‘The helping,the fixtures,the kits,the gear,the gum shields,the food,the snacks,the waiting,the rain,the car rides … ’: social class,parenting and children's organised activities

ABSTRACT

Class-related parenting cultures and ideologies have been of considerable interest to academics over the last two decades. Much of the research thus far has focused on exploring Annette Lareau's conceptualisations of ‘natural growth’ and ‘concerted cultivation’ and the implications for outcomes in relation to education. The focus of the present article is organised activities, which are a central but as yet relatively under-researched feature of middle-class parenting. The findings are based upon 73 semi-structured interviews with parents and children from 48 middle-class families living in and around a small city in northern England. The article reveals that initiating and facilitating children's organised activities is considered a central aspect of ‘good’ parenting in middle-class social networks. It is shown how this is a consequence of several developments within society over the past three decades or so, including the rising levels of maternal employment, the growing competitiveness of the labour market and the increasing concerns related to children's health and safety. It is argued that these developments have heightened middle-class parents’ predisposition to not only be involved with and invest in their children's leisure biographies, but to do so in a more deliberate, rigorous and rational manner.     

Massive preexposure and preexposure in multiple contexts attenuate the context specificity of latent inhibition

Latent inhibition, which refers to attenuated responding to a conditioned stimulus (CS) after CS-unconditioned stimulus (CS-US) pairings as a result of CS-alone presentations prior to the pairings, is often attenuated if preexposure and conditioning occur in different contexts (i.e., it is context specific). Here we report two conditioned lick suppression experiments, using rat subjects, that examined whether manipulations known to attenuate the context specificity of extinction could also eliminate the context specificity of latent inhibition. Context specificity of latent inhibition was eliminated when the CS was preexposed in multiple contexts (Experiment 1) and when the CS was massively pre-exposed in the training context alone (Experiment 2). These results and their practical implications are discussed in the framework of contemporary theories of latent inhibition.     

A longitudinal study of the educational and career trajectories of female participants of an urban informal science education program

The purpose of this longitudinal case study is to describe the educational trajectories of a sample of 152 young women from urban, low‐income, single‐parent families who participated in the Women in Natural Sciences (WINS) program during high school. Utilizing data drawn from program records, surveys, and interviews, this study also attempts to determine how the program affected the participants' educational and career choices to provide insight into the role informal science education programs play in increasing the participation of women and minorities in science, math, engineering, and technology (SMET)‐related fields. Findings revealed 109 participants (93.16%) enrolled in a college program following high school completion. Careers in medical or health‐related fields followed by careers in SMET emerged as the highest ranking career paths with 24 students (23.76%) and 21 students (20.79%), respectively, employed in or pursuing careers in these areas. The majority of participants perceived having staff to talk to, the job skills learned, and having the museum as a safe place to go as having influenced their educational and career decisions. These findings reflect the need for continued support of informal science education programs for urban girls and at‐risk youth. © 2004 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Res Sci Teach 41: 835–860, 2004     

Caught between a rock and a hard place: disruptive boys’ views on mainstream and special schools in New South Wales,Australia

Students with disruptive behaviour in the Australian state of New South Wales (NSW) are increasingly being educated in separate ‘behaviour’ schools. There is however surprisingly little research on how students view these settings, or indeed the mainstream schools from which they were excluded. To better understand excluded students’ current and past educational experiences, we interviewed 33 boys, aged between 9 and 16 years of age, who were enrolled in separate special schools for students with disruptive behaviour. Analyses reveal that the majority of participants began disliking school in the early years due to difficulties with schoolwork and teacher conflict. Interestingly, while most indicated that they preferred the behaviour school, more than half still wanted to return to their old school. It is therefore clear that separate special educational settings are not a solution to disruptive behaviour in mainstream schools. Whilst these settings do fulfil a function for some students, the preferences of the majority of boys suggest that ‘mainstream’ school reform is of first-order importance.     

The existence of dyslexia without severe literacy problems

This paper is concerned with those who display positive indicators on tests for dyslexia but seemingly do not have any severe literacy problems. A case study is presented by way of illustration. On the basis of data from the British Births Cohort Study (12,905 10-year-old children), it was found that some seemingly normal achievers who showed signs of dyslexia (N=422) obtained different results on five measures associated with dyslexia than did other normal achievers without such signs (N=4,998). The measures used were: underachievement at word recognition; and underachievement at spelling, reading comprehension, pseudoword reading, and mathematics. The proportion of boys to girls in the groups was also noted. It is suggested that these were cases of mild dyslexia, who, on the basis simply of reading and spelling tests, might escape detection. The consequences for the concept of dyslexia are discussed, and it is suggested that the needs of dyslexics with only mild literacy problems should not be overlooked.     

Effects of segmenting,signalling, and weeding on learning from educational video

Informed by the cognitive theory of multimedia learning, this study examined the effects of three multimedia design principles on undergraduate students' learning outcomes and perceived learning difficulty in the context of learning entomology from an educational video. These principles included segmenting the video into smaller units, signalling to direct students' attention to relevant information, and weeding to remove any non-essential content (SSW). It was hypothesized that the SSW treatment would decrease perceived learning difficulty and facilitate the transfer of knowledge and the structural knowledge acquisition. Results of the study demonstrate that participants in the SSW group outperformed the non-SSW group on the tests of knowledge transfer and structural knowledge acquisition and reported lower levels of learning difficulty. These findings support the use of SSW to help novice learners organize and integrate knowledge from complex, dynamic audio-visual media like video.     

The submergence and re-emergence of gender in undergraduate accounts of university experience

Gender distinction has been shown to characterise both undergraduate experiences and outcomes. Yet research recounted in this article supports work that shows that young people are often unaware of such trends, subscribing instead to individualist perspectives that foreground equality of opportunity and agency. This article examines the gender continuities and divergences in 64 undergraduate students' accounts of their experiences, and constructions of peers and lecturers, in higher education. Concepts of heteroglossia and monoglossia are applied to gender to explain how students submerged ‘structure’ and inequality in their accounts, but how discourses that presented the genders as distinct (and in which the masculine is elevated over the feminine) nevertheless ‘bubbled up’ in their articulations. The students tended to reject the notion that gender and other structural differences impact their experiences and outcomes; yet their broader discussions frequently reflected (often stereotypical) monoglossic constructions of gender difference. The article concludes with a discussion of the implications of these findings for the sociology of education and for higher-education pedagogy.     

World of work on TV: Ethnic and sex representation in TV drama

On the pages which follow, authors Seggar and Wheeler explore the increasing use of minority group members in network television programming. They focus on a sample period in 1971 to show variances in dramatic portrayals of minority versus white American roles. Dr. Seggar received his Ph.D. from Kentucky in 1968 and has since taught at Brigham Young University where he is now associate professor of sociology. Ms. Wheeler received her MA in sociology at BYU in 1971. An earlier version of this paper was first presented at the 1972 convention of the Association for Education in Journalism.