It Only Looks the Same From a Distance: How U.S., Finnish,and Irish Schools Support Struggling Readers

This study examined how U.S., Finnish, and Irish educators identified and supported struggling readers. Using Johnston's (2011) framework for evaluating reading interventions and activity theory (Engeström, 1999), we interviewed educators in four U.S., three Irish, and three Finnish schools. In the United States, the adoption of three beliefs—reductionist reading philosophy, difficulties as cognitive and remediated through instruction, and reading problems as unexpected phenomena—reinforced a skills-driven approach. Irish and Finnish educators adopted a more holistic view of reading, and teachers used formative assessment to support struggling students over extended periods while working collaboratively with other staff. Discussion focuses on how these beliefs influenced divisions of labor, roles and responsibilities, and the urgency with which difficulties were addressed.     

Children's conceptions of mental illness: A naïve theory approach

This paper reports two studies that investigated children's conceptions of mental illness using a naïve theory approach, drawing upon a conceptual framework for analysing illness representations which distinguishes between the identity, causes, consequences, curability, and timeline of an illness. The studies utilized semi‐structured interviewing and card selection tasks to assess 6‐ to 11‐year‐old children's conceptions of the causes and consequences (Study 1) and the curability and timeline (Study 2) of different mental and physical illnesses/ailments. The studies revealed that, at all ages, the children held coherent causal–explanatory ideas about the causes, consequences, curability, and timeline of both mental and physical illnesses/ailments. However, while younger children tended to rely on their knowledge of common physical illnesses when thinking about mental illnesses, providing contagion and contamination explanations of cause, older children demonstrated differences in their thinking about mental and physical illnesses. No substantial gender differences were found in the children's thinking. It is argued that children hold coherent conceptions of mental illness at all ages, but that mental illness only emerges as an ontologically distinct conceptual domain by the end of middle childhood.     

Healthy and chronically‐ill children's generalisation of illness to biological and non‐biological categories

Using children's naïve theory of biology as a framework, this study investigated children's developing understanding of illness by examining their generalisation of illness to biological and non‐biological categories. In addition to differences associated with age, the children's health status was investigated for any possible linkwith their understanding. Healthy and chronically‐ill children, aged 4–11 years, were randomly assigned to one of three conditions, according to which exemplar (child, dog or duck) was described as suffering from an imaginary illness. Using a card‐sorting technique, the children assessed whether each entity out of 30 entities (five representatives in each of six categories: humans, mammals, non‐mammals, birds, plants and artifacts) could be afflicted by that illness. The children's generalisations indicated a grasp of the distinctiveness of the various categories, although they seemed less certain about the biological status of plants. Furthermore, the type of exemplar on which the children had been taught influenced their responses. However, the children's reasoning appeared unaffected by their health status and largely unaffected by age or gender. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Chief executive leadership style,consensus decision making,and top management team effectiveness

Using data from 79 high technology firms in the US and Ireland this study concludes that leadership style has both direct and indirect relationships with consensus decision making and with the reported effectiveness of top management teams. It focuses on what effective leaders do rather than the individual traits they possess and distinguishes between four styles of leadership: authoritarian (characterized by the use of instruction and non-contingent reprimand), transactional (influence via exchange of valued rewards for services/behaviours), transformational (inspiring followers to do more than originally expected), and laissez faire (avoiding decision making and supervisory responsibility). The transformational style of leadership was significantly and positively related, and the laissez faire style was significantly negatively related to reported team     

Children's understanding of religion: Interviews with Arab-Muslim,Asian-Muslim,Christian and Hindu children aged 5–11 years

Research into children's awareness of group differences has been an active area of research for some time, with work focusing on areas such as nationality, ethnicity, gender and religion. The majority of the work in these areas has taken the cognitive-constructivist framework as a background, offering a domain-general approach to all social cognition. This paper reports a qualitative study investigating children's understanding of religion and the importance of religion, broadly following an interview schedule based on Verbit's (1970 Verbit, MF. 1970. “The components and dimensions of religious behaviour: Toward a reconceptualisation of religiosity”. In American Mosaic, Edited by: Hammond, PE and Johnson, B. 124–139. New York: Random House. (Eds.) [Google Scholar]) definition of religion. A semi-structured interview procedure was used with 58 Arab Muslim, Asian Muslim, Christian, and Hindu children aged between 5 and 11 years living in North London. Religion appeared to be highly salient to the children interviewed, and findings suggested that children's religious identity is subject to a complex pattern of influences which cannot be solely explained by either age or cognitive differences.