-nothing associations (during CS-alone presentations), and primacy effects.     

Process of internationalization of business schools in Latin America: the case of EAESP/FGV,Brazil

This article analyzes the theoretical and practical aspects of the academic internationalization process, through the main events and pathways developed over the 60 years of the EAESP/FGV, the São Paulo Business School of the Getulio Vargas Foundation (Brazil). A survey was conducted of former directors, coordinators of the main international programs and all school faculty (266 professors) about their training and international activities. EAESP/FGV has developed a diverse and consolidated international career, surpassing the activities related to teaching and student mobility. However, there are some opportunities to deepen internationalization as a strategic brand of the institution.     

A causality analysis of the link between higher education and economic development

The aim of this article is to shed light on the relationship between higher education and economic development by means of econometric tools designed to evaluate the existence and direction of causality: cointegration and Granger-causality tests. The results show a significant causality from national higher educational effort (proxied by the number of students per capita, i.e. not engaged in productive activities) to economic development for four countries: Sweden (1910–1986), United Kingdom (1919–1987), Japan (1885–1975) and France (1899–1986). However, such a causality link has not been found for Italy (1885–1986) or Australia (1906–1986). This suggests that this relationship is indeed not mechanistic as already pointed out by some social scientists.     

Reading children’s literature

ABSTRACT

This article covers the contribution reading and stories (children’s literature) have made to reading, its study, its material world, and the implications for teaching and learning to read -particularly with picturebooks – at the heart of that practice. It first explores the category of children’s literature as a possible ‘lie’, but also its special contributions: animal story or fable as a ‘creativity and criticality genre’ par excellence, attracting artists and writers of extraordinary talent, frequently breaking boundaries, and unashamedly taking partisan positions on matters of identity formation and socio-political justice. Distinctive experiments in crosswriting and originality are cited, and the material poetics, or ‘thingness’ of books, from the constructivist tradition onwards, as one of children’s literature’s leading innovations. The article then engages with the role children’s literature has played in the ‘reading wars’, including teaching strategies and governmental policies for learning to read; the controversies and competitive tensions inherent in the metrics and mechanisms of reading ‘for the test’ or for pleasure. After decades of reader-response theory emphasising the active roles of the reader and the text, the piece concludes with a plea to re-describe reading for new, screen-based, visual literacies offering linear, radial, spatial forms of reading, or reader-as-player.