The segregation of items into categories by ten-month-old infants

2 experiments were conducted investigating infants' use of structural relations (i.e., correlated attribute values) in dividing or segregating items into categories. Rosch argued that attribute values do not occur in all possible combinations in the real world. Even though values of attributes may vary continuously across objects, some combinations are more likely to occur than others, forming breaks or discontinuities between clusters of correlated values. Within a well-controlled laboratory context, using artificial categories and a standard infant-recognition memory procedure, the present experiments demonstrated 10-month-old infants' sensitivity to structural information like that proposed by Rosch to exist in the real world, and their ability to segregate items into categories on the basis of clusters of correlated attribute values.     

Differential Achievement of Girls and Boys at GCSE: some observations from the perspective of one school

This article focuses on the differential achievements of girb and boys at GCSE over the four years 1991‐94, in the context of one Suffolk comprehensive school, and attempts to analyse, through questionnaire and interview with students, teachers and parents, some of the factors contributing to such differences. Male attitudes and a paramount concern with image emerge as key factors in affecting how boys respond to the academic and authority structure of the school. Teachers attitudes to masculinity and femininity in turn influence classroom interactions between teacher and learner: students perceived more positive teacher attention and support focused on girls, with teachers prepared to be more lenient and tolerant with girls than with boys. In homework and coursework, girls appear to be more committed and better organised, and to have a more realistic grasp of what is required for success at GCSE. In conclusion, an attempt is made to identify a number of issues which schools might consider in attempting to reduce male underachievement.     

Category-use effects in children

Three experiments examined the changes in category representation that take place when children use exemplars for tasks other than classification. In Experiments 1 and 2, 6- and 10-year-old children learned to classify exemplars of a novel category and then used the same exemplars in an inferential prediction task. In a subsequent classification task, features that were predictive for both classification and inference were classified more accurately than features that were predictive only of category membership. Experiment 3 showed that features with multiple uses were also more likely to be retrieved in feature listing. The findings show that children's category representations are affected by the way exemplars are used after they have been categorized.     

Infants' developing appreciation of similarities between model objects and their real-world referents

Previous research suggests that model competence does not emerge until relatively late in infancy (20-26 months). Development was systematically analyzed within 3 key areas--count noun learning, dual representation, and categorization-hypothesized to support the emergence of model competence in the second year. In an object-handling preferential looking task, 21- to 26-month-olds matched model objects to referents only when count noun knowledge was high. When dual representation demands were reduced through the use of pictures in place of model objects, 20-month-olds with low count noun vocabularies succeeded in relating symbols to referents. Finally, change in infants' construal of a model object as a member of a category was documented between 14 and 20 months of age.     

Boys’ educational ‘underachievement’ in the Caribbean: interpreting the ‘problem’

Education ministries in the Caribbean countries have directed considerable attention over the last decade to ‘solving’ the ‘problem’ of boys’ underachievement. Rather than considering such interventions, our central concern in this paper is to revisit debates about the interpretation of the issue, to explore whether boys’ underachievement is indeed a ‘problem’, in the sense of both an empirical reality and an issue requiring political attention. In this paper, we explore contestations over the reality and complexity of educational underachievement and whether this relates to broader political–economic marginalisation (or privileging) of boys. We turn then to explore the relationship between material realities and gendered subjectivities. Overall, we argue that boys’ underachievement should neither be ignored nor be the exclusive focus of attention and that a move from ‘boys’ underachievement’ to a broader analysis of ‘gender and education’ is needed, to place the debate in a gender relational context.     

Book Reviews

Growth, creativity and collaboration: great visions on a Great Lake – proceedings of the North American Serials Interest Group, Inc. 19th annual conference, June 17–20, 2004, Milwaukee, Wisconsin. 2005 Ed. P. S. French and M. Mering The Haworth Information Press, Binghamton, NY, ISBN 0‐7890‐2976‐6 US $34.95 Communicating in style by Yateendra Joshi The Energy and Resources Institute, India, 2003, 81 7993 016 5, £7.50 Bookmaking: Editing, Design, Production by Marshall Lee W. W. Norton & Co. Ltd., 2004, hardback, ISBN 0393730182 The Institutional Repository By Richard Jones, Theo Andrew and John MacColl Chandos Publishing, 2005, ISBN 1 84334 138 7, 237pp.     

A systematic review of evidence on the effectiveness of interventions and strategies for widening participation in higher education

Widening participation (WP) in higher education (HE) is an increasingly important policy issue, with interventions to increase participation from minority ethnic, low-income and other under-represented groups undertaken in HE sectors in many countries. In the UK there is a large amount of WP activity but a lack of robust evidence of its effectiveness. This article presents a systematic review in the topic area of WP in HE. We included studies of systematic review, randomised controlled trial (RCT) and quasi-experimental (QE) designs, and assessed evidence of the effectiveness of university access strategies and approaches in relation to the participation of disadvantaged students at university. We searched for, quality appraised and synthesised the international evidence, that is, evidence published in any country, in the English language. The findings from 4 systematic reviews and 12 experimental studies (4 RCTs, 4 RDDs and 4 QEDs) are presented as narrative syntheses in a series of thematic sub-topics. We found some evidence of effectiveness for a number of university access interventions. ‘Black box’ WP programmes (those with multiple elements in a single programme) and financial incentives were found to be effective. However, much of the evidence had design limitations and the majority were conducted in the US. The article concludes with research recommendations in relation to UK interventions, including suggested designs for future quasi-experimental evaluation.     

‘Life is a tightrope’: reflections on peer group inclusion and exclusion amongst adolescent girls and boys

Feeling part of one’s peer group is of crucial importance for most middle adolescents. Drawing on empirical research in different schools, this paper explores the components of exclusion in relation to gender, the consequences for those excluded by their peers, and the kinds of strategies engaged in by girls and boys in order to attain peer group acceptance.     

Single-sex Classes and Equal Opportunities for Girls and Boys: Perspectives through time from a mixed comprehensive school in England

The recent concern with the apparent 'under-achievement' of boys in England's comprehensive schools has led schools to review the potential of single-sex classes as a means of improving performance. This paper reviews the arguments for such a strategy, in the context of one school where such an approach has underpinned the organisation of the school through the last three decades. We examine the rationale behind the original decision to implement single-sex teaching, consider the evolution of the curriculum through time, and discuss the strengths and weaknesses of this mode of organisation from the varying perspectives of parents, students and teachers. We consider whether the strategy has contributed to an improvement in the achievement levels of girls, and discuss the extent to which single-sex teaching has the potential to have a positive impact in raising boys' performance. In reviewing the evidence, we conclude that the single-sex mode of teaching in the school is effective in contributing to high achievement levels, in many contexts providing a conducive and supportive environment for students' learning. We suggest that such groupings may offer more advantages for girls than for boys; we argue that the potential of the system will only be fully realised when it is explicitly recognised that girls and boys do respond differently, in certain contexts, to different teaching-learning styles.