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Folate-sensitive fragile sites (FSFS) are a rare cytogenetically visible subset of dynamic mutations. Of the eight molecularly characterized FSFS, four are associated with intellectual disability (ID). Cytogenetic expression results from CGG tri-nucleotide-repeat expansion mutation associated with local CpG hypermethylation and transcriptional silencing. The best studied is the FRAXA site in the FMR1 gene, where large expansions cause fragile X syndrome, the most common inherited ID syndrome. Here we studied three families with FRA2A expression at 2q11 associated with a wide spectrum of neurodevelopmental phenotypes. We identified a polymorphic CGG repeat in a conserved, brain-active alternative promoter of the AFF3 gene, an autosomal homolog of the X-linked AFF2/FMR2 gene: Expansion of the AFF2 CGG repeat causes FRAXE ID. We found that FRA2A-expressing individuals have mosaic expansions of the AFF3 CGG repeat in the range of several hundred repeat units. Moreover, bisulfite sequencing and pyrosequencing both suggest AFF3 promoter hypermethylation. cSNP-analysis demonstrates monoallelic expression of the AFF3 gene in FRA2A carriers thus predicting that FRA2A expression results in functional haploinsufficiency for AFF3 at least in a subset of tissues. By whole-mount in situ hybridization the mouse AFF3 ortholog shows strong regional expression in the developing brain, somites and limb buds in 9.5–12.5dpc mouse embryos. Our data suggest that there may be an association between FRA2A and a delay in the acquisition of motor and language skills in the families studied here. However, additional cases are required to firmly establish a causal relationship.

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High-stakes testing is changing what it means to be a 'good teacher' in the contemporary school. This paper uses Deleuze and Guattari's ideas on the control society and dividuation in the context of NAPLAN testing in Australia to suggest that the database generates new understandings of the 'good teacher'. Media reports are used to look at how teachers are responding to the high-stakes database through manipulating the data. This paper argues that manipulating the data is a regrettable, but logical, response to manifestations of teaching where only the data counts.

KJre purpose of this study was to determine how the National FFA AgriScience Teacher of the Year Award Program winners perceived the impact that integrating science has had on their agricultural education program. The target population consisted of all state, regional, and national winners of the National FFA AgriScience Teacher of the Year Award Program from the years I988-1995. Responses were collectedfrom 131 teachers (71.98% response rate). A Jive point Likert-type scale (I = strongly disagree; 5 = strongly agree) was used to measure the teachers 'perceptions toward integrating science into their agricultural education programs. The respondents perceived that integration of science was an effective delivery method for agricultural education, as over one-third of the instrument items received mean scores greater than 4.0 and 90% of the items received mean scores of 3.0 or greater. The findings of this study support the need to integrate science into agricultural education programs.

This article is both an editorial introduction for this special issue and a distinctive contribution in its own right. The article seeks to extend a dynamic and multiple conception of time to the sociology of education to think beyond the clock time associated with modernity and industrialisation. This need is illustrated through an account and critique of E.P. Thompson's canonical account of clock time. The article argues that this construction of clock time implicitly frames most work in the sociology of education. The concept of 'timespace' offers a way to go beyond both clock time and the current 'spatial turn' in the sociology of education that prioritises space over time. It is shown how computerisation also ushers in a new temporality, which works simultaneously with clock time and perhaps presages the move from a disciplinary to control society. The article accepts that there are multiple and dynamic temporalities and correlatively supports a working together of historical and sociological imaginations towards a sociology of education that acknowledges and works with multiple temporalities, empirically, methodologically, theoretically and in research writing. … the need to project ourselves into the future has never been so strong, while we have never been so poorly armed on the conceptual front to conceive this future, which leaves a wide gap between the historic rupture that confronts us and our difficulty in interpreting it. (Laidi 1998, 1) Why do we remember the past and not the future? (Hawking 1988, 37)