Second Screening and Political Persuasion on Social Media

This article seeks to explain political persuasion in relation to second screening—people’s use of a second screen (i.e., smartphone/laptop) while watching television to access further information or discuss TV programs. Employing a two-wave-panel survey in the United States, results show this emergent practice makes people more open to changing their political opinions, particularly among those who habitually use social media for news or frequently interact with others in social media contexts.     

Student Success and Failure: As a matter of fact or just how they are portrayed?

This paper introduces and analyses three broad discourses of academic achievement and failure, specifically those that speak of students' deficits, disadvantages and differences. It draws on interview data collected from teachers working in Australian primary (elementary) and secondary (high) schools and on academic literature that speaks to the field. The paper argues that 'deficit', 'disadvantage' and 'difference' represent discourses of considerable influence in determining how teachers, students and parents define what constitutes success or failure in schools, which respective approaches educators employ, and the beliefs we hold about students who fail and those who succeed. In this respect, the paper is concerned with matters of inclusion and exclusion in schooling. In particular, we seek to tease out the stories that these discourses tell about student diversity, as a way of unmasking how students are differently represented and how these representations serve to include some and exclude others from the benefits of schooling and society more broadly.     

Locomotor activity and exploration: The use of traditional manipulators to dissociate these two behaviors in the rat

An apparatus designed by Berlyne was used to dissociate locomotor activity and inspective exploratory responses with the aid of traditional manipulators. In this apparatus, novel and complex stimulation increased exploration but did not affect locomotor activity (LA), d-amphetamine (1.5 mg/kg) increased LA but decreased exploration. These findings provide a double dissociation of the behavioral components. In addition, low intrasubject correlations for the two behaviors were demonstrated. Results are discussed with reference to the need for simultaneous separate measures to obtain valid indices of exploratory behavior and LA.     

Evaluating a Training Intervention for Assessing Nonsuicidal Self‐Injury: The HIRE Model

The authors evaluated the effectiveness of a brief training intervention with graduate counseling students who used the HIRE (history, interest in change, reasons for engaging in the behavior, and exposure to risk; Buser & Buser, 2013b ) model for the informal assessment of nonsuicidal self‐injury. The intervention group demonstrated improvements in nonsuicidal assessment self‐efficacy and assessment skill. Findings suggest that HIRE is an evidence‐informed model for teaching nonsuicidal self‐injury assessment.     

Art Teachers' Views of National Curriculum Art: A repertory grid analysis

There have been calls for a radical revision of National Curriculum Art. A number of prominent academics have argued that its inadequate theoretical base has led to unsatisfactory formalist and normative tendencies in school-based art courses. The paper describes a small-scale survey, using the repertory grid technique, of the opinions and attitudes of experienced heads of art departments in comprehensive schools. Although the results indicate some areas of dissatisfaction, there is a clear overall consensus for acceptance of the mandatory framework. Such views are clearly at odds with most published discourse about National Curriculum Art. It is suggested that the school teachers' attitude to art education is an essentially pragmatic one, which recognises many forms of accountability.     

Variability in Muscle Damage After Eccentric Exercise and the Repeated Bout Effect

The first purpose of this study was to determine a possible explanation for the variability in the response to eccentric exercise by having participants repeat the same exercise 1 year apart. The second purpose was to examine whether initial injury in response to eccentric exercise was associated with the extent of the repeated bout effect (RBE). Male students performed 30 eccentric contractions (ECC) of the elbow flexors using a dumbbell set at 80% of the pre-exercise maximal isometric force (MIF). Participants were then classified into low (LR; n = 6), medium (MR; n = 6), high (HR; n = 5), and higher (HrR; n = 7) based on the increase in blood creatine kinase (CK) activity. A year later, participants repeated this exercise (ECC30). Four days after ECC30, participants performed 70 eccentric contractions (ECC70). Range of motion, MIF, upper arm circumference, soreness, and blood CK activity were measured before and up to 9 days after each bout. The change in the criterion measures following ECC and ECC30 were similar for each group. There were no further changes in all parameters after ECC70 for MR, HR, and HrR, although there was a small increase in CK after ECC70 for LR. LR showed a smaller RBE after ECC70 compared with the other groups. It is concluded that participants who exercised 1 year apart showed remarkably similar responses between the bouts. The extent of the RBE following the second bout for the LR group is less for participants who demonstrate the least evidence of muscle damage after a first exercise bout.     

Differentiation: teachers’ views of the usefulness of recommended strategies in helping the more able pupils in primary and secondary classrooms

Recent official publications have emphasised the need for differentiation to take place in classrooms in order to ensure that the needs of all pupils, including the more able, are met effectively. These publications list methods of differentiation which are ‘recommended’ for classroom use. This article researches the views of teachers about the value of these recommended methods of differentiation for able pupils in primary and secondary classrooms. It concludes that the teachers are more subtle in their use of the methods than the official publications allow for and it suggests that no single method can be applied without understanding the context in which it is used.     

The impact of word processing on the preparation and submission of written essays in a tertiary course of study

This study investigated whether the use of word processing in the creation and submission of written essays by tertiary students, resulted in the achievement of higher grades compared with conventional methods. The study was conducted among 240 student teachers in the first year of a degree course and studying a pre-service unit in teacher education. Students' marks in an essay were gathered along with details of the submission method used; word processed, typed or hand-written. Initial statistical tests showed that students who used word processing as a method for essay submission scored significantly higher essay marks that students whose essays were typed or hand-written. Further tests, however, revealed than it was the level of revision carried out rather than the submission method that accounted for the differences in achieved scores.     

Going to school with Madame Curie and Mr. Einstein: gender roles in children’s science biographies

One of the first places children encounter science and scientists is children’s literature. Children’s books about science and scientists have, however, received limited scholarly attention. By exploring the history of children’s biographies of Marie Curie and Albert Einstein, the two most written about scientist in children’s literature, this paper taps this unutilized resource to cultivate a unique perspective on the history of gender and authority in science and science education. Through analysis of explicit discussions of womanhood and science and implicit gendering of Curie and Einstein’s school experiences within these books, this study demonstrates that while much has changed in how these stories are framed the gender of the scientist is still central to how they are represented in children’s literature.