Understanding student teachers' development of conceptions of teaching and learning is critical for teacher educators. Drawing from the findings of a four-year longitudinal study in Hong Kong, this paper examines the trajectories of the student teachers' changing conceptions of teaching and learning approaches throughout their undergraduate…

This is among the first longitudinal studies to report student attitudes across 4 yr of a university program. We found that the attitudes of students in biology become significantly more expert-like from the first year to the fourth year of the program, that is, there was a significant positive shift in students' overall percent favorable scores…

Recently, evidence of poor or atypical motor skills in autism spectrum disorder has led some to argue that motor impairment is a core feature of the condition. The current study uses a longitudinal prospective design to assess the development of motor skills of 20 children at increased risk of developing autism spectrum disorder, who were…

The expansion of higher education in the UK has been accompanied by ongoing class related inequalities in expectations about, and access to, university. In the context of detailed research into middle-class and working-class experiences and difference, there have been calls for more detailed analysis of internal class diversity, and for…

Background: Youth participation (or lack thereof) has been a subject of continued concern over the past 20 years. This decline has prompted huge interest in understanding how young people practice citizenship and in identifying measures that can help increase participation and interest. Purpose: The aim of this article is to examine how young…

Empirical research on parental involvement in children's education often makes the assumption that levels of involvement remain fixed over time. This paper highlights evidence from a longitudinal study that half of parents of young people in Year 9 reported becoming more or less involved in their child's school life over a two-year period and…

A handful of studies have found evidence of a gap in academic achievement between students of high- and low-socioeconomic status (SES) families. Furthermore, some scholars argue that the gap tends to widen as students get older. Evidence is, however, inconclusive and relies mostly on limited methodological designs. Drawing on the Hamburg School…

This article explores turning points and transitions emerging in the life course of children with disabilities and their parents. Through in-depth interviews with parents we found that a change appears in disabled children's social participation and belonging, at approximately eight years of age for children with learning difficulties and at…

An outline of frameworks for conceptualising and analysing news media roles in the representation of teachers, is followed by a discussion of quantitative and qualitative approaches to the study of news coverage. An argument is made for the benefit of using corpus linguistic tools within the overall conceptual focus on lexical and syntactical…

Using previously unanalysed data from Norbert Elias's lost study of young workers in Leicester--the "Adjustment of Young Workers to Work Situations and Adult Roles" (1962-1964), and data from a subsequent restudy of the same respondents in 2003-2005, this paper focuses on three main themes. First, we critically examine the concept of…

During the last decades, an increasing awareness has developed that humankind will have to make important decisions about the environment which will demand substantive knowledge of critical ecological phenomena such as the production and decomposition of biomass (World Commission on Environment and Development, 1987). As a biology teacher the…

Explores the relationship between three psychological factors (1) field dependence/field independence; (2) convergent/divergent dimensions of cognitive styles; and (3) working memory capacity and their effect on word association test responses for biological concepts, as well as grid questions. States the research study was completed in three…

Purpose: The aim of this article is to offer insight into the factors affecting individual and organisational learning in a small business; specifically the identification of the learning relationships that are unique to the small business environment. Design/methodology/approach: The authors apply Crossan et al.'s (1997, 1999) Organisational…

The acquisition of German in three adult Poles over a three-year period is examined based on an acquisition profile of each person that specified the sequences in acquisition. The findings suggest that cognitive factors must be considered to explain the varying degree of success in the acquisition process. (40 references) (Author/LB)

We explored the ''idiothetic'' cognitive structure of RIASEC occupational percepts in a sample of Italian middle and high school students over a one year period, examining the possible bidirectional linkages between cognitive-vocational structure, involvement in career exploration activities, and exposure to authoritative parenting style. The…