www.srcd.org

Academic Lessons from Video Game Learning
National Science Foundation-sponsored conference to be held at
Fordham University - Lincoln Center Campus
New York, NY
October 7-10, 2010

Call for Post-doc/Graduate Student Scholarship Applications

This conference is designed to bring together leading researchers and practitioners from developmental and cognitive psychology, communications, media, and game design to examine how learning transfers from video game play to the elementary and secondary school classroom. This issue remains largely unaddressed despite a growing body of literature linking video game play to improvement in spatial skills (Green & Bavelier, 2003; Greenfield, Brannon, & Lohr, 1994; Subrahmanyam & Greenfield, 1996), problem solving and inductive reasoning (Blumberg, 1998; 2000; Greenfield, Camaioni et al., 1994; Rosas et al., 2003), and attention (Green & Bavelier, 2003; 2006a).

Invited conference attendees represent leading national and international researchers and practitioners in developmental and cognitive psychology, media, communications, and game design. Talks and activities during the conference will addres:

• cognitive skills and content knowledge that children and adolescents acquire and refine during video game play;
• game features that captivate and promote skill development among game players; and
• evidence of skill and content knowledge transfer from video game play to the classroom context among game players of different ages.

Discussion of these issues will then provide the basis for the culminating activity of the conference: specification of the most appropriate research agenda to investigate the academic potential of video game play, particularly using those games that child and adolescent players find most compelling.

Those interested in applying for Conference Scholarship should submit, via email only, the following by Sunday March 21, 2010:

• A letter of interest that includes 1) a general statement of how attending the conference will further your career goals and, 2) demonstration of expertise relevant to the conference goals
• A vita that includes name, address, institution, telephone, fax, e-mail, educational background, awards, professional publications and presentations, teaching experience, and service activities relevant to the conference goal
• A letter of recommendation from your advisor, major professor, or dissertation chair sent directly to the conference chair.

All email attachments, and general questions about the conference, should be sent to the conference chair, Fran Blumberg, (blumberg@fordham.edu). Only complete applications will be considered by the conference chair and a review committee consisting of a subset of conference attendees representative of academic and media-industry perspectives. Priority will be given to student applications from under-represented minorities, women, and persons with disabilities.

Positive Development of Minority Children
Call for papers for Special Issue of Child Development Perspectives (CDP)

The development and well-being of ethnic and racial minority children have received sustained attention over the past few decades from policymakers, researchers, and practitioners (see Quintana et al., 2006, for a review). These efforts have resulted in a body of research that, while rigorous and insightful, has for the most part been conducted from a deficit-perspective that emphasizes the negative effects of inadequate economic and social resources and an elevated rate of behavior problems, decreased social competence, and reduced school success among these children.

Recently, there has been increased interest in the study of positive child development among minority children (Eccles & Gootman, 2002; Lerner, Jacobs, & Wertlieb 2003). This approach reflects the view that individual, family, and community factors can have both negative (e.g., behavior problems) and positive (e.g., success in school) effects on children's outcomes. Protective factors such as developing positive attachment relationships with healthy adults (MacDonald et al., 2008) and participating in growth-promoting activities such as early childhood education or after-school programs (Beeghly et al., 2006; Frank et al., 2002) may not only prevent the occurrence of later problems but also create a positive developmental pathway (Papini, Roggman, & Anderson, 1991). Similarly, the formation of a strong ethnic identity can be an important predictor of positive outcomes for children (Phinney, 1990; Yip, Seaton & Sellers, 2006). It is thus important to understand both risk and resilience in this population.

The purpose of this special issue is to invite scholars to present articles that summarize emerging trends or conclusions and advance our understanding of positive child development among ethnic minority children. Articles suitable for publication in Child Development Perspectives include reviews or commentary, as well as conceptual papers or papers that primarily discuss methodological issues. Manuscripts presenting new empirical data are not appropriate for this journal. All manuscripts will undergo a review process, although this process may be more abbreviated for some types of submissions (e.g., commentary) than others (e.g., author-initiated submissions).

Please send a 500-word abstract of the proposed manuscript to Nancy Eisenberg (Nancy.Eisenberg@asu.edu and Natasha Cabrera (ncabrera@umd.edu) by MAY 15, 2010; inquiries submitted after this date may also be considered. We will notify authors of acceptance by JUNE 30, 2010. The deadline for submission of final manuscripts is SEPTEMBER 30, 2010.

The abstract should include the following: Tentative title; name and contact information of first author, name and contact information of all co-authors, brief description of the content of the manuscript, and perceived fit between the submission and the theme of the special issue.

The University of Kansas is pleased to announce an expanded set of 5-day workshops on quantitative methodology, to take place June 7 - 25, 2010 in Lawrence, Kansas. Workshop topics include: Structural Equation Modeling, Multilevel Modeling, Advanced Longitudinal Modeling, Meta-Analysis, Categorical Data Analysis, Item Response Theory, Statistical Analysis and Programming in R, and Social Network Dynamics. Brief descriptions can be found below, and more detailed information regarding course descriptions, registration and fees, location and lodging, etc can be found here:

www.Quant.KU.edu/StatsCamps/overview.html

Structural Equation Modeling: Foundations and Extended Applications (Todd D. Little & Noel A. Card, instructors)
June 7-11, 2010

Multilevel Modeling: Foundations and Applications (Kristopher J. Preacher & James P. Selig, instructors)
June 7-11, 2010

Structural Equation Modeling: Advanced Longitudinal Modeling (Todd D. Little, instructor)
June 14-18, 2010

Foundations of Meta-Analysis (Noel A. Card, instructor)
June 14-18, 2010

Categorical Data Analysis (Pascal R. Deboeck and Carol Woods, instructors)
June 14-18, 2010

Statistical Analysis and Programming in R (Paul E. Johnson & Pascal R. Deboeck, instructors)
June 21-25, 2010

Fundamentals of Item Response Theory (Michael C. Edwards, instructor)
June 21-25, 2010

Social Network Dynamics (Christian E. G. Steglich, instructor)
June 21-25, 2010