At the request of the National Executive of the APS College of Educational and Developmental Psychologists (CEDP), a survey was carried out with the aim of profiling its membership in order to better describe the nature of college membership when information is sought from its parent body, the APS, and to provide better services for its members. Of the 327 CEDP members contacted by email, 119 completed an online questionnaire providing demographic information and data concerning their professional practice, skills, involvement with the APS and professional development needs and preferences. The data obtained indicates that the CEDP contains an aging, predominantly female, city-based membership. Respondents consider they share many skills and competencies with other psychologists but do have a specialised knowledge base. They collaborate with colleagues from other Colleges but would welcome the opportunity to do this more. While they value the work of the APS they would like increased support by the APS in raising the profile of educational and developmental psychology. While the majority of members could find and access professional development (PD) relevant to their practice, a sizeable minority considered the costs involved excessive. The implications of these data for CEDP policies, especially with regard to recruitment and service provision, are discussed.

Accurate knowledge and positive attitudes within the community are important for the effective diagnosis, treatment and support of people with ADHD. Most previous research about knowledge and attitudes has focused only on professional groups and parents of children with ADHD. The aim of this study was to explore knowledge about ADHD characteristics and causes, and attitudes towards issues such as medication in the general population. Six hundred and forty-five members of the Australian community, all of whom were parents, completed a questionnaire. The findings showed that the core features of ADHD were well-known, but there were misconceptions and considerable uncertainty about many aspects. Most respondents failed to recognise the genetic basis of the disorder and its potentially lifelong nature. Fathers were less knowledgeable than mothers. Although most participants believed that ADHD is a genuine disorder and recognised the benefits of medication, the majority believed that it is diagnosed too frequently and that medication is prescribed too readily. The study concluded that, in many respects, the public is not well-informed about ADHD and suggested that the media may have an important role in enhancing community awareness of the disorder through responsible, sensitive and accurate reporting.

Research suggests that gender and perceived language proficiency level are among the factors that may impact the strategies language learners use. This study explored the impact of these variables on learning strategies used by 111 English-major Jordanian students. The instrument was Oxford's (1990) Strategy Inventory for Language Learning (SILL). The study revealed that females opt to use strategies more frequently than males. Results also showed that the higher the proficiency level, the more frequent the strategy use. Metacognitive strategies were the most prevalent among the different strategy types whereas memory strategies were the least deployed. These findings are discussed and implications are outlined.

This is a reflective paper grounded in practice. It addresses the nature of working alliances in education between colleagues from different cultural, professional and generational backgrounds. The authors are specifically concerned with discussing the significance of accessing peer/cultural support in education, in particular how one colleague mentored another and the way knowledge was exchanged during this process to increase awareness and understanding. This topic is considered in the context of supporting male Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students while they study and live away from home to complete their secondary school education at boarding school in Western Australia (WA).

This article reports mean scores on the Bayley Scales of Infant and Toddler Development (Version III) for 211 randomly selected healthy term (≥ 37 weeks gestation) Australian infants at one year of age. Mean scores were significantly different from standardised norms in all subscales except fine motor. Australian infants scored higher on cognitive and receptive language (p < .01) and lower on expressive language and gross motor (ps < .01) subscales. These findings raise questions regarding the validity of this test in the Australian population and suggest that the test be re-normed on Australian children for valid interpretation of scores in this cultural context.