Children's ideas about evaporation

This article reports on research conducted as part of the Primary Science Processes and Concept Exploration (space) Project. The background to, and orientation of, space is briefly described.

Classroom‐based research into children's thinking about evaporation is reported. This work was conducted in close collaboration with teachers of the 5‐11 years age range with the intention of establishing the viability of the techniques for eliciting ideas and managing subsequent interventions within classrooms.

Children's thinking in relation to three main evaporation phenomena are discussed. Ideas about evaporation were categorized by reference to notions of conservation, change of location and change of form of the water.     

Creating,implementing and integrating a first‐year statistics requirement

We present the process our institution used to create a statistics requirement for almost all incoming first‐year students. From conception and planning, to hiring and acceptance by the university community, we offer lessons learned should you consider making such a shift in your own curriculum.     

On‐screen print: the role of captions as a supplemental literacy tool

Children living in poverty are 1.3 times as likely as non‐poor children to experience reading difficulties and lack key oral experiences that contribute to early literacy development. The purpose of this research was to study the effects of viewing commercially available educational television with closed captions. Seventy second‐ and third‐grade economically disadvantaged children living in urban locations participated in this experimental research design. Children were randomly assigned to view videos with or without closed captions. Captions helped children recognise and read more words, identify the meaning of those words, generate inferences regarding programme content and transfer these skills to a normative code‐related skill task. Risk status moderated word recognition performance: those at risk benefited from captions while those who were not at risk recognised more words when captions were absent.     

How Do You Know You're Old? Gender Differences in Cues Triggering the Experience of Personal Aging

In order to evaluate the gender differences on the experience of aging, 142 individuals 50 years of age and older completed an interview regarding experiences with another individual conveying the message that they were “old.” Interviewees were asked about the type of situation, the age and gender of the response person, and the perceived intent and feelings associated with the experience. Results showed that 72.3% of the experiences could be classified into one of three categories: discount/benefit, physical features/appearance, and performance. While no gender differences were found in the location/setting of the incident, the response person, or the age of the response person, findings indicated that for men, the incident was classified as a “benefit/discount,” while for women it was classified as “physical features/appearance.” In addition, the presumed intent of the situation was viewed as negative and hurtful by women, and both genders reported that the incident made them feel self-conscious and/or elicited a negative self-assessment. These results illustrate that the self-reported experiences that make one feel old and potentially change an individual's identity are important to understand in the context of growing older as a gendered experience.