Civic Science for Public Use: Mind in the Making and Vroom

Mind in the Making and Vroom are partner initiatives that exemplify a unique “civic science” approach to “bringing developmental science into the world.” Mind in the Making offers families and professionals working with children 0–8 access to developmental research, by engaging them in an active process of professional development and community outreach. Vroom is an outreach and communication initiative that brings “brain building basics” to communities, inviting parents to participate in the science of early learning through partnerships with trusted entities. These initiatives use collaborative, iterative processes in disseminating findings and implications of child development research. Preliminary evidence shows early promise of these initiatives to help promote engaged learning and life skills based on executive function in adults and children.     

The parental bonding experiences of sex offenders: a comparison between child molesters and rapists

OBJECTIVE: It has often been hypothesized that because of a lack of early satisfactory attachments, sex offenders grow up unable to form relationships with adults, which makes them susceptible to pursue intimacy in maladaptive ways. This research aims to empirically examine the parental bonding patterns for a group of sex offenders, comparing child molesters and rapists. METHOD: Seventy-six men convicted of a sexual offense (57 child molesters and 19 rapists) completed the parental bonding instrument (PBI), and were assessed by means of a semi-structured clinical interview. RESULTS: Affectionless control style of parental bonding was highly prevalent amongst the sex offenders. There was some suggestion that low parental care was associated with childhood abuse and disturbances, particularly for child molesters. High overprotection in mothers was linked with parental separation and sex play with male peers in childhood. CONCLUSIONS: There is a need to replicate the study with non-sexual offenders as a comparison group, and to establish whether the PBI provides a useful adjunct to studies of adult romantic attachment in sex offenders.     

Empowering or disempowering the international Ph.D. student? Constructions of the dependent and independent learner

There is in higher education a powerful discourse of ‘independent learning’. While there may be pedagogical rationales to support the desirability of increased independence at the tertiary stage, it may also serve other institutional agendas, such as functioning as a way for academic staff to ‘manage’ the frustrations experienced as teachers as a result of pressures to prioritise research. However, the individualisation of learning constituted by this discourse under‐emphasises the collaborative nature of learning. Academic success and failure are neither the property of the individual students nor of the instruction they receive, but lie rather in the relationships between students and the practices in which they and their teachers engage during the course of their ongoing interactions. The learning experiences of international doctoral students are used here to illustrate ways in which discourses of dependence and independence can operate to disempower students.     

Improving Elementary Grade Students’ Science and Social Studies Vocabulary Knowledge Depth,Reading Comprehension,and Argumentative Writing: a Conceptual Replication

Educational Psychology Review - This experimental study aimed to replicate and extend a previous efficacy study of an elementary grade content literacy intervention that demonstrated positive...     

Increasing physical literacy in youth: A two-week Sport for Development program for children aged 6-10

PROSPECTS - Regular physical activity significantly improves health outcomes, yet rates of childhood physical activity remain alarmingly low. Physical literacy has been identified as the...     

Contemporary Models of Communicative Practice: Shaky Foundations in the Foundation Stage?

This article outlines a four‐year‐old child's multi‐modal encounters with texts and analyses one of those encounters in the light of a framework for the analysis of such events. It is argued that this analysis leads to the conclusion that the experiences with texts that permeate young children's lives are complex in nature and that this complexity is not sufficiently addressed in relevant curriculum frameworks. Further, it is suggested that young children's encounters with televisual texts need to be identified as emergent techno‐literacy practices which should be supported and extended in ways which correlate to the strategies used with regard to print‐based texts.     

Purposes for literacy in children's use of the online virtual world Club Penguin

This paper reports on a study of the purposes for literacy discernible in young children's use of the virtual world, Club Penguin. Twenty‐six children aged between 5 and 11 took part in semi‐structured interviews in which their use of virtual worlds was explored. Further, three 11‐year‐old children were filmed using Club Penguin four times each over the period of 1 month in their own homes and they and their parents took part in interviews regarding their use of this virtual world. Findings indicate that the purposes for literacy in virtual worlds such as these are varied and have much in common with purposes for literacy in the off ine world. The virtual world Club Penguin provided a motivating and enjoyable context for reading and writing and enabled the construction and maintenance of online social networks. The implications for research, policy and practice are discussed.